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- [00:00]
Joseph
In today's world, data breaches happen all the time. And even the most secure companies can't always protect their employees personal information from ending up in the wrong hands. That's where Deleteme comes in. Deleteme is a service that removes your employees sensitive information from hundreds of data broker websites, sites where hackers can find phone numbers and emails within seconds. Rachel Toback, CEO of Social Proof Security, says attackers use this data to target employees with phishing messages and AI powered phone. But Deleteme makes it harder for these bad actors by scrubbing your employees details regularly. It's simple. Attackers are lazy. If it's too hard to find contact info, they'll move on to easier targets. Deleteme takes care of this for you, doing the heavy lifting so you don't have to. And over time, they keep removing the information so it stays down, protecting your team from constant exposure. If your business has a social presence or deals with clients, you need DeleteMe. Visit DeleteMe.com 404Media and start safeguarding your team's information today. That's DeleteMe.com 404Media hello and welcome to the 404Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404 Media Co as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404 Media co. I'm your host, Joseph and with me are 404 Media co founder Sam Cole.
- [01:52]
Sam Cole
Hi, Joe.
- [01:53]
Joseph
Emmanuel Myberg.
- [01:54]
Emmanuel Myberg
Hello.
- [01:55]
Joseph
And Jason Kevlar. Hey, good to be here.
- [01:59]
Sam Cole
Was that your Jason voice?
- [02:01]
Joseph
Uh, yeah, it was. How was my Joseph voice?
- [02:04]
Sam Cole
It was perfect. It needed to be a little bit more British, but pretty good.
- [02:09]
Joseph
Yeah, yeah. Um, as you can probably tell, Joseph is not here. I'm Jason. But you know, you get the B team. Today we are going to start out with Emmanuel's story. Microsoft study finds AI makes human cognition, quote, atrophied and unprepared. This is one of those stories that we published that the response to was kind of mixed, I feel where there was a bunch of people saying, hey dumbasses. Of course we already knew that. However, I thought it was quite interesting and I think that anytime that a company is pushing a technology, but then also publishing studies saying that their technology is causing some problems, I find it to be very interesting. So what is this paper? How did it work. What did they find?
- [02:59]
Emmanuel Myberg
So I want to start by reading a quote from the paper itself, which I think really sums up the point. And it says a key irony of automation is that mechanizing routine tasks and leaving exception handling to the human user. You deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgment and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do arise. That is what they found. This is the gist of the paper. I think that's very well phrased in terms of how they actually measured this. They recruited 319 knowledge workers from one of those. This is an interesting story on its own, but there are these various platforms where people can sign up and volunteer to participate in this kind of research. They use one of those to recruit 319 knowledge workers. And then those knowledge workers reported 936 firsthand examples of them using generative AI. And then the researchers provided them with a questionnaire to reflect on how using AI impacted or did not impact their critical thinking. And the paper goes on quite a bit on how they prepped the people who participated in the study, which I think is good because a lot of these terms are vague and complicated. But they explain what their definition of critical thinking is, made sure that the people who participate in the study understand that, and kind of explain what they're looking for. And a lot of interesting stuff to talk about here. I want to start with some of the actual data, which the study did not make a big deal out of, but I found to be probably the most terrifying thing about it, which is just what people report that they use AI for and they're daily jobs. So they cite some examples. So there is a teacher who is using Dall E, which is an AI image generator, to make a presentation about hand washing in school. There's a commodities trader who is using ChatGPT to kind of train themselves on their job and become better commodity traders. And there is a nurse who verified that a ChatGPT generated educational pamphlet for newly diagnosed diabetic patients. So that alone, I think is already kind of shocking that all these professions are using generative AI like that. But yeah, what these people reported and what the study found is that the more a worker relies on generative AI, the less critical thinking they use in their job. And also there's a correlation between workers who are more confident in themselves are less confident in the generative AI output and therefore feel like they have to use more critical thinking. And the inverse is ultra true. So if you have not a lot of confidence in your abilities, you just trust the generative AI more, rubber stamp it and let it go.
- [06:36]
Joseph
Yeah, it's interesting. They have like a few little excerpts in this study where they have quotes from people and one of them is, quote, I can be confident that everything is spelled correctly. I don't need to second guess myself. I can get the reassurance I need without having to bother another person to check it for me. And that's obviously like a very small thing where they're just asking it to spell check something. But I did find it interesting to see what people were using it for. The other thing that this study says, I believe, if I understand it correctly, you wrote this story. But as I understand it, the people who are using generative AI are, rather than being creative and, you know, create, like creating things from scratch, which is, you know, how we used to do things and how we still do things here. They're like correcting the AI, so they're, they're sort of like managing the output of this other, of this technology. And that's like a different type of work. Can you elaborate a little bit on, on that? Like it's a different type of work? More or less.
- [07:44]
Emmanuel Myberg
Yeah. Maybe one of you can look up the exact word that they use, which I thought was really good. But essentially what you're referring to is the difference between someone doing the job and someone's job being verifying the output of a generative AI tool, which is.
- [08:06]
Joseph
Yeah, like that's, here's the quote. It's. The data shows a shift in cognitive effort as knowledge workers increasingly move from task execution to oversight.
- [08:16]
Emmanuel Myberg
Oversight, right. Yeah. So that, and that's like, that's kind of a scary vision of the future where all these jobs, you're not actually doing the job, you're kind of making sure that the AI is doing the job correctly that you previously did.
- [08:30]
Joseph
You, Emmanuel, had this like, allegory more or less, where you said, like, I don't remember anyone's phone numbers anymore. And you just use, you know, you're. They're saved in your cell phone. And that's not the cognitive. You don't have that like cognitive load anymore. You've, like offloaded it to technology. And that's not artificial intelligence. But it seems like, you know, saying that someone's cognition is atrophied and unprepared, that seems quite bad. But it does seem like it is not fully a dire picture that they're painting here. Can you elaborate a little bit? More on the phone number analogy.
- [09:10]
Emmanuel Myberg
Yeah. So I think you and I were texting about this study that we both saw over the weekend. And I think the reason that we thought it was interesting is because the study itself. Let me see what the actual. I'm going to read the title of the paper. It's the Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking. Self Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers. Which is obviously many words, but that is like a pretty spicy title for a paper from Microsoft, which is heavily invested in the success of Generative AI. And we can talk more about what that means for all this to be coming from Microsoft researchers. But to your question, and the researchers point this out at the top, and this is something when we talked about before we wrote the story, is that there is a need. We both felt the need to hedge here and like, make this seem maybe less dramatic that even the title says, because there is a long history of various technologies that we offload cognitive tasks to, and it seems outrageous at the time, but then becomes completely normal and we all assume is good. So the researchers point out calculators, right? It's like calculators didn't used to exist. People thought that it would make us bad at math. And obviously that is not the case. Like, math has advanced tremendously. People are probably overall better at math than they used to be before the invention of the calculator. People said the same thing about the Internet itself. This I didn't know. But they noted that Socrates really objected to writing becoming commonplace, and that would make people dumb because they wouldn't have to remember stuff. I guess did not know that. Right? Me neither. But it's like, yeah, we've all felt this. And I think the millennials in the audience probably remember a time before smartphones and not having Google Maps on your device. And I talk about in the story how when I moved to San Francisco, it was right before smartphones caught on, and I would leave the house with like a little pocket map and I would learn how the city works and public transportation works, and I would remember all of that. And in a few years, I kind of knew the city very well. And since then, every time I moved to a new city, I never went through that process because I just had Google Maps and I never learned, you know, I really can't navigate New York that well without Google Maps. And is that bad? I don't know. Like, it's probably not great that my navigational skills have atrophied, as they say in the Paper. But overall people are better at navigation and one can easily imagine generative AI should it catch on, should it work as well as the people who run AI companies tell us the will offloading various tasks and us getting completely used to it and then it becoming an overall positive. Like one can imagine that world even if the prospect of offloading all these tasks right now seems scary, especially if you're a nurse or whatever.
- [12:37]
Joseph
Yeah, I mean, I find it to be pretty scary. Regardless, I take your point and I think just like, as a, as a counterpoint, you know, I didn't memorize my partner's phone number until like six months ago and we've been together for seven years and that's very bad. But I can still remember a lot of phone numbers from my childhood. Like, and I like my next door neighbor's phone number. I still remember it. And I do think that like the maps one is a good thing to bring up. And I find that when I purposefully try to navigate without Google Maps or something like that, I feel my brain working in a way that it doesn't normally work when I just blindly follow the map. And I also find that if I go somewhere without Google Maps one time and I have to figure it out myself, it like downloads into my brain in a way that doesn't happen. If I do it like 30 times with Google Maps, I'll go to the same place and just blindly follow the map and I'll have no idea like how I got there, what happened during the ride. It's like there's an entire like blank space in my brain. And I do wonder if you start offloading all sorts of different things to, you know, generative AI in some way. Like what, what that will look like over time when you just start taking like all of these things off, like what is left. And the paper does bring that up like it says effects on writing. And they're like, well, people know how to write now. And the people who use generative AI for writing, who already know how to write, they will, you know, like be able to edit what, what is, what's coming back. So they'll be able to do that oversight process. But they sort of worry that in the long term, like it says. However, there are concerns that novice writers may become overly reliant on these tools, potentially impairing their long term skill development by bypassing critical writing processes such as constructing logical arguments and understanding subject matter. That seems like a real potential problem.
- [14:50]
Emmanuel Myberg
I just like so two things. One, which is addressed in a paper and that goes back to what does it mean for this to come from Microsoft? I think that is a company that is heavily invested in AI recognizing potentially a real and big problem. And eventually at the end of this paper, coming around to a solution, right? Saying we recognize it and we see this with other things, right? Like when we write about Google doing research about AI misinformation. The point of that, at the end of the day is for Google to say, we recognize this is a problem. This is a result of a technology that we are developing and deploying. Here's what we suggest we can do to mitigate this problem so we can develop this technology further. And in this case, essentially what Microsoft says is that the generative AI tools need to first of all encourage critical thinking, even though they are doing the work. So they say the AI tool can suggest areas for user refinement or offer guided critiques like invite the user to examine the output, which is not something we see AI tools currently do, right? When OpenAI gives you an answer, it is kind of doing it in a definitive voice with authority. And that's where things can get really hilarious, right? When we talk about Google AI overview, telling people to igloo, right? That would seem less bad if Google in some way was like, hey, like maybe you should look into this further and not just trust the output. And then the other thing that is not addressed in the paper, but I think is something that has come up in our reporting a little bit. For example, when I wrote about the CEO of Suno talking about how nobody likes making music actually, and we should just like let AI do it all. And that is the more fundamental question of like, what do we actually want AI to do? Like, let's assume that generative AI will eventually be able to do all of our jobs. Does that mean that we wanted to do it all? Are there things that we don't want it to do because we want to do them just because we enjoy them, or we think we get better results even though an automated tool can do it?
- [17:17]
Sam Cole
I think these companies that are developing AI know this is a problem. And it's like Jason said, like people replied to this story and they were like, oh duh, like, everyone knows this is a problem, but something being studied is much more powerful than people just like kind of anecdotally knowing something. And when I was writing about Anthropic recently put in all of their job applications, which they have like 150 different open roles right now. So it's a lot of job applications or a Job, you know, like descriptions that they're telling applicants not to use AI to fill out the application. And it's like they know, they know that this is a problem. And I was trying to find a study that kind of backs up the idea that everyone knows, which is that, like, relying really heavily on these conversational AIs makes your brain kind of mushy after a while if you're just kind of never using critical thinking. And in their application it says, don't use AI assistance during the application process. We want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system. And we also want to evaluate your non AI assisted communication skills. And anthropic, if people don't know, makes Claude, which is a very popular conversational AI that you would use for that purpose. Like, if it was any other job application, you were like, I just need to whip off a why I want to work at Anthropic. I would use Claude to do that probably if I was going to like rely on a chatbot to do those sorts of things. But they're saying, we want to see your non AI assisted communication skills. Which I wonder is, is that going to be a sought after skill in the future if people don't have it? If people are losing that ability to put together critical thought without the use of a computer, is that going to be the new kind of sought after skill in the workforce? I don't know. That feels like a very far away thing, but maybe it's not that far.
- [19:18]
Joseph
This study is not exactly about that. And yet I found myself thinking the same thing. What does this mean for humans and what does this mean for jobs? And what does this mean for, you know, cynically, like companies who want new ideas and who want to continue making money. And we talked about this before, but there was this period of time where a bunch of journalists were getting laid off. And as part of the culture war, there was like a type of software engineer who would go into people's Twitter mentions and say, learn to code. Like the way that it worked was someone would say, oh my God, I just got laid off from my job at Vice. And then a bunch of like dickheads would respond to them, say, learn to code. Saying that like, software engineer was going to be the, you know, the only place that jobs would exist in the future. And in a somewhat like, interesting fashion, you know, software engineers are being automated right now by generative AI. And I think there's a lot of creativity in software engineering and there's a lot of problem solving in software engineering. But a lot of the sort of, like, commodified coding is being replaced by things like Copilot, you know, Microsoft Copilot, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is talking about replacing software engineers with AI and turning a bunch of these coders into people who just like, oversee AI coding bots and things like that. And then in this story we reported on last week, like, the federal government wants to replace a lot of its coders with AI coding bots. And meanwhile, there's like, tons of journalists and writers who have been replaced by AI or who have, you know, are competing with, you know, AI that steals content and just, you know, regurgitates it out there. But, like, what we do and what a lot of really good journalists do is they find new information and share new information and share new ideas. And I wonder if, like, the only way that you'll have a sort of, like, knowledge work job in the future is if you can create new ideas with your own brain. Because a lot of the little quotes in here about what people are using generative AI for are like, I just wonder if companies are getting what they paid for, because a lot of companies are asking people to do stuff and they're like, oh, I typed it into the AI and I gave whatever it spit out. And so I wonder about, like, the sameness of everything that's going to start happening as AI does more stuff in, like, an office setting, I guess, I.
- [22:07]
Emmanuel Myberg
Think, what is the OpenAI research tool? Is it just open research that they recently unveiled?
- [22:14]
Joseph
Deep Research.
- [22:15]
Emmanuel Myberg
Deep Research. That is the AI tool that I think is closest to what our jobs are. And I haven't used it yet, but I will use it and report back and tell you if we're cooked or not. I suspect not. I was watching the demo and initially I was really freaked out. I was like, damn, that's what I do. But then I thought about some of what you, Jason, said, which is a lot of our stories are really the foundation, at its core is an original thought. And also talking to people and getting information that inherently is hard to get out of people. And as far as I know, Deep Research is still unable to do that. Before we move on, can I just very briefly talk about POD committed?
- [23:08]
Joseph
Yeah, please.
- [23:10]
Emmanuel Myberg
I wrote in the story, I used the phrase that Microsoft is POD committed to the rapid development of generative AI tools. And I've never gotten more emails about a mistake in my article before. And I was like, did I make this up? And I didn't. It's a Real term, pot committed is a poker term. I don't even play poker, but I like the metaphor, which is you're sort of so deep in to a bet that the only way forward for you is to keep placing the bet or to go deeper into the same bet. And I was very surprised that people are not familiar with it.
- [23:49]
Joseph
So it's like in Hold'em in Texas hold'em, for example, you get your cards, you make a bet, someone else calls, someone else raises, you call or you raise, and then like, you see some cards and then by the end of like the, the hand, your options are like fold and lose all the money that you've bet or, you know, your pot committed, meaning you put in so much of your money that giving up is like gonna fuck you at this point.
- [24:19]
Emmanuel Myberg
If you don't win the pot, you're done.
- [24:21]
Joseph
Yeah.
- [24:22]
Emmanuel Myberg
So you have to keep going.
- [24:23]
Joseph
So you have to keep going. You have to keep investing in it. Because like, even, even if there's like a low percentage chance of being able to win at this point, like, you know, a card comes up in poker, in, on the river or whatever, the last card, and you're, you're not going to win or like, you only have like a 5% chance of winning or something like that, you still kind of just like have to bet because you won't have enough chips left to like play if you fold.
- [24:48]
Emmanuel Myberg
Right.
- [24:48]
Joseph
More or less is how I understand it.
- [24:50]
Emmanuel Myberg
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm saying, and I mean that, that is basically my read on where Microsoft and a lot of the big tech companies are with AI. They have put so many billions of dollars into it already that to back out at this point would be.
- [25:06]
Joseph
Yeah, they need us to, they need us to accept it as a society.
- [25:10]
Emmanuel Myberg
Right.
- [25:10]
Joseph
That's what I always say, that they're shoving it down our throats. And I mean that, that is what's happening. But it's like, even though people are showing in many ways that they don't want to use it, or they only want to use it in certain contexts or for certain things. It's like they're like, you will keep eating these vegetables until, until you're healthy, even though we can see you turning purple or whatever, I just wanted to.
- [25:34]
Emmanuel Myberg
Say it's a real term, I promise. PAC committed. It's a real thing, man.
- [25:38]
Sam Cole
You wanted to say. He's right. That's all.
- [25:39]
Joseph
Yeah, we had like a, like an hour long conversation about pot committed yesterday though, afterwards. Sam, you knew it though, right?
- [25:46]
Sam Cole
No, I didn't. Know to look it up. And then I asked my fiance who plays poker and he didn't know it, but he's not very good at.
- [25:52]
Joseph
That means he's not good. That means he's not good at poker.
- [25:54]
Sam Cole
He said, oh, I would never do that though. And I was like, okay, yeah, for sure.
- [25:57]
Joseph
Only win. He only plays poker hands that he wins.
- [26:00]
Sam Cole
I think we should do a 44 poker club. We should poker match for subscribers. No, maybe not. That's a bad idea.
- [26:08]
Joseph
We can bet Bitcoin. Okay, we'll take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk about Wikipedia. Do you plan your vacation locations based on the local language? With Babbel, language no longer has to be the barrier this year, speak like a whole new you With Babbel, the language learning app that gets you talking. Learning a new language is the pathway to discovering new cultures. So before you embark on a trip, embark on learning something new. Babbel's quick 10 minute lessons, handcrafted by over 200 language experts, get you to begin speaking your new language in three weeks or whatever pace you choose. And because conversing is the key to really understanding each other in new languages, Babbel is designed using practical real world conversations. Spending months with private teachers is the old way of learning languages, and nothing screams tourist like holding a phone translation app up to your face all day. Babbel's tips and tools are inspired by the real life stuff you actually need when communicating with a focus on conversation, you'll be ready to talk wherever you go. Last year I used Babbel to learn Italian before my trip to Rome, allowing me to better connect with the people I met there. This year I'm brushing up on my rusty Spanish before a trip to South America. This year, get talking with Babbel. Babbel is gifting our listeners 60% off subscriptions@babbel.com 404 get up to 60% off@babbel.com 404 spelled b a b b e l.com 404 babel.com 404 rules and restrictions may apply. I don't know about you, but I like keeping my money where I can see it. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers also seem to like keeping my money too. After years of overpaying for wireless, I finally got fed up from crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks that actually cost more in the long run and switched to Mint Mobile. Now I pay just a fraction of the price with Mint compared to big wireless carriers and you can be doing the same. Say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plan's jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at 15 bucks a month. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans@mintmobile.com 404 Media that's mintmobile.com 404 Media upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month new customer offer for first 3 months only, then full price plan options are available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Starting any business becomes so much easier when there's another business you can rely on to make things easy for our merch. That business is Shopify. And for millions of online and brick and mortar stores, well, they rely on Shopify too. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shopify's not so secret. Secret, it's Shop Pay, which boosts conversions by up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout 404 Media uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com media all lowercase go to shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com media.
- [30:30]
Jason Kevlar
Hackers and cyber criminals have always held this kind of special fascination.
- [30:35]
Emmanuel Myberg
Obviously, I can't tell you too much about what I do. It's a game. Who's the best hacker? And I was like, well, this is child's play.
- [30:43]
Jason Kevlar
I'm Dena Temple Reston, and on the Click Here podcast you'll meet them and the people trying to stop them.
- [30:49]
Sam Cole
We're not afraid of the attack.
- [30:51]
Emmanuel Myberg
We're afraid of the creativity and the.
- [30:53]
Sam Cole
Intelligence of the human being behind it.
- [30:55]
Jason Kevlar
Click here Stories about the people making and breaking our digital world.
- [31:00]
Emmanuel Myberg
AI machines, satellite engine ignition.
- [31:03]
Jason Kevlar
Click here and lift up. Click here Every Tuesday and Friday, wherever you get Your podcast.
- [31:21]
Sam Cole
This is a story by Jason. The headline is Wikipedia Prepares for Increase in Threats to us Editors from Musk and his Allies. I have been kind of seeing here and there on social media because I follow a lot of Wikipedia folks talking about threats to Wikipedia existentially and also sometimes literally from Elon Musk and Silicon Valley, and with everything that's been going on with those delightful topics and news cycles. So I have seen that there are threats. I've seen that people are worried, but I haven't quite seen exactly what's going on. So can you kind of just walk us through what these threats are against Wikipedia also, why would you threaten Wikipedia? So wholesome crazy.
- [32:09]
Joseph
Yeah. So Elon Musk has hated Wokipedia for, like, several years now. And our friends Molly White, who runs Web3 is going great. And also a blog called Citation Needed did a really big rundown of, like, the history of Elon Musk hating Wikipedia back at the beginning of January that you should go read. But, like, basically his. His thought is that Wikipedia is biased against the right, and specifically it's biased against Elon Musk and his companies. And so he's been calling it Wokipedia for a long time. He said, stop donating to Wikipedia. He's talked about trying to take over Wikipedia. He's talked about trying to buy Wikipedia because he tries to buy stuff when he doesn't like it and then turn it into something of his image. And this all, like, boils down to the fact that, you know, Wikipedia is a collective effort between millions of human beings across the entire world and also the most pedantic people you've ever met in your entire life. And so the integrity of Wikipedia is very important to them. It's not something that can be bought, and it's not something where it's like you try to change a comma in an article and you can get into an argument for like, four days about whether that comma should be there or not in the talk pages and sort of like in the back and forth of, like, whether an ed is going to be accepted or not. And so Wikipedia has shown itself to be very resilient to efforts to change how a given article reads. And a lot of. Not a lot of. But, like, Elon Musk doesn't like what his Wikipedia page says, more or less, and what he doesn't like what, you know, the Wikipedia pages for his companies say either. And there are lots of companies that try to do paid Wikipedia editing, meaning they're just like, they're Essentially, like disinformation firms that try to go in and edit a Wikipedia page to make it look more favorable to whoever the subject is or to, like, scrub it of, you know, negative information, more or less. And I, I haven't seen, like, a good. There probably is a good study because there's a lot of studies about Wikipedia, but there's basically, like, that's very, very verboten in Wikipedia land, like being paid to edit things. Like, when people are caught, they're banned for life. It's, like, extremely bad. And so Elon Musk and more recently, the Heritage foundation, which wrote Project 2025, has sort of upped the ante and said that they are going to start going after individual Wikipedia editors, meaning they are going to threaten specific editors with either, like, harassment campaigns, you know, more or less. That's my value judgment put on that. Like, you know, the Heritage foundation didn't say we're going to do a harassment campaign, but they've talked about trying to identify individual editors based on, like, their IP addresses or based on their usernames, like searching their usernames in, hacked their data sets, for example, to try to. To dox them and find out, you know, who they are and perhaps, like, bring lawsuits, like defamation lawsuits against them and things like this. And this is like, really scary. It's really scary for Wikipedia editors who are largely just engaging in this volunteer project in good faith. And it's really scary for the integrity of Wikipedia as a whole, because, you know, it's a. It's a nonprofit organization. You know, the people who work for the Wikimedia foundation are being paid, but the editors are not. And so if editing Wikipedia starts becoming this, like, dangerous thing where you could get sued because of an edit that you made, then, you know, it throws the entire, like, validity of the project into concern, I guess.
- [36:21]
Emmanuel Myberg
It's also such. I'm glad we're podcasting about this because now that we're talking, and I can put this, like, in the analysis bucket and not the, I don't know, purely factual bucket, we can speak about it in terms I feel are more appropriate. And it's just very crazy that we're having this conversation about editing Wikipedia in the United States because this language and these strategies come from what we think of as authoritarian countries, right? It just, it just, it's bad for Wikipedia for sure. But it's also, I feel like a really bad sign that editors in the United States feel like they are under threat for editing Wikipedia. It's just not something that I imagined what's on the menu here, you know?
- [37:20]
Joseph
Yeah. So, I mean, let's be real, like, we're journalists in the United States. The First Amendment is extremely permissive for us. It protects us. It protects, like, a lot of different types of freedom of speech. It's like a very strong amendment, or it has been historically, and it's been eroded away by sort of by like a. Via a lot of lawsuits. You know, there's been examples of different media companies that have been more or less destroyed by these lawsuits that even if they maybe could have won, stay in court forever because there's, like, a rich person behind them and they can be bankrupted in that way. And, and that's for, like, larger media corporations, companies like Gawker and things that have had millions of dollars to. To spend on their defense. If you start thinking about just like a random Wikipedia editor, you know, having a lawsuit financed against them, that's very scary. It's like a very scary situation. And so historically, it's like freedom of speech in the United States has been very strong. Wikipedia operates globally, and it operates differently in other countries than it does in the United States. For that reason. It's like, always been easy to operate in the United States because of the First Amendment. But Wiki Wikimedia has just recently fought a lawsuit in India. It's fighting a lawsuit in Germany, and I believe it won the lawsuit in Germany. I don't know the specifics of it, but that came up as part of this sort of reporting that they were fighting this. And then there's like, a lot of countries where it's either illegal to edit Wikipedia, it's illegal to access Wikipedia, or it's very dangerous to do so. And you're right, they've, like, developed these methods for users there to continue to contribute to the project, but to do so anonymously. And they're now rolling those features out to the United States. So, like, I haven't said what those features are, so I'll say them now, which is right now, if you're logged out of your Wikipedia account, your IP address is shown, and this is so that, you know, if you're just like, terrorizing a website, the administrators, or like the moderators of that web, that Wikipedia page can ban you or, you know, like, contact you in some way. So they are going to get rid of that. They are going to make it so that everyone who is logged out and starts editing Wikipedia pages is given a dummy username and that the IP address is not available publicly. They also are going to start deleting IP address information after 90 days? I believe it is. And then especially in what has traditionally been considered authoritarian countries, if you were editing pages that were considered to be controversial, meaning like pages about the government in these countries, things like that, you could get a sock puppet account and that, that sock puppet would be known by an administrator in another country and you would be allowed to edit these pages, but you're. It wouldn't be attached to your, like, real Wikipedia username. So you could have like a Wikipedia presence where you're like, editing only, you know, articles about the color red or something, and then on the side be editing, you know, articles about the dictator of your country or something under a separate name.
- [41:04]
Emmanuel Myberg
We usually use sock puppet in a negative context, but here we're talking about, it's like a pseudonym. It's, it's just a way for you to have an identity that doesn't compromise your real identity. Right?
- [41:16]
Joseph
Yeah, they call it legitimate sock puppets, but yeah, that, like sock. Sock puppets on Wikipedia are a big problem generally where it's like someone creates a fake account and then starts, you know, doing disinformation or whatever. And this is using it in a different context to allow people to edit politically dangerous topics. So you, like, you could imagine someone wanting to use a sock puppet account to edit the Elon Musk page or edit the Tesla page, or edit the Heritage foundation page, for example. And so they're going to roll these out more widely. And this was announced at like two different meetings on January 30th. One Jimmy Wales went to, who was the founder of Wikipedia. And then Mariana Iskinder is the CEO of the Wikimedia foundation. And she was at that same one and was sort of talking about this problem. And so it's like this is something that the highest levels of the Wikimedia foundation are worried about at this moment. I personally think that the community is not. They don't think that this is enough is sort of the vibe that I got, although I hesitate to speak for the entirety of the Wikimedia community. Like, this is something that people are really worried about. And the solution here is not super clear. One last thing I'll say is that every year Wikimedia has a conference called Wiki Mania. You know, lots of, lots of terminology here, but they have basically a conference and a party. And it's not always in the United States. It's kind of rarely in the United States. But the idea of holding a Wiki Mania in the United States came up and you know, the CEO of Wiki Wikimedia was like, we're not sure. We're just not sure if we're going to do it in the US because it might be dangerous. It might be dangerous to have in the United States. It's also like difficult to get visas to come to the United States now. And it's just like, I don't know, the idea that you wouldn't have an event like that in the US because of the political situation shows kind of like how scary at least this global organization is taking this moment, I guess.
- [43:37]
Emmanuel Myberg
Do you want to talk at all about. Because we're talking about Elon Musk being a risk and the government potentially being a risk. But there's also a growing, I don't want to call it a movement, but there is this like in conservative media, there's this growing notion that Wikimedia is like, if not Soros backed, but like a liberal, progressive, lefty project. And it's like, I don't think a week goes by now that we don't see some peace about how biased Wikipedia is. And that I think is also feeding into this and feeding into the fear of Wikipedia editors.
- [44:16]
Joseph
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you're right. This has been sort of like a years long conservative, I guess, project to delegitimize Wikipedia as an information source. It's interesting, like on one of these calls there was former Wikipedia editor who went on a rant. So, so these things are like open to anyone basically. And so it's like the world's largest city council meeting that you could imagine. And it's all like Wikipedia affiliated people. So there was one guy who was like, you haven't answered my question for six years and I'm going to continue asking this question at every single one. And he talked for like seven minutes straight. And then they were like, okay, sir. And they were like, we'll get back to you. And then there was another woman who came on and she started asking a question to Jimmy Wales and was basically like, I have forked Wikipedia because I think that you're like a woke project, more or less. And so she like cloned Wikipedia and then created a new one. And she's like, but my version isn't being indexed by Google. Can you like figure out, figure this out for me? And he was like, well, we have nothing to do with that, ma'am. But I, I bring that up because it like is this, it's been this narrative for a while. There have been some studies about this and they found that the average like Wikipedia article is slightly left of center, like ever so slightly, but that it's generally fact based. You know, there's so many rules about citing your sources and things like that. And so, yeah, it's like the, it's one of those things where it's like reality has a left wing bias, you know, that's a saying also. Like the United States in general is very conservative and Wikipedia is a really global project. And so you have like, I don't know, those pesky Europeans with their like center left, like ideology infiltrating articles about climate change where it doesn't say climate change is a hoax. So I don't know, it's one of those deals, I think personally. But my personal opinion is that Wikipedia is maybe the greatest example of cross cultural global human cooperation ever done. Like, I don't really know what else compares to it. It's a free resource that has just like endless information about everything. I don't know. I don't even know what else you would like put up there with it. And so like the idea that this is now under threat is quite concerning to me.
- [47:04]
Emmanuel Myberg
Back when anyone could upload to pornhub, that was a very rich tapestry. But that's over now.
- [47:09]
Joseph
So true. Yeah, they shut it down.
- [47:12]
Sam Cole
I was just looking at Elon Musk's Wikipedia page because I was like, what is on here? I, you know, I don't look at that every day. It's like, what is on here that he's so pissed about? And it's very normal, very average. It's like there's not even. It's like the public image section is about how he was like portrayed in the Simpsons or whatever. But then you go in the talk page, which you can click at the top of any big P page, which I recommend everybody doing for anything mildly controversial because it's so fun. And the first entry in the talk page, his discussion is mentioning oligarch characterization in lead. And it's someone making the argument that he should be characterized as an oligarch because like he cites like seven different sources and then people are going to fight about that for who knows how long, weeks. That's, you know, that's good eats on Wikipedia.
- [48:04]
Joseph
Yeah, the talk page is just like endless.
- [48:06]
Sam Cole
People are talking about the duck test. So good. I just love it. I love that this exists. We're talking about his family's wealth, South Africa. Yeah, Just good shit. But none of this is on the front of his page. Like, what are you so mad about bro.
- [48:22]
Joseph
Yeah, you really need to read Molly White's article. It's on. It's citation needed. And the article is called Elon Musk. And the rights were on Wikipedia that on December 31, Elon Musk was mad because in a Twitter account called Gates is a psycho. Had seen that Bill Clinton's Wikipedia page was edited to delete his connection to Jeffrey Epstein, for example, and then suggested that Bill Clinton himself was the person who did the edits. And you know, the, the text really just got moved to another part of the Wikipedia page. And this, this spurred like a days long like Elon Musk rant against Wikipedia. So it's like even trying to explain this on a podcast is. It's. This is something where text is way better. Links it, screenshots, images like. So go check out what Molly White wrote because it's really good.
- [49:23]
Sam Cole
Yeah, go down the rabbit hole. She also put out a recent video about how to edit Wikipedia if you're new, which I think is very useful and great.
- [49:31]
Joseph
Yeah. Okay, let's end it there for the free show. If you're listening to the free version of this podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you're a subscriber, we are going to talk about posting our way out of fascism and why you can or cannot do that. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404 Media co. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and so supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404 Media co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope. We will see you again next week.