00:00:49.980If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.400Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:04.060Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:02:07.720I would not be living here if I was being paid by Bill Gates and the government and the World Economic Forum.
00:02:13.380There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:02:27.760I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:33.080The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is a scary, tense, highly charged situation.
00:02:38.100And as we know, with scary, tense, highly charged situations, also comes a flood of misleading, inaccurate, or straight-up fabricated content being shared across social media.
00:02:48.820Now on TikTok, I've seen videos taken from films or video games, pretending that that footage is actually from Ukraine.
00:02:56.720I've seen old videos from other conflicts purporting to be from Ukraine.
00:03:00.620And even worse, because of TikTok's live stream feature, where users can collect donations from viewers in real time.
00:03:07.020Some grifters are even using these fake videos to lie about streaming live from Ukraine to make money.
00:03:14.180Marie Cowpers is a social media expert who told me that one of the reasons that TikTok is so ripe for disinformation
00:03:20.380is because of the speed by which users are surfaced questionable content on their For You page.
00:03:26.360Marie has been tracking inaccurate and misleading Ukraine videos on TikTok, but it didn't start there.
00:03:31.140For Marie, it started when she started noticing false information about things like diets and health.
00:03:37.420It really started when I saw a lot of different videos popping up with really weird information.
00:03:45.400It didn't start with, you know, the amount of disinformation that's happening now,
00:03:50.020but it was just small things like how diet soda is going to give you cancer.
00:03:56.440lots of stuff about health scary stories also that were scaring children and that weren't true
00:04:04.500but I didn't see a lot of these videos pop up on my own for you page I just saw one every once in
00:04:11.580a while so I decided to make another account to see what was happening because I was really
00:04:16.920curious is there more more to this because you know I'm seeing some really weird stories going
00:04:23.400around so I created a different account to my own where I started just liking conspiracy theories
00:04:31.200really dodgy info and everything I normally wouldn't like and the algorithm just started
00:04:38.320serving me a whole bunch of questionable videos that I was just really really shocked to see and
00:04:47.800That in my language, in Dutch, nobody else was talking about or debunking or fact checking.
00:04:54.440So that's why I started, because I saw that people were getting affected by this information and nobody was talking about it.
00:05:04.420So often when I have these conversations, there has been some failure by some platform to do something.
00:05:12.500Right. So for you, it was disinformation in Dutch on TikTok.
00:05:16.520and you know just a regular person usually a woman or a person of color or somebody who is
00:05:23.180already marginalized just said okay no one is doing this I'll do it I'll take I'll do the work
00:05:28.640of making this platform safer or at least chronicling what is going on did you feel
00:05:33.380compelled in that way to sort of take on this fight? It feels almost like a moral obligation
00:05:39.400for me because I see the effects it's having on people and I also see that it's not just
00:05:46.300misinformation about health which has really bad consequences obviously but also
00:05:51.340these same algorithms are pushing this alternative account that I have into really far right
00:05:59.620TikTok really extreme videos that I was also reporting and they were not getting taken down
00:06:08.720so which is also really strange to me uh just just it's just shocking to me how huge
00:06:15.520these videos are and it it seemed like nobody was seeing it or responding it to it and then
00:06:22.620yeah it it feels like a moral obligation because it's the consequences of misinformation are just
00:06:29.400not just people believing stuff that isn't true but it it leads to uh biases or you know blaming
00:06:36.400other people sometimes when it's misinformation about vaccines that goes into conspiracy theories
00:06:43.740about the Great Reset and this global cabal, which is usually Jewish people. That's also0.56
00:06:52.720something that I've seen a lot since I've looked into conspiracy theories. When the invasion of
00:06:58.860Ukraine happened, I, how can I put this? It was a pretty terrifying moment. Like it definitely
00:07:06.820was a moment of crisis. And I know that in moments of crisis, I definitely feel this. And I think a
00:07:12.780lot of other people feel this. You feel sort of powerless. And so you're like, what can I do?
00:07:17.160I'll share information. And I caught myself going to share a lot of very moving videos,
00:07:23.960a lot of very visually arresting videos. And then I think I saw a tweet. It was I think I think it
00:07:29.340might have been from Abby Richards that was like, in this moment, take a beat, take a breath before
00:07:34.220you share things. And then I saw your account, all of these videos purporting to be from Ukraine
00:07:40.240that were either very misleading or just completely inaccurate, like not Ukraine.
00:07:45.460What kind of disinformation and misleading stuff are you seeing in relation to the invasion of
00:07:49.780Ukraine? So a couple of different types of misinformation and disinformation. I've been
00:07:56.760seeing a lot of old videos. So I think that's something that happens more often in these
00:08:03.660crisis situations. It's a lot of old footage of explosions that happened. Like I saw a video that
00:08:11.220was an explosion and it had 10 million views. But this was not an explosion in Ukraine. It was in
00:08:17.580Lebanon a year ago so it's real footage but it's not in Ukraine and because people are so
00:08:25.940interested in seeing more and and so invested anything that even remotely seems like it could
00:08:32.060be in Ukraine or is like related to war or shooting or explosions it just goes wild on TikTok it has
00:08:38.940yeah it just goes insanely viral so older videos have been circulating of conflicts and
00:08:47.260explosions also i've been seeing uh video game footage because video games are so realistic now
00:08:55.880that uh there's been footage of arma 3 the video game that's been shared uh sometimes it's a little
00:09:02.620zoomed in or they've made it a little darker so it's less easy to recognize but that's uh and
00:09:09.260people just don't see that it's a video game unless you know the game uh animations i've seen
00:09:15.400being shared uh there's an animation of someone on instagram who made a world war ii animation
00:09:21.620so if you know your airplanes you can see that the airplanes that are in the animation are not
00:09:27.460you know modern airplanes they're b12 airplanes i think from the second world war uh so those are
00:09:34.540the things i've been seeing and um yeah mostly those kind of videos are circulating on on tiktok
00:09:42.400It's just like old footage misleading stuff.
00:09:46.820Yeah, I mean, I've seen a couple of video game images or videos and I didn't know about the animations.
00:09:55.280But do you think there is something to the fact that we have a hunger for, I use this in quotes, content about invasions and about, you know, high crisis situations that are kind of cinematic?
00:10:13.480and so there's maybe there's like the idea that we would be being fooled by video games and and
00:10:19.840animations and stills from films and things like that I almost feel like it's this it speaks to
00:10:25.140this need in us or this conditioning in us that we expect the footage from these things to have
00:10:30.840a storyline and have good animation like good graphics and to be so visually arresting and
00:10:35.780maybe that's why people are able to be like oh well this is definitely from a from a conflict
00:10:41.620in Ukraine yeah well this is something I've really noticed as well so I actually studied
00:10:47.960film and photography I have a master's degree in film and photography and this is something I've
00:10:52.780also seen in conspiracy theories in general like QAnon where they're basically talking about the
00:11:00.120conspiracy theory as if it's a movie as if it's a big plot and there's actors and you know it
00:11:05.620there's a conclusion and uh just like narrative movie movie narratives basically and the same
00:11:13.040goes for visual disinformation it's it works the best when it's a story uh so if it's emotional
00:11:20.460and there's a good guy and a bad guy and you can root for the good guy um i i recognize what
00:11:28.880you're saying. Yeah. It's definitely true in audio. There was one time I think I switched on
00:11:35.920an Alex Jones radio show. And I kid you not, he was screaming into the microphone. So just like
00:11:43.800poor microphone etiquette about how because of COVID and the vaccines, Bill Gates was going to
00:11:49.640make us all eat bugs. And he was screaming about it. And I was thinking, yeah, someone just talking
00:11:57.140in a regular voice about the dangers of conspiracy theories or, like, the realities of the COVID
00:12:03.680vaccine, like, accurate information, they could never compete attention-wise. Like, you really
00:12:08.980have to, you would really have to work to compete with someone who is being that dramatic because
00:12:15.820there's something about your brain that is like, oh, well, this is really sensational. Let me tune
00:12:19.580into this. Let me give this my attention. And we really have a big fight if we're going to make
00:12:25.120content that is equally as compelling, but also based in accuracy and truth and nuance and
00:12:31.060thoughtfulness. That's definitely a struggle that I've been having as well, because I think
00:12:36.280sometimes what works about my videos is that I try and really make it a TikTok, like really make
00:12:44.440it presented in a way that's not just a newsreader reading something without any emotion and just,
00:12:51.540you know here are the facts uh because that just doesn't work it doesn't get the same amount of
00:12:57.200views like you said so i do try and uh you know grab the attention because you have to grab the
00:13:03.360attention on tiktok because if you don't you know have someone's attention in the first five seconds
00:13:07.620they're already gone uh so you need to kind of sensationalize yourself to get people to watch
00:13:14.380the video but then you also want to be correct and you don't want to um maybe spread a conspiracy
00:13:21.220theory even further by uh beginning with a whole story about q anon and then after a minute you
00:13:28.440you start debunking it because then people are already gone um so it's a it's something that
00:13:34.320i've been struggling with but it's something that i think traditional media can do more uh to to
00:13:42.300improve their contents and make it more appealing and also not just you know sometimes traditional
00:13:48.900media are kind of uh i don't want to say elitist or like a little bit like uh this is just uh you
00:13:57.080know uh yeah we're journalists and uh the facts are the facts and uh you know but that's not how
00:14:03.540it works in real life because teenagers who are on tiktok are not going to go to some website with
00:14:09.720dry facts if they can just watch people on tiktok uh make really exciting videos about it i think
00:14:16.800it really boils down to lack of trust in media as an institution. And I think part of that is
00:14:23.880exactly what you said, is that when you only are able to present information in ways that feel
00:14:29.380really alienating to a lot of your audience base, of course, they're going to check out.
00:14:34.180And when you have a very vast network of people offering something else, speaking to this audience
00:19:45.480We have found that fact-checking and debunking, particularly in news, is actually not that
00:19:55.540effective at curbing the spread of false information, and yet we still rely on it,
00:19:59.700even though we know it's not terribly effective. And I also think it can be kind of condescending,
00:20:05.300like, if you believe this, you're some kind of a moron. And it obscures the reality that1.00
00:20:11.960But people, like I fall for misinformation. It happens to the best of us. Some of it is so savvy and hits the exact right tension points that you already have because misinformers and disinformers are really good at it.
00:20:26.000And so if we if we tell people that, oh, you're an idiot for falling for this, of course, they're going to be be that's not going to be compelling to them.
00:20:35.280And I also think what you said about traditional media not always feeling like they need to let particularly younger people in on the business of how stories get made, the business of content, I absolutely think that it is a thing where I think a lot of these institutions don't feel like they need to be accountable to young people.0.98
00:20:57.420They just don't feel like any of their listenership or audience really deserves to know how stories get made and how these decisions get made and how the story that you see on your social media feed comes to be.
00:21:09.900I don't think that they feel like their audience deserves a peek into that.
00:21:15.080And I think that you're exactly right, that people are curious.
00:21:17.380And I think if we were able to have some more transparency around those kinds of conversations, it might do some of the work of building back that public trust in media as an institution.
00:21:27.420yeah yeah it's there could be a lot more transparency about the way journalists work
00:21:34.880and why they do things and why they use certain words or why they make certain stories or don't
00:21:42.360make them I think I think that would help a lot but what you said it's like they don't think young
00:21:48.920people deserve it or even you know like they feel that they wouldn't understand it so like they're
00:21:54.760young people it's kind of they don't they're not taken seriously um which is really bad because
00:22:00.960when they're young you can actually teach them stuff uh which is going to get a lot more difficult
00:22:06.580when they're older and they're all set in everything they believe and when they're young
00:22:10.600you can like let let them see how the news is made so that later on they understand uh how it works
00:22:18.820and they're more trusting but it's even even when I'm making a TikTok video like a traditional news
00:22:26.060organization could do the same thing but then there would be a whole team behind the news video
00:22:32.500that you don't see and it's just being presented by someone in the video and you don't know who
00:22:39.220wrote the script who who you know edited it it's just makes it kind of easier to trust someone
00:22:47.760who's just one person which is what works with disinformation as well with like people like
00:22:52.940alex jones or other people who are uh you know showing their personality as well so you feel
00:22:58.960like you you they're a real person who has emotions who is not like completely neutral
00:23:04.800and everything and has no uh yeah emotions about any news i think it works better when you
00:23:12.560there's obviously like negative aspects of it but just being one person in front of the camera
00:23:18.980instead of having an entire team also increases trust I think people like to get their information
00:23:24.640from their trusted source right like oh this person who is my friend in my head you know
00:23:29.380in the whole conversation we were having about Joe Rogan that was one of the things I feel like
00:23:34.180people really I wish we had a bigger conversation about which is that people have been listening to
00:23:39.820Joe Rogan in their earbuds for years and years and years. He is their trusted source and friend
00:23:45.360in their head, in their mind. I mean, we all do it, right? My favorite podcast host, I definitely
00:23:51.000have a parasocial relationship with them in my mind that they have no idea about. And that is a
00:23:57.200big part of building trust. And so it's not always going to be this newsreader who is coming at
00:24:07.200something in a specific unbiased way who is going to be able to foster that kind of trust yeah yeah
00:24:13.800and also you know uh relatability or someone who looks like you or is your same age uh who maybe
00:24:21.740understands your point of view uh if if that person is saying it uh i would trust it more than
00:24:28.540just you know someone who feels totally far removed from me some you know uh random white guy
00:24:36.100presenting the news, who's like 50 years old and telling me that, you know, something I believe is
00:24:42.520wrong. Okay, but you don't know anything from about my experience. One of the videos that you
00:24:48.700shared from TikTok really caught my eye. It was a video that was meant to be sort of poking fun
00:24:53.980at American liberals. And it's like, your point of view when you're an American liberal who is
00:25:00.500anti-war for everything except for, uh, when it comes to Russia and, you know, are you seeing
00:25:07.580videos that are targeted, targeted at Americans or meant to sort of prompt Americans or people
00:25:17.560who are, you know, not in Ukraine or not in Russia to have a certain point of view about
00:25:23.940this invasion? Yeah. Most of what I've seen, I think there's definitely the pro-Ukrainian
00:25:34.860content that's being shared is in the majority. But the couple of pro-Russian accounts that I've
00:25:42.060seen or pro-Putin accounts that I've seen, they also are usually anti-Biden and anti,
00:25:48.660You know, they're kind of on the right wing American side in the other content that they post. So it does seem like those accounts are really trying to reach Americans and like, get some distrust in the government also growing, which is something I've seen also with QAnon accounts on TikTok that are like, yeah, also very anti Biden.
00:26:12.960I think there's a huge anti-Biden hashtag that's, TikTok still hasn't banned yet, but all the people on TikTok are using it to spread conspiracy theories and QAnon stuff. And I don't want to repeat it in case people go looking for it, but it's like a joke making fun of Biden. But when you search the hashtag, there's only conspiracy theories and misinformation.
00:26:39.760nation. That's so interesting. And I think it goes back to something we see time and time again is
00:26:44.340that one of the reasons why all of these conspiracy theories are kind of linked, like you might be
00:26:49.660thinking, what does QAnon, a conspiracy theory where people believe that, you know, children are
00:26:54.580being, you know, trafficked by nefarious Democrats or whatever and anti-vaccine stuff, like what do
00:27:02.660they all have in common? And I think it's all, it all goes back to chipping away at public trust
00:27:07.520in institutions. And so whether it's our president, Biden, or whether it's the doctor
00:27:11.920giving you a vaccine or Dr. Fauci on TV, or, you know, the lawmaker who you suspect might be
00:27:19.800trafficking kids or something like, it is all about chipping away at public trust in institutions.
00:27:26.000And luckily for these people who want to do that, there are a lot of reasons for people to not be
00:27:32.080So, you know, rah-rah about trusting their public institutions. And so it really goes back to this idea of bad actors poking at existing tension points, existing traumas, existing, you know, realities to say like, yes, and that's why it's important to distrust these people.
00:27:52.000And I'm someone who is like, I think a healthy skepticism is good. But the way that they're able to really take a basic thing like, oh, yeah, it's good to question authority. It's good to question government and turn up the dials. So in such a wild way, I think just shows how savvy disinformers really are.
00:28:11.560Yeah. And why it works so well and why nobody is immune to it, because, you know, there are things that are, there are bad things happening. There are institutions that are, that you can really criticize, but they take advantage of that.1.00
00:28:28.400And I think we see a lot of disinformers using actual criticisms and tensions and things that are maybe grounded in reality for people.
00:28:38.660And they really turn up the dials into something that where it goes into sort of dangerous territory.
00:32:00.340One of the biggest threats that disinformation poses is that it makes it really difficult to have thoughtful, accurate conversations, especially about topics that are highly charged.
00:32:09.000It just takes up a lot of oxygen in the room.
00:32:11.700And it is meant to cause confusion, increased polarization, and distrust.
00:32:16.440And because disinformation is often rooted in some kernel of truth or legitimate tension or grievance,
00:32:22.320if that tension is intentionally exploited or inflamed,
00:32:25.660you can't even actually have a real conversation about the legitimate issues
00:32:29.580because the conversation has become so muddled and extreme.
00:32:33.500Marie saw this play out firsthand in conversations about the World Economic Forum,
00:32:38.060the international organization founded by economist Klaus Schwab
00:32:41.360that's known for bringing together some of the world's most powerful and richest people
00:38:04.420I would not be living here if I was being paid by Bill Gates and the government and the World Economic Forum.
00:38:10.400TikTok as a platform is kind of tailor-made for war footage.
00:38:13.520As Chris Stokel-Walker writes in a piece for Wired, prior research has shown that fake news travels six times faster than legitimate information on social media, in part because of its ability to trigger a strong emotional response.
00:38:26.640TikTok's design, which throws users headlong into an immersive, endless stream of snappy content,
00:38:35.460TikTok's sound feature, whereby users can easily add sounds from an existing library to their videos,
00:38:40.740was a big part of the platform back when it was called ByteDance,
00:38:43.680and it was mostly used to showcase teenagers doing cute dances.
00:38:46.720But now, users can use this feature to easily add existing war sounds
00:38:51.420to videos purporting to be from Ukraine, to make them appear more authentic.
00:38:56.000Researcher and friend of the show, Abby Richards, found that audio of gunfire from a viral video filmed before the invasion ever even began was used in over 1,700 videos before TikTok removed it.
00:39:07.720Users were adding the gunfire audio to their own videos to make them seem as though they were taken during the invasion.
00:39:14.720TikTok has a lot of raw footage, which gives the impression that you're actually watching something live as it unfolds.
00:39:20.840But it also makes it prime for exploitation because there isn't really a lot of verification happening,
00:39:25.900which has led to users looping videos or using old videos, claiming their live feeds from Ukraine, asking viewers for donations to support.
00:39:36.080On TikTok, when you do live streams, a lot of live streams are monetized.
00:39:40.740What do you make of the fact that a couple of the live streams purporting to be from Ukraine but are not from Ukraine are also, one, getting lots and lots of viewers, but two, getting money?
00:39:53.580They're basically able to use TikTok as a platform to profit materially from lies about an active invasion.
00:40:02.820Yeah, well, my faith in humanity is, you know, it's still there, but it's getting a little damaged.
00:40:10.740Especially when you see that during a war, even then people are still profiting off of it by spreading, you know, fake videos, which is what they're doing with the live streams, especially in the first days after the war started, there were people going live.
00:40:26.540And, you know, I saw live streams with hundreds of thousands of viewers and all these people being so compassionate in the comments and saying, oh, we love you.
00:40:36.720We support you and we hope you're doing well and sending so, so, so many gifts because on TikTok, you can send gifts to people who are live.
00:40:46.840And I checked one of these lives to see how many gifts they had received in that one live.
00:40:53.560And it was like a couple thousand dollars, I think.
00:40:56.540But if you do that for a couple days and you do multiple live streams, you can get a lot of money. And there's also people, you know, getting donation links in their bio. So it's not even through TikTok. It's just on other platforms and they're just, you know, profiting off the situation.
00:41:13.520So that's something I always go back to is this idea that so many disinformers and bad actors, it's just a grift. It's just a scam. Like, there are people out there who are interested in, you know, actively misleading people for nefarious, you know, means.0.99
00:41:31.300But then there are also people who are doing it just because they want money. And it's a grift. It's, you know, just like any other scam. And I think why that is so low, but there are so many reasons I find that so lobesome. But one of them is that for every dollar that is being spent, given to someone who is purporting to be live streaming from Ukraine, and they're really not, that's money that can go to somebody who actually needs it, who is actually impacted.
00:41:56.880That's money and attention, right? Because your attention has worth. And so I feel like it is, again, it makes it so that the conversation and the attention and the financial benefit is just not going where it needs to be.
00:42:13.100it's just like what's happening with these conspiracy theories leading away from actual
00:42:18.440problems and you know making it more difficult to talk about that the same thing is happening
00:42:23.380with this money going to people that aren't using it and where the money could be going to actually
00:42:29.800help people in ukraine or you know do good things um yeah it's just it's just getting real people's
00:42:38.340compassion and real people's, you know, wanting to help, but abusing it.
00:42:45.520In this time where it feels very tense and scary, and a lot of people probably feel very
00:42:52.760powerless, myself included, do you have any tips where, for anyone listening who wants to stay
00:42:59.980informed, wants to be using their social media to inform themselves and others, any tips to avoid
00:43:06.260spreading inaccurate information, either in general or particularly when it comes to the
00:43:12.420invasion in Ukraine? I've been asked a bunch of times these days if I have tips for checking stuff
00:43:18.420yourself. But I also want to say that, you know, you can't check everything. There's a reason that
00:43:25.140there are experts and there are journalists and, you know, maybe you're working and you already
00:43:31.080have like a ton of things on your mind. You can't check every single thing that comes on your for
00:43:36.180page or on other social media platforms so i don't think you can expect that of people but
00:43:42.060of course you can check stuff when you have the energy to do it it begins with you know knowing
00:43:50.620your own biases knowing how misinformation uses your emotions to manipulate manipulate you so
00:43:59.200that you know you're aware that when a video is really scary or makes you really angry or maybe
00:44:05.040confirms some beliefs you have about a situation maybe you're really pro-Russian maybe you're really
00:44:10.700pro-Ukraine so when something fits really neatly into that story you should be aware that it might
00:44:18.580be a fake and you need to check twice and also just you know not sharing everything immediately
00:44:27.040what you said is is really important and just taking a second looking at it again thinking
00:44:33.620about how you feel and checking sources seeing if you can find other people who've shared the same
00:44:38.500video or if the account that's posted it is even the real person that shared the footage or if
00:44:47.200they're just resharing because if it's just someone resharing stuff you should always be
00:44:52.980yeah on high alert so that's the first thing and also I would just recommend also following
00:45:28.140I know for myself, some of the videos coming out about the treatment of Black folks in Ukraine, I was very aware of my own pressure points and tension points in myself personally.
00:45:41.960And so I really had to be like, obviously, this is material that is highly emotionally resonant to me.
00:45:50.080And so it's that what you just said, like that is so easily poked at and manipulated.
00:45:56.860And so I really had to have an extra level of like aware, like internal awareness of my own trigger points and my own tension points while navigating, you know, social media and deciding what I wanted to share or amplify.
00:46:09.800Yeah. Yeah. And I've seen this story also being shared a lot on Instagram, in my own friend groups, because, yeah, it's a pressure point for a lot of people.
00:46:21.920it's it's it's you know it should be a pressure point for a lot of people and
00:46:26.220it doesn't mean that it's not true obviously what you just said it there can be really horrible
00:46:33.100stuff happening but yeah people are taking advantage of that it's it's but it doesn't
00:46:39.880seem like that is registering as misinformation or yeah it's not misinformation but you know
00:46:45.160that there are other ways than just sharing fake videos it's not just fake videos you can use
00:46:49.520real videos to advance your agenda and that's something that people I don't think really
00:46:57.340notice as much when it's on their own sides my own biases lean more towards thinking that most
00:47:05.100misinformation is really right-wing for some reason I don't know why I think that but I just
00:47:10.480those were my prejudices as that I thought you know misinformation is trying to get people to
00:47:16.480you know be anti-immigration and all that stuff and I don't consider myself right-wing but I've
00:47:23.280noticed like some videos on TikTok where it's Russian accounts that are posting these like
00:47:28.660left-wing liberal things with other stuff that's true you know a criticism of wars that have also
00:47:37.060happened or conflicts that have also happened where they haven't gotten as much attention as
00:47:43.080this has gotten. Or, you know, the words that reporters have been using to say, yeah, these
00:47:48.160people are so relatable and they're just like us. And, you know, real criticism in covering
00:47:57.200these things. But those things are being spread also by Russian accounts. So be aware of that.
00:48:05.460It's not new what's happening now. It's not something that, you know, it's get... I'm really
00:48:10.760happy that this has brought more attention to tiktok and the stuff that's being spread there
00:48:16.380and how fast it's being spread and how easily it's being spread um but this is getting attention
00:48:23.880because people think it's important but there's lots of other misinformation that's being spread
00:48:29.300that's you know not seen as important enough to fact check apparently because i can see
00:48:34.420even in mainstream media there's a lot of misinformation about trans people
00:48:38.760which you know has not gotten nearly as much attention as other topics when it comes to
00:48:45.600fact-checking there's this like panic about oh my god there's so much misinformation on social media
00:48:50.140but it's always you know certain topics that are getting fact-checked and others that are not
00:48:57.360getting the same amount of information so fact-checking is not something that's neutral
00:49:01.220uh which i you know some people don't realize maybe because you you choose what kind of things
00:49:09.260you fact check and i think you there yeah i think other topics on tiktok are getting spread
00:49:15.540with just as much misinformation and maybe just as much uh harm that's being done so i i hope that
00:49:23.060this uh event and the amount of attention that it's getting now that there's so much
00:49:28.140misinformation on TikTok is also going to lead to more research and more attention on the other
00:49:34.240forms of misinformation that are being spread there. Yeah, I'm so glad you added that. When we
00:49:40.060were talking about Rogan, it was so interesting to me that it was the, I mean, obviously it deserves
00:49:45.440a lot of attention, but the COVID misinformation, everyone was like agreed, no good. But the
00:49:52.800misinformation about trans people, that is also medical misinformation. That is also a public
00:49:57.260health issue. And that it's so interesting that mainstream people traffic in that kind
00:50:02.260of misinformation. You know, elected officials traffic in medical misinformation about trans
00:50:07.000people. And it's somehow we don't clock it the same way. And we should be questioning
00:50:12.040why that is and sit with that, you know, sit with that reality.