What's shaking? My name's Cam. Welcome back to another video. I've got some pretty exciting stuff to discuss in today's video. Basically, I'm just going to be talking a bit off the cuff. I don't really have any notes or anything on what I'm going to be talking about today. So if it seems a little bit all over the place, forgive me. In a nutshell, what I'm going to be doing is talking about my plans for the future of my writing, what I'm going to be doing pretty much into next year. Because 2022 for me is the most planned out year of writing. I've probably ever had and of course those plans can change, but for now I'm prepared and I know what I want to do and how.  Some stuff that I think might really affect your plans as well for how you intend to do your writing and how you intend for people to read it. If you're new here, first of all, thanks for tuning in. If you are also a writer, I would love it if you stuck around. I make lots of videos here on writing how I do it, what works, what doesn't, a whole lot of fun stuff. And hey, let me know in the comments what your plans are for your next year of writing. Do you even have plans or are you just kind of winging it like I know most writers do? First thing I want to discuss is Kindle Vella. You've probably heard of it by now, but if you haven't, let me give you the quick rundown because this I honestly think has the potential to be a big game changer for self-published authors. Kindle Vella, I would say, is Amazon's answer to Wattpad. It's their version of Wattpad because as we know, Amazon has to monopolize every facet of human life. And as much as I am not really a fan of Amazon, they have pretty much put writers, especially self-published authors, in a situation where we don't have a choice but to use their services if we want to be successful. Anyway, it's their answer to Wattpad, Wattpad basically being a platform, almost like a social media platform even, where writers will upload short stories or long stories, most of the time for people to access for free. And the big thing with these type of platforms is that it's the best outlet I would say for serialized works. And that's the angle that Kindle Vella is going to be really digging into. Serialized works basically being stories that are broken up into, you know, long series. It's almost like an episodic TV show, but in writing form. The idea is that readers would tune in, you know, weekly, monthly, whenever the next episode is released to read the next one, and then the next one, and then the next one just to see where the story goes. One of the major differences I've seen with Kindle Vella over Wattpad though is their approach to it and how the monetization of Kindle Vella will work. So with Wattpad, there is, you know, options where you can get paid for your work, but Wattpad as a whole isn't looked on very, let's just say respectfully, by most other people, which I think is unfortunate. There is a lot of great stories on Wattpad. There's a lot of trash too, but so what, you know? Kindle Vella looks like they're going to be taking a bit more of a professional approach, not that there's any real like gatekeeper there that says your story's good enough or your story isn't, but it looks to be structured in a way that's going to encourage writers to really take it seriously and treat it like a proper, almost like a career option. From what I've found, what they will be doing is you'll upload a few episodes. I'm just going to be using the word episodes just so we all know what I'm talking about, but you would upload a few episodes and the first couple of episodes will be free for the reader. But after those first few episodes, the stories you upload will be worth about $2 per 20,000 words. And you, like me, might be wondering how much of that money does the writer or the author get and they get 50%, which is pretty good. It feels silly saying that you get half of the profit for something that you created is good, but you know, we live in 2021, so and it is Amazon, but you get half. So per 20,000 words, are you right? You will probably get about a dollar back. If you're uploading a new episode every week or every month and let's say generously 100 people purchase the next episode, you'll get about a hundred dollars.  With that in mind, this seems like a really good way for authors and writers not just to build their portfolio of written works, but also as a way for writers to boost their passive income, which is so incredibly important if you want writing to be your career. Like I know I do. There is something else that Amazon's kind of announced recently that I want to talk about, but before we get into that, just to wrap up the whole Kindle Vella section of this video. In regards to my future plans with Kindle Vella, for now, I can't really do anything because it's exclusively for readers and writers in the US. But I'm assuming and I'm hoping that that will be rolled out to the rest of the world, or at least most of the rest of the world by the start of next year, because that's what Amazon usually does. They test their new features or whatever in the US, and then a little while later, they will roll it out to everywhere else. So I'm hoping by the start of 2022, I over here in Australia will be able to upload to Kindle Vella as well. And if I can, my plan is actually for context, I should probably tell you, so I'm in the middle of planning a big epic kind of fantasy series. That's my big thing for next year. That's what I'm going to be putting pretty much all of my writing focus and time into. And I will still be doing those as books, not on Kindle Vella. There'll be about 50,000 words, a piece, tops is what I'm aiming for at the moment. So they will be quite short. And there will be a long kind of A plot running through all of the books, a major plot that connects them together. But for the most part, those books will be very episodic. There'll be a conflict and a climax and a resolution for a story within each of those shorter books. I've already kind of started on that, but the reason I'm talking about Kindle Vella is because I had an idea. I won't be uploading those books on Kindle Vella because I still want them to be proper books. But I have been kind of struggling with how to do a bit more of the world building. And then in regards to Kindle Vella, I thought, why not write some kind of little short stories set in that fantasy world for Kindle Vella? So my plan for the moment, assuming again, that Kindle Vella rolls out to Australia by next year, is that at the start of every single month, I would upload a new episodic short story on Kindle Vella set within that fantasy world.  That way, when the actual books come out, it's already going to feel very familiar and comfortable. My plans for that fantasy world are, I'll admit, extremely ambitious, but I've already done so much planning and it's all really coming together really well. This is the first time in a long time I've really known exactly what I'm doing with this story. So writing a few short spin-off stories within that world for Kindle Vella just feels natural. And also, I was thinking I might do a bit of a second different series on Kindle Vella as well. Again, uploading once a month, just horror short stories. I really like writing horror short stories. That's pretty much all I've done during this year. I am looking forward to moving away from that into fantasy, but I think I could write at least one horror short story a month just to keep my foot in the waters of horror. So I think it would be fun to upload them to Kindle Vella as well for anyone who wants to read them. Anyway, that's Kindle Vella. Let me know what you think. Let me know if you think that's going to help you with your writing. Now, the second thing Amazon's kind of announced that I'm excited about. I got an email the other night from my mate, Jeremy Fee, literally just before I went live on Twitch to do some writing sprints, which you should come and join in sometime. It's really, really fun. But he sent me an email letting me know that Amazon finally, after years of me complaining about it, they are finally offering hard covers as an option for self-publishing. I made a video literally not that long ago at all. I'll leave a card up here talking about when I used IngramSpark to make Welcome Descent and how I'm not really a big fan of IngramSpark at the moment, just with a bunch of issues they have. Again, you can check that video out. But I said that I would have used KDP exclusively for the paperback and the hardcover and the ebook if only they had a hardcover option. And now they do. As far as I'm aware, it's still a brand new option. So it's not perfect. In particular, the hardcovers are just printed on the actual cover. There is no dust jacket, which I'm not a big fan of.  At the moment with Amazon's self-published hardcovers, it would just be printed on here instead. And I don't know, I don't think it looks as good. And it just doesn't really have that same feeling, you know? But the fact that they are doing hardcovers is definitely a step in the right direction. And I'm almost positive they will eventually offer dust jackets as well.  There's still a whole lot of changes they could be making over there. But I think that's pretty big news for self-published authors, knowing that you now don't have to spread yourself across KDP and other print-on-demand companies just so your book has a hardcover. I won't be making any hardcovers there yet, but once they offer dust jackets, it's definitely something I'm going to be looking into. We're still yet to see what the print quality and all that's going to be like, but I haven't had any issues with KDP's paperbacks so far. So this year so far has been a pretty big year for my writing as far as finally publishing another book, My Psychological Horror, Welcome Descent, you know, full novel, along with me having a short story in the anthology Local Haunts. Then before the end of the year, the next anthology in the series comes out, which I also have another short story in, that one's called Served Cold, along with an anthology of horror short stories that I'm putting together with other writers. That one should be coming out end of October, early November. We're just about to move into the formatting and kind of publication stage of that anthology, so the timeline's looking pretty good so far. And then in addition to that, I also have my very own full collection of horror short stories coming out before the end of the year as well. So that's literally three more books that I'm involved with coming out before the end of the year. That means I'm going to have technically five books, all horror. So again, I'm excited to move back into arguably my favorite genre, fantasy, next year. I gotta tell you, I'm really, really, really excited about this fantasy series I'm working on. I think it's going to be... I don't like to talk myself up too much. I'm just not that good at it, which is unfortunate when you're a self-published author. I don't like talking myself up too much, but I really do think if I write it well, this fantasy series could be incredible. And I'm excited to not only write the books, but also work in some spin-off short stories for Kindle Vella. Tell you what, let me know what you think about any of this. What do you think about Kindle Vella?  What are your plans for next year? Are you being as ambitious as I am? I'm probably definitely setting my expectations way too high, but meh.  Which is also fine. Either way, best of luck with your writing. And thank you so much for watching this video, especially for watching it through to the end. I appreciate it. The video is about done now, so go do some writing. Catch ya.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we have with us Professor Vijay Prashad from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. Vijay, good to have you with us again. Pleasure. Vijay, you have written this book on Arab Spring, Libyan Winter. Do you think that we have now entered into a situation where the steam is running out of the Arab Spring completely? Well, the… If I may mix my metaphor. Ah, correct. This is what the first thing I would say is yes, let's stay with one metaphor at a time. The metaphor of Arab Spring was in a sense to bottle the jubilation that came out of a very punctuated set of events. You know, those who follow North African politics, West Asian politics have been following for a long while political turbulence in Egypt, in Tunisia. You know, Egypt since the 1990s has seen a concatenation of protests. Some of them camouflaged around international events. You know, one of the big formations, big demonstrations was around, for instance, the Second Intifada to insolidate you with the Palestinians. Another big event was in opposition to the run-up to the Iraq War of 2003. So, this region has been in turbulence. There have been class struggles in the textile town of Mahalla where tens of thousands of workers have been on extended rolling strikes. One knew that there's no settled state in the North African, West Asian region. When the series of events took place, you know, and sometimes one has to really appreciate that structures make themselves manifest when people's enthusiasm, you know, in a way snowballs. And that snowballing effect was given the name Arab Spring. But Arab Spring wasn't something that was to capture the totality of the process. It was simply the opening up of a new moment for the Arab people. And if you say that has that run out, well, the moment has opened. Now we are in the second stage of the Arab, you know, kind of new history of Arab modernity. We are at another place where people are trying to consolidate. What does it mean for us to have overthrown these settled regimes, these regimes which had made various national liberation kind of promises but had actually settled into a kind of neoliberal authoritarianism? You know, they've moved those, at least the formal elements of those regimes aside. Now the principal task is what to reconstruct and how to start reconstructing it? You know, even if we don't go into reconstruction just as yet. If we look, for instance, there was also movements taking place in Jordan. Yemen, of course, was on the boil and still movements are going on. Saudi Arabia, the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia has seen ferment. Bahrain has seen ferment. At the same time, we have also had Libya and after that Syria are going on. So you do see now sort of contradictory movements in this part of the world? Well, the main thing that one has to, what I have actually emphasized in the book is that it is the case that the Arab Spring was an authentic rising of various classes coming together because they had a common sort of enemy in the authoritarian regimes of Ben Ali, of Mubarak, of the Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, of the Saleh regime in Libya. So this was a coming together of various classes in popular struggles. Fine. That's up to their simple. They caught the Americans and the Europeans completely off-footing. I mean, the Americans were desperate to try to reconstruct their control, their pillars of authority in the Middle East because one by one, they seemed to be falling. You know, Mubarak being as it were first among equals as the guardian of the American order in West Asia and North Africa. And in a sense, by March of 2011, the Americans had come to some understanding of how to move an agenda forward and they found a very willing and of course enthusiastic ally in the Gulf Coordination Council, basically Saudi Arabia, Qatar, these were the two leaders in the GCC, which some people call the Arab NATO. And they came out now as an alternative social force to this populist uprising. And it was their interventions into Bahrain, into Yemen, into Syria, and of course into Libya that included a new character into the Arab Spring. And I just call that character the Libyan winter. You know, it was the counter-revolution as it were. You know, nobody who rose up against Mubarak was under any illusions that their demonstrations in Port Said, in Alexandria, in Cairo, these demonstrations weren't going to completely overthrow the regime without the regime fighting back. And the regime has fought back quite strongly. Well, if the regime fought back, do you think the forces of imperialism were just going to sit back, watch TV and say, well, this is a good day for democracy? No, they also just as Mubarak sent in, you know, camel-riding thugs into Tahrir Square, the people in Washington, in the Elysee Palace in Paris, they had their own camel-riding thugs. It's just that they don't ride camels and they pretend not to be thugs. They don't ride camels anymore. They don't ride camels anymore. You are referring to T.E. Lawrence. Yes, Lawrence of Arabia. Now they have drones. Now they have F-16A fighter jets. And now they have planes that can sit above the ground and claim to be doing things like maintaining a no-fly zone when actually they are troops in the air because they just unleash vast amounts of ammunition at people on the ground. So using ideas like the no-fly zone, they insinuated themselves to try to, as it were, put in place new pillars of imperial authority in a region where it looked absolutely to have been lost to them in the same way as South America was lost. You know, there's an interesting issue of Qatar now aligning with Saudi Arabia. They were at one point sort of competition in the space. Now they simply have completely come together. Do you think that the Islamic popular movements, which also we have to accept that both in Tunisia and Egypt, they constitute a part of the popular movement? Do you think this alliance between the Islamic fundamentalists, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and this kind of Islamic movements on the ground is also is helping the shift away from Arab Spring? Yeah, I mean absolutely. But you know, the alliance between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is in a sense a tactical, maybe even a strategic alliance. It's not an alliance of final vision. You know, and the way to maybe put this kind of, you know, in a way very bluntly is that the Saudis in Egypt preferred to finance the Al Noor Party, which was the much more orthodox Salafi political organization, whereas the Qataris funded the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood. So they have some differences in, as it were, the final vision. If you look at what you were saying, Qatar is a recent founder of Islamic groups like Ikhwan. But otherwise, Saudis had funded Ikhwan, Muslim Brotherhood for a long time. And the Al Noor is also the group that we are calling the Salafis and Al Noor have broken away from Ikhwan also. So it is not that they really have a very sharp division of vision in a long term sense. Yeah, that's probably true. I mean, my general sense between the two is that the Qataris are a little bit more hesitant about some of the more, shall we say, medieval aspects of the Saudi social vision. But that's a really, you know, those are splitting hairs at the end of the day because they have found common cause for at least two reasons. One is the monarchies must not be at all threatened. You know, the Bahrain thing was a real test case. The Saudis are firm in the idea that the neighborhood must not allow democracy. I mean, Yemen as well. That was a kind of moderated transition from Saleh to his deputy Hadi, hardly democratic.  So in the neighborhood, they will not allow.  So these are the two reasons, principal reasons why they are highly galvanized. I mean, in a sense, they see the opportunities for themselves much faster than the Americans. You know, for instance, in Syria, the Americans, I think, have an Israeli opinion about what's happening in Syria, whereas the Qataris and the Saudis seem to have a Gulf opinion about what's happening in Syria, which is why they went ahead of the curve to say we should fund the opposition. We should direct the opposition. We should get weapons and arms there. The Americans, I think, have taken an Israeli view, which is the Israelis are terrified about the loss of security in their neighborhood. That is security on their terms. You know, they've lost the Egyptian wall. They've completely lost the Lebanese wall for 30 odd years. And now with unrest in Jordan, with uncertainty in Syria, I mean, Syria, whatever the kind of rhetoric coming out of the Assad regime, Syria has been a firm border guard for Israel. You know, they have not allowed any nonsense on that side. So the Israeli opinion, in a sense, has modulated or at least provided the kind of hesitancy from America. But the Qataris and the Saudis are totally joined in a certain view where they see this as a tremendous opportunity to undermine Iran. So when you say why are they, the two of them emerging as a block almost together, the real thing is the question of monarchies, you know, in the Gulf region and the issue of Iran. And there they are almost 100% united. The other party to this is, of course, Turkey. And Turkey under Erdogan has been very aggressively going into Syria. And in this sense, the Iran issue, as well as what the monarchies see, as well as the way they see Islamic popular movements, Turkey seems to be also one of the key drivers in this in this game. Yeah, I mean, there's no question that Turkey, I mean, right after the Arab Spring came to its high point, you know, Erdogan goes on his tour. He goes to all the important capitals he welcomes and he offers a kind of Turkish model as a way forward.  You know, it's what my colleagues calls Islam without fear. You know, you can, we are going to be moderate, reasonable, reasonable is a code word in contemporary affairs, which means the Americans and Europeans have nothing to fear from us. That's what they mean when they say we are reasonable. So they went on their reasonable tour. Now the issue between Syria and Turkey is so complicated and fraught. You know, they have so many mutual interests. For instance, the problem of the Kurdish question, which has united these regimes. Secondly, the issue of the double dealing and dancing with Israel, you know, both Syria and Turkey have played a similar role on the one hand, all kinds of agreements with Israel, you know, whether it's sanitation contracts or whether it's arms dealing, they are very complicated relationship to the force of many years, they were quite close in their unified vision in the region. And now it seems that the Turks have made a strategic decision that Assad regime has lost legitimacy. They want to put their chips elsewhere. They want a forward policy into the Arab world, and maybe Syria will provide them, you know, I mean, don't forget that that was the main part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. So Syria is going to be their door back into West Asia and North Africa. I mean, that is very plainly the way Erdogan seems to articulate what they are playing at with the Syrian question. You know, they want back in in the region in a much more aggressive way than they've had previously. So what you're saying is that essentially Erdogan seems to see Syria as really an opening into West Asia at large. And that is that is what is driving the policies. You know, you say talking about Syria and Israel, there is a kind of left position which argues that Syria is a bulwark against Israel and Palestine issues and so on. This has been coming in a lot of whereas, you know, there's a big controversy on this. It seems to forget that actually Syria had played the policeman's role against the Palestinians in Lebanon, right? Absolutely. I mean, if you talk to the Palestinian left, whether in the West Bank or in Lebanon, they will tell you unequivocally that the Syrians lost their legitimacy in the 1970s. You know, so those on the left now who harken back to some kind of rhetorical statement from Syria about its anti-Zionist position, they're blinded by the fact they don't know the reality on the ground. You know, Syria has no legitimacy among these forces precisely because they have been a check on Hezbollah. On the one side, it's true. Hezbollah gets arms, they get, you know, support from Syria, which is why they are in a very complicated position. But they are also reined in. You know, Syria has been the kind of a driver, attempted driver of a populist movement inside Lebanon. But again, look at it from the other point of view. In Syria, there was the opening for Palestinians to come and bring their organizations. Hamas had an organization there, the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. George Habash had his center there, the DFLP. Every Palestinian faction had some place in Syria. Over the last 15 years, as Syria has liberalized, as the big capitalists have begun to dominate, you know, the kind of cronyest capitalism of Syria, you've seen the left-wing factions all lose the shine. And the bottom line was when the Hamas leadership in Damascus essentially decamped and condemned the regime. After even that, forget the 1970s, after even Hamas has condemned the regime, it's ridiculous that people hold to the illusion that Syria is a major force, you know, against Israel. It's unbelievable that people say that, you know, it somehow suggests that people are trying to hold on to something, you know, when nothing is there.


We're here. It's 1 o'clock, rock. I'm Jay Fidel in Think Tech, and this is Community Matters. And we're talking to a very special guest, Tim Delaney, who was here for Hanoi, the Hawaii, what is it? Alliance. Alliance of nonprofit organizations, H-A-N-O, very important organization, and very active under Lisa Maruyama. So many things. I looked at the website and some of the email, incredible number of activities going on with Hanoi. So the Hawaii Alliance of Nonprofit Organizations is really in tune, doing a lot in Hawaii. And they brought you in, or they asked you to come. And you agreed to come, Tim Delaney? Absolutely agreed to come, in part because Lisa Maruyama is on our national board, and she exports from Hawaii to the mainland a lot of wisdom. And so we're always delighted to be able to support Lisa in paying her back for all that she does for nonprofits across the country. I'll tell you something that maybe you didn't know. She's on our board, too. She's a national leader all around here. She's having a national leader, international leader. Absolutely. So we're delighted to have her, just as you are on your board. So Tim is the president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits out of Washington. Yes, sir. Very important organization, especially in these times. Can you describe, Tim, exactly what it is that the National Council of Nonprofits does? Sure. We are the nation's largest network of charitable nonprofits. We have more than 30,000 nonprofit members from coast to coast, border to border. And we are helping nonprofits to track some trends that are happening as they're emerging. We help nonprofits with their operational insights so that great things are happening in one state. We can go across state lines. And probably most importantly these days, we're looking at public policy issues. We, for the last several years, with all the gridlock happening in D.C., we have focused primarily at the state level to look at all the state policy threats that are happening. Most Americans are not aware that Congress, over a four-year period recently, passed fewer than 600 total bills, including post offices. And they mean highways. Whereas state legislatures passed more than 135,000 bills. But in December, our board, looking at the national elections, looking at what the predictors were, said we need to be pivoting and focusing more of our resources. We had some focus on federal, but doing a lot more looking at the federal level. But you have a lot of diversity. You have 30,000 members, 30,000 nonprofits, all sizes and shapes, I'm sure, come from every vantage, every place, every point of view. When you talk about public policy in Washington, talking mostly, I guess you're talking about state and federal, but you're talking about a lot of different views. Sometimes they don't agree. How do you handle the fact that there's 30,000 people who may or may not agree on a given point of public policy? Well, in fact, there's not even 30,000 people. It's 30,000 organizations. And so then with them, they have staff and boards and the diversity is true. And one of the things we've learned to do is not to get involved in the subsector issues. As soon as an organization goes out to advocate for more funding for education in this zero-sum game or even less than zero-sum game, you're then trying to take money away from health care or the environment. And so we don't get into the subsector issues, which we often delineate as the causes, all of which are important and we fully support in our spirit. But we mobilize around the issues of the commons, where there are threats that can impact the work of all nonprofits, whether you're for or against an issue. All nonprofits need to have a reliable public policy base that they can be depending on without having to worry about governments trying to tax us as tax-exempt properties, which is happening every time. Thanks every single nonprofit that way. And to over-regulate nonprofits and to otherwise take money away from us such as changes in the tax code. So what we try to do is help informed nonprofits as well as foundations. We have in our 30,000 plus organizational members more than 800 foundation members. And so we're looking out for the impact of policy at federal, state, and local levels on the day-to-day work in missions of nonprofits and local communities. Well, you know, one of the things that I've noticed is that say there's three elements on the table, one, the public, two, the government and the full aspects of the government. And three, the nonprofit community. I suppose you could say business is in there somewhere. But talking today about nonprofits and foundations, as you say, that's changed in our lifetimes. It's changed dramatically in the last 10, 15, 20 years. Can you talk about that? Sure. There are a variety of forces, Jay, as I'm sure you've been watching and tracking yourself. What I look at in my background is I'm an attorney and I've practiced within a very large law firm for private interest. I've practiced within government on behalf of the public that way and for nonprofits. And so I've seen a lot and as a lifelong student of government, what I have watched is since the 1980s, it came out in the re-election playbook that almost all politicians ran by is, hey, if you vote for me, I'll cut your taxes. And there's been this transactional mode as opposed to what's best for the community. What are the community's needs, the true needs, then let's tax in order to meet those needs. Instead, it's been, let's cut, let's cut, let's cut. And we're now to the point where we've cut into the skin, beneath the skin, into the muscle. We've chopped off some limbs, in fact. And we've been asking in that process, nonprofits to do so much more for so many more, for so much longer, with so much less. And it has been crippling as governments have turned away from their public duties and they've expected, without articulating it, they just expect nonprofits to step forward and fill the gap. And interesting, what I've noticed and finally catches people's attention when I frame it is, as governments are cutting their budgets, they don't cut the human need that relates to that. And so the human need, the budget's revenues are going down, but the human need actually doesn't stay static, it actually grows because there's even more need created. And so that's how things have really shifted. And it's not because someone came out with a great playbook and said, well, this is how we will take care of democracy better, it's been more along politicians saying, how can I get reelected? Yeah. So the government becomes more of a re-election machine than a machine that does things and leaving it to the nonprofits. The nonprofits step up because they're more efficient, arguably their management is better. So when they do that, when they are efficient, when they handle those things and produce those outcomes, government can even sit back further. In my view, there's a spiral here. And the spiral is the more successful nonprofits are, the less government is inclined to do. They spend their time getting re-elected. And as we're having this discussion, I would buy in your articulation of it. I want to take a giant step back and anticipate you would agree. We need to, whenever we can, see the great work that people within governments are doing, whether it's the federal, state, or local level, there are some great individuals giving so much of themselves for their community. And it's becoming more difficult for them within their organizations, within government, as the resources are being cut. I showed up two weeks ago and you were on my right as my co-colleague and Sally was on my left. And then the budget got cut, Sally went away, you and I suddenly had to do all the work. And then my job gets cut and then you have to do all of our work. And that's an awfully large burden for you to carry. And notwithstanding the fact that Sally and I are now on the corners trying to clean windshields, there are a lot of people trapped in governments who are great public servants who are not given the resources. And we need to change that dynamic to help lift the voices of the people to tell the elected politicians enough is enough. This is our country, as Lincoln said, a government of the people, by the people, for the people. It's time for the people to step forward and say, this is our country, this is our government, and these are our expectations. And we are prepared to pay more in taxes. And importantly, if you look at all the ballot propositions that occur across the country, where people are stepping forward and voluntarily saying, I will pay more for education, I will pay more for the environment, I will pay more for parks, and the politicians keep saying, no, no, people don't want to pay. Actually, people want quality of life. Thank you very much. And we will pay for it. We just expect that it's going to be delivered effectively and efficiently. Yeah, absolutely. And the nonprofits are able to do that. They play, in my view, they play a larger role in the national process and for that matter, the national conversation. So the individual person may have some views. He may express them in social media, what have you. But when the National Council of Nonprofits steps up and makes a statement on public policy, that is a much stronger statement because all these people, 30,000 organizations and all the people that follow them. So you have a voice and you have a role in this new conversation with government trying to reorganize things so it's more efficient. But the question is, how far can you go? There is the Johnson Amendment. Let's talk about the Johnson Amendment. Sure. I'm delighted that you raised that because it's a very hot issue right now, which is probably why the smart man that you are, you raised it. In terms of the Johnson, let's go back to the basics. In section 501c3 of the tax code, what are government has done is declared since the early 1900s that for certain organizations, charitable, educational, religious, and others, that in exchange for us to have the benefits of being tax exempt and to receive tax deductible contributions, in exchange for these, we agree that we will do three things. In 1908, Congress said you cannot pay out any profits. So if the nonprofit brings in more revenue than it spends, it can't pay it to shareholders or can't pay off of the employees more. They can pay their employees a fair reasonable salary, but not more. So that's why we've been called nonprofits since 1908. In 1934, Congress added a provision saying you cannot engage in too much legislative lobbying. And then in 1954, then Senator Johnson, who was the minority leader in the Senate and the Senate majority of the Republican Party accepted his amendment that added the third condition. And the third condition is that charitable nonprofits, religious nonprofits, foundations, educational institutions, for example, in exchange for those two benefits, we cannot go out and actively or passively go out and endorse or oppose candidates for political office. And the actual language speaks in terms of we may not support or oppose any candidate for public office. And so that has proved for the last 60 plus years has protected the nonprofit community from being polarized and divided by partisan politics. How does that work? Just suppose hypothetically, you allowed people, you know, to take positions, nonprofits to take positions on candidates. What would happen in the worst case analysis? Well, the worst case analysis has been proposed by the president has been proposed by the the chair of the Ways and Means Community House right now. And there's a bill that was introduced to totally repeal that. Now to totally repeal the Johnson amendment would mean, among other things, that, let's say that you're the nonprofit. I am a donor. I then come to you and say, I will give you $50,000 or $5,000, whatever amount I want to give. If you endorse that candidate, and if you don't, I'm then going to give the money over here to this other organization. Well, suddenly, you're feeling I need to get that revenue. So I'll trade my integrity in order to endorse what the donor said. Or here's another hypothetical. I then give you the money and tell you here's $50,000, you can keep 2000, but I want you to then send the money over to the candidate of my choice. I want the other 48,000 to go over there. That's the dark money that's been polluting the 501C 4s and the other organizations, Citizens United all over again, except here, there's the public subsidy of I get the tax right off as I give it to you to funnel over elsewhere. Now, as that happens, then the organizations that say, absolutely no, I'm not going to do that. Then even donations to them go down, because people are saying, wait a minute, if I wanted to give to a candidate, I will do it directly. I don't want to run the risk of a nonprofit channeling that money out there. And so there's the donations will go down. Or yet another problem, which is you and I are on the same board. And we are coming into the boardroom and you say, hey, Fred was my fraternity brother, I want us to endorse him for city council. And then I say, well, that's great, but I'm a business partner with Sally's. And I really appreciate it if we as a board endorse Sally instead. Suddenly, our board is involved in all these disruptive discussions, and it becomes alliances who likes Jay more than him. And it's not about the mission of the organization, but this huge distraction. And then finally, many of us go into our houses of worship to pray and to seek guidance and counsel. And we often use it almost as an escape from the secular world and the craziness that's going on. And the idea of having my preacher telling me that in order to get into heaven, I have to vote for the candidate of his or her choice. That is frightening. And these proposals to change the Johnson amendment to either repeal it or to substantially weaken it, they're all being couched in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Well, who can be against that? Well, most Americans wouldn't until you peel back the layers or you just open the hood and look at what's actually being proposed. And it's not freedom of speech. If a preacher wants to stand there and from the pulpit and to endorse a candidate, they're free to do it. It's just that they don't get these two special benefits. And they will then have the opportunity to pay taxes like everybody else and to not receive charitable contributions like everybody else. And so if in order to get those two special benefits, we have to comply with three different requirements. In an analogy, if if I might, which would be you have a driver's license. When you went in, you took a driver's test, you had the vision checked, and there are all these things. And they said in order to drive, you have to wear your glasses. And you agree in order to have the privilege of driving, then I will not violate traffic laws. I will not purposely try to run over pedestrians, some basics.  And it's the same thing with this. And yet, there are some who are trying to politicize and actually weaponize the nonprofit, the charitable, religious and philanthropic communities. And that's why we as nonprofits are standing up to say no. Yeah, Tim Delaney, President and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, joining us today on Community Matters, talking about nonprofits and and foundations in a time of change. Very important discussion. We come back from this break. I want to talk about the ripple effects of this in the community under the Constitution in the future of America. If this if this happens, we'll be right back. We Lucas host of Hawaii is my mainland every Friday at 3pm on think Tech Hawaii. We talk about things of interest to those of us who live here. And my past blogs can be found at kawaii Lucas.com. Okay, I didn't listen. Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel here on Community Matters. We're talking about nonprofits and foundations in a time of change with Tim Delaney, who was the president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits. He's here with Hano, the Hawaii Alliance of Nonprofit Organizations. And he's been talking, been running around town enjoying Hawaii and enjoying the people. And he's we enjoy him right here at the studio. Thank you for coming down. Thanks, Jay. Delighted to be here. So what are the what are the larger effects here? I mean, the country is under, in many ways, constitutional crisis over the past few months. And it seems like every time you open the New York Times, there's another crisis issue. Do you do you consider this possibility, this bill, to repeal the Johnson Amendment constitutional rising to a constitutional crisis level? The constitutional crisis might be what's happening with the investigations of Russia. And in terms of trying to disrupt our democracy in the last elections, and what they might do in future elections, if we don't find out exactly what happened and put it into it. There's certainly something that can be challenged constitutionally with the executive order that the president just signed last week. There was on this issue on this issue. Last Thursday, there was a coordinated attack on the Johnson Amendment by the White House and by the certain people in Congress. First, by Congress, there was a hearing of two subcommittees that came together. They heard from several proponents of change in this to allow religious groups to be endorsing candidates. And then over in the Rose Garden at the same time, the president was signing an executive order that was to, among other things, section two, depending on how you read it, because there are alternative views of it. It purports to say that religious groups can go out and begin endorsing candidates. That's the way it was sold. That was the whole image that was portrayed. And the president had told various evangelicals that he would go out and, using his words, he vowed in February to totally destroy the Johnson Amendment. And with his actions last week, he signed this, suggesting that people were then free to endorse the religious organizations were free to endorse. Now, can that be legally have a statute that says the opposite? Well, in fact, there is the requirement in the oath of office in the Constitution to faithfully execute. There is also the issue that presidents are not authorized to do any line item vetoes on substance, let alone line item veto, something that was passed 60 plus years ago signed by President Eisenhower, re-opped by President Nixon, re-opped by President Reagan, and then by President Reagan again, without any controversy all these years, and now there's a desire by some to politicize aspects of nonprofits. So that's what was suggested was occurring. There are others who are reading the same executive order saying, wait a minute, it's very confusing, but it actually doesn't change anything. It's been described as empty. It was described by one columnist as a nothing burger. And so you have competing ideas out there on what it does. Now, in fairness to a religious organization, they're getting the message that they can, but maybe they can't. And that's a lot of confusion. People need to know what's going on. But for the charitable nonprofits, or educational nonprofits, or foundation C3s, all those organizations are then being told that the government is giving greater rights to religion than to non-religious. And that's what our establishment clause, or probably properly called the anti-establishment clause, we were not going to have our government give greater rights to certain religions. And so that violates that clause. There are a couple of other things that are especially problematic with the language, because it says that any individual that it directs the the Treasury Department to not take adverse actions against quote, any individual house of worship or other religious organization that then is engaged in this partisan activity.  Can you tell me what any other religious organization means? Does I know generally what a house of worship is, but any other religious organization does that include Notre Dame? Why should Notre Dame have a greater voice than Yale or Harvard? And does it include the Salvation Army or the Young Men's Christian Association or the Young Women's Christian Organization? And so we have these questions on what does it mean? Well, under due process in the Constitution, the laws are vague and ambiguous. And this is a law in the form of an executive order. And so it is either it means nothing, or if it means something, it violates the Constitution. Is anybody taking this up in court? So far, one organization in Wisconsin has filed suit. And there may be additional litigation just as it's been the executive order on immigration was challenged. And then the follow up order on immigration was challenged. And then the executive order and sanctuary jurisdictions was challenged. And in all three of those instances, the federal courts as the neutral arbiters have stepped in and said, wait a minute, you can't do this. And so that's what they are looking at in Wisconsin. And again, I anticipate and other places. So just to just to figure out what's going on, there are people in Congress, I presume there are Republicans who are who would like to see this happen, would like to take the Johnson Amendment or 501c3, which would change the law as you and I have known it for our lifetime. You know, why? Why what what what is the self interest? What is the motivation? What is their vision for the future on this? Why would they want to appeal this or 501c3? What I have read and what I have heard is that there have been a couple of organizations that have been promoting this. Their funders want to do this. They see an advantage for particular political interest of theirs to have the freedom to go out and take all this additional action. Again, they already have the freedom to do it. They already have the liberty to do it. It's just that if they are violating those three conditions, they are not to receive the special treatment of being tax exempt and getting the tax deductible contributions. And so that's where the whole freedom discussion is elusive because they're styling it as though it's freedom of speech and freedom of religion. But not really. But it's not really. It's all window dressing. And when you look inside, you see it's not really there. And the consequences could be horrific. I was presenting to the head of actually the board of a major US based foundation. And the chair was talking about how this will change private philanthropy as we know it were this to pass there. The foundations and 4500 other nonprofits across the country have all signed a community letter that you your nonprofit here nonprofits on that are listening across the country can sign at www give voice.org. Again, that's give voice.org. Give give voice.org. Correct. And can sign that community letter to tell Congress, no, don't do this. Again, more than 4500 have already signed it. These are nonprofit charities, religious organizations, the National Council of Churches, the Ford Foundation is a foundation. The Mott Foundation is a foundation that signed it. Our organization signed it. Hano signed it. The Hawaii Community Foundation assigned it and for profit businesses have also signed it. Now there's a separate letter that more that 99 are religious and denominational groups have signed saying the same thing with major denominations saying they do not want this. There is not a single religious congregation, excuse me, were religious denomination that has stepped forward to say that they want this. And so these are are factions that are saying that they want this. And so they signed it. But in fact, there is not an overwhelming calling for this massive change that would politicize and weaponize nonprofits, taking us off of our mission of trying to solve community problems and instead trying to be hijacked, hijacked into political operatives. All these charities would become political instruments for a few of these charities. And so I vote through those charities. It's awful. You size it up well. Thank you for that sound bite. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. And again, it is just going to be so problematic and it will transform our society as we have known it. Because right now you drive down the street, you see the Baptist Church or the Episcopal Church. The Republican Baptist Church and the Democratic... That's what you would see if that happens. But that's what you would see. And you don't see the United Way Democratic chapter or United Way Republican chapter. You see one United Way that is there for all Americans. This wasn't a campaign issue, was it? This wasn't even raised in the campaign. It is something that then candidate Trump talked about when he was in certain places with audiences. But it was not widely debated in part because it would be so damaging. And most people can see it once they realize what is being proposed. This is part of that group of issues where the administration is pulling the wings out of traditionally settled matters like the EPA, for example. And just disrupting everything with profound possibilities. There would be profound possibilities if this passes. So what's the likelihood that it will pass? Are you having a significant success in getting people to speak out against this amendment? More people are starting to as they learn about it. And that's the power of your program. That's the importance of cable access. It's the importance of public radio and public television in order to get information and news out to people so that democracy can be run by the people. And we need to get that information out there so that your viewers and listeners know that they can take action. Well, Tim, as camera one, talk to them. They're right there. Tell them what they can do, what they should do in order to support the National Council of Nonprofits on this. Thanks, Jay. What you can do to help and not just help the National Council of Nonprofits, not just help Hano, but to help yourself in order for your country to be in a better position. What you can do is go out and go to www.givevoice.org and sign that community letter. Then what you can do is call your two representatives in Congress and your two senators in Congress and your representative wherever you live and let them know that this is something that you firmly disagree with. You want to retain the protection in the Johnston Amendment. Don't mess with 60 plus years of proven reliable law. And then what you can do is contact your friends, your families, your neighbors, other non-profits, your for-profit employers, whomever, to get them to sign on to that too and call their members of Congress. Let your voice be heard.  Or do you want to say we need to have one safe place where we can come together as Americans through our non-profits to solve problems collectively together without the division and the posturing of politics, but rather get into solving the issues of the day? Wow, wish I'd said that. Thank you, Tim Delaney. It's been great having you here. Jay, it's been my delight and the next time I'm in Hawaii, which I hope will be very soon, I hope we can visit again. Aloha. Aloha.


My name is Ceci Correa and I'm here to talk to you about the psychology of fake news, why people believe in fake news, and what we can do as developers, designers, technologists to create experiences that are more honest and transparent for our users. So I actually want to start by talking about Orson Welles in 1938 and a broadcast of War of the Worlds. If you were here earlier during the break, you were listening to Orson Welles's rendition of War of the Worlds, which they broadcast on October 30th for their Halloween episode. Now Orson Welles being the, what's a good word, genius maybe? Being the genius that he was, he didn't want to just do any rendition of War of the Worlds. He wanted to do something different, so he thought, wouldn't it be great to tell this story as a series of breaking news? So this will be a news broadcast and we'll tell it like it's happening right now. So the night of the broadcast, they started off with this pretend show, there was music, it started off with news about the weather, and then we had the breaking news that a UFO had landed in New Jersey, and then panic started. It is reported that due to this broadcast that night, people panicked out in the street, they went outside, they packed their bags and left and tried to go somewhere for safety. There were reports of even people just trying to even kill themselves because they were just so afraid that this was happening. There was a study that came out in 1945 that tried to tie some numbers to this event, and this study in 1945 said that about one million people had listened to and had been impacted by this broadcast. After that, this kind of became a cautionary tale about the power of the media, and it's been in textbooks about media and critical studies of the media ever since. That was then, this is now.  On the back end now of my, now that it's almost completed, although there are all kinds of issues that I care about, the single most important thing I can do is. Now when you listened to this, who did you think it is, Barack Obama? Okay, now watch his mouth. It is white gold because our parties have moved further and further apart and it's harder and harder to find common ground. So when I said in 2004 that there were no red states or blue states, there are the United States of America, I was wrong. On the back end now of my presidency now it's almost completed, although there are all kinds. So here you can see kind of how that is being made. They are using facial manipulation technology to essentially use an existing video of President Barack Obama and move his mouth, and they're also using this other program called Project Voco by Adobe where if you feed it about 20 to 40 minutes of someone talking, you can then just type what you want them to say and Project Voco will give you an audio track of that person saying those things in that same voice and in that same cadence. If you want to find out more about this, I would highly recommend you go to Futureoffakenews.com and you listen to the Radio Lab episode entitled Breaking News. They talk a lot more about this technology. One more thing that I do want to point out about that episode and just to talk about ethics is that one of the biggest things that they talked to about the creators of these programs is are you worried of what people are going to make with this technology? And they were not. They felt like people would be smart enough to figure it out. If people know that this technology exists, it's okay. They'll be able to have the critical thinking skills to figure out if it's fake. But the thing that happens with this is that it creates plausible deniability. If you actually catch someone doing something and you have video evidence of them doing something or talking about something, they can easily say, well, actually, it's a fake video. It creates this society where nobody can believe anything. So this is the post-truth world. This is where we live right now. And we are no longer at a point where we can stop and think about whether we should, whether we could. These things are here right now. They're not going to go away. They can't turn back time and hide this technology. It's not going to happen. It's here to stay. And what we need to do is figure out how to address these things, the content that might be generated with things you might not intend them to. So how do we do this? We need to understand why people believe fake news to begin with. And to be able to understand that, we need to understand the psychology behind fake news. And this takes two things. Understanding how beliefs are formed and also how we experience knowledge. So let's start with beliefs. And what I'm going to talk about is coming from this book called Thinking Fast to Slow, which is a great book that talks way more about how we think. But essentially, we have two parts to our brain. The system one, which is fast, automatic, intuitive. It's like riding a bike. You can do it, I don't know, with no hands, with your eyes closed. No, but it's things that come to you easy. It's also known as the lizard brain. So these are things that are intuitive, automatic. Then we also have system two, which is the more analytical part of our brain. This is where the slow, the thinking slow comes from. So we use both of these with beliefs. However, we use our slow mind, our system two, to form those beliefs. But how we act on those beliefs comes from our lizard brain, our automatic brain. So really, when we react to something based on those beliefs, it's really coming from a feeling. So if we take a look at these two headlines from two different fake news websites, which are actually owned by the same person, we can notice something. If you read the headlines, first of all, look at the language. They were clearly written by the same person, because it's using the same language, giving the boot. But also, at the end, it's asking you for a feeling. Are you glad, prepare to be infuriated? Now, this is not a new tactic. It's not new. It's been around for a while. It used to be called yellow journalism. It's been around since the 1890s, and it's been around, and it's stuck around because these types of headlines work. Sensationalistic headlines work because they appeal to our feelings, and we respond to that with that intuitive lizard brain of ours. So it's asking for that guttural and instinctual response, and we respond to it just almost automatically. So where do feelings fit with beliefs? Again, from thinking fast and slow. When faced with difficult questions, we actually answer an easier one instead, because that takes our system one easier part of our brain. So for example, when asked, how should financial advisors who pray on the elderly be punished, we might actually answer how much anger do I feel when I think of financial predators? So we answer an easier question instead, and that question is deeply tied to feelings. Now, we can often confuse feelings for knowledge. Why is that? So let's talk about knowledge. And in this discussion, I want to talk about the Knowledge Illusion, which is another great book that talks about the illusion of knowledge. So in this book, they talk about an exercise. You might have seen some of these pictures online. So this exercise had three steps. They would ask someone, how much do you know about bikes? And they would say, I ride a bike every day. I know a lot about bikes. Then they would ask them to draw a bike. And then they would fail spectacularly, kind of like that. So then after they went through that exercise, they would ask them, how well do you know bikes? And in most instances, people ranked their knowledge of bikes lower. What happened is that people experienced that lack of knowledge. They weren't aware of how little they knew about something. And if we're not aware of what we don't know, then we just don't know that we don't know. Right? This is actually by design. Knowledge is shallow by design. Because if we walked around aware of how much we don't know, literally our brains would not be able to function. They would explode. The way that the authors of the Knowledge Illusion talk about this is that if people needed to know the ins and outs of metallurgy before ever picking up an ax, then the bronze age would not have amounted too much. So not only are we not aware of what we don't know, but also those strong feelings that we have, that we react with, aren't actually based on deep understanding. So we might feel like we know a lot about bikes, and we might actually not know how little we know until we are faced with that. But our beliefs will be deepened as more people believe in things together. So to recap this, which I think is really interesting, those deep strong feelings about things, we don't actually have to know much about them. They don't come from deep understanding, but if we believe in things as a group, these things are reinforced. So a lot of what we do is believing together. It gives us that sense of belonging. And when you think about fake news and how they spread, this is really key, because you start seeing how that thread happens. We start with a new story that evokes some sort of emotional response from us. We immediately react to it, because again, we're instinctually reacting to this feeling. And if this feeling is part of this larger sense of belonging to a community, we're gonna go and share it, and it's going to sort of reinforce that belief, whether it's true or not. And it's harder, once that information is out there, to prove that something might be fake, because once it's already out there, in order to change someone's mind that this wasn't true, they need to not think with their system one into instinctual brain, but they need to think with their more analytical mind, and that takes brain power. So this is how fake news spreads. There was a really good study by The Atlantic recently, or a really good article talking about the study, where they did, it was the largest study on fake news on social media done by MIT. And the quote says, it seems pretty clear that false information outperforms true information, but it might actually have something to do with human nature. So again, if you think about those psychological factors, it's almost like we're kind of wired to respond a certain way to that type of information. So based on that, what they found out is that fake news stories are shared six times, or spread six times faster than a true news story. So to talk about that, I wanna go back to this, The War of the Worlds, 1938. So as I said earlier back in 1945, so this is a few years after the original broadcast, there was a paper published by a scholar that established a lot of the story that we talk about today, which is that about one million people were affected, and thought that this was real, and went out, and panic happened. Now, this is actually not true. And confession, I'm not a CS major, I'm not an engineering major, I was actually a film major. So I'm very familiar with the body of Work of Orson Welles, and when I found out that this didn't actually really happen the way I thought, I was really disappointed. So what ended up happening is that newspapers at the time were really struggling with radio, they were losing a lot of ground to radio. So when this broadcast happened, they kind of jumped at the opportunity to criticize radio. So that's where these headlines came from, but they actually died down within a day or two. It died down really fast, and it wasn't until that 1945 study that said that a million people were affected by this, it wasn't until then that people started talking about this mass hysteria that never really happened. And the reason why this might have grown out of proportion is that with that time that passed by, as people started seeing some of these headlines, they maybe didn't hear the broadcast, but they read the headline and kind of tricked themselves into thinking, yeah, I think I heard it. So what ended up happening is that new data surfaced back in 2003, and it turns out that the supposed panic was actually really tiny. So it ended up happening that that same day of that broadcast, there was a survey done, where they call your house and they ask you questions, and they asked people what they were listening to that night, and only 2% said they were listening to the Mercury Theater. 0% said they were listening to a broadcast. If it is to be believed that people were listening to the news broadcast and thought that this was actually happening, that number of people listening to a news broadcast would not be zero. Not only that, but the police reports about people going out in the street or even attempting suicide, none of that happened. There are no police reports that corroborate that story. So what ended up happening, again, is that as time progressed, people started to kind of buy into this. So this is how you can start to see that, especially when that study in 1945 came out with the data that millions of people listened to this, and they were panicked, we started believing that together, and it became this myth. So fake news stories elicit that emotional response. So when I was in high school, in college, and I heard about this story, it's very sensationalistic, it really gets your attention. You think, wow, I can't believe that that happened. And I think that's part of the reason why this myth was perpetuated. So can we disprove a fake news story once it's out there? Turns out, sort of. So to go back to that exercise of drawing a bike, if instead of asking people to draw a bike, you ask people to explain policy and you kind of follow the same steps, you ask how well do you know this policy on a scale from one to 10, 10 being the highest, and people might say, oh, I'm very familiar, eight, nine, maybe, and then you would say, okay, step by step, explain to me how that policy works, and then people would try to do that and not be able to, and then at the end they would be asked, how well do you think you know that policy, and then they would rank their knowledge lower. So in most cases, people would be able to figure out, okay, I don't actually know as much about something, so they had to kind of experience that, but it turns out that we can't just say great, let's do that, people don't like feeling dumb. So at the end of that experiment where people were asked, can you please explain this policy, and then people weren't able to, what they remembered was not that they learned something, they didn't remember, oh, I learned something that I didn't know about this thing, they just remembered that feeling of being dumb. So the answer can't just be, just get people to realize that they don't know something, get people to realize that this thing is fake. To go back to the Mercury Theater, War of the Worlds example, I was really bummed when I found out that my beloved Orson Welles didn't actually have the impact that I thought he did. We don't like that feeling. When I've given different versions of this talk before, one of the things that people talk about is like, if we can just get other people to see a different viewpoint, different opinion, we might be able to convince them about something, with facts, figures, et cetera. There was a great study done by The Guardian that tried just this back in 2016. They asked people of opposing viewpoints to switch Facebook feeds. I wanna say for maybe 30 days. And you would think that maybe people would come out of that feeling like, wow, I really learned something about people who have different beliefs than I do. But it turns out that it backfired. For some of the participants in this study, checking out the other bubble only confirmed their position to stay in their current bubble. So what we do can potentially backfire. So to quote the knowledge illusion again, a good leader must be able to help people realize their ignorance without making them feel stupid. And this is our job. This is what we're tasked with if we try to address the idea of fake news spreading online. I think this takes a three-pronged approach. It takes education, it takes design, and it takes engineering. So let's talk about education first. There was an interview again with the Guardian. I wanna say Mitchell Baker from the Mozilla Foundation talked about the importance of liberal arts education in STEM. So just to quote her, if we have STEM education without the humanities or without ethics or without understanding human behavior, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of STEM to society or humans or life. We need to understand how code intersects with human behavior, privacy, safety, vulnerability, equality. So essentially what she's saying is that we don't need STEM in liberal arts, we need more liberal arts in STEM. And sitting here listening to other talks in this track, I'm not the only one who thinks that. Obviously this person also said that and she was quoted and she's way more smart than me. But other speakers today have also stressed the fact that we need to talk more about ethics in tech. It needs to be part of our education as technologists. But it's not just education of technologists themselves. It's about teaching others and teaching those around us. So as an example, when I was talking to my boss that I was gonna give this presentation, she talked to me about this collective that she's a part of in Brooklyn called Cyber Collective. They do meetups at the Brooklyn library, which are free and open to anybody of any skill level. And they talk about things like fake news. They talk about things like cybersecurity. But they also talk about more basic things like are people reading my email? And it's really important to have these more basic conversations about computer literacy before we can even tackle the more complicated conversations about how to do fact-checking online. So it's not just about educating ourselves. It's also about educating others and those around us. And this can be as easy as starting a meetup like this in your city.  I don't know, I don't really talk to my neighbors. Do people talk to their neighbors anymore? Next door? But it's about educating people around us as well. Also want to talk about design. A friend of mine, her name's Marissa Morby and her friend, AJ Davis, I saw that they had proposed a panel for South by Southwest on Design for Post Truth. And I talked to her because I'm not a designer and I'm really curious to hear what a designer might think about how to solve this problem from a design perspective. And she's still putting together this workshop. So one of the things that she did tell me that I found really interesting was this idea of native ads and native experiences. This is an example of a native ad. It's harmless, it's just an ad for Grubhub. This is from Boost for Reddit on the Pixel on an Android device. And it's a pretty seamless experience. You see an ad and it looks just like any other post in that app. But where things get dicey is where you start dealing with fake news websites or fake news pages on Twitter. This specifically is a screenshot from different Russian bots that had bot ads on Facebook. And you can see that these are native ads, so this is a native experience. And the only way, if you're scrolling through Facebook, through that feed, the only way that this content is differentiated, and I try to highlight it with a red box, is that little sponsored, tiny little text in light gray. That's really the only differentiator. So I think this is really interesting because this UX pattern was created to make the ads a seamless experience. But what ends up happening is that this can actually be exploited to spread fake news. So in a post-truth world, we need to think more about honest design. And in some cases, this might actually mean that we need to implement anti-patterns. And we need to add a little bit of more friction to that experience of ads. And native ads is a good example of that. To try to add that a little bit of friction to make it a little bit more clear and transparent to the user that what they're seeing might be an ad. So that's one design idea. Let's talk about engineering. So when we were talking about this fake news technology, there was actually a really interesting article that came out after this future of fake news video came out. So CNN is talking about these videos called Deep Fakes. And are we ready? And it turns out, no, we're not. And this is because just as quickly as we can create AI to detect these deep fakes, the deep fakes evolve and it becomes a little bit harder. So to steal a slide from a talk in Strange Loop that I didn't attend, I just saw someone tweet this photo and I just thought it was really interesting as it relates to these deep fakes is that it can be pretty easy to deceive an image recognition bot. So on one side, you have the original image, 89% likeness or likelihood that it's a lifeboat. And when you add a little bit of noise to that same image, now you have a 99.77% chance that it's a Scotch terrier. So there can be a lot of room for error. So the solution is gonna be both tech and human. We need both because when you lean too far into one direction, you get this. So companies like Apple are actually using people to try to moderate what actually makes it to Apple news. And I think this is really interesting, but editors, you invented editors that already exists. I think that's really interesting. This is one of the responses that I really liked, which is, this is yet another example of how the tech world is inventing something that already existed. And I think that sometimes when we try to address these issues, we try to reinvent the wheel and we don't realize that there are other solutions out there that are already tried and true. So I think that is not just about designing experiences that are honest. It's also, as an industry, we need to be a little bit more honest with ourselves and realize that we're not inventing anything new. We're just using editors or using something that already existed. Another great tool out there that just came out recently is called Fact Check Me. And this is actually both a data effort and a people effort. So on request, people can email deploy at rubhat.com with a topic or event that they wanna track. And the folks over at Fact Check Me, which I believe is a group of college students that started this company, will fire off this, I believe, like some sort of AI and try to analyze tweets around a specific topic. And they'll analyze it and give you some data on which photos might be bots and which photos might actually be real and who is sharing what. And this can help journalists navigate that data that is out there in social media. But it combines a little bit of the human with the automated. And to talk about fake news and bots, I was talking how deep fakes keep getting more sophisticated. And it's the same case with bots. So in a recent article on Wired, we found that 60% of all of the recent controversial conversations on social media were actually driven by bots. But it's not just that they are sharing actual fake tweets or content. It's that they are now more sophisticated to try to amplify things that are divisive or specifically that are fake, especially if those things are actually written by humans to try to sort of game the system. So the bots are still there, they're just more sophisticated. And from the same people that made fact check me, they also have bot check me, which is a Chrome extension that you can add that will check if a specific Twitter account is a bot. I wanna close this section on engineering to talk about this. I think this is really interesting. This was from a post by Jessica Powell. She talked about why she left her big job in Silicon Valley and she says, you can't tell your advertisers that you can target users down to the tiniest pixel, but then throw your hands up before the politicians and say your machines can't figure out if bad actors are using your platform. That just doesn't go together. So I think that a lot of what we need to do as an industry is take a little bit more responsibility about what we can and can't do and be honest that if we can do this thing, then we can surely do this other thing and try to track if there are people that are acting badly in our platforms. So in the end, I feel like the solution takes a lot of different moving parts. This involves design and engineering to understand things like psychology, understand things like ethics, and be more involved in education. But also when I end this talk by saying that this is still very much a developing story, we are currently living in this post-truth world. We are living out this story right now. So if when I presented things that we could do as an industry to address these issues, if you felt like it wasn't enough, it's because it's not enough and it's because we're still living this out and we're still trying to figure out what to do and how to address the spread of fake information online. So if you are interested, know that you have the power to create the tools, the designs are really going to help give people, have those tools to be able to think critically about the things that they see online. So it really is up to us. If any of you have any questions, if you want to see my slides, if you want to see my research, you can go on Twitter at SESI Korea and with the magic of Twitter scheduled posting, you should see my slides here shortly and also my notes. And I'm also happy to answer questions out in the hall or over Twitter. Thank you.