Interview with Renée DiResta: Online Ecosystems, Disinformation, & Censorship Debates

Decoding the Gurus

Christopher Kavanagh and Matthew Browne

Science, Leisure, Social Sciences, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2023

⏱️ 141 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We are joined by Renée DiResta a writer and researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory. Renée has done a lot of interesting work on disinformation and influence campaigns. Including leading an investigation into the Russian Internet Research Agency’s multi-year effort to manipulate American society in the lead-up to the 2016 election. More recently she was dubbed by the writer/conspiracy theorist, Michael Shellenberger, as the leader of 'The Censorship Industry'.

In short, Renée stands accused of serving as an agent of the Distributed Idea Suppression Complex defending the Gated Institutional Narrative. So being good DISC soldiers ourselves we had to follow our orders and host our exalted leader.

We discuss all of this with her and a range of other topics including how important algorithms and bots are in disinformation networks, whether contemporary influence campaigns are really anything new, and how to address debates around censorship and free speech.

We enjoyed the discussion a lot and are sure that you will too... or else...

Also covered in this episode: Eric Weinstein's suggestions for Twitter CEO, evidence of Lex Fridman's pilled brain, and a rather confusing review.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're going to. Oh, Hello and welcome to Dakota the Guru's a podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist
0:29.3	listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about.
0:33.4	I'm Matt Brown with Ms. Chris Cavada. It's mid-morning here, it's a beautiful day in Australia.
0:39.9	How are things over there, Chris? All right, how's the traffic?
0:43.4	I feel you slept into like morning Joe, you know.
0:47.0	It's a beautiful day right there on the 557 traffic backed up up but you know.
0:54.0	Yeah I think that's what it is I've had too much coffee and now I'm in like radio mode.
0:59.0	Yeah, I have to practice my mid-Atlantic accent. I'm sure I could do a pretty good one. I just need to hear a few more examples to get into the zone.
1:07.0	Yeah, I think that's doable for you. I think that's within your range. I could see you as a Mid-Atlantic radio DJ.
1:16.0	Yeah, yeah, I could do it. I could do it. Yeah, so we get into our new format to have a little bit of a look around the Euro sphere, see what's been going on, keep tabs and some of the old favorites.
1:29.5	A bit like one of the classic rock bands from the 1970s. We play some of the greatest hits
1:34.9	as well as our new stuff.
1:36.1	What have you got for us, Chris?
1:38.1	Well, Elon Musk announced a new Twitter CEO and it's been enjoyable to observe because she
1:47.2	appears to be a relatively, I stress relatively normy advertising executive kind of type, right?
1:56.9	So the kind of person that you would expect to get a CEO role for a tech company that wants to attract advertisers.
2:05.0	And this led to much willing and gnashing of teeth
2:08.8	amongst Elon Musk's peeled fans because she has some involvement with the World Economic Forum,
2:17.4	young leaders program or whatever like she she took part in something to do with
2:22.3	the World Economics Forum and as a result they are all convinced
2:28.0	that she's going to bring in the new world order and destroy Elon's palace of free speech.
2:34.7	So it's been funny to see him get dog piled by his brain minions.
	...

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