WEBVTT - Silencing the Echo Chamber 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.960 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.880 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:19.000 How Stuff Works in a love of all things tech, 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:24.880 and welcome to a week of darkness. I know we 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:28.639 just did Nuclear Power, but we're not done with some 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:32.200 dark and scary topics. This week we're going to explore 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:36.840 some stuff, uh in the world of the web that 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:40.920 is of concern, and today specifically, we're gonna talk about 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:45.159 echo chambers. Um So, also I should mention before I 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:48.640 really jump into this, I'm still dealing with a cold. 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:51.440 You may have heard from the Nuclear Power episodes that 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.320 I was dealing with the cold. That cold is slowly 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:56.880 moving from my head to my chest and it is 0:00:56.920 --> 0:00:59.360 affecting my voice. So I could get a little extra 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.600 crokey over the next few episodes. So back in April, 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:09.040 Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress to talk about 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:11.720 some pretty heavy topics. Now, one of the big ones 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:15.160 was about Cambridge Analytica, and the next two episodes will 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:18.120 be about Cambridge Analytica. But the other was about how 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:22.039 dozens of accounts linked to Russia had used Facebook as 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:25.680 a platform to influence US voters during the two thousand 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:28.840 and sixteen election season, and this episode is going to 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:32.320 be more about how Facebook and other social media platforms 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:35.800 got to the point where they could be exploited in 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:39.400 that way. And before I get deep into this topic, 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:42.760 I am not going to take a specific political stance 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:45.800 in this episode, so you don't need to worry about that. 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:49.880 I am not here to argue one philosophy over another. 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:55.680 This is not a pro party episode in either or 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:59.000 an anti party episode in either case. Instead, I'm going 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:01.480 to talk about the way so media platforms in general, 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:05.240 and Facebook and Twitter in particular, work to explain how 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:08.640 features that were meant to do one thing could be 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:12.840 twisted to do something else. And this can affect anyone 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:16.280 of any philosophy, so it can be exploited by anyone 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:20.239 who has ulterior motives, doesn't matter whether that's for one 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:22.679 party or for a different party. So a lot of 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:24.800 what I'm going to talk about relate is related to 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:29.160 the concept of the metaphorical echo chamber. And I'm sure 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:32.120 most of you have heard about that and you probably 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:34.919 know what it is, but just in case, I'm gonna 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:37.480 lay it out. It's a phrase we use to describe 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:40.959 an environment in which our persons previously held beliefs are 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:44.640 boosted through repetition of those beliefs within a closed system. 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:47.920 So imagine that you're in a room full of people 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:51.400 who all love one sports team and they all hate 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:55.880 another sports team. Okay, so they all share these common traits. 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:58.760 They all love Team A and they all really hate 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:02.280 team B. And they talk about how great their team 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:06.160 A is and how rotten Team B is. They all 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:10.200 feel validated in their beliefs, right. They are getting validation 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:12.480 from their peers who are also saying, you know what, 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:16.280 you're right. Teammate does rule, and Team B can go 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:21.280 kick sand. There are no dissenting opinions. There's no objective 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:24.280 point of view. Everyone is biased. By the end of 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:27.320 the meeting, everyone's pretty much sure that their team rules 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:31.160 and the other team is literally like the worst. That 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:34.880 is an echo chamber. Social media platforms can become echo 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:38.600 chambers too, and often do partly because it's hard to 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:42.440 have a nuanced conversation online where two people with different 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:46.400 points of view can come to some sort of mutual understanding. 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:50.680 That seems to be the exception as opposed to the rule. 0:03:50.840 --> 0:03:54.160 When you have two people of opposing viewpoints interact online. 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:58.160 The culture of flame wars and memes, coupled with the 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:01.600 lack of tone and bodyline which and other communication tools, 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:05.680 means we're far more likely to have a shallow interaction. 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:09.119 We're either patting each other on the back for confirming 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:12.680 our common beliefs, or we're tearing each other down because 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:15.800 we share different points of view and we tend to 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:20.320 get pushed more towards radical ends of our respective philosophies. 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:24.159 It becomes an us versus them and not a wee. 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:27.080 So instead of we should work this out, it becomes 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.479 how can we defeat them? This is just something that 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:34.120 happens in general online more frequently than it does in 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:35.880 the real world, although it can happen in the real 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:39.360 world too. Obviously, now there have been actual studies about 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:43.280 this sort of thing. I'm not just spouting armchair philosophy, 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:46.960 but whenever it comes to psychological studies, I'm always personally 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:51.080 a little bit cautious. Not because I lack respect for psychology. 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:53.120 I have a great deal of respect for it, but 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:59.080 rather it is particularly challenging to design good scientific tests 0:04:59.160 --> 0:05:03.719 for psychologic issues and and scenarios due to the enormous 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:07.800 number of variables that come along with being a human being. 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:11.479 But there is a study that published in eleven called 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:16.400 Effects of anonymity, invisibility and lack of eye contact on 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:21.760 toxic online disinhibition that explores causes for our bad behaviors 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:24.680 when we get behind a keyboard. The experiment looked at 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:28.240 how anonymity, invisibility, and lack of eye contact could affect 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:33.839 interpersonal interactions online and the researchers took subjects test subjects 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:37.760 and paired them together randomly, and each pair received a 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:40.839 dilemma that they were supposed to discuss and resolve as 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:44.800 best they could. The researchers saw the greatest evidence of 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:50.320 negative behaviors, of toxic behaviors when the subjects did not 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:53.479 have eye contact with one another in their interactions. So 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:56.480 whenever they were in a setup that prevented them from 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:59.120 being able to make eye contact with each other, they 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:02.760 saw that the toxicity of those interactions would increase. Where 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:05.760 you have people of a very different points of view 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:09.560 arguing about what's the best solution to a dilemma. Now, 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:12.680 maybe this means that when we're online and when we're 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:16.039 interacting with someone else online. The fact we cannot see 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:18.840 that person and make eye contact with them means that 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:24.080 to a certain extent, that person doesn't seem real to us. 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:27.279 We're interacting with what appears to just be words on 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:29.760 a screen, so not a human being. This is text. 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:32.919 The fact that there is a real human being on 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:35.680 the other end of those words is a level of abstraction. 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:39.400 We usually don't bother the process, like we know that's 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:42.479 the case. We know most of the time anyway, that 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:44.440 there is an actual person on the other end of 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:49.520 those words, but that doesn't you know, knowing it doesn't 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:54.520 filter into our our immediate behaviors. Dr John Sewler defines 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:58.800 what he calls the online disinhibition effect, which consists of 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:03.839 six factors that remove or reduce inhibitions that we typically 0:07:03.920 --> 0:07:07.880 feel when we interact with one another in public spaces. 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:13.800 Those factors are dissociative anonymity. That means the anonymous persona 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:18.360 we adopt online isn't quote unquote really us, right, So 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:21.280 we might act in ways that don't reflect who we 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:25.960 are as individuals in our day to day lives because 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:30.600 we're taking on a persona online and maybe this makes 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:33.720 us more bold than we normally would be, or more 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:36.360 what we think of as outspoken, and other people might 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:40.400 think of as really freaking rude. Um, anyone who has 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.760 spent any time online can probably say, yeah, you know, 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:47.600 I get that. Like I, I'm a different person online 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:51.000 than I am in real life. Then there's invisibility that 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:53.680 means no one can judge my tone or tell what 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:58.360 I look like when I'm online, so that disinhibits me. Right. So, 0:07:58.720 --> 0:08:01.600 if I have certain inhibitions I experience in my day 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:04.000 to day life because of the way I look or 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:08.600 the tone I have, and I'm constantly adjusting my behavior 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:11.520 because of that, that no longer applies when I'm online. 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:15.960 There's a synchronicity that is, your actions are not unfolding 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:20.160 in real time. You can um read a response, you 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:23.920 can write something down, days can pass in between, and 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:28.760 that changes things as well. Then there's solipsistic introjection, which 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:32.280 is because I cannot see this person, I must fill 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:34.280 in the gaps as to what they intend and who 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:37.520 they really are. So, in other words, when I interact 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:42.160 with you online, I cannot see you, and I start 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:47.560 to a sign intent and behavior to the words that 0:08:47.600 --> 0:08:51.240 you're sending me because I can't see them. I can't 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:54.800 witness them myself, and now those are pieces of information 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:57.200 that are kind of necessary for me to understand the 0:08:57.240 --> 0:08:59.680 meaning of what you are saying, So I start to 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:04.320 just assume what it is you mean. So this is 0:09:04.360 --> 0:09:07.839 where you get into some of those problems where someone says, oh, no, 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:10.080 I was I was trying to make a joke, but 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:13.199 you took it seriously, um, which, by the way, can 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:16.040 be a real lousy way of trying to cover up 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:19.800 bad behavior saying oh, it's just joke. Um. Sometimes it 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:22.840 can literally be just a joke and it ends up 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:26.480 snowballing into something terrible. But there are a lot of 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:28.320 people who will use just a joke as a way 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:30.720 to try and excuse bad behavior in general. So it's 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:34.400 not a great response, but it does mean like if 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:36.199 you send me a message that was intended to be 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:38.480 a joke, like let's say, legit, it was meant to 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:41.000 be a joke and it wasn't mean spirited or anything 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:44.240 like that, but I misinterpreted because I have assigned a 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:49.320 motivation to you based upon those words, that's me engaging 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:53.720 in this particular behavior. Then there's dissociative imagination. That is 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:57.320 the uh, the idea that this is all online, which 0:09:57.400 --> 0:10:01.080 isn't in real life. Therefore the are not real people 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:04.880 that I'm interacting with. And there's minimizing authority, which is 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:06.920 there are no Internet police, so I can do what 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:08.960 I want. It's like the Wild West, so I'm not 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:11.920 gonna get punished, So why should I worry about limiting 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:15.680 my behavior? Now, those factors will influence people and lead 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:19.439 them to behaving in ways they might not behave normally 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:22.120 in the public world, and sometimes they do that in 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:24.720 a positive way. This doesn't have to be negative. It 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:27.640 could mean that you might be more honest and open, 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:32.120 and you might be more accepting. But other times it 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:36.000 might mean being more negative than lashing out in attacks 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:38.520 in a way that you would never do in any 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:42.079 other context. And it may even be that those who 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:45.240 attack are normally pretty decent people that you know in 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:49.480 their day to day lives. They aren't uh aggressive or 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:54.000 obnoxious or insulting, but when they get online, that changes 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:58.520 and the factors remove those inhibitions they would typically feel 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:00.840 that guide them to being a any decent person. Now, 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:03.040 I'm not sure what that says about the real person 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:08.000 underneath all that. It doesn't seem great. If the argument 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:11.440 is this person only behaves well because he or she 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:15.360 feels they have to based upon the community they exist in, 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:18.719 that's not a great argument for that person's character, but 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:22.319 it is a reality. So out of the real world, 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:27.040 we have communities and we adapt our behaviors to the 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.600 communities we belong to, and this is a survival mechanism. 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:34.559 Human beings are social creatures, and to be social, one 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:36.520 of the things you have to have is the ability 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:38.959 to get along with people. If you start to alienate 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:43.319 everyone you come into contact with, eventually you'll get ostracized 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:46.920 from the community. And if we're talking about you know, 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:52.640 primitive humans, that might mean that you have severely reduced 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:56.160 your chance for survival. So a survival mechanism that is 0:11:56.200 --> 0:11:58.240 important to develop is how do I get along with 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:01.160 everybody else and contribute in a way where I can 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:04.160 be part of the group. So, whether it's laws or 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:06.640 just the desire not to rock the boat, we tend 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:11.080 to behave within the context of our community's values and rules. 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:15.480 But online those things aren't nearly as present, or established 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:20.000 or enforced, and so more destructive human tendencies tend to 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:23.599 come to light there. In addition, communication online tends to 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:26.760 be fairly short with each blast, and that means we 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:29.319 have very little time to reflect on what we are 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:32.720 actually saying before we say it. Now, back in the 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:36.520 old days, gather around the fire, my friends. We would 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:42.160 write letters on paper with pen or pencil, and it 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:45.560 took ages to write something out of any substance. And 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:47.079 by the time you were finished, then you have to 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:49.600 go find an envelope and address the envelope and put 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:52.120 the letter in the envelope, but a stamp on the envelope, 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:54.120 go out to the mailbox or to the post office 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:56.360 to mail it. By the time you do all that, 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:57.960 you might have thought better of the words that you 0:12:58.000 --> 0:13:00.920 wrote down, right, You might have thought, you know, there 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:02.400 probably was a better way for me to put that. 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:07.440 Maybe I shouldn't say that, uh that you know you 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:10.200 are a horse's rear end. There might be a better 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:13.640 way of putting my thoughts down on paper, and you 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:16.520 would try again, or maybe you toss everything out. Venting 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:20.360 on the page might work through your feelings. Maybe even 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:23.520 through this process, you think about how the recipient of 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:26.880 your letter will react to the words that you have written, 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:30.040 and that might guide you to write them in a 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:33.959 much more constructive way. But online, when we can zap 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:38.079 off a quick zinger in no time, it's instant gratification. 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:41.760 A tweet or a Facebook update zooms out there before 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:45.280 we've even really thought about the consequences of what we 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:48.680 have just said, and the nature of online communication itself 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:52.440 has catered to our more base natures. Now, to be clear, 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:56.600 social media platforms did not create this problem. They just 0:13:57.440 --> 0:14:02.440 facilitate it very efficient lely, and if managers of those 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:06.920 programs do not intervene or do not enforce behavior policies, 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:09.920 things can get out of hand. Now, next, we're gonna 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:12.240 take a look at how Facebook's algorithm works to get 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:16.160 a better understanding of how Russian accounts Russian hackers were 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:19.680 able to really exploit that system. But first let's take 0:14:19.720 --> 0:14:29.520 a quick break to thank our sponsor. One of the 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:33.440 big goals for any web based property is to drive engagement. 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:37.320 Engagement might mean viewing more pages, which ends up counting 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:40.640 towards page views for advertising, or it might mean encouraging 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:43.800 people to buy stuff from an online store, or it 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:46.520 might mean getting people to sign up for newsletters or 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:49.160 to join groups online. But it's all about getting people 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:52.640 to go from being a momentary visitor to something more 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.560 than that. And Facebook measures engagement in a few ways 0:14:56.680 --> 0:14:59.320 on their site. One of those ways is through the 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:03.160 number of likes or reactions a post gets. If a 0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:05.520 post gets a lot more people hitting that like button, 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:08.760 then engagement is high. If nobody has reacted to it, 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:12.320 engagement is low. Another is in the number of times 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:15.600 a post is shared to various people's walls. If I 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:18.720 see acute meme that features foxes, I know I need 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:21.600 to share that on my friend Shaise wall because she 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.760 loves foxes. So I'll do that, and sharing it counts 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:29.160 toward the engagement of that original post. And the third 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:33.320 major way that Facebook gauges engagement, which I realized now 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:38.800 sounds a little repetitive but isn't, is through comments. So 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:41.920 if a post gets a lot of comments, particularly from 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:44.240 a lot of different people, not just the same like 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:47.440 two people going back and forth, Facebook registers that as 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.520 a post with high engagement. Now why is that important? 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.480 Why should you care? Well, the reason engagement is important 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:56.840 with Facebook is that you, as a user. Let's say 0:15:56.840 --> 0:15:58.920 that you have a Facebook profile. Some of you may not, 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:01.680 but if you do, you do not see all the 0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:04.520 stuff that your friends post on Facebook, even if they're 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:07.760 posting it publicly or to their friends. Even if they 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:10.920 are not specifically leaving you out of the posts, you're 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:13.680 not seeing all their stuff. And this has been a 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:18.400 common complaint among users, including myself. Uh. A lot of 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:21.480 people have argued, I wish that Facebook would just send 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:24.960 everything chronologically. It's my job to sit there and go 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:26.840 through it all and read up on things, and if 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.760 I miss stuff, I miss stuff. But Facebook doesn't do 0:16:29.800 --> 0:16:32.280 it that way. First of all, you don't necessarily get 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:34.840 all the posts in chronological order, even when you said it, 0:16:34.880 --> 0:16:37.480 because they keep changing the darn settings. But that's another 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:39.800 argument for another time. But you might notice when you 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:43.200 log on some of your friends seem like they're pretty 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:48.120 consistently really active, and others appear to rarely post. In fact, 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:51.480 some of those people who appear to rarely post might 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:54.520 be posting regularly, but you just aren't seeing it unless 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:57.000 you actually take the effort to pop on over to 0:16:57.160 --> 0:16:59.280 that friend's wall, and then you can see all the 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.320 posts that you been missing. Well, what Facebook is doing 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:04.919 is serving you a selection of the stuff your friends 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:08.560 are sharing on the social media platform and they leave 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:12.080 out the rest, and Facebook will serve up posts in 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:15.520 your news feed that have high engagement. So if one 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:17.840 of your friends shares a post from someone else on 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:21.040 their feed that got a ton of responses, you'll probably 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:23.720 see that when you scroll through your feed, or if 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:26.479 the post has anything to do with anything you're interested in, 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:30.760 you'll likely see it then too. Stuff goes viral, helped 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:33.879 in no small part by Facebook's algorithm to make sure 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:38.199 the more visible posts get even more visibility and they 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:41.679 get the most engagement. Now, let me be clear, on 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:44.120 the face of it, this seems like a no brainer. 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.600 After all, if a lot of people are interested in something, 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:50.760 if someone writes a very thought provoking post and it 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:53.639 gets a lot of engagement, chances are you will be 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:56.439 interested in that as well. You don't want to be 0:17:56.520 --> 0:17:59.520 left out the next conversational topic or the next fun meme. 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:02.600 But there's a big problem with this philosophy, and that 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:05.560 is you can exploit it as long as you can 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:08.480 make posts that drive a lot of engagement, and it 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:12.480 doesn't have to be positive engagement, which makes it way easier. 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:15.639 It can actually just be about stirring the pot and 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:18.720 making people mad, and you can do it without directly 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:23.760 violating Facebook policies. Now, if you go and post something 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:29.080 that's outright hateful, racist, misogynistic, or offensive, that might get 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:33.720 flagged and Facebook might remove it. It might not. I've 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:37.639 seen some pretty awful things up on Facebook that have 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.840 been left there even after people have complained. But Facebook 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:43.439 does have policies about this sort of stuff, and if 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:47.240 enough people flag it and Facebook takes notice, those posts 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:51.200 might get taken down. Um, So let's assume for the 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:53.840 moment that Facebook has established some firm rules and it's 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:57.320 enforcing them, and just take that off the table. What 0:18:57.520 --> 0:18:59.760 you could still do is linked to stories that are 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:03.679 written specifically to rile people up. There may not be 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:07.439 an ounce of truth to those stories. They might be 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:13.560 complete fabrications, specifically crafted just to get a reaction from people. 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:17.639 People who agree with whatever the perspective is of the 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:20.600 story will share a link of that story on their 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:23.080 social media page, or at least they'll be more inclined to, 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:28.080 and others will share that and then they'll comment or 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:30.720 they'll engage in some way, and in this manner, the 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:34.359 message gets elevated and it gets spread around a little 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:38.959 bit more, and then you start to see it go viral, 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:41.119 and there doesn't ever have to be an ounce of 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:43.840 truth in the original story for this to happen. I've 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:46.840 been seeing this on Facebook for a few years, and 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:50.840 it's not always political. The stuff I'm talking about today 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:54.200 relates largely to politics, but I've seen it for all 0:19:54.240 --> 0:19:56.760 sorts of different stuff. And I'm sure many of you 0:19:56.840 --> 0:19:59.440 have had the experience of looking at a post that 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:02.479 a friend of years has shared and there's an article 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:05.639 that it links to with a crazy headline, and you 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:08.440 might say to yourself, hang on, that can't possibly be true. 0:20:08.560 --> 0:20:10.600 And then you click through to the article and you 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:12.600 do a little digging maybe, and you find out that 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:16.000 the site that's hosting that article is a quote unquote 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:21.720 satire or parody site. Typically for these sites, you'll find 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:25.880 an about page somewhere that lays this out. But because 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:30.480 our real journalism has become so focused on creating clickable 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:34.160 or a clickbait if you prefer headlines, the quote unquote 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:38.600 joke articles don't seem that unreasonable within that same context, right, 0:20:38.800 --> 0:20:44.040 You've got legitimate news outlets that are creating ridiculous headlines 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:47.040 because they work. They get people to click on the stories, 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:51.399 and the stories might be very well written, very well researched. 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:56.199 But that headline culture means that when we encounter a 0:20:56.520 --> 0:21:01.560 quote unquote satire or parody headline, it's not always clear 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:04.680 that it's a joke, because we see crazy stuff all 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:08.920 the time. Now click bait has made that a reality, 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:11.840 and so it only matters if you go further in 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:15.240 and read the actual article to see, all right, is 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:19.280 this legit or is this a joke? What is this? 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:23.640 Sometimes it's a joke, and sometimes it's very evident from 0:21:23.640 --> 0:21:25.720 the beginning, like you start reading the article and you think, 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:28.680 all right, this is a joke. But my friend clearly 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:31.040 didn't read the article. They just saw the headline and 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:35.560 shared it and that became their contribution to the conversation, 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:38.080 which really all it did was add more traffic to 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:41.960 this website. In other cases, it may not obviously be 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:43.560 a joke, and it's only when you go to the 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:46.600 about page on the website that you see that everything 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:49.240 is supposed to be satire, although for it to really 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:52.920 be satire, you have to know it's satire um In reality, 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:55.720 I would call those websites just purveyors of lies. They 0:21:55.760 --> 0:21:59.160 just make up junk and they pass it off as true. 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:01.840 And it's only if you dig in the website that 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:04.399 you find the little disclaimer saying, oh, this is a 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:08.240 satire site. That's not really satire, that's fake news. Um. 0:22:08.440 --> 0:22:11.640 And I hate using the term fake news because it's 0:22:11.640 --> 0:22:14.720 so politicized, but there really is that stuff out there, 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:16.720 and it's been there for years. And like I said, 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:20.040 it's not just politics. I've seen it for things like, uh, 0:22:20.080 --> 0:22:23.840 the entertainment industry, where you'll see some ridiculous headline you think, well, 0:22:23.880 --> 0:22:26.920 that's just bizarre, and only through digging you realize, oh, 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:29.879 there's nothing to this. So the owners of those sites 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:32.960 are really in a sweet spot. They can point to 0:22:33.000 --> 0:22:35.800 that about page and say, hey, it's not our intent 0:22:35.880 --> 0:22:37.879 to be taken as a serious source of news. You 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:39.520 just read our about page. You see that we're a 0:22:39.600 --> 0:22:43.359 joke site. But they also keep publishing articles that don't 0:22:43.400 --> 0:22:45.080 seem to be so much of a joke as an 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:49.800 outright fabrication, and they end up making huge amounts of 0:22:49.800 --> 0:22:54.160 money off of ads. High engagement means high traffic. High 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:56.920 traffic means high page views, high page views means you're 0:22:57.000 --> 0:22:59.320 start making money off the ads that you serve against 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:02.119 your site. So those deceitful articles are really just a 0:23:02.160 --> 0:23:05.800 means to an end. The consequences of those deceitful articles, 0:23:05.840 --> 0:23:09.439 the idea that they might be spreading misinformation, that's not 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:12.480 really a consideration or concern for a lot of these sites. 0:23:12.640 --> 0:23:15.680