Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Tad and this
Speaker 1: is there are No Girls on the Internet. I'm here
Speaker 1: with my producer, Mike Hey.
Speaker 2: Mike Hey, Bridget.
Speaker 1: How about this smoke? Right?
Speaker 2: It's really something here in duc. It's like the only
Speaker 2: thing anybody's been able to talk about for days.
Speaker 1: I have not left my house in forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: And here's what you might have missed this week on
Speaker 1: the internet. You know that song that goes I always
Speaker 1: feel like somebody's watching me. Well, if you have a
Speaker 1: ring camera, that somebody watching might be an Amazon employee.
Speaker 1: And that's because before twenty seventeen, Amazon employees could just
Speaker 1: access whoever's ring camera they wanted, and some of them did.
Speaker 1: This is according to a court filing from the Federal
Speaker 1: Trade Commission when in announced a five point eight million
Speaker 1: dollar settlement with Amazon over privacy violations. So this whole
Speaker 1: thing is about as creepy as you would expect. It
Speaker 1: sounds like there was just over broad access given to
Speaker 1: employees and also contractors to customers ring footage, and that
Speaker 1: there might have been just a generally lax attitude around
Speaker 1: accessing that footage at Amazon. According to the filing, Ring
Speaker 1: gave every employee full access to every customer video before
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen and failed to patch bugs in the system
Speaker 1: that allowed hackers to access cameras and scare consumers. Now,
Speaker 1: I gotta say this was not just like a one
Speaker 1: time thing. It sounds like a pervasive issue. Ring employees
Speaker 1: were spying on women. In twenty seventeen, an employee of
Speaker 1: Ring viewed videos made by at least eighty one female
Speaker 1: consumers and Ring employees using Ring products undetected by Ring.
Speaker 1: The employee continued spuying for months. He was looking specifically
Speaker 1: for cameras with labels that suggested they were in people's
Speaker 1: intimate spaces. So they had labels like master, bedroom camera
Speaker 1: or bathroom camera, so it's pretty clear what was going on.
Speaker 1: In this instance, this employee was only caught after a
Speaker 1: supervisor noticed that the male employee was only viewing videos
Speaker 1: of quote pretty girls, which even that supervisor's explanation, I
Speaker 1: feel like, is pretty gross. In another incident, an employee
Speaker 1: gave someone's ex husband access to their Ring footage without
Speaker 1: their consent. So you can kind of get a sense
Speaker 1: of how dangerous and serious. That could be like if
Speaker 1: you're going through a contentious divorce or you have an
Speaker 1: abusive X. The fact that Ring was just handing over
Speaker 1: your ring footage to your ex without your consent or
Speaker 1: knowledge is pretty problematic. So it was not just random
Speaker 1: women that these Ring employees didn't know. Ring employees were
Speaker 1: also spying on each other. Another incident allegedly occurred in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen when a male employee allegedly accessed a fellow
Speaker 1: female employees camera and watched her stored video recordings without
Speaker 1: her permission. And can you imagine, Like you go to work,
Speaker 1: there's Greg at the water cooler, cut to Greg watching
Speaker 1: you in your home. Like that is so fucked. So
Speaker 1: Ring employees were also gifting people with cameras and then
Speaker 1: using those cameras to spy on them. An employee was
Speaker 1: found to have given Ring devices to people and then
Speaker 1: watched their videos without their knowledge, Like some gift. Oh
Speaker 1: here's the present, it's a Ring camera, I'll see you later.
Speaker 1: Totally fucked. Give the gift of Greg watching, lurking spying,
Speaker 1: terrible gift. So separately, Amazon also had to pay twenty
Speaker 1: five million to settle allegations that it violated children's privacy
Speaker 1: rights when it failed to delete Alecxa recordings at the
Speaker 1: request of parents and kept them for longer than necessary.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, So parents requested did Amazon delete them and
Speaker 2: then they just didn't. That's an additional level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, My understanding is that they said that they would
Speaker 1: delete those recordings and then did not. So it kind
Speaker 1: of goes back to this idea of you know, I
Speaker 1: don't think that companies can just say one thing and
Speaker 1: do another. And it sounds like the FTC agrees.
Speaker 2: We talked about this last week with Google where they
Speaker 2: said they were going to delete users abortion data and
Speaker 2: then they just didn't.
Speaker 1: Exactly like it definitely paints a larger portrait of negligence.
Speaker 1: You know, this is all part of a push by
Speaker 1: the FTC to regulate big tech and hold companies accountable
Speaker 1: to putting profit above privacy. Now, I have said this
Speaker 1: probably a hundred times on this show. I get why
Speaker 1: someone would want a ring camera for their safety or
Speaker 1: to feel secure in their homes, but I would never
Speaker 1: allow one of these devices in my home. You know,
Speaker 1: not that I would ever break any laws myself, but
Speaker 1: people should be aware that police can and have accessed
Speaker 1: your RING footage without your consent and without a warrant
Speaker 1: because Ring partners with police departments. It sounds like even
Speaker 1: after having to pay out millions of dollars for these
Speaker 1: violations around spying and privacy, Amazon is still not admitting wrongdoing,
Speaker 1: saying in a statement that they disagree with how these
Speaker 1: instances were framed by the FTC, but they did, you know,
Speaker 1: pay these fines. And so it just goes to show
Speaker 1: like these companies don't care. They don't care about your security,
Speaker 1: they don't care about your privacy, and they're callously praying
Speaker 1: on and fostering a climate of fear, fear around crime,
Speaker 1: fear around your neighbors, and tricking us into thinking that
Speaker 1: it is a safe choice to have their devices in
Speaker 1: your home, while all the while they are out here
Speaker 1: putting us in danger. You know, I completely get a
Speaker 1: lot of us feel vulnerable right now, feel scared right now.
Speaker 1: I totally get it. But I believe that Amazon is
Speaker 1: inflaming and exploiting and taking advantage of this vulnerability that
Speaker 1: we might feel to sell us technology that ultimately harms us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like you mentioned, this story happens to be
Speaker 2: about Amazon, but it could just as well be a
Speaker 2: story about Google we talked about last week, or or Tesla,
Speaker 2: who a few months ago was in the news because
Speaker 2: their engineers similarly had unfettered access to the cameras inside
Speaker 2: people's cars, and they were using that to share videos
Speaker 2: of each other of like, hey, look at this guy
Speaker 2: picking his nose in his car hahaha Lol. But you know,
Speaker 2: it could be Facebook, could be any of these big companies,
Speaker 2: because this is just the sort of thing that we
Speaker 2: get in surveillance capitalism, when we bring these devices into
Speaker 2: our homes, where privacy is just an afterthought and the
Speaker 2: commodification of our personal data is a gold rush for
Speaker 2: these companies, so much so that you know, a few
Speaker 2: million dollars in fines here and there is well worth
Speaker 2: it to them. And so in this case, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not like the Amazon executives were getting in on
Speaker 2: the creeping. I assume it was just Greg and maybe
Speaker 2: some of these buddies.
Speaker 1: But I feel like I'm using Greg as a stand
Speaker 1: in for the creepy employee because I've have been binge
Speaker 1: washing session, so I'm like, oh, someone was doing something creepy,
Speaker 1: has to be Greg, just like the name on the
Speaker 1: top of my mind that I'm associating with like leccherous creeps.
Speaker 1: No offense to any Greg's out there listening. You're not
Speaker 1: all bad, No, just.
Speaker 2: The one who's a member of the disgusting Brothers. But yeah, they,
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah they, you know, Greg's the one creeping.
Speaker 2: But it's the executives at the top that allowed it
Speaker 2: to happen with these lack of security controls when they
Speaker 2: I would are you had a responsibility to limit access
Speaker 2: in a way that would protect people's privacy, but they didn't,
Speaker 2: because why would they willingly put road bumps in the
Speaker 2: way of unfettered access to all of the data just
Speaker 2: to feed back into their profits and helping them make
Speaker 2: more sales, and without regulation, that's just going to keep happening.
Speaker 1: And I just don't think that what like thirty million
Speaker 1: dollars is an amount that a come any like Amazon
Speaker 1: is really going to feel. To me this I mean,
Speaker 1: I am happy that they're having to have some kind
Speaker 1: of a show of accountability to how they have wronged
Speaker 1: the public, But I don't think this is amount of
Speaker 1: money that they are going to feel. And just the
Speaker 1: fact that before twenty seventeen anybody a ring employee and
Speaker 1: their vast network of contractors could just look at anybody
Speaker 1: from their ring cameras they wanted. Is just the scale
Speaker 1: of harm is so much bigger than the amount that
Speaker 1: they have to pay in punishment that I cannot imagine
Speaker 1: this is going to be something that gives them pause
Speaker 1: in terms of how they're harming people in the future.
Speaker 1: And you know you, I didn't even know about the
Speaker 1: fact that Tesla was using people's cameras to like share
Speaker 1: jokes with each other. Think about the grossest, longest car
Speaker 1: trip that you've ever taken, where there's just Wendy's bags
Speaker 1: and used Kleenex on the ground and you're driving barefoot
Speaker 1: and you're disgusting. Imagine that video being used in Greg's
Speaker 1: slack channel just to have a laugh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks a lot, Greg.
Speaker 1: We're really we're really beating up on the Gregs here.
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's switch gears. Let's beat up on the
Speaker 1: Ron's for a minute. Because Ron DeSantis's campaign just recently
Speaker 1: used AI generated images of Trump hugging and kissing Fauci
Speaker 1: in their campaign material. So we've said many times on
Speaker 1: the show about the spread of deep fakes, and on
Speaker 1: the Internet, and as AI image generation software gets better
Speaker 1: and more available, it is so easy for bad actors
Speaker 1: to create fake images of celebrities and politicians. And I
Speaker 1: think especially when those images are weaponized in political campaigns
Speaker 1: during climates that are like politically fraught or sensitive or inflammatory.
Speaker 1: It's concerning because these fake images can often appear real.
Speaker 1: I am not too proud to admit that I got
Speaker 1: I got got by that image of the Pope in
Speaker 1: the Balenciaga puffer. It was early morning, I had had
Speaker 1: my coffee. I was just scrolling Twitter on my iPad.
Speaker 1: I just saw it and I thought, Okay, the Pope's
Speaker 1: wearing a Balenciaga puffer. Checks out. It didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: have My brain was not primed. Even though I'm somebody
Speaker 1: who studies disinformation and like talks about it for a living,
Speaker 1: my brain was not yet primed to have that seer
Speaker 1: of skepticism. So these fake images can get the best
Speaker 1: of us. Right, you shouldn't have to necessarily be so
Speaker 1: primed and poised and ready to tell the zoom in
Speaker 1: on the fingers and be like, oh, that's fake, to
Speaker 1: tell if an image is real or not. So that
Speaker 1: I definitely am. I've gotten got before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good point you make that we shouldn't
Speaker 2: have to be constantly hyper vigilant. You know, if you
Speaker 2: if I think about the times that I'm looking at
Speaker 2: social media, it's when I'm waiting for the metro or
Speaker 2: bored or you know, waiting on this or that, or
Speaker 2: I don't know, I'm not like sitting down to critically
Speaker 2: engage in like deep and critical thought about what I'm
Speaker 2: looking at right, Like, I just want to see some cats.
Speaker 2: I want to see some jokes. I want to see
Speaker 2: some stupid stuff that makes me laugh. And yeah, you
Speaker 2: see the pope in a puffer jacket. I don't know,
Speaker 2: I probably would have got got too.
Speaker 1: So this week, Ronda Santis's campaign joined in on the
Speaker 1: AI generated deep fake fun and shared a set of
Speaker 1: fake images of Donald Trump hugging and kissing Anthony Fauci.
Speaker 1: They were kind of clever about it, mixing in the
Speaker 1: fake images with some real ones, but they weren't that
Speaker 1: clever about it because with a little scrutiny, the images
Speaker 1: appear to be obviously fake, Like in one of them,
Speaker 1: Trump's arm kind of wraps all the way around Fauci's
Speaker 1: body in a very unnatural way, like a long snake,
Speaker 1: like he's like got double the arm around him kind
Speaker 1: of in another one the letters in the phrase white
Speaker 1: house or garble, so you kind of know it's AI
Speaker 1: or that something is going on there. Other details are
Speaker 1: also off, like the stars in the American flag, or
Speaker 1: unnatural details in Trump's hair, which somehow kind of manages
Speaker 1: to look more unnatural than his actual, honest to god
Speaker 1: human hair. I don't know how that's possible. So the
Speaker 1: French media entity AFP first reported on the fake photos,
Speaker 1: which were included in a video released by the official
Speaker 1: Dasantis campaign.
Speaker 2: You know, I really thought, in hope that we had
Speaker 2: more time before US presidential candidates were using deep fakes
Speaker 2: as part of their official campaigns. I don't know why
Speaker 2: I thought that. I guess maybe just wishful thinking. But
Speaker 2: you know, politicians like DeSantis and also Trump, like it
Speaker 2: happens to be that like DeSantis did this against Trump,
Speaker 2: but I could just as easily see it going the
Speaker 2: other way. They have no qualms about speaking lies and
Speaker 2: spreading lies, so why wouldn't they take advantage of AI
Speaker 2: images to spread visual lies?
Speaker 1: And I think there's really something about visual lies that
Speaker 1: works on a different level than when you read something
Speaker 1: that's not true. The same way that I was just like,
Speaker 1: didn't have my class, hadn't had my coffee, scrolling ands
Speaker 1: all picture of the Pope and said, oh that's fine.
Speaker 1: Visual images can hit us so much differently. They can
Speaker 1: hit us quickly, more quickly than the written word, and
Speaker 1: they can sort of stoke a more emotionally resonant space
Speaker 1: in us. I think, like in the interview that we
Speaker 1: did with the Foma Uzoma who was formally at pinterest,
Speaker 1: who was kind of in charge of getting medical misinformation
Speaker 1: and other you know, bad stuff, I'll have Pinterest, she
Speaker 1: said that one of the reasons why it was so
Speaker 1: prevalent on Pinterest is because it's a visual, a visual platform,
Speaker 1: and so there would be these highly visually visceral images,
Speaker 1: like when it came to abortion disinformation, it was these
Speaker 1: like very visually charged images and they of course would
Speaker 1: stoke an emotional response on people very quickly. So definitely
Speaker 1: the threat of image based AI manipulated deep fake images
Speaker 1: is a real concern.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I think you really hit on something there
Speaker 2: that the like she said, the images evoke this visual
Speaker 2: emotion reaction. And also it's just new I think in
Speaker 2: certainly in my lifetime, and I think possibly all of
Speaker 2: human experience that we have to be so questioning of
Speaker 2: what we visually see in front of us.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We have all these phrases like he said, she said,
Speaker 2: you can't believe everything you read, and so we're used
Speaker 2: to having to like sort through what's true and what
Speaker 2: isn't in these like verbal domains. But we also have
Speaker 2: the phrase like you don't believe what's in front of
Speaker 2: your own eyes, right, which is usually a pejorative thing
Speaker 2: because typically in human experience, we can believe what we
Speaker 2: see for ourselves. When we directly see something, it's generally
Speaker 2: assumed to be true. But even that is no longer true.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, of all the scary stuff that
Speaker 2: you've talked about on this show with our guests, I
Speaker 2: feel like deep fakes are one of the scariest because
Speaker 2: if people aren't able to tell what's real and what isn't,
Speaker 2: it does not bode well for solving the big problems
Speaker 2: that are coming our way. Right Like outside the windows
Speaker 2: right now, the city is blanketed in smoke from the
Speaker 2: worst wildfires on the East Coast that I can remember
Speaker 2: in my lifetime, made worse by climate change. We're gonna
Speaker 2: have like serious problems that a society we need to
Speaker 2: come together to solve. And Yeah, if we can't have
Speaker 2: a shared understanding of what is real and what isn't,
Speaker 2: that's gonna be hard.
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about YouTube. YouTube, which is owned by Google,
Speaker 1: will no longer remove videos falsely claiming that the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty presidential in the United States was stolen, reversing a
Speaker 1: policy put in place after the twenty twenty vote. In
Speaker 1: a blog post, the company says, quote, it will stop
Speaker 1: removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors,
Speaker 1: or a glitches accord in twenty twenty in other past
Speaker 1: US presidential elections because things have changed. Well what's changed?
Speaker 1: Why are they doing this? According to YouTube, because free speech,
Speaker 1: they said, in the current environment, we find that while
Speaker 1: removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also
Speaker 1: have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully
Speaker 1: reducing the risk of violence and other real world to harm.
Speaker 2: I just want to jump in there real quick to
Speaker 2: break down that quote that you just read, because it's
Speaker 2: so telling. They say, we find that while removing this
Speaker 2: content does curb some misinformation, it could have the unintended
Speaker 2: effect of curtailing political speech. Right. So they're on the
Speaker 2: one hand, they're acknowledging that it does curb misinformation, it
Speaker 2: is actively today preventing harm from being done, and yet
Speaker 2: they are going to remove those protections out of potential
Speaker 2: maybe fear about something that could potentially occur in the future.
Speaker 2: And it's so backwards and silly and infuriating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the Gettysburg Address of cow towing tech
Speaker 1: pr bullshit speak where they say, we are we acknowledge
Speaker 1: that what we are doing will has prevented harm, but
Speaker 1: what if it could increase for speech? Question mark, let's
Speaker 1: find out, right. And I gotta say, like, I feel
Speaker 1: a little bit personally invested in this because getting Google
Speaker 1: to agree to take down this kind of misinformation is
Speaker 1: something that I personally worked on in my platform accountability work.
Speaker 1: This has definitely been I've tried, I mean, I've tried
Speaker 1: not to dwell on it too much because what does
Speaker 1: that get you? But this has definitely been the year
Speaker 1: of a lot of policies that did verifiable, verifyable good
Speaker 1: and verifiably made platforms safer in like clear ways. This
Speaker 1: has been the year of seeing those policies be walked back,
Speaker 1: be changed. So it's a little personally distressing to me,
Speaker 1: but that's either here nor there. They do say that
Speaker 1: they will continue to take down content that misleads voters
Speaker 1: about when, where, and how to vote, and claims that
Speaker 1: discourage voting, and content that encourages others to interfere with
Speaker 1: the democratic process. But knowing a little bit about this,
Speaker 1: like that's just not how it works, right. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: didn't go on television and say I think people should
Speaker 1: go to polls and harass pole workers. I don't think
Speaker 1: he explicitly said that, but that was how that message
Speaker 1: was interpreted and filtered down right, And so this is
Speaker 1: really flies in the face with like what we know
Speaker 1: about how election disinformation and misinformation works. People don't go
Speaker 1: on TV and say do x y z in an
Speaker 1: explicit way. It's very roundabout. It's very the implication. And
Speaker 1: so saying like, oh, well, can we definitely understand that
Speaker 1: misleading people about how to vote, content that encourages people
Speaker 1: to interfere with the democratic process. Saying that that is
Speaker 1: content that you will take down because you recognize that
Speaker 1: as harmful and dangerous. It kind of it doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense that you would think that that is dangerous. But
Speaker 1: that is not how it really works, Right, Like, bad
Speaker 1: actors are really good at staying just on the right
Speaker 1: side of not needing to be have their content remove.
Speaker 1: That is like something that they are very good at.
Speaker 1: It is their bread and butter. And so saying that
Speaker 1: someone will have to meet this very specific threshold to
Speaker 1: have their content removed by YouTube is just inviting people
Speaker 1: to make content that stays just a hair on that
Speaker 1: side of plausible deniability that essentially encourages just that you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, that's right, and it's a moving, shifting target,
Speaker 2: and to really meaningfully address it or moderate that content,
Speaker 2: to remove that sort of content that is sneakily just
Speaker 2: on the just the hair shy of being over the line.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a tough problem, and I can understand
Speaker 2: why platforms like Google really just want to punt on it,
Speaker 2: but it's also super important for our democracy and the
Speaker 2: cohesion of society.
Speaker 1: And also, let's just talk about this bs oh, it
Speaker 1: could threaten free speech literally. This morning, I saw a
Speaker 1: post from Trump on truth Social that said that the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election was stolen. It's not as if there
Speaker 1: are no places in society or on the Internet that
Speaker 1: one could say those lies if they wanted to. Trump
Speaker 1: does it literally every day and has been for the
Speaker 1: last few years, right, And so what I am saying
Speaker 1: is that there is no reason for a company like
Speaker 1: YouTube to allow that on their platform. Not being able
Speaker 1: to say it on YouTube doesn't mean that people aren't
Speaker 1: able to say it. People say it all the time, right.
Speaker 1: It's just like it's such an abdication of responsibility and leadership.
Speaker 1: And I should say that this is actually one of
Speaker 1: the last planks of like post insurrection digital infrastructure that
Speaker 1: was put in place after the violent insurrection. YouTube was
Speaker 1: actually the last one of the last platforms to have
Speaker 1: a policy against twenty twenty election denial. Twitter started adding
Speaker 1: false labeling of false claims about the twenty twenty election
Speaker 1: early last year, but then they walked it back, saying
Speaker 1: that it had been more than a year since you know,
Speaker 1: Biden took office and there was an eventually an exchange
Speaker 1: of power. Facebook also walked back their labeling of false
Speaker 1: claims to.
Speaker 2: The decisions of these platforms about what sort of content
Speaker 2: they're going to allow and what sort of lying, disingenuous,
Speaker 2: dangerous content they might prohibit. That's not a free speech issue,
Speaker 2: right like that is what these That is a business
Speaker 2: decision by these companies of how they they want to
Speaker 2: operate and what role they want to play in a
Speaker 2: pluralistic society.
Speaker 1: And I think it really shows it's just like another
Speaker 1: plank and how these platforms are I guess I'll use
Speaker 1: the word preparing, but really it's the opposite of preparing
Speaker 1: for the upcoming election. Like YouTube restored Trump's account back
Speaker 1: in March so that users could quote hear equally from
Speaker 1: major national candidates. You know. I think it really shows
Speaker 1: that platforms and also media outlets like CNN, who platform
Speaker 1: Trump to just like lie and smear and slander people
Speaker 1: for an hour. I think that these platforms have really
Speaker 1: learned nothing from the last few years. You know, verifiable
Speaker 1: lies about our democratic process and our elections. It's not discourse.
Speaker 1: It's not a difference of opinion. It's not an issue
Speaker 1: that you need to show both sides to or give
Speaker 1: credence to. It is a lie. It is a verifiable lie.
Speaker 1: By now, platforms should have a game plan about how
Speaker 1: they're going to deal with verifiable lies about our democratic
Speaker 1: process in a way that is ethical and responsible, or
Speaker 1: at least more ethical and more responsible than just like
Speaker 1: let anybody lie, because that's what free speech is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, they just want that sweet, sweet engagement.
Speaker 2: They know that trumpy outrage drives clicks and eyeballs, and
Speaker 2: they want a piece of the action. You know, Google's
Speaker 2: business is selling ads, and integrity and responsibility really have
Speaker 2: nothing to do with it. And it's tragic and dangerous
Speaker 2: because YouTube is so powerful and it has such a
Speaker 2: large impact on our discourse, on our democracy that they
Speaker 2: should feel a sense of responsibility for the content that
Speaker 2: they amplify and promote. But they've just demonstrated time and
Speaker 2: again that they don't, and that they're going to choose
Speaker 2: outraged engagement and selling ads every time. Platforms. Huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Let's talk about another platform that is generating a
Speaker 1: bit of outrage, and that is Reddit. So popular platform
Speaker 1: Reddit announce some changes this week and users are not happy,
Speaker 1: to say the least. So if you don't know what
Speaker 1: Reddit is, I love Reddit. It's kind of known as
Speaker 1: the front page of the Internet, to a point where, like,
Speaker 1: if you need to answer a question or you need
Speaker 1: some like real, like human vetted reliable information, it is
Speaker 1: a common practice to search whatever you need plus Reddit
Speaker 1: to quickly get to an actual answer. I want to
Speaker 1: heart somebody say that, like, if they were in a fire,
Speaker 1: the last thing googled on their phone would be like
Speaker 1: how to fight fires plus Reddit, Like I died trying
Speaker 1: to get the answer from Reddit.
Speaker 2: So and Bridget, didn't you used to be like a
Speaker 2: power moderator on Reddit, like years ago, I was a.
Speaker 1: Former Reddit moderator. I was. I mean, it was a
Speaker 1: site that I spent a lot of my free labor
Speaker 1: moderating and caring about and thinking about. So if folks
Speaker 1: use Reddit, and they probably already know that, when you
Speaker 1: log onto Reddit from a computer, generally like it's fine,
Speaker 1: the user experience is fine. But if you log on
Speaker 1: on your phone the app, the Reddit app is very janky,
Speaker 1: and it's also full of ads, to the point that
Speaker 1: I would say that it's like, I won't say unusable,
Speaker 1: but it's not a pleasant user experience. It's like almost unusable.
Speaker 1: The amount of ads that pop up when you're trying
Speaker 1: to use it. So to get around that, a lot
Speaker 1: of folks who use Reddit on a mobile use third
Speaker 1: party apps like Apollo, and these apps only work because
Speaker 1: Reddit allowed those third party apps to have access to
Speaker 1: their API, basically have access to their back ends. And
Speaker 1: all of that is changing because now Reddit announce that
Speaker 1: they're going to start charging those third party apps a
Speaker 1: pretty high price for the access that they've always had.
Speaker 1: You might remember that Twitter did something pretty recently too,
Speaker 1: so pretty much every third party app that relies on
Speaker 1: Twitter's API has announced that they will not be able
Speaker 1: to operate if Reddit continues with this plan to charge
Speaker 1: them the amount that they're asking to be charged to
Speaker 1: continue to have access to the back end.
Speaker 2: Wow, this is like such a surprising trend for platforms
Speaker 2: to make because I think I was reading like a
Speaker 2: Tom Friedman book a while ago. Tom Friedman, Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was a I don't remember why. I think it was
Speaker 2: like in an airport and it felt like the right
Speaker 2: thing to do or something. But he was talking about
Speaker 2: like after the nineties and the dot com boom, how
Speaker 2: like APIs were the big thing that enabled the Internet
Speaker 2: to like take off and flourish because you had all
Speaker 2: this interoperability, and I think it was right about that.
Speaker 2: It was wrong about a lot of other stuff. But
Speaker 2: but yeah, like APIs were a great invention, right and
Speaker 2: allowed platform arguably. You know, these all the third party
Speaker 2: apps that allow people to interact with Reddit in ways
Speaker 2: that are better than Reddit's native app makes available, help
Speaker 2: people use it, help grow their user base, and it's
Speaker 2: so surprising to see platforms like Reddit and Twitter clamping
Speaker 2: down on the very thing that helped them grow.
Speaker 1: Well. So, one of my favorite third party apps for
Speaker 1: Twitter block Party, which is a great tool to mass
Speaker 1: block people who are like harassers or bad actors on Twitter.
Speaker 1: They announce that they're taking an indefinite hiatus because of
Speaker 1: this change where they're now charging for Twitter access to
Speaker 1: Twitter's API. Now, Reddit did walk this back a little bit,
Speaker 1: kind of along the lines of exactly what you were saying,
Speaker 1: saying that these new API terms would carve out an
Speaker 1: exception for accessibility apps which allow users who are blind
Speaker 1: or visually impaired to browse Reddit, because I guess Reddit
Speaker 1: does not have a way for people who are visually
Speaker 1: impaired to browse it. So exactly what you were saying
Speaker 1: that these third party apps via API access are able
Speaker 1: to create a more inclusive experience to to include more users,
Speaker 1: which Reddit have not done. So really, like, I'm the
Speaker 1: expert on this, but in my book, it's like Reddit
Speaker 1: should really be paying the people who It's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you just completely shut out blind users. Luckily we have
Speaker 1: found a workaround to include them.
Speaker 2: You're welcome. Yeah, And that's a that is an interesting
Speaker 2: note here, right like, Reddit is pretty different than Twitter
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways. Right Like, Reddit, to my understanding,
Speaker 2: really survives and thrives on the active participation of its
Speaker 2: users U and I would imagine that some of them,
Speaker 2: particularly like you just mentioned, those who are blind who
Speaker 2: rely on these third party apps to use it, I
Speaker 2: would imagine some of those users might not love this change.
Speaker 1: While they certainly do not, and in fact, the Reddit
Speaker 1: community is very vocal and they do not take stuff
Speaker 1: like this without a fight, so they are organizing to
Speaker 1: fight back. The platform relies on an army of unpaid moderators.
Speaker 1: I used to be one of them, and honestly, like
Speaker 1: Reddit would not function without these moderators giving a lot
Speaker 1: of their free time and labor to keep Reddit subreddits,
Speaker 1: which are like they're like, you know, the different communities
Speaker 1: on Reddit going. They all signed an open letter to
Speaker 1: Reddit saying that oftentimes third party tools offer better moderation
Speaker 1: tools than the ones that Reddit does. They say, many
Speaker 1: of us rely on third party apps to manage our
Speaker 1: communities effectively. The potential loss of these services due to
Speaker 1: the pricing change would significantly impact our ability to moderate efficiently,
Speaker 1: thus negatively affecting the experience for users in our communities
Speaker 1: and for us as mods and users ourselves. It honestly
Speaker 1: sounds like these moderators are just generally fed up with
Speaker 1: what they feel as a lack of communication and transparency
Speaker 1: from Redder higher ups to Reddit moderators, who, again basically
Speaker 1: their unpaid labor is the reason why this site is
Speaker 1: able to function. On June twelfth, much of the site's
Speaker 1: subreddits are planning a blackout, which means that individual subreddits
Speaker 1: will lock into private mode, meaning that and anybody who
Speaker 1: is not already a follower of these subredits will not
Speaker 1: be able to access them during that time or see
Speaker 1: that content. So, if you don't use Reddit and you're thinking,
Speaker 1: who cares, what's the big deal, We're talking about millions
Speaker 1: of people, right Some of these big subreddits that are
Speaker 1: going dark in protests have upwards of like three or
Speaker 1: four million people on them, and I think it does
Speaker 1: kind of come back to what you were saying, Mike
Speaker 1: about how I mean. I don't want to give Thomas
Speaker 1: Freeman too much credit, but this idea of APIs and
Speaker 1: opening things up and having it be a more inclusive experience.
Speaker 1: I really see this reddit thing and the reason that
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about it here, I really say
Speaker 1: it as a part of a larger fight about the
Speaker 1: Internet and who the Internet is for and what it
Speaker 1: is for. Right There is this great piece in Wired
Speaker 1: about the inthitification of the Internet which kind of posits
Speaker 1: that this is how platforms die. First they are good
Speaker 1: to their users, then they abuse their users to make
Speaker 1: things better for their business customers. Finally they abuse those
Speaker 1: business customers to claw back all the value for them themselves,
Speaker 1: and then they die. I totally agree with this, and
Speaker 1: I feel it everywhere, like Ie, not even just on
Speaker 1: social media platforms, just everywhere. I feel like everything online
Speaker 1: eventually has to whatever little joy or life or love
Speaker 1: it has to just bleed it to make a little
Speaker 1: bit more money for people who are already rich. You
Speaker 1: know Instagram. Ten years ago, Instagram felt fun and cool,
Speaker 1: Like I remember when Instagram first was a thing I didn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't on Instagram because I didn't feel cool enough.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, there's nothing cool in my life
Speaker 1: to show. Everybody is like putting Sepia filters on their pictures,
Speaker 1: and it was like, it felt cool. It felt like
Speaker 1: a community where you wanted to be, And now it
Speaker 1: just feels like a virtual dead mall. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not enough that HBO, Max or Netflix cancels your favorite
Speaker 1: series only after one season. Now they have to remove
Speaker 1: the entire back catalog so you cannot so it's not canceled,
Speaker 1: you can never watch the existing episodes again, just to
Speaker 1: save a little bit of money on residuals and like
Speaker 1: having to pay the writers and the actors more. You know.
Speaker 1: On this new version of Twitter verification, people with something
Speaker 1: to sell can buy influence via paying eight dollars a
Speaker 1: month for a blue check mark to give them more
Speaker 1: influence to sell whatever it is that they sell more effectively.
Speaker 1: But where is the internet infrastructure that exists to prop
Speaker 1: things up other than building and squeezing capital from people?
Speaker 2: You know, Ooh, that is dark and heavy, but you're
Speaker 2: absolutely right. I do like this phrase and shitification. First
Speaker 2: them bigan, then they shitify. But yeah, it's a good question,
Speaker 2: like where is that internet infrastructure that exists? Yeah, well it's.
Speaker 1: A perfectly cromulent question. Luke Plummet, a tech writer, captured
Speaker 1: this feeling so well on Twitter. He writes, a huge
Speaker 1: part of the bad vibes you feel everywhere these days
Speaker 1: is because every single aspect of our lives is being
Speaker 1: squeezed by companies shaking us down, and we're reaching a
Speaker 1: breaking point. Every platform, every service, every product, every form
Speaker 1: of entertainment just keeps tightening the grip. Each quarterly growth
Speaker 1: report looks good in isolation, but we're reaching the point
Speaker 1: of collective societal exhaustion. And boy, I really felt that,
Speaker 1: I really identified with that. I think I'm there where
Speaker 1: it feels like every little bit of joy is being
Speaker 1: squeezed and mined for whatever little capital can be taken
Speaker 1: from it to make some rich guy who's already rich
Speaker 1: a little bit more rich. And I think I'm really
Speaker 1: yearning for online spaces that felt like they felt when
Speaker 1: I was a bit younger, you know, that felt like
Speaker 1: connection and community building and joy and it feels like
Speaker 1: we are seating more and more of the Internet solely
Speaker 1: to people who want to make money, right, whether it's
Speaker 1: capital for wealthy investors or people who want to sell
Speaker 1: you something or outright scams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got to bring the weird, joyful internet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to see Like I don't want to
Speaker 1: date myself, but I want to see more weird Internet
Speaker 1: spaces that are just like, here's my weird cartoon website.
Speaker 1: Here's my big spoon or my salad fingers or my
Speaker 1: teen girls squad. All those are real things. Look them up, kids,
Speaker 1: They're very funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was like funny stuff. There is joyful stuff.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's out there too, right, like they're
Speaker 2: instill the infrastructure to create those things. Maybe the problem
Speaker 2: is that we're all spending our time on the big
Speaker 2: platforms because everybody else is there. Maybe we gotta get off.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm just like speculating and losing the
Speaker 2: thread here.
Speaker 1: So that's I mean, it's pretty messed up in dark
Speaker 1: and I have to we have to talk about this,
Speaker 1: like speaking of dark, messed up stuff online.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about this.
Speaker 1: I know I don't want to spend too much time
Speaker 1: on it because it like genuinely nauseates me. But we
Speaker 1: have to talk about this new Wall Street Journal report
Speaker 1: about Instagram. A trigger warning here about abuse of children.
Speaker 1: It is horrific. The Wall Street Journal just published an
Speaker 1: expose showing that Instagram has been algorithmically promoting a vast
Speaker 1: trade of child sexual exploitation material. The journal said that
Speaker 1: it conducted an investigation into child sexual exploitation material on
Speaker 1: Instagram in collaboration with researchers at Stanford and the University
Speaker 1: of Massachusetts Amherst. They found that pedophiles have long used
Speaker 1: the Internet, but unlike forums and file transfer services that
Speaker 1: cater to people who have interest and illicit content, Instagram
Speaker 1: does not merely host these activities. Its algorithms promote them.
Speaker 1: Instagram connects pedophiles and guides them to content sellers via
Speaker 1: recommendation systems that excel at linking those who share niche interests.
Speaker 1: Here's how it all works. The researchers found that Instagram
Speaker 1: enabled people to search explicit hashtags and then connected them
Speaker 1: to accounts that use those same terms to advertise child
Speaker 1: sex material for sale. According to the journal, test accounts
Speaker 1: were set up by researchers that viewed a single such account,
Speaker 1: and then we're immediately hit with suggested for you recommendations
Speaker 1: of purported child sex content sellers and buyers, as well
Speaker 1: as accounts that we're linking to off platform content trading sites.
Speaker 1: Following just a handful of these recommendations was enough to
Speaker 1: flood their test account with content that sexualizes children. In
Speaker 1: addition to that, it's horrifying. In addition to that, certain
Speaker 1: Instagram accounts invite buyers to commission specific acts, with men
Speaker 1: us listing prices for videos of children harming themselves or
Speaker 1: imagery of minor children performing sex acts with animals. This
Speaker 1: is all, according to the Wall Street Journals report, citing
Speaker 1: the findings of the Stanford Internet Observatory researchers. At the
Speaker 1: right price children are available for in person meetups. The
Speaker 1: journal reported, h Yeah, it's stomach churning, it's horrifying. It's terrifying.
Speaker 1: But I have to say it is not terribly surprising
Speaker 1: to me, especially right now when we're having so many
Speaker 1: conversations about protecting kids online, and if lawmakers were serious
Speaker 1: about that, they would be regulating Facebook and companies that
Speaker 1: Facebook runs like Instagram, because according to the data, Facebook
Speaker 1: is by far the biggest defender when it comes to
Speaker 1: child sexual abuse content online. This is not just when
Speaker 1: you compare it to other social media platforms, but when
Speaker 1: you compare it to pornography sites as well. According to
Speaker 1: an independent study released by the National Center for missigan
Speaker 1: Exploited Children, mind Geek, which is the parent company of Pornhub, RedTube, Uporn,
Speaker 1: and several other adult tube sites, accounted for thirteen thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty nine instances of what they deemed
Speaker 1: child sexual abuse material, while Snapchat had one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty four thousand, ninety five instances. Google had five hundred
Speaker 1: and forty six seven hundred and four instances. Facebook topped
Speaker 1: everybody with twenty point three million instances of this child
Speaker 1: exploitation material. So if we're actually serious about protecting kids online,
Speaker 1: it needs to start with looking at the biggest defender,
Speaker 1: looking at the worst bad actor, and that is undoubtedly,
Speaker 1: by a by have a vast majority Facebook.
Speaker 2: Jesus, I thought we started out dark, but this is
Speaker 2: like next level stuff and like it's I got to
Speaker 2: hand it to Facebook. You know, we've talked about Amazon
Speaker 2: in this episode. We've talked about Google doing bad stuff,
Speaker 2: but once again, Facebook just blows away the competition at
Speaker 2: being unbelievably bad. Actor. Oh, this is disgusting, and I
Speaker 2: mean in printing in the this, this was in the
Speaker 2: Wall Street Journal, so like, hopefully something will come from this.
Speaker 1: Well, the Wall Street Journal is also where Francis Hogan
Speaker 1: published her information about harms that Facebook knowingly did against children.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, I don't know, they're goals with no,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 2: I let's move on it like a well traveled Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal to nothing pipeline, got it?
Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah, I mean I wouldn't say nothing. After Francis
Speaker 1: Hogan published that information in the Wall Street Journal, Facebook
Speaker 1: did change their name to Meta So we got that
Speaker 1: out of it, all.
Speaker 2: Right, that's true. Yeah, still working on the legs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not doing there. They're not doing the metaverse anymore.
Speaker 1: You're never gonna get those legs. Might keep dreaming.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank god, Okay, back to jokes please.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's let's move on. I know I can't.
Speaker 2: I we have to move on.
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't even sum make it. So let's
Speaker 1: move back to Twitter. So last month, Elon must announced
Speaker 1: that he was stepping down as a CEO of Twitter
Speaker 1: and named a former NBC Universal executive, Linda Yakarino, as
Speaker 1: the new CEO. Musk initially said that she would take
Speaker 1: over in about six weeks, but on Monday, after about
Speaker 1: three weeks, she tweeted that she had officially started, saying
Speaker 1: it happened first day in the books. So who is
Speaker 1: Linda Yakarino. Well, she spent twelve years at NBC Universal,
Speaker 1: where she was most recently the chairperson of Global Advertising
Speaker 1: and Partnerships. She was a big part of launching NBC's
Speaker 1: streaming service Peacock in twenty twenty, which I gotta say
Speaker 1: shout out to Peacock because I watch a lot of Peacock.
Speaker 1: She seems pretty buddy buddy with Elon Musk. At a conference,
Speaker 1: she interviewed him and said, many of you in this
Speaker 1: room know me and know that I pride myself on
Speaker 1: my work ethic, But buddy, I have met my match.
Speaker 1: She said that to Elon Musk when everybody was kind
Speaker 1: of criticizing Elon Musk in the early days of him
Speaker 1: at the helm of Twitter. She urged people to give
Speaker 1: him a minute, let's see what he's gonna do. She
Speaker 1: has some ties to Trump. In twenty eighteen, Yakarino was
Speaker 1: named by Trump to the President's counsel on Sports and
Speaker 1: Fitness and Nutrition. The queer focused news outlet them reported
Speaker 1: that she follows some troubling accounts on Twitter, like libs
Speaker 1: of TikTok, which we know is known for attacking LGBTQ
Speaker 1: people and their allies for just like minding their business.
Speaker 1: Deb notes that she also follows some like stand one
Speaker 1: of the mill Twitter accounts, like mainstream journalists. I actually
Speaker 1: could kind of see her being the kind of person
Speaker 1: who thinks that if you follow mainstream journalists, that means
Speaker 1: that you also have to follow accounts like libs of
Speaker 1: TikTok to sort of represent both sides and have balance.
Speaker 1: Like I was like, I probably I could easily see
Speaker 1: her being the kind of person that feels this way. Now,
Speaker 1: her coming on as CEO does not necessarily signal big
Speaker 1: changes at Twitter. Musk is staying on as the owner,
Speaker 1: and he says that he wants to focus more on
Speaker 1: like tech issues. Media Matters reported that Twitter's lawyers told
Speaker 1: a court that hiring Koris the new CEO will not
Speaker 1: result in different content moderation strategies. So if you had,
Speaker 1: you know, high hopes for new content moderation strategies that
Speaker 1: maybe don't allow for things like hate speech, attacks on
Speaker 1: trans folks, crypto scams, and pornbots, you might be disappointed.
Speaker 1: What's also kind of funny to me is that when
Speaker 1: she was first announced as CEO, a bunch of right
Speaker 1: wing and extremist influencers criticized her because she had talked
Speaker 1: about wanting to hire more women and people of color
Speaker 1: when she was at NBC and they had a video
Speaker 1: of her in twenty twenty talking about the importance of masks,
Speaker 1: like that was their big find. Just goes to show
Speaker 1: that these people are literally never satisfied. Like anybody that
Speaker 1: Musk was going to pick, they would still find a
Speaker 1: way to make that a grievance, to make that an
Speaker 1: attack on them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyone to the left of Mussolini is like unacceptable
Speaker 2: to these people.
Speaker 1: So she's coming in as CEO at a self inflicted
Speaker 1: difficult time for Twitter. The platform is not doing well.
Speaker 1: It's not doing well with this regular users or with advertisers.
Speaker 1: A recent poll by Pugh found that six and ten
Speaker 1: adults in the US, which is Twitter's largest user base,
Speaker 1: were taking a break, and a quarter of them said
Speaker 1: that they did not expect to be using Twitter in
Speaker 1: a year. When it comes to advertisers, of Twitter's top
Speaker 1: one thousand advertisers from last September before Musk took over,
Speaker 1: only forty three percent of them were still using Twitter
Speaker 1: as of April. Now, Musk had been kind of cagey
Speaker 1: about this, like he has not liked to talk about
Speaker 1: the dire financial straits that the company was in, But
Speaker 1: this week he finally did acknowledge that in a Twitter
Speaker 1: spaces with presidential candidate and COVID conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Junior,
Speaker 1: where he did admit that the revenue at Twitter had
Speaker 1: been cut by about fifty percent. You know, advertisers buying
Speaker 1: ads on Twitter is how the platform makes money, and
Speaker 1: basically right now they're not doing that because what advertiser
Speaker 1: wants to see their branding next to a tweet calling
Speaker 1: somebody a racial slur or like a porn bot or
Speaker 1: a scam or something. Right. I saw a pretty interesting
Speaker 1: piece in BBC about how with Yakanaro's background working with
Speaker 1: advertisers Musk was basically trying to purchase trust to woo
Speaker 1: advertisers back.
Speaker 2: Maybe she'll be less like chaotic than Musk. Maybe.
Speaker 1: So if you're thinking that she sounds like she might
Speaker 1: be a grown up in the room, might be somebody
Speaker 1: who can sort of steer the ship in a better
Speaker 1: direction than Musk has. That is a well worn phenomena
Speaker 1: in business. There is this theory in business called the
Speaker 1: glass cliff, where women are basically brought in to clean
Speaker 1: up the messes made by terrible men in power. I'm
Speaker 1: a good example of the glass cliff was after the
Speaker 1: gaming company Blizzard had a massive gender discrimination and harassment lawsuit,
Speaker 1: they hired in twenty twenty one Jen O'Neil, who was
Speaker 1: the first female lead of the company, right, who was
Speaker 1: sort of like brought in seeming lead to kind of
Speaker 1: clean up this mess. Now, I absolutely do think that
Speaker 1: that is what some of what's going on here, that
Speaker 1: a woman is being brought in to clean up this
Speaker 1: mess made by a man, and this sort of signal
Speaker 1: that a grown up is in charge and that it's
Speaker 1: no longer like a frat boy in charge. But I
Speaker 1: also think that she is kind of being set up
Speaker 1: to fail in a lot of ways. You know, it's
Speaker 1: tough to be a such a high profile higher one
Speaker 1: have to appease a demagogue, which we know Elon Musk
Speaker 1: is too, and then have to handle that, navigate that
Speaker 1: while also signaling to advertisers that big changes are coming
Speaker 1: to woo them back. You know, it's this very difficult dance.
Speaker 1: I would say it's an impossible dance to have to dance.
Speaker 1: The way that people are talking about her background really
Speaker 1: signals to me that she is being set up to
Speaker 1: have to accomplish something that seems at least very difficult,
Speaker 1: if not impossible. People have described her as someone who
Speaker 1: really likes to be a superwoman and someone who can
Speaker 1: who would see a mess of a company and voluntarily
Speaker 1: want to go in and feel like they can fix things.
Speaker 1: By the way, I hate this framing. I can't even
Speaker 1: really get, like verbalize why I hate this. There's just
Speaker 1: something about it that feels very much like women have
Speaker 1: to be super women to be in the room that
Speaker 1: they have to be. They can't just be included from
Speaker 1: the jump. They have to be super women who are
Speaker 1: not just able, but excited to clean up a mess
Speaker 1: that was just clearly made by a man who had
Speaker 1: too much power and didn't know how to handle it,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you think about the mess that is Twitter,
Speaker 2: it really all started when Elon took over, right, Like,
Speaker 2: I guess, it had financial problems before then, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't the chaotic, toxic place that it is now. Where
Speaker 2: I mean, among my friends, I don't know too many
Speaker 2: people that really spend much time there at all anymore.
Speaker 2: He's really I don't know, Tank, the brand, whoever you
Speaker 2: want to say it.
Speaker 1: It'll be interesting to see how bringing on this new
Speaker 1: CEO will be for Twitter. There was a very interesting
Speaker 1: piece about the glass Cliff phenomena and wired twitch Yaknaro
Speaker 1: responded on Twitter quote as someone used to wearing foreign cheels.
Speaker 1: Let's be crystal clear. I don't teeter which, Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: give it to her. Kind of a good line. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna lie, but it's clear, like we need to
Speaker 1: be clear, Musk is staying on at Twitter. So even
Speaker 1: with a new CEO, this is still his company. He's
Speaker 1: not going away. And Musk does not have a great
Speaker 1: track record when it comes to working alongside women. I
Speaker 1: believe that Mosque is a misogynist. You don't even have
Speaker 1: to look very far to see the ways in which
Speaker 1: he is a misogynist either. There are like a hundred
Speaker 1: different examples, and I could give you off the top
Speaker 1: of my head, but immediately come to mind if we
Speaker 1: listed all of the ways that Trump or Trump Oh
Speaker 1: my god, he's also a massageist. No, keep that shit in.
Speaker 1: They're both misogynists. They actually reminded me of each other.
Speaker 1: A sound surprising to me that I confuse one for
Speaker 1: the other. So you know, if we listed all the
Speaker 1: different examples that come to the top of my head,
Speaker 1: we'd be here all night. He tweeted a crass joke
Speaker 1: about wanting to start a university called the Texas Institute
Speaker 1: of Technology and Science TITS as the acronym. Side note,
Speaker 1: it's never even a good sexist joke, right, Like, I
Speaker 1: hate misogyny and sexism, but I love humor, and if
Speaker 1: a sexist joke was legitimately funny, I would acknowledge it.
Speaker 1: This isn't even a good joke. It's not even good misogyny.
Speaker 1: Like if you're gonna tell, if you're gonna be a CEO,
Speaker 1: that is this powerful and tell misogynistic jokes. Don't give
Speaker 1: the joke that a million of us have heard in
Speaker 1: the frat a thousand different times.
Speaker 2: You know it's a bad joke, Like it's it's like
Speaker 2: a Beavis and butt Head level joke, but like not
Speaker 2: even good enough to actually be on Beavis and butt Head,
Speaker 2: which is an excellent show, including the reboot.
Speaker 1: Like I am someone who deeply appreciates stupid jokes and
Speaker 1: stupid humor, and this is not even like I can't
Speaker 1: even appreciate it. So the day after he tweeted this,
Speaker 1: Tesla became the subject of a gender discrimination lawsuit from
Speaker 1: multiple women, and I remember engineer and tech organizer Share
Speaker 1: Scarlett tweeted in response to all this, I heard that
Speaker 1: sexualizing women is a top down, systemic issue in tech.
Speaker 1: Might be wrong, thou lighty k And to be honest,
Speaker 1: that's how you do a funny joke about gender and tech. Elon,
Speaker 1: take a note.
Speaker 2: Yes, acronyms are not the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah an acronym that spells out tits, which is a
Speaker 1: body part that is sometimes found on female anatomy. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, Like, get this, get this guy a Mark
Speaker 1: Twain Award, somebody. So, according to a report from Business insider,
Speaker 1: Musk secretly fathered twins with Chavon Zill's, a female executive
Speaker 1: at his company, Neuralik. So we don't know much about
Speaker 1: their relationship. But if you're the head of a company
Speaker 1: and you're having sex with your underlings and your staff,
Speaker 1: I feel comfortable saying that, Like, at the very least,
Speaker 1: it's not a great look. All of this information is public, right,
Speaker 1: So by all the accounts, Jacanaro, this new Twitter CEO
Speaker 1: seems like a smart, competent person who would have looked
Speaker 1: at this information and decided that Twitter and Elon Musk
Speaker 1: were who and what what she wanted to be mixed
Speaker 1: up with. And if that's what you decided, as a confident,
Speaker 1: smart adult, that's what you wanted. If it doesn't work out,
Speaker 1: like you kind of in my book, like get what
Speaker 1: you get, Like this is all public information is if
Speaker 1: this is the company that you decided that you wanted
Speaker 1: to stake your reputation on, girl do you but you
Speaker 1: get what you get, you know, And I want to
Speaker 1: be clear, I want Yakanero to do well the same
Speaker 1: way that I want like all women to do well.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not like rooting for her to fail.
Speaker 1: But to me, doing well is not just bringing back
Speaker 1: advertisers or appeasing Elon Musk or helping Twitter make money.
Speaker 1: Doing well would be making Twitter a platform that does
Speaker 1: not elevate and amplify toxicity, lives, abuse, scams, and harassment.
Speaker 1: And so I wish her well and hope that she's
Speaker 1: able to achieve that. But I think that her vision
Speaker 1: for doing well and what I have just articulated might
Speaker 1: be two different things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to be interesting to watch it develop. Uh you know,
Speaker 2: maybe I've bought into the glass cliff mythology, but uh, yeah,
Speaker 2: it seems like having having a smart, competent woman in
Speaker 2: the room probably couldn't hurt and hopefully it'll be good.
Speaker 2: But I guess we'll just have to wait and see
Speaker 2: as this Twitter, this latest Twitter drama unfolds.
Speaker 1: Now, I don't trust any institution or company that doesn't
Speaker 1: have some women at the at the highest levels, the priesthood,
Speaker 1: the NFL. Uh yeah, if you don't have the military,
Speaker 1: if there's not women all up through that, I have
Speaker 1: questions that I'm a little skeptical just in general. That's
Speaker 1: a blanket statement. If I don't see, if I don't
Speaker 1: see a woman making decisions something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a set of somebody.
Speaker 1: Somebody's tweeting the word tits. So all, let's put it
Speaker 1: at the very least.
Speaker 2: You know, I've never thought of those three institutions as
Speaker 2: a set together before, so thank you for that. More.
Speaker 3: After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: So. I know that this has been a little dark,
Speaker 1: but I do have a little bit of a good news.
Speaker 1: Would you like to hear it?
Speaker 2: Yes? Please, So it's.
Speaker 1: Going to start with some bad news, but trust me,
Speaker 1: it'll get good. Stick with me. I probably don't need
Speaker 1: to tell y'all that book bands are on the rise
Speaker 1: in the US, with books that center LGBTQ voices accounting
Speaker 1: for about forty one percent of challenged books. This is
Speaker 1: according to Pan America. Attempted book bands at school and
Speaker 1: public library set a record high in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: This is according to information from the American Library Association. Obviously,
Speaker 1: that is terrible, but here's the good news. At a
Speaker 1: White House Pride event yesterday, Biden announced a slate of
Speaker 1: actions aimed at curbing discrimination against LGBTQ communities, including the
Speaker 1: appointment of a new point person who will serve as
Speaker 1: a coordinator at the Education Department to address the increase
Speaker 1: in book bands. That's good, I like to see that.
Speaker 1: But here's a little bit more positive news. Despite all
Speaker 1: of those bands and all of those restrictions and all
Speaker 1: of those attempted attacks by extremists to challenge and ban
Speaker 1: books about LGBTQ people, people still really really want to
Speaker 1: read about queer folks and are going out of their
Speaker 1: way to do so. Sales of LGBTQ plus books soared
Speaker 1: to record highs in twenty twenty two, even as a
Speaker 1: small but vocal army of extremists try to ban queer
Speaker 1: theme titles and attack inclusive education across the country, US
Speaker 1: readers bought six point one million LGBTQ plus fiction titles
Speaker 1: over the past year ending in May twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: This is according to a new report put out on
Speaker 1: Tuesday by consumer analyst group CIRCANNA that marks an eleven
Speaker 1: percent jump in growth since last year, when around five
Speaker 1: million total units were sold, and a massive one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy three percent explosions in twenty nineteen before the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen pandemic. This is a really important context. The
Speaker 1: growth in LGBTQ fiction has outpaced the overall market for
Speaker 1: fiction sales, including adult, kids and young adult fiction combined,
Speaker 1: which remained relatively flat. This is from Kristen MacLean, a
Speaker 1: book industry analyst. So it just goes to show you
Speaker 1: can try to ban queerness and transness and gainness out
Speaker 1: of existence, people still want to see it represented. People
Speaker 1: will go out of their way to get that inclusion
Speaker 1: because that is what people want. The extremists who are
Speaker 1: trying to ban and legislate that out of existence are
Speaker 1: out of step with the desires of the majority of
Speaker 1: the country. I believe they are a small but vocal
Speaker 1: group of extremists, and there are more of us than
Speaker 1: there are of them, and I think that is news.
Speaker 2: That is good news. Thank you for sharing that. It's
Speaker 2: good to be reminded that the right wing bigots are
Speaker 2: a minority and they are freaking out because they know it,
Speaker 2: and they know that they are going to go extinct.
Speaker 1: So I've got a little bit of bonus good news.
Speaker 2: For you, two different good news stories in one episode.
Speaker 1: It's not really good news exactly, but the good news
Speaker 1: is that one of my favorite things in the world
Speaker 1: is low stakes online internet drama where there are no
Speaker 1: clear like good guys to root for, and the entire
Speaker 1: internet is like weighing in on what they think. And
Speaker 1: some of that happened, and so it's good news for
Speaker 1: me personally, Bridget. So here's what we've been down. There's
Speaker 1: two moms, let's call one park Mom and the other
Speaker 1: birthday cake Mom. So park Mom gets on TikTok and
Speaker 1: explains the situation. She says that she took her kid
Speaker 1: to a public park and there was another f family
Speaker 1: there who is having a birthday party for their kid.
Speaker 1: Her kid basically starts playing with this other family having
Speaker 1: this party. It's time to sing Happy Birthday and due cake.
Speaker 1: So park Mom is watching her kid. It sounds like
Speaker 1: from the other side of the playground. Park Mom says
Speaker 1: that she watches her kid get a plate, sing happy
Speaker 1: Birthday and clearly have the intention that they're going to
Speaker 1: have birthday cake. That is when birthday cake Mom takes
Speaker 1: the plate away from her the kid and says, you're
Speaker 1: not going to have a piece of cake. These are
Speaker 1: not your friends, this is not your party. Where is
Speaker 1: your mother?
Speaker 2: Devastating So park.
Speaker 1: Mom, in her TikTok says basically, am I the asshole?
Speaker 1: Park Mom is horrified. She cannot believe that birthday cake
Speaker 1: mom would speak to a kid this way. She cannot
Speaker 1: believe that birthday cake mom, who had what she describes
Speaker 1: as a big sheet cake with lots of lots of
Speaker 1: cake to go around, plenty of cake for her kid,
Speaker 1: would deny her kid a slice of cake. She asks
Speaker 1: the Internet on TikTok is she wrong?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: This is why I love this drama so much. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things where there is no clear right
Speaker 1: answer and everybody is weighing in, and like what people
Speaker 1: weigh in with actually says more about them than it
Speaker 1: does about the situation, because the situation, we actually don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of information, like how old are these kids?
Speaker 1: You know. Some people were like, oh, well, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: give food to someone else's kid that I didn't know,
Speaker 1: Like what if they have an allergy? Other people were like, well,
Speaker 1: who's allergic to birthday cake? That seems like a weird
Speaker 1: thing that to just suggest that maybe they're allergyp to
Speaker 1: birthday cake? Read every comment, Love every minute of it,
Speaker 1: you know, I it sounds to me like, if I'm
Speaker 1: being honest, it sounds to me like Park mom just
Speaker 1: kind of let her kid join this other family and
Speaker 1: never went over and introduced herself or said like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm whoever. Is it cool if my kid hangs out, like,
Speaker 1: let me know if they get annoying, just assume that
Speaker 1: it was fine. Kind of a point against Park Mom. Also,
Speaker 1: I feel like snatching a plate from a kid and
Speaker 1: saying these are not your friends a little bit harsh.
Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't do that, but I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: know who is in the right here. I just love
Speaker 1: that it's low stakes. There's no clear correct answer. Everyone
Speaker 1: on the internet is weighing in, and their way in
Speaker 1: says more about who they are and what their values are,
Speaker 1: and you know who they are as people in the
Speaker 1: world that it does about the actual situation. Tad out
Speaker 1: of ten love this kind of low stakes internet drama.
Speaker 2: Yes, please, It is nice that it's so low stakes,
Speaker 2: you know. No, Like I feel for the kid who
Speaker 2: didn't get the cake. It sounds like park Mom was
Speaker 2: also pretty upset.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm sat are entitled Mike?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, I'm trying to refrain from sharing
Speaker 2: my thoughts here.
Speaker 1: No, what do you you have? You have a take,
Speaker 1: like what's like, who do you think is in the wrong?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, just give the kids some damn cake,
Speaker 2: Like what the hell? Like, one person's an adult, the
Speaker 2: other person is a kid who wanted who like came
Speaker 2: to sing the birthday song and like play with some
Speaker 2: other kids and like have some cake. Like regardless of
Speaker 2: who's like truly morally in the right or like violating
Speaker 2: someone else's personal property or whatever. Like one of them
Speaker 2: is a kid who sang the birthday song and wanted
Speaker 2: a piece of cake. The other one's an adult.
Speaker 1: Well, I saw a lot of people on the internet
Speaker 1: being like this kid the birthday cake. Mom probably was
Speaker 1: annoyed by this kid the whole time and was probably like,
Speaker 1: where's your mom to come get you? And was like
Speaker 1: just in this it not not to like excuse her behavior,
Speaker 1: but was like in one of those situations where you're
Speaker 1: getting more and more and more annoyed and then you're
Speaker 1: just like, now it's coming out of an outburst that
Speaker 1: doesn't really makes sense, and it's kind of that the
Speaker 1: wrong person, which I know very well in my personal life.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I kind of see all sides. I think
Speaker 1: that I have been park mom I probably would have.
Speaker 1: I find it frankly unfathomable that at this that someone
Speaker 1: could watch their kid playing with another family, but it
Speaker 1: wouldn't occur to them at some point to go up
Speaker 1: town and be like, hey, like I'm Sally, this is
Speaker 1: my kid, Like this is fine, You're you're cool with this.
Speaker 1: I think it's a It is surprising to me that
Speaker 1: that a mom wouldn't, you know, do that. I think
Speaker 1: that's probably what I would do. Uh probably honestly would
Speaker 1: have like solved this whole thing. It also was surprising
Speaker 1: to me that a grown woman would be like snatching
Speaker 1: a plate from a child. That's that's why it's so good,
Speaker 1: Because everybody but this kid has done something that I
Speaker 1: would not suggest adults do. Everybody's behavior is a little
Speaker 1: bit off.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's part of what makes this so satisfying. It's
Speaker 2: almost like reality TV, where like like am I the asshole? Like,
Speaker 2: actually everyone's the asshole? You know, park mom probably should
Speaker 2: have been keeping it better around her kid. Birthday Mom
Speaker 2: probably could have given the kids some cake. I guess
Speaker 2: I do want to give birthday mom a little bit
Speaker 2: of grace here, because like I've thrown a party in
Speaker 2: my life, you know, a couple of times, and it's stressful,
Speaker 2: and it kind of makes me a bit of a
Speaker 2: head case. I like to think that I would still
Speaker 2: be like kind to a child, but you know, it's
Speaker 2: a high pressure thing. Maybe she had trouble tracking down
Speaker 2: the sheet cake, and like the kids keep running around
Speaker 2: and yelling and like where's birthday?
Speaker 1: Dad?
Speaker 2: Is he helping? I don't hear anything about him in
Speaker 2: this story.
Speaker 1: It makes it better that it's two moms. I feel, yeah,
Speaker 1: it actually I think I think I was telling you
Speaker 1: about this that it reminds me so you and I
Speaker 1: had very I know that you and I had very
Speaker 1: different upbringing sess children. I grew up in the suburbs.
Speaker 1: You grew up on a farm and like in a
Speaker 1: very rural community, so this was not something that you
Speaker 1: really knew about. But when I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: remember I have several memories of in the summertime going
Speaker 1: out to play on our street with other kids. One
Speaker 1: of the other kids would be like, hey, you want
Speaker 1: to come back to my house. I would say sure.
Speaker 1: I would go back to this kid's house, like a
Speaker 1: couple of blocks away. I would get there, their mom
Speaker 1: would be there, so they'll be like, oh, you are
Speaker 1: now expected to like keep an eye on this like
Speaker 1: stranger kid from down the street, and half the time
Speaker 1: I think we would expect food. So it's like, oh, hi, Mom,
Speaker 1: it's not just me the kid that you had that
Speaker 1: you you know, aren't caring for. It's a stranger's kid
Speaker 1: that you don't even know, and she expects lunch. Like
Speaker 1: I think there is something kind of entitled about sending
Speaker 1: your kids with strangers and expecting them to be fed.
Speaker 1: But I absolutely that was my I mean, like maybe
Speaker 1: I misremembering, but I feel like that's how it was
Speaker 1: when I was growing up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was different from my upbringing. You know, there
Speaker 2: were like four other kids within a mile radius of
Speaker 2: our house, right Like I knew them all and also
Speaker 2: needed a ride from my parents if I wanted to
Speaker 2: go see them, So that, just like straight was not happening.
Speaker 1: So I want to know where you stand on this drama. Again,
Speaker 1: it's low stakes, so no judgment. If you would have
Speaker 1: snatched that paper plate from that kid so fast it
Speaker 1: makes your head spend, I want to know about it.
Speaker 1: If you would have gotten Mom's Venmo information to Venmo
Speaker 1: her for her share of the cake. I want to
Speaker 1: know that too. I'm obsessed. Let me know. Hit me
Speaker 1: up on email at Hello at tango dot com. You
Speaker 1: can find me on social or you can subscribe to
Speaker 1: our Patreon. We are having interesting conversations over there. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much to the folks who have subscribed. I've
Speaker 1: got some really exciting stuff coming up on Patreon soon.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a little teaser. It involves Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and Azalea Banks, my problematic fave. So please subscribe. We
Speaker 1: would love to have you there, and thanks so much
Speaker 1: for listening. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so listening, and thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Bridget always Mike. If you're looking for ways to support
Speaker 1: the show, check out our merch store at tangody dot
Speaker 1: com slash store. Got a story about an interesting thing
Speaker 1: in tech, or just want to say hi, You can
Speaker 1: reach us at Hello at tangody dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also find transcripts for today's episode at TENG Goody 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 Unbossed Creative,
Speaker 1: edited by Joey pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amado
Speaker 1: is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If
Speaker 1: you want to help us grow, rate and review.
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