Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is solvable on Jacob Weisberg. Every time you
Speaker 1: browse around online, you have a teeny bit of power
Speaker 1: as a consumer in what you elevate and amplify and
Speaker 1: engage with. Since its beginnings, the Internet was meant to
Speaker 1: be a vehicle for free, uncensored communication. Though the Internet
Speaker 1: is international, the model was in many respects based on
Speaker 1: the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to free expression
Speaker 1: in the United States. But as we've all seen in
Speaker 1: recent years, free speech can also suppress speech. The same
Speaker 1: freedom that promotes creativity and collaboration can become a tool
Speaker 1: to spread lies and propaganda. Misinformation usually refers to facts
Speaker 1: that turn out to be wrong, and disinformation refers to
Speaker 1: wrong facts that are being deliberately peddled for a political end.
Speaker 1: So it's the more kind of sinister version. Disinformation now
Speaker 1: threatens American democracy directly. Malicious foreign actors, including the Russian government,
Speaker 1: are taking active measures to so confusion and cynicism, and
Speaker 1: it's unclear where the responsibility falls for separating facts from falsehoods.
Speaker 1: If you don't want the government to have any power
Speaker 1: over online speech, then you have to recognize that you
Speaker 1: have made mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey at Twitter and
Speaker 1: whoever runs YouTube the czars of speech. So you just
Speaker 1: got to reckon with that. I mean, the First Amendment
Speaker 1: is the closest thing to religion and the households I've
Speaker 1: lived in, and the idea that it's broken or needs
Speaker 1: to be modified or limited in some way is I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: I can only go back to these religious terms. It
Speaker 1: feels herre icle to me, Yes, I know you and
Speaker 1: lots of people in my Twitter timeline. I deeply think
Speaker 1: it's crucial to every democracy to protect free speech. I
Speaker 1: think what Americans need to reconsider is how we are
Speaker 1: protecting free speech. Emily Basilon is a staff writer with
Speaker 1: The New York Times magazine. In her recent story The
Speaker 1: Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation, she
Speaker 1: explores the way free speech is being abused. I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to her about that problem and what we
Speaker 1: might do about it. Disinformation is a solvable problem. We
Speaker 1: have this ideal of free speech, which is that there's
Speaker 1: a marketplace of ideas out there, that more speech is
Speaker 1: always better because the good ideas will win out in
Speaker 1: the end. It's a kind of fundamentally optimistic idea. It
Speaker 1: comes originally from the political philosopher John Stuart Mill and
Speaker 1: his book on Liberty in the nineteenth century, and then
Speaker 1: it kind of comes into Supreme court land in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. But it often just turns out not to
Speaker 1: be true. There are various eras in history where propaganda
Speaker 1: and false ideas have actually won the day. In politics,
Speaker 1: you can think about the Nazis, you can think about
Speaker 1: times of Soviet Union, communism, other nineteen thirties examples of fascism,
Speaker 1: and more recent governments in places like Brazil and India
Speaker 1: where disinformation has really won out. And so I think
Speaker 1: that we are flirting with that possibility in a scary
Speaker 1: way in the United States right now. The fact is
Speaker 1: the marketplace of ideas was always a pretty shaky concept,
Speaker 1: and so free speech is really important to our democracy,
Speaker 1: but we need, I think, to reconceptualize how we think
Speaker 1: about it and how we protect it in a way
Speaker 1: that really protects the speech that supports the democracy instead
Speaker 1: of threatening it. Just so we Yet our terms clear
Speaker 1: say a little about how disinformation with a D differs
Speaker 1: from misinformation with an M. Yeah, I mean these are
Speaker 1: sort of recent terms that are only I think the
Speaker 1: definitions are becoming clear kind of as we speak. But
Speaker 1: misinformation usually refers to facts that turn out to be wrong,
Speaker 1: and disinformation refers to wrong facts that are being deliberately
Speaker 1: peddled for a political end. So it's the more kind
Speaker 1: of sinister version. Yeah, disinformation, intentional deception, often fueled by
Speaker 1: malicious actors of different kinds, is sort of crowding out
Speaker 1: the good information. I mean, there's a term in economics
Speaker 1: called Gresham's law, where you know, the bad money, the
Speaker 1: money that's fake gold kind of is circulating everywhere and
Speaker 1: the real money disappears from the marketplace. In a way,
Speaker 1: that's something like that happening with information right where there's
Speaker 1: just all of this swirling nonsense depending on where you
Speaker 1: get your information from, and you can't tell what's the
Speaker 1: good information or if there's any good information in that context. Ray.
Speaker 1: So one way to think about this is that it
Speaker 1: used to be hard to speak. We had gatekeepers, We
Speaker 1: had these traditional media companies that had a real hold
Speaker 1: and sort of control over speech. Now it's really easy
Speaker 1: to speak, but it's very hard to be heard. And
Speaker 1: some of what we see in disinformation campaigns is a
Speaker 1: deliberate effort to drown out true speech or to smear
Speaker 1: the reputations of people, especially online, so that they'll effectively
Speaker 1: be silenced. They all leave the space, they won't keep
Speaker 1: trying to talk. And so it's the use of speech
Speaker 1: to suppress speech, and that is very challenging for our
Speaker 1: American First Amendment to deal with. I mean, you had
Speaker 1: I thought a really good example in your piece, which
Speaker 1: was a meme. My eye hadn't come across that the
Speaker 1: Democrats were threatening to secede from the country if they
Speaker 1: lost the election. Just tell that story in brief, because
Speaker 1: it was such a tidy example of sort of you know,
Speaker 1: in the famous like Mark Twain, like a lie that
Speaker 1: got halfway around the world before the truth got its
Speaker 1: boots on him. It's just a piece of nonsense that's
Speaker 1: spread like wildfire. Right. Yeah. So over the summer, a
Speaker 1: group of academics and former administration officials, former campaign staffers, posters,
Speaker 1: they got together take game out the twenty twenty election,
Speaker 1: and they played out various scenarios in which one or
Speaker 1: the other candidate won. It was close, there was litigation,
Speaker 1: there wasn't They're basically testing the system of American democracy
Speaker 1: and Rosa Brooks, who was one of the co organizers
Speaker 1: of this project, wrote an essay in The Washington Post
Speaker 1: in which he mentioned that in one of the several
Speaker 1: hypothetical scenarios, Biden won the popular vote, Belosi Electoral College,
Speaker 1: and fictional team Biden talked about trying to ask California
Speaker 1: and the Pacific Northwest threatened to secede as a way
Speaker 1: of pressuring Republicans to add more seeds to the Senate.
Speaker 1: There's just a sentence about this in Rosa Brooks's essay.
Speaker 1: Out of that sentence comes an article by Michael Anton,
Speaker 1: a former Chump official and a conservative publication, arguing that
Speaker 1: a coup is coming. And from that article comes an
Speaker 1: appearance by another Chump official on Tucker Carlson Show talking
Speaker 1: about this fictional threat of a democratic coup, a very
Speaker 1: popular right wing podcaster named Dan Bongino. He shows up
Speaker 1: making videos about this that are getting millions and millions
Speaker 1: of views on social media. President Trump tweets in praise
Speaker 1: of a publication called Revolver News, a right wing website
Speaker 1: which is also spreading this false story. And what you
Speaker 1: see here all the parts of the right wing media
Speaker 1: ecosystem coming together to really give a big platform to
Speaker 1: this made up idea that the Democrats are planning a coup.
Speaker 1: It's like a malignant game of telephone exactly. It's a
Speaker 1: propaganda feedback loop. Yeah, I mean you use that to
Speaker 1: illustrate your argument that the First Amendment isn't serving democracy
Speaker 1: in America. The First Amendment is being used to advance
Speaker 1: propaganda disinformation, and it is not. It's not doing what
Speaker 1: it's supposed to do, which is get information to voters
Speaker 1: and help them make decisions. It's such a striking thing
Speaker 1: to say, and so obviously true in many respects, but
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll say I still have a hard time
Speaker 1: accepting criticism of the First Amendment. I mean, I'm a journalist,
Speaker 1: you're a journalist. You know I grew up in an
Speaker 1: Afilu family. I mean, the First Amendment is the closest
Speaker 1: thing to religion and the households I've lived in, and
Speaker 1: the idea that it's broken or needs to be modified
Speaker 1: or limited in some way is I mean, honestly, I
Speaker 1: can only go back to these religious terms. It feels
Speaker 1: heretical to me. Yes, I know you and lots of
Speaker 1: people in my Twitter timeline, so I guess I'll say
Speaker 1: two things. I do not mean to be making an
Speaker 1: argument against free speech. Like I deeply think it's crucial
Speaker 1: to every democracy to protect free speech. I think what
Speaker 1: Americans need to reconsider is how we are protecting free speech.
Speaker 1: Our First Amendment has come to put corporate interests, in
Speaker 1: particular corporate spending on elections on par with the shouting
Speaker 1: of protesters. That is not the way other democracies think
Speaker 1: about free speech in Europe and Canada and elsewhere. And
Speaker 1: that sort of libertarian corporatization of free speech and of
Speaker 1: the First Amendment. I think that's what we failed to
Speaker 1: grapple with. But it actually is the kind of underlying
Speaker 1: framework for both why the social media sphere circulates disinformation
Speaker 1: the way that it does, and also why we have
Speaker 1: a broken traditional media system in which we have underinvested
Speaker 1: in trusted public broadcasting. And again that is a big
Speaker 1: contrast between us and some of our pure countries in Europe. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, someone like we believe the First Amendment isn't
Speaker 1: just important for democratic purpose, it's a human right. That is,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's something that belongs to people. I
Speaker 1: don't believe it's a human right that belongs to non humans,
Speaker 1: i e. Corporations who maybe persons under a kind of
Speaker 1: legal fiction but aren't don't have human rights per se.
Speaker 1: But doesn't this all just go back to this series
Speaker 1: of Supreme Court decisions? I mean, is the problem with
Speaker 1: the First Amendment or is it simply with the way
Speaker 1: a conservative Supreme Court has used the First Amendment to
Speaker 1: protect commercial interests at the expensive democratic interest. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the latter. The problem is not the text of
Speaker 1: the First Amendment right which protects our freedom of speech
Speaker 1: and freedom of assembly and the freedom of the press.
Speaker 1: It's a line of Supreme Court cases that start in
Speaker 1: the seventies and take off in the eighties and basically
Speaker 1: culminate in Citizens United, which gave corporation so much more
Speaker 1: ability to contribute to political campaigns. There are some other
Speaker 1: cases that come into play here too, involving labor unions.
Speaker 1: And it's really as Justice Elena Kagan put a kind
Speaker 1: of weaponizing of the First Amendment. And then I think
Speaker 1: the other strand of this that's important and that I
Speaker 1: learned a lot about when I was writing my piece
Speaker 1: is the deregulation of traditional media by the Reagan administration.
Speaker 1: In the eighties. So when you go back to the
Speaker 1: beginning of radio and TV, starting in nineteen twelve, you
Speaker 1: have Congress passing laws that are include the idea of
Speaker 1: a public interest, a public interest obligation by the people
Speaker 1: who are getting our broadband space. Right, Like we the
Speaker 1: American people, own the broadband. We are giving you a
Speaker 1: place on the radio dial or on the TV dial,
Speaker 1: and in return we expect some attention to the public interest.
Speaker 1: That idea lasts until the late eighties, and then it
Speaker 1: really goes away during the Reagan administration, and I think
Speaker 1: that's part of what leads to the rise of Fox
Speaker 1: News and talk radio like Rush Limbaugh. I'm not making
Speaker 1: an argument about conservative media because it's conservative, but I
Speaker 1: am talking about the way in which Fox and commentators
Speaker 1: like Limbaugh really spread disinformation more than the mainstream or
Speaker 1: the liberal media. I mean, there's a lot of evidence
Speaker 1: to back up that thesis, right, But you're arguing that
Speaker 1: Western European democracies that don't have the First Amendment per
Speaker 1: se maybe doing free speech better because their version of
Speaker 1: free speech doesn't prevent them from having reasonable regulation around campaigns.
Speaker 1: They have national broadcasters like the BBC that are generally reliable,
Speaker 1: trusted sources of information, and those are all good things,
Speaker 1: but they also those go in hand in hand with
Speaker 1: limitations that we would be in the United States more
Speaker 1: reluctant to accept, certainly those of us who are journalists.
Speaker 1: There's less protection for truth findings through journalism. It's easier
Speaker 1: to sue people for libel. And of course there are
Speaker 1: tougher restrictions on what people would call hate speech. That is,
Speaker 1: there are things, you know, political things, ideas that express
Speaker 1: animals that you know, can't be said in certain in
Speaker 1: certain places. That's you know, that's it's just a more
Speaker 1: limited conception of what free speech allows. I think that's true,
Speaker 1: especially about hate speech. And I think if you are
Speaker 1: really opposed to banning hate speech, then Europe looks like
Speaker 1: a problem because they do punish people for widely disseminated
Speaker 1: hate speech. In Europe, they have a trifferent tradition. Their
Speaker 1: tradition comes out of the fact that the Nazis rose
Speaker 1: to power because they were elected, and so in Europe
Speaker 1: there is this deep sense that anti democratic ideas can
Speaker 1: be terribly threatening and they're just kind of done with
Speaker 1: them and willing to regulate them and ban them in
Speaker 1: a way that we are not. It's a kind of
Speaker 1: more pessimistic view of the marketplace of ideas than we have.
Speaker 1: I guess the question and you know here we are unsolvable,
Speaker 1: and I want to, you know, focus on now when
Speaker 1: are we solving the problem the conversation we can on
Speaker 1: exactly that. You know, what is the solution in broad strokes, Well,
Speaker 1: I think if you are thinking in a kind of
Speaker 1: blue sky way, you could start with investment in traditional
Speaker 1: media in the United States on par with European countries,
Speaker 1: for example, like the BBC in the United Kingdom or
Speaker 1: RD in Germany. And I think especially important is creating
Speaker 1: outlets or more opportunity for competition that conservative audiences will trust.
Speaker 1: So you know, we have lots of fact checking of
Speaker 1: Fox from outlets like CNN and the New York Times
Speaker 1: where I work, but those are just not trusted outlets
Speaker 1: in a conservative part of a country or conservative audience,
Speaker 1: and so you would want to create more competition, particularly
Speaker 1: in that space. The second thing that we're going to
Speaker 1: watch the Europeans do is figure out how to make
Speaker 1: the big social media platform MS more responsible, how to
Speaker 1: essentially inject a public interest sense of obligation into what
Speaker 1: they do. I think they're just going to do it
Speaker 1: much faster than we are. One advantage in regulation I
Speaker 1: think the Europeans have over the United States is that
Speaker 1: these big social media companies they're American companies, they're not
Speaker 1: European companies. And so in United States Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,
Speaker 1: they show up in Congress and they say, hey, if
Speaker 1: you don't protect us, you're going to empower the Chinese
Speaker 1: TikTok is going to take over the world. The Europeans
Speaker 1: aren't particularly moved by that argument. They don't feel the
Speaker 1: same need to protect American corporations, and I think that
Speaker 1: is why they're going to lead the way in figuring
Speaker 1: out how to have just a healthier social media environment.
Speaker 1: Although these companies have big lobbying operations in Brussels, they're
Speaker 1: working the European legislators the same as they're working the
Speaker 1: ones here. Absolutely, I mean, I yes, I'm glad you
Speaker 1: said that they just don't have the kind of home
Speaker 1: team antis, but they are absolutely spending lots of money
Speaker 1: doing exactly that. And there are a range of things
Speaker 1: to talk about here. I mean, I don't I am
Speaker 1: not in favor of direct government regulation of speech online. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think we should create a federal Department of
Speaker 1: Content moderation. But what we could do, or what the
Speaker 1: Europeans may well do, is start requiring, first of all,
Speaker 1: much more transparency from these companies. Well, let's dig into
Speaker 1: the social media part of it first, because you know,
Speaker 1: here we have a conundrum. We've given these companies permission
Speaker 1: to not be responsible for what they've published. This is
Speaker 1: the so called Section two thirty that says as long
Speaker 1: as their platforms and not publishers, they're not legally culpable
Speaker 1: and what publishers are. And they've generally taken that to mean, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not up to us whether something is true,
Speaker 1: it's not. We don't decide what's good information and what's
Speaker 1: bad information. All we have to do is take things
Speaker 1: down if they vile a copyright or I guess increasingly
Speaker 1: if they are proven false. They may limit the spread
Speaker 1: of them. At the moment, independent researchers can't even tell
Speaker 1: you how prevalent disinformation and hate speech is on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,
Speaker 1: and these are places that are not governed by the
Speaker 1: First Amendment. They already police lots of speech, right, they're
Speaker 1: not the public square. They sort of function that way,
Speaker 1: but legally they have much more freedom to monitor speech
Speaker 1: than the government does. They're not the government, they're companies.
Speaker 1: But we don't even really know what they're doing when
Speaker 1: they say that they're fact checking or putting fact checking
Speaker 1: labels on posts, or reducing the spread of disinformation. We
Speaker 1: have to trust their internal reports about the effects that
Speaker 1: has we don't even know. So that's like one place
Speaker 1: to start solving this problem is just literally to find
Speaker 1: out what's going on inside those companies, and then we
Speaker 1: can talk about other parts of this involving like the
Speaker 1: way that their algorithm functions. Yeah, so a crucial suggestion
Speaker 1: is if we're going to do something about disinformation, the
Speaker 1: places that are the main avenues for disinformation. I eat
Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook more than any others, but the social
Speaker 1: media platforms YouTube, Jacob, we got to include sorry, your
Speaker 1: YouTube absolutely fem in there because they always we always
Speaker 1: leave them out. They have to get good at dealing
Speaker 1: with disincinformation. They have to get good at spotting it
Speaker 1: and keeping it from spreading. And you know, the question is,
Speaker 1: then do they are they going to do? Are they
Speaker 1: incentive has to do that on their own will regulation
Speaker 1: make them do that? Or are there rules like if
Speaker 1: they adopt standard, setting up some sort of independent governing
Speaker 1: body that will enforce the rules they set in a
Speaker 1: consistent manner. Right. That's another thing that Europeans are talking
Speaker 1: about is whether they should have some kind of government
Speaker 1: agency that they don't even necessarily talking about setting the rules,
Speaker 1: but saying to these platforms, Okay, what are your rules,
Speaker 1: and then how can you show us that you're actually
Speaker 1: in forcing them in a fair and comprehensive way. Like
Speaker 1: that's a role you could imagine the government playing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what can we do about the other side of this,
Speaker 1: the political side, the unlimited money, the undisclosed sources of
Speaker 1: funding on political ads online. Absent a new Supreme Court
Speaker 1: that revisits citizens United, how can we regulate politics in
Speaker 1: a way that de weaponizes the First Amendment? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: there is nothing in the Supreme Court jurisprints that would
Speaker 1: prevent Congress from requiring disclosure of funding sources for online ads,
Speaker 1: just as they do for radio and television imprint that
Speaker 1: is still available. Another possibility would be to ban or
Speaker 1: regulate what's called microtargeting, which are these very narrow casted
Speaker 1: ads online in which you can pick exactly who you
Speaker 1: want to reach. You can send a more extremist kind
Speaker 1: of message to one part of the electorate and then
Speaker 1: more moderate ones to other parts. And if you're slicing
Speaker 1: and dicing the electrode into very thin slices and sending
Speaker 1: out lots of messages, the chances that people are going
Speaker 1: to fact check all the messages you're sending are much lower.
Speaker 1: Like people aren't even going to see the messages necessarily,
Speaker 1: they may never surface in a way that they come
Speaker 1: to the attention of the press. And so we've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of domestic groups do this in this cycle.
Speaker 1: This is what the Russians did in twenty sixteen. Microtargeted
Speaker 1: ads are one thing. If you're buying shoes, maybe they're
Speaker 1: a totally different thing. And we shouldn't allow campaigns and
Speaker 1: issue advocacy groups to use them. That's one possibility. Isn't
Speaker 1: another important part of it just the widespread consciousness that
Speaker 1: we are prone to disinformation. I mean that there we
Speaker 1: know more and more about how it works, we have
Speaker 1: some ideas where it's coming from, and isn't that you know?
Speaker 1: And that's that's like wearing masks during the pandemic, you
Speaker 1: just have to take some basic precautions totally. I agree.
Speaker 1: I guess what I worry about is that the people
Speaker 1: who are aware of what you just said are not
Speaker 1: the people who are falling for it. You know, sometimes
Speaker 1: when I'm out reporting and I'm talking to people who
Speaker 1: aren't journalists and don't really know very much about politics,
Speaker 1: I just sense a level of exhaustion and confusion about
Speaker 1: which sources of information to trust. And I think if
Speaker 1: you're in that sphere and you're just really not sure
Speaker 1: who's telling the truth, it's very hard to figure out
Speaker 1: what to do because like your whole sense of trustworthy
Speaker 1: information has been destabilized and kind of scrambled. I mean
Speaker 1: an extreme example of this is Russia under putin, where
Speaker 1: people just don't trust anything and I'm not sure what. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not a good thing to say unsolvable. I think
Speaker 1: that one thing we can do about that is a
Speaker 1: longer term effort to really teach people about how social
Speaker 1: media and media work, and that's important. In the more
Speaker 1: short term, we also need to make sure that when
Speaker 1: we talk about disinformation, we don't do it in a
Speaker 1: way that makes it seem so overwhelming that we just
Speaker 1: like exhaust all the people who are not super plugged
Speaker 1: in and make them feel like politics is just useless
Speaker 1: and not something that they can ever figure out. I
Speaker 1: worry about that. Yeah, it's interesting. On coronavirus, the social
Speaker 1: media companies at the outset took a pretty strong position
Speaker 1: that they were going to take down disinformation because it
Speaker 1: was so dangerous for obvious reasons, and they were pretty
Speaker 1: good about that. On the one hand, it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have had that much of an impact in that
Speaker 1: there's still tremendous disinformation spreading and being believed by a
Speaker 1: significant portion of the population. On the other hand, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty good model for how they can get bad
Speaker 1: information out of their systems when they want to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because before coronavirus, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube would
Speaker 1: almost always say like, we can't promote authoritative sources, that's
Speaker 1: not our role. And then the World Health Organization came
Speaker 1: to them in March and said we have an infodemic
Speaker 1: on our hands, meaning like a pandemic of disinformation, and
Speaker 1: the platform said okay, and they started trying to promote
Speaker 1: information From the World Health Organization and the CDC. There
Speaker 1: has still been a lot of misinformation about coronavirus online.
Speaker 1: Trump has contributed to a lot of it. You know,
Speaker 1: when Trump started talking about how you can inject disinfectant,
Speaker 1: his words stayed up online, but also the social media
Speaker 1: companies then left up other claims about bleach is disinfectant.
Speaker 1: So there's some way in which Trump himself, at least
Speaker 1: in the United States, is like a major causal factor,
Speaker 1: and or at least we won't know how much it's
Speaker 1: about him until we've moved into some post Donald Trump world. Emily,
Speaker 1: we usually wrap up by asking what listeners can do
Speaker 1: to help with the problem. I think this is one
Speaker 1: where a lot of people have a lot of opinions,
Speaker 1: But what do you think are the most important things
Speaker 1: that ordinary people can do to fight the spread of disinformation.
Speaker 1: The first thing is you can learn more about these issues,
Speaker 1: especially on social media. The Stanford Internet Observatory Cyber Policy
Speaker 1: Center does really interesting analysis of Twitter takedowns and other
Speaker 1: social media developments, Facebook takedowns, and they also have a
Speaker 1: link to the Election Integrity Partnership, another organization that's trying
Speaker 1: to tackle electoral disinformation. There's a really interesting global activist
Speaker 1: group called a VAZ that does. It's a VAAZ. They
Speaker 1: do reports on misinformation and disinformation, and the Berkman Client
Speaker 1: Center for Internet and Society at Harvard is another great resource.
Speaker 1: And then I think another part of this is don't
Speaker 1: share stories that come across your social media feed until
Speaker 1: you're sure they are true. And I think this is
Speaker 1: something that happens to all of us, like liberals as
Speaker 1: well as conservatives. Friends of mine since I've been working
Speaker 1: on this story have confessed to me various stories that
Speaker 1: they looked true and then they turned out to be
Speaker 1: totally wrong. So just be careful when you see things
Speaker 1: coming across your feed, are they coming from a reliable source,
Speaker 1: what kind of evidence do they look like they really
Speaker 1: have behind them? Because what the companies are doing is
Speaker 1: trying to make money, and they are algorithms right now
Speaker 1: are driving and amplifying a lot of content because it's
Speaker 1: hot and that it provokes emotions like outrage. And so
Speaker 1: part of this is being a consumer of social media
Speaker 1: or media who is trying to push these companies toward
Speaker 1: a less profit driven and more public interest kind of model.
Speaker 1: And how do people let social media companies know that
Speaker 1: they want that? I mean literally, it's like what you
Speaker 1: click on, what you respond to. The algorithms are promoting
Speaker 1: the content that keeps people engaged, because the more data
Speaker 1: about us and he's have, the more they have to
Speaker 1: sell back to advertisers. If we're going to disrupt that
Speaker 1: whole loop, it's going to be because we forced it
Speaker 1: to happen. So if we have a different kind of
Speaker 1: diet ourselves like that affects the algorithm in a healthy way.
Speaker 1: So be careful what you share, lean on social media
Speaker 1: companies to be more responsible and better actors themselves. And
Speaker 1: then how about the political part. I mean, if Congress
Speaker 1: were to do one thing and listeners were to write
Speaker 1: their members of Congress asking for that one thing, what
Speaker 1: would it be, Well, I have to choose one thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: you can have as many. Well, certainly we should start
Speaker 1: by requiring disclosure for online ads, just as they do
Speaker 1: for radio and television and print. I mean, that just
Speaker 1: makes sense, And there's by part as an interest in that.
Speaker 1: I think beyond that, there are real questions that go
Speaker 1: deeper about the Supreme Court line of cases that ends
Speaker 1: and Citizens United, and basically how to get corporation out
Speaker 1: of the dominant or near dominant place they have in
Speaker 1: our political ecosystem, and that's about major political change. It
Speaker 1: really is. It's unfortunately not a kind of medium sized solution.
Speaker 1: Emily Basilon is a staff writer for The New York
Speaker 1: Times magazine and the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing
Speaker 1: and Law at Yale Law School. Don't forget to check
Speaker 1: out our show notes for links to the suggestions our
Speaker 1: guest mate for ways that you can get involved in
Speaker 1: solving these problems too. Next week, Solvable will discuss the
Speaker 1: international rise of populism and how to solve it. I
Speaker 1: hope you'll join us. Solvable is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Our show is produced by Camille Baptista, Senior
Speaker 1: producer Jocelyn Frank. Catherine Girardo is our managing producer, and
Speaker 1: our executive producer is Mia lo Bell. I'm Jacob Weisberg.