Best gift I've ever received has to be a bike when I was younger, a pedal bike.

It was a sort of slick little road bike and I remember it was all like, it was so, it was all wrapped up,

it was so obvious what it was obviously because nothing's shaped like a bike and I had a little ribbon on it and I was so

a guest. For that was a life changer and I'm still sort of big on cycling around my area now so, for that one change me a little.

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Just a quick heads up, there's a little swearing in this episode.

Casey, how many conversations do you think you have had since the 2016 election about how Internet platforms and social media are hurting democracy?

I mean, it's sort of become the background chatter to every conversation I have about my beats.

Casey Newton writes the newsletter platformer and he's been reporting on tech and the Internet for years.

You know, when I started covering these issues, I don't think the intersection of tech and democracy had not been a particularly hot topic.

And then in the wake of the election, it was sort of all anyone wanted to talk about. And it sort of felt like we spent the five years after the election just sort of reliving it every day.

It's something we've covered extensively on this show. The idea that social media algorithms are primed to amplify content that is outrageous or offensive.

Just spread misinformation about COVID-19 or conspiracy theories about the 2020 election or to be used to incite events like the Capitol riots.

I think it's pretty common now in the Twitter timeline to say to see people taking it as a given that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube are all working together to destroy democracy.

I have long argued that it is more complicated that because for every, you know, 2016 election where you have Russians interfering, you also have the Me Too movement.

You have Black Lives Matter, you have gay marriage, just like stuff that was playing out on social networks that was able to rally a lot of people around those causes arguably to create a progressive effect.

In Ukraine, Casey says we're watching a small country use the Internet as a force multiplier.

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