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‘I Believed Sandy Hook Was a Hoax’ · Question Everything

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Hi, Kate.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: How are you?
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I'm Brian.
• 0:09
  Speaker 3: Hi. How's it going?
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Good.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Nice to meet you. Yeah, you too. I've heard your voice,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and I've heard about you, and it's nice to see
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: your face. This is Kate. For years, Kate believed a lie,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: a terrible lie that spread on the internet, on social media,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: which lots of Americans believed. It's a lie that really
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: hurt people, individuals, and our society as a whole. This lie,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: which Kate has now come to realize was a lie,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: is the kind of thing I'm hell-bent on fighting through
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: the mission I announced in our first episode back after
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the summer break. My mission to get a law known
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: as Section 230 repealed or reformed, which I think it
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: helps stop lies and propaganda from overwhelming us online. Section 230,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: which Congress passed in 1996, it makes it so that
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Internet companies can't be sued for what happens on their
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: sites online. Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, they bear essentially no responsibility
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: for the content they amplify and recommend to millions, even
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: billions of people. No matter how much it harms people,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: no matter how much it warps our democracy, under Section 230,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: you cannot successfully sue tech companies for defamation, even if
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: they spread lies about you. You can't sue them for
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: pushing a terror recruitment video on someone who then goes
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and kills your family member. You can't sue them for
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: bombarding your kid with videos that promote eating disorders or
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: that share suicide methods or sexual content. These companies have
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: a special protection that only Internet companies get. We need
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: to strip that protection away. And I think Kate's story
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: is a perfect example of why.
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: What I had been told was so outrageous that it
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: was like, wow, I can't believe I ever even thought
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: that this was real.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: From KCRW and Placement Theory, this is Question Everything. I'm
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Brian Reed. Today, I make my case to you for
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: how I think we can beat back the most destructive
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: lies in our society. And I start by talking to
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: someone who deeply believed one of them.
• 2:13
  Speaker 5: Stick around.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: So as I've told you about here on the show,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: in August, I made a trip to the Iowa State Fair.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: A producer, Sam Egan, and I spent a single day
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: interviewing random people there, probably 20 people in total. And
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: this is incredible to me. One of the people Sam
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: happened to meet in that pretty small, random sample is Kate, who,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: within minutes of talking to Sam by the lemonade stand,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: told him this.
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: As far as Sandy Hook, I was one that grew
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: up thinking that that's a hoax.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, you grew up thinking Sandy Hook was a hoax?
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: Every time I see anything on Sandy Hook, I have
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: to remind myself that that was real.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Kate, who's now in her 20s, spent years believing that
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: the mass shooting of 20 elementary school children and six
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: adults in Newtown, Connecticut, an area called Sandy Hook, in 2012,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: was fake. A staged event with actors hired to play
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: kids and grieving parents. Sam told me about Kate after
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: he met her, and then I listened to the recording.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: And what she said about Sandy Hook from her upbringing
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: really stayed with me. I grew up 10 miles from
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Sandy Hook, one town over. When I was in elementary school,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I used to go see $ 2 movies with my mom
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: at the Newtown Town Hall. I go to Sandy Hook
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: every year for the holidays to visit family who live there,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: and every year I have a moment where I just
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: sit with the pain of what happened on that ground.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: My parents and lots of friends still live nearby, and
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: while we didn't have any direct connections to the families affected,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: my childhood priest, Father Bob, he'd moved over to a
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: church in Newtown by 2012. and was a huge source
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: of support to many of the families. He helped them
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: deal with the press, too. Here he is on the news,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: very soon after the shooting.
• 4:04
  Speaker 6: You know, we actually went to their homes early this
• 4:07
  Speaker 6: morning to confirm the death of their children. It was
• 4:11
  Speaker 6: just horrible, you know, the uncertainty, even though they knew
• 4:14
  Speaker 6: in their hearts that this was real. And the questions
• 4:16
  Speaker 6: they were asking, the regrets they had, you know, why
• 4:19
  Speaker 6: did I send my child to school today? And the
• 4:21
  Speaker 6: parents were just sharing, you know, kind of the last
• 4:23
  Speaker 6: moments they had with their children. One of the dads
• 4:25
  Speaker 6: shared how, for some reason, the child got up early
• 4:28
  Speaker 6: and just came down and told the father how much,
• 4:30
  Speaker 6: you know, she loved him. Or another one that said
• 4:32
  Speaker 6: that just the day before, the child asked him, what
• 4:35
  Speaker 6: is dying like? So parents are really going through a
• 4:37
  Speaker 6: tremendous amount of pain and hurt right now trying to
• 4:40
  Speaker 6: deal with not just their own personal loss, but what
• 4:42
  Speaker 6: happened to their child in the last moments of their life.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Father Bob officiated funerals for eight of the children. All
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: this is to say, I know how real the tragedy
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: at Sandy Hook was. You're probably familiar with the conspiracy
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: theory that Kate believed about Sandy Hook. That the shooting
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: was an elaborate hoax staged to justify gun control. The
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: far-right radio host Alex Jones promoted it on his online outlet, InfoWars,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: and it took off on YouTube and other platforms. This
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: American Life did a story about one of the fathers
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: of a child who was killed at Sandy Hook back
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: when I worked there in 2019. His name is Lenny Posner.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Lenny and his family, after suffering the most horrible tragedy imaginable,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: losing their six-year-old son Noah, they had to suffer again
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: because believers of the Sandy Hook conspiracy started targeting Lenny
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: and his family. threatening their lives for supposedly being actors
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: in this fake shooting. Lenny has had to move his
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: family seven times to keep them safe. When he appeared
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: in an episode of 60 Minutes, the show hired theatrical
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: makeup artists to create like a Mrs. Doubtfire-style fake face
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: that he wore in the interview to protect his privacy.
• 5:56
  Speaker 7: What was the most hurtful thing they said about you?
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: That Noah did not die, that I'm not Noah's father,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: that they're scripted events. that I'm an actor, that I'm
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: paid to fake the death of a child. Other family
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: members of the victims have been walking down the street
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: in a random city and found themselves being shouted at
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: or even chased by people who'd bought into this lie
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: on social media. In a poll taken a few months
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: after the shooting, one in four Americans said they believed
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: that the truth of the Sandy Hook shooting was being
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: covered up. And Kate, she was one of them. And
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: now she's not. I knew something about how the Sandy
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Hook lie had impacted the people who were the subject
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: of it, but I'd never heard from someone who believed
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: the lie and then disbelieved it and could explain how
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: that happened. For Kate, it started when she was a
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: teenager with her dad.
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: My dad was a self-employed realtor, but my dad has
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: historically not been the most popular guy, so he did
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: a lot. smaller properties and a lot of rentals, things
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: like that.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: What do you mean not the most popular guy? Like
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: what are you alluding to there?
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: My dad's mean. He's a mean guy.
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: He's a bully and people definitely know that he's not
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: very friendly. I do remember him always like answering phone
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: calls of people interested in renting or touring houses. And
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: he just always was really rude from the get-go and would,
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: you know, say like, no, we don't have this available
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: or no, da, da, da. and would hang up and
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: just be like, morons. At the same time, he is
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: so loving when he wants to be. He always was
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: a great gift giver, always gave the best Christmas presents
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: and just because presents, and is fiercely still very protective
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: over me and my sister.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: This was in northwest Iowa, an area with a mix
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: of farms and fancy vacation homes on a nearby lake.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: In December 2012, Kate was 14 years old in eighth grade,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: on the evening of the Sandy Hook shooting, December 14th,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Kate remembers she and her family were watching the news together,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: like they often did around dinner time, and it was
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: filled with images of the aftermath of the shooting. First responders, parents,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: and family members doubling over in grief.
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: And I remember so vividly my dad just kind of saying, like,
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: this is, this was put on by the government, you know,
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: there's no way this happened, like, this is The FBI
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: were in on this. And yeah, I don't know if
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: he turned it off or just was talking over it
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: or what, but he just from the start was like,
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: this is not real.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: This is bullshit.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Like from the very moment it happened, he was saying
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: it's not real?
• 8:45
  Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: He's always been chronically online. Definitely was a listener to
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: Alex Jones.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Do you know where he consumed Infowars, Alex Jones?
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: It must have been on– his laptop while he was
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: at work. And that's another like contributing factor, I think,
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: to his lackluster success as a realtor is I think
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: a lot of the time he was spending at work,
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: he was really just looking at things on the internet
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: like that.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Kate says that's where her dad must have submerged himself
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: in this conspiracy, in extreme and fringy channels online. Again,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: she was a kid, 14, and her dad was telling
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: her this event didn't actually happen. Kate says her mom's
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: really good natured, tries to stay out of politics, so
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: she generally goes along with what her more domineering father says.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: So Kate kind of put the event out of mind.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: And then a couple days later, she says her dad
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: brought up the shooting at Sandy Hook again.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: He tells her, How could this possibly, you know, be
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: real when this picture exists? And he shows me this
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: picture of Obama with supposedly one of the kids sitting
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: on his lap, like, in the following days.
• 9:57
  Speaker 7: And.
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: Like I said, my mind is just not on any
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: of this, but he's showing me this.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: And so, yeah, sure. That seems to make sense to me.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: You know, yeah, right.
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: How could this happen if this girl was, you know,
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: supposedly dead, but now here she is sitting on Obama's lap?
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: He would show me like clips of Alex Jones, like debunking,
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: you know, the different pieces of it. and just showing
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: that picture over and over of Obama with the girl
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: on his lap.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: That photo of President Obama, it was actually a picture
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: of Obama with the deceased girl's sister on his lap.
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: It was just immediately like, oh, this is what my
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: dad said about it.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: Why would he lie?
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: And what did you believe did happen then?
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: I fully believed what my dad had said, that the
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: FBI were in on it, that it was staged, that
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: they were crisis actors. And that somewhere these kids were
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: being hidden and that no one actually died. You know,
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: this whole thing, everyone was in on it. It was
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: just some way for them to fabricate a way to
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: take away guns.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: And they, who's the they in that story?
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the government to take away guns for there to
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: be stricter gun laws. Everything was always about guns. And
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: it's crazy because I don't remember my dad ever owning
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: a gun. It seemed like to him that was the
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: beginning of the end. That was the first step to
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: losing control and losing any sort of power that he
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: had as a Republican man, you know, to protect himself
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: and his family.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: And like, did that freak you out? Were you like
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: the story you believed? Was that alarming to you? You know,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the government would do this. They would pretend that six-year-olds
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: were killed at a school and the president would fly
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: to Connecticut and meet with families and they'd hire actors. Like,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: that's a really alarming story to believe about our government.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: It did. It did incite fear. And I think that's
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: what worked so well.
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: I knew that the high school students, they would have
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: the day where they do like a fake car crash and,
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: you know, kids would die and these things would happen.
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: So it was like that for me. It was like, yeah,
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: these are actors portraying a scenario that's so scary that
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: it like scares you straight kind of thing. It was like, yeah,
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: that's so scary and wildly unrealistic. Who would come in
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: and shoot all these little kids?
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: I guess it is like in a certain way, like
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: it is more unbelievable that someone would actually kill children.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: When was the first time you remember questioning your belief?
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: That definitely was in college.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Kate turned 18 in time for the 2016 election. She
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: voted for Donald Trump. Her family was Republican, so that's
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: what you did, she says. She left town for college,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: still in Iowa, but a new place, a little more
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: ideologically diverse. And then, as if in a comedy sketch
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: mocking the times we live in, she enrolled her first
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: semester in a women's and gender studies seminar.
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: That course opened my eyes to everything. I had learned
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: about trans people. I had learned about social constructs.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: Patriarchy.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: All semester, Kate was having her assumptions about the world
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: challenged in this class. She got used to changing her mind.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: It was a group of all women. She and another
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: student were the only Republicans, she says. At home, she'd
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: get into terrible arguments with her dad about what she
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: was learning. He thought she was being indoctrinated. Then came
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: the end of the semester, December, around the time when
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: the Sandy Hook shooting was.
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: And that would have been the five-year anniversary. We talked
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: about the current events and like the news almost every class.
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: It was very casually structured. So that day was just like, hey,
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: today's the anniversary of Sandy Hook. And, you know, what
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: do we think about how things have changed or not changed?
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: And I think we had probably a journal prompt of like,
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: what are your thoughts on this? And then we all
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: spoke about it. And I had to share like with
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: my partner, I was like, I am realizing right now.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: That this is real.
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: I very scaredly shared that to my class. I was like,
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: you guys, I don't feel anything right now. As you're
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: all very emotional, I feel nothing. And I have to
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: now tell myself that I should feel something because this
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: was real. I think we watched a news clip discussing
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: that it was the anniversary. And I think it was, like,
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: maybe some interviews from, like, parents. And that definitely got me. Like,
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: how could I have not seen any of this before
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: and thought to myself, like, there's no way that this
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: didn't happen.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: These are real parents.
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: And, oh, my God, you know, we're being asked to
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: journal about the Sandy Hook shooting, and I'm just thinking
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: to myself, like, I don't know a whole.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Lot about it.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: Because I never had to. I never.
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: Thought more about it. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, wow.
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: Everyone around me is, you know, profusely writing. And, like,
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: some are even getting teary-eyed. And then we talk about it,
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: and I'm like, I've written nothing down. I don't know
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: what to feel.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: When you told your partner, what was their reaction?
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: Like, where did you grow up? you know, like, wait,
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: where are you from?
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Seriously? Yeah.
• 15:49
  Speaker 8: Okay.
• 15:50
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, yeah, right. You know, you all know
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: that I came into this class as a Trump voter.
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: Like we were all very open and honest and I
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: shared that perspective. But yeah, my partner was just like, wait, what? Like,
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: how is that even an opinion? I didn't even know
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: that was a opinion to have. And my professor was like, wow,
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: you know, like you've shared some crazy stuff this semester,
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: but You know, that just makes me feel she.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: Just was like totally blown away.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: How did she handle it when you said it to
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the whole class? Like were people empathetic?
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: There were a couple that were like angry and, you know,
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: sort of just, I don't know, feeling some sort of way.
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: And they were like, well, yeah, this happened. You know,
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: how can you possibly, how could you believe that? Like
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: that's so stupid.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Why would you think that? That's terrible.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: They use that word, stupid?
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, stupid. And like, that's awful, you know.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: How did you feel about them?
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: I felt so ashamed. Yeah, I did. I was like, yeah,
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: you're right.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: Like, I don't know how I didn't realize that this was,
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: you know, so severe. And, you know, it's really not
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: until this last year, really, that I've looked back and
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: thought to myself, like, why didn't I take it seriously
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: more than I did?
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I understand why you'd be mad at yourself or I
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: don't know if you said just shamed. But for what
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: it's worth, hearing your story, within a year of you
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: leaving your house, you heard the truth and believed it.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Within seconds of hearing the truth, it sounds like, or minutes,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: you believed it. So give yourself some credit.
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Once the truth was presented to me, it was
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: so easy to change my mind because what I had
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: been told was so outrageous. that it was like, wow,
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: I can't believe I ever even thought that this was real.
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: That night, for sure, I felt really distracted with it.
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: I looked up, like, Sandy Hook stuff and was kind
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: of reading through, you know, the Wikipedia about it, like,
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: refreshing my memory on.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: What all happened. Read through a.
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: Couple different articles and just tried to let it sink in.
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: and tried to see videos again in a new light
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: from the news of like, you know, did this look
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: like it was fake in any sort of way that
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: I would have thought? You know, these people are acting
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: funny and these are actors. And it was like, no,
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: these people are clearly grieving their children and like loved
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: ones and still just like feeling guilty that I didn't
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: feel anything. while reading about it. And even to this day,
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, I have to like force myself to feel
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: something for this day. No other school shootings do I
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: feel that way, you know, but still Sandy Hook in
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: my brain, I have to actively be like.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: This was real. People died. It was bad.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: Like feel something, feel something.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: You're poking your head right now.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Feel something brain.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: Because I mean, I'm very emotional. person.
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: And every time I hear about a school shooting now,
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: especially when it's, you know, little kids like that, it's heartbreaking.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: It's gut-wrenching.
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: It has me, you know, posting on my social media and, like,
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: calling for gun reform and has me wondering, when will
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: it be enough? Yet that one, you know, was so terrible,
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: but I didn't feel that way yet.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: And that.
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: It still is just this like hole because I didn't
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: experience it as it happened.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: One of the big effects the Sandy Hook lie has
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: had on Kate's life is that it has deeply strained
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: her relationship with her dad, who still believes it. Kate
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: says since learning the truth, she's confronted him about it
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: once in a screaming match they got into about politics.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: And it didn't go well. Kate wanted to tell her
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: story publicly. She sees it as something small she can do.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: To help make up for all those years she dismissed
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: the Sandy Hook shooting as a hoax. And also, she says,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: for voting for Donald Trump the first time around. But
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: she also asked that we not let her dad know
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: about the story, to avoid hurting their relationship more. We
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: were able to corroborate Kate's story with other people in
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: her life, so we've decided to honor her request. That's
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: also why we're not using her last name. When I
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: think about the effect of lies, disinformation, propaganda, you know,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: on our society, sure, but on us as people, my
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: kind of initial thought is that it riles us up.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: It leads us to feel anger. It inspires this like angry,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: hateful feeling. But you talking has made me think like, oh,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: maybe this is actually another really big and important impact
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: of lies and disinformation, which is it dulls empathy for
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: other people.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: It was like a separation of registering that it was
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: real people, real deaths, real tragedy.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Coming up, how I think we can stop lies like
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: the one Kate believed about Sandy Hook from spreading in
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the first place. That's in a minute. Welcome back to
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: the show. I saw an essay by a journalism professor
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: at UConn where she argues that the Sandy Hook shooting was,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: as the headline puts it, the start of misinformation running amok.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: The many delusions that have engulfed us in the last
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: 10 years that have jumped between the digital and physical worlds,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: lies like QAnon and the 2020 election being stolen from
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, which led to the insurrection on January 6th,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: lies about COVID and vaccines, which led to actual deaths.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Sandy Hook was arguably the start of it. And I
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: think Sandy Hook also points to a compelling solution. And
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: that is changing the law known as Section 230, the
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: law that gives special immunity to internet companies like Facebook
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: and YouTube so they can't get sued for what goes
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: on their platforms. I think looking at the Sandy Hook
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: lie that Kate and her dad believed is one of
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the strongest arguments for changing this law. Here's my case. So,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: within days, held hours, of the Sandy Hook shooting, Alex
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Jones and others started spreading lies about the victims, their families. Now,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: this is really important to keep in mind. Freedom of
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: speech means we have the freedom to lie. We have
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: the freedom to spew absolute, utter bullshit. We have the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: freedom to concoct conspiracy theories and even use them to
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: make money by selling ads or subscriptions or what have you.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Most lies are protected by the First Amendment, and they
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: should be. But there's a small subset of lies that
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: are not protected speech, even under the First Amendment. The
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: old shouting fire in a crowded theater, not necessarily protected.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: And similarly, lies that are defamatory aren't protected. In order
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: for a statement to be defamatory, okay, for the most part,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: whoever's publishing it has to know it's untrue, and it
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: has to cause damage. to the person or the institution
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: the statement's about. Reputational damage, emotional damage, or a lie
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: could hurt someone's business. The bar for proving defamation is
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: high in the U.S. It can be hard to win
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: those cases. But in 2022, family members of 10 of
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: the Sandy Hook victims did win a defamation case against
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Alex Jones's company. And the verdict was huge. Jones was
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: ordered to pay the family members over a billion dollars
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: in damages. Just this week, the Supreme Court declined to
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: hear an appeal from Jones over it. A semblance of
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: justice for the victims, though infuriatingly Alex Jones filed for
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: bankruptcy and has avoided paying them so far. But also,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: and this is what I want to focus on, the
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: lawsuits are a real deterrent to Alex Jones and others
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: who will likely think twice before lying like this again.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: So now I want you to think about this. Alex
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Jones did not spread this lie on his own. He
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: relied on social media companies, especially YouTube, which hosts his show,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: to send his conspiracy theory out to the masses. One
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: YouTube video spouting this lie shortly after the shooting got
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: nearly 11 million views in less than two weeks. And
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: by 2018, when the family sued him, Alex Jones had
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: 1.6 billion views on his YouTube channel. The Sandy Hook
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: lie was laced throughout that content, burrowing its way into
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: the psyche of millions of people, including Kate and her dad.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Alex Jones made money off of each of those views.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: But so did YouTube. Yet the Sandy Hook families, they
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: cannot sue YouTube for defaming them because of Section 230.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: I'm going to keep reminding you what Section 230 is
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: as we cover it on this show because I want
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: it to stick. Section 230, small provision in a law
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Congress passed in 1996. Just 26 words, but words that
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: were so influential, they're known as the 26 words that
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: created the internet. Those words make it so that internet
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: platforms cannot be treated as publishers of the content on
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: their platform. It's why Sandy Hook parents could sue Alex
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Jones for the lies he told, but they couldn't sue
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: the platforms like YouTube that Jones used to spread those lies.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: And There is a logic to this that I think
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: made sense when Section 230 was passed in the 90s.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Back then, internet companies offered chat rooms, message boards, places
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: where other people posted, and the companies were pretty passively
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: transmitting those posts. One analogy that gets thrown around for
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: this is that the platforms, they're like your mailman. They're
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: just delivering somebody else's letter about the Sandy Hook conspiracy.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: They're not writing it themselves. And sure, that might have
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: been true for a while. But imagine now that the
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: mailman reads the letter he's delivering, sees it's pretty tantalizing.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: There's a government conspiracy to take away people's guns by
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: orchestrating a fake school shooting, hiring child actors and staging
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: a massacre and a whole 911 response. The mailman thinks,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: that's pretty good stuff. People are going to like this.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: He makes millions of copies of the letter and delivers
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: them to millions of people. And then, as all those
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: people start writing letters to their friends and family talking
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: about this crazy conspiracy, the mailman keeps making copies of
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: those letters and sending them around to more people. And
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: he makes a ton of money off of this by
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: selling ads that he sticks into those envelopes. Would you say,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: in that case, the mailman is just a conduit for
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: someone else's message? Or has he transformed into a different role?
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: A role more like a publisher who should be responsible
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: for for the statements he or she actively chooses to
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: amplify to the world. That is essentially what YouTube and
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: other social media platforms are doing by using algorithms to
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: boost certain content. In fact, I think the mailman analogy
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: is tame for what these companies are up to. Which
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: brings me to someone who studies how all this works.
• 27:54
  Speaker 10: Social media engagement is engineered up the wazoo.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: This is Joan Donovan. She's an expert who researches the
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: ways lies operate on social media and then affect the
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: real world. She teaches at Boston University. She wrote a
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: book called Meme Wars about how memes influence our politics.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Research from Joan and others shows that social media platforms
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: prioritize and amplify false and harmful content. So, for instance,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: back in 2018... A group of researchers discovered that lies
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: travel six times faster on Twitter than factual posts do
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: and reach far more people. And that rate of travel
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: is due in large part to that mysterious, hyper-personalized social
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: media calculator, the algorithm.
• 28:39
  Speaker 10: So that study came out of MIT and they had
• 28:44
  Speaker 10: some unprecedented access to Twitter's backend to be able to
• 28:49
  Speaker 10: do a study of that magnitude. And that was, I
• 28:53
  Speaker 10: would say, in the good old days. Once platform companies
• 28:56
  Speaker 10: realized that even though they were nice to academics, they
• 29:00
  Speaker 10: really couldn't control their output. They'd make it very difficult
• 29:04
  Speaker 10: to see how the system works. They claimed that these
• 29:07
  Speaker 10: algorithms are secret sauce and that nobody should be able
• 29:11
  Speaker 10: to know because then people will game them. So they
• 29:14
  Speaker 10: locked us out of platforms because there had been some
• 29:18
  Speaker 10: research done that showed that These algorithms are reacting to
• 29:24
  Speaker 10: signals that people have within the first, let's say, hour
• 29:29
  Speaker 10: of a post is the most important time. Probably the
• 29:32
  Speaker 10: first five to ten minutes is probably the most important
• 29:35
  Speaker 10: time because the algorithm is going to decide how much
• 29:38
  Speaker 10: amplification to give. based on the initial signals of who's
• 29:43
  Speaker 10: interacting with that content.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: And what's a signal?
• 29:46
  Speaker 10: A signal is any kind of click, like, or share.
• 29:50
  Speaker 10: Sometimes even if you just expand the post, that can
• 29:53
  Speaker 10: be a good signal. Or if you, you know, make
• 29:58
  Speaker 10: a comment, that's a really good signal that people are
• 30:01
  Speaker 10: engaging with this.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: So signals are ways that a user can interact with
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: a post.
• 30:08
  Speaker 10: It can even be dwell time. Like if you're reading
• 30:11
  Speaker 10: something and you stop, especially Instagram, that can also be
• 30:17
  Speaker 10: a signal. In like a platform like TikTok, they might
• 30:21
  Speaker 10: see a piece of content that they think should be
• 30:24
  Speaker 10: circulated and they'll heat it so that it gets more traction.
• 30:29
  Speaker 10: And so the algorithm decides by and large what's going
• 30:33
  Speaker 10: to be popular or what's not. And the point of
• 30:35
  Speaker 10: the platforms is to keep people on platform and seeing
• 30:39
  Speaker 10: the next ad.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: To be fair, that's the goal of most media companies.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: News outlets, book publishers, movie studios, podcasters. We are all,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: or most of us at least, trying to make money too.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: We want to make stories that are popular so we
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: can keep audiences paying attention and sell ads or movie
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: tickets or streaming subscriptions to support our businesses. But in
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: the world that every other media company occupies aside from
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: social media, if we go too far and put a
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: lie out that hurts somebody, we risk getting sued. It
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean other media outlets don't lie or exaggerate or
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: spin stories, but there's still a meaningful guardrail there. There's
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: a real deterrent. to make sure we're not publishing or
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: promoting lies that are so egregious, so harmful, that we
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: risk getting sued, such as lying about the deaths of
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: kids who were killed and their devastated parents. Social media
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: companies have no such deterrent, and they're making tons of money.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: We don't know how much money, in large part because
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: the way that kind of info usually gets forced out
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: of companies is through lawsuits, which we can't file against
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: these tech behemoths because of Section 230. So we don't know,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: for instance, how much money YouTube made from content with
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: the Sandy Hook conspiracy in it. All we know is
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: that they can and do boost defamatory lies as much
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: as they want, raking cash without any risk of being
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: sued for it. Joan Donovan says they take full advantage
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: of that force field around them. What's the strongest evidence
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: you know of showing that platforms are making a conscious
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: decision to to spread lies because they make money and
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: lies that are leading to real world harms.
• 32:25
  Speaker 10: Ultimately, what we learned from Francis Haugen's whistleblower documents is
• 32:30
  Speaker 10: that Facebook knew its algorithms were radicalizing people and they
• 32:38
  Speaker 10: weren't doing anything about it.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Francis Haugen is a data engineer from Iowa, by the way,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: who worked for Meta, Facebook, from 2019 to 2021. Haugen
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: says she joined the company wanting to help make a
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: less toxic Facebook, but she was so dismayed by what
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: she saw on the inside, she quit and became a whistleblower,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: releasing a trove of internal documents from the company to
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: reporters at the Wall Street Journal and to Congress, where
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: she testified.
• 33:11
  Speaker 8: No one truly understands the destructive choices made by Facebook
• 33:15
  Speaker 8: except Facebook. When we realized big tobacco was hiding the
• 33:20
  Speaker 8: harms it caused, the government took action. When we figured
• 33:24
  Speaker 8: out cars were safer with seatbelts, the government took action.
• 33:29
  Speaker 8: And when our government learned that opioids were taking lives,
• 33:31
  Speaker 8: the government took action. I implore you to do the
• 33:35
  Speaker 8: same here.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Haugen's document dump showed that Facebook leadership knew about the
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: harms their product is causing, including disinformation and hate speech,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: but also product designs that were hurting children such as
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: the algorithm's tendency to lead teen girls to posts about anorexia.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Frances Haugen told lawmakers that top people at Facebook knew
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: exactly what the company was doing and why it was
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: doing it. Did these decisions ever come from Mark Zuckerberg
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: directly or from other senior management at Facebook?
• 34:08
  Speaker 8: We have a few choice documents that contain notes from
• 34:12
  Speaker 8: briefings with Mark Zuckerberg where he chose metrics defined by
• 34:17
  Speaker 8: Facebook over changes that would have significantly decreased misinformation, hate speech,
• 34:21
  Speaker 8: and other inciting content.
• 34:23
  Speaker 9: So you're saying the documents exist that at the highest
• 34:26
  Speaker 9: level at Facebook, you had... Information discussing these two choices
• 34:31
  Speaker 9: and that people chose, even though they knew that it
• 34:34
  Speaker 9: was misinformation and hurtful and maybe even causing people lives,
• 34:38
  Speaker 9: they continued to choose profit.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have said Francis Haugen's documents are
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: taken out of context and don't tell a complete story.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: After Haugen went public, Zuckerberg wrote, I think most of
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: us just don't recognize the false picture of the company
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: that is being painted. He claimed serving up angry or
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: harmful content would cost them advertisers. Zuckerberg was later dragged
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: in front of the Senate, where Republican Josh Hawley went
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: after him, accusing Zuckerberg's company of amplifying content that led
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: to eating disorders in teenagers and to suicides.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: Let me ask you this. There's families of victims here today.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Have you apologized to the victims? Would you like to
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: do so now? They're here. You're on national television. Would
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: you like now to apologize to the victims who have been.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Harmed by your product? Senator Hawley bullied Zuckerberg into turning around,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: facing family members of dead children who were sitting in
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: the hearing and apologizing.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Anything that you've all.
• 35:37
  Speaker 11: Gone through is terrible. No one should have to go
• 35:39
  Speaker 11: through the things that your families have suffered.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Hawley then brought up the protection Facebook gets from Section 230. Mr. Zuckerberg.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: Why should your company not be sued for this? Why
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: is it that you can claim, you hide behind a
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: liability shield, you can't be held accountable? Shouldn't you be
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: held accountable personally? Will you take personal responsibility?
• 36:00
  Speaker 11: Senator, I think I've already answered this.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is... Well, try us again. Will you
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: take personal responsibility?
• 36:07
  Speaker 11: Senator, I view my job and the job of our
• 36:09
  Speaker 11: company as building the best tools that we can to
• 36:13
  Speaker 11: keep our community safe. Well, you're failing at that. Well, Senator,
• 36:16
  Speaker 11: we're doing an industry-leading effort. We build AI tools. Your
• 36:19
  Speaker 11: product is killing people.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Another social media CEO and founder has copped to some responsibility.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, said this on stage
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: at an event in Kenya earlier this year.
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: I built one of those services. Every time you hit
• 36:35
  Speaker 5: the heart, every time you like a post, every time
• 36:38
  Speaker 5: you retweet something, that's a signal to an algorithm. which
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: then takes that and a bunch of other variables and
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: uses that as a way to push into someone else's feed.
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: And the reason why is because that increases the number
• 36:54
  Speaker 5: of advertising revenue for them. They're programming you. And they
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: can change that algorithm at any point and program you
• 37:02
  Speaker 5: in a different way. And they have in the past,
• 37:05
  Speaker 5: and they will continue to do so.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: And how about with YouTube, where the Sandy Hook lie proliferated?
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: and made its way to Kate's dad's screen at his
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: real estate office. In 2013, a French engineer named Guillaume Chalot,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: who helped write the code for YouTube's algorithm, was fired,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: he says, for trying to spearhead a project that would
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: have changed the algorithm to make it less tribal and bubble-like.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Chalot went on to give interviews describing how YouTube's wildly
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: lucrative business model relies on the algorithm making editorial decisions
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: about which content to recommend. The company is dictating most
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: of what we see. Here he is speaking on a
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: podcast from the Center for Humane Technology in 2019. Jello
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: told an interviewer that the vast majority of YouTube's views
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: each day come from the company's tailored recommendations to users.
• 37:57
  Speaker 7: So you have very little choice. 99.99999% of the choice
• 38:03
  Speaker 7: is from an algorithm that you don't understand and you
• 38:06
  Speaker 7: don't control.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: What harm does that create?
• 38:10
  Speaker 7: Conspiracy theories are really easy to make. You can just
• 38:14
  Speaker 7: make your own conspiracy theories in like one hour, shoot,
• 38:17
  Speaker 7: and then it can get millions of views. They're addictive
• 38:21
  Speaker 7: because people who live in this filter bubble of conspiracy
• 38:25
  Speaker 7: theories and they don't watch classical media. So they spend
• 38:29
  Speaker 7: more time on YouTube. Imagine you're someone who doesn't trust
• 38:32
  Speaker 7: the media. You're going to spend more time on YouTube.
• 38:35
  Speaker 7: So since you spend more time on YouTube, the algorithm
• 38:38
  Speaker 7: thinks you're better than anybody else. It's a definition of
• 38:41
  Speaker 7: better for the algorithm. It's who spends more time. So
• 38:45
  Speaker 7: it will recommend you more. So it's like this vicious circle.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: It's a vicious circle, Shallow says, where the more conspiratorial
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: the videos, the longer users stay on the platform watching them,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: the more valuable that content becomes, the more YouTube's algorithm
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: recommends the conspiratorial videos. The number with Alex Jones, for example,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: always stunned me. You said that it recommended Alex Jones'
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: videos 15 billion times.
• 39:18
  Speaker 7: Yeah, that's a lower estimate. I think it's much more,
• 39:21
  Speaker 7: but we have no idea how big it is.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: Why do we not have any idea?
• 39:25
  Speaker 7: Because YouTube doesn't want to say how many times they
• 39:29
  Speaker 7: recommend videos. each video. So they're like, yeah, if we
• 39:33
  Speaker 7: start saying it, then we give way too much information.
• 39:36
  Speaker 7: They have no incentive to actually do it.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: We need to be able to sue these companies. Imagine
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: the Sandy Hook families have been able to sue YouTube
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: for defaming them, in addition to Alex Jones. Again, we
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: don't know how much money YouTube made off the Sandy
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Hook lies. Did YouTube pull in as much cash as
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Alex Jones? Five times as much? A hundred times? Whatever
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: it was, what if the victims were able to sue YouTube?
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: It wouldn't get rid of their loss or trauma, but
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: it could offer some compensation. YouTube's owned by Google, remember,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: one of the most valuable companies in the world, more
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: likely to actually pay out instead of going bankrupt like
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Alex Jones. But on a wider scale, the risk of
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: massive lawsuits like this, a real threat to these companies' profits,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: could finally force the platforms to change how they're operating.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Maybe they'd change the algorithms to prioritize content from outlets
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: that fact-check because that's less risky. Maybe they'd get rid
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: of fancy algorithms altogether, go back to people getting shown
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: posts chronologically or based on their own choice of search terms.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: It'd be up to the companies, but however they chose
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: to address it, they would at least have to adapt
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: their business model so that it incorporated the risk of
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: getting sued when they boost damaging lies. For what it's worth,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: this is what Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen argued for in
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Congress in 2021.
• 41:16
  Speaker 8: I strongly encourage reforming Section 230 to exempt decisions about algorithms.
• 41:23
  Speaker 8: They have 100% control over their algorithms. And Facebook should
• 41:28
  Speaker 8: not get a free pass on choices it makes to
• 41:30
  Speaker 8: prioritize growth and virality and reactiveness over public safety. They
• 41:36
  Speaker 8: shouldn't get a free pass on that because they're paying
• 41:38
  Speaker 8: for their profits right now with our safety. So I
• 41:41
  Speaker 8: strongly encourage reform of 230 in that way.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Lenny Posner. the father of Noah Posner, who was murdered
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: at Sandy Hook. He started a nonprofit to stop disinformation
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: and harassment online. It is also advocated to change Section 230.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: I made my argument to Kate, by the way. I've
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: been practicing it, making the case I just made to
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: you to friends, to people I meet in bars, and
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: lately to interviewees. Kate didn't say much. What would the
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: world be like if the Sandy Hook victim families could
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: sue YouTube the same way they could sue Alex Jones? Hmm.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: She listened. And then, at the end of my spiel,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: said this.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: I'd agree with that.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah. No, it is. It's a great idea.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: I'd believe in it. She apparently thought it was so
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: great that after our interview, she texted Sam, my producer...
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: A story about a mom in New York who's suing
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: TikTok and Meta for pushing content about subway surfing to
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: her 15-year-old son, who went and did it and died.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: The case is challenging Section 230 in court. Would this contribute?
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Kate wrote.
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: I think your idea and solution would be, like, broad enough.
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: I think it's a great idea. Yeah, I'm about to say, like,
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: give me the petition, you know?
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: Let me go.
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: Out and shout on the corner.
• 43:10
  Speaker 9: Okay.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: I'm taking you to Congress. Now I just need the
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: people in Congress to return my calls. There's a bipartisan
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: group of them who want to repeal Section 230. Lindsey Graham,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: Josh Hawley, Dick Durbin, Amy Klobuchar. Senators, call me back.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: I want to know what needs to happen to get
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: your proposal passed. I'm still trying to figure out how
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: to do this whole advocacy thing, honestly. Pushing for a
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: policy change rather than just reporting on it.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: It's new to me.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: And I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Should I be launching a petition? Raising money for like
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: a PAC? I've been talking to marketing people about slogans
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: for a campaign. We'll document this as I stumble my
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: way through. It's all a bit awkward for me. So
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: if you have ideas for how we can build this
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: movement to be able to sue big tech, please tell me.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: I'm on Instagram at brihreed, B-R-I-H-R-E-E-D. We're also on Substack
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: at questioneverything.substack.com. Get in the comments, get in our chat there.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Let me know what you think of my argument. I've
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: already started to get some pushback from some of you.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Please don't be afraid to poke holes in what I'm saying.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: And we're going to talk to some skeptics in future episodes.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Today's episode was produced by Sam Egan. It was edited
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: by our managing editor, Kevin Sullivan. Robin Semyon and I
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: are the executive producers of Question Everything. Our team also
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: includes producers Sophie Kazis and Zach St. Louis, contributing editors
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Neil Drumming and Jen Kinney, and associate producers Emily Malterre
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: and Kevin Shepard. This episode was fact-checked by Annika Robbins,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: mixing and sound design by Brendan Baker. Our music is
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: by Matt McGinley. Special thanks to Iowa Public Radio and
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: to Meg and Patrick Witte. Our partners at KCRW include
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: Arnie Seipel, Tejal Ajmera, Natalie Hill, and Jennifer Farrow. Please
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: rate and review Question Everything. I will keep asking. I
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: really appreciate it. And speaking of social media influence, we
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: will be back next week with a frank behind-the-scenes look
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: at some of the most popular accounts on TikTok. So
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: you have... politicians, some of the most powerful people in
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: the world, begging, pleading to get on your shows. You're
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: turning them down. Meanwhile, legacy news outlets, independent news organizations
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: like us are putting in requests. We try to get
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Trump on the show. Because we're not asking them hard-hitting questions.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: See you next Thursday.