Thread by @Shoq

Please permit me a thread:

Glenn @ggreenwald went on Fox & told his future bunk-buddy in hell, @tuckercarlson that in so many words, he's concerned that ambiguous videos were being seen as immutable evidence of events. For maybe the 2nd time, GG and I were close to agreement.

I can't believe I'm saying it, but I wish I'd taken @ggreenwald's tack. It's my main issue with #covingtonGate. I'm terrified digital media is so gameable, society will soon be unable to tell real from fake, relevant from irrelevant. And both scoundrels & enemies are thrilled.

It doesn't matter what this episode of "As The Twitter Turns" was even about. There will be another one just like it coming shortly. And bad actors are learning how to weaponize ever-more innocent OR toxic events and narratives. And very soon we will have a HUGE new problem…

The #DeepFakeVideo. We should be alarmed and planning for its evolution from seed-stage novelty, to a tool any student can use to turn reality on its head. Instant reactions to their images will wreck lives, politicians, policies and possibly our planet.

wsj.com/articles/deepf…

We KNOW this is coming. It's almost here already. Within a decade, perhaps only 5 years, it will be so powerful, it will be all but undetectable without a validating technology or facility. I predicted the eventual need for that very thing over 25 years ago. And this is why…

I often focus on these subjective viral sensation stories. They're a reminder of that new problem coming. Unless something is absolutely conclusive (nearly impossible), we need ways to guard against rapid reactions that obscure facts and accelerate hate & distrust. #PutinsPlan

None of us are psychic. We can't automatically grasp intents or interpretations of subjective images and events. If we don't remember that different viewpoints have HELPED society work, thus far (which is why conservatives hate them so much), I fear this society is all but lost.

Nothing pains me more than being fair to vile suspects, criminals & teenagers. But I've tried my whole life to find a philosophical way around it and fail every time. Quick conclusions and punishment upon allegation is swift & satisfying, but in the end, morally repugnant to me.

Whenever something happens that has even a chance of being misunderstood, or subject to more than one interpretation, I tell myself that it's a life or death matter in order to ensure I am not recklessly following my emotions and biases, rather than my intellect and reason.

If after looking for evidence, the story is still murky, I look for more evidence that tips the scales one way or the other. If I can't find any that removes the doubts, I can't just go with my friend's or team's choices, just because that's a lot easier. Morally I can't do it.

I feel we as a society need to step back and take a long hard collective look at the past few years and realize that a reckoning is coming: we cannot have a successful society if half our people hate or mistrust the other half. But while we try to thrash out a solution to that…

The one thing that is not conducive to our survival is a 24 hour cable news culture that MONETIZES each & every dispute, interpretation or narrative that our sprawling digital culture produces. They make money on our arguments so there's no incentive to clarify or mitigate them

Liberals lambaste @FoxNews for its craven weaponization of any trope toxic to progressive values. As they should. But @MSNBC in the morning, @CNN, the Alphabet's, and local news throughout our day all generate their own kind of manipulation that thrives on uninformed viewers.

The uninformed viewer is less likely to tune away from a biased or skewed program, and that keeps those eyeballs in the network's inventory so they can be sold to the chemical PSMs (Penis Splint Manufacturers, aka "Big Pharma."). That's the only reason their programs are made.

I've worked for years to understand these dynamics & design some kind of tool for helping society index its assets and police its worst instincts. It envisions massive public information farms where actionable information is often free, but always instantly useful & repurposable.

But for even that idea to ever exist, we need still other tools that get us over this ever increasing "veracity problem" where almost nothing is trustable by enough people that consensus can be reached on necessary actions. It's no small reason why our Federal govt is shuttered.

If we're to even have a promising future again, we need to build and use new tools for vetting, documenting and generally improving society's digital output. If my tools don't help, someone else's might. I just think someone's had better, or our future is bleak.

Before that happens, we'll need to stop the toxicity machine called Right wing media, typified by @FoxNews & @rushlimbaugh. In the name of "free speech" they've contributed nothing but vitriol and hate to our society, while blaming other for the cultural carnage they've monetized

And that's why I've decided to temporarily set my larger projects aside, but repurpose some parts as a tool that can help us #ReformTheMedia. Not censor it, shut it down, or boycott it. Just reform its worst traits and instincts. We've never tried, but I believe we must.

Toward this end, the brilliant documentarian. @jen_senko, and the esteemed blogger, @Green_Footballs and I are teaming up to forge a non profit that will try to FOCUS America on this "media problem" and finding remedies for it. But it won't just focus on reforming bad actors…

We want to help media find new content & business models that return us to earlier days when news wasn't just entertainment masquerading as news. We had documentaries, public affairs programming, and news magazines about things other than celebrities, murders, and mayhem.

It will take a month or two to get our project organized, but we'd like to have these tools in place long before the political primaries are in full-swing, and the horse race media is once again driving their toxic tropes, narratives and misinformation in all directions.

After we publish our project outline in a few weeks, we're going to need a lot of help finding funding, staff, resources and volunteers. If any of the issues and dangers I've discussed in this thread resonate with you, and you'd like to help us, please reply to this thread.

There are no easy answers. But we feel digital process can facilitate actionable info & media activism and mitigate some of the dysfunction that media is causing in our society.

Thanks for listening & enduring my contrarian nature at times. I hope I've clarified why it exists.

@ggreenwald @TuckerCarlson Folks, if you RT or reply to this thread, I'll add you to our contacts list. When @jen_senko @green_footballs and I have finished the outline, we'll ship it to you for feedback. We don't want to build just another media advocacy project. We want to build a crowd-based juggernaut

@ggreenwald @TuckerCarlson WHAT'S COMING ACROSS in our #ReformTheMedia idea: we don't want to be another random boycott, blasting Fox and other networks. We want to punish bad media behavior, reward the good, and assist in fostering new content & business models for a better media every society deserves.