Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to OKF Daily with Me
Speaker 1: your Girl. Daniel Moody recording from the Home Bunker Today.
Speaker 1: I woke up and did not want to get out
Speaker 1: of bed, and so I laid there for at least
Speaker 1: forty five minutes. I am feeling incredibly heavy, incredibly low,
Speaker 1: and doing all that I can to muster the energy
Speaker 1: to keep pushing forward. We've all been dealing with just
Speaker 1: non stop havoc on our nervous systems for the last
Speaker 1: two weeks. But if we're really honest, the last eight years,
Speaker 1: and so, if you do find yourself like I do,
Speaker 1: where you are at a very low point, you find
Speaker 1: yourself at a very low moment. I want to offer
Speaker 1: to you to just give into what your body needs,
Speaker 1: which is rest, which is a social media break, which
Speaker 1: is a news break, and go and do things that
Speaker 1: nourish you. Because what I think is happening right now
Speaker 1: with this inundation of just bad judges, bad decisions, bad
Speaker 1: people gaining power and reverence on social media, in corporate media,
Speaker 1: the fall of our democracy, of places like MSNBC who
Speaker 1: now have pretty much shown and revealed who they are
Speaker 1: with inviting Eric Trump on air, Katie Turr really with
Speaker 1: removing Mourning Joe from the air and lying to the
Speaker 1: hosts about why really like, that's what we're doing, all
Speaker 1: to comply and be complicit in the anointing of Donald
Speaker 1: Trump as king. It's vile and it's disgusting, and I
Speaker 1: think that more and more people are recognizing that they
Speaker 1: are not to be trusted. And so I just woke
Speaker 1: up feeling really heavy and also more committed to telling
Speaker 1: the truth, to doing the work, to uplifting the truth,
Speaker 1: and trying to wake as many people up as humanly
Speaker 1: fucking possible. The announcement of jd Vance as Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: running mate tells you everything that you need to know
Speaker 1: about Republicans. Donald Trump could have, if he was interested
Speaker 1: in actually gaining voters, chosen Nikki Haley. Now, I think
Speaker 1: Nimroda is a piece of shit, But what it would
Speaker 1: have indicated at least two Republican women is that you
Speaker 1: believe in their power and their purpose as well. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump said, yeah, Nah, she don't have the complexion.
Speaker 2: For that, right.
Speaker 1: Remember, but you saw her just this week on the
Speaker 1: stage at the RNC, bending the knee, kissing the ring
Speaker 1: and doing what she can to stay relevant inside of
Speaker 1: a party that sees her as nothing more than the
Speaker 1: fucking help. So choosing jd Vance a man that has
Speaker 1: said that he believes in abortune one hundred percent. No,
Speaker 1: there is no cause in his mind that rape or
Speaker 1: incest or anything horrific would constitute a second thought. He said, no,
Speaker 1: just rape is inconvenient right. But two wrongs don't make
Speaker 1: a right, which is what he said. Tell that to
Speaker 1: victims of sexual assault. He has said that women should
Speaker 1: stay in the side of abusive relationships because it's for
Speaker 1: the better men of the children. He has said that
Speaker 1: LGBTQ plus people are an abomination and wants to roll
Speaker 1: back any protections that the community has gained in the
Speaker 1: past several decades. He is a white supremacist. He is
Speaker 1: a liar. He is a man that said in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen that Donald Trump was America's hitler, and now in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four is Shooken and Jivin on the stage
Speaker 1: with him. These people are not to be trusted, and
Speaker 1: they're also to be taken.
Speaker 2: At their word.
Speaker 1: So do not sit this election out. Do not think
Speaker 1: that you're going to get another bite at the apple.
Speaker 1: Do not waste your vote on a third party. Use
Speaker 1: your power, your platform, your treasure, your talents to secure
Speaker 1: our democracy over the next three and a half months.
Speaker 1: Because where who we have been withh wait for coming
Speaker 1: up next, dear friends, my conversation with friend of the
Speaker 1: show bridget Todd, the host of the pod There Are
Speaker 1: No Girls on the Internet. We get into a great
Speaker 1: conversation about tech, about democracy, about this upcoming election, and more, folks.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to welcome back to WOKF Daily
Speaker 1: bridget Todd, the host of There Are No Girls on
Speaker 1: the Internet, which is launching its fourth season on iHeart
Speaker 1: On Outspoken, and I'm so excited to have you. Every
Speaker 1: time that I have you on, we have such rich
Speaker 1: conversations about the world, the culture, society that we are
Speaker 1: living in right now. The last time we spoke last year,
Speaker 1: these are some of the things that hadn't happened that
Speaker 1: have happened in that timeframe, which is kind of wild.
Speaker 1: When I was like looking at this, so since then,
Speaker 1: Twitter has become extreads hadn't taken off yet, and TikTok
Speaker 1: was not facing a federally mandated ban just those three things,
Speaker 1: and AI was still I think being talked about on
Speaker 1: the margins, you know, within the industry, but not in
Speaker 1: a mainstream type setting, and now it's everywhere and it's
Speaker 1: in every conversation. So bridget jump in. Let's start with
Speaker 1: threads and the ban on TikTok and kind of the
Speaker 1: politization of information disinformation and kind of what were you
Speaker 1: thinking about as these platforms were shifting and bands were
Speaker 1: being announced.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do feel like we are in a really
Speaker 3: specific moment for somebody that has been on the Internet
Speaker 3: for a very long time, sort of covering and thinking
Speaker 3: about the Internet and how we get our information, how
Speaker 3: we connect. I can't recall a time that we were
Speaker 3: ever in a moment like this one where you have
Speaker 3: made sure, you know, communications platforms like Twitter essentially completely
Speaker 3: being disrupted because of one billionaire that's new. You have
Speaker 3: other companies trying to sort of fill that gap with threads.
Speaker 3: You've got, you know, as you said, TikTok, which really
Speaker 3: was taking up a lion's share of how people were
Speaker 3: getting their information on social media facing a fan All
Speaker 3: of this happening against the backdrop of the rise of
Speaker 3: things like Generator of AI, which we know is really
Speaker 3: poised to change our information ecosystem that already has do
Speaker 3: things like you know, politically motivated deep fakes and cheap
Speaker 3: fakes and things like that. I don't know, it's such
Speaker 3: a weird time personally. I really see people experiencing a
Speaker 3: lot of fatigue, and I think I'm there myself with like, well,
Speaker 3: what platform can I use? Or you know, when something
Speaker 3: happens in my community. For the longest time, where you
Speaker 3: would go for like a real time update was Twitter, right, Like, yep,
Speaker 3: you know, I would go to Twitter to see what my.
Speaker 2: Mayor was saying about something.
Speaker 3: Now I have no idea, I don't know where to go,
Speaker 3: and so I think that we're really in this no
Speaker 3: man's land of how you just get access to information
Speaker 3: all of that in the lead up to a critical
Speaker 3: election year, not just in the United States globally, right,
Speaker 3: And so I'm concerned, I guess is the word title use.
Speaker 3: I'm a little bit concerned about our information ecosystem online.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that, particularly when you make the point
Speaker 1: that our global town square was disrupted by one right wing, racist, misogynist,
Speaker 1: transphobic billionaire, shows you how broken our systems of communication
Speaker 1: and gathering in media truly are. Right when what we
Speaker 1: had seen from let's say, the murder of Trayvon Martin,
Speaker 1: the murder of Mike Brown, and I'm just I'm giving
Speaker 1: like just specific time points the murder of George Floyd.
Speaker 1: So you're looking at, you know, almost seven eight years
Speaker 1: of time. In that span, what we saw were people
Speaker 1: being able to quickly gather, people being able to organize online,
Speaker 1: and then transition that organizing online into organizing in real life.
Speaker 1: Then because of the bubbling up that was happening in Twitter,
Speaker 1: finally mainstream media was covering what was actually happening on
Speaker 1: the ground in these communities where these murders took place.
Speaker 1: That was I think a bat signal bridget to the
Speaker 1: right wing that was like, Oh, they can't have this,
Speaker 1: they can't have this centralized organizing and we need something
Speaker 1: and someone to disrupt it. How do you look at
Speaker 1: the devolving of an X versus the proposed ban on
Speaker 1: a TikTok? How do you look at that on the
Speaker 1: spectrum of where we are?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so the way that you broke down
Speaker 3: that timeline is so I think needed and necessary, because
Speaker 3: I do think the reason why Twitter became this battle
Speaker 3: ground is because it really was a place where people
Speaker 3: who traditionally didn't have access to traditional means of power
Speaker 3: were able to build up power. So people like Elon
Speaker 3: must saw that and they were like, we need to
Speaker 3: disrupt that. Right When I think about TikTok, I think
Speaker 3: that TikTok is a platform that it's not surprising to
Speaker 3: me that you have a lot of people kind of
Speaker 3: fear mongering about TikTok because I do think it's one
Speaker 3: of the last places that people can go and just
Speaker 3: like express themselves. I think it's interesting how the conversation
Speaker 3: around the platform has been demonized. But other platforms that
Speaker 3: I could tell you twenty different ways that they're that
Speaker 3: they're that they're harming us, it's not similarly demonized. And
Speaker 3: so I think that what lawmakers who are trying to
Speaker 3: ban TikTok are really saying is that American owned companies
Speaker 3: should be able to harm us in this way.
Speaker 2: Like that's like, like that's my like big theory.
Speaker 3: And I also think like there's a kind of a like, oh,
Speaker 3: you kids with your phones kind of mentality about it,
Speaker 3: where because it's a platform that is really taken off
Speaker 3: with younger people, it's really easily demonized, and so you
Speaker 3: have these lawmakers being like, oh, like, you know, young
Speaker 3: people couldn't possibly feel xyz about Palestine, it has to
Speaker 3: be TikTok is like rotting their brains, and then they
Speaker 3: turn around and want that same demographic to vote for them.
Speaker 3: It's like, on the one hand, they are both like
Speaker 3: devaluing what young people have to say while also being like, oh,
Speaker 3: but we want your votes. And so I just had
Speaker 3: the whole conversation around TikTok on the backdrop of how
Speaker 3: it's unfolding with X like, it just feels really disingenuous,
Speaker 3: and I don't know that it's a conversation that is
Speaker 3: really benefiting us and really making us safer. If lawmakers
Speaker 3: want to have a conversation about how we make social
Speaker 3: media platforms safer, how we stop social media platforms from
Speaker 3: profiting from harming people and taking all of our data,
Speaker 3: and have an actual conversation about like a robust data
Speaker 3: privacy policy, I am.
Speaker 2: All for it.
Speaker 3: I don't think just spanning one platform gets us there.
Speaker 1: We can all list off on the top of our
Speaker 1: heads the ways in which American platforms, American run platforms
Speaker 1: have been abusing our data and abusing us since like
Speaker 1: their beginning, what responsibility did Meta take for the twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen election they had to pay fines over in Europe
Speaker 1: like a slack on the wrisk, but it was at
Speaker 1: least like a billion or so, What was the responsibility?
Speaker 1: What was the accountability that Meta had to play? YouTube
Speaker 1: and others that were you know, for Google, like in
Speaker 1: terms of broadcasting and platforming disinformation, misinformation and white supremacy.
Speaker 3: And in fact, I would argue that platforms like YouTube
Speaker 3: that is owned by Google, in the recent months, they've
Speaker 3: actually walked back what very little guardrails they put up
Speaker 3: after twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, they've walked back. And
Speaker 3: so for a while after the twenty two election they
Speaker 3: were like, oh, we won't allow election denihalism on our platform.
Speaker 3: They walked that back a couple months ago ahead of
Speaker 3: the ahead of the upcoming election. So not only is
Speaker 3: it a lack of accountability, I think that they're just like,
Speaker 3: it doesn't like we can do whatever we want and
Speaker 3: people are not gonna stop using these platforms, and so
Speaker 3: I think the dynamic has really become that they don't
Speaker 3: have to be accountable to us, the people who use
Speaker 3: these platforms and make them billions, and we really have
Speaker 3: to shift that because these platforms would be nothing without us.
Speaker 2: They got us, aren't being accountable to us.
Speaker 1: You know? And I wonder because to that point, how
Speaker 1: because I feel like we have also become intellectually enslaved
Speaker 1: to these platforms and their algorithms. If you are a
Speaker 1: content creator, right like you and I are content creators,
Speaker 1: the only way for you to get pops is to
Speaker 1: basically live on those apps, right, be able to put
Speaker 1: up five, ten, fifteen videos a day, to be able
Speaker 1: to push out content to meet your audience, and for
Speaker 1: folks to stay on their screens all day every day.
Speaker 1: And so because of that, I'm like, how, like, is
Speaker 1: it is it a boycott? Because I don't see a
Speaker 1: bunch of people saying, you know what, I'm good? So
Speaker 1: in your mind, what does it look like for us,
Speaker 1: as those that are the source of their power and
Speaker 1: their wealth to make them accountable even when the people
Speaker 1: that we are electing to regulate them and hold them
Speaker 1: accountable don't What a good question?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think part of it is almost like
Speaker 3: a philosophical answer of really putting these platforms in an
Speaker 3: appropriate place in our lives and in our media diets.
Speaker 3: You know, I love technology and I love the Internet,
Speaker 3: and I hate that we're in a place where when
Speaker 3: I'm talking about technology and the Internet, invariably I'm talking
Speaker 3: about like three different companies Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, I guess
Speaker 3: for Google. And it's like, we've gotten to this place
Speaker 3: where these four massive companies, mostly run by white male billionaires,
Speaker 3: to become synonymous with the Internet. And so I think
Speaker 3: that ultimately we deserve an Internet ecosystem that is more robust, richer,
Speaker 3: more dynamic, has more players than like four people making
Speaker 3: decisions for how we will get our content. And I
Speaker 3: don't know what you said about being a content creator
Speaker 3: and what it feels like to exist in these platforms
Speaker 3: really speaks to me because it is so exhausting, Like
Speaker 3: it's exhausting. Have you ever seen the guidelines from Adam Mosseerri,
Speaker 3: who runs Instagram, where it will be like, here's how
Speaker 3: you succeed on Instagram And it'll be like post five
Speaker 3: reels a day, post five times on a grid, and
Speaker 3: it's like, Okay, well, I have a job. My job
Speaker 3: is that full time Instagram creator. I have a family,
Speaker 3: I have a life and maybe the kind of inside
Speaker 3: and perspective that I'm able to bring. I need to
Speaker 3: spend time not thinking get Instagram to do it. I
Speaker 3: need to spend time in.
Speaker 1: The world like thinking and existing. Right, yeah, yeah, Because
Speaker 1: there was a point where I was really trying to
Speaker 1: develop my TikTok presence, right, and I had gotten some
Speaker 1: really good tutorials from much younger content creators who were
Speaker 1: like Danielle, I think that you could translate to TikTok
Speaker 1: and this is here are some ideas, right and just
Speaker 1: give it a go. And they're like, also, you need
Speaker 1: to put up at least nine videos a day, And
Speaker 1: I was like, in.
Speaker 2: What world, it's not happening, like in not in what
Speaker 2: a world?
Speaker 1: But there was like a span of time bridget I
Speaker 1: shit you not where I was putting up like six
Speaker 1: videos a day, and then at the end of like
Speaker 1: that month, I was burnt out. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: log onto TikTok, I didn't want to share a video.
Speaker 1: I just didn't have it, you know. And so I
Speaker 1: also want people to understand that those that try to
Speaker 1: make a living and build a presence and a platform,
Speaker 1: like again, we don't own any of the data. So
Speaker 1: the tens of thousands of people that started following me
Speaker 1: on TikTok, it's not like I have their email addresses, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like I have access to them to bring
Speaker 1: them into different formats in places, and so again it
Speaker 1: is really about us looking and saying, am I really
Speaker 1: in control of this? Then I say that I'm a
Speaker 1: content creator, I say that I'm a you know, an
Speaker 1: entrepreneur and doing these things, but like I think that
Speaker 1: I have just traded one master for another.
Speaker 3: That is a word. I mean, that is really how
Speaker 3: it feels. And you know, let's say that you are
Speaker 3: somebody who built up a huge following on TikTok then
Speaker 3: it gets banned, or you're somebody who built up a
Speaker 3: huge following on Instagram, then they tweak the algorithm, or
Speaker 3: the kind of content that you were told succeeds on
Speaker 3: the platform no longer pops off. Like it's just not
Speaker 3: something that I think is healthy. It's not something that
Speaker 3: I think is really possible. Like I really had to
Speaker 3: have like a come to Jesus moment of like what
Speaker 3: is it that I do well?
Speaker 2: What is my value? Add what do I like doing?
Speaker 3: And that's not making videos on TikTok, right like, and
Speaker 3: I have to sort of be okay with that that
Speaker 3: not every like Like I also did the TikTok thing.
Speaker 3: It was a huge flop for me, partly because I
Speaker 3: was not willing to make a million videos a day,
Speaker 3: And I kind of have to be okay with that
Speaker 3: and hope that the people who resonate with what I
Speaker 3: have to say will find me in other ways.
Speaker 2: But it's hard. It's really hard.
Speaker 3: But as you said, increasingly, and I think especially for
Speaker 3: black folks, for women, for people who are traditionally marginalized,
Speaker 3: you do have to have that presence on TikTok or
Speaker 3: on social media to get your point across. It's not
Speaker 3: like you could, like you know, if you ever go
Speaker 3: to try to get like a book deal, the first
Speaker 3: thing they ask you is like, how many cass do
Speaker 3: you have?
Speaker 2: Exactly? And so I.
Speaker 3: Recognize it's easy for me to say like, oh, just
Speaker 3: don't care about your TikTok presence or whatever, because of
Speaker 3: the reality is it does matter. But I guess I'm
Speaker 3: trying to do the individual personal work of making it
Speaker 3: matter less in my own mind and my own understanding
Speaker 3: of my work and my values and my value.
Speaker 1: It is so much work, and it's so much compartmentalization,
Speaker 1: right and understanding like that you are not the product
Speaker 1: that you are putting out. It's a very tricky game
Speaker 1: as a content creator. I want to switch gears with
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes that we have to talk about
Speaker 1: generative AI and to talk about where we are, how
Speaker 1: it's being used, and whether or not. And I know
Speaker 1: that it's not black or white, that it is not
Speaker 1: you know, inside of the binary. But is it going
Speaker 1: to be for our betterment in your humble opinion, or
Speaker 1: we just essentially setting ourselves up for a massive like
Speaker 1: failure of humanity Because I tell you I think in
Speaker 1: only existential thoughts when I think when I think about AI,
Speaker 1: have no one has changed my mind on this, so please.
Speaker 3: Sounds like somebody has been staring into the void and
Speaker 3: like correct ground with existential thoughts. Okay, correct, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean this is what I think about AI right at
Speaker 3: my core. I am a techno optimist. I think that technology.
Speaker 3: I've seen the way that it can connect people, inform people,
Speaker 3: all of that. I think that we are at a
Speaker 3: critical moment with generative AI where we are running out
Speaker 3: of time to decide whether or not this is going
Speaker 3: to be technology that helps us or harms us. I
Speaker 3: think it's all about the people that we center, because
Speaker 3: you know, it's easy to think about AI as like
Speaker 3: hyper intelligent, hyper aware robots, but it's people. It's made
Speaker 3: by people, it's trained by people, it learns from us.
Speaker 3: So we're really talking about people. And I think that
Speaker 3: right now we have to decide if we are going
Speaker 3: to center and follow the same kind of tech billionaires
Speaker 3: that led us to this place that we were just
Speaker 3: talking about a moment ago, Danielle, where you know, it
Speaker 3: feels like our information ecosystem is crumbling. Do we want
Speaker 3: to listen to those same people that got us to
Speaker 3: this moment that feels so scary and tough when it
Speaker 3: comes to making decisions about AI, or do we want
Speaker 3: to listen to the hundreds of mostly marginalized people, right
Speaker 3: black women women who have been raising the alarm about AI,
Speaker 3: really having the conversations about ethics, talking about how we
Speaker 3: can make AI that truly is people centered, and the
Speaker 3: need to do that. I think we can go one
Speaker 3: of two ways, but we are losing time to decide
Speaker 3: where we're gonna go, and So what I think when
Speaker 3: it comes to AI is like we really need to
Speaker 3: have a shift of who we listen to, who we
Speaker 3: decide as an expert, who we center, because right now
Speaker 3: we're doing the same thing that we're doing with the
Speaker 3: platforms right where we've decided a couple of companies like
Speaker 3: open AI and others mostly headed by white CIS men,
Speaker 3: and we've just decided like they are the people who
Speaker 3: are going to figure this out, and I want something
Speaker 3: different from us. We have voices that are offering a
Speaker 3: different story in a different future. We just have to
Speaker 3: decide that those are the voices that we are going
Speaker 3: to center.
Speaker 1: Last question for you, bridget too, and this one is
Speaker 1: you know, around pride, as I you know we've been
Speaker 1: saying on the show this month. You know, pride is
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty five days of the year, particularly
Speaker 1: when our community is under attack in so many ways
Speaker 1: from so many spaces and places. And I wonder when
Speaker 1: you say, like you're a techno optimist, how that translates
Speaker 1: into like your own multitude of identities at a time
Speaker 1: when America and the world feel fairly dark.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just remembering that the last time we talked
Speaker 3: was also Pride this time last year, and I was
Speaker 3: telling you that I had got out to a Pride
Speaker 3: party and it felt different, Like I was like, I'm
Speaker 3: a little nervous being here.
Speaker 2: Is this safe?
Speaker 3: But then when I kind of like leaned into the moment,
Speaker 3: I was like, Oh, this actually feels good, and we
Speaker 3: need to have these spaces. I think it really comes
Speaker 3: down to that that, like, sometimes it feels like just existing,
Speaker 3: just living, just thriving, just being here is its own
Speaker 3: kind of quiet, radical act, and so I'm leaning into that.
Speaker 3: That like resistance and showing up every day and being
Speaker 3: an optimist and having hope and thinking making plans for
Speaker 3: your future, being hopeful about the future in a kind
Speaker 3: of way, that is a radical act that I'm sort
Speaker 3: of clinging to that, you know, as everything feels like
Speaker 3: it's burning sometimes sometimes that's all I had to cling to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 1: I feel like we have to lean into the moment
Speaker 1: that we're in because I feel every single day we
Speaker 1: are living history. You know, I thought for the first
Speaker 1: time the other day, and I don't know why, but
Speaker 1: I have all of these conversations as you do, all
Speaker 1: through COVID, right, that are pretty much like audio diaries,
Speaker 1: all of these podcasts of this moment, and at some
Speaker 1: point in time ten, twenty, thirty, forty years from now,
Speaker 1: people will be listening and being like they had no
Speaker 1: idea what was coming, or like oh my god, they
Speaker 1: did know, but they really didn't know, but like what
Speaker 1: a moment to be living in. The thing that I
Speaker 1: will end on is that I think that pride is necessary.
Speaker 1: It is necessary, particularly in these times, to seek a
Speaker 1: serious amount of joy, to center it, to guard it,
Speaker 1: because everything is at stake, including our health and well being.
Speaker 1: So with that, happy Pride to you, Bridget. Please tell
Speaker 1: people how they connect with your new season of their
Speaker 1: and No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much for having me Danielle Happy Pride.
Speaker 3: You can find the podcast There Are No Girls on
Speaker 3: the Internet, on iHeartRadio and Outspoken wherever you get your pods.
Speaker 3: You can follow me on Instagram at Bridget Marie DC
Speaker 3: or on TikTok where I just got around.
Speaker 2: But if you want to follow it, if you want
Speaker 2: to follow.
Speaker 3: Me, it's a Bridget makes podcasts. Yeah, I'd love to
Speaker 3: have you there.
Speaker 1: Amazing As always, thank you so much for making the
Speaker 1: time for WOKF really appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today. Friends on wokef as always,
Speaker 1: power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.