conspiracy theories, which used to be stuff you could ignore. but now disinformation and conspiracy has jumped from the digital world into reality and you ignore disinformation at your own peril. on this special hour of "velshi," we'll trace donald trump's embrace of disinformation and the tools that he and others use to spread it, while exploring the effect it's having right now on americans, on our democracy, and on the upcoming election and beyond. and we should warn you, over the next hour, you're going to hear and see plenty of things that are not real, that have been invented out of thin air. stuff that will most likely have you wondering how anyone could possibly believe it. but it is important because people are vulnerable. some are gullible and plenty of people believe this nonsense. disinformation has infiltrated our government. that is part of our everyday lives. joining me for the hour are my colleagues, nbc news reporter

ben collins and brandy zebrosny, who will talk about how and where disinformation forms and spreads. the main problem is that creating and spreading disinformation has never been easier. because it's born on and grows on the internet, we can trace the path of the anatomy of disinformation, taking the oonge c ongoing conspiracy theory that people are traveling by plane to instigate mayhem and destruction around the country. this post, by a real important, says, quote, boise and surrounding areas, be ready for attacks downtown and residential areas. at least a dozen males got off the plane in boise from seattle, dressed head to toe in black, backpacks only. one had a tattoo that said

antifa america on his arm. there are people watching. you see this post from may 31. it has no basis in reality whatsoever. it is a figure of the poster's imagination. because this is the internet, his made-up post caught on. this post spread widely. a group called the real three percent ers idaho called the post incredible intel and stated that the secret plans of these black-clad hooligans were continuing to spread and grow,

so much so that the sheriff's office had to publicly respond and post that it was false. by the way, this wasn't contained to idaho. both the mayor and the police chief of neighboring missoula, montana had to publicly dispel the information but it didn't stop there, because why would you believe the sheriff, the police chief, or the mayor, when you could just believe russ thor wade? and yes, you know where this is going. president trump has also amplified variations of this, saying last week that protesters at the rnc, the republican national convention, came on a plane that was, according to trump, quote, almost completely loaded with thugs wearing these character uniforms, black uniforms with gear and this and that, end quote. and so people like this have now descended on racial equality and police reform rallies in multiple small towns in the northwest and elsewhere. they truly believe that if they weren't there, the imaginary

black-clad backpack gang bring chaos and destruction to their lives. it's ludicrous but it doesn't matter. one multiracial family was camping in washington, followed by multiple vehicles who proceeded to fell large trees, blocking them on the road and trapping them. this stuff is dangerous. joining us now is brandy collins dexter, a visiting fellow at harvard. she is an expert when it comes to online disinformation, especially when it comes to race. ben collins, get us started here. >> so brandy, i think what's really interesting about this is this is like an urban legend from 20 years ago, right? this is spread in the same way, word of mouth, all throughout people on facebook saying, oh, i heard this thing from this guy who then heard this thing from

this guy. why does this have so much import and how does it affect policy when people are going on their gut instead of on stats and data? >> this is an accelerated version of [ inaudible ]. it's part of the reason why the emperor has no clothes, passed down through jennings, because it's not new for those in power to stand up and say they're covered in the finest robes and [ inaudible ]. the defense is we often had brick and mortar in the past, [ inaudible ], even places that were separate from even alternative spaces [ inaudible ], we could process these things and decide [ inaudible ]. now what we're seeing is we're all trapped in the fun house. even if you are not on facebook, someone in your neighborhood is, and often it emerges as [ inaudible ] going out into the community and being [ inaudible ].

>> brandy. >> brandy, great name. i also wanted to ask, i've seen you say on facebook that you're tired of begging for crumbs of humanity. what can facebook do right now to stop this stuff from going from russ thor wade to the president? >> there's plenty they can do. will they do it is the question. they have psychologists on staff. their role isn't [ inaudible ] to polarization is the name of the game and power is the name of the game. we could see better content moderation, [ inaudible ] moderators. we could see them taking down [ inaudible ]. oftentimes had they slap labels on things, part of the problem is the things you miss them are more likely [ inaudible ] and

also people believe the lie and of course [ inaudible ]. but really it's up to congress and up to those in power that [ inaudible ] to [ inaudible ] because we've seen time and time again that these companies have no incentives to do better and our democracy suffers from it. >> brandy, what can people do? you said it's up to congress. we've been talking about this for a long time, congress certainly isn't going to act before the next election if they act at all. regular folks who consume this stuff, my parents are watching right now, they're not -- they don't know how to curate what's true and what's not. i think your point is valid, if it's not so egregious that twitter and facebook will put a lability label on it, what do you do then? >> we've seen place keeping, whatsapp is another primary vehicle for disinformation, and people you trust in the community have to be willing to

step in in terms of what's real and what's not. don't pass on information, even if you say "this is false," they'll see the disinformation more than they'll see the "this is false." so little things like that. >> brandy, you've covered -- >> go ahead, brandy. >> i've been following you for a long time. you figured out what happened in 2016, even before that, the people that first sounded the alarm with this stuff were black women on twitter with your slip is showing, right? have we learned anything? >> you know, i think we are learning. like as you pointed out, you have your slip is showing, it's father's day, you have a woman like [ inaudible ] mitchell, jackie lofgren, different folks that have been tracking this. the problem is it's a rapid [ inaudible ]. by the time you're out with [ inaudible ] already evolved into something [ inaudible ].

filter bubbles that you may not even [ inaudible ] people that are doing this [ inaudible ] may not even necessarily come into your atmosphere. so that's a lot we have to [ inaudible ]. we also have to [ inaudible ] that is incumbent on us to really seek out alternative sources of information and faces and to [ inaudible ] as smart as we think we are, we all can be [ inaudible ]. >> brandy, you've seen a lot of accounts, co-opting black identities and the identities of wannabe extremists. this specific rumor, busloads of an teetif antifa, twitter said it was actually created by a white supremacist group posing as antifa. you've seen this over and over again, people opposing as black

lives matter supporters. what are platforms supposed to do here? are they supposed to look into every single account that claims it's antifa and see if it's a white supremacist account? what's the game plan here? >> there are a number of ways in which platforms can obviously be more vigilant. part of the problem is, one, they're underresourced to deal with content moderation and most of their content moderators are not full-time staff. so there's a lot of challenges [ inaudible ]. but i think also, you know, i could tell you little things that i try to do, if there's an account that [ inaudible ] offline and they have [ inaudible ] 2016 or 2015 even or closer. but again, really, there's only so much you can do, except look to people who you do know are real. there's a reason why i follow so many journalists, because i know

i can [ inaudible ] than somebody that i may have a twitter relationship with but don't actually know offline whether or not they're real. >> that's tip number one for people, brandy triangulates, she can get some sense of what real or true looks like. brandy collins dexter, thank you for the great work you're doing. brandy and ben are with me for the rest of the hour. let's face it, social media giants profit off the spread of disinformation on their platforms. social media ceos created this importance. i'll speak to someone who has been on the inside at facebook. e i'll speak to someone who has been on the inside at facebook 'cause you're not like everybody else. that's why liberty mutual customizes your car insurance,

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for spending a perfectly reasonable amount of time on the couch with tacos from grubhub? grubhub's gonna reward you for that with a $5 off perk. (doorbell rings) - [crowd] grubhub! (fireworks exploding) welcome back to our special report on the disinformation epidemic. social media replicates what life ufsed to be like. you log on, see some disinformation posted by your uncle louie, and you move on and click on the next post. but the fact that rumor, innuendo, conspiracies, and outright lies are amplified by social media is no accident. it is a feature built into platforms like twitter and facebook. it's part of their business model. take fastball which has over 2 million affect the monthly

users. when you sign up, you give a bunch of personal data and you allow it to harvest your data however it sees fit. it takes your data and runs algorithms designed to get you to engage more on the platform, to stay on the site longer, to click through more clicks and get more ads targeted to you. that's the main way facebook makes its money. facebook ranks content for you based on those algorithms. the probability that you'll like, comment on, or share a story. the problem is that this process can point you to some really outlandish stories and before long, you might find yourself in the online equivalent of a rabbit hole, spending hours consuming misinformation and maybe even disinformation, deliberate lies. if you're vulnerable, and by the way, facebook knows if you are, you could be tricked or worse, you could be radicalized. that's how the facebooks of the world become an effective tool for bad actors to game social

media, to promote violence, lie about things like vaccines, to interfere in elections. long before the election of 2016, facebook knew all of this to be true but it followed a familiar pattern of responses. it denied there was a problem. when it acknowledged the problem, it treated it as a public relations issue, not as a core business issue. it offered up half-baked solutions that changed nothing. and it fought off attempts to regulate it. because what facebook has created is immensely profitable. look at its stock price since going public in 2012. it has risen 644% to a value of $806 billion. joining us now, roger mcnamee, a legendary and early investors in facebook well before it went public. he says he warned mark zuckerberg on the problems facebook's business model could unleash.

roger wrote a book last year called "zuck'd." now we're less than two months from an election and there is a chance that facebook's unwillingness to deal with this could actually threaten our democracy. >> ali, that's absolutely true. the company essentially believes that it is sovereign, the equivalent of another nation. it has more monthly active users than there were members of christianity. mark zuckerberg very much has the view that no one can tell him what to do. and his business is made by keeping people affect the and emotionally engaged in the platform. there's no content on earth that does that better than hate speech and conspiracy theories.

they create algorithms designed to keep us engaged and those algorithms will naturally promote harmful content. the real problem we have here is that it isn't just about advertising algorithms. it also is true of facebook groups. this is something created initially to give people a chance to get together and share things with family and friends and people who were interested in the same things. the problem is that facebook groups have evolved to the point where they're now really the incubator of conspiracy theories, disinformation and hate. and in that context, facebook's own research says that 64% of the time that a person joins an extremist network on facebook, it is because facebook has recommended that they do so. and brandy and ben have done amazing work to show how that has promoted things like qanon and made conspiracies much more prevalent in our society.

it's effectively mainstreaming it. >> roger, it fascinates me, i'm a business reporter, to me, i would think a ceo, warned about this, would do something about it. you make it clear in your book that you made it clear a long time ago and warned that it would be a problem. why the resistance to fix this? >> ali, people sit there and assume it's about money. i think money is secondary. i really think it's about power. i think mark zuckerberg has a vision that connecting all the people in the world on one network, his network, is the best thing any human being could do. in his notion, it has to do with efficiency, it has to do with scale, it has to do with his vision. that kind of power is intoxicating. remember, between when the company went public and 2018, the company got very little pushback. in fact what it really got was tons of love from investors and journalists and the like. they were in their own filter bubble and started to believe

their own press and their own point of view about what was going on. and i just think they're at this point now where they're just disconnected. there's no sensitivity, no understanding that they might have a responsibility to society. with the election coming so soon, this has become a national security issue. these advertising tools could be used by campaigns, they could be used by foreign governments, they can be used by provocateurs, people who just want to make trouble. if may have beenfacebook's poin this is just business as usual. they're hiding behind the first amendment and freedom of speech. but amplification is a business choice for profit, and to undermine the pandemic response, which they have done, to amplify

qanon with militias in the street, facebook has done that for their own benefit. >> roger, thank you for joining us very early for you on the west coast. roger is an investor and a real genius but also a musician, which is why you see all that paraphernalia behind him. brandy and ben are sticking with me. roger, by the way, is the author of a book which you do have time to read before the election to understand this better. it's called "zucked: weiaking u to the facebook catastrophe." chances are you know someone who has fallen for qanon's conspiracy theories. but we're not completely doomed. our next guest is a reformed neo-nazi who managed to separate herself from the hate. herself from the hate.

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rioting is not protesting. looting is not protesting. it's lawlessness, plain and simple. and those who do it should be prosecuted. fires are burning and we have a president who fans the flames. he can't stop the violence because for years he's fomented it. but his failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows how weak he is. violence will not bring change, it will only bring destruction. it's wrong in every way. if i were president, my language would be less divisive. i'd be looking to lower the temperature in this country, not raise it.

donald trump is determined to instill fear in america because donald trump adds fuel to every fire. this is not who we are. i believe we'll be guided by the words of pope john paul ii, words drawn from the scriptures. be not afraid. i'm joe biden and i approve this message.

the qanon movement appears to be gaining a lot of

followers. can you talk about what you think about that and what you have to say to people who are following this movement right now? >> well, i don't know much about the movement other than i understand they like me very much. uh, which i appreciate. but i don't know much about the movement. >> i've been a big supporter of mental health. i recommend that people who believe it maybe should take advantage while it still exists in the affordable care act. >> those two very different answers. qanon has gone mainstream, so mainstream that the two men running for president are acknowledging its existence and at least two qanon supporters have a pretty good shot of being elected to congress in november. you can't talk disinformation without getting in depth on qanon. qanon is a pro-trump online conspiracy cult based on the belief that donald trump is

battling deep state actors and child molesters. it began on a racist forum in 2017 frequented by trolls and far right extremists. if not for social media, it might have stayed there. as the qanon conspiracy spread online, often through anti-semitic memes, believers started showing up in the real world at trump rallies. qanon believers also began popping up in the news, often for committing violent crimes. the fbi warned last year that qanon is a potential domestic terror threat. this conspiracy theory, once hidden in the shadows of the dark web, has made its way to thousands of those facebook groups that roger was talking about, and millions of members. it's now infiltrating a new group of targets. brandy zadrozny has more on that. brandy? >> it's not just a conspiracy theory.

it's a cult. it feeds on uncertainty and isolation. nationwide protests, the election, and a pandemic have provided just the environment to recruit and radicalize new members. this chart was made using crowdtangle, a facebook-owned tool. it shows the activity of hundreds of the largest qanon groups. that spike is in march when states began covid-19 lockdown measures. but it hasn't just grown. qanon content is reaching a new audience and in some unexpected places. antivaccination, antimask conspiracies have pushed the theory. in some 200 cities and towns across the u.s., moms, often with kids in tow, gathered in their main streets, holding signs branded with qanon messages. now, after six months of rapid growth, facebook finally took

some action removing some but not all of the qanon groups that were specifically the discussing violence. twitter made a similar stronger sweep the week before. those moves have decreased but not eliminated qanon activity on the platforms, ali. >> what do you do, you've got friends, co-workers, neighbors who believe this qanon stuff. shannon foley martinez is, and i hope you're sitting down for this, an ex-neo-nazi and a current yale professor who specifically works to deradicalize people who have fallen victim to radicalization. shann shannon, thank you for joining us on the show. ben? >> shannon, thanks for coming. we talked a few weeks ago for a story about q an no. >> yes. >> you told me explicitly, like, i don't know what i was thinking when i was going down that white supremacist rabbit hole. was it, like, did i lose empathy, what was happening at that time? and what you were saying is, at

that point you didn't think you were becoming a bad guy. that's really what's happening with these qanon people, right, they don't think they're becoming a bad guy, they think they're becoming a hero in their own story, right? >> so i'm not a yale professor, i'm a consultant at pan american university, just to clear that up. >> so you're accusing me of disinformation already, 30 minutes into the show. don't clip that and put that on the internet. go ahead, shannon. >> everybody already thinks that anyway. so one of the things that i didn't recognize, while i was radicalizing into what i was doing, was that i was creating an echo chamber for myself. in my case it was a physical echo chamber. i ended up only spending time who believed what i believed, only in spaces where this was all that was going on. and i didn't recognize that that was happening to me, that my brain got -- was really like hijacked into only framing the

world around this ideology and these beliefs that i was immersing myself in. one of the things that's very important is that these are still individual stories. it's important for us to talk about the meta, right? it's important for us to talk about this bigger, larger qanon thing. but the people who are part of this are still individual human beings who all have a story behind how they got there. most of the time these stories involve some kind of trauma or layers of trauma in their lives. we know specifically when we're talking about women and moms from the "me too" movement just how endemic sexual assault and sexual violence is for women in the country, that the world feels dangerous and out of control to these people, and that they're looking for something that has -- a meaningful connection to something greater than themselves that they haven't

found elsewhere. when we start interjecting the idea that children are in danger, of course moms in particular and women are like, oh, we have to save the children. like why has no one told me about this? and so then when they hear and they start investigating it, interacting with these ideas, that there's this -- coming from this sense of deep disempowerment, when you feel like you've found the true truth, the real facts which hitherto have been hidden from you, that is very alluring and saeductive and feels like empowerment for a lot of people. the qanon folks tend to be older people as opposed to a lot of the further right wing stuff and esoteric hitlerism stuff tends to be younger, teenagers and young adults. but this is often middle-aged and older people who feel like

they're tech savvy but aren't actually really all that tech savvy. so their ability to fact check is often really limited. and they think they are. so one of the things, i also work at helping people leave radical violence-based stuff. and one of the things that i have found is that when you're talking to people who are involved in conspiracy theories, that the problem is that there really are conspiracies. part of the explosion of qanon is that it is being exploited by domestic and foreign influences to create and sow discord. but there isn't a single conspiracy, right? there isn't one driver. there are lots of people who have power, who want to maintain and amplify their power. and there are conspiracies that are going on. but there isn't one singular conspiracy. so how to talk about that in a complex way and how to interject

that complexity into what they have, this world view that they have created, to navigate the difficulty feeling this world that feels dangerous and unsafe, and that they're losing security that they once had, through multitudenous drivers. there's recession, there's social change, that we're watching the dismantling, hopefully, of white supremaciy, we're watching foreign actors, the world feels dangerous and unpredictable to a lot of people and this gives an explanation as to why. >> it's a useful explanation, shannon, while it's hard to empathize, it's useful to understand the drivers are similar, fear, danger, and being out of control. thank you for sharing that with us. shannon foley martinez is a

reformed white supremacist who now works to keep people from going down into those conspiracy theories and hate groups. this "velshi" special report continues after this. l report continues after this when your v-neck looks more like a u-neck... that's when you know, it's half-washed. downy helps prevent stretching by conditioning fibers, so clothes look newer, longer. downy and it's done.

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for spending a perfectly reasonable amount of time on the couch with tacos from grubhub? grubhub's gonna reward you for that with a $5 off perk. (doorbell rings) - [crowd] grubhub! (fireworks exploding) over this hour we've been speaking a lot about information and disinformation that finds its way onto and is disbursed widely on social media platforms and what government agencies could and should do to flatten the curve of disinformation. in the end they probably won't, at least anytime soon. so it really is up to you to defend yourself from the disinformation, and you can. joining me is my old friend katie byron, who works at an

initiative that helps people sort information out online. good to see you, katie, thank you for being with us. you're going to bottle a lot of what you tell people at mediawise into ways my viewers can protect themselves. >> yes, ali, good to see you, brandy and ben, thanks so much for having me and doing this special, because these issues of learning how to sort what is real and accurate online is more crucial than ever before. mediawise is teaching people to use fact checking skills that journalists use to do their jobs to identify what is reliable and accurate on the internet. why is that our approach? it's because there have been research studies done, one by stanford history education group, that shows that professional fact checkers are significantly better than other types of people at identifying what is really real and reliable

and accurate on the internet. so we're talking about very serious consequences here with the pandemic as well, because there's so much misinformation and disinformation online, that piece issues have life or death consequences, especially for older americans who are at high risk for the pandemic and are not equipped with the skills to identify what is reliable on their social media feeds and are online more than ever before. so one of the first tips that we teach with our digital media literacy project with mediawise is when you're scrolling through your social feeds, don't do it in a passive way. be an active and engaged user, because if you see something on your feed that gives you an intense emotional reaction, particularly surprise or shock or disgust, something that inspires you to share it with your network or press that share button or like button, that's

the moment, that's a key moment that you need to stop what you're doing, take a breath, and fact check it on your own and see, is this reliable, is this accurate. because those are those key moments that actually bad actors are looking for to disorient you and inspire you to spread a negative and damaging message that's also unreliable, not real disinformation. so that's one of our key first steps. and then the second one is, we have three key questions that we teach people to ask. these were developed by the stanford history education group after studying fact checkers like i mentioned. the first one is, who is behind the information, which is i think the most important question. the second is what is the evidence. and the third is, what are other sources saying. these are super critical questions that are essentially all you need to know to get

started on cleaning up your feeds. i know brandy is going to talk about that as well. >> that last one is important, what are other sources saying, sources that you otherwise don't go to. ben, let's talk about two things that influence how we look at things on the internet, those are trending topics or things recommended for us. >> sure. so i have one really specific piece of advice. the last time there was an october surprise, it was wikileaks, right, which was a bunch of hacked documents that were posted on the internet and then disseminated, people had to guess what was in them. that's going to happen again, not necessarily wikileaks, but the pathway is the same. what's interesting is the same bad actors from 2016 are taking the same pathway now and they have even in elections across the world since 2016. so how did we get pizza gate, how did we get qanon which is basically pizza gate? it was from the podesta leaks,

john podesta, hillary clinton's campaign manager, had his emails hacked or leaked. was there anything interesting or salacious in them? no. but people found a way to make them interesting by guessing on 4chan that if you replace the word "hot dog" with "little boy" or something, it would mean they are part of a satanic child-eating ring. that pathway is still the same. the bad guy stuff, the people who put all this stuff together, they bring things from 4chan to reddit, reddit to twitter, then once it gets to trending topics, it's out in the world. that's going to happen again this october. be really careful, on weekend nights, be careful when these things tend to drop, during weekend nights in october, something like this is going to happen, just beware. >> brandy, what do you have for advice for people to stay away from this stuff? >> piggybacking off of ben, social media companies have so much power over our lives because they built their programs that way, to have so

much power over our lives with their algorithms. and i think i don't necessarily have a tip, yes, you should google any claim that you see being made by media eagle 333 on twitter. yes, you should reverse image search when you see something that looks like a bunch of people climbing a rochester home and it said in the thing, oh, black lives matter people are climbing on this home when actually the "rochester city" reporter said no, i took this image and it was people sitting on the home in support. yes, you should reverse image search that. the overall thing i want people to leave with is that we have asked and begged platforms to clean up their act. but we are living in a polluted information environment. and it is absolutely up to us to clean up our own backyards, to be in control of the information that we put in that environment as well. so supporting and subscribing to

your local newspaper, sharing good information like fact checks, which typically don't go as far or as fast as misinformation, doing that is really important. you know, there's a really important study from kate starbird out of the university of washington in 2013, she looked at the 2013 boston bombings. she spoke to people who had read misinformation, and the people said they would change their habits when they realized it was misinformation. >> we can all do that right now. katy byron is the editor and mediawise manager. ben and brandy, you're staying with me. a classic american small town in idaho has become a hotbed of white supremacist hate, after this. needles.

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george floyd swept the nation earlier this year, rallies also popped up in smaller cities and they have been counterprotested by armed militia that spread disinformation. one of their theories, plane loads of antifa members were descending on iowa to destroy their city sounds logical. earlier this year, rebecca spoke out against the militias and a far right anti-government event that was called liberate america. it was a rally she went there and spoke. she urged local businesses not to sponsor the rally and her words were not welcomed in any stretch. so she was targeted by the militias because she spoke out against them and they began to share her pictures and she received threats. sometimes totaling more than a thousand messages in a day alone. some being death threats.

even talked about putting her in a body bag. she has been called a freedom hating marxist and targeted as a member of antifa online. she and her teenage son left idaho for fear of violence and she'll never feel comfortable living there again. we're not about to reach rebecca, but brandy has spoken with her a number of times. what do you know? >> rebecca is a fighter for sure. she's again -- she has been working in progressive causes in north -- northern idaho for a number of years but this year really changed things. around the time the george floyd protests started she started to see the militias that were often sort of organizing online, they talk online really hit the streets. when she saw there were the small protests of black lives matter, you know, a couple dozen young kids, college students, people of color in court kaline

come out, they were met with the armed men, it was terrifying. they target her in videos and facebook posts, she didn't feel comfortable living there anymore. like she said to me, she's like, it's not a conversation when one side is carrying an automatic rifle and it was scary so she left. for me, this story hits home, the idea that a lot of times we say, oh, it's just online, just trolling but for her, this is in her own backyard and i'll tell you rebecca is not alone here. this is happening all over the country. all over facebook. we see it time and time again. >> ben, do authorities take this stuff seriously? >> it's a really good question. here's the thing. we know they take antifa seriously, right? we know they're giving presentations about the violent anarchists in all of the cities and that's true. but a lot of times what we have seen is that they have had -- they made de facto alliances with some of the militia groups,

because they think it's the best way to keep themselves safe that's the dangerous thing. but i would say even more dangerous is that when a lot of the towns have these facebook meetups where they go to town squares and say, hey, let's go bat off antifa coming in on planes or buss or whatever, they go downtown and there are a couple of black lives matter activists who live in town but refuse to believe it because they're told that these are outside agitators and try to stir stuff one it and sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn't. they learn at the end of the day they beat antifa and they didn't come to their town. they didn't when this is an invisible enemy. they learned the opposite lesson and that's because they're in the echo chamber and they can go back home, hey, we won. they can claim a victory when really there was never a battle to begin with. >> you have some sense that this comes to a head soon and, you

know, people can understand it and get ahead of it so they're not tricked into this nonsense? >> i mean, at some point, where this stuff is being shared is two places. one, you know, the extreme right, the militia groups that facebook is apparently they say doing things about it. just with rebecca they deleted the militia that was harassing her, deleted the guy he said right after the deletion that he's been using facebook for ten years and will continue to do so. that's one problem. it may be -- facebook can get a handle on. we have seen an erosion of local newspapers in areas across the country. these news deserts. that's happened here. so what happens is people go into their facebook news groups, you know, beaver county news groups, you know, what they do is they share this misinformation. how facebook gets a handle on that i have no idea. >> thanks to both of you for this very strong hour. that does it for this special edition of "velshi." i want to thank brandy and ben

collins. catch me here next saturday and sunday from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. "a.m. joy" is up next. you're watching msnbc. atching m. when you think of a bank, you think of people in a place. atching m. but when you have the chase mobile app, your bank can be virtually any place. so, when you get a check... you can deposit it from here. and you can see your transactions and check your balance from here. you can detect suspicious activity on your account from here. and you can pay your friends back from here. so when someone asks you, "where's your bank?" you can tell them: here's my bank.

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could, perhaps, that ballot will not be used to be counted in that your vote has been cast and tabulated. this way you're guaranteed to have your vote count. send it in, and then see and then vote and let's see what happens. >> good morning. welcome to "a.m. joy." i'm maria teresa kumar. we are facing unprecedented threats to our election including from the president of the united states himself. during a north carolina telerally trump appeared to encourage them to vote twice which i repeat is illegal. with growing unrest and more damning revelations about his character, trump is trying to cling to power by sowing disinformation not only about this election but 2016s. >> i think i did win the popular vote. i think there was tremendous cheating in california. there was tremendous cheating in new york and other places.