Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me.

This is obviously a very important topic, and I have some big feelings about it.

To kick things off, I'm sure you all remember the “freedom convoy”. Well, as part of my coverage at the time, I joined several Telegram channels and groups where organizers and supporters gathered to exchange everything from planning details to fringe conspiracy theories. You might not have realized this, but it was actually just days after the convoy—actually, you guys probably do know this—that Russia invaded Ukraine.

It was a really interesting time to be monitoring all of those Telegram channels, because all of a sudden, the ones that had been posting about the convoy and COVID—groups with tens of thousands of members primed to distrust experts, government, media and institutions—shifted to posting about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, often claiming that Russia's invasion was actually justified because of reasons that the government and the mainstream media won't tell you.

This illustrates something that experts have said time and time again: Russia identifies the areas where we're most prone to polarization and pours gasoline on the fire that we've already built ourselves.

Don't just take my word for it, though. You can take it from Russia. In the documents that the DOJ released in September in the U.S., we saw details from Russia's “Good Old USA” project and its “Guerrilla Media Campaign” in the United States. Those documents show that Russia identified existing sources of polarization to then exploit. The “Campaign Topics” they planned to focus on included stuff like what they called the “Threat of crime coming from people of color and immigrants”, “Risk of job loss for white Americans” and what they called “Privileges for people of color, perverts, and disabled”.

That gives you a sense of the kinds of divisions Russia focused on exacerbating. It has a lot in common with what I would call the “right-wing grifter sphere” and what comes out of there, where people rail against immigration, attack diversity and inclusion, pearl-clutch about anti-white racism and oppose trans rights. Those are the kinds of topics you hear from people like Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Lauren Southern, and those are the same influencers who ended up on the payroll at Tenet Media, which Russia was allegedly funding to spread its talking points. If we accept the premise that Russia never influenced their editorial decisions, as these influencers claimed after the fact, that implies these folks are so good at dividing and polarizing western society that Russia likely saw it as a good investment to just fund them to make more of their organic content—yikes.

When we indulge in divisive, conspiratorial and often hateful rhetoric, we are doing Russia a favour, because a society that doesn't believe in institutions, in science, in journalism, in the validity of experts, in the value of taking care of each other and in the importance of a shared reality is a society where democracy and stability are under threat.

That's a note for the politicians who use this same kind of divisive and conspiratorial rhetoric: Consider what it means that Russia engages in the same tactics when it tries to undermine our democracy. Don't make it easier for them.

I want to touch on one last, slightly boring but super important, topic. When it comes to online disinformation, I want to emphasize the importance of taking action against Google's monopoly on digital ads.

The advertisers don't know where their ads go anymore. They take their ad spend and they give it to a company like Google, which says that it will reach, say, women aged 25 to 35 who want to buy a car, but it's actually very hard for advertisers to know where their ads end up, because Google and a bunch of middlemen place those ads for them. When an industry group tried to track this last year, 3% of the international digital ad spend, which is on track to hit a trillion dollars next year, went to an “unknown delta”. That's billions of dollars.

In the course of my reporting, I've seen ads for the U.S. government mint placed on Iranian websites that are likely sanctioned. I've seen ads for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on a porn website. Do you think those advertisers wanted to fund those websites? Do you think that, if they had the choice, they'd rather fund disinformation websites than actual journalism?

Advertisers can't demand transparency on where all of their ads actually go. They can't demand better from Google, because it's the only game in town. Breaking up Google's monopoly and ensuring advertisers know what they're funding would be one incredibly effective way of ripping a profit motive from several disinformation websites.

With that, I am happy to take your questions.

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