Southern California under first ever tropical storm watch, fixing USWNT: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Southern California under tropical storm watch for the first time

Southern California is under a tropical storm watch for the first time. Plus, USA TODAY Senior Reporter Jessica Guynn looks at how social media pushes hate on users, Guatemala heads to a runoff election, experts warn against boycotting student loan payments, and USA TODAY Sports Columnist Nancy Armour explains what the U.S. women's national team needs to do to get back on track.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Saturday, the 19th of August 2023. Today, Hurricane Hilary approaches. Plus, how the biggest social media platforms are promoting antisemitic and hateful content, and it's World Cup Final weekend.

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Parts of Southern California were put under a tropical storm watch for the first time ever yesterday as Hurricane Hilary grew to a Category 4 hurricane in the Pacific. The storm will weaken as it approaches land, but it will likely hit the region as soon as tomorrow as a tropical storm, with heavy rainfall and potential flooding expected. Hilary was about 360 miles south southwest of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico yesterday with sustained winds of 145 miles an hour. The Hurricane Center expects the storm to remain a hurricane as it approaches Mexico's Baja California peninsula tonight before weakening to a tropical storm. Hilary would become the first tropical storm to make landfall in California since 1939.

Meanwhile, there are worries that national parks in the Western U.S. could see severe flooding because of the storm, including Zion in Utah and Joshua Tree and Death Valley in California. You can stay up on all the latest throughout the weekend with usatoday.com.

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The world's biggest social media platforms are not just hosting antisemitic and hateful content, they're promoting it and making it easier to find. That's according to a pair of new studies from the Anti-Defamation League and the Tech Transparency Project shared exclusively with USA TODAY. I spoke with USA TODAY Senior Reporter Jessica Guynn to learn more. Jessica, thanks for making the time.

Jessica Guynn:

Thanks so much for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So, you write that there are new studies out on social media and hate content. What are the studies and what were the big reveals here?

Jessica Guynn:

Well, Will Carlos and I teamed up to write about two new studies that show that social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X, otherwise known as Twitter, are recommending anti-Semitic content and making it easier to find. In one of the studies, researchers created six online accounts for fictional people, four adults and two teenagers. They had the accounts follow some antisemitic folks, and then just some popular stuff that's not in any way connected to extremism. And the study found that these platforms began pushing pretty hateful suggestions, and the more the accounts liked pages or followed other accounts, the more antisemitic content they were shown.

It's not really news that social media platforms are rife with hateful content, but the proactive way these platforms were serving up this content is really troubling at a time when we have a historic surge in antisemitic incidents in this country, and at a time when the number of Americans who believe in antisemitic tropes has doubled since 2019.

Taylor Wilson:

And in these studies, who were the users that were having this content recommended to them?

Jessica Guynn:

In one of the studies we looked at, the most virulent, hateful content was not directed at the accounts of fictional adults, but at the teenagers. Instagram, for example, served up Nazi propaganda, Holocaust denial and white supremacist symbols, among other things, all to an account belonging to a 14-year-old. I mean, think about that. Who would want their 14-year-old child being shown that type of content?

Taylor Wilson:

Terrible. So Jessica, we know that antisemitism globally has been on the rise. What role is social media playing in this?

Jessica Guynn:

This is an extremely frightening time for Jewish people and Jewish communities. We've seen antisemitic graffiti slurs, physical attacks. We've had really troubling statements from celebrities and politicians, and we've seen people get really brazen about sharing antisemitic and hateful memes, tropes, conspiracy theories online. And scholars who study the spread of antisemitism on social media say these platforms are really partly to blame for the normalization and mainstreaming of antisemitism in the United States. And one of the culprits is algorithmic antisemitism. And that's the use of algorithms like we saw in these studies to spread hateful ideas even wider.

Taylor Wilson:

And we know that hate is sticky, meaning it gets the most engagement from users. Can these companies just change their algorithms to screen for antisemitism and hate and then not promote that content?

Jessica Guynn:

That was one of the most interesting parts of the study for us. YouTube, which we have written about in the past for playing a major role in spreading extremism, did not recommend antisemitic content. That came as a big surprise to us and to everyone. Our experts said YouTube is showing that it's entirely possible for companies to adjust their algorithms to stop recommending horrifying content. Elon Musk, who's platform X was described by the study as a heat machine, has this expression, "Freedom of speech, not freedom of reach." Well, in this case, YouTube is putting its money where Musk's mouth is.

Taylor Wilson:

And so, Jessica, what's the solution here?

Jessica Guynn:

Really good question. No good answers. We have laws governing the internet that were written before the internet or in its infancy. Congress hasn't managed to pass much in the way of legislation that would have a meaningful impact. The responsibility here really falls on the companies, and they argue they can only do so much. Their platforms are overflowing with content created by billions of users. They say they have all the right policies in place to ban bad stuff and they spend a pretty penny on moderation, whether AI or human, to detect it and police it. But that argument begins to wear thin when, as we saw in this case, they're sending adults and kids down an antisemitic rabbit hole.

Taylor Wilson:

Jessica Guynn is a senior tech and economic opportunity reporter for USA TODAY. Thanks for your insight here, Jessica.

Jessica Guynn:

Thanks so much, Taylor.

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Taylor Wilson:

Guatemala heads to a runoff election tomorrow. On one side is political veteran Sandra Torres, who's shifted to the right as she makes her third bid for president. Once an opponent, she's become an ally of outgoing President Alejandro Giammattei. On the other side, there's a surprise outsider who has campaigned against much of the country's system, Bernardo Arévalo. His very involvement, especially at this deep stage of elections, has worried authorities. And a judge at one point briefly suspended his Seed Movement party's legal status. Now, opinion polls released this week in Guatemala appear to show him leading by a wide margin.

Arévalo, if he wins, stands poised to reshape the Biden administration's approach to the flow of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. The administration in 2021 heralded a plan for hundreds of millions of dollars to address poverty, corruption, and violence in the region, root causes of the migration flow. Many Central American leaders have been reluctant or slow to cooperate, but Arévalo told USA TODAY in an exclusive interview that he's different. He said, "The first thing that will happen is that actually the United States will find a partner that is rooting out corruption and will have all intention of actually working toward development."

For her part, his opponent Sandra Torres declined USA TODAY'S multiple interview requests. In her campaign, Torres has leaned on conservative values and wants to keep abortion and same-sex marriage illegal in Guatemala. Arévalo has said that he's against discrimination of the LGBTQ community. And as the country's former first lady, some rural Guatemalans in particular may support Torres, remembering how she sent free food staples out while overseeing the country's social services. You can read more with the link in today's show notes.

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Now that the Biden administration's plan for student loan forgiveness has been overturned, many borrowers are considering taking matters into their own hands by boycotting payments. 62% of 1,000 federal student loan borrowers surveyed by independent researcher intelligent.com this month said they're likely to withhold payments, and about half believe the boycott could lead to total debt forgiveness.

But financial experts warn against doing so. The Biden administration has said that financially vulnerable borrowers who miss payments between October 1st of this year and September 30th, 2024 will not be considered delinquent, reported to credit bureaus, placed in default, or referred to debt collection agencies. But interest begins accruing in a few weeks on September 1st, which will increase borrowers debt balances. And once that on-ramp period ends next year, boycotters could start facing damaged credit scores, seized tax refunds, and more, according to Rikin Shah, the former head of business operations at a student loan refinancing company. Still, many borrowers may feel desperate after a slew of court decisions against them on loan forgiveness, two years of elevated inflation, and the highest interest rates since 2001.

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It's World Cup final weekend, but the U.S. Women's National Team is not participating after crashing out of the tournament weeks ago. I caught up with USA TODAY Sports Columnist Nancy Armour about what the team needs to fix to get back to glory, and for a look ahead to tomorrow's final between Spain and England. Nancy, welcome back to the show.

Nancy Armour:

Thank you, Taylor. It's always a pleasure.

Taylor Wilson:

So when you were on last time, we were getting excited for the US and Sweden in the knockouts, but it was not to be. Sweden eliminated the U.S. on penalties. Nancy, you wrote that if the US wants to avoid mediocrity next time, they need to do a major reset over the next year or so. Let's start with finding the right coach. Vlatko Andonovski has resigned as head coach. How important is it to get his successor right?

Nancy Armour:

It's imperative, because as we saw at the World Cup and as we saw in Tokyo and in between, it's the coach who comes up with the tactics. It's the coach who comes up with the system in which this collection of talent plays. Talent is not the U.S.' problem, as we saw at the World Cup. It was finishing. It was the way that they were playing. They were overthinking things. You need a coach who can build a system around the players rather than trying to shoehorn them into a preset system. That's most important of anything. But then longer-term, you need to look at the talent pool.

We talked so much before this World Cup about this being a generational change, that so many of the players had never played at a World Cup before. That's going to be the case again at the Paris Olympics and the next World Cup. So you need to start bringing in these younger players, getting them experience, giving them meaningful minutes so that you're not afraid to play them in the 88th or 85th minute of a World Cup game or an Olympic gold medal game, or a knockout round game in the wherever it is in the Olympics, but a must-win game at the Olympics.

Even further down the road, you need to look at the development system of the U.S. Talk to anybody who is involved in American soccer and they will criticize or complain or shout about the problems of the pay-to-play system. It is pricing kids out of the game. It's ensuring that we are overlooking talented players. There are ways around it, but U.S. Soccer or the NWSL or anybody who cares about American soccer is going to have to find a way to get creative, and figure out a solution so that the best players are playing the game and that they're staying in the game.

Taylor Wilson:

And Nancy, the U.S. has not seen this level of, I guess, let's just call it failure.

Nancy Armour:

Ever.

Taylor Wilson:

Ever is fair. Yeah. What lessons can they take from failure?

Nancy Armour:

I think motivation, number one. The younger players, they don't know a U.S. team that isn't successful. The U.S. has won the last two World Cup titles and it played in the final the tournament before that. So even if they know that it's not a given, it sure feels like a given, or did feel like a given up until now, and now it's not. And these players, they already knew that the game was getting more competitive, but they've experienced it and they know what it's like to get knocked out early, to not live up to expectations, and they don't like that feeling. Most of these women have been successful every point of their career, or been on teams that have been successful. And so this is a foreign feeling to them. And so they need to sit with it and use it as motivation so that they never feel like that again.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Shifting gears to this weekend. The World Cup is still going on, of course, with the final set for Sunday morning U.S. Time. It'll be England versus Spain. What are your keys to success on either side?

Nancy Armour:

England needs to score early in order to get a little bit comfortable. They've got to lock down the midfield. Spain, that's where their game is. They live and die in the midfield with their game. This is their first time here, but they've been knocking on the door for the last couple of tournaments, and they need to just focus and know that they can get it done. For Spain, similar type of thing. They need to lock down the midfield. They need to have an answer for England's many different weapons. So one thing that is so special about the England team is that their goals can come from anywhere. And also too, Spain is somebody that has never been here before. So controlling the nerves is going to be a bigger deal for Spain than I think that it's going to be for England.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Nancy Armour, you've been an awesome resource for us throughout the World Cup. Thanks for making the time, and enjoy the final.

Nancy Armour:

Thank you. You, too.

Taylor Wilson:

You can tune into tomorrow's final at 6:00 AM Eastern Time on FOX. And before we go, did you know that 5 Things is now on YouTube? A limited number of our specials and Sunday episodes will now be available as vodcasts. We have a link in today's show notes.

And thanks for listening to 5 Things. Dana Taylor is in for the Sunday episode tomorrow, and I'll see you Monday with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.