It Could Happen Here - DiscloseTV & the Cultic Milieu

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

Journalist and researcher W. F. Thomas talks with Robert and Garrison about DiscloseTV, Telegram, and the cultic milieu. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee om...nystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy
Starting point is 00:00:34 Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app,
Starting point is 00:00:59 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or wherever you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season
Starting point is 00:01:42 digging into Tex Elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. It could happen here is the podcast you're listening to with your ears or perhaps other parts of your body. If you have, I don't know, some bizarre form of synesthesia that causes you to taste sound. Maybe you're tasting us right now, in which case I'm going to open up the flavor bouquet
Starting point is 00:02:32 by introducing my co-host Garrison and our guest for today. Why don't you take over now, Garrison? I've done my job. Great. That sounds lovely. Yeah. Hey, Garrison here. It could happen here is the podcast.
Starting point is 00:02:45 We have a special guest today, journalist and researcher W.F. Thomas. Hello. Hello. It's so good to be here on Behind the Woman's Revolution, the Police Insurrection Daily. Thank you. Lovely to have you. A lot of people say Garrison's voice tastes like sorbet, by the way. It's a comment we get a lot. Yeah. A lot. A lot. A lot. A lot of people say Garrison's voice tastes like sorbet, by the way. It's a comment we get a lot. Yeah, a lot of those DMs. You should probably stop that. So we're going to be talking about something I've wanted to actually bring up myself for a while now, but I just have not put the work in. And now, luckily, someone else did the actual work.
Starting point is 00:03:23 So now we could just talk about it. We're talking about something called a disclosed tv um which is a broad range of things it's not it's not just one thing uh and i guess i'll i'll hand it over to the person who did the actual work in terms of like how how would you describe what disclosed TV is before we get into like the journey of the platform and thing like what like what is it yeah um let me start this off by saying I've already before the publication of the article been publicly threatened uh vaguely with legal action from Disclosed TV so uh that will be largely informing what I say today but we do have a lot of receipts. And we have very scary lawyers here, so I'm excited whatever happens. So feel free to say whatever you want to say. and presents itself as a news aggregator operating Twitter, Telegram, Gab, Getter.
Starting point is 00:04:29 They have a Facebook as well, as well as a main site where they host what one could describe as articles as well. Yeah, and I think Disclosed TV, for our purposes, they have a very large Facebook presence, but the way that we usually interact with them, specifically me and Robert, and then other people who are journalists or just anti-fascist researchers, usually we interact with Disclosed TV on Telegram or through Twitter.
Starting point is 00:05:02 Twitter, it's how they break a lot of current events in like a where like you know a lot of like political figures talk about them is twitter um and then telegram is where they really disseminate these out into more obscure groups maybe they change their wording because they know the audience is a little bit different and they've been a vector of information for a while really really with the 2020 protests they kind of oh god a lot of all over twitter yeah they they were everywhere in terms of like saying specific things not doing sourcing um and just having like basically they are a place where they kind of create what the they try to create what the news is because of how isolated they are from the sources that they actually pull info from and they're very they're very interested in kind of
Starting point is 00:05:50 crafting their own version of events um which appeals to people across the spectrum like they don't just market towards the the far right wing sometimes they frame things to kind of attract a variety of people under the extremist banner, let's say. So, you know, you don't just see them in far right circles. You see Disclosed pop up in a lot of places because of the way they frame news and breaking events. But they didn't always start out like this. This isn't what they always were.
Starting point is 00:06:21 They weren't always this kind of content aggregator that creates their version of news. And Thomas did more research into what they were before, which I actually had not done that research yet. So, yeah, let's let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So I'm going to start off with talking about how I first heard about Disclose. So I was living in Germany when the pandemic hit and got COVID first wave in Germany in the middle of March. Luckily, I was totally asymptomatic, but I was kind of stranded in Germany for a couple weeks
Starting point is 00:06:56 and had to isolate in a vacation rental. And the Bavarian man who owned it just kept coming and talking to me, and I would tell him hey it's probably not the best idea for you to be coming by and chatting with me all the time and you know he got into talking and we're talking in German he got we got into talking about you know the pandemic what he thought about it and he started talking about how he thought oh the government's making this seem way worse than it is you know the deep state if you know anything about that and he and he said deep state in english um and i was familiar with german far-right currents uh at that time um but i had never encountered a pilled german dude uh and that's when i realized this is going to be a fucking problem. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:45 Yeah. And, and it, lo and behold, it has continued to be a problem. So as I got back to the U S and the other thing, when I was in Germany, the first time I encountered, I encountered telegram when a German I knew said, Hey, I just don't trust WhatsApp because it's owned by Facebook. Why don't you download telegram in 2019, I think. And it was pretty innocuous to me at the time. I didn't realize this would become a problem. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:08:15 Yeah. Fast forward. I was working on my master's project, which you can talk about more later on because it's kind of besides the point um if you don't want to hear about it but looking at telegram as the cultic milieu um using colin campbell's framework of the cultic milieu um to understand specifically how q anon spread in germany uh and how q anon interacted with these native underlying conspiracy narratives within Germany because Telegram is already massively popular in Germany.
Starting point is 00:08:51 Before, after J6, I think of the bandwave came down and there was much more migration to the platform. So I did the social network analysis looking at the German conspiracy scene on Telegram and one of the biggest notes that came up and I was looking at a number of times shared into other groups or channels was Disclosed TV and that's the first time I came
Starting point is 00:09:14 into it I looked through it and realized there is an editorial stance within this and that editorial stance largely attracts conspiracists and far-right extremists uh to this coverage and to you know this is widely shared among conspiracists and far-right extremists yeah um fast forward um i i'm on twitter as many of us
Starting point is 00:09:41 are unfortunately um and i saw disclosed tv just popping up everywhere, even from people who I would think should know better. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Who are, you know, big extremism researchers and journalists shared it. I remember one specific one that really came across my feed. Disclosed had taken a video from, like, The Blaze, Glenn Beck's whatever. Media empire or whatever. Glenn Beck is doing. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:10:18 About the firefighters who were quitting over vaccine mandate or something and had all of their boots or whatever. And I saw lots of people sharing that as well. And eventually I got tired of saying, hey, this shit is suspect, don't share it. And decided to write an article about it so I could just send my article to people. in the mid-2000s as just this forum for UFOs, paranormal stuff, cryptids, Bigfoot sightings, and existed in largely the same format until 2021. There were some shifts in the way the site presented itself. It started off as a member login where members could write articles that were largely long-form forum posts and then have people comment on them and reply.
Starting point is 00:11:15 And at one point, Disclose made the jump to functioning as a news aggregator while including an editorial spin on that yes and including some of their own articles you want me to get more into that now yeah because yeah because like the the shift was was it wasn't like immediate as well right like they were starting to kind of present themselves in more of a news gathering way you know around the late 20 teens of course 2020, this became a big thing in terms of their social media presence.
Starting point is 00:11:48 They were trying to present themselves as, like, a news aggregator, right? But they still operated the forum on their site throughout most of that time, and it's only until recently where they shut that forum down, which was, you know, full of all kinds of conspiratorial nonsense that's very easy to see past for most people. Secret, you know, secret Arctic shit,
Starting point is 00:12:11 which is always a red flag. That's usually a red flag. Yeah. Even getting to get stuff like, watch this SJW get wrecked, which is not a quotation, but just that kind of vibe. That style of content, yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:33 Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonoro. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.
Starting point is 00:13:07 Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.
Starting point is 00:13:39 He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he look so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian.
Starting point is 00:13:53 Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died
Starting point is 00:14:11 trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story,
Starting point is 00:14:27 as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Toot, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down.
Starting point is 00:15:07 I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year, you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting 8, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:15:34 I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend
Starting point is 00:16:10 and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it.
Starting point is 00:16:40 Going from the forum operating then with their social media accounts to the shift to this more of like presenting as a news website talk about that and the potential effects that we see this having on both like the social media sites and just the overall trend of news aggregation in general i guess yeah so the first big shift that i found found was the creation of their Telegram channel, which is in January of 2021, actually. So this is relatively more recent than the shift that happened. And they operated their Telegram as more in this traditional news aggregator sense.
Starting point is 00:17:21 And so that's how they really blew up on Telegram. At some point, they deleted all of their old tweets and started operating their Twitter in a similar manner. It was after they created this Telegram channel. In September, actually overnight on September 20th of 2021, they completely rebranded the site. They took out all the user forums. They included backdated articles to a year prior. And looking through archives of it, there was a note saying something along the lines of, we have found so much growth on our social media, our telegram channel our growing twitter account um and something to the effect of we we are changing our strategy and going about this a different way um and you can if you were into the forum you can join our discord um which is
Starting point is 00:18:20 yeah funkt and i'll get i'll get into that later um and yeah looking it was really interesting too because looking at these backdated articles um they included very obviously plagiarized content um they had i believe it's it's all in the article, but they had four journalists' names attached with the article using AI-generated images for their pictures. Yeah, yeah. they themselves published um were very focused on ufos paranormal paranormal phenomenon um as well as content that could cause skepticism within an audience um about vaccines and lockdowns and i do not know the intent of uh their editorial board And so I cannot speak on that, but of course it generated this effect. Yes.
Starting point is 00:19:27 That is, they found a way of creating content, which develops a very specific audience, which grew their numbers, which made them, you know, one could assume would make them want to make more of that content because it makes more numbers and they can use that to grow their platform.
Starting point is 00:19:45 Yeah. Specifically leading up like like, after January 2021, ramping up when the vaccines were becoming more and more common in the States and then across the world, they have seen a pretty significant growth and have changed their platform accordingly. Exactly. So we began looking into who the who the fuck owns this what's going on with this um like all german companies um
Starting point is 00:20:14 and it is based in germany there's a requirement by law to include an imprint or an impressum that includes an address um contact information for the site and the company that owns it. A company called Futurebytes operates Disclosed TV, which describes itself as a private equity firm and media group. And looking into the ownership behind Futurebytes is a man by the name of uva brown who has a pretty interesting backstory he's hosted he's made numerous web hosting sites um i believe he created some dating sites as well but but my research was not conclusive so that's a maybe um but eventually he sold he had his most success when he sold one of his web hosting sites to go daddy for a lot of money and along the way in his own as he described booked a flight on
Starting point is 00:21:17 virgin to go into space and see for himself if the earth if the earth was flat my god awesome cool that this is great thank you yeah so this this is who we're dealing with um sweet and the thing about disclose being based in germany um that that becomes an issue um is that germany has a very different look at free speech than in the US. For example, even online displaying swastikas and denying the Holocaust is illegal and is a prosecutable crime that can get you jail time. So as we explored, as I mostly, and there's additional reporting from Ernie Piper, and I'll talk a bit more about that later, explored their Discord and their Telegram. We realized, huh, seems to be a lot of Nazis here. And by which, when I say seems to be a lot of Nazis, I mean people with swastikas in their profile builds.
Starting point is 00:22:21 Yeah. in their profile builds yeah um with you know names referencing the holocaust with the whispers parentheses um and saying denying that the holocaust happened um and also sharing the neo-nazi famous neo-nazi infamous neo-nazi propaganda film uh europa the last battle um which was shared by prominent q anon influencer ghost ezra yeah i know um oh man i this this came up a few days ago one of the uh one of the uh channels that me and someone else have been watching uh forwarded me it being that that that film being shared. It was at the Free Oregon Telegram channel was sharing links to that.
Starting point is 00:23:10 And I wonder, I would like to track back where that link came from. Yeah, not great seeing that film circulate more and more, especially among the Free Oregon Telegram channels,
Starting point is 00:23:21 like Anti-Mask, Anti-Vax, Anti-Lockdown channel. And seeing the proliferation of that type of content. Yeah, so in preparing for this article, with the help of the Logically editorial team, I'm a freelancer, their current head of content, Ernie Piper, um, sent an email basically asking, Hey, what's going on? Y'all seem to have a Nazi problem. That's kind of borderline illegal in Germany. Um, to which for a while, this for, for about 24 hours, this close just went totally quiet and didn't post. Um um and then came out with a post specifically targeting ernie um by name and with a picture of him and linking to some of his old
Starting point is 00:24:14 reporting work uh as well um saying yes uva brown owns this he got his money from go daddy you know we value free speech and and we condemn hatred whatnot and and saying oh our telegram we have a tell there's a telegram group but we have these rules in it and uh okay yeah we we had to shut down the discord that got a little bit out of hand we admit that you know they had people denying the holocaust with swastika icons in their Discord that they didn't seem to care too much about until someone pointed it out. And there was additionally very explicit neo-Nazi content in their Telegram channel as well with the excuse, oh, well, we're a growing platform. We can't moderate everything as well they have they just crossed 400 000 in their telegram channel and i think about 30 000 in their telegram group um
Starting point is 00:25:11 which is frankly bullshit yeah that is if if my personal opinion is that if you cannot don't have the resources to moderate this space you probably shouldn't then you shouldn't have the space yeah the space um and and additionally confirming oh okay we we when we made our new version of the site yes we backdated some articles from previous user generated content that we you know didn't vet properly we're trying to fix that now uh they removed some of those articles um and that yeah we none of the people who who are the authors of our articles are real people and they're all pen names um you know they they also have or at least had a tab on their website that said write for us and and looking for people to send them things and saying you know we we will disclose your bio
Starting point is 00:26:04 and link to all your social media if you write a story for us. And there was zero of that happening as well. So do you think that I know like on the rules for their telegram, they have the no Nazi stuff rule. Do you think they're actually trying to discourage that because they're scared of legal stuff or is that just presentory? And they I guess, you know know this is just going into speculation so i think this might be more a question for even robert um in terms of yeah like is the anti-nazi stuff presentory and because it does seem to be a lot of their user base is fostering that type of thing or is you know being moved over from other similar channels. Because, yeah, like, a lot of, like, the amount that we see Disclose, like, you know, intercept with channels like, you know, the Rise Above Movement channel,
Starting point is 00:26:51 and a whole bunch of, like, eco-fascist channels, and a whole bunch of channels, you know, on a broad, like, a broad range of, like, actual, like, fascist topics, like, people who are, like, into fascist theory, is quite high, like, that disclosed shows up um and i don't know like you can look at all their stuff saying i mean like yeah on their rule page saying no nazi bullshit um but then if you spend any amount of time looking at where their posts are forwarded it's almost primarily people who self-describe themselves as fascists um so i mean yeah it's hard or donald j trump jr yes yes it expands out into a lot of you know just like you know american journalists who study extremism could also share discloses stuff on twitter right that is part of their thing is
Starting point is 00:27:39 making that and you know that that does strengthen them because it gives them that legitimacy so then when people point out that they have a nazi problem like no that's not us that's just some of our users who are trolling or you know whatever whatever bullshit they they want to say um so i guess like how i guess the the real way to frame this is like how often have you seen nazi stuff associated with the disco with the disclosed tv brand because that's the one thing we actually can measure, right? We can't measure their intentions, but we can measure how often this stuff happens. Yeah, I mean, that's always like the best way to measure that kind of thing, rather than just sort of like making the allegation listing.
Starting point is 00:28:19 Like, we find it in this many channels. We see it shared in these areas. It's being discussed by these people. find it in this many channels we see it shared in these areas it's being discussed by these people and like the like that that's i think always kind of how you actually build these these sort of networks is by looking at what is actually spreading where like that's it is thankfully something that you can measure pretty objectively and like they are fostering it with the amount of stuff they talk about like george soros and you know the amount of stuff they talk about, like George Soros and the amount of stuff that they... The way they frame breaking news
Starting point is 00:28:48 has that editorial bent where it's very clear that it's getting pushed in a specific direction. Like, there is... That is a thing that you can't observe by reading the type of narratives they're weaving
Starting point is 00:29:01 via how they report information. Yeah, the topics that they choose to cover um are topics that resonate very deeply with conspiracists and with far-right extremist communities um if i had to speculate um i will say at least since the article has come out um they've done a better job of moderating their telegram channel at least since the article has come out um they've done a better job of moderating their telegram channel at least for now so good job disclose tv no one you can't find links to europa the last battle there anymore you can still find you can still find uh very rampant homophobia slurs um because you know they didn't they clearly auto-blocked some words but people can shorten them or use different spellings for those words to still be used in the channel um there's still anti-semitic um coded anti-semitic references as well um responding to something saying oive
Starting point is 00:30:07 for example uh yeah which is something that tends to be used by a lot of neo-nazis and anti-semites yeah i mean even and if you do any amount of research on telegram you will you will find forward link forwarded links to this channel all everywhere like if it's it is it is so massive the footprint that they have currently in the in like the the the cycle of of forwarding posts specifically on telegram um and yeah they're getting a lot of traction on it because they have stuff framed in a way that's really easy for them to have those stuff like line up with the communities that promote those types of worldviews um yeah and promote the you know
Starting point is 00:30:58 the narratives that they want to foster so let's see let's have uh another quick break and then let's maybe talk about uh your big masters project which is really interesting um yeah can i can i can i do it yeah i do the you know you know what isn't telegram uh literally these ads unless we get an ad by telegram which we we are primarily sponsored by the durov brothers um but that's for a separate project great my favorite ad is the uh is the one where it's the kid playing and they find a gun oh yeah that's my favorite welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows,
Starting point is 00:31:51 presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.
Starting point is 00:32:25 Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.
Starting point is 00:32:55 And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.
Starting point is 00:33:01 Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.
Starting point is 00:33:18 Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm you get your podcasts. you're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean,
Starting point is 00:34:08 how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Toot, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year, you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15 percent. I'm not saying you're going to get 15 percent every single year. But if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.
Starting point is 00:34:48 I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call in podcast Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails.
Starting point is 00:35:26 I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29 they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
Starting point is 00:35:42 or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it we're back well we are thanks great job great work everybody enjoyed that kid finding a gun and firing it yeah so there's one of my favorite tweets recently was like somebody it was an somebody like clipped a screen grab a news article that was like, a toddler has shot someone every day in the United States for the last three years. And somebody quote tweeted and said, somebody fucking stop him. It's very good. The last thing I want to talk about is just kind of why news aggregators
Starting point is 00:36:26 are bad in the first place and examples of which we've seen the past few years and how they contribute to disinformation specifically and how they don't do sourcing for any claims and they try to make themselves a primary source even though they're not. And then also I would love to talk about your
Starting point is 00:36:41 very fancy project. So yeah, we saw a lot of news aggregators in 2020 that like during the protest specifically that that spawned and killed many a news aggregator account um which did not help things very much um yeah and this is an issue that strikes across the political spectrum yes i mean one of the biggest instances of that would be an account called uh anon cat right that was the that was what i was thinking of yeah um who you know marketed themselves towards the left wing
Starting point is 00:37:16 um and i again i don't know what their intentionality was they may have had their heart in the right place i have no idea um and i'm not going to speculate on that right now but the effect that they caused was damaging to how information is disseminated specifically in high stress events um you know like for instance the written house shooting you know like stuff like that uh like the big accounts the the the demos around that before that yeah before that yes yeah like then the in fostering that very fast-paced unverified information circulation um that gets you know a lot of retweets it gets it gets a lot of eyeballs on it but it's but it's hard it makes it very hard to backtrack claims because they do not uh want to link to other accounts because they're mostly interested in growing their own account.
Starting point is 00:38:11 And I will say Disclose has gotten better about linking to the sources, even if the title and the tweet don't necessarily match what is in the story they link to. Or at least someone could take a different interpretation from the two. Yes. So just like, you know, news aggregation and the way it intersects with disinformation and misinformation, not just a problem for the far right, not just a problem for the right wing, not just a problem for liberals, not just a problem for leftists. This is the thing that anyone can really grasp onto. And some of it's accidental, some of it's intentional, right? There's some people might just do this kind of mindlessly, and some people may do this aggregation with a very specific intent in mind. So just be very careful whenever you have an account that always leads with all caps, like breaking news. If you have an account that always does that, maybe don't take that account super seriously all the time. Maybe you should find other sources of info that don't always start the tweets with breaking
Starting point is 00:39:05 news in all caps. Or my advice to people, if they do want something like that, find an actual news source. Yeah! There is plenty of valid criticism to be made against these mainstream media MSM
Starting point is 00:39:21 centrist stuff. Even from the left, there's criticism. But you have to find some way of finding your own meaning and understanding of what is going on in the world around you. I think AP, CNN, Reuters. Yeah, and
Starting point is 00:39:38 on that point, I think that is part of why I think Disclose can succeed, or like what they did can succeed even like when I see stuff shared on the left even by like anarchists because it is a not mainstream media news source the way they can frame things of sometimes rarely will match up with like an actual anarchist views and they're like yeah I'm going to share it from this thing because it does feel like an underground you know source it it doesn't it's. You're not sharing a CNN article so you feel better
Starting point is 00:40:07 because instead you're sharing something that is not in the mainstream. So I get that pull to not support that. Something that is a disingenuous reading of a CNN article instead. Yeah, but instead it's not actually better, it's just marketing. They're just tricking you via aesthetics and branding, and that's all that it is right so maybe you should learn to see past the marketing and branding of those types of things and look at the actual content of what's being shared what is the university project thing that uh has been taking up a lot of your time yeah and um so i got back in the u.s and i got interested um
Starting point is 00:40:46 especially in looking at the spread of cuban on in germany and that you know led me down this research path um and brought me especially to telegram um again before it was largely used in in right-wing circles in the u.s well Although the Nazis have pretty regularly in the U.S. been on Telegram as well. But this led me to look at this, and especially to look at Telegram in the context of, as I mentioned, Colin Campbell's concept of the cultic milieu, which I don't know if y'all have talked about that on this before.
Starting point is 00:41:24 We have on behind the bastards a couple of times okay but yeah to to give a quick summary is is the concept that there is the space and and when colin campbell wrote that it was in i believe the 70s so it was a physical space where people go to find these rejected narratives, the idea of rejected knowledge, and they go to seek this kind of knowledge and these things. So he was talking about things like UFO conferences or meetups or alternative bookstores. Or perhaps maybe signing up at an institute to get a degree in metaphysics yeah as what a weirdly specific example gary what yeah sorry i just read the random thought yeah anyway how's that going by the way garrison it's going good good yeah and and what you find is people can very easily move between ideologies.
Starting point is 00:42:28 And as they move between ideologies, concepts, specific schools, they cross-pollinate these schools. And this is how you get these kind of highly syncretic movements like QAnon, like the modern conspiracy movement which is incredibly syncretic and some of the other really bad ones that are out there as well that combine these different views specifically when you start combining this type of cultural mysticism
Starting point is 00:42:57 with politics often you can have very volatile results yes exactly can you think of any examples i'm not i mean in some ways the modern eco-fascist movement is built on a lot of this type of stuff so that that would be the easiest that'd be the easiest one the the i think that the syncretism of because i think a lot of people have been surprised to see like you know kind of like natural medicine and and whatnot uh subcultures and eight like alien subcultures kind of colliding with q anon and and these like uh more like far right neo-nazi type
Starting point is 00:43:33 groups and the fact that there are all of these things that were associated for years kind of more with the left have been increasingly um pulled into this this sort of um weather system of conspiratorial thinking has been surprising to a lot of people who don't understand this stuff but it makes total sense if you if you have been paying attention to the scholarship on on what is actually like how cults sort of form like it's it's it's um it's like a weather pattern that's been building for quite a while there's a gravity to it that sucks everything in together. And it all kind of it's, as you said, syncretic.
Starting point is 00:44:10 It's interesting because not to get into horseshoe theory, but this is even how you get some of that crossover. Right. Yes. Yeah, that was that was that was what I was just going to mention is that even a lot of like the left wing authors or, you know, post left wing authors who got into this like cultural mysticism. or post-left-wing authors who got into this cultural mysticism, you see their texts now getting shared by open fascists. Even though these authors were anti-fascist, they are able to still pick and choose what parts they're writing to appropriate because some of it can kind of synchronize despite them coming at it from opposite ends. A very long time. Like if you, we talked about in our Gabriel D'Annunzio episodes, Fume, which was this kind of like where a large chunk of like the fascist intellectual movement
Starting point is 00:44:51 got started in the post-World War I period, but also there were like a ton of anarchists and a lot of like left-wing like thought leaders and whatnot were kind of all, it was again,
Starting point is 00:45:02 there was this kind of like gravity center that pulled everything in and it all started churning together. And yeah, we're seeing that happen now. And yeah. It sucks. It's great. To jump back to Campbell, that's one of those examples of those physical spaces that Colin Campbell was talking about, right?
Starting point is 00:45:23 that's one of those examples of those physical spaces that colin uh that colin campbell was talking about right um where it's it's any place that ideas that are rejected by you know the orthodox kind of the establishment there is overlap there is not necessarily ideological overlap there is an interplay between them as people move between them and as these ideas come into collision with one another um and with the internet right a whole different fucking ball game um yeah because that space is now everywhere yeah exactly yeah and and telegram specifically has these specific affordances that make it ideal for having this soup of bullshit on it as well um it's it's additionally one, and this may be changing, there's a lot of discussion going on about this,
Starting point is 00:46:10 especially within the German government, who could actually, they already have a law that they could use to say, hey, you can't have Nazis on, you can't have this Nazi shit in Telegram. But Telegram is one of these last places where things are largely allowed to spread without any kind of interruption right um which i do think you know you look at telegram is used in in um the hong kong uprising as well it was used for it was used in the george floyd uprising yeah
Starting point is 00:46:39 the george floyd uprising as well um and it's the same things that attract different people to at time is fake um abolish linear time um but shoot your clock shoot the fucking clock but okay okay so let's get back to the topic yeah but but but but jumping back into this telegram markets itself is this very secure platform uh it's probably not right it does have it's certainly not no yeah absolutely not it does have it does have encrypted chats but that's only for one-to-one messaging um between people and even then you need to go and make sure that security settings are right and and again i i don't fully trust that um yeah i don't fully try i mean signal is about as good as it gets and we barely trust signal yeah yeah exactly i trust conversations when everyone has put their phone inside a faraday bag in a house and then we walked two miles into the woods we walked two miles into the woods then
Starting point is 00:47:39 you can have a conversation yeah um but telegram markets itself as this very secure app, right? Which is which is largely marketing, you know, it's appeal is that it's not WhatsApp, it's not owned by Facebook. It's probably worth acknowledging that for because it's also very popular with a lot of people in, you know, parts of the global south and countries with authoritarian governments, and it is has been used for a lot of organizing. It can be more secure but also more accessible than any other tool people have access to. In Syria, it's, again, extremely common for neighborhoods and towns will have telegram groups for this little village where a lot of stuff gets done over telegram and places like that. And telegram sits in this interesting space between social media um it's not a full-on social media site but it's also not just a messaging app yeah like telegram it's kind of hard to categorize it is an interesting sort of
Starting point is 00:48:35 like in between type thing yeah because you can have essentially unlimited i think the number is in the hundreds of thousands for how many people can join a group message on Telegram. And you also have these one-way messaging thing called channels where one person or group of people can send out messages that appear alongside everyone else's message feed as well. And you can also enable comments on that, which I'll get into in a second. But it's a great way to share information as well. And what I was specifically looking at is the forwarding of messages, because you can forward a message from this one channel into whatever group chat you're in. And it links back to that channel.
Starting point is 00:49:18 And I was interested in seeing how far, you know, what connections can we make from this? What kind of zigzagging can we find? And the answer is fucking a lot. Where someone may use Telegram for, for example, a neighborhood group message, right? And then someone forwards a message for this channel or for this other group message where they talk about, oh oh here's kind of health practices to use and then you get into the pseudoscience of things crossing into further messages from what's forwarded forward groups and channels from what's forwarded into that
Starting point is 00:49:54 group and channel and so on so on until you get to the neo-nazis eventually um and it's also it is it is a concerted effort on the part of people pushing their ideology, who will go in the comments of these giant channels and say, hey, check out my channel, what's not a real one, you know, Aryan Cooking, which is probably a channel, but- Probably is, yeah, great job. Sorry, but check out this or whatever. Especially when QAnon moved on, a lot of promoters moved on to Telegram.
Starting point is 00:50:34 There was organized groups of internet neo-Nazis going on and trying to pill boomers into neo-Nazism. Yeah. And there still are. Because of the mesh-like network of Telegram, they try to make those meshes connect via dissemination, right? You can, you know, people who are dedicated to these more esoteric groups
Starting point is 00:50:53 can join more regular, like, MAGA groups or QAnon groups and start slowly bringing links to the, start doing links and forwarding to the more extreme channels. And eventually, yeah, that does work. it can be a slow careful process um or it can be very fast and uh like bombastic and it'll depending on the person one of them will latch on to one one will latch on to the other yeah and and before the article came out um what I did see was the specific thing of, of accounts that I would associate or, or believe to be neo-Nazi, um,
Starting point is 00:51:31 encouraging people to join their groups and channels, um, in the, in the telegram group message as well. And I cannot speak to what that looks like right now after the article has come out. Yeah. And I've been trying to take a break from Telegram for my day-to-day life and focus on reading actual books.
Starting point is 00:51:51 But yeah, that is something. Yeah, I can always tell when one of us has been spending time on Telegram because the things we consider jokes get much worse. Yeah. You remember when I found that playlist of Blink-182 Nazi covers? Nazi covers? It was what? There was like a hundred of them.
Starting point is 00:52:11 Blink-1488 or some bullshit. Blink-1488. Yeah. You can find the most fucked up stuff. Don't. Don't do it. Don't scroll on Telegram. Absolutely do not do it. You're not going to get... This isn't like coveting the same knowledge or anything. You don't need't scroll on absolutely do not you're not gonna get this isn't
Starting point is 00:52:26 like coveting the same you don't need to be on twitter let alone fucking telegraph it's not even it's not worth it like there's no sacred novice like knowledge that we're hiding it's just yeah it's it just kind of sucks like it just like it just makes you feel bad yeah it just makes you feel worse about life and yourself and the people around you. So the scope for your master's project, what's the deal with tying these things together, I guess? Yeah, so using this social network analysis to argue that Telegram does function as this cultic milieu, which I have my i have my masters which seems to be the case yeah um you know and the question gets into what is the responsibility of the platform right um because i fully believe there should be something at least similar to this it it has been used for
Starting point is 00:53:22 you know purposes aligned with my politics in which i would call good uh and needed um however they've also allowed this fucking awful ecosystem to spread it's it's interesting to see when telegram has had to step in and they you know they have pulled down some isis accounts and channels um and and they have pulled down when i was in um al-hol which is the camp where all the isis prisoners were in syria like while jake and i were in the camp we could see on telegram like isis supporters in al-hol talking about stabbing guards like in real time it was not uh particularly uh it... They've done a lot. There's less of it than there used to be,
Starting point is 00:54:07 but it is still not hard to find ISIS on Telegram. Yeah, and they've taken down a few amount of neo-Nazi channels. It's funny because... Oh, God. Maybe cut this, but they've taken down some of the neo-Nazi channels when they've shared ISIS shit, for example.
Starting point is 00:54:24 Yeah, yeah. I think we're familiar with that line of thing that's something we've mentioned before there has been pressure from the Play Store and Google as well or the Play Store from Google and the App Store yeah Apple's App Store
Starting point is 00:54:38 from Apple to say we aren't going to carry the app if you don't do just a tiny bit better, essentially, which also it exists as a web client, both as a web client and as a desktop app as well. But that would limit some of it. So this has become largely discussed in the german parliament because
Starting point is 00:55:06 there's a new um there's a new government in germany and and there is this history of germany kind of is the lead for doing things about this digital content especially within the eu and and as i mentioned there's already a law called the Network Enforcement Act that requires platforms to take down content in Germany that could be implemented on Telegram as well. There's already a law.
Starting point is 00:55:35 Yeah, I mean, this is... The thing why, you know, I watch happen lots is, you know, these channels will get shut down and they'll make a new one and they'll shut down that one and make a new one, right? You see this with Discord servers, Telegram channels. It is kind of this
Starting point is 00:55:50 endless cycle. And seeking an end to the cycle is always not as easy as what one would hope because of the cyclical nature of building these platforms and connections and how the people who run these intersect. And specifically with Telegram,
Starting point is 00:56:06 it's really easy because if a channel gets shut down, you're still part of 12 other channels and odds are one of those channels is going to forward you the link to the new channel that was lost. Yeah, and this is a thing you see where they send lists of channels within extremist groups and channels, they will send out lists of here's other groups
Starting point is 00:56:22 and channels to check out as well. Yeah, but I mean, I would so that's something that's, you know, hard for regular people to actually do. But something I think that people who do not own these platforms nor lawmakers can think about is is particularly the the cultic milieu that does, you know, go past regular left right divisions in terms of politics, and how you know, go past regular left-right divisions in terms of politics and how, you know, symbol, like, symbology and stuff that was, you know, initially, you know, perhaps more anarchist or left-wing is being used by people on the right. And some people are really confused by that. And there is ways to understand it. Like, it is i i am very frustrated when i look at you know people online who don't understand why nazis can use ted k and right it's like yeah like
Starting point is 00:57:12 it's not it's not it's not not what it's not not really about what ted k actually wrote it's more the symbolic meme of ted k and trying to you know get that get that line of thinking across is not the easiest thing, because sometimes it'll go in the other direction and be like, oh, Ted K. is a Nazi, which isn't accurate either. Like, that's not also the most accurate thing to say. So it's the cultic milieu framework of being, yeah, sometimes these symbols can cross over from one thing to another. And sometimes the action can be the same, you know, both anarchists and like insurrectionary fascists both want to attack industrialization
Starting point is 00:57:46 and attack points of industry, but maybe their ideologies are slightly different sometimes in specific ways. So it's always a tricky thing to navigate. So I think in terms of people should think about what symbols they promote publicly
Starting point is 00:58:02 and stuff is a good thing, and think about news aggregation and how to maybe not just share something because it's countercultural. Try to figure out what other types of narratives this source is spreading. Follow real journalists. Support the work of real journalists
Starting point is 00:58:19 because there's a bunch of kick-ass people out there who are doing awesome research and work. So I think that kind of wraps up the scope of what I want to talk about around Disclose specifically. Because Disclose is a thing, but it's also good as just an example to this broader phenomenon, I think. Because Disclose won't be here forever, hopefully. Hopefully in a few years it's something that we can just look back on and laugh about. But it's still a good signifier for a phenomenon that happens. And even if Disclosed goes away, the phenomenon is still going to stay.
Starting point is 00:58:56 And it's important to point it out when you see whatever the next version of this is. And I'll also say that the cultic milieu isn't necessarily a bad thing right this is you know where where stuff that is rejected by the orthodox goes and you know completely eliminating right any kind of cultic milieu just means everything is exactly the fucking same and falls in line with orthodox belief which i strongly disagree with as well no there's there is a way to be counter-cultural without being a conspiratorial fascist. I would say most... It takes vigilance and responsibility in what you were consuming and sharing.
Starting point is 00:59:32 Yes, and I would say most people who are actually counterculture are... Yeah, like actual punk is that. Once you're enforcing traditional hierarchical viewpoints, that ain't punk. That's playing into what the status quo was that isn't that isn't revolutionary that like the living members of the sex pistols would disagree with you aren't they all yeah yeah but i think we can all agree that having living members of the sex pistols was a mistake and i would i prefer uh lana Wachowski's version of punk to theirs anyway. So, hey, who cares? So thank you for your work, Thomas.
Starting point is 01:00:09 I would recommend people read your article, which you can do by Googling Disclosed TV now. It will be, for me, it's the second result that pops up. So that's cool. Send it to all your friends and mutuals who are sharing Disclosed TV. You can find it on logically.ai is the website, and the full title of the article is Disclosed TV Conspiracy Forum Turned Disinformation Factory.
Starting point is 01:00:33 Thank you. Thank you for that. Do you want to direct people to your Twitter account, or do you want to be a ghost that fades away in their memory? Just don't be fucking weird. You can find me on Twitter at uh w underscore f fucking weird do it underscore thomas god fucking damn it jesus christ be weird all right i guess i'm keeping my account locked for a few more weeks um yeah i also want to shout out um some of the local mutual aid or one of the local mutual aid groups uh in the town where i live or in the area where I live is the Atlanta Justice Alliance.
Starting point is 01:01:06 Their cash app is cash symbol ATL Mutual Fund, or their Venmo is ATL Mutual Fund. They've done weekly provided food and resources for unhoused people living in downtown Atlanta, and are a great group. And then also people want to give more money to things. Shout out Atlanta Solidarity Fund, who have helped many of my friends get out of jail after they were arrested at protests. And also you can hire me. Yes.
Starting point is 01:01:40 Researchers, yes, you can hire Thomas if you want. I mean, I've known Thomas for a bit. They do really good work. Yeah, they're very in my experience, they're a very careful researcher. They will not say things without thinking about them a lot
Starting point is 01:01:58 first, which is always great in a researcher. Or at least not publicly. Send them money and off-putting comments. An even mix of money and really off-putting Twitter comments. Oh, and one more shout-out to my friends at Terrorism Bad Pod, which you should
Starting point is 01:02:14 listen to, and is on Twitter at Terrorism Bad Pod. Well, that does it for us today. If you, for some reason, are on social media and you want to follow us, you can follow us at CoolZoneMedia. Absolutely don't do or happen here pod um you can follow robert evans at i write okay send him weird definitely do not do that and you can send me weird messages at creepo time all right send garrison pictures of salads that you make and and keep keep doing
Starting point is 01:02:44 that for like five or six years to the point that it actually becomes funny because it's going to take a while. I'm just happy that people have stopped sending me eel porn. So that's honestly, that's a win. That one's on you though. I remember distinctly. Goodbye, everybody. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,
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