School here in the audience. I hope you enjoy that and continue to participate in the event. We have an exciting panel today. Lets get started with some questions. Many of the questions were prepared in advance. Lets start with questions about news in the current year. Its only been a year since the president ial election. It is hard to remember when fake facebook wasnt part of fake news. no matter how bad it was for their candidate or how bad it was it allowed them to assume it was coming from a biased point of view and therefore they ignored it it has not been typical of american campaigns have a slightly different view. We focus on the elections and it figures a letter that moore versus the cost and my background in psychology in a lot of the research that incentives of how people believe what they want to believe and really smart people have access to all the news they should know Better Believe what they want to believe. People will believe what they want to believe. Certainly social media with gasoline on the fire, but i dont think fake news is necessarily their problem, but an accelerant on the underlying problem which is division in this country. Yeah, i largely agree with you. I mean, the trump phenomenon was because people were unhappy. It may have been exacerbated in fake news may have played a role in that, but i question the depths of the role through the spin they are talking about on facebook is a joke. You cant effect change with that kind of money. It is bothersome to us because they conceptually could affect our elections which is very holy to us but in terms of practical consequence, i dont think it did much for the election, but it could in the components of this fabric and in actual reality i just dont think it did much. So many of the questions on fake news come from the way we are receiving this questionable quality and thats because theres been a change in the control of misinformation shifting from Media Companies with editors and editorial policies to Tech Companies that may not have the expertise on board. So some in Congress Want the government to regulate Political Lab and the way they are regulated, what is your thought process . Well, the regulation on television is pretty minimal for the most part. And the creation of a disclaimer, and paid for by the Campaign Says they are paid for by bob for governor for kameny. Theres not much regulation. Candidates in their ability to say what they want to see on television is pretty younger stick trade. I dont think its asking a lot for online advertisers to have some commitment to disclosing while the absurd who paid for them. Similar to what we do on television. The reality is we didnt get where we are to last week in the week before. They have evolved over time and they have a very key element of this is the airwaves, the broadcast airwaves are publicly owned and the federal Communications Commission regulates them and they put together these requirements. Obviously, im Online Communications is not federally regulated and i dont think theres any political will to federally regulate them nor should there be. So it is a real question of whether they are going to be self policing in terms of what they do or is Congress Going to step in and wasting that argument be joined in the last few weeks. Its tough for the government to regulate. For government to meaningful regulate, i work in attacking mr. Intact to people. And does not acknowledge the responsibility not to do a better job. They are surprised by things that have happened in the political world. In one direction or another but better in terms of something we all care about. I think theres a lot as liking it to nutrition. Once upon a time we devolved to be really into sugar and really want to eat sugar and eventually we learned that too much sugar is bad for us and we have like find that tell us and we Pay Attention to negative information in computers groups and they can be healthy for us in a similar way. Not just online. Look at the 11 00 news. The seven things you dont know that might kill you if you dont watch the 11 00 news. It is sort of ingrained in us that these algorithms in the media are optimizing towards human nature, that you know, just like with contrition, there are ways for us as a species to understand the kinds of things we are seeing are right for us and for smart people to do good things about that. People working on these algorithms so when it comes to regulation things will get better. I was extremely thoughtful and im not going to say anything remotely that thoughtful. I like the perspective that it makes common sense that there should be some degree of transparency, but when you did not out i dont think youll have any practical effect because these expenditures on how fun skating is very difficult if not impossible. The point is you will not see a facebook ad or any ad with the disclaimer this was purchased by the russian government yet its going to go through a lot of hand before it gets there. I would defer to you if you feel differently because you actually replaced the things. I think its extremely challenging to figure out whos paid back. The transparency just isnt fair. The the impact particularly on independent expenditure ads of disclaimers is grossly exaggerated by most of the campaign reformers because oftentimes they say paid for by the committee for a better world and whos against a better world obviously. But on the other hand, it does lead a paper trail you can follow to figure out who is behind the money. Now, in particularly the issue involved with the russian comments somebody comes up to you and says they want to have you do there it pays you in rubles, youll probably say this is not a very good idea. Well come well, they would just pay cash. Are absolutely right. Ravi, and enjoyed your analogy about sugar and maybe you mention diabetes,. Maybe when we create something when the technology will create Something Like refined sugar, it is exciting, but there are consequences like a Public Health problem of diabetes and thats a Technology Developer myself, our community has sensed the pace of development is increasing. And so, the opportunity to regulate behaviors for this consequences become shorter and shorter. I wanted to ask bill and justin, in your line of work, have you noticed an acceleration or just par for the course the Way Technology is changing both Opinion Research and political messaging . Well, the most profound impact of technology on the political process so far has been the huge acceleration of fundraising opportunities from small donors, president obamas campaign was funded primarily by small donors particularly in 08 and i think we saw that with Bernie Sanders this time. So, we are talking about ads, but the most profound impacts have been the fund raising, the change in the fundraising culture in that part of Digital Communications and digital Political Communications is far advanced beyond were advertising this right now in terms to the Digital World still to get 15 of advertising dollars either commercially or politically. So theres questions about where its going to go and of course, all of these things change. Theres going to be other digital breakthroughs in different ways to communicate. I have a firm view that what we do in the Communications World is we dont get rid of old media. And new media top of it. And in the advertising stock. We are still advertising on cable in terms of people still advertising on broadcast radio and then we have all of these new mediums including online and satellite in all these other things and i am sure we can see a significant political role over time. So you know, just an enormous fragmentation going on in their communication and people are not only selfselect team as we talk about, also selfselecting where they get their news and we know people who are watching Fox Television and msnbc. Well see the same phenomenon on podcast and people who listen to progressive podcast and conservative podcasts exclusively. That is the big change as people become so ideologically driven about where they get information from. Yeah, the media looks at those describing it evolves over time, but it hasnt clicked because people consume information in the ways they like to consume them in multiple different ways. Digital dozen on the world right now because people consume information in a variety of ways and those media markets, tv is an incredibly efficient way to spend money. In my small world, the researchers figuring out what people think and try and how to influence their thoughts and behaviors. Digital has had a profound impact if youre talking about a highly informed horse race and theres really only one of the president ial race, Google Survey is fantastic, remarkable, and believable. Anything under that its efficacy. There are folks who are proselytizing a particular tool or method because they get enamored with any kind of industry and they forget sometimes there is a right for any application and its not onesizefitsall. In my world there is a move right now to transition from telephone research, which if you perform in the right way can still be integrating online research, which can be incredibly useful for the right approach, but there are pitfalls with it. They come in california. And 50 , and if you say arbitrarily 50 of the funds found include cell phones and ill have 50 of it online and 50 of their sample to new registrants, which composes a fraction of the electorate premises gone ahead gone ahead and put an artificial constraint and theres good reason to look at that and say that methodology is flawed. It may hit the market time to time, but it is not much more different in that particular purpose. On the other hand if you are researching a small California Coastal town on the ballot measure and theres 10,000 voters in that space, you can slice and dice methodology and just make sure youre careful about proportions and get much better realities and how your readers respond that normally and that can be regarded as statistically significant because it just doesnt work that way, but its directional and the rest of the world when i work on Consumer Base stuff, which from someone selling toothpaste or technology i cant use the voter fraud list, but i have to use some construct the data. People forget it sounds really cool. Its just a workaround. It gets better and better, but nowhere near as his as we have in this policy. Anyway, diversion bear. So back to companies and Media Companies are just google, facebook and twitter are making the case they are not Media Companies and should be taken a handsoff role in other platforms and outweigh the consequences and might want to deal with bad actors to manipulate. Broad question. That is a very complex problem for a long time. I think that there is a difference between what the hearings did on facebook talking about russian collusion and i totally agree the impact was not that great on this election, but the potential impact in some future election continues to grow as rapidly as its grown in the last 20 years. How the industry itself deals with these issues is going to be really difficult for them. To the extent the industry can have an ideology is more antiregularity than other industries they will resist any regulation and congress balked, particularly its amazing how interest doing congress can get into issues about elections than they have a little bit of selfinterest in how elections are conducted, so their aggressiveness on this issue will be pretty expensive. They will want to see some clean up your act kind of dynamic, but i think there will be resistance. Were a long way from figuring this out, too. I think ive heard he said this. I think its almost impossible for government to effectively regulate these technologies. Ill give you a helpful thing, which is bad also something useful for your engineering season today, i think there is a Movement Towards the idea you dont have to measure just clicks for time on the site or ad impressions, which is what a lot of these sites are designed. There are other things you can measure. Products out there on some of these Media Companies that try to sense when you are in danger of hurting yourself and try to help you with that. There are things that are trying to measure things a little more human and closer to the goal and i reminded by Something Like if you ever get ana i have problems like stop all human suffering, and easiest way to stop all human suffering is to kill other human beings. So sometimes theyre unintended consequences of the goals we set for these algorithms and i think we are realizing there are consequences. There are interesting ways to think about how can i measure measuring things like fulfillment, happiness, you know, they are constructs, but if you can measure whether something is or is not a cap you can measure these constructs as well. Speaking carefully, there is a challenge within the hubris and they tend to breed their own exhaust a little bit too much and be the worst corporate act bears in america. One example, the way that they approach growth was to ignore the law. We live under a construct of laws and we have to respond to them that car company in every city that they rolled out to be simply ignored it. Rather than working with some degree, and in they didnt. If you can imagine an oil company or Tobacco Company behaving in a way of Many Technology companies behave i dont think there is an appetite to celebrate. The companies you are alluding to include Tech Companies and also to my preferred i dont know so, do you see as bad a problem, many are not more than others to maintain tension or loyalty to the media source, which seems like its not in line necessarily with the values that the benefit. Eventually the thing that people value and Companies Value converge. So i guess coming up, ultimately for example some of these platforms are paid by advertisers on the platform. A lot of them are brand advertisers. They want to be associated with things that provide value. There is a huge effort right now around her and safety for example where brands are removing their ads from places that they feel are harming their consumers. And so, that is in some ways a response to everyday consumers who were tweeting todays brand, look, you were on this really offensive plays. The world doesnt get there like right away, but eventually things converge towards the things that people value are the things that businesses optimize towards and there will be inefficiencies along the way that will be terrible and terrible consequences, but i think business as a whole will eventually get to the point where they are trying to serve some of these larger goals. Some of these companies right now. I would say there is a comparison here historically between television and online and its back to the issue of how you evaluate how many people are watching an ad. Television adopted a universal method that was monopoly by the Nielsen Company that has become a standard measurement in the television industry. I mean, there have been arguments over various rating methodology changes and it hasnt been all happiness in sweetness, but mostly its been universally accepted as standard measurement. Online, nobody can figure out who they are talking to. Its just reality. There was an experiment that procter gamble, which will be the Largest Consumer company in the world did over the summer, where basically their argument based on a study done by advertising agencies in the United Kingdom is that we really didnt know who we were talking to and although the things we know are big problems. And what his impressions mean and what are we getting forward and whatnot. This study came across the atlantic. Procter gamble takes a look at it and they decided to experiment. For one quarter, they dropped all of their online advertising, which has been 20 of their budget advertising. And to see what impact it would have on their sales. What they uncovered was it had zero impact on their sales. Absolutely zero. They tried to figure out okay, what the media most influences people at the point of purchase . They found a slightly over 50 said television and then in the teens were radio and unbelievably enough print in high Single Digits was online. We are still in the infancy of this industry as another testing platform, not spl experience everyday getting online and doing all the things we do, communicating with each other, getting Information Online than what not, but as an advertising platform where is dylan the infancy. We take quite measure what we are getting for our bucks. On the other hand, we cant stay away from it and as we talk about it, there are situations where california is the biggest state and also two of the top 10 in the top 25 sacramento, another one like 26, san diego. And then we have this political setup for the whole state votes for everybody so it gets very expensive here. Online gives people an option to do something other than mail people things so everybody finds it very is and i think the political community, they are just not sure related to tack on another online allows you to do is targeting. Unlike tv ads and cant respond to information the ads. How this change Campaign Going forward . That is one of the advances obviously targeting one of the limitations. It limits the number of people you are communicating with. You can do wonderful things online with the ballot measure last november with a whole of a lot of money on texting wit