Podcasts Are the Laboratories of Misinformation
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2022
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Valerie Wirtschafter and Chris Meserole, our friends at the Brookings Institution, recently published an analysis of how popular podcasters on the American right used their shows to spread the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. These are the same issues that led tech platforms to crack down on misinformation in the runup to the election—and yet, the question of whether podcast apps have a responsibility to moderate audio content on their platforms has largely flown under the radar.
Why is that? This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic talked through this puzzle with Valerie and Chris. They discussed their findings about podcasts and the “big lie,” why it’s so hard to detect misinformation in podcasting, and what we should expect when it comes to content moderation in podcasts going forward.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.8 | We are starting to see some of these funny things where the advertising model or the advertising |
| 0:39.7 | algorithm is maybe a little bit off. |
| 0:43.1 | That poses potentially reputational risks for the advertisers if they don't like the hosts |
| 0:48.9 | that they're getting attached to or vice versa for the hosts if they don't like the advertisers |
| 0:53.2 | getting put on their shows. |
| 0:55.3 | And then we do end up in this world where there are some companies that are jumping |
| 1:00.3 | in and saying, hey, there's a profit to be made here. |
| 1:02.8 | But then they open up another can of words in terms of the content moderation space that |
| 1:06.9 | previously somebody like Apple could skirt around a little bit. |
| 1:11.8 | I'm Quinta Jurassic and this is the LawFair podcast January 13th, 2022. |
| 1:20.1 | Today we're bringing you another episode of Arbiters of Truth. |
| 1:23.4 | Our series on the online information ecosystem. |
| 1:26.7 | In this week on the podcast, we're talking about, well, podcasts. |
| 1:31.8 | Valerie Wirtchopter and Chris Mezzarol are friends at the Brookings Institution recently |
| 1:36.7 | published an analysis of how popular podcasters on the American right used their shows to |
| 1:42.9 | spread the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. |
| 1:48.5 | These are the same issues that led tech platforms to crack down on misinformation in the run |
... |
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