Archives: Episode
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98. UMass’s very own Brian Levine is one of the foremost cybersecurity experts on CSAM. Here’s how he thinks we can make the Internet safer for children.
0Trigger/content warning: child sexual abuse materials, sexual exploitation of children, and trauma stemming from sexual abuse. Brian Levine has a storied career as a computer scientist working in cybersecurity. Earler, pivotal work in privacy has given way to his current all-hands-on-deck fight against the spread of CSAM (child sexual abuse material) online. Ethan and Brian…
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Rewind: Timnit Gebru Looks at Corporate AI and Sees a Lot of Bad Science
0Rerun of episode 85 from August, 16 2023 Timnit Gebru is not just a pioneering critic of dangerous AI datasets who calls bullshit on bad science pushed by the likes of OpenAI, or a tireless champion of racial, gender, and climate justice in computing. She’s also someone who wants to build something different. This week…
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Rewind: Ted Lasso’s Dylan Marron wants to redeem Jar Jar Binks
0This is a rerun of episode 84. Jar Jar Binks, the human side of online harassment, restorative justice, the Friends writers room, solidarity with UPS, what life looks like in the creative gig economy after your show has won an Emmy. Dylan Marron (Ted Lasso, Welcome to Nightvale) joins us for a sprawling, poignant conversation…
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97. There are 14 billion videos on YouTube. Mr. Beast, we hereby challenge you to watch them all.
0Our lab’s Ryan McGrady and Kevin Zheng are taking a victory lap around some amazing work they’re doing here at the lab. Ryan just published an article in The Atlantic about the research he’s leading to understand how big YouTube is and what exactly is on it, and Kevin recently debuted his amazing tool to…
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Rewind: The Netherlands’ most important sociologist is building the other DPI: the Dutch Public Internet
0Rerun of episode 69 from February 15th, 2023. José van Dijck is arguably the preeminent sociologist in the Netherlands, conducting research about how online platforms have crept into public life that has proved foundational to European regulation like the Digital Services Act. Today on Reimagining the Internet, José talks to us about PubHubs, an attempt to build…
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Rewind: Third Wave Internet with Ben Tarnoff
0Rerun of episode 81 from June 24th, 2023 We’re always told algorithms are going to change our world. And they do, but it always seems to be for the worse. Do we have any alternative to simply breaking the machines that have run afoul of our values and needs? We’re thrilled to welcome Ben Tarnoff…
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Rewind: iDPI’s New Manifesto: The Three-Legged Stool
0From April 5th, 2023: We talk a lot about reimagining the internet here at iDPI, and that’s because it’s something we spend most of our time at the lab doing. We’re thrilled to share our new, banner white paper with you, and we hope you’re excited by our call to widen your own imagination if…
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96. Should All Old Passwords Be Forgot: The 2023 Holiday Special
0It’s that wonderful time of year for one of our favorite lab activities here at iDPI: making the Reimagining the Internet holiday special. This year we decided to go for unmitigated optimism and making promises to ourselves we’ll definitely be keeping. That’s right, everyone here at iDPI made New Year’s resolutions for the Internet. Join us as…
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95. What’s the answer when workplace surveillance creeps into the home? Ifeoma Ajunwa says civil rights and organized labor
0Ifeoma Ajunwa wrote the definitive book about how data is used to surveil and attempt to automate away workers. This week on Reimagining, Dr. Ajunwa tells us how a history rooted in eugenics and Henry Ford sending private detectives to workers’ homes led us to this moment when software is used as a cover for discriminatory hiring…
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94. How does Meduza’s Kevin Rothrock publish some of the best reporting about Russia? From far, far away.
0Kevin Rothrock has been reporting on Russian culture and politics since the mid-aughts, and as the English-language editor of Meduza, he’s a crucial figure in helping the English-speaking West understand the day-to-day in Putin’s Russia during the war in Ukraine, and on the front lines too. This week on Reimagining, Kevin Rothrock tells us how…
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93. Reddit is powered by community moderators. We asked former senior mod Kethryvis if that can last.
0When we call Christine Moelleberndt “queen of the moderators” we mean it. She just finished a 7-year stint at Reddit as a moderator of its moderators where she went by the user name kethryvis, and she’s been doing work like that since her days overseeing the community around the ’90s web comic User Friendly. This…
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92. Where’d all the music blogs go? with Emilie Friedlander
0Emilie Friedlander got her start covering Western Mass music while living in France, and made a career as a music editor at the biggest online magazines like Pitchfork and VICE. This week on Reimagining, Mike asks her: where did all the music writing go? Emilie Frielander is cohost of The Culture Journalist with Andrea Domanick.…
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91. Global Voices has spent 19 years platforming bloggers in 52 languages. Georgia Popplewell, where does it go from here?
0Georgia Popplewell has dedicated two decades to publishing local bloggers writing in 52 languages. What’s Global Voices fate in this strange era of the Internet? The long-time managing director of Global Voices joins the show to talk to her co-founder Ethan about the blogosphere of yore and why we’ll never stop needing global, local perspectives.…
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90. Are American politics more polarized than ever? Brendan Nyhan thinks social media just helps us see it more.
0Brendan Nyhan spends a lot of time researching America’s political polarization and the strength of its democracy with the organization he founded, Bright Line Watch. In part 2 of our interview with him, he tells us how questions about the state of America’s democracy really need to be put in the context that we didn’t…
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89. Facebook scores your politics with a number. Brendan Nyhan figured out what they do with it. (Part 1 of 2)
0Does Facebook make people’s politics more extreme? Do algorithms force us into bubbles? Does social media threaten American democracy? Political scientist Brendan Nyhan used his permission to research political data on Facebook as an opportunity to tackle these questions head on. In part one of our interview with Brendan, he tells us about his contribution…
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88. Does Facebook change your politics? Talia Stroud is leading studies to find out.
0Our first ever guest Talia Stroud is one of the principal investigators on a slate of social science research investigating Facebook’s impacts on the 2020 elections, and we’re thrilled to welcome her back to tell us about what her team is finding when they look at the funny things algorithms do, the pervasiveness of polarized…
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87. Before Laura Edelson was the DOJ’s chief antitrust technologist, Facebook deleted her account
0Did Facebook influence how people voted in the 2020 elections? This month, we’re focusing on a recent spate of studies published in Science and Nature studying how Facebook’s algorithms handle political content. First up is Laura Edelson, who was banned by Facebook for her work studying its ads through her project at NYU, the Ad…
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86. danah boyd on freaks, geeks, queers, and lying to the US Census
0danah boyd is so fascinated by data and society that she founded a research institute called Data and Society. We brought her on Reimagining this week to talk about one of her long-running research interests—the social lives of teens online—and ended up with a sprawling conversation that touched on everything from anti-trans culture wars to…
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85. Timnit Gebru Looks at Corporate AI and Sees a Lot of Bad Science
0Timnit Gebru is not just a pioneering critic of dangerous AI datasets who calls bullshit on bad science pushed by the likes of OpenAI, or a tireless champion of racial, gender, and climate justice in computing. She’s also someone who wants to build something different. This week on Reimagining, we talk to the thrilling, funny…
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84. Ted Lasso’s Dylan Marron Wants to Redeem Jar Jar Binks
0Jar Jar Binks, the human side of online harassment, restorative justice, the Friends writers room, solidarity with UPS, what life looks like in the creative gig economy after your show has won an Emmy. Dylan Marron (Ted Lasso, Welcome to Nightvale) joins us for a sprawling, poignant conversation about how social media has effected our…
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83. A History of Why the Internet Sucks Right Now with Dave Karpf
02010s online activism, the Reddit blackout, antitrust, academic data access, Newt Gingrich, enshitifcation. We brought scholar/activist Dave Karpf on to talk about his work leading fellow academics to fight for data access standards, and we ended up with a Reimagining greatest hits. Dave Karpf is associate professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs…
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82. Twitter Blocked Tracy Chou’s Anti-Harassment App. Now She Wants to Fix Your Browser.
0When we had Tracy Chou on the show in 2021, she was rolling out software to give users a revolutionary toolset to block harassment on Twitter, and she was doing it with the Twitter corporation’s help. Fast forward to today, when she’s one of Time Magazine’s 2022 Women of the Year and her work has…
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81 Third Wave Internet with Ben Tarnoff
0We’re always told algorithms are going to change our world. And they do, but it always seems to be for the worse. Do we have any alternative to simply breaking the machines that have run afoul of our values and needs? We’re thrilled to welcome Ben Tarnoff back on the show to talk his calls…
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80 *Slaps Roof of Algorithm* You Can Fit so Much Taste in This Thing with Nick Seaver
0Do Spotify’s algorithms make a listener’s music taste, or does taste make the algorithm? Nick Seaver embedded himself as an ethnographer at a music recommendation software firm to learn about the the very real way very specific people influence the algorithms that power our automated world. Nick Seaver directs the program in Science, Technology, and…
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79 Taking Stock of the Everything Store with Moira Weigel
0For our first ever episode talking about Amazon (somehow?), Logic Magazine co-founder Moira Weigel tells us what she learned about Amazon by spending years interviewing its third-party sellers. From hand sanitizer hoarding to Chinese vendors getting “dragon boated,” Moira gives us a fascinating look at a massive, unregulated economy. Moira Weigel is assistant professor in…