How To Fight Against Manipulated Reality

Documenting the truth safely in 2026

Life With Machines and Baratunde Thurston

May 08, 2026

Hey friends,

In 1992, I took to the streets for the first time to scream “No justice, no peace.” I was in high school. I had seen what millions of us had seen caught on video: the police beating of Rodney King. That footage moved people to march. It moved me.

A kid in high school today is living through something both familiar and different. Injustice is still roaming the lands. But now federal agents are snatching neighbors out of their homes and workplaces. AI is being used to fabricate what we see. Surveillance through government and corporate means tracks our every move, digital and physical. And our own government is manipulating what we see to give us a false sense of reality itself.

Being a witness is an active process. And if we’re going to keep going through this kind of nonsense, we might as well get good at it.

I sat down with Sam Gregory, executive director of WITNESS, an organization that has been training human rights workers to document abuse since the Rodney King video. Sam has spent years warning that we were headed toward a moment of low trust, abundant disinformation, and mass confusion about what’s real. We’re in it.

This episode covers how to witness safely, responsibly, and usefully:

How to assess your personal risk before you film
How to secure your device
How to capture footage that holds up
How to share without spreading harm
And why, even when justice feels far away, the act of witnessing matters

One thing Sam said that has stayed with me:

“We’re building archives of accountability so that justice may be served someday in the future.”

That can sound pessimistic. I hear it as hopeful. Someone in a lifetime before yours made that kind of commitment. It didn’t pay off for them. It paid off for you.

Watch the full episode below →