Debugger

There’s a new front that’s opened in the years-long battle between the FTC and Facebook.  Federal regulators have sued to stop the social media giant’s proposed acquisition of a company named Within, which makes a popular virtual reality fitness app called Supernatural. In this episode of Debugger in 10, we talk with Duke University law professor Barak Richman about the merits of the case, an...

Bryan Palma, CEO of cybersecurity firm Trellix, spoke recently at the biggest cybersecurity conference in the world, the RSA conference, and delivered quite the call to action. Social media companies "have revealed themselves as soulless," he said.  Tech workers who want to find more meaning in their work...well, there's plenty of work to do in cybersecurity. Palma lays out his plan to fill m...

Big Tech makes big decisions over our lives: What products we see, how we feel about world events, what to censor -- to some degree, what medical decisions we make.  Yet who controls Big Tech? The firms are so powerful and rich they really act as judge and jury now.  Increasingly, they are accountable to no one. So at Duke University, we are exploring ways to balance the power of Big Tec...

In this five-minute sizzle reel, you'll hear from all the voices in our 3-part docu-podcast about the problem of Big Tech.  Big Tech makes big decisions over our lives: What products we see, how we feel about world events, what to censor -- to some degree, what medical decisions we make.  Yet who controls Big Tech? The firms are so powerful and rich they really act as judge and jury now....

This isn't the first time the American Way has been threatened by an industry with too much power and influence. What has been done in the past to rebalance the scales? We talk with a field of experts to learn what can be borrowed from the epic struggles of the past -- in finance, food, drugs, the environment. How do we make sure that data works in the service of humankind, rather than the other w...

Even Big Tech companies understand they wield too much power. Facebook's attempt to create an Oversight Board is a nod to this reality.  In practice, it also demonstrates why this problem is so challenging. And how an effort to bring sense to the 2020 presidential election ended up as a Twitter food fight instead. In episode 2 of Defending Democracy from Big Tech, we take a deep dive into wha...

Bob Sullivan hosts Duke's Debugger podcast and AARP's The Perfect Scam podcast. This Debugger in 10 episode brings the work of these two projects together. In a recent two-part series for AARP, Bob told the story of Matthew West, afflicted with a deadly form of brain cancer, and the terrible things that happened to him when he went online looking for pain relief. In this short Debugger episode, Bo...

Dr. Johnny Ryan is senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. We discussed the critical role Ireland plays in regulating the world's Big Tech companies, and why he sees the online advertising ecosystem as "the biggest data breach of all time."

Jane Horvath is Apple's chief privacy officer. We talked with her about Apple's role as "judge and jury" when it comes to inclusion in the App Store, and how the firm might be more accountable for its decisions. 

Francella Ochillo is a digital rights advocate. A fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School and Executive Director of New Century Cities, we talked with her about making sure underserved communities are represented in discussions about platform accountability.

David Hoffman is a cybersecurity policy expert at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.  He told us Big Tech should take much more responsibility for the harm done using their platforms. 

Chris Jay Hoofnagle is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert in privacy law and computer crime law.  He believes Internet regulators could adopt strategies similar to the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies.

Michael “Buz” Waitzkin is the Deputy Director of Science & Society at Duke University. We talked with him about the outsized impact technology has on consumer decision-making -- even intimate healthcare choices. 

Robin Spector is a long-time Federal Trade Commission attorney who now works in the Office of Commissioner Christine S. Wilson. She talks about the challenges the FTC faces when enforcing the law with a small staff of 30 or 40 who focus on privacy-related cases.  

Kyle Taylor serves on the 'Real' Facebook Oversight Board, created in anticipation of social media issues surrounding the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Taylor says Facebook hasn't engaged in sincere dialog around issues like hate speech or disinformation.

Duke Law School student Alexys Ogorek spent months researching the Facebook Oversight Board.  She explains why the concept is good, but the execution has -- so far -- fallen short. 

Jolynn Dellinger teaches privacy at Duke University Law School and is a Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. She talks about the need for more transparency when companies like Amazon use algorithms to recommend choices to consumers.

As former head of the FTC's bureau of consumer protection, David Vladeck had a front-row seat at some of the landmark lawsuits against Big Tech. He's in a great position to explain why it's so hard for the U.S. government -- any government -- to balance Big Tech's power. "It's not just David vs. Goliath...we're a pretty tiny David." 

Ken Rogerson teaches at Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy,  where he is the director of graduate studies. He explained that market economics alone cannot create incentives for companies to address the harms caused by new technologies.l

Duke University law school professor Barak Richman studies the economics of contracting, new institutional economics, antitrust, and healthcare policy.  We talked with him about the role that antitrust law might play in creating accountability for Big Tech.

Duke University professor Shane Stansbury served for more than eight years as Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York (SDNY), where he led some of the office’s most sensitive and noteworthy prosecutions in the areas of terrorism, cybercrime, espionage, money laundering, international public corruption, and global weapons trafficking. We talked with him about the probl...

Rory Van Loo has tackled big problems with big ideas before. He helped set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the Great Recession. What big steps can be taken to rein in Big Tech? What lessons can be learned from other regulatory agencies?  Van Loo is now a law professor at Boston University. 

Martin Abrams is Executive Director and Chief Strategist for the Information Accountability Foundation, which receives funding from large technology companies.  We talked with him about early efforts at accountability and why technology firms would support such efforts.

John Oliver draws attention to serious subjects with irreverent humor and made-for-TV stunts.  He made some people in Washington D.C. very nervous recently when his show, Last Week Tonight, took on the data broker industry and acquired sensitive information about people in and around the U.S. Capitol.  The segment featured work by Duke's Justin Sherman, who recently authored a paper titl...

Cybersecurity isn't just for IT workers -- for geeks -- anymore. Everyone, at every level of every organization, must make it a priority. Executives who sit on boards of directors should play a critical oversight role as companies make their cybersecurity plans, but many have little training or expertise in this area. Duke's Univerisity has put together a training program that will help fill this...