Daily: Weapons of Mass Distraction - Inside Tek Fog

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

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News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Imagine an app able to dictate social media trends at the click of a button. Digital researcher Ayushman Kaul talks to Alex Andreou about ‘Tek Fog’ – software he reports can do exactly that. They discuss corrosive impacts already seen in India, tracked in a nearly two-year long investigation for The Wire, and worrying implications for democracies the world over. “Operators who use this app can manipulate social media trends en-mass, including on Facebook and Twitter.” “There is a global industry emerging in this grey space between tech and politics, where disinformation for profit services are being offered.” “Using platforms like Tek Fog, you can target people in a way that you could never target them before.” “I wish there was a silver bullet to cure this disinformation epidemic that we’re facing.” https://www.patreon.com/bunkercast Presented by Alex Andreou. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Lead Producer: Jacob Jarvis. Producers: Jacob Archbold, Jelena Sofronijevic and Alex Rees. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:17.9	add up to one, but our fatally short-sighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations,
1:26.4	though one could think that the world has seen more than enough of what a well-disciplined
1:31.2	mob can do in the hands of a single madman. Those are the words of psychiatrists,
1:37.4	Carl Jung, which today appear like a dark prophecy many decades before the inception of social media. But what happens if
1:46.2	digital actors state or not can manipulate that arithmetic? Add zeros at will to swell the numbers on wedge topics.
1:57.0	A recent three-part investigation by award-winning Indian nonprofit news organization, The Wire Wire into a secret app called
2:05.2	Tech Fog, a powerful tool that hijacks social media counts and messaging apps
2:10.8	and targets thousands with a click of a button has caused real and recognize certain online patterns.
2:23.5	And I have with me today one of the two investigators, a forensic digital researcher and
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