There Are No Girls on the Internet - How do we stay optimistic about technology?

Episode Date: September 16, 2022

People are using AI to reshape the way we live. It’s terrifying and exciting.  Solana Larsen, editor of Mozilla’s Internet Health Report, talks about how optimism has grounded her work and our podcast IRL.  LEARN MORE ABOUT THE INTERNET HEALTH REPORT AND THE IRL PODCAST: 2022.INTERNETHEALTHREPORT.ORG  FOLLOW SOLANA LARSEN: https://twitter.com/solanasaurusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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So, yeah, I think that's part of it. Who should be involved in this conversation? Who should feel entitled? to be a part of this conversation. And I think that's all of us, and particularly people who experience harm from these systems, or harm from surveillance, or harm from, you know,

all kinds of power imbalances in society. There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. So I talk a lot about the harm that technology has been responsible for, particularly in marginalized communities. But ultimately, I am a tech optimist, and I see criticizing and critiquing technology and demanding it to be better

as an expression of my deep love of technology. You know, I love it enough to want it to be better and to really believe that it can be. And that same ethos is what drives Mozilla's Solana Larson as well. Hi, Bridget. I'm Solana. Solana Larson. And my title is editor of the Internet Health Report on Mozilla's Insights team.

Solana and I worked on a podcast for Mozilla called IRL, where together we explored the peril and promise of AI. For Solana, this work is grounded in optimism around the possibilities of technology. She saw all the positive ways it could be used to shape our world early on. But after watching the ways technology has been used to facilitate things like mass surveillance and criminalization, it got hard to be so optimistic. Originally, I had wanted to be a journalist, so that's where it all started, but I was really drawn to internet topics and writing for the internet. And around the time that I got started, the internet was still new. The newspapers were still coming online, and there were very few people who had started to talk about the possibilities and the opportunities. I guess I was really excited about how the internet could bring us together.

And for the first 10, 15 years of my career, it was all about how can we use the internet to create bonds between people in different countries. I work for a website called Open Democracy, which was all about global politics and exchanges of ideas, different perspectives from around the world. And then when blogs started happening, I became the editor of a website called Global Voices that was pitching itself as an alternative to international news or as an accompany. meant to international news, I should say, using the voices of bloggers from all over the world. So I've been working in this realm of digital activism, citizen journalism, and really trying to use the internet to bridge people's understandings of one another. And I think after some years of doing this, a lot of us who were very optimistic about the internet started to sour and just started to see a lot of surveillance, a lot of people ending up in jail, you know, for those of us

who are working in international communities. A lot of like the Arab Spring, uprisings, things that were happening around the world, that were all around internet culture, were backfiring in a sense. And then, you know, with the Snowden leaks and all we learned about surveillance around the world, it was just difficult to find a way to be optimistic about, you know, the great promise of the Internet. And what I found in Mozilla, which, you know, then became a job to create this annual report about the health of the global Internet, what I found was a way to be optimistic, because I think we had been working a lot in these communications or activism circles, and Mozilla had a very

technical approach to a lot of these problems. And the builder approach or the technical approach is like let's fix it, let's make something, let's build something. And it was contact with a community who sort of remembered building the internet in the first place, or building browsers or, you know, this approach to the internet was something we made, we can change it, we can fix it, was really refreshing, you know, in a world with all these political problems and human rights problems that are difficult to change, suddenly the Internet seemed a lot easier to tinker with than, you know, human rights or dictatorships or women's rights. So that's kind of how.

That was a long story. But, yeah, the Internet Health Report. How do we measure the health of the Internet? And how do we do it from year to year? That's been the project. So can you tell us more about what the Internet Health Report is and how it's changed over the years? Yeah. It's always been a very creative publication.

So I've tried to divide it into different topics. It's always had a lot of visuals. It's always been about collecting a lot of stories, perspectives, compilations of research, pulling together a lot of information from different parts, different corners of internet politics and internet, you know, tech circles, and then to try and tell a story of where are we right now. originally we had wanted to make some kind of index or a number or a score but the more that we looked at others who had done similar things or like really got to the heart of what we wanted to

to explore with this publication it didn't seem fitting to narrow down such a huge you know part of human experience into just like this quantifiable metric and I think particularly when you're looking at the entire world at once and you want to make something that's respectful of global experience, it's difficult to just say, oh, something's going well or something's going bad. Like in every country of the world, you have things that are going better and things that are going worse. Depending on where your focus is, like let's say we're in North America or Europe, then you might completely leave out the experience of entire continents, languages. So more and more it's been diving into different topics momentarily and doing like a snapshot in time. And

of, well, how do submarine internet cables look right now? Or how does harassment on the web look like right now? Or what's this thing about social media taxes in African countries and so forth? So trying to give a really broad overview. And then over time, I think Mozilla has really focused on this topic of AI, not just for the Internet Health Report, but in all our programmatic work and the fellowships that we're doing, really identified AI as this is the next challenge of the internet. Like if we're trying to be forward-looking and thinking about where do we have an opportunity

to make a difference now for the internet for the future, AI is an area where we can really focus. So this year we decided to focus on AI. And, you know, I think we've all been through a pandemic. People don't really have capacity to read long things at the moment. Podcasts are what people enjoy and listen to. And I think what we always wanted to do with this publication was really to inspire, you know, not just say what's going wrong or like give some cold metric of what's happening, but to give people a sense of what can be done to make things better. And I think with people's voices and people's experiences, you can convey a lot more emotion, I think, in a way that's easier consumed.

So, yeah, this year we made the Internet Health Report a podcast, and we're able to, you know, create new connections, new links, for instance, with you. So being able to create this kind of project together and, you know, explore this topic in a different way. It's been really fantastic. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite.

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And we're back. So lots of organizations do an annual report every year. And if we're being honest, maybe no one really reads them. But Solana and the team at the Internet Health Report at Mozilla wanted to do something different. They decided to release their report as a podcast, anchored in the real-life stories of the researchers, activists, and technologists who lived them. Oh, I mean, working on this

project with you has been, I mean, I could talk all day. It's been a dream for me. But I think you're so right. There's something about it being a podcast where you get to hear in your earbuds the stories and the voices of these people. And so, like, the stories are really the thing that that centers the work. And so I just think there's something about hearing people explain themselves and explain what it was like to, you know, realize that you were working on a project involving killer machines at Google or, you know, lose your wife from cancer and want to make sure that other people didn't have to suffer the way that you did.

And so building something to prevent it. Like there's something about hearing the voices of the people at the center of these stories that really makes them come to life in a way that, you know, I don't know that that reading a report ever could. It's what I really enjoy about your podcast as well is the way you get close to people, but then you also use that as an entry point to discuss the politics or to discuss the technology. And I think people need that entry point to topics like this because a lot of the time when we do hear about them, it is just like cold. I mean, who cares about a computer, right? You care about the people and how they're affected by that computer. So,

I think that that's why it's been great to work with you on this. And, you know, I'm also curious to see what you'll carry into the work going forward, you know, and being able to explore all these stories together of these people around the world has been great. I do feel like when it comes to topics like technology or especially AI, I think someone who doesn't think of themselves as like a hard tech person might think, that has nothing to do with me. And I like the way that the Internet Health Report really frames those stories in a way that's so accessible, that's like, actually, there is a lot of impact on your life if this is the way that AI is being used by governments,

by law enforcement officials, by, you know, other agencies. So I guess I wonder, you know, how do we make people understand what's at stake? And how have you worked to make people really be able to see themselves reflected in these issues that you care so deeply about? Yeah, it's tough because you can also get, sometimes you can get too superficial on some of these topics. Like, I think people understand, oh, okay, here's social media, you know, like there's disinformation or this is how I'm affected by social media. or, like, you can find some of those entry points easier, and I think we've gone a little bit deeper. You know, we're also looking at, okay, but how does this work in health care,

or how does this work in governance, or what is it that's really happening with surveillance? So I guess one step removed from the user's cell phone, so it does require some imagination from people, but I think, you know, that's where the stakes really get a lot higher and where you're talking about life and actual death. And the really confusing thing about this topic is that the entities that you have to be concerned about are also the ones that you're friends with and you use every day. So I'm thinking specifically about big tech, you know, Google, you probably all use it

every day for our email or internet searches and stuff. And then to be confronted with this fact that they also are involved in, you know, mass surveillance in different ways through their cloud computing contracts or contracts with the Pentagon or other agencies. These are difficult things to grasp or Amazon. You know, we shop on Amazon, but, you know, Amazon also has relationships with the police or also has a stake in surveillance tech. And so, and with governments, governments survey, and they do like.

of things, but we also need them to make policies and to be our friends and to protect our privacy. And so it's a difficult topic to navigate because, you know, everybody's wearing so many different hats. And the things that need to happen, like so many different things need to happen at once for like massive change to happen. How do we make it interesting? I think it's partly these people stories and then just highlighting the mere facts. Even though we use these technologies every day, we're just not aware of all these things. So the experience that people have when they hear this, oh my goodness, I didn't know. Or even when you explain how Uber works or what it's like to be a driver, if you haven't had that experience yourself, people are really surprised and taken it back.

So yeah, we just have to get better at talking about it, demystifying it, you know, allowing people to ask their questions, presenting it in a way that isn't intimidating. Because this is an area where experts like to pontificate and they like to be important, I think. And that makes it difficult for newcomers to come to the conversation. So, yeah, I think that's part of it. Who should be involved in this conversation? Who should feel entitled to be a part of this conversation?

And I think that's all of us, and particularly people who experience harm from these systems or harm from surveillance or harm from, you know, all kinds of power imbalances in society. Yeah, that's, I think that's key. That's something that we talk about a lot on this podcast where, you know, I think that we really need a big culture shift around who feels like they are allowed to have a, to speak on these issues, to see themselves in these issues, to center themselves in these issues. You know, it's not, it should not just be, you know, the people with power who are making the decisions who also mostly happen to be a lot of white, you know, men, a lot of white straight cisgender men who are of a certain economic class. Like those, like we, I feel like we've gotten a situation where, for whatever reason, we feel like those are the only people whose voices matter. And in fact, when you think about who is impacted by this technology, who is harmed by it, we need to be able. to take up a much bigger space in the conversation to reflect the role that we actually have and what's actually at stake for the rest of us. Absolutely. And that's true worldwide.

One of the researchers that we interviewed in the final episode of the podcast, the one about healthcare, she has this quote that really, it really struck a nerve with me, where she talks about, she was researching how AI diagnostic systems are being rolled out in rural India, where there a lot of doctors and so they roll out these systems and they're able to screen people, scan them and send some tests to a major hospital somewhere far away. And she says some of these systems have not been tested. They're being tested actively in a patient scenario in a situation where people have no other option for health care. Big companies, you know, whose names we know and are familiar with are involved in this kind of testing and then they say well we got these people's

consent and but they present a consent form in a language that the person doesn't know and it's terminology that they're not familiar with and how she described it was it's the mass infantilization of entire population of an entire population and when you treat people as you know in this way there's just so much not even just in how the system is designed but how it's rolled out how you expect people you know to coexist with them there's so much offensive behavior at every level of the chain and so these aren't just tech questions these are human questions and rights questions and there's varieties of that all in any kind of field where these technologies exist we need people to be speaking up and we need to be defending people's rights to, you know, their own autonomy, physical and

digital, because it makes things better, you know. Yeah. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Side-Eyed. help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

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Oh. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. AI will do this. AI does that. It is really easy to think of AI and other technologies as doing things. But really, it's the people and companies behind that technology that are doing the things. You know, AI doesn't discriminate against people of color or strengthen the surveillance

state. It's the people who make AI that are doing that. Computers on the Internet are powerful tools. And the people who shape those tools at scale have a responsibility to make them safe. I'm reminded of something that you said to me early on working on this project together, you said that you, in writing the internet health report, try to stay away from assigning motivations or intentions to technology. So instead of being like, oh, AI does this, it's like, oh, the people who make AI does this. You know, how is that thinking shaped your work? Because I do think

that it's really easy to think, oh, technology is just going to do what the technology does. It is neutral. but that obscures the fact that there are people behind it that make decisions and that that can be so difficult to keep at the forefront. That's right. People and companies. Yeah, and especially with AI, you know, there's this fantasy of an autonomous robot or some kind of computer brain that does stuff on its own. And it doesn't help us get anywhere. You know, that's just not how it works. These are systems created by people that are actually kind of stupid. but in the way that they work. You know, you give them data, they learn. I mean, we shouldn't even be using the word learning, right? But they replicate or they're able to spot patterns. And so when you highlight some of the errors or the false, you know, findings of systems like this,

you just, you start to realize that it's not always all that it's made out to be. You know, there's a lot of marketing lingo that these systems get wrapped up in. And so, when, yeah, I'm completely allergic to when people say AI does this or AI will do this or AI will make this. Like the only way that AI is going to do anything is if we people, you know, ask it to do something. Exactly. You know, also we've talked a bit about some of the harms and sort of the difficult things to accept about the way that technology and AI has functioned for so many folks. But like you also strike me as someone who is quite optimistic. You know, your work at Mozilla is really about getting to a web and an internet that we want. What kind of web do you want?

Well, I want one where more people are involved. Like that's, I don't, I don't imagine that we can completely change how big tech works overnight. These are, these are extremely powerful systems. right now it's about ensuring that alternatives can also coexist and that the web can be a place where people can create things for their own communities and where there is that openness and opportunity for creativity yeah to enable those kinds of collaborations because that's where I still see that there is a lot of positive and important work to be done and oftentimes it's these smaller projects or grassroots project or the project of an individual or even artistic projects

that can kind of set an example for what we would like to see happen on a bigger scale. So it's hugely important that we all be creating or co-creating or thinking about how we can build things together. And this isn't just something for technical people to think about. This is something for, I think, all different sectors to be thinking about together because I think the really interesting thing or challenging thing about AI is the way that it is becoming a part of all kinds of different businesses, all kinds of areas where there is data, all kinds of governance or even the nonprofit world. Anywhere where there's data, there's an opportunity to use AI in some way.

And sometimes it can be in ways that are genuinely helpful to, I think, you know, right causes. That's what we've been trying to highlight in the podcast, too, looking for people who are doing something in a different way. And that, you know, when you see people who are building their own data sets or creating their own voice recognition systems or their languages, you realize the imbalance that there is that, you know, it wasn't created in the first place, that these things don't exist already. A lot of ways that technology and systems are designed to work, we just sort of take it for, granted, right? We just think, oh, that's just the way it is, but it doesn't have to be. And so we need these people to shine a light on how could it be different? Or where is that injustice? Or what is the data that's missing? How could we be approaching this problem differently? And that does not mean

that, you know, we need to teach big tech or big companies how to do it. It might just mean that we need to find ways and find resources to do these things ourselves. Our show is all about identity and the internet and how it can really impact how people who are traditionally marginalized, like what they bring to these conversations. Do you feel like your identity as like a Danish Puerto Rican woman? Like does that impact this kind of optimism that you have about an internet that is more inclusive, includes more people, more collaborative? Do you think that your identity has shaped what you bring to the work?

Yeah, I think it does. It definitely, I mean, I think it impacts my approach. approach to everything really because I've got some north in me I've got some south in me I've got some different languages and different experiences and so when you're able to kind of step out of yourself and see something from a different perspective I think when you're willing to do that at every level you know I can give you a lot of empathy but also some imagination for how things could be or how they might be so yeah it is a big part of it even even more, though, I think, is just working with communities for so many different years who have been

using the internet to do good in different way, particularly with the Global Voices community, where we also had so many translation projects with, you know, citizen journalism that was translated in different directions and just reading new stories from around the world, firsthand perspective news stories from around the world. Yeah, I just know a lot of strange things about different parts of the world. So, yeah, that's definitely part of it. But I think when you're working with an organization like Mozilla, you do come into contact with a lot of people in communities who have that sense of

optimism or have that drive to try and build something and do something. And that is very nice. When it comes to the state of the Internet, are you hopeful? I'm hopeful about some things and those are the ones that I try to focus on I spend a lot of time convincing myself not to get too mad about or too jaded or too upset about

the global surveillance society I do feel like a lot of things are getting worse particularly when it comes to surveillance and lack of privacy and the way these systems are just kind of taking over really important things in dangerous ways. So I'm concerned, but I also see a lot of good things happening. And having worked just on this project for the last five, six years, the conversation has evolved. We are, and I mean we as humans all around the world and

in the media and even on social media, there's a lot more understanding for how these systems work, what the harms are, what the potential is. You know, five, six years ago, that was just like the beginning of Cambridge Analytica. There's been so many data privacy policies, a lot of things happening in a good direction as well. So it's always about, yeah, trying to see both the good and the bad. at once and keeping both those things in focus so that you can keep moving forward. That's, I mean, that's it in a nutshell, right? The internet technology, it's really about being able to hold two spaces at once.

Like, oh, this is such a powerful gift and this technology provides such a good opportunity for connection, but it can also be used to do some really scary, horrible stuff. I feel like you just really summed it up nicely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's everybody's daily experience, right? Like, you probably love Twitter and you probably hate Twitter or, you know, I love that I can do things easily online or order food or delivery or whatever, but I also hate that these systems are exploring people in the worst possible way. So, yeah, we need to work together and we need to fight back because these systems didn't exist just a few years ago and we can change them.

So, Lana, where can folks listen to the podcast and just generally keep up with the work that you're doing with the Internet Health Report and beyond? Well, they should listen to our podcast because it's yours as well. They should go to 22.22.Internethealthreport.org. It's called the R.L podcast. You can find it everywhere where there's podcasts. is there anything that I did not ask that you want to make sure it gets included? I think the only thing, I'm curious to ask you, I'm curious to ask you what you, what do you think you'll bring with you from the podcast? Like, have you noticed, has it changed your mind about anything?

Oh, what a good question. I was actually just thinking about this. I think it's changed my mind. I think before this podcast, I, I was a little, I mean, this doesn't make me sound great, but it's the truth. I think I had a much more United States domestic focus on these issues. And I kind of told myself, you don't really know a lot about like geo-global politics or, you know, what's going on globally. So you got to focus on the United States.

From listening to IRL and helping to make it, I definitely have a better sense of the way that these issues are global. And so we're experiencing something, a harm in the United States, that harm is, is deeper, felt, abroad and that those harms are connected and linked. And so I think it's definitely made me think a little further out than just my own bubble in the United States because, yeah, these issues are global. And I think that you do a beautiful job of really demonstrating that. I think it will be so easy to just have this be a conversation that begins and ends in the West. But that wouldn't be a full conversation. that wouldn't be the honest truth about what the situation is. Yeah.

Yeah, I find that part interesting as well. I mean, because I've learned just as much listening to the people who are talking and sharing their stories on the podcast as anyone. But this way that, you know, when we talk about the experience of people in rural India where we talk about spatial injustice in South Africa and, you know, data sets to help combat that injustice. just how much we share in common on these topics, you know, that there's something recognizable in that experience everywhere.

And that even in the most low-tech parts of the world, there is this highly advanced technology is something that I think will surprise people. It still surprises me sometimes. That really, it doesn't matter if you're online or offline. AI is everywhere now, and the Internet is everywhere now. and that it can make a difference to your life, good or bad. You know, like the guest who described the voice chatbot that he made.

He's been working on voice recognition systems for major language in Wanda, Kinyawanda. And they created this COVID chat bot where you can call it up on the phone and ask it questions about where to get vaccines and different things related to public health. And when we were thinking about whether to include that story in the podcast, I sent him an email and I said, Remney, how many people are using this? Does it still exist? You know, because they had won some award and there was a hackathon and, you know, it was like a neat idea, but you never know if these things take off. And he said, oh, yeah, we just hit 2 million users the other day.

So I'll say people still use it. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and this is a system that's designed for people who maybe just have feature phones or who aren't, you know, you don't even have to be able to read or write. But it's still AI and it's still Internet. And yeah. So I feel like sometimes those low, low connectivity contexts help us realize. a lot of things about life in, you know, let's say in the U.S. or places where there's high connectivity. It makes you think about what you have and what you're able to do and what's good and maybe taken for granted about the Internet. But it also makes you think about, oh, hey, there are actually also a lot of people in the U.S. who can't read or write English or who don't have Internet connections or who only have slow Internet connections and so forth. So I think we share a lot more in

common on these topics in particular than I think most people are aware of. I find it fascinating, you know, that approach to thinking about the internet as this global connector, but, you know, it also means that we all need to be, you know, fighting for it to be better. The internet is at once frightening and full of hope. And telling the stories of the people like Solana who are fighting to make the internet better makes me hopeful too. Hopeful that the people

who want to use the internet to spread harm will never be more powerful than the voices of all the different people saying no, I don't think so. And I believe that all of us

can actually make a difference. Y'all, fighting for a better internet means a lot to me, so please, please, check out the IRL podcast. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our merch store

at tangodi.com slash store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi, you can reach us at hello at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Edited by Joey Pat.

Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, write and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL

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