Speaker 1: What's terrible my me? This is it could happen here
Speaker 1: a podcast about collapse, and that's appropriate because everyone's faith
Speaker 1: in me as a colleague has collapsed today as the
Speaker 1: result of a series of horrific cluster fox On my part,
Speaker 1: I'm late to the meeting. I accidentally left the meeting
Speaker 1: when they started recording. Just a just a complete fucking
Speaker 1: ship show. Speaking of ship shows, my co host Garrison Davis,
Speaker 1: how are you, Garrison. I'm the one that saved this.
Speaker 1: I had to send the guest to the zoom call.
Speaker 1: I know. I'm not even supposed to be on this call.
Speaker 1: No you're not. You're not even supposed to be working today.
Speaker 1: That's not true. Well but you're not on this call,
Speaker 1: not on this call. But here I am saving. This
Speaker 1: is enough. This is enough, Woody Banter. This is a
Speaker 1: daily podcast, and now let's bring on our guest for today,
Speaker 1: monsignor Alex new House. Alex, how are you doing. I'm
Speaker 1: doing well. Thanks for having me. I feel like I
Speaker 1: was pulled in off the street, just like bundled into
Speaker 1: a van and then yeah, yeah, we uh. You know
Speaker 1: how people used to get like shanghaied, like like captured
Speaker 1: by allegedly allegedly and forced to work on on on
Speaker 1: boats in like San Francisco and whatnot. We do that
Speaker 1: with podcasts. I mean that is actually most of what
Speaker 1: I've done to the people who work on your podcast.
Speaker 1: I think I think I've had everyone from your show
Speaker 1: on our show now, and it has been very much
Speaker 1: like I'm just pulling them on a string. Speaking of which, Alex,
Speaker 1: you are one of the hosts of the Terrorism Is
Speaker 1: Bad podcast, a very uh controversially named podcast. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you work at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at
Speaker 1: Monterey Center of Terrorism, Extremism and counter Terrorism Center on
Speaker 1: not not of that would be a different center, very important,
Speaker 1: very important. Yeah, and we're not we're not bringing you
Speaker 1: on to talk about how to make explosively formed penetrators.
Speaker 1: Not that not this time. That is someone else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you are also you were also a actual games journalist. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got my start in this weird space. How do
Speaker 1: you gamer gate? How do you feel about ethics in
Speaker 1: the game journalism industry? Alex uh, always been fine, Like yeah, alright, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's the end of that. Yeah, I do want to
Speaker 1: actually start there, Alex, because you and I both have
Speaker 1: something in common, which is that we we've got our
Speaker 1: start writing in a field that's wildly different from consulting
Speaker 1: with like governments on terrorism. Like for me, it was
Speaker 1: I wanted to write like Dick jokes on the Internet
Speaker 1: and I just like stumbled into a bunch of ices
Speaker 1: propaganda that most people weren't aware of and and that
Speaker 1: started me like lecturing at universities and ship And for
Speaker 1: you it was gamer Gates. I'm interested in kind of
Speaker 1: you telling your story a little bit to start us off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I was. I was during undergrad I entered every
Speaker 1: summer at game Spot video game website you may have
Speaker 1: heard of. It's one of the two big ones along
Speaker 1: with I g n UM. And when I was doing that,
Speaker 1: I was so this was like right in the at
Speaker 1: the beginning stages of of gamer Gate really popping off.
Speaker 1: And what ended up happening is a lot of the
Speaker 1: people I worked with, a lot of my colleagues and
Speaker 1: friends were just in the blast zone. They were just
Speaker 1: targeted by the absolute onslought of of harassment UM and
Speaker 1: I just had a curiosity started looking into some of
Speaker 1: those people who were who are targeting my friends and colleagues,
Speaker 1: and it ended up being a lot of the people
Speaker 1: that were still talking about today. Uh you know, it
Speaker 1: all all rolls back up to the bright bart metropolitan area,
Speaker 1: if you will. And um, I don't know what a
Speaker 1: uh the thing that made me want to I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously I've been aware of you work for well, the
Speaker 1: thing that maybe want to specifically bring you on as
Speaker 1: you started on a new project to create like a
Speaker 1: video game that that will hopefully have an ability to
Speaker 1: help like de radicalize people. And I'm I'm not entirely
Speaker 1: certain like of the details of the project, but I
Speaker 1: think it's a fascinating project because as as you know
Speaker 1: all too well, a lot of this stuff started in gaming,
Speaker 1: not as a result of anything specifically about gaming, but
Speaker 1: the kind of like socialization that occurs in those spaces
Speaker 1: and the kind of like different communities. And it's been
Speaker 1: like we have going back to the nineties evidence of
Speaker 1: like different Nazi groups on the early Internet, like talking
Speaker 1: about like these are specific specific groups and subcultures that
Speaker 1: you know will have an easier time radicalizing and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm interested in kind of what actually is
Speaker 1: going on with this project, um, And and how you
Speaker 1: think it's going to look at this stage. I understand
Speaker 1: it's pretty early in development right now, so I'm not
Speaker 1: expecting like, you know, an E three walkthrough. Yeah, our
Speaker 1: E three size life and I wish we had that. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We won a grant from DHS and FEMA their their
Speaker 1: Tears and Prevention Grant program this year. We just got
Speaker 1: awarded it like literally two weeks ago, so I have
Speaker 1: not even started work on it at all. But the
Speaker 1: project will be a laboration between my center and a
Speaker 1: nonprofit games development company called the Eye Thrive Foundation. And
Speaker 1: basically what we are going to do is like build
Speaker 1: digital scenarios, digital narratives that can be engaged with UH
Speaker 1: within classroom settings. So we're targeting high schools for rolling
Speaker 1: this out UH, and the idea is that we're going
Speaker 1: to give students the ability to take on roles that
Speaker 1: empower them to better understand how extremism and radicalization work
Speaker 1: as mechanisms, which will hopefully the idea is that it
Speaker 1: will it will improve resilience and you know, civil integrity
Speaker 1: and all those fun buzzwords within within high school communities.
Speaker 1: So we're not necessarily trying to de radicalize already radicalize people.
Speaker 1: But we're really trying to build community awareness, community resilience
Speaker 1: to to radicalization pathways. I mean, this is something I
Speaker 1: think about constantly because I get asked this a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll get I'll get emailed questions from people,
Speaker 1: sometimes as much detail as like, hey, I'm like a
Speaker 1: teacher and here's some things this could in my classes said,
Speaker 1: or something he put in an essay, and like, I'm
Speaker 1: growing really concerned earned about him, and like, I what
Speaker 1: do I do? And my usual answer is, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of people who I respect that I'll
Speaker 1: try to direct them to, but I I don't. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty good at how people get radicalized. It's something I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time studying. I don't know how
Speaker 1: how you I have trouble figuring out how to break
Speaker 1: down these pathways because like, right, the the default for
Speaker 1: a lot of people and for a lot of time
Speaker 1: has been will you d platform? Right? You um, you
Speaker 1: get them off of whatever. And there's there's I do
Speaker 1: certainly think there's there's utility in that, but there's also
Speaker 1: you know, the toothpaste tube effect, the fact that when
Speaker 1: you you squash these popular areas where they're able to
Speaker 1: spread them, they filter off into increasingly isolated communities that
Speaker 1: develop new terms, they find out ways to hide it,
Speaker 1: and that actually increases you know, it may it may
Speaker 1: reduce the number of people who get radicalized, but the
Speaker 1: people who remain just get more and more extreme because
Speaker 1: they're even more isolated from you know, everyone else. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, how do you how do you how
Speaker 1: do you break that that radicalization and cycle? Like, how
Speaker 1: do you how do you stop that ship before it gets,
Speaker 1: you know, to a tipping point? Yeah, I mean, in general,
Speaker 1: I'm with you, I'm pretty skeptical of a lot of
Speaker 1: de radicalization strategies. Uh. And it's it's like an incredibly
Speaker 1: difficult task to to pull someone out who's already going
Speaker 1: down these pathways. And then, like you said, it's also
Speaker 1: an incredibly difficult task to make sure that when you
Speaker 1: are disrupting the radicalization networks that they aren't just disappearing
Speaker 1: off to some other corner of the Internet, which we
Speaker 1: know they're doing. Like one of the reasons why we're
Speaker 1: we're working with a video game video game company is
Speaker 1: over the last few years, we've noticed a big migration
Speaker 1: into video game platforms especially big social based video game
Speaker 1: platforms like Roadblocks and Minecraft, which are like not even
Speaker 1: remotely prepared to deal with you know, very well developed
Speaker 1: sophisticated radicalization networks. They have moved over there both for
Speaker 1: organization and radicalization reasons, um, since mainstream companies have started
Speaker 1: taking more of an interest in de platforming them. Uh
Speaker 1: And so we're ending up like pretty wildly unprepared for
Speaker 1: this sudden onslought of extremists being right in front of
Speaker 1: kids as they're playing games or you know, teenagers or
Speaker 1: even young adults. So our idea essentially is to use
Speaker 1: that language, the same language that extremists are trying to
Speaker 1: adopt the structures of video games three via the sort
Speaker 1: of interactivity there, to better communicate, uh, the the impacts
Speaker 1: of extremism, what it looks like, how to identify it,
Speaker 1: and hopefully how to avoid getting you know, falling into
Speaker 1: the traps that are laid uh for for unsuspecting people.
Speaker 1: One of the issues and I'm curiously thoughts on this
Speaker 1: because we we we talk a lot about, Like I
Speaker 1: think people have become increasingly aware of how bad Facebook
Speaker 1: in particulars is a problem with this. It's it's really
Speaker 1: well real a lot of the boogaloo movement to and
Speaker 1: now this stuff is coming out about like the data
Speaker 1: Facebook has had on just and this isn't this isn't
Speaker 1: this is adjacent to radicalization. Um, the mental impact that
Speaker 1: it's been having on teenagers right like the just how
Speaker 1: bad it is for people, And UM, I'm wondering, like
Speaker 1: how do you scale this stuff? I guess is the question,
Speaker 1: like how do you actually how do you make the
Speaker 1: social internet less dangerous? Yeah, I mean that's that's going
Speaker 1: to be extremely tough. And we are even starting very
Speaker 1: very small, like we're building we're building on a narrative
Speaker 1: platform to target three high schools right now. Um. But
Speaker 1: the hope is that ultimately what we can do is
Speaker 1: build a tool set and and a platform, like literally
Speaker 1: a game platform that can be used by high school
Speaker 1: teachers in high school classes throughout the country or throughout
Speaker 1: the world. Um. The idea will be to hopefully make
Speaker 1: a new sort of package of different methods and interactive
Speaker 1: experiences that can be reused into the future. But it
Speaker 1: is one of the big open questions that we will
Speaker 1: hopefully come to some sort of answer for throughout the
Speaker 1: project about how do we actually scale us up UM.
Speaker 1: But you know, in general, it is again like one
Speaker 1: of the biggest open questions right now. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons why I's so skeptical of a lot of d
Speaker 1: RAD and CBE techniques is they try to go for
Speaker 1: scale about effectiveness UM, when in reality, one of the
Speaker 1: best and only de radicalization pathways that we know of
Speaker 1: involves people that you know and I know going out
Speaker 1: and meeting with these people one on one and having intensive,
Speaker 1: frequent communications with them. So UM, there's as far as
Speaker 1: we know, there's not a good answer right now. This
Speaker 1: is a huge place of research right now because we
Speaker 1: should just straight up do not understand how to scale
Speaker 1: up UM radicalization, prevention and de radicalization. I mean, and
Speaker 1: you know what you're trying to do, And like, reaching
Speaker 1: kids in high school in something that's meant they're meant
Speaker 1: to be consuming while they're in school is even such
Speaker 1: an additional challenge because I think you and I are
Speaker 1: both young enough to at least remember that like almost
Speaker 1: nothing that you put before kids in that context in
Speaker 1: a school gets through. I can I I can think
Speaker 1: about like anti drug programs and stuff when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, and how ineffective they were. There was I
Speaker 1: had one one effective anti drug like speech by a
Speaker 1: teacher and it was just a teacher who whose son
Speaker 1: was part of this this there was this one night
Speaker 1: and plane where like six kids indeed on heroin. It
Speaker 1: was there was big Rolling Stone article about it was
Speaker 1: a very famous moment, and her son was one of
Speaker 1: the kids who nearly died and she was and she
Speaker 1: like just explained like physically what happened to him and
Speaker 1: begged us not to do heroin. And that actually did
Speaker 1: stick with me. I've never never shot up anything, um,
Speaker 1: but you know, like the a lot of it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: And I think part of why it's this thing I
Speaker 1: talked about when I tried to explain like why isis
Speaker 1: propaganda was so effective, it's the it feels more authentic
Speaker 1: than the than the counter narrative, right, the counter narrative
Speaker 1: because it's it's usually focus grouped. It's coming as the
Speaker 1: result of like some sort of government initiative, a bunch
Speaker 1: of people worked intogether. It feels focus grouped as opposed
Speaker 1: to there's something inherently more compelling about something that just
Speaker 1: like feels like somebody who really gave a ship cares
Speaker 1: a lot put this thing together, even if it's terrible.
Speaker 1: And I that strikes me as a really because if
Speaker 1: you're going to be scaling something and trying to reach
Speaker 1: a lot of people, it's going to have to be
Speaker 1: something that is put together at scale by an organization.
Speaker 1: And how do you I mean, I know this must
Speaker 1: be on your mind as you're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to craft this thing. I'm just interested in your
Speaker 1: thoughts on that. Really, Yeah, I mean that exact challenge
Speaker 1: challenges what led us to proposing the project project that
Speaker 1: we are so the idea behind it or the the
Speaker 1: impetus behind what we did what we proposed is, um,
Speaker 1: the exact problem of students just don't listen to people
Speaker 1: in whether that's anti drug programs or anything like that. Often,
Speaker 1: my uh my uh feeling about it is they are
Speaker 1: often resistant to it because it's very negative. It's very
Speaker 1: don't do this, don't do this. I'm setting up boundaries
Speaker 1: for for kids and ano listens to act within. It's
Speaker 1: all very declaratory, very you know, commanding. Um, there's no
Speaker 1: there's no sense of treating kids like people who have control,
Speaker 1: who have interests, who have motivations. It's all attempting to
Speaker 1: restrict them. And so the idea is that we're going
Speaker 1: to attempt to build a game platform that actually empower
Speaker 1: students to operate within roles that have control, that that
Speaker 1: have something to say, to give them voices, to give
Speaker 1: them UM and that sort of feeling of being an
Speaker 1: established UM person within a within a certain scenario. UM.
Speaker 1: The way that I've been thinking about it is that
Speaker 1: we're basically merging video games with like the structure of
Speaker 1: a model you in conference or something like that hopefully
Speaker 1: will be a little less nerdy than the model un conferences.
Speaker 1: But that's the idea of giving people power to make decisions, uh,
Speaker 1: and and treat them like actual, you know, operating humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I uh. I'm wondering do you have any kind of
Speaker 1: models that you're looking at when you think of like
Speaker 1: something that you see is is kind of worth I
Speaker 1: don't emulating maybe the wrong word, but like, oh, these
Speaker 1: people I think got it right and and this was effective,
Speaker 1: Like or is this really a situation where you feel
Speaker 1: like we're kind of in the fucking wilderness here. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot of great models for what's effective. We
Speaker 1: are very much in the wilderness. I was expecting you
Speaker 1: to say, like, so much of c V and d
Speaker 1: RAD work of the last ten years has been directly
Speaker 1: towards trying to essentially recreate the like the DARE model
Speaker 1: or the anti drug model, just in a different field. Um.
Speaker 1: And so we're going to be pulling from scenario builders
Speaker 1: and like mad un and debate and like all of
Speaker 1: these different models that seem to at least work to
Speaker 1: get kids engage with like operating that sort of situation.
Speaker 1: But it is going to be pretty I mean, at
Speaker 1: least from what I understand, is gonna be pretty new.
Speaker 1: We're going to be out there really flying blind for
Speaker 1: a lot of it, um, But we will you know,
Speaker 1: we have a pilot phase built in to try to
Speaker 1: bay attest this with with um some of the students
Speaker 1: were incorporating students and instructors and the actual creation devolopment stage.
Speaker 1: So that'll be another hopefully good part of this. We'll
Speaker 1: we'll give some students experience with the game development process,
Speaker 1: which I think will health engage them as well. That
Speaker 1: strikes me as a particularly good idea of like giving
Speaker 1: and also just giving them some agency. So it's not
Speaker 1: like this is a thing that you are forced to consume,
Speaker 1: like this is the thing that you can like learn
Speaker 1: something from. I think that's that's very important. I'm interested
Speaker 1: in how you see how you see this because like
Speaker 1: again we kind of both got in around the same time.
Speaker 1: Gamer Gate is when I started paying attention to radicalization
Speaker 1: to how do you think it's changed since then? How
Speaker 1: do you think like the nature of of how, particularly
Speaker 1: like younger people are being radicalized has changed. And I
Speaker 1: guess I'm also interested because I get the feeling that
Speaker 1: back then it was mostly younger people getting radicalized and
Speaker 1: that's no longer the case. Just as we're talking, I
Speaker 1: just came across the video on Twitter of a group
Speaker 1: of anti vax protesters chasing parents and children away from
Speaker 1: an elementary school and screaming at them that they're raping
Speaker 1: their kids with a vaccine. So clearly the problem is expanded.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, and honestly, one of the things that
Speaker 1: keeps me up at night is when we start, if
Speaker 1: you know, knocking movies, are able to roll this out
Speaker 1: to more schools, we're going to run into some probably
Speaker 1: very resistant parents who have radicalized. Yum, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the big one is, like what you said, like the
Speaker 1: radicalization demographics have vastly expanded to incorporate so many more
Speaker 1: different types of people, so many more ages and even
Speaker 1: ethnicities and genders. Um. But what we do know is
Speaker 1: that the hardcore of the of the violent extremists are
Speaker 1: still targeting adolescents. UM. We know, accelerationists, for instance, hang
Speaker 1: out and try to essentially black pill a bunch of teens,
Speaker 1: especially autistic teens, especially teens with mental health issues, UH,
Speaker 1: and bring them into a more violent, more accelerationist posture. UM.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I think that has sort of stayed
Speaker 1: constant throughout all of this. One of the big uh
Speaker 1: changes has been platforms. You know, ten years ago, it
Speaker 1: was much easier for a neo Nazi to operate openly
Speaker 1: on YouTube or Facebook, but that has thankfully changed. Um.
Speaker 1: But they have spread out into like I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: they've spread out into video games. They spread out into
Speaker 1: other sorts of platforms where the social aspect isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: the first part of the platform, but rather a secondary
Speaker 1: aspect to it, And they try to engage UM adolescence
Speaker 1: on their own turf on you know, in a roadblocks
Speaker 1: game or in a in a video game forum. Out there,
Speaker 1: it's not even enough to say. It feels like the
Speaker 1: task of reducing radicalization or or not not even mentioned,
Speaker 1: pulling it back, just stopping the process. It feels not
Speaker 1: just like whack a mole, but like whack a mole
Speaker 1: when you're surrounded by moles. Um. And I guess that
Speaker 1: is the thing that keeps me up at night the most, too,
Speaker 1: is that like the problem has gotten because of how
Speaker 1: social media scales, I think, in large part, has gotten
Speaker 1: so much worse than it ever was. And the I
Speaker 1: see these crowds of adults, you know, assembling in you know,
Speaker 1: places like Los Angeles and showing up outside of schools
Speaker 1: to her ask people, and like, I don't know what.
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do about that. Like part
Speaker 1: of me thinks, um, part of me thinks that the
Speaker 1: only effective long term answer is to mobilize a larger
Speaker 1: number of people two show up to you know, not
Speaker 1: necessarily confront those people, but make them make them feel outnumbered,
Speaker 1: and maybe they'll stop, and that will start a process
Speaker 1: where they they alter their thinking. Like I'm thinking kind
Speaker 1: of back to some aspects of the civil rights movement
Speaker 1: here right where you would have these people show up
Speaker 1: at schools just try to stop integration and whatnot, and
Speaker 1: they would be opposed often by by larger groups that
Speaker 1: they would see the size of the marches in the street.
Speaker 1: And like, I don't know, I don't even know if
Speaker 1: it works that way anymore. Like knowing that you know,
Speaker 1: tend to one people think your stance on vaccines is
Speaker 1: stupid and they're willing to show up to like yell
Speaker 1: at you if that would do anything. But I don't
Speaker 1: know what. I don't know what's going to do. Like
Speaker 1: I guess I'm asking you, like, can you have you
Speaker 1: figured this out? Because I don't know what the funk
Speaker 1: to do? Um, But it's it's it's not you can't
Speaker 1: we can't close our obviously you're someone who's trying to
Speaker 1: confront it directly, but we certainly can't keep ourselves like
Speaker 1: just pretend it's not going to get worse, right, No, totally,
Speaker 1: And um, you know, I often feel like it's almost
Speaker 1: too far gone. And you know, frequently I worry that
Speaker 1: we've already passed some sort of you know, part of
Speaker 1: the return on rodo causation exploitation of social media. But
Speaker 1: one of the other things I've also recognized is that
Speaker 1: when you're in a space that is dedicated to one
Speaker 1: type of confronting one one method of confronting extremism, very
Speaker 1: often they will forget about, or d prioritize, or or
Speaker 1: even ignore the other types, the other methods. And one
Speaker 1: of the tasks before us, I think, before we throw
Speaker 1: up our hands and give up, is trying to tie
Speaker 1: together all the different facets of resisting extremism, from the
Speaker 1: hardcore confrontational doxing and showing up in the streets counterprotesting,
Speaker 1: which I think is an essential part of it, to
Speaker 1: UM working as hard as we can to try to
Speaker 1: get tech companies to to realize what's going on UH,
Speaker 1: and then also on the educational side, like what we're
Speaker 1: doing with this with this project UM. Some of the
Speaker 1: things that make me at least a little bit optimistic
Speaker 1: is that there is obviously inertia, both intentional and unintentional
Speaker 1: at tech companies, but frankly, they are still extremely far
Speaker 1: behind in understanding how to even do D platforming on
Speaker 1: their platforms, how to even identify who t D platform like,
Speaker 1: the majority of tech companies are still making conto moderation
Speaker 1: decisions on a piece by piece basis specifically looking at content.
Speaker 1: Very few of them are doing actor analysis, very few
Speaker 1: of them are doing secial network analysis. Very few of
Speaker 1: them are looking at even the links between like off
Speaker 1: platform violence and on platform content, Like it's the They
Speaker 1: are still very much in the stone ages when it
Speaker 1: comes to contom moderation. And that's so so key when
Speaker 1: I think about like what actually would reduce the harm
Speaker 1: that these platforms are doing at scale. It's focusing on
Speaker 1: the actors, um and and not just like the individual actors,
Speaker 1: which is part of the patterns that let you tell
Speaker 1: whether or not someone is like that same actor who's
Speaker 1: kind of like putting on a different hat, so to speak. Um,
Speaker 1: are you aware of like, is there any I because
Speaker 1: I have not seen that happen yet. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: Facebook take that seriously, um, and I have I have
Speaker 1: spent some time there. I haven't seen certainly haven't seen
Speaker 1: Twitter take that seriously. UM, I haven't really seen. I
Speaker 1: don't believe TikTok is like they're they're they're they're just
Speaker 1: um like you said, they're going after they're taking it
Speaker 1: on a piece bay piece basis, which is never there's
Speaker 1: too many pieces. That's never going to handle the problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean taketok is crawling right now. They are in
Speaker 1: their infancy. Um, they don't. They don't have a data
Speaker 1: sharing uh, any sort of data sharing systems set up
Speaker 1: for researchers or anything like that. Yet I've seen optimistic signals.
Speaker 1: So I think Facebook's approach to q and on in
Speaker 1: boogleoo movement over the past year has been probably the best,
Speaker 1: the most positive development we've seen on the content moderation front,
Speaker 1: because they took an actual network based approach to it.
Speaker 1: It was hands strung by a variety of different policy decisions,
Speaker 1: but it was still from like a from like a
Speaker 1: mechanics standpoint, the most sophisticated one any of the comedies
Speaker 1: has actually talked about openly. Uh. And YouTube has followed
Speaker 1: in their path. They've started taking more network approaches. Um.
Speaker 1: They they've taken moderation action against q and On on
Speaker 1: a similar basis. But the thing that I want tech
Speaker 1: companies to start looking at is applying a lot of
Speaker 1: the techniques they're using for disinformation and info ops work
Speaker 1: to extremism and radicalization. It's very similar, but right now
Speaker 1: it seems to be just easier politically or just there further,
Speaker 1: along with doing the large scale network analysis approaches on
Speaker 1: this info UM, like Twitter is doing a lot of that,
Speaker 1: but it's all on information operations and take info yeah,
Speaker 1: as opposed to yeah people. Yeah. And I I worry
Speaker 1: too because I'm paying attention to kind of you know,
Speaker 1: you have this whistle blower from Facebook, and how that's
Speaker 1: being politicized right, how the right is kind of coming
Speaker 1: at this from a they're trying to say, like as
Speaker 1: Ben Shapira said, they're trying to to UM to censor
Speaker 1: alternative media voices and the like. And I I worry
Speaker 1: each tremendously about the politicization because number one, it means
Speaker 1: that at best we've got like three years to get
Speaker 1: something together before you know, who knows whose wides up
Speaker 1: in the White House next. But also if it's just
Speaker 1: this thing of like veering between who gets who gets
Speaker 1: paid attention to UM based on like what is politically
Speaker 1: viable for Facebook, we're never going to solve the problem.
Speaker 1: And I I think I agree with you for the
Speaker 1: most part on the Facebook's response to the Google Boo movement.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I think the problem was that
Speaker 1: by the time they developed a functional set of responses
Speaker 1: to it. Um, it had metastasized, it had grown, it
Speaker 1: had grown strong enough to exist on its own, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people have gotten exposed. What do you
Speaker 1: think is the actual is reasonable to expect in terms
Speaker 1: of response time from these people? Because with boogle boo stuff,
Speaker 1: it was about I want to say, about three months maybe, well, no,
Speaker 1: it was more like five. It was about five months
Speaker 1: that it had from like December of twenty nineteen was
Speaker 1: when I started really noticing it, and then like you know,
Speaker 1: May at the when when stuff really kicked off with
Speaker 1: the George Floyd protests, when you started to see action
Speaker 1: taking the tail in the May. Yeah, So I guess
Speaker 1: that I'm wondering, like what is the half life of
Speaker 1: this ship? Like how quickly do you need to crack
Speaker 1: down on this stuff before it gets to be impossible
Speaker 1: to contain? Uh? Yeah, I mean that's the biggest limiting
Speaker 1: factor on that effectiveness of UH contemnation in general, but
Speaker 1: also in particular these new approaches that the tech companies
Speaker 1: seem to be experimenting with. UM. My understanding is that
Speaker 1: part of the So I'm not I'm not defending Facebook
Speaker 1: by any stretch I'm not here to be the Facebook
Speaker 1: rallying croup, but my understanding is that they literally did
Speaker 1: develop an entirely separate approach to taking down the Biblie movement,
Speaker 1: So that explains at least a little bit of the delay.
Speaker 1: But hopefully, you know, my optimistic side hopes that they
Speaker 1: will be able to apply it more quickly in the future. Um.
Speaker 1: The problem is a lot of the network approaches that
Speaker 1: have been developed are have like these very high thresholds
Speaker 1: for attribution. So it has to be like a dedicated
Speaker 1: network that has crossed the line into criminal activity and
Speaker 1: is actively calling for you know, political violence on like
Speaker 1: a network level, and that like we all know that
Speaker 1: that is that is like the end goal or the
Speaker 1: end point in exactly right, Like that is the terminal
Speaker 1: point of the development of these extremist networks. So you know,
Speaker 1: we're one of the one of the things that we're
Speaker 1: working on is trying to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: convince tech companies that you can and should take action
Speaker 1: earlier before it reaches that point. And it's going to
Speaker 1: be a mosaic of things. It's going to be combining
Speaker 1: violent extremism with hate speech, with even like c sam
Speaker 1: child exploitation stuff with um, all of you know, criminal
Speaker 1: criminal conspiracy, network policies, all of those things need to
Speaker 1: be sort of thought of as pieces in a single, big,
Speaker 1: overarching umbrella that we can use to take down networks
Speaker 1: earlier on. But you know, it's a it's a that's
Speaker 1: one of the biggest tasks is just convincing them to
Speaker 1: think about it much much earlier. Yeah. Um, all right, well,
Speaker 1: let's I think most of what I wanted to get
Speaker 1: into today. Is there anything else you really wanted to
Speaker 1: like kind of talk about while you're here? Um, those
Speaker 1: are the those are the big ones for sure. We
Speaker 1: will hopefully have more to talk about very soon. And
Speaker 1: how we're approaching this project. Um, it's going to be
Speaker 1: a pretty big project. It will take two years to implement,
Speaker 1: but um, we're pretty excited to see what comes out
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah. Um, well, people can find you on
Speaker 1: Twitter at it's just at alex new house, right, alex
Speaker 1: B new house, alex B new house. Yeah, at alex
Speaker 1: B new House. Um, they can check out where you
Speaker 1: work at at C T E, C M, I I
Speaker 1: s UM And yeah, I'm I'm excited to see. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll have you back on when you UMU, when
Speaker 1: you you actually put out the game. But I'm really
Speaker 1: interested in looking at that. Oh yeah, it was the
Speaker 1: last thing you brewed. Oh I brewed a red I
Speaker 1: p A and I'm currently brewing three gallons of apple cider.
Speaker 1: Oh nice. We just um, we juiced ten gallons of
Speaker 1: apples and pears that I just kegged after almost four
Speaker 1: weeks of fermentation. That I know. I've been I've been
Speaker 1: looking at I've been looking at apple mills, like apple presses,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I should I should just buy one. We
Speaker 1: found one to rent. Um So it's just like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, thirty bucks for the day. Uh, and we
Speaker 1: just gathered up all the apples on property. But it's
Speaker 1: it was rab definitely very solely. Yeah, we were juicing
Speaker 1: all of the apples the day that um tiny got
Speaker 1: shot at that protest in Olympia. So it's just like
Speaker 1: looking at the Twitter saying there's been a shooting into
Speaker 1: protests and be like, yeah, I'm glad I'm not working today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad I'm not working today. Idellic afternoon pressing apples.
Speaker 1: This is this is a more enjoyable use of my
Speaker 1: time right now. All right, well, Alex, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being on, Thank you for what you're doing,
Speaker 1: and thank you all for listening. Go with you know, whoever,
Speaker 1: whatever deity up to you. It could happen here as
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.