Stanford Radio

Evelyn and Alex discuss what should be a massive story about India's orders to platforms to take down content related to a BBC documentary that is critical of Prime Minister Modi. They also discuss the UK's Online Safety Bill; ChatGPT content moderation; the Republican battle against Gmail's spam filters; Trump's pending return to mainstream platforms; TikTok "heating" videos; and an update from Courtroom Corner. Thanks to our new sponsor, Guttr.

Our guest on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast, Ilan Kroo, is an expert in aircraft design. But when Kroo talks of aircraft, he means a new generation of flying vehicles that could transform our very concept of transportation—like personal flying cars that take off and land vertically or commercial airliners fueled by clean-burning hydrogen. Kroo says the rapid changes he’s seeing in the industry could lead to safer, less expensive, more efficient—and quieter—air travel. Listen in as he shares more with host Russ Altman on this episode of The Future of Everything podcast.

Alex and Evelyn get Josh Tucker, a professor at New York University, and Solomon Messing, a Visiting Researcher Georgetown University, to talk them through the results of two major studies about the effects of online speech; they also discuss Twitter cutting off API access; public universities cutting off TikTok access; Apple promising more transparency about app store take-downs, and an update from the courtrooms.

Alex and Evelyn kick off 2023 with a rollicking tour through stories about: Meta's $400 million EU fine for privacy violations (cameo by Daphne Keller), Google's new appeals process for users flagged as uploading child sexual abuse material, WhatsApp introducing proxy servers, Twitter reinstating political ads, Meta's struggles to get out of politics, an Oversight Board decision about Iranian protests, information from the Jan 6 Committee about their findings to do with social media, and what's going on in Brazil.

Alex and Evelyn sweat through the holidays to make sure you get your critical trust and safety news, including Congressional action on platform transparency (cameo by Nate Persily); TikTok and LastPass data breaches (yikes!); and, of course, Twitter mayhem (sigh).

Evelyn and Alex talk about news happening in other corners of the trust and safety and platform regulation world: bills are introduced to ban TikTok; Meta released its annual adversarial threats report; a tech industry trade body filed a legal challenge to the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act and asked SCOTUS to review the 5th Circuit ruling upholding Texas' social media law; Trump had thoughts about defunding Stanford. And then, yes, they discuss the ongoing Twitter death spiral.

Helen Blau is a stem cell biologist and expert in why, as we age, our muscles weaken, even if we get exercise and try to stay fit. In an age when humans are living longer, our muscles are critical to living life to the fullest and Blau is helping them keep pace by recruiting stem cells to regenerate youthful muscle in older people. Join us on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast as Blau and host Russ Altman discuss the science of muscle regeneration.

Evelyn and Alex wonder if this podcast is the propaganda platform that Elon Musk has said Alex runs. Then they discuss Apple’s huge set of announcements about encryption this week and the balance between privacy and safety; their weekly check in on the Twitter files and how things took a dark turn; and the Meta Oversight Board’s long-awaited decision on Meta’s X-Check system.

In the wake of the Buffalo shooting in May, New York passed a law imposing certain obligations on social media networks regarding "hateful conduct" on their services. It went into effect at the start of December and Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA Law who runs a legal blog, is challenging the law as unconstitutional. Evelyn sits down with Eugene and Genevieve Lakier from UChicago Law to discuss.

In this explosive, never-before-heard episode, Evelyn and Alex discuss the trust and safety implications of the AI text-generator ChatGPT, the expansion of a cross-industry database for removing non-consensual intimate images from platforms, a legal challenge to a new online hate speech law in New York, and….. The Twitter Files, of course.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: E204 | Lawrence Wein: Computation cracks cold cases This episode’s guest on Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast is Lawrence Wein, an expert in the science of catching criminals using DNA left behind years or even decades prior. All it takes is a snippet of the killer’s DNA and for a relative of the killer to have registered their DNA with one of the many genealogy websites in operation today. Armed with those few details, genetic detectives quickly narrow in on the suspect. They’ve used it to capture some of the most reviled, previously unidentified killers on record. Listen in as Wein joins host Russ Altman to discuss the mathematics of forensic genetic genealogy on this episode of The Future of Everything podcast.

Evelyn and Alex discuss how China’s censors are struggling to contain information about the ongoing protests, how they are going on the offensive, and why that offensive includes an image of Alex with horns.They also, of course, check in on Twitter with the weekly Elon Musk segment, and discuss US-backed information operations.

Evelyn and Alex talk about the latest Musk shenanigans, why the flight to decentralized platforms isn’t solving all our content moderation problems, account hijacking at Meta, and what to make of the discussion of the security risks of TikTok. Also, Evelyn learns the results of the Big Game.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: E203 | Doug James: Computer-generated sound catches its graphical sibling Natural sounds in the world around us are based on the principles of physics. Today’s guest on Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast, Doug James, uses those same principles to create computer-generated sounds to match the imaginary computer-generated objects and creatures that inhabit almost every movie or game these days. His algorithms speed the animator’s work and make the final product all-the-more believable, as James tells host Russ Altman on this episode of The Future of Everything podcast

Come for the discussion of whether Musk is going to find himself in hot water with the FTC, stay for the discussion of privacy and data security regulation more generally. Evelyn discusses Twitter’s data security problems and what this says about privacy regulation more generally with Whitney Merrill, the Data Protection Officer and Privacy Counsel at Asana and long-time privacy lawyer including as an attorney at the FTC, and Riana Pfefferkorn, a Research Scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory.

Evelyn and Alex talk about what the Election Integrity Partnership saw online in terms of mis- and dis-information around the midterms, and what the results might mean for tech policy. And... Elon. Sigh. What a week. Twitter's security team resigned -- what does this mean for compliance with an FTC consent order and... what does it mean for Twitter's security? Elon says they're turning off "microservices." That can't be good. What does it mean? And other exciting developments in the Musk/Twitter debacle.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: E202 | Mellisa Valentine

Evelyn and Alex discuss Musk's "just tweet through it" approach to Twitter ownership; the pros and cons of the great Mastodon Migration; Rumble pulling out of France over demands it block RT; the Intercept's (poor) reporting on DHS-Platform collaboration,; what to expect with the Midterms (GO VOTE!); and check in on legislative developments in India and the UK.

Our guest on this episode of Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything podcast, Elaine Treharne, is an English professor and an authority on ancient manuscripts. She's using modern tools like machine learning to unlock the secrets hidden inside these aged pages. Despite frequent predictions of the demise of physical writing, she says, books will never go away. Physical writing, she believes, is a perfectly human manifestation of our humanity—an effort by transient beings to create something eternal. All this and more as Treharne and our host Russ Altman discuss the future of books, writing and reading on this episode of The Future of Everything.

Evelyn and Alex reluctantly talk about Elon Musk and Twitter, again, before some updates about The Wire in India, the midterms at home, Meta's political ad transparency fine in Washington state, and the publication of the EU's mammoth regulation, the Digital Services Act.