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.
Speaker 2: I'm here with my producer, Mike.
Speaker 1: Mike, I missed talking about the news with you last week,
Speaker 1: but I'm excited to be here doing it with you now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been over a week, but things gept happening,
Speaker 3: and so here we are, let's talk about them.
Speaker 1: Things kept happening. Just right off the top. We are
Speaker 1: usually having this conversation on Thursday nights for Fridays, We're
Speaker 1: having it on Monday night. Coming out tomorrow on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Because I was off last week getting nasal surgery. I
Speaker 1: am mostly recovered from it. Thanks for all the bell witches,
Speaker 1: but looking forward to be capping the news that you
Speaker 1: may have missed this week on the internet. So let's
Speaker 1: start with one that has really kind of got me
Speaker 1: boiling my beans over here. So just today, Texas A
Speaker 1: and M negotiated an updated settlement agreement with doctor Kathleen McElroy.
Speaker 1: The university also announced that they were replacing their outgoing president,
Speaker 1: who resigned over doctor mccolroy's racist botched hiring. So if
Speaker 1: you've not been following this story, it is infuriating to me,
Speaker 1: and I think it really shows how far we have
Speaker 1: fallen when it comes to conversations about inclusion in this country. Basically,
Speaker 1: doctor McElroy is a black woman with a long and
Speaker 1: storied career in journalism spanning twenty years in different editing
Speaker 1: positions at.
Speaker 2: The New York Times.
Speaker 1: Ever heard of it before helming University of Texas Austin's
Speaker 1: Journalism School from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two, where
Speaker 1: she is also a tenured professor, So she was meant
Speaker 1: to be joining Texas A and M's journalism school, which
Speaker 1: is also her alma mater. However, Texas A and M
Speaker 1: had originally hired her on a tenured track program to
Speaker 1: really revive the school's journalism department. But because doctor McElroy
Speaker 1: is a black woman with a history of doing media
Speaker 1: work that's sometimes involves race, conservative stakeholders made a huge
Speaker 1: stink about her appointment. Her tenured track offer was later
Speaker 1: changed to a five year contract and then ultimately just
Speaker 1: a one year contract. So, as somebody, both you and
Speaker 1: I have had stints in academia, what if you're offered
Speaker 1: ten year track, then five years, then one year.
Speaker 2: What is your takeaway there, Uh.
Speaker 3: Not a place that is super excited to have you
Speaker 3: on right, Like they're just trying to get out of
Speaker 3: it without actually following through on the job offer.
Speaker 1: The difference between a ten year track offer and a
Speaker 1: one year contract is pretty stark and like pretty insulting,
Speaker 1: so as she was probably right to do, she publicly
Speaker 1: declined the offer. Doctor McElroy told The Texas Tribune earlier
Speaker 1: this month that she felt quote damaged by the controversy
Speaker 1: and said, I think I am being judged by my
Speaker 1: maybe gender, and I don't think other folks would face
Speaker 1: the same bars or challenges. I think she's exactly one
Speaker 1: hundred percent right now. The Runner Association, which is a
Speaker 1: collection of current and former Texas A and M students
Speaker 1: and staff, said that they had concerns about her hiring,
Speaker 1: basically that they were concerned that the university was not
Speaker 1: quote embracing egalitarian and merit based traditions and instead that
Speaker 1: the university was turning toward quote divisive ideology of identity politics.
Speaker 2: Let me just break that down for you right now.
Speaker 1: That is code for she's a black woman like there's
Speaker 1: nothing else. Why would you automatically assume that merit wasn't
Speaker 1: being followed, that this was not an egalitarian hiring. Do
Speaker 1: you know how hard it is to become a like
Speaker 1: do you know how difficult it is to become the
Speaker 1: head of a journalism department, which she is. She has
Speaker 1: been an editor for twenty years at the New York Times.
Speaker 1: You're gonna tell me that she doesn't have merit? That
Speaker 1: is just there is just no way that that means
Speaker 1: anything other then she is a black woman, and we
Speaker 1: don't like that. The group also objected to claims that alumni, donors,
Speaker 1: and taxpayers constitute outside influence, because a big part of
Speaker 1: this story was that I guess stakeholders is the word
Speaker 1: they were using, and the piece that I read people
Speaker 1: who are not necessarily directly affiliated with the university. They
Speaker 1: were the ones who were really making a big stink.
Speaker 1: And so it sounds like this group is like, well,
Speaker 1: I think that taxpayers and donors don't aren't considered to
Speaker 1: be outside influence, And I don't know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: am a taxpayer for plenty of things that I don't
Speaker 1: then get to have a direct say on just because
Speaker 1: you're a taxpayer for this public university. I don't know
Speaker 1: that I would really say that that means that you
Speaker 1: get to have this level of scrutiny over journalism department hires.
Speaker 1: So the entire fiasco actually led to the resignation of
Speaker 1: the president of Texas a and M. Catherine Banks, who
Speaker 1: said that she took responsibility for what she called the
Speaker 1: flawed hiring process and also said that doctor Calori had
Speaker 1: fallen victim to anti woke hysteria, which I completely agree.
Speaker 1: We covered so many of these kinds of stories with
Speaker 1: our mini series that we did with Cool Zone Media
Speaker 1: Internet Hate Machine about how like just being a marginalized person,
Speaker 1: like just being a black woman is enough to have
Speaker 1: your tenure question. And I think that question of just
Speaker 1: asking like like, how do we know she really deserved
Speaker 1: this job? How do we know this was a merit
Speaker 1: based hiring? I know It's like any black woman, woman
Speaker 1: of color, marginalized person knows exactly what they are trying
Speaker 1: to say when they say stuff like that, because it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's barely even a dog whistle, Like what
Speaker 1: like why would you assume this person is not qualified?
Speaker 2: They've been doing this job for twenty years.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just another way to be little and
Speaker 1: other and continue to further marginalize people who are already marginalized.
Speaker 1: It's not like black women are overrepresented in universities. And
Speaker 1: also can't we to keep it like really real about
Speaker 1: the concept of merit and like egalitarianism real quick, because
Speaker 1: merit and a galitarianism, like, we all know people who
Speaker 1: get to high level positions of power in society and
Speaker 1: it is not on merit. Looking at you, Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: it is because of connections, family, your name, money, relationships, gender,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. But it is not always merit. Your
Speaker 1: boss is not automatically smarter than you simply because of
Speaker 1: the fact that they were made your boss. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting to me to see which folks that the stakeholders
Speaker 1: at Texas A and M decide get that merit scrutiny,
Speaker 1: like are you really did you really earn this position?
Speaker 1: In conversations about who gets offered a position in the
Speaker 1: journalism school.
Speaker 3: The language of meritocracy is particularly inauthentic.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: Clearly, she like led a department in New York Times
Speaker 3: for decades. It's pretty difficult to conceive that she got
Speaker 3: through all the rounds of review by the various hiring
Speaker 3: committees as someone who wasn't qualified to have that sort
Speaker 3: of position, right, So like it's just almost impossible to
Speaker 3: believe that, in fact, she truly was not qualified. Like
Speaker 3: you said, it sounds like it has everything to do
Speaker 3: with her having a point of view that is not
Speaker 3: concordant with what Texas A and M is going for. Right,
Speaker 3: it seems like maybe they're trying to compete with Florida
Speaker 3: to see who can have the most regressive fantasy land curriculum.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker 1: And you know this is all happening in Texas where
Speaker 1: Governor Greg Abbott has just signed into law a bill
Speaker 1: to dismaysntle DEI programs at state funded public universities, including
Speaker 1: Texas A and M. But importantly, doctor mclvroy is not
Speaker 1: a DEI professional. I feel like DEI Diversity and Inclusion
Speaker 1: is like the new boogeyman. Like for a while it
Speaker 1: was woke, and then it was like leftists, and now
Speaker 1: it's just like the association with DEI because she's a
Speaker 1: black woman. Just because you're a black woman who works
Speaker 1: in media doesn't make you a DEI specialist.
Speaker 2: I'm not a DEI specialist.
Speaker 1: Just because I'm a black woman in media, And I
Speaker 1: think that you're exactly right the language of meritocracy and
Speaker 1: just this blanket assumption that she couldn't have just been qualified.
Speaker 1: How often do we use that regressive thinking to keep
Speaker 1: marginalized people from holding positions of power and influence. Just
Speaker 1: if I guarantee you if this has been a white man,
Speaker 1: nobody would be saying, well, let's see, were they really qualified?
Speaker 2: What really?
Speaker 1: What merit do they have? Was this a galitarian process
Speaker 1: of getting them in here? It is just a way
Speaker 1: to keep marginalized people from positions of power and influence.
Speaker 1: It's so obvious to me, and I think that we
Speaker 1: should really be concerned about how effective this rebrand of
Speaker 1: DEI and inclusion and even people like even people who
Speaker 1: don't do that for a living, just being a black
Speaker 1: person is enough to have it be synonymous with, oh,
Speaker 1: you must be doing DEI work. And it's already bad
Speaker 1: enough that in Texas, if you your university does DEI work,
Speaker 1: you don't get public funding. That's already bad enough. But
Speaker 1: now just being able to associate any black professional with
Speaker 1: DEI because of their race, like it is just so
Speaker 1: clearly meant to keep marginalized people from these positions.
Speaker 3: And particularly in a journalism school. You know, the idea
Speaker 3: of meritocracy, I think is connected to the idea of
Speaker 3: like an objective reporting of the news, like purely objective
Speaker 3: both sides telling, you know, the truth is somewhere in
Speaker 3: the middle, the idea that journalists would not have any
Speaker 3: sort of perspective that they bring to a story, but
Speaker 3: that they should really to be a good journalist, a
Speaker 3: good you know, a good objective journalist, they should just
Speaker 3: you know, report the facts. But of course that's an absurdity, right,
Speaker 3: Like any sort of telling is going to be a
Speaker 3: selection of facts. Every journalist is going to have a perspective.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it really seems like her big crime here
Speaker 3: was having a perspective that did not align with what
Speaker 3: the Texas A and m powers that be wanted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she just today they agreed on a settlement.
Speaker 1: I actually hope that we find out more information about
Speaker 1: this story, Like I want emails, I want text messages,
Speaker 1: I want to know who said what, I want to
Speaker 1: know when what was said. I have a feeling the
Speaker 1: story is not going to end here. The fact that
Speaker 1: the university president resigned over it tells me that it's.
Speaker 2: A big deal and there's probably more to this story.
Speaker 1: So I hope this is one that we find out
Speaker 1: more information about, because something is going on here that
Speaker 1: just doesn't sound right to me.
Speaker 3: Well, it's also going to be very interesting two or
Speaker 3: three years from now to take a look at what
Speaker 3: does the faculty body at Texas A and M look like,
Speaker 3: because I can't imagine this very public national news story
Speaker 3: is making a whole lot of you know, top faculty
Speaker 3: from around the country want to go there, right. It
Speaker 3: really makes it seem like a very provincial, backwards little school.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I have another kind of infuriating story for you,
Speaker 1: this must read piece from the Intercept on the rise
Speaker 1: of survivors of sexual violence being sued for defamation. So,
Speaker 1: in the years after the Me Too movement, more people
Speaker 1: accused of sexual misconduct are now suing their accusers. The
Speaker 1: entire Intercept piece is worth a read. We will definitely
Speaker 1: throw it in the show notes. But they write this,
Speaker 1: in the five years since I started the metwo movement,
Speaker 1: a quiet but effective legal backlash has swept over those
Speaker 1: who spoke at against sexual harassment and abuse. The accused
Speaker 1: have turned around and sued their accusers, effectively silencing them.
Speaker 1: This silencing is even more acute in the aftermath of
Speaker 1: the libel judgment in Johnny Depp's case against Amber Heard,
Speaker 1: where a jury found her allegations of abuse and an
Speaker 1: op ed on op ed that did not actually name
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp were false. Experts warned that anti feminist groups
Speaker 1: were mobilizing to bring defamation suits and that it could
Speaker 1: make survivors of sexual violence and domestic abuse to come forward.
Speaker 1: Herd's own teams said that the outcome would have a
Speaker 1: chilling effect, and it sounds like it really has. Most
Speaker 1: of the people being sued for speaking out against sexual
Speaker 1: abuse or domestic violence are not like a list famous celebrities.
Speaker 1: They are regular people who probably don't have access to
Speaker 1: the kinds of money, support or legal teams that you
Speaker 1: would need to challenge a defamation lawsuit. Like imagine speaking
Speaker 1: up about being a survivor of sexual violence and trying
Speaker 1: to warn others, and then finding yourself with a legal
Speaker 1: summons because you're being sued for defamation. The piece also
Speaker 1: talks to Kenneth White, a partner at a law firm
Speaker 1: called Brown, White and Osborne White said that he used
Speaker 1: to only get the occasional request for help with the
Speaker 1: defamation case after writing and speaking up frequently about handling
Speaker 1: such cases, and he says over the last I would
Speaker 1: say five years, I really saw a significant increase in
Speaker 1: the number of these that had to do with women
Speaker 1: being threatened for speaking or writing about some form of abuse.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 1: Being labeled as a harasser or a rapist carries more
Speaker 1: reputational damage than it used to, thanks to me to
Speaker 1: this is a way for abusers to try to claw
Speaker 1: back that lost status. I mean, I've been seeing this
Speaker 1: in so many cases playing out with famous people. I
Speaker 1: don't want to mention any names because there are cases
Speaker 1: that are still ongoing, but you could probably guess so.
Speaker 1: I think it's clear that people who are famous or
Speaker 1: public figures have really set a new tone for how
Speaker 1: abuse and conversations around things like sexual misconduct cases will
Speaker 1: be handled for all of us. Me too, really use
Speaker 1: the platforms of a lot of famous people, but it
Speaker 1: was honestly never just about Hollywood starlits or a lusters
Speaker 1: or famous people.
Speaker 2: It was about what kind of climate.
Speaker 1: We want to live in as it pertains to abuse
Speaker 1: and sexual misconduct, because we all, all of us, whether
Speaker 1: you're famous or not, truly deserve a better world, one
Speaker 1: where sexual abuse and violence is just not tolerated. It's
Speaker 1: not part of life, and it's not something that is
Speaker 1: just excused or overlooked. If the abuser is like a
Speaker 1: genius or like really good at making money for people,
Speaker 1: or really does not want to have to contend with
Speaker 1: the fact that they abuse. Somebody really does not want accountability,
Speaker 1: you know. I think we made some progress in this
Speaker 1: system that created a little bit of a cost for
Speaker 1: things like sexual abuse and sexual violence. But I think
Speaker 1: there are people who are really invested in going back
Speaker 1: to that old system where things like sexual abuse and
Speaker 1: violence are just like private matters or like matters of
Speaker 1: the house or domestic, rather than being invested in seeing
Speaker 1: the truth, and the truth is that abuse and violence
Speaker 1: are systemic issues and that there should be a cost
Speaker 1: associated with it. But now abusers and the people who
Speaker 1: enable them are simply just like using the state and
Speaker 1: the courts to swing that pendulum back the other way
Speaker 1: and create a cost for calling out the system for
Speaker 1: what it is and create a cost for speaking up
Speaker 1: a bad abuse, and the cogs and the machines.
Speaker 2: That enable it. It's one of the reasons.
Speaker 1: Why I think Me Too was kind of criticized because
Speaker 1: of its association with like Hollywood A listers, even though
Speaker 1: it was started by Toronto Burke, a black woman, specifically
Speaker 1: to center other black women survivors of sexual violence. Because
Speaker 1: not everybody who speaks up about abuse has the money
Speaker 1: or the support or a legal team to support them
Speaker 1: through it. And the choice to center a lot of
Speaker 1: survivors of abuse who do have that kind of support
Speaker 1: because they have money or they're famous, I think, really
Speaker 1: minimize the reality that the vast majority of people speaking
Speaker 1: up about abuse do not have that kind of support.
Speaker 1: I struggle with the idea that we tell survivors that
Speaker 1: they should be naming their abusers because of exactly the
Speaker 1: climate that is described in this Intercept article. I would
Speaker 1: only ever advocate for a survivor of violence to like
Speaker 1: speak up if they really felt sure and they really
Speaker 1: felt like they had support. It's a complicated, fucked up
Speaker 1: climate that is going to lead to survivors not speaking up.
Speaker 2: And these people don't have a ton of support, right, Like, these.
Speaker 1: Are not a list people who have lots and lots
Speaker 1: of funds for long drawn out legal battles. Like, imagine
Speaker 1: how terrified you would be if you got a legal
Speaker 1: sumon saying that you were going to be sued for
Speaker 1: defamation and you don't even have a lawyer, maybe you
Speaker 1: don't even have you know, the kind of support that
Speaker 1: would that you would need to know what to do
Speaker 1: as your next step.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's you know, really interesting you framed it as
Speaker 3: an anti me too movement because it does seem like
Speaker 3: that is a fitting description of this pattern of defamation
Speaker 3: cases against women who have accused abusers. And so you know,
Speaker 3: if you think about it as an anti movement or
Speaker 3: like a backlash, who benefits from that?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: Who are the people like in this movement? Abusers?
Speaker 1: Abusers and the people who protect the power structures and
Speaker 1: institutions that enable their abuse, Like people who are abusers,
Speaker 1: people who are uncomfortable with the power structure being challenged
Speaker 1: that enables abuse.
Speaker 2: Like maybe they are not abusers.
Speaker 1: Themselves, but they feel like, you know, oh, the way
Speaker 1: things are supposed to go is like being an abuser
Speaker 1: should not you know, be disqualifying to be to hold
Speaker 1: power being an abuse? Like just because you you know, people,
Speaker 1: I think people who want us to go back to
Speaker 1: a certain way of life. I think that we made
Speaker 1: some progress, not even that much progress, but some progress.
Speaker 1: And I think some people see this and they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they want abuse to remain something that is in the
Speaker 1: sphere of the domestic. And what we're saying is that, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're an abuser, you're If you're you probably are
Speaker 1: abusing people in your life outside of the domestic.
Speaker 2: This is not a private issue or a personal issue.
Speaker 1: And in fact, this is an issue that deeply intersects
Speaker 1: with how you hold pass So if you were a
Speaker 1: power holder, no, you shouldn't be able to treat people
Speaker 1: in your life any kind of way. They need that
Speaker 1: structure to be maintained. I think that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are very invested in that structure.
Speaker 1: And I think me too was a challenge to that structure.
Speaker 1: And I think the people who don't want that structure
Speaker 1: challenge are like, wait, wait, wait, wait wait, we need
Speaker 1: to how can we use the state to put things
Speaker 1: back how they're meant to be, which is that nobody
Speaker 1: cares when somebody is an abuser.
Speaker 2: Woo.
Speaker 3: If that is dark, it's bad.
Speaker 1: I like many of us kind of got duped by
Speaker 1: a really effective social media campaign that led me to
Speaker 1: believe that there was a lot more happening with the
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp Amber Heard defamation trial than was there. I
Speaker 1: was like a low information person on that, like I
Speaker 1: wasn't something that I followed, and I was being surfaced
Speaker 1: so much content that really completely painted a different portrait
Speaker 1: than what was actually happening. And once I actually looked
Speaker 1: into it, I was like, wait, this is actually like
Speaker 1: very cut and dry, Like this is actually like not
Speaker 1: that complicated. I don't know why I thought that it
Speaker 1: was like some big murky thing. And the article in
Speaker 1: the intercept, which I think everybody should read, really makes
Speaker 1: clear that Johnny depp that trial is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons we are seeing this new climate, and that is
Speaker 1: something that we are seeing play out right now. That
Speaker 1: is the climate that Johnny Depp's legal team has left
Speaker 1: us with.
Speaker 4: Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: Well, Elon's been up to a lot since I've been offline.
Speaker 1: It's all like a mixed bag of terrible Let's just
Speaker 1: get into it. I want to do it quickly because
Speaker 1: like part of me was like do I even do
Speaker 1: what's Elon up to this week? Because it's so it's
Speaker 1: so ridiculous. So I'm late to the game because I
Speaker 1: was offline. Twitter is trying to change their name to X.
Speaker 1: What is there really to say? It's like a terrible name,
Speaker 1: it's a the logo is terrible. It's it's like a
Speaker 1: throwback to like do you remember back when like X
Speaker 1: was really cool, like for some reason, like I want
Speaker 1: to say, like late nineties, X was like a really
Speaker 1: cool branding, so very much on brand for Mosk to
Speaker 1: get into something like fifteen years too late for it
Speaker 1: to be relevant.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I saw that he that Linda yakan Arrow was like
Speaker 1: had this breathless string of tweets about how their new
Speaker 1: vision for Twitter is to be X and X is
Speaker 1: going to be like an everything app that is like video.
Speaker 1: By the way, there's already a pretty popular video streaming
Speaker 1: service with the name X, so that's already taken.
Speaker 2: But they want to do like video audio banking.
Speaker 1: They should go without saying, please do not give Elon
Speaker 1: Musk your banking information, like terrible idea. I continue to
Speaker 1: like weirdly feel bad for Linda Yakanaro because I feel
Speaker 1: like her.
Speaker 2: She is like the CEO of Twitter, and it.
Speaker 1: Seems like most of her job is just like turning
Speaker 1: random choices that Elon Musk makes into a thread of,
Speaker 1: like really enthusiastic tweets, which I still feel like she
Speaker 1: could get out of this thing if she really, like,
Speaker 1: you know, she could drive herself out of this I think,
Speaker 1: what do you think?
Speaker 3: There is a brief moment when she's like, well, maybe
Speaker 3: she would be a person with power to influence the
Speaker 3: direction of the company, but in hindsight that was always
Speaker 3: silly to think, and it's certainly proven to not be
Speaker 3: the case. You know, being the multi post cheerleader for
Speaker 3: whatever Elon's latest thing is seems to be like her
Speaker 3: only public facing thing. I don't know. Maybe she's having
Speaker 3: a lot of deep conversations with brands behind the scenes
Speaker 3: that we don't get to see, but everything we do
Speaker 3: get to see is not much Wow, So like her
Speaker 3: breathlessly enthusiastic thread of or string of tweets or exes.
Speaker 1: I don't know about this new thing seats. People were
Speaker 1: compared zeats. Is that what they're calling?
Speaker 2: Oh that's terrible? Is it really zeats?
Speaker 3: Or I heard somebody's it's heard somebody say they're calling
Speaker 3: them zeats.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, it's calling.
Speaker 3: I actually have a theory that this is it actually
Speaker 3: is brilliant marketing because it's so terrible it forces everybody
Speaker 3: to like talk about it, like you can't even talk
Speaker 3: about it in a normal way.
Speaker 1: It's like the branding equivalent of comic sins. You know
Speaker 1: about this, right, yes? Why like basketball players, So for
Speaker 1: folks you don't know, Like when NBA players were where
Speaker 1: the like I can't breathe shirt, everybody was like, oh
Speaker 1: for a game and they were like, why are they
Speaker 1: in comic sands? And it's actually like a like an
Speaker 1: effective tactic because the logo is so bad, even though
Speaker 1: I actually kind of like comic sands, but the font
Speaker 1: is so bad people talk about it and then it
Speaker 1: gets more attention. So maybe that's what he's doing. So yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of stuff on the X thing. People probably already
Speaker 1: know this by now, but both Meta and Microsoft already
Speaker 1: owned trademarks for variations on X, which is probably gonna
Speaker 1: open them up to lawsuits. In Indonesia, X was temporarily
Speaker 1: blocked because of the association with adult content. The country
Speaker 1: has laws forbidding, gambling and pornography online, and so whoever
Speaker 1: used X as a domain before Musk broke that country's
Speaker 1: content law And it seems like Elon Musk's team just
Speaker 1: like didn't check to see if that would be a problem.
Speaker 1: It honestly sounds like Musk has been trying to make
Speaker 1: X happen since his PayPal days. People don't like like
Speaker 1: that was probably the last time that this branding was
Speaker 1: like a cool thing y.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, he's trying to make X happen. Stepping back
Speaker 3: is like, of all the things we've talked about happening
Speaker 3: on Twitter over the past several weeks or months or
Speaker 3: however long it's been, at least this one doesn't isn't
Speaker 3: like hurting anyone, but it is worth stepping back and
Speaker 3: just reflecting on how bizarre it is that Elon Musk
Speaker 3: just kind of likes the X branding and he wants
Speaker 3: to have like one app to do everything, and he
Speaker 3: like started that with PayPal and then it didn't work,
Speaker 3: and so then he just like went and bought Twitter,
Speaker 3: and now he's trying to like pursue his vanity project
Speaker 3: with Twitter, which like I would almost respect, you know,
Speaker 3: I have lots of projects that I'm working on that
Speaker 3: like no one else is interested in that, Like I
Speaker 3: know no one else would ever be interested in but
Speaker 3: it would like personally be gratifying for me to like
Speaker 3: have it see the light of day. But those none
Speaker 3: of those involve like the information infrastructure on which our
Speaker 3: democracy depends, right, Like the stakes are so much lower.
Speaker 1: So you said that the ex branding isn't hurting anybody,
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some people.
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is hurting.
Speaker 1: So one he erected a giant glowing X on Twitter's
Speaker 1: HQ in San Francisco, pissing off everybody, failed to have
Speaker 1: the city come check it out, and then unceremoniously took
Speaker 1: it down. So I'm sure the I saw on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Somebody was like, oh, imagine living right across the street
Speaker 1: from this, And somebody was like, I don't have to
Speaker 1: imagine it, it's my reality.
Speaker 2: Here's a picture. Terrible.
Speaker 1: He also quietly reinstated Kanye West's Twitter account. You might
Speaker 1: remember that Kanye's account was pulled in December after posting
Speaker 1: a series of very anti Semitic tweets, including an image
Speaker 1: of a Nazi swastika blended with the star of David
Speaker 1: Musk clarified that the account had been suspended for the
Speaker 1: incitement to violence.
Speaker 2: Well, Connie is back.
Speaker 1: Musk also reinstated an account that shared a screenshot from
Speaker 1: a child sexual abuse video, completely caving to right wing pressure.
Speaker 1: This is after, of course, Elon Musk went on and
Speaker 1: on about how he was going to be cracking down
Speaker 1: on child sexual abuse material on the platform and had
Speaker 1: a zero tolerance policy for it, so I guess it's
Speaker 1: more like a sum tolerance policy. And also he'd threatened
Speaker 1: to sue a nonprofit that studies hate speech and misinformation
Speaker 1: on social media called the Center for Counting Digital Hate
Speaker 1: for you guessed it reporting on hate speech on Twitter.
Speaker 1: One of their reports looked at one hundred different account
Speaker 1: subscribed to Twitter Blue and found that Twitter failed to
Speaker 1: act on ninety nine percent of hate posted by the subscribers,
Speaker 1: and questioned whether or not Twitter's algorithm boosts toxic tweets.
Speaker 1: They also found that Twitter failed to act on eighty
Speaker 1: nine percent of anti Jewish hate speech and ninety seven
Speaker 1: percent of anti Muslim hate speech on the platform, and
Speaker 1: Elon Musk replied by saying that the Center for Countering
Speaker 1: Digital Hate has made inflammatory, outrageous, and false or misleading
Speaker 1: assertions about Twitter and suggested that it conspire to drive
Speaker 1: advertisers off of Twitter by smearing the company and its owners.
Speaker 1: It sounds like this the Center, I mean, I know,
Speaker 1: the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
Speaker 2: They do good work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like Elon Musk just doesn't like hearing
Speaker 1: the truth about himself or his platform. And yeah, so
Speaker 1: he's trying to sue them and also like a pressure
Speaker 1: campaign to smear them, which is something that we see
Speaker 1: time and time again, like people who work in disinformation
Speaker 1: work being personally threatened for doing that work as a
Speaker 1: way to sort of push them out of it.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: Also another thing that Elon Musk is doing shaking down
Speaker 1: verified accounts for one thousand dollars a month. This is
Speaker 1: according to the Wall Street Journal, Twitter is asking brands
Speaker 1: to spend at least one thousand dollars per months on
Speaker 1: ads to maintain their verified status on the platform. In
Speaker 1: response to the Wall Street Journal reporting this, Musk says
Speaker 1: that as he describes that price tag is moderately high,
Speaker 1: which I think moderate, it's doing a lot of work
Speaker 1: in that sentence, but okay, but the high cost, according
Speaker 1: to Musk, is a preventative measure to keep scammers from
Speaker 1: the platform, which I don't know why you would have
Speaker 1: to pay a thousand dollars a month to in advertising
Speaker 1: fees to just get Elon Musk to do his job
Speaker 1: and run a platform.
Speaker 2: But there you have it.
Speaker 3: Boy, that's.
Speaker 2: Yes. I told you it was gonna be.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: I think I warned you it's gonna be a lot
Speaker 2: of like.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's we were we were only off for
Speaker 1: a week and we got this much musk nonsense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my god, it's been so much, so much musk.
Speaker 3: A x X is such a bad name, Like, how
Speaker 3: do you even talk about it? I feel like you
Speaker 3: can't even say it. Everything I've read about it is
Speaker 3: like the you know X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Speaker 3: It's like like I almost want to compare it to Prince,
Speaker 3: but I'm not going to. I know I'm not going to. Uh,
Speaker 3: X can't.
Speaker 1: Stick my best friend in the world, Andrew Nasden shout
Speaker 1: out to Andrew Nasden in front of the show the
Speaker 1: day So, like, I go offline, I get surgery, I'm
Speaker 1: on drugs.
Speaker 2: They changed the name to X.
Speaker 1: The first text that I come to is just my
Speaker 1: good friend Andrew Nasden saying are you ready for this?
Speaker 2: X gonna give it to you?
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh shit, DMX, it hadn't even
Speaker 1: occurred to me. So then we just texted back and
Speaker 1: forth the lyrics of that one DMX song. I thought
Speaker 1: it was very clever when I was on painkillers. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just bad branding. Also, it's like it's hard. It's
Speaker 1: just hard to say the logo. Someone I think astuteley
Speaker 1: said that it looks like Berlin based human trafficking app
Speaker 1: for like gentlemen in Berlin or some sort of a
Speaker 1: like weird like just a It's like it's like a
Speaker 1: black like weathered X.
Speaker 2: It just looks it just looks very nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: That's all.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the clothing store structure. Remember the
Speaker 1: store structure, the men's clothing store reminds me of that,
Speaker 1: just like a very of an era, and that era
Speaker 1: is nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3: Thousand dollars a months worth it.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of companies changing their names, this is really quick,
Speaker 1: but I just have to get it out. So chalk
Speaker 1: this up to just me needing to like make it
Speaker 1: part of the public record that I was right about
Speaker 1: something that I suspected all along. This week is National
Speaker 1: Whistleblower's Day. So remember back when whistleblower Francis Hogan released
Speaker 1: what became known as the Facebook Papers, blowing the whistle
Speaker 1: on a grip of knowing wrongdoing that Facebook did, including
Speaker 1: the way that their platforms harm youth and messing up
Speaker 1: democracies abroad. Well, shortly after this wave of bad press,
Speaker 1: that is Facebook's words, because I don't think that that
Speaker 1: level of harm is bad press. I think it's like
Speaker 1: deep wrongdoing. But that's how they would frame it. After
Speaker 1: that wave of bad press, Facebook announced that they were
Speaker 1: changing their name from Facebook to Meta. I was fairly
Speaker 1: certain they were doing this to distract from this like
Speaker 1: damaging news cycle. You know, Facebook has been knowingly harming
Speaker 1: our kids for a while. To Facebook has changed his
Speaker 1: name to Meta in classic like oh it's Malibu Stacy,
Speaker 1: but she's got a new hat kind of vibe, you know,
Speaker 1: like just like just change the conversation about it.
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg of course denied.
Speaker 1: This, saying that, you know, any indication that the company
Speaker 1: was changing the name to try to get away from
Speaker 1: bad press was quote ridiculous. That was the word that
Speaker 1: he used, because Facebook was just really interested in the metaverse.
Speaker 1: They were just doubling down on the metaverse like that
Speaker 1: was nothing to do with bad press or harming kids,
Speaker 1: or disabling democracies, any of that. They were just really
Speaker 1: really invested in the metaverse. Well, as Mark Zuckerberg was
Speaker 1: busy saying that his chief product officer, Chris Cox was
Speaker 1: basically saying that that's exactly what they were doing. About
Speaker 1: two weeks later, according to a new report from Business Insider,
Speaker 1: here's what the report found. During a company wide q
Speaker 1: and A with employees in November led by Cox and
Speaker 1: Sheryl Sandberg, then Facebook's chief operations officer, an employee asked
Speaker 1: about the overall success of.
Speaker 2: The new meta name.
Speaker 1: A longtime employee who has since left the company recalled
Speaker 1: Cox said the name change was successful, explaining his measure
Speaker 1: of success was the amount of press coverage of the
Speaker 1: name change compared to the whistleblower disclosures. It was more
Speaker 1: than double the volume of the Facebook papers coverage, Cock
Speaker 1: said on the call. He added that the coverage was
Speaker 1: also neutral to positive in tone. That's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing we only could have dreamed of when we did
Speaker 1: the change in terms of press coverage. He went on,
Speaker 1: and it's a really big deal because the Facebook papers
Speaker 1: was a big story, especially inside the US. So that
Speaker 1: whole song and dance that Mark Zuckerberg did saying, we
Speaker 1: just loved the metaphorse so much. We loved it so
Speaker 1: much we quietly basically dropped it a few months later. Well,
Speaker 1: that was just a life as everybody knew, myself very
Speaker 1: much included. They were just changing the name to try
Speaker 1: to pivot the story away from their knowing harm and
Speaker 1: wrongdoing onto the fact that they change their name. And
Speaker 1: this is like a time honored strategy of companies. I
Speaker 1: don't really think it's really what's happening with Twitter. I
Speaker 1: think that like Elon Musks is just stuck on X
Speaker 1: and trying to make fetch happen, and like is stuck
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine, I don't know that. I think
Speaker 1: that he is trying to pivot from bed press there.
Speaker 1: But Philip Morris became Altria, the Lance Armstrong Foundation became Livestrong.
Speaker 1: Like this is a thing that companies do when they
Speaker 1: are caught doing something that they ought not be doing,
Speaker 1: and so they just want everybody to sort of forget it,
Speaker 1: change the conversation pivot. So the next time you see
Speaker 1: a company do this, don't just take for face value
Speaker 1: that they're genuinely interested in the metaverse and want their
Speaker 1: name to reflect that. Know that it's a classic play
Speaker 1: from the bad actor playbook to avoid accountability.
Speaker 3: It's a good call that anytime a company changes their name,
Speaker 3: sh really ask why what is it that they're trying
Speaker 3: to distract from right now? It's also a good reminder
Speaker 3: that we just cannot believe anything that Meta or Mark
Speaker 3: Zuckerberg say right will just openly lie in public, and
Speaker 3: that's just what they do.
Speaker 1: We talked about this a little bit when Threads came out.
Speaker 1: They did finally add a chronological feed to Threads. So
Speaker 1: if you're still on Threads and that's something that excites you,
Speaker 1: it's not just like an algorithmic mishmash of people that
Speaker 1: you follow on people that you don't. But I remember
Speaker 1: when Threads first came out, they had us like low
Speaker 1: key rooting for Mark Zuckerberg. That's how much everybody hates
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, And I wonder did Mark Zuckerberg like enjoy
Speaker 1: that three day Sapan, where people kind of didn't hate him.
Speaker 3: I would assume, you know, he kind of seems like
Speaker 3: the kind of guy who wants to be liked. But
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't have any special insight there.
Speaker 3: Either way, he's probably comforted by his tens of billions
Speaker 3: of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars. He's probably feeling, Okay.
Speaker 1: It's funny, like I nobody wants and I'm doing the
Speaker 1: things that I hate.
Speaker 2: But like where you start, like.
Speaker 1: Trying to get into the head of these tech billionaires
Speaker 1: who just live such different lives than us, Like the
Speaker 1: life that any of us you, that you live, that
Speaker 1: I live, that anybody listening lives is so different than
Speaker 1: the lives of these people. Trying to glean what they're
Speaker 1: thinking their motivations is like it's a fool's errand. But
Speaker 1: I think Elon Musk is someone who genuinely, deeply wants
Speaker 1: to be liked, And I think a lot of the
Speaker 1: way that he makes decisions is rooted in a deep
Speaker 1: chasm of need to be liked. And I think that
Speaker 1: he needs us to think that he's funny. He needs
Speaker 1: us to think that he's like in On the so
Speaker 1: we make when people make fun of him and cut
Speaker 1: him down, his response and I feel like I know
Speaker 1: this response because I have this, I'm capable of these
Speaker 1: kinds of responses that are so like little and small
Speaker 1: as well. So like game recognized game, I like to
Speaker 1: see the gears turning where it's like, oh, it didn't
Speaker 1: hurt my feelings that you said that. Actually I'm getting
Speaker 1: in on the joke, haha, Like you know when people
Speaker 1: make fun of him, you know, like when he when
Speaker 1: he suspended Kanye West from Twitter back in December. One
Speaker 1: of the things among the very anti semitic things that
Speaker 1: he tweeted that were like completely inappropriate and messed up,
Speaker 1: he tweeted an image of Elon Musk shirtless on a boat,
Speaker 1: and Elon Musk had to be like, oh, just in
Speaker 1: case you were wondering, suspending Kanye West had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with that unflattering picture of me shirtless on the boat.
Speaker 1: If anything, it was good motivation for my weight loss.
Speaker 1: And it's like this vibe of like having two can
Speaker 1: work over time to convince people that you are aware,
Speaker 1: self aware of the joke that you know that they're thinking.
Speaker 1: That I think is really rooted in like this deep
Speaker 1: well of need for approval but not getting it. It's
Speaker 1: kind of sad when you think about it.
Speaker 3: It is a little sad.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't spend time feeling sad for Elon Musk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but just imagine if somebody like him, like felt validated,
Speaker 1: felt you know, like didn't need to buy a platform
Speaker 1: so that he could like see his own jokes amplified
Speaker 1: on it to be like they like me, they think
Speaker 1: I'm funny.
Speaker 3: There's so much better stuff that one could do with
Speaker 3: forty four billion dollars. I think so, But then again,
Speaker 3: I don't have forty four billion dollars, so a lot
Speaker 3: of good it does me.
Speaker 1: Give me one billion dollars, they'll never hear from me again,
Speaker 1: Like I'll do it for a fracture that you will
Speaker 1: never hear from my ass again.
Speaker 3: Like there's so many things, so many possibilities, and yeah,
Speaker 3: he's barked on this journey to try to make everyone
Speaker 3: like him, like you were saying, and failing so spectacularly.
Speaker 2: It is sad when you think about it that way.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's really taggd his brand like he used
Speaker 3: to be somebody that I think most people liked or
Speaker 3: at least didn't loathe. That's gone.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because I often go back and listen
Speaker 1: to old podcast interviews with him or read old articles
Speaker 1: about him or profiles, and he really did have a
Speaker 1: sweet grift going where he comes off so genuinely both unlikable,
Speaker 1: uncharismatic and like doesn't know what he's doing, but that
Speaker 1: the interviewer or the profiler or whoever was there was
Speaker 1: a time where they were giving him a lot of
Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 2: I think that time is over.
Speaker 1: I think people are like, yeah, this person is like
Speaker 1: exactly who he's been saying he is. But imagine having
Speaker 1: so much money and kind of lucking your way into
Speaker 1: buying companies that are like kind of successful, having the
Speaker 1: press mostly fooled, and having them carry water for this
Speaker 1: concept that you're like a smart guy who knows what
Speaker 1: he's doing, and then ruining all of that.
Speaker 3: Got to get it back, you know, maybe that's why
Speaker 3: he's out there trying so hard.
Speaker 2: Now xcom give it to you, X come deliver to
Speaker 2: you more.
Speaker 4: After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about these two bills that are both
Speaker 1: making their way through Senate regulating the Internet and children.
Speaker 1: Last week, the Senate Commerce Committee advanced two bills in
Speaker 1: the United States, both regulating how young people show up online.
Speaker 1: Bill number one is the Children and Teens Online Privacy
Speaker 1: Protection Act, introduced by Senators Marky and Bill Cassidy. This
Speaker 1: would update the nineteen ninety eight Children's Online Privacy Act
Speaker 1: to raise the age of consent for data collection to
Speaker 1: sixteen and build a new Federal Trade Commission Division to
Speaker 1: enforce it. The second bill, is the one that we're
Speaker 1: sort of focusing on right now, is the Kids Online
Speaker 1: Safety Act, introduced by Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn.
Speaker 1: This would place a duty of care on platforms to
Speaker 1: prevent promoting to users under seventeen content that includes disordered
Speaker 1: eating and suicide. The bill carves out explicit protections for
Speaker 1: support services such as suicide, health potlines, school and educational software.
Speaker 1: An amendment to the bill approved Thursday would also require
Speaker 1: companies to be transparent about if they're filtering content using
Speaker 1: an algorithm and giving users a chance to opt out.
Speaker 1: So the Kids Online Safety Act is the one that
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of privacy and civil liberties
Speaker 1: experts are concerned about. It's a little bit complicated because
Speaker 1: I've actually seen people that I trust and like respect
Speaker 1: coming out in support of the Kids Online Safety Act.
Speaker 1: But I think it's complicated in that most people who
Speaker 1: are not like in the pocket of big tech and
Speaker 1: making money from this, I think agree that like something
Speaker 1: needs to be done with the way that tech companies
Speaker 1: are harming young people and really everybody, but young people
Speaker 1: in particular. But the concern is that we will like
Speaker 1: push through a sloppy bill that ends up regulating the
Speaker 1: Internet in ways that harm more people and that actually
Speaker 1: do more to harm marginalized kids. Because I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of folks who care about things like privacy and
Speaker 1: like digital harms raising the alarm. One of them is
Speaker 1: Aliah Bathia, policy analyst for the Center for Democracy and
Speaker 1: Technologies Free Expression Team. She published a blog post where
Speaker 1: she expressed concern around giving more information to platforms to
Speaker 1: verify ages, saying this is essentially meaningless if the very
Speaker 1: nature of the bill requires online services to treat miners
Speaker 1: differently from adult users. Doing so pire online services to
Speaker 1: know the ages of their users adults and children alike.
Speaker 1: So I kind of get what she's saying there that
Speaker 1: there is like a weird mental thing of like, in
Speaker 1: order to keep kids privacy safe online, we all need
Speaker 1: to give more information about ourselves to tech platforms. Like
Speaker 1: I get what she's saying about why that sort of
Speaker 1: hits weird maybe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's such an interesting and also important problem. I
Speaker 3: mean important for so many reasons, but interesting because, like
Speaker 3: you said, I think most people agree that there is
Speaker 3: a serious problem with young people young people in the internet, right,
Speaker 3: like trying to get beyond that and more specifically name
Speaker 3: what the problem is, I think that consensus breaks down
Speaker 3: pretty quickly. But there's definitely privacy concerns, and there's also
Speaker 3: concerns about young people accessing content that is inappropriate for them.
Speaker 3: You know, people have different ideas about what might be
Speaker 3: inappropriate if it's sexual or about drugs or violence, but
Speaker 3: most people would probably agree that, like, there's some content
Speaker 3: that kids shouldn't see. But those are like very different
Speaker 3: problems privacy and content restrictions. And it kind of sounds
Speaker 3: like it's maybe a little bit muddled which problem this
Speaker 3: bill is actually trying to solve, And that's pretty problematic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, to your point about the content
Speaker 1: that like, we all have ideas about what kind of
Speaker 1: content is or is not appropriate for young people to
Speaker 1: be seeing. Verge reports that digital rights advocates have suggested
Speaker 1: that this bill could prevent queer youth from finding resources
Speaker 1: that they need online without coming out to their parents
Speaker 1: due to the prevental consent requirement of the bill. And
Speaker 1: this is not an unfounded concern. In fact, the Right
Speaker 1: Being organization, the Heritage Foundation, already flat out admitted that
Speaker 1: they planned to use this legislation to censor LGBTQ content
Speaker 1: in an attempt to barrow children from such content. Right
Speaker 1: and so, what I think the kind of content that
Speaker 1: young people should not be have access to online and
Speaker 1: the content that the Heritage Foundation, who is this like
Speaker 1: incredibly lobbied, well resourced right being organization would say that
Speaker 1: kids should not have access to online are two different
Speaker 1: kinds of content.
Speaker 2: And you know, to your point about it's not.
Speaker 1: Clear what problem exactly this legislation is meant to tackle.
Speaker 2: We in our episode that we.
Speaker 1: Did with doctor Olivia Snow, who is a sex worker
Speaker 1: and an Internet privacy expert, she talked about how that
Speaker 1: is like a real red flag when someone is telling
Speaker 1: you that legislation is going to protect kids online, but
Speaker 1: it seems kind of lofty, not really clear like how
Speaker 1: it's actually going to do that.
Speaker 2: That it should really get.
Speaker 1: Your spidey senses tingling about this legislation being something that
Speaker 1: really has the power to shape the future of the Internet,
Speaker 1: not for good. You know, we talked about Sesta Fasta,
Speaker 1: how much that did to change the landscape of so
Speaker 1: much but particularly the Internet, And yeah, I just I'm
Speaker 1: concerned that a bill like this. I can see how
Speaker 1: for some folks it seems like it's better than nothing,
Speaker 1: because most people agree that we have a problem.
Speaker 2: But I don't want.
Speaker 1: To just push through a bill that is actually going
Speaker 1: to create more harm for marginalized youth and queer youth
Speaker 1: and like change the landscape of our internet to make
Speaker 1: it less private, more draconian, you know, more harmful, more surveillance,
Speaker 1: more of our data being given up and then having
Speaker 1: them tell us it's for our own good. Like I like,
Speaker 1: I understand the need to do something, and I understand
Speaker 1: that need to be like, well, we have to make
Speaker 1: it seem like we're taking some sort of an action
Speaker 1: on this, But I don't want it to be an
Speaker 1: action that ends up creating more harm totally.
Speaker 3: I mean, the red flag warning is probably a good
Speaker 3: one here, right, Like, Oh, we have to protect kids,
Speaker 3: like protect them from what? Like what are you protecting
Speaker 3: them from? Protecting them from accessing content about what it
Speaker 3: means to be gay? Like that's probably okay if they
Speaker 3: access that. Yeah, it's the rhetoric is so lofty and vague.
Speaker 3: I think red flag is absolutely the right term to
Speaker 3: understand it. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I
Speaker 3: think that, uh, you know, I personally feel like the
Speaker 3: threat to privacy is the big risk here. I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously there's a ton of threats and risks to young people,
Speaker 3: and absolutely legislators, business leaders, tech companies should be you know,
Speaker 3: addressing all of them. But the creeping risk to privacy
Speaker 3: that we all face right now, like that seems like
Speaker 3: the clear, big flashing red light for legislators to like
Speaker 3: step in and do something about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, And like, just to be super clear, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not a policy person internet legislation. I talk to
Speaker 1: people much smarter about it than me all day long.
Speaker 1: I am not the person to ask about whether or
Speaker 1: not we should be advocating for a specific piece of legislation.
Speaker 1: My job is to like talk to people about it
Speaker 1: and to talk to people who know more about it
Speaker 1: than me to help other people figure out what we
Speaker 1: should be doing. And so I get, I get that
Speaker 1: it is complex, But I don't think that it's going
Speaker 1: to be any one, Bill, I guess is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I think that we need a real rethinking and restructuring
Speaker 1: about how we think about privacy our data as it
Speaker 1: pertains to our children, but adults deserve it as well,
Speaker 1: and who gets to make money off of it? What
Speaker 1: is for sale, what's not for sale? I don't think
Speaker 1: it's going to be any one, Bill. I think we
Speaker 1: need a real overhaul in that department to make the
Speaker 1: kind of like sweeping, meaningful change that we truly do
Speaker 1: need in this country.
Speaker 4: Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: At our back, so I have a little bit of
Speaker 1: an update add on to a story that we talked
Speaker 1: about a couple of weeks ago. So y'all might recall
Speaker 1: that we did a story all about how Google is
Speaker 1: making money from lies about abortion and reproductive health. Well,
Speaker 1: that's not all that they're making money from, because it
Speaker 1: turns out that Google owned YouTube makes millions of dollars
Speaker 1: from channels pushing climate disinformation.
Speaker 2: Researchers from the.
Speaker 1: Global nonprofit that Echo examine YouTube videos in Brazil related
Speaker 1: to climate change and deforestation. This comes at a time
Speaker 1: of real political controversy in Brazil, as the Lula administration
Speaker 1: is attempting to halt and reverse the aggressive anti indigenous
Speaker 1: pro deforestation policies of the previous Bolsonnario administration. The researchers
Speaker 1: found that many of the videos repeated and promoted well
Speaker 1: worn conspiracy theories that fires in the Amazon rainforest either
Speaker 1: were not real so like did not happen, or that
Speaker 1: they had been intentionally started by non governmental organizations to
Speaker 1: help with their fundraising. This is despite a policy announced
Speaker 1: by YouTube in twenty twenty one that expressly prohibited quote
Speaker 1: ads for and monetization of content that contradicts well established
Speaker 1: scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.
Speaker 1: And just as like a side note, because these issues,
Speaker 1: you know, I've focused mostly on like domestic United States issues,
Speaker 1: but these issues really are global because here in the
Speaker 1: US we have a very similar well worn conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan has used his massive platform to repeat the
Speaker 1: lie that like Antifa or Black Lives Matter was responsible
Speaker 1: for forest fires that we had here in the United
Speaker 1: States last year. There was no truth to this claim.
Speaker 1: It was just an outright lie. But it was a
Speaker 1: particularly sticky conspiracy theory because it really overlapsed with a
Speaker 1: lot of like flash points and tensions around things like
Speaker 1: race and climate that we're always feeling what we were
Speaker 1: feeling so intensely a few years ago. So I'm not
Speaker 1: totally sure why these like extremist right wing lies about
Speaker 1: leftists or Antifa or Black Lives Matter starting forest fires
Speaker 1: is so hot right now pun not intended but acknowledged.
Speaker 1: But maybe it's like a consequence of climate change getting
Speaker 1: worse and worse in the immediate So maybe we should
Speaker 1: really come to expect even more over the top efforts
Speaker 1: to really shift the blame away from fossil fuel companies
Speaker 1: and their defenders that brought us here. Like it's so
Speaker 1: much easier to believe a wild conspiracy theory that leftists
Speaker 1: or NGOs are intentionally starting fires because they want to
Speaker 1: get more funding, and like it's not even really a
Speaker 1: big issue, and like maybe the fires aren't even happening
Speaker 1: than it is to be like, oh wow, corporations and
Speaker 1: fossil fuel companies have really gotten us into a big problem,
Speaker 1: the consequences of which are all around us all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're probably right that we're going to
Speaker 3: see a lot more scapegoating as the effects of climate
Speaker 3: change just get like more real in the here and now.
Speaker 3: And it really speaks to the success of the fossil
Speaker 3: fuel industries. They're like decades long campaigns to like firmly
Speaker 3: link climate change denial with the culture wars, where you know,
Speaker 3: they've got foot soldiers who aren't even on the payroll
Speaker 3: carrying their water for them, saying that, oh, it's leftists
Speaker 3: starting these fires.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know what's really funny is a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: I was in a webinar about how to report on
Speaker 1: climate misinformation and learning about these like vast networks of
Speaker 1: pr companies that put out talking points and coordinative campaigns
Speaker 1: to make us think that corporations are not responsible for
Speaker 1: climate change.
Speaker 2: And it was literally the literal hottest day on.
Speaker 1: Earth, and I was just thinking, like, how am I
Speaker 1: How am I like sitting here in my kitchen sweating,
Speaker 1: unable to breathe, clearly because of there's forest fires and
Speaker 1: there are people out here trying to tell me like, no,
Speaker 1: there's not that's not true.
Speaker 2: You're not experiencing that. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Forestbar Like I was like, I'm being We're like being
Speaker 1: gas lit on a massive scale.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the East Coast has always been blanketed in smog
Speaker 3: for the entire summer.
Speaker 1: Like, don't you remember when you were a kid and
Speaker 1: you couldn't go outside because of the small You're like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't remember that.
Speaker 2: Actually, Okay, So back to these videos.
Speaker 1: So not only were these videos on YouTube obviously promoting
Speaker 1: a false, alternate reality about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest,
Speaker 1: but those videos were also making money. The researchers calculated
Speaker 1: that YouTube channels behind these videos made between six hundred
Speaker 1: thousand and ten million dollars in YouTube monetization. And I
Speaker 1: know that sounds like a pretty huge range, but regardless,
Speaker 1: if that's how much creators were making, it means that
Speaker 1: Google was making even more by selling ads around those videos. Now,
Speaker 1: Google is not the first company that we've talked about
Speaker 1: on this show to have some big, flashy moderation policy.
Speaker 2: About taking down or not allowing.
Speaker 1: A certain kind of conspiracy theory or false information only
Speaker 1: to like not really enforce that policy or just kind
Speaker 1: of like quietly drop it after that new cycle of
Speaker 1: good press ends. Nor would they be the first company
Speaker 1: to have one set of standards in the US where
Speaker 1: their base and a completely different set of standards abroad.
Speaker 1: Facebook famously implemented policies around racist disinformation in the United
Speaker 1: States in twenty seventeen while they were actively aggressively promoting
Speaker 1: racist disinformation campaigns in Myanmar. Now, whether or not this
Speaker 1: was like a deliberate strategy or a crime of neglect
Speaker 1: by failing to invest in non English language moderation and
Speaker 1: moderation software, the end result was a lot of death
Speaker 1: and a lot of profit for these companies. But hopefully
Speaker 1: this report does prompt Google to be more actively moderating
Speaker 1: its Brazilian content and actually start enforcing policies against climate misinformation.
Speaker 1: The report also noted that adds for several major brands,
Speaker 1: including Calvin Kline, Tommy Hillfigure, Lift, Capital One, and others,
Speaker 1: appeared alongside these videos touting these lies about forest fires,
Speaker 1: And you really have to wonder how excited is Tommy
Speaker 1: Hillfigure or Calvin Klein to be knowing that their advertising
Speaker 1: dollars are directly funding a network of dangerous c lils.
Speaker 2: I'm a denial.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you'd have to assume not very excited. I would hope.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think it really does remind me quite
Speaker 1: a bit of other techt stories we've covered, where for
Speaker 1: as much guff as I give Facebook, the version of
Speaker 1: Facebook that we use in the United States, like is
Speaker 1: the best version of Facebook that they offer, because it's
Speaker 1: the version that they are like actively doing the most
Speaker 1: work to like moderate and have the most moderators. And
Speaker 1: so if you don't like what we have here in
Speaker 1: the United States, you're gonna hate what they have in
Speaker 1: the global South, right, because it's much worse. And Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think it really goes back to this
Speaker 1: idea that we've talked about before of like this colonialist vibe,
Speaker 1: where like, I don't even I think that we're just
Speaker 1: like not supposed to think about how if the platform
Speaker 1: is bad here, how much worse.
Speaker 2: It is globally. I just think that we're like not
Speaker 2: supposed to think.
Speaker 1: The whole system kind of relies on this unwillingness to
Speaker 1: acknowledge the kind of harm that these platforms are responsible
Speaker 1: for globally.
Speaker 3: Totally colonial list is I think the right framework to
Speaker 3: think about it. It's just a very extractive model where
Speaker 3: whatever they need to do in the name of profit
Speaker 3: in other countries is fine. And as infuriated as we
Speaker 3: are at Meta a lot of the time, it's got
Speaker 3: to be so much worse in one of these other
Speaker 3: countries where they are just completely unencumbered by concerns about
Speaker 3: trying to, I don't know, be responsible actors. I think
Speaker 3: in Brazil in particular, Meta built a Wi Fi network
Speaker 3: or like a cell network. I don't know whether it
Speaker 3: was Wi Fi or sell. But you know, when What'sapp
Speaker 3: was a new thing, it took off like wildfire in
Speaker 3: Brazil because they did not have great cell coverage everywhere.
Speaker 3: But so because Facebook built a proprietary network, everybody was
Speaker 3: using What's App. And it's got to be super hard
Speaker 3: to regulate a company like that that like built and
Speaker 3: owns the Internet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, same way that AOL was the Internet when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. Facebook is the Internet. Facebook, What's App
Speaker 1: they maybe they have, maybe they own the cell service whatever,
Speaker 1: Like it is the Internet. It functionally is a public service,
Speaker 1: but it is not being regulated that way because it
Speaker 1: is a private company being run by, you know, for profit,
Speaker 1: by somebody who has shown himself again and again did
Speaker 1: not really cared that much about the people he is serving.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he just hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 3: It's like a it is a public service. We can
Speaker 3: pretend it isn't and we can fetishize the market and
Speaker 3: be like, oh, everything needs to be privately owned, but
Speaker 3: like it is a public service. We all depend on
Speaker 3: the internet all the time in our personal lives and
Speaker 3: our professional lives, and to just have it be run
Speaker 3: at the whim of some billionaires is bad enough. When
Speaker 3: those billionaires live in a totally different country and don't
Speaker 3: care about the local country at all, it's really a
Speaker 3: recipe for disaster.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, back in twenty sixteen, the UN declared Internet
Speaker 1: access a human right. So it's not great to think
Speaker 1: of these companies that do so much harm and think
Speaker 1: so little of these populations that they're the ones who
Speaker 1: are meant to be providing what the UN's as is
Speaker 1: a human right.
Speaker 2: It doesn't sit right with me. And yeah, I think
Speaker 2: that we deserve better all globally, we deserve better. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll leave it there.
Speaker 3: What else you got for us?
Speaker 1: Bridget Well, speaking of deserving better, I have to apologize Mike.
Speaker 2: Last week I gave the last time that we talked.
Speaker 1: I guess the week before last, I gave you a
Speaker 1: lot of crap because you recorded an episode with your
Speaker 1: mic off and the audio was bad and some listeners
Speaker 1: complained and I really enjoyed taking the piss. But I
Speaker 1: have to complain. And now this is really like karma
Speaker 1: coming back to get me because I made a pretty
Speaker 1: big tech screw up that I have to own up to,
Speaker 1: which is that at the end of every episode, we
Speaker 1: say email us if you want to say hi, if
Speaker 1: we've got a text story, we give out the email
Speaker 1: address hello at tangoti dot com. In our last episode,
Speaker 1: I said that I'm doing a live Patreon ask Me anything,
Speaker 1: and I asked folks to email me questions. Please also
Speaker 1: email me questions. You don't have to be a Patreon
Speaker 1: subscriber to send a question. Patreon dot com slash tangoty. However,
Speaker 1: this whole time because of a screw up with my inbox.
Speaker 2: I won't bore you with the details.
Speaker 1: It turns out that that email address was going unchecked
Speaker 1: because it was not filtering into my main email. Long
Speaker 1: story short, if you have sent me an email to
Speaker 1: Hello at Tangodi dot com in the last like six months,
Speaker 1: I just now got it totally screwed up. And what's
Speaker 1: awful is that I literally had a point where I
Speaker 1: was like, nobody ever emails me. I've never I have
Speaker 1: never get emails, Like, are people not listening to the show?
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like down in the dumps
Speaker 1: about it. Come to find out they were emailing me.
Speaker 1: I just wasn't getting them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel pretty bad about it. You know, I
Speaker 3: could have been checking the email too.
Speaker 2: Can I find a way to blame this on you?
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm trying to be generous right now like
Speaker 3: you were supposed to be doing it, So no, you
Speaker 3: can't blame this on me after the mic incident last week.
Speaker 3: But yeah, listeners, please email us. We're very sorry. We
Speaker 3: are on it now. We'll get a timely response. Hello
Speaker 3: at Tangoti dot com.
Speaker 1: So we're working our way through the backlog of emails
Speaker 1: that I have neglected to check because of my own
Speaker 1: tech ineptitude. But we got one recently that was just
Speaker 1: super interesting and it was a response to the piece
Speaker 1: that we did about how people are modifying video games
Speaker 1: using AI deep fakes of the voice actors, and that
Speaker 1: sometimes those games have adult content. Y'all might remember that
Speaker 1: as a voice professional, I was very not pleased to
Speaker 1: hear that this was being done to voice actors. The
Speaker 1: voice actors were also not pleased about it. But we
Speaker 1: actually got an email from a listener that which is
Speaker 1: really interesting and I wanted to share it.
Speaker 3: So they write in Hi, new listener, first time caller.
Speaker 3: I love the show, and as I was listening to
Speaker 3: one of the latest episodes in the story about voice
Speaker 3: actors and video game moding came up. I was offended.
Speaker 3: Question mark. Don't know how to describe it, but it
Speaker 3: hit me wrong when it was described as disgusting to
Speaker 3: use someone's voice without permission, especially to make pornographic material.
Speaker 3: And I understand how it must feel. And I agree
Speaker 3: with all of your points about work and exploitation and
Speaker 3: the problem with AI. But I'm a fanfic writer, reader,
Speaker 3: and fandom enthusiasts. I know there is a difference, but
Speaker 3: we use characters from shows and books to our own stories,
Speaker 3: and the actor who brings the character to life is
Speaker 3: the model we use when we write stories. Often explicit
Speaker 3: sex and sometimes right fandom also makes art of the
Speaker 3: characters and sexual situations, some of which the actor might
Speaker 3: be uncomfortable with. There are interesting questions there, bridget.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate that this person wrote in It really
Speaker 1: got me thinking. I think it underscores something that we
Speaker 1: come back to time and time again on the show,
Speaker 1: where we are entering this new landscape where things like
Speaker 1: AI deep fakes might be ubiquitous, And so the.
Speaker 2: Line of like what is okay? What isn't okay?
Speaker 1: You know, what's the difference between if you used someone's
Speaker 1: likeness in fan fiction that they didn't consent to, but
Speaker 1: you've just like written about them, Like how in what
Speaker 1: way is that like ethically different than a deep fake
Speaker 1: AI version of their voice? These are all like new
Speaker 1: questions that we're grappling with. I want to be clear
Speaker 1: that I do not have all of the answers for
Speaker 1: these questions. We're actually going to be digging this this letter,
Speaker 1: like it really inspired us to like think on the topics.
Speaker 1: So we're going to be doing a follow up episode
Speaker 1: or we talk to a fan fiction expert a couple
Speaker 1: other folks about how they think about this. But I
Speaker 1: think this letter writer is spot on that there is
Speaker 1: not one right answer for where the line is, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of like we're all kind of building the
Speaker 1: plane as we fly it in terms of building out
Speaker 1: those ethical guardrails for how we deal with these things
Speaker 1: going forward.
Speaker 3: And yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to that episode. I
Speaker 3: think it's there's a lot of interesting questions here about like,
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, with AI changing and evolving and getting better,
Speaker 3: so rapidly existential questions about like what is the self?
Speaker 3: What do we own? Like is is your physical voice
Speaker 3: part of the self. These are interesting things that I'm
Speaker 3: really looking forward to listening to you talk with some
Speaker 3: experts about it.
Speaker 2: Me too.
Speaker 1: So thank you to this writer for writing in. Thank
Speaker 1: you to everyone who's written in in the last six months.
Speaker 1: Sorry that I have not read those emails.
Speaker 2: But I'm on it.
Speaker 1: I've got a backlog, please keep emailing me.
Speaker 2: And lastly, before we wrap, obviously we usually.
Speaker 1: Do these newscasts at the end of the week on Fridays,
Speaker 1: and today we're doing it on Tuesday because I've been
Speaker 1: recovering from surgery, so I'm also on painkillers. So if
Speaker 1: I sound weird because I'm on painkillers, but let us
Speaker 1: know how this feels to you, because usually on a
Speaker 1: Tuesday episode, you're getting like a produced interview me with
Speaker 1: somebody else about one topic. Today you're getting a newscast.
Speaker 1: I'm curious how that is landing for folks. You can
Speaker 1: email me and let me know and I will read
Speaker 1: the email. Yes, please email me. I feel like I've
Speaker 1: just discovered this new technology called emailed.
Speaker 2: Everybody's doing emails.
Speaker 3: You've got mail. Our second AOL reference of the episode.
Speaker 2: Ah, okay, that's our cue to call it. That's our
Speaker 2: cue to call it. Okay.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening, Thank you for all
Speaker 1: the well wishes on my surgery.
Speaker 2: And Mike, thanks for being here as always, Buddy.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me Bridget, it was a pleasure.
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 tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at tengodi dot com. There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget tod.
Speaker 1: It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 1: sound engineer. Michael Almato is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
Speaker 1: and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts