Stuff You Should Know - How Russia Shapes What the World Thinks

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

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 for privacy information.

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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. 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.

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. 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, is 2010 or at least the 2000, yeah, but like the 2010's, 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 is to basically game social media and use whatever you can, whatever weaknesses it has and 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-truths 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 was part of this too. Like that was a Russian name as well. Or we want to stir America up over the border 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. 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 feels even scarier, you know. 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 going to stop. I'm just not going to pay attention anymore. I'm just not going to care. Or I'll just share something because, like, I read it. Yes, exactly. Sometimes on Reddit.

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 you might know it better as. That was founded in 2013 by, 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, confident 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. Yes. Do you watch the agency on Prime? No, I don't. It is magnificent. Yeah. It's one of the best spy shows of recent times. Ooh, I love a spy show.

You guys liked black dubs, right? Yep. This is at least on that caliber, if not higher. Michael Fossbender's in it, Richard Gear, Jeffrey Wright, a bunch of other very talented people. But it's all like SpyCraft stuff. And 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. Okay, I did not watch Black Doves, actually. I thought you were talking about the, what's the Gary Elman show, Wild Horses, something Horses? I don't know. I know the one you're talking about. You watched that?

Yeah, I watched that one. Is it good? Yeah, that's really good. I mean, Gary Oldman's fantastic. Slow horses. Slow horses. I swear you watch Black Does because Emily said she liked it. The one with...

She may have watched it. Bend it like Beckham? Yeah, Kira Knightley. I didn't see it. Emily may have watched that without me, though, because she loves that too, buddy. Okay, just 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. All right. Okay. So back to the show. Oh, I know I brought that up. They battle essentially the Wagner group, but it's called Valhalla in the agency.

Oh, okay. I got you. Sorry about that. That's okay. Everyone loves a good recommendation from either one of us, I think. 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? Oh, I don't know, Josh. Because of stuff like this operation that we're going to talk about. That's right. So the IRA that I spoke of, the Internet Research Agency, 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 loved 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. Yeah. 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? They were always backed by the Kremlin. Oh, well, okay.

Yeah. But, 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. Right. So they started distributing stories around the world, basically, like we were saying, trying to get people to, like, to believe whatever they wanted to them believe at the time, like, politically. Right. And the 2016 United States election was a real big.

kind of debut. They've been kind of added 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. And this is where the allegations of Trump colluding

with the Russians, this is what they were talking about. Unproven, by the way, to Rachel Maddow's great dismay. Right. Pizza gate. They didn't necessarily come up with these things, but they were able to amplify

them 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 D.C. Who knows? Maybe you should take an assault rifle from North Carolina and go find out. Yeah, exactly. So once this sort of starts coming out and the United States and, you know, all over North American and Europe started realizing what was going on, in February 2020, to after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there started to be a little bit of action taken. The EU banned Russian state media,

including Sputnik and RT. Other companies, Google News dropped them from aggregation service. I think Google, Microsoft, and Apple all started like pulling their apps. So that sort of started happening. And then in 23 was when that failed uprising against Putin by the Wagner group happened. And the long and short is, after all this, the IRA, finally disbanded, but this work continued among other groups. Yeah, this is a good example of the whack-a-mole that the West is playing.

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 responses like taking Russia Times app off of. the Apple 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 do anything about it is because 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 the quality. It's the quantity that they focus on. Yeah, for sure. After Crimea was annexed in 2014, and then obviously after the invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, they really ramped up a lot of messaging to try and get sentiment, sometimes on their side, but a lot more times like just against Ukraine and what was going on.

And this eventually would become known as doppelganger. But to be clear, Dopplganger isn't like, it wasn't Operation Doppelganger. Ganger or there's not an organization called Doppelganger. It's more of just sort of, I think the media sort of misread that and labeled it that, but it's really just sort of this method of doing what they're doing and how they're doing it. Yeah. To be specific, it's a way of cloning dummy websites that look like actual legitimate websites.

Some of the ones that they targeted were LeMond and France, their website, Washington Post in the U.S., the guys. Ardian in the UK, and they would essentially just take, 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

if you were in the area they were targeting. 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 take you to this fake website like Washington Post.com. Just different enough that, like, you probably wouldn't notice, but it's a different domain name. And 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 was doppelganger. That technique that they used for getting this stuff out. There is no operation like using bots or creating like 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. Dopplganger was just the technique of the way that they used the infrastructure of the internet to deliver misinformation. for this short period of time. Yeah, 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, which is a PR firm that started up in 2022, founded by a political consultant who had, you know, that was their business. So, you know, they know exactly how to do it. And the Russian government all of a sudden was like, wait a minute, we would love to hire you to do like all this stuff.

It's literally as of, I think, a couple of years ago run by the Kremlin and directed by the Putin administration. So they're kind of in the middle of most of this doppelganger activity. Yes. 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, Washington Post.com, it looks like it. It smells like it. It acts like it for the most part. So it's really easy to fool people. It is. 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 the U.S. must not become the world's gendarme, which is police in French. Like the Washington Post would not use a phrase like that, right?

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

Yeah, for sure. And of course, they're amplifying this through the bot farms, Russian social media bots. We'll post links, and then there are more bots that retweet these links. I think I mentioned on the show I saw a picture of a bot farm one not too long ago that was a big expose. Were they all two in grass? No, man, it was terrifying. It was like a dude sitting at a desk on a computer and there were a thousand cell phones connected, hardwired to the computer. And then there were dozens and dozens of these guys with hundreds and hundreds of smartphones 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. 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. Agreed. Should we take a break? Mm-hmm. All right. We're going to ruminate that, and I hope we can even come back after we ruminate, but we'll be right back, my hope. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellair direct.com.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 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 replace 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. So it's almost like, you know, it's not almost like they've got all their bases covered.

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

Right. 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 the, like, the cloned sites. They're like doppelgangers of the real thing. Yeah, exactly. 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 U.S., the U.K., 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. 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 Buka massacre, like that never happened. Right. 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? Yeah, do you want to read that quote?

Go ahead. Oprah says, supporting Ukrainians is unacceptable. Their actions destroy lives in societies. Yeah. So, you know, especially if you're sorry. 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. That's exactly right. That's exactly

what they're trying to do. Or maybe not deserves what's coming, but like America, this is what a big sort of angle for them is America first. Like, we shouldn't get involved in this, let Ukraine handle it themselves. Right. And so that is, you, 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 it's 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 in creating turmoil about all the things that are going on in 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 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. 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 ever been on, like, 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 not good for your mental health and well-being. But if you do and you see people saying like, oh, yeah, thanks, Comrade or whatever Russian bot, like, that's what they're talking about here. 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 Tenet Media.

Yeah. And 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 in those people, well, I guess had to eat some crow, I would guess. Yeah, for sure. Another thing, if you ever heard, you know, George Soros is paying those protesters by the hour, like paid protesters, paid protesters. Yeah.

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 there, 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. Yeah. The one I remember was that the Ukrainian government was actually like Nazis. Oh, yeah, yeah. And really what Russia is doing is liberating the Ukrainian people. I remember that one for sure. That definitely came from this doppelganger era. Yeah, one of the weirder ones was Princess Kate

when she sort of disappeared from the public eye. Yeah. 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 tend to, and chaos in the UK. Yes. I don't remember where I found this, but I saw that 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 didn't make it up themselves in the first place. Man. They also, apparently, according to, I think, the good old USA project, that 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. I was a little worried about that. I am.

Hopefully we're still under the radar enough. Well, I like to think so. Yeah, and if all of a sudden Chuck and I die in a fiery car crash together, it was probably the Kremlin. I'm not flying anytime soon. You have to, although I don't want to say win or how. We should probably edit this part out.

But there was a whole group at the social design agency that 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. Yeah, for sure.

I don't know how much you want to get into this nuts and bolts section. We kind of already covered it, really. 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, then it goes to 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. 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 illegal. It's a UK company. so, you know, we don't have any obligation to check what they're doing, right? And as it gets closer and closer to the actual fake website, the companies just get shadier and shadier.

And apparently they're not the one, they didn't come up with this technique. It's fairly common among bad actors. Yeah. Like Brad Pitt, I guess. I was trying to think of a bad actor. I didn't want to be mean. I think you can be mean to Brad Pitt at this point. Oh, yeah, because he's a fine actor.

Yeah. And a fine piece, you know. A piece of what? You know. S or A. Did you see he and Ed Norton at the soccer match? No, I heard about it. Yeah, it's kind of fun, the old fight club thing.

What was I going to say? You were going to say we're going to take a break, right? Yeah, I think whatever I was saying is petered out. It didn't matter. All right. Well, Josh is going to peter back up. up and we'll be back right after this. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple.

Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellair direct.com. Our town is small taters by most standards, right? But to the people who grew up here, it's everything. What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America? Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area. The first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in Appalachia. But they weren't just planning houses.

We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life. Stop right there. Is that normal? A podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment. God need men to rule. Great. And decides to fight back. Do not use my hard work to sell your bullshit. They're not just opposing what. It's being planned for here.

Our hometown is not a test tube. They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to Our Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clemens. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers.

The show is famously super accessible so you can easily. jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller. The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anywhere too, right? What do you think it is now? It's images and words being spoken,

captured by some sort of technology. Danny McBride. He loves Nova. Oh, that's fantastic. And you make it on, you make your own. That's great. I call him Terro Reed. It's a good name. They're all named after cast members of American Pie. Oh, gotcha.

I call, I don't, I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachie Sobieski. Yeah, I don't think she was an American pie, but I still like that. Haven't looked it up. She was prominent around the same time. Yeah. Then Mary Steenbergin. Why are you guys talking to me? I'm worried.

Why are you talking so down to me that you think I don't understand your little play game? I just really, I get it. I'm trying to set you up for success here. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, the German website, T. Online, That sounds fake. 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. I'm sure Netflix is like, seriously? Thanks. I know. Although Netflix is probably like, hey, any publicity's good publicity.

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. Sure. Or I will get a comment from someone on some random, like I'll leave a comment 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 got to be separating me from money somehow.

Somehow, or yeah, or getting money to somebody like an influencer or something or to boost whatever thing you said was cool. 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. 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 next to the video screen. Like learn all about C++ coding from me. Yeah. You're 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. 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.

Yeah. Because it's really going in the wrong direction. No, it definitely is. There's this thing called the dead internet theory, I've been wanting to do at least the 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 and whatever country, Singapore or something like that, right? And some studies have found that perhaps a third of accounts on either Instagram or Facebook,

probably Facebook, are bots, a third. 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 pushed actual human-written, researched articles about any given thing from, like, page one Google search to, like, page 20. 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 basically repeat themselves over and over again. That's what you have

available. So it does seem like the internet is pretty dead. 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 caption instead of being like, you know, Led Zeppelin performs at this performance and it was awesome. Right. 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's doing it. Yeah. And it's just, it's kind of ruining what I used to like about Instagram, along with a lot of other stuff. Yeah.

Like, you know, these fake, busty women, it's like, it just makes me want to run away and stop it all. Run, run away. Something else is going to come along because there is, like, it's very clear that the Internet, and, 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. I know. It'll comes to. It sucks because I don't like to support that company because they're a 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, yeah, it feels like it's a no-in situation sometimes. I think what it will probably become is more of an emphasis on email. Maybe. Again, and then, like, that'll get taken over and then it'll be handwritten letters. 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 in 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. 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. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, they said that they're doing this. They're not actually doing it. And that's a good example. of the whole whack-a-mole thing too is like a big company like that trying 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 medic could do way, way more than it does. So finally, in September 2024, after this has been identified for two full years, the U.S. Department of Justice is like we're going to take charge here. Yeah, we'll take care of it. Get this. They took down 32 websites. Wow. That were related to doppelganger. And they were like, this is too risky before a U.S. election.

So we're going to go to the nuclear option and take down 32 websites. Yeah. I think the cynicism is coming through. I mean, whack-a-mole doesn't even begin to describe it. But I'm sure, like, Russia hears the stuff. And they're just, like, laughing into their vodka. you know. 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. Yeah, and now we're seeing, of course, and we've talked about, I think we did a whole episode on deepfakes, right? Yeah, on deepfake and obviously the advent of AI technology, which is now a complete we've 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. 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. I've been going like, I don't even know if this is real. Like, I don't know what I can believe anymore. So, like, it's working. What they're doing is working. Right. The thing that got me is that they 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 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. Yeah. I'm going to go live in a cave right after we record this. How does that sound? We'll get into Buddhism. Yeah, let's do that. So like we said, I don't know if we gave our hat tip to Livia, 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. Yeah, there have been some studies, right? 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 going to be like, yes, then maybe it doesn't really sway opinion? But there was a study that looked at disinformation efforts by Russia and the 2016 U.S. election, and it basically found that, like, it had almost no effect whatsoever. 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%. 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. 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, which

was just complete bunk made up by the SIF 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. So it's going to 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 going to find out about three years from now, you know? Right.

Yeah, for sure. The other thing that sort of would send to 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. They're out and proud. 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

sewing chaos and getting people to eventually think, like, I don't even know, like, maybe I'll just disengage all together. Right. 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. Right. man, I really do want to go live in a cave after this. 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. That sounds like a great idea. Sure. Well, since Chuck and I are jaded, I think it's time for listener mail.

This is beyond jaded. All right. Guys, 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. Right. She, of course, claimed 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. Yeah. 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 Croyle 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. So I say biopic. And I don't know. That's just how it flowed out of my mouth. So I may be wrong.

I don't care. Yeah. You may be crazy. What do you say? You say biopic, right? Mm-hmm. But that's just what I've always heard. And I'm so used to you saying biopic now.

Not even, I think that they're both right. I think you manage to wedge it into reality. Well, maybe someday when someone writes the biography on our lives, it would have turned into a biopic. Yeah. All right. Well, who is that from The Nice One? That is from Kevin.

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? Yeah. We can all have an arm wrestling match one day or something. 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 Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Nick Tuturo. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Least Black Landsman. And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Tatoro, I deliver pizza to a new guest. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins.

What are you doing my belt? To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Tuturo. It's called Happiness, Delivering Happiness. And many, many more. Open your free High Heart Radio app. Search Delivering Happiness with Nick Tutro.

And listen now. I'm Hoda Kotbby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotbby. You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. On Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman.

Your duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you. Oh, no. I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.