The Mago world has much stronger ties among its supporters,

and I think it's because it really does empower them.

What Trump did, I think, was he helped cultivate a community

where he sent a signal by his own behavior

because at 3 a.m. he was tweeting about whatever crazy shit came to mind or whatever he saw that he thought was cool or funny and he sent a signal to his supporters that it's good it is useful to my campaign for

you to just post whatever you want about me. Hey everyone you just heard from today's guest journalist and author Sasha

Isenberg. So way back in 2012 when I was working on my last campaign, Sasha wrote a book called

the Victory Lab about how the Obama re-elect and other Democratic campaigns had used what was

then revolutionary technology to reach voters and increase turnout.

It was an optimistic take on the role of tech and politics based on the idea that voter targeting

and digital fundraising could lower the barriers to political participation and organizing.

Then the 2016 election gave us Trump, fake news, alternative facts, and a mess of bad actors who exploited technology and online platforms to spread

disinformation and propaganda that made voters more confused and more

radicalized than ever. It came from the Russian government, but also from the Trump campaign,

right-wing media, and countless anonymous trolls and kooks who remain difficult to

track. All of this led Sasha to go back and re-evaluate the lessons he wrote about in the victory lab.

What he came up with is a new book called The Lie Detectives, where he dives into all the things we missed about politics and technology way back when,

and talks to the strategists and researchers who were figuring out the most effective ways

to fight back against the disinformation that still threatens democracies everywhere.

I sat down with Sasha to talk about why the left and right view disinformation so differently,

how the Biden campaign used new strategies to deal with it in their successful 2020 campaign and what we can all

do to help neutralize the threat ahead of 2024.

...