Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, December twenty four. Green's leader Adam Bandt says
Speaker 1: Labor is coming closer to the Greens position of full
Speaker 1: support for Palestine, saying Anthony Alberonizi has been forced to
Speaker 1: admit the Greens were right all along in criticizing Israel.
Speaker 1: That's an exclusive interview live on Beaustralian dot com dot
Speaker 1: u right now. How are we being manipulated on social media?
Speaker 1: That's the big question burning from Hollywood right through to
Speaker 1: all of our feeds as actress Blake Lively launches legal
Speaker 1: action against a coast and a production house she says
Speaker 1: deliberately sought to destroy her reputation and her life. Today,
Speaker 1: Who's controlling what we see online? It was one of
Speaker 1: the biggest movie releases of twenty twenty four, the longer
Speaker 1: waited cinematic adaptation of Colleen Hoover's blockbuster novel It ends
Speaker 1: with us, we.
Speaker 2: All have an idea of what love can be.
Speaker 3: I want to see you again. Now you see me,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: The film's stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni who also
Speaker 1: directed It Ends with Us, embarked upon a flashy press
Speaker 1: tour reminiscent of the media blitz, executed to perfection by
Speaker 1: Margo Robbie's Barbie.
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, I didn't have any hesitations.
Speaker 3: To me. It was a no brainer.
Speaker 1: But the longer it went on, the more things felt.
Speaker 3: A bit off. There is clearly something going on with
Speaker 3: this movie.
Speaker 4: They were at the premiere last night, they're all still
Speaker 4: not interacting with justin mind you.
Speaker 3: He's the producer, director, and a main character.
Speaker 1: He was rarely pictured with his co stars on red carpets.
Speaker 1: Lively was criticized for her lighthearted promotion of a film
Speaker 1: about domestic violence.
Speaker 2: It Ends with Us as in theaters now, so grab
Speaker 2: your friends, where your.
Speaker 3: Florals and had out to see.
Speaker 1: It, and for using the publicity tour to spook her
Speaker 1: haircare and alcohol brands. Old interviews resurfaced in which Lively
Speaker 1: appeared condescending, rude.
Speaker 3: Or bratty. What's the best way for them to be
Speaker 3: able to talk to you about this? How would you
Speaker 3: recommend they go about it? Like asking for my address
Speaker 3: or my phone number, or like my location share or
Speaker 3: I could just location share you, and then we could.
Speaker 1: It quickly became a pylon of a particularly new kind,
Speaker 1: a social media avalanche of negative videos, posts, and stories
Speaker 1: apparently made by creators who'd all come to a similar
Speaker 1: conclusion blake Lively was horrible.
Speaker 5: After her concerningly vapid answers to fairly serious questions, I
Speaker 5: found myself asking has she always sounded like this?
Speaker 3: I think my algorithm was tricking me.
Speaker 1: Ellie Dudley is The Australian's Legal affairs correspondent. She's also
Speaker 1: in her twenties, which means she's a prime target for
Speaker 1: this kind of viral social content.
Speaker 3: I was just being fed so much content that told
Speaker 3: me that Blake Lively was a bad person.
Speaker 1: On Friday, blake Lively filed a legal complaint revealed by
Speaker 1: The New York Times in which she accused her co
Speaker 1: star Justin Baldoni and others of legal violations, including sexual
Speaker 1: harassment and retaliating against her for a workplace complaint. She's
Speaker 1: claiming Baldoni, producer Jamie Heath, their film company Wayfarer and
Speaker 1: its billionaire founder Steve Sarrowitz, and public relations people they
Speaker 1: employed crafted a sophisticated social media astroturfing campaign in which
Speaker 1: they created and then fed an onslaught of negativity against Lively.
Speaker 1: The lawsuit claims it was all in an attempt to
Speaker 1: intimidate Lively into staying silent about her claims that Baldoni
Speaker 1: and Heath had behaved badly on set. Lively's lawsuit says
Speaker 1: the social media campaign was retaliation for a meeting held
Speaker 1: in January twenty twenty four in the middle of shooting
Speaker 1: for the film, in which Lively presented a list of
Speaker 1: thirty demands. We've used AI voices throughout this episode to
Speaker 1: read from the legal complaint.
Speaker 2: No more showing nude videos or images of women, including
Speaker 2: producers who were mentioned of mister Baldoni's or mister Heath's
Speaker 2: previous pornography addiction or BL's lack of pork. No more
Speaker 2: descriptions of their own genitalia. No more inquiries by mister
Speaker 2: Baldoni to BL trainer without her knowledge or consent to
Speaker 2: disclose her weeak. An intimacy coordinator must be present at
Speaker 2: all times when Biella is on satin scenes with mister Baldon.
Speaker 1: Lively said after she signed on to make the movie,
Speaker 1: Baldoni suddenly introduced sexual and nude scenes she hadn't agreed to,
Speaker 1: including wanting her to be totally nude in a scene
Speaker 1: where her character gives birth.
Speaker 2: When miss Lively objected to these editions, mister Baldoni insisted
Speaker 2: he had added them because he was making the film
Speaker 2: through the female gaze.
Speaker 1: Baldoni's denied the allegations, saying the complaint is categorically false
Speaker 1: and accusing Lively of trying to tank the film. In
Speaker 1: the end, the movie was a huge success, earning hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars at the box office and telling
Speaker 1: a powerful, domestic, violent story to audiences who didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: go to the movies expecting to be dealing with such
Speaker 1: big themes. But the legal dispute opens a window into
Speaker 1: how reputation is now, perhaps more than ever, being manipulated.
Speaker 1: The really explosive part of the lawsuit is a series
Speaker 1: of text messages Lively says she obtained by subpoena they
Speaker 1: pre brought to show. Baldoni's publicist, Jennifer Abel in August
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, messaging PR consultant Melissa Nathan that her client,
Speaker 1: Justin Baldoni, wanted the PR professionals to destroy Lively's reputation.
Speaker 1: Abel allegedly texted.
Speaker 3: He wants to feel like she can be buried.
Speaker 1: Nathan allegedly texted Abel back, we can't rate.
Speaker 5: We will destroy her. Ima Jennifer documents saying all the
Speaker 5: things that he once ends up in the wrong hands.
Speaker 5: You know, we can bury anyone, but I can't rate
Speaker 5: that to him coming up?
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for women in the
Speaker 1: public eye and for the way we consume social media.
Speaker 1: I sat down with Ellie Dudley and The Front's producer
Speaker 1: Kristin Amiot to dig into what this all means.
Speaker 3: So let's talk.
Speaker 1: About the way you absorbed the social media coverage of
Speaker 1: the press tool for It ends with Us? Was that
Speaker 1: how you first became aware that this movie even existed.
Speaker 3: When I first saw it, it was because I saw
Speaker 3: something about Blake Lively and the rest of the women
Speaker 3: in the cast not following justin on social media, and
Speaker 3: then also them not posing for photos with him on
Speaker 3: the press tour, them doing entirely separate junkets. That sort
Speaker 3: of stuff started pointing some big arrows towards something isn't
Speaker 3: happy here. What is going on?
Speaker 1: It really is the epitome of the guilty pleasure, isn't
Speaker 1: it spending time watching reels or scrolling through content in
Speaker 1: your feed that you know is being served up to
Speaker 1: you because you've already told the algorithm that you like it.
Speaker 1: My version of this is Meghan Markle content. So TikTok
Speaker 1: and Instagram have deduced that I really like Kate Middleton
Speaker 1: and I think she's very classy, and I really think
Speaker 1: Meghan Markle is trouble.
Speaker 3: And so I am constantly.
Speaker 1: Served videos of Megan Markle being weird or being horrible,
Speaker 1: being rude to people, even though I know it is
Speaker 1: not organic content. It's not just being served up to
Speaker 1: me because most people agree with me. I can't help
Speaker 1: myself kind of indulging in watching these videos.
Speaker 3: And there's a bit of a trend on TikTok. I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 4: If you ever go to the comment section of those
Speaker 4: videos that you're served, it can be about anything. It
Speaker 4: could be Meghan Markle, it could be people cleaning carpets,
Speaker 4: whatever it is people are in the comments, and they
Speaker 4: will often you'll often see the same phrase over and
Speaker 4: over again, which is I built this algorithm brick by brick,
Speaker 4: So there is this self awareness of people recognizing that
Speaker 4: they are being served the exact content that they want
Speaker 4: to can assume at that moment in time, and it
Speaker 4: might be ten carpet cleaning videos in a row, but
Speaker 4: they understand I am the person who has created this.
Speaker 4: It is just serving me what I've asked for and
Speaker 4: what I've already engaged with.
Speaker 1: In May, a podcast investigation by Alexi Mostris of Tortoise
Speaker 1: Media exposed a stunning social media assault against the actress
Speaker 1: Amber Herd. A defamation suit brought against her by her
Speaker 1: ex husband, actor Johnny Depp in twenty twenty two whipped
Speaker 1: up a social media frenzy in which more than fifteen
Speaker 1: million posts targeting Herd and calling her a liar were
Speaker 1: published on x. Depp ultimately won the suit and was
Speaker 1: awarded almost sixteen million Australian dollars in damages. What Mostres
Speaker 1: uncovered in the Hugeolled Amber podcast wasn't a dedicated fan base,
Speaker 1: but a sophisticated campaign perpetrated in large part by the
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabian disinf amation network known as the Ministry of Flies,
Speaker 1: the country's crown Prince, Muhammed bin Sulman. It turns out
Speaker 1: is a big fan of Depths, and the actor appears
Speaker 1: to have reciprocated Saudi Arabia's help in the form of
Speaker 1: positive publicity, including praise of Saudi Arabia's cultural revolution.
Speaker 3: There is something about these cultural moments. So when you're
Speaker 3: engaging with that and seeing what people think, you're telling
Speaker 3: your algorithm, please feed me more of these videos. I
Speaker 3: love them. Show me what you've got.
Speaker 4: And the enjoyment, to a certain extent, comes from the
Speaker 4: stakes being so low for any of us. You are
Speaker 4: observing this exchange, this cultural exchange that's going on.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because one of the things that social media
Speaker 1: is doing is critiquing the mainstream media, is saying, question
Speaker 1: everything and be a skeptic. And yet, because of the
Speaker 1: extremely addictive and delicious nature of particularly video content on
Speaker 1: social media, we don't apply that same skepticism and caution
Speaker 1: to what we're being served on social right.
Speaker 3: And if social media is holding the mainstream media to account,
Speaker 3: who's holding social media to account? Which I think is
Speaker 3: where we end up. I think there's something really interesting
Speaker 3: because young people today are becoming increasingly more literate when
Speaker 3: it comes to what they're consuming online. They're able to
Speaker 3: pick something that is an AI generated video, or they're
Speaker 3: able to see a tabloid headline that just seems a
Speaker 3: little bit off kilch, how something's not quite right. But
Speaker 3: what happens when there is an entire force at play
Speaker 3: pushing at social media algorithm to change the way that
Speaker 3: the public thinks. How can an individual possibly push up
Speaker 3: against that?
Speaker 4: There's also a possibility that this actually proves her argument
Speaker 4: in that if indeed Justin Baldoni and the people he
Speaker 4: employed can orchestrate a campaign so devastating that it can
Speaker 4: dismantle the reputation of somebody.
Speaker 3: Like Blake, live with the standing that she has.
Speaker 4: In Hollywood was to say, it can't also work in
Speaker 4: his favor and actually build up his brand in the
Speaker 4: same process. And in fact, that branding exercise, purely from
Speaker 4: a marketing perspective, has been going on for several years
Speaker 4: before he came to this film. He did a ted
Speaker 4: talk about sort of vulnerability and masculinity that went viral
Speaker 4: I think in around twenty seventeen. He then parlayed that
Speaker 4: into two books a podcast about male vulnerability toxic masculinity,
Speaker 4: discussing these things in a really open end. It appeared
Speaker 4: to be an intellectual way. So there is a marketing
Speaker 4: exercise that's been going on long before this that while
Speaker 4: it can allegedly do damage, it can also build the
Speaker 4: foundations of something that's powerful in a different way.
Speaker 1: I mean, does it basically boil down to the idea
Speaker 1: that society, men and women, and particularly now in this
Speaker 1: age of social media, doesn't like a woman who stands
Speaker 1: up for herself and says, I don't like the way
Speaker 1: you're behaving.
Speaker 3: I'm boss here. This is my call? Is that it?
Speaker 3: I think it's more than that. I think that if
Speaker 3: we believe everything that Lively has put in her legal complaint,
Speaker 3: then I think that we can believe that these men
Speaker 3: decided to shut down a woman that was trying to
Speaker 3: make a workplace safer. I then think that they succeeded
Speaker 3: in doing that. They spread a narrative, and they choreographed
Speaker 3: a campaign trying to damage her reputation. That worked. And
Speaker 3: I think that women and other people on the internet
Speaker 3: bought into that because they like to shut down a
Speaker 3: woman that's standing up for herself, and also because it's easy,
Speaker 3: and also because they loved the drama of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, she seems to have it all, doesn't she
Speaker 1: She's stunningly beautiful, very stylish, extremely rich and very successful.
Speaker 1: You know what's not to hate.
Speaker 3: And broadly liked as well. Right. She built this entire
Speaker 3: brand around being a nice lady. She's got her fun,
Speaker 3: playful relationship with her husband and Ryan Reynolds, and they've
Speaker 3: built this brand about being really, really likable. They flew
Speaker 3: too close to the likable sun, if you will, and
Speaker 3: got burnt. And so the Internet is really happy to
Speaker 3: pile on to somebody because you know that they're doing
Speaker 3: too well, or they're too successful, or they're too beautiful
Speaker 3: or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Ellie Dudley is The Australian's Legal affairs correspondent. Over summer,
Speaker 1: we'll be right here on the front with the headlines
Speaker 1: you need and some deep dives into Australia's best journalism,
Speaker 1: whether you're listening on the beach or on a road
Speaker 1: trip or just escaping from the relatives while pretending to
Speaker 1: walk the dog.
Speaker 3: From all of
Speaker 1: Us here at the Front and The Australian, have a
Speaker 1: merry Christmas, a happy Haneker, a brilliant new Year, and
Speaker 1: a beautiful time with your favorite people.