Ethan Zuckerman

UMass Amherst, Global Voices, Berkman Klein Center. Formerly MIT Media Lab, Geekcorps, Tripod.com

Last Notes

2025-07-30 18:20:02 UTC

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:
https://publicinfrastructure.org/podcast/117-alondra-nelson/
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.

2025-04-16 15:41:43 UTC

Honored to be moderating this conversation, "Democracy is a Disability Issue" at the Boston Museum of Science tomorrow night: https://www.mos.org/events/democracy-disability-issue .
If you're in Boston, please sign up and come. If not, please watch the live stream: https://www.mos.org/events/livestream-democracy-disability-issue

2025-04-05 02:33:57 UTC

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.

2025-02-21 16:07:09 UTC

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: https://globalvoices.org/2025/02/21/the-impact-on-the-african-continent-of-meta-scrapping-its-fact-checking-program/ - Great Global Voices coverage. (Also I love that we can toggle between original quotes and translation - great for me as a French language learner.)

2025-01-18 18:00:52 UTC

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: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/internet-censorship-tiktok-ban/681361/

2025-01-14 18:41:27 UTC

Social Web Foundation (I am an advisor) warns that having an unfactchecked Threads on the fediverse is a recipe for misery and mischief: https://socialwebfoundation.org/2025/01/12/content-policy-on-the-social-web/

2024-12-07 04:46:19 UTC

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

2024-12-07 04:30:21 UTC

- reply

Brian Hioe notes that platforms are capable of doing different things and having different communities - we might need to interact with all these different spaces so we can engage in different corners of the public sphere.

2024-12-07 04:30:21 UTC

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

2024-12-07 04:03:09 UTC

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

2024-12-07 03:54:45 UTC

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?

2024-12-06 09:55:50 UTC

Kanav Sahgal explains that there’s a constitutional right to internet in India, but there’s also a mechanism for the government to argue that shutdown is necessary for national security. But shutdowns come around much less serious threats, like exam cheating. #GVSummit2024

2024-12-06 09:34:23 UTC

Kanav Sahgal is an Indian activist focused on gender issues and on the Supreme Court. He tells stories of how internet shutdown affects the right to protest - losing WhatApp and Google Maps makes it extremely difficult to assemble in physical space. #GVSummit2024

2024-12-06 09:31:11 UTC

Rezwan, the long-term South Asia editor for Global Voices, is chairing a session on internet shutdowns, which he describes as a common tool of repression in South Asia. These can be total blackouts, or slowdowns, where 4G is turned off and 2G left on. #gvsummit2024

2024-12-06 09:00:14 UTC

Because environmental journalism requires a ton of science, Sara Rai explains, it might require a fellowship or other significant investment to make a story possible. She was able to report on climate change and wildfires only because of support from CNN and MacArthur #GVSummit2024

2024-11-29 16:06:30 UTC

Trump's victory has me thinking about the problems of listening at scale, which is one of the hardest problems in democracy. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/united-states/us-election-2024/68666/polls-are-out-listening-is-in (This column is inspired by brilliant new work from Eric Gordon - excited about his forthcoming book.)

2024-11-13 21:38:21 UTC

Alexandros Efstratiou presented a terrific paper from UCL, Binghamton U and the fine folks at iDrama lab, which helps unpack the spread of COVID-19 misinfo. We all know that misinformation about COVID flooded the internet, but this study examines how scientific literature was used and misused during the pandemic and how it spread on Twitter. (https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.13248)