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I’m David Gilbert, a reporter on WIRED’s Politics desk covering disinformation and online extremism. I’m filling in for Makena this week, and wanted to talk about reality. Not in the sense of whether we’re living in a simulation or not (obviously we are), but in how we perceive the world around us.
Over this July 4 weekend, you might meet family members or friends you haven’t spoken with for a while. You might chat about the news and the economy, and given the fact that it’s an election year, you will probably talk about politics. But at some point during the conversation, you might find yourself asking: “What the hell are they talking about?”
This is not just the result of different opinions, but the fact that in 2024, Americans can now live in entirely different realities depending on where they get their daily news and information. To discuss this phenomenon, I talked to disinformation expert Renée DiResta about the bespoke realities we are all now living in.
Let’s talk about it.
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Our Invisible Rulers
Billions of people are voting in elections around the world this year, and it feels like political disinformation is on the rise and buoyed by the rapid emergence of multiple AI technologies. So I’m spending my time looking for experts who can explain what’s happening.
As research manager of the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), Renée DiResta has helped unmask Russia’s online support for Trump in 2016, China’s use of Clubhouse for spying, and Instagram becoming a hive of child abuse material. But in the face of unrelenting—and baseless—allegations of anti-conservative bias from right-wing lawmakers like Jim Jordan, Stanford didn’t renew her contract last month.
Luckily for us, DiResta just published a new book, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, which outlines how unseen people and technologies shape our realities today, and how it's all being leveraged to win elections. I spoke with Renée about the book—check out our conversation here!
David: Hi Renée, thanks for chatting with us. In your book, you speak about “bespoke realities.” Is everyone effectively now living in their own reality?
Renée: There's a lot of movement into factions, where people are really deeply entrenched in a highly-specific niche political identity. One of the things you start to see is that faction A and faction B are often not even seeing the same kinds of content. You have communities that are absolutely outraged about something that has happened on the internet and the other community has absolutely no idea that this is even happening.
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David: Key to these factions are influencers. How have they become so powerful?
Renée: They have the followers. Even conspiracy theorist influencers have followings in the millions at this point. Mainstream media doesn't necessarily get that kind of readership on a given article or viewers on a given piece of content. But the influencer is algorithmically pushed into your feed and they have that ability to speak back, to engage in a way that media brands often don't.
David: How important are algorithms in helping these influencers get their message out?
Renée: The influencer needs to be seen by their audience, and having that relationship with your audience is key, but that's always mediated through what the algorithm is going to push to people, particularly as more and more of that in-feed real estate is determined not by who you follow at all, but by what it thinks you want to see.
David: In your book you write about Ali Alexander, an influencer who helped organize the Stop the Steal movement in 2020. How have people like Alexander become so influential?
Renée: People who are not Trump supporters might see him as clownish, but among the group that he's speaking to, they trust him, they believe him, and he compels them to take action. It's really important to realize the effect that influencer relationships have in shaping reality or driving people to act in a way. They really come up from the crowd and they're given their power because the crowd continues to engage with them and support them and drive them.
David: Is this what Trump is doing?
Renée: What you see with Trump over and over again is what we call this bottom-up rumor mill, where people are chattering about things, they say it, they post it, they tag him, he retweets them, then they have the benefit of that additional clout within the community. They've done their part, they're fighting for the cause. You see him very deftly working this system on Truth Social [where] he's constantly amplifying fans and followers and engaging very much among the online supporter base.
David: What are we missing about our current information environment?
Renée: What I find most alarming is that people have the ability to just create reality by making something trend, to reinforce over and over and over again these conspiracy theories. You do have this increasingly divergent set of realities where there's a deep conviction built up over many, many years of reinforcing the same tropes and stories. You can't just correct that with a fact check.
David: And following the demise of the Stanford Internet Observatory, there are even less people fact-checking this stuff. Who or what was to blame for your departure from Stanford?
Renée: The chilling effect of congressional inquiries and associated lawfare, and the politicization of research, is real. Institutions need to see the writing on the wall. We have seen these tactics in the past, such as during attacks on climate scientists a decade ago, yet the playbook continues to work. If spurious investigations into politically inconvenient findings succeed in cowing institutions, there will only be more spurious investigations.
The Chatroom
Where do you get your political news from these days (aside from WIRED Politics, of course)? Do you stick to traditional media (newspapers, broadcast TV) or are you subscribed to political newsletters, podcasts, and social feeds? Do you consciously make an effort to get news from different perspectives? Or do you think you are living in an information echo chamber?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment on the site, or send me an email at mail@wired.com.
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💬 Leave a comment below this article.
WIRED Reads
The US Supreme Court Has Handed Big Tech a Big Gift: Recent Supreme Court rulings have fundamentally changed the regulatory landscape, and limit how federal agencies hold powerful companies to account.Conspiracy Theorists Aren’t Even Bothering With Biden’s Debate Performance: Before the debate, far-right influencers and even Trump himself flooded the internet with Biden conspiracies. Now they’re just sharing real clips.UK's Labour Is Winning the Meme War, but Young Voters Think It's All Incredibly Embarrassing: Social media campaigns from both the Labour and Conservative parties have taken over the UK election.
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What Else We’re Reading
🔗 The Far-Right in Europe and America Isn't Populist—It's Much Worse: Mukul Kesavan argues that labeling far-right politicians as “populist” has eased their entry to mainstream politics and hides their true extremist nature. (Foreign Policy)
🔗 Evangelical Christians Are Throwing Their Support Behind Israel. They’re Partly Driven By Antisemitism: Christopher Mathias looks at how Chrisitian Zionists’s support for Israel is rooted in antisemitism. (Huffington Post)
🔗 FULL-ON ALARM: SCOTUS Declares President Above the Law: Author Jared Yates Sexton says the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity is a sign to take action in order to “avoid the abyss we are approaching.” (Dispatches From A Collapsing State)
The Download
This week we’re doing a feedswap with our friends from Marketplace, so make sure to give it a listen. And you should definitely spend your July 4 weekend catching up on any episodes of WIRED Politics Lab you may have missed. If you’re up to date, I highly recommend listening to the Blindboy Podcast for something completely different.
That’s it for today—thanks again for subscribing. Makena will be back next week, and you can get in touch with me via email, Instagram, X, and Signal at @DavidGilbert.01.
