When the disinformation machine comes for you
Imperfect Paradise
LAist Studios
4.5 • 535 Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Renée DiResta joined the Stanford Internet Observatory to analyze how propaganda spreads online. But in 2023, she went from studying the online disinformation machine to becoming its target. We dive into what happened when a right-wing conspiracy made Renée its villain, as well as how disinformation has changed over the last three presidential elections and where Renée is finding hope for a better future online.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for LAIST comes from CarPros Kia, featuring the 2027 Kia Telluride Hybrid with a striking new design and family-friendly seating for up to eight. |
| 0:09.5 | You can learn more at CarPros Kia in Glendale, Huntington Beach, and Moreno Valley. |
| 0:15.1 | LAISD is supported by Elephant Energy. |
| 0:17.7 | Elephant Energy is LA's expert in installing modern and efficient heating and cooling systems, the new standard for whisper-quiet comfort year-round. They handle the design and the rebates to save you thousands. Claim your rebates at elephantenergy.com. Do you think we lost the war on disinformation? Well, no, see, I wouldn't frame it that way because disinformation is like, It's like a chronic condition. It's like it's always going to be there. It's, you know, you can talk about disinformation? Well, no, see, I wouldn't frame it that way because disinformation is like, it's like |
| 0:38.0 | a chronic condition. |
| 0:39.0 | It's like, it's always going to be there. It's, you know, you can talk about disinformation in the ancient Greece if you want to, and it'll be with us forever. So I don't think about it in those terms. I think about it more in the terms of like, how do we return to like a shared base of facts? The bigger question is not like, what do we do about disinformation? |
| 0:53.5 | It's how do we find ways to create an information environment where consensus is possible? That I think is the |
| 0:59.0 | question in front of us. This is in Perfect Paradise. I'm Antonio Serejido. René Deresta is a professor |
| 1:07.6 | at Georgetown, a writer and a researcher who studies disinformation and |
| 1:11.7 | propaganda online. |
| 1:13.6 | Her career has spanned venture capital and tech startups. |
| 1:17.1 | She's advised Congress and the State Department on issues of online manipulation. |
| 1:21.8 | Her book Invisible Rulers dives into how influencers, algorithms, and internet spaces can shift public opinion and undermine trust in institutions. |
| 1:36.7 | In 2019, she became the research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a multidisciplinary group that studied abuse on the internet. |
| 1:46.7 | At Stanford, Renee looked at how narratives spread online |
| 1:50.1 | and helped run a project to identify disinformation during the 2020 election. |
| 1:56.1 | She was one of the leading figures on disinformation research. |
| 2:00.6 | And then, in 2023, Renee went from studying the online disinformation machine to becoming its target. |
| 2:08.3 | There's one of the big leaders of the censorship industrial complex is this person named Renee |
| 2:12.0 | Duresta. She's deeply embedded within both the intelligence community and the defense corps. |
| 2:21.3 | This episode on Imperfect Paradise, we sit down with Renee Duresta to get into how and why she became interested in disinformation. |
| 2:30.3 | And what it was like to be caught in the crosshairs of the disinformation machine. |
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