Sarah T. Roberts is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Studies, Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, at UCLA. She holds a Ph.D. from the iSchool at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining UCLA in 2016, she was an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University in London, Ontario for three years. On the internet since 1993, she was previously an information technology professional for 15 years, and, as such, her research interests focus on information work and workers and on the social, economic and political impact of the widespread adoption of the internet in everyday life.

Since 2010, the main focus of her research has been to uncover the ecosystem – made up of people, practices and politics – of content moderation of major social media platforms, news media companies, and corporate brands.

She served as consultant to and is featured in the award-winning documentary The Cleaners, which debuted at Sundance 2018 and aired on PBS in the United States in November 2018.

Roberts is frequently consulted by the press and others on issues related to commercial content moderation and to social media, society and culture, in general. She has been interviewed on these topics in print, on radio and on television worldwide including: The New York Times, Associated Press, NPR, Le Monde, The Atlantic, The Economist, BBC Nightly News, the CBC, The Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Wired, The Washington Post, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, SPIEGEL Online, and CNN, among many others.

She is a 2018 Carnegie Fellow and a 2018 recipient of the EFF Barlow Pioneer Award for her groundbreaking research on content moderation of social media.

She tweets as @ubiquity75.

This episode streamed live on Thursday, October 1, 2020. Here’s an archive of the show on YouTube:

The Tech Humanist Show is a multi-media-format program exploring how data and technology shape the human experience. Hosted by Kate O’Neill.

Subscribe to The Tech Humanist Show hosted by Kate O’Neill channel on YouTube for updates.

01:43
all right
01:44
hey humans
01:48
how we doing out there come on in start
01:50
gathering around the uh the old digital
01:52
campfire
01:54
let me hear from those of you who are in
01:55
line uh right now tell me
01:57
tell me who’s out there and tell me
01:59
where you’re tuning in from
02:01
i hope you’re starting to get your
02:02
questions and thoughts ready
02:04
for our guest i’m sure many of you have
02:06
already seen who our guest is and i’ll
02:07
be reading her bio here in just a moment
02:09
so start thinking of your questions
02:11
about commercial content moderation and
02:13
what you want to
02:14
know about that and you know all that
02:17
kind of stuff
02:18
uh i hear sarah laughing in the
02:19
background it’s not to laugh
02:22
really good valid questions i think i
02:25
was just snorting
02:26
honestly through my uh through my sinus
02:29
trouble
02:30
so uh welcome to those of you who are
02:32
all tuned in welcome to the tech
02:34
humanist show this is a multimedia
02:36
format program
02:37
exploring how data and technology shape
02:39
the human experience
02:41
and i am your host kate o’neil so i hope
02:44
you’ll subscribe and follow wherever
02:45
you’re catching this
02:46
so that you won’t miss any new episodes
02:49
i
02:50
am going to introduce our guest here in
02:51
just a moment uh one one last shout out
02:53
if anybody’s out there wanting to say hi
02:56
feel free
02:56
you are welcome to comment and i see a
02:59
bunch of you
03:00
online so feel free to tune uh
03:03
comment in and tell me who you are and
03:05
where you’re tuning in from
03:07
but just get those you know type in
03:08
fingers warmed up because we’re gonna
03:10
want you to
03:10
to weigh in with some questions and
03:12
comments as the show goes on
03:14
but now i’ll go ahead and introduce our
03:17
esteemed guest so today we have the
03:19
very great privilege of talking with
03:21
sarah t roberts who
03:22
is an assistant professor in the
03:24
department of information studies
03:26
graduate school of education and
03:28
information studies at ucla
03:30
she holds a phd from the ischool at the
03:32
university of illinois urbana-champaign
03:34
my sister’s school i went to university
03:36
of illinois chicago
03:38
prior to joining ucla in 2016 she was an
03:40
assistant professor
03:42
in the faculty of information and media
03:44
studies at western university in london
03:46
ontario for three years
03:47
on the internet since 1993 she was
03:50
previously an information technology
03:52
professional for 15 years and as such
03:54
her research interests focus on
03:56
information work and workers and on the
03:58
social
03:59
economic and political impact of the
04:01
widespread adoption of the internet in
04:02
everyday life right totally
04:06
so since 2010 the main focus of her
04:08
research has been to uncover the
04:10
ecosystem
04:11
made up of people practices and politics
04:14
of content moderation of major social
04:16
media platforms
04:17
news media companies and corporate
04:19
brands
04:20
she served as consultant tune is
04:21
featured in the award-winning
04:22
documentary
04:23
the cleaners which debuted at sundance
04:26
2018
04:27
and aired on pbs in the united states in
04:29
november
04:30

1. so roberts is frequently consulted
   04:33
   by the press and others on issues
   04:34
   related to commercial content moderation
   04:36
   and to social media society and culture
   04:38
   in general
   04:39
   she’s been interviewed on these topics
   04:41
   in print on radio
   04:42
   on television worldwide and now on the
   04:44
   tech humanist show
   04:45
   uh including the new york times
   04:47
   associated press npr
   04:48
   le monde the atlantic i mean this list
   04:50
   is going to go on and on so
   04:52
   buckle in folks the economist bbc
   04:55
   rolling stone wired and picking and
   04:57
   choosing now it’s a really really
   04:59
   impressive list of media
   05:00
   she’s a 2018 carnegie fellow and a 2018
   05:04
   recipient of the eff barlow
   05:06
   pioneer award for her groundbreaking
   05:08
   research on content moderation
   05:10
   of social media so audience again please
   05:12
   start getting your questions ready for
   05:13
   our outstanding guest
   05:15
   please do note as a live show i well
   05:17
   i’ll do my best to vet comments and
   05:19
   questions in real time
   05:20
   we may not get to all of them but very
   05:23
   much appreciate
   05:24
   you being here tuned in and
   05:25
   participating in the show so with that
   05:27
   please welcome uh our dear guest
   05:31
   sarah t roberts and you are live on the
   05:34
   show
   05:34
   sarah thank you so much for being here
   05:37
   thank you uh
   05:38
   thanks for the invitation and thanks to
   05:40
   your audience and
   05:41
   uh all those interested folks who are
   05:44
   spending time with us today i’m really
   05:45
   grateful
   05:46
   for the opportunity we’ve already got uh
   05:48
   david polgar
   05:49
   saying excited for today’s talk hey our
   05:52
   buddy
   05:53
   dave drp
   05:54
   [Laughter]
   05:56
   all right so i wanna talk right away
   05:59
   about your um
   06:01
   your book behind the screen i i hadn’t
   06:03
   had a chance to read and until i was
   06:05
   preparing for the
   06:06
   show and it was it was wonderful to get
   06:07
   a chance to dig into your research
   06:09
   so tell us a little bit about that came
   06:11
   out last year is that right
   06:13
   um yeah it just just a little over a
   06:15
   year ago uh
   06:16
   came out on on yale university press
   06:19
   um you know the academic
   06:23
   publishing cycle is its own beast it’s
   06:25
   its own world
   06:26
   it uh as it relates to
   06:29
   um kind of like journalism and and
   06:31
   mainstream press timelines it’s much
   06:33
   slower
   06:34
   that said uh i wrote the book in about a
   06:37
   year which is about a normal
   06:39
   a normal cycle but it took about eight
   06:42
   years to put together the research that
   06:44
   went into the book
   06:46
   and this is because when i started my
   06:48
   research in 2010
   06:50
   which you know we say 2010 it seems like
   06:53
   yesterday that was a decade ago now
   06:55
   you know if we’re in terminable 2020
   06:59
   you know which is which is a million
   07:01
   years long so far but
   07:03
   back in 2010 when i started looking into
   07:05
   this topic as a
   07:07
   as a doctoral researcher at the
   07:09
   university of illinois
   07:10
   uh you know there were a lot of things
   07:12
   stacked against that endeavor
   07:14
   including the fact that i was a doctoral
   07:16
   student at the university of illinois i
   07:17
   had no cachet i had very few
   07:20
   like material resources um you know to
   07:23
   finance
   07:24
   a study that would require uh
   07:27
   at the end of the day required going
   07:29
   around the world quite literally
   07:32
   but maybe the biggest barrier at the
   07:34
   time was the fact
   07:36
   that i was still fighting an uphill
   07:38
   battle trying to tell people
   07:40
   that major mainstream social media
   07:43
   platforms
   07:44
   were engaged in a practice that is now
   07:47
   weirdly um you know a phrase that you
   07:51
   might say around the dinner table and
   07:52
   everyone would get which is content
   07:54
   moderation
   07:55
   and that further when i would um raise
   07:58
   the issue
   08:00
   and and bring up the fact that firms
   08:01
   were engaged in this practice which
   08:04
   you know has to do with the adjudication
   08:06
   of people’s
   08:08
   self-expression online and sits
   08:10
   somewhere between users
   08:13
   and the platform and then the platform’s
   08:15
   recirculation of users material
   08:18
   uh you know people would argue with me
   08:20
   at that point
   08:22
   about the fact that that practice would
   08:24
   even go on
   08:25
   and then when i would say that uh you
   08:27
   know kind of offer
   08:28
   incontrovertible proof that in fact it
   08:30
   did go on uh
   08:32
   then we would uh find ourselves in a
   08:34
   debate about whether or not
   08:36
   it was a legion of human beings
   08:40
   who was undertaking this work or uh in
   08:43
   fact it was computational
   08:45
   now in 2010 in 2020 the landscape is
   08:48
   complicated but in 2010
   08:51
   the technology and the sort of
   08:53
   widespread adoption
   08:54
   of of computational uh
   08:58
   automated let’s say algorithmic kinds of
   09:01
   content moderation or machine learning
   09:03
   and forum content moderation was not a
   09:05
   thing
   09:05
   it was humans and so i had to start the
   09:09
   conversation
   09:10
   so far below baseline
   09:14
   that it you know it took uh it took
   09:17
   quite a lot of effort just to get
   09:19
   everybody on the same page to discuss it
   09:22
   and you know when i’m talking about
   09:24
   uh engaging in these conversations i
   09:27
   mean just like trying to vet this as a
   09:29
   as an appropriate research topic at the
   09:32
   graduate school you know what i mean
   09:34
   like to get faculty members
   09:36
   many of whom were world experts in in
   09:39
   various aspects of uh of the internet or
   09:42
   of
   09:42
   media or information systems themselves
   09:46
   um it was new to them too that was did
   09:49
   you originally frame it was it it’s a
   09:51
   question of how
   09:52
   is this done or what was the original
   09:54
   framework of that question yeah
   09:56
   so i’ll tell you a little bit about the
   09:57
   origin of why i got interested
   10:00
   and it’s something that i write about in
   10:01
   the book because i think it’s so
   10:03
   important to acknowledge kind of those
   10:06
   those antecedents i had read i was
   10:08
   actually teaching down at the university
   10:10
   of illinois in the summer
   10:12
   of 2010 and i was on a break from
   10:15
   teaching and
   10:16
   you know probably drinking a latte which
   10:18
   is what i’m doing right now
   10:19
   and um and uh uh reading the paper i was
   10:23
   reading the new york times and there was
   10:24
   a very small
   10:26
   uh but compelling article in the new
   10:28
   york times about a group of workers
   10:30
   who were there there were a couple of
   10:32
   sites they mentioned but there was in
   10:33
   particular a group of workers in rural
   10:35
   iowa well here i was sitting in rural
   10:38
   central illinois thinking about this
   10:40
   group of workers in rural iowa as
   10:42
   profiled in this piece
   10:44
   who were in fact engaging in what we now
   10:46
   know as commercial content moderation
   10:48
   they were working
   10:49
   in effectively a call center uh
   10:53
   adjudicating content for unnamed kind of
   10:55
   you know
   10:56
   media sites websites and social media
   10:59
   properties
   11:00
   and i kind of circulated that article
   11:03
   around i shared it with friends i shared
   11:05
   it with my colleagues and i shared it
   11:06
   with professors and
   11:07
   the argument that i made was that it was
   11:10
   it was multifaceted first of all it
   11:12
   sounded like a miserable
   11:14
   job and guess what that has been borne
   11:16
   out it is a
   11:17
   very difficult and largely unpleasant
   11:20
   job
   11:21
   uh so i was captivated by that fact that
   11:24
   there were these you know
   11:25
   unnamed people who a generation or two
   11:28
   ago would have been on a family farm
   11:30
   who were now in the quote unquote
   11:32
   information economy but seemed to be
   11:34
   doing
   11:34
   a drag just awful work
   11:38
   uh but also there was this bigger issue
   11:41
   of
   11:42
   uh you know really having this this big
   11:44
   reveal
   11:45
   of the of the actual
   11:48
   ecosystem an unknown here for unknown
   11:51
   portion of the social media ecosystem
   11:54
   effectively letting us know how the
   11:56
   sausage was being made right
   11:58
   and yet if you were to look at any of
   12:01
   the
   12:02
   the uh the social media platforms
   12:05
   themselves or any of the discourse at
   12:06
   really high levels in
   12:08
   industry or in regulatory bodies this
   12:11
   was not
   12:12
   this was a non-starter but i was was
   12:14
   arguing at the time
   12:16
   that how content was being adjudicated
   12:18
   on the platforms
   12:20
   under what circumstances under what
   12:23
   conditions and under what policies was
   12:25
   in fact
   12:27
   maybe the only thing that mattered at
   12:29
   the end of the day
   12:30
   right now in 2010 that was a little bit
   12:32
   of a harder case to make
   12:34
   by 2016 not so much after we saw the uh
   12:38
   the ascent of donald trump in the united
   12:40
   states we saw brexit
   12:42
   we saw uh this the rise of bolsonaro and
   12:45
   in brazil largely
   12:46
   uh attributed to um
   12:49
   social media campaigns there and kind of
   12:52
   discontinued sustained
   12:54
   support through those channels uh and
   12:57
   here we are in 2020 where uh
   13:00
   we might argue or we might claim that
   13:02
   misinformation and disinformation online
   13:04
   is one of the primary
   13:06
   concerns of civil society today
   13:09
   and i would put front and center
   13:13
   in those all of those discussions
   13:16
   the fact that social media companies
   13:18
   have this incredible immense power
   13:20
   to decide what stays up and what doesn’t
   13:24
   and how they do it and who they engage
   13:27
   to do it
   13:28
   should actually be part of the
   13:30
   conversation if not
   13:31
   i would argue that it’s a very
   13:33
   incomplete conversation so when i talk
   13:35
   about like the
   13:36
   scholarly publishing cycle it took a
   13:39
   year to put the book out right but it
   13:40
   took eight years to amass the evidence
   13:44
   to um to do the to the interviews and
   13:47
   media that you mentioned
   13:48
   to converse with industry people at the
   13:51
   top levels eventually but
   13:52
   you know starting at the bottom with the
   13:54
   workers themselves to find workers who
   13:56
   are willing
   13:56
   to talk to me and break those
   13:58
   non-disclosure agreements that they were
   14:00
   under um and to kind of create also
   14:04
   a a locus of activity for other
   14:07
   researchers and scholars and activists
   14:09
   who are also interested in in uncovering
   14:12
   uh this area and really sort of create
   14:14
   co-create a field of study so that’s
   14:17
   what took eight years it took a year to
   14:18
   get the book out
   14:19
   um but all that legwork of proving in a
   14:22
   way
   14:23
   that this mattered took a lot longer i
   14:25
   don’t have to make that same case
   14:27
   anymore
   14:27
   as i’m sure you you can imagine um
   14:30
   people people are interested they’re
   14:33
   concerned
   14:34
   and um they want to know more they’re
   14:36
   demanding a lot more
   14:38
   um from firms as users
   14:41
   you know as people who are now engaged
   14:43
   in social media in some aspect
   14:45
   of their lives every day need i say more
   14:48
   about zooming
   14:49
   constantly which is now our you know our
   14:52
   primary
   14:53
   medium of connection for so many of us
   14:55
   in our work lives even
   14:57
   yeah hey we already have a question from
   15:00
   our buddy drp david ryden-polgar let me
   15:04
   uh
   15:04
   put this against the background we can
   15:06
   actually see it here uh
   15:08
   he says sarah would love to hear your
   15:10
   thoughts on section 23
   15:12
   230 and how any potential changes would
   15:15
   impact content moderation
   15:16
   so we’re going right in right deep yeah
   15:19
   really
   15:20
   so um let me try to flush that out a
   15:22
   little bit
   15:24
   for others who aren’t um you know inside
   15:26
   quite as as deep
   15:28
   um section 230 is
   15:31
   a part of the uh communications decency
   15:34
   act which goes back to 1996 but
   15:36
   effectively what what anyone needs to
   15:38
   know about section 230 is that
   15:40
   it’s the it it’s sort of the legal
   15:42
   framework
   15:43
   that informs social media companies
   15:48
   rights and responsibilities around
   15:51
   content
   15:52
   when we think about legacy media um
   15:55
   so-called uh broadcast television for
   15:58
   example or other other forms of of media
   16:01
   that we consume
   16:02
   you know i always bring up the the
   16:04
   example of george carlin who
   16:06
   famously um uh
   16:10
   you know made a career out of the seven
   16:12
   dirty words that you couldn’t say
   16:13
   on radio right so there are all kinds
   16:16
   of governing uh
   16:19
   legal and other kinds of norms about
   16:22
   what is allowed and disallowed in some
   16:24
   of these legacy media
   16:26
   when it comes to social media however
   16:30
   there is a pretty
   16:35
   drastically contrasted permissiveness
   16:38
   that is in place uh that
   16:41
   seeds the power of the decision-making
   16:44
   around
   16:45
   what is allowable and what is not
   16:46
   allowable to the platforms themselves so
   16:49
   this is a really different kind of
   16:50
   paradigm right
   16:52
   and it’s section 230 that allows that
   16:54
   that’s the
   16:55
   that’s the precedent that’s the that’s
   16:57
   the guidance uh
   16:58
   legally that uh that provides that kind
   17:01
   of
   17:02
   uh both responsibility and discretion
   17:05
   and what it does is it allows the
   17:07
   companies
   17:08
   um to make their own decisions
   17:12
   effectively
   17:13
   about what policies they will follow
   17:15
   internally now this doesn’t go for
   17:17
   every single piece of content you know
   17:18
   one of the the biggest examples that
   17:21
   uh that this does not cover is child
   17:24
   sexual exploitation material which is
   17:25
   just illegal full stop it doesn’t matter
   17:28
   if platforms wanted to traffic in that
   17:30
   material or not it’s illegal
   17:32
   but beyond that just to certain to a
   17:35
   certain extent what section 230 allows
   17:38
   is for platforms to redistribute
   17:42
   effectively material that other people
   17:44
   submit
   17:45
   uh without being held liable for that
   17:47
   material
   17:48
   and so if we think about that that’s
   17:50
   actually the business model of social
   17:51
   media
   17:52
   the business model of social media is to
   17:54
   get other people to create content
   17:56
   upload it circulate it and engage with
   17:59
   it download it
   18:00
   and effectively the platforms have um
   18:03
   you know argued and claimed that they
   18:04
   are really
   18:05
   you know don’t kill the messenger right
   18:07
   like they’re just like the
   18:08
   the the apparatus by which this material
   18:10
   gets shared
   18:12
   i think that um
   18:15
   you know at one time that really made
   18:16
   sense particularly when the
   18:18
   when this uh when the communications
   18:20
   decency act was passed and this goes
   18:22
   back in
   18:23
   into the mid 90s when what was
   18:26
   kind of imagined as needing this this
   18:29
   uh reprieve from liability was an isp an
   18:33
   internet service provider
   18:35
   which at that time uh i guess the most
   18:38
   imaginative version of that you could
   18:40
   think of would be america online for
   18:41
   those of you who
   18:42
   remember that on the program shout out
   18:45
   to the aol days yeah
   18:47
   right aol like all the you know the
   18:49
   discs and cd-roms you got and used as
   18:51
   coasters
   18:52
   um but you know back in that time but an
   18:55
   internet service provider really was a
   18:57
   pass-through in some cases you know i
   18:58
   knew a guy who ran an isp locally
   19:01
   he really just had a room with a with a
   19:03
   huge internet pipe coming in
   19:06
   and a wall of modems and you would dial
   19:08
   up through your modem and connect
   19:10
   through and then be on the internet to
   19:11
   some other service
   19:12
   so that was the model then but the model
   19:15
   now
   19:15
   uh is you know multi-billion dollar
   19:19
   transnational corporations
   19:21
   uh who have immense power in decision
   19:24
   making around content
   19:26
   and yet are are uh
   19:29
   in the american context at least largely
   19:32
   not liable for those decisions
   19:34
   uh legally or or otherwise um
   19:38
   making incredibly powerful
   19:42
   decisions about what kind of material we
   19:45
   all see and engage in
   19:47
   and what is permissible and what is not
   19:49
   online and they do that at their
   19:50
   discretion well if they’re doing that at
   19:52
   their discretion
   19:54
   do you think that they’re largely going
   19:56
   to um
   19:58
   fall into a mode of altruism and like
   20:01
   what’s best
   20:01
   for civil society are they going to look
   20:03
   at their bottom line
   20:05
   and their shareholder demands and
   20:07
   respond to that i mean
   20:09
   the audience yeah i mean frankly
   20:12
   publicly traded companies
   20:13
   have a legal mandate to respond to their
   20:15
   shareholders and to generate revenue for
   20:17
   them so
   20:18
   um when those things are at odds when
   20:20
   when those things are aligned with
   20:22
   what’s good for you know
   20:23
   america is good for uh facebook’s
   20:26
   internal policies around content
   20:28
   moderation that works out great
   20:29
   but if there’s you know if ever those
   20:32
   two pathways should diverge
   20:34
   we know which one they’re going to fall
   20:35
   under and there’s just there’s very
   20:37
   little
   20:37
   um legal consequence or legal uh
   20:41
   expectation for uh reporting out on how
   20:46
   uh these decisions get made the way that
   20:48
   that
   20:49
   we have seen more decisions getting uh
   20:52
   publicly
   20:53
   unveiled through things like um
   20:56
   the publication of of what had been
   21:00
   previously kind of closely held secret
   21:03
   policies internally is through public
   21:06
   pressure
   21:06
   through the pressure of civil society
   21:08
   groups and advocacy groups through the
   21:10
   pressure
   21:11
   of the public through the pressure and
   21:13
   the constant threat of
   21:15
   you know things like reform to section
   21:17
   230 or other kinds of
   21:19
   regulation so it’s a very interesting
   21:23
   moment and it’s interesting to bring up
   21:24
   section 230 because
   21:26
   again a couple of years ago i had
   21:28
   colleagues um
   21:30
   who are in uh legal studies and who are
   21:34
   you know law professors essentially tell
   21:36
   me that 230 would soon be rendered
   21:38
   moot anyway because it’s just it’s it’s
   21:41
   you know based on um on
   21:45
   well it should be solely relevant in the
   21:47
   united states right in the jurisdiction
   21:49
   of the united states
   21:50
   and so because these platforms were
   21:52
   going worldwide
   21:54
   uh you know there
   21:57
   it would be rendered mood well i would
   21:59
   say it’s actually been the opposite
   22:00
   that’s right that what is happening is
   22:02
   that section 230 is getting bundled up
   22:04
   as the norm
   22:06
   and is now being promulgated either just
   22:09
   through uh through the process of these
   22:13
   platforms going global but kind of
   22:14
   keeping their americanness and
   22:16
   keeping their um their response their
   22:20
   you know business practices largely
   22:22
   responsible to american laws first and
   22:24
   foremost
   22:25
   but also even to the point that uh you
   22:28
   know it recently
   22:29
   has become known i think more and more
   22:32
   to people like me who aren’t legal
   22:34
   scholars but who have a great interest
   22:36
   in how this stuff goes down that section
   22:39
   230 like language
   22:41
   is being bundled up and put into trade
   22:44
   agreements
   22:45
   uh at the nation state level or
   22:48
   you know region level with the united
   22:50
   states and trading partners and we know
   22:52
   that
   22:53
   you know these these trade agreements
   22:56
   which have been you know huge hugely
   22:57
   politically
   22:59
   uh problematic and were a major issue in
   23:03
   fact of the 2016 election
   23:05
   uh you know they’re they’re they’re
   23:07
   anti-democratic i mean how do you even
   23:09
   know what’s in a trade agreement they’re
   23:10
   totally secret
   23:12
   uh but i i learned while watching a uh
   23:15
   uh house uh subcommittee
   23:19
   uh convening about section 230 from
   23:22
   a highly placed google executive
   23:26
   that in fact their their lobbyists are
   23:28
   pushing for this kind of language in
   23:31
   in these trade agreements so we see that
   23:33
   instead of 230 becoming less relevant
   23:35
   because of the globalization
   23:37
   of american social media platforms it’s
   23:39
   actually becoming a norm that is now
   23:42
   being
   23:43
   first of all it was sort of like softly
   23:45
   reproduced just because of the spread of
   23:47
   these american platforms and
   23:49
   how they were doing business but now
   23:50
   it’s actually becoming codified
   23:52
   through other means means like like
   23:55
   trade agreements that the public has
   23:57
   really no
   23:58
   mechanism to intervene upon and i think
   24:00
   that’s really worrisome
   24:02
   what about those mechanisms where the
   24:04
   sorry what were you gonna say
   24:06
   no okay i was just gonna say that’s one
   24:07
   of my short and concise professorial
   24:09
   answers
   24:11
   let me drink a coffee well david
   24:14
   uh thanks you for that uh great
   24:17
   historical overview and i’m sure
   24:18
   the rest of our viewers and listeners do
   24:20
   too i i wonder about the ones
   24:22
   the the examples that don’t have that
   24:25
   kind of
   24:26
   uh consumer involvement so i’m wondering
   24:28
   about for example
   24:29
   you know youtube and it’s kids content
   24:32
   and
   24:33
   and so there have been a lot of changes
   24:35
   it seems like
   24:36
   with regard to that that platform and
   24:38
   that subject over the
   24:40
   over the last few years so can you maybe
   24:42
   give us an overview of
   24:43
   how that has gone down um
   24:46
   well i think that you know youtube is
   24:49
   such an interesting example
   24:51
   to talk about for for many reasons uh
   24:53
   for its reach and pervasiveness you know
   24:56
   it’s a
   24:56
   market leader for sure it’s globality i
   24:59
   would also say that youtube is
   25:01
   particularly interesting because when we
   25:04
   think about
   25:05
   uh social media content as being
   25:10
   monetized there is no greater
   25:13
   and more direct example than youtube
   25:15
   where it actually pays people who are
   25:17
   really highly successful on the platform
   25:19
   for content right
   25:20
   so like when there’s no kind of like a
   25:23
   metaphor there about monetization it is
   25:25
   literally monetized right
   25:27
   um and this you know just to kind of tie
   25:30
   this back to the section 230
   25:31
   conversation
   25:32
   when we imagined isps as just path
   25:35
   pass-throughs you know that was one
   25:37
   thing but here we have
   25:39
   these huge companies like youtube and
   25:40
   others involved actively
   25:43
   in production so that kind of like
   25:46
   firewall between just being an
   25:48
   intermediary and actually being actively
   25:50
   engaged in producing media
   25:51
   has gone but the there’s like a legacy
   25:54
   legal environment that it still
   25:56
   informs it so youtube you know they pay
   25:58
   producers they have these like
   26:01
   uh pretty extraordinary studios in
   26:05
   in major uh in major
   26:08
   cities around the world including la
   26:10
   where i live
   26:12
   uh they you know they are kind of the
   26:15
   go-to outlet and people
   26:18
   want to participate in youtube for all
   26:20
   sorts of reasons but there’s certainly
   26:21
   you know a dollar sign reason that
   26:24
   people get involved
   26:25
   and you bring up this issue of kids
   26:27
   content
   26:28
   um again here’s where we see sort of
   26:31
   like the softening and the eroding of
   26:33
   regulation too it
   26:35
   started it’s it’s not just youtube i
   26:36
   have to confess it’s not just
   26:38
   social media companies that have eroded
   26:40
   uh you know child protections around
   26:42
   um media that that goes back to the you
   26:45
   know 40 years ago in the reagan
   26:47
   administration when there used to be
   26:48
   very stringent rules around
   26:50
   uh saturday morning cartoons for example
   26:52
   and advertising to children that could
   26:54
   go on
   26:55
   during that time uh shout out to my
   26:58
   colleague molly neeson who has worked
   27:00
   extensively on that
   27:01
   on that particular topic and that
   27:02
   erosion so
   27:05
   i see uh on on youtube again
   27:08
   a lot of the pressure to kind of reform
   27:11
   and
   27:11
   i think when you’re talking about kids
   27:13
   content you’re talking about
   27:15
   some of like some like really disturbing
   27:17
   and weird content that was showing up
   27:20
   um you know kind of like cheaply made
   27:22
   unknown
   27:23
   weird creepy sometimes not really
   27:25
   clearly
   27:27
   necessarily uh
   27:30
   benevolently made like you know
   27:33
   sometimes creepy sexual undertones
   27:36
   uh other kinds of stuff going on you
   27:38
   know really and really no way to know
   27:40
   that’s part of the problem no way to
   27:42
   know right um
   27:43
   and then uh the massive problem of
   27:46
   trying to
   27:48
   moderate that material right um you know
   27:51
   i think of it
   27:52
   as like the the classic story of the the
   27:55
   whole
   27:56
   springing through the the dyke holding
   27:58
   the water back you know
   27:59
   you plug one hole another one springs
   28:02
   open
   28:02
   so it’s a little bit falls down so the
   28:05
   whole wall
   28:06
   and then your inundated that’s right
   28:07
   that’s right and so
   28:09
   you know that is a good metaphor to
   28:10
   think about the problem of these like
   28:12
   kind of isolated
   28:14
   uh hot spots that explode on platforms
   28:17
   as a new social issue or maybe a new
   28:21
   uh a geopolitical conflict erupts
   28:25
   somewhere in the world it’s you know
   28:26
   gets meted out and replicated on social
   28:28
   media and attention gets drawn to it
   28:31
   and so i think this issue of child
   28:34
   content and its kind of exploitive
   28:35
   nature and
   28:36
   strange nature in some cases was
   28:38
   something that advocacy groups and
   28:40
   others brought attention to
   28:41
   and the platform had to reconfigure and
   28:44
   focus on it
   28:45
   now i mentioned earlier that you know
   28:47
   back in 2010 it really was humans who
   28:49
   were doing this work almost exclusively
   28:50
   but by 2020
   28:52
   we are using computational tools
   28:55
   to try to deal with content as well
   28:57
   although i
   28:58
   i’ll repeat the quote that i once heard
   29:00
   from a reporter
   29:02
   who who heard it from a an engineer at a
   29:05
   company that shall not be named but it
   29:06
   might sound like
   29:08
   um you know boo-boob let’s say might
   29:10
   rhyme with that
   29:11
   uh and the quote was uh whatever the
   29:14
   algorithm is doing it’s
   29:15
   not watching the video so you know
   29:17
   they’re using these computational
   29:19
   mechanisms to do all kinds of other
   29:21
   stuff but it’s not like
   29:22
   an algorithm can watch and sense make
   29:25
   out of a video it has to look at other
   29:26
   stuff
   29:28
   so that’s an interesting point though
   29:30
   too and i want to follow up on that with
   29:31
   a question about
   29:32
   you know do you do you personally
   29:34
   advocate for more
   29:35
   ai in the mix of con of content
   29:38
   moderation such as you know facebook
   29:39
   recently made an announcement that they
   29:40
   were using
   29:41
   ai to simulate bad actors so that they
   29:44
   could train their moderation
   29:45
   systems automated moderation systems to
   29:47
   more effectively recognize it do you
   29:49
   think that that ultimately
   29:50
   will work and will benefit the humans
   29:52
   who are part of this ecosystem or
   29:54
   is it likely to produce unintended ill
   29:56
   effects so i mean that’s a really great
   29:59
   question because that’s sort of like the
   30:01
   64 000 question about my work if
   30:04
   you know one would one would think if my
   30:05
   concern is the welfare of workers
   30:08
   which has always kind of been my cut in
   30:10
   on this topic and where i start and
   30:11
   where i come back to an end
   30:13
   um then hey wouldn’t it be great if
   30:15
   tomorrow we could just flip that switch
   30:16
   and go
   30:17
   to those uh purely computational means i
   30:20
   think that
   30:21
   in theory right in theory but i think
   30:24
   there are a lot of red flags there
   30:26
   you know one red flag is that if it’s
   30:29
   been this difficult
   30:30
   as and i kind of laid the groundwork for
   30:32
   that at the at the front end of the show
   30:34
   to unpack and uncover uh
   30:37
   the ecosystem involving humans and i
   30:39
   have to say
   30:40
   the majority of my work has been
   30:43
   reliant upon the willingness of human
   30:46
   beings involved in the system
   30:48
   to leak essentially to break
   30:51
   their non-disclosure agreements and to
   30:54
   you know essentially snitch on what they
   30:56
   felt was
   30:58
   problematic also sometimes what they
   31:00
   felt was good about the work they did
   31:02
   how do you get uh an algorithm or a
   31:04
   machine learning based tool
   31:06
   to call a journalist or
   31:09
   uh you know do an interview with a
   31:11
   researcher
   31:13
   i don’t know how to do that you know the
   31:14
   closest thing we could come to is
   31:16
   getting access to it and looking
   31:18
   at code but that’s not easy to do and
   31:20
   it’s much harder to do
   31:22
   than finding uh and i cannot stress the
   31:25
   difficulty of what it was like
   31:27
   in the early days to find people willing
   31:29
   to talk to me so
   31:30
   you know you can’t do that with ai how
   31:32
   do we how do we audit those tools how do
   31:34
   we
   31:35
   how do we you know what’s the check on
   31:37
   power that the firms have with those
   31:39
   tools
   31:40
   in terms of how they’re set up and what
   31:42
   they keep in and what they keep
   31:43
   out it also sounds like a potentially
   31:46
   even greater violation
   31:47
   of uh that non-disclosure if someone
   31:50
   leaks a bit of code
   31:51
   rather than just tell their own personal
   31:53
   story oh for sure i mean and and
   31:56
   you know the the other thing too that
   31:58
   that comes to mind for me is
   32:00
   the nature of how these tools work
   32:03
   and you know a great worry and i think a
   32:05
   legitimate worry of many people in the
   32:07
   space
   32:07
   is that uh they
   32:11
   the tendency to use those tools would be
   32:13
   to
   32:14
   uh calibrate them
   32:17
   to be even uh less permissive let’s say
   32:21
   or to you know because of their nature
   32:23
   they would have less of an
   32:24
   ability to look at a given piece of
   32:27
   content
   32:28
   and you know see that it violates abc
   32:31
   policy but understand it in the context
   32:34
   of you know again
   32:35
   a cultural expression or um
   32:38
   you know an advocacy piece around a
   32:41
   conflict zone
   32:42
   and then make an exception so what we
   32:44
   would see
   32:45
   is uh more conservative and greater
   32:49
   false positives around material that
   32:52
   quote unquote is disallowed right
   32:55
   again all of this adjudicating to the
   32:58
   logic that the firms themselves create
   33:00
   which for um for many years itself was
   33:03
   opaque
   33:05
   uh so this is you know it’s not as easy
   33:08
   to say unfortunately if we could just
   33:10
   get those darn algorithms right if we
   33:11
   could just get
   33:12
   you know machine learning to get
   33:13
   sophisticated enough we could
   33:16
   take out the human element and and
   33:18
   basically
   33:19
   you know save people from having to do
   33:21
   this work
   33:23
   unfortunately i think it’s more
   33:24
   complicated than that and i would say
   33:26
   that
   33:26
   you know bringing up the idea of
   33:29
   training machine learning tools as you
   33:30
   did
   33:31
   one of the gross ironies of this whole
   33:33
   thing that i’ve been
   33:34
   monitoring is that uh
   33:38
   content moderation commercial content
   33:40
   moderation for these major platforms
   33:42
   is its own kind of self-fulfilling uh
   33:46
   industry that begets uh sub industries
   33:49
   in and of itself
   33:49
   so that when machine learning tools have
   33:52
   come on what needs to happen
   33:54
   is that people need to sort data sets to
   33:56
   create data sets for the machine
   33:58
   learning tools to train on
   33:59
   and they need to be themselves trainers
   34:02
   and classifiers for the machine learning
   34:04
   tools so now we have a whole new stratum
   34:06
   of people
   34:07
   working to train machine learning
   34:09
   algorithms which has them essentially
   34:11
   doing a certain kind of content
   34:12
   moderation
   34:13
   it’s a lot easier that cottage industry
   34:14
   of evil ai
   34:16
   spawn it’s like anything like
   34:19
   how are we gonna make the ai bad enough
   34:21
   to train our ai
   34:23
   uh automation systems to recognize that
   34:25
   so that we can keep a good environment
   34:27
   but then you’ve got this whole cottage
   34:29
   industry around the bad
   34:30
   ai seems like a very awkward way of
   34:32
   going
   34:33
   so you know as someone who monitors like
   34:36
   like hiring trends and things like that
   34:37
   too
   34:38
   i was i was watching companies looking
   34:41
   for people to to come be
   34:42
   classifiers on data sets which is just
   34:44
   moderation before the fact right
   34:46
   yeah you know you talked about that in
   34:48
   the book too you have
   34:50
   you presented a taxonomy of sorts of
   34:52
   labor arrangements from
   34:53
   in-house moderators to what you call
   34:56
   micro labor you know looking at
   34:58
   mechanical turk and things like that can
   34:59
   you walk us through that a little bit so
   35:01
   that we can become familiar with what
   35:02
   the
   35:02
   the human issues relative to each level
   35:06
   yeah one of the one of the early
   35:07
   insights i had when i was trying to
   35:09
   figure out the contours of this industry
   35:11
   from
   35:11
   you know the outside and it reminds me
   35:13
   of that parable of you know
   35:15
   people feeling different parts of the
   35:16
   elephant without really being
   35:18
   being able to see it and they don’t
   35:19
   really they don’t really get the big
   35:21
   picture
   35:22
   um was that you know what i was
   35:24
   considering as being kind of like a
   35:26
   monolithic
   35:27
   practice really wasn’t it was happening
   35:28
   in all kinds of different places and in
   35:30
   different guises
   35:32
   including using different names like
   35:33
   there was no kind of cohesive name to
   35:35
   call
   35:36
   this this work practice so i started out
   35:38
   kind of knowing about these workers
   35:40
   in in iowa that i reference in the book
   35:42
   and i referenced today
   35:44
   who were working in a call center and it
   35:46
   turned out that call centers were really
   35:48
   a prevalent way
   35:50
   that this work was going that it was um
   35:53
   you know kind of at somewhat of a remove
   35:55
   geographically and organizationally so
   35:57
   it’d be kind of like a third party
   35:59
   contracted out group of workers
   36:00
   somewhere in the world
   36:02
   when i started out i knew about the
   36:03
   workers in places like iowa florida etc
   36:06
   but i soon came to know about workers in
   36:08
   places like india
   36:09
   or in malaysia or of course key to the
   36:12
   book in the philippines
   36:13
   so that um that that call center
   36:16
   environment for content moderation work
   36:18
   is really prevalent
   36:20
   and it’s global but there are also
   36:23
   workers who
   36:24
   uh prior to covid we’re going every day
   36:26
   for example in the bay area down from
   36:28
   san francisco on the
   36:30
   company buses um and going on site to
   36:33
   companies
   36:34
   that i describe in the book one that has
   36:36
   the you know
   36:37
   pseudonym of megatech and is a stand-in
   36:40
   for
   36:40
   any number of companies in fact i’ll
   36:42
   just tell you a little anecdote that
   36:44
   i’ve met a lot of people from industry
   36:46
   who like over cocktails after meetings
   36:48
   will come up to me
   36:49
   all from different companies and say
   36:52
   we’re mega tech aren’t we and it’s like
   36:54
   you know like at least six different
   36:56
   corporations think they’re making
   36:57
   answers
   36:58
   yes yes sounds right yeah that tells you
   37:01
   something
   37:02
   so um you know these people were on site
   37:05
   workers they were
   37:06
   in you know the belly of the beast
   37:07
   essentially they were working
   37:09
   in places where there was also uh
   37:11
   engineering product development
   37:13
   marketing
   37:14
   uh communications you know soup to nuts
   37:16
   uh
   37:17
   although interestingly enough they were
   37:20
   also contractors in the case of the
   37:21
   books so
   37:22
   they still had this differential and
   37:24
   lesser status even though they were
   37:26
   going on site
   37:27
   to the corporate hq you know it still
   37:31
   wasn’t quite the right badge caller as
   37:33
   they described it to me although they
   37:35
   thought about the people who were
   37:36
   working as contractors and call centers
   37:38
   as another kind of worker
   37:40
   even though they were essentially very
   37:43
   very similar
   37:44
   then we had people that i encountered
   37:47
   who were
   37:48
   you know very entrepreneurial and
   37:50
   especially in in sort of the early days
   37:52
   were
   37:52
   developing a model that looks almost
   37:56
   like an ad agency they were
   37:58
   independent companies that were starting
   38:00
   to specialize in providing content
   38:02
   moderation services
   38:03
   to other companies and it was a boutique
   38:05
   kind of service
   38:06
   a specialty service and they would often
   38:09
   offer
   38:10
   social media management across the board
   38:13
   so not only were they offering
   38:14
   the removal of content in some cases but
   38:16
   they would even
   38:18
   offer again in that advertising model
   38:20
   the generation of content
   38:22
   because believe it or not sometimes you
   38:24
   know your auto parts company’s facebook
   38:26
   page just doesn’t
   38:27
   generate a lot of organic interest and
   38:29
   so you hire a company to come post about
   38:31
   how awesome your auto parts company is
   38:34
   um likewise if there’s a you know as
   38:37
   somebody once
   38:38
   told me and it’s in the book too if you
   38:40
   open a hole on the internet it gets
   38:41
   filled with
   38:43
   bleep with uh you know if you have
   38:46
   a web page or you have a facebook page
   38:48
   and there’s no activity
   38:49
   that’s like organic or really about what
   38:51
   it’s supposed to be about i guarantee
   38:52
   you that somebody will be posting
   38:54
   invective racist comments and so on
   38:56
   these boutique firms said
   38:58
   to usually to smaller companies hey
   39:00
   we’ll manage the whole thing we’ll
   39:01
   delete that stuff
   39:02
   we’ll generate new stuff for you it’ll
   39:04
   look organic nobody will really know
   39:06
   that that’s what we’re doing
   39:07
   and they were having great success when
   39:09
   i talked to them was that generally
   39:11
   filed under this sort of banner of user
   39:12
   generated content
   39:14
   or was it called other things generally
   39:16
   um
   39:17
   you know it was kind of like a social
   39:19
   media management is how they would call
   39:21
   couch that and how they would pitch it
   39:25
   and uh you know it was like uh hey
   39:28
   company x you your business has nothing
   39:31
   really to do with social media that’s
   39:33
   not
   39:33
   you know your primary business let us
   39:35
   handle it for you
   39:36
   and a lot of companies jumped at the
   39:38
   chance to kind of outsource that and not
   39:40
   deal with it
   39:41
   an interesting thing in that kind of
   39:43
   bucket of
   39:44
   of the taxonomy that you mentioned is
   39:46
   that those companies
   39:48
   uh in some cases got bought up by
   39:52
   ad firms or ad firms have started doing
   39:54
   this service as well
   39:56
   or they become really really big and
   39:58
   successful so there’s like a few that
   40:00
   kind of
   40:01
   uh uh rose to the top and have survived
   40:05
   and then you already mentioned this
   40:07
   really interesting and and kind of
   40:09
   worry some arena where this work goes on
   40:12
   which is in the micro labor realm
   40:14
   the amazon mechanical turk model
   40:17
   uh which is effectively you know digital
   40:19
   piece work it’s people
   40:21
   adjudicating a bit of content here
   40:23
   they’re often
   40:25
   paid a per view or per decision
   40:28
   uh and then they try to aggregate enough
   40:30
   to make that make sense for them
   40:31
   financially
   40:33
   and it it turns out although that’s
   40:36
   supposed to be an anonymous relationship
   40:38
   you know savvy mechanical turkers they
   40:40
   can figure out who they’re working for
   40:42
   because a lot of times
   40:43
   you know they’d receive a set of of
   40:46
   images or other content to adjudicate
   40:48
   and like you know the interface was
   40:50
   obvious
   41:00
   [Music]
   41:02
   before and you get those guidelines
   41:04
   again then you know yeah
   41:06
   that’s right so you know i i came to
   41:09
   know some folks who were
   41:10
   uh you know who themselves sort of began
   41:13
   to specialize within
   41:14
   mechanical turk and other platforms on
   41:17
   this kind of thing and they would seek
   41:18
   out this work because they got good at
   41:20
   it like you said
   41:21
   and they got good at knowing the
   41:22
   internal policies and juggling them for
   41:24
   all these different firms and
   41:26
   began to specialize in this work on that
   41:28
   platform
   41:29
   i was wondering you know when thinking
   41:31
   about this as you mentioned earlier
   41:33
   about the
   41:34
   the consequences of misinformation
   41:36
   especially as we
   41:37
   are deep in the process of the us
   41:40
   presidential election cycle and
   41:42
   i say the u.s because i want to be
   41:43
   sensitive to the fact that there are
   41:44
   global viewers but i feel like everyone
   41:46
   in the world is kind of
   41:48
   you know hooked into the u.s
   41:49
   presidential election right now
   41:51
   and we’re all like yeah aren’t they
   41:53
   right and we’re all being subject to
   41:55
   you know all of this uh well the the
   41:58
   dumpster fire of it all but also the
   42:00
   misinformation that accompanies it
   42:02
   and so i wonder how should people think
   42:04
   and understand the difference between
   42:07
   content on social media and content in
   42:09
   news media
   42:10
   and what are some of the differences in
   42:12
   approaches to moderating
   42:14
   harmful content and you know kind of
   42:16
   just thinking about
   42:18
   the access to you know free access to
   42:21
   information you know this is kind of a
   42:23
   big
   42:24
   muddy question i’m not sure i’m
   42:26
   articulating very well but
   42:27
   hopefully you see the direction of of
   42:29
   the um
   42:30
   the question that i’m asking her yeah i
   42:34
   i’ll i’ll do my best to respond and we
   42:36
   can
   42:36
   you know we can you can offer guidance
   42:40
   yeah as i go i mean i i think your
   42:43
   question in essence is what the hell
   42:45
   right yeah
   42:48
   information misinformation
   42:50
   disinformation the election
   42:52
   what the hell and so i think you speak
   42:54
   for a global audience when you pose that
   42:56
   question and
   42:58
   you’re right about the u.s election i
   43:00
   know uh friends and colleagues who were
   43:02
   up early in australia watching it and
   43:04
   you know as mortified as we were by the
   43:06
   the behavior on display
   43:08
   and the other night yes the debate and
   43:11
   the kind of the nadir
   43:12
   of uh you know american politics in my
   43:15
   lifetime is how i described it
   43:17
   um you know i i often
   43:20
   bring up the the rise of social media
   43:24
   as a force in again in american civic
   43:27
   life
   43:29
   that it’s important to not think about
   43:31
   it having happened in a vacuum or having
   43:33
   happened
   43:34
   uh without without
   43:37
   um other forces at play and in the other
   43:40
   part of my life i
   43:42
   am a professor in a program that trains
   43:44
   and prepares
   43:45
   people for careers and information
   43:47
   professions primarily in librarianship
   43:50
   and so i know something about the way
   43:53
   in which we’ve seen a gross
   43:57
   erosion of the american
   44:00
   public sphere and opportunities for
   44:03
   people to become informed
   44:06
   in places that traditionally have been
   44:10
   more transparent more committed to the
   44:13
   public good
   44:13
   not-for-profit i’m thinking about
   44:16
   institutions like public schools
   44:18
   and institutions like public libraries
   44:21
   so if we were to take
   44:24
   you know uh funding a funding graph or
   44:28
   something like that and put them
   44:29
   together about expenditures or
   44:31
   where where money goes in our society we
   44:34
   would see
   44:35
   you know that off the cliff kind of
   44:37
   defunding
   44:38
   of of these uh institutions that i just
   44:41
   mentioned
   44:42
   while we see a rise in social media
   44:46
   and what i think that suggests at least
   44:49
   to me is that
   44:50
   it’s not that the american public
   44:51
   doesn’t have a desire to be informed
   44:54
   or to have information sources and i
   44:56
   would add to that by the way
   44:57
   it’s not necessarily in the public
   44:59
   sphere in the same way
   45:00
   but we have seen total erosion in
   45:04
   regional and local journalism too right
   45:06
   during the same time right
   45:08
   into mega media that’s right mega media
   45:11
   which
   45:12
   you know came about by the shuttering of
   45:14
   local news
   45:15
   and it there was a time when you know
   45:17
   cities like mine i come from madison
   45:19
   wisconsin 250
   45:21
   000 people yeah they yeah they might
   45:24
   have had a a
   45:25
   a reporter in dc you know what i mean
   45:28
   for our local paper the capitol times
   45:30
   which went the way of the dodo some
   45:33
   some years ago and that that local paper
   45:35
   no longer exists in a print form
   45:38
   so there’s a whole i mean we could do a
   45:40
   whole show on this and you probably
   45:42
   shouldn’t have me on for the show so
   45:44
   apologies to to the users that this
   45:46
   isn’t my total area of expertise but i’m
   45:48
   just trying to connect some dots here
   45:50
   for people to make sense of it right
   45:52
   right and you know when we think about
   45:53
   the differences between social media
   45:55
   information circulation and something
   45:58
   like journalism
   46:00
   agree or disagree with what you read in
   46:02
   in in the newspaper or you hear on the
   46:05
   news
   46:06
   of your choice but there are things
   46:09
   there that are not present
   46:10
   in the same way in the social media
   46:12
   ecosystem uh
   46:13
   you know an author name a set of
   46:16
   principles by which
   46:18
   uh the journalists
   46:21
   at least pay lip service to but most of
   46:24
   them
   46:25
   live by you know that they have been
   46:27
   educated
   46:28
   to uh to serve and then do so
   46:31
   in their work there’s editorial control
   46:34
   that before stories go to print they
   46:37
   have to go through a number of eyes
   46:38
   there’s fact checking if you’ve ever you
   46:41
   know i’ve been on the
   46:42
   the the side of having been interviewed
   46:44
   for journalistic pieces and i get phone
   46:46
   calls from fact checkers to make sure
   46:48
   that the journalists got
   46:49
   right what i think yeah right
   46:52
   you think that did you really say xyz
   46:55
   yes i did that doesn’t exist and you
   46:57
   know
   46:58
   your your your racist uncle
   47:00
   recirculating
   47:01
   um god knows what from whatever outlet
   47:04
   that is just go those those
   47:08
   what we might think of barriers to entry
   47:10
   but we also might think of as safeguards
   47:11
   are just gone
   47:13
   and with all of the other institutions
   47:16
   eroded that i mentioned
   47:17
   you know public schooling library public
   47:20
   libraries and so on the mechanisms that
   47:22
   people might use to
   47:24
   vet material to understand what it means
   47:27
   when they look at a paper of record
   47:29
   versus
   47:32
   a dubious outlet let’s say a dubious
   47:34
   internet based outlet
   47:36
   and how those uh sources differ those
   47:39
   mechanisms to to learn about those
   47:41
   things have been eroded as well
   47:43
   um is there even a civics class anymore
   47:45
   in public school
   47:46
   i see that uh at least it looks like
   47:49
   donald trump missed it when
   47:51
   when he was coming up based on what i
   47:54
   saw in the debate the other night
   47:55
   i had one growing up i think that when
   47:57
   it might have already been spotty by the
   47:59
   time
   47:59
   i was in yeah you know i mean yeah i i
   48:02
   have that and
   48:03
   i i won’t mention my age but it’s it’s
   48:06
   probably a writer it’s not 29.
   48:11
   so you know i i’m trying to i guess what
   48:13
   i’m trying to do
   48:14
   uh in a roundabout way here is draw some
   48:17
   connections
   48:18
   around phenomena that seem often um
   48:23
   like they have come from nowhere to say
   48:25
   that actually
   48:26
   it would behoove us to to connect those
   48:29
   dots both in this moment but also draw
   48:32
   back
   48:33
   a little bit on history uh at least the
   48:36
   the last 40 years of sort of like
   48:37
   neoliberal
   48:39
   uh policies that have eroded the public
   48:41
   sphere
   48:42
   in favor of private industry and it what
   48:45
   it didn’t do was erode the public’s
   48:47
   desire to
   48:48
   know but what has popped up and cropped
   48:50
   up in that
   48:51
   vacuum left are these uh
   48:54
   you know really questionable uh
   48:57
   information sources that
   48:59
   really don’t respond to any greater
   49:02
   norms other than partisanship
   49:06
   uh advertising dollars etc
   49:09
   and and that’s on a good day i mean
   49:11
   those are the ones that aren’t totally
   49:13
   nefarious like state and extra state
   49:15
   right uh you know psyops generated stuff
   49:19
   right
   49:20
   it’s so interesting because when you
   49:21
   were talking about youtube you mentioned
   49:22
   about how
   49:23
   the quote about how the ai’s not
   49:25
   watching the video
   49:26
   and and the comment you made was about
   49:28
   you know the the idea of sense making
   49:30
   from the video and
   49:32
   what i’m hearing and what you’re
   49:33
   describing there is you know one of the
   49:35
   kind of underlying themes of my work is
   49:37
   that humans crave meaning
   49:39
   and that a lot of one of the most sort
   49:41
   of human qualities that we have or two
   49:44
   of the most human qualities are
   49:45
   meaning making and meaning uh finding so
   49:48
   it means
   49:48
   yeah so it strikes me that what you’re
   49:50
   describing is this kind of
   49:52
   systemic change you know many systemic
   49:56
   changes happening at once
   49:57
   in what information is available what
   49:59
   information is provided and yet
   50:01
   our impulse to connect dots and create
   50:05
   meaning is still there but we’re giving
   50:07
   we’re given increasingly unreliable
   50:10
   potentially
   50:10
   a sources of information and we’re
   50:14
   we’re still trying to connect those dots
   50:16
   but the the dots that connect
   50:17
   inevitably become simpler more
   50:20
   rudimentary more
   50:21
   uh fit more conspiracy theory kind of
   50:24
   narrative in many cases is that a fair
   50:26
   characterization do you think i mean
   50:28
   i that’s absolutely the conclusion i
   50:30
   come to and i actually have a
   50:32
   a doctoral candidate whom i supervise
   50:35
   right now
   50:35
   who works on this notion of conspiracy
   50:38
   theory
   50:39
   and we have talked her name’s yvonne
   50:41
   eden and i want to shout it out just
   50:42
   because i want folks to look out for her
   50:44
   coming up
   50:45
   um but i i have talked with her and
   50:49
   others about this topic
   50:51
   significantly because i have quite
   50:54
   this may surprise people but i have
   50:56
   quite a sympathetic
   50:58
   uh orientation towards people who
   51:01
   who fall prey to what we might consider
   51:04
   broadly speaking conspiracy theories
   51:06
   and it’s the reason you just laid out so
   51:08
   eloquently that
   51:09
   that human impulse as you described it
   51:11
   right and that’s the that’s really at
   51:12
   the root of the show anyway right yeah
   51:14
   we’re
   51:15
   all tech is human and it’s it’s about
   51:17
   humanity it’s about digital humanity
   51:19
   um and i think when i think about people
   51:22
   who fall victim
   51:23
   to to conspiracy theories
   51:26
   what i see underlying that is an is a
   51:30
   human impulse to want to make sense of a
   51:33
   world that increasingly doesn’t
   51:34
   and they’re doing it in the absence of
   51:37
   information
   51:38
   that is way more complex and hard to
   51:40
   parse out and actually might
   51:42
   um point criticism at places that are
   51:44
   very uncomfortable
   51:45
   right so you know a flat earth or a q
   51:47
   anon
   51:48
   uh adherent etc uh whatever else is go
   51:52
   you know lizard people who live under
   51:55
   the crust of the earth i mean i’ve heard
   51:56
   all of these things
   51:58
   um you know it’s like
   52:01
   it’s like this process of finding black
   52:04
   holes
   52:05
   that uh astrophysicists engage in
   52:08
   it’s not that they’re seeing the black
   52:10
   hole it’s that they’re seeing
   52:12
   the way the energy behaves around it
   52:14
   right um
   52:15
   for example that you know things might
   52:17
   be congregating towards a point
   52:19
   in space or uh you know there’s
   52:21
   disruptions
   52:23
   and i think about that metaphor a lot
   52:25
   when i think about people who fall
   52:26
   victim to
   52:27
   essentially bad information that they
   52:29
   sense
   52:30
   you know a disruption in the force right
   52:33
   they sense a disruption they sense
   52:36
   a wrongness about the world but they
   52:38
   don’t have
   52:39
   the right information um presented to
   52:42
   them
   52:42
   or access to it or even the ability to
   52:45
   parse it because
   52:46
   we’ve destroyed public schools and now
   52:48
   we we might suggest in my own bout of
   52:50
   conspiracy making
   52:52
   that this kind of again debasement and
   52:55
   destruction of these public institutions
   52:57
   that help people
   52:58
   uh identify good information and be good
   53:01
   citizens
   53:02
   and understand the world around them in
   53:05
   a
   53:05
   in a way that you know lasts longer than
   53:08
   a blip on the screen is political
   53:12
   and that it leaves them chasing their
   53:14
   own tail through conspiracy theories
   53:15
   instead of unpacking things like
   53:17
   you know the consequences of um of
   53:20
   western imperialism
   53:22
   or understanding human migration as
   53:25
   economic and environmental injustice
   53:27
   issues or
   53:28
   the destruction of political systems
   53:30
   that have long lasting consequences in
   53:33
   their countries of origin
   53:34
   that the u.s may have been involved in
   53:36
   you know like all of these kinds of
   53:37
   things that you learn from studying
   53:39
   history
   53:40
   or social sciences or having a
   53:42
   humanistic approach
   53:43
   uh to various topics that you know all
   53:45
   of these spaces that are getting eroded
   53:47
   from
   53:47
   from kindergarten all the way through
   53:49
   higher education um
   53:51
   have consequences and then the the
   53:52
   auxiliary institutions that help people
   53:55
   such as libraries and that that is
   53:58
   happening not just in the in the public
   54:00
   library sphere but there’s been gross
   54:01
   consolidation in academic libraries over
   54:03
   the years
   54:04
   uh the price of information access to
   54:06
   journals has skyrocketed for
   54:08
   virtually no reason etc you know you
   54:10
   combine all that and
   54:12
   we have created essentially an
   54:13
   information
   54:15
   access problem and an information
   54:19
   an ability to parse information a
   54:22
   problem
   54:23
   for people what do they do they reach
   54:25
   for the pablum of social media which is
   54:27
   instantaneous
   54:28
   always on constantly circulating speedy
   54:31
   easy to digest uh and
   54:34
   worth about as much as you know those
   54:37
   things might be worth
   54:38
   yeah well before we run out of time i
   54:40
   want to make sure we touch on the
   54:42
   speaking of intersecting dimensional
   54:45
   systems
   54:45
   uh the work that you are doing with uh
   54:48
   with the
   54:49
   ucla center for critical internet
   54:51
   inquiry which of course
   54:52
   you do with our previous delightful
   54:53
   guest satya noble
   54:55
   yeah we all love zapier noble uh the
   54:58
   website
   54:59
   describes it as an interdisciplinary
   55:01
   research center committed to holding
   55:02
   those who create
   55:03
   unjust technologies and systems
   55:05
   accountable for the erosion of equity
   55:07
   trust and participation i won’t read the
   55:08
   whole statement but that immediately to
   55:10
   me
   55:11
   ties back into some of what you were
   55:12
   just saying so can you tell us a little
   55:14
   bit about
   55:15
   what your initiatives and programs are
   55:17
   or are planned to be
   55:19
   well uh absolutely first of all um
   55:22
   yeah this is sort of a this is sort of
   55:26
   the
   55:26
   uh the the long lasting goal that sofia
   55:31
   and i have had and
   55:32
   just so your v your viewers and
   55:34
   listeners have a little contact sophie
   55:36
   and i
   55:36
   uh met essentially on our first day of
   55:38
   our phd program and so that’s we that’s
   55:41
   how far we go back
   55:42
   and we were both really involved in each
   55:44
   of the origin stories of each other’s
   55:46
   research and
   55:47
   if you look at the work that i do on on
   55:49
   humans in content moderation you look at
   55:51
   the work that she does on algorithmic
   55:53
   bias you can see you know the the
   55:56
   the dna is swirling around each other
   55:58
   born of so many conversations that she
   56:00
   and i have had over the years
   56:02
   and so one of our long-term goals was to
   56:05
   create a center
   56:06
   uh at what well first of all our
   56:08
   long-term goal was to get to the same
   56:10
   academic institution which for those of
   56:11
   you in academia
   56:13
   out there know that is not an easy task
   56:16
   but we managed
   56:17
   over the years to do that through
   56:19
   circuitous means and we ended up at ucla
   56:21
   together
   56:22
   then the second task that we had in mind
   56:25
   was to create a center that would
   56:27
   take the sum of the work that we do
   56:30
   put it together and allow it to be
   56:32
   bigger than it would be
   56:34
   on its own because we would be able to
   56:36
   invite others in under the umbrella and
   56:38
   under the
   56:39
   you know the big ten approach of having
   56:40
   a center
   56:42
   and so it’s really uh taking
   56:46
   uh this opportunity of having some
   56:48
   funding sources bringing on other
   56:50
   researchers
   56:51
   um holding convenings uh hopefully
   56:54
   sponsoring research studies
   56:56
   etc uh that will allow us to amplify
   57:01
   the strands of the research that i
   57:02
   talked about today and that
   57:04
   uh previous viewers and listeners will
   57:06
   know about through sophia’s work
   57:08
   and then amplifying that and making it
   57:10
   bigger than we could on our own
   57:12
   so of course in this particular moment
   57:15
   we’re absolutely interested in in
   57:18
   focusing on things like
   57:19
   uh the political situation in the us and
   57:22
   in the election
   57:23
   uh we’re absolutely committed to and
   57:26
   following the black lives matter
   57:27
   movement and how
   57:28
   uh that is that is playing out um and
   57:31
   and issues of of racial and social
   57:34
   injustice and inequity
   57:36
   that not only i would argue are
   57:38
   perpetuated in social media but are
   57:40
   exacerbated
   57:41
   in social media and um you know thinking
   57:44
   about ways in which
   57:45
   interventions should take place so that
   57:48
   that doesn’t happen
   57:49
   and i’ll leave just one anecdote you
   57:50
   know we were in a room once
   57:52
   at a megatech one of the many mega techs
   57:55
   with
   57:55
   with an engineer who was working on a
   57:58
   tool
   58:00
   his particular platform had you know had
   58:02
   it
   58:03
   had a mechanism for people to post um
   58:06
   uh job advertisements and they were
   58:08
   finding that you know people were doing
   58:10
   a lot of
   58:10
   uh racist and and other kinds of you
   58:13
   know gender discriminatory things in
   58:14
   their
   58:15
   job ads go figure and he was
   58:18
   you know he was working more on the
   58:20
   experimental side thinking about how to
   58:22
   make algorithms understand what might be
   58:24
   fair and you know he started ruminating
   58:26
   really what is
   58:27
   fairness you know and sophia and i
   58:29
   looked at each other we’re just about
   58:30
   dying we’re sitting there together we
   58:32
   say to the guy you know
   58:34
   um you could sit there and reinvent the
   58:36
   many thousands of years of philosophical
   58:38
   rumination on fairness
   58:40
   or you could look to guidance from the
   58:41
   federal government
   58:43
   that has laws about what constitutes
   58:46
   fairness and hiring practices
   58:48
   and in fact we would argue that’s what
   58:49
   you should do uh and that
   58:51
   that’s what you’re compelled to do so so
   58:53
   you see what i mean
   58:54
   they’re always doing that i’m telling
   58:57
   you a mega tug man
   58:58
   they’re on my nerves so you know this is
   59:00
   the kind of this is the kind of
   59:03
   the thing that that we want to do in a
   59:05
   bigger way
   59:06
   through the center which is to inform um
   59:09
   make these connections like we’ve talked
   59:12
   about on the on the
   59:13
   uh on the program today uh talk to
   59:16
   policymakers
   59:17
   many of whom desperately want to be
   59:20
   better informed themselves right
   59:22
   regulators uh politicians they’re going
   59:24
   to be the first to say
   59:26
   it’s a series of tubes may have been
   59:28
   more correct than than not in retrospect
   59:30
   right but they
   59:30
   they need help too to unpack and
   59:32
   understand
   59:34
   and many of the firms themselves want to
   59:36
   get better as well and we’re we’re here
   59:38
   to do all of those things and more
   59:40
   oh i i want to give you a chance to um
   59:42
   point people to
   59:43
   where they can find your work i know
   59:45
   that on on the promo for this
   59:47
   uh show we had ubiquity75 as your
   59:50
   twitter handle are there other places
   59:51
   people can find you online
   59:53
   well i think a great thing for folks to
   59:56
   do would be to follow the c2i2 the ucla
   59:59
   c2i2
   60:00
   twitter account we also have a mailing
   60:03
   list
   60:04
   that will become more active as we go
   60:07
   forward you can visit our website again
   60:11
   c2i2ucla.edu
   60:12
   and um you know follow the initiatives
   60:15
   there i i have to give people a
   60:17
   you know a content warning that the the
   60:19
   tweets from the last few days have a lot
   60:21
   of naughty words in them because i was
   60:22
   watching
   60:23
   the presidential debate and just losing
   60:25
   my mind
   60:26
   um but i’m not the only one no you’re
   60:29
   not the only one you know
   60:32
   caveat lector on my on my twitter
   60:35
   account just you know i’m a human too
   60:37
   folks i’m a technological human too
   60:42
   that’s fair enough we i think that’s a
   60:44
   great way to finish off this thought
   60:46
   thank you so much thank you to our
   60:48
   audience for tuning in
   60:49
   and uh to david ryan polgar for our only
   60:52
   question that was asked live today but i
   60:54
   know there must have been another ones
   60:55
   so
   60:55
   feel free folks to follow up with sarah
   60:58
   on
   60:59
   twitter or on her channels and engage
   61:02
   with her work
   61:03
   thank you sarah for the work you’re
   61:04
   doing it’s so appreciated and it’s so
   61:06
   important
   61:08
   thank you very much uh i guess i should
   61:10
   say the book is called
   61:11
   behind the screen content moderation in
   61:13
   the shadows of social media i didn’t
   61:15
   mention that
   61:16
   that’s the cover uh right there it’s on
   61:18
   yale university press
   61:20
   it’s coming out in a french edition on
   61:22
   october 8th
   61:23
   on la de cuvert uh uh press and so for
   61:26
   any
   61:27
   french speakers or french readers who
   61:30
   may be watching or if you have friends
   61:32
   uh they can now read it in in french
   61:39
   thank you very much all right thanks
   61:41
   everyone bye bye now
   61:43
   all right thank you