Corryn G. Freeman (00:00)

Hey, hey, hey, and welcome back to another episode of the Future Coalition podcast. I’m your host, Corinne Freeman, executive director of Future Coalition and today.

 

I’m very excited to welcome Alexis Crews. Now, Alexis is an impact designer and strategist with extensive experience at the intersection of technology and geopolitics. Alexis was one of the people who ran the US 2020 war room at Metta, playing a crucial role in safeguarding the US election against election interference from domestic and foreign actors.

 

Currently, Alexis is a senior fellow for information integrity at All Tech is Human, focused on global elections and the impact of misinformation on democracy. With her expertise spanning both the theoretical and practical aspects of social media’s influence on elections, Alexis explores social media in elections from the viral power of memes to the challenges of disinformation, along with strategies for fostering a more informed and engaged electorate in the digital age. Welcome Alexis, how are you today?

 

Alexis Crews (01:01)

Hey, I’m good. I’m excited to be here. We could talk for like hours about…

 

Corryn G. Freeman (01:09)

hours and hours and hours. For y’all who don’t know, well, none of you know, I met Alexis as a baby organizer on the Obama campaign in Colorado.

 

So before we really get into like what it is that you do, because it sounds so interesting, can you talk a little bit about how you went from becoming a field organizer into like election tech?

 

Alexis Crews (01:32)

Yeah, totally. And honestly, like it was not linear at all because we met in 2012 and I stayed in Colorado and ended up working on another race for Senator Mark Udall. So he was up for reelection in 2014. We lost that race. And then I got picked up by sitting US Senator Michael Bennett.

 

to lead his outreach. So I worked in the US Senate for almost three years. So I was on the Senate side and then decided to leave the Senate after we ended up with a very interesting presidential race in 2016 and went to grad school at City Counterterrorism. And during that time, we worked together again at the collective pack.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (02:04)

I remember that.

 

We did, I completely forgot about our collective of hack experience.

 

Alexis Crews (02:28)

Yeah, so the collective pack and that was what 20 was like the 2017 2018 election cycle, I think. Right. And after that, I felt I would never work in elections again. And then I got picked up by Metta. Right. J.K. Right. I got picked up by Metta and I was working on a team called.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (02:35)

Around then, yes, 2017, 2018.

 

J.K.

 

Alexis Crews (02:50)

regulatory escalation. So we worked with all the regulatory governments to make sure that like the platform could operate in every single country. And at that point in time, they were standing up the election war room with a bunch of people who never worked in elections before. And because I have the, well, if you’re not going to listen to me, I’m just going to like make a way spirit. I created a playbook saying like, this is how

 

elections run in the US and this is what you should look out for dog whistle X Y and Z and fought my way into the war room and then I ended up leading the war room and 2020 killed me I think I was so exhausted afterwards because the election didn’t end on election day and I vowed that I would never work on another election and then here we are again in 2024.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (03:33)

Yeah.

 

Alexis Crews (03:45)

where I’ve just been doing global elections work and doing trends and analysis for another tech company, but also for two think tanks, a focus on misinformation and the elections. But honestly, it’s like the erosion of democracy and how these tools have always been around.

 

but there’s just so many more people have access to information and who are also lacking critical thinking skills in a way that like we would have to pick up the encyclopedia Britannica or like the dictionary and now you just online, right? And so it’s just like, I couldn’t sit back and watch what was happening globally.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (04:13)

Mm-hmm.

 

right.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (04:27)

and not have a stake in the game. And so I’ve been working on every single election since January this year. So starting in Indonesia, the Pakistani election, the Turkish election, the India election, the EU election, France, UK, South Africa, and now US.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (04:53)

So really, truly global.

 

and trying to mitigate some of the digital harm. And I also think it’s really cool to see how you went from being a field organizer and even just having those skills transfer all the way into tech global elections oversight. Super cool. So there’s a lot of opportunity there for young people who are interested in getting into electoral politics. How would you say…

 

that how would you characterize the role of social media in the political process today, globally, but particularly for us here in the United States?

 

Alexis Crews (05:28)

Yeah, I mean…

 

Okay, think about it this way. The election that we worked on was like the first real like social media election, right? Like we were organizing on Facebook. We were organizing on Twitter. were like, and it was just another tool, right? We were sharing information. We were trying to get people to like come out in campus and we were sharing polling information, right? Like, how do you find? So, you know, back then it was also like the new

 

Corryn G. Freeman (05:37)

for real.

 

Alexis Crews (06:00)

era of like memes and everything. It wasn’t, you know, a place where a lot of bad actors, and when I say bad actors, I’m talking about foreign entities, people talk a lot about like Russia and China, but it truly is every country has a vested interest in the, in like this specific election. So it’s those foreign actors and then you also have

 

like domestic actors, right? Which is every single person who is involved or has an interest in the election outcome, right? And so for some people that could be like the leader of the Proud Boys groups or like the Federalist Society or other organizations or just political organizations. They weren’t using social media as like a tool to like shepherd false information necessarily because people were just like getting used to using social media.

 

2016, 2020, especially 2020, like it changed the game, right? So if we’re thinking about it from like our organizing days or when we’re teaching, because we used to teach, okay, but Corinne’s not telling you guys, it’s like we used to teach candidates on how to run for office. so like, yeah, yeah, like we, but we built this stuff. And so we would talk about media buys.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (07:10)

We did, the collective pack days, yes.

 

Alexis Crews (07:18)

Now, half of that money is going to social media and political ads, right? Now you’re having candidates doing 20 second clips on TikTok trying to spread messages or policy messages and trying to engage with voters. And then you also have people who used to just be, you know, the people in the peanut gallery, the ones who like, you’re like, okay, I’m going to listen to you, but you don’t know what you’re saying. Now everyone has an opinion.

 

All of those people have verified accounts. And then you have people who have fake accounts. So like not even real people, just like fake accounts that are being used across all platforms are spewing misinformation. And sometimes it doesn’t feel like.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (08:01)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (08:03)

it’s wrong information. Sometimes it just feels like, okay, yeah, it makes sense that this person said this. Or like, this feels as if like, I’m 90 % sure like this seems correct. I’m not gonna fact check it. And so it’s become part of the lexicon where even if you’re not on social media, candidates are catering to your social media instincts, right? And so, yeah, it’s not about doing town halls anymore. It’s about the clips that come from the town halls.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (08:27)

Yes.

 

Alexis Crews (08:33)

You know what I mean? So it’s become like a major player, but social media companies are not beholden to a lot of the same rules and regulations that… Exactly. So in the US at least, globally, every country is different, but in the US it’s fast and loose.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (08:48)

that media corporations are.

 

Yeah, think I’ve, well not I think, I definitely have noticed the lag when it comes to, there are FEC communication regulations for like television and radio, newspaper ads, mailers, things of that nature, but online, like you can pay as many influencers to do anything and they don’t have to report anything to the FEC, right? And I believe, don’t quote me or feel free to take this out if this is not correct.

 

I believe I heard on NPR that there were some American influencers who were being paid by Russia to do ads for Donald Trump and to promote the conservatism, but they were paid for by foreign interests. And to me, that’s very scary because…

 

Alexis Crews (09:45)

about a few weeks ago, That was part of a foreign interest influencing the campaign targeting out-of-work journalists you already have standing, right? Yeah.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (09:48)

We have.

 

Yep. Yep. And so like we have this happening and it’s completely not regulated yet because the pace of change is way slower than culture.

 

Alexis Crews (10:13)

I’m gonna be controversial because yes, there’s a big rate of change, but to be quite honest, so it was Department of Homeland Security who released the disinformation attempt by Russia. This was maybe a month or two ago. I don’t know, I’ve been traveling, so I remember hearing it, saying, okay, this checks out.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (10:15)

push back. Push back.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (10:42)

And it checked out because this is what we saw in 2020, but it’s the same thing that we saw in 2020. So the thing is now that federal agencies can now uncover this and now they’re sharing this information. But the technology is getting better, but the tools and like the methods are the same.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (11:03)

are the same. Yeah.

 

Alexis Crews (11:05)

And so it is literally a willingness for legislators to pass legislation. It’s not, it’s literally, yeah, so, so sorry. But it’s like, we don’t have privacy legislation around, on the federal level, around technology. We don’t have like true child safety.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (11:13)

Come on, Alexis.

 

Mm.

 

Alexis Crews (11:28)

legislation around technology, right? So like states have had to do it. So it’s not that the technology is like moving too fast. It’s like the tools that these actors and people are using. We’re talking about toolkits when we’re organizing, when we’re thinking about basic campaign. It’s the same things that people have been doing for decades, right? We’re not reinventing the wheel. Exactly.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (11:48)

what we were doing in 2012 on Facebook, Instagram, now TikTok.

 

Alexis Crews (11:52)

Right, you still got a lot of wars, you still got a canvas, you still have to figure out how to reach voters. And so it’s that’s just, it’s an excuse that I hear a lot from people from Washington. So like, there’s no reason why we should not have had regulation pre this election cycle.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (12:12)

I wholeheartedly agree with you and I appreciate you for pushing back on that talking point because it very much is from the perspective of legislators in Washington. But we’ve seen how quickly legislators can move things when they think it’s important, which speaks more to, for our listeners who are newer to the political process, the importance of you voting down ballot, why your legislative candidates matter, your federal legislative candidates, your Senate.

 

Alexis Crews (12:26)

I want to.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (12:40)

your House of Representative candidates and why our advocacy for the bills that we want, for the change that we want, is so critical and fundamental so that we can actually see impact and change. So thank you, Alexis, for calling that out.

 

Alexis Crews (12:54)

Yeah. No, thank you for giving the civics lesson because I think it’s, it’s unfortunate that states have to take this up and it actually creates more of a burden on the companies to try to create policies, address every state where you could just do it on the federal level. And there’s already, right. And there’s already an example, but if you vote down the ballot,

 

Corryn G. Freeman (13:14)

as it should.

 

Alexis Crews (13:20)

then and if you push for what you want to have seen done on the federal level, can get done. Yeah, TikTok, the TikTok ban. We can talk about that another time, but like that got pushed.

 

Right? And so a lot of it was driven by xenophobia related to China, not necessarily the fact that there were bad business practices, but the fact that they were worried about Chinese influence. yeah. So, I mean, I don’t know. It’s what people want to do at the end of the day. Politicians are politicians.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (13:36)

Yeah.

 

Mm.

 

Very true. So we’ve talked about the challenges online with social media and the way that social media impacts those elections. What role have you played in addressing the challenges posed by social media in elections to date?

 

Alexis Crews (14:15)

So I’ll work backwards. I’ll start from today and then I’ll give some examples of what I used to do in 2020 because I think the work has evolved a bit. over the past year, I’ve worked as a consultant for a tech company focusing on trends and analysis and creating authoritative facts.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (14:25)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (14:40)

books around every single election, right? Because what I think people overestimate is that these companies have teams of people who know every single thing about the election. Most of the cases, they don’t. And so I go in and I say like, this is actual election date, or this is what the ballot process looks like, or this is factual information about candidates. And I go through and I look at authoritative sources in Native Lincoln.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (14:44)

Mm.

 

Alexis Crews (15:10)

languages. So for example, I did this for the India election for months leading up to India. And then during the India election, looking at misinformation claims, providing context around that because they didn’t necessarily have the capability for fact checking. So I put all of that together and that’s what I currently do for the US election. And what that does is that creates a database for authoritative information. So when things come across that might need to be fact checked,

 

Corryn G. Freeman (15:23)

Mm.

 

Alexis Crews (15:40)

it’s already there. And that is, yeah.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (15:43)

okay. That verified sourcing, I do remember this when it was happening on, was it Facebook or Instagram? I just remember there was like, this looks like it may be misinformation.

 

Alexis Crews (15:54)

It looks like it may be exactly. So it looks like it may be information. And back in 2020, when we launched that. It would go through, it would go to a group of fact checkers. and they would decide whether or not they would have the capability to fact check that information. But that content would either be left up on the platform or would be demoted. But I’m talking about what I’m doing now.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (15:56)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Okay.

 

Alexis Crews (16:21)

is I’m providing all that information upfront. This way, if we know it’s false, it doesn’t even get up on the platforms.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (16:30)

Got it. Okay. Well, that’s wonderful. So like, the real life Olivia Pope, everybody Alexis Cruz in the background. What

 

Alexis Crews (16:32)

Yeah.

 

I know a little bit.

 

And so if you and I know that polling hours are from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.,

 

but someone decides to post something that says it’s from like now from like 8 a.m. until like 5 30 in certain districts, we know that that’s not true and we’re not gonna allow that content online. like that’s and so like that’s what I do, right? Because like that’s so like that’s part of it and then I also do scenario planning because for me,

 

Corryn G. Freeman (17:06)

Very good.

 

Alexis Crews (17:14)

the election happens in three phases and that’s something we learned in 2020. Election day is not the end of the election. You and I know this well. There’s so much work to be done.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (17:22)

Oof, oof. And for those that don’t remember,

 

January 6th happened, it started as a rally on Capitol Hill and turned into an insurrection where people died trying to take the seat of power from duly elected

 

Alexis Crews (17:43)

Now it is literally Election Day until Inauguration Day.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (17:46)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (17:49)

no matter who wins, there are going to be people who are going to be upset. Now the question is like, what is the potential for violence? And then the thing that is most confusing is the certification process.

 

Because we know about what the election process looks like.

 

And so I’m working with people who used to work in SOS, Secretary of State’s offices on a report that’s like scenario planning. And like, this is what actual process looks like. This way we can start to combat narratives that are gonna come out. And then there’s also potential for another…

 

Corryn G. Freeman (18:15)

Hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (18:25)

Bush versus Gore, right? Florida and SCOTUS, right? And so it’s like, again, the importance of voting because of the Supreme Court, because if it goes up to the Supreme Court, then we’re a whole lot of fucked. But like, how fucked are we? Not really sure.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (18:46)

Again, why elections matter? And she says, we’re a whole lot of fucked because right now we have a conservative leaning Supreme Court with three appointees by Donald Trump during his tenure. Okay? So we might not all be rah rah in love with Kamala Harris, but because of things like the courts and appointments project 2025 is all about having the ability to appoint people into these positions that have an aligned ideology.

 

Alexis Crews (18:57)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (19:14)

our president has the ability to do that, which is why you need to vote.

 

Alexis Crews (19:19)

Yes, and like I think like we used to convince people to register to vote and to vote. think with Obama it was so much easier because he had like the hope and change and like we felt like we were part of a movement and I think like that was infectious.

 

And then we have like this like high point over the summer and then people are expecting, they’re expecting a season campaign that only launched in what, late July, early August.

 

on my global team, I was in charge of a specific channel that certain organizations would reach out to us when they would see like misinformation or things that might seem a little bit off. So at that point in time, we had some celebrities, I’m not gonna name names, but we also had some pretty famous politicians who you and I both worked for, who would share these like infographics around like early voting information, like early voting dates.

 

those infographics would spread like wildfire, right? They would be something that like you wouldn’t think twice about resharing because of who it came from. Now I had three instances where I had to get on the phone and figure out how not to burn my political bridges because I had to tell this person like, hey, the information that you’re sharing is wrong, it’s not correct because there are two dates on there or two times on there that aren’t correct because something just changed.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (20:23)

Mm.

 

is not correct.

 

Alexis Crews (20:48)

Right? And so not all misinformation is malicious. And I think like that’s something that we have to remember. Like if something’s coming from the AP, great. If something’s coming from like when we all vote.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (20:53)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (21:01)

great because like I know that they’ve spent the time and effort and they would not be sharing information or they’ll issue redactions or updates. But if it’s just like your random friend who like, don’t know, she’s sharing a lot of political stuff, do not share that information because like you.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (21:17)

But I think it is important that we give people the correct information to share because everyone wants to share, right? I think, and because of how, so in the event that we are encouraged, because Future Coalition, we are encouraging people to create content, but we are getting information from verified sources.

 

Alexis Crews (21:39)

Let’s talk about verified. So let’s talk about how are you verified sources because no, no, no, because you’re right. Like we want people to share information, but like it can’t be. So when we’re thinking about verified sources, anything election related, I go to every single SOS office. I literally spend hours going to every single SOS office that they’re not posting stuff on their Instagram, secretary office, secretary’s the state’s office. Don’t look.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (21:42)

Yes, let’s, let’s come on Alexis. We do.

 

SOS for our listeners. And the secretary of state does.

 

Alexis Crews (22:10)

my gosh, they are the feeder for everything related to election integrity, every single thing. So they are going to be your main source of truth, right? And so especially if we’re looking at voting information, you can look at county information, but if you’re looking at like what’s happening in your state of Florida, you’re going to the Florida SOS office. They should have an Instagram page, they should have a Facebook page, if not, they have a website. And that is where you’re going to want to get the information from. You can also go on ballotpedia.com.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (22:19)

Okay.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Yes.

 

Alexis Crews (22:40)

and get the information. That’s what I would consider procedural. The problem that we see on social media is all the political stuff, right? And so it’s like,

 

when someone says something and it’s taken out of context and there’s no immediate fact checking, but it spreads like wildfire,

 

when you have a one specific

 

national candidate who literally just opens his mouth and says whatever he wants. It becomes really hard to fact check all of that. And so it’s like that political content. That’s the stuff that catches like wildfire. And that’s the stuff that people are using to spread and sow disinformation.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (23:19)

So to find out all of the facts around the election, meaning election date, early voting dates, early voting locations, early voting times, anything that we see online, we want to fact check against our Secretary of State’s office, which might also take you to your County Supervisor of Elections office. And feel free to visit Future Coalition’s voter hub.

 

But it sounds like for political information, we need to make sure that we are fact checking everything that we read, especially before we’re sharing it,

 

how do we balance the benefit of free speech on social media with the need to combat harmful disrepute?

 

disinformation, like, how does your everyday average person kind of strike that balance?

 

Alexis Crews (24:06)

I think that’s a hard question. I think…

 

Corryn G. Freeman (24:10)

Or can they?

 

Alexis Crews (24:12)

I think the most amazing thing about the US is that we have freedom of speech, right? And that individuality comes before everything, except when it comes to voting, please. But I think it’s a hard balance, right? Because social media…

 

Corryn G. Freeman (24:18)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (24:34)

And we didn’t even talk about AI, but social media and AI are just tools. Right. And so it goes back to, you asking the right questions? Right. Are you, are you sharing something? Are you seeing something because it matches the algorithm? Right. Like, are we.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (24:40)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (24:56)

are things so bad that like we would take anything that seems sensationalized at face value,

 

There are not enough people who understand the U.S. election working at tech companies. Most of the people who I used to work with at Metta no longer work at that company.

 

Right. so they might have trained up new classifiers and have better AI internally to catch misinformation. But you’re also just thinking of like one small like.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (25:12)

Mm.

 

Alexis Crews (25:28)

bucket, right? There are 30 tech companies who are like involved in the election right now. We’re talking about Reddit, we’re talking about Twitch, we’re talking about Snap.

 

Right. And then when you’re thinking about a company like Google, for instance, people only think about YouTube, but it’s Google search also. Right. It’s also Gemini. Right. For Meta, it’s Meta AI. Everyone talks about chat GBT, but hopefully people aren’t using that as a search engine.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (26:00)

she lies.

 

Alexis Crews (26:01)

So here’s the thing, they have hallucinations. I’ve been red teaming LLM products. I get various answers for everything, right? And the thing is, it’s like who holds these tech companies accountable?

 

right, for providing the correct information. So for us it’s just when we’re talking about what happens after Election Day.

 

Now we have to train a whole bunch of people on what the certification process looks like. We also need to train a whole bunch of people about what to look out for when it comes to political violence

 

but there is just not enough capacity internally for these companies to do all of that work.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (26:35)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (26:41)

So it really is up to you as an individual to not share information until you can verify it or unless it’s already coming from a trusted source, right?

 

If the SOS office calls something, I’m happy for it. If your governor calls something, they should be an informative source. But you know, depending on what state you live in, I’m going to double check that. So it’s also knowing the political leanings of the people who you’re hearing from, right? So like you live in a very interesting state. I live in a very interesting state.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (27:00)

they have a political interest.

 

Alexis Crews (27:18)

If I’m hearing something from my governor, I’m probably going to take that at face value. If I’m hearing something from your governor, I’m not going to take that at face value. Right, right. And so it’s like, do you know the political players and have you been trusting the information coming from them up until this point? If the answer is no, then why would you with something as crucial as election results? As crucial as…

 

Corryn G. Freeman (27:27)

Uh-uh, don’t.

 

I appreciate all of these critical thought questions for the audience. It’s like, if you already know kind of which way this person is leaning, how much of what they’re saying can actually be trusted. So there’s a big piece around critical thought around all that we are consuming around elections. So for the everyday average person, right, who is engaging online and social media, trying to like navigate their way,

 

What are some of the most common tactics that we will see used to spread false information during the elections?

 

Alexis Crews (28:21)

I mean, it’s already out there. So we talked about graphics. We talked about memes. I think things like deep fakes are very obvious. Even the soap.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (28:28)

Okay.

 

Talk more about deep fakes for those who might not know what they are.

 

Alexis Crews (28:37)

Yeah, so deep fakes are manipulative videos.

 

deep fake videos where the audio is manipulated. So anything that has like audio and maybe like a black screen or like this audio has been resurfaced from X, Y, and Z time.

 

pay attention to that because that is a very easy way that content is being manipulated. Things that actually are in Spanish or Mandarin or any other language that’s not English, we are already seeing a ton of misinformation being spread around certain candidates in Spanish just because the capabilities for catching that information on the tech side are limited.

 

So that’s already flooding. Going back to voting and like actual like how do you vote? Anything related to when ballots are being mailed out, how you can vote, who’s eligible to vote. We’ve already seen instances of information where like a date is wrong or time is wrong. Now it doesn’t mean that…

 

all the information in the actual post itself is wrong, but like I’ve seen instances recently where it is an X, Y, and Z state, the actual date itself is wrong, but all other information is correct. So that is a form of like misinformation.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (30:03)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (30:08)

And then what we can see after election day is a lot of confusion around the certification process and what that looks like for each state. The electoral process, there’s gonna be a lot of misinformation around that.

 

and just and so if there’s anything that organizations like yours can do to start to provide information around like the electoral process like some states are winner take all some states are not that’s the type of work i’m doing right now to identify which states are which states aren’t i think that actually i’m going to pull up

 

Corryn G. Freeman (30:44)

And the certification process, I really love the idea of talking more about the certification process so people understand what is happening. So when we are watching, we know how to watch.

 

And we know what’s factual versus what is hearsay.

 

Alexis Crews (31:02)

I didn’t know half of what was happening around certification process, right? And like we’ve worked in this for a very long time. So we theoretically should know more. But then again, there are are secretary of state’s offices who work on this information. Those people don’t go and work at tech companies, right? And they also maybe they’re burnt out from elections like we are, but they’re not putting together certification guides because up until

 

last year no one or up until 2020 no one really cared about certification right and so

 

Corryn G. Freeman (31:39)

Right, right. But now it’s definitely going to be a hot topic.

 

Alexis Crews (31:45)

Exactly. So let’s see. So there’s that. There’s all the fact checking around positions that candidates have, right? And you can find all of that information on PolitiFact. You know, the great thing is that we have all these rallies. We have these media interviews.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (31:58)

Okay.

 

Alexis Crews (32:05)

I look at Pillow to Fact and FactCheck.org and I said Washington Post and New York Times and I also do my own fact checking using other sources, So again, with the governor of North Carolina, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (32:24)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (32:25)

when everything was coming out around his behavior online, some of it was seeming a little bit too good to be true. turns out, you know, after doing fact checking, yeah, it turns out this guy had been in politics for a long time and didn’t know what he was doing. But.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (32:40)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (32:42)

I would say that I had to use tooling to figure out that these stories were verifiable or not before sharing them with people at the company I work at. So those are types of things that we’ll see.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (32:56)

do social media companies have in ensuring the integrity of elections and how well are they meeting this responsibility?

 

Alexis Crews (33:02)

yeah. Okay. So I think that this is a hard one. And to be quite honest, it’s hard for two different reasons. The first one is that technology companies are almost as big as nation states, right? So theoretically, they should have their own seat at the United Nations just because of the amount of power they collectively have.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (33:25)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (33:26)

Now they are private corporations, right? And so you’re thinking about it through a morality lens, right? And how much do they care about democracy? And for someone who’s worked on the inside, it becomes a business case. for…

 

Corryn G. Freeman (33:38)

Hmm.

 

Alexis Crews (33:48)

Some companies, the US is not one of the biggest markets, but the company is based out of the US. And so in a country like Brazil, the reason why it can hold Elon Musk to count and kick out X, right, is because, and you know, and like go into negotiations, it’s because Brazil is one of the largest markets for X.

 

Right. So it’s a business case as a business reason.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (34:15)

Yeah.

 

Alexis Crews (34:19)

So unless there’s regulation on the table and fines attached to that, they’re not going to do anything. So again, it is, we’ve already seen this like proven time and time again in other countries. If the US wanted to do something about it.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (34:37)

If he wanted to, he would, And the US is not trying to. It is up to us who care about democracy to press our elected officials.

 

Alexis Crews (34:37)

they would.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (34:48)

One, to create regulatory laws around fact checking and combating disinformation for these privately owned companies. So we must be the force that, I say it all the time, Dr. King said, the arc of the moral universe is long and it bends towards justice and it bends that way because we pull it that direction. So we must continue to pull it in the direction of justice by advocating to our elected one.

 

create making sure that these elected officials that we are voting for are prioritizing this as an issue and then advocating for the change that we need to see to ensure that democracy is protected because I would really argue that democracy, it looks like it’s on the line. Would you say the same based on what you, your experience?

 

Alexis Crews (35:37)

I think democracy is on the line and all countries are looking at us to make sure that the world doesn’t backslide. So it’s not pretty and like protecting democracy is not pretty and it’s not easy and the methods are not always great. But this is one method that we have at our disposal. So.

 

Yeah, it’s necessary.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (36:08)

If you could give one piece of advice to voters about engaging with political content online, what would it be?

 

Alexis Crews (36:16)

Other than question everything, have a healthy dose of skepticism. I post political content all the time. People think I’m a political scientist. I’m just like, no, just happen to not know when to stop caring. But that doesn’t mean that I’m always sharing the right things. So I guess know who you’re following, right? And know where their voice is coming from, right? So.

 

As long as you understand that, then you’ll understand the type of content and you’ll understand whether or not you need to do due diligence before sharing that publicly. That would be my advice. Yeah.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (36:55)

love that.

 

And our last question for you, Alexis, is what does the future look like to you? Like, what would you say is in  future for

 

Alexis Crews (37:09)

I think no matter who wins this election, it’s going to be a wake up call for US citizens, but also like who we are as a nation globally and our standing. I think that we’re going to see a lot of questioning about like

 

Are we actually a global leader? Can we weather the storm? Are our institutions actually a sound as we continue to say that they are? And whether or not we’re going to have standing on a global stage. My vision’s always global and I think leaders are waiting to see who gets elected.

 

But I think at the end of the day, they understand that America is broken for all intents and purposes. It needs to go through a healing process and it’s either going to be brought on because…

 

we want to heal or something catastrophic is going to have to happen and we are going to have to come together as a country.

 

So I hope that this election cycle just reminds people how important their voice is and that like,

 

It might seem that you’re just one person in a sea of millions of people, but your voice matters. Your vote matters because otherwise you’re just letting someone else determine what your future looks like. And honestly, we’ve already seen what that looks like. So if you just turned 18 and you can register to vote and you can vote for the first time, make it your first and make it your last. And local elections matter.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (38:35)

it does.

 

Alexis Crews (38:54)

because a lot of Project 2025, none of that stuff is new if you’ve been paying attention to what the Republicans have wanted to do ever since Obama got elected in 2008. And it’s been able to happen on the state level because people do not come out and vote in local elections, right? So it’s just allowing it to filter up to the federal level. And that’s because we didn’t do our due diligence in off-election years.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (39:04)

Not at all.

 

Alexis Crews (39:23)

to make sure that people were engaged in vote. So I hope that people wake up and see that it’s not every four years, it’s every year that your voice can create change and that you have to work at it and that people like you and I have been doing this for far too long, but like to retire.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (39:49)

We’re trying to pass it off. would like to, somebody put your hand out so we can just say, here you go.

 

Alexis Crews (39:57)

I’ll give you everything. We’ll train you. We will give you everything. We will, but like we want better leaders. We want more people who look like us, who understand our plight to like run for office and to be Olivia Pope’s and behind the scenes. Not everyone needs to be like an AOC, right? So it’s like.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (39:59)

We will.

 

Alexis Crews (40:20)

And people, I don’t know, I hope they get inspired to like become a field organizer, right? You gotta start from somewhere.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (40:27)

Look, those transferable skills, a lot of great people came from field organizers. Barack Obama was an organizer. President of the United States. Right, right, look at us. We were field organizers, first job out of college. So it’s, first job out of college.

 

Alexis Crews (40:30)

Yes. Look at that. Look at it. Look. I mean, look at that.

 

my god. From the start, we Blackologist. Come on, it doesn’t get better than that. We went to historically Blackologists, field organizers for the first Black president, and then we taught Black candidates how to run for office. Right?

 

Corryn G. Freeman (40:58)

a lot of power in that. And what I’m hearing Alexis say also is like, in order to create, to prevent a future that is bleak and dark, where democracy in America does completely backslide, our choices now matter. Of course, voting, registering to vote, making your election plan, but also using what you have at your disposal to point to the correct information. Provide that correct information.

 

Right? And so what we need you guys to do now is to get involved. One, vote. Make sure that you’re good to go. Ideally, vote early if you can. Right? Yes, vote early if you can. Don’t wait till election day. But also, feel free to get involved with Future Coalition if you would like to receive factual information about elections, the electoral process, and be an arbiter of that factual information.

 

please visit futurecoalition.org, check out our voter hub, view all of our resources and apply to be a part of our creator network today so you can use your voice for good and combat disinformation and misinformation. Alexis, thank you so much for joining me today. I love you sister and keep fighting the good fight. I hope you can rest soon.

 

Alexis Crews (42:14)

That was great.

 

I hope you can too, you’re the one doing it. You’re the one doing it. You’re tired and you’ve been doing this. So no, thank you because this makes my job easier. So we’re fighting on all levels.

 

Corryn G. Freeman (42:19)

Me too. I’m tired. It’s a joy.

 

It’s a joy.