Meta Ends Third-Party Fact-Checking: Implications for Users and Society

Eryk Salvaggio 

Great to be. Thank you. Thank you. 

Hessie Jones 

So let’s start with Eric. So I read a lot of your work. You are clearly within the tech ethics space and a lot of what you do informs the public and about emerging AI and what it means for users and society so. Can you tell us a little bit about your work? Your research and and more importantly, how you initially responded to the news. Better. 

Eryk Salvaggio 

Yeah, certainly. So my background is sort of formally in media studies communication. But also applied cybernetics and so a lot of this comes into effect with both technology as the sort of thing in and of itself, such as an algorithm, but also its relationship with the user. And so when I look at things like social media platforms such as meta. I’m clearly looking at it from sort of two perspectives, which is not necessarily the decisions that are being made about the platform, but also how people are responding and reacting to those decisions. Often times through multiple lenses, what what it allows for people to do sort of socially how it changes the way people communicate is of great interest to me and the way that I responded to this news from Meta was first of all, a complete lack of surprise. This is part of a very. Visible trends that’s happening in technology, which is essentially a a pivoting for position with the new administration, very clear signs of this from meta including things that. Seem very. Unsubstantial on the surface but actually have a very substantial resonance as a signal, for example, taking away transgender pride themes. Literally the colors you can pick. Your profile. Are no longer available. To any user. Because of its alignment with sort of LGBTQ plus efforts, and this is also part of, I think, an important part to look at with the the moderation policies and what they are allowing, what they are saying, it goes beyond necessarily. Content moderation, but it is also linked to what is explicitly allowed now, including. Things like the harassment of trans people. So this is very much in line. We saw a campaign. In in the swing states that on television, that really focus on these efforts, this is part of a growing sort of social right wing core position and by by signaling an alliance with that position, meta is carrying favor with that movement. 

Hessie Jones 

The the one thing I will say. Is that? The I guess the the desire to to moderate content to make sure it’s it’s right is is also a moral decision. A moral decision. To to exemplify, I guess the values of I would say the majority of humanity that really wants to ensure that that people are informed by the right choices. And so by doing this the it’s it’s actually. Defeating the purpose of of what? How people can get properly informed by by anything and this impacts everything locally. It impacts the relationship. And anyway, we will dive into all of that later, Maria. You your platform actually was doing some live fact checking during the elections and during the presidential debate debate last June between Biden and Trump. Can you talk about some of the key takeaways from that debate? So. 

Maria Amelie 

We’ve been already since 2016 developing technology to. Detect this information and detect controversial statements in large amounts of. And during the the debates, we tried out a new solution, a new feature, because it was actually some of our fact checking community in the Nordics that reached out to us and said we’re so overwhelmed with. So much information these days, especially during the live debates, life happenings. So we what we did is we analyzed help, help them just to set up and automatically use basically AI. For. Good to extract claims and during these debates we. We could immediately see, you know, that’s especially during the first debate, the amount of disputing and false claims set by by Trump was was much higher than than Biden. We can see that in the debates with Kamal Harris and Jade events, there was. Kamala Harris was was was replying really well on her questions. A lot of the claims and statements she had were well, fact. They were well, they had clear facts in them and that that kind of that helps the the Fact Check in community to quickly, quickly assess information that and then it freed up time for them. To go deeper into the into the topics that really require more, more analysis and. But overall, we saw so through all the three debates that there was almost no discussion about climate, that war, defence and also health, like abortion, were the trending topics. And it. It was definitely a sad, sad election when it comes to discussion about the climate change, which is very much discussed in Europe. 

Hessie Jones 

1. I want to throw this in and I want Eryk as well to respond about this because based on Maria’s analysis of what happened with respect to the disparity when it comes to the level of truth. And lies, I would say from that debate. Where have we come to in this? Where, where maybe facts are not, you know, valued as much anymore.

Eryk Salvaggio 

Yeah, I I think that aligns pretty well with what I’ve been seeing, which is that really what people are are doing on social media is oftentimes about confirmation rather than information. People often times I I I would say don’t even necessarily care about the factuality of something they are. What they care is the feeling that they are expressing by sharing information that may actually not be true and knowing. And it is not true. There’s a kind of. Climates here where it’s very personal. Politics is a very personal thing, and it’s very much centered around jabs for lack of a better word. It’s about well, this is going to be, you know, we have this phrase owning the lives right and or. You could argue on the other side. There’s a sort of resistance. This this resistance meme where really a lot of the the stuff that drives discourse is not sharing information. Or having healthy debates about the direction of our democracy. It’s about what feels good, because maybe it hurts somebody that you disagree with or it feels good to circulate something that you that that sort of affirms your position and this comes down for me to the realization that social media has always been about asserting. Identity everything that we post is about who we are. And now that includes the facts that we are selecting. So there is unfortunately not an environment. On social media that really facilitates this sort of. Purpose driven debates and discussion about reality. It’s really. Asserting a kind of Halo of reality around oneself and around the things that you see and the things that you share and the things that people are responding to. That confirms a kind of position in the world. Oftentimes an ideological position. Position. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah. And and I think this is, This is why this becomes more of a a heated topic because we know. We know what has happened in the last, let’s say, 10 years with the rise of fake content, we’ve seen impersonation, we’ve seen attacks against groups and women. You have alluded to the LGBTQ community. Now that that has been dissolved to you have to decide whether or not you are one gender or another. Like. Your rights have now been impeded to a certain extent. What are the wider implication from a health perspective? Also, I’ll ask Eric this. To the community. 

Eryk Salvaggio 

I mean wider implications. Unfortunately, I think is that it is going to drive more division. One of the things that I find really frustrating and have found really frustrating about social media around. The frequent misinformation campaigns that are that are sort of engineered on these platforms, you know, depending on who the actor is, you can you can assign it to anyone, including just people who really want to make somebody else angry all the way up to state actors. But there there is an engineering. A of division. And one of the things when we extrapolate from that to sort of beyond the social media platforms, one of the things that I worry about is what happens traditionally in societies where speech is no longer seen as a way of achieving political ends. And more and more as we clutter this. And it’s not just about moderation, it’s about, you know, so-called AI slop. We don’t know what’s. We don’t know what’s fake. We can’t make sense of it. It also becomes extremely. Easy to dismiss things we disagree with. The algorithm does not reward. It rewards aggression and hostility, and So what we take away, most people don’t feel enriched or inspired after spending time on social media, right. Most people, I feel. Walk away feeling like what is wrong with people? And when you have a society saturated with a bunch of people walking around saying you just can’t talk to these people, right? Those people might be there’s no reaching these people. These people are insane, right? Right. What that’s doing is not just saying, oh, you’re not going to be able to reach your political goals through speech through politics, but now you’re going to have to look for other means and those other means are oftentimes much more extreme even than the speech acts that. See on social media even now. So it does have wider implications, I feel, and that it erodes a trust in the principle, the sort of founding principles democratic society, which is, you know, let truth and fiction grapple and truth will will win, right. This if if the system doesn’t. That grappling to happen. 

Then what? You are doing is essentially short circuiting the fundamental aspect of the democratic participation. And that’s what I’m worried about. 

Hessie Jones 

This this leads to. My next question for Maria because obviously. If what Eric is saying is true and and that we are now, I guess pushing. We’re not even pushing a. A democratic debate about a specific topic. We are widening the gap between two different factions and we are always subject to confirmation bias, regardless of whether or not there is truth. There was a point in time when Congress actually. Had a debate about whether or not social media companies are publishers or their platforms. I think you both remember that, right? But if they are the latter, there has been an argument that the scale to which content can be perfectly moderated makes it almost impossible. What? What are your thoughts on all of this? Especially as. A journalist. A former journalist. 

Maria Amelie 

I look back at the time when we were embracing social media platforms. You know, Arab Spring, things were happening on those social media platforms. And they were invited to the white. And they were basically like the these amazing role models, all of the all of these found. Dropouts and and heroes almost, and I think we were not critical enough to to the work they were doing and the way they were developing their algorithms because some of the and I agree with Eric with some of the things that you raise is. We they have the. This these platforms kind of changed some. The way we. Understand and read information now. And how we also share information platforms like Meta could have eliminated a lot of the misinformation, disinformation, viral posts. If they just removed the share button. But they’re not doing that because it’s not good for business. They want the virality and it’s kind of. Determines as well how we users who who grew up with the social media platforms. Are reading and understanding information and that’s I think that’s scary. How? How little critical we were at the time and I see for example, with the development of AI, we’re much more critical because I think we were so scared of what’s happened earlier with the we’re much more we question we almost question too much when it comes at. In Europe, when it comes to what kind of effect algorithms will have? On our future on our democracy, economies, on our warfare and everything. So I think there’s some positive feedback happening with new technologies, but with social media. I I am. I’m not. Not. I’m. I’m scared of how much effect it has had on on, on, on us and then when it comes to fact checking. I feel like. When we started working with this and. There were a. Of there was a lot of fact checking happening and we also had it in our own tools that we would show. This is true. This is false. And then we started interviewing users and asking would you do you like this and and and most of the users, even though we were predicting the correct results? They said I don’t like it. Don’t trust. So it’s sort of like a cognitive reaction for many is that you don’t necessarily want to know exactly. You don’t want technology to tell you what is truth, but you want to understand. The complex topics faster and you want to read an article and actually feel like you. You you’ve learned something and you can actually discuss and then you can form your own opinion. And I think that’s where. Because we all and all feel the bubbles, thanks to the a lot of the social media platforms. A lot of this knowledge is is very. It’s very focused on specific topic from a specific angle and you it’s very difficult to learn something. 

However, I see some positive developments. In spite of all of this kind of dystopian future, we we have ahead of us. And that individual good individual journalists are are actually taking a chance on doing something with this and creating their own platforms and and kind of redefining what journalism is, you know, either it’s YouTube, even even on Tiktok or or they’re doing it with sub sub cycle podcasts. And. I love specially those initiatives where they take time, not just focus on the, you know, conflict and and stupid news, but they actually take time to learn to educate you because there’s just so much information out there that the platforms that are taking the time to educate. Are able, I think to also help to to bring people together. If if you are, if you’re not sure about what’s happening in, you know different war zones, you can you can watch. An episode of something that will explain things to you, but not necessarily force you to believe one thing or another, and then you can feel like, you know, educated person and understand things. And I think that’s what we’re going to need to see more, more of these kind. Things and. The reason I’m saying this is that because I see that a lot of the fact checking initiatives are also have developed during the past 10-15 years and they also writing more articles that are not necessarily true or false? But they’re actually doing enormous effort in in helping explain complex issue issues in a way so that you you actually you actually understand what what’s happening. 

Hessie Jones 

I want to dive a little bit more into that and I’ll ask Eryk this because, yes, you’re you’re right, Maria, about I, I would say reasonable individuals want to be informed properly. They want to make sure that if they’re going to make a decision about where they stand on a specific issue that they have all the information, whether or not it’s it’s it’s right or left, but they can make an informed choice based on both. But really, in today’s world, within today’s landscape where everything is moving fast and information can be. Distilled down to, let’s say, a tweet. Do people really have time for that? And in Eric is a question to you. Should it really be up to the individual? To decide you know what is truth and what is fiction. I mean, and we’re going back to use your common sense. But technology could do that for us. 

Eryk Salvaggio 

Absolutely. So I. I do believe it has to be. Individual that decides for themselves. And the problem I think at this moment is. That there’s really no such thing as freedom of speech on an algorithmic platform. As much as the work of independent journalists is out there and it’s happening and and I find them and and subscribe. This idea of. To share good information on social media and that will be able to have unfettered conversations on social media, where we’re able to access things. Assumes a kind of neutrality of the algorithm, and I’m not saying you you do this, but there’s an assumption, I think among many people, which is to say, oh, I’m going to go online and I’m going to, I’m going to look for what so and so says about. Thing or I’m going to look for this perspective. Well, really the algorithm surfaces things that get. That is tied to responses of people who are similar to you, or oftentimes people who are the polar opposite of you. And so if we relying on a filter system, external filter system besides our own. Critical reasoning. It is. We are beholden, essentially to passing off some of that access. So you don’t have freedom of speech because the algorithm is gonna decide whether your speech is amplified or whether it is not right, whether it is buried under. And so that access is not always the same. This is just Facebook or meta. Also things like Google. And what its surfaces and results are search query. Some of which is is a matter of. There’s actually ways of of confirmation bias in your search prompt. If you’re looking for information that proves something, you’re going to get information that proves that. If you’re looking for information that disproves, you’re going to get information that disproves it, you’re not going to get something that says. Here’s one side. The other. And even. It’s here’s one side. Here’s the other who are determining the boundaries of those sides of the conflict. Very much. It is embedded into the. Algorithm and these algorithms are not naturally evolving forms, they are designs. Are the result of decisions. They are products that are deployed and I think this is an important thing to understand is that our world is essentially being filtered because there is so much information. And when we focus exclusively on the information, though, I know that we have to and I I by all means we need to focus on good information being available. But we also I think have to think. About the filter. And what that filter that we? Relying on to. Here’s what you need to know today. What is that filter? Who’s responsible for that? Is it a journalist that we trust, or is it some massive? Sort of prescriptive process, where 16 engineers in four different States and three different countries are building tiny pieces and don’t even see the whole thing themselves. That really ultimately is is the type of critical literacy. We need. Think about reasoning through our information environments today. It’s not. It’s not the noise, it’s filter. 

Hessie Jones 

OK so. Like for your perspective, because you’re building a technology that can help. Surface. Some of these, I guess, truths. But the reality, As for Eric, is that how does a technology like yours play with a social network? How does how do you how do you? Influence. The information that get that that gets serviced. Your platform. Versus what actually gets amplified on social media. 

Maria Amelie 

Yeah. I I very like your your your points, Eryk. I we work in the direction of explainable AI and that’s basically that we show what’s happening behind the curtain of AI algorithms. And it’s a very important value for us to be able to show that that’s something our. Asking so if if our machine learning algorithm was showing to you that. That this and this topic is disputed, and it’s disputed by these sources. So we are open about our training data, which is coming a lot from from some open fact checking data sets and partnerships with fact checkers. And so, and we also show that we, yeah, we’re acutely aware that we’re showing like one side of of. Well, very well trained and certified fact checkers and reliable journalists are thinking. So that’s that’s so we’re kind of amplifying their knowledge through with help of our machine learning model. And and I think we need to continue with that and to build more more these kind of partnerships because and continue developing explainable AI features. There’s, I think it’s really scary that we have so much focus on on algorithms and AI and we we exactly we don’t know what is the outcome because sometimes the eyes just just doesn’t know and then it’s still showing you some kind of a result that is not. That is not actually true or or relevant. And if if we get more. These kind. AI in, you know, in health there’s already some AI used in. In warfare and and other aspects, it is truly. What the consequences can be if we rely too much blindly on algorithms like we’ve done relying on on social media algorithms as well. And I. I think the the debate when it was happening, whether those platforms are editors or not, and then I feel like we kind of gave in as a society and said, OK, you’re not, you’re not editors. I think that that was like that was not a good moment for for our democracy, and we see the effect. 

Hessie Jones 

So you mentioned something really important about explainable AI, and I want you to to define it a little. For for. Those of you who don’t really know about it because that. Lays down legitimacy for how good an an algorithm is explained. These one thing, accuracy, et cetera. But can. Can you define it for us? 

Maria Amelie 

So a lot of the and I’m not there, AI technical person. So bear with me. But a lot of the the way machine learning model works and the results we get is basically a black box and you don’t know. How how the calculation is happening so that the AI reaches this in this conclusion? So in our case, for example, if we reach a conclusion we we show which sources we used, which search engines research. And we show you also why we chose, why our machine learning model chose those sources. We. Maybe for example, we have more. Have trained. The model more on the data that is political data and less on data, for example about fashion, so. There’s there’s sort of like a. It’s not a weakness in our model, but it’s it’s it’s it’s a certain like bias that we have in the model, which is which we’re aware of and which we need to to commun. And I think it’s a way to hold AI systems accountable and also a way to to stay because nobody wants the technology to control you, right? Want to if you really, if you really rely on decisions of AI, you want to understand. Why? That is why that decision happened and there are some some stuff happening with on this with for example chaib PT or this kind of AL Alms. But I still haven. Really good examples of that in in large language models. For example, I don’t know if Eric, maybe you have some more insight. 

Eryk Salvaggio 

No, I don’t think that that is the priority for a lot of the companies building these models, right? There’s. There’s really also kind of a shared shared myth that scale alone will solve some of these these issues that you get rid of bias by just having lots and lots of data. But I I think that’s also increasing. Coming to be accepted as. Not the case. You know you you scale up bad data, you get more bad results, more biased results if there’s more bias on the data. Really, I think this this idea of like algorithms being neutral, which I think is is increasingly becoming less. Accepted reminds me of of conversations we were having about journalism in the early 2000s about whether journalists. Should strive for objectivity or if there is rather a sort of disclosure of where one’s position is. And I think that with algorithmic sort of systems or llm’s really it’s insight and transparency into those biases and just being upfront about them like this is going to. Recommend more. Goals. Then it maybe should. 

And we, you know, there’s that respect into the. Or maybe it’s not recommending enough fashion articles. I don’t want to be biased myself here. So. So yeah, I think it’s about just being very clear about what, where that data is coming from. But also teaching users through the ways they use it, what those biases look like and how they take shape. I think that’s a really important piece. It’s it. ‘S challenging for me when when companies say, oh, we’re transparent and the transparency is a kind of 80 page report with like a very long appendix of possible sources, which is obviously better than. Not sharing those sources at all, but really I think about users who engage with these things needing. To not be patronizing, but it’s a new technology and and hands need to be held as to understand that these technologies are not like past technologies or not like past news screens that you might have seen from a newspaper. A difference? And guiding people through understanding and making sense of those differences is a really important part of the user interface, which I think is underestimated. And these days no one is really thinking very much beyond the chat box. Or the chat window I think. 

Hessie Jones 

And I think with the recent, I guess rescission of the AI, guess the the Biden Act for Safe and ethical AI that’s going to receive further into the background. So Eric, you used to be part of that. In Twitter and correct. 

Eryk Salvaggio 

No. 

Hessie Jones 

I have followed you on Twitter. I thought you were there. 

Eryk Salvaggio 

No, I was not working with with Twitter, no. 

Hessie Jones 

You’re not working, but you’re on the platform. 

Eryk Salvaggio 

Ohh sorry.  

I was on the platform. 

Hessie Jones 

You’re on the platform and you had left. 

Eryk Salvaggio 

Yes. 

Hessie Jones 

Now I see you on blue sky. 

Eryk Salvaggio 

Yes 

Hessie Jones 

What has happened at X Shows that there is a disproportionate amount of like a certain mindset that’s on the platform, that that can be hateful, that that, that that shows a certain level of bias, and it’s actually affected not only the users but also advertisers and monetization of that platform. Based on that trend or what you’ve seen, what do you think the implications are From that we can learn from that and how that may affect meta. 

Eryk Salvaggio 

Well, I think Meta is very clearly going down the same path and this is really, I think social media companies have realized that. They are financially rewarded when division is cultivated and there is no winning and I I say this, not necessarily from a position of sympathy, but there is essentially no winning when there are efforts underway to curtail because they’re not getting financially rewarded, they’re getting a lot of heat. From various political factions. And really, I think the temptation is to simply say. Well, that’s not us. That’s not our job. Aren’t. We aren’t a platform for news and information. Aren’t media. We’re actually a telephone company and so we can’t control what you say on the telephone, right? We’re just there to connect the calls. This is, I think, a fundamental misread. What they. Of course, this is also because they said that what they were they got rewarded for it through the laws that were passed because we took them at their word. But now, by absconding from that. That responsibility to moderate at all. We see the opposite, which is they can lean into the sort of more toxic traits of social media. And really what happens is we often say we talk about this in a political framework, that there’s sort of left and right in politics, but there is. Political frameworks or or disagreements of all kinds that are being amplified, and one of these things is conversations around artificial intelligence, for example. They’re extremely divisive and they are more divisive, I think, than they would have been had this technology emerged elsewhere or in some other way than on social media. But there are divisions where really these these the mechanics of these algorithms. Are quite literally to show your position of people who are going to hate you for that who are going to disagree with the thing that you’ve said, because that generates interactivity and that is the KPI that they are seeking to measure. So I. Think we’re going to see more and. Of. That leaning into. That more sort of toxic algorithmic structure and away from any claims of responsibility which is going to translate more broadly into a lot of the way the technology is going to say, well, it’s the way the user uses it. And we’ve been seeing this with open AI recent. As well. They’re basically have advocated in a recent blueprint for the Trump administration to say. Say it’s developers and users who can abuse our. It’s not us and I think that’s a fascinating and very wrong argument to put my cards on the table. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah, that’s that’s almost similar to the the platform publisher argument, you know. And so they say it’s not us, but we can become enablers or we can become again. 

Of of of. What’s considered the norm or the values that that exhibited by the majority? Maria, I want to ask you because you your organization is in the EU and. As you know the GDPR, the AI act they’re they’re very strong and they’re they’re much stronger. And leveraged in in that region and they have imposed significant. Significant fines among big tech. Do. Can you talk about what this? New move by Metahead with among the users that are in the EU and and what it what it really means for them and and especially how the legislation may respond. To this new rule. 

Maria Amelie 

Yeah, we I I’m I love. I love that we have all these kind of regulations. It might sound like a hassle. It’s a lot to learn, but it’s also kind of makes us everyone who starts a business in Europe makes you aware of your responsibility. To your users and how you learn how to build. Digital trust how to which is and trust is always good for business. And we with I’m curious what’s going to happen with meta in Europe because of the Digital Services Act and kind of that forces platforms to be mindful. Of kind of content they have and also moderate content. More than than they would do in the US, so I’ve seen their their articles in Guardian, for example, in Financial Times as well that. Looking. Exactly. That’s what what will happen now with meta. In. My guess is that they might actually keep some of the fact checking initiative still in in Europe because a lot of them misinformation, disinformation, that fact checking organizations have been analyzing on on platforms like meta is, is, is really harmful. It’s about health. About false inform. For example, crypto that is really harmful to the public debate and also to people’s economy. So we might see that. 

It was a very, you know, it was a very big thing to see. To say that we’re not going to have any fact checking anymore. But I think when once they actually start executing this, this rule we we’re going to see some changes, some different local adaptations to. And and also I think in Europe we. And and I think people care about. Brands care about this all over the world is. What kind of information do you want your brand to be associated with? And if you doing advertising on platforms like meta and your brand name is associated with? Free delivery banned harmful content that is not. Relevant to the values you have as a brand and to the customers that you are reaching. You just advertise somewhere somewhere else, so I’m I’m also curious about the development when income of course meta is such a huge company, but I’m curious about how the companies are going to react. And adjust their advertising budgets when it comes to X and and met. And especially in the time when currently there’s World Economic Forum happening in Davos and they have worked a lot on this kind of framework for digital trust. How the more society becomes more digital? Consumers needs to be able to trust the services that they’re using, so brands are not just able whatever push, whatever and sell whatever they want, they actually all the big corporations. They actually need to spend time and resources on. On what kind of content they are publishing, whether it’s trustworthy, whether they’re there, there are some data leakages when there are customers sign up and start using their service. Says if there are some hacks so there, there are many aspects to digital trust, but I’m I’m really happy that this discussion is is happening because. It’s it’s very like. People care about trust and and people care about trust in big organizations, web and people, a lot of. Trust also in in government and and in defence and how to ensure that the the audience gets the right and the best information. So it seems like almost some of these tech companies are not, you know they’re not. In in in what’s happening with with? Rest of the world. Well. 

Hessie jones 

Yeah, I think it extends beyond tech companies as well. Because I mean, at the end of the day, especially when it comes to political affiliation, as long as you’re getting what you need as a business, you know, do you? Do you try to fight? You know the the beast that’s in front of you. You probably are going to accede to their demands are and try to influence. Something for your organization, but to to point, Eryk, what do you see from? I guess a user perspective. Do you do you think that we need to inform users? First of all a little bit more or more or way more about the implications of what’s happening. But the other part of it is. Will we see some churn in in the coming months and years? 

Eryk Salvaggio 

So I think one of the things that I I find when I do talks or travel or or just I I meet with a lot of people in my capacity as an artist. I I often am going to places where people do not expect me to be sort of tech tech savvy. Or literate. Outside of just using the tools and so I ended up having a lot of conversation then with with. A lot of conversations with kind of everyday people and what I find in the United States is that this idea of data rights is is unheard of. The idea that a Facebook cannot do what it wants with your data is is just an. It’s it’s, it’s it surprises people that that’s a possibility that, that there could be regulations that actually said well, you could say that you use these things but not these things. And so data rights in general, there’s there’s not a great amount of literacy. There’s not even, I think in the United States, a real policy imagination around this idea. Still. And I think that shows the results of a kind of concerted effort. From industry to ensure that this industry is linked to ideas of innovation and that regulation hampers innovation, and really that really sort of decouples it from an actual technology of of for social purpose, which. Is fundamentally should be. It is meant to connect people. Is meant to facilitate communication. It has to be understood as a social technology. Yet it is. Solely from the position of in the US of innovation and what hampers innovation, technological progress. So that’s bedded very much into, I think the way people understand the tech industry at large, well beyond the data rights conversation is it’s always about what’s good for the company, what’s good for innovation, what’s good for innovation is good for America. And. That said, I think there’s some growing backlash, and we are seeing, I I saw it on Twitter. Was a massive backlash in the US against Twitter for its policies for its amplification of contents and basically for taking the position that well. Where else are you going? Go. Soon as there. Somewhere else to go, people went there, which is here. I’m referring to blue sky. And I think Meta may be in the midst of an. As well. I don’t. That Mark Zuckerberg is going to get as much as he thinks he’s going to get for these concessions to the Trump administration, to the extent that they are concessions and not just what he’s always felt, but where this is not a psychoanalysis of Mark, Zuck. But we we know that there was backlash and we know that it’s very easy right now. A kind of period, a honeymoon period. Where we’re. Overestimating the amount of support for a lot of these policies. Really overestimating what it says about America to have elected Donald Trump. Not necessarily, just politically, but for what its appetite is and for its trust in tech companies. I really don’t think those things were related to people’s votes to the. That people think they. And so to the extent that these companies. Walking. Over an invisible ledge they’re about to realize that this gravity that is holding them up is an illusion. And I think we’re going to see some some falling in the next couple months. 

Maria Amelie 

It also like it’s also bad leadership like you have all of these in super engaged and interesting journalist fact checkers all over the world who contributing to your platform to make it more. Better and more credible. And then you just go out and you belittle all of the work they’ve done and completely kind of discredit their their efforts. It’s just. 

It’s it’s not a he’s not a cool boss, no. 

Hessie Jones 

Can I? And this is gonna be our last question because both of you, as journalists, can you speak? Can you put that hat on and tell me what the implications are? For that profession, but also because because of the role that journalism has played in the past as being the arbiter of truth. Like what does that mean today and tomorrow? Maria, do you want to start? 

Maria Amelie 

Yeah, I can start. I I am. I am very careful with my journalist path because I’m not a journalist when I do. When I do a business and I completely focused on that. But from like general like. Perspective of what we see by talking to a lot of journalists and fact checkers is that there is sort of like an existential crisis happening for many because many are asking themselves. What is the meaning of what I’m doing and how can I make make an impact? Can I contribute to to positive change? But I think there are a lot of people who are just regrouping who are thinking through how they communicate, how they make the news, how they reach younger audiences. I think the Norwegian state channel and their core. Has for example, done a fantastic job on their climate reporting, especially towards the young people because their climate reporting before was everywhere. A very, very doomsday. Everything is going so bad. Then they just realized that they are not getting the young, younger people to to actually read it and care about the climate. So they they changed and make it much more made it much more personable, still very knowledgeable, but they also focused on a lot of both positive and negative things. Kind. They worked a lot on this and I think that’s going to be really important, but both are large and small and medium organisations just make an effort about. How are they reaching out to to different type of audiences? And of course I see. So some positive development with individual journalists, like we’ve been, we’ve been on a team gathering and been watching YouTube through watching all this individual journalists still with the team and they often always have a fact checker or several fact checkers in their team. But they’re using kind of different different way of of sharing, sharing and explaining news. I think that’s we see more of that. 

Hessie Jones 

1. Eryk you have the final word.

Eryk Salvaggio 

I think it will come down to networks of trusts and building networks of trust. Think that. One of the one of the things that is falling away from journalism is the idea of the institution. Serving as a kind of backdrop that that verifies you, for better or for. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but what I do believe is that journalists who lean into. Creating communities of their own and relationships with those communities that feel more authentic. Is going to be, in a sense, a way of verifying that the information that you’re sharing with those communities is accurate and trustworthy, and it really is going to increasingly come down to who are you as a journalist and and why should people trust you? And this is again, I don’t know that this is. Best thing for journalism, but it is, I think, an inevitable thing for journalism. And I think the more we sort of pretend. That’s individualism. Or the individual is not part of that. The the more we sort of hasten it and. And make way for for really. To be quite harsh. It the grifters who are absolutely have no qualms. Being like, hey, you trust me. Here’s here’s here’s a couple more lies. So I think what? I hope to see is that social media platforms. That do not. Sort to the extent that the algorithms have on Facebook and Twitter, but actually allow for network effects of trust. I trust this. This person follows this person by extension. Maybe that person is trustworthy. Becomes more transparent and more legible and more understood and more centered. In the conversation, because I think what I see on Blue Sky is that, oh, a bunch of people that I trust find this source of news to be reliable. I’m more likely to trust. I’m not going to take off my critical thinking, but I’m more inclined to trust it. And that has a deeper resonance to me than any sort of verification badge ever did. Whether it was just someone paying $8. Month for it or not? So I I do hope that we we come back to center relationships and communities as a way of establishing trust. And verifying. I think that’s a really important thing. 

Hessie Jones 

Thank you so much and thank. I think that’s all we have time for today. Think you both Eric and Maria! This was an engaging discussion and I think. The next four years are going to help define an alternative order. In store for the rest of. So, you know, like, let’s just sit tight and see what happens and see what we can do to influence in a positive way. So for audience, if you have topics you want us to explore, please e-mail us at communications at altitudeaccelerator.ca. Tech Uncensored is powered and produced by altitude accelerator and we are hosted on Spotify. Can find us wherever you get. Until that next time I’m hessie Jones. Please stay curious And I welcome you to be inspired. Thank you. You.