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

On today’s show, hosts April Glaser and Will Oremus introduce some of their favorite interviews from 2018. We have highlights from our conversations with journalist Taylor Lorenz about teen YouTube stars, former head of Facebook’s Newsfeed Adam Mosseri about real-world violence in places like Myanmar, the founder of Data for Black Lives Yeshimabeit Milner on how tech companies might share their data for social justice efforts, author Naomi Klein on cryptocurrency in Puerto Rico following the deadly Hurricane Maria, Senator Mark Warner on how the government might actually regulate the big tech companies, and Paige Panter, a volunteer with the Tech Workers Coalition on how a broad coalition of tech workers are fighting for change.1:21 - Interview with Taylor Lorenz7:57 - Interview with Yeshimabeit Milner15:49 - Interview with Adam Mosseri24:09 - Interview with Naomi Klein30:27 - Interview with Senator Mark Warner38:30 - Interview with Paige PanterPodcast 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 will talk reader mail! The hosts  take a look at some of your questions and comments from the year, in particular about how your relationship to technology and social media has changed in a year that has been tumultuous for tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter.Then, they’ll talk about cybersecurity, hacks, and the sometimes bizarre legal battles that ensue after a big data theft. They’re be joined by Josephine Wolff, a professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology and the author of “You'll see this message when it is too late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches.” They’ll talk to her about some of the most significant breaches in the last decade,  how those companies holding that information have been held accountable,  and what it means for the everyday user who just wants to shop at Target.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. This episode is brought to you by Merrill Lynch. Get started today at ML.com/you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s show, hosts April Glaser and Will Oremus will talk about how Taylor Swift used face recognition to surveil the crowd at a recent concert, and whether that’s smart, scary, or both. Then they’ll welcome Renée DiResta, an expert on cybersecurity and online misinformation. DiResta is the lead author of a new report to the Senate Intelligence Committee on exactly how Russian operatives weaponized social media in the 2016 election, and why it may be just the beginning of a new era of global information warfare.6:45 - Interview with Renée DiResta26:09 - Don’t Close My TabsDon’t Close My Tabs:Logic: My Stepdad's Huge DatasetThe Pudding: Population MountainsPodcast 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 latest round of “Tech CEO Goes to Washington.” On Tuesday morning, that CEO was Google’s Sundar Pichai, who appeared before the House Judiciary Committee and was asked about data privacy, location tracking, Google’s plans in China, and of course, Republicans’ favorite tech topic: conservative bias. We’ll talk about what we learned from this hearing as well as what we wish Congress might’ve asked the Google CEO.Then April speaks with two people who have been working to organize workers in Amazon fulfilment centers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. One is a founder with Awood, Nimo Omar. She’s been organizing with the primarily East African communities that work in the Amazon warehouses on a campaign to collectively advocate for better working conditions. We’ll also be joined by a worker at one of those Amazon fulfillment centers in the Minneapolis area, WIlliam Stolz. We’ll ask him about his job at the warehouse and why he’s joining his fellow workers in organizing for change for change at the fulfillment centers. 15:45 - Interview with Nimo Omar & William Stolz37:13 - Don’t Close My TabsDon’t Close My Tabs:Pew Research: Social media outpaces print newspapers in the U.S. as a news sourceThe Baffler: Streambait PopSlate: Roma Is the Culmination of Everything Alfonso Cuarón Has Ever DonePodcast 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 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