With the midterm elections just weeks away,
the cheap knockoff right wing social media platforms,
the fake louis Vuitton bag versions of twitter and facebook are now
spreading false and misleading information faster than ever before.
With more frequent calls for violence than we've ever seen before.
And here's the great news.
They are even harder to control than they did than it was
when they were on the major platforms.
Why is that?
Because they are, they are kind of in their own ecosystem now and
they pride themselves on not censoring information and
you have to love it when a solution to a major problem causes even bigger problems.
In an article in the new york Times titled How disinformation splintered and
became more intractable.
They explained it like this today.
There are dozens of new platforms, including some that pride themselves on
not moderating or censoring as they put it.
Untrue statements in the name of free speech.
Pew research by the way, has found that at least 6% of
americans now regularly get their news from one of these.
Pretty much I'm gonna call them fake platforms that they can say fake news.
I'm gonna call them fake platforms that are in such an echo chamber.
That truth can't even exist.
At least 69 million people people have joined platforms like parler gab truth
social getter and
rumble that advertise themselves as conservative alternatives to big tech.
According to statements by the companies though,
many of those users are ostracized from larger platforms.
They continue to spread their views,
which often appear in screenshots posted on the very sites that barred them.
Let's go right to the next slide because there's more to unpack here.
Nothing on the internet exists in a silo said Jared holt a senior manager
on hate and extremism research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue,
quote whatever happens in all platforms like Gab or
telegram or truth makes its way back to facebook and twitter and others.
So even the content of people barred from these mainstream platforms
finds its way onto those platforms and
in a much more difficult to control way it bubbles right back up to the surface.
And now it's coming from all kinds of accounts on top of
which the purveyors of disinformation have also become increasingly
sophisticated at sidestepping all the major platforms rules while the use
of video to spread false claims on Youtube, tiktok and
instagram has made them harder for the automated systems to track than text.
Sure.
If you bury it in the middle of a video.
Now, the computers have to process all of this information.
You can put music behind it, you can use code words, you can wink at the camera and
that's a lot harder for for a platform to detect and try to take down.
Here's another example, as recently as July eight of this year, President Trump
took to truth social tea and Incredibly stupidly but very Trumpian Lee named
platform to claim he had in fact won the 2020 presidential vote in Wisconsin.
He was breaking news to his followers there, I'm sure.
And despite all evidence to the contrary, he said this,
barely 8000 people shared that missive untruth social and yet
Mr trump's baseless claim pulsed through the public consciousness.
Anyway, it jumped from his app to other social media platforms within 48 hours of
Mr trump's post.
More than one million people saw his claim on at least a dozen other sites.
It appeared on facebook and twitter, but also youtube, Gab parler and telegram.
Side note telegram isn't, wasn't created for the right wing.
All the rest of them have just the silliest names.
They can't even name things.
Well, Gab and truth social and parlor, it sounds like you're getting a weird
haircut in a strange hall of disinformation.
But I digress since its founding Truth Social, Since founding truth Social trump
has shared posts now from kuna accounts more than 130 times.
Let me repeat that.
The former president of the United States is now just indiscriminately sharing
Cunanan posts just because they make him look good.
He'll post something with a Q button on his shirt and it says the storm is coming
and why do they do it just because they want donald trump, he wants himself to be
able to look like a superhero, like some guy coming out to save the world instead
of actually having done it when he was in power and had a chance to do that.
And even Tiktok has become a hotbed of lies.
Tiktok which is owned by the chinese tech giant bite dance has become a primary
battleground in today's fight against this information.
A report last month by news guard showed that nearly 20% of videos presented as
search results on Tiktok contained false or misleading information on topics
such as school shootings and Russia's war in Ukraine.
20% of the search results are coming up with complete BS results and you have
to assume the other 80% are just people with very defined jaw lines and their
shirts off dancing better than you could ever dance with the midterm elections.
In just a few weeks, the major platforms have all pledged to block or label
anything that violates company policies including disinformation hate speech and
calls to violence.
But experts are not convinced and think the companies are not
doing nearly enough to stop the spread of blake and dangerous lies.
It seems very clear that they are not doing that.
And this is a gigantic problem.
Jink your thoughts on this.
>> Yeah, 69 million people, man, we're in a lot of trouble.
This is really bad.
Okay, now guys, this is very important.
You can't put the genie back in the bottle and everybody's trying to do it and
it's totally futile.
It's you've got to move on from that strategy.
So the original idea was, no, okay.
In the old days we got the tv box in the corner that's got three channels.
Okay, fine, cable news has got 20 channels, 500 channels but it's still
contain, you still need a billion dollars to start a company, start a tv company.
So you got gatekeepers, right?
And still the roughly the walter Cronkite era in some shape or form, right?
That walter Cronkite got turned into a corporate news actor, but but
nonetheless it's contained.
Right now the internet starts, it's no longer contained.
And you just got the social media giants that rise up and
then people start saying crazy stuff on the social media giant's right?
And then they go, yeah, well we can't let people say that the Sandy Hook kids were
actors and that they're not really dead and their parents are part of a conspiracy
and a cabal, they're getting chased all across the country.
This is we can't.
All right, so
facebook is not gonna let you say that twitter is not gonna let you say etcetera.
So then they just start and you know, you mentioned some of the some of their names,
spent one of his gator, okay, they start things like gator right?
And they're like, okay, now then trump's like I got no bounce right cute on you
guys, remember what that is right?
They think that the country has led by democratic cabal that not
only molest little Children, but then drinks their brain juice,
a former president of the United States is promoting promoting a group that
thinks democrats molest kids on a regular basis that that's why they hold power and
then they drink their rangers cuckoo for cocoa puffs.
>> And sometimes eat them.
They're not wasting all of them.
>> To be fair, they do.
Now look guys, they're lunatics.
Everyone who's involved in queue is full blown lunatic that believes in conspiracy
theories that couldn't possibly be anywhere near true.
And in fact, it's it's all projection right?
I mean, they caught the Maga Republican candidate the other day in the parking lot
of a school masturbating, right?
And he's like,
they're endangering the students in there by talking about gay people or something.
And then meanwhile he's masturbating in the parking lot.
Donald trump wished the biggest groomer in american history.
That's a literal fact.
Ghislaine Maxwell biggest groomer in american history.
He wished her well twice.
So I I know her, I like her, I wish her well.
He said about Jeffrey Epstein, Jeffrey really likes them young,
jesus and they're like, no, no it's not trump.
It's the guy as opposed to trump who like pedophiles etcetera etcetera.
So we have disintegration of rationality, logic and reason were in a different
place now, you're not gonna be able to contain it, you're not gonna be okay.
Well let's shut down twitter, let's shut down.
Facebook was shut down and they're just gonna pop up somewhere else.
Well, was it shut down the whole internet.
No, you can't do that.
So I don't want you to fall into despair.
There is another answer.
The other answer is you fight back.
You don't do it physically, you don't do it with violence.
Like they're talking about, you fight back with words,
engage, engage, kick the goddamn mass with ideas.
You've got to, It's, it's a super tough battle because a third of the country's
already zombies, you have to somehow pull them out of zombie land.
Whose brain juices are people drinking?
No, no dude, concentrate, concentrate there, robbing you of your wages.
The whole thing is a distraction so they pay you less and
they don't give you a healthcare, you dumbass.
But you've got to get in the fight and you got to make those arguments and
you've got to be an actual believer in what is right and actually fight for
the american people.
That's the only way to get it back and
certainly gotta win the independence first before you even think about the zombies.
Okay.
And you've got to be able to say things like they're zombies.
Every democrat in Washington listening to this is outraged, not A Q and A.
But at me.
No, you can't call them zombies.
This country's center, right?
Those are wonderful americans.
Majority of republicans are wonderful.
I love my republican friends.
They'll say they'll hit me.
No, they're goddamn zombies have lost their minds.
You've got to get in the battle and
you've got to fight him because you cannot put the genie back in the bottle.
And what do we have as the fascists are now circling around us?
Democratic Party and the corporate media total submission.
I mean, finding does a half speech about Maga in philadelphia did lose it, right?
And, and even the mainstream media.
So I was on, he had read behind him, he had the color red behind him in
that speech, he said, the majority of republicans are wonderful people.
That's hard.
That's tough.
No, you and you've got to actually fight for higher wages.
You gotta fight for everyone's health care.
You gotta fight for paid family, leave.
If you don't give people something they can understand and grasp and
go, they gave me that.
I love that.
Right?
You're not gonna win.
And we have unilateral disarmament for democrats and from corporate media and
they're always 50 50.
I can't tell who's right.
The zombies with the brain juice or the scientists,
99% of the world's scientists, 99% of the world's doctors.
If you can't tell who's right, You're not a reporter.
You're an idiot loser.
Who's destroying this country by saying, hey, let's find the lies and
let's find the truth and let's meet somewhere in the middle,
somewhere in the middle is still a lie and you're not a reporter.
So you retire and go to another job.
>> I think that's all true and good.
This is the one thing though you said it's good things to fight back.
My only point here.
But this is as I saw this, I was like,
I'm glad we have numbers not behind how many of these things are happening.
Cause I've noticed that and I've retweeted some folks that have retweeted things that
re truth, some things that trump said.
And I was like, yeah, he's basically back on twitter.
Right? I remember thinking that to myself, but
how often do I see it?
And I wonder how much is it actually getting to people who are already already
drinking the kool aid?
So is it really?
Yeah, those numbers are startling.
Is it there from people, every time I see it, people either ridiculing it or
there or there pushing back on it saying, look at this ridiculous post.
This guy sit over on truth.
Can you believe he's pushing this over there and when it gets to twitter,
I feel like it's a it's a, you know,
the circular firing squad around this is stupid and everybody just shoots it down.
True.
So I see it that way.
>> But it's also because it's in its infancy and
they haven't quite figured out exactly how to disseminate it very, very widely yet.
And that is gonna get better sadly every year.
And there's already so many platforms, There was one first,
they're like we're gonna try one alternate platform.
Another 12 they're spawning like gremlins and so we do have to be very aware.
It also makes perfect sense to me that the right wing in this country believes
the the does not believe the 99% for example, of scientists or
people are fact based because they've always just cared about the 1%.
So even when it comes to facts, they care about the 1%.
My only hope is that in addition to absolutely you're right jenko that we
need to with fervor and with very crafty, aggressive shrewd language and
marketing and strategic messaging, win back the messaging war and
make sure that we destroy this.
We mock these point of views.
We use laughing emojis, we say how just silly and clownish these people are.
But also I do think that the one not that you can put the genie fully back in
the bottle, but the one way we do have the one chance we do have to punish this
kind of speech is through the legal system and through legislation that at
least when people push the most dangerous of those opinions of those
unfounded theories of the most dangerous and harmful disinformation that
those people can be held accountable like Alex jones just was one chance.
>> Yeah, let me just address two things.
So right wing as we'll hear Ben talk about punishing speech and I knew it.
No, every right has limits, right?
So you can own a gun, but you can't own a nuke.
So the classic line is you can't yell fire in a crowded theater even though you have
the right to speech because every right has some limits, right?
So one of those limits in speech is the call for violence.
If you say, hey, go attack bob and rip his face off, that's illegal.
Even though that's I'm just speaking, it's just speech No,
that actually according to the laws assault,
because you're asking people to go and actually physically harm him.
There are limits to things and there are laws and rules and
regulations so we can all live together peacefully.
>> And not just direct violence.
Like in the Alex jones case,
it can be your words cannot maliciously destroy somebody's life.
>> And that's called and there's rules around that.
It's called defamation.
Nobody's saying go outside the law, What we're saying is actually enforce the law.
In a great irony.
We've turned into the law and order folks and as progressives and
the right wing is like screw law and order.
We don't need it.
We didn't chaos and why?
Because they think they can't win any democracy.
So how is the only other they can win violence, violence.
>> And that's messaging.
We have to take back also is that I don't even think we should see it as the fact
that, we've become the law and order.
People.
We've never not been in favor of law and order, We've just been in favor of justice
under the law while maintaining order in our society and that's a big difference.
>> That's a great point man.
And now what Jayar said, Gerald, here's what I'm worried about.
Okay we all shoot it up down on twitter.
That's true and people certainly fight back on twitter.
That's absolutely true, right?
So but the message spreads and spreads and spreads, right?
So tucker Carlson has the number one show on cable news.
You're not surprised by that.
Number one show for right?
Because you're not surprised by that.
But did you know he has the number two show for democrats?
Number one is Rachel Maddow.
Number two is not any other MSNBC show actually 23 and
four are all Fox news shows because why they're like I don't know everybody's
talking about tucker Carlson and they go I heard he was crazy,
I heard he said something interesting, I'm gonna watch right?
Or they just turned on tv right?
And they're and they're watching or they heard it from their uncle bob who's
telling him about the brain juice and he's like yeah I gotta check that out, right?
And so they're watching him and he's influencing them and
he's influencing them.
He's convincing who don't believe
what they believe in brain juice drinking because Jayar.
You're projecting not every democrats are like us not most like democrats and
republicans.
Most of the people in the country don't follow politics as closely as we do
they barely follow it at all.
I mean have you seen our interviews with the trump fans?
They don't know anything, they don't know anything and
you think the democrats are all geniuses and scholars.
>> And aren't gonna believe all of it maybe.
But even if they believe the slightly less absurd things that his extreme base will
believe you're now moving people a little bit more to that side into a place full of
disinformation.
I infiltrated Q.
And on myself and down at the JFK JR site and
talk to these people who they've jumped so fast like you said into zombieland
it's not like it was a slow descent immediately a few years only into Cuban on
being a thing they believe that the president's being played by an actor and
dead people are alive and they're being inhabited with costumes and CGI.
It's like immediately they're more creative than Star Wars and
you wonder where we're gonna go from here.
It's very quickly gets out of hand.
Yeah so last thing guys so
on twitter there's plenty of folks there is 100% right like if you said to
me hey let's get more left wingers on twitter but no kind of a waste of time.
Okay so and I'm the king of let's fight back with left wing right so but
on tv you got Fox news ripping democrats face off metaphorically most of the time.
And meanwhile, what do we have?
We have a bunch of deaf mute news actors who are like, I cannot tell who you go to.
CNN, I cannot tell who is right.
Everything is 50 50 half of our pundits are republicans, and
they say brain juice tastes delicious.
Okay, we I cannot tell, I cannot tell.
I will not fight back.
It will be biased too far right back.
MSNBC, corporate democrats are great.
Corporate democrats are great.
Don't know. You don't need higher wages.
You don't need health care.
Medicare for all sucks.
Make sure you vote against Bernie, vote for corporate interests.
Wait, what? You're supposed to be fighting back
against the right wing, what are you doing?
They spend all their time fighting against the left wing.
Well then get out of the goddamn way and let us do it, right?
It's not like we're shy about fighting right wingers, you can tell that at least,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no progressives allowed in media,
no progressives,
because then you guys would be uncivil to the right wing goddamn right.
We would be we would be deeply uncivil to them, not with physical action,
not with violence, but with words, fight back with words and ideas and
your speech, but everyone in mainstream media and everyone in democratic
leadership says she, they're only fascists, but you wanna fight back.
No, we we prefer civility, and that's when fascists win,
when the other side refuses to fight back.
We're in those waters right now.