Local News Brought to You by Big Tech
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 3 April 2019
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss a recent report in Bloomberg that says executives at YouTube ignored employees who raised concerns about the spread of harmful videos. The company’s algorithm often recommends conspiracy videos, which lead viewers down rabbit holes they might not otherwise explore.
Then journalism professor Emily Bell talks about Google and Facebook’s recent efforts to revive the local news industry. Since the tech giants are partially complicit in harming local news in the first place, Bell says it’s akin to asking a bull that broke everything in a China shop to come back and piece things back together.
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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. |
| 0:05.0 | I'm Will Oremus. |
| 0:06.3 | And I'm April Glazer. |
| 0:14.4 | Hey, everyone, welcome to If Then. |
| 0:16.2 | We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tents, a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America. |
| 0:22.3 | We are recording this on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 2nd. |
| 0:25.8 | On today's show, we're going to talk about YouTube's problems with misinformation, conspiracy theories, extremism, |
| 0:31.7 | and how the video platform has reportedly spent the past several years downplaying and ignoring those problems. |
| 0:37.4 | A new report from Bloomberg alleges that employees raised red flags internally, only to have them brushed aside by the company's executives. |
| 0:45.0 | After that, we'll talk to journalism professor Emily Bell about why tech companies are investing so much money in journalism, and more specifically, why they're starting to branch into |
| 0:54.8 | local news. |
| 0:55.9 | And as always, we'll end with Don't Close My Tabs, some of the best stuff we saw online this week. |
| 1:00.5 | That's all coming up on If Then. |
| 1:03.7 | Okay, so before we get into the news, I have some kind of sad news to share, but I'm very |
| 1:09.1 | excited also about the future for Will. And that is that |
| 1:12.8 | Will is leaving. If then, this is his last episode. It's been so much fun to make this show with |
| 1:19.5 | him to learn along the way. But he's off to Medium. So please, please, please stay tuned in Will's |
| 1:25.9 | world. Follow him on Twitter. Follow Medium publication. What is it called One Zero, right? Yeah, it's their new tech and science publication. It's called One Zero, and you can find it at one zero.com. Yeah, Will's going to be writing for them, and that means he's not podcasting with me anymore. I'm going to miss you, Will. Yeah, thanks, but I'm excited to see you where you guys take the show i know you |
| 1:44.9 | have some really cool guest hosts lined up for the coming week i have a feeling that you will |
| 1:49.9 | take it to another level in my absence but i've had so much fun learning to podcast and making the |
| 1:55.5 | show with you we both kind of learned on the job and learned from our listeners thank you to all our |
| 1:59.8 | listeners for coming on the ride with us and for all the feedback. And I look forward to seeing where it goes. |
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