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- [00:00]
Dina Temple-Raston
Chatgpt AI machine satellite engine ignition. Click here and lift up. From recorded future news and prx, this is Click here's mic drop. A longer listen to one of our favorite conversations of the week. I'm Dina Temple Rastin. Earlier this week, we talked about extremism online, how it's shifting and fragmenting and speeding up. But today we want to focus on what comes next. A response. Because kids, some as young as 8, aren't embracing ideologies anymore. They're getting pulled into something far looser and far harder to track.
- [00:48]
Milo Comerford
There is such a low barrier to entry for people getting involved in these groups. It used to be with an ideology. You had to be able to at least express yourself. You had to at least be able to articulate, you know, why you were doing things. That's not required with this.
- [01:00]
Dina Temple-Raston
For years, social media helped us connect, share photos, talk to friends, find community. But for thousands of kids, the Internet didn't just reflect the real world, it slowly began to replace it. And when Covid hit, it accelerated everything. Young people were spending nearly all their time online, and suddenly they had unfiltered access to far more of the world and its ideas than any generation before them.
- [01:30]
Milo Comerford
I think young people are very aware of lots of different online cultures and politics. It's not so much that people sit in a specific echo chamber anymore. You know, if you're online and you're on 4chan, or you're kind of, you know, you're in gaming spaces, you're fully aware of Albright culture, you're fully aware of where the incels live, you're fully aware of where, you know, if you are transitioning and you want to kind of speak to other trans people, this is where, where they sit. It's this kind of extraordinary hotel lobby where it's all available and it's all sort of indexed out.
- [02:01]
Dina Temple-Raston
That's created a dilemma. How do you protect young people in a space where everyone is exposed to everything all the time? Because non stop exposure doesn't just broaden horizons. It blurs boundaries, ideas, jokes, fantasies, grievances, they all sit side by side. And in that blur, the path to harm just gets shorter. Suddenly, violence doesn't need a manifesto. It just needs a little shove, a meme, a moment, a nudge from the wrong person at the right time. And that shift from ideology to influence has changed everything we once knew about online extremism. Not just how it spreads, but how we stop it. We'll explain after the break. Stay with us.
- [02:54]
Recorded Future News Announcer
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- [03:26]
Dina Temple-Raston
I'm dena temple roost, and this is click here's mic drop. Milo Comerford is the Director of Policy and Research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in the uk and when he first started studying extremism, the idea of prevention seemed pretty straightforward. Spot the warning signs, intervene early, stop the slide before it becomes irreversible. But the longer he worked on this, the more he realized those warning signs weren't nearly as visible as people imagined, and the old models for prevention weren't built for the world young people now inhabit. Before you can talk about solutions, he says, you have to understand where the vulnerability actually begins.
- [04:15]
Milo Comerford
You were seeing a lot of people not understanding how this was working and not really appreciating the role of social media platforms in providing people with identity.
- [04:23]
Dina Temple-Raston
Identity, belonging, a sense of being seen. That's what gets vulnerable kids sucked into dark places on the web.
- [04:31]
Milo Comerford
We also have to be quite honest about these vulnerabilities and to work out ways of assessing risk that don't just create exactly the same dynamics that happened after 9 11, where suddenly all Muslims were in the spotlight for potential radicalization.
- [04:48]
Dina Temple-Raston
After 9 11, UK officials started a program called Prevent. It was supposed to jumpstart early intervention, but it was really about going into Muslim communities looking for young people who might be radicalizing. And in reality they weren't preventing anything. They were profiling. They were looking for signs in all the wrong places and misreading the real ones. Trust collapsed almost overnight. Families pulled back, teachers hesitated, neighbors went quiet. Which meant that when someone was getting drawn into extremism, the people closest to them weren't sure they could say anything.
- [05:30]
Milo Comerford
We have to learn the lessons from how those kind of profiling attempts didn't work and instead adopt a much more non securitized approach that can get upstream.
- [05:39]
Dina Temple-Raston
But upstream prevention looks very different today. In the heyday of groups like isis, the ideology left footprints a worldview, a manifesto, maybe a flag on a Facebook page. Now motivations are murkier, more about environment than belief. Kids aren't joining groups, they're just being swept into digital Spaces filled with hateful jokes, violent memes, and nihilistic aesthetics that don't look like radicalization. They look like content. Content adults often don't understand. Like in that pivotal scene in the Netflix series Adolescence, when a detective's son decodes Instagram messages for his father.
- [06:23]
Actor/Character from Netflix series Adolescence
Dynamite. What do you think that means? It's an exploding red pill.
- [06:27]
Dina Temple-Raston
The detective sees emojis. The audience can see intent.
- [06:32]
Actor/Character from Netflix series Adolescence
Listen, my brain can't take all this. I don't know what you're talking about. Just break it down.
- [06:37]
Dina Temple-Raston
13 year old Jamie. The killer is leaving clues, but the detective can't see them. That's what makes this modern threat easier to miss. Is this tech driven or is this culture driven?
- [06:52]
Milo Comerford
Well, tech is culture. It's very hard to separate those two things out now.
- [06:56]
Dina Temple-Raston
And that's the crux of it. Covid didn't just put more kids online, it supercharged everything. More time online, fewer buffers, and a massive expansion of peer influence. Digital interactions began to weigh heavier than offline ones. Friendships, conflicts, affirmation. They all felt real. And adults who didn't grow up online missed the signals. Which is why Milo's answer to what's the solution? Doesn't start with policing content. It starts with noticing the conditions, the emotional weather kids are living in, and then reaching them long before you'd ever call it radicalization. So what's the. What's the solution?
- [07:40]
Milo Comerford
As a European, I often think the solution is regulation.
- [07:46]
Dina Temple-Raston
After the break. What that looks like in practice. Stay with us. What do you think makes the perfect snack?
- [08:00]
Actor/Character from Netflix series Adolescence
Hmm, it's got to be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.
- [08:04]
Dina Temple-Raston
Could you be more specific?
- [08:05]
Actor/Character from Netflix series Adolescence
When it's cravinient. Okay, a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the street at AM pm. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at a.m. pM.
- [08:14]
Dina Temple-Raston
I'm seeing a pattern here.
- [08:16]
Actor/Character from Netflix series Adolescence
Well, yeah, we're talking about what I.
- [08:17]
Dina Temple-Raston
Crave, which is anything from am, pm.
- [08:19]
Actor/Character from Netflix series Adolescence
What more could you want? Stop by AM PM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's cravenience. Am, pm Too much good stuff.
- [08:29]
Katie Drummond
What the hell is going on right now and why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.
- [08:56]
Milo Comerford
I want a shark that.
- [08:57]
Katie Drummond
That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.
- [09:01]
Milo Comerford
So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.
- [09:10]
Katie Drummond
Week we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times. Meaning and context. True or false. You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point, as of yet undefined, in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [09:42]
Dina Temple-Raston
Across the Atlantic, Milo says something important is already happening.
- [09:46]
Milo Comerford
There is a lot of regulation happening of tech companies at the moment. There's been some quite promising moves by the European Union and by the uk, but also other countries like Australia, to essentially hold platforms to account more for their role in this.
- [10:00]
Dina Temple-Raston
In this process, it's a shift in philosophy away from chasing down every dangerous post or video and looking instead to address the problem at its root. What risks are platforms designing into the system in the first place? For years, big tech has controlled how algorithms work, what data is collected, and how they nudge young users around their platforms. Now some lawmakers are pushing back, saying if you build the environment, you're responsible for what happens inside it. Platforms know who their youngest users are. They know what they click and what keeps them scrolling in the wee small hours of the morning. And they know where the rabbit holes lead.
- [10:45]
Milo Comerford
We're talking about people who are 12, 13. These platforms know these people are 12 or 13, and they have a responsibility to ensure that their functionalities and their services are age appropriate. And so there's been this big shift towards essentially being much more robust in making platforms deliver on their promises to keep young people safe.
- [11:04]
Katie Drummond
Right.
- [11:05]
Dina Temple-Raston
Age gating.
- [11:06]
Milo Comerford
It might be age gating, but it might also be certain features that are turned off. It might be the most addictive parts of the platform are kind of reduced. It's just about understanding and assessing what the risks are to young people and mitigating those and not telling them what they need to do, but telling them it's their responsibility to solve it.
- [11:22]
Dina Temple-Raston
This is the heart of the new model, designed for safety before crises have time to emerge. It's what Europe's Digital Services act aims to do. Forcing transparency, banning targeted ads to minors, even imposing real penalties when companies fail to protect children.
- [11:40]
Milo Comerford
Ultimately, it's European regulators standing up and saying, you, foreign companies have a responsibility when you're selling things to our young children. As democratically elected representatives, we have to ask the questions of what you're doing, and if you're not doing a good enough job, then we're going to fine you. We're going to hold your leadership to account, and in some cases, we're going to ban you.
- [12:02]
Dina Temple-Raston
And that's one solution. Structural, systematic, and upstream. But Milo says the next stage of prevention is more intimate and quite a bit harder, because by the time a kid stumbles into a violent online community, the grooming has already begun.
- [12:19]
Milo Comerford
You know, when you're dealing with issues of grooming, you have to deal with that in an incredibly sensitive way. And what you're doing, what you're dealing really with these. In these online communities, is grooming of a different scale. People are being groomed towards carrying out acts of violence.
- [12:31]
Dina Temple-Raston
But here's the challenge. Adults often don't understand how real online relationships feel to the young people who form them. What looks like a username to a parent can be someone who feels like a best friend to a teenager. Online.
- [12:46]
Milo Comerford
We think there must be something missing, because why would you do this for someone you've never met? But that's kind of the way that these spaces are operating now.
- [12:55]
Dina Temple-Raston
I feel like we're also missing something here, just like we did with isis, I think, because we're older and so we don't really fully think that just because you meet somebody online, you really feel this solid connection and you never have to meet them in person. And this new generation actually thinks they're friends with people that they only know.
- [13:14]
Milo Comerford
Online and they feel real connection. I think that's the thing that we underestimate, is we assume that all these tools are just a means to like real relationships. Whereas these are real relationships, people have parasocial relationships online that are as meaningful as people offline in that world.
- [13:29]
Dina Temple-Raston
Prevention can't rely on policing content alone. It requires something else. It requires people around a young person to recognize the telltale signs that something is off, because someone who's drifting into danger almost always leaves clues. Do you know of any interventions that actually work?
- [13:49]
Milo Comerford
I think all the promising interventions are about getting bystanders better engaged. So really understanding how to respond and how to flag potential risks is seemingly the most effective approach.
- [14:03]
Dina Temple-Raston
Things like increased secrecy, social withdrawal, changes.
- [14:06]
Milo Comerford
In behavior, and really, what does that look like? It's about getting information out to people. It's about knowing who to speak to, and also providing pathways for referral that aren't just picking up the phone and getting someone arrested, but rather providing them with the support they need.
- [14:23]
Dina Temple-Raston
And often those clues live in the places adults overlook. A digital diary, a late night post, a private server, maybe a string of messages that change tone over time.
- [14:35]
Milo Comerford
And there are just lots of opportunities for understanding in the online space how this person might have been reached and the risk mitigated. But we missed our chances.
- [14:44]
Dina Temple-Raston
And the cost of missing that moment is enormous, measured first in the people you might have saved and then in the resources it takes to repair the damage.
- [14:54]
Milo Comerford
The money you spend on prevention, you reap dividends on in mitigating the impacts of what happens when you don't prevent.
- [15:01]
Dina Temple-Raston
In the uk, that thinking is starting to reshape policy, including a major review of that prevent program we talked about before. Lord David Anderson, a member of the House of Lords, examined what wasn't working. And what could his conclusion treat online extremism the way you treat a public health crisis. It's an approach built on three digital literacy, stronger oversight of online environments and support systems for kids who show early signs of risk. And for Lord Anderson, the work is personal.
- [15:36]
Lord David Anderson
I think the answer to that is spending as much time with the person as you can, trying to see them in an environment, for example, the home or the school.
- [15:44]
Dina Temple-Raston
That emphasis on presence, on showing up, has reshaped his understanding of the problem.
- [15:50]
Lord David Anderson
Most of those people at this stage have not done anything wrong. You know, they haven't reached the criminal threshold. They're simply susceptible to being radicalized. And what it can do, if it works, and it does often work quite well, is to put something in place. Whether that's a plan of support or whether it's a mentor who can make the difference in those people's lives and put them on a better path to help them, but also to safeguard the rest of us.
- [16:13]
Dina Temple-Raston
The Internet spans the globe, and so will the next generation of solutions. It will take regulators willing to set boundaries and platforms willing to redesign their systems. Parents and teachers have to be willing to engage early, and young people have to be willing to speak up when something doesn't feel right. For decades, kids were taught stranger danger. Now they need to learn a new version of that lesson, one shaped not by the neighborhood but by the news feed. We're in a new era, Milo says, and it requires a new playbook, one that recognizes that prevention doesn't start with ideology. It actually starts with a connection. From recorded future news. This has been click hair's Mic Drop. It was written and produced by Megan Dietrich, Sean Powers, Erica Gaeda, Zach Hirsch, Lucas Riley and me, Dina Temple. Rest it was edited by Karen Duffin. We'll be back on Tuesday. Have a great weekend. Support for Click Here comes from CleanMyMac if you're like me, your cloud drives are packed with files you don't actually need. Sync duplicates, old backups, random junk, just gobbling up storage. CleanMyMac takes care of that with a new cloud cleanup feature. It connects to your accounts on iCloud, OneDrive and Google Drive, and scans to find large space wasters both in cloud storage and on your device. And while my Mac health is apparently excellent, CleanMyMac found 8 gigabytes of junk on my computer and tons of duplicate downloads. And it removed a bunch of leftover applications I never use. Who knew? And this happens locally on my Mac, so my data stays safe. CleanMyMac has a whole suite of other features too, including their Moonlight Anti Malware engine. With just a click, the anti malware tool scans and removes viruses, ensuring your Mac remains threat free. Not everything deserves eternal storage, so why pay for it? Get tidy today with CleanMyMac. Try it free for seven days and use the promo code. Click to save an additional 20% on your purchase@cleanmymac.com looking for more of the.
- [18:51]
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