This month, President Donald Trump has threatened to ban the Chinese-owned platforms TickTock and WeChat. This comes after years of China banning major US platforms like Google and Facebook, and securing the purchase of Uber’s Chinese business by a Chinese company. Chinese tech activists Katt Gu and Suji Yan speak with us about how this conflict looks from where they live in Shanghai, and they describe some of the firewalls they’re building to help protect labor and privacy rights. As the US—long used to being on the offensive in the Internet economy—moves to the defensive, our guests will help us think through what kinds of sovereignty online might be worth having.
MEDLab’s radio show and podcast, Looks Like New, asks old questions about new tech.
Each month, host Nathan Schneider speaks with someone who works with technology in ways that challenge conventional narratives and dominant power structures. The name comes from the phrase “a philosophy so old that it looks like new,” repeated throughout the works of Peter Maurin, the French agrarian poet and co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement.
You can hear Looks Like New the fourth Thursday of every month at 6 p.m., or online as a podcast on iTunes and Stitcher.