AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
4min chapter
Interview with Renée DiResta: Online Ecosystems, Disinformation, & Censorship Debates
Decoding the Gurus
The Importance of Moderation in the Internet
CNN's John Sutter is fascinated by the use of social media to spread propaganda. He asked why ISIS was allowed on Twitter, but Facebook had already made a decision not to allow it. The internet has created incentives for people to manipulate that system in order to get attention and make their ideas seem like they're more powerful than they really are," he said.
00:00
Transcript
Episode notes
Speaker 3
Yeah, I might move us towards some topics that I've heard you talk about recently that we think are really interesting. And that's around these questions around moderation or censorship. This endless controversy that you seem to see on places like Twitter between people that are all free speech is great, you know, the free market of ideas, it's a level playing field, you know, the best ideas will naturally rise to the surface and there shouldn't be any of this terrible censorship stuff. And you said something recently, which I really liked, which was that you said there was no neutral in the recommendation algorithm. So yeah, I just wondering if you could speak to that a little bit and just let us know where you what's what's the more nuanced way to think about this instead of the terribly boring kind of thing about are you in fact, are you for free speech or against it? I'm
Speaker 8
for it.
Speaker 1
You should. No, it's a really interesting question. I've been like,
Speaker 5
this was the
Speaker 1
thing that I actually started off writing about, right? It wasn't state actor interference. It was actually this question of how do we think about networked information cascades and peer to peer information transmission. And if you think about the internet as a, you know, as an ecosystem for capturing attention and that having attention can translate to real world power, what you start to see is very significant incentives to manipulate that system to try to get attention. And this was the bots conversation was very, very big part of this when I first started writing in 2015. Hey, if you make it trend, you make it true. Right? It was like this little phrase I used in Wired once. And so everybody is trying to game that trending algorithm because everybody wants their hashtag to get that attention to, you know, kind of blow up their social movement or their cause or even their, you know, their shoe brand or whatever. And so it was just this,
Speaker 8
the game
Speaker 1
that was created was really, really interesting to me from the standpoint of, okay, well, how do you, you know, how do you use different types of accounts in this system? How does this platform engage with that platform? What do you use one for versus another? And so I started really paying attention to that again, way before it was state actors. I was kind of captivated by first anti vaccine movement, like why were they so good at this? And you know, you guys, I know, study gurus. You probably got some opinions on that too. But structurally, I was just really interested in how they use it. And then, and then ISIS was sort of the second thing that I became really captivated by, right? You have this organization with the six right icon, no, right? Like,
Speaker 5
you
Speaker 1
want to talk about like old school property. I mean, that's it. You know, you're growing a caliphate. You're, you know, putting out how we're in the world and you're not hiding it in any way. It's not like Russia, you know, operating as things that they're not. It is absolutely transparent over propaganda. And I was fascinated by, you know, who engaged what they chose to put out and this sort of, the sort of style that they were doing. But one of the real interesting questions then was why is ISIS on Twitter? And Facebook had made the decision already by that point, but by 2016, 2017, it was late 2015 actually, it was like October is right before the bottle con attack. Facebook already made the determination that these accounts were not going to be allowed on the platform. And
Speaker 5
it had, you know, what, what,
Speaker 1
I don't know if it was called dangerous orgs then, but that was also a construct around certain types of groups who were harmful who should not be on the platform. But Twitter was having this question about one man's terrorist is a man's free to fight her. And if you take down ISIS, what comes next? And so I thought, well, okay, maybe we can draw lines around terrorist organizations. Is that, is that a thing that we can all agree to? So I have a question for you, any questions as how do you moderate recognizing as you said that there is no neutral. So anytime you see a feed, it's ranked even reverse chronological is waiting time as the most important factor. It's probably the most neutral in my opinion.
Get the Snipd
podcast app
Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
AI-powered
AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode
Save any
moment
Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways
Save any
moment
Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways
Share
& Export
Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more
Share
& Export
Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more
AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode