The Early Internet & 9/11 Conspiracies

you ever had that thought, then congrats Alex Jones. You're a nine eleven conspiracy theorist. This is Jordan Clapper Fingers the conspiracy September eleven really was the ground zero of conspiracy theories. Chances are you can name one. Jet fuel can't melt steel beams? George Bush did it? What about Building seven? Osama bin Laden is a CIA operative named Tim. What's that you don't know about that one? Well, someone told it to me just a few months ago at

a Trump robway. People were talking, it's been Laden still alive him? Um, are you doing math right now? Now? I'm trying to remember his real name, Tim Osama Osama bin Laden, Yeah, Tim, Tim someone forgot his last name. He's him is not the most saughty name and he wasn't say from the c I A needless to say. When we heard about Tim bin Laden, we were like, let's get to the bottom of this huckleberry. And even though our unverified non tipster couldn't remember Tim's real last name,

we found it. His name is Tim Osman. Totally fake guy, but his name is Tim Osman. So I want to go through this conspiracy theory with a person who is a specialist in media manipulation and the effects of disinformation. Dr Joan Donovan, the Research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard. Joan, ready to hear this story of a man named Tim. Yeah, I know a few Tims, so interested to find out if I knew you. You may know that this guy

lives just down the street from you. Again, disclaimer, his name is not Tim. Here we go. Let me walk through this for you guys. So this nutterbutter of his story starts in nineteen eighty six in Sherman Oaks, California, classic classic Bin Laden. He's twenty eight at the time, wearing doctors and he's representing the interests of the muja Hadeen in Afghanistan. He's at a Hilton Hotel in Sherman Oaks to meet a couple of FEDS and the name

he's been assigned by the CIA is Tim Osman. Now at the Hilton Osama Bin, Tim Osman Lawden is told by the guys from the US government that the CIA doesn't consider their group truly representative of Afghans, and Tim gets pissed. He wants to lobby the d C Movers and shakers for support. Now, the theory claims there is evidence that Tim tours US military bases other parts of

the United States, including possibly the White House. He's even given special demonstrations of the latest equipment, pretty high end stuff. How do we know all this? And by no, I mean how do we make it all up? Because one of the Americans there to meet Tim is a guy named Michael Reakin Shudo, a man linked to the Chinese industrial and military group Norinko, whose name is misspelled a dozen different times on the most official looking website explaining

this conspiracy theory. He was apparently a loose end and he had to be taken care of, so he gets arrested, accused by the US government of being delusional, accusing him of modifying something called Promise software in the desert, which obviously doesn't make sense because and I'm quoting from the website here, sand isn't good for computers. I mean, that's a fact. So Rick and Shuto, which sounds like a delicious advertiser, is put in prison and accused of making

all this stuff up. But if he were really making it up, then why is there evidence that the modifications the computer software was made in an office in nearby Indio, California. That's the story of tim Osman rest in Power of Fake King. It's a strange way into what is probably the original Internet conspiracy theory eleven. And that is why

Joan is here. First of all, Joe, any reactions to the tale of tim Osman, I mean it sounds legit, uh Like, you know, clearly we've got a reputable news organization digging up facts and and we've got you know, layers of editors and others that have been activated. You know, hundreds of thousands of dollars must have been spent on

this investigation. So I'm on board. You buy it, and you're a pro here had you well, of course, of course, you know what's interesting about things like this is essentially when you're being told something that is a liicit information that you feel like you're getting information that nobody else has, it does make you listen closer. It makes you want to dig deeper. And when it comes to the early internet, uh, we you know, we think a lot about well, what

are you know? What isn't government telling us? Right? And and you have all of this new information s that you have access to. And so the moment when the attacks on nine eleven happened, we all were concerned, but none of us really knew what the internet was at that point. You didn't even have major news organizations taking

you know, their websites very seriously at that stage. And so if you were going online to find information about what happened during nine eleven and you were digging in, you would be drawn in by the novelty and the outrageousness of stories like this, and you may uh then find yourself moving between a network of websites and message boards discussing uh these theories and others. And so it's it's unsurprising. But also we've had you know, twenty years

of this now and it still looks a lot like that. Well, when we look at nine eleven conspiracy theories, where do we start? Where do you begin to hone in? I recently published a book with my co authors called me Moore's and in the book, we wanted to explain how basically the Internet affects how people understand politics and communication, and so we decided to go back into looking at Occupy and what we were interested in Occupy was understanding

the rise of Alex Jones. And as we were digging in, we couldn't ignore the fact that Alex Jones was also one of the major contributors to nine eleven conspiracy theories. But it wasn't the same then. It wasn't like he was online pushing this so much. He had a lot of UH television stations that were airing his show and a few months I think it was July before UH September eleventh, he had a show where he was showing people the White House UH number and suggesting people call Congress, say,

we know a terrorist attack is about to happen. We know that bin Laden is going to be involved. They're going to blame it on him, and you, as a listener, have a role to play, and I won't want you to believe Alex Jones. I want you to go get these news stories off my website. I want you to

call these major newspapers. I want you to find out these statements were true by the White House about preparing for martial law, and I want you to let them know that if there is any terrorism, we know who to blame, and that participatory conspiracy being part of the action is something that Alex Jones has been able to really hone in on and bring people into these worlds um as part of his media making. You say, you're saying some and you're saying this is July of two

thousand one too. So there's people who are paying attention, they're hearing this before it happens, and see this happening and draw a connection that gives validity to a lot of his theories. Does that that building, it builds his base and but it what it does is it actually he actually loses his television um uh networks? So uh, people are you know this is kind of crazy? This

is really out there. Uh, you know, it's very obviously xenophobic in some ways, although cancel culture wasn't really a thing then you you could be openly xenophobic or islamophobic and the good old days before yeah, before you when you could get away with it right. Um. But by and large, when we were trying to study at the rise of other kinds of political communication online, we did keep coming back to nine eleven conspiracies and especially means like, uh,

jet fuel can't melt steel beams. Why do we even remember that turn of phrase? Nine eleven is an inside job? Uh? You know, these turns of phrase can be very potent and popular, and they they're really sticky, and so they those kinds of um key phrases also became really important explainers or shorthand for groups of people that had started to come together on message boards and in in email

lists that eventually be called became to be called truthers. Now, I think what's interesting about this, you know, and on this podcast we're looking at a bunch of different conspiracy theories, and we often talk about how these things spread on social media and the internet, looking at this as one of the uh, the birth of these types of conspiracy theories. Uh, it's also the birth of the internet at the time.

Can you give us a little bit of background of how the Internet is being used at this this point and how how people are using it to pass information, how people are getting information, understanding these theories. So this is before social media, so we're not in the era of social networks in the same way that we think about early Facebook or early Twitter. But we are finally starting to have high speed Internet in our homes, which

allows for the transmission of video. And this is a really important aspect of how we understand UM the world around us, because it's no longer that you're getting your video from UH cable um stations. It's no longer that strictly UH and this opens up a whole new world of broadcast, creativity, innovation. And at that moment, there were a lot of people who were going online, making videos,

making content that we're anti mainstream media. And I would say that in that time, even when I was using the Internet then I was someone who would consume these kinds of videos. I wanted to know more about what was going on in the world. I didn't always trust mainstream outlets. I certainly didn't trust the government. I mean, I'm a child of the rage against the machine generation, right, So we always want to question and ask more and so.

But online everything is done through hyperlinks at this point. So you're on a website, there's a page on the website with a bunch of links, and so you're really traveling through this very um labyrinth like information ecosystem where people are linking you to things or your following sets of links, and you never really know where you're going to end up. But you always take it um with a grain of salt. You think about it. There's no

institutional power behind this message. You don't always know where you're getting the information from, so you approach it with a kind of radical skepticism at that stage. Back then, the internet was really a place for weirdos and geeks and people who wanted to understand more about the world. And and we're sharing things for the love of one another. Uh, And I thought that was really you know it was. It was actually kind of a nice time in a

weird way, um, because you could find your people. I remember entering in with skepticism around that time as well, and partially because of my lack of familiarity with this new tool. Right if it feels as if everybody was skeptical in certain ways because we weren't experts on it. We didn't really know how this was working or what we were getting information on. But it was sort of like the wild West in a very curious way. And perhaps I'm speaking more to myself of somebody who was

always afraid of taking big steps into the unknown. So I was always cautious about those things. I guess I'm curious about at that time what kind of conversations or were their conversations about the Internet and how it should be regulated and used. So there's this landmark legislation that

is essentially a legislation of decontrol. It says UH section two thirty essentially says that websites or computer services are able to moderate contents as they wish, but they're not going to be held responsible for the content on their

UM services. So that means that if you're a server, or you're an email host or your domain registrar, if someone, if some crazy person puts up stuff that's illegal, it's not your fault, right, You're just providing this basic infrastructure and is So that law gets past and you start to see different web services blossom, and you see um groups of people still feel like they have mastery over the means of communication, they are able to build their

own servers, they're able to register their domains, and so essentially, at that time, on line regulators and many people using the Internet were very optimistic that there weren't going to be these major crimes committed. Uh, most legislation or people were concerned with, um, child pornography as we know um or maybe people don't know, but the the Internet's backbone and the innovation around the Internet actually came about as the pornography industry came online. And so the way in

which we remember Internet history. UM. As a professor, I'm always telling my students, you know, like there was really you know, it matured around pornography. And so it's not like the we endeavored to build an Internet that was going to be the place for uh, you know, this free and open library of information where everybody's getting access to of the world's knowledge. Like you remember, al well, right, follow the porn and that's I mean, that's always been

the history, right, isn't that? Also think the innovation towards home movies, uh, like allowing people to watch it at home primarily came because people wanted to watch pornography at home, and so the technology follows the porn. If only if we could only aim pornography at a working democracy, that's what I mean, then we can technologically get to a good place and yes to be like, oh, thank god, we have a lovely democracy that responds to the needs of its people. How do we get here? Well, people

wanted to watch democratic porn. Fine, Okay, it's weird, it's a little strange. But no king here, no king shaming, as long as my vote counts. But if you think about it, then as as we describe the history of the Internet, and we're not talking about then like, you know, we want people to have access to legal uh you know, law libraries, and we want people to have, you know, access to the greatest science. A lot of that stuff

is still behind paywalls. And so at that time, the early Internet, um, you know, maybe the wild West doesn't really even describe it, um, but it was a bit of a free for all, and the major innovations weren't you know, necessarily tied to any particular like public interest or social good, and so conspiracy theories and conspiracy communities we're not just a place where you could you know,

jump in and say things and contribute. But these were also communities where people thought that they were building some kind of knowledge, some kind of um resistance to the establishment, right.

And so the Internet had in its infancy this relationship to liberation, this relationship to if we had the facts and we were able to communicate freely, we wouldn't need governments, right, And so there is a kind of techno libertarian uh ethic that undergirds the rise of these kinds of communities online. I love it. I want to take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll be joined by Corey Row, a filmmaker who created one of the first viral conspiracy

films about nine eleven. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Jordan's Clapper Fingers the Conspiracy. This week, we're talking about Osama bin Laden and as apparently rich history as a guy named Tim from California who turned into a CIA operative, and we're also going to look at a few theories about what happened in the wake of nine eleven. I'm here with Joan Donovan, who you've been hearing from, but we also have Corey Row with us today. Corey

is a filmmaker and a veteran. A few years after nine eleven, he made a film that went crazy viral called Loose Change. Was one of the first conspiracy theory films on nine eleven, and since then a lot has happened, both for the aftermath of the film and for Corey himself. So we're going to talk about some of that. Corey, thanks for being here, Thanks for having me on. Let's talk a little bit about Loose Change. How did you

get involved in making this film. I was a soldier in Afghanistan and Iraq and my best friend Dylan Avery. Him and I were communicating from you know, him in the United States and myself overseas, and you know, just talking back and forth, and largely it kind of came from a place of Dylan didn't really know what was going on with me, uh and different things that nature and you know, started to just kind of dig into things.

Now it is it correct? It started out as a fictional narrative story and then morphed into becoming more of a documentary style film. Yes, that is correct. Dylan Avery,

who is the director of the film. You know, he was always aspirational and he always wanted to make a movie, and he started to write a script in the post nine eleven era, and then in doing so, and you know, writing that script, he was doing a lot of research about September eleven and uh, you know, on the internet, researching different things and coming across different information that the film started to split kind of from like a narrative

and then there was sections of documentary. And then he did his first screening and the the immediate response was like, this documentary is very interesting. You should drop all that narrative stuff. Because we had no ability to act or do anything of that nature, and our cameras were terrible, and uh, you know, it was basically still like pre DSLR days and we had no money or equipment to

actually make a movie. But he did have the ability to kind of edit together, you know, small chunks of information on a laptop, which was really a new technology at that time. The fact that we were even able to get a camera at all and a laptop and be able to shoot content and edit that, you know on a PC um was a revolutionary at that time, UM, and it was really intriguing for us as young men

and as myself, um, coming out of the military. It was technology that I was interested in and it was something that I enjoyed going, uh, you know, shooting footage, and I started to do it while I was in the military, making videos from my battalion and things of

that nature. And then once I got out after my second tour, I joined Dylan in d c uh and he was already in the process of releasing Loose Change, and I just kind of came on board to help him, uh produce that film and really get it out there as much as possible. And it just caught onto things that were really early on at that time. Google Video, which is kind of the predecessor to YouTube, was just coming online and it was a way that we were able to share information, uh. And we didn't even really

do it a lot. We we uploaded like a version of the movie in English, and then other people all around the world would download it and they would change it into their language, German, Korean, different things of that nature,

and then re uploaded to Google Video. And during I think it was two thousand five and two thousand six, Loose Change held you know, the first top video positions from one Day eighteen and all these different languages, uh, and it was just again was taking off in a way that nobody expected and nobody really could have foreseen.

It was just kind of the culmination of perfect circumstance answs between technology that was available to filmmakers early on the growth of the Internet, as you guys have been talking about UM as well as you know, and this is really I think the big thing is at that time, there was a huge response to the Bush administration. You know, you guys just talked a lot about why you know that these groups kind of came together and that that nine eleven was the beginning of the digital conspiracy theory,

which I agree with. It just kind of it was all a response because the Bush administration wasn't investigating nine eleven. At a certain point, the Jersey Girls who were victims of the nine eleven UH or family members and nine eleven victims were demanding investigation into nine eleven, and the Bush administration, who was already entrenched in war in Afghanistan, was like, no, we're not going to investigate this. We're

we're focused on the war right now. And that's when they started to be this like huge uprising of people are like why won't you investigate it? You know, what are you trying to hide? And then you know, for people like myself who were overseas and fighting these wars,

it was you know also you know, disheartening. And then you have movies like Michael Morris Fahrenheit Night eleven that were coming out, and so there was a lot of anti war, anti Bush amnistration feelings within the nation that really caused these things to kind of culminate in different areas.

And once they did investigate nine eleven and they came out with a nine eleven Commission report, of course there was a large upward to that as well, because it really was an efficient, sufficient investigation and didn't answer most of the questions that the family members were asking for in the first place, which is I believe why society and members of that society like myself reacted in the way that we did to create media that was to

educate people about things that could potentially be going on. So they got more you know, invested with the Bush administration and what they were doing. Walking through your headspace a little bit there, quite because so we're talking, you're you're getting involved around two thousand four, two thousand and five, is that correct? How old are you at the time? I was twenty two coming out of the military too, and you're you're in Iraq. Yeah, actually I turned nineteen

in Iraq. I turned I was I turned nineteen Afghanistan and then I turned twenty Iraq. Sorry, that was the exact years. You're in Afghanistan and then you're how are you feeling? Told youre in Iraq? How are you feeling? Uh? You know, really on like everybody, I drank the kool aid. There's even news articles out there of my hometown papers saying terrorism has got to be dealt with. But it was in Afghanistan that we were told that we were going to Iraq, well before the general public was and

then I got to live that firsthand. Um, you know, knowing that knowledge, coming back to the United States, seeing them drum up the war effort for Iraq with the false intelligence that we all know is false intelligence. Now that we directly lied to the American people and murdered innocent people in Iraq. Like, let's let's say what it was. Are you feeling this and doubting that as you are

in Iraq? You know, I remember a very specific conversation in the emergency room of Medical City in Baghdad with a father whose daughter's head was blown off, and he was like, this is what's gonna happen. He goes, you guys came in here and we have let you do what you you're doing. And he's like, it's gonna get worse, and it's gonna keep getting worse and until you guys leave because we will never stop. And this is what's happening,

is you're killing innocent people like my daughter. And guess what. Exactly what he described to me on the first wave of that invasion is what I saw not only on my invasion, but every subsequent one after that, as it just continuously got worse as one administration handed it to the next, and things in that region of the world

just turned into absolute garbage. So personally, for somebody who me, you know who who you know stepped forward and was fighting for the American government and then to learn that they're just basically lying to the American people so that them and their buddies have a blank check to rip off American taxpayers, and then it's like, all right, well, we should probably have a conversation about this as citizens

of our country, right because this is fucked up. I'm sorry, I'm just gonna say, for what it is like this was a terrible time in American history where the government was just running amok and and citizens were genuinely upset and concerned, you know, and that's that's where we you know, what I like to really focus on is the fact of where these kind of things came from. It's fascinating to hear that that's the story we don't get to

to know, Like what what what? What you're walking into, where you're coming from as you start to put together loose change, I guess, so you have your experience in Iraq clearly affects your point of view and your opinion towards the American government clearly a lot of distrust and the information you're getting. And uh, did you see the internet the way that Joan has kind of described it as a place to to find community, as a find porn,

to find point? Yeah, I guess first of all, do you first go and find board and then like, oh, I could also use this as a place to find community and or to put out information? Seek out information? Is your take on the internet at that time? Similar what my take is on the Internet is kind of a cause and reaction that we always see throughout human society as we continue to evolve. Right, information was growing and things were happening, and so this this, these things

started to go in one direction or the other. And it's really the largest question here is can human nature? Can humans survive mass communication? Which is what we're really at the beginning of here, and at the beginning of the Internet was and so for me to just kind of see all this different stuff was crazy, But for us it was definitely a way to what I would call weaponized information. We were able to use these new platforms to get stuff out there in a way that

was never done before. So Dylan's a filmmaker, and even at the idea is let's create something narrative and successful in that sense, did things shift and you saw yourselves as as activists as opposed to filmmakers at some point? Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, we were given a pretty big hat to wear. It wasn't something that we asked for. We were young kids would be the best messengers for that,

of course not. Dylan just made a great video that was you know, very uh, that was caught by people's you know, people could receive it or they liked it, or you know, what about whatever about it was something was new and like she said, you know, they felt like they were on the inside of information, and so it grew exponentially and you know there was you know, memes later on about you know, college kids pickup lines was have you seen loose change and that kind of thing.

But it definitely morph Like we're talking about two very different errors of time here. We're talking about the creation of loose change in the base of the Internet, and then where we are today, which is wildly different. Right, we'll get into some of the content of loose Change and also where we are today, Joe and I want to bring you in here. Loose Change becomes some say, one of the first viral hits, something like a hundred million people watched it were affected by it. What was

it that made it go viral? From your perspective, Joane, did we have even a concept of virality at the time when this was launched in two thousand six? No, Well, the things that used to go viral online at that time were you know still what goes viral these days, which is pictures of animals, cats, uh, you know, funny names, um.

And you have to remember that, like video is new at that stage, right, and so but what really UH was this ground swell of interest was small groups sharing this link, getting involved in discussions about this uh a film in this documentary and the community around it that we're also digging out different pieces of information and putting them, putting, putting this really big puzz a together UM on message boards where people were communicating with one another and trying

to add to the story, right, and in that way, UM, the early Internet is highly participatory, and I think that one of the things you don't get with UM the kind of conspiracy that we would think of with JFK is the narratives come down, but there's not a lot of ways in which you can interact with the narrative. You can believe it or not. But with U nine eleven conspiracism, you had this ongoing daily dialogue that you

could participate in and that you could add to. And so UH that community building and even this idea that you were a truth seeker rather than someone that was merely just you know, consuming what the mainstream media is

telling you. And you were like this drone that was just living your life, right, You weren't going to look away, you were going to look further and further and deeper and deeper into this, and people were meeting each other, they were having uh you know, conventions, they were uh making memes together and sharing them, and so it was

a highly participatory moment for the culture. And because you thought that you were finding things that government and other UM groups were keeping from you, uh, that really made you want to dig in more and understand more. And the military component I think is really important here because when people feel like they're being lied to and the democracy is at stake, they're willing to do things that

they otherwise wouldn't have been willing to do. And so at the same time, not just online you have these um uh media that's traveling, but you also have uh a fairly intense and high war movement that is consuming this information and then bringing it into the streets uh and trying as best as they can to stop US imperialism. Corey, I know you don't think of yourself as a conspiracy theorist, and then you have you have passionate views about right

wing conspirasts like Alex Jones. What's the cleanest way to separate in your view? What the differences between you and someone like like Alex Jones. Alex Jones is definitely someone who's turned this into you know, a money making operation. He's become very wealthy out of this, and he's gotten

himself into very high political places. I mean, let's remember and again, this is something I really need to harp on here because we've had a whole conversation about conspiracy theories, and we need to talk about when this really got out of control, because for a long time, this nine eleven conspiracy stuff kind of really quieted down. My life

had moved on. People weren't talking about this anymore. I wasn't getting nearly the messages that I still get to this day, until the candidate of Donald Trump came around, and that candidate of Donald Trump utilized Alex's Alex Jones's platform to promote himself and to align himself with this kind of base of people, and then decided to use that in his you know, presidential career, with the assistance of Fox News to perpetuate these conspiracy theories on a

level that's never been seen before. Again, you're talking, we're talking about two very different things here to twenty year old kids who made a you know, college level movie and put it out for free on the Internet. And then the President of the United States utilizing Fox News to weaponize conspiracy theories to ignite a base to try to overthrow the country. And then now we're in this kind of post era and they used this and they

took this in. What's so ironic about it. It's the same group of people that hated us when we made this video because we were anti war, we were leftist, we were liberals, we didn't want to we were pacifists. I'm you know, not into guns and that kind of ship. Uh. And so now to have the same people that hated us using this material to propagate their own nonsense is kind of very interesting thing to me. Uh. And furthermore on on Alex Jones, Like, you know, obviously we're talking

about him. He just got hit with about a billion dollar fine after you tie in legal fees and all those different things, as as he as he should, and

so let's really focus on what that is. That's the the shooting and the fact that he's claiming that the people are actors and all that nonsense, right, And so what's the difference between those two events, between nine eleven and Sandy Hook eleven was response by family members in an era when there was information that wasn't being disseminated to the American public, and it was not only conspiracy

theorists who were interested in that information. The American media was perpetuating nine eleven for decades afterwards, with every little bit of new information that was coming out. Uh. But back to you know, Sandy Hook, that kind of conspiracy came up within a couple of months, and it was generated on the Internet by people who were not directly related to the event, which is very different than the

nine eleven situation where this took years to culminate. And so for us, we were coming from a place where we were trying to do what we believed was honorable, using using the things that we had available to us at the time, and we believed in what we were doing, and we're trying to make it the most scholarly piece of evidence that we could put out there, and we always that's why we did so many revisions, and that's why we kind of remove things, and we admitted to

our mistakes, and we consistently try to just have a conversation about it so that we could always get a new investigation and that was always our aim and the reason we wanted that new investigation was to support the family members who also wanted that new investigation into nine eleven and never they never got it. What what is your what is your relationship with with it? Now? Uh?

Knowing where we're at, obviously, we're in a very different place than we were, We're across social media is very different now and like you're an older person, information has come out, there's distrust across the board, and I know you guys have revised the film, but there's even a cottage industry that's brought up to debunk theories that you guys were putting out there as well, like how do you see that film currently? I mean, I'm the producer of that film and I will be for the rest

of my life. So my job is to make sure that it doesn't disappear because it's such an important piece of information that we need to analyze and have a conversation about. And I also think you still you still have the same questions about uh, nine eleven that you

had in that film. Do you have those today? There's definitely you know, there's a lot that film has put out twenty years ago right, and during that time, so much more information has come out from the from the United States government with redactive documents and different things of that nature. But there's still some major questions for me that need to be answered. This is a lot of infinite questions and it's a delicate conversation. I think, Corey,

I can see UM. I think you bring up something that I think a lot of people on the left on the right are grappling with right now. We should be skeptical of our government and the institutions around us, and I think we're looking for what that line is of what is healthy skepticism and what is skepticism that is degrading faith in institutions. Uh. I think there are there are critics of UM, something like louis Cha Change

and some of these the Truth or movement. There are critics that live within victims families who feel like this UM takes the responsibility off of the people who perhaps perpetuated the horror of nine eleven, and it adds disinformation out there that it erodes faith in institutions. But I'm sure there's we should be more skeptical of the institutions

and the information that we have. I think There's an argument too of if some people would argue that what you're putting out there's misinformation, it's also in response to a government that is putting out misinformation. You're fighting a war in Iraq that is based on misinformation, which puts us in this fucking place right now where where it doesn't feel like we're getting healthy, good information. Joan, I think I look to you when it comes to theories,

where is the healthy line? How do we show distrust in UH positions of power without eroding distrust or eroding trust in sort of our society. Well, I what's interesting about government or the state is I don't think there's anybody that's ever been really satisfied with the state. I don't think that there's a UH utopia anywhere where people are like, you know, who's doing a good job our government? Right, Like, it's just not something you hear, right, especially as we

get into different issues. But back in the early aughts, people were using you know, there was a familiar meme going around bush line people died, right, and and he had made these statements about quote unquote a massive stockpile of biological weapons. Other had others had argued that um you know, Uh, well, we don't know if there were nuclear weapons, but we're pretty sure, you know. And so there was a lot of hedging back then about what

to do and how to do it. But when you say massive stockpile um and people are doubting that, it tends the government's tend to double down on that. And for nation, we've seen that meme repeated over and over. Obama lied, people died, you know, Trump lied, people died.

It keeps coming up, right, And I think that as we imagine the role of government in our lives and what governments should and could be responsible for, we're at another crossroads right now with um, the role of NATO in the Ukrainian and Russian war going on, and is it the fact that NATO is fighting a proxy war with you know, with Ukraine suffering all of the uh serious, serious casualties. And so I think that it's important for people to be skeptical of of governments and very powerful

people um making these decisions when it comes to massive casualties. Now, that doesn't mean we should just throw our arms in the air and say everything is endlessly corrupt and there's nothing we can do. Because I do at the end of the day, and I think maybe Corey agrees with me. I do believe in the power of people and the power of people to come together to formulate their own ideas, to dig in and look at what kind of evidence is out there, and we do need to have more

facts and public interest information circulate throughout our society. And the last point I'll make on this UM, which is to say, I think we need a lot more journalism. I think we need a lot more investigation. I think when it comes to who's going to hold these people accountable, it's going to be UH journalists who are going to be able to get the goods. I don't think we can rely on UM law enforcement and those other kinds of institutions to get to the bottom of corrupt governments.

It just doesn't really seem to be doing the job. Journalists have always played this role of digging in, finding and piecing together UH different bits of information and creating that narrative. And so in many ways, Corey and and those that made Loose Change UM weren't necessarily your traditional

style journalists, but they do UM are. They are the archetype of this early form of digital journalism where people were uh doing more than asking questions, but really trying to make media to mobilize audiences and to get people to think differently. And hopefully what it does is it instills in people a skeptical attitude about how do you critique and understand information? How do you piece it together? Um? And then further than that, how do you hold accountable

people in power that are telling massive lies? And I think that that's where the the big question about studying disinformation and comes in right now is because UM, we don't necessarily know who's going to hold the very very rich and powerful UH to account for spreading lies at scale. I think the most recent example of that is is trying to understand who is responsible for the January six insurrection and and what does that mean to hold someone

responsible for an event like that, Corey. When you look at the information on the internet, who should we trust to ask these questions? And what information should we be trusting on the internet? UM, I think we're in such a gray zone right now that we don't have an answer to that. And I think what we need to kind of come to terms with this effect that we

as a society won't have an answer to that. But I think, and this is my idea, this is my solution, This is where the line is um for me, is that we need to educate our children better right from the start. If you ask any kid in America now what we're Columbus's three ships, they'll tell you right. And so we know how to teach our children good information. We just need or we know how to teach our children information. We just to deed to make that good information.

And so I think we need to kind of just accept the fact that where we are right now is kind of where we are, and of course we need to tombstone engineer that as best we can, but we need to do our research on how this misinformation is affecting us and how it's driving us and the things like Joan is doing and trying to to grapple with, and then figure out a way that we can instill that information into our children early on so that they grow up with the right tools to be able to

discern good information from bad. And I think that's a solution. Of course it's not perfect, but it at least push us in the right direction. And it's very much what like Jones said, there's no utopia humans aren't perfect and we never will be, and so we need to just kind of keep working towards something better and leave it

better than we found it. And so in this instance, with this new digital age, we have created this new weapon of mass communication, and we need to figure out how it really adjusts to humans and how we can use it as a benefit instead of what we've created, which is this kind of individualistic society where everybody thinks they're the center of the universe. And figure it and tool it, retool it into something that's more beneficial for society, you know, like, how is how is the societies of

going to be using the internet? Can we envision that, Can we envision how they transmit information, good information, factual information, and try to reverse engineer that for our own society and start to implement those rules so that we can get to that place for the next generation. Because as I see it, right now, our current generations, we just gotta let us go. We're done, Like we don't even have a chance. Come on, come on. It's a very

optimistic point of view. I've been watching Jordan's pieces, and I like what I see out there is like scary, so like I'm not sure there's ever coming back from that. Right, And and we think Trump was so bad, wait till the next one comes down. Because when I was in the army, the one thing I always had a new first sergeant like every eight months, and I was hoping that the next first sergeant would be better than the

last one. And he was never better. He was always worse than It always been new rules and restrictions and uh, and so I mean, I hope you know I used to be optimistic like ten years ago, right, we all used to be optimistic, but then the last ten years happened, and now we're a lot more pessimistic. Uh, we'll put a bow on this, and I want to We're gonna

talk about a couple of things. But uh, kind of the final question for both of you within this segment here, Uh, what what do you think the legacy of Loose Change is, Corey? I think Loose Changes the first viral video of the Internet. It's the only documentary that people are still talking about now all these years later. There's a lot of different stuff comes out, and I'm proud of that fact, Like I helped make a piece of media that was like truly just long is going to live past me probably,

and that's cool. And what I think it's turned into is the digital version of a band book and we need, you know, And then the statement goes any band burger, but any band book is worth reading, right, And so again I think that Loose Change needs to exist on the Internet so that we can have the conversations about it. Are humans going to continuously use pieces of information like loose Change or anything else to you know, push their

own views? Of course they are. That's human nature. And it doesn't matter if it's loose Change or Zeitgeist or something they saw on Fox News. They're gonna use whatever they need to use to to propagate their point of view. But I like to look back at loose Change as the culmination of an amazing series of events that nobody could have seen coming, and it really did rock the world. Like you know, it still goes on to this day.

And what's super interesting about it is how it's morphed throughout these years and to me to see, you know, how it's been used incorrectly by other people, to especially American presidents and Alex Jones and and these different people. We we need to latch onto that not and not be afraid of it. We need to understand why it's happening and do the studies that that she's talking about so that we can understand why these things happen and then again equip our our children to be able to

deal with them better. I was not trained for the society that I was pushed into. Right in high school, I was like, Hey, we're gonna do this. Need to pinta san Raealoss Columbus Day. And then, you know, on my eighteenth birthday, essentially I'm invading Afghanistan, and then on my nineteenth birthday, I'm invading uh, you know, Iraq. And I get to live firsthand at this early stage in my life seeing the American you know, foreign policy just

as horrible as it really is. And I mean imagine the psychological, like just breakdown that I went through as a human being, trying to understand that everything that you were raised to believe in is an utter lie, like and and that it's just complete facade and the thing that you think was you were believing in it's long

long gone. Joan, what do you see the legacy of loose change as I think, you know, I think about it in a broader sense than it wasn't just the the video and the evidence presented in it, but it's part of a moment where um, you know, Corey, I appreciate you talking about how it was translated into many different languages. People felt that they could pick it up and take elements of it, translate elements of it, and

make it their own. And it really shows us how this kind of participatory Internet culture was going to develop, was that people were going to take information, they were going to remix it um in many ways. Uh. And you know, no, no shade, Corey, but we don't even remember the authors of it, right, Like it's anonymous in that sense. It becomes a piece of the culture, and you know, clips of it people I'm sure will remember. Means that come out of it are definitely something that

have lived on. But by and large it was you know, born of the Internet and then created and became the infrastructure in the in the content on which many different kinds of communities based their worldviews. And I think that when you come into contact with that, uh, those ideas very early on as you're making your identity. And I'm you know, I'm sure eighteen other people in your life where either going off to college or starting new businesses or uh you know, um not going to war, but

it was. You know, it's a really unique time in American culture with the technological shifts that people were grappling with and the uncertainty we don't The thing that nine eleven itself introduces to the American psyche is that, uh it can happen here, that the war can be brought home.

And as a result, you get this uh paranoia in society about the other and about being attacked, and you don't feel as if you have protection and security from the government, and so finding one another and using information and building knowledge together becomes an incredibly powerful mode of solidarity.

And I think that, you know, as the Internet has progressed and things have changed, those groups of people that found each other in those uh moments after nine eleven, that we're sharing um these kinds of theories UH continue to be in community with one another and continue to be critical of the state. And the last thing I'll add about this moment, especially around conspiracies. Sometimes communities have to use conspiracy as a way to protect themselves from

UH governments and government overreach. It's not uncommon for if you take a situation like Flint, where people were saying, there's something wrong with the water, there's something going on, and people were really dismissive at the beginning of the Flint water crisis because people hadn't really learned how to do science and and to build science around of the pollution and flint. And so sometimes rumors and conspiracy can help communities come together and focus on a problem. And UH,

and sometimes it's it's true. And I think that elements of what came out of loose change or out of that moment that we would have called conspiracy end up challenging power and becoming an important, UH way in which we resist tyranny and author authoritarianism. We need to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to dive into how social media companies are dealing with disinformation or if they even are at all. Welcome back, everybody,

joan UH. If posting a conspiracy theory on YouTube is media manipulation, is the company that lets it remain posted participating in that manipulation? Well, it's a good question right now.

Um Legally the answer is is no. Although there is an interesting case that's being picked up by the Supreme Court where UH there was some terrorism content that was posted on YouTube and the terrorists made money off of it because it was monetized, and so now the Supreme Court is trying to figure out if YouTube was funding terrorism essentially, and so that is a very unique thing though, but by and large, companies get a big pass on

their products being used to spread conspiracy UM. It's only been since about eighteen that companies have decided that they're going to inforced terms of service around UH lies and disinformation. I think was the first time we saw info Wars

and Alex Jones get d platformed. He was probably one of the most famous UH people that have been moved off of these platforms, and that had a lot to do with public pressure by activists and advertisers to ensure that the information that was being provided on these platforms, even if it was entertainment, was not defamatory, libelous, hate, harassment,

or incitement. The question always becomes, you know, where is that line and if you if you have to censor him for this, then you have to censor this person for this, and before long no one can say anything. And I mean I've dealt with this personally as well, like loose change lived on YouTube for years. It's hundreds of millions of you, so many people have put it up.

I had it on my own channel just because I needed a place to park it for free, so that people could see it, analyze that, have conversations about it, what have you. And of course over the years people have complained to YouTube about it, and they would send me warnings about it and things of that nature. But one day, essentially right after around two thousand eighteen, I just one day got an email from YouTube and it was like, we've taken down loose change for hate speech. Uh,

you can't, you can't fight against this. This is just something we're gonna do. And and and of course I write back, like, what exactly is the hate speech within loose change, Because there's nothing in loose change that's trying to incite a riot, There's nothing in it that's a defamatory towards anybody, And it's just a it's a piece of information after information

that we're putting forward. And so YouTube has the ability as a content provider to not allow me to put my video on them, and and that's their business, and and that's that I understand. I think that's a great line for companies to have the ability to shut those things off. I think it was amazing that Twitter was able to turn off Donald Trump, right, and I hope he never comes back. But at the same time, these are all crazy people. They're gonna keep talking. It's our

responsibility not to listen to them. There's you know, I'm driving through Amsterdam, New York the other day, there's a guy in the bus station just yelling at everybody that drives by. If I stop and listen to him and start broadcasting him on national television, well that's more on me and and the people watching then the person who's yelling at the bus station. Um. And so at my point, we need to be able to live our life. We need to be a free person in a world, and

not because we're Americans, but because we're humans. And you have the right to live your life. And as long as you don't hurt another person physically, alter that, you know, change their life in any way, then you should have the ability to live your life however you want. And then we're seeing that pushback between regulation, the state and people who want to live their life and do their own thing, and you know, self identify as a cat.

We're but we're in a tricky spot though right now, right like you keep talking about um, loose Change or all these things as pieces of information, and you're right. We should be able to have access to information, to have conversations around information. I'd love to live in a society that can have complicated, thoughtful conversations, uh, that can be extended and interesting. Sadly, it doesn't feel like we're in that society very often. But putting something controversial on

an online space might not just be information anymore. I mean it it is an act that incites distrust, and it's it's an act that could incite um, excitement and interest and curiosity for sure, But I don't know if it is neutral anymore. And so is it Is it a cop out to say it's just information? Aut Jones can put that out there, it's just information. Like this information has a reaction and causes a reaction, it is, and people should be held accountable when that information takes

things to the next level. And again, why I was never invited on the Daily Show before Donald Trump? Right, even when Loose Change was at it's heyday, Like what you guys wouldn't even talk about it. And now twenty years later, post Donald Trump, we're having these conversations not because a DVD was made twenty years ago, but because a president used the national platform to propagate lies to the American people, which caused them to try to over

overthrow the United States capital. And every single person that was there should be held accountable and they should be put in jail, and the president should be held accountable, and we should learn from that as a country and as a society. And that's the line, right, because if you go over line, you start to hurt other people, you take away their freedoms, are you're you're impeding them from living their free life. That's where the line is. And and we were never there before. We were never

having those conversations. It wasn't even part of it now post Donald Trump, because we have this now, we live in a world where we have to deal with with all this craziness. And it was there because corporate wanted to make money, because politicians want to be reelected. And exactly like you highlighted in your last piece, how many people that are running for office right now believe that the election was stolen, right, And it's a ridiculous amount

of them. And that's not because of Loose Change. That's because of a president who used Fox News to propagate lives to American people. And this is a trend throughout current American history and new media where these or administrations are using media to lie to the American people, to propagate for their own profit and personal growth, and then they just get to retire and go do whatever they want to do. And and so of course people are starting to get pissed, and so yes it is information.

Yes it does stir stuff up. But I wasn't into conspiracy theories before Loose Change. I'm not in conspiracy theories afterwards because I don't believe it's a conspiracy theory. I believe these are things that we actually need to talk about, that these are actually things that are happening in our country. And and as Jones just supported beyond, like, we know that the American government was longing to us about the war in Iraq and no one's been held accountable. So

where does that line go again? If people are hurt or people are killed, and the freedoms are impeded in any way, than that has to be held accountable for. But people having conversations and discussing free information. We can't limit that otherwise nobody gets to say anything. Yeah, I think Corey. One of the things and this is something that I think a lot about is the scale is different. So social media introduces a different relationship between free speech

and audiences or listening. Right, there's no obligation to listen. There's also no right to broadcast. There's no right, um in that sense of of being the right to reach eighty million people. Um, we don't have. We we actually have laws against uh using broadcast to do um uh inciting things. And so the so for me, you know, Alex Jones isn't necessarily just having conversations, but he's moving between that and mobili sing audiences. And it was held

accountable right and went to far across the line. And so now we have, you know, a consequence to that which is exactly the way. And I wonder if that consequence is actually you know, reflective of how out of scale with or out of touch with reality. But the internet, uh, in social media companies have become like finding someone a billion dollars, It almost seems comical. But when it comes

to the scale of the Internet, more is different. It's different when millions of people are doing a thing versus even a regional radio station. And we've never had broadcast rules attached to the Internet in the same way that we have broadcast rules for television and radio. And so, you know, what I would love to see is us moving more towards accountability for people that have access to

and are broadcasting to larger audiences. So maybe it's the case that if someone's you know, talking to their you know, twenty five friends on a discord server, uh, maybe that's not something we need to bother with. But when somebody is reaching a million people and they have these calls to action and they are, especially in the case of profiting from political oppression, are profiting from lies and disinformation, that we should have some new regulations to ensure that

they're not able to hurt people. And so I think ultimately, until we understand the scale question and how more is different, we're not going to be able to completely address, well, what is free speech mean in the context of the Internet, especially when I could just say your name and say you did this dastardly thing and there's really no retraction,

there's no way to uh. Yeah, but it's gotten so much worse than that, right, Like, we're we're we're way beyond that at this point too, because now you can have a kid walk into or I'm sorry, I walk down the street with an air fifteen shoot and kill people, and you have half the country that supports that person, and you have political candidates news stations who then fight for that person. And what's even worse is, again it's

not just about groups on the internet. Now we have CNN and Fox that no matter what the question is, it's going to be a debate from one side or the other. And it is sickening. No matter what side of the conversation you are. Right. If you're a conservative and you're watching Fox News and you see CNN, you're like, oh my god, this is just absolutely ridiculous. But if you're a liberal and you're watching Fox, you're like, you're

the same position. There's a really interesting book of one of my team members wrote called Networked Propaganda, and it's about these media ecosystems and how the media has developed over the last twenty years, but particularly looking at the election, and the right wing media ecosystem is very different from left and center media. UM and what's interesting about the right wing media ecosystem is how quickly they will coalesce around a story in a narrative, and if the facts

don't fit, it's party over the news. Right, You've got to get the party line. And you know this isn't in the book, but the controversy around dominion voting machines, and how if you said negative things about dominion on television, dominion is able to sue you. If you're saying negative things about dominion on the internet, it's it's going to

be decided by the courts. Um and And I think that that moment where we start to realize that these media companies are constricted in some ways by these different mediums, and the regulatory systems around those mediums eventually are gonna be uh tested in the courts. And you know, when it comes to left and center media, they do not have the same kind of UH infrastructure online, They don't have the same kind of motivated audiences uh in order to spread and distribute the news as the right does.

The right has an incredible distribution muscle through Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. Um. And so we're going to see over time how these different media ecosystems interact, and but I don't know, you know, like I'm you know, I'm a big joker. I get it. Clinton News Network MSD n C. I'm with you. I'm with you, you know. Um. And I don't know if cable news is really going to survive the Internet era. Um. But what we're dealing with is a difference of well, do we want news

or do we want partisan politics that looks like news? Right? And some of this is I know, I can tell Corey for you it comes down to well, who's getting paid out? And you know, and I agree with you,

we should follow the money, always follow the money. But also I think the light for me, or the optimism, comes in where the Internet is a huge international project and we could reimagine some technology, some design so that we have room for news, we have room for fact based discussion we have and right now what we have is social media, which is essentially trying to monetize any bit of information that it can uh and it's not

designed uh specifically to spread uh public interest information. And I think that that's where we get into a lot of our problems because you know, we used to rely much more on traditional media to get information out there, and now the gates have shifted, and I wonder, you know, at the end of the day, are we going to be able to depend on Elon musk in, Mark Zuckerberg and you know Kanye is buying parlor, We've got Trump with true social are we going to be able to

trust social networks to get this public information out there? And if not, what are we built right? Uh? And how do we get there? And that's those for me are the big questions moving forward? Well, let's you know, I want to ask one final question in that world, because I know there's disagreements here, but it sounds like we we want a similar thing, which is to have free flowing information and conversations. The question is where do

those conversations live? And what you just described, Joan is a sloppy social media system, Uh, doesn't know how to manage disinformation. It's now being run by Elon Mouski is running Twitter, who is throwing stuff willie nilly at the wall? Um, what where are we supposed to have these conversations? One? What can these platforms do? Or is there a platform where this this type of healthy discourse can live or we just are we just screwed. Uh, Corey, what do

you think? Well again, I mean this stuff has always been around, right, it's just more visible now. KKK existed before the Internet, and they had their little meetings and they put on their costumes and they did all those

different things. For me, this is an issue with information in the way that it's broadcast throughout American society, is that we just broadcast hypothetical so like, well, broadcast information about a case before we know all the facts, and we have immediate like you know, here's a car chase, we gotta cover it. Uh. And so we've gotten away from kind of fact based journalism where we're just we're just broadcasting whatever we can do to keep people's attention.

What do you trust? Where do where do you go when when you're looking for information? I don't trust anyone like I I don't. I don't. I've blocked every major news application because I kiss can't handle it's all nonsense, Like it doesn't matter, Phoe, what do you click? You wake up? And what do you click? I read stuff about cameras. I read stuff about New York state legalization.

I'm I'm into just different articles. I let Google news Feed give me stuff that tailored to my interests, and I block anything about Biden or Trump because I just can't handle it. I think if you support a politician at this point, it's basically the same as supporting a football team. So it's just like they're just there so you can buy a jersey. Uh. And so for me, I'm what was the question. I don't know, I feel

I got lost again, that's what it was. Sorry, So we're we're broadcasting hypotheticals, right, and her question is how do we fix this? Right? So there's I think the conversations can exist online because even if they don't exist online, like I was saying the KKK, they'll have their little meetings and so, but it's up to the mainstream media to to really grow a backbone here and start to and again it's part of the conversation that we need to go and how we evolutionize the mass communication. But

the media we need. We need to trust the media again. And that's I think one of the major problems in America and the world right now is that people don't trust the media, and that's because they're reporting on hypotheticals. They're going to report for a political base and there's no true information that you can follow anymore where you would normally just clock into the six six pm NBC

News and get the World Report. Uh that that you can't do that anymore without hypocrisy, And and and that again what I said at the beginning, hypocrisy is more visible. People are upset because they know the government has been lying to us, and it's proven at this point over major things for at least two decades. Now it's in my life. And so, like you know, how do we hold people accountable? How do we adjust this? And again, like Jones said, let's focus on changing some regulations. Let's

focus on, you know, putting information where it belongs. And like I said, let's focus on and envisioning how the future societies communicate accurately, and let's try to reverse engineer that for our society and start to build those building blocks. But do you do you feel the same responsibility as somebody who put information out there as the mainstream networks? Do? I feel absolutely no responsibility over anything. No, I mean, I'm living my own life. I'm living my own life.

If you want to do your thing, go do your thing. If you want to make because again everybody makes videos, And what we're really talking about is a technological evolution where people are able to carry a camera and disseminate information online. And guess what, It's in everybody's hands right now. We have all human knowledge in our pocket. We have a camera that can broadcast to everyone in the world same time. And what do we do with it as a society? And we're seeing it. We're not doing the

right thing. We're not growing as a society. We're making things worse. So I don't know, but but you have a clear distrust for the medio ecosystem. But you yourself are a part of that. I mean, twenty years ago, I made a DVD. I don't we don't have we don't post on Facebook. I'm not out there promoting loose change. I don't talk about it unless somebody reaches out to

me to ask about it. And I only do major news at this point because the littler guys just are normally tailored in one conspiratorial direction to the other, for the right to the left, And so I like to have real conversations with with people like yourself, so we can have a real conversation about this stuff and kind of push it in a direction so that people understand it.

I've seen too much lazy journalism where they're just like, loose change is responsible for all the disinformation on the Internet. It's like that is the laziest thing you could do. Like you're not digging into the conversation at all. You're not even looking at the information. You're just trying to get clicks. And that's where we are at with reporting right now. We're just trying to get clicks. And you

yourself know that you have to do crazy things. You have to go to Trump rallies and ask people in same questions that I would be terrified to ask them in person. Don't my spot, Corpy, don't blow up my spot. It's crazy. You're a crazy person, man. But I love you and I really support everything you're doing too. And I just want to say I love The Daily Show.

And John Stewart was my fucking hero and still is as a veteran to be standing up for my rights when no other political candidate is like, I would vote for him if he ran. That's the only person I'm interested in. I tell you, I think you'd have some backers for sure. Um Joe. If we can't trust the people running these platforms. How are we supposed to trust and use these platforms? Yeah, I think you know, it's

up to us to work together. I think journalists have a huge role to play Journalism organizations have a huge role to play outside of news media and corporations. I think journalists, still like academics, have a passion for the truth, right, And I think that we we are truth seekers. And I think that that's an important thing to hold on to in a time when people feel like there's no anchor, that there's no there's no truth out there that we can access um And in some ways, I think that

that post truth a society really favors authoritarians. It really favors those who are willing to lie to us at scale and and to press us, because we then deactivate, We then step aside and and and walk away from the responsibilities that we have to one another. UM. So, when it comes to someone like Elon Musk, you know,

he's not your typical homo economic ast rational actor. He didn't buy Twitter to make money, right, He spent forty four billion for a product that he probably could have built on his own for less than a billion dollars. But what he was buying were the networks that we're all part of. He was buying the networks of journalists, he was buying in the networks of politicians. He essentially bought the chessboard that global politics is being played on

at this stage. There's really not a lot of ways in which anyone else could UM have that kind of influence rather than being the owner of a large platform. And I think that Musk's political aspirations in terms of being part of the the global conversation about the war and in Ukraine, UH, what's going on in Taiwan UM at the end of the day, are also being driven by his business decisions around selling cars and who the

markets are that are going to buy these cars. And he is going to be able to um, you know, gain some kind of political favor with different governments if he UH uses Twitter in that way. And so think that there's a very big risk to allowing our communication commons to be owned by single individuals that don't have the public interest at the core, especially when it comes to communication. UM, you guys are old enough to remember

long distance calling. You know you want to call free towns over it was gonna cost you twenty five cents a minute. Uh. You know, we have a remarkable new innovation here where we can call across the world. I'm calling you from Ireland right now. I mean we can call across the world for free and UH reach our family,

reach our friends, reach our collaborators, colleagues. And that's something I don't want to lose in in this moment where we're going to see this massive shake up around what social media is, how much platforms cost, and eventually how these networks are going to change our society, especially our politics. And so I think the time has come if we are going to fix this for regulation around UH truth in advertising, knowing your customers, UH, political advertising online needs

to have much more oversight. We do need to know exactly how much money these platform companies are making and where it's going, how much they're investing in content moderation, can they actually enforce their terms of service? Uh? And as we move into understanding social media as an industry, I think we can start to fashion a public interest Internet that will provide the kinds of information and forums that people need in order to UH participate in UH

elections and to participate in our political systems. But right now we're at a very very early stage, UM, and it's going to take a lot of work to build those institutions. Follow the money, follow the pornography. We'll get there. UM and follow me on Twitter, oh self promotion, don't follow me. Don't look for me. I don't want you, don't don't look for me. I'm not here. I was gonna say, Corey, I can't imagine you're big on the TikTok no I I watched it for like a week

and then I got tired. I got an Instagram follower with sixty or Instagram with sixteen followers. I'm not. I don't do anything anyway. I own a business. I make videos. That's my life here. Well, Joe Donovan, Corey Row thank you guys for great conversation to healthy skepticism, trust and blowing all that ship up. I love it. Listen to Jordan Clapper figures the Conspiracy from The Daily Show on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.