TFGL2021 - S4 - Ep 2 - Lawful But Awful

Welcome to this episode of the Tech For Good Live podcast.

Joining Tech for Good Live’s Jonny and Rebecca Rae-Evans is Ben Fowkes, Commercial Director at Delib.

Transcript

Jonny: Hello fellow lonely people and welcome to another episode of the Tech For Good Live Podcast. I imagine right now, you're wondering why you even bother to tune into this show. Maybe you're having a bad day. Maybe you regularly make bad decisions like this either way. Thank you. I appreciate it. We're in this together. Just waiting for it all to end, but together. We’re super unprepared this week. It might feel a little bit rushed, maybe a little shambolic, but that's kind of our niche though, right? We’ve some interesting stuff to talk through. BBC's Cape team have lodged their toolkit for design in an inclusive workspace. So we'll get into that. The shelter salary campaign has come through. Well kind of, but maybe not really, so we'll be talking about that as well. All that and more coming up. Joining me in my existential crisis today we have Rebecca Rae-Evans, partner in work, partner in life, partner in mixed tennis doubles. She's back on the podcast. Bex, hello.

Bex: Hello. Interesting fact about tennis doubles. In high school,I came second in the girls’ doubles tennis. The key to this story is that there are only two teams that entered the tournament. So, you know, I don't know if I did that well actually.

Jonny: Did you got a trophy? 

Bex: Yes. Which is the main thing [laughs]

Jonny: That’s all that matters. 

Bex: A trophy for losing. That's my kind of trophy.

Jonny: Didn’t you say second place though? 

Bex: Yeah. 

Jonny: Well, that's all that matters. It did not say how many teams were involved. So the dream tournament  is how I got along in life. Just aiming for those kinds of competitions. And me. I'm Jonny Rae-Evans. I've been away. I've been away for a while because I've not been wanted or needed. Weird saying that and it not being about my family. And we have a guest today. Ben Fowkes is back on the podcast then. Ben. hello? How are you? 

Ben: Hello. Yeah, I'm very well thanks. Thanks for inviting me back. I'm amazed this keeps happening.

Bex: [laughs] 

Ben: More fool you. But thanks.

Bex: You're basically part of the team now. So come on whenever you want.

Ben:  I’d like to think so too, Bex. Thanks Bex. I kind of feel part of the furniture will be maybe an insignificant part of the furniture, you know, maybe our beloved pot plant, but I'll settle for that. It's very much my role in life. But yeah, good times, good times. 

Bex: Don’t say that. 

Ben: I love your sporting achievements as well Bex, such as they are. We'd call that in my terms, most improved. Some people may know what that means in sporting terms, but you know, you've got the trophy. No one can take that away from you, even if it was baseless. So, yeah. Anyway.

Bex: I'm sad though, that you called yourself a pot plant because I kill all of our pot plants [laughs[ 

Ben: Well, that's unfortunate, isn't it? Maybe lamp, but possibly a freestanding lamp. You know, the sort of thing you do tend to retain. It's quite irritating when you move, but you did anyway cause frankly you'd love it. Right? 

Jonny: Hmmm. 

Ben: Well, we've taken this analogy as far as it can go. So yeah, but no, like I said, it’s great to be here. Thanks for the invite. 

Jonny: It’s great to have you [laughs] Okay, so we're going to move on to stat off the week. 

Bex: Wiat. Wait. No, we want to chat to Ben first. We're not prepared enough to move straight on to stat of the week. 

Jonny: So what you want to say is, you want to play for time a little. Since we don’t have enough content to get through an episode, so let’s chat.

Bex: Also, I suppose this is what you call , what is it? Backseat hosting. I'm not supposed to be hosting this week but I'm clearly trying to host aren’t I?

Jonny: Well, I don't like hosting.

Ben: So it's also very much game of doubles. So I can see how that crosses over into this aspect. So I think this is going well. There's some feisty returns and some really good teamwork. 

Jonny: And you’re happy with how it’s going [laughs]

Ben: And the communication is there. So I'm glad you asked Bex actually, yeah. How am I doing? Pretty well, actually. Thanks. 

Bex: And also who are you? Who are you? We've had you on three times. I know who you are, but people might not know who you are. Weirdly. I don't know why they wouldn't because you know. 

Ben: Well, I've tried to add enough, right. Try it out. And I'll say, I find him near here. He doesn't know my name's Ben facts and for what it's worth, I'm commercial director at the lab and DeLib is the world's number one digital democracy company based out of Bristol, which is the world's number one city, but with operations all over the world. And we did lots of interesting things to improve ongoing decision-making in large institutions. But yeah, so pretty exciting. We've had a very, very busy year. So I can pad pretty hard for you and make up some minutes and for anyone listening to it, you can just sort of skip onto the bit that you kind of tune in for. So what have I been up to? We shipped new product in the year since I've last been on. So I'm very excited about maps these days. To a level where it's moved beyond geeky. We started with the tech users as introducing geospatial technologies to, what you'd loosely called consultation and engagement exercises. Which is good. But you do end up getting pretty deep on this stuff. Have you guys ever dabbled with maps, as in like really thought about maps? 

Jonny: I was warned by my parents. Never dabble in maps.  They will give you your first map free but after that…

Ben: Rabbit hole mate. 

Jonny: But after that. Yeah. But you’re  like post geek maps and now you've moved beyond that. Like an extra level of it. 

Ben: Yeah. 

Jonny: I mean, I'm familiar with the concept of a map and I, occasionally, maybe look at the one on my phone when I'm trying to get somewhere, but that is probably as superficial as map knowledge is. 

Ben: That's a case in point, if you're overthinking maps. So you're looking at it on your phone and what you're actually doing, you're interpreting the world as it currently exists. But actually, maps can be a way to understand the past. They can be a way to understand potential new features and so on and so forth. But like at every level, I'm into maps at the moment, and shout out to my dad, because he probably will listen to this anyway. So Ste folks, thanks for listening. 

Bex: Ste. Hi Ste [laughs]

Jonny:  So someone will be listening when we check the data next week, it'll say one listener, we now know who that is. Which is always good.

Ben: And you can geo locate that to Chepstow in Wales as well. And that'll be him. If you do geo reference it, you’ll notice it is in Wales, but it's a borderline technicality. I grew up surrounded by iOS maps. I mean surrounded by them and sort of, I was being a bit vaguely interested, but he was obsessed and does lots of outdoorsy stuff. But I trained as an archaeologist originally. Sounds pretentious to say that. I did archaeology at university, is what I actually did. 

Bex: Is it because of Indiana Jones? Indiana Jones, right? 

Ben: Indiana Jones. That’s what I thought but the reality is somewhat different Bex. 

Jonny: Is it? You don't even get like a hat?

Ben: No no. What I did get was a trowel engaged and it was a one and a half inch Draper, if you're interested. 

Jonny: Well, that was my next question, was it a draper? 

Ben: Well it’s a tech focused podcast so it’s obvious that we'll move on to the tooling. So yeah, it's a kind of a diamond shape and like basically you’d be on your knees, scraping around anywhere but like, maps are quite interesting and historical maps are interesting and, you know, there's this concept of palimpsest. You ever heard of a palimpsest or the idea of palimpsest?

Jonny: I have not, no.

Ben: Have you Bex? Bex is shaking her head.  So I'm going to get this all wrong, but I was talking about palimpsest, which is where you see almost imprints or echoes of the past on landscapes. And landscapes you record, understand, interpret using a map. So you could sort of, it might be a palimpsest might be former ancient street patterns, like a medieval street pattern, but actually modern realms will still conform to it. Things like that. And there's all sorts of examples. So these kinds of things like, cause we effectively, you can create a kind of a palace obsessed with the future when you put it in the context of decision-making. What would our communities look like? Particularly climate change and modelling and things like that. It's super interesting when you're using maps as well. So, you know, is it going to be underwater in 10 years [laughs] is quite a pertinent question. So, yeah, it's super interesting. And then you've got this maturity of geospatial tech. A biggie is iOS going back into public ownership. So we can pull that in using the OpenGov. Well this, sorry, the open API licence key. So all our customers can use it. OS, I could talk about it for days. It's rad and of its own right. Although, anyway I shouldn't get into it. So yeah, it's just cool. So we’re doing loads of that and then getting into all these arcane, democratic processes and trying to make them better. I'm super interested in traffic regulation orders at the moment and stuff like that. So anyway, we've been doing loads of stuff and I'm like, yeah, I think there's so much potential because the attack has matured to the point where it's easy to use. We've also gone deep on how you try to make online maps accessible, which is like,  no one knows effectively is the answer. So we've been working with a consultant called Laney Watson, who props to Laney, he blocked the GDS stuff as well. Laney Watson. I'll just repeat the name because go and check her out. She knows her onions. But working with her, we realised building this stuff, there aren't actually answers. And if you can't see a map, you can't see a map and you can't really effectively read out what is on a map like you would do with DNA traditional sort of assistive tools. So anyway, there you go. There's some padding for you. It's called Citizens geospatial, and it's shipped to our core platform, which about 150 organisations have already subscribed to. Yeah. Lots and are picking it up. Police Scotland have picked it up and that will be super interesting because Police Scotland, if anyone doesn't know the best organisation, I love Police Scotland. I mean, I shouldn't say that now because I might be political and everyone will disagree, but they're really going after it. They're like engaging football fans, even about how we can engage with you better because there were problems up there all the way through to full ongoing listening and like reporting out to the various forces they were acting on it, pretty much almost in real time during the pandemic. If you work in this kind of field, it's like gold standard stuff and they've just picked up geospatial, which for loads of boring, practical reasons is going to make it even easier for them to act on areas you feel unsafe. All this sort of, I don't know. I mean, on this podcast I can get geeky, right. But like, there's a lot of super geeky making organisations, but by implication, making them more responsive to the people they serve and so on, that's happening and there's been an acceleration. So, maps, I'm really interested in because my dad, right. But maps and really geospatial technology and what it means for large organizations is potentially really fucking interesting. There you go. It was my first swear word out of the way. So, yeah, I've been loving that. And also I've hazed a couple of raves, which were quite good fun. Which is a bit of an aside. But yeah, is that enough words? Shall I stop?

Bex: Good words. But don’t leave us hanging on the raves. They're relevant. They're not just rave raves. They’re like relevant raves. 

Ben: Cool. So we've done two raves. I mean, it started last year by making a joke on Twitter, which was essentially a pun. So if anyone knows about any sort of  democracy, progressive democracy or any of that kind of stuff, there's been a big push towards what you call citizens assemblies. I think most people know about these things now. And they're everywhere. And I won't comment on their efficacy as such. 

Jonny: [laughs] 

Ben: I probably will at some point cause but they were being done so much that this hashtag emerged by their proponents and what they generally, the collective noun of their proponents would be named as practitioners, just FYI. So whatever that means and say, because there were so many of these happening across Europe and they're a deliberative process and there's so many of them, the hashtag developed to de lib wave. Because it's meant to be like a wave crashing over Europe of deliberative participation. So yeah, if anyone else vomits it in your mouth, right then, that is perfectly natural. 

Jonny: [laughs] 

Ben: So anyway, so there's that and then this report came out that had collected a ton of examples, basically all of these things and presented it as a report that said, this is the future of democracy basically, but like presented it as sort of academic, empirical research. Whereas actually it was a collection of case studies when they reference it was like completely in isolation. Right. It's kind of, yeah, you will kind of stuff like research, bad science. And then like, so that was published with the delivery of hashtag by someone who's at the centre of this kind of thing here. I won't say any more about it. And it kicked off in democracy circles. It was the geekiest kicking off you've seen but there was, you know, politics professors wading in who were really mild mannered ordinarily. There were other people that you might expect from this kind of crowd. There's your sort of angry people. And it was a full suite and it was just a bit daft and like it stopped being about, I mean the whole thing for me, it was just a bit silly. So I made the kind of joke that actually, I remember when this whole scene was a bit more civilised, a bit less dogmatic, and we all got on a bit better because it was just silly. And I said, I remember when it was a bit more delibrave than delibwave. And that was it. I mean, it's not even a good pun. Right. And then like that kind of kicked off. So I was like, well, I’ll hold a delibrave and that'll be fun. And then we had to think what a delibrave might be. And I was determined to host it cause why not and it was lockdown. So we hosted this delibrave and it turned into this slightly weird satirical quiz sort of thing, with little kind of edited viral snippets in between made by someone called Tiffany Maddox, who is a legend and does filmmaking and stuff.  Just things like we found every single dancing politician on the internet, you know, like when Theresa May did a silly dance and then set it to a tune.  So it was like, I didn't even know what it was. It was kind of satire and kind of, but yeah, anyway, so I hosted a couple of days as well. I'm not doing them again but it was very silly and I'm still not sure what we did or why. But they were quite popular. People came. Yeah, I dunno what else to say. I kind of wish we hadn’t talked about it now cause it sounds ludicrous. 

Jonny: Were glow sticks involved?

Ben: Yeah. 

Jonny: Politics professors with glow sticks? 

Ben: That's what we did. Yeah. God, it's all come back. This was like a year ago, but yeah, a lot of the stuff was like, we'd cut it with nineties rave stuff that we'd found on YouTube. So at the end we broke up the rave and just had a big clip about the police coming and things like that. We did have lots of rave music throughout and stuff like that. Yeah. So we kind of did make it a rave theme. So it was like a weird political satire with a rave, based on a pun. And no one really knew why we were doing it. And now I say, it sounds really like, you don't have to be mad to work here but it helps. I'm super aware of that, but it was just a bit of fun, I suppose.

Jonny: It sounds brill, but I don't have a perfect segue [laughs] 

Ben: Well let’s move on right, cause that was your padding. 

Jonny: But it was definitely sufficient padding. 

Ben: Okay, good. 

Jonny: Successful padding, I would say. But stat the week. Bex, this is about BBC’s Cape and a toolkit for a more inclusive workspace, right? 

Bex: Yeah. So the stat is that 10 to 30%, which is really vague actually, that's not a very specific stat. 10 to 30% of the population are neurodivergent. So that’s people who might have autism or dyslexia, dyspraxia. There's a bunch of stuff that fits under neurodiversity. And the BBC's UX&D team have a department called Cape, which specifically is an initiative looking at how to design for neurodiversity and this toolkit they've launched, it's not very digital. It's not very techy. It is about physical space and how to include neurodiverse people in the workspace. I thought it was really interesting. Cape have done more wide stuff and some of it has been about programming and media and how to design for neuro-diversity within that space. And I'm really excited about what the next steps might be. Might there be a digital neuro-diversity design toolkit because I think that would be really, really helpful because I think the thing is you know, working environments specifically are required by legislation to be accessible for physical disabilities, but you don't have that for the cognitive conditions. And I think we have a similar thing on the internet as well, where we all know that we need to be accessible, but in everyone's heads that screen readers and there's no more to it than that. So I think this kind of expands the idea of accessibility to a point where it would be great if we do a digital version of this for designing an experience online as well as an experience offline. 

Jonny: Is the toolkit owned internally by the BBC or  is it something for wider use?

Bex: Ni it’s more generally. Generally how to design a workspace to be neuro inclusive is the term. 

Jonny: Awesome. 

Ben: Good for them. And you're right. There is a direct cross compared to online web accessibility standards, for sure. And it's definitely a sort of a content thing, I think as much as anything else or at least in my limited understanding of it. I'd say the current WCAB standards or whatever the correct name for those are, don’t tackle this. And we think about this a bit. I don't want to say we've really specifically tackle thi, but in terms of when you're trying to break down government policy and that's related to decisions, even in basic senses, when you're trying to kind of tackle this it's, you know, what is the, maybe just the explanation in simple terms? Is there maybe a slightly narrative start page that says on the following pages, you're going to see this. If this is too much information, you can stop here and save it but it's those kinds of things. And that's something we definitely kind of push and if the BBC did do something more kind of web based, I think it would go a long way with a lot of influence and there's maybe some easy wins to tackle it online. Maybe. I really don't know enough about it, so I don't feel like I'm speaking from a particularly expert position. 

Bex: No, but it's a really good point. And actually I've never, I hadn't really made the connection between democratic decision-making and neuro-diversity as wel,  from this conversation's perspective, because what’s come my mind, because I'm very tired today, but what's that the democratic decision-making term? Sociocracy. So I've been recently properly practitioning it and they find it very difficult for my neuro-diversity. Obviously it's good for inclusion, but it's too much. I just zone out because you have to hear everyone's views and it often takes much longer than a normal decision-making process. 

Ben: Yeah. 

Bex: So yeah, I wonder if there's also parallel research to be done around democratic decision making and how it might exclude those or with neuro-diversity or include them. 

Ben: Or include them more positively. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you just have to. A lot of what we do is audience, audience, audience, audience.  Obviously we’ve got to invest in user need. And, but I think when it comes to democratic decisions, audience, audience, audience, audience.  And then it gets to the point of being really clear on where the edges are, where you need to set up a different channel but make that work really well in the web based experience. That's something we've certainly learned with mapping. So there's alternative pathways. Like actually we need clarity and those accessibility based pathways need to be mandatory. So people don't ever optional. A real practical stuff like thatBecause it does relate. And like when it, when we're talking democratic processes, it could be something like, um, uh, like a low traffic neighbourhood, which is really, really tangible and important  to you and if you live on that street, you must be able to participate. So it's interesting, cause what we'd push is if they can feasibly do it online, you should support that audience. And this is a really tricky one there, but we start from the position that it's not optional. And when you get to the groups that simply can't use it online, you better have a communication plan in place to reach them in the first instance and an alternative shared pathway to then collect those responses in the second. Hmm. Yeah. It was interesting though. I don't feel like it's that much positivity involved. I think a lot of it is people who kind of commit to it and the tech building around it. 

Jonny: Yeah. Bex, show the salary. On to charity news of the week. Show the salary is dead or is it? Is it not? What’s going on?

Bex:  When we found this story, we were really upset because we did think show the salary was dead. Show the salary, as you can imagine, is a campaign to try and encourage charities to show what the salary is. Pretty straightforward, right, in a job ad. Instead of saying salary negotiable. And obviously this is aimed at the charity sector but I think bled into everything I tag. I don't think I really realised they were charity sector only. So I just tag them into everything anytime I see somebody not posting a salary. I'm like, show the salary. Look at this. Isn't this terrible?

Jonny: Which is a lot of the time. 

Bex: And I thought we all knew this now. You’re supposed to put a salary. And a lot of people apparently don't know this. So it's really upsetting to see that they might've been shutting down, but it turns out they're not actually shutting down. They're just handing over the reins to a new group of people, which is great because it shows that it's doing really, really well. And they just run out of time because it's doing so well to respond to it or and probably engaged. So it's nice that they're allowing the campaign to snowball and be self-managed and be run by people who do have the time for it instead of kind of like holding onto it even when they don't have time to run it. It's a nice gesture. 

Ben: Yeah, I did miss this entirely. So this is a group that is kind of actively campaigning for this. Is that right?

Jonny: Yeah. Yeah, it's a hashtag as well, isn’t it, show the salary? 

Ben:  Yeah I’ve seen that. Just wasn't aware there was a sort of an organised group as it were. 

Jonny: So every time, which happens regularly in the charity sector, they will post a job without showing a salary, you will wait for the seconds before someone jumps in, hashtag show the salary and you’ll see the salary show up in a good way to try and right those wrongs. Anecdotally, I've noticed quite a lot of times you do see that corrections come out and salaries put on backwards. Obviously a lot of the time that doesn't happen as well because people won’t do it despite being pointed out that what they’re doing is wrong or will make the argument, oh actually we’re not showing a salary because we're being even more appropriate and inclusive. Yeah. Right. 

Ben: I’ve seen some of this actually. And I'm like, I think, yeah, happy days. Cause not adding salaries in any sector is just ridiculous. But you see it across sectors because in the world of IT, there's a really good journalist and he's quite active on Twitter. Derek DePrize, I think it’s pronounced. I could be wrong. You know you don’t read Twitter handles. And he’s very good with that. And they've got a similar thing cause it's ludicrous. Show the bloody salary right? I think we can agree. But someone decided to write a defence paste in response to it [laughs] rather than, as you say, retracting it. They wrote it and it’s just glorious. That’s sartre. 

Jonny: But not [laughs] 

Ben: Well, no. I mean, that's what's arguably tragic for anyone that works for them. Yeah. So it's rife in the charity sector then is it? 

Jonny: Yeah, unfortunately, it is. It is a shame, but hopefully the work they’ve been doing and will now continue to do with the new team will continue to improve that hopefully. I’m excited to see what does happen next with it.  We don't know who is picking it up, do we Bex? Just that it’s under new leadership.

Bex: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I never really knew who was behind in the first place. And the post is like, bye we’ve really loved doing this. We're having to get over to new people and never does it say who the original people were or who the new people are, but I'm sure we'll find out at some point. We certainly should. It's a great campaign and the people who are running it are clearly excellen. So we should know who they are, but it doesn't really say in the post. I'm sure we could probably find out right, in the about section? 

Jonny: Maybe you don't know. I mean, I quite like the mystery of it, but I imagine maybe if they’re working in the charity sector, they’re worried about repercussions. 

Bex: Good point. 

Ben: Batman play possibly. 

Jonny: Batman play [laughs]

Ben: By day, by night. All that. Or maybe they're just very British and you know, it’s a public service. 

Jonny: Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: Who knows? 

Jonny: Maybe they wear capes. 

Ben: Quite literally hovering over that button in a cape. 

Jonny: Yeah. Yeah. Somebody somewhere posts a job ad without a salary and they go into the show the salary cave, probably behind a hidden bookcase and open up a computer that's just for the purpose of social media marketing and they fix things.

Ben: Exactly. It's just got a big red button. 

Jonny: Yeah. 

Ben: Yeah. No, well, I mean good on them because that sounds quite elaborate actually, so yeah. 

Jonny: You’ve got to commit to it though right? You've got to go all in. 

Ben: It sounds like they have. 

Jonny: Yeah. Yeah. 

Ben: Well, good stuff. Good stuff. So just as an aside, DeLib always places salary ranges. So, you know, we explain what the job entails and why you might want to work for us. 

Jonny: I mean, it would have been up, but if you had to jump out now that didn't have the salary on them, then we have this segment. 

Bex: [laughs] 

Ben: Well, I just think it's daft anyway, isn't it? Why wouldn't you? You're going to get fewer candidates and the quality isn't going to be as high. Why would you? The only reason you’d do it's like, yo, it just reflects on the people advertising doesn't it don't go and work for those people. They will also be the ones also saying you can't beat the creativity of the office. Get fucked. You can't beat the e-game man. That's what it is, isn't it? I won't go on about office culture. You'll never have your tea Bex, if I do. So, yeah [laughs]

Jonny: [laughs] On to news of the week then. Canada has got the world's worst internet ideas so say, COVID October, right? 

Bex: Yeah. But you literally sent me this five seconds ago and neither of us have read it. We just really liked the site. 

Jonny: You’ve put it on the top. 

Bex: I hoped I would have time to read it. 

Jonny: It’s poor structuring. Okay. 

Bex: But I did not. 

Jonny: I’m worried now that we just said that Canada’s shit and I haven’t explained why and I imagine it’s a more nuanced piece on that. 

Ben: What's the crack then? Why did we intro this if no one really knows what it is? Tell me, what's your limited knowledge of this? 

Jonny: My limited knowledge is that the title of the article is normally good. I believe there are some online harmful things going on.

Bex:  It's about harmful content on the internet, right? So Canada's government has kind of got a new regulation to work towards a better way of regulating harmful content, is the kind of headline, but it's not a good one. And people are kind of using it, which is not good. I'm trying to figure out what exactly is really, really terrible about it. I mean, it's not great, but obviously we need somebody to work on this.

Jonny: Oooooh.  Lawful, but awful. That's interesting. Have you seen this? 

Bex: Yeah, so there's a requirement to remove lawful but awful speech. 

Jonny: In this new law? 

Bex: In this new law. So that's dangerous because who's setting those boundaries, I suppose. There's a 24 hour deadline for removal. So when they have identified this lawful, but awful speech, they’re telling tech platforms that they have 24 hours to get rid of it and part of me is like, well, that's a good thing, right? We want to be getting rid of these bad things. Obviously it depends on….

Jonny: But who’s defining awful? 

Bex: Exactly because of who's defined it. Exactly.  24 hours is great. But I think the thing that's the issue here is that 24 hours is not enough time to, well, the platforms are saying it's not enough time to thoroughly analyse it to tell if it's actually should be censored or not. So there's plenty of things where people might be being sarcastic or making a really good point but using nuanced language.  We know what quick censorship can do. It can block entire websites that are talking about, like teaching teenagers about safe sex but because it says the word sex iIt will get rid of it. So I think, you know, acting quickly is good and helpful for the things that are really important to remove. But it doesn't seem to be. And there's loads of our algorithm shit as well, going on. So it doesn't seem to be like, well thought through [laughs]

Jonny: It’s also warning as well, I guess that because of it being really poorly defined, the penalties being so harsh and the requirements to respond being so quick, that you'll just get tech giants clamping down on all manners of speech by default so that they’re not in trouble with it.

Ben: Yeah, for real, it would only be big i.e. keyword searches and stuff. That’s the thing isn’t it? What was it? Awful, not lawful. 

Jonny: Yeah. 

Ben: I mean, how the hell do you define that? It’s got abuse all over it. But, you know, further on it goes on to mention. And it's never really encouraging as a styling thing, a Chinese style national firewall that will block websites that refuse to comply. I mean, to be honest, it might just be the framing there, but like, the far reaching data retention policies. I'm in favour of managing it out. It's just nuts. Because as you said, it’s only going to be the big people that can get in and do it . It will be draconian. It’s just not the way you do stuff, is it? 

Bex: Listen to this, listen to this. It allows Canadian police, cops, to confiscate…..

Ben: Go on. 

Jonny: Mounties I think is the word. 

Bex: Mounties. Internet Mounties. Cyber mounties. 

Ben: Well played [laughs]

Jonny: Are they rebooting Due South but is gonna have technology?

Ben: How will the digital Mounties going to kind of lick anything?

Jonny: On a robot horse…

Ben: Any kind of shit that they appear to find as a way to solve murders because that really was central to that program, wasn't it? I think it might've even been in the title credits. 

Bex: There’s going to be a lot of electrocutions. 

Jonny: What, he licked stuff? 

Bex: He licked a lot of things. 

Ben: Don’t you remember this dude? I thought you were looking at me blankly, like it was central.

Bex: Due South is the best thing in the world.

Jonny: I’d lost you. I’ve not seen it.

Ben: Due South. Go and look it up if you haven't seen it. It’s very good. I reckon it would stand up. 

Bex: It’s the best thing in the world. It does. I rewatch it every now and again. 

Ben: Does it? I rewatched Red Dwarf. Never do that if you used to watch it. 

Bex: It’s bad. It's really, really bad now. 

Ben: Ohhhh. It wasn't bad then. Yeah, but in Due South just to finish it off, because I'm sure even Johnny, you know this stuff. Like the whole thing he was so all mountain and so in touch with nature, that he would let things that you shouldn't lick and then he'd be like, well, it was those guys that robbed the bank and like the connection sometimes with lease and specifically to be real shit, it was quite often shit.

Jonny: And what's going to happen now because I think there's this article. I think that's how it's really getting at is that there'll be a reboot of Due South would be more cyber focused and the horse would be a robot and the robot horse would lick things rather than him and it will be able to detect DNA on things. And the horse would lick it and he'll look at the horse and the horse would look at him and he'll go, hmm, tastes lawful. 

Bex: He didn't have a horse . He had a deaf dog. Anyway, Brenton Fraser. Due south. In this scenario, what happens is, Benton goes up to somebody who's running like…..

Jonny: What’s the name? Is that the name of the character or the actor?

Bex: The character and his dog’s Steven Baker. Deaf dog. 

Ben: Did you just google that? Come on, be real. 

Bex: No [laughs] I absolutely love it.

Ben: That’s so good. That’s so good. 

Bex: Sniffing around little Steven baker. Like, oh, who's this. They have dodgy internet stuff that we think is awful and actually he's really prude. So he would think a lot of things are awful. So he'd be like, this is awful. Take the computer. So he takes the computer and then there's going to be like a, basically a racket set up. So there's insurance but the police are going to have an insurance policy to say, you can pay this and even if we do think that you're being awful, we won't take your computers. So it's just an insurance policy to be like, if you do something a bit dodgy, just pay us every month and we won't come knocking on your doors taking your computers.

Ben: Sorry, are we talking about Due South? I’m very confused. 

Bex: We’re talking about the article we're talking about Canada's harmful content regulation. 

Ben: I thought that was a strange flight of fancy to Due South.

Bex: [laughs]  It’s real. Not an episode of Due South. [laughs] 

Ben: I thought you were  just talking about how he would take it forward. So he’s old school at this point we presume, right? 

Bex: [laughs] 

Ben: Like, he's jaded. He's going to set up an insurance racket. I thought this was all good stuff. Details. 

Bex: Did you think for the rest of the episodes I was going to explain my idea for pitching an episode for real.

Jonny: Yeah, I thought you were gonna get your screenplay out.

Ben: But to be real we've all had a long day and I was really enjoying myself and I thought, you know, fair play man. I was going to recommend screenwriting or something, but yeah. Okay. So in real life, it's an insurance racket to make it look like a tech for good live podcast or tech for good podcast. Whatever this is called. So the law sends a name, really silly, rife for corruption and it's an insurance racket, iIt turns out because for anyone else who's confused, that is actually what they're doing. So Bex, I don’t know if anyone knows, are they gonna do it, but water it down?

Bex: So it's poised to pass. However many other countries are already passed rules based on this. So Australia, France, UK, Germany, India have already done similar things, but this is worse than all of them. 

Ben: Yeah. 

Jonny: It's a perfect example of, there is a problem, obviously with harmful content online and it needs to be tackled when you get this all the time with opposed regulation, where the first idea everyone would jump safe is always stupid and wrong. Oh, what if you just did this? This would stop it. And that's what we've gone for. It's like a child came up with the idea and nobody's seemed to stop them, which is fun. 

Ben: I think you've summed it up perfectly. 

Jonny: Well I do. 

Ben: I know, it’s like you've done this before [laughs] but really well put. Well, I mean, it's nuts. I don't think there's much more to say and it will fail, but it's always the same. Regulation doesn't keep up. And then when they try and use it as a proper heart instrument it’s daft. It’s like using, what's the right analogy, it’s using like a sledgehammer to break an egg, that kind of thing. Right. So, you know, yeah. Anyway, good times. Things are going well in Canada. And presumably this is happening because old Trudeau is back in again? Is that kind of the thing  He is back in isn't he? 

Jonny: Has he ever not? Did he not? Was he not in for a bit? I've not been up to date with Canadian law [laughs]

Ben: No elections dude. Haven’t the Canadians just re-elect Trudeauand it was all a bit of a punt and it might not have gone well?

Jonny: I don’t know. 

Ben: Well, I'm going to stop asking awkward questions. 

Jonny: I just have not. I think since Due South was cancelled, I think it’s still a little bit too raw. 

Bex: It didn't get cancelled. It was a well-rounded finale after about a hundred million seasons. So it’s fine. 

Ben: Nice. And fundamentally something like Due South, it doesn't end. It ascends. 

Bex: It lives on in my heart. 

Ben: It becomes something more atheorial, you know, it becomes matter in effect. So, you know, that's how we have to remember it. 

Jonny: I don't have a segue for this into DCMS. 

Ben: It's impossible dude.  Oooh DCMS. 

Jonny: Do you want to talk about this? 

Bex: Yeah, very good segue here. It's about if the government is launching a consultation, so hopefully it won't make a shitty decision, right? 

Jonny: I mean, not knowing what it’s about is also limited me [laughs] unless Ben had said the term DCMS, I wouldn't have had a segue [laughs] 

Ben: I think I might know what you’re talking about dude. I might actually have this. Go on. What is it? 

Bex:  Consultation. They're doing a consultation. 

Ben: Is it the data thing?

Bex: Yeah. 

Ben: It’s the data thing.  

Bex: Data forms. I mean, I'm a little bit upset about their ideas that they've got in here already. Like they want to create a pro-growth and innovation friendly data protection regime, which basically says don't protect data because innovation and growth is all about collecting data, which worries me. But I've not actually read it so it might be better than I think it is. But there's a consultation so you can have a say before the 19th of November. 

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. I have a lot of thoughts about this. Many of which I can't talk about her, frankly, for reasons of decency and say to some extent contracts and things I've signed. But like the first thing I would say is we don't work with DCMS, but we do work with a majority of the core Whitehall departments in the citizens space to run these kinds of processes and DCMS are borderline unique and not doing so. I mean, nothing more than that, other than we aren't affiliated by them, to be very clear. But in terms of the nature of the constitution and the policy it represents without really getting into specifics. I think what's interesting is the number of similar consultations we've had and therefore policies, the weird way that this kind of stuff moves around government and quite often, the weird way we don't hear a lot more after the fact. And actually digital being bundled into DCMS is still relatively recent and happened in a fairly strange way. It was actually Matt Hancock that brought digital in. The DCMS used to be a department for culture, media, and sport and is now the department for digital culture, media and sport. I believe. It may have changed again, also props finding levelling up to ministry of housing communities and local global last week. I've never, it's very rare to see a political arguably slogan added to the name of a ministry or a department. That is a curiosity, I would say. But when it comes to DCMS, it's the fact that digital should be central and it was when GDS was set up. It was a Cabinet office. It was about spend and control. It was about levers. It was a content play. Let's be real. And it kind of worked ready. So what I would say in terms of my take - the constitution, I think you should take part if you’re interested. There will be a policy team there that actually is interested in hearing what you have to say, particularly if you've got a voice it's always worth remembering the consultations and not referendums, but actually not really whether you agree with it or not, but which bits could be improved. So a consultation is constructive. So if you do take part, actually it's better to think of it in those times, because consultation is less politicians and more people like you and me who are trying to make things better. I would say largely there are places where that isn't true and I couldn't name them. 

Bex: [laughs]

Ben: But I do think in this sense. But the main thing is there's been a lot of these data strategies. There's been a lot of overlap. There's a lack of clarity about how these relate to previous ones or ones that are contained elsewhere or even how it feeds into industrial strategy in a way, which is kind of a base thing. So it's super interesting. And I'd say at the moment policy making in Whitehall is something, you know, we live in interesting times. That's the only thing I'd say, but rather than on a basis level. It's interesting to know what the potential impact of this is. We hear whether it sees the light of day and what version. Whether it's kind of real stuff or more a statement of intent. 

Bex: It;s a really important topic. So I think we should all get involved. Well, hopefully it would make some difference. 

Ben: I think you should. I really do. I really do. I really would. Sorry if that sounded dead cynical. 

Bex: [laughs] 

Ben: I do think it's worth getting involved because the people who do listen to this would have a valuable opinion and valid opinion. And actually it probably take you half an hour to take part and you'd have to use your brain. And like, that's a real exchange though. But I do think it is worth doing it, but in light of, you know, who is this person trying to make this better. It's not really political. I don't think too much all day. Although, you're probably going to tell me it was a few things and how the, I mean, we're setting up all of our private data of some horrible person or something. Have I missed the point? 

Bex: No.It's a good thing. It's supposed to be a good thing. It's supposed to be what we think about personal data, but there's a really great line in here, which I think is like future facing, which is, keep pace with the rapid innovation of data intensive technologies. So it is about how do we keep on top of that, which is important with legislation of data and digital that we haven't really nailed yet.

Ben: Really fundamental stuff, potentially anyway, depending on how they use it. 

Jonny: Indeedy. And we are almost out of time. So do we have time for an and finally are a rant. Is that a preference?

Bex: Sorry. I just want to rant very quickly about the big tech companies and what they've been up to in the last week. Just very quickly. Facebook's been a prick again, basically. 

Ben: [laughs] 

Bex: The company's response to flagging of drug cartels and human traffickers, like, which is really bad. If people are flagging stuff like this on Facebook, the company doesn't respond as quickly as it is, it should have done or as strongly as it should do. So, like there's a big Wall Street Journal article that’s come out about that with loads of staff and employees talking about that. So just so you know, Facebook's still awful. Amazon's also awful. They've launched a creepy robot, which is spying on us. So that's cool. And Google is letting the US police mine their data for your location search history, which obviously is scary as well. So three scary things coming out of the big tech. I just wanted to kind of say they’re still at it. 

Jonny: Did you see the Instagram new, which is not good for them but it's good for us. Cause Instagram, if you remember a while back, was it, awhile or was it years back said, hey, because we're so dreadful at stopping exploitation of children or teen suicide, we’re the responsible people to launch a platform just for these kids and everybody with a brain went, well, that's the worst idea anyone has ever had. They’ve finally now decided, hey, we're maybe not ready or able to do this, so we're not going to do it. I think maybe expecting applause for being so careful and considered when, yeah, so at least a bit of good news about big tech. I think the best way to stop big tech doing harm is this, where you just don't do your product, which I think would be the perfect way to fix Facebook. Shut it down, burn it, and then salt the earth where it existed. That would be my approach. 

Ben: And off planet, just to be safe.

Jonny:  Yeah. Okay. [laughs] So Ben, thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. How was it for you and where can people find you online? 

Ben: Brilliant. Well, for me, I just found it to be deeply professional. And I'm just glad you asked that question in quite a spontaneous fashion, so props to you. 

Jonny: [laughs] 

Ben: So yeah, where you can find me online, mostly Twitter to be fair. That kind of thing. So I'm at Ben underscore fowkes. which, you know, no doubt link it. Give it a follow. There's loads of great insight there. But yeah, for Delib stuff, delib.net for product stuff. Loads of good things on there, including the geospatial things. Follow me because that'll make me feel good. But then do you go to deliberate on that to check out those products and if you are working in a public institution and you want to hear more people holler at me, but thanks for asking. 

Bex: [laughs] 

Jonny: You're very welcome and I’m glad I asked. That's all we have time for. Listeners, what did you think of this well prepared podcast? We'd love to hear your thoughts. You can get with us. You can’t get with us but you can get in touch with us on Twitter at tech for good live. Or you can email us to say nice things only at hello at tech for good dot live. We would also like it if you gave us a nice iTunes review and told your friends about this, I mean, if you’re listening to this podcast, you don't have friends. 

Ben: [laughs] 

Jonny: But tell strangers or family members about us. 

Bex: Or your enemies. 

Jonny: Tell your enemies. Hey, I've got a good podcast you can listen to. You’d really dig it, Steve. 

Bex: Also, can I ask a question of everybody? Please tweet us the answer. 

Jonny: It’s terrible decorum when you’re not the host but yes. 

Bex: If we are totally unprepared for a podcast like we were this time, should we just not do one or should we just do it anyway? 

Jonny: I don’t think they’ll notice the difference [laughs]

Bex: It was the same as always right? [laughs]

Jonny: They’ll be like, wait, so they’re normally prepared?

Ben: It was a real tech focus and I appreciated that. 

Jonny: And it was live. 

Ben: It was very live. Dude. It was very live. It was unplugged, I would go so far to say. 

Jonny: [laughs] Unplugged. Yeah, it was, uh, yeah. Thanks to Podcast.co for hosting our podcast. It's very kind of them. And please don't forget this podcast is run by volunteers, clearly not by professionals and we survive on sponsorships and your chain donation. Right now one of our primary goals is to ensure all our podcasts episodes are accessible and each one is transcribed. This does cost us money and we desperately need your help to make this become a reality. So if you've ever tuned into one of our podcasts or have attended one of our events and are able to please do consider chipping in the price of a cup of coffee, which you can do on our website. I believe there is a shiny donate button that you can press. But that is everything from us. Thank you so much. And we will, we won't see you soon because it's audio medium but you'll hear from us soon. So thank you. Goodbye.