histroy sent from my iphone feat. Paolo Gerbaudo

Summary

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TRASHFUTURE: "history sent from my iPhone" feat. Paolo Gerbaudo

Release date: February 3, 2026
Host(s): TRASHFUTURE regulars
Guest: Paolo Gerbaudo (sociologist, Complutense University of Madrid)
Main Theme:
The episode explores the latest revelations from the Epstein files, highlighting the intertwining of elite power, corruption, and the strange ways scandals shape politics and technology. The second half examines the US takeover of TikTok, algorithmic manipulation, and the ways social media platforms enable and reinforce right-wing propaganda, with insights from digital sociologist Paolo Gerbaudo.

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1. Overview

The episode is loosely structured in two parts:

• Part 1: Analysis and gallows humor about new Epstein files and their demonstration of a lawless global elite.
• Part 2: Interview with Paolo Gerbaudo on the American right's takeover of TikTok and the implications for digital power, democracy, and platform manipulation.

The tone is irreverent, darkly humorous, and critical, with moments of bleak insight about the systemic nature of elite impunity.

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2. Epstein Files: The Protagonist of History (00:16 – 35:19)

A. Epstein as Global Forrest Gump Gone Monstrous (00:16 – 01:19)

• The hosts reflect on how Jeffrey Epstein’s omnipresence in recent history parallels being a “sinister Forrest Gump—except, you know, a sex trafficker.”
  • Quote: “We gotta try and be sensitive about the fact that this is about a sex traffick[er] and rapist and genuinely monstrous person who…did not know how to work a phone keyboard.” (A, 00:16)
  • Joke about imagining "Pedo Gump" and being the protagonist of history, darkly lampooning the idea of one individual cropping up in every major scandal.

B. Reaction to the Filings: Who's In, Who’s Out (01:22 – 03:11)

• The discussion concerns the document dump, who actually appears, and how context is everything (e.g., Francis Fukuyama appears only via a reading list, not via direct contact).
• Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky are contrasted in their responses to Epstein (the former spurning him, the latter responding amicably).

C. Key Takeaways & Vindications (03:31 – 06:33)

• The hosts note that most incriminating connections are reconfirmed, with increasing brazenness as time passes.
• Those involved always must have known more would eventually come out; the "weird guy with money" defense is dismissed as a self-serving myth.
  • Prince Andrew’s circle, including his private secretary, Amanda Thirsk, shown as more involved than formerly depicted.

D. The Breadth of Epstein’s Influence—A Satirical Inventory (08:03 – 15:36)

• Hosts jokingly—but pointedly—attribute a whole catalogue of calamities to Epstein:
  1. 2008 financial crisis: Epstein’s withdrawal from a Bear Stearns fund triggered collapse.
     • “Jeffrey Epstein’s face photoshopped onto the end of a Jenga block that’s about to collapse a tower…” (A, 08:25)
  2. Global economic policy: Links to Jamie Dimon, Alistair Darling, and manipulation of bailout strategy.
  3. Gamergate/4chan culture wars: Epstein as the shadowy “Dr. Yakub” (inventive creator of “the primaris white guy”).
     • “He invented a new kind of white person to serve his own twisted ends.” (A, 10:21)
  4. Brexit: Tangential at first, but hosts gleefully exaggerate, connecting Epstein’s emails about making money off Brexit to Steve Bannon, Tommy Robinson, and UK far-right circles.
  5. Russiagate/Transnational Plots: The “libs were half-right”—a hidden global network really was influencing events.
  6. Microtransactions in gaming: Email chains suggesting Epstein pushed “addictive design” in video games.
     • “Put microtransactions in Call of Duty. Fucking shud. Dr. Yakub has gotten the kids addicted to gambling. Fantastic. Thank you.” (A, 14:35)
• Notably, the hosts consistently mock “single actor” conspiracy theories as simplistic, but point out that the scale of confirmed, direct connections is still staggering.
• Quote: “If Napoleon is history on horseback, then Epstein is history sent from my iPhone.” (B, 15:46)

E. Naming Names & Contextualizing the Implications (17:04 – 23:38)

• Emphasis that merely appearing in the files (“named in the Epstein files is not an indicator of wrongdoing”) does not mean guilt.
• Use of the J.K. Rowling (JX) anecdote as an ironic aside about unwise (but not criminal) connections, reinforcing the need to distinguish between association and active complicity.
• Focus shifts to the deep, systemic role played by brokers like Epstein—primarily facilitating introductions for the “transnational kleptocratic class” rather than being an evil criminal mastermind or lone rogue operator.

F. Systemic Perspective: Quoting Ganitsky (19:17 – 21:41)

• Reading from Seva Ganitsky’s blog, which frames both Russiagate and the Epstein scandal as symptoms of a global elite's lawless impunity.
  • Quote: “Both highlight the post-1991 emergence of a transnational kleptocratic class that links Western oligarchs to foreign state interests…”
  • Analysis that this class “swim[s] in the same waters”—U.S., Russian, Saudi, Israeli, and European elites.

G. Structural Nature of Elite Networks (22:05 – 25:59)

• Epstein as “broker of access”: child sexual exploitation is only one of the currencies.
• The pattern is less about villainous genius than about being perfectly positioned to exploit and facilitate global collapse.
• Example: Epstein’s email chains include plans to profit from frozen Gaddafi/Libyan state assets in 2011, involving Mossad, MI6, and other intelligence networks.

H. The Royal Family and Elon Musk Cameos (28:41 – 34:55)

• Absurdity and banality: the British royals turn out to be “houseboys” for Epstein’s elite dinners; Sarah Ferguson comes off especially badly (offering herself as a reputational beard).
• Elon Musk turns up as a naïve, enthusiastic visitor, misspending his emails and missing social cues, but still deeply, cringingly involved.
  • Quote: “Elon Musk is gonna stay rich forever…unless things take a really strange turn, in which case I will be in New Zealand having survived the apocalypse, trying to pry open the air vents to his bunker.” (A, 33:55)

I. Conclusion: Nothing Will Change Unless Politics Changes (34:15 – 34:55)

• The show closes this segment on the note that no accountability is likely without radical change.
  • “Politics must be de-pedophile.” (B, 34:51)

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3. Interview: Paolo Gerbaudo on TikTok’s Reactionary Turn (35:19 – 74:11)

A. The Trump-Ellison TikTok Takeover (35:52 – 39:44)

• Paolo outlines the American forced sale of TikTok’s US assets and the emergence of a right-wing consortium of tech billionaires (notably Larry Ellison of Oracle) controlling TikTok USA.
• Comparison: the “authoritarian phase of capital” sees the US adopting the very data-grabbing and algorithmic governance it accused China of.

B. Algorithmic Bias and Political Curation (41:39 – 45:15)

• The new owners seek to strip TikTok of its creative and critical potential, turning it into another vessel for right-wing propaganda and emulation of “X” (formerly Twitter’s) descent into far-right, ad-revenue-driven, slop content.
• Gambling and sensationalist content pervade, leveraging the profit motive of algorithmic recommendation.
  • Quote: “Content that is as addictive as possible…bias toward sensationalistic content…towards activating emotions…It is not automatically an opening for the right or for the left, but it does create an extreme environment.” (D, 43:09)

C. The Political Center’s Algorithm Panic (42:16 – 43:09)

• “Algorithm” becomes a political scapegoat when young audiences develop sympathy for Palestinian causes on TikTok.
• The right’s obsession is less about foreign manipulation and more about wanting control of the means of perception.

D. The Left, Charisma, and the Limits of Viral Politics (45:22 – 47:57)

• Tech-savvy left politicians (like Zoran Mamdani) successfully exploit algorithmic conditions, but this brings risks: “neo-charisma,” personality cults, and the superficiality of aura/vibe-driven online politics.
• Quote: “Charisma…is plebiscitary, personist politics…quite, I say, not very easy to reconcile with organizational politics or with party politics.” (D, 47:26)

E. Participatory Surveillance, Algorithmic Strangle, and Censorship (47:57 – 55:12)

• The takeover is a fundamentally political rather than commercial operation—about fiddling with the algorithm to dampen dissent, promote certain topics, and invisibly suppress dissident content (e.g., mentions of “Epstein” now flagged).
• Quote: “Censorship is about more stopping your voice from going too far…with algorithms there are a number of ways…you can pretty much…block the transmission…but in an invisible manner.” (D, 48:14)
• Focus shifts to the subtlety of modern algorithmic throttling and the normalization of “shadowbanning.”

F. Algorithmic Environments Favor the Right (55:12 – 60:27)

• Sensationalism and high-emotion content play into right-wing hands (fear, collapse, xenophobia).
• The right is better equipped (and more willing) to exploit or directly manipulate these systems, but the environment is not hopeless—the same mechanisms can also be hijacked for hope-driven or left-populist politics.

G. Manufactured Climate and Propaganda Ecosystems (60:55 – 64:07)

• The right creates ecosystemic climates—a cloud of messages, memes, and content networks, fostering a sense of inevitability and civilizational crisis.
• Success is less about individual messages and more about creating a “climate” that permeates all discussion, even among the left, generating “shock and further confirmation” of inevitable right-wing victories.

H. Totalizing Control: From Murdoch to Ellison (64:07 – 67:19)

• Larry Ellison/Oracle’s ambitions go further than Murdoch—controlling not just information sources but also the very platforms on which political discussion occurs (not just “news” but “the squares” themselves).
  • Quote: “Once upon a time, capitalists could control our sources of information…but now…our discussion…goes on in places that are private, that are corporate, that are captive spaces…and they are owned not only by evil capitalists…because they are also allied politically and ideologically with the tech right, with the new extreme right.” (D, 65:50)

I. Censoriousness, Gaslighting, and the Echo Chamber (67:45 – 71:52)

• The right has weaponized claims of “cancel culture” and “free speech” while engaging in far more pervasive censorship.
• Heavy-handed propaganda (such as attempts to dominate sentiment about Israel) may provoke backlash or result in online echo chambers that eventually isolate the far right from broader realities.

J. Why Buy TikTok? Algorithmic Subtlety Versus Blunt Censorship (71:52 – 74:11)

• New ownership seeks not blanket censorship but fine-tuned algorithmic nudging—“behavioral economic stripe of manipulation…leads people to self-censor.”
• Social control is most efficient when the audience doesn’t realize its posts are being buried—not outright banned, just rendered invisible.
  • Quote: “It’s less about individuals, generally speaking, and it’s more just about what kinds of things are people going to see…Are you…just going to get largely sidelined?” (B, 73:12)

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4. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “History is replete with spelling mistakes because it was sent by the iPhone of a barely literate pedophile.” – A, 15:28
• “If Napoleon is history on horseback, then Epstein is history sent from my iPhone.” – B, 15:46
• On algorithmic control:
  • “Censorship is about stopping your voice from going too far…as long as I’m speaking and just my 12 friends listen, the system can cope with that. The problem is if people listening to me become 100,000.” – D (Paolo), 48:14
• On the algorithm’s political effect:
  • “There is a certain complicity…between social media and populism; the main complicity between the two has to do with the fact that social media sensation journalism…works very well in the right’s favor.” – D, 55:46
• “Politics must be de-pedophile.” – B, 34:51

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5. Timestamps for Key Segments

• Epstein Files analysis/roast: 00:16 – 35:19
  • Forrest Gump/epicenter framing: 00:16 – 01:19
  • Who’s in the files? 02:09 – 03:36
  • Systemic implications, financial crisis, Brexit, Gamergate: 08:03 – 15:36
• Transition to TikTok/Paolo Gerbaudo interview: 35:19 – 35:50
• Paolo Gerbaudo on TikTok takeover/surveillance capitalism: 35:50 – 41:39
• Algorithmic censorship and the right: 41:39 – 49:22
• Shadowbanning and algorithmic bias: 52:09 – 55:46
• Ecosystemic propaganda and the right’s climate: 60:55 – 64:07
• Totalizing platform control/old vs. new media oligarchs: 64:07 – 67:19

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6. Episode Takeaways

• The new Epstein files reinforce decades-old suspicions that global elites operate via corrupt, internationalist networks, uniting the worst of financial, political, and intelligence spheres.
• The American right’s takeover of TikTok is less a national security project than a naked effort to control the means of perception, nudging algorithmic outcomes to favor right-wing worldviews, quash dissent, and shape the “climate” of opinion.
• “Algorithmic censorship” is more insidious than direct bans; it operates by boosting or suppressing emotional content, crafting a sense of inevitability and demoralization, even as it spurs occasional backlash and ridicule.
• Hope for the left lies in exposing these mechanisms and crafting counter-climates via creativity, hope, and participatory action, though the path is fraught with risks of superficiality and personality cultism.

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For further reading: Paolo’s work on digital democracy and algorithmic power is referenced, and links will be available in the episode description.

Transcript

[A]

So this is once again a difficult week to kind of thread the comedic needle in the, the news is Epstein Arama. And we gotta, we gotta try and be, like, sensitive about the fact that this is about a sex traffick and rapist and genuinely monstrous person who also was involved at every level of seemingly almost every government and NGO in the world and also did not know how to work a phone keyboard.

[B]

I gotta say, I think Forrest Gump paints a picture of a much better world where a Forrest Gump is Forrest Gump. And I think Epstein being Forrest Gump globally.

[A]

Yeah, making, making Forrest Gump a pedophile was the sort of creative choice I would have made.

[B]

No, no, I, I don't, I don't think I would have said, hey, let's take, let's do Pedo Gump.

[A]

This is a great pedophile of history theory.

[B]

God damn.

[C]

Well, the end, yeah, the end of history in the last pedophile, which is apparently Jeffrey Epstein.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Which was Jeffrey Epstein.

[C]

Francis, Francis Fukuyama wasn't, wasn't on the island, was he? Like, I don't know. I, I, I haven't, like, I haven't, like, you know, control seed his name.

[A]

While you introduce the podcast, I'll go and look and see if Francis Fukuyama's in the Epstein files.

[B]

Welcome to Trash Future, the podcast where we are going to be talking about the new Epstein revelations in the first half, and then we're going to be talking to Paulo Gabaldo from the Complutense University of Madrid about the new American TikTok entity and what the political right gets from seizing the means of posting. Weirdly, I think these are kind of connected, different sides of the same coin in some ways. And before we talk about Fukuyama, I do want to say one of the few people who shows up in the Epstein files and actually comes off better for it is Norman Finkelstein just being like, yeah, fuck you. I want nothing to do with you. Stop emailing me.

[A]

Yeah, sort of the reverse Elon Musk.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

He's like, you're all disgusting and should be strangled. Fuck you.

[C]

Apparently also kind of the opposite of Noam Chomsky, because, like, the running joke for a while was that Noam Chomsky will respond to any email that you send him.

[A]

Yeah, turns out that cut both ways.

[B]

Yeah. Turns out Noam Chomsky will also go to any island you invite him to. That just didn't come up as often.

[C]

Whereas Norman Finkelstein is just like, no, leave me alone. I'M staying on. Where does he live? Does he live on Staten Island? Just like I'm staying in Staten Island. I'm not going anywhere.

[A]

The good news is Fukuyama vindicated. He's only in the files in the extent that. And this is the main problem with the files, right, is although they're not everything and they're clearly still protecting, I mean, most of all Donald Trump, right? It's also just like the complete dump of like, whatever was in the kind of like, database. Which means that if you were on like a reading list that went to Jeffrey Epstein's spam folder, as Francis Fukuyama is, or if you're in the references of a, like, scholarly paper that Jeffrey Epstein had saved, as Francis Fukuyama is, then you're in the files.

[B]

So as we say, this new tranche of Epstein documents gets released. There's millions of pages. And from what has been gleaned so far, so day of recording, February 2, it seems again like everything we knew about everyone who's in there is largely reconfirmed. The lies have become more brazen in retrospect. You know, Peter Mandelson being like, oh, I deeply regret my friendship with this guy who gave me 75,000 bucks.

[A]

My favorite kind of small side beef here is when we watched, I think now, two film adaptations of the like, Andrew Newsnight interview when his private secretary, Amanda Thirsk was portrayed as this kind of like ditzy mumsy woman who is completely blindsided. She's in the files emailing Jeffrey Epstein like, oh, come to Buckingham palace and bring you like, you know, mysterious brand of entertainment or whatever. So I feel like maybe the legacy there has slightly changed.

[B]

November. What we have to do is clear we need a third Prince Andrew news night movie.

[A]

Keep doing it until it's. Until it's right.

[B]

Exactly. We're like Steely Dan and we're Donald Fagan and Walter Becker and we're getting Jeff Picaro, which is like the BBC, to keep re recording the same Prince Andrew Jeffrey Epstein movie until they get it perfect, hundreds of them.

[C]

We're gonna do it until morale improves. It could be like that play. What's that play?

[A]

The fucking Mr. Burns. A post electric play. The one I keep referencing on Killjoy. What's that play?

[C]

The one that Lily Allen was in and made the like with 222. The Ghost Ghost story one where it's just like on and in perpetuity, but they have like different celebrities as like the leading role like every month or something like that. That could Be.

[A]

It'll be like one of two plays.

[B]

But we say that the lies become more brazen, the connection's more corrupting, embarrassing, deeply lucrative. Political as well. This is much more politic. Like not just political like Bill Clinton, but political. Or Larry Summers, but political like no, like operatives. Intelligence agents.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

You're seeing Epstein in more of a work mode thing. It's a lot more sinister both in the sense that like you see him sort making these connections, albeit still sort of like hammering at a keyboard but like he's also sort of keenly aware that he can't talk about a lot of the like sex trafficking on email only alludes to it. And that makes it even more sinister when you see sort of like it slips out through people emailing him being like, hey Jeffrey, what about the sex trafficking? What about the like, you know, child sexual abuse? And Jeffrey Epstein replies with sort of like a three pound signs of a queue and then like can't talk about this on email. And email is misspelled.

[B]

Yeah. And that's what I mean. Right. It's like when we see jee vacation, ironically enough in work mode.

[A]

Well, that was the greatest trick he ever pulled.

[B]

He said he was on vacation. Is that it turns out much more big and powerful and globally networked than anyone outside of committed left wingers with eyes and memories or people engaging in exaggerated gallows humor really turned out to. We turned out to be on the money essentially.

[A]

We did. I mean some of the more like outre conspiracy theorists also unfortunately vindicated. You have to remember that that line which mercifully we never held to of like, oh, Jeffrey Epstein was just a weird guy. And you know, everyone was just kind of like, who's this weird guy? I hate that I have to hang out with him because he has so much money or whatever. Was always a kind of like defensive like ditch.

[D]

Right.

[A]

And everybody doing it who was in the files knew that like more would come out at some point. And as you say, it makes it that much more brazen to be like, oh, I, you know, met Virginia Giuffre and by the way, I don't sweat knowing that, you know, either Gillian Maxwell or Jeffrey Epstein took a photo of you like the ones of Andrew that have just dropped. So it's real bad. And it kind of seems like this guy was maybe the protagonist of history, which I don't love.

[C]

I just want to intervene for a second. I did do what is natural for me to do, which is I did type in Avatar into the Jeffrey Epstein search engine. Find out how many references there are. There are a lot of references and there is only one where apparently a private plane was. I think it was a private plane was set for him. And this was an email from Scott Dennett who said, avatar Blu Ray B L U E Ray is ready for you.

[A]

Amazing. There's only one reference to kimchi in the final.

[C]

This fucking guy keeps wanting to like, I'm not letting him come into my island with his fucking bucket of kimchi.

[B]

We talk about Epstein being the protagonist of history. Right? It's. And we're going to talk a little bit about how to understand Epstein. Not as a weird guy.

[A]

Yeah, it's a little bit more nuanced. And then protagonists of history. I do think he may have been the kind of son of the 21st century, you know.

[B]

So what did he do? Like, he, he. This. Some of this is in the email. Some of it's not yet stuff that we learned right.

[A]

In the last few days that Jeffrey Epstein is responsible for, number one, the.

[B]

Recession, the global financial crisis, or more more specifically, the recession in as much as it was his withdrawal from a Bear Stearns CDO fund that was levered like 17 to 1 or whatever that caused the big drawdown that turned into the recession.

[A]

Yeah. Jeffrey Epstein's face photoshopped onto the end of a Jenga block that's about to collapse a tower. Like, he didn't, he didn't like create the mortgage bubble. Right. But he turned out to weirdly be the thing that popped it. Which is an insane historical reason why.

[C]

You can't buy a house anymore.

[D]

Literally.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Jeffrey Epstein is the reason why you can't do that. Two, he, like, he arguably, like, he was pushing. He was through Mandelson.

[B]

Right.

[A]

He was pushing Jamie Dimon to threaten Alistair Darling with JP Morgan, like pulling all of its guilt and therefore sort of like nudged the UK government's response to the recession as well.

[B]

Yeah. And yeah, we also know he was friends with Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan and like all those like, like Obama people who like engineered the bailout for bankers. Fuck everyone else. We know he was deeply embedded in all those networks. But seeing him actually say, don't worry, I will tell Jamie Dimon to threaten Alistair Darling so the UK doesn't do too generous of a bailout package. It's quite galling to be like, oh, in the one sense the conspiracy is real. Like, we know that these are actual people with names and they talk to each other and so on. They have interests that they advance. But it is also quite Jarring to see it, I guess written down.

[A]

Oh yeah, yeah. We're not even halfway.

[B]

Number three.

[A]

Number three.

[B]

This is so fucked. This is fucked.

[A]

Jeffrey Epstein did Gamergate, right? Like, Jeffrey Epstein arguably is responsible for the existence of pol, the politics board on 4chan, which means that they're currently right now as a recording this crashing out, wondering whether or not any of their thoughts are their own. And the thing is, they aren't. Right. Jeffrey Epstein is the kind of Dr. Yakub of. He invented them like and he did it on an island.

[B]

Like he also had a big head much like Yakub.

[A]

Yeah. He invented a new kind of white person to serve his own twisted ends.

[D]

Right.

[B]

He made the primaris white guy.

[A]

But like, if you, if you told me that like Gamergate exists because of like an international billionaire pedophile back when it was happening, I would have been like, no, this is too on the nose. It's just, this is just some kind of bottom up chud phenomenon. Not so just like the most reductive kind of like single actor theory you can imagine vindicated time and time and time again. Number four, he did Brexit.

[B]

Yeah. Or at least he seemed like peripherally involved with.

[A]

No, I'm willing to fly completely off the handle and attribute Brexit single handedly.

[C]

Suggesting you gotta like bring back the wooferendum guys, but give them all, we got to give them all like exile bullies.

[A]

Like he's in the emails being like, damn, Brexit, be good to make a lot of money off of that. And it's like, how. And you know that you start pulling on these threads of like, why is Jeffrey Epstein emailing Steve Bannon about Tommy Robinson? And you can just keep pulling and pulling and pulling and it's just because all of this stuff is tied together in a way that makes you feel insane to talk about.

[B]

Before we move on though, I do want to hold on, I do want to stay for a second on fucking the Epstein Bannon clowning on Tommy Robinson thing.

[A]

Cheap at any price is Bannon's verdict on him. Which owned.

[C]

I feel like I'm just trying to find it now because this was my favorite. I didn't get a chance to read through all of them, but I did see this one and I have found it so funny and I just, I feel like. Let me find the picture because the actual chat itself I think is quite funny. So they've got this picture of Tommy Robinson and Steve Bannon replies in quotation marks. Blackbone of England. To which Epstein Yeah, Backbone of England. To which Epstein responds, that's why the pound's so low. To which Steve Bannon replies, cheap at any price. Yeah, I mean, I've said this, like, a couple of times. People. This is like. If I found out that people were clowning on me in the Epstein, like, secret chat logs, like, I would definitely consider maybe redacted myself. Yeah.

[A]

You would? Yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely. Number five, Russia Gates. Jeffrey Epstein, again.

[C]

The libs were right. Well, they were kind of right. They were kind of right in the.

[A]

Sense that the libs had half the puzzle.

[C]

Yeah. Because my feeling is that the libs were kind of. And I mean that not in a sort of, like, demeaning way, but actually in a very admirable way. Now, like I have said, and I sort of admit I'm willing to eat humble pie in lots of instances, but I feel like the reason why certain liberals were kind of made fun of a few years ago was because their analysis seemed to be very simplified, Right. Russiagate, working on the basis of there's this sort of nefarious kind of Russian plot to undermine the United States, and that this is being conducted by various sort of hidden forces of which Putin is kind of connected to them. The sort of notion of the hidden forces behind momentous moments like Brexit, again, were sort of dismissed by many, including those on the left, as being. They're just dismissing kind of these wider social problems. And I'm not saying that's not true, but also seemingly, yeah, there was a secret cabal, and it was just this one guy that everyone couldn't stop emailing for some reason.

[A]

There's more. There's more. Number six, because Peter Mandelson was his guy.

[D]

Right?

[A]

And I think that makes one of the interesting things, retrospectively, much like Jimmy Savile now going back and looking at what people said, you know, in the kind of, like, lobby journalist, I know more than you do because I'm cool. Wink, wink. Kind of elusive way about Peter Mandelson as kind of like the Prince of Darkness, Right. Knowing where the bodies are buried. Because Peter Mandelson was his guy, and because he had Jeffrey Epstein keeping him afloat financially, that gives us Morgan McSweeney and therefore Starmer and therefore Wes Streason. Once again, thank you, Jeffrey. Very cool.

[B]

More than that as well, he also appeared to be involved in the innovation of microtransaction.

[A]

That's the final insult, is to be like, anti. Put microtransactions in Call of duty. Fucking shud. Dr. Yakub. Has gotten the kids addicted to gambling. Fantastic. Thank you.

[B]

Awesome. Thank you. So no, this is true, by the way, because I saw this, I was like, I need to. I see a screenshot, I checked it, and again, what he says is Epstein and Kotick emailing one another about ideas for games. And Epstein is like, what if people were like. And again, imagine this brutally misspelled. What if people were more like emotively interested in like, the financial outcome, but it was small enough that it could like, matter each time? And it's like, yeah, let's. Let's do that. It's like he is at the back to the future end of movie Concert of Evil and is just calling fucking everybody Biff Epstein. God damn.

[A]

I feel like the human basketball player is an airbud. Like, I've just.

[B]

So it's like if we say history is written by the winners, it appears in this case to be replete with spelling mistakes because it was sent by the iPhone of a barely literate pedophile.

[A]

Yeah, by the citizens. Simple expedient of not being a paedophile. Right. History has assigned us to the Washington Generals, apparently.

[B]

You know, if Napoleon is quote history on horseback, then Epstein is histor sent my iPhone.

[A]

Can we. Can we include the. No, we probably can't include that.

[B]

I think we can include elements of it.

[A]

Here's the thing. If you want. If you want to include elements of it in your voice, that's fine.

[B]

I do.

[A]

I'm just going to remain silent.

[B]

So. Okay. You understand why it appears as though some emails were exchanged by someone who signs off their emails JX in the Epstein files. Yeah, they seem to. They identify as a woman.

[A]

Yeah, they do. And at this point, I am dropping the 1000 ton quote. Being named in the Epstein files is not an indicator of wrongdoing. End quote. Anvil on the podcast.

[B]

Yes, Named as again, exchanged emails with him. Whoever this was exchanged emails with him.

[A]

It's not a crime to exchange an unwise email. It doesn't imply anything necessarily.

[B]

But it does suggest that, number one, that in the 2013s they were said that someone who signs off their emails JX and someone who has the same amount of characters in their email address as J.K. rowling's email address.

[A]

Again, that's just a complete. Like that could be any number of things.

[B]

Genuinely, I does seem to be corresponding with this man. And you know, maybe whoever this is, I just, you know, I mean, look, women. Women and girls. That's all I have to say is women and girls. They're so important. But both of them are so important. Both women and girls are super important. They got to be kept safe from anybody who might be even suspicious of maybe hurting them. And you know, I just. That's a disconnected statement. I just think it's important.

[A]

Yes, no, I agree. Can I. Can I offer another completely disconnected statement?

[B]

Uh huh.

[A]

Someone bear in mind this is a huge production. Could have been anyone. Does appear to have invited Jeffrey Epstein to the premiere of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in New York.

[B]

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, November. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Is that the first book that came out in 1999?

[A]

No, no, that's one of the recent ones.

[B]

I would characterize it like six, maybe seven, eight.

[A]

No, no, later than that. I would say later than that. Subsequent to Jeffrey Epstein 2009 arrest for like child sexual abuse and then imprisonment.

[B]

I would say, yeah, I hope someone got fired for that blunder.

[A]

That would be. That would be very embarrassing, I would say. Yeah.

[B]

On the invitation, does it say you are invited by two of the producers of the show and then J.K. rowling is named?

[A]

Just a form thing. That doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, she was in any way aware of that. That's just, that's a production decision. I don't think that we could draw any inferences from this or any of this whatsoever.

[B]

No, no, no, not at all. I think what we can confirm is that it's more important than ever for women and girls to be protected from.

[A]

I would say so.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So that, that is all we will say about that other random JX style individual who happens to critique. The only person, by the way, who critiques Epstein's writing in the entire. In the draw. You sent me a substack earlier that I was reading with some interest. It was by a University of Toronto IR academic called Seva Ganitsky. And it's one that I think is quite insightful about Epstein and says something more about the day job orientation of this new drop of files.

[A]

I like Seva. I would like to get Seva on at some point, if we could.

[B]

Seva DM me on Bluesky or DM November, wherever November wants to be.

[D]

DMed.

[A]

Yeah, sure.

[B]

So this is Seva's writing. This is from his piece that Russiagate and the Epstein files are the same thing. It makes sense when you read it. It so says for years the culture war has assigned these scandals to opposite teams. But the three and a half million pages released from the DOJ confirm that these are in fact, the same story. Both highlight the post1991 emergence of a transnational kleptocratic class that links Western oligarchs to foreign state interests, whether Russian, Saudi, Israeli or whoever. Treating Russiagate as isolated foreign interference or Epstein as individual depravity are limiting and strange as it sounds, comforting frames because they give each side a villain.

[A]

Well, this is why it's interesting to me. I think the most impactful email personally in the files yet discovered is the one where he is emailing Larry Summers about Brexit, where he just quite casually says he worked out that it's easier to make money off of things on the way down. Where if you look at this kind of post Cold War kleptocracy, that's something that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union and which is therefore very adept at exploiting collapse. And I would suggest a big reason for why everything feels like it's collapsing now is because this is now a kind of established network of people across borders, borders that is good at doing, that is good at causing and exploiting collapse.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And to go on from Ganitsky, he says the real story here is more systemic. The documents suggest a reframing of Epstein's case from one man's crimes to transnational geopolitics. The Russian collusion story was never about. So this is a long quote, but I think it's quite insightful. The Russian collusion story was never about shadowy foreign forces assaulting an innocent democracy. This lets the US off the hook too easily. Rather, it's about a sphere of elite impunity where American consultants, Russian oligarchs, Saudi princes, European politicians, Israeli intelligence figures and British ex spies all swim in the same waters. And I'll add here, all with largely similar interests. And so the Russiagate that he talks, that Ganitsky talks about isn't like, you know, Putin personally had some Serbian teams post deep fried Hillary memes, but rather that there were like politically connected oligarchs who were paying huge over the odds prices for properties or paintings or whatever owned by like Donald Trump or Mohammed bin Salman. And in almost every case, it's Epstein who's making those introductions and allowing, allowing these things to happen.

[A]

That's his job. And I think also I don't want us to lose track of the kind of central fact of this, which is what he was getting paid to do was both those introductions and whatever other kind of nefarious things. But chiefly child sex trafficking, which is something that had a sort of Huge wave from post Soviet countries.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, there are, you know, millions of girls from, like, Ukraine or Belarus or any number of other post Soviet states who are trafficked into sort of like sexual abuse all over the world. And so when you, when you start looking at these, these patterns, then you see that it makes sense because these are sort of already things that exist. You don't need to have been a Forest Gump.

[D]

Right.

[A]

Or rather, you don't need to have been sort of like Napoleon.

[D]

Right.

[A]

You can just be Forrest Gump. You can just kind of be in the right place at the right time. And I think that's how you square the thing of how Jeffrey Epstein is connected to all these people and also ostensibly not that smart, is because he just didn't have to be.

[B]

He was in this perfect place where it was in everyone's interest to prop him up as much as possible.

[A]

Yeah, it's sort of like. It's sort of like the guy who has the idea of the bank first, right? It's. You have a kind of paradigmatic thing. You have one good idea, which is to be a kind of broker of access in which, like, the sexual abuse of children and the trafficking of children for that sexual abuse is just kind of one currency. And you become very useful in that role until you're not.

[B]

Yeah, he was the Jakob Fugger of his very specific world.

[A]

Yeah, kind of. And I mean, you can trace that back to any way you want. Most notably, I think, Robert Maxwell, which is your kind of like your intelligence side of that as well. So like I said, Jeffrey Epstein didn't sort of necessarily invent any of these things, but I think he is a new synthesis of some of them.

[B]

And by the way, we want to talk about another example of like, profiting from collapse. You know, another email gets released, right. Which is, okay, it's July 2011. There is the various, like, uprisings in the Middle east and North Africa. Gaddafi has not yet been killed by Libyan rebels. He will in a few months.

[A]

Gaddafi in the emails question, he's trying.

[B]

To get Jeffrey to read the Green Book. But there's this email set that between Jeffrey Epstein and associate. It's like speculating that, well, there's like $80 billion of Libyan funds frozen international, 32.4 billion in the U.S. but you could probably get even more. And it's saying if we can identify, recover 5 to 10% of these monies and receive 10 to 25% as compensation, we're talking about billions. The sender, which is two. Jeffrey says certain members of MI6 and Mossad have all expressed a willingness to assist in efforts to identify and recover stolen assets. So if you want to take billions from this, guess who you talk to? Guess who knows everyone in intelligence who can find all this stuff? Epstein.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. And it's one of those things where, where any intelligence agency should have a national interest in knowing Jeffrey Epstein and knowing these things and also to help cover them up until it doesn't. And so I think the kind of like brazenness of a lot of this stuff comes from people acting under that kind of assurance. Which now it turns out was, was not good after all.

[B]

Or it was, it was good till it wasn't. I mean the, the email by the way, also says we assume Libya will need to spend at least 100 billion in reconstruction and recovery, saying the real carrot is if we can become their go to guys because they plan to spend at least 100 billion next year to rebuild their country and jumpstart the economy. So it's like you can see weird paths of history not taken in the Jeffrey Epstein emails because he's kind of one of the nodes of the network of transnational kleptocrats where all the stuff flows through. Yeah, yeah, he's the one guy that rules the world or the one guy that rules the. One of the like 10 guys, one of the 20 guys. God knows how many other fucking Epstein's are out there. I mean this, I wonder if this global, this again, this global network of kleptocrats, including like every intelligence agency, the vast majority of rich guys from Europe, North America and Russia and Israel. You don't see so many like African or Chinese billionaires involved.

[A]

No, for sure. And it is also arguably to some of these players, advantages if there are multiple Jeffrey Epstein's, if you follow me.

[C]

Right.

[A]

If there are sort of competing networks that they can play off against each other, other. So it's not as if sort of Epstein had access to everything everywhere, all the time. Love that movie so much as that he was useful to a lot of people and was deeply, deeply influential. But yeah, again I come back to Robert Maxwell here of like you certainly can be for a time, but there absolutely comes a time when you outlive your usefulness. And I think it's naive to assume that the reason why that's happened is because we're all living in a time of more kind of like, like truth and justice and like fewer of these people being pedophiles.

[D]

Right.

[A]

Like, so you have to imagine that a Lot of the kind of like sort of day to day stuff that Epstein was doing is still going on somewhere with someone. Fucking Bill Clinton needs his adrenochrome supply, you know.

[B]

Yeah. Bill Gates needs advice on how to trick his wife into taking antibiotics so he cannot tell her that he got an STI from someone who was sex trafficked.

[A]

I would say, well, world's most vindicated divorcee there.

[B]

Oh, 100%. Absolutely. And. But again, it's like they're all there, right? And it's not just. And yeah, the billionaires are all there, the intelligence agents are all there. And then even like guys like fucking Dan Ariely are there as well. Who's. Which is again, very funny to see. Who you remember is the guy who's like the chief niceness officer or whatever at the spy insurance technology company Lemonade. And what he did was he. I think it was Lemonade, but he came up with the idea of if you record a video of yourself saying, I promise I'm not committing insurance fraud, you'll feel too guilty if you're committing insurance fraud and you're less likely to do it. Like he's. His behavioral economics is why there's like a video of you at the self checkout machine. So you feel guilty if you're. If you're like, Jeffrey Epstein did the self checkout machine.

[A]

Where does it end?

[B]

Where does it end? I don't think it does.

[A]

I mean, that fucking is an unexpected item in the bagging area. Jesus Christ.

[B]

Yeah, so it's like he's. He's at least connected to a lot of things that make your life shitty.

[A]

Fuck.

[B]

And just, just to. Just to round out before we sort of hand off to ourselves in the past to talk about the TikTok sale, which again is I think a hugely important political development. And if we want to talk about like. And we do get into this, if you want to talk about communication, secrecy, elite capture. Elite capture, then you could do, really do worse than thinking about the purchase of TikTok by, you know, Larry Ellison and fr friends.

[A]

Boy, I hope we remember to ask some questions along that theme.

[B]

Oh, I'm sure we will. But before we do that, I want to note another. Just a couple other people who've appeared. I mean, again, you could. There's infinite things to talk about in these releases for people who are interested in this sort of thing. Oh, yeah, you know, we have. So I want to focus a little bit on Sarah Ferguson and. And Prince Andrew, where they're codenamed, of course, in the Files. But the code is like, yes, this is from the Duke. And then the codename is just like, my mother's not letting me go to Buckingham palace again. It's like, I wonder, my mom, the Queen.

[A]

Yeah, the more pathetic one is that he signed off some of his emails as the invisible man.

[B]

So Sarah Ferguson says, and this is from 2011. I know you must feel hellaciously let down by me from what you were either told or wrecked.

[A]

Sake. They even write like this. I.

[B]

And I most humbly apologize to you and your heart for that. You've always been as steadfast, generous, and supreme friend to me and my family. As you know, I absolutely did not say the P word about you. But understand it was reported that I did. I was advised in no uncertain terms to say I have nothing to do with you and not to speak or email with you. And if I did, I'd be causing more problems for both you, the Duke and myself.

[A]

Also, can we. Can we be 100% clear that the Queen knew about all of this?

[D]

Right?

[A]

Like, yeah, just now, now that she's dead, now that now that we're sort of like, you know, letting kind of memories fade on, like, oh, she's kind of like the nation's mind mum. It's like, no, she was.

[B]

She's the nation's mom that's colluding with another abusive relative. Yeah, basically. So Sarah Ferguson goes on. So I shut down and ran away. I was broken and lost. So please understand, as I do about you, that I was broken and not the strong person, you know, And I got completely obliterated. And I saw all my children's work disappearing. I shut everyone out. I was frightened. The palace system is frightening.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

This is so Sarah Ferguson, I think maybe comes off the. The worst in anyone in the files after Elon Musk in that, like, you know, you're in the Epstein files. Okay, that's pretty bad. How bad is it? Well, you're in the Epstein files proposing to him so that he would have as like a kind of pedophile beard so that people would stop thinking that he was a pedophile because he was married to you, an adult woman. Yeah, I mean, we've. We've barely even have the time to talk about Elon Musk, who is. Is I fucking Jesus Christ is like, when can I come to the island? Because he's like, autistic enough to not know how to, like, code that. And also Jeffrey Epstein seems visibly annoyed by him.

[B]

Before we go to Musk, I want to do A couple more things for Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no sweat.

[B]

Which is Epstein appears to have just used the palace for like used Buckingham palace more or less as like another of his home.

[A]

There's going to be a photo of him like on the throne that is going to drop at some point. There has to be.

[B]

I'm looking Forward to the 30th release of the Epstein documents that just show even more and deeper and more perverse and pervasive connections. Yeah, he uses Prince Andrew. This is again I like to see Prince Andrew humiliated. I just wish it wasn't by this guy where Andrew basically is his houseboy for arranging dinners at Buckingham palace for his friends that he might not even be invited to. Right. It's like oh, what time? And how many replies Andrew to Epstein again suggesting how much Epstein was calling the shots in terms of like where they are.

[A]

Yeah, just, just sort of like piloting the Royal family like a cordyceps.

[B]

You know what again that's not difficult. These are, these are deeply inbred people.

[A]

This is, this is very true. Also not just the British Royal family. The fucking like Norwegians are in there as well.

[B]

Yeah, everyone you know, no one comes off clean. But yeah as you say, Nova Elon. And then we're going to throw to ourselves in the future past. In November 2012, Epstein' sent Musk an email asking how many people will you be for the helicopter to the island? Musk then says probably just Tallulah, his wife at the time and me. What day slash night will be the wildest party on your island? Musk replied, cool, yeah, I can't wait to engage in some like sort of awful abuse and depravity.

[A]

Yeah. He says later on not to skip ahead of you but like he says, a peaceful island experience is the opposite of what I'm looking for. Which he may have. Well as may as he may as well have included the way word wink there like I. It just.

[B]

Yeah. And also by the way he's email, sorry this is a reference to no gods, no mayors. We talked to a lot of people who are emailing each other crazy shit on Christmas. But Musk follows up with an email on 25th December in response to another Epstein message encouraging to visit and offer the use of his helicopter. Do you have any parties planned? I've been working to the edge of sanity this year and so once my kids head home after Christmas half I.

[A]

Remember what Elon Musk was doing in 2012 and it was not sticking to the edge of Sanity.

[B]

Yeah. He was writing his, like, master plan on a notes app. Says, I really want to hit the party seat in Saint Barts or elsewhere and let loose. And then he says, the invitation is much appreciated, but as you say, Nova, a peaceful island experience is the opposite of what I'm looking for. Epstein responds, I'll see you on St. Barth. The ratio on my island might make Talila uncomfortable. Ratio is not a problem for Tallulah.

[A]

Replied, I would say that ratio is a problem. Problem for Elon Musk.

[B]

Oh, God. Jesus Christ. Anyway, these people.

[A]

And the thing is, nothing, Nothing's. Nothing's gonna happen. Elon Musk is gonna stay rich forever. And, like, unless things take a really strange turn, in which case I will be in New Zealand having survived the apocalypse, trying to pry open the air vents to his bunker. So we'll see. We'll see.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And also, it's like, this will not change unless politics changes it. You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah. And even then, like, this would require a kind of, like, generational project of de baathification. Right. Like when we talk about, like, how the Labour Party is done, right. We're not just saying, like, oh, Andy Burnham is going to get sort of shut out by factional stuff. We mean, like, a lot of influence is still held by people who were put there by one of Jeffrey Epstein's close friends.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think we can say, you know what, that politics must be de pedophile.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. By necessary. And I think necessary.

[B]

Yeah. So I'm going to now hand over to us in the future past and we will see you in a second. Hello, everybody, from the first half. Welcome to the.

[A]

What a first half. It was.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Hey, you know, why don't we recount our favorite.

[D]

I know.

[B]

So I do this every time. It never isn't funny to me. Recount our favorite jokes in the first half. Ahem. Anyway, thank you. Hello, everybody, from the set. From the first half. Welcome to the 2nd. November and I are going to be talking with Paolo Gherbaudo, who's a sociologist at the Complutense University of Madrid who specializes in. In digital culture platforms and so on, and an associate of friend of the show, Ben Fogels. Paolo, welcome to the show.

[D]

Hi, how you doing?

[B]

I'm very well, thanks.

[A]

But it appears must be a quiet week. Not much going on with, like, social media as far as I know.

[B]

Hold on, let me just post on my TikTok about how much I hate ice cream and we should abolish ice cream and hey, what the. Hey, what the dickens? It doesn't appear to be loading. So that was, of course, the ice cream skit. So, Paolo, one of the things we're here to talk about is the recent handover of TikTok to its new coterie of reactionary billionaire American owners and the political fallout that's come from that as people are beginning to, I think, be quite rightly suspicious of how they're going to use and abuse Capital T, Capital A, the algorithm. So can you just give us a little bit of an overview of what exactly has happened and what people are saying?

[D]

Yes. I mean, it really looks like, or, you know, like the authoritarian phase of capital when the things you accuse China of doing, you're actually doing them yourself. I think this is what is happening with the US TikTok.

[A]

But.

[D]

But to give you the. The facts first before the interpretation, really basically what happened. You will remember that during the Biden administration, already there was this bipartisan bill that wanted to force ByteDance, the Chinese company which created and owns Dictatorship stock, to cede its American operation, its U.S. operations, on the basis of a number of accusations, fears that it would be able to use US Users data, basically what all Silicon Valley companies are doing. But they were singling out TikTok for doing that, as well as possible political interference from a Chinese company suspected of having ties with the Chinese Communist Party, whatever. And there were all these congressional earrings. You may remember, remember this famous hearing when this congressman was asking the TikTok CEO, are you a member of the Chinese Communist Party? Have you served in the Chinese military? And the guys was famously saying, I'm from Singapore. I'm from Singapore. I mean, I'm not supposed to. And actually all of that ultimately ended up leading to this bill, to this. I mean, this law that was approved and which actually set a legal obligation for ByteDance to sell its American operation. Then enters Trump 2.0, Trump 47. And he uses, as he always good at doing, he has a sense of opportunity and says, hey man, why don't I use this opening that Democrats basically Biden kindly gave me to turn TikTok into even more of a propaganda machine for myself, for the MAGA movement, or what it has already been anyway, because Trump himself celebrated the fact that during the campaign, TikTok was decisive, was what won it for him. And basically what he did, he was basically installing this new joint venture which comprises US tech company as well as financial companies that are invested in big tech, together with an assortment of other international allies somehow similar to the investors of X Twitter with the mask takeover like a couple of years ago. And many of them have very clear ties with, with Trump, with maga, with global rights. And so it's really how you say, it's a perfect sense of opportunity which Trump used to reinforce his control over their media and social media system even more what he already had.

[A]

So all of the stuff that we love about X.com, the Everything app is now going to be sort of like transported to TikTok and turn it into a kind of like, I don't know, like a kind of hamburger rednote completely coming, completely.

[D]

This is, I mean we already saw that. I mean it's nothing new in a way, right? I mean it's precisely what happened with the ancientification of X, to quote Cory Doctorow. I mean basically taking spoiling a social network, a platform of all the good things that we associated with it. In the case of Twitter, being able to have access to a variety of qualified opinions from credential like credentialed experts, academics, journalists, as well as like debate, but say sane debate and plural debate, democratic debate and then turning it into a crypto and porn machine, which is what is X. We are probably going to see something similar happening with TikTok where TikTok we prize its creativity, video explainers, jokes, meme videos, trends. But it has also been, I would say in a way considered unserious because of its association with, with hilarity and with light headed content and with jokes. But the reason why it is so politically sensitive is because it is also being a channel through which in recent years Generation X and Generation Z have been informed of many recent events like Gaza affordability crisis and so on and so forth. So this is something that people like Larry Ellison, which is basically the leader of this TikTok US in many respect the CEO of Oracle and a very right wing person and a very staunch pro Israel person. What he wants to do, basically what these people want to do is to normalize TikTok to take out all these democratic elements and critical elements out of TikTok and turn it into yet another vessel for the global right propaganda.

[B]

And when we say the vessel for the global right propaganda, we're also not just simply talking, talking about you will see RFK doing his new food pyramid or whatever, but also it will be things like relentlessly pushing, you know, like gambling for example. That's been one of the hallmarks of the global right is the, is an adoration of gambling and betting in all of its forms. It's now Everywhere on X. It's everywhere. In the high end of the US Government, the labor right has been ahead of the key.

[A]

More sort of like AI slop content as well. I look forward to, you know, a sort of like shrimp Jesus telling me to gamble.

[B]

Yeah. And one of the things I want to talk about as well, right. Which is that. So we've got this again. It is so typical that it is a. This big democratic push. And I remember, you know, you mentioned Gaza, Paolo, this democratic push to raising, fomenting a moral panic over TikTok, partly because TikTok was the thing that through its terrifying algorithm was making Gen Z people in their 20s and late teens suspicious of Israel and sympathetic to Gaza. This must be the algorithm. It's the same thing you could if you zoom into the New York mayor's election, a lot of people were saying, oh, the algorithm is, is favoring Zoron. You know, there is this paranoia among the political, in the political center and the right. About what the algorithm is and how it's to be used. And I mean, I wanted to talk about this as well. Like, what do they mean when they say the algorithm? Because they refer to it, I think without understanding what it is.

[D]

I mean, I think that there's an element of truth in that, that conspiracy theory, or if you want to call it like that, in a sense that of course we know that these platforms use these algorithmic curation, which basically means that you don't really decide what you're watching. But you have recommender systems, as they're called. You have computational system that are recommending contents to you in ways that are very effective because they know, have so much information about you. And they have very complex models to make sense of what you're likely to like, what you're likely to be interested in based on your previous behavior and based on what people like you, your neighbors, as they're called, neighbors of taste, of course, are liking. And these algorithms, fundamentally what they do, they are coherent to the profit motif of these companies. And the profit motif of these companies is based on advertising. Right. And is based on the time you spend on the platform, which translates into a number of opportunities to expose you to advertising costs. Content. So they, in order to maximize the time you spend on the platform, what they give you is content that is as addictive as possible. So the bias there before the political bias will tend to be a bias towards sensationalistic content, content that is very attractive, very satisfying, content that grabs your attention, content that wants you to come back, back and Interactions in a way are also hitting at your weak, weak spot. So that is already a bias that is more cultural or experiential, but that also translates into political opportunities is a bias that has to do with surprise. That's to do with activating emotions, with extreme emotions. Not necessarily negative ones, but often negative ones. But say in a way it favors more intense or sometimes extreme position. But it is not automatically something that is just an opening for the right or for the left, if you see what I mean.

[A]

I mean we've seen Zoran Mamdani make good use of some of those techniques, some of those sort of like styles of filmmaking.

[D]

I remember seeing a recent deadline somewhere on Instagram or TikTok, I don't remember from which media, which is perhaps testament to the attention span reducing or all of us becoming bidenized in some way or other. But he was saying like the left finally is understood algorithm. No, the left discovers the algorithm and there was a photo of Mamdani with very strange pair of spectacles with some celebrity showbiz figure that I don't know because I'm, I'm too old to be that much into showbiz. But basically already the headline and the photo already were self explanatory really. I mean this was a content that was completely apolitical to start with, completely affective or fatigue. Basically Mamdani playing cool and showing off relatability. But which is to a great extent the matter of politics these days and perhaps has always been in a sense of projecting an aura. You know, remember the aura farming was Oxford Dictionary word of the year alongside with vibe something. I mean, is this authentic politics that is really prominent now and, and is pushed by algorithms?

[A]

Is there a danger to that too though, of, of a sort of like a left politics that becomes hype moments and aura?

[D]

Completely. Completely. There's a lot of danger there. I mean, on the one hand, I mean tactically, one can exploit that space. I think that the point of the left discovering the algorithm is realizing, hey, I mean, these are the rules of the game, like them or not. If you want to play in corporate communication space in a way, you need to latch onto some of these affordances if you want to be, to be relevant. Of course, you know, then it. There is a number of liabilities in terms of personality culture. I mean, of course it's a politics of extreme personalization is a politics of neocharisma. Charisma is a plebiscitary personist politics, as we know from Max Weber.

[A]

Right.

[D]

So perhaps it's quite, I say, not very easy to reconcile with organizational politics or with party politics. And so there are all these number of liabilities that are associated with. With it. But I would say that at very least tactically, one needs to play this game and you can win with these as Zorama. I mean, yeah, indeed, as you were suggesting, Zorma Mudani thus far is the most clear case of how the opportunity can be used.

[A]

And if you look at that from the sort of other end, the more participatory end of people say, like filming ice or filming the police more generally, do you think that sort of TikTok US's new efforts to try and like sort of put that back the bottle are reflective of a kind of potential there?

[D]

Completely. It's precisely that. I mean, my sense also because I mean, if you look at the operation itself, it makes very little business sense. I mean it is clearly by and large politically motivated. I mean, it's something also really weird. I mean, it's a company, a joint venture that acquires the national operation of a global social network network with a very unsexy name. TikTok USDS. It looks like the name of an agency, of a quango, right. With these group of investors that are half shady, half also shady and I mean who are licensing, pay the license for the use of the algorithm. I mean, it's an operation that as such, I mean, you would normally kind of create an alternative platform or whatever or acquire a platform, but in that way really strange. And what they want to do is really quite clearly, I mean, fiddle with the algorithm and fiddling with the algorithm. So the point they made in a recent Guardian article is that this is how censorship operates these days in this invisible indirect way. Namely, we are used to think about censorship as people that are not allowing you to speak right, are shutting your mouth, are not allowing you to speak out. Yet to that extent these days, censorship is about more stopping your voice from going too far. I mean, as long as I'm speaking and just my 12 friends and 20 affectionate listeners listen to me, I mean the system can cope with that. Any system, any utilitarian system can perfectly cope with that. The problem is that people listening to me or seeing my tweets, my Instagrams and TikToks become 10,000, 100,000 million. And with algorithms, there are a number of ways of firestops or how would you call that, what metaphor would you use where you can basically strangle, you can block the transmission from the small circle of people to the general public and by fiddling with parameters, which is basically the, the nuts and bolts of algorithms, by changing the weight you attribute to different variables in algorithm, you can pretty much, you can not completely shut down as you were certain voices, but more effectively, more sensibly and in a more sophisticated manner, more invisible manner, really control the general climate as you were of the conversation.

[A]

Maybe, maybe you're not too left, maybe you're just not posting good enough.

[B]

But that's also important because if you note that you are being stopped from speaking at all, then you're likely to react to that. You're likely to just, well, I'm going to stop posting on TikTok. I'm going to find somewhere else. But if you're encouraged to keep interacting with the service, if you're encouraged to keep doing it but you realize you're just, you're not getting much distance, then you just keep on going. And all of that energy, that energy that is, you know, let's say communicating against the interests, let's say represented by Ellison Trump and their immediate group of friends, you know, then you'll just sort of keep doing it, but you'll be sort of just sidelined. You just won't really feel it. It's that you'll be part of this. The Sen. Censorship is from an overwhelming amount of information and that you can just be pushed to the side of it if you will because I mean it's worth saying like what people have said, right, that the, so ownership of, as we said, ownership has switched over to the New American Consortium. And what people have said is, hey, when I send a DM containing the word Epstein, it's marked as suspicious. When I'm posting about the killing of Alex Preddy by a federal agent that, oh, it just, it's controversial, it remains under review. It's basically suspicious malfunctions like this. And the thing is I'm always naturally suspicious of anyone who sort of makes a political statement that is essentially my posts aren't posting because, you know, we, we make fun of you.

[A]

I remember us deriding like Greg Stubby a few years back being like, I was, I was shadow banned.

[B]

Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah. So I'm always suspicious of people who claim to be shadow banned. And I guess I want to know, Paolo, your view view on what the significance is of like of people making these claims, especially given that TikTok, TikTok USDs, which I actually think sounds like a dairy farm came came out with the explanation for a couple days later like, oh yeah, a winter Storm knocked out like all of Oracle's data centers, which I find hard to believe. But I also, I guess I'm naturally suspicious of anyone talking about shadow banning.

[D]

Yes, I mean, I'd say that you're right to be suspicious. I mean, in a sense that, you know, shadow banning, I mean, is a practice that exists. That exists and basically it involves inflicting, throttling the visibility of a certain account. It has been shown that, I mean, social networks have done it, but in a way this would be more targeted, in a sense, whatever. This user has repeatedly breached community guidelines, so I will inflict less visibility. So usually it would be kind of manually curated. Right. It would involve an individual decision. While here is a sort of generalization of Shadow Bunny, as it were. Right. In a sense that I would reduce the weight that is attributed to a parameter. For example, I mean, this is what Facebook already did in 2018, right on the back of all the temper, generality, you know, scandal and wave of attention around the power of social networks, so on and so forth, and breaches to privacy. What they did was reducing the weight of the algorithm attributed to political, public, political content and news. So you would see less of that on your timeline. And that heavily affected any account that was covering politics of Facebook. The idea behind that is justification, was that it was important to go back to authentic real connection with your relatives and with your friends and so on and so forth. But then paradoxically, by doing that, at the same time, Facebook attributed more importance to more weight, to angry reactions, which in fact, according to some analysts, helped create the ground for the nationalist right to. To rise. So you see what I mean? I mean it's a matter of. I mean, there can be a matter of curation. For example, you can decide that certain words on topics that are controversial are disfavored. They are put at the algorithmic disadvantage. This is partly also what TikTok has always done with controversial topics, with aggressive topics, because it's corporate ethos on the focuses on think positive, but you can weaponize that much more deliberately in order ultimately to silence voices that are critical of your favorite political parts.

[A]

I think that's the thing that interests me here, and I'm sort of being haunted by some kind of a specter as I ask this question.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Is that whether it's TikTok or Facebook or Twitter, for some mysterious reason, almost as if there's some kind of motive underpinning these things, whether there's shadow banning or no shadow banning, whether you're sort of waiting the algorithm or not somehow these things, things always tend to work in the right's favour. And I wonder if you could kind of if that sort of jives with your experience as well and if you could elucidate maybe why that might happen.

[D]

I mean I would say that there is a certain complicity and I've argued also in an article where I said that kind of social media and populism, kind of an elective affinity between the two. I think that the main complicity between the two has to do with the fact that social media sensation journalism, which is the main product of algorithm, therefore the emphasis on content that is astonishing, high pitch, high arousal, works very well in the right's favor as it tries to pander. Fear, fear of immigrants, fear of foreign interference, fear, so collapse of Western civilization because that kind of content is very much high arousal and high intensity density and appealing to visceral emotions. While the left also culturally is very reluctant to engage with these more visceral emotions. I mean that doesn't mean that there's no game for the left. I mean it has been shown that also messages of hope, if they are high stake, I mean they need to be high stake messages, they need to be challenging, they need to engage people in a civilizational battle for the future. And I feel like things like now Zach Polanski is doing or what Jeremy Corbyn in his best period was doing and some of the material that Politico Envy Ron was producing and now of course Mamdani are managing to do that, but indeed is playing with an environment that is very sensationalist and where you need to know that you are in a way riding the beast that can lead you place you don't want to go.

[B]

Yeah. And the fact that it is sensationalist sort of, I think ties well into the old observation that fascism is the application of the aesthetics to politics, the Walter Benjamin one, right. Which is politics, because fascist politics is about feeling good all the time if you're a favored group. Right. And it's in that those high emotions, the same emotions that make you want to keep engaging in social media, that get you more and more angry and to tuned in are the same ones that sort of create that desire to demand that the government machine guns anyone who comes over in the channel because it's creating that desire to feel good and that's partly sated by scrolling and scrolling and scrolling or posting and posting and posting, but that because it's so fear based and so empty and so news related, yet that demand eventually has to be filled by someone like Trump or someone like Nigel. And in my view, that's the. I think that's actually one of the main reasons why I think it. Does these platforms just benefit the right so much and why the right seems to be so able to, and keen to. Aside from the fact that the right has most of the billionaires, of course, as taking every opportunity to seize control of the methods of communication, you know.

[D]

Indeed, I think that this kind of compulsive, obsessive, kind of user experience that they give us place us in a spot where we are more vulnerable to those kind of appeals. I don't know how much that is completely new, because ultimately, if you think going a bit back in time, I mean, what the sun and the tabloid press was doing is partly similar, right. They tended to favor a certain kind of ethos that was very much in line with what the right wanted to be like, pondering fears about migrants, pondering fear about whatever, fugue, welfare queen and so on and so forth, creating that kind of moral panic. So Adobe, it is completely new in certain respects. What is new is just the pervasiveness of the algorithmic environment. I mean, the hours and hours and hours we spend in these. I mean, paradoxically, we have never been more exposed to politics and political content than we are now. So all this idea of the politicization of society, I think, is only partly true. And probably we have never discussed so much politics. And I'm saying the average of the population, in the sense that we are constantly exposed to discussion, they may not be very deep, they tend to be very superficial, but yet there is a sort of submerged politicization of the population, which also opens opportunities, I think. And people are more interested in politics precisely because of the situational crisis, the escalating and converging poly crisis. So indeed, it's a landscape that favors the right. But I also would not underestimate the openings that there are for socialist politics there.

[A]

I think on both sides, there is this kind of feeling of like, being overwhelmed, of being sort of demoralized out of action sometimes by sort of being suffused by politics to that extent. Do you think that the sort of the Polanski sort of like hope schema, if you like, is sort of like something that's helpful for that? Or is there a risk inherent in that of just sort of people feeling just more of the same, sort of like overwhelm?

[D]

How would you say? I think that there's an opportunity for that. And in a way, it's the only Thing that we can do really realistically, in a sense that to cast that message, we should not underestimate the importance of the environment in the sense that the right, what is done the other the right has created an equal ecosystem is not just the campaign, is not just farage or reform or the candid, the top candidates of reform. It's tens and tens of accounts on YouTube, podcasts, Telegram channels, Facebook pages, meme accounts that are fundamentally hammering the same message in thousand variations and are creating a cloud climate. So my proposal in my recent work is really that we should go beyond looking at propaganda as message response individually, but understand that the persuasive effect is made possible by the creation of a certain climate within which these single messages swim and become effective. So what the writers managed to do very effectively through this ecosystem, through this investment, through this infrastructure process, propaganda is to create a climate of inevitability and to create a climate of millionaire and fear about civilizational collapse where they also managed to permeate our own psyche. I mean the things we are saying now, but are the things that you almost always repeat in conversation with leftists at any latitude, basically these days, which is ah, yet again another victory of the right, yet again. Look what that has happened. You know, a mixture of shock and O and despair and further confirmation that we are bound to go down the new 1930s and whatever, that we land up in jail and whatever, you know what I mean? I mean this kind of climate and this is precisely the spell that they managed to conjure up and that they want to keep going. But I think there's also a spell perhaps we can try to puncture, to start puncturing. And part of that means also in a way puncturing the algorithm and the way in which it manages to reproduce this climate.

[B]

And I mean, I think when we talk about the climate and we talk about the people who want to create it, the sort of reactionary billionaire class, just putting this back in the context of Oracle's major participation in the consortium of investors who are largely associated with the right, with the party, political right, with being with also obsessions with culture wars, with sort of support for Israel, stuff like this, you know, you could, you could see why they would do it. But also it's strange because although that algorithmic content most of the time is pretty rigged in their favor, like already, right. Just because it. You naturally. It naturally is, yeah, that's the sensationalism that makes for good business, also makes for good right wing propaganda generally. It's almost just like again, they're playing a rigged game in their favor and they're like, no, this is not rigged enough in my favor. I would like to buy the game.

[D]

And let's remember that Larry Ellison also controls media, right? He's creating a media empire, an old media or news media empire, and is acquiring CBS and wants to acquire cnn. So they want to control all of it in ways that are really concerning for anybody who has studied the political economy of the mass media. I mean, it's worse than Marduk. You know, like the Marduk me empire was bad, bad. But this is worse, is more pervasive, is more totalizing, is more comprehensive. And it comprises both news media, namely information sources and spaces of discussion. I think this is a great novelty. I mean, the real novelty of the digital public sphere, namely once upon a time, capitalists could control our sources of information. But we were discussing in places that were physical. They were workplaces, they were clubs, they were sports venues, they were family circles, public squares, cafes, pubs. While now our discussion, political discussion goes on and political talk is central. Many political sociologists really said this is the mediating factor between information and individual opinion and ultimately motivation to votes. So what is really concerning now is that the places where we are discussing are private, they are corporate, they are captive spaces, and they are owned not only by evil capitalists, who are evil because they are capitalists, but because they are also allied politically and ideologically with the tech right, with the new extreme right. So that is really what is really concerning, I think about this new moment.

[B]

And as we say, right, like the, usually the Murdoch empire empire, right. It's. Its game was to look at social media and then create news content from its talk shows, for example. Yeah.

[A]

Had that weird kind of air of desperation to be chasing trends almost exactly.

[B]

Is that the Murdochs, the Murdoch media empire writes articles and does news shows to be clipped and shared on social media platforms they don't own but want to influence. You know, whereas Larry Ellison has seen the bigger picture. Right. We're gonna, we, yeah, we can create all we want by owning these TV networks, but it's not, that's enough. Because we don't want to share a TikTok algorithm that, for example, says yes, if you pander to horror about migrants, that's going to go up. But also if you're, if you're talking about horrors being committed in Gaza, for example, that an algorithm that just looks at highly emotive content that demands engagement doesn't really distinguish between the two of them. But. And I'm using Israel as an example, just because Gaza is one of these things that breaks through completely.

[D]

No, Gaza is central to this, Is central to this. I think it was very. And Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed delight at his new arrangements. So, I mean, it's not just about Gaza, but I think Gaza for them was the last drop, as you were. They got really afraid that there was these Generation Z that was becoming politically out of. Was going politically out of control from the perspective.

[A]

Perspective.

[B]

And I mean, this is not just again, another conspiracy. This said quite literally, not just from Netanyahu, but as well as Oracle CEO Safra Katz. She said, we have all been horrified by the growth of the BDS movement in college campuses and concluded that we have to fight this battle before the kids even get to college. We believe that we have to embed the love and respect for Israel in American culture. That means getting the message to the American people in a way that they can consume it.

[A]

Yeah, this game isn't rigged enough. And it's interesting as well how the sort of heavy handedness of lot of this seems to be in some ways provoking a backlash. Like, I'm struck by sort of like a lot of these people on the right were sort of like deeply, deeply emotionally wounded by Charlie Kirk getting assassinated. And the sort of like teenagers they sort of like then tried to enforce that feeling on. Made him into a meme almost immediately to the point that he's a sort of like punchline now. So I sort of wonder whether or not they'll be able to sort of dial that in or whether it will stay like this where it becomes a sort of like an object of as much derision as like the old forms of censorship used to.

[D]

I mean, the amount of moral gaslighting around freedom of expression that has come from the right, particularly from Elon Musk, JD Vance and all the Cancel Culture saga that, let's remember, it was initiated by people of the Tony Bear Institute. Institute. Then like fascist curious liberals, I would say, kind of like Barry Weiss and all these supposedly moderates, but actually very, very conservative, they now put themselves at a complete service of the New Right. It was all pretending that the left was censorious, that it was bent on Cancel Culture. And I mean, personally, I. There were aspects of a certain kind of witch hunting in instinct, in certain left circles that I didn't completely share as. I mean, but what the right is doing now is. I mean is exponentially greater, is both controlling everything in the media system, is demonizing any adversary, calling them terrorists, is trying to get People to shut up through self censorship. And that if you, I mean, and what is happening to people going to the US is just ludicrous. People like their phones being checked and if they expressed an opinion or a criticism, getting in trouble, being kicked out. I mean, the amount of censorship that this right is producing just completely out of proportion. I don't think it is popular with anyone, especially with young people, that you cannot express yourself besides being in evident contradiction with what they pretend to be, namely freedom loving people who love freedom of speech. Charlie Kirk, free debate, debate me, blah, blah.

[A]

It's interesting. Sort of like in the course of trying to turn social media into an echo chamber, I wonder to what extent the right has just sort of trapped themselves in one where they can only sort of get more and more extreme with each other. And anyone with any sort of like semblance of normality left is just like, what are you, what are you talking about?

[D]

You know? Yes, I mean, I was proposing this idea back then, the intellectual year, and I was proven wrong on that in the sense that, I mean, sometimes you wonder how much them becoming so extremely online can lead them to lose touch from the real world. But these days the real world is the online world to that extent. I mean, the separation between the two doesn't exist anymore. I think more is the separation from any sense of long term reality that is troubling for them in a sense that they do live in confirmation bias. And I mean, Trump first and foremost lives in a world of confirmation biases and you're already seeing the limits of that political strategy. I mean, like, no, he has basically alienated many of his allies. He has put himself in a very dangerous position with the economy when this enormous AI bubble, which was already there, by just pumped it up beyond proportion. So indeed, I mean, partly it is a product of algorithms, right? Partly is this a product, these algorithmic publics and the boost and deboost mechanisms they build into the system. And yeah, we're looking forward to see these bubbles crashing down.

[B]

And I guess just to wrap it up, taking it back around, I think to why you'd want to own this. I think it's pretty obvious. And also I think it's something that you don't necessarily, you don't necessarily buy it to say, okay, if they send Epstein, flag it as suspicious, but rather you buy it because you understand the power of these heightened emotive forms of communication and you understand that you need them to work for you 100% of the time because you won't settle for Anything less. But also because you do know that if your belief, for example, is, well, obviously you know, everyone in Minneapolis is a Soros funded plant. Whatever, whatever you can say, well, we think that's, we think this kind of content, for example, is inauthentic and we're going to be boosting authentic content. It's not that they're going to be imposing hard stop on this, never talk about this. If you upload this, it won't get, it won't, it won't work. But rather we're just going to make relatively subtle changes and we're going to, we're going to couch them in line with something like a business strategy. And also we're going to collect, by the way, a huge amount more information. Like they're now doing precise location tracking and they weren't doing that before. And we're going to use all of that just like Elon did as well. I mean, he did it in a different way with Twitter. Right? He did it by like favoring Blue Check people. And Blue Check people are self selecting to be morons, broadly speaking. But we're just going to make these subtle changes to what gets boosted, to what doesn't get boosted. And it's less about individuals, generally speaking, and it's more just about what kinds of things are people going to see? Are you going to be. Be if you're interested in a certain kind of topic, if you're posting from a certain kind of area or whatever, are you going to be seen as someone who is just going to get largely sidelined?

[D]

Totally, yes. Nudging to some extent. Right? Yeah. I mean, it's this behavioral, economic stripe of manipulation, which is mostly subtle, is invisible and small, insidious because also it leads people to practice self censorship because perhaps you don't see your post traveling and you wonder, perhaps he's my audience that doesn't want me anymore, so perhaps I should change tack.

[A]

The nudge unit vindicated at long last.

[D]

Completely. You see, it's a quango. I told you.

[B]

All right, well, look, that's all the time we have, so we're going to throw back to ourselves in the future past. Always love doing that. I'm never going to get tired of it. That's my promise to you. Paolo, thank you so much for coming and talking to us today. This was very interesting and informative.

[A]

Cheers.

[D]

You're welcome.

[B]

All right, well, I think that just about does it for another episode of tf. A free episode of TF might have been some beeps in this one. A couple beeps.

[A]

A couple. A few. Yeah. But it's fine. It wouldn't be, it wouldn't be a fitting episode on the Files if there weren't a couple of redactions of our own and that, you know.

[B]

Yeah, that's right. So I just want to, of course, once again, thank our guest, Paolo. We're going to have a link to some of his recent work in the description. Thank my lovely co host for being here, as ever. And finally, to thank you, the listener, remind you, of course, there's a Patreon yada, yada, yada. You can, you can subscribe to it for more of this. So we will see you on the bonus episode in a couple short days.

[A]

Bye.

[D]

Bye.

[A]

Sam.