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that for a vision? Learn more

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at www.kpmg.us.ai. Casey,

0:28

a little bird told me it's your birthday today. It's

0:30

my birthday, Kevin. Happy birthday. Thank

0:32

you so much. And let me just say,

0:34

58 looks great on you.

0:37

Thank you. I never felt better.

0:41

Really. You're not 58. Well, in internet years,

0:43

I think I probably am, at least 58,

0:45

if not older. So no, I feel it

0:47

good. Yeah. I got you a present. What's

0:49

that? You want to see it? Yeah. OK. I

0:54

wrapped it in everything. Now I have to warn you, I'm not

0:56

a good rapper. So it really... I'd like to hear you at

0:58

least spit a few bars. Hey, I

1:00

hear what you did there. Thank

1:02

you. I actually think this is beautifully wrapped. It's

1:04

a nice sort of, you know, some brown

1:07

and glitter paper. A

1:10

multi-voice changer. Yeah. So this is

1:13

because sometimes we get listeners writing

1:15

in to say that they can't tell our voices

1:18

apart. So this is

1:20

to give you some options for how to

1:22

transform your voice. That's great. Should we listen to

1:24

a few of them now? Yes. Just describe

1:26

what it is. This is a sort of miniature

1:28

bullhorn that is purple and plastic. And

1:31

it is still in its packaging. Yeah. Open it

1:33

up. Let's try it. All right. Let me just

1:35

cut through these zip ties here. And

1:40

it has many different modes. And the way you

1:42

adjust it is by turning those sliders. And then

1:44

you pull the trigger. And then you talk into

1:46

it. And it changes your voice. OK. So let's

1:48

just... Hello? Hello? Hello?

1:52

Pretty good. It's giving robot. Let's

1:55

try to do high pitch. So that's just A,

1:57

it says. Is

2:00

this heartbeats? Yes. OK. Do

2:02

you like this one? I like that

2:05

voice. So if I just

2:07

did this forever, then people would

2:09

just confuse us with the piecey.

2:11

Yes. And then they would

2:13

no longer be confused about our voices.

2:15

No time, no longer listen to heartbeats.

2:17

Maybe, I guess. It's

2:20

very good. I like it. Well,

2:23

happy birthday to me. I'm

2:30

Kevin Roos, a tech columnist at The New

2:32

York Times. I'm Casey Neiman, a platformer. And

2:35

this is Hard Fork. That's Link on the

2:37

Sound. The Surgeon General wants

2:39

to issue a warning about social media.

2:41

Should Congress let him? Then, former Stanford

2:43

researcher Renee DiResta joins to talk to

2:45

us about her new book on modern

2:47

propaganda and whether we're losing the war

2:50

against disinformation. And finally, The Times'

2:52

David Yaffe Bellamy stops by to tell us how

2:54

crypto could reshape the 2024 election. Well,

3:06

Kevin, this week we start with a warning. Yes.

3:08

But not our warning. A Surgeon General's warning.

3:10

Or I guess we should say an attempted

3:12

Surgeon General's warning. Yeah, let's

3:14

talk about it. This was really interesting.

3:17

This was maybe the biggest tech news

3:19

of the week. And it came out

3:21

earlier this week from Surgeon General Vivek

3:23

Murthy. That's right. And it is a

3:25

story that we have been following here

3:27

on Hard Fork. I would say essentially

3:29

since the beginning, right? Because last May,

3:31

the Surgeon General issued an advisory about

3:34

the risks of social media for young

3:36

people. In that advisory, he wrote both

3:38

that there were potential risks of harm

3:40

for excessive use of social media, particularly

3:42

for some groups of young people and

3:44

also that there could be benefits for other groups of people.

3:46

We talked about that here. Then more recently,

3:49

we had Jonathan Haidt on the show in March.

3:51

He wrote this book, The Anxious Generation, which

3:53

went on to become a bestseller, kind of

3:55

covers this similar idea that social media can

3:57

be really risky. We talked to young people.

4:00

They called into the show. We talked to them about how they felt

4:02

about it. And since then, this

4:04

has just been, frankly, one of the biggest

4:06

debates of the year, wouldn't you say? Totally.

4:08

I mean, I have been talking with parents

4:10

for months now. I would

4:12

say that the debate sparked by Jonathan

4:15

Hight's book has become a true social

4:17

phenomenon. And I've seen this book on

4:19

desks and shelves everywhere. I've heard from

4:21

just many, many people about this.

4:23

And we got so much feedback on the

4:26

episodes that we did, not just with Jonathan

4:28

Hight, but with the listeners who wrote in

4:30

and who we talked to about this issue.

4:32

So I would say this is one

4:35

of the biggest debates about technology

4:37

right now is the effects of

4:39

social media on teens and adolescent

4:41

mental health. Absolutely. And while there

4:43

are a lot of folks who

4:45

wrote in who are very sympathetic

4:47

to the ideas expressed by both

4:49

the Surgeon General and Jonathan Hight,

4:51

there's also been some pushback. Candace

4:53

Audris, who's a professor at UC

4:55

Irvine, wrote in the journal Nature,

4:57

quote, hundreds of researchers, myself included,

4:59

have searched for the kind of

5:01

large effects suggested by Hight. Our

5:03

efforts have produced a mix of

5:05

no small and mix associations. Most

5:07

data are correlative. So in other

5:09

words, efforts to prove once and

5:12

for all, find the smoking gun,

5:14

say, hey, you look at Instagram

5:16

too long, it's going to make

5:18

you depressed. She's saying we

5:20

have not been able to find a very large

5:22

effect for that. And the tech platforms themselves have

5:24

been pushing back on this idea for years, right,

5:26

that they are sort of causing mental health problems

5:29

among young people. But

5:32

I would say this has become like a kind

5:34

of kitchen table debate in America and around the

5:36

world. It has also spawned

5:38

a bunch of legislation and attempts to

5:40

actually try to reform social media through

5:42

new regulations and laws. That's right. So

5:44

more than half of the states in

5:46

the US are moving forward with some

5:48

form of legislation aimed at protecting children

5:51

who use the internet. Laws passed in

5:53

Utah and California have already faced legal

5:55

challenges because, of course, it's very hard

5:57

to regulate social media in a way

5:59

that doesn't infringe on the First Amendment.

6:01

I believe New York just passed a

6:03

bill this month that restricts social media

6:05

companies from using algorithms in kids' social

6:07

media feeds without parental consent. So we'll

6:09

see how that one plays out. My

6:12

guess is that'll be subject to a big legal

6:14

challenge as well. So Kevin, as you say, this

6:16

is maybe the big kitchen table debate about tech

6:18

so far this year. But Kevin, what if I

6:21

were to tell you that all of that was

6:23

just a prelude to what happened this very week?

6:26

I would believe you. So the surgeon general wrote

6:28

an op-ed in your newspaper,

6:30

so congrats on the big scoop,

6:33

where he says that social media

6:35

should add cigarette-style warning labels to

6:37

social media platforms. In the opening

6:40

paragraphs of his op-ed, he said,

6:42

we don't have perfect information,

6:44

but the mental health crisis among young people

6:46

is an emergency. Kevin, what did you make

6:49

of this op-ed? It was really

6:51

interesting, in part because I think, a

6:53

lot of people know that the surgeon

6:56

general puts warning labels on cigarette packages,

6:58

and we have seen those for decades

7:00

now. And there's actually some

7:02

evidence that those warning labels can increase

7:04

awareness of the risks of tobacco, and

7:06

that they can change behavior among the

7:09

people who see them. And

7:11

so what the surgeon general essentially called

7:13

for in this opinion essay is

7:16

applying the same kind of approach to social

7:18

media, where if you're a teenager and you

7:20

log onto a social media platform, maybe there's

7:22

a little banner, maybe there's a little warning

7:24

label, and it says something like the

7:27

use of social media by adolescents

7:29

has been linked to mental health

7:31

harms. And this is something that a

7:33

lot of parents and teachers have

7:35

been calling for, but it's

7:38

one thing to have sort of a citizens movement around

7:40

this stuff. It is another thing to have the

7:42

surgeon general of the United States say that social

7:44

media platforms should carry warning labels. Well, that

7:47

is certainly what he is counting on, right?

7:49

That he can use the authority that came

7:51

from many surgeon generals ago pointing out that

7:53

smoking caused cancer to use that credibility to

7:55

say now essentially, hey, you look at Instagram

7:57

or Snapchat too long, you're gonna have problems.

8:00

But I have to say, Kevin, I was not impressed

8:02

with this statement. All right. Walk me through why you

8:04

were not impressed. Well, what I want

8:06

to take issue with something you just said, which

8:09

is that these warnings have been associated with a

8:11

change in behavior. Well, I think that's true in

8:13

a broad sense. I think it's important to remember

8:15

all the other things that were happening that contributed

8:17

to people smoking less, because just a

8:20

few years after they started putting out those warnings,

8:22

Congress banned advertising for cigarette ads on TV

8:24

and radio. And then we began

8:27

to see the banning of smoking in public

8:29

places. Right. So the warning, yes, was part

8:31

of a package of things that appears to

8:33

have had a very positive effect. But the

8:35

idea that a warning in and of itself

8:37

really did much, I'm actually not convinced at

8:39

all. Yeah, I

8:41

mean, I also think it's a more

8:44

nuanced argument that the surgeon general is

8:46

making. He actually writes, to

8:48

be clear, a warning label would not on

8:50

its own make social media safe for young

8:52

people. Like he is not calling for this

8:55

to be the only thing that the federal

8:57

government does to deal with the issue of

8:59

young people's mental health and social media. He

9:01

also is supporting still this legislation in Congress.

9:04

He wants companies to be required to

9:06

share data about the

9:08

health effects of their apps

9:11

with independent researchers and

9:13

allow independent safety audits. He

9:15

also calls for these sort of phone

9:17

free zones that parents and schools can

9:20

set up. But

9:22

I think the sort of narrow question

9:24

of this warning label, I

9:26

just don't see what it harms. Do you actually

9:28

see people being

9:30

hurt as a result of, if you

9:32

were a teenager and you had to click past

9:35

a little warning label when you spent

9:37

too much time on Instagram, do you actually think that

9:39

would hurt your life? No, but what if I'm a

9:41

14-year-old LGBT kid and I have parents who aren't supportive

9:43

and I say, can I create an Instagram account? And

9:45

my parents say, no, you can't. It's like not safe

9:48

for you. And it's like, okay, well, I'll just go

9:50

be, feel very alone

9:52

for the next couple of years. Like that

9:54

doesn't seem great to me. I just think

9:56

that this warning is going to be used

9:59

as a pretext to keep kids off social

10:01

media who might get some benefit. fit for

10:03

them. And look, it's not that I'm saying

10:05

that there's no risk to some groups of

10:07

teens, but I think everything is just sort

10:10

of like getting flattened into this very just

10:12

like kind of ham fisted warning when we

10:14

need like more targeted solutions like the surgeon

10:16

general was proposing last year. Yeah, well, we

10:19

should also just say like the surgeon general

10:21

cannot unilaterally just start slapping warning labels on

10:23

products and social media platforms. This actually would

10:25

require an act of Congress

10:28

to put a warning label on Instagram

10:30

or TikTok or any of these platforms. I was a

10:32

little surprised by that. Were you? Yeah, I kind of

10:34

was too, because I kind of thought like, what's the

10:37

point of being the surgeon general if you can't like

10:39

snap your fingers and put warning labels on stuff? Congress

10:41

has to be like, okay, you can warn people. What

10:43

did we need the surgeon general for was my question.

10:45

But I think it's, you know, it is a position

10:48

that has a lot of symbolic importance. This is sort

10:50

of the top doctor in

10:52

the nation. And I think

10:54

it matters if the surgeon

10:56

general says, you know, this thing that

10:58

your teens are are using may

11:00

be harmful to them. Well, it does matter.

11:02

But I have to say, I was really

11:04

disappointed by this statement because as I'm reading

11:06

through both the op ed and an accompanying

11:08

interview that he did with reporters

11:11

at the Times, he does not bring

11:13

any new science to the table, right?

11:15

So a year ago, he brings forth

11:17

what I thought was this very measured

11:19

look at teens at social media. And

11:22

then a year later, he's in

11:24

the time saying that he believes

11:26

that the risk of using social

11:28

media is so great to adolescents

11:31

that the benefits of

11:33

potentially using it do not outweigh

11:35

the potential harms. That's an

11:37

incredibly bold statement to be

11:39

making without having subsequent

11:42

evidence to support it, right? When the

11:44

surgeon general came out said, smoking causes

11:46

cancer, there was really, really good science

11:48

about that. This I think is

11:50

a much less settled question. And so I

11:52

think to skip all the way to Well,

11:54

now we need to slap a warning on

11:56

every website where like teens can post, I

11:58

thought it was actually and

16:00

President Biden just sort of wash their hands of it and

16:02

say, well, what do you want us to do? We put

16:04

some texts on a website, right? And

16:07

I just feel like the moment that we've

16:09

gotten to this feeling like the next obvious

16:11

thing to do in the teen mental health

16:13

crisis, it just feels absurd to me. Yeah,

16:15

I do think, you know how like in

16:18

Europe, some of the warning labels on cigarettes

16:20

have like images with that, like a photo

16:22

of like a lung after it's

16:24

been like decimated by years of tobacco use.

16:26

It's like a very visual warning label. And

16:29

I think we should do the same thing with social media.

16:31

We should just like put up an

16:34

image of someone whose brain has been totally rotted

16:36

by spending too much time on social media and

16:38

like the kinds of crazy stuff that they're posting

16:40

on their feed. And this is what will happen

16:42

to you if you spend six hours a day

16:44

on Instagram. Yeah, except you know what it would

16:46

be. It would just show that person getting gradually

16:48

hotter over time as they started eating right, they

16:50

started working out, they started paying obsessive attention to

16:52

their body. So that's what the warning would

16:54

be. Well, I don't think

16:57

that's necessarily true, but I do like, so

16:59

look, I think, you know, we could have

17:01

a productive conversation about what, if anything, a

17:03

warning label should say. I also think we

17:06

should talk about where it would appear because

17:08

we know that not all social networks are

17:10

created equal. Adolescents are not having mental health

17:12

problems from spending too much time on LinkedIn,

17:15

right? This is a problem that is very

17:17

specific to a certain subset of social networks.

17:19

I would say Instagram, maybe Snapchat

17:21

should be in their TikTok, maybe should be in their

17:24

too. These are the ones where there really

17:26

is this kind of visual comparison going

17:28

on of, you know, what your body looks like,

17:30

what your face looks like. These are the kinds

17:32

of places that can be really unhealthy for teens

17:34

to spend lots of time. You know, another thing

17:37

I've been thinking about as I've been reading the

17:39

Surgeon General is, could he

17:41

offer a more targeted warning about a more

17:43

obviously real problem? There's this story that I've

17:45

been wanting to talk about on our show

17:47

and we've just not been able to find

17:49

a way to do it because it is

17:51

just so, so upsetting. We try not to

17:54

bum people out too much, but there's this

17:56

issue and there've been a lot of great

17:58

investigation into it over the past. and

20:00

without harming your mental health. All it says is

20:02

this thing might be dangerous to you. I mean,

20:04

this point, I totally agree with you. If

20:07

I had kids and they were going to school and

20:09

I found out that their school was offering a social

20:11

media literacy class and they took it and it was

20:14

the same kind of thing as like driver's ed where

20:16

you got like half credit or whatever, it

20:19

sounds like a non-solution when you're gonna

20:21

say, well, what we really need is

20:23

education literacy. When people say that to me,

20:25

I sort of feel like they're throwing their hands up and it's

20:27

like, okay, well, what's actually gonna solve the problem? But

20:30

this whole story is about media literacy.

20:32

It's about understanding how systems are designed,

20:35

how they are likely to make you

20:37

feel, what strategies you can use if

20:39

you find yourself in a spot of

20:42

harm. What are some likely scams or

20:44

dangers that you might find on these

20:46

systems? Like it would be amazing

20:48

if the platforms actually offered that kind of literacy,

20:51

right? And maybe that is an area where I'm

20:53

like, yeah, Congress actually go ahead, mandate that they

20:55

do something like this for these teens. But if

20:57

they're not gonna do it, school districts could do

20:59

it, parents groups could do it, nonprofit groups could

21:01

do it, but I agree with you. That is

21:03

what I would like to see that I think

21:05

actually starts to make a dent in this problem.

21:07

Yeah, but in the meantime, I don't think this

21:09

idea of a surgeon general's warning is necessarily a

21:11

bad idea in the same way that I think,

21:14

putting warnings on cigarettes didn't immediately

21:17

curb smoking overnight. It wasn't like people

21:19

stopped smoking because they knew all of

21:21

a sudden it was bad for them.

21:23

But it is kind of a little

21:26

visual reminder if you are going to

21:28

the store to pick up a package

21:30

of cigarettes, it just sort of makes

21:32

you pause or at least think for

21:34

one second before you hand over your

21:37

money and get your moral bros. Like

21:39

it does actually have a psychological effect.

21:41

And I actually don't mind the idea

21:43

that teens before they spend four

21:46

hours on Instagram would get a little

21:48

visual just pop up or something to just say,

21:50

are you sure you wanna do this? This could

21:52

be bad for you. Yeah, I mean,

21:54

when you put it that way, it doesn't sound like

21:57

that big a deal. Again, I'm just like, what are

21:59

the odds that we... applied this morning and

22:01

it has any meaningful improvement in the lives of

22:03

these teens. I just truly struggled to see like

22:05

the causal connection. I mean, I think the

22:08

effect that it could have is on actually

22:10

parents. I know so many parents who are

22:13

struggling with what to do with

22:15

their kids when they reach adolescence about social media.

22:17

Do I give them a smartphone? Do I let

22:19

them have an Instagram account? And

22:22

a lot of parents just feel very powerless

22:24

in those situations because all their kids' friends

22:26

are on social media. There's this sense that

22:28

by sheltering them away, you are actually limiting

22:30

their ability to be social with their friends.

22:33

A lot of parents don't feel like they

22:35

have a lot of backup when it comes

22:37

to limiting or controlling the

22:39

ways that their teens use social media. And

22:42

I actually do think that having the Surgeon General

22:44

of the United States put a warning on these

22:46

social media sites that say, this could be bad

22:49

for your teen's mental health. I think that could

22:51

embolden parents to say, look, it's

22:53

not just me saying that this stuff is

22:55

bad for you. The Surgeon General says it's

22:57

bad for you, too. And it could help

22:59

them feel a little more confident in actually

23:02

setting some policies for their own kids. I

23:04

can't believe you disagree with me like this on my birthday, by the way.

23:08

What did I do to you? Jesus.

23:14

When we come back, we'll talk to

23:16

Renee DiResta about her new book on

23:18

disinformation and how to win the war

23:20

against it. This

23:46

podcast is supported by KPMG. Your

23:48

task as a visionary leader is simple. Harness

23:51

the power of AI. Shape the future

23:53

of business. Oh, and do

23:55

it before anyone else does without leaving people

23:57

behind or running into unforeseen risks. Simple,

24:00

right? KPMG's got you. Helping

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24:14

All right, guys, how would you describe

24:17

our podcast? Matter of opinion. Extremely

24:20

civilized exchange of high-minded ideas. I

24:22

swear, if somebody says dinner party

24:24

conversation, I'm slapping them. It's an

24:26

airing of grievances, right? Somewhere

24:29

in between, I hope. Maybe the easiest

24:31

way to explain what matter of opinion

24:33

is, is actually to share what our

24:35

listeners have to say about us. Listener

24:38

Tobias said, matter of opinion

24:40

is a great podcast for anyone

24:42

engaged with social issues and politics

24:44

on any level. The

24:47

lighthearted, but testy conversations about

24:49

truly divisive topics pique my

24:52

interest. Lighthearted, but testy.

24:54

That's totally you, Ross. I'm putting that on

24:56

my headstone. My back is getting a little

24:58

sore from all this padding. From

25:01

New York Times opinion, I'm Michelle Cottle. I'm

25:04

Ross Douthat. I'm Carlos Lozada. I'm Lydia Polgreen.

25:06

And don't just take our work for it.

25:08

Make up your own mind and follow matter

25:10

of opinion wherever you get your podcasts. Well,

25:15

Kevin, I hate to brag, but it is my birthday. Last

25:18

week at Platformer, we broke some news. Yeah,

25:20

what was the news? So the

25:22

Stanford Internet Observatory, which is this

25:25

small, but I think very influential

25:27

group that studied the way groups

25:29

use online tools to spread disinformation

25:31

is basically being dismantled

25:33

and will no longer exist as we know

25:35

it. And why is this a big

25:38

deal? So this group

25:40

was the most savvy and

25:42

well-connected among the tech platforms.

25:44

And they had really good

25:46

relationships with companies like Facebook

25:48

or Twitter when that existed.

25:51

And so as elections would take

25:53

place, the SIO as they

25:55

called it, would be in close

25:57

communication with the platforms to understand.

32:00

the subpoenas and lawsuits and all the BS. And

32:03

I really just wanted to write a book kind of like manufacturing

32:05

consent did in the 1980s, right? Where

32:07

he's writing about, here's this incentive structure and here's the

32:09

outputs that come out as a result of it. And

32:11

I thought we haven't really had an update to that

32:14

in 40 years or so, so maybe

32:16

I'll write one. And then of course, couple

32:19

months later the conspiracy theories about us started, then the

32:21

subpoenas came down and then I was like, well, I

32:23

didn't want to write a memoir, but I guess I

32:25

am. But now you are, yeah. I

32:28

want to talk a bit more about

32:31

this idea that something has changed about

32:33

propaganda over the past couple of decades.

32:35

What had you noticed in your work

32:38

that made your ears perk up and

32:40

say, there's something interesting here to dig

32:42

into? I spent a

32:44

lot of time looking at the anti-vaccine movement as a

32:46

new mom in 2013 to 2015 timeframe, right? But

32:50

I didn't actually think of that as propaganda at the

32:52

time, that was not, you know, I thought of it

32:55

as activism, right? We are fighting, we are pro-vaccine people,

32:57

we are fighting those anti-vaccine people. We have a law

32:59

we want to pass in California, we have a campaign

33:01

and we're going to fight it on the internet. And

33:03

the thing that's interesting about it is whenever you have

33:06

a political campaign, there's a, there's like a start date

33:08

and an end date, right? But

33:11

they did not see it as having a start date and

33:13

an end date for them. This was like, this was their

33:15

thing. And they were on it 24 seven and

33:18

they had built an entire community.

33:20

There were thousands of anti-vaccine accounts.

33:22

This is years prior to COVID,

33:24

just to clarify, we're talking about

33:26

measles vaccines here. I thought

33:29

it was interesting that I thought of this as something

33:31

that this is activism, we're turning it on and off,

33:34

but they thought of it as something that was persistent.

33:36

They were going to message forever because they were really

33:38

true believers in this idea that vaccines caused autism. So

33:41

that was kind of my first experience. And then I

33:44

felt like I had sort of seen the future, right? I

33:46

was like, this is how every campaign is going to be

33:48

fought. I can run ads on Facebook. I can granularly target

33:50

down to the zip code level and nobody knows who the

33:52

hell I am. And I don't have to tell them. And

33:54

this is absolutely insane actually. This

33:57

is wild. Integrity

36:00

Partnership was sort of an ad

36:02

hoc group of organizations that were

36:05

looking specifically at attempts to undermine

36:07

the election on social

36:09

media. Absolutely. So

36:11

I think sometimes you see right wing media

36:13

report that it was somehow related to Hunter

36:16

Biden's laptop, that's BS, or that had something

36:18

to do with political speech in

36:20

the context of candidate A saying something about

36:22

candidate B. But you were doing

36:24

things like monitoring, there was this

36:27

thing Sharpie Gate, which is just

36:29

sort of a conspiracy theory about

36:31

people basically manipulating ballots. Yes. So

36:34

the scope was exclusively limited to things related

36:36

to policies and procedures having to do with

36:38

voting. So it was that kind of stuff,

36:40

Sharpie Gate making an allegation that a

36:43

felt tip pen would invalidate a ballot. And

36:47

that specifically, the sort of other piece

36:49

of it was the delegitimization narratives. So in the

36:51

context of Sharpie Gate again, that those felt tip

36:53

pens were only given to Trump supporters to steal

36:55

the election. So we

36:57

were only looking at narratives related to the election.

36:59

We did not care about Hunter Biden's laptop. But

37:04

what winds up happening is

37:06

that work, which did involve

37:08

occasionally speaking with state and local

37:11

election officials. And you

37:13

see Fox News call Arizona for Biden and

37:15

all of a sudden the Sharpie story goes

37:17

from being just some people concerned

37:20

about Sharpie markers to that's

37:22

how they stole Arizona. And

37:26

so state and local election officials meanwhile throughout the

37:28

entirety of election day are trying to ensure that

37:30

people have confidence in the election and that

37:32

if there is something irregular or weird that is

37:34

happening that they know about it. But

37:37

election officials are not supposed to be sitting on the internet

37:39

all day long. That is not their actual job. It is

37:41

in fact our job. And

37:43

so we were like, well, okay, we can communicate with state

37:45

and local election officials. And what this meant was

37:47

that they would occasionally send tips basically, hey, can you

37:49

look at this tweak? Can you look at

37:51

this post? Oftentimes we looked at it, but

37:53

it was some random guy with two followers

37:55

who was like wrong on the internet. But

37:58

then sometimes there were these things. that got a whole

38:01

lot of attention and a whole lot of pickup. And

38:04

in certain cases, we would also tag tech platforms and just say,

38:06

hey, you should have a look at this. Now,

38:08

this was reframed as government

38:11

officials were using us, giving us things

38:13

that they wanted taken down and that

38:15

we were then telling platforms to take

38:17

them down, that this was like this

38:19

vast operation. And they turned it from

38:22

being state and local election officials to

38:24

being like DHS itself, because

38:26

DHS is responsible kind of at a

38:28

federal level for elections. And

38:30

so you have this conspiracy theory that

38:32

we are somehow being used. And I

38:35

mean, the numbers that these sort of

38:37

like right wing blogs start to write

38:39

are like 22 million tweets, entire narratives

38:41

nuked from the internet with an AI

38:43

censorship super weapon. I'm not kidding. That

38:45

was the actual phrasing, right? And

38:49

this is the sort of thing where in

38:51

a normal polity, this would

38:53

be seen as tinfoil hat BS. But

38:55

in this reality, Jim

38:58

Jordan is like, yes, we need to investigate this.

39:01

We need to investigate the AI censorship super weapons

39:03

run out of Stanford University. So let's

39:06

just finish the narrative arc here, because

39:08

we have this sort of pushback from

39:10

the right to these groups

39:12

and platforms that are engaging in what

39:15

they believe is politically motivated censorship. Jim

39:17

Jordan starts sending out all these not

39:19

only letters, but subpoenas. He gets a

39:22

bunch of emails from platforms communicating with

39:24

governments and academic institutions. And

39:28

then something happens with Stanford

39:30

itself, which is spending tons

39:32

of money. I think you've

39:34

said millions of dollars to

39:36

defend. Yeah, to defend against

39:39

these claims and to respond to these

39:42

subpoenas. And maybe

39:44

at first that feels like they're sort of

39:46

on your side. They're sticking up for the

39:49

research team. But at

39:51

some point, that seems like it started to

39:53

change. And you recently learned that your position

39:56

at the Stanford Internet Observatory was being

39:58

disconnected. that there was not going to

40:00

be more funding made available for you

40:03

to continue working there. And

40:05

I'm just curious what your emotional reaction was

40:07

when you heard that. So

40:09

several of us were given that news at

40:11

the same time that there was no funding.

40:14

And I think the reaction

40:17

was disappointment, obviously. Well,

40:19

my reaction was disappointment, I can't speak for them. We

40:22

have a really close-knit team and we

40:24

do amazing work together. And

40:26

again, I think for us, the immediate reaction

40:29

was, are there

40:31

ways to get funding for particular project

40:34

lines? The

40:36

child safety work, I mean, I think

40:39

it's perhaps just to make

40:41

it clear, there are certain tools that we

40:43

have to build to be able to do that work.

40:45

It's not something you can just do anywhere because it

40:47

is illegal to view that kind of content in addition

40:49

to being seriously damaging. And so a

40:52

lot of what we've done is design

40:54

ways to do certain types of very

40:57

delicate trust and safety research in ways

40:59

that enable the team to

41:02

put out amazing work while not bumping into

41:05

some of the sort of terrible sides of it. I

41:08

also felt like because we have that breadth,

41:10

because all of us work on all of

41:12

these different project areas, I work on trust

41:15

and safety, I work on our generative AI

41:17

stuff, I work on our election integrity or

41:19

information integrity work, we built

41:21

an entire center on the idea of

41:23

all of these challenges are interrelated because

41:25

they happen on the same system, like

41:27

there's structural things here, how

41:29

can we have that pipeline from quantitative

41:32

empirical research to policy recommendations that also

41:34

take into account the way that all

41:36

of these things are related? There are

41:39

very, very few institutions that have that

41:41

type of analytical capacity and that have

41:43

that vision of the internet

41:46

as complex system. And so

41:48

while there are many, many excellent institutions that do

41:51

deep work on topic A or topic B

41:54

or the right exceptional policy briefs, what

41:57

we really wanted to build at SIO, what we

41:59

did build at SIO, over five years was this

42:01

ability to study a very complex system at

42:04

a holistic level and make

42:06

material impacts across a fairly broad

42:09

array of topics. So

42:11

I want that to exist. And

42:13

I want to be doing it too. Also, I

42:15

would say, even if you're somebody

42:17

who says, wow, there's this censorship

42:20

industrial complex and these academics have

42:22

gotten out of control, I just

42:24

want to remind us that what

42:27

we're talking about is should universities

42:29

be able to study the way

42:31

that narrative spread online? Should they

42:33

have a sense of which narratives

42:36

are gaining popularity? Which accounts are

42:38

responsible for spreading them? How

42:40

do these networks of ideas work? This

42:43

is a sort of objective study of

42:45

reality, and it is somehow being

42:48

painted as this malicious effort

42:50

to censor speech. So I just want to say

42:53

that you can have different opinions about what should

42:55

we do about tweets we don't like and

42:58

should we be able to study the way

43:00

that information spreads online? I

43:02

think what I actually found

43:04

most disturbing and the thing that I think I'm

43:06

going to wind up writing about is that there's

43:09

a couple of tweets that go out from like

43:11

Howis Judiciary GOP and Jim Jordan saying explicitly, victory,

43:14

right? And that's a thing that I

43:17

think I don't know what it takes to jolt academia

43:19

out of its complacency, to

43:21

make them realize that this was

43:23

the objective, right? That the objective

43:26

was to silence the work of

43:28

a First Amendment-protected research

43:31

project and team. And

43:33

my frustration there is that

43:35

when you have a sitting

43:38

government official with subpoena power

43:40

gloating about killing First Amendment-protected

43:42

work and then saying freedom of speech

43:45

wins, I mean that is, you know, I feel like

43:47

Orwellian is the most over-used word on Twitter, but

43:50

like man, is that really it? I

43:53

want to ask about another part of the

43:55

criticism of some of the work that you

43:57

do that I actually think is important. is

44:00

sort of interesting. And it's not about Stanford

44:02

or academia in particular, but it's about actually

44:05

the role the government plays in

44:07

this whole universe of online platform

44:09

manipulation and disinformation. There's

44:11

this word job owning that gets used a

44:13

lot in these debates. And for people who

44:15

aren't familiar, it's basically job owning is sort

44:18

of when the government is kind of applying

44:20

pressure to private companies to kind of do

44:22

something they want. Even if

44:24

they're not legally required to. Right. It

44:27

could be as simple as someone

44:29

from the White House sending

44:31

an email to the trust and safety team

44:34

at Facebook or at another social

44:36

network and saying, hey, we've got

44:39

these 50 accounts that we believe

44:41

are spreading misinformation. Maybe you

44:43

should take a look at them. And maybe you want to

44:45

sort of apply a label to them

44:47

or maybe even take them down. And

44:49

we know, in part, thanks to some

44:51

of these subpoenaed emails, that this

44:54

kind of thing actually did happen. There were

44:56

people in the Biden White House emailing platforms,

44:58

talking with them about trying to

45:00

get certain content taken down. And that sometimes

45:02

the platform pushed back and refused to do

45:05

that, but sometimes they went along with it.

45:07

So do you think this issue

45:09

of job owning is real? And do you think the

45:11

government has overstepped when

45:13

it comes to trying to enforce

45:15

social media policy on these platforms?

45:18

I think it's a really interesting

45:20

question. Job owning is bad. And we

45:22

should be able to hold that idea in our head and

45:24

say, it is bad. It is not a

45:27

thing that we should want as a democracy. We should want

45:29

our government to do. There's a couple

45:31

of nuances there, meaning that the government

45:33

also has speech rights. The government also

45:35

has particular incentives, for example, during a

45:38

pandemic to communicate with platforms about here

45:41

we are trying to prevail upon you for why you

45:43

should do this thing. I

45:45

think that that's best done perhaps a little bit

45:47

more publicly. I think, though, interestingly, when you

45:50

do see Biden say something like in

45:52

a public press conference, like, what did

45:54

he say, you're killing people? Was that

45:56

the sentence? That's also sort of viewed

45:58

as like, whoa. This was something that

46:01

he said about. Facebook during the pandemic,

46:04

basically accusing them of killing people by

46:06

not removing more misinformation about

46:08

vaccines and things like that. Right. So

46:11

there's a whole spectrum of government communications,

46:13

public and private. One of the

46:15

things that we see is governments,

46:17

not the United States, but

46:19

other governments making explicit content

46:22

takedown requests explicitly to throttle their

46:24

political opposition. You see the Modi

46:26

government requesting Sikh politicians in Canada

46:28

have their content throttled so that

46:31

it can't be seen in India.

46:34

Right. That is, I would

46:36

argue, rather transparently censorship in the actual

46:38

sense of the word. So

46:41

this is a worthwhile thing to be looking

46:43

at. I think that Google

46:45

in particular will put up these transparency

46:47

reports where it says the government requested

46:50

action on, and then it will sort

46:52

of list content that governments request action

46:54

on. I think that's a very reasonable

46:56

thing for tech platforms to do, which

46:58

is to say when these requests or

47:00

asks come in, we're going to make

47:03

them public. Right. And that

47:05

provides then, I think, kind of a check on

47:07

government, because if they don't want that request being

47:09

made public, then maybe they won't make it. Right.

47:12

Or if they feel like it's a it's a

47:14

very, very important thing and a thing that they

47:16

want to request, they can either do it publicly

47:18

themselves or make it public after the fact. I

47:20

think we need government and platforms to have open

47:23

channels of communication, particularly because

47:25

there are certain areas where you do

47:27

see meta in some of its adversarial

47:29

threat reporting about state actors in particular,

47:32

like China, saying the government no longer

47:34

talks to us because it's afraid of

47:36

being seen as somehow any

47:39

communication is jawboning. And that, I think, is also a

47:42

very, very bad state for us to be in. Your

47:45

book is sort of about how we ended

47:47

up in the place that we are now, which

47:49

is where you have millions of

47:51

Americans who are deeply invested in

47:54

conspiracy theories. It kind of feels like we have

47:56

what you call bespoke reality, where everyone is

47:58

just kind of stitching together. their own version

48:01

of events based on the sources

48:03

that they're following, the influencers they pay attention

48:05

to and trust. We

48:08

don't have a sort of broad

48:10

consensus reality anymore. You also

48:12

have some ideas in your book about how we could sort

48:15

of start to make our way back

48:17

to something like consensus reality, how we

48:19

could start to turn the

48:21

tide of disinformation and extremism and

48:23

all this stuff. Can

48:26

you walk us through some of your ideas for that? Yeah,

48:28

so a big area

48:30

of focus for me has been design and

48:32

that's because I think

48:35

people hope for regulation. I'm a little bit

48:37

more of a skeptic on the regulatory front

48:39

and that's mostly because I don't, from a

48:41

purely pragmatic standpoint, I just don't see how

48:43

anything gets passed in the United States, right?

48:45

So the basic, you know, we've

48:47

been talking about tech reform and tech accountability and

48:49

so on and so forth and everything from antitrust

48:52

to child safety to privacy to, you

48:54

know, and then a whole

48:56

slew of like very, very bad bills also,

48:58

but nothing gets passed anyway. So

49:01

I think what we look at here is

49:03

the question of can you, you know, what

49:05

did we used to do to arrive at

49:07

consensus? We've always had heated debates. How did

49:10

we get to a point where we could

49:12

not have any kind of ability to bridge?

49:15

I think one of the things that happens

49:17

is when you have heated debates in your

49:19

local neighborhood, you usually talk to your neighbors,

49:21

right? You're geographically constrained. You see these people at

49:23

the bus stop, you see them at the library.

49:27

You don't spend all of your time screaming obscenities at

49:29

them, you know? No, you go

49:31

out to next door like a reasonable person

49:33

and you write an all caps post complaining

49:36

that your neighbor set off fireworks at 11

49:38

p.m. and it woke up the dogs and

49:41

no, that might just be my neighborhood.

49:44

I am no longer on next door. Yes,

49:51

no, I think there's a, you know,

49:53

you can have civil disagreements

49:55

in the real world. I think it's hard to look somebody in

49:57

the face and like accuse them of being a... Politicians

58:00

have increasingly been engaging with the crypto

58:02

industry as part of a strategy to

58:04

win their elections. Well, tell me about

58:06

this. So last year, RFK Jr., who's

58:09

running for president on a third-party platform,

58:11

chose a crypto event in Miami as

58:13

the place to make his big campaign

58:15

debut, and he declared that he was

58:17

a big lover of the crypto industry.

58:20

And then, just over the last month,

58:22

Donald Trump has also been invoking crypto

58:25

in his campaign speeches and positioning himself

58:27

as a friend of the crypto industry.

58:29

And now, even apparently, President Biden is thinking about

58:32

meeting with the crypto industry to talk about policy.

58:34

Well, that is interesting, although Kevin, when it comes

58:36

to RFK Jr., we can never forget that a

58:38

worm did eat part of his brain. That's

58:42

very true. So, you know, it's

58:44

been a little weird as someone who's been sort

58:46

of following the crypto industry for a while to

58:48

sort of see this, you know, this sort of

58:50

turn of events where politicians who used to dismiss

58:53

crypto out of hand are now apparently taking it

58:55

seriously. And I think

58:57

it's just a very revealing story about how

58:59

the crypto industry has been working behind the

59:01

scenes to kind of drum up support among

59:03

lawmakers to try to beat back some of

59:05

these regulations that it thinks are going to

59:07

hurt its ability to make money, and also

59:10

how it's using its money in very conventional

59:12

ways to try to influence the upcoming election.

59:14

So this week, three of my colleagues, David

59:16

Yaffe Bellamy, Aaron Griffith, and Teddy Schleifer, published

59:19

a story titled How Crypto Money is

59:21

Poised to Influence the Election. Basically,

59:24

it's about this new attempt that the crypto industry

59:26

is making to raise a bunch of money and

59:28

to start super PACs and to start distributing it

59:30

to candidates in races where they think their support

59:32

could make a big difference. And I'm very excited

59:34

about this, because any time I hear about a

59:36

lot of crypto money going somewhere, I think it's

59:39

a fresh opportunity for people to eventually be incarcerated.

59:41

Right. So I

59:44

thought this was a very revealing piece, not just because of

59:46

what it said about the crypto industry, but because of what

59:48

it says about politicians and how easily some of them apparently

59:51

can be bought or at least convinced

59:53

to take crypto more seriously. So

59:55

to talk about this piece and what it

59:57

means, we've invited our old pal, David Yaffe

1:00:00

Bellamy. DYB, back on the show. BRB with

1:00:02

DYB? Well, BRB, have you ever used

1:00:04

that joke with DYB? Yeah. Davey

1:00:11

Effie Melanie, welcome back to Hard Fork. Thanks

1:00:14

so much for having me. By my

1:00:16

count, this is your seventh appearance

1:00:18

on this show. You are the

1:00:20

most frequent Hard Fork guest. How

1:00:22

does it feel? Well, do I

1:00:24

get some sort of metal or like any

1:00:26

hardware to signify this achievement? We just put

1:00:28

an NFT in your crypto wallet. You'll want

1:00:30

to check that out later. That's even better,

1:00:33

Davey. DYB, where are we catching you

1:00:35

right now? I'm coming

1:00:37

to you live from Puerto Rico,

1:00:39

where I'm on a real grueling

1:00:41

hardship reporting assignment for the next

1:00:43

few days. You're just like sipping

1:00:45

margaritas with Francis Howigan, aren't you?

1:00:48

Yeah, basically. Well,

1:00:51

I hope you're getting hazard pay for your

1:00:53

arduous reporting trip to Puerto Rico. Before

1:00:56

we dive into the story of crypto

1:00:58

money and the 2024 election, I think

1:01:00

it would

1:01:03

be helpful if you just sort of

1:01:05

mapped the terrain of crypto politics for

1:01:07

us a little bit. And

1:01:09

I want to start by asking

1:01:12

you about how crypto is being

1:01:14

viewed on the right and specifically

1:01:16

by former President Trump. Because until

1:01:18

fairly recently, he was not

1:01:20

a fan of the crypto industry. He used

1:01:23

to say stuff like calling Bitcoin a scam.

1:01:25

But recently, he's totally flip-flopped. And

1:01:28

this year, he has declared himself

1:01:30

a friend of crypto. He's accepting

1:01:32

campaign donations in crypto. He's taking

1:01:34

up causes that matter to crypto

1:01:36

supporters. He recently met with Bitcoin

1:01:38

miners at Mar-a-Lago. And he's been

1:01:40

saying stuff in his speeches like,

1:01:42

I will end Joe Biden's war

1:01:44

on crypto. He even has his

1:01:46

own NFT series. So what

1:01:49

happened? So that's a really good

1:01:51

question. Like you said, he had this kind of

1:01:53

long history of disparaging comments about crypto. And

1:01:56

really, up until even kind of earlier

1:01:58

this year, group

1:06:00

of PACs, the largest of which

1:06:02

is called Fairshake. Those

1:06:05

groups are sitting on a pool of money, more

1:06:07

than $150 million, which

1:06:10

in the tech world is not an astounding amount of

1:06:12

money, but

1:06:15

in politics, it can really make a huge difference.

1:06:20

So lay out the political agenda of these

1:06:22

PACs. What

1:06:25

do they hope to accomplish? They

1:06:28

want to elect pro-crypto candidates. They're

1:06:31

talking about sending questionnaires along to candidates to

1:06:33

gauge their views on crypto, and then the

1:06:35

idea is to elect people who

1:06:38

will back pro-crypto legislation. That

1:06:41

could be a bill that strips a lot of

1:06:43

power away from the SEC that

1:06:45

says that cryptocurrencies are not actually

1:06:47

securities, and therefore they're

1:06:49

allowed to be offered and traded the way they

1:06:51

have been in the US. And

1:06:55

what kinds of races are these

1:06:57

crypto super PACs most focused on

1:06:59

right now? So Fairshake,

1:07:01

the biggest of the PACs, announced

1:07:03

a couple of months ago that

1:07:05

it was going to focus on

1:07:07

four Senate races, including two that

1:07:09

are very competitive, that involve Democrats

1:07:11

who are looking pretty vulnerable in

1:07:13

their re-election efforts. And that's, there's

1:07:15

the Senate races in Montana and

1:07:17

Ohio. So it's John Tester in

1:07:19

Montana and Sharon Brown in Ohio,

1:07:21

who are both kind of vocal

1:07:23

Democratic critics of the crypto industry,

1:07:26

kind of facing re-election in those crucial

1:07:28

states. And

1:07:30

are these super PACs mostly or exclusively

1:07:32

supporting Republicans? Because there are some Democrats

1:07:34

who are seen as pro-crypto,

1:07:38

or at least a little less anti-crypto

1:07:40

than maybe Elizabeth Warren and other

1:07:42

very anti-crypto Democrats. So are

1:07:44

they supporting any Democrats or

1:07:46

independents? Absolutely, and the

1:07:48

PACs and the companies that are backing

1:07:51

them are very quick to say that

1:07:53

they consider this a bi-partisan issue, they

1:07:55

see strong supporters of crypto on both

1:07:57

sides, etc., etc. It's

1:08:00

true that one of the first major

1:08:02

expenditures by Fairshake was in the California

1:08:04

Democratic Senate primary, where the group spent

1:08:06

about $10 million on attack ads against

1:08:09

Katie Porter, who was one of the

1:08:11

Democratic candidates and was seen as sort

1:08:13

of a close ally of Elizabeth Warren.

1:08:15

And so she was defeated and Adam

1:08:17

Schiff ended up winning that race. And

1:08:20

Schiff went on to

1:08:22

meet with Coinbase and some other

1:08:24

crypto firms at Coinbase's offices a

1:08:27

few weeks after that election. So

1:08:29

you definitely see these

1:08:31

groups kind of rubbing shoulders with Democrats

1:08:33

as well as Republicans. And

1:08:35

how much of this activism by the crypto

1:08:37

industry do you think has been helped by

1:08:40

the fact that crypto prices are quite high

1:08:42

right now? I mean, if we were talking

1:08:44

in 2022 when the sort of

1:08:47

crypto industry had collapsed and all

1:08:49

these coins were their value had

1:08:51

fallen precipitously, there just might

1:08:53

not have been as much money to spend

1:08:55

on these races. So how much is the

1:08:58

fact that like Bitcoin is close to an

1:09:00

all time high now that a lot of

1:09:02

crypto prices have recovered and are booming again?

1:09:04

How much has that helped these attempts to

1:09:06

influence the political process? Yeah, I

1:09:08

mean, it's unquestionably a big part of

1:09:10

it. I mean, you know, most of Coinbase's

1:09:12

revenue comes from transaction fees on crypto

1:09:15

trades. And crypto trading ramps up and the

1:09:17

sizes of those trades tend to be bigger

1:09:19

when the market is doing well. And so

1:09:21

Coinbase does a lot better when the

1:09:23

market is doing well, generates a lot more

1:09:26

revenue. And you can see that it's earning

1:09:28

reports every quarter. And so,

1:09:30

you know, Coinbase has more money to spend

1:09:32

now than it would have had two years

1:09:34

ago. And, you know, thus it can it

1:09:36

can afford to lay out 50 million dollars

1:09:38

on a pack. You

1:09:42

mentioned the the Katie Porter race where

1:09:44

the crypto people got where they wanted.

1:09:46

Are there other examples of them winning?

1:09:48

Like do they feel like they have

1:09:51

some real momentum? So

1:09:53

one sort of cautionary thing I would say

1:09:55

is it's always like difficult to determine like

1:09:57

causation here. Like we know that Katie Porter

1:09:59

lost and we know. that the crypto industry

1:10:02

spent a lot of money in that race,

1:10:04

but like, you know, was one a result

1:10:06

of the other. It's not totally clear. They're

1:10:08

very quick to claim that scalp, but I

1:10:10

think that we probably need more evidence before

1:10:12

we can like definitively say that this money

1:10:15

is like shaping the elections. I mean, another

1:10:17

claim that sort of backers of some of

1:10:19

these PACs are making behind the scenes is

1:10:21

that Sherrod Brown's position on some crypto issues

1:10:23

has kind of softened, you know, he's voiced

1:10:26

a willingness to vote for some pro-crypto legislation

1:10:28

as a result of the threat to spend

1:10:30

a huge amount of money in his race.

1:10:33

But if he had simply put his position on

1:10:35

the blockchain, it would have been immutable and that

1:10:37

it never could have either softened or hardened. So

1:10:39

that's something that candidates should be thinking about. Exactly.

1:10:42

This is how we stopped the flip-flopping that the

1:10:44

devils are a political process, yeah. So

1:10:46

obviously there are parts of this that just sound very

1:10:49

traditional and sort of about

1:10:52

a special interest trying to

1:10:54

influence the political process, whether through

1:10:56

big campaign donations or super PACs.

1:10:59

But there's also this idea among some people

1:11:01

I talked to in the crypto industry about

1:11:04

the crypto voter, right? There's this idea that

1:11:06

a lot of crypto leaders have that there

1:11:08

are millions of Americans out there for whom

1:11:10

crypto is a very important

1:11:12

issue and it will vote for candidates

1:11:14

who support crypto and won't vote for

1:11:17

candidates who don't support crypto. What

1:11:20

do you make of that theory about the

1:11:22

crypto voter? I

1:11:24

mean, I know Casey is a single

1:11:26

issue crypto voter. Correct. It was every

1:11:28

single decision is shaped by these issues.

1:11:30

So it seems plausible to me. This

1:11:33

is something I joked about with my colleague, Kellen

1:11:37

Browning, who used to be on the tech

1:11:39

team and covers politics now. And I

1:11:41

said to him a few months ago while he was sort

1:11:43

of on the campaign trail, like,

1:11:45

so are you running into a lot of

1:11:48

these single issue crypto voters? And he just

1:11:50

laughed. Like, of course, nobody's talking about Bitcoin

1:11:52

at a Trump rally or whatever. But

1:11:54

the industry has these surveys

1:11:57

that are exclusively commissioned

1:11:59

by the www.kpmg.us.ai.

1:20:05

Before we go, just a note, if

1:20:07

you want to hear more about the

1:20:09

Surgeon General's call for a warning label

1:20:11

on social media platforms, The Daily has

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an episode out today featuring an interview

1:20:16

with the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy himself.

1:20:18

So go check that out if you want to hear more. Artboard

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