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This is probably the last episode of "Reimagining the Internet", the podcast Mike Sugarman and I have produced for the last five years. Talk about going out on a high note: I interview Alondra Nelson on AI, universities and the Trump administration:

Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at UMass Amherst

117. Alondra Nelson, Biden's Head of Science and Technology Policy, talks AI, Trump's research funding cuts, and how memes replaced Happy Days - Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at UMass Amherst

Alondra Nelson is arguably the most important sociologist of science in America. She isn’t just a brilliant researcher of how race and racism...

I'll have more to say about Reimagining, and what Mike and I hope to do next in podcasting. But this one is a must-hear - Alondra is one of the smartest, best informed and most hopeful people I know.

Honored to be moderating this conversation, "Democracy is a Disability Issue" at the Boston Museum of Science tomorrow night:

Museum of Science

Democracy is a Disability Issue

The Museum and the Perkins School for the Blind team up for this program highlighting how end-to-end accessibility is crucial for civic engagement.

. If you're in Boston, please sign up and come. If not, please watch the live stream:

Museum of Science

Livestream | Democracy is a Disability Issue

The Museum and the Perkins School for the Blind team up for this program highlighting how end-to-end accessibility is crucial for civic engagement.

The attacks by the Trump administration on universities by cutting funding are painful, and are going to damage our ability to conduct research. The attacks that are revoking student visas are utterly terrifying to students and are destroying our ability to teach.

Meta cancelling professional factchecking in favor of community notes is causing worry in West Africa, where online disinfo has led to community violence and death:

Global Voices

The impact on the African continent of Meta scrapping its fact-checking program

The removal of fact-checking on Meta, the social media platform, will have a significant impact on the work of professionals committed to combating...

- Great Global Voices coverage. (Also I love that we can toggle between original quotes and translation - great for me as a French language learner.)

To be slightly blunter than The Atlantic allowed me to be: the tiktok ban is a protectionist subsidy to Meta and Google worth hundreds of billions of dollars:

The Atlantic

America Is No Longer the Home of the Free Internet

How the United States learned to love internet censorship

Social Web Foundation  (I am an advisor) warns that having an unfactchecked Threads on the fediverse is a recipe for misery and mischief:

Social Web Foundation

Content Policy on the Social Web

On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, announced a new content policy for Meta on Threads. We are disappointed in these changes, which put vulner...

Translation is activism. Writing is activism.” Featuring indigenous voices is a form of activism. We need to show all of these forms of activism are possible - Juke Bransiecq #GVSummit2024

Arzu Geybullayeva wonders whether the decentralized web could be a useful starting point for detaching ourselves from the platforms that have so disappointed us over the years. (Blogs, of course, were both decentralized and centered on platforms like Blogger) Asteris argues that we should be everywhere, cross posting across networks, even when it's a pain in the ass. In space engineering, redundancy means we should never rely on a single piece of equipment. #GVSummit2024

Asteris Masouras, social media editor for Global Voices, reminds us that there was life before the internet, and that we found ways to organize in those analog spaces. Once we got the internet, we got used to technologies coming and going - for a moment, we were all excited about Gopher. Then the web, then Facebook. Systems keep evolving. Our hopelessness today may have something to do with a loss of historical memory. #gvsummit2024

Rebecca MacKinnon, my Global Voices cofounder, leads a session called "Can we save the internet?" at #GVSummit2024, which begins with a brief history. In 2004, as blogging was on the rise, we were optimistic that the internet could open the world for interested participants. By 2014, authoritarians were adapting to the internet, sometimes in cooperation with large social media platforms. At this point, do we still see the internet as a hopeful place?