Group Chats: The Dark Matter of American Politics

Endless Thread

WBUR

Reddit, Technology

4.2 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The thing about social media when it was created was that it was public. Ideas shared were debated for all to see. Today much of that is happening behind closed doors—in group chats.

Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of the media outlet Semafor and co-host of the podcast Mixed Signals, speaks with Endless Thread about the elite group chats on Signal and WhatsApp that are shaping American politics.

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Credits: This episode was produced by Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The co-hosts are Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson.

Transcript

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0:29.5	Stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode.
0:35.2	WBUR Podcasts, Boston.
0:43.4	Amory.
0:44.9	Benjamin.
0:46.6	How many group chats are you in?
0:49.9	Ooh, it's pretty good.
0:53.1	Just like text chats, probably five.
0:57.4	I want to say five.
0:58.6	Okay.
0:59.2	How about you?
1:00.3	I don't know the number off the top of my head, but I'd like to read you the titles of some of them.
1:06.1	Okay.
1:06.5	And by group chat, we're talking like text.
1:09.5	Group chats?
1:10.6	Yeah, texting. Yeah, texting.
1:11.4	Group texts.
1:12.1	I mean.
	...

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