Recode Decode: Jessica Weisberg traces the history of advice in ‘Asking for a Friend’

The web has a problem: huge chunks of it keep going offline. The web isn’t static, parts of it sometimes just… vanish. But it’s not all grim. The Internet Archive has a massive mission to identify and back up our online world into a vast digital library. In 2001, it launched the Wayback Machine, an interface that lets anyone call up snapshots of sites and look at how they used to be and what they used to say at a given moment in time. Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, joins Decoder this week to explain both why and how the organization tries to keep the web from disappearing. Links:  When Online Content Disappears | Pew Research Game Informer is shutting down | The Verge When Media Outlets Shutter, Why Are the Websites Wiped, Too? Slate MTV News lives on in the Internet Archive | The Verge The video game industry is mourning the loss of Game Informer | The Verge Guest host Hank Green makes Nilay Patel explain why websites have a future | Decoder How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral | Decoder The Internet Archive is defending its digital library in court today | The Verge The Internet Archive has lost its first fight to scan and lend ebooks | The Verge The Internet Archive just lost its appeal over ebook lending | The Verge Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Sep 202440min

Decoder is off this week for a short end-of-summer break. We’ll be back with both our interview and explainer episodes after the Labor Day holiday. In the meantime we thought we’d re-share an explainer that’s taken on a whole new relevance in the last couple weeks, about deepfakes and misinformation. In February, I talked with Verge policy editor Adi Robertson how the generative AI boom might start fueling a wave of election-related misinformation, especially deepfakes and manipulated media. It’s not been quite an apocalyptic AI free-for-all out there. But the election itself took some really unexpected turns in these last couple of months. Now we’re heading into the big, noisy home stretch, and use of AI is starting to get really weird — and much more troublesome.  Links:  The AI-generated hell of the 2024 election | The Verge AI deepfakes are cheap, easy, and coming for the 2024 election | Decoder Elon Musk posts deepfake of Kamala Harris that violates X policy | The Verge Donald Trump posts a fake AI-generated Taylor Swift endorsement | The Verge X’s Grok now points to government site after misinformation warnings | The Verge Political ads could require AI-generated content disclosures soon | The Verge The Copyright Office calls for a new federal law regulating deepfakes | The Verge How AI companies are reckoning with elections | The Verge The lame AI meme election | Axios Deepfakes' parody loophole | Axios Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

29 Aug 202441min

Decoder is off this week for a short end-of-summer break. We’ll be back with both our interview and explainer episodes after the Labor Day holiday, and I’m very excited for what we have coming up on the schedule.  But while we’re out, we’d like to highlight a great episode from the Land of the Giants podcast, which is over at Vulture this season, for a deep dive into Disney. Can it be a tech company? It’s the question that defines the struggles of its streaming service Disney Plus — and it also tells us where it needs to go in the future to compete with Amazon, Apple, and Netflix.  Links:  Disney Is a Tech Company? | Vulture Why Disney plussed itself | Vulture Disney’s CEO drama explained, with Julia Alexander | Decoder The clock is ticking on Disney’s streaming strategy | Decoder The Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max streaming bundle is now available | The Verge Disney reportedly wants to bring always-on channels to Disney Plus | The Verge How baseball's tech team built the future of television | The Verge The year Netflix ended the streaming wars | The Ringer   Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

26 Aug 202438min

The Onion is a comedy institution — and like everything else in media, it went on a pure nightmare hell ride in the 2010s. We could do an entire episode on the G/O Media calamity, but the short version is: A bunch of friends just managed to buy The Onion, and they're busy relaunching the website, going back to print, and, clearly, having a blast doing it. CEO Ben Collins and chief product officer Danielle Strle joined me to explain how that even works in 2024. Links:  The Onion sold by G/O Media | The New York Times Sam Reich on revamping the game show - and Dropout’s success | NPR Platformer’s Casey Newton on surviving the great media collapse | Decoder Craig Silverman: Digital advertising’s structure has been weaponized | Digiday US Warns a Gaza Ceasefire Would Only Benefit Humanity | The Onion The Truth is Paywalled but the Lies are Free | Current Affairs A newsroom expands and The Onion is out again on paper | Washington Post Report: Nuclear War Sounds Fucking Amazing Right Now | The Onion Google defends AI search results after they told us to put glue on pizza | The Verge Jury awards nearly $1B to Sandy Hook families in Alex Jones defamation case | CNN ‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens | The Onion Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23989633 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

22 Aug 202457min

Today I’m talking with Thomas Dohmke, the CEO of GitHub. GitHub is the platform for managing code – but since 2018, it’s also been owned by Microsoft. We talk a lot about how independent GitHub really is inside of Microsoft — especially now that Microsoft is all-in on AI, and Gitbhub Copilot is one of the biggest AI product success stories that exists right now. But his perspective on AI is pretty refreshing: It’s clear there’s still a long way to go. Links:  Original GitHub landing page | Wayback Machine Introducing Entitlements | GitHub Blog ashtom (Thomas Dohmke) | GitHub The developers suing over GitHub Copilot got dealt a major blow in court | The Verge GitHub Copilot can now help start a project with AI | The Verge GitHub users can mess around with different AI models | The Verge GitHub’s AI-powered Copilot will help you write code for $10 a month | The Verge Google DeepMind co-founder joins Microsoft as CEO of its new AI division | The Verge Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23986019 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

19 Aug 20241h 16min

There’s a major internet speech regulation currently making its way through Congress, and it has a really good chance of becoming law. It’s called KOSPA: the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act, which passed in the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support late last month. At a high level, KOSPA could radically change how tech platforms handle speech in an effort to try and make the internet safer for minors.  It’s a controversial bill, with a lot going on. To break it all down, I invited on Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner, who’s been covering these bills for months now, to explain what’s happening, what these bills actually do, and what the path forward for this legislation looks like. Links:  Senate passes the Kids Online Safety Act | The Verge The teens lobbying against the Kids Online Safety Act | The Verge How the Kids Online Safety Act was dragged into a political war | NYT House Republicans won’t bring up KOSA in its current form | Punchbowl News Why a landmark kids online safety bill is still deeply divisive | NBC News Why Sen. Schatz thinks child safety bills can trump the First Amendment | Decoder Child safety bills are reshaping the internet for everyone | The Verge Online age verification is coming, and privacy is on the chopping block | The Verge Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

15 Aug 202438min

Today, I’m talking with Replika founder and CEO Eugenia Kuyda, and I will just tell you right away, we get all the way to people marrying their AI companions, so get ready. It’s a ride. Replika’s basic pitch is pretty simple: what if you had an AI friend? The company offers avatars you can curate to your liking that pretend to be human, so they can be your friend, your therapist, or even your date. That’s a lot for a private company running an iPhone app, and Eugenia and I talked a lot about the consequences of this idea and what it means for the future of human relationships.  Links:  The AI boyfriend business is booming | Axios Speak, Memory | The Verge Your new AI Friend is almost ready to meet you | Verge What happens when sexting chatbots dump their human lovers | Bloomberg AI chatbot company Replika restores erotic roleplay for some users — Reuters Replika’s New AI App Is Like Tinder but With Sexy Chatbots — Gizmodo Replika’s new AI therapy app tries to bring you to a zen island — The Verge Replika CEO: AI chatbots aren’t just for lonely men | Fortune Gaze Into the Dystopian Hell of Bots Dating Bots | Slate Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23980789 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

12 Aug 20241h 8min

Today, I’m talking to Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general for antitrust at the United States Department of Justice. This is Jonathan’s second time on the show, and it’s a bit of an emergency podcast situation. On Monday, a federal court issued a monumental decision in the DOJ’s case against Google, holding that Google Search and the text ads in search are monopolies.  The court hasn’t decided on the penalties for all this yet — that process is scheduled to start next month. But it’s the biggest antitrust win against a tech company since the Microsoft case from two decades ago. I wanted to know what Jonathan thought of the ruling, what it means for the law, and most importantly, what remedies he’s going to seek to try and restore competition in search.  Links:  Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case | The Verge All the spiciest parts of the Google antitrust ruling | The Verge Now that Google is a monopolist, what’s next? | The Verge DOJ’s Kanter says the antitrust fight against Big Tech is just beginning | Decoder The DOJ Antitrust Division isn’t afraid to go to court | The Verge The US government is gearing up for an AI antitrust fight | The Verge Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23979725 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.  The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

8 Aug 202443min