On synonymous with fake news. Whats your take on fake news and its impact on the outcome of the 2016 election . I think the microphone microphone. I think the impact of fake news was to allow primarily the trump voters to discount what was going on in the mainstream media, no matter how bad it was for their candidate or how bad it was factually. They just it allowed them to assume that it was coming from a biased point of view, and that, therefore, they ignored it. That has not been typical of american campaigns in the past. So, i have a slightly different view on fake news in the sense that i think we focus a lot on the fact that, you know, this news might have, you know, changed the results of the election, and i think of fake news more of a symptom versus a cause, so i think its a symptom of the polarization thats in this country. So my backgrounds in psychology, and a lot of the research that gets done is about how people believe what they want to believe, and really smart people who have access to all the news and should know better, believe what they want to believe. So i think people are going to believe what they want to believe. Certainly, social media is like gasoline on a fire, but, you know, i dont think fake news is necessarily a problem. I think its more of an accelerant of the underlying problem, which is the divisions that we see in this country. Yeah, i largely agree with you. I mean, the trump phenomenon was because people were unhappy. It may have been exacerbated and fake news may have played a role in that, but i question the depth of the role. I mean, the spin that they are talking about on facebook is a joke. I mean, you cant effect change with that kind of money. Its bothersome to us because it could affect our elections, but in terms of practical consequence, i dont think it did much for this particular election. I think it could, and theres some interesting components to that fabric, but in actual reality i just dont think it did much. So, many of the questions about fake news come from the way were receiving this, maybe new continent questionable quality. And thats because theres been a change in the control of news information. Its been shifting from Media Companies with editors and editorial policies, to Tech Companies that may not have such expertise on board. So some in Congress Want the government to regulate political ads on sites such as facebook and similar to the way they are regulated on tv, what is your thoughts on this . Well, i mean, the regulation on television is pretty minimal for the most part, but it, essentially, is a creation of a disclaimer that says who the ads are paid for by. So they are paid for by a campaign, it says paid for by bob shrum for governor committee. Beyond that, theres not much regulation. In terms of candidates and their ability to say whatever they want to say on television is pretty unrestricted. They are mostly immune to libel laws, so i dont think that its asking a lot for our online advertisers to have some commitment to disclosing while the ads are playing who paid for them. Similar to what we do on television. I think the reality is, we didnt get where we are in terms of television and disclaimers last week or the week before. It took it evolved over time, and the other very key element in this is the air waves, the broadcast air waves, are publicly owned, and the federal Communications Commission regulates them, and they put together these requirements. Obviously, Online Communications is not federally regulated, and i dont think theres any political will to federally regulate them or should there be. But so its a real question of are they going to be self policing in terms of what they do, or is Congress Going to step in and weve seen that argument be joined in the last few weeks. I think, honestly, it would be really tough for the government to regulate you know, i think technology moves too fast for government to really meaningfully regulate, but i think, you know, i work in the tech industry, and i talk to people at some of these companies, and i have never talked to someone at one of these companies who does not somewhat acknowledge their responsibility and want to do a better job. And, you know, these companies are made of people who care just like you do and were surprised by things that have happened in the political world just like you are and want things to be better, not necessarily just, you know, in one direction or another, but just better in terms of the kinds of things we all care about. So, you know, i can say i think people are working on it. I think theres a lot of smart people working on it, and i kind of sometimes liken it to nutrition. Once upon a time, you know, we have evolved to be really into sugar, right, and to really want to eat sugar, and eventually we learned that too much sugar is bad for us and we have, like, signs that tell us how many calories things are. And, you know, weve evolved to sort of Pay Attention to negative information and compete as groups and our information diet, you know, can be very unhealthy for us in a similar way. Its not just online. Look at the 11 00 news. All the seven things that you dont know that might kill you if you dont watch the its sort of ingrained in us that these algorithms in the media are all optimizing in some way towards human nature, but, you know, just like with nutrition, there are ways for us as a thoughtful species to understand that, you know, the kinds of things were seeing arent good for us, and for smart people to do good things, to do things about that, so people are working on these algorithms. So in the absence of regulation, i do think things will get better. That was extremely thoughtful, and im not going to say anything thats even remotely that thoughtful. I like bills perspective, yeah, it makes common sense there should be some degree of transparency, but when you game that out, i dont think it will have any real practical effect, because this kind of expenditure goes through a pac, unraveling how funds get into that pac is very, very difficult, if not impossible. The point is, youre not going to see a facebook ad or any ad with the disclaimer this ad was purchased by the russian government. Its going to go through a lot of hands before it gets there. So i think practically speaking, and bill, i would defer to you if you feel differently, because you actually would place those things and interact with them, i think its extremely challenging to see who paid that. The transparency just isnt there. I think the impact, particularly on independent expenditure ads of disclaimers is grossly exaggerated by most campaign reformers, because oftentimes they say paid for by the committee for a better world, and whos against a better world, obviously . But on the other hand, it does lead a paper trail that you can follow and try to figure out whos behind the money. Now, i think the russian particularly the issue involved with the russians, i think if somebody comes up to you and says they want to hire you to do their polling and pays you in rubles, youre probably going to say, well, this is probably not a good idea. Well, they would just pay cash. No, youre absolutely right. So, ive enjoyed your analogy about sugar, and maybe you didnt mention it, but diabetes, right . So maybe when we create something, when the Technology CreatesSomething Like refined sugar, its exciting, but there are consequences Like Public Health problem of diabetes, and as a Technology Developer myself, i feel like our community is sensed the pace of development is increasing, and so the opportunity to regulate and to alter our behaviors for these downstream consequences, our window becomes shorter and shorter, so i wanted to ask bill and justin, you know, in your line of work, have you noticed an acceleration or is it just par for the course the way the technology is changing both Opinion Research and political messaging or the fields you work on . Well, i think the most profound impact of technology on the political process so far has been the huge acceleration of fundraising opportunities from small donors. Literally, president obamas campaign was funded primarily by small donors, particularly in 08, and i think we saw that with Bernie Sanders this time. So, you know, were talking about ads, but i think the most profound impacts has been the fundraising, the change in the fundraising culture. And that part of Digital Communications and digital Political Communications is far advanced beyond where advertising is right now in terms of the Digital World is still struggling to get 15 to 20 of advertising dollars, either commercially or politically. So, you know, theres questions about where its going to go, and, of course, all of these things change. I mean, theres going to be other digital breakthroughs and different ways to communicate, and i have a firm view that what we do in the Communications World is we dont really get rid of any old media, we just add another form of new media on top of it, so its like we get to be a more fragmented and more complex communications culture, particularly in the advertising side. And it just you know, were still advertising on tv, still advertising on cable, still people are advertising on broadcast radio, and then we have all these other new mediums, including online and satellite and all these other things that are coming, and im sure i think we can see podcasts are going to play a significant political role over time. So, you know, theres just an enormous fragmentation going on in our communications universe, and people are not only self selecting about the news, as we talked about, they are also self selecting about where they get their news. And, you know, we know there are people who are watching exclusively fox television, people who watch exclusively msnbc. Well probably see the same phenomena on podcasts. People who listen to progressive podcasts and people who listen to conservative podcasts exclusively. So thats a big change, is that people become so ideologically driven about their where they get information from. Yeah, the medium mixup bill was describing, it evolves over time, because but it hasnt flipped. People consume information in the ways they like to consume them and its usually multiple different ways, so digital doesnt own the world right now simply because people consume information in a variety of ways and in most media markets, tv is an incredibly efficient way to spend money, if youve got money. In my small world figuring out what people think and figuring out how to influence their thoughts and behaviors, digital has had a profound impact. I mean, if youre talking about a highly informed horse race and theres really only one, thats the president ial race, then google surveys is fantastic, its remarkable, its unbelievable. If youre talking about anything other than that, then it becomes degrades in efficacy. There are, you know, folks who are process thelytizing a particular tool or method because they get enamored with that method. Just like any kind of industry. And they forget that sometimes theres a right widget for every application, and its not one size fits alls. In my world theres a move right now to transition from telephone research, which if you perform it in the right way, it can be the most accurate form, to integrating Digital Online research, which can be inkreeblbly useful for the right approach, but there are pitfalls with it. The digital aspect of that typically comes in in california from the voter file, and in recent years, 50 of every new Voter Registration card has a valid email address. It works. Its really, really good. But if you say arbitrarily im going to do 50 of this on phone, and that includes cell phones and all that stuff, and a 50 of it online, youve put 50 of your sample to new registrants, which composes a fraction of the electorate. So youve gone ahead and put an artificial constraint, and there is good reason to look at that and say that methodology is thawed. It may hit the mark from time to time, but its going to be wrong much more often than a different methodology for a particular purpose. If theres 10,000 voters in that space, then you can slice and dice the methodology and include digital and be careful about the proportions and you can get much better reality is, youll get a higher rate of response than you would normally, and that information cant be regarded as statistically significant, because the math doesnt work that way, but its directional. The rest of the world works with directional research. So when i work on consumerbased stuff, which if im selling toothpaste or technology, i cant use the voter file, which is a remarkably effective tool, but i have to use some construct of big data. And what people forget, big data sounds really cool, its just a work around. And its good, gets better and better and better, but its nowhere near as effective or accurate as the voter rolls in the world of Public Policy. Anyway, divergent there. Thanks. So, back to companies, Media Companies, so companies such as google, facebook, and twitter are making the case they are actually not Media Companies and should be they should take a handsoff role in policing content on their platforms. I want to get your takes on whether the benefits of free speech outweigh the consequences of the spread of false information and how platforms might want to deal with bad actors trying to manipulate messaging. Broad question. Well, this is going to be a very complex problem for a long time. I think that i mean, theres a difference between what the hearings did on facebook when they were talking about russian collusion, and i totally agree, it was not the impact was not that great on this election, but the potential impact in some future election just continues to grow as rapidly, the foreign interference, grown more rapidly than the last 20 years. It will have an impact. How the industry itself deals with these issues, you know, its going to be really difficult for them. I mean, to the extent an industry can have an ideology, theirs is more antiregulatory, antigovernment, libertarian in many ways than other industries, even more conservative industries. They are going to resist any kind of regulation, and congress is going to hold, you know, particularly it is amazing how interesting Congress Gets into issues about elections. They have a little bit of self interest in how elections are conducted, so their aggressiveness on this issue will be pretty extensive. They will want to see some clean up your act kind of dynamic, but i think there will be resistance. Were a long way from figuring this out, too. A hell of a long way. So, i think ive already said i think its almost impossible for almost impossible for government to really effectively regulate some of these technologies, but ill give you a hopeful thing, which is that, you know, also i think something useful for your engineering students who might be in the audience today, i think theres a Movement Towards the idea you dont have to measure just clicks or time on site or ad impressions, which is what a lot of these sites are designed to optimize towards. There are companies that try and sense when you are in danger of hurting yourself and try and help you with that, or there are things trying to measure things that are a little more human, little closer to the goals and, you know, reminded by some people say if you ever give an a. I. A problem like stop all human suffering, you know, easiest way to stop all human suffering is to kill all human beings. Now theres no more suffering in the world, right . So sometimes there are unintended consequences of the goals we set for these algorithms and were realizing these consequences, and for the engineering students here, there are interesting ways, you know, to think about how can i measure, you know measuring things like, you know, fulfillment, happiness, you know, those are fuzzy constructs, but they are, if you can measure whether something is or is not a cat, you can measure some of these fuzzy constructs, as well. Speaking carefully, because some of the companies are clients, there is, i think, a challenge within Technology Companies of hubris, and i think they tend to breathe their own exhaust a little bit too much, and they tend to be some of the worst corporate actors in america. One, for example, particular ride hailing app, the way they approach growth was to ignore the law. Im not a law and order person, but the reality is, we live under a construct of laws, and we have to respond to them and respect them. That particular car company, in every city that they rolled out to, they simply ignored it. And states. Even with self driving cars. When they did something against the law, rather than working with another organization, fix this in a way that works for everybody in some degree, which means everybody walks away to some degree happy, as well as unhappy, they didnt. If you could imagine an oil company or a Tobacco Company behaving in a way many Technology Companies behave, they would be crucified. But so far that momentum is still there. I think theres a i dont think theres an appetite to self regulate. The companies that you were eluding to include Tech Companies and also traditional Media Companies, and you mentioned some metrics that might be might provide more value to society, but i dont know if theres a connection between those metrics and what is Good Business for the companies. So do you see is that a problem . So that many of the Media Companies are more incentivized to maintain attention or maybe even loyalty to that media source, which seems like its not in line necessarily with the value some of the values that were proposed as alternative benefits of these yeah. Thats certainly true at the micro level for individual companies, but then, you know, eventually the things that people value and the things that Companies Value converge. Theres so, i guess, you know,