Social Media Addiction Lawsuits and AI Propaganda
Meta Lost in Court. AI Propaganda Is Getting Better. Now What?
Social Media Addiction, AI Propaganda and the New Meme War
Social-media companies are beginning to face legal consequences for platform designs accused of encouraging compulsive use. At the same time, artificial intelligence is making propaganda cheaper, faster, more visually sophisticated, and easier to distribute across borders.
These developments may appear unrelated. They are both consequences of digital systems built to capture attention.
In this episode of Network Issues, media scholar Jamie Cohen and marketing strategist Destinee Day examine recent verdicts against Meta and YouTube, the future of children’s online-safety regulation, OpenAI’s decision to discontinue Sora, and the rise of AI-generated propaganda in the conflict involving Iran and the United States.
What Happened in the Meta and YouTube Social-Media Addiction Case?
In March 2026, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google-owned YouTube liable for contributing to the harm experienced by a young woman who began using their platforms as a child.
The case focused on product-design features rather than merely the posts uploaded by users. These included systems such as autoplay, infinite feeds, intermittent rewards, and notifications designed to encourage repeated engagement.
The jury awarded the plaintiff:
$3 million in compensatory damages
$3 million in punitive damages
Meta was assigned 70 percent of the responsibility and YouTube 30 percent. Both companies have appealed. (Reuters)
This was a landmark verdict because the plaintiff’s lawyers argued that the harm came from how the platforms were designed—not simply from third-party content.
Was Meta Also Fined $375 Million?
Yes, but that was a separate case.
The episode combines details from two verdicts that occurred around the same time.
In a New Mexico case, a jury found that Meta violated state consumer-protection law and harmed children’s mental health and safety. That jury imposed approximately $375 million in penalties for thousands of alleged violations. (AP News)
The two cases should be clearly separated on the published page:
Case
Defendants
Outcome
Los Angeles individual lawsuit
Meta and YouTube
$6 million total damages
New Mexico state case
Meta
Approximately $375 million in penalties
The $375 million figure was not the award in the individual Los Angeles addiction case.
Why Do These Verdicts Matter?
The financial penalties are small relative to the companies’ overall revenue.
Their greater significance lies in the legal theory.
Section 230 generally protects online services from being treated as the publisher or speaker of content created by users. In the Los Angeles case, the plaintiff focused instead on platform design.
The argument was not simply:
Instagram showed harmful content.
It was:
Instagram and YouTube were designed in ways that encouraged compulsive use and amplified harm.
That distinction may influence thousands of similar cases involving families, school districts, and state governments. It does not guarantee that every future claim will succeed, especially while appeals remain pending. (AP News)
Is Social Media Clinically Addictive?
The terminology remains contested.
Some researchers and clinicians use concepts such as:
Problematic social-media use
Compulsive use
Behavioral addiction
Platform dependence
Disordered use
Instagram head Adam Mosseri testified that he does not believe people become clinically addicted to social media, although he acknowledged that some users spend more time on the platform than they intend. (AP News)
Destinee and Jamie compare platform use with gambling because both can involve variable rewards, habitual checking, and a compulsion to return.
The safest published wording is:
The lawsuits allege that certain platform features encourage compulsive or addiction-like use. Whether “social media addiction” is the best clinical term remains debated.
Why Is Protecting Children Online So Difficult?
Most people agree that children need stronger protections.
The disagreement begins when policymakers attempt to define and enforce them.
Possible approaches include:
Age declarations
Government identification
Parental consent
Facial-age estimation
Biometric analysis
Device-level controls
App-store verification
Platform design requirements
Each creates tradeoffs involving effectiveness, privacy, access, data retention, and surveillance.
A system strong enough to verify every child’s age may require collecting sensitive information from everyone—including adults.
That creates questions such as:
Who stores the identity data?
How long is it retained?
Can it be used for advertising?
What happens after a data breach?
Can anonymous or vulnerable users still access information?
Will large companies be better positioned to comply than small platforms?
A child-safety system can create new risks if it requires permanent identity infrastructure.
What Is the Kids Online Safety Act?
The Kids Online Safety Act, commonly called KOSA, is proposed federal legislation intended to place stronger safety obligations on online platforms used by minors.
Supporters argue that platforms should provide safer defaults, parental tools, and greater transparency.
Critics have raised concerns involving:
Age verification
Privacy
Government pressure over lawful content
Restrictions on LGBTQ+ or reproductive-health information
Broad definitions of harm
Advantages for the largest platforms
The episode treats KOSA as though it would automatically create lifelong identity tracking. That is an interpretation of the risks, not a settled description of every provision.
The page should explain that the debate involves a real conflict between youth protection, anonymity, privacy, and freedom of access.
What Is Section 230?
Section 230 is part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
It generally protects online services from being held legally responsible as the publisher of material created by users. It also protects certain good-faith content-moderation decisions.
It does not provide unlimited immunity for every action taken by a technology company.
Courts and lawmakers continue debating how it applies to:
Recommendation systems
Product design
Paid content
Algorithms
Online marketplaces
Civil-rights claims
Artificial intelligence
Eliminating Section 230 entirely could expose both large and small online services to far more litigation. Large companies might be able to absorb those costs more easily than nonprofit communities, independent forums, or startups.
What Happened to OpenAI’s Sora?
OpenAI discontinued the consumer Sora web and app experiences on April 26, 2026. The Sora API is scheduled for discontinuation on September 24, 2026. (OpenAI Help Center)
The decision also ended a planned agreement with Disney involving a $1 billion investment and licensed Disney characters. Reuters reported that the transaction had not closed and no investment money had changed hands. (Reuters)
This is more precise than saying:
Disney invested $1 billion and then pulled the money out.
A better description is:
Disney and OpenAI announced a planned $1 billion agreement, but the transaction did not close before OpenAI discontinued Sora.
Did Sora’s Shutdown Prove the AI Bubble Burst?
Not by itself.
Sora’s discontinuation shows that a particular consumer product did not become sustainable or strategically valuable enough to continue.
It does not prove that:
Generative AI is disappearing
OpenAI is abandoning video research
Data centers will close
AI investment has ended
Consumers have rejected every form of synthetic media
Jamie argues that a failed consumer product can still leave behind infrastructure capable of being redirected toward surveillance, enterprise services, coding, advertising, or other forms of automation.
That is analysis rather than a documented plan. It is useful to frame it as a question:
What happens to expensive AI infrastructure when the original consumer product fails?
What Is AI Slop?
AI slop is a critical term for high-volume synthetic content created primarily to gain attention, fill feeds, imitate popular formats, or generate advertising revenue.
It may include:
Fake news footage
Synthetic animals
Fabricated celebrity videos
Automated serialized stories
Generated political imagery
Repetitive motivational posts
Fake historical scenes
Propaganda
Not every AI-generated image or video is slop.
The term usually implies that speed and volume matter more than originality, accuracy, consent, or artistic quality.
What Is Memetic Warfare?
Memetic warfare is the strategic use of memes, images, video, humor, symbols, and shareable cultural references to influence public perception.
A successful propaganda meme does not need to explain an entire political argument.
It compresses that argument into something that can be:
Understood quickly
Shared easily
Adapted by supporters
Repeated across platforms
Used to provoke emotion
Distributed beyond national borders
Memetic warfare can involve governments, military groups, political movements, activists, troll networks, independent creators, or loosely affiliated supporters.
How Is Iran Using AI-Generated Propaganda?
During the 2026 conflict, pro-Iran groups distributed English-language AI-generated videos aimed at Western audiences.
Some used Lego-style animation, American popular-culture references, humor, and depictions of U.S. political figures. Others used darker imagery involving capitalism, colonial violence, Jeffrey Epstein, war, and American power.
The Associated Press reported that groups connected with or amplified by Iranian media used sophisticated English-language memes to influence Western perceptions. Some creators described themselves as independent, although analysts noted that the tightly controlled Iranian internet and state amplification made the relationship difficult to determine. (AP News)
The safest wording is therefore:
Pro-Iran creators and media networks produced and amplified the videos.
Avoid attributing every example directly to the Iranian military unless the source and authorship are verified.
Why Did the Lego Propaganda Work?
Destinee identifies several reasons:
It was visually polished.
It used recognizable Western imagery.
The music was catchy.
It was funny enough to invite sharing.
The cultural references required little explanation.
It mocked recognizable political figures.
It looked more like entertainment than government messaging.
That blend is powerful because the audience may redistribute the propaganda while commenting on how strange, funny, or impressive it is.
Opponents can therefore become part of the distribution system.
Why Are Symbols So Important in Propaganda?
The darker video discussed in the episode combines images associated with:
Native Americans
Colonial violence
Capitalism
Wall Street
Gold
Children
Jeffrey Epstein
American military power
Each symbol carries multiple historical and emotional meanings.
The video does not make a conventional evidence-based argument. It builds a compressed narrative:
American power is rooted in colonization, greed, hypocrisy, and violence against vulnerable people.
A viewer can reject that argument while still recognizing why the symbolism is persuasive.
Media literacy requires interpreting the emotional architecture of propaganda—not only checking whether an individual image is authentic.
Is Memetic Warfare New?
No.
Governments and political movements have always used:
Posters
Cartoons
Songs
Radio
Film
Slogans
Satire
Rumors
Symbols
What has changed is the speed, accessibility, personalization, and volume.
AI allows smaller groups to generate animated videos, synthetic voices, translations, and culturally tailored messages at far lower cost.
Social platforms then distribute the material globally without requiring traditional broadcasters.
How Should People Analyze Digital Propaganda?
Use this framework:
Identify the source
Who created or first posted the material?
Separate authorship from amplification
A government account sharing a video does not necessarily prove that the government created it.
Identify the intended audience
Is the content aimed at local supporters, enemies, Western activists, journalists, or undecided viewers?
Decode the symbols
What historical events, brands, memes, religions, or political figures appear?
Identify the emotional objective
Does it seek laughter, fear, humiliation, anger, pride, or despair?
Verify the underlying claims
Symbolic power is not factual evidence.
Avoid becoming an uncritical distributor
Sharing propaganda to express outrage can still expand its reach.
Key Takeaways
A Los Angeles jury awarded $6 million in a social-media harm case involving Meta and YouTube.
A separate New Mexico jury imposed approximately $375 million in penalties against Meta.
Both cases are significant, but appeals and further proceedings remain.
The Los Angeles case focused heavily on platform design rather than only user-created content.
Age-verification systems may protect children while also creating privacy and surveillance risks.
Section 230 does not automatically resolve lawsuits involving allegedly defective platform design.
OpenAI discontinued Sora’s consumer web and app experiences in April 2026.
Disney’s planned $1 billion OpenAI transaction had not closed.
AI-generated propaganda can combine humor, cultural references, and geopolitical messaging.
Pro-Iran groups have used AI videos to influence Western audiences.
Media literacy requires evaluating authorship, amplification, symbols, incentives, and emotional intent.
Questions Answered in This Episode
Were Meta and YouTube found liable for social-media addiction?
A Los Angeles jury found that negligent platform design contributed to a young woman’s harm and awarded $6 million. Both companies are appealing.
Why was Meta ordered to pay $375 million?
That amount came from a separate New Mexico consumer-protection case involving alleged harms to children.
Does Section 230 protect addictive design?
Section 230 generally concerns liability for third-party content. Courts are still determining how it applies when lawsuits challenge a platform’s own product design.
Did OpenAI shut down Sora?
OpenAI discontinued the consumer Sora web and app experiences on April 26, 2026. Its API is scheduled to close on September 24, 2026.
Did Disney lose a $1 billion Sora investment?
The planned transaction never closed, and Reuters reported that no money changed hands.
What is memetic warfare?
Memetic warfare is the strategic use of shareable cultural content to influence political attitudes, identities, or interpretations of a conflict.
Is every pro-Iran AI video official government propaganda?
Not necessarily. Some came from pro-Iran creators or groups and were later amplified by state-linked media. Authorship should be verified individually.
About the Hosts
Jamie Cohen
Jamie Cohen is a media scholar, professor, writer, and expert on internet culture, online extremism, memes, media literacy, and the manosphere.
Website: jamesncohen.com
Substack: New Media Homework
Destinee Day
Destinee Day is a marketing strategist and founder of Rudy & Company. Her work focuses on branding, digital strategy, communications, online influence, and responsible marketing.
Website: rudyandcompany.com
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Jamie (00:01.581)
How you been?
Destinee Day (00:03.12)
I have been offline, that's how I've been.
Jamie (00:05.07)
that you've been missing some of the biggest, most weirdest things that have happened in a while that I cannot wait to talk to you about.
Destinee Day (00:15.0)
Of course that happens the moment I block all social media from my...
Jamie (00:18.882)
which is very smart. there's a couple of things we're gonna catch up on based on our previous conversation about the social media addiction case, which is now prosecuted, I guess that's how put it. And then I wanna talk to you about the fall, excuse me, I wanna talk to you about the fall of Sora, which is OpenAI's social media app. And I especially would like to talk to you about the filthy meme war that we're now in, okay? Because...
This is not the meme war of 2017 when Trump took office and Donald Trump Jr. called himself the general of of memeing. This is like what happens when you get into the big game. All right, so I want to talk to you about these three things. So I guess let's start. Let's start with the I guess let's start with the social media addiction one. You want to talk about that?
Destinee Day (01:11.504)
Yes, it is the one I am aware of because I don't have to be on social media to see it. I do have a news app that I do have access to. So I did see that and you texted it to me. So,
Jamie (01:13.838)
Yeah.
Jamie (01:23.854)
Well, because we spent so much time talking about it, I figured like it's now on our radar, you know. Yes, that's should. So the court, the jury has found Facebook and Google liable for social media addiction. And I'm gonna put that in air quotes again, like we did last time, because addiction when they refer to it is compulsion. That's what they mean by it. And so compulsion is a similar addiction to gambling.
Destinee Day (01:29.262)
Yes, which we will link to that episode.
Destinee Day (01:35.344)
Thank
Jamie (01:51.81)
which is the compulsion to return to it. In this case, they were held liable. And this case is fascinating because like we talked about last time, it's about a young woman, 20 years old, who is the main defendant who claimed that her addiction to social media caused her harm. And we know now, of course, we've known this for a while, that meta properties are aware of the harm they cause. It was in the Facebook papers. So it's not like we're
It's not like we don't know that these platforms cause harm. It's just that this outcome is so interesting. Because we talked about it last time as like a benchmark case, because now it's a precedent. Now once you settle, it's a precedent. Doesn't mean they're going to pay yet. Odds are is that Meta will appeal because for anybody who knows these things happen, as soon as they pay it, assumes guilt. So they're going to try to push this one further down. Or as I'm about to talk about, maybe not. And we're going to see. So.
The case ends and Facebook's held liable for 75%, Google for Meta, sorry, Meta's held liable for 75 % and Google for 25%. And it's for their social media properties, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. And they were fined by the court $375 million, which represents, I think $5,000 for every person that is harmed in the state. Okay, I think that's what it comes out to.
To give you an example of how much money that is to these companies, 375 million to Meta, just to Meta is the equivalent of if you made $65,000 a year, it's $17. So it's a very little amount of money when it comes to a company that's worth 1.5 trillion, okay? So it's not exactly a penalty, but it's more about the fact that it's a precedent. But now it's settled, or so to speak.
Okay. What do you think? How do you feel about it?
Destinee Day (03:56.058)
I think a few things. mean, obviously this entire lawsuit meta definitely acted like this wasn't going to be the outcome. Their lawyers presented the case in a way that definitely made it seem like the main defendant was, there were too many other instances in her life that caused her harm and that they couldn't hold the apps accountable.
Jamie (04:06.061)
Mm-hmm.
Destinee Day (04:22.338)
I think though, if I mean, personally, if you're looking at things like that, that's exactly the kind of predatory nature that is the problem here because they provide an addictive environment that feels comforting, right? You know, that.
Alcohol works, right? For alcoholics, drugs work for drug addicts. so gambling works for people with gambling. And we've mentioned many times that these things are designed like slot machines. So I was a little vindicated because they definitely acted like this wasn't gonna be the outcome. I think my response to you was, this is great, but now what?
Jamie (05:07.67)
Right, that's the problem. Yes. So I think there's this very big sense of this is great, but I think this is gonna have ripple effects that like we're not really prepared for. That's what I
Destinee Day (05:19.458)
Right. And a couple of people have asked me about it and have asked me about my thoughts. And, you know, I've reiterated to them a lot of what you and I have talked about and some of it's been offline, but. Okay, great. But like, what's the, what's the solution to this? Right. let's say that they do appeal it and you know, it's the same verdict all the way up to the top. Let's say that does happen. How are we going to enforce any of this? Because what are you going to do? Put the.
Jamie (05:42.919)
Right. That's right.
Destinee Day (05:48.048)
put the enter your age thing, people lie on those all the time, it's so easy. And to a point that you've made many times, children don't have IDs, so then there's no ID verification, and then it's totally unethical to ask for a biometrics of a kid, so.
Destinee Day (06:10.894)
What's the solution? it like a pure, I don't even know, a band wouldn't even work because you'd have to verify someone's age. So I'm lost.
Jamie (06:18.998)
Right. So I think you're right. I mean, that is the outcome of this. The questions become the outcome because now that this is a precedent, you're right. don't think it's ending in terms of like, now Meta and Google are held or Alphabet are held responsible. Now they're like, okay, now we have to appeal it, goes to a circuit. If they decide to kick it back, then it goes up again, they appeal again. Then it goes up to the Supreme Court. And you know, the Supreme Court and Congress and everybody, they're like, they really understand the internet.
like they truly remember the people behind a lot of these things like even like Dick Durbin, he's a senator in Illinois who had just Gordon Levitt up to do the repeal section 230 thing. He's from he's been a senator for a long time, but he's from the era where like, people still thought the internet was a series of tubes, you know, and like, it's kind of like that.
look, they're not wrong. It's wires, but it's also wrong in terms of like what people are getting out of it and like how algorithms even work. And you're you're absolutely right about the idea of like that black box. This case was not about the content, right? This case was about the technology. This case was about the hidden nature of the algorithms, the slot machine like click on a thing and refreshes and what it sees is based on your information that you fed to it.
And that's what makes it somewhat harder to talk about than slot machines, because a slot machine is a contained data set. The outcome is in the machine. So when you use it, it's not like you're pulling it and some other machine is jumping into your machine. So this is all the content that is being basically cycled into your view space. But you're absolutely right, too. When people talk about this, they forget, like, this case is complicated by the young woman's, like, horrible past, like, horrific past.
We didn't really go into her details and I'd prefer not to, but like she was abused as a teenager pretty terribly. She was basically only brought back into her house when her parents found out that they could like sue Meta for this. Like, so she was abused and like the claim here is that like, if it wasn't for social media, she may not have been as depressed in those many ways, like it put her down in those places. And I think this case is also like a big stand in case for the thought.
Jamie (08:37.816)
just the idea of harm. Like when people think about like what causes the depression in young people, what causes people to not feel great about reality? It's like, well, social media platforms definitely don't help. it's goal is to keep you on the platform, not to push you outdoors and like touch grass.
Destinee Day (09:01.956)
Well, I mean, this reflects back. just got back from a trip from a school. was a larger institution and I got the opportunity to interact with a bunch of students and a lot of what they wanted to talk about was surprisingly social media addiction, which then I was like, I have a ton of feelings about it. And they introduced me to a few apps that I've been trialing, which is why I've been offline. But the...
surprising thing that I heard from every single one of them. Who are high performers by the way. They're just they're not an average student. They are the highest performers at that school and they all said the moment that they shut it off and their brain chemistry like reset and rewired they were doing even better in class. They felt mental clarity for the first time in years. They were like we weren't walking around in constant brain fog.
And I was like...
Jamie (10:04.302)
But that's what the gray area is of this. And that's why a legal precedent like this is so difficult to talk about because when you're talking about compulsion that is like gambling addiction, you really, like we talked about, like gambling doesn't have windows. It's meant to keep you there. Whereas phones are like a device or an app, they're an appliance. So you could put the appliance down. You can leave those things. The other part of that is I think that's true because like I was getting very addicted.
like a few weeks ago, like very much like doom scrolling. Like I had to kind of see what the news was saying like all the time. I mean, we literally went to war with another country. So was like, what the hell? Like I was trying to keep track of it. But then it became like all consuming. But like, just started like, like my wife noticed that was like, I was keeping it on too much around the kids. And I was like, my gosh, you're right. Like that's a bad thing. that's a, just holding the phone in front of children like breaks the concentration. So was like, all right, let me do my best. But in the days since I just like,
focused on them and not it, like I felt better, you know? So you do have this almost an immediate, though same way you feel rewarded by doom scrolling, you have an almost immediate reward system by not doom scrolling. But that is, again, this is where the problem comes in with this case, which is that these are consumer choices. That's a consumer choice, not a technology choice. The reason this gets weird isn't because of the outcome of this case, but rather what the case does in terms of the next steps, which is like what you just mentioned.
Destinee Day (11:12.944)
Right.
Jamie (11:31.779)
which is now what? Now do we ban children? And exactly what you assumed would happen, happened. Instantaneously, everybody came out of the woodwork being like, cool, now we can blame Meta, let's ban the internet for children. And that is immediately the big problematic thing because like you just said, it's like, there are no good safety features built for children. And it brings us to the question of like loss of privacy more than anything else.
Destinee Day (11:59.417)
Yeah.
Jamie (12:01.442)
So, go ahead, what were you gonna say?
Destinee Day (12:03.084)
No, I'm just like, I'm lost in this, like, it's a constant, it's a self-fulfilling cycle. Like, yes, it causes problem, there's no solution. So problem continues, still no solution.
Jamie (12:10.284)
Yeah.
Jamie (12:18.146)
But there's like these big organization groups being like, all right, well now we have to get the Kids Online Safety Act through Congress. And like, that is a terrible act. It is an act that is designed specifically to use any data available, which is what these companies want, which is remember, meta is missing a lot of data. This is my big conspiracy about the metaverse. The metaverse is in its failure, which we're not gonna talk about today, but like the metaverse itself as a technology was because Zuckerberg couldn't really see what else we were looking at.
The metaverse allowed a more immersive data collection. In fact, a lot of the goggles looked at your eyes. It looked at the eye movement. That was claimed as technology, but it's not to say they're not collecting that data too. The data they're missing is like everyday life data, data that travels with you offline. And so the Kids Online Safety Act is really designed as a way of putting data into the machine at scale to collect it longitudinally so that data can be then
commodified and sold off. So the younger you could bring kids in, which is right now, kids can't use social media before the age of 13, allegedly, they do. But in order to really ban the internet, you've got to start getting data from before 13. And so now you have a very big data set. And then of course, you say to yourself, well, Meta can't contain all the data, so they're going to send it off to a third party company that's going to buy it. And like, who is to say that that data doesn't get hacked? What does it do with it? Who owns it? What do they repair it with? What is all these things?
And then the worst part of this is that very often this leads to the conversation about the sun setting of section 230, which would leave only meta. Because if you make $65,000 a year and you, what's $17? Like an Erewhon shake or something. One of those very, let's say you buy something for 17 bucks, right? Like that's how much money they lose during this lawsuit.
But if Section 230 were taken away, all the small sites that can't afford lawsuits, like $375 million would kill probably 80 % of every social media or platform site that currently exists. So when somebody sues them for that level, that's the end of the company. They're not gonna fight back, they're just gonna shut down. Which means in the end, by losing things like Section 230 or by adding like age gating, you're basically saying, I'm super pro meta. I'm like.
Jamie (14:40.544)
super pro big tech, I want only the biggest tech to win because they can afford survival from the public. Whereas the public does need survival, the public does need safety. It just doesn't need it the way that's being advertised. And like, I think one of the biggest sponsors of the COSA Act is Meta. Like, so of course they want this. So I think that the big problem with this case isn't so much that it was settled in terms of this. It's just like, I'm in one part like glad this young woman gets restitution or settled.
maybe it'll maybe in some way or another, it'll change her life. But the worst part is that it creates this exciting outcome for the public to be like, hop on this bad bandwagon of like, well, let's do the solutions. And none of these solutions currently are good. None of them.
Destinee Day (15:27.726)
Right, well, it's classic misdirection, like the Kids Online Safety Act sounds like a good thing.
Jamie (15:35.904)
Yeah, who doesn't want to keep you safe? Like that would be ridiculous. Yeah.
Destinee Day (15:37.744)
Like obviously that is a good thing, but it's one of those things where, and I don't feel like people get into it anymore. Like no one reads legislation, like nerds like you and I do, but right like that. I'm going to dig into a thing where like,
Jamie (15:56.302)
Yeah.
Destinee Day (16:07.952)
as a bigger part of media literacy, this is also information literacy, and we can't take headlines at face value anymore. Maybe once upon a time we could, I would maybe argue that we couldn't, but that's where you can't take any headline from anybody. You have to go in, you have to do your research, you have to look at things and do a very deep dive.
because otherwise you don't have all the information and then that's where, okay, where are you reading it? Is it on a journalism website? If so, do you know who owns that source? Do you know who the publisher is owned by? Do you know all of that background? And that is a ton of information in today's day and age.
So even the public well-being is, it's a, you have to be passionate enough about it to go in and do the actual research about the thing.
Jamie (17:01.4)
Yeah, me.
Jamie (17:10.946)
Yeah, and that's what makes me feel somewhat cynical. It's because it's like when you don't see enough coverage of it. And sometimes I'm like the only people covering it are like Taylor Lorenz and Kat Tenbarge. And like it feels like with the lack of coverage in it, it almost makes you get cynical. Like, wait, is this just how everybody feels from the top down? Or is this just because we're given limited information? Is this because they're in the pocket of meta? Like those aren't good questions to ask even if they're not true, but just the fact that it gives me that like,
weird conspiratorial, like, why aren't we hearing this perspective except for like on our us discussing this, like this, and then it's tough because like you and I speak to people and like there's, it's very, it's kind of a pushback. People get really defensive when you're like, well, I don't think this is a good act. And they're just like, you don't want to keep kids safe? It's like, yes, of course I want to keep kids safe. Like, it's just, I don't want to have them put up their identity when they're zero years old to be tracked every year of their life until they're that age. Like that, I just don't want my children's data.
Destinee Day (18:01.999)
That's how it.
Jamie (18:11.118)
to be part of this mega structure.
Destinee Day (18:12.9)
Right, that doesn't sound very safe to me. That's how these things are designed, right? They're designed to make any pushback sound like you're a terrible person with no values.
Jamie (18:15.948)
In fact, it sounds the opposite of Yeah.
Jamie (18:24.398)
Brilliant propaganda. All right, I think I'm gonna keep the propaganda part of this to the end because I want to like, talk to you one more one more short bit about Sora shutting down. So I don't think you or I use Sora. So it doesn't really affect us now.
Destinee Day (18:26.926)
Mm-hmm.
Destinee Day (18:37.071)
Yes.
Destinee Day (18:40.96)
No, I use like basically every other AI situation except for Sora because
Jamie (18:47.618)
You're not a slop creator. I mean, like we've talked about this before. I am not, I always say this. I am not anti AI. I am anti pro AI. I use a lot of AI tools. I especially like AI tools that are inside of Lightroom or Photoshop. I like, I love my auto correct. I love my GPS. You know, I use AI. I love them. I don't like generative AI or what's known as inference AI because it's burning the environment and it's like usually making a lot of nice heavy duty.
Destinee Day (18:50.372)
I try not to be. Sometimes you have to.
Jamie (19:17.454)
hallucinations. But what I liked the least out of all of it was like the Sora app, which was supposed to be the TikTok clone for OpenAI. So you can create your own content and basically create a meta feed, I guess, of some sort, like a feed of content that doesn't exist. You could just create and generate over prompts. They were also really connected to a lot of existing IP that you could regenerate. you could create fantasy versions of reality in many ways. Of course, people went
all the terrible ways of that. So I don't even have to do imagination.
Destinee Day (19:47.952)
Not like the Hobbit fantasy, like bad fantasy.
Jamie (19:53.327)
Yeah, the bad kind. And usually, of course, all those fantasies perpetuate the hegemony of violence that comes to women, you know, it's typical. In fact, we're not we're not doing anything about Fruit Island here. But Fruit Island has a lot of derivative content that is a lot of explicit violence against women coded as Love Island characters as fruit. And it's almost like that's a whole other discussion. We're not getting into it. But Fruit Island is a craze. It is a slop show.
And it's a serialized AI show about Love Island, but they're fruit. And I got interviewed, know, all these sentences, I got interviewed about this yesterday. And I was like, man, all these sentences are like, for the you say them for the first time, you're like, what is going on? But that AI as a tool, as a prompt based tool, as a tool that we use, it's access, we have access to it, just like we have the internet.
It reproduces the things that we already do. It's just we don't have access to make them. so access to something like Sora gave people permission to create the content they can't see due to safety concerns. And so oftentimes it was just like coded aspects of violence or pornography that they wanted to see, but now they have the access to create, albeit somewhat fetishistic or like weird in general, but hey, to each their own. But the Sora shut down and it was just about an hour before.
it shut down, Disney pulled out of its $1 billion investment in it. And the big investment here, I think, I don't know what the discussions were, but I know that like, Bob Iger was originally interested in it because it gave people access to the characters. It gave people participatory environments of Disney, but it's a billion, a billion's a lot. And a lot of people pointed to the failure as like, this is the AI bubble popping. And I don't agree.
I think this is really what this is that social media in terms of AI social media isn't really a product. I just don't think that's a product. I don't think people are like super interested in like a TikTok clone that is just AI material. What is?
Destinee Day (22:04.44)
I'm sorry, I'm thinking about like...
Destinee Day (22:08.854)
AI Mickey Mouse.
Jamie (22:13.197)
No, don't go any further with that sentence. don't know what you're gonna say.
Destinee Day (22:18.498)
in blank, right? And then my brain's like, what is Bob Iger thinking there? Like, you know, like
Jamie (22:29.113)
So this is, I'd like to, I am personally like, this is a sign that the AI bubble is over and we're gonna move back towards it. But again, just like the whole lawsuit, and to make this a quicker part, is just like the whole lawsuit being settled in the favor of the public for addiction, the outcome of an AI bubble pop wouldn't be in favor of the people either, because now at least we know what AI is being used for. We know how people create, we know how people adjust their content, we know how people can generate new blurbs,
like texts, can create images. But in the absence of generative AI, the data centers don't close up shop and go home. They don't disappear. The collapse of an AI bubble would lead to a surveillance state because they'll just repurpose the technology. It's gonna still do its thing. They're still gonna keep that churning because they can't un-buy the technology. So I always get these fears of people getting super excited about this, because I'm like,
Sure, that's fun to watch and almost like a ha ha to Sam Altman, whatever, but like, yeah, it was a bad idea to begin with. So obviously it wasn't gonna work, but it's not like he's gonna stop using chat GPT. It's not like he's not gonna create GPT-6. That's gonna definitely get developed. So this is just a bump in the road of OpenAI's process. And I think it's a learning lesson for all of us that is like a TikTok clone that is just AI is just not a marketable idea. That's, I think it's stupid.
Destinee Day (23:57.24)
No, I mean, I've used AI to like make little videos of my dog talking, like saying like Merry Christmas and that like, I use that as my Christmas card, right? Cause I don't want to spend time or money doing a Christmas card. But.
Jamie (24:08.975)
Cute.
Destinee Day (24:16.568)
I mean, I feel like everyone's really excited about it to your point right now and everyone's learning how to create in it and doing the things that they think they always wanted to do. I can't tell you how many people from the film industry I know right now that are creating apps. Like they're learning how to create apps because of things like lovable.
Right. And they, in these courses, right. And they've learned that you can take a prompt and then you can have it give instructions to lovable. And like, they don't know any code. They know zero actual infrastructure of how the thing is built, but they're able to build it. And that to me is probably one of the scariest outcomes of AI is that we don't actually have the building block knowledge and what happens when, if that disappears.
We're in trouble.
Jamie (25:10.799)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Vibe coding, vibe coding is interesting because 90 % of vibe coding can be done with AI. And it's good in terms of people with curiosity. I have a friend who had high levels of curiosity in making an app. And I was like, well, you know, you could take courses, but he vibe coded 90 % of it. The problem is that 10 % is intellectual property. Code is art. Code is intellectual. Code is everybody's code is different. When you become a good person, a good coder, your knowledge of code is yours.
And so the last 10 % really does require learning. So you can vibe code to an extent. It's just that when you want to implement the app or actually make it work, you're definitely going to need either a professional or you have to become a professional. so I do again, back to the access. I appreciate that type of access far more than like creating violent video slump. You know, I appreciate people being like, I never knew what code is. And now I see code and now I'm like practicing with code. That to me is like admirable. So long as you don't get psychosis from it because
Destinee Day (25:57.912)
Yeah.
Jamie (26:08.845)
One of the downsides of AI is that it communicates to you like a human. so you get, your brain isn't developed enough to not see the AI as not a human. So you'd like start talking to it in a weird way. That's another discussion for another time, unfortunately. But that's, I do like that. I have somebody who developed a nice app who I'm like proud of him for it. I also like, use an app called Sunday, which is by Jack Dorsey, formerly the guy who founded Twitter.
Sunday is a very simple vibe coding app that he did. He's a coder though. So he was able to finish it and get it out there. Extremely lightweight app that tells you what the UV ray UV light is. I'm pale, so I need it. UV light is in your region and how long you have to be in the sun before you get burned. Very simple, you know, it's a it's a that's a good vibe coded app. Like you don't have to go nuts and like turn around and make a new social network. You just build something a nice usable tool.
Destinee Day (26:57.2)
Yeah!
Yes.
Thanks.
Destinee Day (27:07.032)
Right, I like it for things like that. It's where people, everyone that I know that is doing stuff like that, I'm always cautioning, like, this is your level one. Like, use this to go get funding, to go show people what's in your head. sometimes they can't always explain it. I struggle with that sometimes. But I mean, I think...
Jamie (27:36.227)
Yeah. And this is so now, now I'm going to show you the negatives. This is when you and I worked together years ago at the institution we worked together at. I used to teach a class. Do you remember me teaching a class called history of digital media during? Yeah.
Destinee Day (27:40.016)
you
Destinee Day (27:50.35)
Yes, yes, students would or our students would talk about it all the time. I usually have them right after that class and so And if you like, did you know or this crazy? Jamie taught us this today and I was like you can't google that on our computers. You just can't
Jamie (28:07.351)
No, yeah, I probably, even like, I was like telling them like you shouldn't, there's a reason class exists for this type of content because like just Googling it probably puts you on a list. The good news is I use the institutional IP address. So, well. If I were to do it at home, but then again, I do this at home too. So it's like, I have a VPN, like you see it right there. So it does like divert my content, but it doesn't mean like, you know.
Destinee Day (28:19.632)
Yes.
Jamie (28:33.677)
I'm a researcher, so hopefully there's a leeway. Hopefully, I don't know, I'll find out at the border, you know. But one of the byproducts of this war is a meme war. And one of the things I've warned students about back in 2017, and I actually checked, I went all the way back through my syllabi, because I wanted to see, did I really say this? Because in my head, I was like, this is a warning. And I did. My history of digital media, of course, used to be broken into three sections, history, cyber war, and future.
Destinee Day (28:40.24)
you
Jamie (29:02.541)
That was it. And the future part was out robots, which I didn't looking back, I probably should have spent more time on AI, but I spent it on like embodied robots. But then again, Melania walked down in the White House yesterday with a robot next to her. which walked surprisingly like Joe Biden. the robotics are everywhere, embodied robots are everywhere. Most embodied robots today, the majority of them are mechanical Turk. I mean, somebody's piloting them like a drone.
But there are a lot like the Honda Asimo, he's like a robot, like he runs, he's an independent robot. So I would often talk about that and students, they love that topic, but they hated the cyber war part. And one warning I used to give at the beginning of the cyber war part was there are three countries you don't f with. Syria, China, and Iran. Like you don't mess with them in the cyber sense because they have the biggest cyber armors. they did. I haven't really checked who has the biggest cyber armies today.
Now knowing what I know about elections, and now knowing about what I know about technologies, I'd probably include Mexico and Russia, of course. And we had a big army too, of course, our cyber army. But our cyber army is more like the CIA, you know, it's kind like just what we do. But the SEA, the Syrian Electronic Army and Iran's army is, they're brutal. All right, they, they're not like, they don't really have guardrails in terms of like what they do. So when we...
use memes in our propaganda warfare, they, they turn that up a notch. So I'm gonna, you probably haven't seen, I'm gonna share with you two different videos. They're both AI, okay, they're both what I would consider borderline slop, but they are extreme propaganda, okay. And one of them we could probably show on, on this and one of them I might just want to see your reaction from because showing it, might be like harmful to an audience. But
I would love to know your thoughts on these two clips in particular. These are real attack ads from the Iran's army. Hang on, I'm pause this. Okay. And now I just wanna know your reaction when you see this, because this is the real, this is a real piece of propaganda from Iran sent via the internet to the US.
Jamie (31:28.053)
I'm going to try text it to you.
Destinee Day (31:30.552)
You can text it, can screen share. You should be able to screen share on this too.
Jamie (31:34.569)
really? Okay, then screen share might be more fun. Let's do that. Because I don't know how I've never screen shared from this. So let me pull this up. Okay. Okay, let me open this up here. How do you screen share?
Let me, cool, screen share. Sorry. I'm trying to get, I know. I know, it's not, it's not letting me break through this. Let me see if I can get through it. No, it wants me to close and reopen Chrome, which would not be possible. Let me see.
Destinee Day (32:03.212)
You're professor of new media. This is basically
Destinee Day (32:19.131)
no, then just text it to me. And I'll screen share it.
Jamie (32:22.873)
Let's see if it works. Let me just try. Select tab, share. All right, here we go. Are you ready? Are you ready? Wait, can you still see, it's still recording both of us, right? okay.
Destinee Day (32:30.136)
Okay. Okay, I'm ready. I'm watching.
Destinee Day (32:37.028)
Yes, it's recording the screen share too. Yeah.
Jamie (33:38.083)
Okay
So I think that explains that one fair amount.
Destinee Day (33:46.424)
Wait, I'm so upset that it's using Legos.
Jamie (33:51.247)
You should be. That, give me your thoughts on it first.
Destinee Day (33:57.36)
First of all, it's kind of amazing, which is what makes it good. Wow, it's just, it's got a good beat. Like if it was not a propaganda, like it works, works. if you look at the big context of propaganda, it's funny. There's enough like.
Jamie (34:00.272)
Yeah.
Jamie (34:10.755)
Mm-hmm.
Jamie (34:14.959)
Yeah, if it wasn't horrific propaganda, right. Yeah.
Destinee Day (34:24.432)
culturally coded motifs in there that resonate with a lot of people. It's catchy.
Holy cow, all those things are dangerous.
Jamie (34:34.935)
It's pretty impactful. Yes, and it works. And all the reasons you said it works, it works. There was a line as soon as I saw the Lego, I was like, no, because it's very, there's a whole lot of meta discussions to be had about it. And like, if you want to get super intellectual about it, Lego is plastic, a petrol product. So it's oil, you know, the second thing is like Lego is not an American company, but very much American, very Western, you know, it's a it's a
a toy of decadence, so to speak. It's enough. It's basically like, when you think about like, in terms of like people building things, it's a toy where you can build things, but you're not like building things for like survival, you're building things for fun, you know, it's like, it's not cooking. It's like, it's not, there's no, the skill set here is like engineering, but for like children. The other part of it is like, it reminds me of like when Qaisem Soleimani, I think it was him before he was killed, which I'll explain in a second with the next one. When he, when Iran was attacked,
last time by the US. They were like, are you going to retaliate against the US? And he's like, who are you gonna who's your big target? He's like, I don't know, what am I gonna attack Spongebob? And like, it was such an insult that like, I think people didn't understand that he basically understood that like, the United States is a commodified culture or corporate culture, like, doesn't really have an icon that would hurt us, like, who would like and so they have like, Soleimani who was taken out was like the this this
that's their icon, that's their like person, that's their thing. And so like, when they use Lego against us, they're basically feeding us US slop, you know, like that's a very much a tactic of like the Lego movie, which is excellent movie being reused or repurposed in terms of like very disastrous propaganda. And so they're like, they're attacking consumerism at its heart. And so that's like, if I like when I was talking about like meme armies, like back in 2017 and 2018,
they were doing like Pepe the frog like dressed up in like some clown outfit or something. And I was like, this is only the beginning. Like those are shareables. What you're going to see someday is like, distinct messaging that comes from this. And I'm as soon as I saw this video, I was like, who boy, because it is a catchy song. And it's it is shareable. And it's it's, it's kind of funny. Yeah. Yeah. We were talking about like, at one point, we're like talked about like how
Destinee Day (36:52.836)
Kind of funny.
Jamie (36:59.245)
One of the worst traits, I don't think we talked about in the pod, but one of the worst traits of Trump is that he can be unintentionally funny, you know? And it's like, they're
Destinee Day (37:05.926)
I definitely don't think it's unintentional at all. I think... Yes, yeah.
Jamie (37:09.459)
well, he that's just his personality. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And like, so this is like attacking from that perspective. So comes off as a Western video, Western piece of content, does that coded designed into, kind of like pushing back in both the digital way. And like, I think we're not this isn't a politics show. But I think the original intent of this, this war or this incursion, whatever you want to call it, was a very quick maneuver that he like
was like what he wanted to do in Venezuela and misunderstood the entire thing. But the most important part for me as somebody who deals in the world of technology is that he completely misunderstood that if he just taken my course, he would have known this is one of the countries you don't mess with. And because when they mess with them, they attack in multiple layers that are digital and they could retrieve it, they could send it to audiences in the West and the West will actually want to reshare it. And like that becomes his own meta attack that I don't think
many countries are prepared for, and I don't think they've been prepared for that for a very long time. And I think during the 2017 period, it was very much seen as novel, like, interesting, France is using Pepe the Frog for Marine Le Pen, or Donald Trump Jr. is calling himself the meme general of the meme war. It was like, okay, that's fair. There was an upper hand coming from that perspective that the left could not match and to this day cannot either. But in this case, it's like the US actually can't match this tactic. This is like,
You know when like people like they always like was that line where it's like when they go low, you go high. Like this is like when when you go low, they go super low. This is bad. All right. I am going to show you a disastrous one. OK, this one. I didn't get to see your reactions with that one, so this one is a.
Destinee Day (38:40.236)
No.
Destinee Day (38:54.21)
My reaction was mostly eyes open, mouth open, my gosh.
Jamie (38:58.787)
Yeah. Okay. This, this is, I'm gonna pause it. The caption on this is actually pretty funny. Not the caption that's in the caption, because it's written in, I think Chinese. I don't know. I don't know what language it is. it is. It says Chinese propaganda, but this was posted originally on RT, Russian television, this video. And this is a piece of propaganda that's AI slop.
But it is, you'll see. Okay, how do I do this share again? Here it is, okay. Screen.
Jamie (39:40.983)
This one? Yes. OK. I've never done this before. All right. Ready? OK. Now the caption, struggling America. Can you see it? Struggling Americans, please stop. You're destroying the environment and jobs with this technology. Silicon Valley. No. Iran.
Destinee Day (39:46.096)
Okay.
Jamie (40:46.383)
Duh.
Jamie (40:53.871)
Yeah, that is.
Destinee Day (40:56.674)
Okay, that one. Okay. I need a second. Okay. The first one was like dangerous because it was funny.
Jamie (41:09.551)
Mm-hmm.
Destinee Day (41:13.208)
That one's dangerous in the way that like I imagine dangerous content. Like first of all, the Epstein Island, like, wow. And it's a little blonde girl, so, whoa.
Jamie (41:17.795)
Yes.
Jamie (41:24.205)
Yeah.
Destinee Day (41:28.802)
And that was very much, feel like, targeting a lot of Americans. Like, that's a coded, targeted... Wow. Interesting that the first image is stereotypical Native American, which is how they chose to really identify the United States, which, if you, I guess, looked at the...
Jamie (41:33.977)
Mm-hmm.
Jamie (41:53.359)
Mm-hmm.
Destinee Day (41:58.808)
genetic makeup of United States citizens it is not that wow the the missile hitting the
horned bull, like the Wall Street bull.
Jamie (42:12.079)
That's ball. That's ball. Yeah. That's ball the the the the the devil the the American. Yeah. Yeah.
Destinee Day (42:17.828)
Okay, was gonna say it's definitely devil-coded, but it's also targeting New York and Wall Street and a bull market. And it's made of gold, which I think a lot of people associate with Trump.
Jamie (42:24.503)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Jamie (42:32.356)
Mm-hmm.
Destinee Day (42:35.852)
Wow.
Jamie (42:36.855)
Yeah. So this is exactly why, like, if I were to still be teaching this course now, I would be using these examples because I think it is important for students to see them. But I also think that what you're right is like what you're looking at is Iran, Iran telling the story of the end point of colonization. Like, that's what you're looking at. And so a lot of the read on the Epstein files is like the these men had colonized everything. And the last thing to colonize was like children. And so
This is like, first they colonized the Native Americans and then it's all world. And then the little girl, like it's.
Destinee Day (43:12.784)
Okay, colonization, I get it. That's a story thread. Okay. I was like...
Jamie (43:17.487)
So that, it was just, it's not to say that's colonization. I'm saying they're, they're showing what an act of violence is against those who have no power. Like that's what it really looks like. And so they're, Iran's message is like, we're going to go after your power, which is like what you mentioned, which is like the ball-esque representation of the U.S. as an ideology. And that is, it's scary. That's a scary, that's a scary piece of propaganda. Like when I saw it, I was like, that's not good.
Destinee Day (43:40.69)
yeah. Because it's partly true.
Jamie (43:44.974)
Yeah. it's also, but it puts an existential threat on us because A, the majority of the citizens in the United States did not want this conflict. And second, like seeing propaganda like that is actually kind of like scary because it ups the ante from a Lego piece, which is like, ha ha, we can laugh at Trump and to like,
Destinee Day (44:04.122)
Right? mean, if you look at it hits at a core Western value, which is capitalism, which, you know, you can be a healthy capitalist or you could be like a, you know, there's this. Yeah. It's greed. So if you're looking at this as a propaganda piece about greed.
Jamie (44:10.723)
That's right.
Jamie (44:15.663)
Mm hmm. Well, it is. It's like I always say it is the system. Mm And.
Jamie (44:29.305)
So in an age where memes are a weapon, I think what we misunderstood from a Western perspective, I'm talking like the United States, the UK, France, like people who have used memes as weaponry in previous instances, I think we misunderstand that globally memes are used in ways that are unexpected. And so this is what would be considered memetic warfare. And what I mean by memetic warfare is it takes a big idea,
reduces it down to something shareable. And that's what it ends up being. So you take these huge concepts. It's just that in the Western idea of memes, we're often not as blunt about this. These are very not mimetic by comparison to memes on the West, which are like layered, nuanced. You kind of have to know the reference. It makes fun of something that if you're not in the end, you can't really get it. These memes are just like, now we're just gonna tell you. We're just gonna make this the video. The reference is like.
you have to make sense of this. And that's where both, in both cases, it's like the Epstein files are in there. And it really does give you a sense that globally, the way we see these conflicts is not the way the world sees the conflicts. So it is doing a good job in terms of conversation and it's becoming novelty, not just to like anti-war people, but novelty in terms of just like seeing how the world creates content that tells a story.
Again, you know my feeling about like I'm pro internet. I think it's important for people to be exposed to this even when it feels dangerous or scary because at least it gives us a perspective that other people are expressing that I don't think we'd normally get access to. And like I was pretty much like, was, when I was teaching and saying like you shouldn't mess with Syria, Iran or like China, like I was like basically saying that in terms of like, I didn't really understand their meme culture so much as I understood that their passion.
telling stories is really there, but I didn't have evidence so much aside from like their real cyber war. They're really good hackers. In fact, I think this morning, I'm recording this on March 27th, morning, Kash Patel's emails were hacked by Iran. So it does show you that like their hacking technical capabilities are pretty high in terms of cyber war, but I think any government is not prepared for the mental warfare of a meme war.
Jamie (46:54.937)
like this.
Destinee Day (46:58.106)
No.
Jamie (47:00.303)
Very good response. Yep. So that's our sum up.
Destinee Day (47:02.851)
No.
Destinee Day (47:07.032)
This has been one of the more depressing ones, I'm not gonna lie.
Jamie (47:09.761)
No, really? I thought this was like, this is like a recap. I would not to say it wasn't depressing, but this is like
Destinee Day (47:14.64)
No it is, but it
You know, it's one of the ones where like, there's no solutions to any of the three big things that we've discussed, right? And this is just going to require everybody being a better individual in order to make this, any of these situations better in my opinion, because what else is there?
Jamie (47:28.431)
Mm-hmm.
Jamie (47:45.2)
But I also have to lean back on what you said, which is we have to consciously, just like we have to make consumer decisions to use an app like you're using to limit your social media. That's like, that's your conscious decision. We have to make conscious decisions to be more media literate and information literate. Like that's, that's of importance at this point. Like we have to.
Destinee Day (48:04.792)
Yes. But what's scary about that is that maybe the, don't want to generalize or stereotype, but the older generation that is kind of sitting at the top of the positions of power in various aspects throughout our society are not media literate.
Jamie (48:05.966)
Yeah, I-
Jamie (48:22.047)
They are not. And they are very much unfortunately beholden to those who tell them their ideas. Like again, with the, to send it back to the Kids Online Safety Act, the act itself isn't being sponsored by Meta, but there are a lot of support groups that are supporting it and they are sponsored by Meta. And so it's oftentimes several layers down. so people don't, this is what I tell my students, like the people in charge of the country, people who represent us, remember represent us as a whole, which means that they often run on a platform and they're experts in that platform.
but very few, maybe three, maybe four. If I think off the top of my head, Chris Murphy, Ro Khanna, there's very few people that are like, their platform is internet stuff. And so when you have 436 people and like two to three are like information literate, we as a public, we really do. I've called my Senator, I've called my Congress people. Like if we learn these things, we have to take it in action because...
While these memes are memes at this point and they're supposed to provoke some sort of emotion, which they're doing a fairly good job at, in most cases, humor or like horror, but they're harbingers of what comes next. If in 2017 I was warning about paper memes and pictures, and in 2026 I'm warning about AI slot videos, what's in the 2030s? You know, I don't know.
Destinee Day (49:45.421)
Okay.
Jamie (49:46.529)
Everybody's got to get information literate quick.
Destinee Day (49:48.72)
You
Jamie (49:53.539)
Anyway, I'm to talk to you about all this.
Destinee Day (49:58.416)
Yes, definitely. And we will definitely chat more next week on maybe a different topic.
Jamie (50:05.539)
Yeah. Yes, let's try it. Since this is about network issues, it is about things that affect us from the space, I'm sure there's something, let's find a good thing. There's, or at least something that we could talk about that would truly lead the positive moments moving forward. I'm sure they're out.
Destinee Day (50:21.914)
They definitely are. Okay.