The "Disinformation Experts", Zuckerberg's AI Problem, DeSantis Bans Social Media For Kids & More
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The statistics i've seen or just for the twitter platform, they they responded to about thirty percent of the things that we sent them.

If it's not just direct information, the segment is a really good piece of propaganda. The right wing is behind all of the this information on social media today, but not one example of this information that makes the left look bad.

How is SHE an expert at this information? I studied every single day. So are you guys? I just want to know who decide that these people are.

These people are just mad.

I don't know. It's like I want to have fun with this topic. These people are fucking evil, and I just am over.

What's up, guys? Welcome back to the pod. We have another bagging for you this week. I want to start right at the gate with this wild sixty minutes segment on disinformation.

Now the disinformation researcher is an archetypal type annoying person on the internet we've talked about for years, reported about for years, covered in the context mostly of our kind of social media giants. Um these people gained a lot of power throughout covet and really during the last election, a lot that was shattered when elon took over twitter. They must be sorry I saw them like run out of the out of the office with peach box of the lie.

And certainly all of the crowd on twitter was sharing for their departure. They still kind of do IT exist um in the context of like other social media companies in may be more hidden context and also this the media s relentlessly reaching out to them for comment um in effort I think so you get the government to do something about wrong thing. But a lot of this interview are a lot of this segment, I think is interesting for a handful of reasons. I just first write out of the gate I love brand in who um SAT down in a really studied the content to can break IT down for us here today before we start a conversation.

Um yeah so sixty minutes the a the television program just ran a basically like a thirty minute segment and IT was pretty much a post mortem on the twenty twenty election and misinformation and um how social media platforms responded to misinformation. Kate starbird starbird was um clearly one of the stars of of the segment. She's actually a former stand for a baseball player, and now he is a professor, university of washington. And SHE actually appeared to be involved in the twitter files. SHE was like one of the people sending twitter information like our posts and telling them that this was misinformation.

He was one of the bad guys.

SHE was one of the bad guys, according to us. yes. So the second also included jim Jordan, who's the the conservative judiciary, and two other experts that were kind of similar to kate starbird. The message of the piece really is that conservatives in the right wing is are are behind misinformation and because of layoffs and indirectly, elon, there is now way more information misinformation then there used to be um but when you you watch the piece, you or when I watch the piece, I should say IT kind of felt to me that the six minute segment was itself kind of a piece of misinformation um for example, there's they have an example of of a piece misinformation and it's a tweet with a two images to AI generated images of like joe biden and done on trump being friendly and they're like this is misinformation and it's a tweet with two likes and i'm pretty sure the captain of the tweet is is like sort of indirectly saying he knows that these images are AI right and there's many such examples throughout the piece. So if it's not just direct misinformation, the segment, it's it's kind of a really good piece propaganda um and yeah, that's kind of the segment within the segment. This lady name kate starter who you pulled out on on twitter, uh SHE says that twitter only responded the thirty percent of her companies or nonprofits a reports about misinformation, which kind of seems like a lot, quite Frankly.

the statistics i've seen or just for the twitter platform. But I my understanding is, is that they're responded to about thirty percent of the things that we sent them. And I think on the majority of those, they put labels, but just a third.

just the third. But again, I think important context areas. She's talking about the a twenty twenty election, which is pre line, and they kind of take that all the way up to now and say that now the problems way worse because of elan and all these social media companies of like layoff h their staff of fact checkers and stuff.

And I will say one more thing is that they only use inform. They only use, they actually do use like legit examples of this information from the White right wing. But not one example of this information that makes that the left look bad like I noticed that they don't mention j butcha at all, like not once, which like if you were doing an honest piece of reporting on misinformation during the twenty twenty campaign cycle and covered, you would definitely have to mention jay, there is nowhere to .

be found so you mean to apologize for accusing .

him of what you would say this is how um so so the piece again is like it's worrying about the state of this of like misinformation research and misinformation in general and they're showing how the right wing is behind all of the misinformation on social media today but the fact of the matter is you have on the left during covet jay bta chari a being shadow and and censored and like this has to be told as a part of that story and not this is.

I think so they refused to grapple with what we really saw throughout coffee, which was this insane power grab that they totally then abuse once they had the power to thanks to the internet, which they achieved by IT. Was really kind of you a very small class of people in silicon valley who control all of these apps and they are ideal gc ally very the same.

So it's not really that hard to IT were wasn't really that hard for these people to capture the machines of of speech basically throughout the entire country. They use those to the sensor things that they've considered to be dangerous. Now if I want to steal, man, I don't know if I don't know that people will steal many this.

They genuinely do seem to believe that trump is dangerous and therefore centering things that he believes and says and argues for is considered a mitigation of danger. But this is, of course, and I I feel, you know, we always are hammering this. We go back to IT again and again, at least I feel like I always do, but I just, we have to keep doing IT because they keep fighting for these powers.

The problem with the disinformation conversation is multifaceted. The first places women calls her self an expert. why? How is he an expert at this information? I studied every single days. So do you guys. We live online where professional, like writers and researchers, we're putting out pieces are we experts and disinformation. I put IT in my twitter bile because I think that I am um I think after the question of expertise, there is the question of one as brand and you mentioned there are there are examples of misinformation in both directions.

And you kind of if you only cover one, your necessarily biasing where you're ort of naturally biasing the entire conversation and it's like what are you kind of not consider to be this information just because of your bias? Like what you what are you missing in that conversation? There's a lot there.

I do think that this information exists, and I do think the deep picks up particular or something we need think about. But the solutions are all so much worse than the problem, right? The medicine there is lethal. Their solutions are always power and control and only take you to talk.

And it's like I almost at that point, how could you possibly care about the problem, the dangerous problem of political misinformation, when their solution is to destroy the political system that we have all grown up under? And that's what that would do when you take an entire spectrum of thought off the table. That is not amErica anymore.

That is something much more scary. And I don't know. It's like I want to have full with this topic, but these people are fucking evil and I just over IT saga, what do you you think .

of so I don't watch the sixty minute segment and I have to confess um I just saw the clip circulating on twitter of kate um and honestly, I mean they are evil and they are you know just what I think well they're not there's just like this like mike i've had in the past of this is like this whole monitor class of like totalitarian minded people who sort of get off on controlling everyone else's speech um my take away from the clip though is just like kate starbird has the physician omy of a disinformation.

It's like she's like her haircut. Her glass is not do you know come for someone's appearance but I think you know SHE SHE just I think one of the the reasons why that clip blew up so much on on twitter because IT kind of just epitomizes whatever one imagined. And they think about like the person who's sending angry messages to twitters like trust and safety team, and telling them to remove, you know, the post, the the deep fake of biden and trump, I don't know, like shaking hands or something.

They have this. I do. I would love them to address these because the event, mosque twitter is their new trump, at least until trump picks up steam.

I don't know if that will ever happen this election cycle. I actually a giant question mark. There might just be already the boring election.

I think we've talked about that on this podcast before. But elan is there because he's the big bad and because he's so scared, he took away their censorship barada. He said, no, you have to listen to people who don't agree with they lost their minds because of this. They're never forgiven him because of IT. They're on td talking about that.

They are absolutely obsessed um because of that they let slide entire really like bubbling conspiracy y theories about him and about really more important to me, the platform I saw one and wired just this week I was not even about twitter right IT was about the bridge collapse. They were making fun of all the conspiracies that were going around blaming twitter for IT naturally as if people aren't saying bad things or wrong things before ella must took over twitter a year ago, as if we haven't all been complaining about twitter for the past ever. Um they in that article say something like this problem has gotten worse because now you can buy a blue checkmark and artificially amplify anything that you tweet and they linked some like that.

I live on twitter that's not accurate. Let me just see what they're linking to here. They just linked to another article of theirs also not about twitter IT was about some other random topic.

But in that article they just make this claim about twitter blue check verification amplifying content, which is not linked. IT was like they just linked to a story where they also made this up and of their own of wires. And it's just like a complete that that is misinformation.

That's not true. That does not exist. That is not how the verification system works.

It's not why it's in place. We have no evidence at all that this is happening. Certainly, I see people believing this.

Cris swish er and don lemon, well, I think they were talking more about the amplico, but i've seen some of the other journalists that I want to mention her name. I feel like I talk about this one too much. I have seen prominent journalists talk about the amplification that is happening now under elon musk.

This is this one is a very specific thing, right, that you can buy. This is not just like, so I think he's amplifying IT. You can literally go and you can buy this enable your bad information will be amplified.

Not true. And there's no one sort of policing that and they don't care. And these are the people who are supposed to be policing this information. And IT is, of course, again, it's in it's almost there is A A humiliation involved in having to take their their own identity seriously like they have assumed the identity of the moral Alberta, the good person who is going to who, who has their heart in the right place, who is who is really just trying to get to the truth, the matter. We're obviously just in a state of political war, always have been.

And um I am frustrated by this continual sort of insistance on their part that we have to kind of enter their frame and talk them in this way. It's like we already know if we've hold the curtain back. We saw the twitter files.

We know who you are. You're just trying to sense people for political purpose. You're not doing that anymore, at least not until they ask e on which who knows? And that's that river. What do you think?

Yeah I mean, these people are just odds who went to college and it's do they think it's some sort of qualification IT IT is really desire to me um I I just .

wanted know who decides like .

that these people are legitimate you me there's no this is just a random lady who is a professor who has some sort of a research group with that expected my name and the sixty map is it's true.

I notice that .

um this isn't a government agency which I mean, I didn't like the FBI email and twitter trying to get stuff taking down either. But I mean at the very least, it's it's the FBI. It's not just a random people who have declared themselves experts.

It's really FBI also is accountable to us. I mean, I know yes, not actually practice yes, like they're supposed sive like you could maybe petition your representatives to do something about that. Where is some random woman with, as sergeant said, like the safety is or the sort of disinformation expert .

haircut right? exactly.

Yeah I don't understand that I thought about this a one um for facebook so a couple years few years back when for started reading about this yeah the twitter on one side but the facebook censorship of ada was really interesting because during the hundred biden laptop fisco the way they got out of that were like, oh yeah this is we've sent this onto our third party of specialists and experts to review IT um whether jack was really in the sake of the fight on all of that getting pounded, attacked um they were twitter where hq was trying to defend little things.

They actually were not even as aggressive in some parties as start other places um we never heard back from facebook on what their third party group of fact checkers decided. Or my question was like who are these people? How are you deciding who's getting this job? Um like you said, river, like what are what are their credentials? If you could even what is the credit you could even even study for something like this. I maybe all can of way. The information.

and I is true. What is not? There will be a major, it'll be like this information or like morning B A, there will y'll make them put up information integrity.

yeah.

Like real, honestly surprised IT isn't like a degree because like this is an actual like being a mod like for twitter or remember whatever like is kind of a job. I know I think they outsource lot of IT to india.

but I we learned in the google story, I don't know. It's true. Every single company holds a lot of the stuff close to the chest.

But a google trust and safety in the context of the A, I, P, that was very different than the a, what was the R A, the R A I team, which I think what the r stands for. But I like R A. That's the AI safety m um team.

And trust and safety was more like, let's make sure there's not any self harm content on here. Let's make sure there's not any like kids or anywhere sex stuff like that's what they were focused on. And then R I I was like, how do we work our ideological framework about the world into this massively important search engines? So everybody agrees with us.

Um and there is A I think a uh a tug there, tug and pull there. I don't know what the phrases, I think some of this stuff is legitimate, right? Like we don't want any of that trash on these platforms.

A lot of it's illegal. Most of that I think is illegal. Um the stuff that the trust and safety team is looking out for and twitter shoe has a team of people doing that.

And um I know that kind of like is that a legal or not just yes, now and you get rid of IT and you don't need to be like an expert of that. Where you need to be an expert is on the nuances of what left his opinion needs to be protected today. And that's what was happening under the last, the last sort of order at twitter.

I do want to talk a little bit of a facebook because theyve had a wild week this week um or wild k in the news, let's say, uh, ton of cool A I stuff which we ve worked about a little bit in pieces res at least in the takes, boers getting fooled by AI generated images. And I would love for I know you had a branded europe really early to the story. I want you to kind of Walkers do that the second and then the reduction of news on instagram, which is very closely related to this conversation. So um what is skip straight to the weird day I should you're seeing on facebook and then I want to get .

into the news thing and and people on twitter last week were scandalized by, I think this was like one viral post that appeared IT was a post that had two images, maybe one of which was portrayed old people looking at cake, right? I think something like that clearly A I generated to maybe there was another one. I had noticed this trend a few weeks back looking at facebook and IT is true.

And the news feed is full of AI generated pictures of, like I noticed cabinet. Now like now you just see here a lot of like really clearly fake cabin. Some of them look like castles.

Now, people just commenting, champing out on them in the comments section of just loving the cabin, loving this day, I generated carbs. This, like caught on on x last week, and people were like, all, you know, like facebooks, really bad now, you know, but I think I don't know. I had this taken the daily, I probably did.

But my take on IT was just like, look, I mean, how is this any different from stupid memes about fishing or means about guns or god that had previously invaded the feed on facebook? So I was kind of like I always has been thing, at least in my perspective. But now um the the the mean page creators are just using A I and it's just cheaper probably to produced than just finding and reusing old means this mean page two point no on facebook .

that would say .

I think yes.

But do they think that the cakes are real? Yeah ah okay.

Well.

guess that's a little bit. Nobody is like this. Cake is a real.

Everyone is like cake .

yeah. I mean, I don't know. I guess maybe we should discuss how, like why is this uniquely bad? I mean, it's all trash content.

This is the right yeah people talk about this specific question may have been for years when he comes the political deep pics. And the only defense that i've heard that is even a little bit compelling is there is going to be so much fake information that looks real on the internet.

IT will be all a bit right, is just complete superabundance of that kind of information, just fake pictures of everyone that, you know, doing every manner of crime, every celebrity with every i'm already seeing all sorts of celebrities hopping up on instagram that are just like A I generated celebrities and just like keeps popping up and like what is going on with this and they care be OK with that. They'll be so much of IT that we will learn to believe nothing. And maybe that's just a hard head space for us to get into.

But I I think that's the only way that we get out of IT. IT does feel like a problem. It's IT. Also, you don't usually talk about the good part of this, like I look at those AI generated homes and let's table the food for a minute.

But when I think about just gna practical use case for this, the AI generated cabinet and homes and things I really would love to be like generate the city block for me in the way that I should work, and tell me then how to build IT and how much a costs given, like the constraints s that we have right now today. Tell me why cost so much, tell me how to produce the cost once we're able to visualize yet crazy, there's this crazy part of what's going on. But just focusing on what we're building right now, it's really cool.

Is this ability to visualize almost anything that is also closer than ever to a form of search that is able to immediately tell us how to create these things in the real world, which feels cool. And I I I wonder, I I can go in two ways. I was looking at zuker er getting criticize for not doing enough maximum m today.

And I was looking at all of these um maximum st architectural landscape that were I generated and I thought, okay, so either one I get what I want, which is these tools for visualization Better enable us to create this thing in the real world. Or two, slightly to topia version. We become so flooded with the coolest things ever that we can quite build, that IT just burns is out generally, and we do nothing. But I don't know. I, I, I want to stick to the former until see evidence for the letter.

I mean, bookers, so kind of always been full by this sort of thing to like. I remember my grandma showing me like clearly photoshop images, obama smoking a plan like, I don't know dressed up like, uh, like, I have been more like sending from the ice is flag or whatever. Like, I don't ve always kind of been this way. And at least now it's kind of cute like they're looking at cakes and um babies and up or whatever instead of like I don't know, red bit like a political .

content because for now, yeah i'm sure that change what you said so that I did get relates this interesting unfortunate point which is that the kid starts of the world are right about something kind of which is that people are believing a lot of crazy, stupid should but like they always have and that is because most people are not very bright and they believe really stupid things and we kind of always seen this um it's not actually I don't see evidence that people are voting for Donald trump, for example, for like tell me the misinformation what misinformation is the reason they want to vote for him? I think the reason that they voted for him in twenty sixteen, the reason he was the president, is because of immigration and that wasn't misinformation.

That was like we had an immigration problem. Only one person was talking about IT that's all anybody was talking about uh, on the pro trump side back then and he he won because of IT. He didn't win because of this information and he didn't lose in twenty twenty because of this information.

So I don't I don't like yeah like there's A A A lot of stupid things and it's getting worse um in terms of there's more bit, but I don't know. I just I really don't see the evidence just yet. I think there are these these negative tail risks that I have written about a writ of peace called jump and that kind of addresses this.

There is a way that this becomes really bad, really fast, I think covered misinformation, pretty much shut the world down. So like leftist information, i've seen some pretty terrible impacts of. But in general, i'm not really scared of the giant cake star brand that I cut off there.

I wasn't gonna say, like I think there's first off a distinction between the cakes and for example, celebrity hooking up that never hooked up um one as a real world impact and I don't see the cakes having any impact at all and the other the other thing I was gna say was what did you know what is luck to do about A I cakes I mean I think I think that should label, if it's possible, deep fakes and things involving people.

If they're A I generated, there should be you know a label that this is A I generated. But I don't know um how fruit fall or how much like how much like virtuous or why there would be on on spending a lot of money trying to identify pictures of cake as as are they A I, are they not A I? I don't see the concern with this specific issue really, but i'm happy to happy for somebody to argue against that. I just don't I can't see IT why don't .

think anyone cares about a cake that right is like this, the political stuff they're worried about, which is maybe why maybe it's not just oh, political news makes everybody miserable and the political people are the most annoying and obsessed with the misinformation question. So we're going to get rid of news which facebook is now doing there they are the amplifying news content um maybe it's just this question.

They're like actually there is no solution to this problem other than to not play the game. There's no winning move out. They're not to play.

There's going to be so much bad misinformation. We're going to go to attack solar lindy's y we're going to be blamed for the election to matter what happens. Fuck IT. We're out. You can no longer unless you super dupper like go tio content preferences and tag off three things in triple opted into getting blasted with bad takes from the washington post. You're not getting any news content um maybe that is the dynamics that's happening there and actually sure the dynamic yeah, I think .

that's what's up. The success doesn't want another twenty sixteen. They everybody blamed him for trump and he's just like, no, i'm not doing that. A very sink spirity theory about that that is somehow related to israel.

by the way oh my god, I know I mean, everything is believing is real political pressure and kind of person. Before I move on, I want to give cause brand you sort of our line that I think i'd love to hear from river, I am handing you the keys to the castle at facebook. Um what did you do about the deep fake problem?

I wouldn't do anything honestly because the bombers will find a way. As I said, they're gonna be trick to be tricked by photoshop. They'll be trick and the clinton body count stuff that everybody like talking about a relation to like this information.

And uh, twenty sixteen that originated in the nineties, like the original list, was created by a woman in like nineteen ninety five or something. So this sort of stuff has been happening forever. The most pernicious ous stuff that can be done with A I uh like A I deep fake porn and and all that all that is that's what the content is banned by meta anyway. So you know, I feel like any fits know Jennifer and stan and uh the rock like holding hands or whatever that I mean, maybe they don't like that but I don't think it's like the end of the world um but it's not going to be you know a porno with like a thirteen year old like girls face on or whatever is like that. The actual thing that I think is I can tolerable about A I like something is going have to be done about, but all the other stuff, I mean, I think is here to stay and they're really isn't that much that you can do about that.

I feel like this is just part of is like the DNA of the information environment and always husband that I think that this is truly just humans struggling with. The fact that means travel like virus is yes, at a and now we're dealing with that on a global scale and a super sped up scale compared to our ancestors. And it's just a it's just a it's a divulged thing to deal with on on both sides of the political spectrum.

I think that the problem is the problem that we're dealing with that IT poses good things and bad things. But well, it's the internet. It's not A I is the internet.

I think it's exactly right. This is what I in jump. This is like really my premise is that just being able to spread any kind of information rapidly, good or bad, is new at the very least.

And that means that IT, we've never been able to do this before. And so it's going to have some kind of consequence. Um I think think about think about code.

Had cove IT happened without the internet, had had cove IT happened in one thousand ninety five, what are really the odds that the entire world would have shut down the way that I did with IT? A matter of what? Like a month, and all the countries didn't IT exactly the same time, zero percent chance.

The reason that happened was because we were all consuming the exact same information at the exact same time. And so we meet the exact same wrongs, in my opinion, set of decisions. And with the exception, I think was IT, was IT sweden that I think kind of when it's only way got less sweden. The weird that where is the country that we were supposed to be obsessed to, all good liberals. We're supposed to be obsessed with sweden up until like covet and then the descript, the lipped and they are the enemy now um by anyway yeah that that is the nature of the internet I think um run scientists social media ban um florida is doing something about the whole machine IT seems a river you have into this once you break down the story for .

us and and give us your cake yes so tuesday uh run the scientist sign H B three which is a band that bans everyone under fourteen from using social media in fourteen and fifteen year old have to get parental concept to use IT IT also is effectively a point ban uh any sight that more than one third of the content is a quote harmful to minors which is basically porn I guess core sites aren't even know if they are still around. That's like a figment of my use.

Um what is the gore side?

Fortune sely fortune probably gore sites .

like um something off or I I don't know like lively which I don't think lively because around anymore but like we you could find like ice is spared adding videos I was .

in high school and you were .

call yeah um those will be done if more than one third of the material um is of this harmful to by uh variety. There is like a closing that works as that IT has to be intentionally distributed. And I think that may be a car bet for twitter.

I'm not completely sure we actually reached out to try to get clarification, not responded yeah um because twitter I don't know, it's a third I have accounted. But there is a lot of point on twitter. It's kind they're pretty good about willing at all. Like if you don't follow those accounts, you won't really see IT, but it's definitely there.

And so it's uh, you can exercise SE of you under eighteen and if you they actually have to verify, unlike social media, I think you can kind of just why um if you're like thirteen and one of facebook or whatever, but with these porn sides and maybe x you actually have to verify your age um using some sort of third party verification and uh similar other states have passed laws like targeting porn sites like texas, utah, necessarian others and what's happened as a porn have a porn a pulled out and and also searches for V P S and stuff have exploded. So I think that um I think porn hubble problem and sites like that will probably just pull out. Um I am interested to see what happens with x though um is still unclear but that would be kind of crazy if I had to like senate my drivers' license tweet probably .

be the end of well will be the end of spam. I mean, yeah, that's an interesting solution. They were forced to do something that I actually got of spam in the UK did this with porn um I don't believe I might correct. I'm around this, but i'm pretty sure you can look up porn in the U K.

You can but they that ministry as you can but they have weird laws on, like what you're allowed to post, like a lot of B, D, S, M. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very, as we very, the nila porn.

I died by that. Hard to believe my bread.

I don't know.

U. K, porn laws. Let's look IT up for the good having .

shared you lived in the U K. Right song I don't you you were watching .

there but I didn't .

I honestly had yeah I had not come across any point laws there. I mean, I don't I hadn't heard of any um.

I'm seen piece on them trying but fAiling to age gate pornography .

just the same as like um the .

R P there wants many, many years ago before I was in a relationship and I remember I not saying I looked at porn. I'm saying someone who I know may have looked at tried to look at porn in the U. K.

And they were not able to do so so that is where I am drawn this from but I do see about your articles here twenty ninety and the U K. Porn block explained um and wired twenty twenty three the vergers report in U. K. Was again to H G. Point and maybe it's fAllen out with laws would not started.

Yes, I see. So I think the way IT works in the U S, if you go into a port site, the landing page can show you explicit content and then you have feel like verify IT seems from what i'm seeing this is like something that can train nineteen. You have to um say you you're over eighteen. I don't know if that requires like showing an idea or something um but lots of questions about on red to ask.

U. K, I wondered how much the increased muslim population in the U. K. Is contributed to the political viability of something like this in the U. K. So this is a way more conservative group of people who are coming in, who are actually very interested in shaping society. Um just really thought I .

IT might be that, or I might be. The U. K.

Also has like a fairly radical feminine movement. The unison have this. We see a lot like the turf stuff. And a lot of the people also very, very ety port. It's a very old school sort of feminism.

It's kind of dad here anti porn, anti trends. They are generally lesbian ans though there a lot of or not all of them, but a lot of famous lesbian in turns in the U. K still those lesbian turns those left by terms.

Do you have a lot in common with radical islamic fundamentalists? Um which is just instantly it's like that belt band IT is just like IT is IT never fails. Uh, what yeah I mean, what is where is the where's the push to ban social media for kids coming from my articles you have, on one hand, the end of this stuff is addictive.

On the other hand, of the ideas that are being disseminated or bad. I've looked at the evidence on the addiction thing, and I going into fights about this online before. The evidence seems inconclusive to me IT IT feels true, right? Like you use IT, you kind of feel that it's true.

Uh, but I have not seen that. I just i've seen IT mix. I've seen evidence in both directions from the studies that I looked at. I did look at them a couple of years ago. There might have been some major city scene that I haven't seen um and the ideas I mean ideas have always been bad, but the internet in that way maybe just I don't know something there not ready to grab to .

grap with what you guys think yeah I mean I am like a grown man and twitter like like other that makes me election sometimes so yeah I I totally get IT.

But on the a lot of the things .

that people have a problem with more problems before social media, like the body image stuff, I mean that the peak of anorexia was like in the nine days. um. I think it's probably not great for kids to be on their phones all the time. I I don't really think it's great for anybody. But when I think all these kids just get IT, they're are going to get D P ends or they are going to find a way around that means these were raised on ipad, like is there's no way that they're going just like take this line and down and if they really want to get an instagram or whatever.

And I also think that there's something to be said for parents taking control, like why does the stay afford to think they control? They can control like the behavior of kid when their own parents can't, like the parents don't want you to have social media like there in the best position do that because they there are the ones who can make sure that you can get A P P N. And once that you can make sure that you don't have the instagram out on your fonder whatever.

Well, can you make the argument about cigarettes too, though, unless you're maybe making I think you might be might be making the argument in favor of twelve year old smoking, but I think you should we be consistent yeah I mean.

I still got cigarettes when I was under range but you I mean, boy parents found them. They like through them away um yeah I mean, I guess you can make that argument, but. I don't it's just so ingrained now like you know, I mean, we're talking about we're talking about fourteen and fifteen old. It's gotten be the vast majority of the more on social media, and I don't know that was over the case. The vast majority of fourteen year old are smoking cigarettes.

you know yeah um there was that craze over baking for a while um but and and the makati addiction did go up during at the beginning of the the banana of vapor culture.

I think it's am so I I wanted defend text off in general, social matty is harder and harder to defend and I think it's very telling that there is really not a no one, no liberator even is making the argument of, oh, we can't ban social media for teenagers because if we do that, they won't be able to x like there's there's no positive use case that we're really worried about people losing access to. Um there's only this potential huge asset tric downside and that feels like a pretty bad thing. Even there were when I was in high school, I was the early two thousands.

So there were a versions of social media right before I was like, right before facebook was created. I want to college, and facets created them. I was like, message or ten things. And there was one that, like, everyone of my school was on. And even though he got really toxic, really fast and IT wasn't ever really clear what the upside to talking to these people in that way was. Um I did find a lot of upside talking to strangers on the internet, especially about comic books and just like learning about different cultures and making friends online, is that I think there were things that I loved about IT.

But I don't know you .

think over the years all the really optimistic, excited, idealistic arguments in favour of this stuff that connecting the world and what does that mean in what now they've just been replaced by the horr of what IT means to live in a connected world. And it's just it's difficult to grapple with someone who wants IT again. I I really do want to a see IT from the bright side, I don't know. So that is a case for optimism. Perhaps I am actually .

basically in favor of the ban. I mean, I don't see why I I do you agree with the river like I think kids are going to find a way to get around IT. You they'll find a way if they can find a way to get like fake ideas pretty easily a to buy alcohol, things like that like they're probably find a way to verify their age and get a VPN that that stuff.

But I just don't really see the kind of like broader positives that most thirteen and fourteen year old are getting out of being on instagram. Honestly, you're even on youtube in a lot of cases, except for maybe educational like I know so many cases of kids who have been like not necessarily groomed online but definitely sort of had strange conversations with you know we are adults a on social media. There's all these cases .

of I was that kid, I was that kid having strange conversations. We I mean and .

IT makes sense. Like if you've got like these these thirteen year old who are posting like smr videos or become instagram fluency, obviously you you'd hope that most of the people watching member their peers, but at the end of the day, there's going to be a lot of of weirdos.

And I think if we if the ban can actually like, I guess i'm pessimistic that you'll actually get enough of them off of social media because I do think so many you're going to find workarounds. But if there can be a paradise shift, we're like social media becomes this adult thing um and which I think IT should be. And kids kind of have to wait, tell them like eighteen um when you can like buy packs of cigarettes and you know twenty one you can start drinking and you can make an instagram account or something. I think that would be good um because I just think IT leads to like brain rock especially when you you're still developing you know your tensions span.

The internet would be lots undergoing to because you want to have like fourteen old hip hop stands. Oh go, you're driver .

only wonder how much of my misery on twitter is really just exist by virtue of me arguing with children and not realizing IT like it's they're not stupid. They're just their brains aren't developed yet and I don't realize that i'm talking to a child because they're anonymous. Um so what you were just saying about really you're talking about the over exposure, just the exposure in general of your kids to the world. You reminded me of a topic that you raised river, uh, about the tary, the kid actor documentary um uh.

quite on yes.

I I mean IT IT seems we all grew. I grew up knowing that to be a child actor was dangerous, kind of bad. I know my mom would talk about this um because I want you to be an actor and he was like fucking on my taking no additions so like that's a night those kids go there to be destroyed like never not a million years um and he is right.

I can mean just like how many child actors have survived is very, very, very few. I mean literally survived quite a bit. But how many of them survived intact emotionally intellectuality?

Just like as a human being, not many um in a sense, social media is sort of turned any kid on social media， potentially a celebrity now and that's crazy. I don't know why we just allow that to happen. River, did you want to maybe break and a little with your thoughts on that documentary and just maybe this topic in general?

Yeah ah so the documentation is about Nicole otian and all the various abuses that went on there I mean they had legit put inside who were kids the most famous of them was a trade bell from drinking josh uh, who was not a dia dialogue um who was on the set of those shows um it's kind of all sender around the dance gender is a guy who created the AManda show with AManda ying shoes didn't participate the documentary but had a very troubled life shows that conservative ship breakdowns all that um he also created I hardly chicken josh basically like every big nickelodeon show of my childhood and um yeah he's kind of free he that he was never accused by anyone in the documentation of direct molestation but he did have a weird relationship with his feet e employees where he was we d like birthday and back give my sages kind of like standard b two stuff but then the weird stuff was he clearly has a food fetish and he was like there's all these clips and like I carly and stuff for the girls are like smiling peano button on their feet and like coding IT looks like fetish content um and there's famously A A video area on the ground who was on one of the shows cat sam. I think where she's like holding a potato and like she's like i'm trying to get to set of the potato and she's like yeah and then like pouring water herself and like squealing IT like IT looks like soft core porn IT shows like fourteen or fifteen and if so, it's really disturb like a retrospect. Um all that was like odd nicolovius like supposedly four kids um when I member .

I would be our kids and I didn't like IT. I wonder how much this is us as adults looking. I mean I point taken on weirdos and but I do what are sometimes like of our gated adult lens. Looking at this stuff is part of the problem.

Here I will show you some of the video is like, I feel like it's pretty undeniable that I mean, because it's not kids like guy directing this who behind the scenes was always making like a bunch of like in like the writers with other adults always making a bunch of sex jokes and like kind of a part like known is kind of like a pervy guy so I I think that combined with the videos, kind of you know that the emblem for nicotian used to be a foot was a foot at one point.

It's all that's .

not mean weird. What channels is on was .

the streaming. It's I max， I think a discovery produced yeah, that's good.

What do you have make of my thought that perhaps we have turned all of our country into celebrities via social media?

Well, yeah, that's true. And I think like the kids are, probably there's a lot of stuff like on the see on tiktok where i'm like it's .

a little bit different .

because the kids are making IT but it's also like, oh, I know there's like perverts and this comment you know I mean and it's kind of sad like because no, I doesn't even .

uh because I have a public instagram account and I get a bunch of a lunch of crazy people on twitter follow me. You may let me post pictures of our needs are my nees and navy anymore and I just kind of completely immediately, totally understood that is there's not really a good reason to have any public facing account with pictures of your kids on IT and um that's just I don't know the world that we live in and maybe that's that's kind of like always win the world that we live in and I don't know how we like lost that lesson.

How do we as I am a child of the eighties, okay, I grew up, my mom was worried about they're being glass in baby food and like katty snatch and um halloween Candy with razor blades and a lot of this stuff was just complete misinformation. Speaking of a separation, like getting all of those stories out of the Kitty natural one um but those are things that we were afraid of like we were we I curb kind of like afraid of the rest of the world was terrifying and people were trying to kill me and um I don't know how we lost that lesson at the very moment that I became extra easy for the rest of the world to hurt you by way of you know super exposing yourself of things I do want to switch you're slightly and talk about this amazing piece, you're santa. On the topic of the kids and people who are really trying to hurt our kids. Let's talk about joe boller.

joe bowler. I mean, so the context for this, I think a lot of viewers will have heard of this one n algebra happening in california um which began in sentence as go as many things do back in twenty fourteen when the school district decided to make a Mandatory to take algebra one in eighth grade, which previously been a class that uh a lot of people taken an eighth grade and it's really foundational for um you know altimira to and calculus and basically all of the math that powers A A I um among other things so you alga was kind of the cornerstone. Um and that decision can be traced back to a woman named joe boller uh who is a professor of mathematics education not mathematics um at stanford um and SHE not only was behind the the ban on algebra erentz she's also behind this new california math framework which was just approved back in july.

It's a thousand pages uh so very few people have the time to go through all of IT but the sort of takeaway from IT is IT also recommends um not teaching algebra dle school and teaching a ninth grade and IT recommends like an alternative pathway for data science like this kind of fuzzy data science course that very low on math as an alternative to calculus um which is another productive joe bowlers research um so SHE has for decades been pushing this idea that you know we need to detract classes um we don't need to have honor's classes and standard classes. We should have everyone together in the same class and you should teach math content more slowly building on big ideas all of this, he claims, is born out by data in know math education research and cogent science. Um and you know people have been sort of scrutinising her studies for years as I talk about in the piece SHE back in two thousand six um SHE published this paper where he basically claimed that he had studied um three high schools, three public high schools in california, two of which were these affluent majority White high schools and one of which was this um sort of lower income majority hispanic high school and in the lower income high school SHE had on this intervention where they detract the classes um so you had know like phil ving students with less high achieving students um among other things and that like kids are outperformed their appears at the affluent high school and then these mathematicians like took a look at her at the data set that sh'd selectively cited and they found that actually that was not true.

They'd like performed slightly Better than they used to have then they had performed before on this one test, but on every other metric they had not performed well. Um so these kind of accusations have sort of dog her for whole career. But last week, this one hundred page um like pretty shocking anonymous complaint was released that details fifty two instances of her like flagrantly taking citations out of context in her research a lot of which is foundational to the claims made in the california math framework that's now guidance for all you know the thousands of of public schools in the state um like for example you know SHE SHE is a whole thing against timed math tests is like traumatizing kids and causing maths I D and IT.

Turns out the study SHE sites to support this like makes one mention of time math tests and doesn't actually say that they traumatize kids in the way that he claims, uh, they do so anyway, SHE SHE basically has been accused of academic fraud and there's going to be investigation. But on top of the s it's important to note that he sends her kids to a forty eight thousand dollar a year private school uh where they have a very regress math education. I didn't want to say the name of the school um cause you know respect her kids privacy but we've looked at their math curriculum and it's very regress. And so she's a hip crit. SHE seems to engaged in a lot of academic fraud and SHE has the ear of policy wonks although our california yes.

she's dangerous. And this is the kind of person who doesn't usually is not usually held to account and even now is not really being held to account, right? It's not like what are the consequence is going to be, if any, and when are her studies going to be, I don't know, rejected by the state that is, absorb them into, as you said, the academic standards of california or the academic, I guess, direction of california.

I think this this idea that really, when you break IT down, this is a woman who is fighting on behalf of poor minority kids and essentially using them as an experiment for her own ideological obsessions. It's, I don't understand why these people think that they're not racist and despicable like it's always like this. It's like your idea you have these public schools in california in seven cisco um we had a huge controversy y around low and still do.

Um this is one of the advanced only gifted high school in the city. This is a way for kids. We're going to public school in safran ces co.

Cannot afford to go to private school, which in sf everyone says anyone who can possibly scrape the change together sends their kids to private school because the public schools are terrible. So you're a essentially a poor person. You have a kid who's achieving well.

They have this incredible opportunity to get out of the city school and and flourish. And you have an idea gue like this who wanted to shut IT down. And they do IT because IT just makes them feel bad.

It's messed up. And um I really hope that he gets some kind of there has been some kind of repress users to this. I mean, she's still working. She's a stanford right education school though not the math, which is the other thing SHE lies about her twitter yeah .

SHE called herself a maths proof she's she's british, by the way, which I don't know if that's important context posh british woman who's come over to to spread her her ideology yeah i'm sort of pessimistic about whether or not she's gone to be appropriately disciplined by stanford for some of this stuff because h jelani e. Nelson, professor at you see berkeley, he has been calling out her academic this representations for years, pointed out that like stanford is kind of financially tied up with some of her other projects, like her nonprofit. And so they don't really necessarily have an incentive to appropriately investigate her because if they find that her research is fraught illness, then like they could potentially face legal consequences for um some of the marketing they've been involved with.

Is that who is the black professor who he called the cops on john y.

elson? Ah yeah. Well, basically lazy.

It's crazy how these people get away with that. There are everything they say that I mean.

he is actually like really such a character atter. I mean SHE basically the context for that as he charged this underfunded majority hasani uh school district in southern alive nia like five thousand dollar an hour consulting fees to come and give like professional training courses to their teachers and this leaked and Johnson Nelson tweet about IT and was like, you know this woman who says that he wants to know help black and Brown students and uh increased equity charging these these to underfund school districts SHE got really pissed and SHE sent him back. This email was like, this is being taken up with lawyers and police .

just for context. That's ten million dollars a year. Ten, four, five thousand dollars .

hour river bed in any any thoughts on maths professor .

boler I mean, as sungei said, that is like the perfect character.

Ure, um I I don't even think that I i'd never understood this argument that like like people can do matter or something that is just seems like the most racist stem paton's zing idea of a poor people or whatever IT do usually racial like let's begon that's the way you because they can play like poor and no one White um IT just seems really um I actually understand IT less than I understand the sort of a the arguments about like S A T words or whatever like people from poor backgrounds and understanding though like that actually makes more sense to be it's like maybe you didn't hear this. We're growing up at all. You're not familiar with that. But with math, I mean it's either you know the concepts or you do you know nobody y's talking about math at the dinner table or whatever IT just um it's never made any sense to me. Um I just I do want .

to say with the S A T thing, nobody know what those words are, just its memorization. It's an intelligence test and I don't know I don't see how any of this stuff. If you want a world where black kids feel empowered, the absolute worst thing you could ever do is implicated. Argue to the entire world that any high achieving, high achieving blacked was put there artificially. It's like you just you destroy every reason to actually excel and do you undermine an entire generation of our kid is messed up and bread and thoughts I conquer I .

don't have any other well .

that's that on joe fucking bowler. Um I hope we don't hear from our lawyers. We didn't make any claims in there there we we just reported I even put your did you even put your opinion in matter? I feel like we kind of know the opinion, but I think you even deep in mir.

I feel like we were really careful and we just reported on what anybody else could go factor for themselves yep.

check IT out guys um be sure to rate and subscribe. Thanks for china a chatted with us in the light chat today um it's been real. Will will see an next friday later.