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Speaker 1: This series explores sexualized imagery involving miners and violence. Please

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Speaker 1: take here when listening. Can we stop from the beginning?

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Speaker 1: How did this all start for you?

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Speaker 2: So I can go back into it? I remember.

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Speaker 3: Somehow all these pictures from my instagram by Visco, we're

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Speaker 3: all on this website. There was one picture of me

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Speaker 3: in a bathing suit. Well it was me in a

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Speaker 3: bathing suit in one of my friend's backyards, and I

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Speaker 3: didn't have a bathing suit on anymore. And it was

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Speaker 3: just me naked, well not me, but me with someone

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Speaker 3: else's body parts on my body parts. It was just

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Speaker 3: boobs and body parts completely nude that looked so much

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Speaker 3: like my own body. There were so many different pictures

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Speaker 3: from my social media on essentially a porn website. I

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Speaker 3: was just trying to figure out exactly, like where is

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Speaker 3: this coming from? Like how are they finding my stuff?

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Speaker 3: I didn't let people follow me that I didn't know,

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Speaker 3: so it was always in the back of my head like, oh,

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Speaker 3: it's someone that I know. But how do you find

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Speaker 3: out who that someone is when you know so many

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Speaker 3: people from school, soccer, all these things.

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Speaker 1: Did you ever have any suspicions as to who it

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Speaker 1: was back then.

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Speaker 2: No, not at all.

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Speaker 3: It was always like, why is this happening?

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Speaker 1: Who is this? Kayla was twenty years old and living

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Speaker 1: at home with her parents in a town that was

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Speaker 1: once the picture of the American dream, a long Island

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Speaker 1: suburb called Leavittown. We're driving around Leavettown. A lot of

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Speaker 1: white picket fences, a lot of American flags. It has

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Speaker 1: the feel of going back in time.

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Speaker 4: This is Levittown, one of the most remarkable housing developments

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Speaker 4: ever conceived.

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Speaker 1: It's the kind of America that makes you think of

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Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties cookie cutter single family houses, like someone

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Speaker 1: hit control C on the ideal suburban house and then

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Speaker 1: pasted it over and over on street after street.

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Speaker 4: The idea that came to a man named Bill Levitt

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Speaker 4: was this, why not apply to the building of houses

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Speaker 4: the same principles that have brought out the American industries

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Speaker 4: to their on accel peaks of efficiency and service.

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Speaker 1: Leavettown was built for veterans returning from World War II

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Speaker 1: as the picture of white suburbia. Perfect houses, manicured.

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Speaker 4: Lawns started here and there Throughout the huge area are

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Speaker 4: shopping centers where every type of product or service is

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Speaker 4: readily available Hue, Stars, five and Dimes Department Store.

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Speaker 1: Today we often talk about the future as digital algorithms

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Speaker 1: and codes, as the architecture of our lives. But back then,

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Speaker 1: Levettown was the imagined future. It just feels like quite

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Speaker 1: suburban and safe, you know. It feels like the kind

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Speaker 1: of place that nothing really happens around here, and yet

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Speaker 1: underneath the facade of perfect order, it's here I found

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Speaker 1: a story unfolding of a group of women faced with

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Speaker 1: a new reality. None of them wanted, a technological reality

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Speaker 1: spinning out of control. It's like, this is not the

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Speaker 1: setting for a horror movie, and that's exactly what played out.

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Speaker 1: But this isn't your average horror story where a group

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Speaker 1: of teens are hunted down until there's only one left standing.

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Speaker 1: In this story, they flip the script, band together and

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Speaker 1: fight back alongside some unexpected global allies, forcing law enforcement

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Speaker 1: and tech companies to sit up and take notice. From

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Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope, this is Levettown. I'm Olivia Carvill.

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Speaker 1: Over the summer, our producer Julia Nutter and I made

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Speaker 1: the drive out to Long Island to meet Kayla at

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Speaker 1: her family home.

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Speaker 2: I can hear music.

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Speaker 3: How are you so nice to see?

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Speaker 2: It's nice to see you too. How do you feel like.

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Speaker 5: Let me just do a quick levels check.

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Speaker 3: Oh do you want me to put the bird in

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Speaker 3: another room?

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Speaker 1: I don't even hear the bird.

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Speaker 5: Oh my god, the bird.

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Speaker 1: Kayla is like a firecracker. She's small but loud, with

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Speaker 1: brightly colored hair. Every time I've seen her, her hair

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Speaker 1: is a different color. She's covered in tattoos and piercings.

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Speaker 3: I was like, oh, yeah, what kind of bird is that?

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Speaker 2: A parakeet? So he likes to talk to himself a lot.

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Speaker 1: Do you feel comfortable showing us where you were when

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Speaker 1: you discovered the website? When you were showing it, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a little messy. Kayla's twenty four now. When we

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Speaker 1: visited her, she was living in the same house she

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Speaker 1: grew up in.

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Speaker 2: Well, I see all.

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Speaker 1: Your plants, and its.

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Speaker 2: Great, as you could tell. I love my books.

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Speaker 1: In high school, Kayla was an elite athlete and a

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Speaker 1: girl who moved easily between friend groups.

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Speaker 3: People make it seem like there's either the popular group

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Speaker 3: or you know, so called nerds. I would like to

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Speaker 3: say I was in the middle of it because I

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Speaker 3: hung out with a lot of the sports people who

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Speaker 3: were considered popular. But I had my friends who we

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Speaker 3: would just sit around and play video games, hang out,

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Speaker 3: do funny things, and make videos of us doing stupid

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Speaker 3: little things. I say this to my friends actually all

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Speaker 3: the time. I may not dress like it, but my

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Speaker 3: inner person is kind of emo. I listen to a

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Speaker 3: lot of dark music.

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Speaker 6: Now.

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Speaker 2: I have the tattoos.

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Speaker 3: All over, I piercings all over, and I truly just

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Speaker 3: like It's not like I like the color black.

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Speaker 2: I just like I changed a lot. I have a

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Speaker 2: really big book tattoo on my leg.

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Speaker 3: I have a big wrap around plants because my whole

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Speaker 3: leg is going to be things I love, and plants

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Speaker 3: is another thing for me.

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Speaker 2: This one, it's one of my favorites. It's tell Me

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Speaker 2: About Tomorrow.

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Speaker 3: Tell Me About Tomorrow is one of my favorite songs

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Speaker 3: because whenever I'm in a depressive stea or just not

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Speaker 3: doing good mentally, I play that song and it tells

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Speaker 3: you to tell me about tomorrow, tell me about the

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Speaker 3: next day that's going to go on in your life.

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Speaker 3: When I was going through this situation, I was not

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Speaker 3: mentally doing good at all, and it told me you

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Speaker 3: will have tomorrow, and you can't have tomorrow.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like a lot of the tattoos are important

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Speaker 1: to you because they represent you moving forward or healing

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Speaker 1: or getting over this situation as you described it. Do

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Speaker 1: you feel comfortable getting into that now.

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Speaker 3: Yes. I remember being in my bed, just laying down.

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Speaker 3: It was late at night.

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Speaker 1: This was in March twenty twenty, at the onset of

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Speaker 1: the COVID pandemic. She'd recently graduated from high school and

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Speaker 1: was stuck at home with her appearance.

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Speaker 2: I was in that corner. My bed was up against

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Speaker 2: the wall. I was just laying in the bed.

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Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure I was on my phone, just scrolling

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Speaker 3: through Instagram or something, or on Snapchat.

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Speaker 1: She heard her dad walking up the stairs from the

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Speaker 1: living room.

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Speaker 3: So as I can always hear when someone comes up

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Speaker 3: the stairs, and he knocked. He always knocks on the door.

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Speaker 3: So he knocked and just like walked right in. I

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Speaker 3: thought automatically like I was in trouble or something. But

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Speaker 3: then I could just like tell like he was just confused,

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Speaker 3: and he was like a little hesitant to like come

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Speaker 3: up to me.

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Speaker 2: I could tell, and he was just like, what is this.

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Speaker 1: What is this? What was he showing you?

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Speaker 3: I think it was the website.

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Speaker 1: It was the faked picture of her naked, and next

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Speaker 1: to it a pole asking the site's users to rank

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Speaker 1: what they wanted to do to her sexually. This next

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Speaker 1: part is graphic and it might be difficult to hear.

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Speaker 2: It was. I always had trouble saying these parts.

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Speaker 7: It was.

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Speaker 3: Drink her purse, milk her, have her drink my purse,

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Speaker 3: and there was something else, and I can't entirely remember

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Speaker 3: what the other one was.

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Speaker 1: So they were ranking what they wanted to do to

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Speaker 1: you sexually.

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Speaker 3: Yes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: She keeped scrolling and it got worse.

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Speaker 3: We would see what they posted, like their nude pictures

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Speaker 3: and them jerking off and coming on our pictures, even

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Speaker 3: like pictures of our pictures with their dicks there and

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Speaker 3: the ejaculation there, and then there was like some like.

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Speaker 2: Writings of like raper.

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Speaker 3: My dad was very confused. He asked me what this

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Speaker 3: was and how did it get up there? And I

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Speaker 3: did not know because I've never seen it before, which

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Speaker 3: I obviously told him. So that's how we found out

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Speaker 3: about the website.

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Speaker 1: Kayla says her dad is a big guy, big personality.

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Speaker 1: Like her loud laugh. Back then, he was a police officer,

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Speaker 1: a beat cop really, for the Nassau County Police Department.

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Speaker 1: He didn't want to talk to us for this podcast,

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Speaker 1: but he's really protective of his kids, which means he

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Speaker 1: regularly googles their names, searching the Internet for anything related

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Speaker 1: to them.

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Speaker 3: For mere specifically, I was playing soccer and competitively, so

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Speaker 3: when I was, you know, going to college and playing soccer,

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Speaker 3: then he just got nervous when they search things.

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Speaker 2: He doesn't want dumb to see things are wrong or

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Speaker 2: you know, like exactly what we found.

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Speaker 1: When he shows you the phone, what is the photo

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Speaker 1: on the phone that you were looking at? The specific

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Speaker 1: photo that you first see.

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Speaker 2: I'm almost passitive.

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Speaker 7: It was the one with the bikini taken off my

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Speaker 7: body and it was just me naked, well not me,

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Speaker 7: but me with someone else's body parts on my body

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Speaker 7: parts that looked exactly like my own.

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Speaker 1: Was there ever a moment, even a split seeking moment,

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Speaker 1: that you thought it was you naked?

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Speaker 3: Yes, I definitely, Like at first, like I was like,

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Speaker 3: oh my god, that's me, Like how did they get that?

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Speaker 3: But then I was like, no, that's in my friend's backyard,

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Speaker 3: Like I was obviously wearing a bikini, and I remember

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Speaker 3: the bikini. It was a blue one and it was

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Speaker 3: mesh a little bit. So that's why I would think

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Speaker 3: it was so easy for them to completely alter the picture.

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Speaker 3: But I just like instantly I was like, whoa, how

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Speaker 3: how did they get that picture of me? Like I

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Speaker 3: never took a picture like that. It was frightening how

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Speaker 3: exact it looked.

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Speaker 1: The website it was on was called come On Printed

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Speaker 1: Picks dot Com, and it encouraged its members to do

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Speaker 1: exactly what that title implies, to print out photos of

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Speaker 1: girls and young women and masturbate to them, and then

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Speaker 1: to post a photo of the user's erection or ejaculation

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Speaker 1: on top of that image. This is a practice they

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Speaker 1: called tributing.

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Speaker 3: To have to see my dad find all that, and

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Speaker 3: like I don't know, like just not understanding what's going on.

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Speaker 3: I didn't even know anything was going on, and then

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Speaker 3: my dad just coming in and seeing all that, It's

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Speaker 3: like nobody wants to see that, but like to have

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Speaker 3: your dad see that, that's like not even uncomfortable, like

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Speaker 3: that's not even the word for it, but just like unimaginable.

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Speaker 1: I wish I could tell you that this website was

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Speaker 1: tucked away in the dark web, where users needed to

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Speaker 1: download a special browser or slink through some other secret

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Speaker 1: cyber door. But it wasn't. It was just out in

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Speaker 1: the open. Kayla was out in the open too. Postings

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Speaker 1: on the site included her real name, which is how

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Speaker 1: her dad found it. Sometimes the images posted to the

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Speaker 1: website were actual unaltered photos, revenge porn type stuff, but

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Speaker 1: often the original photos were taken from innocent social media

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Speaker 1: posts like Kayla's, and then the site's users turned those

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Speaker 1: images into non consensual pornography, often with underage subjects.

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Speaker 2: This type of.

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Speaker 1: Photo manipulation was new to Kayla, but it wasn't new

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Speaker 1: to me. I've been starting to see more of it

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Speaker 1: over the past few years. I've been reporting on big

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Speaker 1: tech and social media platforms what they're doing or not

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Speaker 1: doing to prevent harm to kids, what guardrails they're putting

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Speaker 1: up to stop exactly this kind of thing from happening,

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Speaker 1: and images like these were starting to multiply with shocking

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Speaker 1: speed alongside the rise of artificial intelligence. I kept hearing

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Speaker 1: more and more about the dark side of this new technology,

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Speaker 1: about deep fakes, altered videos online known as deep.

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Speaker 8: Fakes the rise of deep fakes.

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Speaker 5: Computer generated videos known as deep fakes.

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Speaker 7: Deep fake videos make people appear to say things they

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Speaker 7: never did or never would.

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Speaker 6: It's getting harder and harder to trust our eyes and airs.

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Speaker 1: When I first heard about the Levett Town case, I

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Speaker 1: knew the reporting was going to take me to some

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Speaker 1: uncomfortable but important places, from the rise of generative AI

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Speaker 1: to the explosion of deep fakes to child sexual abuse

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Speaker 1: material online. I also knew that it was going to

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Speaker 1: be really hard to find the victims and dive into

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Speaker 1: this website on my own, so I turned to my

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Speaker 1: colleague for help, Margie Murphy. She's a technology reporter at Bloomberg.

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Speaker 5: At the time, I remember, I was reporting on this

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Speaker 5: new generative AI tool that people were using to create

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Speaker 5: child sexual abuse material. I typically write about people who

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Speaker 5: hide on the fringes of the Internet, like teenage hackers

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Speaker 5: extorting global businesses, or cyber criminals using AI to scam people.

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Speaker 5: Not that long ago, when I started on this beat,

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Speaker 5: deep facts weren't that easy to make and kind of

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Speaker 5: always had to tell. If you looked at them long enough,

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Speaker 5: you would notice something was off. Yet they caught your attention.

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Speaker 8: With AI, there has been so much innovation, but.

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Speaker 5: In the last few years there have been rapid breakthroughs

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Speaker 5: and machine learning.

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Speaker 4: Amazon investing up to four billion dollars in startup andthropic

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Speaker 4: as You're.

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Speaker 8: Reportedly investing ten billion dollars in open AI.

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Speaker 5: That is, and truly hundreds of millions of dollars has

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Speaker 5: flowed into image generating software powered by AI.

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Speaker 8: Microsoft, Amazon, you name it. They are all actively investing

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Speaker 8: in young AI startups because you're tribes.

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Speaker 5: That has made it a lot cheaper and easier to

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Speaker 5: make convincing photos or videos of pretty much anything you

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Speaker 5: can think of. Now, there are billions upon billions of

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Speaker 5: deep fake images out there, and this probably won't surprise you,

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Speaker 5: but the vast, vast majority, by one estimate, more than

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Speaker 5: ninety percent of all deep fake imagery is pornographic. Typically,

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Speaker 5: people who have had their image turned into porn have

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Speaker 5: not consented to having their faces, bodies, or voices morphed

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Speaker 5: in this way. A lot of people don't even know

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Speaker 5: that these images of themselves exist. But as Olivia and

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Speaker 5: I learned, Kayla's dad had found this website in a

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Speaker 5: regular search of her name, and now he and Kayla

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Speaker 5: knew it was there.

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Speaker 3: Seeing what people had to say about my body as

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Speaker 3: the pictures were like when I'm what thirteen fourteen, I

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Speaker 3: think I instantly cried. I was just like I think,

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Speaker 3: I remember kind of like stating more to myself than

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Speaker 3: anybody else, like why is this happening to me?

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Speaker 2: Like what is going on?

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Speaker 3: Like is this even real life? I felt betrayed by

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Speaker 3: my body because it felt so real, like the pictures

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Speaker 3: just seemed so real.

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Speaker 5: The website to users also encouraged each other to comment

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Speaker 5: on the images and even harass the person being pictured.

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Speaker 3: It's unimaginable to think that people can even say how gross,

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Speaker 3: like to tell you to rape me or milk me.

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Speaker 3: I remember a lot of mine was with my braces,

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Speaker 3: because I had braces until I was in eleventh grade,

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Speaker 3: and then I had some pimples, and I would see

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Speaker 3: people saying that they loved my brace face and my

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Speaker 3: pimples on my face, They like, I'm younger.

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Speaker 1: Did you actively search through the website for all photos

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Speaker 1: of you and look at other photos on there and

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Speaker 1: what the people were saying, or did you just could

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Speaker 1: you just not look at it at all?

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Speaker 4: No?

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Speaker 2: I constantly looked at it.

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Speaker 3: I was searching to see if there were new picks

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Speaker 3: that would be uploaded.

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Speaker 1: After learning about the website, Kayla's biggest question was who

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Speaker 1: did this? Who went through the trouble of scraping her

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Speaker 1: pictures from social media, editing them to make her look naked,

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Speaker 1: and then posting them on this site asking others to

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Speaker 1: harass her. She wanted it to stop, so she took

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Speaker 1: a break from Visco, a photo sharing app.

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Speaker 3: Because I started to notice that was the mean place

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Speaker 3: that they took my pictures from.

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Speaker 1: I mean, for you, you can't unsee that that's your

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Speaker 1: body and that's someone putting it out there naked on

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Speaker 1: this website. How do you survive and how do you cope?

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Speaker 3: I quite literally just put in the back of my

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Speaker 3: head and moved on and just did not think about it.

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Speaker 3: Try not to think about it. We're still on lockdown,

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Speaker 3: so I was stuck with my.

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Speaker 2: Thoughts a lot.

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Speaker 3: But I was also stuck with my family. We all

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Speaker 3: kind of just put it in the back of our

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Speaker 3: heads and essentially basically pretended that it never happened.

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Speaker 5: Kayla didn't tell anyone about it, not even her friends,

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Speaker 5: though her father reached out to his colleagues at the

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Speaker 5: Nasau County Police Department. He wanted to know what could

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Speaker 5: they do to help Kayla.

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Speaker 3: My dad did seek advice to his buddies at work.

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Speaker 2: He did ask if there.

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Speaker 3: Was anything that they could do, but his buddies really

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Speaker 3: didn't know how to go about it because it's so

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Speaker 3: hard to trace, like those types of websites when they're

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Speaker 3: all anonymous and they're essentially a porn website, so it's

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Speaker 3: really hard to trace those back to the original owner

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Speaker 3: or anything like that.

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Speaker 5: Bear in mind, this was happening in twenty twenty when

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Speaker 5: the term deep fakes wasn't as widespread recognized as it

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Speaker 5: is now, and there weren't any laws federal or in

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Speaker 5: New York State at this time to prevent faked pornographic

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Speaker 5: images of real people.

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Speaker 3: I didn't really know what there was to do after

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Speaker 3: my dad already tried to contact the police department and

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Speaker 3: his buddies and them just telling us that, like, there

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Speaker 3: really was not much that they can do. Going through

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Speaker 3: a complete and trying to go through all the steps

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Speaker 3: that it took, I just don't think I was I

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Speaker 3: was strong enough at that moment.

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Speaker 1: And there's more time passed. Can you describe how your

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Speaker 1: feelings about their website and those photos changed.

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Speaker 2: I think.

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Speaker 3: After some time I stopped looking at the website put

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Speaker 3: in the back of my head, but it completely altered

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Speaker 3: the way that I thought about my body. And there's

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Speaker 3: thing called body dysmorph Your brain alters the way that

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Speaker 3: you look at your body, and I completely went through that.

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Speaker 2: I used to feel.

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Speaker 3: So confident about it because I was an athlete. I

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Speaker 3: felt so in tune with my body, and then I

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Speaker 3: completely changed. I started having eating issues and wasn't able.

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Speaker 2: To eat full meals.

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Speaker 3: I would feel sick after eating. I couldn't even eat

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Speaker 3: three bites of food. I would eat two bites and

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Speaker 3: feel absolutely disgusted in what I'm eating and disgusted in

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Speaker 3: my body for wanting food. It completely changed just who

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Speaker 3: I was as a person. I completely got depressed and

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Speaker 3: just wasn't myself.

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Speaker 5: And that's where the story could have ended, with Kayla's

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Speaker 5: faked pictures still online and her and her dad not

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Speaker 5: able to do anything about it. Her small, safe, suburban

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Speaker 5: world turned upside down. But ten months later, Kayla's phone rang.

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Speaker 3: I got a call when I was working at my

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Speaker 3: old job at a clothing store. It was around New

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Speaker 3: Year's Eve, and I remember it was like seven forty

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Speaker 3: and I was behind the register. It was very quiet

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Speaker 3: in the store, so I was just on my phone.

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Speaker 3: We weren't really supposed to be on our phones, but

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Speaker 3: I just remember being on my phone and I see

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Speaker 3: one of the classmates. It was her dad's name popped

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Speaker 3: up on my phone, which was so weird to me

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Speaker 3: because I was like, I don't even have this number.

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Speaker 2: Why are they calling me?

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Speaker 3: And I just remember the last name and I answered

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Speaker 3: and I was like hello, and she's like, Hi, this

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Speaker 3: is blank. She goes, I saw you on the website.

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Speaker 3: I just want to let you know I'm also on

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Speaker 3: this website. And I remember just like walking away from

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Speaker 3: the register and I was just like, okay, like how

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Speaker 3: many other people are on there? Who do you think

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Speaker 3: it is? And that's when she said, I figured out

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Speaker 3: who it was. I think.

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Speaker 1: In an instant. Kayla's story got so much bigger from there.

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Speaker 1: It would stretch beyond her bedroom, past the high school

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Speaker 1: out of Leavittown, across the country and around the world.

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Speaker 5: What she didn't and couldn't know, but what Olivia and

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Speaker 5: I would learn through our investigation was that there was

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Speaker 5: a global web of cyber criminals taking advantage of a

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Speaker 5: plodding justice system being pursued by online vigilantes and hackers

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Speaker 5: willing to take risks the cops and prosecutors wouldn't. The

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Speaker 5: story took us from New York to small town New Zealand,

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Speaker 5: through the darkest corners of the Internet, back into bedrooms

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Speaker 5: of mid century homes lined up in neat little rows.

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Speaker 5: This season on Levettown.

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Speaker 2: There are things you don't want to believe about your friends.

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Speaker 2: You kind of think that the people in your circle

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Speaker 2: and are like you put them on a pedestal.

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Speaker 6: This individual was just out to ruin their lives for

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Speaker 6: no reason. There was a very new type of crime

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Speaker 6: where there was a gray area to say.

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Speaker 7: You have certain police officers there will wait for corps

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Speaker 7: to come in and then now go and respond to

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Speaker 7: those courts.

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Speaker 2: I'm the person that will go and hunt people. They

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Speaker 2: call it an arms race between law enforcement and technology,

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Speaker 2: and it's where we're losing. We are absolutely losing.

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Speaker 1: This series is reported and hosted by Margie Murphy and

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Speaker 1: me Olivia Carvell. Produced by Kaleidoscope, led by Julia Nutter,

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Speaker 1: edited by Nita Tuluis Semnani. Producing by Dara luck Potts,

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Speaker 1: Executive produced by Kate Osborne. Original composition and mixing by

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Speaker 1: Steve Bone Leavittown. Archival clips provided by Screen Ocean Clips

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Speaker 1: and Footage Our. Bloomberg editors are Caitlin Kenney and Jeff Grocock.

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Speaker 1: Additional reporting by Samantha Stewart. Sage Bowman is Bloomberg's executive

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Speaker 1: producer and head of Podcasting. Kristin Powers is our senior

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Speaker 1: executive editor. From iHeart, our executive producers are Tyler Klang

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Speaker 1: and Nicki Etoor. Leavittown is a production of Bloomberg, Kaleidiscs

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Speaker 1: GO and iHeart Podcasts. If you liked this show, give

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Speaker 1: us a follow and tell your friends