Speaker 1: Just a quick heads up. Today's episode talks about pregnancy termination.
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this
Speaker 1: is there Are No Girls on the Internet. When it
Speaker 1: comes to the health of our online landscape, I think
Speaker 1: it's really important to look at how and honestly if
Speaker 1: we're able to use our digital communications platforms to communicate
Speaker 1: with each other about what's going on in the world.
Speaker 1: So in this episode, I want to look at a
Speaker 1: few recent cultural happenings and how bots did or didn't
Speaker 1: sway those conversations. We'll be covering a lot of ground
Speaker 1: and digging into a lot of research, and we're going
Speaker 1: to start with Britney Spears. So we have talked about
Speaker 1: Britney Spears on the podcast before, and I just finished
Speaker 1: the audiobook of Britney Spears's memoir The Woman in Me. Now,
Speaker 1: even if you're someone who does not read a lot
Speaker 1: of celebrity memoirs, I think this book is still worth
Speaker 1: a read, or you could listen to the audiobook narrated
Speaker 1: by Michelle Williams. At first, I was like, Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't need to read this whole thing. I'll just listen
Speaker 1: to a recap on a podcast. So I listened to
Speaker 1: the podcast Celebrity Memoir book Club about the memoir, and
Speaker 1: they ended the episode saying, y'all really need to read
Speaker 1: this book for yourselves. So I did, and they were right.
Speaker 1: Listening to Brittany in her own words was really a
Speaker 1: different experience. The book is a hit. It sold one
Speaker 1: point one million copies in its first week alone. It's
Speaker 1: at the top of the New York Times bestseller list,
Speaker 1: and it is the number two fastest debut of the year,
Speaker 1: second to Prince Harry's Spare, So it is clear people
Speaker 1: have been waiting to hear what Britney has to say.
Speaker 1: In the memoir, Brittany opens up about some of what
Speaker 1: we already knew and some that we didn't about her upbringing,
Speaker 1: her rise to fame, and the horrifying details of her
Speaker 1: thirteen year long conservatorship. It's one of those memoirs where
Speaker 1: Britney is pretty gracious and how she reflects on the
Speaker 1: people in her life who did not treat her well.
Speaker 1: She has a lot of grace and compassion for people
Speaker 1: who treated her like absolute garbage, and unfortunately it sounds
Speaker 1: like there are a lot of people like that in
Speaker 1: her life, her own family who financially benefited from her conservatorship,
Speaker 1: media figures who mocked and belittled her, and of course,
Speaker 1: her ex, Justin Timberlake. In Britney's memoir, she talks about
Speaker 1: some of the details of their relationship, including her pregnancy,
Speaker 1: which she says she terminated after Justin said he was
Speaker 1: not ready to be a parent. Brittany said in her
Speaker 1: memoir that she was actually happy about the unplanned pregnancy,
Speaker 1: but Justin Timberlake was not ready to be a father.
Speaker 1: She says, terminating the pregnancy was quote one of the
Speaker 1: most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.
Speaker 1: On realizing that she was pregnant, she said, it was
Speaker 1: such a surprise for me, but it wasn't a tragedy.
Speaker 1: I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to
Speaker 1: have a family together one day. This would just be
Speaker 1: much earlier than I anticipated. But Justine and definitely was
Speaker 1: not happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren't ready
Speaker 1: to have a baby in our lives, that we were
Speaker 1: way too young. I agreed not to have the baby.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that was the right decision. If
Speaker 1: it had been left up to me alone, I never
Speaker 1: would have done it, And yet Justin was so sure
Speaker 1: that he did not want to be a father. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, this is only one detail from a
Speaker 1: life story filled with so much color, pain and insight.
Speaker 1: But it's the detail that I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of media outlets have really latched onto, probably because it
Speaker 1: involves Justin Timberlake. Like, if you've not read the memoir,
Speaker 1: you probably have seen this one detail about the abortion
Speaker 1: in headlines about the book, as opposed to all the
Speaker 1: other details that she shares in the book, like how
Speaker 1: she recorded and produced her album Blackout during one of
Speaker 1: the worst years of her life, and she did it
Speaker 1: in basically one take, or about how she was almost
Speaker 1: in the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical Chicago Boy.
Speaker 1: Did we all miss out on that? Or how she
Speaker 1: describes her use of Instagram it's just this place to
Speaker 1: have fun and play.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: The book is full of so much rich texture about
Speaker 1: Brittany that it kind of makes me sad that we're
Speaker 1: really seeing the conversation unfold along the lines of the
Speaker 1: man in her life. And listen, if you listen to
Speaker 1: the episode that we did on Janet Jackson or any
Speaker 1: of the other times where it comes up on the show.
Speaker 1: You probably already know that I will happily take any
Speaker 1: opportunity to talk about how much I do not care
Speaker 1: for Justin Timberlake. But there's so much in this book.
Speaker 1: I just hate that the online conversation has been dominated
Speaker 1: by what does Justin think? What is Justin's reaction? What
Speaker 1: did Justin do? But that has been a big part
Speaker 1: of the reaction. So after Britney's memoir was published, it
Speaker 1: renewed criticism of Justin Timberlake's behavior in their romantic relationship
Speaker 1: and especially during that relationship's aftermass people have been weighing
Speaker 1: on social media, and Justin Timberlake actually turned off the
Speaker 1: comments to his Instagram, so did his wife, Jessica Biel.
Speaker 1: And people on social media notice something else unusual online too.
Speaker 1: On Twitter, several social media users suspiciously used identical language
Speaker 1: to downplay Britney's revelations about Timberlake and the termination of
Speaker 1: the pregnancy, all repeating the same line, verbatim quote, two
Speaker 1: consenting adults made a joint decision what was best for
Speaker 1: them in the period of their lives. I see no issue.
Speaker 1: This line was shown to have been posted from a
Speaker 1: few different social media accounts verbatim, So different social media
Speaker 1: accounts all defending the behavior of an unpopular, fading celebrity
Speaker 1: using the exact same language. That's sus suspicious. So this
Speaker 1: leads to the obvious question, is someone using inauthentic accounts
Speaker 1: sometimes more commonly referred to as social media bots to
Speaker 1: manipulate public sentiment around Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. Oh So,
Speaker 1: in case you're curious why I'm switching up using the
Speaker 1: term bots and inauthentic accounts in this conversation, Well, it's
Speaker 1: because social media researchers sometimes use the phrase inauthentic account
Speaker 1: rather than bots, because bots brings to mind like automated
Speaker 1: accounts not being run by humans. But sometimes these accounts
Speaker 1: are actually real people trying to inauthentically coordinate to manipulate
Speaker 1: public sentiment, hence inauthentic accounts. Okay, but back to Justin
Speaker 1: and Brittany. So the obvious answer here is that Justin
Speaker 1: Timberlake's PR team has organized inauthentic accounts to sway the
Speaker 1: public to be on his side. Right, Well, maybe not
Speaker 1: the daily Dot looked into it and found that of
Speaker 1: the nine accounts on Twitter that repeated the two consenting
Speaker 1: adults line since October seventeenth, at least one of them
Speaker 1: appeared to have made the comment as a joke, like
Speaker 1: a joking use of what is called copy pasta content
Speaker 1: that is copied, pasted and repeated online as a joke
Speaker 1: or a troll. The Daily Dot actually talked to people
Speaker 1: behind two of the accounts that posted the line. One
Speaker 1: of them seems to be a clear self identified troll
Speaker 1: who said, I copy pasted it it seemed funny. Another
Speaker 1: person they spoke to who repeated the two consenting adults
Speaker 1: line on Twitter is a Justin Timberlake fan account, but
Speaker 1: they claim to be genuinely copying and pasting the line
Speaker 1: because they'd seen other Timberlake fan accounts post the same thing,
Speaker 1: telling the Daily Dot there is no bot campaign, I
Speaker 1: assure you. The issue is Britney's fan base is ten
Speaker 1: times the size of Justin's on social media. They're twisting
Speaker 1: narratives to make things worse for Justin. So to be
Speaker 1: super clear, there is no evidence that Justin Timberlake or
Speaker 1: anyone connected to him is directing inauthentic accounts to post
Speaker 1: and support of him. Also, just a side note, did
Speaker 1: you know that last summer Justin Timberlake danced so badly
Speaker 1: during a performance at a music festival here in DC
Speaker 1: that he had to issue an apology to the entire city.
Speaker 1: But I digress. So maybe Justin's team is not behind
Speaker 1: this social media behavior. But it is curious, you know,
Speaker 1: other than having a laugh, why would a handful of
Speaker 1: disparate people on social media all be using the exact
Speaker 1: same language to talk about Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake.
Speaker 1: Social media users noticed something similar earlier this summer, when
Speaker 1: actor Jonah Hill was being scrutinized after his ex surfer
Speaker 1: Sarah Brady, published text messages that he had set during
Speaker 1: their relationship. The texts, to many, including myself, seemed to
Speaker 1: be using therapy language to manipulate her behavior in some
Speaker 1: pretty controlling ways that Brady herself categorized as emotionally abusive.
Speaker 1: The conversation exploded online, with people talking about how their
Speaker 1: exes tried to manipulate and control them. We even made
Speaker 1: an episode about it. And while all of that was
Speaker 1: going down, social media users found that accounts were doing
Speaker 1: the same thing as what we're seeing in the Justin
Speaker 1: Timberlake Britney Spears situation, repeating a pro Jonah Hill message
Speaker 1: on posts about the situation verbatim the message in question
Speaker 1: read quote. It sounds like Jonah Hill is communicating what
Speaker 1: works for him in a clear way. He literally said
Speaker 1: he supports her if that brings her happiness, it's just
Speaker 1: not for him. I actually see nothing wrong with this.
Speaker 1: So is it just me or is there something strangely
Speaker 1: similar about the Timberlake tweets and the Jonah Hill tweets?
Speaker 1: The way they kind of implore us to see the
Speaker 1: perspective of the man accused of bad behavior, The way
Speaker 1: they both end with some version of I see nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with this or I see no issue. They just
Speaker 1: seem awfully similar. Now, obviously, neither Justin Timberlake or Jonah
Speaker 1: Hill have said anything about this, And this is where
Speaker 1: I kind of need to give you a heads up
Speaker 1: that if you're hoping that there's going to be some
Speaker 1: kind of like big reveal of some smoking gun in
Speaker 1: this episode, sadly there will not be. Even after all
Speaker 1: the research I did for this episode, I don't feel
Speaker 1: any closer to knowing what is actually going on with
Speaker 1: these specific accounts repeating this specific line. You know, did
Speaker 1: a handful of people all just decide to post the
Speaker 1: same message for a joke or to create confusion? Is
Speaker 1: something else going on? I don't know. But the question
Speaker 1: that I am really curious about is are we going
Speaker 1: to see more and more inauthentic social media activity and
Speaker 1: accounts as a way to shape our opinions? And what
Speaker 1: does that mean for all of us and for our
Speaker 1: digital media landscape more broadly. Now, obviously PR is nothing new.
Speaker 1: There's an entire lucrative industry built around making us the
Speaker 1: public think about people, brands, and campaigns in specific ways.
Speaker 1: But coordinating people or bots to hijack conversations on social
Speaker 1: media to inauthentically manipulate public opinion is a very different thing.
Speaker 1: And if it becomes just another plank of normal ways
Speaker 1: to do PR and sway public opinion, I think it
Speaker 1: would be a pretty big sign of this ongoing rot
Speaker 1: in our digital landscape. So is coordinating the use of
Speaker 1: inauthentic accounts going to be a more viable and commonplace
Speaker 1: strategy for brands and companies looking to engage with the
Speaker 1: public and do you remember when you could go to
Speaker 1: the Internet to get information to help you understand something
Speaker 1: without having to worry if some corporate or pr interest
Speaker 1: was actually just secretly trying to push you towards having
Speaker 1: their brand friendly opinion? Like is everything online just bots,
Speaker 1: fakes and scams?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Well, just ask HBO, because just last week, HBO came
Speaker 1: under fire for using inauthentic social media accounts to silence
Speaker 1: critics of their shows. Allegedly, between June twenty twenty and
Speaker 1: April twenty twenty one, HBO Programming chief Casey Bloyse and
Speaker 1: Senior Vice president of Drama Programming Kathleen McCaffrey repeatedly discussed
Speaker 1: using Berner social media accounts to directly combat critics of
Speaker 1: their shows. On Twitter. According to Variety, there were at
Speaker 1: least six different text message exchanges between the two executives
Speaker 1: that involved floating the idea of using a fake Twitter
Speaker 1: account to harshly respond to TV critics who gave negative
Speaker 1: reviews to HBO shows. All of this came to light
Speaker 1: thanks to a laid off staffer who used to work
Speaker 1: on the HBO show The Idol. You remember that show?
Speaker 1: It was like this terrible troubled show about the dark
Speaker 1: side of Hollywood, starring and produced by the Weekend that
Speaker 1: was canceled after one short season. The laidoff staffer who
Speaker 1: worked on that show is suing HBO. The HBO executives,
Speaker 1: HBO's head of Drama and The Weekend himself, and two
Speaker 1: other producers of the show the idol for wrongful termination.
Speaker 1: So the staffer says that HBO executives asked her to
Speaker 1: set up fake social media accounts to counter the tweets
Speaker 1: from professional TV critics, And it kind of looks like
Speaker 1: that's exactly what might have happened, because in April twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, a newly created Twitter account from a quote
Speaker 1: Texas Mom and herbalist Kelly Shepherd tweeted in response to
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone TV critic Alan Steppenwall's negative review of the
Speaker 1: HBO series The Nevers. This quote, Texas Mom wrote, Alan
Speaker 1: is always predictably safe and scared in his opinions, and
Speaker 1: the language from that tweet matches the directions that the
Speaker 1: HBO executive allegedly texts to the laidoff HBO staffer, and
Speaker 1: the account's profile picture is just some stock image that
Speaker 1: is found used on several business websites. That same account
Speaker 1: was also defending HBO's shows in the comments of entertainment
Speaker 1: trade publications like Deadline. So a coordinated campaign of inauthentic
Speaker 1: social media activity to defend bad TV shows from criticism like?
Speaker 1: Is this the future of discourse online?
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: We used to think of coordinated and authentic accounts as
Speaker 1: being used in an attempt to disrupt political discourse and democracy,
Speaker 1: But now are they being used to sway public opinion
Speaker 1: about specific celebrities and even television shows by networks. So,
Speaker 1: if I had to guess, I would say that I
Speaker 1: think that people in entertainment saw how effective it was
Speaker 1: to manipulate public sentiment using coordinated social media activity and
Speaker 1: are toying with using that more. Really, and for a
Speaker 1: great template for how successful this kind of online coordination
Speaker 1: can be, just look at what happened during the Amber
Speaker 1: heard Johnny Depp defamation trial that stemmed from Herd's op
Speaker 1: ed about domestic violence. Bot Sentinel, a research firm that
Speaker 1: uses data science and artificial intelligence to track and detect bots, trolls,
Speaker 1: and suspect accounts on Twitter and elsewhere, released a report
Speaker 1: after the trial focused on how Herd was treated during
Speaker 1: the trial. The report called the targeting of Herd on
Speaker 1: social media quote one of the worst cases of platform
Speaker 1: manipulation and flagrant abuse from a group of Twitter accounts.
Speaker 1: So the La Times spoke to Christopher Bouose, CEO of
Speaker 1: Bot Sentinel, who said, we immediately observed dozens of newly
Speaker 1: created accounts subamming negative anti Amber Herd's cashtags. Many accounts
Speaker 1: were replying to tweets with hashtags unrelated to the tweet
Speaker 1: they were responding to. Some accounts encouraged others to get
Speaker 1: the hashtags trending, and the trolls were successful on multiple occasions.
Speaker 1: So in putting together this report, Bot Sentinel looked at
Speaker 1: more than fourteen thousand tweets that included the hashtags, and
Speaker 1: it determined that twenty four point four percent of the
Speaker 1: account sending those tweets had been created in the past
Speaker 1: seven months. So this is where I have to say,
Speaker 1: I totally got taken by what sounds like some inauthentic
Speaker 1: social media activity about that trial. You know, I didn't
Speaker 1: really pay a ton of attention to the trial at first,
Speaker 1: So then when I decided I wanted to dip in
Speaker 1: and sort of like get a sense of what was
Speaker 1: going on. I of course went to social media, and
Speaker 1: the social media content that I saw was so overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: negative toward Amber Heard that it was really easy for
Speaker 1: me to think, like, Wow, the Internet is all collectively
Speaker 1: against Amber Herd, so she must be in the wrong here.
Speaker 1: It's really shocking to me how effective it was at
Speaker 1: shaping my opinion. And yep, Goot Sentinels report says that
Speaker 1: copy pasta was indeed used in this media manipulation campaign.
Speaker 1: To the report reads, one manipulative technique that was employed
Speaker 1: was copy pasta or copying and pasting duplicative content to
Speaker 1: game Twitter's trends and propagate a positive view of depth
Speaker 1: and a negative view of Heard. One such message read
Speaker 1: quote people turned against Amber Heard not because Johnny Depp
Speaker 1: is a powerful man or a famous actor, but because
Speaker 1: we watched the trial and saw who was telling the
Speaker 1: truth and who wasn't. And again, doesn't this kind of
Speaker 1: sound similar to the Jonah Hill and justin Timberlake's tweets Again,
Speaker 1: we're being asked to negate any of the quote he said,
Speaker 1: she said and focus on the perspective of the man
Speaker 1: accused of bad behavior. I just can't shake how these
Speaker 1: copy pasted defenses seem to be inviting us to disregard
Speaker 1: structures that we know exist, like power dynamics and gender dynamics,
Speaker 1: to focus on how the man didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 1: And they're also framed in this way to look so logical.
Speaker 1: You know, it's logical to see that Britney Spears and
Speaker 1: Justin Timberlake were just two consenting adults making the best
Speaker 1: decisions for themselves. He didn't do anything wrong. It's logical
Speaker 1: to see that Jonah Hill was just being clear about
Speaker 1: its boundaries for a partner. He didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 1: It's logical to not get blindsided by celebrity or gender
Speaker 1: dynamics and see that Johnny Depp was simply telling the
Speaker 1: truth in court. He didn't do anything wrong. It's like
Speaker 1: they're all framed to invite us to completely disregard everything
Speaker 1: we spent the last ten years of me too talking about.
Speaker 1: But again, the question is why, you know, other than
Speaker 1: someone working on Johnny Depp or Justin Timberlake's PR team,
Speaker 1: why would anyone want to control our feelings around celebrities
Speaker 1: or popular culture? Like what is there to gain. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe Star Wars can give us a little bit of
Speaker 1: a clue. Morton Bay, a research fellow about the usc
Speaker 1: Aberg School for Communications and Journalism Center for the Digital Future,
Speaker 1: looked into what appeared to be a massive backlash against
Speaker 1: the twenty seventeen Star Wars movie The Last Jedi. If
Speaker 1: you don't remember or you're not a Star Wars person,
Speaker 1: The Last Jedi was the first Star Wars movie to
Speaker 1: feature a woman of color in a lead role, Kelly
Speaker 1: Marie Trand as Rose Tico, and a small but very
Speaker 1: vocal minority of people didn't like that. They accused the
Speaker 1: franchise of like forcing diversity and wokeness down their throats
Speaker 1: or some such nonsense. Rotten Tomatoes confirmed that the film's
Speaker 1: score was seriously targeted by a coordinated campaign to tank it.
Speaker 1: Tran faced a slew of gendered and racialized harassment online
Speaker 1: and eventually left social media, and Morton Bay's research showed
Speaker 1: that some of that conversation online was driven by Russian
Speaker 1: bot campaigns and inauthentic accounts. But more interestingly is that,
Speaker 1: according to Vox's Emily Saint, James, Ay's study further concludes
Speaker 1: that much of the backlash was driven by political opportunism
Speaker 1: from the American alt right, particularly members of that movement
Speaker 1: who were deeply involved in twenty fourteen's anti feminist and
Speaker 1: proto alright gamer Gate movement in the video game community.
Speaker 1: In Saint James Peace called Russian trolls us Star Wars
Speaker 1: to sow discord online. The fact that it worked is telling,
Speaker 1: Saint James writes, quote, what bays study really got me
Speaker 1: thinking about was how strange it was that Russian agents
Speaker 1: would focus on Star Wars of all things, and what
Speaker 1: seemed to be a campaign to spread dissension throughout America
Speaker 1: dating back to before the twenty sixteen election. Whether or
Speaker 1: not a Star Wars movie is good or bad has
Speaker 1: little bearing on the overall twists and turns of global geopolitics,
Speaker 1: and yet here was evidence that somebody in Russia sure disagreed.
Speaker 1: Maybe the Russian bucks that they identified are all extra governmental,
Speaker 1: built by trolls with spare time on their hands and
Speaker 1: a grudge against Lucasfilms. Or maybe Bay's findings are yet
Speaker 1: another example of how thoroughly Russian intelligence has zeroed in
Speaker 1: on the idea that white nationalism is central to driving
Speaker 1: a wedge in American society. If the latter is true,
Speaker 1: then what's most unnerving about Russia's intelligence strategy and its
Speaker 1: connection to Star Wars isn't what the strategy says about Russia,
Speaker 1: but what it says about us. So what does it
Speaker 1: say about us?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: Saint James argues that our political landscape increasingly operates like
Speaker 1: one big fandom, picking teams and being and staying fanatically
Speaker 1: loyal to those teams as a marker of identity. You
Speaker 1: know who they are in the world, and we already
Speaker 1: know that using identity and our anxieties and hang ups
Speaker 1: and fears that are rooted in identity has always been
Speaker 1: one of the most effective ways to cause disruption and
Speaker 1: manipulate people. So to be super clear, I am not
Speaker 1: suggesting that there is a foreign campaign to get us
Speaker 1: to think favorably about a fading pop star like justin Timberlake.
Speaker 1: It's concerning not to mention really telling that popular culture,
Speaker 1: you know, the music we like, the celebrities we follow,
Speaker 1: the films we identify with, is becoming just another domain
Speaker 1: to spread chaos and division. But it also kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense because the content we consume is so often
Speaker 1: tied with our identities. But I do think that if
Speaker 1: identity based conversations online like these are artificially manipulated, it
Speaker 1: does leave us more polarized and more susceptible to being
Speaker 1: manipulated along highly charged tension points for more in a
Speaker 1: fair political causes where the stakes are a whole lot higher.
Speaker 2: More.
Speaker 1: After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: We talked before about inauthentic social media accounts trying to
Speaker 1: spread chaos in the twenty sixteen elections targeting black and
Speaker 1: brown voters, while we're already seeing inauthentic accounts being used
Speaker 1: ahead of the twenty twenty four presidential election too. Gizmoto
Speaker 1: published a detailed report about a Twitter bot campaign. Using
Speaker 1: research from the digital analytics firm Sabra, Siabra uncovered a
Speaker 1: bot run pro Trump campaign. The bot farm was created
Speaker 1: within the last eleven months solely to heat praise on
Speaker 1: Trump while ridiculing his potential political opponents, especially those likely
Speaker 1: to challenge him in twenty twenty four. According to Siabra researchers,
Speaker 1: a regular conversation on sites like Facebook or Twitter will
Speaker 1: usually track between four percent and eight percent of fake
Speaker 1: accounts in many of these conversations surrounding Trump. That was
Speaker 1: up to between twenty percent and forty percent. Over a
Speaker 1: quarter of the interactions for pro Trump officials like ReBs,
Speaker 1: Jim Jordan, and Matt Gates on Twitter came from bots.
Speaker 1: According to this report, it is far far more than
Speaker 1: left wing accounts experience, like Senator Warren or Representative Alexandria
Speaker 1: Ocazio Cortez. And importantly, for all the talk we do
Speaker 1: about Russian assets and Russian run bot campaigns, this bot
Speaker 1: farm was likely created and being run from right here
Speaker 1: in the United States. The company of Researchers found that
Speaker 1: there were three massive bot farms established in April, October,
Speaker 1: and November of last year. These interconnected bot farms were
Speaker 1: likely created in the United States. What's more, all these
Speaker 1: fake accounts were extremely proch Trump and attacked anybody who
Speaker 1: made negative mention of the former president.
Speaker 2: So that's a lot.
Speaker 1: But how effective are these bot campaigns really at shaping
Speaker 1: public opinion. It's actually kind of hard to say, and
Speaker 1: also kind of in dispute. First, it's really hard for
Speaker 1: researchers to get any kind of clear consensus about bot
Speaker 1: activity on social media sites, especially now that Twitter has
Speaker 1: blocked access to the API, it's harder than ever for
Speaker 1: researchers to get a look into the back end to
Speaker 1: make any kind of assessment about what's happening on the site.
Speaker 1: According to research from Dahudzeman, Associate Professor of Operations Management
Speaker 1: at MIT, even a small handful of bots can have
Speaker 1: an impact on shaping public opinion. His research found that
Speaker 1: a small number of highly active bots can significantly change
Speaker 1: people's political opinions. The main factor was not how many
Speaker 1: bots were used, but rather how many tweets each set
Speaker 1: of bots issued. But there is some research to suggest
Speaker 1: that the concern about bots's impact on our behavior is overblown.
Speaker 1: Despite the presence of Russian bots trying to disrupt the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen election, there is some research suggesting that maybe
Speaker 1: it wasn't all that effective in actually changing American voting behavior.
Speaker 1: But here's the interesting thing. When inauthentic accounts and bots
Speaker 1: are used to shape discourse in these clandestine ways at all,
Speaker 1: it has an impact whether we're doing the thing the
Speaker 1: bot campaign is trying to get us to do or not.
Speaker 1: That's because the knowledge that there could be bots out
Speaker 1: there manipulating conversations online is enough to make us change
Speaker 1: our behavior and shape the way that we do discourse online.
Speaker 1: According to a study by Adam Waits, a professor of
Speaker 1: Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School, people are more
Speaker 1: likely to assume that posts that they don't agree with
Speaker 1: are from bots, not from real people. So if they
Speaker 1: are bots being deployed in discourse online at all, it
Speaker 1: kind of doesn't matter if the content that we're seeing
Speaker 1: is being driven by bots or not. When people believe
Speaker 1: they are interacting with a bot, they trust online discourse
Speaker 1: less and show less willingness to engage with it. One
Speaker 1: of the reports researchers said, viewed alongside earlier studies which
Speaker 1: show that people perceive opposing views as more bot like,
Speaker 1: the results of this experiment suggest that the political bias
Speaker 1: may contribute to markers of political polarization. One of the
Speaker 1: researchers on this study says that the research suggests does
Speaker 1: how deep American partisan divides go, saying I was surprised
Speaker 1: by how consistently this bias emerged. People are very quick
Speaker 1: to dismiss other viewpoints as not only incorrect, but also
Speaker 1: as not even human, and our current conversation around bots
Speaker 1: might not actually even be helpful weights. The author of
Speaker 1: the study said that belief that bot accounts are widespread
Speaker 1: may have the effect of poisoning the well and making
Speaker 1: all online content seem suspect. The research, he says, does
Speaker 1: make me wonder whether all the hype around bots might
Speaker 1: actually have a more damaging effect or more biasing effects
Speaker 1: than the bots themselves. So it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: double edged sword, because people should be aware of the
Speaker 1: reality that there are bots out there trying to hijack
Speaker 1: conversations online, but that reality could also shape the way
Speaker 1: people see and engage in discourse in ways that make
Speaker 1: us all more polarized and less informed, and that is
Speaker 1: an outcome that could have very big impacts on our democracy,
Speaker 1: which is probably why the hbos of the world should
Speaker 1: maybe think twice before using inauthentic accounts just to make
Speaker 1: their bad TV shows look more well liked, because they
Speaker 1: might think they're just making it seem like people like
Speaker 1: our Texas herbalist mom Kelly Shepherd are just really going
Speaker 1: to bed and defending their programming, But in actuality, they're
Speaker 1: making all of us trust online discourse and in turn
Speaker 1: each other less And I'm sad to say that none
Speaker 1: of this shows any signs of slowing down anytime soon.
Speaker 1: In fact, kind of the opposite. And even though Elon
Speaker 1: Musk pledged to crack down on bots on Twitter, you
Speaker 1: might remember that he even tried to use the prevalence
Speaker 1: of bots to weavel out of the sale way back when,
Speaker 1: and is now even floating the idea of having people
Speaker 1: paid to use Twitter to curb bots. The problem has
Speaker 1: actually gotten worse under his tenure as the owner of Twitter,
Speaker 1: and it really does not sound like his team is
Speaker 1: doing a whole lot to fix it. A team of
Speaker 1: researchers at Queensland University of Technology who track misinformation and
Speaker 1: bought activity and social media for several years, including until
Speaker 1: Musk took over, found that automated inauthentic social media accounts
Speaker 1: so like really botspots remained active on the platform long
Speaker 1: after their research had discovered them, showing that Twitter has
Speaker 1: just not really been effective at suspending bought accounts. And
Speaker 1: with the rise of technology like AI, this is all
Speaker 1: poised to get a lot worse because AI powered bots
Speaker 1: can look and sound more and more like authentic humans.
Speaker 1: So what's at stake with all this? Like why does
Speaker 1: any of this matter? Well, I think the reason I
Speaker 1: get so up in arms about this is that at
Speaker 1: the most basic level, people ought to be able to
Speaker 1: trust that the conversation they're having online are authentic, whether
Speaker 1: they're about celebrities like Britney Spears and the failed actors
Speaker 1: like Justin Timber like they end up having relationships with,
Speaker 1: or about who you should be voting for and what
Speaker 1: We should be able to turn to our biggest social
Speaker 1: media platforms to get accurate, thoughtful content and information from humans. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: what is point when you get on social media, especially
Speaker 1: if you're trying to form an opinion about something that
Speaker 1: is complicated or complex or nuanced. You should be able
Speaker 1: to do that without interference by bots secretly trying to
Speaker 1: push you to think a certain way. And I think
Speaker 1: it is related to this overall feeling that more and
Speaker 1: more of the Internet is just a landscape or a
Speaker 1: marketplace for scams and bots, Like what happened to an
Speaker 1: Internet that is actually based on community building and accurate
Speaker 1: information sharing? And I think increasingly the ultimate why of
Speaker 1: inauthentic accounts and bot campaigns might not necessarily just to
Speaker 1: be to change our behavior and sway our opinions, but
Speaker 1: to keep us fearful and distrustful of one another. You know,
Speaker 1: if we're all accusing each other of not just being
Speaker 1: misinformed or wrong, but not even being human. It's like
Speaker 1: I don't have to listen to what you think, or
Speaker 1: engage you or try to understand your perspective if you're
Speaker 1: just a bot. I think it's another way to keep
Speaker 1: us divided, us easier to manipulate, and ultimately we all
Speaker 1: lose out if the Internet becomes just another place to
Speaker 1: manipulate us, divide us, and keep us polarized. Got a
Speaker 1: story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want
Speaker 1: to say hi? You can read us at Hello at
Speaker 1: tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's
Speaker 1: episode at tenggody dot com. There Are No Girls on
Speaker 1: the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd. It's a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed. Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our
Speaker 1: executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.
Speaker 1: Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1: If you want to help us grow, rate and review
Speaker 1: us on Apple Podcasts For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check
Speaker 1: out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.