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