You're listening to a stage talk titled How We
Got Here, The Rise, Backlash and Feature of Counterdisinformation.
In this episode, we're joined by Bellingcat founder
Elliot Higgins and Cornell University professor
Dr. Claire Wardle. Together, they unpacked the
historical context of online fact -checking and
where open source investigations really began
to shine. You can find links to all the resources
mentioned in the talk in the podcast description.
This talk was hosted by me, Charlotte Ma, on
Thursday the 29th of January, 2026, in the Villain
Cap Discord server. Hello, beautiful people.
We're back in a new year with a new set of talks
to kick off our 2026 series. We're discussing
the rise, fall and future of counter disinformation
and fact -checking efforts. Something central
to the work we do at Bellingcat and important
to the balance of our society. Someone who's
been a leader in the study of the way we receive
and respond to information for decades is Dr
Clare Wardle. Claire is a co -founder of the
former First Draft News, a non -profit providing
practical and ethical guidance in how to find,
verify and publish content sourced from the social
web. She's currently an associate professor at
Cornell specializing in information ecosystems
with a focus on effective communication in the
age of AI and conspiracy. If you're familiar
with Bellingcat's work, our other speaker needs
no introduction. We're joined by Bellingcat founder
Elliot Higgins. Elliot has been working with
the University of Nottingham on a new framework
demonstrating the importance of epistemic security
for a healthy democracy. Today they'll be breaking
down the emergence and journey of counter disinformation
strategies and answering your questions on what
our future looks like as people are now fed information
according to political preferences and life experiences.
Whilst we talk you can place your questions in
the chat accessible on the right hand corner
of your screen but please remember that this
is being audio recorded for the podcast So if
you don't want me to mention your username, please
add that as a note in your question. Okay. Elliot,
Claire, over to you. Oh, yeah. Thanks for coming
to speak to us, Claire. I think I first met you
probably 20, my memory's terrible. So 2011, 2012,
the very early days of this whole kind of, I
guess, movement you could call it. This, correct
me if I'm wrong, this started for you when you
were in Storyful and maybe you can tell us a
bit about what Storyful was and how you kind
of came into this area. Yeah, so actually it
goes a little bit earlier than that. I was at
Cardiff University as a professor and wrote a
report for the BBC about user -generated content,
because in 2008 they were like, we're getting
this stuff from the audience and we don't know
what's true. So I was like, oh, interesting.
And so I wrote the report thinking that only
my mom was going to read it. And one person from
the BBC read it and said, oh, would you come
for six months and help us implement your recommendations,
which never happens as an academic. And while
I was there, many of you may remember this, but
that plane landed in the Hudson River in January
2009. And the head of BBC News Gavin called me
and said, you're the Twitter lady. None of my
journalists are on Twitter. We got scooped by
CNN because we couldn't find that image. We couldn't
verify it and we didn't know whether we could
use it ethically or legally. Can you develop
a training course for the BBC on how do we verify
and use this kind of content? So I just was like,
had this niche area of like, how do you verify
what's on this? social web and then did that
worked for a couple of years independently and
traveled the world training journalists. I mean,
I was so lucky and it was an extraordinary time
to go to Al Jazeera and to go to ABC Australia
and go to BBC Africa and like many countries
in Africa to train them in how do you tell whether
or not the audience is telling the truth. But
then from that in 2012, I moved to Storyful when
it was still very small, with an incredibly small
group of people trying to figure out the Syrian
war. And at the time, I didn't even know your
real name, right? Like you were just, they were
like, this is Guy, he's in Leicester, he's really
good at munitions stuff. And you were like, you
know, Moses Brown. And we didn't, we never met,
we just knew you. And so there was like this
crew at Storyful, this small crew at BBC, anti
-Carvin, NPR and you. And we were just trying
to figure this stuff out. tell people about that
kind of period. It was such a small group of
people who are kind of figuring out exactly even
what words to use. Open source investigation,
it wasn't even a term we were using. Someone
started using Austin and that kind of stuck and
that's kind of plaguing us a bit now, I think,
unfortunately. A good way to spot hoses as well.
But also, Words like geolocation, I can't remember
where that word came from, but it kind of then
become just the word we use to talk about what
we now call the process of geolocation. But for
me, at the first time, I spot the difference
with Google Maps. Yeah. Well, because at story
for the time, there was Malachy Brown, who then
went on and many people probably know, works
for the New York Times. And I remember at the
time he wrote a blog post for us, which was like
the steps to verify a video. And I think I said
to him at the time, I was like, I think this
might one day go into a museum, Malachy. Like
it was this crazy attempt by one individual to
try and lay out the steps that he was doing every
day. And, and I think lots of that was everybody
was helping each other to be like, well, what
are you doing there? And, you know, and I remember
the first time that we tried to analyze an explosion,
a distance of an explosion. And we were like,
Oh, has anybody done this before? Like, how do
you figure that out forensically? So yeah, it's
kind of extraordinary what was happening at the
time. And I don't think we realized how important
that time was. Yeah, I think that's kind of your
experience when you do this work because everything's
so new. You're saying how like measuring the
explosion. That's something I remember doing
in a completely separate case, measuring the
range of a rocket launcher and based on how far
away the noise of its rocket explosion was from
the origin. So yeah, I mean, and I guess Syria
was the kind of dominant topic in 2011 and 2000.
probably till about 2013, I would say, especially
with the sarin attacks. But eventually you moved
on to another organization from Storyful. Yes.
Well, I just want to remind, and I had just another
moment. I remember one of the early chemical
weapons attacks where we all figured out that
the different platforms had different timestamps,
right? Because Putin had said that it had happened
yesterday and we were like, what? And it was
because we hadn't figured out that YouTube was
Pacific Standard Time. And then we're like, but
that's different to Twitter, because Twitter
depends on where your settings are versus all
of this stuff now that we take for granted. But
it's incredible to remember those kind of moments
that were so defining. But yeah, after StoryFile,
I went back and did a fellowship for a year of
updating that user -generated content research.
I did that at the TAL Center of Digital Journalism.
And then around that time, founded a nonprofit
called Eyewitness Media Hub. which was a small
group of us trying to figure out like what are
the ethical uses of eyewitness media? And I have
to say this week there's been some incredible
pieces written about eyewitness videos from Minnesota.
And obviously that's what we've all been looking
at for a long time, but it's kind of amazing
to think back to, there were real questions around
that time, like the Charlie Hebdo shooting. I
don't, people may not remember this, but there
was a guy in his apartment and he filmed the
killing by the security forces and then uploaded
to Facebook, not thinking. Somebody else scraped
it from Facebook, uploaded it to YouTube and
monetized it. And all the newsrooms were using
the YouTube version, not realizing that they
should check the Providence, right? And so again,
there was such uncertainty in those early days
of like, what were guidelines for newsrooms?
What were the best? ethical practices. And I
think we're seeing some of the conversations
around Minnesota. I'm like, Oh, actually, there's
a whole host of earlier stuff, because I got
interested in this with the 2005 777 bombings.
which was the first time the BBC ever led a news
broadcast with anything from a camera that wasn't
BBC owned. Somebody was down in the tube tunnels
and had not an iPhone, because it was 2005, a
grainy photo from inside. And it was the first
time the BBC had led that, right? So when we
think about the tsunami in 2004, 7 -7 bombings,
blah, blah, blah, it's kind of a fascinating
story of the kind of evolution of eyewitness
media. Yeah, and I think as well, I've been thinking
about the past 20 years in terms of how our whole
information ecosystem has changed. And in parallel
to all the kind of really dark stuff that's been
happening and obviously that we battle against
every day now. There was also this growth of
this parallel community that were truth seekers,
but trying to figure out actually how do you
establish the truth? I remember, I think the
big challenge for a lot of newspapers and media
organizations were citing people like the gay
girl in Damascus blog, which turned out to be
a white guy in America. And that really shook
their faith in their ability to trust that they
can go online. It seems silly now, you shouldn't
trust stuff on the internet, but back then all
kinds of stuff was being reported on just because
it became It seemed legitimate. I do remember
one really bizarre one. There's something awful
for a music called Martin Random who did a series
of posts about the Bush administration talking
about Donald Rumsfeld having to wear iced underwear
and all kinds of ridiculous things. It got picked
up by the Daily Cast and went a bit semi -viral
because of it. Just those basic things now that
would be completely ridiculous to do just weren't
established within journalism and the blogosphere
also had a big influence that suddenly we were
getting these alternative voices. people didn't
know who was kind of the respectable voices very
early on. So you got that kind of weirdness emerging
from that. Yeah. And of course it wasn't Syria,
but Hurricane Sandy, which was the end of October
2012, was the first time I remember seeing like
all sorts of fake, you know, people like, oh
my God, look at this, like the Statue of Liberty.
And it was from like some disaster movie or,
you know, really obvious, or, you know, there
were users that were talking about tubes, subways
being flooded and they weren't. And I think that
when I had this moment of like, hang on, there
was so much more misinformation that up until
that point I was training newsrooms saying like,
well, once in a while you might get hoaxed. And
that was the moment I was like, oh no, hang on,
this is a completely different level and how
in real time a newsroom is meant to verify this
kind of content. When do you think was the kind
of moment you really saw that sea change? What
kind of year would you say that was? So actually,
I think even though it sounds silly, but I think
it was Hurricane Sandy because I think there
was something about Syria, which was like there
was nobody else in, like there were no journalists
allowed into Syria around that time. So we were
only able to rely on YouTube. And so a lot of
it was like, can we verify that that bomb did
land on that day? Even though that footage is
probably from around this time, we were trying
to be really specific. I think Hurricane Sandy
was like, oh, some people just want to like cause
like create content and call shit just because
they can. Like that for me was this moment of
like, oh, something different is happening here.
Like, which I think up until the stuff that we
were looking at Syria didn't feel like that at
all. I started feeling around probably 2013 is
when the social media companies were engaging
a lot more with this. I remember, of course,
there's the Google Conflict and Connected Worlds
Summit in late 2013, where it was the first time
I kind of personally had done a major event,
which was terrifying for me. And there are lots
of people there from like the Syrian kind of
community and journalists and It was the first
time I'd seen people talk to each other in that
way and people caring about that because before
that it was just me and a few people on the internet,
including yourself, doing this. Where did you
start feeling this was something that was being
taken more seriously by the social media companies?
So it's a good point. I mean, in 2014 I worked
for a year at UNHCR as like head of social media
and at the time we had real problems with smugglers
basically creating content of like beautiful
pictures of yachts using UNHCR logo and that
was 2014 and we were trying to contact Facebook
and others and they were like freedom of expression,
everybody has a right to pretend to be a smuggler,
maybe smugglers are good. These kind of crazy
conversations with these Silicon Valley bros.
So I think around that time, they weren't, newsrooms
were. When I was doing interviews with newsrooms
in 2013, 2014, they were like, we are terrified
of getting it wrong. And I'd be like, so are
you building up these skills in -house? And they
were like, no, we just use Reuters and AP. BBC
was building it in -house, but many, many newsrooms
were like, we don't know where to start with
this kind of content. I think the social media
company as well, I think the point that you're
probably trying to get to is in, it was 2015,
basically Google invited a small group of us
to a New York meeting. They didn't pay for our
flights. But we all were like, oh, because at
the time we were like, oh, Google, exciting.
It's like Willy Wonka's factory, right? And we
all, you were there. There was people from Storyful,
Eyewitness Media Hub, Medan. There were different
people there. And they basically said, we want
to start a non -profit. And we want to call it
First Draft. So I'm sure we're going to get to
more of that, but it is really important to remember
that First Draft really started with a number
of small number of people who'd been doing this
work for five or more years. And it was like,
well, how can we amplify that kind of work? But
it's really important to remember the foundations
came from and like Craig Silver was in that group.
Like it was this amazing group of people that
were thinking about verification and from different
perspectives. Yeah. And that was the Google ideas.
I think they called it at the time. was part
of that as well. They were very keen to support
that. I remember a lot of excitement in Google
about how their tools were being used for the
human rights thing and then ISIS came along and
then they got very worried about how their tools
were being used for other things as well. And
that's when, especially Facebook, I think as
well, you've got a lot of concern. Anytime we
tried to speak to Facebook in that period, it
was like, oh, we'll have to talk to our lawyers
about this. It was like, we don't want to engage
with it. Google are always a lot kind of more,
I think, communicative. I think they still have
their, you know, do goods idea, which kind of
obviously, Tamiya's laser is a bit different,
but. Yeah, so let's talk about First Draft then
because I remember meeting people like Ed Weiss
from Medan and him trying to do work and all
these different news organizations coming along,
all these kind of independent and unusual internet
ones. But we still didn't have that kind of,
I guess we hadn't really written a lot of stuff
down that we could show of people. I think that's
something that First Draft did a really good
job of kind of trying to start off with. Yeah,
and at the very beginning, I mean, Google gave
us an amount of money. It wasn't that much and
said build a website, which was kind of terrifying
because nobody, you never want to build a website
for Google. But what we decided to do as a group,
as a coalition, is that we said every week we'll
write one blog post, right? And so you'd write
something about something you've done, I'd write
something and then Craig Silverman would write
something and then me down would write something.
And I am a little bit biased, but at some point
somebody will go back to those early first draft
writings and see it as an archive. When you look
at everything that was published on first draft,
it's this kind of incredible six -year journey
of the ways in which we were all thinking about
the problem. There was a lot of stuff about definitions,
and then there was a lot of stuff about bots,
and then there was a lot of stuff about Russia,
and then there was a lot of stuff about monetization,
and then there was a lot of stuff about pre -bunking.
You can trace the ways in which this field shifted
based on what people were thinking about at any
given time. It is kind of extraordinary to go
back and think about it as an archive of exactly
the conversation that we're having today. I think
then 2016 was obviously a big moment because
of the exit of the Trump election. And Uterte
in the Philippines. Bellingcat, I was busy with
all my Syria stuff with Russia starting to bomb
Syria after we've done the MH17 investigation.
I remember around that time, we were also getting
invites to various things. I remember this Facebook
Paris event where they were trying to convince
a bunch of fact checkers to work for basically
free to fact check their website for them. I
kind of left that meeting thinking I'm not going
to do that with Burning Cat. But what kind of
thing were you doing around that period in the
kind of aftermath of those events? Yeah. So,
so I came on board full time by that time, first
draft, I think had gone from this kind of like
cute hobby. website where we all write one thing
a week to hang on, there's something more here
and people need training and we thought about
training materials. But just after the US election,
we heard from French journalists who said, well,
we're worried about what might happen in our
April election, April 2017. And so a group of
people got together in Paris, lots of different
journalists and tech companies and other things.
And we kind of came up with this idea called
CrossCheck, which was that these different newsrooms
would work together. The point being, which is
the collaboration that we see at Bellingham.
at which is nobody should be competing. around
clearing up the shit on the internet. There's
reasons that journalists compete and it's around
quality information and it's about investigations,
but debunking and just cleaning up the mess,
nobody should be competing about it. So the idea
was what if journalists actually worked collaboratively
to write one piece that they could all basically
syndicate and all publish so they would be using
less resources to create the same content. And
then you would also have this amplification effect
because the same stuff would be appearing. Those
of us who study Russian disinformation, that's
what works. firehose of propaganda is that you
need to be repetitive and actually quality information
sources often don't do that, like we are competing.
So that was Cross Check France and that happened
in 2017. At the end of the election, everyone
was like, thanks so much, no more funding. We
did another project like that in Brazil in 2018
called Comprova, which still continues. I mean,
I think it's one of the things that I'm most
proud of is that that coalition of major newsrooms
in Brazil still works together to counter bad
information in Brazil. So like many things, Brazil
have got it right and we've got it wrong. But
yeah, so first off was ever a fact checking organization,
but it was how can we connect the dots and train
people and understand that collaborating around
these issues is actually a much better model.
and competing. And what was lovely is that you
would have these different French journalists
together. in Slack. I mean, this is another amazing
archive because the French are so philosophical.
They'd be like, but what is the meaning of truth?
Like all in French, like just these great conversations
about like what they were doing. Um, but you
also saw journalists from different newsrooms
were like, oh, you guys do that. Oh, that's interesting.
We do that. Like, and it made me realize how
rarely do journalists compare notes. And also
the quality of the work was higher. This is what
we found out after was in the evaluation because
it was said we didn't want to screw up in front
of our competitors. So the work they were producing
was of a higher quality, right? So it was a fascinating
way of thinking about collaboration as a model,
which I don't think has taken off in the way
it should have done. But yeah, it was an exciting
time. I think I often found with those projects,
again, it's that funding issue. They'll fund
you for one project, but beyond that, they don't
offer the support and they just aren't interested
in sustaining those kinds of projects in the
long term. And I think looking at what's happening
in America as well, Thinking about how that collaboration
is so important, I would like to see a lot more
of that happening in the US at the moment. And
it's kind of a shame that America, I don't know
if they feel that they're kind of special compared
to the rest of the world, but you know, we've
seen this happen before in a lots of other contexts.
We have processes and ideas and we understand
why building communities around verification
is important. I feel those lessons need to be
learned a lot more quickly in this current moment.
Yeah. Well, I'll just say, going back to the
funding, is that I'd often say to funders, why
do you think that disinformation only starts
12 weeks before the election and then stops a
day after elections? Why are you funding Brazil,
then you fund Nigeria, then you fund France,
then you fund Germany, then you fund the UK,
as if none of this is connected, right? So I
was very disappointed by that. And then your
point, Elliot, is every time there was an election
in the US, I tried to get funding to do projects
in the US and never could because it was like,
oh, we're so different. And of course they're
not. But there is definitely a superiority complex.
I say that as somebody who lives here and is
now a citizen. But yes, it's frustrating that
there's not more collaboration in the US. I think
at this point, this would take us to about 2018,
I think. And is this about the time you joined
Brown? Is that correct? No, at that point, I
was still leading First Draft full -time. We
went to Harvard for a year to try and get funding.
I mean, it was all this like moving around trying
to figure out where we could be safe and what
would work. But yes, it was a real challenge.
And then really COVID happened and we got significant
funding from Google, it will surprise nobody.
A lot of money that was like, you have to spend
that money in a year. So we kind of expanded
and did all this work in 2020. And then that
money went away in 2021 and we had to lay off
lots of staff. And at that point, you know, attacks
against those of us that were doing this work
were increasing. We couldn't get publishing insurance
because people like we can't like we can't support
a site that publishes misinformation because
you're going to get sued. And so it just became
increasingly difficult for us to do that work.
And so at that point, I took some staff to Brown
University, but it was really kind of the end
of first draft. And I think, Charlie, you put
the link in. And then lovely Internet Archive,
who of course we love and we all use the Wayback
Machine and we have their things. I contacted
them and said, look, there's such important work
on here. Is there any way you could help? And
they were like, oh yeah, we'll archive in perpetuity.
And so I had this wonderful couple of weeks where
I had to go through all of the archives of First
Draft and then pick out how to reorganize the
site to make it a place that people could go
and find information. But like I say, it does
sit to me like an archive that somebody one day
will go through and study because there's an
extraordinary depth and wealth of materials,
both articles and blog posts, but also training
materials that were translated into many, many
languages. So yeah, I will always feel very warm
and fuzzy about First Draft because not only
was it started by a really great group of people,
we ended up I think doing work that really helped.
I think that period around COVID is one where
now with the rise of this censorship industrial
complex theory has become a real point of contention.
I think that was a moment where traditional institutions
were faced with a huge crisis. They struggled
to adapt because they were still thinking of
it in terms of their old institutional dominance
of the information environment. They were relying
a lot on academics and independent organizations
to fill in the gaps that they weren't able to
handle. I think as well post -2016, there was
so much focus on the idea of bad information
versus good information. and that the kind of
foreign interference had become such a big part
of the discourse, that really the more underlying
factors were missing there. I'd be here to hear
your kind of experiences and reflections in that
specific period, because that then came back,
I think, to haunt a lot of us, you know, in the
new Trump administration. Yeah, no, I have a
lot to say about this. mean, I'm so glad we're
having this conversation. But I also have an
eye to these conversations aren't happening in
public because there's this sense of if we were
to kind of acknowledge some of the missteps,
it would look like that we were kind of giving
oxygen to certain ideas. But I look back at COVID.
I mean, even the first draft team, the majority
of people in their 20s or early 30s, the majority
of people were living alone. hadn't had a cuddle,
myself included. I look back now and we were
all working full time monitoring conspiracy theories
and everybody was trying to do good. Did that
mean that we labelled stuff as misinformation
that was a poor use of that term? 100%. There
was stuff that we labelled as misinformation
when we should have said this is unsettled science,
or we don't have enough evidence yet, or we're
concerned that people are pushing this narrative
to make money. you know, we need more scientific.
We didn't do that, right? People were looking
for, is this misinformation or not? We were trying
to ensure that the platforms who had created
these policies, were they actually doing what
they said they were going to do in the policies?
So to your note about the censorship industrial
complex, like... there's a blog post that kind
of lists the 50 organizations in the censorship
industrial complex and like first draft was number
one, right? And I remember reading that, I mean
like, but what that was, was just like a number
of people trying to figure out how to do this
work. But the platforms, they didn't really go
after the platforms, right? We weren't calling
up Google or Twitter, you need to take this down
because we think it's bad information. We're
like, hey, your policy says X and here's an example
of something and we're just letting you know,
it's up to you to do whatever you want, but this
goes against your policies. And that's got lost
in all of this, right? Like it was, it's about
these individual evil academics or nonprofits
as opposed to actually these were the platforms
that were making these kinds of decisions. But
I do look back and I think, I wish we hadn't
been moving at speed. I wish we'd had more time
to collaborate, but we couldn't because we were
all living alone or not able to connect. And,
you know, I think that we didn't think through
that this would look like, we didn't think about
the balance of freedom of expression. like which
we all believe in, and how do we ensure freedom
of expression exists when we have speech that
is potentially harmful, right? And we still haven't
figured out that balance, right? Policymakers,
you know, international human rights lawyers
haven't figured that out either. And so I think
organizations like First Draft and other nonprofits
in this space like Center for Countering Digital
Hate that are getting absolutely hammered, like
all of us were trying to do the right thing.
Was it perfect? Were mistakes, of course, but
there were mistakes made by all sorts of people
in all sorts of ways. But we were really good
people trying to do the right thing, right? But
we've been painted as these like evil monsters.
And that's pretty hard to swallow. I think a
big problem with this as well is the failure
to recognize the change in the information system
and how freedom of speech is built around information
systems that were dominated by institutions,
by governments, by media, that pre -filtered
certain views and ideas out of discourse. The
guy standing on the corner of the street, holding
a sign saying the earth is flat, didn't get onto
the news at one BBC. You live in a different
information environment now. In my work on verification,
depression and accountability, I like to make
the point that those processes that were done
by institutions have kind of been collapsed into
the public space now. The public aren't just
recipients of information, we're distributors
of information, yet we don't hold the responsibility
of making sure that information is accurate.
We can just share what the hell we want. I think
that's where that tension starts being created
because if you start saying, oh, well, people
can't say this because they can't say that because
it's wrong and it's untruthful. Even if you can
prove that's wrong and untruthful, it's still
you limiting their speech. But as an academic,
as someone working at Ballincat, we aren't the
government, which is really a lot of what freedom
of speech in the 20th century is focused on.
Yet we have a problem now that governments are
trying to adapt to that. So they kind of use
academics and independent civil society organizations
as a kind of proxy, and then use that to also
pressure the social media companies into action.
And I think there is a legitimate criticism of
that. I think the censorship industrial complex
reaches too far. And I think it's very biased
in the way it's kind of approaching these topics.
And I think it imagines stronger connections
between our organizations that really, then it
actually exists. It's not like we're on the phone
all the time saying how we censor this because
we don't like it. Yeah. And so for me, I think
there is a legitimate criticism of that. I don't
think the censorship industrial complex theory
is that legitimate criticism. And it's now being
weaponized against those people who certain groups
found, you know, are basically part of the out
group and the in groups now angry with them.
I think in this current administration, that's
become particularly dangerous. Yeah, and I mean,
I think you get tired if you call out hypocrisy
all the time. But exactly to your point, you
know, when we think that's when people say to
me, oh, yeah, but we just need to change Section
230. It's like, can we think about what these
different policies look like in the hands of
different types of governments? right? Like this
idea that there are like neutral policies without
recognizing, well, who does make these decisions
around speech? And so I think it's very frustrating
to see, you know, those of us being attacked
as being part of the censorship industrial, you
know, I was being investigated by Jim Jordan
and having my email sent to Congress, like seeing
all of all of that about being deemed a censor,
yet seeing like book bans in Florida, like, of
course, it doesn't make any sense, right? That
we're not thinking about the system as a whole.
All of this has been weaponized for political
gain. And so But I think those of us who got
into this space were just internet nerds, trying
to do the right thing. And then I have these
moments of just like, how on earth did this happen?
How did I go from working with the BBC about
how to verify what Beryl from Swansea is sending
in to being investigated by Jim Jordan? But that's
this insane journey we've been on. But we have
to understand it, to your point, Elliot, from
this very much higher level zoom out of like,
it's not about the debunking individual claims
or what was labeled or what wasn't. It's like,
what's happening at the institutional and ecosystem
level that really explains all of these changes?
And I think as we're moving into this current
period, I mean, as you've mentioned, you've been
targeted. I think a lot of our colleagues, you
know, people we've worked with in the past, people
who are just part of the kind of counter disinformation
community are finding an incredible amount of
pressure. I mean, we all know about the MIT technology
reviewer report where emails have been sent out
asking for communications from certain individuals.
You know, Ename and Balincat was also mentioned
within that. And that in itself is a potentially...
you know, it pushes people out of the discourse.
It makes it dangerous. How have you kind of felt,
you know, in the last year with the kind of rising
tide of this, your feelings of still being in
the US, especially when things seem to be getting
worse rather than getting better? Yeah, I mean,
I'd be lying if I didn't think that I've had
like wobbly moments. And I certainly before I
was a citizen felt much more wobbly. And I mean,
the reason that these things work is that then
you have self -censorship, right? Like I was
less likely to stand on stage and say certain
things. I was less likely to write blog posts.
I think now I've got to the point of like, I
don't want to hide anymore. And, you know, and
just, but I mean, I think, and it's hard to,
I mean, I'm sure you get horrific emails. I mean,
I get horrific emails, which say horrific things
to me. And there were times I was like, I just
don't want to deal with it. But I think I've
come through another side now and just like,
sod it. I've got a lot to add. And I think it's,
but I also just want to acknowledge that. Um,
women in particular get harassed in pretty nasty
ways. Um, but I do, uh, you know, I know it's
trite to say, but it's too easy to let them win,
um, by not putting a head above the parapet and
saying the things that you need to say. And I
think it's difficult to have conversations about
this in public because on one side, you have
people are really just trying to push a specific
agenda that, you know, we're the sensors and
the censorship industrial complexes is evil.
And if you try and kind of meet them halfway,
they aren't interested in that because they're
absolutists in their positions. And I think there
should be a debate and discussion about where
things went wrong. But if it just results in
us being attacked more, then it's very hard to
have those discussions in public. And Charlotte,
how are we doing for questions from the audience?
A couple of people have asked about AI, actually.
Rope Stone wrote, if governments are weaponizing
disinformation to the public, How can the consumer
in the street stand a chance of finding the truth?
Will the trend of LLM and AI give way to much
information for the user to comprehend what is
actual truth? And as a secondary to that, Sarah
said, is there any old school verification techniques
that can sidestep this new trend in people trying
to use AI to verify things? Yeah, I just taught
a class just now actually on generative AI, good,
bad and ugly. And I was trying to say to the
students like the thing that's the ugliest part
for me is the fact that people are losing trust
in anything they see or hear. Right. And we saw
that the first time I saw that was around Gaza
when I saw people like that's so upsetting that
can't possibly be true. But seeing yesterday
with the Alex Pretty video coming out of like
you know, him potentially hitting a car and spitting,
and seeing people like, that can't be true, that
can't be true. And I was like, yeah, that's the
biggest victim of this moment. Um, but I think
what's so interesting about AI verification is,
of course, there's all these startups trying
to convince us all that they've got the technology
that can do this automatically. But in the same
way as we started when we were doing this work,
you know, 15 years ago, there was never one easy
tool, right? You had to, like, look at the exif
data and then do the shadow analysis and then
check the timestamp on the, like, there were
all these different checks you had to make. And
that's what I say with AI, which is like, the
stuff that you see, you've still got to do the
human checks of like, did this, do you have evidence
that this happened independently? And if you
don't keep quiet, like there are times that newsrooms
were like, we've got 99 % there and the newsrooms
are like, but we're not 100 % there. So we're
not going to use that footage. But I think we're
so far away from that now that that's my concern
about AI. But I do hope that with this new generation
of students and people who have grown up with
AI, we also need to keep saying if we all lose
trust in everything, we're absolutely screwed.
And B, here's some fun techniques. So when people
say, well, what's the magic AI verification tool?
I'm like, here are the magic non -AI verification
tools that still stand the test of time, which
is like picking up the phone and talking to somebody
and be like, were you there? Were you an eyewitness?
Can you tell me what you saw? Sometimes there's
just no shortcut. So yeah, I'm interested to
hear what Elliot says. And I think on that example
you gave of the recent video of Alex Petty kicking
the... A lot of people I saw reacting, oh, that's
AI, that's not real, it's been manipulated. That's
no different when Trump was showing the pictures
of the video of the things being thrown out the
White House window and he said, oh, that's probably
AI, it's not real, it's AI. It's the same kind
of mindset that it's about protecting the group
identity rather than verifying something. And
if he kicked that car, it doesn't justify him
being shot to death two weeks later. Not all
the people using it as justification are either
bootlegs or psychopaths, I think. So But it is
about, you know, group identity for a lot of
people on both sides of these situations. And
I think we need to commit ourselves primarily
to, you know, building our group identity around
that verification, deliberation, accountability
process being functional rather than serving
the interests of the group. Yeah. And I do think
whenever, you know, I talk to students and others,
there's like, here's the technical verification
stuff, but here's why our brains are mush. like
left or right, like this is why we're vulnerable
to this. And the in -group, out -group, the fact
that we're all performing when we're on social
media, that's the stuff that I think doesn't
get taught as much when we do a checklist of
like, what's the pope wearing a puffer jacket?
But yeah, all right, we can do those checks.
But actually, why might you be convinced? Well,
because you looked great in that puffer jacket.
And you want it to be true because it's funny,
right? Like that's a silly example. But we don't
talk enough about the psychology of all of this.
platforms when you were talking and a couple
of questions have come in that. When did the
tensions between journalists, researchers and
platforms really emerge when it comes to disinformation?
And Nick asked, if governments, can governments
regulate platforms to make algorithmic curation
less alien in the attention economy? So the first
question, I mean, I have to say as somebody who's
probably been to like 400, 500 counter disinformation
conferences, I mean, that's where the industrial
complex was just like event after event after
event. And people would always invite the platforms
and were like, yeah, we got Google to come, or
we got Facebook to come. And the representatives
would turn up with their marketing slides that
had been signed off by the... And they said nothing,
right? But we were like, oh, we should keep inviting
them. I think the shift happened in 2021 when
everybody realized post -COVID that there was
a shift happening and there was fears around...
There was starting to be these grumblings that
there had been jaw boning, the idea that the
Biden administration had been... putting pressure
on the platforms. And it was around that time
that people really stopped talking to platforms
because there was fears of like collusion and
jawboning. But that has really, I mean, I used
to speak to almost everybody, like lots of people
at all platforms a lot of the time and like all
of those relationships have disappeared. And
then of course, Musk took over, trust and safety
teams were demolished. But yeah, again, it's
kind of very interesting to track like Google
funding a first draft. And the other day, on
my reading list, I had a piece of research from
Jigsaw about toxicity online. And my student
was like, hey, Claire, I can't find the PDF.
And I was like, oh, here's a link. And I was
like, oh, it's been taken down. I mean, Google
is so frightened that some of their best research
has been taken down off the internet because
they don't want to upset Trump, right? So it's
an extraordinary journey that we've been on.
The question about regulation is a really, really
good one. I used to believe that we would get
someone with regulation. And I was very excited
about the Digital Services Act from the EU. that
there was a real emphasis on data transparency,
a real emphasis on auditing algorithms as opposed
to content. high hopes. And then of course, as
we've seen, since Trump has come back into office,
pressure from the US against the EU on these
fines. And I worry that there will be some element
of pulling back and a chilling effect when I
think if Trump hadn't got in, we would have seen
like some pretty brave moves from the EU against
the platforms. I do not see that happening. I
wish I could be wrong, but I'm not as hopeful
as I was two years ago about what regulation
might be able to do. And I would add to that
that we've had the same experience. I mean, up
until Musk took over Twitter, I mean, like literally
as he took over, we were just starting a new
project with Twitter about looking kind of identifying
disinformation that works and stuff like that.
And literally the team's emails stopped working
overnight once Musk took over. And I had a lot
of people I knew very well at Twitter who had
been really working on these issues seriously.
just kind of disappearing. Like, you know, as
we all contact each other by email and then their
emails work, it's like, I don't have their phone
number or any of the details for them. So yeah,
and it was, it felt quite sudden when it happened,
not just in terms of X, but just that, like you
said, the post 2021 period. We were talking a
second ago about the U .S. Sarah said, are you
seeing any changes in U .S. organizations going
from, no, we don't need any help researching
disinformation, to we really need help researching
disinformation? Or are you seeing the opposite
because of Trump in power? Yeah, I mean, the
sad thing is, is that kind of three years ago,
there was a really thriving network of research
institutes and nonprofits in the US that were
being funded and supported. And that network
has almost entirely gone right from the project
at Stanford with Ray DeResta and Alex Deimos.
Stanford basically once they were attacked. shutting
it down, you know, Joan Donovan at Harvard, we
were doing work at Brown, you know, like it's
first draft has gone, like it, there's many,
many, many organizations that could just couldn't
get any funding anymore, or were basically attacked
into, and they're bigger organizations saying
when we, you know, we can't support you anymore.
So it is extraordinary to me to see the collapse
of a pretty tight knit. infrastructure of counter
disinformation efforts in the US completely disappear
at a time when we need them more. But that was
the whole purpose. That was the whole purpose
and it was successful and it stopped people from
doing the monitoring. You know, we're going to
go into the midterms. In fact, in the 2024 elections,
we used to have a whole network of people that
would do these big election projects and would
be monitoring. And all of that has disappeared
now. So we just don't have the monitoring infrastructure
that we used to have. So yeah, it's pretty shocking.
I'd add that as well. The cut to USAID funding
has had a devastating effect outside of the US
as well. We know loads of media organizations
who are using USAID funding, a lot were very
reliant on it. They've all started to collapse
and disappear. But also that has an impact on
the wider funding ecosystems. It means there's
less money in general for organizations who are
doing this kind of work and priorities are changing
a bit. And I think also kind of funders are starting
to feel that maybe this counter disinformation
stuff, these fact -checking websites aren't actually
as impactful as they think they are. And I think
they are correct to an extent on that. There's
no money now to figure out the more effective
version of kind of responding to these issues.
And, you know, that's affecting every organization.
It certainly affects Bellingcat, even though
we never took USAID funding, we're still competing
in that much smaller pool of money. And there's
also been a huge number of journalists, researchers
made redundant from these roles. So if you're
working in it, it's very difficult to find any
kind of employment. And you are seeing, I think,
a bit of a rise in more independent outlets,
but still they've got the challenge of having
a subscriber base or, you know, hoping Substack
works with them or competing in this dwindling
pool of money. I was just going to talk about
platform money, right? First off, we definitely
got criticized for taking platform money. My
perspective was always, we got money to do good
work, right? And there was always editorial independence.
And why shouldn't they pay to help clean up the
mess that they'd created? But even seeing how
Meta has pulled back, I mean, collapsing fact
checking in the US. And we can have a longer
conversation about the efficacy of fact checking.
But fact checking when you're doing it on Meta's
platforms and the reach that those fact checks
got once they retrained the algorithms to basically
to lower certain types of content or to flag
others. But yeah, there are many, many fact checkers
that started because of money from meta that
have now, in many, many parts of the world, that
we no longer have fact checkers. Have we in the
past overestimated the power of kind of corrections
and fact -checking? Kouch von Katschi asked a
question that kind of fits in here. How do we
go about teaching how to navigate this new information
landscape that is very fractured and has decreasing
trust? It feels like we're in a massive information
and geopolitical paradigm shift, and I'm curious
how we work through this. So if immediate fact
-checking isn't the way forward now, what would
you suggest is? So I'll be transparent in that
I'm a trustee of Full Fact, which is a UK fact
-checking organisation. I've always been clear
that fact -checking in terms of changing an individual's
belief system is very, very difficult. Fact -checking
is incredibly important and even more so now
that we have an accurate record. In an age of
LLMs, it's even more important that we actually
do have an archival moment that says what something
was, right? So for me, it's about having an accurate
record and it's also at times ensuring that the
person who lied in the first place changes it.
They're very good at getting people to correct
the record. it is all really important. But to
Elliot's point, we spent so much money on the
end of the information supply chain, right? Like,
let's wait until people are seeing the bad stuff
and then we'll kind of issue a correction. We
should have been working much, much earlier in
the supply chain. And we didn't do that. But
that doesn't mean that fact checking doesn't
work. It just doesn't work in the way that I
think a lot of policymakers thought was like,
oh, we just need people to have more facts and
then they'll change their minds. But it is astonishing
to me when you look at community notes on X and
other places, how many times people linked to
fact checkers. and like the LLMs, like if you
go to ChatGBT, it pulls all of that stuff from
those small fact checkers, has never paid a penny
for that information, uses all of their archives
to train their models. So for that now, I actually
think the fact checking is more important than
ever, but the funding is disappearing. I always
find it amusing that Grok is a big fan of BedlingCat
despite Elon Musk's position on the BedlingCat.
I mean, for me, a lot of this is actually getting
into that discourse as it's unfolding. And I
think the recent shootings has been a really
good example of that. We knew the US government
was going to lie about the second shooting because
they lied about the first one. So at Bellingham,
we were very keen to make sure we could get information
out very quickly. So we published stuff up through
Blue Sky and on our other platforms without in,
you know, hours of the shooting happening as
that discourse was forming and we still were
able to do our kind of longer form reporting
later on. Also training other people to do that's
really important. You had lots of media, traditional
media doing open source investigation into that
incident, partly because they've been trained
to do that. Banning Cat has trained a lot of
those people. We've created content online. You've
done that kind of work. It's put those skills
out there, but also involving the public. We
asked a lot about this and say that this Discord
community that we're talking to now played a
role in getting that information out. Our trained
volunteers community had a role in getting that
information out. And by spreading those skills,
it means there's more people applying them to
this information, often in places that you aren't
looking at. I always think of the role the kind
of alternative health community played in spreading
COVID disinformation. They weren't formed around
COVID disinformation. They were formed about
what were often traumatic experiences they had
with medical professionals. And then they built
a network around that, which towards more disordered
forms of communication. We can't predict where
this stuff can come from, so for me it's about
spreading those skills as far and wide as possible
through every layer of society so that when this
stuff comes out, and as I mentioned before, we're
all distributors of information, people at least
think twice about the stuff they're sharing,
and maybe that will stop some of the formation
of these very strong opinions that are based
on fictions. Yeah, and I'll just support that.
Like I make jokes every time I speak about how
I spend a lot of my days in the armpit of the
internet. And so I spend a lot of time in spaces
that are deeply participatory, that they're conspiracy
communities or anti -vax communities. But they
are communities where people turn up, they feel
heard, they're told that they can do their own
research, they have a sense of agency. Right.
And the only community to me that matches those
kind of communities is the Bellingcat community.
I think if you think about trusted gatekeeping
type organizations, they're still top down. put
the right person behind the podium or you put
out the right PDF, right? There's this idea that
it's still top -down and hierarchical. And very,
very few organizations, if any, on the kind of
the side of quality information have said in
order to get better information, you need collaborative
spaces where people feel a sense of agency and
you can work together, right? So just to say,
I hope you will realize how important this space
is, but it really is a model that I think many,
many organizations, because they feel like they
lose control if they hand it over. right? If
they hand over messaging or communication, there's
this idea that the quality goes down as opposed
to, well, actually, if you hand it over, the
quality will go up, but you're going to lose
control. So I couldn't say more about how important
this kind of community is. And I saw something
in the chat being like, yeah, but these kind
of communities are slower and other things. I
do ultimately think we're in this really nasty
moment right now where, like, how many times
do you hear people go, oh yeah, well, I'm on
Instagram. I mean, I know it's 75 % AI slop,
but I still look at it, right? I think in a few
years time, we'll actually have a kind of a bifurcated
internet where it's not like I don't love AI
slop sometimes. Like I want to see a cat singing
and dancing, right? Because I'm in a bad mood
and I want to be cheered up. But there are other
times where I only want good information. And
I think there will be increasing spaces where
quality information coming from like quality
organizations will have, you know, like watermarked
content or they will have, you know, the kind
of things that we're seeing around AI generated
content that says this really was filmed by the
New York Times or this really was filmed by or
created by Bellingcat so that you can go to places
for that kind of content. Doesn't mean we won't
have the nasty sloppy parts of the internet,
but I think people will realize that you can't
have both in the same space. It shouldn't be
on all of us individually to figure out is that
true or not. So it could be wrong, but that's
a kind of a prediction I have for the next five
years. I'll just add to that. I had it interesting
when I left X and then into Blue Sky. I wasn't
planning to join Blue Sky, but to be honest,
when I quit X, I felt like physically depressed.
It was like I was so addicted. It's like going
clawed into me so much. I thought I'd need like
a methadone to get over this. And that's what
Blue Sky became for me. But then when I actually
started posting there, the discourse felt so
different. There's so few times when someone
would post something like banning Kat as the
CIA or how terrible I was, which I got way too
used to on X. And I think, you know, that having
those good spaces where there can be discourse,
where there is engagement, that you can talk
to people normally, reminds me of what X used
to be like, you know, or Twitter 15 years ago.
Um, my worry is blue skies that, you know, as
it grows, they're going to think, how can you
squeeze some money out of this? And then it becomes
an algorithmic hellscape. But I think we have
to kind of, uh, you know, express the value of
having those spaces where the algorithm doesn't
dominate the conversation and that you don't
get reshares just because you're sharing a, you
know, singing and dancing cat video made with
AI. Yeah. Well, I mean, I certainly think non
-algorithmic spaces like WhatsApp or Reddit or
Discord, you're seeing a growth of those kind
of spaces because people are sort of fed up with
the algorithmic stuff. There will always be a
place, like I said, there's a role for that kind
of content that makes me feel better when I've
had a bad day. But there were also times where
I just want good information in ways that I can
verify who the person is. Yeah, Rafi agrees.
They said, I think the overflow of slop will
give people a renewed interest in controlling
whether their feeds can be consumed with content
that is not conducive to a useful flow of information.
I just wanted to flag as well, above Kara said,
just wanted to add fact checking can also be
powerful if used by relatives, friends, act of
those falling for disinformation. So it's also
important, you know, to work within your local
and your family communities as well. It's not
just online. Yeah, but there's really good research
about bystander fact -checking, right? So if
somebody on Facebook says something bonkers and
you respond, it's unlikely you're going to convince
the original poster, but you have a lot of people
lurking who see that and are likely to be like,
oh, that's interesting. Let me go and read that
article. So I often say to people, it's not about
changing the mind of the first person, but recognize
that you're having benefits in other ways. Absolutely.
Nick has an interesting question earlier. Could
governments see epistemic security as defense
spending, like for example, education reform
and journalism funding counting towards NATO
spending targets? What do you think of that idea?
Has there been any interest from governments
in general to kind of pursue kind of fact checking
or verification strategies? Is that being taken
as seriously as it should be? Yeah, I mean, Elliot
alluded to this earlier, which is working with
governments is always really, really tricky.
Like when we did our project in Brazil, we had
to basically write a statement for a lot of newsrooms
to say that we'd never taken money from the American
government because of the American government's
role in the military dictatorship. And so we
never took money from the US government. We never
took money from the UK government. And so I think
there's this challenge of like, how can we stay
independent? But your point is a good one. And
there are like, for example, many of the Scandinavian
countries and obviously the countries that the
nearer you get to Russia, the more they take
this seriously and see it as a kind of a counter
disinformation as military spending. The question
is like how much should they be doing versus
independent organizations? And I think that's
the real challenge with all of this. But I certainly
think that there are many governments who are
increasingly seeing this as something that they
should be taking seriously. But I think they
don't know where to start, right? So there's
this sense of like, well, we should be doing
more media literacy, but they don't know what
format that should take or how to do it effectively.
And it's very targeted on like school kids as
opposed to like you need cradle to grave. So
that's my frustration is that we haven't invested
properly in innovative media literacy interventions.
And instead we're like, well, we just would do
a PowerPoint slide to some 18 year old or, you
know, 16 year olds who laugh at the teacher who
hasn't got a clue what Snapchat is. But yeah,
I'm sure Elliot's got some thoughts on all of
this. Yeah. And on that point, even regards to
education, there was a recent government advice
to curriculum development organisations about
having more media literacy skills, which really
for me is critical thinking skills needing to
be embedded across multiple subjects. You're
no longer in a society where if you want to influence
discourse, you have to, you know, have a career
path to become a journalist or politician. You
pick up your phone and you're influencing the
discourse just by looking at a post with five
seconds longer than another post. We need to
understand that's the environment we live in.
We need to educate around that environment. And
if we fail to do that, then we're just going
to keep on repeating the same mistakes. It's
like, um, you know, someone says, Oh, I go into,
you know, do media literacy skills and we teach
kids how to fact check headlines, which is things
that have been said to me. I'm thinking, what
headline are they seeing to ever fact check?
Because that's not how they're consuming the
content they're encountering. You don't have
this kind of passive consumption of media in
the kind of 20th century way where you had the
newspaper that your parents brought home and
the Scott News was on. now connected to a media
ecosystem that's algorithmically designed to
keep you on those platforms. We need to educate
around that. We can't just say, oh, here's how
you fact check a bunch of stuff because we need
to go beyond that. We need to say, actually,
democracy relies on these things actually working.
We also need to be able to demonstrate that institutions
respond to that. We're teaching young people
that this is how democracy works. This is why
facts are important and then the government comes
along and does Iraq in 2003 all over again. That
just drives the cynicism that sends people to
these online communities that say, yes, you're
right to hate the government for being liars.
Here's lots of information to support that. And
then in another 20 years where we have enough
chemical weapons attack in the Middle Eastern
country, we'll have again people saying, oh,
well, it's just like it was 20 years ago. I think
that's the responsibility here. We talk a lot
about how people have lost trust in institutions,
but that's often earned. It isn't just because,
oh, it's a vague idea that they're reading too
much rushing propaganda or bad information on
the internet. It's because those institutions
have failed people in a myriad of ways and those
institutions need to be able to respond to that.
But I think they also end up kind of paralysing
this current information environment because
What they see is the most salient discourse on
these platforms that they're engaging with. In
the UK it's, well, in the US as well, it's immigration
because it's salient because one side is really
passionate and hateful, as is the other side,
against that side. So there's lots of arguing
online. The algorithm sees, hey, great, loads
of engagement and starts boosting that. That
changes the incentives of people on the platforms
to start posting more stuff about that topic.
And they have the institutions who exist in those
same spaces now seeing that as the topic of conversation.
And they have people like, know, labour chasing
after reform voters and actually pissing off
all their own supporters. So we need to understand
the information environment we're existing in
even before we start discussing those solutions
in a really deep way. I'm glad to say that I'm
consulting with a couple of education establishments
that are developing curriculum material and they're
really interested in this kind of deeper way
of approaching it. So I think we're going to
get away from the kind of fact checking headlines
in one lesson that I approach, which I think
is something that's really, really important
in this moment. And I think just, I saw somebody
put into the chat about that blog post from LSE
and it was from 2018. I remember in lots and
lots of conferences, 2016, 2017, anybody, somebody
talked about media literacy, somebody else were
like, oh, we haven't got the time. We just need
to get Facebook to tweak its algorithm or we
just need a spam folder for misinformation. We
haven't got time. And now we're 10 years on,
I'm like, what would have happened if we'd actually
invested in media literacy properly 10 years
ago, right? Not to say that we wouldn't be where
we are today, but it wouldn't be quite as bad
as it is. And I'm with Elliot that we just haven't
done enough to explain how algorithms shape what
we see. Like I'm doing a project right now on
polarization. And when you talk to people like,
well, you know that we have like polarized candidates
like Marjorie Taylor Greene or, you know, left
-wing candidates because the algorithm privileges
the more extreme you are. Like if you're a nice,
centrist candidate, you don't get any airtime.
So that's forced people to become more and more,
you know. So once you start explaining how algorithms
have impacted our headlines, the types of politicians
we see, what politicians say, then I think people
start to be like, oh, okay, right. So it's algorithms
are at the heart of so many different things,
but we've done a really bad job of explaining
how algorithms work. And most people are like,
oh, everything I see on Facebook is just the
people I like. They still don't understand that
what they see on Facebook is algorithmically
driven and that they don't see 90 % of the stuff
that they could. Then people's minds are like,
ooh, and it's 2026. So yeah, algorithms. I'll
put all of the links that have been mentioned
in the chat in the description of the podcast.
So if you are listening back, you can still check
them out, including a recent article that Elliot
wrote for the Voters Institute, which talks about
how to protect democracies from falsehoods and
has some examples of how you could teach critical
thinking. So please do give that a read. Bear
in mind, we only have about seven minutes left,
so we have to limit the questions. I wanted to
go back to the idea of kind of how we talk about
disinformation. And Caro asked earlier, I remember
reading Claire that you've become rather critical
of the term malinformation. Can you elaborate
on that a little? Are the terms that we're using
disinformation, misinformation, malinformation,
fake news, are they confusing, misleading? Are
they causing more problems than they should?
Yes, I wrote a piece in the spring of 2023, where
I basically said that So I wrote a report in
2017 called Information Disorder, which came
from a frustration that everybody was using the
term fake news, which had been weaponized and
actually didn't describe a lot of the problems.
A lot of this content isn't fake and it certainly
doesn't look like news. So I wrote this report
and it had like it was a very long report, but
it had this Venn diagram in around misinformation,
disinformation, malinformation. And that Venn
diagram has appeared on a lot of slide decks
over the years. Like I've seen them pop up and
I'm like, oh, that slide deck. But I sort of,
I wrote this piece to say that wasn't helpful,
right? Because we got obsessed with trying to
define different examples. Like, but what bucket
do we put it in? Right. And so much of this was
about intent and we couldn't actually tell. And
so this piece that I wrote was basically saying
we, by doing that, we got fixated on thinking
that we could take the complexity of the ecosystem
and make it simple. But, and it meant that we
completely forgot to look at a whole host of
different factors, right? And so I talk about
missing disinformation, right? Like, so if I'm
in an anti -vax community and there's an image
I have from Instagram with a woman who's holding
a binder full of scientific evidence, right?
She's reading the evidence. She's not somebody
who just like forwards something in the coffee
shop without checking. She's looking at this
stuff all day long, but she's just reached different
conclusions to me. Is she a disinformer or is
she a misinformer? She's neither of those things,
right? The people who stormed the Capitol. So
the more I was doing this work, I was like, none
of those early definitions make sense when you
start operationalizing it. Or the people that
use the, when Musk changed the blue tick thing
to say it was Eli Lilly and said, now everybody
can get like free. insulin. What was that? Was
that misinformation or disinformation? Was it
causing harm? Well, it caused harm to some very
rich fat cats on Wall Street, but it was helping
the public interest. So I think that these definitions,
maybe they were necessary in 2016 to take a complex
problem and make it make sense. But I actually
really try and avoid a lot of the terms now,
partly because they've been weaponized. But secondly,
I don't think any of this is as straightforward
as we like to think. And I think by doing so,
it has prevented us from really understanding
some of the key drivers to these problems. And
so for that reason, I've changed my language.
So yeah. And I do use those terms in my discourse
framework, but that's because I can then build.
So I use those as the elements and then I explain
what the drivers are, who the people are, you
know, the types of people. groups or people who
are spreading this stuff and the process behind
that. So that's, I think, the thing that's often
overlooked. It has to be about when we're talking
about this information, about the discourse,
not just about, you know, this is bad information
and it's getting out to people and therefore
we have to make the information. It's like...
Why does this discourse emerge in the first place?
Because that lets us off far too lightly and
it lets off institutions far too lightly. Because
again, it comes back to this idea old people
have lost trust in institutions, but we need
to understand why they've lost trust in institutions.
What was that trust even based on in the first
place? We don't really ever question that. Um,
and if we don't do that, then we'll never actually
be able to find workable solutions. And I think
that's where, you know, a lot of post 2016 counter
disinformation efforts did fail because it was
so much about the information rather than the
discourse that was happening and the role of
institutions in being responsible for that discourse
in the first place. Yeah. And I think just to
jump in, the question actually was about malinformation,
which was this term that I coined with my co
-author, Hossein Darikshan. And the idea was
when look, genuine information is used to cause
harm, right? And so I've done work with the ICRC
and the UN, like some very effective malinformation
is when you go back and talk about the ICRC's
role during World War Two, right? Like, or you
talk about the UN and what some of the peacekeepers
have done, right? Like that is not false information.
It's like that is it's being is the weaponization
part that is useful and interesting. labeling
it isn't that helpful, right? And so I think,
but what I was trying to make the point by talking
about malinformation is that everybody was so
obsessed with false information, you could only
flag false information without realizing that
the smartest actors were weaponizing genuine
information because you couldn't go to a platform
and be like, you want to take that down, it's
disinformation because it's not, it's genuine
information, right? And so again, to Elliot's
point, so much of this is understanding historical
context, understanding institutions properly
and the discourse. around them to understand
how they're being weaponized. It's not about
is it true or false. And that's, I think, where
we got lost a little bit. Thanks for giving that
extra context. We're going to have to wrap in
a second, but I wanted to just read out this
point. One of somebody in the chat said, 30 years
ago, my views aligned with today's Marga. Many
of my friends from those days are Maganal. It
was people sharing facts as seeds, not demands
that helped me change, that led me to be the
centre -left pro -facts person I am now. So really
builds on a lot of what you were saying. Just
to wrap up, a lot of people have been asking
how they can get in contact with you both if
they have follow up questions or want to highlight
amazing things that they're working on to you.
Where's the best way to contact you? I'm going
to put my email in the chat. So I might not be
able to get back immediately, but I always love
to hear people and what they're doing. And so
it would be my pleasure to get into a conversation
with anybody if they want to continue it. Amazing.
You can contact me directly at my email as well.
Fabulous. Thank you so much both for your time
today. And thank you to everybody who's joined
the audience as well. Thank you for your fantastic
questions. And we'll be back in two weeks time
with another stage talk. But for now, this recording
will be up hopefully by tomorrow for you all
to listen back to. And yeah, again, Claire, Elliot,
thank you so much for coming in and chatting
with us. Thank you so much. Thank you. I loved
it. Thank you for listening to the stage talk.
If you'd like to catch a stage tour live where
you can ask the guest questions, join the Bellingcat
Discord server by visiting www .discord .gg slash
Bellingcat. The music you've heard is titled
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