00:01:41.860is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:48.640I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:01:54.160Welcome to another episode of There Are No Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of identity, technology, and social media.
00:02:00.880And this is another iteration of our Tangody Weekly News Roundup, where we summarize and break down the news online that you might have missed so you don't have to.
00:02:09.960I am joined by my producer, Mike. Mike, thank you for being here. Welcome back to the show.
00:02:14.780Bridget, thanks for having me back. Always such a pleasure to be here with you in the Tangody News Roundup.
00:02:19.740Okay, so listeners, settle a bet for me or weigh in on a conversation.
00:02:24.540So I was telling Mike, off Mike, how much I wanted to watch this new movie, War of the Worlds with Ice Cube.
00:02:33.520And the reason I wanted to watch this movie is because it has achieved something truly historic, which is a less than 5% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
00:02:44.620And I honestly think there's maybe there's like two movies in the whole world that have ever had such a low rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
00:02:53.640To me, when the rating is very high or very low, they kind of achieve the same thing in that I'm just so curious what's going on.
00:03:02.540I was like, Mike, we should watch this and talk about it on the podcast.
00:10:29.720You know, and most mainstream AI companies will usually have a rule that is spelled out explicitly, prohibiting folks from creating harmful content, which typically calls out by name, sexual material or celebrity deepfakes, right?
00:10:44.120You know, rival AI generators like Google VO3 or Sora from OpenAI usually have these built-in protections that are an attempt to stop users from creating this kind of content.
00:10:55.160So you could not just type in, for instance, Taylor Swift deepfakes and actually generate them.
00:11:00.820When those Taylor Swift deepfakes went viral on X the last time around, users had these workarounds to create it.
00:11:07.360So obviously, explicitly prohibiting users from making this kind of sexually charged imagery doesn't stop the problem, but it arguably does create a bit of a barrier.
00:11:17.000Yeah. And it just kind of, I don't know, like appeals to common decency that you shouldn't be promoting non-consensual nude imagery of people, even if they are celebrities like it's just unsavory.
00:11:36.280And it seems like polite society shouldn't be pushing those tools onto everyone else.
00:11:46.000Well, not at X, because unlike its rivals, XAI does not shy away from not safe for work content in Grok.
00:11:54.400And folks might remember that it recently introduced Ani, which is kind of a flirty sex bot anime avatar that will engage in not safe for work chats.
00:12:04.380Mashable reports that Grok's image generation tool does let users create images of celebrities and politicians.
00:12:10.240So it's telling to me that the competitors of Grok and Imagine spell out like, hey, don't use our platform in this way. Not at X. They have no such qualms.
00:12:21.800It's, like, tempting to go down the free speech rabbit hole and be like, well, you know, the rules about free speech and First Amendment rights are different for celebrities and politicians.
00:12:37.220Like, you don't want to limit speech about them.
00:12:39.540But this just sounds, like, really gross.
00:12:42.060Uh, setting aside the fact that that Verge reporter didn't even ask for, you know, nude images of Taylor Swift. Uh, it just, it feels super gross. You know, we know that Elon Musk has written a bunch of like highly specific, uh, rules into Grok.
00:13:58.160And so I do have to give him that, that he didn't add special rules to exempt himself from being depicted by Grok, at least in Grok 3.0, which I guess is a couple models below this new Imagine one.
00:14:15.500And I didn't feel any better after having done it.
00:14:19.260But I was curious and that curiosity has been satisfied and and it was terrible.
00:14:25.460Yeah, I mean, you can really see what they mean when tech leaders tell us that this kind of technology, this is going to be the linchpin of our entire economy.
00:14:36.040Communities can't have clean water or clean air, but we can be served up AI videos of Taylor Swift undressing without even asking for it or going looking for it.
00:18:02.200Oh, thank goodness, because I heard that actually it's been a problem lately.
00:18:07.260Don't worry. We've we've solved it because we have another update about the continuing fallout of the T-app.
00:18:14.620That's right. The app designed for women to share information about men that they might be dating.
00:18:20.180We did a whole episode about this where we talked about how men were saying we should have our own T-app where men can talk about the women.
00:18:28.220notwithstanding the fact that do you think that men need a dedicated app to do this men have been
00:18:34.240like sharing like pictures of women and talking about women on group chats since forever they
00:18:40.180don't need it you don't need a dedicated platform to do it but whatever so the tea on her app was
00:18:47.680meant to be exactly that and tech crunch reports that the tea on her app the app for men to talk
00:18:53.820about women, has also exposed users' personal information, including government IDs and
00:19:10.540If everyone has nothing, then we're equal.1.00
00:19:14.700You know, I envision a world where all genders can have our data privacy compromised by sketchy1.00
00:19:21.420apps in the name of gender equality.1.00
00:19:23.820The Tea on Her app, which launched on the Apple App Store earlier this week and shot to number two in the lifestyle category on the App Store, it borrowed language from the original Tea app for women in its description.
00:19:38.260TechCrunch found at least one security flaw that allows anyone to access data belonging to Tea on Her app users, including their usernames and associated email addresses, as well as driver's licenses and selfies that users uploaded to the app.
00:19:51.700Images of these driver's licenses are publicly accessible web addresses, allowing anybody with the links to access them using their web browser.
00:19:59.680In one case, TechCrunch saw a list of posts shared on the T on Her app appended with each user's email address, display name, and self-reported location.
00:20:08.840It gets worse because TechCrunch also identified a potential second security issue in which an email address and plain text password belonging to the app's creator was left exposed on the server.
00:20:22.780The credentials appeared to grant access to the app's admin panel.
00:20:26.980TechCrunch did not use the credentials because doing so would be illegal, but it does highlight the risks of inadvertently leaving admin credentials exposed to the web.
00:23:16.560But we didn't really have that conversation because it was so easily weaponized by manosphere
00:23:22.600communities talking about how women who who were interested in sort of getting information on men
00:23:28.840deserve what they get and how you know it's it's women who should really be being gossiped about
00:23:34.680because of you know like oh what however you want to say it but how how easily that conversation
00:23:41.660which was genuinely fertile soil for like genuinely interesting conversations about how we
00:23:48.840interact with each other how quickly it just became about gender wars nonsense it feels like0.97
00:23:54.780there's really like two groups that are keeping this thing going there's uh like shitheads that0.84
00:24:01.920are intentionally trying to like weaponize gender wars as a way to either farm engagement or just
00:24:09.880actively like suppress women uh they're like largely the minority but then it also seems like
00:24:18.100there's this huge like not huge but like it seems like there's also this group of men who are like
00:24:26.820caught up in the nonsense of that first group and uh and are just like afraid of women and like the
00:24:35.000only thing they know is gender wars and so like every single event that is in the news or is being
00:24:43.660talked about online gets like filtered and transformed to reinforce like a gender war
00:24:51.340framework. Absolutely. And I don't remember if it was you and me that were talking about this,
00:24:57.060but as much as I love the internet and I'm of the internet and was raised on the internet and1.00
00:25:02.500am super online, I do think that gender is one of those issues where the worst people,0.94
00:25:08.140the most extreme people, the people with an ax to grind, the people who are grifting and trying0.81
00:25:12.100to make money off of the discontent of others, they have really been able to take an outsized
00:25:17.720footprint in the conversation about gender dynamics. In my experience, when I'm like out
00:25:24.500in the world, as hard as it is being a woman in the world, a Black woman especially, I genuinely
00:25:30.500think that the in real life way that we interact with each other, which is not perfect by any
00:25:36.580means. I don't think it is so deeply colored the way that online conversations would have you
00:25:43.320believe sometimes. I genuinely believe that we have let a small subsection of very loud,
00:25:49.600very vocal extremists who are in the minority dictate what the conversation is and like
00:25:55.540really paint an impression that perhaps it's not always the impression that is happening.
00:26:00.300And then when you have big flashpoints like the T app, that faction explodes, right?
00:26:06.440And they get to be like, we told you so.
00:26:08.220They get to really so easily dominate the conversation.
00:26:11.740And I feel very bad for people who are just looking for information about others, right?0.95
00:26:18.180Like you're just interested in a woman's perspective or you're just interested.
00:26:21.180Like if you're a guy and you're like, oh, I want to know how to approach women or talk to women.
00:26:25.640The internet is the worst place to go for good faith information in that vein because it is the worst people who are owning the conversation and owning the landscape.
00:26:36.440it is a real problem. You know, when I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin,
00:26:42.220I had the great fortune to study with this amazing professor, Dr. Janet Hyde, brilliant,
00:26:48.280brilliant professor, scientist woman. And she, a big part of her career was
00:26:56.380advocating for what she called the gender similarities hypothesis, which is
00:27:02.100uh both like so common sense but also like somewhat radical like the idea that the men and
00:27:09.000women have so much more in common than they have that then are different between them and yet for
00:27:15.860various reasons partly because of that cadre of extremists you mentioned but also other reasons
00:27:21.860throughout society we just love to focus on the differences and and so we do we talk about the
00:27:28.940differences and we focus on the differences and reinforce the differences to the exclusion of the
00:27:32.820fact that like actually come on like it's it's not really that different like men and women for the
00:27:38.760most part like we just want to watch a comedy and like eat a burger or like a salad if you're a
00:27:44.720vegetarian like whatever like we're just and yet there's this big investment in like focusing on
00:27:50.320the differences that gives them this outsized weight yeah i agree i mean who among us doesn't
00:27:56.260just want to put on war of the world and see what happens okay well i don't want to watch that0.97
00:28:02.080we're so different mike i guess this is just a woman thing you know how women are always
00:28:09.400watching war of the world women be women be you just said women be shopping women be watching
00:28:15.060war of the worlds wait so you you actually did a little bit of research into the tea on her app
00:28:22.620right more than i did i did just a little bit i'm just like curious about it because
00:28:25.760something about it felt strange to me that's what i was reporting on the t app the thing that i said
00:28:32.640was that it felt hinky and that it just didn't something didn't sound right and this it sounds
00:28:38.100like you found the t on her app similarly hinky it was just like the the story arc was too quick
00:28:45.660that it went from, like, not existing to being released
00:28:49.400to suffering the same types of security breaches
00:28:53.480as the T app within, like, a week, I think.
00:28:58.540And, like, specifically just putting sensitive information
00:29:04.340in public buckets with public URLs that were not secure,
00:29:14.900Like I can't, it's hard to imagine that somebody would do that in the first place.
00:29:20.040And it's even harder to imagine that somebody would commit that same error of an app that
00:29:28.280they had replicated that had suffered that exact breach like a week before it.
00:29:32.040But you might think that like, if you were creating a copycat app that was adapted for
00:29:36.520men instead of women, maybe a little light bulb would go off and be like, hey, what if
00:29:41.000we make these private urls and also like requiring the users to upload their driver's licenses that's
00:29:48.760another big red flag for me because the you know as you talked about i think it was last week on
00:29:53.160the news roundup uh age verification is actually a dangerous morass and it that it sounds like the
00:30:02.460t app realized this like two years ago and stopped requiring users to do that that's right yeah
00:30:09.180Because they, you know, I guess I don't know what their reasons were, but I have to assume that part of their rationale is that this is a dangerous thing to do to just be even like handling that level of sensitive information.
00:30:21.180And yet the tea on her app did it. And like, I have to ask, I have to wonder why. And part of me, you know, like, you know, I've got my tinfoil hat on pretty, pretty firmly. But like, perhaps this was all just a fishing expedition to get a bunch of sensitive information about a bunch of men.
00:30:40.860And it seemed to be created by this guy, Xavier Lampkin, from the Newville Media Corporation.
00:30:47.260Never heard of any of these companies.
00:30:48.600There's a billion app-developing companies that I've never heard of.
00:30:52.580But, like, couldn't find a whole lot about either of them online.
00:30:57.240But it just seemed really, I guess, hanky is a good word.
00:31:01.360I mean, that was exactly my experience when I was first doing research on the T app.
00:31:06.840I mean, I am not saying this is what was going on.
00:31:10.080And I looked into the founder and I was like, OK, he has a paper trail, a history, an employment history that checks out.
00:31:18.260But it seemed so absurd that I was like, is this some sort of a scheme?
00:31:23.240And I remember we talked about that and I actually talked you down from that.
00:31:26.520I was like, no, no, I don't think it's a scheme like you're really underestimating the incompetence and laziness of humans who work in like software development and data where we're just trying to do things really fast.
00:31:41.320and like I was like yada yada I could see how somebody would you know back up that database
00:31:48.600to a public bucket and plan to go back and lock it down later they never did or like
00:31:56.720so I talked you down I was like no it's not I think incompetence can fully explain what
00:32:03.280happened with the t-app but then for somebody else to replicate it a week later and the same
00:32:08.080errors i i don't know and after there was so much reporting about the driver's license and selfie1.00
00:32:15.420aspect of it that oh these women when this app was breached their driver's licenses with their
00:32:21.580with their addresses on them were floating around the internet i don't know how you could have been1.00
00:32:26.780even nominally paying attention to that story and then a handful of days later be like new app wants
00:32:33.720my driver's license that has t in the name of the app i'm gonna do it i i'm with you i i so i
00:32:41.160as you know i went on an evolution of thinking this is some sort of a scheme to this is just
00:32:47.740incompetence and i do suspect like if i i don't know but this is my opinion my take i think that
00:32:53.440these apps are just being quickly pushed out to capitalize on exactly the kind of gender wars
00:33:00.260stuff we were just talking about. And so I think when you are rushing, when you want to be part of
00:33:06.700a current conversation, you want to get there quickly, it doesn't really surprise me then that
00:33:11.500maybe things like, oh, I don't know, security for your user base would take a backseat when the only
00:33:17.140thing that you're worried about is capitalizing on this big engagement, splashy moment about gender
00:33:23.320wars. Do you know what I'm saying? I do. I totally do. I think I completely agree. And I also think
00:33:29.020there's a little bit of i don't know if irony is the word here and poetic justice makes it sound
00:33:34.960more satisfying than it is but like that same asymmetrical criticism that you described of
00:33:42.000how like when the tea app came out so many men were writing about how it was like messed up and
00:33:47.900like how dare these women like besmirch men and it's unfair uh and that there was you know with
00:33:55.660this new tea on her app there's just like none of that it's just a vacuum of conversation and i think
00:34:01.960that that lack of scrutiny and that lack of conversation about it i think perhaps is giving
00:34:08.840companies like the newville media corporation a pass to just exploit and steal data from their
00:34:17.660male users without commentary like i couldn't find anything about it when i was searching earlier
00:34:23.860today neither could i and i guess that's my thing if you are i don't want to use the word grifter
00:34:30.460because i this i don't think this person is grifting in that sense but if you are interested
00:34:35.100in like the men who sign up for this app are the product right like i saw through this as
00:34:41.180marketing bullshit but at least for the t app for women the creator who was a man was like oh well
00:34:46.920my mother dated and i wanted to make an app where women wouldn't have to face dangerous experiences0.91
00:34:53.220when they dated yada yada yada whether you believe that or not i happen to not really believe that i
00:34:57.100think it's just marketing at least there was some nod to the fact that this is an app created for
00:35:02.560women to keep women safe sure fine whatever so i think that for the tea tea on her app for men
00:35:09.600to to talk about women i think it is like this is someone who is interested in capitalizing on
00:35:15.260the current conversation around gender wars and the men who signed up for the the app even if
00:35:20.620their promise like oh you can find out all the tea on these women they are the product who is being
00:35:25.880exploited as evidence by the fact that they didn't even do the bare minimum to keep their data safe1.00
00:35:30.120so yeah it's just the worst people dominating the conversation and people who of all genders who
00:35:37.340might actually be trying to use these apps to keep themselves safe are being exploited by people who
00:35:44.080do not actually care about that that are selling them a false bill of sale i guess that's my
00:35:48.400ultimate point. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody deserves better. Women deserve better. Men
00:35:52.720deserve better. We all deserve better. Exactly. More after a quick break.
00:36:18.400is everything run a business and not thinking about podcasting think again more americans
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00:36:29.060one podcaster iheart's twice as large as the next two combined so whatever your customers listen to
00:36:34.040they'll hear your message plus only iheart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast
00:36:39.120radio think podcasting can help your business think iheart streaming radio and podcasting
00:36:56.420This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club,
00:37:01.080part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives,
00:37:04.040and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:37:08.800I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books,
00:37:12.180the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:37:16.060I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed, so obsessed.
00:37:19.580From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments,
00:37:24.440nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling
00:37:30.560characters, then that is the Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives,
00:37:35.560smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much,
00:37:40.600you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever
00:37:47.060you get your podcasts see you between the pages when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held
00:37:54.460captive for nine months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what
00:38:00.920should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files i just remember
00:38:07.260this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything every week i'm with
00:38:16.120survivors who live through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt
00:38:23.420i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they
00:38:31.380are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's
00:38:37.140taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the
00:38:42.980Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
00:38:49.040get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it.
00:39:01.380Speaking of which, speaking of deserving better and justice, I guess, one of the stories I've been keeping a very close eye on in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling gutting Roe is these period tracking apps.
00:39:14.920When Roe first fell, probably the number one question that listeners and people in my own community would ask me was, oh, Bridget, should I be using period tracking apps?
00:39:23.900And I always say, I mean, I err on the side of caution.
00:39:26.320we had a privacy expert on the show who said honestly for that kind of thing good old-fashioned
00:39:31.920pen and paper is going to be your best bet but there was one specific very popular app called
00:39:36.940flow that had been in court because of a lawsuit filed over the app's practice of sharing people's
00:39:42.740sensitive information with third parties including meta without permission so this being a period
00:39:48.700tracking app when i say sensitive information i'm talking about your menstrual cycles like
00:39:54.740the most intimate stuff happening in your body, that is the information they are sharing with
00:40:00.100third parties, including Meta. I don't really want to talk to Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Osseri
00:40:05.340from Instagram about my cycles, actually. So this lawsuit was filed in the wake of a 2019
00:40:11.140bombshell Wall Street Journal story reporting that despite promises of confidentiality,
00:40:17.020because remember, these companies can and do just say whatever, and then they'll do a completely
00:40:20.800different thing. Flow shared users' period data with Meta, Google, and other third parties who
00:40:26.580then used it for targeted advertising. So the other companies, Google and some of the other
00:40:32.480third parties, they just settled in a suit, but not Flow and not Meta, so it went to court.
00:40:37.540So no one disputes that the data was shared. It happened. The thing that was really in dispute
00:40:42.940was whether or not menstrual data counts as health data, which is a special protected class of data
00:40:49.220in the U.S. And some states, most notably California, where this lawsuit took place,
00:40:53.480have even stronger state-specific protections for health data specifically. So there was a jury
00:40:58.720trial about two weeks ago to determine whether or not Flow and Meta used this class's personal
00:41:04.260health data for advertising and other purposes. Carol C. Villegas, the attorney for the plaintiffs,
00:41:10.000asked the jury in her opening statement to decide how seriously big tech takes women's privacy.
00:41:15.060She said, this wasn't an accident. This wasn't a mistake. This is how Meta makes money. This is their business. And honestly, knowing what I know about Meta, she is not wrong. And you know who else agrees with me? The courts. Because this week, a California jury found that Meta did in fact illegally collect user health data from the flow period tracking app, violating California's wiretap law.
00:41:39.780In a statement about the verdict, the attorney said, this verdict sends a clear message about the protection of digital health data and the responsibility of big tech. Companies like Meta that covertly profit from users' most intimate information must be held accountable. And I could not agree more.
00:41:57.320I thought this was a particularly interesting case because the way that apps like to get around the legality of sharing information like this with third parties is that they'll say we aren't health apps.
00:42:09.400You know, we've seen that in the realm of therapy.
00:42:12.180We've seen it in terms of period tracking.
00:42:16.700You know, and it's it is kind of like a gray area in some regards.
00:42:22.400what is and is not health information because a lot of stuff is like very personal but not
00:42:28.700necessarily health information like uh the food you eat uh it's related to your health but we
00:42:34.940probably wouldn't call that health information the world health organization i think has a really
00:42:39.700good definition of health they define it as quote a state of complete physical mental and social
00:42:45.620well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. And I, you know, as a public health
00:42:53.060preventive medicine guy, I really resonate with that. I think it's really important to take a
00:42:59.520holistic approach to what is health. But that very holistic approach does run into some problems
00:43:07.020when it's bumping up against the law, where the law covers specifically health data, right? So we
00:43:13.040have hipaa uh at the federal level which protects health information and then we have states like
00:43:19.140california that also have health information uh laws and so in this case uh my understanding is
00:43:26.180that meta was suggesting that like period tracking information was not health data so they there's
00:43:33.040no reason that it should be held to this higher standard of privacy um and they were just really
00:43:41.260trying to exploit that gray area in the way that we see them try to exploit every opportunity they
00:43:48.140can to harvest as much data from their users as possible and then use it to sell ads or whatever
00:43:56.980they can think of to make money without any concern for the health and well-being of their
00:44:01.360actual users. Exactly. And we see this time and time again with other kind of apps that I guess
00:44:08.620You do think of them as health apps, but they get to say like, oh, we're not a health app.
00:44:12.880Like I came up in our conversation that we had a while ago about BetterHelp where they say, oh, well, we aren't a mental health app or we're not we don't have health information.
00:44:21.020We shouldn't be held to that scrutiny. We're just connecting people with people who are mental health professionals.
00:44:27.580And, you know, I used to work for a company where we built apps that operated in a HIPAA environment where all of the data that we were collecting from users and, you know, we were processing it and using it to try to help people.
00:44:46.220But all of it was governed by HIPAA. So I do have some I'm not a lawyer, but I do have some experience leading a data team that had to operate within HIPAA rules.
00:44:58.220And I'll share that in my personal experience, just talking with people at parties or wherever, people really misunderstand HIPAA. And I think often the average person has this idea that it just protects all health data and anything that might be related to your health in a common sense way is protected by HIPAA.
00:45:22.400And that's just not the case. It is a very narrow set of data and information about your body and your health that is protected by HIPAA. And so if you're using an app, unless you sign off on like what's called a HIPAA authorization, right, when you're like onboarding onto the app, when you're setting up your account, they'll have you read like the terms of service and like you'll sign off on the terms of service.
00:45:46.980But there will also be a separate thing that you have to sign off on that is the HIPAA authorization that essentially, you know, says that you give up some of your HIPAA rights so that they can process the data.
00:46:02.500Unless that's part of what you sign off on during the onboarding service, that's not being treated as health data by that app.
00:46:10.000And so they're just considering it any other data, like whether, you know, what size shirt you wear or whether you prefer blue to green or some sort of data like that.
00:46:22.440And it really is troubling when we're talking about something that is so intimate about your body.
00:46:27.820It's like some of the most intimate information about us.
00:46:30.980And I will say the damages have yet to be set in this case.
00:50:13.440We'll throw those instructions into the show notes.
00:50:16.780But again, I just think people should be aware
00:50:19.160that this is a new feature spend some time thinking about whether or not you want to share
00:50:23.560this with instagram and meta and also in general i mean like who really was clamoring for this
00:50:30.080but it really makes me think i don't know if the geniuses over there at meta and the geniuses
00:50:36.800like adam oseri who you know is my the tech guy i probably hate the most out of all the tech guys
00:50:42.740we talk about on this podcast for some reason i don't know that they really know what people want
00:50:47.120If you've ever talked to a woman, I bet that you might know that opting people into sharing their location when they post on social media is not something that I think most women would think was super cool.
00:51:02.080But, you know, on a company run by Mark Zuckerberg, who initially started his tech empire to rate the looks of women, guess I can't say I expect much more.0.84
00:51:11.220Yeah, it has nothing to do with what people want and everything to do with them getting more information about you so they can sell more stuff.
00:51:19.340Some of it to you, some of it to other people like you.
00:51:23.140They don't even have to have a specific reason why they want this information.
00:51:26.800They just want as much information about you as they can have.
00:51:29.920And they're not real choosy with who they share that with.
00:51:33.040The conversation around this location sharing change on Instagram has been really interesting.
00:51:39.440It's mostly been happening on threads where people are essentially complaining about this change.
00:51:47.320In some cases, maybe sort of fear mongering about it a little bit.
00:51:50.780They're kind of leaving out the fact that according to Meta, this change is opt in.
00:51:55.700So it's not automatically sharing your location.
00:51:58.520However, as the story that we just talked about indicates, you really can't trust what Meta says.
00:52:03.420So they are a company that, per a court, will say one thing and do another.
00:52:07.500And Adam Mosseri himself is in people's posts on threads saying, no, that's not true. We're not automatically sharing anybody's location. It's totally opt in. And I think what they are missing is that this is their fault. This is the level to which consumers simply do not trust Meta and Instagram.
00:52:27.420And clearly, those consumers are not wrong for, you know, not giving Facebook or Meta or Instagram the benefit of the doubt.
00:52:36.580I've really been kind of surprised seeing people say, wow, average consumers are misunderstanding this change and fear mongering and misreporting it.
00:54:21.500and it just shows me they don't understand the role that they play
00:54:25.760in the media diet of their own consumers
00:54:29.200Diego Jimenez who is a product designer at Instagram
00:54:33.200posted on threads. Misinformation aside, the reactions to the new IG friends map are pretty
00:54:39.080funny. Younger generations get it and love it. They already use social maps. Boomers don't
00:54:44.320understand it and freak out. They want photos back. The real takeaway is no matter how clearly1.00
00:54:49.540a new feature is explained, people won't read the explanation or give it a try before rushing to
00:54:54.600alarm the world about it. Shruggy emoji. And that coming from somebody who is an internal product
00:55:01.980designer at Instagram tells me so much. These people simply do not get it. They do not get
00:55:08.180the way that people are so distrustful of them, their company, their platform, their products,
00:55:13.120these changes. The fact that there's been so much loud and vocal backlash, they basically have to
00:55:18.620resort to, you're just an uncool boomer if you don't like this, really tells me that they have
00:55:24.200no idea how the public actually perceives them. And, you know, until they're ready to hear that
00:55:32.220and like deeply in a meaningful way, make amends for the rightful reasons why people are not willing
00:55:39.660to trust them and are not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and are rushing to sound
00:55:44.340the alarm, they're not going to learn. Like it just is sad to see people essentially say,
00:55:49.860no it's the users who are wrong that quote you just read i thought that was some sort of like
00:55:56.220tech journalist or podcaster something it's nuts that that's an actual like internal product person
00:56:03.280at meta talking about their own users in that way it sounds disdainful and if you had if you
00:56:10.220worked on a team that rolled something out that had this level of loud backlash again even if
00:56:16.300Some of it is perhaps not entirely accurate in that Meta says, oh, this is all opt in.
00:56:23.780We're not automatically sharing anybody's location with anybody, but they are a company per the courts that you cannot trust.
00:56:29.900If you like if the only way that you can respond to that is essentially telling the people who are speaking up about how they're responding to this rollout by saying you're uncool, you don't understand tech and you don't get it.
00:57:14.140Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify
00:57:18.900and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined.
00:57:24.060So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend
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00:57:33.160Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-iHeart to get started. That's 844-844-iHeart.
00:57:41.640when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine months i survived and i've spent
00:57:49.300my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart
00:57:55.380and these are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying
00:58:03.000shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable
00:58:10.480I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.0.89
00:58:14.940I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:58:22.540They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:58:26.460But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:58:29.900They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:58:33.020Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:58:41.980If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:58:47.900This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:59:00.380I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books,
00:59:04.080the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:59:07.500I'm going to have to look up this story.
01:00:21.340the reason he was fired was because the network that employed him, CNN, which like, you know,
01:00:27.900questionable, but we can move on from that. But like his his journalistic employer felt that he
01:00:35.200was not upholding journalistic standards. Right. Like that's why he was fired. Correct. Yes.
01:00:43.200This will come become important again later. Well, Chris Cuomo, phenomenal journalist that
01:00:49.860he is, currently now at NewsNation, shared this video of AOC talking about the Sidney Sweeney
01:00:57.180American Eagle jeans ad on X. Sidney Sweeney looks like an Aryan goddess and the American
01:01:04.120Eagle jeans campaign is blatant Nazi propaganda. I mean, watching that sultry little temptress0.93
01:01:11.620squeeze into a Canadian tuxedo three sizes too small with her bouncy little fun bags on the1.00
01:01:18.520screen staring at you, piercing through the core of your soul with those ocean blue eyes that could
01:01:24.840resurrect the Fuhrer from his grave in Argentina, is something that should alarm every American
01:01:30.620citizen. Because in America, beauty is not defined by whiteness. No, it is defined by the number of
01:01:38.500victim groups of which you are a member, skinny, attractive, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, cisgender0.51
01:01:43.560women descend from the slave daddy oppressors of this nation. And any man who cranks one out0.88
01:01:50.460while thinking about a woman like this probably hates black people, probably hates gay people.1.00
01:01:56.800And they certainly hate the diversity of our great nation. So I say instead of simping for0.99
01:02:02.500the Sydneys, we should be celebrating the Shaniquas. Instead of worshiping the hot straight1.00
01:02:07.920blonde what about the obese alphabet people with blue hair they need love too and to all the haters
01:02:14.680who say companies that go woke go broke i'd rather be poor than a nazi only one problem it's a deep
01:02:22.360fake and honestly i think a pretty obvious deep fake at that it is so clear that he thought this
01:02:29.700video was real even though the clip has a watermark on it that says parody 100 made from ai i guess he
01:02:37.560didn't see it. Yeah, it's got a watermark right on it. Like, come on, man. So he shared this on
01:02:44.140S with a message. Nothing about Hamas or people burning Jews in cars, but Sweeney Jean's ad
01:02:50.460deserved time on floor of Congress. What happened to this party? Fight for small business, not small
01:02:56.820culture wars. Never one to back down. AOC called him out and said, this is a deepfake, dude. Please
01:03:02.420use your critical thinking skills. At this point, you're just reposting Facebook memes and calling
01:03:06.900journalism which that's absolutely what he's doing it's like if my uncle was a journalist
01:03:12.680and was like reporting on facebook's ai slop as if it was real it's also such a double standard
01:03:18.720it's like what about like hamas or people burning other people in cars has to do with fighting for
01:03:27.140small business it's like like you're fighting the culture war in this tweet calling to not fight
01:03:33.460culture wars like have some self-awareness and chris cuomo has a platform on news nation if he
01:03:41.620wants to highlight any of those issues he absolutely has a platform to do it he doesn't
01:03:47.120have to scream at aoc for not doing it even though it's completely made up like he's just he's just
01:03:53.060like making up stuff to be mad at so he took the video down and said you are correct that was a
01:03:59.320deep fake, but it really does sound like you. Thank you for correcting. But now to the central
01:04:04.620claim. Show me you calling on Hamas to surrender or addressing the bombing of a car in St. Louis
01:04:10.000belonging to the IDF American soldier, dude. And then he doubled down on this on his show.
01:04:17.880Here's what he said. She was right. They got AI. It was really good. And it did seem like0.99
01:04:23.380something she would say. So I thanked AOC for correcting me. But I didn't remind her. She
01:04:28.920ignored the part of the tweet that meant, okay, not Sweeney, which really should never have been
01:04:34.520a thing, let's be honest. Why did AOC, the most popular Democrat in the country, powerful,
01:04:41.320reportedly ignore what I asked about calling on Hamas to surrender to end the war they saw?0.70
01:04:47.440She has never said that, that I could follow. Think about that.0.50
01:04:53.380And so it is so clear to me that when it comes to AI, one of the things that makes it tricky is that especially when it adheres to a worldview that we already hold, it can be difficult to see like, oh, this is not real.
01:05:09.660So even though, in my opinion, this was very obviously AI, down to the watermark spelling out that it is AI and not real, the fact that it aligns with Cuomo's worldview, an attitude and an opinion that he already holds and is very ready to uphold and very ready to believe and share any sliver of information that it hears and upholds that attitude, I think that is why we see Cuomo now basically saying,
01:05:36.700well, it doesn't matter or not if she actually said this.
01:05:40.020It doesn't matter or not if this was actually fake
01:06:03.720It's like he's made something up to be mad at.
01:06:06.180I think this is the darkest thing we've talked about in this entire episode, because it just really illustrates exactly the way that AI is, like, destroying society, destroying democracy, that, like, it's not real, it's fake.
01:06:27.280Like this is the dangerous thing about AI is it is blurring the line between what's real and what's not. And that's scary. But what's even worse is that someone who purports to be a journalist would just act like that distinction doesn't even matter.
01:06:45.160Like even after he's called out on the fact that this is a fake video, he just doubles down on it.
01:06:52.680And like you said, like demands that she respond to this fake thing that she didn't say.
01:07:03.820And that's like he is just working so hard to bolster the authoritarian takeover of our entire information ecosystem with this kind of behavior.
01:07:20.940And I just, I mean, not to make it about me, but I simply cannot imagine being called out for getting something so, for being a journalist and getting something so wrong and then doubling down on it and being like, but I'm still owed some answers.
01:07:40.100Like, where is the shame? Bring back shame. And not for nothing, Congress is not even in session right now, you moron.
01:07:47.360you like like when do you think this happened i just honestly these are meant to be our journalists0.98
01:07:53.060and i listen i told a story on the podcast last week i got taken by an ai video some bunnies
01:07:59.160jumping on a trampoline although i when i told you about that you were like i i thought it was
01:08:03.780ai but i didn't want to burst your bubble i mean i said that after the fact so you thought it was
01:08:09.600real so much credit no but like those buddies did not jump bridget but it's one thing i mean
01:08:16.700it all comes from the same place. I don't want to say that me getting taken is the same thing as
01:08:20.320Cuomo getting taken. But I think it really shows exactly what you were saying that how
01:08:28.440bad and eroded our information and digital media ecosystem has gotten that he could be
01:08:35.620get something so wrong as a journalist, basic stuff, still sort of be like, well,
01:08:42.660it sounds like you but something that even if you didn't say it as something that you would say
01:08:47.600like what like yeah it is similar because you were like those bunnies would jump on a trampoline
01:08:53.620like how do you know they wouldn't get up there they could jump i still stand by that i still
01:08:57.960stand by that when the when night falls bunnies are doing all kinds of things we don't know about
01:09:02.440i stand by that it was a fake it was a fake they didn't jump on that trampoline they're just down
01:09:07.540there eating grass dandelions big broad leaf vegetation that's what they like you know a lot
01:09:14.100about bunny diet yeah that's how i knew it was a fake it wasn't a real bunny thing they don't
01:09:21.420jump on you don't think they would jump on trampolines no they would hate that first of
01:09:25.660all how are they gonna get up there why would they get up there wily haven't you ever watched
01:09:30.380a cartoon they're afraid they're skittish they may as well be holding up a sign while they're
01:09:36.420jumping it's like hey come and eat me foxes whatever every now and then on the show i will
01:09:43.640talk about a story that sounds like it was created in a lab to infuriate me specifically and this is
01:09:50.460one of those stories because over the past two weeks there have been six known incidents of green
01:09:56.440sex toys being thrown onto the court during wnba games the latest happened this week during a game
01:10:03.460between the Indiana Fever and the LA Sparks at Crypto.com Arena in LA. Sex toys were also0.54
01:10:09.020thrown in the stands at the New York Liberty and Phoenix Mercury Games this week. And another two
01:10:14.300were thrown at the Atlanta Dream Games last week and a Chicago Sky game on Friday. It has gotten
01:10:19.720pretty serious. Two different people were arrested on multiple charges for allegedly throwing these
01:10:24.480sex toys. We were going to play audio of her speaking, but it is so drowned out with sounds
01:10:58.640This is just a great example. And we should write about it in that way. And these people that are doing this should be held accountable. We're not the butt of the joke. They are the problem and we need to take action.
01:11:09.900So I have been following the story and trying to figure out what the heck is going on here. But right as we were sitting down to record, USA Today had a break in the story about what is going on.
01:11:21.340USA Today spoke to the spokesman for a crypto group called Green Dildo Coin, and that spokesperson said that they were not trying to be disrespectful or disrespect women.
01:11:34.820And he described their group as a group of crypto enthusiasts and traders who launched green dildo coin and that the whole thing was meant to be lighthearted and perceived as a joke or a prank in order to protest what they describe as a toxic environment taking over the crypto world.
01:11:53.180So if you don't know what a meme coin is, it's a type of crypto asset that is sort of inspired by internet memes or characters or trends for which the promoter seeks to attract an enthusiastic online community to purchase the meme coin and engage in its trading.
01:12:26.600Meme coin generally carries a lot more risk compared to other cryptocurrencies, which are already pretty risky.
01:12:31.880So according to the people in this dildo meme coin group, talk about a sentence.
01:12:37.300If you had to explain that sentence to yourself, if you went back in time and you had to talk to your 10 year old self back in like 1990, whatever.
01:15:03.180Fans doing random things more or less to create attention.
01:15:06.100So they go on to explain how they are just trying to spread awareness about the culture that they want to perpetuate in the meme coin and crypto community cultivated around lightheartedness, jokes, pranks and various stunts.
01:15:20.700The coordinated effort, they said, is a very strategic protest against what meme coin creators view as a small group of individuals controlling the crypto space.
01:15:31.440It's not about women. It's not about being disrespectful. It's just about meme coins and
01:15:37.440crypto. To which I say eat shit. Do you think the women whose games you are disrupting give a crap1.00
01:15:44.500about your crypto meme stock? Do you think that anybody cares about the vibes that you're trying
01:15:49.720to curate in the crypto space? No. Women athletes already have to struggle for respect both on and
01:15:56.700off the court. We have talked about the ways that technology intersects with the very real
01:16:01.280threats of harassment that these athletes face. You expect us to think that it's a coincidence
01:16:05.960that they're doing this at WNBA games instead of NBA games? Literally, go choke on your green
01:16:11.560dildos. With the rise of things like social media and online sports bettors, ESPN reports that
01:16:17.340harassment of athletes is on the rise. So I don't give a fuck if you are trying to raise awareness0.98
01:18:43.700Before we end, I have one quick note, which is just really funny.
01:18:48.660Linda McMahon, the secretary of education and former chairwoman of the WWE, speaking of wrestling, folks might know her as the person who was trying to talk about AI and education and kept calling it A1, like the steak sauce, which I actually love.
01:19:02.640Our children need to know about this tangy sauce to be able to compete against China in the future.
01:19:09.680My children will never know about steak sauce.0.93