Do Social Media Bans Work? + A Conversation About A.I. Consciousness + Tool Time

“If the net result is that all the teens in Australia are still using social media, even after they’re technically banned from doing it, why are we doing any of this?”


This week, with news that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up Texas’ age verification law for app stores, we check in on how social media bans are going around the globe and what may be coming soon to a state near you. Then, we’re joined by Jeff Sebo, an associate professor at N.Y.U., to discuss new research into “A.I. welfare” and whether A.I. could ever become conscious. And finally, in our latest edition of Tool Time, we show each other some of the latest tech tools we’ve been experimenting with.


  • Jeff Sebo, associate professor and the director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy at N.Y.U.

An illustration of a person holding an iPhone, with a circle around the phone and line through the circle.
Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Images: Getty Images


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“Hard Fork” is hosted by Kevin Roose and Casey Newton and produced by Rachel Cohn and Whitney Jones. This episode was edited by Vjeran Pavic. Engineering by Chris Wood and original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano and Rowan Niemisto. Fact-checking by Caitlin Love.

Special thanks to Paula Szuchman, Pui-Wing Tam, Brooke Minters and Dahlia Haddad.