The 🔥🔥🔥 New Social App: NPR Podcasts Comments Section on Spotify

{Ira Glass voice} On this week’s episode of This American Life, the story of middle schoolers too young for social media chatting in the comments section of NPR’s podcasts on Spotify. From the transcript:

And it was just, like, gibberish. There was a bunch of new comments, but I couldn’t make heads or tail of any of them. They’re just these clipped, weird, incoherent postings that I was just like— it screamed bots, just because anytime that I see just gibberish in a comment on the internet, I assume it’s a bot. But the fact that they were all from different accounts seemed very weird. And the fact that they also maybe seemed to be interacting in some way also seemed weird and not like typical bot behavior.

They tracked down one of the participants and interviewed her:

Ira Glass: And can I ask, why did you guys pick NPR shows to be the ones where you went to in the comments?

Ella: I think we just looked for podcasts that didn’t have many comments.

Ira Glass: I see. So you picked NPR because it didn’t seem very popular.

Ella: Yeah, so that we wouldn’t get caught up in other people’s comments.

Ira Glass: I tell you, buddy, I do a public radio show, and that hurts a little to hear it.

You can listen to the whole episode here (or wherever you get your podcasts) — it’s the very first segment — or watch a shorter version of it on Instagram or YouTube. (thx, alana)

• Ira Glass
• NPR
• podcasts
• spotify
• This American Life