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Speaker 1: From UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups, histories where

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Speaker 1: with unexplained events you can turn back now or learn

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Speaker 1: the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, everyone,

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Speaker 1: welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and

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Speaker 1: my name is Ben, and we are here as always

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Speaker 1: with our super producer, Noel Tiger Blood Brown. In this case, however,

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Speaker 1: our nickname for Noel has almost nothing to do with

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Speaker 1: this episode. We were just talking about the India, the

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Speaker 1: population of tigers in India. Yes, absolutely nothing to do

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Speaker 1: the actual show, kind of like at the old Tea

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Speaker 1: in China's statement. So let's get to our actual show,

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Speaker 1: because this is a very special episode. We are joined

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Speaker 1: today by a friend of ours and co worker. Our

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Speaker 1: special guests for today, ladies and gentlemen, co hosts of

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Speaker 1: forward thinking and stuff to blow your mind, Joe McCormick. Hi, everybody,

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Speaker 1: He Joe. The crowd goes, well, it is a privilege

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Speaker 1: to be on the show with you creeps. Thank you awesome.

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Speaker 1: We just love having you here. We you listeners may

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Speaker 1: remember that we've had Joe on before for our Tunguska event.

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Speaker 1: Oh that was a lot of fun. I always love

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Speaker 1: talking about Tunguska. Yeah, and it's creepy to have you

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Speaker 1: here as well, or whatever it was you said. Did

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Speaker 1: we did we? And that one I can't remember. Did

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Speaker 1: we talk about the theory that that Nicola Tesla was

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Speaker 1: testing his death ray and that's what happened at the Tunguska?

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Speaker 1: Did I think we did about? How that's not right

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Speaker 1: at all? I think of the timing wouldn't work out

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Speaker 1: or something right? Yeah? The problem. The problem is that

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Speaker 1: in both instances, the life of Nicola Tesla and the

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Speaker 1: Tunguska event, we have pretty solidly established timelines. Are you

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Speaker 1: guys crushing my dreams? Oh? Man? Dreams? Served? They are

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Speaker 1: all kinds of dreams out there in the zeitgeist. You

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Speaker 1: know what Nikola Tesla's death three to do things there?

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Speaker 1: There are, uh, there are attempts to build death rays

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Speaker 1: right now. You know, the the U. S. Military is

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Speaker 1: working on pretty good, uh pain inducing microwave thing and

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Speaker 1: you know what's speaking of speaking of amazing segues. Uh.

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Speaker 1: We're going to talk about uh some technology based things today,

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Speaker 1: but first we've got to walk through something that really

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Speaker 1: interested the three of it, well the four of us

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Speaker 1: as well, uh nol I assume you're interested in this.

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Speaker 1: Give me a nod. Okay, that's kind of a nod.

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Speaker 1: He's a sarcastic nod. Yeah, that was very You have

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Speaker 1: an amazing command of physicality, my friend. We'll talk with

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Speaker 1: you about that in a second. But what what interested

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Speaker 1: us this week was the concept of uh, the concept

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Speaker 1: of online communication in general, right, yes, and in particular

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Speaker 1: something that is a huge matter of import to people

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Speaker 1: listen to the show, to people who go on conspiracy websites,

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Speaker 1: the idea of a shill. What is a shill? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and sometimes you run into the problem of how can

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Speaker 1: you tell the difference between somebody's honest to goodness, just

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Speaker 1: real patriotic uncle and a legit paid government chill. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a There was this old rule about or you know,

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Speaker 1: rule of thumb made up thing about how difficult it

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Speaker 1: would be to discern the sincerity from the satire. And

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Speaker 1: I kinnot recall the name of it, right yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: post law. I believe it's something like on the internet,

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Speaker 1: it's difficult to tell legitimate extremism from the satire thereof.

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Speaker 1: So if somebody puts up a post on the web

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Speaker 1: saying I think we should round up all red haired

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Speaker 1: people and make them work until they die. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of hard to tell if they're making fun of somebody

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Speaker 1: else's extremism or if that's just really somebody who thinks that.

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Speaker 1: Did you see the Onion article that came out recently

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Speaker 1: where they discussed with the Iran deal. That's that was

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Speaker 1: in talks about how the US just in order to

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Speaker 1: calm down Bibbie gave him some some weapons, gave Israel

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Speaker 1: some weapons. The headline was something like Obama soothed net

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Speaker 1: and Yahoo with gift basket of ballistic missiles. And then

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Speaker 1: the announcement came within twenty four hours they Oh, yes,

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Speaker 1: that is in fact what's happening. Wow, So I I

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Speaker 1: imagine the comments section on a lot of those are

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Speaker 1: those things are growing like wildfire. Now you've probably seen

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Speaker 1: it if you were in a any kind of UM

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Speaker 1: news forum where people can make comments. At times, something

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Speaker 1: a little tricky starts to happen. Right, somebody says, well,

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Speaker 1: here's a story about UM and we can fill in

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Speaker 1: some more specific examples later. But somebody, for instance, says, uh,

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Speaker 1: here's a story about what Russia is doing wrong in

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Speaker 1: crimea or something, and then for a few hours, right,

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Speaker 1: everything's okay. People are responding one on one to comments, Well,

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Speaker 1: I don't know if everything's okay. For a few hours,

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Speaker 1: you have the normal organic growth of garbage, not necessarily

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Speaker 1: not necessarily okay, yeah, because you'll still have you'll still

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Speaker 1: have that. But then but at least it's for real. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but then take me to the plots whist what happens Joe? Well,

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Speaker 1: at a certain point, you might notice that there is

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Speaker 1: a massive influx of messages that are repeating almost the

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Speaker 1: exact same theme that, in this case would be a

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Speaker 1: pro Russian government message that that maybe criticizes foreign leaders

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Speaker 1: or rivals to Vladimir Putin, or that criticizes people for

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Speaker 1: criticizing the Russian government, saying that they're part of a

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Speaker 1: CIA plot or something, or any number of other things.

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Speaker 1: And they seem strangely unified in their message, even unto

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Speaker 1: the language they use. And in some cases this is

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Speaker 1: probably not a coincidence. Dare we call it a conspiracy?

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Speaker 1: That's right, online manipulators professionally paid or somehow professionally induced, rewarded,

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Speaker 1: some out organized that's the key, uh, people attempting to

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Speaker 1: sway the quote unquote narrative of a conversation in the

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Speaker 1: digital space, and sometimes not even sway, sometimes just muddy

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Speaker 1: the waters or just inundate the comments sections such. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's a great point. So when we we did

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Speaker 1: a video about this, right, and we made a couple

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Speaker 1: of points about online manipulators. Yeah, I think one of

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Speaker 1: the things that's important to start with is the question

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Speaker 1: of why such a thing as a shill exists, like

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Speaker 1: why you would put a land in the audience, Because

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Speaker 1: this is a sort of psychological fact about human beings,

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Speaker 1: is that we're sensitive to the sources of information, Like

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Speaker 1: when we judge the truth of of an argument or

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Speaker 1: a claim, sometimes we're even more sensitive to who it

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Speaker 1: comes from than we are to the content of it.

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Speaker 1: Sure you can see that in a pitch meetings in

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Speaker 1: businesses across the planet. Sure, yes, there there might be

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Speaker 1: the teacher's pet or the boss's pet in your office

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Speaker 1: who you know, whatever kind of dribble comes out of

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Speaker 1: their mouth, Oh that's gold, or or you can see

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Speaker 1: this in your own judgment. I mean, you probably naturally

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Speaker 1: have some suspicion about messages that come to you directly

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Speaker 1: from sort of the public relations arm of a government

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Speaker 1: or organization, especially when they seem to serve the interests

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Speaker 1: of that very government or organization. So if the pr

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Speaker 1: representative of a major corporation tells you our products are

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Speaker 1: not harmful, that does not necessarily carry the same weight

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Speaker 1: to you as if the same message came from a

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Speaker 1: disinterested third party or just some friend of yours. And

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Speaker 1: it's pretty clear why that is. You know, we're suspicious

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Speaker 1: of people's motives when they're passing along information, and this

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Speaker 1: comes through in the way governments try to pass along propaganda.

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Speaker 1: It's in their interest to to make it look like

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Speaker 1: it's coming from someone other than the public relations arm

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Speaker 1: of the government. Absolutely, this is something that I'm glad

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Speaker 1: you bring up the idea of government stuff because this

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Speaker 1: is something that uh, Matt and I have looked at before,

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Speaker 1: where in you know, you're not going to believe the

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Speaker 1: press secretary of the Executive Branch when they say the

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Speaker 1: new law that the president is creating is in fact

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Speaker 1: the best law and it's it's objective, that's why he

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Speaker 1: did it. And also you have to be suspicious of

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Speaker 1: any uh any popular journalism that reports something from an

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Speaker 1: unnamed government official and did not want to go on record,

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Speaker 1: and and we we see this, and it's a great point.

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Speaker 1: We see this effort to obstucate the uh the source

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Speaker 1: of information, right, and sometimes the the source of information

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Speaker 1: can be from an advocacy group with a name that

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Speaker 1: you just go, okay, I've never heard of that before,

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Speaker 1: but it seems legit. Seems legit. Yeah, the society of

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Speaker 1: completely objective doctors. Yeah, I mean something we'll get into

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Speaker 1: a little later. But I just when when you're speaking

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Speaker 1: about that job, I was just thinking and imagining, uh

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Speaker 1: if Okay, So your your example was talking about pr

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Speaker 1: firm coming directly out and this is great. The then

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Speaker 1: you might have on the other side an advocacy group

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Speaker 1: or supposedly an advocacy group that says, no, we've done

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Speaker 1: testing and these things, these products are safe, and boom,

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Speaker 1: another advocacy group comes up with a relatively young history,

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Speaker 1: like let's walk through smoking, so someone we'll we'll see this.

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Speaker 1: Smoking is a is a great example for cigarettes of

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Speaker 1: the act ends of a couple of these practices that

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Speaker 1: we've seen before, where all of a sudden, a group

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Speaker 1: of quote unquote concerned citizens says, you know, we're concerned

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Speaker 1: about people impinging on smokers rights and all this uh,

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Speaker 1: all this overblown government whoy that smoking uh causes cancer

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Speaker 1: when we all know that red meat is the real killer,

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Speaker 1: right or something like that. You know, it's a diversion

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Speaker 1: and I'm I'm just styling on it right there. I

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Speaker 1: don't think that their argument was read meat. But to

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Speaker 1: bring it back to this, we we know that the propaganda,

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Speaker 1: this kind of manipulation or of false perspective. These facades

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Speaker 1: have existed before the digital age, but now this new

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Speaker 1: age of information is changing them to the point where

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Speaker 1: not only are their online manipulators, but there's there's more

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Speaker 1: than one kind. There's an ecosystem of sorts. Sure, well,

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Speaker 1: the web has increased the average person's ability to say

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Speaker 1: things with anonymity, but it's also increased governments and corporation's

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Speaker 1: ability to say things with anonymity. You can always introduce

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Speaker 1: more layers of, as you said, obfuscation into the sort

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Speaker 1: of chain of hunting, like who was it Who's actually

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Speaker 1: behind this message? On the Internet, Sometimes it's impossible to

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Speaker 1: figure out, and so that leads to the common practice.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure y'all are very familiar with of sock puppetry.

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, no, no, no, we're gonna make a show

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Speaker 1: with sock puppets at one time. Yeah, we probably still will.

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Speaker 1: I appreciate you playing the straight man, Matt, but I

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Speaker 1: know you know what I'm talking about Internet sock puppetry.

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Speaker 1: So this could go a bunch of different ways. Here's

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Speaker 1: one example. Author writes a book, book gets published. Author

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Speaker 1: sees that his book has two Amazon reviews. One is

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Speaker 1: two stars and one is one star. So this is

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Speaker 1: a problem. He's probably gonna have a lot harder time

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Speaker 1: selling this book if that's all that's sitting out there.

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Speaker 1: So maybe he might wait a couple of days for

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Speaker 1: the good reviews to pour in. But it's just not happening.

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Speaker 1: Let's specify the name of the book, get people really

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Speaker 1: in the moment. The book is Chomp, a comprehensive history

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Speaker 1: of people biting other people to death with dentures. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I was the two star review Okay, yeah that was me. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and they say like biased and there's just two stars,

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Speaker 1: and but so so it's not the author. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: author of Chomp says, I've got to take matters into

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Speaker 1: my own hands. So he goes and he creates some

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Speaker 1: accounts that could be for all we the other users,

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Speaker 1: no actual different people, but no, they're all him, and

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Speaker 1: they're all given the book. Rave reviews five stars, a

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Speaker 1: brilliant tour to force. Five stars. Best book I've ever

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Speaker 1: read in my life. Five stars. I'll never look at

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Speaker 1: Denture's the same way again. Take a bite out of

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Speaker 1: history with Chump. Yeah, and suddenly Chomp is a very

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Speaker 1: highly rated book. Now, there might be some in an

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Speaker 1: actual system like Amazon, there might be some measures put

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Speaker 1: in place to try to use some some clues to

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Speaker 1: prevent that sort of thing from happening. Age of account

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Speaker 1: holder or something, length of account right, But there are

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Speaker 1: these situations where people try to pretend to represent other

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Speaker 1: third party opinions when really it's just one guy who

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Speaker 1: made five hundred different accounts with five hundred different email addresses,

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Speaker 1: and that's really all it takes. Now, with most of

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Speaker 1: these sites and apps, you need an email address and

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Speaker 1: there you go. Wait wait wait, wait wait wait, guys,

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Speaker 1: I'm you know as I am relatively amorl. This doesn't

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Speaker 1: seem like a bad idea to me, but it seems

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Speaker 1: kind of inconvenient, Like walk me through this day of

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Speaker 1: this sock puppet master. Okay, well, here's where the problem

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Speaker 1: comes in. Because let's say he's not facing this problem

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Speaker 1: of whatever platform he's trying to spam with all of

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Speaker 1: his sock puppetry. Uh, it's not actually sniffing out the

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Speaker 1: fact that he's just one guy. They're all coming from

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Speaker 1: the same IP address. Maybe he uses some some tools

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Speaker 1: to get around that, uses proxies and and clever tricks

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Speaker 1: to really try to look like seven different people. Even

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Speaker 1: then it's really going to be eating into his schedule.

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Speaker 1: It takes a lot of time to do this. But

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Speaker 1: you know something else he could do is he could

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Speaker 1: hire a bunch of his friends. Yeah. Now, the problem

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Speaker 1: there is his friends might not keep the secret, and

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Speaker 1: this would be really embarrassing if it got out. So

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Speaker 1: he would have to probably make them sign a nondisclosure

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Speaker 1: agreement or something that would be legally binding or enforceable

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Speaker 1: so that he could punish them in some way if

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Speaker 1: they leaked his secrets. But whatever the situation is, he

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Speaker 1: would get different people to be the sock puppet operators

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Speaker 1: for him. And there's a term that sometimes shows up

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Speaker 1: for this kind of thing on the internet, and that

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Speaker 1: term is meat puppets, not necessarily referring to the band,

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Speaker 1: But the idea is is a sock puppet that's a

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Speaker 1: real human being. It's made of meat. So there, it's

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Speaker 1: not just you logging out and then logging back in

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Speaker 1: with a different user name to to leave a different

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Speaker 1: comment pretending to be somebody else. It's a real other person.

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Speaker 1: The deal is, they're just not acting of their own

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Speaker 1: agency or independently. They're acting based on your marching orders. Right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so you're you're having something that's as much smarter as

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Speaker 1: a system overall. You're able to delegate. Yeah. Well, and

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Speaker 1: one of the interesting things that happens now instead of

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Speaker 1: one person using all these accounts, now you have physical

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Speaker 1: people using multiple amounts or multiple accounts like this, and

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Speaker 1: you kind of have a weird little army. I guess. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the way it's and and uh, let's take a second.

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Speaker 1: So we've got we've got some good terms here. We've

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Speaker 1: got sock puppets, we've got meat puppets. We should also

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Speaker 1: address something that a lot of people use synonymously, which

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Speaker 1: may maybe is not the case, and it's the idea

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Speaker 1: of trolls. Yeah, so there's one particular example we're gonna

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Speaker 1: get to in this podcast, which is the idea of

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Speaker 1: Russia's troll army, which is not not physical trolls like

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Speaker 1: control Hunter. That would be really would be amazing. I

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Speaker 1: would be behind that army, whatever cause they served. I

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Speaker 1: welcome our troll overlords. But now that this is the

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Speaker 1: idea of the online troll, somebody who shows up to

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Speaker 1: cause grief, frustration, panic and demoralization and online uh forum,

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Speaker 1: the agents of chaos. Yeah, usually just it seems like

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Speaker 1: their main goals are getting attention and getting giggles. Some

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Speaker 1: people just want to see the thread burn, you know,

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Speaker 1: That's right. So the idea, and that's sort of the

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Speaker 1: idea of a troll. To me, a troll inherently is

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Speaker 1: sort of an anarchic force, usually not directed. But I

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Speaker 1: think we should specify that people do use this term

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Speaker 1: referring to what we just talked about, these meat puppets

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Speaker 1: acting on behalf of somebody with nefarious goals, trying to

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Speaker 1: hide the fact that they are one person spreading their

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Speaker 1: agenda through many well in many cases too, we we can't.

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Speaker 1: We have to be careful when we assume the motivation

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Speaker 1: because many people who will be doing this likely assume

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Speaker 1: that they're doing it for a greater good or or

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Speaker 1: you know the funny thing that happens psychologically when someone

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Speaker 1: is paid to do a task. Uh, and we started, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we start to rationalize, right, and it's like I gotta

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Speaker 1: put food on my family. Yeah, right right, where wings

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Speaker 1: going to do it? Yeah? But the but I think

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Speaker 1: that's I think that's a great point. Like this. The

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Speaker 1: idea of a troll is not necessarily synonymous, though. I

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Speaker 1: think in some cases meat puppets can be trolls, and

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Speaker 1: this actually can serve the agenda of some state actors

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Speaker 1: or in some cases, So here's an example. Let's say

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Speaker 1: you are the managing the Internet information bureau of some government,

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Speaker 1: and you got a pesky online newspaper that keeps publishing

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Speaker 1: articles critical of the glorious, powerful, wonderful leader you serve. Right,

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Speaker 1: we already had an election, Yeah, exactly, why are people

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Speaker 1: like lobbying all these unfair criticisms at this wonderful, glorious man.

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Speaker 1: Maybe what I could do instead of spamming the comments

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Speaker 1: sections of these online articles with good things about the leader,

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Speaker 1: is to just spam them with horrible, horrible messages that

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Speaker 1: are juvenile, full of profanity and disgusting imagery, and generally

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Speaker 1: make people not want to look at the comments grammar

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Speaker 1: as well he and me or sexy but yeah this

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Speaker 1: actually yeah, yeah this, this could serve the agenda of

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Speaker 1: this wonderful, powerful, glorious, merciful leader, because even though good

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Speaker 1: messages aren't getting out, it's definitely shutting down a space

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Speaker 1: where otherwise reasoned and constructive criticism might have occurred. This

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Speaker 1: is a place where people might have been sharing ideas

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Speaker 1: about how to put together an opposition party, or sharing

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Speaker 1: links and ideas that spread yet more bad information. So

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Speaker 1: if you just stink up the joint, people aren't gonna

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Speaker 1: want to be there. And there are allegations that real

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Speaker 1: government paid online manipulators have done this very thing. That

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Speaker 1: they're not always just trying to say, look, Russia is

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Speaker 1: an amazing country. Sometimes they just want to say pooh pooh,

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Speaker 1: but p P to make people go away. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: then there's there's also the uh. There's also the idea

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Speaker 1: of taking an extremist stance like like one of the

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Speaker 1: The word extremist is become as much of a boogeyman

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Speaker 1: as the word, you know, terrorist or communist. Well, I

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Speaker 1: mean it's also just painfully imprecise. Yes, it is. It is. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there's one person's extremist is someone else's moderate, right. But

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Speaker 1: the uh, the thing that also can occur is when

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Speaker 1: somebody muddies the water by going onto something that a

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Speaker 1: government or a company would officially consider extremists and then

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Speaker 1: trying to take it even farther further and saying, uh,

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Speaker 1: saying you know, um, guys, these peaceful protests there b s.

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Speaker 1: What we really need to do is cut off some heads,

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Speaker 1: FedEx some toes, get this party started. In a debate,

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Speaker 1: you would call this tactic creating a straw man. So

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Speaker 1: if I'm arguing with Ben, and Ben's position is I

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Speaker 1: think we should lower taxes, um, I would say. So

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Speaker 1: Ben has argued that we should have no taxes and

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Speaker 1: that we should behead all people who suggest there should

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Speaker 1: be taxes, So I'm trying to just make his opinion

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Speaker 1: look awful so it's easier for me to strike down.

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Speaker 1: You can do the same thing with sock puppetry, So

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Speaker 1: making the opposition stance, pretending to be one of the

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Speaker 1: people you oppose, but making their position looks so extreme

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Speaker 1: and unpleasant that people won't want to identify with it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which sometimes you only have to take it a little

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Speaker 1: bit further and that's all that it takes. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: don't know. I mean I do that all the time

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Speaker 1: on recipe forums because I have some fairly strong opinions.

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Speaker 1: Hazelnut in a recipeers people who put their marmide on

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Speaker 1: the top side of the toast on a guy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, Dr Seuss was right, But there are a

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Speaker 1: couple of other Um, there are a couple of other

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Speaker 1: terms here that we should also look at because it's, uh,

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Speaker 1: it's not simply a matter of human interaction. No, that's

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Speaker 1: exactly right. Because bots are also starting to enter the pictures.

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Speaker 1: So we've got sock puppets one guy operating thirty seven

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Speaker 1: different accounts to pervey his message. We've got meat puppets

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Speaker 1: him hiring thirty seven people to pervade his message. Then

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Speaker 1: we've got bots, which are pieces of soft where that

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Speaker 1: do the same thing robots, yet no their their software.

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Speaker 1: I mean, well, if you wanted to, I guess you

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Speaker 1: could really put the time and money into making a

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Speaker 1: robot that types on the computer. But I've never heard

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Speaker 1: of one like that. Now, Yeah, these are software programs

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Speaker 1: that pretend to be agents online, but in fact they're

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Speaker 1: not agents. They're just pieces of software doing what their

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Speaker 1: programmed to do. And at this point, like the early

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Speaker 1: stages of the Terminator universe, these things are fairly easy

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Speaker 1: to discern in comparison to other some other things. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because often the bots of today are not very interactive

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Speaker 1: and they don't offer very specially tailored messages, Like the

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Speaker 1: natural language processing is not good enough yet that they

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Speaker 1: can really engage in a substantial argument with another comment

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Speaker 1: or or react to the specifics of the article they're

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Speaker 1: commenting on. It's more just that they might repeat the

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Speaker 1: same government message over and over again, verbatim, or just

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Speaker 1: retweet the same length over and over. Yeah, this is

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Speaker 1: something that I'd love for you to try out if

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Speaker 1: you get a chance. Listeners, if you haven't heard of

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Speaker 1: it yet, uh, clever body yet, you guys remember clever bot.

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Speaker 1: It's it's fairly old now, but we've discussed it several times,

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Speaker 1: or at least mentioned it several times. Yeah. So if

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Speaker 1: you want to see one of the one of the

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Speaker 1: public expressions of this software for language processing, go to

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Speaker 1: clever bot and have a conversation with clever boy. You

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Speaker 1: just it's like you're texting somebody. Every time I've done it,

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Speaker 1: I've ended up being in an argument. That's ultimately because

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Speaker 1: all clever bot does is tell you things that have

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Speaker 1: been said to it before. And apparently a lot of

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Speaker 1: people were just monsters when they were talking to the

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Speaker 1: court because I've been the nicest I can. And then

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Speaker 1: I get you know, clever body is also fond of

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Speaker 1: calling you a robot. Just heads up, Well, that's funny.

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Speaker 1: I've I've heard actually that in these these touring test

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Speaker 1: situations where people so they're actually trying to test a

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Speaker 1: program to see how well it passes the Turing test,

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Speaker 1: like how well a chat bot can pretend to be

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Speaker 1: a human. And sometimes they'll have humans actually sitting in

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Speaker 1: in these chats to be you know, the control group

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Speaker 1: basically to to which the AI programs are compared. You know,

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Speaker 1: can you tell the difference for real and some of

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Speaker 1: the humans. I remember I've heard they said that the

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Speaker 1: easiest way to prove you're really a human is to

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Speaker 1: be very mean and sarcastic, because the robots are not

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Speaker 1: very good at doing that convincingly. Ah, then okay, so, uh,

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Speaker 1: this is something that can give you a good sense

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Speaker 1: of where bots are now. And uh, I guess try

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Speaker 1: to uh get some sarcasm from the next flame warrior

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Speaker 1: in and that might be your touring test. There's one

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Speaker 1: other term we should establish, yeah, and that term is astroturfing.

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Speaker 1: You'll see this referenced online. And astroturfing is sort of

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Speaker 1: a play on the term grassroots. So the idea of

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Speaker 1: a grassroots movement is what it's like, a spontaneous upwelling

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Speaker 1: of genuine feelings of support from the public. Lots of

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Speaker 1: people in a grassroots organization kind of way come together

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Speaker 1: to support the Coni Sanders. You know, we really care

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Speaker 1: about this politician because the people. But then you can

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Speaker 1: also organize movements that are just designed to look like

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Speaker 1: that's what they are lay down some master of sur right,

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Speaker 1: So you you might be some kind of corporate sponsorship

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Speaker 1: group that gets a bunch of people together that you're

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Speaker 1: paying to look like there are a crowd that has

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Speaker 1: turned up in just enthusiastic genuine support of you, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is uh. Edward Burne's pioneers a lot of this stuff.

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Speaker 1: As you know, listeners, as you are versed in Mr

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Speaker 1: Edward Burnet's, father of public relations and propaganda. He's had

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Speaker 1: his hands in this since the beginning. And as we

427
00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:02,520
Speaker 1: have seen, Mrs Mr Burnet's was very good at working

428
00:26:02,560 --> 00:26:06,000
Speaker 1: with corporations and companies to get to the what they

429
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:09,400
Speaker 1: wanted to get across across and we can see this

430
00:26:09,440 --> 00:26:13,199
Speaker 1: isn't just governments doing this. This is also companies corporations,

431
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:16,560
Speaker 1: and they'll do things like kind of what we talked

432
00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:19,480
Speaker 1: about earlier. They'll go, are you are you solving a

433
00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:23,359
Speaker 1: Rubik's cube right now? Now? I'm just fiddling with it. Okay,

434
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:26,480
Speaker 1: it looked more solved than when I glanced at it earlier.

435
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:33,000
Speaker 1: That's how I fiddle fiddle productively. But yeah, you're saying

436
00:26:33,080 --> 00:26:36,359
Speaker 1: so you're saying there that you're you're saying that these

437
00:26:36,359 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 1: corporations will use similar tactics sock meat puppets, astroturfing and

438
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:47,920
Speaker 1: so on and and and to to what ends. Well, yeah,

439
00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:50,480
Speaker 1: because a lot of what corporation, A lot of what

440
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:53,720
Speaker 1: you see on a corporations and now are reviews, which

441
00:26:53,800 --> 00:26:56,399
Speaker 1: is interesting to think about. When I want to know

442
00:26:56,480 --> 00:26:58,440
Speaker 1: about a company, I go to YELP. I don't know

443
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:00,600
Speaker 1: if anybody else does that. Or I go to a

444
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:04,680
Speaker 1: similar thing. Just what what is this? Like? What is this? Betters? Yeah,

445
00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:07,240
Speaker 1: something else. I don't go to the website because of

446
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:10,640
Speaker 1: I think now we're all aware of what PR firms are,

447
00:27:10,760 --> 00:27:13,760
Speaker 1: and anyone who makes a website for a company, their

448
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:15,679
Speaker 1: job is not to tell you the truth. It's to

449
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: make the company look good. I mean everybody understands. Yeah,

450
00:27:20,280 --> 00:27:23,640
Speaker 1: I'm fighting against that. Just side note. On my any

451
00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:26,439
Speaker 1: of my books, I go through and sock puppet my

452
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:29,320
Speaker 1: own reviews and give them all like one star. Uh

453
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 1: and like you know, I thought this could have been better. Um,

454
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:37,480
Speaker 1: too hard on yourself. Well you know what that means

455
00:27:37,520 --> 00:27:39,879
Speaker 1: that if there's a decent review, then it I earned

456
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:45,320
Speaker 1: that one. We digress, we digress. It's to make yourself

457
00:27:45,320 --> 00:27:48,239
Speaker 1: look like an outsider. You know you've got you've got

458
00:27:48,280 --> 00:27:50,800
Speaker 1: outsider cred because of all these one star reviews. And

459
00:27:50,840 --> 00:27:54,119
Speaker 1: they'll be all like backhanded insults, compliments of disguise, like

460
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:56,600
Speaker 1: this is too edgy for me? Yeah I hate and

461
00:27:56,600 --> 00:28:01,200
Speaker 1: how I couldn't put it down. But but yeah, so companies,

462
00:28:01,320 --> 00:28:05,000
Speaker 1: companies will we can't trust the uh that we can't

463
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:08,479
Speaker 1: trust the trumpets blown by you know, members of their

464
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:10,720
Speaker 1: own bands, right sure, Yeah, And and if a company

465
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:13,160
Speaker 1: can effectively make use of some of these techniques, then

466
00:28:13,200 --> 00:28:16,280
Speaker 1: why the heck would you not? Because is it illegal?

467
00:28:17,600 --> 00:28:21,080
Speaker 1: That's a tough question. I think there has been a

468
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:24,720
Speaker 1: mixed case history on this. Would you agree with that, Ben, Yes,

469
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:29,200
Speaker 1: I completely agree because it's hard, it's it's a actually

470
00:28:29,240 --> 00:28:34,160
Speaker 1: I completely degree because it's a matter of degree. Yeah,

471
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:40,120
Speaker 1: there goes that. There, it goes that English degree. Sorry mom. Anyhow,

472
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:44,280
Speaker 1: the in two thousand thirteen, New York Attorney General Eric T.

473
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 1: Schneiderman did a big takedown of all these different groups,

474
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:53,520
Speaker 1: right nineteen companies in general, uh in in total. He

475
00:28:53,840 --> 00:28:56,880
Speaker 1: called astroturfing. He specifically took them down for that. They

476
00:28:56,920 --> 00:29:01,240
Speaker 1: called astroturfing the twenty one century version of fall advertising,

477
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:04,880
Speaker 1: because these companies were doing the following. They were offering

478
00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 1: to go to someone's like you know, on Craigslist or something.

479
00:29:08,160 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 1: They want to say, we'll go to uh, we'll go

480
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:13,080
Speaker 1: to h yelp for you go to a website. We've

481
00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:16,920
Speaker 1: got these aged aged accounts that already looked like their

482
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:19,960
Speaker 1: live person. So you're getting around the sort of smarter

483
00:29:20,120 --> 00:29:23,200
Speaker 1: countermeasures of saying like wait a second was this account

484
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:26,800
Speaker 1: just created a minute ago with no picture and nothing right.

485
00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:30,560
Speaker 1: This kind of like al They also post puppies, so

486
00:29:30,600 --> 00:29:33,120
Speaker 1: we know it's got to be real. Uh. So he

487
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:36,720
Speaker 1: found that these companies weren't just uh using their own

488
00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:39,280
Speaker 1: employees to write and post reviews. In fact, they were

489
00:29:39,280 --> 00:29:44,240
Speaker 1: so successful they were hiring freelancers from uh, from other

490
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:48,800
Speaker 1: countries to write these reviews. So you could get um,

491
00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:51,080
Speaker 1: you know, you couldn't go too hard on the pain.

492
00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 1: You can't all of a sudden have a hundred five

493
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:56,720
Speaker 1: star reviews in the space of an afternoon. People will notice.

494
00:29:56,840 --> 00:30:00,000
Speaker 1: You gotta have a couple of threes, a couple of fours, yeah,

495
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:02,320
Speaker 1: uh uh, and you've got to have a time span

496
00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 1: across this too. Uh. This practice spread across industries, you know,

497
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:11,520
Speaker 1: retail stores, restaurants, even video games, which I know is

498
00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:15,960
Speaker 1: got to be close to your heart. Matt. Yeah, there was, well,

499
00:30:16,160 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 1: I forget which one. What it was the specific example

500
00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:22,640
Speaker 1: that we went over the video game. Oh, let's see,

501
00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 1: there were there were some companies that got caught having

502
00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:28,720
Speaker 1: their interns right reviews. That was what it was. Electronic

503
00:30:28,920 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 1: Arts is notorious for being caught going into forums and

504
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:39,800
Speaker 1: trying to change public opinion or what what form does

505
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 1: that take? Because it like there's a bug in this game. Actually,

506
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:45,680
Speaker 1: it just makes the game more fun. It kind of

507
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:48,840
Speaker 1: is like, it's very difficult to fix these problems. Isn't

508
00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:51,720
Speaker 1: it funny when the quarterback has no arms? You know?

509
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 1: You know, because e A is one of those massive

510
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:58,000
Speaker 1: companies now that's just been gobbling up all the other ones,

511
00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:02,280
Speaker 1: and there's a tremendous amount of animosity from grassroots gamers

512
00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:05,400
Speaker 1: against so you need to do a little less or

513
00:31:05,440 --> 00:31:07,680
Speaker 1: turfing to make up for it. And I don't you know,

514
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 1: I'll be honest with the guys gamers right in and

515
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:11,760
Speaker 1: let us know what you think. But I have not.

516
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 1: I haven't really played any games. Oh yes you have,

517
00:31:16,720 --> 00:31:19,520
Speaker 1: I haven't. I just don't know. Don't they make basically

518
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:24,200
Speaker 1: all sports games? Man? Just go go online, just search

519
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:26,880
Speaker 1: EA games. I think there's a wiki that goes through

520
00:31:26,920 --> 00:31:29,360
Speaker 1: and and shows all the ones that they've had their hands.

521
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:32,959
Speaker 1: Did they do they own Mortal Kombat through acclaim or something?

522
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:36,160
Speaker 1: I honestly don't know. Well, if they did, that would

523
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:37,920
Speaker 1: be one game I played, and I'm not a huge

524
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:40,680
Speaker 1: fan of Mortal Kombat. So did they own Shack Foo

525
00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:43,520
Speaker 1: because I am a huge fan of Shack Foo. Yeah,

526
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:46,360
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I'm not the guru. I just I just

527
00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:48,920
Speaker 1: like him a lot so well, But I don't want

528
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:52,840
Speaker 1: to pretend like I am a an expert. I'm not

529
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:56,959
Speaker 1: a self appointed expert. Oh, I'm glad you'm You're more

530
00:31:57,000 --> 00:32:00,240
Speaker 1: of a grassroots voice. That's right, right, So let's get bigger.

531
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:02,200
Speaker 1: Two write the Internet. I love you said that. That's

532
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:04,800
Speaker 1: a great segue. The Internet is full of self appointed experts,

533
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:07,520
Speaker 1: so called citizens group. Bernese was a big fan of

534
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 1: this himself. Nonprofit advocates organizations claiming to present a non biased,

535
00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:18,280
Speaker 1: uh objective you and you'll often hear the phrase common sense.

536
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:22,920
Speaker 1: There are a couple of key phrases that will be like, uh,

537
00:32:23,280 --> 00:32:26,400
Speaker 1: yellow cards are red flags to me. When when someone

538
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 1: says a group of concerned citizens and begins naming them

539
00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:33,120
Speaker 1: by profession you know, like a group of concerned stakeholders

540
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 1: and citizens just like you, including property owners, uh, lumber

541
00:32:37,720 --> 00:32:41,400
Speaker 1: professionals blah blah blah, Yeah, dentists. Oh, it's great when

542
00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 1: they start citing engineers and doctors as scientists. I mean,

543
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:49,800
Speaker 1: no offense to engineers and doctors like smart people. Yeah,

544
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:52,000
Speaker 1: but it's great when it's like you see some of

545
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 1: these organizations a group of scientists, they're all m d

546
00:32:55,560 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 1: s and engineers. Why yeah, right exactly. And so the

547
00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:04,880
Speaker 1: the internet is replete with uh these these groups that

548
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:07,640
Speaker 1: can be also made by lobbyists, which will get to

549
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:12,080
Speaker 1: one of other points. Um. And they're advocating the in

550
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:15,560
Speaker 1: in sometimes in a very secuitous way. They're advocating for

551
00:33:15,600 --> 00:33:18,680
Speaker 1: their own political agenda that sorts of laws they want

552
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:21,600
Speaker 1: to change or policies they want to change. One of

553
00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:27,040
Speaker 1: my favorites was one called hands Off the Internet, which

554
00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:29,160
Speaker 1: was let me guess, let me guess this was against

555
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:31,960
Speaker 1: net neutrality. Yeah, it was. Well, they never used the

556
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:34,720
Speaker 1: word net neutrality on the website. This is a group

557
00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 1: of concerned citizens who uh, you know, they were getting

558
00:33:38,560 --> 00:33:42,560
Speaker 1: they don't want Obamacare for the Internet or something like that. Yeah,

559
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:45,680
Speaker 1: or they don't want you know, they said that the uh,

560
00:33:45,800 --> 00:33:50,280
Speaker 1: the internet would um, the Internet would suffer eventually if

561
00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:53,640
Speaker 1: they were. There were even things like um cities being

562
00:33:53,640 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 1: allowed to build their own municipal broadband like how would

563
00:33:57,000 --> 00:33:59,200
Speaker 1: what a what a terrible thing, And it was painted

564
00:33:59,240 --> 00:34:03,360
Speaker 1: as this is this big government thing, and guys listeners.

565
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:06,760
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what side of the political divide you

566
00:34:06,840 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 1: might fall on, what side of the argument for net

567
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:11,680
Speaker 1: neutrality you would fall on, the point is that is

568
00:34:11,719 --> 00:34:17,560
Speaker 1: a disingenuous yet widespread practice for any kind of political ideology,

569
00:34:17,840 --> 00:34:19,839
Speaker 1: the left, the right, the center. I don't know if

570
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 1: there's a top or bottom. But those guys too to

571
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:27,400
Speaker 1: put on this fake uh, this fake front and pretend

572
00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 1: to be something they're not, to trick someone through the

573
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:34,600
Speaker 1: use of buzzwords and thought terminating cliches to support whatever

574
00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:38,799
Speaker 1: X happens to be. Well, I'm just I'm stepping off

575
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: the soapbox. I just want to say that there is

576
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:43,239
Speaker 1: a bottom of the barrel, and this is how you

577
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 1: scrape it. This is how your scrape Okay, But we

578
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:52,879
Speaker 1: should talk about some actual examples of governments being suspected

579
00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:58,080
Speaker 1: of of using sock puppetry, meat puppetry, and just generally

580
00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:01,799
Speaker 1: armies of paid online manipulators. And of course one of

581
00:35:01,840 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 1: the biggest examples that's been chronicled in the international media

582
00:35:05,800 --> 00:35:10,000
Speaker 1: is the Kremlin, the Russia's government, especially in recent years.

583
00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how far back this practice goes,

584
00:35:13,200 --> 00:35:15,759
Speaker 1: but I have read suggestions that it goes back to

585
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:20,160
Speaker 1: the early two thousands. More recently inteen there was a

586
00:35:20,200 --> 00:35:24,399
Speaker 1: hacker group called Anonymous International, which from what I can tell,

587
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:28,399
Speaker 1: is not actually affiliated with Anonymous, but it's how hard

588
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:32,200
Speaker 1: to be certain. Yeah, that's a good question. Anyway, they

589
00:35:32,239 --> 00:35:36,080
Speaker 1: released this huge batch of documents that included emails that

590
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:40,680
Speaker 1: have been stolen from people who were supposedly operating a

591
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:48,360
Speaker 1: Kremlin funded online manipulation scam that employed perhaps thousands of Russians.

592
00:35:49,320 --> 00:35:52,319
Speaker 1: And these would be operating in multiple venues, so you

593
00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 1: might have people leaving blog posts or sort of like

594
00:35:56,360 --> 00:36:02,000
Speaker 1: a Russian live journal, posts in Russian language blog social networks, forums,

595
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:06,040
Speaker 1: social media, but then you also had participation in English

596
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:08,920
Speaker 1: language social media. So they were jumping into the comments

597
00:36:08,920 --> 00:36:13,800
Speaker 1: sections of English language news sites like Fox News, Huffington Post,

598
00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:18,359
Speaker 1: The Blaze, Politico, World net Daily, and so you might

599
00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:21,440
Speaker 1: have encountered these yourself. You might have gone into the

600
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:23,920
Speaker 1: comments section of a of a news article and sites

601
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:26,839
Speaker 1: like this and seeing WHOA what is all this pro

602
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:30,680
Speaker 1: Putin stuff saying Putin makes Obama look weak? What? Why

603
00:36:30,680 --> 00:36:33,440
Speaker 1: are there a hundred comments repeating this message or the

604
00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:38,719
Speaker 1: I believe the internet phrases what a bouttery where yeah

605
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:43,200
Speaker 1: and says well, you know the US, what about the

606
00:36:43,239 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 1: trail of tears that can crimea pales and consideration that

607
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:51,759
Speaker 1: which is true but doesn't make either of them. You know. Uh,

608
00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:54,080
Speaker 1: look Anny better, I'm trying to think what's the name

609
00:36:54,120 --> 00:36:56,360
Speaker 1: of that strategy and rhetoric. I don't think it's exactly

610
00:36:56,400 --> 00:36:58,920
Speaker 1: the two coke fallacy, which is the you know, the

611
00:36:58,920 --> 00:37:02,760
Speaker 1: one that says you were doing something too Yeah, well

612
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:06,120
Speaker 1: maybe it might be that form of that. We um,

613
00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 1: we see a lot of the same rhetorical fallacies a

614
00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:14,319
Speaker 1: plot like weaponized and this stuff. And uh, what's a

615
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:18,279
Speaker 1: good example of these comments that you're talking about. Sure, well,

616
00:37:18,120 --> 00:37:21,840
Speaker 1: we've seen them popping up, especially with relation to certain

617
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:27,000
Speaker 1: news events like the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine

618
00:37:27,640 --> 00:37:31,000
Speaker 1: or after the assassination of the Russian dissident politician and

619
00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:36,400
Speaker 1: activist Boris Nipsov. So you would see articles about these subjects,

620
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:40,520
Speaker 1: and then the floodgates would open and these people would

621
00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:42,600
Speaker 1: come in and they would be leaving all of these

622
00:37:42,600 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 1: pro criminin messages. And there there were a couple of

623
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:49,800
Speaker 1: major investigative reports on this that came out in the

624
00:37:50,160 --> 00:37:52,279
Speaker 1: past year or two. One of them was a big

625
00:37:52,320 --> 00:37:55,160
Speaker 1: original news piece done for BuzzFeed, and then another one,

626
00:37:55,239 --> 00:37:57,719
Speaker 1: which I thought was an excellent read, was a New

627
00:37:57,800 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 1: York Times profile by Adrian Chin of an agency called

628
00:38:01,640 --> 00:38:06,400
Speaker 1: the Internet Research Agency, which is one of the Yeah, exactly,

629
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:10,400
Speaker 1: I think it has been since renamed and perhaps relocated,

630
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:13,920
Speaker 1: but the Internet Research Agency is one of the main

631
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:19,240
Speaker 1: organizations that's been called out in this Kremlin online manipulator program.

632
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:22,200
Speaker 1: And the idea is that it has all these people

633
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:25,960
Speaker 1: who come in and, according to the reports like the

634
00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:28,399
Speaker 1: ones given in this New York Times profile, every morning

635
00:38:28,440 --> 00:38:30,960
Speaker 1: they'll sit down and they'll get a list of themes

636
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 1: and opinions from the higher ups, and it's their job

637
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:36,960
Speaker 1: throughout the day, and they're working like twelve hour shifts

638
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:41,279
Speaker 1: to just slather these all over the internet. So one

639
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:43,839
Speaker 1: former workers said they'd have to do over a couple

640
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:47,120
Speaker 1: of shifts. They'd do these these five political posts, ten

641
00:38:47,239 --> 00:38:49,600
Speaker 1: non political posts, and then a hundred and fifty to

642
00:38:49,719 --> 00:38:54,040
Speaker 1: two hundred comments on other workers posts, So creating this

643
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:59,880
Speaker 1: whole conjured up ecosystem of opinion that is designed to

644
00:39:00,120 --> 00:39:03,480
Speaker 1: look as if it's a true grassroots movement. On the Internet,

645
00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:06,160
Speaker 1: but it's all just people who get a sheet in

646
00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:09,120
Speaker 1: the morning that says here's today's message. So I've got

647
00:39:09,120 --> 00:39:12,680
Speaker 1: two quick things for for this whole section. First, the

648
00:39:12,680 --> 00:39:15,319
Speaker 1: thing that interests me is the schedule that they would keep.

649
00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:17,960
Speaker 1: It was, I believe in the article it said to

650
00:39:18,200 --> 00:39:21,080
Speaker 1: twelve hour days in a row. The one main former

651
00:39:21,120 --> 00:39:23,279
Speaker 1: employee they talked to you had this schedule. I don't

652
00:39:23,280 --> 00:39:25,480
Speaker 1: know if this is every employee, but it seems like

653
00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:28,640
Speaker 1: this was a common thing, so to to well for

654
00:39:28,680 --> 00:39:32,320
Speaker 1: in this one instance, at least to twelve hour days

655
00:39:32,400 --> 00:39:35,400
Speaker 1: in a row where you're just inundating the Internet with

656
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:37,719
Speaker 1: all of your stuff and you get two days off

657
00:39:38,160 --> 00:39:39,560
Speaker 1: and then you get back in there. And I was

658
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:42,160
Speaker 1: just trying to imagine how they would stagger employees in

659
00:39:42,239 --> 00:39:44,879
Speaker 1: order to just have a constant stream. You might also

660
00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:47,960
Speaker 1: be able to schedule a post. You could schedule those

661
00:39:48,080 --> 00:39:51,120
Speaker 1: your days off even Yeah, that's a good question to schedule.

662
00:39:51,440 --> 00:39:53,480
Speaker 1: How do you do that? I don't I don't know.

663
00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:54,840
Speaker 1: I don't want to be in charge of that. That

664
00:39:55,960 --> 00:40:00,200
Speaker 1: Internet Research Agency feel free to write us. Yeah, well,

665
00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:03,760
Speaker 1: that that's entirely a possibility, because they have gone after

666
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:07,480
Speaker 1: people for talking about them before, allegedly. I mean, yeah,

667
00:40:07,920 --> 00:40:11,960
Speaker 1: we're talking. Let but this is all in the interest

668
00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:14,560
Speaker 1: of hearing more information. You know, I wanna. I want

669
00:40:14,560 --> 00:40:16,880
Speaker 1: to hear your side of the story. So feel free

670
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:19,120
Speaker 1: to uh, feel free to write to me yea right

671
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:24,040
Speaker 1: to ben do it, yeah, or email me at uh

672
00:40:24,239 --> 00:40:29,799
Speaker 1: Jonathan dot Strickland. Uh. So that's that's uh one of

673
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:31,800
Speaker 1: our friends the coast. You've heard them on tech stuff

674
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:34,279
Speaker 1: and stuff that'll want you to know before. But uh,

675
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:37,120
Speaker 1: what I love, I love the name of this thing

676
00:40:37,200 --> 00:40:40,799
Speaker 1: or what these have been. Yeah, one particular subset of these.

677
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:43,880
Speaker 1: So this is from that that BuzzFeed original report I mentioned.

678
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 1: They said that the Russian media analyst Vasily Gatov had

679
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:52,719
Speaker 1: a name for these accounts that suspiciously sometimes lack photos,

680
00:40:53,200 --> 00:40:57,120
Speaker 1: lack biographical information and the account profiles and lack of

681
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: posting history. And gat Off wold apparently call those dead souls,

682
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:05,160
Speaker 1: which I don't know where you met, but reminds me

683
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 1: of one of our sphils of Dark and Twisted. Say this,

684
00:41:09,120 --> 00:41:14,640
Speaker 1: but one of our favorite names for any Russian project, Oh,

685
00:41:14,719 --> 00:41:17,640
Speaker 1: the dead hand, or wait, what do we call it? Dead?

686
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:21,360
Speaker 1: The dead hand? The perimeter system. Yeah, the failed deadly device.

687
00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:24,719
Speaker 1: We called it something else earlier on and then we

688
00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:27,239
Speaker 1: cut it out of the video. Oh, I can't remember what,

689
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:30,960
Speaker 1: but dead dead hand, you know, the the counter act,

690
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:34,160
Speaker 1: the counteract, the counter the counter Yeah, it's a system.

691
00:41:34,239 --> 00:41:38,600
Speaker 1: What was it designed so that if, like if intercontinental

692
00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:41,600
Speaker 1: ballistic missiles took out all of the command centers in

693
00:41:41,640 --> 00:41:45,319
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, the system could still automatically respond with

694
00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: the deadly barrage. Yes, and an indiscriminate one. This would

695
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:52,799
Speaker 1: be a It's interesting because it's designed to function after

696
00:41:53,080 --> 00:41:56,719
Speaker 1: there's no continuity of government. Now then this also, of

697
00:41:56,719 --> 00:41:59,200
Speaker 1: course is a different issue. But a lot of countries

698
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:03,279
Speaker 1: that have that have nuclear weapons have either a policy

699
00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:06,799
Speaker 1: or an actual mechanism in place like this the US. Uh,

700
00:42:06,880 --> 00:42:08,839
Speaker 1: you know, I can't remember what's called. Maybe it will

701
00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:11,960
Speaker 1: be called Project High five or something, you know, just

702
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: to the very different cultures. But but uh, this this

703
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:19,120
Speaker 1: is not listeners, This is not meant to pick on Russia.

704
00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:23,880
Speaker 1: Russia the Yeah, no, no at all. And just like

705
00:42:23,920 --> 00:42:26,680
Speaker 1: we said that it might be in a company's best interest.

706
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:31,879
Speaker 1: Sometimes a country is an entity and international affairs, there

707
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:37,800
Speaker 1: is no such thing really as all truism. Um ethics

708
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:42,239
Speaker 1: fall beneath the heel of real politic. So this is

709
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:46,160
Speaker 1: another tool that countries can use to their advantage. China, Israel,

710
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:50,120
Speaker 1: the US, other countries have these things, and and and

711
00:42:50,320 --> 00:42:53,319
Speaker 1: Britain to or excuse me, the United Kingdom. China has

712
00:42:53,360 --> 00:42:55,920
Speaker 1: a massive army to In fact, one is called the

713
00:42:55,920 --> 00:42:59,640
Speaker 1: Walker Army, and that is a private group functioning to

714
00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:04,480
Speaker 1: propagate Chinese UM official views, right, the views of officialdom

715
00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:07,520
Speaker 1: or the fifty cent Army, no relation to the m C.

716
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:12,319
Speaker 1: The PRC is very open about this practice, right, They

717
00:43:12,360 --> 00:43:16,520
Speaker 1: have certified training courses for the Internet users. They're pretty

718
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:19,560
Speaker 1: open about wanting to train large numbers of people to

719
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:22,799
Speaker 1: massage public opinion. It's a little bit different though. This

720
00:43:22,880 --> 00:43:26,879
Speaker 1: was different to me because it seems very inward focused. Yeah, yeah,

721
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:30,800
Speaker 1: going to quell the opinions of people inside China about

722
00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:35,520
Speaker 1: the party. Right. Domestic unrest, you know, UH, Domestic unrest

723
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:39,920
Speaker 1: UH is something that is often combated or UM I

724
00:43:39,960 --> 00:43:45,400
Speaker 1: guess counteracted through the rise of nationalism in other countries.

725
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 1: So you can see a lot of countries that are

726
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:50,520
Speaker 1: are very troubled have a lot of time invested by

727
00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 1: authority figures in UM fomenting aggressive nationalism, right, and uh,

728
00:43:57,640 --> 00:44:00,120
Speaker 1: this this is something that happens here at This is

729
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:04,680
Speaker 1: also compounded with a September to two thousand and thirteen law.

730
00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:07,160
Speaker 1: I think I wrote twenty one oh three here two

731
00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:14,040
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen law banning rumormongering online. Right, what are you

732
00:44:14,120 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 1: in jail for a mong Uh? But this, uh, this

733
00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:23,160
Speaker 1: shows that there's a move toward containing this um, containing

734
00:44:23,160 --> 00:44:25,879
Speaker 1: this domestic problem. But of course this also, just like

735
00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:30,000
Speaker 1: in the case Russia, translates into English language. Uh. English

736
00:44:30,080 --> 00:44:33,680
Speaker 1: language forms English language social media where people are saying,

737
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:38,200
Speaker 1: what what what do you guys expect China to do?

738
00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:40,840
Speaker 1: It has a right to the sovereignty over the South

739
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:43,400
Speaker 1: China Sea or something like that. Right. You know, I

740
00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:46,520
Speaker 1: wonder if we one day will encounter a future where

741
00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:50,759
Speaker 1: all of this leaves social media and forums and comments sections.

742
00:44:50,760 --> 00:44:53,160
Speaker 1: So it's not on your Twitter feed, it's not in

743
00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:56,080
Speaker 1: the common section below the news article. But it's all

744
00:44:56,120 --> 00:45:02,720
Speaker 1: relegated to Wikipedia edit wars, which create it's just these

745
00:45:02,840 --> 00:45:07,000
Speaker 1: governments employing thousands of people to edit the Wikipedia pages

746
00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 1: for themselves, their allies and their enemies abroad. You know,

747
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:14,359
Speaker 1: Joe Matt No, I have a few Wikipedia pages that

748
00:45:14,520 --> 00:45:17,719
Speaker 1: I check in with about one month just to read

749
00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:23,000
Speaker 1: the talk section. Oh, we don't have the Wikipedia yet. Guys,

750
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:25,600
Speaker 1: I have to share with you my favorite page on

751
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:31,040
Speaker 1: all of the web. Yeah it is, you know, it

752
00:45:31,120 --> 00:45:34,160
Speaker 1: is the wiki page. It is the Wicky talk page

753
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:39,480
Speaker 1: for time cube related edits to the article Greenwich Mean Time.

754
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:43,560
Speaker 1: So it's this long, wonderful chronicle of one person who

755
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: I think at some point creates sock puppet accounts to

756
00:45:46,280 --> 00:45:50,880
Speaker 1: keep making edits. But anyway, they there is this person

757
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:53,319
Speaker 1: who wants to add a subsection to the page on

758
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:57,440
Speaker 1: Greenwich Mean Time to discuss time cube related criticisms of

759
00:45:57,560 --> 00:46:02,680
Speaker 1: GMT in late The truth is there. The truth is

760
00:46:02,680 --> 00:46:06,279
Speaker 1: out there. It's got this thing that I that I

761
00:46:06,360 --> 00:46:10,439
Speaker 1: quote sometimes it says, uh, the person who keeps making

762
00:46:10,520 --> 00:46:13,239
Speaker 1: the timecube edits at some point says, you know, some

763
00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:15,680
Speaker 1: of the time cube gibberish. It's like Earth has four

764
00:46:15,719 --> 00:46:19,440
Speaker 1: corner day, rotating through four corners in twenty four hour period.

765
00:46:19,719 --> 00:46:24,080
Speaker 1: And then the ending is the punctuation disprove or accept?

766
00:46:26,200 --> 00:46:28,799
Speaker 1: I love it. It should be noted the creator of

767
00:46:28,840 --> 00:46:32,240
Speaker 1: the time cube is a native English speaker, is he not? Yes,

768
00:46:32,520 --> 00:46:35,000
Speaker 1: I don't think it was this guy personally, I think

769
00:46:35,440 --> 00:46:37,800
Speaker 1: it could have been at that's what it's an advocate

770
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:40,759
Speaker 1: or of follower And he spoke at Georgia Tech a

771
00:46:40,760 --> 00:46:43,360
Speaker 1: few years ago, didn't he? Or is it? Yeah, a

772
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:46,360
Speaker 1: few years ago? And uh, you can check out the

773
00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:49,000
Speaker 1: timecube website if you wish. We talked about it off

774
00:46:49,000 --> 00:46:53,640
Speaker 1: air before. But I would say if you before you visited,

775
00:46:54,239 --> 00:46:57,520
Speaker 1: block off some time and just prepare yourself. You gotta

776
00:46:57,560 --> 00:47:00,359
Speaker 1: have a cup of coffee besides you maybe year if

777
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 1: you drink. Not to be a downer. It's not all

778
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:06,520
Speaker 1: just sweet crankery. Sometimes there's some kind of mean racist

779
00:47:06,520 --> 00:47:11,120
Speaker 1: stuff on. There's some sexist stuff. It really depends because

780
00:47:11,160 --> 00:47:13,839
Speaker 1: the guy who was updating it, at least when I

781
00:47:13,880 --> 00:47:16,360
Speaker 1: was reading it, would just go in whenever I guess

782
00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:21,560
Speaker 1: the spirit moved him. Uh so like like China. Um,

783
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 1: you know, Israel also takes an active and relatively non

784
00:47:25,600 --> 00:47:30,920
Speaker 1: secretive role in attempting to sway public opinion online. Uh. This,

785
00:47:30,920 --> 00:47:35,759
Speaker 1: this policy of image building overseas is not necessarily dependent

786
00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:40,360
Speaker 1: upon paid advocates. Uh. There's a really interesting thing that

787
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:45,520
Speaker 1: happens with a software program called megaphone. Right and Megaphone

788
00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:49,399
Speaker 1: would uh megaphone would sort of crowdsource what is called

789
00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:53,560
Speaker 1: the brigading and it's it's been characterized, um it has

790
00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 1: you know, has been supported by officials in the government

791
00:47:57,560 --> 00:48:01,480
Speaker 1: of the country, and it's been characterized not as crafting

792
00:48:01,520 --> 00:48:06,120
Speaker 1: propaganda at as so much as combating what they see

793
00:48:06,320 --> 00:48:11,359
Speaker 1: as uh anti Israel attitudes. Is the phrase that I

794
00:48:11,400 --> 00:48:14,000
Speaker 1: believe they use. While I hear what they're saying, it

795
00:48:14,120 --> 00:48:18,440
Speaker 1: sounds like cleverly crafted propaganda, right, Yeah, I know what

796
00:48:18,480 --> 00:48:22,880
Speaker 1: you mean. Yeah, And uh and this, uh the software

797
00:48:23,160 --> 00:48:27,120
Speaker 1: using their um the software there is while it is

798
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:30,760
Speaker 1: um or it was, I don't know if it's still

799
00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:33,840
Speaker 1: being used, but I can't imagine why why the government

800
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:36,600
Speaker 1: will quit using that or why these organizations would using it.

801
00:48:36,800 --> 00:48:41,200
Speaker 1: But uh, the software there is not unique. If we

802
00:48:41,360 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 1: go over to the United Kingdom, that will find the

803
00:48:44,600 --> 00:48:48,200
Speaker 1: Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group or j TRIG, which totally

804
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:51,640
Speaker 1: sounds like a street name. Uh. They used, they used

805
00:48:51,680 --> 00:48:55,320
Speaker 1: some weaponized stuff. They have fake victim blog post, honey traps,

806
00:48:55,600 --> 00:49:01,240
Speaker 1: targeting activists, monitoring wiki leaks, spine on YouTube or Facebook users.

807
00:49:01,280 --> 00:49:03,920
Speaker 1: So be very careful when you click like on that

808
00:49:04,000 --> 00:49:07,840
Speaker 1: next working video. Now when it says, spying on YouTube users.

809
00:49:08,200 --> 00:49:11,279
Speaker 1: Is that just looking at activity? That's all it is, right,

810
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 1: It's not looking through the camera back at the YouTuber, right,

811
00:49:14,440 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 1: come on? Well that is that is probably possible because

812
00:49:19,200 --> 00:49:21,759
Speaker 1: there are also more aggressive techniques that j tre is

813
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:25,879
Speaker 1: capable of, such as changing the outcome online polls, oh

814
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:27,520
Speaker 1: and the other. A lot of that software that we

815
00:49:27,560 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 1: talked about, even the crowdsourcing stuff is oriented towards UH,

816
00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:35,480
Speaker 1: ballot stuffing, you know, online poll the asking opinion uh.

817
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:39,960
Speaker 1: And then j trick can also impersonate a user. So

818
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:44,040
Speaker 1: take take one of our online accounts and then transform it.

819
00:49:44,080 --> 00:49:47,279
Speaker 1: But I say all this just to say that one

820
00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:50,040
Speaker 1: one thing that we can talk about is that the

821
00:49:50,080 --> 00:49:54,919
Speaker 1: tactics of these accounts are evolving. You know, they are

822
00:49:55,040 --> 00:50:00,120
Speaker 1: the tactics of these online manipulators. And we're seeing that

823
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:04,319
Speaker 1: as the cost of information continues to lower, the cost

824
00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:09,439
Speaker 1: of communication rather continues to lower. Propaganda and censorship, which

825
00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:14,239
Speaker 1: used to depend upon the um I guess the compartmentalization

826
00:50:14,400 --> 00:50:17,759
Speaker 1: or the removal or emission of information, now thrives in

827
00:50:17,880 --> 00:50:20,680
Speaker 1: the idea of inundating it, surrounding it with a bunch

828
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:23,880
Speaker 1: of garbage and and putting a haystack on the needle,

829
00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:27,680
Speaker 1: in other words. And so with this we see that

830
00:50:27,840 --> 00:50:32,399
Speaker 1: um quantity becomes a quality all its own, and with

831
00:50:32,600 --> 00:50:38,799
Speaker 1: all of the information out there, people are less and

832
00:50:39,080 --> 00:50:45,640
Speaker 1: less attractive as online manipulators. The future, we would say, oh,

833
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:47,960
Speaker 1: and of course, sorry, I forgot to mention. Let me

834
00:50:48,040 --> 00:50:49,680
Speaker 1: just go ahead and say this to everywhere and write

835
00:50:49,680 --> 00:50:53,880
Speaker 1: in the email. Yes, the us IS has intensely researched

836
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:59,760
Speaker 1: software software to manipulate public opinion online. But I believe

837
00:50:59,800 --> 00:51:03,200
Speaker 1: they have. They invested in software that allows like a

838
00:51:03,239 --> 00:51:06,960
Speaker 1: single person to operate multiple different types of accounts to

839
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:10,640
Speaker 1: comment on things without being detected for doing so. Yes, yes,

840
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:15,719
Speaker 1: and that software was purchased from a private company called Intrepid.

841
00:51:16,080 --> 00:51:19,160
Speaker 1: And what we're seeing then is as humans are more

842
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:22,560
Speaker 1: and more admin positions rather than the infantry on the

843
00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:27,600
Speaker 1: ground and the ongoing flame wars and cyber wars, ladies, gentlemen,

844
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:31,960
Speaker 1: and any software listening to the podcast. Now, we are

845
00:51:32,080 --> 00:51:35,000
Speaker 1: entering the age of the bots, right. I think it's

846
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:39,840
Speaker 1: pretty decisively clear that the future of online manipulation is bots.

847
00:51:41,000 --> 00:51:44,400
Speaker 1: Bots are already being used in online manipulation today, and

848
00:51:44,440 --> 00:51:48,000
Speaker 1: I think they're only going to continue to replace human users,

849
00:51:49,120 --> 00:51:52,080
Speaker 1: especially because human users come with a lot of problems. Right.

850
00:51:52,160 --> 00:51:54,680
Speaker 1: I covered these in the video, but just to go

851
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:57,920
Speaker 1: over them again, they're expensive, like you actually have to

852
00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:01,480
Speaker 1: pay them, uh, depend ending on where it's being done.

853
00:52:01,520 --> 00:52:03,319
Speaker 1: I mean some you might have not have to pay

854
00:52:03,360 --> 00:52:05,640
Speaker 1: as much as others. But in the New York Times

855
00:52:05,680 --> 00:52:08,759
Speaker 1: profile of the Internet Research Agency, the former employee that

856
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:11,160
Speaker 1: they talked to the most claims that when she was there,

857
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:14,480
Speaker 1: she was paid forty one rubles a month, which they

858
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:17,000
Speaker 1: say is about equivalent to the salary of a tenured

859
00:52:17,080 --> 00:52:23,400
Speaker 1: university professor. Yeah that's what. Yeah, to to leave comments

860
00:52:23,400 --> 00:52:26,440
Speaker 1: and blog blog posts that you know that slam the

861
00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:33,920
Speaker 1: leadership of Ukraine, but it's for national security security there. Yeah.

862
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:36,879
Speaker 1: Another problem is they don't always keep secrets. I mean

863
00:52:36,920 --> 00:52:39,760
Speaker 1: you've noticed several times we've talked about these news articles

864
00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:43,400
Speaker 1: they come from like former employees leaking information about what

865
00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:45,879
Speaker 1: they did while they were they were at these organizations.

866
00:52:46,440 --> 00:52:48,680
Speaker 1: So you can try to make a human employee keep

867
00:52:48,719 --> 00:52:50,359
Speaker 1: their mouth shut, you can get them to sign an

868
00:52:50,440 --> 00:52:53,160
Speaker 1: n d A, you can threaten them if they leak information,

869
00:52:53,200 --> 00:52:56,480
Speaker 1: but still leaks are gonna happen. They're just gonna share information.

870
00:52:56,560 --> 00:52:59,120
Speaker 1: That's sort of the nature of humans. We don't keep secrets,

871
00:52:59,480 --> 00:53:04,279
Speaker 1: butts secrets great, Well, they're so good at it. Uh.

872
00:53:04,320 --> 00:53:07,799
Speaker 1: Then there's the other problem, which is that lots of

873
00:53:07,840 --> 00:53:11,439
Speaker 1: these people whose job it is to leave comments are

874
00:53:11,520 --> 00:53:14,439
Speaker 1: not very good writers. Do we have some examples? Yes,

875
00:53:14,480 --> 00:53:17,520
Speaker 1: we have one from that original BuzzFeed article that you've

876
00:53:17,719 --> 00:53:21,640
Speaker 1: referenced several times. Uh, I guess we'll just get into it.

877
00:53:22,200 --> 00:53:25,000
Speaker 1: I think the whole world is realizing what will be

878
00:53:25,080 --> 00:53:28,960
Speaker 1: with Ukraine, and only us keep on around because of

879
00:53:28,960 --> 00:53:33,520
Speaker 1: their great plans are doomed to failure. You know, that

880
00:53:33,640 --> 00:53:38,200
Speaker 1: might serve one of the potential purposes of these online manipulators,

881
00:53:38,200 --> 00:53:41,200
Speaker 1: which is if you're just trying to pollute these forums

882
00:53:41,200 --> 00:53:45,000
Speaker 1: with lots of sort of annoying messages and drive people

883
00:53:45,040 --> 00:53:47,759
Speaker 1: away by by stinking up the place, that might do

884
00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:51,280
Speaker 1: the job. But if you're trying to disseminate the message

885
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:55,040
Speaker 1: that your leadership wants people to believe, that's not gonna

886
00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:57,600
Speaker 1: cut it. No, that's not gonna cut it. Although I

887
00:53:57,640 --> 00:54:01,640
Speaker 1: can I can immediately like it, I can immediately see

888
00:54:02,160 --> 00:54:06,160
Speaker 1: other other people sincerely liking that comment for one reason

889
00:54:06,239 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 1: or another because let's because it's funny but well and

890
00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:14,320
Speaker 1: just really fascinating. I can imagine. This is where it

891
00:54:14,320 --> 00:54:16,680
Speaker 1: gets a little bit hazy for me, because I can

892
00:54:16,719 --> 00:54:19,799
Speaker 1: imagine that being a real comment of someone trying to

893
00:54:20,040 --> 00:54:24,200
Speaker 1: write something in English who does not speak English, maybe

894
00:54:24,239 --> 00:54:27,560
Speaker 1: even at all. But in some of these English examples,

895
00:54:27,719 --> 00:54:29,839
Speaker 1: it's clear that they're trying to make it look as

896
00:54:29,880 --> 00:54:34,719
Speaker 1: if the commenter is an American. Hang on this, like

897
00:54:34,960 --> 00:54:39,280
Speaker 1: this is coming from you Americans, it's one of your own,

898
00:54:40,440 --> 00:54:42,560
Speaker 1: and this happens. I don't know if that's the case

899
00:54:42,600 --> 00:54:45,239
Speaker 1: in that one example you read, but this happens a

900
00:54:45,280 --> 00:54:47,719
Speaker 1: lot in the US too. I mean, you know, you

901
00:54:47,760 --> 00:54:50,600
Speaker 1: can see. One thing that we do know, especially about

902
00:54:50,600 --> 00:54:54,560
Speaker 1: the States, is that quite a few people here do

903
00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:57,600
Speaker 1: not speak a foreign language, so it can be difficult

904
00:54:57,600 --> 00:55:00,759
Speaker 1: to find people doing that. So just imagine all the

905
00:55:00,800 --> 00:55:04,600
Speaker 1: Mandarin language forms, Russian language forms that are replete with

906
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:09,040
Speaker 1: poorly worded Russian, right, and you know, maybe maybe even

907
00:55:09,080 --> 00:55:13,920
Speaker 1: accidental euphemisms hilarious, Right, So yeah, we could have we

908
00:55:13,960 --> 00:55:18,400
Speaker 1: could have US government operatives leaving the the equivalent comments

909
00:55:18,400 --> 00:55:21,200
Speaker 1: on sections all over in all different kinds of language

910
00:55:21,239 --> 00:55:25,840
Speaker 1: based groups around the world. But bots could potentially solve

911
00:55:25,880 --> 00:55:28,560
Speaker 1: this problem because if you can, all you need to

912
00:55:28,640 --> 00:55:31,960
Speaker 1: do to get a bot that speaks a language pretty

913
00:55:31,960 --> 00:55:34,359
Speaker 1: well is to come up with it once. Then then

914
00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:36,480
Speaker 1: you can get that one bot to do the job

915
00:55:36,520 --> 00:55:39,200
Speaker 1: over and over again. It's a pretty it's a pretty

916
00:55:39,280 --> 00:55:43,080
Speaker 1: heavy initial investment, and it requires some stuff that frankly,

917
00:55:43,120 --> 00:55:44,960
Speaker 1: we don't even always know how to do all that

918
00:55:45,040 --> 00:55:48,960
Speaker 1: well yet, like different types of artificial intelligence, natural language processing.

919
00:55:49,080 --> 00:55:51,440
Speaker 1: I mean, depending on how interactive you want it to be,

920
00:55:51,960 --> 00:55:54,919
Speaker 1: you could with today's AI just easily have a bot

921
00:55:55,000 --> 00:55:58,440
Speaker 1: go spam comments sections with the same message as over

922
00:55:58,480 --> 00:56:00,359
Speaker 1: and over. If you wanted to be able to really

923
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:02,960
Speaker 1: interact with people in a convincing way, we would need

924
00:56:03,040 --> 00:56:06,720
Speaker 1: better AI than we have. Uh yeah, like the the

925
00:56:06,760 --> 00:56:09,760
Speaker 1: south Pole bot that I built that just goes into

926
00:56:09,760 --> 00:56:14,120
Speaker 1: places and go south Pole equals best poll loll Uh.

927
00:56:13,080 --> 00:56:16,719
Speaker 1: It's pretty it's pretty popular as ready, Karma is off

928
00:56:16,719 --> 00:56:20,400
Speaker 1: the chain. But but the I see the point you're saying,

929
00:56:20,440 --> 00:56:23,239
Speaker 1: So how far along are we in this in this

930
00:56:23,440 --> 00:56:27,040
Speaker 1: future of bots? Right? Oh? I mean I think I

931
00:56:27,080 --> 00:56:30,600
Speaker 1: think the bot takeover of the online manipulation game is

932
00:56:30,640 --> 00:56:34,920
Speaker 1: extremely close. It's already we already see plenty of bots

933
00:56:35,239 --> 00:56:37,320
Speaker 1: if we're going to refer to the example of Russia's

934
00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:41,200
Speaker 1: social media manipulation manipulators again. There is an article I

935
00:56:41,239 --> 00:56:44,520
Speaker 1: read by an Internet analyst named Lawrence Alexander for the

936
00:56:44,880 --> 00:56:47,799
Speaker 1: UH It's It's a blog called Global Voices Online, comes

937
00:56:47,840 --> 00:56:51,400
Speaker 1: from April, and he claims that he used these open

938
00:56:51,480 --> 00:56:55,080
Speaker 1: source social media analysis tools to determine that a lot

939
00:56:55,120 --> 00:56:59,720
Speaker 1: of the Twitter accounts that are tweeting these pro Kremlin

940
00:56:59,760 --> 00:57:03,160
Speaker 1: messages over and over are in fact bots according to

941
00:57:03,239 --> 00:57:05,960
Speaker 1: his analysis. He he said, you know, I've narrowed it

942
00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:08,719
Speaker 1: down and I'm pretty sure I've you know, identified like

943
00:57:08,800 --> 00:57:12,480
Speaker 1: it was something like twenty thousand pro Kremlin bought Twitter

944
00:57:12,560 --> 00:57:15,759
Speaker 1: accounts that are just tweeting the same things. You could

945
00:57:15,760 --> 00:57:18,640
Speaker 1: look at it as a bad investment because they're not

946
00:57:18,760 --> 00:57:22,480
Speaker 1: really reaching many people outside of their own little networks

947
00:57:22,480 --> 00:57:25,640
Speaker 1: of bots talking to bots. Then again, you could also

948
00:57:25,720 --> 00:57:29,680
Speaker 1: say that, well, they're they're sort of changing the conversation

949
00:57:29,880 --> 00:57:32,600
Speaker 1: from a macroscopic view, like if you want to look

950
00:57:32,640 --> 00:57:36,560
Speaker 1: at trending topics on Twitter or use the Twitter search function,

951
00:57:36,880 --> 00:57:40,800
Speaker 1: these bots are going to be effectively polluting certain hashtags

952
00:57:40,800 --> 00:57:45,280
Speaker 1: and topics with their message. Well there's uh so, so

953
00:57:45,360 --> 00:57:48,800
Speaker 1: let's talk in like absolute numbers because I can see

954
00:57:48,840 --> 00:57:52,880
Speaker 1: them changing the macroscopic view on Twitter. Um, but if

955
00:57:53,360 --> 00:57:56,560
Speaker 1: is there a guess we could make about the human

956
00:57:56,760 --> 00:58:00,400
Speaker 1: human to bot ratio, Well, not so much. I don't

957
00:58:00,400 --> 00:58:02,240
Speaker 1: know if we have an answer for that on social

958
00:58:02,280 --> 00:58:04,480
Speaker 1: media and places where people are leaving comments. But on

959
00:58:04,520 --> 00:58:07,760
Speaker 1: the web as a whole, there was this startling fact

960
00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:10,960
Speaker 1: we learned from a the web company in Capsula, and

961
00:58:12,240 --> 00:58:16,480
Speaker 1: they carried out a study where they eventually estimated that

962
00:58:16,760 --> 00:58:20,960
Speaker 1: sixty one point five percent this is now, sixty one

963
00:58:21,320 --> 00:58:25,120
Speaker 1: five percent of all traffic on the web is bought traffic.

964
00:58:25,560 --> 00:58:30,160
Speaker 1: What so only thirty eight point five percent of the

965
00:58:30,200 --> 00:58:34,280
Speaker 1: agents visiting websites are human beings according to them. So

966
00:58:34,800 --> 00:58:39,400
Speaker 1: and this was so listeners, Yeah, and it's as we

967
00:58:39,440 --> 00:58:43,360
Speaker 1: record this now, listeners that Joe, do you know what

968
00:58:43,440 --> 00:58:48,840
Speaker 1: this means? We're the minority on the web. We are

969
00:58:49,720 --> 00:58:51,720
Speaker 1: so now I now, I don't sorry, I hate to

970
00:58:51,920 --> 00:58:54,360
Speaker 1: because it's I don't think that's necessarily true on like

971
00:58:54,400 --> 00:58:57,880
Speaker 1: social media, but but on the web as a whole,

972
00:58:58,000 --> 00:58:59,760
Speaker 1: we are the minority. And that counts a lot of

973
00:58:59,800 --> 00:59:03,600
Speaker 1: things like web crawlers, so like cataloging for search engines

974
00:59:04,120 --> 00:59:06,800
Speaker 1: that that will include that's totally innocuous. They need to

975
00:59:06,840 --> 00:59:11,640
Speaker 1: do that. It's also including lots of creepy stuff that

976
00:59:11,720 --> 00:59:14,120
Speaker 1: we don't even understand necessarily what they're doing. They might

977
00:59:14,160 --> 00:59:17,200
Speaker 1: be distributing malware, there might be links spamming, they might

978
00:59:17,240 --> 00:59:21,880
Speaker 1: be doing all kinds of things that are not necessarily altruistic.

979
00:59:22,040 --> 00:59:24,200
Speaker 1: And guys, to be fair, we are kind of the

980
00:59:24,240 --> 00:59:28,080
Speaker 1: invaders of the internet space, right, I mean, we did

981
00:59:28,080 --> 00:59:31,920
Speaker 1: their planet. We're colonizing it. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna be

982
00:59:32,120 --> 00:59:36,320
Speaker 1: We're just gonna be in um millennia. Hence we are

983
00:59:36,360 --> 00:59:39,280
Speaker 1: going to be uh the you know, like some some

984
00:59:39,360 --> 00:59:42,240
Speaker 1: weird mentioned in their version of the Old Testament. Oh yeah,

985
00:59:42,280 --> 00:59:49,160
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, the the creatives of the original os. Yeah. Well,

986
00:59:49,240 --> 00:59:51,280
Speaker 1: so to sum up, I would just say that bots

987
00:59:51,280 --> 00:59:54,200
Speaker 1: are the future, and they they're pretty darn close to

988
00:59:54,240 --> 00:59:58,240
Speaker 1: being the present of online manipulation. I think within within

989
00:59:58,680 --> 01:00:01,040
Speaker 1: five to ten years, we're gonna see this mostly being

990
01:00:01,040 --> 01:00:04,200
Speaker 1: a bought enterprise, which is scary because then you can

991
01:00:04,240 --> 01:00:08,840
Speaker 1: expand the volume of your online manipulation massively without expanding

992
01:00:08,840 --> 01:00:13,400
Speaker 1: the cost and uh, you know, blame me for being

993
01:00:13,640 --> 01:00:17,479
Speaker 1: being a little bit too empathetic here, But uh, I

994
01:00:17,480 --> 01:00:20,240
Speaker 1: would be concerned about people who depend on this for

995
01:00:20,280 --> 01:00:23,200
Speaker 1: a livelihood. You know, it's these A lot of people

996
01:00:23,240 --> 01:00:25,800
Speaker 1: aren't even though they're expensive in comparison, A lot of

997
01:00:25,800 --> 01:00:27,880
Speaker 1: people are probably probably don't have a whole lot of

998
01:00:27,960 --> 01:00:31,320
Speaker 1: child aspects. Guys, I can't believe that I'm doing that

999
01:00:31,320 --> 01:00:35,160
Speaker 1: that I'm worried about the people who are essentially spreading propaganda.

1000
01:00:35,200 --> 01:00:37,400
Speaker 1: But it's a well, I mean, it's a way to

1001
01:00:37,400 --> 01:00:39,720
Speaker 1: put food on your family. Here, don the family? Wait

1002
01:00:40,520 --> 01:00:44,120
Speaker 1: do you hear that I do own? Oh wait, no,

1003
01:00:45,040 --> 01:00:49,080
Speaker 1: it's a moment with goal. Hello, fellow human, are you doing? Buddy?

1004
01:00:49,760 --> 01:00:51,640
Speaker 1: You know what I'm doing? What are you doing? Um?

1005
01:00:51,920 --> 01:00:53,960
Speaker 1: Did you guys ever do that thing where if you

1006
01:00:54,040 --> 01:00:57,640
Speaker 1: turn predictive text on on an iPhone you can just

1007
01:00:57,760 --> 01:01:02,560
Speaker 1: make these bizarro like random sentences that sound like strange,

1008
01:01:02,960 --> 01:01:06,680
Speaker 1: like poetry, slam. It's based on what you usually text,

1009
01:01:06,760 --> 01:01:08,880
Speaker 1: and I think so, which makes it extra interesting. So

1010
01:01:08,920 --> 01:01:10,360
Speaker 1: I was just saying, this is what I came up with.

1011
01:01:11,000 --> 01:01:12,840
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to be the first half of the

1012
01:01:12,920 --> 01:01:15,000
Speaker 1: day before I get a follow back. On my way

1013
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:17,040
Speaker 1: home from work, to be the first half of the year.

1014
01:01:17,400 --> 01:01:19,280
Speaker 1: The only one who is the best thing ever is

1015
01:01:19,280 --> 01:01:20,840
Speaker 1: when you have to be a good day to be

1016
01:01:20,880 --> 01:01:22,920
Speaker 1: a good time to get a new one is the best.

1017
01:01:22,960 --> 01:01:25,320
Speaker 1: But the best thing ever is when you have to

1018
01:01:25,320 --> 01:01:27,240
Speaker 1: be the best of the day before I get my

1019
01:01:27,360 --> 01:01:32,120
Speaker 1: money to be able. A new song. That beautiful and

1020
01:01:32,280 --> 01:01:34,000
Speaker 1: it sounds like you send a lot of positive sex

1021
01:01:34,880 --> 01:01:36,840
Speaker 1: talk just reminded me of that and I had to

1022
01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:38,680
Speaker 1: figure out how to turn it back on. You have

1023
01:01:38,840 --> 01:01:42,120
Speaker 1: to type that into the Microsoft speech or something like that,

1024
01:01:42,360 --> 01:01:44,440
Speaker 1: recorded and then using it a song. Yeah, that's a

1025
01:01:44,560 --> 01:01:47,520
Speaker 1: radiohead song. Yeah, it only does sound like a radio

1026
01:01:47,640 --> 01:01:49,880
Speaker 1: so I can hear I can hear drive the first

1027
01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:51,840
Speaker 1: half of the day. It's funny because it eventually it'll

1028
01:01:51,840 --> 01:01:53,720
Speaker 1: get stuck in a loop where it just starts saying

1029
01:01:53,760 --> 01:01:55,160
Speaker 1: the same thing over and over and over and over

1030
01:01:55,200 --> 01:01:56,680
Speaker 1: and over again. You have to kind of change it

1031
01:01:56,760 --> 01:01:58,160
Speaker 1: up and add to the in there and then it'll

1032
01:01:58,160 --> 01:02:00,480
Speaker 1: sort of switch up. But that is so cool, just

1033
01:02:00,520 --> 01:02:04,840
Speaker 1: for fun. Yeah, I haven't tried that. Listeners, try that,

1034
01:02:04,960 --> 01:02:08,520
Speaker 1: and you know what, We hope you enjoyed this episode. Uh, Joe,

1035
01:02:08,680 --> 01:02:11,200
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on. Are you down

1036
01:02:11,280 --> 01:02:14,240
Speaker 1: to read some predicted text emails if we get if

1037
01:02:14,280 --> 01:02:17,080
Speaker 1: we get people to send them in sure, yeah, all right.

1038
01:02:17,480 --> 01:02:20,439
Speaker 1: So we asked a question at the end of our

1039
01:02:20,600 --> 01:02:23,360
Speaker 1: video this week that I want to pose to all

1040
01:02:23,400 --> 01:02:25,040
Speaker 1: of you out there. It's not even really a question,

1041
01:02:25,080 --> 01:02:27,160
Speaker 1: it's a challenge. No, can we pose it to you

1042
01:02:27,200 --> 01:02:31,200
Speaker 1: as well? Sure? Okay? I want you to prove to

1043
01:02:31,320 --> 01:02:34,840
Speaker 1: us and to me, Matt Frederick the human I swear

1044
01:02:35,360 --> 01:02:38,680
Speaker 1: that you are also human? Do you think it's possible?

1045
01:02:38,720 --> 01:02:41,040
Speaker 1: How do you? How do you do that? Oh? And

1046
01:02:41,480 --> 01:02:44,880
Speaker 1: this is funny. I just watched X, which is all

1047
01:02:44,880 --> 01:02:46,960
Speaker 1: about the Turning Test. You guys haven't seen it? You

1048
01:02:46,960 --> 01:02:48,720
Speaker 1: should really check it out, everybody. I thought it was

1049
01:02:48,760 --> 01:02:51,760
Speaker 1: probably my favorite sci fi movie I've seen in a

1050
01:02:51,760 --> 01:02:54,120
Speaker 1: good a good amount of time. Yeah. Yeah, Chandler is

1051
01:02:54,160 --> 01:02:57,600
Speaker 1: a big fan. When we're producers, Chandler just turned around

1052
01:02:57,440 --> 01:03:01,920
Speaker 1: heard it all talking about really like, yeah, uh okay,

1053
01:03:01,920 --> 01:03:04,200
Speaker 1: so that's a movie wreck as well. Indeed, Um, but

1054
01:03:04,320 --> 01:03:07,360
Speaker 1: is that a how do you prove your person? It's complicated.

1055
01:03:07,360 --> 01:03:09,600
Speaker 1: I mean the movie sort of deals with it on

1056
01:03:09,720 --> 01:03:12,720
Speaker 1: several levels, but I think the ultimate takeaway is it's

1057
01:03:12,760 --> 01:03:16,720
Speaker 1: it's very, very difficult yeah, I mean like you specifically me. Yeah,

1058
01:03:16,800 --> 01:03:18,760
Speaker 1: I couldn't even start to do it for you. Now

1059
01:03:18,800 --> 01:03:20,960
Speaker 1: do you remember the scene in h do you ever

1060
01:03:20,960 --> 01:03:23,920
Speaker 1: read to Android Stream of Electric Chiefs? And there there

1061
01:03:23,920 --> 01:03:26,040
Speaker 1: are a couple of great scenes in it where the

1062
01:03:26,840 --> 01:03:28,920
Speaker 1: the battery of questions or whatever, well they had the

1063
01:03:29,000 --> 01:03:32,840
Speaker 1: void comptest to decide if you're a replicant. But apart

1064
01:03:32,920 --> 01:03:36,520
Speaker 1: from that, the the protagonist of the book starts wondering

1065
01:03:36,560 --> 01:03:39,560
Speaker 1: in a certain scene if he himself is a replicant.

1066
01:03:39,720 --> 01:03:41,800
Speaker 1: And I think he's standing in a room with someone

1067
01:03:41,840 --> 01:03:44,400
Speaker 1: else he suspects might be a replicant and he doesn't

1068
01:03:44,440 --> 01:03:47,479
Speaker 1: know if which one of them is the real human. Wow,

1069
01:03:47,760 --> 01:03:49,800
Speaker 1: I mean I think we've all been there, right, I'm

1070
01:03:49,840 --> 01:03:54,480
Speaker 1: there right now alright, so hopefully you're right there on

1071
01:03:54,480 --> 01:03:57,360
Speaker 1: the same page with us. Listeners. Again, thank you so

1072
01:03:57,440 --> 01:03:59,680
Speaker 1: much for checking this out. And that's a great question

1073
01:03:59,680 --> 01:04:02,320
Speaker 1: of has met and uh we'd love to hear your answers.

1074
01:04:02,320 --> 01:04:05,520
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter and Facebook. We uh

1075
01:04:05,560 --> 01:04:08,800
Speaker 1: we swear it's us. Yeah, oh yeah, well it's at

1076
01:04:08,880 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 1: least mostly, but I'm on there sometimes we're else. We're

1077
01:04:11,880 --> 01:04:14,479
Speaker 1: on there with our people. Fingers type in a way

1078
01:04:14,920 --> 01:04:18,480
Speaker 1: on our people keyboards. Who knows for how long and

1079
01:04:18,560 --> 01:04:20,360
Speaker 1: we should come up with a code word or something.

1080
01:04:21,080 --> 01:04:24,680
Speaker 1: But uh, but if you would like to write to Joe,

1081
01:04:24,720 --> 01:04:27,440
Speaker 1: if you would like to check out some shows that

1082
01:04:27,520 --> 01:04:29,400
Speaker 1: Joe has done, Joe, I have to ask, where can

1083
01:04:29,440 --> 01:04:31,800
Speaker 1: people find you? Well? I also am one of the

1084
01:04:31,800 --> 01:04:34,920
Speaker 1: hosts of the Forward Thinking podcast, which is a podcast

1085
01:04:34,920 --> 01:04:38,360
Speaker 1: about science, technology, and the future, mostly a futurism kind

1086
01:04:38,360 --> 01:04:40,320
Speaker 1: of angle. And I'm also one of the co hosts

1087
01:04:40,320 --> 01:04:42,400
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind with Robert Lamb and

1088
01:04:42,680 --> 01:04:48,840
Speaker 1: Christian Seger, and we talk about science, weirdness, monsters, psychology, space,

1089
01:04:49,520 --> 01:04:53,240
Speaker 1: Ghoule's Darkness, everything you might find in the weirdest corners

1090
01:04:53,240 --> 01:04:55,520
Speaker 1: of your brain. Highly recommend both of those shows. Yeah,

1091
01:04:55,560 --> 01:04:57,680
Speaker 1: if you like our show, you'll like those as well.

1092
01:04:57,880 --> 01:05:01,520
Speaker 1: In the meantime, speaking of speaking of our shows, our

1093
01:05:01,560 --> 01:05:05,920
Speaker 1: best suggestions come from you guys. Uh. So, as long

1094
01:05:05,960 --> 01:05:07,840
Speaker 1: as you're not like driving or in the midst of

1095
01:05:07,880 --> 01:05:10,680
Speaker 1: some crazy, strange adventure where you don't have time. Uh.

1096
01:05:11,560 --> 01:05:13,080
Speaker 1: If you get a chance, if you have an idea

1097
01:05:13,120 --> 01:05:15,600
Speaker 1: for topic, you just want to say hi, then we're

1098
01:05:15,600 --> 01:05:17,920
Speaker 1: down to read it. Let us know what our next

1099
01:05:17,920 --> 01:05:20,600
Speaker 1: best episode is gonna be. You can write to us

1100
01:05:20,600 --> 01:05:28,600
Speaker 1: directly at conspiracy at how stuff works dot com. From

1101
01:05:28,600 --> 01:05:32,840
Speaker 1: more on this topic, another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot

1102
01:05:32,880 --> 01:05:36,280
Speaker 1: com slash conspiracy Stuff. You can also get in touch

1103
01:05:36,320 --> 01:05:39,160
Speaker 1: on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy Stuff