Taylor Lorenz on Taking Internet Culture Seriously

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with a reporter who has carved out a unique beat writing about not just technology but the creativity and peculiarities of the people who use it—Taylor Lorenz, a columnist at the Washington Post covering technology and online culture. Her recent writing includes reporting on “algospeak”—that is, how algorithmic amplification changes how people talk online—and coverage of the viral Twitter account Libs of TikTok, which promotes social media posts of LGBTQ people for right-wing mockery. They talked about the quirks of a culture shaped in conversation with algorithms, the porous border between internet culture and political life in the United States, and what it means to take the influence of social media seriously, for good and for ill.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair
0:07.2	podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:14.7	That's patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:18.2	Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair
0:25.6	no bull and the aftermath.
0:32.6	People always have said, oh, she's not a real tech reporter, you know, because she's not
0:38.4	covering like Facebook drama or like, you know, internal Facebook politics or something,
0:43.7	or writing reviews of the iPhone.
0:45.4	Like there's this really regressive view of what technology is within the media.
0:50.5	So a lot of people just still associate tech reporting with reporting on gadgets or
0:56.4	reporting on like the business behind IBM or something.
1:00.4	When actually tech is completely integrated into our culture and our world and our lives
1:06.3	and especially with the rights of social media, like we need to cover all of that through
1:12.1	this cultural lens and through this deeper look from the user side of technology.
1:17.7	I'm Quintedurusic and this is the LawFair podcast April 21st, 2022.
1:25.7	Today we're bringing you another episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on the online
1:29.3	information ecosystem.
1:31.5	Evelyn Duac and I spoke with a reporter who was carved out a unique beat writing about
1:35.7	not just technology but the creativity and peculiarities of the people who use it.
1:41.5	Taylor Lorenz, a columnist at the Washington Post covering technology and online culture.
1:46.7	Her recent writing includes reporting on Algo Speak, that is how algorithmic amplification
1:52.6	changes how people talk online.
	...

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