Engines of Outrage Pt. 2

Landslide

NPR

History

4.8 • 762 Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the early 2000s, key tech companies made a series of choices that shaped the future of the internet. They "gave away"" their products "for free." From an initial tweak to Facebook's NewsFeed to conspiracy theories about permanent markers in the 2020 election, that decision — and the relentless hunt for engagement that followed — paved the way for outrage-fueled content, viral conspiracy theories, and polarizing misinformation. And it all supercharged a right-wing media bubble inflated by the same forces.

Part Two of "Landslide: Engines of Outrage" explores how the internet, profit motives, human psychology, and political benefit are fusing together to widen our political divide.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Technologist Powell Garcia is using AI to create photos of people's most precious memories.
0:08.0	How her mother was dressed, the haircut that she remembered. We generated tens of images,
0:13.8	and then she saw two images that was like, that was it. Ideas about the future of memory. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR.
0:24.5	This episode contains some strong language.
0:26.9	Listener discretion is advised.
0:31.4	In a catastrophe, there's always a fog of war.
0:35.9	Rumors fly.
0:36.9	Events get misreported.
0:38.6	In 2012, a wildfire raged in Boulder, Colorado.
0:42.6	And Kate Starboard, a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado,
0:46.5	fought through the fog to provide clarity.
0:48.5	We would, like, make maps of what was going on, of who needed what in what area.
0:53.8	Katener colleagues made maps not of geography, but social media posts.
0:58.8	Where people could pick up donations, where they could make donations, who needed what,
1:02.9	who was injured, who needed help.
1:04.9	And it was uplifting in a way.
1:07.2	All of the best of human behavior during the worst of times.
1:12.7	Kate continued this work, but noticed the fog of war during disasters growing thicker.
1:18.5	Untrue information and conspiracy theories swirled more widely.
1:22.9	In 2015, she was confronted with a pair of horrific events, a mass shooting in Oregon.
1:28.5	It happened on the campus of Umpqua Community College.
1:31.3	At least seven people were killed.
	...

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