Speaker 1: There are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm bridgeitat and this is
Speaker 1: there are No Girls on the Internet. I am here
Speaker 1: with my producer Mike, and here's what you may have
Speaker 1: missed this week on the Internet. So, as y'all know,
Speaker 1: in the pandemic, Zoom became such.
Speaker 2: An ubiquitous part of all of our lives.
Speaker 1: You would have your work meeting on Zoom, through therapy
Speaker 1: on Zoom, your happy hour on Zoom, your book club
Speaker 1: on Zoom. But Zoom is still a tech company, and
Speaker 1: tech companies can be very tricky, and that they love
Speaker 1: to quietly slip some updates into their terms of service,
Speaker 1: you know that thing we all click without really reading
Speaker 1: too much. Last week, people started posting screenshots of Zoom's
Speaker 1: new policies that state that people who use Zoom, just
Speaker 1: by using the platform, consent to the company's use, collection,
Speaker 1: and storage of quote service generated data for any This
Speaker 1: includes quote training and tuning of algorithms and models. And
Speaker 1: so just by showing up to a Zoom meeting, you
Speaker 1: are consenting to use whatever comes up in that meeting,
Speaker 1: whatever you talk about, images, whatever, for Zoom's quote machine learning,
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, training and testing, among other uses. According to
Speaker 1: zd net, just by showing up on Zoom, users would
Speaker 1: then give Zoom quote a perpetual, worldwide, non exclusive, royalty free,
Speaker 1: sub licensable and transferable license and all other rights required
Speaker 1: or necessary to redistribute, publish, import, access, use, store, transmit, review, disclose, preserve, extract, modify, reproduce, share, use, display, copy, distribute, translate, transcribe,
Speaker 1: create derivative works of and process all of our content.
Speaker 1: That's pretty bad. That is a lot of like just
Speaker 1: by showing up to this meeting, you know, that's well,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of data to be giving over to
Speaker 1: Zoom just to show up. So Zoom told Vice that
Speaker 1: they actually made this change to their terms of service
Speaker 1: back in March. Notably, it sounds like Zoom didn't really
Speaker 1: go out of their way to make this super public
Speaker 1: until this week users started posting screenshots of this new
Speaker 1: terms of service. After all the backlash and outcry, Zoom
Speaker 1: then put out a blog post this week where they
Speaker 1: kind of walked back this terms of service and basically said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know all that stuff that I just read from
Speaker 1: their terms of service, they promise, promise promise pinky promise
Speaker 1: that they will not do it without users consent, like
Speaker 1: opting into it, promising that Zoom will not use audio,
Speaker 1: video or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: models without your consent. That was a big part of
Speaker 1: the issue before that Zoom users basically had to consent
Speaker 1: to this. There was no opt out. One interesting thing
Speaker 1: is that folks were asking, like what about people who
Speaker 1: use Zoom for like therapy sessions, like my therapy happened
Speaker 1: over Zoom, or you know, medical reasons. It does sound
Speaker 1: like those use cases are completely different Zoom contracts, and
Speaker 1: so Zoom is required to keep those conversations like hip
Speaker 1: hoop compliant.
Speaker 3: Is that right, Mike, Yeah, I believe that's right. I
Speaker 3: think that it's like a separate category of contract that
Speaker 3: enterprise clients who have Hippo protection needs signed than general
Speaker 3: users like most of us.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it sounds like that for most of us
Speaker 1: general Zoom users, there was no way to opt out
Speaker 1: of this. If you were gonna use Zoom, you had
Speaker 1: to consent to let Zoom use your data in this way.
Speaker 1: But now they are saying promising that they will allow
Speaker 1: users to opt out. However, the d Net pointed out
Speaker 1: that Sean Hogel, business and intellectual property attorney, is not
Speaker 1: so sure on why. Combinator Hogel wrote, quote, Zoom's lawyers
Speaker 1: are trying to pull a fast one with these revised terms.
Speaker 1: The new sentence on user consent being required to train
Speaker 1: AI applies only to customer content, not service generated data.
Speaker 1: Zoom can use this data, which is derived from your
Speaker 1: conference and materials without your consent. Also, surprise, in their
Speaker 1: blog posts clarifying their terms of service as it pertains
Speaker 1: to AI, Zoom assures all of us, no, no, no, don't worry.
Speaker 1: It sounds scary, trust us. This is gonna be good
Speaker 1: for you. It's for your own good, pointing to the
Speaker 1: ability to opt into Zoom settings for things like meeting
Speaker 1: transcriptions and summaries and how it will quote improve the
Speaker 1: performance and accuracy of these AI services. So if you
Speaker 1: want to use these services with Zoom, then you will
Speaker 1: have to opt in to sharing your data with the platform.
Speaker 1: Something that I find kind of interesting about this, Like
Speaker 1: I was talking to somebody about this and they were like, well,
Speaker 1: what do I care if, like Zoom wants to use
Speaker 1: my data in this way? Like, explain it to me.
Speaker 1: Like I'm five. Why this is a problem, Well, first
Speaker 1: of all is there are pretty big intellectual property concerns
Speaker 1: anybody who uses a platform like Zoom to discuss things
Speaker 1: where their ownership of those things is key. So like
Speaker 1: for me, I'm a podcaster, if I were having podcast
Speaker 1: interviews on Zoom, Zoom can essentially say oh, hey, actually,
Speaker 1: because you use Zoom, we could have the rights to
Speaker 1: what you talk about in this episode. You no longer
Speaker 1: have the rights. We've talked about how folks like Sarah
Speaker 1: Silverman are suing companies like Open Ai for intellectual property
Speaker 1: threats because they have taken her intellectual property which she owns,
Speaker 1: to train their algorithms and machine learning. So if you
Speaker 1: are somebody who has to discuss scripts that you own
Speaker 1: or discuss creative content that you own, using Zoom under
Speaker 1: those original terms of service would not be a really
Speaker 1: secure place to do that, because just by using Zoom,
Speaker 1: you're kind of giving them consent and ownership to use
Speaker 1: that intellectual property however they see fit to make money
Speaker 1: for their company.
Speaker 3: And not just intellectual property, but any sort of trade
Speaker 3: secrets or internal information that you wanted to keep private
Speaker 3: among you and your your team your business associates, your
Speaker 3: partner anything, right, Like it's chat GPT can just using
Speaker 3: that as one example. But you know a lot of
Speaker 3: these large language models are different, and who knows how
Speaker 3: many of them work. But chat GPT seems pretty good
Speaker 3: at repeating back information from specific copyrighted works, you know,
Speaker 3: specific pieces of its training corpus. And so who's to
Speaker 3: say that what might happen to something that you say
Speaker 3: during a Zoom meeting that you think is private, that
Speaker 3: then gets used to train a large language model. It's
Speaker 3: a pretty like brazen attack on privacy and confidentiality.
Speaker 1: Well exactly that, And I think that's another big issue
Speaker 1: is that yes to all of the intellectual property concerns
Speaker 1: and trade secret concerns, kind of like what you were saying,
Speaker 1: it's also just kind of the principle that people's private
Speaker 1: meetings should not be fodder for training Zoom's AI that
Speaker 1: like that dynamic where by by just by using this
Speaker 1: software that has become so ubiquitous to all of our lives,
Speaker 1: how work gets done, how people communicate and connect with
Speaker 1: each other, that just by showing up on that platform,
Speaker 1: you are consenting that basically you're like an employee of
Speaker 1: Zoom that whatever you whatever comes up in that space
Speaker 1: belongs to them, and that's like a fundamental dynamics that
Speaker 1: I think that it's it's the principle of that that's
Speaker 1: kind of what why people felt so outraged by this
Speaker 1: move by Zoom. It's just like the fundamental shift that
Speaker 1: we as users of these programs are just fodder for
Speaker 1: whatever Zoom wants to do, and however Zoom wants to
Speaker 1: make money, and I think that people are The fact
Speaker 1: that people really raised hell about this to the point
Speaker 1: where Zoom had to like walk it back, I think
Speaker 1: shows that there's a little bit of a shift happening
Speaker 1: in terms of how folks are thinking about the relationship
Speaker 1: between themselves tech companies and how their data is used
Speaker 1: or misused. And this is not the first time that
Speaker 1: Zoom has really stepped in it with regards to things
Speaker 1: like user privacy. Mike, you got a little bit of
Speaker 1: a check from Zoom because of this, right.
Speaker 3: That's right. I got to check for fifty three dollars
Speaker 3: from a class action settlement against them.
Speaker 1: Wow, what did you spend that whopping fifty three dollars on?
Speaker 3: I think I got some uber eats.
Speaker 1: Well, the reason why you were able to get that
Speaker 1: Uber eats is because Zoom had to pay out a
Speaker 1: historic eighty five million dollar lawsuit for zoom bombing, basically
Speaker 1: not having secure enough system that allowed for bad actors
Speaker 1: to disrupt the privacy of folks as private meetings. This
Speaker 1: has happened to me before. I have been on pretty
Speaker 1: high stakes important calls on Zoom where like presentations about
Speaker 1: things that are like important but need to be secure
Speaker 1: for specific security reasons, and bad actors and folks looking
Speaker 1: to disrupt have been able to gain access to those
Speaker 1: spaces to disrupt them. So it's pretty serious, Like it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty high stakes what we're talking about. And like
Speaker 1: I said, I think that people are just starting to
Speaker 1: ask questions about whether or not these tech companies are
Speaker 1: actually obviously they're not acting with our best interests as
Speaker 1: users in mind, but like how much are they not
Speaker 1: acting with our best interest as users in mind? I
Speaker 1: think really recently there have been a lot of big
Speaker 1: examples of people being like, wait a minute, you're using
Speaker 1: my data or my work or my intellectual property for
Speaker 1: what exactly, and really pushing back against that dynamic that
Speaker 1: everything of their should just be for the taking of
Speaker 1: whoever wants it for them to make money. For instance,
Speaker 1: this week, this guy Benji Smith was rightly like kind
Speaker 1: of bullied by authors of the Internet into taking his platform,
Speaker 1: prose Craft down. Prosecraft was meant to use AI to
Speaker 1: analyze the structure of a whole library of thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of books looks he notably did not have any
Speaker 1: right to be using or reproducing. Authors like rox Sane
Speaker 1: Gay were pissed, and eventually he took the platform down
Speaker 1: because it turns out that authors really don't love it
Speaker 1: when their material is being taken without their consent, so
Speaker 1: they spoke up about it until he put out a
Speaker 1: statement apologizing and eventually was like, oh yeah, wow, like
Speaker 1: y'all really hated this, and announced he was closing up shop.
Speaker 1: On the show, We're actually gonna be talking to another author,
Speaker 1: Jane Friedman, who recently found out that somebody or somebody's
Speaker 1: is impersonating her name as an author and using AI
Speaker 1: to create like poorly written AI generated knockoffs of her
Speaker 1: books under her name, and that Amazon then added those
Speaker 1: books that were not written by her to her Goodreads
Speaker 1: author profile, and Google, for instance, just recently went on
Speaker 1: record as saying that their AI systems should have the
Speaker 1: right to mind publishers work unless those publishers specifically opt
Speaker 1: out of doing so. When asked how a system like
Speaker 1: this might work, Google didn't say they didn't really have
Speaker 1: an answer. And I think that we've really hit a
Speaker 1: wall with how regular people are thinking about the future
Speaker 1: and the way that tech companies are using all of us.
Speaker 1: I think folks are starting to push back against this
Speaker 1: idea that everything we do, everything we do online, everything
Speaker 1: we say, whatever we bring to these platforms can just
Speaker 1: go to enriching these tech companies that already have so much,
Speaker 1: have so much money, and have so much impact on
Speaker 1: how all of us live our lives.
Speaker 3: I hope you're right.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: So speaking of that, we have to talk about this
Speaker 1: black woman in Detroit who was falsely arrested. This story
Speaker 1: is infuriating. So back in February, a thirty two year old,
Speaker 1: eight month pregnant black woman in Detroit named Portia Woodruff
Speaker 1: was arrested for our carjacking that she did not commit.
Speaker 1: Why well, facial recognition technology misidentified her, as it often
Speaker 1: does with black people. The New York Times reports that
Speaker 1: when the police came to her house, she actually gestured
Speaker 1: to her stomach to indicate how pregnant she was and
Speaker 1: that like how unlikely it would be to have an
Speaker 1: eight month pregnant woman commit at armed carjacking and robbery. However,
Speaker 1: that did not stop them from putting her in handcuffs
Speaker 1: in front of her neighbors and her four babies, leaving
Speaker 1: her four babies at home with her fiance as they cried,
Speaker 1: and taking her to the Detroit Detention Center for booking.
Speaker 1: She says that she was held for eleven hours, questioned
Speaker 1: about a crime that she had no knowledge of, and
Speaker 1: had her phone ceased to be searched for evidence. She
Speaker 1: told The New York Times, I was having contractions in
Speaker 1: the holding cell. My back was sending me sharp pains.
Speaker 1: I was having spasms. I think I was probably having
Speaker 1: a panic attacked. And the reason that she knows all
Speaker 1: of this is because she's a nursing school student. I
Speaker 1: was hurting sitting on those concrete benches. So she was
Speaker 1: charged with robbery and carjacking, released on one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars bond, and when she was released on bond, went
Speaker 1: straight to the hospital where she was diagnosed with dehydration
Speaker 1: and had to be given two bags of ivy fluids.
Speaker 1: A month later, in March, the Wayne County Prosecutor dismissed
Speaker 1: the case against her, and this week she filed a
Speaker 1: lawsuit for wrongful arrest against the City of Detroit in
Speaker 1: the US District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan.
Speaker 1: Portia is the sixth person to report being falsely accused
Speaker 1: of a crime because of facial recognition technology. All six
Speaker 1: of these people have been black. Because we already know
Speaker 1: that facial recognition technology disproportionately misidentifies blackfaces, Portia Woodriff is
Speaker 1: the first woman reporting it. So basically what happened in
Speaker 1: this situation is that a man called the police to
Speaker 1: report that he had picked up a woman who he
Speaker 1: had been drinking with outside of a liquor store, and
Speaker 1: that this woman pulled out a gun, robbed him, and
Speaker 1: stole his car. The police department uses a facial recognition
Speaker 1: vendor called data Works Plus to run unknown faces against
Speaker 1: a database of criminal mug shots. The system returns matches
Speaker 1: ranked by their likeliness of being the same person. A
Speaker 1: human analyst is ultimately responsible for deciding if any of
Speaker 1: the matches are a potential suspect. The police report said
Speaker 1: that the crime analyst gave the investigator Portia Woodroff's name
Speaker 1: based on a match to a twenty fifteen mugshot that
Speaker 1: she had because she had been arrested for being pulled
Speaker 1: over while driving with an expired license. They then showed
Speaker 1: the victim six photos of black women, and the police
Speaker 1: say that he the victim picked out Portia Woodroff's picture.
Speaker 1: If Portia gets her settlement, which she should, this would
Speaker 1: be the third case where the city would have to
Speaker 1: settle for folks who have been falsely arrested of a
Speaker 1: crime because of faulty facial recognition technology. The New York
Speaker 1: Times reports that on average, Detroit runs over one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five facial recognition searches a year, almost entirely
Speaker 1: on black men. An attorney for the ACLU, who represented
Speaker 1: a man who was falsely arrested for shoplifting because of
Speaker 1: facial recognition technology, is trying to get Detroit to gree
Speaker 1: to collect more evidence in cases involving automated face searches
Speaker 1: to end what he called the facial recognition to line
Speaker 1: up pipeline so I need to be clear. It is
Speaker 1: not like we do not already know the dangers of
Speaker 1: the use of this kind of technology. Doctor joy Bolomwini,
Speaker 1: researcher at MIT back in twenty eighteen, did a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of research showing that facial recognition technology routinely fails
Speaker 1: to accurately read the faces of marginalized people. There's an
Speaker 1: entire fascinating Netflix documentary about it called Hidden Bias. However,
Speaker 1: apparently police officers in Detroit have not seen this film
Speaker 1: and have not heard of this research. This is a
Speaker 1: good example of how technology can really harm marginalized people
Speaker 1: and how we know when that technology is allowed to
Speaker 1: become commonplace. Anyway, it is a real problem, like there
Speaker 1: are real world consequences, and unfortunately this technology, despite being
Speaker 1: knowingly faulty, is also becoming really commonplace. You have probably
Speaker 1: gone into venues that use facial recognition technology and might
Speaker 1: not have even known it, and that then used like
Speaker 1: Madison Square, Garden City Field, Cleveland's First Energy Stadium, Miami's
Speaker 1: Hard Rock Stadium, the Pachanga Arena in San Diego, and
Speaker 1: others used this technology on fans entering venues for concerts
Speaker 1: and sporting events. I've heard horror stories like there was
Speaker 1: a story of a young girl who was being who
Speaker 1: her parents had dropped her off at a skating rink
Speaker 1: and I think it was in Chicago, and the skating
Speaker 1: rink happened to be using facial recognition technology it misidentified
Speaker 1: her as someone else, and the skating rink owners basically
Speaker 1: threw this girl into the night without her parents because
Speaker 1: they said that she was someone that she was not
Speaker 1: based on this technology. There was another case with Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden where an attorney who was representing the parent
Speaker 1: group of Madison Square Garden. She was representing them and
Speaker 1: in a legal suit, but not directly involved with Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden, just like their parent group, and that apparently
Speaker 1: that parent group has a rule where if you are
Speaker 1: not just one of the lawyers involved in a litigation
Speaker 1: against Madison Square Garden or their parent company, even if
Speaker 1: you are a lawyer who just works at that firm,
Speaker 1: you are not allowed to come into Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 1: And so she was taken her kid to like see
Speaker 1: the rockets for Christmas. They stop, we're at the door
Speaker 1: and they say, we know you're an attorney and you
Speaker 1: can't come in. And so this technology is becoming more
Speaker 1: and more and more used and commonplace, even though we
Speaker 1: already know it is disproportionately misidentifying black folks, women and
Speaker 1: folks of color. In fact, the organization Fight for Our
Speaker 1: Future organized a boycott led by musicians like Tom Morello
Speaker 1: of Rage against the machine of venues that utilize this technology,
Speaker 1: and they actually got smaller venues like House of Yes
Speaker 1: and Brooklyn one of my favorite spots, the Lyric Hyperion
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, and the Black Cat Here in DC.
Speaker 1: These smaller venues actually pledged not to use facial recognition
Speaker 1: at their shows. But as this technology grows, I think
Speaker 1: these problems are going to become more and more pronounced
Speaker 1: and happened more and more often, with bigger and bigger consequences.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to not be let in for a concert.
Speaker 1: It's quite another to spend eleven days in jail when
Speaker 1: you're eight months pregnant.
Speaker 3: The fact that she was so pregnant and had to
Speaker 3: spend like her eighth months of pregnancy in jail feels
Speaker 3: pretty It feels inhumane.
Speaker 1: It does feel inhumane, And something that she said that
Speaker 1: kind of like broke my heart was that she said
Speaker 1: that she was as horrible as it was to be
Speaker 1: very pregnant in this holding cell for eleven hours, that
Speaker 1: she was kind of happy that she was so pregnant
Speaker 1: because at least it provided some kind of a seed
Speaker 1: of doubt to the police officers and investigators that this
Speaker 1: could not have been her, because the victim in the
Speaker 1: carjacting did not say that this person, the person who
Speaker 1: did this to him, was pregnant, and so oh, it's
Speaker 1: pretty obvious when someone is eight months pregnant. So she
Speaker 1: said that as much as it was horrifying to her,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure it was, being pregnant, she believes it
Speaker 1: was almost kind of a saving grace because at least
Speaker 1: it's the police officers had put some doubt in their
Speaker 1: mind that they had the correct person.
Speaker 3: Maybe we just need to figure out a way to
Speaker 3: move that doubt a little bit further up the causal
Speaker 3: chain of events and like not arrest the pregnant, innocent
Speaker 3: women from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's what the lawsuit is calling for,
Speaker 1: that when facial recognition gives a match, doing actual police
Speaker 1: work and actual investigating to see if you have the
Speaker 1: right person before you arrest them and hold them for
Speaker 1: eleven hours, I said, actially if they're pregnant, but even
Speaker 1: if they're not that like, I think it might be
Speaker 1: a case where it's very easy to just rely on
Speaker 1: the technology because you have it and you can that
Speaker 1: cover of saying like this is why we arrested her,
Speaker 1: right like the City of Detroit is saying like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: in this case, her arrest was actually warranted because of
Speaker 1: the situation, because the facial recognition technology said it was her.
Speaker 1: The victim picked her up and up picked her out
Speaker 1: on a lineup of six. But you know, anybody who's
Speaker 1: ever done one of those police lineups knows how faulty
Speaker 1: those are too. So relying on two different faulty mechanisms
Speaker 1: facial recognition technology, which we know is faulty, and just
Speaker 1: a human being's ability to recognize faces at a moment
Speaker 1: that was probably like scary or traumatic. Just relying on
Speaker 1: those two things that are so faulty to lock somebody
Speaker 1: up for eleven hours is not enough. And so I agree,
Speaker 1: I think that we need to have clearly, we need
Speaker 1: to have protocols in place where this kind of thing
Speaker 1: doesn't happen, and that human investigators are doing work, which
Speaker 1: I know and nobody likes to do extra work, but
Speaker 1: that you can't just cut horners when it's people's lives
Speaker 1: like this, And it sounds like that's happened too many
Speaker 1: times in Detroit. But I think the fact that the
Speaker 1: powers that be are like, let's start using it first,
Speaker 1: make it commonplace first, and then the Kinks will reveal it.
Speaker 1: It seems like they're just saying that, like it's okay.
Speaker 1: The human cost, the human impact is just part of
Speaker 1: working at the Kinks. And if an eight month pregnant
Speaker 1: woman had to, you know, be dehydrated in a cell
Speaker 1: for an eleven hours, that's just the cost of getting
Speaker 1: on the road of perfectedness technology so that we can
Speaker 1: have a pitch perfect digital surveillance state. The whole thing
Speaker 1: is like a big castle role of awful when I
Speaker 1: think about it that way. So speaking of a big
Speaker 1: cast role of awful, let's talk about Linda Yakarino, new
Speaker 1: CEO question Mark of Twitter. She had her first big
Speaker 1: splashy Boss of Twitter televised interview this week. By the way,
Speaker 1: you may have realized that we're not calling it X,
Speaker 1: We're calling it Twitter. I am going to continue calling
Speaker 1: it Twitter. I think it will be funny if X
Speaker 1: doesn't take, and I'm doing my part to make sure
Speaker 1: that it does not, so we will continue to call
Speaker 1: it Twitter. I call Facebook Facebook for the most part.
Speaker 1: Every now and then, like if I'm reading a statement
Speaker 1: from the company, I'll slip into meta every now and then.
Speaker 1: But x's is not going to take. I'm not doing it.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing it.
Speaker 2: Are you doing it?
Speaker 3: I guess I'm trying, but it just feels so awkward
Speaker 3: that it feels weird every time I say X.
Speaker 1: So basically, as you reported, a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: Linda Yacanaro was made Twitter's new CEO. It was a
Speaker 1: weird situation because during that time Twitter had like very
Speaker 1: big moves, like they changed the name, they announced the payouts,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to later, all of these big changes,
Speaker 1: and these changes seem to be from the outside, just
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's whims, and then Yak and Arrow would have
Speaker 1: to sort of play catch up and like have a
Speaker 1: very enthusiastic thread of tweets about whatever random change they
Speaker 1: just made. It just did not seem like the behavior
Speaker 1: of someone who is the CEO of the company, which
Speaker 1: she supposedly is she often publicly anyway seemed to be
Speaker 1: like an afterthought, like she I remember the day that
Speaker 1: they announced the Twitter payouts, she posted like, oh, in
Speaker 1: order to be eligible for payouts, you have to have
Speaker 1: forty four million impressions a month or whatever, and then
Speaker 1: Elon Musk that same day said like, oh, well we're
Speaker 1: using internal metrics to determine who gets payouts. There's no
Speaker 1: way to know who gets what publicly. And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: then why did she just tweet? Literally is something else?
Speaker 1: Like why didn't you at least tell her that? So
Speaker 1: she didn't tweet that? And then have you say something
Speaker 1: totally different and then it's like, okay, well my tweets
Speaker 1: has a completely different thing. Get on the same page. Basically,
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is that it did not seem like
Speaker 1: CEO behavior to me publicly, and so I was sort
Speaker 1: of like happy to see that she was doing some
Speaker 1: kind of a public facing CEO ish interview. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about how it went. So you really don't need to
Speaker 1: watch the whole thing. There's really nothing too surprising that
Speaker 1: you need to see if you didn't watch it. Basically,
Speaker 1: Yack and Aro did a lot of spin around Twitter
Speaker 1: being a healthy place. It is very clear that she
Speaker 1: really wants brands to feel safe on the platform and
Speaker 1: come back. Many brands have left Twitter rightly so since
Speaker 1: Elon Musk took over, because they probably don't want to
Speaker 1: see their advertising next to like, you know, slurs or
Speaker 1: hate speech or child sexual abuse material. So a lot
Speaker 1: of brands left the platform and took their advertising revenue
Speaker 1: with them. Yack and Arrow was really excited to talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that too big brands State Farm and
Speaker 1: Coke have come back to the platform. Although funny enough
Speaker 1: Media Matters after this interview showed Coke and State Farm
Speaker 1: ads where it's like here here their ads are on
Speaker 1: the platform next to hate speech and harassment, like good job.
Speaker 1: And she really kept championing this idea of Twitter being
Speaker 1: a place force free expression like that was like she'd
Speaker 1: probably said that three different times in this interview. As
Speaker 1: someone who has done a little bit of work around
Speaker 1: platforms and sort of how people think about platforms, researchers
Speaker 1: think about platforms, something that she did that I really
Speaker 1: want to call out is that she repeated a lot
Speaker 1: of made up metrics that truly mean nothing, like truly
Speaker 1: are meaningless. She said, I can considantly sit in front
Speaker 1: of you and say that ninety nine point nine percent
Speaker 1: of all posted impressions are healthy. I don't know what
Speaker 1: that means. It's just it's like not a metric that
Speaker 1: any researcher would be like, Oh, sure, ninety nine point
Speaker 1: nine percent of all posted impressions are healthy. She just
Speaker 1: made that up, and it probably sounds good. It's probably
Speaker 1: something they're going to be using in their marketing to
Speaker 1: try to get brands back to the platform because it's
Speaker 1: it's very it's a very brand safe platform. If you
Speaker 1: didn't know, like lots of healthy discussion and free expression
Speaker 1: is taking place there. Coke and State Farm and other advertisers,
Speaker 1: please come back, We love you. There was this exchange
Speaker 1: that I feel like is a pretty good example of
Speaker 1: the kind of say nothing pr tech spen that I'm
Speaker 1: talking about.
Speaker 4: I can confidently sit in front of you and say
Speaker 4: that ninety nine zero point nine percent of how all
Speaker 4: posted impressions are healthy?
Speaker 2: How do you define health? Say? Though? Is porn healthy?
Speaker 2: Are conspiracy theories healthy? You know?
Speaker 4: It goes back to my point about our success with
Speaker 4: freedom of speech not reach, and if it's if it
Speaker 4: is lawful, but it's awful. It's extraordinarily difficult for you
Speaker 4: to see it. But how many millions of people follow
Speaker 4: Kanye West?
Speaker 2: Lawful but awful and he's allowed back on.
Speaker 4: You know, Kanye, who hasn't rejoined the platform yet but
Speaker 4: is planning to do so, will operate within the very
Speaker 4: specific policies that we have established that we're clear on
Speaker 4: that everyone who's watching this or listening on spaces can
Speaker 4: access themselves, and we have an extraordinary team of people
Speaker 4: who are overseeing, hands on keyboards, monitoring all day, every
Speaker 4: day to make sure that that ninety nine point nine
Speaker 4: to nine percent of impressions remain.
Speaker 2: At that number.
Speaker 4: But we also have to remember what's at the core
Speaker 4: of free expression. You might not agree with what everyone
Speaker 4: is saying. We want to make it a healthy debate
Speaker 4: and discourse, but free expression at its core will really
Speaker 4: really only survive when someone you don't agree with says
Speaker 4: something you don't agree with.
Speaker 1: I mean, so, what are you what are your takeaways
Speaker 1: on that? Bet?
Speaker 3: Oh, it was pretty empty. She used a lot of
Speaker 3: rhyming phrases.
Speaker 1: The business world to Johnny cochrane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, She was asked, how do you define that, and
Speaker 3: she responded, I think with another rhyme. At first she
Speaker 3: said ninety nine point nine percent of posts are healthy,
Speaker 3: which like, what does that mean that she says ninety
Speaker 3: nine point ninety nine percent, which further makes it seem
Speaker 3: like she's just making this number up. And it just
Speaker 3: sounded like very pr speech in a way that was
Speaker 3: like transparently, so like she wasn't even trying to make
Speaker 3: it seem like she was actually talking about these problems.
Speaker 3: She sees no problems. From her point of view. She
Speaker 3: is they have solved all the problems, and it's just
Speaker 3: all about free speech, which to her means anybody can
Speaker 3: say anything.
Speaker 1: So her obsession with free expression and open dialogue, healthy dialogue.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's really what we're talking about when
Speaker 1: we're talking about problems on platforms like Twitter. I don't
Speaker 1: think that anybody could say that they go on the
Speaker 1: platforms like Twitter and they only see takes they agree with.
Speaker 1: It's such a like false reality that like, oh, what
Speaker 1: people are upset about is that they're seeing takes that
Speaker 1: they don't agree with. But have you ever considered, dear user,
Speaker 1: that that it's free to have speech? It's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not really what people are upset about, Like me
Speaker 1: being called a slur is not on a pian that
Speaker 1: I don't agree with. Right, And here's an actual metric.
Speaker 1: According to Twitter's own API, usage of the N word
Speaker 1: on Twitter jump from about three hundred and ninety instances
Speaker 1: on October twenty sixth, twenty twenty two, before Elon took
Speaker 1: over to twenty seven thousand, seven hundred and six on
Speaker 1: November fifth, twenty twenty two, after Elon took over. So
Speaker 1: that is an actual, tangible, specific metric. And that's what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. If there are about thirty thousand people
Speaker 1: calling me a slur on the platform, that is not
Speaker 1: thirty thousand takes that I happen to not agree with.
Speaker 1: That is not discourse, That is not free expression. And
Speaker 1: so she's doing this very tricky rhetorical thing where she's
Speaker 1: making it seem like people's complaints and concerns about the
Speaker 1: way Twitter is being moderated now is grounded from a
Speaker 1: place of not wanting to see opinions they don't agree with.
Speaker 1: Who owns any social media platform, ever, is only engaging
Speaker 1: with or seeing opinions they say they agree with. That's
Speaker 1: not what people are saying, and it's like this insistence
Speaker 1: on digging into this false, self serving reality. Really it's
Speaker 1: just so obvious. I also think like the person interviewing
Speaker 1: her in this clip really did a good job of
Speaker 1: kind of trying to hold her accountable a little bit
Speaker 1: for some of the things that she was saying, like
Speaker 1: saying like, oh, we are going to be focusing on
Speaker 1: healthy speech on the platform. Kanye West tweeted a literal
Speaker 1: swastika and got his platform back, and so she's saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: he's going to be operating under specific rules. First of all,
Speaker 1: Kanye Kanye West is probably not doing anything that you
Speaker 1: expect him to be doing at this point. We all,
Speaker 1: it's all clear. What she's actually saying is that he
Speaker 1: will not be eligible for the revenue sharing model and
Speaker 1: that advertising won't be next to his tweets. But he
Speaker 1: still has millions and millions and millions of followers. He
Speaker 1: has more followers than there are Jewish people worldwide. And
Speaker 1: so you're gonna tell me that when he tweets a
Speaker 1: swastika it's no big deal, because oh, don't worry, he's
Speaker 1: not going to it's not gonna be add sex to
Speaker 1: that like she speaks like somebody for whom the only
Speaker 1: thing she can think about. The only measure of success
Speaker 1: of this huge, important platform is whether or not brands
Speaker 1: are there, and that Kanye West using his millions of
Speaker 1: followers to tweet anti Semitic garbage is only a problem
Speaker 1: inso much as it affects advertising. There's no other reason
Speaker 1: why one would have a problem with that.
Speaker 3: The only other reasons that she articulates to you know,
Speaker 3: care about content moderation policies is to ensure that free
Speaker 3: speech is protected, like by her telling you know, we
Speaker 3: should welcome the opportunity to see swastikas and hate speech
Speaker 3: and slurs, right because it's like a difference of opinion,
Speaker 3: and that's valuable in itself, which which is just wrong, right,
Speaker 3: Like we we don't want that need to be rules
Speaker 3: for discourse in polite society, and hate speech has no
Speaker 3: place there.
Speaker 1: But then stepping back about her saying like, oh, we
Speaker 1: want to foster healthy engagement and healthy dialogue on the platform.
Speaker 1: Ever since Twitter announced these payouts, which we have a
Speaker 1: big update about that for you at the end of
Speaker 1: the show. But the platform has just gotten it's gone
Speaker 1: from you know that you don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with the expression it's gone from worse
Speaker 1: to worser, if anything, like it's gone from from worse
Speaker 1: to worser, if anything, it is. I have definitely seen
Speaker 1: an uptick in more accounts rage baiting and clickbaiting and
Speaker 1: outrage baiting because there is now a financial incentive to
Speaker 1: do so. You might not even ever get that check, hint, hint.
Speaker 1: But now that that that has been financially incentivized, I
Speaker 1: have seen more and more people give more and more
Speaker 1: asinine tweets that are just clearly meant to anger you
Speaker 1: into engaging because they think that it is financially incentivized. Like,
Speaker 1: there was this account earlier this week that like posted
Speaker 1: a picture of a woman who runs a coffee truck
Speaker 1: in Vancouver, and she made a cute TikTok where she's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I make my coffee and I like, I'm really polite
Speaker 1: to everybody. And this guy, I guess, just because he
Speaker 1: didn't happen to find this woman like attractive, personally took
Speaker 1: her TikTok from TikTok, posted it on Twitter with like
Speaker 1: a mean comment, and the only thing this woman had
Speaker 1: done wrong was just like exists and like happened to
Speaker 1: put her existence on Twitter. And so it's like these
Speaker 1: kinds of things that are that are kind of relying
Speaker 1: on people like me replying and being like that's awful,
Speaker 1: how dare you like blah blah blah because they think
Speaker 1: it will put money in their pocket. I saw this,
Speaker 1: like pretty well known right wing grifter doing that thing
Speaker 1: where he posted an image of a really sexy looking
Speaker 1: woman dressed in a UPS uniform and he tweeted it
Speaker 1: with the caption, you get a package and she's your
Speaker 1: delivery driver? What are you saying to her? And it's
Speaker 1: like just the lowest of the lowest quality engagement bait
Speaker 1: of like that you see on like your MEM's Facebook page.
Speaker 1: That I mean, that is not healthier discourse. That's not
Speaker 1: better discourse. People being incentivized to have the worst or
Speaker 1: most obnoxious takes that they can to get people to
Speaker 1: engage with them so they can put money in their
Speaker 1: pocket is not making anybody's discourse healthier. It's just making
Speaker 1: us all more annoyed, myself specifically.
Speaker 2: More After a.
Speaker 5: Quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: Linda Yakarvino's Big first public interview as Twitter CEO was
Speaker 1: happening against kind of a weird backdrop. I have to
Speaker 1: give a little bit of a heads up for child
Speaker 1: abuse on this one, because the day before her big interview,
Speaker 1: Nick Pickles, who is the head of Global Government Affairs
Speaker 1: at Twitter, was grilled by the Australian Parliament about why
Speaker 1: Twitter restored the account of someone who shared a still
Speaker 1: from childhood sexual abuse material. Remember that Elon Musk touted
Speaker 1: how he was going to crack down on childhood sexual
Speaker 1: abuse material on the platform and was like bolstering this
Speaker 1: zero tolerance policy, and then he actually criticized Twitter's Twitter's
Speaker 1: former leadership as being too busy censoring conservatives and speech
Speaker 1: to care about protecting children online. Well, now it sounds
Speaker 1: like the new policy is kind of like hmm, depends
Speaker 1: on the vibe. So a right wing social media influence.
Speaker 1: Dominic McGee who goes by dom Luker, who has over
Speaker 1: a half a million followers on the platform and it's
Speaker 1: big into Cubanon posted an image from a well known
Speaker 1: child sexual abuse material video. He said that he posted
Speaker 1: these images to spread awareness about child trafficking. The still
Speaker 1: is from a video that is known to investigators. It's
Speaker 1: actually the specific video that led to the arrest of
Speaker 1: Josh Dugger from the show nineteen Kids in Counting. The
Speaker 1: Washington Post reports that when this image was posted to Twitter,
Speaker 1: it got more than three million views and eight thousand retweets,
Speaker 1: and when he posted it to Twitter, he watermarked the image,
Speaker 1: which I feel like is a special kind of like
Speaker 1: you gotta be a real creep to do something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Nick Pickles, the head of Global Government Affairs at Twitter,
Speaker 1: basically said that he felt the person that shared that
Speaker 1: image did so because he was outraged by the image, which, again,
Speaker 1: that is not a zero to Laban's policy, right, That's
Speaker 1: not what a zero tolerance policy is. Pickles testified, quote,
Speaker 1: one of the challenges we see is, for example, people
Speaker 1: sharing this content out of outrage because they want to
Speaker 1: raise awareness of an issue and see something in the media.
Speaker 1: So I guess I'll if you put like a sad
Speaker 1: face emog next to it, or like you're like this,
Speaker 1: like hate this, then like it's okay. You know, there
Speaker 1: is nothing in Twitter's terms of services says it's okay
Speaker 1: to share child sexual abuse material if the user is
Speaker 1: doing it because they're outraged or looking to quote raise awareness.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: The policy says viewing, sharing, or linking to child sexual
Speaker 1: exploitation material contributes to the revictimization of the depicted child,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the platform's most serious violations. And
Speaker 1: it's just beyond obvious that, regardless of anybody's intent, nobody
Speaker 1: should be sharing that kind of material ever, point blank,
Speaker 1: full stop, end of sentence. And it really kind of
Speaker 1: goes back to something that came up in our interview
Speaker 1: with mind Miles Klee two weeks ago, the author of
Speaker 1: that Rolling Stone article about the trafficking movie Sound of Freedom,
Speaker 1: where so much is done to quote raise awareness, like,
Speaker 1: oh well, even if it's even if it's upsets you,
Speaker 1: it raises awareness and that's okay, And it's like, no, actually,
Speaker 1: it revictimizes the person depicted in this harmful image, and
Speaker 1: it has no place. It's not discourse, it has no
Speaker 1: place in place society.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and raises awareness towards what end. Like the field
Speaker 3: of public health is littered with failed awareness campaigns that
Speaker 3: did successfully raise awareness of something but achieved zero impact
Speaker 3: in like reducing the harm of it or reducing the
Speaker 3: scope of how many people it affected. So like, how
Speaker 3: does it help anyone to raise awareness of the specifics
Speaker 3: of an image of childhood sexual abuse material. It just
Speaker 3: reinforces the idea that the people who are like deep
Speaker 3: down this rabbit hole of like fixation on trafficking, Like
Speaker 3: it just feels like a lot of them just kind
Speaker 3: of like it, right, Like it's like a smoke screen
Speaker 3: to share stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that came up in that mild Cley interview as well,
Speaker 1: that like that film is like very gratuitous, and so
Speaker 1: all these people who are like, we are trying to
Speaker 1: raise awareness about trafficking are also like watching a movie
Speaker 1: that kind of like has a gratuitous depiction of it.
Speaker 1: And so it's like, well, you're kind of consuming the
Speaker 1: thing with which you are saying repulses you in a
Speaker 1: way that is like very weird. And you know, this
Speaker 1: idea of raising awareness. I don't think that people need
Speaker 1: to see an image from childhood sexual abuse material to
Speaker 1: know that that is wrong and that is bad. I
Speaker 1: truly don't think people to see that to have their aware.
Speaker 1: I think that most people already know it's wrong and horrible.
Speaker 1: I don't think that that image really helps change anybody's mind,
Speaker 1: and in that interview with Linda Yakerino. I do think that,
Speaker 1: you know, the way that the tenor of that interview
Speaker 1: seem to me that folks are interested in asking pointed
Speaker 1: questions to get at what the truth is because they
Speaker 1: understand that this platform is so important to our discourse.
Speaker 1: And I think kind of in the same way that
Speaker 1: the tide is sort of turning around how we respond
Speaker 1: to big tech companies who want to be using us
Speaker 1: and everything we do online to train their AI. I
Speaker 1: think that we're kind of seeing folks turn on Musk
Speaker 1: and the people in his orbit as well. Casey Newton
Speaker 1: published a piece over at platform Or called It's time
Speaker 1: to change how we cover Elon Musk. In it, he
Speaker 1: breaks down Musks many many, many many lies and calls
Speaker 1: for a shift and how journalists cover him kind of
Speaker 1: not totally dissimilar to Trump, Like how do you cover
Speaker 1: someone who lies so much? I mostly agree with the
Speaker 1: substance of the piece. I have a couple of big quibbles.
Speaker 1: One is that Newton says that in business reporting, it
Speaker 1: is generally commonplace to take CEOs at their word and
Speaker 1: like not assume that they're just lying, bold faced lying
Speaker 1: to you. I would really push back on that. I
Speaker 1: would say, like, yeah, if you're lazy, Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: like can't imagine a CEO ever lying or distorting the truth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you are caught up in the fact that this
Speaker 1: person has power and a company and money and access
Speaker 1: and privilege, and therefore us are bought into this idea
Speaker 1: that they are smart and worthy and valid and upstanding. Sure, maybe,
Speaker 1: but I think that for the most part, I don't
Speaker 1: when I'm if I'm talking to a CEO, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna assume that CEO is automatically telling me the truth.
Speaker 1: And it's also worth noting who, like which specific journalists
Speaker 1: take hucksters and liars like Elon Musk at their word,
Speaker 1: because I sure didn't right to cover Musk without mentioning
Speaker 1: his deep history of lies, his embrace, his open embrace
Speaker 1: of things like white supremacist talking points and eugenesis talking points,
Speaker 1: failing to pay his bills, fostering workplaces that foster sexism
Speaker 1: and racial mistreatment, cracking down on journalists and freedom of speech, etc. Etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: Like union busting, like blaytant transphobia, all of that, choosing
Speaker 1: that those things are not part of the story and
Speaker 1: choosing to not to not include the men stories is
Speaker 1: a choice. It is not being objective, it is not
Speaker 1: being unbiased. It is a choice. And I do think
Speaker 1: that the tech press has spent a long time really
Speaker 1: not including these things that I believe are so at
Speaker 1: the core of who Elon Musk is, not just as
Speaker 1: a person, but as a leader as well, and they
Speaker 1: basically helped him rise to power. They helped give him
Speaker 1: this reputation as a brilliant genius who you know, is
Speaker 1: playing three dimensional chests, who is so brilliant we could
Speaker 1: never fully understand the moves that he's making because he's
Speaker 1: just too smart, when in reality he's actually just like
Speaker 1: a wealthy manchild born on third base who thinks he
Speaker 1: hit a home run, right Like. I think that a
Speaker 1: lot of tech folks got really invested in this idea
Speaker 1: of who Musk was telling them. By the time they
Speaker 1: opened their eyes to who Musk actually is and who
Speaker 1: he has been for a really long time, and who
Speaker 1: he has made clear time and time again who he is,
Speaker 1: I think they were like, oh wait, I have spent
Speaker 1: a long time not asking these questions, and so you know,
Speaker 1: I'm glad folks are getting there I do think the
Speaker 1: tide is turning a little bit. I think that like
Speaker 1: the fact that this this big first interview of the
Speaker 1: new CEO wasn't just a cushy you know, Q and
Speaker 1: a about her rise to power whatever, but it was
Speaker 1: like real questions of substance about this platform that is
Speaker 1: so important to all of our lives and our democracy.
Speaker 1: I think it's it illustrates that, like the tide is
Speaker 1: turning a little bit. And I guess I would just
Speaker 1: say this that if we are reaching a point where
Speaker 1: folks are more apt to be calling out Musk for
Speaker 1: who he is, I hope that when the next tech
Speaker 1: leader comes along selling us a lie and a dream
Speaker 1: or snake oil or giving us harm and a package,
Speaker 1: is that they've wrapped up and said it's good for
Speaker 1: us that we are not so quick to launder that
Speaker 1: that people with power and platforms really do the work
Speaker 1: of asking the question of like, who is this person really?
Speaker 1: Not not who are they saying they are? Or who
Speaker 1: would it be nice if they were? Who are they really?
Speaker 3: It's a good plan. I hope we do that. I
Speaker 3: don't know. I'm a little skeptical. I think we have
Speaker 3: got a long history of just really wanting to embrace
Speaker 3: hucksters and not just willingly but enthusiastically get behind the
Speaker 3: con that they're selling, because it's almost like a like
Speaker 3: a rising tide lifts all boats, like a self serving
Speaker 3: con serves everybody who gets behind it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, until it doesn't, until it's revealed as a con.
Speaker 1: And like if your folks in Trump world, you start
Speaker 1: going to.
Speaker 3: Jail, right, yeah, right, until it does it.
Speaker 1: Okay. So one last thing, speaking of Elon's lives, one
Speaker 1: big update that we promised y'all is on those Twitter payouts.
Speaker 1: You might recall that Twitter promised they were going to
Speaker 1: start paying out on their ad revenue sharing program to
Speaker 1: people who drove AD dollars on the platform. People were
Speaker 1: posting screenshots of like thousands and thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars and they were meant to be getting from Twitter.
Speaker 1: And I was skeptical, We'll say that's the word I'll use.
Speaker 1: I was skeptical because Elon, much like Cheat Whitfield from
Speaker 1: Real Housewives of Atlanta, who's sometimes known as Charay, she
Speaker 1: don't pay. Elon Musk does not pay his bills, just
Speaker 1: like sorry what Field.
Speaker 3: Well, comparing Elon to charat.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of questions from both of them,
Speaker 1: and most of them are like, did you are you
Speaker 1: gonna pay not to go? Don't get me on a
Speaker 1: Housewives tangent, but no, this is.
Speaker 3: Why people tune into you because you can take the
Speaker 3: you know, the complicated digital things going on in the
Speaker 3: news and put them in terms that people understand.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is the Charae whitfield of technology. I'll stand
Speaker 1: by that.
Speaker 3: You know, just like before you you were going through
Speaker 3: all of the things that he has done openly, repeatedly
Speaker 3: that journalists ignore when they cover him. Uh, and a
Speaker 3: lot of them, it's like, okay, you know, fostering a
Speaker 3: sexist and racist workplace. I can see how his people
Speaker 3: would be cool with that, but it really truly surprises
Speaker 3: me the extent to which people on the right seem
Speaker 3: totally fine with their like cult leaders, personality leaders just
Speaker 3: not paying their bills. I really would have thought that
Speaker 3: that would be more of a problem for people on
Speaker 3: the right who were like the Party of like personal responsibility.
Speaker 3: According to them, it's not true, or like fiscal responsibility
Speaker 3: also not true. I guess it's all just like not true.
Speaker 3: But like these heroes who just openly don't pay their bills.
Speaker 3: It's surprising, it's so interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have a new philosophy on this where
Speaker 1: it is not fruitful to point out hypocrisy with some
Speaker 1: of these folks of like, well, if I was like
Speaker 1: a young person who was drowning in student loan debt,
Speaker 1: you would be like, pay your bills, You should pay
Speaker 1: your bills, personal responsibility, YadA, YadA, YadA. If I'm a
Speaker 1: billionaire and I have lots of money, but I don't
Speaker 1: pay my bills, it's like, oh, what an innovative strategy
Speaker 1: to cut down on costs squatting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, somebody said it a while ago that their goal
Speaker 3: is a you know, they want the freedom to do
Speaker 3: what they want to do and also the freedom to
Speaker 3: tell you what to do.
Speaker 1: It's just exactly.
Speaker 3: Completely completely hypocritical, and it does nothing to point it out.
Speaker 3: And maybe Elon and Yagorino have already figured that out,
Speaker 3: and maybe they are ahead of us in their vision
Speaker 3: of an open discourse where uh, you know, there is
Speaker 3: no point in actually talking about inconsistencies and ideas or anything.
Speaker 3: It's just like free speech is just people yelling slurs
Speaker 3: at each other.
Speaker 1: Well, why do you need to talk about things like
Speaker 1: inconsistencies or accountability when you've got a little thing that rhymes.
Speaker 1: You've got any but you've been practicing a little rhyme
Speaker 1: in the Mirror'll that'll get them?
Speaker 3: She had two things at rhyme.
Speaker 1: I'm like trying to talk to you and also rack
Speaker 1: my brain to come up with like a little rhyme.
Speaker 3: Like if you could have come up with a little rhyme,
Speaker 3: it would double our listeners.
Speaker 1: Okay, Lydia, give me a second. When Linda talks about
Speaker 1: the tweets, there are very few deats.
Speaker 3: Oh that's good.
Speaker 1: That's the best I can do on short notice. If
Speaker 1: anybody has a good rhyme out there, tell it. Tell
Speaker 1: it to me. I'm going to like memorize it and
Speaker 1: then drop it on the show as if I just
Speaker 1: came up with it, and then I will not give
Speaker 1: you credit. So that's help the homework. If that sounds
Speaker 1: appealing to you, let me know. Okay, So back to Chara,
Speaker 1: I mean elon so. On August fourth, Twitter put out
Speaker 1: a statement saying, quote, the volume of people signing up
Speaker 1: for revenue sharing has exceeded our expectations. We previously said
Speaker 1: that payments would occur the week of July thirty. First,
Speaker 1: we need a bit more time to review everything for
Speaker 1: the next payout and hope to get all eligible accounts
Speaker 1: paid as soon as possible. So basically, like the last time,
Speaker 1: they were like within seventy two hours, it was like
Speaker 1: a very specific time frame, and now they're like, look,
Speaker 1: I ain't got it, So do you want me to
Speaker 1: say you're time.
Speaker 3: We're gonna pay you as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: Listen, I am very familiar with the language of somebody
Speaker 1: who like owes money but they don't have it, So
Speaker 1: like I definitely recognize this, Like, oh, what he needs
Speaker 1: to say is like come up with some sort of
Speaker 1: convoluted story, convoluted but detailed story of like, well, so
Speaker 1: I was going out to put the checks in the mail,
Speaker 1: and I remember because it was raining and so I
Speaker 1: had to get my coat. And when I went out
Speaker 1: to get my coat, I realized, you got to come
Speaker 1: up with some sort of like convoluted, detailed story. Don't
Speaker 1: just be like mmm, it's taking and I love how
Speaker 1: it's like because so many people were interested in this
Speaker 1: like program, so many of you loved it and could
Speaker 1: see that it was lucrative and worth your time. Now
Speaker 1: because of all of that interest, you know what, Holy shit,
Speaker 1: that's exactly See what Charay said about why her She
Speaker 1: Buy Charret website didn't work. She was like, too many
Speaker 1: people were interested in it, and it crashed the website.
Speaker 1: So when you went to her website, when she launched
Speaker 1: her line, her website didn't work. And everybody on the
Speaker 1: show was like, you know, took you all this time
Speaker 1: to launch this brand and your website doesn't work, And
Speaker 1: she was like, oh well, there was so much interest
Speaker 1: it crashed. It's actually a good thing. There's this I'm
Speaker 1: gonna this is this comparison is apt. This comparison is apt.
Speaker 3: X bite Elon Yes, like.
Speaker 1: I would I see a charae Elon Musk collab in
Speaker 1: the future. So if you are owed money from Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: the check's not in the mail. Basically, you're not getting it.
Speaker 1: Just like I said, I knew it. I knew he
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna pay all. It sounds like he did pay
Speaker 1: out like a select handful of right wing influencers, but
Speaker 1: did not pay the vast majority of them. I think
Speaker 1: that he's thinking that people will see these big numbers
Speaker 1: and be like I'm gonna join, but there's the pot
Speaker 1: of money is like empty. Just today this week they
Speaker 1: were selling off not just old Twitter memorabilia with birds
Speaker 1: on it, but also couches and stuff, so like not
Speaker 1: just now off brand stuff, all their furniture. That is
Speaker 1: not the behavior of somebody who has this big pot
Speaker 1: of money to pay people out. Yeah. So if he
Speaker 1: owes you money, I don't know, don't bank on it.
Speaker 1: This is not the behavior of somebody who has the
Speaker 1: money to pay.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Their whole thing is that they like don't have
Speaker 3: any money. They're leveraged up to their eyeballs. They're losing
Speaker 3: all their advertisers and revenue. Yeah, paying out a bunch
Speaker 3: of people doesn't really help that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I will say, at least Charet Whitfield, when
Speaker 1: like push comes to shove, you can like back her
Speaker 1: into a corner. She will pay. It takes some work,
Speaker 1: but she'll pay eventually. Elon Musk comes on a thing
Speaker 1: or two about about life from Surey Whitfield.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm still waiting for those ex joggers.
Speaker 1: Joggers, we're doing joggers. People who don't watch househongs are
Speaker 1: like what the hell are you talking about? I also
Speaker 1: have a little bit more to say, specifically about the
Speaker 1: tory Lands trial for shooting Megna Stallion on how disinformation
Speaker 1: played a role on that. Do you want to hear that?
Speaker 1: You can find it on Patreon at patreon dot com,
Speaker 1: slash tangoty, where you can get ad free content and
Speaker 1: support the show. Mike, thank you so much for riunning
Speaker 1: down these stories with me. As always, thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for ways to support the show, check
Speaker 1: out our March store at tenggodi dot com slash Store.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi, You can reach us at
Speaker 1: Hello at tengody dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
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