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By Michael Calderón
When he co-founded NewsGuard in 2018, Steven Brill recalls, “We even knew we were in the middle of this total typhoon of misinformation. But that was before the 2020 election, the COVID pandemic of Jan. 6, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war between Israel and Hamas, and some other presidential race taking a stand in a deeply polarized America. “We were calm before the typhoon, even though we even knew it was the typhoon,” Brill told me in an interview. “And with generative AI, the scenario will only get worse before it gets better. “
It might seem like a dark time to try to live in a fact-based world, as false and conspiratorial accusations circulate freely on the internet and on social media, a topic Brill explores in his new book, The Death of Truth. , a veteran journalist and entrepreneur (he started The American Lawyer, Brill’s Content, and Court TV) diagnoses the infodemic of our time, while proposing solutions, ranging from reforming Section 230, the law that protects web corporations from liability for content on their platforms, to suing social media corporations for violating their own terms of service, Control programmatic advertising, in which a set of rules places automated classified ads based on user demographics. One result of such exposure is that big brands would possibly inadvertently help purveyors of false information. information. (One of the facilities introduced through NewsGuard, in addition to offering trustworthiness ratings to news outlets, is programmatic advertising. )
In a gripping excerpt from Vanity Fair published this week, Brill recounted how his paintings in NewsGuard led him to be attacked by John Dougan — an American who, as the New York Times reported last week, spreads disinformation from Russia, where he has been granted asylum — and House Republicans, led by Rep. Jim Jordan. “We received an email from President Jordan necessarily accusing us of exactly the same thing that Dougan had charged, that we were complicit with the deep state,” Brill said. The irony has not escaped me. It’s a tragic comedy, but it’s not funny.
“Their priority, basically, is to destroy the concept that there are facts in the world, that there are facts,” Brill added. “The Death of Truth is about the concept that everything has become a matter of opinion. “
In an interview, written with length and clarity in mind, Brill discusses his motivation for writing the book, how AI is accelerating the misinformation crisis, and where he sees some hope for the media.
Vanity Fair: I’d like to start with your motivation for the book. You wrote: “If we can perceive how the fact has been so eviscerated, we can see how to repair it. For me, it kind of captured it.
Steven Brill: That’s exactly right. I live in this world, as you know, and what I started thinking, a year and a half ago, is that all those forces seem to be mixing in a very big storm. . . The mixture of the alpasrhythms of social networks and [programmatic advertising], which inadvertently budget all this. Together, they have created an ecosystem in which no one believes in anything. You go through the internet and if you’re an average person, you just don’t know what to believe. I searched to break down how that happened, the ramifications, but also what we can do about it.
Along the way, I learned that this was an even bigger challenge than I thought, and that there were safe players, such as the Russians, who were much more serious and much more complex in this area, and much more in the area a way to use this as a way to disappoint the global order than I had imagined.
You’ve taken a critical look at our news ecosystem for a long time and founded a media monitoring publication, [Brill’s Content], as well as an organization, NewsGuard. Even since 2018 – that is, before the incorrect information about COVID, “Stop the Steal” and the war between Ukraine and Russia – it seems that things are only accelerating. But what is their experience?
Surely this is true. When we introduced NewsGuard, in 2018, we even knew that we were in the middle of this total typhoon of disinformation, and yet this was before COVID, before “Stop the Steal,” before vaccine disinformation, before January 6, before the Russian campaign. invasion. Ukraine, before the war between Israel and Hamas, and before the existing elections. So we were calm before the typhoon, even though we even knew it was the typhoon. And with generative AI, the scenario will only get worse before it gets better.
By Bess Levin
By Chris Murphy
By Katie Nicholl
We have the story of a guy named John Dougan who [is] the guy who threatened me in my house. He discovered generative AI as a force multiplier. This guy, in addition to making all those fake documentaries from his Moscow studio, has created 167 fake local news sites in the U. S. The US and the West, all with the aim of spreading Russian disinformation and making everyone nothing; it just creates all kinds of chaos. [Editor’s note: The NewsGuard article states that it “uncovered 167 Russian disinformation sites on the Internet sites that appear to be components of Dougan’s network of Internet sites posing as independent local news publishers in the United States. “]
You talked about John Dougan and this bankruptcy of Death of the Truth, which is compelling, because it’s a very private bankruptcy. You write how, when NewsGuard exposed Dougan and those videos posted on YouTube, and YouTube got rid of them, you became the target of Russian disinformation, whereas, around the same time, you have become the target of House Republicans who also go through NewsGuard for what they see as collusion with the U. S. government on censorship. Can you tell me about it?
It’s not even about the same time. It’s literally the same day. I’m not saying they planned it, but it was literally the same day that my wife and I were grieving this news. We were just beginning to perceive this guy who calls our space and makes a video on YouTube with aerial photographs of our space and tells me about my daughter. That afternoon, as we were settling in, we received an email from President Jordan, necessarily accusing us of exactly the same thing that Dougan had accused, that we were accomplices of the Deep State. The irony has not escaped me. It’s a tragic comedy, but it’s not funny.
What does it say to you that those two forces, the Russians [propagandists] and the Republicans in Congress, their priorities seem to align even if they don’t look like a combination?But your same priorities, at least as far as you and NewsGuard are concerned. Focusing, they come in combination at the same time.
Their priority, basically, is to destroy the concept that there is a fact in the world, that there are facts. What is at stake in The Death of Truth is the concept that everything has become a matter of opinion. And what does the Judicial Branch of the Chamber say?What the Committee tried to do with NewsGuard is the same thing that the Russians tried to do, which is to turn the consultation into an opinion consultation on whether we are independent sleuths who, in fact, give a higher score for quality or reliability. on the [Fox News website] that we give to the [MSNBC website]. But they are content to forget that and say that we lean to the right, or that we are organs of the Biden administration. But it all becomes a matter of opinion. There is no such thing as a fact.
By Bess Levin
By Chris Murphy
By Katie Nicholl
It is quite a challenge to cover these current elections. You describe Trump as “the most egregious avatar and beneficiary of the trendy eco-formula of misinformation and disinformation that has become an integral component of the world’s [media] diet. ” There are a number of other polls and studies where 60% of Republicans can simply say that the 2020 election was stolen or that Biden did not legitimately win. So we have a giant segment [of people], from Donald Trump to members of Congress, who help this fiction that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. So how to cover, in 2024, a political component that happens to be at the center of his confidence formula, even if it is not true?
With wonderful difficulty. One of the things I don’t think you deserve to do: I prefer the term “mistake” or “lie” to “lie. “I think when you say someone is lying, you’re claiming that you sense their mood. .
For example, I’m profiling some of the other people who were arrested at the Capitol on January 6 and reviewing their media diet. There’s a guy from Ohio, completely normal, middle-class graduate of Ohio State who got laid off during the pandemic and is home, and long story short, he’s essentially going down the rabbit hole of misinformation on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. And he is discovered in the Capitol on January 6. He honestly thought, and honestly thinks, for some reason, that a) the formula rarely works for him. He has very intelligent reasons for thinking this. And b) He is Trump when Trump says the election was stolen from him because he went to sleep that night and Trump was ahead, then he woke up the next morning and Trump was late. We know all the reasons, counting mail-in votes later, etc. But he not. He is not a crazy person. He’s not even a bad person. He is about someone who has been deceived. And when you try to analyze the mindset of all the other people on January 6, or even everyone who supported the claim that the election was stolen, you can’t really know exactly what his mindset was. But what we can say is that the election was not stolen and it is wrong. And one of the real tragedies of the times we live in is, again, that we have created an incorrect information [ecoformula] in which no one says anything.
So, for example, with generative AI, if the Access Hollywood band fell right at the end of this election season, instead of 2016, no one would because Trump would say, “Well, that’s a big lie. It’s not me. ” So we live in a world where we are out of touch with reality, and it is up to journalists to help other people find their moorings by trying to stick to what is being done and what is a matter of opinion.
I understand the guy you’re talking about, who goes to January 6th, who has been duped and who would possibly be cheating and really believes that the election was a robbery. But you can identify bad actors who lie.
By Bess Levin
By Chris Murphy
By Katie Nicholl
There are bad actors. For example, J. D. Vance is evidently a pretty wise guy. He went to my law school, so he’s going to have to be prudent. And yet, in an interview he was quoted as saying that one of the reasons cash should not be sent to Ukraine is that Zelensky uses it to buy yachts and mansions everywhere. . He’s too wise for that. I just guess he’s too wise. You can’t do that. And yet he says it and others say it.
You talked about AI, a topic I wanted to address. It seems like a huge accelerator of bad data.
That is precisely the right word. It’s an accelerator.
How can we even technical this? We have seen, as we have just said, that with the advent of social media has come incorrect information, and now, with AI, if someone needs to deceive a large number of people very easily, it seems that they must do so. So how can you even perceive this as an organization tracking that stuff online?
Well, if you’re a social media company, I find that you have the same duty as Condé Nast to oversee Vanity Fair, which is to be at fault for the content of your pages and your website. They don’t have a legal duty, but [they] have a legal duty. They have an ethical and ethical duty.
One of the epiphanies I had while writing this ebook was that I was at a convention of some media executives and I was talking about misinformation online, and someone who is a smart friend muttered, “Well, you know, what are YouTube or Facebook? I wanted to do, other people post thousands of videos per second. How can they do all this? And that’s when I had this epiphany and I was like, “Well, who died and said they have to post a thousand videos per second?” “Why do they have to do this? In a convention hall and on the wall of this auditorium, there is a note from the Ministry of Construction that says: The occupation by more than 280 people is harmful and illegal. So don’t You can fill this building with more than 280 people and that does not take away your First Amendment right to freedom of assembly. This is a security order. Why can the platforms say, “We can’t spend more money filtering. things we want to let in as many people as we want, because that’s how we maximize our advertising revenue, attracting as many eyes as possible.
One of the things I suggest, right now, without any legislation, is if you go online and take a look at the terms of use of Facebook, X or YouTube. They all have terms of service and the terms of service say that we will tolerate incorrect information. harmful incorrect information or information. We will tolerate harassment or hate speech. They say so in the terms of service. Terms of service are a contract. It is a contract between you and them. Right now, without any legislation, the FTC can simply sue those platforms for violating their terms of service.
By Bess Levin
By Chris Murphy
By Katie Nicholl
I saw in the e-book you discussed how NewsGuard almost struck a deal with Twitter before the deal with Elon Musk closed. Obviously, Elon Musk is someone who has promoted false data on a giant scale. The Paul Pelosi incident is just one of them. , with over a hundred million followers. Is there any hope that you see now with Twitter/X in terms of trying to determine the data or have you missed it now?
The only thing that can be said about Musk is that he is much further ahead than others about the fact that he doesn’t care. So I don’t see much hope in that. I’m glad you talked about Paul’s story. Pelosi because, once again, I need to move on to the other generation guilty of the death of truth: programmatic advertising.
The night Paul Pelosi attacked, there was an article in the Santa Monica Observer, [which] NewsGuard had known years earlier as a fake site posing as a local news site in Santa Monica. We knew them that way because they had published, among other things, an article saying that Hillary Clinton had died [and] a stunt double who had appeared in debates with Trump. So it’s a notoriously terrible place.
They published an article that night that said Paul Pelosi had had an encounter with a gay prostitute and Elon Musk retweeted it. . . It received millions of insights that were submitted to the Santa Monica Observer’s website. That’s why you use the social media platform if it’s a post to get other people to come back and visit your website. It sounded on the Santa Monica Observer box. . . That night, and in the days that passed, you may have read this article about Paul. Pelosi and the Gay Prostitute, a completely fabricated article and featured ads from Hertz, from [all] kinds of big top brands. In fact, programmatic advertising doesn’t differentiate between everything similar to the site’s content. Simply stick to one demographic.
A few years ago, the biggest advertiser of Sputnik, the Russian propaganda news site, Warren Buffet. Warren Buffet doesn’t wake up every morning and think, “How can I sit down and give cash to Vladimir Putin?But he [is CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a publicly traded company that] owns Geico, a large programmatic advertiser and his company sends classified ads to Sputnik.
We have a product that looks to do anything about it. So, everything I’ve told you is just self-centered communication in favor of this product. But the point is that they need to make this big bidding process clear, because if you don’t, it’s not like in the days of Mad Men, where other people would sit down and have 3 martinis for lunch and decide: do I deserve to promote it in Vanity Fair or Time?Should I promote it on NBC or CBS? [80]% of all international advertising is done through this automated bidding process.
By Bess Levin
By Chris Murphy
By Katie Nicholl
As a result of your studies and writing this book, as well as the paintings you’re doing at NewsGuard, do you have any hope that there might be a media data ecosystem that just gets flooded with bad data, because it can be hard to feel like that sometimes?
Actually, I am because I think there are some things, as I say in the book, that can be done about it. I think we’ve gone beyond global where everything is loose online. Quality publications like yours rate for their content and that’s literally good news because when publications, whether it’s the New York Times or the New Yorker or Vanity Fair or Wired, call you, if they rate for your content, which means that you and I really generate a source of profit with what we write. We are not just a payment center that revolves around ads, which used to be the profit. If your earnings are based on other people actually reading, buying, and paying anything for the content, that creates incentives for the sleuths. I have taught a journalism seminar at Yale for years and have found that there is more demand for quality sleuths lately than in the past, precisely because many publications (in fact, most of them) now rely on the source of revenue from readers . as much, if not more, than they rely on advertising. Don’t let your readers blame you for charging a subscription.
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