The Tech Policy Press Podcast

This episode features a discussion with Brandi Collins-Dexter, the author of the new book BLACK SKINHEAD: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future. Brandi is both an academic and a civil rights activist in the fight for media and tech justice, and her book is a rollercoaster ride through those issues through culture and music and politics. Part media and cultural criticism, part memoir, and part warning, the book takes us to the fringes of Black communities and tries to make sense of our political moment.

As the U.S. midterm elections approach next week, there is a renewed focus on understanding the spending on and claims made in political advertising in digital channels, particularly on social media. But what is going on across the web, beyond the social media platforms?

A recent report from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center on Technology Policy found that as a result of restrictions on political ads instituted by major platforms ahead of the 2020 elections, political advertisers are increasingly turning to political advertising on other platforms. Programmatic advertising accounts for a substantial and increasing share of political advertising, they say, and more attention needs to be paid to this complex and confusing ecosystem of companies- large and small- that serve up ads on websites, apps, streaming services, and other digitally connected devices. This episode features a discussion with the report's authors, J. Scott Babwah Brennen & Matt Perault.

Danielle Citron is the inaugural Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she teaches and writes about information privacy, free expression and civil rights. She is the vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit devoted to fighting for civil rights and liberties in the digital age, and in 2019 she was named a MacArthur Fellow for her work on cyberstalking and intimate privacy. Her latest book, The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age, published by W.W. Norton and Penguin Vintage UK, was released this month.

In this episode of the podcast, we present two segments that explore how the combination of media, platforms, politics and people play out in Latino communities in the U.S., particularly at crucial moments for democracy, such as at election time. The first segment is with individuals who are leading efforts to understand and confront mis- and disinformation targeting Latino communities:

• Roberta Braga, Director of Counter-Disinformation Strategies at Equis
• Jaime Longoria, Manager of Research and Training for the Disinfo Defense League at Media Democracy Fund.

And the second segment is a discussion with two researchers at the University of Texas at Austin who spent the summer talking specifically to Latino users of WhatsApp about how the political discourse plays out in their communities on that widely used messaging app, and wrote about it for Tech Policy Press as part of a special series of essays on race, ethnicity, technology and elections:

• Inga Kristina Trauthig, Ph.D., Research Manager of the Propaganda Research Lab at the Center for Media Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin
• Kayo Mimizuka, Graduate Research Assistant at the Center for Media Engagement and a Ph.D. student in the School of Journalism and Media at The University of Texas at Austin.

In recent episodes of this podcast we’ve explored the policies and practices of the social media platforms with regard to elections. In this week’s episode, we’ll hear two segments on this theme. First, an interview with Daniel Kriess, an Associate Professor in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a principal researcher at the UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life. With Ph.D candidate Erik Brooks, Daniel is the author of Looking to the Midterms: The State of Platform Policies on U.S. Political Speech, a recent post at Tech Policy Press.

In the second segment, we zoom out and discuss the trajectory of tech company policies on elections over the last twenty six years with Katie Harbath and Collier Fernekes, authors of a recent report for the Bipartisan Policy Center that was based on an archive of public announcements made by the firms. Katie is a former Facebook public policy director and now leads Anchor Change, a consultancy she started after leaving the tech company. Collier is a research analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Earlier this year, an investigation published in the New Yorker by Ronan Farrow suggested that commercial spyware called Pegasus, developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group, is being used by governments in at least 45 countries around the world, including by U.S. and European intelligence and law enforcement services. The technology permits government agents to gain access to the contents of cell phones by exploiting flaws in device operating systems and software. 

In this episode, we hear from three individuals in Bangkok, Thailand; pro-democracy activists who have seen their community targeted with Pegasus, part of a range of activities intended to discourage dissent and limit free expression:

• Yingcheep Atchanont, a program manager at iLaw
• Ruchapong Chamjirachaikul, advocacy officer at iLaw
• Darika Bamrungchok, a program manager at Thai Netizen

Regular users of social media platforms are well aware that they often produce toxic discourse. Scholars continue to produce results that bring clarity to the mechanisms by which digital and social media exacerbate partisan and identity-based conflict. A better understanding is crucial for keying in on what platforms should be held responsible for, devising better policy, and potentially designing solutions. 

A new peer-reviewed paper from Petter Törnberg, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, contributes to this understanding by developing a computational model that “suggests that digital media polarize through partisan sorting, creating a maelstrom in which more and more identities, beliefs, and cultural preferences become drawn into an all-encompassing societal division.” 

Last week, President Joe Biden’s White House published a 73-page document produced by the Office of Science and Technology Policy titled Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights: Making Automated Systems Work for the American People.

The White House says that “among the great challenges posed to democracy today is the use of technology, data, and automated systems in ways that threaten the rights of the American public.“ The Blueprint, then, is “a guide for a society that protects all people from these threats—and uses technologies in ways that reinforce our highest values.”

To discuss the blueprint and the broader context into which it was introduced, Tech Policy Press spoke to one expert who had a hand in writing it, and one external observer who follows these issues closely. Joining the discussion are Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a professor of computer science and data science and director of the Data Science Initiative at Brown University, who recently completed a 15-month appointment as an advisor to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and Alex Engler, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he researches algorithms and policy.

Some of the most controversial debates over speech and content moderation on social media platforms are now due for consideration in the Supreme Court. Last month, Florida’s attorney general asked the Court to decide whether states have the right to regulate how social media companies moderate content on their services, after Florida and Texas passed laws that challenge practices of tech firms that lawmakers there regard as anti-democratic. And this month, the Supreme Court decided to hear two cases that will have bearing on interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally provides platforms with immunity from legal liability for user generated content. 

To talk about these various developments, Justin Hendrix spoke to three people covering these issues closely. Guests include:

• Brandie Nonnecke, Director of the CITRIS Policy Lab at UC Berkeley and the Director of Our Better Web
• Jameel Jaffer, Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University
• Will Oremus, a news analysis writer focused on tech and society at The Washington Post

The guests also made time to discuss Elon Musk’s on-again, off-again pursuit of Twitter, which appears to be on-again, and how his potential acquisition of the company relates to the broader debate around speech and moderation issues. 

On September 21, Justin Hendrix moderated a panel discussion for the McCourt Institute at a pre-conference spotlight session on digital governance ahead of Unfinished Live, a conference on tech and society issues hosted at The Shed in New York City. The topic given by the organizers was Digital Governance and the State of Democracy: Why Does it Matter? 

Panelist included:  

• Erik Brynjolfsson, the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) and Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab
• Maggie Little, Director of the Ethics Lab at Georgetown University
• Eli Pariser, Co-Director of New_Public, an initiative focused on developing better digital public spaces; and
• Eric Salobir, the Chair of the Executive Committee, Human Technology Foundation, a research and action network placing the human being at the heart of technology development