A tragic homicide seems linked to online gaming. Facebook continues to be under fire for its long-running, previously established issues with censorship, or lack thereof. In North Korea, new reports claim that Kim Jong Un has been in a coma for some time -- and that all of his recent appearances are pretaped or faked (Ben also remains unable to enter the country). All this and more in this week's edition of Strange News.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome back to
(00:25):
the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly,
you are you, You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. It's the top
of the week, which means this is our Strange News segment.
(00:48):
We always find a little something off the beaten path,
and we we bring it to each other, will turn
over these ideas. We often will find more questions then
we find answers. That is very true today with especially
one story that we've already kind of touched on, but
now we're learning more and just our brains are really
(01:12):
Hey guys, a quick question. Now, I know we're doing
video now and this is like a new thing for us,
kind of in this format at least, But when you
got the zoom open and you know we're doing video,
do you find yourself looking at your face and and
like trying to be more animated. Do is this like
an active process that you guys have to go through,
because it is for me. I'm just putting out there.
I want to look like a U man. I don't
want to look like a robot and so here. Yeah. Yeah,
(01:36):
It's funny because as we were gearing up to record,
I don't know if you were here. We're off air
setting up the zoom call, but I was saying the
exact same thing or a very similar thing when I
was saying, does anybody else find yourself looking at the
little thumbnail of your face were in one of these calls?
And then you're kind of nodding. You're watching your own reactions.
Zoom is terrible for narcissistic tendencies. The species is gonna
(01:59):
be even worse. At the end of this. I have
some good news bad news for you, Ben. I'm not
looking at your face at all for reactions, very distracted
by what's happening just behind you over by the door.
Oh that's right, and Easter egg for our video friends. Yes,
(02:20):
I am the reason we started late today, or should
I say, are returning video accomplice. You know her, you'll
love her from the YouTube days. That is indeed, Agent
Scully took some convincing, but she's joined us in the studio.
As you could tell, she's she's snoozing one off right now.
But hopefully we'll we'll get her back in the mix
(02:41):
as soon as we realize we were returning to our
video roots. We knew that we couldn't do this without her.
So also to our super producer, Doc, yeah, thank thank
you for just letting us roll with this. When we
were like, now there's a skeleton. Jill and Anderson has
not aged well, you guys. She she she needs to
(03:04):
eat a burger or something. Um, it's good to have
her back her him. I don't know, I justid before
my time. I did, H I did. I did some
research into things you can tell about skeletons to try
to figure out the the biological you know, the biological sex.
(03:24):
Were fairly confident Agents Scully is female or was in
another life m But we held a vote for everyone
on YouTube, and we just want to thank everyone who
tuned in and participated that vote for not giving her
the name Alex Bones, which we were very close to.
We made it through, and speaking of making it through,
(03:50):
let's see, we've got some good ones today. Um, where
where where do we want to start? One of these
is like my personal hobby horse. So I feel completely
by just when I'm like, oh, I'll go well, I
kind of want to save it. If that's okay, Um,
if you guys are down, I wouldn't mind getting into
this the firsthand. If that's okay, lead the way. This
(04:14):
is something Matt, when you first came to us with this,
this is something that I was unaware of. And it's uh,
it's a disturbing story, especially in the implications. Yeah, I
would say a lot of people were probably unaware of
this story. I certainly was until I went digging around
a bit um. And it's possibly because it almost feels
(04:38):
like local news, like terrible, tragic local news, but something
that occurred in one specific place. It dealt with one individual, um,
I guess who wasn't especially prominent. We have to remember
that they're tragic things that occur and horrific things that
occur every day across the globe. And you know, organizations,
(05:00):
we're gonna talk about this a little later. Organizations. News
organizations get to decide what is news worthy for you
to learn about, and then has to go through a
whole other process of getting into the social media that
you may be consuming, or you know, in whatever pipeline
of content that you're consuming. So there are several steps
(05:21):
through which a story has to travel before it gets
to your eyes or your ears. And this is a
story that comes out of a place called Flower Mound, Texas.
It's just south of Denton, Texas. If you look at
a map, you'll see the uh it's the the Dallas
Fort Worth area, and then Denton is kind of north
(05:42):
of those two in a bit of a triangle. And
then just below Denton to the south is this area
called Flower Mound. And I'm just gonna read you from
this story that comes from the Dallas Morning News. This
was published on August, so a little bit before where
according this, I'm just gonna read it to you. Flower
(06:03):
Mound police are investigating an eighteen year old man who
was fatally shot Tuesday morning. Officers were called just before
six am to a home in this area of Flower Mound,
where they found Matthew Thayne dead. No one else was
injured in the incident. Police said they were working to
identify a suspect and added that the shooter was reported
(06:25):
to have been wearing a helmet. This is not believed
to be a random act, according to officials, and police
said they have no reason to believe the attacker is
still in the area. So this was published again on
the eighteenth. There was a Tuesday night. That was the
day that Matthew Thane was slain. Um he was eighteen
(06:45):
years old. Well, we know, we we've learned quite a
bit since that initial published story. But just on the
surface of it, a young man was killed, and um,
that's very sad, no matter what the cocumstance and are
you know, of course our hearts go out to you know,
the family and friends of Matthew Thayne, the victim. The
(07:09):
reason why we're talking about it today is because Matthew
Thain did something that a lot of us probably do
who are listening right now, I would say a good
number of us do. Um, and even more of us
participate in it without actually doing it. Sounds a little vague.
Matthew Thayne was a twitch gamer, a Twitch streamer, so
(07:33):
he would play video games and others would watch. As
you know, he is playing his game, he would interact
with people watching and in part of his interactions, like
a lot of other streamers. There can be some, um,
some things that happened that aren't maybe the nicest, uh you.
Some people call it cyber bullying, some people liking it
(07:55):
to other things. But there is a lot of times
in those environments when you have a streamer who's on
one side of the camera and then a lot of
viewers on the other side of the camera, there can
be a tension there, and it's something that humanity is
learning to deal with. I would say we're evolving, right,
We're we're evolving in our interactions online. We have been
(08:18):
since we had the ability to type something up and
somebody else across the world could read it, right. Sure, Yeah,
but I'm just sorry, I'm just laughing because I wouldn't
conflate that with positive progress in all senses. Right, we're
finding new ways to ridicule each other's mothers, uh, to
threaten each other. Uh. Like, I see what you're saying though,
(08:40):
because we are communicators. Uh, it's one of our primary
superpowers as a species. But it just I just feel
like we're also seeing a lot of very ugly things. Yeah,
And I mean we we always We've talked about this
a lot, but just the whole nature of anonymity on
the Internet really empowers the worst impulses and people a
lot of time times where they feel protected and uh,
(09:03):
the ability to kind of target people or bully people,
or docs people or do any number of like internet
based kind of scare tactics. Really, I mean, it's almost
like Internet I don't know, I want to go to
of reward terrorism, like where you can really terrorize individuals, uh,
and it can spill over into the real world, I think,
which is what I think you're you're getting out here
(09:25):
with this story. And it freaks me out because, I mean,
talk about growing up on the Internet. I think the
three of us were sort of like came in when
dial up was still a thing. That's when we were younger,
and then you know, cable modems and dsls would really
like cracked all that wide open um. So we certainly,
you know, we evolved a kind of along with it.
But like my kid, uh just literally has grown up
(09:46):
on and it's just second nature, and like that's the way,
especially with all this remote school basically the exclusive form
of how she gets her social interactions in and she's
very aware of all of this stuff and cyber bullying
and being able to p text her identity and protect her,
you know, actual personal details, because there's all that. You
never know who's able to someone you think you're friends with.
(10:08):
Quote unquote, what's the criteria for having an internet friend?
You don't really have to vet them that heavily, you know.
I mean, it's not the same as knowing somebody in
person and maybe knowing their family or knowing things about
them and how they behave in real life, you know
for sure. Anyway, Sorry, I feel like we derailed you
because you were definitely going somewhere. It's okay, Well, who
(10:30):
knows who knows? With me? You guys, we we might
be going somewhere. We might just be coasting and then
looking around at all the weird things occurring. That's that's
generally how I like. Well, wherever, wherever we're going, we're
along for the ride man, Okay, perfect. So so. Matt
Matthew was was a Twitch streamer. According to some social
(10:50):
media posts by the family, he went by jp N
that was his tag or Japan and according to the family,
called Duty was one of the main games that he played.
For anyone who's unfamiliar, it is a warfare game that
has evolved over the years where it is a first
person shooter where you take the perspective of a person
(11:11):
with a gun and you fire at other players and
you generally score points I guess, and are victorious by
killing more people than your opponents. UM. This game and
others like it, we as we've talked about on the
show before, have been criticized heavily over the years. A
lot has been written about them about whether or not
(11:32):
they can affect um psychologically those who play them. You know,
we've discussed this at length about how much validity there
is to some of the thinking there. Um, I believe
we came away from this kind of on a middle
ground where it does it doesn't appear to have a
(11:53):
direct effect, but there is something to be said kind
of on the periphery of our understanding even about what
these types of games can do to us. Again, because
just as in our online communications, this is evolving as well.
Like the the experiences that we can give each other
(12:14):
through video gaming and virtual reality experiences and all these things,
we're just we're really just learning it. We're at our
we're in our infancy of these things. And importantly, uh
the research since we've had that conversation has changed. I
keep track of this stuff. We have to remember this
kind of communication, this this medium is evolving so quickly
(12:36):
and it's so relatively new that we don't have the
luxury of say a intergenerational or fifty year longitudal study
saying something like group A was raised with it was
raised with Call of Duty or whatever, and this is
the activity in their brain compared to group B, which
(12:58):
was just raised with the thing. Uh, you know and
love boomer audience of insert science journal here, checkers and uh,
I don't know, part cheesy or you know, if you
look at my my all of my games over here,
maybe just risk risk is at the bottom there. Maybe
just played that game. Well, I have a quick question
(13:19):
for you guys, Like I mean, Call of Duty has
obviously been around for a long time. You know, there's
a lot of iterations of that game. I don't know
the answer to this, and I'm sure there are tons
of super young people to play it, But do you
think the youngest of the young gamers are more playing
things like Fortnite? And uh, what's that other one that's
a little more cartoony and a little less like real life? Uh?
You know Shooter, h what's it called? I love that.
(13:43):
No Minecraft in the shooter real matting. I feel like
I feel like Fortnite and Overwatch are the big ones
for the younger crowd. And I definitely know young people
play Call of Duty and there's a big one that
just came out, this war Zone or whatever. And I
have found though that whenever I tried getting into Call
of Duty, and I just find that a lot of
(14:04):
people that are on, they're really mean. Not only that
they will snipe you from like miles away and just like,
you know, totally harass you just in the game, but
they're just like they use a lot of kind of
racially charged language and like a lot of homophobia. Yeah. No, definitely, um,
and maybe that's Internet in general. And I'm just naive
(14:25):
because I don't play a lot of games with just
like open anyone that can be on is on. But
that's kind of the nature of those And I was
shocked one time where I had Call of Duty on
and I quit the game but it was still connected
to the chat on my TV and realize it and
all of a sudden, there's just like this just string
of like you know, homophobic expletives coming out of my
TV and I was just like, oh my god, like
(14:46):
like my mom was over. But I don't know, like,
do you feel like there's a I don't know, a
division with like the Age, like with like Call of
Duty versus these other games that are a little less
overtly bloody. Uh, and I feel creative. I don't know.
I don't think so. I mean, maybe there's a general trend,
but having the agency to choose the game one personally
(15:08):
wishes to play means that there will be demographic trends,
but ultimately, every person, as a unit of the gameplay
can make their own choice. There are people who are
into all kinds of weird things that might really surprise you, right,
But I think Call of Duty here is mainly important
because we're talking about Matthew Thay. Yeah, we're talking about
(15:32):
Matthew Thaine being shot at his home, and um, the
reason why it's significant is because the authorities are investigating.
They're not sure at this point, at least according to
the reporting that I've seen on this, but they are
investigating whether or not Matthew's death was related to a
gaming dispute, specifically within Call of Duty, within the realm
(15:56):
of twitch streaming that Matthew was doing. So there is
a another story that was published on August one that
is a follow up to Matthew's death and the title
of this article is Flower Mount teens killer may have
driven from California to settle video game feud. Authorities say,
(16:20):
I'm going to read a bit of this again from
the Dallas Morning News. This was written by Tom Steele.
The now dead suspect in the slaying of a Flower
Mound eighteen year old may have driven from California to
Texas to settle a dispute that began in a video game.
Officers were called shortly before six am Tuesday, this is
(16:42):
about Matthew's death to to find Matthew. According to a
police spokesman, the attacker lured Thane outside by setting a
propane tank at the back of the home on fire.
Police said at the time the gunman was wearing a
helmet and they had no reason to believe that he
was still in the area. And I just want to
stop here for a second because in a lot of
(17:03):
these games, the objective is to strategically kill more people
than your opponents, right, and the strategies used to do that.
A lot of times have to do with flanking, with
setting up something like a distraction, um, doing things very
similar to what appears to have happened in this real
life example where a young man was killed. The the
(17:25):
concept of setting a propane tank a light in the
backyard to get your intended victim outside to then shoot him.
I mean that sounds like video game thinking to me.
And that's why perhaps it is if true, if you
know what the police believe is true, then this would
(17:47):
be just um, this would be terrible and terrifying. Yeah,
it's interesting because when you told us about this, uh,
the there does seem to be a suspect, right, So
it goes to the question of um, I guess very similitude,
because we if we spend a lot of time mentally
(18:10):
in one place or in one state, then we we
start to transfer that perspective into the waking world. A less, uh,
a less complicated version of this tendency can be seen
with Tetris. One interesting thing about the game of Tetris
(18:31):
is that you know, it's built to be addictive. It's
built to get to fire those right parts of your
brain and get you to continue playing and after a
certain threshold. Uh, and overwhelming majority of people start saying
that they just sort of think and dream of the
shapes of Tetris and with Call of Duty or with
(18:52):
any game. Really the question of which game is, which
is kind of irrelevant. We're saying is if you are
inundated in this virtual environment, then everything else sort of
starts to become visible through that lens, even when you're unplugged. Uh.
And this, I don't think they have identified uh, any
(19:14):
kind of suspect outside of an age right in age range. No,
they they have identified a sea Okay, who is do
we have? Yeah? We I do not have a name
at this point. We know that it is a twenty
three year old California man that was at least an
acquaintance or an online acquaintance of some sort to Thane,
(19:36):
to Matthew and apparently this person after they investigated Matthew
Than's home. They identified this person as a potential suspect
who was way out in California. Yeah. I guess that's
what I'm saying. I say they have identified him only
by age or a location. I should have been more
clear and said they haven't publicly announced this suspects name correct, correct, absolutely, yes,
(20:03):
So they identified that this person may be involved. Police
in California went to Pleasanton in the town where this
twenty three year old suspect lived, and they obtained a
search warrant for this man's home, and when they got there,
they discovered that he had um committed suicide by gunshot
(20:26):
in his home, or at least it appears that he
has he had committed suicide in his home and allegedly
this was as the officers were approaching his residence, that's
when he killed himself. Um. The official cause of death
has not been released. Again, that is what the authorities
have stated that it's appeared to have occurred. And this
(20:48):
article from the Dallas News there also says that the
Flower Mount Police said evidence recovered from that home was
linked to Matthew Thain's death and they would release more
info after confirming that the California man was in fact
the killer's twenty five hours. By the way, you go, yeah,
(21:10):
so you could do you could do the turnaround quickly
would be it would be pretty brutal. It makes you
wonder they probably stopped halfway somewhere. Well, I mean, it
occurred that Matthew Thain's death occurred on Tuesday evening were
on Tuesday, and then he was found in his home
(21:31):
the next day in California. So he literally drove from
California to Texas to do this and then drove right.
But I wonder if it was one of those situations
like that, remember that astronaut situation. I can't remember her name,
but she drove with a diaper on, like a really
long distance to confront or like a ex husband or
something like that, or it wasn't as far of a distance.
(21:53):
I believe her thing was planning astronauts and meticulous planners.
So her her thing was, is uh, planning to minimize
her drive time basically because if you have enough gas,
then you know, bio breaks are the only bio breaks
in the unfortunate design flaw of sleep are the only
(22:14):
thing keeping you from going continually. But when people have
mania or when they're having a break of some sort,
time does get different. You know, time time is not uh,
you don't experience fatigue in the same way I would imagine,
at least subjectively objectively, your body is still wearing down, right,
(22:36):
we know that. But now they so they're saying there's
more evidence coming out or that they will have more
announcements in the next few days. Uh, what do you
think is gonna becoming this man? You know, I'm I'm
unsure for Matthew Faine's family and friends. Um, they're forced
to deal with the death of a loved one, and
(22:57):
for whoever this um attacker was killer, they are also
having to deal with the death of their loved one.
And the real, the real question here is what caused
this to occur? And you know how many other people
out there are dealing with some frustration or issue that
(23:20):
that this killer was dealing with. You know that perhaps
could be perhaps, and I can't speak for everyone in
every situation, but perhaps could be handled with just a
little personal connection or somebody to talk to to work
through something like that. Well, sure, you know, it certainly
seems like a case of undiagnosed or possibly diagnosed and
(23:42):
just un you know, uh acknowledged in this situation in
terms of how it escalated mental illness. You know, I
mean to have that level of fixation based around a game,
which can you know, exacerbate those kind of things if
you're prone to isolation, or if you're prone to depression,
or if you're prone to kind of delusions of grandeur
or whatever. Like it certainly is something that can really
(24:02):
push that stuff to the next level. Like I have
a friend who, um, you know, struggles with depression and
has found a community in online gaming. And sometimes it's
like you just disappear into it and and and it
becomes your whole world. And if something in that world
triggers you or see some someone wrongs you within the
(24:24):
rules or that are established by this basically fantasy existence,
it can have real ramifications in the real world. And
sometimes people might just hurt themselves. In this case, both
things happen. I get very very strange messages when I
was working my way up the ranks of Teken online,
(24:45):
just because it seems cheaper to go outside. People do
have first little bit like I'm not gonna I don't
think we need an anecdote because everybody listening to this show,
this is a podcast where this is all on YouTube.
You know some one who has experienced this. You may
have experienced this. There's nothing wrong with loving a game
(25:06):
and getting very into it. I don't want to put
my own narrative on this, but it sounds like we're
asking what else might be out there. Is there going
to be maybe a trend or is there already a
trend of things like this? But I don't know, I mean,
maybe that's completely not what you were thinking that, But
(25:27):
I'm I'm I just keep remembering, you know, every almost
every mass shooting we hear about in the US, especially
in earlier years, there was some kind of video game
angle that an anchor or a pundit would sort of
put on it, you know what I mean, like the
teens in column by. But's your question, Noal, is that
(25:49):
just is playing? Is playing these games? You know, it's
correlation versus causation right where they just playing because they
were already trying to escape some very painful circumstances or
some very troubling states of being or invasive thoughts. I
don't think we can play him a video game, no,
(26:09):
I mean, and then then not to be too silly
about it, but it's like I play a ton of
online Mario Kart, and I'm not gonna go driving around
thinking that I can shoot turtles at people or like
slip on banana peals in my you know, sedan. But
on the on the other hand, I can't be the
only person who every so often just like checked the
handles of locked cars and parking lots after playing Grand
(26:31):
Theft Auto five for too long. It just like the
normal thing you would do. It's it's true. Um, well,
it'll be interesting to follow this. I don't know, like
it seems like it's case closed. I know there's a
go fund me campaign for the young man that was killed.
That's that's almost met its goal. Um, you know, to
(26:52):
to raise money for funeral expenses and obviously just to
help the family. Uh. If you want to check that out,
you can go to go fund me and look for
Matthew Thane Memorial. Um. And they've raised twenty three thousand,
six h of a dollar goal, which will hopefully be
higher by the time this comes out. I'm certain of it.
(27:12):
Just as a closing piece here, I don't know if
you can see this on the on the video here,
but this is Call of Duty Mobile and I play
this game absolutely every day, and I I love competitive
games like this that our first person shooter that have
violence in them. I want everyone out there listening to
(27:33):
not feel weird for enjoying a game like that. I
don't want you to think that we're talking down to
you for liking those kinds of games. UM, yeah, well
I know we that's the I just want you. I'm
speaking directly to you, whoever you are. UM, just remember
you know that that is not you know, it's not reality.
It's it's wonderful, it's fun. And anything that occurs in
(27:56):
those games, no matter how much it it feels like
it's affecting. Right now, I promise you you're gonna be okay,
and you know, reach out, talk to somebody if you
need any help whatsoever. I just want to leave everybody
with that. And UM, if you do want to find me,
I'm on Call of Duty Mobile. I'm std w y
t K, just like our number. If you want to
(28:18):
play a game, let's play a game, add me. Let's
do this and let's be competitive and have fun. Doesn't
have to ever lead to something like that. Agreed, And
on that note, wanted to take a quick sponsor break
and then come back with some more strange news and
(28:40):
we're back. I believe our next story addresses uh some
similar ideas about life in a virtual world versus life
in the analog or biological one. And this is this
is part of something that I am convinced has to
be a full episode in the future. Yeah, and and
and with that in mind, I think we'll probably just
(29:01):
touch on it a little bit because it's a it's
a really interesting divisive issue where I'm not even quite
sure what to make of it yet, and I think
we're all kind of on the same page. But it's
about Facebook and the way it's sort of battling with
this notion that it is either on the one hand,
anti conservative or like, you know, actively it's it's it's
a it's an argument that a lot of conservatives make
(29:23):
about uh, Silicon Valley in general and things like Twitter
and you know, all of these platforms that they're actively
filtering out conservative or more right wing viewpoints. And then
on the other hand, there's a there's a lot of
discussion internally from employees at Facebook that they are actively
pro conservative um. And that's really interesting, And it's not
(29:43):
about the political bias or whatever, like like Ben was saying,
it would be just as troubling if they were actively
being anti liberal or anti left wing or anti some
particular issue. The idea is that they're supposed to be
an arbiter of free speech and that they shouldn't be
laying favorites one way or the other. So the politics
part of this is really kind of just secondary to
(30:05):
just the amount of control that a company like Facebook has,
especially when you consider the fact that, like, I mean,
let's be real, guys, Facebook is a monopoly, you know,
over our information. The fact that they can just kind
of buy up competitors that are developing things that they
want to be in control of, you know, intellectual property technology,
(30:25):
like they basically just bought up Instagram for a gazillion dollars.
I'm not quoting. That is just a you know, a guestimate,
because they wanted to have that technology. They wanted to
have that platform for themselves, rather than develop something themselves
and compete in like a free, fair market kind of way.
So that part in and of itself is is a
(30:46):
little bit troubling. And this control over information, especially during
an election that's probably going to be the most remote
election in the history of elections in terms of people
not wanting to go to the polls, in terms of
people you know, using mail in ballots and absentee ballots
more than ever before, and they're being this potential lag in. Uh,
(31:09):
you know, when the ballots are cast and when the
results are in, and so let's it's a big topic
and then and we we we can just kind of
divide it up a little bit into a couple of
a couple of buckets. I guess um. One is about
the fact checking program that Facebook has. And there's an
article that BuzzFeed published on auguste, like Craig Silverman and
(31:33):
Brian Mack. The headline is Facebook's preferential treatment of US
conservatives puts its fact checking program in danger. Um. So
let's just really quickly talk a little bit about what
this fact checking program is. It's essentially a rank that
supposedly third party fact checkers give to the veracity of
(31:56):
of articles content, whether it's false or misleading, or inflammatory
or overly what's the word sensational, I guess um. And
that can include things like ads that are pro uh
pro pro choice that maybe have images of fetuses, or
things that are like you know, meant to trigger you
(32:16):
and and and could could be considered inflammatory, or things
like fake news, the idea of reporting something that isn't
true or is his patently false or is somewhere in
the middle. Um. And Facebook has been caught essentially kind
of messing with those stats in terms of you know,
(32:38):
which types which sites get rankings cleared more quickly. Uh,
there was like a case of a bright Bart article
where their internal flagging system, you know, flagged it as
being potentially false, and then someone within Facebook removed that
flag by the end of the day and the article
was allowed to stick around. So let's start with the
(33:01):
whole idea of flagging content and having independent fact checkers
and where that problem lies. If there's no transparency, I
think there's a major issue here, and it's a problem
that is very much an onion that you have to
begin drilling down into. Right. First of all, we're talking
about social media platforms, where in human beings who are
(33:26):
using it supposedly have, at least if they're operating within
the United States and its territories, they have First Amendment rights,
which means they can say whatever they want right. Anyone
can say whatever you want essentially right to an extent.
But then you drill down a little bit further. We
have social norms that we've all adopted that very you know,
(33:51):
in on an individual level, but you know, overall, we've
decided what we can and cannot mention or beliefs that
we can or cannot put forward as our beliefs because
they're taboo or they're out of bounds or so incorrect
and against what the whole believes, or at least the
(34:13):
majority believes, that we just cannot type them or state them.
Then you get down even further than you're talking about
institutions like, um, I think there's Praeger this is one
that was mentioned in a bus speed university. Like an institution.
Who is that is making a statement? Right that appears
(34:35):
to be a fact and may not be a fact. Um,
we have to decide, like on which of those levels
and and where do we want to draw the line? Right?
Should everyone be able to say anything they want to say?
If no, then should institutions? I don't know. I think
like if we don't, If we don't address that first one, right,
(34:57):
the free speech angle, then how do you get in
to any of the other things. But there's a difference
here because these are private entities, so they own their
own lawn, you know what I mean? The people have
id to cavort. Just walk with me a second, because
this this is a crucial argument that hinges on something
in the communications Decency Act Section two thirty A k A.
(35:22):
It's the reason I don't know if this is in
the article you're looking at, No, but it's the reason
that uh, Twitter and Facebook and all their ilk have
not been sued into oblivion. The reason they haven't been obviated,
and it's the idea that they are simply UH platform
for other people's ideas. So if somebody of for instance,
(35:46):
post something hateful and discriminatory on Twitter, Twitter is not
getting sued for hate speech right because of this kind
of legislation. Interestingly, an UF earlier this year, UH, the
current president of the US as we record this, Donald Trump,
(36:07):
signed an executive order trying to get section to thirty
removed because he wants a well, because he likes it
if he feels like it gets along with him, and
he's angry if he feels like it disagrees with him.
And isn't that basically the basis of the free and
open Internet, Like without that, there's gonna be so much
(36:29):
potential for a litigation that no one's gonna be able
to publish anything, no one's gonna be able to share
any free thought because these platforms are going to be
on the hook for everyone else's ideas, and therefore they're
gonna be so protective of of who gets to post
on their platform that you're not gonna have access to
anything beyond just whatever the most safe line is, right,
(36:51):
I would, I would argue that's not a bug. That's
a feature for the group that continually has wished for
a less free internet. I mean, the same people who
want your your website browsing to be sold to you
the way tiered cable packages were sold by Google premium.
By being signature. I guess doesn't that also limit like
(37:15):
I mean, look again the politics of secondary here. But
you know, we know Trump has made some inflammatory statements
that that that were fact checked and proved to be untrue.
Doesn't that limit his platform, his platform of choice being Twitter,
and his ability to like go on there and say
whatever he wants and then have that freedom of speech.
Doesn't this shut that ability down for him? It's part
(37:37):
of a It's a noodle in a larger spaghetti dish
of terrible, terrible things. Honestly, the the argument about upon
whose shoulders the liability for hate speech or incitement to
violence rest you know what I mean, I've said it
for a very long time. There are more and more
(37:58):
things to look at, right, but they're fewer, few fewer
and fewer and fewer people in charge of the screens
that let you see those things. Right. It's like Disney.
What did Disney by today while we were recording this?
Did they buy like my cats? Did they buy the
idea of all cats? Maybe? I'm literally gonna go to
(38:19):
duck dot go right now and see what did Disney
buy recently? Is that? Like ask jeeves, what what are
you going? Is that? Is that a thing? Is there
a reason to use that search? It gives you Google
without all of Google's clingy information. I learned something new today.
(38:42):
I didn't know this. This is great, Thank you guys.
Been done. Yeah, none of it was consistent. It looks
like Fox is the last thing. Okay, all right, well
that's a big one really quickly and then we can
we can tell the move. I just wanted to go
into a little bit about this whole process that they
have because I was sort of brushed over it early on.
But they do have a set of third party fact
(39:04):
checkers that assign a rating to these pieces of content
um and based on those ratings, Facebook applies a label,
and it can be demoted, the content can be demoted,
which I think is kind of like search engine optimization,
like if you're if your quote unquote putting out low
quality content, you get demoted in the search ranking. So
(39:25):
I think that's similar to what this is what's going
on here. But they also have a system of strikes
against their preferred news partners, which again is folks like BuzzFeed,
the Washington Post, and yes, bright Bart. And in this article,
a lot there was there's a discussion that's going on
in this internal Facebook platform called work work Day or workforce,
(39:45):
I think that's what it's called. And a lot of
employees were wondering why brightbart is allowed to continue being
one of these preferred news organizations when they consistently have
published uh misinformation. Um. There an article or a video
rather that got I think fourteen million views in about
six hours because of how prominently it was promoted on Facebook,
(40:08):
and it it promoted um uh you know mask like
like the idea that masks weren't necessary, um and you know,
uh put forth some dubious science behind that, and it
was actually removed from Breitbart's page after being challenged enough.
But in that period of time, it racked up all
those views that would be considered a strike, and Zuckerberg
(40:31):
said that this is a strike, but we're not going
to demote them because they've only had one strike in
the last ninety days. But then internally there was some
evidence of that the strikes were cleared by some unknown
individual within that has access to the system. And again,
like you're saying, Prager University, a couple of other ones,
(40:52):
let's see, there was also Diamond and silk Uh, Charlie Kirk,
Turning Point USA, UM, some other kind of far or
right wing outlets that were kind of having these black
marks stricken from their record, um and in an effort
to kind of game the system. Well, just to step
in here. We all, we've talked about this before. We
have to remember this Facebook. As much as you want
(41:14):
it to be the place where you connect with your family,
and that's what it's meant to be. No, Facebook is
an advertising and data collection platform. That is what it is.
That is what all social media is. Doesn't matter how
much you love it, what you think it is. They
are designed to make money for the people who designed
them by selling ads to all of these bigger corporations.
(41:38):
It doesn't matter how where they politically lie. If their
ad dollars are good and those checks clear, good to go. UM.
And of course that any company can have what a mission,
statement and values and all of those things, however they
want to play it or at least publicly put out there.
But in the end, it's the bottom line for these
(42:00):
and you you gotta remember that no matter what's what
is written in those ads, no matter what's shared on
those posts, that data can then get um gathered up
and sold to bulk of Bayer sure like a third party.
And the terms of service can change without your consent
or without notifying you, and is as innocuous as this
(42:23):
stuff might seem. Shout out to everybody wrote in regarding
uh the yes or nos of d N A collection,
especially on Here's where it gets crazy our Facebook page.
Blackstone just bought ancestry dot com dot dot dot dot boom.
So with this point you have, you're you're right this
private industry institutions and companies, they are capitalistic endeavors. They
(42:48):
would not exist if this were not the case. And
with the consideration of that, I would like to point
out also, um and stop me if we mentioned this
and I somehow missed it. Uh. Back in Facebook announced
their plans to pay Bright part for content they were
paying these other publisher arms, and it was messaged out
(43:11):
as a way of giving them extended security in these
our uncertain days. But that gets us to another sticky
issue with journalism and accuracy and reporting. If we're paying
these things to churn content for us, and then we're
also saying with the other hand that we are, uh,
(43:34):
we are somehow walking away from money. Right. All of
most of the the Facebook's money is generated by the engagement
of people reading stuff they see and reacting to it.
Whether or not it's real doesn't matter to the bottom
line to your point, Matt, So, so now they have
these conflicting aims, and what price do we put on
(43:55):
the truth? By the way, I'm not the fan of
section to thirty. I think it's real dilemma because if
we don't hold these platforms responsible in some way, then
there's there's nothing stopping them other than business leaving. There's
nothing stopping them from doing whatever the hell they want.
(44:16):
So you do have to have some sort of fact checking.
But I think to your point, Noel, it's uh who
prioritizes what is considered a fact and when it is
considered a fact, that's right. And also just the murkiness
of the whole process, you know what I mean, Like
they say, oh, we rely on these third party fact checkers,
but we really have no insight into the process, especially
(44:39):
if you know, at the end of the day, they're
not held to these standards. They it's just an optical thing.
Like it's literally saying, no, we have these different organizations,
media outlets that have different viewpoints that are giving us
unbiased Um, you know, uh, fact checking. But who's to
say that they have to abide by that, you know
what I mean. It's it's not something that's not like
it's a law. It's not like there's some kind of
(45:00):
legislation that's holding them to do this. It's all internal
and and the thing that really confuses issue for me
speaking of internal stuff, and then we'll move on. Uh,
there's another article that came out today, uh saying or
actually I'm sorry. A couple of days ago, Facebook commissioned
a study of alleged anti conservative bias and here's what
it found. And it was it was done by a
(45:22):
former Republican senator by the name of John Kyle UM
and his colleagues at the law firm Covington and Burling
lll P. And they looked into this notion that that
you know, frankly has been put forth by members of
the Conservative Party and folks McDonald Trump that uh, Facebook
is patently anti conservative or anti right wing. And the
(45:47):
study found that they had taken some measures to for example,
it really leaned more heavily on things like anti abortion
ads UM that often have very triggering kind of uh,
you know, upsetting images of whether it's fetuses or people
that are sick or you know, hooked up to hospital
(46:08):
equipment and and um, something that would maybe you know,
triggering to some people and unpleasant, and the idea that
it's inflammatory. Uh, they have adjusted their UM their policies
or their auto image you know recognition things to allow
images of people with medical tubes as long as they're
not invisible pain or distress and there are no blood
(46:30):
or bruises. Uh. And that's something that could benefit folks
who post ads for pro life organizations and also UM
children's advocacy groups advocating for you know, protection against child
abuse and things like that. So the article again this
is an internal study. It doesn't really talk much about
the fact checking process at all. It's much more about
the idea of filtering out content that has a right
(46:55):
wing lean So it's really weird. Like but again, this
is internal. So this is clearly kind of for Optics
as well. Because they hired this person, they commissioned the
study themselves, they're not forced to abide by it. There's
really nothing that anybody can do short of doing some
kind of antitrust situation against Facebook as an entity, Like
who's to say that they can't post misinformation anytime they want.
(47:20):
Who who's holding them to these standards except for themselves?
So I don't know any answer. It's really I messed
up situation, you guys. I personally don't want anyone believing
or living their lives based off of misinformation or disinformation
or something that is untrue. Um. Unfortunately, we've all been
doing that to some extent throughout our whole lives because
(47:43):
we we don't get to control the pipelines, and we
don't know a lot of times exactly what is occurring
in the world around us. UM. And there are people
out there that I want it to be that way,
But I mean, I think at the end of the day,
and it's something that that I tell my kid to
do is uh and he got even my mom, but
(48:05):
she's that's a whole another story. You gotta vet your
own facts. I mean, you can't just rely on one
platform to tell you what's what you have to do
independent fact checking. You can't rely on these fact checkers
that Facebook hires or employees or or uses or whatever
that arrangement might be. Um, you gotta just do your
own homework and and and keep your eyes open and
(48:27):
not let the WOL be pulled over your eyes or
actively pull it over your own eyes. Well said. So
expect more from us on this in the future, and
expect one more piece of strange news after word from
our sponsor. And we are back with Kim Jong oong
(48:52):
a k A one of the reasons it's hard for
me to wait uh for this episode. But what are
the reasons I was able to take out my old
the DPRK flag that I bought near the border, and
that's what Agents Scully is reclining against. I don't think
you can see it very well. But we brought Kim
Jong un with us in the news today we reported Matt, I,
(49:15):
I really appreciate you taking the time to set that
up with a little teaser at the top of the episode.
That was very Uh, it was cool. Thank you. I
hope it pays off. But we recently reported on the
ascension of Kim Jong UN's sister, who has been taking
over more day to day operations for the show called
(49:37):
Hermit Kingdom. This place for a long time was kind
of a black box for the world's intelligence agencies. They
didn't know very much about what went on there on
a daily basis, but they did know that the DPRK
did not have oil, so they didn't invade them. And uh,
eventually they got nuclear capability, which is another kind of
(49:58):
that and not having a ill are too not full proof,
but there there are two things that really lower the
likelihood of another country invading you, by which I mean
the US. They lower the likelihood of the US invading.
So people have always speculated about Kim Jong un, and
when we did our original report about him being missing
(50:20):
in action, we said one of the theories was that
maybe he had faked video footage, right, because his debut
back from his absence was like a press kit of
him at a fertilizer factory footage that could have been
filmed at any time, right, And this led a lot
(50:41):
of the pundits and the boffins and the eggheads and
the walks and the crowd to speculate like crazy, like
mad and say, well, this is a body double, and
this is just the kind of dictator that would do this. Uh,
he is sick. They don't want to show weakness to
the domestic demographics of North Korea. And then other people
(51:04):
said no, he's dead, and someone else said no, he's
not dead. It was a heart attack. And then someone
else said no, he's been in a coma, And so
we started talking a little bit. You'll recall about films
like The Death of Stalin and and ideas of creating
these body doubles, like um, we did a pretty pretty
interesting series on actual body doubles. They are a real thing.
(51:27):
Unfortunately a lot of them have very painful lives that
get cut short. But the news that came out in
recent days from UH, from one specific source is claiming
that yes, the crazy speculation was right. Kim Jong UN's
recent appearances were faked. That he has been in a
(51:47):
coma quote for months, and so I did some digging
on this because anybody who's read about North Korea for
any length of time, you know that the propaganda is
so strong. A lot of South Korean outlets, uh, and
a lot of Western outlets especially will just report whatever
(52:09):
they think someone had heard, and it becomes an echo
chamber of people slightly rephrasing the same story that later
turns out not to be completely true. And I gotta
tell you, I can I understand it because when I've
been at the border, the propaganda the thing I wish
they told more people in the US. The propaganda is
(52:29):
really really strong on the North Korean side, and it's
really really strong on the South Korean side, like very
very bad and blatant. And I had to you have
to watch this informational video at some of these tourist sites,
and they're all about how the d MZ is great
for birds birds about and that that's like a really
(52:53):
positive contribution it makes to bio diversity. Uh. Anyhow, that's
the idea. The report comes from one Jong Sung Mien.
He is important because he was a former aide to
President Kim Dai jung in South Korea. He was head
of the State Affairs Monitoring Office. Uh, he probably had
(53:15):
access to intelligence operations sigin tell humans health, and he
said he insisted recently, Kim Jong Loon is comatos and
his sister, Kim Yo Jong, is still running a lot
of day to day stuff, but she is not technically
his successor. He's saying, the insiders haven't haven't made that
(53:35):
switch yet. But the problem is a lot of people
are calling these sources into question. This is so, this
is a retired political official who was you know, you
would know him the way that you know a member
of Barack Obama's presidential staff or Donald Trump's presidential staff.
(54:00):
Right you you've probably heard the name. Maybe they went
to jail for something. I don't know, that's your politics.
But the but this guy I'm saying is more like
a career, career politician, bureaucrat kind of guy. Uh, not
necessarily James Bond himself. And now people are not just
(54:22):
on the civilian Internet, but people in academic circles and
people in intelligence agency circles are trading notes on this.
The Twitter is hilarious. There are tons of people say, no,
he's fine, it's it's propaganda. It would have been more
widely reported if it was true. This is one guy
(54:44):
claiming one thing. Uh, you know, the that Kim Jong
goon had been seen as recently as August nine. But
we have to realize that we are in the post
deep fakes era, which means that now more than ever
is Fox loves to say it is possible to fake
the appearance of someone online, and if you're a state actor,
(55:05):
with the resources and the motivation, is possible to do
it very well. Like, uh, you know, the thing that
should scare people about that concept. I'm not saying that's
what's happening now in North Korea, but the thing that
should scare people about that is that it means it's
completely possible for your own president or prime minister or
(55:27):
whoever rules your country to have a heart attack, to
go into a coma, and for their online persona to
just continue just deep fakes of you know, the regular
fireside chat, just keep the Twitter going on, brand in
the voice or even us or maybe that's doing some eyebrows. Well,
people see, you gotta watch the video. You have to
(55:49):
watch the video to catch the Frederick Brow action. But
I wanted to ask you, gentlemen, because we have talked
about this before. Do you guys remember that conversation. I
do totally do remember that conversation, And I wanted to
ask you what you think about something that Jeffrey Lewis
said on Twitter a k A at Arms Control wonk
(56:11):
um he was he was citing the last thirty days
of appearances by Kim Jong n. He's citing ten from
I guess the official Supreme Leaders Activities list that I'm
assuming is issued by some state armor outlet there within
(56:32):
the DPRK, And there are ten official appearances and I
haven't actually clicked on I was kind of scared to
click on it. I wanted to see where it took me.
It's a Google talk. He's the one who did the
He's the one who also mentioned the August nineteenth date. Okay, okay, yeah,
(56:53):
but he's I mean, he's got it all listed out there. Um.
It would make you think that the level, the level
of disinformation a number of appearances there would be would
feel odd to me, Like that's a lot to put
out to feign that he's, you know, actually out there
(57:14):
using body doubles or deep fakes or whatever. And it
seems like there's a wonk who cried wolf situation so
often when it comes to conspiracies about Kim Jong UN's death,
because we've seen so many Western sources just directly quote
in a way, quoting themselves, quoting things like Radio Free Asia,
(57:36):
which is totally and blatantly US propaganda, like it's on
the website. Uh, they end up quoting themselves. Uh, and
they seem just like really eager to hear about Kim
Jong oon dying. Uh he is a terrible person who
has overseeing concentration camps. But a lot of the speculation
(57:59):
I think come from again still this sort of black
box situation, Like the guy travels by train. He travels
by rail because it's seen as the most secure way
for him to travel. Uh. He could die, That's that's
the thing. He could die and have the state apparatus
(58:20):
would have the power to make sure that no one
really knows for a while. The question is how long
you know? What I mean? Yeah? Man? And what happens?
I think that's my next question, like for you all,
because I know I read a lot about North Korean stuff,
But what what do you think happens? When the king
(58:40):
is dead? His sister rolls in and run stuff, and
it's way scarier than it's been in a long time. Yeah,
that's what I was wondering. Like at first, I thought,
you know, we talked about her in the last time
we had this conversation and she was like watching like
Fourth of July videos or something and not knowing as
(59:02):
nearly as much as you about this topic. Ben. I
was like, Oh, is she like more open to Western
influence and like, but apparently that's not the case at all,
Like she's staunchly anti Western influence, and like I think
she's she she's known to have had people killed that
were like dissidents or that were isn't that right, Like
there was a poisoning situation several years back with yeah,
(59:26):
they've been poisonings. Uh. One of the siblings was killed,
another lives a life in exile. From what we understand
about the outlook of the country culturally, it's pretty patriarchal,
but it also cannot have a power vacuum for any
(59:46):
amount of time. Things will go south so quickly, maybe
literally south, because South Korea is just over the border
on this would be an absolute and utter uh show.
But it also makes me think in a larger scale
to your point Matt about the multiple appearances that the
(01:00:07):
leader of North Korea has recently had or appeared to
have had. Do you all think it's possible that a
president or prime minister in another country and be like
the US or Canada? Do you think it's possible they
could die or perhaps be mentally infirm or compromised, and
(01:00:29):
that we would have enough of an apparatus to hide
that fact from the public. I am only thinking of
the United States, but I'm imagining with the frequency of
White House press conferences that occur, with the press teams
that exists there from from outlets across the country, I
think it would be near to impossible for the President
(01:00:51):
United of the United States to get away with it.
Although if you decided that that's no longer going to
happen as a regularly scheduled thing, then perhaps because then
it would just be whoever has transparency into the White
House itself, and if no one ever came out or
went in, and then no matter which president is in
(01:01:13):
the White House, if they were sequestered inside and they
weren't leaving for an emergency situation, let's say, you would
have no way of knowing and there are secret ways
to get in and out of the White House too. Yes,
I guess you know it's it's weird because you raise
an excellent point. But we also have to consider if
(01:01:33):
something like this happened, it would not be the first
time information was hidden from the public. You know what
I mean the world, I mean specifically in the United States. Uh.
Woodrow Wilson had a terrible stroke in October of nine,
with almost none of the technology we have today. Uh.
He was partially paralyzed. He was nearly blind. He spent
(01:01:56):
the final like seventeen months of the president's see. Oh yeah,
he was still president by the way, Uh, locked away
in the White House. He was still president until March
of ninety one. So the public didn't know. The public
had no idea of the severity of his condition or
his illness. And to me, given that this is a
(01:02:21):
place with a rule by the representatives of the people,
that seems like important information. Uh maybe there's a geopolitical
thing that keeps them from saying that. But I I
just what hits me about this. No one talking to
the media at least seems to really know what's going
on in DPRK. There are a bunch of guesses. But
also before we get on a high horse about that,
(01:02:44):
how much, whether you live in the US or abroad,
how much do you know about the day to day
actions of the folks who are responsible for keeping your
country running? It should be a sobering thought. Yeah, do
you guys, has anybody out there listening? Are you in
with five eyes or f Salon or any of these
(01:03:06):
other groups? Maybe are we still five eyes? Did they
the US out yet? Four eyes? Are you down with
four eyes? I only got two eyes, guys. That's just
that's the best I can do. But there are I mean,
there are intelligence agencies and world governments that have those
satellites over the DPRK, and you know they do just
(01:03:27):
like they do over numerous other locations, probably everywhere. That's
not being conspiratorial either, It's just I think it's just
easier to get good coverage from a satellite system, you
know what I mean, You get more bang for your
orbital buck. Yeah, until you get the bug sized. You know,
spyke cams in there, which will be everywhere. And as
(01:03:49):
we always need to mention what we're talking about, surveillance
states and having spike ms everywhere, everybody, hold up your phone.
Hey get Oh no, my tape came off. I need
to get some more tape on mine as well. I
was just thinking about that, if you're watching this, that
this part of the episode is brought to you by
duct tape or electrical tape, you know, some kind of
(01:04:13):
tape to put over your phone screen. I think there
are some phone cases that also have a little physical slide.
Have you guys seen that? Yeah? Yeah, phone tape and
rare Earth minerals and duck duct go and duck duckt
go And that's our show. Thank you so much for
tuning in, folks. We hope that you enjoyed this. We
(01:04:33):
went a little long, but maybe these will just be
longer segments because the mission of this show says that
we should chase the story and we shouldn't cut things
short for some arbitrary timeline. It's a matter of fact,
if you listen to our earlier episodes last week, you're
all too well aware that our species actually has very
little idea how time works to begin with. So it's
(01:04:55):
a tough question. But these are great stories, and they
feel like they're gonna lead us two more episodes. The
relationship between cognition and Communications Technology AK video games specifically, uh,
the power and opaqueness of Facebook, and then of course
(01:05:17):
North Korea. I'm just gonna get that at a T
shirt at some point, and then of course North Korea.
That's great. If you have anything to say about any
of the things we've discussed today, you can find us
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or you can check out our community page there here's
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(01:05:39):
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(01:06:00):
You can call us directly. We are one eight three
three say it along your home st d w y
t K. Yeah. Less of a void, more of an
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into that thing pretty regularly. And now we've got a
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(01:06:21):
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(01:07:39):
they don't want you to know. Is a production of
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome back to
(00:25):
the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly,
you are you, You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. It's the top
of the week, which means this is our Strange News segment.
(00:48):
We always find a little something off the beaten path,
and we we bring it to each other, will turn
over these ideas. We often will find more questions then
we find answers. That is very true today with especially
one story that we've already kind of touched on, but
now we're learning more and just our brains are really
(01:12):
Hey guys, a quick question. Now, I know we're doing
video now and this is like a new thing for us,
kind of in this format at least, But when you
got the zoom open and you know we're doing video,
do you find yourself looking at your face and and
like trying to be more animated. Do is this like
an active process that you guys have to go through,
because it is for me. I'm just putting out there.
I want to look like a U man. I don't
want to look like a robot and so here. Yeah. Yeah,
(01:36):
It's funny because as we were gearing up to record,
I don't know if you were here. We're off air
setting up the zoom call, but I was saying the
exact same thing or a very similar thing when I
was saying, does anybody else find yourself looking at the
little thumbnail of your face were in one of these calls?
And then you're kind of nodding. You're watching your own reactions.
Zoom is terrible for narcissistic tendencies. The species is gonna
(01:59):
be even worse. At the end of this. I have
some good news bad news for you, Ben. I'm not
looking at your face at all for reactions, very distracted
by what's happening just behind you over by the door.
Oh that's right, and Easter egg for our video friends. Yes,
(02:20):
I am the reason we started late today, or should
I say, are returning video accomplice. You know her, you'll
love her from the YouTube days. That is indeed, Agent
Scully took some convincing, but she's joined us in the studio.
As you could tell, she's she's snoozing one off right now.
But hopefully we'll we'll get her back in the mix
(02:41):
as soon as we realize we were returning to our
video roots. We knew that we couldn't do this without her.
So also to our super producer, Doc, yeah, thank thank
you for just letting us roll with this. When we
were like, now there's a skeleton. Jill and Anderson has
not aged well, you guys. She she she needs to
(03:04):
eat a burger or something. Um, it's good to have
her back her him. I don't know, I justid before
my time. I did, H I did. I did some
research into things you can tell about skeletons to try
to figure out the the biological you know, the biological sex.
(03:24):
Were fairly confident Agents Scully is female or was in
another life m But we held a vote for everyone
on YouTube, and we just want to thank everyone who
tuned in and participated that vote for not giving her
the name Alex Bones, which we were very close to.
We made it through, and speaking of making it through,
(03:50):
let's see, we've got some good ones today. Um, where
where where do we want to start? One of these
is like my personal hobby horse. So I feel completely
by just when I'm like, oh, I'll go well, I
kind of want to save it. If that's okay, Um,
if you guys are down, I wouldn't mind getting into
this the firsthand. If that's okay, lead the way. This
(04:14):
is something Matt, when you first came to us with this,
this is something that I was unaware of. And it's uh,
it's a disturbing story, especially in the implications. Yeah, I
would say a lot of people were probably unaware of
this story. I certainly was until I went digging around
a bit um. And it's possibly because it almost feels
(04:38):
like local news, like terrible, tragic local news, but something
that occurred in one specific place. It dealt with one individual, um,
I guess who wasn't especially prominent. We have to remember
that they're tragic things that occur and horrific things that
occur every day across the globe. And you know, organizations,
(05:00):
we're gonna talk about this a little later. Organizations. News
organizations get to decide what is news worthy for you
to learn about, and then has to go through a
whole other process of getting into the social media that
you may be consuming, or you know, in whatever pipeline
of content that you're consuming. So there are several steps
(05:21):
through which a story has to travel before it gets
to your eyes or your ears. And this is a
story that comes out of a place called Flower Mound, Texas.
It's just south of Denton, Texas. If you look at
a map, you'll see the uh it's the the Dallas
Fort Worth area, and then Denton is kind of north
(05:42):
of those two in a bit of a triangle. And
then just below Denton to the south is this area
called Flower Mound. And I'm just gonna read you from
this story that comes from the Dallas Morning News. This
was published on August, so a little bit before where
according this, I'm just gonna read it to you. Flower
(06:03):
Mound police are investigating an eighteen year old man who
was fatally shot Tuesday morning. Officers were called just before
six am to a home in this area of Flower Mound,
where they found Matthew Thayne dead. No one else was
injured in the incident. Police said they were working to
identify a suspect and added that the shooter was reported
(06:25):
to have been wearing a helmet. This is not believed
to be a random act, according to officials, and police
said they have no reason to believe the attacker is
still in the area. So this was published again on
the eighteenth. There was a Tuesday night. That was the
day that Matthew Thane was slain. Um he was eighteen
(06:45):
years old. Well, we know, we we've learned quite a
bit since that initial published story. But just on the
surface of it, a young man was killed, and um,
that's very sad, no matter what the cocumstance and are
you know, of course our hearts go out to you know,
the family and friends of Matthew Thayne, the victim. The
(07:09):
reason why we're talking about it today is because Matthew
Thain did something that a lot of us probably do
who are listening right now, I would say a good
number of us do. Um, and even more of us
participate in it without actually doing it. Sounds a little vague.
Matthew Thayne was a twitch gamer, a Twitch streamer, so
(07:33):
he would play video games and others would watch. As
you know, he is playing his game, he would interact
with people watching and in part of his interactions, like
a lot of other streamers. There can be some, um,
some things that happened that aren't maybe the nicest, uh you.
Some people call it cyber bullying, some people liking it
(07:55):
to other things. But there is a lot of times
in those environments when you have a streamer who's on
one side of the camera and then a lot of
viewers on the other side of the camera, there can
be a tension there, and it's something that humanity is
learning to deal with. I would say we're evolving, right,
We're we're evolving in our interactions online. We have been
(08:18):
since we had the ability to type something up and
somebody else across the world could read it, right. Sure, Yeah,
but I'm just sorry, I'm just laughing because I wouldn't
conflate that with positive progress in all senses. Right, we're
finding new ways to ridicule each other's mothers, uh, to
threaten each other. Uh. Like, I see what you're saying though,
(08:40):
because we are communicators. Uh, it's one of our primary
superpowers as a species. But it just I just feel
like we're also seeing a lot of very ugly things. Yeah,
And I mean we we always We've talked about this
a lot, but just the whole nature of anonymity on
the Internet really empowers the worst impulses and people a
lot of time times where they feel protected and uh,
(09:03):
the ability to kind of target people or bully people,
or docs people or do any number of like internet
based kind of scare tactics. Really, I mean, it's almost
like Internet I don't know, I want to go to
of reward terrorism, like where you can really terrorize individuals, uh,
and it can spill over into the real world, I think,
which is what I think you're you're getting out here
(09:25):
with this story. And it freaks me out because, I mean,
talk about growing up on the Internet. I think the
three of us were sort of like came in when
dial up was still a thing. That's when we were younger,
and then you know, cable modems and dsls would really
like cracked all that wide open um. So we certainly,
you know, we evolved a kind of along with it.
But like my kid, uh just literally has grown up
(09:46):
on and it's just second nature, and like that's the way,
especially with all this remote school basically the exclusive form
of how she gets her social interactions in and she's
very aware of all of this stuff and cyber bullying
and being able to p text her identity and protect her,
you know, actual personal details, because there's all that. You
never know who's able to someone you think you're friends with.
(10:08):
Quote unquote, what's the criteria for having an internet friend?
You don't really have to vet them that heavily, you know.
I mean, it's not the same as knowing somebody in
person and maybe knowing their family or knowing things about
them and how they behave in real life, you know
for sure. Anyway, Sorry, I feel like we derailed you
because you were definitely going somewhere. It's okay, Well, who
(10:30):
knows who knows? With me? You guys, we we might
be going somewhere. We might just be coasting and then
looking around at all the weird things occurring. That's that's
generally how I like. Well, wherever, wherever we're going, we're
along for the ride man, Okay, perfect. So so. Matt
Matthew was was a Twitch streamer. According to some social
(10:50):
media posts by the family, he went by jp N
that was his tag or Japan and according to the family,
called Duty was one of the main games that he played.
For anyone who's unfamiliar, it is a warfare game that
has evolved over the years where it is a first
person shooter where you take the perspective of a person
(11:11):
with a gun and you fire at other players and
you generally score points I guess, and are victorious by
killing more people than your opponents. UM. This game and
others like it, we as we've talked about on the
show before, have been criticized heavily over the years. A
lot has been written about them about whether or not
(11:32):
they can affect um psychologically those who play them. You know,
we've discussed this at length about how much validity there
is to some of the thinking there. Um, I believe
we came away from this kind of on a middle
ground where it does it doesn't appear to have a
(11:53):
direct effect, but there is something to be said kind
of on the periphery of our understanding even about what
these types of games can do to us. Again, because
just as in our online communications, this is evolving as well.
Like the the experiences that we can give each other
(12:14):
through video gaming and virtual reality experiences and all these things,
we're just we're really just learning it. We're at our
we're in our infancy of these things. And importantly, uh
the research since we've had that conversation has changed. I
keep track of this stuff. We have to remember this
kind of communication, this this medium is evolving so quickly
(12:36):
and it's so relatively new that we don't have the
luxury of say a intergenerational or fifty year longitudal study
saying something like group A was raised with it was
raised with Call of Duty or whatever, and this is
the activity in their brain compared to group B, which
(12:58):
was just raised with the thing. Uh, you know and
love boomer audience of insert science journal here, checkers and uh,
I don't know, part cheesy or you know, if you
look at my my all of my games over here,
maybe just risk risk is at the bottom there. Maybe
just played that game. Well, I have a quick question
(13:19):
for you guys, Like I mean, Call of Duty has
obviously been around for a long time. You know, there's
a lot of iterations of that game. I don't know
the answer to this, and I'm sure there are tons
of super young people to play it, But do you
think the youngest of the young gamers are more playing
things like Fortnite? And uh, what's that other one that's
a little more cartoony and a little less like real life? Uh?
You know Shooter, h what's it called? I love that.
(13:43):
No Minecraft in the shooter real matting. I feel like
I feel like Fortnite and Overwatch are the big ones
for the younger crowd. And I definitely know young people
play Call of Duty and there's a big one that
just came out, this war Zone or whatever. And I
have found though that whenever I tried getting into Call
of Duty, and I just find that a lot of
(14:04):
people that are on, they're really mean. Not only that
they will snipe you from like miles away and just like,
you know, totally harass you just in the game, but
they're just like they use a lot of kind of
racially charged language and like a lot of homophobia. Yeah. No, definitely, um,
and maybe that's Internet in general. And I'm just naive
(14:25):
because I don't play a lot of games with just
like open anyone that can be on is on. But
that's kind of the nature of those And I was
shocked one time where I had Call of Duty on
and I quit the game but it was still connected
to the chat on my TV and realize it and
all of a sudden, there's just like this just string
of like you know, homophobic expletives coming out of my
TV and I was just like, oh my god, like
(14:46):
like my mom was over. But I don't know, like,
do you feel like there's a I don't know, a
division with like the Age, like with like Call of
Duty versus these other games that are a little less
overtly bloody. Uh, and I feel creative. I don't know.
I don't think so. I mean, maybe there's a general trend,
but having the agency to choose the game one personally
(15:08):
wishes to play means that there will be demographic trends,
but ultimately, every person, as a unit of the gameplay
can make their own choice. There are people who are
into all kinds of weird things that might really surprise you, right,
But I think Call of Duty here is mainly important
because we're talking about Matthew Thay. Yeah, we're talking about
(15:32):
Matthew Thaine being shot at his home, and um, the
reason why it's significant is because the authorities are investigating.
They're not sure at this point, at least according to
the reporting that I've seen on this, but they are
investigating whether or not Matthew's death was related to a
gaming dispute, specifically within Call of Duty, within the realm
(15:56):
of twitch streaming that Matthew was doing. So there is
a another story that was published on August one that
is a follow up to Matthew's death and the title
of this article is Flower Mount teens killer may have
driven from California to settle video game feud. Authorities say,
(16:20):
I'm going to read a bit of this again from
the Dallas Morning News. This was written by Tom Steele.
The now dead suspect in the slaying of a Flower
Mound eighteen year old may have driven from California to
Texas to settle a dispute that began in a video game.
Officers were called shortly before six am Tuesday, this is
(16:42):
about Matthew's death to to find Matthew. According to a
police spokesman, the attacker lured Thane outside by setting a
propane tank at the back of the home on fire.
Police said at the time the gunman was wearing a
helmet and they had no reason to believe that he
was still in the area. And I just want to
stop here for a second because in a lot of
(17:03):
these games, the objective is to strategically kill more people
than your opponents, right, and the strategies used to do that.
A lot of times have to do with flanking, with
setting up something like a distraction, um, doing things very
similar to what appears to have happened in this real
life example where a young man was killed. The the
(17:25):
concept of setting a propane tank a light in the
backyard to get your intended victim outside to then shoot him.
I mean that sounds like video game thinking to me.
And that's why perhaps it is if true, if you
know what the police believe is true, then this would
(17:47):
be just um, this would be terrible and terrifying. Yeah,
it's interesting because when you told us about this, uh,
the there does seem to be a suspect, right, So
it goes to the question of um, I guess very similitude,
because we if we spend a lot of time mentally
(18:10):
in one place or in one state, then we we
start to transfer that perspective into the waking world. A less, uh,
a less complicated version of this tendency can be seen
with Tetris. One interesting thing about the game of Tetris
(18:31):
is that you know, it's built to be addictive. It's
built to get to fire those right parts of your
brain and get you to continue playing and after a
certain threshold. Uh, and overwhelming majority of people start saying
that they just sort of think and dream of the
shapes of Tetris and with Call of Duty or with
(18:52):
any game. Really the question of which game is, which
is kind of irrelevant. We're saying is if you are
inundated in this virtual environment, then everything else sort of
starts to become visible through that lens, even when you're unplugged. Uh.
And this, I don't think they have identified uh, any
(19:14):
kind of suspect outside of an age right in age range. No,
they they have identified a sea Okay, who is do
we have? Yeah? We I do not have a name
at this point. We know that it is a twenty
three year old California man that was at least an
acquaintance or an online acquaintance of some sort to Thane,
(19:36):
to Matthew and apparently this person after they investigated Matthew
Than's home. They identified this person as a potential suspect
who was way out in California. Yeah. I guess that's
what I'm saying. I say they have identified him only
by age or a location. I should have been more
clear and said they haven't publicly announced this suspects name correct, correct, absolutely, yes,
(20:03):
So they identified that this person may be involved. Police
in California went to Pleasanton in the town where this
twenty three year old suspect lived, and they obtained a
search warrant for this man's home, and when they got there,
they discovered that he had um committed suicide by gunshot
(20:26):
in his home, or at least it appears that he
has he had committed suicide in his home and allegedly
this was as the officers were approaching his residence, that's
when he killed himself. Um. The official cause of death
has not been released. Again, that is what the authorities
have stated that it's appeared to have occurred. And this
(20:48):
article from the Dallas News there also says that the
Flower Mount Police said evidence recovered from that home was
linked to Matthew Thain's death and they would release more
info after confirming that the California man was in fact
the killer's twenty five hours. By the way, you go, yeah,
(21:10):
so you could do you could do the turnaround quickly
would be it would be pretty brutal. It makes you
wonder they probably stopped halfway somewhere. Well, I mean, it
occurred that Matthew Thain's death occurred on Tuesday evening were
on Tuesday, and then he was found in his home
(21:31):
the next day in California. So he literally drove from
California to Texas to do this and then drove right.
But I wonder if it was one of those situations
like that, remember that astronaut situation. I can't remember her name,
but she drove with a diaper on, like a really
long distance to confront or like a ex husband or
something like that, or it wasn't as far of a distance.
(21:53):
I believe her thing was planning astronauts and meticulous planners.
So her her thing was, is uh, planning to minimize
her drive time basically because if you have enough gas,
then you know, bio breaks are the only bio breaks
in the unfortunate design flaw of sleep are the only
(22:14):
thing keeping you from going continually. But when people have
mania or when they're having a break of some sort,
time does get different. You know, time time is not uh,
you don't experience fatigue in the same way I would imagine,
at least subjectively objectively, your body is still wearing down, right,
(22:36):
we know that. But now they so they're saying there's
more evidence coming out or that they will have more
announcements in the next few days. Uh, what do you
think is gonna becoming this man? You know, I'm I'm
unsure for Matthew Faine's family and friends. Um, they're forced
to deal with the death of a loved one, and
(22:57):
for whoever this um attacker was killer, they are also
having to deal with the death of their loved one.
And the real, the real question here is what caused
this to occur? And you know how many other people
out there are dealing with some frustration or issue that
(23:20):
that this killer was dealing with. You know that perhaps
could be perhaps, and I can't speak for everyone in
every situation, but perhaps could be handled with just a
little personal connection or somebody to talk to to work
through something like that. Well, sure, you know, it certainly
seems like a case of undiagnosed or possibly diagnosed and
(23:42):
just un you know, uh acknowledged in this situation in
terms of how it escalated mental illness. You know, I
mean to have that level of fixation based around a game,
which can you know, exacerbate those kind of things if
you're prone to isolation, or if you're prone to depression,
or if you're prone to kind of delusions of grandeur
or whatever. Like it certainly is something that can really
(24:02):
push that stuff to the next level. Like I have
a friend who, um, you know, struggles with depression and
has found a community in online gaming. And sometimes it's
like you just disappear into it and and and it
becomes your whole world. And if something in that world
triggers you or see some someone wrongs you within the
(24:24):
rules or that are established by this basically fantasy existence,
it can have real ramifications in the real world. And
sometimes people might just hurt themselves. In this case, both
things happen. I get very very strange messages when I
was working my way up the ranks of Teken online,
(24:45):
just because it seems cheaper to go outside. People do
have first little bit like I'm not gonna I don't
think we need an anecdote because everybody listening to this show,
this is a podcast where this is all on YouTube.
You know some one who has experienced this. You may
have experienced this. There's nothing wrong with loving a game
(25:06):
and getting very into it. I don't want to put
my own narrative on this, but it sounds like we're
asking what else might be out there. Is there going
to be maybe a trend or is there already a
trend of things like this? But I don't know, I mean,
maybe that's completely not what you were thinking that, But
(25:27):
I'm I'm I just keep remembering, you know, every almost
every mass shooting we hear about in the US, especially
in earlier years, there was some kind of video game
angle that an anchor or a pundit would sort of
put on it, you know what I mean, like the
teens in column by. But's your question, Noal, is that
(25:49):
just is playing? Is playing these games? You know, it's
correlation versus causation right where they just playing because they
were already trying to escape some very painful circumstances or
some very troubling states of being or invasive thoughts. I
don't think we can play him a video game, no,
(26:09):
I mean, and then then not to be too silly
about it, but it's like I play a ton of
online Mario Kart, and I'm not gonna go driving around
thinking that I can shoot turtles at people or like
slip on banana peals in my you know, sedan. But
on the on the other hand, I can't be the
only person who every so often just like checked the
handles of locked cars and parking lots after playing Grand
(26:31):
Theft Auto five for too long. It just like the
normal thing you would do. It's it's true. Um, well,
it'll be interesting to follow this. I don't know, like
it seems like it's case closed. I know there's a
go fund me campaign for the young man that was killed.
That's that's almost met its goal. Um, you know, to
(26:52):
to raise money for funeral expenses and obviously just to
help the family. Uh. If you want to check that out,
you can go to go fund me and look for
Matthew Thane Memorial. Um. And they've raised twenty three thousand,
six h of a dollar goal, which will hopefully be
higher by the time this comes out. I'm certain of it.
(27:12):
Just as a closing piece here, I don't know if
you can see this on the on the video here,
but this is Call of Duty Mobile and I play
this game absolutely every day, and I I love competitive
games like this that our first person shooter that have
violence in them. I want everyone out there listening to
(27:33):
not feel weird for enjoying a game like that. I
don't want you to think that we're talking down to
you for liking those kinds of games. UM, yeah, well
I know we that's the I just want you. I'm
speaking directly to you, whoever you are. UM, just remember
you know that that is not you know, it's not reality.
It's it's wonderful, it's fun. And anything that occurs in
(27:56):
those games, no matter how much it it feels like
it's affecting. Right now, I promise you you're gonna be okay,
and you know, reach out, talk to somebody if you
need any help whatsoever. I just want to leave everybody
with that. And UM, if you do want to find me,
I'm on Call of Duty Mobile. I'm std w y
t K, just like our number. If you want to
(28:18):
play a game, let's play a game, add me. Let's
do this and let's be competitive and have fun. Doesn't
have to ever lead to something like that. Agreed, And
on that note, wanted to take a quick sponsor break
and then come back with some more strange news and
(28:40):
we're back. I believe our next story addresses uh some
similar ideas about life in a virtual world versus life
in the analog or biological one. And this is this
is part of something that I am convinced has to
be a full episode in the future. Yeah, and and
and with that in mind, I think we'll probably just
(29:01):
touch on it a little bit because it's a it's
a really interesting divisive issue where I'm not even quite
sure what to make of it yet, and I think
we're all kind of on the same page. But it's
about Facebook and the way it's sort of battling with
this notion that it is either on the one hand,
anti conservative or like, you know, actively it's it's it's
a it's an argument that a lot of conservatives make
(29:23):
about uh, Silicon Valley in general and things like Twitter
and you know, all of these platforms that they're actively
filtering out conservative or more right wing viewpoints. And then
on the other hand, there's a there's a lot of
discussion internally from employees at Facebook that they are actively
pro conservative um. And that's really interesting, And it's not
(29:43):
about the political bias or whatever, like like Ben was saying,
it would be just as troubling if they were actively
being anti liberal or anti left wing or anti some
particular issue. The idea is that they're supposed to be
an arbiter of free speech and that they shouldn't be
laying favorites one way or the other. So the politics
part of this is really kind of just secondary to
(30:05):
just the amount of control that a company like Facebook has,
especially when you consider the fact that, like, I mean,
let's be real, guys, Facebook is a monopoly, you know,
over our information. The fact that they can just kind
of buy up competitors that are developing things that they
want to be in control of, you know, intellectual property technology,
(30:25):
like they basically just bought up Instagram for a gazillion dollars.
I'm not quoting. That is just a you know, a guestimate,
because they wanted to have that technology. They wanted to
have that platform for themselves, rather than develop something themselves
and compete in like a free, fair market kind of way.
So that part in and of itself is is a
(30:46):
little bit troubling. And this control over information, especially during
an election that's probably going to be the most remote
election in the history of elections in terms of people
not wanting to go to the polls, in terms of
people you know, using mail in ballots and absentee ballots
more than ever before, and they're being this potential lag in. Uh,
(31:09):
you know, when the ballots are cast and when the
results are in, and so let's it's a big topic
and then and we we we can just kind of
divide it up a little bit into a couple of
a couple of buckets. I guess um. One is about
the fact checking program that Facebook has. And there's an
article that BuzzFeed published on auguste, like Craig Silverman and
(31:33):
Brian Mack. The headline is Facebook's preferential treatment of US
conservatives puts its fact checking program in danger. Um. So
let's just really quickly talk a little bit about what
this fact checking program is. It's essentially a rank that
supposedly third party fact checkers give to the veracity of
(31:56):
of articles content, whether it's false or misleading, or inflammatory
or overly what's the word sensational, I guess um. And
that can include things like ads that are pro uh
pro pro choice that maybe have images of fetuses, or
things that are like you know, meant to trigger you
(32:16):
and and and could could be considered inflammatory, or things
like fake news, the idea of reporting something that isn't
true or is his patently false or is somewhere in
the middle. Um. And Facebook has been caught essentially kind
of messing with those stats in terms of you know,
(32:38):
which types which sites get rankings cleared more quickly. Uh,
there was like a case of a bright Bart article
where their internal flagging system, you know, flagged it as
being potentially false, and then someone within Facebook removed that
flag by the end of the day and the article
was allowed to stick around. So let's start with the
(33:01):
whole idea of flagging content and having independent fact checkers
and where that problem lies. If there's no transparency, I
think there's a major issue here, and it's a problem
that is very much an onion that you have to
begin drilling down into. Right. First of all, we're talking
about social media platforms, where in human beings who are
(33:26):
using it supposedly have, at least if they're operating within
the United States and its territories, they have First Amendment rights,
which means they can say whatever they want right. Anyone
can say whatever you want essentially right to an extent.
But then you drill down a little bit further. We
have social norms that we've all adopted that very you know,
(33:51):
in on an individual level, but you know, overall, we've
decided what we can and cannot mention or beliefs that
we can or cannot put forward as our beliefs because
they're taboo or they're out of bounds or so incorrect
and against what the whole believes, or at least the
(34:13):
majority believes, that we just cannot type them or state them.
Then you get down even further than you're talking about
institutions like, um, I think there's Praeger this is one
that was mentioned in a bus speed university. Like an institution.
Who is that is making a statement? Right that appears
(34:35):
to be a fact and may not be a fact. Um,
we have to decide, like on which of those levels
and and where do we want to draw the line? Right?
Should everyone be able to say anything they want to say?
If no, then should institutions? I don't know. I think
like if we don't, If we don't address that first one, right,
(34:57):
the free speech angle, then how do you get in
to any of the other things. But there's a difference
here because these are private entities, so they own their
own lawn, you know what I mean? The people have
id to cavort. Just walk with me a second, because
this this is a crucial argument that hinges on something
in the communications Decency Act Section two thirty A k A.
(35:22):
It's the reason I don't know if this is in
the article you're looking at, No, but it's the reason
that uh, Twitter and Facebook and all their ilk have
not been sued into oblivion. The reason they haven't been obviated,
and it's the idea that they are simply UH platform
for other people's ideas. So if somebody of for instance,
(35:46):
post something hateful and discriminatory on Twitter, Twitter is not
getting sued for hate speech right because of this kind
of legislation. Interestingly, an UF earlier this year, UH, the
current president of the US as we record this, Donald Trump,
(36:07):
signed an executive order trying to get section to thirty
removed because he wants a well, because he likes it
if he feels like it gets along with him, and
he's angry if he feels like it disagrees with him.
And isn't that basically the basis of the free and
open Internet, Like without that, there's gonna be so much
(36:29):
potential for a litigation that no one's gonna be able
to publish anything, no one's gonna be able to share
any free thought because these platforms are going to be
on the hook for everyone else's ideas, and therefore they're
gonna be so protective of of who gets to post
on their platform that you're not gonna have access to
anything beyond just whatever the most safe line is, right,
(36:51):
I would, I would argue that's not a bug. That's
a feature for the group that continually has wished for
a less free internet. I mean, the same people who
want your your website browsing to be sold to you
the way tiered cable packages were sold by Google premium.
By being signature. I guess doesn't that also limit like
(37:15):
I mean, look again the politics of secondary here. But
you know, we know Trump has made some inflammatory statements
that that that were fact checked and proved to be untrue.
Doesn't that limit his platform, his platform of choice being Twitter,
and his ability to like go on there and say
whatever he wants and then have that freedom of speech.
Doesn't this shut that ability down for him? It's part
(37:37):
of a It's a noodle in a larger spaghetti dish
of terrible, terrible things. Honestly, the the argument about upon
whose shoulders the liability for hate speech or incitement to
violence rest you know what I mean, I've said it
for a very long time. There are more and more
(37:58):
things to look at, right, but they're fewer, few fewer
and fewer and fewer people in charge of the screens
that let you see those things. Right. It's like Disney.
What did Disney by today while we were recording this?
Did they buy like my cats? Did they buy the
idea of all cats? Maybe? I'm literally gonna go to
(38:19):
duck dot go right now and see what did Disney
buy recently? Is that? Like ask jeeves, what what are
you going? Is that? Is that a thing? Is there
a reason to use that search? It gives you Google
without all of Google's clingy information. I learned something new today.
(38:42):
I didn't know this. This is great, Thank you guys.
Been done. Yeah, none of it was consistent. It looks
like Fox is the last thing. Okay, all right, well
that's a big one really quickly and then we can
we can tell the move. I just wanted to go
into a little bit about this whole process that they
have because I was sort of brushed over it early on.
But they do have a set of third party fact
(39:04):
checkers that assign a rating to these pieces of content
um and based on those ratings, Facebook applies a label,
and it can be demoted, the content can be demoted,
which I think is kind of like search engine optimization,
like if you're if your quote unquote putting out low
quality content, you get demoted in the search ranking. So
(39:25):
I think that's similar to what this is what's going
on here. But they also have a system of strikes
against their preferred news partners, which again is folks like BuzzFeed,
the Washington Post, and yes, bright Bart. And in this article,
a lot there was there's a discussion that's going on
in this internal Facebook platform called work work Day or workforce,
(39:45):
I think that's what it's called. And a lot of
employees were wondering why brightbart is allowed to continue being
one of these preferred news organizations when they consistently have
published uh misinformation. Um. There an article or a video
rather that got I think fourteen million views in about
six hours because of how prominently it was promoted on Facebook,
(40:08):
and it it promoted um uh you know mask like
like the idea that masks weren't necessary, um and you know,
uh put forth some dubious science behind that, and it
was actually removed from Breitbart's page after being challenged enough.
But in that period of time, it racked up all
those views that would be considered a strike, and Zuckerberg
(40:31):
said that this is a strike, but we're not going
to demote them because they've only had one strike in
the last ninety days. But then internally there was some
evidence of that the strikes were cleared by some unknown
individual within that has access to the system. And again,
like you're saying, Prager University, a couple of other ones,
(40:52):
let's see, there was also Diamond and silk Uh, Charlie Kirk,
Turning Point USA, UM, some other kind of far or
right wing outlets that were kind of having these black
marks stricken from their record, um and in an effort
to kind of game the system. Well, just to step
in here. We all, we've talked about this before. We
have to remember this Facebook. As much as you want
(41:14):
it to be the place where you connect with your family,
and that's what it's meant to be. No, Facebook is
an advertising and data collection platform. That is what it is.
That is what all social media is. Doesn't matter how
much you love it, what you think it is. They
are designed to make money for the people who designed
them by selling ads to all of these bigger corporations.
(41:38):
It doesn't matter how where they politically lie. If their
ad dollars are good and those checks clear, good to go. UM.
And of course that any company can have what a mission,
statement and values and all of those things, however they
want to play it or at least publicly put out there.
But in the end, it's the bottom line for these
(42:00):
and you you gotta remember that no matter what's what
is written in those ads, no matter what's shared on
those posts, that data can then get um gathered up
and sold to bulk of Bayer sure like a third party.
And the terms of service can change without your consent
or without notifying you, and is as innocuous as this
(42:23):
stuff might seem. Shout out to everybody wrote in regarding
uh the yes or nos of d N A collection,
especially on Here's where it gets crazy our Facebook page.
Blackstone just bought ancestry dot com dot dot dot dot boom.
So with this point you have, you're you're right this
private industry institutions and companies, they are capitalistic endeavors. They
(42:48):
would not exist if this were not the case. And
with the consideration of that, I would like to point
out also, um and stop me if we mentioned this
and I somehow missed it. Uh. Back in Facebook announced
their plans to pay Bright part for content they were
paying these other publisher arms, and it was messaged out
(43:11):
as a way of giving them extended security in these
our uncertain days. But that gets us to another sticky
issue with journalism and accuracy and reporting. If we're paying
these things to churn content for us, and then we're
also saying with the other hand that we are, uh,
(43:34):
we are somehow walking away from money. Right. All of
most of the the Facebook's money is generated by the engagement
of people reading stuff they see and reacting to it.
Whether or not it's real doesn't matter to the bottom
line to your point, Matt, So, so now they have
these conflicting aims, and what price do we put on
(43:55):
the truth? By the way, I'm not the fan of
section to thirty. I think it's real dilemma because if
we don't hold these platforms responsible in some way, then
there's there's nothing stopping them other than business leaving. There's
nothing stopping them from doing whatever the hell they want.
(44:16):
So you do have to have some sort of fact checking.
But I think to your point, Noel, it's uh who
prioritizes what is considered a fact and when it is
considered a fact, that's right. And also just the murkiness
of the whole process, you know what I mean, Like
they say, oh, we rely on these third party fact checkers,
but we really have no insight into the process, especially
(44:39):
if you know, at the end of the day, they're
not held to these standards. They it's just an optical thing.
Like it's literally saying, no, we have these different organizations,
media outlets that have different viewpoints that are giving us
unbiased Um, you know, uh, fact checking. But who's to
say that they have to abide by that, you know
what I mean. It's it's not something that's not like
it's a law. It's not like there's some kind of
(45:00):
legislation that's holding them to do this. It's all internal
and and the thing that really confuses issue for me
speaking of internal stuff, and then we'll move on. Uh,
there's another article that came out today, uh saying or
actually I'm sorry. A couple of days ago, Facebook commissioned
a study of alleged anti conservative bias and here's what
it found. And it was it was done by a
(45:22):
former Republican senator by the name of John Kyle UM
and his colleagues at the law firm Covington and Burling
lll P. And they looked into this notion that that
you know, frankly has been put forth by members of
the Conservative Party and folks McDonald Trump that uh, Facebook
is patently anti conservative or anti right wing. And the
(45:47):
study found that they had taken some measures to for example,
it really leaned more heavily on things like anti abortion
ads UM that often have very triggering kind of uh,
you know, upsetting images of whether it's fetuses or people
that are sick or you know, hooked up to hospital
(46:08):
equipment and and um, something that would maybe you know,
triggering to some people and unpleasant, and the idea that
it's inflammatory. Uh, they have adjusted their UM their policies
or their auto image you know recognition things to allow
images of people with medical tubes as long as they're
not invisible pain or distress and there are no blood
(46:30):
or bruises. Uh. And that's something that could benefit folks
who post ads for pro life organizations and also UM
children's advocacy groups advocating for you know, protection against child
abuse and things like that. So the article again this
is an internal study. It doesn't really talk much about
the fact checking process at all. It's much more about
the idea of filtering out content that has a right
(46:55):
wing lean So it's really weird. Like but again, this
is internal. So this is clearly kind of for Optics
as well. Because they hired this person, they commissioned the
study themselves, they're not forced to abide by it. There's
really nothing that anybody can do short of doing some
kind of antitrust situation against Facebook as an entity, Like
who's to say that they can't post misinformation anytime they want.
(47:20):
Who who's holding them to these standards except for themselves?
So I don't know any answer. It's really I messed
up situation, you guys. I personally don't want anyone believing
or living their lives based off of misinformation or disinformation
or something that is untrue. Um. Unfortunately, we've all been
doing that to some extent throughout our whole lives because
(47:43):
we we don't get to control the pipelines, and we
don't know a lot of times exactly what is occurring
in the world around us. UM. And there are people
out there that I want it to be that way,
But I mean, I think at the end of the day,
and it's something that that I tell my kid to
do is uh and he got even my mom, but
(48:05):
she's that's a whole another story. You gotta vet your
own facts. I mean, you can't just rely on one
platform to tell you what's what you have to do
independent fact checking. You can't rely on these fact checkers
that Facebook hires or employees or or uses or whatever
that arrangement might be. Um, you gotta just do your
own homework and and and keep your eyes open and
(48:27):
not let the WOL be pulled over your eyes or
actively pull it over your own eyes. Well said. So
expect more from us on this in the future, and
expect one more piece of strange news after word from
our sponsor. And we are back with Kim Jong oong
(48:52):
a k A one of the reasons it's hard for
me to wait uh for this episode. But what are
the reasons I was able to take out my old
the DPRK flag that I bought near the border, and
that's what Agents Scully is reclining against. I don't think
you can see it very well. But we brought Kim
Jong un with us in the news today we reported Matt, I,
(49:15):
I really appreciate you taking the time to set that
up with a little teaser at the top of the episode.
That was very Uh, it was cool. Thank you. I
hope it pays off. But we recently reported on the
ascension of Kim Jong UN's sister, who has been taking
over more day to day operations for the show called
(49:37):
Hermit Kingdom. This place for a long time was kind
of a black box for the world's intelligence agencies. They
didn't know very much about what went on there on
a daily basis, but they did know that the DPRK
did not have oil, so they didn't invade them. And uh,
eventually they got nuclear capability, which is another kind of
(49:58):
that and not having a ill are too not full proof,
but there there are two things that really lower the
likelihood of another country invading you, by which I mean
the US. They lower the likelihood of the US invading.
So people have always speculated about Kim Jong un, and
when we did our original report about him being missing
(50:20):
in action, we said one of the theories was that
maybe he had faked video footage, right, because his debut
back from his absence was like a press kit of
him at a fertilizer factory footage that could have been
filmed at any time, right, And this led a lot
(50:41):
of the pundits and the boffins and the eggheads and
the walks and the crowd to speculate like crazy, like
mad and say, well, this is a body double, and
this is just the kind of dictator that would do this. Uh,
he is sick. They don't want to show weakness to
the domestic demographics of North Korea. And then other people
(51:04):
said no, he's dead, and someone else said no, he's
not dead. It was a heart attack. And then someone
else said no, he's been in a coma, And so
we started talking a little bit. You'll recall about films
like The Death of Stalin and and ideas of creating
these body doubles, like um, we did a pretty pretty
interesting series on actual body doubles. They are a real thing.
(51:27):
Unfortunately a lot of them have very painful lives that
get cut short. But the news that came out in
recent days from UH, from one specific source is claiming
that yes, the crazy speculation was right. Kim Jong UN's
recent appearances were faked. That he has been in a
(51:47):
coma quote for months, and so I did some digging
on this because anybody who's read about North Korea for
any length of time, you know that the propaganda is
so strong. A lot of South Korean outlets, uh, and
a lot of Western outlets especially will just report whatever
(52:09):
they think someone had heard, and it becomes an echo
chamber of people slightly rephrasing the same story that later
turns out not to be completely true. And I gotta
tell you, I can I understand it because when I've
been at the border, the propaganda the thing I wish
they told more people in the US. The propaganda is
(52:29):
really really strong on the North Korean side, and it's
really really strong on the South Korean side, like very
very bad and blatant. And I had to you have
to watch this informational video at some of these tourist sites,
and they're all about how the d MZ is great
for birds birds about and that that's like a really
(52:53):
positive contribution it makes to bio diversity. Uh. Anyhow, that's
the idea. The report comes from one Jong Sung Mien.
He is important because he was a former aide to
President Kim Dai jung in South Korea. He was head
of the State Affairs Monitoring Office. Uh, he probably had
(53:15):
access to intelligence operations sigin tell humans health, and he
said he insisted recently, Kim Jong Loon is comatos and
his sister, Kim Yo Jong, is still running a lot
of day to day stuff, but she is not technically
his successor. He's saying, the insiders haven't haven't made that
(53:35):
switch yet. But the problem is a lot of people
are calling these sources into question. This is so, this
is a retired political official who was you know, you
would know him the way that you know a member
of Barack Obama's presidential staff or Donald Trump's presidential staff.
(54:00):
Right you you've probably heard the name. Maybe they went
to jail for something. I don't know, that's your politics.
But the but this guy I'm saying is more like
a career, career politician, bureaucrat kind of guy. Uh, not
necessarily James Bond himself. And now people are not just
(54:22):
on the civilian Internet, but people in academic circles and
people in intelligence agency circles are trading notes on this.
The Twitter is hilarious. There are tons of people say, no,
he's fine, it's it's propaganda. It would have been more
widely reported if it was true. This is one guy
(54:44):
claiming one thing. Uh, you know, the that Kim Jong
goon had been seen as recently as August nine. But
we have to realize that we are in the post
deep fakes era, which means that now more than ever
is Fox loves to say it is possible to fake
the appearance of someone online, and if you're a state actor,
(55:05):
with the resources and the motivation, is possible to do
it very well. Like, uh, you know, the thing that
should scare people about that concept. I'm not saying that's
what's happening now in North Korea, but the thing that
should scare people about that is that it means it's
completely possible for your own president or prime minister or
(55:27):
whoever rules your country to have a heart attack, to
go into a coma, and for their online persona to
just continue just deep fakes of you know, the regular
fireside chat, just keep the Twitter going on, brand in
the voice or even us or maybe that's doing some eyebrows. Well,
people see, you gotta watch the video. You have to
(55:49):
watch the video to catch the Frederick Brow action. But
I wanted to ask you, gentlemen, because we have talked
about this before. Do you guys remember that conversation. I
do totally do remember that conversation, And I wanted to
ask you what you think about something that Jeffrey Lewis
said on Twitter a k A at Arms Control wonk
(56:11):
um he was he was citing the last thirty days
of appearances by Kim Jong n. He's citing ten from
I guess the official Supreme Leaders Activities list that I'm
assuming is issued by some state armor outlet there within
(56:32):
the DPRK, And there are ten official appearances and I
haven't actually clicked on I was kind of scared to
click on it. I wanted to see where it took me.
It's a Google talk. He's the one who did the
He's the one who also mentioned the August nineteenth date. Okay, okay, yeah,
(56:53):
but he's I mean, he's got it all listed out there. Um.
It would make you think that the level, the level
of disinformation a number of appearances there would be would
feel odd to me, Like that's a lot to put
out to feign that he's, you know, actually out there
(57:14):
using body doubles or deep fakes or whatever. And it
seems like there's a wonk who cried wolf situation so
often when it comes to conspiracies about Kim Jong UN's death,
because we've seen so many Western sources just directly quote
in a way, quoting themselves, quoting things like Radio Free Asia,
(57:36):
which is totally and blatantly US propaganda, like it's on
the website. Uh, they end up quoting themselves. Uh, and
they seem just like really eager to hear about Kim
Jong oon dying. Uh he is a terrible person who
has overseeing concentration camps. But a lot of the speculation
(57:59):
I think come from again still this sort of black
box situation, Like the guy travels by train. He travels
by rail because it's seen as the most secure way
for him to travel. Uh. He could die, That's that's
the thing. He could die and have the state apparatus
(58:20):
would have the power to make sure that no one
really knows for a while. The question is how long
you know? What I mean? Yeah? Man? And what happens?
I think that's my next question, like for you all,
because I know I read a lot about North Korean stuff,
But what what do you think happens? When the king
(58:40):
is dead? His sister rolls in and run stuff, and
it's way scarier than it's been in a long time. Yeah,
that's what I was wondering. Like at first, I thought,
you know, we talked about her in the last time
we had this conversation and she was like watching like
Fourth of July videos or something and not knowing as
(59:02):
nearly as much as you about this topic. Ben. I
was like, Oh, is she like more open to Western
influence and like, but apparently that's not the case at all,
Like she's staunchly anti Western influence, and like I think
she's she she's known to have had people killed that
were like dissidents or that were isn't that right, Like
there was a poisoning situation several years back with yeah,
(59:26):
they've been poisonings. Uh. One of the siblings was killed,
another lives a life in exile. From what we understand
about the outlook of the country culturally, it's pretty patriarchal,
but it also cannot have a power vacuum for any
(59:46):
amount of time. Things will go south so quickly, maybe
literally south, because South Korea is just over the border
on this would be an absolute and utter uh show.
But it also makes me think in a larger scale
to your point Matt about the multiple appearances that the
(01:00:07):
leader of North Korea has recently had or appeared to
have had. Do you all think it's possible that a
president or prime minister in another country and be like
the US or Canada? Do you think it's possible they
could die or perhaps be mentally infirm or compromised, and
(01:00:29):
that we would have enough of an apparatus to hide
that fact from the public. I am only thinking of
the United States, but I'm imagining with the frequency of
White House press conferences that occur, with the press teams
that exists there from from outlets across the country, I
think it would be near to impossible for the President
(01:00:51):
United of the United States to get away with it.
Although if you decided that that's no longer going to
happen as a regularly scheduled thing, then perhaps because then
it would just be whoever has transparency into the White
House itself, and if no one ever came out or
went in, and then no matter which president is in
(01:01:13):
the White House, if they were sequestered inside and they
weren't leaving for an emergency situation, let's say, you would
have no way of knowing and there are secret ways
to get in and out of the White House too. Yes,
I guess you know it's it's weird because you raise
an excellent point. But we also have to consider if
(01:01:33):
something like this happened, it would not be the first
time information was hidden from the public. You know what
I mean the world, I mean specifically in the United States. Uh.
Woodrow Wilson had a terrible stroke in October of nine,
with almost none of the technology we have today. Uh.
He was partially paralyzed. He was nearly blind. He spent
(01:01:56):
the final like seventeen months of the president's see. Oh yeah,
he was still president by the way, Uh, locked away
in the White House. He was still president until March
of ninety one. So the public didn't know. The public
had no idea of the severity of his condition or
his illness. And to me, given that this is a
(01:02:21):
place with a rule by the representatives of the people,
that seems like important information. Uh maybe there's a geopolitical
thing that keeps them from saying that. But I I
just what hits me about this. No one talking to
the media at least seems to really know what's going
on in DPRK. There are a bunch of guesses. But
also before we get on a high horse about that,
(01:02:44):
how much, whether you live in the US or abroad,
how much do you know about the day to day
actions of the folks who are responsible for keeping your
country running? It should be a sobering thought. Yeah, do
you guys, has anybody out there listening? Are you in
with five eyes or f Salon or any of these
(01:03:06):
other groups? Maybe are we still five eyes? Did they
the US out yet? Four eyes? Are you down with
four eyes? I only got two eyes, guys. That's just
that's the best I can do. But there are I mean,
there are intelligence agencies and world governments that have those
satellites over the DPRK, and you know they do just
(01:03:27):
like they do over numerous other locations, probably everywhere. That's
not being conspiratorial either, It's just I think it's just
easier to get good coverage from a satellite system, you
know what I mean, You get more bang for your
orbital buck. Yeah, until you get the bug sized. You know,
spyke cams in there, which will be everywhere. And as
(01:03:49):
we always need to mention what we're talking about, surveillance
states and having spike ms everywhere, everybody, hold up your phone.
Hey get Oh no, my tape came off. I need
to get some more tape on mine as well. I
was just thinking about that, if you're watching this, that
this part of the episode is brought to you by
duct tape or electrical tape, you know, some kind of
(01:04:13):
tape to put over your phone screen. I think there
are some phone cases that also have a little physical slide.
Have you guys seen that? Yeah? Yeah, phone tape and
rare Earth minerals and duck duct go and duck duckt
go And that's our show. Thank you so much for
tuning in, folks. We hope that you enjoyed this. We
(01:04:33):
went a little long, but maybe these will just be
longer segments because the mission of this show says that
we should chase the story and we shouldn't cut things
short for some arbitrary timeline. It's a matter of fact,
if you listen to our earlier episodes last week, you're
all too well aware that our species actually has very
little idea how time works to begin with. So it's
(01:04:55):
a tough question. But these are great stories, and they
feel like they're gonna lead us two more episodes. The
relationship between cognition and Communications Technology AK video games specifically, uh,
the power and opaqueness of Facebook, and then of course
(01:05:17):
North Korea. I'm just gonna get that at a T
shirt at some point, and then of course North Korea.
That's great. If you have anything to say about any
of the things we've discussed today, you can find us
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(01:05:39):
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(01:06:00):
You can call us directly. We are one eight three
three say it along your home st d w y
t K. Yeah. Less of a void, more of an
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into that thing pretty regularly. And now we've got a
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(01:06:21):
the air, So let us know if you have a
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leave out your name or what have you when you
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(01:06:42):
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(01:07:39):
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