Speaker 1: Futuro investigates Putioduro Investilla.
Speaker 2: Alexa, who will win the next American election? The twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four American election will not take place. There will
Speaker 2: be no winner, will powers resolution.
Speaker 3: In August of twenty twenty three, a video was shared online,
Speaker 3: and in that video, a white man wearing an army
Speaker 3: green trucker hat asks Alexa, Amazon's AI voice assistant about
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty four election. Alexa seemingly responds that the
Speaker 3: election is not happening. It's a lie, of course. Still,
Speaker 3: soon after, infamous conspiracy theorist Alex Jones decided to share
Speaker 3: the video with the millions of people who visit his
Speaker 3: far right platform info Wars every month.
Speaker 2: So the buzz is out there that there won't be
Speaker 2: a twenty twenty four election. Now, I'm not saying that's
Speaker 2: gonna happen.
Speaker 4: I'm saying we're not in normal situation, and let's play
Speaker 4: the club I just talked about with Alexa.
Speaker 3: And just like that, the video takes off. It soon
Speaker 3: appears on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Alexa, who will win them?
Speaker 5: Who?
Speaker 2: Instagram?
Speaker 3: What's good? Some posts still up have millions of views
Speaker 3: as it's snowballed.
Speaker 6: This video was also shared on one of those weird
Speaker 6: Facebook pages with subtitles of Spanish.
Speaker 3: Of course, that's Evelyn Bedezberdia, the founder of We Are mass,
Speaker 3: a consulting firm where she's been focusing on countering disinformation
Speaker 3: like the No. Twenty twenty four election lie. Evelyn first
Speaker 3: came across the Alexa video in late twenty twenty three
Speaker 3: when We Are Muss partnered with Brown University in order
Speaker 3: to track election related concerns among Latinos.
Speaker 6: And what we did is we asked them two questions
Speaker 6: for six weeks, what are you hearing in your communities
Speaker 6: and are there any rumors you're hearing?
Speaker 3: Evelyn says. They received over five hundred responses.
Speaker 6: But only twenty percent were rumors. But within that twenty percent,
Speaker 6: there were two people, a nicaragua and American and a
Speaker 6: Venezuelan American that did not know each other, and at
Speaker 6: the same time, both of them were mentioning about Alexa,
Speaker 6: saying that there was not going to be an election
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Four because that Alexa alex Jones video had moved on
Speaker 3: and it was now targeting Spanish speakers from Futuro Media
Speaker 3: and FPRX. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria nor Josa Today
Speaker 3: the Misinformation Web a new Futuro investigation. This story is
Speaker 3: part of our election coverage, The Latino Factor How we Vote.
Speaker 3: With just days left before the presidential election, we meet
Speaker 3: face to face with social media content creators driving miss
Speaker 3: and disinformation in Spanish and we attempt to answer some
Speaker 3: elusive but key questions how much money are they making
Speaker 3: off of this? And is anybody funding them? Is influencer?
Speaker 3: Who is Venezuelan? For months, our team at Puturo Investigates
Speaker 3: researched digital creators who share political and election content on
Speaker 3: social media in Spanish. In particular, we focused on two
Speaker 3: prolific YouTubers who have been very engaged with you as
Speaker 3: politics in the lead up to the election, and when
Speaker 3: Juan Torris was one of them, John Aquaviva, who also
Speaker 3: happens to be Venezuelan, was the other one. Yes, these
Speaker 3: creators have a combined following of over half a million
Speaker 3: subscribers and counting. Both are very passionate about what's happening
Speaker 3: in the United States, but neither one of them has
Speaker 3: any direct ties to this country. Yes, you heard that right,
Speaker 3: and yet despite living outside of the United States and
Speaker 3: not being US citizens and can't even vote in this country,
Speaker 3: their influence and reach is local. In our month long
Speaker 3: research of misinformation in Spanish, we also came upon conspiracies
Speaker 3: about the FBI raid at Donald Trump's Mara A Lago estate,
Speaker 3: lies about Kamala Harris being a Marxist, theories about President
Speaker 3: Joe Biden's decis to not run for reelection. All of
Speaker 3: these narratives originated in English, only to be repurposed soon
Speaker 3: after in Spanish. It's not new that Latinos in the
Speaker 3: US are prime targets of misinformation, particularly in Spanish. After all,
Speaker 3: over forty percent of US consume news in Spanish. What's
Speaker 3: different this election cycle is a growth of both content
Speaker 3: creators attracted by the ever expanding Latino market and the
Speaker 3: online platforms themselves. Seventeen percent of US adults now get
Speaker 3: news from TikTok, compared to just three percent in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty and X formerly Twitter has now expanded because it
Speaker 3: pays verified users, and so more users started trying to
Speaker 3: go viral. And going viral is good for business because
Speaker 3: it means more followers, more clicks, and ultimately more money.
Speaker 3: It's hard to know how many creators are putting out
Speaker 3: fake content in this election cycle, Experts have told us
Speaker 3: there simply aren't enough resources dedicated to tracking them all,
Speaker 3: especially in Spanish, so posts en Espanol just live on
Speaker 3: and on and on, fueling a wave of disinformation that
Speaker 3: drowns out the facts and ultimately drowns out the truth. Sadly,
Speaker 3: it's Latinos who are often the ones spreading this content
Speaker 3: to our own communities and sometimes from Afar. Because, dear listener,
Speaker 3: as we dug into how this underworld of misinformation operates
Speaker 3: and who the players are, we actually had to leave
Speaker 3: the United States in order to get the answers.
Speaker 4: Nomre Juan Jose Torres eetra Tango and quarruan Jonlandia as
Speaker 4: Manuel Livia Venezuela Sol.
Speaker 3: Juan Jose Torres Estrada, who goes by Juan Torres on
Speaker 3: his social media, is a twenty four year old Venezuelan
Speaker 3: man who told us he lives in Iceland. Yes you
Speaker 3: heard that right, Iceland. Yet he runs two YouTube channels
Speaker 3: which focus almost entirely on US politics and on the
Speaker 3: US election. His main channel, Venezuela News, has over one
Speaker 3: hundred and seventy thousand subscribers, and his political videos started
Speaker 3: in May of twenty twenty three, and that's what really
Speaker 3: caught our attention. Why a channel called Venezuela News is
Speaker 3: actually all about us politics. On this video, posted in
Speaker 3: early August, Jue tries to paint a dark picture of
Speaker 3: what a Kamala Harris presidency would look like. He says
Speaker 3: she would abolish ice, the fin that she would defund
Speaker 3: the police, con confiscate your arms. The list of lies
Speaker 3: goes on. As we tracked Jue's videos, the question persisted
Speaker 3: why a young Venezuelan who has never lived in the
Speaker 3: United States was so interested in our election, so much
Speaker 3: so to produce and post, according to his account, five, yes,
Speaker 3: five videos about it daily. So we reached out to
Speaker 3: Juan and asked for an interview. He agreed pretty quickly,
Speaker 3: but when we told him that we were willing to
Speaker 3: fly out to Iceland to meet him in person, he refused,
Speaker 3: agreeing only to a virtual interview, and so in early September,
Speaker 3: je joined us from the same place that we see
Speaker 3: in most of his videos. The background on his screen
Speaker 3: is blurred, but you can see a kitchen behind him.
Speaker 2: This is like on the kitchen and a studio at
Speaker 2: the same time.
Speaker 3: Purple led lights illuminate the space, and he tells me
Speaker 3: it's his favorite color. He has a round face. He
Speaker 3: has dark hair that's short and neatly trimmed, along with
Speaker 3: the goatee. Today he's wearing a black T shirt, which
Speaker 3: is the casual look that he sports in most of
Speaker 3: his videos. When we asked Juan about how he prepares
Speaker 3: his videos and who are his sources, he gives us
Speaker 3: just one answer. He says, my sources are x aka Twitter.
Speaker 2: Those he METEGO me for my ex Basicamente.
Speaker 3: Del Parsa One said everything is researched by him using
Speaker 3: quote trusted sources from the Republican Party and other accounts
Speaker 3: in English to gather information. But a review of his
Speaker 3: video shows that he often just takes content from an
Speaker 3: ex post in English and simply translates it on screen
Speaker 3: for his audience. So I asked him the question that's
Speaker 3: been on my mind since I first watched his videos.
Speaker 3: Why is a twenty four year old Venezuelan in Iceland
Speaker 3: so invested in the.
Speaker 2: US asser Keeria Guardo.
Speaker 4: Princes Manteezuelauela.
Speaker 3: One says he wants to see core principles of the
Speaker 3: GOP transferred to Venezuela.
Speaker 2: Nottoya guard against senor.
Speaker 3: Like not teaching children about gender in.
Speaker 2: Schools deecho de elba.
Speaker 3: And about the right to bear arms. So your entire
Speaker 3: motive for what you are doing is to impact the
Speaker 3: politics of Venezuelamento, to create a new movement in Venezuela
Speaker 3: republic and that that movement is based on the Republican
Speaker 3: Party of the United States.
Speaker 5: See.
Speaker 3: We first came across Jue through fact ce Cuiado, which
Speaker 3: is a nonprofit initiative that counters miss and disinformation aimed
Speaker 3: at Spanish speakers in the US. In an article about
Speaker 3: the FBI search of Donald Trump's estate in mar Lago
Speaker 3: in August of twenty twenty two, they used one of
Speaker 3: Juan's videos as a perfect example of misinformation.
Speaker 7: Pimbnido Venezuela news Iberda in fronteas lefmente so lad de la.
Speaker 3: Lagu Earlier this year, Donald Trump twisted the standard language
Speaker 3: in an FBI document about the raid to falsely claim
Speaker 3: that the Biden administration was trying to kill him. This
Speaker 3: claim spread like wildfire. Juan disseminated it.
Speaker 7: Too basicamente and conclusion el de partment cita. I said,
Speaker 7: chuto n Trump ka manera de in citaro al ya
Speaker 7: si e repondre comunic Donald Trump fra primo.
Speaker 3: Jue cites Julie Kelly as his source, calling her a journalist.
Speaker 3: Kelly describes herself on x as a conspiracy theorist and
Speaker 3: insurrection denier. One's loose definition of journalist extends to himself.
Speaker 3: On X he identifies as a quote independent journalist sharing
Speaker 3: true story and free speech. But then he confirmed to
Speaker 3: us that he's never studied journalism. But on Twitter, you
Speaker 3: did call yourself a journalist corrector, Yes, he says he's
Speaker 3: a content creator. Well, content creator and journalist. Do you
Speaker 3: see them as the same thing? No, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: not the same, he tells me. But you did call
Speaker 3: yourself a journalist on X see, but you just said
Speaker 3: you didn't identify yourself as a journalist. One says he
Speaker 3: doesn't have the title, but personally, it's how he identifies.
Speaker 3: He brings up his abilities that, according to him, validate
Speaker 3: his work.
Speaker 4: Mocho potenziang in de de conversation the Politica politicaner, he.
Speaker 3: Says he has quote a lot of potential when it
Speaker 3: comes to discussing politics about the United States, Venezuela, or
Speaker 3: the world. When immigration comes up in our conversation, one
Speaker 3: gets excited and then tries to debate the border with me.
Speaker 3: King hell IoT genoin Porta, No mere del hefedl border
Speaker 3: patrol orgue because the system of what's the problem with
Speaker 3: the border actually is decades in the making. Okay, by
Speaker 3: both Republicans and Democrats. Okay, perfect his story. Okay, but
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna do this one. Hold on, a second,
Speaker 3: hold on, Okay. I love the fact that you're a
Speaker 3: smiling but I'm not No, no, no, no, no. Here's
Speaker 3: the thing. One, I'm not going to get into a
Speaker 3: debate with you about what's happening at the border when
Speaker 3: you're in Iceland. Our team had prepped for these interviews,
Speaker 3: but I hadn't prepped for being confronted by what felt
Speaker 3: like a real, live troll. When I asked one his
Speaker 3: thoughts on the two US presidential candidates, he said he
Speaker 3: doesn't support Kamala Harris or her policies, but that Trump
Speaker 3: goes beyond politics. He has a long history of real
Speaker 3: estate investments, and Trump knows how to deal with tough people,
Speaker 3: he says. So I asked him what he thinks about
Speaker 3: Trump being a convicted felon. He says, those urges, they're
Speaker 3: all lies. When I tell him that it's a fact
Speaker 3: that Donald Trump has been convicted of multiple felonies, Juan says,
Speaker 3: it's all a witch hunt. Ultimately, Donald Trump was found
Speaker 3: guilty by a jury of his peers. Juan tells us
Speaker 3: he lives in Keflavik, Iceland. We tried to confirm this
Speaker 3: location ourselves, but Juan's digital footprint is scarce and pretty puzzling.
Speaker 3: The more we looked into it, the more confusing it was.
Speaker 3: For instance, we found some old Facebook posts that Juan
Speaker 3: had made looking for apartments in Iceland, but across his
Speaker 3: social media accounts he tells a different story. On YouTube,
Speaker 3: his location for his two channels are set to Mexico.
Speaker 3: On x he says he's in the US. In his videos,
Speaker 3: he does talk about moving to Iceland. And then we
Speaker 3: found a clue in an old Facebook post on his
Speaker 3: page for bed Dades Sinfronteas, which is Quan's second YouTube channel.
Speaker 8: When you change something on Facebook, like you change your
Speaker 8: relationship status or your location.
Speaker 3: It'll send it also as a post.
Speaker 8: And so there's a post that just says Vedada Sinfrontea
Speaker 8: updated their address. And so when you click that, it
Speaker 8: takes you to this map on bing and as this
Speaker 8: pin when we're able to determine, okay, it's pointing at
Speaker 8: this building or this structure here.
Speaker 3: When our producer Nor Saudi narrowed down the pin on
Speaker 3: the map, it indicated an address somewhere in direct Florida,
Speaker 3: not Venezuela, not Iceland, not Mexico. But as we zeroed in,
Speaker 3: Nor saw that this wasn't a house, It wasn't even
Speaker 3: an apartment building. It was a warehouse. So we decided
Speaker 3: maybe we should go there to find out if we
Speaker 3: could see signs of Juan Torres there seventy nine oh two.
Speaker 3: Here it is seventy nine fifty. Okay, well then stop
Speaker 3: start stops up stuff to.
Speaker 9: See what it's what.
Speaker 3: Coming up on Latino USA. Our quest to find out
Speaker 3: more about the content creators making a living pushing out
Speaker 3: misleading content and lies ends up taking us to some
Speaker 3: unlikely places. That's after the break. Stay with us, not there, yes, hey,
Speaker 3: welcome back. We just heard from Juan Torres, a YouTuber
Speaker 3: from Venezuela who lives in Iceland, or so he claims.
Speaker 3: Before the break. We found a Facebook post from twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one where he listed an address in Miami as
Speaker 3: the location of his page. Now, there was no way
Speaker 3: to verify what this location was or where it was
Speaker 3: and how Juan, who has never lived in the United States,
Speaker 3: was connected to this place unless we went there ourselves.
Speaker 3: So we are in Doral and what we are looking
Speaker 3: for is the address that Juan Torres has put as
Speaker 3: his address in the United States. Definitely, no one lives here.
Speaker 3: This is a warehouse on Logic Express, Corn Logic Express
Speaker 3: Casierro Internacional. In the place where Jue had once listed
Speaker 3: as the address for his YouTube channel. We found a
Speaker 3: shipping service and this particular address was part of a
Speaker 3: maze of one story warehouses behind locked doors, and so
Speaker 3: it felt like we ended up literally in the middle
Speaker 3: of nowhere. So we're gonna try and find a human.
Speaker 7: Here we go.
Speaker 3: On the side walls and in the back were shelves
Speaker 3: where cardboard boxes and other wrap packages were sitting, some
Speaker 3: as big as a refrigerator, and all of these packages
Speaker 3: were getting ready to ship. On the right. When you
Speaker 3: first walk in, there was a small glass window revealing
Speaker 3: an office on the other side. A woman was sitting
Speaker 3: at the desk behind the window. As we explained what
Speaker 3: we were doing there, an older man quickly walked out
Speaker 3: from the small office.
Speaker 7: So I'm not shooting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we're looking for a business that said it
Speaker 3: was located in the same address.
Speaker 2: Do you know disaddress?
Speaker 3: Yeah, seventy nine fifty what street that's exactly sixty six? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: we're here for two years, so two years. JUNI. This
Speaker 3: is Diego. He's fifty nine years old with a medium
Speaker 3: build and short gray hair, and like one he is
Speaker 3: also from Venezuela. Diego and his wife run con Logic Express,
Speaker 3: which functions basically like a shipping middleman. So someone in
Speaker 3: Venezuela could buy something from Amazon here in the US.
Speaker 3: Amazon ships it to Diego's warehouse and then they'd prepare
Speaker 3: the packages and give it to a freight forward to ship.
Speaker 2: Do you know who was here before?
Speaker 4: It was?
Speaker 2: It was a transportential company? It was a transport hawk
Speaker 2: Hawk Express.
Speaker 3: Has anybody ever come looking for hre that is in
Speaker 3: front ras or never heard someone by the name of
Speaker 3: Juan Torres. What would you think if I told you
Speaker 3: that there is a YouTube influencer who creates content on
Speaker 3: YouTube aimed at Spanish speakers talking about uh Donald Trump
Speaker 3: and Kamala Harris and then his address said he was
Speaker 3: based here. What what I do? What would you think?
Speaker 3: We showed Diego Jue's YouTube page. One.
Speaker 10: Yeah, all right, so young guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah four, let me see if he is registered with US.
Speaker 3: Diego decides to join us in our investigation as to
Speaker 3: the address that one has used. Now, Diego pulls out
Speaker 3: a black swivel chair and sits down and starts searching
Speaker 3: his database for one. No, one, yeah, this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, let's see what I'd say.
Speaker 1: M hmm.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 10: So he registered with us some time and then twenty
Speaker 10: twenty one and he sent some package to maybe.
Speaker 3: We were able to confirm it was the same Juan
Speaker 3: Torres because the email on the receipt was the same
Speaker 3: one we found in our research for one. That's why
Speaker 3: he's using our words. Oh so it was one way
Speaker 3: to make sense of it, because if one thing was
Speaker 3: for certain, one had never had that address as his own.
Speaker 2: He's not telling the truth. This is not his dress.
Speaker 10: I mean, we are here for two years maybe and
Speaker 10: the people before us it was another company, So when
Speaker 10: is this guy was here when?
Speaker 3: At this point, Diego's Marionilla got very concerned about the
Speaker 3: conversation we were having and she jumped in.
Speaker 2: At cleant Ennesota.
Speaker 3: Marionella is also Venezuelan. She has a medium tan complexion
Speaker 3: and straight brown hair that reaches just past her shoulders.
Speaker 3: When she learns about what was happening, she gets visibly upset.
Speaker 9: Baraka. He says, do you know why I contact that?
Speaker 9: I'll Facebook? ILOs to.
Speaker 3: Marionella begins to get adamant. What if Je gets into
Speaker 3: trouble and they connect him back to them? She tells
Speaker 3: us she's going to contact him on Facebook and tell
Speaker 3: him to remove this address. If he refuses, she says
Speaker 3: she's willing to report him to the police. Diego, on
Speaker 3: the other hand, didn't seem as worried. As far as
Speaker 3: he's concerned, this was all just a way to make
Speaker 3: money from YouTube.
Speaker 2: He's trying to.
Speaker 10: What he's doing, as I can sit here, is making money.
Speaker 3: That During our interview, we did ask Quan straight out
Speaker 3: about the address that he had listed. When we spoke
Speaker 3: to him. He told us matter of factly that he
Speaker 3: needed an address in the US in order to get
Speaker 3: paid for his content.
Speaker 2: I politic.
Speaker 3: Basicament one says he cannot monetize his Facebook content in Iceland,
Speaker 3: which is why he needs a US location. Quan tells
Speaker 3: me this is basically the most logical approach. You have
Speaker 3: to have a US address in order to get paid. Now,
Speaker 3: misrepresenting your location on Meta the owner of Facebook violates
Speaker 3: the company's community standards. It's unclear if que did this
Speaker 3: or if he used the address to make money. In
Speaker 3: any case, despite once declaring a US address on Facebook, one,
Speaker 3: we remind you has never ever lived in the United States,
Speaker 3: and as he told us, YouTube is his full time job.
Speaker 3: It's how he makes all of his money. Now, and
Speaker 3: what's the largest amount of money that you have received.
Speaker 3: Let's say fifteen thousand dollars for one video, no bottle
Speaker 3: miss for one month?
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Depending on which country someone is based in, YouTube, x TikTok,
Speaker 3: and Facebook all offer creators opportunities to make money off
Speaker 3: their content, usually through ad revenue that's based on their
Speaker 3: post's popularity. We reached out to YouTube to ask them
Speaker 3: the size of their Spanish language moderation team. They replied
Speaker 3: saying they have twenty thousand moderators globally quote, including many
Speaker 3: with Spanish language expertise unquote. That's twenty thousand people monitoring
Speaker 3: the over seven hundred and twenty million hours of video
Speaker 3: uploaded to YouTube on a daily basis. A few days
Speaker 3: after we visited Diego and Marinella, the Durrel address had
Speaker 3: been removed from one's profile on Facebook. Diego told us
Speaker 3: that they didn't get to reach out to Juan to
Speaker 3: ask him to delete it, So we tried to ask
Speaker 3: Quan why he was no longer listing the location, then
Speaker 3: why he had used it in the first place, But
Speaker 3: after speaking to us for two hours on video, Juan
Speaker 3: declined a second interview. With our follow ups, we kept
Speaker 3: on trying. We even tried to get answers in writing,
Speaker 3: but again Juan declined to offer any explanation. Still, Juan
Speaker 3: remained a bit of a mystery for me. Maybe it's
Speaker 3: as simple as Diego from the warehouse thought, you know, us,
Speaker 3: politics is just a money grab. Maybe that's why new
Speaker 3: creators like Juan are popping up on the scene. But
Speaker 3: what is their impact on Latinos and Latinas just before
Speaker 3: this presidential election. So after hanging out in remote warehouses
Speaker 3: in the middle of nowhere, our journey to discover more
Speaker 3: about miss and disinformation continued. So we got in our
Speaker 3: car and decided to move towards the Latino and Latina
Speaker 3: neighborhoods of South Florida, one place that has been rampant
Speaker 3: with misinformation in the past elections. That's due to the
Speaker 3: area's high concentration of Cubans and now more and more
Speaker 3: of an Isuelan's because misinformation campaigns aimed at them have
Speaker 3: exploited their fears of socialism and Marxism in order to
Speaker 3: attack Biden before and now to attack Harris. In dorel
Speaker 3: which actually is now referred to as Doral Suela, we
Speaker 3: asked folks on the streets where they were getting their
Speaker 3: news and while a few answered with some traditional news
Speaker 3: sources Fox News and is that your most trusted sources.
Speaker 1: Trust most trusted sources CNN.
Speaker 3: Are, others pointed to social media. Where do you get
Speaker 3: your information?
Speaker 2: I st.
Speaker 3: In Miami. We also met up with Anna Maria Carano
Speaker 3: in fact Check, Ciado's managing editor. Remember this is one
Speaker 3: of the main organizations in the US that's tracking misinformation
Speaker 3: in Spanish. She and her very excited dog welcomed us
Speaker 3: into her home.
Speaker 1: We've seen that as close as we get to elections,
Speaker 1: there are more fake content in social media targeting Hispanic people.
Speaker 3: We wanted to speak to her in order to understand
Speaker 3: if Juan's videos are having a real impact on US.
Speaker 1: Soil Latinas tend to get informed basically on social media,
Speaker 1: and they rely a lot in their families and people
Speaker 1: they know, so they don't trust official sources more intend
Speaker 1: to rely on other sources that not necessarily are well informed.
Speaker 3: And not everyone who shares misinformation has ill intentions.
Speaker 1: It could be your grandma or your friend that you
Speaker 1: know very well, and they think that this is true
Speaker 1: because they are looking at the logo of New Salad
Speaker 1: and they think that this is true.
Speaker 3: So you have people with verified accounts and huge audiences
Speaker 3: like Elon Musk with two hundred million followers on x
Speaker 3: or even Juan Torres, who has more than about two
Speaker 3: hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube. When they share claims about
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris being a Marxist, those lies can spread more
Speaker 3: quickly because their peddlers seem to be reputable, as.
Speaker 2: As Carmela Harris numerouno take missus poult Carmela Harris numetal
Speaker 2: dos no importa.
Speaker 3: Videos like the one we just heard that not only
Speaker 3: mispronounces Harris's name but also repeats a common lie, for example,
Speaker 3: that prices will immediately shoot up if she becomes president.
Speaker 3: It's the old law of propaganda. Repeat a lie often enough,
Speaker 3: and it becomes the truth. I sat down with Ana
Speaker 3: Maria to look at some examples of miss and disinformation
Speaker 3: that factche Ciao has flagged. One of them was an
Speaker 3: AI generated image of Kamala Harris posted on x by
Speaker 3: the platform's owner, Elon Musk. So you have a situation
Speaker 3: where Elon Musk has actually tweeted out a picture of
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris wearing a red outfit and a cap with
Speaker 3: the sickle hammer, looking like a communist and it says
Speaker 3: Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one.
Speaker 3: Can you believe she wears that outfit?
Speaker 5: Wow? Wow.
Speaker 3: This connection between Kamala Harris and Marxism or communism has
Speaker 3: been pushed by the far right repeatedly over the last
Speaker 3: several years, but specifically over the last year. For example,
Speaker 3: the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas tracks hundreds of
Speaker 3: Spanish language public WhatsApp groups and they found that since
Speaker 3: January of this year, at least twenty four thousand Latinos
Speaker 3: were likely exposed to content connecting Vice President Harris to communism,
Speaker 3: and around a third of this exposure to these lies
Speaker 3: happened in the week following the presidential debate in September,
Speaker 3: when Trump repeated those claims.
Speaker 1: And this narrative is basically trying to tackle emotions into
Speaker 1: the voters.
Speaker 3: Can you will live ill? A mosque posited this image
Speaker 3: of come so.
Speaker 1: Often that he's so easy to spread out instead of facts.
Speaker 2: Facts are not sexy to talk about.
Speaker 3: Being a political influencer has been a lucrative job for one,
Speaker 3: but he's not the only online creator making a living
Speaker 3: by talking about US politics from outside of the United States.
Speaker 3: So part of our investigation is trying to understand how
Speaker 3: some creators are making so much money off of Spanish
Speaker 3: language content. And this ended up taking us on a
Speaker 3: plane across the pond, yes, across the Atlantic, because our
Speaker 3: next stop.
Speaker 1: Good morning, evering, I'm welcome to London, where the local
Speaker 1: time is approximately ten.
Speaker 3: Is England, and our goal is to meet face to
Speaker 3: face with someone named John Aquaviva.
Speaker 5: If for me hint does John a Amanda.
Speaker 3: John Aquaviva is another Venezuelan YouTuber. His channel has over
Speaker 3: three hundred and forty thousand subscribers and he's published more
Speaker 3: than a thousand videos. Some date back years, most often
Speaker 3: covering Venezuelan issues, but in the lead up to the
Speaker 3: twenty twenty election, his content shifted to focus primarily on
Speaker 3: US politics.
Speaker 5: Plata form.
Speaker 3: John is thirty one years old. Back in Venezuela and Colombia,
Speaker 3: he was a professional athlete in something called freestyle football.
Speaker 3: He moved to England in twenty fourteen, where his mom's
Speaker 3: family lived. When we reached out to request an interview,
Speaker 3: he agreed to meet us in person. He did not
Speaker 3: want to share his home address or hometown. Instead, he
Speaker 3: agreed to meet us in downtown London Leicester Square, which
Speaker 3: is essentially like Times Square, and he was staying at
Speaker 3: the swanky Londoner Hotel. That's where my producer More and
Speaker 3: I headed to meet him. John walks over to us
Speaker 3: where we are waiting in the lobby. He's tall, frankly,
Speaker 3: towering over me, and he has these big, broad shoulders.
Speaker 3: He's dressed pretty sleekily with a black jacket over a
Speaker 3: white shirt and jeans. He's got a light complexion, dark hair,
Speaker 3: and dark brown eyes. John tells me he keeps his
Speaker 3: home address private ever since a group called then in
Speaker 3: Inane Venezuelan's in England reported him to the police because
Speaker 3: of pro Trump posts he had made back in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: John then says the police came to his home, busted
Speaker 3: his front window and confiscated air rifles that he had
Speaker 3: been displaying in his living room for all to see.
Speaker 3: Ten minutes into our conversation, John, just like Juan Torres,
Speaker 3: tries to provoke a debate with me. So let me
Speaker 3: ask you, though, why.
Speaker 5: Why would you put I like, what's the problem. Obviously
Speaker 5: you do produce your against grones. Well that's just a
Speaker 5: different subject. As you say, obviously you do see a
Speaker 5: problem with it. Produce your against grones. Well that's your opinion.
Speaker 3: Can find Wait a second, what are you talking about.
Speaker 5: I've seen your opinions about gun control opinions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you'd have to specifically show me something that shows
Speaker 3: an opinion.
Speaker 5: You've spoken endlessly about my shooting endlessly. Yeah, okay, I
Speaker 5: actually have some quotes. Do you want to read them?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 3: So once again I had to push back against getting
Speaker 3: baited to get into a debate with John. And so
Speaker 3: the answer to the question of why you focus on
Speaker 3: US politics is.
Speaker 5: Because at the moment, US politics influences Venezuela more than
Speaker 5: Venezuelan politics. So if you're going to be interested in
Speaker 5: creating the most amounts of growth possible, you're going to support.
Speaker 5: I think if you're living in the West, or if
Speaker 5: you're living in any Latin American country, you're going to
Speaker 5: support who you think is the best option to lead
Speaker 5: the United States.
Speaker 3: Because the United States is going to impact yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: YouTube and Instagram and a smaller telegram channel are the
Speaker 3: primary platforms John spends most of his time on.
Speaker 5: Now, I decided this is what I'm most passionate about.
Speaker 5: This is what I actually think is what I'm meant
Speaker 5: to do the moment. For the past few years, have
Speaker 5: been a content creator, political analyst, opinadorre, whatever you want
Speaker 5: to call me. Well, yeah, I living from my content
Speaker 5: the same way you do.
Speaker 3: A review of John's YouTube channel shows it's clear he
Speaker 3: favors Trump.
Speaker 5: I'm supporting Trump, obviously. I think that when you compare
Speaker 5: them to obviously, I think he's the best option out
Speaker 5: of what is available. As soon as you're president, you
Speaker 5: have to do what you've promised. I'm not going to
Speaker 5: keep supporting you if you're not doing what you promise
Speaker 5: to do.
Speaker 3: You don't vote in the United States. No, you're not
Speaker 3: a US citizen. No, you have no plans to move
Speaker 3: to the United States.
Speaker 5: Thoughts about it.
Speaker 3: I just find that fascinating, because you know, you're so
Speaker 3: engaged with you as politics, but literally you have nothing
Speaker 3: to do with the United States. I continued in my
Speaker 3: conversation and asked John specifically about his position on Kamala Harris.
Speaker 5: How can you trust someone who has said that the
Speaker 5: main cause of one of the main culprits of a
Speaker 5: high grocery prices in americant moment is that the supermarkets
Speaker 5: are charging too much. That is exactly what happened in Venezuela.
Speaker 5: Madya Challis said exactly the same thing.
Speaker 3: John doesn't go as far as calling Harris a Marxist
Speaker 3: or Communist like the other content creators have, but he
Speaker 3: says on this policy point, essentially they're equal Coming up
Speaker 3: after the break, we look at what solutions are being
Speaker 3: put in place to combat misinformation, and we keep digging
Speaker 3: into the money mystery. Stay with us, Yes, Welcome back,
Speaker 3: dear listener. In this episode, we've heard from two YouTubers who,
Speaker 3: despite having never lived in the United States, focus virtually
Speaker 3: all of their content on the upcoming US presidential election,
Speaker 3: including many times misleading information, and all of it in Spanish.
Speaker 3: And the question at the front of our minds was, Oh, ways,
Speaker 3: who's funding all of this? And so I asked Juan
Speaker 3: Torres and John Aquaviva directly if someone was paying them
Speaker 3: to do this or if they got any help from
Speaker 3: any organization, and they both quickly said no. So which
Speaker 3: sponsors do you have?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 3: Zero zero institutional nosteleis news navi No. Every expert we
Speaker 3: spoke to talked about the difficulty in tracing the money factor.
Speaker 3: This is what Anna Maria, Factcheckiado's editor, who we heard
Speaker 3: from earlier, had to say about this. Where's all this.
Speaker 5: Money coming from?
Speaker 11: Me?
Speaker 1: There? I have ideas, but I wouldn't say that aloud
Speaker 1: because as a fact checker, I have to to tell
Speaker 1: what I know and.
Speaker 2: What is truth.
Speaker 3: Evelyn of We arem Us, who we heard from at
Speaker 3: the top of the show, also shared some thoughts.
Speaker 6: What we've heard from some journalists in Latin America is
Speaker 6: a lot of the money comes from the Kremlin to
Speaker 6: Latin America through certain accounts. There's connections with Venezuela and
Speaker 6: other places, and then it gets disseminated.
Speaker 3: Now, we have no evidence that either Juantres or John
Speaker 3: Aquaviva are funded by Russia or any other government, either
Speaker 3: directly or indirectly. But the truth is that Russia has
Speaker 3: repeatedly interfered with US elections. In fact, in September, as
Speaker 3: we were flying to London, an FBI investigation found evidence
Speaker 3: that the state run media outlet RT formerly known as
Speaker 3: Russia Today, sent millions of dollars to Tenant Media, Tennessee
Speaker 3: based content creation company. It's the goal of spreading pro
Speaker 3: Russia propaganda across YouTube, TikTok, and other major platforms in
Speaker 3: order to influence the American public and in order to
Speaker 3: sew division. Here's Evelyn again.
Speaker 6: Content is created in Latin America and content is created
Speaker 6: in the United States that is being shared to scare
Speaker 6: family and friends with whatever they want. The purpose to be.
Speaker 3: Fear is a central part of this from your analysis
Speaker 3: the role of fear.
Speaker 6: The role of fear to weaken democratic institutions.
Speaker 3: And we heard about this fear firsthand from a Latina voter.
Speaker 3: At Evelyn's home in Weston in South Florida, she introduces
Speaker 3: us to Esperanza, who is Evelyn's hairstylist. Now, Esperanza is
Speaker 3: not the hairstylist's real name because she wants to remain
Speaker 3: anonymous in order to protect her business. But Esperanza was
Speaker 3: part of the pilot program with Brown University that Evelyn
Speaker 3: worked on that we mentioned earlier in the episode. Esperanza
Speaker 3: had been hearing and seeing a lot of misinformation from
Speaker 3: her clients at the hair salon. One person put her
Speaker 3: in a telegram group called gau Salidad, the word in
Speaker 3: Spanish for cause or origin. The word is spelled with
Speaker 3: a C, but in this telegram group it was spelled
Speaker 3: with a Q, as in QAnon, the far right political
Speaker 3: conspiracy movement. The lies and conspiracies Esperanza says she heard
Speaker 3: from her clients ranged from the persistent lie that President
Speaker 3: Joe Biden is allowing criminals to cross the border the
Speaker 3: way to Biden being behind the first attempted assassination of Trump.
Speaker 3: That information where we're where was it coming from. Even
Speaker 3: though Esperanza works at her hair salon and here's the
Speaker 3: talk of politics day in and day out, she still
Speaker 3: believes that she's not entirely informed about politics in the US.
Speaker 3: But she told us she definitely will not be voting
Speaker 3: for Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: Letronico Sarmas.
Speaker 2: Mil Conelte mail racism.
Speaker 3: She says she's afraid of Trump because of two particular issues,
Speaker 3: guns and racism. But she tells us that a majority
Speaker 3: of the women she's spoken to with the salon are
Speaker 3: telling her they are going to vote for Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: influenced by those entrenched rumors they've heard about Democrats equally socialism.
Speaker 3: Evelyn says misinformation is a problem that needs to be
Speaker 3: urgently addressed by the government, by journalists, and by academics.
Speaker 6: My frustration, to be honest with you, Maria, was I
Speaker 6: felt like the Cassandra of Greek mythology, right because I
Speaker 6: kept on saying, look at this, look at how this
Speaker 6: is affecting our communities. And the response so many advisors
Speaker 6: and consultants to them was, you know what.
Speaker 2: You just need to laugh it off.
Speaker 3: And as we saw before, when Elon Musk shares a
Speaker 3: fake photo of Kamala Harris in a communist get up,
Speaker 3: it passes off as a meme. Some people might laugh,
Speaker 3: but on the ground it has a real impact from
Speaker 3: the neighborhoods of Miami.
Speaker 10: I don't buy into that she's a communist or anything,
Speaker 10: but her social views are right up there with people
Speaker 10: who I would not support.
Speaker 3: A Kamala Harris presidency. What concerns you about that?
Speaker 2: What's tradition socialism?
Speaker 3: Yes, I believe that Kamala Harris elected would lead to socialism.
Speaker 2: I think so, but I tell you I'm not complete informed.
Speaker 3: And all the way to New Jersey, which has one
Speaker 3: of the highest populations of Cuban Americans in the country,
Speaker 3: are you going to involve.
Speaker 10: In the dialection?
Speaker 8: Yes?
Speaker 2: You know who for Trump?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 11: And why well, my dad is from Cuba, and like
Speaker 11: people that come from a communist country, they already know
Speaker 11: what's going to happen, and everything is diviral.
Speaker 2: We don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 11: It's not a real thing that she can do for us,
Speaker 11: for the Latin people, because you know, when they are elected,
Speaker 11: they change all the things, So I think this is
Speaker 11: afraid for us the immigrant.
Speaker 3: Back in Miami in her home office, Evelyn played us
Speaker 3: a recording from a local radio station called kamalai Ian
Speaker 3: and Tampon.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: On this Spanish language radio show, the hosts are criticizing
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walls for allegedly
Speaker 3: taking a photograph at the offices of an organization allegedly
Speaker 3: called Revolutionary Communists of America where you see Kamala Harris
Speaker 3: and Tim Walls with a hammer and sickle insignia behind
Speaker 3: them huge on the wall. Evelyn was immediately suspicious of this,
Speaker 3: so she picked up the phone, called the station and
Speaker 3: asked a friend who worked there to center the information.
Speaker 3: The friend sent her a video on WhatsApp of a TikTok.
Speaker 11: I am not asked this year.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get myself.
Speaker 3: Saw the TikTok and the account that posted it is
Speaker 3: now deleted. But on What's App, Evelyn saw the note
Speaker 3: above the video that said forwarded many times. It's a
Speaker 3: notice what app adds to content forwarded too many times?
Speaker 3: In order to help prevent spamming and misinformation, Evelyn called
Speaker 3: the station back and insisted that this wasn't a real photo,
Speaker 3: it wasn't a real video. The backdrop had been photoshopped
Speaker 3: behind Kamala Harris and Tim Walls. A short while later,
Speaker 3: the station went on the air and issued a correction.
Speaker 3: But when I tell You Pacific, the radio anchor acknowledged
Speaker 3: that the video was in fact fake, but then followed
Speaker 3: up by saying this lie that Kamala Harris's Marxist tendencies
Speaker 3: were still very very real across social media. The line
Speaker 3: between misinformation and opinion gets murkier and murkier. That's the
Speaker 3: same reasoning John Aquaviva gave us when we asked about
Speaker 3: accusations against him, that he's pushing miss and disinformation.
Speaker 5: Misinformation could be an opinion. Disinformation is where I take
Speaker 5: issue with, and then you have to prove that I
Speaker 5: lied about somethinniy.
Speaker 3: So what about the fact that you said that Democratic
Speaker 3: Party leaders quote unquote intentionally pushed Joe Biden's June debate
Speaker 3: against Trump.
Speaker 5: Joe Biden said that it was obvious. Why else would
Speaker 5: they push for it to be so, if not to
Speaker 5: give Kamala Harris a chance to create her own campaign. Well,
Speaker 5: is that coincidence on.
Speaker 3: A second, Hold on a second, I just want to say,
Speaker 3: when you were saying it's so obvious, it's not that
Speaker 3: you have any written documentary or actually journalism politics.
Speaker 5: When something is a huge coincidence, like a huge coincidence,
Speaker 5: I lean on the side of it not being a coincidence.
Speaker 5: Do I have the proof of that they didn't. No,
Speaker 5: But it's my opinion.
Speaker 3: Anamaria from fact check Yado has heard this before.
Speaker 1: If they're saying, well, in my opinion, I think that
Speaker 1: probably so. You can't fact check an opinion because people
Speaker 1: have the right to have their opinions. So if someone
Speaker 1: get famous by telling their opinion, how do you censor it?
Speaker 3: And at the end of the day, research has shown
Speaker 3: that it's not that Latinos are more inherently susceptible to misinformation,
Speaker 3: but that the real root of the problem is a
Speaker 3: lack of accurate resources and tools to combat miss and
Speaker 3: disinformation that directly targets them in Spanish, and with the
Speaker 3: e of artificial intelligence, fake content spreads more easily and
Speaker 3: more widely, Like the lie about the election being canceled
Speaker 3: that we started our show with.
Speaker 1: They want you to act based on fear, on an
Speaker 1: emotion that you can't control.
Speaker 3: Dear listener. What we've learned in our investigation is that
Speaker 3: the problem of dis and misinformation in our community will
Speaker 3: continue to grow because it feeds on emotions, emotions that
Speaker 3: among Latinos and Latinas can overpower facts. And then there
Speaker 3: is the perpetually elusive question of the money behind all
Speaker 3: of these disinformation efforts. You should know, dear listener. We're
Speaker 3: going to continue to press on this. What is clear
Speaker 3: is that there simply aren't enough resources in Spanish to
Speaker 3: counter these lies, resources like learning the basics of media literacy,
Speaker 3: for example, how to triple source a piece of information,
Speaker 3: because that's hard to come by in our community, especially
Speaker 3: when the lies come from others who speak and look
Speaker 3: and sound just like us. The Misinformation Web is an
Speaker 3: original production of Futuro Investigates in collaboration with Latino USA.
Speaker 3: This episode was produced by Nur Saudi and edited by
Speaker 3: Andrea Lopez Crusado. Additional research and support by Arduro Ahil
Speaker 3: and our associate producer, Roxanna Guire. Fact checking for this
Speaker 3: episode by Elizabeth Loenthal Torris, scoring and sound design by
Speaker 3: Jacob Rossati. Our piece was mixed by Gabriel Abiez. To
Speaker 3: find out more about the misinformation web and to read
Speaker 3: our articles, visit Futuro Investigates dot Org. Again, that's Fuduro
Speaker 3: Investigates dot Org. The Latino USA team also includes Julia Caruso,
Speaker 3: Jessica Ellis, Victoria Strada, Frinando Junior, Stephanie lebou Luis Luna Jordi,
Speaker 3: mar Marquez, Marta Martinez, and Nancy Trujillo. Benilee Ramirez is
Speaker 3: our co executive producer along with myself and I'm your
Speaker 3: host Maria Josa. Join us again on our next episode.
Speaker 3: In the meantime, look for us on social media. I'll
Speaker 3: see you on the gram and as usual, lotevayas.
Speaker 2: Latino USA is made possible in part by the Geraldine R.
Speaker 9: Dodge Foundation, working toward a just an equitable New Jersey,
Speaker 9: the Taal Foundation and Skyline Foundation,