Speaker 1: It's Friday, ma I'm oscar Mirrors from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update.
Speaker 1: Big social media platforms have been pretty quick to stop
Speaker 1: the spread of misinformation during the pandemic, but last week
Speaker 1: we saw the first true hit conspiracy video of the
Speaker 1: coronavirus era. It was called the Plandemic and it got
Speaker 1: over eight million views on Facebook and YouTube. The video
Speaker 1: has since been removed, but not before making a star
Speaker 1: out of the discredited scientist Dr Judy mcovits. Casey Newton,
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley editor at The Verge, joins us for what
Speaker 1: to know about the plandemic. Thanks for joining us, Casey,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Whenever something like the coronavirus pandemic happens,
Speaker 1: whenever there's a big world event or something huge happening,
Speaker 1: there always tends to be some type of hoax or
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory attached to it. And these times, especially when
Speaker 1: we're all stuck at home and on the internet so much,
Speaker 1: these things generally tend to pop up. If you'll remember,
Speaker 1: back in February, there was this whole thing spreading on
Speaker 1: YouTube and Facebook that was alleging that five g cellular
Speaker 1: networks were playing a role in spreading the virus. But
Speaker 1: right now, this is past week, this other kind of
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory slash hoax thing popped up. It was a
Speaker 1: video called the Plandemic and it featured a woman named
Speaker 1: Dr Judy Muscovitz, and she was alleging things about Dr
Speaker 1: Anthony Fauci, who was on the Coronavirus Task Force team.
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of craziness in this video. Casey tell
Speaker 1: us about the video and then we'll get into how
Speaker 1: it went viral. So the video is conspiracy theory, as
Speaker 1: you note, and the basic idea seems to be that
Speaker 1: some shadowy elites are conspiring to use the pandemic to
Speaker 1: sees power maybe make money by creating vaccines. And the
Speaker 1: star of this twenty six minute clip that went viral
Speaker 1: is this woman named Judy Mikovitz, who has become a
Speaker 1: kind of hero to the Tie vaccine crowd. She's a
Speaker 1: discredited scientist who published a book in April called Plague
Speaker 1: of Corruption that sort of depicts her as a truth
Speaker 1: teller fighting scientists who aren't willing to accept inconvenient facts,
Speaker 1: and so far right publications began to promote her book,
Speaker 1: and this documentary that is forthcoming will apparently be taking
Speaker 1: an even closer look at these sort of baseless conspiracies.
Speaker 1: This video has since since it kind of blew up,
Speaker 1: has been taken down, but tell us about some of
Speaker 1: the crazy accusations in it. I mean, one of the
Speaker 1: things that keeps popping up, and I think it was
Speaker 1: the main thing that really got it pulled down was
Speaker 1: they were saying that wearing a mask will literally activate
Speaker 1: your own virus. That's right, and that is the thing
Speaker 1: that got it taken down. Platforms like YouTube and Facebook
Speaker 1: generally do not want to remove content from the network,
Speaker 1: and they try to enable a maximum of free speech,
Speaker 1: but they do make an exception for or stuff that
Speaker 1: is actively harmful. And while a lot of this video
Speaker 1: plandemic is just kind of conspiracy, is saying, don't forget
Speaker 1: a lot of people are making money and other people
Speaker 1: are going to become more powerful, that's not why it
Speaker 1: got taken down. It got taken down because, as you say,
Speaker 1: it warned people against wearing masks, you know, saying that
Speaker 1: it would reinfect them, which of course there's no basis
Speaker 1: for that whatsoever. But you can imagine if a lot
Speaker 1: of people watch that and believe that it could have
Speaker 1: a really negative effect on public health. So initially Facebook
Speaker 1: didn't want to remove it, but when it sort of
Speaker 1: stumbled across that particular claim, it said, Okay, we've actually
Speaker 1: got to take this thing down. And Dr Judy mikovits
Speaker 1: for herself. She does have a degree in biology from
Speaker 1: the University of Virginia, a PhD in molecular biology. She
Speaker 1: worked on the National Cancer Institute. She has a lot
Speaker 1: of things under her belt. But then she started getting
Speaker 1: into work about chronic fatigue syndrome and vaccines, and this
Speaker 1: is kind of where she was derailed a little bit.
Speaker 1: A lot of people disc credited a lot of the
Speaker 1: later things that she was researching, so like, in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, she had published research saying that a mouse
Speaker 1: retrovirus caused chronic fatigue syndrome, which got a lot of attention,
Speaker 1: but it was discredited a couple years later and the
Speaker 1: journal ultimately retracted it. And then in this sort of
Speaker 1: like weird side story, she was actually put in jail
Speaker 1: on charges of theft, which apparently involved computers disappearing. Those
Speaker 1: charges were dropped, but the whole thing was a scandal
Speaker 1: and she was kind of sideline and lost her scientific career.
Speaker 1: But after that she sort of drifted into this anti
Speaker 1: vax crowd, and because of the credentials that you mentioned,
Speaker 1: the anti vaxers have sort of lifted her up as
Speaker 1: this brave truth teller, even though what she's saying is
Speaker 1: largely nonsense. So let's talk about how something like this
Speaker 1: goes viral. The usual players come up. Obviously, Facebook and
Speaker 1: YouTube have a huge part in this, just because of
Speaker 1: how big the platforms are, But there was a lot
Speaker 1: of Facebook groups that were sharing this, and then beyond that,
Speaker 1: even as you mentioned, there's a lot of mistruths in
Speaker 1: these video but it also takes time for their fact
Speaker 1: checkers to go through this, so, as you've mentioned, they
Speaker 1: didn't take it down right away. It kind of was
Speaker 1: circulating around for a while while they were trying to
Speaker 1: do some of that fact checking. It's a really interesting story.
Speaker 1: The way that things go viral on Facebook and YouTube
Speaker 1: is always changing based on things that the platforms do
Speaker 1: to try to stop bad stuff from happening, and sort
Speaker 1: of like as soon as they fixed one problem, another emerges.
Speaker 1: So over the past year, Facebook has put a lot
Speaker 1: more attention on groups, getting people to join groups, kind
Speaker 1: of moving you away from that news feed. And there
Speaker 1: are a lot of conspiracy groups, anti vax groups where
Speaker 1: this video clip was very popular, and what happened is
Speaker 1: people were sharing it in the group and what they
Speaker 1: were sharing was actually a link to YouTube. And so
Speaker 1: from those Facebook groups, they were able to send seven
Speaker 1: point one million views to one video within a period
Speaker 1: of between thirty six and forty eight hours. So just
Speaker 1: within that short period of time, Facebook drove all of
Speaker 1: that traffic to YouTube, and so it was kind of
Speaker 1: an unwitting tag team between the two platforms that sent
Speaker 1: this thing viral. As you noted, it did take a
Speaker 1: while for the platforms to fully understand what was in
Speaker 1: the video. The video is twenty six minutes long, it
Speaker 1: contains a lot of claims, and they had to go
Speaker 1: through it sort of point by point and ultimately make
Speaker 1: the determination that it had to come down. But it
Speaker 1: sort of speaks to this cliche, this quote that is
Speaker 1: attributed to Mark Twain that the lie gets halfway around
Speaker 1: the world before the truth can put its shoes on,
Speaker 1: and that was definitely the case here, and it was
Speaker 1: also this whole thing with obviously all the algorithms and
Speaker 1: this big cycle. She had just published a book not
Speaker 1: too long ago, and it became this thing where searches
Speaker 1: for her name brought up searches for the video, and
Speaker 1: vice versa, searches for the video would bring up searches
Speaker 1: for her name. So it's kind of this big cycle
Speaker 1: where just feeding off of itself for a while until
Speaker 1: Facebook and YouTube took these things down. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to remember that Judy mckovitz has
Speaker 1: something to sell, right She has a book to sell,
Speaker 1: and this whole viral event on Facebook and YouTube has
Speaker 1: been very good for her. She had a number one
Speaker 1: best seller on Amazon over the weekend. Yesterday it was
Speaker 1: still at number six. So all of this has been
Speaker 1: of a huge benefit to somebody who is selling this
Speaker 1: very delicious idea that just doesn't have any basis in reality.
Speaker 1: Casey Newton, Silicon Valley editor at The Verge, thank you
Speaker 1: very much for joining us. It's my pleasure. I'm Oscar
Speaker 1: Ameres and this has been your daily coronavirus update. You
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