00:01:41.580We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook.
00:01:43.760Every episode, we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers.
00:01:49.380The show's famously super accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on.
00:01:55.820We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenburgen.
00:02:00.760Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:08.160I don't want to see us in a position where, like, we're just flooded by low-quality, inaccurate misinformation that's just, like, brain candy.
00:02:19.380There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:02:34.000I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:39.460So recently, I've been deeply fascinated by this noticeable uptick in AI-generated low-effort
00:02:49.160On Facebook, maybe you saw the picture of the elderly twins who are celebrating their 120th birthday posted alongside the caption, prompting you to leave them a little birthday love.
00:03:00.140Or that bizarre image of Jesus made entirely out of shrimp asking for an amen.
00:03:06.160Now, on Facebook, it does tend to trend a little bit more saccharine, but over on TikTok, creators are flooding the platform with low-effort videos that push truly ridiculous conspiracy theories.
00:03:19.920Things like, the government is holding a vampire hostage.
00:03:23.800And not only that, but because of the way TikTok's creativity program works, spreading these ridiculous lies equals a payday.0.93
00:03:31.500It sounds really silly and maybe even kind of harmless.0.79
00:03:36.160But disinformation researcher and friend of the show, Abby Richards, who has been tracking the spread of this kind of content for Media Matters, says if garbage like this is incentivized, it makes our entire Internet ecosystem worse.
00:03:49.680I usually start by asking my guests to, like, introduce themselves, give us their title, all of that.
00:03:55.580But I feel like by now people know you.
00:03:57.580You are a certified friend of the show.
00:04:18.040So the reason I wanted to talk to you today is because you're sort of my, I don't know, resident TikTok expert.
00:04:24.100I feel like nobody knows the platform better than you.
00:04:26.760And when I say knowing the platform, I mean the good, the way that it can connect people, educate people, bring people together, give people access to community they didn't know they had.
00:04:35.740and also the bad, because as much as I know you like TikTok, I don't know that I know many people
00:04:42.080that are as honest about the platform and as critical of the platform as you. Yeah, you know,
00:04:48.300I really approach TikTok from two angles, which are the two hats that I always wear.
00:04:54.180My first hat is as a researcher and like studying misinformation and extremism on the platform.
00:05:00.260But then my other hat is a content creator and, like, a user of TikTok, someone who has found great joy there at times.
00:05:10.140And there's, I like situations where there's complexity, you know, like, we can understand that things can be simultaneously amazing and also terrible.
00:05:21.220And we can hold space for both of those things at the same time.
00:05:24.280Like, I'm glad that you were doing that because I feel so often when we're talking about technology, it's either this technology is harming everybody and it should be made like it's it's I think there's a temptation to talk about it in a binary, either like all good or all bad.
00:05:42.320And I'm happy that people like you can really bring the nuance of like, well, here's all the good things.
00:05:46.700I want to be honest about all the good things it's brought to me.
00:05:48.560But let's also be honest about the places that are not so good and the things that need to be fixed on the platform.
00:05:53.000Yeah, because also, how are we going to move forward and create better digital spaces if we can't pinpoint what's working, what's good, what do we like? And also what's not working, what's harmful? Like, I'm all for creating healthy digital spaces where people can thrive and, like, evolve and learn and grow and laugh and build community. Love. Like, yeah, amazing.
00:06:16.240But I want to avoid creating spaces that like are exclusively prioritizing profit. Right. And in doing that, creating some like really toxic spaces.
00:06:29.140Well, to that end, let's talk about some of the reporting that you did around something happening on TikTok.
00:06:34.360So you initially pointed this out with Media Matters back in February.
00:06:38.240We're talking months later, but it's really that folks had been exploiting TikTok's creativity
00:06:43.660program by pumping out viral conspiracy theory content using AI-generated images and voices
00:07:29.420You had to be at least 18 years old. You had to have at least 10,000 followers. You had to have at least 100,000 video views in the last 30 days. And the videos that you could monetize, that could be monetized, had to be at least 60 seconds long.
00:07:46.020So that was replaced in March. They ended the creativity program beta and officially launched the creator rewards program, which is very, very similar in structure, essentially same requirements, but is no longer in beta.
00:08:00.900So because of this program, these TikToks can rack up millions and millions and millions of views, which makes whoever posts them probably a pretty good bit of money.
00:08:08.880What kind of conspiracy theories are you seeing in these TikToks?
00:08:11.980We had the seemingly AI Joe Rogan predicting Texas will secede starting a civil war, which had 800,000 views.
00:08:21.000Simpsons predicted that the Baltimore Bridge would collapse.
00:08:29.760Seemingly AI Joe Rogan saying about three weeks ago, a man named Blake Dawson embarked on a mission to uncover the hidden depths of the Denver International Airport.
00:08:37.960He discovered a vast laboratory underneath, et cetera, et cetera.
00:19:04.360I should say, a common tactic of these low-effort AI-generated conspiracy theory TikToks
00:19:09.600is making the content look as if Joe Rogan is discussing it on his podcast.
00:19:15.300They'll actually use AI-generated content of Joe Rogan
00:19:19.060to make it seem as if Rogan actually did discuss the government
00:19:22.560covering up if they found an alien or a vampire or whatever.
00:19:27.000But even Joe Rogan has not actually entertained these conspiracy theories.
00:19:30.860And it's just another way to credential whatever outlandish claim their content is making
00:19:35.620by visually associating it with Joe Rogan.
00:19:39.600I did notice something else about a couple of these videos that I'm, I'm, I don't know if you have thoughts about what's going on, but where they have been designed to make it look like they are specifically being discussed on Joe Rogan's podcast.
00:19:52.680So it's like an image of Joe Rogan and it's like him being like, oh, did you know that we're all going to die because scientists found an asteroid? Pull this up.
00:20:02.920And then it makes it seem as though they've discussed this on the podcast, even though they have it as far as I know.
00:20:07.660uh yeah and quite cleverly the captions are always put right over his mouth so that you can't
00:20:15.100tell easily how how dubbed it is and how bad that dubbing is um yeah that was a really interesting
00:20:23.400part of this research that I wasn't necessarily expecting but so much of this content uh was
00:20:30.440especially used I got a lot of videos using Joe Rogan uh where Joe Rogan did the exact same
00:20:37.460formula, right? He'd be like, three weeks ago, a man called Blake Dawson embarked on a mission
00:20:43.060to uncover hidden depths of the Denver International Airport. And he discovered a
00:20:48.040vast laboratory underneath that's like, yada, yada, yada. Literally verbatim, I wrote that down.
00:20:54.320Yeah, like I got another one of Joe Rogan predicting that Texas was going to secede
00:21:00.800in the US starting a civil war on May 14th. It is now May 21st and that hasn't happened.
00:21:07.800Data's come and gone. As far as I know, Texas is still part of the United States.
00:21:13.600Yeah, last time I checked. And one thing I also do, I want to stress too, because I didn't say
00:21:21.140this up at the top, but like does provide some context is that these videos are going mega viral,
00:21:27.520like very very viral like we were seeing these types of videos with like you know 20 30 million
00:21:34.960views at times you know 10 million views on some but just millions and millions of views
00:21:40.700um we found one account that yeah there was one account that actually let me say this so we
00:21:48.640identified a network of seemingly affiliated accounts that were all posting this exact same
00:21:53.660type of AI-generated conspiracy theory content. A lot of Megalodon content on this account for
00:21:59.700whatever, on these accounts. And they were posting these videos in English, Spanish, and French
00:22:05.120using like a translated version of the same username and the same profile picture, which also
00:22:10.700seemed AI-generated. It's hard to say for sure. And so they have received, at the time that we
00:22:19.420looked at it, over 342 million views on this account, just posting this sort of content.
00:22:26.520And then the Spanish language account had received 329 million views.
00:22:33.420Those numbers are shocking. But also what I know about Spanish language content,
00:22:40.380I feel like people who are interested in flooding digital spaces with junk,
00:22:44.520they are definitely going to translate that junk into Spanish because they know we don't have
00:22:49.380as many, you know, really good Spanish language content platforms as we should. And so it's like,
00:22:55.100there's a gap of that. And they're like, oh, we can fill that gap with nonsense and make a quick
00:23:00.560buck. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Why do you think these videos are going viral like they are?
00:23:07.280Where to start? First of all, we love a good story. And we love a good conspiracy story.
00:23:12.600Like these are candy for our brains. We love mythical creatures. We love to think that,
00:23:17.900you know the government's hiding some sort of knowledge from us like there's a reason why
00:23:22.220men in black is still a classic movie like we fundamentally love these stories
00:23:27.820and then you combine it with like this this kind of attention hijacking approach to creating content
00:23:36.360where we know that that sort of content plays really well on these algorithms where you're
00:23:42.040you're just trying to get watch time and the more people watch it the more that that video will be
00:23:46.780recommended to other people and it'll then go viral. Um, and then on top of that, you're able
00:23:53.620to just create such a high volume of this content. It's really easy to pump this content out because
00:23:59.440you don't need to go create your own art. You can just get like an AI to do it. Um, you don't need
00:24:07.220to read your own text. Like, do you know how long it takes me when I film one of my videos
00:24:11.600to get all the words right, like, and get my delivery right, like, that's time that you don't
00:24:18.440need to do, like, you know, you don't need to spend that anymore. You can just plug it into a
00:24:23.700text-to-speech software. So you can really crank this stuff out quite quickly. And I think that
00:24:32.160then you can just put a lot out and see what hits. When it comes to AI, we talk a lot about
00:24:41.080the obvious dangerous examples of the ways that AI can disrupt our democracy. But there's also a
00:24:47.300real danger to the seemingly more benign AI-generated content too, because it just makes1.00
00:24:52.800our internet landscape worse, more stupid, and less trustworthy. And when it's financially0.99
00:24:58.140incentivized, not to mention easy and fast to crank out at scale, it's not really that difficult
00:25:03.860to see how it gets us away from the kind of internet we actually want, which is not one
00:25:08.940full of low effort, AI generated lies, scams, and garbage. Yeah. Part of me wonders if that's0.66
00:25:15.900really the role that we're seeing AI being utilized for here. It's just the speed at which
00:25:22.800you can crank these out, the ease at which you can crank these out, and you can just really just
00:25:27.800flood the space and see what happens to hit that virality mark. I'm definitely nervous about it.
00:25:35.020I'm very concerned about the role of AI here in just its ability to create volume.
00:25:43.380And I'm concerned about the combination of AI plus algorithms that prioritize watch time over the actual originality and high quality nature of the content.
00:25:59.220like I don't want to see us in a position where like we're just flooded by low quality
00:26:06.900inaccurate misinformation that's just like brain candy that makes me that makes me nervous because
00:26:14.220a lot of the times like I get asked why this sort of content is concerning like why is it bad if
00:26:20.340like you know the U.S. like has vampires and like it's really silly but I am worried about
00:26:25.860more so at scale what it means to be in digital spaces that are fundamentally prioritizing,
00:26:33.800not just prioritizing, incentivizing, financially incentivizing content that is low quality and easy
00:26:40.560to pump out. In what ways do you feel that TikTok, this program, is incentivizing junk like this?
00:26:48.680Well, so if you're paying creators, if you're financially rewarding people for content based
00:26:54.620on how viral it is uh the end result it makes sense is that you're going to get a lot of people
00:27:02.060just trying to pump out as much content that will go as viral as possible rather than like actually
00:27:08.240funding the creators who do their own you know their own original high quality work because i
00:27:15.160do want to see them funded of course i do like i want the platforms to pay the creators who are
00:27:21.380the backbone of the of the platforms like tiktok would not be good if it weren't for all the
00:27:26.260creators out there making that content i would like to see them to see them compensated um but
00:27:31.520i want to make sure that we are we have systems in place so that they are the ones being compensated
00:27:37.340and not people that are just flooding the feeds with saber-toothed tiger conspiracy theories
00:27:43.200the reason why i liked tiktok to begin with is that i felt like they were my people and that
00:27:48.300it was people who wanted to go deep on an issue. And it's like, everything you ever wanted to know
00:27:53.760about this specific thing, if that is your jam, rock with me and I'll tell you, we'll get into
00:27:58.400the nitty gritty minutia. But getting into the nitty gritty minutia of something takes research,
00:28:02.980it takes time. You can't just plug it into an AI system and have it poof, create that kind of
00:28:08.360content. It really takes, as you know, it takes a lot of time. And I worry that it's so much easier
00:28:15.180to rather than reward that person who is putting so much time and effort into making the thoughtful,
00:28:20.040deep dive content that we all love, it's so much easier to just throw money at people
00:28:24.420who have completely gamified this via AI, just flooding the space with junk.
00:28:28.680And I don't know, like you, I worry about what that says about our larger information ecosystem.
00:29:18.260Like, my understanding is that TikTok has rules that prohibit misleading or inaccurate
00:29:24.560content, but it seems like they're allowing, not just allowing this kind of content on
00:29:29.120their platform, but allowing creators to be profiting off of it.
00:29:34.000Yeah. So I'm a little bit confused on this one. So here's what I know. So I know that
00:29:43.000we published this in February and a TikTok spokesperson told Axios in late March that
00:29:50.820conspiracy theories are not eligible to earn money or to be recommended in for you feeds on TikTok.
00:29:55.940I have gone since then and looked and found plenty of the exact same right formula of conspiracy theories that are just over a minute long using that AI generated text to speech and the spooky music and the editing and the and the images like all of that.
00:30:18.160And I've seen videos that were posted since then. That seems a little inconsistent. The way they've talked about their newest update to the community guidelines around conspiracy theories doesn't seem to reflect that.
00:30:30.700So they said that conspiracy theories that are unfounded and claim that certain events or situations are carried out by covert or powerful groups, such as, quote, the government or a secret society, are not eligible for UPage recommendation.
00:30:48.600I don't know where a lot of these fall on that.
00:30:53.620it's a pretty, it's just unclear exactly what TikTok is enforcing and what they're allowing
00:31:00.200to be monetized. And something we've seen time and time again is that the people who create this,
00:31:06.160especially if they're doing it for profit, are so good at creating content that really skirts that
00:31:11.600gray area and staying just on the other side of that line to keep them on the platform and to keep
00:31:17.100the money coming in. Yeah. So the conspiracy theories about like the unfounded, that are
00:31:21.360unfounded and claim about certain events being carried out by secret powerful groups. That's
00:31:26.200FYP ineligible. What's not allowed on TikTok are conspiracy theories that name and attack an
00:31:33.200individual. Oh, so it seems like it wouldn't be that hard to create content that would be eligible,
00:31:40.220but still does the same kind of thing in spirit, just not in specificity.
00:31:44.880Yeah. Like, you know, because like the video that I talked about with an AI or seemingly AI Joe
00:31:50.840Rogan predicting that Texas will secede from the U.S. starting a second civil war on May 14th,
00:31:56.720which would then lead to an all-out nuclear war. That was uploaded on April 5th, and it has
00:32:03.260over 800,000 views. It's a concerning video to be making a claim and to be using such a
00:32:11.140well-known figure that a lot of people do get their information from to claim that you have
00:32:19.000special knowledge from a time traveler claiming that you're aware of imminent civil war? Where
00:32:25.600does that fall within these guidelines that we've set up? Where does that fall within the guidelines
00:32:32.200that TikTok has set up? And I got to say, not for nothing, if I'm Joe Rogan, I would be so insulted
00:32:38.760that this is the kind of content that people think they can plausibly associate with me.
00:32:45.100unrelated to this whole conversation I would really be taking a step back if I were him and
00:32:49.320be like wow people think that I would be giving them content about cryptids and stuff and like
00:32:56.240that's what people would associate with me and people would be like oh yeah I buy that I would
00:32:59.440be so insulted and I would be taking a step back to deeply reflect on the kind of content I'm known
00:33:03.960for I think you and Joe Rogan might be different in certain fundamental ways Bridget
00:33:10.380I mean, listen, like when the whole Joe Rogan, the last time that we talked about Joe Rogan, one of the points I made was like, I'm not saying I'm such a great podcaster, but like, come on.
00:33:25.700it does but okay the issue though of like taking a celebrity figure especially someone that is like
00:33:38.320trusted by a bunch of people um straight men across america uh and you know altering them
00:33:47.440with this ai voice and putting this information in their mouths like where i want to see more
00:33:53.800much more of a conversation happening from TikTok, but also from other platforms about like,
00:33:59.420where does this stand within policy? Because TikTok's community guidelines only prohibit
00:34:06.940this sort of like misleading AI generated content of a public figure who is being degraded or
00:34:12.600harassed, engaging in criminal or antisocial behavior, taking a position on political issues,
00:34:19.320commercial products or a matter of public importance or being politically endorsed or
00:34:24.440condemned. So the policy doesn't really seem to account for AI generated content of Joe Rogan
00:34:29.180claiming that a time traveler predicted civil war. Yeah. And I think it really exposes some
00:34:35.860gaps in policies that these people are exploiting to make a quick buck.
00:34:40.620Yeah. And I mean, the more that we're having these conversations around AI, right,
00:34:45.180We're learning more ways that it's going to be used
00:34:47.700that maybe we hadn't thought of before.
00:34:50.840And like a lot of the conversations that I saw,
00:34:53.480especially early on around AI and like deep fakes
00:34:56.900and deep fakes of celebrities or politicians was like,
00:35:00.100oh my God, they're going to deep fake world leaders
00:35:02.160and say that like they're launching nuclear war
00:35:05.480and it's going to start nuclear war, right?
00:35:07.600It was like this really high stakes kind of discussions
00:38:20.420run a business and not thinking about podcasting think again more americans listen to podcasts
00:38:26.460than ad-supported streaming music from spotify and pandora and as the number one podcaster
00:38:31.060iheart's twice as large as the next two combined so whatever your customers listen to they'll hear
00:38:35.780your message plus only iheart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio
00:38:40.640think podcasting can help your business think iheart streaming radio and podcasting call 844
00:38:46.760844-844-IHEART to get started. That's 844-844-IHEART. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held
00:38:55.500captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive
00:39:01.740what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. I just
00:39:07.880remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.
00:39:15.700Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:39:20.240I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:39:24.800I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:39:32.240They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:39:36.200But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:39:39.640They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:39:42.780Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:39:51.740If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:39:57.660This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:40:10.140I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books,
00:40:13.840the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:40:17.260I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:50:03.620I don't I don't think that that's a bridge too far to expect a little transparency behind.
00:50:09.120No, I mean, I would argue that we deserve much more than that.
00:50:12.560I think that the bar is on the ground.
00:50:15.280But I do think that we deserve to know when there is a very clear financial incentive for certain types of content.
00:50:24.220You know, is this person making flat earth content because they are genuinely a flat earther and like they believe it with their full chest?
00:50:30.200or are they making it because they know that it'll get millions of views and that they'll get money
00:50:34.100and like that's a big difference and i i do want to know where that where that line is like i just
00:50:42.720i want to know more about because you can never know people's motivation there are still lots of
00:50:47.420grifters even when financial motives are very clear um but i still think that that transparency
00:50:53.140is a very good starting place absolutely abby thank you so much for being here it is always