Latest / The Real News Podcast / Fighting Disinformation in Europe: Media Education, Regulation, & Organizing

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Fighting Disinformation in Europe: Media Education, Regulation, & Organizing · The Real News Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hi, folks, Just a quick heads up before we get started.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: There are a few curse words in this episode. Okay,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: here's the show, and you can hear me, all right,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: I can hear you fine, lovely, okay, and I will begin.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Last fall, I visited the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: It's located on this big campus in the hills west
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: of the city, and I was there to interview people
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: about something that had happened just the week before. So
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: this was October October twenty twenty five. The month before,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: on September tenth, Charlie Kirk was killed. Remember, he was
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: a young far right US activist Christian nationalist, founder of
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the conservative organization Turning Point USA, and he used to
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: do these speaking tours on US campuses where he would
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: debate people in public and put forth his controversy conspiratorial
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and offers racist or sexist ideas. So back in Spain,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: following Charlie Kirk's killing, a young far right Spanish activist
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: named Vito Kilis decided he was going to do the
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: same thing in Spain in Kirk's honor. He was going
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: to visit universities across the country and hold kirk style
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: debates in public with controversial or incendiary rhetoric, and he
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: kicked off his tour at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: The problem was he never really kicked it off. See,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: the Autonomous University is one of the most radically progressive
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: universities in the country. It has staunchly defended the independence
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: movement for the region of Catalunya, and the university actually
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: told him he didn't have permission to speak because of
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: the chaos that could ensue. So he arrived anyway, and
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: so did anti fascist protesters who filled the main plaza.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: They squared off with Kile supporters holding Spanish four flags.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Both sides protested shouted at each other until the Catalunya
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: police force showed up, and then they pushed the groups
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: back with batons and shields and riot police and shut
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: it all down.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: The following week, I traveled to the university.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: To ask students what they thought about what happened and
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: about Vito's plan to try and speak. So I spoke
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: with this one journalism student. His name is Uneveles, and
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: he said, Vito Kiles came here to stand with a
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: megaphone to shout a few things, to give a speech
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: and not to answer questions, he said. In fact, he
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: told me that's even worse than what Charlie Kirk did.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: You could have.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Another student told me everyone can have their own thoughts,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: but to come to a university to do anything, you
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: have to ask for permission. And from what I understand,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: he didn't have permission to come here, and he was warned,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: in fact, not the com Hugo Guiaru sees it differently.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: He's a history.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Student who was in the group of Kiles supporters with
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: the Spanish flag. I wanted to have a debate, he said,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: to share ideas even if we didn't agree, because that's
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: really the spirit of the university and to keep that spirit.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: But then he said he ended up trying to separate
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: people and almost got hit several times.
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah me, boy follows.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: So here's the thing. Most of the students I spoke with,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: but not all of them, told me that wasn't just
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: trying to do a speaking tour in the name of
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: free speech. He was using Charlie Kirk's death as a
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: way to push his far right vision of the world
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: and a US style free speech definition across Spain. And
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: they say his goal was to get exactly what happened, chaos, protests,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: police violence, media attention. Can you introduce yourself?
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so my name is Acela. I am as a
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: said professor in the University of Barcelona in the communication
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: studies and Midia studies.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: And I spoke to him about this as well, and he.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: Said, every time that a rite wing politician watch some notoriety,
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: he or she goes to the autonomous university and she
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: gets the radio, she gets public in media, she gets publicities,
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: he gets so Bito Kilis went to that specific university
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: because then he knew that in that specific university there
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: is this big contestation, is very politically it's very politically affirmed,
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: and they will get he will he would get that
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: reaction he wanted. He wanted attention, and.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: So he got it.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I think it's important to say that the next universities
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: where he tried to also speak on his his tour
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: also blocked him from doing so. The university regions essentially
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: wouldn't give him permission because they said he wasn't there
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: to have an open debate. He was there to disturb,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: trouble and to create, you know, a media attention. And
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I think This is interesting because again it shows the
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: difference in definitions of free speech in the United States
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: and abroad. Charlie Kirk found the space to speak on
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: university campuses in the United States despite his controversial and
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: incendiary rhetoric, but not in Spain, and there's a reason
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: for that.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: One student I interviewed.
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: Told metespression is well look libert.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: She said, I believe that freedom of expression is the
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: right to say whatever you want. But the limit is
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: when you disrespect other groups of people that have a
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: different ideology. Perhaps you can debate with a person who's
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: different from you, but without disrespecting them, that you have
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: expreeddend of expression until you disrespect the other or the.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Other person's ideology.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: In her opinion, Vitokilles and others on the far right
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: have a discourse that is disrespectful to others. They thrive
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: on attacking, dividing, and using others as scapegoats. And again,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: as I've looked at a lot in this podcast, this
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: in the United States is protected speech under the First Amendment.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Their free speech is seen as absolute, But in Brazil,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Europe and elsewhere, the right to free speech is balanced
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: amid other rights. So your right to free speech doesn't
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: trump my right not to be harmed by your speech.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: But the far right and the powerful owners of US
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: tech firms are hiding behind the discourse of free speech
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: to push their incendiary rhetoric, and they're doing it far
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: beyond the borders of the United States. Spain is not
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: the only place where far right activists or US tech
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: firms are trying to push their agenda abroad into Europe
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: and their US definition of free speech, But people are
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: pushing all of that in a minute. This is the
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Battle for Free Speech, a multipart narrative podcast brought to
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: you by the Real News. In this series, we take
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: you on a journey to understand the important role free
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: speech has played in US history and the fight being
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: waged over at today. I'm your co host Michael Fox,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: and I'm honored to be joined today by Laura Flanders.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: She is the host of Laura Flanders and Friends, formerly
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: known as The Laura Flanders Show on public television, and
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: she has had a long, illustrious career in journalism. Laura,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me today.
• 7:38
  Speaker 6: Michael is so great to be with you, and I'm
• 7:40
  Speaker 6: fascinated by that story you just told it.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Is crazy, and I'm sure we will dive into more
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: of this.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Laura, I just want to say, like, I'm so excited
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: to chat with you, in particular because you kind of
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: have a foot in these.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Two worlds in the United States and Europe.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: You grew up in the UK, You've had most of
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: your professional career in the United States, and I think
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: that that's so important for understanding this conversation today, right
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: because we're talking about free speech in these two different
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: worlds and the different definitions and also disinformation. What does
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: that mean? I just wanted to start, Laura, what is
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: your definition of free speech?
• 8:17
  Speaker 6: Well, you know, before we get there, I think what
• 8:20
  Speaker 6: your story illustrates and makes a think about, and what
• 8:23
  Speaker 6: you're alluding to in terms of what are the distinctions
• 8:25
  Speaker 6: between a kind of European sense of free speech and
• 8:28
  Speaker 6: an American one takes me right back to the core
• 8:31
  Speaker 6: distinction I think really between our two cultures, one being
• 8:37
  Speaker 6: a culture of the individual with all of its wonderful assets.
• 8:42
  Speaker 6: In the US, we have this supposedly inviolable individual right
• 8:46
  Speaker 6: to free speech and it sort of trumps everything, not
• 8:50
  Speaker 6: to use that word. In europe societies there actually think
• 8:58
  Speaker 6: about the social you know, it's not horrifying to imagine
• 9:03
  Speaker 6: a collective and to think about collective rights. Now, we
• 9:08
  Speaker 6: can always take that too far, and you know, there's
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: certainly histories of abuse in both countries, and I hope
• 9:15
  Speaker 6: we get a chance to talk about that, but in
• 9:17
  Speaker 6: broad strokes what I'm reminded I've been in Barcelona also
• 9:21
  Speaker 6: when you go back to the history, the histories everywhere
• 9:23
  Speaker 6: on the walls of the Civil War and that sense
• 9:27
  Speaker 6: of a collective struggle for freedom and for a different
• 9:31
  Speaker 6: sense of priority, different set of priorities. Barcelona was the
• 9:37
  Speaker 6: heart of that civil war struggle for an anti fascist,
• 9:44
  Speaker 6: anti authoritarian style of government, complete with communists and anarchists,
• 9:50
  Speaker 6: and the autonomous University has a lot of its roots
• 9:53
  Speaker 6: in that struggle. So anyway, you've kicked us off in
• 9:56
  Speaker 6: a really interesting place because I think, as we'll see
• 10:00
  Speaker 6: through this conversation that comes up over and over again
• 10:04
  Speaker 6: that European governments have a long tradition of balancing individual
• 10:10
  Speaker 6: rights with other rights for better and for ill as well. Here.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, Laura. Thank you so much for
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: grounding us in that, because it's so true, and I
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: don't think that enough people in the United States like
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: understand this core difference and also understand this idea of
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: society as as as the whole outside of the United States, right, So,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: so thank you for grounding us in that. So this
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: episode we're going to be traveling.
• 10:39
  Speaker 6: To Europe those correct.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Protisically to understand how Europeans consider free speech and also
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: look at kind of the threats from big tech moguls
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: to push their agenda. And in particular this episode, I
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: really want to focus around disinformation, fake news, and the
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: battle against it, in particular that's happening in Europe. So, Laura,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: I want to continue our conversation in a place that
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: you and I were just speaking about recently, and that
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: is Northern Ireland.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: In a capital city in the British Isles, people are
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: forced to flee.
• 11:17
  Speaker 6: Their homes by a mob which.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: Was intent on causing havoc and setting fires.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Violent riots and fires in Belfast in Northern Ireland just
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: took off in mid June. They rippled across the city
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: for several days after a violent knife attack went viral
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: over social media. The attacker was reportedly either from Sudan
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: or Chad and his nationality sparked a wave of anti
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: immigrant violence. Migrant families were forced to flee their homes.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: And here's the thing. Elon Musk, owner of the social
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: media platform X, played a key role in fueling this violence.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: According to a report from the Center for Counter Digital Hate,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: a US and UK based end Joe Musk's role was
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: quote instrumental in the Belfast riots. He helped to spread
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: calls for protests from anti immigrant activists and politicians on X.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: One of them read quote only by protesting repeatedly and loudly,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: will there be change? According to the report, more than
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: half of the more than one hundred million views across
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: three accounts came from Musk's reach on the platform. People
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: responded to those posts on X with nearly four thousand
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: comments calling for lynchings and other offenses against immigrants, and
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: the director of that organization, Imran Ahmed, said no individual
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: played a bigger role in spreading this content on X
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: than Musk himself. As the owner of X and its
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: most followed user, Musk has unparalleled power to shape what
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: people see online. With that power comes responsibility for the
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: content and conduct his platform promotes. Laura, did you see this?
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Unfold and what are your thoughts about Musk's role here.
• 13:06
  Speaker 6: Well, it's fascinating, you know, Michael, I started as a
• 13:08
  Speaker 6: journalist in Northern Ireland. I don't know whether you know that,
• 13:11
  Speaker 6: but when I was like twenty three, I was in
• 13:14
  Speaker 6: Belfast in the nineteen eighties during the so called troubles
• 13:17
  Speaker 6: the Irish, of course call it the trouble with England,
• 13:21
  Speaker 6: and saw conflict in the streets of the thought that
• 13:25
  Speaker 6: we saw in the story that you just told. So
• 13:27
  Speaker 6: for many of us it was like a flashback to
• 13:30
  Speaker 6: that earlier era. And you know, younger generations who had
• 13:33
  Speaker 6: memories of that conflict where there were you know, molotov
• 13:38
  Speaker 6: cocktails thrown and bombs in the streets and troops and
• 13:42
  Speaker 6: guns and regular gunfire. I think almost sort of dug
• 13:47
  Speaker 6: into their roots maybe to sort of revive some scene
• 13:50
  Speaker 6: that they'd seen in the histories of their families. I
• 13:54
  Speaker 6: was reminded in the context of this conversation of what
• 13:58
  Speaker 6: the free speech situation was in the eighties when British
• 14:03
  Speaker 6: anti terrorism law. Again this is the other side of
• 14:06
  Speaker 6: the collective approach to speech rights in the name of
• 14:10
  Speaker 6: protecting the British, especially the interests of the British in
• 14:16
  Speaker 6: Northern Ireland that were being contested by a liberation nationalist
• 14:21
  Speaker 6: independence movement at that time led by Shinfain and the
• 14:25
  Speaker 6: Irish Republican Army. In the name of protecting certain people
• 14:28
  Speaker 6: from other people, the government of Margaret Thatcher passed these
• 14:32
  Speaker 6: Prevention of Terrorism Act laws that restricted broadcasting rights for Shinfein,
• 14:38
  Speaker 6: the political party that represented the nationalist's point of view.
• 14:42
  Speaker 7: Hello and good morning. Yesterday the government banned all British
• 14:46
  Speaker 7: television and radio stations from broadcasting interviews with members of Shinfein.
• 14:50
  Speaker 7: Are their supporters, but will it reduce terrorism or merely
• 14:55
  Speaker 7: curb press freedom?
• 14:57
  Speaker 6: And they literally were not allowed on the broadcast airwaves.
• 15:02
  Speaker 6: Now this is pre Internet, pre YouTube, any of that.
• 15:05
  Speaker 6: But you had this ridiculous scenario that I remember where
• 15:08
  Speaker 6: the broadcasters got around this ban by hiring actors to
• 15:13
  Speaker 6: say the words of the politicians. So it didn't stop
• 15:16
  Speaker 6: the ideas getting out there. It just made an absurdity
• 15:20
  Speaker 6: out of the situation, and it did reduce the number
• 15:25
  Speaker 6: of interviews that were conducted with Hinfein politicians who had
• 15:28
  Speaker 6: members of Parliament elected to parliament by I don't know,
• 15:31
  Speaker 6: I've seen statistics of sixty to eighty five percent because
• 15:34
  Speaker 6: broadcasters just didn't want to deal with it. So they
• 15:37
  Speaker 6: have an example of very heavy handed use of censorship
• 15:40
  Speaker 6: by the government in the name of protecting some people
• 15:42
  Speaker 6: from other people. And this was a period of a
• 15:45
  Speaker 6: lot of violence, most of it in Northern Ireland, which
• 15:49
  Speaker 6: was at the time occupied by British troops, just to
• 15:51
  Speaker 6: remind people. So I'm thinking, okay, well, there you have
• 15:55
  Speaker 6: the government censoring a whole political party in point of view,
• 15:59
  Speaker 6: and it's represent today. It's not the government that's causing
• 16:05
  Speaker 6: the problem. Let's say it's the owner of a for profit,
• 16:10
  Speaker 6: privately held monopoly business. And I think you can say
• 16:14
  Speaker 6: that X is kind of a monopoly in the sense
• 16:16
  Speaker 6: of it holds disproportionate power, sort of uncontestable power in
• 16:21
  Speaker 6: that sphere of commentary social media. So which is worse?
• 16:28
  Speaker 6: Which is better? I mean, it's a really a very
• 16:30
  Speaker 6: good question. And when you asked me to define free speech,
• 16:33
  Speaker 6: and I savily avoided answering your question. I think it's
• 16:40
  Speaker 6: partly because I could agree with the Barcelona students who
• 16:43
  Speaker 6: you interviewed, do that anyoney has a right to say anything.
• 16:46
  Speaker 6: They just don't have a right to say it without contestation.
• 16:49
  Speaker 6: They don't have a right to say it and not
• 16:50
  Speaker 6: be confronted by another point of view. That's all fine
• 16:53
  Speaker 6: and good until you get to the point of this
• 16:56
  Speaker 6: kind of monopoly control, this corporate control inciple. I left
• 17:00
  Speaker 6: the UK and came to the US because it was
• 17:02
  Speaker 6: a land of greater freedom and independence unless sort of
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: nanny England control of life in general. But now we're
• 17:10
  Speaker 6: in kind of muskie United States, where a musky world,
• 17:15
  Speaker 6: where that control is being exerted not by the nanny
• 17:20
  Speaker 6: state but by corporations with a private interest, a profit
• 17:25
  Speaker 6: motive to stir up a certain kind of conflict. So
• 17:28
  Speaker 6: we can talk more about that, but you've really hit
• 17:31
  Speaker 6: at a very fascinating place Northern Ireland to discuss this
• 17:35
  Speaker 6: question of speech.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: This brings me back to what I was speaking with
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: my co host Mark Steiner in an earlier episode about
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: how speech when it was censored throughout the history of
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: the United States and elsewhere, it's always been the powerful
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: censoring the voices, the marginalized, the poor, the black and brown,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: the people fighting to stand up, to rise up. And
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: this is what reminds me when you mentioned Margaret Thatcher,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: you know, censoring shing Thin in censoring the speech coming
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: out of Ireland. It is the powerful censoring the people
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: who who do not have power. That is where you
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: see speech. And it's the same thing now. It is
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: the powerful, although it's coming from a corporation, it's coming
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: from musk It is the powerful that are doing this
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: against others.
• 18:24
  Speaker 6: Although interesting that they are not so much censoring as
• 18:29
  Speaker 6: exploiting this free speech right in the name of their
• 18:34
  Speaker 6: corporation as an individual, yes, And I think that's where
• 18:38
  Speaker 6: it all gets very complicated, because they are presenting themselves
• 18:42
  Speaker 6: as bastions of free speech, opposing censorship, and you know,
• 18:49
  Speaker 6: sort of call in the bluff of governments that say
• 18:51
  Speaker 6: they defend free speech. We can't possibly talk about the
• 18:55
  Speaker 6: history of Ireland and England without mentioning that the whole
• 18:59
  Speaker 6: Irish Lane Lang which was banned under British colonial rule.
• 19:03
  Speaker 6: So you know, the control through language control is a
• 19:07
  Speaker 6: part of this picture.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Too, absolutely, and that is exactly what this woman who
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: I spoke with this week told me about. Her name
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: is Jude Ferrell. She's Irish. She's actually a former tech worker.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: She worked at Google for several years. And I wanted
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: to speak with her because last year she founded this
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: organization Your Tech, Their Deaths to protest against big tech
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: in Ireland and in particular the rule of big tech
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: in supporting the genocide in Palestine.
• 19:35
  Speaker 8: And it's a grassroots lad initiative, but it's very much
• 19:39
  Speaker 8: so brick by brick, and a small committed group of
• 19:43
  Speaker 8: people can impact change.
• 19:46
  Speaker 6: And that is in Irish blood, that is in our DNA.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: And in fact, when she spoke, she had just left
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: a protest in Dublin against an Israeli tech company, Sneak Technology,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: that's trying to sign a contract with one of Iraland's
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: largest banks. Anyway, about the Belfast riots, she told me
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: it was easy for these big tech companies and elon
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Musks to put the blame on immigrants.
• 20:10
  Speaker 8: There is a very big issue in Ireland with a
• 20:14
  Speaker 8: cost of living crisis, with public transport infrastructure, with healthcare,
• 20:19
  Speaker 8: with education.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: You know, for all this.
• 20:22
  Speaker 8: Money the imperialist assets are thrown in here, Ireland is
• 20:27
  Speaker 8: really really struggling, and it's very easy for social media
• 20:33
  Speaker 8: to target immigrants, which you can't be Irish and be racist.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: And I just love this quote. We are a nation
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: that is built on immigration.
• 20:45
  Speaker 8: She said, we had to leave Ireland due to our
• 20:48
  Speaker 8: own genocide thanks to the British, through our own man
• 20:52
  Speaker 8: made FAMI thanks to the British, and we went to
• 20:55
  Speaker 8: the places like America and Australia and built those countries.
• 20:59
  Speaker 8: You cannot be Irish and be racist, but it's fear
• 21:03
  Speaker 8: is a very powerful tool to use on social media
• 21:08
  Speaker 8: and Irish people are.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Struggling and this is what we saw.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And I just want to give a little context about
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Ireland today and big tech, because I don't think a
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: lot of people understand this. Remember first that Belfast is
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: a city in Northern Ireland, so politically it's actually part
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: of the UK. But regardless, Ireland and Northern Ireland have
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: become major tech hubs over the last two decades. More
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: than ten percent of the Irish GDP comes from the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: tech industry. They provide more than one hundred and sixty
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: thousand jobs across the country.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Although AI is already.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Taking its toll and roughly I think the figures from
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: earlier this year is that twenty thousand people have lost
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: their jobs to AI. Just recently, almost all of the
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: major tech companies have their European headquarters here, and in fact,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: some people have even called Ireland Europe's Silicon Valley. These
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: tech platforms chose Ireland because they speak English clearly, and
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: because the country's low corporate tax rate. And you told
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: me in the beginning, they were really excited that these
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: tech companies chose them.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: She says.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: She was really happy to work for Google. But those
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: times have clearly changed. She says today she is really
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: worried about the discourse from the tech billionaires and so
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: called free speech absolutist infecting Ireland and Europe because they
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: have this international reach and there are no regulations coming
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: out of the United States. So you know, one of
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: the things I think that she said that was really
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: interesting is that your future, America is linked to ours.
• 22:41
  Speaker 8: So if you fuck shut up, you fuck it up
• 22:44
  Speaker 8: for everybody. And it's the same with the United Kingdom,
• 22:47
  Speaker 8: It's the same with America, it's same with Germany. You
• 22:50
  Speaker 8: cannot view big tech or freedom of speech in isolation.
• 22:54
  Speaker 8: It would be the biggest and the most naive error
• 22:58
  Speaker 8: for any of us to take that approach. What happens
• 23:02
  Speaker 8: in imperialist countries like the United States trickles down to
• 23:06
  Speaker 8: us here in Ireland.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: And she also told me about how this is what
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: you were just speaking to. Laura, is that how important
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: free speech is for her, But not the absolutist free
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: speech that we hear about from the United States or
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: from Musk not free speech where you're inciting hatred on others.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: But that free speech is like the most important thing
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: in Ireland.
• 23:33
  Speaker 8: You know, Ireland, we lost our language. It was illegal
• 23:37
  Speaker 8: to speak to learn Irish, and that impact we see
• 23:41
  Speaker 8: generations later and we're only starting to understand the impact.
• 23:46
  Speaker 8: It's like we've got a hangover from our own oppression,
• 23:49
  Speaker 8: the silent scene of our religion, the silent scene of
• 23:52
  Speaker 8: our language, of our culture. So yeah, free speech is
• 23:55
  Speaker 8: incredibly important in Ireland.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: So free speech, but not the freedom for the big
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: tech platforms to run ramshot over everyone in defense of
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: their quest for ever more power and money. Laura, how
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: do you see all this? What does all this mean
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: as these tech companies are arriving in Ireland and what
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Ireland means within this context for Europe.
• 24:18
  Speaker 6: Well, this takes us down a different trajectory, at least
• 24:21
  Speaker 6: my mind goes to a different was of conspiratorial place,
• 24:24
  Speaker 6: and just for what it's worth. I think Ireland m Barcelona.
• 24:29
  Speaker 6: You've talked about right wing activists in these two places.
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: What are these two places having common Ireland north and
• 24:34
  Speaker 6: South has been a place of progressive activism for different reasons,
• 24:38
  Speaker 6: coming from different roots in some cases, but progressive activism
• 24:42
  Speaker 6: for sure. If you think of the conflict, if you
• 24:44
  Speaker 6: think of the genocide in Palestine over the last few years,
• 24:48
  Speaker 6: it's been Ireland that has led at the United Nations,
• 24:51
  Speaker 6: along with South Africa and a few others, in the
• 24:53
  Speaker 6: calling out of the genocide and the supporting of resolutions
• 24:58
  Speaker 6: that the United Nations that use that language and call
• 25:01
  Speaker 6: for the prosecution of Israeli leaders.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: To do nothing is not neutrality, it is complicity.
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: Barcelona interestingly had one of the most anti monopoly, anti corporate,
• 25:21
  Speaker 6: anti gig economy regimes until recently with the election about
• 25:26
  Speaker 6: a Kalau years ago. Barcelona, going back to those roots
• 25:30
  Speaker 6: in the Civil War, has been a place of progressive
• 25:33
  Speaker 6: foment and really strong anti capitalist collectivist experimentation. Let's just
• 25:38
  Speaker 6: say it's very proud of its cooperatives and its collectives,
• 25:42
  Speaker 6: as I'm sure you've found out. So I think, well,
• 25:45
  Speaker 6: why are these people focusing in these places, and I
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: can't help but get curious about what their political motivations
• 25:54
  Speaker 6: might be. So I'll just say I was in Ireland recently,
• 25:56
  Speaker 6: and with respect to immigration, at least according to public
• 25:59
  Speaker 6: opinion polls, you have majorities not just supporting immigration but
• 26:02
  Speaker 6: saying that they appreciate migrants. So they're taking on, I think,
• 26:08
  Speaker 6: a big challenge the Bannons and Musks and Peter Teals
• 26:11
  Speaker 6: of the world. But it's a challenge they seem to
• 26:13
  Speaker 6: be up to and up four. I just saw a
• 26:16
  Speaker 6: report that Peter Teal is holding a conference in Dublin,
• 26:20
  Speaker 6: convening some of the same people he convenced in this
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: country to talk about world dominance through AI. All of
• 26:27
  Speaker 6: this is not exactly an answer to your question, but
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: it's the kind of thoughts I'm having prompted by your
• 26:33
  Speaker 6: interviews and your reporting, So thank you.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's two very interesting things.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: First, so Jude told me when I asked her about
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: kind of the far right and this discourse and immigrants
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: and kind of the rise in the country, said, actually,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: their bark is worse than their bike.
• 26:49
  Speaker 8: I think they're like one of those yuppy little dogs,
• 26:52
  Speaker 8: you know, they don't have much power or control in
• 26:55
  Speaker 8: Ireland yet thankfully.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: And in fact, what we saw in the big fuel
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: protests that were happening back in April, big protests around
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: the country, people standing up. She said. Those the right
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: was also trying to steer this in the direction of
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: blaming immigrants and blaming immigration, and people just weren't having it.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: They were shut down fairly fast.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: So that's on the positive side, people are standing up
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: against that narrative.
• 27:19
  Speaker 6: I think one thing that's different, I mean, the two
• 27:21
  Speaker 6: cultures going back once again, is in the US you
• 27:23
  Speaker 6: have our two party system, and you make that makes
• 27:27
  Speaker 6: it much easier to say we're great, you're terrible, we're wonderful,
• 27:30
  Speaker 6: you're evil, you're the threat to all things good. In
• 27:33
  Speaker 6: Europe generally, in Ireland, certainly, you have a multi party
• 27:37
  Speaker 6: system and you may have far right parties, but you
• 27:40
  Speaker 6: have other parties too. There's a much more diversity of discourse,
• 27:44
  Speaker 6: and you have, of course a long history of multiple
• 27:47
  Speaker 6: media at each other's throats. People are used to weighing
• 27:52
  Speaker 6: different opinions and the idea of one enormous megaphone influencing
• 27:58
  Speaker 6: an important and large part of the population I think
• 28:02
  Speaker 6: is harder to pull off than there than it is here.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you mentioned Peter Tiel Laura, which is really
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: important because he was going to hold his event in Ireland,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: you know, and of course for people that don't remember,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: he's the Silicon Valley tech financier, co founder of PayPal,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: pall Andeer and he was planning this international conference of
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: his secret organization.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Known as Dialogue.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: And then they wanted to talk about World War three
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: battlefield technologies and also how to build a cult, which
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: were some of the things that were on the agenda. Anyway,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the meeting was going to take place in this upscale
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: hotel in Ireland, but Jude and her organization and several
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: other groups started to organize against it. They held some protests,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: they were going to hold more protests over the next week,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: and in the end the meeting was canceled just a
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: couple of days ago.
• 28:50
  Speaker 6: Ah, there you go, public act, popular action, go for.
• 28:53
  Speaker 6: They didn't even need to protest, they just needed to
• 28:55
  Speaker 6: say they were going.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: To exactly, excellent, exactly.
• 28:59
  Speaker 8: It's not just Peter Teil, it's not just talent here,
• 29:03
  Speaker 8: but it is the audacity an arrogance of individuals like
• 29:11
  Speaker 8: Peel that they think that they would be welcome in
• 29:17
  Speaker 8: any country when we know that they are entirely focused
• 29:22
  Speaker 8: on their own power and privilege. They are not using
• 29:26
  Speaker 8: technology or data for the good of humankind. They're only
• 29:32
  Speaker 8: using us to fill their own coffers.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: This is just one of those moments that I think
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: we need to like pause to remember that sometimes a
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: standing up against these things, standing up online, but also
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: getting active, getting organized, and people getting out in the
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: streets can have.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: An impact against what we're seeing right now.
• 29:53
  Speaker 6: Well, that brings me back to our US media. How
• 29:55
  Speaker 6: come I didn't know that. I've been looking at that story.
• 29:57
  Speaker 6: Where is it?
• 29:58
  Speaker 9: You know?
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: This is why the real news and programs like mine,
• 30:01
  Speaker 6: independent media so important to bring people the stories not
• 30:04
  Speaker 6: just of the threats and the dangers, but also the
• 30:06
  Speaker 6: victories of people's movements. So just a little self promotion for.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Us, I love it, Laura. I wanted to say one
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: more thing about that Ireland that I did not know
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: before I move on. Jude told me that the term boycott.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Did you know that that was coined in Ireland?
• 30:25
  Speaker 6: Yes? I actually did.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: It's amazing so apparently that this was when tenant farmers
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: demanded a rent reduction in the eighteen eighties from a
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: British captain named Charles Boycott. That's so cool, so cool.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: So anyway, again, it's the kind of reminder of the
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: of the excitement and the power in the organizing of Ireland,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: and you know, just gives us a little bit of hope.
• 30:51
  Speaker 6: I think, collective spirit, collective spirit.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, Laura. I want to dig a
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: little bit deeper into this question of fake news and
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: information and the attempts to fight it. And I just
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: want to say very quickly that I kind of feel
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: like there's this elephant in the room in the United
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: States that no one's discussing, because around the US elections
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, pretty much all the social media platforms
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: suddenly said, you know what, I don't think we're gonna
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: fact check anymore. I think that you know, Trump is
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: now in office and we don't really need to do this.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: And so it's this thing where kind of everybody realizes
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: that there's a bunch of misinformation and disinformation and fake
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: news out there, but at least from the tech billionaires
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: and from Silicon Valley, there's like nothing being done about this. Right,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: And let me just also say that not only is
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: there nothing being done, but Musk continues to push his narrative.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: And in Ireland that wasn't the first time that Musk
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: was throwing his weight around. And I just have a
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: couple of statistics that I wanted to throw out. So
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: first off, just he has two hundred and forty million.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Followers on X.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: It's the most He's the highest number of followers on
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: the platform, according to a report from the European Council
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: on Foreign Relations. In recent years, he has attacked prime ministers,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: calling them criminal, tyrants or traders. He's backed far right parties,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: fabricated statistics, and reorganized x's algorithm to amplify right wing
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: voices and suppress democratic accounts. In Germany, he boosted the
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: far right party before the twenty twenty five election and
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: spread fabricated quotes. He posts attacks against the press roughly
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: three times a day. And here's the thing. He has
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: his agenda, and of course, in the name of free speech,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: he is then pushing his own agenda out there. But
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Europe has been pushing back in more ways than one.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: One way was in Ireland. The other way is the
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: attempts to battle this information by another very unique way.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: And Laura, I want to take us to Finland.
• 32:58
  Speaker 6: Right now, let's go.
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: So.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: Finland is a Nordic country. It's in northern Europe, just
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: to the east of Sweden. About a third of the
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: country lies above the Arctic Circle, and it shares a
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: border that is eight hundred and thirty miles long with Russia.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Russia actually controlled Finland for most of the eighteen hundreds,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: and that's important because Finland has faced a barrage of
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Russian propaganda, troll farms, and fake news in recent years,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: in particular beginning around the time of the Russian invasion
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: of Crimea in twenty fourteen. And what Finland did is
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: pretty revolutionary. So as we've looked at this in this podcast,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: countries have tried to battle fake news and disinformation by
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: taking content down or going after troll farms, like in
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the case of Brazil. They've protested and tried to regulate
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: speech in other parts of Europe, and in Finland they've
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: tried to battle against disinformation with education, so by teaching
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: starkhar exactly so, by teaching the young and old to
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: how to distinguish between facts and opinion and propaganda, how
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: to spot it, how to critically assess where the information
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: is coming from, and what are the reputable sites and
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: what aren't. And before I get into this, I just
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: want to say that this is not new in Finland.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: So I'm just going to.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Give a really quick history lesson here, Laura. Remember that
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: this country, Finland, like much of Europe, was devastated by
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: World War Two. Almost one hundred thousand Finns died. They
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: fought a bloody Soviet invasion from the east.
• 34:46
  Speaker 10: The Big Bowler is being pressed into service as part
• 34:48
  Speaker 10: of a roadblock or tank ops to go and here
• 34:51
  Speaker 10: in the depths of the Coriadian Woods finish unt and
• 34:54
  Speaker 10: Rein lays down a protective barrage beyond the Mannheim Line.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: They lost parts of their territory to the Soviet Union,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: and then they fought alongside the Axis powers Germany and Italy,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: so they were on the losing side of the war.
• 35:09
  Speaker 11: A Finnish community reports that six hundred Russian plane bomb
• 35:13
  Speaker 11: Helsinki last night, causing fires and heavy damage. The raid
• 35:17
  Speaker 11: lasted nearly twelve hours, the longest and heaviest air attack
• 35:20
  Speaker 11: of the war.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Anyway, the point is this, that was a time of
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: tremendous propaganda used by all sides, in particular from Nazi
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Germany and in Finland they were just irigated with it,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: and when the war ended they began to teach what
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: they called then communication education in schools, which also came
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: alongside the rise of film and cinema.
• 35:44
  Speaker 12: Because people have always been worried about new media, and
• 35:49
  Speaker 12: in nineteen fifties they were very worried about what will
• 35:52
  Speaker 12: happen to young people when they see all kinds of
• 35:54
  Speaker 12: garbage in cinema, and that's how it started, and then
• 35:59
  Speaker 12: it has been modified over the years.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: They now call this media education and media literacy, and
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Finland outlined a national policy around this in twenty thirteen.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: It was the first European country to do so.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: And I spoke with Sada Salomah about all of this.
• 36:16
  Speaker 12: I work at the Finnish Arts and Culture Agency, which
• 36:20
  Speaker 12: is a national body responsible for media education and promoting
• 36:24
  Speaker 12: media literacy.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: She told me that in her life she actually wanted
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: to be a kindergarten teacher Laura, but that she took
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: a class in college about this and she got hooked,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: and so she ended up doing her PhD on media
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: education for kindergarten teachers.
• 36:38
  Speaker 12: So I didn't totally give up on kindergarten, but my
• 36:42
  Speaker 12: work is now targeting all people in Finland.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: So she coordinates media education across Finland. And here's what
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: she told me. First, it isn't just about one class.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: It's something they do across all grades from kindergarten up
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: to high school and also for adults and even seniors.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't just happen in schools.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: But also libraries and NGOs, and it kind.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Of crosses multiple disciplines, so they incorporate this in many,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: many different ways. I asked her the difference between media
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: education and media literacy, because that I was confused about this,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: and she explained that media literacy are the skills you
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: need to learn to analyze media, and media education is
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: the actions that promote media literacy.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: So how to learn this?
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: And so she explained that it's not just discerning fact
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: from opinion, but understanding kind of the social perspective of media.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: So what's being said, who's being said?
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: And I asked her to take a step back and
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: just explain to me what this looks like actually in
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: a classroom on a typical day, it's.
• 37:50
  Speaker 12: Hard to say, what is a typical school day in Finland?
• 37:54
  Speaker 12: Because our municipalities, schools and teachers all have a great
• 37:59
  Speaker 12: freedom to choose how they implement our national CURRICUROUM. But
• 38:04
  Speaker 12: if I think about, for example, thirteen year old, a
• 38:08
  Speaker 12: media literacy lesson would be about reading a text and
• 38:16
  Speaker 12: trying to discern what is fact and what is opinion,
• 38:20
  Speaker 12: for example.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Or looking at a video or ads and trying to
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: understand what's behind the ads, like what's the hidden message?
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: And this is where I want to go right now
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: to explain this a little bit more, We're going to
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: travel to Helsinki, Finland's capital, late twenty twenty four November.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: It's cold and snowing outside, so put on your jacket, Laura.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: All right, Here we go inside the room, a teacher
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: passes out these pages of different images to groups of
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: teenage students sitting around desks. They're analyzing what the media
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: content is, trying to say who produced it, where it's
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: coming from. Their teacher says, who has produced the material
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: that you watch? How do you produce it? Do you
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: have your own ethical responsibility? I think these questions are
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: really important everywhere.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: One of the students said.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: The school has taught me to interpret media as messages
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: written in between lines, for example, through ads or fake pictures.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: She says she started to look at it from a
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: slightly different perspective, more critically, you know, in terms of
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: propaganda and disinformation. And here's the thing, it's not just
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: you know, one subject, it's something that's incorporated, you know,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: across all aspects, all subjects, and Laura, you know, for
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: me that I just feel like this is so important
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: because you would imagine that this would just be a
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: no brainer. Like everything our entire lives is inundated today
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: with media.
• 39:58
  Speaker 13: And today's fragmented media, it can be hard to know
• 40:01
  Speaker 13: which news sources you can trust.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Even I don't always know where to turn. If only
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: it's in social media, it's it's every place, and yet
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: we never step back and kind of analyze critically. I
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: looked at some of the figures in the stats in
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: the United States around media literacy, like is that happening
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: in the States, And from what I found, it's roughly
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: half of the states have passed some laws mandating some
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: form of media literacy, but it's really incipient, like it's
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: really early on. They're trying to figure this out, Michael.
• 40:36
  Speaker 6: Is so interesting because what I've been looking at a
• 40:40
  Speaker 6: lot recently are these age specific digital access bands.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 40:47
  Speaker 6: Right, So in Australia you have a ban on under sixteens.
• 40:50
  Speaker 6: In the UK you had the Labor Party leader Starmer
• 40:53
  Speaker 6: talking about a ban on under sixteens using social media
• 40:57
  Speaker 6: things like TikTok and x and so on, spoke, I think,
• 41:00
  Speaker 6: even YouTube. And the approach is very much let's keep
• 41:05
  Speaker 6: people off these platforms, and conveniently enough in order to
• 41:10
  Speaker 6: assess people's ages. It all involves uploading biometric data to
• 41:15
  Speaker 6: the web so that there's yet more information that these
• 41:19
  Speaker 6: huge corporations have on all of us. Biometric meaning eyes
• 41:22
  Speaker 6: and fingers and whatever else they can use. They're even
• 41:26
  Speaker 6: proposing having AI assess photographs to see what age people are.
• 41:31
  Speaker 6: You can imagine the mistakes, But the whole approach is
• 41:33
  Speaker 6: how do we keep people off this platform, rather than
• 41:36
  Speaker 6: how do we regulate the platform. What you're providing is
• 41:39
  Speaker 6: yet another idea is why don't we just make people smarter?
• 41:43
  Speaker 6: Why don't we just educate people? And that, it seems
• 41:46
  Speaker 6: to me, is a classic collectivist in a good way
• 41:50
  Speaker 6: approach of let's actually inform people and give them the
• 41:54
  Speaker 6: tools to assess this. And frankly, I think younger generations
• 41:58
  Speaker 6: are going to be smarter about all of this them
• 42:01
  Speaker 6: we are, because they've seen the damage that it's doing
• 42:04
  Speaker 6: to their fellows. And I don't know about you, but
• 42:06
  Speaker 6: I know a lot of high schoolers and middle schoolers
• 42:09
  Speaker 6: who are simply going off social media themselves because they
• 42:13
  Speaker 6: don't want to be tortured the way that they've seen
• 42:15
  Speaker 6: their friends be tortured. So I think this is an
• 42:19
  Speaker 6: interesting third way. And gosh, wow, how far we are
• 42:24
  Speaker 6: from Finland.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: In so many ways? How far we are? Yeah. In fact,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: there was a stat in this one organization that had
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: done a report about media literacy, the push for media
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: literacy in the United States, and they said that more
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: than eighty percent of students in the US would like
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: to have media literacy classes taught.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: And it makes sense.
• 42:46
  Speaker 11: Yeah.
• 42:46
  Speaker 6: I a radio show that still is out there as
• 42:50
  Speaker 6: Fabulous Now hosted by Janine Jackson for Fair the Fairness
• 42:53
  Speaker 6: and Acrision reporting the media watch groups called counter Spin,
• 42:56
  Speaker 6: and we would sometimes go to classrooms and do simply
• 43:00
  Speaker 6: a you know, one off demonstration, have people pick up
• 43:03
  Speaker 6: their local paper or look at the news for a
• 43:06
  Speaker 6: week and just say, Okay, who got to speak, who
• 43:08
  Speaker 6: got to appear, how many sources were cited, how much
• 43:11
  Speaker 6: space was used by ads versus by print. People loved it,
• 43:15
  Speaker 6: kids loved it, and it was the kind of thing
• 43:17
  Speaker 6: anybody could do anywhere. Any teacher could actually initiate such
• 43:20
  Speaker 6: a thing. People at fair could help. But it's a
• 43:23
  Speaker 6: fascinating exercise just to have people think twice about what
• 43:27
  Speaker 6: they're reading and listening and watching.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's awesome, lover.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: This was one of the questions I asked Sata.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: I said, you know, how what does success look like
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: for this? You know, like, what does this look like really?
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: And she said it's actually kind of hard.
• 43:46
  Speaker 12: Because we don't have a parallel version of Finland in
• 43:50
  Speaker 12: which media literacy was never taught.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: So I love this. But she said, one of the
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: wheis is the fact that they've had several governments in power,
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: the left and now the right is in power right now,
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: and none of these governments have pushed to try and
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: roll this back.
• 44:09
  Speaker 12: Both of these governments they have had media literacy in
• 44:13
  Speaker 12: the program of government. So I think that's success story
• 44:20
  Speaker 12: that regardless of what kind of political parties are in power,
• 44:24
  Speaker 12: they still want to promote media literacy in Finland. Of course,
• 44:29
  Speaker 12: if you would ask very right wing politicians and very
• 44:32
  Speaker 12: left in politicians what they mean with media literacy, that
• 44:35
  Speaker 12: can be a different story. But on the other hand,
• 44:40
  Speaker 12: they are not like handpicking the initiatives themselves.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: And they also have something going for them in that
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: their criculum around media literacy isn't governed by necessarily the
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: government that's in power. It's a ten year long plan
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: that they set up, so it's not one government that
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: can come in and then derail things and whatnot.
• 44:59
  Speaker 12: And here I also think that it's very important to
• 45:02
  Speaker 12: stress that media literacy is not there to dictate what
• 45:07
  Speaker 12: to think, but it's supposed to be teaching how to think.
• 45:12
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: She also brought up several things that I think are
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: important now. She said they're facing many challenges, in particular,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: you know, reaching immigrant communities, poor communities in Finland. And
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: the other thing is of course AI, which is making
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: everything so much more complicated.
• 45:30
  Speaker 12: Things are moving very quickly, and it was kind of
• 45:35
  Speaker 12: surprise for me how the big tech companies how they
• 45:39
  Speaker 12: took aside in the US elections and then US government.
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: The Golden Age of America begins right now.
• 45:50
  Speaker 12: And this has now been a topic of discussion very
• 45:54
  Speaker 12: much in Europe that should we actually trust any US
• 45:58
  Speaker 12: tech companies or should we try to get rid of
• 46:02
  Speaker 12: USTA companies as soon as possible. Our chessboard is constantly changing. Yes,
• 46:10
  Speaker 12: in media education, we have to run really fast even
• 46:13
  Speaker 12: to stay where we are.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 46:17
  Speaker 6: I love our idea that there's no alternate Finland to
• 46:19
  Speaker 6: have as your control, because that's what we have in
• 46:23
  Speaker 6: this country too. We're constantly told we have free choice
• 46:25
  Speaker 6: when it comes to media, but we don't really. We
• 46:27
  Speaker 6: have a limited array of options. So it's not like
• 46:29
  Speaker 6: you can just say I hate those networks, I'm going
• 46:31
  Speaker 6: to go pick another one. So that's another way in
• 46:34
  Speaker 6: which our media diet is presented to us as this
• 46:37
  Speaker 6: wonderful universe of freedom, but it's really not. It's really
• 46:40
  Speaker 6: who has the power money to get to your eyeballs,
• 46:44
  Speaker 6: and that isn't everyone exactly.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: So Sata said in closing that this was not a
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: silver bullet.
• 46:52
  Speaker 12: We can provide people possibilities to learn and to discuss
• 46:56
  Speaker 12: these topics, to understand that not all the information is same,
• 47:01
  Speaker 12: so there are more and less reliable sources and they
• 47:04
  Speaker 12: can develop practices that help them to recognize this information
• 47:09
  Speaker 12: for example. But at the same time, we need to
• 47:14
  Speaker 12: also strengthen people's trust in trustworthy media.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: It's one answer to the threat, and there need to
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: be multiple answers. And that is the direction that I
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: want to go into right now, because as the United
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: States has always pushed for deregulation, and as we see
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Musk and Silicon Valley tech barons always talking about how
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: regulation is actually another form of censorship, Europe has been
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: pushing to fight with regulation, and I think it's important
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: to just underline this point before we dive into this,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: is that in the United States, this question of tech
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: barons talking about, you know, regulation is censorship is kind
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: of repeated daily. It's the same thing as like the
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: absolutest free speech thing. But you know, we have a
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: ton of regulation in the United States, television, radio, you know, newspapers, print,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: all the legacy media, it's all regulated. It's all there,
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: So you know, why not tech companies and social media.
• 48:18
  Speaker 6: It's useful to go back and see, well, how did
• 48:19
  Speaker 6: it get regulated.
• 48:20
  Speaker 9: I am not for a return to that definition of
• 48:24
  Speaker 9: liberty under which for many years a free people were
• 48:30
  Speaker 9: being gradually regimented into the service of a privileged fuel.
• 48:36
  Speaker 6: And for much of it, which took in broadcasting, it
• 48:38
  Speaker 6: got regulated in the nineteen thirties and forties under the
• 48:41
  Speaker 6: FDR administration, and just before when you had a rise
• 48:45
  Speaker 6: of right wing demagogues using what was then the most
• 48:49
  Speaker 6: influential media, namely radio, to stir up fascist movements in
• 48:54
  Speaker 6: this country, movements that we forget we ever had. But
• 48:57
  Speaker 6: it wasn't like it just suddenly got regulated. It got
• 48:59
  Speaker 6: regulated as an effort to protect democratic values and a
• 49:03
  Speaker 6: democratic society when a threat was observed in a growing media.
• 49:08
  Speaker 6: So in that case it was radio, and then those
• 49:11
  Speaker 6: broadcasting regulations were extended, some of them to television. We've
• 49:15
  Speaker 6: had a huge fight around new technology, whether it's online
• 49:19
  Speaker 6: or online or social media technology, where the tech companies
• 49:23
  Speaker 6: have done their best, as they would, to keep themselves
• 49:26
  Speaker 6: free of regulation and to present themselves as these bastions
• 49:29
  Speaker 6: of free speech. Well that's the same thing that the
• 49:32
  Speaker 6: fascist demagogues in the thirties presented themselves as bastions of
• 49:35
  Speaker 6: free speech. European law again takes us back to where
• 49:39
  Speaker 6: we began, in the sense that they do guarantee under
• 49:42
  Speaker 6: their Ministry of Injustice acts, they do guarantee that there
• 49:49
  Speaker 6: is a right to free speech, an individual right to
• 49:51
  Speaker 6: freedom of expression, but they give a little bit of
• 49:54
  Speaker 6: wiggle room and say the restrictions are allowed in the
• 49:59
  Speaker 6: diff of a democratic society. So a democratic society trumps
• 50:04
  Speaker 6: your right to call someone a you know, call someone
• 50:09
  Speaker 6: a name in public and to rally crowds to take
• 50:12
  Speaker 6: out unwanted folks in your community or whatever. So again,
• 50:17
  Speaker 6: it's that balancing act that the Europeans are explicitly doing,
• 50:20
  Speaker 6: even in their law in a way that we don't,
• 50:24
  Speaker 6: and where we do in regulatory law, the public's not
• 50:28
  Speaker 6: educated about it, and instead we get this very binary
• 50:31
  Speaker 6: black white attitude to free speech. And I don't know
• 50:34
  Speaker 6: about you, but I'm kind of over binaries in general
• 50:37
  Speaker 6: and get very suspicious whenever they grow up.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: Amen.
• 50:39
  Speaker 6: Absolutely, Laura, let's live in the squishy milling Amen.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. I want to underscore
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: really quick the links that tech platforms have gone to
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: push their agenda and to stop the possibility of regulation.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: According to a twenty twenty five investigation led by the
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: Brazilian media outlet Ajincyapublica, together with Reporters Without Borders and
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: several other outlets and journalists across numerous countries. Between twenty
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: nineteen and twenty twenty five, big tech companies carried out
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: nearly three thousand lobbying actions across ten countries and the
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: European Union. It involved more than fourteen hundred company representatives
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: and twenty five hundred public officials. Among the tactics were
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: disinformation campaigns, funding supposed independent groups to oppose legislation, hiring
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: former public officials to lobby in favor of the companies,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: and arguing that national laws don't apply. So the tech
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: companies have gone to very unfair extreme lengths to push
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: their agenda to ensure that regulations are not imposed on them,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: and specifically for this podcast. Of course, they've been using
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: all of this in the name of free speech, supposed
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: free speech that defend their right to be unregulated under
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: the guys that regulation means censorship.
• 52:12
  Speaker 6: It's interesting because it has its parallel, of course, in
• 52:15
  Speaker 6: the world of economics, where you have governments at the
• 52:20
  Speaker 6: local level often doing things like trying to ban big
• 52:22
  Speaker 6: box bet stores, Walmart's or you know name it, and
• 52:26
  Speaker 6: those same corporations saying this is a violation of our rights.
• 52:30
  Speaker 6: You know, they're using the same argument we've seen over years,
• 52:33
  Speaker 6: their power versus community power. This is the fight we're
• 52:35
  Speaker 6: in and I don't think there's a more important fight
• 52:37
  Speaker 6: in our lifetime.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely, But the EU has moved forward.
• 52:47
  Speaker 12: Hate speech and disinformation online.
• 52:49
  Speaker 6: This is what we're all fed up with. Right in
• 52:51
  Speaker 6: the European Union, a groundbreaking new law is coming into
• 52:55
  Speaker 6: effect this week to tackle exactly these problems.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: The European Union approved the Digital Services Act in twenty
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: twenty two and the European Media Freedom Act, which went
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: into effect in August twenty twenty five. And of course
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: these aren't perfect, but they are steps in the right direction.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to try.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: You know, this is this is complicated, really complex legislation.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try and sum it up in about
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: a minute or two here, Laura, good luck. But broadly,
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: the Digital Services Act aims to increase transparency and accountability
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: for big tech companies.
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: Nothing in the dsay forces or asks or requests a
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: platform to remove lawful content on anything that is being
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: asked is illegal content. Content that is illegal in real
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: life has no place online.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: And the European Media Freedom Act creates a set of
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: rules to protect media pluralism and independence in the EU,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: so protecting media companies, journalists and outlets that are already there. Anyway,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: I sat down and spoke with Eva Nenaditch here.
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: I'm the scientific coordinator of the Center for Media Pluralism
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: and Media Freedom.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: At the European University Institute just outside of Florence, Italy.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: She's been a journalist for ten years, she's now a professor,
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: and she really knows her stuff because she's actually been
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: working in developing the framework around fighting disinformation through these
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: acts since twenty eighteen. And I just want to say
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: really fast that usually, like when we start to talk
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: about regulation, myself included, like my eyes kind of glaze
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: over and I like start looking out the window.
• 54:34
  Speaker 12: You know.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: It's like it's hard to stay focused when we're talking
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: about regulation because it's something that's so complex and confusing.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: But this stuff has real, like world impacts, Like this
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: is really important and we need to understand it. So,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: first off, tech platform, social media AI some of it
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: is the most powerful technology information revolution we've ever seen,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: and yet it's a free for all and so Eva
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: told me that the goal to try and rain in
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: the online lawlessness and the power of big tech.
• 55:05
  Speaker 5: Innovation is important, is relevant. It will sustain the europe
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: as we want to have. But at the same time,
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: we cannot just unleash the wild west of innovation that
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: doesn't take any accountability or responsibility for the societal implications
• 55:23
  Speaker 5: that these technology is the way they are designed, but
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: also the way they are used and misused.
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: That is the logic of this legislation.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: Just to remind people, the EU is made up of
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: twenty seven member countries and that this legislation is what
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: they call regulation, So it means that they create regulation
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: and then they send that to these countries to apply
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: it harmoniously across the EU. So this is I mean,
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: actually I'm trying to envision in my head how this
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: is done, how you could even do this in one
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: country and here we're talking about twenty seven countries, so
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: I can't even imagine. But the biggest takeaways here are
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: the Digital Services Act. Remember this is about creating more
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: transparency and accountability. The platforms are mandated to carry out
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: yearly strategic risk assessments over what's considered illegal speech problematic
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: harmful speech. Large online platforms now have the legal obligation
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: to provide access to their data to independent researchers.
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: So this is really a game changer compared to what
• 56:25
  Speaker 5: we've had before, where European researchers were really struggling to
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: get access to platform data and this was preventing us
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: really from understanding what the risks are, what potential implications
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: of any kind of action or activity by big tech
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: are here in Europe.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Regarding disinformation and particularly around the online discourse during elections,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: this is something that they've been, like I mentioned, they've
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: been trying to tackle for almost a decade and it's
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: really complicated. And she gave one example why. I don't
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: know if you remember this, Laura, but disinformation isn't just
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: used for political purposes, but often monetary purposes. And she
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: told me about the story of the Macedonian teenager during
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Trump's twenty sixteen electoral campaign.
• 57:12
  Speaker 13: Dimitri is eighteen years old and he says that in
• 57:15
  Speaker 13: the past six months he's made more than sixty thousand
• 57:19
  Speaker 13: dollars writing, posting and sharing fake news articles about the
• 57:23
  Speaker 13: American election.
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: NBC did this story.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: It was titled fake News how a parting Macedonian teen
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: Earns thousands Publishing lies.
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: Her point was.
• 57:33
  Speaker 5: That monetization can also be an incentive for disinformation doesn't
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: need to be just political, it can also be very economic.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: And so part of what they're trying to do.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: The Media Services Act handles disinformation in kind of a
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: self regulatory framework. It loops back to the risk assessment,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: so they have to assess risk once a year, and
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: then the companies have to show that they're they're taking
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: action against this risk to regulate things on the platform.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: Of course, the Digital Services Act it doesn't it's not
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: it can't tell these companies what they should and should
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: not do in terms of taking things down or not
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: taking things down. But it's pushing these tech platforms in
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: a direction they actually have to take actions, and there
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: is a policing mechanism around this that these companies can
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: be fined.
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: If at some point we come to an uncompliance decision
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: confirming the breach under the Digital Services Act, this could
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: lead to fines going up to six percent of the
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: company's global annual turnover.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: So that's the Digital Services Act, and then there's the
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: European Media Freedom Act, which is essentially about really protecting
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: like the legacy media companies against the power and the
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: growth of these tech firms. Because the way that Eva
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: explained it to me is that these other companies are
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: already regulated newspaper, television, radio, They already have their own regulations.
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: They're doing what they're supposed to.
• 58:57
  Speaker 5: So big tech companies that do not complete to the
• 59:00
  Speaker 5: same level of regulation and they barely have any professional
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: standards in operating should not be the ones who kind
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: of sensor media, if you want me to simplify this
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: very much.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: And so the idea is kind of protecting media content
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: and giving these media outlets more power within this to
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: receive special treatment on these platforms. They should be allowed
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: to register, they should be able to receive preempted information
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: or informed if anything is supposed to be removed. And
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: so the idea is trying to move in a direction
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: of what she calls what Eva nna Diish calls more democracy.
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: I think the very history and constitutional understanding of freedom
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: of expression or free speech is different between the EU
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: and the US. I think in some foundations is the same.
• 59:58
  Speaker 5: So we are both striving to have healthy democracy, and
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: the foundation for healthy democracy is free.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: Speech, open communication, academic freedom, the freedom for people to
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: voice their opinions.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 5: But instead, what we are increasingly having nowadays is extreme
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: fragmentation and polarization. One of the paradigmatic shifts that have
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 5: led us somehow to this is the very change of
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 5: the basic infrastructure of the information environment. Because what we're
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: seeing and how these platforms operate social media and now
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 5: also moving to generative AI with GENAI applications, they are
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 5: fragmenting information environment. They are separating us, first in small
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 5: groups through social media like minded people, and now with
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: generative AI, we are shifting to what we call audience
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 5: of one, where we interact with these systems in a
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 5: very isolated, individualized bubbles. This is not compatible with democratic
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 5: needs of a shared information ecosystem, and so this is
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 5: in basics, in design is wrong.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: What she told me is just like we've been talking, Laura,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: what we're increasingly seeing is this fragmentation, this polarization. Everyone's
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: broken into these two sides of us versus them, and
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: it's because of the very structure and infrastructure of these
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: big tech platforms that this is happening.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 6: Well, I want to take on the word big and them,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 6: because when you talk about big platforms. We know we're
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 6: talking about this big five players in this world, in
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 6: this field that we're talking about, we talk about them,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 6: there's not so many of them. There's a small number.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 6: I think that's the problem. And I don't think that
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 6: any amount of regulation by government, even governments representing twenty
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 6: seven countries or government representing fifty states, is any match
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 6: for a corporation that has more revenues and more private
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 6: profits than many of the countries or states that we're
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 6: talking about put together. So I want to come back
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 6: to inequality, corporate power, and the sort of initiative that
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 6: I think we have to get much more serious about.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 6: We can regulate ourselves as much as we can and
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 6: engage in no end of fights with these guys about
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 6: who is more for free speech. I think it's a
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 6: losing battle. Frankly, I think that what we need to
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 6: see is more legal action to break up monopolies of
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 6: the sort that Lena Kahan was pursuing under in the
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 6: Biden administration. It's interesting, it'll be interesting to see what
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 6: she does collaborating with Zora Mamdani in New York. As
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 6: New York becomes like Ireland a tech hub for some
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 6: of these media companies. But I think that at the
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 6: end of the day, we're going to need to grapple
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 6: with the ownership of these companies and the size of them.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 6: And I really don't want to end these conversations without
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 6: talking about Bernie Sanders American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 6: which is just one example of a different approach to regulation.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 6: Rather than regulating these companies, let's put fifty percent. In
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 6: this case, he proposes fifty percent of their stock assets
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 6: into a sovereign wealth fund for the American people. I
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 6: think you could go further. I think you could find
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 6: other ways of breaking up these huge corporations they are running.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 6: Let's not forget on our intelligence. It's not artificial intelligence,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 6: it's human intelligence. It's ours. It's stolen and we not
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 6: only deserve some profit from the wealth that they've stolen
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 6: from us, but we have some right to control. And
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 6: I just don't think there's a way to regulate companies
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 6: as big as these, not when it comes to where
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 6: they put their big box stores, not where it comes
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 6: to how much of our data they siphon up and
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 6: how they use it. So I'm sorry to come on
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 6: sounding such a naysayer to the Europeans. I think they're
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 6: doing the best think it can. But if if it's
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 6: little us versus enormous monopoly both of them, it's an
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 6: unfair battle. In the eighteen hundreds, in the nineteenth century,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 6: we had massive fights to break up monopoly business at
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 6: the level of manufacturing. We are in a new economy now.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 6: We need to have those fights all over again for
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 6: our sake, for the sake of our intelligence, our democracy,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 6: and for our planet. Because you know, the other front
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 6: of this conversation is these AI companies and their use
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 6: of our water and air and land to process the
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 6: data that they're taking from us at no charge.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: Stealing absolutely, Laura, absolutely, And you know what, I think
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: this is interesting because it's something that Mark Steyron and
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: I have talked about in the past about the time
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: of antitrust and the breaking up of monopolies and how
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: important this is and how we have to come back
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: to this. What's terrifying for me right now is we're
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: actually seeing the consolidation of media companies.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 6: Yeah, we're going in the opposite direction.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: Exactly, but that that is where we need to be
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: and I so appreciate you bringing that back and tying
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: this in, particularly as we like near the close of
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: this conversation, and I don't.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 6: Want to, honestly, I don't want to dismiss the importance
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 6: of those regulations passed by Europe. They are important. They
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 6: did make a difference. You can tell they made a
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 6: difference because they scared the heck out of the company's
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 6: Microsoft Google. They all freaked out, So clearly there is
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 6: some bite to their bark. But I think the bigger
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 6: problem is inequality and control.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Laura. I want to just mention some closing
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: thoughts that have been really important for me in doing
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: this episode, and also kind of closing thoughts because this
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: is in a way kind of one of the last
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: episodes of this podcast series, and so I have a
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: couple of things that I want to mention, and I'm
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: so glad to be doing this with you today. So
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: you going to hear but I first I want to
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: go back to Barcelona and back to Circo Biennuela. So
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: he's the communications professor. I spoke at the top and
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: he said something I think is really important, and this
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: is particular in terms of understanding fake news and disinformation
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: and why it's so complicated, and why it's so hard
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: to push back on and why it's so powerful for
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: Trump and of others on the far right is he
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: said that it's hard to combat it because it generates
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: an emotional response.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: This automatic ancer is very difficult to train. So some
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: author will say we can't train that by education. I
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: think education has a small part to do, but we
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: need to be aware of how our brain works, so
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: we need to have cognitive science knowledge.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: See he says, we have to train our mind around this.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: We need to live in a constant state of skepticism,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: and that's hard. And he told me this just beautiful
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: metaphor Laura, that's used by the American psychologist Jonathan Hate.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: Jonathan Hate explains that our brain is like an elephant
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: that has.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: A jockey, no joky that drives the elephant.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: So the automatic brain is the elephant and the jokey.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: It's difficult to manage, to direct and to drive an elephant,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: and that jockey has to use a lot of energy
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: to make rational cognitive processes. So I would say that
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: try to train your jockey to be constantly active.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of like what we're seeing in terms
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: of trying to handle like the amount of fake news,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: and that's why it goes so viral so fast. The
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: other thing he said, Laura is that it is not
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: all bad. Social media is not all bad. The new
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: media ecosystem is not all bad. And I really, as
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: someone who has a teenage daughter and who is trying
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: to grapple with social media, you know means today, and
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: having worked on this entire podcast, it was important for
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: me to hear this. So he says, you know, young
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: people are living in a different media ecosystem, and.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: We cannot teach them how to navigate because we don't
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: know how to navigate in the decosystem. So it's a
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: mutual learning process and we have to be very open
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: to be taught by them. No.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: Now, some youth are actually using AI, using social media
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: in these creative ways to build new stories, to build
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: new myths, new waves of understanding morality. But oftentimes we're
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: not seeing it. Maybe we're not on the same platforms,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: that we're not following the same stuff, right because everyone
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: is kind of in their own silo.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: But there's this one example that he.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: Gave, and this is about the put China avocado. Have
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: you ever heard of this, no I love dying to
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: hear okay is it is crazy and it's hilarious. So
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: basically I've been in recent days after he told me
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: about this, I went online and I started looking at
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: it's mainly on TikTok and they're all these like little
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: one or two minute stories or tales that all start
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: off with like the legend of the pu China avocado
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: legend and this is all in Spanish, and so people
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: create their own AI videos and it could be like
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: I watched one that was like the legend of the
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: Puchina avocado and the football.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 6: Game legenda the China Catania Medal football.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: And it's like creating these tiny little bits and they're
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: hilarious because they're clearly done to be funny. But they
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: also have these own like these like these moral like
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: underpinnings and like it. It's it's fascinating because people they
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: see it and then they copy it and they make
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: their own. So there's done with AI. There's done with
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: other forms of AI. These images and you see this
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: like little avocado like walking on a football field or
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: a little avocado like you know, it's like it's crazy,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: but they really are creating like this whole new system
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: of stories houa tsugada, caavez masoscuro.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: You get into it and you get into a whole
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: world histories that are cross.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 12: Values, new heroes.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: New heroines, new anti heroes that we are not aware. Yeah,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: it's crazy, and I guess this is in a Spanish
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: in Inglish. There are all the similar phenomenon like this.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: And it's really really beautiful.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 6: Somehow about that, Michael, Instead of a ban on under
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 6: sixteens on the internet, how about we have a ban
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 6: on over sixteens.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 9: We can.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 6: Listen, we can learn, but we can't put more stuff up.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 6: There wouldn't be good for our businesses, you and I.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 6: But hey, we could take a pause. I think we
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 6: might learn something, and we might learn something beautiful. How
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 6: do you spell for China?
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: Puh ai na? I can send you a link and
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: I will put a link in the show notes to
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: where people can find this. It's it's it's really cool.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: It's really cool. The one other thing I want to
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: I want to mention today is one of the things
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: that I've really gotten from this from this whole experience,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: you know, researching, investigating and working on this podcast over
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: the last year, Laura, is is how much we are
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: increasingly living in a divided world and that powerful people
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: like Trump and those in Silicon Valley use that division
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: for their gains.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: It's us versus them.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: And that more and more, what I come back to
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: is is the need for us to find common ground,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: to find our common place, to return to our society
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: kind of what you were talking at the top. Democracy
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: is about, you know, us being able to listen to
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: each other and how having conversations not always agree, but
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: also disagree. And for me, no one's asked me what
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: my definition of free speech is in this podcast just yet.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: But what I for speech? Thank you, Laura, thank you
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: what I come back to. You know, for me, free
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: speech needs we need to be able to listen. Free
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: speech does not work if we're not listening. And I
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: mean I feel really strongly about that after a year.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: We have to have the right to speak our voice
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: and we and we should be required to listen as well.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: And there is something that I think was really beautiful
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: and really profound from my conversation with Sata from Finland,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: because she talked about this concept that they put in
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: their policy. It's actually included in their like policy book
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: that's around media education, media literacy, and it's a finished
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: concept called civisci. I know I did not announce that, right,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: and I apologize for those in Finland. It's similar to
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: apparently the German concept of bulldom, and there is no
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: real translation for it in English. But the idea is
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: it's a holistic process of self cultivation.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 12: But also with civistis comes also the kind of tolerance.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 12: It doesn't mean that you would accept everything, but you
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 12: understand that there are different points of view and different
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 12: perspectives to many aspects.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: She says, for them, it's like this key aspect of
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: democracy because facts are important, but they can be used
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: and they can be biased. But citsd needs to always
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: ground us in society. It's the way we have to
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: relate with each other in the world. It's empathy, right,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: And I saw it described in one place as a
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: kind heart and a critical mind. And I really like
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: this idea as something to grasp or strive for to
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: ground us, particularly now and like this insane world as
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: people are being pushed aside as a way for us
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: to ground us and something to try and bring us together.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 6: You know, I for many many years have used sign
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 6: off that I think speaks to exactly that, and recently
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 6: I had it written on my arm because I felt
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 6: that I needed to be reminded and it was simply
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 6: stay kind, stay curious, which is a lot of what
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 6: I'm hearing there. And I think you're right. It's listening,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 6: it's pausing, it's empathy, using that empathy muscle. I think
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 6: that as we think about our education process, there's media literacy,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 6: there's comprehension. We need the arts. We need the arts
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 6: that encourage people's imagination and to use their imagination to
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 6: think themselves into other people's reality, so that maybe there's
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 6: a moment of pause between the inhale, oh my god,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 6: scary thing and immigrant did I'm being told on the
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 6: internet and exhale? Therefore I should go out? What should
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 6: I do?
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: Wait?
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 6: Maybe I should think about that immigrant Does this make sense?
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 6: We need those pauses. So I love this idea and
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 6: I love this series. Michael. You've done a wonderful year
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 6: of work, and you and Mark did an amazing thing.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 6: And thank you so much for letting me be part
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 6: of it here at the tail end. It was a
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 6: pleasure and a privilege.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Laura, I really appreciate it, and
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: it's been such a it's such a such an honor
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: and a pleasure speaking with you today. It's just it's
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: been it's been a gem. So thank you so so much.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: You're welcome, Hi, folks, thanks for listening. I hope you
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's episode.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 14: Next time, now, the Battleful of your speech who more
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 14: critical than ever. We have to stand up, tell the
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 14: stories we have to tell, put it out there in
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 14: every meetium we can find and fight for the right
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 14: to speak our minds, which will be taken away from us.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 14: And if we don't, that's what we face right now.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: Next week, I'll spend the entire hour with my co
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: host Mark Steiner. He was with me for the first
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: three episodes, and in so many ways, his life has
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: represented the epitome of what standing up for free speech
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: should mean. Civil rights activist, community organizer, educator, journalist, radio host.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: For most of his eighty years, he's been speaking truth
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: to power and I can't wait to bring you this
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: exclusive finale to this podcast series that's next week on
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: the Battle for Free Speech. If you enjoyed today's podcast
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: and you like this series, please do us a favor,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: go to your podcasting app, leave a review, and tell
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: a friend. It really helps to spread the word about
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: the show and the state of free speech in the
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: United States today. If you'd like to find out more
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: about The Battle for Free Speech and my work on
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: other podcasts, you can find me at Patreon dot com
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: forward slash Mfox. There you can also support my work.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: Become a monthly sustainer and sign up to stay abreast
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: of all the latest on this podcast and my other
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: reporting in the United States or across Latin America. This
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: really helps me to continue to do this important work.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: I'm adding links to everyone I spoke with today in
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: the show notes, and a huge thanks to Loura Flanders.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: It was really a pleasure having you on the show.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: I'll add a link to her show, Laura Flanders and
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: Friends also in the show notes. Finally, please make sure
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: to sign up for the Real News Network's newsletter so
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: you'll never miss an episode. You can find that at
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: therealnews dot com. The Battle for Free Speech is a
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: production of the Real News. Thanks for listening, See you
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: next time.