Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works in a love of all things tech,
Speaker 1: and welcome to a week of darkness. I know we
Speaker 1: just did Nuclear Power, but we're not done with some
Speaker 1: dark and scary topics. This week we're going to explore
Speaker 1: some stuff, uh in the world of the web that
Speaker 1: is of concern, and today specifically, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: echo chambers. Um So, also I should mention before I
Speaker 1: really jump into this, I'm still dealing with a cold.
Speaker 1: You may have heard from the Nuclear Power episodes that
Speaker 1: I was dealing with the cold. That cold is slowly
Speaker 1: moving from my head to my chest and it is
Speaker 1: affecting my voice. So I could get a little extra
Speaker 1: crokey over the next few episodes. So back in April,
Speaker 1: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress to talk about
Speaker 1: some pretty heavy topics. Now, one of the big ones
Speaker 1: was about Cambridge Analytica, and the next two episodes will
Speaker 1: be about Cambridge Analytica. But the other was about how
Speaker 1: dozens of accounts linked to Russia had used Facebook as
Speaker 1: a platform to influence US voters during the two thousand
Speaker 1: and sixteen election season, and this episode is going to
Speaker 1: be more about how Facebook and other social media platforms
Speaker 1: got to the point where they could be exploited in
Speaker 1: that way. And before I get deep into this topic,
Speaker 1: I am not going to take a specific political stance
Speaker 1: in this episode, so you don't need to worry about that.
Speaker 1: I am not here to argue one philosophy over another.
Speaker 1: This is not a pro party episode in either or
Speaker 1: an anti party episode in either case. Instead, I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk about the way so media platforms in general,
Speaker 1: and Facebook and Twitter in particular, work to explain how
Speaker 1: features that were meant to do one thing could be
Speaker 1: twisted to do something else. And this can affect anyone
Speaker 1: of any philosophy, so it can be exploited by anyone
Speaker 1: who has ulterior motives, doesn't matter whether that's for one
Speaker 1: party or for a different party. So a lot of
Speaker 1: what I'm going to talk about relate is related to
Speaker 1: the concept of the metaphorical echo chamber. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: most of you have heard about that and you probably
Speaker 1: know what it is, but just in case, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: lay it out. It's a phrase we use to describe
Speaker 1: an environment in which our persons previously held beliefs are
Speaker 1: boosted through repetition of those beliefs within a closed system.
Speaker 1: So imagine that you're in a room full of people
Speaker 1: who all love one sports team and they all hate
Speaker 1: another sports team. Okay, so they all share these common traits.
Speaker 1: They all love Team A and they all really hate
Speaker 1: team B. And they talk about how great their team
Speaker 1: A is and how rotten Team B is. They all
Speaker 1: feel validated in their beliefs, right. They are getting validation
Speaker 1: from their peers who are also saying, you know what,
Speaker 1: you're right. Teammate does rule, and Team B can go
Speaker 1: kick sand. There are no dissenting opinions. There's no objective
Speaker 1: point of view. Everyone is biased. By the end of
Speaker 1: the meeting, everyone's pretty much sure that their team rules
Speaker 1: and the other team is literally like the worst. That
Speaker 1: is an echo chamber. Social media platforms can become echo
Speaker 1: chambers too, and often do partly because it's hard to
Speaker 1: have a nuanced conversation online where two people with different
Speaker 1: points of view can come to some sort of mutual understanding.
Speaker 1: That seems to be the exception as opposed to the rule.
Speaker 1: When you have two people of opposing viewpoints interact online.
Speaker 1: The culture of flame wars and memes, coupled with the
Speaker 1: lack of tone and bodyline which and other communication tools,
Speaker 1: means we're far more likely to have a shallow interaction.
Speaker 1: We're either patting each other on the back for confirming
Speaker 1: our common beliefs, or we're tearing each other down because
Speaker 1: we share different points of view and we tend to
Speaker 1: get pushed more towards radical ends of our respective philosophies.
Speaker 1: It becomes an us versus them and not a wee.
Speaker 1: So instead of we should work this out, it becomes
Speaker 1: how can we defeat them? This is just something that
Speaker 1: happens in general online more frequently than it does in
Speaker 1: the real world, although it can happen in the real
Speaker 1: world too. Obviously, now there have been actual studies about
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. I'm not just spouting armchair philosophy,
Speaker 1: but whenever it comes to psychological studies, I'm always personally
Speaker 1: a little bit cautious. Not because I lack respect for psychology.
Speaker 1: I have a great deal of respect for it, but
Speaker 1: rather it is particularly challenging to design good scientific tests
Speaker 1: for psychologic issues and and scenarios due to the enormous
Speaker 1: number of variables that come along with being a human being.
Speaker 1: But there is a study that published in eleven called
Speaker 1: Effects of anonymity, invisibility and lack of eye contact on
Speaker 1: toxic online disinhibition that explores causes for our bad behaviors
Speaker 1: when we get behind a keyboard. The experiment looked at
Speaker 1: how anonymity, invisibility, and lack of eye contact could affect
Speaker 1: interpersonal interactions online and the researchers took subjects test subjects
Speaker 1: and paired them together randomly, and each pair received a
Speaker 1: dilemma that they were supposed to discuss and resolve as
Speaker 1: best they could. The researchers saw the greatest evidence of
Speaker 1: negative behaviors, of toxic behaviors when the subjects did not
Speaker 1: have eye contact with one another in their interactions. So
Speaker 1: whenever they were in a setup that prevented them from
Speaker 1: being able to make eye contact with each other, they
Speaker 1: saw that the toxicity of those interactions would increase. Where
Speaker 1: you have people of a very different points of view
Speaker 1: arguing about what's the best solution to a dilemma. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe this means that when we're online and when we're
Speaker 1: interacting with someone else online. The fact we cannot see
Speaker 1: that person and make eye contact with them means that
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, that person doesn't seem real to us.
Speaker 1: We're interacting with what appears to just be words on
Speaker 1: a screen, so not a human being. This is text.
Speaker 1: The fact that there is a real human being on
Speaker 1: the other end of those words is a level of abstraction.
Speaker 1: We usually don't bother the process, like we know that's
Speaker 1: the case. We know most of the time anyway, that
Speaker 1: there is an actual person on the other end of
Speaker 1: those words, but that doesn't you know, knowing it doesn't
Speaker 1: filter into our our immediate behaviors. Dr John Sewler defines
Speaker 1: what he calls the online disinhibition effect, which consists of
Speaker 1: six factors that remove or reduce inhibitions that we typically
Speaker 1: feel when we interact with one another in public spaces.
Speaker 1: Those factors are dissociative anonymity. That means the anonymous persona
Speaker 1: we adopt online isn't quote unquote really us, right, So
Speaker 1: we might act in ways that don't reflect who we
Speaker 1: are as individuals in our day to day lives because
Speaker 1: we're taking on a persona online and maybe this makes
Speaker 1: us more bold than we normally would be, or more
Speaker 1: what we think of as outspoken, and other people might
Speaker 1: think of as really freaking rude. Um, anyone who has
Speaker 1: spent any time online can probably say, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I get that. Like I, I'm a different person online
Speaker 1: than I am in real life. Then there's invisibility that
Speaker 1: means no one can judge my tone or tell what
Speaker 1: I look like when I'm online, so that disinhibits me. Right. So,
Speaker 1: if I have certain inhibitions I experience in my day
Speaker 1: to day life because of the way I look or
Speaker 1: the tone I have, and I'm constantly adjusting my behavior
Speaker 1: because of that, that no longer applies when I'm online.
Speaker 1: There's a synchronicity that is, your actions are not unfolding
Speaker 1: in real time. You can um read a response, you
Speaker 1: can write something down, days can pass in between, and
Speaker 1: that changes things as well. Then there's solipsistic introjection, which
Speaker 1: is because I cannot see this person, I must fill
Speaker 1: in the gaps as to what they intend and who
Speaker 1: they really are. So, in other words, when I interact
Speaker 1: with you online, I cannot see you, and I start
Speaker 1: to a sign intent and behavior to the words that
Speaker 1: you're sending me because I can't see them. I can't
Speaker 1: witness them myself, and now those are pieces of information
Speaker 1: that are kind of necessary for me to understand the
Speaker 1: meaning of what you are saying, So I start to
Speaker 1: just assume what it is you mean. So this is
Speaker 1: where you get into some of those problems where someone says, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I was I was trying to make a joke, but
Speaker 1: you took it seriously, um, which, by the way, can
Speaker 1: be a real lousy way of trying to cover up
Speaker 1: bad behavior saying oh, it's just joke. Um. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: can literally be just a joke and it ends up
Speaker 1: snowballing into something terrible. But there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who will use just a joke as a way
Speaker 1: to try and excuse bad behavior in general. So it's
Speaker 1: not a great response, but it does mean like if
Speaker 1: you send me a message that was intended to be
Speaker 1: a joke, like let's say, legit, it was meant to
Speaker 1: be a joke and it wasn't mean spirited or anything
Speaker 1: like that, but I misinterpreted because I have assigned a
Speaker 1: motivation to you based upon those words, that's me engaging
Speaker 1: in this particular behavior. Then there's dissociative imagination. That is
Speaker 1: the uh, the idea that this is all online, which
Speaker 1: isn't in real life. Therefore the are not real people
Speaker 1: that I'm interacting with. And there's minimizing authority, which is
Speaker 1: there are no Internet police, so I can do what
Speaker 1: I want. It's like the Wild West, so I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna get punished, So why should I worry about limiting
Speaker 1: my behavior? Now, those factors will influence people and lead
Speaker 1: them to behaving in ways they might not behave normally
Speaker 1: in the public world, and sometimes they do that in
Speaker 1: a positive way. This doesn't have to be negative. It
Speaker 1: could mean that you might be more honest and open,
Speaker 1: and you might be more accepting. But other times it
Speaker 1: might mean being more negative than lashing out in attacks
Speaker 1: in a way that you would never do in any
Speaker 1: other context. And it may even be that those who
Speaker 1: attack are normally pretty decent people that you know in
Speaker 1: their day to day lives. They aren't uh aggressive or
Speaker 1: obnoxious or insulting, but when they get online, that changes
Speaker 1: and the factors remove those inhibitions they would typically feel
Speaker 1: that guide them to being a any decent person. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what that says about the real person
Speaker 1: underneath all that. It doesn't seem great. If the argument
Speaker 1: is this person only behaves well because he or she
Speaker 1: feels they have to based upon the community they exist in,
Speaker 1: that's not a great argument for that person's character, but
Speaker 1: it is a reality. So out of the real world,
Speaker 1: we have communities and we adapt our behaviors to the
Speaker 1: communities we belong to, and this is a survival mechanism.
Speaker 1: Human beings are social creatures, and to be social, one
Speaker 1: of the things you have to have is the ability
Speaker 1: to get along with people. If you start to alienate
Speaker 1: everyone you come into contact with, eventually you'll get ostracized
Speaker 1: from the community. And if we're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: primitive humans, that might mean that you have severely reduced
Speaker 1: your chance for survival. So a survival mechanism that is
Speaker 1: important to develop is how do I get along with
Speaker 1: everybody else and contribute in a way where I can
Speaker 1: be part of the group. So, whether it's laws or
Speaker 1: just the desire not to rock the boat, we tend
Speaker 1: to behave within the context of our community's values and rules.
Speaker 1: But online those things aren't nearly as present, or established
Speaker 1: or enforced, and so more destructive human tendencies tend to
Speaker 1: come to light there. In addition, communication online tends to
Speaker 1: be fairly short with each blast, and that means we
Speaker 1: have very little time to reflect on what we are
Speaker 1: actually saying before we say it. Now, back in the
Speaker 1: old days, gather around the fire, my friends. We would
Speaker 1: write letters on paper with pen or pencil, and it
Speaker 1: took ages to write something out of any substance. And
Speaker 1: by the time you were finished, then you have to
Speaker 1: go find an envelope and address the envelope and put
Speaker 1: the letter in the envelope, but a stamp on the envelope,
Speaker 1: go out to the mailbox or to the post office
Speaker 1: to mail it. By the time you do all that,
Speaker 1: you might have thought better of the words that you
Speaker 1: wrote down, right, You might have thought, you know, there
Speaker 1: probably was a better way for me to put that.
Speaker 1: Maybe I shouldn't say that, uh that you know you
Speaker 1: are a horse's rear end. There might be a better
Speaker 1: way of putting my thoughts down on paper, and you
Speaker 1: would try again, or maybe you toss everything out. Venting
Speaker 1: on the page might work through your feelings. Maybe even
Speaker 1: through this process, you think about how the recipient of
Speaker 1: your letter will react to the words that you have written,
Speaker 1: and that might guide you to write them in a
Speaker 1: much more constructive way. But online, when we can zap
Speaker 1: off a quick zinger in no time, it's instant gratification.
Speaker 1: A tweet or a Facebook update zooms out there before
Speaker 1: we've even really thought about the consequences of what we
Speaker 1: have just said, and the nature of online communication itself
Speaker 1: has catered to our more base natures. Now, to be clear,
Speaker 1: social media platforms did not create this problem. They just
Speaker 1: facilitate it very efficient lely, and if managers of those
Speaker 1: programs do not intervene or do not enforce behavior policies,
Speaker 1: things can get out of hand. Now, next, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a look at how Facebook's algorithm works to get
Speaker 1: a better understanding of how Russian accounts Russian hackers were
Speaker 1: able to really exploit that system. But first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. One of the
Speaker 1: big goals for any web based property is to drive engagement.
Speaker 1: Engagement might mean viewing more pages, which ends up counting
Speaker 1: towards page views for advertising, or it might mean encouraging
Speaker 1: people to buy stuff from an online store, or it
Speaker 1: might mean getting people to sign up for newsletters or
Speaker 1: to join groups online. But it's all about getting people
Speaker 1: to go from being a momentary visitor to something more
Speaker 1: than that. And Facebook measures engagement in a few ways
Speaker 1: on their site. One of those ways is through the
Speaker 1: number of likes or reactions a post gets. If a
Speaker 1: post gets a lot more people hitting that like button,
Speaker 1: then engagement is high. If nobody has reacted to it,
Speaker 1: engagement is low. Another is in the number of times
Speaker 1: a post is shared to various people's walls. If I
Speaker 1: see acute meme that features foxes, I know I need
Speaker 1: to share that on my friend Shaise wall because she
Speaker 1: loves foxes. So I'll do that, and sharing it counts
Speaker 1: toward the engagement of that original post. And the third
Speaker 1: major way that Facebook gauges engagement, which I realized now
Speaker 1: sounds a little repetitive but isn't, is through comments. So
Speaker 1: if a post gets a lot of comments, particularly from
Speaker 1: a lot of different people, not just the same like
Speaker 1: two people going back and forth, Facebook registers that as
Speaker 1: a post with high engagement. Now why is that important?
Speaker 1: Why should you care? Well, the reason engagement is important
Speaker 1: with Facebook is that you, as a user. Let's say
Speaker 1: that you have a Facebook profile. Some of you may not,
Speaker 1: but if you do, you do not see all the
Speaker 1: stuff that your friends post on Facebook, even if they're
Speaker 1: posting it publicly or to their friends. Even if they
Speaker 1: are not specifically leaving you out of the posts, you're
Speaker 1: not seeing all their stuff. And this has been a
Speaker 1: common complaint among users, including myself. Uh. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have argued, I wish that Facebook would just send
Speaker 1: everything chronologically. It's my job to sit there and go
Speaker 1: through it all and read up on things, and if
Speaker 1: I miss stuff, I miss stuff. But Facebook doesn't do
Speaker 1: it that way. First of all, you don't necessarily get
Speaker 1: all the posts in chronological order, even when you said it,
Speaker 1: because they keep changing the darn settings. But that's another
Speaker 1: argument for another time. But you might notice when you
Speaker 1: log on some of your friends seem like they're pretty
Speaker 1: consistently really active, and others appear to rarely post. In fact,
Speaker 1: some of those people who appear to rarely post might
Speaker 1: be posting regularly, but you just aren't seeing it unless
Speaker 1: you actually take the effort to pop on over to
Speaker 1: that friend's wall, and then you can see all the
Speaker 1: posts that you been missing. Well, what Facebook is doing
Speaker 1: is serving you a selection of the stuff your friends
Speaker 1: are sharing on the social media platform and they leave
Speaker 1: out the rest, and Facebook will serve up posts in
Speaker 1: your news feed that have high engagement. So if one
Speaker 1: of your friends shares a post from someone else on
Speaker 1: their feed that got a ton of responses, you'll probably
Speaker 1: see that when you scroll through your feed, or if
Speaker 1: the post has anything to do with anything you're interested in,
Speaker 1: you'll likely see it then too. Stuff goes viral, helped
Speaker 1: in no small part by Facebook's algorithm to make sure
Speaker 1: the more visible posts get even more visibility and they
Speaker 1: get the most engagement. Now, let me be clear, on
Speaker 1: the face of it, this seems like a no brainer.
Speaker 1: After all, if a lot of people are interested in something,
Speaker 1: if someone writes a very thought provoking post and it
Speaker 1: gets a lot of engagement, chances are you will be
Speaker 1: interested in that as well. You don't want to be
Speaker 1: left out the next conversational topic or the next fun meme.
Speaker 1: But there's a big problem with this philosophy, and that
Speaker 1: is you can exploit it as long as you can
Speaker 1: make posts that drive a lot of engagement, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be positive engagement, which makes it way easier.
Speaker 1: It can actually just be about stirring the pot and
Speaker 1: making people mad, and you can do it without directly
Speaker 1: violating Facebook policies. Now, if you go and post something
Speaker 1: that's outright hateful, racist, misogynistic, or offensive, that might get
Speaker 1: flagged and Facebook might remove it. It might not. I've
Speaker 1: seen some pretty awful things up on Facebook that have
Speaker 1: been left there even after people have complained. But Facebook
Speaker 1: does have policies about this sort of stuff, and if
Speaker 1: enough people flag it and Facebook takes notice, those posts
Speaker 1: might get taken down. Um, So let's assume for the
Speaker 1: moment that Facebook has established some firm rules and it's
Speaker 1: enforcing them, and just take that off the table. What
Speaker 1: you could still do is linked to stories that are
Speaker 1: written specifically to rile people up. There may not be
Speaker 1: an ounce of truth to those stories. They might be
Speaker 1: complete fabrications, specifically crafted just to get a reaction from people.
Speaker 1: People who agree with whatever the perspective is of the
Speaker 1: story will share a link of that story on their
Speaker 1: social media page, or at least they'll be more inclined to,
Speaker 1: and others will share that and then they'll comment or
Speaker 1: they'll engage in some way, and in this manner, the
Speaker 1: message gets elevated and it gets spread around a little
Speaker 1: bit more, and then you start to see it go viral,
Speaker 1: and there doesn't ever have to be an ounce of
Speaker 1: truth in the original story for this to happen. I've
Speaker 1: been seeing this on Facebook for a few years, and
Speaker 1: it's not always political. The stuff I'm talking about today
Speaker 1: relates largely to politics, but I've seen it for all
Speaker 1: sorts of different stuff. And I'm sure many of you
Speaker 1: have had the experience of looking at a post that
Speaker 1: a friend of years has shared and there's an article
Speaker 1: that it links to with a crazy headline, and you
Speaker 1: might say to yourself, hang on, that can't possibly be true.
Speaker 1: And then you click through to the article and you
Speaker 1: do a little digging maybe, and you find out that
Speaker 1: the site that's hosting that article is a quote unquote
Speaker 1: satire or parody site. Typically for these sites, you'll find
Speaker 1: an about page somewhere that lays this out. But because
Speaker 1: our real journalism has become so focused on creating clickable
Speaker 1: or a clickbait if you prefer headlines, the quote unquote
Speaker 1: joke articles don't seem that unreasonable within that same context, right,
Speaker 1: You've got legitimate news outlets that are creating ridiculous headlines
Speaker 1: because they work. They get people to click on the stories,
Speaker 1: and the stories might be very well written, very well researched.
Speaker 1: But that headline culture means that when we encounter a
Speaker 1: quote unquote satire or parody headline, it's not always clear
Speaker 1: that it's a joke, because we see crazy stuff all
Speaker 1: the time. Now click bait has made that a reality,
Speaker 1: and so it only matters if you go further in
Speaker 1: and read the actual article to see, all right, is
Speaker 1: this legit or is this a joke? What is this?
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a joke, and sometimes it's very evident from
Speaker 1: the beginning, like you start reading the article and you think,
Speaker 1: all right, this is a joke. But my friend clearly
Speaker 1: didn't read the article. They just saw the headline and
Speaker 1: shared it and that became their contribution to the conversation,
Speaker 1: which really all it did was add more traffic to
Speaker 1: this website. In other cases, it may not obviously be
Speaker 1: a joke, and it's only when you go to the
Speaker 1: about page on the website that you see that everything
Speaker 1: is supposed to be satire, although for it to really
Speaker 1: be satire, you have to know it's satire um In reality,
Speaker 1: I would call those websites just purveyors of lies. They
Speaker 1: just make up junk and they pass it off as true.
Speaker 1: And it's only if you dig in the website that
Speaker 1: you find the little disclaimer saying, oh, this is a
Speaker 1: satire site. That's not really satire, that's fake news. Um.
Speaker 1: And I hate using the term fake news because it's
Speaker 1: so politicized, but there really is that stuff out there,
Speaker 1: and it's been there for years. And like I said,
Speaker 1: it's not just politics. I've seen it for things like, uh,
Speaker 1: the entertainment industry, where you'll see some ridiculous headline you think, well,
Speaker 1: that's just bizarre, and only through digging you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to this. So the owners of those sites
Speaker 1: are really in a sweet spot. They can point to
Speaker 1: that about page and say, hey, it's not our intent
Speaker 1: to be taken as a serious source of news. You
Speaker 1: just read our about page. You see that we're a
Speaker 1: joke site. But they also keep publishing articles that don't
Speaker 1: seem to be so much of a joke as an
Speaker 1: outright fabrication, and they end up making huge amounts of
Speaker 1: money off of ads. High engagement means high traffic. High
Speaker 1: traffic means high page views, high page views means you're
Speaker 1: start making money off the ads that you serve against
Speaker 1: your site. So those deceitful articles are really just a
Speaker 1: means to an end. The consequences of those deceitful articles,
Speaker 1: the idea that they might be spreading misinformation, that's not
Speaker 1: really a consideration or concern for a lot of these sites.
Speaker 1: And I've read articles, I've read interviews by people who
Speaker 1: wrote for these sites, and it's clear that they were
Speaker 1: just trying to think of ways that would get more
Speaker 1: people to click on stories, and that beyond that, they
Speaker 1: didn't care. They just wanted to drive traffic, to get
Speaker 1: a lot of traffic, to make a lot of money,
Speaker 1: and so they would just come up with whatever outlandish
Speaker 1: stories they could think of that would play right into
Speaker 1: people's preconceived ideas in order to make money. It's very cynical,
Speaker 1: and as someone who works very hard to create content
Speaker 1: that I consider to be of high quality, I find
Speaker 1: it quite insulting to just both as a reader and
Speaker 1: as someone who creates content. All Right, so you've got
Speaker 1: these writers cynically creating inflammatory articles to drive traffic to
Speaker 1: a site. They might incorporate just enough real world facts
Speaker 1: to give the article some believability, but even that isn't
Speaker 1: really necessary, as a lot of people are going to
Speaker 1: just share an article if the headline gets their attention
Speaker 1: and seems to confirm they're already held beliefs. And if
Speaker 1: you believe deep in your heart that your local government
Speaker 1: was I don't know, replaced with pod people or something,
Speaker 1: the headline that says as much confirms and validates your belief.
Speaker 1: And hey, you're busy, right. You can't be expected to
Speaker 1: read every article you come across just to see if
Speaker 1: it's legit, or even do further digging to make sure
Speaker 1: the site that hosted the article is in fact a
Speaker 1: real news site, so you just share it. Add to
Speaker 1: this the fact that there are countless sites out there
Speaker 1: that only exist to repurpose other people's content that performs
Speaker 1: well in order to exploit that content for advertising revenue.
Speaker 1: And you have a recipe to make things worse. So
Speaker 1: these are outfits that are all about let's look and
Speaker 1: see what's trending, and hey, there's this article. Let's say
Speaker 1: it's on BuzzFeed. There's this article on BuzzFeed. It's to
Speaker 1: end super well, let's do a version, our version of
Speaker 1: that exact same article, and we're going to piggyback off
Speaker 1: their success. Um, there are a lot of different sites
Speaker 1: out there that are essentially doing this. They're taking other
Speaker 1: people's content. They might change enough stuff so that it's not,
Speaker 1: you know, just a hatchet copy and paste job, but
Speaker 1: ultimately they're just again about trying to get as much
Speaker 1: traffic as possible. The content can be terrible. By the way,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if the content is good or not.
Speaker 1: It just has to drive engagement. So now you've got
Speaker 1: people trying to make legitimate, good content, the content that
Speaker 1: is thorough, it's investigative, it's objective, it's of high quality,
Speaker 1: and they're competing with people just throwing junk up online
Speaker 1: as fast as they possibly can to drive as many
Speaker 1: page views as possible. This is not a good environment
Speaker 1: if you want to make good content, because you get
Speaker 1: drowned out by all the noise. You can hope that
Speaker 1: your reputation is good enough so that people take you seriously,
Speaker 1: but you're still going up against people who just don't
Speaker 1: care about quality. They care about quantity and engagement, and
Speaker 1: that is very demoralizing as you go on. Now, so
Speaker 1: far i've been talking about this just as a way
Speaker 1: to make money through serving up ads against lousy content.
Speaker 1: But when we come back, I'll talk about the dreaded
Speaker 1: fake news for political gains. I'm talking about the stuff
Speaker 1: fabricated to guide conversations and influence political elections. So stay
Speaker 1: tuned because that's coming up next. But first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. Propaganda is a
Speaker 1: really old idea, and the definition of propaganda is that
Speaker 1: it is information, typically biased, sometimes disinformation or misleading information,
Speaker 1: maybe an even outright lie, but it's used to promote
Speaker 1: a particular philosophical or political point of view. All sorts
Speaker 1: of organizations used propaganda to build support among the general
Speaker 1: public for a particular stance or action, such as electing
Speaker 1: a leader or putting your faith in an organization. Russian
Speaker 1: propaganda is kind of in a class all of its own.
Speaker 1: For decades, the Soviet government used propaganda to praise Soviet
Speaker 1: leaders and demonize Western countries, particularly the United States, as
Speaker 1: well as the concept of capitalism. During the Soviet era,
Speaker 1: the various publications in the Soviet Union were state owned,
Speaker 1: so the government got to dictate what was communicated down
Speaker 1: to the citizens. Us very much a propaganda machine. Russian
Speaker 1: propagandists included artists who are great at capturing the public imagination.
Speaker 1: Now these days, at least when it comes to the Internet,
Speaker 1: Russian propagandists are like assembly line workers. In March two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, Time magazine published an article titled a former
Speaker 1: Russian troll explains how to spread fake news Now. That person,
Speaker 1: vitally best Belove, explained that he took a job with
Speaker 1: a company called the Internet Research Agency. That particular company,
Speaker 1: a lot of people call it a troll factory. It's
Speaker 1: just infamous for churning up people who do this professionally
Speaker 1: in Russia. The real purpose of this organization is not
Speaker 1: to conduct research, despite the name Internet Research Agency, but
Speaker 1: rather spread propaganda as quickly and as effectively as possible.
Speaker 1: The employees were given instructions to create fake accounts on
Speaker 1: various social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and to
Speaker 1: leave comments and posts that followed the directions of their superiors.
Speaker 1: So those directions could involve sharing an article that was
Speaker 1: written specifically to appeal to people with particular political or
Speaker 1: social views, or to leave comments on posts of that nature,
Speaker 1: and the whole point was to make those article will
Speaker 1: seem relevant and important and elevated and popular to get
Speaker 1: a post rolling with enough momentum and make it go
Speaker 1: viral so that it could affect as many people as possible.
Speaker 1: The Russian government, by the way, doesn't place the same
Speaker 1: value on free speech as say United States citizens do.
Speaker 1: The Russian government has laws that make it illegal to
Speaker 1: post certain types of material on social media pages, such
Speaker 1: as material meant to quote threatened public order end quote,
Speaker 1: or posts that are extremist in nature. Now, on the
Speaker 1: face of it, that sounds reasonable, because you don't want
Speaker 1: people to incite others to violence, But the Russian government's
Speaker 1: interpretation of this tends to be we don't want you
Speaker 1: posting anything that criticizes the Russian government in general, or
Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin in particular, or any of Putant's buddies generally speaking.
Speaker 1: So the Russian rules seem to be we want to
Speaker 1: make sure that everything that is posted is true and
Speaker 1: liable and objective. But in reality, it's more about we
Speaker 1: don't want to see you posting anything that's critical of
Speaker 1: our president. Twitter has also been a target for these
Speaker 1: types of tactics. In July two thousand eighteen, NBR ran
Speaker 1: a story about how that same Internet Research agency had
Speaker 1: created nearly fifty Twitter accounts claiming to represent various US newspapers.
Speaker 1: Most of those newspapers were fake. They did not exist.
Speaker 1: They were just made up by the Twitter accounts. So
Speaker 1: you might see a title, their city name and a
Speaker 1: newspaper title, and there's no actual newspaper called that from
Speaker 1: that city. The accounts were steadily gathering followers, and they
Speaker 1: were posting links to news that was relevant to the
Speaker 1: various regions the papers claimed to represent, like Chicago or Seattle.
Speaker 1: And again, some of these were taking names of papers
Speaker 1: that one day existed but haven't existed for decades, so
Speaker 1: they were trying to trade on that legitimacy, and they
Speaker 1: were also trying to establish a sense of legitimacy by
Speaker 1: sending spreading links to real stories that were from those areas,
Speaker 1: and they were unbiased news reports. This was not a
Speaker 1: misinformation campaign at this point, there was no fake news
Speaker 1: being spread around. But NBR had uncovered this trend and
Speaker 1: realized that what was happening was that the Internet Research
Speaker 1: Agency was building trust online through these fake accounts and
Speaker 1: gathering followers that way and being seen as a reliable
Speaker 1: news source, and it was all in preparation to begin
Speaker 1: a misinformation campaign. It's just that NBR found out about
Speaker 1: it before they had moved into that phase. Twitter, like Facebook,
Speaker 1: measures engagement and stuff like replies, retweets, quoted tweets, likes,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and those metrics guide Twitter to
Speaker 1: occasionally show tweets beyond the feeds of people that are
Speaker 1: directly following those accounts. So, in other words, if I
Speaker 1: make a Twitter account and I follow let's say five people,
Speaker 1: and I'm I would expect every time I log into Twitter,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna see the tweets from those five people
Speaker 1: and the stuff that they retweet or quote, and that's
Speaker 1: all I'm gonna see. So I might see tweets from
Speaker 1: others occasionally, but because one of the people I followed
Speaker 1: retweeted it or quoted it. Except that sometimes Twitter will
Speaker 1: show me tweets beyond those five people that were not
Speaker 1: retweeted or quoted by them. And you might not follow
Speaker 1: one of those fake accounts, but you might still see
Speaker 1: a post from it because it drove a lot of engagement,
Speaker 1: and thus Twitter would serve it up to you saying, well,
Speaker 1: this particular post seems to be really relevant. A lot
Speaker 1: of people are responding to it, so maybe we should
Speaker 1: show it to more people because I bet more people
Speaker 1: will find it interesting. And that's one way Twitter can
Speaker 1: facilitate the uh the spread of misinformation, or they can
Speaker 1: pay for promoted tweets, which means Twitter will serve it
Speaker 1: up to a larger number of people, regardless of whether
Speaker 1: or not they follow the original account. And of course,
Speaker 1: if someone you follow retweets are quotes a tweet from
Speaker 1: differ account, you're going to see it then. So, like
Speaker 1: Facebook's algorithm, this approach is something people can exploit, and
Speaker 1: that seems to be the case. Since the twenty six
Speaker 1: election in the United States, both Facebook and Twitter have
Speaker 1: cracked down on accounts that were fake in the sense
Speaker 1: that the entity the account claimed to represent was not
Speaker 1: the real owner of the account, or they were accounts
Speaker 1: that existed specifically to spread misinformation. So you can see,
Speaker 1: our love of social media and the business model that
Speaker 1: supports social media has created a perfect situation for savvy
Speaker 1: people who wish to spread a specific message. We humans
Speaker 1: are less likely to feel empathy in online interactions with
Speaker 1: each other, were more likely to respond quickly and with
Speaker 1: very little inhibition. This leads to other people responding to
Speaker 1: our words in a similar manner, either in support of
Speaker 1: our view or an attempt to rip us to shreds,
Speaker 1: and the process continues. That same process fuels the visibility
Speaker 1: of the original piece of content that prompted the flame
Speaker 1: war in the first place, which means even more people
Speaker 1: see it and react to it. This rewards the social
Speaker 1: media site, as the more engagement needs more money from
Speaker 1: ads served on the site itself. So Facebook once more engagement,
Speaker 1: they want to make more money through ads and the
Speaker 1: uh It rewards whatever entity posts the content because it
Speaker 1: means that the message is getting out there is shaping
Speaker 1: the perception of whatever the topic happens to be, and
Speaker 1: it can also be a monetary reward if the content
Speaker 1: is served up with ads for those entities, and it
Speaker 1: serves to create a deeper divide between the people who
Speaker 1: have opposing points of view on a given subject. And
Speaker 1: since it is a more challenging prospect to engage online
Speaker 1: in an empathetic way, we are not likely to come
Speaker 1: to any sort of agreement on that object. Instead, we're
Speaker 1: gonna push ourselves more toward that us versus them mentality.
Speaker 1: Now I didn't even touch on other problems, such as
Speaker 1: the belief that journalism must give an equal amount of
Speaker 1: time and opportunity to all perspectives on the topic. Now,
Speaker 1: journalism should be objective and unbiased. It should be investigative.
Speaker 1: It should not take anything at face value. But that
Speaker 1: is not the same thing as giving all sides of
Speaker 1: a discussion equal opportunity to use the platform to get
Speaker 1: a message out. If there's a hate group that exists
Speaker 1: primarily to oppress some other group, it's not responsible journalism
Speaker 1: to give that group a platform to espouse those beliefs. Now,
Speaker 1: it would be objective journalism to investigate that group to
Speaker 1: determine what are the motivations behind that group's philosophy, why
Speaker 1: do they believe the things they do, and why do
Speaker 1: they act in the ways that they have chosen, and
Speaker 1: to publish that that response, That that investigation. But it
Speaker 1: is not journalism's responsibility to act like a stage for
Speaker 1: anyone to jump up and use it. So what can
Speaker 1: we do about this? Well, one thing we can try
Speaker 1: to remember is that the people online are mostly people mostly.
Speaker 1: I mean there are bots, their fake accounts that have
Speaker 1: made this kind of muddy, makes it a little more
Speaker 1: tricky to just make a blanket statement to be honest.
Speaker 1: And in some cases, the quote unquote person on the
Speaker 1: other end may either not be a person at all,
Speaker 1: or they may be someone who is posting something they
Speaker 1: don't necessarily believe or care about. They're just posting it
Speaker 1: because it's literally their job to do it. They're just
Speaker 1: filling out an assignment. They don't care because they have
Speaker 1: no investment in whatever the messages. But we should remember
Speaker 1: that most of the people that we interact with online
Speaker 1: are people, and we need to keep that in our minds.
Speaker 1: If we are not willing to make that that assumption,
Speaker 1: then that says something very troubling about our own character. Now, no,
Speaker 1: when I say this, I do not mean that we
Speaker 1: need to entertain racist or misogynist or hateful ideologies just
Speaker 1: because people hold them. I don't think there's any place
Speaker 1: for that kind of stuff, at least no place I
Speaker 1: want to be in. Another thing we can try to
Speaker 1: do is seek out information from reliable sources, not just
Speaker 1: information that seems to support our own personal worldview, but
Speaker 1: objective information about any number of topics. And it might
Speaker 1: mean that you find yourself questioning your own perspective about
Speaker 1: certain things, and maybe you even change your mind. For example,
Speaker 1: if you asked me a year ago why I thought
Speaker 1: about universal basic income as a concept, I would probably
Speaker 1: be pretty positive about it, and I still am. I'm
Speaker 1: still more or less positive about it. But I think
Speaker 1: instead of universal basic income, what I would prefer to
Speaker 1: see is some sort of universal guaranteed jobs program. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, I would like to see a program
Speaker 1: where anyone who wants to find a job can get
Speaker 1: a job. It's a guarantee. Now, those jobs would have
Speaker 1: to be created by various governments at various levels. It
Speaker 1: could be everything from a local government to federal programs,
Speaker 1: but it could include all different types of work as well,
Speaker 1: and that would be very important. But I don't say
Speaker 1: this to convince anyone that my beliefs are the only
Speaker 1: legit ones, that my approach is the only right way,
Speaker 1: and that everyone should just subscribe to my idea, or
Speaker 1: at least the idea that I have already subscribed to.
Speaker 1: It's not my idea. Other people have had universally guaranteed
Speaker 1: job program UH suggestions for years and years and years.
Speaker 1: I did not come up with that idea, but I
Speaker 1: just wanted to give you an example as an idea
Speaker 1: where originally I was thinking, yeah, universal basic income, that
Speaker 1: makes most sense to me. But I actually think that
Speaker 1: the guaranteed jobs makes more sense because it creates more
Speaker 1: direct benefits, and I think it's an easier concept to
Speaker 1: get up to to get support behind. So there are
Speaker 1: reasons why I've changed my mind. But that wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been possible if I had not sought out more information
Speaker 1: about the subject from a variety of different sources. If
Speaker 1: I had only just kept reading people who were advocating
Speaker 1: for universal basic income, I never would have taken any
Speaker 1: time to consider alternatives. So that's a simple example, and
Speaker 1: also it's an example that I admit is is fairly shallow. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not a huge shift to go from universal basic
Speaker 1: income to universal uh guaranteed job program. That's not an
Speaker 1: enormous leap. It would take a lot more for me
Speaker 1: to change a more fundamental idea. I have to something
Speaker 1: that is more in opposition to that idea. But it
Speaker 1: is important for us to seek those pieces of information
Speaker 1: out so that we aren't just confirming our biases, whether
Speaker 1: we consider ourselves liberal or conservative, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: It's very important to try and seek that out. Now,
Speaker 1: the real trick there, obviously, is trying to find sources
Speaker 1: that are as objective as possible and you're not just reading,
Speaker 1: you know, propaganda that is supporting one viewpoint over another.
Speaker 1: I don't think we're going to get to a spot
Speaker 1: where everyone magically becomes totally objective and empathetic all at
Speaker 1: the same time and makes decisions that are responsible from
Speaker 1: a social and physical point of view. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's going to happen. But being aware of how online information,
Speaker 1: which has become the primary source for information for a
Speaker 1: growing number of people, can be used to manipulate those people,
Speaker 1: that's of critical importance. Only then can we spot what's
Speaker 1: happening and we can do our best to shut down
Speaker 1: abuses of the system and make informed decisions based on
Speaker 1: real information and maybe remember that we're all human beings
Speaker 1: in the process. Uh. It's a big request, but I
Speaker 1: think we could do it if we wanted to. That
Speaker 1: wraps up this episode about echo chambers. In our next episode,
Speaker 1: we will start our discussion about Cambridge Analytica and the
Speaker 1: enormous mess that company found itself in. UH, if you
Speaker 1: guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff. Send
Speaker 1: me an email the addresses tech stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com, or you can drop me a line
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of those
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff hs W. Don't forget we have a
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Speaker 1: And make sure you follow us on Instagram and I'll
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Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is that how stuff works
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