00:01:48.860Guests of the wedding were not allowed to film or photograph anything,
00:01:54.160And this anti-surveillance was itself enforced by Madison Square Garden's surveillance system, ironically, which, according to TMZ, scanned guests not just for the phones in their hands, but also for if they were wearing metaglasses.
00:02:12.420The new AI glasses that photograph and record people without their knowledge.
00:02:19.300Anyone caught wearing metaglasses at the wedding was promptly escorted out the back and shot by James Dolan himself.
00:02:29.840Thank you. There's the studio audience I was looking for.
00:02:33.260metaglasses we're told are the next frontier of consumer technology in their newest release
00:02:44.660kylie jenner is their celebrity face a pair of the kylie starfire metaglasses will run you 400
00:02:52.980and the built-in ai assistant talks to you in kylie jenner's voice fun i'm happy i really am
00:03:01.440that Taylor Swift had a state-of-the-art security system to ensure people around her could not film
00:03:08.120her with their glasses without her consent. But for the rest of us who don't have James Dolan on
00:03:15.480speed dial, what's our recourse? Today, we are going to explore all of this. And I'm so excited
00:03:24.340to be doing that alongside two friends of the show cat tenbarge writer of spitfire news and
00:03:31.860ed on guesso jr of the this machine kills podcast and writer of the tech bubble newsletter welcome
00:03:40.080back to the show you guys ed it's been a while yeah it's great to uh be here thanks for having
00:03:45.260me back always glad to be here should i tell my story yeah because i just learned that you two
00:03:50.660know each other ed and i have known each other for years because we're both like tech journalists in
00:03:55.720the new york city media scene last year we were at the same party and i saw that ed had this amazing
00:04:02.100hat and it's a hat that says if you talk to me about ai i will kill myself i went home and like
00:04:09.420in the following days weeks i got a shirt on etsy that said this and i wore that shirt on the 4th of
00:04:16.100July this year. I was like, this is my most patriotic shirt. And I took a picture wearing
00:04:20.520it and posted it on Instagram. And then the next day I woke up and they were like, we flagged your
00:04:25.360account because you're promoting self-harm and suicide. And I was like, well, I don't think
00:04:31.040that's, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that. Right. Some world we live in
00:04:36.320can't even joke about AI making me want to kill myself anymore. You know, anytime I feel like I
00:04:42.220got a similar flag whenever i post a picture of myself with the hat i have them going you know
00:04:48.620someone who follows you is concerned and wanted to check in totally totally not our large language
00:04:56.220model behind the scenes it's a real person soon you won't be allowed to make jokes uh
00:05:01.360about the pervert glasses you know yeah i was gonna say i was gonna say now that i'm doing
00:05:06.620props and costuming on this podcast i'm gonna show up to the next episode with a hat that says
00:05:10.680don't talk to me about metaglasses. I'll kill myself. But actually do talk to me about these0.94
00:05:16.040things because I can never shut up about them. So we're going to be talking a lot about metaglasses,
00:05:21.420about the future of AI surveillance and all of this really fun stuff, as well as
00:05:26.900Kylie Jenner and her transgressions today. But, you know, I thought that it would be
00:05:33.660anti-feminist, dare I say, of myself to talk so much about Kylie Jenner's sort of lending her
00:05:41.080face to the rise of a techno feudalist society if I did not also talk about what her boy
00:05:48.600Timothee Chalamet is doing, which is in many ways the same thing. So our opener, our icebreaker
00:06:40.400And that is the point at which I have to cut it for copyright purposes.
00:06:45.160but the bottom line is it is timothy chalamet reclining in his uh you know dental chair with0.99
00:06:53.820the dentist putting all sorts of shit in his mouth and him just repeating the word0.97
00:06:57.780calci i was just like this ad isn't even funny or smart like there's not even any like redeeming0.99
00:07:03.880factor or quality to this it just was like humiliating and you sold your soul yeah i think
00:07:09.240that's also the thing that a lot of these ads i feel like as they try to get more creative as they
00:07:16.540try to be like what's a fun way we can get someone to feel like they're promoting us without feeling
00:07:22.520like they're selling out to us they just get dumber and dumber and reveal the thing for what0.87
00:07:27.920it is right which is like very brazen cal she's spent a lot of time just doing very brazen how0.95
00:07:33.540can we do publicity stunts how can we get really popular public figures or really popular trends
00:07:39.860you know how can we ride the next wave how can we get timothy in the midst of this movie star run
00:07:46.140for people who don't know what calci is at all which can you broadly just explain what it is
00:07:51.180ninth circle of hell so just imagine that's right you know a place you can you can bet on anything
00:07:57.900it's ostensibly it's a prediction market which is you know a buzzword that these people use where
00:08:02.980They like to be like, you know, imagine a world where instead of getting facts and news and, you know, finding out what's what, you would trust a bunch of degenerate crypto bros and people, you know, gamblers and others who are getting taken for a line, you know, to dictate the odds of something happening and that this will somehow give us more insight because we're democratizing.
00:08:31.560You know, that's the buzzword. We're democratizing finance and information gathering and news generation through a prediction market.
00:08:39.020Yeah. And the CEO of Kalshi famously said they want to financialize everything, meaning any difference of opinion. What's the weather going to be tomorrow? Will Taylor Swift get pregnant in 2026? What will, you know, the color of the dildo thrown at the WNBA game?
00:09:02.120Like these are all, by the way, real bets that people are placing on anything where there is a yes, no difference in opinion split.
00:09:10.820They want to say you can bet on the future of that.
00:09:14.560One of the first times that they really came onto my radar was the day of the New York mayoral primary, because before the polls even closed, they tweet from their like their official X account as if they are the news.
00:09:30.620I've seen tons of people, including like journalists, kind of get like fooled or tricked by this because it reads like a headline.
00:09:38.020And even before the polls were closing, they were posting like fake election results and claiming like, oh, so-and-so is in the lead, like so-and-so is really behind.
00:09:46.960And it was just completely made up, but they faced zero consequences for it.
00:09:51.860Like what they were doing was dramatically flouting like advertising guidelines.
00:09:55.980There was just nobody at the wheel to stop them. And they've only gotten worse since then.
00:10:01.460Yeah, they've benefited from Trump administration corruption extensively, right? They've hired people that previously worked in the CFTC or the SEC. They have pretty close ties to the Trump administration. They are a firm, you know, them in poly market technically are illegal in the United States, but are allowed to operate through ridiculous sort of loopholes.
00:10:25.720I mean, Polymarket, which is a similar venture to them, operated for a while the same kind of loophole that these crypto casinos overseas would operate by, where you'd have like these big firms that would do partnerships with streamers and essentially target children trying to be like, you guys should gamble on stream, we'll give you money for it so you're not really losing anything and we'll give you a big payout on top.
00:10:50.160And you're not allowed to do that in the United States. And similarly, some of these, you know, for a while, if you weren't allowed to do it in the United States, whether it's digital gambling or gambling, you know, on these markets this way, but now it's coming home.
00:11:02.580Now we're freeing the market to do God's work, which is to let people gamble on whether a town is going to get annexed by an occupying army or whether someone in your neighborhood is going to use a hairdryer to increase the temperature on a radar or on a sensor by two degrees so that they can get like a $30,000 payout.
00:11:20.720And it's been so demoralizing to see, like, the Oscars bring this right in, like, no questions asked, like, we're going to put tickers on all of these major channels, like, the Super Bowl, the Oscars, like, all of these.
00:11:34.220Yeah, CNN did the Calci deal too, right?
00:11:36.120News and cultural institutions bending over backwards to facilitate the slightest profit from this, like, blatantly not only illegal, also morally corrupt thing.
00:11:47.460and all these decision makers are just like whatever like it's trump's america we're gonna
00:11:51.960do whatever we want yeah and you know i've teased this topic many times on this podcast because it
00:11:57.980makes me so so angry and like emotional um because it's gambling it's gambling and you know they'll
00:12:06.660say oh well there's a difference between prediction markets and and gambling casinos and you know i
00:12:12.200would argue that that's like spiritually uh the same argument that people in multi-level marketing
00:12:17.500schemes make when they say we're not a pyramid scheme technically distinctions without differences
00:12:23.020and and most importantly people using these prediction market websites if the websites
00:12:29.700themselves want to say that it's not gambling uh well the bottom line is the psychological impulse
00:12:35.200and the dopamine hits that you get from participating in it is the exact same as gambling at a casino
00:12:40.860And the thing about casinos is if you go to Las Vegas and you walk into a physical casino or Atlantic City from my lovely home state of New Jersey, you see what gambling does to people.
00:12:58.280You see how it destroys people's lives.
00:13:01.240The thing with Polymarket and Kalshi is it allows people to destroy their lives in the exact same way, to go into financial ruin, to develop these gambling addictions from the comfort of their own home.
00:13:18.380And in middle school, in many of these ad campaigns, look at what they're doing with Timothee Chalamet, target young men and boys.
00:13:28.280gambling addiction has the highest suicide rate of any addiction and and and so you know for
00:13:35.480timothy chalamet to be doing this to me it just for the sake of this podcast it opens up a
00:13:40.700conversation that i am always wanting to have that i don't know if it's that interesting to people
00:13:45.320who aren't like content creators and or make money this way but about saying no to brand
00:13:52.080partnerships something that i think we the three of us right as creatives as creators
00:13:59.600that we are all tasked with now to give you a sense of how rich timothy chalamet is before his0.80
00:14:08.100fucking calci ad and the rates that he commands timothy chalamet was the face of a chanel
00:14:13.740blue de chanel fragrance campaign in 2023 for which he was paid a reported 35 million dollars0.97
00:14:20.880and you know that's one brand deal that is not to account for any of his movies any of his anything
00:14:29.980he's so rich it's like we all have the capacity to draw lines for ourselves around what we will
00:14:37.420and won't do I do a podcast the podcast has sponsors I have the task of deciding which
00:14:42.840sponsors I will and won't accept for this podcast and I just think like you know for example I said
00:14:48.980no to better help uh and i don't think i'm like a you know a model citizen for saying no to better
00:14:55.680help i'm just like you know when you get a certain amount of listens on your podcast you get the
00:15:00.120better help sponsorship offer and i looked up better help on reddit because i don't know that
00:15:04.760much about the company but i was curious about what other people said and i saw enough bad or
00:15:08.380dubious stuff to be like i'm gonna say no to better help i'm just like look if we can say no0.68
00:15:13.960to better help on the fucking leftist podcast circuit like come on timothy you can say no to0.83
00:15:19.820kalshi i know you can i know you can does that make sense i mean i think it does especially i0.88
00:15:26.220think about it a lot with these gambling because like you said gambling's a particularly pernicious
00:15:30.560one right but i also think it's a perfect example of sort of traps people fall for primarily thinking
00:15:36.740because something is digital that it's a little bit different right you know what is the reason
00:15:41.940we have these online gambling markets is because we have physical gambling markets and why are
00:15:48.220they interested in physical and gambling markets because they're incredibly lucrative why are they
00:15:51.280lucrative because they're so intentionally designed to drain as much money out of you as
00:15:55.280possible to get you in a flow state there to get you to lose sense of time and reality to get you
00:16:01.600as comfortable and accommodated to spending as much money as possible which is you know the design
00:16:06.380that we have incorporated into most of our digital interfaces and products.
00:16:11.280But it's just so silly that given the general antipathy I think the public has for digital goods
00:16:17.780and understanding that these firms don't have any of our interests in mind
00:16:22.020and that they rarely, if ever, offer something that's pro-social,
00:16:26.660it is silly to say yes to something that combines the worst of all these worlds, right?
00:16:31.700which is gambling, addiction, insider trading, corruption, political connections to the
00:16:37.920administration. But, you know, I guess you need like a second, third house or something. I don't
00:16:42.900really know. It feels like to me the physical infrastructure of the casino is important
00:16:48.100because if we're going to have like a market that we've created for this like social ill,
00:16:53.560which like people can participate in gambling and not have it be a morally negative act.
00:16:58.020but when you're in the casino you can very obviously see what's happening the downsides
00:17:04.360of it if you go to like i remember i stayed at the rio in las vegas because they were doing hotel1.00
00:17:08.580rooms for like 14 a night and it's really depressing walking past like all of the elderly
00:17:14.600folks who are sitting there at the slot machines and like you pass them at 9 a.m and then you pass
00:17:19.440them again at 9 p.m and you know they've been there for 12 hours like that is an important
00:17:24.160visual reminder of what gambling is with the prediction markets and specifically the celebrity
00:17:30.600endorsements, it's now being morphed into just like a cool thing. And I also think that with
00:17:36.620Timothee Chalamet choosing to do this, he's also doing this very cynical calculus because he's not0.84
00:17:42.580dumb. He knows this is going to be unpopular. He knows this is going to be controversial.0.71
00:17:47.900I think a lot of these celebrities have wised up to the knowledge that like they're going to do
00:17:52.000these controversial ads and endorsements and people are going to get mad at them they just
00:17:55.660know fundamentally it's not going to matter because they can afford they can afford to lose
00:18:00.640even thousands of fans they know that the majority of people will not notice and or will forget and
00:18:06.860or will not care so they're doing it purposefully and i also thought it was very funny like after
00:18:12.580the timothy ad came out my little brother who is a college student who like is not like that tuned
00:18:18.480into any of this stuff texted me and was like timothy's not cool anymore like he's like like
00:18:24.880can't believe he did this call she had like i don't i don't ride for timothy anymore and i was
00:18:29.500like whoa so it's like i do think that there is there's blowback to this and that is real
00:18:35.340i think timothy is like by the time dune 3 comes out like no one's gonna care anymore
00:18:39.940and he's probably right and like what of you to have of your own fans what have you what have you
00:18:47.680to have of the people who support you that they're just like these lifeless sheep who will get over
00:18:55.260it you know I know a lot of people love to make fun of like the people who would like engage with
00:18:59.700something like Kalshi but I don't I think that they're all victims of you know an extremely0.58
00:19:06.780predatory business model that Timothee Chalamet has handsomely profited off of and you know like
00:19:13.920ed said for what that money could hit or not hit his bank account and it would not change a single
00:19:19.120thing about his life that's what drives me crazy we've been experiencing a wave of horrible celebrity
00:19:24.520brand partnerships from this to what we're about to talk about to gwyneth paltrow doing luxury
00:19:31.300apartments in herzalia israel and i'm like for what yeah that are filmed in new york filmed in
00:19:37.180new york for what you guys all have so much money i also find like gambling addiction and gambling
00:19:44.740marketing really interesting because it is so young male dominated and focused there was an
00:19:51.200atlantic cover story that got a lot of attention a few months ago about gambling which was kind of
00:19:56.620an insane concept because they gave a mormon reporter who had never gambled before because
00:20:02.240it's against their religion. They gave him like $10,000 to go gamble with. And the cover story0.80
00:20:07.980was basically just like outlining what happened. And what happened is he got really into it and
00:20:12.940ended up losing a ton of money. But along the way, like he was speaking to all of these like
00:20:18.840experts in gambling, like going through a lot of the science behind it. And I learned from that
00:20:23.020article that like 93% of people with gambling addiction are men and that many men start
00:20:31.620gambling for the first time when they're like 14 years old. Sometimes it's because they gamble
00:20:37.880with their dads as like a father-son bonding activity, which I find so sad and depressing.
00:20:43.300Other times though, increasingly it's because kids are able to access these markets like
00:20:48.980Polymarket and Kalshi and start gambling. And the fact that like that's part of the calculus of
00:20:55.360doing a Timothee Chalamet ad is they know that he is a popular figure for among these like young
00:21:01.140men and boys. And I'm like that in particular, I'm like, that's one of those, like, how do you
00:21:05.740sleep at night knowing you're probably you've been chosen because they think that 13 year old
00:21:10.500boys look up to you and are going to want to do what you did because it's cool. Like that is
00:21:15.680really, really selfish. Yeah. I mean, these industries, that's what they thrive off, right?
00:21:20.140To getting them while they're young. I mean, you know, Natasha Scholl in her book, Addiction by
00:21:24.280Design, she's an anthropologist that studies casinos and gambling and writes the book at a
00:21:29.300period where we're just about to be at the cusp of online gambling, but the industries are anxious
00:21:36.660because they're realizing that they've had lifetime customers who they've relied on using
00:21:45.860and engaging with casinos in a very specific way, and they're going to die. And it seems like
00:21:51.840they're not going to be able to properly capture, convince young people to move on to casinos or
00:21:59.280to, you know, to spend all their time in casinos. So what are they going to do? And, and online
00:22:03.560gambling, right, emerges as a sort of solve, but, but it's also, I think downstream of some of the
00:22:09.800same stuff that motivates the gambling and in of itself, right. You know, post 2008 kind of
00:22:16.140desperation to make money, the, this, this insistence on, you know, the way that we can,
00:22:22.000you know, make amends in one way or another, rectify what happened with the financial crisis
00:22:26.240This is, you know, don't trust the bankers, trust the platforms, you know, trust the tech
00:46:15.700It feels so out of the era that made Jeffree Star really famous.
00:46:22.200When Jeffree Star was famously like always in his like pink house surrounded by 16 dogs and like three pink Lamborghinis and a film crew and telling everyone where to go and what to do.
00:46:35.280And I'm so rich. I'm so rich. Look at all my beautiful things.
00:46:38.520And it's just like, you're right that I think that probably still works for some people.
00:46:42.740But as a culture, it so does not feel current.
00:46:46.000It also arguably has not always worked that well for Kylie.0.99
00:46:49.540like her her aesthetic and her public persona had changed a lot um after she got pregnant for the
00:46:57.680first time they launched a Kylie Jenner spinoff show called Life of Kylie back in the late 2010s
00:47:03.400that was canceled after just one season if I remember correctly because I don't think people
00:47:07.580have are really that into like Kylie's version of this and that is something that also came to
00:47:13.160mind for me when watching this ad was I was like I don't think she needs to be like like I don't
00:47:17.660believe in, oh, as a mother, you always need to be with your children. Absolutely not. But I did
00:47:23.280think it was striking that as a mother of young children, they're not present in this. You wouldn't
00:47:28.960even know that they existed in this. It's so clear that her experience of parenting is to not
00:47:36.960have to be hands-on because clearly there is a team of other people taking care of her kids for
00:47:41.880her no almost no other young mother on the planet has that experience so I think that a lot of
00:47:47.520people are sort of like not really like on board with with the Kylie of it all but it's more like
00:47:53.260there's a fascination with watching her because of her the fact that her life is so surreal and
00:47:58.620that she has grown up in this like bizarro world of wealth and privilege and what what a nice
00:48:05.220option for her to have to not include her child in the metaglasses commercial if only mothers
00:48:12.140everywhere could similarly have the option to not have their children filmed by these glasses
00:48:17.100right yep on like such a base level what would the general person really be using this for right
00:48:23.640just like filming the general day-to-day and constantly be what interfacing with checking
00:48:29.640in on the metaglasses capturing very specific moments or trying to set that up instead of just
00:48:34.820letting things happen. I think, you know, as is the case with a lot of Meta's products, the goal
00:48:40.460is to kind of terraform social life and convince you that, yeah, of course, of course, it's nice
00:48:47.500to hang out with your friends. Of course, it's nice to be offline. Of course, it's nice to go
00:48:50.860outside and to have things spontaneously happen. But wouldn't it be better if you did it on the
00:48:56.000platform? In fact, here's some reasons why it might be better if you did it. If you did dating,
00:49:00.380If you did, you know, meeting new friends, if you did events, if you did communication, you know, and phone calls.
00:49:07.820Here's why it would be better if you did an art ecosystem and trying to offload as much as that as possible.
00:49:12.560But, you know, you still by doing that, you have to convince people there's a reason why or you have to change the way that the experience happens.
00:49:20.940And I feel like the meta glasses, part of the move, part of the push is they're going to try to do is how do we convince people that it's normal, cool, and fun to not just film strangers in public, although that's already, you know, that we've kind of lost out war.
00:49:36.960But how do we convince people that they should also be filming their private moments completely and consistently all the time and always be online, right?
00:49:45.800There's no real reason to be doing this.
00:49:48.520Most people have more digital detritus than they can handle.
00:49:52.660You know how many people have thousands, tens of thousands of photos that they don't really need to sift through to the point where it's like you have to make a decision.
00:50:02.020I'm not going to use some of these services because they encourage the sort of like thoughtlessness of perpetual piling on instead of being a little bit more present with the moment and cherishing it.
00:50:11.760I think these are attitudes that the technology encourages, but also that the company encourages because that makes for a more amenable and reliable customer for this product and others, right?
00:50:25.640Yeah, I think along with that, the only people who I've really seen using these glasses so far and the only type of content that I've seen created with these glasses so far are influencers.
00:50:37.700influencers like when I'm watching like reels or something I will see because this being a meta
00:50:43.100product they're using it as a form of advertising within the content so like if someone films
00:50:48.060something with meta glasses and then uploads it to Instagram there's a little label that says like
00:50:52.500filmed with you know meta AI I can see why for some content creators the selling point is like
00:50:58.120you can go hands-free and you can just like literally just have this like instead of holding
00:51:02.820a camera and like setting it down setting it up it's like you're just filming everything around
00:51:06.620you there's one woman who her whole shtick is she eats like a stack of edibles have you guys seen1.00
00:51:12.800this woman she okay like edible like thc yes yes yes she's really really popular and i i don't have1.00
00:51:22.120anything against her as a person but i do have two problems with what she's doing so the whole
00:51:26.380gimmick of her video the whole gimmick of her video is she shows you this massive stack of like thc
00:51:32.860gummy edibles she puts them all into her mouth in one big bite and then she's like let's go eat
00:51:37.980lunch together and she films the content from what i can tell with the some form of the glasses
00:51:42.960she'll go into the restaurant and she'll be recording like her interactions with the people
00:51:48.540who work there and she'll ask them on camera are you okay with me filming this to which they'll say
00:51:55.340yes but my issues are twofold one i don't think you should be eating that many edibles and then
00:52:01.620driving. I'm like, you should not be driving like under the influence, which I do think that a lot
00:52:10.080of the people who are doing this are. Second of all, and this is the bigger issue with the glasses
00:52:14.880and with content creators using the glasses, you're acting like you're asking for people's
00:52:19.400permission to be filmed, but you're already filming them and they're in a social position
00:52:24.020where they can't easily say no. If you are the customer and you're already filming the person
00:52:29.800serving you and you're like can I film you it's almost a jerk knee-jerk reaction to be like oh
00:52:34.820yeah sure because it's already happening and it's like there's so much there's such a balance of
00:52:39.860power with like a paying customer and a low-wage employee where I think a lot of people in that
00:52:45.000position would just say yes so I'm like I don't like the like the the way that I'm seeing these
00:52:50.860glasses sort of be used in people's content already yeah working customer service or retail
00:52:55.680Half the time, most of the time, actually, it's just so much easier to say yes than to risk stepping on some random landmine that activates a fight where you get disciplined, chastised, or lose the job.
00:53:13.380I can't think of how many times I said no to a very innocent thing that I thought made sense, yelled at, and then get yelled at again by the boss like it's my fault.
00:53:22.920It is funny that it's like the one person who seems to be asking is doing it after, you know, taking a million edibles to the face.
00:53:34.440I never thought I would yearn for the GoPro.
00:53:51.760because even if they do consent they don't know you're not standing there and really like
00:53:56.100telling them like oh by the way i have a million followers so like hundreds of thousands of people
00:54:00.320could see you you just like it just it doesn't feel like these glasses and the function of
00:54:05.820filming with them in public or even in private it doesn't feel like informed consent is even on the1.00
00:54:11.180table and mind you these are all the problems we have with the edible lady who just by virtue of1.00
00:54:17.480asking for people's permission sounds like the most ethical wearer of these goggles like this1.00
00:54:24.680is the best case scenario kylie jenner had a launch party for her meta glasses which timothy
00:54:31.820chalamet attended ironically in a hoodie which he had pulled the string so you could basically not
00:54:38.960even tell that it was him because he didn't want anyone to see or film him presumably which i just
00:54:46.540thought was a beautifully ironic thing to do at the launch party for the surveillance goggles
00:54:53.200surveillance for thee not for me you know that's usually how it is what we don't know is that he
00:54:58.220was actually inside of that hoodie he was uh on his own meta goggles placing bets on calchi
00:55:04.920do you think he'll do a partnership with uh meta ray bands like a his and hers i mean they really
00:55:13.460You know, I have to say, I have to say, people, I remember when Timothy and Kylie started dating, and this is sort of heterosexual business that I try not to get too involved with on this podcast or elsewhere, but people were like, oh, my God, he, like, has these little chicken legs, and she's a voluptuous, beautiful woman.
01:00:23.260So on a few levels, I think that there is enough of what can go wrong and enough of a tech leap that there's an opportunity to get people to react as sharply as they did to the glass holes.
01:00:35.000But it is possible that they'll win the war and that the pervert glasses will spread everywhere because there's been erosion of people's outrage, right?
01:00:43.940As we've been talking about, we're just inundated with constant violations and revulsions.
01:00:51.300Facebook is constantly doing something that pushes a boundary and is constantly getting
01:01:42.240I mean, this is similar to what they've been doing with the slow integration of AI features into photo albums that you already have, right?
01:01:50.460Don't you just want like an automatic, you know, facetune or modification or adjustment of the photo?
01:01:56.820It's no different than what your phone already does, actually.
01:02:01.220When you take the photo, right, it already has to do some adjustments, algorithmically.
01:02:05.940So what's the difference if we have an actual artificial intelligence or if we have an LLM that's interested in doing that for you as a product, right?
01:02:14.000And so there's been a lot of slow encroachments over the years that I think have eroded people's defense mechanisms.
01:02:21.460And these companies are also more desperate.
01:02:23.680They need as many lines of revenue as they can, especially as they're burning all this money on AI infrastructure, right?
01:02:29.920You need, they don't have another growth thing, right?
01:07:08.540And the idea that these glasses are a tool for creeps isn't just speculative, it has materialized.
01:07:18.340I want to talk a little bit here about this idea that Kylie Jenner and, you know, frankly, the many other women who have been hired by Meta and paid handsomely to do their dirty work are attempting to girlboss this digital panopticon for pedophiles.
01:07:35.980that, I mean, sorry, I'm just going to come out and say it. Like, that's what it is that we're
01:07:40.240creating. And BBC has done some extensive reporting into stories about women who've been caught on
01:07:46.580camera, non-consensually by men wearing these glasses. And I'm going to read you some of their
01:07:52.320reporting. Joy Kolekye, a 19-year-old woman living in Nairobi, Kenya, was approached by a man on the
01:08:00.840street and did not know she was being filmed. She was one of many women filmed by this same guy
01:08:07.980who made content for the internet secretly hitting on women in public. Well, I guess hitting on them0.98
01:08:14.920openly but secretly filming himself doing so. And the video that she was in went viral. She's told
01:08:22.000the BBC, quote, it's like being a celebrity but not in such a good way. It led to men harassing
01:08:28.400her in person, slut shaming her outside of her home, cat calling and the like. And the same
01:08:34.760thing happened to a woman named Dilara, a 21 year old woman in London, who was shocked to see a
01:08:41.120first person POV video of her getting hit on by the male creator of this video with 1.3 million
01:08:49.300views on TikTok. In the video, the man asks for Dilara's phone number, which was then made public
01:08:56.220in the video and led to her getting spam called for weeks, including in the middle of the night.
01:09:03.800The article said, quote, on one occasion, she says she picked up the phone and a man said to her,1.00
01:09:09.540do you know how stupid you are? Do you regret it? Do you know how easy that made you look?1.00
01:09:14.500Men have also shown up to her workplace. And the same thing happened to a 56 year old woman named1.00
01:09:21.240Kim, who was filmed wearing a bikini in a video that got 6.9 million views on TikTok.
01:09:29.920Kim only learned of this when her son called her one morning at 5 a.m. to notify her that a video
01:09:36.720of her in a bikini had gone viral. She says she received thousands of messages from men,
01:09:42.500including, quote, name your price to see your naked body and, quote, do you have an OnlyFans?
01:09:49.000Six months later, the messages still have not stopped.
01:09:52.980She says she didn't even think there was any point in asking the man who uploaded the video to delete it
01:09:58.440because it had so many views that it didn't matter anymore and she had no recourse.
01:10:04.700I mean, I think that this is kind of like this is something that happens alongside a lot of technological advancements.
01:10:11.600And particularly I've seen this with AI.
01:10:13.420Like when deepfake technology was first being engineered and hitting the internet and hitting the public, one of the original biggest purposes of this technology was to sexually harass women and girls by like deepfaking women and girls' faces into pornographic videos.
01:10:31.260and today that's not the primary purpose of deep baking technology although it is still a major one
01:10:37.140but I think you see a lot of times with like these sorts of advancements that is oftentimes like one
01:10:43.740of the mainstreaming purposes and these companies aren't really doing anything about it because they
01:10:49.180know that it serves them in the end like that's part of the profit incentive here like you want
01:10:54.820someone anyone to be buying these glasses so if your main target audience is like creeps and
01:11:00.540purveyors of sexual harassment and abuse i they'll do like surface level like condemn that type of
01:11:05.560behavior or not but they're not going to stop it because i just think that like they see that
01:11:10.360there's a market for it yeah i mean you know this is the thing you know facebook runs into this time
01:11:14.780and time and time again right it's it's profitable to have fraud on the platform right it's profitable
01:11:20.220to have sexual harassment and abuse on the platform right it is profitable to have as many
01:11:29.400people as possible and eat a tiny fine because everyone more or less has either been made
01:11:37.120amenable to the regulatory frameworks that you've lobbied for or believes in you and your mission.
01:11:42.780With products like this, you know, we have seen increasingly, increasingly over time,
01:11:48.440what is some of the immediate use cases, right? It's, you know, how can I harass? How can I abuse?
01:11:57.260And these glasses in particular, when combined with biometric surveillance and combined, I'm sure, with deep fake tech, offer like a pretty frightening vector for people to be able to only expand this even further.
01:12:13.980And is there going to be any real effort to impose guardrails on this sort of thing?
01:12:18.580I mean, even recently, there was reporting from Wired, I believe, that was talking about biometric code that was already present in one of Facebook's products.0.62
01:12:31.400They rolled out one of their chief PR people to basically call the journalists liars and say that this was slander, this is bullshit, they don't know what they're talking about, and then eventually have to take all that back and apologize because it's true.
01:12:46.200Why? Because they don't care, right? They don't care that they're putting out antisocial products because in a way, it's actually good if it is antisocial. There's a market for antisocial behavior. And they've also monopolized so much or cannibalized so much of the social fabric that those who rely on it or those who integrate it as part of their lives when they're moving around, interacting with people, keeping in contact with family abroad through WhatsApp, keeping in contact with friends from earlier periods of their life.0.98
01:13:16.200through Facebook or through Instagram.
01:13:19.860I mean, they have been able to pull a large chunk
01:13:22.480of people's lives and communications onto the platform
01:13:24.760that even if it becomes a hostile place,
01:13:44.940So I think this is increasingly only going to get worse and worse, because Facebook has no real incentive to actually do anything about it. It would cost them more to do this than it would to just simply profit from it. And, you know, no government seems to take it seriously enough to actually bring down the hammer on something as simple as, hey, let's, you know, make sure that this technology isn't going to be used for surveillance, for stalking, for harassment.
01:14:08.760And they're not going to do it because there's so many other things that it could be done for.
01:14:12.280I mean, we have this with these sort of AI license plate readers.
01:14:15.600I mean, they are used regularly to stalk people.
01:18:13.540paparazzi or in LA it's just easier to be spotted I think so the thought of like trying to find an
01:18:23.660outfit and like getting ready and present and then I go back and forth because that's a silly way
01:18:29.140to think about it but it's honestly the truth but do they just wait by your house for your car to
01:18:35.600leave no because I don't really leave got it so they don't really wait for me anymore it used to
01:18:42.680be so insane i don't even know how i'm like a normal person right now like what would it what
01:18:48.640was it like things that they would say to me and how they would treat me as a child0.74
01:18:52.360is diabolical like inappropriate i would be coming out of a thing and they'd be like you1.00
01:19:00.520fucking slut what when i was 16 you're lying i'm not lying the things that they would say to me1.00
01:19:07.220i would never try to give them a photo so i would just jump in the car and then there would be like1.00
01:19:14.040six of them and they would stand in front of my car as i was like 16 like turning my car on
01:19:18.980whatever and they would all stand out because i would just be like you know hiding and they would
01:19:23.560just be like oh i'm pretend like you know mock me what they wanted to just make more money off
01:19:29.720a scandalous photo and i was an underage girl by herself i didn't have security i didn't have
01:19:34.660security till after I had my daughter. A lot of this comes down to like wealth and class because
01:19:40.200it's like people like Taylor Swift, people like the Jenner Kardashians, like they are able to pay
01:19:46.820for environments in which they are truly private and secure. Like they can create the conditions
01:19:53.320necessary to have a party where no one is allowed to talk about or take pictures of them or like
01:19:59.580what they wore, what they said and what they did, in a way by endorsing and sort of mainstreaming
01:20:05.680these projects, they're creating an even larger divide between what they are able to create for
01:20:11.380themselves with their money and the rest of us. They are actively participating in this project
01:20:16.380to create like new ways to define class and isolate themselves away from the rest of the
01:20:21.740masses. Being able to like prevent yourself from being recorded and surveilled in this way
01:20:26.420is part of that. And it is ultimately really selfish. I remember a long time ago, again,
01:20:32.660before she had her first child, Kylie Jenner did an interview where she literally said she would go0.84
01:20:38.080off the grid if given the opportunity because she had never been allowed to have that type of a1.00
01:20:43.780lifestyle, only then to turn around and expose herself to the world, create an economy around1.00
01:20:50.480her 10 times harder than before. And I don't think that that is because she's even necessarily0.99
01:20:56.960contradicting herself. I think it's because for her, she actually has freedom of choice
01:21:01.960that the rest of us don't have. We already have such a massive societal panopticon around just
01:21:09.000people in the background of TikToks. There have been so many controversies where so-and-so who
01:21:14.120doesn't even know they're being recorded becomes this viral overnight villain for not smiling or
01:21:20.040not dressing in a certain way or not looking a certain way. The potential with these glasses
01:21:24.580to make that even worse, I think is true. And also just the social trust element of this is
01:21:31.800a big thing too, because we've already seen this with the rise of generative AI. There's been this
01:21:36.520erosion of social trust. Teachers don't trust their students to be turning in original work.
01:21:42.580People don't trust that their friend or colleague is writing their own emails,
01:21:46.900writing their own text messages. The what if, the not knowing is a big part of what is so
01:21:52.660antisocial about all of this technology. And whether you are wearing recording glasses or not,
01:21:59.060that's a new area of social distrust. Because now if this starts to become a big viral thing where
01:22:05.180people are constantly being exposed, if you see someone wearing sunglasses or glasses,
01:22:09.820now that question is going to be in the back of your head like, I wonder if they're recording me.
01:22:14.260And I just think that is such like an enormous loss at a time when we really need to be building and reinvigorating social trust. These technologies and these companies and these celebrities are actively working against it.
01:22:27.400Yeah. I was at Penn Station, funny enough, the other night waiting for a train. That wasn't me trying to coyly be like, I was at Penn Station. But I was sitting there waiting for a train and I found myself and I started to do this more and more.
01:22:45.660anytime someone has like a black rimmed glasses of a certain shape i was like squinting trying to0.69
01:22:53.640see if there was that little camera on the side and i'm like what the fuck are we doing i don't
01:23:00.240have any faith that meta like cares about this at all if they actually did i'm like a little red0.63
01:23:06.260light is not enough the it should be like a blinking flashing red light and it should be a
01:23:12.080an audible sound yeah yeah literally you are being recorded yeah yeah yeah yeah yes i personally
01:23:19.200think if you start filming with them that they should just spontaneously combust but you know
01:23:24.420i'm asking a little too much if i had a wand okay you know i i'm hopeful and i want to be
01:23:31.140optimistic also about you know us blocking these glasses from proliferating because i think
01:23:36.520downstream of them are a lot of other developments that i hate and i don't want to see happen and
01:23:42.860that would follow pretty quickly uh if they were used you know wide widely and i'm hoping also i
01:23:51.980mean think that something that encourages me a little bit is the fact that people do smash them
01:23:55.960you know i have read many reports of people taking them off people's faces and smashing them
01:24:00.560you're doing lord's work right okay and that's what he wants you to talk about practical solutions
01:24:06.120It's what the Pope wants is what we want. I've seen more of that and heard of more of that than when I look back and see how people reacted to the Google glasses. That does give me hope, I think. But the solution is really only going to come from us, right? Because the company's not doing it and God knows the government's not doing anything except somehow figuring out a way to make it worse as long as Trump is in control here.
01:24:32.520Instead, they're going to pass a moratorium on legislating anything to do with AI surveillance glasses for the next five years.
01:24:42.400We have to let the tech develop and mature.
01:24:45.640But this is why it's like we need to look and imagine solutions bigger than the law because like these tech companies and products are moving faster than the law.
01:24:55.320The law is moving especially slow as long as people are in charge like the people we currently have.
01:29:25.520In 2023, when there was that story that reported about Kenyan workers being paid $1 to $2 an hour to label the data was this firm, Sama.
01:29:38.620These companies are used precisely because the understanding is, you know, we're going to offload everything onto you.0.66
01:29:45.640you know you're gonna have to deal with you're gonna get the psychic baggage and trauma and
01:29:50.200you're gonna also get the brunt of the blame and the liability if something goes wrong right we'll
01:29:55.060cut you off you'll find another firm you'll find another hyperscaler you'll find another
01:29:59.520sas company who cares right we'll be able to move on you without much reputational damage and it's
01:30:06.220a system that's like so cynically constructed they you know it's one of the things tech does
01:30:11.620best, right? They do this to distance themselves from unethical labor. They do this to distance
01:30:16.380themselves from slave labor. They do this to distance themselves from any sort of toxic
01:30:23.540sludge that's integral to their operation. It feels like deja vu from all of the amazing 2010s
01:30:32.240reporting on the content moderators and all of the horrific violence that these people had to see
01:30:37.640get uploaded to social media platforms 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
01:30:42.760But instead of addressing that, instead of doing anything at all to address that,
01:30:46.440we're going to make it worse. We're going to ensure that exponentially more of this horrific
01:30:51.600content exists. Because at the end of the day, they realized that to have all these problems
01:30:57.100in the world is the greatest boost to their net worth. And they just will steamroll over
01:31:04.060everything in their quest for more and more money. Yeah. And you don't want the threat of a good
01:31:08.080example either, because if you have some sort of precedent where it's like, OK, then we are
01:31:12.660providing for them. You know, maybe we create some workers fund. Maybe we hold ourselves
01:31:16.680accountable. Then that just gives a little bit of a legal scaffolding for more ambitious
01:31:21.240lawsuits to be brought up in places where we acted even more egregiously.
01:31:26.260I think so many people who are relatively low information when it comes to AI, which is most
01:31:33.820people, which is me most of the time, I mean, this isn't my area of expertise, but they think
01:31:38.480that if they were to buy, for example, the Kylie Jenner meta glasses that talks to them in Kylie
01:31:45.020Jenner's voice, that it's like some algorithms that really smart people at meta wrote. And now
01:31:51.040I can talk to a fake Kylie Jenner inside of my glasses. And it's like more or less technological
01:31:56.700magic but it's not the entire system that we're talking about here relies on a labor force and
01:32:05.980this is that labor force based in africa consuming the way that you're using these products and
01:32:12.400potentially consuming the first person videos of people who are having sex with these glasses on0.54
01:32:18.600yeah and telling the machine exactly what they're seeing to better train the next model of the
01:32:24.900machine. There's a lot of discussion about the way that AI and the way that it's changing the
01:32:31.480American workforce and going to create a permanent underclass in the American labor force and all of
01:32:37.880that stuff is awful. And it has already in many ways created an underbelly in other countries0.51
01:32:46.640where they can exploit workers for even less and do hideously traumatic things to them. I mean,
01:32:53.480not to be such like a downer, but it's like, again, it's just, it's all so unbelievable to me.
01:32:59.160I mean, this makes me think of the luxury surveillance idea from Chris Gillard, right,
01:33:04.520where that, you know, there are populations that have surveillance forced upon them or are forced
01:33:10.440to interface with technologies that either scan their faces or monitor where they're going,
01:33:16.260whether that's because they're on probation or coming out of the corrections industry or because
01:33:21.960they are in a heavily policed area, but then there are populations that willingly subject
01:33:26.620themselves to surveillance as a status symbol of some kind, right? And that's a lot of that
01:33:31.860is the wearables, you know, these sort of VR, AR devices where the idea is, you know,
01:33:39.140by turning the camera towards myself and offering these companies free training data, free insights,
01:33:47.420I will also get a little bit more data for myself and, you know, the company will presumably get something in aggregate.
01:33:53.640And this sort of is a dynamic, I think, also is overlooked.
01:33:58.100Like there was a little bit of an understanding that was being cultivated in the 2010s that none of this stuff is free.
01:34:05.020And in a very real way, you know, you are the product.
01:34:08.780And the question was, you know, product to what end?
01:34:12.080For example, with advertising, where it's like we're selling, you know, advertisers access to you.
01:34:17.080And our value as an advertiser revenue-based business, which Facebook is, is getting as many people as possible, getting as many groups as possible, getting as many insights in those groups as possible, which means moving almost all their lives onto this so that advertisers can pay us some obscene fee to get that privilege of your eyeballs.
01:34:37.860And I think similarly, it feels like so much of the push to put the surveillance inwards, right?
01:34:47.600And integrate these sort of wearables constantly on always recording, always learning devices.
01:34:54.620Some of it is, you know, how can we monetize this?
01:34:57.000How can we introduce advertiser revenue?
01:34:59.460Some of it is what other insights can we get to develop additional products and services that will get you to use?
01:35:06.120And if you spend all your time on it, then we'll get the answers we need to maybe tinker it and iterate it better, right?
01:35:12.480But I think to your point where when I think about are people low or high information, I think it's really like everyone is saturated in information, but it's propaganda.
01:35:23.180You know, we're just saturated in propaganda about how these things work.
01:35:25.900We're lied to constantly about how they work, what their capabilities are going to be, what they're going to do to our livelihoods, where you should use them, where you shouldn't use them.
01:35:38.140The only people who are really sending out messaging constantly is these companies who are screening about how they're going to destroy everything in our civilization, but they're also the greatest thing that we've ever made.
01:35:49.000You need to integrate them to get ahead of the workplace, but they're also going to take your job away in a few years.
01:35:54.400They're magical devices that are smooth and frictionless, but they also need a fleet of slaves to teleoperate or to, you know, label and to treat constantly.
01:36:04.680So I think that's the thing where it's like most of what people do know is just like, oh, usually a bold faced lie or misunderstanding that a company is selling.
01:36:15.280And through a very thin layer on the flip side is how it's actually working.
01:36:20.280But it is hard to break through that barrier when every day, all day, you go on the subway, you go on the highway, you go on your phone, you go on your TV, there is some message about why it's okay to have this pervasive surveillance, why it's okay to have AI, why it's okay to port your life over to this or that platform.
01:36:40.920Yeah. I also feel like the way that we're being introduced to this technology is through the lens of like Kylie Jenner's morning routine or the woman who eats a shit ton of edibles and then goes to lunch. But also like the police are going to be wearing these like police officers are going to have like these cameras all over their bodies.
01:37:02.640And 404 Media, just an amazing story this past weekend about a woman who was being stalked by a police officer.
01:37:09.960And they outlined how this police officer, he was working in private security at an event.
01:37:21.620This police officer, this who was working as a security guard, he then went to the station or wherever he had his technology.
01:37:26.740And he was able to use like Palantir-esque surveillance networks to track her license plate and then put out an active alert so that he was notified the next time she passed like a flop camera.
01:37:39.500And then he drove out and pulled her over to harass her more.
01:37:43.680So it's just like, yeah, it's just like when you outfit the police, when you outfit the military, when you outfit the private companies with this type of surveillance, like we're constantly bombarded with the message that it's done for our safety and for our benefit.
01:37:57.680But the reality is they're giving these abusive creeps and individuals the power to like torment
01:38:04.680us and make our lives hell. And at the end of the day, we do not have recourse. And I think the vast
01:38:09.920majority of people out there don't even know how interconnected these webs of surveillance are to
01:38:15.400the point where that creepy man who's harassing you at the event is going to be able to like
01:38:20.500track you down and flag you down like a few days later. Can I just put out a call before I conclude
01:38:26.540here like i i don't think you need a ring camera i don't think ring cameras do anything good for
01:38:34.080you my parents have a ring camera your parents probably also have a ring camera everyone's0.95
01:38:39.060fucking parents have a ring camera everyone loves ring cameras this is like kind of a random side0.99
01:38:43.280tangent but but but not really because ring cameras are tied in with all of this like police0.99
01:38:48.200force bullshit amidst the disappearance of nancy guthrie savannah guthrie's mother where nancy
01:38:56.180guthrie had a ring camera in the home that she was kidnapped from everyone was0.95
01:39:01.900sorry they're calling you matt yeah you've gone too far amazon's on the line
01:39:09.080stop would you like a brand partnership
01:39:11.980yeah exactly they're gonna they're gonna give me the timothy chalamet treatment
01:39:18.800everyone was like oh thank god she had a ring camera so we could have this footage of the
01:39:28.960men who kidnapped her and this is like this is like the most sympathetic this was like the most
01:39:34.300fleeting sympathy i ever had for the argument of like ring cameras are good and what did the ring
01:39:38.960camera footage do we never figured out the people who who kidnapped her because they were wearing
01:39:44.860masks we got no recourse for her death and even with my parents i had this conversation with my
01:39:51.900parents i was like why do you guys have a ring camera has anything good ever happened like have
01:39:55.700have you ever as the ring camera says you can help find your neighbor's dog that's how they
01:40:00.640that's how they spun it in the super bowl at and they said well no but it gives us peace of mind
01:40:05.200and i said but has it ever done anything for you i said no but it makes us feel safer they did a
01:40:11.080great job convincing people to be paranoid in their own homes i mean that's the whole thing right
01:40:15.000yeah and it's like i understand because this is the messaging that is like conditioned into us
01:40:20.360from birth but like people are under the impression that surveillance makes us safer
01:40:25.380when the reality is that surveillance puts people in danger like surveillance it does not equal
01:40:30.620safety in most cases i would argue surveillance equals like authoritarian danger and like the
01:40:36.360ability for people with power to track you and harm you in situations where you will not have
01:40:41.660recourse. I want to conclude by reflecting more broadly on my experience with technology. And
01:40:48.460I don't know if you guys can articulate yours or articulate this feeling better than I could,
01:40:52.840but in the realm of new tech launches, nothing feels exciting anymore. I almost exclusively
01:40:59.140feel dread and this is distinct because back in the day I remember watching iJustine the YouTube
01:41:08.160queen of tech iJustine I remember watching her unbox all the new tech products with wonder
01:41:14.360I remember when the iPod got color and then it came in colors and then it had a touch screen
01:41:22.260and when the iPhone got apps and when every iPhone it felt like the camera was actually
01:41:27.560improving a lot. And every new iteration of the thing felt genuinely exciting and innovative.
01:41:33.380And I can't pinpoint exactly when that feeling went away for me. But it doesn't exist at all
01:41:39.460anymore. Nothing feels innovative or exciting anymore. I just feel like I am constantly being
01:41:46.920taken for a ride by companies who hate me. There are no more value ads, just useless novelty.
01:41:54.120And I'm always nervous that this is just me becoming like a proverbial boomer and resisting
01:42:00.340change and being like, it was better when I was young.
01:42:19.440And that many young people seem to be more interested.
01:42:23.500And I see this like when I go out at night, it's like they're like buying like Canon PowerShot digital cameras instead of headwear that like records your trips to the bathroom.
01:42:34.900I think it's hard to be excited for tech when a lot of it is used for the things that we've been talking about, you know, surveillance, projecting power from afar, hurting people, stealing cultural commons and creative wealth, you know, putting people out of jobs.
01:42:49.440Jobs, creating working conditions and jobs that suck.
01:42:52.880I mean, it's hard to be excited for these things when, you know, you would have thought if you talked to me as a child and you said when you're 30, you'll be able to tell your computer, hey, draw me a map.
01:43:06.980It'll draw you a map and everyone will be obsessed with that.
01:43:09.900And the company that has that will be worth, you know, almost a trillion dollars.
01:43:14.360I feel like I might have had a little wonder, a little childlike wonder about it.
01:43:18.660Whereas now, I think, like you said, it's dread because it's not even now it's not just a technology.
01:43:23.080It's what impact is this going to have on the rest of our society?
01:43:26.380Because every single one of these tech firms, they've not just made products.
01:43:30.320They've also tried to terraform daily life around everyone using the product as much as possible in very specific ways so they can make more money.
01:43:39.100So it's hard to get excited for tech because it's not it's never just tech.
01:43:42.760It's, you know, packaged within it as an attempt to realize some sort of social reality as some sort of political project.
01:43:50.700And that does actually strip out a lot of the wonder for it, right?
01:43:55.320Well, I don't even – last piece of tech I feel like I probably got excited about was, you know, it's pretty lo-fi tech, which is what – my partner got like a new glucose monitor that was actually functional.
01:44:10.920you know because a lot of them suck a lot of them really fucking suck am i excited by anything in0.99
01:44:17.540ai no you know even if on a technical level this stuff is interesting the company's pushing it0.99
01:44:24.140i'd rather anyone i'd rather any other group of people on the planet have a say on this and i'd
01:44:31.340i'd actually want it to be us i'd want it to be democratized but it's not you know can i be
01:44:35.600excited about you know any sort of advances in robotics no because this year they're trying to
01:44:42.560roll out like 12 different lines of robot slaves that'll be tele-operated by people in the
01:44:47.700philippines i mean i'm not too keen on on that can i be excited about autonomous vehicles no
01:44:53.320because they're also tele-operated or they're the vanguard of some political project the musk
01:44:57.780specifically that i don't like or some scheme to make cities look and feel a different way0.54
01:45:02.420You know, things that you shouldn't, that might, that you can make the case for being excited, it's hard to, which, which does suck, right? Because there are a lot of technologies that have the potential to radically change the world that could be pursued or developed.
01:45:18.540And instead, a lot of the attention in capital is focused on fucking chatbots and surveillance, you know, and book theft and deep fakes and, you know, all sorts of horrors that I want nothing to do with.0.82
01:45:33.800Right. So I guess that's also part of why the youth are so against it.0.96
01:45:38.100I feel like you don't even get to have the period of being too excited about it.
01:45:41.960And you're just kind of confronted with the horror almost immediately.
01:45:44.060Growing up, it felt like there was a separation between the world of tech and the world of politics. And now we're at a point in time where it's very obvious that all of these tech companies are just completely intertwined with the authoritarian state.
01:46:00.740And like Elon Musk, I think is like, you know, the perfect example of this.
01:46:04.840But even more broadly, it's like these tech companies have amassed so much power, they've
01:46:09.620amassed so much wealth that they essentially operate as like systems of government that
01:46:15.180are completely devoid of accountability.
01:46:17.520And but even on like the cultural level, too, I think I've become more disillusioned with
01:46:21.280it because it's like when I see someone using their meta Ray-Ban glasses to make content,
01:46:26.780like maybe 10 years ago, I would have been like, oh, that's so cool.0.91
01:46:29.760But now I just think like, there's a growing expectation and need for all of us to be monetizing every aspect of our fucking lives. So when I see someone like monetizing, like going to a restaurant, I'm like, damn, I wonder if I'm gonna have to do that. Like, I wonder, like, it's like this slow creep of like, being a content creator, being a creator, period, at one point felt like a very liberating thing.0.97
01:46:55.620And now it feels more like a ball and chain where it's, like, you are slowly having to record yourself, perform, monetize, and disseminate every single thing you do just to, like, keep up and, like, have all these various income streams because that's the way that the creator economy, like, that's, like, what ultimately was the result of this versus, like, an actual, like, liberating force of, like, building people's platforms.
01:47:21.780it feels much so more that like our expectations and our potential is like limited through new
01:47:28.980technology versus like oh it's building new ways for us to like say and do things it's like no
01:47:34.120no you have to perform for meta and then they will censor you if you even like joke about it
01:47:39.380you're still pissed about that shirt i'm so mad so mad and you're right yeah with all that with
01:47:50.440all that being said though aren't you afraid as a woman of being left behind
01:47:53.680that is even more insidious and i i do think that you know you are seeing more and more people wake
01:48:02.520up to this which is that like that anecdote it's very haunting of like the man turns on his glasses
01:48:08.360and puts them on like the bedside table and begins recording like a woman undressing herself like
01:48:13.180it is so haunting and it is so disturbing and i also think that like more and more people
01:48:19.160not just women like this also affects men and boys and people of all genders and identities like
01:48:23.940it is not good to have the ability to be surveilled without your knowledge and i think
01:48:29.720that more people are actually like waking up to that and are becoming more and more viscerally
01:48:34.440aware of that meta reality labs which is the division of meta that's producing these glasses
01:48:40.220and creating all sorts of bullshit nobody really wants they brought in in the first quarter of
01:48:46.1602026 402 million dollars in sales of these glasses sounds like sounds like a good number0.94
01:48:54.740nope not really because in that same time meta reality labs lost four billion dollars and that's
01:49:03.420on top of the six billion dollars that they lost in the quarter before the final quarter of 2025
01:49:09.720and uh this is all part of a total loss of 80 billion dollars since meta reality labs opened
01:49:19.600in 2020 so in the tradition of ending these podcasts on a high note yay people don't really0.96
01:49:27.220want this shit no matter how much they pay kylie jenner to try to make it look sexy i have no faith0.97
01:49:34.680that laws will catch up. And even in, you know, look how the laws that do exist around things like1.00
01:49:41.160sexual violence, look how those protect women. Not very well. And so what I am, you know,
01:49:47.000advocating for officially on the A Bit Fruity podcast is, you know, as always, we need a
01:49:53.260cultural shift around this stuff. It is not cool to film people without their permission. It wasn't
01:49:58.800cool to do that with a phone and uh it's especially not cool to do that with fucking glasses that0.97
01:50:05.980nobody will know that you're filming on if you are in a reddit forum asking people how to cover0.97
01:50:12.560up the light on your glasses that signal that it's recording that the vast majority of people
01:50:18.060already won't even know what that means you have gone too far bro we all just need a you know if
01:50:23.940your friend if your family member gets these meta goggles like smash them throw them out0.97
01:50:30.100throw them on the ground and beat them with your foot or hammer0.99
01:50:34.260and hey if you need help finding a hammer a big hammer hit me up0.99