Speaker 1: You're listening to this informed a mini series from There
Speaker 1: Are No Girls on the Internet. I'm Bridget Todd. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: the ceo is of Facebook, Google, and Twitter went before
Speaker 1: Congress to testify about the role that their platforms played
Speaker 1: and spreading the misinformation that led to the insurrection. In January,
Speaker 1: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg proposed some limited reforms to Section
Speaker 1: two thirty, legislation that says that tech platforms can't be
Speaker 1: held liable for what people post on those platforms. First,
Speaker 1: platform should have to issue transparency reports that state the
Speaker 1: prevalence of content across all different categories of harmful content,
Speaker 1: everything from child exploitation to terrorism, to incitement of violence
Speaker 1: to um intellectual property violations to pornography, whatever that the
Speaker 1: different harms are. On this week's episode, we heard from
Speaker 1: Evan Greer, digital rights activist, about why she works with
Speaker 1: the organization Fight for the Future. Tip deserve Section to
Speaker 1: thirty now. In the episode, Evans said that rushed changes
Speaker 1: to Section to thirty could do more harm than good.
Speaker 1: This is not about defending the companies. I don't particularly
Speaker 1: care very much about um, you know, the company's profits
Speaker 1: or uh, you know how much money they have to
Speaker 1: spend on lawsuits. What I care about is the impact
Speaker 1: that that then has on marginalized people's speech in particularly
Speaker 1: social movements, And for me, section to thirty is such
Speaker 1: a crucial law for protecting speech like, for example, a
Speaker 1: video of police violence, which in a world without Section
Speaker 1: to thirty would almost certainly invite lawsuits from law enforcement
Speaker 1: who would claim that it's defamatory or that its incitement,
Speaker 1: right like the Me Too movement, where you know people
Speaker 1: are able to speak out about abusive behavior, and platforms
Speaker 1: are willing to host that speech because they know that
Speaker 1: they're not going to get sued for giving people a
Speaker 1: platform to speak and speak their truth, and so I
Speaker 1: always think about the impact on those movements. Fight for
Speaker 1: the Future sees Section to thirty as one of the
Speaker 1: most important laws protecting free speech and human rights in
Speaker 1: the digital age. And that doesn't mean that we don't
Speaker 1: think it can ever be changed. Right, no law is sacrosanct.
Speaker 1: Laws are just laws. But we are very concerned that
Speaker 1: you know, rushed or uncareful changes to Section two thirty
Speaker 1: will do far more harm than good. So you might
Speaker 1: have already gleaned there's a lot of debate about section
Speaker 1: to thirty. Some people say it shields big tech companies
Speaker 1: from accountability. Well others say it's the backbone of what
Speaker 1: makes the Internet the Internet. Last season, we heard from
Speaker 1: Carrie Goldberg, an attorney who fights things like revenge born stalking,
Speaker 1: and harassment on social media. In a groundbreaking case about
Speaker 1: a horrific harassment campaign being run on the dating app Grinder,
Speaker 1: Carry argued in favor of changes to section to thirty
Speaker 1: in front of the Supreme Court. Let's listen into Carrey's
Speaker 1: story and why she says section to thirty needs to
Speaker 1: be changed. There used to be a time when we
Speaker 1: didn't really have a term for the idea of revenge porn.
Speaker 1: Spreading someone's intimate content online without their consent was just
Speaker 1: a thing that happened on the Internet. Just last week,
Speaker 1: nineteen year old Aaron Coleman won the Democratic primary for
Speaker 1: a Kansas House seat, even after admitting to obtaining nude
Speaker 1: photos of a girl when he was fourteen, trying to
Speaker 1: blackmail her into sending him more photos and spreading them
Speaker 1: online when she refused On Twitter. Journalist Glenn Greenwald of
Speaker 1: The Intercept called Aaron's behavior quote bad middle school bullying,
Speaker 1: but This kind of behavior isn't just bullying, it's a
Speaker 1: serious sex crime. When we minimize revenge porn, we're contributing
Speaker 1: to an attitude that says, once someone takes an intimate
Speaker 1: photo of themselves, they deserve whatever happens next, even if
Speaker 1: it means their life is destroyed, they're harassed, or worse. Luckily,
Speaker 1: women are fighting to build a better Internet, one where
Speaker 1: we have the right to feel safe online. You could
Speaker 1: be forgiven for thinking of Carrie Goldberg as a real
Speaker 1: life superhero instead of a cape. She rocks heels, bold
Speaker 1: statement glasses and sometimes even caps it off with a
Speaker 1: baseball hat. Reading I sue abusers with her law firm.
Speaker 1: She spent her professional life holding all manner of Internet creeps, abusers,
Speaker 1: and stalkers accountable. Going head to head with powerful abusers
Speaker 1: and their enablers is scary, but Carrie has never been
Speaker 1: one to back down from a challenge. She represented Lucia
Speaker 1: Evans and Paz de la Huerta, who were among the
Speaker 1: first women who made public allegations against Harvey Weinstein, which
Speaker 1: led to his arrest. Her book, Nobody's Victim, is about
Speaker 1: her own experiences with an abusive X who vowed to
Speaker 1: use the Internet to ruin her life and her journey
Speaker 1: to become the lawyer she needed. Carrie has been responsible
Speaker 1: for creating a massive cultural change around the kind of
Speaker 1: experiences marginalized people can expect from the internet. Her work
Speaker 1: creating accountability for people who misuse the internet to cause
Speaker 1: harm forces us to ask why should we accept mistreatment
Speaker 1: as a given? Why can't things be better? Carrie, it
Speaker 1: turns out has been holding creeps accountable since the very beginning.
Speaker 1: So one of the stories I read about you is
Speaker 1: that when you were in school, one of your classmates
Speaker 1: was bragging about having gotten a hand job from one
Speaker 1: of your girlfriends, and you responded by gluing a bunch
Speaker 1: of amputated doll hands to a poster and giving it
Speaker 1: to him with a card that says, we'll give you
Speaker 1: a hand has holding people accountable for their bad behavior
Speaker 1: always been a mission of yours? It didn't feel like
Speaker 1: it was a mission of mine, no, but it was
Speaker 1: a fun pastime. And I remember um, one of my
Speaker 1: friends was on the boys soccer team and she was
Speaker 1: the only girl on the team. We didn't have a
Speaker 1: girls soccer team in Aberdeen, and there was an incident
Speaker 1: where she was on the school bus and they were
Speaker 1: going to an away game, and she fell asleep with
Speaker 1: her mouth open, and she told me about how when
Speaker 1: she woke up there were all these pubes in her
Speaker 1: mouth and all I guess a bunch of of her
Speaker 1: teammates had like plucked their pubes and put it put
Speaker 1: them in her mouth. Now, I was a member of
Speaker 1: the eurote team and I got assigned to write this
Speaker 1: story about the boys soccer team, and I got kicked
Speaker 1: off the yearbook team or the year robe class because
Speaker 1: the teacher had realized that the first letter of each
Speaker 1: word in the first couple of sentences spelled out pubic pluckers.
Speaker 1: So um, you know, now that's just like that's a
Speaker 1: Title nine situation, you know, like her waking up and
Speaker 1: having you know that that's a disciplinary issue. Back then,
Speaker 1: it was, it was. We didn't think that much of it.
Speaker 1: It was playful, but I mean she was the only
Speaker 1: girl on that team, you know, it was it was.
Speaker 1: It's certainly impacting her enjoyment of it. Boys will be boys.
Speaker 1: It's just a joke. She deserved it. I'd never let
Speaker 1: something like that happen to me. It's difficult for me
Speaker 1: to admit, but I've had these kinds of harmful victim
Speaker 1: blaming reactions to hearing about the sexual abuse of a classmate.
Speaker 1: I was fifteen, and it was gossip, something to whisper
Speaker 1: about on home room. I got to feel like part
Speaker 1: of the in group, judging another girl for something that
Speaker 1: was done to her. It was wrong, and I wish
Speaker 1: I had known better. Young me contributed to a culture
Speaker 1: that treated serious crimes and violations like some big joke.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a joke. Your work has been incredibly impactful
Speaker 1: for me for my own process of understanding the cultural
Speaker 1: change that needs to happen around those kinds of stories. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: when I was in high school, I think that was
Speaker 1: in tenth grade. You know how every school has that
Speaker 1: big scandal that happens in your in your in your class,
Speaker 1: or in your school that everybody's talking about. In my school,
Speaker 1: it was a girl had sent intimate pictures to her
Speaker 1: boyfriend currently just for him, and he sent them to everybody.
Speaker 1: You know, he said. We lived a went to a
Speaker 1: pretty small school. There was an all girls school where
Speaker 1: there was an all boys school nearby, and these pictures
Speaker 1: were seen by everybody. And I hate to say this,
Speaker 1: it's like a shameful confession, but fifteen year old Bridget
Speaker 1: I thought this was a joke, right, Like, fifteen year
Speaker 1: old Bridget thought that because she had taken these pictures
Speaker 1: at all, she deserved what happened to her, she deserved
Speaker 1: to be shamed. And you know, I got I was
Speaker 1: very young, but looking back, I thought about it as
Speaker 1: a as a joke, right, I didn't think it was serious,
Speaker 1: and I thought that, you know, it was okay to
Speaker 1: make fun of her, to shame her because she had
Speaker 1: done this to herself and she deserves it. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't until becoming older did I really step back and think,
Speaker 1: like I was really complicit in continuing a cultural attitude
Speaker 1: that a when things like this happened, that it's just
Speaker 1: a joke, it's not serious, it's not a big it's
Speaker 1: not a crime, and be that the victims deserve to whatever,
Speaker 1: like scorn or shame they get because they put themselves
Speaker 1: in this situation. And I guess my question is how
Speaker 1: do we get to a place where we more people
Speaker 1: go through that process of being like, oh, well, actually
Speaker 1: I believe some pretty funked up stuff about victims about
Speaker 1: sexualized violence, and I have a role in making sure
Speaker 1: that that people everybody understands that these are very serious.
Speaker 1: I'm appreciate what you're talking about. Is is like it
Speaker 1: is the issue. You know, like most of my underage clients,
Speaker 1: almost all of them are that victim, are the person
Speaker 1: that the scandal um around the high school is is
Speaker 1: orbiting around, and um, it's you know, it's it is
Speaker 1: like the The issue is that kids don't learn empathy,
Speaker 1: and they don't develop empathetic skills until later on, and
Speaker 1: they can't roll reverse with with the victims, and so
Speaker 1: instead they want to be there's a natural instinct in
Speaker 1: all of us to want to be part of the
Speaker 1: gossip and part of the story and to see the
Speaker 1: picture that everyone else is seeing and talking about, and
Speaker 1: not to be the like upstander who is like, that's
Speaker 1: actually a sex crime. And everyone who's looking at that
Speaker 1: and has it on their phone and is sending it
Speaker 1: to other minors is is actually engaging in a felony,
Speaker 1: you know, child pornography, like floneous behavior. But the issue
Speaker 1: is that that attitude of a victim blaming and stuff,
Speaker 1: which is really natural in kids. It's also frequently present
Speaker 1: in the administrators, um in the school resource officers who
Speaker 1: are cops, and even in the people UM in the
Speaker 1: parents who get involved, including sometimes the victims parents. A
Speaker 1: lot of times her clients don't take immediate action because
Speaker 1: they're afraid of UM, their parents disciplining them UM. And
Speaker 1: it's just, you know, we talk about consent education and
Speaker 1: how we need to teach kids about consent, but a
Speaker 1: big component of that is is about empathy and just
Speaker 1: you know, doing role reversal exercises where kids have to
Speaker 1: imagine what it's like to be in somebody else's shoes.
Speaker 1: And I think that's important when we're talking about race
Speaker 1: and gender and and also UM victimization. One of Carrie's clients,
Speaker 1: a Brooklyn team with mental disabilities, was raped in a
Speaker 1: stairwell while at school. When she reported what happened, her
Speaker 1: school counselor decided that she was at fault and spended
Speaker 1: her Sadly, her story is not really that uncommon. School
Speaker 1: aged black and brown girls are more likely to face
Speaker 1: interpersonal violence at school and are also disproportionately criminalized and punished.
Speaker 1: Carrie's client wan a ninety settlement against the city and
Speaker 1: the city spokesperson promised forty seven million dollars annually in
Speaker 1: school climate trading programs. It won't undo the hell she suffered,
Speaker 1: Carrie said, but it will buy her some comfort and healing.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not necessarily about suing, although I am
Speaker 1: a big believer in that when it's when the circumstances
Speaker 1: are right. But it's it's like making amplifying your boys.
Speaker 1: And I mean sometimes when I would be writing my
Speaker 1: legal complaints in preparation of lawsuits, I would get so
Speaker 1: emotional that I would just go on these like tweeter Twitter,
Speaker 1: like like storms, you know, just like deva fits. But
Speaker 1: even that, you know, those would get retweeted, And by
Speaker 1: the time I filed my complaints, I had a lot
Speaker 1: of earlists that were um that we're in line to
Speaker 1: cover them. Um sometlem It's just like letting the natural
Speaker 1: rage of the injustice let's speak for itself. Let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break enter back. Kley has a real connection
Speaker 1: to our clients. She rages about the injustices they face
Speaker 1: on Twitter. She uses her own experiences to help them
Speaker 1: combat stigma and shame and let them know they're not alone.
Speaker 1: I feel very invested in in um making the process
Speaker 1: of the litigation or getting justice tolerable because they can
Speaker 1: take years and you need you need them to be
Speaker 1: able to to feel like it's worth it, and it's um.
Speaker 1: It's stressful at times, and it can be very um
Speaker 1: invasive of you know, like when you're having to relive
Speaker 1: when you're only sixteen seventeen, you're having to relive this
Speaker 1: awful thing that happened to you when you're thirteen. You
Speaker 1: need you need to like feel like it's it's for
Speaker 1: something really important and um and also just getting back
Speaker 1: to what you're talking about, bridget about how um you know,
Speaker 1: when we're young, we can actually be complicit in some
Speaker 1: of the violation. It makes me think about how much
Speaker 1: more traumatizing it is to be a victim when you're
Speaker 1: when you're young and we were not only have have
Speaker 1: our violators not developed uh, the skill of empathy, but
Speaker 1: the victims haven't figured out how to cope. And you
Speaker 1: can feel like your whole world is crushing around you
Speaker 1: if if you are not only sexually violated, but then
Speaker 1: all the students in your class, you know, think you're
Speaker 1: a jill. They're spreading it and you know you're afraid
Speaker 1: your parents are going to punish you, and you're afraid
Speaker 1: your school's gonna punish you. And like kids are ready
Speaker 1: don't have control over their lives. And and then to
Speaker 1: to be kind of socially ostracized or or put in
Speaker 1: this category of other and have your friendships kind of
Speaker 1: crumble like that is that can create such desperation. Um
Speaker 1: And every single one of our young clients has been
Speaker 1: suicidal during during those moments. It's just like they don't
Speaker 1: have the coping skills. I didn't when I was that age.
Speaker 1: When Carrie was younger, she was victimized by abusive XS.
Speaker 1: One had intimate images of her and vowed to use
Speaker 1: them to ruin her life. This was before revenge porn
Speaker 1: was even really a thing. People didn't know how to
Speaker 1: talk about it or deal with it when it happened,
Speaker 1: and lawyers didn't really know how to handle what she
Speaker 1: was going through. In your book, you talk about how
Speaker 1: you became the lawyer that you you wish you had
Speaker 1: had in your thirties. Can you tell me a bit
Speaker 1: about that? Yeah, Well, I had some uh violence, you know,
Speaker 1: I was the victim of some dating violence and incident
Speaker 1: of sexual violence. Before I started my law firm, and um,
Speaker 1: when I was trying to escape my ex boyfriends stalking
Speaker 1: and he was just besieging me with with text messages
Speaker 1: and threats and and false police reports and it was
Speaker 1: never ending. UM, I had trouble finding a lawyer. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, I I work with somebody on the domestic
Speaker 1: violence piece. I worked with somebody on the um the
Speaker 1: focus criminal complaints peace. But for everyone that I talked to,
Speaker 1: this was a real like abnormal case for them. UM,
Speaker 1: And you know it. You don't want to be the
Speaker 1: the the outlier when it comes to getting legal help
Speaker 1: and having a lawyer. UM, you know, be kind of
Speaker 1: learning as they go, and and it was unpredictable for them,
Speaker 1: you know, what would happen or or kind of the
Speaker 1: profile of my offender was something really new to them.
Speaker 1: And UM, when I finally got my orders of protection
Speaker 1: and he played guilty, which was six months after the breakup,
Speaker 1: M I quit everything and started my law firm a
Speaker 1: few months later, when I was you know, in retrospect,
Speaker 1: I was still in the midst of a lot of trauma.
Speaker 1: But UM, I started this law firm basically to become
Speaker 1: the kind of lawyer that I'd needed because I've gotten
Speaker 1: this kind of involuntary education into um, into into the
Speaker 1: world of of you know, being stalked and having no
Speaker 1: control over what's happening in the Internet. And I learned
Speaker 1: that in New York we didn't have a law criminalizing um,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody sending around your naked pictures. And so
Speaker 1: the internet component of the attack on me was was
Speaker 1: the most scary thing. That um, the scariest part about
Speaker 1: it because even after I got my order of protection,
Speaker 1: I knew that legally he could still be sending around
Speaker 1: my images. He you know, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: he didn't. But but there was always this like thing,
Speaker 1: this that he had threatened to and and he had
Speaker 1: sent me emails saying that he with the picture of
Speaker 1: saying that he'd blind copied um, you know, people that
Speaker 1: I was like other lawyers and judges and stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: But it was like there's a constant anxiety that like
Speaker 1: I wasn't I wasn't protected. Even after all the legal
Speaker 1: issues had had seemingly wrapped up. Kelly became one of
Speaker 1: the most prominent lawyers specializing and revenge born and offers
Speaker 1: victims legal support and a pathway to justice, whatever that
Speaker 1: looks like for them. Our expertise is dealing with people
Speaker 1: who have been stopped and harassed and um, victims of
Speaker 1: sexual assault and sexual trauma, and and getting justice for them.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just about getting in order of protection or
Speaker 1: helping advocate in the criminal justice system, or just sending
Speaker 1: a cease and as system getting the offender to go
Speaker 1: away forever. Other times it's we have to um if
Speaker 1: the victim doesn't want to take any legal action but
Speaker 1: just wants those images to be removed from the Internet.
Speaker 1: And then we also do sometimes have really big cases
Speaker 1: against uh, the City of New York when there's a
Speaker 1: retaliation against a student, or our big case against Grinder
Speaker 1: because we felt they were facilitating our client being stopped. UM,
Speaker 1: but they're there. But basically the whole idea is that
Speaker 1: we every client that comes to us has either been
Speaker 1: attacked or is under attack, and so we know what
Speaker 1: to do. And we've seen all these these behavioral profiles
Speaker 1: over and over again, and the more you do something,
Speaker 1: the more expert you get. And so we we can predict,
Speaker 1: you know, well, by sending a season to this letter
Speaker 1: to this kind of behavioral profile who is mentally ill
Speaker 1: and unrelenting and assess we can know that's just gonna
Speaker 1: escalate things. Um, Whereas oh, this other person, he's threatening
Speaker 1: revenge porn, but he's actually got a really stable job
Speaker 1: and um lives with with and has a kid, and
Speaker 1: she's actually going to feel um scared of a threat
Speaker 1: because it could take things away from from him. More
Speaker 1: after this quick break, let's get right back to it.
Speaker 1: Carrie's case against the dating app Grinder was one of
Speaker 1: the biggest fites of her career. In it, she sets
Speaker 1: her side a legislation called Section to thirty, which basically
Speaker 1: says that tech platforms can't be sued for what people
Speaker 1: say on those platforms. Now, free speech advocates like the
Speaker 1: Electronic Frontier Foundation say Section to thirty is what makes
Speaker 1: the Internet the Internet, but Carrie says that's exactly the problem.
Speaker 1: Forgive me if I like bungle this from my kind
Speaker 1: of like lay person's research, I understand that it really
Speaker 1: comes down to Section to thirty, which I know that
Speaker 1: is something that you really really have an issue with.
Speaker 1: You know, this is the section that allows tech companies
Speaker 1: to not be held liable for things that that are
Speaker 1: said on their platform way that their platforms are used. UM,
Speaker 1: free speech advocates say that that section is like what
Speaker 1: makes the Internet what it is. But you say, that's
Speaker 1: exactly the problem, right, that we should be thinking about
Speaker 1: the Internet in a different way, we should be building
Speaker 1: a different Internet. I guess how do we reconcile those
Speaker 1: two those two arguments. I guess you know, Um, is
Speaker 1: there some way to preserve free speech online while also
Speaker 1: not letting tech companies just like avoid accountability for the
Speaker 1: way that their platforms are are misused. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I have so much to say to this pretinue. You've
Speaker 1: you've framed it like better, better than I could. Our client,
Speaker 1: Matthew Herrick was a waiter slash actor slash former reality
Speaker 1: star who lived in Manhattan in Harlem, and he had
Speaker 1: just ended a relationship with a really controlling and abusive man.
Speaker 1: And among the ways that that man's stalked Matthew was
Speaker 1: he UM started creating fake profiles on Grinder, the gay
Speaker 1: dating app, and then luring people to Matthew's job and
Speaker 1: to his home using Grinder's deal locating technology and d
Speaker 1: m ng with with the unknowing people, and over the
Speaker 1: course of several months over individuals came in person to
Speaker 1: Matthew's apartment and to his job thinking that they were
Speaker 1: there to have sex with him. So imagine, just like
Speaker 1: in the course of this interview, if your buzzer rang
Speaker 1: three times with you know, like it was sometimes as
Speaker 1: many as twenty three people a day, bridget and um,
Speaker 1: and you know, each time he didn't know who it
Speaker 1: was going to be. He didn't know if that person
Speaker 1: was going to be dangerous. Sometimes, Um, Matthew's X would
Speaker 1: would torment and taunt the visitors and say home of
Speaker 1: full big or racist things, or say that Matthew had
Speaker 1: free drugs, and so sometimes the visitors would um come
Speaker 1: really angry or tweaked out. Um, but always they were
Speaker 1: there thinking that Matthew had had great fantasies and and stuff. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was scary, like it was. It was
Speaker 1: a crime that was happening to Matthew day in and
Speaker 1: day out, every single day. And Matthew had gone to
Speaker 1: the police ten times, he'd gotten an order protection that
Speaker 1: the offender was violating over and over again, and nothing
Speaker 1: nothing mattered. Matthew flagged the accounts with Reinder about fifty
Speaker 1: times by the time we came along, and then I was, Um,
Speaker 1: I had just worked with a bunch of big tech
Speaker 1: companies at the time. This is like, um, the fall
Speaker 1: or the the end of and I've worked with a
Speaker 1: bunch of tech companies on the revenge porn policies. And
Speaker 1: so I was super like, I'll just call up Grinder's
Speaker 1: general counsel and get them to remove this this user.
Speaker 1: And they ignored me too, and so I was like raging,
Speaker 1: raging with him, and we UM ended up getting a
Speaker 1: restraining order against Grinder UM saying that they had to
Speaker 1: remove this user, which you know, it's not super common
Speaker 1: to get a restrainding order against a tech company, UM,
Speaker 1: but we got it. And Grinder even ignored that the
Speaker 1: visitors kept coming and we UM, as we you know,
Speaker 1: plotted our lawsuit against Grinder, we had to worry about,
Speaker 1: UM the communications de since the Act Section to thirty,
Speaker 1: which was this law as you mentioned, that went into
Speaker 1: effect UM back in UH five when the Internet looked
Speaker 1: nothing like it does now. And UM the law was
Speaker 1: actually you know, it's just a twenty six word law
Speaker 1: that was part of a bigger law that basically banned
Speaker 1: pornography on the Internet. But the other part of that
Speaker 1: law got got deemed unconstitutional. Case you're wondering, um, why
Speaker 1: we have porn on the internet, Um, it's it's not
Speaker 1: constitutional to to outlaw it. But but this little section survived,
Speaker 1: and it originally was was supposed to just make it
Speaker 1: so that you know, if if a bulletin board, which
Speaker 1: was basically the way that you know, people talked to
Speaker 1: one another online, if if somebody posted something defamatory UM
Speaker 1: on the bulletin board, there wouldn't be a lawsuit against
Speaker 1: the bulletin board, but but the defamation would be user
Speaker 1: to user. And you know, it kind of makes sense
Speaker 1: because then, um, the platforms are not tasked with this
Speaker 1: burden of of having to moderate all all the speech
Speaker 1: and all the posts and stuff like that. But the
Speaker 1: issue is that over the last you know, five years, UM,
Speaker 1: that law has been interpreted by our courts in this
Speaker 1: really expansive way. And so anytime you know, Twitter or
Speaker 1: Facebook or anybody gets sued for something that's happening to
Speaker 1: a user, they say, we're not liable because of section
Speaker 1: to thirty. Um, you know, like you can't hold this
Speaker 1: accountable for anything that one user does to another. And
Speaker 1: courts of you know, said you're right, because all the
Speaker 1: other cases before you didn't. It's important to emphasize that
Speaker 1: Carrie isn't just talking about what someone says on a platform.
Speaker 1: If a platform allows an abusive user to impersonate you
Speaker 1: and set you up for a dangerous encounter in real life,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty big flaw. The issue is that the
Speaker 1: Internet and apps and and you know are so much
Speaker 1: different now than they were. And we're not just talking
Speaker 1: about defamation. We're talking about you know, geolocating technology and um,
Speaker 1: you know, social media companies which have so much function ability,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about you know, dating apps, you know,
Speaker 1: and apps that are playing a role in matching users
Speaker 1: and so but we had to make it when we
Speaker 1: were filing this lawsuit so that we were not suing
Speaker 1: Grinder for anything that Matt's X was doing to Matt,
Speaker 1: because we knew it would get kicked out of court
Speaker 1: for violating Section to thirty. And so when Grinder's lawyers
Speaker 1: finally came to court and told us that they didn't
Speaker 1: have the technology to ban an abusive user, we were like, what, Like,
Speaker 1: you have the world's biggest dating app and it's so foreseeable,
Speaker 1: the big biggest dating app, you know, for for gay people,
Speaker 1: it's so foreseeable. But sometimes it's going to be abused
Speaker 1: by stalkers, by predators, and you've not designed into it
Speaker 1: like a way to stop abusive users. Well, then you've
Speaker 1: you've released a dangerous product into the stream of commerce.
Speaker 1: And just like our product liability laws for cars you
Speaker 1: know that have air bags that don't go off, or
Speaker 1: or broken bread breaks or something like, Grinder had created
Speaker 1: a dangerous product and we say you shouldn't have been
Speaker 1: on the market in the first place. And the fact
Speaker 1: that you are, well, that's how we're gonna sue you.
Speaker 1: Grinder still said, you're at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you're still holding us liable for stuff that's users done
Speaker 1: to Matthew. It's not us. And the judge agreed with
Speaker 1: with Grinder, And we appealed and and and kept losing
Speaker 1: at every stage and ultimately petitioned to the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: and lost and um which happened. You know, this was
Speaker 1: from the beginning a re I'll um. It was a
Speaker 1: very experimental lawsuit, Like at the time that we filed it,
Speaker 1: it was novel for us to even be for anybody
Speaker 1: to even be referring to UM apps as products. Everyone
Speaker 1: was saying their services, their services. But but now this
Speaker 1: idea has caught on and UM and it's kind of
Speaker 1: changed the way that UM that we think about apps
Speaker 1: and Internet products. And the fact that we did have
Speaker 1: such you know that Mattithew experienced such a horrific thing
Speaker 1: and he couldn't get justice. That's actually helped us fight
Speaker 1: for legislation. And and so as you mentioned, you've got
Speaker 1: all these people on the other side that And I
Speaker 1: don't actually think it's all these people. I think they're
Speaker 1: just very vocal and they're getting paid a lot of
Speaker 1: lobbying money from from big tech. Is the Internet we
Speaker 1: have now working for everyone? Is that the version of
Speaker 1: the Internet we want? Is it one worth preserving as is?
Speaker 1: Karen doesn't really think so. But they're saying that UM
Speaker 1: basically the Internet as we know it when it exists
Speaker 1: UM without section two three, and we're going to lose
Speaker 1: you know, all the this wonderful free exchange of ideas
Speaker 1: if we if we lose section two three. And I
Speaker 1: hoped total bs on that, because number one, you're assuming
Speaker 1: that the Internet as we know it is a great
Speaker 1: place and as we know it like should be you know,
Speaker 1: like preserved just you know, it's kind of like any
Speaker 1: constitutional argument or or make America great again. You're assuming
Speaker 1: that it is. The things are great, um and you
Speaker 1: know you're assuming that you know that everyone has the
Speaker 1: same level of free speech. But I mean speech on
Speaker 1: the Internet really belongs to those were the loudest and
Speaker 1: and you know, for basically for companies Amazon, Facebook, Um,
Speaker 1: Microsoft and Apple. I mean they control the Internet and
Speaker 1: we've got all our our issues with with anti trust
Speaker 1: um and and then you and also the quantity, So
Speaker 1: the most hostile people on the Internet are the ones
Speaker 1: who have the greatest protections. Um. But also when we're
Speaker 1: talking about lawsuits and and the right to sue, it's
Speaker 1: such a fundamental right. Carrie says that as long as
Speaker 1: tech companies have the kind of legal protection afforded to
Speaker 1: them by Section to thirty, it creates a situation where
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of avenues to hold them accountable.
Speaker 1: You know. Like the thing is like as you see
Speaker 1: with our our cases against the New York City Department Bed,
Speaker 1: like for the cost of an index number, which is
Speaker 1: a couple hundred bucks, which you can get waived. I
Speaker 1: had a client who you know, whose mom was a
Speaker 1: part time home healthy and didn't speak English, you know,
Speaker 1: and they had they had no money to speak of.
Speaker 1: I had her suing the city of New York, which
Speaker 1: is where multibillion you know, multibillion dollar dollars. And that's
Speaker 1: the great equalizer in our country is that anybody can sue,
Speaker 1: even you know, if there's been a harm. And and
Speaker 1: it's it's fundamental and it's also how we keep our
Speaker 1: big organizations are companies from being total assholes because the
Speaker 1: threat of being being sued is is hits you in
Speaker 1: the bottom you know, it's a bottom line issue. It
Speaker 1: costs money and um and it's what you know, like
Speaker 1: so many safety measures, whether we're talking about pharma, suitables,
Speaker 1: or cars, it's because of litigation that happened, or it's
Speaker 1: because of the fear of litigation. And also it's because
Speaker 1: most companies want people to be safe. They want their
Speaker 1: customers and clients to not have a bad experience. You
Speaker 1: don't see that with big tech though, you know, like
Speaker 1: the the wall off, you know, like if you had
Speaker 1: a crisis on Facebook. If let's say you're a parent
Speaker 1: and your kid was manipulated into giving nudes to a
Speaker 1: pedophile and then he was sharing them online. You're a parent,
Speaker 1: your first instinct was who you know? Is who do
Speaker 1: I talk to? Who do I talk to? What's the
Speaker 1: phone number? Who's live to help me with this crisis?
Speaker 1: And it's just like a one way street here where
Speaker 1: we're giving these companies all this information about us and
Speaker 1: and and stuff, and we can't. I mean, they are
Speaker 1: like it's like OZ, like they're the behind this magic
Speaker 1: curtain and don't have to in act with us users.
Speaker 1: As you were talking, it occurred to me that when
Speaker 1: you first started your law firm, the idea of revenge
Speaker 1: porn didn't even really exist, And it was through advocating
Speaker 1: for legal protections and working with victims that you helped
Speaker 1: us are in both a legal change and a cultural
Speaker 1: reimagining of what revenge porn actually is. And in listening
Speaker 1: to you talk about tech companies just now, it seems
Speaker 1: like you're poised to do that same kind of thing
Speaker 1: again when it comes to reimagining what role tech companies
Speaker 1: should play in creating an Internet that's safe for everyone,
Speaker 1: like a hard reset of how these companies operate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's true, Bridget there's so much there's
Speaker 1: so much work that can be done, and like it's
Speaker 1: it's a really critical time because you have all this
Speaker 1: concentrated power and wealth in such a few number of
Speaker 1: you know, just a few companies, and that the inequality
Speaker 1: in our in our society is just getting greater, you know,
Speaker 1: because of these companies, because and and also of power,
Speaker 1: and the omniscience is also you know another thing that's
Speaker 1: just creating so much more inequalities and in our country.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, I do have so many cases
Speaker 1: where it's you can't ignore that the facts are horrific.
Speaker 1: You know, an eleven year old who was sex started
Speaker 1: and made to create all these videos and they were
Speaker 1: sent around on Instagram, or my my client who's who
Speaker 1: was who's murder was basically life streamed um or another
Speaker 1: client who was raped and murdered on a first date
Speaker 1: through match dot Com by a known sex offender. Like
Speaker 1: there's gonna come become a point where the more cases
Speaker 1: like that, Okay, if even if these cases can't be
Speaker 1: brought in court, get kicked out, Like you can't deny
Speaker 1: that there is extreme negligence by these companies and we're
Speaker 1: just I'm gonna just keep producing them until we get
Speaker 1: new law. And it's just like any other case where
Speaker 1: if you don't feel like you can become a victim,
Speaker 1: then you're not going to care. But the whole purpose
Speaker 1: of my book and and everything is to is to
Speaker 1: pound into this and into the consciousness that we're all
Speaker 1: a moment away from becoming victims. Like all it takes
Speaker 1: is one person to decide they want to destroy you.
Speaker 1: One bad interaction at the supermarket with somebody who finds
Speaker 1: out your name. They then have the right to to,
Speaker 1: you know, go to pedophile websites and and tell the
Speaker 1: world that you're a pedophile. And good luck getting that down,
Speaker 1: you know, Like, um, it's anybody can become a victim,
Speaker 1: but it shouldn't take that in order for us to
Speaker 1: have empathy toward victims and want to change the Internet.
Speaker 1: And it's you know, like this we're not talking about
Speaker 1: you know, somebody call somebody else a bitch on Twitter.
Speaker 1: That's not the kind of speech that's going to be impacted.
Speaker 1: And we're not even talking about speech really because this
Speaker 1: is all conduct, you know, And but our law doesn't
Speaker 1: even see the difference there I would, you know, like
Speaker 1: with Grinder, we weren't suing them for any words of
Speaker 1: the profile or any words on the d M. We
Speaker 1: were suing them because this product was being used, you know,
Speaker 1: hundreds of times a day to try to get get
Speaker 1: our client injured. It's not a speech issue. This is unjust.
Speaker 1: Kenny's work isn't just about the law. It confronts the
Speaker 1: cultural attitude that people who are victimized online deserve it,
Speaker 1: or that it's just a sexy scandal rather than a
Speaker 1: serious crime, or that we should just expect that the
Speaker 1: internet is a place where we'll be mistreated. Why can't
Speaker 1: it be better than that? So, what has it been
Speaker 1: like to have such a personal hand in challenging the
Speaker 1: internet to be better and safer and stronger and working
Speaker 1: to build one where people will power are held accountable. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's so kind of you too to describe me
Speaker 1: that way if you really, um feel flattered about that. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I love my job and I love that
Speaker 1: as the owner of this law firm, I can decide
Speaker 1: what direction we go in and what fights to choose.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is an incredibly privileged and inquisition to
Speaker 1: be in. And you know, like there are ways to
Speaker 1: use your law degree in a super awesome, fun, creative way.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's it been like? It's just like been fun.
Speaker 1: But there aren't moments where I wake up and I
Speaker 1: feel like, oh, I'm just like really, you know, I've
Speaker 1: done it, you know, like like I've made it, because
Speaker 1: there's always, um, somebody waiting to give me a bad
Speaker 1: verdict or you know, a troll that you know cuts
Speaker 1: me down to size, or you know, like, um, there's
Speaker 1: you know, there there's very fleeting moments of um, well
Speaker 1: what should I call fleeting moments of like success. I'm
Speaker 1: proud of what we do. I'm so proud of my staff, um,
Speaker 1: but we're always humbled by by the next fight. On
Speaker 1: her website, Carrie says the clients she works with aren't
Speaker 1: fragile like a flower. They're fragile like a bomb. Through
Speaker 1: her work with those clients, Carrie is blowing up our
Speaker 1: understanding of the Internet by asking the big, bold questions
Speaker 1: about how it can be better. She's taken the darkness
Speaker 1: she faced and used it to build a brighter future.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this podcast, please help us grow by subscribing.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi. We'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: you at Hello at Tango dot com. Disinformed brought to
Speaker 1: you by There Are No Girls on the Internet. It's
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio and Unbust Creative. Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: is our executive producer. Tory Harrison is our supervising producer,
Speaker 1: and engineer. Michael Lamato is our contributing producer. I'm your
Speaker 1: host Bridget Tod. For more great podcasts, check out the
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.