Ira Glass details the story on "This American Life"
1 Sep 24 · 3d ago · 3 posts · 2 sources · development 1 of 2
Host Ira Glass tracked down one of the kids involved and aired the story, including the kid's blunt explanation for why they chose NPR's podcast and Glass's own reaction to it.
“Um, I think we just, like, looked for podcasts that didn't have many comments.”
unnamed middle schoolerIra Glass Host, This American LifeHannah Chin Audio producer, NPR's Wild CardNPR Public radio organization / podcast producerSpotify Platform hosting the podcast comments
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What people said 3 voices · verbatim
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J
I'm glad more people are seeing the @thisamericanlife.org report about how children use the NPR comments section to get around social media bans today. Funny thing is that @npr.org and @techdirt.com reported on this a year ago. And it was Google Docs before podcasts.
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The folks at NPR started seeing weird activity in the comments section of the Spotify account their show "Wildcard" -- stuff totally unrelated to the podcast, in mostly English but weird abbreviations. Thinking they had found bots, they asked Spotify to delete the comments -- which of course came back. Because, as Ira Glass of This American Life…
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K
Kids that are too young (age-restricted) from social media figured out they can use the comment section for NPR podcasts on Spotify, to talk to each other. Basically a group chat in an unrestricted random public place. In an alternate timeline, this is where escaped LLMs leave messages for themselves, but this time, it's kids working around age…
All 2 developments of Middle schoolers turn NPR podcast comments into a secret… →
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