and the algorithms . elevate that content. so he has gamified the system - and to a certain extent social media has kind of created this monster, if you wilt and matt, when you were interacting not just with andrew tate, but some of his colleagues, were you aware that he was thinking about some of the factors that scott describes? yeah, definitely. and i think it s important to remember that one of the ways that he s been able to do what scott describes is through something called the hustlers university, which is ostensibly a kind of online course where andrew tate will teach you how to become wealthy and successful and an alpha male like him. it s now been shut down, but when it was running, it also ran a kind of affiliate marketing scheme where you had a financial incentive to share re edited clips of andrew tape and students of the university, of which there almost 200,000 at the time, were instructed that the more controversial, the better in terms of sharing content of his. so,
i was going to say, i think sort of one exception to that is providing a useful context for people to learn about andrew tate within. so for example, he s already out there, his content has been viewed over 13 billion times on tiktok alone. right? so if your viewers haven t heard of him, there are sons and nephews of theirs will have. and for the first time through our reporting, we ve managed to give a voice to kind of women from his past. so now when someone googles him saying they won t just see andrew tate and him talking about himself and justifying himself, they ll also get a chance to hear the voices of women who allege that he raped and physically abused them and make a more informed decision about whether to follow him. if he s committed crimes. and by the way, helen, i think he made absolutely the right choice because having someone who s a credible journalist from the atlanticjust creates i a halo of credibility that he does not deserve being in- the same room with him. s
and we have these mediums now that are very profit motivated, where some of our most talented - people and well resourced companies have a profit motive in elevating content that enrages people - because enragement. equals an engagement. and there s a real. externality to that. and until we hold these platforms to the same i responsibility and accountability that we would hold the bbc - or the new york times or the atlantic, they re going to continue to engage in these externalities and let people - continue to smoke or put carbon into the air~ it s that simple. scott, yours will be the last thought on this matter because we re out of time. thank you. to you, that s professor scott galloway from the prof gee podcast and the pivot podcast. thanks to helen lewis, staff writer at the atlantic, and to match matt shea, the film maker who s produced the dangerous rise of andrew tate for vice. that s it for this edition of the media show. thanks as ever, for watching. we ll be back with y
of his so called secret society and the women from his past. what did you make, helen, as you watch that section of the film? i think it s extraordinarily powerful. i mean, we re talking about this in a week in which, you know, serving metropolitan police detectives convicted of a huge number of rapes, you know, with red flags for 20 years back. and i think matt s film makes very clear that there have been a number of red flags that were not picked up on in the background of andrew tate. and again, this speaks to an interaction with technology, which is that misogyny is often the onramp to other types of bigotry. it s often the onramp to far right content, for example, simply because it is so nebulous, so widespread so low levels tolerated. you know, the idea that womenjust need a smack is actually something that you can get away with saying, on pretty much every social network in the way that you cannot say overtly racist things. and so andrew tate had to push it a long way before he
about my daughters having to deal with teenage boys who have soaked in it. i ve even agonised about whether i ought to do this interview. although if the most googled man on the planet can t be written about in a newspaper, then i m honestly not sure what any of us are here for. what s your view of that, helen? is there a point at which journalists should stop engaging? well, i made that decision, actually. i was asked last year to go on a podcast, which was on a tik tok channel on a podcast, you know, and be, the other guest who was interviewed essentially and i turned it down because what i felt in that case was that was something that was going to get chopped up and clipped up. and i was there to be the, you know, woman that he get to call ugly and stupid and dunk on and the butt of the joke, essentially. and what would essentially happen was exactly as scott was saying, some more controversial content would be created. and i think you have to make that decision when you re covering