This week’s Burning Platforms will introduce ‘Civility’ – a new collaborative platform designed to create better public engagement. Recorded live 10th June 2022. With our regular panelists: Peter Lewis, Director of The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology Lizzie O’Shea, Chair of Digital Rights Watch and new panelist: David Swan, Technology Editor at The Australian Special guest:

Humans embrace technology with a child-like optimism, but what are the threats Artificial Intelligence poses our society if its impacts are not thought through? Burning Platforms dives deep into the amorality of AI with a special discussion with Professor Toby Walsh, author of the new book ‘Machines Behaving Badly’. Recorded live 29th April 2022. Regular

On this week’s burning Platforms we dive deep into digital addiction: are we being played? And what can we do to get ourselves off the bad stuff? Recorded live 14th April 2022 Regular panelists: Peter Lewis, Director of The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology Lizzie O’Shea, Chair of Digital Rights Watch Dan Stinton, Managing

After turning to new technology in a public health crisis we now face critical questions in what a new surveillance normal looks like. Special guest Dhakshayini Sooriyakumaran from Reset joins the panel to ask whether we are ready to learn the lessons of 9/11 before a new tech paradigm takes hold. Recorded live 1st April 2022.

Our panel and former president of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) Paul Twomey will outline how competing models of state control over online communications are challenging the very essence of the internet. Recorded live 18th March 2022. Regular panelists: Peter Lewis, Director of The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology Lizzie O’Shea,

In the last Burning Platforms before the Australian Federal Election we run the rule over the policies being offered up by the major parties. Is it just Coke vs. Pepsi? Or are there bigger ideas at play? Recorded live 13th March 2022. Regular panelists: Peter Lewis, Director of The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology

As the Federal Election approaches amid heightened geo-political tensions, Burning Platforms looks at a ground-breaking attempt to understand how political actors game the social media algorithms to deliver targeted disinformation. Recorded live March 4th 2022. Regular panellists: Peter Lewis, Director of The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology Lizzie O’Shea, Chair of Digital Rights Watch

We mark 12 months from the Facebook news takedown and review the progress of the News Media Bargaining Code. Has the code achieved its objectives? Who’s missed out? And should it be a global model for managing the relationship between journalism and the platforms. Recorded live on 18th February 2022. Regular panellists: Peter Lewis, Director

While Australians spent the summer searching for RATs, a hastily convened federal government inquiry was holding public hearings about online safety, as the Morrison Government amps up its war with the Big Tech companies. Burning Platforms is back for 2022 to dissect the inquiry with deputy chair Tim Watts MP. Recorded live 4th February 2022.

Held at The Australia Institute’s Politics in the Pub event, we launch the Centre for Responsible Technology’s new book ‘The Public Square Project’. Western democracy has always been anchored by the idea of a public space where people gather to share ideas, mediate difference and make sense of the world. When Facebook blocked Australian users

The internet promised new ways to challenge power and privilege, so how has it become a tool to promote division and entrench despots? Join us as we dive deep with special guest Elaine Pearson from Human Rights Watch into the ways tech platforms have become wilful partners in oppression around the globe. Regular panellists: Peter

The dominance of Google’s data-hungry search engine is under the spotlight in Australia, with live inquiries on its role in the Ad-tech industry and anti-competitive deals which embed the search engine in smart devices. But DuckDuckGo has proven that you can build a search engine that’s not based on user surveillance. In this week’s Burning

As the world’s leaders debate the future of the planet, technology is being put forward as the solution to the earth’s climate woes. But will smart energy networks, AI and Bitcoin really save us? As part of the annual NetThing internet governance conference, this week’s Burning Platforms dives deep into the environmental impacts of technology. Regular panellists: Peter

Platforms are acting like nation-states and governments are trying to become platforms, but are they both getting it wrong? The idea of the ’platform’ has come to dominate our notion of the internet – that there are corporate networks that we stand on to support us in accessing cyberspace. Governments are employing the same construct

With a review of the Privacy Act expected soon, and the Facebook whistleblower revealing Facebook’s privacy breaches among other things, we take a deep dive into the legal frameworks for entrenching digital data rights into Australian law. From informed consent to data matching and security, is the traditional approach to privacy applicable to the online

Welcome to Burning Platforms. A new fortnightly podcast unpacks the latest developments in technology from around the world. This fortnight we explore algorithms that rule Australia, how we are increasingly outsourcing policy and governance to algorithms. We will look at how facial recognition, robo-planning and robo-welfare are entering our policy environments. This and more in

When Facebook banned Australian news and information from its platform — as well as the pages of many charities, community groups and government departments — in an attempt to avoid regulation, it may have been the first time many Australians had heard of the news media bargaining code. So in this week’s episode we unpack what the code is, what it does, why it’s necessary and what happens next.

There is a growing awareness globally that unregulated technological development is not delivering on its promise to transform the world for the better. The Australia Institute launched the Centre for Responsible Technology, a new non-partisan centre designed to give people greater influence over the way technology is rapidly changing our world, on Wednesday 20 November 2019.