Misinformation: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

for our main story tonight we're going to talk about the internet it's a magical place where you can find communities of like-minded individuals like for instance the tick tocker who created a charming video of things narrowly fitting into tight spaces something that this exceedingly british woman was a big fan of here we go oh that went nice that literally fitted perfectly oh that's nice oh bloody hell bit close for comfort that stressing me out a bit but that was nice oh go on oh yes go on how'd you find that all these things fit you know what i mean why'd you just sit in your house and just think see if things fit in holes 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 going to be about the fun side of the internet tonight it's going to be about the rampant misinformation on it it's something that we've covered multiple times before from alex jones to vaccine misinformation to conspiracy theories but tonight we're going to 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're going to be looking at stuff like this post in spanish featuring the exact same video which as of taping has no such warning and that actually isn't that surprising when you consider that according to the recent facebook files expose a well more than 90 percent of facebook's monthly users are outside the us and canada when it comes to the hours the company spends on monitoring this information last year only 13 were spent on content from outside the us 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 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 one woman explained her reluctance like this come again [Music] 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 covert cures but had never heard of dr fauci and on that point i honestly kind of envy her whatever you think about fauci i think we can all agree it would have been great to have 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 fouchy ouchy she enjoys an inner peace i will never know 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 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 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 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 but in fact this is false it's actually a photo of leighton regent explorer thor heyerdahl and his wife jacqueline beer 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 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. one popular host based here in the united states is nui vu who brands himself king radio he's basically a vietnamese alex jones as you can see in rants like these 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 why are we still being forced to wear masks masks are killing people are human living them if you're 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 one tell them you you i mean you can see where the alex jones comparisons come from both have voices that sound like bones going through a wood chipper both have an inability to control the volume of said voices and both have set clearly inspired by 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 clinique 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 but there is another way misinformation spreads that's actually invisible to most people and unfortunately also happens to be one 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 one of these or even a video like this [Music] i will say that is an aggressively pleasant way to wake up when we came across 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 morning harambe rest in peace king but it's not just whatsapp certain communities have their own preferred app korean immigrants have cacao talk 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 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 outside of china the diaspora uses it to connect with fellow chinese speakers and issues in the country they're living in exactly communication food orders travel payment everything all in one app that is so much more efficient than the us-based model where you have one app to convince you everyone's having a better time than you one that functions as an endlessly refreshing fury generator one for pretending you'll meditate one day one that lets you pay too much for fast food one for horny mistakes and one that simply lets you know that you're very old and the world no longer belongs to you so i guess in a way who knows to wechat for streamlining our shared digital nightmare into one 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 there is actually saying in the latino community in the venezuelan and cuban communities about latia 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 oh yeah we do and it is almost comforting to know that regardless of background every single family has one member that when anyone gets a message from them the first response is to go ah what now it is a 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 so misinformation can spread far and wide without the same ability to check it in brazil a broadband connection can cost up to 15 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 while facebook and twitter generally allow publishers to post links that take users to other websites wechat bends 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 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 and sometimes when the messages are entered and 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 subreddit's like asian parent stories are full of posts like wechat up my parents and listen to this woman read a message that was flying around her south african family's whatsapp group please do not full petrol to the maximum limit it may cause explosion this week five explosion accidents have happened due to filling petrol to the maximum please do share this message rescue one one two two i've never heard of it i've never seen it so i don't see how she believes it but you know what because whatsapp says so it's true your car is gonna explode yeah it's true i mean it's not your car is not going to explode 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 q and on or this post about how ayurvedic doctors say we can save ourselves from coronavirus with tips like boiled 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 one son of indian parents mocked it on tick tock like this here's how you make brown parents believe literally anything you're gonna start with the plain background and write whatever you want but just make sure you write it in the spawn that's crucial 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 i make a diagram that looks scientific and religious at the same time and throw some sanskrit on there don't worry about accuracy 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 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 three dots three exclamation points cite your sources and make the image quality a little worse and that is perfection yeah yep all it takes 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 and wow and while that was clearly fun that 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 meet kavya [Music] she lives away from her family first time [Music] but very close to their hearts on the family's whatsapp group but today she's a little serious fufuaji has forwarded some random fake news on the family group kavia called him writer namaste do you have some proof for that message or did you just forward it just received it on some random group and made him understand that fake news can cause violence we shouldn't circulate something dangerous right she convinced fufaji to leave that group be like kavya share joy not rumors yeah yeah sure it's 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 for destroying the fabric of our society because we clearly can't do it so what can we do about all of this 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 five chats at a time which might sound good but in practice it leaves plenty of room for damage if a message is sent to a whatsapp group of 20 then each of them shares it with 20 other people and this happens five times it can reach more than three million people very quickly 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 two group chats of 20 different people each and if you are how the do you sleep 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 your day scrolling back up just so you know what this gif meant in context mom sent that 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 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 viet fact check 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 exhausted 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 one of these diaspora communities you may need to prepare yourself for more difficult conversations with your least favorite uncles although there is one tiny way that we may be able to help you here because we made some good morning messages specifically tailored for your needs like this one which reads good morning take every chance you get in life and rethink sharing news from a 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 [Music] that's right it may not be the morning message that they want 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 [Music] you can download that message 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 no deep down you do really have to say something that is our show thank you so much for watching we're off next week we'll be back after that good night you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 7,087,821

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Id: l5jtFqWq5iU

Length: 20min 1sec (1201 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 11 2021