Mass Surveillance, AI & The Death Of Mainstream Media - Andy Stumpf

I actually think it's a vast overreach by the United States government. I think the government has the ability to know far too much about its citizens and people should be really upset about that. I really don't think that there is a breadcrumb trail that you can follow where if a government knows more about you, you are actually safer as a people. I think there is a breadcrumb trail where you can follow that the more the government knows about you, probably the less secure that you are. (wind blows) I don't have any wisdom, but I certainly will tell people what I think regardless of what they may think about it and how it lands with them. And if you don't like the answer, don't ask me the fucking question.

Good stuff.

(laughs)

Andy Stumpf, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the show.

(laughs) Thank you for having me.

Primetime ratings last night, CNN 569,000, Fox News 1.73 million.

Okay.

MSNBC 1.86 million. The first episode of Tucker Carlson on Twitter, 82 million in 20 hours so far.

So basically an ADX increase over what would be considered traditional mainstream media.

Yeah. Or 40, 30X over all three combined.

Put together?

Yeah.

Wow. Um, where do you get your news from?

Mostly the internet.

How do you select your source and how do you bounce, you know, we're in an interesting time, a time where I think people have more access to information than in the history of humankind and it seems like every day we're through that envelope or threshold even more. I have seen it in myself, I've seen it in other people, I'm sure you have too. The pros of the internet is you can find anything you want to. The cons of the internet is you can find anything that you want to. If you go there pre-cocked or with some type of confirmation bias, let me just tell anybody what they're going to find on the internet, exactly what they're looking for. And you can get lost in fake news, literally like satire sites that sometimes are so ridiculously good they're hard to tell that they're satire. Fucking totally here for it. Um, you'll come onto traditional media outlets like, you know, Fox News, the CNN, and if, and I'm sorry at this day and age if people don't realize that everybody and that message is bought and paid for. I don't know how to help you because it's right there in your face. You'd have to be blind to not see it. And I don't have a problem with people getting news from either one of those sources, let's just recognize there's a slant on it and a bias, and also they're in the business of selling ads, just like TV. So it leads you at this place, where do you get information? Do you go onto Substack? Do you go onto Twitter? Do you go onto traditional media outlets? How much do you have to balance it against the other side to determine that the information that you're getting is actually legitimate or real?