Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Think back twenty years. Maybe you were in school or college.
Speaker 2: A friend comes up to you with a twenty dollars bill.
Speaker 2: They say, check this out, and they start folding it
Speaker 2: in a kind of weird way, kind of in half.
Speaker 2: Then it comes to a point. Then you realize it's
Speaker 2: the shape of the Pentagon, and the image on the
Speaker 2: bill is now the twin towers who smoke coming out
Speaker 2: of them? What did the government know about nine to
Speaker 2: eleven before it happened? If you ever experienced that, or
Speaker 2: if you ever had that thought, then congrats Alex Jones.
Speaker 2: You're a nine to eleven conspiracy theorist. This is Jordan
Speaker 2: Klepper Fingers the conspiracy September eleventh really was the ground
Speaker 2: zero of conspiracy theories. Chances are you can name one
Speaker 2: jet fuel can't melt steel beams? George Bush did it?
Speaker 2: What about Building seven? Osama? Bin Laden is a CIA
Speaker 2: operative named Tim. What's that you don't know about that one? Well,
Speaker 2: someone told it to me just a few months ago
Speaker 2: into Trump Broway, people were talking, is bin Laden still alive?
Speaker 1: Jim?
Speaker 2: Are you doing math right now?
Speaker 1: Now? I'm trying to remember his real name.
Speaker 2: Tim Osama Osama bin Laden. Yeah, Tim, Tim, someone forgot
Speaker 2: his last names. Tim is not the most saudy name.
Speaker 1: And he wasn't Saudi. He's from the CIA.
Speaker 2: Needless to say, when we heard about Tim bin Laden,
Speaker 2: we were like, let's get to the bottom of this huckleberry.
Speaker 2: And even though our unverified non tipster couldn't remember Tim's
Speaker 2: real last name, we found it. His name is Tim Osman.
Speaker 2: Totally fake guy, but his name is Tim Osman. So
Speaker 2: I want to go through this conspiracy theory with a
Speaker 2: person who is a specialist in media manipulation and the
Speaker 2: effects of disinformation, Doctor Joan Donovan, the Research director of
Speaker 2: the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard. Joan,
Speaker 2: ready to hear this story of a man named Tim.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know a few Tim's so interested to find
Speaker 3: out if I knew him.
Speaker 2: You may know that this guy lives just down the
Speaker 2: street from you. Again, disclaimer, his name is not Tim.
Speaker 1: There we go.
Speaker 2: Let me walk through this for you guys. So, this
Speaker 2: nutter butter of a story starts in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 2: in Sherman Oaks, California. Classic classic Bin Lauden. He's twenty
Speaker 2: eight at the time, wearing Dockers, and he's representing the
Speaker 2: interests of the mujah Hadeen in Afghanistan. He's at a
Speaker 2: Hilton hotel in Sherman Oaks to meet a couple of
Speaker 2: FEDS and the name he's been assigned by the CIA
Speaker 2: is Tim Osman. Now at the Hilton Osama Bin, Tim
Speaker 2: Osman Lauden is told by the guys from the US
Speaker 2: government that the CIA doesn't consider their group truly representative
Speaker 2: of Afghans, and Tim gets pissed. He wants to lobby
Speaker 2: the DC movers and shakers for support. Now, the theory
Speaker 2: claims there is evidence that Tim tours US military bases
Speaker 2: other parts of the United States, including possibly the White House.
Speaker 2: He's even given special demonstrations of the latest equipment, pretty
Speaker 2: high end stuff. How do we know all this? And
Speaker 2: by no, I mean how do we make it all up?
Speaker 2: Because one of the Americans there to meet Tim is
Speaker 2: a guy named Michael Reekan Shoodo, a man linked to
Speaker 2: the Chinese industrial and military group Norinco, whose name is
Speaker 2: misspelled a dozen different times on the most official looking
Speaker 2: website explaining this conspiracy theory. He was apparently a loose end,
Speaker 2: and he had to be taken care of. So he
Speaker 2: gets arrested, accused by the US government of being delusional,
Speaker 2: accusing him of modifying something called Promise software in the desert,
Speaker 2: which obviously doesn't make sense because and I'm quoting from
Speaker 2: the website here, sand isn't good for computers. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's a fact. So Ricken Shudo, which sounds like a
Speaker 2: delicious appetizer, is put in prison and accused of making
Speaker 2: all this stuff up. But if he were really making
Speaker 2: it up, then why is there evidence that the modifications
Speaker 2: to the computer software was made in an office in
Speaker 2: nearby Indio, California. That's the story of tim Osman rest
Speaker 2: in Power of Fake King. It's a strange way into
Speaker 2: what is probably the original Internet conspiracy theory nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: And that is why Joan is here. First of all, Joan,
Speaker 2: any reactions to the tale of tim Osman.
Speaker 3: I mean it sounds legit y, like, you know, clearly
Speaker 3: we've got a reputable news organization digging up facts, and
Speaker 3: we've got you know, layers of editors and others that
Speaker 3: have been activated. You know, hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 3: must have been spent on this investigation, So I'm on board.
Speaker 2: You buy it, and you're a pro hered.
Speaker 3: Well, of course, of course, you know what's interesting about
Speaker 3: things like this is essentially when you're being told something
Speaker 3: that is illicit information that you feel like you're getting
Speaker 3: information that nobody else has, it does make you listen closer.
Speaker 3: It makes you want to dig deeper. And when it
Speaker 3: comes to the early internet, we you know, we think
Speaker 3: a lot about well, what are you know? What is
Speaker 3: government telling us? Right? And you have all of this
Speaker 3: new information that you have access to, and so the
Speaker 3: moment when the attacks on nine to eleven happened, we
Speaker 3: all were concerned, but none of us really knew what
Speaker 3: the internet was at that point. You didn't even have
Speaker 3: major news organizations taking, you know, their websites very seriously
Speaker 3: at that stage. And so if you were going online
Speaker 3: to find information about what happened during nine to eleven,
Speaker 3: and you were digging in, you would be drawn in
Speaker 3: by the novelty and the outrageousness of stories like this,
Speaker 3: and you may then find yourself moving between a network
Speaker 3: of websites and message boards discussing these theories and others.
Speaker 3: And so it's it's unsurprising, but also, we've had, you know,
Speaker 3: twenty years of this now and it still looks a
Speaker 3: lot like that.
Speaker 2: Well, when we look at nine to eleven conspiracy theories,
Speaker 2: where do we still? Where do you begin to hone in?
Speaker 3: I recently published a book with my co authors called Memoirs,
Speaker 3: and in the book, we wanted to explain how basically
Speaker 3: the Internet affects how people understand politics and communication, and
Speaker 3: so we decided to go back into looking at Occupy
Speaker 3: and what we were interested in Occupy was understanding the
Speaker 3: rise of Alex Jones. And as we were digging in,
Speaker 3: we couldn't ignore the fact that Alex Jones was also
Speaker 3: one of the major contributors to nine to eleven conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't the same then. It wasn't like he
Speaker 3: was online pushing this so much. He had a lot
Speaker 3: of television stations that were airing his show and a
Speaker 3: few months, I think it was July twenty fifth, before
Speaker 3: September eleventh, he had a show where he was showing
Speaker 3: people the White House number and suggesting people call Congress
Speaker 3: and say, we know a terrorist attack is about to happen,
Speaker 3: we know that Ben Laden is going to be involved.
Speaker 3: They're going to blame it on him, and you, as
Speaker 3: a listener, have a role to play.
Speaker 4: And I won't want you to believe Alex Jones. I
Speaker 4: want you to go get these news stories off my website.
Speaker 4: I want you to call these major newspapers. I want
Speaker 4: you to find out these statements were true by the
Speaker 4: White House about preparing for martial law. And I want
Speaker 4: you to let them know that there is any terrorism,
Speaker 4: we know who to blame, and.
Speaker 3: That participatory conspiracy being part of the action is something
Speaker 3: that Alex Jones has been able to really hone in
Speaker 3: on and bring people into these worlds as part of
Speaker 3: his media making.
Speaker 2: You're saying some and you're saying this is July of
Speaker 2: two thousand and one too, So there's people who are
Speaker 2: paying attention, they're hearing this before it happens, and see
Speaker 2: this happening in draw connection that gives validity to a
Speaker 2: lot of his theories.
Speaker 3: Does that build it builds his base? And but what
Speaker 3: it does is it actually he actually loses his television networks.
Speaker 3: People are you know, this is kind of crazy, this
Speaker 3: is really out there. Uh, you know, it's very obviously
Speaker 3: xenophobic in some ways. Although cancel culture wasn't really a thing.
Speaker 3: Then you could be openly xenophobic or islamophobic.
Speaker 2: And the good old days, the good old days.
Speaker 3: Before yeah, before you when you could get away with it, right.
Speaker 3: But by and large, when we were trying to study
Speaker 3: at the rise of other kinds of political communication online,
Speaker 3: we did keep coming back to nine eleven conspiracies and
Speaker 3: especially means like jet fuel can't melt steel beams. Why
Speaker 3: do we even remember that turn of phrase nine to eleven?
Speaker 3: As an inside job? You know, these turns of phrase
Speaker 3: can become very potent and popular, and they're really sticky,
Speaker 3: and so they those kinds of key phrases also became
Speaker 3: really important explainers or shorthand for groups of people that
Speaker 3: had started to come together on message boards and in
Speaker 3: email lists that eventually be called became to be called truthers.
Speaker 2: Now, I think what's interesting about this, you know, and
Speaker 2: on this podcast we're looking at a bunch of different
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories, and we often talk about how these things
Speaker 2: spread on social media and the internet. Looking at this
Speaker 2: as one of the uh the birth of these types
Speaker 2: of conspiracy theories, it's also the birth of the internet
Speaker 2: at the time. Can you give us a little bit
Speaker 2: of background of how the Internet is being used at
Speaker 2: this point, and how how people are using it to
Speaker 2: pass information, how people are getting information, understanding these theories.
Speaker 3: So this is before social media, so we're not in
Speaker 3: the era of social networks in the same way that
Speaker 3: we think about early Facebook or early Twitter. But we
Speaker 3: are finally starting to have high speed Internet in our homes,
Speaker 3: which allows for the transmission of video. And this is
Speaker 3: a really important aspect of how we understand the world
Speaker 3: around us, because it's no longer that you're getting your
Speaker 3: video from cable stations. It's no longer that strictly, and
Speaker 3: this opens up a whole new world of broadcast, creativity, innovation.
Speaker 3: And at that moment, there were a lot of people
Speaker 3: who were going online making videos, making content that were
Speaker 3: anti mainstream media. And I would say that in that time,
Speaker 3: even when I was using the Internet, then I was
Speaker 3: some one who would consume these kinds of videos. I
Speaker 3: wanted to know more about what was going on in
Speaker 3: the world. I didn't always trust mainstream outlets. I certainly
Speaker 3: didn't trust the government. I mean, I'm a child of
Speaker 3: the rage against the machine generation, right, so we always
Speaker 3: want to question and ask more and so, but online
Speaker 3: everything is done through hyperlinks at this point. So you're
Speaker 3: on a website, there's a page on the website with
Speaker 3: a bunch of links, and so you're really traveling through
Speaker 3: this very labyrinth like information ecosystem where people are linking
Speaker 3: you to things or you're following sets of links, and
Speaker 3: you never really know where you're going to end up,
Speaker 3: but you always take it with a grain of salt.
Speaker 3: You think about it. There's no institutional power behind this message.
Speaker 3: You don't always know where you're getting the information from,
Speaker 3: so you approach it with a kind of radical skepticism
Speaker 3: at that stage. Back then, the internet was really a
Speaker 3: place for weirdos and geeks and people who wanted to
Speaker 3: understand more about the world. And we're sharing things for
Speaker 3: the love of one another, and I thought that was
Speaker 3: really you know, it is actually kind of a nice
Speaker 3: time in a weird way, because you could find your people.
Speaker 2: I remember entering in with skepticism around that time as well,
Speaker 2: and partially because of my lack of familiarity with this
Speaker 2: new tool. Right, it feels as if everybody was skeptical
Speaker 2: in certain ways because we weren't experts on it. We
Speaker 2: didn't really know how this was working or what we
Speaker 2: were getting information on, but it was sort of like
Speaker 2: the wild West in a very curious way. And perhaps
Speaker 2: I'm speaking more to myself of somebody who's always afraid
Speaker 2: of taking big steps into the unknown. So I was
Speaker 2: always cautious about those things. I guess I'm curious about
Speaker 2: at that time what kind of conversations or were there
Speaker 2: conversations about the Internet and how it should be regulated
Speaker 2: and used.
Speaker 3: So in nineteen ninety six, there's this landmark legislation that
Speaker 3: is essentially a legislation of decontrol. It says section two
Speaker 3: thirty essentially says that websites or computer services are able
Speaker 3: to moderate contents as they wish, but they're not going
Speaker 3: to be held responsible for the content on their services.
Speaker 3: So that means that if you're a server, you're an
Speaker 3: email host or your domain registrar, if some crazy person
Speaker 3: puts up stuff that's illegal, it's not your fault, right,
Speaker 3: You're just providing this basic infrastructure. And so that law
Speaker 3: gets passed and you start to see different web services blossom,
Speaker 3: and you see groups of people still feel like they
Speaker 3: have mastery over the means of communication. They are able
Speaker 3: to build their own servers, they're able to register their domains,
Speaker 3: and so essentially, at that time, online regulators and many
Speaker 3: people using the Internet were very optimistic that there weren't
Speaker 3: going to be these major crimes committed. Most legislation or
Speaker 3: people were concerned with child pornography as we know, or
Speaker 3: maybe people don't know, but the Internet's backbone and the
Speaker 3: innovation around the Internet actually came about as the pornography
Speaker 3: industry came online. And so the way in which we
Speaker 3: remember Internet history. As a professor, I'm always telling my students,
Speaker 3: you know, like there was really you know, it matured
Speaker 3: around pornography. And so it's not like the we endeavored
Speaker 3: to build an Internet that was going to be the
Speaker 3: place for you know, this free and open library of
Speaker 3: information where everybody's getting access to the world's knowledge. I like,
Speaker 3: you remember.
Speaker 2: AOL right, follow the porn and that's I mean, and
Speaker 2: that's always been the history, right, isn't that? Also the
Speaker 2: innovation towards home movies, uh like, allowing people to watch
Speaker 2: it at home primarily came because people wanted to watch
Speaker 2: pornography at home, and so the technology follows the porn
Speaker 2: if only if we could only aim pornography at a
Speaker 2: working democracy, That's what I mean. Then we can technologically
Speaker 2: get to a good place. And yes, it'd be like, oh,
Speaker 2: thank god, we have a lovely democracy that responds to
Speaker 2: the needs of its people. How do we get here, Well,
Speaker 2: people wanted to watch democratic porn. Fine, Okay, it's weird,
Speaker 2: it's a little strange, but.
Speaker 3: No kink shaming here.
Speaker 2: No kink came in as long as my vote counts.
Speaker 3: But if you think about it, then as as we
Speaker 3: describe the history of the Internet, and we're not talking
Speaker 3: about then like you know, we want people to have acts,
Speaker 3: us to legal you know, law libraries, and we want
Speaker 3: people to have you know, access to the greatest science.
Speaker 3: A lot of that stuff is still behind paywalls. And
Speaker 3: so at that time, the early Internet, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: the Wild West doesn't really even describe it, but it
Speaker 3: was a bit of a free for all, and the
Speaker 3: major innovations weren't you know, necessarily tied to any particular
Speaker 3: like public interest or social good, and so conspiracy theories
Speaker 3: and conspiracy communities were not just a place where you could,
Speaker 3: you know, jump in and say things and contribute, but
Speaker 3: these were also communities where people thought that they were
Speaker 3: building some kind of knowledge, some kind of resistance to
Speaker 3: the establishment, right. And so the Internet had in its
Speaker 3: infancy this relationship to liberation, this relationship to if we
Speaker 3: had the facts and we were able to communicate freely,
Speaker 3: we wouldn't need governments, right, And so there is a
Speaker 3: kind of techno libertarian ethic that undergirds the rise of
Speaker 3: these kinds of communities online.
Speaker 2: I love it. I want to take a quick break,
Speaker 2: and when we come back, we'll be joined by Corey Rowe,
Speaker 2: a filmmaker who created one of the first viral conspiracy
Speaker 2: films about nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Jordan Klepperfinger's The Conspiracy. This week, we're
Speaker 2: talking about Osama bin Laden and is apparently rich history
Speaker 2: as a guy named Tim from California who turned into
Speaker 2: a CIA operative. And we're also going to look at
Speaker 2: a few theories about what happened in the wake of
Speaker 2: nine to eleven. I'm here with Joan Donovan, who you've
Speaker 2: been hearing from, but we also have Corey row with
Speaker 2: us today. Corey's a filmmaker and a veteran. A few
Speaker 2: years after nine to eleven he made a film that
Speaker 2: when crazy viral called Loose Change. It was one of
Speaker 2: the first conspiracy theory films on nine to eleven and
Speaker 2: since then a lot has happened, both for the aftermath
Speaker 2: of the film and for Corey himself. So we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about some of that. Corey, thanks for being.
Speaker 1: Here, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit about Loose Change. How did
Speaker 2: you get involved in making this film.
Speaker 1: I was a soldier in Afghanistan and Iraq and my
Speaker 1: best friend Dylan Avery, Tim and I were communicating from
Speaker 1: you know, him in the United States and myself overseas,
Speaker 1: and you know, just talking back and forth and largely
Speaker 1: kind of came from a place of Dylan didn't really
Speaker 1: know what was going on with me and different things
Speaker 1: that nature and you know, started to just kind of
Speaker 1: dig into things.
Speaker 2: Now, is it correct. It started out as a fictional
Speaker 2: narrative story and then morphed into becoming more of a
Speaker 2: documentary style film.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is correct. Dylan Avery, who is the director
Speaker 1: of the film, you know, he was always aspirational and
Speaker 1: he always wanted to make a movie, and he started
Speaker 1: to write a script in the post nine to eleven era,
Speaker 1: and then in doing so and you know, writing that script,
Speaker 1: he was doing a lot of research about September eleventh,
Speaker 1: and you know, on the Internet, researching different things and
Speaker 1: coming across different information that the film started to split
Speaker 1: kind of from like a narrative and then there was
Speaker 1: sections of documentary. And then he did his first screening
Speaker 1: and the immediate response was like, this documentary is very interesting.
Speaker 1: You should drop all that narrative stuff. Because we had
Speaker 1: no ability to act or do anything of that nature,
Speaker 1: and our cameras were terrible, and you know, it was
Speaker 1: basically still like pre DSLR days, and we had no
Speaker 1: money or equipment to actually make a movie. But he
Speaker 1: did have the ability to kind of edit together, you know,
Speaker 1: small chunks of information on a laptop, which was really
Speaker 1: new technology at that time. The fact that we were
Speaker 1: even able to get a camera at all and a
Speaker 1: laptop and be able to shoot content and edit that,
Speaker 1: you know, on a PC was a revolutionary at that time,
Speaker 1: and it was really intriguing for us as young men,
Speaker 1: and as myself coming out of the military. It was
Speaker 1: technology that I was interested in and it was something
Speaker 1: that I enjoyed doing, you know, shooting footage, and I
Speaker 1: started to do it while I was in the military
Speaker 1: making videos for my battalion and things of that nature.
Speaker 1: And then once I got out after my second tour,
Speaker 1: I joined Dylan in DC and he was already in
Speaker 1: the process of releasing Loose Change, and I just kind
Speaker 1: of came on board to help him produce that film
Speaker 1: and really get it out there as much as possible,
Speaker 1: and it just caught onto things that were really early
Speaker 1: on at that time. Google Video, which is kind of
Speaker 1: the predecessor to YouTube, was just coming online and it
Speaker 1: was a way that we were able to share information
Speaker 1: and we didn't even really do it a lot. We
Speaker 1: uploaded like a version of the movie in English, and
Speaker 1: then other people all around the world would download it
Speaker 1: and they would change it into their language, German, Korean,
Speaker 1: different things of that nature, and then re upload it
Speaker 1: to Google Video. And during I think it was two
Speaker 1: thousand and five and two thousand and six, Loose Change held,
Speaker 1: you know, the first top video positions from one to
Speaker 1: eighteen and all these different languages, and it was just
Speaker 1: again was taking off in a way that nobody expected,
Speaker 1: but he really could have foreseen. It was just kind
Speaker 1: of the culmination of perfect circumstances between technology that was
Speaker 1: available to filmmakers early on the growth of the Internet,
Speaker 1: as you guys have been talking about as well as
Speaker 1: you know, and this is really I think the big
Speaker 1: thing is at that time, there was a huge response
Speaker 1: to the Bush administration. You know, you guys just talked
Speaker 1: a lot about why you know that these groups kind
Speaker 1: of came together and that nine to eleven was the
Speaker 1: beginning of the digital conspiracy theory, which I agree with.
Speaker 1: It just kind of it was all a response because
Speaker 1: the Bush administration wasn't investigating nine to eleven. At a
Speaker 1: certain point, the Jersey girls who were victims of the
Speaker 1: nine to eleven or family members of nine to eleven
Speaker 1: victims were demanding investigation into nine to eleven, and the
Speaker 1: Bush administration, who was already entrenched in war in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: was like, no, we're not going to investigate this. We're
Speaker 1: focused on the war right now. And that's when there
Speaker 1: started to be this like huge uprising of people are like,
Speaker 1: why won't you investigate it? You know, what are you
Speaker 1: trying to hide? And then you know, for people like
Speaker 1: myself who were overseas and fighting these wars, it was
Speaker 1: you know, also you know, disheartening. And then you have
Speaker 1: movies like Michael Morris Fahrenheit nine eleven that were coming out,
Speaker 1: and so there was a lot of anti war, anti
Speaker 1: Bush administration feelings within the nation that really caused these
Speaker 1: things to kind of culminate in different areas. And once
Speaker 1: they did investigate nine to eleven and they came out
Speaker 1: with a nine to eleven Commission report, of course, there
Speaker 1: was a large upward to that as well, because it
Speaker 1: really wasn't efficient, sufficient investigation and didn't answer most of
Speaker 1: the questions that the family members were asking for in
Speaker 1: the first place, which is I believe why society and
Speaker 1: members of that society like myself reacted in the way
Speaker 1: that we did to create media that was to educate
Speaker 1: people about things that could potentially be going on. So
Speaker 1: they got more invested with the Bush administration and what
Speaker 1: they were doing.
Speaker 2: Walk me through your headspace a little bit there, quit
Speaker 2: because so we're talking, you're getting involved around two thousand
Speaker 2: and four, two thousand and five, is that correct?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: How old are you at the time.
Speaker 1: I was twenty two coming out of the military.
Speaker 2: Twenty two, and you're in Iraq?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Actually I turned nineteen in Iraq. I turned I
Speaker 1: was I turned nineteen Afghanistan, and then I turned twenty Iraq. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that was the exact years.
Speaker 2: You're in Afghanistan and then you're a how are you
Speaker 2: feeling told your in Iraq? How are you feeling?
Speaker 1: You know, early on, like everybody, I drank the kool aid.
Speaker 1: There's even news articles out there of my hometown paper saying,
Speaker 1: you know, terrorism's got to be dealt with. But it
Speaker 1: was in Afghanistan that we were told that we were
Speaker 1: going to Iraq, well before the general public was. And
Speaker 1: then I got to live that firsthand, you know, knowing
Speaker 1: that knowledge, coming back to the United States, seeing them
Speaker 1: drum up the war effort for Iraq with the false
Speaker 1: intelligence that we all know is false intelligence. Now that
Speaker 1: we directly lied to the American people and murdered innocent
Speaker 1: people in Iraq, Let's say what it was.
Speaker 2: Are you feeling this and doubting that as you are
Speaker 2: in Iraq?
Speaker 1: You know, I remember a very specific conversation in the
Speaker 1: emergency room of medical City in Baghdad with a father
Speaker 1: whose daughter's head was blown off, and he was like,
Speaker 1: this is what's going to happen. He goes, you guys
Speaker 1: came in here and we have let you do what
Speaker 1: you're doing, and he's like, it's going to get worse,
Speaker 1: and it's going to keep getting worse and until you
Speaker 1: guys leave, because we will never stop. And this is
Speaker 1: what's happening, is you're killing innocent people like my daughter.
Speaker 1: And guess what. Exactly what he described to me on
Speaker 1: the first wave of that invade is what I saw
Speaker 1: not only on my invasion, but every subsequent one after that,
Speaker 1: as it just continuously got worse as one administration handed
Speaker 1: it to the next, and things in that region of
Speaker 1: the world just turned into absolute garbage. So personally, for
Speaker 1: somebody who me, you know who you know stepped forward
Speaker 1: and was fighting for the American government and then to
Speaker 1: learn that they're just basically lying to the American people
Speaker 1: so that them and their buddies have a blank check
Speaker 1: to rip off American taxpayers, and then it's like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: we should probably have a conversation about this as citizens
Speaker 1: of our country, right because this is fucked up. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say for what it is, like,
Speaker 1: this was a terrible time in American history where the
Speaker 1: government was just running amok and citizens were genuinely upset
Speaker 1: and concerned you know, and that's that's where we you know,
Speaker 1: what I like to really focus on is the fact
Speaker 1: of where these kind of things came from.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating to hear this is the story we don't
Speaker 2: get to know, like what you're walking into, where you're
Speaker 2: coming from, as as you start to put together loose change.
Speaker 2: I guess, so you have your experience in Iraq clearly
Speaker 2: affects your point of view and your opinion towards the
Speaker 2: American government, and clearly a lot of distrust and the
Speaker 2: information you're getting. And did you see the internet the
Speaker 2: way that Joan has kind of described it as a
Speaker 2: place to find community, as to find porn, to find
Speaker 2: port Yeah, I guess first of all, do you first
Speaker 2: go and find poor and then like, oh, I could
Speaker 2: also use this as a place to find community and
Speaker 2: or to put out information, seek out information? Is your
Speaker 2: take on the Internet at that time?
Speaker 1: Similar what my take is on the Internet is kind
Speaker 1: of a cause and reaction that we always see throughout
Speaker 1: human society as we continue to evolve. Right, information was
Speaker 1: growing and things were happening, and so these things started
Speaker 1: to go in one direction or the other. And it's
Speaker 1: really the largest question here is can human nature? Can
Speaker 1: human survive? Mass communication? Which is what we're really at
Speaker 1: the beginning of here and at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: internet was And so for me to just kind of
Speaker 1: see all this different stuff was crazy, But for us
Speaker 1: it was definitely a way to what I would call
Speaker 1: weaponized information. We were able to use these new platforms
Speaker 1: to get stuff out there in a way that was
Speaker 1: never done before.
Speaker 2: So Dylan's a filmmaker, and even at the idea is
Speaker 2: let's create something narrative and successful in that sense, did
Speaker 2: things shift and you saw yourselves as as activists as
Speaker 2: opposed to filmmakers at some point?
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, we were given a
Speaker 1: pretty big hat to wear. It wasn't something that we
Speaker 1: asked for. We were young kids. Where we the best
Speaker 1: messengers for that? Of course not. Dylan just made a
Speaker 1: great video that was you know, very that was caught
Speaker 1: by people. As you know, people could receive it or
Speaker 1: they liked it, or you know what about whatever about
Speaker 1: it was something was new, and like she said, you know,
Speaker 1: they felt like they were on the inside of information.
Speaker 1: And so it grew exponentially and you know, there was
Speaker 1: you know, memes later on about you know, college kids
Speaker 1: pickup lines. Was have you seen loose Change and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, But it definitely morphed, like we were
Speaker 1: talking about two very different errors of time. Here we're
Speaker 1: talking about the creation of loose Change in the base
Speaker 1: of the Internet, and then where we are today, which
Speaker 1: is wildly different.
Speaker 2: Right, we'll get into some of the content of loose
Speaker 2: Change and also where we are today, Joan, I want
Speaker 2: to bring you in here. Loose Change becomes some say,
Speaker 2: one of the first viral hits, something like one hundred
Speaker 2: million people watched it were affected by it. What was
Speaker 2: it that made it go viral? From your perspective, Joan,
Speaker 2: did we have even a concept of virality at the
Speaker 2: time when this was launched in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: No, Well, the things that used to go viral online
Speaker 3: at that time were you know, still what goes viral
Speaker 3: these days, which is pictures of animals, cats, you know,
Speaker 3: funny memes, and you have to remember that, like video
Speaker 3: is new at that stage, right, and so, but what
Speaker 3: really was this groundswell of interest was small groups sharing
Speaker 3: this link, getting involved in discussions about this a film
Speaker 3: and this documentary and the community around it that we're
Speaker 3: also digging out different pieces of information and putting them,
Speaker 3: putting this really big puzzle together on message boards where
Speaker 3: people were communicating with one another and trying to add
Speaker 3: to the story, right, And in that way, the early
Speaker 3: Internet is highly participatory. And I think that one of
Speaker 3: the things you don't get with the kind of conspiracy
Speaker 3: that we would think of with JFK is the narratives
Speaker 3: come down, but there's not a lot of ways in
Speaker 3: which you can interact with the narrative. You can believe
Speaker 3: it or not. But with nine to eleven conspiracism, you
Speaker 3: had this ongoing daily dialogue that you could participate in
Speaker 3: and that you could add to. And so that community
Speaker 3: building and even this idea that you were a truth
Speaker 3: seeker rather than someone that was merely just you know,
Speaker 3: consuming what the mainstream media was telling you. And you
Speaker 3: were like this drone that was just living your life. Right.
Speaker 3: You weren't going to look away. You were going to
Speaker 3: look further and further and deeper and deeper into this.
Speaker 3: And people were meeting each other, they were having you know, conventions,
Speaker 3: they were making memes together and sharing them, and so
Speaker 3: it was a highly participatory moment for the culture. And
Speaker 3: because you thought that you were finding things that government
Speaker 3: and other groups were keeping from you that really made
Speaker 3: you want to dig in more and understand more. And
Speaker 3: the military component I think is really important here, because
Speaker 3: when people feel like they're being lied to and the
Speaker 3: democracy is at stake, they're willing to do things that
Speaker 3: they otherwise wouldn't have been willing to do. And so
Speaker 3: at the same time, not just online you have these
Speaker 3: media that's traveling, you also have a fairly intense anti
Speaker 3: war movement that is consuming this information and then bringing
Speaker 3: it into the streets and trying as best as they
Speaker 3: can to stop US imperialism.
Speaker 2: Corey, I know you don't think of yourself as a
Speaker 2: conspiracy theorist, and that you have passionate views about right
Speaker 2: wing conspiracsty like Alex Jones. What's the cleanest way to separate,
Speaker 2: in your view, what the difference is between you and
Speaker 2: someone like Alex Jones.
Speaker 1: Alex Jones is definitely someone who's turned this into a
Speaker 1: money making operation. He's become very wealthy out of this,
Speaker 1: and he's gotten himself into very high political places. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's remember, and again this is something I really need
Speaker 1: to harp on here because We've had a whole conversation
Speaker 1: about conspiracy theories, and we need to talk about when
Speaker 1: this really got out of control, because for a long time,
Speaker 1: this nine eleven conspiracy stuff kind of really quieted down.
Speaker 1: My life had moved on. People weren't talking about this anymore.
Speaker 1: I wasn't getting nearly the messages that I still get
Speaker 1: to this day until the candidate of Donald Trump came around,
Speaker 1: and that candidate of Donald Trump utilized Alex Jones' platform
Speaker 1: to promote himself and to align himself with this kind
Speaker 1: of base of people, and then decided to use that
Speaker 1: in his presidential career with the assistance of Fox News
Speaker 1: to perpetuate these conspiracy theories on a level that's never
Speaker 1: been seen before. Again, you're talking, we're talking about two
Speaker 1: very different things here to twenty year old kids who
Speaker 1: made a college level movie and put it out for
Speaker 1: free on the Internet, and then the president of the
Speaker 1: United States utilizing Fox News to weaponize conspiracy theories to
Speaker 1: ignite a base to try to overthrow the country. And
Speaker 1: then now we're in this kind of post era and
Speaker 1: they used this and they took this and which so
Speaker 1: ironic about it. It's the same group of people that
Speaker 1: hated us when we made this video because we were
Speaker 1: anti war, we were leftists, we were liberals, we didn't
Speaker 1: want to we were pacifist, I'm not into guns and
Speaker 1: that kind of shit. And so now to have the
Speaker 1: same people that hated us using this material to propagate
Speaker 1: their own nonsense is kind of very interesting to me.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, on Alex Jones, Like, you know, obviously we're
Speaker 1: talking about him. He just got hit with about a
Speaker 1: billion dollar fine after you tie in legal fees and
Speaker 1: all those different things, as as he should, and so
Speaker 1: let's really focus on what that is. That's the shooting
Speaker 1: and the fact that he's claiming that the people were
Speaker 1: actors and all that nonsense, right, And so what's the
Speaker 1: difference between those two events between nine to eleven and
Speaker 1: Sandy Hook. Nine to eleven was a response by family
Speaker 1: members in an era when there was information that wasn't
Speaker 1: being disseminated to the American public, and it was not
Speaker 1: only conspiracy theorists who were interested in that information. The
Speaker 1: American media was perpetuating nine to eleven for decades afterwards,
Speaker 1: with every little bit of new information that was coming out.
Speaker 1: But back to you know, Sandy Hook. That kind of
Speaker 1: conspiracy came up within a couple of months, and it
Speaker 1: was generated on the Internet by people who were not
Speaker 1: directly related to the event, which is very different than
Speaker 1: the nine to eleven situation where this took years to culminate.
Speaker 1: And so for us, we were coming from a place
Speaker 1: where we were trying to do what we believed was
Speaker 1: honorable using the things that we had available to us
Speaker 1: at the time, and we believed in what we were doing,
Speaker 1: and we were trying to make it the most scholarly
Speaker 1: piece of evidence that we could put out there, and
Speaker 1: we always that's why we did so many revisions, and
Speaker 1: that's why we kind of removed things, and we admitted
Speaker 1: to our mistakes, and we consistently tried to just have
Speaker 1: a conversation about it so that we could always get
Speaker 1: a new investigation, and that was always our aim, and
Speaker 1: the reason we wanted that new investigation was to support
Speaker 1: the family members who also wanted that new investigation into
Speaker 1: nine to eleven, and never they never got it.
Speaker 2: What is your relationship with with it now? Knowing where
Speaker 2: we're at, obviously we're in a very different place than
Speaker 2: we were. Across social media is very different now, and
Speaker 2: like you're an older person, information has come out, there's
Speaker 2: distrust across the board, and I know you guys have
Speaker 2: revised the film, but there's even a cottage industry that's
Speaker 2: sprung up to debunk theories that you guys were putting
Speaker 2: out there as well, Like how do you see that
Speaker 2: film currently?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm the producer of that film and I
Speaker 1: will be for the rest of my life. So my
Speaker 1: job is to make sure that it doesn't disappear because
Speaker 1: it's such an important piece of information that we need
Speaker 1: to analyze and have a conversation about.
Speaker 2: And I also think you still have the same questions
Speaker 2: about nine to eleven that you had in that film.
Speaker 2: Do you have those today?
Speaker 1: There's definitely, you know, there's a lot That film was
Speaker 1: put out twenty years ago, right and during that time,
Speaker 1: so much more information has come out from the United
Speaker 1: States government with redacted documents and different things of that nature.
Speaker 1: But there's still some major questions for me that need
Speaker 1: to be answered.
Speaker 2: Is this brings up really a lot of interesting questions
Speaker 2: and it's a delicate conversation. I think, Corey, I can see.
Speaker 2: I think you bring up something that I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people on the left on the right are
Speaker 2: grappling with right now, we should be skeptical of our
Speaker 2: government and the institutions around us, and I think we're
Speaker 2: looking for what that line is of what is healthy
Speaker 2: skepticism and what is skepticism that is degrading faith in institutions.
Speaker 2: I think there are critics of something like loose change
Speaker 2: and some of these the truth or movement. There are
Speaker 2: critics that live within victims' families who feel like this
Speaker 2: takes the responsibility off of the people who perhaps perpetuated
Speaker 2: the horror of nine to eleven, and it adds disinformation
Speaker 2: out there that it erodes faith in institutions. But I'm
Speaker 2: sure we should be more skeptical of the institutions and
Speaker 2: the information that we have. I think there's an argument
Speaker 2: too of if some people would argue that what you're
Speaker 2: putting out there's misinformation, it's also in response to a
Speaker 2: government that is putting out misinformation. You're fighting a war
Speaker 2: in Iraq that is based on misinformation, which puts us
Speaker 2: in this fucking place right now where where it doesn't
Speaker 2: feel like we're getting healthy, good information. Joan, I think
Speaker 2: I look to you when it comes to theories where
Speaker 2: is the healthy line? How do we show distrust in
Speaker 2: uh positions of power without eroding distrust, eroding trust in
Speaker 2: sort of our society.
Speaker 3: Well, I what's interesting about government or the state is
Speaker 3: I don't think there's anybody that's ever been really satisfied
Speaker 3: with the state. I don't think that there's a utopia
Speaker 3: anywhere where people are like, you know, who's doing a
Speaker 3: good job our government? Right? Like, it's just not something
Speaker 3: you hear, right, especially as we get into different issues.
Speaker 3: But back in the early aughts, people were using you know,
Speaker 3: there was a familiar meme going around. Bushlie people died, right,
Speaker 3: And he had made these statements about quote unquote a
Speaker 3: massive stockpile of biological weapons. Other others had argued that,
Speaker 3: you know, well we don't know if there were nuclear weapons,
Speaker 3: but we're pretty sure, you know, And so there was
Speaker 3: a lot of hedging back then about what to do
Speaker 3: and how to do it. But when you say massive
Speaker 3: stockpile and people are doubting that, it tends the governments
Speaker 3: tend to double down on that information. We've seen that
Speaker 3: meme repeated over and over. Obama lied, people died, you know,
Speaker 3: Trump lied people died. It keeps coming up right, And
Speaker 3: I think that as we imagine the role of government
Speaker 3: in our lives and what governments should and could be
Speaker 3: responsible for, we're at another crossroads right now with the
Speaker 3: role of NATO in the Ukrainian and Russian war going on.
Speaker 3: And is it the fact that NATO is fighting a
Speaker 3: proxy war with you know, with Ukraine suffering all of
Speaker 3: the serious, serious casualties, And so I think that it's
Speaker 3: important for people to be skeptical of governments and very
Speaker 3: powerful people making these decisions when it comes to massive casualties.
Speaker 3: Now that does it mean we should just throw our
Speaker 3: arms in the air and say everything is endlessly corrupt
Speaker 3: and there's nothing we can do, because I do at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, and I think maybe Corey
Speaker 3: agrees with me. I do believe in the power of
Speaker 3: people and the power of people to come together to
Speaker 3: formulate their own ideas, to dig in and look at
Speaker 3: what kind of evidence is out there. And we do
Speaker 3: need to have more facts and public interest information circulate
Speaker 3: throughout our society. And the last point I'll make on this,
Speaker 3: which is to say, I think we need a lot
Speaker 3: more journalism. I think we need a lot more investigation.
Speaker 3: I think When it comes to who's going to hold
Speaker 3: these people accountable, it's going to be journalists who are
Speaker 3: going to be able to get the goods. I don't
Speaker 3: think we can rely on law enforcement and those other
Speaker 3: kinds of institutions to get to the bottom of corrupt governments.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't really seem to be doing the job.
Speaker 3: Journalists have always played this role of digging in, finding
Speaker 3: and piecing together different bits of information and creating that narrative.
Speaker 3: And so in many ways, Corey and those that made
Speaker 3: Loose Change weren't necessarily your traditional style journalists, but they
Speaker 3: do are. They are the archetype of this early form
Speaker 3: of digital journalism where people were doing more than asking questions,
Speaker 3: but really trying to make media to mobilize audiences and
Speaker 3: to get people to think differently. And hopefully what it
Speaker 3: does is it instills in people a skeptical attitude about
Speaker 3: how do you critique and understand information, how do you
Speaker 3: piece it together? And then further than that, how do
Speaker 3: you hold accountable people in power that are telling massive lies?
Speaker 3: And I think that where the big question about studying
Speaker 3: disinformation comes in right now, is because we don't necessarily
Speaker 3: know who's going to hold the very, very.
Speaker 2: Rich and.
Speaker 3: Powerful to account for spreading lies at scale. I think
Speaker 3: the most recent example of that is trying to understand
Speaker 3: who is responsible for the January sixth insurrection and what
Speaker 3: does that mean to hold someone responsible for an event
Speaker 3: like that, Corey.
Speaker 2: When you look at the information on the Internet, who
Speaker 2: should we trust to ask these questions? And what information
Speaker 2: should we be trusting on the Internet.
Speaker 1: I think we're in such a grey zone right now
Speaker 1: that we don't have an answer to that, And I
Speaker 1: think what we need to kind of come to terms
Speaker 1: with is the fact that we as a society won't
Speaker 1: have an answer to that. But I think, and this
Speaker 1: is my idea, this is my solution, This is where
Speaker 1: the line is for me, is that we need to
Speaker 1: educate our children better right from the start. If you
Speaker 1: ask any kid in America right now what we're Columbus's
Speaker 1: three ships, they'll tell you right. And so we know
Speaker 1: how to teach our children good information. We just need
Speaker 1: we know how to teach our children information. We just
Speaker 1: indeed to make that good information. And so I think
Speaker 1: we need to kind of just accept the fact that
Speaker 1: the where we are right now is kind of where
Speaker 1: we are and of course we need to tombstone engineer
Speaker 1: that as best we can. But we need to do
Speaker 1: our research on how this misinformation is affecting us and
Speaker 1: how it's driving us and the things like Joan is
Speaker 1: doing and trying to grapple with, and then figure out
Speaker 1: a way that we can instill that information into our
Speaker 1: children early on, so that they grow up with the
Speaker 1: right tools to be able to discern good information from bad.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a solution. Of course, it's not perfect,
Speaker 1: but it at least push us in the right direction.
Speaker 1: And as very much what like Jones said, there's no utopia.
Speaker 1: Humans aren't perfect and we never will be, and so
Speaker 1: we need to just kind of keep working towards something
Speaker 1: better and leave it better than we found it. And
Speaker 1: so in this instance, with this new digital age, we
Speaker 1: have created this new weapon of mass communication, and we
Speaker 1: need to figure out how how it really adjusts to
Speaker 1: humans and how we can use it as a benefit
Speaker 1: instead of what we've created, which is this kind of
Speaker 1: individualistic society where everybody thinks they're the center of the universe,
Speaker 1: and figure it and it retool it into something that's
Speaker 1: more beneficial for society, you know, like how is how
Speaker 1: is the societies of the twenty one hundred is going
Speaker 1: to be using the internet? Can we envision that, Can
Speaker 1: we envision how they transmit information, good information, factual information,
Speaker 1: and try to reverse engineer that for our own society
Speaker 1: and start to implement those rules so that we can
Speaker 1: get to that place for the next generation. Because as
Speaker 1: I see it right now, our current generations, we just
Speaker 1: got to let us go. We're done, Like we don't
Speaker 1: even have a chance.
Speaker 3: Oh, come on, come on, Okay, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a very optimistic point of view. I've been watching
Speaker 1: Jordan's pieces, and I like what I see out there
Speaker 1: is like scary, so like I'm not sure there's ever
Speaker 1: coming back from that. Right, And we think Trump was
Speaker 1: so bad, wait till the next one comes down. Because
Speaker 1: when I was in the army, the one thing I
Speaker 1: always had a new first sergeant like every eight months,
Speaker 1: and I was hoping that the next first sergeant would
Speaker 1: be better than the last one. And he was never better.
Speaker 1: He was always worse, always with new rules and restrictions
Speaker 1: and and so I mean, I hope you know I
Speaker 1: used to be optimistic, like ten years ago, right, we
Speaker 1: all used to be optimistic, but then the last ten
Speaker 1: years happened and now we're a lot more pessimistic.
Speaker 2: We'll put a bow on this, and I want to
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about a couple other things, but
Speaker 2: kind of the final question for both of you within
Speaker 2: this segment here, what do you think the legacy of
Speaker 2: Loose Change is? Corey?
Speaker 1: I think Loose Change is the first viral video of
Speaker 1: the Internet. It's the only documentary that people are still
Speaker 1: talking about now all these years later. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of different stuff comes out, and I'm proud of that fact,
Speaker 1: Like I helped make a piece of media that was
Speaker 1: like truly just long. He's going to live past me probably,
Speaker 1: and that's cool. And what I think it's turned into
Speaker 1: is the digital version of a band book and we
Speaker 1: need you know, And then the statement goes any band burger,
Speaker 1: but any band book is worth reading, right, And so
Speaker 1: again I think that Loose Change needs to exist on
Speaker 1: the Internet so that we can have the conversations about it.
Speaker 1: Are humans going to continuously use pieces of information like
Speaker 1: loose Change or anything else to you know, push their
Speaker 1: own views? Of course they are. That's human nature, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if it's loose Change or zeitgeist or
Speaker 1: something they saw on Fox News. They're going to use
Speaker 1: whatever they need to use to propagate their point of view.
Speaker 1: But I like to look back at Loose Change as
Speaker 1: the culmination of an amazing series of events that nobody
Speaker 1: could have seen coming, and it really did rock the world,
Speaker 1: like it still goes on to this day. And what's
Speaker 1: super interesting about it is how it's morphed throughout these
Speaker 1: years and to me to see, you know, how it's
Speaker 1: been used incorrectly by other people, to especially American presidents
Speaker 1: and Alex Jones and these different people. We need to
Speaker 1: latch onto that and not be afraid of it. We
Speaker 1: need to understand why it's happening and do the studies
Speaker 1: that she's talking about so that we can understand why
Speaker 1: these things happen and then again equip our children to
Speaker 1: be able to deal with them better. I was not
Speaker 1: trained for the society that I was pushed into. Right
Speaker 1: in high school, I was like, Hey, we're gonna do this.
Speaker 1: Nina Pinto Santarealiski's Columbus Day, and then you know, on
Speaker 1: my eighteenth birthday, essentially I'm invading Afghanistan. And then on
Speaker 1: my nineteenth birthday. I'm invading, you know, Iraq, and I
Speaker 1: get to live for hand at this early stage in
Speaker 1: my life seeing the American you know, foreign policy just
Speaker 1: as horrible as it really is. And I mean imagine
Speaker 1: the psychological like just breakdown that I went through as
Speaker 1: a human being, trying to understand that everything that you
Speaker 1: were raised to believe in is an utter lie like
Speaker 1: and that it is just complete facade and the thing
Speaker 1: that you think was you were believing in it is
Speaker 1: long long gone.
Speaker 2: Joan, what do you see the legacy of loose Change
Speaker 2: as I think.
Speaker 3: You know, I think about it in a broader sense.
Speaker 3: Then it wasn't just the video and the evidence presented
Speaker 3: in it, but it's part of a moment where, you know, Corey,
Speaker 3: I appreciate you talking about how it was translated into
Speaker 3: many different languages. People felt that they could pick it
Speaker 3: up and take elements of it, translate elements of it,
Speaker 3: and make it their own. And it really shows us
Speaker 3: how this kind of participatory internet culture was going to develop,
Speaker 3: was that people were going to take information, they were
Speaker 3: going to remix it in many ways. And you know,
Speaker 3: no shade, Corey, but we don't even remember the authors
Speaker 3: of it, right, like it's anonymous in that sense, it
Speaker 3: becomes a piece of the culture, and you know, clips
Speaker 3: of it, people I'm sure will remember, and means that
Speaker 3: come out of it are definitely something that have lived on.
Speaker 3: But by and large it was you know, born of
Speaker 3: the Internet and then created and became the infrastructure in
Speaker 3: the content on which many different kinds of communities based
Speaker 3: their worldviews. And I think that when you come into
Speaker 3: contact with that those ideas very early on as you're
Speaker 3: making your identity, and you know, I'm sure at eighteen
Speaker 3: other people in your life were either going off to
Speaker 3: college or starting new businesses or you know, not going
Speaker 3: to war. But it was you know, it's a really
Speaker 3: unique time in American culture with the technological shifts that
Speaker 3: people were grappling with and the uncertainty we don't The
Speaker 3: thing that nine to eleven itself introduces to the American
Speaker 3: psyche is that it can happen here, that the war
Speaker 3: can be brought home, and as a result, you get
Speaker 3: this paranoia in society about the other and about being attacked,
Speaker 3: and you don't feel as if you have protection and
Speaker 3: security from the government, and so finding one another and
Speaker 3: using information and building knowledge together becomes an incredibly powerful
Speaker 3: mode of solidarity. And I think that, you know, as
Speaker 3: the Internet has progressed and things have changed, those groups
Speaker 3: of people, people that found each other in those moments
Speaker 3: after nine to eleven that we're sharing these kinds of theories,
Speaker 3: continue to be in community with one another and continue
Speaker 3: to be critical of the state. And the last thing
Speaker 3: I'll add about this moment, especially around conspiracy, is sometimes
Speaker 3: communities have to use conspiracy as a way to protect
Speaker 3: themselves from governments and government overreach. It's not uncommon for
Speaker 3: if you take a situation like Flint, where people were
Speaker 3: saying there's something wrong with the water, there's something going on,
Speaker 3: and people were really dismissive at the beginning of the
Speaker 3: Flint water crisis because people hadn't really learned how to
Speaker 3: do science and to build science around the pollution in Flint.
Speaker 3: And so sometimes rumors and conspiracy can help communities come
Speaker 3: together and focus on a problem. And sometimes it's true.
Speaker 3: And I think that elements of what came out of
Speaker 3: loose change or out of that moment that we would
Speaker 3: have called conspiracy end up challenging power and becoming an
Speaker 3: important way in which we resist tyranny and authoritarianism.
Speaker 2: Well, we need to take a quick break, but when
Speaker 2: we come back, I want to dive into how social
Speaker 2: media companies are dealing with disinformation in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: or if they even are at all. Welcome back, everybody, joan.
Speaker 2: If posting a conspiracy theory on YouTube is media manipulation,
Speaker 2: is the company that lets it remain posted participating in
Speaker 2: that manipulation.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a good question. Right now. Legally the answer
Speaker 3: is no, although there is an interesting case that's being
Speaker 3: picked up by the Supreme Court where there was some
Speaker 3: terrorism content that was posted on YouTube and the terrorists
Speaker 3: made money off of it because it was monetized, and
Speaker 3: so now the Supreme Court is trying to figure out
Speaker 3: if YouTube was funding terrorism essentially, and so that is
Speaker 3: a very unique thing though, but by and large, companies
Speaker 3: get a big pass on their products being used to
Speaker 3: spread conspiracy. It's only been since about twenty eighteen that
Speaker 3: companies have decided that they're going to in force terms
Speaker 3: of service around lies and disinformation. I think in twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen was the first time we saw info Wars and
Speaker 3: Alex Jones get deplatformed. He's probably one of the most
Speaker 3: famous people that have been moved off of these platforms,
Speaker 3: and that had a lot to do with public pressure
Speaker 3: by activists and advertisers to ensure that the information that
Speaker 3: was being provided on these platforms, even if it was entertainment,
Speaker 3: was not defamatory, libelous, hate, harassment, or incitement.
Speaker 1: The question always becomes, you know, where is that line?
Speaker 1: And if you have to censor him for this, then
Speaker 1: you have to censor this person for this, and before
Speaker 1: long no one can say anything. And I mean I've
Speaker 1: dealt with this personally as well. Like loose change lived
Speaker 1: on YouTube for years. It's hundreds of millions of you,
Speaker 1: so many people have put it up. I had it
Speaker 1: on my own channel just because I needed a place
Speaker 1: to park it for free so that people could see it,
Speaker 1: analyze that, have conversations about it, what have you. And
Speaker 1: of course over the years people have complained to YouTube
Speaker 1: about it, and they would send me warnings about it
Speaker 1: and things of that nature. But one day, essentially right
Speaker 1: after around twenty eighteen, I just one day got an
Speaker 1: email from YouTube and it was like, we've taken down
Speaker 1: loose Change for hate speech. You can't you can't fight
Speaker 1: against this. This is just something we're going to do
Speaker 1: and I and of course I'll write back, like what
Speaker 1: exactly is the hate speech within loose change, because there's
Speaker 1: nothing in loose change that's trying to incite a riot,
Speaker 1: There's nothing in it that's defammatory towards anybody, and it's
Speaker 1: just a it's a piece of information after information that
Speaker 1: we're putting forward. And so YouTube has the ability as
Speaker 1: a content provider to not allow me to put my
Speaker 1: video on them, and that's their business, and that's that
Speaker 1: I understand. I think that's a great line for companies
Speaker 1: to have the ability to shut those things off. I
Speaker 1: think it was amazing that Twitter was able to turn
Speaker 1: off Donald Trump, right, and I hope he never comes back.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, these are all crazy people.
Speaker 1: They're going to keep talking. It's our responsibility not to
Speaker 1: listen to them. There's you know, I'm driving through Amsterdam,
Speaker 1: New York the other day, there's a guy in the
Speaker 1: bus station just yelling at everybody that drives by. If
Speaker 1: I stop and listen to him and start broadcasting him
Speaker 1: on national television, well that's more on me and the
Speaker 1: people watching than the person who's yelling at the bus station.
Speaker 1: And so at my point, we need to be able
Speaker 1: to live our life. We need to be a free
Speaker 1: person in a world, and not because we're Americans, but
Speaker 1: because we're humans. And you have the right to live
Speaker 1: your life. And as long as you don't hurt another
Speaker 1: person physically altered that you know, change their life in
Speaker 1: any way, then you should have the ability to live
Speaker 1: your life however you want. And we're seeing that pushback
Speaker 1: between regulation the state and people who want to live
Speaker 1: their life and do their own thing. And you know
Speaker 1: self identify as a cat.
Speaker 2: Well, but we're in a tricky spot though right now,
Speaker 2: right like you keep talking about loose change or all
Speaker 2: these things as pieces of information, and you're right, we
Speaker 2: should be able to have access to information, to have
Speaker 2: conversations around information. I'd love to live in a society
Speaker 2: that can have complicated, thoughtful conversations that can be extended
Speaker 2: and interesting. Sadly, it doesn't feel like we're in that
Speaker 2: society very often. But putting something controversial on an online
Speaker 2: space might not just be information anymore. I mean, it
Speaker 2: is an act that incites distrust, and it's an act
Speaker 2: that could incite excitement and interest and curiosity for sure,
Speaker 2: But I don't know if it is neutral anymore. And
Speaker 2: so is it a cop out to say it's just information?
Speaker 2: Alex Jones can put that out there, it's just information.
Speaker 2: Like this information has a reaction and causes a reaction,
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: And people should be held accountable when that information takes
Speaker 1: things to the next level. And again, why I was
Speaker 1: never invited on the Daily Show before Donald Trump? Right,
Speaker 1: even when Loose Change was that it's heyday, like you
Speaker 1: guys wouldn't even talk about it. And now twenty years later,
Speaker 1: post Donald Trump, we're having these conversations not because a
Speaker 1: DVD was made twenty years ago, but because a president
Speaker 1: used the national platform to propagate lies to the American people,
Speaker 1: which caused them to try to overthrow the United States Capital.
Speaker 1: And every single person that was there should be held
Speaker 1: accountable and they should be put in jail, and the
Speaker 1: president should be held accountable, and we should learn from
Speaker 1: that as a country and as a society. And that's
Speaker 1: the line, right, because if you go over line, you
Speaker 1: start to hurt other people, you take away their freedoms,
Speaker 1: you're impeding them from living their free life. That's where
Speaker 1: the line is. And we were never there before. We
Speaker 1: were never having those conversations. It wasn't even part of
Speaker 1: it now post Donald Trump, because we have this now,
Speaker 1: we live in a world where we have to deal
Speaker 1: with with all this craziness. And it was there because
Speaker 1: corporations wanted to make money, because politicians want to be
Speaker 1: a reelected And exactly like you highlighted in your last piece,
Speaker 1: how many people that are running for office right now
Speaker 1: believe that the election was stolen, right, And it's a
Speaker 1: ridiculous amount of them. And that's not because of Loose Change.
Speaker 1: That's because of a president who used Fox News to
Speaker 1: propagate lives to the American people. And this is a
Speaker 1: trend throughout current American history and new media where these
Speaker 1: or administrations are using media to lie to the American people,
Speaker 1: to propagate for their own profit and personal growth, and
Speaker 1: then they just get to retire and go do whatever
Speaker 1: they want to do. And so of course people are
Speaker 1: starting to get pissed. And so, yes, it is information,
Speaker 1: Yes it does stir stuff up. But I wasn't into
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories before Loose Change. I'm not into conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: afterwards because I don't believe it's conspiracy theory. I believe
Speaker 1: these are things that we actually need to talk about,
Speaker 1: that these are actually things that are happening in our country.
Speaker 1: And as Joan just supported me on, like, we know
Speaker 1: that the American government was lying to us about the
Speaker 1: war in Iraq, and no one's been held accountable. So
Speaker 1: where does that line go again? If people are hurt
Speaker 1: or people are killed and their freedoms are impeded in
Speaker 1: any way, then that has to be held accountable for.
Speaker 1: But people having conversations and discussing free information, we can't
Speaker 1: limit that otherwise nobody gets to say anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think Corey, one of the things in this
Speaker 3: is something that I think a lot about is the
Speaker 3: scale is different. So social media introduces a different relationship
Speaker 3: between free speech and audiences or listening. Right, there's no
Speaker 3: obligation to listen. There's also no right to broadcast. There's
Speaker 3: no right in that sense of being the right to
Speaker 3: reach eighty million people. We don't have. We actually have
Speaker 3: laws against using broadcasts to do inciting things. And so
Speaker 3: so for me, you know, Alex Jones isn't necessarily just
Speaker 3: having conversations that he's moving between that and mobilizing audiences,
Speaker 3: and he.
Speaker 1: Was held accountable right across the line, and so now
Speaker 1: we have a consequence to that which is exactly the way.
Speaker 3: And I wonder if that consequence is actually you know,
Speaker 3: reflective of how out of scale with or out of
Speaker 3: touch with reality. The Internet and social media companies have become.
Speaker 3: Like finding someone a billion dollars, it almost seems comical,
Speaker 3: But when it comes to the scale of the Internet,
Speaker 3: more is different. It's different when millions of people are
Speaker 3: doing a thing versus even a regional radio station. And
Speaker 3: we've never had broadcast rules attached to the Internet in
Speaker 3: the same way that we have broadcast rules for television
Speaker 3: and radio, and so I you know, what I would
Speaker 3: love to see is us moving more towards accountability for
Speaker 3: people that have access to and are broadcasting to larger audiences.
Speaker 3: So maybe it's the case that if someone's you know,
Speaker 3: talking to their you know, twenty five friends on a
Speaker 3: discord server, maybe that's not something we need to bother with.
Speaker 3: But when somebody is reaching a million people and they
Speaker 3: have these calls to action, and they are especially in
Speaker 3: the case of profiting from political oppression, our profiting from
Speaker 3: lies and disinformation, that we should have some new regulations
Speaker 3: to ensure that they're not able to hurt people, and
Speaker 3: so I think ultimately, until we understand the scale question
Speaker 3: and how more is different, we're not going to be
Speaker 3: able to completely address, well, what does free speech mean
Speaker 3: in the context of the internet, especially when I could
Speaker 3: just say your name and say you did this dastardly thing,
Speaker 3: and there's really no retraction, there's no way to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's gotten so much worse than that, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we're way by on that at this point too, because
Speaker 1: now you can have a kid walk into or I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: a kid walk down the street with an AAR fifteen
Speaker 1: shoot and kill people, and you have half the country
Speaker 1: that supports that person, and you have political candidates, new
Speaker 1: stations who then fight for that person. And what's even
Speaker 1: worse is, again it's not just about groups on the Internet.
Speaker 1: Now we have CNN and Fox that no matter what
Speaker 1: the question is, it's going to be a debate from
Speaker 1: one side or the other. And it is sickening. No
Speaker 1: matter what side of the conversation you are right. If
Speaker 1: you're a conservative and you're watching Fox News and you
Speaker 1: see CNN, you're like, oh my god, this is just
Speaker 1: absolutely ridiculous. But if you're a liberal and you're watching Fox,
Speaker 1: You're like, you're the same position.
Speaker 3: There's a really interesting book one of my team members
Speaker 3: wrote called Networked Propaganda, and it's about these media ecosystems
Speaker 3: and how the media has developed over the last twenty years,
Speaker 3: but particularly looking at the twenty sixteen election, and the
Speaker 3: right Way media ecosystem is very different from left and
Speaker 3: center media. And what's interesting about the right Way media
Speaker 3: ecosystem is how how quickly they will call us around
Speaker 3: a story in a narrative, and if the facts don't fit,
Speaker 3: it's party over the news, right, You've got to get
Speaker 3: the party line. And you know this isn't in the book,
Speaker 3: but the controversy around dominion voting machines and how if
Speaker 3: you said negative things about dominion on television, dominion is
Speaker 3: able to sue you. If you're saying negative things about
Speaker 3: dominion on the internet, it's going to be decided by
Speaker 3: the courts. And I think that that moment where we
Speaker 3: start to realize that these media companies are constricted in
Speaker 3: some ways by these different mediums, and the regulatory systems
Speaker 3: around those mediums eventually are going to be tested in
Speaker 3: the courts. And you know, when it comes to left
Speaker 3: and center media. They do not have the same kind
Speaker 3: of infrastructure online. They don't have this kind of motivated
Speaker 3: audiences in order to spread and distribute the news as
Speaker 3: the right does. The right has an incredible distribution muscle
Speaker 3: through Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. And so we're going
Speaker 3: to see over time how these different media ecosystems interact.
Speaker 3: And but I don't know, you know, like I'm you know,
Speaker 3: I'm a big joker. I get it. Clinton News Network MSDNC,
Speaker 3: I'm with you. I'm with you, you know. And I
Speaker 3: don't know if cable news is really going to survive
Speaker 3: the Internet era. But what we're dealing with is a
Speaker 3: difference of well, do we want news or do we
Speaker 3: want partisan politics that looks like news? Right, And some
Speaker 3: of this is I know, I can tell Corey for
Speaker 3: you it comes down to, well, who's getting paid out?
Speaker 3: And you know, and I agree with you, we should
Speaker 3: follow the money, always follow them money. But also I
Speaker 3: think the light for me, or the optimism, comes in
Speaker 3: where the Internet is a huge international project and we
Speaker 3: could reimagine some technology, some design so that we have
Speaker 3: room for news, we have room for fact based discussion.
Speaker 3: We have right now what we have is social media
Speaker 3: which is essentially trying to monetize any bit of information
Speaker 3: that it can and it's not designed specifically to spread
Speaker 3: public interest information. And I think that that's where we
Speaker 3: get into a lot of our problems because we used
Speaker 3: to rely much more on traditional media to get information
Speaker 3: out there, and now the gates have shifted, and I wonder,
Speaker 3: you know, at the end of the day, are we
Speaker 3: going to be able to depend on Elon Musk and
Speaker 3: Mark Zuckerberg and you know, Kanye is buying parlor, We've
Speaker 3: got Trump with true social are we going to be
Speaker 3: able to trust social networks to get this public information
Speaker 3: out there? And if not, what do we build right?
Speaker 3: And how do we get there? And that's those for
Speaker 3: me are the big questions moving forward.
Speaker 2: Well, let's you know, I want to ask one final
Speaker 2: question in that world, because I know there's disagreements here,
Speaker 2: but it sounds like we want a similar thing, which
Speaker 2: is to have free flowing information in conversations. The question
Speaker 2: is where do those conversations live? And what you just described,
Speaker 2: Joan is a sloppy social media system doesn't know how
Speaker 2: to manage disinformation. It's now being run by Elon Musk
Speaker 2: is running Twitter, who is throwing stuff willy nilly at
Speaker 2: the wall. Where are we supposed to have these conversations one?
Speaker 2: What can these platforms do? Or is there a platform
Speaker 2: where this this type of healthy discourse can live or
Speaker 2: we just are we just screwed Corey? What do you think?
Speaker 1: Well again, I mean this stuff's always been around, right,
Speaker 1: it's just more visible now. KKK existed before the Internet,
Speaker 1: and they had their little meetings and they put on
Speaker 1: their costumes and they did all those different things. For me,
Speaker 1: this is an issue with information in the way that
Speaker 1: it's broadcast throughout American society, is that we just broadcast hypotheticals,
Speaker 1: like we'll broadcast information about a case before we know
Speaker 1: all the facts, and we have immediate like you know,
Speaker 1: here's a car chase, we got to cover it. And
Speaker 1: so we've gotten away from kind of fact based journalism
Speaker 1: where we're just we're just broadcasting whatever we can do
Speaker 1: to keep people's attention.
Speaker 2: What do you trust? Where do you go when you're
Speaker 2: looking for information?
Speaker 1: I don't trust anyone, Like I've blocked every major news
Speaker 1: application because I just can't handle it's all nonsense, Like it.
Speaker 2: Doesn't been your poe. What do you click you wake
Speaker 2: up and what do you click.
Speaker 1: I read stuff about cameras. I read stuff about New
Speaker 1: York state legalization. I'm into just different articles. I let
Speaker 1: Google news feed give me stuff that's tailored to my interests,
Speaker 1: and I block anything about Biden or Trump because I
Speaker 1: just can't handle it. I think if you support a
Speaker 1: politician at this point, it's basically the same as supporting
Speaker 1: a football team. So it's just like they're just there
Speaker 1: so you can buy a jersey. And so for me,
Speaker 1: I'm what was the question. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: got lost again, that's what it was. Sorry, So we're
Speaker 1: broadcasting hypotheticals, right, and her question is how do we
Speaker 1: fix this?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: So there's I think the conversations can exist online because
Speaker 1: even if they don't exist online, like I was saying
Speaker 1: the KKK, they'll have their little meetings and so, but
Speaker 1: it's up to the mainstream media to really grow a
Speaker 1: backbone here and start to and again it's part of
Speaker 1: the conversation that we need to go in how we
Speaker 1: evolutionize the mass communication. But the media we need we
Speaker 1: need to trust the media again, and that's I think
Speaker 1: one of the major problems in America and the world
Speaker 1: right now is that people don't trust the media, and
Speaker 1: that's because they're reporting on hypotheticals. They're going to report
Speaker 1: for a political base, and there's no true information that
Speaker 1: you can follow anymore, where you would normally just clock
Speaker 1: into the six PMNBC News and get the world report.
Speaker 1: That you can't do that anymore without hypocrisy. And that again,
Speaker 1: when I said at the beginning, hypocrisy is more visible.
Speaker 1: People are upset because they know the government's been lying
Speaker 1: to us and it's proven at this point over major
Speaker 1: things for at least two decades. Now it's in my life.
Speaker 1: And so, like you know, how do we hold people accountable?
Speaker 1: How do we adjust this? And again, like Jones said,
Speaker 1: let's focus on changing some regulations. Let's focus on, you know,
Speaker 1: putting information where it belongs. And like I said, let's
Speaker 1: focus on envisioning how the future societies communicate accurately, and
Speaker 1: let's try to reverse engineer that for our society and
Speaker 1: start to build those building blocks.
Speaker 2: But do you do you feel the same responsibility as
Speaker 2: somebody who put information out there as the mainstream networks?
Speaker 1: Do I feel absolutely no responsibility over anything. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm living my own life. I'm living my own life.
Speaker 1: If you want to do your thing, go do your thing.
Speaker 1: If you want to make because again, everybody makes videos.
Speaker 1: And what we're really talking about is a technological evolution
Speaker 1: where people are able to carry a camera and disseminate
Speaker 1: information online. And guess what, it's in everybody's hands right now.
Speaker 1: We have all of human knowledge in our pocket. We
Speaker 1: have a camera that can broadcast to everyone in the
Speaker 1: world at the same time. And what do we do
Speaker 1: with it as a society, And we're seeing it. We're
Speaker 1: not doing the right thing. We're not growing as a society.
Speaker 1: We're making things worse. So I don't know, but.
Speaker 2: You have a clear distrust for the media ecosystem, but
Speaker 2: you yourself are a part of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, twenty years ago, I made a DVD. We
Speaker 1: don't post on Facebook. I'm not out there promoting loose change.
Speaker 1: I don't talk about it unless somebody reaches out to
Speaker 1: me to ask about it. And I only do major
Speaker 1: news at this point because the littler guys just are
Speaker 1: normally tailored in one conspiratorial direction or the other, for
Speaker 1: the right to the left, and so I like to
Speaker 1: have real conversations with people like yourself, so we can
Speaker 1: have a real conversation about this stuff and kind of
Speaker 1: push it in a direction so that people understand it.
Speaker 1: I've seen too much lazy journalism where they're just like,
Speaker 1: loose change is responsible for all the disinformation on the Internet.
Speaker 1: It's like that is the laziest thing you could do.
Speaker 1: You're not digging into the conversation at all. You're not
Speaker 1: even looking at the information. You're just trying to get clicks.
Speaker 1: And that's where we are with reporting right now. We're
Speaker 1: just trying to get clicks. And you yourself know that
Speaker 1: you have to do crazy things. You have to go
Speaker 1: to Trump route. He's ask people insane questions that I
Speaker 1: would be terrified to ask them in person.
Speaker 2: Don't blow up my spot, Corey, don't blow up my spot.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. You're a crazy person, man. But I love
Speaker 1: you and I really support everything you're doing too. And
Speaker 1: I just want to say I love the Daily Show.
Speaker 1: And John Stewart was my fucking hero and still as
Speaker 1: as a veteran to be standing up for my rights
Speaker 1: when no other political candidate is like, I would vote
Speaker 1: for him if you ran. That's the only person I'm
Speaker 1: interested in.
Speaker 2: I tell you, I think he'd have some backers for sure,
Speaker 2: that Joe. If we can't trust the people running these platforms,
Speaker 2: how are we supposed to trust and use these platforms?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you know, it's up to us to
Speaker 3: work together. I think journalists have a huge role to play.
Speaker 3: Journalism organizations have a huge role to play outside of
Speaker 3: news media and corporations. I think journalists still like academics,
Speaker 3: have a passion for the truth, right, And I think
Speaker 3: that we are truth seekers and I think that that's
Speaker 3: an important thing to hold on to in a time
Speaker 3: when people feel like there's no anchor, that there's no
Speaker 3: truth out there that we can access. And in some
Speaker 3: ways I think that that post truth a society really
Speaker 3: favors authoritarians. It really favors those who are willing to
Speaker 3: lie to us at scale and depress us because we
Speaker 3: then deactivate, We then step aside and walk away from
Speaker 3: the responsibilities that we have to one another. So when
Speaker 3: it comes to someone like Elon Musk, you know, he's
Speaker 3: not your typical homoeconomicist, rational actor. He didn't buy Twitter
Speaker 3: to make money, right. He spent forty four billion for
Speaker 3: a product that he probably could have built on his
Speaker 3: own for less than a billion dollars. But what he
Speaker 3: was buying were the networks that were all part of
Speaker 3: He was buying the networks of journalists, who was buying
Speaker 3: the networks of politicians. He essentially bought the chessboard that
Speaker 3: global politics is being played on at this stage. There's
Speaker 3: really not a lot of ways in which anyone else
Speaker 3: could have that kind of influence rather than being the
Speaker 3: owner of a large platform. And I think that Musk's
Speaker 3: political aspirations in terms of being part of the global
Speaker 3: conversation about the war in Ukraine, what's going on in
Speaker 3: Taiwan at the end of the day, are also being
Speaker 3: driven by his business decisions around selling cars and who
Speaker 3: the markets are that are going to buy these cars.
Speaker 3: And he is going to be able to, you know,
Speaker 3: gain some kind of political favor with different governments if
Speaker 3: he uses Twitter in that way. And so I think
Speaker 3: that there's a very big risk to allowing our communication
Speaker 3: commons to be owned by single individuals that don't have
Speaker 3: the public interest at the core, especially when it comes
Speaker 3: to communication. You guys are old enough to remember long
Speaker 3: distance calling. You know, you want to call three towns
Speaker 3: over It was going to cost you twenty five cents
Speaker 3: a minute. You know, we have a remarkable new innovation
Speaker 3: here where we can call across the world. I'm calling
Speaker 3: you from Ireland right now. I mean we can call
Speaker 3: across the world for free and reach our family, reach
Speaker 3: our friends, reach our collaborators, colleagues. And that's something I
Speaker 3: don't want to lose in this moment where we're going
Speaker 3: to see this massive shake up around what social media is,
Speaker 3: how my platforms cost, and eventually how these networks are
Speaker 3: going to change our society, especially our politics. And so
Speaker 3: I think the time has come if we are going
Speaker 3: to fix this for regulation around truth and advertising, knowing
Speaker 3: your customers. Political advertising online needs to have much more oversight.
Speaker 3: We do need to know exactly how much money these
Speaker 3: platform companies are making and where it's going, how much
Speaker 3: they're investing in content moderation, can they actually enforce their
Speaker 3: terms of service? And as we move into understanding social
Speaker 3: media as an industry, I think we can start to
Speaker 3: fashion a public interest Internet that will provide the kinds
Speaker 3: of information and forums that people need in order to
Speaker 3: participate in elections and to participate in our political systems.
Speaker 3: But right now we're at a very very early stage,
Speaker 3: and it's going to take a lot of work to
Speaker 3: build those institutions.
Speaker 2: Follow the money, follow the pornography. We'll get there.
Speaker 3: And follow me on Twitter.
Speaker 2: Oh self promotion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't follow me. Don't look for me. I don't
Speaker 1: want you.
Speaker 3: Don't look for me. I'm not here.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, Corey, I can't imagine you're big
Speaker 2: on the TikTok no.
Speaker 1: I watched it for like a week, and then I
Speaker 1: got tired. I got an Instagram follower with sixteen our
Speaker 1: Inctragram account with sixteen followers. I don't do anything anyway.
Speaker 1: I own a business. I make videos. That's my life.
Speaker 2: Well, Joe Donovan, Corey Row, thank you guys for great conversation,
Speaker 2: healthy skepticism, trust and blowing all that shit up. I
Speaker 2: love it. Listen to Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracy from
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