Published Jan 1, 1
~~~
**Brandon Kline Interview
You
Great. Um, so I’m working.
Participant
Boy, that feature must be
You
Yeah,
Participant
a reporter’s best friend.
You
it really is. Um, so, I’m working on a story about Wikipedia edits from UC staff and students, and a few edits from back in 2009, stuck out to us, specifically on the article for Mark Udoff, who was, you know, then the president of the UC. Um,
Participant
Uh-huh.
You
So I understand that you had a role as the special assistant to the president um, during that time. Yeah,
Participant
Yes. Uh-huh.
You
so most of the edits that we’re viewing on his article were from Anonymous, um, Wikipedia Accounts, which the way that Wikipedia
Participant
Uh-huh.
You
works is that if you’re logged out, you can still make edits to an article, the, they’ll just be associated with your IP address, and the way that we’re associating them with UC is through the IP addresses that are, um, owned by the University of California. But, yeah,
Participant
Oh.
You
some of the ones that we’re viewing on Mark Udoff’s article were not made from anonymous accounts they were made from logged in accounts, which had your name on them. Um, Yeah.
Participant
Okay, but they, they weren’t, like, they were. I was trying to hide them, right?
You
Yeah. Um,
Participant
Okay.
You
yeah, so I was wondering if I could, could I just quickly email you a list of the, um, a link to the, um, the edits that I’m talking about? I don’t know if it’ll go through your spam
Participant
Sure,
You
filter.
Participant
that
You
Yeah,
Participant
that, that would be helpful.
You
just that we can both have them in front of us. Um,
Participant
Okay.
You
yeah, sorry about the spam, by the way, that that has happened to a few of our, um, our correspondence. But, um,
Participant
Yeah, uh, sorry, um, that it caused the delay here.
You
Yeah,
Participant
It’s,
You
no, it’s
Participant
It
You
totally not
Participant
happens
You
your fault.
Participant
so
You
Yeah.
Participant
frequently, everyone understands, right? It’s just the nature of the world we’re
You
Yeah,
Participant
living in.
You
of course. Um, so, um, do you see the, um, the email that I just sent you? I
Participant
Let me check. Yes.
You
said as a reply, yeah. So, um, the the 2 accounts, um, in question are, Kleiner 916, which is the 1st link,
Participant
Uh-huh.
You
and the
Participant
Okay.
You
2nd link is one called Brandon Klein. Um, Yeah,
Participant
Yeah, really sneaky there.
You
um, I know this is something from like close to 2 decades ago at this point, but do you recall if these 2 accounts were you?
Participant
I, I don’t
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
recall, but I,
You
Yeah.
Participant
I, unless there’s another Kleiner 916. um, Uh, But I, I really, you know, like as you state, Wikipedia is, um, a little in the
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
rear view for me
You
Yeah.
Participant
personally, but,
You
Yeah,
Participant
Yeah.
You
cool. I just wanted to go over 2 of the edits in particular, the 1st one you can see on link number three. Um,
Participant
Uh-huh.
You
It’s an edit from the account Kleiner 916. Which,
Participant
Yeah.
You
um, and the way that you read this page is that stuff on the, on the left-hand side of the page, which is in yellow, is stuff that was removed from the article, and stuff
Participant
Okay.
You
on the right-hand side of the page in blue is stuff that was added to the article. So, this edit in particular from um, September of 2009 by Kleiner 916 is removing um, all the paragraphs in yellow on the left. Um, and.
Participant
I was trying to see exactly what you’re talking about, and um, how do I see the paragraphs in yellow?
You
So, um, do you see the 3rd link that I emailed
Participant
Okay, I,
You
to? Yeah.
Participant
I, I, I see now. Yeah.
You
Um. Yeah, so I just had like, um, a couple of questions about specifically, well, 1st of all, your role as the special assistant, was that mostly like communications sort of stuff I saw on your LinkedIn that, like, the role at the top
Participant
Oh.
You
was, was listed as, um, as specifically being the, um, Here, I have it up, here, and as the institutional advocacy of communications.
Participant
Yeah, so I, it was sort of a, um, It was, my role was just come to so many
You
Yeah.
Participant
things that it didn’t really fall neatly into one box, but my background is in strategic
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
communications, and the, uh, the, the role that I played, and I, you know, I should 1st lead off by saying that, you know, it has nothing, uh, this has, uh, this conversation and and all of the work that
You
Yeah.
Participant
I was doing at, you see, um, has no bearing on the work of doing now
You
Yeah,
Participant
for
You
of course.
Participant
the Air resources board, and this is in no way, um, meant to be an endorsement and, you
You
Yeah,
Participant
know, all of
You
of
Participant
that
You
course.
Participant
disclaimer language that, um, I didn’t even know that I would be an attorney at the resources
You
Yeah.
Participant
board, um, in 2009. So
You
Of
Participant
uh, unconnected.
You
course.
Participant
But, To the extent, uh, the work that I was doing at UC, it was just more trying to, um, I was, you know, like the youngest person around, I
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
was just trying to get UC, to be a little more responsive to students and, um, to try to get more resources for the for the university. Um, I, uh, designed this, uh, UC for California network and created an entire, like, uh, integrated way of getting students involved through, uh, Twitter,
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
Facebook, and, uh, YouTube, and trying to get the president to be modernized as well.
You
Yeah.
Participant
Um, and get, and get him to actually visit campuses and and to interact with people.
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
And the, the outcomes were intended to increase support for the UC budget, you know,
You
Yeah.
Participant
specifically, uh, the appropriation and try to stop the cuts. There were a lot of cuts around, um, uh, higher education generally, UC took like 15000000 and and uh, and augmentations and then the state borrowed money from the UC at the time.
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
So it was just, there were unprecedented shortfall in the, in the California budget uh, through those years. I mean, what, it was 2000, 8 through, I think, like 2012. I, were you, you were probably not even in high school at
You
Yeah,
Participant
that time.
You
no, I was I was being doing it, actually. Yes.
Participant
Were you being born? How,
You
I
Participant
can I ask, what year were you born?
You
was born in 2007. Yeah.
Participant
Good Lord, okay, that’s, um, well, well, come, things have finally come
You
Yeah.
Participant
full circle for me because I, I was the, I was saying that to people when I was making these
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
edits. Um, you see, um, So, uh, at the time, Twitter and Facebook were really
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
cool. They were new, and nobody knew anything about how to, um, what to do with them, how to trust them. And I thought, you know, at the time, Wikipedia also, like I was trying to get blogging to be more a part of what we were doing and people up to understand that, um, that, you know, we have to be responsive and
You
Yeah.
Participant
engaging of like to the public. So, that was my general mission. Um, and so there were really just very few things that I didn’t do.
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
Um, at, toward the end of, of increasing, let, um,
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
support through all sorts of channels of advocacy.
You
Yeah. Yeah,
Participant
Yeah.
You
that’s great. I actually read about a lot of the things that you’re talking about it on this Wikipedia page through some of the other edits on the, the Brandon Klein account actually. Um, yeah, there’s a, there’s a, a few sections that were added by that account that, that go over this stuff. So that’s interesting to hear it from you actually. Uh
Participant
I would probably be more careful if I was doing this today, but, you know, it is what
You
Yeah,
Participant
it is.
You
um, so as far as like the goal of, um, of like having more outreach on these new platforms, um, which like I guess Wikipedia was one of them at the time. Um,
Participant
Yeah, because I mean, Wikipedia is still like a
You
Yeah.
Participant
blog, you know, because it, it’s, it’s, um, it’s such a critical way for people to see what the facts are just through, um, these sorts of edits
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
and, uh, and it’s, if you think about it, it’s kind of like the original Reddit in some
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
ways. But, um, yeah, this was the dream for me was to point to Wikipedia for, um, showing people about, um, at, at UC, about what, some of the tools that we could do. And you’ll never believe like how hard I had to fight to get even like a Twitter
You
Yeah.
Participant
handle going. Um, I, and you know what I did is like, I just did it without asking.
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
And, and then I had to explain what I had done,
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
like, you
You
Yeah.
Participant
know, like asking permission. And so that sort of launched Mark Udoff as a president who was on Twitter and he had, um, You know, that was a part of my role was to make it authentic by having him make the tweets
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
himself. I would take pictures, but of him in action, but like he had, at the time, he didn’t even have an iPhone. He
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
like had one of these
You
Yeah.
Participant
flip phones and I was like, you have to get an iPhone because then you can actually take the, we can take the pictures and get them onto your Twitter account right
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
away.
You
Yeah.
Participant
So Mark was the only college president that was doing this.
You
Mm-hmm
Participant
And, um, I think Time magazine did a piece on him,
You
Yeah,
Participant
uh, basically, like in the top 10.
You
that was, that was one
Participant
And.
You
of the things that was out of the article, yeah.
Participant
Oh, awesome. glad I did that. And I’m sure it was me. That’s… I mean you would know if it was me. But, um, yeah, so that that was Mark was the model about how to try a different way to get students involved. And I, I, I strongly believe and I still do that, um, the only real authentic way to increase support for the University of California is through the students because
You
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Participant
they’re the ones who show the pain of these cuts. And they’re the ones that have to experience, you know, the rise in tuition, the the classes being cut, the sections, and it’s just, you know, like you, having Mark Udoff go to a legislative hearing and talk about what students are experiencing is not the most effective way to tell our story. So
You
Yeah.
Participant
that’s what you see for California is all about, is having your UC story told through students as these cuts were happening to them. And my most difficult part of the job was explaining how it’s not Mark Udoff who was deciding to not fund the University of California.
You
Yeah.
Participant
Uh, you know, like the legislature, and it might seem like a very simple thing to say, but people don’t understand that when they’re, especially by people, I should be more
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
specific. I mean, the faculty didn’t really see that furloughs were being caused by the shortfalls and
You
Right.
Participant
funding.
You
Yeah. Um, and yeah, I obviously saw like a lot of the same. Sentiments like reflected in in these edits. So, um, Yeah, the message definitely did get out in that sense then, in, in the sense that like, like what you’re saying was definitely reflected in, in like the online presence of a, or being soon.
Participant
Certainly tried. And, you know, there were, uh, issues where, um, you know, like there was a lot of vitriol from, uh, certain segments, I don’t know exactly where it would come from, but it always made me look bad.
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
Because, um, you know, because I’m out saying this is, we should interact with students and this is a +and then, you know, you would have somebody, um, like create a fake account
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
and like treat all these obscene things about President
You
Oh
Participant
Udolph and,
You
yeah, you mean on
Participant
uh,
You
Wikipedia? Or on other
Participant
Yeah, it was
You
platforms.
Participant
on
You
Yeah.
Participant
Wikipedia. It was on Twitter. There, there, there was a fake resignation hoax that the New York Times reported on it as being real.
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
And so we were getting all of these calls about Mark Udoff suddenly resigning.
You
Yeah.
Participant
Uh, they, they created a fake email apparatus that uh, mimicked Mark Udoff’s email and sent it out to the entire consolation of faculty and staff.
You
Wow.
Participant
Like, it was really, really, um, uh, an interesting job, but those were all of the things that were in my job that I I was dealing with.
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
So, um, probably one of the best jobs I’ve ever had in terms of just a lot of fun.
You
Yeah. So do those sort of like attacks, um, like on the, the image that you see by sort of like anonymous people online. Does that sort of go into, like, the decision making behind these, like, um, more large scale, like removals of things from, from Wikipedia, like, the, the 3rd link on here is, is,
Participant
Honestly, the, the, Mark Udolph knew nothing about it,
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
and it was just something that I was, you know, I was like 23 or 24 years
You
Yeah.
Participant
old, um, that I didn’t, like, you know, I didn’t tell anyone about it. I just would, would make those edits,
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
um, without asking anyone for permission, because
You
Yeah,
Participant
that’s,
You
because Mm-hmm.
Participant
I had a lot of leeway, and, um, I didn’t really explain to anyone that, oh, this is something I’m gonna do.
You
Yeah.
Participant
And I didn’t consider the, The 1st amendment implications, like, now I’m an
You
Yeah.
Participant
attorney. So I I completely get that. Um, you know, that’s, that’s not how this works. But, um, I, I was, uh, really committed 24
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
year old in a job that I thought, um, was super important for higher education to, try to get funded and to not make it about Mark Udoff, but make it about the, the, the, the, the, the, advocating for the versus California as the, the, the best invest, the best return on the investment of the, the legislature. get is through funding the Universe of California.
You
Yeah. Could you, could you just like clarify for, for a minute about what you mean by now as an attorney, the 1st amendment implications like you looking back, this is
Participant
Well,
You
not high,
Participant
I,
You
so.
Participant
I’m, I’m, like, so after you see, I, I’ve left you see this job
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
to, uh, go to law school and, um, so, so, I am an attorney, and I don’t have really any social media, even though, so, I think it’s ironic that I don’t, because I, I created all
You
Yeah.
Participant
of the University of California, the social media. But as an attorney, I think that there are broad implications for, um, for speech. Uh, that I respect for, um, vigorously, um, what I know about the, uh, the 1st amendment.
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
So like this. This, the implications of me making these changes, whether or not I, like I was told to or not, it just looks like you have action by Mark Udoff to do it since I was working for the UC.
You
Yeah, which clearly it
Participant
Um,
You
was, it was sort of like, there wasn’t that much knowledge about these platforms at all within the UC before you got there.
Participant
There was, there were no, uh, like nobody knew anything about how this worked. And I, I couldn’t, you know, can you imagine explaining, um, how all of this connects? In
You
Yeah.
Participant
2008? Like nobody wanted us to be on Facebook. Mark Udof, like, took a chance on me by, by going along with the idea that he should even have a
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
Twitter,
You
It’s
Participant
and like now, it’s just,
You
just the default.
Participant
it’s, yeah, it’s assumed that you would have those things. But, um, this was the only way that I saw that we could get the community of advocates to be to to
You
Mhm.
Participant
grow. Um, When I 1st started UC for California, there were like, I was handed a few emails from, uh, like what was then called like UC friends and
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
there were like, there were like 2000 people on the list. And Mark wanted, uh, he, he agreed to, um, like with Michael was a get over 1000000
You
Yeah.
Participant
advocates. And so that, like, it seems like a quaint goal now, but at the time, it was really ambitious. And so I was just super committed to removing any obstacle to getting getting that universe of UC advocates to, to, you know, be student led and and to be connected through all of these platforms. So I think what I was thinking, you know, like, um, I, I, I just wanted people to look at the UC and not, not have it be about, uh, What, they called it occupy UC at the time,
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
uh, before, before that it was occupy, Wall Street. And, um, it, there were a lot of distractions from the mission of, Telling your UC story to legislators about how these cuts are just detrimental, and they add, they add the time to degree. They, you know, the labs were really outdated.
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
There was a lot of things that that had to go unfunded because of the UC was being cut. And then not only were we being cut, they were borrowing money from the UC’s pension plan. And so we ended up with $3000000000 like out of the UC during this time
You
Yeah.
Participant
period. And, um, like my, the way that I knew understood my, my role was to help to grow these advocates to, you know, be a 1000000 people.
You
Yeah. That is awesome. actually to hear about like the early history of like um, I guess the modernization of uh, of the office. Um,
Participant
Yeah, I mean, it’s really cool to be a part of, and I’m so glad that you’re doing the story because it was really, really hard to get anyone to agree to do, to go full scale into Facebook.
You
Yeah.
Participant
And I had nothing but resistance. The, uh, the, the, the crazy thing, like I had to do all these memos. I had to do presentations. I had to go from I had to go to every single campus and convince them to work together. to get all of these emails into one
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
system. And the way to do it, as I saw was through these social media platforms because when I was in college, I had a Facebook and then like after college, you know, it sort of slowly expanded and you may not recognize this because it was before you were
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
born. But, um, Facebook starts in 2005 or so. And then, um, it was only college age people, like literally was just only college age people. And then I get this job that you see it. Before that, I was in the governor’s office as a fellow. And, um, so I came in to make it, um, to, to try to, um, you know, do this advocacy role that was brand new.
You
Yeah.
Participant
And so the way that I pitched, you see, um, when they hired me was I wanted to focus on college age, uh, students, or not, obviously college students, on college students, on RUC students, as the as the leaders of this advocacy
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
program, and they just thought, oh, no, the students are going to embarrass, well, excuse me. I shouldn’t probably should not tell this reporter. But, um, you know, there was a lot of fear about losing control.
You
Yeah.
Participant
And I believe that it’s not as as much of a driving factor now, but they viewed social media as at best, um, a waste of time.
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
That’s, that’s, I truly believe that. And at worst, they would lose message control.
You
Yeah.
Participant
And so these things on Wikipedia really made my message, like what I was trying to do, like it really, it took away from it because I was, you know, like that was proving their point that we have no control of this and it’s making us, you know, it’s the, they, they, there’s a thought out there that if you do it, people will, um, be drawn to it and it’ll make things worse.
You
Okay.
Participant
So, you know, you know, go out there and, um, do a Facebook or something because we can’t control the message that will be on the, on the, uh, the message
You
Yeah.
Participant
board. Whereas my belief is that we need to have that interaction because it’ll draw more people in. And that’s also how we would realize that these things were even happening. And let me tell you, like, I’ll give you an example is, um, it was Thanksgiving weekend. And, um, I’m getting all of these messages through Facebook, because I was running the, the, the university’s Facebook
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
page. And it was all, that’s how we found out about this pepper spray incident at Davis, where apparently the chancellor was somehow involved in this, like, these poor students being pepper sprayed in the quad.
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
by the by the police. And, you know, that was one of the incidents that, um, that was like our 1st emergency incident where we learned about it through Facebook.
You
Yeah.
Participant
And think about how many times this happens, not the pepper
You
Uh-huh.
Participant
spray, but think about how, like, you, if you’re not getting your news through, like, these mediums, then I, I don’t know, um,
You
Yeah.
Participant
I don’t know anyone who isn’t. I mean, even my mom is is doing is on Facebook and getting our news there. So I, like, I’m so glad you’re doing the story because I’ve been proven right about, you know, um, Like, year after year, since launching this, that if we’re not getting our message out through these mediums, we are losing out on a huge opportunity, and um, it’s just the, the, the right way to do it, because that’s where the students are living anyway. And so, you know, what are we doing other than communicating with our students? Um, that should be our number one priority.
You
Yeah. Um, I would ask, how would you respond to someone who would say that, in particular, um, changing, like the the framing or the narrative of, um, some things on Wikipedia could be viewed as something that’s not really the job of, of the UC or the person who the article is, um, from.
Participant
It certainly is
You
Mhm.
Participant
not, like, I would agree with that person. Um, it, it’s not a job, like no one hired me to do
You
Yeah.
Participant
that, and no one, no one asked me to do that. I just was, um, I, it was, Something that I was passionate
You
Mm-hmm.
Participant
about. I did it on my private time. Um, I, and I did not. Um, yeah, I, I, nobody told me to do
You
Yeah.
Participant
that, and I, I just, it was by my own initiative that I, I did that. I think if if somebody were doing that as a university employee, it probably wouldn’t be proper.
You
Oh, okay. So, So you’d say that any, um, that
Participant
Well,
You
might.
Participant
actually,
You
Yeah,
Participant
hang on, hang on.
You
yeah,
Participant
Let
You
let’s
Participant
me
You
let’s take a
Participant
clarify.
You
one step at a time. Um,
Participant
Okay.
You
I think, so you would say that, um, like having, um, changing these sort of like public things on the internet on Wikipedia as being like an official communications, um, like job or task, like wouldn’t be proper. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Of course. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That’s interesting that you say that because, um, I was just talking with, um, Dan Mogolov, who’s the director of communications at, um, at Berkeley about, like, sort of like a similar thing about our current chancellor at Berkeley, um, Rich Lyons, there were some edits by, um, a Berkeley, um, communication staff member and Mogolov, who’s in charge of answering, um, sort of questions that I ask him for the newspaper. He confirmed that, um, the edits were sort of part of the official duties of, of this, uh, staff member and, um, and yeah, so I think that kind of like shows that it, like sort of editing Wikipedia and these sort of like communications things on, on sort of public sites is, has definitely became sort of more, yeah, like a lot more, um, normalized. Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Definitely. Um. Yeah, um… I don’t have any more, um, Questions for you at this moment. I was just wondering, is there anything else that, um, you’d like to add in, uh, in on this topic? Um, right now, I have talked to the University of the, I’ve talked to Berkeley, the campus for, um, for similar edits, um, I’ve also talked to, um, the University of, I’ve talked to the office of the president, um, the current office of the president for, um, some other edits that came out of, uh, the office of the president back in the day, which aren’t related to, um, Mark Udoff, which, No, I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think so because they’re from back in 2007. Um, Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, a lot of, we’ve, we found like several 100 edits from a, from within the office of the president and yours was kind of the only one that we identified as like, you know, not being anonymous and just like, I mean, you did it properly, like. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I had too much what? Sorry. Yeah. There, yeah, there’s a lot of edits from the, the, the, the Brandon Klein account and then the Kleiner 916 has sort of, um, more like large scale, uh, like removals of content. Um, I would say that, yeah, for, for the, the Kleiner 916 account, the, the link number 3 is one that, um, I was kind of curious about like whether all the things that were removed were, um, like fictitious that like you identified as being fictitious and were removing. Yeah, there were a lot of references specifically to uh, like UDOF compensation that were removed over like multiple edits, not just this one. Uh, no, they’ve, all of these edits have, like, been removed as of this point. Uh, I actually don’t think so at this point. I mean, I think that deleting that account might do the trick if you have a log into it, but, uh, Yeah, I’m not sure. I will say that, um, like a lot of the edits from the, the Brandon Klein account were also removal of some pretty heinous stuff that was written about Mark Udoff by IP addresses that we tracked to uh, to different students at different campuses, like the, the rhetoric on the, the Mark Udoff account is definitely, like gone through a lot of changes and a lot of them were just completely vandalist, uh, like things added by uh, different UC campuses. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I started this story specifically because of logged out accounts, which, um, um, I noticed that the University of California, um, owned several autonomous systems, which are, um, just blocks of IP addresses, um, which they had associated with each each of their campuses and the Office of the President. So, just based on that fact, I thought that it was probably possible to, um, find all the edits that were made by those, um, IP addresses on Wikipedia, and, Yeah, it was, a lot of the things that we found were pretty interesting, but also, not that important because the students are just going to be students in, write whatever they like on different articles, but the stuff from the office of the president was a little more interesting because, like, All the people in there are, obviously, holding themselves to a little bit higher of a standard than a, the average UC student. Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. Oh, so they hadn’t even like registered their domains? Wow. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s awesome. Yeah, I can imagine. Uh-huh. Yeah, this, this is, definitely been a very enlightening call. Um, we’ve just been kind of staring at these edits for like a few weeks now and being able to put a voice behind, like, um, what’s written is definitely, um, been very helpful, and honestly, for it to have been someone who kind of started, like, uh, uh, a move to like these sort of more modern methods is like really cool. Mm. Yeah. Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well. It has been a great conversation. Um. Yeah, thank you so much for reaching out, even if it was, um, a little after my my email got there, I’m sorry about the the spam issue, but I’m glad that we made it happen in the end. Totally fine. Yeah. Um, I will send you an email when the article’s out. Um, just so you can, you know, take a look at it. Um, but apart from that, um, thank you so much for the call and uh, yeah. I’m actually a freshman at Berkeley. I just finished my 1st semester. It was it was it was a very good experience so far. Yeah, thank you. Uh, a lot of, a lot of GAs join their um, freshman year, but I’m actually on the, the data department where we do a sort of longer form content. Yeah. Yeah, so, is the right fit for me. IP addresses. And yeah, the IP addresses are just like yours, like whatever you log onto the internet, you have an IP address associated with your, uh, with your connection and different organizations can, um, own certain blocks of the IP address space. Um, and the University of California has like, has a pretty expansive, um, range of IP addresses that they’ve sort of chopped up into individual sections for each of the campuses. So that’s how we’re able to identify where these edits came from. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, they, they do often change ownership or they might be registered to the organization, so I’m not sure if it would have your name on it. Uh, with the story? Oh, um. Uh, not sure right now. I’m studying electrical engineering and computer science. So, might go into the software engineering industry or continue doing data journalism, which has been very interesting this past semester. Yeah. Yeah, it very much is like a non-traditional route to journalism. I got a random roommate at Berkeley, actually, and he is way into journalism, and he went to an open house at the Daily California at the beginning of the semester. And I just like tagged along with him to check it out and I got hooked. You know what? His last name is actually Woodward. Yeah. Yeah. No, he’s not, but we’re both big fans. Yeah. Uh-huh. For sure. Oh, really? To, to the, to the UC? To the opposite the present? Wow. Uh-huh. Wow. Yeah, for sure. This is, this has definitely been a really interesting conversation. Uh, Brandon and uh, And yeah, happy to chat about anything if you have anything.**