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Make sure to check out Drink Champs, your number one music podcast on the Black Effect Podcast Network, Hosts n O r E and d J E f N sat down with artists and icon Yea, which Vulture called one most significant interviews. I literally had to go like Danos and I don't want to have to be the villain. But when I went and did the Donda thing, he returned and anybody had to sit back and watch the
real leader. Check out Drink Champs conversation with Yea and many more legendary artists each and every Friday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. When we talk about voter suppression, we often use the term bad actors individuals that are actively trying to suppress voters. Jesse Littlewood is the vice president for Campaigns at Common Cause, a nonpartisan democracy organization that works to protect voting rights. Bad actors can be foreign.
That actors can be domestic. Bad actors can be individuals or bots pushing information out into the media ecosystem. In our viral virtual world, bad actors are lurking behind every screen, working to intentionally spread incorrect information across social media and other types of media, to create an environment where it feels like voting isn't something we all do together, but it's some kind of partisan battle field. But never fear,
because our democracy has its protectors too, including you. You've taken the challenge and you've chosen to be a disinformation fighter. Put on your capes, Democracy heroes, it's time for your training. You are a newly deputized troll buster. The first crime fighting superpower that you can tap into is skepticism. The first thing is to be skeptical of anything that makes extremely explosive claim or takes a singular incident as proof
of some kind of widespread pattern. Another super strength that you have at the ready, good information. Flood your feeds with it. Let that audience know how to find the trusted source of information Secretaries of State Office of your state, or the website can I vote dot org, which goes to the National Association Secretaries of State not will work people directly to the right information for their state. Finally, be aware of the kryptonite that may weaken your powers.
Don't engage something I often mind very hard to do. You have to combat the urge to reply or debunk, um or dunk on any kind of wrong content that you see online. No matter any response that you put to a piece of online social media content, the social media algorithms will read that as engagement and try and push it in front of other individuals. So even the frownie face or the retweet that says this is garbage will end up telling the social media algorithm this is
highly engaging content. We should put it on in front of other people in their feed. Instead, you should flag it within the platform. Facebook and Twitter and many other platforms have processes where you can report disinformation when it comes to voting in elections. The other thing you can do is report it to the disinformation experts at Common Cause.
You can also join our social media monitoring team become part of this growing movement of democracy advocates that are using their online personas to fight against disinformation and to protect every voter. I'm Katie Currict and this is Turnout today on the podcast The Scourge of Disinformation. Well, it's not exclusive to the Internet age. We've seen billboards, flyers, and unsolicited phone calls. It is thriving online like never before.
A tweet or a post can be spread to millions almost instantaneously, and there's almost no cost to doing it, and it gives more opportunity for the bad actors to try a bunch of tactics, to throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks, because there's very little downside to them. The platforms in the action that they can take against these bad actors are pretty limited. That can be difficult for them to wall off their platform from a bad actor who wants to come back on the
platform and be able to I something again. So far in our podcast series, we've covered the physical barriers to the ballot, like the financial burden of a poll tax, the hoops you have to jump through to register to vote, and the arcane laws that keep formally incarcerated people from voting, But when it comes to cyber suppression, Jesse says voters should be aware of three types of information disorders, disinformation, misinformation,
and malinformation. Disinformation is something false, even if it sometimes contains a little nugget of truth that is deliberately created and spread to harm a person, a group, an organization, or make trouble when it comes to our elections. So disinformation is used for voter suppression when you tell people the wrong date uh day, the wrong place, or the wrong manner in which they can vote, in order to confuse them or cause them to miss their chance to
cast a ballot. Misinformation is mimilarly false information, but it isn't necessarily intended to cause harm. You can think about
it kind of like accidental disinformation. The rules can actually vary pretty significantly state to state, So some of the misinformation around voter suppression that we see online has to do with people incorrectly assuming a one size fits all approach to something like mail and balloting um and instead can create confusion and can actually cause people to um understand something wrong or to choose not to make use of a safe, secure and available option for them to vote. Now,
the very last type. The third type of information disorder is called malinformation, and this is the one that not a lot of people necessarily know about. So malinformation is sort of defined by true information that's used to cause harm of a group. So one example could be leaking private information about someone in order to embarrass them or helping other people to abuse them. That could be private communications, it could be personal information. What Common Cause is doing
to stop cyber suppression works on two levels. The first, as Jesse mentioned earlier, is flooding the Internet with those trusted sources of information. The second level is removing as
many instances of disinformation as possible. We're working with the social media companies to make sure they strengthen their terms of service, while we're working as well with disinformation experts and big data experts to analyze the overall social media conversation and flag disinformation and bad actors to the companies themselves.
And then we've also recruited hundreds of social media monitoring volunteers, nonpartisan volunteers that are active on social media, who we've given advanced training on how to identify and flag incidences of cyber suppression, so we document it, analyze it, and then we take action on it. Volunteers are actually extremely important because there are some places that the big data and social media experts can't see because their private social
networking locations. So a great example is a private Facebook group or next door the neighborhood platform social media platform where you have to verify your address and then you're placed within a neighborhood and only the people in your neighborhood can see your content. So volunteers who are active in their communities on social media are the only way we're able to monitor and help document and remove disinformation as it comes to voting in elections on those platforms.
Combating cyber suppression also means looking into a crystal ball of sorts to stop the lies before they take root
and spread. By reviewing our database of disinformation, we can understand what are some of the most pernicious narratives that could impact voters, and we're creating effective responses to that, either by pre bunking that with the correct information that helps protect people from believing something that's not true, or helping people understand what is true and why they may have received some disinformation about something that comes to voting.
One of the challenges of playing whack a mole when it comes to disinformation is one. How the platforms read their own policies can be really different than how the voting rights advocates and voters themselves can be affected by it.
And some of that has to do with geography, right Like when we post content on social media, usually we don't specify specific geography we're talking about, and the voting and elections rules often very state by state, But the platforms aren't necessarily able or willing to educate their moderators and to make clear enough rules to help prevent disinformation. That has to do with some of these cases that can vary from place to place. That's I don't think
is an excuse. We're talking about our democracy, the most fundamental part of what keeps our country running and gives all citizens and all voters the ability of making decisions for our country. It's really not an excuse that it's complicated. These are super smart, super wealthy, super accomplished individuals that run a highly highly successful company. I believe, I truly believe that they could figure this out if they applied themselves.
So how do we hold social media networks accountable? Put Mark Zuckerberg speak to the flame that's coming up right after this. This is Roxanne Gay, host of The Roxanne Gay Agenda The Bad Room, in his podcast of Your Dreams. Now, what is the Roxanne Gay Agenda, you might ask, Well, it's a podcast where I'm going to speak my mind about what's on my mind, and that could be anything. Every week I will be in conversation with an interesting
person who has something to say. We're going to talk about feminism, race, writing in books, and art, food, pop culture, and yes, politics. I started show with a recommendation. Really, I'm just going to share with you a movie or a book, or maybe some music or a comedy set, something that I really want you to be aware of and maybe engage with as well. Listen to the Luminary original podcast, The Roxanne Gay Agenda, The Bad Feminist Podcast of Your Dreams, every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. After thirty years, it's time to return to the halls of West Beverly High and hang out at the peach Pit. On the podcast nine O two one, OMG joined Jenny Garth and Tory Spelling for a rewatch of the hit series Beverly Hills nine O two one oh. From the very beginning, we get to tell the fans all of the behind the scenes stories to actually happen, so they know what happened on camera, obviously, but we can tell them all
the good stuff that happened off camera. Get all the juicy details of every episode that you've been wondering about for decades. As nine O two one oh, super fan and radio host Sissany siss In with Jenny and Tory two reminisce, reflect and relive each moment, from Brandon and Kelly's first kiss to shouting Donna Martin graduates, you have
an amazing memory. You remember everything about the entire ten years that we filmed that show, and you remember absolutely nothing of the ten years that we film that show. Listen to nine O two one OMG on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to check out Drink Champs, your number one music podcast. On the Black Effect podcast Network, host n O r E and d J E. F N sat down with artists and icon Ya, which Vulture called one
of most significant interviews. I literally had to go like Danos and I don't want to have to be the villain. But when I went and did the dawn the thing, Yea returned and anybody had to sit back and watch the real leader. Check out drink Champ's conversation with Yea and many more legendary artists each and every Friday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or ever you listen to your favorite shows. Mr Suckerberg, is Facebook consider
itself a neutral public forum? Senator? We consider ourselves to be a platform for all ideas. In April of two thousand eighteen, Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the Senate's Commerce and Judiciary Committees to discuss Russian disinformation on Facebook and a massive data breach. Let me ask the question again, does Facebook consider itself to be a neutral public forum? And representatives of your company have given conflicting answers on this? Uh, Senator,
Here's how we think about this. I don't believe that there are certain content that clearly we do not allow. That data breach happened four years before Zuckerberg was in the hot seat. Facebook rolled out a new tool today that will start notifying users if you are among the eight seven million people whose personal data may have been
harvested by political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. In two thousand fourteen, a British voter profiling company called Cambridge Analytica Cambridge An Cambridge Analytica, Cambridge Analytica, a company called Cambridge Analytica harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than fifty
million users without their permission. That private information was primarily used for political advertising and the two thousand sixteen presidential election, and it was one of the largest leaks in Facebook's history. That massive story, which was a two thousand nineteen Pulitzer Prize finalists Hi Carol, but just the Right Time then
was exposed by British investigative journalists Carol Cadwalader. It's not just a company which has all this power, It's an empire which is ruled by the boy king, Mark Zuckerberg. I invited Carol to come onto the podcast to find out how much this ubiquitous social media platform is destroying our democracy and what, if anything, we can all do about it. The thing I find most terrifying about Facebook is this realization that there is just simply no body
on Earth that can hold this company to account. It really is bigger than governments and law enforcement agencies and regulators. Decisions are made by personalities. There are no checks and balances at all on that power, and in that way it is the nearest comparison is to North Korea. Facebook's family of apps, including Instagram and What's App, has more than two point nine billion global users every month, which
is nearly two fifths of the world's population. But the danger of that kind of power is that it's not obvious. In fact, for Carol, it took those years of reporting and a few key moments to be able to see the wolf hiding in the hoodie. The Federal Trade Commission has voted to find Facebook nearly five billion dollars from mishandling users personal information. One of the key moments was when Facebook was fined five billion dollars for the data
abuse scandal with Cambridge Analytica. And this was a record fine, you know, it's the biggest ever by the FTC. And Facebook share price actually went up on that day because it was it just wasn't that bad. I mean, five billion dollars really is nothing to accompany the size and scale of Facebook. And then the other moment was for me was when Marks A Keberg he kept on refusing to come to Britain to answer questions to our parliament
about what happened in the Brexit referendum. Mark Zuckerberg will not appear in front of Parliament in the UK after he declined the invitation from the chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Committee, Damien Collins. It's this sort of extraordinary moment of really thinking about what that kind of power means in the world. And I think, you know, I think people in America are just sort of waking up to a bit of that really starkly in terms
of the next few weeks in the election. Let's talk about disinformation during the election. How prevalent is it and how worrisome is it. I think it's incredibly worrisome. The way to think of it is it is this sort of toxic pollution. It is a sort of oil slick almost which is sort of spread through the entire information space. Lies and misinformation is spread at speed and scale because
the algorithm favors it. A British news organization did a series of reports in September which were really interesting around the topic of voter suppression and which is because they got hold of the r n c s entire voting database from two thousand and sixteen and they discovered, you know, in the voter files people have been marked for deterrents, and that was voters who were targeted with suppression ads who they were trying to stop turning out to vote.
And they discovered it was black and minority voters who were disproportionately targeted for deterrents using Facebook's tools. And you know, this mass of data, including stolen Facebook data, to to to target them. And there's something really, really really disturbing about that. You know, it's the machinery of fascism, the idea that this American company is being used to touch to racially profile people and then target them with the intention of trying to stop them turn out to vote.
I mean, it's just it is the stuff of dystopia. Facebook is being used to subvert democracy. Coming up, how Carol is subverting the subverter m H I call the Union Hall as is male lipendia. I thank these people are playing and to kill Dr King. On April four, Dr Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis a petty criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. He pled guilty to the crime and spent the rest of his life in prison. Case closed right James Hill Ray
was upon for the official story. The authorities would pray at all we found a gun the James L. Ray bought in Birmingham that killed Dr King, Except it wasn't the gun that killed Dr King. One of the problems that came out when I got the Ray case was that some of the evidence, as far as I was concerned, did not match the circumstances. This is the MLK tapes. The first episodes are available now. Listen on the I
Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Hillary Clinton and I'm excited to be back with a new season of You and Me both. You know, when we started this podcast, we were going through some tough times, and let's face it, we still are. But I am a firm believer we're stronger together, So please join me for more conversations with people who will make you think, make you laugh, and help us find a
path forward. Listen to You and Me both on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Chuck Wicks from Love Country Talk to Chuck, where we bring you what's really happening in the country music family. We also if you love country. Here's the deal. If you love country music, you can be on the podcast. So if you're a fan country music, well, you can call in anytime, like, oh, I want to talk about this. Haul Cogan called in season one. He's
like Chuck Lobster, I love your podcast. I mean Jason, al Dean, Jimmy, Alan, Carley Pierce, Lauren, Lena. So many huge stars have been on Love Country Talk to Chuck season two. It's gonna get even better, gonna have the same big, giant, huge stars. But I think it's to bring some people in the studio right off the street. You love country music, fine, come talk to Chuck. That's how cool we are. I'm just saying it. I'm saying
it out loud. Listen to new episodes of Love Country Talk to Chuck every Monday and Thursday on the Nashville Podcast Network, available on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For years, Carol Cadwalader reported on the waste Facebook funneled racism and unchecked disinformation into millions of users feeds, manipulating the world's most powerful
democracy during the two thousand and sixteen presidential election. This time around, Carol wasn't about to stand by and watch Facebook interfere and yet another presidential race. It's an emergency intervention. It's borne out of this recognition that there is no way of holding it to account and that it essentially is a dangerous weapon that is um about out to be, is already being deployed in an incredibly consequential election. And from this realization that there is no way of of
making Facebook do the right thing. There is no actual mechanism or lever to do this, So we had to just try and invent our own. She gathered together a coalition of academics, legal experts, and civil rights leaders to act as a check against Facebook's unbalanced power. The group calls itself the Real Facebook Oversight Board. Facebook was terribly proud of the fact that it had this idea for setting up its so called oversight board, and originally Mark Zuckerberg.
You know, it was three years ago they started talking about it and it still hasn't appeared, So it's it may they say it may be up and running before the election, but even if it is, it doesn't really matter because all it is looking at in the initial stages is it's a kind of super dream court for
Facebook is the idea. But all it's going to be able to rule on initially is if somebody's had their post taken down, they can appeal and the oversight board can make a decision on whether it should go back up again. And when you think of the sort of the number of harms that Facebook is doing and the danger it represents, that is like, honestly the least of them. The group kick things off on September with a live press conference hosted where else on Facebook is this sort
of a guerilla act of subversion. Basically, it's kind of like punk. It's sort of punk theater. This is a live press conference. You'll first be hearing from six board members. And the amazing thing is that these really brilliant academics and civil rights leaders got the idea immediately and sort of like jumped at the prospect of it and have really thrown themselves into it. With that, I would like to introduce Shoshan Zubach, author of the Age of surveillance,
capitalism and Professor Emerita Harvard Business for Shoshana. Thank you, Kyle. Our group has come together for one purpose. We demand comprehensive action to ensure that face rock cannot be weaponized to undermine the vote and with it American democracy. What are you doing with the real Facebook Oversight board? What
are your goals? So for the first press conference that we did, you know, there's there's a lot of people on the board with a lot of diverse opinions, but we tried to see what consensus there was around a couple of kind of minimum asks and we did, actually, you reach consensus essentially one of them. Facebook has now done so its first task was around anything to de legitimize the election during that crucial period between the close
of poles and tour for a winner is announced. And now Facebook has announced that it's not allowing political ads to it for what's saying. I think it's for a week after the election, but it's made this thing about any ads which deligitimize the election, you know, declare victory prematurely. It's it's banning those. But the other key demand is around organic content, which is so because that is we know it's going to be like the real problem during
that period. So we are asking for a anything which is calling victory premature, lee, casting doubt about the validity of the election, misreporting, voter fraud, etcetera. That we're saying that those should be clearly labeled, and any other key demand is just that there are just asking for Facebook to enforce its own policies. So Facebook has policies around incitement to violence, for example, it just doesn't enforce them. And one of the people it doesn't enforce that policy
on is the President of the United States. It's an awesome idea, but realistically, Carol, I mean, is it? Is it somewhat impotent? I mean, what can this real oversight board do? Yes, I mean that is the point there. It is impotent because we are all impotent because we don't have the power. Facebook has the power, and there is, as I say, nothing on earth that can change that. However, the only thing that Facebook ever, ever, ever, ever, ever responds to is public pressure. It is pressure from the
American press and the American people. So, um, the only thing we can do is create a noise and to try and amplify the voices of people who need to be heard from, and you know what, to be honest with you, one of my thoughts about it was if the worst does happen and terror all things do happen, and Facebook doesn't take the steps to prevent them, and it deliberately enables the inciting of violence, etcetera, etcetera, there is going to be a framework in place of people
who are able to mobilize and to be a counter voice to Facebook, because you know, it has all of the money and all of the lobbyists and all of the spokespeople and all of the PR firms and all of the contact, so it gets its message out very powerfully across the media. And parts of this is about is sort of an organized response to have these other voices who can explain the harms and why it is so important that action is taken that and that their
voices are heard in the media. So it's you know, it's a fool's errand I'm sure, but at the same time, it just felt that because we could try, we had to try. One of the things we all have to do is unders and that we absolutely have a role to play in this. Not just a journalist, I'm a citizen and It's like, we do have to really understand that we have to step up if we don't want to see our countries sort of descend into authoritarian chaos.
Then it really is as up for us as individuals to um to realize that the only way that any of this is going to stop, the only way we're going to help hold these companies to account is you know, it's got to come from us as individuals. We've got to find ways to work together. And there is power, you know, which can come from a united band of
people who are do stand up to power. I mean, that's been so that story has been so powerfully told with Black Lives Matter, and I think that hopefully a lot more people realize that actually you do need to sort of stand up and be counted and to be trying in whatever way you can to hold the line truths, facts, evidence based reporting, rule of law institutions. These things are so important and we have to realize their value and defend them in whatever means possible. Really, Facebook has made
some attempts to monitor the content on its platform. Recently, the company announced it would be in anything that denies or distorts the Holocaust, as well as Q and on an organization that promotes and perpetuates outrageous conspiracy theories. They are now making some decisions on you know, like the Q and on stuff, although there is you know that doesn't go far enough. I'm optimistic that the challenges that our democracy face today can be overcome because we've overcome
harder challenges in the past. For Jesse Littlewood, Hope Springs Eternal, we are faced with a whole suite of challenges to voters and to the belief in the integrity of our democracy. But we've confronted even tougher problems in the past, and while not perfect, our democracy was improved and expanded through those other challenges. So I think we have a resilient
system and a pretty resilient population. It's a path that is a hard one, and we are currently headed in the wrong direction when it comes to rebuilding trust and civic participation. But if you talk to young people today who are civically engaged, they're involved in the fight for to stop climate change no I know, or they're involved in advocacy around gun control or the way that we
should be approaching those subjects. Everyday shooting alright, everyday, prob my name is R. Bobs, and I'm here what the brave there involves across the board on a whole different set of civic issues. So there's an opportunity to rebuild a sense of civic engagement, and voting is one of those ways. I think it's a problem when people in the voting community say that that's the only way you should get involved. It certainly is an important one, but it's not the only thing that is going to help
get us out of it. Participation is the secret. I don't believe we're going to be able to litigate, lobby or legislate our way out of a diminished civic society. It's going to take active participation on behalf of individuals to be able to improve the condition of our democracy. Next week on turnout, we're the moral compass of the country. Why kids these days maybe the real democracy heroes. There's a visionary power that young people hold and that is
something that we need to continue to follow. Young people, not a certain generation, are the moral compass of the country. Hey, listeners, before we wrap up, I want to share some of those websites again. If you want to report the disinformation you see on the internet, go to common Cause dot org slash disinfo. To keep up with a real Facebook oversight board, visit Real Facebook Oversight dot org. And for all you need to know about how and where to
vote in your state, go to vote dot org. And finally, for the latest election coverage, make sure to sign up for my morning newsletter wake Up Call. Just go to Katie Currek dot com for that. Turnout is a production of I Heart Media and Katie currec Media. The executive producers are Katie Curic and Courtney Litts. Supervising producers Lauren Hansen. Associate users Derek Clements, Eliza Coostus, and Emilyn Pento. Editing by Derrek Clements and Lauren Hansen, Mixing by Derrick Clements.
Our researcher is Gabriel Loser and special thanks to my right hand woman Adriana Fasio. You can follow me in all my election coverage at Katie Courrect So until next week, I'm Katie correct. This is Turnout. Thanks so much for listening. So I freston state whoever football in Latina insane but always their call. Hope put Julatres let's keen in California. Adoption of teams from foster care is a topic not enough people know about, and we're here to change that.
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