{"id":62740,"date":"2018-01-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foxtail\/2018\/01\/08\/irl-season-2\/"},"modified":"2018-01-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T00:00:00","slug":"irl-season-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/en\/firefox\/irl-season-2\/","title":{"rendered":"As real as you and me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On May 23, hundreds of thousands of public comments poured into the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in a matter of hours. A week and a half later, on June 3, hundreds of thousands more followed. Over these two days alone, the FCC would receive a historic number of comments; both for, and against, the rollback of net neutrality. Only it wasn\u2019t voters they were hearing from. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/bots-broke-fcc-public-comment-system\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">More than 1 million of these comments were left by bots<\/a>. The New York Attorney General\u2019s office is currently investigating their sources. <\/p>\n<p><iframe frameborder='0' height='200px' scrolling='no' seamless src='https:\/\/embed.simplecast.com\/a12c2c51?color=f5f5f5' width='100%'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>On the internet, questions like this, about what\u2019s real, and who\u2019s real, can feel disorienting. Because our experience of the web is deeply personal, and profoundly human; it\u2019s as real as you and me. We live here. We lol here. We love, and argue, and share out here. It\u2019s not just about bots impersonating angry voters. (But also: who are they?) It\u2019s the whole online experience. When we transform ourselves into avatars, when we express ourselves with emojis or star ratings, our identities also shift. It\u2019s 2018, and we\u2019ve changed. <\/p>\n<p>You can close this tab, and shut down your phone, but there\u2019s no off switch for the internet. This year, one of the most important questions we can ask is what it\u2019s doing to us. In this season of <a href=\"https:\/\/irlpodcast.org\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">IRL podcast<\/a>, we\u2019ll investigate how the internet is rewiring our brains, and reshaping our identities. <\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll meet <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/millions-of-people-post-comments-on-federal-regulations-many-are-fake-1513099188\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Jack Hirsch<\/a>, an AI developer whose profile was stolen by a political bot. We\u2019ll talk to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sosadtoday\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">SoSadToday<\/a> about what making memes can teach us about self care. We\u2019ll spend time with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/05\/18\/technology\/never-forgetting-a-face.html?_r=0\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Joseph Atick<\/a>, one of the forefathers of facial recognition technology, as he grapples with its impact. Along the way, we\u2019ll hear from many others; whose experiences, real, regular, and extraordinary, have been impacted by what happens online. Throughout all these stories are signs of the larger forces shaping culture, both good and bad. The issues changing the internet are changing the world. <\/p>\n<p>In this season\u2019s first episode, we explore the rise of bot politics in social media, with Tim Hwang, Lauren Kunze, Ben Nimmo, Jack Hirsch, and Lisa Maria Neudert. What happens when bots outnumber people on the internet? How are automated accounts shaping the public debate? And what can we do to help stop the spread of misinformation online? These questions and more, in this week&#8217;s edition of <a href=\"https:\/\/irlpodcast.org\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\u201c_blank\">IRL podcast<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p><iframe frameborder='0' height='200px' scrolling='no' seamless src='https:\/\/embed.simplecast.com\/17f3cc4b?color=f5f5f5' width='100%'><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On May 23, hundreds of thousands of public comments poured into the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in a matter of hours. A week and a half later, on June 3, hundreds of thousands more followed. Over these two days alone, the FCC would receive a historic number of comments; both for, and against, the rollback [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1521,"featured_media":20610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>As real as you and me<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In this season of IRL podcast, Veronica Belmont investigates what it means to be human online, starting with the rising influence of bots in culture.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/en\/firefox\/irl-season-2\/\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" 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