Techdirt (Techdirt)

There was a time not too long ago when tech companies enjoyed broad public support and adulation. Now they face widespread opposition and criticism from almost all corners. The shift from one to the other has long been called the "techlash", but it's always been unclear where it really came from and how it happened, and especially what role journalists and the media played. This week, we're joined by Dr. Nirit Weiss-Blatt, author of the new book The Techlash and Tech Crisis Communication, for a deep dive into the story of the techlash phenomenon and how companies are reacting to the new dynamic.

Textiles have been around for such a long time that we barely think about them. The making of fabric is one of the oldest crafts, and has played a major role in human civilization for thousands of years — and that might lead one to assume that there's nothing left to be learned from fabric's history. But they'd be wrong. This week we're joined by Virginia Postrel, whose book The Fabric Of Civilization: How Textiles Made The World is a fascinating look at how textiles have pushed and shaped the history of innovation, and how the story of fabric can teach us important lessons about today's biggest challenges around innovation.

For some reason, a lot of people who get involved in the debate about content moderation still insist that online platforms are "doing nothing" to address problems — but that's simply not true. Platforms are constantly working on trust and safety issues, and at this point many people have developed considerable expertise regarding these unique challenges. One such person is Alex Feerst, former head of Trust & Safety at Medium, who joins us on this weeks episode to clear up some misconceptions and talk about the current state of the trust and safety field.

Despite all the nonsense that dominates so much of the public discussion on the subject, free speech in the age of big social media platforms is a vital topic with a lot of nuances, and there are many people with important perspectives on it. One such person is EFF Director of International Freedom of Expression Jillian York, whose new book Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism offers an exploration of the topic rooted in personal experience and years of activism — and she joins us on this week's episode to discuss the challenges and pitfalls of internet content moderation and its impact on free expression around the world.

We've got another podcast cross-post for you this week! Mike recently joined the Cato Institute Daily Podcast to discuss the PACT Act — the more "serious" proposal for Section 230 reform that is still riddled with problems that will do damage to the entire internet. Listen to the full conversation withn Mike and Cato's Will Duffield on this week's episode.

It's one more podcast cross-post this week! A recent episode of the Institute for Justice's Short Circuit podcast dug into two very interesting legal cases: one that explores one of the more rarely-invoked pieces of Section 230, and another that tests the limits of the Fourth Amendment. Mike joined IJ attorney Josh Windham and host Anthony Sanders to discuss the cases themselves and what they mean for the law, and you can listen to the whole conversation here on this week's episode.

After a few cross-post episodes, we're back with a brand new conversation, and it's all about a big subject that intersects with the majority of what we cover here at Techdirt: rights. In his book How Rights Went Wrong, Columbia Law professor and Constitutional scholar Jamal Greene proposes a new way of thinking about rights and how they interact, and he joins this week's episode to discuss this paradigm-shifting idea that challenges many preconceptions about the subject.

The way a lot of people talk about content moderation is disappointingly uncreative — most of all in the way they boil every decision down to the binary decision of "leave it up or take it down". But this framework is extremely limiting and doesn't reflect the way content moderation professionals work, and one person working to paint a better picture is Santa Clara Law Professor Eric Goldman. He joins us on this week episode to discuss the many different ways to approach difficult content moderation questions.

The past several years have done a lot to expose the failings of the "marketplace of ideas", as disinformation and harassment campaigns have shown an ability to spread and flourish despite ample amounts of counterspeech. This triumph of mob behavior, especially on Twitter, has challenged a lot of people's preconceptions about how free speech functions, and one person who has been exploring these issues is FIRE's Sarah McLaughlin, especially in two topical articles on her Substack. She joins us on this week's episode to discuss Twitter, free speech, and the challenge mob behavior presents to online discourse.

Last week, the Oversight Board made its highest-profile decision yet: upholding Facebook's suspension of Donald Trump, though with the caveat that it needs clearer policy reasons to make the suspension indefinite. Unsurprisingly, a whole lot of people have a whole lot of opinions on this, and we wanted to learn more about the decision from the source. Julie Owono is an Oversight Board member and the Executive Director of Internet Sans Frontières, and she joins us on this week's episode to discuss how this decision was reached and what it means for Facebook.

It's no secret that we were not at all impressed with WIRED's recent cover story about Section 230. The resulting conversation sparked a Twitter debate with the story's author, Gilad Edelman, and we thought... why not bring it to the podcast? So on this week's episode, Gilad joins Mike to discuss and debate the story, our response, and Section 230.

The recent ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline has brought renewed public attention to cybersecurity issues. The field is always evolving, and the attack serves as a great starting point for understanding the current state of cybersecurity, so this week we're joined by three experts — Ross Nordurft and Alex Botting from Venable LLP, and Amy Mahn from the National Institute of Standards and Technology — to discuss the lessons from the pipeline attack, and how to take a risk management approach to cybersecurity.

Earlier today, we announced the release of an open source playkit for Money City, our new game about the future of money that was designed and run for MozFest 2021. For this week's episode of the podcast, Mike is joined by two of the people who commissioned the game — Erika Drushka and Chris Lawrence from Grant For The Web — as well as our game design partner, Randy Lubin of Leveraged Play, to talk more about Money City and using games to explore serious topics and generate useful ideas. Money City Playkit: https://copia.is/projects/money-city/ Copia Gaming: https://copia.is/gaming/

It's no secret that the tech industry has lost much of the diversity that was present in its early days and grown into a male-dominated field rife with sexism and gender disparity. Today, many people are work to change this — and one such effort is the GirlCon, which is holding its fourth annual conference for women in tech from June 27th to 30th this year. On this week's episode, we're joined by GirlCon co-founder Kyla Guru and co-director Vidya Bharadwaj to discuss this year's event and the ongoing fight to empower the next generation of women in tech.

Even among people who recognize the problems with holding platforms liable for user speech, there's an understandable temptation to treat the act of content amplification and recommendation differently, since that's something the platforms do themselves. While you can see the logic to this idea, the fact is it's just as difficult and fraught with problems as other intermediary liability proposals. This week, we're joined by frequent guest Daphne Keller, Director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, to discuss her recent paper on the subject and why regulating amplification isn't the simple solution it might sound like. "Amplification and Its Discontents" by Daphne Keller: https://knightcolumbia.org/content/amplification-and-its-discontents Separately, this is the first time we've had a sponsor for the podcast! The Pessimists Aloud podcast is sponsoring today's episode. It's a new offering from the Pessimists Archive Twitter feed, which finds old articles that are skeptical of technology, which in retrospect turned out to be incorrect. The podcast takes those articles and has them artistically read (in an old-timey voice) aloud. We think fans of Techdirt will certainly enjoy the Pessimists Aloud podcast: https://anchor.fm/pessimistsaloud

We've been talking a lot about the huge effort in Congress to pass new antitrust laws targeting big tech companies, and all the issues these proposals have. This week, we've got an insider perspective on just what's going on with antitrust in the House: Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who called out many of the deficiencies in the bills during last week's marathon markup session, joins us for a discussion all about the many, many problems in all five proposed antitrust bills.

If you've been following our coverage of Florida's recent law about social media content moderation, you know it hasn't been going well — it was an insane bill that was quickly shut down by an injunction from a judge who could see how obviously unconstitutional it was. But the fight isn't over, so this week we're joined by Florida Representative Anna Eskamani, one of the most vocal critics of the bill in the state legislature, to discuss how this all happened and what's going to come next.

Although it's taken a bit of a back seat lately, the topic of patents has long been important here at Techdirt. Now that we're in the first ever Patent Quality Week, it's time to dig back in and talk about changing the patent system and turning it into something that enables good patents without allowing so many bad ones. So for this week's episode, we're joined by Engine's IP Counsel Abby Rives to talk about the inception and goals of Patent Quality Week, and how to fix our broken approach to patents.

Freedom of speech sits at the intersection of so many of the topics we write about here on Techdirt, and some of our favorite podcast guests are true experts on the subject. One such guest is UCI Law Professor and former UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression David Kaye, who joins us again for this weeks episode and a wide-ranging discussion about some of the most pressing and current free speech issues.

Most people are pretty clear on the fact that the First Amendment prevents the government from making rules about speech — but what about when government officials make informal demands or threaten retaliation related to speech? Such actions have been ruled to violate the First Amendment, but this practice — dubbed "jawboning" by this week's guest — raises messy legal edge-cases and grey areas. We're joined by University of Chicago Law Professor Genevieve Lakier, who recently authored an article for Lawfare on the subject, to discuss the legal history and status of jawboning and the problem of informal government coercion. Informal Government Coercion and The Problem of "Jawboning" by Genevieve Lakier: https://www.lawfareblog.com/informal-government-coercion-and-problem-jawboning

The pandemic has brought us face to face with important questions about (among many things) the roles of technology and government in our lives, and especially the intersection of the two. One interesting example that is worth exploration is California's new digital vaccine record system, and who better to discuss it with than the person who spearheaded the project: California's Chief Technology Innovation Officer Rick Klau, who joins us this week to discuss tech, government, and what happens when the two manage to work well together.

We're continually amazed that so many companies still think they can get away with abusing the law to take down parodies, satire, and criticism without invoking the Streisand Effect and making things worse on themselves. One person who has a lot of experience being on the receiving end of these foolish threats is artist and culture hacker Danielle Baskin, whose recent Brand-Aid project is just the latest in a series of works that drew the ire of Johnson & Johnson. This week, Baskin joins us on the podcast to discuss what it's like when your art is constantly hit with demands to cease and desist.

We've written a lot about the Oracle/Google case over API copyrights as it wound its way through the courts, but the Supreme Court ruling has such widespread implications that there is still plenty to unpack. This week, we're joined by two top experts on intellectual property — Berkeley Law's Pamela Samuelson and Stanford Law's Mark Lemley, who recently co-wrote a paper on the subject — to discuss in detail what impact this landmark case has on copyright and interoperability. Paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3898154

Canada is barreling towards a federal election, and if recent legislative proposals are any indication, the outcome will have huge implications for the future of the internet in the country. Between the recent Bill C-10 and the proposed online harms legislation (among other things), it's clear that plenty of Canadian politicians want to make drastic and draconian changes to how the internet is regulated. This week, I join Mike on the podcast along with Matt Hatfield, the Campaigns Director of OpenMedia (something like Canada's version of the EFF), to discuss the Canadian election and what it means for a variety of important internet policy issues.

The notion that if libraries didn't exist already, the publishing industry wouldn't allow them to exist at all is both a grim joke and a depressing truth, as continually evidenced by the opposition of publishers to seemingly unobjectionable technologies like controlled digital lending, which aim to allow libraries to carry their mission forward into the digital age. This week, we're joined by Jennie Rose Halperin, executive director of the Library Futures Institute, to discuss the institute's new paper on the subject and the legality of and opposition to controlled digital lending, and what it tells us about the future of libraries.

The concept of "shadowbanning" comes up a lot in content moderation discussions — often from people who are spreading nonsense. But various means of deprioritizing content have been employed by platforms for many years. This week, we're joined by Dr. Carolina Are, a researcher who recently released a paper on the subject, especially how it relates to nudity and censorship on Instagram. This week, she joins us on the podcast to discuss shadowbanning, how it works, and the impact it has. The Shadowban Cycle [Paper]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2021.1928259 Additionally, we've got a special announcement: to celebrate our upcoming 300th episode of the podcast, we'll be hosting a live stream with the return of the original co-hosts Dennis Yang and Hersh Reddy, including (hopefully, barring technical issues) the ability for viewers who back our Patreon to call in live and ask questions. The stream will happen on Thursday, September 30th at 1pm PT/4pm ET — stay tuned for more details on how you can watch the stream, and be sure to back our Patreon if you want a chance to call in!

Disinformation continues to be a major topic of discussion across many fields, but a lot of what people believe about the subject is... questionable at best. One of the more thoughtful writers on the subject is Joe Bernstein from Buzzfeed News, whose recent cover story in Harper's brings a very different and valuable perspective to the debate. This week, he joins us on the podcast to discuss the glut of misconceptions and misinformation about disinformation. Harper's Article: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/ Additionally, as we recently announced, we'll be celebrating our upcoming 300th episode of the podcast with a live stream featuring the return of the original co-hosts Dennis Yang and Hersh Reddy, including (hopefully, barring technical issues) the ability for viewers who back our Patreon to call in live and ask questions. The stream will happen on Thursday, September 30th at 1pm PT/4pm ET — stay tuned for more details on how you can watch the stream, and be sure to back our Patreon if you want a chance to call in! Live Stream Details: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210928/07392347648/this-thursday-watch-techdirt-podcast-live-become-patreon-backer-to-call-with-questions.shtml Techdirt Podcast on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/techdirt

Last week, we celebrated 300 episodes of the Techdirt Podcast with a live stream, for which we brought back original co-hosts Dennis Yang and Hersh Reddy. You can watch the stream on YouTube, but now it's time to release the episode as normal! The subject was simple, but led the conversation in all kinds of interesting directions: how have our views on technology issues changed and evolved since the podcast started? YouTube Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYOzagdwfkI

We've got a cross-posted podcast for you this week! Recently, Mike appeared on the Ipse Dixit podcast with host Professor Brian L. Frye — the inspiration for our Plagiarism Collection of NFTs and, previously, our OK, Landlord gear — for a wide-ranging discussion about scarcity and abundance in the digital age. You can listen to the whole conversation on this week's episode. Ipse Dixit - https://shows.acast.com/ipse-dixit

It's another crossposted episode this week! Mike recently joined the Tech Policy Press podcast alongside Block Party founder Tracy Chou for a conversation about using middleware and interoperability to craft a new, less centralized online ecosystem. You can listen to the whole conversation on this week's episode.

The documents revealed by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen are full of important information — but the media hasn't been doing the best job of covering that information and all its nuances. There are plenty of examples of reporters taking one aspect out of context and presenting it in the worst possible light, while ignoring the full picture. This week, we're joined by law professor Kate Klonick to discuss the media's failings in covering the Facebook Papers, and the unwanted outcomes this could produce.

Facebook is under a lot of scrutiny lately, and for very good reasons! But the anger surrounding Facebook has also resulted in plenty of criticism that is misleading or downright inaccurate in its description of how the company operates and what it does — though Facebook itself carries some of the blame for that happening, too. The goal of fixing the problems with social media isn't helped by misrepresenting what those problems are, so this week we're joined by Gizmodo's Shoshana Wodinsky to discuss all the things people get wrong about Facebook.

We've got a crossposted episode for you this week: Mike recently joined The Cato Daily Podcast with Caleb O. Brown for a discussion about the "hacking" fiasco in Missouri and the state's treatment of the journalists who exposed its huge data security flub. It's a shorter conversation than our usual podcasts, and you can listen to the whole thing on this week's episode.

Earlier this month Mike participated in a content series and virtual symposium on Lessons From The First Internet Ages, hosted by the Knight Foundation, alongside several important figures from the history of the internet. On this week's episode, the creators and curators of the event — John Sands, Mary Anne Franks, and Eric Goldman — to reflect on the writings and conversations from the event and the lessons to be learned.

In last week's episode, we had a conversation with the creators and curators of the Knight Foundation's virtual symposium on Lessons From The First Internet Ages. This week, we've got the audio from the panel discussion at the symposium that Mike participated in along with Stanford's Daphne Keller and Harvard Law's Evelyn Douek, all about the ways that the governance of online communities has evolved and changed as the internet has matured.

Our lives are lived at the intersection of vast systems (economic, technological, and beyond) that are incredibly complex and often chaotic, and it's hard to understand and embrace what author Neil Chilson's new book, Getting Out Of Control, calls "the emergent mindset." On this week's episode, Neil joins us to discuss his book and why you can't simply "control" complex systems.

As many of you know, last week we hosted an online event for the latest Techdirt Greenhouse edition, all about looking back on the lessons learned from the 2012 protests against SOPA and PIPA. Our special guest was Rep. Zoe Lofgren, one of the strongest voices in congress speaking out against the disastrous bills, who provided all kinds of excellent insight into what happened then and what's happening now. In case you missed it, for this week's episode of the podcast (yes, we're finally back with new episodes!) we've got the full conversation and Q&A from the event. The Techdirt Greenhouse: https://www.techdirt.com/blog/greenhouse/

We talk a lot about free speech in different countries, and about the history of free speech in the US — but what about the global history of this fundamental concept? A new book released today, Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media by Jacob Mchangama, tackles exactly this subject in great and insightful detail. This week, Jacob joins us on the podcast to discuss the sweeping story of free speech throughout the ages and around the world.

More than a year and a half ago we were joined on the podcast by Riana Pfefferkorn, then the Associate Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and now a research fellow at the Stanford Internet Observatory, to discuss the disastrous EARN IT Act. As you probably know, EARN IT is back, and this week, Riana joins us once again to discuss why it hasn't gotten any better — and might in fact have gotten worse.

We've got another cross-post this week: Mike was recently a guest on the new Internet of Humans podcast by Jillian York and Konstantinos Komaitis, for a wide-ranging discussion about internet regulation issues today and where they might be headed. You can listen to the entire conversation on this week's episode.

Nearly three years ago, we were joined by Professor Jeff Kosseff to discuss his then-new book about Section 230, The Twenty-Six Words That Created The Internet. Now, Jeff has a new book coming out, about another internet issue that is deeply misunderstood by many people: anonymity. The United States Of Anonymous releases in two weeks, and on today's episode Jeff joins us to discuss how the right to anonymity has shaped American values, politics, business, security, and discourse.

It took a little longer than usual, but we've finally announced the winners of the fourth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1926! In this episode, Mike and I are joined by Randy Lubin (our partner in running the jam) to discuss the winners in all six categories, as well as some of our favorite entries that didn't quite make the cut. The Winners: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/03/09/announcing-the-winners-of-the-4th-annual-public-domain-game-jam/ The Entries: https://itch.io/jam/gaming-like-its-1926/entries

Five years ago, we were joined on the podcast by author and law professor Aaron Perzanowski to discuss his book about the impact of copyright on property in the digital age, The End of Ownership. That book touched on the issue of repairing devices and the ways companies make it difficult, but his new book, The Right To Repair, puts this topic in the spotlight. This week, Aaron joins us to discuss the history and future of the right to repair around the world.

Recently, Mike joined Jason Feifer on the Build for Tomorrow podcast for a discussion about predicting the future — and specifically about a prediction that Mike got very wrong. The episode includes interviews with several other guests on the subject, and we're featuring the whole thing this week on the Techdirt Podcast.

People often talk about some kind of "right to deletion" as an approach to fixing online privacy issues. This construct can create problems, as we've seen with Europe's version, but newer proposals don't seem to consider these lessons. A recent paper by law professor Tiffany Li looks at another angle on the issue: how data deletion impacts algorithms and AI-trained models. This week, Tiffany joins us on the podcast to discuss this concept of "algorithmic destruction", and how policy makers are ignoring it. "Algorithmic Destruction" paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4066845

So much of the debate about Section 230 is based on an incorrect understanding of its procedural benefits, and the completely false idea that it's a special gift to "big tech". A new paper (which we wrote about yesterday) by Elizabeth Banker from the Chamber of Progress dives deep into the real benefits and beneficiaries of Section 230, and this week she joins us on the podcast to discuss how the law protects small companies, individuals, and free speech. Research Paper: https://progresschamber.org/new-report-details-impact-of-section-230-litigation-onsmall-online-providers/ Our Coverage: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/18/new-study-shows-section-230-protects-small-companies-much-more-than-big-ones/

PLAY THE GAME: https://startuptrail.engine.is/ Last week, in partnership with Engine, we launched our startup policy simulator game Startup Trail. The game puts you in the shoes of a founder trying to build a successful startup, and facing the many difficult policy decisions that entails without running out of money, losing all your users, or ending up with a company that has no innovative ability. This week on the podcast, Mike and I are joined by our game design partner Randy Lubin of Leveraged Play as well as Kate Tummarello and Abby Rives from Engine, for a discussion all about how the game came to be and what we hope people will learn from it.

It's no secret that Elon Musk's statements about his plans for Twitter have been confused to say the least. It has become abundantly clear that he doesn't know much at all about how a service like Twitter operates, especially when it comes to content moderation, and doesn't seem to have much interest in learning. On this week's episode, we're joined by Renee DiResta from the Stanford Internet Observatory to discuss just how little Elon Musk understands the platform he's supposedly planning to buy.

The problems with copyright have been a subject of coverage here at Techdirt since the beginning, and for most of that time it has been largely a non-partisan subject. At the moment, however, that isn't so much the case thanks to Josh Hawley's war with Disney, which has created a situation where some copyright reform ideas that are conceptually good are mired in culture war issues, partisan politics, and unconstitutional nonsense. This week, we're joined by the Niskanen Center's Daniel Takash to discuss the problems with Hawley's copyright bill and copyright law in general.

In discussions about content moderation, it's easy to get stuck in the mindset that there are only a few simple ways it could possibly work — but in fact there is plenty of room for exploring creative alternatives. One such idea examined in a recent paper by Aviv Ovadya, Technology and Public Purpose Fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center, is called "platform democracy". It's well worth discussing, and Aviv joins us on this week's episode to do exactly that. Paper: http://platformdemocracy.com/

This week is Engine's second annual Patent Quality Week, focused on the many ways that the patent system allows low-quality patents to get through, the problems this causes, and what can be done about it. On this week's episode, we're joined by Abby Rives and Charles Duan for a discussion all about why patent quality matters.

We've got some great new discussions for the Techdirt Podcast... coming in a few weeks. But at the moment, amidst a very busy schedule on a variety of fronts, we're taking a short break to look back on a very old conversation: our 14th episode ever, from 2015, about media companies rolling out proprietary content management systems. Since we recently completed our own migration to Wordpress (the popular platform that was also a major component of that seven-year-old discussion) we thought it might be fun to revisit the question. So on this week's episode, Mike and I open with a bit of a retrospective followed by a replay of the original conversation in full.

As advocates of decentralization and a protocols-not-platforms approach to the web, there's a lot about the concept of Web3 that sounds appealing to us at Techdirt — but the details usually leave a lot to be desired. A new project called TBD from Block aims to move beyond all that, and while its invocation of "Web5" understandably invites skepticism, it's actually a lot more interesting. This week, we're joined by project lead Mike Brock to discuss how TBD and the concept of Web5 aims to grapple with the true potential of decentralization.

Read the report: https://copia.is/library/just-a-click-away/ Yesterday, we released a new report from the Copia Institute, written by Karl Bode, about the state of broadband competition and the great potential of an open access fiber model: Just A Click Away: Broadband Competition In America. On today's episode, Karl joins the podcast to dig into the details of the report and explain how a better future of US broadband is possible and attainable.

We've got a cross-post episode for you this week! Recently, Mike appeared on the Walled Culture podcast to discuss a wide range of topics including reflections on the SOPA/PIPA fight, ways to support creators, and the world of NFTs. You can listen to the entire interview on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast.

We've got one more cross-post episode this week. If you've been following Techdirt recently, you've surely heard about California's recently-passed bill, the Age Appropriate Design Code, and all its massive problems. Recently, Mike appeared on This Week In Google to discuss these problems, and you can listen to the whole conversation on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast.

The explosion of AI-generated art has taken the internet by storm, and is poised to continue growing for a long time. In turn, that's sparked a lot of conversation (and a lot of backlash) about the impact on artists — but much of the controversy seems misguided or overblown. This week, we're joined by Rob Sheridan, an artist and designer who has embraced the power of these tools, to discuss what AI-generated art really means for artists.

When the Elon Musk/Twitter drama landed in the Delaware Court Of Chancery, it thrust specialist publication The Chancery Daily into the spotlight, and they began offering up excellent explainers on this important court that most people knew very little about. The people behind the publication have decided to remain anonymous amidst the influx of attention, but today one of them joins us on the podcast to discuss just what's going on as Elon Musk takes his chances in a court that seems pretty immune to his reality distortion field.

When Mike wrote a post digging into some of the complex questions surrounding Cloudflare banning Kiwi Farms, there was plenty of backlash and disagreement — much of it thoughtful and well worth engaging with. Among the strongest critics was lawyer Mike Dunford, who composed a detailed Twitter thread that lead to a lengthy back-and-forth. This week, he joins us on the podcast to continue the conversation and discuss the welcome death of Kiwi Farms as well as broader issues of content moderation at the infrastructure layer.

As you probably already know, Techdirt recently marked its 25th anniversary and celebrated the occasion with an online party for our Insider subscribers. At the event, Mike was joined by Techdirt co-founder Dennis Yang for an interview conducted by Alex Feerst of Murmuration Labs, in which they looked back on the history of the site and took some questions from the audience. Now, you can listen to the full conversation on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast.

One of the oldest and most important topics on Techdirt is copyright, and the many problems with the law both here and abroad. One of the best voices on the subject, here and in many other publications, is Glyn Moody, who recently released his book Walled Culture, that goes through the history of how legacy copyright industries have tried to harm the internet and gain ever greater control over the work of artists and creators. It's available as a free e-book under a Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication, and today Glyn joins the podcast to discuss the book and the long, often-sad story of copyright law around the world. Get the book: https://walledculture.org/the-book/

Amidst all the conversation around regulating social media, algorithmic amplification, and disinformation, one idea that tends to get a lot of broad support is mandating editorial transparency. After all, it sounds nice, since transparency is usually a good thing. But in fact, there are huge legal and conceptual problems with mandated transparency. Santa Clara Law's Eric Goldman has written papers on the constitutionality of the idea and an important Supreme Court case related to this question, and this week he joins the podcast to discuss why mandated transparency isn't as good (or as constitutional) as many people claim. Read the papers: The Constitutionality of Mandating Editorial Transparency - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4005647 Zauderer and Compelled Editorial Transparency - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4246090

We've often talked about the importance of distinguishing content moderation at the infrastructure layer of the internet stack from that which happens on platforms at the edge, and this issue was brought to the forefront recently when Cloudflare took down Kiwi Farms. This week, we're joined by internet policy expert Konstantinos Komaitis to discuss an interesting, if admittedly imperfect, idea for approaching these tough questions: would infrastructure providers benefit from a third-party oversight board that handles content moderation decisions?

There are big internet regulatory changes coming in the EU, with the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. Each is a huge bundle of new rules that could drastically change the future of the entire internet, and today we're focusing on the DSA, which is set to come into force in 2024. Emma Llansó from the Center for Democracy & Technology and Daphne Keller from Stanford's Cyber Policy Center join us on this week's episode to dig into the DSA and its many, many implications.

This week, we have a special joint episode with The Neoliberal Podcast, discussing the question on a lot of minds: just what the hell is going on at Twitter now that Elon Musk is in charge? He's owned the company for less than a month, and it's already in chaos. Mike sits down with Neoliberal Podcast host Jeremiah Johnson to discuss why content moderation is so difficult at scale, whether Mastodon can be a real Twitter replacement, Elon's erratic and dumb moves, and the big question: whether or not Twitter might die. The Neoliberal Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/will-elon-kill-twitter-ft-mike-masnick/id1390384827?i=1000587263520

Last Friday evening, Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi dropped a non-bombshell on everyone, with the revelation of internal Twitter documents about the content moderation around Hunter Biden's laptop that showed... nothing particularly unusual or notable happened, and there's no evidence of government interference. Over the weekend, Mike was interviewed by Justin Hendrix for the Tech Policy Press podcast for a closer look at just what was contained in "the Twitter Files", and we've got the whole conversation for you here on this week's episode.

It's been a little over a year since we learned about Meta's "X-Check" program for whitelisting high-profile Facebook accounts from various content moderation efforts. Now, after a long wait, the Oversight Board has released the results of its review of the use of the tool, and there's plenty to dig in into. This week, we're joined by Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America and member of the Oversight Board, to discuss the details of the program and what the board has to say about it.

It seems the madness just never stops on Elon Musk's Twitter, and it's almost impossible to keep up. Recently, Mike joined the Daily Beast's podcast, The New Abnormal, for a discussion with host Andy Levy about just what exactly is going on with Twitter under Musk's erratic leadership. The conversation first appeared as part of The New Abnormal's latest episode, and now you can listen to Mike's segment here on the Techdirt Podcast. The New Abnormal episode: https://www.thedailybeast.com/watching-the-last-jan-6-hearing-was-utterly-heartbreaking

There have long been attacks on the global, open nature of the internet. Traditionally these came from authoritarian regimes looking to wall off portions of the internet and exert greater control of them, but lately we've also been seeing growing threats from democratic countries in the form of problematic laws and regulations. Recently, we wrote about an article by Global Network Initiative executive director Jason Pielemeier and Annenberg Public Policy Center research fellow Chris Riley that made a case in defense of the global, open internet, and this week both Jason and Chris join us on the podcast to look at the past, present and future of the internet around the world. In Defense Of The Global, Open Internet (Lawfare) - https://www.lawfareblog.com/defense-global-open-internet-0 Techdirt's Coverage - https://www.techdirt.com/2022/09/07/can-we-save-a-truly-global-internet/

For a brief and interesting time, the New York Times employed a Public Editor to serve as a liaison with its readers. One of the most interesting of these was the fifth, Margaret Sullivan, who would go on to become a media columnist with the Washington Post and then, as of today, a weekly columnist for The Guardian. She also recently published a book, Newsroom Confidential, full of insight drawn from her years of journalism and media experience. This week, Margaret joins us on the podcast to talk about her many ideas and pieces of advice for the future of media. Newsroom Confidential - https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250281906/newsroomconfidential

We've got a double-header of cross-post episodes for you this week! Recently, Mike joined two different podcasts to discuss Congress's response to the Twitter Files and the dumpster fire of a hearing held by the House Oversight Committee: The New Abnormal podcast from the Daily Beast, and The Sunday Show podcast from Tech Policy Press. You can listen to both conversations back-to-back right here in today's extra-long episode.

If you've been reading Techdirt recently, you probably know all about supposed "AI Lawyer" service DoNotPay and the tireless investigation of the company undertaken by Kathryn Tewson, who has written a couple of Techdirt posts about the saga. This week, Kathryn joins us on the podcast for a long and entertaining discussion about the entire story (so far).

After all these years, the Supreme Court is finally weighing in on Section 230 in the Gonzalez and Taamneh cases, and the outcome could have a very significant impact. Our organization, the Copia Institute, filed an amicus brief in the case, as did many other parties. This week, we're joined by Jess Miers from the Chamber of Progress and lawyer Cathy Gellis (who wrote our amicus brief), both of whom attended the Gonzalez hearing in person, to discuss the status of both cases and what they could mean for the future of the internet.

Last week, we announced the winners of the fifth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1927! We strongly encourage everyone to go check out all the submissions, but as in past years, I sat down with Mike and our game design partner Randy Lubin for an episode of the podcast all about the winning games in all six categories, as well as some of our favorite entries that didn't quite make the cut. Read about the winners: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/28/announcing-the-winners-of-the-5th-annual-public-domain-game-jam/ Check out all the entries: https://itch.io/jam/gaming-like-its-1927/entries

Misunderstandings (honest or otherwise) about Section 230 abound — across the political spectrum and, of course, in Congress. Each side believes weakening or eliminating the law will achieve its own distinct goals, and both sides are wrong. Following the most recent (but far from the first) very frustrating congressional hearing about Section 230, this week we're joined by TechFreedom's Free Speech Counsel Ari Cohn for a discussion about why and how congress constantly gets Section 230 so wrong.

Science fiction has always served as a source of inspiration for real technological progress. Sometimes that's great, but other times it enables abuse or leads people to make terrible assumptions that result in harmful decisions. This week we're joined by the hosts of the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct, authors Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders, who recently began tackling this very subject, to discuss the relationship between Silicon Valley and science fiction. Our Opinions Are Correct - https://www.ouropinionsarecorrect.com/

Legacy media operations really, really want tech companies that send them traffic to pay them as well. From Rupert Murdoch's link tax in Australia to the very bad JCPA in America, these requirements are nonsensical and run directly counter to the core functioning of the internet. Currently, one of the biggest pushes for such a law is happening in Canada with the government's Bill C-18 — and it's certainly no exception. Nobody has been following C-18 closer than law professor and researcher Michael Geist, and this week he joins us on the podcast to discuss the status of the bill and why, like similar laws around the world, it's a very bad idea.

Data portability is an important front in the war for an open internet. A few years ago, it seemed like some major movement was coming, with the joint announcement of the Data Transfer Project from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter — but recently, news of any progress was running thin. That is, until now: the project has morphed into the nonprofit Data Transfer Initiative, with a real team led by new Executive Director (and returning podcast guest) Chris Riley, who joins us on this week's episode to discuss the push to liberate data and make it portable. The Data Transfer Initiative: https://dtinit.org/

We've featured lots of coverage of the frankly insane deluge of "protect the children" type social media laws popping up in several states, and recently Mike was a guest on TechFreedom's Tech Policy Podcast, hosted by Corbin K. Barthold. You can listen to the whole conversation right here on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast.

We've been swamped with some big projects lately, and that put a bit of a dent in our podcast schedule. We've got a whole bunch of fresh new episodes lined up to record, so you can expect lots of original content soon — but to tide you over until then, this week we've got a cross-post of Mike's recent segment on The New Abnormal podcast, where he and host Andy Levy discuss Pornhub cutting off Utah in response to its age verification law, and some of the other "protect the children" efforts in Congress.

Play Moderator Mayhem: https://moderatormayhem.engine.is/ Last month, in partnership with Engine, we launched our new browser game that puts you in the shoes of a frontline content moderation worker at a growing online platform: Moderator Mayhem. If you haven't tried it yet, you can play it in your browser on mobile or desktop. The response to the game has been great, and this week Mike is joined on the podcast by myself, our game design partner Randy Lubin of Leveraged Play, and Engine executive director Kate Tummarello who spearheaded the project, to discuss how we built Moderator Mayhem and the impact it's been having so far.

When talking about content moderation, it's easy to focus entirely on centralized platforms. But now, with the rise of more federated and decentralized systems like ActivityPub and Bluesky (and many others), it's becoming more and more important to talk about how content moderation works in a decentralized space. This week we're joined by Yoel Roth, the former head of Trust & Safety at Twitter and now a Tech Policy Fellow at UC Berkeley, to discuss the new and different content moderation challenges that decentralized platforms face.

If you're a Techdirt reader, a Reddit user, or both, then you probably know all about the chaos engulfing the site as users and moderators of popular subreddits protest CEO Steve Huffman's recent changes to the site's API. This week, we're joined by Jay Peters from The Verge to talk about the situation, the protests, and Huffman's disastrous responses.

Recently, we announced our latest game project: FutureCast, created in partnership with the United Nations' Global Pulse group. It's a highly adaptable strategic forecasting tool that aims to explore "pathways of change" for different future scenarios by bringing together groups of stakeholders for a fun, insight-generating exercise. This week, we're joined by Minke Meijnders and Tiina Neuvonen from UN Global Pulse, as well as our game design partner Randy Lubin from Leveraged Play, to discuss how the game came to be and the many things you can do with it. Read about FutureCast: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/14/announcing-futurecast-a-new-game-framework-for-exploring-pathways-of-change/ Get the game materials: https://foresight.unglobalpulse.net/futurecast/

If you're a Techdirt reader, you're surely familiar with Cory Doctorow: we've written about him often, he's appeared on the podcast several times and, of course, he's a prolific science fiction author whose books brilliantly engage with many of the subjects we cover. Next week, if all goes according to plan, Cory will be joining us on the podcast once again to talk about his latest novel, Red Team Blues — so if you haven't read it yet, now's the time! And today we've got a special podcast feature to get you started: a chapter-long excerpt from the audiobook, available to listen in full on this week's episode.

Last week, we promised an upcoming episode featuring a conversation with Cory Doctorow — and that conversation has been recorded and is arriving next week! But we decided to take a brief intermission this week, since things in the social media landscape are changing so quickly. Mike recently appeared on The Neoliberal Podcast with Jeremiah Johnson to talk about the ongoing nonsense at Twitter, the dawn of Meta's Threads, the situation at Reddit, and all the other chaos engulfing the world of social media. You can listen to the entire conversation right here on this week's episode. The Neoliberal Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/social-media-in-chaos-ft-mike-masnick/id1390384827?i=1000621423264

Okay, now we're getting back to the plan. Two weeks ago we featured an excerpt from the audiobook of Red Team Blues, Cory Doctorow's new (and excellent) novel, and promised that we'd soon be joined by Cory himself. And now, we deliver! Listen to this week's episode for a long and far-reaching conversation between Mike and Cory about the book and it's themes and subjects, plus plenty of interesting tangents. Red Team Blues: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/redteamblues

We've long believed in the power of online platform interoperability and the power it gives to users to curate their own experiences. One of the prime examples of this is Block Party, created by Tracy Chou, which has had to suspend its operations following ExTwitter's API changes. Tracy joined us on the podcast once before to discuss Block Party, and now she's back to talk about her new service, Privacy Party, as well as the broader topic of platform interoperability and whether it could be mandated with regulations.

As you may recall, we weren't fans of The Social Dilemma, the documentary manipulated people with misinformation in the course of complaining about that exact practice. But now there's a much better and more interesting documentary in the space, and one that's worth your time: The YouTube Effect by Alex Winter. It takes a deep dive into the good and the bad of YouTube, and grapples with the fact that it has helped radicalize a lot of people. This week, Alex joins Mike (who still contests some of the points in the movie) on the podcast to discuss (and debate) the documentary and the role of YouTube in our culture. Watch The YouTube Effect: https://www.yteffect.com/

If you didn't know who Gigi Sohn was before her stalled-out FCC nomination and the ridiculous smear campaign that came with it, you surely do by now. And if you read Techdirt, you know she's one of the most experienced and passionate experts around when it comes to broadband. This week, she returns to the podcast after quite some time to discuss her new role at the American Association for Public Broadband and the fight for more community-owned broadband in the US.

Social media isn't the first phenomenon to spark a moral panic about its impact on people's (and especially young people's) mental health, and it surely won't be the last — but for now, it's the star of the show. A lot of people will gladly latch on to, and casually misrepresent, any research that might strengthen their belief in social media's harms. But that doesn't mean there are no harms: it's just that good research needs to account for the complexity of the subject and social media's myriad impacts, good and bad. One person doing such research is Professor Andy Przybylski from the University of Oxford, who joins us on this week's episode for a more detailed and meaningful discussion about social media and mental health.

We've got a another cross-post episode for you this week, on a subject near and dear to our hearts: protocols over platforms, and restoring decentralization online. Mike recently joined Danny O'Brien on the DWeb Decoded podcast to talk all about these topics, as well as tell a little story about Danny's role in the founding of Techdirt, and you can listen to the whole conversation here on this week's episode.

Earlier this year, we had an episode looking at Canada's proposed social media link tax and the many ways it would be terrible. Since then, that link tax has become law (though not yet come into effect), and unsurprisingly proven that the dire predictions were correct. Also since then, the Cato Institute's Paul Matzko published an excellent paper on link taxes in general, and Paul joins us on this week's episode to discuss the many reasons that a link tax won't save the newspaper industry. Read the paper: https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/link-tax-wont-save-newspaper-industry Listen to our previous episode on Canada's link tax: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/04/techdirt-podcast-episode-349-link-taxes-are-bad-canada-edition/

We've got a slightly unusual (at first glace) crosspost episode for you this week! Recently, Mike joined Dave Cooper, CEO and Founder of brand protection agency IPSecure, on the company's Owning The Buy Box podcast. As you probably know, we're pretty skeptical of brand protection companies here at Techdirt, but Dave has a history of heeding our criticisms and being thoughtful about policy and court rulings, enabling an interesting and insightful discussion about a recent legal decision and the brand protection space as a whole.

The trust and safety conversation tends to focus on the huge platforms, and the millions of smaller websites (some still quite big!) get ignored. But those websites have trust and safety needs too, and they use a lot of different tools to meet them. Most of these tools are proprietary, but there's a growing push to build more open source tooling for the purpose, which was discussed by Derek Slater in a recent Atlantic Council report. This week, Derek joins us on the podcast to talk about the problems that open source trust and safety tools can solve.

As you hopefully know by now, earlier this week we launched our new game, Trust & Safety Tycoon. It's a free, browser-based game (playable on desktop or mobile, though we recommend desktop for the best experience) that puts you in the shoes of the head of trust and safety at a rapidly growing social media platform, where you must face all the difficult decisions that entails. As we did for our past games Moderator Mayhem and Startup Trail, Mike, myself, and our game design partner Randy Lubin of Leveraged Play sat down after the release to record a podcast episode all about the game, our design process, and the reaction from players so far.

We've written plenty about facial recognition here on Techdirt, and especially the infamous Clearview AI. Now, journalist Kashmir Hill, who wrote the original New York Times story that told the story about the company's inception, has written a new book all about the subject: Your Face Belongs To Us. This week, she joins us on the podcast to discuss the whole story of Clearview AI, the rise of facial recognition, and the impact on privacy. Your Face Belongs To Us: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/691288/your-face-belongs-to-us-by-kashmir-hill/

As you hopefully know, we recently launched (and then released a podcast about) our new game, Trust & Safety Tycoon, which we created in association with the Atlantic Council's Task Force for a Trustworthy Future Web. This week, we've got two people from the Atlantic Council joining us on the podcast: Democracy & Tech Initiative Director Rose Jackson and DRFLab Senior Fellow and Managing Editor Andy Carvin. In the wake of current events in Israel, the conversation turned to a look at the unique challenges of trust and safety during times of global armed conflict.

The world of generative AI has been changing rapidly, and that's not something that's going to stop any time soon. Today, we're joined on the podcast by Jonathan Ross, founder and CEO of Groq (no, not Elon Musk's new bot called Grok) — a company working on a new technology stack that drastically speeds up performance of AI models — to talk about all things AI, and the many ways it's going to change in the coming months and years.

We've got another cross-post episode this week! Recently, Mike joined the debut episode of the new Dot Social podcast from Flipboard CEO Mike McCue for a discussion about decentralized social media and the open social web, and the ways in which they are poised to spur widespread innovation. You can listen to the whole conversation here on this week's episode.