Speaker 1: There are no girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm brigittat and this is
Speaker 1: there are no girls.
Speaker 2: On the Internet.
Speaker 1: So Mike, as you can probably tell, we are not
Speaker 1: recording this when we usually record for the Round US,
Speaker 1: which is Thursday late night. It is Friday early morning.
Speaker 1: I'm not a morning person. Do you consider yourself a
Speaker 1: morning person?
Speaker 3: I don't. I've always aspired to be a morning person,
Speaker 3: and on those occasions when I manage to get out
Speaker 3: of bed early, I feel really proud of myself and
Speaker 3: like a little bit smug about it. But truth be told,
Speaker 3: that left my own devices, I would sleep in late
Speaker 3: every single day.
Speaker 1: I pretty much do sleep in late every single day.
Speaker 1: So if I'm not sounding my most bride eyed and
Speaker 1: bushy tailed, it is because it is early in the morning,
Speaker 1: and I don't I'm not usually on a microphone right
Speaker 1: when I wake up. I was traveling to New York
Speaker 1: for a conference about disinformation and my train was late
Speaker 1: and I got in late, and I was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, I don't have it in me. But this morning,
Speaker 1: this is this is the truth. We got this right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, and listeners, this is really a sign of
Speaker 3: how much Bridget loves and respects you that she is
Speaker 3: so committed to putting this podcast out that she is
Speaker 3: getting up early in the morning. There are not a
Speaker 3: lot of things that can get Bridget up on the
Speaker 3: microphone early in the morning.
Speaker 1: Surely nothing that's so true. So I'm phasing in a
Speaker 1: new banter idea. Mike, you you kind of don't have TikTok.
Speaker 1: You've you've had it, You've you've had flirtations with it.
Speaker 1: I know you have a like a philosophical opposition to
Speaker 1: TikTok or something. You you're basically you're not on TikTok.
Speaker 3: I'm not on TikTok. I wouldn't call it a philosophical opposition.
Speaker 3: I am kind of where of it, but like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, I don't have it. I've been thinking lately
Speaker 3: like maybe I'm being ridiculous and I should just get it,
Speaker 3: but I don't currently have it.
Speaker 1: So that means that there are entire trends and discourses
Speaker 1: and all of that happening that you're just like you
Speaker 1: just miss you. I'll be like, oh, did you see
Speaker 1: such and such, and You're like, I don't know what
Speaker 1: you're saying, I don't know what those words mean. So
Speaker 1: new kind of segment we're trying out. Bridgett explains TikTok's
Speaker 1: to Mike. I love TikTok. I watch it constantly. I
Speaker 1: have a timer on my phone to when I've been
Speaker 1: on for an hour, we'll be like, oh, you've had
Speaker 1: your hour of TikTok a day. It used to be
Speaker 1: an hour of Instagram. I can tell you the last
Speaker 1: time I spent ten minutes on Instagram TikTok. That's where
Speaker 1: I need my timer. So I somebody who is very
Speaker 1: tuned into what's happening on TikTok, I'm going to take
Speaker 1: a stab at explaining popping TikTok discourse to Mike somebody
Speaker 1: who is barely on TikTok with me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this probably won't be embarrassing for me at all.
Speaker 1: Okay, So there's this thing, this trend on TikTok. I
Speaker 1: should say something about TikTok and also social media more generally,
Speaker 1: is that you really never know if what you're watching
Speaker 1: is a skit, like somebody is just making up a
Speaker 1: scenario that's never happened just to get engagement. And so
Speaker 1: I suspect that most of what I'm about to say
Speaker 1: is being done by people who are doing it on
Speaker 1: purpose to get people like me to talk about it.
Speaker 1: And here I am so. I saw this trend challenge
Speaker 1: whatever on TikTok where women who were married to men
Speaker 1: were making a small mess of ketchup on their kitchen tables,
Speaker 1: calling their husband or their boyfriend in and being like, hey,
Speaker 1: can you clean this ketchup? And first of all, all
Speaker 1: the men are like, why are you asking me to
Speaker 1: clean up a random pile of ketchup that you made
Speaker 1: seemingly with intention because it's a perfect circle, while also
Speaker 1: filming me like what's going on? But the challenge is
Speaker 1: does your husband or boyfriend know how to clean up
Speaker 1: up a pile of ketchup effectively? And what would he do?
Speaker 1: So if asked? And I gotta say, y'all the bar
Speaker 1: is in hell. I was like, so if you're if
Speaker 1: your man doesn't know how to do it embarrassing all
Speaker 1: if you're a man doesn't and you're like, Wow, my
Speaker 1: husband really knows how to clean up a pile of ketchup?
Speaker 1: If almost the man, I would be so insulted that
Speaker 1: you would think that, like that like that like like, hey, ladies,
Speaker 1: does your man clean up piles of ketchup on the table?
Speaker 1: That like that's the marker of like a good confident man.
Speaker 3: So just to repeat this back to make sure that
Speaker 3: I've understood it. Uh, the woman will call her husband
Speaker 3: or boyfriend over look him in the eye while she
Speaker 3: squeezes out some ketchup onto the there. Oh, it's already there. Okay.
Speaker 3: So he comes in and she's like, somehow, through mysterious circumstances,
Speaker 3: there's ketchup here. I don't know what to do. I
Speaker 3: need you to help me by cleaning it up.
Speaker 1: And for some reason, her phone is out she's recording
Speaker 1: hold the whole interaction, which to me, it's like somebody
Speaker 1: in my household. Actually, that would never happen unless somebody
Speaker 1: was about to like give me happy news. I think.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody in my life would ever be
Speaker 1: purporting to have a normal interaction with me while also
Speaker 1: filming me.
Speaker 3: Now that's a little strange. But like, how does Wooden
Speaker 3: screw up cleaning up a little bit of ketchup from
Speaker 3: the counter?
Speaker 1: Great question. So it is a fair amount of ketchup,
Speaker 1: So it's not just like a doll up. It's like
Speaker 1: a little pile of ketchup if you I mean, it's
Speaker 1: hard to explain, but if you ever had to clean
Speaker 1: something that's like pretty sticky off of a surface, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about. You have to sort of
Speaker 1: come at it at a specific angle. A lot of
Speaker 1: these guys are going at it from the top, like
Speaker 1: they put a paper They put a single paper towel
Speaker 1: down on it, which is already like the wrong tool
Speaker 1: for the job, and then they sort of full hand
Speaker 1: palmet from the top and then move their hand around,
Speaker 1: so essentially they're smearing it around, is what they're doing.
Speaker 1: They're like or like finger painting with it at that point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like like wax on, wax off from like the
Speaker 3: karate kids exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so some of these men don't know how to
Speaker 1: clean ketchup off a table, or they're pretending not to. Again,
Speaker 1: whenever I am watching tiktoks and I'm watching a seemingly
Speaker 1: mundane moment, I always been thinking, like, well, why did
Speaker 1: you have your phone? Why are you recording this? Like
Speaker 1: like it has to be some sort of setup. But
Speaker 1: in any event, that is what's going on in certain
Speaker 1: corners of TikTok. Men either cannot clean ketchup off of
Speaker 1: a table or they're getting lots of praise and like, oh,
Speaker 1: what a good husband for knowing how to and being
Speaker 1: willing to clean up ketchup from the table. We deserve better.
Speaker 1: Women deserve better. Frankly, men deserve better. Everybody deserves better.
Speaker 1: Nobody wins in this scenario. The bar is in hell.
Speaker 3: Maybe you need to or like, we need to do
Speaker 3: a PSA or something like create a little instructional video
Speaker 3: on how to clean ketchup off a table.
Speaker 1: Men, is your wife putting a phone in your face
Speaker 1: and asking you if you know how to clean up
Speaker 1: ketchup off a countertop. Don't worry, it happens to a
Speaker 1: lot of us. Here's what you need to do. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's helpful. We'll flesh it out. We'll flesh it out
Speaker 1: in further episode. So that is what's going on on, TikTok.
Speaker 1: Thank you for letting me to explain this to you.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you're missing out by not having
Speaker 1: heard this discourse?
Speaker 3: No, I feel actually dumber having it. Okay, let's but
Speaker 3: thank you for telling me anyway, of course, I do
Speaker 3: feel a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Informed Okay, so let's move on to an update on
Speaker 1: a story that we talked about a little while ago. So,
Speaker 1: after a Row was overturned by the Supreme Court, everybody
Speaker 1: was looking at tech companies. After all, in the days
Speaker 1: before ROW, abortion was criminalized, but we didn't all carry
Speaker 1: like surveillance devices with us in our pocket tracking our
Speaker 1: every move. So it really was a moment in time
Speaker 1: where tech companies really needed to stay up or at
Speaker 1: least clarify and be transparent about how they would be
Speaker 1: saving data related to abortions. Google announced pretty soon after
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court ruled on ROW that they were going
Speaker 1: to be proactively deleting sensitive location data like when somebody
Speaker 1: visits an abortion clinic from their search history. I believe,
Speaker 1: like if I'm mistaken and someone is like, no, that's
Speaker 1: not right, please correct me. My remembering of this event
Speaker 1: is that Google did this proactively, that they were not
Speaker 1: like pushed by a campaign. At the time, I was
Speaker 1: pretty plugged into like tech platform accountability campaigns at the
Speaker 1: intersection of you know, platform accountability and gender justice, and
Speaker 1: so as far as I know, Google came out of
Speaker 1: the gate and proactively announced this. That's that was my understanding,
Speaker 1: But thanks to the advocacy organization Accountable Tech, we know
Speaker 1: that Google said they would proactively be deleting people's search
Speaker 1: history and location data when they visited abortion clinics. However,
Speaker 1: they just kind of didn't do that. So Accountable Tech
Speaker 1: did this really interesting test where they bought brand new
Speaker 1: Android phones, drove to abortion clinics, and found that Google
Speaker 1: did retain that location information. So Google gave the usual
Speaker 1: song and dance, we care about user privacy, We're doing
Speaker 1: all we can, blah blah blah, and it said that
Speaker 1: the company planned to go along with changes to implement
Speaker 1: this change in location retention policies in early twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: as promised. So what's the update here? While they really
Speaker 1: haven't done that here, it is twenty twenty four and
Speaker 1: they're still, like, I guess, still working on it, still
Speaker 1: working at the kinks whatever. Accountable Tax just released another
Speaker 1: study this week that found that the company still was
Speaker 1: not deleting all location history in all cases as promised,
Speaker 1: though I will say Google's rate of retention has improved
Speaker 1: a little bit. So the rate of retention of location
Speaker 1: information decreased from sixty percent of tested cases a measurement
Speaker 1: taken five months after Google's pledge to fifty percent of
Speaker 1: tested cases in the most recent experiment, fifty percent, Like
Speaker 1: it's a coin flip of whether or not it's they're
Speaker 1: actually gonna do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not a very good metric. When you started,
Speaker 3: I was like, Okay, well, maybe there's like a couple
Speaker 3: edge cases they creep through. Fifty percent is like, that's
Speaker 3: pretty embarrassing.
Speaker 1: So, according to the Guardian, here's how they did this
Speaker 1: newest test. Researchers from Accountable Tech ran eight tests in
Speaker 1: seven states, Pennsylvania, Texas, Nevada, Florida, New York, Georgia, and
Speaker 1: North Carolina. In four out of the eight tests, the
Speaker 1: route to planned parenthood was retained in the device's location history,
Speaker 1: though the name of the clinic was scrubbed. But it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be like that hard if somebody was really trying
Speaker 1: to paint a portrait about where you were, it really
Speaker 1: wouldn't be that hard to be like, oh, it was
Speaker 1: planned parenthood. Data on searches for abortion clinics was still
Speaker 1: retained in the web and activity history as in the
Speaker 1: researchers first test, so that has not changed like when
Speaker 1: they first did this test, they were still when you
Speaker 1: searched for abortion clinics, that information was still retained in
Speaker 1: your web activity. It's still it is still retained in
Speaker 1: your web activity in twenty twenty four. So the director
Speaker 1: of Products of Google Maps, Marlow McGriff, disputed the findings
Speaker 1: of this study, saying, we are upholding our promise to
Speaker 1: delete particularly personal places from location history if these places
Speaker 1: are identified by our systems. Any claims that we're not
Speaker 1: doing so are patently false or misguided. So it's when
Speaker 1: I looked into this, it's like very clear to me
Speaker 1: that Google is sort of nippicking here. Like in one
Speaker 1: of the cases they say that, oh, well, Google Location
Speaker 1: services did not detect that visit as a planned parenthood
Speaker 1: specifically so that it did not delete that location data,
Speaker 1: but like it was a planned parenthood. So whether or
Speaker 1: not your location services or map or whatever clocked it
Speaker 1: that way, I don't know. It seems a little weird
Speaker 1: to include that in a case where you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to delete the location services.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like they're saying, like what that spokesman
Speaker 3: was saying is that they didn't detect that the location
Speaker 3: was abortion clinic and so they didn't delete the trail.
Speaker 3: But like detecting that the person has visited in abortion
Speaker 3: clinic is a big part of what they're saying that
Speaker 3: they're they're doing right. Like it's like saying, oh, we
Speaker 3: you know, like they just totally didn't they missed on
Speaker 3: half of the objective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're essentially using that as their excuse. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know why something about this this situation infuriates
Speaker 1: me because it's so ridiculous. Basically, they out of the gate,
Speaker 1: We're like, we're gonna do X, and now they're like,
Speaker 1: well we can't do X. It's like, well, you couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. It's like exactly what accountable tech and abortion
Speaker 1: advocates are saying is that you're not you're doing a
Speaker 1: sloppy job of it. And they're like, well, we agree,
Speaker 1: we're doing a sloppy job. One could say, we're not
Speaker 1: even really doing it at all. It's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what we're saying. It's like it seems to be
Speaker 1: everybody is saying the same thing. It's not getting done.
Speaker 3: You know. I've heard that Google is very siloed and
Speaker 3: it's a bunch of little fiefdoms. Uh, and I I
Speaker 3: wonder if, like, basically what he's saying is that, like, well,
Speaker 3: the department that was in charge of this, they did
Speaker 3: their part, and they were just relying on the data
Speaker 3: from some other department that wasn't involved in this, So
Speaker 3: it's not our fault. But like it's all Google, right,
Speaker 3: Like the whole thing that they said they were gonna
Speaker 3: do of scrubbing data showing people visiting abortion clinics like
Speaker 3: Soup to nuts, the whole process of identifying that data
Speaker 3: and then scrubbing it, it's all Google right. Like this
Speaker 3: is not a good excuse.
Speaker 1: No, it's not a good excuse at all, And especially
Speaker 1: when we're talking about like playing so fast and loose
Speaker 1: with something that can, let's be really clear, could get
Speaker 1: abortion seekers and the people who support abortion seekers arrested.
Speaker 1: Like we're not talking about something that is frivolous. We're
Speaker 1: talking about something that really matters. And so I think,
Speaker 1: I think, like playing this weird blame game and you know,
Speaker 1: using all these excuses really doesn't cut it for me
Speaker 1: when we're talking about something so serious that they proactively
Speaker 1: said that they could and would do so. According to
Speaker 1: Accountable Tech, it's about fifty to fifty whether or not
Speaker 1: this data is deleted or not by Google, they say,
Speaker 1: with the same odds as a coin flip an abortion
Speaker 1: seekers location data might still be retained and used to
Speaker 1: prosecute them. On top of that, as we've seen through
Speaker 1: the experiments, Google still retains location, search query data and
Speaker 1: likely other incriminating data as well from email to Google
Speaker 1: search data. Yeah, it's not great, Like this is a
Speaker 1: pretty big deal that I think already has had pretty
Speaker 1: big implications for folks who need abortions. The company receives
Speaker 1: and responds to tens of thousands of law enforcement requests
Speaker 1: for data from its vast tropes of user data, and
Speaker 1: complies with eighty percent of those requests with some level
Speaker 1: of information. This is according to Google's transparency report. And
Speaker 1: on top of that, law enforcement agencies and police have
Speaker 1: so or to make increasing use of this new category
Speaker 1: of search warrant called reverse search warrants. The Guardian says
Speaker 1: in that category are geofence location warrants, which police use
Speaker 1: to come up with a list of suspects by seeking
Speaker 1: out information on all users whose devices have been detected
Speaker 1: in a certain place at a certain time. Many activists
Speaker 1: worry law enforcement would use these search warrants to collect
Speaker 1: data to find and prosecute or investigate those seeking abortions.
Speaker 1: So it's not all bad though. I do have some
Speaker 1: like good ish news from this update. Google has announced
Speaker 1: that it planned to change the way that it stores
Speaker 1: location history data for all users in a way that
Speaker 1: could render responding to geofence warrants effectively impossible. The changes
Speaker 1: include storing location data on user's devices by default, encrypting
Speaker 1: any location data that's backed up to Google's cloud storage,
Speaker 1: and deleting location data after three months. So this is
Speaker 1: sort of good, Like, it's a sort of a good
Speaker 1: way to get around that particularly invasive search warrant process. However,
Speaker 1: as Accountable Tech points out, we are talking about a company,
Speaker 1: Like the reason we're talking about Google today is because
Speaker 1: they have shown themselves to be kind of slippery about
Speaker 1: what they say they're going to do and what they
Speaker 1: actually do when it comes to our data. Right, so
Speaker 1: can we trust them to do this thing? That sounds
Speaker 1: kind of like a step in the right direction? Who knows?
Speaker 1: Accountable Text says they are not holding their breath. They
Speaker 1: told the Guardian that yeah, this is a step in
Speaker 1: the right direction. However, the company's inability to follow through
Speaker 1: on previous commitments to protect location data shows that Google
Speaker 1: cannot be trusted to meet its public commitments on its
Speaker 1: timeline promises. We cannot take the company on its word.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like you said, is that does sound
Speaker 3: like a really positive step and the things Google is
Speaker 3: saying it's doing are really good and should be commended.
Speaker 3: But then they need to actually do those things. And
Speaker 3: three months is a long time for data to not
Speaker 3: be deleted, right if they continue to store sensitive data
Speaker 3: related to abortion locations, three months is definitely enough time
Speaker 3: for somebody to find that with a warrant or go
Speaker 3: fishing for it.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Google, have you noticed how Google Search sucks?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: Yeah? It's bad and getting worse.
Speaker 1: So I was googling something recently and I realized I
Speaker 1: had just sort of trained myself to have my eyes
Speaker 1: kind of scan over the first handful of results at
Speaker 1: the top because they're always ads are always really scammy.
Speaker 1: It is maddening. So if you feel like Google Search
Speaker 1: has gotten worse lately and like just overall less useful,
Speaker 1: full of garbage, you are not wrong, because now we
Speaker 1: have the data to confirm that a new study from
Speaker 1: German researchers at Leibzig University and the Center for Scalable
Speaker 1: Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. We're trying to answer the
Speaker 1: research question is Google getting worse? To answer this question,
Speaker 1: they examined almost eight thousand product review queries on Google
Speaker 1: Being and Duck duc Go for a year. Researchers worked
Speaker 1: off reports that a torrent of low quality content, especially
Speaker 1: for product search, keeps drounding out any kind of useful
Speaker 1: information in Google search results, and what they found pretty
Speaker 1: much confirmed that a significant amount of the results found
Speaker 1: in response to product related queries were outright SEO product
Speaker 1: review spam. So just like garbage ads, like people who
Speaker 1: are taking advantage of SEO to like get their stuff
Speaker 1: at the very top of Google Search. It is so annoying.
Speaker 1: So basically Google Search, especially for products, is all SEO spam.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, it's so true, Like Google Search is just
Speaker 3: really difficult to use for some types of queries. And
Speaker 3: you know, it's so interesting that SEO has basically ruined
Speaker 3: Google Search. You know, people one of the big things
Speaker 3: people were talking about a couple months ago when you know,
Speaker 3: chat GPT came out and everybody was all a buzz
Speaker 3: about generative AI was the idea or concern about generative
Speaker 3: AI producing content that gets released in the world and
Speaker 3: then training on that content like a snake eating its
Speaker 3: own tail thing. And I feel like we already kind
Speaker 3: of have that with Google Search just returning in a
Speaker 3: lot of cases garbage results that are just optimized for SEO.
Speaker 3: Where uh like, we didn't even need generative AI to
Speaker 3: turn the Internet into a snake eating its own tail
Speaker 3: of low quality information, right like we we humans did
Speaker 3: it ourselves.
Speaker 1: Well, you know who does not agree that their search
Speaker 1: platforms are becoming is it? Orboris? Is that the name
Speaker 1: of that snake eating its own roboros? Or don't quote
Speaker 1: me on that pronunciation of it. But you know who
Speaker 1: doesn't agree with you know what I'm trying to say,
Speaker 1: it's the morning, Give me a break. You know who
Speaker 1: doesn't agree that that's happening?
Speaker 3: Is it Google?
Speaker 1: It's Google? So they're really taking a lot of heat
Speaker 1: in this episode, I got to say. A Google spokesperson
Speaker 1: told Mashable, but the study does not reflect the overall
Speaker 1: quality and helpfulness of search, And they also emphasize that
Speaker 1: the study only focuses on a narrow set of search queries,
Speaker 1: namely product search. Again, it is wild to me that
Speaker 1: they're like, well, yeah, of course product search sucks. Like
Speaker 1: is that that big of a deal. Like they're almost
Speaker 1: like using like they're almost like confirming what people are saying.
Speaker 1: What people are saying is like, yeah, you can't use
Speaker 1: Google the search products anymore without getting a bunch of ads.
Speaker 1: And they're like, well that sure if you only count
Speaker 1: product search. It's like, well that's what they're saying. It
Speaker 1: seems like we agree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean in fairness to Google, right, Like, there
Speaker 3: are a lot of categories where it works really well. Right, Like,
Speaker 3: I use Google Search all the time. In a lot
Speaker 3: of cases it works well. Product search it's terrible. And
Speaker 3: you know, it's kind of interesting that the category of
Speaker 3: search where it fails is the one category where people
Speaker 3: are trying to sell stuff, right, Like, Right, isn't that interesting?
Speaker 1: So we've been picking on Google a lot in this episode.
Speaker 1: I will throw them a bone. So the study did
Speaker 1: show that Google results did improve a little bit to
Speaker 1: some extent between the start of the researchers experiment and
Speaker 1: the end, but still they found an overall downward trend
Speaker 1: in text quality and all three search engines, and then
Speaker 1: when you add in things like AI generated spam, this
Speaker 1: is only going to get worse, Like this is going
Speaker 1: to be a problem that if they don't really take
Speaker 1: some action on, it's just going to result in Google
Speaker 1: being garbage, Like whenever I'm searching for a product out
Speaker 1: the search like Ninja coffeemaker, Reddit to at least I
Speaker 1: used to do that, but I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know the state of Reddit these days, whether or not
Speaker 1: that's going to remain a viable strategy to actually get
Speaker 1: real information. But it should not be this hard to
Speaker 1: get real good information curated by a human on the Internet.
Speaker 1: Like it's like wild to me that this is where
Speaker 1: we're at that you have to do so much just
Speaker 1: to get real honest information online.
Speaker 3: Yeah, adding Reddit in the search terms and you search
Speaker 3: Google is definitely a useful thing to do. Relatedly, I mean,
Speaker 3: this isn't part of this Google story, but it's just
Speaker 3: an interesting thing. I was talking with somebody the other
Speaker 3: day who's like a digital strategy person, and they were
Speaker 3: talking about SEO and how much it's changed in recent
Speaker 3: years where SEO used to be all about Google, right,
Speaker 3: like optimizing your website or they would show up in
Speaker 3: Google results. Now that's still a big piece of it,
Speaker 3: but people are also optimizing their sites to show up
Speaker 3: in social media platform results, so like searching Facebook, searching Twitter,
Speaker 3: searching uh TikTok. When I thought that was like a
Speaker 3: really interesting change from Google being basically the only game
Speaker 3: in town for search to that no longer being the case.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty two, there was new reports that, particularly
Speaker 1: with gen Z younger folks, TikTok had already overtaken Google
Speaker 1: as the new search engine. So people are definitely using
Speaker 1: social media sites as search engines now, so look out Google.
Speaker 3: That's wild that gen Z would want to search something
Speaker 3: and be like the format I want to see that
Speaker 3: is a short video.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: Okay, So speaking of young people on the internet, quick
Speaker 1: heads up on story because it is pretty disturbing. It's
Speaker 1: an issue that I feel very strongly about. I talk
Speaker 1: about it a lot and it infuriates me. And that
Speaker 1: is AI generated deep fakes. So if you listen to
Speaker 1: the show, you probably already know that when it comes
Speaker 1: to technology, we are really failing our kids, in particular
Speaker 1: our young girls. Unchecked tech harms routinely befall on young girls,
Speaker 1: and they're just supposed to deal with it. They're just
Speaker 1: supposed to be like, yep. Now, this is a whole
Speaker 1: new category of harm that you have to absorb and
Speaker 1: there will be no accountability or recourse for it. Unacceptable
Speaker 1: and when it comes to AI, that is no different.
Speaker 1: So this week, a New Jersey high schooler named Francesca Manny,
Speaker 1: a teenage victim of non consensually sexually explicit deep fakes,
Speaker 1: joined Representative Joe Morrell from New York to share her
Speaker 1: story and advocate for a bipartisan bill that would criminalize
Speaker 1: sharing deep fakes at a federal level. So, this bill,
Speaker 1: called the Preventing Deep Fakes of Intimate Images Act, was
Speaker 1: first referred to by the House Judiciary Committee back in
Speaker 1: December twenty twenty two, but since then no further action
Speaker 1: has been taken and this lawmaker morel is trying to
Speaker 1: reintroduce it. So the bill would criminalize the non consensual
Speaker 1: sharing of sexually explicit deep fakes and create a rite
Speaker 1: of private action so that victims who are depicted in
Speaker 1: these images would be able to sue the creators and
Speaker 1: distributors of those deep fakes while also remaining anonymous. Under
Speaker 1: this proposed law, damages for sharing deep faked images without
Speaker 1: consent go as high as one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars an imprisonment of up to ten years. If sharing
Speaker 1: the images facilitates violence or impacts the proceedings of a
Speaker 1: government agency. That's really important, I think, because oftentimes with
Speaker 1: deep fakes I do sometimes they're used to terrorize individual people.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're used to, you know, disrupt a political campaign
Speaker 1: or disrupt an election, and so I think it is
Speaker 1: important to have to have that bit in there. So
Speaker 1: Francesca's story is truly heartbreaking. Boys in her school, like
Speaker 1: a group of boys created and traded AI generated deep
Speaker 1: fake nude images of her at about thirty other girls
Speaker 1: in her class back on October twentieth, And I think
Speaker 1: it's an important reminder that AI is threatening and harming
Speaker 1: women and girls right now. Like this is not some
Speaker 1: faraway conceptual threat down the line. It is happening. It
Speaker 1: is here. Women and girls are already paying a cost
Speaker 1: for that technology and for the fact that it's been
Speaker 1: allowed to just run rampant unchecked. So according to the
Speaker 1: Dutch AI company sensity. Ninety six percent of deep fakes
Speaker 1: online are non consensual deep fake porn, surprise, surprise, the
Speaker 1: vast majority of which targets women. So this is a
Speaker 1: gender justice issue. It is a issue about sexual violence.
Speaker 1: It's an issue about consent. You know, I beat this
Speaker 1: drama lot that tech issues are gender issues, their race issues,
Speaker 1: their identity issues. And this is a story that I
Speaker 1: think really makes that clear. It poses a very real
Speaker 1: threat to our democracy. It does not just threaten the
Speaker 1: women and girls that are depicted in these images. It
Speaker 1: threatens all of us and makes us all less safe
Speaker 1: and secure. Because if women can't run for office or
Speaker 1: participate in public and civic life without being depicted in
Speaker 1: sexualized AI generated content that depicts them, we will not
Speaker 1: have a representative democracy, right. We will not have a
Speaker 1: society where everybody can make their voice heard, where everybody
Speaker 1: can can participate equally in public and civic life. We
Speaker 1: just won't have that. And so it's an issue that
Speaker 1: impacts us all, not just the women who are depicted.
Speaker 1: One note about this is that we're talking specifically about
Speaker 1: AI generated deep things right now, because we're talking about
Speaker 1: this legislation However, this kind of thing is not new, right,
Speaker 1: bad actors have already been doing this for a very
Speaker 1: long time without AI, Like before AI was super ubiquitous.
Speaker 1: A few years ago, there was an image circulating online
Speaker 1: of a woman topless in her bathtub vaping, and it's
Speaker 1: a picture of her feet, but in the picture you
Speaker 1: can see her faucet, and like, there's a blurry reflected
Speaker 1: image of this woman topless if you look close enough,
Speaker 1: because you know how creeps will zoom in on a
Speaker 1: photo if I think there's some chance of nudity in it,
Speaker 1: if you zoom in enough, you can see a topless
Speaker 1: naked woman in the reflection of the faucet in this picture.
Speaker 1: And so this picture was making the rounds on social media,
Speaker 1: with people saying that it was AOC. However, in reality,
Speaker 1: I think it was actually Sidney Leathers. If you don't
Speaker 1: know who Sidney Leathers is, Sidney Leathers was the woman
Speaker 1: who was involved in Anthony Wiener's the first iteration of
Speaker 1: Anthony Wiener's text scandal. Do you remember that?
Speaker 3: Ah? Yes, the leather Wiener scandal.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, the Leather Wiener scandal. So the image was
Speaker 1: actually her but they were like, oh, this is a
Speaker 1: picture of AOC topless and naked in her tub, even
Speaker 1: though like it was barely a picture of Sidney Leathers
Speaker 1: topless and naked in her tub, Like if you're zooming
Speaker 1: in and like enhancing and enhancing and enhancing just to
Speaker 1: see a new topless woman. Debatable on whether that is
Speaker 1: a top like, come on, you know that's really on you, Like,
Speaker 1: don't put that on her? That makes sense to you,
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Yeah, that makes sense. So this
Speaker 1: is what's called a cheap fake, which is exactly what
Speaker 1: it sounds like, a cheaply manipulated piece of content. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's as simple as something as like mislabeling what that
Speaker 1: content is, so saying, oh, this is AOC, not Sydney Leathers.
Speaker 1: That is how like low budget and cheap cheap fakes
Speaker 1: can be. So it's not always AI, right, So AI
Speaker 1: is not the reason why people are creating this kind
Speaker 1: of misleading content. However, AI makes it so easy and
Speaker 1: so fast and so cheap for anybody to do it right.
Speaker 1: It might have taken some effort to like make a
Speaker 1: believable cheap fake of a girl in your high school
Speaker 1: class who you want to sexually humiliate. But with AI,
Speaker 1: anybody can do it easily. Francesca Manny, the high school
Speaker 1: student who was targeted by these deep stakes, I really
Speaker 1: got to give it to her because, like she worked
Speaker 1: with this lawmaker and advocated and talked about her experience
Speaker 1: to help raise awareness about this law. She says, the
Speaker 1: issue is pret black and white. No kid, teen or
Speaker 1: woman should ever have to experience what I went through.
Speaker 1: I felt sad and helpless. I'm here standing up and
Speaker 1: shouting for change, fighting for laws so no one else
Speaker 1: has to feel as lost and powerless as I did.
Speaker 1: On October twentieth. The glaring lack of laws speaks volumes,
Speaker 1: and when you have a high school student having to
Speaker 1: advocate to protect people in this way, something is really wrong.
Speaker 1: Like I give it up to Francesca. She sounds amazing. Francesca,
Speaker 1: if you're listening, come to the show anytime. We support you.
Speaker 1: But she should be like getting ready for her prom
Speaker 1: and hanging out with her friends and reading magazines and
Speaker 1: playing supports and like doing things that high schoolers are
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing. It kind of breaks my heart
Speaker 1: that she has to be working, because this is work
Speaker 1: in this way to advocate for a system where kids
Speaker 1: like her aren't harmed like this, like this should not
Speaker 1: be on her, a child, To ask adults whose job
Speaker 1: it is to keep her people like her safe, who
Speaker 1: just done fuck all? It infuriates me, She says. Our
Speaker 1: voices are our secret weapon, and our words are like
Speaker 1: power ups in Fortnite. My mom and I are advocating
Speaker 1: to create a world we're being safe. Isn't just a hope,
Speaker 1: it's a reality for everyone.
Speaker 3: Oof.
Speaker 1: Francesca girl, thank you for what you're doing. I am
Speaker 1: so sorry that we have failed you. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's an issue that really pisses me off because it's
Speaker 1: just so fucked up, and she really shouldn't have to
Speaker 1: be doing this.
Speaker 3: And it also seems like it should be a no
Speaker 3: brainer that there should be some action on this bill
Speaker 3: that was introduced in December of twenty twenty two. It's
Speaker 3: been over a year and no action. Like everybody's constantly
Speaker 3: yelling their heads off that we need to save the children.
Speaker 3: Here is a bill that would help protect children from
Speaker 3: what I would imagine nearly all reasonable people would agree
Speaker 3: is like a harmful, bad thing. So the lack of
Speaker 3: action on this bill is like puzzling and infuriating. Hopefully
Speaker 3: we'll see some action on it.
Speaker 1: Agreed. So I did want to talk briefly about this
Speaker 1: open Ai story. Open ai the company behind chat Gypt.
Speaker 1: We did a whole episode about their CEO, Sam Altman,
Speaker 1: being fired and then rehired and all of that. Well,
Speaker 1: they quietly changed it their terms of service to remove
Speaker 1: language forbidding the use of its technology for military purposes.
Speaker 1: The new terms of service still forbids the technology being
Speaker 1: used to make weapons specifically, but other military or like
Speaker 1: military adjacent purposes are now fair game. This change follows
Speaker 1: a newly announced collaboration between open ai and the US
Speaker 1: Department of Defense. So this policy change really continues this
Speaker 1: trend of Sam Altman and open Ai as they embrace
Speaker 1: this profit making potential of relaxing the company's sort of
Speaker 1: original lofty ideas. I think initially open ai was meant
Speaker 1: to be a nonprofit and they had this sort of
Speaker 1: like at least stated, kind of like altruistic sounding ish goal.
Speaker 1: Now they're like, no, we're trying to make money. We're
Speaker 1: trying to get paid, y'all. Like that's what it is.
Speaker 1: Let's just call it what it is so. Just two
Speaker 1: months ago, we watched the internet pretty much melt down
Speaker 1: with a nonprofit board of open ai, which a Wired
Speaker 1: article from the summer describes as responsible for making sure
Speaker 1: that the drive for revenue and profits will not overwhelm
Speaker 1: open AI's original idea, fired Altman for allegedly not staying
Speaker 1: true to its idealistic mission. The firing didn't take Within days,
Speaker 1: he was back and many of the other board members
Speaker 1: were out. We're really witnessing this evolution where we see
Speaker 1: open ai going from this organization that has this ethos
Speaker 1: of like free and open and non military to exclusive
Speaker 1: enterprise licenses and yes military. It kind of reminds me
Speaker 1: of not to keep picking on Google in this episode,
Speaker 1: but like it's like every every story has been like
Speaker 1: you know what, fuck Google, But like, do you know
Speaker 1: how Google they used to have that motto don't be
Speaker 1: evil and then soon thereafter they were like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: make death tech. We make technology that is used to kill,
Speaker 1: and what about it. I'm not saying Google's evil, but
Speaker 1: like to go from don't be evil to like, we
Speaker 1: literally make weapons that have and do kill people, it's
Speaker 1: a big jump.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a little squishy here, now.
Speaker 1: So I will say open AI's collaboration with the Department
Speaker 1: of Defense. It does sound like they are stopping short
Speaker 1: of using their AI tech to build weapons in this case, however,
Speaker 1: it does sound like this week they moved a step
Speaker 1: closer to having their technology be used to build weapons.
Speaker 1: We already know that AI is being used by the
Speaker 1: Israeli military to identify targets for bombings in Gaza. They
Speaker 1: use a system called the Gospel, which I'll just move on.
Speaker 1: I have a lot to say about that name, but
Speaker 1: we'll just move on, which the Israeli military has said
Speaker 1: allows them to identify enemy combatants and equipment while reducing
Speaker 1: civilian casualties. That's what they're saying. However, a fact that
Speaker 1: we just know to be true about AI is that
Speaker 1: it is super janky and gets things wrong consistently all
Speaker 1: the time. And so if you're saying like, oh, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're actually doing a good thing by using this AI
Speaker 1: because it helps us reduce civilian casualties, and we know
Speaker 1: with certainty because of the AI technology that the people
Speaker 1: that we bomb are actually enemy combatants. Don't worry if
Speaker 1: what you're if the lynchpin of that is the AI
Speaker 1: technology being effective. We know it's not effective, so like
Speaker 1: that doesn't really work, and it really does sound like
Speaker 1: this whole system is likely kind of being used to
Speaker 1: justify killing civilians because AI identified them as combatants. So
Speaker 1: this whole situation is yet another reminder that technology is
Speaker 1: not neutral and that the decisions made by people who
Speaker 1: make technology have huge implications. And with all war and conflict,
Speaker 1: it really is a gender justice issue. Okay, so we
Speaker 1: have to talk about this kind of funky AI racing
Speaker 1: ambassador thing. So this week the Formula E motorsports team
Speaker 1: Mahindra launched Ava Beyond Reality, an AI generated female presenting
Speaker 1: AI ambassador for the team. So, as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, Ava was an existing AI influencer and she
Speaker 1: was going to be used to publicize this racing team.
Speaker 1: The team's fans hated it, like clear loud, instant negative feedback.
Speaker 1: They hated it so much that the entire thing was
Speaker 1: basically scrubbed from the Internet in less than forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: according to Car and Driver magazine. So the racing company
Speaker 1: did kind of release an apology on Instagram. They said,
Speaker 1: nurturing diversity, inclusion and innovation is at the heart of
Speaker 1: Mahindra Racing. Our AI influencer program was designed with this
Speaker 1: innovation in mind. Your comments hold tremendous value. We listened, understood,
Speaker 1: and decided to discontinue the project, like grand opening grand
Speaker 1: closing for their AI lay the Ambassador. So I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why this got such negative feedback
Speaker 1: is that there are real, live human women in racing,
Speaker 1: but these women are often sidelined and marginalized in the sport.
Speaker 1: According to Car and Driver, fewer than five percent of
Speaker 1: elite level pilots identify as women, So it sort of
Speaker 1: seems like this team would rather create an AI generated
Speaker 1: fake woman than actually amplify a real, living and breathing
Speaker 1: human woman who does exist in the sport. What's really
Speaker 1: interesting is that Car and Driver did a deep dive
Speaker 1: into this AI influencer social footprint and they found that
Speaker 1: she posts about things like shoes and self care. So
Speaker 1: Car and Driver suspects that this AI ambassador was actually
Speaker 1: like a clunky marketing attempt to appeal to women, like
Speaker 1: sometimes when people are using AI, like the story that
Speaker 1: we talked about with the tech conference that was using
Speaker 1: a fake like fake AI ambassador for their tech conference
Speaker 1: It's clear to me that that was an attempt idea
Speaker 1: to appeal to men, right, Just a lot of the
Speaker 1: way that she presented was like, this is about men.
Speaker 1: This AI racing ambassador, according to Car and Driver, might
Speaker 1: have actually been an attempt to market to women. The
Speaker 1: piece reads the photographs, shoes, clothing, selfies seemed drawn from
Speaker 1: the same kind of influencer style sponsored content theme so
Speaker 1: common from accounts that advertise toward women, in this case,
Speaker 1: paired with your standard AI girlfriend imagery that's from Hazel Southwell,
Speaker 1: longtime Formula E correspondent, and yet the text that accompanies
Speaker 1: them doesn't appeal to women at all. It feels very
Speaker 1: much like some type of outside marketing agency deal gone
Speaker 1: terribly wrong.
Speaker 3: That is an interesting distinction that like for that tech
Speaker 3: conference it was an AI generated woman who I guess
Speaker 3: it wasn't an AI generated woman, right, It was like
Speaker 3: a like you said, like a cheap fake where they
Speaker 3: had a model an actor.
Speaker 1: Honestly, I'm not even comfortable saying that, like have I
Speaker 1: have not. I have yet to get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of what's going on there. People should listen to that
Speaker 1: episode because it is if you haven't listened to it
Speaker 1: because it is wild, will put it in the show notes.
Speaker 1: But like, I'm not even comfortable saying in every instance
Speaker 1: it was a human woman. In some cases, I believe
Speaker 1: it was AI generated and this guy just thought we
Speaker 1: wouldn't notice. In some cases, I think it's a handful
Speaker 1: of women who kind of look alike. I honestly wouldn't
Speaker 1: even feel comfortable guessing what's going on there.
Speaker 3: But I guess the point that I tried to reinforce
Speaker 3: there is that, like it was a don't know, disingenuous
Speaker 3: representation of a woman, yes, meant to appeal to men,
Speaker 3: like you said, and here it's a disingenuous representation of
Speaker 3: a woman meant to appeal to women. And it is
Speaker 3: nice to think about all the diversity that's out there
Speaker 3: in disingenuous representations of women.
Speaker 1: Everybody can be targeted. It's it's kind of conclusive when
Speaker 1: you think about it, Like anybody can be targeted for
Speaker 1: a disingenuous AI bought campaign, doesn't matter who you are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, truly is a meritocracy.
Speaker 1: So I will say, like, the thing that really kind
Speaker 1: of sticks in my crawl about this is that it
Speaker 1: does actually sound like this team has a history of
Speaker 1: like trying to do good things and like trying to
Speaker 1: be pretty inclusive. They've done campaigns on the past where
Speaker 1: they highlight like actual human women in the sport, so
Speaker 1: it seems like they didn't even really have to do this.
Speaker 1: This script with the AI woman, this point from the
Speaker 1: car and Driver piece really nails it. The entire Eva
Speaker 1: Rose debacle waves a big red flag at situations where
Speaker 1: inclusion and diversity are swept up by a marketing machine
Speaker 1: intent on piggybacking on the latest tech trends without consideration
Speaker 1: for the human dynamics that make up the sport. It's
Speaker 1: encouraging that the backlash was widespread enough to make Mahindra
Speaker 1: rethink Eva Rose. And we can only hope at the
Speaker 1: next company that thinks programming diversity is better than hiring
Speaker 1: diverse employees takes note. And that to me is really
Speaker 1: the point. Like it's a silly story, yes, but that
Speaker 1: is like the nugget of saying that we should really
Speaker 1: be taking away is that when companies are like, oh,
Speaker 1: we want to do something that involves a woman or
Speaker 1: a person of color or somebody to highlight if you
Speaker 1: use AI, that is a gig that an actual marginalized
Speaker 1: human does not book and does not get paid for.
Speaker 1: We did an episode about this a while back. But
Speaker 1: a lot of these AI influencers, even if they're women,
Speaker 1: Like there's there's one that's really famous, it's like a
Speaker 1: black woman model that is run by a white man,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's a lot of times these when
Speaker 1: you book an AI for to be an influencer or
Speaker 1: talent in some way, that is a gig, that is
Speaker 1: money that a human person from that background is not getting.
Speaker 1: And so particularly in situations like this one, when human
Speaker 1: women already feel marginalized, to use a fake woman as
Speaker 1: an ambassad or rather than amplifying one of those real
Speaker 1: human women who feel sidelined sometimes in this sport doesn't
Speaker 1: sit right with me, right, Like, actual inclusion has to
Speaker 1: involve actual humans from the identity that you're trying to include.
Speaker 1: And it's one of my worries about AI more generally
Speaker 1: that it will just be used to further displace and
Speaker 1: marginalize people who are already marginalized. Like you don't get
Speaker 1: credit for working with a woman in a male dominated
Speaker 1: space if that woman is not even real, if she's AI.
Speaker 2: More, after a.
Speaker 4: Quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: So bad news keeps on coming for media. Yesterday, Conde Nast,
Speaker 1: the parent company of the music criticism site Pitchfork, announced
Speaker 1: layoffs and that the site would be folded into the
Speaker 1: Conde Nast out let GQ. Conde nas executive Anna Wintur
Speaker 1: allegedly delivered the news of the mass layoffs while at
Speaker 1: a conference room table without even removing her signature sunglasses
Speaker 1: ouch no when tour described it as quote the best
Speaker 1: path for the brand so that our coverage of music
Speaker 1: can continue to thrive within the company. That kind of
Speaker 1: makes it sound like Pitchfork must have not been successful. However,
Speaker 1: Claire Willett, Conde Nass audience analytics person, said that this
Speaker 1: was actually not the case, saying on Twitter, Pitchfork has
Speaker 1: the highest daily sight visitors of any of our titles.
Speaker 1: Their higher consuming segments generate more unique page views by
Speaker 1: volume than any title. This despite scant resourcing, especially from
Speaker 1: corporate well placed in a post scale era, or at
Speaker 1: least was so I should be clear that I don't
Speaker 1: have insight into exactly what is going on here and
Speaker 1: why this decision was made. If I was a betting woman,
Speaker 1: I would say that it has something to do with
Speaker 1: the recent unionization effort by Pitchfork staff, and it was
Speaker 1: confirm that eight of the staff who were laid off
Speaker 1: were union members. The United Musicians and Allied Workers Union
Speaker 1: released a statement saying the mass layoffs at Pitchfork are
Speaker 1: union busting. So I have my suspicions of what's going
Speaker 1: on here, but I don't have any special insights, so
Speaker 1: I can't really say.
Speaker 3: Damn. I had read that Pitchfork was being folded into GQ,
Speaker 3: and yeah, I just assumed it was because people weren't
Speaker 3: reading it, weren't looking at it. But apparently that's not
Speaker 3: the case. It's just union busting allegedly.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that, because I really really hate
Speaker 1: that of all the titles that Conde Nast has, it
Speaker 1: is folding Pitchfork into GQ specifically. Do you know what
Speaker 1: GQ stands for?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Gentlemen's Quarterly. It's like marketed for men.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a men's publication, right, And so I think,
Speaker 1: especially out of time, when you have so many people
Speaker 1: who are not men. I'm thinking of big artists like
Speaker 1: Taylor's so and Beyonce, artists like boy genists we have.
Speaker 1: We're in the heyday of so many musicians who are
Speaker 1: not men really being powerhouses and dominating and shaping the
Speaker 1: music industry. So like, what are you trying to say
Speaker 1: that music is a men's interest? You know, Conde Nast
Speaker 1: has Vanity Fair, they have Wired why not fold it
Speaker 1: into one of those those are also Conde Nast publications.
Speaker 1: It feels pretty marginalizing to me.
Speaker 3: And also I know several women who enjoy listening to music.
Speaker 1: Music. It's not just for men anymore. So it does
Speaker 1: seem like an end of an era for Pitchfork. Like
Speaker 1: I feel strongly about this because I was definitely a
Speaker 1: Pitchfork person, Like I was what you might consider a
Speaker 1: hipster in the heyday of hipsters. I lived in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: I did all of that. Like, I was a person
Speaker 1: who took the Pitchfork end of your lists very very seriously.
Speaker 1: I used to sometimes obsess about the numerical ratings they
Speaker 1: would give artists. Do you remember when Halsey accidentally praised
Speaker 1: nine to eleven because they were trying to hate on Pitchfork.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a little it was a little awkward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So for folks, it's one of my favorite Pitchfork Memories.
Speaker 1: I think Pitchwork gave Halsey's album a not good review,
Speaker 1: and Halsey was like, I just wish Pitchwork would explode.
Speaker 1: And it turned out that Pitchfork happened to have an
Speaker 1: office in the World Trade Center, so it sounded like
Speaker 1: it sounded like Halsey was like praising nine to eleven
Speaker 1: and yeah, It's just one of those things where was like,
Speaker 1: who could have seen it coming? But loved that, loved
Speaker 1: that tweet.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: So I have a I have a history with Pitchfork.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna pretend like I'm unbiased here. I drove
Speaker 1: from DC to Chicago to go to the Pitchfork Music Festival,
Speaker 1: and I had a memorably unpleasant drug experience while listening
Speaker 1: to the band Animal Collective. I will never forget it.
Speaker 1: If folks want more detail, maybe I can go into
Speaker 1: it on It's not that exciting. Aren't all like bad
Speaker 1: drug trips the same in a kind of way. But
Speaker 1: like so, Pitchfork definitely occupies a certain soft spot in
Speaker 1: my media diet.
Speaker 3: It's like a pillar of not just music journalism, but
Speaker 3: like journalism in America, right, Like how many national publications
Speaker 3: are there that like focus on music and culture the
Speaker 3: way that they do, or I guess did. It's pretty
Speaker 3: sad to see that just folded into a lifestyle brand,
Speaker 3: and not just the lifestyle brand, but like a lifestyle
Speaker 3: brand marketed to men.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, Pitchfork. When they first started,
Speaker 1: they got a lot of heat for really only covering
Speaker 1: like white indie male artists, but by the end they
Speaker 1: were doing what I found to be like really inclusive coverage.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it makes me sad to see them folded
Speaker 1: into an explicitly a men's magazine. And I can only
Speaker 1: imagine that whatever the next iteration of Pitchfork is is
Speaker 1: going to be hollowed out. And so I think it's
Speaker 1: an It feels like the end of an era of
Speaker 1: a pitch but also an end of an era for
Speaker 1: like media and criticism more generally. It feels like like
Speaker 1: if you are not in media or like media adjacent,
Speaker 1: I cannot stress to you enough how how tenuous it
Speaker 1: feels right now, Like every day there is a new
Speaker 1: round of layoffs announced in media and also tech. So
Speaker 1: it also seems like it's one of those situations where
Speaker 1: a lot of the big bets on digital media that
Speaker 1: that like people with money made are just like not
Speaker 1: coming to fruition because of their choices. Like it is
Speaker 1: not like it's not rank and file staffers or like
Speaker 1: writers or editorial who are causing this disruption. It is
Speaker 1: decisions being made at the executive suit level. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what is so infuriating, is like it is
Speaker 1: not those people who lose their jobs and who are
Speaker 1: laid off and have their careers disrupted. It is the
Speaker 1: rank and file staffers who aren't making those decisions. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I just think it really says something grim
Speaker 1: about the state of media that we're in right now.
Speaker 1: There's a really good piece in Defector by Israel Darmalo
Speaker 1: that put it really well Israel rights. Throughout the industry,
Speaker 1: features in reporting and music reviews have taken a backseat
Speaker 1: as companies push for more social media and video content.
Speaker 1: What has filled the vacuum left behind by actual music
Speaker 1: criticism is a loose collection of YouTubers and influencers who
Speaker 1: feed slop to their younger audiences and fan communities that
Speaker 1: engage with music solely through their obsession with a particular
Speaker 1: pop act. This has all helped produce a mass of
Speaker 1: music fans who don't understand the value of criticism and
Speaker 1: outright to test being told that things they like might suck.
Speaker 1: Even worse, it has helped destroy what scant opportunities remain
Speaker 1: for obscure or up and coming musicians to find an audience.
Speaker 1: It's harder than ever to make it big without a
Speaker 1: co sign from Drake or Kayler. Swift and Stuffing one
Speaker 1: of the few music publications left that swam against all
Speaker 1: these currents into GQ stuffy environs, isn't going to help things.
Speaker 1: So I agree with that so much, and I would
Speaker 1: actually take this a step further more and more. I
Speaker 1: think that this is the way of meeting. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: this is the future of media, and it is making
Speaker 1: everything worse. It is making us all less informed, It
Speaker 1: is making us all less able to be savvy critics
Speaker 1: of the media that we consume. Like right now, there
Speaker 1: are literally people celebrating the demise of Pitchwork because Pitchwork
Speaker 1: gave their favorite artist a bad rating like five years
Speaker 1: ago or whatever. Right Like, when media criticism just becomes
Speaker 1: a vehicle for stands to stay in their faves, we
Speaker 1: lose something. We lose something valuable like, I know this
Speaker 1: might sound super hoity toity when you compare it to
Speaker 1: everything else going on in the world, but I do
Speaker 1: think that it is connected. I think this is a
Speaker 1: symptom of a larger rot happening in our society right now.
Speaker 1: When it comes to technology and media, media criticism is
Speaker 1: and has been the staple of a robust, healthy society,
Speaker 1: and it has been that way since our earliest days.
Speaker 1: If that is replaced by like thinly veiled ad copied
Speaker 1: just another way to sell us crap, or like AI
Speaker 1: generated listicles, or just like fan content, then we really
Speaker 1: do lose something. Like I don't think this is a
Speaker 1: I understand that this seems like a small story and
Speaker 1: maybe it isn't a scale of things, but I think
Speaker 1: that this is a symptom of a larger rot happening
Speaker 1: in our society.
Speaker 3: Yeah, preach, you know, And it's probably not coincidental that
Speaker 3: valuable thing that is being lost that you know, like good,
Speaker 3: high quality media criticism and being replaced by much lower
Speaker 3: quality like fan content on you know, on YouTube or wherever,
Speaker 3: is happening in parallel with what sounds like union busting
Speaker 3: at Conde Nast, right where like professional journalists who are
Speaker 3: putting out this high quality stuff. Sounds like we're either
Speaker 3: acted or laid off because they were wanting to agitate
Speaker 3: for better wages, better conditions or something. And I'm sure
Speaker 3: that the people creating those YouTube videos, you know, the stands,
Speaker 3: the whoever, uh, they're probably doing it for a lot
Speaker 3: less compensation than those professional writers, if any compensation.
Speaker 1: And I think I think you're so spot on. And
Speaker 1: when you fold the threat of AI replacing journalists and
Speaker 1: writers and people who make interesting stuff, like it's clear
Speaker 1: to me that what suits, you know, executives thought they
Speaker 1: had in Pitchfork was a brand and so what was important,
Speaker 1: what was valuable was the brand name Pitchfork. What was
Speaker 1: not adding value in their kind of myopic view of things,
Speaker 1: was the writers who actually do the thing, the people
Speaker 1: who write, the people who do the interviews, the people
Speaker 1: who make the thing. They're like, oh, we can outsource
Speaker 1: that with AI. That's not that's not you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know this to be specifically true for Pitchfork, but
Speaker 1: I think that that is the larger trend I'm seeing.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing media go toward that the people who actually
Speaker 1: make the thing that bring an audience. What they do
Speaker 1: is replaceable. What they do can be replaced by AI
Speaker 1: or somebody who's not making any money, or just some
Speaker 1: teen on YouTube or whatever. And what's actually important, what
Speaker 1: actually makes money, is the brand. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that is going to work out. I don't think. I
Speaker 1: think what actually puts butts in seats and eyeballs on
Speaker 1: pages is good writing, is good content, is thoughtful writing.
Speaker 1: And I think that And honestly, like I was, I
Speaker 1: was like kind of gone a deep dive with this.
Speaker 1: Claire Willet, the audience analytics person from Conde Nast, When
Speaker 1: someone when Claire was like, oh, Pitchfork actually was driving
Speaker 1: lots of engagement. They're doing fine, someone was like, so
Speaker 1: then why do this? She basically was like, because rich
Speaker 1: people don't read. Because rich people buy things, they kind
Speaker 1: of hate the things that they acquire. They don't understand
Speaker 1: the things that they acquire, and they don't the only
Speaker 1: way that they have to engage with the the things
Speaker 1: that they get ownership over is to crush them, because
Speaker 1: they don't understand them, and they like have a weird
Speaker 1: kind of disdain for these things that they buy. And
Speaker 1: we've seen that time and time again here in the
Speaker 1: DMV area where I live, a wealthy person just acquired
Speaker 1: the newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, and first day in the office,
Speaker 1: people are meeting the new owner for the first time,
Speaker 1: and what does he do stand in front of her
Speaker 1: room and denigrate the people who now work for him,
Speaker 1: being like, all of you don't know what you're doing,
Speaker 1: You don't know how to write. We should be doing
Speaker 1: more social media, more listicals, more engage in content. What
Speaker 1: you're doing is worthless and valueless to me. This company
Speaker 1: that I just bought, and so I think that she's
Speaker 1: onto something that there is a deep, deep disdain when
Speaker 1: wealthy people acquire things that people like I was like, like,
Speaker 1: I don't respect it, and I almost kind of like
Speaker 1: weirdly hate this thing I just acquired.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And also I think those wealthy people often view
Speaker 3: it as, you know, very much a thing, not like
Speaker 3: any sort of organization or community of you know, people
Speaker 3: who actually do the work of making the thing happen.
Speaker 3: And when those people start to agitate and want a
Speaker 3: little bit of power through advocating for reunion, that is
Speaker 3: like so threatening. And you know, we've definitely seen executives
Speaker 3: willing to like take huge losses just so that they
Speaker 3: don't have to negotiate with the union about anything, right,
Speaker 3: like just wanting absolute control.
Speaker 1: I saw this tweet from John Frankensteiner that I really appreciated.
Speaker 1: Every industry has been taken over by a guy that's like, oh,
Speaker 1: that thing that's made life a little less unbearable for
Speaker 1: multiple generations. I'm shutting it down to increase profits by
Speaker 1: two percent for a single quarter, and that's done. That
Speaker 1: say it all. So this last story. In doing the
Speaker 1: research for this story, I found out that I actually
Speaker 1: might be on the wrong side of history on this one.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious for folcused thoughts. I was also had
Speaker 1: to do a story about how our grand experiment with
Speaker 1: those electronic self kiosks and stores could be coming to
Speaker 1: an end, and Mike You and I were talking about
Speaker 1: it and I was like, oh my god, I hate
Speaker 1: those self checkout kiosks at Target, and you were like, oh, those,
Speaker 1: I love those.
Speaker 3: It's true. I mean they are often maddening, and I've definitely,
Speaker 3: like occasionally had some like pretty negative interactions with the
Speaker 3: poor staff person whose job is to like stand there
Speaker 3: and tend to those machines, not like, I was never
Speaker 3: mean to them, but you know, communicating my frustration with
Speaker 3: their the janky machines. So it's I understand why people
Speaker 3: might not like them, but most of the time they
Speaker 3: actually work pretty well and allow me to just like
Speaker 3: get through there, get out work quickly.
Speaker 1: How would you feel if I told you that sixty
Speaker 1: seventy percent of con say that they've had self checkout
Speaker 1: machines fail. Would that make you think that they were
Speaker 1: working well?
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 1: Is that a Is that a stat that fills you
Speaker 1: with confidence?
Speaker 3: I mean, if anything, that sounds like an underreporting, right,
Speaker 3: Like I'd say, among people who use them with any frequency,
Speaker 3: nearly one hundred percent of people have experienced the case
Speaker 3: where they fail at one point or another, but most
Speaker 3: of the time they actually work okay.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if I am out of step
Speaker 1: with the way that everybody feels on this. I thought
Speaker 1: we were all. I thought we all I was like,
Speaker 1: we have to do this story because don't we all
Speaker 1: hate these? Now I'm like, maybe I'm at maybe I'm
Speaker 1: on the wrong side of history on this one, and
Speaker 1: you know what, I've been there before. I'll you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm the old if I'm the only hater of
Speaker 1: these I will I'll stand on that. So I hate
Speaker 1: the self check kiosks, and apparently retail establishments might actually
Speaker 1: be on my side too. According to Gizmoto and a
Speaker 1: report from BBC, stores across the country are reversing course
Speaker 1: on these machines, and the consensus is growing among analysts
Speaker 1: and insider that self checkout has been a disaster for
Speaker 1: consumers and retailers alike. I totally agree, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Get them out of there. So the machines are probably
Speaker 1: like not going away anytime soon, but they might be
Speaker 1: less a part of like the retail shopping experience, Like
Speaker 1: at certain Target stores, they might start limiting the amount
Speaker 1: of items that you can check out at a self checkout.
Speaker 1: I think it's like ten of them or less. Dollar
Speaker 1: General really bet big on self checkout, but at their
Speaker 1: earning call last month, their CEO said the store is
Speaker 1: planning to increase the number of employees and stores, particularly
Speaker 1: in the checkout area. So like a big reversal of
Speaker 1: relying on self checkout. So there are so many reasons
Speaker 1: to hate self checkout. I don't know how somebody who
Speaker 1: likes it contends with these like very clear reasons why
Speaker 1: they don't work and why they're awful. Like, I don't
Speaker 1: see how a reasonable person could disagree with this evidence,
Speaker 1: So like you'll have to let me know.
Speaker 3: So when you go to target, you go queue up
Speaker 3: in like align with one of the humans and just
Speaker 3: like watch people in this self checkout line like go
Speaker 3: through and leave the store while you're still standing there.
Speaker 1: Well, we go to the same target, so you and
Speaker 1: I both know that the self checkout line at that
Speaker 1: particular target it's janky as hell. First of all, if
Speaker 1: you're ever buying something that you have to show your
Speaker 1: ID for like an allergy medicine here or like alcohol,
Speaker 1: there's never a person in there. So it's like it's
Speaker 1: not really you're describing like a check a self checkout
Speaker 1: experience where folks are breezing through. I've never seen anybody
Speaker 1: breathe through the self checkout at that target, and you
Speaker 1: know it, this is this is you are. I feel
Speaker 1: like you're being disingenuous to support your your love of
Speaker 1: these robot kiosks.
Speaker 3: Not the case. I mean. I have watched people stand
Speaker 3: in line for one of the human cashiers, meet each other,
Speaker 3: fall in love, have children pass away, those children grow
Speaker 3: up to eventually check out with the items that they're
Speaker 3: parents had brought into the line. Like that's the pace
Speaker 3: at which those human checkout lines go.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying the humans are faster. I'm saying this
Speaker 1: is this is my take, and I again, I want
Speaker 1: to know what people think. I'm saying that, Like, if
Speaker 1: it's gonna be slow with a human cashier or slow
Speaker 1: with a robot cashier, I would go slow with the
Speaker 1: human every time, because at least it's like not beeping
Speaker 1: at me. At least it's it's it's a human communicating
Speaker 1: with me in words and I can like express myself
Speaker 1: to them. And also another thing that I feel about
Speaker 1: these kiosks is that when you have a in my
Speaker 1: in my grocery store, the giant that I go to,
Speaker 1: they're kiosks routinely mess up and I feel like, when
Speaker 1: I have a mess up, it's always the kiosk, it's
Speaker 1: never me. But when the person has to come over
Speaker 1: to like fix it or whatever, I feel like the
Speaker 1: look they're giving me is like, oh, this stupid boom,
Speaker 1: this stupid old lady doesn't know how to use the
Speaker 1: self checkout and is like messing it up. There's no
Speaker 1: way to convey. It's like no, no, no, your technology
Speaker 1: has failed, not me. I feel very shamed. I feel
Speaker 1: like other shoppers are like, look who was to be
Speaker 1: hollowed for a self checkout and broken and a human
Speaker 1: had to come over to fix it. It's not a
Speaker 1: pleasant experience.
Speaker 3: I mean it's it's not. But uh, you know they're
Speaker 3: nice at that Giant, right, there's like that one guy
Speaker 3: who is nice. He like he gets it. There's that
Speaker 3: older woman, she gets it, she understands their janky. But
Speaker 3: I think we're like reinforcing this false dichotomy that it's
Speaker 3: it's either humans or robots. Uh. Like I think that's
Speaker 3: what uh Dollar General was trying to go for, Like, oh,
Speaker 3: we can get rid of all of our staff and
Speaker 3: we'll just have these machines, will be like one human
Speaker 3: in the store who does everything. And I feel like
Speaker 3: that's what doesn't work, right, Like, even when you have
Speaker 3: the self checkout machines, there need to be staff there
Speaker 3: tending them to like check your ID if you're trying
Speaker 3: to buy alcohol or you know, clear clear the machine
Speaker 3: if it has experiences an error or something. The top
Speaker 3: when the machines are most frustrating is when there's not
Speaker 3: a human there, or there's just like two teen humans
Speaker 3: more interested in flirting with each other than like helping
Speaker 3: me check out. But when there's like, you know, either
Speaker 3: of those two two older folks at Giant who like
Speaker 3: know the drill and are on it, it's a perfectly
Speaker 3: reasonable experience.
Speaker 1: Mike, listen to yourself. The robots only were if there's
Speaker 1: a human there. In the scenario that you just described,
Speaker 1: there needs to be a human. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Why have the robot kiosks if there needs to be
Speaker 1: a human there to make sure that they're working. Just
Speaker 1: have the human.
Speaker 3: But one human can tend I don't know, like six machines.
Speaker 3: Let's say, right, so, like so that one human can
Speaker 3: have six people going through at the same rate that
Speaker 3: a human cashier who is like manually scanning the things
Speaker 3: only gets one through.
Speaker 1: Well, then hire more humans at the stores. And here's
Speaker 1: some This is not just me talking out of my ass.
Speaker 1: I actually do have an outline with evidence here. Let
Speaker 1: me let me just like hitch you with some facts.
Speaker 1: So a big reason why these kiosks to me don't
Speaker 1: work is that they make everything more expensive. Not only
Speaker 1: do self checkout machines allegedly double theft rates, they actually
Speaker 1: increase labor costs because employees who get taken away from
Speaker 1: their other duties to help customers deal with those chios
Speaker 1: and errors and blah blah blah overall, some analyst said,
Speaker 1: the machines increase costs overall. So I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a good use of a human's time to service a robot,
Speaker 1: so that at that point they're not like you're paying
Speaker 1: a human. Yeah, it's less human staff, but you're paying
Speaker 1: that human not to engage with the customer, but to
Speaker 1: engage with a robot that system. It doesn't make any
Speaker 1: sense to me just have like things are going fine
Speaker 1: with human cashiers.
Speaker 3: You know. It's like we were talking about in one
Speaker 3: of the earlier segments that like, you know, technology isn't neutral, right,
Speaker 3: It's not just some objective thing that exists in the world.
Speaker 3: It is an extension a tool of the humans who
Speaker 3: are employing it. Employing is not the right word to
Speaker 3: use here, but like the humans who are determining how
Speaker 3: it works, determining the systems in which it works. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they should hire more humans to make them work, but like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, I think it could be a useful tool, right,
Speaker 3: Like the scanner gun that they use, that's a useful tool, right, Like,
Speaker 3: I mean, they hear what you're saying, but I feel
Speaker 3: like they work.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll say this, I might be in the minority here.
Speaker 1: Sixty percent of consumers say they prefer self checkouts as
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one. I'm not sure how that squares
Speaker 1: with the sixty seven percent of them that have had
Speaker 1: those machines not work. I want to I do want
Speaker 1: to say, like, well, I'll say this, there are probably
Speaker 1: people listening who have all kinds of reasons to prefer
Speaker 1: self checkout, Like maybe I definitely I'm not saying they
Speaker 1: should be phased out entirely, Like I don't think they
Speaker 1: should be given the real estate that they have in
Speaker 1: retail stores. Like I think if you're somebody who, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason you might have where you're like I don't
Speaker 1: really want to have to engage with a human today
Speaker 1: the hungover line or whatever where you can just scan
Speaker 1: your stuff and go, you probably will have to engage
Speaker 1: with a human when it invariably fails. But Okay, all
Speaker 1: I am saying is that the massive investment in that cause,
Speaker 1: Like when you go to Giant, it's like, I think
Speaker 1: the Target is a good example. They have more self
Speaker 1: checkout than they have human checkout. I think that is ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Definitely, we can all agree that humans need to be
Speaker 3: a big part of the equation, and when there aren't
Speaker 3: enough humans, that's when things break down.
Speaker 1: We can hold it there. Honestly, I want to hear
Speaker 1: folks is experience. You don't just have to like agree
Speaker 1: with me, because I'm getting the sense that I am
Speaker 1: on the wrong. I am the minority here, and that's fine.
Speaker 1: If I have to be the only person who can
Speaker 1: see the truth, I will do that. But let me
Speaker 1: know what y'all think about self checkout. I really want
Speaker 1: to know. If I'm wrong, show me the evidence. I
Speaker 1: am willing to update my opinions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I look forward to hearing what people have to say.
Speaker 1: Mike, thank you so much for being here. As always.
Speaker 1: I guess I'll see you at that janky ass Target
Speaker 1: self checkout line trying to buy wine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll wave to you while you're setting up camp
Speaker 3: over in the human cashier line. I'll bring you some water,
Speaker 3: maybe some magazines.
Speaker 1: And listeners, thank you for joining us. So there's another
Speaker 1: story that we didn't have time to get into that
Speaker 1: former Facebook CEO Cheryl Sandberg is leaving Facebook's board. So
Speaker 1: I figured it was a perfect excuse to tell kind
Speaker 1: of a wild story about the time that I actually
Speaker 1: met Cheryl Sandberg irl and how she basically crushed my
Speaker 1: faith in feminism. So check it out ad free on
Speaker 1: the Patreon at tangoti dot com slash Patreon. So we'll
Speaker 1: see you there and see you on the internet. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is Future bridget here. I'm here with producer Mike.
Speaker 1: You were qaing this episode about self checkouts. It got
Speaker 1: very heated. We both have strong feelings. A gauntlet was thrown.
Speaker 1: Mike and I have decided we are going to go
Speaker 1: to the supermarket. We're going to get the same amount
Speaker 1: of stuff we are gonna get in self checkout, and
Speaker 1: I'm you're gonna do self checkout. I'm gonna do human checkout.
Speaker 1: I guarantee you. I will be out of there faster
Speaker 1: and more efficiently. I guarantee it.
Speaker 3: And we're gonna go to multiple stores. We're gonna go
Speaker 3: to Giant, We're gonna go to Target, We're gonna find
Speaker 3: a third store, maybe like Safeway down by Adams Morgan
Speaker 3: or something fine.
Speaker 1: I guarantee I will have a more pleasant experience, a
Speaker 1: more efficient experience, and a faster experience. There's just no way, Mike,
Speaker 1: let's go.
Speaker 3: I don't know how I ended up the like anti
Speaker 3: John Henry.
Speaker 1: Okay, listeners, you heard it here first. This is our
Speaker 1: first ever there Are No Girls on the Internet challenge.
Speaker 1: Y'all already know I'm about to win. I am so
Speaker 1: confident that I'm going to win.
Speaker 3: Let's go right now.
Speaker 1: Let me finish the episode and I'll get my fucking shoes.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for ways to support the show, check
Speaker 1: out our March store at tangody dot com, slash store.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi? You can reach us at
Speaker 1: Hello at tegody dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at TENG Goody dot com. There Are
Speaker 1: No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget
Speaker 1: tod It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative, edited
Speaker 1: by Joey pat Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari
Speaker 1: Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is
Speaker 1: our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you
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