Tech Policy Podcast

She’s back! Former host Ash Kazaryan (Future of Free Speech) returns for a wide-ranging discussion about powerful algorithms, attacks on Section 230, and much, much more.

Topics include:

• Ash: this is your life!
• In defense of tHe aLGoRitHm
• In defense of Section 230
• Once more: Anderson v. TikTok is so bad
• Has information gotten too cheap?
• Why Evangelicals should love AI
• Why every platform has a metamorphosis
• Let’s get cancelled

Links:

I Built This Algo Brick by Brick

The Bedrock Principle

Neural Viz

Tech Policy Podcast 417: Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton Is Wreaking Havoc

TPP From the Vault: Revising Section 230 Will Silence Marginalized Voices

TPP From the Vault: Why Section 230 Matters

Sri Muppidi (The Information) discusses OpenAI’s effort to overhaul its corporate structure—and the resulting power struggle over the company’s future.

Links:

OpenAI Says Its Business Will Burn $115 Billion Through 2029 

OpenAI Executives Rattled by Campaigns to Derail For-Profit Restructuring 

OpenAI Says Nonprofit Parent Will Own Equity Stake in Company of Over $100 Billion

Jeremy Neufeld (Institute for Progress) discusses how our immigration system works, why high-skilled immigrants are so important to the tech sector, what’s wrong with the Trump administration’s H-1B reforms, why America is so complacent about competing for global talent, and more.

Links: 

Trump’s H-1B Changes Won’t Work

Talent Recruitment Roulette: Replacing the H-1B Lottery | IFP

The Talent Scout State | IFP

Tech Policy Podcast 317: Making Progress

Adam Kovacevich (Chamber of Progress) discusses the populist / anti-tech turn in politics, and what can be done about it.

Topics include:

• How did we get here?
• Tech optimists: There are dozens of us!
• Beware ThE gROupS
• If there’s a crisis, maybe act like it?
• Duct tape and bubble gum
• The great relearning
• We’re so doomed
• We’re so not doomed

Links:

Tech Policy Podcast 403: The Constitutional Crisis

Tech Policy Podcast 388: The Abundance Agenda

Tech Policy Podcast 355: Conservative Futurism

Tech Policy Podcast 301: The Realignment

Ari Cohn (FIRE) and Tom Kurland (Patterson Belknap) discuss the spate of product-liability lawsuits against social-media and AI companies.

Topics include:

• A tort law primer
• The ballad of Helen Palsgraf
• Causation, shmausation
• Speech =/= product
• Ideas are powerful. (That’s the point!)
• “Addiction.” You keep using that word …
• ♪ Junk science ♪
• AI, suicide, and you

Links:

Tech Policy Podcast 414: Beware the Butlerian Jihad

Tech Policy Podcast 347: When Schools Scapegoat Social Media

Tech Policy Podcast 310: Algorithmic Amplification

Host Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) discusses why Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is wrong, how it muddies First Amendment law, and how it is already causing wider harm.

Topics include:

• FSC v. Paxton: a result-oriented ruling
• A credulous court
• PoRn iS sCArY
• Ashcroft v. ACLU is sitting right there!
• tEcH Is ScARy
• RIP First Amendment 101
• The porn-to-social media litigation pipeline 
• States cite FSC v. Paxton 1,000 times

Links:

Tech Policy Podcast 373: Porn and the First Amendment

Shoshana Weissmann (R Street) discusses the disastrous Online Safety Act, the growth of censorship in the UK, and more.

Topics include:

• Protect the children, they said . . .
• The SpongeBob videos must stop
• Solve problems? Or just shut people up?
• How dare you comply with our law!
• Age verification in practice
• Peter Kyle: polite demagogue
• Let’s kill KOSA
• UK: global speech police?
• “Rights”: you keep using that word . . .

Links:

U.K.’s Online Safety Act Censors the Internet—A Preview of U.S. Proposals

Tech Policy Podcast 405: No, Internet Age Verification Has Not Been “Solved”

Tech Policy Podcast 404: The Worst Possible Moment to Break Encryption

Tech Policy Podcast 356: The UK Targets End-to-End Encryption

Tech Policy Podcast 354: Online Age Verification (Sucks)

From November 8, 2020 (Episode 279): Billy Easley sits down with former host Ashkhen Kazaryan. They remind us of the value of the free and open Internet.

Links:

Revising the Law That Lets Platforms Moderate Content Will Silence Marginalized Voices

Free Speech and Tech Policy at the US Supreme Court, 2025 (AEI Event)

Matt Perault (a16z) joins Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) for a wide-ranging discussion of AI bills, AI laws, and AI vibes. Part of the WLF-TechFreedom Tech in the Courts webinar series.

Topics include:

• Why did the AI moratorium die?
• Activity in the states
• Regulate outcomes, not models?
• Next steps in Congress
• “Transparency”: so hot right now
• The AI panic
• Lawsuits

Links:

Recorded Tech in the Courts Webinar—The State of AI Regulation

Our host, Corbin Barthold, heads over to So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast. He talks with Nico Perrino and Ari Cohn of FIRE about the death of the AI moratorium, a bogus wrongful death lawsuit against Character AI, the FTC’s campaign of censorship against ad agencies, and the absurdities of Europe’s Digital Services Act.

Links:

Shownotes, courtesy of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast