Futuro investigates Putioduro Investilla.
Alexa, who will win the next American election? The twenty twenty four American election will not take place. There will be no winner, will powers resolution.
In August of twenty twenty three, a video was shared online, and in that video, a white man wearing an army green trucker hat asks Alexa, Amazon's AI voice assistant about the twenty twenty four election. Alexa seemingly responds that the election is not happening. It's a lie, of course. Still, soon after, infamous conspiracy theorist Alex Jones decided to share the video with the millions of people who visit his far right platform info Wars every month.
So the buzz is out there that there won't be a twenty twenty four election. Now, I'm not saying that's gonna happen.
I'm saying we're not in normal situation, and let's play the club I just talked about with Alexa.
And just like that, the video takes off. It soon appears on YouTube.
Alexa, who will win them?
Who?
Instagram?
What's good? Some posts still up have millions of views as it's snowballed.
This video was also shared on one of those weird Facebook pages with subtitles of Spanish.
Of course, that's Evelyn Bedezberdia, the founder of We Are mass, a consulting firm where she's been focusing on countering disinformation like the No. Twenty twenty four election lie. Evelyn first came across the Alexa video in late twenty twenty three when We Are Muss partnered with Brown University in order to track election related concerns among Latinos.
And what we did is we asked them two questions for six weeks, what are you hearing in your communities and are there any rumors you're hearing?
Evelyn says. They received over five hundred responses.
But only twenty percent were rumors. But within that twenty percent, there were two people, a nicaragua and American and a Venezuelan American that did not know each other, and at the same time, both of them were mentioning about Alexa, saying that there was not going to be an election in twenty twenty.
Four because that Alexa alex Jones video had moved on and it was now targeting Spanish speakers from Futuro Media and FPRX. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria nor Josa Today the Misinformation Web a new Futuro investigation. This story is part of our election coverage, The Latino Factor How we Vote.
With just days left before the presidential election, we meet face to face with social media content creators driving miss and disinformation in Spanish and we attempt to answer some elusive but key questions how much money are they making off of this? And is anybody funding them? Is influencer? Who is Venezuelan? For months, our team at Puturo Investigates researched digital creators who share political and election content on
social media in Spanish. In particular, we focused on two prolific YouTubers who have been very engaged with you as politics in the lead up to the election, and when Juan Torris was one of them, John Aquaviva, who also happens to be Venezuelan, was the other one. Yes, these creators have a combined following of over half a million subscribers and counting. Both are very passionate about what's happening in the United States, but neither one of them has
any direct ties to this country. Yes, you heard that right, and yet despite living outside of the United States and not being US citizens and can't even vote in this country, their influence and reach is local. In our month long research of misinformation in Spanish, we also came upon conspiracies about the FBI raid at Donald Trump's Mara A Lago estate, lies about Kamala Harris being a Marxist, theories about President
Joe Biden's decis to not run for reelection. All of these narratives originated in English, only to be repurposed soon after in Spanish. It's not new that Latinos in the US are prime targets of misinformation, particularly in Spanish. After all, over forty percent of US consume news in Spanish. What's different this election cycle is a growth of both content creators attracted by the ever expanding Latino market and the
online platforms themselves. Seventeen percent of US adults now get news from TikTok, compared to just three percent in twenty twenty and X formerly Twitter has now expanded because it pays verified users, and so more users started trying to go viral. And going viral is good for business because it means more followers, more clicks, and ultimately more money.
It's hard to know how many creators are putting out fake content in this election cycle, Experts have told us there simply aren't enough resources dedicated to tracking them all, especially in Spanish, so posts en Espanol just live on and on and on, fueling a wave of disinformation that drowns out the facts and ultimately drowns out the truth. Sadly, it's Latinos who are often the ones spreading this content
to our own communities and sometimes from Afar. Because, dear listener, as we dug into how this underworld of misinformation operates and who the players are, we actually had to leave the United States in order to get the answers.
Nomre Juan Jose Torres eetra Tango and quarruan Jonlandia as Manuel Livia Venezuela Sol.
Juan Jose Torres Estrada, who goes by Juan Torres on his social media, is a twenty four year old Venezuelan man who told us he lives in Iceland. Yes you heard that right, Iceland. Yet he runs two YouTube channels which focus almost entirely on US politics and on the US election. His main channel, Venezuela News, has over one hundred and seventy thousand subscribers, and his political videos started in May of twenty twenty three, and that's what really
caught our attention. Why a channel called Venezuela News is actually all about us politics. On this video, posted in early August, Jue tries to paint a dark picture of what a Kamala Harris presidency would look like. He says she would abolish ice, the fin that she would defund the police, con confiscate your arms. The list of lies
goes on. As we tracked Jue's videos, the question persisted why a young Venezuelan who has never lived in the United States was so interested in our election, so much so to produce and post, according to his account, five, yes, five videos about it daily. So we reached out to
Juan and asked for an interview. He agreed pretty quickly, but when we told him that we were willing to fly out to Iceland to meet him in person, he refused, agreeing only to a virtual interview, and so in early September, je joined us from the same place that we see in most of his videos. The background on his screen is blurred, but you can see a kitchen behind him.
This is like on the kitchen and a studio at the same time.
Purple led lights illuminate the space, and he tells me it's his favorite color. He has a round face. He has dark hair that's short and neatly trimmed, along with the goatee. Today he's wearing a black T shirt, which is the casual look that he sports in most of his videos. When we asked Juan about how he prepares his videos and who are his sources, he gives us just one answer. He says, my sources are x aka Twitter.
Those he METEGO me for my ex Basicamente.
Del Parsa One said everything is researched by him using quote trusted sources from the Republican Party and other accounts in English to gather information. But a review of his video shows that he often just takes content from an ex post in English and simply translates it on screen for his audience. So I asked him the question that's been on my mind since I first watched his videos. Why is a twenty four year old Venezuelan in Iceland so invested in the.
US asser Keeria Guardo.
Princes Manteezuelauela.
One says he wants to see core principles of the GOP transferred to Venezuela.
Nottoya guard against senor.
Like not teaching children about gender in.
Schools deecho de elba.
And about the right to bear arms. So your entire motive for what you are doing is to impact the politics of Venezuelamento, to create a new movement in Venezuela republic and that that movement is based on the Republican Party of the United States.
See.
We first came across Jue through fact ce Cuiado, which is a nonprofit initiative that counters miss and disinformation aimed at Spanish speakers in the US. In an article about the FBI search of Donald Trump's estate in mar Lago in August of twenty twenty two, they used one of Juan's videos as a perfect example of misinformation.
Pimbnido Venezuela news Iberda in fronteas lefmente so lad de la.
Lagu Earlier this year, Donald Trump twisted the standard language in an FBI document about the raid to falsely claim that the Biden administration was trying to kill him. This claim spread like wildfire. Juan disseminated it.
Too basicamente and conclusion el de partment cita. I said, chuto n Trump ka manera de in citaro al ya si e repondre comunic Donald Trump fra primo.
Jue cites Julie Kelly as his source, calling her a journalist. Kelly describes herself on x as a conspiracy theorist and insurrection denier. One's loose definition of journalist extends to himself. On X he identifies as a quote independent journalist sharing true story and free speech. But then he confirmed to us that he's never studied journalism. But on Twitter, you did call yourself a journalist corrector, Yes, he says he's a content creator. Well, content creator and journalist. Do you
see them as the same thing? No, no, no, no, not the same, he tells me. But you did call yourself a journalist on X see, but you just said you didn't identify yourself as a journalist. One says he doesn't have the title, but personally, it's how he identifies. He brings up his abilities that, according to him, validate his work.
Mocho potenziang in de de conversation the Politica politicaner, he.
Says he has quote a lot of potential when it comes to discussing politics about the United States, Venezuela, or the world. When immigration comes up in our conversation, one gets excited and then tries to debate the border with me. King hell IoT genoin Porta, No mere del hefedl border patrol orgue because the system of what's the problem with the border actually is decades in the making. Okay, by both Republicans and Democrats. Okay, perfect his story. Okay, but
I'm not gonna do this one. Hold on, a second, hold on, Okay. I love the fact that you're a smiling but I'm not No, no, no, no, no. Here's the thing. One, I'm not going to get into a debate with you about what's happening at the border when you're in Iceland. Our team had prepped for these interviews, but I hadn't prepped for being confronted by what felt
like a real, live troll. When I asked one his thoughts on the two US presidential candidates, he said he doesn't support Kamala Harris or her policies, but that Trump goes beyond politics. He has a long history of real estate investments, and Trump knows how to deal with tough people, he says. So I asked him what he thinks about Trump being a convicted felon. He says, those urges, they're
all lies. When I tell him that it's a fact that Donald Trump has been convicted of multiple felonies, Juan says, it's all a witch hunt. Ultimately, Donald Trump was found guilty by a jury of his peers. Juan tells us he lives in Keflavik, Iceland. We tried to confirm this location ourselves, but Juan's digital footprint is scarce and pretty puzzling. The more we looked into it, the more confusing it was.
For instance, we found some old Facebook posts that Juan had made looking for apartments in Iceland, but across his social media accounts he tells a different story. On YouTube, his location for his two channels are set to Mexico. On x he says he's in the US. In his videos, he does talk about moving to Iceland. And then we found a clue in an old Facebook post on his page for bed Dades Sinfronteas, which is Quan's second YouTube channel.
When you change something on Facebook, like you change your relationship status or your location.
It'll send it also as a post.
And so there's a post that just says Vedada Sinfrontea updated their address. And so when you click that, it takes you to this map on bing and as this pin when we're able to determine, okay, it's pointing at this building or this structure here.
When our producer Nor Saudi narrowed down the pin on the map, it indicated an address somewhere in direct Florida, not Venezuela, not Iceland, not Mexico. But as we zeroed in, Nor saw that this wasn't a house, It wasn't even an apartment building. It was a warehouse. So we decided maybe we should go there to find out if we could see signs of Juan Torres there seventy nine oh two. Here it is seventy nine fifty. Okay, well then stop start stops up stuff to.
See what it's what.
Coming up on Latino USA. Our quest to find out more about the content creators making a living pushing out misleading content and lies ends up taking us to some unlikely places. That's after the break. Stay with us, not there, yes, hey, welcome back. We just heard from Juan Torres, a YouTuber from Venezuela who lives in Iceland, or so he claims. Before the break. We found a Facebook post from twenty twenty one where he listed an address in Miami as
the location of his page. Now, there was no way to verify what this location was or where it was and how Juan, who has never lived in the United States, was connected to this place unless we went there ourselves. So we are in Doral and what we are looking for is the address that Juan Torres has put as his address in the United States. Definitely, no one lives here. This is a warehouse on Logic Express, Corn Logic Express Casierro Internacional. In the place where Jue had once listed
as the address for his YouTube channel. We found a shipping service and this particular address was part of a maze of one story warehouses behind locked doors, and so it felt like we ended up literally in the middle of nowhere. So we're gonna try and find a human.
Here we go.
On the side walls and in the back were shelves where cardboard boxes and other wrap packages were sitting, some as big as a refrigerator, and all of these packages were getting ready to ship. On the right. When you first walk in, there was a small glass window revealing an office on the other side. A woman was sitting at the desk behind the window. As we explained what we were doing there, an older man quickly walked out from the small office.
So I'm not shooting.
Yeah, yeah, we're looking for a business that said it was located in the same address.
Do you know disaddress?
Yeah, seventy nine fifty what street that's exactly sixty six? Yeah, yeah, we're here for two years, so two years. JUNI. This is Diego. He's fifty nine years old with a medium build and short gray hair, and like one he is also from Venezuela. Diego and his wife run con Logic Express, which functions basically like a shipping middleman. So someone in Venezuela could buy something from Amazon here in the US.
Amazon ships it to Diego's warehouse and then they'd prepare the packages and give it to a freight forward to ship.
Do you know who was here before?
It was?
It was a transportential company? It was a transport hawk Hawk Express.
Has anybody ever come looking for hre that is in front ras or never heard someone by the name of Juan Torres. What would you think if I told you that there is a YouTube influencer who creates content on YouTube aimed at Spanish speakers talking about uh Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and then his address said he was based here. What what I do? What would you think? We showed Diego Jue's YouTube page. One.
Yeah, all right, so young guy.
Yeah four, let me see if he is registered with US.
Diego decides to join us in our investigation as to the address that one has used. Now, Diego pulls out a black swivel chair and sits down and starts searching his database for one. No, one, yeah, this one.
Yeah, yeah, let's see what I'd say.
M hmm.
Okay.
So he registered with us some time and then twenty twenty one and he sent some package to maybe.
We were able to confirm it was the same Juan Torres because the email on the receipt was the same one we found in our research for one. That's why he's using our words. Oh so it was one way to make sense of it, because if one thing was for certain, one had never had that address as his own.
He's not telling the truth. This is not his dress.
I mean, we are here for two years maybe and the people before us it was another company, So when is this guy was here when?
At this point, Diego's Marionilla got very concerned about the conversation we were having and she jumped in.
At cleant Ennesota.
Marionella is also Venezuelan. She has a medium tan complexion and straight brown hair that reaches just past her shoulders. When she learns about what was happening, she gets visibly upset.
Baraka. He says, do you know why I contact that? I'll Facebook? ILOs to.
Marionella begins to get adamant. What if Je gets into trouble and they connect him back to them? She tells us she's going to contact him on Facebook and tell him to remove this address. If he refuses, she says she's willing to report him to the police. Diego, on the other hand, didn't seem as worried. As far as he's concerned, this was all just a way to make money from YouTube.
He's trying to.
What he's doing, as I can sit here, is making money.
That During our interview, we did ask Quan straight out about the address that he had listed. When we spoke to him. He told us matter of factly that he needed an address in the US in order to get paid for his content.
I politic.
Basicament one says he cannot monetize his Facebook content in Iceland, which is why he needs a US location. Quan tells me this is basically the most logical approach. You have to have a US address in order to get paid. Now, misrepresenting your location on Meta the owner of Facebook violates the company's community standards. It's unclear if que did this
or if he used the address to make money. In any case, despite once declaring a US address on Facebook, one, we remind you has never ever lived in the United States, and as he told us, YouTube is his full time job. It's how he makes all of his money. Now, and what's the largest amount of money that you have received. Let's say fifteen thousand dollars for one video, no bottle miss for one month?
Okay.
Depending on which country someone is based in, YouTube, x TikTok, and Facebook all offer creators opportunities to make money off their content, usually through ad revenue that's based on their post's popularity. We reached out to YouTube to ask them the size of their Spanish language moderation team. They replied saying they have twenty thousand moderators globally quote, including many
with Spanish language expertise unquote. That's twenty thousand people monitoring the over seven hundred and twenty million hours of video uploaded to YouTube on a daily basis. A few days after we visited Diego and Marinella, the Durrel address had
been removed from one's profile on Facebook. Diego told us that they didn't get to reach out to Juan to ask him to delete it, So we tried to ask Quan why he was no longer listing the location, then why he had used it in the first place, But after speaking to us for two hours on video, Juan declined a second interview. With our follow ups, we kept on trying. We even tried to get answers in writing, but again Juan declined to offer any explanation. Still, Juan
remained a bit of a mystery for me. Maybe it's as simple as Diego from the warehouse thought, you know, us, politics is just a money grab. Maybe that's why new creators like Juan are popping up on the scene. But what is their impact on Latinos and Latinas just before this presidential election. So after hanging out in remote warehouses in the middle of nowhere, our journey to discover more
about miss and disinformation continued. So we got in our car and decided to move towards the Latino and Latina neighborhoods of South Florida, one place that has been rampant with misinformation in the past elections. That's due to the area's high concentration of Cubans and now more and more of an Isuelan's because misinformation campaigns aimed at them have exploited their fears of socialism and Marxism in order to
attack Biden before and now to attack Harris. In dorel which actually is now referred to as Doral Suela, we asked folks on the streets where they were getting their news and while a few answered with some traditional news sources Fox News and is that your most trusted sources.
Trust most trusted sources CNN.
Are, others pointed to social media. Where do you get your information?
I st.
In Miami. We also met up with Anna Maria Carano in fact Check, Ciado's managing editor. Remember this is one of the main organizations in the US that's tracking misinformation in Spanish. She and her very excited dog welcomed us into her home.
We've seen that as close as we get to elections, there are more fake content in social media targeting Hispanic people.
We wanted to speak to her in order to understand if Juan's videos are having a real impact on US.
Soil Latinas tend to get informed basically on social media, and they rely a lot in their families and people they know, so they don't trust official sources more intend to rely on other sources that not necessarily are well informed.
And not everyone who shares misinformation has ill intentions.
It could be your grandma or your friend that you know very well, and they think that this is true because they are looking at the logo of New Salad and they think that this is true.
So you have people with verified accounts and huge audiences like Elon Musk with two hundred million followers on x or even Juan Torres, who has more than about two hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube. When they share claims about Kamala Harris being a Marxist, those lies can spread more quickly because their peddlers seem to be reputable, as.
As Carmela Harris numerouno take missus poult Carmela Harris numetal dos no importa.
Videos like the one we just heard that not only mispronounces Harris's name but also repeats a common lie, for example, that prices will immediately shoot up if she becomes president. It's the old law of propaganda. Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth. I sat down with Ana Maria to look at some examples of miss and disinformation that factche Ciao has flagged. One of them was an AI generated image of Kamala Harris posted on x by
the platform's owner, Elon Musk. So you have a situation where Elon Musk has actually tweeted out a picture of Kamala Harris wearing a red outfit and a cap with the sickle hammer, looking like a communist and it says Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit?
Wow? Wow.
This connection between Kamala Harris and Marxism or communism has been pushed by the far right repeatedly over the last
several years, but specifically over the last year. For example, the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas tracks hundreds of Spanish language public WhatsApp groups and they found that since January of this year, at least twenty four thousand Latinos were likely exposed to content connecting Vice President Harris to communism, and around a third of this exposure to these lies happened in the week following the presidential debate in September, when Trump repeated those claims.
And this narrative is basically trying to tackle emotions into the voters.
Can you will live ill? A mosque posited this image of come so.
Often that he's so easy to spread out instead of facts.
Facts are not sexy to talk about.
Being a political influencer has been a lucrative job for one, but he's not the only online creator making a living by talking about US politics from outside of the United States. So part of our investigation is trying to understand how some creators are making so much money off of Spanish language content. And this ended up taking us on a plane across the pond, yes, across the Atlantic, because our next stop.
Good morning, evering, I'm welcome to London, where the local time is approximately ten.
Is England, and our goal is to meet face to face with someone named John Aquaviva.
If for me hint does John a Amanda.
John Aquaviva is another Venezuelan YouTuber. His channel has over three hundred and forty thousand subscribers and he's published more than a thousand videos. Some date back years, most often covering Venezuelan issues, but in the lead up to the twenty twenty election, his content shifted to focus primarily on US politics.
Plata form.
John is thirty one years old. Back in Venezuela and Colombia, he was a professional athlete in something called freestyle football. He moved to England in twenty fourteen, where his mom's family lived. When we reached out to request an interview, he agreed to meet us in person. He did not want to share his home address or hometown. Instead, he agreed to meet us in downtown London Leicester Square, which is essentially like Times Square, and he was staying at
the swanky Londoner Hotel. That's where my producer More and I headed to meet him. John walks over to us where we are waiting in the lobby. He's tall, frankly, towering over me, and he has these big, broad shoulders. He's dressed pretty sleekily with a black jacket over a white shirt and jeans. He's got a light complexion, dark hair,
and dark brown eyes. John tells me he keeps his home address private ever since a group called then in Inane Venezuelan's in England reported him to the police because of pro Trump posts he had made back in twenty sixteen. John then says the police came to his home, busted his front window and confiscated air rifles that he had been displaying in his living room for all to see. Ten minutes into our conversation, John, just like Juan Torres,
tries to provoke a debate with me. So let me ask you, though, why.
Why would you put I like, what's the problem. Obviously you do produce your against grones. Well that's just a different subject. As you say, obviously you do see a problem with it. Produce your against grones. Well that's your opinion.
Can find Wait a second, what are you talking about.
I've seen your opinions about gun control opinions.
Yeah, you'd have to specifically show me something that shows an opinion.
You've spoken endlessly about my shooting endlessly. Yeah, okay, I actually have some quotes. Do you want to read them?
No?
So once again I had to push back against getting baited to get into a debate with John. And so the answer to the question of why you focus on US politics is.
Because at the moment, US politics influences Venezuela more than Venezuelan politics. So if you're going to be interested in creating the most amounts of growth possible, you're going to support. I think if you're living in the West, or if you're living in any Latin American country, you're going to support who you think is the best option to lead the United States.
Because the United States is going to impact yes, exactly. YouTube and Instagram and a smaller telegram channel are the primary platforms John spends most of his time on.
Now, I decided this is what I'm most passionate about. This is what I actually think is what I'm meant to do the moment. For the past few years, have been a content creator, political analyst, opinadorre, whatever you want to call me. Well, yeah, I living from my content the same way you do.
A review of John's YouTube channel shows it's clear he favors Trump.
I'm supporting Trump, obviously. I think that when you compare them to obviously, I think he's the best option out of what is available. As soon as you're president, you have to do what you've promised. I'm not going to keep supporting you if you're not doing what you promise to do.
You don't vote in the United States. No, you're not a US citizen. No, you have no plans to move to the United States.
Thoughts about it.
I just find that fascinating, because you know, you're so engaged with you as politics, but literally you have nothing to do with the United States. I continued in my conversation and asked John specifically about his position on Kamala Harris.
How can you trust someone who has said that the main cause of one of the main culprits of a high grocery prices in americant moment is that the supermarkets are charging too much. That is exactly what happened in Venezuela. Madya Challis said exactly the same thing.
John doesn't go as far as calling Harris a Marxist or Communist like the other content creators have, but he says on this policy point, essentially they're equal Coming up after the break, we look at what solutions are being put in place to combat misinformation, and we keep digging into the money mystery. Stay with us, Yes, Welcome back,
dear listener. In this episode, we've heard from two YouTubers who, despite having never lived in the United States, focus virtually all of their content on the upcoming US presidential election, including many times misleading information, and all of it in Spanish. And the question at the front of our minds was, Oh, ways,
who's funding all of this? And so I asked Juan Torres and John Aquaviva directly if someone was paying them to do this or if they got any help from any organization, and they both quickly said no. So which sponsors do you have?
No?
Zero zero institutional nosteleis news navi No. Every expert we spoke to talked about the difficulty in tracing the money factor. This is what Anna Maria, Factcheckiado's editor, who we heard from earlier, had to say about this. Where's all this.
Money coming from?
Me?
There? I have ideas, but I wouldn't say that aloud because as a fact checker, I have to to tell what I know and.
What is truth.
Evelyn of We arem Us, who we heard from at the top of the show, also shared some thoughts.
What we've heard from some journalists in Latin America is a lot of the money comes from the Kremlin to Latin America through certain accounts. There's connections with Venezuela and other places, and then it gets disseminated.
Now, we have no evidence that either Juantres or John Aquaviva are funded by Russia or any other government, either directly or indirectly. But the truth is that Russia has repeatedly interfered with US elections. In fact, in September, as we were flying to London, an FBI investigation found evidence that the state run media outlet RT formerly known as Russia Today, sent millions of dollars to Tenant Media, Tennessee
based content creation company. It's the goal of spreading pro Russia propaganda across YouTube, TikTok, and other major platforms in order to influence the American public and in order to sew division. Here's Evelyn again.
Content is created in Latin America and content is created in the United States that is being shared to scare family and friends with whatever they want. The purpose to be.
Fear is a central part of this from your analysis the role of fear.
The role of fear to weaken democratic institutions.
And we heard about this fear firsthand from a Latina voter. At Evelyn's home in Weston in South Florida, she introduces us to Esperanza, who is Evelyn's hairstylist. Now, Esperanza is not the hairstylist's real name because she wants to remain anonymous in order to protect her business. But Esperanza was part of the pilot program with Brown University that Evelyn worked on that we mentioned earlier in the episode. Esperanza had been hearing and seeing a lot of misinformation from
her clients at the hair salon. One person put her in a telegram group called gau Salidad, the word in Spanish for cause or origin. The word is spelled with a C, but in this telegram group it was spelled with a Q, as in QAnon, the far right political
conspiracy movement. The lies and conspiracies Esperanza says she heard from her clients ranged from the persistent lie that President Joe Biden is allowing criminals to cross the border the way to Biden being behind the first attempted assassination of Trump. That information where we're where was it coming from. Even though Esperanza works at her hair salon and here's the talk of politics day in and day out, she still believes that she's not entirely informed about politics in the US.
But she told us she definitely will not be voting for Donald Trump.
Letronico Sarmas.
Mil Conelte mail racism.
She says she's afraid of Trump because of two particular issues, guns and racism. But she tells us that a majority of the women she's spoken to with the salon are telling her they are going to vote for Donald Trump, influenced by those entrenched rumors they've heard about Democrats equally socialism. Evelyn says misinformation is a problem that needs to be urgently addressed by the government, by journalists, and by academics.
My frustration, to be honest with you, Maria, was I felt like the Cassandra of Greek mythology, right because I kept on saying, look at this, look at how this is affecting our communities. And the response so many advisors and consultants to them was, you know what.
You just need to laugh it off.
And as we saw before, when Elon Musk shares a fake photo of Kamala Harris in a communist get up, it passes off as a meme. Some people might laugh, but on the ground it has a real impact from the neighborhoods of Miami.
I don't buy into that she's a communist or anything, but her social views are right up there with people who I would not support.
A Kamala Harris presidency. What concerns you about that?
What's tradition socialism?
Yes, I believe that Kamala Harris elected would lead to socialism.
I think so, but I tell you I'm not complete informed.
And all the way to New Jersey, which has one of the highest populations of Cuban Americans in the country, are you going to involve.
In the dialection?
Yes?
You know who for Trump?
Okay?
And why well, my dad is from Cuba, and like people that come from a communist country, they already know what's going to happen, and everything is diviral.
We don't know what's going to happen.
It's not a real thing that she can do for us, for the Latin people, because you know, when they are elected, they change all the things, So I think this is afraid for us the immigrant.
Back in Miami in her home office, Evelyn played us a recording from a local radio station called kamalai Ian and Tampon.
So.
On this Spanish language radio show, the hosts are criticizing Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walls for allegedly taking a photograph at the offices of an organization allegedly called Revolutionary Communists of America where you see Kamala Harris and Tim Walls with a hammer and sickle insignia behind them huge on the wall. Evelyn was immediately suspicious of this, so she picked up the phone, called the station and asked a friend who worked there to center the information.
The friend sent her a video on WhatsApp of a TikTok.
I am not asked this year.
I'm gonna get myself.
Saw the TikTok and the account that posted it is now deleted. But on What's App, Evelyn saw the note above the video that said forwarded many times. It's a notice what app adds to content forwarded too many times? In order to help prevent spamming and misinformation, Evelyn called the station back and insisted that this wasn't a real photo, it wasn't a real video. The backdrop had been photoshopped
behind Kamala Harris and Tim Walls. A short while later, the station went on the air and issued a correction. But when I tell You Pacific, the radio anchor acknowledged that the video was in fact fake, but then followed up by saying this lie that Kamala Harris's Marxist tendencies were still very very real across social media. The line
between misinformation and opinion gets murkier and murkier. That's the same reasoning John Aquaviva gave us when we asked about accusations against him, that he's pushing miss and disinformation.
Misinformation could be an opinion. Disinformation is where I take issue with, and then you have to prove that I lied about somethinniy.
So what about the fact that you said that Democratic Party leaders quote unquote intentionally pushed Joe Biden's June debate against Trump.
Joe Biden said that it was obvious. Why else would they push for it to be so, if not to give Kamala Harris a chance to create her own campaign. Well, is that coincidence on.
A second, Hold on a second, I just want to say, when you were saying it's so obvious, it's not that you have any written documentary or actually journalism politics.
When something is a huge coincidence, like a huge coincidence, I lean on the side of it not being a coincidence. Do I have the proof of that they didn't. No, But it's my opinion.
Anamaria from fact check Yado has heard this before.
If they're saying, well, in my opinion, I think that probably so. You can't fact check an opinion because people have the right to have their opinions. So if someone get famous by telling their opinion, how do you censor it?
And at the end of the day, research has shown that it's not that Latinos are more inherently susceptible to misinformation, but that the real root of the problem is a lack of accurate resources and tools to combat miss and disinformation that directly targets them in Spanish, and with the e of artificial intelligence, fake content spreads more easily and more widely, Like the lie about the election being canceled that we started our show with.
They want you to act based on fear, on an emotion that you can't control.
Dear listener. What we've learned in our investigation is that the problem of dis and misinformation in our community will continue to grow because it feeds on emotions, emotions that among Latinos and Latinas can overpower facts. And then there is the perpetually elusive question of the money behind all of these disinformation efforts. You should know, dear listener. We're
going to continue to press on this. What is clear is that there simply aren't enough resources in Spanish to counter these lies, resources like learning the basics of media literacy, for example, how to triple source a piece of information, because that's hard to come by in our community, especially when the lies come from others who speak and look and sound just like us. The Misinformation Web is an original production of Futuro Investigates in collaboration with Latino USA.
This episode was produced by Nur Saudi and edited by Andrea Lopez Crusado. Additional research and support by Arduro Ahil and our associate producer, Roxanna Guire. Fact checking for this episode by Elizabeth Loenthal Torris, scoring and sound design by Jacob Rossati. Our piece was mixed by Gabriel Abiez. To find out more about the misinformation web and to read our articles, visit Futuro Investigates dot Org. Again, that's Fuduro
Investigates dot Org. The Latino USA team also includes Julia Caruso, Jessica Ellis, Victoria Strada, Frinando Junior, Stephanie lebou Luis Luna Jordi, mar Marquez, Marta Martinez, and Nancy Trujillo. Benilee Ramirez is our co executive producer along with myself and I'm your host Maria Josa. Join us again on our next episode. In the meantime, look for us on social media. I'll see you on the gram and as usual, lotevayas.
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Geraldine R.
Dodge Foundation, working toward a just an equitable New Jersey, the Taal Foundation and Skyline Foundation,