Until we learn to be better information consumers, we'll keep falling for disinformation

The day after the 2024 US Election.

Related data points in my timeline:

A certain personality type is found to most readily fall for poor information.

Also, news- information- digital- and media-literacy are teachable and learnable.

We need to help people be better information citizens.

That fact has never been clearer. It’ll help people be better voters, better neighbors, and better able to collectively work on our biggest issues, all the way to the climate crisis. It’s why I keep looking for ways to bring KIP, my passion project of the past 9 years, to the world.

Click on any of the tags below to see my previous posts on these topics which millions are now waking up to today. Click on the headline of each post to open it and see continue clicking on the tags in each post to dive deeper.

Here come the CONTENT CREATORS - 400 million impressions at the Democratic National Convention

I feel quite vindicated this month. The central contention of KIP, my passion project of the past decade, is hitting the mainstream. Everybody sees it!

A journalism society talked about feeling insulted this week. Meanwhile, journalists in the mainstream media had their lunch eaten last week by 200 ‘social media influencers’ invited to the Democratic National Convention who reached 400 million impressions (4x what cable news generated) for a media value of $800 million.

What a masterclass in disinter-media-tion. The Democrats went straight to the people.

The mainstream ‘journalism’ hits keep coming, with Dana Bash of CNN recycling racist Trump taunts as if it’s legitimate journalistic work in the first cable news mainstream media interview of the HARRIS WALZ team. Don’t waste our time!

I cannot help but notice these are the very same social media contributors I've been talking about as the non-traditional bridge media we need to connect to traditional journalism, and I conceived a framework to do that with my passion project KIP.

Journalists, it’s long past time for you to stop feeling insulted and get to work connecting with the people who are bringing news to us. They could use your rigor and training and experience, and we will all benefit from it. Democracy demands it.

By the way, I have a plan for that. Take a look at the KIP framework to connect journalists with content creators (I call them the Fifth Estate) and trusted independent parties to vet, frame, and generate discussion, games, research, education and commerce using current events.

Now you can listen to KIP's Emerging Narrative...thanks to AI voice generator

Consider this audio a companion to the Bigger Picture video of various quotes I’ve collected rather than a mirror image…there’s more to this multifaceted story.

“A unique curation of emergent voices describing this moment we find ourselves in.”

— KIP

This is my first experiment with AI voice generation using a script made from individual quotes from civic participators I’ve been tracking for last past 7 years, describing this moment we find ourselves in. Quote credits in the images below and a full list to come.

The bigger picture, in your words

With my KIP project to make sense in the social age and surface the best civic participators - or members of “the Fifth Estate”, - I’ve been collecting the contributions on Twitter.

For a couple years I made graphic images of quotes I spied. I put some of them together into a larger narrative of our time, and this moment. Take a look!

Below is a short version of the narrative in the video. See the video for quote credits or read the transcript with credits here.

“The Bigger Picture” In Snippets From Emergent News Contributors Curated By KIP

If I were writing the book on 2020, this would be the BLUF

“We are at war but most Americans don’t realize it and even fewer know the American president was installed to destroy us.” #fridaymorning #quoteoftheday #TrumpFailedAmerica #TRUMPDestroyedAMERICA #BookBoost #amwriting #Election2020 #VoteForOurLives pic.twitter.com/STOHuisOnF

— Trust is a license. Renew it. (@actuallyreal33) July 17, 2020

This is how a book written by the ‘generative journalism” account/“knowledge service in an infodemic” I contribute to would start. I believe that’s called BLUF: bottom line, up front.

What would the first sentence of YOUR book on 2020 be?

Today's bookshelf

Our bookshelf of tomes about this dark chapter in American political history keeps growing…

“Age Of Lies. Rigged. Cold War. Hot Peace. Dirty Money. Unfreedom. Shadow State. Red Notice. Stable Genius. Untold Story. Putin’s People. Crime In Progress. Secret Meetings. Dark Towers. Trail Of Destruction. Age of Trump.”

We’ll keep adding to it until this chapter of history is fully written & in the dustbin.

Here’s to the heroes among us who are going to bring us through.

A knowledge service to cut the noise in today’s infodemic

“If you can’t follow what’s happening, you can’t adequately think or act in this crucial moment.”

Trump impeachment rally - San Francisco Federal Building 12/2019. Image by me.

Today’s info war sure is info hell, isn’t it? The United Nations is calling it an “infodemic”.

When I talk to people — intelligent people, educated people, media and news professionals, tuned in people, random people — pretty much when I talk to everyone, they don’t know at all what I know.

Or they know a lot less, or they admit they get their news from “CNN…and FoxNews, for balance”, or they simply aren’t trying to follow the firehose of info flying at us these days.

The enemy is noise, the goal is clarity.

~ Jon Stewart told the New York Times this week

Most people I talk to are clinging to an outdated and irrelevant opinion or worldview like it’s a life raft.

This is a problem.

An information diet that doesn’t serve you is COSTLY

• during a pandemic that requires us to reenvision how we live;

• in an Election Year;

• when Western Liberal Democracy is under attack both domestic and foreign, with a main weapon being military-grade psy op disinformation and propaganda directed at a civilian population.

If people can’t follow what’s happening or learn the historical basis of what’s happening or perceive the machinations of global alliances and systems including the largest law enforcement action against organized crime that the world has ever seen, they can’t adequately think and act in this moment.

It’s a costly problem that can be solved, as Jon Stewart points out, by clarity.

“For more than a decade I’ve been following sources & stories that are coming together now. I want you to see what I see.”

I’m an info hound as you know. I’ve been curating speciality lists of expert sources on Twitter for more than a decade, and relying on them almost exclusively for my news gathering needs through the Arab Spring and the Gezi Park Protests in Turkey. The list of 1,000 sources I mention in this post was meant to be my lens on American politics and current affairs for the 2016 Presidential Election.

I’ve been following stories that are all coming together now. And I’m working to share that with you. So you can see what I see.

Introducing a curated knowledge & awareness project for concerned citizens

See a few news stories a day…

Subscribe to a daily Trust Is A License Nuzzle newsletter with just a few of the top news stories shared from 1,000 curated sources

Knowledge Is Power (formerly referred to as Trust Is A License, a phrase from Shefaly Yogendra) is generative journalism, a community service to inform citizens

At its core the project is a Twitter account run by a small group of diverse centrists who see all sides of global and societal threats and want to ensure our fact-based perspective gets voice and distribution in this age of extreme disinformation campaigns.

We’re also exploring a variety of other ways to connect, present, and share this vital and contextual information that only become more relevant with each passing day. We all need to know this. It’s our history. More on that soon.

One of our readers has described us as civil service journalism. “What you’re doing is generative journalism. It’s a community service to inform citizens at a time when the Fourth Estate is dying and under attack, and news media has devolved into propaganda machines.”

“We vet content & sources, metabolize info & amplify points to help you understand this moment in time. ”

As the mainstream media failure became clear, citizen researchers and curators like me picked up the slack. At Knowledge Is Power, our focus has been on vetting the content and sources, metabolizing the information, and finding ways to underline and amplify clear points we believe are valuable to cutting through the noise and understanding this moment in time.

We hope to connect the dots for ourselves and others. We started doing this for OURSELVES. Yet, it’s for others. Without any marketing the account’s organic reach has grown 160x in its first year.

By vetting and amplifying the work of citizen researchers, whistleblowers, journalists, social justice workers, national security experts and more, we aim to strengthen democracy and stop the playing-the-extremes-so-nothing-gets-done horseshoe that divides us.

“Our mission is to help with what comes next: when we dig out from the damage, there will be a massive need to educate people about what just happened.
”

As people begin to dig out from the damage of the cyber war/information war/total kinetic war against Western Liberal Democracy (including Trump & transnational organized crime) that we are currently experiencing in America and throughout the world, there’s going be a need for a massive education of the American people about what just happened. Hollywood is already telling these stories. We want to help with that.

…or get everything we share

Follow the Trust Is A License Twitter feed to see who & what we’re highlighting & what discussions we’re a part of.

Scan some recent tweets.

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The Wrap's Power Women Breakfast for Girls Who Code

Good morning at TheWrap’s #PowerWomen2018 breakfast benefit for #GirlsWhoCode at Dolby Laboratories. Heard from #femalefounders of entertainment and technology ventures as well as the mayors of Oakland and Compton. #enttech #startups #wrapwomen

TBT, speaking at The Commonwealth Club & signing my book

This talk "The Rise of Turkey" was moved to a larger room (about 100 in the audience and live-streaming the podcast to Commonwealth Club members everywhere) and we ran out of books to sign right away. 

I was joined on the panel by:

• Steven West, Ph.D., Fulbright Scholar to Turkey; Professor of Turkish Studies and Cross Cultural Communication

• Bonnie Joy Kaslan, Honorary Consul General, Turkish Republic, S.F. Bay Area

• Joel Brinkley, Professor of Journalism, Stanford University; Foreign Affairs Columnist; Former Pulitzer Prize Winning Foreign Correspondent, The New York Times — Moderator

Amidst the turmoil of the Arab Spring, Turkey has arisen as a powerful force in the Middle East. The distinguished panel will discuss the nation's culture and its sometimes bitter past, the growing influence of religion in Turkey, and her frayed alliances. In addition, the panelists will discuss how Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's dynamic prime minister, is becoming one of the most powerful voices in the troubled region.
 

You can listen to the podcast here.

TBT, tracking the election in a 100-day live blog

My team of media producers tracked social media reactions and global news about the election on a new social publishing platform. You can view the 100-day live blog here.

What we mean when we say "Berkeley"

Much of what I and my Berkeley-native peers experienced growing up there was being duplicated in alternative communities everywhere, and also much of it was a product of the times. We didn't know that.

Berkeley is revealed in its "byzantine cultural complexity" by secular Jewish homegirl author of new book about going undercover in Jerry Falwell's evangelical church.

"If you’re from Berkeley...you know the muscle of the Berkeley Left is actually made up of a million fibers, often flexing at cross purposes — the Green Partiers, the Clintonites, the Obamaphiles, the Slow Foodists and Dumpster Divers, the Second and Third Wave feminists, the Marxists, anarchists, and Revolutionary Communists, the vaguely apathetic left-leaners, the merely apathetic."

Read the Berkeleyside article here.

"The first time I saw a bowl of table grapes I had a panic attack. ~ KOKO MULDER"

Connecting through social media with the diaspora of Berkeley kids, and comparing our upbringings. Read the New York Times article here.

Freedom of the Internet demonstration, TBT

Odd to see this Internet ban memory from my final days as an expat in Istanbul at a time when America is voting to save or kill Net Neutrality tomorrow.

A photo author, journalist & mid-east politics expert Hugh Pope took of me midway in the march from his Istiklal apartment.

What Hugh Pope wrote about that day:

Some pictures of demonstrators on Sunday 15 May 2011 calling for reform of Turkey's new conservative internet laws in Istanbul's Istiklal St today - the biggest, loudest and happiest protest I've seen in more than a decade of living in the city center. Some signs were funny too: "Dawkins is a scientist, not a pornographer, you retard!" "Your Internet is being cut according to Islamic regulations" (carried by the two gentlemen in chador-like garb, punning on signs in religious-minded meat shops) "EnSUCKlopedia" (well, roughly), "Censorship for Security is like Sex for Virginity" and "Hands off my porn". 

Unless the government backtracks, a whole new system goes into force on 22 August. Internet providers will be obliged to offer every subscriber four filters of varying severity, and forcing Internet cafes to choose which sites can be accessed in advance. Any attempt to bypass such regulations will be criminal, and all Internet providers will be responsible for enforcement. 

The liberal Radikal newspaper, for instance, compares this coming system to that of China, Iran or Cuba. This appears to be a new turn for Turkey, which has so far been ambivalent on Internet freedom - YouTube was banned for what seemed like years, but even the Prime Minister noted that it was easy to use a proxy server to reach it. But from 22 August even proxies will be banned ... and all this in a country negotiating to join the EU! 

Not only Turks are concerned. Turkey's expat harem's Queen of Social Media, Anastasia Ashman, peeled off the crowds to visit and tweet from our windows overlooking the crowds of tens of thousands (see picture). At the same time, her Internet guru husband Burc managed to get my wi-fi system working properly for the first time in five years. So a big catch-up for me and I hope the demo will turn into a giant step forward for Turkey.

Noticing the conservative gaming of Google

Why are these the questions Google autocompletes when I was searching for the answer to how many people were about to lose their health insurance due to Congress' current action? Factcheck.org addressed this misleading Republican talking point back in 2014.