How Russia Shapes What the World Thinks

Operation Doppelganger was a Russian propaganda project discovered in 2022, a minor part of the enormous, ongoing disinformation and chaos-sewing campaign Russia spreads across the world through social media. And some of your views may have come from it. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:52Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:02Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And Jerry's missing. We don't know where she is. It's possible. The Russians have her. At the very least, it's quite possible the Russians have misled her in some way or another, and maybe they tricked her into leaving when it was time to record.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  You cheeky boy. Don't worry, everybody. Jerry's just really on vacation, but that was a very clever setup to this episode on, essentially on Russian propaganda, and how, you know, I think we all knew that like their propaganda machine was big back in the Cold War and stuff, obviously, but it's a really big problem now, and has been for a while, ever since the advent of the internet, and especially social media.

• 2:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because those two things are wide open, set up for people to distribute misinformation, deliberate misinformation. The Russians are far from the only ones that do it. They're just really, really good at it. And they've been doing it for a long time. They, I would guess they were probably the first country to really start doing this on like a wide scale. But, I mean, as far back, I think, as 2010, or at least the 2000, yeah, but like the 2010s at least, 2013, at the absolute latest, the Internet Research Agency was the first kind of famous one that surfaced. And the whole premise, back then and now,

• 3:33Josh Clark?

  is to basically game social media and use whatever you can, whatever like weaknesses it has in like the entire structure of it, to confuse people, to sow discord and disinformation and chaos and questioning what reality is. Getting the media to start using words like post-truth and stuff like that. That kind of stuff, it might not have a specific aim, where it's like, we want to, say, get Trump elected. That's, that was part of this, too. Like, that was a Russian aim as well. Or, we want to stir America up over the border

• 4:11Josh Clark?

  crisis. Just creating a climate where people question what's real or what's true. That in and of itself is a huge triumph for these Russian operations that have been going on for more than a decade.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that was one of the things that chilled me most, was it wasn't like, we really need to get people to believe this one thing about Ukraine, let's say. It's more like, no, let's just sow chaos and confusion, to where you doubt what you're reading, and you don't know what the truth is anymore. And that's just like, that's, that feels even scarier, you know?

• 4:48Josh Clark?

  It does, because ultimately, eventually, most people would be like, it's not worth trying to get to the bottom of this, you know? I'm just gonna stop. I'm just not gonna pay attention anymore. I'm just not gonna care.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Or I'll just share something, because like, I read it.

• 5:03Josh Clark?

  Yes, exactly. Sometimes on Reddit.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Good point. All right, so maybe we should jump back a little bit and talk about the IRA, not the Irish Republican Army, but the Internet Research Agency, or the Russian troll farm, as it might, you might know it better as. That was founded in 2013 by a guy that was a former criminal, eventually a successful entrepreneur, and kind of higher up oligarch in Russia, and, you know, confidant of Vladimir Putin. And he also founded, you know, confidant for a while, because he also founded the Wagner Group, which you may have read about in the news, the Russian mercenary organization that would eventually try and overthrow Putin.

• 5:49Josh Clark?

  Yes. Do you watch The Agency on Prime?

• 5:52Speaker 02

  No, I don't.

• 5:54Josh Clark?

  It is magnificent. It's one of the best spy shows of recent times.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Ooh, I love a spy show.

• 6:02Josh Clark?

  You guys like Black Doves, right?

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 6:04Josh Clark?

  This is at least on that caliber, if not higher. Michael Fassbender's in it, Richard Gere, Jeffrey Wright, a bunch of other very talented people, but it's all like spy craft stuff. And it's, it's really worth it. They just released their second season, and I've got three episodes left. I started two days ago, and both seasons are well worth watching.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Okay. I did not watch Black Doves, actually. I thought you were talking about the, what's the Gary Oldman show? Wild Horses? Something Horses?

• 6:38Josh Clark?

  I don't know. I know the one you're talking about. You watched that?

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I watched that one.

• 6:42Josh Clark?

  Is it good?

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really good. I mean, Gary Oldman's fantastic. Slow Horses.

• 6:47Josh Clark?

  Slow Horses. I swear you watch Black Doves, because Emily said she liked it. The one with, um...

• 6:52Speaker 02

  She may have watched it.

• 6:53Josh Clark?

  Bend It Like Beckham?

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, Keira Knightley. I didn't, I didn't see it. Emily may have watched that without me, though, because she loves that stuff.

• 7:00Josh Clark?

  Okay, just watch it. Watch them both, but definitely watch The Agency. It's much more likely to be in your wheelhouse, if either one of them are going to be.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  All right.

• 7:10Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  So back to the show.

• 7:13Josh Clark?

  Oh, I know I brought that up. They battle, essentially, the Wagner Group, but it's called Valhalla in The Agency.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Okay, I got you.

• 7:21Josh Clark?

  Sorry about that.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  That's okay. Everyone loves a good recommendation from either one of us, I think.

• 7:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I also, I want to be clear here. This was not brought to you by Prime. We're not trying to manipulate you, or propagandize you, or market to you. This is just, I watch it on Prime, and it's on Prime, and it's so good that I just took that time to share that with everybody. That's all. Exactly what it seemed like on face value. And do you know why I have to say that, Chuck?

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't know, Josh.

• 7:51Josh Clark?

  Because of stuff like this operation that we're gonna talk about.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  That's right. So, the IRA that I spoke of, the Internet Research Agency, that what they did, and this is like mid 2010s, they hired a ton of, you know, young people, basically, who could speak English and who knew a lot about politics, to like, hey, why don't you start a troll farm, you know, get on board this troll farm, and just create fake stuff, create fake news stories, although I'm loathe to even say those words together, fake social media posts, YouTube videos, eventually, you know, as you'll see what would become, like deep fakes and AI and stuff like that, but this is before that.

• 8:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  And while this was going on, Sputnik and Russia Today, or RT, these are, you know, I think legitimate, or at one point were legitimate Russian news outlets, right?

• 8:44Josh Clark?

  Uh, they were always backed by the Kremlin.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Oh, well, okay, yeah.

• 8:49Josh Clark?

  But I, yeah, I think that they were still, they still had journalists and stuff like that, but they were trying to get the Russian viewpoint across to Western audiences.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Right. So they started distributing stories around the world, basically like we were saying, trying to get people to like, uh, to believe whatever they wanted to them believe at the time, like politically.

• 9:11Josh Clark?

  Right. And, um, the 2016 United States election was a real big kind of debut. They've been kind of at it already, but the 2016 election, they really showed just how much they could monkey with stuff, or at least the potential of them monkeying with stuff. Uh, and this is where that, um, the allegations of, um, Trump colluding with the Russians, this is what they were talking about, uh, unproven, by the way, to Rachel Maddow's great dismay.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:40Josh Clark?

  Pizza Gate, these, they didn't necessarily come up with these things, but they were able to amplify them.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:48Josh Clark?

  And get people talking about them and make people questioning what was what, you know, or the Democrats, like really keeping child sex slaves in the basement of Comet Pizza in DC. Who knows? Maybe you should take an assault rifle from North Carolina and go find out.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So, uh, once this start, sort of starts coming out and, uh, the, uh, United States and, you know, all over North America and Europe started realizing what was going on, uh, in February 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, uh, there started to be a little bit of action taken, the EU banned Russian state media, uh, including Sputnik and RT, um, other companies, Google News dropped them from aggregation service. I think Google, Microsoft and Apple, uh, all started like pulling their apps. So that sort of started happening. And then in 23 was when, uh, that failed uprising against Putin by the Wagner Group, um, happened. And the long and short of it is, after all

• 10:44Speaker 02

  this, the IRA finally disbanded, but this work continued among other groups.

• 10:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah. This is, this is a good example of the whack a mole that the West is playing. The, the Russian internet disinformation operations have the West on our heels, clearly. There's basically no one who knows what they're talking about with this stuff, who would disagree with that. The West still has not figured out how to do it, aside from piecemeal, um, responses like taking Russia Times app off of the Apple.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:17Josh Clark?

  Market, off of the Apple App Store, you know, like, that's the kind of response we have to this still. And this has been going on for more than a decade. And one of the reasons why it's so hard to, to do anything about it is because, um, they use what the Rand Corporation researchers Christopher Paula and Miriam Matthews call a fire hose of falsehood. Just put everything out there. It's not, it's not, um, it's not the quality, it's the quantity that they focus on.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Um, after, uh, Crimea was annexed in 2014 and then, uh, obviously after, uh, the invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, they really ramped up a lot of messaging to try and get, uh, you know, sentiment, um, sometimes on their side, but more, a lot more times like just against Ukraine and what was going on. Uh, and this eventually would become known as, uh, doppelganger. But to be clear, doppelganger isn't like, it wasn't Operation Doppelganger, or there's not an organization called doppelganger.

• 12:19Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  It's more of just sort of, uh, I think the media sort of misread that and labeled it that, but it's really just sort of this method of, of doing what they're doing and how they're doing it.

• 12:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah. To be specific, it's a, it's a way of cloning dummy websites that look like actual legitimate websites. The ones, some of the ones that they targeted were Le Monde in France, their website, Washington Post in the US, The Guardian in the UK. And they would essentially just take, they, they would have their bots start sending links or putting links all over the internet to basically share, right? Hey, look at this crazy article, right? The Washington Post actually reported this, so it seems like it would be legitimate. And you would click that and it would take you to a different series of domains that got smaller and smaller to where, uh, if you were in the area they were targeting,

• 13:14Josh Clark?

  say you were in the United States and you had clicked, you know, this thing to find out about whatever this fake Washington Post thing was saying, it would, um, so it would take you to this fake website like washingtonpost.pm. Just.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:28Josh Clark?

  Different enough that, that like, you probably wouldn't notice, but it's a different domain name. And the, the way that they were able to get away with this was through shell companies and using shady kind of hosting services around the world. And that, that was doppelganger. The, that technique that they used for getting this stuff out. There is no operation like, like this, these, these, using bots or creating like, um, fake accounts on Facebook or whatever. That wasn't doppelganger. That is constant. It's so constant and so embedded that there's no name for that.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:04Josh Clark?

  Doppelganger was just the technique of the way that they use the infrastructure of the internet to deliver misinformation for this short period of time.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, sort of one of the main companies, and we're not going to go through all of these because it's a little mind numbing, but there's one called the Social Design Agency, uh, which is a PR firm, uh, that started up in 2022, founded by a political consultant who, um, had, you know, that was, uh, that was their business. So, uh, you know, they know exactly how to do it.

• 14:35Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  And the Russian government all of a sudden was like, wait a minute, uh, we would love to hire you to do like all this stuff. Um, it's literally as of, I think a couple of years ago, run by the Kremlin.

• 14:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  And, uh, directed by the Putin administration. So they're kind of in the middle of most of this doppelganger activity.

• 14:53Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  And, you know, like you said, when you go to one of these websites, when you click on the link, if you're not paying attention to the dot whatever, and you realize it's not, you know, washingtonpost.com, uh, it, it looks like it, it smells like it, it acts like it for the most part. So it's really easy to, to fool people.

• 15:11Josh Clark?

  It is. Uh, I mean, if you really look closely and you look with a skeptical eye, you'll turn up some stuff. I saw one example is that, um, the US must not become the world's gendarme, which is police in French. Like the Washington Post would not use a, a phrase like that, right?

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you have to know that. Like, I think they count on just fire hosing it such where they're like, well, who cares if most people don't? If we just get this percentage of people, that's great.

• 15:38Josh Clark?

  Yes. And even more than that, I feel like going to the trouble of actually creating the article on the fake website is almost superfluous because so many people on the internet just share.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:51Josh Clark?

  That share, like that headline, gotcha. Now I think that this is going on, not even bothering to click into this to read the actual article. All I need is the headline because it got me juiced up.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, and of course they're amplifying this through the bot farms, uh, Russian social media bots, uh, will post links and then there are more bots that retweet these links. Uh, I think I mentioned on the show, I saw a picture of a bot farm one, uh, not too long ago, there was a big expose.

• 16:21Josh Clark?

  Were they all chewing grass?

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Uh, no, it was terrifying. It was like, uh, a dude sitting at a desk on a computer and there were a thousand cell phones connected, hardwired.

• 16:32Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  To the computer. And then there were dozens and dozens of these guys with hundreds and hundreds of smartphones.

• 16:37Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Connected on a big wall. So when you see how it actually works, like literally connecting to phones to send this stuff out and amplify it, it's just, it feels really dystopian and like scary.

• 16:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I feel like it's becoming clear that we're going to have to abandon the internet and come up with a new one because this one got cooked.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Agreed. Should we take a break?

• 17:00Josh Clark?

  Hmm.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  All right. Well, we're going to ruminate that and I hope we're, we can even come back after we ruminate, but we'll be right back, I hope.

• 17:23Josh Clark?

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  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 19:34Josh Clark?

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• 20:41Speaker 02

  All right. So I mentioned after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, that's when things really ramped up again. They, you know, a lot of these ideas were really pretty clever. There was a one group that launched sort of like a Snopes-like site, but a fake one called War on Fakes. And it was designed to discredit Ukraine and support Russia, obviously. And then another one called RRN, Reliable Recent News, which replaced Reliable Russian News. So on one side, you've got something that says like, hey, this is reliable news, so this is real. On the other side, it's like, hey, we root out the fake stuff, but it's fake.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  So it's almost like, you know, it's not almost like, they've got all their bases covered.

• 21:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, if you pay too close attention to this, you'll start bleeding out of your ear, guaranteed.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:34Josh Clark?

  Doppelganger got its name from the EU's disinformation lab. One of the disheartening things to me, Chuck, was figuring out that the people who are tracking this stuff, there's not a government agency involved anywhere. These are all like independent NGOs that are dedicated to tracking disinformation.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's interesting.

• 21:56Josh Clark?

  Journalists, like, these are the people doing the actual work. And then seven years later, the government's like, oh, we're going to have our Department of Justice do something about this.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:07Josh Clark?

  So that's where, that's where Doppelganger got its name from. I think it's basically, it suggests that these are, or it points out that, like, the cloned sites, they're like doppelgangers of the real thing.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:22Josh Clark?

  But that war on Ukraine, after the invasion of Ukraine, they really ramped up the misinformation flood that was coming. Like, they targeted in 2024, and I think 2023, their main targets were France, Germany, the US, the UK, and Ukraine. And essentially, what they were trying to do was to make the people, the public in each of those countries, lose support or turn on the idea of supporting Ukraine so that Russia could get them out of the Ukraine business and Russia could just get back to trying to take over Ukraine as best it could.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they, you know, they did it in a lot of ways. Obviously, some ways were just fake articles about like, you know, stuff that Ukraine does, or maybe a fake article about that whitewashes a Russian atrocity like the Bukha massacre, like that never happened.

• 23:20Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  But cleverly, they're also going like through celebrities and like faking that, you know, Taylor, like a real influential celebrity like Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian, like fake messages where they're supporting, or they're criticizing America and Europe for supporting Ukraine. Or didn't you find something about Oprah?

• 23:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Do you want to read that quote?

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Go ahead.

• 23:44Josh Clark?

  Oprah says, "Supporting Ukrainians is unacceptable. Their actions destroy lives and societies."

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, especially if you're some, like, young person who supports Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian, you're probably, you know, not even aware that this kind of stuff even goes on. All you're thinking is like, well, Taylor Swift said Ukraine deserves what's coming, so that's probably true.

• 24:07Josh Clark?

  That's exactly right. That's exactly what they're trying to do.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Or, or maybe not deserves what's coming, but like, America, this is a big sort of angle for them is America first, like, we shouldn't get involved in this, let Ukraine handle it themselves.

• 24:21Josh Clark?

  Right. And so that is, you just hit the nail on the head as far as why Republicans typically get targeted with this stuff. It's not because the Trump administration is colluding with the Russians. It's because the message that the Trump administration and MAGA in general, and Republicans by extension, are basically basing their platform on is, like you said, America first, focus on domestic issues, get ourselves out of foreign affairs. And that goes lockstep with what Putin wants. It's like, yes, America, go, go mess with your own stuff. And by pointing out and creating turmoil about all the things that are going on in

• 25:06Josh Clark?

  America at any given time, it makes it seem even that more urgent to just stop giving money to Ukraine when we've got all of these middle-class white people who need that money too, and like tax breaks and stuff like that. That kind of messaging, that's not necessarily wrong, but is making it seem like the American public sentiment is behind that, that's the part that's wrong. They're manipulating that to kind of try to get the public to swing that way, all because they just want to be able to invade Ukraine more easily.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, they had one project called the Good Old USA Project, which one of the SDA founders had come up with, with some other people, and it targeted voters in six swing states during the last election in 2024 about just that. Like, let's not help Ukraine. Like, why are we doing that when we have problems here? And they also spent about 10 million bucks encouraging right wing influencers to get on board with pro Russia opinions. So that's why if you've, if you've ever been on like the, the comment section of any social media site about anything political like this, first of all, we would both encourage you to stop doing that because it's just

• 26:20Speaker 02

  not good for your mental health and wellbeing. But if you do, and you see people saying like, oh yeah, thanks, comrade, or whatever Russian bot, like that's, that's what they're talking about here.

• 26:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And to be fair, those right wing influencers, the YouTubers that were hired to disseminate Russian propaganda, were not aware that that's what they were doing. They were hired by a front company called Tenant Media.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:43Josh Clark?

  They hired like six hardcore right wing YouTubers and just basically said, hey, let's talk about this kind of thing. But they were not aware that they were being paid by the Kremlin. They didn't know that. And then once that was exposed, that company dissolved and those people, well, I guess, had to eat some crow, I would guess.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Another thing, if you ever heard, you know, you know, George Soros is paying those protesters by that, by the hour, like paid protesters, paid protesters.

• 27:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  That comes from a fake Washington Post article, like, you know, from one of these, like completely fake cloned websites. That's where that comes from. It was right after Israel invaded Gaza in spring of 2024, and that, you know, all the protests were going on. And there was a fake Washington Post article that came out about the Soros Foundation and Rockefeller, like paying people 30 bucks an hour to go protest.

• 27:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah. The one I remember was that the Ukrainian government was actually like Nazis.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 27:50Josh Clark?

  And really what Russia's doing is liberating the Ukrainian people. I remember that one for sure. That definitely came from this doppelganger era.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. One of the weirder ones was Princess Kate, when she sort of disappeared from the public eye.

• 28:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  And, you know, this is before she revealed it was because of a cancer diagnosis, but they jumped on that and sort of hijacked that with all sorts of weird conspiracy theories. And again, I think that was one just to, just to create tension and chaos in the UK.

• 28:19Josh Clark?

  Yes. The, I don't remember where I found this, but I saw that their, their involvement in conspiracy theories is topic agnostic. They don't care about the subject, whatever it is that will push people's buttons, that will get emotional responses and get people worked up, they will get in there and amplify it if they, if they didn't make it up themselves in the first place.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Man.

• 28:39Josh Clark?

  They also apparently, according to, I think the good old USA project, that they, there was a whole group at the Social Design Agency, who again, like you said, seemed to be the ones behind this. If all of a sudden you start to hear negative chatter about stuff you should know, I'm going to go ahead and say it was probably them after this episode comes out.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  I was a little worried about that. I am.

• 29:06Josh Clark?

  Hopefully we're still under the radar enough.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Well, I like to think so.

• 29:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And if all of a sudden Chuck and I die in a fiery car crash together, it was probably the Kremlin.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  I'm not flying anytime soon.

• 29:20Josh Clark?

  You have to, although I don't want to say when or how. We should probably edit this part out. But there was a whole group at the Social Design Agency that was, their job was to monitor social media posts from GOP lawmakers to figure out what was on America's mind, or what people were worried about or angry about. And then they would start making memes and stuff based on that and try to create like, I guess, mess from that. Just from like one tweet or something could do it.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. I don't know how much you want to get into this nuts and bolts section.

• 29:54Josh Clark?

  We kind of already covered it, really.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it gets sort of in the weeds, but like you sort of mentioned earlier, we just want to be clear. It's like, they'll use disposable domains that are owned by other companies. They will use virtual offices and set up shell companies. They'll work with, you know, in places like, sometimes at the far reaches of the earth, well, they'll set up like some company in Malaysia where, you know, it's, then it goes through another shell company in Lithuania. And it's just, you know, it's also obfuscated. And that's the whole point, you know, that you don't know, it's hard to even trace back to any origin.

• 30:32Josh Clark?

  Right. And it's just very decentralized. And then the companies, these shell companies are just legitimate enough to provide cover for the shady hosting companies to say like, well, they're, they're legal. They're, it's a UK company. So, you know, we don't have any obligation to check what they're doing, right?

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:52Josh Clark?

  And then the, as it gets closer and closer to the actual fake website, the companies just get shadier and shadier. And apparently they're not the ones, they didn't come up with this technique. It's fairly common among bad actors.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:09Josh Clark?

  Like Brad Pitt, I guess.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  I was trying to think of a bad actor. I didn't want to be mean.

• 31:15Josh Clark?

  I think you can be mean to Brad Pitt at this point.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, because he's a fine actor.

• 31:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  And a fine piece, you know?

• 31:24Josh Clark?

  A piece of what?

• 31:26Speaker 02

  You know.

• 31:26Josh Clark?

  S or A?

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Did you see, he and Ed Norton at the soccer match?

• 31:31Josh Clark?

  No, I heard about it.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was kind of fun. The old Fight Club thing.

• 31:35Josh Clark?

  What was I gonna say?

• 31:37Speaker 02

  You were gonna say, we're gonna take a break, right?

• 31:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I think whatever I was saying just petered out, didn't matter.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  All right. Well, Josh is gonna peter back up and we'll be back right after this.

• 32:04Josh Clark?

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• 32:26Josh Clark?

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• 32:42Speaker 02

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• 33:07Josh Clark?

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• 33:30Speaker 02

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• 33:54Josh Clark?

  That's pretty awesome. And Smart Downloads automatically downloads videos by your favorite creators. So even if you forget to download it ahead of time, Premium has you covered. So if you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  You know, you're never done decorating your home. You know what I mean?

• 34:18Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do or buy or update. The only question is, what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly, it's usually a new rug.

• 34:28Josh Clark?

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• 34:35Speaker 02

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• 34:47Josh Clark?

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• 35:19Josh Clark?

  Okay, so we're back and we know about doppelganger. Like I said, thanks to journalists and non-governmental organizations that are dedicated to tracking and fighting disinformation. The first one where it came up even before it was called doppelganger, because remember that was the EU's disinfo lab that gave it that title. But a full year or so before that, a German website, T online.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  That sounds fake.

• 35:49Josh Clark?

  It does. It sounds super fake. They published an article where they're like, hey, there's a bunch of new Facebook accounts. All of them are German women. And the weird thing is they all say that they work for Netflix. And even weirder, every single one of them seems to be really, really adamant about Germany not funding Ukraine and just leaving Russia alone.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  I'm sure Netflix is like, seriously? Thanks.

• 36:15Josh Clark?

  I know. Although Netflix is probably like, hey, any publicity is good publicity.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  That's a good point. I get, this is, this is not this, but I know you're not on social media a lot, but on Instagram, I will get, I'll have to block a lot of people that come on to follow me because it's clear that it's some sort of a, some sort of a porn thing.

• 36:39Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  Or I will get a comment from someone on some random, like I'll leave a comment on some random, like Instagram posts that I think is cool or whatever. And then someone will comment on that, like, oh yeah, totally Chuck Brian or whatever, Chuck the podcaster. And then I'll look, I'll be like, who is this? And it's, you know, it's clearly some fake person. And I just, I don't know what the angle is and I always block it. So obviously I don't know, but I wonder what the goal is. It's gotta be separating me from money somehow.

• 37:12Josh Clark?

  Somehow, or yeah, or yeah, or getting money to somebody like an influencer or something, or to boost whatever thing you said was cool.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  Maybe. It's very strange, but it's always quite obvious what it is because they have like zero posts, follow a ton of people, no one follows them. And it's usually some, you know, if I can be frank, it's usually some very like well endowed, you know, woman.

• 37:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Do you remember there was a period of time when AI slop was really starting to gear up where it does not matter what video you were watching on like YouTube or whatever in the search? It was like a very beautiful woman standing there like Vanna White.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:56Josh Clark?

  Next to the video screen, like learn all about C++ coding from me, you the sexy secretary, you know? Like it was, all videos were like that for a minute. And I was like, God, is this how it's going to be from now on? And then it seems to have vanished.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you know, the only reason I bring all that up is because it's just sort of backs up this thing that we're talking about and this idea that I keep edging toward, which is like, God, maybe it's just best to get off and away from all of that stuff altogether. Cause it's really going in the wrong direction.

• 38:30Josh Clark?

  It, no, it definitely is. There's this thing called the dead internet theory. I've been wanting to do at least a short stuff on it, but essentially it says that the internet has become a, just a bunch of bots interacting with bots, trying to game social media algorithms to make money for some dude in, yeah, whatever country, Singapore or something like that. Right? And I, some studies have found that perhaps a third of accounts on either Instagram or Facebook, probably Facebook are bots, a third.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 39:02Josh Clark?

  And that it's just gotten so far out of hand that we're never going to get it back. And also like those long tail articles where you make like five cents, but it costs nothing to have an AI write and publish that article. Those have, have pushed actual human written, researched articles about any given thing from like page one Google search to like page 20. So, so there's still like no reason to go in and search for anything anymore unless you want some AI article broken into 50 different small paragraphs or sections that are basically repeat themselves over and over again. That's what, that's what you have available. So it does seem like the internet is pretty dead.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I've noticed even on Instagram from some sites I like and follow, like music sites or whatever. It's sort of a dead giveaway now if the, the caption, instead of being like, you know, Led Zeppelin performs at this performance and it was awesome.

• 39:57Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  It's now some really long, like four paragraph thing with like this detailed history of like Led Zeppelin was a band and blah, blah, blah. And it's just so obvious AI is doing it.

• 40:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  And it's just, it's kind of ruining what I used to like about Instagram, along with a lot of other stuff.

• 40:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  Like, you know, these fake busty women. It's like, it just makes me want to run away and stop it all.

• 40:16Josh Clark?

  Run, run away. Something else is going to come along because there is like, it's very clear that the internet in like ideally is really great and useful and important and we need it. It's just this version of it is no longer useful. So we need to figure out a different one and somebody will.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  I know. Well, it just, it sucks because I don't like to support that company because they're part of Meta, which I hate and got off of Facebook, but I do like the connection with listeners and be able to chat stuff up. So it's, uh, yeah, it feels like it's, it's a no win situation sometimes.

• 40:49Josh Clark?

  I think what it'll probably become is more of an emphasis on email.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 40:54Josh Clark?

  Again, and then like that'll get taken over and then it'll be handwritten letters.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  That'd be great. Speaking of Meta though, in 2022, and this was after that T online group that you mentioned, sort of out of this whole thing. That's when like Meta and some other higher profile companies started saying like, oh, well, like we know this is going on. We're going to start removing pages and we're going to start deleting this and we're going to take this super serious. And who knows what's going on on the inside. I sound like I'm being cynical because I probably feel like I am, but they have found that like, a lot of it is coming through ads and like they're not even catching 95% of undeclared political ads aren't being caught in this supposed sweep to clean things up.

• 41:41Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah. Because it's not just posts or bots creating posts or even commenting, it's buying ads. And so Facebook has a huge financial incentive to not root those things out because they make tons of cash off of it.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:57Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, I mean, they said that they're doing this, they're not actually doing it. And that's a, that's a good example of the whole whack a mole thing too, is like a big company like that trying to, to police their own social media site that's gotten out of their own control. That's not a good technique either, although I think all of us could probably agree that Meta could do way, way more than it does. So the, the finally in September, 2024, after this has been identified for two full years, the US Department of Justice is like, we're going to take charge here.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll take care of it.

• 42:33Josh Clark?

  Get this, they took down 32 websites.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 42:39Josh Clark?

  That were related to doppelganger. And they were like, this is too risky before a US election. So we're going to, we're going to do, we're going to go the nuclear option and take down 32 websites.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think the cynicism is coming through. It's, I mean, whack a mole didn't even begin to describe, but I'm sure like Russia hears this stuff and they're just like laughing into their vodka, you know?

• 43:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Well, that's a point that a lot of people make is that it might not even be changing people's minds, but just the fact that we know it exists makes you question everything then. And so you are questioning the legitimate stuff too. So you're not learning anything. Everything has an angle.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. And now we're seeing, of course, and we've talked about, I think we did a whole episode on deep fakes, right?

• 43:29Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. On deep fake and obviously the advent of AI technology, which is now completely taken over already, where they have, you know, a fake video going up where you, it looks like Joe Biden doing something, or it looks like anybody doing something. And they will take, you know, they try to evade detection. So they'll post a video just a little differently in different iterations, like with just a few milliseconds trimmed out. So they can't be automatically rooted out when like a company builds a system to root out this kind of stuff.

• 43:59Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  And we're already at the point like AI has moved so fast, we're already at the point where people all over the place for months now have been going like, I don't even know if this is real. Like, I don't know what, if what I can believe anymore. So like it's working, what they're doing is working.

• 44:13Josh Clark?

  Right. The thing that got me is that they've figured out because AI companies train their models on like the internet and specific parts of the internet, the Russians have figured out that they can flood those parts of the internet with misinformation. And that's what the, the AI is going to learn and think is real. So the AI is going to just give out bad information or misinformation as well, because that's what it thinks is true.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  I'm gonna go live in a cave right after we record this.

• 44:49Josh Clark?

  I'll join you.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  How does that sound?

• 44:50Josh Clark?

  We'll get into Buddhism.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do that.

• 44:54Josh Clark?

  So, like we said, I don't know if we gave our hat tip to Olivia, who really did a good exhaustive job on explaining this. But one of the things she points out is that it's really unclear whether this actually sways opinion.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, there have been some studies, right?

• 45:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but I mean, just anecdotally, I think it does. But maybe it's one of those things where like, okay, if it really comes down to somebody saying, do you truly believe that? Are you gonna be like, yes? Then maybe it doesn't really sway opinion. But there was a study that looked at disinformation efforts by Russia in the 2016 US election. And it basically found that like, it had almost no effect whatsoever.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, they found that 1% of social media users got 70% of the exposures. So a few people getting most of this stuff. But that's still 30% on the other 99%.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  And they also point out that like, a lot of the people getting exposed to this are Republicans. Because the Russian posts are, you know, again, they're sort of targeting them about like, hey, America first stuff, America first stuff. And they already believe that stuff anyway. So it's not maybe like they're changing minds? Maybe that's the point, but they're reinforcing beliefs for sure.

• 46:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. But again, that fire hose or the fire hose of misinformation or false information, that's the technique and it seems to be working. The thing that stuck out to me was I couldn't find anything about what they're doing now. It seems like they're still doing much the same because it works really, really well. And it can just pop up anywhere. Like there is a story I found, I don't know if you saw it, where a 2016 disinformation campaign from Russia actually managed to get real life Texans to battle one another, at least verbally. I don't think anyone was physically injured over the Islamification of Texas,

• 46:57Josh Clark?

  which was just complete bunk made up by this disinformation group. And even more than that, they made up the group that the protesters joined. They also made up the group that the counter protesters joined. So the whole thing was totally fabricated and social engineered. So like, that works. And at the time, these people were not thinking that they were being manipulated by Russians, right? They thought it was real. And so it's gonna keep continuing to work. So there's no reason for them to stop. I'm curious about what the next thing is that they're doing now that we're gonna find out about three years from now, you know?

• 47:31Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, for sure. The other thing that sort of would send a chill up your spine is like, none of this is even secret anymore. Like it's out and they know it's out and they don't care.

• 47:42Josh Clark?

  They're out and proud.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  They're out and proud with their, what they call a high reach, low impact campaign. Which is, like you said, again, the fire hose and the volume of content doesn't really matter how much people believe it or not, as long as you're sowing chaos and getting people to eventually think like, I don't even know, like, maybe I'll just disengage altogether.

• 48:02Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  Because I don't know what's real. When widespread coverage of doppelganger came out, the Russian government was like, awesome, let's give more funding to the SDA. And there's even a suggestion that SDA deliberately leaked Operation Doppelganger, like information about that, just to get more media coverage about it.

• 48:23Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  Man, I really do want to go live in a cave after this.

• 48:29Josh Clark?

  The best suggestion I saw was to fight fire with fire, that the whole whack a mole thing is never, ever going to work. And it actually just helps Russia, like you said, just by giving it publicity. And that essentially the best thing the West could do is to create its own SDA and just turn it on Russia. That that's basically the only option to get them to stop.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  That sounds like a great idea.

• 48:54Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 48:57Josh Clark?

  Well, since Chuck and I are jaded, I think it's time for listener mail.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  This is beyond jaded. All right, guys, for, this is a nice lightweight to end. Guys, for years, my wife and I have had an argument over the pronunciation of B-I-O-P-I-C. Like when you make a movie about a person, like a biographical picture. We've both been stubborn to admit defeat. She's part of the biopic crowd, but I prefer biopic.

• 49:27Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  She, of course, claims she's right because she's a former elementary school teacher and a big study of English Lit and knows the truth, blah, blah, blah. But it wasn't until Chuck said biopic in your recent Howard Hughes episode that I got the vindication I needed. I don't care if Chuck and I are wrong. It doesn't matter. All that matters is I know I'm not alone anymore and will continue with my pronunciation. And I'll make sure to pass this down to my seven and four year old kids. That is from Kevin Crowell in North Carolina. And I also got a really rude email from a very, I guess, angry person that I said it differently and they were like, I guess you like being wrong. I guess it is wrong. I don't even know, I never thought about it. But I don't say biography, I say biography. So I say biopic.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  And I don't know, that's just how it flowed out of my mouth. So I may be wrong, I don't care.

• 50:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you may be crazy.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  What do you say? You say biopic, right?

• 50:20Josh Clark?

  But that's just what I've always heard. And I'm so used to you saying biopic now that it's not even, I think that they're both right. I think you managed to wedge it into reality.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Well, maybe someday when someone writes the biography on our lives, it would be turned into a biopic. Yeah.

• 50:38Josh Clark?

  All right, well, who is that from the nice one?

• 50:41Speaker 02

  That is from Kevin.

• 50:42Josh Clark?

  Thanks, Kevin. That was very nice and I'm glad you feel vindicated. Sorry to your wife, although she and I share the same pronunciation, okay?

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, we can all have a arm wrestling match one day or something.

• 50:54Josh Clark?

  You get it. If you want to be like Kevin and write to us about feeling vindicated by me or Chuck or Jerry or whoever, we want to hear about it. Send it off to [email protected].

• 51:09Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 51:25Josh Clark?

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• 52:06Josh Clark?

  Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of VivGart. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of VivGart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, I am here to talk to you about Dude Wipes, who offer fragrance free wipes that are made with 99% water and plant based ingredients. So they're gentle enough for sensitive skin, but they're tough enough for even the worst messes. Water cleans better and Dude Wipes flushable wipes deliver textbook freshness and ultimate clean. And just like human body molecules, Dude Wipes are made with 99% water,

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