Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget Todd and this
Speaker 1: is there are No Girls on the Internet. I'm here
Speaker 1: with my producer Mike and here's what you may have
Speaker 1: missed this week on the Internet. So, in news that
Speaker 1: will probably shock no one, it turns out Twitter under
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is not doing a very good job of
Speaker 1: dealing with anti LGBTQU hate speech on the platform. Who
Speaker 1: would have guessed, Am I right?
Speaker 2: You know, savvy listeners might have guessed.
Speaker 1: So this is all According to glad's annual report on
Speaker 1: the Safety of Social media Platforms for LGBTQ users. GOD
Speaker 1: said that all five of the major social media platforms
Speaker 1: examined had taken steps to improve safety over the past year,
Speaker 1: with the single exception of Twitter. Twitter not only scored
Speaker 1: the lowest but also changed its policies to become even
Speaker 1: less safe. I gotta say that one is sort of
Speaker 1: personal for me. Policies that I personally worked on in
Speaker 1: my platform accountability work. It was a little bit rough
Speaker 1: to see them rolled back, but you know that is
Speaker 1: to be expected when you're dealing with somebody like Elon
Speaker 1: Musk who just clearly does not take these issues seriously.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's easy to feel like progress is inevitable towards
Speaker 2: a more inclusive world where we all recognize that other
Speaker 2: people are valuable and respect them. But that's not something
Speaker 2: that is inevitable, and it is due to the hard
Speaker 2: work of people like you Bridget who push and fight
Speaker 2: to make that positive change happen. And it's awesome when
Speaker 2: it does. And then there are times like this where
Speaker 2: there's a reminder that there are counter forces who will
Speaker 2: push back against it.
Speaker 1: I say this and I mean it pretty much how
Speaker 1: it sounds that whenever a tech company does something good
Speaker 1: nine times out of ten and is not because they
Speaker 1: went to bed and woke up and their their hearts
Speaker 1: grew three sizes like the Grinch's heart when it breaks
Speaker 1: out of that thing. Usually there is someone, an organizer,
Speaker 1: a professional pain in the ass who is pushing them
Speaker 1: to be better. And so I means, as much as
Speaker 1: I hate that Twitter is is not just failing to
Speaker 1: moderate their platforms in a way that allows for LGBTQ
Speaker 1: users to feel safe there, and you know is actually
Speaker 1: rolling back those policies, it is good to see that
Speaker 1: other platforms are taking some steps in the right direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Twitter is an outlier here, right, even
Speaker 2: among like Facebook and YouTube, Twitter is an outlier in
Speaker 2: rolling back protections for LGBTQ people. So that's worth noting.
Speaker 1: So the reports scored each platform in twelve areas of
Speaker 1: specific relevance to LGBTQ users, like the platform should have
Speaker 1: a policy that to protect LGBTQ users from hate, and
Speaker 1: the platform should have a policy that prohibits targeted dead naming.
Speaker 1: I really think this should really be a wake up
Speaker 1: call that Twitter under Elon Musk is really going out
Speaker 1: of its way to signal that anti trans, anti LGBTQ
Speaker 1: hate is welcome on the platform. And I think it's
Speaker 1: a problem because it leaves marginalized people out of the
Speaker 1: conversation and it keeps us from being able to be
Speaker 1: equal participants in our discourse and democracy. For a platform
Speaker 1: that wants to be the public square, that is really
Speaker 1: a problem. You know, Twitter is the place where news
Speaker 1: is broken, where stories become news. It moves so much
Speaker 1: faster than other platforms like Facebook or Instagram that I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the reasons why you see this
Speaker 1: battle for it, and like it's really a proxy war
Speaker 1: for power and who gets to take up space and
Speaker 1: who gets to be part of the conversation. The fact
Speaker 1: that because of Elon Musk rolling back what little policies
Speaker 1: there were to protect LGBTQ users, that anti trans bigots
Speaker 1: would feel comfortable showing up there and feel embolden and empowered,
Speaker 1: which sounds like what is happening is a real problem
Speaker 1: for a platform that heretofore have been about, you know,
Speaker 1: making news where journalists and newsmakers are congregating, and so
Speaker 1: if people don't feel safe or good about spending time there,
Speaker 1: that's a real problem. And I also think it's not
Speaker 1: just an issue of you know, the user experience of
Speaker 1: LGBTQ users. It's also about the security and the safety
Speaker 1: of these platforms, because when extremists and hate bongers are
Speaker 1: allowed to gather in these platforms, they become less secure,
Speaker 1: they become more polarized, they're easier to have bad actors
Speaker 1: disrupt them. And so it's not just it is about
Speaker 1: the LGBTQ users and their experiences online, but also it
Speaker 1: makes it less secure and less safe for all of us,
Speaker 1: whether you identify its LGBTQ.
Speaker 2: Or not absolutely like it is about the LGBTQ users,
Speaker 2: but also it's not about them, right like the right
Speaker 2: wing fascist types who love to hate, they're going to
Speaker 2: find somebody. It's always going to be somebody. So yes,
Speaker 2: it's about them, but no, it's not about them. It's
Speaker 2: about oppression.
Speaker 1: Folks can read the full report in our show notes.
Speaker 1: But in addition to ranking the platforms for LGBTQ safety,
Speaker 1: the report also highlights other dangerous trends on platforms. One
Speaker 1: of those trends is called stochastic harassment. If you don't
Speaker 1: know what that is, it is a form of harassment
Speaker 1: where online accounts or media figures don't directly attack individuals
Speaker 1: or call for violence, but instead amplify a general narrative
Speaker 1: that indirectly dehumanizes specific groups, in doing so, increasing the
Speaker 1: likelihood that others will engage in such violence. A great
Speaker 1: example right now would be the groomer narrative, which we
Speaker 1: know like baselessly claims that queer folks and their allies
Speaker 1: are trying to recruit children into sexual acts. We talked
Speaker 1: quite a bit about this in our opening episode this
Speaker 1: season with Nina Jenkowitz. How you know Tucker Carlson would
Speaker 1: spend hours talking about her on Fox News, never directly
Speaker 1: threatening her, but people would get the message.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Trump did a lot of this where he would specifically
Speaker 1: call out black women or women of color journalists by
Speaker 1: name to his like fan base and followers, never saying,
Speaker 1: you know, harassed this person, attack this person, but it
Speaker 1: was a kind of a wink wink, nudge nudge thing
Speaker 1: where people would get the message pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I thought it was a really interesting part of that
Speaker 2: Glad report that they called that out explicitly, because I
Speaker 2: had never heard that term before, stochastic harassment, and it's
Speaker 2: it's so common now that we have a term for it.
Speaker 2: We see it everywhere in Nina Jenkowitch was a great
Speaker 2: example where, you know, and Trump is a master of it,
Speaker 2: right of never directly explicitly calling for violence against a
Speaker 2: particular person, but talking about them in a way that
Speaker 2: just incites all theirs to violence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've definitely seen right wing extremists are so good
Speaker 1: at this. They're so good at knowing what to say
Speaker 1: to have that sheen of plausible deniability where it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I never said to attack so and so, I never
Speaker 1: said to storm the capitol. I never said to do this,
Speaker 1: but it's just like, well, here are eighteen different examples
Speaker 1: where you all but said that. So knowing how to
Speaker 1: stay right on that line is something that these folks
Speaker 1: are very good at. And that's something that the Glad
Speaker 1: Report really spotlights that folks are really utilizing this as
Speaker 1: a loophole in social media platforms policies, which is contributing
Speaker 1: to the rising tide of anti lgbtqu hate and legislation
Speaker 1: that we're all currently living through. And so it's this
Speaker 1: is all very distressing. It's like hard to hear, but
Speaker 1: it's good to have some insight into this. You know,
Speaker 1: for a long time, we would only have social media's
Speaker 1: companies and they're like pr leadership to be able to
Speaker 1: like have any understanding of what's going on on these platforms.
Speaker 1: And so having visibility into this is good because that's
Speaker 1: really going to be the first step of creating a
Speaker 1: better system where folks can show up and meaningfully make
Speaker 1: their voices heard on digital platforms, you know, the same
Speaker 1: way that all of us deserve to.
Speaker 2: In public health, one of the things we say sometimes
Speaker 2: is that like if you don't measure something it doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: And so I think it's extremely valuable that GLAD is
Speaker 2: measuring these policies with respect to how they protect LGBTQ
Speaker 2: people to show up online and you know how that
Speaker 2: contributes to a more to an inclusive internet where we
Speaker 2: can all show up and enjoy the internet. You know,
Speaker 2: who doesn't want to enjoy the internet exactly.
Speaker 1: And I do think that something that did not get
Speaker 1: enough attention is the very clear ways that Elon Musk's
Speaker 1: ownership of Twitter, the way that he's running Twitter is
Speaker 1: connected to transphobia. Documents revealed that it was a protecting
Speaker 1: the ability of the Babylon Bee to say a transphobia
Speaker 1: joke about Rachel Levine, who is a trans woman in
Speaker 1: the Biden administration. Uh, that was the thing that first
Speaker 1: prompted him like, I gotta buy Twitter this, you know,
Speaker 1: and make it make it a free a quote free
Speaker 1: speech haven. And so he's been pretty clear that transphobia
Speaker 1: is a big part of his mo O. And we
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think I would be telling tales
Speaker 1: out of school to say that his ownership of Twitter
Speaker 1: has been a disaster by pretty much every metric. He's
Speaker 1: losing money, it's bleeding users people. It's not a fun
Speaker 1: place to show up anymore. And I think that's the
Speaker 1: thing that's the gag about transphobia is that doubling down
Speaker 1: on transphobia is unpopular. It makes it makes everything worse.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It took a platform that was like not perfect but
Speaker 1: like usable and made it garbage, right, And so it
Speaker 1: really I hope that this is something that I want
Speaker 1: to see all their business and tech leaders taking note
Speaker 1: that trafficking in transphobia is not just cruel and hateful
Speaker 1: and bigoted and all the things that we know it is,
Speaker 1: but also building a trying to build a community around transphobia,
Speaker 1: it's always going to fail, And so I wish that
Speaker 1: we saw more reporting that tied Elon Musk's clear and
Speaker 1: explicit transphobia with his tanking of a you know, of
Speaker 1: businesses and tanking of community and experience and vibes. Listen,
Speaker 1: if I was throwing a party and a transphobe showed
Speaker 1: up and started spouting transphob shit, of course it would
Speaker 1: kill the vibe and I would make them leave. And
Speaker 1: so Elon Musk is throwing the party and he's the transphobe,
Speaker 1: so of course the vibes are off.
Speaker 2: Thank you for calling that out. We don't acknowledge it
Speaker 2: enough to just say, like, yeah, Elon Musk is a transphobe.
Speaker 2: His whole free speech thing. Transphobia is really at the
Speaker 2: center of it. It has been. You know, remember when
Speaker 2: he went out on stage in San Francisco at the
Speaker 2: Dave Chappelle con not concert but comedy show, you know,
Speaker 2: comedy and scare quotes whatever Dave Chappelle does now, and
Speaker 2: people booed him like that's the common denominator of these folks,
Speaker 2: and it's just like not palatable, it's not interesting. It
Speaker 2: reminds me of Dennis Miller. Most of our listeners are
Speaker 2: probably too young to even remember him, but like, his
Speaker 2: whole gag was that he was like a right wing
Speaker 2: comic and he would have these like right wing jokes,
Speaker 2: but it was all just punching down, and it's just
Speaker 2: it's not funny to punch down.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. I think about that Elon Musk and
Speaker 1: Dave Chappelle thing so often because I think it was
Speaker 1: it was either in Austin or in San Francisco, one
Speaker 1: of the other. I can't remember which one, but I
Speaker 1: can't think of an audience more primed to be sympathetic
Speaker 1: to Elona Musk's whole thing. People who are going to
Speaker 1: see Dave Chappelle in twenty twenty three or twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two or whenever that happened in Austin or San Francisco
Speaker 1: or wherever it was. I think it was San Francisco.
Speaker 1: And no, that I'm thinking about it, I can't think
Speaker 1: of an audience more prime to be like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: love Elon Musk and they boot him. That's the thing is, like,
Speaker 1: you know, imagine hating trans people so much that you
Speaker 1: light forty four billion dollars on fire, Like that really
Speaker 1: says a lot about who you are as a person.
Speaker 1: And it's not bad enough that you need to be
Speaker 1: a trans phobe and be running a website into the ground.
Speaker 1: You also got to be like a vibe killer. Two.
Speaker 1: Come on, it's too much. Kick a lane.
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about women and gaming, because it turns out
Speaker 1: and be gaming more than half fifty two percent of
Speaker 1: all Nintendo Switch players in the United States are women.
Speaker 1: This is based on a new report from Sircana Player Pulse.
Speaker 1: So women be gaming and Nintendo's Switch ownership is following
Speaker 1: a more broad trend in the United States when compared
Speaker 1: to other gaming consoles too, So Nintendo Switch does have
Speaker 1: the highest amount of female users at fifty two percent,
Speaker 1: but fifty percent of gaming PCs are also owned by women.
Speaker 1: The next closest is the Xbox series, with forty five
Speaker 1: percent of those being owned by women. PlayStation five is
Speaker 1: the lowest at forty one percent. This year, in the
Speaker 1: United States, forty seven percent of console video game players
Speaker 1: were women, and half of all PC video game players
Speaker 1: are women, and fifty four percent of mobile video game
Speaker 1: players are women. So guess who is not thrilled about
Speaker 1: all this, Mike, Is.
Speaker 2: It the shittiest segment of the American public?
Speaker 1: Yes, gamer guys, like not all gamer guys, but like
Speaker 1: a very specific type of gamer guys is not thrilled
Speaker 1: about this and is really working over time to poke
Speaker 1: holes in these findings. So when Matt Piscatella, the executive
Speaker 1: director of Sirkana, tweeted out these stats showing how women
Speaker 1: were into gaming, he had these angry dudes in his
Speaker 1: mentions whose whole worlds were being shattered by the idea
Speaker 1: that women make up a big part of the gaming
Speaker 1: market in some cases more than men. So I would
Speaker 1: say that the replies really fell into a couple of buckets.
Speaker 1: First was this idea that you know, taking issue with
Speaker 1: the methodology, saying that since men are far too busy
Speaker 1: being I don't know, titans of industry or whatever, they
Speaker 1: don't have time for silly surveys, So that survey itself
Speaker 1: and all surveys are skewed toward women because only a
Speaker 1: woman would take a survey. As somebody who does a
Speaker 1: lot of surveys for a living, what do you think about.
Speaker 2: That, Mike well Bridget, as someone who does a lot
Speaker 2: of surveys for a living, I think it's stupid.
Speaker 1: That was very emphatic. I appreciated how emphatic that was.
Speaker 1: Another is that the data couldn't possibly be correct, because
Speaker 1: if there are really so many women playing video games
Speaker 1: out there, why haven't these guys found them and, like
Speaker 1: I don't know, made contact with them, Which, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can kind of imagine why these women aren't going out
Speaker 1: of their way to buddy up with these guys who
Speaker 1: sound so charming. Probably the most infuriating bucket of the
Speaker 1: responses from men who could not believe this idea that
Speaker 1: women are playing games is that women don't play real games.
Speaker 1: Like there was some conversation about the games that women
Speaker 1: are playing, like the sims are not real games, like
Speaker 1: the games that men play. There's something else, and that
Speaker 1: really reminds me of this classic George Carlin routine that
Speaker 1: I'm sure I've talked about on the show, that I've
Speaker 1: probably gotten more wisdom and use out of than anything
Speaker 1: I've ever read in any kind of history book or
Speaker 1: philosophy book or anything. You ever notice how your shit
Speaker 1: is stuff and everybody else's stuff is shit. It's like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I'm a man, So whatever those women are playing, they're
Speaker 1: not real games. The only real games are the games
Speaker 1: that I play, because only the things that I engage
Speaker 1: in are real and worthy of any kind of like
Speaker 1: intellectual rigor.
Speaker 2: I hate the adjective real. I feel it is code
Speaker 2: for others, like dehumanized others, like real gamers, real games,
Speaker 2: real Americans, real men. It's it's a complete It's like
Speaker 2: a vacuous term that doesn't actually have any meaning other
Speaker 2: than them versus us.
Speaker 1: Totally absolutely, and like some of the tweets I saw,
Speaker 1: I saw one was like half of the women who
Speaker 1: responded to this survey are probably wine moms playing Candy
Speaker 1: Crush on their iPad or things like that. And it's like,
Speaker 1: what difference does it make, you know, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to get a landscape of who is playing games and
Speaker 1: who is making up this industry in like who is
Speaker 1: representative of the space, what difference does it make what
Speaker 1: they're playing? What difference does it make? Like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it just seems like such a weird, arbitrary distinction. And
Speaker 1: it's a way of like creating a hierarchy where there
Speaker 1: is none, right, because it's not like if you're playing
Speaker 1: Call of Duty that game is so high falutin that
Speaker 1: oh my god, like it's the you know, most philosophical
Speaker 1: game out there or something like. It's just another I mean,
Speaker 1: it's honestly just misogyny. It's another way to dress up
Speaker 1: misogyny and say that the things that women enjoy, the
Speaker 1: things that women that are bringing women enjoy the way
Speaker 1: that women are spending their time when they're gaming is
Speaker 1: worse than less worthy than less worthy of scrutiny, and
Speaker 1: you know, looking at less serious than what men are doing.
Speaker 1: It's just misogyny. And you know, I honestly am not
Speaker 1: surprised by this data. Most of my friends who are
Speaker 1: women play some kind of game. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of them do have Nintendo switches. I would love to
Speaker 1: own a switch. Nintendo. If you are listening, you can
Speaker 1: send me a switch. I will happily like make content
Speaker 1: about it. So there is a historical precedence of this,
Speaker 1: as journalist Zach Zewyn points out, writing Barbie Fashion Designer
Speaker 1: outsold Doom and Quake in nineteen ninety six and was
Speaker 1: the ninth best selling PC game of that year. Of course,
Speaker 1: women were also playing Doom and Quake back then too,
Speaker 1: So angry dudes online maybe stop acting so defensive and
Speaker 1: shitty about games being played by women and instead realize
Speaker 1: that they've always been here, and if you feel like
Speaker 1: they're hiding from you, maybe ask yourself why that is.
Speaker 1: And so I love that as a response, and I
Speaker 1: think it's really it's really about the gaming industry catching
Speaker 1: up with this information that we have. If nearly half
Speaker 1: of gaming consumers are women, then it is imperative that
Speaker 1: gaming companies act like it and catch up and make
Speaker 1: sure that these platforms are places where everyone all of
Speaker 1: their consumers can safely show up to and you know,
Speaker 1: have things like better safeguards against harassment or more gender
Speaker 1: inclusive games.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So I think for me, it's really about the people
Speaker 1: who have power in the space recognizing the reality of
Speaker 1: who makes up that space, who their consumers, and who
Speaker 1: their demographic actually is. And according to this data, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of women because women be gaming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, women be gaming. You know. The there's so many
Speaker 2: domains where this sort of like misogynistic gatekeeping plays out.
Speaker 2: But one nice thing about video games is that there
Speaker 2: are very well defined metrics of success, right, and that
Speaker 2: metric is money, Right, how much money do you make
Speaker 2: from the sale of your game? And games that appeal
Speaker 2: to women, it turns out sell so many more copies
Speaker 2: than games that do not appeal to women, because there's
Speaker 2: a lot of women in the world, right, Like I
Speaker 2: was just looking at up. Animal Crossing is a game
Speaker 2: that a lot of women I know, like a lot
Speaker 2: of men I know. Like it's not a gendered game, right,
Speaker 2: Like you're not. Yeah, it's just like a fun game
Speaker 2: that a lot of my friends really love. And just
Speaker 2: looked it up. It made like a quarter billion dollars
Speaker 2: in the past couple of years. That's so much money.
Speaker 1: I mean, like this gets into like a whole other
Speaker 1: there's a whole other topic. But I have seen and
Speaker 1: I have so many examples where industries would rather leave money,
Speaker 1: good money on the table that not be misogynistic and
Speaker 1: not you know, not perpetuate visogyny and racism and all
Speaker 1: of the badisms. Right Like, you know, look at Blizzard,
Speaker 1: look at their you know, their lawsuit where it sounded
Speaker 1: like for women working at the uber popular video game
Speaker 1: company Blizzard, it sounded like a terrible environment. And it's like,
Speaker 1: if you are a company that is producing a product
Speaker 1: that half of your consumer base are women, that you
Speaker 1: just can't you just can't run a company like that.
Speaker 1: But I think that there are definitely other incentives than
Speaker 1: money that the people have. And I think that people
Speaker 1: are very entrenched in and bought into the idea that
Speaker 1: this is a boys club. They're not women around. And
Speaker 1: so even if that's not true, even if all the
Speaker 1: evidence is showing them that's not true, even if they
Speaker 1: can make more money by acknowledging that reality, the sirens
Speaker 1: song of misogyny and perpetuating it in that industry is
Speaker 1: just too much to resist.
Speaker 2: This is a weird moment in the history of there
Speaker 2: are no girls on the Internet, Bridget, because it's like,
Speaker 2: I feel like you and me are both being like, yes, capitalism,
Speaker 2: that is what will free us from the chains of misogyny.
Speaker 2: I don't know, there's a lot of damn women out
Speaker 2: there right, Like it's like it's almost incompatible with a
Speaker 2: system where women are just like devalued and locked out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, welcome to patriarchy. It it harms everyone. It doesn't
Speaker 1: just harm the people who are its targets women, It
Speaker 1: harms us all that keeps us all back from innovation.
Speaker 1: With did a great episode about how misogyny and bias
Speaker 1: and you know, really rigid incorrect thinking around gender stifles innovation.
Speaker 1: And it does it harms us all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really does. And like what does it say
Speaker 2: about the people who really cling to the misogyny that
Speaker 2: like they value it so much that they're willing to
Speaker 2: throw away innovation, inclusivity, a larger market share, everything in
Speaker 2: order to protect a gender hierarchy, and like what happened
Speaker 2: to them?
Speaker 1: I mean, misogyny is a hell of a drug. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about this story Dad in Georgia, where a radio
Speaker 1: host is suing open ai for defamation because of something
Speaker 1: a chatbot said about him. So last week, a radio
Speaker 1: host in Georgia filed the first, but probably not the last,
Speaker 1: lawsuit against open ai, the company who created chat gpt,
Speaker 1: over false statements that chat gpt made about him. It's
Speaker 1: sexually a pretty notable case, partly just because it's so
Speaker 1: novel and interesting, and partly because it connects to two
Speaker 1: themes that we've been talking about a lot on this
Speaker 1: season of the podcast. One the fact that AI is
Speaker 1: making it harder to tell what's real from what's fake,
Speaker 1: and two, the fact that we know that legal frameworks
Speaker 1: are necessary and are going to be necessary going forward,
Speaker 1: since it's clear that platforms and tech companies cannot be
Speaker 1: trusted to police themselves. In this case, chat gpt just
Speaker 1: completely made up a bunch of negative, slimy, grimy lies
Speaker 1: about this radio host. Chat gpt confidently stated that he
Speaker 1: had been the treasurer of an advocacy organization until he
Speaker 1: was forced to resign following a lawsuit over misappropriation of funds.
Speaker 1: Except none of that ever happened. It was just a
Speaker 1: made up thing that chat gpt pulled out of its
Speaker 1: computer butt. I guess I'll say he was never the
Speaker 1: treasurer of that organization, he was never accused of embezzling funds,
Speaker 1: and he was never part of that lawsuit. Chat GPT
Speaker 1: just made it up. So you've probably seen stories about
Speaker 1: chat GPT hallucinating. That's what it's called when chat gpt
Speaker 1: spits out facts that are not true, like getting math
Speaker 1: problems wrong, or saying that planets have extra moons, or
Speaker 1: just getting basic facts wrong. Most of these hallucinations are
Speaker 1: kind of funny. It's easy to laugh at them, and
Speaker 1: if nothing else, they provide kind of a smug piece
Speaker 1: of evidence that maybe AI isn't going to displace us
Speaker 1: all after all. But this one is different because it
Speaker 1: wasn't a hallucination about some abstract fact. It was about
Speaker 1: a specific person who exists, and based on this person's lawsuit,
Speaker 1: that person is pissed. So it raises a good question.
Speaker 1: Are tech companies responsible for false statements made by their
Speaker 1: AI chatbots? Hopefully from this lawsuit we will find out,
Speaker 1: and personally, I'm hoping that the answer is yes. Because
Speaker 1: our information ecosystem is already overflowing with mis and disinformation.
Speaker 1: We can't just say it's okay for big tech companies
Speaker 1: to add more fake information on top of that information
Speaker 1: economy with impunity. You know, there needs to be standards,
Speaker 1: There needs to be accountability, especially when specific living people
Speaker 1: are harmed by this technology.
Speaker 2: Bridget I'm so glad you brought this story up. I
Speaker 2: love this story. I'm so interested in it. I can't
Speaker 2: wait to see what comes of it. You know, last
Speaker 2: week and I think maybe in the week before, we
Speaker 2: were talking about this idea of how with all this
Speaker 2: generative AI, it's increasingly difficult to tell fact from fiction,
Speaker 2: and this feels like one route to try to restore
Speaker 2: the importance of fact right and protect against the proliferation
Speaker 2: of fake information that makes it harder to know what's real.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of facts versus fici, can you guess a
Speaker 1: platform that is currently caching in breaking in that sweet
Speaker 1: sweet dough from fiction?
Speaker 2: Ashley Medicine.
Speaker 1: Google. It turns out that Google is cashing in from
Speaker 1: fake clinics. This is according to a new report from
Speaker 1: the Center for Countering Digital Had which found that Google
Speaker 1: made more than ten million dollars over the past two
Speaker 1: years from ads for crisis pregnancy centers. If you don't
Speaker 1: know what crisis pregnancy centers are. They're basically anti choice
Speaker 1: clinics that try to convince people not to have abortions,
Speaker 1: but they often do so by masquerading as real medical
Speaker 1: facilities or clinics, which they are not. But because they're
Speaker 1: not clinics, they're often just basically unregulated outfits. Their primary
Speaker 1: goal is to prevent people from getting abortions. They'll sometimes
Speaker 1: give out really unscientific, sometimes harmful medical advice or make
Speaker 1: lofty promises of services that they can provide for somebody
Speaker 1: after they have a baby. Ultimately, their goal is to
Speaker 1: waste the time of the person who is pregnant so
Speaker 1: that they can no longer obtain an abortion within the
Speaker 1: window of legality, so essentially tricking folks into carrying the
Speaker 1: pregnancy to term even if they don't want to. Because
Speaker 1: they are not real medical facilities, they're unregulated, which means
Speaker 1: that they're not subject to data privacy and patient confidentiality
Speaker 1: laws that govern legitimate medical facilities, So listen to this.
Speaker 1: The Center for Countering Digital Hate found that one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty eight crisis of pregnancy centers placed ads on
Speaker 1: Google worth an estimated total of more than ten million
Speaker 1: dollars over ten years. Now, obviously, there was a major
Speaker 1: spike in advertising about six months before the Supreme Court's
Speaker 1: decision on Roe versus Wade. Many of these fake clinics
Speaker 1: are registered as five OHO one C three nonprofit organizations,
Speaker 1: and that means that they get to take advantage of
Speaker 1: Google's ad grant program, which allows qualifying nonprofits to get
Speaker 1: up to ten thousand dollars worth of ads for free
Speaker 1: per month. So it's really just like a scam. They're
Speaker 1: able to for free put ads on Google that you know,
Speaker 1: are filled with lies and harmful, inaccurate information about abortion,
Speaker 1: and then Google makes money from that. It's just like
Speaker 1: a scam on top of a scam on top of
Speaker 1: a scam.
Speaker 2: Those yeah, pregnancy crisis centers. I feel like we've been
Speaker 2: talking about them for years. They were a genius move
Speaker 2: by the anti choice forces because they just like skirt
Speaker 2: under the radar of like so many things, and they
Speaker 2: seem so benign and not even benign but like benevolent.
Speaker 2: But they're bad.
Speaker 1: They're bad. And the fact that Google is essentially making
Speaker 1: money from propping up their badness and allowing them to
Speaker 1: do it for essentially you know, if not for free,
Speaker 1: like probably not for that much money. If they're getting
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars worth of ads for free, this is
Speaker 1: really telling.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I described these a moment ago as scams, but it
Speaker 1: really is, like think of the scammiest SEO practices that
Speaker 1: you have ever encountered. Like when you are googling something
Speaker 1: and the first thing that comes up, you click on
Speaker 1: it and you're like, oh wait, it's a scammy spammy ad,
Speaker 1: and then they do that thing where like to click
Speaker 1: out of it. The ex is really hard to click,
Speaker 1: and then you try to click it and then you
Speaker 1: actually click into it, and then it like think of
Speaker 1: like the scammiest Internet stuff that drives you out of
Speaker 1: your fucking mind. That's what these clinics are doing, and
Speaker 1: Google is allowing them to do that. Center for Digital
Speaker 1: Hate found that several marketing firms help these fake clinics
Speaker 1: hijack search keywords to ensure that their content appears next
Speaker 1: to legitimate reproductive health information. So if you google something
Speaker 1: that is a obvious keyword for somebody looking for an abortion,
Speaker 1: like I need an abortion or pregnant and scared help,
Speaker 1: you might find results that max real health information alongside
Speaker 1: these fake clinics which are peddling harmful lies. And the
Speaker 1: fact that we're talking about this with Google is a
Speaker 1: really big deal. Ninety three percent of all searches worldwide
Speaker 1: happen on Google. And when someone doesn't know what to do,
Speaker 1: or they find themselves in a situation where they need
Speaker 1: answers and they're looking to the internet, odds are the
Speaker 1: first thing they're going to do is a Google search,
Speaker 1: And when they do that search, they should not be
Speaker 1: served up lies, and certainly Google should not be profiting
Speaker 1: off of those lies. Like it is an economy. It
Speaker 1: is a scam economy of lies and grifts, and Google
Speaker 1: is cashing in on it. And it really takes me
Speaker 1: back to something that Ifoma Uzoma, who you know, formerly
Speaker 1: worked at pinterest combating medical misinformation, a lot of which
Speaker 1: was misinformation around abortion. She always says that these people,
Speaker 1: these extremists who are pushing lives about abortion, they are
Speaker 1: scammers and spammers, and they have built an industry of
Speaker 1: lives for profit, and Google, as the country's number one
Speaker 1: search platform, should not be in the business of amplifying
Speaker 1: these lies, and they certainly should not be in the
Speaker 1: business of profiting from it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this it doesn't feel so terrible, but like, these
Speaker 2: are some of the more disgusting actors that we've talked
Speaker 2: about on this show, because they are preying on people
Speaker 2: who are at their most part vulnerable, often young, probably
Speaker 2: terrified if they have suddenly discovered that they are unintendedly
Speaker 2: pregnant and looking for some kind of like information about
Speaker 2: what the hell to do, and to deceive people at
Speaker 2: that moment is terrible. Yeah, it's It's infuriating, and the
Speaker 2: fact that Google is profiting off it to such an
Speaker 2: extent is not surprising but shameful.
Speaker 1: It is shameful, and if you're the biggest search engine
Speaker 1: in the world, some responsibility comes with that, and you
Speaker 1: should be in the business of amplifying actual information and
Speaker 1: not lies and scams. Some of the lies that these
Speaker 1: fake clinics are pushing are actually dangerous and harmful, things
Speaker 1: like telling people that they can have their medication abortions
Speaker 1: reversed and you know, telling them to take certain medications
Speaker 1: to reverse pill based abortion, which can harm them and
Speaker 1: also is not true. Google should not be in a
Speaker 1: place where they are amplifying these lies and certainly not
Speaker 1: making money off of it. I mean, it's really ghulish.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Ghulish, let's talk about Tesla. So this report, like,
Speaker 1: people should read the whole report, because I found myself
Speaker 1: gasping each paragraph. I was like, oh God, oh God,
Speaker 1: oh God, it just got worse and worse. So a
Speaker 1: new report from the Washington Post says that there have
Speaker 1: been seven hundred and thirty six crashes in the US
Speaker 1: since twenty nineteen involving Tesla's in autopilot mode, which is
Speaker 1: far more than previously reported. According to the report, the
Speaker 1: number of crashes has surged in the last four years
Speaker 1: because of the increase of the number of Tesla's on
Speaker 1: the road. Some of these crashes sound pretty serious. The
Speaker 1: number of deaths and serious injuries associated with autopilot has
Speaker 1: also grown significantly. When authorities first released a partial accounting
Speaker 1: of accidents involving autopilot in June of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: they counted only three deaths definitively linked to this technology,
Speaker 1: But the most recent data includes seventeen fatal incidents, eleven
Speaker 1: of them happening since May of twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 1: five serious injuries. So you might be asking, why is
Speaker 1: the number of crashes so much higher now than was
Speaker 1: previously reported. What we know all of this because of
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty one federal order that the National Highway
Speaker 1: Traffic Safety Administration, which is the country's top auto safety regulator,
Speaker 1: required automakers to disclose crashes involving driver assistance technology. Now,
Speaker 1: I should say that the total number of crashes involving
Speaker 1: this technology is really small compared to all road accidents,
Speaker 1: but it's so pretty troubling now. Since this new reporting
Speaker 1: requirements were introduced, we now know that the vast majority
Speaker 1: of the eight hundred and seven automation related crashes have
Speaker 1: involved Tesla's and it's linked to almost all deaths involving automation,
Speaker 1: in part because Tesla has experimented much more aggressively with
Speaker 1: automation than other carmakers have. The uptick and crashes also
Speaker 1: coincides with Tesla's aggressive rollout of full self driving mode,
Speaker 1: which has expanded from about twelve thousand users generally four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand users in a little more than a year.
Speaker 1: And this is not just Tesla either. After a mass
Speaker 1: shooting in San Francisco, there was a video of a cruise,
Speaker 1: which is General Motors's line of driverless cars blocking first
Speaker 1: responders from being able to administer aid to the victims.
Speaker 1: In the video, you can see the police screaming about this.
Speaker 1: He's screaming, you know that this driverless car is blocking emergency, medical,
Speaker 1: and fire. They need to get it out of there.
Speaker 1: In another video, you can hear an officer worrying that
Speaker 1: the car might crash into an ambulance or a firetruck
Speaker 1: when they're trying to get out. So General Motors has
Speaker 1: said that although the vehicle did stop at the crime scene,
Speaker 1: the car did not actually obstruct any emergency vehicles. They said,
Speaker 1: our car initially stopped as it was approaching an active
Speaker 1: emergency scene, then proceeded to perform a U turn and
Speaker 1: pull over. Throughout this time, all vehicles, including emergency response vehicles,
Speaker 1: were able to proceed around our car. Emergency personnel in
Speaker 1: San Francisco seemed to more or less confirm this. They
Speaker 1: told SFGate that the car did not technically obstruct emergency
Speaker 1: vehicles because another road happened to be available that was
Speaker 1: in an adjoining lane that they could use to get
Speaker 1: around this driverless car. But honestly, they didn't sound too
Speaker 1: thrilled that this was something they had to navigate in
Speaker 1: order to help nine people who had just been shot.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty clear like had this been a car
Speaker 1: with a human, a human would have been able to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, this is an active emergency scene, let
Speaker 1: me immediately do a quick U turn or whatever. But
Speaker 1: because it was driverless, there wasn't a real protocol of
Speaker 1: what to do or how to move it. They're just
Speaker 1: very lucky that there was an available lane in order
Speaker 1: to maneuver around this car. So Elon Musk argues that
Speaker 1: autopilot is safer than human drivers and that the use
Speaker 1: of autopilot will usher in a safer, virtually accident free future.
Speaker 1: In a March presentation, Tesla claim that cars in full
Speaker 1: self driving mode crashes at a rate of at least
Speaker 1: one fifth that of vehicles with normal driving in a
Speaker 1: comparison of miles driven per collision. But that claim and
Speaker 1: musks characterization of autopilot as unequivocally safer, is impossible to
Speaker 1: test without access to the detailed data that Tesla possesses,
Speaker 1: So it's basically impossible to say how many accidents this
Speaker 1: technology has diverted. But what is super clear is how
Speaker 1: dangerous it is to be testing this out on actual
Speaker 1: roads with the public because it is killing people. So
Speaker 1: I didn't know this. I don't have a Tesla because
Speaker 1: I'm a broke bitch. But I was reading this and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, surely they're not just out here testing
Speaker 1: out full self driving mode with just regular motorists on
Speaker 1: our public road and making anybody who exists out in public.
Speaker 1: They'reea Tesla's guinea pig. But I'm sorry to say that
Speaker 1: is kind of exactly what is happening.
Speaker 2: More.
Speaker 1: After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: So if you don't drive a Tesla, here's what you
Speaker 1: need to know. Teslas have three modes. One is autopilot,
Speaker 1: which is standard on all Teslas, which has intelligent cruise
Speaker 1: control that matches the car to the speed of the
Speaker 1: surrounding traffic and a lane centering function that helps keep
Speaker 1: the vehicle in the center of its lane. Then there
Speaker 1: is Enhanced Autopilot, which adds navigating highway on and off
Speaker 1: ramps and interchanges. On top of what autopilot does, it
Speaker 1: also adds a self parking system and a summon feature
Speaker 1: that lets owners call the car to them at parking
Speaker 1: lot speed from nearby and lastly, full self driving, which
Speaker 1: Tesla says will do all of the above, but also
Speaker 1: read and react to traffic lights and stop signs, and
Speaker 1: steer around some terms with the driver's quote active supervision. Now,
Speaker 1: according to Tesla's own website, full self driving mode is
Speaker 1: still being tested out. It's still in beta. It is
Speaker 1: not fully ready to go. The Tesla website says a
Speaker 1: full self driving mode this feature is in beta and
Speaker 1: may not stop for all traffic controls. Yeah, that's pretty scary.
Speaker 1: This is from blue Book. The term test would seem
Speaker 1: to suggest some sort of laboratory conditions or controlled experiment
Speaker 1: with close monitoring, but that's not how Tesla is testing
Speaker 1: the software. Instead, it's allowing owners to use it on
Speaker 1: public roads with the rest of us as if it
Speaker 1: were a finished product. Now, Tesla does require owners to
Speaker 1: sign a waiver to use this mode, but what about
Speaker 1: the rest of us? You know, I never consented to
Speaker 1: or opted into being whenever I was out on a
Speaker 1: public roadway being part of Elon Musk's text kitchen on
Speaker 1: whether or not this technology is safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so curious what the content of that waiver is, Like,
Speaker 2: what is being waive? What sort of liability is the
Speaker 2: owner assuming like, is the owner of the Tesla just
Speaker 2: deciding or just like taking on all lives ability to themselves,
Speaker 2: because yeah, like what about you and me who don't
Speaker 2: own a Tesla. We're just out there walking around, driving around,
Speaker 2: being at risk. What does this test status of full
Speaker 2: self driving mode mean for us?
Speaker 1: The report speaks to a young person who was really
Speaker 1: lucky to be alive after tesla using this technology crashed
Speaker 1: into him. I think he fractured his neck and like
Speaker 1: you know, was on a ventilator and still has a
Speaker 1: lot of issues. I think he's from North Carolina, and
Speaker 1: it is really scary, and I think it really speaks
Speaker 1: to this idea that we talk about a lot, which
Speaker 1: is just this very messed up relationship between the people
Speaker 1: who make this technology and the public. Like we should
Speaker 1: not have to be unpaid lab rats in this experiment
Speaker 1: with potentially harmful or deadly consequences just because Elon Musk
Speaker 1: says it's cool. I don't think that's very cool. I've
Speaker 1: never signed up for that. Before we go, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about this interesting poll that I read in
Speaker 1: Fast Company. So, according to a new Harris poll shared
Speaker 1: exclusively with Fast Company. Most Americans would prefer to live
Speaker 1: in eras before the rise of things like social media, smartphones,
Speaker 1: and the Internet. This sentiment is particularly true for older
Speaker 1: millennials and Gen xers. When asked if they would like
Speaker 1: to return to a time before smartphones and social media,
Speaker 1: seventy seven percent of Americans age thirty five to fifty
Speaker 1: four said yes, the highest of any group. So you
Speaker 1: might be thinking, oh, like, these people are just nostalgic
Speaker 1: because they're old enough to remember, you know, using payphones
Speaker 1: and you know, wired internet and all of the things
Speaker 1: that you and I talk about because we're old, right,
Speaker 1: But that's actually that might be some of it. But
Speaker 1: it actually might not be totally the case, because according
Speaker 1: to this poll, even younger people who have no memory
Speaker 1: of a world before social media indicated that they would
Speaker 1: like to return to the pre internet vibe. That's sixty
Speaker 1: three percent of eighteen to thirty four year olds agreed
Speaker 1: with that idea versus only thirty seven percent who disagreed.
Speaker 1: So I don't actually find that surprising at all. But
Speaker 1: can you guess the demographic who are most likely to
Speaker 1: be like, Actually, I like how things are right now.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go back to the pre social
Speaker 1: media days. I can't baby boomers. So baby boomers do
Speaker 1: not share that feeling. Only sixty percent of people over
Speaker 1: the age of fifty five say that they would like
Speaker 1: to return to those times. And this does not surprise
Speaker 1: me at all. My mom loves Facebook, you know, she's
Speaker 1: completely obsessed with it. I think that baby boomers love
Speaker 1: the Internet. Like, who is keeping Facebook afloat in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. It's baby boomers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that's right. It's a weird way to
Speaker 2: think about it.
Speaker 1: So what's interesting is that overwhelmingly all people still feel
Speaker 1: like technology is important. Ninety percent said that being open
Speaker 1: minded about new tech is important. Of finding that is
Speaker 1: held up across all the demographics that they looked at,
Speaker 1: And I think that's really to like. I almost think
Speaker 1: that what that shows is that people are just really tired.
Speaker 1: I think as we're seeing like the cost of being
Speaker 1: connected all the time and being like hyper aware of
Speaker 1: what that feels like being connected via technology all the time,
Speaker 1: and the ways that tech is becoming even more entrenched
Speaker 1: in our daily lives, it's like we don't like it,
Speaker 1: but we're aware of it, and it's just kind of
Speaker 1: like resignation that we're gonna have to accept it, right,
Speaker 1: Like we're gonna have to accept that these digital tools
Speaker 1: and experiences are part of our lives, whether we like
Speaker 1: it or not. And it turns out we don't really
Speaker 1: like it that much. Like I almost see this as
Speaker 1: a kind of like, I don't know, I find it
Speaker 1: interesting that people don't like this. They yearn for a time,
Speaker 1: even sometimes in the case of young people, a time
Speaker 1: that they never even experienced before social media, but they
Speaker 1: understand the importance of keeping up with technology.
Speaker 2: It makes you wonder if they is a different in
Speaker 2: appreciating the costs of what has been lost and like
Speaker 2: what we have to deal with, Like we talk on
Speaker 2: this show all the time about this information climate we
Speaker 2: live in where there's like so much disinformation, And we
Speaker 2: were talking about stochastic harassment earlier, where people are just
Speaker 2: like repeating harmful, hateful narratives that are just sufficiently under
Speaker 2: the radar that they don't violate terms of service of
Speaker 2: social media platforms. And it feels like that's just like
Speaker 2: normal and how it is. And like, you know, with AI,
Speaker 2: we've talked a lot about the how it's increasingly difficult
Speaker 2: to separate fact from fiction, and as we look into
Speaker 2: the future, it's probably only going to get harder. And
Speaker 2: that doesn't feel good. Doesn't make me feel like we're
Speaker 2: going to be approaching a future where things are better
Speaker 2: than they are now. And you know, no offense to
Speaker 2: the baby boomers, but maybe they're just not like as
Speaker 2: clued into all of these harms.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It really takes me back to the conversation that I
Speaker 1: had with Paris Marks from the podcast Tech Won't Save
Speaker 1: Us around who are the tech leaders who are building
Speaker 1: what our future looks like for all of us do?
Speaker 1: And when they think about what a good life looks like,
Speaker 1: a full, meaningful life, what that looks like, what that entails,
Speaker 1: are they thinking about the same thing that the rest
Speaker 1: of us are thinking about? Because parents made a great point,
Speaker 1: probably not a lot of these people who are designing
Speaker 1: what our futures are going to look like probably have
Speaker 1: a very different idea. But what a good future looks
Speaker 1: like versus what I think or what people listening ninety
Speaker 1: percent of us might think. And so when they're the
Speaker 1: ones who are in charge of using technology and building
Speaker 1: technology to build that future, we've got to really ask like,
Speaker 1: who put them in charge? If the majority of us
Speaker 1: from all these different demographics are wanting to go back
Speaker 1: to a time before social media, before technology was where
Speaker 1: it is, before the rise and the ubiquity of the Internet,
Speaker 1: that really says something. And I almost feel like it's
Speaker 1: kind of a positive thing because I hope that the
Speaker 1: people who build technology are really listening and paying attention
Speaker 1: to what the rest of us are saying. Because people
Speaker 1: don't want futures or we're increasingly being asked to give
Speaker 1: more and more of ourselves. Our experience is our time,
Speaker 1: our energy, our data to technology companies to make some
Speaker 1: tech billionaire a little bit richer. We are exhausted. Every
Speaker 1: drop of us, anything that we have has already been
Speaker 1: taken in mind from us. We are exhausted. We cannot
Speaker 1: give anymore. I think that that's what people are responding to.
Speaker 1: I think that people are tired, They want to slow down.
Speaker 1: They are craving connection, they are craving real experiences, and
Speaker 1: I think that tech leaders should be listening and not
Speaker 1: just trying to fill that gap with more tech, with
Speaker 1: more screens, with more extractive policies and you know, mining
Speaker 1: from us. Because I don't think they don't think that's
Speaker 1: making us happy, and I think that if it's I
Speaker 1: hope that they're really listening, because I think that what
Speaker 1: I'm hearing from this poll is that people want better
Speaker 1: for themselves, for their futures, for all of us, and
Speaker 1: got I hope that people who make technology are listening.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being here Mike to walk through
Speaker 1: these stories, and thanks to everyone for listening. If you
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