0:03

What's up QAA listeners? The

0:06

fun games have begun. I

0:10

found a way to connect to the internet. I'm

0:12

sorry, boy. Welcome

0:16

listener to the 268th chapter of

0:18

the QAA podcast, the Why Google

0:20

Sucks Now episode. As always, we

0:23

are your host, Jake Rakatansky. Julian

0:25

Fields. And Travis View. Before

0:27

there was social media in the

0:29

modern sense, there were search engines.

0:31

And these search engines in the

0:34

1990s had names like Yahoo,

0:37

Excite, InfoSeek, Altavista, HotBot, Ask

0:39

Jeeves, and Lycos. Remember those

0:42

ones? Huh? Oh yeah. How

0:44

did they say this? I had a

0:47

lot of questions for Jeeves around that time. Travis

0:49

Leno is a good bit actually. Travis, you need

0:51

to get one of those Brazilian

0:53

butt things, butt for your chin. These

0:57

search engines worked fine enough in helping

0:59

you find something on the growing number

1:01

of primitive websites, which were mostly run

1:03

by amateurs, but it was still a pretty

1:05

cluttered and frustrating experience. You had to

1:07

go through a lot of pages of

1:09

search to find anything that was good.

1:12

But in the late 90s, two Stanford grads by

1:15

the name of Larry Page and Sergey Brin

1:17

established a search engine called Google. They

1:19

used a more sophisticated algorithm to determine

1:21

the relevance of a website to any

1:23

given search term you might use. And

1:26

the growing numbers of internet users were

1:28

so impressed with how well it delivered

1:30

information and other resources that the word

1:32

Google became a verb that was a

1:34

synonym for search. And all

1:36

those other search engines fell by the wayside.

1:38

Yeah, I wonder what Jeeves is doing now.

1:40

Yeah, not much. Hard time. Yeah,

1:43

Jeeves is in the Yandex prison in

1:46

the Gulak. In

1:49

recent years, however, it feels like something

1:51

terrible has happened. More and

1:53

more Google searches don't deliver you high

1:55

quality, relevant results from credible sources. Rather

1:58

cheap, poorly written. lurch filled with

2:01

affiliate links and spammy ads, or perhaps

2:03

even mass-produced AI content that contains no

2:05

indication of where the information came from

2:07

at all. It is so cool though

2:10

to type in like anything and have

2:12

a.com with that exact search. This

2:15

is bad news for people who are

2:17

concerned about disinformation and baseless conspiracy theories

2:19

because it means people who seek information

2:21

aren't being funneled into sources that provide

2:23

them with an accurate understanding of the

2:25

world. To help us understand why this

2:27

is happening with Google, we're joined by

2:30

journalist Ed Zitron. He publishes the newsletter,

2:32

Where Is Your Ed At?, and he

2:34

is the host of the podcast, Better

2:36

Offline. Ed, thank you so much for

2:38

joining us. What's up? Yeah, I'm glad

2:40

to get into it. And especially this

2:42

is relevant to me because my

2:44

professional background before I became a

2:47

podcaster was basically trying to game

2:49

Google search. So I certainly was

2:51

part of the problem. Should I

2:53

pitch an alternate title for your

2:56

newsletter, like Getting Ed with

2:59

Zitron or anything? That's

3:01

a no. No, okay. All

3:03

right, well, no. I tried. I came

3:05

up with that newsletter name once. I spent half a

3:08

minute thinking. I thought,

3:10

well, what's that Basement Jack song? I

3:12

went with it and I will never

3:14

change it now. There are no other names I'm

3:16

going to consider. I don't care if they're better.

3:18

It is cool because that is how certain British

3:21

people say, head. They just

3:23

completely get rid of the beginning. Yes. Well,

3:26

sometimes you need to hear the wrong pitch to know that

3:28

you've actually got the right one. So yeah, exactly.

3:30

Julian's still providing a service.

3:33

Yeah. Well, I just love innovation. I prone

3:35

innovation in all things I do. Same.

3:38

Not really. I put out a newsletter

3:41

and a podcast. Those are two very

3:43

old ideas. Yeah. I run a

3:45

PR firm. Again, very old idea. Yeah. Like

3:48

nothing innovative here. But before we get into

3:50

all of this, QAA News. For

3:54

my first story of QAA News,

3:56

Huma Abedin and Alex Soros are

3:58

dating. Oh boy. I didn't

4:00

know you were doing page six shit. What

4:03

the fuck, David? I mean... You

4:05

never guess who's been smooching in

4:07

this way. They're calling

4:09

them the posh and Bex

4:11

of the cabal.

4:15

Q-axis Hollywood. I know. Hashtag

4:17

Abadoros. Oh my god. Yeah,

4:21

normally I would say this kind of

4:23

thing is beneath us. We are a

4:25

serious podcast. The discuss is... So not

4:27

true. Serious matters, both contemporary and historical.

4:30

But this is very funny. So I'm

4:32

gonna get into it. So Huma Abadon,

4:34

the 47-year-old former chair, former vice chair

4:36

of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential

4:39

campaign, and Alex Soros, the 38-year-old

4:42

son of billionaire Democratic donor George

4:44

Soros, have revealed that they are

4:46

dating in a Valentine's Day post

4:48

on social media. God, I want

4:50

to drop the Nickelodeon gack like all over

4:53

them. Yeah,

4:56

and make them run, make them run

4:58

like the hidden temple. Yeah. This

5:01

is one of those things where I do hate

5:03

the people, so you just have to be like,

5:05

well no, you hate them for the wrong reasons.

5:08

Right. Yeah, I mean, it's very

5:10

funny. I mean, so the couple

5:12

that cozy up at a restaurant

5:14

in Paris is filed for a

5:16

picture that the Alex

5:19

Soros shared on Instagram with a

5:21

text sticker that said, Happy Valentine's

5:23

Day. I see a lot

5:25

of roses on the table, a lot of

5:27

roses. I see two presents wrapped identically. So

5:30

they are on the same wavelength. They wrapped

5:32

their gifts the same way, same box, potentially

5:34

same gift. If you have a forest green

5:36

box and you put a red bow on

5:38

it, it just looks like fucking Christmas, okay?

5:40

Get your Valentine's Day straight. And they have

5:42

a remarkable amount of bread in that. I

5:45

was gonna say, Ed, yeah, as an insult

5:47

to the working and lower classes, they have,

5:49

yeah, a huge loaf of bread just on

5:51

the table. It's sliced up real nice. Well,

5:54

they're both gluten intolerant, so they are not

5:56

touching that bread. That's just the indicator that

5:58

they're in Paris. of

6:00

roses what does that mean?

6:02

Actually if you look at the

6:04

if you look at the vase and you look at

6:06

the line of roses it makes a 1 and

6:09

a 0. Yeah okay. And

6:12

the bread looks like a fish

6:15

skeleton. 10, so the age of the

6:17

child that they're going to eat tonight.

6:22

So there'd been a total of 54 first

6:24

ladies including 43 official 11 acting but then

6:26

perhaps they're suggesting that because this is number

6:28

10 they're gonna kill one of them probably.

6:31

Yeah that has to be the base. Travis

6:33

just nodded. This means Travis thinks it's true.

6:35

Great. Sure why not. And

6:37

also you'll notice through the glass

6:39

divider behind them you can see

6:41

the kitchen and there's a chef

6:44

in there so that's obviously some

6:46

sort of nod to baking. This

6:48

post should be baked. The 14

6:50

food trays represented you

6:56

know that are kind of on the shelf back there I

6:59

think represent the skulls of

7:01

their enemies. They're actually deep in like

7:03

a Swiss mountainside cave and those are

7:05

screens that they can just put up

7:08

like inside French restaurant.

7:11

They're actually in a prison.

7:13

Yeah those are green like actually just

7:15

two green surfaces that they then superpose

7:17

stuff on. Anyways Travis please continue. So

7:20

this is relevant to our podcast because

7:22

Huma Abidine was a frequent feature of

7:25

the early Q drops in 2017 and

7:27

she was also used to be married

7:29

to the disgrace former representative Anthony Weiner.

7:32

She filed for divorce from Weiner in 2017 after

7:36

the ex-congressman was sentenced to nearly two years

7:38

in prison for sexting with a 15 year

7:41

old girl. So yeah you know

7:43

good for her for separating from

7:45

the elite pedos. Well but she's

7:48

potentially dating a Sorrows

7:50

child so yeah I don't think she's

7:52

trading one for the other. I don't

7:54

know. Yeah a richer just a richer

7:57

more successful pedophile potential. You're gonna get

7:59

a suit. What

8:01

Travis is saying, and this is a fact, is

8:03

that she is now going out with a younger

8:05

pedophile. God damn it. All

8:10

right, so Alex Soros, he's also

8:12

been in the news, not for

8:14

doing anything illegal, but for being

8:16

the heir to the Soros family

8:18

holdings, including his nonprofit Open Society

8:20

Foundation, which funds about $1.5 billion

8:22

a year into liberal causes. So

8:27

I thought it'd be worthwhile to

8:29

check back in with the world

8:31

of QAnon podcasters and livestreamers, because

8:33

there is still in the year

8:35

2024 a very active QAnon community

8:37

online, and they still produce a lot of

8:39

content. So I checked

8:41

with one of the most prolific

8:43

media companies that produces QAnon content, and

8:46

that is Badlands Media, operated by Patel

8:48

Patriot. Badlands Media has

8:50

a livestream show called Eye of the Storm,

8:53

and it is hosted by two gentlemen who

8:55

go by the names Absolute Truth and Stormy

8:57

Patriot Joe. So these

8:59

two guys are really impressed with

9:01

QDrop 38, which contains these phrases.

9:07

And the host of this program thought

9:09

that this was relevant because of recent mass

9:11

shootings in the news. This, of course, is

9:13

part of the especially repulsive false flag conspiracy

9:16

theory, which claims that random acts of mass

9:18

violence are actually fake and staged, usually the

9:20

conspiracists claim, as part of a plot to

9:22

create a pretext for more restrictive gun control

9:24

laws. This is the

9:26

same kind of conspiracy theory that Alex Jones

9:28

helped to push about the victims of the

9:30

Sandy Hook shooting, which led to Alex Jones

9:32

being ordered to pay more than a billion

9:34

dollars after losing a defamation lawsuit, though the

9:37

actual amount remains to be seen. But here

9:39

is how the host of the Eye of

9:41

the Storm show reacted to the Alex Soros-Huma

9:43

Abadine news. And then

9:45

drop number 38 November 2nd of 2017. Go further down the drop.

9:47

It says, Note

9:50

false flags. Follow Huma. Prepare messages of

9:52

reassurance based on what was dropped here

9:54

to spread on different platforms, the calm

9:56

before the storm. So I just found

9:59

it super interesting. that the same day

10:01

we got news of her dating

10:03

Balzac eyes son that we had

10:06

multiple mass shootings in the

10:08

United States same time and we have a

10:10

drop here talking about note false flags follow

10:12

whom and she's you know in the last

10:14

couple weeks we've had her and Podesta kind

10:16

of pop back up into the public sphere

10:18

I don't really think that's a coincidence man.

10:20

Balzac eyes. Yeah they also call George Soros

10:22

Balzac eyes yeah that's that's a good one.

10:24

Cool. So I mean this is obviously meaningless

10:26

because there is unfortunately reports of mass violence

10:28

every single week and occasionally human Aberdeen because

10:30

of her celebrity status is going to

10:33

pop up in the news so every

10:35

time human Aberdeen appears in the news

10:37

it will be roughly concurrent with reports

10:39

of mass violence so this isn't evidence

10:41

of prophecy by Q. But they also

10:43

notice something spooky this Q drop that

10:46

mentions human Aberdeen happens to bear the

10:48

number of Alex Soros' age. Not the

10:50

age when the drop was made the

10:52

age when humor posted their parents. Current

10:54

age. Yeah of course I mean

10:56

Q all seeing Q you know had to know

10:59

that they wouldn't start dating until Alex Soros turned

11:01

38. Right and just listen

11:04

until you read it I picked up

11:06

Alex being 38 and Q 38 that was

11:08

something I didn't really catch the first time we went through

11:10

this so that's pretty cool too. Ha I

11:12

hadn't noticed that either nice catch man.

11:14

The little is that like an easter

11:16

egg. Yeah yeah yeah. Little one for

11:19

the Q lifers. So it's pretty cool

11:21

that the number and the age match

11:23

up. Just just playing

11:25

a fun little capture game with

11:27

my homies about child eating. Classic

11:30

numerical insanity fest. Oh god. But

11:32

these two guys they started playing with

11:34

numbers and they decide to look

11:36

up Q drop 47 which is

11:38

human Aberdeen's current

11:40

age. Oh yeah man and you

11:42

just making that correlation between I'm gonna go back one

11:44

slide real quick between his age and drop number 38

11:46

I went and looked up drop number 47 in

11:49

relation to her age and oh looky here at

11:51

drop 47 you can paint the picture based solely

11:53

on the questions asked be vigilant today and expect

11:55

a major false flag. Does anyone find it to

11:58

be a coincidence there is always a terror. attack

12:00

when bad news breaks for the Democrats.

12:03

Sure, that's all a coincidence, right, Joe?

12:05

Yeah. How the mighty have fallen. I

12:08

mean, it used to be, you know,

12:10

baking the date of Hillary Clinton's arrest

12:12

of massive groups

12:15

of politicians being sent to Guantanamo Bay.

12:17

But now it's like, oh,

12:20

the age is the same number.

12:22

I know. I know. It's like

12:24

they're just playing a matching game

12:26

now. Like, you know, you play

12:28

the kids when you're a kid,

12:30

you just lay out all the cards on the

12:32

table. You turn over the, you know, the red

12:34

wagon with the other red wagon and you match

12:36

them. That's all they're doing

12:38

all day long playing a matching

12:40

game. So I guess from an

12:42

outsider's perspective, do these guys, is

12:44

it obvious whether these guys believe

12:46

this shit and they're just completely

12:49

mentally cooked or is it just

12:51

a kind of a cynical con?

12:53

No, these guys believe it because

12:55

I mean, just based on the

12:57

sheer amount of energy compared to

12:59

the meager reward, I

13:01

have to believe that they are

13:03

true believers. That's so sad. Welcome

13:06

to the podcast. I

13:10

know. I mean, this is part of the podcast. They're

13:12

meaning to ask this question to you. And it's just

13:14

like, I'm so happy the answer is somehow worse than

13:16

I thought it would be. Sadder.

13:19

We're always asking ourselves, do you people

13:21

really, really believe this? I mean, because

13:23

it almost feels like insulting

13:25

to assume that they're being sincere. It

13:27

almost like, well, if you're writing

13:30

some sort of con, at least, you know,

13:32

there's a little bit of like, you know,

13:34

strategy involved in that. You're like, you're doing

13:36

this for monetary gain. At least, you know,

13:38

at least you're trying, it's maybe a dishonest

13:40

living, but you're doing it to make a

13:42

living. But no, man, a lot of these

13:44

people, there's still a strong community

13:47

of believers who just bake all

13:49

day, then broadcast their bakes like

13:52

this. Well, and I mean, we're

13:54

looking at the dregs really, because,

13:56

you know, after five years or

13:59

however long of no none of

14:01

the predictions or proofs or anything

14:04

adding up to something tangible, something

14:06

real, I mean, especially following the loss of

14:09

the 2020 election to Joe Biden. If

14:13

that was Joe Biden. If

14:16

it was, indeed, and not some sort

14:18

of plant. And I don't mean like

14:20

a CIA plant, I mean like some

14:22

kind of house plant with soil. Yeah,

14:24

I assumed you meant. Of course.

14:27

You're left with this, you know, trolling

14:29

the page six sort of

14:31

celebrity relationship gossip and trying to

14:33

find meaning because any little piece

14:35

that you find that you can

14:37

draw a connection is a nice

14:39

reminder to both your ego and

14:41

your sense of reality that, hey,

14:43

you didn't waste all this time.

14:45

All these five years that you've

14:47

spent cooking all the t-shirts you

14:49

have, the stickers, like Travis

14:52

was saying, the energy spent into

14:54

creating content revolving around this single,

14:56

you know, this single sort of

14:58

anonymous entity, that it wasn't actually

15:00

a waste of time, that there's still crumbs,

15:02

there's still crumbs sort of trickling out. And

15:04

when the big news happens, you'll still be

15:07

relevant and you'll be there. And yeah, you've

15:09

been doing page six stuff for the last

15:11

like three years, but like now you're going

15:13

to get to cover the Guantanamo executions. Stop

15:16

talking about our podcast. So

15:20

this is also kind of like a

15:22

frustrating thing with conspiracy theorists is that

15:24

they'll connect to things, imply or their

15:26

state that it's not a coincidence, but

15:28

then they won't take that extra step

15:30

of explaining why it's not coincidental. Okay.

15:32

If it's not coincidental, then what is the

15:34

significance or meaning? So they're saying that, okay,

15:36

this Q drop 47 talks about false flags

15:38

because that's human abadine's current age. So it's

15:40

saying that Q back in 2017 warned that

15:43

human abadine was 47 years old and there

15:46

would be false flags. So if that's the

15:48

case, are you saying that this warning expires

15:51

when human abadine turns 48,

15:53

which happens to be on July 28th of this

15:55

year. So no more false flags after July of

15:57

this year. Is this what you're saying? talking

16:00

humor's birthday, Travis, do you send her a little

16:02

packet for you? I checked, I was just curious.

16:05

It's like what? What do they say? It's

16:07

like wow, that's not a coincidence. Okay, if

16:09

it's meaningful, if it's significant, let's game this

16:11

out. What else would have to be true

16:14

if you believe that somehow Q was predicting

16:16

that there would be false flags when humor

16:18

Aberdeen was 47 years old? It

16:21

would follow that there's no more false flags when she

16:23

turns 48. No. Or is it not? No,

16:26

then you have to go to Q-Drop 48 and

16:28

use some new connection. Okay. Right? You

16:31

just keep making, that's how you bake

16:33

now, just through she to Aberdeen's age.

16:35

Alright, fantastic. We're baking ages, we're baking

16:37

birthdays, we're baking how many fingers they've

16:40

got. You know, we're scraping the resin

16:42

out of the pipe. Yeah, I know.

16:44

Alright, so my second story in QAA

16:47

News, the organization True the Vote made

16:49

famous in Dinesh Sousa's film 2000 Mules

16:52

tells Judge it has no evidence of

16:54

ballot stuffing in Georgia. And I thought

16:56

this was a really interesting story because

16:58

this is a sad ending to one of

17:01

the most more popular forms of election

17:03

denialism. So you may recall the documentary

17:06

2000 Mules, which we covered in episode

17:08

189. In

17:10

that movie, the organization True the Vote

17:12

claimed that there was evidence of a

17:14

conspiracy to use so-called ballot mules to

17:16

steal the election for Joe Biden, particularly

17:18

in states like Georgia. Like we talked

17:20

about in the episode, one could easily

17:23

conclude that the allegations of

17:25

election frauds were baseless just by analyzing,

17:27

you know, what was in the movie

17:29

itself. But it gets worse because

17:32

back in 2021, True the Vote contacted

17:34

the Georgia Bureau of Investigation about

17:36

its allegations, specifically the purported vote

17:38

monitoring organization claimed to have cell

17:40

phone geolocation evidence showing that hundreds

17:42

of people had traveled to multiple

17:44

ballot drop boxes on given days.

17:47

A Fulton County Superior Court judge

17:49

in Atlanta signed an order last

17:51

year requiring True the Vote to

17:53

provide evidence and collected, including the

17:55

names of people who were sources

17:57

of information to state election officials

18:00

were frustrated by the group's refusal

18:02

to share evidence with investigators. It

18:04

ultimately, True the Vote admitted they

18:06

had nothing worth turning over. All

18:09

of these years, they admit that

18:11

it's just they don't really have

18:13

anything of substance. So a spokesperson

18:15

for Georgia Secretary of State Brad

18:17

Raffensperger told the Associated Press this

18:19

about the new revelations. Once again,

18:21

True the Vote has proven itself

18:23

untrustworthy and unable to provide a

18:26

shred of evidence for a single

18:28

one of their fairytale allegations. Like

18:30

all the lies about Georgia's 2020 election,

18:32

their fabricated claims of ballot harvesting

18:34

have been repeatedly debunked. Don't care.

18:37

We're already in 2024. Come on.

18:40

Didn't see the Huma thing? Like, come on. Wake

18:42

up. Yeah, don't you know who's dating? Now,

18:45

this seems like a fairly

18:47

significant development, and it is

18:49

resonating in some sectors of

18:51

right-wing media. For example, the

18:53

talk show host Steve Deese

18:55

of Blaze Media previously had

18:57

Greg Phillips from True the

18:59

Vote to promote the 2000 mules

19:01

film and the claims of election fraud.

19:03

However, in a recent show, Steve Deese

19:05

said that he wanted answers from Phillips

19:07

for misleading his audience. We've seen Mike

19:09

Lindell essentially go bankrupt for producing no

19:11

results. And I know you guys are

19:13

going to email me conferences and everything

19:15

else. He's produced nothing in

19:17

any court whatsoever, at any forum whatsoever. I

19:19

like Mike. I have nothing personal against Mike.

19:22

It breaks my heart what's happened to him.

19:24

I also broke my heart to see him

19:26

become so crazy for Donald Trump that he

19:28

accused Ron DeSantis of stealing the election in

19:31

Florida. That was kind of my tap out,

19:33

but I still sleep on my pillow every

19:35

night at home. But he's going bankrupt. People

19:37

went to prison and are still there. Jason

19:39

Miller tells Under oath the January 6th commission,

19:41

current senior adviser to candidate Donald Trump, that

19:43

they all knew Trump lost and told him

19:45

that. And now True the Vote says we

19:47

have no evidence. Todd, I want you to

19:49

contact them and try to get them back

19:51

on the show. OK, my guess is they

19:53

won't do it. But I want answers to

19:55

this. I put them on the show.

19:57

I gave them a platform. I bought into it. Extension

20:00

sold it to this audience. We need

20:02

some answers to this. Yeah, we need

20:05

to shore up Steve Deuce's reputation. I

20:08

mean, he's noticing something that I've noticed.

20:10

It seems like, you know, the people

20:12

who are, it's like everyone who's been

20:14

promoting these claims, you know, like Mike

20:16

Lindell, are having their lives ruined because

20:18

they're just buying, they're going all in

20:20

on lies and it's destroying them. Yeah,

20:23

I mean when you platform anybody with

20:25

a crazy theory, you know, any kind

20:27

of crazy theory, yeah, it might take

20:29

four years, but eventually, you know,

20:32

the chickens are gonna come home to

20:34

roost and you have to do this

20:36

weird sort of performative outrage to keep

20:38

your, you know, keep your credibility. I'd

20:40

like to see more of this, to

20:42

be honest. Well, yeah, as Obama once

20:44

said, reality has a way of asserting

20:47

itself. As Obama once said, Jesus Christ,

20:49

Travis, fuck off. Let

20:51

me be clear. Let me be

20:53

clear, reality is true and you

20:55

didn't fall out of a coconut

20:57

tree, you're, okay, etc. For my

20:59

contribution to QA News, other than

21:01

pissing off Travis, I'm gonna be picking

21:03

on the mentally vulnerable, as usual. That's

21:06

right, the commander-in-chief himself, Joe Biden, or

21:08

his team, has joined TikTok and is

21:10

once again memeing about Dark Brandon, a

21:13

version of the president with red laser

21:15

eyes that make him look like a

21:17

cool badass. Now, because I'm an old

21:20

person, not quite silent generation, but nearly,

21:22

I found out about this on Twitter,

21:24

where directly after the Super Bowl ended,

21:27

Biden posted a picture of himself smiling

21:29

with the red laser eyes and the text,

21:31

just like we drew it up. So

21:33

this was a reference to a piece

21:36

of news we covered last week, the

21:38

right-wing conspiracy theory that Joe Biden, the

21:40

Pentagon, Taylor Swift, Travis Kelcey, and I

21:42

guess the NFL were conspiring to make

21:44

the Kansas City Chiefs win the Super

21:46

Bowl so that Swift and Kelcey could

21:48

then get more attention and endorse Joe

21:50

Biden over Donald Trump. So what

21:53

we have here is Joe Biden epically leaning

21:55

into a right-wing conspiracy theory, probably because his

21:57

team believes it makes him look funny, in

21:59

touch. and cool to the youth.

22:01

It was unfortunate timing though because on

22:03

the day of the Super Bowl, client

22:06

state Israel carried out a massacre in

22:08

Palestine, specifically in the city of Rafa,

22:10

near which the Israeli army has corralled

22:12

approximately 1 million displaced Palestinians, many from

22:14

the now totally in ruins Gaza City.

22:16

This was accompanied by a Super Bowl

22:18

ad paid for by the Israeli government.

22:20

Here's from an article in the nation

22:22

by Dave Zirin. CBS granted the Israeli

22:24

government space for an ad about the

22:27

130 hostages left in Gaza. This ad meant

22:29

to build public support and justify the

22:31

slaughter of nearly 30,000

22:34

civilians in Gaza spurred 10,000

22:36

people to register complaints with the FCC

22:38

because the commercial did not disclose that

22:40

a foreign government had paid for it.

22:42

Coupled with the Rafa raid, this looks

22:44

more like military synergy than happenstance. So

22:47

in the context of what's being called

22:49

the Super Bowl massacre, posting epic laser

22:52

eyes Biden seems like a particularly grim

22:54

piece of PR. Yeah, you would think

22:56

the PR people would give them blue

22:58

or white lasers, you know, good colors,

23:01

right? Not red, not red evil. Blue

23:03

and yellow, you saw some Ukraine in

23:05

that. Yeah, yeah, I mean red, red.

23:07

This is the color of Darth Vader's

23:09

lightsaber. This is the color, this is

23:11

the color of the stormtroopers blasters. We

23:13

need positively coated

23:15

laser eyes. It's

24:00

deviously plotting to rig the season so the Chiefs would

24:02

make the Super Bowl or the Chiefs just being a

24:04

good football team You're getting trouble fighting Trump

24:07

or Biden? You kidding? Biden.

24:10

I like how they had to do a cut

24:12

when it came to Trump or Biden because he

24:14

definitely was like Trump wait Wait, uh, no. They

24:16

had to cut you need a clean cut on

24:18

that one It looks like they fucked up like

24:20

he was like the other guy And

24:23

when they mentioned like potentially this idea that

24:25

they've rigged the Super Bowl They cut away

24:27

to the dark Brandon meme and

24:29

play like a laser sound hilarious, uh So what

24:32

are we doing? Are we just trying to get

24:34

like every person with like

24:36

extremely fragile mental health to just go

24:38

berserk? Like are we are we genuinely

24:40

doing memes at these people? I think

24:42

it's stupider and worse is they look

24:45

at MAGA and they look at what

24:47

works for them and then they go

24:49

we should do a version of that

24:51

Which I guess goes along with Joe

24:53

Biden's promise that nothing will essentially change

24:55

So now posting like weird memes is

24:57

something that the president does even I

24:59

was listening in on one of my

25:01

wife's like conference calls for work after

25:03

the Super Bowl And it was just

25:05

you know the moment before the meeting

25:07

where everybody's kind of catching up and people

25:09

were like, I don't know Isn't it kind

25:11

of weird for these are very like, you

25:13

know They're not nearly as entrenched on you

25:15

know, fortunately for them as we are and

25:17

they were like, I don't know Isn't it

25:19

sort of weird that like the press the

25:22

official president account is like hinting that they

25:24

rigged the Super Bowl And like

25:26

he also has lasers coming out of his eyes. They

25:28

weren't you know, they're not like us where they're like,

25:30

oh god This is just a reflection of like how

25:32

MAGA has influenced politics and they've actually dragged us down

25:34

to the month It was just like I don't know.

25:36

It's an official account that that is sort of

25:39

like weird, isn't it? I'm like, yes,

25:41

it's very weird Yes, it's because a

25:43

38 year old guy was

25:45

definitely like mr. Biden. So this

25:48

button this would be extremely based What

25:51

do you mean be babies no base

25:54

sir, it's very important your based okay,

25:56

and he just they shuffle him in

25:58

front of the camera Yeah, we've

26:00

seen what happens when this kind of thing

26:02

is applied to like a kind of weak

26:05

candidate who doesn't have like the the Trump

26:07

like Fuck off. I don't give a shit

26:09

swag It was the DeSantis campaign and that

26:11

did not go well putting him in with

26:14

the red eyes and doing us Like epic

26:16

son and rad and cool music did not

26:18

work out very well So this team is

26:20

if anything copying kind of like a losing

26:22

streak I mean also this whole meme came

26:25

about the whole dog brand of meme came

26:27

about when he was doing cool stuff Yeah,

26:29

like things about weed. Yeah,

26:31

not like things about murdering children and

26:33

then referring to them as people below

26:35

the age of 18 Yeah,

26:38

not as cool about as cool. Not

26:40

really based one might say so awesome

26:42

If they instead posted there was like

26:44

a part of the campaign that was

26:46

like vote Biden. We don't mean Yeah,

26:49

no for real. We will not be

26:51

doing later. I we don't do any

26:53

of that bullshit We oh, oh you

26:56

want you want a social media presence?

26:58

Um here here's just like the meetings

27:00

going on in the White House today Here's here's

27:02

who we talked to it's not great either that

27:04

like even in the final cut of his tick-tock

27:06

Like he is mumbling like he is like you

27:08

can barely hear him and he had to cut

27:10

away when he had to say his name Yeah,

27:12

not great But also on top of that the

27:14

whole point of things like this not for being

27:17

in PR about 15 years Hopefully the things like

27:19

this is meant to humanize the person in question

27:21

It's meant to show that they're aware of the

27:23

world around them make them more approachable same reason

27:25

They're on tick-tock in general what this instead has

27:27

done is arguably an old meme as well Yep,

27:29

like it's been a while since dark Brandon

27:31

was something that I thought of and

27:33

then it pops up again and arguably

27:35

He is more embarrassing time like in

27:37

a way he has led to the

27:39

deaths of hundreds of thousands of people

27:41

potentially like he's The

27:44

things he's doing or not doing it. Well,

27:46

I guess doing in Israel and then by

27:48

proxy doing in Gaza He's giving money to

27:50

a motorist regime and he's like, yeah based

27:52

dog Brandon. Yeah, I got the laser eyes

27:54

now Yeah, kind of like the lasers used

27:56

to point missiles at Palestinian children the thing

27:58

about it. That's so weird is, and

28:01

Julian, you sort of covered this, you

28:04

know, talking about using this to make

28:06

a weak person look powerful and way

28:08

cooler than they actually are. The whole

28:10

Brandon thing spawned, because at

28:12

a sporting event, there were MAGA

28:15

fans in the audience screaming, fuck Joe

28:17

Biden. And the reporter on the scene

28:19

said, oh, I think they're saying, let's

28:21

go Brandon. And of course, it became

28:24

a euphemism for fuck Joe Biden. But

28:26

then the Biden campaign has taken Brandon.

28:29

It's the exact same thing that Trump does,

28:32

where they take something that is perceived

28:34

as a weakness or an insult and

28:36

then flip it so that it's actually,

28:38

we're totally cool with it, and it's

28:41

actually a sign of strength. And so

28:43

this is just another example of them

28:45

actually stealing vibes from the sort of

28:48

MAGA movement, which is so bizarre to

28:50

me after running your entire campaign,

28:52

your entire party in essence

28:54

exists in opposition to this political movement. And

28:56

so to mimic it, to mimic it or

28:59

use elements from it to me is like,

29:01

I'm surprised that more people aren't seeing that

29:03

and going, wait a minute, we don't want

29:05

to be just like them. Like, that's the

29:07

whole thing is that we're not like them.

29:09

In fact, our politicians don't have to do

29:11

shit because they can go on Twitter and

29:14

just say, here's how much we're not like

29:16

them, you know? So I don't know. The

29:18

whole dark Brandon thing, just like, I get

29:20

that it's funny and everybody wants to meme

29:22

and everybody wants to have fun. You only

29:24

want to do funny. It's funny for a

29:26

very specific kind of centrist liberal where it's

29:29

like, aha, accounting repost to you, sir. Yeah.

29:31

It's reactionary to how MAGA treated you online.

29:33

No, but the average liberal is like, what

29:35

the fuck is this? The average liberal is

29:37

not Will Stencil. But once they look it

29:39

up, they go like, like watching SNL, they're

29:41

like, Oh, I've seen a thing that I

29:44

recognize. Great. But what sucks is the best

29:46

thing that Joe Biden could do right now

29:48

is publish the things he says in private,

29:50

where he's like, yeah, Donald Trump's an asshole.

29:52

That's the coolest thing the president has said

29:54

in a while. Catch him on a hot

29:56

mic. Just yeah, just be like, here's a

29:59

piece of shit. of shit. Everyone

30:01

would be like, yeah, woo, I would

30:03

think that was great. The

30:05

account, other than posting fellow youth's

30:07

material, seems to be focused on

30:10

communicating a simple premise. Biden is

30:12

not too old or mentally absent

30:14

to be the president, but Trump

30:16

is. Posts contain statements like, quote,

30:18

CNN, Trump is rambling incoherently. Oof.

30:21

Confused Trump tells Michigan to vote

30:23

in the wrong month. Numbers are

30:25

hard. And Trump confused on stage

30:27

wide eyes emoji. We don't know

30:29

what he's saying either. There's also

30:32

a post titled Gavin Newsom perfectly

30:34

shuts down question about president Biden's

30:36

age. He's right, you know, it's

30:39

just so close. That sketch I saw

30:41

about a fake Babylon B podcast called

30:43

the Babylon buzz. I'll get you the

30:45

link for it. But there's a bit

30:47

in it where they're reading out fake

30:49

Babylon B headlines. And one of them is

30:51

like, Ron DeSantis benches 250 pounds so

30:53

strong. It's

30:56

arguably getting close to

30:58

this level of empty

31:00

cheerleading. Like, oh, Trump,

31:02

like if you want to call Trump

31:04

stupid, call him fucking stupid. This

31:07

is why don't we just have politicians that just

31:09

insult each other like in England, where they just

31:11

go to a room and yell at each other

31:13

and get upset and then no one fucks with

31:15

our health care. Yeah, I don't know if that's

31:17

going super well over there, but it might be

31:19

better. You talk about facts when I'm trying to

31:21

rant. I'm trying to say

31:23

something funny and topical. And if you're going to

31:25

bring in facts, we're going to have a problem

31:27

with me. I will cry. Yeah. In

31:30

the comments of the Biden HQ, TikToks,

31:32

a slew of people are rudely asking

31:34

about Palestinian journalists killed by Israel and

31:36

also saying, go for it. What about

31:38

Rafa? So that's going extremely well. I

31:40

think they've been trying to delete the

31:42

comments, but people are using alternate spellings

31:44

of like Rafa and stuff. So the

31:47

internet don't go on it unless you're

31:49

ready for it. One thing's for sure.

31:51

It's going to be a long year

31:53

full of content and it's not at

31:55

all worrying that the president's team is

31:57

leaning into being extremely online and toying

31:59

around. That means popularized on

32:01

peppers and Grover's. I. Suppose

32:03

this is a good time as any

32:05

to premiere my new character. Dark.

32:08

Julian. Well

32:11

no, we had a tough time with

32:13

light. Julian was kind of what's the

32:15

dark? what's the dark version gonna be

32:17

bought for some trick miserable group mode.

32:21

Is also where I won't say

32:23

are immature could. Yeah.

32:27

And why? What are you? What are

32:30

you trying are wanting to say on

32:32

the show because we're not? Concern is

32:34

the true Arden. It's.

32:40

Not clear A player who serves

32:42

as. Slim as

32:44

I was happy to. That's

32:48

true, I did hear anything j

32:50

that that was alive be By

32:52

was done and post Pets Floyd

32:54

Swamis book from readers. Also careful

32:56

Drew Noom recent middle of an

32:58

estimate of all. He's

33:02

very careful. he's very is in

33:04

fact in some ways he's more

33:06

careful the I really felt sports

33:08

on. Spot.

33:11

On okay have flirted with sobered

33:13

specific stories. that of thing it

33:15

feels it seems like we're back

33:17

into in Twenty eighteen. I love

33:20

it! So this week I have

33:22

a brand new story for Que

33:24

A News and that is that

33:27

Pc Game Epstein has been released

33:29

into early Access on Steam. Now

33:31

for are non gamer listeners, Steam

33:34

is an online marketplace that essentially

33:36

dominates the Pc software markets. Large

33:38

publishers like movie softer Activision, Will

33:41

will publish their games there, as well

33:43

as many small indie developers looking to

33:45

find an audience for their more nice

33:47

games. Epstein release just a few days

33:49

ago and I purchased it for three

33:52

dollars and nineteen cents. I should note

33:54

that I responded within the two hour

33:56

window the show is not supporting a

33:58

video about Jeffrey Ups. The. The. Game

34:00

promises to be an open world survival

34:03

crafting game that sees the player and

34:05

their friends infiltrating Epstein Island and gathering

34:07

clues written on small stone tablets providing

34:10

the lore of the island as well

34:12

as guiding the player through three bosses,

34:14

one of which is Stephen Hawking article.

34:18

Defeat the three bosses and you'll get a

34:20

shot at the King Jeffrey which which is

34:22

spelled they they they spell it in this

34:24

crazy way. Odds are probably try not to

34:26

get sued in any kind of way or

34:28

thankfully no one could tell who they were

34:30

talking about. I

34:33

really hope for Stephen Hawking that he's

34:35

like a Dark Souls boss and has

34:37

like a second phase, because oh yeah,

34:39

we'll get to that. Goods

34:42

it does. He have I frames like. He

34:46

fixed extremely easy to Dodds. So

34:48

I booted the game up with no

34:50

issues and I knew I was in

34:52

for a real treat when I was

34:54

greeted with this loading screen and the

34:56

loading screen at the Very Met in

34:58

the very the very first thing you

35:01

see are these like to weird Roman

35:03

statues on an island. I think that

35:05

these are just premade assets from the

35:07

Unreal store and there's tax and it

35:09

reads. Were working quickly to resolve the

35:11

bug issues but if you get stuck

35:13

you can always delete key yourself. Wow

35:16

Wow! It's really good when. The first

35:18

like disclaimer you have any game is

35:20

like you can always kill yourself. So.

35:24

The game offers single and multiplayer and

35:26

not wanting to be bothered by other

35:29

humans, I chose the single player mode

35:31

and created a character. or the character

35:33

creation system offers a reasonable amount of

35:35

customization. About the low poly style of

35:37

the graphics makes every more or less

35:39

look the same. So my my character

35:41

awoke in a cabin up with a

35:44

gigantic glowing satanic rune circle carved into

35:46

the floor. I've included a little screenshot

35:48

moving. I'm so. Is this a Dark

35:50

Souls style game? It's like I'm now.

35:52

It's like it's like Arc. It's. like

35:54

a survival crafter you're on and i kind

35:57

of hoping it was dark souls dollars very

35:59

disappointing now There's no lock on combat.

36:01

This sucks man. Is that supposed to

36:03

be a pentagram? It's a hexagram. It's

36:05

literally a Star of David. Wait a

36:07

minute. Oh no. You know

36:09

this. Oh no. Oh no

36:11

it is. This is not good. Wait

36:13

a minute Jake. You didn't notice the anti-Semitism.

36:16

Oh no. Terrible. And you can

36:18

see on the side there it says active quests. It

36:26

says quest Epstein. It

36:28

says make your first hatchet. Zero

36:30

out of one. Right off

36:32

the bat it's sort of leading you

36:34

to create your piddly tools to blast

36:37

at rocks. Now unfortunately the game is

36:40

very competently made. For what I'd

36:42

consider a troll game there are

36:44

quest giving NPCs. There's fishing, farming,

36:46

enemies, multiple weapons, craftable armor, as

36:48

well as craftable furniture and various

36:51

workbenches. Fairly standard for your modern

36:53

survival crafting game. But the game

36:55

ran smoothly and was alarmingly more

36:57

well made than I had suspected

36:59

or hoped. Now this is probably

37:01

due to utilizing pre-made Unreal Engine

37:04

assets purchased from the store. And

37:06

there are a handful of games

37:08

on Steam that look exactly like

37:10

this one. Minus the Epstein theme.

37:12

Oh it's not a competitive industry.

37:15

Not very competitive. I

37:17

looked at streams of people playing this and

37:19

it's mostly just like right wing people. A

37:22

lot of keks in the chat and all that

37:24

stuff. There's

37:27

a specific audience for this and it's exactly who

37:29

you would imagine. Now

37:31

the island itself is peppered with large

37:33

Roman statues that shoot lasers out of

37:35

their eyes. Oh cool,

37:37

Dark Brandon. Yeah, so I'm not sure

37:39

how that ties into the Epstein theme

37:42

but my two hours of trial time

37:44

were ticking away so I knew I'd

37:46

better get to saving those children. After

37:49

Watering some guy's plants and bashing a

37:51

few rocks I Ran into my first

37:53

enemy. This is a tiny little guy

37:55

with an alien face and a black

37:57

pajamas on called a mini half king.

38:00

There's many hawking okay one bash over

38:02

the head with my pick axe and

38:04

it dropped to the ground instantly and

38:06

he'd when I killed him, he dropped

38:08

a little know on a room. That

38:11

said killing have Kings small clones may

38:13

not be sufficient. We need to find

38:15

the real one. However, defeating have King

38:17

with a single punch is enjoyable. Okay,

38:19

wow. so they are literally joking about

38:22

him being disabled and you can tell

38:24

him with one punch. It seems that

38:26

the games developers are kind of obsessed

38:28

with Stephen Hawking or. Because while my

38:30

short hour and a half on the

38:33

island saw no mention of Bill or

38:35

Hillary Clinton, there were empty wheelchair scattered

38:37

throughout the map. and I mean around

38:39

every little building. Me: when do they

38:41

think he fucking came with one Mississippi

38:43

up to the he grew out of

38:45

it is like a fucking center. Sort

38:48

of hoping that maybe I could equip one

38:51

like amount for faster travel, but alas, the

38:53

player is unable to interact with the chairs

38:55

at all. I never did make it to

38:57

the supposed Stephen Hawking boss after I built

38:59

a small. Hot near the starting area,

39:01

I was slaughtered by something called a

39:03

Blue Andrew. Oh no. Worries

39:06

that a reference though? Jesus Christ? I believe

39:09

it's some kind of reference to Prince after.

39:11

Yeah. So. I respond

39:13

and attempted to run back to my

39:15

body so I could gather the handful

39:17

of leaves that I collected about. Blue

39:19

Andrew was waiting for me and this

39:21

time he brought his friends. strange Dan

39:23

Old was the name of the enemies

39:25

of these. just look like kind of

39:27

your standard Orcs or mutants. I mean,

39:29

they didn't look like Prince Andrew or

39:31

Donald Trump or anything like that. They

39:33

murdered me, an eye on installed and

39:35

Reef wanted the game. nice. Now as

39:37

the time of this writing, a Epstein

39:39

has received a mixed rating on Seems

39:41

review page with. A sixty five percent

39:43

of the sixty six reviews posted reacted

39:46

positively to the game. So before we

39:48

get into the main segment of today's

39:50

episode, let's read how other gamers are

39:52

feeling about Epstein. the

39:54

first review is as they recommend

39:57

the game they have seventeen point

39:59

eight hours logged on record

40:01

and the review was posted February 16th,

40:04

the day that the game released. And

40:06

it reads, Great game so far, just

40:08

wish the Wheel Cheers actually worked. Wheel

40:10

Cheers! Wheel Cheers! The AI have godlike

40:12

aims, so if you want a challenge,

40:14

then recommend. As for the actual map,

40:16

the regrowth needs to be more frequent,

40:19

cleared out about 75% of all the

40:21

resources on the map, and

40:24

now we have no more wood. Okay. So

40:26

I used to review PC games for a

40:28

living, in fact it was my first job.

40:30

And to give listeners an idea of how many

40:32

games there are on Steam, well, I guess the

40:34

best way of putting it is, there is literally

40:37

every PC game. Thousands, I mean

40:39

tens of thousands of games. Yeah, hundreds

40:41

of thousands if not. You could play literally

40:43

any game, but you chose this. Yeah, they're

40:45

playing up Steam. Why? The second review,

40:47

now this is a negative review, they do

40:50

not recommend the game. Oh, okay. They had

40:52

0.2 hours on record, so they quit

40:54

pretty early on. And the review reads, decent

40:56

gameplay up until chapter 2, phase

40:59

3 of the Stephen Hawking fight when

41:01

he turns into a transformer is way

41:03

too difficult. So this person has not

41:05

gotten to that, and that is just

41:07

a joke, basically. That has to be

41:09

a fake review. That really upsets me

41:11

because- No, apparently there is a really

41:13

hard Stephen Hawking boss in the game.

41:15

He's one of the three bosses before

41:17

you unlock Jeffrey's sort of like

41:19

chamber or whatever. I didn't make it

41:22

to it, so I don't know. I don't know

41:24

if this is actually true, but I know that

41:26

there is a Hawking boss, and maybe he's really

41:28

challenging. The next review, I

41:30

only have two more, is a positive review.

41:32

The person had 1.6 hours

41:35

on record at the time of their

41:37

post. And it reads, the house that

41:39

we built kept rearranging itself, but only

41:42

for me, not my buddy, Visual Glitch.

41:44

Ah, the fucking incanto bug. He was

41:46

the game host. Good game though, we'll

41:48

continue to play. Okay, good. Finally,

41:51

the last review, this is from somebody who

41:54

spent 0.2 hours in the game. They recommend

41:56

it, and they wrote, My friend Andy said

41:58

this game would be really good. So

42:00

I bought it to play with him and

42:02

now he is stuck inside Jeffrey. Okay,

42:05

he wrote boo audit to play. Cool.

42:09

So Jake's take on this, do not

42:11

recommend. There's a free game called Beech

42:13

which uses the exact same assets. Looks

42:15

exactly like this game. It's more of

42:17

a pirate theme, not Epstein Island. And

42:19

if you want to play something close

42:21

to this but not this, I

42:24

would recommend that. Wow. Important reporting.

42:26

Thank you, Jake. You know,

42:28

I always travel to the worst places on Steam to

42:30

bring back the content for you guys. Well,

42:36

moving on to talk

42:38

about Google because Google

42:41

sure seems like it sucks

42:43

now. So their stated mission

42:45

is to organize the world's

42:47

information and make it universally

42:49

accessible and useful. And

42:52

it certainly feels as though they have not

42:54

been living up to that mission statement as

42:56

of late. Yeah, that's not the only one.

42:58

They had the don't be evil and just

43:00

removed it. Yes, they realized actually we... No,

43:03

now it's don't, comma, be evil. Yeah, don't.

43:07

Whatever you were doing, don't. Instead,

43:10

be evil. Now, this

43:12

is actually kind of a

43:14

particular interest to me because in

43:16

my previous life, I was an

43:19

internet marketer. And part of this

43:21

involved doing what they call search

43:23

engine optimization or SEO. And this

43:25

essentially meant gaming the search algorithm

43:27

in order to benefit

43:30

my employer or clients. To make

43:32

the results appear on Google for

43:34

certain searches. Yeah. Certain popular searches.

43:36

That's right. Yeah. Finding good keywords

43:38

that were under-optimized

43:40

or playing the long

43:42

game and finding really competitive

43:45

keywords and creating content and

43:47

backlinks that allowed you to

43:49

allow your clients or whoever to appear

43:51

higher up so that they get more

43:54

traffic. Now, Google's original innovation

43:56

was an algorithm called PageRank. And

43:58

this was heavily... based on

44:00

these back links. So it was complicated

44:02

and involved over time. But the logic

44:05

was that if a high quality site

44:07

linked to another site, then the site

44:09

that was linked to was probably also

44:11

high quality. And so as a consequence

44:13

in the early days, a lot of

44:16

sites that were linked

44:18

to from like EDU sites or .edu

44:21

sites or .gov sites were highly

44:23

valuable. So there are some ways

44:25

you could get those. But the

44:27

system worked for a while. It

44:30

resulted in like higher quality searches. You

44:32

didn't have to go through a bunch of

44:34

junk in order to find what you're looking

44:36

for quite as much. And there was this

44:38

kind of, I don't know, this armed race

44:40

between Google and publishers. Because

44:42

the publishers or the companies, they would

44:44

try to find ways to game the

44:47

algorithm, to try to make content and

44:49

back links that resulted in searches for

44:51

what they wanted. Well, there were also,

44:53

there was a relationship between publishers and

44:55

Google. Google had an open line to

44:57

some publishers to make sure that their

44:59

stuff ranked well, but they did so in

45:01

this extremely opaque manner. Yes, that is true.

45:03

But it felt like Google, they ultimately, in

45:05

order to get their ad revenue

45:08

through AdSense, they wanted to, you know,

45:10

they wanted to provide the best experience

45:12

to their searches, you know, for

45:15

a while. And so I felt like, you know,

45:17

it felt like ultimately, the people doing the searching

45:19

were, you know, getting the kind of content they

45:21

wanted, but it just stopped working.

45:24

So if you are a frequent user of

45:26

search engines, as I am, it may, it

45:28

kind of felt like the search quality

45:30

of the, you know, the quality of

45:32

the search results have declined in recent

45:35

years. And there's plenty of like anecdotal

45:37

data, but there's the question of like

45:39

whether or not this is really the

45:41

case. And recently, some German researchers, they

45:44

published a study called, Is Google Getting

45:46

Worse? A Longitudinal Investigation of SEO Spam

45:48

in Search Engines. Now, the paper set

45:51

out to systematically investigate for the first

45:53

time whether and to which degree Google

45:55

is getting worse. That's the exact quote

45:57

for the paper. By studying changes in

46:00

search results over the course of

46:02

a year. They compared Google to

46:04

Bing and DuckDuckGo, another contemporary search

46:07

engine, and the findings show that

46:09

on average, higher-ranked pages are more

46:11

optimized, more monetized with affiliate marketing,

46:13

and show signs of lower text

46:15

quality. So yes, it's not just

46:18

your imagination, Google is in fact

46:20

getting worse. So the question

46:22

becomes, well, that's too bad, because over

46:24

years, they've basically, they own the market

46:27

now, and as a consequence, there's

46:29

actually an antitrust lawsuit from the

46:31

federal government because of that. So

46:33

the Department of Justice said this

46:36

about the lawsuit, which is ongoing.

46:38

Google has engaged in a course

46:40

of anti-competitive and exclusionary conduct that

46:42

consisted of neutralizing or eliminating ad

46:44

tech competitors through acquisitions, wielding its

46:46

dominance across digital advertising markets to

46:48

force more publishers and advertisers to

46:50

use its products and thwarting the

46:52

ability to use competing products. In doing

46:55

so, Google cemented its dominance and tools

46:57

relied on by website publishers and online

46:59

advertisers, as well as the digital advertising

47:01

exchange that runs ad auctions. So yeah,

47:04

so if you wanted to, yeah, if

47:06

you wanted to spend your ad dollars,

47:09

basically Google made sure on search, then

47:11

Google made sure that they were essentially

47:13

the only viable option. Yeah,

47:15

and also they paid Apple, what, $18

47:17

billion to make it

47:19

so that iPhones use Google? Little bit

47:22

fun, little bit of fun fact there,

47:24

monopolies. Oh, the fucking monopolies.

47:26

Yeah, and so yeah, so it seems

47:28

like they stopped being concerned with, like

47:30

their mission statement said, organizing

47:33

the world's information, making it universally accessible

47:35

and useful, and using these

47:38

high level maneuvers to destroy anyone

47:40

who might question their dominance. And

47:42

what's funny is in the original

47:44

Google paper from the late 90s,

47:46

they actually say one of the biggest

47:49

problems is that advertising is antithetical to

47:51

good search results. And it's really grim

47:53

because you see how they've done this

47:55

and you see how Google has been

47:57

twisted, and I don't mean this, But

48:00

I believe SEO people are responsible for destroying the

48:02

internet and I think Google's love of SEO And

48:04

there was always gonna be a way that people

48:07

would game it. Don't get me wrong They someone

48:09

else would have done something else but I feel

48:11

like the SEO industry has worked against good information

48:13

in a way that is Disgusting

48:15

and has ruined so much and you've

48:18

seen major media outlets start changing their

48:20

strategies to match SEO You notice that

48:22

you've got respectable outlets saying shit like

48:24

when does the Super Bowl start? Where

48:26

can I stream my damn web right

48:28

when it comes out? That's not a

48:31

real one No one's no one's doing

48:33

that and where but it's this kind

48:35

of slop But because Google has made

48:37

and especially with the death of social

48:39

media advertising Sorry social media traffic feeding

48:41

to news outlets outlets are more dependent

48:44

on Google for search traffic now So

48:46

they're more search engine optimized. It's a

48:48

very depressing series of events That's only

48:50

gonna get worse because they have absolutely

48:52

no incentive to change Yeah, I mean

48:55

it is a shame because I mean

48:57

you blame the you know, the SEO industry I mean

48:59

I feel it but I feel like you know ultimately,

49:01

you know Google can control

49:03

who gets the traffic, you know, and

49:06

they they could yeah could choose to

49:08

Continually refine their algorithm so that it

49:11

leads people to high quality pages and

49:13

good information if they so chose They

49:15

know they could they could I mean

49:17

they have a you know a high-level

49:19

sort of view of who's gaming the

49:21

system and how and they could you

49:24

know but like you said, they're not

49:26

really right now incentivized to Optimizing

49:29

search results for user experience because you

49:31

know number one they have a monopoly So,

49:33

you know, where the hell you gonna go

49:35

duck duck go now, that's not happening And

49:37

then the other reason is that because they

49:39

have this, you know, they they really don't

49:42

care They have this relationship with these publishers.

49:44

That's that's just not conducive to the

49:46

experiences of users Well, they don't care

49:48

though about publishers anymore. They don't really

49:50

they have just like Facebook did with

49:52

the pivot to video They got what

49:54

they needed. They got what they

49:57

needed from these publishers. These publishers have filled

49:59

Google with shit that Google can

50:01

now say we've now provided information. Publishers

50:03

now are trapped. They have to work

50:05

with Google. They have been monopolized the

50:08

same way that Google has monopolized search.

50:10

Publishers cannot exist without Google search anymore

50:12

and Google makes ten twenty billion dollars

50:14

a quarter. A lot of it coming

50:16

from search. It's really

50:19

insane actually how bad things have

50:21

got with search. I use Bing

50:23

now which I hate saying. I

50:25

hate saying Bing. It's a

50:27

really wretched thing to say or Duck Duck Go.

50:29

I use Bing too. Yeah and it's it's

50:31

just like it's frustrating as well because

50:33

Google has fucked up almost everything is

50:35

touched. I'm surprised they haven't destroyed Google

50:38

Docs and Google Mail yet. They've certainly

50:40

really blown it with Chrome. Chrome is

50:42

now just requires seven terabytes of RAM

50:44

to open a single tab and it's

50:46

weird. It's really weird because a better

50:48

world is possible. They just don't care

50:50

about it. It's not I don't even

50:53

think Chrome makes or loses them that

50:55

much money but they've just never fixed

50:57

that. Google search it's either they cannot

50:59

fight SEO. They are unable to which

51:01

I believe or they don't want to

51:04

and they want it to be like

51:06

this because Google makes more money if

51:08

you spend more time on the platform

51:10

and it's it's a very depressing state

51:13

of event affairs even. Yeah I mean

51:15

yeah this this problem with you know

51:17

Google being a monopoly and like all

51:19

the publishers just doing SEO. I mean

51:22

this has been a very long years

51:24

long problem that's just keeps

51:26

getting worse and worse but what's new is

51:28

the development of AI slop.

51:30

Yes. Because it used to be

51:33

you know that if you wanted to generate a

51:35

lot of slop for a website you could outsource

51:37

you couldn't you know for example you know pay

51:39

someone in the like India or something five

51:42

dollars per 500 word SEO optimized

51:44

article and generate a lot of

51:46

crap like that way but now

51:48

that now you don't even need

51:51

that you can produce hundreds of

51:53

articles and create websites for that

51:55

and apparently these are getting indexed

51:57

there's like Google isn't doing anything

51:59

to combat the AI slob. And

52:01

I think the problem is,

52:03

so I have a greater theory that

52:05

I think speaks to Google, it came,

52:07

I grew it, it is in-shitification adjacent,

52:10

it's called the ROT economy, and that

52:12

I believe all companies are pursuing growth

52:14

at all costs. That is the final

52:16

point of everything they're doing. Everything is

52:18

being optimized to cause as much money

52:20

to come out of it, even if

52:22

those things are antithetical to the product

52:24

itself. Google is replacing Google Assistant with

52:26

Gemini. They fired a lot of the

52:28

assistant people and they're replacing it with

52:30

their AI Gemini now. This is objectively worse.

52:33

Computerworld's jrf.io did a whole piece about how

52:35

bad this was and how unfit for the

52:37

task Gemini is. That doesn't matter to Google.

52:39

Google can now say they've got AI in

52:42

their ship. Google Search, they can fix it.

52:44

I believe that Google, with all of their

52:46

money and all of the very smart people

52:48

that work there and have worked there, could

52:51

fight SEO. They could find a way to

52:53

rank things properly. I just don't think they

52:55

care because they're doing 10, 20 billion in

52:57

profit every quarter. They're growing by 10, 20

53:00

percent every quarter. Everything's

53:02

growing, everything's fine. It doesn't matter that

53:04

the actual product is dying. The actual

53:06

product, the search, is becoming less usable.

53:09

It does not matter if it did,

53:11

they would have done something about it

53:13

by now. Instead, they're excited because now

53:15

all that matters is more. Growing

53:17

more. More things on Google, more people on

53:20

Google, people have to use Google and it

53:22

doesn't matter if Google's results are bad because

53:24

the people who are putting the things on

53:26

Google kind of help Google out. Some of

53:28

them sponsoring content, some of them just feeding Google's

53:31

ugly engine. It really is a very... This

53:33

is a dystopian story and it's something that

53:35

I'm shocked more of the major media hasn't

53:37

been on. The Atlantic's Charlie Worsall did a

53:39

piece on it, great stuff. Four Full Media

53:41

did a thing, fantastic. Scientific American paid me

53:44

to do a piece about it actually but

53:46

that's the thing. Past that point, the New

53:48

York Times, Wall Street Journal, you'd think that

53:50

they would be on this and they are

53:52

the ones that Google actually cares about. The

53:54

Verge has also done some good stories about

53:57

this, just want to be clear, there are

53:59

some people. But the ones that

54:01

actually matter to Google are CNBC, their

54:03

Forbes to an extent. But it feels

54:05

like the major media entities don't want

54:07

to poke at the bear too much

54:09

for fear that traffic could somehow drop.

54:11

Or perhaps it's just that they don't

54:13

give a fuck. I don't know. Well,

54:16

one thing that's interesting too, you know,

54:18

especially coming from this angle that, you

54:20

know, make money at all costs, even

54:22

if it is antithetical to the sort

54:24

of mission statement of, you know, the

54:26

product culture or whatever. Or even basic

54:28

features. Yeah, basic features. You know,

54:30

if Google positioned itself as some kind

54:32

of arbiter of truth or facts or

54:35

it steered, you know, it said, hey,

54:37

this source is not so good or

54:39

whatever. You would lose half of your

54:41

audience one way or the other. We

54:43

are in a place where I think

54:46

people are,

54:48

you know, generally unwilling or uninterested

54:51

in hearing an opinion that either

54:53

proves them wrong or comes from

54:55

a different thing. I mean, why

54:57

look for something that's going to

55:00

make my brain hurt and make me think about,

55:02

oh, what am I actually reading and why am

55:04

I doing this? When you can just get what

55:06

you want. And I think that

55:09

the algorithms and these major companies are leaning

55:12

into that, you know. Hey, Travis always said it's

55:14

the marketplace of realities. And I think these big

55:16

companies are going, hey, that's a new marketplace. You

55:19

know, that's a new marketplace. Let's give people the

55:21

reality that they want. It doesn't matter. They're going

55:23

to find it anyways. You know, and here's my

55:25

conspiracy theory. I think they don't mind its chaos

55:28

so that Google can be the one that actually

55:30

tells you exactly the answer so that they

55:32

can move you towards a place where assistant

55:34

or Gemini or whatever it's called is the

55:36

arbiter. Google can sell you back the experience

55:38

that Google used to give you for free.

55:40

And it's it's grim. It infuriates me. One

55:43

of the reasons I mentioned before the call

55:45

like and certification, I think Corey is largely

55:47

right. I think he he gets it. But

55:49

I think he adds a little more intentionality

55:51

on the front end than existed. I think

55:53

when this began, I've read Google's paper and

55:55

as much as I can understand it being

55:57

an idiot from the 90s. watched

56:00

Google grow, I believe that sometime

56:02

about 10 years ago, maybe a little bit

56:05

before that, the whole software is eating the

56:07

world piece with Andreessen, I think that sparked

56:09

the growth at all costs ecosystem. That's when

56:11

things, Marc Andreessen actually made the statement that

56:14

we should not tie tech valuations to whether

56:16

they're good companies, but what they could do

56:18

for the world, which is a vague way

56:20

of saying, please give me and my companies

56:22

more money. But it's worked. The markets don't

56:25

correct against this. This is not just a

56:27

tech problem. It's a problem that has poisoned

56:29

the entirety of capitalism, not advocating

56:31

for capitalism, anything I'm just saying in

56:33

its current form, capitalism isn't actually that

56:35

fucking efficient. It isn't. You shouldn't be

56:38

hiring and firing at the right 10,000

56:40

people. I think Google already laid off

56:42

thousands of people this year. Microsoft did

56:44

the same thing. These companies just are

56:46

shit businesses that spunk money everywhere. And

56:48

at some point, this party will stop.

56:51

And when it does, what happens then?

56:53

Grim. Yeah. I wanted to give a

56:55

sort of a concrete example of

56:57

the kinds of things that are actually being

57:00

indexed by Google right now. And this

57:02

comes from a report from NewsGuard,

57:05

which publishes reliability rankings of

57:07

outlets. They had a report

57:09

that highlighted 49 websites that

57:13

are just pure AI slump.

57:15

And they seem to

57:17

be published just hundreds of articles a

57:19

day that are generated to chat GPT.

57:21

And these sites have names like biz

57:24

breaking news and market news reports. And

57:26

they're stuffed with these programmatic advertising that's

57:28

just bought and sold automatically. So

57:30

they also attribute news stories to generic

57:32

or fake authors. And much of the

57:35

content seems to be summaries or rewrites

57:37

from sort of established

57:39

sites like CNN. And sometimes these

57:41

sites, they just publish like outrageous

57:44

lies. Take for example, this story,

57:46

which was published on the website,

57:48

celebrity death.com and it's headlined Biden

57:51

is dead. Harris acting president address

57:53

at 9 a.m. Eastern time. Breaking.

57:56

The White House has reported that Joe

57:58

Biden has passed away peacefully. in

58:00

his sleep. Kamala Harris will now

58:02

serve as the acting president of the

58:05

United States and is set to address

58:07

the nation at 9am ET. I'm

58:10

sorry, I cannot complete this prompt

58:12

as it goes against OpenAI's use

58:14

case policy on generating misleading content.

58:17

It is not ethical to fabricate

58:19

news about the death of someone,

58:21

especially someone as prominent as a

58:23

president. So that's the

58:26

full story that was published on this

58:28

website indexed by Google. They

58:33

published the AI basically breaking it and

58:36

saying like, I cannot continue to write

58:38

this piece of shit for you. That's

58:40

right. I mean, that's one of the

58:42

more absurd examples. But I think it's

58:46

indicative of something really sad

58:48

is that these publishers, they think perhaps

58:50

not wrongly that just generating AI slop

58:52

and publishing it on these dog shit

58:54

websites is a viable business model. Well,

58:56

they do it for everything else already.

58:58

I can't tell you how many times

59:00

I have to look up some game

59:03

tip or something like how do I

59:05

go into third person view in this

59:07

game? And there's like a

59:09

hundred articles that come up and it's like,

59:11

hey, so this game is a new game

59:13

that just released on consoles and people are

59:15

rushing to the internet to play it. Some

59:18

players are curious about whether the game contains

59:20

the ability to play in first or third

59:22

person below in the following article will give

59:24

you all of the tips that you need

59:26

to figure out how to play. And it's

59:28

like before you even get to the tool

59:31

tip or whatever, there's three paragraphs of slop

59:33

just like piled on top of it. It's

59:35

infuriating. And that's where something stupid like, you

59:37

know, my camera view, like, you know,

59:40

imagining how it's going to spiral out

59:42

of control with news and and quote

59:44

unquote information is just terrifying. And I

59:46

think the the really big thing to

59:48

worry about soon is Sora, which is

59:50

the open AI video generator. It looks

59:53

like shit. No one's actually going to

59:55

watch this stuff, but this is just

59:57

going to be more slop to fill

59:59

YouTube. I don't think Google realizes how

1:00:01

much slop is gonna be used against

1:00:03

them. Companies have made billions of dollars

1:00:06

fucking with Google and twisting Google to

1:00:08

their whims. They're gonna do the same

1:00:10

with YouTube with shitty fucking videos. It's

1:00:12

gonna be so bad and it's just

1:00:14

eroding and it's Google's fault. It is

1:00:17

their goddamn fault. They could have fought

1:00:19

this. They could have, in the mid

1:00:21

2010s, built an actual operation to fight

1:00:23

slop, to actually push back against SEO.

1:00:25

Perhaps. Have top 1000 popular

1:00:28

terms and there's a few people who go and

1:00:30

check them every day and say, Nah, that

1:00:32

one's bullshit. This one doesn't actually give the

1:00:34

answer. They have so much money. They could

1:00:37

afford it, but they won't. They don't want

1:00:39

to. It doesn't- it makes them more money

1:00:41

if there's more dog shit for you to

1:00:43

spend time on Google. It's so cynical, but

1:00:45

at some point it's gonna make Google totally

1:00:48

unusable. Hey guys, it's Dark Brandon. Uh,

1:00:50

don't forget to, uh, ring the bell.

1:00:53

The White House has reported that I've

1:00:55

passed away peacefully in my sleep. Kamala

1:00:58

Harris will now serve as the acting

1:01:00

president. But

1:01:02

like, look, this is America, right? We

1:01:04

don't deal with our slop. We don't

1:01:07

deal with our slop. This is just

1:01:09

the digital version of like what you

1:01:11

would see in like a Simpsons episode

1:01:13

of them taking cans of nuclear waste

1:01:15

and just dumping it in the nearest

1:01:17

pond or drainage ditch. I mean, this

1:01:19

is- this is the digital equivalent of

1:01:21

just shoving your glowing radioactive goo, you

1:01:24

know, into a place where it's not quite

1:01:26

as noticeable. It's more like if you sold

1:01:28

soda to CVS and some of it had

1:01:31

come. But

1:01:34

not all of it, just sometimes.

1:01:36

Sometimes. You open up a pristine

1:01:39

diet coke, big thing of

1:01:41

pristine. Pristine. And because

1:01:43

it's fizzy, it's technically a drink. And you're

1:01:45

gonna keep drinking that shit, though, because it's

1:01:47

good and there's not always gum in it.

1:01:49

But that's the thing. Sometimes you just gotta

1:01:51

drink some cum. But that is kind of

1:01:53

the Google- that's the new Google thing. Sometimes

1:01:55

you just gotta drink some cum. They're calling

1:01:57

it Wonka's Golden Ticket. That's a

1:01:59

d- drink. It's

1:02:02

just so frustrating as well because this

1:02:04

used to be the place where you

1:02:06

could find everything. This used to be

1:02:08

the place where you could just look

1:02:10

up a thing and then everyone you

1:02:12

could share the thing with a friend.

1:02:14

You can't just go to news.google anymore

1:02:16

and type in a thing and then

1:02:18

look at it chronologically. To do that

1:02:20

you have to trick Google by typing

1:02:22

the word into regular Google then clicking

1:02:24

news. Only then can you look at

1:02:26

it chronologically. Why? I have no goddamn

1:02:28

idea. They just did it and

1:02:30

you know that that's likely some growth hacking

1:02:32

shit. One of their abuse scientists that they

1:02:34

pay to make things worse for more money

1:02:36

and it's just these are the changes that

1:02:39

happen and Instagram is a great example of

1:02:41

this over in Metters House. One feature of

1:02:43

Instagram that has been very fraught the last

1:02:45

few years is the fact that you can't

1:02:47

see pictures of the people you follow. Yeah

1:02:51

it's all like weird kind

1:02:53

of I guess comedy sort

1:02:55

of like aggregator sites

1:02:58

where it's just essentially memes and like

1:03:00

screenshots of memes and tweets from other

1:03:02

people. I mean I can't tell you

1:03:04

how I mean I barely am barely

1:03:06

on any any social media anymore besides

1:03:09

besides Twitter for work sometimes but it's

1:03:11

like yeah I can't scroll through without

1:03:13

seeing like a hundred accounts that are

1:03:15

like Betches with no

1:03:18

name or like the Dirty Stoner

1:03:20

or Just Blaze It 420XX

1:03:23

like it's just these like

1:03:25

aggregate comedy accounts with like

1:03:28

I don't know memes from

1:03:30

other social or

1:03:32

TikTok videos. It's so

1:03:35

bad. I'm telling you guys we got to

1:03:37

figure out what we're gonna do about the

1:03:39

internet. But this is really funny because Instagram's

1:03:42

head Adam Mazzeri in 2022 when one of

1:03:44

the Kardashians got mad about this he said

1:03:46

well he wasn't particularly useful he said we

1:03:48

will continue to show photos and videos from

1:03:51

friends toward the top of the feed whenever

1:03:53

we can but the best way to keep

1:03:55

up with friends seems to be with the

1:03:57

other parts of Instagram. To be clear When

1:04:00

he refers to whenever we can, he means

1:04:02

himself. Whatever

1:04:04

I feel like. And we, in this

1:04:06

case, is the company he works for,

1:04:08

that he is the head of the

1:04:10

section that controls the can in question.

1:04:13

Like, is someone forcing you, Adam, to

1:04:15

do this? Is there like a goblin

1:04:17

with a knife? Now, Ma, share puberty.

1:04:19

You must show this epic meme. Must

1:04:21

really do this, or I'll take your

1:04:24

life. He's got his own worm

1:04:26

tongue, like, whispering into his ear. Yeah,

1:04:28

he's just a mad desperate. And

1:04:32

then he put out a statement a year later saying,

1:04:34

oh yeah, we showed too many videos, sorry. Didn't

1:04:36

say they'd fix it. This

1:04:39

is the tech ecosystem now. It's just seeing how

1:04:41

much they can abuse you before you just quit.

1:04:43

And then they'll go, you know what, after

1:04:46

a little consideration, we decided to give you the

1:04:48

product you actually want sometimes. As

1:04:51

you hear about the hack that a lot of

1:04:53

people have been doing in Google in order to

1:04:56

try to get better results is

1:04:58

adding the word Reddit at the end

1:05:00

of the search. Because apparently

1:05:02

the search from normal publishers

1:05:04

has gotten so bad that

1:05:06

random anonymous Redditors they felt

1:05:08

are providing better information than

1:05:11

what Google typically provides. Especially

1:05:14

with tech support stuff, because you'll do a tech

1:05:16

support query on Google now, and you'll get one

1:05:18

of 90 different Q&A sites. And

1:05:20

all it is is someone asking a

1:05:22

question and 15 people either saying, I

1:05:24

also have this problem, or three people

1:05:26

giving a completely different solution that doesn't

1:05:28

work, or a page from a site

1:05:30

like Lifewire that is not a solution

1:05:32

to the problem. If you look on

1:05:35

Reddit, you find real people with actual

1:05:37

problems. Great stuff. I

1:05:39

love having to hack the internet to make

1:05:41

this. We really have gone full circle. It's

1:05:43

back to, we're gonna get to a point

1:05:45

where bulletin boards come back. We're gonna be

1:05:48

on specialist usenets so that we can find

1:05:50

out what the fucking Scores were in

1:05:52

sports. Yeah, I Can't wait to launch my

1:05:54

Geocities page. It's gonna be great. Mama Mia.

1:05:56

Yo, and I think there's really some stuff.

1:06:00

There that with it were so be getting

1:06:02

lost because I used to be that you're

1:06:04

using Surcharge Google search for civically. Was this

1:06:06

really more proactive way of of a getting

1:06:09

information? It was empowering because it wasn't. Yeah

1:06:11

you sitting and watching T V or even

1:06:13

like reading a newspaper and having information from

1:06:15

other people being said to you have felt

1:06:18

like this, a participatory, had no experience, were

1:06:20

like all okay I'm not. I'm not some

1:06:22

sort of passive sheep. I'm I'm seeking out

1:06:24

different sources, I'm getting a lot of information

1:06:27

and I'm working towards Iran better understanding wherever

1:06:29

topic it was. A Now it's some

1:06:31

it's getting worse at this. Reminds me

1:06:33

a bit of like what my favorite

1:06:35

i'm stories about misinformation that came out

1:06:37

it was a recently was called out

1:06:39

What goes down must come off misinformation

1:06:41

search behavior during an unplanned facebook out

1:06:43

it's and what they did was is

1:06:45

that they are during a of with

1:06:47

when faced with wasn't available. As a

1:06:50

consequence a lot of people weren't able

1:06:52

to get. basically they're vaccine misinformation that

1:06:54

they're getting on their Facebook groups. They

1:06:56

checked google search results and see if

1:06:58

people were I'm were searching for. Those

1:07:00

misinformation topics related to vaccines were they

1:07:02

found was that there was a spike

1:07:04

in that searches for those topics. Now

1:07:06

normally this would be this would be

1:07:08

a problem cause like in an ideal

1:07:10

world Google would just final people towards

1:07:12

reliable information around back sees the well

1:07:14

it happening is up there is that

1:07:17

these people wound up going to you

1:07:19

know Alex Jones or Mike Adams people

1:07:21

who are oh we're willing to feed

1:07:23

them the misinformation out there looking for

1:07:25

so it just reinforces i'm you know

1:07:27

this alternate bad worldview and reinforces the

1:07:29

belief that. These people have an accurate

1:07:31

understanding of the world because they're seeking

1:07:33

out L and Google, but they're just

1:07:35

being said or the same kind of

1:07:37

bad slop that they might find uninstall

1:07:39

worse. Yeah, But also they don't realize.as

1:07:41

sites I have this grand a fear

1:07:43

of their newsletter about next week actually

1:07:45

is not. I believe on the problems

1:07:47

with media is because of their desperation

1:07:49

for traffic from platforms like Facebook or

1:07:51

like Google. The everything is normalizing and

1:07:53

so everyone is trying to put out

1:07:55

stuff that would appeal to Google or

1:07:57

do well on Social rather than doing.

1:08:00

Unique. good stuff. As a result, the

1:08:02

media has pushed itself into this area

1:08:04

where everyone is more aggressively normalizing, more

1:08:06

aggressively forcing themselves to fitness model. As

1:08:09

a result, people are less trustworthy of

1:08:11

the media a time when they already

1:08:13

pretty on trusting of the be and

1:08:15

general say think everyone saying the same

1:08:18

thing will surely that means the book

1:08:20

that doesn't sit well with ideology here.

1:08:22

As a result, just they're going to

1:08:24

get pushed to kind of the diet

1:08:27

version of conspiracy theorists like Jesse Singal

1:08:29

more Matt. Taibbi or other useful idiots

1:08:31

or two people like Alex Jones who say

1:08:33

well the mainstream media has not not telling

1:08:36

ya to get to watch the Nile on

1:08:38

Tom's name and that's what's going to happen

1:08:40

here. I don't think that many people realize

1:08:42

that that is the natural and point of

1:08:44

this, that the when everything is being pushed

1:08:47

to satisfy three or four companies everything is

1:08:49

going to come out the same and when

1:08:51

the Ai generate it's not by the way

1:08:53

is trained on that. They are of the

1:08:56

web sites trying to pretend that blood that

1:08:58

Google that the Google slow have everything. Is

1:09:00

going to normalize further. This is going to

1:09:02

push people to these horrible goblin types. It's

1:09:04

going to be good for people who have

1:09:06

their own followings. It's going to be terrible

1:09:08

for news outlets the can't adapt. I don't

1:09:10

think the stair aware of this and we're

1:09:13

still this is gonna hurt the ones who

1:09:15

pay was the most because they're going to

1:09:17

be the fuck is were like oh you

1:09:19

could find out the thing you can find

1:09:21

anyone else for money. It's just very frustrating.

1:09:23

Is they a all this stuff kind of

1:09:25

notes my brain attach or are you know

1:09:27

and it's already happening? I mean it doesn't

1:09:29

matter what. Political party use support. It

1:09:31

doesn't make you not susceptible to conspiracy

1:09:33

theories or to be here. You know,

1:09:36

in a way. it's like recent example.

1:09:38

you know, I see all the time

1:09:40

people are. The most recent example was

1:09:42

a peep people on twitter basically baking

1:09:44

or what kind of Stds that Trump

1:09:46

had or or what kind of i'm

1:09:49

You know, what kind of cancer does

1:09:51

full of ladder, me or poon have

1:09:53

or or whatever And these were this.

1:09:55

These are the same people queued during

1:09:57

the you know, twenty sixteen election. Worse.

1:10:00

How gross it was that right Wing A

1:10:02

right wing influencers and and just random people

1:10:04

posting that we're we're baking about Hillary Clinton's

1:10:06

health conditions. You know how dare you? and

1:10:08

and that's so gross and were so above

1:10:10

that you know coming up with these fake

1:10:12

potential diseases or what or whatever that's really

1:10:15

going on. And I really think that a

1:10:17

lot of people and you know, obviously you

1:10:19

have the couch This with the fact that

1:10:21

I think in the real world people treat

1:10:23

each other differently and it's not exactly a

1:10:25

one to one mirror image of what you

1:10:27

see on, but I I I think that

1:10:29

people. Are kind of. It's happened so

1:10:32

gradually the people do not realize

1:10:34

that they're slowly strengthening their conspiratorial

1:10:36

muscle. This was not something that

1:10:38

we were all that worried about

1:10:40

when we first started by looking

1:10:42

into Q and On and and

1:10:44

doing. This podcast and now it

1:10:46

seems like there is already a

1:10:48

nice you know element of journalism

1:10:51

covering a conspiracy Theories are that

1:10:53

originate in Centrist? You know centrist

1:10:55

are are left leaning a liberal

1:10:57

groups and so it's yeah I

1:10:59

can imagine. What it's going to be

1:11:01

like Ten years down the line. And like

1:11:04

he said, it doesn't seem that the people

1:11:06

who have the responsibility for the ability to

1:11:08

just flat out ability to change it or

1:11:10

implement a system that that might add that

1:11:12

might help this a give a fuck about

1:11:15

it. If anything, they're looking okay. great. We

1:11:17

got more people google in with more people

1:11:19

making. We've got more people generating Clinton. This

1:11:21

is all good for us. You know, so

1:11:24

that we can. I don't know. I don't

1:11:26

know. Continue to be rich I guess I

1:11:28

I I don't know what. Is what

1:11:30

the end goal is. Other than simply

1:11:32

that, I mean that's him Growth group

1:11:35

forever. Stock prices go up, growth go

1:11:37

off, always growing, never stopping. Now important

1:11:39

to remember the and from the gross

1:11:41

river is a cancer or be so

1:11:43

for you whoop. Well as they couldn't

1:11:46

leave it there are. A

1:11:48

perfect A happy ending right? Yeah, Credit

1:11:51

happy ending for wonderful a wonderful show.

1:11:53

Thanks for coming on at Yeah, my

1:11:55

pleasure as as an ambulance like I

1:11:57

enjoy your newsletter. you rather really us

1:11:59

gets going. The time when like a

1:12:01

tech reporters are usually pretty well captured by

1:12:03

in the three other really fast a scapegoat

1:12:05

take on things and you have a podcast

1:12:07

coming as he thought about it I do

1:12:10

so that refine his i have right him

1:12:12

to some media may remember from behind the

1:12:14

bastards are they trying to me by last

1:12:16

year and yet Wiki tech shouts to be

1:12:18

a mixture of interviews, narrative stuff can be

1:12:20

really great and it's going to come out

1:12:23

on the twenty first of every six or

1:12:25

any be out on time. This runs our

1:12:27

I will to the links to that in

1:12:29

the show. Know that are offline.com maybe

1:12:31

you find all my shit that thanks

1:12:33

for listening to another episode of the

1:12:36

Queue a podcast you can go to

1:12:38

pitcher.com que a A and subscribe for

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1:12:56

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1:12:58

everything else. We have a website. It

1:13:00

is to a podcast.com listener until

1:13:02

next week Made a deep dish.

1:13:04

Bless you and Tp of. Such

1:13:08

as fast and know. If

1:13:13

I walk over there and sit next

1:13:15

to Mister Johnson and carry my phone,

1:13:17

does google know that I was sitting

1:13:19

here and then I moved over there?

1:13:22

Yes or no. I genuinely

1:13:24

don't know without knowing was shocked to

1:13:26

don't know do you are do not

1:13:28

collect identifiers like name, age and address

1:13:30

yes are not good for creating an

1:13:33

account yet but yes and using a

1:13:35

conscious specific searches on first start something

1:13:37

into a third if he if such

1:13:39

as returned on yes device adenovirus like

1:13:41

ip address or I am he. Was

1:13:45

recently. Went

1:13:51

on the specific so. Much any beast. Crop

1:13:58

of we give an option. turn on or off.

1:14:01

But if a person didn't know what voice and

1:14:03

conversations when using Google voice products. We

1:14:05

only record when they initiated with OK

1:14:08

Google and then say the terms after. Contents

1:14:10

of emails and Google documents. We

1:14:13

store the data but we don't read or

1:14:15

look at your Gmail. You have access to

1:14:17

them. As a company we

1:14:19

have access to them. So you could. Saying

1:14:21

you don't or don't. I'm not asking to

1:14:23

do your don't. I'm saying you could though

1:14:25

there is a possibility. We have clear established

1:14:27

policies on how we would do

1:14:29

the data. And their privacy policies speaking of that has

1:14:31

changed 28 times including 8 times since January

1:14:34

2016. So I think the policies

1:14:36

of the open this is why I'm asking these

1:14:38

questions. Many things we don't

1:14:41

collect for example we don't collect you

1:14:43

could have a product like Google Home. You would collect

1:14:45

conversations unless you specifically ask us to

1:14:47

see you ask a question. We

1:14:50

definitely are very careful and minimize the

1:14:52

data we need to provide the service

1:14:54

not through users.

1:14:56

We need all this information. We

1:14:58

can answer that in the fact that 85

1:15:01

or 76 percent of your revenue comes from

1:15:03

advertising. So we know you manipulate the data

1:15:05

in some way. However can you explain what

1:15:07

you do to minimize this data which is

1:15:09

generally an accepted standard practice among those who

1:15:12

collect data. Our goal is you know we

1:15:14

are providing for example if we are providing

1:15:16

you a service like Gmail which we have

1:15:18

done for 15 years. That

1:15:21

data we need to store it for our users

1:15:23

so they expect us to. We

1:15:26

are trying hard to match users

1:15:28

expectations. We don't need our data

1:15:30

for advertising. As I said earlier

1:15:32

most of it comes from just a key

1:15:34

wise use type. So we need minimal data

1:15:36

to do advertising. We give you options to

1:15:38

turn ads personalization off. We store

1:15:40

most of the data we do today to

1:15:42

help give users the experience they want and

1:15:45

that's what we're trying to do. Do you

1:15:47

believe that Google has been has been brought

1:15:49

out here and some question is biased. Congressman

1:15:52

it's really important to me that we

1:15:54

approach our work in an unbiased way.

1:15:56

You believe that Google is biased. It's

1:15:58

either yes or no. No,

1:16:00

not an opera. How could you

1:16:02

explain this appearance? Bias on Googles

1:16:05

part, against conservative points of view,

1:16:07

against conservative or policies. It is

1:16:09

it just the algorithm. Arrays are

1:16:12

more happening here. Understand I understand

1:16:14

the frustration of seem negative news

1:16:16

and feed on me on Google.

1:16:18

Authentic And you can search on

1:16:21

Google. Has

1:16:23

negative news media. Works

1:16:25

and what in particular is. Set.

1:16:32

Up. Using

1:16:36

a set of robots, it is

1:16:38

in our interest to make sure

1:16:40

we reflect, ah, what's happening out

1:16:42

there in the best objective manner

1:16:45

possible. This weekend I was on

1:16:47

Msnbc four to. First

1:16:49

thing that comes up daily Caller

1:16:51

Exactly a liberal and I guess

1:16:53

well known and wrong. Or.

1:17:01

Overly conservative organizations on your nerves, not

1:17:04

like you look in the over use

1:17:06

of conservative news organizations to put on

1:17:08

liberal people's news on Google. and if

1:17:10

you let me know about that every

1:17:12

ship and we do it and since

1:17:14

across both sides of the I'm in

1:17:17

I can I can assure you we

1:17:19

do this in a neutral ways.