What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future

On today’s show, hosts April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss the news that Tumblr will soon be banning all adult content on its site -- this in response to some instances of child pornography that got it suspended from Apple’s App Store. Hundreds of thousands of Tumblr users are upset, and the plan appears to be backfiring.Then we’re excited to bring you a pair of interviews today, with two people who have emerged as leading critics of Facebook—one from the outside, and one from within, right before he left the company. We’ll talk first with former Facebook employee Mark S. Luckie about what he calls Facebook’s “black people problem.” Those words came from a memo that he wrote shortly before leaving the company last month, and which he published to the world after he left. Then we’ll talk with someone who’s been thinking through problems at Facebook for many years--and recently discovered that his organization was also a target of the company’s controversial “opposition research” PR campaign. Rashad Robinson is the president of Color of Change, a progressive civil rights group that was among several nonprofits Facebook tried to discredit by highlighting their ties to the liberal financier George Soros. In the wake of that story, Robinson met last week with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. 8:15 - Interview with Mark Luckie16:00 - Interview with Rashad Robinson35:20 - Don’t Close My TabsDon’t Close My Tabs:The New York Times: Philippine Journalist, a Thorn to Duterte, Turns Herself In to Face ChargesTwitter: Natasha ViannaPodcast production by Max JacobsIf Then plugs: You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Listen to If Then via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s show, hosts April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss the ongoing fallout at Facebook over the company’s decision to hire a conservative PR firm to surface opposition research in order to attack Facebook’s nonprofit critics by highlighting their funding ties to the liberal financier George Soros, playing into an untrue and anti-Semitic popular right wing trope. As internal and external turmoil continues to rile major American technology companies, their employee are organizing for serious change. Hosts dig into what that’s accomplished so far and what continued employee pressure and mounting labor actions means down the line.Then, an interview with Antonio Regalado, a senior editor at the MIT Technology Review, on a story he broke Sunday night: the very first gene-edited babies were born this month in China. The trio discuss the history of gene-editing technology and the debate about using it on humans. To some, gene-editing is a form of medicine, like a vaccination. To others, it’s a form of enhancement. How easy is this to do? And will we have a future where the health of tomorrow’s children, or those whose parents can afford it, will be determined before their children are even born?14:13 - Interview with Antonio Regalado32:02 - Don’t Close My TabsDon’t Close My Tabs:The New Yorker: Exploding Mojitos: The First “Sonic Attacks” Targeting American Diplomats in Cuba May Have Taken Place Thirty Years AgoThe New York Times: A Business with No EndPodcast production by Max JacobsIf Then plugs: You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Listen to If Then via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s show, host Will Oremus will discuss the fallout from last week’s New York Times expose about Facebook with the company’s former Security Chief Alex Stamos. The Times story was headlined “Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Leaned Out in Crisis.” Stamos has been at the center of this story both as a critic and an advocate. The story has revolved partly around reports that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg stifled or downplayed his revelations that their platform was still not free from Russian meddling months after the 2016 election. We’ll get his side of the story, as well as his perspective on Facebook’s missteps, and what he thinks the public and the media get wrong about the company. We’ll also talk about what some solutions to its problems might look like, including, potentially, government regulations.2:15 - Interview with Alex Stamos37:53 - Don’t Close My TabsDon’t Close My Tabs:Slate: Trapped in the Fire ZoneThe New York Times: Are You Sitting Down? Standing Desks Are Overrated. Podcast production by Max JacobsIf Then plugs: You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Listen to If Then via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s show, host Will Oremus will talk about the employee uprising at Google, and the changes that it and other tech companies have made to their sexual harassment policies in response. Joining him is Caroline O’Donovan, senior technology reporter for BuzzFeed News, who was there to cover the employee walkouts in person and has continued to report on the fallout from them.And then, a story that has been making headlines for months, and finally reached its culmination this week with a big announcement. That would be Amazon’s HQ2 contest—or maybe now it’s HQ2.5, or HQ2 and 3, HQ2a and HQ2b. Whatever you call it, we’ll talk about the company’s decision to open not one but two new headquarters. One will be in Arlington, Virginia, just outside DC. And the other in Long Island City, just across the East River from Manhattan. That, of course, prompted an outcry from critics around the country, not to mention all the cities that weren’t chosen. Here to help Will make sense of all this will be Tim Bartik, a Senior economist at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. He’s done some fascinating research on the incentives that cities offer to companies to try to get them to locate there--and whether it really pays off for their residents in the long run.2:47 - Interview with Caroline O’Donovan14:32 - Interview with Tim Bartik32:00 - Don’t Close My TabsDon’t Close My Tabs:The Atlantic: The Problem with FeedbackGoFundMe: How To Help Those Impacted By The Fires In CaliforniaChico Enterprise Record: How You Can Help Camp Fire VictimsTwitter: Martha McSally For Senate (Concession Video)Podcast production by Max JacobsIf Then plugs: You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Listen to If Then via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Will Oremus and April Glaser are bringing you a special episode of If Then, all about the midterm elections and the role of Silicon Valley and online media in our beloved democratic process. We’re going to start with a roundtable with two extra tech journalists, Kevin Roose from the New York Times and Paris Martineau of Wired who have been reporting on issues of online speech, misinformation, and election interference this year.Then we’ll have an interview with one of the country’s top experts on election security and voting systems. He’s the former White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer: Ed Felten. We’ll talk to him about the problems that could rear their heads this cycle… namely with the very very outdated tech that we use to cast our ballots. Some of the voting machines we rely on are well over a decade old and are extremely vulnerable to hacking -- but here we are. And we’ll end our show with a very special Don’t Close My Tabs where we take a look at the best way to watch the results come in on Tuesday night. 2:00 - Roundtable with Paris Martineau and Kevin Roose31:22 - Interview with Ed Felten49:01 - Don’t Close My TabsPodcast production by Max JacobsIf Then plugs: You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Listen to If Then via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s If Then, Will Oremus and April Glaser look further into the presidential election in Brazil and how tech has played a role. On Sunday, the far right candidate Jair Bolsanaro was elected President, and many have attributed his victory to misinformation that spread like wildfire through WhatsApp in the months leading up to the election.And it’s time again for more gadgets. Apple unveiled a new series of gizmos on Tuesday in Brooklyn: there were big changes to the iPad, Macbook Air, and MacMini. The hosts are also joined by Joan Donovan, the lead researcher at Data & Society, who focuses on hate groups congregate on social media. This conversation, sadly, comes following the horrific terrorist attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh over the weekend. The shooter, Robert Bowers, had been an active user of the free-speech-centric social media platform Gab that has become a kind of digital playpen for neo-Nazi and white supremacists since forming in 2016. Gab went offline Sunday night.5:43 - Interview with Pablo Ortellado15:11 - Interview with Joan Donovan33:41 - Don’t Close My TabsDon’t Close My Tabs: The New York Times: How Google Protected Andy Rubin, the “Father of Android”Frontline: The Facebook Dilemma (Part One)Podcast production by Max JacobsIf Then plugs: You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Listen to If Then via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s If Then, Will Oremus and April Glaser discuss Elon Musk’s other, other project with their Slate colleague Henry Grabar. Not space travel, not electric cars, but the Boring Company, which is working on a tunneling project in Los Angeles that would bring a new type of transportation to an area plagued by traffic. Musk announced over the weekend that the first tunnel will be open to the public later this year.They’ll also dig into never-ending battle to rid Facebook of disinformation—particularly the kind that can disenfranchise, confuse, or stoke hatred in voters. Last Friday, the Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint against a Russian woman accused of running an operation on behalf of the Kremlin-connected Internet Research Agency. The operation had been working to deepen America’s political divisions and muddle its upcoming midterm elections.April and Will are also joined by Kate Black, Global Privacy Officer and Senior Counsel at 23andMe, the genetic testing company. Sites like 23andMe and Ancestry.com have been in the spotlight lately after Senator Elizabeth Warren made public the results of her DNA test in a video last week. And earlier this year, when the capture of the Golden State Killer was aided by a genealogy website. The hosts ask Black about who really owns your data, who gets to see it—and what the company will say if law enforcement comes asking for it.13:45 - Interview with Kate Black23:53 - Don’t Close My TabsDon’t Close My Tabs: The Root: The Wildly Unregulated Practice of Undercover Cops Friending People on FacebookWired: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley DisruptionPodcast production by Max JacobsIf Then plugs: You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Listen to If Then via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s If Then, Will Oremus and April Glaser discuss the continuing saga that is Facebook’s effort to fix itself--ideally, without breaking everything else. On Friday, the company finally released more information about the huge hack that it announced last month, which affected nearly 30 million people. They’ll talk about what was stolen, and why it matters. Then, April and Will are joined by Senator Mark Warner, from Virginia, the top democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, conducting its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. This summer he released a policy paper proposing possible regulations for U.S. social media and technology companies. They talk to him about what worries him most about the largely unregulated tech industry that can’t seem to keep our data private and stop muddying our elections. They also ask him what he thinks congress can do to rein these companies in and why lawmakers haven’t been quick to act. 10:44 - Interview with Senator Mark Warner31:40 - Don’t Close My TabsDon’t Close My Tabs: The New Yorker: The Growth of Sinclair’s Conservative Media EmpireNew York Magazine: Here Is a List of Every Animal Humans Currently Monitor Using Facial Recognition TechnologyPodcast production by Max JacobsIf Then plugs: You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Listen to If Then via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s If Then, Will Oremus and April Glaser discuss the latest data spill in Silicon Valley: It’s Google this time. And it’s time to talk gadgets again. This week Facebook announced its second foray into the hardware space with the Portal and Portal Plus—essentially a smart display for making video calls, equipped with an AI camera and Amazon Alexa. Meanwhile, Google launched a new smart display called the Google Home Hub, a new tablet that shares a name with the hosts’ employer, and a new phone that’s interesting for both its camera and the AI built in.The hosts are also joined by tech attorney and privacy expert Tiffany C. Li. She teaches a course at Yale about the changing rights to privacy throughout history. They talk to her about what privacy rights we really have, whose interests are served by U.S. privacy law, and the difference between government and corporate surveillance.19:16 - Interview with Tiffany Li34:45 - Don’t Close My TabsDon’t Close My Tabs: IPCC ReportBloomberg: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. CompaniesPodcast production by Max JacobsIf Then plugs: You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Listen to If Then via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s If Then, Will Oremus and April Glaser talk about the announcement that Amazon would raise the minimum wage for its US workers to 15 dollars an hour. While Jeff Bezos may be receiving praise for the move this week, another enigmatic tech CEO is facing retribution. Elon Musk has agreed to settle with the SEC following tweets he made about potentially taking the company private and will step down from Tesla’s board.Net neutrality is also back in the news: California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill on Sunday to implement net neutrality protections in the state starting next year. But within 30 minutes of Brown’s signing, the Justice Department announced it would be suing the state of California to prevent circumventing the federal net neutrality repeal.And the headaches continue for Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook... Last week it was announced that a massive security breach to the social media site allowed for hackers to take control of upwards of 50 million accounts. Facebook does not yet know who the culprits are.The hosts are then joined by Katherine Maher, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, best known for, well, Wikipedia: the fifth most popular website on the planet. Maher talks to Will and April about how it all works; how a community of millions of volunteer editors are able to pull fact from fiction, how a site dedicated to trying to be correct deals with false news, how it deals with harassment within its editor community, its changing relationship with Google, and why diversity is important in writing the web’s massive nonprofit encyclopedia. 17:04 - Interview with Katherine Maher47:15 - Don’t Close My TabsDon’t Close My Tabs: Slate: The Temptation of Apple NewsPodcast production by Max JacobsIf Then plugs: You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Listen to If Then via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices