The acquisition of Twitter broke, well, Twitter. Around 90% of the workforce left the company, leaving shells of former teams to handle the same responsibility. 

Today, we welcome two guests from Twitter’s civic integrity team. We welcome new guest Rebecca Thein. Rebecca, was a senior engineering technical program manager for Twitter’s Information Integrity team. She is also a Digital Sherlock for the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab).

Theodora Skeadas is a returning guest from our previous episode! She managed public policy at Twitter and was recently elected as an Elected Director of the Harvard Alumni Association.We answer the following questions on today’s episode:

• How much was the civic integrity team hurt by the acquisition?

• What are candidate labels?

• How did Twitter prioritize its elections?

• What did the org structure of Twitter look like pre and post acquisition?

• And finally, what is this famous Halloween party that all the ex-Twitter folks are talking about?

This episode is a bit different – instead of getting deep into the weeds with a guest, we’re starting from the beginning. Our guest today, Pearlé Nwaezeigwe, aka the Yoncé of Tech Policy, chats with me about Tech Policy 101.

I get a lot of questions from people who are fascinated by Trust & Safety and Integrity work in tech, and they want to know – what does it look like? How can I do it too? What kinds of jobs are out there? So, I thought we’d tackle some of those questions here on the podcast.

Today’s episode covers the exciting topics of nipples, Lizzo, weed, and much more. And as any of us who have worked in policy would tell you, “it’s complicated.”

It might be May 2023, but it’s never too early to start worrying about elections! 2024 is slated to be the biggest year of elections in platform history. Listen to this episode of Trust in Tech to learn how to prepare for the upcoming elections.

We live in a world where platforms influence the digital and real lives of billions of people across the world, perhaps with more influence than many governments. However, the decision making processes around the platform are generally opaque and obscure. In this episode, Integrity Institute Fellow Brandon Silverman uncovers why we need transparency, its nuances, and how you can help.

OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT, join the show! In November 2022, ChatGPT upended the tech (and larger) world with a chatbot that passes not only the Turing test, but the bar exam.

In this episode, we talk with Dave Willner and Todor Markov, integrity professionals at OpenAI, on how they make large language models safer for all.

Turkey’s election is only 3 weeks away and, during the recording of this episode, the Turkish regime has detained 150 people including activists, lawyers, and journalists. Gürkan Özturan talks with the Integrity Institute’s Talha Baig about this context and Turkey’s fraught relationship with social media.