YouSaid · the spoken record

Dipayan Ghosh

lines on the record: 95
first: 2018-01-31
most recent: 2018-01-31
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Increasingly, yes, as traditional media erodes. New media is coming to the fore. And yet our regulatory system is designed for that old world So, you know, what Ben and I have been thinking about is, you know, how do we translate the regulatory regime for this old system into one that can be applied to the new one? And that, I think, can solve this major flaw of detecting malevolent actors in a number of ways.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or confuse them or distract them. And I think that we have to start thinking about our regulatory system. There are traditional media is the space for which our regulatory system has been designed and it's eroded in terms of its influence. It's obviously still very influential and you could argue that.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, for me, this is very much related to Ben's point. The flaw to me, the major flaw is that it is hard to detect malevolence. There has to be a way to build around this. There has to be a way to detect the fact that there is an agent working, let's say, for the Russian government who wants to persuade an American voter or 100,000 American voters with a particular message.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think Nora are the companies thinking of it because they don't, and we'll talk about how they think because they don't think, they don't anticipate malevolence oftentimes, or else they willfully ignore it. I'm not really clear which one it is that's at work there, but I often think they think in opportunities not necessarily in problems like that could happen. All right, so that's one, obviously. Second one, another one?”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have to look at whether it is appropriate to collect and store political information as a part of the data profile, whether it's appropriate to sell that to advertisers, whether it's appropriate to sell it to political advertisers. If you're going to sell it, what kind of transparency should be in place? How should a consumer know why and how they're being targeted with what kinds of messages? None of those questions are anticipated under current law, and we're not having that discussion yet in the context of Russia, national security, and Twitter bots.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, for me, the core of it comes down to The harm created by leveraging personal information and the social graph to enable political advertisers, peddling disinformation to manipulate your prejudices in the same way that a retail advertiser would attempt to manipulate your consumer preferences. That's the core of the problem. That's what's generating Filter bubbles alternative media realities that people live in that inform their political views and choices. How do we disconnect from that pattern?”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not necessarily saying, yes, we are describing how this ecosystem works. We're not necessarily saying that it needs to be broken down and changed, and we need to change the fundamental ways that we pursue monetization on the Internet. Rather, we're saying that there are some key technical flaws in the system that need to be solved. All right.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So talk a little about what you change because you're just saying, well, I'm going to use the cigarette analogy, even though you actually kill people. This is a little different. It warps people. I think that's mentally warps people. If your business is predicated on people smoking cigarettes, you can't really shift into another business, or can you? So you essentially described what they do and say this is their business and their business is easily manipulable in all kinds of malevolent ways.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, that's the fundamental point of the paper, that the scandal over Russian disinformation on the Internet does not depend on Russians using some tricky new technology. They're using the fundamentally Normative tools of the digital advertising industry that are at the center of the business.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so Ben, when they're doing this, that is their business plan. There's nothing else. I mean, that is at the heart of Google's business for sure, getting you to what you want. Same thing with Amazon, same thing with Facebook, not Apple or others necessarily. But in that zone. So can you talk about that? How do you then, if that's what they, you just describe what they are and what their business is?”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. That was where I was going to go next, which is the implementation of cookies on the web, which really help the major companies as well as the smaller players in the advertising ecosystem, as well as consumer-facing retail companies like Nike or eBay. Understand more about us”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the more they know about you, the better because that's gone back since when you were at a supermarket and they knew if you bought cat food and litter and... Skim milk, you might be a single lady or something like that, whatever, whatever they did. I used to cover retail and it was a big deal. The data they'd collect from your purchases at the time, which was minor compared to now. And one of the things I think we should underscore is when we move into the mobile age, when you sat at a computer and went from website to website, that was all they knew. And they could infer a lot from that. But now when you're on a mobile phone, they know what you search, then where you go, and then what you call, and then what you like. And then it goes, it creates an entire tableau. You can't even understand how much. And when you introduce it into the home, it's even more so because you get a complete picture. It's a photograph of a person's life, essentially, and their needs.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. You know, I think it starts with certainly the use of major consumer web applications like Facebook, like Google, like Amazon, which increasingly understand our interests. They know our preferences, our behaviors, our beliefs, our likes, our dislikes. And that information that they infer from our clicking like or searching for recode on the top. There's signals all the time. They're signals.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me just stop you. Explain that to the regular people. Just assume that everybody's you. That is essentially what everything people do on the internet is recorded and how they behave, where they go.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, of course. There's a broad ecosystem here at the center of that are the advertising technologies that are managed and operated by the companies that are in the public attention right now. But this whole issue of Russian propaganda over the internet is based on a series of technologies. The number one thing that Ben and I are concerned about is the long-term collection of behavioral data. And in the report we talk about...”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a great discussion. I hope you'll go listen to it with Patrick Spence from Sonos. You can find two embarrassed ask on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, wherever you listen to podcasts. That's too embarrassed to ask. See you there. We're here with DePayan Ghosh and Ben Scott. They're both fellows at the think tank New America. We're talking about their latest paper, which talks about, I think, pretty much the weaponization of social media and how it's beyond the Russian bots, essentially, which Ben was just talking about, and how you push that back. Why don't you start, Divine, talking about the landscape? What are some of the things that are happening right now? Because as Ben just said, things change rather quickly.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Inventions will enable new industries, and the next great product the world can't live without. Qualcomm is inventing the tech the world loves. To learn more, visit Qualcomm.com slash weinvent. I also want to tell you about too embarrassed to ask my other podcast, which I host with Lauren Good from The Verge. That's me. Needs”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So when we get back, we're going to talk a little bit about what are these tools are and what are the ones that are really problematic. And then in the final part, we're going to talk about what are the solutions. And I do want to talk about some of the issues I have with you because I do think the administrations you worked for really did drop the ball in a lot of ways to regulate these companies before they got more powerful. And it was really the Obama administration who was in power when these companies came to real true power. And we'll talk about that and more with DePayan Ghosh and Ben Scott. They are both fellows at the Washington think tank New America. They've just written a paper that's gotten a lot of attention, a policy paper called Digital Deceit, the Technologies Behind Precision Propaganda on the Internet when we get back. Today's show is brought to you by Qualcomm. At Qualcomm, inventing comes first. When they connected the phone to the internet, Qualcomm's foundational inventions created the mobile revolution. And now as Qualcomm leads the world to 5G,”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, absolutely. Right. And changing also as we change the technology. I was just actually talking this morning on one of the cable shows, and I said it's not what happens in VR, what happens in AR, what happens when we have things embedded in our eyes, when we can be tricked and fooled with all kinds of cloud and technologies and things like that, and things we can't even imagine, which are coming down the pike at some essentially any old episode of Black Mirror will help you understand that. I mean that in a joke I mean, but not really, is that it's regressing rather quickly as they fix one clear one deck another one comes up open pretty much, correct?”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, Easier to talk about that. So we wanted to flip it to systematically identify all the players in the market, describe what the tools are that they use, and to make the point that these are the standard tools of the digital advertising industry, which is one of the most effective innovations in digital commerce, and that those tools are the tools the disinformation campaign because they are indistinguishable from any other advertiser. Right, absolutely. And until we deal with that problem, we're not going to solve this problem. And it is very likely to get worse because the technologies of the advertising industry for microtargeting, behavior tracking, segmentation, and influence are getting better and better.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm glad people are doing that, but this is even if we slammed the door on the Russians and they were unable to use social media to effect elections again, we haven't stopped the problem of disinformation. Right. This information is endemic to internet communications. How do we account for that? What's going on? How does it work? What are we going to do about it? So our goal was to Literally lay out the map of the mechanics of how disinformation operations work. It's not just a Russian agent woke up in the morning and bought some ads on Facebook.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, Ben, give me your thoughts on what you're trying to achieve here with the paper to start with. To start this discussion, as you said.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. As it should be. Absolutely it is, and argues that while that's the center of this debate and as it should be, there is a much broader ecosystem here. And that goes from behavioral data tracking to certainly online ad buying and customer audiences and lookalike audiences, but also extends to search engine optimization and management platforms of social media. And many of these technologies are going to be supercharged by artificial intelligence as it's increasingly integrated into the technologies underlying the web.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Between the internet platform and the advertiser. And that means that we need to figure out who those disinformation agents are. Our paper discusses all those issues, but it also pulls away from the specific lens on Facebook, Twitter, and Google and Russia”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. Fundamentally, we believe that, and we write about, that there is a fundamental issue in the construct of this whole digital advertising ecosystem The ways that we have created this digital advertising ecosystem over time, which is the fundamental way that the internet works nowadays and is probably the biggest money-making machine over the internet. It carries a fundamental flaw, which is that there is an implicit alignment in the interests of the large internet platform and the advertiser. That is all fair and well. But when that advertiser becomes, let's say, has an issue malevolent, has a nefarious motivation. Like a disinformation agent, we need to segregate that shared goal.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right. And so with this particular thing, you focused on something people have been have just recently started to pay attention to, but a lot of us have been talking about this issue, which is how the weaponization of social media, the uses of it for propaganda. You may not know this, but I actually was a propagandist studies major at Georgetown and Columbia. I'm very attuned to the idea of use as a propaganda. I've been used since the beginning of time from walls in China to the most famous is Nazi propaganda, obviously. But it's been going on forever. This is not a new thing. It's just these tools are more sophisticated and dangerous, probably. So your idea behind the paper is that you guys got together to write this paper. Once you explain the paper and what you're saying, in your words, I'm not going to...”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. So, what we were trying to do was essentially with think tanks have done since the beginning of time is just using new tools to do so, right? In different ways, and actually have solutions based kind of things rather than just a pompous paper, everybody has a cocktail party that discusses and then it goes in a drawer.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of ways, yes. So it's called public interest technology. We have a group of about 15 people that come from all those different backgrounds. And one piece of what we do is technically informed policy analysis that tries to make interventions and policy debates by talking about what's happening in the market, how the technology influences the development of both public policy issues and consumer benefit or consumer harm in order to inform debates in the media, government, and in the industry. So that's what this paper is, that piece of the public interest technology.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I am a part of a team that had the idea that we ought to build new ways of working for think tanks, that this old model of White papers for insiders was only going to go so far in this political environment, perhaps not even as far as it once did. And so we decided, hey, there's an opportunity here to do work at the intersection of technology and policy.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We do Oh, do you? All right, Ben, why don't you talk about the new initiative and how it led to this paper Digital Deceit, the Technology Behind Precision Propaganda on the Internet. And I do like digital deceit. It sounds like a movie that we should all be watching. But why don't you talk about how you got to that? You created this group within New America.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We do still have a conference room named after him. Oh, do you? It used to be called the New America Foundation. It's now called New America. And Ben should really answer part of this question because he fundamentally helped create this new initiative that I joined.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we've heard about the little controversies about it. Eric Schmidt's new America, that's what we like to call it in Silicon Valley.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, right. It's really hard when your business is predicated on a slot machine of attention. Really, it's kind of, it creates a real pride. It's like being a cigarette company and saying, we want people to be healthy kind of thing, which I think we can talk about. You know I have that attitude, much to Facebook's chagrin. So you two got together at the New American Institute. Is that correct? It's just called New America. Correct?”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think strategically within the policy team, which is the team that I work for, think strategically about how the company can continue to innovate and create amazing products. That can win users and win attention while also thinking about user privacy issues and maintaining a commitment toward individual privacy.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“U.S. privacy. And you were supposed to do what? Be an irritant to them and say, or go along, how can we violate privacy more?”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A couple of years later, I transitioned to Facebook. And it was an inspiring time to join the company and to try to help think about how it could solve a lot of challenges around user privacy issues. And that brings me to my work with Ben at New America.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That the government, well, obviously at the time it was a huge public debate. What should the government do? What should companies do? How did we come to this place? And how do we move forward from here? And the Obama administration at the time began a serious inquiry into all of those questions. And I had the opportunity to come to the Obama White House and work on a lot of these issues. So I was there for a couple of years helping think about consumer privacy and commercial privacy issues amongst some other things. And ultimately, we released a major report on big data and privacy. And in that report, I think we made a number of recommendations. That move the ball forward toward progressive consumer privacy reform. And there was a lot of follow-through on all the recommendations, particularly from the administration itself”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Postdoc. Oh, so you're working on that. When you say became interested, what does that mean? Like, oh my God, the government that's spying on us.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, of course. I'm a privacy engineer by training. I did a PhD in electrical engineering. And then moved on to start a postdoc out in California and was doing study of information theory, how you send information from point A to point B and in as efficient a manner as possible. That got me interested in privacy issues. I think really the pivotal moment for me was the Snowden disclosures after After that”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which they love to talk about in Germany, and they have very different attitudes, obviously. And Tipayan, how did you get, and then I want to know how you guys came to do this paper?”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eventually, I worked at a shop called Free Press for many years working on such little-known issues as net neutrality, and then went into the Obama administration in 2010 and worked on tech and foreign policy at the State Department. When Secretary Clinton left, I also left government, went to Europe, spent four years in Germany running a think tank on tech policy over there.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did a PhD in communications and studied the political economy of media markets and spent enough time in academia to realize I didn't want to be an academic. And I came to Washington to try to learn politics and got a job as a young legislative aide with then congressman Bernie Sanders.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. I spent most of my career in Washington working on technology and telecommunications policy. And little known fact that I may be the only guy on the planet who staffed both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. How was that? Over the course of the last 15 years.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today, I'm talking to Dapayan Ghosh and Ben Scott. Depayan is a fellow at the think tank New America, and he's here with me in the studio in Washington, D.C. Ben is also at New America. He's a senior advisor to its open technology institute, and he's joining us over the phone. The two of them previously advised the White House under Barack Obama and the State Department under Hillary Clinton. They're also the co-authors of a new policy paper that I attacked on Twitter, that is the talk of the town called Digital Deceit, the Technologies Behind Precision Propaganda on the Internet. Depion and Ben, welcome to Reco. And thank you for coming in after I strafed you on the Twitter. I don't want to apologize for that. I'm glad you did it. We're going to talk about all that. But why don't we start, talk about where you started, and then we'll get to how you guys got to this report. So Ben, why don't you go first and then Depay and talk about your background and where you met?”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today's show is brought to you by Qualcomm. At Qualcomm, Inventing Comes First, the rest of the world innovates on top of Qualcomm's foundational inventions. To learn more, visit Qualcomm.com slash we invent.”
2018-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, co-authors, ‘Digital Deceit’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT