The Tech Policy Press Podcast

This week’s episode of The Sunday Show focuses on Congressional testimony on disinformation and extremism by Tech CEOs including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. Guests include Yaël Eisenstat (Betalab), Katie Paul (Tech Transparency Project) Evan Greer (Fight for the Future), Chris Gilliard (Harvard Shorenstein Center), and Fadi Quran (Avaaz). And, Tech Policy Press colleagues Romi Geller and Bryan Jones discuss news of the week. 

This episode features a discussion on the challenges of content moderation at scale with four great experts on the the key issues including Tarleton Gillespie, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University; Kate Klonick, Assistant Professor at Law at St. John's University Law School and an Affiliate Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School; Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University; and Sarah T. Roberts, Assistant Professor of Information Studies at UCLA.

Tech Policy Press fellow Romi Geller and cofounder Bryan Jones discuss news of the day.

In this episode we focus on the question of what should be done to constrain the dominance of the tech platforms, and to regulate the ways in which they control aspects of our economy, markets and the public sphere.

First up, we hear from Alec MacGillis, a reporter for ProPublica that has just written a book that considers Amazon’s dominance and what it means for wealth of American cities and people called Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America.

Then, we listen to a panel discussion from the Betalab: Fix The Internet program at Betaworks. The discussion focuses on priorities for the regulation of social media, and features Yaël Eisenstat, Researcher-in-Residence at Betalab and formerly a CIA officer, a White House advisor, and the Global Head of Elections Integrity Operations for political advertising at Facebook; Jason Kint, the CEO of Digital Content Next, a trade association that advocates for media companies such as The New York Times, Conde Nast, ESPN, Vox, Politico and Insider, and the Chairman of TrustX, a cooperative digital advertising marketplace designed to address the industry's trust, transparency and accountability challenges in digital advertising; and Marietje Schaake, international policy director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. Between 2009 and 2019, Marietje served as a Member of European Parliament for the Dutch liberal democratic party where she focused on trade, foreign affairs and technology policies. 

This week we focus on the intersection of technology, media and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first segment is a discussion with Alexis Madrigal, a staff writer at The Atlantic, a co-founder of the COVID Tracking Project, and the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology.

Then, we listen in on a panel discussion titled Privacy Impacts of Modern Contract Tracing for Future Pandemic Response that took place a the end of January during a day of discussion hosted by Santa Clara county. The panel features Deirdre Mulligan, a Professor in the School of Information at UC Berkeley and a faculty Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology; Brandie Nonnecke, Director of the CITRIS Policy Lab a UC Berkeley; Brian Hofer, Chair of the Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission; and Steve Penrod, VP of Product Development at TripleBlind.

This week's episode features a discussion hosted by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab titled Reclaiming Reality: De-radicalization and Rehabilitation After the January 6 Attack that includes Amarnath Amarasingam, an Assistant Professor in the School of Religion at Queen’s University, Cristina López G, a Senior Research Analyst with Data and Society, QAnon Anonymous co-host Travis View, and the DFRLab’s Research Fellow, Jared Holt. We also hear related Congressional testimony from Emily Bell, Founding Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, at a House subcommittee hearing titled "Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media."

First, we discuss Facebook’s response to an Australian law that would compel search and social media platforms to pay news organizations for linking to their content with guest Chris Zappone, Digital Foreign Editor at Australia’s The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

Second, we listen in on a panel discussion on free speech in the digital age hosted by Betaworks Studios as part of its Betalab: Fix The Internet program. Moderated by Betalab Researcher-in-Residence Yaël  Eisenstat, includes David Kaye, a clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine and former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, along with Nora Benavidez the director of U.S. Free Expression Programs at PEN America.

This week's episode features a discussion about technology, democracy and the public sphere with Ali Velshi, the MSNBC Anchor of the show named after him and an NBC Correspondent; Karen Kornbluh, director of the German Marshall Fund’s Digital Innovation Democracy Initiative; and Emily Bell, Founding Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. Plus, we talk about news at the intersection of technology and policy with Bryan Jones and Romi Geller.

Interviews with Caitlin Elsaesser, a clinical social worker and researcher at the University of Connecticut who studies the connections between youth violence and social media and Jeff Kosseff, a professor of cybersecurity law in the United States Naval Academy's Cyber Science Department and author of the book The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet- A history of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Also featuring Bryan Jones, cofounder of Tech Policy Press, and Romi Geller, Tech Policy Press fellow and a research assistant at the Center for Media Engagement at UT Austin. Hosted by Justin Hendrix.

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