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Speaker 1

00:00

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ For our main story tonight, we're gonna talk about the internet. It's a magical place where you can find communities of like-minded individuals, like, for instance, the TikToker who created a charming video of things narrowly fitting into tight spaces, something that this exceedingly British woman was a big fan of.

Speaker 2

00:20

Hi, here we go. Oh, that went nice. That literally fit perfectly.

Speaker 2

00:25

Oh, that's nice. Oh, bloody hell. A bit close for comfort, that. Stressing me out a bit, but that were nice.

Speaker 3

00:36

Oh, go on.

Speaker 2

00:38

Oh, yes, go on. How do you find that all these things fit, do you know what I mean? Like, do you just sit in your house and just see if things fit in our holes.

Speaker 1

00:49

You know what? She's asking a legitimate question there, and I do think that the answer is, yes. But sadly, our story isn't gonna be about the fun side of the Internet tonight.

Speaker 1

00:58

It's gonna be about the rampant misinformation on it. Something that we've covered multiple times before, from Alex Jones, to vaccine misinformation, to conspiracy theories. But tonight, we're gonna be looking specifically at misinformation that spreads among immigrant diaspora communities. Basically, instead of stuff like this Facebook post in English titled, The fake vaccination of Kamala Harris, which incidentally, Facebook has flagged as false information, we'd be looking at stuff like this post in Spanish featuring the exact same video, which as of taping, has no such warning.

Speaker 1

01:26

And that actually isn't that surprising, when you consider that According to the recent Facebook Files expose, while more than 90 percent of Facebook's monthly users are outside the U.S. And Canada, when it comes to the hours the company spends on monitoring misinformation, last year, only 13 percent were spent on content from outside the U.S. So it seems that Facebook's adopted the same general attitude to misinformation that the Oscars took toward best pictures for the first 90 years of its existence. Basically, if it doesn't happen in English, it doesn't fundamentally matter.

Speaker 1

01:58

And the spread of misinformation has real consequences. When a reporter recently tried to figure out why vaccination rates among Latino communities in California's Central Valley remain low, 1 woman explained her reluctance like this.

Speaker 4

02:15

I've heard of this doctor. I've seen him in documentaries. He tells us that the virus is curable.

Speaker 4

02:22

This is the doctor. Look, my name is Doctor. But the most important thing is that for my people, El Salvador, the answer is no. We don't need to get the COVID vaccine.

Speaker 4

02:31

How did you get this video? My mom sent it to me. Through what media? Through Facebook.

Speaker 4

02:39

Why do you choose to believe this doctor and not a doctor like Dr. Fauci? I've never seen Dr. Fauci.

Speaker 4

02:45

You've never seen him? No.

Speaker 1

02:48

Yeah, that's not great, is it? And it's a pretty good reminder of how, thanks to social media, it is possible to silo yourself off and have very different experiences of living in America, because she was aware of a doctor from El Salvador peddling bullshit COVID cures, but had never heard of Dr. Fauci.

Speaker 1

03:04

And on that point, I honestly kind of envy her. Whatever you think about Fauci, I think we can all agree

Speaker 5

03:10

it would have been great to have

Speaker 1

03:11

seen significantly less of him over the last year and a half. That woman will never know the dystopian hell of seeing Fauci superimposed over a votive candle, or hearing people refer to the vaccine as a Fauci-ouchie. She enjoys it in a piece I will never know.

Speaker 1

03:28

And look, we clearly haven't remotely figured out what to do with English language misinformation yet, as proven by the fact that when I say the words horse dewormer or the letter Q, you know exactly what I'm referring to. But while I know it is hard to imagine that this situation could be worse, when it comes to non-English language misinformation, It honestly is. So tonight, let's talk about misinformation in diaspora communities, how easily it can be spread, and what can be done about it. Let's start with the fact that while some misinformation is basically the same in other languages, in other cases, it taps into culturally specific interests or fears.

Speaker 1

04:03

For instance, communities with lived experience under communist or socialist regimes are often targeted with misinformation that tries to stoke fears about socialism. In fact, Joe Biden's underperformance in majority Latino areas in Florida may have had a lot to do with the fact that before the election, Cuban communities were absolutely inundated by false claims like this.

Speaker 6

04:21

For the past few months, many Hispanic American voters have seen reports and images trying to tie Joe Biden to socialism. For instance, this photo has been floating around on social media. It claims to be Jill Biden next to Fidel Castro.

Speaker 6

04:36

But in fact, this is false. It's actually a photo of late Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and his wife, Jacqueline Beer.

Speaker 1

04:45

Okay, that photo is clearly not Jill Biden, and that is definitely not Joe Biden. Although it looks a lot more like him than this animatronic version at Disney World's Hall of Presidents does. What is going on there?

Speaker 1

04:57

That looks like what would happen if an elderly Anderson Cooper got a facelift from a plastic surgeon without a medical license. And sometimes the spread of misinformation is exacerbated by the fact that for many diaspora communities here in the United States, there just aren't many alternatives in their own languages. For many older Vietnamese-Americans, there is such a vacuum of credible news channels that broadcast in Vietnamese, that many turn to YouTube for their news, with certain channels on in their houses 24-7. 1 popular host based here in the United States is Nguy Vu, who brands himself King Radio.

Speaker 1

05:30

He's basically a Vietnamese Alex Jones, as you can see in rants like these.

Speaker 7

05:35

China completely has control of Biden. The whole situation with Hunter Biden's laptop and the trove of data it contains, I think Xi Jinping has got his hands on all of it. George Soros was part of the financial plot to overthrow the Trump administration.

Speaker 7

05:53

Why are we still being forced to wear masks? Masks are killing people.

Speaker 1

06:00

If you're

Speaker 7

06:00

in a state that gives you the right to not wear a mask, and then you enter someone's house but they try to make you wear 1, tell them, fuck you.

Speaker 1

06:07

Fuck you! I mean, you can see where the Alex Jones comparisons come from. Both have voices that sound like bones going through

Speaker 5

06:15

a wood chipper, both have

Speaker 1

06:16

an inability to control the volume of said voices, and both have sets clearly inspired by a Windows 95 screensaver. Also, they both seem to have the same business model, with King Radio selling his audience Viagra, medications, and beauty creams that he claims are made by his cousin, which should be a huge red flag. Unless his cousin is named Steve Klinik.

Speaker 1

06:37

I do not want any creams from that individual. But again, while Alex Jones has been removed from YouTube for spreading misinformation, King Radio is still going strong on the platform, despite the fact you just heard him say, masks are killing people, which clearly violates YouTube's ban on claims that wearing a mask is dangerous. And what I guess this means is, Alex Jones could probably find his way back onto YouTube if he could just complete a Rosetta Stone course in Vietnamese. And as bad as Facebook and YouTube are, and they are screamingly, screamingly bad, at least in theory, they can be monitored.

Speaker 1

07:14

But there is another way misinformation spreads That's actually invisible to most people, and unfortunately, also happens to be 1 of the most popular tools of communication among immigrant communities, and that is private messaging apps. The biggest by far is WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, which is massive all over the world. So much so, it has become part of many people's daily routine. In India, sending good morning messages on WhatsApp is incredibly popular, meaning millions of people wake up every day to relatives having sent them 1 of these, or even a video like this.

Speaker 1

07:48

♪ ♪ -♪♪ -♪♪ I will say, that is an aggressively pleasant way to wake up.

Speaker 5

08:07

When we came across

Speaker 1

08:08

that message uploaded to YouTube, the top comment on it was simply, -"Nice." Which is pretty striking. Nothing else on that platform has a response that wholesome. You just know the American version of good morning would have a top comment like, you know who had a shit morning?

Speaker 1

08:23

Harambe. Rest in peace, king. But it's not just WhatsApp. Certain communities have their own preferred app.

Speaker 1

08:30

Korean immigrants have KakaoTalk, while more recent Chinese immigrants use WeChat. And if you are not on these apps, it can be hard to understand just how central they are to people's lives.

Speaker 8

08:41

This tune and loading screen are instantly recognizable to over 1 billion people around the world. In China, where most Western social media is banned, WeChat is essential. People use it to text each other, order food, hail rides, and pay for things.

Speaker 8

08:59

Outside of China, the diaspora uses it to connect with fellow Chinese speakers and issues in the country they're living in.

Speaker 1

09:06

Exactly. Communication, food orders, travel, payment, everything all in 1 app. That is so much more efficient than the U.S.-based model where you have 1 app to convince you everyone's having a better time than you. 1 that functions as an endlessly refreshing fury generator.

Speaker 1

09:20

1 for pretending you'll meditate 1 day. 1 that lets you pay too much for fast food. 1 for horny mistakes. And 1 that simply lets you know that you're very old and the world no longer belongs to you.

Speaker 1

09:29

So, I guess, in a way, kudos to WeChat for streamlining our shared digital nightmare into 1 convenient place. So, these apps are a cheap and ubiquitous way to allow people to stay in touch with family and friends, and also get news and share information in their home languages, which is obviously very appealing. Unfortunately, they're also a huge vector for misinformation.

Speaker 9

09:53

There is actually a saying in the Latino community, in the Venezuelan and Cuban communities, about la tia del WhatsApp. It's the aunt that goes on WhatsApp and receives any type of conspiracy theory and forwards it to all her contacts. We all have somebody in our family like that.

Speaker 1

10:08

Oh, yeah, we do. And it is almost comforting to know that regardless of background, every single family has 1 member that when anyone gets a message from them, the first response is to go, -"Oh,

Speaker 5

10:20

shit, what now?" -$HIT! It is a

Speaker 1

10:22

truly universal experience. And there are particular reasons these apps have become especially fertile grounds for misinformation. For instance, in many countries, Facebook, which remember, owns WhatsApp, has partnered with mobile phone carriers to make accessing its services a lot cheaper than accessing the rest of the Internet.

Speaker 1

10:41

So, misinformation can spread far and wide without the same ability to check it. In Brazil, a broadband connection can cost up to 15 percent of a household's income, essentially making fact-checking too expensive for the average Brazilian, which is a truly terrifying thought. And WeChat has its own features that make sourcing harder to follow, because it has a function for users to set themselves up as what's known as self-media, basically a pseudo news channel, but there is a crucial limitation there.

Speaker 8

11:10

While Facebook and Twitter generally allow publishers to post links that take users to other websites, WeChat bans most publishers from embedding hyperlinks in articles. This means pretty much everything is self-contained on the platform. It's hard to find the original source material and debunk it.

Speaker 1

11:28

Right, and that is a big deal because who your source is matters. A book called How I Broke Rules and Made History reads completely differently if it was written by Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Osama Bin Laden. So, misinformation can circulate freely on messaging apps and in closed groups, basically invisible to the general public.

Speaker 1

11:49

And sometimes, when the messages are end-to-end encrypted, even to the companies that host them. And they're often being passed around by trusted friends and family members, lending them an aura of legitimacy. And it can be truly exasperating for younger people to see just how susceptible their relatives are to this bullshit. Subreddits like Asian Parent Stories are full of posts like, -"WeChat fucked up my parents." -$1,000,000.

Speaker 1

12:14

And Listen to this woman read a message that was flying around her South African family's WhatsApp group.

Speaker 3

12:19

Please do not fill petrol to the maximum limit. It may cause explosion. This week, 5 explosion accidents have happened due to filling petrol to the maximum.

Speaker 3

12:30

Please do share this message. Rescue 1122. I've never heard of it, I've never seen it, so I don't see how she believes it. But you know what?

Speaker 3

12:38

Because WhatsApp says so, it's true. Your car's gonna explode.

Speaker 1

12:43

Yeah! It's true! I mean, it's not. Your car is not going to explode.

Speaker 1

12:48

What is true, though, is that misinformation like that is everywhere on these apps. Our own staff has had family members circulate things like these videos in Korean promoting conspiracy theories like QAnon, or this post about how Ayurvedic doctors say we can save ourselves from coronavirus with tips like, boil black peppers in water and add lemon juice, it kills the virus. Which would be great news if it was true, but you know, it isn't. The problem is so familiar to younger generations that 1 son of Indian parents mocked it on TikTok like this.

Speaker 10

13:20

Here's how you make brown parents believe literally anything. You're gonna start with a plain background and write whatever you want, but just make sure you write it in this font. That's crucial.

Speaker 10

13:28

Now, mention any religious text and talk about body, mind, spirit, or something like that. And make sure that you mention a Harvard scientist helped confirm ancient wisdom, because we love those headlines. Now make a diagram that looks scientific and religious at the same time and throw some Sanskrit on there. Don't worry about accuracy.

Speaker 10

13:43

Beautiful. Now mention some chemicals. I chose Kanye and Drake's name and made them look like compounds. It doesn't matter if they're real or not.

Speaker 10

13:49

Our uncles and aunties have PhDs in science, but that's no match for WhatsApp. Now it's imperative that you insult Western medicine and culture at this last part. You know the drill, 3 dots, 3 exclamation points, cite your sources, and make the image quality a little worse, and that is perfection.

Speaker 5

14:04

Yeah, yep. All it takes

Speaker 1

14:08

is a few superficial labels and style choices to convince people that something with no real substance is actually meaningful and good. Or as it's known in America, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And while that was grow up!

Speaker 1

14:21

And while... And while that was clearly fun, that guy later posted a follow-up saying that his image had worked slightly too well because it was making the rounds on WhatsApp, but not always as a joke. And we have seen the very real impacts that misinformation on these apps can have. In India, misinformation has been linked to violence and deaths, to the point where WhatsApp felt it necessary to create this ad.

Speaker 11

14:45

Meet Kavya. She lives away from her family.

Speaker 3

14:49

First time.

Speaker 11

14:51

But very close to their hearts. On the family's WhatsApp group. But today, she's a little serious.

Speaker 11

14:58

Fufa ji has forwarded some random fake news on the family group. Kavya called him right away.

Speaker 3

15:03

Kavya! Fufaji, Namaste! Did you have some proof for that message or did you just forward it?

Speaker 11

15:06

I just received it on some random group. And made him understand that fake news can cause violence.

Speaker 3

15:12

We shouldn't circulate something dangerous, right?

Speaker 11

15:14

She convinced Fufaji to leave that group. Be like Kavya. Share joy, not rumors.

Speaker 5

15:21

Yeah, yeah. Sure, it's

Speaker 1

15:24

a nice sentiment, but it's also not great when you have to produce a PSA essentially saying, look, Some of what's on our service is dangerous nonsense, and if you could help clean it up for us, that'd be really great. At the very least, they might want to change that slogan to share the responsibility for keeping misinformation from destroying the fabric of our society, because we clearly can't do it. So What can we do about all of this?

Speaker 1

15:47

Well, ideally, platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and others would be at least as proactive about taking down misinformation in other languages as they are about taking it down in English, which I know is a low, low bar, but it does say something about where we're at right now. As for private messaging apps, that is trickier because of how they are designed. And even when some have taken steps to slow the spread of misinformation, they've often amounted to half measures. WhatsApp, for instance, started placing limits on the number of chats a message can be forwarded to, capping it at up to 5 chats at a time, which might sound good, but in practice, it leaves plenty of room for damage.

Speaker 12

16:24

If a message is sent to a WhatsApp group of 20, then each of them shares it with 20 other people, and this happens 5 times. It can reach more than 3000000 people very quickly.

Speaker 1

16:41

Yeah, it can still spread pretty far. And I know that this isn't the main point here, but also, how many of us are in 2 group chats of 20 different people each? And if you are, how the fuck do you sleep?

Speaker 1

16:54

How do you get anything done without constantly swiping away notifications? And if you're thinking, well, hold on, it's not a problem, just mute them, then how do you catch up on anything that's happened in the chat? You're gonna spend half of your day scrolling back up just so you know what this gif meant in context. Mom sent that?

Speaker 1

17:11

In response to what? I have to find out. A key problem right now is that many communities don't have the same fact-checking resources that English-speaking ones do. If someone sends you an Alex Jones clip, you can respond to it with any number of trusted sources debunking him.

Speaker 1

17:28

You can send them something from PolitiFact, or Snopes, or FactCheck.org. But if someone sends you a clip from King Radio, Vietnamese language fact-checking sources are thin on the ground. There are some, there is VietFactCheck, a volunteer-led project, and The Interpreter, which works to translate news articles from reputable outlets into Vietnamese. But these are often small organizations, and the people running them are outmatched and understandably fucking exhausted.

Speaker 1

17:56

So, groups like these badly need resources to better match the challenge that they are facing. But beyond that, there needs to be public pressure on platforms to do something about all forms of misinformation, whether they are in English or not, because a whole lot depends on this. And until they do, if you are a member of 1 of these diaspora communities, you may need to prepare yourself for more difficult conversations with your least favorite uncles. Although, there is 1 tiny way that we may be able to help you here, because we made some good morning messages specifically tailored for your needs.

Speaker 1

18:30

Like this 1, which reads,

Speaker 5

18:32

Good morning. Take every chance you get

Speaker 1

18:35

in life and rethink sharing news from a bullshit source. It might be easier to send that to an uncle in the morning rather than, you know, speak to him. Or you can even send him a video message like this.

Speaker 1

18:46

♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪

Speaker 5

19:01

That's right. It may not be the morning message that they want,

Speaker 1

19:04

but it is definitely the morning message that they need. And for Vietnamese Americans in particular, if any of your relatives have King Radio on in the background 24 hours a day, we made a special message just for you. -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪

Speaker 5

19:30

You can download that message

Speaker 1

19:31

in both English and Vietnamese, and a few more messages like them at bettermorningmessages.com. Feel free to use them when you cannot handle a whole conversation, but know deep down, you do really have to say something. That is our show.

Speaker 1

19:45

Thank

Speaker 4

20:00

you