Social Media Algorithms Are Amplifying Conscience

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As a parent as a person who was fighting to get that bill passed I was in no way neutral on this whatsoever just to be clear. There is a really strange distribution by which 10 participants in the hashtag were dominating the hashtag and that's because there would be these accounts that would just be kind of on 24-7. So it was really interesting to see that that divide and even if you look at vaccination rates in California you would still see that you know 85% or so were still vaccinating their kids but if you were to look at the social media conversation it seemed like nobody was anymoreit was all done. But we did not want the platforms to be the arbiters of truth and

Today’s online propaganda has evolved in unforeseeable and seemingly absurd ways; by laughing at or spreading a Kermit the Frog meme, you may be unwittingly advancing the Russian agenda. These campaigns affect our elections integrity, public health, and relationships. In this episode, the first of two parts, disinformation expert Renee DiResta talks with Tristan and Aza about how these tactics work, how social media platforms’ algorithms and business models allow foreign agents to game the system, and what these messages reveal to us about ourselves. Renee gained unique insight into this issue when in 2017 Congress asked her to lead a team of investigators analyzing a data set of texts, images and videos from Facebook, Twitter and Google thought to have been created by Russia’s Internet Research Agency. She shares what she learned, and in part two of their conversation, Renee, Tristan and Aza will discuss what steps can be taken to prevent this kind of manipulation in the future.