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Bytes: Week in Review A fraying tech bromance, Claudes new skills and a robotics boom

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Apple answers the call for iPhone repairability

There’s a movement to make it possible to repair our gadgets ourselves instead of having to send them back to the company that makes them or, you know, just get a new one. The “right to repair” movement in consumer electronics has made real gains in recent years. Several states, like California, New York and Oregon, have passed legislation requiring it. And it looks like Apple’s newest iPhone \\u2014 the 16 \\u2014 has made strides in that department. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Kyle Wiens, CEO of the online repair guide iFixit, about the iPhone 16’s improved repairability.

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On Instagram, politics is the new taboo

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How tech is boosting the turnout of disabled voters

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How Big Tech is courting Big Oil

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Bytes: Week in Review SpaceX vs. California, and AI crawlers and VC dollars

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Why presidential candidates are embracing podcast interviews

Vice President Kamala Harris sat for her first interview on Fox News Wednesday as the Democratic presidential candidate continued her media blitz ahead of the November election. And while it’s generating plenty of headlines, these kinds of big interviews just don’t hold the power they used to, according to Nick Quah, a podcast and culture critic at New York Magazine who’s been following the candidates’ interviews on the alternative media circuit. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Quah about how Kamala Harris’ appearance on more internet-native shows like the podcast “Call Her Daddy” or Donald Trump’s appearances on various “bro-centric” shows like Logan Paul ‘sYouTube channel represent a notable media shift compared to previous elections.

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After years of missed deadlines, Tesla enters the robotaxi race

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A deluge of online misinformation obscures FEMA disaster relief efforts

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TikTok creators dont want a ban

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Bytes: Week in Review Breaking up Google, TikTok troubles and the Godfather of AI gets a Nobel Prize

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Some of the walls around Metas Threads app are coming down

The new kid on the block of social media, Meta’s Threads, hit 200 million active users in August. When it launched in the summer of 2023 as a rival to the platform formerly known as Twitter, Meta said the app would eventually be integrated into the so-called fediverse. This “federated universe” is the most prominent example of a decentralized social network in which users can join any affiliated platform and interact with content from all the others. Recently, Meta took some steps to integrate Threads into this ecosystem, and Will Oremus, tech news analysis writer for The Washington Post, has been following the developments.

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Do paid data-removal services pay off?

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A village of hackers is beefing up election security

Until about a decade ago, independent cybersecurity researchers in the U.S. weren’t allowed to examine voting machines for potential vulnerabilities. But that ban was essentially lifted in 2015. Two years later, DEF CON \\u2014 one of the largest hacker conventions \\u2014 decided to invite hackers, cybersecurity researchers and election officials to find those flaws during its annual Voting Village event. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Catherine Terranova, executive director of Voting Village, about how they balance the well-intentioned work of finding vulnerabilities before bad actors do and the problem of misinformation around the security of voting machines.

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The quest to discover the creator of bitcoin

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Bytes: Week in Review OpenAIs valuation doubles, biotech investment grows and a prescription giant is acquired

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The AI-crypto power struggle

All those fancy artificial intelligence systems need a lot of data centers to run, and those data centers need a lot of energy. One estimate from the Electric Power Research Institute suggests that current data center electricity consumption in the U.S. will more than double by 2030, making up about 9% of all energy use. But the AI sector is coming up against the big energy-hungry tech innovation of yesteryear: crypto mining. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Reuters reporter Laila Kearney about the scramble to power up in both industries.

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In most voting precincts, no-tech ballot counting is a nonstarter

Today we\\u2019re talking about voting tech and the push in some areas to move away from machines and go back to hand counting ballots. A legal battle is brewing in Georgia over a new rule requiring ballots be hand counted on election night to ensure the tally matches electronic records. Arizona has added a similar requirement. The issue has become particularly mired in misinformation in recent years, with some election deniers questioning the security of the tech used in our elections. While some may believe hand counts are more accurate, the number of jurisdictions across the country relying on them on election night has been steadily dropping. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Pam Smith, president and CEO of the nonpartisan organization Verified Voting, about why the practice of counting ballots by hand is waning.

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What do generative AI and social media have in common? A lack of regulation.

This week, we’re talking about how teenagers are using artificial intelligence tools like chatbots and image generators, often without the knowledge of their parents and teachers, according to a recent report from the nonprofit Common Sense Media. Monday we heard about that research from Jim Steyer, founder and CEO of the group. And now we want to home in on a specific piece of what he said: “If you look back at the advent of social media, about 20 years ago, we pretty much blew the regulatory side of that, but also the educating teachers and parents part of that. And we left kids on their own.” So we called up Nathan Sanders, an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, who has written about the overlapping risks of AI and social media.

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Parents, educators are unaware how their students use generative AI, report finds

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Bytes: Week in Review Xs transparency report, Sam Altmans Intelligence Age and Metas celebrity chatbots

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Commercial space travel is risky business

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Inside the data center capital of the world

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VoteFlares mission to upgrade voter communication

There have been a lot of rumors and misinformation recently about voter registration and voter list maintenance, adding confusion to what experts say are secure processes. And while election officials regularly update voter lists, it’s become increasingly important that individuals also keep their voter registration information up to date. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams recently spoke with Josh Visnaw,\\xa0 project manager at a Harvard University initiative called VoteFlare, about the challenges of maintaining accurate voter lists and how VoteFlare is trying to help.

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How teenagers can get hooked on sports betting

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Tech Bytes Week in Review: Senate weighs AI regulation, Instagram launches teen accounts and AirPods aid the hard of hearing

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Polling response rates are dropping. AI chatbots could be the solution.

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An appeals court heard arguments on TikToks ban-or-sale case. Whats next?

A federal appeals court heard arguments Monday in a case that pits the First Amendment against national security. TikTok sued to block a bipartisan-backed law that will ban the Chinese-owned app in the U.S. by January 19 \\u2014 unless it finds a U.S. buyer. This week, the government argued the app gives China access to Americans’ sensitive data, as well as the ability to spread propaganda. While TikTok argued it’s been unfairly singled out and that a sale isn’t the only way to address security concerns. TikTok touts 170 million users in the U.S., and that includes both candidates for president. A group of U.S.-based creators have also joined as plaintiffs in this lawsuit. Anupam Chander, professor of law and technology at Georgetown University, walked Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino through the arguments in the case.

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States step in to regulate digital replicas

The bipartisan NO FAKES Act, aimed at regulating deepfakes created with the aid of artificial intelligence, moved forward in the House of Representatives last week after it was introduced in the Senate in July. But in the absence of federal rules, several states have already stepped in. Last month, California became the third to back legislation regulating digital replicas. The home of Hollywood follows Tennessee, which earlier this year passed a ban on unauthorized deepfakes known as the ELVIS Act, and Illinois, which enacted a similar law last month. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Steve Brachmann, a freelance journalist specializing in intellectual property law, to learn about how these bans work.

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Telegram-linked ads on Meta platforms may promote illegal activity, report finds

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Bytes: Week in Review Google on trial, underwater data centers and how AI spurred a celebrity endorsement

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Crypto emerges as a funding powerhouse in the election

The cryptocurrency industry has been fairly quiet recently, with the scandals around the bankruptcy of crypto exchange FTX and its former chief executive, Sam Bankman-Fried, fading from the headlines. But behind the scenes, the industry has become a bit of a power player in the 2024 elections \\u2014 funding political ads, endorsing House and Senate candidates and raising millions of dollars, according to a recent report from the nonprofit group Public Citizen. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Axios reporter Brady Dale, author of the Axios Crypto newsletter, to learn more.

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Big Techs pivot away from diversity efforts

Over the last couple of years, the tech industry has slashed hundreds of thousands of jobs, many of them in recruiting and other departments working to improve diversity. Companies like Meta and Google, which earlier set ambitious hiring and investment goals, have pulled resources from those efforts. As a result, many nonprofit groups set up to train and recruit underrepresented workers are struggling to stay afloat. One prominent person in the field is Lisa Mae Brunson, founder of the nonprofit Wonder Women Tech. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino asked her how things have changed.

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The threat posed by rumors of noncitizen voting

Among the trends of mis- and disinformation spreading ahead of the 2024 election is the narrative that large groups of noncitizens are illegally voting. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams recently spoke with Danielle Lee Tomson, a research manager with the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, about how this narrative is affecting the November election.

This conversation is part of \\u201cMarketplace Tech\\u2019s\\u201d limited series\\xa0\\u201cDecoding Democracy.\\u201d Watch the full episode on our YouTube channel.

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SpaceX comes to NASAs rescue

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Bytes: Week in Review the X ban, Apples AI and airplane Wi-Fi gets upgraded

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A mothers quest for social media reform

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The AI safety bill dividing Silicon Valley

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Teenagers could be more susceptible to online dark patterns

Dark patterns are everywhere on the web. These are design tricks that manipulate users in some way and prompt them to give up information, money or just more of their time. A recent study from the Federal Trade Commission found three-quarters of all subscription apps and websites use at least one dark pattern, and a majority use multiple such tricks. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Yanely Espinal, who covered the topic in this week’s episode of “Financially Inclined.” She said some common dark patterns include advertising that doesn’t look like advertising, online forms that come with check boxes pre-selected and something called confirm shaming.

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Have you heard the one about the AI-written comedy routine?

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Bytes: Week in Review Telegrams CEO arrested, SF startups boom and Meta pivots

This week: a report from venture capital firm SignalFire seems to show that despite all its problems, San Francisco is still the place to be for tech startups in the artificial intelligence space. Plus, why Meta is scrapping plans for a superpremium mixed-reality headset and aiming for a lite version instead. But first, the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France has sent shock waves through the tech world. Durov is facing a number of criminal charges. French authorities allege he is liable for illicit activities conducted on the encrypted messaging platform, including child sex abuse and drug trafficking, essentially because of a failure to moderate content. The case highlights longstanding tensions in the tech world between public safety and free speech. Marketplace\\u2019s Meghan McCarty Carino is joined by Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, for her take on this week\\u2019s tech news.

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With campaign hacks, Iran takes a page from Russias playbook

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AI in the election: misinformation machine or meme generator?

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Court upholds block of California law aimed at protecting kids online

The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, passed in 2022, would be among the most sweeping pieces of legislation to protect kids from online harms \\u2014 if it hadn’t become tangled up in court. The law has two basic requirements: first, that tech companies analyze and report on whether their products are harmful for children; second, that they minimize how much data they collect from those under 18. Earlier this month a federal appeals court found that first part likely violates the First Amendment, and upheld a lower-court decision blocking that part of the law. But it vacated an injunction on the second component, the part dealing with data privacy. The decision could point a way forward for similar laws, many of which have also run into legal challenges, Aaron Mackey, free speech and transparency litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino.

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The loose, undefined guardrails of Xs AI image generator

The social media platform X recently launched a new artificial intelligence feature for premium users: Grok-2, an AI model that can also generate images. And the outputs are a bit less censored than you might see with other similar tools. Experimenters online have been able to generate images of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris brandishing guns, Mickey Mouse smoking a cigarette and some far more disturbing tableaus. Grok claims to avoid images that are pornographic, excessively violent or intended to deceive and added it’s cautious about representing content that might infringe on existing copyright. But the guardrails certainly seem to be on the looser side, in keeping with owner Elon Musk’s hands-off approach to content moderation. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Adi Robertson, senior tech and policy editor at the Verge, about Grok-2 and what she found while she tested the AI’s limits.

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Bytes: Week in Review Dems tech platform, Googles legal troubles and OpenAIs newest partnership

On today’s show: Google deals with another legal headache. A federal appeals court revived a class-action lawsuit that had been dismissed concerning privacy violations by its Chrome browser. Plus, OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has partnered up with another media brand, Cond\\xe9 Nast.\\xa0But first, we can’t ignore the biggest happening of the week \\u2014 the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the party formally nominated Vice President Kamala Harris for president with the help of big names in entertainment.\\xa0Rapper Lil Jon revving up the presentation of the Georgia delegation’s votes was just one viral moment that came out of the convention. What didn’t come out of the gathering, though, were clear indications of the Harris campaign’s tech policy platform. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, about what that platform might look like.

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What its like to be a content creator at the DNC

New faces are mingling among the party faithful and the swarm of journalists at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week. In a bid to reach younger, more online voters, the DNC invited 200 content creators to cover the convention. One of them is Malynda Hale, who’s been sharing her experience with her more than 50,000 followers on Instagram. Creators like her, she said, have their own part to play at the event. Marketplace\\u2019s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Hale how it\\u2019s been going at the convention.

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New online age-verification tools could exclude lots of adults

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The Chandra X-ray telescope, now 25, offers a more complete story of what the universe is doing

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Not all screen time is created equal

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Bytes: Week in Review X vs. advertisers, Instagrams harassment problem, and the food delivery race continues

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Senators advance bipartisan effort to regulate deepfakes

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Can AI accurately simulate a human?

Generative artificial intelligence has made it possible to mimic someone’s voice and generate a script for that voice in real time. The tech, of course, is already used to scam and defraud people, but what if you just had it make a bunch of calls on your behalf? That’s what journalist Evan Ratliff did for his new podcast, “Shell Game.” He trained AI audio clones, gave them phone numbers and sat back as they took on customer service agents, family members, therapists and even a few scammers. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Ratliff \\u2014 and briefly with one of his AI agents \\u2014 about his takeaways from producing the show and whether the clones succeeded in tricking people into thinking they were who they said they were.

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Remembering a Silicon Valley giant

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Can AI solve fans concert ticket woes?

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Bytes: Week in Review An AI bubble, Olympians mental health and controversial ads

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Yes, you can place bets on the election (for now)

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Can an algorithm break antitrust law?

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With the internet now a necessity, the digital underclass is still in need

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a photo of two little girls in the parking lot of a California Taco Bell went viral. They were doing their schoolwork on laptops in that inconvenient location because the restaurant provided free Wi-Fi, which they didn’t have at home. The girls came to symbolize the digital underclass that’s emerged since the rise of the internet. There are millions of American kids like them, says Nicol Turner Lee, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Her analysis of the digital divide is contained in her new book, “Digitally Invisible: How the Internet Is Creating the New Underclass.”

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AI is learning how to lie

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Bytes: Week in Review Kids online safety legislation, Metas AI and EV regrets

Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta is expanding AI offerings across its products, even as the company gets rid of AI features that haven’t quite landed with consumers. The bottom line? CEO Mark Zuckerberg says \\u201cMeta AI is on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year.\\u201dThen, the Wall Street Journal’s senior personal tech columnist Joanna Stern shares surprises and regrets on her journey as an electric vehicle owner. But first, this week in Congress, the Senate passed the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, also known as COPPA 2.0, and the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, in a rare bipartisan vote \\u2014 91 senators voted in favor, with just three opposing these measures, which aim to reduce harm to kids on the internet.

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The hidden cost of smart home technology

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A lifesaving medical technology puts some patients on a bridge to nowhere

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For data-hungry tech companies, YouTube is a gold mine

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Does the tech sector need its own regulatory agency?

It’s a rare issue that can bring the political parties together in Congress, and the need to regulate social media companies ranks high on that very short list. Two industry veterans want Congress to create an agency that sets safety and privacy rules for platforms \\u2014 and enforces them. The status quo, they argue, is like letting airlines fly without Federal Aviation Administration oversight. The idea comes from Anika Collier Navaroli and Ellen Pao. Pao, an attorney and now CEO of Project Include, pushed to ban revenge porn on Reddit during her tenure as interim CEO. Navaroli, an attorney and senior fellow at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, was involved in Twitter’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump from the platform in 2021, when she was a senior policy expert there. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Navaroli and Pao about their proposal.

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Bytes: Week in Review Google cookies, Waymo vandalism and Kamala Harris memes

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Landmark disability law now applies to life online

Back in 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, the world’s first comprehensive law for people with disabilities. It was seen as making up for an area in which the Civil Rights Act of 1964 fell short. “The stark fact remains that people with disabilities were still victims of segregation and discrimination, and this was intolerable,” Bush said. Now, the legislation passed at the dawn of the internet age is being adapted to ensure digital access for everyone. That means ensuring access to captions on web videos to support deaf Americans and the ability to resize text so people with low vision can read it. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with consultant Nicolas Steenhout, who explained how the Department of Justice is updating the rules.

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How DIY medical testing is changing health care

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Lessons to learn from the massive CrowdStrike outage

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EU regulators request information on Amazons algorithms

Online sales in the U.S. surpassed $14 billion during Amazon Prime Day last week, according to Adobe Analytics. Amazon’s heft and promotional power continue to drive sales, even for rivals, during the shopping jamboree. But in Europe, an important market for the e-commerce giant, lawmakers have become increasingly sensitive to Amazon’s relations with its rivals, as well as its partners and customers. They’ve requested that Amazon hand over information about its product recommendation algorithms, along with data on ads, by Friday. It’s part of compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act, a sweeping set of tech regulations that took effect in recent years. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino discussed it with Theo Wayt, who covers Amazon for The Information.

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Tech Bytes Week in Review: Vances Silicon Valley ties, Prime Day injuries and Starbucks bets on EVs

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How to deal with misinformation about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump

FBI officials are still looking into what motivated the 20-year-old gunman who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump on Saturday. As of this episode, investigators have yet to publicly share any conclusions about his reasons for the attack, which killed a rally attendee and injured the former president and two others. But the lack of information didn’t stop misinformation from flooding online channels. Marketplace’s senior Washington correspondent, Kimberly Adams, speaks with Molly Dwyer, director of insights at PeakMetrics, and Lisa Fazio, associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, about the false narratives surrounding the shooting and how to separate fact from fiction in the aftermath of a violent event.

This conversation is part of \\u201cMarketplace Tech\\u2019s\\u201d limited series \\u201cDecoding Democracy.\\u201d\\xa0Watch the full episode here or on our YouTube channel.

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The complicated reality of school cellphone bans

Pop quiz: What’s a policy supported by political rivals in California and Florida? The answer is banning cellphones in school. Florida is among a handful of states that have restricted mobile devices in the classroom. California has not, though Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed the Legislature to act. The policies are intended to reduce distraction and mitigate addiction and other mental health concerns attributed to phone use. But Liz Kolb, a clinical professor of education at the University of Michigan, tells Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino it’s not that simple.

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The digital surveillance of transgender people

In recent years, we’ve seen a surge of state laws and policies affecting trans people. Half of states have banned or restricted gender affirming care for minors, with some adding restrictions for adults. The ACLU is tracking more than 500 bills that have been introduced across the country. The enforcement of such laws, as with recent bans on abortion and related reproductive care, have raised concerns about tracking people’s digital footprints. So much of daily life is conducted online, and there are currently no federal data privacy protections. KB Brookins, a writer based in Austin, Texas, wrote about a personal experience that drove home concerns about their trail of digital data.

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Online speech cases sent back to the lower courts

Sandwiched between some blockbuster Supreme Court rulings last month came a decision \\u2014 or more so, a non-decision \\u2014 that is reverberating through the tech world. NetChoice, big tech’s lobbying arm, challenged a pair of laws in Florida and Texas that sought to restrict how social media platforms moderate content. The high court kicked both cases back to lower courts with some added commentary. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Lauren Feiner, senior policy reporter with the Verge, who wrote about what this means for future attempts to regulate tech.

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Bytes: Week in Review FTCs latest tech crackdown, Trumps pro-crypto campaign and Threads turns a year old

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More website links are expiring. Is it a bug or a feature of the internet?

The internet is full of all manner of unsavoriness that is surely corroding our minds and societies. But the kind of rot we’re talking about here is link rot \\u2014 the disappearance of online content when links turn into “404 Page Not Found.” A recent study from Pew Research suggests almost 40% of all webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible. That includes important government links, citations on Wikipedia and hyperlinks in news articles. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently talked about this with Clare Stanton, product and research manager at Harvard Law School\\u2019s Library Innovation Lab, who also works on a webpage preservation project, perma.cc.

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Progressive TikTok creators turn against Biden

About a third of adults under 30 regularly get their news on TikTok, according to the Pew Research Center. And in this election season, the messages from young, left-leaning creators on the short-form video app are pretty different from last time around. In 2020, a coalition of influencers united to back presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign, and historically high youth turnout helped propel him to a win. But after almost four years of the Biden presidency, the TikTok tide has turned, according to Taylor Lorenz, online culture columnist at The Washington Post, who recently wrote about this shift.

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The making of Sam Altman

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AI concerns stall contract negotiations between game companies and actors

Big-budget video game producers and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the union representing voice-over actors and motion-capture stunt workers, have been negotiating a new labor contract since last September. And union leaders say those talks have stalled due to concerns over generative artificial intelligence. (Note: Several Marketplace employees are also represented by SAG-AFTRA under a different contract.) Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Associated Press reporter Sarah Parvini, who recently wrote about the negotiations. She explained how consent is a key concern.

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Bytes: Week in Review the most impactful moment, the biggest flub and the most underreported story in tech

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The unstoppable rise of Swedish music tech

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What do billboards say about a city?

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Creating a joy spiral to revive San Franciscos downtown

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Is San Francisco in a doom loop or a boom loop?

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Bytes: Week in Review music biz vs. AI, social media moderation and Nvidia stock woes

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The evolution of political messaging into the digital age

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How data generated by everyday apps can incriminate abortion seekers

This week, we’ve been taking stock of how tech has both helped and harmed Americans trying to get abortions in the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. After the Dobbs decision, some experts warned consumers that menstrual tracking apps would provide a means of surveilling abortion seekers. There was even a social media campaign on what was then Twitter advising people to delete their period trackers. But it’s turned out that the threat to privacy isn’t limited to those apps. Other digital data can actually be more likely to reveal an illegal abortion. That’s according to Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. He told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that everyday consumer apps generate sensitive data that can be used for abortion surveillance.

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Protecting abortion patients digital data in the post-Roe era

After the U.S. Supreme Court took away the federal right to abortion two years ago, telehealth has helped provide ongoing access, including to people in states where abortion is now banned. That was our subject Monday. Now we are looking into apps that link patients with abortion providers. Julie F. Kay, executive director at the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that digital privacy protections are far from equal across these services.

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Telehealth widens access to abortion care as lawmakers restrict it

Two years ago this week, the Supreme Court ruled that abortions are not constitutionally protected in the U.S., a decision that would draw protests across the country. Since then, 14 states have outlawed abortions.\\xa0Still, some people in those states have been able to cut through barriers to get abortions via telehealth, according to a recent report from the research project #WeCount. Usually, this requires a virtual visit with a telehealth care provider. The provider assesses the patient and gets their information, then can mail them mifepristone and misoprostol, which aid in ending a pregnancy. The Supreme Court preserved access to mifepristone in a ruling this month, which means it can still be prescribed and mailed to patients. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed the increase in telehealth abortions with Ushma Upadhyay, professor of OB-GYN and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and a coauthor of the #WeCount report.

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Bytes: Week in Review Warning labels for social media, Adobes hidden fees and a less open OpenAI

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2014: The year that shaped social media

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Juneteenths viral moment and its future

Shortly after the Union won the Civil War in 1865, a union major general issued an order: \\u201cThe people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” June 19, known as Juneteenth, has long been celebrated by African Americans. But in 2020, in the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic and the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, Juneteenth took the internet by storm. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Brandon Ogbunu, professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale, who wrote about that moment for WIRED back then. He revisited what was happening at that time a year before Juneteenth became a national holiday.

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Meet the man who combines science, technology and magic to understand proteins

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How to find a mailbox in Sao Paulos favelas

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Bytes: Week in Review Apples AI flex, Ubers legal loss and Xs hidden likes

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Greater, newer AI models come with environmental impacts

Back in 2020, Microsoft made an ambitious pledge to go carbon negative by 2030. But that plan is encountering some headwinds, according to its latest sustainability report. It showed Microsoft’s carbon emissions have increased by 30% since it made that pledge four years ago and comes a reminder of the significant environmental cost of the AI boom. Just how significant? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino asked Emma Strubell, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who co-wrote a paper about the specific energy demands for common uses of this technology.
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Disinformation on elections, migration is spreading in Spanish too

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have been courting Latinos this election season. Relatedly, perhaps, this voting bloc has emerged as a target for disinformation. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Marketplace senior Washington correspondent Kimberly Adams and Roberta Braga, founder and executive director of the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas, to learn more about Spanish-language disinformation in the 2024 campaign.

This conversation is part of \\u201cMarketplace Tech\\u2019s\\u201d limited series\\xa0\\u201cDecoding Democracy.\\u201d Watch the full episode on our YouTube channel.

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California AG: Without federal law, kids online safety starts with the states

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Reddits CEO on why its partnering with OpenAI and Google

The network of online communities known as Reddit has millions of weekly active users. They post on “subreddit” forums like r/WhatShouldICook \\u2014 a place where people just talk about their dinner plans \\u2014 and r/ShowerThoughts, where participants share what they’re thinking during routine tasks. The co-founder and CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman, is a fan of r/Daddit, being a father himself. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Huffman at Reddit headquarters in San Francisco, where they talked about the company selling stock and its recent licensing agreements with the likes of Google and Open AI, which use Reddit content to train their large language models.

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Bytes: Week in Review AI whistleblowers, Facebooks future, and meme stock backlash

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Deepfake detectors promise to tell truth from AI-generated fiction. Do they work?

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The universe is expanding faster than we thought, Webb Space Telescope shows

NASA\\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope has been exploring the cosmos for the past three decades, helping scientists understand how fast the universe is expanding and with that, its age. In December 2021, NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope to further that research. The bonus: All those stunning images from outer space. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Adam Riess, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University who shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics. He said the Webb telescope has confirmed what Hubble first pieced together: Our universe is expanding faster than first predicted.

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Paris braces for a barrage of cyberattacks

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The dark side of AI in Indias election

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Bytes: Week in Review OpenAIs workplace expansion, data center power woes and the 80s on TikTok

In the early days of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a chatbot query required about 10 times the electricity of a typical Google search. And as people do more with generative artificial intelligence, we’re going to burn through even more power. Plus, the ’80s are back \\u2014 on TikTok. A new dance trend is getting Gen X parents to show their Gen Z kids how they danced back in the day, to the tune of Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy.” Also this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that consulting and professional services giant PricewaterhouseCoopers is now OpenAI’s largest customer and the first reseller of ChatGPT’s enterprise tier, which is aimed at businesses. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at Collab Capital, about these headlines for this week’s Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

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Potential TikTok ban stirs anxieties in small-business owners

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A scientists struggle to find the truth behind 3Ms forever chemicals problem

Sharon Lerner has been reporting on \\u201cforever chemicals\\u201d for the better part of a decade. These manmade compounds \\u2014 known as PFAS for short \\u2014 resist oil, water and heat, take an incredibly long time to break down in nature, and have been used widely in products like Scotchgard, Teflon and firefighting foam. Lerner has focused part of her work on understanding the flow of information inside manufacturers like 3M. By the 1970s, Lerner says, Minnesota-based 3M had established that they were toxic in animals and were accumulating in humans\\u2019 bodies. But who inside 3M knew? And what did they know? Reporting for ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative news site, Lerner got a complicated answer after coming across a former 3M scientist named Kris Hansen. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Lerner about her recent investigation.

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What to do when combating misinformation gets personal

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A not-so-furry dog to help the visually impaired

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Tech Bytes Week in Review: Online extremism, Section 230, and ScarJo vs. OpenAI

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NASA scrapped the next phase of its Mars mission. Now what?

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A professor tries to turn the tables on Section 230s web protections

The internet today is largely governed by 26 words in the Communications Decency Act, signed on Feb. 8, 1996, by then-President Bill Clinton. “Today, with the stroke of a pen, our laws will catch up with our future,” he proclaimed during the signing of the act. The web has changed a bit since then. But Section 230 of that law has not. Today, social media companies routinely use Section 230 to protect themselves from liability over what users post. Now, an internet scholar wants to change that. Will Oremus wrote about him for The Washington Post.

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Why cellphones and trust may be affecting polling data

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Right-to-mine crypto laws are making their way across the U.S.

If you drive 45 miles north of Little Rock, Arkansas, you’ll come across a facility packed with thousands of computers trying to “mine” the next bitcoin. The popular cryptocurrency’s value recently shot past $60,000 per bitcoin. Mining those bitcoins is a lucrative operation, and several crypto mining outfits have moved to the state since the passage of the Arkansas Data Centers Act last year, also known as the “right-to-mine” bill. Similar bills giving crypto mining operations protections from local regulations have popped up a couple of states. But it turns out residents don’t particularly welcome many of these operations. And Arkansas recently changed course and restored to municipalities the ability to regulate crypto miners. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently spoke with Gabriel Dance, senior deputy investigations editor at The New York Times, about the crypto mining situation in Arkansas. He explained what the biggest complaints have been since these mining operations moved in.

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Tech Bytes Week in Review: Google doubles down on AI, ChatGPT gets chatty and Congress charts a path for AI regulation

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A vital, mostly invisible undersea industry is facing a labor shortage

The whole digital economy runs through hundreds of thousands of miles of communication cables no bigger than a garden hose, deep on the ocean floor. So what happens when they break? And they do break, about once every other day, thanks to fishing trawlers or natural disasters. That’s when you call a repair crew of engineers, geologists, marine construction specialists and more who often spend months at sea repairing cables. This vital industry is largely invisible and facing some big challenges. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Josh Dzieza, feature writer and investigations editor at The Verge, who did a deep dive into the industry and those challenges.

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Digital ad spending streams past traditional TV

This week, media executives have been busy trying to impress advertisers at the annual “upfronts,” where major TV networks showcase their stars, new programs and the potential size of their audiences. It’s a show in its own right. “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon did his version of Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” at NBC\\u2019s upfront Monday. But this year, Big Tech is looking to cash in. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke about it with Reuters reporter Sheila Dang, who said ad spending on digital has surpassed that of traditional TV for the first time.

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Why deepfakes of foreigners are selling goods on Chinese social media

A couple of weeks ago, Marketplace’s China correspondent Jennifer Pak noticed a video deepfake of the Hollywood actor Chris Evans on social media. The AI-generated Evans explains in Chinese how money is at the root of life’s problems. It’s part of a recent trend on mainland China, where deepfakes of foreigners give advice, discuss politics and sell goods online. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Pak about what’s behind the trend and later, the state of online misinformation in China.

This conversation was part of \\u201cMarketplace Tech\\u2019s\\u201d limited series,\\xa0\\u201cDecoding Democracy.\\u201d\\xa0Watch the full episode here or on our YouTube channel.

The next $50,000 in donations to Marketplace will be matched, thanks to a generous gift from Dr. Joe Rush of Florida. Give now and double your impact.

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What happened to the Texas miracle?

Early in the pandemic, many big tech companies based in Silicon Valley exited California, fleeing the high overhead necessary to do business there. One city \\u2014 Austin, Texas \\u2014 was consistently tagged as the top destination. The Texas capital offered lower costs, especially in regard to housing and taxes. Another draw for companies: the state’s more lax approach to regulation. Well, after a massive influx, the “Texas miracle,” with Austin at its epicenter, is losing some of its luster. In recent weeks, Tesla, which moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin in 2020, announced it\\u2019s laying off 2,700 workers there. And software giant Oracle, which relocated to Austin at about the same time, is moving its headquarters again, this time to Nashville, Tennessee. Last week, at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Austin Mayor Kirk Watson about the state of tech in his city.

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Tech Bytes Week in Review: Layoffs at Tesla, OpenAIs deepfake detector and lots of new iPads

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How scammers hijack their victims brains

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Pinterest CEO wants to build a more positive version of social media

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Millions of Americans could lose home internet access next month

Back in the pandemic depths of December 2020, when so many Americans were working, learning and performing essential daily tasks online, the Federal Communications Commission launched an emergency program to help low-income people connect to high-speed internet with a $50-per-month subsidy. That was extended with the Affordable Connectivity Program, which has provided $30 a month for internet service. An estimated 23 million households currently get the subsidy. But they won’t for much longer. Efforts to renew funding for the ACP have stalled in Congress and are expected to run out by the end of the month. Marketplace\\u2019s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Kelcee Griffis of Tech Brew about her reporting on the ACP and the people who rely on it.

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Rethinking the lifecycle of AI when it comes to deepfakes and kids

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Tech Bytes Week in Review: Walmart health centers, VCs and Bumble

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AI is surpassing humans in several areas, Stanford report says

Just how capable is today’s artificial intelligence at beating humans at their own games? That’s one of the metrics tracked by an annual report put together by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, or HAI. And its latest AI Index report finds the tech is quickly gaining on humans. According to the report, AI now exceeds human capability not only in areas like simple reading comprehension and image classification, but also in domains that start to approach human logic, like natural language inference (the ability to draw inferences from text) or visual reasoning (the ability to deduce physical relationships between visual objects). Still, there are areas where the bots haven’t quite caught up. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Nestor Maslej, research manager at HAI and editor in chief of the index report, to learn more.

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Can life exist on Europa, Jupiters moon?

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Deepfakes and online misinformation in Indias election

A massive general election is currently underway in India. It’s been described as the \\u201clargest democratic exercise in history.\\u201d And tech platforms are a big part of it. Many Indian voters get their information online, where misinformation and disinformation can spread quickly. That includes deepfakes of prominent public figures, like Bollywood actor Aamir Khan, spreading false information about who or which political parties they are endorsing. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia Pacific policy director and senior international counsel with the international human rights group Access Now, about how deepfakes and online misinformation have become a problem for voters in India. They also discuss a recent report from Access Now and Global Witness, an environmental and human rights nonprofit, about YouTube’s advertisement moderation standards in India.

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Atlas, forefather of humanoid robots, gives way to next generation

Robotics company Boston Dynamics announced this month it is retiring its humanoid robot known as “Atlas.” The 6′, 2,330 lb robot was considered a quantum leap in robotics and was famous for parkour stunts and awkward dance moves. Debuting more than a decade ago in 2013, the Atlas robot was a part of a partnership with the Defense Department. It relied on hydraulic power, using pressurized fluid to generate movement. It could do tasks that can be challenging for humans like lifting heavy boxes and parkour. As the older Atlas lives out its golden years, Boston Dynamics has announced its successor – a smaller version of the Atlas bot that runs on electric power. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Brian Heater, hardware editor at TechCrunch, for his take on what’s next and a look back on the original Atlas.

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Tech Bytes Week in Review: The TikTok ban, the end of noncompetes and Sonys EV

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Inside Amazons business tactics and company culture

When Jeff Bezos left Wall Street to start Amazon in 1994, the most common question he got was “What’s the internet?” Fast-forward to today, and Amazon is, of course, the country’s leading online retailer, as well as cloud services provider. In 2022, the company controlled almost 38% of the U.S. e-commerce market. Walmart, its closest competitor, had just over 6%, according to Insider Intelligence. In her new book, “The Everything War,” The Wall Street Journal’s Dana Mattioli documents the tactics she says have enabled Amazon to dominate.

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Training for the next crisis with serious games

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Why the Ai Pin fell flat

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When a senior is ill, can an algorithm decide length of care?

Artificial intelligence has become a big part of medicine \\u2014 reading images, formulating treatment plans and developing drugs. But a recent investigation by Stat News found that some insurers overrely on an algorithm to make coverage decisions for seniors on Medicare Advantage, a Medicare plan offered by private insurers. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Casey Ross, who co-reported the story. He said an algorithm predicted how long patients needed care and coverage was curtailed to fit that calculation.

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Tech Bytes Week in Review: Amazon, deepfakes & the creator economy

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How science could disrupt the gin industry

When you think about gin, what tastes comes to mind? Pine? Maybe citrus or coriander? It can vary quite a bit because unlike some spirits, gin is very lightly regulated. Distillers can throw in all kinds of flavors and call the result “gin” as long it has some minimum requirements. In the U.S., gin is gin as long as the flavor is derived from juniper berries and alcohol by volume is at least 40%. In the European Union, the minimum ABV is 37.5%. But researchers in Edinburgh, Scotland, recently identified the exact elements that define gin using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscropy. Think of it as something like an MRI scan that lets scientists create a flavor “fingerprint.” The new technique could have big implications for this very old industry.\\xa0Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Eve Thomas, who wrote about it for Wired, to learn more.

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Scientists try to prevent forever chemicals from being a forever problem

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How Arizona is preparing for AI-powered election misinformation

President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by a razor-thin margin, flipping the state blue for the first time in more than 20 years. As a result, Arizona became a hotbed of election misinformation and conspiracy theories, as false claims of a stolen election led to protests outside voting centers, a GOP-backed ballot audit and threats against election workers. Now, with just over 200 days until the 2024 election, experts warn that artificial intelligence could supercharge misinformation and disinformation in this year’s race. So how are election officials in a state that has already been in the trenches preparing for another battle over facts? In this episode of “Marketplace Tech\\u2019s” limited series, “Decoding Democracy,” Lily Jamali and Kimberly Adams look back at what happened in Arizona during the last presidential election and how the state became entangled in conspiracy theories. Plus, we hear from Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes about how his office plans to combat AI-charged misinformation this year.

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The 65-year-old computer system at the heart of American business

The programming language known as COBOL turns 65 this year. We couldn\\u2019t help noticing that\\u2019s right around retirement age, but COBOL is nowhere near retirement. It remains a mainstay of IT operations at U.S. government agencies, businesses and financial institutions. Yet the programming language, which is older than the Beatles, is no longer taught at most universities. Glenn Fleishman is a freelance tech journalist who has written about this aging slab of digital infrastructure. Marketplace\\u2019s Lily Jamali asked him whether our continuing reliance on COBOL is a problem.

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Tesla settles Autopilot suit, inflation spooks tech investors and Bidens CHIPS Act pledges $6.6B for domestic chipmaking

The Labor Department this week confirmed what a lot of Americans have been feeling: Inflation is kind of sticking around, and higher interest rates are likely to as well. We’ll look at what that means for venture capital, which was already slow to flow. Plus, the Joe Biden administration announced a $6.6 billion deal with Taiwan-based semiconductor maker TSMC to build a third production hub in Arizona. We take a look at the ongoing rollout of the CHIPS and Science Act, which makes it all possible. But first, Tesla has settled a lawsuit in the death of a software engineer who was killed driving a Tesla while using the company’s semiautonomous driving software, Autopilot. The suit put scrutiny on Elon Musk’s claims about the software.

Marketplace\\u2019s Lily Jamali is joined by Jewel Burks Solomon, managing director at Collab Capital, for her take on these stories.

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The race to resurrect the dodo

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The rise of AI fashion models

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The hidden meanings of the AI industrys favorite words

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Facial recognition part of Israels arsenal in Gaza war

It’s been six months of war in the Gaza Strip since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The destruction and death have been profound, and nearly every aspect of life in the roughly 140-square-mile territory has been upended. The New York Times recently reported that the Israeli military is using facial recognition artificial intelligence to monitor Palestinians in Gaza. The government hasn’t publicly acknowledged it, but reporter Sheera Frenkel spoke to Israeli intelligence officers, military officials and soldiers who confirmed that the technology was being used for mass surveillance. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Frenkel about facial recognition’s role in the conflict, starting with the story of a Palestinian poet, Mosab Abu Toha, who reportedly was arrested and beaten by Israeli forces.

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The FCC tackles net neutrality, Google commits to voiding billions of data records and Jon Stewart spills about working with Apple

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Why are fake obituaries cluttering Google and upsetting loved ones?

Fake obituaries have become an online trend. They exploit tragedy for profit and have raised concerns about the reliability of search engines. Marketplace\\u2019s Lily Jamali discussed the problem with reporter Mia Sato of The Verge. Her investigation uncovered a network of websites generating this content using search engine optimization, or SEO, tactics. Sato also covered the story of Brian Vastag, a journalist who experienced this abuse when he read his own fake obituary along with that of his ex-wife, who did actually pass away.

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Why theres no TikTok in China

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Can deepfakes be used for the greater good?

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Who benefits from a national AI program?

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Florida bars kids from social media, EV charging tips to make your money go farther and AI ambitions at Apples developer fest

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Government pressures tech behind the scenes, says former Facebook employee. Its called jawboning.

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What a privacy organization and Big Techs lead lobbying group think about internet regulation

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Africas gaming market is expected to top $1 billion in 2024

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Why crypto has made a comeback in the Philippines

Crypto is once again big in the Philippines. It first took off during COVID-19 lockdowns in 2021 with a now-defunct video game called Axie Infinity, where players earned money \\u2014 often more than minimum wage \\u2014 through non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Of course, the crypto winter soon followed with the implosion of FTX in 2022, but now crypto is back in a big way on the island nation. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with reporter Eli Tan, who recently visited and wrote about the scene for The New York Times.

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Lawsuits, fines and the tech at the heart of it all

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What it means for nations to have AI sovereignty

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AI manipulation and the liars dividend

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What Redditors think about the Reddit IPO

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Makers of electric roasters pitch carbon cutting in coffee making

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TikTok faces the hammer, Sam Altman returns to OpenAIs board, and Waymos driverless taxis come to Los Angeles

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What a TikTok ban would mean for free speech and data privacy

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The Biden administration hasnt had a CTO. Why?

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States and schools are learning how to manage AI in education

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AI cant handle the truth when it comes to the law

Almost one in five lawyers are using AI, according to an American Bar Association survey. But there are a growing number of legal horror stories involving tools like ChatGPT, because chatbots have a tendency to make stuff up \\u2014 such as legal precedents from cases that never happened. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Daniel Ho at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence about the group’s recent study on how frequently three of the most popular language models from ChatGPT, Meta and Google hallucinate when asked to weigh in or assist with legal cases.

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EU fines Apple over competition, Change Healthcare cyberattack drags on, and Max will join the crackdown on password sharing

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The San Francisco Fed chief says Silicon Valley is thriving, but in transitional waters

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One year after all hell broke loose at Silicon Valley Bank

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Deepfakes and the 2024 election season

Audio deepfakes have become shockingly convincing in the last few years. A deepfake robocall impersonating President Joe Biden encouraging voters to stay home for the New Hampshire primary was one recent example of how far the technology has advanced. That’s why “Marketplace Tech” is launching a limited series called “Decoding Democracy.” Marketplace’s Lily Jamali will be joined by other Marketplace reporters, experts and researchers to discuss what election mis- and disinformation is out there, how to spot it and how it impacts our democracy. In this first episode of \\u201cDecoding Democracy,\\u201d Marketplace senior correspondent Kimberly Adams joins Jamali to delve into the latest on audio deepfake technology and how to protect yourself from being fooled by one.

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Spotting tech-driven disinformation isnt getting easier

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A boost for data privacy policy, Nvidias chip shortage eases and Apple steers away from electric cars

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Voting precincts are steadily moving away from paperless machines

“DRE” is the acronym in election-speak. It stands for direct-recording electronic voting machines … the kind that record votes directly into a computer’s memory, often with no paper trail. In an effort to boost security and ensure more reliable counting of ballots across the country, officials have been replacing them with voting machines that produce a paper backup. And there has been noticeable progress on this front. According to a recent report from the nonprofit organization Verified Voting and the Brennan Center for Justice, in 2016 about 22% of registered voters were in jurisdictions that used DREs. By 2020, that figure had fallen to 9% and could drop considerably further this year. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Megan Maier, co-author of the Verified Voting report, about replacing what’s left of these outdated machines and bringing that number down to zero.

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DOEs Granholm drives campaign to make EV batteries a U.S. industry

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Will we remember any of the fast-paced trendbait slang on TikTok?

The race to coin new words and phrases is on \\u2014 on TikTok. They range from “first time cool syndrome,” to “the weekend effect,” and “dinner and couch” friend. Keeping track of all this can feel like a wild goose chase, to use an expression credited to William Shakespeare, who introduced countless words and phrases to the English language. But unlike the Bard’s phrases, TikTok slang doesn’t seem to have much staying power. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Rebecca Jennings, senior correspondent for Vox, on the TikTok “trendbait,” as she calls it \\u2014 terms invented by content creators who seem like they’re trying a little too hard \\u2014 and what’s driving it all.

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How NetChoice became Big Techs ally against social media regulation

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Amazon to join the Dow, VCs steer away from Chinas startups, and Rivians cold EV winter

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When cellphones fail, landlines are still a lifeline

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Want to quit your smartphone?

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Would you trust a cancer screening by artificial intelligence?

As consumers, we’ve all been subjected to the “upsell,” or pressure to pay a little more for a product that’s slightly better. It’s one thing if you’re buying, say, a car or a piece of clothing. The ethical questions get a lot more complicated in health care. Some providers have started integrating artificial intelligence in diagnostic procedures, including screenings for breast cancer. The tools may be available for an additional cost, and questions about their accuracy have been raised. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Meredith Broussard, a journalism professor at New York University, about integrating AI into mammograms and her personal experience grappling with the tech.

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Vibrating suits offer a new way to experience music

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A $7 trillion chips moonshot, AI-fueled cyberattacks, and Disneys bet on gaming

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How a comprehensive federal privacy law could protect kids online

On our show last week, we had Sen. Amy Klobuchar share her take on the recent Senate hearing with tech executives. You remember the one, with the execs, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, doing their best to stall in response to searing questions about how to keep kids safe online. Klobuchar told us that hearing may have actually moved the needle on that issue. She stressed to us that such events educate the public and help lawmakers get on-the-record pledges of support for specific bills from tech CEOs. In the absence of federal rules, a patchwork of state laws has filled the void. How’s that going? Nicol Turner Lee, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, gave Marketplace’s Lily Jamali the rundown.

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Dating apps can get pretty intimate with your data

Cuffing season is that time of year when singles hunker down with someone to keep them warm \\u2014 temporarily. And Valentine’s Day more or less marks the end of it. So people are about to start flocking back to their dating apps. Adrianus Warmenhoven, cybersecurity expert at NordVPN, told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that a lot of those apps are eager to vacuum up their personal data.

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In spite of plummeting valuation, 23andMe still aims to pivot into biotech

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For Uvalde families, social media is a tool to share grief and energize advocacy

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FCC cracks down on AI robocall scams, Meta tightens oversight of AI content and Sen. Klobuchar discusses Section 230 reform

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What does it take to protect children online?

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The Department of Energy will track energy used in crypto mining

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Pumped-storage hydropower could help renewable energy flow

Back in the 1970s, the Tennessee Valley Authority built what remains one of the largest energy storage facilities in the world: a pumped-storage hydropower plant. A pump takes water from the Tennessee River, shoots it up a giant shaft and holds it there until electric power needs peak during the day. At that point, the water is allowed to drain back down, spinning turbines that can generate enough power for a million homes. It’s almost like a gravity-powered battery as big as a cathedral … buried deep inside a mountain. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Robert Kunzig, a freelance journalist who recently wrote about this in depth for the publication Science. He says pumped-storage hydro is attracting a lot of interest, thanks in part to generous tax credits from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

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Apples Vision Pro is finally here. What took so long?

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Tech CEOs grilled by Congress, Microsoft still leads in AI, and Neuralink touts its human brain implant

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What the grief tech industry says about how we navigate loss

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The many battles in the lithium and critical minerals revolution

In 2021, the Biden administration put out a report about gaps in the supply chain for electric vehicles. It estimated global demand for lithium and graphite would grow by more than 4,000% by 2040 if the world were to achieve the climate goals laid out in the Paris accords. These materials, along with copper, nickel and others, are critical to green technologies. And there is a global fight over their supply, one that Reuters correspondent Ernest Scheyder documents in his new book, “The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives.” He told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali about why lithium, in particular, is in such high demand and the challenges of bringing it to market.

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More people are buying EVs, but there arent enough mechanics to fix them

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Why carbon capture isnt a magic bullet solution to the climate crisis

In rural North Dakota, an old, coal-fired power plant is being retrofitted to capture emissions before they enter the atmosphere and store them underground. $890 million from the 2022 bipartisan infrastructure law will go towards that and two similar projects in California and Texas. Critics take issue with spending taxpayer money to kick the tires on “carbon capture and storage” technology. Among those critics are Catherine McKenna, Canada’s former minister of environment and climate change. She’s now CEO of Climate and Nature Solutions, an advisory firm, and chairs the UN’s expert group on net-zero commitments.

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Layoffs continue, Silicon Valley renews romance with Middle East money and why Netflix is retiring its no-ads basic tier

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How satellite radar helps scientists map the destruction in Gaza

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The anonymous world of extreme privacy

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AI reveals unseen human activity across the worlds oceans

AI can be used for unsavory things, like any technology. But researchers at the nonprofit Global Fishing Watch have revealed a promising use case \\u2014 enlisting AI to accurately track human activity on the oceans, according to its new study published in the journal Nature. There’s a lot out there that has long floated under the radar of monitoring systems, including the so-called dark fleets involved in illegal and unregulated fishing. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with David Kroodsma, director of research and innovation at Global Fishing Watch, about the group’s work.

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Bitcoin has gone mainstream. For crypto, thats controversial.

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How the C-suite sees AI, whats next for CRISPR and why health tech needs better marketing

On the show today, the Food and Drug Administration expanded its approval for CRISPR gene-editing therapies. We look at the affordability of these treatments, which can cost well into the millions of dollars. Plus, is bad marketing stunting health tech companies? More on how startups can up their game. But first, at this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, there were 32 scheduled events devoted to AI. When they weren’t comparing private jets, business executives were busy asking, \\u201cHow do you make money off AI?\\u201d Marketplaces\\u2019 Lily Jamali is joined by Christina Farr, a health tech investor at OMERS Ventures, for her take on these stories.

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Spot bitcoin investment funds likely to stoke miners massive energy use

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The demise of Hyperloop One and the future of high-speed transport

While Marketplace’s Lily Jamali was at CES last week in Las Vegas, she took her first ride on the Vegas Loop, built by Elon Musk’s the Boring Co. In 2013, Musk floated the concept of a hyperloop as a way for people to travel long distances at superfast speeds via pods in vacuum-sealed tubes. The Vegas Loop, as Lily found out, is not that. Developing actual hyperloop technology is hard and costly. Just ask Hyperloop One, a startup that recently shut down after a decade of trying. Lily recently spoke with Bloomberg’s Sarah McBride about Hyperloop One’s demise and what it means for the tech sector’s larger ambition to create hyperloop transport systems.

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Could hydropanels help solve the water crisis?

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Can robots make us less lonely?

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AI in the workplace, where venture capital will flow and age tech at CES

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Can tech help improve your sleep?

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At CES, a look down the long road ahead for automotive tech

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What to watch for at CES

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Women still hold just a third of clean energy jobs, Fuller Project says

Last June, President Joe Biden flew to Silicon Valley to tout the massive federal investment in clean energy made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act. For a long time though, women have been largely shut out of clean tech jobs. And an investigation by the nonprofit newsroom The Fuller Project, reported by Kate Gammon, found that last year, women filled just 32% of green energy jobs, up just 1 percentage point since 2008. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with senior editor Aaron Glantz about The Fuller Project’s sometimes graphic findings.

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Tesla updates driver assistance software, Apples rocky start to the year and the personal tech to keep an eye on in 2024

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Is Big Tech using philanthropy to influence universities?

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The ins and outs of reporting on Facebook

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Using the internet to connect users to queer-owned spaces around the world

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For many, AI is a religious experience (rerun)

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What happened to the Metaverse?

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Crypto comes to the classroom

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RIP, Netflix DVD

In 2023, we said goodbye to a service you might not have known was still around \\u2014 DVD delivery from Netflix, now a giant in streaming. With a collection of more than 100,000 titles available for delivery in those red, paper envelopes, the DVD service retained some utility even years into the company’s transition. But Netflix pulled the plug on the service in September. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Slate writer and editor Sam Adams about what we lost with its demise.

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Preserving Indigenous cultures and languages with the help of AI

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The clouds heavy toll on natural resources (rerun)

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A week of legal troubles for Big Tech

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Long lines and broken chargers: Demand for powering EVs outpaces infrastructure

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Are lab-grown diamonds dazzling consumers?

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EUs tech regulatory framework protects its consumers, but can slow down innovation

When Google unveiled its answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT this month, Gemini, the pitch was: AI that can run efficiently on everything from data centers to your smartphone. But it came with a caveat for users in the UK and the European Union: you can’t use it there, for now. After the EU’s recent passage of the AI Act, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Andrea Renda of the Center for European Policy Studies. He says Google is trying to convince European lawmakers that Gemini complies with the continent’s tough privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Renda says the GDPR is likely why Gemini hasn’t made it to Europe, yet.

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How AI could help families get paid leave benefits

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Europes landmark AI law, Googles court loss and the data behind nearly 100 billion hours of Netflix

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Meta has a problem with hosting predators on its platforms

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Bug bounty hunters attempt at patching zero day vulnerabilities

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Tech companies want marketable web addresses. These island nations are selling them.

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The green bubble vs. blue bubble debate isnt just a tech issue

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Layoffs hit Spotify, Google launches its Gemini AI tool oh, and an unexpected Cameo star

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Tired of trying to protect your data privacy? Youve got consent fatigue.

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Metas pixel code tracks students from kindergarten to college

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Can biofuel help clean up airline emissions?

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A controversial U.S. surveillance program expires this month. Will it be renewed?

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One year of ChatGPT, fast fashions plan to go public and more trouble for Elon Musk

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Big advertisers flee X as Musk spotlights antisemitic content

This time of year, companies tend to open their wallets and choose where they choose to advertise. Those ad dollars are the lifeblood of X, the former Twitter. In the last quarter of 2021, almost 90% of Twitter’s revenue came from ads. That business model was already showing signs of wear after when Elon Musk took over. Now, as the Israel-Hamas war rages on, a new controversial post by Musk has accelerated the flight of advertisers. New York Times journalist Ryan Mac spoke with Marketplace’s Lily Jamali about how the fallout of fleeing advertisers could affect the platform.

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The bust after the boom hits the video game business

This week, TikTok parent ByteDance said it’s retreating from mainstream video games altogether. Earlier this year, Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, a game that has had more than 400 million “unique registered users” since its 2017 launch, announced hundreds of layoffs as well. They’re just some examples of the wave of layoffs hitting game companies around the globe. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Los Angeles Times reporter Sarah Parvini, who covers the video game sector. In a piece just last week, she wrote that the industry is deep in downsizing mode.

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Being an influencer sounds great, but is it really that glamorous?

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Menopause technology could finally be having its moment

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What venture capital is thinking after a week of high drama and shakeups in tech

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Older video games are in danger of going extinct (rerun)

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Kids prep for YouTube careers at content creator camp

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Why OpenAIs board fired CEO Sam Altman

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How is crypto doing in a post-Sam Bankman-Fried world?

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Google and Apples complicated relationship, and Metas chance to return to China

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When work communication tools distract from the actual work

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The autonomous vehicle industry hits another roadblock

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What it takes for Mexican coders to cross the cultural border with Silicon Valley

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After years of explosive growth, is Chinas livestream shopping industry slowing down?

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WeWork files for bankruptcy, Metas plan for election-related AI and ad blockers get blocked

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Moneyball: the Oakland As and the transformation of baseball data

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Technology, community, insurance: How California hopes to mitigate future wildfires

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Social media and eSIMs help Gazans stay connected amid war and blackouts

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Military service members personal data is for sale. Is that a threat to national security?

Remember when President Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok? He called attention to the risk that American users’ data could fall into the hands of Chinese authorities who have ties to the app’s owners. A judge blocked the ban, but even if he hadn’t, experts say so much of our personal information is available to buy from run-of-the-mill data brokers. That includes information on Americans serving in the military, which can have big consequences for national security. Marketplace\\u2019s Lily Jamali spoke to Justin Sherman, senior fellow at Duke University\\u2019s Sanford School of Public Policy, about a new study he led in which his team tried buying just that kind of data.

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Global AI concerns, slumping EV sales and Netflixs ad gamble

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AI vs. AI: Automated programs are writing better scam emails, and AI is spotting them

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You realized the AI youre creating may be dangerous. Now what?

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Bidens executive order aims to limit the harms of AI

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Why default settings are important to a search engines success

It was declared the winner of the search-engine wars way back in 1998. Fortune magazine said the company was poised for much bigger things. That company was, actually, Yahoo. As it turned out, that prediction didn\\u2019t age well. Of course, Google is the real winner of the battle for search engine dominance. How it got there is the subject of the U.S. Justice Department\\u2019s antitrust case against it. Google has just started mounting its defense as the 10-week trial nears its end. Much of the case hinges on the question of default settings on tech devices. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with her colleague Matt Levin about the role of those settings in the government’s argument.

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Policymakers take on AI, deepfakes and Metas effects on kids

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Ageism in Chinas tech sector has workers fearing the curse of 35

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How teens are being blackmailed with sexting scams on social media

Last year, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) got more than 10,000 tips about minors extorted in sexting scams. The number is even higher so far this year. And what authorities are noticing is that in a lot of these cases boys are the target. It often starts with direct messages on social media. Flirting leads to requests for explicit photos. And as soon as they hit send, the person on the other end threatens to share the photos unless they get paid. Freelance reporter Chris Moody wrote about what’s being called “sextortion” for the Washington Post. A warning: this conversation includes a mention of teen suicide.

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As New York cracks down on rentals, Airbnb hosts go underground

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CRISPR pioneer Doudna envisions ending asthma, aiding climate

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Workers in Israels dynamic tech sector are joining the war effort. Thats affecting the industry, and the economy.

Thousands of Israelis and Palestinians have lost their lives since Hamas gunmen staged their surprise raid on Oct. 7. In the wake of the attack, Israel’s defense forces have called up more than 350,000 reservists, about 4% of its population. The country’s booming tech industry could be affected more than most, given that so many younger Israelis work in the sector. Fast Company contributing writer Issie Lapowsky recently interviewed several of them, including an Israeli tech lawyer named Yitzy Hammer.

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The potential return of net neutrality and the future of the digital divide

The talk of late at the Federal Communications Commission is whether to restore net neutrality. When the Barack Obama administration put those rules in place in 2015, the idea was to ensure that internet service providers \\u2014 or ISPs \\u2014 like Verizon and Comcast gave consumers fair access to the web and didn\\u2019t favor sites and services they controlled. But that mandate was repealed two years later under then-FCC Chair Ajit Pai, chosen by then-President Donald Trump. He argued that net neutrality would disincentivize companies from building their networks in low-income, urban and rural areas. Critics of the repeal argued that rural America’s ability to access the internet would be hurt. After the federal repeal, some states adopted their own net neutrality regulations while others didn\\u2019t, which provided a pretty great data set for researchers wanting to know: What would getting rid of net neutrality mean for internet access in rural areas?\\xa0

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Bacteria could be the key to a safer, greener way of processing rare-earth metals

The word “bacteria” doesn’t exactly evoke positive images, but scientists at Cornell University recently discovered a novel way to replicate and use a bacterium from Oneida Lake in New York state. It’s called Shewanella oneidensis, and it has a special affinity for the rare-earth elements \\u2014 such as so-called lanthanides, metals that are important for clean, renewable energy technology. The bacteria can be used to process rare-earth metals through a method called biosorption, which is considered safer and less taxing on the environment than current means of extraction. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed the findings with Buz Barstow, a professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell and a lead researcher on the project.

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How the IRS is using $60 billion to make filing taxes less painful

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The game-changing work of Jerry Lawson (rerun)

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The race for Chinas electric vehicle market

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Fraud influencers, phishing and scams account takeovers are on the rise

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San Francisco is becoming a tech hub again, Y Combinator CEO says

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Xs misinformation woes get worse during the Israel-Hamas conflict

Last weekend, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, people around the world flocked to Twitter \\u2014 now X \\u2014 for up-to-the-minute information. What they found was a site crawling with misinformation: images captured months or years earlier in unrelated attacks, inaccurate claims about other countries entering the conflict, even a fake White House press release announcing billions of dollars in new U.S. aid to Israel made the rounds. And X’s owner, Elon Musk, promoting accounts known for spreading lies and hate didn’t help. The signal-to-noise ratio on X is worse than ever, said David Clinch, a founding partner of the social media intelligence agency Storyful and co-founder of Media Growth Partners. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Clinch about what X users should remember when scrolling through the platform for news on the Israel-Hamas situation.

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As SBF sits in court, is cryptocurrency on trial too?

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Streaming data transparency a vast and contested terrain for Hollywood creatives

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California bill could lead the way in diversifying venture capital investments

Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley’s Menlo Park is often referred to as the main street of venture capital. Funding from these influential firms can launch a startup into the big time \\u2014 sometimes unicorn status. But just 2% of venture capital goes to all-female teams. That figure is even lower for Black women and Latina founders. A bill just passed by California lawmakers, SB 54, offers a first-in-the-nation push to gather the statistics on who’s getting all that highly sought-after cash. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until next week to sign it into law. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with reporter Hanisha Harjani of The Fuller Project about how it would work. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

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The beauty industry generates a lot of waste. Technology can help.

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Are state and local governments embracing or banning generative AI?

A couple of weeks back, the news broke that a school district in Mason City, Iowa, was using ChatGPT to implement Iowa’s ban on books that include descriptions of sex acts. One book flagged was Buzz Bissinger’s classic “Friday Night Lights.” The thing is, that book includes no such descriptions, according to the author himself. Although the district reversed course, it’s an example of how more government officials are using artificial intelligence at work, in some cases leading to restrictions on tools like ChatGPT. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with journalist Todd Feathers, who covered this recently in Wired.

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The history of the keyboard is filled with battles, controversies and lasers

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How Californias Delete Act could impact the business of data brokering

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After a decade, the EU draws the curtains on its Human Brain Project

In making the case for the Human Brain Project back in 2009, neuroscientist Henry Markram noted that 2 billion people are affected by some kind of mental disorder. It was time, he said, to explore fundamental questions about how the brain works. The collaboration that resulted involved hundreds of scientists across several nations. This week marks the end of Europe’s ambitious but also at times controversial initiative. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Miryam Naddaf, a reporter for the publication Nature, about what the project’s researchers have accomplished.

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What the FTCs antitrust lawsuit means for Amazon

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Whats happening in the Google antitrust trial? Its kind of a black box.

We’re going on Week 3 of Google’s high-stakes trial over allegations that it bought its way to dominance in internet search. The Department of Justice and several states allege that the tech giant has maintained a lucrative monopoly through exclusive contracts with browser companies and phone makers like Apple and Samsung. Google has countered that it’s dominant in search because it offers the best product. Covering this trial has been a complicated task. Part of the challenge is that Google and other companies involved have moved to shield documents from public view. That applies to some testimony too. Leah Nylen, an antitrust reporter for Bloomberg who’s been present throughout, told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali about the trade-offs involved in these confidentiality decisions.

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How countries around the world shape their data policy

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AI in schools creates greater risk for marginalized students, researchers find

When ChatGPT came on the scene in November, it sent schools across the country into a panic. Some districts immediately started setting rules around how students could use artificial intelligence programs in their schoolwork. Others moved to ban them altogether. All this happened while information about the good and the bad of AI’s foray into classrooms was still pretty scarce. Researchers at the Center for Democracy & Technology, based in Washington, D.C., gathered data to counter some of the hype. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed it with Elizabeth Laird, CDT’s director of equity in civic technology and a co-author of a report out this week.

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Model collapse shows AI doesnt have the human touch, writer says

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The race to develop earthquake warning tech

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How presidential candidates are talking about tech on the campaign trail

We are a little more than a year away from Election Day, and voters have probably heard something about candidates’ views on the economy, foreign policy and other issues in the media daily. But today, “Marketplace Tech” is looking at what candidates are telling voters about their plans for the future of technology in the United States. How are they framing issues related to artificial intelligence, social media and the power of Big Tech? If you scroll through the websites of the leading candidates, tech might not seem very high on their priority list so far. But tech is definitely on the agenda \\u2014 you just have to know where to look and what to listen for. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Dave Weigel, politics reporter for the news website Semafor, about how the contenders are defining and spinning tech to influence voters.

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Have smartphones peaked?

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How tech has influenced a year of demonstrations in Iran

Saturday marks one year since the death of Mahsa Amini, the young woman who was arrested by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s “morality police” for allegedly violating its strict dress code for women. She died in custody. Protests that started at Amini’s funeral quickly spread across the country. Iranians have depended on messaging apps and social media to share information and try to stay safe. But staying connected hasn’t been easy, according to Shaghayegh Norouzi and Reza Ghazinouri with the U.S.-based nonprofit United for Iran. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Norouzi and Ghazinouri about the online resources United for Iran has developed and the technology used by activists across the country.

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How Musks Starlink became a security liability for the U.S.

Here on Earth, the satellites that make up Starlink look like a string of stars travelling across the night sky. More than 4,000 of them are circling the Earth in low orbit right now. They’re part of the private venture that\\u2019s the brainchild of billionaire and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Last year, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Musk sent Starlink terminals there so Ukraine could stay connected to the internet. But turns out Musk controls both the on and the off switch on that technology, giving him an outsized role in the conflict, according to Steven Feldstein of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He’s out with a story in The Atlantic on how that happened and what can be done about it.

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Why did the Instant Pot go out of style?

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The European Commission lists some tech titans as gatekeepers of online services

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Why Apple is supporting the right to repair in California

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Googles Justice Department trial could test the future of antitrust law

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Its imperative and nearly impossible to contain artificial intelligence, expert says

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X/Twitters political ad policy could affect elections around the world

Then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey banned them in 2019. Now, owner and Chair Elon Musk is officially bringing back political ads from parties and candidates to the company he renamed X, expanding its push into cause-based advertising. The move could boost revenue; some big brands have been less than eager to buy ads on the platform since Musk took over. X didn’t respond to a request for comment by the time of taping, but it has said it plans to expand its safety and elections team ahead of the 2024 elections in the United States. That, of course, would come after deep staff cuts. For analysis, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali had a chat with Jonathan Lemire, host of “Way Too Early” on MSNBC and the White House bureau chief at Politico, and Katie Harbath, a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

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The U.S. and Chinas different and similar attitudes about AI in the workplace

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Why people are letting Worldcoin scan their eyes

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Signal will leave the UK if the current version of the Online Safety Bill becomes law, says the companys president

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Womens health startups are still trying to crack Silicon Valleys glass ceiling

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YouTube and Universal Music leap into the AI copyright void

YouTube recently announced a partnership with Universal Music Group to launch a music AI incubator. Their goal is to come up with new artificial intelligence projects and protect artists. The venture comes after songs featuring AI versions of singers like Drake, Kanye West and Frank Sinatra got viral attention, raising questions around how copyright law applies to AI-derived music and who should be paid. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge and host of the Decoder podcast, about how the deal could breed innovation but also create serious problems.

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Your next tattoo could be invisible

According to the Pew Research Center, about one-third of Americans have at least one tattoo. Most get one to honor someone or make a statement. But a nanoengineer in Colorado, a tattoo artist to the stars and a former doctoral student have long-term hopes for smart tattoos with a health purpose. They’re starting with ink that can appear and disappear with different kinds of light.

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Diversifying the games industry, one virtual experience at a time

Video games are about a lot more than having fun. They also give us narrative lessons and messages about the economy and culture \\u2014 issues that often affect the people who make them. “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio has been reporting on this in a series called “Skin in the Game.” The series took him to Oakland, California, for a visit to a nonprofit group called Gameheads. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with David about how the medium is giving students at Gameheads an outlet to translate their personal experiences into stories.

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Tracking methane from space to slow the warming of Earth

This year could become the hottest one ever recorded. In reporting on the climate crisis, carbon dioxide gets most of the headlines. But molecule for molecule, methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas. It’s odorless and colorless, making it difficult to detect. While CO₂ can linger in the atmosphere for centuries, methane lasts more like seven to 12 years. And because methane is so potent, the ability to quickly detect and fix leaks could have an immediate climate benefit. The nonprofit Carbon Mapper tracks greenhouse gas emissions by flying planes with imaging spectrometers over oil and natural gas hubs and other spots where leaks can cluster. But to scale things up, it’s working with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on an instrument that can detect methane releases from space. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently spoke about the mission and its mechanics with JPL senior research scientist Rob Green at the lab’s campus in Pasadena, California, outside the “clean room” where the instrument has been developed.

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How one company hopes to alleviate poverty in India with ethical data

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Artificial intelligence may influence whether you can get pain medication

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The clouds heavy toll on natural resources

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YouTube will disable recommendations for some users. Will that decrease harmful content?

Warning: This conversation isn’t appropriate for all listeners.

YouTube\\u2019s recommendation algorithm has always been key to keeping users on the site. Watch a cute cat video, and the platform spews countless more of the same. But that also applies to harmful content, which the YouTube algorithm sometimes serves up not just to adults, but also to kids. Well, this month, Google-owned YouTube said it’ll stop displaying recommended videos to some users who have turned off their watch histories. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed this with Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, an organization that “seeks to hold large technology companies accountable.” Paul said controls on the recommendation algorithm on the site’s homepage are vital.

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The dangers of AI in the 2024 elections

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Hollywood hires for AI-related roles as strikers seek protection from tech threat

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Dating apps fail to protect some users from predators, Mother Jones finds

Warning: This episode contains references to sexual abuse and violence.

Whether for a hookup or to find true love, 3 out of 10 American adults say they have used a dating app, according to the Pew Research Center. But an investigation out Wednesday from Mother Jones looks into how these apps can also incubate abuse, finding that companies like Grindr and Match Group have failed to protect some of their users from predators. At the heart of this story is this question: Is that the companies’ responsibility? The tech industry has long argued the answer is no, thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet companies from liability for content posted xx on their sites. Abby Vesoulis is the author of the Mother Jones investigation. Her story begins with Matthew Herrick, whose ex-boyfriend created fake profiles of him on Grindr.

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Swedens building an electric road that could charge EVs while driving

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How do Americans feel about AI?

We’re quickly coming up on one year since ChatGPT was released to the public. In that time, it and other generative AI tools have placed artificial intelligence front and center in a larger discussion about the future of work, art, ethics and pretty much everything else. So, what do Americans think about AI now? The upshot is that many of you are checking the “somewhat concerned” and “mostly concerned” boxes on this one. And it seems like Democrats and Republicans are generally on the same page regarding the future of AI. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed the question with Ryan Heath, global tech correspondent for Axios, who recently combed through several surveys to get a sense of the country’s current sentiment toward AI.

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Virality, algorithms and echo chambers: Can adjusting the feed diminish division online?

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How to share memorable experiences through video games

The artists, producers, designers, and others who make your favorite video games have the technical chops to make it in the industy. But they also bring their personal stories and experiences to the job \\u2014 and they’re able to take players along. Gameheads, a nonprofit based in Oakland, California, is teaching the next generation of developers how to do that, encouraging them to incorporate themes from their own lives, like gentrification and mental health, into the games they create. Lisette Titre-Montgomery is a veteran art director in the game industry and a Gameheads instructor. She shared how she got started and why she’s helping others break into the business of making games.

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For many, AI is a religious experience

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What venture capital layoffs mean for the startup economy

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Legislation could stall companys effort to get autonomous trucks on California highways

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Cybersecurity labels are coming. Will they be effective?

The Joe Biden administration has begun work on a cybersecurity certification program for online devices and appliances that may be vulnerable to hacks or other invasive cyberattacks. Consumers can basically think of this U.S. Cyber Trust Mark as akin to a nutrition label, but in this case it tells you if your smart speakers, baby monitor or fitness tracker are secure. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Stacey Higginbotham, founder and editor of the Internet of Things newsletter, about why getting this program out soon is vital to strengthening national cybersecurity.

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Should the AI makers also be the AI regulators?

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The AI concentration problem in the U.S.

There\\u2019s a lot at stake in the artificial intelligence race, and although it may feel like it’s everywhere, the U.S. AI race is primarily playing out in just a few places \\u2014 specifically, hubs that offer AI entrepreneurs advantages like capital, talent and more. That helps explain why so many AI companies, patents, job opportunities and so much else are concentrated in Silicon Valley and other very expensive, mostly coastal U.S. cities, said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Muro about that concentration and what it means for AI development going forward.

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Grade school students send research in tiny cubes into space

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The potential future of open-source generative AI

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The advantages and drawbacks of decentralized social networks

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How companies are trying to leverage AI

It sure feels like we’re on the verge of an artificial intelligence revolution in many workplaces. New tools like chatbots and image generators have taken the tech world by storm, but many businesses across the economy are still figuring out what exactly it means for them. That’s often where firms like Accenture come in. It offers business services and consulting. Last month, Accenture surveyed more than 2,300 C-suite leaders across industries and around the world on their thinking about integrating generative tools into their workflows. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Lan Guan, the global lead for data and AI at Accenture, who said the survey found almost universal enthusiasm.

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Creating humanlike minds is the next step in AI development

Even the most impressive artificial intelligence today isn’t quite what we see in science fiction. The superintelligent humanoids of “Westworld,” the malevolent supercomputer in “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the emotionally attuned operating system in “Her” are all more like artificial general intelligence, rather than just artificial intelligence. They’re machines that are capable of everything humans are, or even more. As far as we know, AGI hasn’t become a reality yet. But John Licato, a professor of computer science at the University of South Florida, tells Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino that experts don’t always agree on where the tipping point is.

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Companies are struggling to meet Californias new child data privacy standards

Most online services that children use are likely monetizing their data in some way, according to a new report from Common Sense Media. The nonprofit analyzed the privacy policies of more than 200 popular internet platforms and found that about three-quarters of them were sharing user data or lacked transparency about how they use personal data. Disclosing those details and offering users a chance to opt out is required in California under the latest expansion of the state’s landmark privacy law, which was sponsored by Common Sense. A recent court ruling extended the deadline to comply with the new privacy provisions to March 29. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, about how many companies’ current privacy policies can be misleading.

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What our nuclear history can teach us about AI

The movie “Oppenheimer,” about the making of the nuclear bomb, opened last week, and the subject matter has spurred an unavoidable comparison with artificial intelligence. Leaders at AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have explicitly framed the risks of developing AI in those terms, while historical accounts of the Manhattan Project have become required reading among some researchers. That’s according to Vox senior correspondent Dylan Matthews. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Matthews about his recent reporting on the parallels between AI and nuclear weapons.

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Special: What happens when AI goes to work

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AI on the Job: How artificial intelligence could create new careers

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AI on the Job: Get ready to meet your AI assistant

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AI on the Job: Will you be competing with a bot for a gig?

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AI on the Job: How AI can influence what you learn at work

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AI on the Job: How generative tools automate and augment some parts of work

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Love in the time of AI

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Older video games are in danger of going extinct

For the most part, it’s not too hard to get access to movies from the last decade or even the last century. But if you want to experience a video game from before, say, the ancient era of 2010? Good luck. A new report from the Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network finds that 87% of those older games are “critically endangered.” They’re not commercially available to the public unless fans have dozens of different old systems to play them on or travel to an archive in person and play them there. In other words, the roots of this hugely influential artistic and cultural medium are in danger of being lost. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Phil Salvador, library director for the Video Game History Foundation, about the report.

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Are we entering the age of the space startup?

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Threads app gains popularity, but it comes with some privacy concerns

The hot, new thing in social media is not really that new at all. And that’s kind of the point. The app Threads from Meta looks like a familiar blend of Twitter and Instagram. It’s attracted more than 100 million users in less than a week, pulling way ahead of Twitter alternatives like Mastodon or Bluesky, in large part because it’s part of an already established social media brand. You don’t have to start from scratch on Threads; just log in with your Instagram credentials and import all your follows with the push of a button. But there’s some baggage that comes along with that Insta network, said Shirin Ghaffary, a senior correspondent at Vox who covers social media. She talked about it with Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino.

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In the futuristic world of Her, tech is designed to be invisible

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Diversity among esports athletes is slowly increasing (rerun)

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The systemic barriers to landing a Big Tech internship (rerun)

This episode originally aired May 3, 2023.

While it\\u2019s never been easy to get one of the coveted spots at big-name Silicon Valley firms, this year there\\u2019s an added wrinkle: The tech industry is reeling from mass layoffs. Many human resources departments and recruiting budgets have been slashed, which could put up even more barriers for candidates from underrepresented groups, said Ruthe Farmer, founder and CEO of the Last Mile Education Fund, which helps low-income students get through college and get on track for a career in tech. That\\u2019s challenging even in the best of times, she told Marketplace\\u2019s Meghan McCarty Carino. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

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The challenges of archiving the internet (rerun)

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As chatbots are deployed, AI whisperers will be employed (rerun)

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Americans mental health data is on the market (rerun)

This episode was originally published on Mar. 28, 2023.

Digital tools like virtual therapy and meditation apps have made mental health care more accessible. But they\\u2019ve made data about the people using them more accessible too. That\\u2019s what Joanne Kim found while conducting research as an undergraduate student at Duke University. The\\xa0final report was published in February. During her study, Kim identified 11 data broker firms willing and able to sell highly sensitive mental health data to her. Marketplace\\u2019s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Justin Sherman, a senior fellow at Duke\\u2019s Sanford School of Public Policy who helped oversee the study, about how this data ends up on the market.

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The long history of Amazon and Walmarts battle to be the behemoth of retail

Amazon and Walmart. Walmart and Amazon. Separately and together, for better or worse, these megaretailers have transformed how Americans transact. It’s the subject of a new book: “Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart and the Battle for Our Wallets.” Author Jason Del Rey says that in recent years, the two have been almost mirror images, with Walmart chasing online sales while Amazon opens physical stores.

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How weaponizing AI could alter the outcomes of elections

Politics is a game in which the truth often gets stretched. But new artificial intelligence tools are making it easy for anyone to bend reality into a pretzel. AI-generated video, still images and fundraising emails are already popping up on the campaign trail. There are fake photos of Donald Trump embracing Dr. Anthony Fauci, exaggerated dystopian Toronto cityscapes and a stock photo of a woman with a curious surplus of arms. The threat goes beyond the occasional extra appendage or incendiary but obvious deepfake, says Mike Hamilton, co-founder of cybersecurity firm Critical Insight. He spoke with Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about AI\\u2019s power to enable election manipulators to finely target specific groups of voters with disinformation.

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Teaching AI to think like a human

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Major social media platforms fail to protect LGBTQ+ users

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) recently released its annual social media safety index. It scores the five biggest platforms \\u2014 Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter \\u2014 on how well they’re doing protecting LGBTQ+ users from harassment and abuse. All five platforms received failing grades. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube did improve their scores slightly over last year but Twitter\\u2019s score sank, hitting a new low of 33%, according to Jenni Olson, GLAAD\\u2019s Program Director for Social Media Safety.

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Identifying the trade-offs in online age verification

Concern about the harm social media can do to young people is growing. But to protect kids, platforms have to know who is underage. That\\u2019s why user age verification has become a focus for policymakers. Several states have passed laws that require it. But these policies require a range of trade-offs, according to a new analysis from Utah State University\\u2019s Center for Growth and Opportunity. Matt Perault and Scott Brennen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill\\u2019s Center on Technology Policy co-wrote that research. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino discussed the costs and benefits involved in various age verification methods with the pair.

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What happened when an entire class of college students had ChatGPT write their essays

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The FTC had a monopoly lawsuit against Google in its sights, and it blinked

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Fever-screening devices used in many places are not helping control the pandemic

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Our experiment in remote schooling could improve education, if we do it right

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AT&T says wireless won’t be a last-mile replacement for fiber

We’re looking back on a year of life under the pandemic, and it’s clear that the internet remains everything. As long as you have access. The year showed us just how much that infrastructure could use some improving. We called one of the country’s biggest internet and wireless providers, AT&T, which has been criticized for rolling out high-speed fiber to only about 30% of the homes in its 21-state territory. The company says it’s investing heavily in 5G. It just spent $23 billion on wireless spectrum. The person in charge of building out these networks is AT&T Communications CEO Jeff McElfresh. He told Molly Wood that AT&T plans to keep expanding fiber to 3 million more customers this year and that wireless won’t be the last-mile solution in place of fiber.

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One result of one year into the pandemic: Privacy might be dead

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White House signals that antitrust enforcement is on its agenda

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Sex workers pivoted to OnlyFans, but there are a lot of amateurs there, too

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China wants to go carbon neutral by 2060, which could mean kicking out some tech

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The U.S. could manufacture batteries, but it’s a dirty business

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Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky says post-pandemic, cities might actually want the company around

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Online vaccine misinformation is big business for creators

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Google is changing the way ad tracking works

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We’re using tech to solve all our problems. But plenty of people still have problems with the tech.

Part of the problem with the COVID-19 vaccine is that the tech to get it isn’t accessible to the people who need it most. Online-only appointment systems are leaving out people without internet access or devices, and clunky, buggy websites are testing everyone’s digital literacy. For Nicol Turner Lee, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, it’s part of a bigger problem that needs a big solution. We’ve got tech that’s unevenly distributed, plus a struggling economy that needs to transition to the digital age. So Turner Lee proposes that big solution in a recent piece for Brookings: a Tech New Deal and a paid civilian corps of tech-savvy people to do building, training and outreach. The idea is that maybe the next big disaster solution won’t leave people behind.

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The chip shortage is a manufacturing problem that won’t be easy to solve

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As telecoms spend billions on wireless, where does that leave the wired?

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Does Clubhouse owe its Black users for the platform’s success?

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Shopify is taking on e-commerce giants

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Could Australia’s antitrust enforcement break the way the web works?

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You need to have secure ingredients to have a secure product

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How a crafty creator took her business online while Broadway’s dark

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Filling the archives with stories from Black Silicon Valley

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Gig companies have the upper hand. So why are they still negotiating?

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Could more women-led tech companies make the internet less awful?

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Should every B.A. include some AI?

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Maybe some critical infrastructure shouldn’t be hooked up to the internet

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New antitrust legislation would check the power of tech giants

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How the history of Blackness on the internet was erased

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$1 billion toward better tribal broadband is just a down payment

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Some tribes are getting help narrowing the digital divide

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Amazon is getting a new CEO. Will that mean big change or status quo?

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Social media was supposed to give everyone a voice. It didn’t.

For Black History Month, we’re looking at the history of Blackness on the internet. Through most of that history, Black women in particular have been disproportionately harassed and abused. And then ignored when they tried to report that abuse or point out how tech might be misused to further oppress people online and offline. Ignored by tech companies and, it must be said, by journalists, too. Researcher and writer Sydette Harry wrote about this in Wired in a piece called “Listening to Black Women: The Innovation Tech Can’t Figure Out.” Molly asked her: “What could the internet look like right now if we had listened to Black women all along?”

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Facebook shouldn’t be surprised its groups were overrun with conspiracies

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The power of transferring technology for climate adaptation

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When you need to figure out how to deal with water, go to the experts

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Lawmakers call for regulation after Robinhood halts trading

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The GameStop-stock market story is absurd

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The EU doesn’t trust its citizens’ data in the hands of the U.S.

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The Biden administration is inheriting working COVID-19 hospital data

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Investment in climate tech is also economic stimulus

Climate change is high on President Joe Biden’s agenda. Last week, on his first day in office, the United States rejoined the Paris climate accord. Reuters reports he’s expected to announce a climate order that will introduce new regulations and make climate change a national security priority. And Biden has tied economic recovery to climate investment — new jobs, new infrastructure and new funding. Molly spoke with Jay Koh, managing director of the private equity firm Lightsmith Group, which is focused on climate adaptation technology.

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President Biden called for an end to disinformation. Will the internet hear him?

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The failed Plaid-Visa merger is interesting fintech tea

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Are pro-Trump extremists’ messages more dangerous if they’re encrypted?

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Taking down content is not censorship. It’s business.

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Social media has been radicalizing people for years

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Will “cancel culture” come for us all?

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Archiving posts from the Capitol attack has value for police and researchers

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Another fear after Capitol attack: information security

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One effect of the Instagrammed insurrection: FOMO

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Surveillance tech is not accomplishing the things it’s supposed to

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Social media companies block Trump, but where’s the bigger reckoning with hate speech?

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Insurrection could be a turning point for social media

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Apple’s privacy labels show which apps collect the most data. Will people care?

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Algorithms for vaccine distribution have a weakness: the people behind them

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Telehealth is here to stay

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Mapping internet access: No clear data on haves and have-nots

This episode originally aired on Jun. 23, 2020.

All this week on, we’re revisiting some of our shows from 2020 that touch on issues we think will continue to be pivotal in the year ahead. Chief among those is the internet. It now touches pretty much every part of our lives, but not everyone has access to good service. Earlier this month, the FCC announced the results of a $9 billion auction to provide high-speed broadband to homes and businesses that don’t have it. The money comes from something called the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, and this is just the first chunk of money to come from it. The FCC is planning to allocate billions more. But the data the FCC is using to map where broadband is most needed is wildly inaccurate, even by the agency’s own admission. Molly speaks with Nicol Turner Lee, who researches technology access as a fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. She says the coronavirus pandemic has made the mapping problem even more obvious.

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Making sure climate solutions don’t make more problems

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Making datasets inclusive from the ground up

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A possible life raft for small businesses selling online

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A game store owner takes on e-commerce, reluctantly

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Small businesses are getting a crash course in e-commerce

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How We Survive: Adapting to climate change

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Russia is likely to launch the disinformation version of nukes

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We hardly ever talk about YouTube and disinformation. Not anymore.

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The common theme with the biggest tech companies: walled gardens

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The latest cyberattack on the U.S. government is a big deal

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Virtual eviction hearings can make horrible situations even worse

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What can Facebook learn from the attempt to break up Microsoft?

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If everyone is shopping online this year, why aren’t shippers prepared?

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The COVID-19 vaccine is nothing short of a technology miracle

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There’s no vaccine for lies about the COVID-19 vaccine

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Here’s the real deal with Section 230

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Creating water out of thin air in the Navajo Nation

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Could a Silicon Valley startup make geothermal heating cool?

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One key to adapting to climate change: Having your own energy grid

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Banks are getting interested in big data to figure out their climate risk

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Making old buildings resilient to climate change requires new financial tools

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Gig workers weigh in on Prop 22 passing

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The future of work … as determined by Uber?

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Retail therapy is great, but returns can take the fun out of it

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Retailers are turning to virtual storefronts this holiday season

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How soon some parts of the country get 5G depends on what the Biden administration does

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Parler lets anything happen on its platform — what if nobody else cares?

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Twitter is finally thinking about accessibility first

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The battle over Chinese tech might not change under a Biden administration

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Post-election purge hits cybersecurity

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It’s time to talk about voting technology. No, not that kind of voting.

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Election misinformation is still spreading

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The H-1B visa program is about to get another reboot

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Will a Biden administration try to break up Big Tech?

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Bringing back net neutrality rules is high on Biden’s tech agenda

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What will a Biden administration mean for tech policy?

The incoming Biden administration will have a long list of policy initiatives, but since the last time Joe Biden was in the White House, tech policy has taken on a much bigger role. Back in 2017, President Trump’s FCC overturned net neutrality regulations. In the years since, the administration has made tech a huge part of its China trade policy, launched antitrust investigations and crafted executive orders on immigration that severely restricted the flow of tech talent. And then there’s the whole social media thing. So what will a Biden administration tackle? Molly speaks with Tom Merritt, host of the “Daily Tech News Show” podcast.

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California’s new privacy law could create haves and have-nots

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Voting is over, but the disinformation machine is humming right along

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The next front in the disinformation war is when you can’t trust what you see

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Online campaign ads are showing up in more places than ever

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This election will set the course for tech policy for years to come

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Robots will be verifying some of our ballots. Can we trust them?

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No, social media isn’t biased against conservatives

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It takes money to make money — that’s an actual regulation

The world of private equity — the hedge funds, the venture capital, the people pouring a ton of money into startups — comes with a huge risk. The reward can be huge too. But if you want a piece of this world, you have to be what’s known as an accredited investor, which means you need to be rich. The idea, historically, was to protect people from getting swindled into throwing their life savings into some sketchy investment. But as time has gone on, people have criticized the rule as a wall that’s shut a lot of people out from opportunities to gain wealth. Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission is changing the rules. Molly speaks with Arlan Hamilton, founder of the venture capital firm Backstage Capital, who has been pushing for changes that could reduce the racial wealth gap. She says anyone old enough can make a bet and lose it all in Vegas, so why not in the casino of private equity?

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A potential bureaucratic dispute could slow down the birth of 5G internet

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Is the pandemic an opportunity for more personalized learning?

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California’s Prop. 22 could affect the gig economy nationwide

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What happens if online advertising is just a big, fat bubble?

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Google is officially on the hot seat with the feds. So now what?

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Stitch Fix is betting you’ll buy clothes its way

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There’s not enough internet for remote learning to go around

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5G is finally here — kind of

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Should robots have a gender or ethnicity? One roboticist says no

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Baltimore students grapple with distance learning

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Is LinkedIn ready for Black LinkedIn?

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Automated test grading has moved way past Scantron bubble sheets

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Facebook expands its ban of QAnon on its platforms

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Google and Oracle’s Supreme Court fight could affect the whole industry

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Amazon automation could be making some warehouse jobs more dangerous

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Foreign election interference is finding plenty of places online to spread

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Surveillance technology is not the way to get kids safely back to school

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Pandemics are as much about logistics as they are about public health

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Targeted political advertising could change how and whether people vote

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Refocusing climate change as a human problem

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Self-driving cars are still going to take a long time, people

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With schools online, software to catch students cheating is big business

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Facebook plays whack-a-mole with foreign election interference

Facebook said this week it’s taken down several networks of fake accounts to guard against meddling in the U.S. election, the latest crop tied to Russian intelligence services. The company says those accounts on Facebook and Instagram could have been used to leak hacked documents. It also removed several inauthentic Chinese accounts that in some cases shared material related to President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. Amy Scott speaks with Sarah Frier, a reporter for Bloomberg, who’s been following developments.

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Can Oracle make it into the cloud computing big leagues?

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AI is reshaping the way we buy, sell and value homes

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The pandemic is putting electronic medical records to the test

To slow the spread of coronavirus, testing is essential — and not just getting a test, but getting the results back as quickly as possible. A shortage of the equipment and chemicals needed to perform the tests is part of the problem, but the country also lacks a robust electronic medical record system, which would allow information to be shared seamlessly. We wondered: How much is that slowing everything down? Amy Scott speaks with Julia Adler-Milstein, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where her research focuses on electronic health records. She says part of the problem is all the different software providers — companies like Epic, CareCloud and Athenahealth — don’t play well together.

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For-profit online schools are getting a second look from parents

It’s yet another Monday, and each week this fall we’re covering the challenges of remote school. As parents try to figure out the best digital options, enrollment in alternative online schools is skyrocketing. Some of these are for-profit schools that get public money from states or public school districts for each student that they enroll. They have been around for years. Jennifer King Rice is a professor of education at the University of Maryland who’s studied for-profit virtual schools. She tells Molly that just because they have experience in remote learning doesn’t means their outcomes are better.

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How constant surveillance puts protesters at risk

As Black Lives Matter protests continue around the country, police are using facial recognition and all kinds of other technology to arrest protesters and organizers. While, in some cases, the people arrested did commit crimes, after-the-fact arrests can have a chilling effect on free speech and lead to cases of mistaken identity. They also show us just how much surveillance is part of our lives. Molly speaks with Simone Browne, author of “Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness.”

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How the Gates Foundation’s values shape the world

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America is lagging on climate change. Where is our innovative spirit?

This week alone in our changed climate: More than two dozen people have died in wildfires in Western states and more are missing. Forecasters predict life-threatening flooding from Hurricane Sally in the Gulf. And the foundations of two major Antarctic glaciers are crumbling, threatening dramatic sea level rise. Bill Gates is founder of the billion-dollar Breakthrough Energy Ventures investment fund. He tells Molly Wood that American innovation is still necessary if we’re going to meet U.N. goals of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

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Gates: The U.S. isn’t helping get a COVID vaccine to the rest of the world

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With all this new tech in remote schooling, what are the privacy implications?

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Don’t lose sight of the proposed WeChat ban

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Could a digital New Deal rewrite tech policy?

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Medical tech is the new gold rush for investors during the pandemic

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During the pandemic, social media can be an information lifeline for rural communities

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Back-to-school season kicks off this week, but laptops are sold out

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Turns out, the people who work at Facebook are fighting just as much as the rest of us

Facebook is feeling the pressure to deal with election disinformation. This week the FBI uncovered a new Russian propaganda campaign targeting the 2020 election. And Facebook announced it would block new political ads for a week before the election. So, how does it feel to work at Facebook right now? Molly speaks with Ryan Mac, a senior tech reporter at BuzzFeed. He says the company has an internal communications platform called Workplace, and it’s full of debate.

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A platform-by-platform prescription for treating the disinformation disease

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How autonomous carmakers can make their cars more accessible

Last month, we spoke with Haben Girma, a disability rights advocate, who told us self-driving cars could be an especially powerful tool. “Imagine the freedom, the independence,” she said. “I was talking to someone who works at one of these companies, and he said, ‘We’re a few years from releasing the car. Maybe 10 years from now we’ll think about disability access.’” So how are car companies approaching autonomy and accessibility, and couldn’t they include access for all from the ground up? Molly speaks with Mark Takahashi, who works for the auto research site Edmunds.

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Can social media help deprogram QAnon believers?

QAnon is gaining followers fast. Social media algorithms are putting QAnon posts in front of their users, QAnon is infiltrating GOP politics and, experts say, increasingly QAnon seems less like a fringe conspiracy theory and more like a cult. Molly speaks with Rachel Bernstein, an educator and therapist who is on the advisory board of the International Cultic Studies Association. She says most cult movements take hold in times of trouble.

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Remote learning leaves schools with a problem: how to get everyone online

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Better diversity in venture capital investing might mean putting it in the contract

This week, a group of venture capital firms announced that they’re planning to make diversity a core part of their deals with startup founders. The 10 firms committed to including new standard language in the contracts, called term sheets, they make with startup founders. It’s a diversity rider that says that the company and lead investor will make “every attempt” to include a member of an underrepresented group as a co-investor. It’s not binding, but the idea is that it’ll create opportunity for underrepresented investors to participate in deals and attract founders who prioritize a commitment to equity. Molly Wood speaks with Alejandro Guerrero, who started the initiative and is a principal with the Los Angeles-based firm Act One Ventures.

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How to get clean air indoors when it’s barely safe to breathe outside

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Rethinking indoor air to stop the spread of COVID-19

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What’s next in the Fortnite antitrust fight?

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Online political conventions could be a model for future conferences

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Facebook shutting down QAnon accounts is a little too late

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Public-safety apps might keep you informed. But are they good for the public?

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Mimicking birds and insects is the future of drones

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Viruses don’t discriminate, but health care often does

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The tech behind the search for a COVID-19 vaccine

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Social media takes baby steps in dealing with hate speech. Time to grow up?

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What do Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have in common? One big congressional hearing.

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It’s a lot harder to get out the vote during a pandemic

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An Instagram account is exposing influencer inequality

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The pandemic has been a chance to sell the cloud

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The global economy relies on sharing data across borders. An EU decision could disrupt that.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled that the way thousands of companies share personal data between the U.S. and Europe. They use something called “Privacy Shield,” which isn’t an app. It’s a set of legal rules to moving information back and forth. But the court ruled that doesn’t do enough to protect European’s data from the U.S. government. I spoke with Adam Satariano, a European technology correspondent at The New York Times. He says it’s hard to tell exactly what happens next.

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Contracts between Big Tech and the military can fly under the radar

Google made a new push for more defense work this week, with an approach to cloud computing it thinks should appeal to government customers. Until now, Google has mostly sat those lucrative contracts out, in part because it’s faced pushback from some employees. Other tech companies have, too. But new reporting shows Big Tech is doing a lot more defense and law enforcement work than perhaps was realized. I spoke with Jack Poulson, a former senior research scientist at Google. He now runs the nonprofit Tech Inquiry and has reported on the thousands of subcontracts tech companies have with defense contractors.

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Shipt gig workers boycott new pay algorithm

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Apps like Robinhood make investing easier. Maybe too easy.

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Restaurants are dying, but their ghosts are delivering your food

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What would it take to moderate a platform as big as Facebook?

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How is bias built into algorithms? Garbage in, garbage out.

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What is venture capital doing to change its mostly white culture?

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The days of unlimited pandemic internet are over

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Tech companies should make it someone’s job to think about ethics

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The technology behind the discovery of a new blue hue

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Content creators look for more fan support as brands pull back ad spending

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Ethical hackers are busy stamping out bugs during the pandemic

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When immigrants come to the U.S., investments often follow

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Why the racism in facial recognition software probably can’t be fixed

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If the internet was a utility, could more cities provide it?

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Want affordable, abundant internet access? Competition’s the key.

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Gaps in internet access: Low-income, communities of color most left out

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The pandemic has shown us that the internet is everything

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What happened to coronavirus contact tracing on our phones?

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Can working from home help employees speak out against racism?

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In automated warehouses, robots’ reach exceeds their grasp

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How to prepare our communications for the next natural disaster

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Hacktivism on the rise in wake of national protests

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Tech companies scrap facial recognition products

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Lots of industries are bad at diversity. But tech stands out.

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Can 15,000 moderate the content of 2 billion?

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Climate change isn’t going anywhere, and investment could soon rise

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From BlackPlanet to Black Twitter, the evolution of Black voices on social media

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You may have heard this before: Venture capital investing is not very diverse

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Social media unites and divides us. How should we respond?

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Black founders want tech companies to do more than donate

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Police can track protesters even after the demonstrations end

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How can we respond to mass protests if we can’t agree on what’s happening?

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The regulation that helped build the internet may be in trouble

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Demand for mental health apps is spiking

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Public health officials stuck using faxes to track the coronavirus

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Europe’s data-privacy law turns 2. Has it actually made our information safer?

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Some people are making bread in quarantine. Others are making TikToks

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Restaurants and apps are fighting over fees. Is delivery too cheap to support both?

Most restaurants right now are open for delivery or pickup only, and that means a lot of them are relying on third-party delivery services like Grubhub, DoorDash or Uber Eats. Those services can charge significant fees to restaurants, and some restaurants complain those fees are unsustainable. Some cities have capped those fees and now the delivery companies say the caps are unsustainable. Host Molly Wood speaks with Venessa Wong, a senior reporter at BuzzFeed News.

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When ventilators break, iFixit can help

Ventilators, dialysis machines and mechanical beds are more important than ever. That equipment, of course, breaks down. And some manufacturers restrict access to repair information, so hospital technicians can’t just fix things themselves. Molly Wood speaks with iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens, who just launched a public database of medical-equipment repair manuals.

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Antitrust regulators have an eye on Big Tech’s spending spree

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Ubiquitous Amazon and our new COVID-19 life

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Is it possible that Zoom is not ready for its moment in the spotlight?

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For the most efficient humanitarian response to COVID-19, mine the data

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The tech that can help crank out more critical care hospital space

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Creating COVID-19 tests is complicated science, and business

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A futurist on navigating change forced by the pandemic: fight the fear

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What tech do we have for living through a pandemic? And what tech do we wish we had?

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Social media platforms are fighting disinformation, but with half the resources

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How COVID-19 may further erode our digital privacy

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Getting internet access to everyone during a pandemic is not an easy job

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If social media giants collaborate, can they wrestle down COVID-19 misinformation?

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Now? Launch a startup now? History points to opportunity

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B+ for secure government networks is not going to cut it in case of cyberattacks

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The COVID-19 crisis is making the internet more available

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How can AI help biotech companies seeking vaccines?

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“Years and Years” showrunner on when tech’s great and grim

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#canceleverything = adios tech conferences. Now what?

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How online retailers are handling the COVID-19 gold rush

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In a world of remote work, virtual reality is still pretty much MIA

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Can tech keep learning on track during COVID-19 spread?

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There’s no driving test for self-driving cars — only metrics

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Fintech apps make stock trading fun … until they crash

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A startup founder wants to change the way employees report HR complaints

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Coronavirus concerns? The doctor will video chat with you now. Is that enough?

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One Chinese government Rx for COVID-19: Collect more data

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Inside China’s digital war on information about COVID-19

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Michael Bloomberg is paying for sponsored memes. Any ROI?

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Intuit wants Credit Karma — along with all the data

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What’s behind Jeff Bezos’ $10 billion climate plan?

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Microsoft vs. Amazon vs. White House = Pentagon cloud project delay

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Kickstarter workers voted to unionize. It wasn’t about working conditions.

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The EU is busy crafting a digital strategy. Because no one else is.

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SoftBank in Silicon Valley reallllly disrupts the scene

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FTC examining tech exits could change the landscape in Silicon Valley

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Swipe right for safety features (and give up more data)

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Tech + old mattresses make gardens grow in refugee camp

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