The Tech Policy Press Podcast

In last Sunday’s podcast, I promised an occasional series of discussions on the relationship between social media, message apps and election mis- and disinformation. In today’s show, I’m joined by two guests who just did a deep dive into the issue, producing a 'score card' that compares the policies and performance of the tech companies on multiple dimensions for New America’s Open Technology Institute:

• Spandana (Spandi) Singh, a policy analyst at New America's Open Technology Institute, and
• Quinn Anex-Ries, a PhD candidate in American Studies at USC and an intern with the Open Technology Institute this summer.

Their findings are summarized in a report, Misleading Information and the Midterms: How Platforms are Addressing Misinformation and Disinformation Ahead of the 2022 U.S. Elections. 

A little more than a year ago, a coalition of multidisciplinary researchers at Stanford, MIT, Northwestern, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia set out to crowd source ideas to address the political divide in what was dubbed the Strengthening Democracy Challenge. “Anti-democratic attitudes and support for political violence are at alarming levels in the US," said Robb Willer, Director of the Polarization and Social Change Lab and Professor of Sociology at Stanford, at the time of the announcement. "We view this project as a chance to identify efficacious interventions, and also to deepen our understanding of the forces shaping these political sentiments.”

After reviewing more than 250 submissions from researchers, activists and others, the research coalition selected 25 interventions it deemed most promising to test against one another in an "experimental tournament" utilizing a sample of 31,000 U.S. adults. To learn more about the challenge, some of the promising projects that emerged from it, and whether tech platforms may play a role in efforts to address polarization, I spoke to Willer and his colleague, Jan Gerrit Voelkel, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University and also a member of the Polarization and Social Change Lab.

With the U.S. midterm election cycle about to kick into high gear, social media platforms are announcing updates to their civic integrity policies and approaches to countering election mis- and disinformation.

In this week's podcast, we hear from election administrators themselves about the impact of election misinformation. This is the first in an occasional series Tech Policy Press will publish this fall on social media and election integrity. This episode draws audio from a panel discussion hosted by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform on August 11, 2022, that took place on the occasion of the publication of a majority staff report on the problem of election disinformation.

When most people think about the problem of mis- and disinformation, they think first of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. But how might the affordances of search engines, when used by ideologically motivated individuals, contribute to an unhealthy information ecosystem? Dr. Francesca Tripodi has a new book out on the subject, The Propagandists' Playbook: How Conservative Elites Manipulate Search and Threaten Democracy, which I had the chance to discuss with her this week.

In recent months, press reports have emerged about individuals in multiple countries falling victim to extortion and fraud schemes enabled by often highly rated lending apps downloaded from Google’s Play Store. Last week, Diana Baptista and Avi Asher-Schapiro, journalists at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, told the story of how a man fell prey to one of these apps operating in Mexico. In this podcast episode, Baptista describes the man's experience, the broader phenomenon and the surrounding context.

Earlier this year in California, two State Assembly members— Democrat Buffy Wicks and Republican Jordan Cunningham— introduced the California Age Appropriate Design Code Bill. The California Age Appropriate Design Code would place limitations on what companies can do with youth data, including tracking location and profiling. It puts limitations on manipulative design, and includes transparency measures so users are aware and consent to the use of their information. The bill makes the California attorney general responsible enforcement of the state’s rules, opening up the possibility of litigation or fines against companies that do not follow the Code. It would also require the California Privacy Protection Agency to create a Children’s Data Protection Task Force that would formulate recommendations on best practices.

A coalition of civil society and tech policy groups supports the Code, including organizations such as Common Sense Media, Accountable Tech, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Sesame Workshop, the Consumer Federation of California, and the National Hispanic Media Coalition. Industry groups, such as TechNet and the California Chamber of Commerce, oppose the bill, and other experts have raised concerns in particular about requirements for age verification. The California State Assembly voted 72-0 to pass the bill, and it is now with the California Senate. 

For this podcast, Tech Policy Press spoke to three people— all college students and activists— who support it, in part due to their own experiences:

• Aliza Kopans, a rising sophomore at Brown University, cofounder of Technic(ally) Politics and an intern at Accountable Tech;
• Emma Lembke, a rising sophomore at the Washington University in St. Louis, founder of the Log Off Movement, cofounder of Technic(ally) politics and an intern at Accountable Tech
• Khoa-Nathan Ngo, rising college sophomore and a youth collaborator at GoodforMedia.

This episode features two segments. First up, an interview with Solana Larsen and Bridget Todd, two of the folks behind Mozilla’s Internet Health Report and its award-winning podcast, IRL. This year, Mozilla decided to publish its Internet Health Report as a series of podcast episodes delving into the experiences of people building AI and working on AI policy. The series digs into a range of topics, including surveillance, labor, healthcare, geospatial data, and disinformation in social media.

The second segment features a discussion with William Frey, a researcher and Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University and the lead author of a new paper titled Digital White Racial Socialization: Social Media and the Case of Whiteness.

In today’s episode of the podcast, we’re going to hear from FTC Chair Lina Khan, who was appointed in June 2021, as well as FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, who was appointed to a Democratic seat on the Commission in 2018. This isn’t a typical episode- what you’ll hear is audio of a special event hosted on Tuesday, July 19 by the Economic Security Project (ESP) and the Law and Political Economy Project (LPE). These organizations brought together scholars, advocates, and government officials to discuss how new thinking and research seeks to reframe dominant economic paradigms, and why it is so important to redefine and challenge monopolies. 

The event, Resourcing a New Paradigm: The Future of Antimonopoly Research, was introduced by Becky Chao, Director of Antimonopoly at the Economic Security Project, and it is her voice you’ll hear first. After remarks from Chair Khan and Commissioner Slaughter, you’ll hear a panel discussion moderated by the Open Markets Institute’s Legal Director, Sandeep Vaheesan. The full complement of speakers includes:

• Lina Khan, Chair, Federal Trade Commission
• Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission
• Elettra Bietti, Joint Postdoctoral Fellow, NYU School of Law and the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech in New York
• Brian Callaci, Chief Economist, Open Markets Institute
• Seeta Peña Gangadharan, Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science
• Lenore Palladino, University of Massachusetts Amherst Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy
• Becky Chao, Director of Antimonopoly, Economic Security Project
• Amy Kapczynski, Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Global Health Justice Partnership
• Moderated by Sandeep Vaheesan, Legal Director, Open Markets Institute

By the end of this 90 minutes, you will be up to date on the key ideas, challenges and opportunities ahead for the intellectual project to redefine antimonopoly thinking and law to pursue not just economic but also social and racial justice.

On Wednesday, July 20, the United States House of Representatives Energy & Commerce Committee held a markup that included H.R. 8152, the "American Data Privacy and Protection Act,” which is touted as the first comprehensive national privacy legislation with bipartisan support.

To discuss the bill and its prospects in detail, Tech Policy Press spoke with two experts on tech policy and civil rights issues: Nora Benavidez, Senior Counsel and Director of Digital Justice and Civil Rights at Free Press, and Justin Brookman, Director of Technology Policy for Consumer Reports. 

This episode features a conversation with the author of a new book that makes a compelling argument for the substantial deprivatization of the Internet. In Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future, Ben Tarnoff says to create a more democratic and equitable society we need to diminish the role of the market in the future of the internet, and reduce the power of profit motive to define our online experience.