INFLUENCE
Matt Silverman
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Top 10 INFLUENCE Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best INFLUENCE episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to INFLUENCE for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite INFLUENCE episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Social media platforms have become the “default” for most of the world’s 5.5 billion Internet users, which means everything we see and post online is controlled by billionaires and squeezed for maximum profit – shredding democracy, mental health, and human rights in the process.
But what if it didn’t have to be this way? In fact, the Web wasn’t this way until very recently. So how did we get here? And how can we claw it back?
The bad news is it will take a LOT of work, investment, and convincing. The good news is, we already know how to do it - and it’s way easier than you think.
This week, activist and public interest technologist Mallory Knodel joins Matt to discuss a huge initiative to reinvent social media and rescue online discourse from billionaire control. Mallory is the executive director and founder of the Social Web Foundation, a non-profit working to build sustainable and fair social network infrastructure.
She’s also a custodian of Free Our Feeds, a coalition proposing new standards and protocols that would make social media open, inter-operable, and free from billionaire control.
In layman’s terms: Imagine if friends on Bluesky could subscribe to your Instagram Reels. Imagine if you decided to leave YouTube and take all your videos with you to Mastodon. Imagine a social media ecosystem where everyone can talk, free from sensationalist algorithms and constant surveillance.
It’s not only possible, but happening now, via federated networks like ActivityPub and AT Protocol. But as Mallory explains, getting your friends to ditch TikTok for Bluesky is a “hearts and minds” battle that’s just getting started.
Mallory and Matt discuss why all of our public discourse has moved onto “private property,” the importance of data portability, the burden of “switching costs,” and why now is the time to free our feeds from the billionaire class.
Plus, some Amish trivia and your questions and voicemails.
Learn more about Free Our Feeds: https://freeourfeeds.com/
The Social Web Foundation: https://socialwebfoundation.org/
And subscribe to Mallory’s newsletter, Internet Exchange: https://internet.exchangepoint.tech/
This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod
Listen & subscribe wherever you get podcasts:
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Join our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepod
Call the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548
Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! [email protected] (NOICE)
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05 Information Disorder: The Disturbing Rise of Political Misinformation Influencers | Lam Thuy Vo
INFLUENCE
06/12/24 • 113 min
“Fake news,” conspiracy theories, and click-bait are no stranger to all our Internet feeds. When we spot it, we may block an account or kindly refer a relative to a more reputable source. But what about the misinformation we can’t even see? Specifically, content in other languages, created for online communities we can’t possibly access?
For the relatively small community of Vietnamese-speaking immigrants in the U.S., there are almost no reliable media outlets to serve news in their native language. And strange entities have sprouted up to fill the void, often mixing far-right conspiracies with legitimate news to create “information disorder,” a particularly insidious brand of propaganda.
This week on INFLUENCE, investigative data journalist and journalism professor Lam Thuy Vo joins Matt to discuss the complexities of consuming a balanced news diet in the Vietnamese-American community. She has written numerous pieces for The Markup (a non-profit tech journalism site) about the “Languages of Misinformation,” and a mysterious YouTuber who produces a shocking amount of very dubious Vietnamese-language “news.” Who is she? Who is behind her channel? And what’s the goal?
Lam also profiles a heroic Vietnamese-American grandmother who took it upon herself to translate reputable news sources to combat the misinformation she was seeing in her community’s social media bubbles. These forces paint a picture of a very complicated voting block that – if misinformed by the Internet – can significantly impact local and national elections.
Their wide-ranging discussion goes deep on what it means to be media literate in a world of deepfakes, AI, and algorithms that care very little for languages that are not English.
Read Lam’s extraordinary work here: https://themarkup.org/languages-of-misinformation/2024/05/22/the-inside-story-of-the-youtube-influencer-who-peddles-misinformation-to-vietnamese-communities
https://themarkup.org/people/lam-thuy-vo
And follow her here: https://x.com/lamthuyvo
This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod
Join our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepod
Call the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548
Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! [email protected] (NOICE)
Follow me:
🐤https://twitter.com/Matt_Silverman
📸 https://www.instagram.com/matt_silverman
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
07 Meet the Comedy Nerd Documenting the History of Late Night, One Podcast at a Time | Mark Malkoff
INFLUENCE
06/26/24 • 99 min
When Mark Malkoff was in 8th grade, he wrote a letter to Phil Hartman, one of his comedy heroes on "Saturday Night Live." He assumed Hartman was too famous and busy to look at fan mail. Except, Hartman *did* respond with a heartfelt note.
For Mark, this (and many other encounters) cemented a life-long obsession with comedy and late night TV — so much so that he moved to New York City and became an audience coordinator at "The Colbert Report" and "Late Night with David Letterman." He was touching the TV biz, but he wasn't writing or performing, and the grueling hours were catching up. That's when he turned to the Internet.
Mark is known for his creative and wacky challenge videos (like living in IKEA for a week, or drinking something at every Starbucks in NYC). But his encyclopedic knowledge of late night TV began to shine when he started "The Carson Podcast," a 400 episode love letter to "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson," in which he interviewed many people involved in its production - from the guy who held the curtain for 20 years, to legends like Carol Burnett, Jimmy Buffett, Brooke Shields, Mel Brooks, and Michael J. Fox.
Recently, Mark launched a new podcast called "Inside Late Night," which covers the generation of comedy that came after Carson — "Saturday Night Live," David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, "The Daily Show," and more. His candid and meticulous conversations with the writers and performers who've made us laugh for decades often unearth showbiz stories that have never been told before.
Mark joins Matt to discuss why viral videos don't pay the bills, getting deep and personal with podcasts, the savvy way he gets into celebrity inboxes, being mistaken for Stephen Colbert, getting Lorne Michaels' autograph, and that time Adam Sandler gave him his phone number.
Subscribe to "Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff" wherever you get podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-late-night-with-mark-malkoff/id1745253634
This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod
Join our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepod
Call the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548
Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! [email protected] (NOICE)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
04 How a Star Wars Parody Show Changed YouTube Forever | Blame Society (Aaron Yonda & Matt Sloan)
INFLUENCE
06/05/24 • 74 min
The early days of YouTube were for home movies, cat videos, and short vlogs. But in the summer of 2006, something emerged from Wisconsin that would change our perception of what Internet video was capable of. “Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager” tells the classic story of Darth Vader’s younger brother, who commands a middle-management job at the local grocery store, rather than a Death Star.
But “Chad” was more than just a hilarious Star Wars parody. It had the production values of a fully-fledged sitcom: Multiple actors and plot lines, costumes, sets, a musical score, sharp writing, and legit cinematography. The Internet — and YouTube corporate — took notice.
Before “Like & Subscribe” was a thing, YouTube featured Chad Vader on its homepage, which reached millions of eyeballs and generated serious heat around the series. Fans began demanding new episodes, and YouTube realized the new potential of its platform. It was starting to shift from a novelty site, to a loyalty destination.
Chad is the brainchild of Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan, improv comedians from Madison, Wisconsin, who had been making sketch comedy videos for public access TV and film festivals. After Chad Vader was canceled by Channel 101 and ignored by the Los Angeles establishment, they decided to check out this whole “YouTube thing.” The success of the series (and other emerging creators) prompted YouTube to roll out its advertising partner program. Yonda and Sloan’s channel, Blame Society Films, became one of the first ever to monetize. Chad’s popularity lead to brand partnerships, contract work, and collaborations. But despite its huge success and even an award from George Lucas himself, Hollywood never figured out how to translate a Star Wars parody sitcom to traditional TV.
This week on INFLUENCE, Aaron and Matt chat with the Other Matt about their origin story, the evolution of their audience, the “lunacy” of Internet comments, why YouTube sketch comedy is dying out, voicing the REAL Darth Vader for TV and video games, and the long-running series their fans love and support today.
Subscribe to Blame Society Films: https://www.youtube.com/@blamesocietyfilms
Beer and Board Games: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL49WgzlbhrT0kCIoZQukx-xbwFjSQhYFQ
Game Society Pimps: https://www.youtube.com/@GameSocietyPimps
Junkyard Joust: https://www.youtube.com/@JunkyardJoust
Welcome to the Basement: http://welcometothebasementshow.com/
This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod
Join our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepod
Call the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548
Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! [email protected] (NOICE)
Follow me:
🐤https://twitter.com/Matt_Silverman
📸 https://www.instagram.com/matt_silverman
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
[Encored Episode] 82 God
INFLUENCE
12/02/19 • 49 min
We're taking the week off for the Thanksgiving holiday, but we hope you enjoy one of our favorite episodes. Sit back, relax, and enjoy a conversation with a very popular social media influencer: God.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
02/26/18 • 78 min
If you're tired of swiping on looks and clever pickup lines, why not go a niche as possible? The Passions Network connects singles based on extremely focused interests, like driving trucks, The Walking Dead, SCUBA, and...herpes? Alli and Jen talk to Michael Carter about the evolution of online love, and how he grew his dating directory in the early days of Google search.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
01/01/25 • 105 min
Happy Nude Year, one and all! I'm still on holiday break, but wanted to check in with out about the YouTuber(s) who exposed the Honey browser extension (owned by PayPal) as a massive scam, my upcoming guests, and sharing an encore episode from my other show, Colette & Matt Have Entered the Chat, about a small but mighty video game community that did the impossible, just in the nick of time!
Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam, by MegaLag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk
Original Show Notes from May 3, 2024
Since 2017, a small collective of "Super Mario Maker" enthusiasts have been trying to complete every single player-created level — a quest to truly "beat" a game with hundreds of thousands of uncleared stages.
But when Nintendo announced that the servers for Wii U games would be taken offline in April 2024, the urgency reached new heights. Team 0% began to grow from its humble beginnings of about 500 members, to 15,000+ players, committed to identifying and clearing the remaining levels before they were lost to time.
Playing the levels was only half the battle. Finding and cataloging the unbeaten stages using Nintendo's arcane databases was no simple task. But through some clever reverse-engineering and lots of spreadsheets, they had whittled it down to a handful of levels with just days until oblivion.
What remained were some of the hardest, most obtuse Mario monstrosities ever created. And one level in particular could only be beaten by a robot — until...
This week, we talk with MagicMason1000, a long time member of Team 0% who now manages the community's YouTube and social media. Mason walks us through the fascinating history of this monumental undertaking, the Team's massive popularity boom amid global headlines, what happens when Nintendo patches glitches in Mario Maker, the exciting (and then somewhat anti-climactic) final victory for the team, and the mysterious fate of all those levels now that the servers are gone.
If you'd like to pitch in to beat every uncleared level of "Super Mario Maker 2," you can join the Team 0% Discord here: https://discord.gg/team0percent
Check out the Team's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TeamZeroPercent
And watch henryst's The History of Mario Maker's Last 100 Levels video, as discussed in this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUqUUXDmk40
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
13 The Fry Up Police
INFLUENCE
12/18/17 • 41 min
A Facebook group with 50,000 members is all about posting pictures of British breakfast food so people can curse at you. Alli and Jen get the scoop behind one of the most hilarious and bizarre Facebook communities.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
02/06/23 • 52 min
Take a trip down memory lane with this encore 2G1P episode, and we'll be back with you next week!
-- Original Show Notes From February 1, 2021 --
Since 1999, the website Something Awful has been an Internet culture tastemaker, and this closed community is still going strong two decades later — a rarity for online platforms. Many modern memes and web culture references have their roots on Something Awful's humor forums.
For a one time fee of $10, you get full access to the site's vibrant discussion and community. That nominal barrier-to-entry is the secret to keeping the discourse quality high and shitpost ratios low, according to the site's current owner, who goes by the pseudonym Jeffrey of Yospos.
Paying for high-quality content and meaningful online community has recently come back into fashion amid the chaos of free platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which make money at incredible scale by selling user data to advertisers. It begs the question: Did we build the Internet wrong?
Alli and Jen talk with Jeffrey about the early days of Something Awful, a place where you're "free to be an Internet weirdo." We also learn the origins of "Let's Play" video game culture, and ways the SA community fought hate speech long before most platforms took it seriously.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
07/31/24 • 98 min
The surreal machinima "Skibidi Toilet" has been viewed 65 BILLION times across platforms, attracting the attention of Hollywood explosion enthusiast Michael Bay. The mega producer (Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean) has licensed the bizarre web series to make a feature length film or TV series.
The Gen Alpha meme generator is more than just a flash in the pan - it has real narrative structure, and the Skibidiverse has been rapidly expanding over the last year. Even if your kids have never seen a Skibidi video, they are definitely talking about it on the playground. I break down whether toilet heads make any cultural or financial sense in a theater near you.
Meanwhile, two extraordinary online child safety bills are making their way to the U.S. Senate with bi-partisan support. If passed, they would dramatically reduce the data collected on kids, and cut off the algorithmic content that is so damaging to their mental health. What would social media actually look like if we could make it safe for minors? And could these regulations help adults, too?
Plus: Would you quit your job to be an influencer? 50% of adults would if they could. Many of those are already trying.
And YouTube's biggest stars are pissed that AI is learning from the captions on their videos. Where is the philosophical line between fair use and theft when it comes to large language models? And how will we protect creators who may soon be out-matched by "synthetic" video content?
This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod
Listen & subscribe wherever you get podcasts:
🍎 https://apple.co/44FeACS
🟢 https://spoti.fi/3UGQjrN
⏯ https://amzn.to/3wCdueF
Join our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepod
Call the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548
Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! [email protected] (NOICE)
Follow me:
🐤https://twitter.com/Matt_Silverman
📸 https://www.instagram.com/matt_silverman
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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FAQ
How many episodes does INFLUENCE have?
INFLUENCE currently has 371 episodes available.
What topics does INFLUENCE cover?
The podcast is about Leisure, Hobbies, Podcasts and Technology.
What is the most popular episode on INFLUENCE?
The episode title '162 Something Awful' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on INFLUENCE?
The average episode length on INFLUENCE is 64 minutes.
How often are episodes of INFLUENCE released?
Episodes of INFLUENCE are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of INFLUENCE?
The first episode of INFLUENCE was released on Sep 15, 2017.
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