The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Renee Diresta, expert in online propaganda, to talk about the 2016 election as the web’s Lehman Brothers moment (3:45), why Facebook got rid of human curators (4:45), the problem with Facebook groups and the anti-vaccination movement (8:40), amoral algorithms (13:40), the war for time and attention (18:25), the “likes” black market (21:25), how Amazon gets gamed (23:00), how trying to get her son into preschool got her in to propaganda research(26:45), how conspiracy theories spread (31:30), why tech giants claim to be platforms, not media companies (34:40), Google’s “your money or your life” search function (37:45), why “host not promote” is a better alternative (38:45), the fixes for misinformation (39:50), her work on ISIS’ online strategy (43:20), the slippery slope argument (47:35), and why she is optimistic (52:05).

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