Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridge Tad and this
Speaker 1: is there Are No Girls on the Internet. Mike. It
Speaker 1: is nice to have you back. How have you been.
Speaker 2: I've been good. It's been nice to be back. You know,
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed Joey's episode last week, but it's nice
Speaker 2: to be back.
Speaker 1: I agree. So let's get into some of these news stories.
Speaker 1: We have some updates and some new news around attempts
Speaker 1: to legislate the Internet to make it safer for kids
Speaker 1: in scare quotes both here and around the world, because
Speaker 1: rather than actually keeping kids safe, lawmakers seem to be
Speaker 1: going all in on just bubble wrapping the Internet instead,
Speaker 1: in some cases with less than optimal results. So yesterday,
Speaker 1: a coalition of LGBTQ plus and sex worker led organizations
Speaker 1: filed a complaint urging the Federal Trade Commission to open
Speaker 1: an investigation into MasterCards adult content policy, alleging that it
Speaker 1: constitutes an unfair business practice. So basically, what's going on
Speaker 1: is that back in twenty twenty one, MasterCard put a
Speaker 1: new policy in place for websites that host adult content,
Speaker 1: like OnlyFans that use master Card payment options. The policy
Speaker 1: requires these websites to jump through kind of a lot
Speaker 1: of hoops, like getting pre approval for all content before publication,
Speaker 1: forbidding certain search terms, and keeping record of age and
Speaker 1: identity verification of all performers. Now, the ACLU says that
Speaker 1: this policy restricts free speech and harms the livelihood of
Speaker 1: sex workers, especially black, immigrant and trans sex workers, while
Speaker 1: also just failing to make those content platforms any safer.
Speaker 1: When the policy was first put in place back in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, researcher Valerie Weber surveyed one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventeen sex workers about how MasterCards Adult Content policy was
Speaker 1: impacting their work now. According to the Queer News outlet, them,
Speaker 1: ninety percent of the respondents in that survey said that
Speaker 1: their work suffered when that policy was implemented. They reported
Speaker 1: payment interruptions and account flaggings and closures, and mostly it
Speaker 1: sounds like all of them felt like all of these
Speaker 1: hoops they had to jump through did not actually make
Speaker 1: the adult industry any safer. The ACLUSED Trans Justice campaign
Speaker 1: manager La La b Holsten Zanell wrote in a blog
Speaker 1: that by restricting sex workers' ability to do business, online
Speaker 1: payment processors were actually increasing the likelihood that they might
Speaker 1: have to turn into more dangerous methods of making money,
Speaker 1: such as street based sex work. They also point out
Speaker 1: that many adult content websites require biometric identification technology that
Speaker 1: we know is racist and routinely used by law enforcement
Speaker 1: to surveil and target and track black and brown people.
Speaker 1: So requiring the use of that technology to verify your
Speaker 1: age or identity is like doubly problematic, which led to
Speaker 1: this coalition of LGBTQ plus and sex worker let organizations
Speaker 1: filing this complaint with the FTC. And I really see
Speaker 1: this as yet another example of how hostile online platforms
Speaker 1: can be to people who engage in sex work. You know,
Speaker 1: we've talked on the show a bit about Sesta Fasta,
Speaker 1: and that is another good example of how these kinds
Speaker 1: of legislation that are ostensibly kind of on their face
Speaker 1: meant to make the Internet safer, what they actually do
Speaker 1: is they make it worse and less safe for everyone.
Speaker 2: Yes, sadly we hear so many examples like that on
Speaker 2: this show of policies supposed to make the Internet safer
Speaker 2: or you know, save the children that don't do that, right,
Speaker 2: The best case scenario, they have no impact. But worst
Speaker 2: case scenario, like this MasterCard policy, it actually puts people
Speaker 2: at risk by taking away their livelihoods to be able
Speaker 2: to make content, make a living off their content online
Speaker 2: and according to that poole, pushing people into street based
Speaker 2: sex work.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to things like fasta SESTA, that
Speaker 1: legislation on its face was supposed to be fighting online
Speaker 1: sex trafficking and and you know, the acronym is Stop
Speaker 1: Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and allow States and victims to
Speaker 1: Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. However, sex workers reported routinely
Speaker 1: that you know, by making by having that legislation really
Speaker 1: target and further criminalize people who are engaged in sex work,
Speaker 1: what it actually did was it meant that people who
Speaker 1: are routinely online in spaces where sex is being exchanged
Speaker 1: for money could not raise the alarm when something untoward
Speaker 1: was happening, when something unconsensual was happening. And so when
Speaker 1: you criminalize the people who are showing up to those spaces,
Speaker 1: the ones who are really you know, sounding the alarm
Speaker 1: when somebody is being trafficked or something non consensual is happening,
Speaker 1: when those people don't feel safe speaking up, you actually
Speaker 1: make you actually are getting further away from the thing
Speaker 1: that you say is you know the reasoning for passing
Speaker 1: this legislation in the first place. Okay, So, speaking of
Speaker 1: legislating the Internet, Mike, you know that we've been tracking
Speaker 1: this flurry of a verification laws moving across the country that,
Speaker 1: if passed, would require us to verify that we're over
Speaker 1: eighteen to access social media. Here's a couple of quick
Speaker 1: updates so far. Utah, California, and Texas have all passed
Speaker 1: laws that will require verification that new users are eighteen
Speaker 1: or older, and Louisiana's law actually requires miners to be
Speaker 1: sixteen to create social media accounts. Now, all of those
Speaker 1: laws are meant to go into effect after Arkansas's law,
Speaker 1: and in Arkansas, the age verification law almost did go
Speaker 1: into effect tonight, but late tonight Thursday, a federal judge
Speaker 1: temporary block the state's social media age verification law, just
Speaker 1: hours before it was meant to go into effect. The
Speaker 1: judge said the laws a burden on the free speech
Speaker 1: of miners and adults, and it is not targeted to
Speaker 1: address the harms it is identified. So actually sounds like
Speaker 1: quite a bit like what we were just talking about,
Speaker 1: where the law will lay out something that it is
Speaker 1: meant to be combating, but then the actual implementation does
Speaker 1: not actually do that, and in some cases takes you
Speaker 1: further away from that stated intention.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the judge basically said what we've said every
Speaker 2: time we've talked about these laws. You know, it's not
Speaker 2: targeted to address the harms that has identified. And it
Speaker 2: really does make you wonder, like, if it's so obvious
Speaker 2: to us, to people making a podcast, and it's obvious
Speaker 2: to this judge and a whole bunch of other people
Speaker 2: that these laws are not accomplishing the things that they
Speaker 2: say they're trying to accomplish. Why do so many people
Speaker 2: keep pushing for them? Why do we have a whole
Speaker 2: list of states that have passed them and are trying
Speaker 2: to put them into law.
Speaker 1: What a good question. I think it's a couple of things. One,
Speaker 1: I think it's the need to appear to be doing something.
Speaker 1: I think that it's clear something needs to be done,
Speaker 1: and so I think this like rushed law that's just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this will do something. I think that's part of it. Two,
Speaker 1: I think that the conversation has been completely hijacked by people,
Speaker 1: not completely, but in some ways has been hijacked by
Speaker 1: peace people who really don't have the best interests of
Speaker 1: kids in mind, and that they know that when you
Speaker 1: bring up protecting kids, people will really scramble to do anything.
Speaker 1: And so I think that like they might have an agenda,
Speaker 1: you know, the Heritage Foundation, I think it was like
Speaker 1: explicitly said that these laws about kids on the Internet,
Speaker 1: they intend to use that to further suppress content about
Speaker 1: like LGBTQ folks and identity and things like that. So
Speaker 1: I think it's just becomes something where you have people
Speaker 1: who legitimately have bad intentions and then like, if you're
Speaker 1: saying this is going to make a difference, we have
Speaker 1: to do something. So maybe that's this. And I also
Speaker 1: think that the converse again, the conversation around how we
Speaker 1: protect people online has become so muddled, and I think
Speaker 1: that it's it's like the age verification thing is such
Speaker 1: a quick fix because you can say, like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this law prevents kids from being online in the first place,
Speaker 1: it prevents kids from being on social media in the
Speaker 1: first place. As to really addressing the root cause of
Speaker 1: the harm that social media presents, not just for young people,
Speaker 1: but for all of us. So I think it's like
Speaker 1: a quick fix that really allows for lawmakers and policy
Speaker 1: folks and people in charge to not have to address
Speaker 1: some of the more systemic root causes of what's going on.
Speaker 1: If you can make a law that's just like, well,
Speaker 1: the law says they shouldn't be on it any way,
Speaker 1: then you don't have to do any of that. It's
Speaker 1: like a quick fix. And meanwhile, in Australia, the federal
Speaker 1: government in Australia was actually looking into age verification to
Speaker 1: access porn online, as we've seen in a flory of
Speaker 1: states here in the United States like Virginia and I
Speaker 1: think Arkansas as well. But this week Australia's e Safety
Speaker 1: Commissioner released a long awaited roadmap to rolling out age verification,
Speaker 1: which they say after looking into it, they are not
Speaker 1: moving ahead with age verification to access pornography online. So
Speaker 1: the report actually does say that while it's not great
Speaker 1: that young people are accessing porn online at pretty young
Speaker 1: ages like thirteen fourteen, it's not all bad. That does
Speaker 1: not paint a full enough picture because the report also
Speaker 1: cites a gap in sex education for LGBTQ youth that
Speaker 1: online porn might actually be filling, the E Safety Commissioner
Speaker 1: said quote. In our research, participants who identified as lesbian, gay,
Speaker 1: or bisexual were also significantly more likely to say that
Speaker 1: there were some positive effects of online pornography on young
Speaker 1: people learning about sex and exploring sexuality than straight participants.
Speaker 1: Some stakeholders reflected this may be due to the lack
Speaker 1: of other representations or learning sources for young lgbtqiplus people,
Speaker 1: including a lack of inclusive sex education in schools, which
Speaker 1: honestly really tracks with my own experiences online as well.
Speaker 1: So instead of requiring age verification to access porn online,
Speaker 1: the E Safety Commission in Australia is actually going to
Speaker 1: develop a new code to educate parents on how to
Speaker 1: access filtering software and limit children's access to such material
Speaker 1: or sites that are not appropriate for young people.
Speaker 2: Such a more thoughtful and like measured, targeted response than
Speaker 2: anything we've talked about happening in the States for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Australia is like, we spent like, I think this
Speaker 1: report has been like years in the making. Australia has
Speaker 1: spent a long time digging into this this policy change,
Speaker 1: and instead was like, oh, there's a better way to
Speaker 1: do this, Like there's a better way to actually help
Speaker 1: parents mitigate the harm that this poses to kids. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's definitely like a more thoughtful approach and
Speaker 1: actually speaking of youth and social media. In ann Armundol
Speaker 1: County in Maryland, the school district issuing Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok,
Speaker 1: Google and other social media platforms, saying that social media
Speaker 1: has rewired how students think and feel. Phil Frederico, an
Speaker 1: attorney for the school system, said, as a result of
Speaker 1: the addictive nature of these algorithms and platforms, children are
Speaker 1: spending too much time on the cell phones. Certainly the
Speaker 1: content is problematic as well, but it's really these platforms
Speaker 1: and really these algorithms that are getting them to stay
Speaker 1: on their phones repeatedly interrupting their time at school. We
Speaker 1: want to get the companies to respect children and treat
Speaker 1: them the way that they should be treated and not
Speaker 1: as a profit center. So we want them to change
Speaker 1: their algorithms, change their platforms so that we don't have
Speaker 1: this problem in the future. And I think that that
Speaker 1: comment from the attorney for the school system really speaks
Speaker 1: to what I'm talking about, right, Like it's much harder
Speaker 1: and much more complex to be to say we need
Speaker 1: to change the way that social media is showing up
Speaker 1: generally as opposed to as slapping a law that keeps
Speaker 1: young people away from it. And so I agree with
Speaker 1: what this what this attorney for the school system is saying.
Speaker 1: Anna Arundel is actually the eighth Maryland school system to
Speaker 1: go after social media platforms on behalf of students. Something
Speaker 1: that the lawsuit really makes clear is that even though
Speaker 1: they're suing the social media platforms, they say that the
Speaker 1: issues really start at home. And I thought that was
Speaker 1: such an interesting point. That you know, we are all
Speaker 1: probably on our phones too much. You might even say
Speaker 1: that some of us are a little bit addicted to
Speaker 1: our phones. And if a kid's grown up right, their
Speaker 1: parents or their guardian is on their phones day and night.
Speaker 1: If when they come home from school they see their
Speaker 1: parent on their phones or on their iPad or on
Speaker 1: their screen day and night, how would they be able
Speaker 1: to set any kind of a different standard, right, Like,
Speaker 1: how would they know that there's something different? And so
Speaker 1: this lawsuit I find it really interesting, and that they're
Speaker 1: going after the platforms will also make it clear that
Speaker 1: some of the dynamics that they're seeing in classrooms that
Speaker 1: are not super healthy around phone use really do start
Speaker 1: at home.
Speaker 2: That is very interesting. I mean, you know, on the
Speaker 2: one hand, I totally agree with those quotes. On the
Speaker 2: other it does feel a little weird that county school
Speaker 2: district is like leading the charge here. It feels like
Speaker 2: there are so many other or entities within our government,
Speaker 2: you know, like the FTC, Congress, I don't know, probably
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of others, you know, state level entities
Speaker 2: that should be doing something. I guess a lot of
Speaker 2: them are busy passing like age verification laws, but you know,
Speaker 2: maybe they could take a look at what some of
Speaker 2: these counties are doing and take some inspiration there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I actually don't find it surprising at all. I'm
Speaker 1: a former educator. I stopped teaching like quite a while ago,
Speaker 1: but even when I was teaching, phone use was a
Speaker 1: problem in classes. I can only imagine what it is
Speaker 1: like now. I bet that it is disruptive to schools
Speaker 1: to the point where they feel like just having there
Speaker 1: be policies at the school level that's like no phones,
Speaker 1: you get in trouble if you ever phone is not
Speaker 1: enough that these educators probably feel like addiction to social
Speaker 1: media is disruptive enough that like they need to take
Speaker 1: it to the next level, and not even just like
Speaker 1: the distraction of having phones in schools. Like I again,
Speaker 1: I have not taught in a long time, so I
Speaker 1: don't I can't speak for sure, but I can only
Speaker 1: imagine that the social disruption that social media platforms introduces
Speaker 1: into an education system is also a problem, and that
Speaker 1: they probably are just completely fed up with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point. You know, there's both things
Speaker 2: are huge problems, right Like, people are addicted to their phones,
Speaker 2: have no attention span anymore for anything. And it's not
Speaker 2: just kids, right Like, we can't just blame children, you know,
Speaker 2: I unfortunately spend half my days on zoom calls talking
Speaker 2: with you know, accomplished, smart adults. And even still, you
Speaker 2: can tell that half the people are not paying attention
Speaker 2: to the conversation, are like, you know, checking Slack or
Speaker 2: responding to an email or looking at Facebook or who
Speaker 2: even knows what they're doing. Social media has really, I think,
Speaker 2: like done something to all of our brains, all of
Speaker 2: our attention spans. And then also, like you mentioned the
Speaker 2: other harmful dynamics that social media has probably introduced into
Speaker 2: schools of kids getting into fights and posting inappropriate photos
Speaker 2: of each other or others. Yeah, I bet schools are mad.
Speaker 1: And I do think that we should really be setting
Speaker 1: a different standard for our young people. You know. It's
Speaker 1: one thing for me to be an adult and to
Speaker 1: have my brain chemistry be so altered by the dazzle
Speaker 1: of social media platforms that I can no longer sit
Speaker 1: through an hour long zoom meeting that I didn't really
Speaker 1: care about in the first place. It's another to be
Speaker 1: passing that on to somebody whose brain is not even
Speaker 1: fully formed, which it sounds like what we are doing
Speaker 1: to our young people, and we are allowing platforms to
Speaker 1: profit from it. And so we'll keep an eye on
Speaker 1: this lawsuit and see where it goes.
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: Speaking of platforms profiting off of all of us, it
Speaker 1: is no secret that Facebook really cannot be trusted to
Speaker 1: put anything ahead of profit. Not the wellbeing of our kids,
Speaker 1: not our democracy, not our privacy, none of it, and
Speaker 1: certainly not the wellbeing of their users. They're actually pretty
Speaker 1: open about it, and maybe that's why we see so
Speaker 1: many of those super fake chain letters that you see
Speaker 1: on Facebook. Maybe you've seen like your weird aunt or
Speaker 1: your uncle post it where it's like, I do not
Speaker 1: give Facebook permission to take any of my pictures. Post
Speaker 1: this in your status and tell Facebook that you don't
Speaker 1: give them permission. If your Facebook is anything like mine,
Speaker 1: you maybe have seen someone make a post like that,
Speaker 1: and those things are not true. They're just like fake
Speaker 1: chain letters. And that's one of the reasons why I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk a bit about this zd net article
Speaker 1: that came out today with instructions on how to opt
Speaker 1: out from Facebook using some of your data to train AI,
Speaker 1: because it sounds exactly like one of those Facebook chain
Speaker 1: statuses that goes around, only it's real, So we'll link
Speaker 1: to it in the show notes. But basically, there's a
Speaker 1: set of tools that you can use with your Facebook
Speaker 1: account to control what they call quote off Facebook activity.
Speaker 1: The article provides instructions on how to break the link
Speaker 1: between your Facebook activity and all other data they collect
Speaker 1: about you from their advertising networks around the rest of
Speaker 1: the Internet. So do we think that Facebook is going
Speaker 1: to actually honor those requests? Honestly, I don't know, Probably not, maybe,
Speaker 1: but I think it's maybe worth a shot, even if
Speaker 1: it only keeps some of your data from being used
Speaker 1: in their latest AI model. I did it, Mike. I
Speaker 1: know that you did it, and I think folks should
Speaker 1: consider it too well. Put the article in the show notes.
Speaker 1: But if you see that floating around Facebook, it is
Speaker 1: not just your weird aunt not understanding how social media works.
Speaker 1: It is a real thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting that they made those tools available since
Speaker 2: obviously they don't want people to do that. I hope
Speaker 2: people do it. I don't know. It's such a weird
Speaker 2: time with AI and like these models being trained, and
Speaker 2: I just keep thinking about that group of authors that
Speaker 2: we've talked about, like Sarah Silverman who's suing open AI
Speaker 2: because chat GBT was just repeating large sections of her
Speaker 2: book unaltered, right, because the AI had been trained on
Speaker 2: her book and it was just repeating it verbatim, like
Speaker 2: long passages. And so if it's can do that with
Speaker 2: a book, it can do that with our conversations that
Speaker 2: we're being you know, we're having on social media. And
Speaker 2: I just it's just very uncomfortable, and you know, you
Speaker 2: give up all rights to it, and what do you
Speaker 2: get from it? You get nothing from it, right, Like
Speaker 2: it's just harvesting your data. So op the hell out,
Speaker 2: op to the hell out. I know I've talked about this.
Speaker 2: People are like, we've heard you, We've heard your soapbox
Speaker 2: spiel about this. But I fundamentally believe that we have
Speaker 2: got to push back on the dynamic that just because
Speaker 2: we use these platforms, anything and everything that we do
Speaker 2: on these platforms is for the taking, for the mining,
Speaker 2: for no benefit to us.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I think folks should opt out. I
Speaker 1: would love to opt out, Like I would like very
Speaker 1: much to be excluded from this narrative. I think that
Speaker 1: folks should be opting out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to be clear, it's not like there's a
Speaker 2: setting you could, like a single setting on Facebook that
Speaker 2: you can just globally opt out from all of it,
Speaker 2: like they're still going after our data, but it's something
Speaker 2: that can be done in the ongoing process of trying
Speaker 2: to protect our privacy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And to be clear, I'm not even sure, like
Speaker 1: we really can't trust Facebook, and so I'm not even
Speaker 1: sure that if people take the steps that I've taken
Speaker 1: and that are described in this piece, that Facebook would
Speaker 1: honor that. But mostly I just want people to know
Speaker 1: that it is a real thing from Facebook. The fact
Speaker 1: that it kind of mimics or mirrors fake chain letters
Speaker 1: that we see on Facebook a lot as unfortunate. But
Speaker 1: I just want people to know that if you see
Speaker 1: this on Facebook, it is legit. It is real. Look
Speaker 1: into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if nothing else, maybe doing this is going to
Speaker 2: be our ticket into the next big class action lawsuit
Speaker 2: against Facebook when they fail to honor these requests.
Speaker 1: Oh I did my I know. I've told people that
Speaker 1: the data is coming gone, So if you did not
Speaker 1: fill out your form to be part of that class action.
Speaker 1: When I get my twelve dollars, best believe I'm gonna
Speaker 1: suspect I'll happily take twelve dollars from a zuck. I
Speaker 1: don't care if he threatened to beat up Elon Musk. Take.
Speaker 1: I'm getting my money, I get your money. Okay, So
Speaker 1: this next story is really wild. It is such a
Speaker 1: weird story. I try to usually give a heads up
Speaker 1: if a story involves something that's gonna be like heavy,
Speaker 1: I honestly don't even know how to give a heads
Speaker 1: up because it's so Clowns are involved, face painting is involved,
Speaker 1: creepy behavior from an authority figure is involved. So if
Speaker 1: those are things that you have a problem with, just
Speaker 1: know that that's what we're gonna get into right now.
Speaker 1: So USA Today is in a deep dive investigation into
Speaker 1: this geography professor named Joseph Takosh, who has a self
Speaker 1: described clown fetish and has been using his position as
Speaker 1: a tenured track professor at Nickels State University in Louisiana
Speaker 1: to get female students to let him paint their faces
Speaker 1: in clown makeup and take photos and video of them.
Speaker 1: Oh it's let's it's a doozy. Let's just keep going.
Speaker 1: So his time at the university is raising questions about
Speaker 1: background checks for educators at the university and whether the
Speaker 1: university puts students at risk by not taking this behavior seriously.
Speaker 1: USA Today reports that Takosh's interactions with students and open
Speaker 1: discussion of his fetish happened in both mainstream and tailored
Speaker 1: digital spaces. He popped into Facebook groups geared toward new
Speaker 1: students and niche forums on websites like Reddit, he posted
Speaker 1: videos on YouTube. In one Reddit post, on a forum
Speaker 1: meant to highlight hard to believe stories, he posted pictures
Speaker 1: of several women in white face paint. So it sounds
Speaker 1: like a couple of different students initially agreed to let
Speaker 1: him paint their faces for money. One student says that
Speaker 1: he insisted on picking her up at her place of
Speaker 1: residence and taking her back to the geography building, and
Speaker 1: it sounds like when they were like discussing this via text,
Speaker 1: she found the whole thing weird and eventually stopped replying
Speaker 1: to his text before the meetup, ever, happened. When she
Speaker 1: stopped replying, he sent her a message with no text,
Speaker 1: only a picture of himself in full cloud makeup that
Speaker 1: he sent after midnight USA today. Had a picture of
Speaker 1: this image. It is like going to haunt my nightmares.
Speaker 1: It is terrifying, the student said, quote there was some
Speaker 1: negative intention with sending me that photo. It's definitely burned
Speaker 1: in my mind. Me too, it's burned in my mind too.
Speaker 2: I haven't even seen it, and it's burned into my mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a pretty disturbing image. There's no text message,
Speaker 1: there's no text in the message, it's just a picture.
Speaker 1: But he is wearing a shirt that says I'm not
Speaker 1: a failure. So weird, just weird. I don't even know
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to make of it. It's
Speaker 1: so strange. So another student basically said the same thing
Speaker 1: happened to her that he went online and said like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll give you money if you let me paint your face.
Speaker 1: He insisted on coming to pick her up at our
Speaker 1: place of residence and take her back to the geography building.
Speaker 1: It sounds like that was the line that was like, no,
Speaker 1: that's so weird, which would make these women stop replying.
Speaker 1: So over the years, two students complained to the university
Speaker 1: and some even complained online, but the university, it sounds like,
Speaker 1: just never followed up. So before coming to teach at
Speaker 1: Nichols State, Takosh was teaching at Kent State, and students
Speaker 1: want to know what exactly happened when he was at
Speaker 1: Kent State to make him leave and start teaching at
Speaker 1: Nichols because when he was teaching there, he was also
Speaker 1: a student. He was finishing his doctorate, which is like
Speaker 1: fairly common for in academia, and so the university said
Speaker 1: that they cannot share any information about anything that went
Speaker 1: down at his time at Kent State, but because he
Speaker 1: was technically a student, citing FURPA, the federal privacy laws
Speaker 1: for students. Now, it does seem like that maybe the
Speaker 1: university is kind of just using that as an excuse.
Speaker 1: Like the USA Today article spoke to some experts who
Speaker 1: said that they are really taking a specific kind of
Speaker 1: interpretation of FURPA in a way that kind of sounds
Speaker 1: like they might be trying to just avoid accountability and
Speaker 1: like avoid having to say what they knew and why
Speaker 1: they didn't tell other universities about what happened at this
Speaker 1: guy's tenure at the university. But in any event, Kent
Speaker 1: State never gave any information to Nickel State that prevented
Speaker 1: him from taking up a job there. So according to
Speaker 1: the USA Today piece, it honestly does kind of sound
Speaker 1: like Kent State just didn't do a ton after students
Speaker 1: complained the peace reads. Kent State would not say whether
Speaker 1: any actions were taken after the student's reports, but Eric Mansfield,
Speaker 1: a spokesperson for the university, said the police department confirmed
Speaker 1: that the students who filed police reports were provided with
Speaker 1: university resources, which would include other non criminal avenues to
Speaker 1: pursue as a general police practice. However, the student who
Speaker 1: made the complaint at Kent State says that she does
Speaker 1: not recall police offering her any services. She said that
Speaker 1: she did not want counseling. What she wanted was this
Speaker 1: professor investigated, which, yeah, I can imagine why. The Kent
Speaker 1: State University spokesperson said that the university monitors social media,
Speaker 1: but that colleges quote can't always see or track every
Speaker 1: mention on social media, which again, it just to me,
Speaker 1: does I'm sorry kind of sound like a cop out.
Speaker 1: So students are now asking why the university did not
Speaker 1: do a background check of this guy's social media because
Speaker 1: his behavior, the self described clown fetish and bragging about
Speaker 1: painting students' faces and sharing images and videos of the
Speaker 1: students whose faces that he painted were all pretty widely
Speaker 1: available on this guy's social media. His LinkedIn used a
Speaker 1: pretty obvious reference to his name and profession, Joeography, which
Speaker 1: was also his Reddit name. So if you looked at
Speaker 1: the name that he used on his LinkedIn and this
Speaker 1: googled it, his Reddit account would come up where he
Speaker 1: wrote quote I convince pretty girls to let me paint
Speaker 1: their faces, along with a photo of multiple women in
Speaker 1: white face paint that he had wrote on Reddit. On YouTube,
Speaker 1: a YouTube account under the name Joe Takosh included at
Speaker 1: least two videos in twenty twenty of a man throwing
Speaker 1: pies at women. One of the videos features a young
Speaker 1: woman also seen in the screenshots from Takosh's Reddit account.
Speaker 1: There's also a comment quote, you can have a video
Speaker 1: of her tied up getting pied via cash app. So
Speaker 1: it sounds to me like not only was he taking
Speaker 1: these pictures and videos sharing them on the internet pretty
Speaker 1: openly saying like yeah, I convinced them to let me
Speaker 1: do this, and it sounds like maybe engaging in some
Speaker 1: sort of scheme where he would share additional photos for money.
Speaker 1: Question mark.
Speaker 2: Maybe these were his students. That is the problem here.
Speaker 2: There is like a special trust of university professors with students,
Speaker 2: and it's a very one directional power relationship and exploiting
Speaker 2: that is not only ethically inappropriate, but it is it
Speaker 2: like directly harms the students who have been trust entrusted
Speaker 2: in the care of the instructor. So I just want
Speaker 2: to be super clear that like that is what is
Speaker 2: so inappropriate here. Thrown pies fine, but living out your
Speaker 2: sexual fantasies with your students never okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like describing it to students people who you
Speaker 1: have a should be having a trust relationship with and
Speaker 1: a relationship where you just implicitly have power over them.
Speaker 1: Describing your fetishes to them is inappropriate. Bringing these conversations
Speaker 1: into the classroom is inappropriate. Having these conversations online is like,
Speaker 1: it's all inappropriate because he's their professor. You know, if
Speaker 1: he was throwing pies at a of age woman consensually,
Speaker 1: you know who was not his student. Okay, fine, but
Speaker 1: it's it's the it's bringing it into a relationship where
Speaker 1: you have power over somebody and you are abusing their trust.
Speaker 1: Like even in the way that he talks about it
Speaker 1: himself on Reddit where I convince pretty girls, it's pretty
Speaker 1: clear to me what he what's going on, Like it
Speaker 1: is He's not like he's trying to hide it. This
Speaker 1: is some like letters taunting the police kind of style
Speaker 1: stuff where he basically is admitting what he's doing. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason that we know any of this is actually
Speaker 1: because of a student journalist. Nicol State. Student journalist Sally
Speaker 1: and Torres started hearing these weird rumors about a professor
Speaker 1: who was giving out extra credit to students who would
Speaker 1: allow him to paint their faces, which at first, she
Speaker 1: just dismissed as like a weird rumor, but then Takosh
Speaker 1: emailed students to tell them that the university was not
Speaker 1: renewing his contract. He said the reason why they were
Speaker 1: not renewing his contract was because he gave out too
Speaker 1: many a's to students, which like likely story that is
Speaker 1: such a that sounds to me like a cover story
Speaker 1: where you're like, oh, I want to go out as
Speaker 1: a hero. I want people to be like, well, mister
Speaker 1: Takosh really was like sticking up for us. It's so unfair.
Speaker 1: The university is like getting rid of them. So you
Speaker 1: know who else found this a little bit suspicious? Sally
Speaker 1: and Torres, so she started looking into this. At one point,
Speaker 1: he said that there was a committee at the university
Speaker 1: to look into great inflation, and she was like, I
Speaker 1: don't think we actually have that committee. She didn't do it,
Speaker 1: No such committee exists. So she ends up breaking the
Speaker 1: story for her campus paper and getting him on video
Speaker 1: defending himself, saying that he basically just had an assignment
Speaker 1: because he's a geography professor, where students were required to
Speaker 1: paint their faces to learn about other cultures. Even that
Speaker 1: to me is like I'm the geography professor, but I
Speaker 1: don't understand how painting your face like a clown whatever.
Speaker 1: Either way, that was his explanation for it. But the
Speaker 1: day that that piece went live, he resigned. And so
Speaker 1: that just goes to show you that student journalists are
Speaker 1: always going to get that dirt. They're gonna sniff it out,
Speaker 1: they're gonna find the truth. So shout out to Sally
Speaker 1: an Torres for really, you know, getting the truth and
Speaker 1: not letting the university sweep that's under the rug, because
Speaker 1: it does sound like if left to their own devices,
Speaker 1: the university would have taken no action because they didn't
Speaker 1: want it to be clear just how much they had
Speaker 1: to put students at risk by not taking this kind
Speaker 1: of behavior seriously.
Speaker 2: It should not be tolerated. And I could see how
Speaker 2: it would be really easy for the university to ignore
Speaker 2: these complaints almost because they're so like unusual, you know,
Speaker 2: and just kind of like shrug them off as like
Speaker 2: something weird that's not harmful or not like some kind
Speaker 2: of sexually motivated breach of trust. So good for that
Speaker 2: student journalist, Sally and Torres. Yeah, I wonder what's next
Speaker 2: for her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want her to go on to be like
Speaker 1: the next Ronan Pharaoh, just like taken down Creeps left
Speaker 1: and right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe she'll come on the pod.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of creeps, we've got a little bit of
Speaker 1: good news in the Taking Down Creeps universe. We've told
Speaker 1: you about Ruby Freeman and Shaymaas, the mother and daughter
Speaker 1: dubo of election workers in Georgia who Trump and Rude
Speaker 1: Giuliani waged a racist, sexist campaign of lies against baselessly
Speaker 1: claiming that they tampered with votes in the twenty twenty election. Well,
Speaker 1: this week, a federal judge ruled that Rudy Giuliani is
Speaker 1: liable for defaming them. He will have to pay their
Speaker 1: legal fees. He's already paid about ninety thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: their legal fees. There's going to be another trial to
Speaker 1: determine how much he has to pay in additional damages,
Speaker 1: and it could be in the millions. So Giuliani's mouth
Speaker 1: has been writing checks and his butt cannot cash, and
Speaker 1: it is finally catching up with him. New York mag
Speaker 1: reports that Giuliani told the court in Georgia that he
Speaker 1: could no longer afford to contest that he made defamatory
Speaker 1: statements against Ruby and Shay because he could no longer
Speaker 1: pay to access his own electronic records, which were seized
Speaker 1: by the FBI when they took his phones in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. Since then, he's been paying twenty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: per month in hosting fees to access his records. His
Speaker 1: lawyers say that this is not an admission of guilt
Speaker 1: on his part, because you know, that would require taking
Speaker 1: accountability for your own actions, which this is somebody who's
Speaker 1: just not gonna do, but that this means that he
Speaker 1: can no longer afford to contest the claims anymore. And
Speaker 1: this is really funny. The judge overseeing the case ordered
Speaker 1: Giuliani to forfeit because he had only handed over a
Speaker 1: sliver of relevant documents in discovery, though Juliani did provide
Speaker 1: quote blobs of indecipherable data, so the judge was basically
Speaker 1: just like enough already, dude, Like this is it's enough, already,
Speaker 1: Like let's end this. The judge declared him liable for defamation,
Speaker 1: and the intentional afflection of emotional distress could not happen
Speaker 1: to a more deserving guy. I hope that Ruby and
Speaker 1: Shay take this joker for every penny that he's worth.
Speaker 1: You know. It sounds like he's been begging Trump to
Speaker 1: pay for his legal fees, which like Trump don't even
Speaker 1: pay his own bills. Talk about Charae, she don't pay,
Speaker 1: Like he doesn't even pay his own bills. He's not
Speaker 1: paying for Rudy Giuliani. And even if he did pay
Speaker 1: for him, he probably wouldn't end up paying anyway. I
Speaker 1: did read that Trump is holding a fundraiser, specif for Guliani,
Speaker 1: but he's but like, that's it. He's not paying for
Speaker 1: his legal bills. And yeah, this is why you shouldn't
Speaker 1: have your mouth right checks that your butt can't cash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great to see, you know. And it also
Speaker 2: we haven't brought it up in a little while, but
Speaker 2: the theme of this season is present future right where
Speaker 2: we're trying to look ahead to see which parts of
Speaker 2: the present are gonna become more dominant in the future.
Speaker 2: And once again here we have a defamation case where
Speaker 2: the targets of a coordinated disinformation campaign successfully fought back
Speaker 2: with a defamation lawsuit. We've seen that several times over
Speaker 2: this season, and good for them, Like you said, it
Speaker 2: couldn't happen to a more deserving dude.
Speaker 1: More.
Speaker 3: After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes
Speaker 1: when it comes to defamation. So, if you followed the
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp Amber Heard defamation trial, we'd probably recall that
Speaker 1: Amber Heard's lawyer described how she carried makeup in her
Speaker 1: purse to cover bruises that Johnny Depp had given her
Speaker 1: throughout their entire relationship. Her lawyer pulled up a specific
Speaker 1: color correcting makeup palette from the makeup brand Malani. Mlani
Speaker 1: then took to TikTok using footage from the trial where
Speaker 1: one of their staffers looks up the date that that
Speaker 1: color correction palette was released, which is twenty seventeen. That
Speaker 1: would have been after Heard and Depth's relationship ended, So
Speaker 1: how could Amber have carried it their entire relationship? The
Speaker 1: video pretty clearly implies that Milani has caught Amber herd
Speaker 1: in a lie, you know, a cosmetics based lie at
Speaker 1: that allah legally blonde, But her attorney never actually said
Speaker 1: that Amber used that specific brand of makeup or that
Speaker 1: specific palette. She was using it as a prop to
Speaker 1: demonstrate like, oh, a color correction kit like this one
Speaker 1: that I'm holding. So this was back when brands were
Speaker 1: really jumping into talking about that trial in a way
Speaker 1: that I found so distasteful. After facing backlash for that TikTok,
Speaker 1: Malani released a statement saying that they quote weren't taking
Speaker 1: a formal stance on the trial, evidence or future outcome
Speaker 1: of the case. But I truly do not know how
Speaker 1: they can say that when they made a TikTok where
Speaker 1: they commented on the evidence, tried to comment on the trial,
Speaker 1: and so you can't really say like, oh, well, we
Speaker 1: aren't weighing the evidence and commenting on the trial after
Speaker 1: you have commented on the trial, specifically commenting on what
Speaker 1: you thought was evident. So it is was pretty clear
Speaker 1: to me at that time why brands would want to
Speaker 1: get in on this. According to BuzzFeed, that particular piece
Speaker 1: of content that Mlani put out was their most watched
Speaker 1: TikTok of all times. It got five million views, and
Speaker 1: prior to this, none of their tiktoks had broken half
Speaker 1: a million views. So this week Milani posted on social
Speaker 1: media in honor of Women's Equality Day. They wrote shout
Speaker 1: out to all the inspirational, powerful women in our lives.
Speaker 1: Happy Women's Equality Day today and every day, and they
Speaker 1: got rightfully cooked. Because if there's one thing I know
Speaker 1: about the Internet, it never forgets. Twitter user Female Tragedy
Speaker 1: Quote tweeted their Equality Day tweet saying, do you remember
Speaker 1: when Amber Heard used a color correcting Malani palette as
Speaker 1: a court prop and y'all took her out of context
Speaker 1: to frame her as a liar and created a space
Speaker 1: for others to laugh at her. Now it's Happy Women's
Speaker 1: Day lol. And honestly, I think that that Twitter user
Speaker 1: is exactly right. And I wanted to talk about this
Speaker 1: because I really hope that this is what's happening to
Speaker 1: this brand on social media shows other brands that there
Speaker 1: are certain things that you really should not weigh in
Speaker 1: on in a joke e cute see TikTok. If Malani
Speaker 1: the brand felt it was important to release a statement
Speaker 1: about their makeup palette being used in the trial, they
Speaker 1: could have released a statement making a cute sea TikTok
Speaker 1: with like a cute sea song, is not an appropriate
Speaker 1: way to weigh in publicly on a trial that at
Speaker 1: its heart has domestic violence, right like it's not cute.
Speaker 1: That is not that should not be funny fodder for
Speaker 1: like social media engagement. And if you engage in that way,
Speaker 1: you can't then be surprised when people don't forget it.
Speaker 1: You can't then be surprised when when you try to
Speaker 1: come back and say, oh, happy women's a quality day,
Speaker 1: we support women. That people remember because nobody forced you
Speaker 1: to do that. That was your choice. And so if
Speaker 1: you make the choice to wade into that conversation in
Speaker 1: a way that's that distasteful, it's really nobody's fault but
Speaker 1: your own when people remember that that's what you chose
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: Boy, I hope you're right that we're coming to the
Speaker 2: end of those times. But like it's not like we're
Speaker 2: talking about two thousand and two, like the you know,
Speaker 2: the dawn of the modern Internet or something. It's this
Speaker 2: was what was it, like twenty twenty two? It was
Speaker 2: like a year ago, right, and like, yeah, this was
Speaker 2: like last year. Yeah, it's like, no kidding, a makeup
Speaker 2: brand whose target audience is primarily women, maybe you shouldn't
Speaker 2: weigh in on a domestic violence case and like have
Speaker 2: a QT video making fun of the woman like it
Speaker 2: would seem like that would be pretty obvious, but I
Speaker 2: guess it wasn't, And so I guess I hope you
Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah, what do you think it seems
Speaker 2: like it should have been obvious to me.
Speaker 1: Well, I would actually argue that the Amber Heard situation
Speaker 1: was probably one of the more high profile cases of
Speaker 1: this happening. But I have seen a flurry this kind
Speaker 1: of thing happening, not on the same level, like not
Speaker 1: not where it's brands talking about a high profile incident
Speaker 1: involving domestic violence, but like, brands have really been waiting
Speaker 1: into misogyny lately in a way that I think is
Speaker 1: really stark and really upsetting. A couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: there was this I don't even know the right word
Speaker 1: for it, because I want to I want to use
Speaker 1: the word feud, but even that I think fuels that
Speaker 1: kind of misconception that I'm talking about. There was some
Speaker 1: sort of situation between two famous women, Selena Gomez and
Speaker 1: Haley Bieber. And these are two women who are both
Speaker 1: in the public eye. The story around them was framed
Speaker 1: as if these two public, famous women were having some
Speaker 1: kind of a public spat or feud. I don't really
Speaker 1: follow either of them that closely to really be able
Speaker 1: to say, like, you know, what was going on specifically,
Speaker 1: But the Internet seemed to be suggesting that Selena Gomez
Speaker 1: was the victim of like bullying by Hailey Bieber, and
Speaker 1: so it would seem to me that like Selena Gomez
Speaker 1: was the was painted as the more sympathetic of these two.
Speaker 1: And so then it's one thing to be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm somebody who cares about celebrity gossip or what's happening
Speaker 1: with celebrities, and I'm picking a side on these two
Speaker 1: famous women who seem to be having some sort of
Speaker 1: a something between each other. But then here come the
Speaker 1: brands wading in, and then you have you have like
Speaker 1: big brands tweeting about it like oh, We're team Selena,
Speaker 1: And to me, that just that just seems like misogyny.
Speaker 1: It just seems like another way that brands have realized
Speaker 1: that they it is profitable and popular to publicly crap
Speaker 1: on women who are perceived in a negative light in
Speaker 1: some way that you can jump on the bandwagon. So like,
Speaker 1: I don't love it when individuals do it. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's great, but like that's one thing. It's quite
Speaker 1: another for a brand who has like a social media
Speaker 1: team and a social media editor, professionals decide, you know
Speaker 1: what we should really wade into, is piling on this
Speaker 1: young woman in the public eye. There's another celebrity, Rachel Zgi,
Speaker 1: who is the star of the new remake of the
Speaker 1: Snow White movie, who I feel like we are watching
Speaker 1: that happen in real time. The women's brand girl Boss,
Speaker 1: actually had to apologize for an Instagram post that they
Speaker 1: put up kind of like making fun of a Rachel
Speaker 1: Zegler because she's been taking a lot of heat for
Speaker 1: coming off as like quote smug in interviews around this
Speaker 1: new Snow White movie, and so they I saw this
Speaker 1: Instagram post where they were like, We're sorry that we
Speaker 1: piled on. We didn't realize how misogynistic that looked. Blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. I actually applaud them for actually taking down
Speaker 1: this post and apologizing. Then I saw people in the
Speaker 1: comments that are like, I guess Rachel Zegler, even though
Speaker 1: she's in Snow White, does not care for Snow White
Speaker 1: the fairy tale, and it's made that clear. And people
Speaker 1: are in the comments of that girl Boss apology were like, well,
Speaker 1: when is Rachel Zegler gonna apologize for what she said
Speaker 1: about snow White, and it's like, well, snow White is fictional.
Speaker 1: She does not really exist, so that would be difficult
Speaker 1: for her to do. But yeah, so I would actually
Speaker 1: argue that it is a trend when brands feel like
Speaker 1: they need to hop on the bandwagon of hating young
Speaker 1: starlets in the public eye who are taking a lot
Speaker 1: of heat. And I hope that the way that people
Speaker 1: responded to Malani's Women's Equality Day posts sends a message
Speaker 1: two other brands who are interested in getting on the
Speaker 1: misogynistic women hate bandwagon that it's not worth it. Your
Speaker 1: cheap engagement is not worth that people don't want to
Speaker 1: see brands trafficking in this kind of misogyny and if
Speaker 1: you do, we will remember. So when you make your
Speaker 1: little Quality Day post or when you make your little
Speaker 1: Women's History Month post, people are going to remember. Because
Speaker 1: the Internet, if it's one thing we're going to do
Speaker 1: is have a long memory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's absolutely true. You know, social media can feel
Speaker 2: pretty crummy a lot of the time, and you know,
Speaker 2: brands want to be there because they want to be
Speaker 2: reaching people. And I guess I can see how that
Speaker 2: would be challenging for them to navigate, like wanting to
Speaker 2: get an engagement without stepping on or stepping into things
Speaker 2: that they don't want to be into. But like maybe
Speaker 2: they should just be a little bit more conscientious and
Speaker 2: less misogynistic. But I don't know. It's a weird time
Speaker 2: in social media, right.
Speaker 1: Well, that's a great segue to this article that I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about. I wouldn't really call this news,
Speaker 1: but I did want to mention it. This interesting piece
Speaker 1: and Business Insider called social media is Dead. Basically, the
Speaker 1: piece uses Instagram as a lens to chart where we've
Speaker 1: been and where we're going with social media. So, if
Speaker 1: the start of Instagram was the start of something that
Speaker 1: felt new and exciting on social media, now, the fact
Speaker 1: that most people, regular people do not even really post
Speaker 1: on the Instagram public feeds anymore kind of signals this shift,
Speaker 1: and maybe that shift is suggesting that social media is
Speaker 1: kind of over. So the piece points out that regular people,
Speaker 1: by the I mean people who are like not influencers
Speaker 1: or you know, not brands, or don't have any kind
Speaker 1: of professional or monetary reason to be on Instagram. Those
Speaker 1: people we're not really spending a lot of time posting
Speaker 1: to our public feeds anymore. Those folks they are posting
Speaker 1: in the close friends Instagram story and in dms. This
Speaker 1: is especially true for younger people, Like younger people are
Speaker 1: just not posting on their public grid. And one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why they say this is is that the
Speaker 1: Instagram feed just no longer feels like a good place
Speaker 1: to post content from regular folks who like, don't have
Speaker 1: a professional camera, are not trying to snag brand deals
Speaker 1: or something like that. And so you know, if Instagram,
Speaker 1: when you scroll the feed, it just feels like a
Speaker 1: place for more and more curated, polished pictures from people
Speaker 1: who are trying to make money and using it as
Speaker 1: a revenue generating stream. Where does that lead people who
Speaker 1: just want to post pictures for their friends, certainly not
Speaker 1: their feed. And the article talks about how people are
Speaker 1: spending time and these like more intimate closed places your
Speaker 1: close friends feed on Instagram, DMS, discord places like that,
Speaker 1: but brands can't really show up there, right, And so
Speaker 1: if brands are not invited to like your discord server
Speaker 1: or whatever, how like the fact that social media has
Speaker 1: really built up this entire infrastructure around this like capitalistic
Speaker 1: thing of like brands reaching out to you and like
Speaker 1: serving you ads. What does that mean for this This
Speaker 1: like the scaffolding of this infrastructure that has been built
Speaker 1: up around that. And so, you know, the article is
Speaker 1: really interesting. I definitely think folks should read it. Something
Speaker 1: that they don't talk about in the piece that I
Speaker 1: think is maybe part of why social media feels so
Speaker 1: weird right now, is that I think people are just
Speaker 1: really tired. Like I think that social media used to
Speaker 1: feel fun, Like when Instagram first came out, it felt exciting,
Speaker 1: it felt like a new thing, and that when Instagram
Speaker 1: made this shift toward being more creator focused, like influencer
Speaker 1: focused and brand focused, they started rolling out all of
Speaker 1: these hoops that people had to jump through just to
Speaker 1: get any kind of traction on the platform, just so
Speaker 1: your friends would see your pictures. And who's got time
Speaker 1: for that? Who's got the energy for that? If that's not,
Speaker 1: you know, part of your job, why would.
Speaker 2: You do that?
Speaker 1: And so the piece is really interesting. I think it
Speaker 1: really speaks to a vibe that I have felt more
Speaker 1: and more that I don't know, something has shifted with
Speaker 1: social media, and I feel it. I'm curious if folks
Speaker 1: listening feel it. Mike, you barely do social media, so
Speaker 1: I don't know what your gauge would even be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's an interesting thing to think about, you know.
Speaker 2: I can't help but suspect that it's related to the
Speaker 2: enormous shift that the Internet has undergone over the past
Speaker 2: twenty five years from a radical distributed thing to a
Speaker 2: highly centralized handful of apps owned by an even smaller
Speaker 2: handful of companies, all of whom make their living on
Speaker 2: sales of ads. Right, Like, we've allowed the Internet to
Speaker 2: become a place where brands pay to market themselves to people.
Speaker 2: And I, you know, I guess we've always been supported
Speaker 2: by advertising, everything always has and there's nothing inherently wrong
Speaker 2: in it. But allowing the Internet to become completely dependent
Speaker 2: on it, and not just that, but like oriented around
Speaker 2: making spaces safe for brands and also connecting people in
Speaker 2: a way that really facilitates selling brands ads to reach
Speaker 2: all of those people. It just leaves out the connection
Speaker 2: that makes people want to participate. Uh so, yeah, I
Speaker 2: think you're You're right. You know, I personally haven't had
Speaker 2: any like meaningful social media presence in a long time.
Speaker 2: It's most of what I do on the Internet is
Speaker 2: you know, group chats or like discord servers with people
Speaker 2: that I know. I am really curious about our listeners
Speaker 2: and what they where they spend their time online? Is
Speaker 2: it is it discord? Is it Facebook groups? Is it? Uh?
Speaker 2: Maybe it is Instagram? I don't know, but uh, I
Speaker 2: would love to hear from folks at hello at tangoty
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 1: So a couple of things about that. One is that
Speaker 1: One is that according to Adam Oseri, one of my
Speaker 1: personal nemesiss tech tech nemesis, he admits that people are
Speaker 1: still consuming content on Instagram that's not down, but sharing
Speaker 1: content is way down. People are just He's flat out
Speaker 1: admitted it that people of this are not sharing content
Speaker 1: on Instagram. So that definitely mirrors what you're saying. But
Speaker 1: about the ads, I think that we have really this
Speaker 1: is not a fully fleshed out thought to like, bear
Speaker 1: with me. I don't I think that we have reached
Speaker 1: peak ad. I think that the fact that when you
Speaker 1: used to open Uber, you would just type in where
Speaker 1: you were gonna go and you would see the thing
Speaker 1: that's like, oh five minutes away. Now when you open
Speaker 1: up Uber, you see a bunch of ads that are random,
Speaker 1: that make no sense. It's like, why are you offering
Speaker 1: me a trip to Disney World. I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: a ride across town right Like things that there, They're
Speaker 1: not even like transportation focused. They are sneaking more and
Speaker 1: more ads into more and more parts of technology and
Speaker 1: the Internet places where ads did not used to be.
Speaker 1: And so to me, what that says is that the
Speaker 1: bubble is about to burst. That they are like, we
Speaker 1: like we have hit the apex of the attention economy,
Speaker 1: and it's like we need to squeeze whatever else juice
Speaker 1: is in this to like get our money's worth, because
Speaker 1: I think something's not panning out. I think that people
Speaker 1: are just like I don't know. That is just my opinion,
Speaker 1: that is my take. But I do think that what
Speaker 1: you said about connection is so interesting because like that
Speaker 1: was the point of the Internet in the first place.
Speaker 1: It wasn't to show you a million ads and you know,
Speaker 1: have the Internet experiences be boiled down to four apps
Speaker 1: that keep mirror changing to mirror each other. It used
Speaker 1: to be about connection and excitement. And in the Business
Speaker 1: Insider article, they talked to Andrea Casanova, an influencer strategist
Speaker 1: who basically says the same thing. She says culture in
Speaker 1: general has kept a lot of people from showing up
Speaker 1: because they don't think their life is aesthetic or they
Speaker 1: don't think they're selling anything, so why would they post
Speaker 1: to social media. I just don't have the lifestyle that
Speaker 1: all these creators have, so I don't know what I
Speaker 1: would be sharing, and therefore I fall into this loop
Speaker 1: of never sharing anything, and that just makes me so
Speaker 1: sad because I can't help but going back to the
Speaker 1: early days of social media, where you would have one
Speaker 1: night out at the bar and you would come home
Speaker 1: and post fifty pictures of the same group of friends
Speaker 1: from the same night out, and you didn't care if
Speaker 1: it wasn't aesthetic, you didn't care if like, the picture
Speaker 1: of your food looks like vomit. You were sharing it
Speaker 1: anyway because that's what we were all doing. And obviously
Speaker 1: those days weren't perfect. I'm not going to say they were,
Speaker 1: but I miss those days when you didn't feel like
Speaker 1: you could be sidelined from your own digital experience because
Speaker 1: it didn't measure up in some way. And it's exhausting
Speaker 1: and crazy making to try to bend yourself into a
Speaker 1: pretzel to meet this impossible aesthetic that you feel like
Speaker 1: you have to have to embody just to show up online.
Speaker 1: Like make social media fun again. Don't make it this
Speaker 1: like anxious slog through resilient ads for stuff you don't need.
Speaker 2: It is sad that she would say that, and like,
Speaker 2: you know, feel like she didn't have anything, you know,
Speaker 2: worthy of posting. But I get it. I totally get it.
Speaker 2: I feel it. And just to be super clear, there's
Speaker 2: nothing wrong with advertising. We love our advertise you know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you know, they support us, They allow us
Speaker 2: to make this show. They support all of the amazing
Speaker 2: outspoken talent. Our advertisers are the best. We love them, Mike.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the good folks at Nissan and Hulu.
Speaker 1: We obviously value their partnership.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, they support us. We're happy to support them
Speaker 2: because they're putting great stuff out there into the world.
Speaker 2: But like, this is a show that we're making, and
Speaker 2: that's just a qualitatively different thing than social media, right,
Speaker 2: these are different worlds, Like exactly, like you were just
Speaker 2: talking about it, you know, back in the day, you'd
Speaker 2: go out to a bar and you'd post like forty
Speaker 2: terrible photographs of all of you out there and just
Speaker 2: like one big batch, just like a dump, like blah,
Speaker 2: here it is. And that was fine because nobody outside
Speaker 2: your immediate circle was going to see it. There was
Speaker 2: no expectation that they would. But back then, the infrastructure
Speaker 2: was set up to support that connection of you with
Speaker 2: your friends, and it's just become completely co opted, where
Speaker 2: the distinction between, you know, a piece of software that's
Speaker 2: meant to connect people and a piece of software that's
Speaker 2: meant to serve up entertainment has been eliminated because it's
Speaker 2: just all been i don't know, combined into this entertainment
Speaker 2: attention economy to all of our detriment, you know, like
Speaker 2: ads on podcasts, the best ads in my me sharing
Speaker 2: my photo of like hanging out with my niece and
Speaker 2: nephew with some of my friends. No good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there should be a place for people that just
Speaker 1: want to post their bad pictures where they have pit
Speaker 1: stains or whatever, because certainly all those like go back,
Speaker 1: go back and look at those pictures that we used
Speaker 1: to post on Facebook back in the day, and like
Speaker 1: they're pit Like we didn't have filter, so you were
Speaker 1: just like sweaty and pit stains all the time, and
Speaker 1: the flash it just always looks terrible, or it would
Speaker 1: be like cringey statuses that were like little reference like
Speaker 1: a song lyric or like a cryptic like a cryptic
Speaker 1: sentence where you're like like reading when I read those now,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't even know what this was about,
Speaker 1: Like this is an inside joke that's so inside I
Speaker 1: don't I don't even know what I'm saying. Anyway. What
Speaker 1: I'm saying is like I think that we're all feeling
Speaker 1: a shift. I don't necessarily think it's bad, because I
Speaker 1: do think that when there's a shift, sometimes something interesting
Speaker 1: or exciting or different is on the other end of it.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I'm curious what people think. Let us know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I leave it there, and if folks want to chime in,
Speaker 1: they can get in touch with me email at hello
Speaker 1: at tangoty dot com. If you want to support the
Speaker 1: show and listen to ad free bonus content, check out
Speaker 1: our patreon at patreon dot com slash tangody. We have
Speaker 1: some exciting changes coming to the patreon soon. TBD say Mike,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me Bridget. It's a pleasure talking with
Speaker 2: you as always, and we.
Speaker 1: Will talk to you soon. If you're looking for ways
Speaker 1: to support the show, check out our merch store at
Speaker 1: tangoti dot com slash store. Got a story about an
Speaker 1: interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi,
Speaker 1: You can reach us out Hello at tangody dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find transcripts for today's episode at TENG
Speaker 1: Goody dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet
Speaker 1: was created by Me Bridget Tod. It's a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative, edited by Joey pat Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 1: sound engineer. Michael Almada is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
Speaker 1: and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.