A Digital Briefing Book on Privacy and Podcasting

Stories to read and listen to, whether or not you’re attending PRX’s podcast privacy symposium

The past few years have shown a growing public awareness of, and outrage over, how companies use things like cookies, cell phones, and WiFi connections to encroach on individual privacy. These companies — Facebook, Google, and Amazon come to mind first, but there are untold others that aren’t household names — collect data about individual behavior and cross-reference it with other data that they trade or buy access to.

They can then use this data to understand their customers and serve us information that is more relevant to our lives… or to sell us more stuff and capture our attention when we are most vulnerable. The desire to connect and stay informed leaves us exposed to free or low-cost offers that dupe us into giving away more value than we get. And often, we’re giving away more than we understand we are.

Online media is at an inflection point. The mantra that information wants to be free, the disappearance of traditional revenue streams, and the erosion of geographical moats, among other things, have led to a flood of quick, commodified stories competing for attention in search engines and on social media. The result is an existential crisis for publishers large and small.

Podcasting has avoided much of that until now. Here are some possible reasons why:

What would a future for podcasting look like that is accessible to many producers, allows large and small organizations to build sustainable businesses, and is respectful of individual privacy?

Often a symposium will assemble a briefing book so that participants can immerse themselves in the subject in advance. Instead and in the spirit of openness, this post links to recent articles that came up in research for the symposium and that inspired the conversations planned for February 25.

Wong will be at the symposium, moderating a panel on privacy in podcasting.

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