2:01

Everyone's brain shut down. You

2:04

know what I mean? Because it's like

2:06

this, I'm already in this post-Holid Thanksgiving

2:08

space where I'm feeling myself pulled like

2:11

into Christmas and into like not paying

2:14

attention to anything, like trying

2:16

to put off big projects. And I'm

2:18

wondering if in your world something similar

2:20

happens and when it happens. Yeah.

2:23

Well, the whole DC policy

2:26

space really does follow like an

2:28

academic calendar. And

2:33

actually, I

2:35

guess thinking more through it. So like

2:37

I went to University of Pennsylvania. So

2:39

in addition to like academic calendar, like

2:42

Jewish holidays also kind of were

2:44

major points. And I think that's

2:47

also the case in DC as well. So

2:49

like things don't really get rolling until like

2:51

mid September, then there's Thanksgiving, then there's Christmas,

2:53

like there's only little chunks where people are

2:55

actually working. But then, you know,

2:57

there's some people who like working

2:59

a little too much. And they're the ones

3:01

who are still, you know, going on into

3:03

the online trenches, like on holidays to do

3:05

battle. Talk about generally

3:08

esoteric policy stuff. Hard pass on

3:10

that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like,

3:12

one could do that as a way to

3:14

avoid family and like having to and it's

3:16

like, oh, sorry, I can't I can't, you

3:18

know, come out to grandma's house for the

3:20

whole week because I'm the designated, you know,

3:22

person that has to be online just in

3:24

case all hell breaks loose, which I have

3:26

used that before. Very

3:29

helpful. Yeah,

3:32

you get to be the newsroom watcher, you're

3:34

the ghost light in the newsroom on on

3:37

a holiday. So you don't have to yeah, the

3:39

little bank light that's flickering. That's me. Yeah,

3:43

there was a weird dynamic. When

3:46

I was a junior researcher, like accounts on

3:48

foreign relations, you know, everyone's trying to get

3:50

published, get their raw bed out there. But

3:52

they're normally younger folks for good

3:54

reason aren't that credible of voices. But

3:56

the holidays, you know, it was a moment where you'd shoot

3:59

your shot, right? Because Older people

4:01

have families and kids who they

4:03

hopefully love. But

4:05

you're a grinder in your mid-20s. Young

4:11

people not being very credible, will that

4:13

possibly be a theme of this

4:16

episode? Who'd you say? I think a

4:18

little. Yeah, I don't know. I'm

4:23

always fascinated by this topic. I think Emily's heard me tell this

4:25

story 15 times now. But

4:28

I worked retail

4:30

for so long that the holidays

4:32

still give me anxiety. Like

4:35

we'll go into Thanksgiving and like, oh, that's Black Friday.

4:38

It's going to be my busiest day of the year.

4:40

And then it's just going to be a nonstop nightmare

4:42

until the middle of January. And

4:45

then getting like a

4:47

steady job in news,

4:50

it's the opposite and everything slows down, but

4:52

my anxiety remains. And

4:54

I don't know what to do with it. So

4:56

I'm always interested to hear who else is just

4:58

relaxing and not doing much as

5:00

the turkey works through their system. I

5:05

would say broadly, being in a war

5:08

and social media is not like a recipe to

5:11

turning off. Maybe

5:14

that explains maybe a lot

5:17

about my personality then, actually. Yeah,

5:21

but that's on you. The posters

5:23

are here. Everybody is,

5:26

it's happening. It's all happening. Because

5:28

I'm going to go home and my mom is going to yell at me

5:30

for being on the phone too much. I can

5:33

feel it. But

5:35

speaking of being on your phone too much, let's actually

5:38

get into today's topic. Can

5:40

you introduce yourself for us, the audience? Sure

5:43

thing. My name is Emerson Brooking.

5:45

I'm a resident senior fellow at the Digital

5:48

Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council where

5:50

I study the intersection of social media

5:53

and warfare. I'm also

5:55

co-author of a 2018 book, Like

5:57

War, Weaponization of Social Media. with

6:00

Peter Singer, right, is the co-op? That's right.

6:04

I think we've had on the show before,

6:06

but anyway, it doesn't matter. So I want

6:08

to talk to you about this today in part because

6:11

I know, Emily, both of

6:13

our mothers are sending us posts

6:16

of things that are happening

6:19

in the Israel-Hamas war. Some

6:21

of them are outright lies. And

6:24

I know that this is a thing that you

6:26

followed for a long time, Emerson. We

6:28

were wondering, what

6:31

is it about this war specifically

6:34

that seems to bring out the

6:37

half-truths, the lies, the disinformation? Is it more

6:39

prevalent than ever, or are we just paying

6:41

attention? And how do we get

6:44

our mothers to stop sending us posts? Well,

6:47

your last question will be the hardest to

6:49

hit. So we'll maybe filibuster that one. In

6:53

general, I think

6:55

that the disinformation around this conflict

6:57

really is unprecedented, both in the

7:00

volume and I think

7:03

also the audacity

7:06

of some lies, some falsehoods

7:08

which have been spread, which are clearly

7:10

intended to drive action

7:13

in one part of the conflict or another. And

7:16

the reason for that, and why

7:19

it's even worse, for instance, than the 2022 Russian

7:22

invasion of Ukraine, is that

7:25

publics who are

7:28

deeply sympathetic to either position

7:30

in the conflict are all

7:33

parts of the same online spaces.

7:37

And broadly, the Israel-Hastenian debate

7:40

is something that's suffused Western

7:42

and especially American politics for

7:45

decades. So of course,

7:47

as more people have gone online, they've

7:49

taken their old positions, but they've moved

7:52

into these new online spaces where they're already

7:54

prepared to engage even more aggressively with

7:57

each other. And I guess one

7:59

point just from the outset, I'm sorry. staying different sides of

8:01

this conflict. When I say

8:04

shorthand, I'm often thinking about pro-Palestinian

8:06

and pro-Israeli positions. Obviously,

8:08

October 7 was a terror

8:10

attack by Hamas, which represents elements of

8:12

Gaza, which is not

8:15

all Palestinian territories, not all Palestine.

8:18

And many pro-Palestinian activists

8:21

are not supportive of Hamas, indeed most

8:23

are not. But I wanna draw

8:25

that distinction because that can often be lost when we talk

8:28

about one side or another. And

8:31

I would say that that is one of the, probably

8:33

one of the big broad brush, like

8:36

lies or bits of misinformation, is to align

8:38

anyone who is invested in

8:40

human rights and

8:46

the plight of the people in Gaza

8:48

as Hamas sympathizers, right? Absolutely.

8:51

I mean, this is a

8:54

particular tactic that transcends

8:58

one conflict. We saw

9:00

in 2020, at the height of

9:02

the George Floyd protests, a pretty

9:04

concerted effort by the American far

9:06

right to tie Antifa

9:09

to terrorism, to

9:11

suggest that they were even supported by

9:14

foreign terrorist organizations. At the time I

9:16

published a analysis of this

9:18

disinformation campaign with the DFR Lab.

9:21

But of course, this phenomenon also

9:23

transcends social media altogether. Vincent

9:26

Bevin's book, The Jakarta Method, talks

9:28

about how when different, mostly

9:32

leftist groups or causes were being marginalized,

9:35

the first thing one would do would

9:37

be to associate them with

9:40

abhorrent political violence or terrorism, which

9:42

they were often tangentially connected, if

9:44

connected at all. Yeah, I think

9:46

I have a good, my dog is

9:49

an Antifa super soldier sticker somewhere that a friend

9:51

of mine made for me. And from like, I

9:53

don't know, 2017, something like that, when

9:56

all that discourse is happening. Yeah,

9:59

it's... It's always

10:01

interesting to me the leaps

10:04

that people will make in trying to

10:06

connect things that are not really connected

10:08

at all. So

10:12

it's politics first, facts

10:14

second kind

10:17

of information space is what I'm

10:19

gathering then. It

10:21

is certainly politics first, facts second,

10:23

although I would observe that is

10:26

most online debates. That's

10:29

fair. That was one of my questions here actually.

10:34

Is like

10:36

certainly there's been conflict

10:39

between Hamas and

10:41

Israel over the past 20 years. Is

10:45

it just that this is the first big conflict

10:48

between the two since

10:51

we've had really the breakout success of

10:53

social media and is

10:55

this really any different than anything

10:57

that played out in

10:59

Syria and I know you already mentioned it

11:01

but Ukraine and Russia. Is it just that this

11:04

is something that people in America are more

11:06

invested in? I think the

11:09

salience of this issue for American audience is a

11:11

huge factor for why you keep seeing it. Actually

11:15

to briefly go back to Russia Ukraine that

11:17

was an interesting case because most

11:20

Western audiences were very

11:22

sympathetic to the Ukrainian position. Western

11:25

social media companies were trying to help their

11:27

Ukrainian users. It's

11:29

pretty clear where the

11:33

public fell and also Russia

11:35

had its own interest in sort

11:37

of pulling its citizens out of

11:40

the shared information ecosystem. So

11:42

there was a sort of separation that

11:44

occurred. There

11:47

can be no such separation

11:49

or disentangling from social media

11:51

of pro-Israeli and

11:53

pro-Palestinian voices and

11:55

I mean that is a huge

11:57

reason that you see this. everywhere

12:00

and all at once. Another

12:03

important takeaway, which is more straightforward,

12:05

is that this war

12:08

is so much bigger than anything

12:10

before it. More people died in

12:12

the first two weeks of the

12:14

conflict than did the entirety

12:16

of the Second Intifada. I

12:19

got interested in social media and warfare

12:21

actually because of an IDF air campaign

12:23

against Gaza in 2012. There

12:27

was another bigger campaign, which included a ground invasion of

12:29

Gaza in 2014. There

12:31

were, I think, missile strikes

12:33

in other campaigns in 2017 and 2019 and 2021, which tracked

12:39

all those. But in this one,

12:42

just the strategic

12:44

surprise that Hamas achieved, the extent

12:47

of that initial terror attack, the

12:50

mass killing of Israeli civilians in

12:52

a way, in a

12:54

systematic fashion that had actually not even happened

12:56

in the Second Intifada and the

12:59

propagandistic sharing of it, then

13:01

a retaliatory

13:03

bombing campaign that

13:07

per capita has inflicted something

13:09

like 4,911 attacks

13:11

on Gaza in the course of

13:13

a month and a half. All

13:17

of this is new. And that's

13:20

why it is just

13:22

so closely tied now to social

13:24

media and why, if you're even

13:27

loosely connected to politics on social

13:29

media, this war, the graphic imagery,

13:31

the accumulating horror and tragedy is

13:34

impossible to escape. You were

13:36

saying that what happened in 2012 on

13:38

social media was really what got

13:40

you interested. What was going on

13:42

on social media then? I'm just

13:44

trying to think back. Facebook was

13:46

big, Twitter was called Twitter. I

13:49

don't think we had Instagram or maybe we did, but

13:51

not very many people were on it. So

13:53

what was the draw for you? So

13:57

in November 2012, the

14:01

IDF assassinated a

14:03

Hamas militant leader

14:06

who had been responsible for some of

14:08

the school bus bombings of Israelis during

14:10

the second intifada. That

14:13

wasn't unique, targeted killings took place

14:15

quite frequently in this conflict. But

14:18

what was different was that the IDF also

14:20

had an infographic ready to go announcing that

14:22

they killed this guy. They posted it on

14:24

Twitter a few hours afterward, then

14:26

they posted the drone video to YouTube

14:28

almost immediately after that. And

14:31

then that was just the start of the conflict.

14:33

The IDF announced that they'd be continuing operations, Hamas

14:37

fighters should run and hide. But

14:39

at this time, Hamas also had just

14:42

a single public-facing Twitter account, Al-Qassam Brigades.

14:44

And so they responded in kind. They

14:46

said, no, we're going to fight you,

14:48

you've opened the gates of hell. So

14:50

there was this bizarre war of words that was

14:52

happening concurrent with the military

14:56

actions. So in the

14:58

real world, this ended up being an eight day air

15:00

campaign that ultimately it didn't

15:02

culminate into a ground incursion.

15:05

But online, people

15:08

dubbed it the first Twitter war, because

15:10

there were about 10 million messages exchanged

15:13

over these eight days, some like 92%

15:16

of them came from outside

15:18

of the conflict region. And

15:21

so you saw this intense

15:23

international attention and engagement

15:25

in this war of words. And

15:28

so at the time, I had a broad

15:30

interest in US defense policy. I

15:34

had grown up in rural

15:36

Georgia, so which means I grown up

15:38

on the internet before I could drive.

15:40

And since war is a

15:43

political exercise, I've been thinking a lot

15:45

about how war politics

15:48

and social media might intersect. So

15:50

this seemed just a clear

15:53

case study of that. And

15:56

indeed, subsequent analysis showed that the

15:58

IDF was probably a on

18:00

global policymaking and on wartime

18:02

decisions. I feel like I've seen either

18:05

the official Israel Twitter account or the official IDF

18:11

Twitter account from

18:14

the perspective that I'm

18:16

seeing it in a lot of ways

18:18

getting back into a corner by a

18:20

lot of posters online in a way

18:22

that I hadn't seen them get

18:26

bodied like that before, but

18:28

also more specifically like, you

18:30

know, people will yell at

18:32

politicians online, people will yell

18:34

at corporations online. But

18:38

it's been a very interesting move

18:41

from, you know,

18:44

trusting and reacting positively

18:46

to more official accounts versus,

18:49

oh, you know who has the best

18:51

coverage right now? Popcrave. That's

18:54

been fascinating to see and I wondered if you had any

18:56

thoughts about that. Yeah, I

18:59

first, I

19:01

think it's important to note, just

19:04

always be aware of the biases that we

19:06

might bring as we're watching certain online

19:10

conversation patterns,

19:13

because sometimes an

19:15

actor may be using a platform, but they're

19:17

not necessarily speaking to most of the audience

19:19

on that platform. So as

19:22

you said, the IDF Twitter

19:24

account gets pretty consistently bodied. Like that's

19:26

totally true. But I think for the

19:28

IDF and Israeli messaging, they're

19:31

much more interested in reaching a

19:33

handful of American political elites versus

19:35

like these broader circles. I

19:38

would also though note, and

19:41

there's been a ton written on this,

19:43

but the nature

19:45

of Israeli public

19:47

diplomacy around this war has felt

19:52

uniquely disjointed to me even more

19:54

so than prior

19:57

conflicts, even more so than

19:59

prior conflicts. an

22:00

institution, you know,

22:02

a lot of the recruits are very young

22:04

people, are people who grew up on

22:06

the internet, or people who have been online, who are

22:08

very online. Something

22:11

that struck me a couple weeks ago is

22:13

that the IDF also launched a podcast during

22:16

all of this. And

22:18

just having this realization of, oh,

22:21

I can see what they're doing here. They

22:24

have a social strategy. They

22:26

have people whose job it is within the

22:28

military, which, you know, other

22:31

governments, other militaries definitely have this as well.

22:34

But it just struck

22:36

me seeing it all seemingly

22:38

unfold during a conflict over

22:41

a very short period of time. Everybody's

22:44

launching podcasts now. It

22:46

is a few years too late, but best of luck

22:49

to them. But I mean,

22:51

the just picking up on that thread, Emily, the

22:55

IDF was really ahead of the curve

22:57

of any other Western military in thinking

23:00

about the importance of social media communication.

23:04

And they didn't start in this war, even a few

23:06

years ago. There was actually a mini

23:10

revolution in the IDF around 2010.

23:14

This was after the 2009

23:17

Operation Cast Lead, where

23:20

there was a broad awareness in Israel.

23:22

This was the last major ground occupation

23:24

of Gaza. And there was

23:26

an awareness across the Israeli

23:29

government or a feeling that they basically lost

23:31

the media war, that they tried

23:33

to stop press from

23:35

reporting. This

23:38

meant the press had only been more critical of

23:40

IDF actions. And at this

23:42

point, enough Twitter and online conversations had existed

23:44

that Israel really felt they'd been on

23:46

the losing side of things. So around

23:50

2010, there were a

23:52

group of essentially millennials,

23:54

very junior level officers who

23:57

tried to push IDF public

23:59

communication in a different, more

24:01

active direction, especially online. And

24:05

the first results of that actually were seen

24:07

in that 2012 Twitter war, which we discussed

24:09

earlier. And that sort of lean

24:11

forward posture has continued, but

24:14

that also comes under criticism. Because the more

24:16

content you put out, the more you say

24:19

you try to be

24:23

hip, you know, keep up with particular online

24:25

trends, adopt the same language

24:28

of your users. That's

24:31

also creating new points of

24:34

vulnerability, which your critics of which there

24:36

are many will attack. So

24:38

it may be at the end of all this, the

24:40

idea of might come back to a more sort of

24:42

restrained online posture. But this, you know,

24:45

debates within militaries about how

24:47

to communicate, to what extent, that

24:50

stuff is endless. But especially in the idea,

24:52

just it's actually one more point. I

24:56

remember all the way back in 2012, seeing

24:58

a really glitzy

25:00

advertisement for service in

25:03

the IDF, where it shows a

25:05

whole team of smiling

25:09

draftees at computers. And it says, you

25:11

know, fulfill your draft requirement with graphic

25:13

design or blogging. And the

25:16

message is that these were important

25:18

military functions that they in some

25:20

ways were almost co-equal with other

25:22

military operational roles. Every

25:25

branch needs public affairs officers. Somebody's

25:28

got to be answering those phones. All right,

25:30

cyber listeners, we're gonna pause there for a break. We'll be right

25:32

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by Code Comments, an original podcast by

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Red Hat. You know when

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29:52

cyber listeners, we are back on talking

29:54

with Emerson Brooking about what's

29:56

real and what's true. We've

29:58

talked a lot about kind of... IDF's

30:00

social strategy, can

30:03

we now talk about Hamas's?

30:06

And I'm thinking specifically of Hamas as a

30:09

separate entity from

30:11

broader, more

30:13

humanitarian-aligned, like Palestinian and free

30:16

Gaza movements. Definitely. So

30:22

something else that really is clear in

30:24

this, the social media elements of

30:26

this war is that the war began

30:28

on telegram. That the

30:31

conversation and informational conflict has

30:33

still been waged primarily on

30:35

acts, but

30:37

Hamas, which

30:40

does not have such a strong public

30:42

social media presence, has a robust

30:44

presence on telegram. And

30:46

I guess telegram for folks who've used it less

30:49

often, telegram is both

30:51

an encrypted messaging service, but it also

30:53

enables you to very

30:56

easily create broadcast groups where

30:58

you or a handful of moderators can be

31:02

sending messages that will reach tens

31:04

or hundreds of thousands of people at once. And

31:07

telegram also has a famously

31:09

loose content moderation policy. Way

31:12

back in the day, the Islamic State used telegram.

31:16

Hamas and many other militant groups use

31:18

it today. During Russia, Ukraine, both Ukrainian

31:21

and Russian military units have regularly used

31:23

telegram. There are tons

31:25

of reasons for why telegram has a lax

31:27

content moderation policy. Main reason is that, actually,

31:30

we'll briefly down this rabbit hole,

31:32

the founder of telegram Pavel Durov

31:34

was previously, I think, co-founder of

31:37

V-Contact, VK, which was the

31:39

big Russian Facebook. He

31:43

got chased out of Russia by 2014. He

31:46

had, in part because he didn't want to

31:48

turn over private information of

31:50

the Russian government. So he's

31:52

taken a sort of a maximalist free

31:55

speech privacy position. And that position

31:57

suffuses telegram, which is I understand.

31:59

understand he still controls completely. So

32:02

there's a reason why that's a

32:05

popular platform and why it's unlikely to

32:08

change in any meaningful way. So that's a platform

32:10

Hamas was using when in the

32:13

first hours of October 7, the official

32:15

Al-Qassam brigade's account posted

32:18

a 10-minute pre-recorded sort of

32:20

declaration of war against Israel.

32:23

And then within an hour, they

32:25

were sharing the first images

32:27

taken by fighters during the attack

32:29

and the first videos soon thereafter.

32:33

So they were trying to

32:35

get their justification

32:38

and then their content created from

32:40

the account into public spaces as

32:42

soon as possible. Because although

32:44

it started on Telegram, obviously most people didn't see

32:46

it on Telegram, they saw it on other platforms.

32:50

And that content wasn't spread by Hamas then it

32:52

was spread by people who were horrified at what

32:54

Hamas was doing. This is the

32:57

basis of terrorist communications. It's

32:59

been really fascinating to do this job in

33:01

the past like five, ten years and watch

33:04

Telegram slowly take over as

33:08

a first or like it's the first source

33:10

for things before it kind of gets disseminated

33:12

out. And I've not thought of it as

33:18

you are creating your little broadcast community. You

33:22

have complete control over what you're going to

33:24

say and you don't have

33:26

any control over what people are going to do

33:28

with it, but that's beside the point. So it

33:30

has been fascinating to

33:36

look at Telegram and to watch it evolve and

33:39

kind of take over as

33:41

the place for breaking news about conflict

33:43

as Twitter has, or

33:47

X now I guess, has kind of

33:49

changed. And I'm wondering if you

33:52

can tell us a little bit about, I'm

33:56

tired of talking about this guy, but as long as

33:58

he continues to have billions of dollars. and lots

34:00

of power we will have to. How

34:03

has Musk's Twitter takeover changed

34:05

the way we report about conflict and

34:08

what have his new incentive structures done

34:10

to the way that this war

34:13

is talked about online?

34:16

Alright, time to get to Musk. Very

34:18

quickly, before we do, just on

34:21

Telegram, the growth of Telegram I think

34:23

is indicative of this broader trend, which

34:25

we really see among Gen

34:27

Z users, where they're less interested in

34:30

a single shared online space. They've grown

34:32

up in shared online spaces, they know

34:34

they suck for a lot of reasons.

34:36

Like having smaller networks, more personal networks,

34:40

a Discord server that you can start with some friends

34:43

and then just as easily dissolve it and move

34:45

elsewhere, that's much more appealing to

34:47

them. So this growth of

34:49

Telegram and these related more

34:52

peer-to-peer and channel distribution services

34:55

is something that was always going

34:57

to happen. Now, Elon Musk

34:59

is almost certainly accelerating that by

35:02

making X such a singularly unpleasant

35:04

place to be. And if

35:07

we talk about Elon Musk's

35:09

role and X's role in this

35:11

war for a bit, I want

35:16

to recognize that fog of

35:18

war is an inevitable part of

35:20

covering any conflict. Fog of

35:22

war suffuses all social media platforms. Talking

35:25

about war on social media is often dangerous

35:27

because in the best circumstances, you can accidentally

35:30

spread something that's not true, information

35:33

that may end up getting someone hurt or killed. That's

35:36

best case scenarios. But there's

35:38

still a responsible way to run a

35:40

platform when it's being used for this

35:42

critical public function and then there are

35:44

irresponsible ways. And because Elon Musk as

35:47

he took control of the service, he held

35:50

special criticism for

36:00

things like the Twitter verification program,

36:02

where, say, it had

36:05

been an easy way to find

36:07

journalists or to find people

36:09

who were demonstrated

36:11

useful sources of information. He's

36:14

expressed doubt in that. He's expressed doubt in the

36:17

media writ large. He seems to

36:20

think that, you know,

36:22

anyone writing anything can do

36:24

just as good a job as a, you

36:26

know, a deeply sourced journalist with

36:28

20 or 30 years of experience and vast networks

36:30

on the ground. So those were

36:32

his biases that he's taken into this war. And

36:36

main things he did were remove

36:38

that verification program. So instead of

36:41

at a glance being able to see if someone

36:43

was a trustworthy source of information, you

36:47

had no idea whatsoever. And in fact,

36:49

there's people untrustworthy

36:51

sources of information were more inclined

36:53

to buy that little verification badge

36:56

to change their profile picture into something that

36:58

made them look like a legitimate media outlet,

37:01

and then share the most salacious

37:03

stuff possible, regardless of whether it was

37:05

true or false. Why were

37:08

they sharing that information? Why did they have those

37:10

incentives? Because of the other big thing that

37:12

must did, which was this

37:14

monetization program, where

37:16

users are now directly

37:19

rewarded for Twitter parlance

37:21

views, but it's really

37:23

impressions of particular posts.

37:26

So as a result of that, you

37:28

have, you've made it much easier to impersonate

37:31

people or to masquerade as someone to

37:33

build the veneer of credibility. And

37:35

then to do that in order to

37:37

make money in order to grab the

37:39

content you think will be the most interesting and spread

37:42

it as widely as possible. Of

37:44

course, it doesn't matter if that content is true or not. And

37:47

we've even seen cases where it seems in

37:50

the war that people have shared

37:52

things that were untrue, but then they've

37:54

gone out of the way not to delete it, probably

37:56

because they think the post won't be monetized

37:59

if they don't. So,

38:02

on top of a very complicated situation, Musk

38:05

created this horrifically perverse incentive structure

38:08

and we're dealing with the consequences.

38:14

So, something that we had talked about pre-show,

38:17

and I think that this is a nice

38:19

segue to it, is the

38:21

relationship between social media content moderation

38:23

and political expression, right? Musk

38:26

says, if you don't like the way

38:28

he does things, you simply do not care for free

38:30

speech. Can

38:32

we get your thoughts on that? Yeah.

38:35

I mean, there was

38:37

a joke among certainly

38:39

the trust and safety

38:41

community who've spent now

38:44

sort of 20 years trying to

38:46

figure out the relation between user

38:49

safety, freedom of speech,

38:51

freedom of platforms, trying

38:53

to write policies which protect

38:55

individual users but are as globally applicable

38:58

as possible and respectful of speech rights.

39:00

Anyway, there's that whole community and the

39:02

joke was watching Elon

39:04

Musk tear everything down

39:06

and then rebuild it piece by piece,

39:08

kind of like a content moderation policy

39:11

speedrun. And

39:13

we have seen him, many teams he fired,

39:15

he now has a need to rehire for

39:17

different compliance issues where speech

39:20

norms are different in different parts of the world. But

39:22

if you're running a global platform, you have to be

39:24

cognizant of these things. Overall

39:28

though, I think I'm

39:30

very worried about freedom of expression

39:32

on X because despite

39:35

Musk repeatedly saying he's a free

39:37

speech absolutist, in

39:40

reality, he's a

39:42

uniquely pliable head of a

39:46

major social media company. Basically

39:48

the last person he talks to, whether

39:51

it's Prime Minister Netanyahu or a cat

39:53

turd too, is

39:56

the person he's going to listen to. And

39:58

that's the specific person he's going to write

40:00

policy for, even if

40:03

it affects hundreds of millions of

40:05

people. Turkey, I think, would be

40:08

the biggest, most damning example. That's

40:10

right. Almost right

40:12

out the gate after acquiring

40:14

then Twitter

40:17

and saying this big game,

40:20

he was remarkably

40:23

quick to appease

40:26

the Turkish government. He

40:28

basically was taking steps in

40:31

this speech case, which

40:35

Twitter and other social

40:37

media platforms would not

40:39

have considered had resisted for

40:41

years. There are all these norms

40:43

that have been filled up, like

40:46

transparency reports that major companies put

40:48

out. There's not a law

40:50

that mandates take

40:53

down transparency report. These are reports

40:55

that show which

40:58

government's lodged, how many take down

41:00

requests and how frequently companies

41:03

complied with them. There's

41:06

not a law that mandates that disclosure. It's

41:08

just become a norm or a standard. This

41:12

is another case where, since

41:14

Elon Musk took over, Twitter hasn't had

41:16

one of these transparency reports.

41:18

We no longer know how often

41:22

governments are sending legal requests and

41:25

how often Twitter is acceding to

41:27

them. My educated guess would

41:29

be that Twitter is folding

41:31

a lot more frequently than

41:34

you'd expect from Musk's

41:36

free speech champion. Because,

41:39

as I mentioned, Musk is pliable.

41:41

But then also the legal

41:44

teams who would help him fight this, who would

41:46

actually help him defend his users, he cut all

41:48

those people. Can

41:53

we leave, let's leave Twitter behind for

41:55

a moment. we'll

42:00

say we'll make a big deal

42:02

about saying that we'll never come back to it. And

42:05

then, you know, we'll wake up in

42:07

the morning, we'll pick up our phone. And

42:09

what's the first thing we'll look at? All right,

42:11

maybe I'm speaking for I'm projecting a little bit.

42:14

You're not wrong, though. So

42:19

we talked about a little bit about this on the last

42:21

show. But it would be it would be

42:24

foolish for me to not ask. Let's

42:27

get into TikTok, the hot new social

42:29

media platform. Kids

42:32

these days, they love the bin Laden? Question

42:34

mark. Very few

42:36

kids these days love the bin

42:38

Laden. But a remarkable number of

42:42

elderly policymakers have

42:44

discovered TikTok as a result of that.

42:48

So the allegation in brief

42:50

is that Osama bin

42:52

Laden's letter to America went

42:54

extremely viral on TikTok and

42:57

that tens of thousands of

42:59

TikTok teens were

43:02

endorsing the letter. The letter,

43:04

by the way, is if you

43:06

read it for the first time, it is remarkable

43:08

in I guess

43:10

its length and just in the reasons

43:14

that he gives for an attack for many people who grew

43:16

up in the shadow of 9 11, but thought of,

43:19

you know, al Qaeda

43:22

and company just as that

43:25

we villains

43:29

actually reading why they engaged in this

43:31

act of atrocity can

43:33

be mind opening. But it doesn't mean

43:35

that anything they say is right. And

43:37

the letter is also virulently anti-Semitic. But

43:40

of course, it was it was coming

43:42

to the public for is a

43:45

consequence of this this current Israel

43:47

Hamas conflict. Anyway,

43:49

got sidelined a little but that is the

43:51

scandal in brief. In reality, it seems

43:54

that there were a few TikTok

43:56

users who put out the very

43:58

stupid position that that Osama bin

44:00

Laden had a point. This

44:03

was not tens of thousands of

44:05

people or thousands of people, as most

44:08

folks I've talked to think it was in the

44:10

low dozens or less. But

44:15

other TikTok users discovered this. They

44:18

saw in this idiocy

44:21

a golden content opportunity, because this was

44:23

a real scandal. So they started cutting

44:25

videos making fun of these folks. So

44:28

it was still a scandal in TikTok. Then

44:31

another day or two passes, and

44:33

we have users on X. Discover

44:37

this, make their own

44:39

super cuts of all

44:41

the dumb stuff happening on TikTok. And

44:44

suddenly, it's being talked about

44:46

widely in the international media and in

44:48

the halls of Congress. So

44:50

it did become a big deal, but

44:53

it became a big deal because everyone was rushing

44:55

to condemn it, not because it

44:57

was an organic trend. Once

44:59

again, Yashiro Lee is at the root

45:01

of all evil online.

45:05

I would say, in this

45:07

case, I don't think Yashiro really

45:09

helped folks get a good idea of what was

45:11

going on. But having

45:14

read everything about Yashiro, I

45:16

do think other things he's elevating

45:19

in this war are helpful. So

45:23

I'd give it a little bit

45:25

more grain. Give me an example. Before

45:27

I dive into how moral panics work

45:29

in Night Quill Chicken, give me an

45:31

example of something that he's elevating that

45:33

you think should be elevated. So

45:36

I'd need to go back and look at the

45:38

feet. But I have seen examples, for instance, of

45:40

him elevating the perspectives

45:43

of Palestinians. Palestinians in

45:45

the diaspora who are facing

45:47

threats to

45:49

personal safety or fidgeted attacks

45:52

now. He

45:54

has a remarkably powerful platform. He

45:56

is very good at media. often

46:00

uses that for not helpful reasons, sometimes does.

46:02

So I wanted to give him a little

46:04

bit of credit. That's fair. We all contain

46:06

multitudes. I actually wanted to dive in, not

46:09

on Yashiro specifically, but on the

46:12

existence of the social media

46:14

personality as a fountain

46:16

of information. I don't

46:19

think it's news to anybody that

46:21

younger people tend to not watch

46:23

cable news. They're not looking

46:25

to see what Anderson Cooper has to

46:28

say about X, Y, and Z. I

46:30

do flick on the cable news sometimes just

46:32

to get a sense of what's being said

46:35

and what my relatives might be hearing or

46:37

what the hell

46:39

is going on today on CNN.

46:42

But the way that I see a lot

46:45

of my peers and my siblings and

46:48

so on and so forth, getting

46:50

news are from a lot of these internet

46:53

personalities, whether they're

46:55

on Twitter, TikTok,

46:58

or Instagram is where I've really

47:00

seen this becoming a huge

47:02

thing. During the 2020 uprisings,

47:07

I saw a proliferation of a lot

47:10

of these accounts that I had never seen before

47:14

that kind of marketed themselves as information

47:16

collectives, sharing

47:18

things generally unsourced with

47:21

a lot of statistics, with a lot

47:23

of information with very

47:25

good graphic design that just

47:27

started spreading around the internet like wildfire.

47:30

And these really seem to be where

47:33

I'm seeing a lot of younger people getting news

47:36

versus traditional

47:38

media that might be

47:40

better sourced but is less trustworthy

47:42

for a number of reasons, both

47:44

understandable and less so. Have

47:47

you been seeing a lot of that now? Yeah,

47:51

what's your take on that? Unfortunately,

47:53

absolutely. It's a very common

47:55

format, say having unsourced

47:58

graphs or data. sometimes

48:01

having snapshots of

48:03

something stupid, someone said on a

48:05

different social media service, which may

48:08

have been decontextualized. This

48:12

really intersects with or just cast

48:14

light on how the design of

48:16

certain social media platforms can really lend itself

48:19

to the sort of content, right?

48:21

And on TikTok, for

48:23

instance, it is very hard to direct people

48:25

off of the platform, which means it's very

48:27

hard to say back up what you're

48:30

saying. TikTok is very insular.

48:34

If you look at the source of younger

48:36

audiences who consume politics and political

48:38

news on Instagram, they

48:40

may often be getting it from

48:42

screenshots of graphs where the

48:46

source has been cut. They're

48:49

also seeing things absent context, and

48:52

that's another very sticky platform which

48:54

really resists sending people elsewhere. What's

48:58

also interesting is that quite often

49:02

you might see screenshots

49:05

of something that social media users

49:07

said on one platform being widely

49:10

circulated on another platform. That

49:12

is especially, and it's almost always

49:14

in the context of, you know, look at this horrific

49:16

thing this person said. Doesn't it

49:18

make you outraged? Maybe you should go harass them. But

49:22

you're never going to find a link back

49:24

to what they said. You're never going to

49:26

understand when or why

49:28

it was said. These

49:31

are all illustrations of

49:33

very bifurcated sorts of

49:36

communities kind of

49:40

getting outraged at each other. Really, this

49:42

is an extension of the phenomenon we

49:44

just discussed, the Osama bin Laden letter,

49:46

where something that was a weird TikTok

49:49

scandal became national and international

49:51

news simply because a

49:53

different platform with a different design

49:56

structure and very different user base

49:58

discovered what was trending. how

52:01

the way that we're talking about

52:03

things now has switched platforms and

52:05

switched almost, you know, audiences entirely.

52:08

And we've been talking a lot about

52:10

younger generations and younger users. But

52:13

I think as we start to close out and

52:15

talk about, you know, how to talk to our

52:17

mothers about this, how

52:21

are we seeing the generational divide play

52:23

out or are we seeing one play

52:25

out on social media talking about conflict

52:27

and this conflict specifically? Gosh,

52:32

I really think the generational divide comes to the fore

52:34

here. You know, people often

52:36

like to talk about or even have

52:38

moral panics about the information literacy of

52:40

Gen Z or now Gen Alpha. But

52:45

these generations have grown up natively

52:47

using these services. They

52:49

might spread or believe dumb stuff, but they

52:51

do have a high level of scrutiny for

52:53

online services. But it's

52:55

really the older generations who joined

52:57

these platforms later who had a

52:59

much more like credulous

53:02

view of, you

53:05

know, when someone shares something with you or

53:07

is nice to you, they can't be lying

53:09

to you, right? If someone is

53:12

pro Israel, like you're pro Israel, pro

53:15

Palestinian, like you're pro Palestinian, then

53:19

why would they mislead you? Right?

53:22

So, yes, a much greater susceptibility

53:25

and vulnerability among older people

53:27

to misinformation than to younger

53:29

people. And

53:34

I think this war really brings

53:36

it out because almost

53:38

everyone has sort of this preceding

53:41

political position. Social

53:43

media doesn't necessarily shape their

53:45

politics, but they've brought those biases

53:48

and that perspective into these new

53:51

digital spaces. And now they're

53:53

communicating with each other about some

53:56

of the most horrific things

53:58

that human beings can do to each other. about

54:00

violence, about the mass killing

54:03

of civilians of children, of

54:06

course tempers run hot, of course mis

54:08

and disinformation are rife. It's

54:10

something where even for very

54:12

experienced students

54:15

of war and social

54:18

media, it's hard to find ground truth.

54:20

To expect that someone in their 60s or 70s who joined

54:23

online services in earnest a

54:26

few years ago, it's going

54:28

to be able to find truth in this

54:30

sort of environment. It's too

54:33

much to expect. It's impossible. So we have to

54:35

do our best to tell our

54:38

mothers to

54:41

just understand

54:43

that even if you're

54:45

inclined to believe something you see online, that

54:47

most people engaging on these services are trying

54:49

to mislead you. They are trying to pull

54:51

you in one direction or another. They don't

54:54

care about the truth. They care about getting

54:56

you on their side. But your

54:59

time and attention is more valuable than that.

55:01

So just reflect a bit more before you

55:03

believe that one thing. Understand that unfortunately,

55:06

you're a target. The internet is still

55:08

great for a lot of stuff, but it is not

55:10

great for understanding war. Emerson Brooking, thank you so much

55:12

for coming on to the show and walking us through

55:15

this. Thank you both very much for having me.

55:53

Thank you. Tired

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