Speaker 1: So this week Elon Musk announced what he was calling
Speaker 1: the Twitter Files, where he gave internal Twitter documents and
Speaker 1: emails to journalist Matt Taiebee and op ed author Barry
Speaker 1: Weis to supposedly drop some bombshells into Twitter's content moderation
Speaker 1: policies before he took over the helm. But the whole
Speaker 1: thing was pretty underwhelming, and on my other podcast there
Speaker 1: Are No Girls on the Internet, I broke down all
Speaker 1: the reasons why I felt like the whole thing was
Speaker 1: just a big stunt, and I wanted to share it
Speaker 1: here with Internet hate machine listeners too. I should add
Speaker 1: that Musk has teased that more of these jobs are
Speaker 1: to come, so we shall see if anything more substitutive
Speaker 1: ends up being revealed. There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: As a production of My Heart Radio and unbost Creative,
Speaker 1: I'm Bridget Todd and this is there Are No Girls
Speaker 1: on the Internet. So it has been a wild couple
Speaker 1: of weeks at Twitter since Elon Musk took over, and
Speaker 1: to talk through all of it, I'm joined with my
Speaker 1: producer Michael Almado. Mike, thanks for being here, Bridget, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me back. What is a pleasure So This
Speaker 1: might come as a surprise to you. I try pretty
Speaker 1: hard not to talk about Elon Musk too much on
Speaker 1: the podcast, uh, from being in meetings and calls and
Speaker 1: stuff with you to make the show. That's probably surprising
Speaker 1: to you because I know that you know, I have
Speaker 1: a lot of feelings and thoughts and opinions about Elon Musk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's pretty hard to avoid these days. It's true, and
Speaker 1: I guess I feel, you know, when making the show.
Speaker 1: The reason why I try to limit how much I
Speaker 1: talk about him is because I just don't think it's
Speaker 1: really helpful to report on or respond to every little
Speaker 1: thing that someone who clearly wants attention says or does.
Speaker 1: I feel like I learned this the hard way. When
Speaker 1: Musk was first talking about buying Twitter, you and I
Speaker 1: rushed to put out an emergency episode. We stopped what
Speaker 1: we were doing. It was like a stop the press moment.
Speaker 1: And you know, after that episode ran, I think it
Speaker 1: was like months and months and months and months and
Speaker 1: months until he actually bought Twitter. And during that time,
Speaker 1: it will be like he would say, oh, the deal
Speaker 1: is off, and everybody would rush to report on it
Speaker 1: and respond, and then it would be like Oh, the
Speaker 1: deal's back on, and everyone would rush to report on
Speaker 1: that and respond. And I think it's a strategy that
Speaker 1: people like Musk employ that allows for them to set
Speaker 1: the tone. And it's just I don't think that being reactive,
Speaker 1: always reacting to the things that they say, every little
Speaker 1: move they make, is the most helpful mode to be
Speaker 1: in because I think ultimately it really serves them in
Speaker 1: setting the agenda and capturing attention, which is clearly something
Speaker 1: they want. Yeah, I think it's a useful strategy for
Speaker 1: people like him and like Trump. Uh. And I think
Speaker 1: also it's a useful strategy that just happens to align
Speaker 1: with their own personal UH needs to constantly be the
Speaker 1: center of attention and to constantly control the narrative and
Speaker 1: have people, you know, jumping and reacting to what they
Speaker 1: say to fill that void where other people feel love. Yikes,
Speaker 1: just coming at the gate with a one to punch
Speaker 1: on Musk's inability to feel love. Okay, Wow, damn, we're
Speaker 1: off to a good start off to the races. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that wasn't my intention that. It's just it's it's been
Speaker 1: a real evolution for me the last couple of weeks
Speaker 1: about him, But that's that's not what this episode is about.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to distract. I mean it might be
Speaker 1: a little bit right. And so again I try really
Speaker 1: hard to to avoid just reacting to things that that
Speaker 1: is little stunts, because people who pull stunts, they want
Speaker 1: you to react, they want you to respond. But this
Speaker 1: past weekend something happened that really felt like a direct
Speaker 1: hit to my work and a direct direct kind of
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, um, if you watch Housewives,
Speaker 1: when Kenya Moore says, don't come from me unless I
Speaker 1: send for you, I feel sent for as Kenya Moore
Speaker 1: would say, And he brought up something that I actually
Speaker 1: have quite a bit of personal experience on and I
Speaker 1: felt kind of compelled to talk about on this podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know you do have a lot of experience in
Speaker 1: this area, and you don't talk about it on the
Speaker 1: show much. And so the fact that you, I think,
Speaker 1: felt so compelled to say something about it really speaks
Speaker 1: to that that feeling of being called so you know,
Speaker 1: speak it. Let's here. So what's going on? Well, this
Speaker 1: past weekend, Elon Musk tweeted that he'd given internal Twitter
Speaker 1: documents to journalists, Matt Taibi, calling it the Twitter files.
Speaker 1: To be clear, that's what Elon Musk is like branding
Speaker 1: it as I'm not going to be calling it that
Speaker 1: because I'm not going to be just you know, doing
Speaker 1: his work for him and running with this little branded
Speaker 1: thing that he's trying to make happen for him. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's what he is calling it. He was very
Speaker 1: excited about this. He was t sing it all weekend.
Speaker 1: He tweeted, what really happened with the Hunter Biden story?
Speaker 1: Suppression by Twitter will be published on Twitter at five pm.
Speaker 1: This will be awesome popcorn emoji, right, And so this
Speaker 1: is someone who is really drumming up excitement about something
Speaker 1: they think is going to be big. He finally got
Speaker 1: the opportunity to come up with his own nickname, and
Speaker 1: he's so excited for everybody to hear about it. You
Speaker 1: can just tell how excited this dude is to be
Speaker 1: trying to make this happen, Like he's trying to make
Speaker 1: that ch happen. He is all in this is this
Speaker 1: is his thing. So to to talk about what's in
Speaker 1: this report, let's back up a little bit. The report
Speaker 1: appeared to show intertal debate at Twitter about how the
Speaker 1: platform should handle the content of a report on the
Speaker 1: laptop that was alleged to belong to President Biden's son,
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden, that was reported initially by The New York Post.
Speaker 1: You probably recall this story if you were in the
Speaker 1: United States and paying attention to domestic politics on the
Speaker 1: presidential election. Um, Hunter Biden has dealt with addiction issues,
Speaker 1: and this laptop purported to show evidence of all this
Speaker 1: unseemly behavior on the part of President Biden's sun Hunter,
Speaker 1: I should say, and it's not clear to me how
Speaker 1: this laptop was obtained if it was actually Hunter Biden's laptop,
Speaker 1: and thus there was a lot of confusion around how
Speaker 1: folks could you know, responsibly report on it or talk
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, that's I remember that obviously. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I I feel compelled to remind everybody that the reason
Speaker 1: we know about this Hunter Biden laptop story, which you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it was this laptop, maybe not, we don't really know.
Speaker 1: You know, I did some research ahead of this show,
Speaker 1: and like it's basically unverifiable. Uh, But the reason that
Speaker 1: we know about it is because a concerned citizen brought
Speaker 1: it to Rudy Giuliani, right, And I think that says
Speaker 1: a lot if you think about the source of the
Speaker 1: information being Rudy Giuliani. Earlier this morning, he was at
Speaker 1: a hearing here in d C before the bar uh
Speaker 1: phasing possible disbardment for his frivolous, ridiculous actions in the
Speaker 1: contesting election, and his defense there was that he didn't
Speaker 1: have the time to verify that the what he was
Speaker 1: failing to court was accurate. And so if he's not gonna,
Speaker 1: if he doesn't have the time to verify his legal briefings,
Speaker 1: what are we to make of his everything else in
Speaker 1: his life. I don't know. I'll just leave it there.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to make the story about that, But
Speaker 1: anything even connected to Rudy Giuliani, let alone originating with
Speaker 1: Rudy Giuliantti, I feel it needs to be taken with
Speaker 1: a pretty big grain assault. Are you trying to suggest
Speaker 1: that when Rudy Giuliani is I'm a mix on something
Speaker 1: is in the mix on something that it's not on
Speaker 1: the up and up. If he's in the mix, God
Speaker 1: help everyone. So you can sort of get an idea
Speaker 1: as to like why there was a lot of skepticism
Speaker 1: and confusion early on around this Hunter Biden laptop story,
Speaker 1: and that confusion very much extended to social media platforms
Speaker 1: like Twitter. Twitter staff independently decided to block posts about
Speaker 1: the Hunter Biden laptop story and prevented people from sharing
Speaker 1: the New York Post story in d MS, citing that
Speaker 1: the content fell under its hacked Materials policy because at
Speaker 1: the time, the thinking was that the content of the
Speaker 1: laptop had been obtained through hacking. This decision was made
Speaker 1: after a lot of internal debate at Twitter. Uh Tybe's
Speaker 1: report shows a lot of back and forth internally at
Speaker 1: Twitter about how to moderate tweets about this Hunter Biden
Speaker 1: laptop story. Trent and Kidnedy, a Twitter communications official, wrote
Speaker 1: an email, I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for
Speaker 1: making for marking this as unsafe. H Kennedy advised that
Speaker 1: the company should say that it is waiting to understand
Speaker 1: whether the New York Post story was the result of
Speaker 1: hacked material. I have to say, Twitter, it sounds like
Speaker 1: they really aired on the side of caution here. Um,
Speaker 1: you remember that White House spokesperson Kayleie McKinney her Twitter
Speaker 1: account was locked for sharing a tweet with the laptop
Speaker 1: story in it. Um, Twitter took a lot of heat
Speaker 1: about this with conservatives who said that this was evidence
Speaker 1: that Twitter and big tech in general was biased against
Speaker 1: them as conservatives. Uh. Then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey spoke
Speaker 1: about the backlash publicly saying, we made a quick interpretation,
Speaker 1: using no other evidence, that the material in the article
Speaker 1: were obtained through hacking, and according to our policy, we
Speaker 1: blocked them from being spread. Upon further consideration, we admitted
Speaker 1: this action was wrong and corrected it within twenty four hours. Um.
Speaker 1: And so again you really see this sort of messy
Speaker 1: nitty gritty of this company having to decide in real
Speaker 1: time how they were going to moderate this story that
Speaker 1: they could not verify and didn't know its origins, and
Speaker 1: at a time when everybody was was felt the same way,
Speaker 1: like they were not alone in that thinking. So I
Speaker 1: guess the question might be like, was this the right call?
Speaker 1: I honestly could not tell you. This is like way
Speaker 1: above I pay grade. But I do think that reasonable
Speaker 1: people could and do disagree with whether or not Twitter
Speaker 1: should have allowed that report about the laptop to be
Speaker 1: on the platform. But I will say that it seems
Speaker 1: like fairly new ground for a platform to have to
Speaker 1: sort out, you know, this kind of situation that is
Speaker 1: so potentially sensitive. Right, so I can understand why there
Speaker 1: was some debate about it. I can understand why folks
Speaker 1: internally disagreed, why folks externally disagreed. It's really kind of
Speaker 1: new territory for a platform to have to sort out.
Speaker 1: And the emails really reflect that that there was a
Speaker 1: lot of what seems like healthy discourse about how they
Speaker 1: should best proceed. Right, So there's two different things. Right.
Speaker 1: You can disagree with the conclusion that they came to
Speaker 1: to moderate the content, which maybe that was the right decision,
Speaker 1: maybe not, depending on your point of view, but to
Speaker 1: take some time and like have a discussion about whether
Speaker 1: it should be moderated, Like, there can be absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with that, right, Like they had a discussion about it.
Speaker 1: Just the act of discussing it is not, in itself
Speaker 1: anything nefarious, and to eat to suggest that it is
Speaker 1: is really disingenuous. Well, enter the big Elon Musk bombshell
Speaker 1: that he dropped. It's gonna change, It's going to change everything.
Speaker 1: Nothing will ever be the same. So get this. So
Speaker 1: get this. If you're driving, pull over because it's gonna
Speaker 1: be it's gonna blow your mind. I don't want I
Speaker 1: want you to be safe. Before Joe Biden was elected,
Speaker 1: his campaign staff flagged tweets containing sexually explicit images of
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden for the Twitter staff, and those tweets were removed.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, cancel the constitution. That's it. It
Speaker 1: America is over. So in an email from a Twitter
Speaker 1: employee from it included six links to tweets and the
Speaker 1: line more to review from the Biden team, the employee wrote,
Speaker 1: Another Twitter worker replied handled these. Interestingly enough, Tibe's reporting
Speaker 1: did not show the Biden team contacting Twitter over the
Speaker 1: initial reporting about the laptop. It was the tweets containing
Speaker 1: sexually explicit photos that they were raising an objection over.
Speaker 1: So when the first New York Post story dropped with
Speaker 1: a laptop, Biden's team did not reach out. It was
Speaker 1: the images with Hunter Biden, you know, nude, that they
Speaker 1: were objecting to. Tybe shared five tweets that that the
Speaker 1: Biden campaign flagged. Four of those still have archives available online,
Speaker 1: and they did include nude images of Hunter Biden. So
Speaker 1: these images were already pretty clearly in violation of Twitter's
Speaker 1: rules around non consensual explicit images, which specifically prohibits sharing
Speaker 1: images or video that are taken in an intimate setting
Speaker 1: and not intended for public distribution. Not to mention, state
Speaker 1: law in California, where Twitter is based, all so outlaws
Speaker 1: sharing non consensual explicit images. So essentially, this huge bombshell
Speaker 1: that Elon Musk has presented us is that Twitter was
Speaker 1: following their pretty clear guidelines about removal of non consensual
Speaker 1: nude images and like complying with with California state law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the breathless tweet revealing that, you know, did not
Speaker 1: include any of that context. You know, it's just like,
Speaker 1: here's links to four tweets that were removed, of course,
Speaker 1: like smoke and mirrors, suggesting that something more nefarious was
Speaker 1: going on exactly. So Elon Musk, after this bombshell revelation
Speaker 1: was dropped, he tweeted, if this isn't a violation of
Speaker 1: the Constitution's First Amendment, what is now? First of all,
Speaker 1: Biden was not a government official at the time. He
Speaker 1: was still campaigning, right, and so it's not really clear
Speaker 1: to me how that would be a violation of the
Speaker 1: First Amendment, which we know regulates how government's control speech.
Speaker 1: But you know what I or honestly, who at this
Speaker 1: point expects Elon Musk to be either getting or making
Speaker 1: these kinds of distinctions at this point, right. And so
Speaker 1: Musk and Taibi say that this was evidence that Twitter
Speaker 1: was in the bag for the Democratic Party and the left. Uh,
Speaker 1: they did not provide any evidence of this, but Taibi says, quote,
Speaker 1: this system wasn't balanced. And if you're wondering why he
Speaker 1: thinks that, well, it's because he says the majority of
Speaker 1: Twitter's employees are Democrats. How do you know, because Twitter's
Speaker 1: team has greater campaign contributions to Democrats over Republicans. So,
Speaker 1: as someone who has done this work for the majority
Speaker 1: of my adult life, this is an absolutely wild conclusion
Speaker 1: to jump to for many many reasons that I want
Speaker 1: to talk about after this quick break and we're back.
Speaker 1: We were talking about Elon Musk and Matt Taiebee dropping
Speaker 1: this bombless bombshell about what they say is evidence of
Speaker 1: Twitter and big tech being in the bag for the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party and the left. And I have to say,
Speaker 1: as someone who has done this work, it's just a
Speaker 1: really out there conclusion to jump to. First, of all,
Speaker 1: social media platforms, having a direct line of communication with
Speaker 1: political leaders is one normal and that is the case
Speaker 1: for all major social media platforms. Facebook has them, Instagram
Speaker 1: has them, Snapchat has them. It is totally a normal
Speaker 1: commonplace thing, you know. I have done that work professionally,
Speaker 1: both from the platform side and the advocacy side. When
Speaker 1: I worked at the social media platform Medium, I was
Speaker 1: essentially the person on the political team whose job it
Speaker 1: was to make in roads and connections with political leaders
Speaker 1: and activists and thought leaders on the left. You know,
Speaker 1: they could reached out to me with issues and questions, etcetera.
Speaker 1: There was also a counterpart to this work on the
Speaker 1: right who did the same thing as me, but within
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. Um. It was actually like a very
Speaker 1: fulfilling and interesting job. We had lots of like spirited
Speaker 1: discussions and debates about content on our team that actually
Speaker 1: remind me quite a bit of like the internal emails
Speaker 1: that we saw from this reporting. It's also fun fact
Speaker 1: why I attended they seen Republican National Convention and got
Speaker 1: to watch Trump officially accept the nomination for president in person,
Speaker 1: which is a story for another day. But part of
Speaker 1: the advocacy work that I do now involves communicating with
Speaker 1: platforms to hopefully help influence their content moderation decision making
Speaker 1: to be less hostile toward marginalized people. Um. A lot
Speaker 1: of the time that work looks like flat, like the
Speaker 1: same thing that the Biden campaign was doing to the
Speaker 1: Twitter folks, you know, flagging content that we think needs
Speaker 1: to be removed. A lot of times it's like faked,
Speaker 1: demeaning misogynistic images of women, women of color, elected officials
Speaker 1: like AOC for removal being like, oh, um, actually this
Speaker 1: image that purports to show a misogynistic crew drawing of AOC.
Speaker 1: We think this might violate your guidelines. Can you please
Speaker 1: remove it? Um? But we also have had some like
Speaker 1: really good wins doing this work. You know. Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: TikTok agreed to add dead naming and mis gendering to
Speaker 1: their community guidelines. Um, we got YouTube to agree to
Speaker 1: remove inaccurate information about abortion from their platform. Uh. So
Speaker 1: it's it's like fulfilling work. I don't actually bring it
Speaker 1: up a ton on the podcast, mostly because it's just
Speaker 1: not that exciting, Like it's fairly mundane work, and it's
Speaker 1: just yeah, it's just not exciting, you know, completely normal
Speaker 1: and commonplace for folks in these positions to have a
Speaker 1: direct line with folks at platforms. You know, we have
Speaker 1: flag I have flag things for them that they that
Speaker 1: they do not take down, you know. So it's not
Speaker 1: like when you reach out and say, hey this is problematic,
Speaker 1: or hey we believe this violates your your your community guidelines.
Speaker 1: It's not a guarantee they're going to take it down.
Speaker 1: But it's like that tedious work of relationship building for
Speaker 1: us for a particular goal, and Musk trying to reframe
Speaker 1: that work that so many people do that is totally
Speaker 1: commonplace across platforms. Him trying to reframe that as somehow
Speaker 1: nefarious or somehow a threat to our democracy is completely wild,
Speaker 1: completely wild. Yeah, it really is, especially when you think
Speaker 1: about the role of advocacy in a democracy and advocacy groups,
Speaker 1: you know, making the case for their constituencies about issues
Speaker 1: that they care about, policymakers trying to get policies put
Speaker 1: in place. And you can tell from those emails that
Speaker 1: the Twitter team was talking about their policies and how
Speaker 1: did this fit within their policies that have been crafted
Speaker 1: to describe this situations in which they would take action
Speaker 1: to moderate uh. And even as I'm saying these words,
Speaker 1: it sounds so boring, but it's so crucial because without that,
Speaker 1: you end up with a situation that we have right now,
Speaker 1: where everything is just, you know, whatever Elon Musk decides
Speaker 1: about it. Right there's it's not clear what is and
Speaker 1: is not allowed on Twitter these days, it's just by
Speaker 1: executive fiat. And also all those fiats bring more attention
Speaker 1: and news attention to him, which is a win win
Speaker 1: for him. I'm so glad that you said that, because
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, I think it was Sam Harris
Speaker 1: asked Elon on Twitter about whether or not he was
Speaker 1: going to reinstate Alex Jones, and Alex Jones famously lies
Speaker 1: about babies who were tragically shot and killed in Sandy
Speaker 1: Hook and lies about their parents, and Elon Musk replied,
Speaker 1: I will never allow him back on the platform because
Speaker 1: I had a baby who died, and I held that
Speaker 1: baby in my hands, and I know the heartbreak of
Speaker 1: a grieving parent, and I actually think that that actually
Speaker 1: was one of very few genuine statements about how Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is planning on moderating Twitter if he can personally
Speaker 1: identify with the group that he is making a moderation
Speaker 1: decision around or based on I think that you will
Speaker 1: get one thing if he cannot identify with them, if
Speaker 1: he cannot put themselves, put himself in their shoes, or
Speaker 1: see their experience in his own experience, He's I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to be real to him.
Speaker 1: And so I think that, to me was the first
Speaker 1: honest assessment of how he plans to moderate the platform
Speaker 1: is just based on what he personally likes or doesn't like,
Speaker 1: what he personally can understand or can identify with or
Speaker 1: see himself in or not. And so you know, he
Speaker 1: is a white, straight, sis billionaire. I don't know that
Speaker 1: he would be able to really see himself in the
Speaker 1: experience of a trans person or a person of color
Speaker 1: or a queer person or someone who's not a billionaire
Speaker 1: and wants to start a union at their car factory,
Speaker 1: right And so I think that really was a pretty
Speaker 1: clear indication that exactly what you're saying, it's just whatever
Speaker 1: Elon feels that's how we will be moderating. And I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a great system, right, Like he is
Speaker 1: someone who is going on and on about the need
Speaker 1: to build transparency into moderation to restore trust. Let's start
Speaker 1: with a little transparency around how he is going to
Speaker 1: make moderation decisions. Yeah, and it's also a little bit
Speaker 1: like a high school student quoting Voltaire about free speech.
Speaker 1: When he's talking about transparency, I think he still thinks,
Speaker 1: at least as like a couple of months ago, he
Speaker 1: thought the transparency meant making all of Twitter's internal decisions
Speaker 1: uh and algorithms uh, like open source so anybody could
Speaker 1: read it, which is a terrible idea because that just
Speaker 1: is like a blueprint for anyone who wants to abuse it.
Speaker 1: And so it's this the spot of like reality where
Speaker 1: there's like he has the high minded ideals of transparency
Speaker 1: and free speech, which are virtuous and good things, but
Speaker 1: to actually like implement them in the real world one
Speaker 1: needs to have a thoughtful approach, and he lacks that
Speaker 1: second part. It's like how all of his tweets with
Speaker 1: Poles about what he should do for Twitter and moderation,
Speaker 1: we're all accompanied by Latin, but then like getting the
Speaker 1: Latin phrases wrong. It's like you kind of you're kind
Speaker 1: of you almost have it. Like you you're you almost
Speaker 1: have it, you almost had it. You you found the
Speaker 1: Latin quote and you got the gist sort of and
Speaker 1: so speaking of the kind of disingenuous nods to what
Speaker 1: they're calling free speech. Uh. Musk really tried to frame
Speaker 1: this report as a bombshell that show that Twitter is
Speaker 1: suppressing the free speech of conservatives on the platform. But
Speaker 1: Tibee's own reporting shows that the Trump administration, while Trump
Speaker 1: was president, made the very same kind of requests as
Speaker 1: the Biden campaign did, and at least some of those
Speaker 1: requests were honored, right, And so there's not there's no
Speaker 1: Tibee includes that that information. There isn't any more transparency
Speaker 1: or any emails around what those requests would be. The
Speaker 1: public is still just like left to wonder what the
Speaker 1: what a sitting president was successfully able to get removed
Speaker 1: from Twitter. Not not worth scrutiny, not worth this transparency
Speaker 1: that Elon Musk says he wants to bring to moderation
Speaker 1: on the platform. Musk said, quote, Twitter acting by itself
Speaker 1: to suppress free speech is not a First Amendment violation,
Speaker 1: but acting under orders from the government to suppress free
Speaker 1: speech with no judicial review is. But then again, Tabee
Speaker 1: himself said, quote, there's no evidence that I have seen
Speaker 1: of any government involvement in the laptop story so true,
Speaker 1: which is it like both of these things can't be correct.
Speaker 1: It can't be that as Elon Musk says that that
Speaker 1: Twitter was acting under orders from the government, and Tibi saying, actually,
Speaker 1: after reviewing this, I saw no government involvement in the
Speaker 1: suppression of this story. It doesn't it doesn't like something's
Speaker 1: not heading up, the mates not lughing. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: almost like it's all just a big stunt and the
Speaker 1: substance doesn't matter almost, And I think like this is why.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I personally, this is just my opinion,
Speaker 1: but I think it's really really irresponsible to release communications
Speaker 1: that folks have had with Twitter over the years in
Speaker 1: this way, you know. In doing this, Elon Musk also
Speaker 1: released the personal email addresses of former Twitter CEO Jack
Speaker 1: Dorsey and an elected official in this release not redacted,
Speaker 1: just tweeted them out. Um. He did later say on
Speaker 1: a spaces that he regretted this, but I think it
Speaker 1: really shows what we're dealing with here. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: I spent part of the weekend being like, well, geez
Speaker 1: is I've have communications with Twitter officials like are they
Speaker 1: gonna I don't want my information released. I just know
Speaker 1: what can happen when you have someone who was addicted
Speaker 1: to attention and stunts and sensitive information. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: concerning to me. And you know, I'm not concerned because
Speaker 1: I've ever had communications with Twitter that I would regret
Speaker 1: or that I wouldn't want, you know, out there. But unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I think that we are past the point of the
Speaker 1: substance of what is being released being important at all.
Speaker 1: And I think, I mean, I might say that the
Speaker 1: first time that I really saw this happening for real
Speaker 1: was around Hillary Clinton's emails, where it didn't really matter.
Speaker 1: The substance of the emails didn't really matter, just the
Speaker 1: reporting around them seemed to suggest, you know, nefarious behavior
Speaker 1: just like by design, right, and so it was reported
Speaker 1: as a bombshell, let's omoking gun all of that, when really,
Speaker 1: if you look at it, you're like, well, what are
Speaker 1: you what it actually is like newsworthy here? What actually
Speaker 1: is the big bombshell here? And I think that we're
Speaker 1: in this place where people, particularly online, can really drum
Speaker 1: up a lot of fanfare around something and be like
Speaker 1: this is gonna blow your fucking mind, and then it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter what's in it? Because if you look
Speaker 1: at the reporting that Tayebee and Elon Musk did, nothing
Speaker 1: in there is really new, right, Like the whole internal
Speaker 1: debate around how Twitter should moderate the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Speaker 1: Eventually they talked about it in public, Like that quote
Speaker 1: that I read from Jack Dorsey was a public quote.
Speaker 1: This is part of the public record already. So is
Speaker 1: the is the bombshell reporting just that this presidential campaign
Speaker 1: had had direct communication with someone at Twitter? That's also
Speaker 1: common knowledge, Like anybody who has ever worked in social
Speaker 1: media is aware of that. That's not a bombshell. So
Speaker 1: if they're not actually reporting anything new, how can you
Speaker 1: tweet about it in such a bombastic way that like, oh,
Speaker 1: we are going to blow the lid off of this thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I saw people reporting about it, like Jack
Speaker 1: Procybia said, we will all remember where we were when
Speaker 1: this one was reported. Like the breathlessness that people talked
Speaker 1: about this for something that wasn't even any new information,
Speaker 1: I think is really I'm gonna say, irresponsible. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: an excellent POI because the only thing that's new here
Speaker 1: is sort of the salaciousness of the illusion of leaks, right,
Speaker 1: Like Oh, there's some sort of secret emails that they
Speaker 1: didn't want us to see. But that's obviously not the
Speaker 1: case for like multiple reasons. One, like, the emails were
Speaker 1: released by Twitter, right, there are emails by Twitter employees
Speaker 1: that Twitter is releasing, so that's like not a leak.
Speaker 1: And in the content of the emails that the people wrote,
Speaker 1: it's clear that they expect these emails. Maybe they don't
Speaker 1: expect the emails themselves to become public, but they clearly expect.
Speaker 1: They are aware that there's intense scrutiny about how they
Speaker 1: are moderating this issue, and uh, and they expect to
Speaker 1: be called to account for it. And like you said, everything,
Speaker 1: you know, all of the decisions they made are already
Speaker 1: public record. Uh, and not because of some sort of
Speaker 1: deep investigative journalism, but because Twitter like put out a
Speaker 1: press release about it, and like said all the same things.
Speaker 1: So the only thing new here is just the framing
Speaker 1: as a leak that something inappropriate happened, But the actual
Speaker 1: facts are completely unchanged, you know, Like you said, like,
Speaker 1: what's the big reveal that that the Biden campaign didn't
Speaker 1: want the candidates sons like naked photos published without his consent?
Speaker 1: Like that, Yeah, they didn't want to cry a literal
Speaker 1: sect crime to a car new Yeah, that's the only
Speaker 1: thing new here, just the illusion and framing of salaciousness.
Speaker 1: And I think that Ellen is doing this because he
Speaker 1: is speaking to people who I think already feel aggrieved, right,
Speaker 1: and so they he knows even if this isn't really anything,
Speaker 1: nothing really new as being you know, talked about or reported,
Speaker 1: that people that feel aggrieved are going to be like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, mind blown. This is huge. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: this this confirms my persecution complex that I have been
Speaker 1: censored on Twitter. And I think that's exactly why he
Speaker 1: is doing this, because he knows that all of this
Speaker 1: sycophants and hangers on are going to amplify that claim
Speaker 1: and be like, oh my god, huge reporting even though
Speaker 1: nothing new is being reported. Here's how Representative James Comber
Speaker 1: from Tennessee, here's what he had to say about this.
Speaker 1: Or he's just beginning, Jason, because we're gonna have every
Speaker 1: single person at Twitter that was involved in this in
Speaker 1: front of the House Overside Committee as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: So he's talking about like investigating and hauling people in
Speaker 1: before a committee. I think that it really is a state,
Speaker 1: a testament to the fact that we are not like
Speaker 1: anybody can say anything and the substance of what it's
Speaker 1: actually being said doesn't matter, because people who are already
Speaker 1: predisposed to feel aggrieved and be on the side of like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, we're being censored, are going to circle the
Speaker 1: wagons to make sure that that claim is amplified and
Speaker 1: like treated with seriousness. Yeah, like truth doesn't exist. It's
Speaker 1: all just framing and you know, winning the narrative. And
Speaker 1: right now, if you Google or take to Twitter to
Speaker 1: search her name, there are people talking about how the
Speaker 1: Jaya God who was Twitter's former head of Legal policy
Speaker 1: and trust at Twitter, the person who made kind of
Speaker 1: moderation decisions and was the head of you know, combating
Speaker 1: things like misinformation and hate speech, how she should be
Speaker 1: arrested for her role in moderating content around the Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden laptop story and quote rigging election for Biden. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting how all of this I think it's it's
Speaker 1: it's savvy on Elon's part because it feeds into this
Speaker 1: like big lie that somehow somewhere the election was rigged
Speaker 1: for Biden against Trump. Yeah, and you know, isn't it
Speaker 1: convenient that they finally found a woman of color to
Speaker 1: be the like poster child of this invented scandal. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously it's a woman of color. And the other idea
Speaker 1: in here is that this one singular event is what
Speaker 1: ragged the election for Joe Biden. Right, Like, everybody still
Speaker 1: knew about the Hunter Biden laptop. We're still talking about
Speaker 1: it years later. You know, it's not like Twitter's decision
Speaker 1: to not show those photos somehow killed the story and
Speaker 1: nobody ever heard about it again. Right, So it's like
Speaker 1: even the part that they're aggrieved about is just completely fabricated.
Speaker 1: More of a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: It is not surprising to me that a woman of color,
Speaker 1: a brown girl, is at the center of this story.
Speaker 1: There are memes on Twitter right now. It says Twitter
Speaker 1: head of Legal Policy, I knowingly subverted your election process.
Speaker 1: I did it with the intent to throw the election.
Speaker 1: That makes that makes me guilty of treason under Article three,
Speaker 1: Section three of the United States Constitution. Um, it's not
Speaker 1: surprising to me that, like earlier today, I saw a
Speaker 1: picture that had that was a explicit image of Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden where they had doctored her head on the body
Speaker 1: of another woman and they were involved in a sex act.
Speaker 1: It's not surprising to me. I think that when you
Speaker 1: talk about this kind of thing, and I know I
Speaker 1: I beat this drum a lot. Misogyny and racism, it's
Speaker 1: all linked, and when you talk about this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: it is not surprising to me that, you know, the
Speaker 1: fallout is not measured discourse. The fallout is talking about
Speaker 1: arresting this woman and making crude memes of her that
Speaker 1: are sexually explicit. Yeah, it's so sad and just like
Speaker 1: the same old story of like once again, it's just
Speaker 1: racism and misogyny finding new stories to turn into memes
Speaker 1: to feed that same narrative exactly. And it has to
Speaker 1: be said, I mean, I didn't want to bring them
Speaker 1: up in this episode, but here I am. In response
Speaker 1: to this reporting, Trump took to truth Social two advocate
Speaker 1: for throwing out the constitution and throwing out the election results.
Speaker 1: And so you know, if this whole thing was meant
Speaker 1: to be a crusade around free speech, and it led
Speaker 1: to Trump, who is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, being like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm coming out in favor of throwing up the Constitution.
Speaker 1: The First Amendment is part of the Constitution, So like,
Speaker 1: where where are all these like free speech crusaders who
Speaker 1: are like trying to protect the free free speech to
Speaker 1: the First Amendment When the presumptive Republican presidential nominee comes
Speaker 1: out against just throwing the whole thing out because of
Speaker 1: their reporting, it's a great question. It's almost like, you
Speaker 1: know something, it's like selectively applies here but not there.
Speaker 1: You know, today they care about the Constitution. Tomorrow let's
Speaker 1: cancel it. I mean, I guess two Republicans credit not
Speaker 1: many people like rallied around Trump's cry to cancel the Constitution.
Speaker 1: Whatever that would mean. I wonder if part of this
Speaker 1: whole thing is just like Ellen really being desperate to
Speaker 1: try to like get in Trump's good graces, you think,
Speaker 1: I mean, some of those some of those images he
Speaker 1: was tweeting a couple of weeks back about him and
Speaker 1: Trump were definitely an appeal to get into Trump's good graces.
Speaker 1: I'll say, I'll just keep it at that. We can
Speaker 1: move on. There were some good graces is the title
Speaker 1: of a movie here? So yeah, there the I think
Speaker 1: it's really scary how commonplace communications are being reframed as
Speaker 1: indicative of like nefarious inappropriate behavior. And I also think
Speaker 1: that it's confirmation bias at work. Some people on the right,
Speaker 1: which at this point I think includes Elon Musk, already
Speaker 1: believe that they are being censored on social media platforms.
Speaker 1: A really interesting study by the Pew Research Center found
Speaker 1: that of Republicans believe that their views are being censored,
Speaker 1: and republicans or people who who lent republicans believe that
Speaker 1: social media companies generally support the views of liberals over conservatives.
Speaker 1: And so I think that, you know, it's this confirmation
Speaker 1: bias at work, or anything, even something that is like
Speaker 1: not anything can be used to confirm this previously held
Speaker 1: opinion that they have. And Elon Musk repeatedly parents this
Speaker 1: claim that Twitter has previously had an anti right wing
Speaker 1: bias and thus quote the Twitter files is just another
Speaker 1: part of that, you know. But there are entire bodies
Speaker 1: of academic research that disapproved this time and time again.
Speaker 1: Their studies from n y U, M I T that
Speaker 1: debunk this claim that there is anti conservative bias on
Speaker 1: social media platforms. It's just not a thing, right, And
Speaker 1: so there was also a study done internally at Twitter
Speaker 1: in the pre Elon Musk days after Trump was banned
Speaker 1: from Twitter. The team was facing a lot of criticisms
Speaker 1: saying that they were censoring the right, so they looked
Speaker 1: into it. The internal research team at Twitter found that
Speaker 1: folks on the right are actually amplified on Twitter, both
Speaker 1: within the United States and globally. Our results reveal a
Speaker 1: remarkably consistent trend. In six out of the seven countries studied,
Speaker 1: the mainstream political right enjoys higher algorithmic amplification than the
Speaker 1: mainstream political left. They've released a whole twenties, seven page report.
Speaker 1: It is fascinating. And so here's my thing. Either Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is woefully uninformed about the realities of quote right
Speaker 1: wing bias at Twitter, or he's just lying to get
Speaker 1: attention from right wing extremists. And that's really kind of
Speaker 1: what bums me out. You know, there are entire bodies
Speaker 1: of work and studies in school of thought dedicated to
Speaker 1: answering all of these thorny complicated questions that are raised
Speaker 1: by social media and how it is moderated right, but
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is demonstrating time and time again that he
Speaker 1: does not care about any of that because he thinks
Speaker 1: that he knows better despite never having done this work before.
Speaker 1: And I feel like everything in our culture is really
Speaker 1: coalescing around confirming that he has some kind of special,
Speaker 1: super special innate genius ability to understand in this stuff
Speaker 1: as a now this more than people who have been
Speaker 1: working on it for years and years. You know, in
Speaker 1: his last few weeks, he came into Twitter and immediately
Speaker 1: blew up verification, only to realize like, oh wait, verification
Speaker 1: is actually important, and then walked back those plans to
Speaker 1: blow up Verification. He said, oh, we don't need moderation,
Speaker 1: and then Kanye West starts tweeting swastikas and he's like, wait,
Speaker 1: actually we do need some moderation. Just kidding, guys, let's
Speaker 1: bring in some moderation. He is learning the very same
Speaker 1: lessons that every other social media platform, even the ones
Speaker 1: like truth Social and Parlor that started by being these
Speaker 1: fringe platforms that wanted to, you know, be free speech
Speaker 1: zones or whatever. He is learning what every single social
Speaker 1: media platform, including those French platforms, has learned, only he's
Speaker 1: getting to the game years and years late. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you're right. He's just like pretty uninformed about these things.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think a generous interpretation of his
Speaker 1: actions here is that he's bringing like a move fast
Speaker 1: and break things kind of attitude to the way that
Speaker 1: Twitter should do moderation. And I think that sort of
Speaker 1: approach can work great for a little scrappy startups trying
Speaker 1: to fight for a piece of market share to sell widgets.
Speaker 1: But when you are making decisions about a cornerstone of society,
Speaker 1: right like that like Twitter is, or at least was,
Speaker 1: how people share information, and it's just like it's a
Speaker 1: really important thing. And for him to just be making
Speaker 1: these huge decisions and then days later be like, oops,
Speaker 1: my bad, I guess that was wrong. It's just so
Speaker 1: reckless and irresponsible. It's it's he should be ashamed, but
Speaker 1: he certainly is not. Yeah, that's my thing is like
Speaker 1: he should be embarrassed. I don't know that that is
Speaker 1: a an emotion that he feels the way that you
Speaker 1: or I might feel. A friend of mine, Justin Hendrix,
Speaker 1: who is brilliant. He runs a great organization called Tech
Speaker 1: Policy Press, which is they also have a podcast you
Speaker 1: should definitely you should definitely listen to it. But he
Speaker 1: works with students um, you know, teaching them about social media.
Speaker 1: And whenever they the students are given like a thought
Speaker 1: experiment about how they should run platforms, they always at
Speaker 1: first or like we're gonna have no moderation. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be whatever people want to do and they can self moderate,
Speaker 1: and then immediately they're like, oh wait, that doesn't work.
Speaker 1: So it's like starting at the one, like the thing
Speaker 1: that like a one oh one student would suggest. That's
Speaker 1: where Elon Musk is starting. But I don't feel like
Speaker 1: he's self aware enough to be like, oh wait, I'm
Speaker 1: actually starting at the ideas that a one on one
Speaker 1: student at this would actually come to the table with. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that is exactly right with him. I think
Speaker 1: he he thinks that he is this genius, uh, but
Speaker 1: he's just he just like doesn't know about these things.
Speaker 1: These things are complicated, and I'm not an expert in moderation,
Speaker 1: but I know that there are experts out there who
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time and ink on it and
Speaker 1: to just like weighed in and just like makeup rules.
Speaker 1: It's it's just so reckless. Yeah, it is reckless. And
Speaker 1: I have worked in this space for a long time
Speaker 1: for years and I come to the table with people
Speaker 1: who are way smarter than me, who have worked in
Speaker 1: this space, who are content moderation experts, and even in
Speaker 1: those spaces, there is not consensus of how to do
Speaker 1: it right. It is an ongoing, complex, complicated body of work,
Speaker 1: and people who have been doing it for years at
Speaker 1: the highest levels don't have consensus of how to do
Speaker 1: it right. And I really take umbradge with this idea
Speaker 1: that Elon Musk, someone who has never done this, I
Speaker 1: have no background in it, no experience with it. It's
Speaker 1: just uniquely a genius at it somehow, And I reject that,
Speaker 1: And I honestly think that Elon Musk's tenure at Twitter,
Speaker 1: I think I'm seeing a little bit of of the
Speaker 1: tides turning. I think, being someone who works in text spaces,
Speaker 1: we're so willing to give wealthy white dudes the benefit
Speaker 1: of the doubt that if they say they're a genius
Speaker 1: at something, then they're a genius had something. If they
Speaker 1: say that they know how to do it, even if
Speaker 1: they've ever done it before, give them millions of dollars
Speaker 1: of funding because they're going to figure it out. And
Speaker 1: if they don't, then you know they had to learn
Speaker 1: by failing. And I'm just I know how this story ends.
Speaker 1: You know, I've seen this story a lot. I have
Speaker 1: had to smile through this story being told to my face,
Speaker 1: even though I'm screaming inside. And I think we're all
Speaker 1: starting to peel back that curtain a little bit and say, well, wait,
Speaker 1: are you actually a genius? Is it possible that maybe
Speaker 1: you're not playing chest not checkers. May you're not even
Speaker 1: playing checkers. Maybe you're like eating the pieces and throwing
Speaker 1: the board on the floor. Yeah, you totally know it.
Speaker 1: And you talked about how content moderation is like difficult
Speaker 1: and nuanced, and I think those sorts of things are
Speaker 1: like really difficult to talk about, and like you said earlier,
Speaker 1: they're kind of boring. They're not really exciting. You know.
Speaker 1: There's certainly if you were to try to pack all
Speaker 1: of it into a single tweet, that tweet would probably
Speaker 1: not get a lot of engagement, right because you need
Speaker 1: to write like a lot of them about it. And
Speaker 1: I think, uh, you know, when we think about some
Speaker 1: of those studies that find that right wing social media
Speaker 1: posts tend to get amplified more than uh, posts written
Speaker 1: by people on the left, I think that's part of
Speaker 1: it that, like on the left, there is often a
Speaker 1: recognition of like nuance and things are complicated and wanting
Speaker 1: to qualify things and provide caveats, whereas, uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: they're certainly thoughtful people on the right, but there's also
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are not interested in the
Speaker 1: thoughtful new ones and are just interested in like getting
Speaker 1: those likes, you know, getting those retweets totally. And this
Speaker 1: is actually one of the reasons why, as you know,
Speaker 1: I was hesitant to even make this episode, because content
Speaker 1: moderation is messy, it's complicated, and it's mundane. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff not working and being like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: here's why this didn't work, or here's what I thought
Speaker 1: about this. I'm like, it's never the The reality of
Speaker 1: the work that people like myself do is never gonna
Speaker 1: be as flashy and exciting as the pithy but incorrect
Speaker 1: Elon Musk tweet about it right like, it's it ends like,
Speaker 1: right have a disadvantage, you know that the truth is
Speaker 1: actually the thoughtful, complex truth is so much less exciting
Speaker 1: than the sexy bombshell with the popcorn emoji. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, I struggle. When we were talking about how
Speaker 1: how I wanted to respond to this, you were like,
Speaker 1: maybe an op ed, and I was like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know the reality, and even I would still like to
Speaker 1: believe the Elon Musk version of things that there are
Speaker 1: some files in Twitter that revealed the smoking gun that
Speaker 1: election was rigged and blah blah blah, and Soyland Green
Speaker 1: is people and all of that. Like, I know the truth,
Speaker 1: and even I would be more entertained to believe this
Speaker 1: complete fiction that he is selling people. But that fiction
Speaker 1: is always going to travel faster than the mundane, boring truth.
Speaker 1: So that probably means that people listening to this, we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: glad I tuned in forty five minutes of mundane accuracy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you got it right with It's more entertaining,
Speaker 1: right that popcorn emoji. We haven't really talked about that,
Speaker 1: but I think it says so much about Elon's approach
Speaker 1: to his shiny new toy that he bought for forty
Speaker 1: four billion dollars, right, Like it's he's he's the guy
Speaker 1: in church, He's making all these decisions, but also he's
Speaker 1: like cool and detached and just like doing it for lulls, y'all,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, totally. And I think it's like, so
Speaker 1: you don't I don't know if you know this deep
Speaker 1: thinks about emoji choices are my like, like, that's my
Speaker 1: Q and on I'm like, I'm like, I gotta I
Speaker 1: gotta like follow all the threads. But a popcorn emoji
Speaker 1: is inviting us to watch the show, right like, he
Speaker 1: knows it's a stunt. He wants us to watch, and
Speaker 1: I think that he is betting this is just my opinion.
Speaker 1: He is betting on turning Twitter into a drama machine
Speaker 1: that people will pay a subscription to watch go down.
Speaker 1: And I think that popcorn I think that you're totally
Speaker 1: spot on that popcorn emoji is. I know it's a stunt.
Speaker 1: Step right up, folks, watch the show. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of something else that he tweeted. I think it was
Speaker 1: the first week that he bought Twitter and things really
Speaker 1: felt like they were on fire, and he tweeted, well,
Speaker 1: at least you know, the last days of Twitter won't
Speaker 1: be boring. And I think that's really what he is
Speaker 1: counting on us, our attention, our eyeballs really being glued
Speaker 1: to him and locked into what's going to happen next.
Speaker 1: It's the same way how how he kept tweeting about how, oh,
Speaker 1: the daily average users has never been higher, and somebody
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, that's like setting your house on fire,
Speaker 1: and then being like, wow, I've never had more visitors
Speaker 1: on my lawn than my house was on fire. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I am so curious to see where this goes, and
Speaker 1: like what Twitter looks like six months from now, who's
Speaker 1: using it, how many people are using it? You know,
Speaker 1: what are they talking about on there? But that's probably
Speaker 1: a story for another show. So all of this is
Speaker 1: to say, I don't want to make it seem like
Speaker 1: pre Elonomusk Twitter days were the best. Certainly if you
Speaker 1: listen to the show, you know that that's not how
Speaker 1: I feel. But I just want to say it explicitly,
Speaker 1: and I do want to say, like, there are so
Speaker 1: many good questions to be asked about the way that
Speaker 1: Twitter moderates content, and I think that more transparency around
Speaker 1: those conversations would be awesome. But unfortunately that's not what
Speaker 1: we're getting. And it is so clear to me that
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is only interested in cherry picking instances to
Speaker 1: blow up and exaggerate that tap into this right wing
Speaker 1: fantasy about being censored on social media platforms, and so
Speaker 1: I would absolutely welcome and love and applaud more transparency
Speaker 1: about how moderation decisions are made. But this is not it,
Speaker 1: you know, cherry picking these examples. It's bloading them up
Speaker 1: and hyping them up as this big bombshell and then
Speaker 1: flinging them to a group of people that you know
Speaker 1: is going to already be predisposed to being like, yes,
Speaker 1: this is so true. This totally confirms my worldview about
Speaker 1: me being persecuted. That is not the way that you
Speaker 1: achieve true transparency about social media platforms and how they
Speaker 1: are moderated. You know what, the way that social media
Speaker 1: platforms work and on our run in two, it can
Speaker 1: shape elections, it can shape democracy, it can shape what
Speaker 1: the world looks like. And so we deserve true transparency
Speaker 1: as the people that fuel these platforms. But what Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is selling us is not that it is a stunt.
Speaker 1: We deserve so much better than these little popcorn emoji stunts. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's a stunt. Transparency is great, This is not it.
Speaker 1: Well that's it for me, Michael. Do you have anything
Speaker 1: else to add? No, nothing else. Thanks for having me, Bridget.
Speaker 1: I always love talking with you here. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1: I'll see on Mastodon see you there. Got a story
Speaker 1: about an interesting thing in tech. I just want to
Speaker 1: say hi. You can be just at hello at tangodi
Speaker 1: dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode
Speaker 1: at tangodi dot com. There Are No Girls on the
Speaker 1: Internet was created by me, Bridget pad. It's a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan's Quid as
Speaker 1: our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.
Speaker 1: Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1: If you want to help us grow, rate and review
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