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