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Recode Daily

How Big Tech benefits from the disinformation panic

Recode Daily

Recode

Science, Technology, Society & Culture

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode of Vox Conversations, host Sean Illing and Joe Bernstein of BuzzFeed News discuss online disinformation and what — if anything — can be done about it. References: "Bad News: Selling the story of disinformation" by Joseph Bernstein (Harper's; Sept. 2021) "Civil Society Must Be Defended: Misinformation, Moral Panics, and Wars of Restoration" by Jack Bratich (Communication, Culture & Critique 13 (3); Sept. 2020) "The Priest in Politics: Father Charles E. Coughlin and the Presidential Election of 1936" by Philip A. Grant Jr. (Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 101 (1); 1990) "Lying in Politics: Reflections on The Pentagon Papers" by Hannah Arendt (NYRB; Nov. 18, 1971) Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet by Tim Hwang (FSG Originals; 2020) "Does Instagram Harm Girls? No One Actually Knows" by Laurence Steinberg (New York Times; Oct. 10) The Radio Right: How a Band of Broadcasters Took on the Federal Government and Built the Modern Conservative Movement by Paul Matzko (Oxford; 2020) "What's so bad about scientism?" by Moti Mizrahi (Social Epistemology 31 (4); 2017) Enjoyed this episode? Rate Vox Conversations ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of Vox Conversations by subscribing in your favorite podcast app. Support Vox Conversations by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by: Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Paul Robert Mounsey Deputy Editorial Director, Vox Talk: Amber Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

What if there was a better way to talk to all your friends than through a thousand different messaging apps on a thousand different platforms?

0:06.1

What if you could just find the show you wanted without browsing through infinite tiles in a hundred different streaming apps?

0:12.6

What if you could have all of your stuff everywhere without dealing with some crummy user interface on some unknowable file sharing platform?

0:21.7

This month on the Vergecast we're looking into connectivity. How we talk to each other, how we talk to our stuff, how we find things online.

0:30.0

All this month on the Vergecast available wherever you get podcasts.

0:39.4

It's Rico Daley. I'm Adam Clark Estes. And in a minute here, it's going to be Vox Conversations with my colleague Sean Elling and his guest Joe Bernstein of Buzzfeed.

0:50.2

They recently had a somewhat daunting talk about misinformation online. How tech giants play a role in spreading it. Why researchers are having such a hard time agreeing what it even is.

1:01.7

And why unfortunately misinformation is here to stay. But also what we need to do to make living with it a little less shitty.

1:11.1

All of this and more is coming up on Vox Conversations. Oh, and one more thing. If you haven't subscribed to the show, maybe you'll reconsider after listening.

1:19.7

Hope so. Okay, here's Sean.

1:23.4

Is the disinformation panic overblown?

1:28.6

I'm Sean Elling and I'm your host for Vox Conversations.

1:41.1

Should we be panicking over disinformation over the last four or five years, we've been sold a pretty consistent story.

1:50.1

The short version is something like this.

1:54.6

We're living in a golden age of conspiracy theories. Thanks to the internet and the tsunami of fake news and disinformation. It's unleashed another fight is shaping up.

2:03.7

But we're how big of a role conspiracy theories are going to have in the Republican Party.

2:07.5

QAnon picking up some new momentum. It's followers are running for school boards and local offices and all this chaos has completely deranged our society.

2:16.7

I believe some of the theories could be true. I believe some of them are great fairy tales, whether it's QAnon.

2:24.4

Facebook decided to take down conspiracy theories pushed by the online movement known as QAnon or the insurrection on January 6th.

2:34.6

Another post stating the next time I see fireworks go off in DC, I want them attached to traitor politicians.

2:40.4

The doors were open. Capital police were standing right there letting people in.

2:44.4

Or the anti-vaccine hysteria. Some groups on Facebook and Instagram are using code words to avoid being detected.

...

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