Metafilter contains the seeds for everything from Twitter to Reddit to comments sections on blogs, and it’s older than podcasts, the blog boom, Facebook, and well, basically everything online. Owner Jessamyn West sat down for a deep conversatio

103. How did Vermont’s favorite civic social network turn into a climate disaster response network overnight? Michael Wood-Lewis Tells Us About His Local Good Web

17 days ago 1h 3m

Michael Wood-Lewis from Front Porch Forum joins us for this second (maybe third?) appearance to help us kick off our Good Web series, where we’re highlighting the successful people building a better, smaller Internet. Michael was gracious enoug

102. Cory Doctorow Coined “Enshittification.” He Sees 4 Ways to End It.

Jun 12th, 2024 40m 58s

To kick off our Good Web series, Cory Doctorow joined us for a deep dive into his enshittification theory, and how regulation, labor power, competition, and user self-help will make it a thing of the past. We also got him to tell us a little bi

101. Reframing Digital Safety with Diana Freed: For Survivors and Youth, The Biggest Threats Come From Everyday Tech

May 29th, 2024 37m 21s

CW/TW: Intimate partner violence, child exploitation Diana Freed has spent the past several years radically reframing the threat model in cybersecurity with groundbreaking research into how domestic abusers utilize everyday technology like smar

100. A Better Internet for Humans with Ethan Zuckerman and Mike Sugarman

May 15th, 2024 39m 23s

For the 100th episode of Reimagining the Internet, Ethan and Mike sit down for a conversation about a human-scale Internet, the threat of an LLM ouroboros destroying our online commons, and Ethan’s fantasies of swithing to urban planning. We wa

99. Do You Want to Use Data to Fight for Justice? Catherine D’Ignazio Wrote the Book For You

May 1st, 2024 41m 50s

A fearsome feminist movemnet has sprung up in response to an epidemic of feminicide in South America, achieving change thanks in large part to an innovative data activism campaign. Cathering D'Ignazio of the Data + Feminism Lab at MIT wrote a w

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.

Feb 28th, 2024 1h 7m

Trigger/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 h

Rewind: Timnit Gebru Looks at Corporate AI and Sees a Lot of Bad Science

Feb 21st, 2024 40m 2s

Rerun 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 com

Rewind: Ted Lasso’s Dylan Marron wants to redeem Jar Jar Binks

Feb 7th, 2024 43m

This 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 Marro

97. There are 14 billion videos on YouTube. Mr. Beast, we hereby challenge you to watch them all.

Jan 31st, 2024 45m 4s

Our 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 exa

Rewind: The Netherlands’ most important sociologist is building the other DPI: the Dutch Public Internet

Jan 25th, 2024 35m 31s

Rerun 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 regulati

Rewind: Third Wave Internet with Ben Tarnoff

Jan 18th, 2024 36m 21s

Rerun 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 val

Rewind: iDPI’s New Manifesto: The Three-Legged Stool

Jan 11th, 2024 37m 46s

From 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 exci

96. Should All Old Passwords Be Forgot: The 2023 Holiday Special

Dec 20th, 2023 26m 48s

It’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

95. What’s the answer when workplace surveillance creeps into the home? Ifeoma Ajunwa says civil rights and organized labor

Dec 13th, 2023 35m 27s

Ifeoma 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’

94. How does Meduza’s Kevin Rothrock publish some of the best reporting about Russia? From far, far away.

Nov 29th, 2023 39m 39s

Kevin 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

93. Reddit is powered by community moderators. We asked former senior mod Kethryvis if that can last.

Nov 15th, 2023 36m 56s

When 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

92. Where’d all the music blogs go? with Emilie Friedlander

Oct 25th, 2023 47m 27s

Emilie 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 w

91. Global Voices has spent 19 years platforming bloggers in 52 languages. Georgia Popplewell, where does it go from here?

Oct 18th, 2023 44m 10s

Georgia 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-

90. Are American politics more polarized than ever? Brendan Nyhan thinks social media just helps us see it more.

Oct 4th, 2023 30m

Brendan 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 stat

89. Facebook scores your politics with a number. Brendan Nyhan figured out what they do with it. (Part 1 of 2)

Sep 27th, 2023 24m 27s

Does 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 opportunit

88. Does Facebook change your politics? Talia Stroud is leading studies to find out.

Sep 20th, 2023 42m 2s

Our 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 findi

87. Before Laura Edelson was the DOJ’s chief antitrust technologist, Facebook deleted her account

Sep 13th, 2023 37m 58s

Did 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 w

86. danah boyd on freaks, geeks, queers, and lying to the US Census

Aug 30th, 2023 47m 35s

danah 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

85. Timnit Gebru Looks at Corporate AI and Sees a Lot of Bad Science

Aug 16th, 2023 40m 2s

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 b