Prepared in advance and so well start with some questions about the news in this current year. Its only been a year since the president ial election, but it seems very hard to remember a time when facebook wasnt synonymous with fake news. People who disseminated false information on social media range from those who are fblly motivated to Foreign Government propaganda agents. Whats your take on fake news and its impact on the outcome of the 2016 election . You know, i think the mike. Microphone. Microphone. I think the impact of fake news was to allow prooimarily the trp 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. And, you know, 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 in fake news of a symptom verses 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 that they and should know Better Believe what they want to believe. And i think people are going to believe what they want to believe. Certainly social medias kind of like gasoline on a fire. But, you know, i dont think fake news is necessarily their problem, i think its just more an accelerant on the underlying problem which is the divisions that we see in this country. Yeah, i largely agree with you, i mean, the term phenomenon was because people were unhappy. It may have been acc sasser balted and fake news may have played a role in that, but i question the depth of the role. I mean, the spin that theyre talking about on facebook is a joke. I mean, you cant affect change with that kind of money. Now, its bothersome to us because it conceptually could affect our elections to you which is very holy to us and should be. 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 content of questionable quality and thats because theres been a change in control of news information. Its been shifting from Media Companies with editors and editorial policies to Tech Companies that may not have such expertise onboard. So some in Congress Want them to regulate political ads on facebook similarly to the way theyre 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 the creation of a disclaimer that says who the ads are paid for by. So theyre paid for by a campaign, it says paid for by bob fromm for governor committee. Beyond that, theres theres not much regulation, theres theres in terms of candidates and their ability to say whatever they want to say on television, its pretty unrestricted. Theyre mostly immune to libel laws. So i dont think that its asking a lot for our online advertisers to have some commitment to disclose in the 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 evolved over time and the other very key element in this is the airwaves, the broadcast airwaves are publicly owned. And the federal Communications Commission regulates them. And they they put together these requirements. Obviously Online Communications is not federally regulated and i dont think theres any political will to federally regulate them nor should there be. But so its a real question of whether theyre going to be selfpolicing 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 mean, i think honestly if it would be tough for the government to regulate the i think Technology Just moves too fast for 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 ive never talked to someone at one of these companies who does not somewhat acknowledge the responsibility and want to do a better job. 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 in one direction or another, but just better in terms of, you know, the kinds of things we all care about. So, you know, i can say i think people are working on it, think theres a lot of smart people walking on it, i kind of sometimes liken it to new transition. Once upon a time, you know, weve evolved to be really into sugar, right, and to really want to eat sugar and then eventually we learn that too much sugar bad for us and we have signs that tell us how many calories things are and weve evolved to sort of Pay Attention to negative information and to compete as groups and, you know, our information diet, you know, can be verien healthy 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 11 00 like its sort of engrained in us that these algorithms and the media, theyre all optimizing towards in some ways human nature. But 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 go for us and for smart people to do good things, to do things about that. And so people are working on these algorithms pmtd so in the absence of regulation are i do think things will get better. That was extremely thoughtful and im not going to say anything thats remotely that thoughtful. But i like bills perspective that it makes common sense that there should be some degree of transparency. But when you game that out i dont think it will have any practical effect. Because this expenditure say naive expenditure that goes through a pac unraveling how funds get into that pac is very, very difficult if not impossible. The point have 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 speak, bill, i would defer to you if you feel differently because youve actually would place those nings things and interact with them. I think its extremely challenging to figure out whos paid that. The transparency just isnt there. I think the the impact on particularly on independent expenditure ads of disclaimers is grossly exaggerated by most campaign reformers because often times 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 who is behind the money. Now, i think the russian particular issue involved with the russian, 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 this is not a good idea. They would just pay cash. Youre absolutely right. So i enjoyed your analogy about sugar and maybe you mentioned diabetes, right. So maybe when we create something when the technology will create Something Like refined sugar, its exciting but, you know, there are consequences like a Public Health problem of diabetes. And as a Technology Developer myself i feel like our community is sensed the pace of the development is increasing, and so the opportunity to regulate and to alter our behaviors for these downstream consequences our window has become shorter and shorter. So i wanted to ask bill and justin, in your line of work, have you have you noticed an acceleration or is it just par for the course the way that technologys changing both Opinion Research and political messaging or the fields you work on . I think the most profound in impact of technology on the political process so far has been huge acceleration of fundraising opportunities from small donors. Literally president baems 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 one of the most profound impacts has been the fundraising, the change in the fundraising culture. And that that part of Digital Communications and digital Political Communications is far advanced beyond where tiesing is right n advertising is right now. The Digital World is still struggling to get 15 foers 20 of advertising dollars either commercially or politically. So theres questions about where its going to go and of course all these things change. I mean, you know, 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 were still by advertising on tv, still advertising on cable, in terms of people are still 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 pod casts are going to play a significant political role over time. So, you know, theres an enormous fragmentation going on in our communications universe. And people are not only selfselecting about the news, as we talked about, theyre also selfselecting about where they get their news and, you know, when know there are people who are watching exclusively Fox Television and people who watch exclusively msnbc. Well probably see the same phenomena on podcasts, people who listen to pro grekt gressive podcasts and there will be people who listen to conservative podcasts exclusively. Thats a big change is that people become so idea logically driven about where they get information from. Yeah, the medium mix that bill was describing, i mean, it evolves over time because but it hasnt flipped because people consume information in the ways that they like to consume them and its usually multiple different ways. So digital doesnt own the world right now simply because people consume information and right of ways and most media markets tv is an incredibly inefficient way to save money if youve got the money. In my small world which is trying to figure out how people thing and trying to influence their thoughts and behaviors, digital has had a profound impact. 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, unbelievable. If youre talk about anything other than that, then it becomes degrades in efficacy. There are, you know, folks who are pros la tiesing a particular tool or method because they get enamored with that method, just with any kind of industry. And they forget that sometimes theres a right wid get for every application and its not one size fits all. In my world theres a move right now to transition from telephone research which if you perform it in the right way can still be the most accurate form to integrating Digital Online research, which could be incredibly useful for the right approach. But there are pit falls with it. The digit all aspect of that typically comes in in california from the voter file. And in recent years, 50 of every knew 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 kind of stuff, and 50 of it online, what youve done is confined 50 of your sample to new registrants, which composes a traction 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 flawed. It may hit the mark from time to time, but its going to be wrong much more often than a different methodology for that particular purpose. On the other hand, if youre researching a small California Coastal town on a ballot measure and theres 10,000 voters in that space, then you can slice and dice the methodology and include digital and just make sure that youre careful about the proportions and you can get much better well, reality is youll get higher rate of response than you would normally. And that information cant be regard as statistically significant because the math doesnt work that way, but its directional. And ghes what . The rest of the world works with with directional research. When i work on consumer based stuff, if im selling footage paste or technology, i cant use the voter file which say remarkable be a will he infective tool. But i have to use some construct of big data. And what people forget, because big data sounds cool, its just a work around and it gets better. But its nowhere near as good as the voter polls that we have. So back to companies, the Media Companies. So companies such as google, facebook and twitter are making the case that theyre actually not Media Companies and should be they should take a handsoff role in policing content on their platforms. So 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 deal with bad actors that are trying to manipulate messaging. Broad question. Well, i mean, its 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 if this continues to grow as rapidly, the foreign interference grows rapidly as its grown in the last 20 years, you know, it will have an impact. How the industry itself deals with these issues is you know, its going to be really difficult for them. I mean, to the extent an industry can have an ideology, theres is more antiregulatory, antigovernment lib bertarian in many ways than other industries, even more conservative industries. Theyre going to resist any kind of regulation. And congress is going to hold, you know, particularly when it is amazing how interesting Congress Gets into issues about elections. They have a little bit of selfinterest in how elections are conducted. So theyre 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 mean i think ive already said that i think its almost impossible for for starters. I think its impossible for government to effectively regulate some of these technologies, but i mean, ill give a hopeful thing, which is that, you know, and also i think maybe useful for your engineering students who might be in the audience today. I think there is a Movement Towards the idea that you dont have to measure just clicks or time onsite or ad impressions, which is what a lot of these sites are designed to optimize towards. There are other things you can measure. There are products out there on some of these Media Companies that try and sense when you are in danger of hurting yourself and try and help with you that, right . Or, you know, there are things that are trying to measure things that are a little bit more human, theyre a little bit closer to the goals. And, you know, were reminded by some people say if you ever gave an ai a problem like stop all human suffering, you know, the easiest way to stop all human suffering is it to kill all the human beings now theres no humans in the world. So sometimes there are unintentional goals that we set for these algorithms and i think were realizing those consequences. For the engineering students here, there are interesting ways to think about how i can measure measuring things like, you know, fulfillment, happiness, you know, those are fuzzy constructs, but theyre they are if you can measure whether something is or is not a cat you can measure some of these fuzzy constructs as well. And speaking carefully because some of the companies are clients, theresy think theres a challenge within Technology Companies of huber russ 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. For one example, a particular ride hailing app, the way that they approached growth was to ignore the law. And 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. So even with selfdriving cars. So when they did something that was against the law, rather than working with another organization say lets fix this in a way that works for everybody to some degree, which means everyone walks away to some degree unhappy as well as happy, they didnt. If you could imagine an oil company or a Tobacco Company behaving in the way that many Technology Companies behave, they would be crucified. But so far so far that momentum is still there. I think theres a i dont think theres an appetite to selfregulate. So the companies that you were alluding to include <