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‘I Believed Sandy Hook Was a Hoax’
00:47:43
The law that let Big Tech rake in cash from a lie about parents whose children had been murdered.
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- [00:01]
Brian Reed
We've been working with this great new sponsor here at Question Everything. It's called Plaud. That's P as in pancake, P, L, A U D, Plod. It's this nifty, tiny AI assistant and notetaker device that you can turn on and it listens to any conversation you're having and then uses AI to create to do lists or action items or to synthesize different things. We've actually turned the word plodding into a verb around the office. So we'll start a meeting and I'll say, I'm going to Plaud. This really just frees your brain from note taking, remembering menial things. If you're interested, go check out plaudplaud AI. And if you get one, use the special code question. It helps out the show.
- [00:45]
KCRW Announcer
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- [01:21]
Brian Reed
Hi, Kate. How are you? I'm Brian.
- [01:23]
Joan Donovan
Hi.
- [01:24]
Kate
Hi. How's it going?
- [01:25]
Brian Reed
Good. Nice to meet you.
- [01:27]
Kate
Yeah, you're here.
- [01:28]
Brian Reed
I've heard your voice and I've heard about you, and it's nice to see your face. This is Kate. For years, Kate believed a lie, a terrible lie that spread on the Internet, on social media, which lots of Americans believed. It's a lie that really hurt people, individuals, and our society as a whole. This lie, which Kate has now come to realize was a lie, is the kind of thing I'm hell bent on fighting through. The mission I announced in our first episode back after the summer break. My mission, to get a law known as section 230 repealed or reformed, which I think it helps stop lies and propaganda from overwhelming us online. Section 230, which Congress passed in 1996. It makes it so that Internet companies can't be sued for what happens on their sites. Facebook, YouTube, TikTok. They bear essentially no responsibility for the content they amplify and recommend to millions, even billions of people, no matter how much it harms people, no matter how much it warps our democracy. Under section 230, you cannot successfully sue tech companies for defamation, even if they spread lies about you. You can't sue them for pushing a terror recruitment video on someone who then goes and kills your family member. You can't sue them from bombarding your kid with videos that promote eating disorders or that share suicide methods or sexual content. These companies have a special protection that only Internet companies get. We need to strip that protection away. And I think Kate's story is a perfect example of why what I had.
- [03:04]
Kate
Been told was so outrageous that it was like, wow, I can't believe I ever even thought that this was real.
- [03:11]
Brian Reed
From KCRW and Placement Theory, this is question everything. I'm Brian Reed. Today I make my case to you for how I think we can beat back the most destructive lies in our society. And I start by talking to someone who deeply believed one of them. Stick around.
- [03:31]
Okay, so I've been telling you about this sponsor we're working with, Plaud. That's P as in pancake. P, L, A U, D. It's this nifty, tiny AI assistant and notetaker device. Though it's much more than that. You turn it on, it can record a meeting, interview, or just you talking to it and dumping the contents of your brain into it. Just in the last few weeks, I've been introducing it to my wife. And I shit you not. Just this morning. She and I were just catching up after dropping our kid off at school about things we have to get done this week. We have a really busy week. And she said, hey, can you plaud this? It just showed, like, actually, this is becoming part of our life. And it's actually really useful. Check out Plaudplaud AI. If you buy one, please use the special code question.
- [04:18]
So, as I've told you about here on the show, in August, I made a trip to the Iowa State Fair. A producer, Sam Egan, and I spent a single day interviewing random people there. Random? Probably 20 people in total. And this is incredible to me. One of the people Sam happened to meet in that pretty small random sample is Kate, who within minutes of talking to Sam by the lemonade stand, told him this.
- [04:43]
Kate
As far as Sandy Hook, I was one that grew up thinking that that's a hoax.
- [04:48]
Brian Reed
Oh, you grew up thinking Sandy Hook was a hoax?
- [04:49]
Kate
Yes. Every time I see anything on Sandy Hook, I have to remind myself that that was real.
- [04:57]
Brian Reed
Kate, who's now in her 20s, spent years believing that the mass shooting of 20 elementary school children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, an area called Sandy Hook in 2012, was fake. A staged event with actors hired to play kids and grieving parents. Sam told me about Kate after he met her. And then I listened to the recording and what she said about Sandy Hook from her upbringing really stayed with me. I grew up 10 miles from Sandy Hook, one town over. When I was in elementary school, I used to go see $2 movies with my mom at the Newtown town hall. I go to Sandy Hook every year for the holidays to visit family who live there. And every year I have a moment where I just sit with the pain of what happened on that ground. My parents and lots of friends still live nearby. And while we didn't have any direct connections to the families affected my childhood priest, Father Bob. He'd moved over to a church in Newtown by 2012 and was a huge source of support to many of the families. He helped them deal with the press too. Here he is on the news very soon after the shooting, you know, we.
- [06:05]
Father Bob
Actually went to their homes early this morning to confirm the death of their children. And it was just horrible, you know, the uncertainty. Even though they knew in their hearts that this was real and the questions they were asking, the regrets they had, you know, why did I send my child to school today? And the parents were just sharing, you know, kind of the last moments they had with their children. One of the dads shared how for some reason the child got up early and just came down and told the father how much, you know, she loved him. Or another one that said that just the day before, the child asked them what is dying like. So parents are really going through a tremendous amount of pain and hurt right now, trying to deal with not just their own personal loss, but what happened to their child in the last moments of their life.
- [06:45]
Brian Reed
Father Bob officiated funerals for eight of the children. All this is to say I know how real the tragedy at Sandy Hook was. You're probably familiar with the conspiracy theory that Kate believed about Sandy Hook, that the shooting was an elaborate hoax staged to justify gun control. The far right radio host Alex Jones promoted it on his online outlet, Infowars, and it took off on YouTube and other platforms. This American Life did a story about one of the fathers of a child who was killed at Sandy Hook back when I worked there in 2019. His name is Lenny Posner. Lenny and his family, after suffering the most horrible tragedy imaginable, losing their six year old son Noah, they had to suffer again because believers of the Sandy Hook conspiracy started targeting Lenny and his family, threatening their lives for supposedly being actors in this fake shooting. Lenny has had to move his family seven times to keep them safe. When he appeared in an episode of 60 Minutes. The show hired theatrical makeup artists to create like a Mrs. Doubtfire style fake face that he wore in the interview to protect his privacy. What was the most hurtful thing they said about you?
- [07:59]
Father Bob
That Noah did not die.
- [08:00]
Brian Reed
That I'm not Noah's father. That they're scripted events. That I am an actor. That I'm paid to fake the death of a child. Other family members of the victims have been walking down the street in a random city and found themselves being shouted at or even chased by people who'd bought into this lie on social media. In a poll taken a few months after the shooting, one in four Americans said they believed that the truth of the Sandy Hook shooting was being covered up. And Kate, she was one of them. And now she's not. I knew something about how the Sandy Hook lie had impacted the people who were the subject of it, but I'd never heard from someone who believed the lie and then disbelieved it and could explain how that happened. For Kate, it started when she was a teenager with her dad.
- [08:51]
Kate
My dad was a self employed realtor, but my dad has historically not been the most popular guy. So he did a lot of, of smaller properties and a lot of rentals, things like that.
- [09:05]
Brian Reed
What do you mean not the most popular guy? Like, what are you alluding to there?
- [09:08]
Kate
My dad's mean. He's a mean guy. He's a bully. And people definitely know that he's not very friendly. I do remember him always like answering phone calls of people interested in renting or touring houses. And he just always was really rude from the get go and would, you know, say like, no, we don't have this available or no da, da, da, and would hang up and just be like morons at the same time. He is so loving when he wants to be. He always was a great gift giver, always gave the best, like Christmas presents and just because presents and is like fiercely still very protective over me and my sister.
- [09:51]
Brian Reed
This was in northwest Iowa, an area with a mix of farms and fancy vacation homes on a Nearby Lake in December 2012. Kate was 14 years old in 8th grade. On the evening of the Sandy Hook shooting, December 14th, Kate remembers she and her family were watching the news together like they often did around dinner time. And it was filled with images of the aftermath of the shooting. First responders, parents and family members doubling over in grief.
- [10:20]
Kate
And I remember so vividly my dad just kind of saying like, this is, this was put on by the government. You know, there's no way this Happened like, this is. The FBI were in on this. And, yeah, I don't know if he turned it off or just was talking over it or what, but he just from the start was like, this is. This is not real. This is bullshit.
- [10:41]
Brian Reed
Like, from the very moment it happened. Yeah, he was saying it's not real.
- [10:44]
Kate
Mm. He's always been chronically online, so definitely was a listener to Alex Jones.
- [10:53]
Brian Reed
Do you know where he consumed Infowars, Alex Jones?
- [10:57]
Kate
It must have been on his laptop while he was at work. And that's another contributing factor, I think, to his.
- [11:04]
Lackluster success as a realtor is I think a lot of the time he was spending at work, he was really just looking at things on the Internet like that.
- [11:14]
Brian Reed
Kate says that's where her dad must have submerged himself in this conspiracy, in extreme and fringy channels online. Again, she was a kid, 14, and her dad was telling her this event didn't actually happen. Kate says her mom's really good natured, tries to stay out of politics, so she generally goes along with what her more domineering father says. So Kate kind of put the event out of mind. And then a couple days later, she says her dad brought up the shooting at Sandy Hook. Again, he tells her, how could this.
- [11:45]
Kate
Possibly be real when this picture exists? And he shows me this picture of Obama with supposedly one of the kids sitting on his lap, like, in the following days. And like I said, my mind is just not on any of this, but he's showing me this. And so, yeah, sure, that seems to make sense to me, you know, yeah, right. How could this happen if this girl was, you know, supposedly dead, but now here she is sitting on Obama's lap. He would show me, like, clips of Alex Jones, like, debunking, you know, the different pieces of it, and just showing that picture over and over of Obama with the girl on his lap.
- [12:23]
Brian Reed
That photo of President Obama, it was actually a picture of Obama with the deceased girl's sister on his lap.
- [12:30]
Kate
It was just immediately like, oh, this is what my dad said about it. Why would he lie?
- [12:36]
Brian Reed
And what did you believe did happen then?
- [12:38]
Kate
I fully believed what my dad had said, that the FBI were in on it, that it was staged, that they were crisis actors, and that somewhere these kids were being hidden and that no one actually died. You know, this whole thing everyone was in on was just some way for them to fabricate a way to take away guns.
- [13:01]
Brian Reed
And they. Who's the they in that story?
- [13:05]
Kate
Yeah, the government to take away guns for there to be stricter gun laws. Everything was always about guns. And it's crazy because I don't remember my dad ever owning a gun. It seemed like to him that was the beginning of the end. That was the first step to losing control and losing any sort of power that he had as a Republican man, you know, to protect himself and his family.
- [13:29]
Brian Reed
And like, did that freak you out? Were you, like, the story you believed was that alarming to you? You know, the government would do this. They would pretend that 6 year olds were killed at a school and the president would fly to Connecticut and meet with families and they'd hire actors. Like, that's a really alarming story to believe about our government.
- [13:53]
Kate
It did, it did incite fear. And I think that's what worked so well. I knew that the high school students, they would have the day where they do like a fake car crash and, you know, kids would die and these things would happen. So it was like that for me. It was like, yeah, these are actors portraying a scenario that's so scary that it like scares you straight kind of thing. It was like, yeah, that's so scary and wildly unrealistic. Who would come in and shoot all, all these little kids?
- [14:25]
Brian Reed
I guess it is like, in a certain way, like, it is more unbelievable that someone would actually kill children.
- [14:33]
When was the first time you remember questioning your belief?
- [14:39]
Kate
That definitely was in college.
- [14:46]
Brian Reed
Kate turned 18 in time for the 2016 election. She voted for Donald Trump. Her family was Republican, so that's what you did. She says she left town for college, still in Iowa, but a new place, a little more ideologically diverse. And then, as if in a comedy sketch mocking the times we live in, she enrolled her first semester in a women's and gender studies seminar.
- [15:08]
Kate
That course opened my eyes to everything I had learned about trans people. I had learned about social constructs, patriarchy.
- [15:18]
Brian Reed
All semester, Kate was having her assumptions about the world challenged in this class. She got used to changing her mind. It was a group of all women. She and another student were the only Republicans, she says at home, she'd get into terrible arguments with her dad about what she was learning. He thought she was being indoctrinated. Then came the end of the semester, December, around the time when the Sandy.
- [15:42]
Kate
Hook shooting was, and that would have been the five year anniversary. We talked about the current events in, like, the news almost every class. It was very casually structured. So that day was just like, hey, today's the anniversary of Sandy Hook. And you know, what do we think about how things have changed or not changed? And I think we had probably a journal prompt of like, what are your thoughts on this? And then we all spoke about it and I had to share like with my partner. I was like, I am realizing right now that this is real.
- [16:20]
I like very scaredly shared that to my class. I was like, you guys, like, I don't feel anything right now. Like, as you're all like very emotional, like, I feel nothing. And I have to, I have to now tell myself that I should feel something because this was real. I think we watched like a news clip discussing that it was the anniversary and I think it was like, maybe some interviews from like parents. And that definitely got me like, how could I, how could I have not seen any of this before? And thought to myself, like, there's no way that this is, that this didn't happen. These are real parents.
- [17:04]
And oh my God, you know, we're being asked to journal about the Sandy Hook shooting. And I'm just thinking to myself.
- [17:13]
Like, I don't know a whole lot about it because I never had to, I never thought more about it. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, wow.
- [17:24]
Everyone around me is, you know, profusely writing and like, some are even getting teary eyed.
- [17:31]
And then we talk about it and I'm like, I've written nothing down. I don't know what to feel.
- [17:39]
Brian Reed
When you told your partner, what was their reaction?
- [17:43]
Kate
Like, where did you grow up? You know, like, wait, where are you from?
- [17:47]
Yeah.
- [17:48]
Brian Reed
Seriously?
- [17:48]
Kate
Yeah.
- [17:49]
Brian Reed
Okay.
- [17:50]
Kate
Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, right. You know, you all know that I came into this class as a trump voter. Like, we were all very open and honest and I shared that perspective. But.
- [18:02]
Yeah, my partner was just like, wait, what? Like, how is that even an opinion? I didn't even know that was a opinion to have. And my professor was like, wow, you know, like you've shared some crazy stuff this semester. But, you know, that just makes me feel.
- [18:20]
She just was like totally blown away.
- [18:24]
Brian Reed
How did she handle it when you said it to the whole class? Like, were people empathetic?
- [18:29]
Kate
There were a couple that were like angry and, you know, sort of.
- [18:35]
Just, I don't know, feeling some sort of way. And they were like, well, yeah, this happened. You know, how can you possibly, how could you believe that? Like, that's so stupid. Why would you think that? That's terrible.
- [18:45]
Brian Reed
They use that word. Stupid.
- [18:47]
Kate
Yeah, stupid. And like, that's awful, you know.
- [18:52]
Brian Reed
How did you feel about them?
- [18:53]
Kate
I felt stupid, ashamed. Yeah, I did. I was like, yeah, you're right. Like I don't know how I, I didn't realize that this was, you know, so severe. And, you know, it's really not until this, this last year, really, that I've looked back and thought to myself, like, why didn't I take it seriously more than I did?
- [19:14]
Brian Reed
I understand why you'd be mad at yourself or I don't know if you said ashamed, but for what it's worth, hearing your story. Within a year of you leaving your house, you heard the truth and believed it. Within seconds of hearing the truth, it sounds like, or minutes, you believed it. So give yourself some credit.
- [19:32]
Kate
Yeah. Once the truth was presented to me, it was so easy.
- [19:39]
To change my mind because what I had been told was so outrageous that it was like, wow, I can't believe I ever even thought that this was real.
- [19:52]
That night, for sure, I, I felt really distracted with it. I looked up, like, Sandy Hook stuff and was kind of reading through, you know, the Wikipedia about it, like, reading, refreshing my memory on what all happened. Read through.
- [20:09]
A couple different articles and just tried to let it sink in.
- [20:16]
And tried to see videos again in a new light from the news of, like, you know, did this look like it was fake in any sort of way that I would have thought? You know, these people are acting funny and these are actors. And it was like, no, these people are clearly grieving their children and, like, loved ones and still just, like, feeling guilty that I didn't feel anything while reading about it. And even to this day, I mean, I, I, I have to, like, force myself to feel something for this day. No other school shootings do I feel that way, you know, but still, Sandy Hook in my brain, I have to actively be like, this was real. People died. It was bad. Oh, my God, like, feel something. Feel something.
- [21:04]
Brian Reed
You're poking your head right now. Yeah, feel something, brain. Mm.
- [21:11]
Kate
Because, I mean, I'm very emotional person. And every time I hear about a school shooting now, especially when it's, you know, little kids like that, it's heartbreaking. It's gut wrenching. It has me, you know, posting on my social media and, like, calling for gun reform and has me wondering, when will it be enough.
- [21:33]
Yet. That one, you know, was so terrible.
- [21:38]
But I didn't, I didn't feel that way yet. And that it still is just this, like, hole because I didn't experience it as it happened.
- [21:53]
Brian Reed
One of the big effects the Sandy Hook lie has had on Kate's life is that it has deeply strained her relationship with her dad, who still believes it. Kate says since learning the truth. She's confronted him about it once in a screaming match they got into about politics and it didn't go well. Kate wanted to tell her story publicly. She sees it as something small she can do to help make up for all those years. She dismissed the Sandy Hook shooting as a hoax and also, she says, for voting for Donald Trump the first time around. But she also asked that we not let her dad know about the story to avoid hurting their relationship more. We were able to corroborate Kate's story with other people in her life, so we've decided to honor her request. That's also why we're not using her last name.
- [22:43]
When I think about the effect of lies, disinformation, propaganda, you know, on our society, sure, but on us as people, my kind of initial thought is that it riles us up. It leads us to feel anger. It inspires this like, angry, hateful feeling. But you talking has made me think like, oh, maybe this is actually another really big and important impact of lies and disinformation, which is it dulls empathy for other people.
- [23:14]
Kate
Absolutely.
- [23:18]
It was like a separation of registering that it was real people, real deaths, real tragedy.
- [23:30]
Brian Reed
Coming up, how I think we can stop lies like the one Kate believed about Sandy Hook from spreading in the first place. That's in a minute.
- [23:43]
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- [24:52]
Hi, it's Reese Gorman, Congressional reporter and host of the brand new podcast on Notice. This is the new podcast from Notice, the nonpartisan newsroom covering politics and policy in Washington, D.C. each week I'll bring you real conversations with members of Congress and those who make the Hill run. And it's packed into just 30 minutes, so you can learn a lot without taking too much time out of your busy day. Join me for On Notice. That's notice spelled N O T U s available every Monday wherever you get your podcast or on YouTube.
- [25:33]
Welcome back to the show. I saw an essay by a journalism professor at UConn where she argues that the Sandy Hook shooting was, as the headline puts it, the start of misinformation running amok. The many delusions that have engulfed us in the last 10 years that have jumped between the digital and physical worlds. Lies like QAnon and the 2020 election being stolen from Donald Trump, which led to the insurrection on January 6, lies about COVID and vaccines, which led to actual deaths. Sandy Hook was arguably the start of it. And I think Sandy Hook also points to a compelling solution, and that is changing the law known as Section 230, the law that gives special immunity to Internet companies like Facebook and YouTube so they can't get sued for what goes on their platforms. I think looking at the Sandy Hook lie that Kate and her dad believed is one of the strongest arguments for changing this law. Here's my case.
- [26:33]
So within days held hours of the Sandy Hook shooting, Alex Jones and others started spreading lies about the victims, their families. Now, this is really important to keep in mind. Freedom of speech means we have the freedom to lie. We have the freedom to spew absolute, utter bullshit. We have the freedom to concoct conspiracy theories and even use them to make money by selling ads or subscriptions or what have you. Most lies are protected by the First Amendment, and they should be. But there's a small subset of lies that are not protected speech, even under the First Amendment. The old shouting fire in a crowded theater, not necessarily protected. And similarly, lies that are defamatory aren't protected. In order for a statement to be defamatory, okay, for the most part, whoever's publishing it has to know it's untrue and it has to cause damage to the person or the institution. The statement's about reputational damage, emotional damage, or a lie could hurt someone's business.
- [27:40]
The bar for proving defamation is high in the US it can be hard to win those cases. But in 2022, family members of 10 of the Sandy Hook victims did win a defamation case against Alex Jones's company, and the verdict was huge. Jones was ordered to pay the family members over a billion dollars in damages. Just this week, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Jones over it, a semblance of justice for the victims, though infuriatingly, Alex Jones filed for bankruptcy and has avoided paying them so far. But also, and this is what I want to focus on, the lawsuits are a real deterrent to Alex Jones and others who will likely think twice before lying like this again. So now I want you to think about this.
- [28:27]
Alex Jones did not spread this lie on his own. He relied on social media companies, especially YouTube, which hosts his show, to send his conspiracy theory out to the masses. One YouTube video spouting this lie shortly after the shooting got nearly 11 million views in less than two weeks. And by 2018, when the family sued him, Alex Jones had 1.6 billion views on his YouTube channel. The Sandy Hook lie was laced throughout that content, burrowing its way into the psyche of millions of people and including Kate and her dad, Alex Jones made money off of each of those views, but so did YouTube. Yet the Sandy Hook families, they cannot sue YouTube for defaming them because of Section 230. I'm going to keep reminding you what Section 230 is as we cover it on this show because I want it to stick. Section 230, small provision in a law Congress passed in 1996. Just 26 words, but words that were so influential, they're known as the 26 words that created the Internet. Those words make it so that Internet platforms cannot be treated as publishers of the content on their platform. It's why Sandy Hook parents could sue Alex Jones for the lies he told, but they couldn't sue the platforms like YouTube that Jones used to spread those lies. And there is a logic to this that I think made sense when Section 230 was passed in the 90s. Back then, Internet companies offered chat rooms, message boards, places where other people posted. And the companies were pretty passively transmitting those posts. One analogy that gets thrown around for this is that the platforms, they're like your mailman. They're just delivering somebody else's letter about the Sandy Hook conspiracy. They're not writing it themselves. And sure, that might have been true for a while. But imagine now that the mailman reads the letter he's delivering, sees. It's pretty tantalizing. There's a government conspiracy to take away people's guns by orchestrating a fake school shooting, hiring child actors, and staging a massacre. And a whole 911 response. The mailman thinks, that's pretty good stuff. People are going to like this. He makes millions of copies of the letter and delivers them to millions of people. And then as all those people start writing letters to their friends and family, talking about this crazy conspiracy. The mailman keeps making copies of those letters and sending them around to more people. And he makes a ton of money off of this by selling ads that he sticks into those envelopes.
- [31:06]
Would you say in that case the mailman is just a conduit for someone else's message? Or has he transformed into a different role? A role more like a publisher who should be responsible for the statements he or she actively chooses to amplify to the world. That is essentially what YouTube and other social media platforms are doing by using algorithms to boost certain content. In fact, I think the mailman analogy is tame for what these companies are up to. Which brings me to someone who studies how all this works.
- [31:41]
Joan Donovan
Social media engagement is engineered up the wazoo.
- [31:45]
Brian Reed
This is Joan Donovan. She's an expert who researches the ways lies operate on social media and then affect the real world. She teaches at Boston University. She wrote a book called Meme wars about how memes influence our politics. Research from Joan and others shows that social media platforms prioritize and amplify false and harmful content. So for instance, back in 2018, a group of researchers discovered that lies travel six times faster on Twitter than factual posts do and reach far more people. And that rate of travel is due in large part to that mysterious hyper personalized social media calculator, the algorithm.
- [32:27]
Joan Donovan
So that study came out of MIT and they had some unprecedented access to Twitter's back end to be able to do a study of that magnitude. And that was, I would say, in the good old days, once platform companies realized that even though they were nice to academics, they really couldn't control their output. They make it very difficult to see how the system works. They claim that these algorithms are secret sauce and that nobody should be able to know because then people will game them. So they locked us out of platforms because there had been some research done that showed that these algorithms are reacting to signals that people have, you know, within the first, let's say, hour of a post is the most important time. Probably the first five to 10 minutes is probably the most important time because the algorithm is going to decide how much amplification to give based on the initial signals of who's interacting with that.
- [33:31]
Brian Reed
Content and what's a signal.
- [33:33]
Joan Donovan
A signal is any kind of click, like, or share. Sometimes even if you just expand the post, that can be a good signal, or if you make a comment, that's a really good signal that people are engaging with this.
- [33:50]
Brian Reed
So signals are ways that A user can interact with a post, interact.
- [33:55]
Joan Donovan
It can even be dwell time, like if you're reading something and you stop, especially Instagram, that can also.
- [34:04]
Be a signal in like a platform like TikTok, they might see a piece of content that they think should be circulated and they'll heat it so that it gets more traction. And so the algorithm decides by and large what's going to be popular, what's not. And the point of the platforms is to keep people on platform and seeing the next ad.
- [34:28]
Brian Reed
To be fair, that's the goal of most media companies. News outlets, book publishers, movie studios, podcasters. We are all, or most of us at least trying to make money too. We want to make stories that are popular so we can keep audiences paying attention and sell ads or movie tickets or streaming subscriptions to support our businesses. But in the world that every other media company occupies, aside from social media, if we go too far and put a lie out that hurts somebody, we risk getting sued. It doesn't mean other media outlets don't lie or exaggerate or spin stories, but there's still a meaningful guardrail there. There's a real deterrent to make sure we're not publishing or promoting lies that are so egregious, so harmful that we risk getting sued. Such as lying about the deaths of kids who were killed and their devastated parents. Social media companies have no such deterrent. And they're making tons of money. We don't know how much money, in large part because the way that kind of info usually gets forced out of companies is through lawsuits, which we can't file against these tech behemoths because of Section 230. So we don't know, for instance, how much money YouTube made from content with the Sandy Hook conspiracy in it. All we know is that they can and do boost defamatory lies as much as they want. Raking cash without any risk of being sued for it. Joan Donovan says they take full advantage of that force field around them. What's the strongest evidence you know of showing that platforms are making a conscious decision to spread lies because they make money and lies that are leading to real world harms?
- [36:13]
Joan Donovan
Ultimately, what we learned from Francis Haugen's whistleblower documents is that Facebook knew its algorithms were radicalizing people and they weren't doing anything about it.
- [36:31]
Brian Reed
Francis Haugen is a data engineer for from Iowa, by the way, who worked for meta Facebook from 2019 to 2021. Haugen says she joined the company wanting to help make a less toxic Facebook, but She was so dismayed by what she saw on the inside, she quit and became a whistleblower, releasing a trove of internal documents from the company to reporters at the Wall Street Journal and to Congress, where she testified, no one.
- [36:59]
KCRW Announcer
Truly understands the destructive choices made by Facebook except Facebook. When we realized Big Tobacco was hiding the harms it caused, the government took action. When we figured out cars were safer with seatbelts, the government took action. And when our government learned that opioids were taking lives, the government took action. I implore you to do the same here.
- [37:23]
Brian Reed
Haugen's document dump showed that Facebook leadership knew about the harms their product is causing, including disinformation and hate speech, but also product designs that were hurting children, such as the algorithm's tendency to lead teen girls to posts about anorexia. Frances Haugen told lawmakers that top people at Facebook knew exactly what the company was doing and why it was doing it. Did these decisions ever come from Mark Zuckerberg directly or from other seniors management at Facebook?
- [37:55]
KCRW Announcer
We have a few choice documents that contain notes from briefings with Mark Zuckerberg where he chose metrics defined by Facebook over changes that would have significantly decreased misinformation, hate speech and other inciting content.
- [38:10]
Kate
So you're saying that documents exist, that at the highest level at Facebook, you had information discussing these two choices and that people chose, even though they knew.
- [38:21]
Brian Reed
That it was misinformation and hurtful and.
- [38:24]
Kate
Maybe even causing people lives, they continued to choose profit.
- [38:29]
Brian Reed
Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have said Francis Haugen's documents are taken out of context and don't tell a complete story. After Haugen went public, Zuckerberg wrote, I think most of us just don't recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted. He claims serving up angry or harmful content would cost them advertisers. Zuckerberg was later dragged in front of the Senate where Republican Josh Hawley went after him, accusing Zuckerberg's company of amplifying content that led to eating disorders in teenagers and to suicides. Let me ask you this, let me ask you this. There's families of victims here today. Have you apologized to the victims?
- [39:06]
Would you like to do so now? They're here. You're on national television. Would you like now to apologize to the victims who have been harmed by Senator Holly bullied Zuckerberg into turning around, facing family members of dead children who were sitting in the hearing and apologizing? I'm sorry. Everything that you have all gone through, terrible. No One should have to go through the things that your families have. Have suffered. Holly then brought up the protection Facebook gets from section 230. Mr. Zuckerberg, why should your company not be sued for this? Well, why is it that you can claim you hide behind a liability shield? You can't be held accountable. Shouldn't you be held accountable personally? Will you take personal responsibility, Senator, I think I've already answered this. I mean, this is these issues. Well, try us again. Will you take personal responsibility, Senator, I view my job and the job of our company is building the best tools that we can to keep our community safe. Well, you're failing at that.
- [40:02]
Guillaume Chalot
Well, Senator, we're doing an industry leading effort with we build AI tools.
- [40:06]
Brian Reed
Your product is killing people. Will you personally commit to another social media CEO and founder has copped to some responsibility. Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, said this on stage at an event in Kenya earlier this year.
- [40:19]
Guillaume Chalot
I built one of those services. Every time you hit the heart, every time you like a post, every time you retweet something, that's a signal to an algorithm, which then takes that and a bunch of other variables and uses that as a. As a way to push into someone else's feed. And the reason why is because that increases the number of advertising revenue for them. They're programming you.
- [40:47]
And they can change that algorithm at any point and program you in a different way. And they have in the past and they will continue to do so.
- [40:54]
Brian Reed
And how about with YouTube, where the Sandy hook lie proliferated and made its way to Kate's dad's screen at his real estate office. In 2013, a French engineer named Guillaume Chalot, who helped write the code for YouTube's algorithm, was fired, he says, for trying to spearhead a project that would have changed the algorithm to make it less tribal and bubble like. Chalo went on to give interviews describing how YouTube's wildly lucrative business model relies on the algorithm making editorial decisions about which content to recommend. The company is dictating most of what we see. Here he is speaking on a podcast from the center for humane technology. In 2019, Jho Low told an interviewer that the vast majority of YouTube's views each day come from the company's tailored recommendations to users.
- [41:44]
Guillaume Chalot
So you have very little choice. 99.9999% of the choice is from an algorithm that you don't understand and you don't control.
- [41:55]
Brian Reed
What harm does that create?
- [41:57]
Guillaume Chalot
Conspiracy theories are really easy to make. You can just make your own conspiracy theories in like one hour. Shoot and then it can get millions of views. They're addictive because people who live in this filter bubble of conspiracy theories and they don't watch the classical media, so they spend more time on YouTube. Imagine you're someone who doesn't trust the media. You're going to spend more time on YouTube. So since you spend more time on YouTube, the algorithm thinks you're better than anybody else. The definition of better for the algorithm, it's who spends more time so it will recommend you more. So there's like this vicious shelf call.
- [42:36]
Brian Reed
It's a vicious circle, shallow says, where the more conspiratorial the videos, the longer users stay on the platform watching them, the more valuable that content becomes, the more YouTube's algorithm recommends the conspiratorial videos.
- [42:56]
The number with Alex Jones, for example, always stunned me. You said that it recommended Alex Jones.
- [43:02]
Guillaume Chalot
Videos 15 billion times. Yeah, and that's, that's a lower estimate. I think it's, it's much more. But we have no idea how big it is.
- [43:11]
Brian Reed
Why do we not have any idea?
- [43:13]
Guillaume Chalot
Because YouTube doesn't want to say like how many times they recommend each video. So they're like, yeah, if we start saying it, then we give way too much information. They have no incentive to actually do it.
- [43:28]
Brian Reed
We need to be able to sue these companies.
- [43:37]
Imagine the Sandy Hook families have been able to sue YouTube for defaming them in addition to Alex Jones. Again, we don't know how much money YouTube made off the Sandy Hook lies. Did YouTube pull in as much cash as Alex Jones? Five times as much, A hundred times.
- [43:56]
Whatever it was. What if the victims were able to sue YouTube? It wouldn't get rid of their loss or trauma, but it could offer some compensation. YouTube's owned by Google, remember? One of the most valuable companies in the world. More likely to actually pay out instead of going bankrupt like Alex Jones. But on a wider scale, the risk of massive lawsuits like this, a real threat to these companies profits could finally force the platforms to, to change how they're operating. Maybe they'd change the algorithms to prioritize content from outlets that fact check because that's less risky. Maybe they'd get rid of fancy algorithms altogether, go back to people getting shown posts chronologically or based on their own choice of search terms. It'd be up to the companies. But however they chose to address it, they would at least have to adapt their business model so that it incorporated the risk of getting sued when they boost damaging lies. For what it's worth, this is what Facebook, whistleblower Frances Haugen argued for in Congress in 2021.
- [45:03]
KCRW Announcer
I strongly encourage reforming Section 230 to exempt decisions about algorithms. They have 100% control over their algorithms. And Facebook should not get a free pass on choices it makes to prioritize grant and virality and reactiveness over public safety. They shouldn't get a free pass on that because they're paying for their profits right now with our safety. So I strongly encourage reform of 230 in that way.
- [45:31]
Brian Reed
Lenny Posner, the father of Noah Posner, who was murdered at Sandy Hook, he started a nonprofit to stop disinformation and harassment online. It is also advocated to change section 230.
- [45:47]
I made my argument to Kate, by the way. I've been practicing it, making the case I just made to you, to friends, to people I meet in bars and lately to interviewees. Kate didn't say much. What would the world be like if the Sandy Hook victim families could sue YouTube the same way they could sue Alex Jones?
- [46:05]
Kate
Hmm.
- [46:06]
Brian Reed
She listened and then at the end of my spiel said this.
- [46:12]
Kate
I'd agree with that.
- [46:13]
Brian Reed
Really?
- [46:14]
Kate
Yeah. No, it is. It's a great idea.
- [46:16]
Brian Reed
I believe in it.
- [46:21]
She apparently thought it was so great that after our interview, she texted Sam, my producer, a story about a mom in New York who's suing TikTok and Meta for pushing content about subway surfing to her 15 year old son, who went and did it and died. The case is challenging section 230 in court. Would this contribute?
- [46:42]
Kate
Kate wrote, I think your idea and solution would be, like, broad enough. I think it's a great idea. Yeah. I'm about to say, like, give me the petition. You know, let me go out and shout on the corner.
- [46:58]
Brian Reed
Okay, I'm taking you to Congress.
- [47:05]
Now. I just need the people in Congress to return my calls. There's a bipartisan group of them who want to repeal Section 230. Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, Dick Durbin, Amy Klobuchar. Senators, call me back. I want to know what needs to happen to get your proposal passed.
- [47:24]
I'm still trying to figure out how to do this whole advocacy thing, honestly pushing for a policy change rather than just reporting on it. It's new to me and I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. Should I be launching a petition raising money for like a pack? I've been talking to marketing people about slogans for a campaign. We'll document this. As I stumble my way through. It's all a bit awkward for me, so if you have ideas for how we can build this movement to be able to sue Big Tech. Please tell me I'm on Instagram @Brihread B R I H R E E D We're also on substack@question everything.substack.com get in the comments. Get in our chat there. Let me know what you think of my argument. I've already started to get some pushback from some of you. Please don't be afraid to poke holes in what I'm saying and we're going to talk to some skeptics in future episodes.
- [48:14]
Today's episode was produced by Sam Egan. It was edited by our managing editor, Kevin Sullivan. Robin Semion and I are the executive producers of Question Everything. Our team also includes producers Sophie Kazis and Zach St. Louis, contributing editors Neil Drumming and Jen Kinney, and associate producers Emily Maltaire and Kevin Shepard. This episode was fact checked by Annika Robbins, mixing and sound design by Brendan Baker. Our music is by Matt McGinley. Special thanks to Iowa Public Radio and to Meg and Patrick Witte. Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seiple, Tejal Azumara, Natalie Hill and Jennifer Farrow. Please rate and review Question Everything. I will keep asking. I really appreciate it. And speaking of social media influence, we will be back next week with a frank behind the scenes look at some of the most popular accounts on TikTok. So you have politicians, some of the most powerful people in the world begging pleading to get on your shows. You're turning them down. Meanwhile, legacy news outlets independent like news organizations like us are putting in requests like we tried to get Trump on the show because we're not asking them hard hitting questions. I know. Yeah, I know.
- [49:21]
See you next Thursday.
- [49:31]
KCRW Announcer
I just got my new phone and the KCRW app is the best way to get the music and shows you love from kcrw. And it's been totally redone to be cleaner, faster and more reliable. And there's two new music streams, Dance 24 and Vintage 24 and they're only in the app plus real time now playing so you never miss a track ID. Look up KCRW in the app store and be sure to make a free account to use all the new features.