TC Top Comment

Podcast

Top Comment

The story behind your social media feed, from BBC correspondent Marianna Spring and investigative journalist Matt Shea. Top Comment investigates what's blowing up online. From global events that go viral across social media, to bizarre moments that spill into real life, Marianna and Matt unpack the trends, theories and digital chaos shaping our world.You can also hear Marianna's previous series for the BBC in this feed, including Marianna in Conspiracyland, Why Do You Hate Me?, Disaster Trolls, Death by Conspiracy? and War on Truth.

Website ↗ Last published 30 October 2026 104 posts collected by Sputnik

Said on Top Comment

“I sort of asked him, do you think that this type of content is why some critics might take issue with the porn industry? And he got really agitated and he was like, do you think I want to shoot that kind of shit? And he said, I can't decide what I shoot anymore. What I shoot is dictated by data of what people click on. And he pointed his finger at me and he said, you are the perverts.” — Patricia Nilsson, Top Comment
Patricia Nilsson · 30 Oct 2026 Listen →
“The modern porn industry, the online porn industry, is not really about porn. It's not really about sex. The pornography is just a byproduct. What the business is really about is the attention that the pornography is attracting.” — Patricia Nilsson, Top Comment
Patricia Nilsson · 30 Oct 2026 Listen →
“If you get told, hey, you have a bias in your algorithm and you choose not to fix it, at some point it becomes a knowing choice. So I don't think they ever set out to intentionally make things worse. But when they were told they had options to make things better, they chose not to take them.” — Frances Haugen, Top Comment
Frances Haugen · 9 Oct 2026 Listen →
“And so what you end up having is this kind of like matcha flavored Russian doll of nothingness where it's like influencers selling courses to influencers on how to become influencers selling courses to influencers and so forth and so forth.” — Matt Shea, Top Comment
Matt Shea · 21 Aug 2026 Listen →

Hosts

Top Comment is hosted by Marianna Spring and Matt Shea .

Recent Episodes

  1. 30 Oct 2026

    How porn sites soft-launched the attention economy

    With Patricia Nilsson

  2. 23 Oct 2026

    Are platforms promoting death on demand?

  3. 16 Oct 2026

    AI influencers are invading our feeds

  4. 9 Oct 2026

    Frances Haugen: exposing Facebook five years on

    With Frances Haugen

  5. 2 Oct 2026

    How the 'Cornell 7' rape case became a call to action

  6. 25 Sep 2026

    Has Hunter Biden fumbled the bag?

  7. 18 Sep 2026

    Why deepfake wizards went underground

    With Suzanne Kroege and Deborah Tice

  8. 11 Sep 2026

    How Charlie Kirk achieved internet immortality

  9. 4 Sep 2026

    Angel Vic and the truth about hustle culture

  10. 27 Aug 2026

    Lindsay Clancy and the age of TikTok trials

  11. 21 Aug 2026

    Everybody wants to be Ellie Ellis

  12. 14 Aug 2026

    Exposed: the faceless accounts inflaming the Ceuta crisis

Guests

Becky Flint , Gabriel Shemirani , Julia Wandelt , Anna Lembke , Taylor Lorenz , Suzanne Kroege , Charlie Parker , Rod Dacombe , Frances Haugen , Greg Jenner , Karen Douglas , Deborah Tice , and 12 more.