The Worldwide War on Truth - Operation InfeKtion (3) NY Times
Summary
TLDRThis video script discusses the pervasive issue of disinformation and its impact on society. It highlights the historical context of disinformation campaigns, dating back to the Cold War era, and how they've evolved with technology. The script emphasizes the importance of fighting back against these campaigns through fact-checking, media literacy, and critical thinking. It also calls for greater responsibility from social media platforms and the need for government intervention to combat the spread of lies and protect democracy.
Takeaways
- 😐 Disinformation campaigns have been a persistent issue since the Cold War era, with the US government historically underestimating their impact.
- 🗣️ The concept of 'truth squads' was introduced during the Reagan administration to combat disinformation, emphasizing the importance of truth and exposing falsehoods.
- 📉 Despite efforts to debunk myths like the AIDS conspiracy, such disinformation persists, indicating the difficulty in eradicating false narratives once they take root.
- 🌐 The spread of lies is a global issue, with various countries developing their own strategies to combat disinformation, including media literacy and active debunking.
- 📺 Some countries have integrated disinformation awareness into their media, with shows dedicated to exposing and debunking false stories.
- 🤔 The effectiveness of combating disinformation is complex and challenging, often likened to a 'whack-a-mole' game where lies continue to resurface.
- 📊 Repetition is a key factor in the spread of disinformation, as lies can become perceived as truth through constant repetition.
- 💡 Tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have a significant role in disseminating information and are increasingly being called upon to take responsibility for combating disinformation.
- 🏛️ There is a call for increased government regulation and oversight of social media platforms to ensure they are not complicit in spreading disinformation.
- 🌐 Democracies are particularly vulnerable to disinformation due to their openness and diversity, which can be exploited to sow confusion and discord.
Q & A
What is the main theme of the video script?
-The main theme of the video script is the fight against disinformation and propaganda, particularly highlighting the role of social media and the responsibility of tech companies in combating it.
What historical reference is made regarding the US government's initial response to disinformation?
-The script references that for the first 30 years of Russia's disinformation campaigns starting in the 1950s, the US government did not take it seriously and there was a lack of awareness about disinformation.
How did Ronald Reagan's administration approach disinformation?
-Ronald Reagan's administration believed in being bold and putting the truth front and center. They created the Active Measures Working Group and government truth squads to expose disinformation.
What was one of the significant disinformation campaigns mentioned in the script?
-One of the significant disinformation campaigns mentioned was the AIDS myth that claimed AIDS was created by the US government.
Why is fighting disinformation compared to a game of whack-a-mole?
-Fighting disinformation is compared to a game of whack-a-mole because no matter what actions are taken, the lies keep resurfacing, making it a never-ending and challenging task.
What is the role of social media platforms in the spread of disinformation according to the script?
-The script suggests that social media platforms, due to their business models, inadvertently promote the spread of disinformation because emotional and hyper-partisan stories drive engagement.
What steps could social media platforms take to combat disinformation?
-Social media platforms could improve transparency about who is paying for posts, fight anonymity, provide nutritional labels on sources, and punish violators more seriously.
What is the role of regulation in combating disinformation as per the script?
-The script implies that regulation is necessary to force social media platforms to change their practices and take more responsibility for the spread of disinformation.
How does the script characterize the current US government's response to disinformation?
-The script characterizes the current US government's response as inadequate and slow, suggesting that there is a lack of urgency and effective action to combat disinformation.
What does the script suggest about the future of disinformation?
-The script suggests that the problem of disinformation will get worse before it gets better, and that it requires a sustained effort to expose and combat it.
How does the script describe the impact of disinformation on democracies?
-The script describes disinformation as polluting the waters of democracy by confusing people and causing them to debate facts instead of discovering solutions, which weakens the democratic process.
Outlines
📢 The Fight Against Disinformation
The paragraph discusses the historical context and current state of disinformation campaigns, with a focus on the US government's response. It highlights the lack of awareness and action during the Cold War era, the role of Ronald Reagan in creating the Active Measures Working Group, and the ongoing challenge of combating disinformation. The paragraph also touches on the global nature of the problem, mentioning disinformation efforts from Russia, Myanmar, and Pakistan, and the personal experience of the filmmaker being targeted by such campaigns.
🌐 Learning From Eastern Europe
This section of the script explores how countries like Latvia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Estonia have been proactive in combating disinformation through various media and volunteer efforts. It contrasts this with the United States' more recent and reactive approach to disinformation, emphasizing the need for stronger media literacy, citizen engagement, and corporate responsibility from social media platforms. The paragraph also discusses the role of tech companies in potentially exacerbating the problem due to their business models and calls for regulation.
🏛️ Government Response and Leadership
The paragraph addresses the varying levels of government response to disinformation, from the Obama administration's focus on ISIS to the Trump administration's approach. It criticizes the lack of urgency and action from the US government, particularly in allocating funds and developing strategies to counter disinformation. The paragraph also discusses the internal threat of disinformation coming from the White House itself, with President Trump's role in spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories being highlighted.
🌍 Democracy and the Challenge of Disinformation
This final paragraph delves into the impact of disinformation on democracy, emphasizing the need for a shared set of facts for effective debate and policy-making. It discusses the vulnerabilities of open societies and the advantage that authoritarian regimes have in spreading disinformation. The paragraph concludes with a call to action, stating that the fight against disinformation is a long-term struggle that requires continuous effort and exposure of false narratives.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Disinformation
💡Active Measures
💡Truth Squads
💡AIDS Myth
💡Media Literacy
💡Social Media Platforms
💡Regulation
💡Digital National Guard
💡Conspiracy Theories
💡Fact-Checking
💡Information Warfare
Highlights
The importance of fighting back against disinformation campaigns.
The difference between bots and trolls in spreading disinformation.
Twitter's role in combating disinformation compared to other platforms.
The historical lack of awareness of disinformation in the US government.
Ronald Reagan's approach to confronting disinformation in the 1980s.
The creation of the Active Measures Working Group under Reagan.
The difficulty in debunking disinformation, exemplified by the AIDS myth.
The persistence of disinformation in popular culture and media.
The global nature of disinformation and its impact on public opinion.
The effectiveness of exposing disinformation as a defense mechanism.
The role of repetition in the spread of disinformation.
The comparison of disinformation strategies across different countries.
The example of Latvia's primetime show dedicated to debunking disinformation.
The need for stronger media literacy and critical thinking in the face of disinformation.
The responsibility of social media platforms in combating disinformation.
The potential solutions for social media platforms to address disinformation.
The challenge of regulating social media platforms to prevent disinformation.
The impact of disinformation on the functioning of democracies.
The role of strong leadership in fighting disinformation.
The current state of disinformation within the White House.
The long-term challenge of combating disinformation and the need for persistent efforts.
Transcripts
[Music]
it's time to fight back against this
information but these are the people
leading the charge can you please
explain to us the difference between a
bot and a troll does Twitter the same as
what you do you can look at a lot of
gray hair and realize that my technology
capabilities are very shallow not very
encouraging is it but this isn't the
first time the US government's been
asleep at the wheel on this how can we
compete with this English propaganda you
know now that Russia's been attacking
the u.s. like this since the fifties but
did you know that for the first 30 years
of that no one in the US government took
it seriously there was not a very high
awareness of disinformation or active
measures so there was a tendency to want
to keep the waters smooth they use all
the means of communication the thinking
when if you respond to a fake story he
dignify it I don't think we grasped it
intellectually then in 1980 a new cowboy
rode into town Ronald Reagan his point
of view was we ought to be bold we ought
to tell the truth truth ought to be put
front and center and that if somebody
were speaking the opposite we ought to
expose it presidents are very important
to the danger of espionage has added
active measures designed to subvert and
deceive to dis inform the public opinion
upon which our democracies are built
Reagan created the active measures
working group you know that government
truth squads which Kathleen Bailey led
from 1985 to 87 I came at the problem
believing that I could grab the tiger by
the tail and whirl it over my head I was
going to win they brought down the AIDS
myth operation infection one of the
greatest disinformation campaigns
ever created proof that the best defense
against this information is exposing it
well actually it's not that simple
decades later surveys have found that
millions of Americans still believe aids
was cooked up by the US government the
line lives on in our music on TV my
parents believed the government created
HIV in a lab and the CIA spreaded in the
prisons to kill blacks and gays in
comics on YouTube even in churches
vinash pathogens to hit selected groups
of humans fighting disinformation it's
like a nightmarish game of whack-a-mole
no matter what you do the lies just keep
which makes us wonder do we really stand
a chance against this information or is
this a virus that can never be cured
[Music]
Mark Twain once said a lie is halfway
around the world before the truth is
even thought it's boots on except even
that's a lie that quotes been attributed
to loads of people but whoever said it
was right we know now empirically that
lies do have an unfair advantage over
the truth spreading further and faster
gaining traction every time they're
repeated repetition is part of the game
and the more it's a bad story is
repeated repeated repeated repeated the
more real it becomes to everyone but
Twain's around the world part is also
true this is a global problem in a ran
the government's deploying their own
version of the Soviet playbook calling
their operation the FAQ which is Farsi
for discord
Myanmar's been brewing up endless
conspiracy theories to justify ethnic
cleansing and in Pakistan the
establishment sees CIA plots everywhere
that last one even instead one of our
own journalists here at the New York
Times an experience that was so
upsetting to him led him to make the
film you're watching right now isn't
that right Adam that's right I was
living in Pakistan al-qaeda accused me
of being part of a CIA anti Islam plot
see conspiracy theories are kind of like
a national sport over there and even
today I still get blasted on Twitter for
being either a CIA spy or a dead
terrorist wait a dead terrorist one of
the country's most popular TV talk show
hosts accused me of being one of the
attackers in a school massacre that
murdered dozens of children Here I am
dead in the Pakistani press but this
stuff is kind of normal over there I
mean it happens all the time what I
never imagined is that we'd be seeing
this kind of toxic disinformation here
at home in the States so is there
anything we can do I think so
I also used to live in Eastern Europe
Estonia Ukraine they lag behind us in
many things but when it comes to
fighting disinformation there's so much
we can learn from them for instance if
you turn on the TV in Latvia on a Sunday
night you'll see this a primetime show
all about Russian lies in the same slot
where we'd be watching American Idol
folks in Riga are tuning in to watch the
latest disinformation be systematically
described debunked and destroyed and
it's not just Latvia Ukraine has a
bilingual stop fake news show
broadcasted by dozens of TV stations
this information never stops and neither
do we welcome to stop fake the Czech
government monitors this information as
a form of terrorism Lithuania has
thousands of volunteers cyber warriors
they call them elves who relentlessly
troll the Russian trolls and in Estonia
there's a kind of digital national guard
thousands of volunteers who among other
things fight disinformation the
countries that have been exposed to this
the longest are the best of deal with it
they see things we don't see they smell
things we don't smell meanwhile back
here we're just learning the hard way
what happens when we don't fight back
the pizza gate conspiracy no journalist
was going to actively debunk that
because they didn't think anybody truly
believed that we now know that they did
and actually it seems that we should
have done more coverage during the
election that there was a rumor
circulating in any let's debunk it so
this is the prescription write
fact-checking
media literacy engage citizens rallying
around good journalism to create a
culture of critical thinking who weaken
media literacy is great and all but we
need something way stronger and for that
we've got to talk about the
responsibility of this guy
Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube they
were designed primarily by a group of
quite young people mostly men in on the
west coast of the US in Silicon Valley I
think there's a lot of people who went
into the tech industry was they're very
very good at tech not because they were
good at civics or political science and
they really believed that they were
building technology that would connect
the world I would actually be a positive
force in society
well not naivety eventually morphed into
flat-out denial you solemnly swear to
tell the truth but that forms have spent
years shamefully ignoring information
warfare the ads in post we are here
today to discuss a number of accounts we
could link to Russia relatively limited
comparatively small we're a very small
fraction of the overall content on
Facebook there's still a level of
astonishing kind of political and
cultural electricity where they think
connecting people is good so what
exactly are they supposed to be doing
well there's no silver bullet but there
are a ton of ideas for things they could
be doing from improving transparency
about who's paying for posts to fighting
anonymity is there a real person behind
this account is there a real person
behind this platform to helping us know
whether we can trust what we're reading
a nutritional label on sources in your
Google search findings and getting
serious about punishing violators we
didn't take a broad enough view of our
responsibility and that was a big
mistake and it was my mistake and I'm
sorry now companies like Facebook have
recently been taking some baby steps
along these lines but don't get your
hopes up social media platforms are
dependent on the emotional
hyper-partisan stories that make great
disinformation the bottom line their
business models are riddled with
perverse incentives if I'm Twitter and I
have shareholders to keep happy and I
have to go back to my shareholders and
tell them how many active monthly users
I have and the truth is that 22% of them
are not human I don't actually want to
tell my shareholders that I want to give
them a lovely big number that means that
we still have value and that we still
make money
and that's the problem asking just isn't
enough we've got to force the platform
to change and that means regulation
that's right it's time for Uncle Sam to
get in the game the problem is Uncle Sam
knows how to mobilize when we get
attacked like this but when the warfare
is digital well you know there are days
when I wonder if the Facebook friends is
a little misstated that doesn't seem
like I have those every single day how
many data categories do you store does
facebook store senator can you clarify
what you mean by date these are the
people who are supposed to be protecting
you from information warfare do you
store any senator I'm not actually sure
what that is referring to yeah so I've
testified five times to the Senate
either about terrorism or Russian acting
measures there is a very diverse level
of understanding of social media how
people say oh yeah because my 13 year
old son you should see how he uses it
now my son Charlie who's 13 is dedicated
to Instagram so I feel very fortunate
that I have not had to go to the house
to testify I think you'd be a giant
waste of time to dis inform the public
opinion upon which our democracies are
built history tells us that the fight
against this information starts with
strong leadership and I've got to tell
you we've been let down on this for a
long time now I'm not talking about him
just yet
I'm talking about him it was really hard
to get the above administration to take
Russia seriously as an issue we could
have looked at sanctions earlier we
could have talked about measured cyber
of counter attacks or even diplomatic
negotiations but that didn't really
happen the Obama administration kind of
got played into a box by recognizing a
too late
Obama actually signed an executive order
to counter foreign disinformation but he
was so obsessed with the threat from
Isis its mandate only covered terror
groups state actors like Russia were
free to carry on unimpeded
to his credit Trump actually reverse
this and some people in his
administration are talking tough Russia
is known for its disinformation
campaigns but the higher up you go let's
just say the less enthusiasm there is
the point is if it's their intention to
interfere they're going to find ways to
do that we can take steps we can take
but this is something that once they
decide they're going to do it is very
difficult to preemptive so what has been
done well Congress put aside 120 million
dollars to fund our defense against this
information the Trump administration sat
on it silently for 18 months and when
they did release it they gave just a
third of it
not much of a counter strike is it I
mean where's the urgency here these
Russian attacks were first plotted way
back in early 2014 and were only now
coming to grips with them we are still
playing catch-up from a long way behind
we are looking in the rearview mirror
getting less bad at working out what
Russia just did to us we're still not
looking through the windshield find out
what's happening right now and what's
gonna be happening next this is one of
the great unsolved policy questions of
our time a functioning government would
at least come together to publish full
detailed reports of all these attacks
[Music]
but the problem isn't just our
lackluster government it's actually much
scarier than that because now the threat
is coming from inside the White House
it's finally time to meet president
disinformation Donald Trump is a one-man
wrecking crew for the truth and he knows
all the moves first there's Trump the
denier and when it comes through this
information he even denies we're being
attacked and if it is Russia which is
probably not nobody knows who it is
nevermind what his own officials say a
manipulation outright lies literally up
their game to the point where it's
having a significant impact
then there's Trump the useful ideas this
is a man who's never met a conspiracy
theory he wouldn't tweet why doesn't he
show his birth certificate you look at
what's happening last night in Sweden
Sweden the same person votes many times
you probably heard about that they
always like to say oh that's a
conspiracy if they're not a conspiracy
theory folks we also know he shared
stories originally planted by the
Kremlin I mean not even the KGB could
have dreamt up a useful idea as
prominent and powerful as Trump and his
administration and then there's Trump
the disinformation natural he doesn't
just regurgitate this stuff he invents
his I there was the biggest electoral
college win since Ronald Reagan there's
a lot of wiretapping being talked about
we've signed more bills and I'm talking
about through the legislature than any
president ice we have become an energy
exporter for the first time ever just
recently it's good but this is somehow
worse than the Cold War thank Ben it was
just us versus them but now it's us
versus them and us versus us
here's the thing about democracies they
can't function unless we all agree on a
basic set of facts we can't debate
anything health care immigration gun
control unless we're aligned left and
right about what is actually true this
information pollutes those waters
confusing us so we end up debating facts
instead of discovering solutions and as
we spiral downwards together our
adversary's applauded from behind the
curtain and here's the kicker the things
that make democracy good living in an
open society with a free press and
political diversity those are the things
weirdly that make us vulnerable any
country with an authoritarian leader and
limited freedom of speech they're the
ones with the advantage right now which
kind of raises the question that maybe
only history can answer can the good
guys ever win
you absolutely never win never this
problem is gonna get a lot worse before
it gets any better the next few years
are gonna be worse than the last few
years and they will continue using it
regardless of what we say in the
discussion regardless of the outcome of
the discussion and investigation but we
will not always be losers in this game
there will be victories here and there
it's only when we quit the game quit
trying to expose them that we lose as
long as we can expose them they're
losing it's like an exhausting
never-ending game of whack-a-mole but
we've got no choice but to play we've
got to fight this information as best we
can whenever and wherever it raise its
ugly head we're in this for the long
haul whether we like it or not this was
the largest audience to ever witness an
inauguration morning the president
strongly feels that there was a large
amount of voter fraud the 9/11 hijackers
are alive and well people who are
behaving like actors the murder rate in
our country is the highest has been in
47 years you had the NATO base of turkey
being under attack by terrorists this is
the greatest overreach and the greatest
abuse of power this video that you link
to appears to be a hoax all we did was
put out what he had on his Internet
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