Antitrust Superstar
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 November 2017
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s If Then, Slate’s April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss how bots messed up the net neutrality comment process and whether that gives advocates a last chance to preserve an open Internet. They also examine YouTube’s ongoing problems airing disturbing videos involving children and why its moderation algorithms don’t work. Then the hosts speak with Lina Khan, legal policy director of the Open Markets Institute and a fellow at Yale Law school, about AT&T’s now-troubled attempt to merge with Time Warner, and the DoJ’s unusual antitrust challenge. Lastly, as always, Don’t Close My Tabs: April and Will’s picks for best tech stories on the web this week.
If Then’s “Don’t Close My Tabs” recommendations:
NY Mag: Tumblr Founder David Karp is Stepping Down
Stanford Politics: How Peter Thiel and the Stanford Review Built a Silicon Valley Empire
Podcast production by Max Jacobs.
You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will at @WillOremus, and April is @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment for us, you can email as well 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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future. |
| 0:10.5 | I'm Will Oremus. |
| 0:11.9 | And I'm April Glazer. |
| 0:29.1 | Hey everyone, welcome to If Then. We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America. |
| 0:40.3 | We are recording this on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 28. On today's show, we'll revisit the pending death of net neutrality and how people who are concerned about that can stop it. |
| 0:45.3 | We'll also discuss YouTube's ongoing problems airing disturbing videos involving children. |
| 0:50.8 | And then a conversation with Lena Kahn, the legal policy director of the Open Markets Institute, to talk about AT&T's now troubled attempt to merge with Time Warner and the DOJ's |
| 0:55.6 | rare challenge of that, as well as how this impacts tech companies. And lastly, don't close my tabs, |
| 1:01.6 | our picks for the best on the web this week. All right, April, how are you doing in this post- Thanksgiving |
| 1:07.0 | week? I'm good. I am happy to be back at work, actually. How are you doing, Will? |
| 1:13.7 | Weirdly, I feel the same. I'm ready for more news. Bring it on. Okay, you're going to wish you hadn't |
| 1:19.1 | have said that. Well, what's been kind of catching your eye this week? I know a lot has happened |
| 1:24.9 | on the YouTube front. Yeah, so there are some new developments in a |
| 1:28.6 | story we talked about on one of our first episodes. If you'll recall, YouTube got in trouble |
| 1:32.8 | when the New York Times found some seriously disturbing children's videos on its site for kids, |
| 1:38.5 | called YouTube Kids. Everything there was supposed to be a kid safe. There was really gross |
| 1:42.7 | and creepy stuff on there. |
| 1:49.1 | Now YouTube is in trouble again for a different but related problem, which is that videos on their main site, so this is just YouTube.com, the one everybody goes to, that exploit kids in various |
| 1:54.8 | ways. You have these videos, a lot of them originating from Eastern Europe, showing young children in vulnerable |
| 2:02.2 | scenarios. They have kids tied up in a doctor's chair, like having violent procedures done on |
| 2:07.6 | them. There was one where a man in a clown suit kidnaps a kid and stuffs them into a washing |
| 2:13.2 | machine. I mean, this is really awful stuff. But the thing about it is that it's, it's like so |
... |
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