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.
Speaker 2: On the Internet.
Speaker 1: Welcome to There No Girls on the Internet, where we
Speaker 1: explore the intersection of identity, technology and social media. And
Speaker 1: this is another installment of our weekly news roundup, where
Speaker 1: we break down and explain all the different news stories
Speaker 1: from the Internet that you might have missed. Yes, it
Speaker 1: has been a while since we've done one of these.
Speaker 1: I took a little bit of a break from the news,
Speaker 1: but now we are back and better than ever. Mike,
Speaker 1: you are also back. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Bridget. It's great to be back.
Speaker 3: It has indeed been a minute. There's been a lot
Speaker 3: of tech news in that time, and it's great to
Speaker 3: be here talking with you again.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit distracted because I'm scrolling through these
Speaker 1: like polished Mark Zuckerberg pictures. Have you seen these?
Speaker 4: I have. Yeah, it's like a whole new zuck.
Speaker 1: Someone from Mark Zuckerberg or Meta pr is working overtime
Speaker 1: to try to convince us the public that Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: is a more polished, more stylished, more refined kind of guy,
Speaker 1: and farbe it of me to spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time talking about the sartorial choices of a tech leader. However,
Speaker 1: we know there is a ton of precedent for tech
Speaker 1: leaders using their fashion and style and hair to try
Speaker 1: to project things at us, the public. So it does
Speaker 1: kind of seem like their game to be talking about
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg rocking a chain at his fortieth birthday party,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, clearly trying to signal to us
Speaker 1: that he's a little more polished, a little more refined,
Speaker 1: a little more stylish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, you know you've talked about this before. Didn't
Speaker 3: you write a whole op ed about Elizabeth Holmes's hair
Speaker 3: and her active choices to have questionably nourished looking hair.
Speaker 1: Good memory, I definitely did. I wrote a whole piece
Speaker 1: about Elizabeth Holmes his hair choices. If you remember her,
Speaker 1: she definitely was known for a certain type of hairstyle
Speaker 1: that I think was with intention. It did not look
Speaker 1: nourished or conditioned, and I think that was my choice.
Speaker 1: We'll throw the article in the show notes if you
Speaker 1: want more information, but she was definitely somebody who knew
Speaker 1: how to use her fashion and hair to signal a
Speaker 1: certain kind of thing to us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're right that. You know, all of
Speaker 3: these tech leaders do that. You know, they get up
Speaker 3: on a stage. There's a lot of photos of them.
Speaker 3: It's all, I think, pretty deliberate. It's and so like
Speaker 3: for this new Zuckerberg rebrand, do you think they brought
Speaker 3: in the Rick Perry guy, the guy who brought us
Speaker 3: the smart Rick Perry, the one who wears glasses.
Speaker 1: Oh that was my favorite like rebrand when it was
Speaker 1: like they put them in glasses and it was like,
Speaker 1: guess what, y'all, Rick Perry is smart. Now from the
Speaker 1: team that brought you smart, Rick Perry comes Zuckerberg.
Speaker 4: Glow Up, Zucker glow up, the Zuck blow up.
Speaker 1: The Zuck glow. So basically in these pictures, there's one
Speaker 1: he made an announcement about Meta AI and he was
Speaker 1: wearing like a silver like a silver Cuban link chain
Speaker 1: and everyone was like, oh, nice chain. And then somebody
Speaker 1: like used AI deep fakes to put a little like
Speaker 1: one of those kind of thin beards on him. So
Speaker 1: if you saw that picture, the chain that was legit,
Speaker 1: the beard that was not legit. But even though that
Speaker 1: picture wasn't real. It really highlights my belief that what
Speaker 1: contouring makeup is for some women, beards are for some men.
Speaker 1: Like a beard can completely change the way a man's
Speaker 1: face looks. It can like it is like magic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, beard really changes a man's face.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like Over the weekend, Zuckerberg had a
Speaker 1: birthday party where for the party, his wife recreated all
Speaker 1: of the places that he lived when he was growing up,
Speaker 1: so like his Harvard dorm room where he created Facebook,
Speaker 1: and there are all these pictures of him wearing like
Speaker 1: a fitted black tea and a chain, like in a
Speaker 1: fake dorm room kind of diorama, like adult sized diorama.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is like, I don't know, it's clear
Speaker 1: to me that somebody wants us to think of Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg as this affable guy with friends and family who
Speaker 1: love him, you know what I mean. That's that clear
Speaker 1: to me that that's what we're all supposed to be
Speaker 1: taken away from this god.
Speaker 3: I have to look for those photos of him in
Speaker 3: the dorm rooms with a chain, because that was definitely
Speaker 3: a type of guy in Boston in like the early
Speaker 3: two thousands when he was there. That's when I was
Speaker 3: in dorms in Boston, and like that was definitely a
Speaker 3: type of guy, like fitted black shirt chain usually not like,
Speaker 3: you know, a forty something.
Speaker 4: Year old Zuckerberg. What a nice and strange gift from
Speaker 4: his wife.
Speaker 1: The pictures are unreal. I did see if someone comparing
Speaker 1: it to Marie Antoinette that apparently Marie Ane Toinette had
Speaker 1: built an entire fake village in Versailles that was equipped
Speaker 1: with like a working farm and fake people to work it,
Speaker 1: so that whenever she wanted to pretend to be a
Speaker 1: peasant girl on the farm, she could do that. And
Speaker 1: somebody compared Mark Zuckerberg's kind of fake set pieces of
Speaker 1: his college dorm and like crappy first apartment to that,
Speaker 1: which I thought was kind of funny. That's actually a
Speaker 1: pretty good segue into what I want to talk about first,
Speaker 1: which is the digital guillotine movement aka digiting if you
Speaker 1: don't know what that is. Basically, people on social media
Speaker 1: are using hashtags like hashtag let the meat cake, hashtag
Speaker 1: blockout twenty twenty four, and hashtag celebrity blocklist to rally
Speaker 1: people to boycott celebrities like Zindea, Taylor Swift, and the Kardashians.
Speaker 1: Here's how Mashable describes it, labeled quote Celebrity Blackout twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four and digitine aka the Digital Guillotine. The movement
Speaker 1: is a protest against celebrity culture, specifically blocking people of
Speaker 1: influence who have not yet used their power or privilege
Speaker 1: to take a stance on the humanitarian crisis that has
Speaker 1: devastated millions. So this all seems to have really been
Speaker 1: sparked by the MET Gala last week. The night at
Speaker 1: the Met Gala was also the night that airstrikes targeted
Speaker 1: Ratha and Gaza, which is an enclave on the border
Speaker 1: of the Gaza Strip, which is really key for transporting
Speaker 1: aid and supplies to Palestinians. So there has been a
Speaker 1: lot of chatter about the Mech Gala as this symbol
Speaker 1: for out of touch, wealthy celebrities really reveling in their
Speaker 1: privilege and opulence, while just a few blocks away protesters
Speaker 1: are on the streets calling for a ceasefire in Palestine.
Speaker 1: People were even comparing this to the Hunger Games, and honestly,
Speaker 1: from like an optics perspective, it is kind of hard
Speaker 1: to disagree. I will say that for what it's worth.
Speaker 1: I don't really feel like I have a clear take here.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, I totally get how it looks
Speaker 1: very out of time much to have these celebrities like
Speaker 1: flaunting their wealth while so much is going on in
Speaker 1: the world. I don't say that to say that I'm
Speaker 1: like above paying attention to the Mechala. In fact, I
Speaker 1: own a T shirt that says Rihanna is my Pope,
Speaker 1: which is a reference to the time that Rihanna addressed
Speaker 1: as the Pope at the Mechala. But I didn't even
Speaker 1: watch it this year, and I didn't even really pay
Speaker 1: attention to any of the coverage or any of the
Speaker 1: like online posts about it, in part because Conde Nas
Speaker 1: staff were boycotting the Mechala, so I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to pay attention. And also it just seemed
Speaker 1: like kind of boring, like not in a like I'm
Speaker 1: above this kind of way, more anda like this just
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like a good use of my time to
Speaker 1: be paying attention to kind of way. I also really
Speaker 1: get the argument around how much money so is spent
Speaker 1: at the Mechala. I've seen people say things like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the mechala is really expensive, but celebrities aren't actually paying
Speaker 1: to attend, And of course all the proceeds from the
Speaker 1: Mechala goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Costume Institute,
Speaker 1: which is like a worthy cause, and that's true, But
Speaker 1: I have also feel that like bringing that up feels
Speaker 1: like a bit of a dodge to what people are
Speaker 1: pointing out when they are talking about the Metcala, which
Speaker 1: is like this dissonance between the mechala and what is
Speaker 1: going on in the world, which I think is like
Speaker 1: a valid point, and I don't think people should just
Speaker 1: be dismissing that. However, I also don't want this to
Speaker 1: be a conversation where women are just being scolded for
Speaker 1: enjoying things like deemed trivial, right, and so easy to
Speaker 1: fall into that this could sort of be a bit
Speaker 1: of an unpopular opinion, but I do feel a little
Speaker 1: bit weird about the entire thing. Like, truthfully, there's been
Speaker 1: a humanitarian crisis in Palestine for many, many years, right,
Speaker 1: and in all of those years, there were met galas
Speaker 1: and rich celebrities doing rich celebrity things, you know. I
Speaker 1: think there's an element of people scolding celebrities for partying
Speaker 1: while there's a big human rights crisis going on, but
Speaker 1: it seems to me that has been the dynamic for
Speaker 1: a very long time, and like, I don't know, it
Speaker 1: almost sort of reads like, how dare you go to
Speaker 1: a party when I have just started being more tuned
Speaker 1: into this situation in Palestine that has been ongoing for
Speaker 1: many years, which I'm not sure that is a useful stance.
Speaker 1: But that said, counterpoint, some of these people seem freaking insufferable,
Speaker 1: and it kind of almost sounds like they were asking
Speaker 1: for it. So I'm talking about people like influencer Haley
Speaker 1: Bailey Khalil, who goes by Hailey Bailey on TikTok, who
Speaker 1: posted a video of herself at the Mecala pre event
Speaker 1: lip syncing to the alleged Marie Antoinette quote let Them
Speaker 1: Eat Cake from the Sofia Coppola two thousand and six
Speaker 1: movie Marie Antoinette, which is a masterpiece, go see it. However,
Speaker 1: I just learned this. Did you know that Marie Antoinette
Speaker 1: might not have actually even ever said let them eat cake?
Speaker 4: I did not know that. I thought it was an
Speaker 4: actual quote.
Speaker 1: No, historians don't even think she ever actually said that.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 1: Fascinating so basically, this influencer really not something I would
Speaker 1: have recommended she'd do. She posted a video from the
Speaker 1: Mechala lip syncing Marie antoinettes Let Them Eat Cake, and
Speaker 1: people unsurprisingly did not like this. And so this whole
Speaker 1: celebrity blockout thing started with TikTok user Ray, who goes
Speaker 1: by Lady from the Outside, who really kicked off the movement,
Speaker 1: specifically asking for TikTok users to unfollow Bailey, the influencer
Speaker 1: who made that let Them Eat Cake video from the Mechala,
Speaker 1: specifically asking for users to block her in particular. But
Speaker 1: now it has led the people making lists of celebrities
Speaker 1: to block just generally who have not used their platform
Speaker 1: to speak up. Here's what Ray said about the celebrity
Speaker 1: blockout movement on TikTok. She said, we gave them their platforms.
Speaker 1: It's time to take it back. Take our views away,
Speaker 1: our likes, our comments, our money now. There has been
Speaker 1: a suggestion that this movement could be making a real
Speaker 1: dent in some celebrities social media followings. Middle East Monitor
Speaker 1: reported that according to Social Blade, a US based social
Speaker 1: media and a lids website, it has caused some celebrities
Speaker 1: to lose followers. They reported that Selena Gomez lost one
Speaker 1: million followers on Instagram and one hundred thousand on x
Speaker 1: Zindeya lost one hundred and fifty three thousand followers on
Speaker 1: Instagram and forty thousand on x Kim Kardashian lost seven
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty thousand followers on Instagram, and her sister
Speaker 1: Kaylie Jenner lost five hundred and forty thousand followers on
Speaker 1: Instagram and fifty three thousand followers on x SO. I
Speaker 1: would say those are like decent chunks of followings that
Speaker 1: they have lost. However, I don't know if you have
Speaker 1: millions and millions and millions of followers, I don't know
Speaker 1: that that it sounds like it seems like a drop
Speaker 1: in the bucket. I don't know. I don't know that
Speaker 1: they're really going to feel this in their wallets, I guess,
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. If that is the intent of this.
Speaker 4: Movement, Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: I and you said the hashtag was digitein like a
Speaker 3: mashup of digital and guillotine.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like pretty intense, you know, like you could
Speaker 3: be mad at celebrities. But I don't know, I feel
Speaker 3: like maybe invoking the French Revolution and the right of
Speaker 3: terror specifically is like not what we need in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four.
Speaker 4: Maybe these people feel differently.
Speaker 1: Mike doesn't make it's time to roll in the gallows?
Speaker 4: Yeah, like maybe not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm not necessarily saying that, you know,
Speaker 3: who knows who's going to be in power when you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to be some sort of counter revolutionary here.
Speaker 1: I mean, I kind of I'm I guess I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit conflicted. I do think this whole thing represents
Speaker 1: where we are when it comes to celebrity right now.
Speaker 1: I think that unless you are somebody who is a
Speaker 1: hardcore stan of somebody, I don't think that in general
Speaker 1: people are really looking to celebrities the same way that
Speaker 1: maybe they once were. Ultimately, I personally just do not
Speaker 1: have any kind of faith and celebrity whatsoever. Like obviously,
Speaker 1: I think it's like nice and good or whatever when
Speaker 1: they use their platforms for good, and they should do
Speaker 1: that and all of that. But I just think that
Speaker 1: we should be looking the celebrities less in general, and truly,
Speaker 1: if there was one moment in the in the recent
Speaker 1: past that I think solidified how useless celebrity is and
Speaker 1: how we also be looking to celebrity less for all things.
Speaker 1: It was the twenty twenty Imagine video when it was
Speaker 1: the early days of COVID, and celebrities were like, you
Speaker 1: know what everyone is in their houses. People are scared.
Speaker 1: You know, we can offer the world us singing John
Speaker 1: Lennon's Imagine. Do you remember this?
Speaker 4: I do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe you're right, maybe that was like I don't
Speaker 3: know that that caused the end of celebrity, but it
Speaker 3: definitely does seem like a.
Speaker 4: Good indicator that.
Speaker 3: Things are not like they were, right, like, uh, yeah,
Speaker 3: we celebrities do not have that place in culture that
Speaker 3: they used to. They're just like they're just like us, right,
Speaker 3: it's like page five everywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really think of that video. That Imagine video
Speaker 1: is my Roman empire. I always wonder do our celebrities like, well,
Speaker 1: I only got roped into this because Gal Gadot asked me,
Speaker 1: or Will Ferrell asked me. He wrote me into it,
Speaker 1: like like celerity celebrities look at who convinced them to
Speaker 1: do that, and they're like, why did I get mixed
Speaker 1: up in that? And I really see it in conjunction
Speaker 1: with I know you're not gonna know what this is,
Speaker 1: so bear with me. But the twenty fourteen selfie that
Speaker 1: Ellen took at the Oscars where it's like Ellen and
Speaker 1: Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence and Kevin Spacey, I think
Speaker 1: like it's it's like a bunch of celebrities all crowded
Speaker 1: into a selfie that Ellen is taking. And I remember
Speaker 1: when it came out, everybody was like losing their mind, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, all these celebrities together, Oh, oh my god,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, oh my god. And it's just funny.
Speaker 1: Now how like five years later, six years later, in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, how collectively we were like, we don't need
Speaker 1: celebrities right now. We don't want to see this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not like that. Yeah, I guess is it? Is it?
Speaker 4: Lusers now? Is it? Nobody?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 4: Mister beast?
Speaker 1: You keep trying to sprinkle mister Beast into conversation and
Speaker 1: then he will be like, I don't want I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about him, I don't want any follow up.
Speaker 1: I want to reference him, and I want to move on.
Speaker 4: I gets I'm curious. Yeah, I don't get it.
Speaker 1: You've not done this on the mic so listeners have
Speaker 1: no idea what I'm talking about. But in non recorded
Speaker 1: conversation you will reference mister Beast, like, who is this
Speaker 1: mister Beasts? Why is he everywhere? Why am I reading
Speaker 1: about him in the New York Times? And I'll start
Speaker 1: to go like tell you, and You're like, I don't
Speaker 1: actually want to know, I just want to like raise
Speaker 1: the question.
Speaker 4: I'm just asking questions. Bridget, Yeah, you're.
Speaker 1: Just asking questions that need answers about mister Beasts.
Speaker 2: Let's take quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: So you know who else is just asking questions. The
Speaker 1: FTC to Better Help, and if you get your therapy
Speaker 1: and mental health services from better Help, you might have
Speaker 1: gotten notice that will be getting an insultingly low refund. Soon,
Speaker 1: around eight hundred thousand customers of the online therapy platform
Speaker 1: Better Help will start getting refund notices related to a
Speaker 1: settlement with the Federal Trade Commission because last year Better
Speaker 1: Help agreed to pay seven point eight million dollars to
Speaker 1: settle the FTC charges that it co opted user data,
Speaker 1: including personal health questions, for advertising purposes, sharing sensitive information
Speaker 1: with social media platforms like Facebook and Snapchat. So the
Speaker 1: FTC allegs that better help not only failed to get
Speaker 1: consent before sharing this data, they also misled users by
Speaker 1: promising they would keep their data private but then sharing
Speaker 1: it with advertising companies like Meta and Snapchat. Now Betterhelp
Speaker 1: did not admit to any of this, although they are
Speaker 1: paying the settlement. I had in a statement this week
Speaker 1: that they were quote deeply committed to the privacy of
Speaker 1: our members and we value the trust people put in
Speaker 1: us by using our services. So I don't know how
Speaker 1: deeply committed to the privacy of their members they can
Speaker 1: be if they're just given their sensitive information to whoever
Speaker 1: wants it for money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and after telling people that they wouldn't do that,
Speaker 3: that they would keep their information private. Yeah, with some
Speaker 3: pretty damning allegations.
Speaker 1: And this is something that you have particular expertise in, right, Mike.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Some.
Speaker 3: I mean it's not like, you know, rocket science, the
Speaker 3: idea that when you are dealing with people's sensitive health
Speaker 3: information and you tell them that it will be kept private,
Speaker 3: they could reasonably expect that it would be kept private
Speaker 3: and not shared with advertising companies to market goods to them.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It was I think I was reading the FTC complaint
Speaker 3: here and it seemed like that misleading aspect was a
Speaker 3: big core part of their complaint.
Speaker 1: So it is not just Better Help. Eligible refund customers
Speaker 1: include anybody who paid for services on Better Help or
Speaker 1: any of its affiliated websites that cater to certain communities
Speaker 1: like youth or queer people, places like Team Counseling, Faithful Counseling,
Speaker 1: or Pride Counseling. If you use those services from August first,
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen to December thirty first, twenty twenty, you are
Speaker 1: eligible for a refund. Okay, so you are a member
Speaker 1: of a vulnerable community. Right, Your therapy app has just
Speaker 1: gotten pinched for selling your deepest, most intimate details that
Speaker 1: you thought you were sharing with your mental health professional
Speaker 1: and them alone. Right, So now Betterhelp is like, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe we did this. We need to compensate you for
Speaker 1: this wrongdoing. What do you think is a number amount
Speaker 1: that you think is commiserate with that with what happened there?
Speaker 3: For like, what is the the value of my privacy?
Speaker 3: Like how much would it be worth to me to
Speaker 3: not unwittingly share personal information about me and my health?
Speaker 3: How much would that be worth? Yes, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean that seems like some pretty pretty big stuff.
Speaker 3: It's hard to put a dollar amount on that kind
Speaker 3: of personal information, you.
Speaker 1: Know, how about less than ten of them.
Speaker 4: Dollars?
Speaker 1: How about less than ten dollars? People got less than
Speaker 1: ten dollars. When I saw that, it's just it's I'm
Speaker 1: a big proponent of like take your little money, like
Speaker 1: even if it's a dollar, get your coffee whatever. Ten
Speaker 1: dollars is like insultingly low for what they have been
Speaker 1: alleged to have done wrong, selling the most intimate data
Speaker 1: and then telling people like don't worry, it's going to
Speaker 1: be between you and a doctor and Snapchat and Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg and his stylist team, and like it's like I'm like, whoa, what,
Speaker 1: here's how ella unchained? Put it on threads better help
Speaker 1: sold my data to Facebook? And all I got was
Speaker 1: this nine dollars and seventy two cent refund. Corporate accountability
Speaker 1: is a shoke, And I completely agree. When I saw
Speaker 1: that amount of money, I was like shocked that that
Speaker 1: is how low that they were giving out. And I
Speaker 1: think that threads is that what we're calling threads. I
Speaker 1: think that thread or whatever post on threads really nails
Speaker 1: how I feel about it. That like tech platforms and
Speaker 1: lacks policy and lack of accountability have created this dynamic
Speaker 1: where nothing private or intimate about us is not for sale.
Speaker 1: Even if they tell you that it's not for sale,
Speaker 1: it is still for sale, even the stuff that you
Speaker 1: talk about with your mental health professional. A dynamic that
Speaker 1: we once really understood as private and sacred and intimate,
Speaker 1: even that it's for sale. And when they sell it
Speaker 1: in a way that the government says breaks the law,
Speaker 1: they will barely face any consequences for it, And the
Speaker 1: compensation that you, as the person who was exploited, will
Speaker 1: get from that will be not just low, insultingly low,
Speaker 1: like an embarrassingly low.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 3: It really speaks to the expectation we have that people
Speaker 3: don't have privacy, that all of our private information is
Speaker 3: available to be sold and traded and used to market
Speaker 3: us goods. And I think that's a really destructive norm
Speaker 3: to have. And you know, it's not like in some ways,
Speaker 3: it's just endemic to everything being online, right, Like it's
Speaker 3: just a fact of the digital world that every product,
Speaker 3: every service is just like one business entity away from
Speaker 3: an advertising company who's trying to use your eyeballs and
Speaker 3: your attention to sell you stuff, and so there's just
Speaker 3: like so much pressure there and incentive to violate people's
Speaker 3: privacy and use personal information to surface them advertising. That
Speaker 3: just wasn't there in previous eras of like health in
Speaker 3: you know, personal health information, when it was all kept
Speaker 3: in paper files at a hospital. They just didn't have
Speaker 3: the opportunity or the incentive to try to use that
Speaker 3: for advertising. Whereas now that's you know, for companies like
Speaker 3: Better Help. I think probably a big part of their
Speaker 3: business model is advertising.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I guess, just philosophically, I think that we
Speaker 1: should all be stopping to wonder, like, do we want
Speaker 1: the most intimate parts of who we are, the parts
Speaker 1: that we share when we're vulnerable, the parts that we
Speaker 1: share when we're told no one else will hear them
Speaker 1: except for this one health professional. Do we want that
Speaker 1: to be fair game to be taken from us and
Speaker 1: use to exploit us? Like I just you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I went to Catholic school. It would be like if
Speaker 1: you did confession and you confess something in the confess
Speaker 1: what you were told was between you and your religious leader,
Speaker 1: and then the next thing, you know, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: did you cheat on your spouse. Here's an advertisement for
Speaker 1: a spouse cheating. You're like, what, wait a minute, like
Speaker 1: that would be we would not accept that. So, like,
Speaker 1: I think it's really like a philosophical thing of like,
Speaker 1: do we want these very intimate things that we share
Speaker 1: to just be fodder to exploit us further and for
Speaker 1: some tech company to make money from us.
Speaker 4: I argue, now this indulgence has been brought to you
Speaker 4: by Ashley Madison.
Speaker 1: I'm sure somebody somewhere is working on if it doesn't
Speaker 1: exist already, somebody somewhere is working on like a confessional
Speaker 1: app where when you make the confession, how they make
Speaker 1: money is selling the data about the confession about you.
Speaker 1: Someone has that app. You can't convince me that does
Speaker 1: not exist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think I totally agree there needs to
Speaker 3: be more I don't know safeguards against this right, like
Speaker 3: we need a federal law protecting privacy. We don't have
Speaker 3: that right. So we're left with companies like Better Help.
Speaker 3: They can can do things like this, and you know,
Speaker 3: may point to the fact that it's kind of a
Speaker 3: new space and there'ren't really rules, so maybe they can
Speaker 3: you know, write a check and not have to admit
Speaker 3: to any wrongdoing. What we need are some like clear
Speaker 3: standards around privacy where you know, as a society and
Speaker 3: you know, backed up by laws, we've clearly stated that
Speaker 3: this sort of thing is not okay. Privacy is worth something,
Speaker 3: and hopefully that is more than nine dollars and seventy
Speaker 3: two cents.
Speaker 1: Yes. So the reason that I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: this is because we actually did an episode about Betterhelp
Speaker 1: in the wake of the Astro World crowd crush incident
Speaker 1: that left a bunch of people, including children dead. I
Speaker 1: was really take it up by that story, especially when
Speaker 1: in the wake of that the organizers announced that they
Speaker 1: were going to be offering free, like a free trial
Speaker 1: of Better Help mental health services. That whole thing that's
Speaker 1: left a terrible taste in my mouth, from the fact
Speaker 1: that they were that it was better Help to begin
Speaker 1: with and not like go talk to a licensed mental
Speaker 1: health professional in your community or whatever, and the fact
Speaker 1: that it was like I think they were offering like
Speaker 1: three months or something. I'm like, oh, yeah, if you
Speaker 1: almost died in a crowd crush incident, you might need
Speaker 1: more than a free Better Help trial to help you
Speaker 1: navigate that. And it just felt to me like, Oh,
Speaker 1: these people were harmed, and now to compensate for that harm,
Speaker 1: they are going to be served up for another platform
Speaker 1: that will only further exploit and take from them. I
Speaker 1: found it really despicable. And so one of the things
Speaker 1: that came up in that episode that we did about
Speaker 1: Better Help was the relationship that Better Help has with
Speaker 1: the podcasting industry. If you listen to podcasts, which I
Speaker 1: guess you obviously do because you're hearing me say this
Speaker 1: right now, I or I guess maybe you're my upstairs
Speaker 1: neighbor who is like listening to me for court this,
Speaker 1: I bet you know. If you listen to podcasts, you've
Speaker 1: probably heard an ad for Better Help or two. According
Speaker 1: to NBC in March, Better Help spend eight point three
Speaker 1: million dollars on podcast opportunities, nearly double the next biggest sponsor,
Speaker 1: which is Amazon. And also, just to put that in context,
Speaker 1: they spend eight point three million dollars on podcasting opportunity
Speaker 1: advertising in March alone. What they had to pay for
Speaker 1: misusing the data of almost a million people was seven
Speaker 1: point eight million dollars. So there's really it's like, when
Speaker 1: I say that, it feels like a slap on the
Speaker 1: wrist or a drop in the bucket to them. That
Speaker 1: is what I mean. They could just pull their advertising
Speaker 1: from podcasts for a month and it would still be
Speaker 1: more than they paid out to these people whose data
Speaker 1: they misused. And despite the fact that we have made
Speaker 1: episodes talking about better Help and they're sometimes not so
Speaker 1: great policies, they have reached out to us to advertise
Speaker 1: on this podcast. And it kind of goes back to
Speaker 1: something that came up in our Andrew Huberman episodes that
Speaker 1: you know, podcasting is this weird space where it's a business,
Speaker 1: and that in a lot of cases you just have
Speaker 1: to take ads to make sure that the people who
Speaker 1: make the show can continue to be paid. But you
Speaker 1: walk this line of not wanting to take money from
Speaker 1: companies whose practices are not on the level with wanting
Speaker 1: to keep the lights on. And so I don't want
Speaker 1: to make it seem like I'm gloating that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: podcasters who made ads for better Help are bad and
Speaker 1: they should be doing XYZ, because I recognize, like, as
Speaker 1: a podcaster, I completely get that it is complicated, but
Speaker 1: because Better Help took up so much space in the
Speaker 1: podcasting landscape, I just think it's important to talk about
Speaker 1: this on a podcast that if you've heard better Help
Speaker 1: ads and you've thought about using better Help, this is
Speaker 1: just information and context that you should know about how
Speaker 1: a government says they have been exploiting people who pay
Speaker 1: for their services. Okay, so quick heads up that this
Speaker 1: story does involve sex crimes against children. A New York
Speaker 1: Times piece just added a lot more context to a
Speaker 1: story that we've been talking about a ton on the podcast,
Speaker 1: and that is the way that Instagram has been knowingly
Speaker 1: connecting children to adult men who are sexually interested in kids.
Speaker 1: So people who run brands related to children, for products
Speaker 1: like children's jewelry or children's clothing, will run paid ads
Speaker 1: on Instagram, and they'll tell Instagram like, I want to
Speaker 1: show these ads to people who are interested in things
Speaker 1: related to kids, like obviously trying to reach moms who
Speaker 1: might buy kids clothing or kids jewelry, which makes a
Speaker 1: ton of sense. But then they will look at their
Speaker 1: back end data, and that data will show them that
Speaker 1: Instagram is actually serving those ads, which are pictures of
Speaker 1: kids using these products to adult men. This whole thing
Speaker 1: started when a mom happened to reach out to the
Speaker 1: New York Times after seeing their previous reporting. It's The
Speaker 1: New York Times writes. When a children's jewelry maker began
Speaker 1: advertising on Instagram, she promoted photos of a five year
Speaker 1: old girl wearing a sparkly charm to users interested in
Speaker 1: parenting children, ballet, and other topics identified by Meta as
Speaker 1: appealing mostly to women. But when the merchant got the
Speaker 1: automated results of her ad campaign from Instagram, the opposite
Speaker 1: had happened. The ads had gone almost entirely to adult men.
Speaker 1: Perplexed and concerned, the merchant contact with The New York Times,
Speaker 1: which had recently published multiple articles about the abuse of
Speaker 1: children on social media platforms. In February, the Times investigated
Speaker 1: Instagram accounts run by parents for their young daughters and
Speaker 1: the dark underworld of men who have sexualized interactions with
Speaker 1: those accounts. With the photos from the jewelry ads in hand,
Speaker 1: the Time set out to understand why they attracted an
Speaker 1: unwonted audience. Test Ads run by The Times using the
Speaker 1: same photos with no text not only replicated the merchant's experience,
Speaker 1: they drew the attention of convicted sex offenders and other
Speaker 1: men whose accounts indicated a sexual interest in children or
Speaker 1: who wrote sexual messages. So The Times was like, we're
Speaker 1: going to get to the this. They did an investigation
Speaker 1: where their reporters opened two Instagram accounts and promoted posts
Speaker 1: showing a five year old girl her face turned away
Speaker 1: from the camera, wearing a tank top and a charm
Speaker 1: Then separate posts showed the clothing and jewelry without the
Speaker 1: child model or with a black box kind of covering
Speaker 1: her up. All of the paid ads were promoted to
Speaker 1: people interested in topics like childhood, dance and cheerleading, which
Speaker 1: metas audience tools estimated as predominantly women. What they found
Speaker 1: from this experiment is horrifying. Aside from reaching a surprisingly
Speaker 1: large proportion of men, the ads got direct responses from
Speaker 1: dozens of Instagram users, including phone calls from two accused
Speaker 1: sex offenders, offers to pay the child for sexual acts,
Speaker 1: and professions of love.
Speaker 3: H That is gross. That seems like the sort of
Speaker 3: thing that we should be involved in.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and I guess what makes it even more
Speaker 1: horrifying is that all of this really suggests that the
Speaker 1: platform's algorithm are playing a role in directing these men
Speaker 1: to photos of children to sexualize and DM and reach
Speaker 1: out to and so previously we had talked about this
Speaker 1: bombshell New York Times investigation about how Instagram was using
Speaker 1: a loophole to allow grown adult men to connect directly
Speaker 1: with children like as young as like five six seven
Speaker 1: on the platform by allowing men to subscribe to these
Speaker 1: like Mommy Run accounts that were set up on behalf
Speaker 1: of the children, because adults are not meant to be
Speaker 1: able to subscribe to the accounts of kids. But if
Speaker 1: the account is technically like a mom run account, that
Speaker 1: is a loophole where adults can subscribe to the content
Speaker 1: of kids. And like this New York Times investigation showed
Speaker 1: that people who worked at Facebook were like, oh, this
Speaker 1: seems to be a loophole that is allowing grown men
Speaker 1: to connect with children. So Facebook was certainly aware this
Speaker 1: was happening, like their own engineers were telling them this
Speaker 1: was happening. And so this new report says there is
Speaker 1: a lot of overlap between the men who are connecting
Speaker 1: to children via these mom run accounts and the men
Speaker 1: for whom the algorithm is surfacing this paid ad content
Speaker 1: involving kids. The New York Times rights an analysis of
Speaker 1: the users who interacted with these ads posted by the
Speaker 1: Times found an overlap between these two worlds. About three
Speaker 1: dozen of the men followed child influencer accounts that were
Speaker 1: run by parents and were previously studied by The Times.
Speaker 1: One followed one hundred and forty of them. In addition,
Speaker 1: nearly one hundred of the men followed accounts featured or
Speaker 1: advertising adult pornography, which is barred under Instagram's rules. So
Speaker 1: all of this is like, pretty horrifying, pretty terrible. Do
Speaker 1: you want to take a guest at Instagram's response to
Speaker 1: all of this was.
Speaker 4: It like a snappy sweater and a silver chain.
Speaker 1: It was Have you seen Mark Zuckerberg's new look? People
Speaker 1: are saying he has a hashtag glow up.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: Their response was it's really not that big of a deal.
Speaker 1: Danny Lever, a spokesperson for Meta, dismissed the Times ad
Speaker 1: tests as quote a manufactured experience that failed to account
Speaker 1: for the many factors that contribute to who ultimately sees
Speaker 1: an ad, and suggested that it was flawed and unsound
Speaker 1: to draw conclusions from limited data. This really reminds me
Speaker 1: of how Twitter responded when Media Matters and other watchdog
Speaker 1: organizations were pointing out these dart pockets where nefarious people
Speaker 1: were using the platform together, and they were like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you would only see that if you met xyz circumstances.
Speaker 1: That's manufactured data. But that is exactly the point, Like
Speaker 1: pedophiles are taking advantage of these unexamined corners of the
Speaker 1: platform to connect with kids. So even if they're saying, well,
Speaker 1: most people wouldn't get these results and most people wouldn't
Speaker 1: have this experience, that is exactly what these people are saying,
Speaker 1: is that pedophiles are taking advantage of the fact that
Speaker 1: this is a little bit under the radar to operate
Speaker 1: in plain sight. So the way that Facebook is responding
Speaker 1: it makes me feel that they don't really understand what's
Speaker 1: actually the threat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think I totally agree that they It
Speaker 3: sounds a lot like that way the way Twitter responded
Speaker 3: to that Media Matters investigation of like how easy it
Speaker 3: was to get to hateful comment through specific searches. But
Speaker 3: this actually feels substantially different from that. When you were
Speaker 3: describing what The Times did, it sounded like a quite
Speaker 3: good experiment that was set up using paid ads to
Speaker 3: see what the algorithm would do and to you know,
Speaker 3: who would surface this ad.
Speaker 4: To so you know, they can this spokesperson can say
Speaker 4: that the methodology was flawed and unsound, but when you
Speaker 4: described it to me, it sounded pretty sound.
Speaker 1: Well, what's interesting is that the New York Times talked
Speaker 1: to like former Facebook engineers, and then they talked to
Speaker 1: Peter Sapienski, a research scientist at Northeastern University who specializes
Speaker 1: testing online algorithms, and he basically said that it sounds
Speaker 1: like these algorithms are working as intended and as designed
Speaker 1: by Facebook. So what's really interesting to me is that
Speaker 1: the potential algorithmic reason that this is happening, which is
Speaker 1: that most ads on Instagram are designed to reach women
Speaker 1: because women are more likely to be buying stuff from
Speaker 1: Instagram as and so we're like a more competitive audience. However,
Speaker 1: reaching men is a lot easier. Peter Sapienski that research
Speaker 1: scientists at Northeastern put it this way. He said that
Speaker 1: advertisers compete with one another to reach women because they
Speaker 1: dominate US consumer spending. He said, as a result, the
Speaker 1: algorithm probably focused on highly interested easier to reach men
Speaker 1: who had interacted with similar content. The men do engage,
Speaker 1: he said, the machine is doing exactly what you want
Speaker 1: it to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, on one level, that is what the machine
Speaker 3: is supposed to do. On another level, it seems pretty
Speaker 3: bad that that is what the machine is supposed to do, Like,
Speaker 3: there should probably be something to prevent that from happening.
Speaker 1: So it's horrifying as all of this is. The Times
Speaker 1: also looked into the kind of men who were dming
Speaker 1: and engaging with these accounts, some of whom use their
Speaker 1: real names or link to their real identities from their
Speaker 1: Facebook pages, and some of them have convictions for sex
Speaker 1: crimes against children. Now, per Meta's rules, people who are
Speaker 1: sex offenders or have been convicted of sex crimes against
Speaker 1: kids are not allowed to have Instagram accounts. However, these
Speaker 1: people did have Instagram accounts, and it's not clear how
Speaker 1: they did have Instagram accounts that they're meant to be
Speaker 1: registering their email addresses, and Meta has a program that
Speaker 1: is meant to keep them from having these accounts. I
Speaker 1: don't know why or how, but that did not work.
Speaker 1: So when The New York Times used Meta's internal tool
Speaker 1: to flag these accounts and tell Facebook like, hey, these
Speaker 1: people have been convicted of sex crimes against kids, or hey,
Speaker 1: these people are on sex offender registries. Per your rule,
Speaker 1: they should not have Instagram accounts. They used Meta's own
Speaker 1: internal tools to flag these accounts, and Meta did not
Speaker 1: remove them. According to The New York Times, the accounts
Speaker 1: remained online for about a week until the Times flag
Speaker 1: them to accompany spokesperson. And so I guess this is
Speaker 1: my point. If you have these rules in place but
Speaker 1: then do nothing to make sure that they are followed,
Speaker 1: in what way is it a meaningful rule? The fact
Speaker 1: that your own tool that you internally used to flag
Speaker 1: accounts that should not be on your platform, that The
Speaker 1: New York Times could be flagging people who have been
Speaker 1: convicted of sex crimes against kids that you know are
Speaker 1: then using your platform to try to connect with children sexually,
Speaker 1: and you just leave them up until the New York
Speaker 1: Times has to directly reach out to a spokesperson. I
Speaker 1: would say that something is very broken, but per the
Speaker 1: algorithm expert at Northeastern, things are working as intended. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really hard to say that something is
Speaker 1: broken when it actually kind of seems like things are
Speaker 1: working on with what they were designed to work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Wilson.
Speaker 1: More, after a quick.
Speaker 2: Break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we have to talk about what is being
Speaker 1: called on the internet bumble fumble. So there's a ton
Speaker 1: going on in the dating app scene right now, namely
Speaker 1: that a lot of women are just fed up with
Speaker 1: dating apps. As y'all might recall bumble the dating app
Speaker 1: down than by Whitney wolf Heard used to have this
Speaker 1: thing where their whole sort of gimmick was that the
Speaker 1: women on the dating app would have to message first,
Speaker 1: and you couldn't talk to a woman without her being
Speaker 1: the first person to initiate conversation. But last week they
Speaker 1: announced they are not doing that anymore. According to women
Speaker 1: can now add prompts to their profiles for men to
Speaker 1: respond to. For same sex and non binariy users, either
Speaker 1: person can set and respond to these prompts called opening moves.
Speaker 1: This is all happening against a backdrop of I guess
Speaker 1: what you could call dating app fatigue. People are sort
Speaker 1: of sick of dating apps. I think that the idea
Speaker 1: that you would have to put so much work in
Speaker 1: to actually find a suitable mate. I also think there's
Speaker 1: some screen time fatigue happening, where the idea that you
Speaker 1: would be on your phone on your screen all the
Speaker 1: time and that that is the key to finding your mate.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are just fed up
Speaker 1: with that, So listen, I have to say, like, I
Speaker 1: am fascinated by the dating app Bumble as a company.
Speaker 1: When it first started, the creator, Whitney wolf Heard, was
Speaker 1: working at Tinder, and in twenty fourteen, she was part
Speaker 1: of a team that launched Bumble after this like pretty
Speaker 1: tumultuous departure from Tinder, which she also helped launch. According
Speaker 1: to NPR, she had this like string of bad relationships,
Speaker 1: one of which even involved a sexual harassment lawsuit against
Speaker 1: one of Tender's co founders, which was later settled. So
Speaker 1: she used all of this experience to build a platform
Speaker 1: that put more power in the hands of women. So
Speaker 1: all of that sounds great, right, Like more power and
Speaker 1: the women messaging first, like that gives women a lot
Speaker 1: more autonomy, right, sounds great. However, NPR spoke to Demona Hoffman,
Speaker 1: an online dating coach and the author of the book
Speaker 1: f the fairy Tale, who basically said this whole women
Speaker 1: message first thing just leads a lot of women feeling
Speaker 1: like they have to do the bulk of the work
Speaker 1: on dating sites, and like the bulk of the work
Speaker 1: to keep the conversation going, keep things moving, is on them,
Speaker 1: which if you are already working a full time job,
Speaker 1: who wants dating to feel like another job? Like dating
Speaker 1: is supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be enjoyable.
Speaker 1: Who wants something that's like, oh yeah, more work piled
Speaker 1: on it. And because it's dating apps and they're like
Speaker 1: algorithmically generated, at the end of the day, we're only
Speaker 1: surfacing you the duves.
Speaker 4: Not the duds. Oh man, it's a rough group to
Speaker 4: be in the dud group.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you're Miilache may vary for what a
Speaker 1: dud is to you, but you know a dud when
Speaker 1: you see one. And algorithms know who the duds are,
Speaker 1: and they those are the only profiles they surface to
Speaker 1: you unless you are willing to pay for premium. Then
Speaker 1: they might show you somebody that you might actually want
Speaker 1: to have sex with, But until you pay up, it's.
Speaker 4: Duds, poor broke duds.
Speaker 1: So I think all of this is kind of adding
Speaker 1: to this backdrop of dating app fatigue that people, particularly women,
Speaker 1: are feeling with these these apps. However, Whitney, we've heard,
Speaker 1: the co founder of Bumble actually has suggested an answer.
Speaker 1: Your AI could just go on a date for you.
Speaker 1: Here's what she said. If you want to get really
Speaker 1: out there, there's a world where your AI dating concierge
Speaker 1: to go on a date for you with other dating concierges, truly,
Speaker 1: and then you don't have to talk to six hundred people.
Speaker 1: It will scan all of San Francisco for you and
Speaker 1: say these are the three people you really ought to meet. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you could in the near future be talking
Speaker 1: to your AI dating concierge and share your insecurities. I've
Speaker 1: just come out of a breakup, I've got commitment issues,
Speaker 1: and it could help you train yourself into a better
Speaker 1: way of thinking about yourself.
Speaker 3: Sounds nice but also creepy and also like, come on,
Speaker 3: that's that's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: I would be remiss if I did not mention there
Speaker 1: was literally a Black Mirror episode about two people's ais
Speaker 1: dating each other within the framework of a dating app,
Speaker 1: and like that's how they find each other and know
Speaker 1: they're compatible. So, given the story that we talked about
Speaker 1: earlier about better help about how they just give the
Speaker 1: most intimate data and information about us to Facebook and
Speaker 1: Snapchat and whoever, else for money. I think we really
Speaker 1: should be wary of this kind of AI integration into
Speaker 1: our romantic and sexual lives. So I know that the
Speaker 1: idea of an AI dating concierge is very different from
Speaker 1: like an AI enabled chat bot or love bot or
Speaker 1: sex bot or romantic partner. But Mozilla Foundation looked into
Speaker 1: it and found in an analysis of eleven romantic chatbot
Speaker 1: apps released in February that nearly every app tested sells
Speaker 1: user data, shares it for advertising, or doesn't provide adequate
Speaker 1: information about any of these points and its privacy policies.
Speaker 1: So basically it's just the wild wild West already when
Speaker 1: it comes to AI and romance, and I think these
Speaker 1: kinds of things become even more concerning for like queer
Speaker 1: or gender expansive people, like are you someplace where it's
Speaker 1: safe to have AI offering up intimate information about who
Speaker 1: you are and your identity to a potential date that
Speaker 1: you yourself have not personally vetted, Like are you safe
Speaker 1: if that information has pretty much no policies around who
Speaker 1: that platform is going to share it with, how they
Speaker 1: will share it with them, what third parties will have
Speaker 1: access to it? You know, I have said this before that,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about connecting with people in ways that
Speaker 1: are intimate and happening. Irl, safety and privacy isn't just
Speaker 1: a nice to have, Like it genuinely does matter. And
Speaker 1: I'm just not sure that I would trust AI designed
Speaker 1: by like mostly white straight CIS men that we know
Speaker 1: is like buggy and full of problems to do that
Speaker 1: for me if the stakes really were high.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the stakes definitely do seem pretty high.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially if you're dating someplace where it's not safe
Speaker 1: to be your identity, if you're a queer or trands
Speaker 1: are gay. Like, this is real. So we have to
Speaker 1: talk about those Bumble ads, which are sort of being
Speaker 1: referred to as the bumble Fumble. When I first saw
Speaker 1: this reported, I was like, well, they're really seeing an
Speaker 1: opportunity to like make bumble fumble a thing. But we
Speaker 1: got there eventually, So bumble Fumble basically Bumble released these
Speaker 1: billboards saying things like you know full well a valve
Speaker 1: celibacy is not the answer, and thou shalt not give
Speaker 1: up on dating and become a nun. The ads were
Speaker 1: criticized and Bumble apologized, saying we made a mistake. Our
Speaker 1: ads referencing celibacy were an attempt to lean into a
Speaker 1: community frustrated by modern dating, and instead of bringing joy
Speaker 1: and humor, we unintentionally did the opposite. So I actually
Speaker 1: saw a lot of the criticism of these billboards and
Speaker 1: people were saying like, oh, they're knocking celibacy as a
Speaker 1: lifestyle all of that. Totally get that, but I actually
Speaker 1: have a different take. So I think that if anything,
Speaker 1: the problem that Bumble was actually like making light of
Speaker 1: in a way that was in poor taste is that
Speaker 1: Bumble is just no longer serving women, who they say
Speaker 1: is their life like main intended user base. So more
Speaker 1: and more women are just getting off of these platforms,
Speaker 1: and on top of that, more and more bots are
Speaker 1: on these platforms too. Like I recently watched the Ashley
Speaker 1: Madison documentary on Netflix, and it is so wild how
Speaker 1: they're basically like, oh yeah, on top of the like
Speaker 1: cheating most of the time, we were just like charging
Speaker 1: stupid men twenty dollars a month to chat with bots
Speaker 1: and other men and themselves. Right, So, like, dating apps
Speaker 1: are kind of a like house of cards where women
Speaker 1: have been like this sucks, We're leaving, and these platforms
Speaker 1: are like, oh god, we have to charge men who
Speaker 1: want to be in conversation with women for something, and
Speaker 1: a lot of that is bots. And so I actually
Speaker 1: see these ads as almost this like weird tone death
Speaker 1: plea to women to come back to these platforms, even
Speaker 1: though these platforms are kind of acknowledging that they failed
Speaker 1: them because the platforms need women on them to make money.
Speaker 1: And so I totally see what people who are saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: this was a dig on celibacy are saying, but I
Speaker 1: think it's actually more insulting than that. I think what
Speaker 1: these platforms are saying is like, listen, women, we need
Speaker 1: you on this platform to make money. So like, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? Be celibate? No way, come back
Speaker 1: to our platform.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does feel a little like desperate and like
Speaker 3: trying to be edgy, but just coming off as desperate,
Speaker 3: which is definitely not a good look if you've ever
Speaker 3: been on a dating.
Speaker 1: Platform, especially if you are the dating platform. And I
Speaker 1: think desperate is the right word for it. And I
Speaker 1: just feel like I wish we lived in a world
Speaker 1: where what these platforms were offering was functionally and meaningfully
Speaker 1: just something better, something that feels like respect and fun
Speaker 1: and exploration and excitement, not just fatigue, Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I get mirrors a lot of the different ways that
Speaker 1: people are feeling about digital experience these days, that it's
Speaker 1: just fatigue. So Bumble really fumbled on this one. I'm
Speaker 1: glad they apologized, But I think the problem is deeper
Speaker 1: than just these billboards. I think that they are not
Speaker 1: serving women. Women are smart enough to not stick around
Speaker 1: where they are not having good experiences and where it's
Speaker 1: clear that they, you know, aren't wanted or aren't value
Speaker 1: And I think that's a real it's a it's a
Speaker 1: real problem, not just for the women that they're failing
Speaker 1: to serve, but also for their business model, Like you
Speaker 1: can't just have a dynamic that women feel like they're
Speaker 1: being mistreated and not served and expect them to continue
Speaker 1: showing up for more of the same.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And maybe the problem is even broader and deeper
Speaker 3: that you know. The problem they're trying to solve is
Speaker 3: people lacking human connection in their life. And and there's
Speaker 3: just the fundamental tension of offering people a digital tool
Speaker 3: to solve that problem, where the financial success of that
Speaker 3: digital tool depends on people continuing to use that tool
Speaker 3: and continuing to engage with it and pay subscription fees
Speaker 3: month after month.
Speaker 4: Yes, you know you can. You can have one, but
Speaker 4: you can't have them both.
Speaker 1: And I fundamentally believe you know. In later on, in
Speaker 1: this conversation with Bloomberg that that Wendy wolf Heard had
Speaker 1: about the future of online dating, she was talking about
Speaker 1: this loneliness epidemic that we're all in, and that's very real.
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure that the people who have given
Speaker 1: us our current tech and digital landscape are the same
Speaker 1: ones that I would trust or want to be using
Speaker 1: technology to solve our current loneliness crisis. Like the people
Speaker 1: that got us into our current situation are not the
Speaker 1: people that I would trust to get us out of it.
Speaker 1: Like if you drove my car into a ditch, I
Speaker 1: don't think I would trust you to drive it out
Speaker 1: of the ditch. I might say it's time for you
Speaker 1: to sit in the back seat let somebody else take
Speaker 1: a turn at the wheel. Yeah, well, Mike, thanks for
Speaker 1: being in the passenger seat on this journey through this
Speaker 1: week's tech stories.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it, Bridgid. It's always a pleasant ride, and
Speaker 3: let's do it again sometime soon.
Speaker 1: And thanks to all of you for listening. I will
Speaker 1: see you on the Internet. If you're looking for ways
Speaker 1: to support the show, check out our merch store at
Speaker 1: tegodi dot com slash store. Got a story about an
Speaker 1: interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi,
Speaker 1: You can reach us at Hello at tegodi dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengody
Speaker 1: dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was
Speaker 1: created by me Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Unboss Creative edited by Joey Patt. Jonathan Strickland is
Speaker 1: our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.
Speaker 1: Michael Amado is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1: If you want to help us grow, rate and review.
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