Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridgett and this is
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. I am here
Speaker 1: with my producer Mike. Mike, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being here.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me Bridget and I'm excited to talk
Speaker 2: all about the tech news.
Speaker 1: And here's what you may have missed this week on
Speaker 1: the Internet. So we're gonna be kind of mixing it
Speaker 1: up a little bit today. Honestly, there was so much
Speaker 1: to talk about. A lot of it is related to Twitter.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna start with some news that you might
Speaker 1: have missed and then do a bit of a deep
Speaker 1: dive on Twitter. Mike, how does that sound?
Speaker 3: It sounds pretty good.
Speaker 2: I hope people are ready, because there's a lot to
Speaker 2: say about Twitter.
Speaker 1: I know it's like a we do our little segment
Speaker 1: what's Elon Musk up to? And this is like an extended,
Speaker 1: supersized version of what Elon Musk is up to. I
Speaker 1: hope y'all are ready, But first let's talk about what
Speaker 1: else is going on. So this is a little bit delicate.
Speaker 1: I don't make any kind of judgments about what kind
Speaker 1: of extra curricular internet searching activities listeners and folks are
Speaker 1: up to. However, here is some news because if you've
Speaker 1: tried to watch pornography online recently, you might have encountered
Speaker 1: some trouble. And that's because a handful of states have
Speaker 1: rolled out age verification policies to access adult sites, where
Speaker 1: folks have to essentially prove that they're over eighteen. So,
Speaker 1: if you've ever spent any time at all on adult
Speaker 1: sites more recently, it's been like a little checkbox that
Speaker 1: you have to check to confirm that you are over
Speaker 1: the age of eighteen. It feels pretty loose, like I
Speaker 1: think you could probably just say I am over the
Speaker 1: age of eighteen, and I don't think it doesn't really
Speaker 1: stop you from lying about that if that's what you
Speaker 1: want to do. But that is no longer the case now.
Speaker 1: When you go to sites like porn hub in these states,
Speaker 1: it redirects you to a government run website to prove
Speaker 1: that you were over eighteen by submitting your government ID,
Speaker 1: driver's license, or passport information. Currently, Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, and
Speaker 1: Utah all have these policies in place. Virginia's went into
Speaker 1: effect just last week, and according to the Verge, traffic
Speaker 1: dropped by eighty percent for Pornhub after it first began
Speaker 1: enforcing age verification in Louisiana earlier this year, and after that,
Speaker 1: it sounds like Pornhub just decided to start taking its
Speaker 1: sites offline instead of enforcing this age verification policy, so
Speaker 1: just sidestepping the issue altogether, kind of in protest. So
Speaker 1: that also goes for other porn tube sites that its
Speaker 1: parent company runs, like red Tube. So that means that
Speaker 1: thanks to Virginia's new rollout of this law, users in
Speaker 1: Virginia will not be able to access porn tube sites
Speaker 1: like red Tube or Pornhub either. Perhaps not surprisingly last week,
Speaker 1: in the days immediately following this policy going into effect,
Speaker 1: according to Google Trends, Virginia ranked as the highest state
Speaker 1: when it came to searches for VPNs or virtual private
Speaker 1: networks networks that allow you to circumvent these location specific
Speaker 1: barriers to accessing websites. So I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is tacky to mention, but at one point ExpressVPN as
Speaker 1: a sponsor of the show. I don't think they are
Speaker 1: anymore as a as a What's Your Producer had on Mike,
Speaker 1: is it taky to throw out the promo code for
Speaker 1: folks who want to try out ExpressVPN?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. You know, it's a useful service.
Speaker 2: We like ExpressVPN. Maybe they want to sponsor us again,
Speaker 2: we'd love to have them back. But in the meantime, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe listeners want a three three months off their subscription.
Speaker 2: Where can they go to get that?
Speaker 1: Bridget You can go to ExpressVPN dot com slash no
Speaker 1: girls to get an extra three months off with a
Speaker 1: twelve month plan. Yeah, I this is again, this is
Speaker 1: They're not paying me to say this. I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of VPNs. I think it's just a good thing
Speaker 1: to have, especially when that's like super easy to use,
Speaker 1: hit a button and then you know it's working behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. But I do think that legislation like this,
Speaker 1: I think that we're going to be seeing more and
Speaker 1: more location specific internet legislation, and so having a VPN
Speaker 1: knowing how to use one wouldn't be the worst idea
Speaker 1: in the world for somebody, even if you were you know,
Speaker 1: don't think of yourself as a techie who's going to
Speaker 1: need it. Do you remember that time that I was
Speaker 1: in South Africa? And you were in the United States
Speaker 1: and you wanted to watch Weekend at Bernie's two, and
Speaker 1: it was available in its entirety on YouTube in South
Speaker 1: Africa but not in the United States. So you used
Speaker 1: a VPN to try to access it, and then you couldn't,
Speaker 1: and we ended up doing like a zoom screen share
Speaker 1: so that we can both be watching at the same time.
Speaker 2: It was a very bad cinematic experience, but we did
Speaker 2: technically watch that movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks to VPNs. So I think that age verification
Speaker 1: online is a terrible idea for so many reasons, not
Speaker 1: the least of which is that it just doesn't really work.
Speaker 1: The day that the Virginia law took up that last week,
Speaker 1: people on Reddit were complaining about not being able to
Speaker 1: access porn sites despite not living in or near the
Speaker 1: states where it's the law. That's because IP addresses are
Speaker 1: notoriously kind of janky at being able to actually locate
Speaker 1: where a user is. For instance, here in DC, it's
Speaker 1: not terribly unusual for a user's IP address to say
Speaker 1: that they're in a nearby state like Virginia or Maryland,
Speaker 1: even if they have never been to one of those states.
Speaker 1: Because it's a little bit chanky.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2: So in some of my research, we try to geolocate
Speaker 2: people who use various digital tools that we provide, and
Speaker 2: it's hard to geolocate people.
Speaker 3: IP addresses just very unreliable.
Speaker 1: And personally, I don't think that we should be getting
Speaker 1: in the habit of being comfortable with having to give
Speaker 1: over our real names and government information and IDs in
Speaker 1: order to access the Internet. Our government does not keep
Speaker 1: our private data secure and private right now. In our
Speaker 1: episode about Doc Saying with Shanna Sigelow, the digital security expert,
Speaker 1: we talked all about how if you've ever voted, or
Speaker 1: paid a parking ticket, or had the power or electricity
Speaker 1: turned on in your apartment, your state or local government
Speaker 1: could be selling your personal data to whoever wants it
Speaker 1: because that's what they do. And so I think giving
Speaker 1: over more of our information under the guise of like,
Speaker 1: keeping us safer, just does it make sense to me,
Speaker 1: especially when it's under the guise of like, quote protecting
Speaker 1: kids online, because if we really cared about protecting kids online,
Speaker 1: there's one hundred other things that we would be doing
Speaker 1: to actually protect them from the corporate Internet forces that
Speaker 1: we know are exploiting and harming them, and I think
Speaker 1: Wired really summarized it well. They right, the Internet isn't
Speaker 1: a child friendly place. However, introducing age verification across the
Speaker 1: web is technical and complex. In twenty nineteen, the UK
Speaker 1: ditched a multi year plan to in introduced age checks
Speaker 1: after encountering myriad problems. The porn we watch is also
Speaker 1: highly sensitive, kinks are incredibly personal, and leaks of data
Speaker 1: online can be devastating. Privacy advocates, porn companies, and some
Speaker 1: regulators say the move to introduce age verification introduces significant problems.
Speaker 1: The concerns about young people accessing adult websites are real
Speaker 1: and widespread. Less widespread is the understanding of the limitations
Speaker 1: of various age verification tools and the new dangers they
Speaker 1: might pose. This is from Arena Resu, director of the
Speaker 1: Internet Ethics Program at Santa Clara University's Marcula Center. Many
Speaker 1: regulators and others seem to think of age verification as
Speaker 1: a solved problem. Technologists and privacy activists, including activists focused
Speaker 1: on protecting children, are trying to explain that that's not
Speaker 1: the case. And I think that's absolutely true. I think
Speaker 1: that you know, when we talk about legislation state specific legislation,
Speaker 1: for instance, around TikTok bands and things like that. I
Speaker 1: think that giving giving states and platforms more access to
Speaker 1: information about us, I find that a really wonky explanation
Speaker 1: for how that's supposed to make us more secure online.
Speaker 1: And we just know how legislation can creep when people
Speaker 1: feel motivated by a desire to protect kids online, like
Speaker 1: in Mississippi. For example, Another piece of new legislation means
Speaker 1: that nobody under the age of eighteen will have access
Speaker 1: to digital materials made available through public and school libraries
Speaker 1: without explicit parent or guardian permission, So no Libby access
Speaker 1: for ebooks for teens, and book Riot reports that even
Speaker 1: if they do get a parent's permission, miners can't access
Speaker 1: digital materials if vendors do not ensure that every single
Speaker 1: item within their offerings meets this new, wide reaching definition
Speaker 1: of quote obscendity. Per the state, This legislation went to
Speaker 1: affect July first, and libraries had to sort of scramble
Speaker 1: to figure out how to comply with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not clear what harm they're trying to solve here.
Speaker 2: I guess they're going to I guess the goal here
Speaker 2: is to protect kids from pornography, which, like I said,
Speaker 2: is a reasonable, laudable goal that I think.
Speaker 3: Most people could get behind.
Speaker 2: But it seems like the result of this law is
Speaker 2: like huge numbers of adults not being able to access
Speaker 2: something that they should have every right to be able
Speaker 2: to access. And I completely agree that it is scary
Speaker 2: to have to enter your government ID to do something
Speaker 2: that some people in power have decided is not okay, right,
Speaker 2: because you have to imagine that part of the goal
Speaker 2: here is just to like eliminate pornography entirely, which is
Speaker 2: a laughable goal. But you know, these a lot of
Speaker 2: these people who are caught up in this moral panic
Speaker 2: about protecting the kids.
Speaker 3: It's not like.
Speaker 2: They are coming from a place of you know, evidence
Speaker 2: based concern or evidence based solutions to actual problems, right.
Speaker 2: They're like living in a fantasy land where librarians are
Speaker 2: grooming children by reading them stories that feature gay people.
Speaker 2: And these are the same people who you know are
Speaker 2: pushing for these sorts of age restrictions like you said
Speaker 2: in Louisiana, and I guess Virginia now too, where you
Speaker 2: have to put in your government driver's license, which is nuts.
Speaker 2: You know, I absolutely wouldn't want to give those same
Speaker 2: people who are putting these laws in place access to
Speaker 2: data about what I'm looking at online.
Speaker 3: That is like the last thing I want to do.
Speaker 1: And it really I completely agree, And it really comes
Speaker 1: down to something that doctor Olivia Snow said that when
Speaker 1: we talk to her, that when you hear you're a
Speaker 1: lawmaker talking about legislation regulating the Internet in a new
Speaker 1: way that is meant to keep kids safe, that that
Speaker 1: should be your big red flag that they are talking
Speaker 1: about cracking down on the behavior online of consensual adults, right,
Speaker 1: And that like how often protecting kids online is used
Speaker 1: as a smoke screen in order to crack down on
Speaker 1: what adults are doing online consensually. And like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: just who who out there when they are doing their thing,
Speaker 1: when it's just them in their computer having their private moment.
Speaker 1: Who wants to get their government ID with their first,
Speaker 1: last and middle name and whatever like their address on it.
Speaker 1: Who wants to get that involved in that exchange? Nobody? Nobody, nobody,
Speaker 1: Like who is this servant? Right? And I think it's
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting that we're allowing lawmakers to
Speaker 1: introduce these new laws into our lives and tell us
Speaker 1: they are for our own good. When I think that
Speaker 1: anybody who's ever looked at online porn knows that, like,
Speaker 1: you can't close those windows out fast enough. When you're
Speaker 1: done doing what you're gonna do, do you want your
Speaker 1: license attached to it? Of course not.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. Who is it serving?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: And relatedly, who would it most harm? You know, it
Speaker 2: doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to picture scenario
Speaker 2: where somebody is being taken to you know, they're engaging
Speaker 2: like a custody battle or something, and somebody gets access
Speaker 2: to somebody else's records and now it's like part of
Speaker 2: the public record that like so and so looked at
Speaker 2: online pornography.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's a great point. And it
Speaker 1: also just reminds me of how often, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about the way the Internet is legislated, how often it
Speaker 1: will start in one place with online pornography, and then
Speaker 1: it'll start someplace completely different. When Yahoo bought Tumblr, they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, we're not going to have there be
Speaker 1: sexual content. You might be thinking that's like nudity, but
Speaker 1: by the end it was a whole host of content
Speaker 1: that wasn't necessarily sexual was content about people learning about
Speaker 1: their sexual or gender identities, right, and so that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily sexually explicit. But how quickly the bucket of what
Speaker 1: they were cracking down on expanded, And I think with
Speaker 1: legislation like this, you have to imagine that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe they're going to say starting with pornography, but who
Speaker 1: knows where that could end up? And that actually is
Speaker 1: a great segue to what's happening in France.
Speaker 4: Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: At or back. So, lawmakers in France's National Assembly passed
Speaker 1: a bill that lets police surveil suspects by remotely activating
Speaker 1: their cameras, microphones, and GPS location systems on their phones, laptops,
Speaker 1: cars and connected devices. Now, a judge will have to
Speaker 1: approve the use of these powers, and a recently amended
Speaker 1: bill does forbid the use against journalists, lawyers, and other
Speaker 1: people who work in sensitive professions. Now. Proponents of this
Speaker 1: measure say that it is meant to be limited in
Speaker 1: scope to serious cases, and that the maximum amount of
Speaker 1: time that police can surveil suspects is six months, and
Speaker 1: geolocation can only be limited to crimes that are punishable
Speaker 1: by at least five years in prison. Now. Unsurprisingly, digital
Speaker 1: privacy experts are, to put it, lightly concerned. According to
Speaker 1: n Gadget, the digital rights group La quadrechur dunet I
Speaker 1: apologize for my bad French previously pointed out the potential
Speaker 1: for abuse because the bill is just not clear in
Speaker 1: terms of what it constitutes as a serious crime. There
Speaker 1: are fears that the French government could use this to
Speaker 1: target environmental activists and others who are not grave threats.
Speaker 1: You'll notice that even though they say that this won't
Speaker 1: be used against folks with sensitive professions, does that include activists? Right?
Speaker 1: Does that include dissidents? They also point out that just
Speaker 1: like in the United States, security policies do have a
Speaker 1: habit of expanding, just like we were talking about with
Speaker 1: that peign legislation, right, that they have a habit of
Speaker 1: expanding to less serious crimes. They give the example of
Speaker 1: genetic registration, which used to only be used for sex
Speaker 1: offenders in France, but La Quadrature says, has now been
Speaker 1: expanded to being used for almost every crime in France.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know about France, but here in the US,
Speaker 2: I feel like every time there's been some law that
Speaker 2: expands police surveillance powers one two. Three years later, there's
Speaker 2: a bunch of stories about how that law was abused,
Speaker 2: used in ways it wasn't intended, targeted people that weren't
Speaker 2: supposed to be targeted. You know those newspaper headlines too.
Speaker 2: It's like the most obvious thing in the world.
Speaker 1: This is all happening against the backdrop of protests in
Speaker 1: France sparked by the police shooting and killing teenager not
Speaker 1: Hilim Razzak. Gizmodo reported that French President Macron actually threatened
Speaker 1: to shut down social media platforms as he claimed that
Speaker 1: protesters were filming, posting, and organizing on platforms like TikTok,
Speaker 1: Telegram and snapchat. And I think that it really goes
Speaker 1: back to what we were talking about in the last
Speaker 1: story about how it may seem like something that it's
Speaker 1: easy to think that these are things measures that we
Speaker 1: should be taking to keep us and our communities safe.
Speaker 1: But it's so often that they sort of start out
Speaker 1: as being about one thing and then can sort of
Speaker 1: slowly become about another. That is a tale as old
Speaker 1: as time when it comes to surveillance policies like this one.
Speaker 1: And so I think that these digital rights groups in
Speaker 1: France are really right to be pushing back on this
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, giving the police power to turn on remotely,
Speaker 1: turn on the camera or the microphone to your phone,
Speaker 1: to your car, to your laptop, that should be something
Speaker 1: that we're really concerned about and don't just you know,
Speaker 1: become okay with lightly.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think privacy is something that we all need
Speaker 2: to take very seriously and protect.
Speaker 3: It is under assault.
Speaker 2: You know, people have been saying that privacy is dead
Speaker 2: for years, and I don't think that's the case. I
Speaker 2: think we still have a lot of privacy in our lives, thankfully,
Speaker 2: and I think it's super important that we all protect
Speaker 2: what privacy we have and resist efforts to make us
Speaker 2: all register with government ID if we want to watch
Speaker 2: corn resist giving the state authority to like turn on
Speaker 2: our phones and record from our cameras without our permission.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's a scary world. These technologies really enable
Speaker 2: a lot of surveillance activity that would have been unthinkable
Speaker 2: years ago, that like despots of the past wish.
Speaker 3: They could have had access to.
Speaker 2: And we've talked a lot on this show about some
Speaker 2: of the paradoxes of the Internet. How at the outset.
Speaker 2: It promised this like bright democratic future where everyone would
Speaker 2: have a voice and everyone would be connected, and like,
Speaker 2: we kind of got that, but we also kind of
Speaker 2: got something very different where no one is anonymous and
Speaker 2: everything you say is traced back to people. And that
Speaker 2: comment from Macron that you just read that he was
Speaker 2: going to shut off social media because people were organizing.
Speaker 2: How many despots throughout history have wanted that power but
Speaker 2: just like didn't have it. But now that we are all,
Speaker 2: you know, communicating on apps that are centralized across you know,
Speaker 2: maybe half a dozen different apps, suddenly that does become possible.
Speaker 2: And what a scary proposition that is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't know, have you seen that episode
Speaker 1: of that first episode of Black Mirror Joan is awful?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So something I won't give it away if
Speaker 1: folks haven't seen it, But something that that episode really
Speaker 1: makes clear about the current future that we're or there,
Speaker 1: the present that we're all in, is how surveillance is
Speaker 1: sold to us as for our own good or even
Speaker 1: for our own entertainment. We should like being surveiled. We
Speaker 1: should find it funny, We should enjoy the information that
Speaker 1: we that you know, our apps and our platforms have
Speaker 1: collected about us and sold us back, sold back to us,
Speaker 1: and so it's kind of scary, how I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not immune to it either. I like looking at
Speaker 1: my Spotify end of the Year list just like anybody.
Speaker 1: I'm not a monster, of course, I find that fascinating
Speaker 1: about information about myself. But the way that we've been
Speaker 1: able to be desensitized to it and sort of more
Speaker 1: and more and more and more of our privacy is
Speaker 1: sort of for sale, and we are consistently told that
Speaker 1: it is for our own protection that we should be
Speaker 1: happy that it's happening. And another great example is what's
Speaker 1: happening in Sacramento. So listeners of this show know that
Speaker 1: since the Supreme Court overturned Row last year, we have
Speaker 1: been following the very deep connections between technology, digital surveillance,
Speaker 1: and abortion rights. And here's another update on that front.
Speaker 1: The digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation sent a
Speaker 1: letter to Sacramento Sheriff Jim Cooper, urging the Sheriff's department
Speaker 1: to stop their practice of sharing automated license plate reader
Speaker 1: data with out of state authorities in anti abortion states
Speaker 1: including Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas. Adam Schwartz, he's the EFF's
Speaker 1: senior staff attorney, said that this practice is a threat
Speaker 1: to security and privacy, and that a sheriff in Texas, Idaho,
Speaker 1: or any other state with an abortion ban on the
Speaker 1: books could use that data to track people's movement around California,
Speaker 1: knowing where they live, where they work, and where they
Speaker 1: seek reproductive medical care, including abortions. So back in May,
Speaker 1: the Electronic Frontier Foundation released a report showing that seventy
Speaker 1: one law enforcement agencies in twenty two California counties, including
Speaker 1: Sacramento County, were sharing this kind of data, and that
Speaker 1: this practice was actually in violation of a twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: law that states that a California law enforcement agency shall
Speaker 1: not sell, share, or transfer automatic license plate reader information
Speaker 1: except to another California law enforcement agency. And so they're
Speaker 1: just it sounds like, I'm no lawyer, but it sounds
Speaker 1: like they're just not doing that. They're just not following
Speaker 1: that law. The Sacramento Sheriff's Office had a pretty weird
Speaker 1: response to those allegations, accusing Electronic Frontier Foundation and the
Speaker 1: ACLU of being involved in some sort of like vast
Speaker 1: conspiracy to read lawlessness I don't know. You tell me.
Speaker 1: Here's what they said back in May. Law enforcement agencies
Speaker 1: commonly use information from license plate readers to investigate serious
Speaker 1: crimes such as homicide, child kidnapping, human trafficking, and drug
Speaker 1: trafficking across state borders. So very much like what we
Speaker 1: were just talking about, right that, like, oh, us collecting
Speaker 1: this data is actually good for you because it makes
Speaker 1: you safer. Fine, However, they go on. Some organizations, such
Speaker 1: as the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have lied
Speaker 1: that law enforcement sharing this information is an attempt to
Speaker 1: violate people's legal rights. These false claims are intentional and
Speaker 1: part of a broader agenda to promote lawlessness and prevent
Speaker 1: criminals from being held accountable. So like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if the Electronic Frontier Foundation is in on this, like
Speaker 1: vast conspiracy to enable criminals to just be lawless out
Speaker 1: on the streets. I don't know. That seems like a
Speaker 1: pretty big allegation from the Sheriff's office in Sacramento County.
Speaker 2: Just chaos agents. Their only interest is spreading chaos disorder. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what they're doing. That's where they get the big
Speaker 2: bucks because they're out there just trying to foment chaos
Speaker 2: anywhere they can.
Speaker 1: And honestly, it sounds like Electronic Frontier Foundation was accusing
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's office of not following the law, so then
Speaker 1: for the Sheriff's office to turn around and be like, actually,
Speaker 1: y'all are the ones who are lawless liars. And it's interesting, right,
Speaker 1: It's like their allegations are so specific, and the response
Speaker 1: is like, well, y'all are lawless liars who are just
Speaker 1: trying to help criminals, you know, murder children. One of
Speaker 1: these allegations seems a lot more believable than the other
Speaker 1: to me. I don't know, that's just me.
Speaker 2: It's such a good follow up to those two stories
Speaker 2: we just talked about about the creep of surveillance authority,
Speaker 2: because exactly like you said, it sounds like from this letter,
Speaker 2: the EFF was saying, hey, you guys are currently violating
Speaker 2: the law by sharing this information that you have collected
Speaker 2: through police surveillance apparatus. I don't know what the term is,
Speaker 2: but like, through these license plate readers, thro are reading
Speaker 2: licenses and you're sharing that with people who the law
Speaker 2: forbids you to share it with, and people are going
Speaker 2: to get hurt, and the response was, shut up. We're
Speaker 2: going after criminals, and you're a criminal too, even though
Speaker 2: the police are the ones breaking the law and the
Speaker 2: people pointing that out and pointing out this overreach of
Speaker 2: a law that was intended to have limits and the
Speaker 2: fact that the police are disrespecting those limits that were
Speaker 2: placed around this law to get it passed. But you
Speaker 2: have to assume we're put there by legislators who couldn't
Speaker 2: get the law passed without them, so they were like, Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: we'll put these limits around it. They can't share it
Speaker 2: outside of California to get the law passed, and this
Speaker 2: sheriff is just like uninterested in that right. He's going
Speaker 2: after criminals and lawlessness. And why should any god fearing
Speaker 2: good citizens be concerned that their data is just illegally
Speaker 2: being shared across state lines.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if you liked that response. After the Electronic
Speaker 1: Frontier Foundation sent the Sacramento sheriff their letter asking him
Speaker 1: to stop this practice this week, he replied on Twitter
Speaker 1: that first response I read to you was like Sacramento
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department like official Twitter this. He took to his
Speaker 1: personal Twitter to give this response. He said quote, the
Speaker 1: bill and this law has absolutely nothing to do with
Speaker 1: reproductive rights. My record on women's and reproductive rights has
Speaker 1: been strong throughout my time in the State Assembly, and
Speaker 1: nothing has changed since becoming sheriff. Electronic Frontier Foundation has
Speaker 1: the track record of protecting child molesters, ventanal traffickers, rapists,
Speaker 1: and murderers. Perhaps they should focus more on helping victims
Speaker 1: rather than continuing to shield criminals from prosecution. So if
Speaker 1: you thought the first response back when eff first made
Speaker 1: these allegations was a little much being like, oh no, no,
Speaker 1: you are too busy holding hands with child molesters and
Speaker 1: fentanal traffickers and rapists and murderers. Like it's just it's
Speaker 1: just a very intense response from what is like a
Speaker 1: very measured letter about about how they are following the
Speaker 1: letter of the law. Now, I should say that Adam Schwartz,
Speaker 1: the attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, does say that
Speaker 1: he was not aware of any cases where license plate
Speaker 1: data was used to prosecute someone forgetting an abortion, but
Speaker 1: added quote, we think we shouldn't have to wait until
Speaker 1: the inevitable happened, And honestly, I could not agree more
Speaker 1: and I think that the fact that the sheriff is
Speaker 1: going back and pointing to his record when he was
Speaker 1: in the Assembly on abortion and reproductive care, I just
Speaker 1: I mean, I honestly think this is kind of a
Speaker 1: normal or expected take from somebody who has not really
Speaker 1: thought very seriously about the landscape of abortion rights here
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people one did not expect Roe to ever be threatened
Speaker 1: the way that it was, and when it did, Fall
Speaker 1: really had a kind of myopic view on the actual
Speaker 1: threats that folks who are looking for abortions or need abortions,
Speaker 1: are allies to people who need abortions would face. You know,
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons why when I was in
Speaker 1: the reproductive justice space, we're not We were like, oh,
Speaker 1: don't use like coat hanger imagery or talk about like
Speaker 1: back alley abortions, because in twenty twenty three, that's not
Speaker 1: the threat. The threat is surveillance and criminalization. Sheriff Cooper
Speaker 1: saying that this kind of data tracking and sharing with
Speaker 1: other states has nothing to do with abortion and reproductive
Speaker 1: rights just goes to show how limited his understanding of
Speaker 1: the reality of our abortion landscape in twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: really is because if he's never thought about how tracking
Speaker 1: somebody's license plate data in California and then sending it
Speaker 1: to a state where abortion is criminalized like Texas or
Speaker 1: Idaho could play a role in someone's ability to access
Speaker 1: abortion care, If he's never thought about that, that really
Speaker 1: tells me all I need to know about how he's
Speaker 1: thinking about this issue. Because even if that license plate
Speaker 1: data is not being used today on Thursday, July sixth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, as we've just talked about in this episode,
Speaker 1: that does not mean that they that there will not
Speaker 1: be an expansion of how that data is used. And
Speaker 1: in my opinion, it is not a question of if.
Speaker 1: It's a question of when that data will be used
Speaker 1: to criminalize people who are looking for abortions. And just
Speaker 1: because Sheriff Cooper doesn't see it and it is does
Speaker 1: not have that clear of a view of the landscape
Speaker 1: of abortion rights in twenty twenty three does not mean
Speaker 1: that it's not our risk. And it's really I can't
Speaker 1: believe that he would say like this has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with abortion when I'm sorry, get real in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, when you share license plate data from California
Speaker 1: to stateside, Texas, A and Alabama. It has everything to
Speaker 1: do with abortion rights.
Speaker 2: And the important thing is that I think this isn't
Speaker 2: about this one sheriff getting it wrong, and like, isn't
Speaker 2: he a bad guy or isn't he clueless or something?
Speaker 2: I have no idea about him. The concerning thing is
Speaker 2: that he is the one who has the authority to
Speaker 2: decide how this private data that has been surveiled gets shared.
Speaker 2: And like you just said, he either is clueless about
Speaker 2: the landscape of reproductive rights and legal threats to people
Speaker 2: seeking abortions in twenty twenty three, or he's faking it.
Speaker 2: But either way, the data that he is sitting on
Speaker 2: of who has been driving around in Sacramento has real
Speaker 2: consequences for people, and he, by his own admission, is
Speaker 2: making decisions about who could access that data and who
Speaker 2: can't without having apparently any clue about the legal risks
Speaker 2: to the people that he has been entrusted to keep safe.
Speaker 1: I would take I agree, I would take it one
Speaker 1: step further, and I would say, because it is he
Speaker 1: like it is not men. I don't think that he.
Speaker 1: I don't this might be a controversial take. I think
Speaker 1: that for a lot of men, it's difficult to see
Speaker 1: the realities and the concerns of people who are not
Speaker 1: also CIS men. Seriously, I think that he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: pro choice. That's all I need to do is like
Speaker 1: be pro choice, And it's like, no, you need to
Speaker 1: also not buttress a vast network of interstate surveillance if
Speaker 1: you truly want to advocate for reproductive rights in this country.
Speaker 1: That's what it looks like in twenty twenty three. It's
Speaker 1: not nineteen eighty, right. Just being supportive of abortion rights
Speaker 1: and voting along those lines is not enough in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. If you are propping up a vast surveillance
Speaker 1: network that is going to get people who need abortions
Speaker 1: criminalized one way or another. And if you're it's really
Speaker 1: something to see people who are casked with supporting and
Speaker 1: advocating for these constituents not get that and so loudly
Speaker 1: proclaim that they don't get that, like I would. He
Speaker 1: should be embarrassed. So I looked up his record and
Speaker 1: it does seem to be a little bit all over
Speaker 1: the place in terms of his record on abortion care.
Speaker 1: But he obviously from his statement, wants to think of
Speaker 1: himself as somebody who is a champion of reproductive care.
Speaker 1: And if that is the case in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: you have got to be thinking about this issue a
Speaker 1: little bit more thoughtfully and a little bit more with
Speaker 1: a little bit more foresight about how it's playing out,
Speaker 1: because in twenty twenty three, you cannot be propping up
Speaker 1: a vast digital surveillance network and tell me that you're
Speaker 1: on my side when it comes to abortion rights. And
Speaker 1: I'll leave it there.
Speaker 4: More after a quick break, let's.
Speaker 1: Get right back into it. So it's not all vast
Speaker 1: surveillance networks. Let's talk about the sun. So we have
Speaker 1: talked a bit about Megan Merkle and how the coordinated
Speaker 1: hate campaign that she gets online targets her. But one
Speaker 1: of the weirdest aspects of this story is that it's
Speaker 1: not just random hate mongers on YouTube publishing videos like
Speaker 1: ten of Megan Markle's micro expressions that show that she
Speaker 1: is actually a huge, mean person. I almost said a
Speaker 1: swear word. I'm trying to swear less. I got some
Speaker 1: feedback about my swearing. I was gonna I was gonna
Speaker 1: put a swear word there. But I didn't, So you're
Speaker 1: welcome listeners with children. So it's not just we like
Speaker 1: weird YouTube hate mongers. It's also the press, like big newspapers,
Speaker 1: who are targeting her. Last week, the newspaper The Sun
Speaker 1: had to print a front page apology for an opinion
Speaker 1: piece about Megan Markle written by Grand Tour star Jeremy
Speaker 1: Clarkson the piece, I can only really describe it as
Speaker 1: a lot. Here's a bit from that piece, he writes.
Speaker 1: I hate her, not like I hate Scotland's first Minister,
Speaker 1: Nicola Sturgeon or serial killer Rose West. I hate her
Speaker 1: on a cellular level. Oh no, Megan is definitely worse
Speaker 1: than a serial killer, right obviously, Like what do you
Speaker 1: think of Megan Markle? You think serial killer is her?
Speaker 1: Megan Markle much further on the on the hate spectrum,
Speaker 1: he goes on, quote at night, I'm unable to sleep
Speaker 1: as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of
Speaker 1: the day when she is made to parade naked through
Speaker 1: the streets on every town in Britain while the crowds
Speaker 1: chant shame and throw lumps of excrement at her. Everyone
Speaker 1: who is my age thinks the same way. I don't know, dude,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's I don't know if that's correct,
Speaker 1: But like everybody, who is your who is your age?
Speaker 1: Is like, yes, I stay awake at night gritting my
Speaker 1: teeth thinking about her. Now, in his defense, he did
Speaker 1: say that he was going for like a Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones reference with that. I don't watch Game of Thrones, So, like,
Speaker 1: I you watched the show, is this? Does that? Does
Speaker 1: that check out?
Speaker 3: Yeah? That does check out.
Speaker 2: That is a reference to a scene from the show,
Speaker 2: But it doesn't diminish it in any way. Like it's
Speaker 2: it's not like she liked being paraded through the streets
Speaker 2: naked and having excrements throw at her, you know, the
Speaker 2: character who was having to who legitimately was like she
Speaker 2: didn't enjoy it. It was like very bad and it
Speaker 2: was just as sexist in the show as it is
Speaker 2: in real life, you know.
Speaker 1: So even if he was going for like a specific reference,
Speaker 1: I just think it's a little much to be printed
Speaker 1: in the newspaper, Like I can't believe that an editor
Speaker 1: read that and was like, Okay, doesn't sound unhinged at all.
Speaker 1: Definitely dis publish it. It's quick published and the way if.
Speaker 2: We go, Yeah, literary illusions aren't like like get out
Speaker 2: of jail free card for writing messed up stuff, right,
Speaker 2: Like they add some context and maybe some meaning or something,
Speaker 2: but they don't just like make it all okay because
Speaker 2: it was a reference.
Speaker 1: Well, the UK newspaper regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organization,
Speaker 1: agrees with you. After this was published, they got twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand complaints about the piece and they ended up
Speaker 1: launching an investigation into whether the piece breached its editor's
Speaker 1: code of practice. Although interestingly, the IPSO chairman Lord Fox
Speaker 1: said that the article was quote humiliating and degrading towards
Speaker 1: the duchess, but according to Deadline, also rejected complaints that
Speaker 1: the article was racist in tone, inaccurate, or sought to
Speaker 1: harass the duchess. The piece was ultimately removed and The
Speaker 1: Sun was forced to print an apology to Megan on
Speaker 1: the front page. It is so interesting to me that
Speaker 1: they specifically go out of their way to say the
Speaker 1: peace was sexist. It was humiliating, but it was not racist,
Speaker 1: and it was not meant to harass her, nor was
Speaker 1: it inaccurate. I find that so interesting because I mean,
Speaker 1: it really goes back to so much of our conversations
Speaker 1: that we've had on there are No Girls on the Internet,
Speaker 1: and also Internet hate Machine about how the responses to
Speaker 1: Megan Markle kind of work and how it's always right
Speaker 1: online line of racist. So it's like they're not going
Speaker 1: to overtly call her a slur. But I just have
Speaker 1: a hard time believing that if not for Megan's race,
Speaker 1: that this would have been somebody would have found this
Speaker 1: acceptable to print in the newspaper, right. And I also
Speaker 1: think that because of the way that identity works, gender
Speaker 1: and race and class and everything else, it's so linked
Speaker 1: that it is the idea that if someone printed this
Speaker 1: about me in the paper as a black woman, I
Speaker 1: would not be able to say, oh, they printed it
Speaker 1: because I'm a woman, not because I'm black. The idea
Speaker 1: that you could parse it and say like definitively not racist, sexist,
Speaker 1: but not racist. It is not how it works because
Speaker 1: of the way that layered identity and the intersections of
Speaker 1: identity work. And so it's fascinating to me to see this,
Speaker 1: you know, Ethics Board be able to say like, Nope,
Speaker 1: not racist, a big red stamp on that, Like, I
Speaker 1: would be curious to know how they determined that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too. It's it's like, how do you prove
Speaker 3: that it's racist.
Speaker 2: Right when, like you said, identity is this big web
Speaker 2: of intersecting identities. Uh, and the systems of oppression that
Speaker 2: traffic and benefit from public sexist and racist attacks are
Speaker 2: so good at writing that line.
Speaker 3: It's it's a tough thing.
Speaker 2: It's it's almost it's almost impossible to look at one
Speaker 2: isolated incident like that, or you know, one isolated piece
Speaker 2: of writing, even as terrible as this, And like you said,
Speaker 2: he didn't include a slur, didn't reference the color of
Speaker 2: her skin, so like prove that it's racist. But then
Speaker 2: when you step back and look at the pattern of
Speaker 2: how this piece fits into a whole ecosystem and industry
Speaker 2: around smearing and harassing her, obviously it's racist.
Speaker 3: It's it's a challenge. I guess.
Speaker 2: It's also hard for me to think about the like,
Speaker 2: what is this guy's title.
Speaker 1: The IPSO chairman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's also a little challenging to me
Speaker 2: to think about this IPSO chairman, who is, like I
Speaker 2: guess in England, he's like the top person in charge
Speaker 2: of the newspapers. Like what would that even look like
Speaker 2: in the United States.
Speaker 3: I can't even wrap my head around it.
Speaker 1: Well, if you asked me, he should come on as
Speaker 1: a producer and co host of the podcast. Yo, is
Speaker 1: this racist? Because this white man apparently is the arbiter
Speaker 1: of what is and is not definitively racist, And we
Speaker 1: got to get him on that podcast as co host
Speaker 1: asap because his talents are being wasted. More.
Speaker 4: After a quick break, let's get right back.
Speaker 2: Into it, all right, bridget we got all the hard
Speaker 2: news out of the way. What's Elon done now?
Speaker 1: Well, something was definitely up with Twitter over the weekend.
Speaker 1: I have so much to say about it. Let's break
Speaker 1: down what was going on. First, Twitter started limiting who
Speaker 1: could and could not read posts on the platform. They
Speaker 1: limited it to only people with Twitter log in, so
Speaker 1: if you didn't have a Twitter log in, you could
Speaker 1: not see Twitter. If he went to Twitter dot com,
Speaker 1: it would redirect you to a login page. Then yesterday
Speaker 1: they quietly walked that policy back without ever acknowledging it.
Speaker 1: So they rolled it with that acknowledging it, walked it
Speaker 1: back with that acknowledging it weird. Then Elon Musk tweeted
Speaker 1: that they were going to start limiting the amounts of
Speaker 1: tweets that users could see. If you were a Twitter
Speaker 1: Blue subscriber, you could see six thousand tweets a day.
Speaker 1: If you were an unverified account, you could see six
Speaker 1: hundred tweets to day, and if you were a new
Speaker 1: unverified account, you could see three hundred tweets per day.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk tweeted that this was a temporary measure to
Speaker 1: prevent data scraping. There was some concern about like AI
Speaker 1: potentially scraping Twitter data to train its models. Seems a
Speaker 1: little suspicious. I'm not we'll get into that, but I'm
Speaker 1: not totally sure. But that's what he tweeted. So I
Speaker 1: don't know how it was for you all. But by
Speaker 1: this happened on Saturday. By Sunday, I was totally unable
Speaker 1: to see any tweets at all. Right, So like when
Speaker 1: I woke up on Sunday, the obviously, like the clock
Speaker 1: should have restarted in that twenty four hour period, but
Speaker 1: the moment I logged in, I was already getting the
Speaker 1: error that I had seen all the tweets that I
Speaker 1: could see, even though I had not been on the
Speaker 1: platform at all. So by Sunday. The platform was just
Speaker 1: a no go for me. I don't know how it
Speaker 1: was for y'all, but let me know. I'm curious. And
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering, this also applied to official Twitter
Speaker 1: accounts for emergency services like a National Hurricane Center or
Speaker 1: Amber alerts. They also could only you know, see the
Speaker 1: six thousand tweets perdy if they were Twitter Blue subscribers,
Speaker 1: or six hundred if they were unverified, which is pretty concerning,
Speaker 1: like had there been a hurricane or had there been
Speaker 1: an Amber alert, maybe there was. It's probably good to
Speaker 1: have these organizations be able to see more than a
Speaker 1: couple of tweets, you know, particularly if they're paying for
Speaker 1: Twitter Blue. That's something that I fully kind of don't
Speaker 1: understand is how if I'm paying for like a subscriber experience,
Speaker 1: am I how am I getting my tweets capped? It's like,
Speaker 1: what was the point of paying If it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you get all these features and also can only see
Speaker 1: six thousand tweets The amouth like, what's the point of paying?
Speaker 2: What other cons about not being able to say tweets
Speaker 2: if you're not logged in is that it has caused
Speaker 2: Google to remove all tweets from Google results. So it
Speaker 2: used to be that if you were searching for something
Speaker 2: online and Google thought that a tweet was relevant to
Speaker 2: what you were searching for, it would include that tweet
Speaker 2: in your search results. But that's no longer the case
Speaker 2: because because of this change that only logged in users
Speaker 2: can see it. And that's a pretty big deal because
Speaker 2: Google's responsible for over ninety percent of all searches in
Speaker 2: the US and I don't know how much Twitter traffic
Speaker 2: was coming from Google, but I have to assume some,
Speaker 2: and Twitter being removed from Google seems like one more
Speaker 2: big step towards Twitter becoming less relevant in the overall
Speaker 2: information ecosystem that we all live in and get our
Speaker 2: information from.
Speaker 1: So what the heck is going on here? Well, the
Speaker 1: short answer is we don't totally know. So there was
Speaker 1: some speculation that it was related to Twitter not paying
Speaker 1: their bills. This is from BBC data scientist. An ex
Speaker 1: Twitter employee, doctor Rumin Chadri, told the BBC that it
Speaker 1: was unclear if AI organizations had actually been scraping data
Speaker 1: from Twitter, but suggested that financial issues could be behind
Speaker 1: the changes. Frankly, I think I'm in the majority of
Speaker 1: people who believe that it's due to Elon's lack of
Speaker 1: payment of his bills and that he's attempting to produce
Speaker 1: his cost She said, I have since seen other people
Speaker 1: who kind of claim to be in the know saying
Speaker 1: that it was not related to unpaid bills, So I
Speaker 1: really couldn't say. Former Twitter head of Trust and Safety
Speaker 1: Joel Roth said that Elon Musk's official explanation about trying
Speaker 1: to prevent data scraping doesn't sound totally right, saying it
Speaker 1: just doesn't pass the sniff test. That scraping all of
Speaker 1: a sudden created such a dramatic performance problem that Twitter
Speaker 1: had no choice but to put everything behind a log in.
Speaker 1: So a lot of theories being floated around. I should
Speaker 1: be clear that we don't know which one is the truth.
Speaker 1: Don't don't leave me a weird comment on Instagram Elon
Speaker 1: Musk allah a certain magazine because I'm just speculating and
Speaker 1: summarizing other people's theories. We don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: But Mike, you actually have a theory we were talking
Speaker 1: about the other day. No, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2: It's not like my theory. But like you said, nobody
Speaker 2: really knows what was behind all of these like large
Speaker 2: surprise changes, some of which were announced, some of which
Speaker 2: just like quietly happened. Uh, but clearly something was up.
Speaker 2: One thing I saw over the weekend was a post
Speaker 2: from someone speculating that this was due to Twitter unintentionally
Speaker 2: releasing some very bad code in their attempts to restrict
Speaker 2: the site to only authenticated users who were logged in.
Speaker 2: So the idea here is that for whatever reason, Twitter
Speaker 2: wanted to make that change so that people who weren't
Speaker 2: logged in and couldn't see it, and to do that, they
Speaker 2: had to change some of their code about how Twitter works,
Speaker 2: and the code that they released to do that was
Speaker 2: just bad and caused a lot of problems. And the
Speaker 2: evidence that this person had for it was that they
Speaker 2: shared a screenshot of their console from their web browser
Speaker 2: showing that, you know, as they were logged into Twitter,
Speaker 2: their computer was just like hammering away at Twitter servers
Speaker 2: with a bunch of network requests. And so they were
Speaker 2: speculating that perhaps that was what caused Twitter to have
Speaker 2: to put up put in place these limits, because you know,
Speaker 2: first they tried to restrict it to only logged in users,
Speaker 2: but they executed that so poorly that it created this
Speaker 2: enormous drain on their on their resources, and so they
Speaker 2: had to put the limits in place just to be
Speaker 2: able to keep things moving at all. And so for
Speaker 2: a while, the hashtag selfdos was going around for self
Speaker 2: distributed denial of service attack, making fun of Twitter for
Speaker 2: crashing its own servers through its bad code. So that
Speaker 2: seems consistent with the screenshot that he had shared, and
Speaker 2: it seems consistent with the chaotic, scattershot approach to decision
Speaker 2: making that Twitter seems to do under Elon Musk. But
Speaker 2: like I said, it's just speculation.
Speaker 3: Who knows.
Speaker 1: I also love the Dave's on vacation theory, the sort
Speaker 1: of joke that Elon has fired or laid off so
Speaker 1: many engineers that Twitter is now operating with a skeleton crew.
Speaker 1: So people are speculating that this engineer named Dave who
Speaker 1: I guess. It's like a fictional engineer took his family
Speaker 1: to make on vacation and there was nobody there to answer.
Speaker 1: The phonel was out and Twitter imploded. I love the
Speaker 1: daves on vacation theory of like, oh yeah, Dave's up
Speaker 1: with the wife and kids up in the adirondecks for
Speaker 1: the weekend. None of this stuff's gonna work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that one too, And it's of all these,
Speaker 2: it's probably the closest to correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, none of us know.
Speaker 2: And it really seems like the true answer, which we'll
Speaker 2: probably never know, maybe we will, is some version of
Speaker 2: they try to do something stupid, they screwed it up
Speaker 2: and had to do more stupid things to try to
Speaker 2: like dig themselves out of that hole.
Speaker 3: And I think.
Speaker 2: We're still there. Maybe maybe they're up and running.
Speaker 1: They're up and running now, and whatever the rationale was,
Speaker 1: we may never know the truth. What we do know
Speaker 1: is that the vibes on Twitter are not good right.
Speaker 1: The engagement is down, advertising revenue is way down. It's
Speaker 1: kind of funny to me that we're having this conversation
Speaker 1: after the new Twitter CEO, Linda Yakarno, it was just
Speaker 1: going on and on about how she was going to
Speaker 1: make Twitter brand safe again and bring back advertisements. That
Speaker 1: this is not doing that right. Like, I don't know
Speaker 1: why somebody would want to pay to be advertising on
Speaker 1: a platform that would limit how much tweets people could see.
Speaker 1: Advertisement included. Doesn't make any sense to me. What's also
Speaker 1: funny is that we didn't really hear a ton from
Speaker 1: her when this was going on. She was kind of
Speaker 1: doing some sneak likes of Elon's tweets, but like I
Speaker 1: would expect the CEO to be making a statement about this,
Speaker 1: but she didn't really. I guess she's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: whatever Elon says. I also, I'm gonna like that on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and not to mention the fact that it's just a janky,
Speaker 1: confusing experience for folks who were trying to navigate it
Speaker 1: still right, Like, I was trying to use Twitter to
Speaker 1: navigate stuff happening globally, as I often do, and it
Speaker 1: just was impossible to do that. You know, verified tweets
Speaker 1: were coming up at the top that weren't saying anything
Speaker 1: that was accurate or useful. It just wasn't a good experience,
Speaker 1: and so I think the vibes were not good over there.
Speaker 1: And it just seems like it is not well thought
Speaker 1: out in terms of how they are rolling out these
Speaker 1: changes and then quietly rolling them back.
Speaker 2: Not well thought out really captures it, and it's not
Speaker 2: just their users. There's an article in Matchable this week
Speaker 2: about how developers of third party apps are fleeing Twitter too,
Speaker 2: because they are similarly being jerked around and having functionality
Speaker 2: that they were promised taken away or just break on
Speaker 2: them without notification. I don't know, did you ever use
Speaker 2: the app who unfollowed me?
Speaker 1: No, I'm way too anxious for that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I don't want to know. Okay, yeah, no one would
Speaker 1: ever unfollow me. In my mind, I.
Speaker 3: Guess I'm yeah.
Speaker 2: So it was like a useful and kind of fun thing,
Speaker 2: but it relied on their API, and now it's just
Speaker 2: gone because the API points first the developer had to
Speaker 2: pay for them, and so they paid however much it
Speaker 2: was a month, but then like Twitter, changed what endpoints
Speaker 2: they were able to actually access after they had.
Speaker 3: Paid for it.
Speaker 2: And so even like big developers who've shelled out up
Speaker 2: to forty two thousand dollars a month for enterprise access,
Speaker 2: have been complaining that the APIs just break all the time.
Speaker 2: Twitter will make changes without telling them, which forces them
Speaker 2: to do like emergency maintenance to try to keep their
Speaker 2: apps working, and according to this article, a lot of
Speaker 2: them have just given up and are done with Twitter,
Speaker 2: you know, And so that's just I think one more
Speaker 2: sign that things are going poorly in Twitter Land for
Speaker 2: everyone involved.
Speaker 1: So speaking of giving up and being done with Twitter,
Speaker 1: I can relate, and it seems like a lot of
Speaker 1: other regular users of Twitter can relate as well, because
Speaker 1: with this big roadblock for the platform, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are looking at alternatives for Twitter in a way
Speaker 1: that I have not seen since Elon Musk first took
Speaker 1: over like seven months ago. So let's talk about a
Speaker 1: couple of the different alternatives to Twitter floating around out there.
Speaker 1: There's a Blue Sky, a platform that I've played with
Speaker 1: a little bit. It was a platform conceptualized by Jack Dorsey,
Speaker 1: the former CEO of Twitter, that is still in beta
Speaker 1: and is invite only. It's very similar to Twitter. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be doing an episode about it more in depth,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of like a Twitter alternative where a
Speaker 1: lot of folks who you might see on Twitter are
Speaker 1: there doing their thing. Another is Spill, which launched on
Speaker 1: July twelfth, that was conceptualized by two former Twitter staffers.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we will hear from the creators of Spill on
Speaker 1: this very podcast very soon. Spill kind of strikes me
Speaker 1: as a spot that is meant to be specifically building
Speaker 1: community around marginalized users, black folks, queer folks. When you
Speaker 1: log into Spill, which is still invite only, you have
Speaker 1: to like it's very clear, like we're not about hate speech,
Speaker 1: We're here for marginalized people to be able to show up.
Speaker 1: I find that kind of interesting. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: like explicitly a space just for marginalized people, but I
Speaker 1: think it's clear that they want it to be a
Speaker 1: space where marginalized folks can show up. And there's a
Speaker 1: heavy like black Twitter contingent to Spill. But again, we'll
Speaker 1: hear more from the creators in their own words, hopefully
Speaker 1: very soon. And the one that I really want to
Speaker 1: talk about today is ig Threads. So I have to
Speaker 1: admit I have not tried ig Threads. It has been
Speaker 1: out for like thirty hours, and in that time I
Speaker 1: have not been able to download it. I'm actually not
Speaker 1: sure if I will question Mark. Maybe I'll decide during
Speaker 1: the course of this episode. But it's being called the
Speaker 1: Twitter Killer, so I've seen some people that I trust
Speaker 1: talk about Threads being good. It just launched yesterday overnight,
Speaker 1: thirty million people joined it. It shot to the I
Speaker 1: think the currently it's the hot most downloaded app on
Speaker 1: the App Store. It's only for iOS right now. I
Speaker 1: think one of the reasons I've seen people that I
Speaker 1: trust kind of be like cautiously optimistic about it is
Speaker 1: that it pulls from your current Instagram following, so you
Speaker 1: don't have to start from zero. And I think, like,
Speaker 1: even if you're somebody who is really good at building
Speaker 1: community online and really good at like, you know, engagement
Speaker 1: and getting followers and all of that, nobody wants to
Speaker 1: start from zero. And so I think that that is
Speaker 1: a reason that I've seen people say that it might
Speaker 1: be good. Let's talk about some of the reasons why
Speaker 1: it might not be good. One big thing to know
Speaker 1: is that if you download Threads, it is a separate app,
Speaker 1: separate from your Instagram. So if you download it and
Speaker 1: then you decide you don't like it, you have to
Speaker 1: delete your entire Instagram count to entirely get rid of
Speaker 1: that app. So, according to the Threads Supplemental Privacy Policy,
Speaker 1: you may deactivate your Threads profile at any time, but
Speaker 1: your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your
Speaker 1: Instagram account. Ours Technica also quoted my personal nemesis, the
Speaker 1: head of Instagram Adam who said, you can deactivate your
Speaker 1: Threads account, which hides your Threads profile and content. You
Speaker 1: can set your profile to private. You can delete individual
Speaker 1: Threads posts all without deleting your Instagram account. Threads is
Speaker 1: powered by Instagram, so right now it's just one account.
Speaker 1: But we're looking out a way to delete your Threads
Speaker 1: account separately, So I don't know. I just don't like that.
Speaker 1: I think that if you were one of the thirty
Speaker 1: million people who just wanted to try it out and join,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have to completely delete your Instagram account if
Speaker 1: you decide it's not for you. Now. Again, as you said,
Speaker 1: you can like private your Threads or hide your Threads,
Speaker 1: but if you want out entirely, I think it's a
Speaker 1: little bit much that you have to completely delete a
Speaker 1: completely separate app to do that. I don't like that.
Speaker 1: Another thing to know is that you cannot only follow
Speaker 1: people that you want to follow. The feed is a
Speaker 1: mix of people that you follow and people that you don't.
Speaker 1: As Ours Technical reported, some users have actually complained that
Speaker 1: their feed is flooded with content from accounts that they
Speaker 1: never followed, outnumbering posts from their friends. But in classic
Speaker 1: tech bro style, that this thing that users are complaining
Speaker 1: about and saying is annoying is actually a really great feature.
Speaker 1: They just don't get it yet because in a blog post,
Speaker 1: meta toouted this default feed as a feature, not an annoyance,
Speaker 1: saying quote your feed on threads includes threads posted by
Speaker 1: people that you follow and recommended content from new creators
Speaker 1: you haven't discovered yet. So you know, an influencer that
Speaker 1: you've never heard of and don't care about spamming your
Speaker 1: threads feed is just a friend you haven't met yet.
Speaker 1: So those are some of the logistical reasons that maybe
Speaker 1: It's threads isn't so great. But let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the bigger, kind of thornier issues. Number one is
Speaker 1: that it is Facebook. People. Do I really need to
Speaker 1: say anything else? It's Facebook. So the people that brought
Speaker 1: you everything that comes with Facebook, they are also bringing
Speaker 1: you threads that should really be enough. Jason Kent't summed
Speaker 1: it up really well. On The Sweet That I Love.
Speaker 1: He writes misleads about metrics, inflates, video opportunity, covers up
Speaker 1: data breach, empowers foreign interference, aids and genocide, blocks, free
Speaker 1: and plural press, hides damming, harms research, abuses users, privacy copies, competition,
Speaker 1: launches new app? Where can I download? It? Sounds a
Speaker 1: little funky.
Speaker 2: When you put it that way, right, I get it, man,
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 1: So because it's Facebook, that means that they are very
Speaker 1: big privacy concerns with Threads. Threads collects a lot of
Speaker 1: data about you, which can include things like your sexual orientation, race, ethnicity,
Speaker 1: biometric data, trade, union membership, pregnancy status, politics, and religious beliefs.
Speaker 1: Threads can also collect data on users employment, as well
Speaker 1: as health and fitness activity. Beyond that, the app also
Speaker 1: can collect data monitoring your location and other web activity. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this in the EU, you do
Speaker 1: not have access to Threads, and that's because of the
Speaker 1: European Data Protection Boards finding decision that Meta did not
Speaker 1: have an appropriate basis for processing personal data to serve
Speaker 1: up behavioral ads. It's kind of a whole legal mess,
Speaker 1: but here's how tech Crunch put it. Currently, Meta does
Speaker 1: not even offer users a general upfront choice to deny
Speaker 1: it's tracking and profiling, let alone explicitly ask if it
Speaker 1: can share data on your health conditions so advertisers can
Speaker 1: sell you diet pills or whatever. And with even harder
Speaker 1: limits on surveillance ads coming down the pipe in the EU,
Speaker 1: an app that proposes to track everything to maximize its
Speaker 1: appeal to advertisers will be a tough sell to regional regulators.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, if you are someone who wants to
Speaker 1: get on threads, you should just be aware of the
Speaker 1: amount of data that Meta is collecting from you from Threads,
Speaker 1: because it's a lot. And I should say, obviously Facebook
Speaker 1: is not the only platform collecting your data. Twitter also
Speaker 1: collects your data, albeit I think a little bit less
Speaker 1: than Facebook does. But it's just generally good to be
Speaker 1: aware of Facebook's practices and histories around our sensitive data.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all of it. It's Facebook, They're collecting all of it.
Speaker 1: And even though Zuckerberg has talked a big game about
Speaker 1: wanting Threads to be this place for discourse and accurate information,
Speaker 1: it has been up for less than a day and
Speaker 1: already this is being called into question because known harassers
Speaker 1: and misinformers and disinformers like libs of TikTok are already
Speaker 1: showing up on Threads. When Donald Trump Junior joined Threads,
Speaker 1: added a warning to his account letting folks know that
Speaker 1: he is known for spreading misinformation, which he is. When
Speaker 1: Donald Trump Junior screenshot at that warning and complained, metas
Speaker 1: Andy Stone walked it back, saying the warning was just
Speaker 1: a mistake, they didn't mean to apply it. So it
Speaker 1: does kind of seem like the same moderation issues and
Speaker 1: concerns that already show up on Facebook might also be
Speaker 1: present on threads. I would also just add that, like,
Speaker 1: I don't really even know how to put this, but
Speaker 1: there is definitely a cultural vibe of Instagram that makes
Speaker 1: me wonder if if a product Cannect did to Instagram
Speaker 1: will ever take off and be an actual replacement for Twitter.
Speaker 1: You know, it's hard to explain, but if you use Facebook, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and Twitter, you probably know exactly what I mean. Think
Speaker 1: about the kind of person who becomes big on Instagram, Now,
Speaker 1: think about the kind of person who becomes big on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Those two groups of people find success for completely different
Speaker 1: behavior and things with completely different audiences. The culture of
Speaker 1: Twitter is text base, so snarks, jokes, meme, general on
Speaker 1: we right, those are the things that perform well on Twitter,
Speaker 1: text based snark, text based insights, things like that. The
Speaker 1: culture of Instagram is visual, right, so it's looking a
Speaker 1: certain way, presenting a certain way. I don't necessarily want
Speaker 1: to read written takes from the kind of people who
Speaker 1: really perform well on Instagram. I don't mean that as
Speaker 1: a dig on them. It's just that there are two
Speaker 1: different mediums. They're very different, and they have very different audiences,
Speaker 1: and so I feel like the kind of person who
Speaker 1: would find success on a visual medium and the kind
Speaker 1: of person who would find success on a on a
Speaker 1: text based medium are very different. And having Threads be
Speaker 1: connected to your Instagram account so that, like the people
Speaker 1: who already have big followings on Instagram, people who are
Speaker 1: already big influencers on Instagram automatically will have big platforms
Speaker 1: on Threads as well, just makes me think that as
Speaker 1: a text base. I mean, you're see your shaking your head.
Speaker 1: But like, if I have a million Instagram followers and
Speaker 1: you have five Instagram followers and Threads automatically pulls your
Speaker 1: followers from Instagram, I will start out on day one
Speaker 1: with a million followers on Threads. You will start out
Speaker 1: on day one with five followers on Threads. That's just
Speaker 1: how it works.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 2: But just because you've got a million followers, if you're
Speaker 2: not creating the kind of content that they think is
Speaker 2: going to give them the kind of engagement they want.
Speaker 2: They will bury you in a day, and you're you know,
Speaker 2: you might have a million followers, but there's no doubt
Speaker 2: in my mind that they there. You know, they wouldn't
Speaker 2: dial you back to like a thousand impressions a day,
Speaker 2: even if you're posting posting a lot of content, because
Speaker 2: as you described, it's it's not like a chronological timeline, right,
Speaker 2: It's that this algorithm that they are using, and that
Speaker 2: that vibe difference that you described between Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 2: I'm sure a lot of people have studied it, and
Speaker 2: I would be like really interested to hear from them.
Speaker 2: But I have to believe that the particular vibe that
Speaker 2: exists on Instagram was very intentionally and deliberately curated by
Speaker 2: Meta And so yeah, I think, you know, bringing all
Speaker 2: your followers is gonna you know, it is an advantage
Speaker 2: to starting on a new network. You know, when I
Speaker 2: started on masted on a while ago, that was like
Speaker 2: a major barrier. I was starting at zero, not that
Speaker 2: I had that many followers, but for me, it was
Speaker 2: more like the people that I was following I had
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 3: And like find them and find all new ones.
Speaker 2: But there's a chronological timeline, and you know with both
Speaker 2: Instagram and Threads, that's not the case. It's the algorithm.
Speaker 2: They're showing you what they want you to see.
Speaker 1: So Edzatrone has a piece that I think really speaks
Speaker 1: to what you're talking about, and he actually argues that
Speaker 1: this might be kind of marking the end of a
Speaker 1: certain era of the Internet as we know it. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a long quote, but I think it's so
Speaker 1: worth it. Hear me out. He writes, when Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram launched, people were not primed for what a social
Speaker 1: network was. Users did not join with the intent of
Speaker 1: building followings or content creation. Influencer was a term, but
Speaker 1: it was not a term that people instantly gravitated toward.
Speaker 1: From day one. Twitter was exciting because it felt raw,
Speaker 1: almost accidentally honest, and the way that famous or notable
Speaker 1: people acted didn't feel like they were following a content
Speaker 1: marketing calendar. Threads is built to attract people who are
Speaker 1: concerned about influence versus any kind of authentic conversation, and
Speaker 1: it suffers greatly as a result. Perhaps we're simply approaching
Speaker 1: the end of the honest Internet, where the magic of
Speaker 1: happenstance is being squeezed out as financial interests find ways
Speaker 1: to dominate real human conversation. Threads isn't built for you
Speaker 1: to talk to other people. It's built to inject intepid
Speaker 1: content into your life and interfere with as much of
Speaker 1: the human experience as possible. Perhaps it's because Zuckerberg already
Speaker 1: saw how unprofitable Twitter is and decided the only way
Speaker 1: to do this would be to make a significantly worse experience.
Speaker 1: More fundamentally, Threads isn't a social network. It's a marketing
Speaker 1: channel for the least interesting people on Earth. It's exactly
Speaker 1: what you'd expect of a text based Instagram, a mediocre,
Speaker 1: algorithmic nightmare of content slob that barely resembles entertainment, and
Speaker 1: I can't wait for it to fail. So a little
Speaker 1: bit grim That speaks a little bit, I think to
Speaker 1: what you were talking about about influencers and whether having
Speaker 1: a big platform on Threads will correlate to engagement and
Speaker 1: being successful there, I kind of agree with, even though
Speaker 1: I'm not on Threads, I kind of agree that we're
Speaker 1: thinking about it completely wrong. We're thinking about it in
Speaker 1: terms of an authentic engagement platform, and I don't think
Speaker 1: that's what Threads is.
Speaker 2: There is zero reason for optimism, right, Like it's meta.
Speaker 2: They are bad actors. Every single piece of it is
Speaker 2: going to be bills around selling ads. I think they
Speaker 2: would readily admit that, right, Like they're they're interested in
Speaker 2: harvesting data and selling ads. This new platform is a
Speaker 2: new vector for them to do that.
Speaker 3: Maybe it'll be interesting. I don't know.
Speaker 2: You know, television is a vector for selling US ads
Speaker 2: and there's good shows on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's funny because because you're not able to
Speaker 1: control your feed and like what you're seeing, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of brands and influencers and things like that. Giovanni
Speaker 1: colon Tiano at Digital Trends put it really well. He said,
Speaker 1: he posted this screenshot of all of these different brands,
Speaker 1: you know, packing their little brand specific jokes on Threads.
Speaker 1: There's Netflix saying Threads, it's kind of like love is
Speaker 1: blind because everybody is all about that engagement a GA
Speaker 1: engagement ring emoji and I get it. It's it's like
Speaker 1: cringe and I ROLLI and all of that. But he writes,
Speaker 1: it's truly pathetic that this is the endgame of social media,
Speaker 1: a powerful tool for education and organization, co opted into
Speaker 1: a dead eyed utopia for brands to post the most
Speaker 1: Sacharin shit imaginable and have it forced into your feed
Speaker 1: happy meal as app, and I get the energy that
Speaker 1: he is responding to right like that. It's there was
Speaker 1: a time where social media and this this era of
Speaker 1: the Internet represented endless possibility of connection and power building
Speaker 1: and organizing and engagement. And I'm we're using it to
Speaker 1: get you know, Netflix's little brand jokes about love is
Speaker 1: blind and we're not even choosing to see that. It's
Speaker 1: just being surfaced to us because that's what Adam MOSERI
Speaker 1: and Mark Zuckerberg think that we want from the Internet.
Speaker 1: And it is I mean, I don't want to sound
Speaker 1: like a downer, but it is a little sad to
Speaker 1: me that these are the people who are architecting what
Speaker 1: our digital future looks like. This is what they think
Speaker 1: that we want or and that we should be happy
Speaker 1: to get it. If we're like, oh, we don't like that,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh no, no, no, you're actually wrong, You
Speaker 1: actually don't You're actually too stupid to know what you like,
Speaker 1: And don't like. Actually, I know what you like and
Speaker 1: don't like. I know more what you like than you know,
Speaker 1: and I just hate that. And I also think that
Speaker 1: Ed's post that I read earlier. You know, when Twitter
Speaker 1: first started, it was a platform with a little bit
Speaker 1: of a reverence and a little bit of zaniness and
Speaker 1: humor and areness, and it did feel new and exciting
Speaker 1: back in the day. And it hasn't felt like that
Speaker 1: for a really long time. Mostly it just feels exhausting.
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the reasons why I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily see a future for a Twitter clone that
Speaker 1: is connected to like my Instagram Facebook universe. This might
Speaker 1: be specific to me, but folks can let me know
Speaker 1: what they think. I just think that my Instagram Facebook
Speaker 1: universe is too broad of a universe for me to
Speaker 1: then go put my takes out onto right like my
Speaker 1: mom follows me on Facebook, my high school English teacher
Speaker 1: follows me on Facebook, right like my high school friends
Speaker 1: follow me on Facebook. Twitter is a much more niche platform.
Speaker 1: Less people use it, and even less people than that
Speaker 1: actually make content and post there, so it kind of
Speaker 1: feels a little bit safer to put like whatever bizarre
Speaker 1: niche take. I want out into the universe on Twitter,
Speaker 1: the idea of like Emily from my senior year math
Speaker 1: class reading my deep dive tweets into the Adipole complex
Speaker 1: in the movie Boa Is Afraid. It's a little much
Speaker 1: like I think there should be some division in the
Speaker 1: way that I there is some division for me and
Speaker 1: how I show up on Twitter versus how I show
Speaker 1: up on Instagram. I don't necessarily want those universes mesh together,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: I think I said this last week because I kind
Speaker 2: of like having different apps for like different audiences and
Speaker 2: different groups of people that I communicate with and different
Speaker 2: types of content that I want to look at something
Speaker 2: you said just before about what a sad end game
Speaker 2: for social media and you know, thinking about threads being
Speaker 2: essentially just a clone of Twitter, which I think everyone agrees,
Speaker 2: like that's exactly.
Speaker 3: What it is.
Speaker 2: Twitter, like you said, really came to prominence ago in
Speaker 2: a different era. Twitter was different, the Internet was different,
Speaker 2: we were different, and so cloning Twitter now it's just
Speaker 2: like a radically different thing than what Twitter was, and
Speaker 2: Twitter arguably hasn't been that for a while. So it's
Speaker 2: you know, if you clone the technology of a platform
Speaker 2: that was something that people really liked and valued a
Speaker 2: few years ago and maybe has fallen off in more
Speaker 2: recent times. You're probably gonna end up with something that
Speaker 2: is similarly not what people are looking for. In twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, then again, thirty million people downloaded it.
Speaker 3: What do I know? But I don't know.
Speaker 2: I remained optimistic that we're gonna do something new, right, Like,
Speaker 2: We're not just gonna all shift to some new platform
Speaker 2: that is a clone of the old platform, that like,
Speaker 2: something genuinely new and different and possibly centralized is going
Speaker 2: to come along.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's Spill, you know, maybe it's there are a
Speaker 1: couple people who are like I think all of the
Speaker 1: interesting new alternatives to social media platforms are all coming
Speaker 1: from marginalized creators. There's Somewhere Good, which is an audio based, intimate,
Speaker 1: audio based social networking platform. They're spill. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: want to make it seem like I'm like Doom and Gloom.
Speaker 1: I will forever be an optimist. I think that when
Speaker 1: you get people who care about connection online together, really
Speaker 1: important stuff can happen, Really groundbreaking stuff can happen. But
Speaker 1: we actually need to be centering and empowering those voices
Speaker 1: and having some of these fucking dipshits get out of
Speaker 1: the way, who are just trying to make everything worse,
Speaker 1: Like it isn't life hard enough? Do we have to
Speaker 1: make everything worse? So on Wednesday, Twitter threatened to sue
Speaker 1: Meta because, as you just said, Mike, it's basically Threads
Speaker 1: is like basically a Twitter clone. I don't even want
Speaker 1: to like get too much into this because I really
Speaker 1: hate this kind of cola wars PEVSI versus COPE framing.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't like talking about this as a
Speaker 1: business story because the reality is that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: as we just demonstrated, we're talking about our ability to
Speaker 1: like connect with people, access information, and like functionally use
Speaker 1: our largest communications platforms that are so connected to our
Speaker 1: ways of life, social engagement, democracy, politics. So that's really
Speaker 1: what's at risk. So I just mentioned the lawsuit because
Speaker 1: it's part of a story. I think talking about this
Speaker 1: from a perspective of like, ooh, what are these two
Speaker 1: CEOs going to do? Or are they going to cage
Speaker 1: fight duke it out? I think it really lends credibility
Speaker 1: into the way that both of these bad actors have
Speaker 1: been behaving the way that they've been putting all of
Speaker 1: us at risk, and it kind of adds credence to that.
Speaker 1: So I don't like that, but I will say that
Speaker 1: in respond thanks to the threads, roll wout and this lawsuit,
Speaker 1: Twitter's new CEO, Linda Yakarino tweeted something that I thought
Speaker 1: was pretty rich. She tweeted, on Twitter, everyone's voice matters.
Speaker 1: Whether you're here to watch history unfold, which you can't do,
Speaker 1: discover real time information all over the world which is
Speaker 1: all inaccurate, share your opinions, or learn about others. At Twitter,
Speaker 1: you can be real unless your account is being impersonated.
Speaker 1: You built the Twitter community, prayer, hands emoji, clap emoji,
Speaker 1: and that's irreplaceable. That is your public square. We're often imitated,
Speaker 1: but the Twitter community can never be duplicated. Now I
Speaker 1: agree with her in some parts, right, we the people,
Speaker 1: we did build Twitter, We did build the community. But
Speaker 1: here's why I think that sentiment is so rich coming
Speaker 1: from her. It's like when COVID started and all the
Speaker 1: airlines were like, we're a family here at American Airlines,
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, were we a family when y'all
Speaker 1: charge me for eighty dollars for my suitcase. Were we
Speaker 1: a family when you bumped me from my flight? No,
Speaker 1: we're not a family. So it's pretty rich for her
Speaker 1: to be talking about community now that they see that
Speaker 1: there are other games in town, other alternatives for people
Speaker 1: to get their online engagement. Now it's about community. Since
Speaker 1: Elon Musk took over, Twitter has not given a single
Speaker 1: crap about community. Anyone whose job it was to foster
Speaker 1: community at Twitter, from blackbirds to other identity specific groups,
Speaker 1: were all let go, and Elon did so while making
Speaker 1: it crystal clear that as far as he was concerned,
Speaker 1: the only job or role at Twitter that mattered was engineering,
Speaker 1: which side note he also sucks at managing him because
Speaker 1: Twitter was broken all weekend? So was Twitter a community
Speaker 1: when Elon blew up verifications and put users who actually
Speaker 1: built the community at risk? Were you looking out for
Speaker 1: Twitter's community when you let hate mongers, extremists and transoms
Speaker 1: back on? Maybe, but that is not a community that
Speaker 1: I would ever want to be part of, And Linda
Speaker 1: is right. It is the people, especially marginalized people, who
Speaker 1: make Twitter worth showing up to. That is a community
Speaker 1: that Elon has attacked and undermined and targeted the people
Speaker 1: who do that work of building the community on the platform.
Speaker 1: Those are the people that he has targeted again and
Speaker 1: again and again and put at risk. So we did
Speaker 1: build this community on Twitter, and that every turn Elon
Speaker 1: Musk treats us, the people who built that community like
Speaker 1: freeloaders who are behind on rent, that we owe him
Speaker 1: simply for showing up. And so I say, like, very
Speaker 1: rich to be talking about how much you value community? Now,
Speaker 1: where is that value when people didn't want to give
Speaker 1: you eight dollars?
Speaker 3: Elon damn? Sounds a little personal?
Speaker 1: Well what is I mean? I just don't like being
Speaker 1: told that my contribution if I'm not willing to personally
Speaker 1: shell over eight dollars to Elon Musk, my contribution as
Speaker 1: a community member of Twitter, but on the platform since
Speaker 1: the beginning, does it make a difference. But now when
Speaker 1: they're seeing there are other apps out there that might
Speaker 1: be able to recreate what they're doing, whether they do
Speaker 1: it well or not is, you know, remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: Now they want to talk about community. This is the
Speaker 1: first time that Elon Musk has ever talked about community.
Speaker 1: To me, where where is this coming from? Right? And
Speaker 1: so like, I just don't appreciate the flim flam, and
Speaker 1: I don't appreciate having him talk. I don't appreciate Twitter
Speaker 1: high ups talking out of both sides of their mouth
Speaker 1: and playing at all of our faces. Because if for
Speaker 1: a community, being a community is not just cashing my
Speaker 1: checks and treating me like garbage. Being a community means
Speaker 1: actually representing me and actually advocating and supporting my interest
Speaker 1: and my well being, which I have not seen from
Speaker 1: Twitter in the last six months. So yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: it is personal. Answer your question. Yeah, I'm angry about it,
Speaker 1: and I guess we'll stop it there enough. Mike, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being here as always. Thanks for
Speaker 1: keeping me grounded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks thanks for having me on. This was a
Speaker 2: long Twitter app. But maybe next week everything will just
Speaker 2: be cool on Twitter.
Speaker 3: We can talk about other stuff.
Speaker 1: Here's hoping. Thanks so much for listening as always. To
Speaker 1: get more ad free content and to support the show,
Speaker 1: just go to patreon dot com slash tangoty and thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening. If you're looking for ways to
Speaker 1: support the show, check out our March store at tangody
Speaker 1: dot com. Slash store. Got a story about an interesting
Speaker 1: thing in tech, or just want to say hi. You
Speaker 1: can reach us at Hello at tangody dot com. You
Speaker 1: can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com.
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
Speaker 1: me Bridget Tod. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative,
Speaker 1: edited by Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer,
Speaker 1: Tari Harrison as our producer, and sound engineer. Michael Almada
Speaker 1: is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If
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