May 14, 2025 • 27 mins
Misinformation is being circulated on a widespread scale, creating major challenges for public health, democracy and even how we interact in our personal relationships. We're pulling back the curtain to reveal the forces behind the new age of digital dishonesty in Canada and sharing insights on how to navigate it. Season three kicks off in conversation with journalist, consultant and commentator Sue Gardner who has previously held executive roles at CBC and the Wikimedia Foundation.
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Episode Transcript
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Takara Small (00:03):
We've all heard the old saying a lie can travel
halfway around the world, whilethe truth is still putting on
its shoes.
But we've reached new levelsMisinformation, disinformation,
mal-information, mistruths Callit what you like.
Never before have we seen lyingon this scale.
(00:25):
They are patently false.
Yet disinformation campaignsand conspiracy theories.
Newscaster (00:33):
Amplifying harmful health misinformation on his top
podcast.
Justin Trudeau (00:37):
False claims about so-called crisis actors.
Recent studies show thatmisinformation on COVID has cost
hundreds of millions of dollarsand thousands of lives.
Who knows what to believeanymore.
Being able to discern what'strue or false is an increasingly
difficult skill, but it's onewe all have to get good at, and
(01:01):
quickly.
Misinformation is beingcirculated on an industrial
scale, and it's creating hugeproblems for how society
functions.
Sue Gardner (01:10):
There has been a real and massive sea change in
the volume of this stuff.
Takara Small (01:15):
Coordinated campaigns of disinformation and
misinformation are impactingpublic health, democracy and
even hurting personalrelationships.
So what are the forces behindall of this and how are we
supposed to navigate this newage of digital dishonesty?
Well, we're here to hold yourhand through it all.
(01:39):
On season three of what's UpWith the Internet, canada's
award-winning internet podcast,I'm your host, takara Small, and
the podcast is brought to youby CIRA, the Canadian Internet
Registration Authority, thenonprofit building a trusted
internet for Canadians.
Over the next six weeks, we'regoing to discuss the threat of
(02:02):
misinformation, how and why itspreads and how we can respond.
It's good to question things.
A dose of skepticism is healthyand, in an ideal world, it
should help keep everyone honest.
As a culture, we often elevatepeople who speak truth to power
and we admire those who speakout when everyone thinks they're
(02:24):
crazy.
But history proves them right.
But how do we discern what'strue and what's not when we're
being bombarded with moreinformation than ever before and
so much of it is untrue andmalicious?
Mark Zuckerberg (02:38):
This is an era where some of the biggest social
media platforms have removedtheir fact-checkers.
We're going to get rid offact-checkers and replace them
with community notes similar toX.
a survey carried out by theteam at CIRA found that 51% of
Canadians are concerned aboutartificial intelligence and
misinformation, and deepfakeswere the biggest factors behind
(03:01):
that concern.
It's also bad for our health.
Diseases like measles aremaking a comeback because people
misunderstand vaccines, whilethe rise of online fit
influencers who provide healthadvice they aren't qualified to
give is another growing problem.
It's a worrying time.
We have so much to get into.
(03:23):
To start the conversation, weenlisted a Canadian expert, Sue
Gardner.
Sue is a journalist andcommentator who used to run CBC
online, among many other things.
Nowadays, she acts as aconsultant and advises a number
of organizations.
Sue Gardner (03:41):
There are a lot of different ways to break it down.
I think of things as fallinginto probably five different
buckets, and I would say thefirst one is one that we often
overlook, which is basicallylike scams and cons, right, so
like a very common form ofdisinformation that we don't
talk about.
A lot is like I want to sellyou something and so I'm lying
(04:02):
to you about that thing, right,so I'm running an MLM, or I am
running a crypto scam, or I'mselling fake supplements or some
kind of pseudoscience, medicalcure or whatever.
All of those things are a supercommon form of disinformation.
That kind of gets a bit lost inthe shuffle when we're thinking
more about political stuff,right, so that's number one.
(04:23):
Number two is hoaxes and pranksand jokes and trolling, and so
that is stuff like the Tide PodChallenge right, was originally
a joke on 4chan that said thatteenagers were eating Tide Pods,
and then the media picked it upand then, lo and behold, people
did start to actually eat Tpods, right, so things like that
(04:45):
.
Another one is birds aren'treal, which is the idea that all
birds are governmentsurveillance, um mechanisms,
drones, um, and so that's, youknow, bucket.
Number two is hoaxes and pranksand jokes and trolling.
Bucket number three is hatespeech.
So there are a lot of examplesof that.
You know the Myanmar militaryusing Facebook to spread false
(05:09):
claims that the Rohingya Muslimpeople were terrorists.
Right, the great replacementconspiracy theory, which is the
theory that white people arebeing intentionally replaced by
immigrants in Western countries.
And then you know there was awhole spade a number of years
ago of false stories on Facebookclaiming that Muslim immigrants
(05:29):
were sexually assaulting womenin Germany and in Sweden.
And so all of that ismisinformation, disinformation
being promulgated to foment hateagainst a particular social
group.
Right.
Bucket number four conspiracytheories more generally, more
broadly.
Right, a lot of the COVIDdisinformation fell into this
(05:51):
bucket, like the kind of thingsaying that there are, like
microchips in the vaccines.
A lot of vaccine hesitancy camefrom this.
Qanon very elaborate conspiracytheory.
Pizzagate less elaborate stilla conspiracy theory.
And then I, less elaborate,still a conspiracy theory.
And then I don't know, do youremember the Wayfair trafficking
conspiracy?
Do you remember that?
Takara Small (06:16):
I do.
I remember it because it seemedsuch a random, like
constellation of companies andpeople working together.
Sue Gardner (06:19):
Yes, they are generally elaborate, right, but
Wayfair, and yes, wayfair is theone for me, wayfair is the one
for me.
Wayfair is the one that kind ofbroke me, like I have a hard
time recounting it because it isso ludicrous that it makes my
head hurt, it makes me feelweird, right, like really it
makes me feel kind ofdestabilized.
Wayfair is the one wherealgorithmic pricing, responsive
(06:40):
pricing, made that you know, Imight buy a chest of drawers on
Wayfair, the marketplacefurniture place, and I might buy
.
It might cost $5,000.
And so the conspiracy theorywas that, because dynamic
pricing drove it up to 5k, I wasgoing to get a trafficked child
inside that chest of drawers.
And so the idea was that therewas a massive international
(07:01):
conspiracy to traffic childrenthrough the mechanism of this
furniture selling marketplacewebsite.
So again, that leaves mefeeling kind of wild and, you
know, destabilized.
And then the last category, thefifth category, is what you
might characterize as likerelatively normal propaganda or
(07:21):
political messaging, andprobably the most famous,
relatively recent example ofthat is, in the run-up to the
Iraq war, the US governmentfalsely claiming that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction as ajustification for going into
that war.
Similarly, during Brexit, a lotof stuff, right.
Also a lot of stuff right nowRussia claiming that it is
(07:43):
liberating Ukraine right.
And another fairly recentexample in Canada of this is I
don't know if you remember thevideo that Chris Jeffery Lynn
shared on Twitter of AaronO'Toole when he was head of the
Conservative Party, talkingabout health care.
Do you remember that?
Takara Small (08:01):
No, I think this one escaped me.
Sue Gardner (08:03):
Oh, if you remembered it, you would
remember it, because Twitterpulled it down or perhaps label
it, I can't remember, but shehad shared this video and it was
him talking about healthcare.
It had been edited in a waythat was arguably somewhat
misleading, and so Twitter madethe determination to pull it
down as a result of that.
And so that last bucket, thatlast category, is all the stuff
(08:24):
that kind of has always beenwith us, right?
You know, politicians aretrying to put their messages out
and they are trying to make youbelieve a particular thing and
back and endorse them, and soyou know and their course of
action that they want to take.
And so you know propaganda.
You know your propaganda is mypolitical messaging, my
political messaging is yourpropaganda, right?
(08:44):
And you know your propaganda ismy political messaging, my
political messaging is yourpropaganda, right?
But that's sort of relativelynormal.
People are trying to spin you tomake you believe what they want
you to believe.
So those are the categories.
That's the array of stuff.
And it might also be worthnoting the difference between
disinfo and misinfo.
Is intent, right?
So misinformation is if I sharethe stuff with you and I don't
(09:05):
know it's false, and disinfo isif I share the stuff with you
and I don't know it's false, anddisinfo is when I share the
stuff with you, I know it'sfalse and I'm doing it on
purpose to mislead you okay, sonow I'm curious as to who is
disseminating all of thismisinformation.
Takara Small (09:18):
Where is it coming from?
Sue Gardner (09:20):
yeah, that is such a good question.
It's a question that I don'tthink it's asked enough, right,
because we tend, in the popularimagination, to think of it as
being like Russia.
Right, it is political, hostilestate actors, and that is
certainly true.
And there are, you know, wellelaborated mechanisms, whole
divisions of departments, ofpeople doing stuff, for example,
(09:41):
for Russia.
So that is real and true.
But a lot of this stuff actuallycomes from trolls and
influencers and pranksters andpeople making jokes and people
who are comedians and people whoare satirists.
Right, a lot of it, especiallythe stuff that doesn't originate
(10:02):
as disinfo but ratheroriginates as jokes and pranks
and hoaxes right, it's going tocome from people who just are
trying to be funny or they'retrying to make a splash, they're
trying to make a name forthemselves.
When it comes to whopromulgates, like, who shares
the stuff, it gets shared byprobably a mix of three types of
people.
Celebrities are a really commonsort of vector for it, right,
(10:24):
celebrities drive a mix of threetypes of people.
Celebrities are a really commonsort of vector for it, right,
celebrities drive a lot ofmisinformation, disinformation,
and when I say celebrities, I'mincluding both sort of
conventional, like movie stars,right.
And then also like more modernkind of TikTok, influencers and
people like that, a lot of it isshared by ordinary people,
people like you and me,knowingly or unknowingly sharing
(10:44):
it.
And then the last vector, and Ithink kind of the saddest
vector, is the news media itself.
Right, because the news mediawill.
Frequently they will share it,not understanding that it's
false right, and sometimes theywill share it wanting to debunk
it.
But the actual effect of theirsharing it is to spread it
further, ordinarily, right.
So those are the main ways thatit gets pushed out.
Spread it further, ordinarilyright.
(11:05):
So those are the main ways thatit gets pushed out.
Takara Small (11:08):
Almost all of the pushing out happens on social
media.
Okay, and so then, how doesthis affect us as Canadians,
personally and politically?
If, as you say, some of this isbeing pushed out as jokes or a
hoax and it's unintentionallybeing spread far and wide, it
must have some downstreamconsequences consequences.
Sue Gardner (11:39):
Right, I think it's a bigger issue really than we
give it credit for being,because I think we are seeing it
mainly through the lens offoreign actors interfering in
our democracy, which is real andserious.
But I think that's just a partof what is happening, right?
You'll probably remember thatback in I don't know, like 2014,
2015, 2016, thereabouts, whenwe first started talking a lot
(12:00):
about disinfo, experts reallyliked to talk about how it had
always been with us.
Right, you know, it goes backto the Roman era.
Like, like always throughouthistory, we have, you know,
tried to propagandize andbrainwash each other, and that
is 100% true.
But there has been a real andmassive sea change in the volume
(12:20):
of this stuff, because ourinformation ecosystem used to be
relatively sanitized.
Right, we had gatekeepers whodetermined what was or was not
true, and they acted as a kindof filtration system that kept
the information ecosystem kindof clean.
Right, with the advent of theinternet, that filtration system
(12:41):
has been entirely swept away.
It's not that those peopledon't still exist in those
functions they do, right, thereare still working journalists,
there are still editorial boardsand fact checkers and ombuds
people, but what has changed isthat they're no longer the only
gateway, right, you can nowcompletely sidestep them.
They are not an intermediary.
The new intermediaries are thesocial media platforms, and they
(13:03):
and I always feel like thissounds very mean when I say it
out loud, but it is justfactually true the social media
companies do not have the samecommitment to truth and accuracy
that journalism does have,right, they just it's just not a
value for them, right, it's notin their purview, it's not what
they do.
And so what that means is todayyou have anybody can make stuff
(13:26):
, right, we all have a printingpress, we all have a megaphone.
There is no filtration system,and that means that the whole
information ecosystem system isawash in disinfo and misinfo.
And so that has two, I think,effects, right.
One is on a political level itfurther diminishes already low
(13:47):
trust in elections andinstitutions, the media etc.
And then, I think, on apersonal level, which is
arguably at least as important,right.
I think what it means is thatpeople start to have increasing
difficulty distinguishing factfrom fiction.
Clearly, right, like we have tospend more time sort of
(14:08):
considering is this real, isthis true?
I think that that is.
It's destabilizing for us andit's kind of unsettling for us.
It's destabilizing for us andit's kind of unsettling for us
and I think it's exhaustingbecause it requires us to
maintain a sort of constantstance of like skepticism and
vigilance.
That is kind of tiring right,and I think is probably also
(14:32):
like we don't know yet what'sgoing to happen, how all of this
will play out.
But it seems to me it'sprobably not psychologically
super healthy for us to have tonavigate the information
environment, which is basicallythe environment, right, With
this constant awareness thatpeople are trying to mess with
you, right?
Like that can't be good for usto feel sort of unsafe in that
(14:52):
way all the time, right.
So I think those are some ofthe effects that we're seeing
that way all the time right.
Takara Small (14:57):
So I think those are some of the effects that
we're seeing.
You know, throughout my careerI've talked to a lot of people,
both experts and, you know, justaverage Canadians about how
they feel about misinformation.
They acknowledge it exists andthey often, you know, explain to
(15:18):
me that they feel it's thereason, the primary reason, as
to why there's a growing dividewithin the country.
It's a reason why institutions,sometimes even doctors and
scientists, aren't believed.
Do you think that's a fairassessment or is there too much
blame being placed on this onespecific area?
Sue Gardner (15:31):
Oh, no, no, no, that's 100% accurate, 100% right
.
I mean trust in institutions.
We know from surveys trust ininstitutions has been declining
for decades, right Indemocracies all around the world
, and I assume it's indemocracies, because in
autocracies you never had trustin the system.
Right.
So we have something to lose,right?
(15:53):
So trust in politicians is down, in the courts, in the news
media, in science, in corporateleaders, that is all down.
That seems like, and we oftentalk about it as though it's a
decline of trust in institutions, and I think that's true.
But I am beginning to believe,and I think we are beginning to
(16:15):
understand, that more so than adecline of trust in institutions
, what it really is is a declineof trust in elites, right In
things that are perceived asseparate from the people.
People have begun, had begun,have now lost their faith in the
(16:38):
idea that elites are on theirside, that the system is working
to their advantage, that theyare being prioritized and their
politicians, for example, wantto help them.
Right.
What disinformation does is itcapitalizes on that diminishing
trust and it amplifies it, itexacerbates, it, makes it worse,
right.
So you get claims like theelection was rigged, that
(17:01):
politician is lying, thejournalist is biased, the
experts are lying about facemasks and COVID right?
I think those claims would notwork if the trust was strong in
the first place, right?
And the way disinformationfunctions, like the way that it
gets promulgated through society.
It's opportunistic, right.
(17:22):
In the same way that DonaldTrump is like he will say
something and if it works, hewill say it more.
It's like that, right.
Like if it lands, if itresonates, it will then get
further perpetuated, it will goviral, right?
What that means is that ifpeople firmly believed that the
news media was on their side,for example, and that the news
media was working to advancetheir interests and help them,
(17:44):
then they would not be receptiveto claims like the news media
is in the pocket of JustinTrudeau or whatever.
The claims are right.
And so I feel like it becomes avicious circle.
So there's this lack of trust,which is not unjustified, right.
Like it has reasons.
Disinformation exploits thatlack of trust and trust further
(18:05):
diminishes, and so it becomesthis sort of bad spiral where
things just get worse and worse,this downward spiral.
Takara Small (18:11):
I'm curious, then, how leaders, how people who
work in these institutions, canengender trust, then how can
they build that long-termrelationship if we're now at a
point where people arecapitalizing on this lack of
trust, in this lack of cohesion?
Sue Gardner (18:31):
extremely difficult , right, it's extremely
difficult.
The only you know and I mean Ihave changed my thinking about
this in the past, probably fiveor 10 years, like, I think I
used to believe that the pathback was to reorient yourself
firmly on the side of the people.
So I think, for example, youknow, journalism has become to,
(18:57):
you know, stenographers, topower.
I think journalism would doitself a favor if it were
aligned more with the people, ifit became more of a blue collar
, kind of on the side of theordinary person thing that it
used to be before.
It became more professionalized, more of an elite profession,
more of a sort of you know, citything.
Right, I feel like I used tobelieve that if you
reconstituted yourself in thatkind of a sort of city thing,
right, I feel like I used tobelieve that if you
(19:19):
reconstituted yourself in thatkind of a way, it would work
right and the people would trustyou again.
But I'm not sure I believe thatanymore.
It's been such a long time,there's been such a diminishment
, right, and I find myselfthinking all the time about how
it is so much easier to breakthings than to build them, and
so it takes a long time to earntrust and then you can squander
(19:44):
it.
It can get destroyed in ananosecond, and so I don't know,
right, like I do think the onlyhope there is is to try to
reorient yourself towards thepeople.
So you're inoculating yourselfagainst those criticisms, right,
that you are out of touch andunrepresentative and only
serving power, right, but I'mnot sure anymore that that's
sufficient.
Like it's gone so far that itmay be too late to sort of to
(20:08):
sort of turn back the clock onthe diminished trust that we are
now.
Takara Small (20:13):
Like that is now sort of such a constant feature,
right, such a deep feature ofour world is there something
that media can do to respond tothe very unique and, dare I say,
quite dangerous challenge, thenno I mean media.
Sue Gardner (20:28):
I always think it's funny because journalists
always think journalism willhave the answer.
Right, really, and and and and,no, right, no, you know, like I
, my heart breaks.
I find it funny and also myheart breaks right when I think
about, like the efforts, thekind of efforts that journalism
has made, like the extremelysincere fact-checking efforts.
(20:52):
Right, you know, in the wake of2016, I guess you know how many
fact-checking organizationssprung up, like dozens, hundreds
, maybe hundreds, right, andexisting journalistic
institutions spun up their ownfact-checking things.
And what is the man's name whowas at the Star and now he's at
CNN, who did the fabulous?
Takara Small (21:12):
inventory.
Oh yeah, Is it David Dale?
Sue Gardner (21:16):
Dale, but I don't remember his surname.
That's terrible.
Daniel Dale, daniel Dale,exactly, yeah, and he did those
fabulous, like never ending youknow documentation of all of
Trump's lies, right, there hasbeen so much of that stuff and
that stuff is just completelyuseless, like I love it, of
(21:36):
course, right, but it is uselessBecause you know people who
care, like it's like there's twogroups of people and we don't
see the other group, right, andof course we.
It's a continuum and we travelback and forth ourselves, right,
different moments, we're indifferent camps, but generally
speaking, there's people whocare about facts, right, people
(21:57):
who live in the so-calledreality community and we are
very serious and very earnestabout all this stuff.
Obviously, every journalist isin this camp, right?
These are people who will readthe 10,000-word essay, like
hand-wringing, about the dangersof deep fakes, and we will read
the fact-checking, checkingsites and we will read Daniel
Dale and we are, like, veryconcerned.
(22:20):
But then there's the people whoare receptive to this stuff and
for them it is totally differentand you know, like I, I, I
would, I kind of want to say,but I also hesitate, I kind of
want to say they see this as aform of entertainment.
The reason I hesitate isbecause we also see it as a form
of entertainment.
If we're being honest withourselves, right, like we are
(22:41):
reading the atlantic, we arereading the new york times.
It flatters our sense ofourselves as extremely serious
people engaged in seriousthinking about serious issues.
Right, but the people who arereceptive to disinfo, they are
also enjoying themselves, andwhat I have seen, when you look
at the stuff that they'reconsuming, it's funny, right,
(23:02):
it's meant to be funny, it'smeant to be satire, it's meant
to be political satire, likeremember I can't remember who
said this about Donald Trump.
Way back, somebody said youknow, the question is whether to
take him literally or seriously, or don't take him literally,
but do take him seriously.
Who said that?
Do?
Takara Small (23:20):
you remember I don't, but it's been repeated so
many times now and, honestly,by mostly journalists.
I've found which is interesting.
Oh no, I've found which isinteresting when, when something
happens, you know, journalistswill say you know, you shouldn't
take him literally, justseriously which.
(23:41):
I think flies in the face offact-checking and the level of
trust that listeners and readershave in the journalist who's
conveying this information.
Newscaster (23:48):
Right, right, right, right, and you're right.
Like.
It's not to my credit that I'mlike, I take that.
I thought it was a very goodline.
I do right, right, right andyou're right, like it's not.
It's not to my credit that I'mlike I take that.
I thought it was a very goodline.
I do right.
Oh, I do too, and it's it's.
Takara Small (23:58):
I think it speaks to our current reality too right
, where a line like that, whichsounds like doublespeak in some
ways, has been treated as likewell, of course, like that's
just.
That's part of the normal waywe talk about politics now.
Sue Gardner (24:13):
Well, and I think it's kind of real and true,
right, because when I thinkabout, when I think about the
people who are consuming andenjoying and and and further
sharing disinfo, I feel likethey are not taking it literally
, like, like they're not.
They don't believe that.
I don't know.
You know, most people don'tbelieve that children are being
sold in wardrobes and that birdsare drones and blah, blah, blah
(24:39):
, but they believe in the spiritof it.
The spirit of it is true tothem and I think that that just
means it's like they're playinga different game.
So our fact-checking areextremely serious.
Point-by-point rebuttals.
You know, like number one, youcan't keep up, right, it's much
easier to say a bunch ofnonsense than to, you know,
(25:00):
point by point, rebut a bunch ofnonsense.
But also, too, it just seemskind of humorless and pointless,
right, because the stuff isn'tintended, I don't think, to be
literally true, it's intended tobe metaphorically true, it's
true on a vibes level, right?
This is how I feel about things, right, and I find it funny,
you know, and I feel like so.
So, so, you know, you askedabout the Canadian media
(25:21):
response to this stuff and I, II can't see if you are a person
who does not trust the Canadiannews media, news media in
general.
I cannot see how the news mediacan be part of the solution
when you see it as part of theproblem.
Like you don't care what theythink, right, you could care
less what they are saying, bydefinition, you are not
(25:43):
listening to them.
You are listening to somethingelse.
You know it's a result ofalienation.
They're just alienated, right?
Like all the surveys, all thestudies show the exact same
thing, right?
They show that people believethe system is broken.
It does not have their back.
Elites are lying to them.
It's all a con, it's all atrick, right, it's all a trap.
That's how they feel and theyhave real reasons for feeling
(26:05):
that way, right, and you know, Imean, I think we're living in a
time where, like the old array,right was the old spectrum, the
old continuum was left to right, and I feel like that's not it
at all anymore.
And I feel like the longer wespend trying to think that
that's still the division, theless smart we can, be right,
(26:27):
like, I feel like the divisionis elite.
And then people, that's thedivision, right.
And so if you let yourself getput in the category of elite,
the people.
That's the division, right.
And so if you let yourself getput in the category of elite,
the people will hate you like.
I think it's that simple, right, because that's how they feel
about everything.
They just feel.
Takara Small (26:42):
They feel hoodwinked and conned and taken
for a ride that was Sue Gardnerkicking off our first episode of
the season.
Next week we're going to lookat how misinformation and
disinformation spreads and whatare the forces behind it.
So things that really get atour base emotions of anger,
anxiety, fear those are thekinds of information that we are
(27:04):
most likely to spread, and sodifferent groups know this and
they will use that as a way topush this information.
Keep an eye out for that nextweek and if you're enjoying the
podcast, then please leave us areview, as it really helps the
show.
You can reach me @Takara Small,on Blue Sky Social and
Instagram, or you can email usat podcast@ cira.
(27:26):
ca.
Thanks for listening and wewill see you again next week,
guys.
We've all heard the old saying a lie can travel
halfway around the world, whilethe truth is still putting on
its shoes.
But we've reached new levelsMisinformation, disinformation,
mal-information, mistruths Callit what you like.
Never before have we seen lyingon this scale.
(00:25):
They are patently false.
Yet disinformation campaignsand conspiracy theories.
Newscaster (00:33):
Amplifying harmful health misinformation on his top
podcast.
Justin Trudeau (00:37):
False claims about so-called crisis actors.
Recent studies show thatmisinformation on COVID has cost
hundreds of millions of dollarsand thousands of lives.
Who knows what to believeanymore.
Being able to discern what'strue or false is an increasingly
difficult skill, but it's onewe all have to get good at, and
(01:01):
quickly.
Misinformation is beingcirculated on an industrial
scale, and it's creating hugeproblems for how society
functions.
Sue Gardner (01:10):
There has been a real and massive sea change in
the volume of this stuff.
Takara Small (01:15):
Coordinated campaigns of disinformation and
misinformation are impactingpublic health, democracy and
even hurting personalrelationships.
So what are the forces behindall of this and how are we
supposed to navigate this newage of digital dishonesty?
Well, we're here to hold yourhand through it all.
(01:39):
On season three of what's UpWith the Internet, canada's
award-winning internet podcast,I'm your host, takara Small, and
the podcast is brought to youby CIRA, the Canadian Internet
Registration Authority, thenonprofit building a trusted
internet for Canadians.
Over the next six weeks, we'regoing to discuss the threat of
(02:02):
misinformation, how and why itspreads and how we can respond.
It's good to question things.
A dose of skepticism is healthyand, in an ideal world, it
should help keep everyone honest.
As a culture, we often elevatepeople who speak truth to power
and we admire those who speakout when everyone thinks they're
(02:24):
crazy.
But history proves them right.
But how do we discern what'strue and what's not when we're
being bombarded with moreinformation than ever before and
so much of it is untrue andmalicious?
Mark Zuckerberg (02:38):
This is an era where some of the biggest social
media platforms have removedtheir fact-checkers.
We're going to get rid offact-checkers and replace them
with community notes similar toX.
a survey carried out by theteam at CIRA found that 51% of
Canadians are concerned aboutartificial intelligence and
misinformation, and deepfakeswere the biggest factors behind
(03:01):
that concern.
It's also bad for our health.
Diseases like measles aremaking a comeback because people
misunderstand vaccines, whilethe rise of online fit
influencers who provide healthadvice they aren't qualified to
give is another growing problem.
It's a worrying time.
We have so much to get into.
(03:23):
To start the conversation, weenlisted a Canadian expert, Sue
Gardner.
Sue is a journalist andcommentator who used to run CBC
online, among many other things.
Nowadays, she acts as aconsultant and advises a number
of organizations.
Sue Gardner (03:41):
There are a lot of different ways to break it down.
I think of things as fallinginto probably five different
buckets, and I would say thefirst one is one that we often
overlook, which is basicallylike scams and cons, right, so
like a very common form ofdisinformation that we don't
talk about.
A lot is like I want to sellyou something and so I'm lying
(04:02):
to you about that thing, right,so I'm running an MLM, or I am
running a crypto scam, or I'mselling fake supplements or some
kind of pseudoscience, medicalcure or whatever.
All of those things are a supercommon form of disinformation.
That kind of gets a bit lost inthe shuffle when we're thinking
more about political stuff,right, so that's number one.
(04:23):
Number two is hoaxes and pranksand jokes and trolling, and so
that is stuff like the Tide PodChallenge right, was originally
a joke on 4chan that said thatteenagers were eating Tide Pods,
and then the media picked it upand then, lo and behold, people
did start to actually eat Tpods, right, so things like that
(04:45):
.
Another one is birds aren'treal, which is the idea that all
birds are governmentsurveillance, um mechanisms,
drones, um, and so that's, youknow, bucket.
Number two is hoaxes and pranksand jokes and trolling.
Bucket number three is hatespeech.
So there are a lot of examplesof that.
You know the Myanmar militaryusing Facebook to spread false
(05:09):
claims that the Rohingya Muslimpeople were terrorists.
Right, the great replacementconspiracy theory, which is the
theory that white people arebeing intentionally replaced by
immigrants in Western countries.
And then you know there was awhole spade a number of years
ago of false stories on Facebookclaiming that Muslim immigrants
(05:29):
were sexually assaulting womenin Germany and in Sweden.
And so all of that ismisinformation, disinformation
being promulgated to foment hateagainst a particular social
group.
Right.
Bucket number four conspiracytheories more generally, more
broadly.
Right, a lot of the COVIDdisinformation fell into this
(05:51):
bucket, like the kind of thingsaying that there are, like
microchips in the vaccines.
A lot of vaccine hesitancy camefrom this.
Qanon very elaborate conspiracytheory.
Pizzagate less elaborate stilla conspiracy theory.
And then I, less elaborate,still a conspiracy theory.
And then I don't know, do youremember the Wayfair trafficking
conspiracy?
Do you remember that?
Takara Small (06:16):
I do.
I remember it because it seemedsuch a random, like
constellation of companies andpeople working together.
Sue Gardner (06:19):
Yes, they are generally elaborate, right, but
Wayfair, and yes, wayfair is theone for me, wayfair is the one
for me.
Wayfair is the one that kind ofbroke me, like I have a hard
time recounting it because it isso ludicrous that it makes my
head hurt, it makes me feelweird, right, like really it
makes me feel kind ofdestabilized.
Wayfair is the one wherealgorithmic pricing, responsive
(06:40):
pricing, made that you know, Imight buy a chest of drawers on
Wayfair, the marketplacefurniture place, and I might buy
.
It might cost $5,000.
And so the conspiracy theorywas that, because dynamic
pricing drove it up to 5k, I wasgoing to get a trafficked child
inside that chest of drawers.
And so the idea was that therewas a massive international
(07:01):
conspiracy to traffic childrenthrough the mechanism of this
furniture selling marketplacewebsite.
So again, that leaves mefeeling kind of wild and, you
know, destabilized.
And then the last category, thefifth category, is what you
might characterize as likerelatively normal propaganda or
(07:21):
political messaging, andprobably the most famous,
relatively recent example ofthat is, in the run-up to the
Iraq war, the US governmentfalsely claiming that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction as ajustification for going into
that war.
Similarly, during Brexit, a lotof stuff, right.
Also a lot of stuff right nowRussia claiming that it is
(07:43):
liberating Ukraine right.
And another fairly recentexample in Canada of this is I
don't know if you remember thevideo that Chris Jeffery Lynn
shared on Twitter of AaronO'Toole when he was head of the
Conservative Party, talkingabout health care.
Do you remember that?
Takara Small (08:01):
No, I think this one escaped me.
Sue Gardner (08:03):
Oh, if you remembered it, you would
remember it, because Twitterpulled it down or perhaps label
it, I can't remember, but shehad shared this video and it was
him talking about healthcare.
It had been edited in a waythat was arguably somewhat
misleading, and so Twitter madethe determination to pull it
down as a result of that.
And so that last bucket, thatlast category, is all the stuff
(08:24):
that kind of has always beenwith us, right?
You know, politicians aretrying to put their messages out
and they are trying to make youbelieve a particular thing and
back and endorse them, and soyou know and their course of
action that they want to take.
And so you know propaganda.
You know your propaganda is mypolitical messaging, my
political messaging is yourpropaganda, right?
(08:44):
And you know your propaganda ismy political messaging, my
political messaging is yourpropaganda, right?
But that's sort of relativelynormal.
People are trying to spin you tomake you believe what they want
you to believe.
So those are the categories.
That's the array of stuff.
And it might also be worthnoting the difference between
disinfo and misinfo.
Is intent, right?
So misinformation is if I sharethe stuff with you and I don't
(09:05):
know it's false, and disinfo isif I share the stuff with you
and I don't know it's false, anddisinfo is when I share the
stuff with you, I know it'sfalse and I'm doing it on
purpose to mislead you okay, sonow I'm curious as to who is
disseminating all of thismisinformation.
Takara Small (09:18):
Where is it coming from?
Sue Gardner (09:20):
yeah, that is such a good question.
It's a question that I don'tthink it's asked enough, right,
because we tend, in the popularimagination, to think of it as
being like Russia.
Right, it is political, hostilestate actors, and that is
certainly true.
And there are, you know, wellelaborated mechanisms, whole
divisions of departments, ofpeople doing stuff, for example,
(09:41):
for Russia.
So that is real and true.
But a lot of this stuff actuallycomes from trolls and
influencers and pranksters andpeople making jokes and people
who are comedians and people whoare satirists.
Right, a lot of it, especiallythe stuff that doesn't originate
(10:02):
as disinfo but ratheroriginates as jokes and pranks
and hoaxes right, it's going tocome from people who just are
trying to be funny or they'retrying to make a splash, they're
trying to make a name forthemselves.
When it comes to whopromulgates, like, who shares
the stuff, it gets shared byprobably a mix of three types of
people.
Celebrities are a really commonsort of vector for it, right,
(10:24):
celebrities drive a mix of threetypes of people.
Celebrities are a really commonsort of vector for it, right,
celebrities drive a lot ofmisinformation, disinformation,
and when I say celebrities, I'mincluding both sort of
conventional, like movie stars,right.
And then also like more modernkind of TikTok, influencers and
people like that, a lot of it isshared by ordinary people,
people like you and me,knowingly or unknowingly sharing
(10:44):
it.
And then the last vector, and Ithink kind of the saddest
vector, is the news media itself.
Right, because the news mediawill.
Frequently they will share it,not understanding that it's
false right, and sometimes theywill share it wanting to debunk
it.
But the actual effect of theirsharing it is to spread it
further, ordinarily, right.
So those are the main ways thatit gets pushed out.
Spread it further, ordinarilyright.
(11:05):
So those are the main ways thatit gets pushed out.
Takara Small (11:08):
Almost all of the pushing out happens on social
media.
Okay, and so then, how doesthis affect us as Canadians,
personally and politically?
If, as you say, some of this isbeing pushed out as jokes or a
hoax and it's unintentionallybeing spread far and wide, it
must have some downstreamconsequences consequences.
Sue Gardner (11:39):
Right, I think it's a bigger issue really than we
give it credit for being,because I think we are seeing it
mainly through the lens offoreign actors interfering in
our democracy, which is real andserious.
But I think that's just a partof what is happening, right?
You'll probably remember thatback in I don't know, like 2014,
2015, 2016, thereabouts, whenwe first started talking a lot
(12:00):
about disinfo, experts reallyliked to talk about how it had
always been with us.
Right, you know, it goes backto the Roman era.
Like, like always throughouthistory, we have, you know,
tried to propagandize andbrainwash each other, and that
is 100% true.
But there has been a real andmassive sea change in the volume
(12:20):
of this stuff, because ourinformation ecosystem used to be
relatively sanitized.
Right, we had gatekeepers whodetermined what was or was not
true, and they acted as a kindof filtration system that kept
the information ecosystem kindof clean.
Right, with the advent of theinternet, that filtration system
(12:41):
has been entirely swept away.
It's not that those peopledon't still exist in those
functions they do, right, thereare still working journalists,
there are still editorial boardsand fact checkers and ombuds
people, but what has changed isthat they're no longer the only
gateway, right, you can nowcompletely sidestep them.
They are not an intermediary.
The new intermediaries are thesocial media platforms, and they
(13:03):
and I always feel like thissounds very mean when I say it
out loud, but it is justfactually true the social media
companies do not have the samecommitment to truth and accuracy
that journalism does have,right, they just it's just not a
value for them, right, it's notin their purview, it's not what
they do.
And so what that means is todayyou have anybody can make stuff
(13:26):
, right, we all have a printingpress, we all have a megaphone.
There is no filtration system,and that means that the whole
information ecosystem system isawash in disinfo and misinfo.
And so that has two, I think,effects, right.
One is on a political level itfurther diminishes already low
(13:47):
trust in elections andinstitutions, the media etc.
And then, I think, on apersonal level, which is
arguably at least as important,right.
I think what it means is thatpeople start to have increasing
difficulty distinguishing factfrom fiction.
Clearly, right, like we have tospend more time sort of
(14:08):
considering is this real, isthis true?
I think that that is.
It's destabilizing for us andit's kind of unsettling for us.
It's destabilizing for us andit's kind of unsettling for us
and I think it's exhaustingbecause it requires us to
maintain a sort of constantstance of like skepticism and
vigilance.
That is kind of tiring right,and I think is probably also
(14:32):
like we don't know yet what'sgoing to happen, how all of this
will play out.
But it seems to me it'sprobably not psychologically
super healthy for us to have tonavigate the information
environment, which is basicallythe environment, right, With
this constant awareness thatpeople are trying to mess with
you, right?
Like that can't be good for usto feel sort of unsafe in that
(14:52):
way all the time, right.
So I think those are some ofthe effects that we're seeing
that way all the time right.
Takara Small (14:57):
So I think those are some of the effects that
we're seeing.
You know, throughout my careerI've talked to a lot of people,
both experts and, you know, justaverage Canadians about how
they feel about misinformation.
They acknowledge it exists andthey often, you know, explain to
(15:18):
me that they feel it's thereason, the primary reason, as
to why there's a growing dividewithin the country.
It's a reason why institutions,sometimes even doctors and
scientists, aren't believed.
Do you think that's a fairassessment or is there too much
blame being placed on this onespecific area?
Sue Gardner (15:31):
Oh, no, no, no, that's 100% accurate, 100% right
.
I mean trust in institutions.
We know from surveys trust ininstitutions has been declining
for decades, right Indemocracies all around the world
, and I assume it's indemocracies, because in
autocracies you never had trustin the system.
Right.
So we have something to lose,right?
(15:53):
So trust in politicians is down, in the courts, in the news
media, in science, in corporateleaders, that is all down.
That seems like, and we oftentalk about it as though it's a
decline of trust in institutions, and I think that's true.
But I am beginning to believe,and I think we are beginning to
(16:15):
understand, that more so than adecline of trust in institutions
, what it really is is a declineof trust in elites, right In
things that are perceived asseparate from the people.
People have begun, had begun,have now lost their faith in the
(16:38):
idea that elites are on theirside, that the system is working
to their advantage, that theyare being prioritized and their
politicians, for example, wantto help them.
Right.
What disinformation does is itcapitalizes on that diminishing
trust and it amplifies it, itexacerbates, it, makes it worse,
right.
So you get claims like theelection was rigged, that
(17:01):
politician is lying, thejournalist is biased, the
experts are lying about facemasks and COVID right?
I think those claims would notwork if the trust was strong in
the first place, right?
And the way disinformationfunctions, like the way that it
gets promulgated through society.
It's opportunistic, right.
(17:22):
In the same way that DonaldTrump is like he will say
something and if it works, hewill say it more.
It's like that, right.
Like if it lands, if itresonates, it will then get
further perpetuated, it will goviral, right?
What that means is that ifpeople firmly believed that the
news media was on their side,for example, and that the news
media was working to advancetheir interests and help them,
(17:44):
then they would not be receptiveto claims like the news media
is in the pocket of JustinTrudeau or whatever.
The claims are right.
And so I feel like it becomes avicious circle.
So there's this lack of trust,which is not unjustified, right.
Like it has reasons.
Disinformation exploits thatlack of trust and trust further
(18:05):
diminishes, and so it becomesthis sort of bad spiral where
things just get worse and worse,this downward spiral.
Takara Small (18:11):
I'm curious, then, how leaders, how people who
work in these institutions, canengender trust, then how can
they build that long-termrelationship if we're now at a
point where people arecapitalizing on this lack of
trust, in this lack of cohesion?
Sue Gardner (18:31):
extremely difficult , right, it's extremely
difficult.
The only you know and I mean Ihave changed my thinking about
this in the past, probably fiveor 10 years, like, I think I
used to believe that the pathback was to reorient yourself
firmly on the side of the people.
So I think, for example, youknow, journalism has become to,
(18:57):
you know, stenographers, topower.
I think journalism would doitself a favor if it were
aligned more with the people, ifit became more of a blue collar
, kind of on the side of theordinary person thing that it
used to be before.
It became more professionalized, more of an elite profession,
more of a sort of you know, citything.
Right, I feel like I used tobelieve that if you
reconstituted yourself in thatkind of a sort of city thing,
right, I feel like I used tobelieve that if you
(19:19):
reconstituted yourself in thatkind of a way, it would work
right and the people would trustyou again.
But I'm not sure I believe thatanymore.
It's been such a long time,there's been such a diminishment
, right, and I find myselfthinking all the time about how
it is so much easier to breakthings than to build them, and
so it takes a long time to earntrust and then you can squander
(19:44):
it.
It can get destroyed in ananosecond, and so I don't know,
right, like I do think the onlyhope there is is to try to
reorient yourself towards thepeople.
So you're inoculating yourselfagainst those criticisms, right,
that you are out of touch andunrepresentative and only
serving power, right, but I'mnot sure anymore that that's
sufficient.
Like it's gone so far that itmay be too late to sort of to
(20:08):
sort of turn back the clock onthe diminished trust that we are
now.
Takara Small (20:13):
Like that is now sort of such a constant feature,
right, such a deep feature ofour world is there something
that media can do to respond tothe very unique and, dare I say,
quite dangerous challenge, thenno I mean media.
Sue Gardner (20:28):
I always think it's funny because journalists
always think journalism willhave the answer.
Right, really, and and and and,no, right, no, you know, like I
, my heart breaks.
I find it funny and also myheart breaks right when I think
about, like the efforts, thekind of efforts that journalism
has made, like the extremelysincere fact-checking efforts.
(20:52):
Right, you know, in the wake of2016, I guess you know how many
fact-checking organizationssprung up, like dozens, hundreds
, maybe hundreds, right, andexisting journalistic
institutions spun up their ownfact-checking things.
And what is the man's name whowas at the Star and now he's at
CNN, who did the fabulous?
Takara Small (21:12):
inventory.
Oh yeah, Is it David Dale?
Sue Gardner (21:16):
Dale, but I don't remember his surname.
That's terrible.
Daniel Dale, daniel Dale,exactly, yeah, and he did those
fabulous, like never ending youknow documentation of all of
Trump's lies, right, there hasbeen so much of that stuff and
that stuff is just completelyuseless, like I love it, of
(21:36):
course, right, but it is uselessBecause you know people who
care, like it's like there's twogroups of people and we don't
see the other group, right, andof course we.
It's a continuum and we travelback and forth ourselves, right,
different moments, we're indifferent camps, but generally
speaking, there's people whocare about facts, right, people
(21:57):
who live in the so-calledreality community and we are
very serious and very earnestabout all this stuff.
Obviously, every journalist isin this camp, right?
These are people who will readthe 10,000-word essay, like
hand-wringing, about the dangersof deep fakes, and we will read
the fact-checking, checkingsites and we will read Daniel
Dale and we are, like, veryconcerned.
(22:20):
But then there's the people whoare receptive to this stuff and
for them it is totally differentand you know, like I, I, I
would, I kind of want to say,but I also hesitate, I kind of
want to say they see this as aform of entertainment.
The reason I hesitate isbecause we also see it as a form
of entertainment.
If we're being honest withourselves, right, like we are
(22:41):
reading the atlantic, we arereading the new york times.
It flatters our sense ofourselves as extremely serious
people engaged in seriousthinking about serious issues.
Right, but the people who arereceptive to disinfo, they are
also enjoying themselves, andwhat I have seen, when you look
at the stuff that they'reconsuming, it's funny, right,
(23:02):
it's meant to be funny, it'smeant to be satire, it's meant
to be political satire, likeremember I can't remember who
said this about Donald Trump.
Way back, somebody said youknow, the question is whether to
take him literally or seriously, or don't take him literally,
but do take him seriously.
Who said that?
Do?
Takara Small (23:20):
you remember I don't, but it's been repeated so
many times now and, honestly,by mostly journalists.
I've found which is interesting.
Oh no, I've found which isinteresting when, when something
happens, you know, journalistswill say you know, you shouldn't
take him literally, justseriously which.
(23:41):
I think flies in the face offact-checking and the level of
trust that listeners and readershave in the journalist who's
conveying this information.
Newscaster (23:48):
Right, right, right, right, and you're right.
Like.
It's not to my credit that I'mlike, I take that.
I thought it was a very goodline.
I do right, right, right andyou're right, like it's not.
It's not to my credit that I'mlike I take that.
I thought it was a very goodline.
I do right.
Oh, I do too, and it's it's.
Takara Small (23:58):
I think it speaks to our current reality too right
, where a line like that, whichsounds like doublespeak in some
ways, has been treated as likewell, of course, like that's
just.
That's part of the normal waywe talk about politics now.
Sue Gardner (24:13):
Well, and I think it's kind of real and true,
right, because when I thinkabout, when I think about the
people who are consuming andenjoying and and and further
sharing disinfo, I feel likethey are not taking it literally
, like, like they're not.
They don't believe that.
I don't know.
You know, most people don'tbelieve that children are being
sold in wardrobes and that birdsare drones and blah, blah, blah
(24:39):
, but they believe in the spiritof it.
The spirit of it is true tothem and I think that that just
means it's like they're playinga different game.
So our fact-checking areextremely serious.
Point-by-point rebuttals.
You know, like number one, youcan't keep up, right, it's much
easier to say a bunch ofnonsense than to, you know,
(25:00):
point by point, rebut a bunch ofnonsense.
But also, too, it just seemskind of humorless and pointless,
right, because the stuff isn'tintended, I don't think, to be
literally true, it's intended tobe metaphorically true, it's
true on a vibes level, right?
This is how I feel about things, right, and I find it funny,
you know, and I feel like so.
So, so, you know, you askedabout the Canadian media
(25:21):
response to this stuff and I, II can't see if you are a person
who does not trust the Canadiannews media, news media in
general.
I cannot see how the news mediacan be part of the solution
when you see it as part of theproblem.
Like you don't care what theythink, right, you could care
less what they are saying, bydefinition, you are not
(25:43):
listening to them.
You are listening to somethingelse.
You know it's a result ofalienation.
They're just alienated, right?
Like all the surveys, all thestudies show the exact same
thing, right?
They show that people believethe system is broken.
It does not have their back.
Elites are lying to them.
It's all a con, it's all atrick, right, it's all a trap.
That's how they feel and theyhave real reasons for feeling
(26:05):
that way, right, and you know, Imean, I think we're living in a
time where, like the old array,right was the old spectrum, the
old continuum was left to right, and I feel like that's not it
at all anymore.
And I feel like the longer wespend trying to think that
that's still the division, theless smart we can, be right,
(26:27):
like, I feel like the divisionis elite.
And then people, that's thedivision, right.
And so if you let yourself getput in the category of elite,
the people.
That's the division, right.
And so if you let yourself getput in the category of elite,
the people will hate you like.
I think it's that simple, right, because that's how they feel
about everything.
They just feel.
Takara Small (26:42):
They feel hoodwinked and conned and taken
for a ride that was Sue Gardnerkicking off our first episode of
the season.
Next week we're going to lookat how misinformation and
disinformation spreads and whatare the forces behind it.
So things that really get atour base emotions of anger,
anxiety, fear those are thekinds of information that we are
(27:04):
most likely to spread, and sodifferent groups know this and
they will use that as a way topush this information.
Keep an eye out for that nextweek and if you're enjoying the
podcast, then please leave us areview, as it really helps the
show.
You can reach me @Takara Small,on Blue Sky Social and
Instagram, or you can email usat podcast@ cira.
(27:26):
ca.
Thanks for listening and wewill see you again next week,
guys.
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