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