# Transcript: Computational propaganda

## Description

It’s all connected to modern online propaganda running on digital platforms and their algorithms. How does it work? And how can individuals, families, companies, and entire countries defend themselves against it?



Who is Josef Holý?



Josef Holý started out as a programmer, then worked for several years at Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) as a Social Network Designer, and eventually co-founded his own startup proactify.com. He then spent six years at MSD focusing on UX, Design Thinking, and also Artificial Intelligence. He currently works at Semantic Visions as Head of Product.Through the topic of AI ethics, he got involved with social network algorithms and disinformation. Together with Alexandra Alvarová, he creates a podcast about algorithmic propaganda called Kanárci v Síti.

## Transcript

**[00:00:00]** My name is Honza Mašek, welcome to another Brain & Breakfast.

**[00:00:24]** Today, I have to apologize right at the start for the complications.

**[00:00:28]** Maybe it’s related to today’s topic, but somehow we had a problem

**[00:00:33]** with the internet connection and networks, so sorry for the slight delay.

**[00:00:38]** I’ll just try to summarize the breakfast once a month with an interesting topic.

**[00:00:43]** Today’s topic is a bit like a pre-election one.

**[00:00:47]** And since the breakfast lasts about an hour before the show and then another half hour,

**[00:00:54]** and it’s always interactive, I ask you to take out your mobile phones

**[00:01:00]** and either go to slajdu.com with the hashtag Brain, or if you’re watching on Edu,

**[00:01:08]** you can ask questions directly under the broadcast.

**[00:01:12]** Right now, I’m asking if you’ve been to a breakfast before,

**[00:01:18]** or if this is your first time.

**[00:01:23]** I see there are already about a hundred people, most have been to a breakfast,

**[00:01:29]** but a third haven’t, which is good.

**[00:01:33]** So I won’t keep you long and will welcome our guest today.

**[00:01:38]** Pepo, come take your seat.

**[00:01:43]** Our guest today is Josef Holý.

**[00:01:48]** We talked about how to introduce Josef,

**[00:01:52]** and besides the fact that he doesn’t want any glorified praise,

**[00:01:56]** Josef does a fantastic thing called Kanárci v síti.

**[00:02:02]** It’s a podcast about the world and how social networks actually work.

**[00:02:08]** When I saw Josef before, and how clearly he can explain how these things work,

**[00:02:14]** it gave me chills on one hand,

**[00:02:18]** but on the other hand, I definitely thought

**[00:02:22]** about how to get him here to Brain and Breakfast.

**[00:02:26]** We agreed that this pre-election time is optimal for that.

**[00:02:30]** So I won’t keep you long.

**[00:02:32]** This breakfast is called Computational Propaganda.

**[00:02:34]** Pepo, here’s your clicker, I’ll step aside and look forward to your talk.

**[00:02:43]** Thank you, good day once again.

**[00:02:45]** I just want to add that we do Kanárci v síti with Aleksandra Alvarová,

**[00:02:49]** who has been focused on propaganda and online manipulation for a long time.

**[00:02:55]** She’s also written books, so you can find her books on Kosmas.

**[00:02:59]** That’s what we had, so today’s topic is Computational Propaganda.

**[00:03:06]** When you say Computational, it’s like Computer Science,

**[00:03:11]** and people immediately get goosebumps all over,

**[00:03:16]** because in Computer Science they learned Word,

**[00:03:21]** and then programming in high school, but some don’t remember much.

**[00:03:25]** A better term might be digital propaganda.

**[00:03:28]** We’ll talk about what’s happening today in the online world

**[00:03:32]** and what is happening with our brains, with the integrity of our decision-making.

**[00:03:36]** This is the main aspect that Sasha and I focus on in the Canary Islands.

**[00:03:42]** The thing is, our times have changed a lot and we are going through a societal transformation,

**[00:03:49]** where the communication architecture of our information space is changing,

**[00:03:53]** the way we communicate with each other.

**[00:03:55]** Especially thanks to social networks and digital platforms.

**[00:03:59]** There is a lot of talk about disinformation in this context,

**[00:04:03]** and we then take it further, about disinformation,

**[00:04:08]** but often discussions around it arise and skeptics always say,

**[00:04:13]** who holds the patent on truth, etc.

**[00:04:16]** Disinformation is defined, it is even defined

**[00:04:20]** in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia in 1952,

**[00:04:24]** and that is no coincidence, of course.

**[00:04:27]** Disinformation is false information created with the intent to confuse the public.

**[00:04:31]** So it's not just someone making a mistake,

**[00:04:34]** or someone having an opinion that they express,

**[00:04:39]** and you can then convince them otherwise.

**[00:04:43]** There is an agenda, the lie

**[00:04:47]** is not just created out of ignorance or some error,

**[00:04:51]** but there is an agenda, the goal is to confuse the public.

**[00:04:55]** That is disinformation. So logically, disinformation can be

**[00:04:59]** used as a weapon if part of your,

**[00:05:03]** let's say, offensive strategy is to confuse the public.

**[00:05:07]** And we, or rather disinformation,

**[00:05:11]** has been talked about for many years,

**[00:05:15]** at least since around 2015-2016,

**[00:05:19]** when Donald Trump won, and massive

**[00:05:23]** disinformation operations started in the United States,

**[00:05:27]** before that there was Brexit, so of course it happened there too.

**[00:05:31]** And here it came, I would say, into the spotlight,

**[00:05:35]** thanks to the ongoing COVID pandemic, when

**[00:05:39]** the two worlds, online and offline, connected,

**[00:05:43]** when parts of the population first questioned whether the disease even exists,

**[00:05:47]** then fell for conspiracy theories that the disease is controlled by someone,

**[00:05:51]** then testing, microchipping, and then vaccination and so on.

**[00:05:55]** So here the biological and informational worlds

**[00:05:59]** merged, where information online

**[00:06:03]** shapes people's behavior offline,

**[00:06:07]** and those people offline, through their behavior, contribute to spreading

**[00:06:11]** or not spreading the virus. So it can be said that for the first time

**[00:06:15]** in history, actually very closely

**[00:06:19]** or deeply connected these two worlds

**[00:06:23]** and we can literally talk about an epidemic of disinformation, where the epidemic of disinformation,

**[00:06:27]** which takes place online and of course also in traditional media,

**[00:06:31]** simply influences the biological pandemic

**[00:06:35]** and it's quite interesting to look at disinformation from a perspective

**[00:06:39]** that is, of course, biological. And on the internet, if you search epidemiology,

**[00:06:43]** you'll probably get an image like this one,

**[00:06:47]** where epidemiologists think in a framework, simply put,

**[00:06:51]** where there is some environment in which an agent spreads,

**[00:06:55]** that's the virus or bacteria, and then there are hosts,

**[00:06:59]** the hosts, which are for example us

**[00:07:03]** or in the case of animal viruses, it can be animals, etc.

**[00:07:07]** And now, if we apply this model to disinformation,

**[00:07:11]** it can nicely explain, or relatively well explain,

**[00:07:15]** the model of how disinformation works. And from this triad

**[00:07:19]** agent, meaning virus, environment, and host, meaning human,

**[00:07:23]** let's start with the agent, so in the biological world these are viruses,

**[00:07:27]** we all now know this scary image of the

**[00:07:31]** spiky sun, which is the coronavirus.

**[00:07:35]** And actually in the online world, in terms of disinformation

**[00:07:39]** and propaganda, we talk about memes. When you say memes,

**[00:07:43]** many of you probably think of funny animated GIFs, videos.

**[00:07:47]** By the way, this is one of the first memes that spread

**[00:07:51]** basically before the internet era, around 1997,

**[00:07:55]** or pre-web era. The web existed, but people mostly sent it by email.

**[00:07:59]** It was originally an ad for a company that sold office supplies,

**[00:08:03]** or something like that. But it became a meme, where people in offices

**[00:08:07]** sent this Angry Office Guy,

**[00:08:11]** who looks at the computer, then breaks it. And then there was

**[00:08:15]** an explosion of more and more memes as social networks grew,

**[00:08:19]** so memes naturally entered pop culture.

**[00:08:23]** We send them. Each of us, every day, I believe sends

**[00:08:27]** at least one meme, if not more, thanks to social networks.

**[00:08:31]** And there are memes for trolls, there are memes, the one in the top right

**[00:08:35]** by the way, that's Pepe the Frog, which was originally a cartoon character,

**[00:08:39]** which was then abused by white fascists in the United States

**[00:08:43]** and became a meme used to represent

**[00:08:47]** Black people. And of course, thanks also to things like

**[00:08:51]** the Shark Song, or whatever it's called, kids all over the world

**[00:08:55]** They were just humming a song, when a meme

**[00:08:59]** is basically a unit of cultural information, today we have

**[00:09:03]** an explosion of memes, if you just type memes into Google, anything comes up,

**[00:09:07]** you get gifs, etc. And the definition is a bit fuzzy,

**[00:09:11]** in recent years, or rather,

**[00:09:15]** memes were first defined in a book,

**[00:09:19]** written by Genetic Dawkins sometime in the 70s,

**[00:09:23]** where he was inspired by gene theory and started talking about how information

**[00:09:27]** creates similarly to genes and then that theory

**[00:09:31]** kind of faded away but is back today, because

**[00:09:35]** of course sociologists, students, or academics who focus on,

**[00:09:39]** experts who study the media sphere, see

**[00:09:43]** this explosion of memes. So now a rough definition,

**[00:09:47]** which the expert community generally agrees on, is that

**[00:09:51]** a meme is a unit of cultural information, meaning it doesn't have to be an animated gif,

**[00:09:55]** the animated gif is a form, it has some content,

**[00:09:59]** that's important, that is the meme.

**[00:10:00]** From our perspective on disinformation, it's important that it's not just humor,

**[00:10:05]** although it can be, but it should ideally lead you to some action.

**[00:10:09]** Maybe not a single meme, but a series of memes can motivate you to act,

**[00:10:14]** for example, to go with others to Congress after the American elections.

**[00:10:23]** And they spread through communication channels and live on as memes,

**[00:10:27]** meaning these units of cultural information live in information repositories.

**[00:10:31]** These are servers, social networks, and also our minds.

**[00:10:34]** What is important is that memes evolve. You can look at it as evolution.

**[00:10:39]** Now memetics, the so-called science, also studies meme analysis.

**[00:10:43]** Here is just one, this is a very famous meme, of course from elections,

**[00:10:48]** when Obama was running and the main leitmotif was 'hope',

**[00:10:53]** which itself is a meme. It is a unit of cultural information.

**[00:10:57]** Here is the image that became iconic and then things,

**[00:11:01]** they analyze the internet and do retrospective analyses of how memes evolved.

**[00:11:05]** Here is some graph showing how things relate by colors and shapes,

**[00:11:11]** or by themes. So memes materialize culture

**[00:11:19]** in digital form, but you can slice it and look at it in different ways.

**[00:11:25]** In this case, they look at it as politics, popular culture,

**[00:11:29]** individualization, alternative narratives, and so on.

**[00:11:33]** So it's a kind of science called memetics.

**[00:11:37]** It is at the intersection of traditional social sciences,

**[00:11:40]** media studies, IT, and so on. So those are memes.

**[00:11:45]** Important, just to return here, is that it is a unit of cultural information.

**[00:11:51]** Form is important when it comes to the risk of misinformation, because memes have to be simple and striking.

**[00:11:57]** If we look at the campaigns of individual political parties today,

**[00:12:01]** you will quickly see who makes good memes, who keeps them simple and impactful,

**[00:12:06]** and we'll get to that at the end, and who is a bit lost in it,

**[00:12:11]** making them too academic, too complicated.

**[00:12:14]** Simplicity and impact are important because memes,

**[00:12:17]** in the context of propaganda, are meant to evoke emotions.

**[00:12:20]** Funny memes we share, like someone falling or contextual jokes,

**[00:12:26]** make us feel humor, and we just laugh at them.

**[00:12:30]** In the context of misinformation, propaganda, to confuse the public

**[00:12:34]** or push them in a certain direction, memes are meant to evoke any emotion.

**[00:12:38]** That emotion can be fear, which is a very strong emotion,

**[00:12:42]** so it's about simplicity and impact, which I just wanted to emphasize.

**[00:12:46]** Then, moving along the triad from the agent, from the virus,

**[00:12:50]** memes spread into the environment, just like a virus spreads in biology.

**[00:12:54]** If you are an infected person in a small or large space,

**[00:12:57]** you are more likely to get infected than outside, and if you go to a concert with many people,

**[00:13:01]** it was said for a while that you would get infected more.

**[00:13:04]** There were so-called super spreader events, etc.

**[00:13:07]** Now, in the environment we are talking about, regarding misinformation

**[00:13:10]** and online algorithmic propaganda,

**[00:13:13]** the environment is the online space.

**[00:13:16]** And today, a key factor for the structure

**[00:13:21]** and way information spreads in the information space

**[00:13:24]** are online platforms.

**[00:13:27]** That means Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, Telegram,

**[00:13:31]** Snapchat, TikTok, etc.

**[00:13:34]** And it is important, in terms of misinformation or online propaganda,

**[00:13:38]** actually it's better to call it that, to look at

**[00:13:41]** how these platforms actually work,

**[00:13:44]** because it's about algorithms.

**[00:13:47]** We often talk in the podcast about how we can speak

**[00:13:50]** of algorithmic propaganda, because this is no longer propaganda

**[00:13:53]** like the French revolutionaries did at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries,

**[00:13:58]** or Goebbels during World War II,

**[00:14:01]** when propaganda was created in some center

**[00:14:04]** and then either printed on leaflets for people,

**[00:14:07]** or shown to them in cinemas in the form of weekly newsreels.

**[00:14:10]** But actually, the information space

**[00:14:15]** is no longer controlled entirely by authoritative centers,

**[00:14:18]** whether totalitarian or democratic, but algorithms control us.

**[00:14:21]** Algorithms developed by those online platforms

**[00:14:24]** and the key function of those algorithms

**[00:14:27]** is that they recommend content. We were all locked down during COVID,

**[00:14:30]** Netflix's revenue grew, Disney+ too, in America as well,

**[00:14:33]** because we all stayed home and watched

**[00:14:36]** Netflix, YouTube. That's content recommendation.

**[00:14:39]** These are algorithms trying to understand what we want,

**[00:14:42]** to recommend certain content. So Netflix, YouTube, Amazon,

**[00:14:46]** Tinder recommends people you should date,

**[00:14:50]** and Facebook recommends content based on what

**[00:14:53]** we should consume, what we should read.

**[00:14:56]** And Facebook is today actually the largest recommendation platform

**[00:15:00]** in the world. An algorithmically driven platform.

**[00:15:03]** That means there are no people at Facebook making

**[00:15:07]** editorial decisions, at least not on the level of individual

**[00:15:10]** pieces of content, like in traditional media,

**[00:15:13]** but basically programmers who develop

**[00:15:17]** the algorithm that then distributes content

**[00:15:20]** to nearly three billion people worldwide today.

**[00:15:24]** And that's the key. They recommend not only content,

**[00:15:27]** but also people, meaning those who might interest you,

**[00:15:31]** and also groups, groups that might interest you.

**[00:15:34]** And that's crucial. Now, how the algorithm works,

**[00:15:37]** when you come to Facebook, you just see slogans

**[00:15:41]** like, we connect people for a better world,

**[00:15:44]** we are a social network, etc. That's not entirely true.

**[00:15:49]** If we look at how the algorithm simply works,

**[00:15:52]** Facebook's algorithm and other social networks', it should be added,

**[00:15:56]** now TikTok is catching up, for example,

**[00:16:00]** we have this algorithm, a huge machine that lives on some

**[00:16:04]** hundreds of thousands of servers, spread across server farms

**[00:16:08]** around the world. And then we have us as people,

**[00:16:12]** who happen to be here unclothed, because the algorithm

**[00:16:16]** tries to undress us to some extent, but undress in terms of

**[00:16:24]** how we behave, etc. There are 2.6 billion monthly users,

**[00:16:28]** now probably about three. Few people know or realize

**[00:16:32]** that Facebook also owns Instagram and WhatsApp,

**[00:16:36]** so in total they have about 3 billion users.

**[00:16:40]** From the perspective of algorithmic propaganda, we can put WhatsApp a bit aside,

**[00:16:44]** but Instagram and Facebook are definitely algorithm-driven platforms,

**[00:16:48]** and this actually makes Mark Zuckerberg one of the greatest emperors of all time,

**[00:16:54]** because on average users spend hours daily on Facebook.

**[00:16:59]** It has 2 billion daily users or so, and 3 billion monthly,

**[00:17:04]** so you basically have a third of the world's population,

**[00:17:08]** and this guy, who is the absolute ruler of Facebook,

**[00:17:12]** due to the share structure, is basically unremovable,

**[00:17:16]** unlike traditional corporate governance in American corporations,

**[00:17:20]** he is basically responsible for what content people consume for several hours daily worldwide,

**[00:17:26]** and that's about a third of the people.

**[00:17:30]** So you could say he is one of the greatest emperors,

**[00:17:33]** because only very few empires in history had a third of the population.

**[00:17:37]** And as I said, the algorithms try to strip us down.

**[00:17:41]** I'm not so interested that I'm Josef Holí and that I live in Prague,

**[00:17:45]** the fact that I live in Prague is somewhat interesting to them,

**[00:17:49]** but they are much more interested in my so-called behavioral personality profile.

**[00:17:53]** And that behavioral personality profile of behavior,

**[00:17:57]** they derive from my activities both on Facebook

**[00:18:01]** and everywhere else on the internet. Facebook and Google, Google uses

**[00:18:05]** the data for a different purpose, to improve search results,

**[00:18:09]** but Facebook, like Google, collects data not only when you come to Facebook,

**[00:18:15]** but basically anywhere on the web where there are small buttons

**[00:18:19]** like the like button, where you can like a page, or widgets

**[00:18:23]** for sharing to Facebook, or when you can log in via Facebook on sites,

**[00:18:27]** even if you don't log in to that site,

**[00:18:31]** just by visiting the page, the button appears,

**[00:18:35]** delivered from Facebook, and if you are logged into Facebook in another tab,

**[00:18:39]** Facebook knows you are on that page. And that data is incredibly valuable to them.

**[00:18:45]** And of course, data about what you do on the site, what you like,

**[00:18:49]** comment on, post, share, who you are connected with,

**[00:18:53]** who you interact with the most, etc. Based on this data runs

**[00:18:57]** a massive parallel, constantly evolving computation,

**[00:19:01]** you could call it machine learning, it's not yet the Skynet from Terminator,

**[00:19:05]** not even close, but it's a machine that evolves over time and tries

**[00:19:09]** to optimize so that we give them as much data as possible, from which they derive

**[00:19:15]** as much information as possible. It's an incredible amount of data,

**[00:19:19]** these are statistics, already two years old, today it's much bigger,

**[00:19:23]** terabytes, terabytes, billions, billions of photos, likes, comments.

**[00:19:27]** And the value we give them and what we get in return is

**[00:19:33]** then there is the personalized content. And it's important to realize,

**[00:19:37]** that they don't do it because they are social network people,

**[00:19:41]** they really do it so that, and the machine learns, and they do it to

**[00:19:45]** keep as much of our attention as possible. And this is the key.

**[00:19:52]** Their PR, all these platforms, says, we make the world better,

**[00:19:56]** we connect people, we provide the service for free.

**[00:20:00]** because this allows people in the third world to be connected too.

**[00:20:05]** The truth is, when you listen to those quarterly financial calls,

**[00:20:11]** like the calls with Wall Street, publicly traded American companies

**[00:20:15]** have to do a conference call every quarter with Wall Street,

**[00:20:20]** with analysts, financial institutions, and there the CEO, the director,

**[00:20:24]** and the CFO talk about their quarterly results,

**[00:20:29]** about their performance. So if it's a car company, they talk about

**[00:20:36]** If it's an oil company, they say how many barrels of oil they extracted

**[00:20:40]** and what the oil price looks like, and so on. And if it's Facebook,

**[00:20:44]** they don't talk at all about how many families they connected,

**[00:20:49]** how many people they helped find lost friends,

**[00:20:52]** or how many democratic, sorry, totalitarian regimes they transformed

**[00:20:55]** into democratic ones, which should be a natural metric,

**[00:21:01]** a natural metric of connecting people, making people more informed,

**[00:21:06]** better connected. No, they talk similarly to the oil company,

**[00:21:10]** talking about how much oil they sold, or the tobacco company about how many cigarettes,

**[00:21:14]** they talk about how many users they have, how many new ones,

**[00:21:17]** how many users they lost, that people are leaving,

**[00:21:21]** that they haven't been there for a long time, how many photos were uploaded, how many likes were made,

**[00:21:25]** how many comments were made, and so on, and so forth.

**[00:21:28]** And basically the key metric that the whole algorithm,

**[00:21:32]** meaning the whole company, optimizes for,

**[00:21:36]** is our attention.

**[00:21:40]** That means to take as much of our awake time as possible.

**[00:21:43]** And of course Elon Musk, one of the main people in Silicon Valley,

**[00:21:46]** is already working on brain implants so that in the future,

**[00:21:49]** even more of our time can be taken.

**[00:21:52]** But that's obviously music for a distant future.

**[00:21:57]** And one important thing follows from this,

**[00:22:01]** that Facebook and these algorithmically driven platforms,

**[00:22:04]** which are driven by so-called user engagement,

**[00:22:07]** meaning user involvement, our attention,

**[00:22:10]** this is the attention economy,

**[00:22:16]** Online viewers probably can't see it now, but there's an arrow pointing to the fact

**[00:22:21]** that it implies we like it.

**[00:22:23]** We only get what we like, what keeps us engaged.

**[00:22:26]** And liking it is still a bit uncertain.

**[00:22:28]** It's more important that it triggers some emotion,

**[00:22:30]** which makes us come back.

**[00:22:32]** To build dopamine feedback in the brain,

**[00:22:36]** so we get used to it and become dependent on the service.

**[00:22:39]** These services, even some of their former employees say,

**[00:22:44]** that they actually give us content we like and optimize for dopamine.

**[00:22:50]** This is included in some internal documents.

**[00:22:54]** Some people involved in designing these core services

**[00:22:58]** say yes, it's a service that distributes dopamine.

**[00:23:01]** Dopamine is an inhibitor in the brain that we've had since ancient times

**[00:23:07]** and it motivates us to repeat behaviors

**[00:23:11]** that are beneficial to us.

**[00:23:13]** And beneficial.

**[00:23:15]** So we get used to things and ultimately become dependent on them.

**[00:23:20]** So Facebook gives us what we like, we come back,

**[00:23:24]** we're motivated by the gamification, the game mechanics inside it,

**[00:23:28]** where people like and comment, and that's the reason,

**[00:23:31]** because when you come to a bus stop and have five minutes,

**[00:23:34]** you pull out your phone and open Instagram or Facebook.

**[00:23:37]** Because your brain, your subconscious knows it will get a small dopamine

**[00:23:42]** dose, basically.

**[00:23:44]** Either you'll have something liked, which is great,

**[00:23:47]** we all really like that because it's external recognition,

**[00:23:51]** that's the psychological game.

**[00:23:53]** Or you'll see something interesting, and just the novelty,

**[00:23:56]** just the fact that we kill time, disconnect from the busy street,

**[00:24:00]** and look at what's new,

**[00:24:04]** even if it's completely random, keeps us there.

**[00:24:08]** And that's also the reason, dopamine and effectively being addicted to it,

**[00:24:12]** why Facebook and the feed are different every time.

**[00:24:15]** Whenever you open the app, you don't see what you saw last time,

**[00:24:18]** you always see a new mix, because they need to show you

**[00:24:22]** something new to keep you there and then sell you ads,

**[00:24:26]** which we'll get to later.

**[00:24:28]** And because they only give us things that somehow

**[00:24:31]** match us, that we 'like' in quotes, it follows

**[00:24:35]** the effect that has been talked about and publicly known for several years

**[00:24:39]** and those are the so-called echo chambers, the bubbles where we as a population end up

**[00:24:45]** within the algorithm nicely divided into separate bubbles

**[00:24:49]** supporters of the Czech Pirate Party and Okamura's followers, leftists, right-wingers, conservatives, liberals, etc.

**[00:24:56]** These bubbles overlap in various ways, but that’s the main construct,

**[00:25:00]** actually the bubbles that can then be targeted by advertising and propaganda.

**[00:25:03]** And it’s important to realize that by being there, we provide data about our behavior

**[00:25:07]** and the algorithm processes that data about us, so it then

**[00:25:11]** just nicely slices us up like that. Whenever this comes up,

**[00:25:15]** I always remember the line from Zimmerman, where there’s a giant ogre

**[00:25:22]** and they talk to him, they only ever see his shoe, and he then hands them a salt shaker from above

**[00:25:26]** and says, 'So salt each other. I’m going to eat you now, so salt each other.'

**[00:25:31]** It’s something similar. We prepare ourselves there so that later

**[00:25:35]** someone can, in quotes, eat or process us. It’s an analogy.

**[00:25:40]** And it’s also important that people talk about echo chambers, filter bubbles,

**[00:25:44]** filter bubbles, the term is about 8 or 9 years old, epistemic bubbles,

**[00:25:50]** bubbles of knowledge. There’s a slight difference, but it’s good to be aware of it,

**[00:25:54]** that’s why I put on the slide that a filter bubble means a filtered bubble,

**[00:25:59]** and we’ve all been in it since Google started personalizing search results.

**[00:26:07]** For a while, Google did searches

**[00:26:12]** only based on how content was related. So if you typed

**[00:26:16]** the name of a politician into Google, if I typed it

**[00:26:20]** or someone with a completely different profile than me, we would get

**[00:26:25]** the same results. Today it’s very likely we get slightly different ones,

**[00:26:28]** or that for different keywords we get different results,

**[00:26:31]** because Google obviously knows us too. So we’re all in a filter bubble.

**[00:26:35]** For example, when my wife searches for something on Google, she finds something

**[00:26:38]** different than I do with the same word. And we have kids together and live in the same household, and so on.

**[00:26:43]** Another term is epistemic bubble. Today there’s a lot of talk

**[00:26:47]** about the epistemic crisis, which basically relates to the way

**[00:26:54]** we form our opinions about the world, how we perceive the world.

**[00:27:01]** And today we have an epistemic crisis because as a society we’re unable

**[00:27:05]** to agree on basically anything. Whether the disease exists,

**[00:27:09]** how serious it is, whether it’s good to test and whether it’s good to vaccinate, for example.

**[00:27:13]** On other issues like migration, up to solving the climate crisis,

**[00:27:18]** there’s no discussion at all.

**[00:27:22]** So that’s the epistemic bubble. Here we have the next step.

**[00:27:26]** At the moment when... As long as you’re just on Google and get

**[00:27:30]** different search results, that’s still probably okay.

**[00:27:34]** This was surpassed here by the way information and dopamine are distributed,

**[00:27:38]** when you simply go to the app to get new and new things into your brain,

**[00:27:42]** like Facebook, and at that moment actually afterwards...

**[00:27:46]** Take a look at what content you consume on Facebook, try to imagine,

**[00:27:50]** what bubble you are in, then try to imagine what your opinion is

**[00:27:54]** and what your image of the people on the other side is.

**[00:27:58]** So if you are a truth-lover, try to imagine something,

**[00:28:02]** what you think, try to imagine the motivation of people

**[00:28:06]** who vote Yes or Okamura, and vice versa.

**[00:28:10]** It's not just one or the other.

**[00:28:14]** The worldview about the other group will be very limited

**[00:28:18]** and at the same time you will feel a certain polarization.

**[00:28:22]** And at that moment you are no longer just in an epistemic bubble,

**[00:28:26]** but also in an Echo Chamber, where you already distrust the others,

**[00:28:30]** where in your bubble there is some ostracism,

**[00:28:34]** some negative perception of those outside the bubble.

**[00:28:38]** And at that moment we radicalize inside that bubble.

**[00:28:42]** So we think of each other as fools, sheep, uneducated, and so on.

**[00:28:46]** We have mutual distrust, and contributing to all this is

**[00:28:50]** the architecture of that algorithm.

**[00:28:54]** The algorithm today, we spend hours daily on average there,

**[00:28:58]** TV, TV advertising, traditional advertising is declining because it's overtaken

**[00:29:02]** by these platforms, because we spend a lot of time there.

**[00:29:06]** And although political marketers say, well, TV still wins.

**[00:29:10]** Yes, TV wins because it has total reach over the population,

**[00:29:14]** but for example Cambridge Analytica and Donald Trump during the 2016 election, Brexit,

**[00:29:18]** and so on, they won not because social media had reach

**[00:29:22]** over the entire population like TV. But precisely because of,

**[00:29:26]** simply data processing, thanks to processing data about people,

**[00:29:30]** basically about large blocks of the population, very complex data processing,

**[00:29:34]** behavioral data, other attributes, you can identify a specific bubble

**[00:29:38]** and then deliver a specific meme, or not just one of course,

**[00:29:42]** we don't decide based on one picture, but simply get there

**[00:29:46]** into that bubble ideally some continuous supply

**[00:29:50]** of information that starts to slightly turn that bubble.

**[00:29:54]** When you run elections, you don't want to turn a right-winger into a left-winger,

**[00:29:58]** but you try to focus on the center, which is undecided.

**[00:30:00]** who maybe sometimes doesn't go to the elections, doesn't want to go, and you are able

**[00:30:03]** to identify that very well thanks to mass data processing.

**[00:30:06]** And at the same time, if you are a foreign power, like Russia,

**[00:30:11]** these echo chambers, these epistemic bubbles, you can

**[00:30:15]** to use it to radicalize and further divide society,

**[00:30:18]** because society is already salted, it's already prepared for it.

**[00:30:21]** So, now I'm being cynical. And now, what's also important to realize,

**[00:30:27]** is that what we drew earlier, the previous picture,

**[00:30:33]** is the bottom part, how they give us personalized content there

**[00:30:39]** and the algorithm takes our behavior, so actually something

**[00:30:45]** much bigger is happening there, and that is connected to propaganda.

**[00:30:49]** A Harvard professor, Shoshana Zuboff, named it about three

**[00:30:53]** years ago in the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, where she focuses on that bottom part

**[00:30:58]** and then jumps over the dotted line upwards,

**[00:31:01]** where one thing is that we get some content and it tries to keep us with envy

**[00:31:06]** and keep us on the service and divide us into groups.

**[00:31:10]** But what's important is that our data flows upwards in various ways,

**[00:31:16]** but it's not the specific data about us as individuals,

**[00:31:20]** but rather behavior patterns.

**[00:31:23]** These companies don't sell connections between people, like social networks,

**[00:31:27]** but they sell behavior patterns. Shoshana Zuboff calls it

**[00:31:30]** the behavioral futures market, meaning it's like from investment

**[00:31:34]** or financial markets, futures always mean you buy something,

**[00:31:38]** like a wagon of wheat that will grow in the future, so you buy it

**[00:31:41]** and then you have to sell it quickly so it doesn't arrive at the main station.

**[00:31:45]** You really have to trade on time, believing it will drop in between,

**[00:31:50]** and so on. Similarly, these algorithms

**[00:31:54]** sell the future in the information world,

**[00:31:58]** because they sell the probability that we will click on an ad

**[00:32:01]** and that's why they try to keep us there. So they show us

**[00:32:04]** personalized ads and their main product is really

**[00:32:08]** behavior patterns, those predictions drawn above.

**[00:32:12]** There it is, that's it. They don't sell me as an individual.

**[00:32:16]** They sell me as part of huge cohorts of people,

**[00:32:20]** on which ads can then be targeted. So that saying,

**[00:32:24]** often mentioned in relation to online platforms,

**[00:32:27]** if the service is free, then you are the product, is not quite right.

**[00:32:30]** We are not the product,

**[00:32:34]** we are basically the raw material from which the product is made.

**[00:32:38]** Our behavior and the patterns of that behavior are what is then sold

**[00:32:42]** and targeted, and what propaganda can also target,

**[00:32:45]** because ultimately this platform is perfectly prepared

**[00:32:48]** for propaganda, because it is subtle, searching the boundary between propaganda

**[00:32:52]** and marketing, which product and service marketing knows,

**[00:32:55]** commercial marketing and propaganda. Somewhere in between is political

**[00:32:59]** marketing, which of course has slid a lot into pure propaganda,

**[00:33:03]** where people simply lie and manipulate, but the platform is actually prepared for that,

**[00:33:07]** because the tools are the same. The only thing that matters is some kind of

**[00:33:11]** ethical framework of the people involved in that business.

**[00:33:15]** That means the people who do commercial advertising

**[00:33:19]** are much more regulated and probably have a much

**[00:33:23]** stronger ethical framework than those who do political propaganda,

**[00:33:27]** because there you can lie, and you don't get feedback.

**[00:33:31]** Or the feedback is that you lose the election or win, and then you can

**[00:33:35]** keep lying, and before the next election, you start lying again. So the platform

**[00:33:39]** is ready for that. We have behavior patterns, we can target them, we can target those

**[00:33:43]** who are right-wing, left-wing, undecided, etc. We can radicalize.

**[00:33:47]** So there is a kind of mining necessity, these companies are motivated to constantly

**[00:33:51]** gather more and more about us, claiming it's beneficial. Now before the elections,

**[00:33:55]** there will be various surveys. What do you think about this?

**[00:33:59]** Would you rather go with this or that?

**[00:34:03]** Would you rather go for a beer, etc. Don't answer them.

**[00:34:07]** The whole Cambridge Analytica was based on a very cleverly designed

**[00:34:11]** survey or series of surveys, through which they managed to obtain

**[00:34:15]** the basis of behavioral data. That means all surveys,

**[00:34:19]** election maps, I've already seen those radars and maps,

**[00:34:23]** so I recommend not answering them, because no matter how much they may appear,

**[00:34:27]** to have GDPR, etc., you don't know where the data might end up.

**[00:34:31]** The motivation very often can be that your data will be sent somewhere,

**[00:34:35]** that it will simply be paired with your profile and then you will be placed

**[00:34:39]** into a segment targeted by a certain type of propaganda.

**[00:34:43]** And it can be very sophisticated how we get there.

**[00:34:47]** So we have the environment. We have the agent, that's the virus, that's the meme.

**[00:34:51]** We have the environment, which is social networks built to target us with propaganda.

**[00:34:55]** Memes are based on emotions,

**[00:34:59]** algorithms are based on dopamine, which is also about emotions,

**[00:35:03]** so great, we have a beautiful sword. And now what it's about,

**[00:35:07]** in biology it's about us as our body. The virus uses our body to spread.

**[00:35:11]** In terms of disinformation, it's about our brain.

**[00:35:15]** Regarding disinformation. Memes, of course, if they have some purpose,

**[00:35:19]** also want to spread, but the important thing that attacks,

**[00:35:23]** the virus, the meme, is our brain. And it's important to look at

**[00:35:27]** how our brain works in relation to disinformation.

**[00:35:31]** Of course, I'm not a neurologist, so take this with a grain of salt,

**[00:35:35]** but there are several important aspects that directly influence how

**[00:35:39]** disinformation and online propaganda are structured.

**[00:35:43]** Basically, there are two key aspects. One is irrational or rational thinking,

**[00:35:47]** and the other is something called neuroplasticity.

**[00:35:51]** Irrational, rational thinking—that's something

**[00:35:55]** deeply embedded in our conversations. It's said

**[00:35:59]** sexistly that women are irrational, men are rational.

**[00:36:03]** Left, right hemisphere, creativity, ratio, math versus art.

**[00:36:07]** This is very well ingrained in our society.

**[00:36:11]** The truth is, research shows that basically our senses,

**[00:36:15]** if you are a healthy person with normal vision, smell, hearing, etc.,

**[00:36:19]** according to encyclopedias and research, process

**[00:36:23]** millions of bytes per second. Whether it's one million,

**[00:36:27]** sorry, eleven million, twenty, thirty, or fifty,

**[00:36:31]** it's on the order of millions or tens of millions of bytes per second, those are megabits.

**[00:36:35]** So imagine your senses and your nervous system taking in

**[00:36:39]** that information like a bad connection today, because

**[00:36:43]** your PC probably already gives you a gigabit or so, but imagine it

**[00:36:47]** like a local provider somewhere in a village. But it's an enormous amount of information,

**[00:36:51]** eleven megabits per second, and yet our conscious layer,

**[00:36:55]** which can't be controlled by hemispheres in any case,

**[00:36:59]** I rather imagine it as layers, like the subconscious and the conscious, let's say,

**[00:37:03]** the cognitive, conscious, rational capacity is on the order of hundreds of bytes.

**[00:37:07]** They say fifty, I think, or some say hundreds,

**[00:37:15]** We naturally receive far more information through our senses

**[00:37:19]** than we can consciously process.

**[00:37:23]** And this is an incredibly important and powerful concept especially in marketing,

**[00:37:27]** where we make decisions based on shortcuts.

**[00:37:31]** Marketers, we had in the Canaries, in our podcast,

**[00:37:35]** an interview with Štefan Sarvaš, who is the head of marketing research

**[00:37:39]** at Wrigley Mars, the maker of various bars, etc.

**[00:37:43]** And he told us, confirming what is quite well known,

**[00:37:47]** that when you stand in front of a supermarket shelf

**[00:37:51]** deciding which mayo or candy

**[00:37:55]** or which flour or something to buy, the moment you reach for the shelf,

**[00:37:59]** you've already made a decision in four or five, maybe six seconds,

**[00:38:03]** that your subconscious decided based on shortcuts.

**[00:38:07]** Shortcuts called heuristic shortcuts or biases, prejudices.

**[00:38:11]** This is historically and evolutionarily built into our brain.

**[00:38:15]** so that we can make decisions quickly in complex or fast environments.

**[00:38:19]** So when we were somewhere like in the wilderness, still as prehistoric people,

**[00:38:23]** we made decisions based on shortcuts from the rustling of bushes,

**[00:38:27]** the brain quickly evaluates, without me thinking about it,

**[00:38:31]** the probability that it might be something like a tiger or just a squirrel,

**[00:38:35]** and based on that I immediately decide and start running.

**[00:38:39]** That's a shortcut, a heuristic shortcut, a bias.

**[00:38:43]** Today it's also called bias or prejudice in Czech.

**[00:38:47]** On Wikipedia, you can find, I think, 188 taxonomies of these biases.

**[00:38:51]** These biases help us cope, these prejudices help us

**[00:38:55]** and these cognitive shortcuts help us deal with

**[00:38:59]** overload, meaning an excess of information, simply put.

**[00:39:03]** When you need to remember only certain things, if there is too much information,

**[00:39:07]** that's when shortcuts come into play

**[00:39:11]** and you make judgments about people based on the first few seconds

**[00:39:15]** or based on the first minute of conversation.

**[00:39:19]** You are able to decide what product to buy,

**[00:39:23]** whether you will like someone, and so on.

**[00:39:27]** This subconscious, which actually controls the conscious, you could say.

**[00:39:31]** We now consider ourselves rational beings, but in the end, 90%

**[00:39:35]** or so many of our decisions come from that subconscious based on shortcuts.

**[00:39:39]** You buy something again, reach for it on the shelf, and you already knew it,

**[00:39:43]** or your brain knew it a few seconds earlier and basically just rationalized it.

**[00:39:47]** That thin rational layer, which only developed in the last few hundred thousand,

**[00:39:53]** maybe million years of evolution, can't handle it.

**[00:39:57]** It has a much smaller capacity, we know the last layer.

**[00:40:00]** We listen to our hormones, we listen to dopamine, endorphins, and other inhibitors,

**[00:40:04]** we listen to our subconscious. We are just walking neural networks,

**[00:40:07]** performing massive parallel computation and reacting emotionally,

**[00:40:11]** which is why we are manipulable.

**[00:40:14]** So manipulation, emotions, sorry, emotions, subconscious, shortcuts.

**[00:40:19]** The second concept is neuroplasticity, which is basically about the ability,

**[00:40:24]** as everyone imagines the brain: neurons connecting.

**[00:40:28]** The brain's ability to connect is incredible and happens basically continuously.

**[00:40:32]** Although with age, of course, this ability decreases.

**[00:40:35]** When a child is born, a completely fresh person, their brain is structured,

**[00:40:41]** it has some connections, but to some extent it's a very random network,

**[00:40:46]** which may have been shaped by sensory things, maybe some epigenetics,

**[00:40:50]** and also sensory things that reached them probably through sound,

**[00:40:54]** and maybe through their mother's hormones, which is why it is said,

**[00:40:58]** Smile, you'll have a happy baby, because children's brains are already being wired.

**[00:41:03]** But then the brain goes through an incredibly dynamic development

**[00:41:08]** up to the age of 25, when strong connections are formed,

**[00:41:12]** when personality is shaped, when worldview is formed, the person,

**[00:41:16]** the personality as such.

**[00:41:18]** Of course, it decreases with age,

**[00:41:21]** I mean, it decreases with increasing age, but neuroplasticity is powerful.

**[00:41:25]** We are still able to learn new things, we are still receptive

**[00:41:28]** and things still get recorded in our brains.

**[00:41:30]** You form opinions about politicians, etc.

**[00:41:33]** So neuroplasticity is an important thing, where new connections are constantly being created for you,

**[00:41:39]** and thanks to what flows into our brain, even without us realizing it,

**[00:41:43]** that's the 11 million bits, everything gets recorded in our brain at the same time.

**[00:41:47]** We put pornography in newsstands so children don't see it.

**[00:41:50]** They don't know what it is, but we don't want it to be recorded in their brains.

**[00:41:53]** We don't want to show violence or porn before 10 o'clock.

**[00:41:57]** It's for 18 and over, etc.

**[00:41:59]** Why? Because it could disrupt the psychological and social development of the child,

**[00:42:04]** because it would be recorded in the brain.

**[00:42:07]** Several concepts of neuroplasticity important for misinformation,

**[00:42:12]** include something called the mere exposure effect.

**[00:42:15]** The principle of simple exposure from the 1960s.

**[00:42:18]** Robert Zajonc, a psychologist, basically says,

**[00:42:21]** the more you are exposed to something, the more you like it.

**[00:42:24]** Simply put. Very simply put.

**[00:42:26]** This is historically the basis of radio programming.

**[00:42:29]** Of course, they keep playing the hits.

**[00:42:32]** It doesn't matter if you like it at first or not.

**[00:42:35]** After just two days of constant listening to commercial radio,

**[00:42:38]** you start humming it.

**[00:42:40]** Then MTV came with much more complex information.

**[00:42:43]** Radio Kilt, Radio Star, just clips, visuals.

**[00:42:46]** And of course today we have audiovisual information

**[00:42:49]** programmed by algorithms.

**[00:42:51]** YouTube, Netflix, Facebook.

**[00:42:54]** And in recent years, TikTok has entered our scene

**[00:42:57]** or rather the global scene.

**[00:43:00]** A Chinese company with an unstoppable algorithm.

**[00:43:03]** It's probably exaggerated to say it's run by the Chinese government,

**[00:43:06]** but in China, these apps must,

**[00:43:09]** when the government wants to provide that data, etc.

**[00:43:12]** And no one knows how the algorithm works there.

**[00:43:15]** And it's highly addictive. It's basically pure dopamine

**[00:43:18]** and pure programming, which is basically,

**[00:43:21]** if you took commercial radio and put AI into it,

**[00:43:24]** or commercial like MTV and put artificial intelligence into it,

**[00:43:27]** and it's controlled. Highly addictive. Everyone who tries it,

**[00:43:30]** after the first hour says they suddenly watch

**[00:43:33]** for two, three hours, whatever they look at,

**[00:43:36]** basically nonsense. So it's pure

**[00:43:42]** algorithm, sorting memes, we don't even have to fill out

**[00:43:45]** who our friends are, it finds us and just gives us,

**[00:43:48]** things we will like the most, like falls down stairs, and then you watch

**[00:43:51]** falls down stairs for an hour. So at that point I can

**[00:43:54]** talk about some kind of brainwashing. If you've seen

**[00:43:57]** A Clockwork Orange, there's of course the famous scene

**[00:44:00]** of brainwashing where they try to cultivate the attacker.

**[00:44:03]** The system has many allegorical layers,

**[00:44:06]** but it's important to say that the moment we have memes like this,

**[00:44:09]** we have neuroplasticity and we have algorithms,

**[00:44:12]** so brainwashing can also happen in the online world.

**[00:44:15]** Totalitarian regimes have of course used brainwashing

**[00:44:18]** for a long time. The Chinese are masters at it.

**[00:44:21]** Today, millions of Uyghurs are locked in Chinese camps,

**[00:44:24]** going through reprogramming,

**[00:44:27]** we can call it that, where they are constantly

**[00:44:30]** exposed to Chinese propaganda, have to write essays,

**[00:44:33]** read the writings of Xi and Mao Zedong,

**[00:44:38]** and propaganda constantly plays from speakers,

**[00:44:41]** to reprogram them, so those people come out from there.

**[00:44:44]** So neuroplasticity really works and can be abused

**[00:44:47]** in the real world. And we are already witnessing it in the online world.

**[00:44:51]** You probably all know this person here,

**[00:44:54]** who was, by the way, a hired actor hired by

**[00:44:58]** the chapter, and everyone said,

**[00:45:01]** this is just some comedians, look at

**[00:45:04]** what kind of freak this is, in quotes. But QAnon,

**[00:45:07]** which he is a proponent of, is something much deeper.

**[00:45:11]** Everyone says it's a conspiracy theory,

**[00:45:14]** but it's basically a digital cult and brainwashing has happened,

**[00:45:18]** to brainwash many people using memes and online platforms,

**[00:45:22]** using neuroplasticity, those mechanisms,

**[00:45:25]** we are talking about here. The central key thesis

**[00:45:29]** of that conspiracy theory is that the world is controlled by

**[00:45:32]** simply a Freemason-liberal, leftist,

**[00:45:36]** pedophile cabal that kills children,

**[00:45:39]** they are satanists, dissecting organs, and that Donald Trump

**[00:45:43]** is a warrior of light who simply restores order.

**[00:45:47]** It was like that for a long time, now Donald Trump is somewhat stepping back from the center,

**[00:45:52]** so it's a fantasy, a connection of all kinds of

**[00:45:56]** traditional conspiracy theories, there's elitism,

**[00:46:00]** about a hidden system behind the curtain,

**[00:46:04]** that elites control the world, that Jews are involved, and so on.

**[00:46:08]** But, we have already seen it, and quite a bit, as cult experts say,

**[00:46:12]** this is truly a digital cult, where a certain part of the population was captured,

**[00:46:16]** also thanks to COVID, when people were basically cut off

**[00:46:20]** from real social contact, so they were locked

**[00:46:24]** in online bubbles and served certain content,

**[00:46:28]** and many of those people became very radicalized. I will quickly

**[00:46:32]** go through the history because it's very interesting how it started.

**[00:46:36]** It started on online forums, QAnon, this thesis,

**[00:46:40]** where someone began posting so-called secret messages, claiming to be the recipient

**[00:46:44]** of secret messages, that they had access to the Pentagon and Washington,

**[00:46:48]** how things work behind the scenes, and started to create a kind of Dungeons & Dragons game for people at that time.

**[00:46:52]** Imagine that.

**[00:46:54]** Mr. Jezkině just calls it a conspiracy theory.

**[00:46:57]** Gradually it grew into something much bigger, when in 2018,

**[00:47:03]** it started in autumn 2017, apparently taken over by someone else,

**[00:47:07]** because his posts, the Qdrops,

**[00:47:11]** and his storytelling were analyzed retrospectively and it was found that their style changed.

**[00:47:15]** It's a series, about four parts, I think, about QAnon,

**[00:47:19]** so check it out, different people took turns there.

**[00:47:22]** The truth is that in spring 2018, QAnon

**[00:47:26]** and its theses were amplified on Twitter by automated networks,

**[00:47:30]** so-called botnets,

**[00:47:34]** Russian botnets, it must be added.

**[00:47:36]** Then in August 2020, Marjorie Taylor Greene,

**[00:47:40]** a congresswoman, I don't remember which state, but I think Arizona,

**[00:47:45]** was elected to Congress and she is a pure QAnon supporter,

**[00:47:50]** she pushes the idea that coronavirus is a hoax and chip implantation

**[00:47:55]** and that Donald Trump is a warrior of light.

**[00:47:58]** It's unclear whether the woman believes it or not, whether she's manipulated,

**[00:48:01]** or not, but she definitely uses it.

**[00:48:03]** He's like Lubomír Volný on steroids, I'd say.

**[00:48:06]** She's really driven by the unified theory of QAnon,

**[00:48:10]** and then Facebook deleted accounts in October 2020,

**[00:48:14]** and in 2021 a radicalized group stormed in.

**[00:48:20]** In his tent were QAnon supporters, so they actually stormed the Capitol,

**[00:48:24]** and a coup was expected, etc.

**[00:48:28]** And they say that ended it. That's not true.

**[00:48:31]** Facebook deleted QAnon accounts, all those groups,

**[00:48:34]** and basically sent them to...

**[00:48:36]** Those people then went even deeper into their bubbles.

**[00:48:39]** We no longer have control over it, it's hard to monitor,

**[00:48:42]** because they moved to private groups on Telegram, Whatsapp,

**[00:48:45]** Signal, etc. And we just don't know anymore.

**[00:48:48]** But obviously it still lives on various obscure fringe platforms,

**[00:48:53]** and unfortunately, and this is a very sad story,

**[00:48:57]** about a week ago there was news,

**[00:49:00]** that some American surfer, I think, killed his two very young children,

**[00:49:04]** it's really hard for me to say because he believed,

**[00:49:07]** that they have snake DNA from his mother, because he's a QAnon supporter.

**[00:49:10]** You can really see the power of neuroplasticity

**[00:49:14]** and how someone continuously feeding you something into your head

**[00:49:17]** is so powerful. Of course, not everyone can fall for this.

**[00:49:21]** You have to be predisposed in a certain way,

**[00:49:25]** but that's the thing, they know your history,

**[00:49:28]** they know your behavioral profile.

**[00:49:31]** This is very visible now with misinformation around coronavirus.

**[00:49:35]** If you look at Facebook, a big melting pot,

**[00:49:41]** or amplifier of conspiracy theories around coronavirus,

**[00:49:45]** were various exogroups that outside the pandemic were basically harmless.

**[00:49:49]** Basically people looking for an alternative approach to life,

**[00:49:53]** looking at the body holistically, trying to find chakras and spiritual dimensions, etc.

**[00:49:58]** If it helps them, fine.

**[00:50:00]** I'm probably scientifically minded, but that's okay.

**[00:50:03]** And now these people, because of the pandemic,

**[00:50:06]** and because they have an alternative worldview and priors,

**[00:50:09]** are very easy to target with theories

**[00:50:12]** from questioning the severity, existence,

**[00:50:15]** and then even the radical theories. So really like

**[00:50:18]** there are groups of people who can be very well targeted and who can

**[00:50:21]** very well be pushed to the point where they do something so terrible.

**[00:50:25]** Similar to Balda, who wanted, based on Okamura's propaganda,

**[00:50:28]** to simply stop or derail that train.

**[00:50:31]** And what is terrible?

**[00:50:34]** So here now are the phenomena of the core,

**[00:50:37]** well, that's maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of people,

**[00:50:40]** but according to a survey in Ketna, about QAnon,

**[00:50:43]** to the basic theses, for example, that the world is controlled by

**[00:50:46]** a satanic pedophile cabal, about 15% of Americans believe that.

**[00:50:51]** There are 300 million Americans,

**[00:50:54]** so 15% is about a fifth, somewhere around 40-50 million or so.

**[00:50:58]** Of course, there are far more Republicans than Democrats,

**[00:51:01]** they examined three theses and so on,

**[00:51:04]** but this is not a fringe topic of QAnon.

**[00:51:07]** The conspiracy theory, the manipulation has basically

**[00:51:10]** spread throughout the whole society, it also absorbed.

**[00:51:13]** QAnon created a logical closure over some broader movement

**[00:51:16]** in society, but through that it connected with it.

**[00:51:19]** For example, what happened with QAnon was,

**[00:51:22]** that about a year and a half ago, QAnon followers basically hijacked,

**[00:51:25]** literally hijacked, the hashtag Save the Children,

**[00:51:29]** which had long been used on Instagram by activists

**[00:51:33]** helping various children, whether from disadvantaged families,

**[00:51:36]** or in third world countries, abused children, and so on,

**[00:51:39]** so they basically stole it by flooding that hashtag on Instagram

**[00:51:44]** with their QAnon imagery.

**[00:51:48]** Sorry, content. That means there was a connection made.

**[00:51:52]** People who originally just wanted to help children,

**[00:51:56]** were suddenly exposed to content that simply talks about satanic cabals.

**[00:52:00]** I don't even want to repeat it.

**[00:52:03]** At this point, you can talk about something that in military circles

**[00:52:06]** is called psyops, that is psychological operations.

**[00:52:09]** QAnon really wasn't just a game of people from some forum,

**[00:52:12]** who got out of control. Apparently, there were still many

**[00:52:15]** other people behind it, backed by new military know-how.

**[00:52:19]** These people were even indoctrinated on YouTube.

**[00:52:22]** At one point, there were videos that used hypnotic techniques.

**[00:52:25]** Where it was really pure brain imprinting, where they catch you

**[00:52:29]** on some topic, something political, and gradually they'll start playing

**[00:52:33]** more and more ambient music, the voice just becomes very soothing

**[00:52:37]** and starts to sound very deep and very urgent.

**[00:52:40]** Then the image even distorts a bit to get you

**[00:52:44]** into a certain way of perceiving reality, and then of course

**[00:52:48]** you plant the idea much better, it gets imprinted into the brain much more effectively.

**[00:52:52]** Experts in hypnosis and manipulation say hypnotic metrics were used.

**[00:52:56]** So if it was PsyOps, then at that moment

**[00:53:00]** we can talk about the arrival of memetic warfare.

**[00:53:03]** This is a quote from someone in the circle of, well, Peter Thiel,

**[00:53:07]** Jeff Giesea, who in 2015 at some summit

**[00:53:10]** published an article titled It's Time to Embrace Memetic Warfare.

**[00:53:14]** That means, the time for memetic warfare has come. And he says one important thing

**[00:53:18]** very clearly: cyberwarfare, the traditional hacking,

**[00:53:26]** to earn bitcoins nowadays, so it's about gaining control over data

**[00:53:30]** or systems. But memetic warfare is about gaining control

**[00:53:34]** over dialogue, narratives, people's psychology.

**[00:53:38]** Over our heads, over our brains.

**[00:53:42]** He wrote this in 2015, you can find the PDF online,

**[00:53:46]** it doesn't say anything so radical in today's view,

**[00:53:50]** but he wrote it mainly in reaction to what was happening with ISIS,

**[00:53:54]** the Islamic State at the time,

**[00:53:58]** in the Middle East and so on.

**[00:54:02]** And what ISIS did very well, considering it was basically a medieval regime,

**[00:54:06]** was online propaganda.

**[00:54:10]** They managed to recruit many people in the West,

**[00:54:14]** even here, a few people, even women, who decided to go

**[00:54:18]** and join ISIS and fight there.

**[00:54:22]** In the West, of course, in Muslim immigrant populations,

**[00:54:26]** the probability was much higher,

**[00:54:30]** but for what they were, a medieval regime,

**[00:54:34]** from our perspective with foreign outdated values, they did very well

**[00:54:38]** YouTube propaganda, there were discussions among journalists

**[00:54:42]** about whether to show executions of journalists, etc.

**[00:54:44]** They did it very well and it was memetic warfare.

**[00:54:46]** The goal was to get into our heads, into our space.

**[00:54:50]** So the question of whether we are at war is a tough topic,

**[00:54:54]** but it's necessary to really realize given what's going on.

**[00:54:58]** We'll get to that too, but apparently we are in some kind of war,

**[00:55:01]** It's just like an unconventional war. It's no longer about tanks, weapons, etc.

**[00:55:05]** It's simply digital propaganda, there's some operator behind it,

**[00:55:09]** and it can be pretty much anyone. And it should be added that we're no longer talking

**[00:55:13]** about state conflicts. Of course, Russians and Chinese operate the most here,

**[00:55:17]** but nowadays there are companies that provide turnkey psyops,

**[00:55:22]** recruiting experts from former Israeli intelligence services,

**[00:55:26]** who know how to handle AI, targeting, etc., who as private corporations

**[00:55:31]** don't just sell it as marketing, but explicitly as psyops,

**[00:55:35]** as a way to change people's perception. Because the infrastructure is there,

**[00:55:39]** so I don't see the interest. There are simply people who realize this,

**[00:55:42]** so why is Trump selling his transformed bullshit,

**[00:55:45]** why couldn't I sell lemonade? Of course, I could.

**[00:55:48]** So there's always an operator with some interest. In the case of war,

**[00:55:52]** in the case of disinformation, the strategy, the strength, is the worse,

**[00:55:57]** the better. Russians here don't do propaganda that pushes

**[00:56:03]** that Russia is great, we know it's not, that Putin is good, we know

**[00:56:07]** he's not, but the worse, the better. We have to be as bad off as possible,

**[00:56:11]** and how do we get worse off? By simply stirring up conflicts,

**[00:56:14]** great, we have bubbles. And when we create distrust in institutions,

**[00:56:18]** at all levels, all kinds of institutions and values,

**[00:56:21]** it's not just about institutions, but about values,

**[00:56:24]** there were values at that strike, where you question everything.

**[00:56:28]** Anything that can be questioned, anything anyone can cling to,

**[00:56:31]** you question it, flood the space with maximum information,

**[00:56:35]** so people can't make sense of it, and of course you attack those vectors,

**[00:56:40]** those bubbles, those echo chambers, etc.

**[00:56:43]** And you try to push those bubbles even further apart,

**[00:56:46]** radicalize those chambers even more.

**[00:56:49]** And an interesting example is the stirring up of conflicts, it's not,

**[00:56:52]** in America, during the Black Lives Matter protests,

**[00:56:56]** it's proven that Russians amplified both the stories of the Black people,

**[00:57:00]** who were obviously trying to gain better rights,

**[00:57:03]** and those of the opponents, not just the opponents, but also the Black people,

**[00:57:07]** so it wasn't about which side wins,

**[00:57:10]** they don't care, they want to stir up as much as possible, polarize as much as possible.

**[00:57:14]** So that's the operator. Disinformers here have this strategy,

**[00:57:18]** the worse, the better. Those who create the main strategies,

**[00:57:22]** are Russians, and then their fifth column,

**[00:57:25]** which is hidden here among several parties.

**[00:57:28]** And then you have another level, which is content creation and distribution,

**[00:57:32]** These are the ones who create the content and distribute it.

**[00:57:35]** In those disinformation websites, of which there are many,

**[00:57:39]** and here is one important thing: Steve Bannon, chief advisor to Donald Trump,

**[00:57:43]** who was also behind Cambridge Analytica,

**[00:57:46]** and who basically helped get Donald Trump elected,

**[00:57:49]** had a great saying: flood the zone with shit.

**[00:57:52]** That means you want to flood the population, the information space,

**[00:57:57]** with as much information as possible. That’s what Trump did, that’s what he did.

**[00:58:00]** He kept tweeting, the guy had to tweet even on the toilet with capital letters,

**[00:58:04]** the worse, the better, the more radical, the more exclamation marks, the better.

**[00:58:08]** Just flood it, overwhelm it, because then information overload happens.

**[00:58:13]** Our disinformation front uses this too.

**[00:58:17]** Who did Steve Bannon meet when he was in Prague in 2017-2018?

**[00:58:21]** He met Tomio Okamura, he met Miloš Zeman.

**[00:58:25]** What does Miloš Zeman do and how does the clique react? He burns underwear.

**[00:58:28]** What do people talk about for a week after? Why did Miloš Zeman burn underwear?

**[00:58:32]** It has no political relevance at all, it’s just about

**[00:58:35]** filling the space with completely useless information, while we,

**[00:58:39]** the café crowd, our bubbles, laugh at the old man on the boat.

**[00:58:43]** Completely irrelevant. Why do you think, if it’s so embarrassing,

**[00:58:47]** that they keep photographing him there every year? Because they need to fill that space

**[00:58:51]** with this kind of so-called crap.

**[00:58:55]** The power of this flood zone tactic is shown here in graphs

**[00:58:59]** from Semantic Visions, which are publicly available, showing

**[00:59:03]** monitoring of disinformation media, where you can see the main

**[00:59:07]** narratives present. This is from April, just before

**[00:59:15]** which is simply covid. Covid dominated, with skepticism about

**[00:59:19]** covid, vaccination, it dominated the disinformation websites that Semantic Visions

**[00:59:23]** monitors. And on the evening of the 17th, 1940, when Hamáček and Babiš

**[00:59:27]** held their famous conference,

**[00:59:31]** between the 17th and 18th this happened,

**[00:59:35]** that suddenly the dominant narrative, dominant topic,

**[00:59:39]** dominant meme on those disinformation websites,

**[00:59:43]** was no longer covid, but it became the GRU in Hrbětice.

**[00:59:47]** Who knows if they were agents, there is no evidence.

**[00:59:51]** With skepticism about BIS, skepticism about whether it was

**[00:59:55]** covid and so on. This is what we witnessed immediately after

**[00:59:59]** and in the following week.

**[01:00:00]** By the way, the postponed press conference of Miloš Zeman,

**[01:00:05]** So it was exactly because of that, because we didn't focus on Hrbětice,

**[01:00:08]** we focused on what Miloš Zeman would say on Saturday or Sunday at the press conference.

**[01:00:14]** That was part of this hybrid mitigation,

**[01:00:18]** or how to put out the fire that had broken out,

**[01:00:22]** the Russian propaganda.

**[01:00:25]** So you can clearly see the power of the media there,

**[01:00:28]** from the GRU perspective, then in April,

**[01:00:32]** most of the disinformation then, this is again from Czech elves,

**[01:00:35]** they produced these websites here.

**[01:00:37]** Of course Sputnik and others, we know that, but what's interesting is the first place,

**[01:00:43]** which is somewhat considered a credible medium,

**[01:00:45]** and even democratic politicians sometimes give interviews there.

**[01:00:50]** So the same narratives that were on Sputnik,

**[01:00:53]** I'm not saying that Parlamentní listy is a disinformation medium at all,

**[01:00:57]** I don't want to be sued, but the truth is that from a structural analysis

**[01:01:00]** and partly human perspective, the most

**[01:01:04]** disinformation narratives about Vrbětice were published there, similar to Sputnik,

**[01:01:08]** which are verifiably disinformation.

**[01:01:15]** And then the last level, sorry, is the sheep, right,

**[01:01:18]** so you create the sheep and the sheep target is the mass,

**[01:01:22]** that's us, the salted in quotation marks, the population,

**[01:01:25]** the goal is to awaken, to cause the snowball effect.

**[01:01:30]** In the new reality, where media are no longer centralized and not just broadcasters,

**[01:01:34]** but where we all are media, we all have editorial responsibility,

**[01:01:39]** to click on publishing something, to simply forward something,

**[01:01:42]** to like something, these are editorial decisions,

**[01:01:45]** these are editorial decisions, we are all editors today.

**[01:01:49]** So the goal is that in this new reality,

**[01:01:53]** information starts to spread and live its own life.

**[01:01:56]** One example.

**[01:01:59]** At the beginning of this year,

**[01:02:02]** I probably shouldn't show this in light of what I just said,

**[01:02:05]** but there was a demonstration at Wenceslas Square,

**[01:02:08]** where people pinned Jewish stars with the inscription 'unvaccinated'.

**[01:02:12]** Basically a tasteless thing.

**[01:02:14]** People were probably confused, a number of people from the disinformation scene were there,

**[01:02:18]** etc. etc.

**[01:02:20]** But what happened? Exactly the snowball effect happened.

**[01:02:23]** We all took it, for example Spectre,

**[01:02:27]** Federation of Jewish Communities,

**[01:02:30]** Israeli ambassador,

**[01:02:33]** Pavel Kpavelnovotný, politicians, Drahoš, Fiala, etc.

**[01:02:37]** They all took it and all shared this meme

**[01:02:41]** of the Jewish star with the label unvaccinated.

**[01:02:45]** And that's the point.

**[01:02:47]** It's not irrelevant that our democratic politicians wrote about it,

**[01:02:50]** or the Jewish community said it's tasteless, it's terrible, it's awful,

**[01:02:53]** but it’s not about what you write about it at all.

**[01:02:55]** It’s about the fact that hundreds of thousands, even millions of people,

**[01:02:59]** are exposed to that meme showing the Jewish star,

**[01:03:02]** that people protest, that it’s similar to World War II,

**[01:03:06]** because we all saw Schindler’s List and we know,

**[01:03:08]** how horrific it was, at least metaphorically.

**[01:03:17]** And again, it increases some distrust in vaccination.

**[01:03:20]** This was a disinformation operation.

**[01:03:23]** By the way, those Jewish stars were also distributed in France and America.

**[01:03:26]** It’s a meme that’s widespread, used by disinformers,

**[01:03:30]** and here, I’d say, it was very successful.

**[01:03:33]** They quickly go viral in chain messages.

**[01:03:35]** I know we’re overtime, can I have 10 more minutes?

**[01:03:38]** Very quick chain messages at the start.

**[01:03:41]** So this is how it goes here.

**[01:03:43]** And now chain emails.

**[01:03:45]** This is a big topic because we talked about social media algorithms,

**[01:03:49]** and chain emails are a bit of a different social network.

**[01:03:53]** They don’t run on algorithms; they happen in all our inboxes,

**[01:03:58]** mostly among the most vulnerable, our grandparents and relatives,

**[01:04:02]** mostly older people.

**[01:04:04]** So here we have a small poll on the slide,

**[01:04:09]** asking if any of your relatives receive chain emails.

**[01:04:13]** It would be very interesting, try to answer it,

**[01:04:15]** whether you know about it, talk about it or not,

**[01:04:18]** or if you think they don’t receive them, or if you have no idea.

**[01:04:21]** It would be interesting to see the situation among the people

**[01:04:25]** listening here.

**[01:04:27]** Because my experience is that many people,

**[01:04:31]** that simply most or a large part of us have this problem.

**[01:04:35]** And if you don’t know, maybe it’s worth looking into it,

**[01:04:39]** can we switch to what people are voting on,

**[01:04:41]** let them vote and then we’ll look at the results.

**[01:04:44]** So what is a chain letter anyway.

**[01:04:46]** This one here is about two years old,

**[01:04:48]** which, by the way, still keeps showing up

**[01:04:51]** and it's about the Pirate Party.

**[01:04:53]** I just get them from the neighbor across the street,

**[01:04:56]** I won't name him, but I just get chain letters.

**[01:04:59]** Chain emails are emails people send to each other.

**[01:05:02]** It's not all propaganda.

**[01:05:04]** 80% of that feed, that inbox,

**[01:05:08]** of the emails people receive,

**[01:05:10]** is harmless content.

**[01:05:11]** It's mostly content meant to build

**[01:05:13]** some trust in the sender.

**[01:05:15]** The sender, from whom the recipient gets it,

**[01:05:18]** is usually someone those people,

**[01:05:20]** mostly older people, know from the old days.

**[01:05:23]** Jaroslav, we went on vacation with him

**[01:05:25]** from ROH in the 80s and it was fun.

**[01:05:27]** And now he sends me nice content.

**[01:05:29]** This is the trust, the algorithm,

**[01:05:32]** based on which people then read it.

**[01:05:35]** And 80% of the content is harmless.

**[01:05:37]** PowerPoint presentations.

**[01:05:39]** My friend has a mom who,

**[01:05:41]** luckily, doesn't live in disinformation,

**[01:05:43]** but she's the first person I know

**[01:05:45]** who managed to basically flood a Gmail inbox,

**[01:05:48]** which should be basically unlimited,

**[01:05:50]** with PowerPoint presentations.

**[01:05:52]** They contain photos, landscapes,

**[01:05:54]** children, jokes by Jiránek,

**[01:05:56]** memories of what it was like,

**[01:05:58]** about Goťák, etc.

**[01:06:00]** Basically, what attracts people,

**[01:06:02]** what gives them that dopamine,

**[01:06:05]** memories of the past.

**[01:06:07]** When you're older, you like to reminisce about the past.

**[01:06:09]** 80-90% is like this.

**[01:06:11]** And then once in every 10 emails,

**[01:06:13]** you get something like this.

**[01:06:15]** Subject, quickly before they delete it,

**[01:06:17]** you have to read this,

**[01:06:19]** so this is how it is.

**[01:06:21]** This is a completely fabricated narrative.

**[01:06:23]** It's either a picture, a video,

**[01:06:25]** or a fake-looking screenshot

**[01:06:27]** from a non-existent Facebook page,

**[01:06:29]** etc.

**[01:06:31]** This is simply a chain email.

**[01:06:33]** The reason for this is a certain

**[01:06:35]** media illiteracy,

**[01:06:37]** where you have a population of people

**[01:06:39]** who grew up in a time

**[01:06:41]** when media was pure propaganda.

**[01:06:43]** Although they didn't believe it,

**[01:06:45]** everyone knew that Rudé Právo lied,

**[01:06:47]** but there was nothing else.

**[01:06:49]** TV was still controlled by party secretaries,

**[01:06:51]** still socialism, still Russia, still communism,

**[01:06:53]** etc.

**[01:06:55]** We are talking about neuroplasticity.

**[01:06:57]** What do these people have, what shaped them,

**[01:06:59]** what's recorded in their minds,

**[01:07:01]** and what happened after '89.

**[01:07:03]** Every Saturday,

**[01:07:05]** the head of the biggest commercial TV at the time, the only one,

**[01:07:07]** simply preached his own truths,

**[01:07:09]** not about the program, but about what people should think.

**[01:07:11]** Supported by Blesk and other media,

**[01:07:13]** and today basically the same thing happens.

**[01:07:15]** So this is a clear pattern,

**[01:07:17]** where you have people

**[01:07:19]** who are, with change,

**[01:07:21]** simply manipulable.

**[01:07:23]** This says nothing about their character,

**[01:07:25]** nothing about their education.

**[01:07:27]** It's about how their brain is wired,

**[01:07:29]** what they were exposed to, what era they lived in,

**[01:07:31]** and how they cope

**[01:07:33]** with the incredible complexity of the information space,

**[01:07:35]** that we have today.

**[01:07:37]** I don't want it to be pejorative.

**[01:07:39]** Absolutely.

**[01:07:41]** According to research by manipulators CZ,

**[01:07:43]** about two or three years ago,

**[01:07:45]** four out of ten seniors don't verify information

**[01:07:47]** from their favorite sources.

**[01:07:49]** The question is, how many of us younger people do that.

**[01:07:51]** And nine out of ten have encountered chain emails.

**[01:07:53]** So it would be interesting to look now

**[01:07:55]** at the statistics, if we could

**[01:07:57]** switch to that slide.

**[01:07:59]** So 44% know

**[01:08:01]** that their relatives receive chain letters,

**[01:08:03]** so that's exactly it.

**[01:08:05]** It's half. 30% have no idea, interesting.

**[01:08:07]** And probably yes, 20%.

**[01:08:09]** No, they don't receive them.

**[01:08:11]** I don't see how many that is.

**[01:08:13]** Whether it's zero or minus six.

**[01:08:15]** So they don't receive them. You are lucky people.

**[01:08:17]** Probably yes, we don't talk about it. You should talk about it.

**[01:08:19]** We'll get to that very quickly.

**[01:08:21]** I have no idea. Try to find out.

**[01:08:23]** Because it's dangerous.

**[01:08:25]** It would be good,

**[01:08:27]** if your senior relative

**[01:08:29]** or some relative starts saying

**[01:08:31]** something radical in a certain way,

**[01:08:33]** and I would say anti-system

**[01:08:35]** type of information.

**[01:08:37]** Because it's a boundary and everyone has it somewhere different.

**[01:08:39]** Try to find out where they got it from.

**[01:08:41]** Very often they'll tell you it was written on some forums

**[01:08:43]** or that they got it by email.

**[01:08:45]** To speed things up,

**[01:08:47]** I'll just skim through this here.

**[01:08:49]** These are images,

**[01:08:51]** showing that the paradigm is really different,

**[01:08:53]** where basically

**[01:08:55]** in the online world, we're now moving away from chain emails,

**[01:08:57]** in the online world

**[01:08:59]** algorithms and Twitters

**[01:09:01]** you basically encounter something called

**[01:09:03]** botnets, for example.

**[01:09:05]** On Twitter for a long time

**[01:09:07]** Twitter has been trying to fight it, but it's tough,

**[01:09:09]** so in the information space you get

**[01:09:11]** these basically abstract structures

**[01:09:13]** of fake accounts that are deliberately

**[01:09:15]** connected, following important

**[01:09:17]** influencers and their only goal

**[01:09:19]** is to flood the zone, amplify messages,

**[01:09:21]** to get as high as possible in search results,

**[01:09:23]** to occupy hashtags,

**[01:09:25]** like Save the Children, etc.

**[01:09:27]** And these are, I basically won't say more about it,

**[01:09:29]** this is like abstract art.

**[01:09:31]** It's something incomprehensible to the brain

**[01:09:33]** or very difficult to understand,

**[01:09:35]** dynamic complex structures,

**[01:09:37]** whose only task is

**[01:09:39]** to elevate certain information

**[01:09:41]** in the information space upwards,

**[01:09:43]** so it can then get higher,

**[01:09:45]** so it spreads better, so amplification.

**[01:09:47]** Here are images of how it looked

**[01:09:49]** before the American elections,

**[01:09:51]** but I believe you might still check

**[01:09:53]** our channels, or replay it later, but

**[01:09:55]** the Khashoggi case I'll skip now,

**[01:09:57]** I would still like to...

**[01:09:59]** let's finish by getting to the most important part and how to fight it.

**[01:10:00]** With this world where it all floods us, where there are botnets,

**[01:10:04]** where propaganda is algorithmically controlled, where there are players

**[01:10:10]** trying to get into our brains, basically divide us,

**[01:10:14]** to make our lives as hard as possible. Obama, when he was president,

**[01:10:18]** said we can't deal with 21st-century threats

**[01:10:23]** using 20th-century approaches or bureaucracy rather.

**[01:10:32]** So that's true, and he said it in a different context,

**[01:10:35]** but I think it fits here.

**[01:10:37]** Simply put, the fight against disinformation, for example, our state

**[01:10:40]** has absolutely failed at it long-term.

**[01:10:42]** In February 2021, the Ministry of Health didn't let influencers,

**[01:10:46]** they wanted to run a TikTok campaign about how vaccination is good,

**[01:10:50]** so unfortunately they let two young people, who probably meant well,

**[01:10:54]** run around Strakova Academy and dance with the minister.

**[01:10:57]** And then they also sent exactly these kinds of messages to the mobile info card,

**[01:11:03]** which I get on my iPhone, which starts,

**[01:11:06]** and I shouldn't even repeat it, nor should it be displayed here,

**[01:11:08]** but maybe we can have it here for us.

**[01:11:10]** Have you also heard that the COVID vaccine changes your DNA?

**[01:11:14]** It doesn't, and on Šoucováku they explained the most commonly spread

**[01:11:18]** ads about fighting disinformation.

**[01:11:22]** This is the problem. This is the problem.

**[01:11:25]** Have you also heard, when I first saw that message,

**[01:11:28]** that notification on my phone, I thought,

**[01:11:30]** someone hacked my phone. I thought,

**[01:11:32]** someone hacked COVID-19, basically the Ministry of Health,

**[01:11:36]** the info center, and started sending disinformation.

**[01:11:40]** Because the number one rule in fighting and defending against disinformation is

**[01:11:44]** don't spread disinformation. That's the main thing.

**[01:11:48]** What I showed you with those Jewish stars,

**[01:11:50]** is debunked. This here is the basic problem,

**[01:11:54]** that you spread the disinformation. As Saša Alvarová says,

**[01:11:58]** you can't deny the Švejk quote that the emperor was shat on by flour,

**[01:12:03]** by writing, it's not true,

**[01:12:05]** that the emperor was shat on by flour with a correction.

**[01:12:07]** You just can't, because you keep spreading the information.

**[01:12:10]** That's the problem with fact-checking, among other things.

**[01:12:13]** Fact-checking is a respectable matter, done by ethical people,

**[01:12:17]** and so on. It's admirable that they managed to put some pressure

**[01:12:21]** on online platforms, but they're slow, because disinformation,

**[01:12:25]** memes, emotions spread very fast. Before a fact-check is done,

**[01:12:29]** the impact is huge. That's first. And second, in many,

**[01:12:33]** in most cases, fact-checking works like this,

**[01:12:36]** you take the disinfo, cross it out, and then write

**[01:12:39]** why it's not true. But again, you spread the disinfo further.

**[01:12:42]** And if it's a well-made meme that hits emotions

**[01:12:45]** and not so much on facts, you spread emotions further, even if it's crossed out.

**[01:12:49]** That simply doesn't matter. There are studies based on the familiarity

**[01:12:53]** principle, on the mere exposure effect I mentioned.

**[01:12:56]** Repetition simply makes you more prone to believe something,

**[01:13:00]** to like something. So how to defend yourself? Very quickly.

**[01:13:04]** There is no guide. There is no silver bullet.

**[01:13:08]** There is no magic wand or golden nail to solve it.

**[01:13:12]** Our information environment settings are changing, fundamentally softening.

**[01:13:16]** There will be social networks, the internet, we all will be editors,

**[01:13:20]** we all shape the information space, so the solution should work

**[01:13:24]** in layers and all layers of society's structure should be involved.

**[01:13:28]** If we cut it hierarchically, from the EU

**[01:13:32]** down to individuals, down to us. At the EU level, why do I mention the EU,

**[01:13:36]** because in this view it's critical that we are part of the EU

**[01:13:40]** or another supranational entity, where the only one who can push,

**[01:13:44]** especially by regulation, are those huge multinational companies, Facebook, Google, Amazon

**[01:13:48]** and others, who run this business and are among the top 10 most valuable companies

**[01:13:53]** in the world, so they are multinational companies. When our prime minister or anyone who wants to,

**[01:13:57]** wants to negotiate with Facebook, they have to call reception

**[01:14:01]** at Paul Althoff Silicon Valley or Ireland and hope to be transferred

**[01:14:05]** at least to some vice president in the headquarters. These companies don't even have representation here.

**[01:14:09]** We don't know what happens with our citizens' data. We don't know how the algorithm works.

**[01:14:13]** We know it manipulates. We don't know how. There are no audits.

**[01:14:17]** This entire business is the least regulated with the biggest impact,

**[01:14:21]** if you measured it worldwide. Car manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies,

**[01:14:25]** financial firms, everything is regulated, but the information space is

**[01:14:29]** completely unregulated. It's necessary to bring market competition, it's necessary

**[01:14:33]** to avoid monopoly, today you can't choose the algorithm,

**[01:14:37]** Facebook's or TikTok's algorithm, great for pop culture.

**[01:14:41]** Emotions, that's pop culture, new pop stars, new influencers, great,

**[01:14:45]** but you can steer democratic campaigns and discourse with emotions,

**[01:14:49]** especially during pandemics, you clearly cannot.

**[01:14:53]** States, again flood zones, the state should create flood zones.

**[01:14:57]** This is called strategic communication.

**[01:15:01]** There is a vacuum in the information space, a huge vacuum, which is then

**[01:15:05]** easy to fill with nonsense and disinformation.

**[01:15:09]** The state should say what the values are, what the strategy is,

**[01:15:13]** why we do what we do, how long it will take,

**[01:15:17]** why it's good for people to get vaccinated. To manipulate in crises,

**[01:15:21]** but that's what the state is for, because it carries values,

**[01:15:25]** that we agreed on and explain these values here in a certain way,

**[01:15:29]** how it shapes and changes, like shaping through public service media.

**[01:15:33]** When someone threatens someone else and so on. There are very few verdicts so far,

**[01:15:37]** it's extremely rare, very little is investigated because no one monitors it

**[01:15:41]** and then no one follows up. And media literacy, that's what people talk about today.

**[01:15:45]** People have low media literacy, but that's a long-term issue.

**[01:15:49]** Estonians and Finns started with it 20 years ago. So yes,

**[01:15:53]** but it needs to start and unfortunately we will see the effects in 10 years.

**[01:15:57]** Strategic communication and law enforcement can be done relatively immediately.

**[01:16:01]** When it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:05]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:09]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:13]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:17]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:21]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:25]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:29]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:33]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:37]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:41]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:45]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:49]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:53]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:16:57]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:01]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:05]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:09]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:13]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:17]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:21]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:25]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:29]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:33]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:37]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:41]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:45]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:49]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:53]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:17:57]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:01]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:05]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:09]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:13]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:17]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:21]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:25]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:29]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:33]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:37]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:41]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:45]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:49]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:53]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:18:57]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:01]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:05]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:09]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:13]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:17]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:21]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:25]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:29]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:33]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:37]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:41]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:45]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:49]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:53]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:19:57]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns,

**[01:20:01]** when it concerns, when it concerns, when it concerns.

**[01:20:00]** I'll write something nasty about it, like in the case of those giant stars,

**[01:20:04]** so take a five or ten second break.

**[01:20:07]** It happened to me four days ago, and it really took me a lot of effort,

**[01:20:09]** because OKAMURA started spreading something I deeply disagree with,

**[01:20:12]** it was about interpreters in Afghanistan.

**[01:20:15]** I had about four comments drafted and it really took me a while,

**[01:20:18]** before I lost it and then I posted something completely different, harmless,

**[01:20:22]** but actually I wanted to spread it and write something ugly about it.

**[01:20:25]** So, reflection, breathing out, that's probably the only defense,

**[01:20:28]** how to step out of the information overload

**[01:20:31]** and slow down the propaganda and its spread a bit.

**[01:20:34]** That's all, thank you for your attention.

**[01:20:36]** We were long, sorry about that.

**[01:20:41]** Well, first of all, thank you very much for that.

**[01:20:44]** Thank you.

**[01:20:45]** And actually, it doesn't matter if you go long,

**[01:20:48]** because I think it's really needed.

**[01:20:51]** I'm thinking now that we actually have like two minutes,

**[01:20:55]** a lot of things, where are the questions.

**[01:20:58]** That's fine, where are the questions, so you answered them.

**[01:21:02]** Let's try, let's try, maybe here,

**[01:21:07]** what are the recommendations if we want to leave the lowest possible digital footprint,

**[01:21:11]** but still stay online with a reasonable balance,

**[01:21:13]** autonomous mode, browsers, effective data, what would you advise?

**[01:21:18]** That's really hard, it just goes like, if you have a smartwatch,

**[01:21:24]** then data is collected about you, unless you have Apple Watch.

**[01:21:27]** And if you have an anonymous browser, anonymous, anonymous incognito,

**[01:21:31]** browsers are apparently not truly anonymous, as they say,

**[01:21:34]** you can definitely download better browsers.

**[01:21:36]** If you log into Facebook and Google everywhere, they have you,

**[01:21:39]** because they do everything to tag you somehow,

**[01:21:42]** whether through cookies or in the future through something else, so they can show you ads.

**[01:21:47]** Now before elections, I think it's critical to watch carefully,

**[01:21:51]** and this is again about propaganda, not just data collection,

**[01:21:53]** generally, just very quickly, this can't be prevented,

**[01:21:57]** because data collection is not only in propaganda,

**[01:22:00]** it's in all areas of human behavior.

**[01:22:03]** Your bank collects behavioral data from your credit card,

**[01:22:06]** your healthcare will be based on behavioral data,

**[01:22:09]** because many diseases can be cured by changing behavior,

**[01:22:12]** some coaching, not medication.

**[01:22:14]** That means as a society we have many good reasons to be interested in data being collected,

**[01:22:17]** we just completely lack the infrastructure

**[01:22:19]** to show where and how, under what conditions to evaluate it,

**[01:22:22]** and then what to do based on those evaluations.

**[01:22:24]** And this goes completely into the field of data collection and AI.

**[01:22:27]** How to behave,

**[01:22:31]** well, it's really hard today, in my opinion,

**[01:22:32]** if you want to be reasonably online, what that means.

**[01:22:38]** If you only have SMS, buy a burner phone for two grand,

**[01:22:41]** one of those for seniors that has nothing on it,

**[01:22:43]** and send people SMS messages.

**[01:22:44]** The moment you want to go online, they’ve got you, that’s how I’d put it.

**[01:22:48]** And I might do something interesting

**[01:22:51]** and actually run an experiment,

**[01:22:53]** because we have a lot of questions here,

**[01:22:55]** which is great.

**[01:22:57]** But I’d like to end it here today,

**[01:22:59]** because,

**[01:23:02]** on September 2nd,

**[01:23:05]** we will discuss this together.

**[01:23:07]** And if you’re here with us

**[01:23:09]** and want to join,

**[01:23:11]** I definitely,

**[01:23:12]** will send you shortly

**[01:23:15]** details on where and what.

**[01:23:17]** Or follow us on the Red Button Edu platform.

**[01:23:20]** So please continue with the presentation.

**[01:23:24]** If you’d be so kind

**[01:23:26]** and vote for us

**[01:23:31]** now on how you liked the talk and the breakfast,

**[01:23:36]** that would be great.

**[01:23:37]** It should appear on the slide

**[01:23:41]** somehow.

**[01:23:43]** It would be nice if it was there,

**[01:23:45]** if you gave us not only stars,

**[01:23:46]** five stars if you liked it,

**[01:23:48]** one star if not so much.

**[01:23:49]** Five.

**[01:23:50]** Give five.

**[01:23:51]** But there’s also an option to write three words

**[01:23:54]** that you take away from the breakfast.

**[01:23:57]** So definitely do that.

**[01:23:59]** I’ll continue.

**[01:24:01]** We’ll leave the voting open for a moment.

**[01:24:03]** So please vote.

**[01:24:06]** I see some fives here,

**[01:24:08]** 4.9, that’s a nice score.

**[01:24:11]** Whenever I look at this,

**[01:24:14]** So I'm thinking about how to actually pierce

**[01:24:16]** this little bubble of ours,

**[01:24:17]** so it can reach further.

**[01:24:20]** I try to pierce it by

**[01:24:23]** going wherever I'm invited and talking about it there.

**[01:24:25]** That's how I pierce it.

**[01:24:27]** And I think Red Button is

**[01:24:29]** a network of creative, innovative people,

**[01:24:32]** who think about business and so on.

**[01:24:35]** Some of the recipes there,

**[01:24:37]** if you have a marketing agency,

**[01:24:39]** now it's somewhat a matter of everything.

**[01:24:41]** At least that's how I feel about it.

**[01:24:43]** We saw it around Vrbětice,

**[01:24:44]** we see it around Dukovany and so on.

**[01:24:47]** Whether you think

**[01:24:48]** it's left or right,

**[01:24:50]** now it's about fundamental democratic values.

**[01:24:52]** If you have a marketing agency and you know how,

**[01:24:54]** start producing memes

**[01:24:55]** that align with your values.

**[01:24:57]** If we are all editors and journalists,

**[01:24:59]** there's no reason

**[01:25:00]** why you should be in the position

**[01:25:02]** of passive forwarders and likers,

**[01:25:04]** of memes produced by someone else.

**[01:25:06]** If you care about

**[01:25:08]** what society should look like,

**[01:25:10]** help those political goals

**[01:25:12]** that maybe aren't doing so well,

**[01:25:14]** to get ahead,

**[01:25:16]** so you can flood,

**[01:25:18]** so we can flood the space with the right content.

**[01:25:20]** There can be many solutions.

**[01:25:22]** I believe that in the nonprofit sector

**[01:25:24]** there are many nonprofits focused on

**[01:25:26]** lifelong education and so on.

**[01:25:29]** If you find that appealing, support them.

**[01:25:31]** What I showed you,

**[01:25:33]** there really isn't a single silver bullet.

**[01:25:35]** That tomorrow this will be turned off and that's it.

**[01:25:40]** Everything is set up, how we exchange,

**[01:25:42]** how we evaluate, how we act on the information basically.

**[01:25:45]** So let's continue a little further.

**[01:25:50]** I'll ask for another sweetie again.

**[01:25:54]** And this is basically about,

**[01:25:56]** try ideally with someone

**[01:25:59]** to play around with this topic.

**[01:26:01]** If you watched alone,

**[01:26:03]** try to share it with someone else,

**[01:26:05]** try to share it with your team,

**[01:26:07]** try to have a discussion about it,

**[01:26:09]** and since you are sharing this episode with us,

**[01:26:11]** it's under the broadcast below.

**[01:26:13]** Or just download the form at brainandbreakfast.cz,

**[01:26:15]** where we learn about your aha moments.

**[01:26:17]** And what's important is this.

**[01:26:19]** So, as I said,

**[01:26:21]** on September 2nd at 4 PM,

**[01:26:23]** I invited, besides Jozef,

**[01:26:25]** a group of other people.

**[01:26:27]** There will be Saša Alvarová,

**[01:26:29]** who is part of Jozef's Canary network,

**[01:26:31]** but also Lukáš Hána,

**[01:26:33]** organizer of the Krymy conference,

**[01:26:35]** Štérka Vodičková from občankářů CZ,

**[01:26:37]** who influences many teachers,

**[01:26:39]** Bob Kertous, who is the spokesperson

**[01:26:41]** for Czech elves and also behind the Nelež initiative,

**[01:26:43]** which I mentioned, and so on.

**[01:26:45]** That means we will be

**[01:26:47]** talking about this issue there.

**[01:26:49]** You can either join

**[01:26:51]** and ask questions or just listen.

**[01:26:53]** So, it's like a digest

**[01:26:55]** after brainandbreakfast, so I just ask,

**[01:26:57]** if this date appears there.

**[01:26:59]** Yes, September 2nd at 4 PM

**[01:27:01]** on the redbutton.edu platform

**[01:27:05]** So this is it. I might say

**[01:27:07]** the book of the month is Homo Deus

**[01:27:09]** by Harari

**[01:27:11]** selected by Jirka Vicherek, so on

**[01:27:13]** rbkniha.cz Homo Deus

**[01:27:15]** is the new book of the month, starting today

**[01:27:17]** and definitely follow

**[01:27:19]** other shows on the platform

**[01:27:21]** redbutton.edu

**[01:27:23]** and what's coming next

**[01:27:25]** at Brain&Breakfast I'm very happy

**[01:27:27]** that it worked out despite the circumstances

**[01:27:29]** in the context of this timing, which is.

**[01:27:31]** So on September 30th,

**[01:27:33]** if you want to chat

**[01:27:35]** with Ondra Volček, CEO

**[01:27:37]** of Avast, about how

**[01:27:39]** he went from a temp worker to one of the most successful

**[01:27:41]** people now

**[01:27:43]** in Czech business,

**[01:27:45]** then on September 30th,

**[01:27:47]** we'll be at the Experience Magenta

**[01:27:49]** center in Arkády.

**[01:27:51]** We will be able to meet in person again,

**[01:27:53]** which means,

**[01:27:55]** register on our website.

**[01:27:57]** Thanks again, Jozef.

**[01:27:59]** Thank you very much,

**[01:28:01]** for being with us. Sorry for the initial problems.

**[01:28:03]** Take care and see you

**[01:28:05]** on September 2nd.

**[01:28:07]** Take care, bye.

**[01:28:09]** Thanks.

**[01:28:29]** www.hradeckesluzby.cz