00:05:44.440and didn't even bother to say that he didn't do it.
00:05:47.480but it's uh it's it's a small comfort it's just really
00:05:52.560uh like people are still gonna vote for him people are talking about how he's still getting
00:05:58.320donations this is gonna like cause his donations to go up so it's mixed it's mixed i mean i guess
00:06:06.940this is better than the alternative of him getting off for clearly doing it we had such
00:06:12.180different takes on this because i was like scrolling blue sky and threads and being like
00:06:18.160memes memes memes like celebratory dances celebratory gifs i was like you know if anything
00:06:25.480i was like man i really miss the days of twitter when news like this would have really like hit
00:06:29.440different you were like at least the rule of law is still upheld in this country i'm like
00:06:35.220how many NeNe Leaks Jeefs could I use?0.75
00:06:40.200Well, I think you're having a healthier reaction. It sounds like you're at least0.67
00:06:43.280getting a little bit of joy out of it. You know, find joy where you can. I will say,
00:06:47.200so one of my favorite tweets was by Zach Silberberg, who tweeted,
00:06:51.360so is Trump cooked now? Or is it like Air Bud logic, where it's like,
00:06:54.960there ain't no rule that says a man with 34 criminal convictions can't be president.
00:06:58.860And not only do I like that, because famously, if you've seen Air Bud,
00:07:02.700There's no rule in the rule book that says a dog can't play basketball. But Zach is actually right here. I was like, well, certainly this means that he cannot be elected president. That is not correct. There is no rule, just like there is no rule that says a dog can't play basketball. There is no rule that somebody with this many felony convictions cannot be president.
00:07:22.480Yeah, he could run for president like a dog.0.55
00:07:24.940that's something else about trump is that like he always said things were like a dog and i always0.95
00:07:32.620wondered like what does he think about dogs it will be like oh he lost the election like a dog
00:07:37.120it's like is that what what dogs are known to do yeah in his vocabulary being a dog is one of the
00:07:44.040worst things like i don't know why he hates dogs so much one of the worst things someone can be
00:07:48.880is a dog yeah i guess because they're good and kind and loyal and some of them are smart
00:14:01.940In a press briefing from Rafa, Piepercorn said that this would be a, quote, unfathomable
00:14:06.700catastrophe, further expanding the humanitarian disaster beyond all imagination.
00:14:11.420All eyes are on Rafa, declared Piepercorn.
00:14:14.040We all watch the news and we all get the stories about this possible incursion and
00:14:18.620military activities are getting closer. This should not happen. There is no place for people
00:14:22.900to go. This is a desperate plea. Yes, contingency plans are being made, but they would be completely
00:14:27.380insufficient. According to 404 Media, the image originated with a photographer in Malaysia's
00:14:33.040Instagram account. The user's own Instagram links to charity fundraising pages for Palestinian aid
00:14:39.060and has a mix of real images and video and then highly shareable AI-generated images,
00:14:45.260kind of similar to that all eyes on Ratha image.
00:14:49.120Why do you suppose it took off on Instagram specifically?
00:14:52.620So there are a couple of reasons I think this happened on Instagram specifically.
00:14:56.720Instagram has really emerged as an important platform for amplifying information about
00:15:00.720Palestine, which is kind of fraught given the way that content about Palestine and
00:15:04.980news content in general is being moderated on the platform.
00:15:08.760For instance, earlier this month, Instagram's oversight board was debating whether or not
00:15:13.460the phrase from the river to the sea violates the platform's rules, including their ban on hate
00:15:18.360speech. And like just the other day, Adam Mosseri was trying to clarify new rules about how political
00:15:25.040content would be moderated in general on the platform, which I have to be honest, I don't
00:15:28.880fully understand what their plan is, what they're trying to say. I don't feel like I have a good
00:15:33.320read on what they consider political content. But Instagram has really played an important role in
00:15:38.020amplifying information about what's happening in Palestine right now.
00:15:40.940Just one more example of how bananas it is that we live in a world where Instagram and Meta get to make these enormous decisions about what kind of content we see related to extremely serious events happening around the world that like really do have an impact on all of us.
00:16:02.120Like, it feels far away, but there are a lot of ways that, you know, it really impacts us all.
00:16:10.060So this, you know, there's obviously been a lot of content online about what's happening in Palestine.
00:16:18.720Why do you suppose that this particular image went so viral?
00:16:22.180Well, probably one of the biggest reasons is just the ease of posting it.
00:16:25.340It was posted using Instagram's add yours feature, which like, was that just like one
00:16:30.680click or really I guess two clicks, you can quickly and easily add an image to your story
00:16:35.640without even really thinking about it.
00:16:37.460This is true for me, but like your mileage may vary.
00:16:40.920I also think there's something about the fact that people were sharing this mostly on their
00:16:44.200Instagram story as opposed to adding it to their Instagram grid.
00:16:48.120I think that things can really take off on stories because of the quickness that you
00:16:53.200can post them. And because they only last for however long, they don't last forever. And so
00:16:58.480I think that people are more prone to share things on the story because it's just so quick.
00:17:04.980Also, a lot of critics of the image have pointed out that journalists have died or been hurt
00:17:10.300to get images about what is actually happening in Gaza online and that it's disrespectful to
00:17:16.920share an AI-generated image when those real images exist? Or why not use art from an actual
00:17:23.440human Palestinian artist as opposed to AI-generated art? But I actually suspect that one of the0.73
00:17:30.060reasons why the image is AI-generated is specifically to be able to skirt Instagram's
00:17:35.280moderation policies. I think had they used a real image of what's happening in Rafa,
00:17:40.260there is no way that that image would be shared by millions of people because it would probably
00:17:43.720be moderated off of the platform. Wait, that's, did you just say that you think it's possible
00:17:49.360that had this been a real image, it would have been more heavily moderated, but specifically
00:17:54.740because it was AI generated, it was able to spread more widely? I think that's exactly right. So NBC
00:18:02.280reports that while the all eyes on Rafa image has spread quickly, video from Rafa posted by
00:18:07.900Palestinian journalists has been restricted and in some cases removed from social media for depicting
00:18:12.900the graphic aftermath of the Israeli strikes. Two of three Instagram posts showing burned and
00:18:17.880grievously injured and dead bodies after the recent strike were removed, and one had a sensitive
00:18:22.540content filter for, quote, graphic or violent content placed in front of it. An Instagram
00:18:27.180spokesperson said that the company removed that content due to its violent and graphic nature,
00:18:31.480which it said violated the platform's policies. So it does seem to be that these platforms are
00:18:36.260saying that in some cases, the reality, the actual images and video and content and footage
00:18:42.380coming from Palestine is deemed too graphic to be shown on these platforms. So I do think that
00:18:49.560had this been a real image from Rafa, I don't think that millions of people would be able to
00:18:54.260post it just by the nature of what we already know around the kinds of content coming out of
00:18:58.600Palestine that Instagram and Facebook and Meta are currently moderating off the platform.0.95
00:19:04.720Yeah, boy, that's a really interesting take because I think a more sanitized version is exactly
00:19:09.660what it is. You know, it looks cold and hopeless and desperate, but there's no people in the image.
00:19:19.860Like, there's no people in the image, which is just one of many cues that clearly it's AI.
00:19:26.340Yeah, I mean, it's certainly more sanitized, definitely a more sanitized vision of what's
00:19:31.780actually happening in Rafa. And I do think that's part of why it went viral. As friend of the show,
00:19:37.300Ryan Broderick over at the newsletter Garbage Day put it, if you're desperate for a super concise
00:19:41.920explanation as to how this random Malaysian user ended up creating the post of the moment,0.56
00:19:46.840it's because they basically managed to do the impossible. They generated a pro-Palestine0.92
00:19:51.360solidarity image, vague and abstract enough to bypass both sensors and filters on one of the
00:19:56.840biggest remaining social networks that real people still use. So there's been a ton of debate about
00:20:02.020this image, you know, after it went super viral, like whether or not people should be reposting it.
00:20:06.260Full disclosure, I reposted it. I remember when I reposted it, my finger hovered over the add
00:20:15.220yours button. And I thought, should I repost this? Ultimately, I did. I think judging from
00:20:22.460the photographer who first shared this image, I do think that image was initially shared with
00:20:27.760good intentions. The person who shared it, they share on their own Instagram, they share a lot
00:20:33.520of resources and information about Palestine. But as 404 Media points out, even assuming the
00:20:38.860best intentions for the original poster, the success of that image still led to the creation
00:20:44.420of hundreds of copycat AI-generated images made by other accounts, basically just trying to get
00:20:50.440to go viral to the point where when you search all eyes on Rafa on either Facebook or Instagram,
00:20:55.760the majority of what you get is like AI-generated copycat content. 404 Media,
00:21:01.780I will put the piece in the show notes. They found that already images sort of created in the style of that AI-generated one have really taken off. And I think it illustrates a truism about the way that AI-generated content strategies on social media move now, how that kind of content works and moves on social media now.
00:21:19.380A lot of the people posting it are just trying to see what sticks or what hits.
00:21:24.840They're not posting it because they care about whatever the image purports to show or be about.
00:21:29.920They're just like, oh, this image purporting to show Ratha hit it?
00:21:34.500Well, then I'm going to make a million different versions of that and see if any of those stick too.
00:21:38.500Yeah, it's such a different universe with these cheap, accessible AI tools now.
00:21:56.460It's one of the reasons why Shrimp Jesus AI-generated images have gone viral because one person made an AI image of half shrimp, half Jesus, and that went viral on Facebook.
00:22:08.860And now there's just like viral shrimp, Jesus, AI generated content all over social media by copycats who were like, oh, well, that one really hit it.
00:22:18.180Maybe half shrimp, half Jesus is the sweet spot.
00:22:22.980God, it's like every day gets a little bit more clear what it means to live in this new world where anything that anybody creates can immediately and almost for free be recreated like a million times.
00:22:38.020Yes. So I want to talk about sort of the debate and the ethics of this image. So a whole bunch of folks smarter than me have been weighing in on this image, with some of them criticizing it, basically saying that it's another version of that black square that people posted in 2020 that we actually did one of our first episodes of the podcast about, where people just post this thing on social media and then feel like they've done what they need to do.
00:23:04.660It's a kind of a self-serving thing where they post it, they feel good, and it's done.
00:26:51.120And I say all of that to say that if you do have extra money and you're thinking, like, what can I do, you could give money to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund.
00:26:58.880If you're in D.C., one of my favorite spots in the city, Sun Cinema, shout out to Suns, is donating all bar money to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund that they take in on Saturday, June 1st.
00:27:09.640So I certainly wouldn't act like I know the exact right thing to be doing here.
00:27:14.680But I can tell you, I can share what I am trying to do, which is listening to Palestinian voices, folks who are actually on the ground, amplifying what they put out, really trying to engage with primary sources as much as I can, donating money to organizations like the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund where I can, and doing my best to educate myself and others.
00:29:42.640And speaking of AI-generated content on social media, new research from Google researchers and several fact-checking organizations have found that the most image-based disinformation online right now is now AI-generated.
00:29:59.420However, the way that researchers are collecting data might actually be undercounting the problem.
00:30:05.440Basically, AI-generated image-based disinformation was not really a thing until late 2023, when AI image generators became widely available and popular.
00:30:15.440But now, they have basically replaced all other forms of image-based disinformation.
00:30:19.940So these AI generated pictures of Rafa, even while they might have been initially shared for good, it is important to know that that's not happening in a vacuum. And if images like that go mega viral and encourage other people to create copycat AI generated images, we will just be awash in images, most of which are not real, about a conflict that is pretty serious.
00:30:44.940Yeah, it gets harder and harder to know what really is like true. You know, you even mentioned that the account that shared that photo had a mix of real photos that were, you know, photos that were taken of the world and AI generated images.
00:31:02.640uh and the blurring of that line is uh scary right like maybe one of the other things that
00:31:10.420we can do is really try to put forth that effort that's needed to use primary sources like you say
00:31:17.540and make sure that we do everything we can to have a accurate sense of what is actually happening
00:31:24.400in the world and not just the narratives that are being promoted absolutely trying to engage as much
00:31:31.940as I can with primary sources has been really fruitful and you know you can read this you can
00:31:38.320read the summary I mean I guess you're listening to me summarize stuff for you right now keep doing
00:31:42.660that but as much as you can we we put the primary sources in the show notes so that you can engage
00:31:48.860with them you know you should do that yeah oh absolutely you know I'm yeah and I think listeners
00:31:54.960have a right to expect that and all those other shows that aren't doing it listeners should stop
00:31:59.600listening to them they should listen to our show are you starting like a podcast is there is there
00:32:04.000a show in particular that you're thinking of because i'm i'm down for a podcast beef i've
00:32:08.820been saying it has been too long since i had a good old-fashioned beef so if you are throwing
00:32:13.860down the gauntlet and we're gonna kick up a beef with another podcast i'm here for it i didn't have
00:32:18.720anybody in mind uh but you know yeah maybe they should be on notice put your sources in your show0.90
00:32:24.840notes we're coming for you pj we didn't forget about what happened at reply all oh shit yeah i0.61
00:32:31.640went there yes we've got all these ai generated images uh is that it is that the only dangerous0.67
00:32:40.820thing that ai has made cheaply and easily available that is poisoning the minds and
00:32:47.660lives of a generation is that it that is not the only harm out there on social media god i wish
00:32:53.360Because we have to talk about this really upsetting report from BBC that is upsetting, but maybe not totally surprising, that found that criminals are producing and selling guides to sextortion on social media.
00:33:06.540The guides show people how to pose as young women online and trick victims into sending sexually explicit material over, and then they can use that material to financially blackmail them.
00:33:18.180My God, this is one of the darkest things I think we've talked about on this show in a while.
00:33:23.360Yeah, and we've talked about how these kinds of sextortion schemes work and how they are mostly being used to target young men and boys, mostly being perpetrated by gangs based in West Africa.
00:33:35.280However, what is new here is that criminals have added this extra stream of income by creating and selling these guides to help other people do this as well.
00:33:44.820That it's becoming a marketplace where it's like, oh, you too can give me money and I can show you how to make money by preying on youth.
00:33:51.800So this is pretty serious. Kids are dying because of it. In the UK, two British teenagers are known to have died by suicide since October 2022 after becoming victims of sextortion schemes.
00:34:04.880Yeah, and even that underestimates the real scope of the problem because a lot of people who are targeted in these schemes don't die but are still severely harmed by it.
00:34:15.580Yeah. Paul Raffle, an intelligence professional and expert on sextortion, says that this whole
00:34:20.580thing is a massive threat to children. Paul says, internet scammers over these past two years have
00:34:26.040found out that they can get very rich very quickly by scamming an untapped market, and that's
00:34:30.940teenagers. He also says that big tech companies are not doing nearly enough to stop extortion,
00:34:36.340surprise, surprise, saying this crime has really exploded on Instagram and Snapchat over the past
00:34:41.060two years. These platforms need to aggressively go after these criminals. Now, Snapchat did tell
00:34:46.700BBC, we've been ramping up our efforts to combat it, including a reporting option specifically for
00:34:51.600threats to leak sexual content and in-app education for teens. In a statement, Meta, which owns
00:34:56.800Instagram, said it offered, quote, a dedicated reporting option so people can report anyone
00:35:01.680threatening to share private images. We default teens under 18 in the UK into private Instagram
00:35:07.200accounts at signup, which hides their follower and following list into stricter default messaging,
00:35:12.360Facebook said. And, you know, I guess I agree that they're just like not doing enough. We already
00:35:19.580know from like multiple episodes that Instagram really is aware of the way that their product is
00:35:25.340being used to harm and target youth in sexualized ways. And like, they really just like aren't doing
00:35:31.540enough. I will agree that like not enough is being done. And I think this is really heartbreaking
00:35:36.540because creeps are preying on the shame and silence and secrecy that a young person would
00:35:42.220feel getting mixed up in this. Like if you're a young person who has gotten caught up in a
00:35:45.600sextortion ring, it's got to be isolating and tough to talk about with the adults in your life.
00:35:51.340And I think that people who are doing this, they know this and they are using that dynamic to prey
00:35:56.240on kids. Meanwhile, platforms aren't doing enough to stop them. I do have another kind of dark
00:36:03.260internet thing to discuss, which is whether or not parents whose children die by suicide
00:36:09.400have a right to examine those kids' social media footprints. So over in the UK, Ellen Room,
00:36:16.400the mother of a child who died by suicide, has gathered more than 100,000 signatures on a
00:36:20.780petition calling for social media companies to be required to hand over data to parents
00:36:25.320after a child has died. Under the current law, parents have no legal right to see whether their
00:36:30.320child was being bullied or threatened, was looking at self-harm images or other harmful
00:36:34.720content, or expressed suicidal feelings online, or searched online to help with mental health
00:38:45.620where does the the light of privacy for for kids get drawn it's uh it's a tough one but
00:38:55.160yeah this is why i wanted to include it because i really cannot imagine the grief
00:39:02.520of losing a child in this way and i then can't imagine the added grief of not knowing
00:39:09.020like if something impacted them in their last moments and just not having insight into that
00:39:15.380But I also don't know enough about, yeah, the privacy ramifications of giving parents that kind of access. And so I think it's a conversation that really illustrates the complexity of where we're at when it comes to social media right now.
00:39:31.920And kind of like what you were saying with the Palestine story, how much platforms are holding, how much weight their decisions and their policies have, how they impact youth and the mental health of youth.
00:39:47.340Like, that is a lot of power that we're giving people like Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri and Elon Musk.
00:39:53.640Yeah, that's a great point, you know, and it's these are tough, complicated issues.
00:40:00.460and historically politicians have just not dealt with them at all and left it to the Zuckerbergs
00:40:09.260of the world to figure out how much they can get away with before it starts cutting into their
00:40:14.320bottom line. I guess it's good to see it being debated in you know in a regulatory context like
00:40:22.800this bridget we've got covid we're tired and it hurts we have covered some pretty difficult
00:40:32.440stories today like i don't know if this is just how you deal with being sick or maybe this is
00:40:38.160it's just been a rough week do we have anything lighter that we can end this episode on can i
00:40:45.040offer you some pizza made with glue michael yes please i love pizza so you and i i should people
00:40:54.160might hear some tension when we're discussing this because we feel differently about this next story
00:40:58.380right we do we talked about this ahead of time uh listeners might be interested to know that
00:41:03.980during the week we keep like a running list like a google doc where we're just adding uh ideas of
00:41:10.720stories that we might want to cover uh i try to add a bunch of stories and then before the we
00:41:17.520record the episode bridget goes through deletes all of my stories add some new ones that's not
00:41:23.480true i would say like i you i think you've got like a solid like 50 50 and also it's because
00:41:32.640if you were in charge it would be such specific stories about hard tech that everybody will be
00:41:39.080like what are they talking about but i'm still it's like 50 50 half stories that you pick half
00:41:44.780stories that i pick i don't i don't delete your stories not unless they're really bad and like0.82
00:41:50.320stupid and i don't want to talk about them so yeah you know what i do i do delete your stories0.87
00:41:54.260sometimes and that's good this is your show it's and thank goodness it is because you're so much0.99
00:42:00.360better at this than me i'm just i'm pleased some of them make it through the filter that's not the
00:42:03.980point here the point is i put this story on the list thinking that it was going to go one way and
00:42:08.780And then I looked through the notes that you wrote, and I was like, oh, Bridget, like, really likes this, which is surprising to me because I had a different reaction.
00:42:18.620Okay, why don't you tell people what we're talking about?
00:42:20.500Because they're like, I don't even know the story.
00:42:27.200So, you know, people probably or maybe know, I think it was last week Google rolled out their new AI summary feature at the top of search.
00:42:38.060So when you search, instead of, well, you still get your list of 10 links buried behind a bunch of sponsored nonsense, but at the very top of your results, you're going to get an AI summary generated by Google's AI bot Gemini that attempts to answer the question that you Googled for.
00:42:59.800And then you can scroll past it to go look at the links. But there, I think we maybe talked about this a little while ago that there's a lot of concern that this is going to really just fundamentally change search because you type in a question to Google, you hit enter and boom, there's an answer right at the top of the page.
00:43:19.880So why would you look beyond that to go to those primary sources that we were just talking about a couple of minutes ago?
00:43:26.840And they rolled out this product and the Internet, or at least my little corner of it, has just been flooded with screenshots of Google's AI summary getting it wrong.
00:43:42.240because they scraped a lot of reddit posts to teach the model like what the world is so it can
00:43:50.000have information to spit back to us it really highly ranks uh the what people wrote on reddit
00:43:55.700but reddit a lot of redditors use humor and sarcasm that's the thing that exists on reddit
00:44:03.560and so like this one screenshot that was going around was about how to make a pizza and it had
00:44:13.280a line that was something like you know if you want a a thicker sauce you could add a little
00:44:19.840bit of glue so i gotta stop because verge collected some of the best incorrect answers
00:44:26.780that google now provides to questions google claims that former u.s president james madison
00:44:32.540graduated from the University of Wisconsin, not once, but 21 times, that a dog has played in the
00:44:38.700NBA, NFL, and NHL. Shout out to Air Bud. There's no rule. There's no rule. How many times are we
00:44:45.900going to talk about basketball playing dogs in this episode? Listen, I have COVID. Let me have
00:44:52.380this. There's no rule that says a dog can't play in the NHL. Also, my personal favorite that,
00:44:59.160But according to geologists at UC Berkeley, you should eat at least one small rock per day.
00:45:18.420In case listeners don't know, Mike grew up on a farm.
00:45:21.240Is this your type five about growing up on a farm?
00:45:23.520No, it's just a joke about eating one small rock per day.
00:45:27.920Like, if you were a chicken, that might not be enough.
00:45:32.320So even for chickens who are using Google, they're like, I don't know if these responses are on the money.
00:45:38.840It should be more than one small rock.
00:45:41.280Yeah, and that just illustrates the perils of trying to design a product for everybody.
00:45:45.820You know, you're just not going to please anybody, humans or chickens.
00:45:48.640Okay, so when you asked Google how to get your cheese to stick better to the crust when you're making pizza, Google said to add glue.
00:45:55.500The reason why you put it on the agenda to talk about last week, which we didn't talk about, was that a tech journalist actually tried this recipe.
00:46:04.360Business Insider's Katie Danopoulos said, I knew my assignment.