00:01:37.940GLAAD said that all five of the major social media platforms examined had taken steps to
00:01:42.500improve safety over the past year, with the single exception of Twitter.
00:01:47.040Twitter not only scored the lowest, but also changed its policies to become even less safe.
00:01:51.940I got to say that one is sort of personal for me. Policies that I personally worked on in my platform accountability work was a little bit rough to see them rolled back. But, you know, that is to be expected when you're dealing with somebody like Elon Musk, who just clearly does not take these issues seriously.
00:02:10.160sometimes it's easy to feel like progress is inevitable towards a more inclusive world where
00:02:18.860we all recognize that other people are valuable and respect them but uh that's not something that
00:02:26.220is inevitable and it is due to the hard work of people like you Bridget who push and fight to
00:02:33.280make that positive change happen. And it's awesome when it does. And then there are times like this
00:02:41.700where there's a reminder that there are counter forces who will push back against it.
00:02:46.680I say this, and I mean it pretty much how it sounds, that whenever a tech company
00:02:50.920does something good, nine times out of 10, it is not because they went to bed and woke up and their
00:02:57.560hearts grew three sizes, like the Grinch's heart when it breaks out of that thing.0.97
00:03:02.340Usually there is someone, an organizer, a professional pain in the ass who is pushing them to be better. And so, I mean, as much as I hate that Twitter is not just failing to moderate their platforms in a way that allows for LGBTQ users to feel safe there and, you know, is actually rolling back those policies, it is good to see that other platforms are taking some steps in the right direction.0.80
00:03:30.140Yeah, that's right. Twitter is an outlier here, right? Even among Facebook and YouTube, Twitter is an outlier in rolling back protections for LGBTQ people. So that's worth noting.
00:03:43.900So the report scored each platform in 12 areas of specific relevance to LGBTQ users, like the platform should have a policy to protect LGBTQ users from hate, and the platform should have a policy that prohibits targeted deadnaming.
00:03:57.140I really think this should really be a wake-up call that Twitter under Elon Musk is really going out of its way to signal that anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ hate is welcome on the platform.
00:04:08.780And I think it's a problem because it leaves marginalized people out of the conversation and it keeps us from being able to be equal participants in our discourse and democracy.
00:04:17.300For a platform that wants to be the public square, that is really a problem.
00:04:22.200You know, Twitter is the place where news is broken, where stories become news.
00:04:27.300It moves so much faster than other platforms like Facebook or Instagram that I think that's one of the reasons why you see this battle for it.
00:04:35.580And like, it's really a proxy war for power and who gets to take up space and who gets to be part of the conversation.
00:04:41.140The fact that because of Elon Musk rolling back what little policies there were to protect LGBTQ users, that anti-trans bigots would feel comfortable showing up there and feel emboldened and empowered, which sounds like what is happening, is a real problem for a platform that heretofore had been about, you know, making news where journalists and newsmakers are congregating.
00:05:05.400And so if people don't feel safe or good about spending time there, that's a real problem. And I also think it's not just an issue of, you know, the user experience of LGBTQ users. It's also about the security and the safety of these platforms.
00:05:20.160Because when extremists and hate mongers are allowed to gather in these platforms, they become less secure, they become more polarized, they're easier to have bad actors disrupt them.
00:05:31.400And so it's not just, it is about the LGBTQ users and their experiences online, but also it makes it less secure and less safe for all of us, whether you identify as LGBTQ or not.
00:05:43.120Absolutely. Like, it is about the LGBTQ users, but also it's not about them, right?0.90
00:05:47.960Like the right-wing fascist types who love to hate, they're going to find somebody.
00:06:02.740Folks can read the full report in our show notes, but in addition to ranking the platforms
00:06:07.860for LGBTQ safety, the report also highlights other dangerous trends on platforms.
00:06:13.340One of those trends is called stochastic harassment.
00:06:16.140If you don't know what that is, it is a form of harassment where online accounts or media figures don't directly attack individuals or call for violence, but instead amplify a general narrative that indirectly dehumanizes specific groups.
00:06:30.660In doing so, increasing the likelihood that others will engage in such violence.0.84
00:06:35.560A great example right now would be the groomer narrative, which we know like baselessly claims that queer folks and their allies are trying to recruit children into sexual acts.0.78
00:06:45.220We talked quite a bit about this in our opening episode this season with Nina Jankiewicz, how, you know, Tucker Carlson would spend hours talking about her on Fox News, never directly threatening her, but people would get the message.0.74
00:07:00.180You know, Trump did a lot of this where he would specifically call out black women or women of color journalists by name to his like fan base and followers, never saying, you know, harass this person, attack this person.
00:07:14.280But it was a kind of a wink, wink, nudge, nudge thing where people would get the message pretty quickly.
00:07:19.480Yeah, I thought it was a really interesting part of that GLAAD report that they called that out explicitly because I had never heard that term before, stochastic harassment. And it's so common now that we have a term for it, we see it everywhere.
00:07:36.200Nina Jankiewicz was a great example where, you know, and Trump is a master of it, right, of never directly, explicitly calling for violence against a particular person, but talking about them in a way that just incites others to violence.
00:07:56.700Yeah, I've definitely seen right-wing extremists are so good at this. They're so good at knowing what to say to have that sheen of plausible deniability where it's like, oh, well, I never said to attack so-and-so. I never said to storm the Capitol. I never said to do this.
00:08:15.160But it's just like, well, here are 18 different examples where you've all but said that. So knowing how to stay right on that line is something that these folks are very good at. And that's something that the GLAAD report really spotlights, that folks are really utilizing this as a loophole in social media platforms' policies, which is contributing to the rising tide of anti-LGBTQ hate and legislation that we're all currently living through.
00:08:38.700And so this is all very distressing. It's hard to hear. But it's good to have some insight into this. For a long time, we would only have social media companies and their PR leadership to be able to have any understanding of what's going on at these platforms.
00:08:57.780And so having visibility into this is good because that's really going to be the first step of creating a better system where folks can show up and meaningfully make their voices heard on digital platforms, you know, the same way that all of us deserve to.
00:09:12.100In public health, one of the things we say sometimes is that if you don't measure something, it doesn't exist. And so I think it's extremely valuable that GLAAD is measuring these policies with respect to how they protect LGBTQ people to show up online and how that contributes to an inclusive internet where we can all show up and enjoy the internet.
00:09:39.140You know, who doesn't want to enjoy the Internet?
00:09:41.580Exactly. And I do think that something that did not get enough attention is the very clear ways that Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter, the way that he's running Twitter, is connected to transphobia.
00:09:54.100Court documents revealed that it was protecting the ability of the Babylon Bee to say a transphobic joke about Rachel Levine, who is a trans woman in the Biden administration.
00:10:06.400That was the thing that first prompted him, like, I got to buy Twitter and make it a, quote, free speech haven.
00:10:13.920And so he's been pretty clear that transphobia is a big part of his M.O.
00:10:19.100And we, you know, I don't think I would be telling tales out of school to say that his ownership of Twitter has been a disaster by pretty much every metric.
00:10:42.800It took a platform that was like not perfect, but like usable and made it garbage. Right. And so it really I hope that this is something that I want to see other business and tech leaders taking note that trafficking in transphobia is not just cruel and hateful and bigoted and all the things that we know it is, but also building a trying to build a community around transphobia is always going to fail.0.82
00:11:09.060And so I wish that we saw more reporting that tied Elon Musk's clear and explicit transphobia with his tanking of a, you know, of businesses and tanking of community and experience and vibes.0.99
00:11:24.020Listen, if I was throwing a party and a transphobe showed up and started spouting transphobe shit, of course it would kill the vibe and I would make them leave.0.99
00:11:30.440And so Elon Musk is throwing the party and he's the transphobe.1.00
00:11:37.220We don't acknowledge it enough to just say like, yeah, Elon Musk is a transphobic, his whole free speech thing. Transphobia is really at the center of it. It has been, you know, remember when he went out on stage in San Francisco at the Dave Chappelle concert, not concert, but comedy show, you know, comedy in scary quotes, whatever Dave Chappelle does now.
00:12:05.180And people booed him like that's the common denominator of these folks. And it's just like not palatable. It's not interesting. It reminds me of Dennis Miller. Most of our listeners are probably too young to even remember him. But like his whole gag was that he was like a right wing comic and he would have these like right wing jokes. But it was all just punching down. And it's just it's not funny to punch down.
00:12:33.640Oh, my God. I think about that Elon Musk and Dave Chappelle thing so often because I think it was it was either in Austin or in San Francisco, one or the other. I can't remember which one, but I can't think of an audience more primed to be sympathetic to Elon Musk's whole thing.
00:12:54.000people who are going to see dave chappelle in 2023 or 2022 or whenever that happened in austin
00:13:01.380or san francisco or wherever it was i think it was san francisco another thing about it i can't
00:13:05.720think of an audience more primed to be like yeah we love elon musk and they booed him that's the
00:13:11.960thing is like you know imagine hating trans people so much that you light 44 billion dollars on fire
00:13:18.180like that really says a lot about who you are as a person and it's not bad enough that you need to0.95
00:13:23.280be a transphobe and be running a website into the ground. You also got to be like a vibe killer too.
00:13:28.480Come on. It's too much. Pick a lane. Let's take a quick break.
00:13:43.320Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month.
00:13:48.300Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit.
00:13:52.220Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability.
00:17:02.260So I would say that the replies really fell into a couple of buckets.
00:17:06.240First was this idea that, you know, taking issue with the methodology, saying that since
00:17:11.940men are far too busy being, I don't know, titans of industry or whatever. They don't have time for
00:17:17.360silly surveys. So that survey itself and all surveys are skewed toward women because only1.00
00:17:23.480a woman would take a survey. As somebody who does a lot of surveys for a living, what do you think
00:17:28.100about that, Mike? Well, Bridget, as someone who does a lot of surveys for a living, I think it's
00:17:34.260stupid. That was very emphatic. I appreciated how emphatic that was. Another is that the data1.00
00:17:42.480couldn't possibly be correct, because if there are really so many women playing video games out
00:17:48.420there, why haven't these guys found them and, like, I don't know, made contact with them? Which,1.00
00:17:55.220yeah, I can kind of imagine why these women aren't going out of their way to buddy up with
00:17:58.760these guys who sound so charming. Probably the most infuriating bucket of the responses from
00:18:04.440men who could not believe this idea that women are playing games is that women don't play real
00:18:10.400games. Like there was some conversation about the games that women are playing, like The Sims,
00:18:16.480are not real games, but the games that men play. They're something else. And that really reminds
00:18:22.000me of this classic George Carlin routine that I'm sure I've talked about on the show,
00:18:25.680that I've probably gotten more wisdom and use out of than anything I've ever read in any kind
00:18:31.740of history book or philosophy book or anything. You ever notice how your shit is stuff and0.99
00:18:36.060everybody else's stuff is shit? It's like, oh no, I'm a man. So whatever games those women are1.00
00:18:41.760playing, they're not real games. The only real games are the games that I play because only1.00
00:18:46.060the things that I engage in are real and worthy of any kind of like intellectual rigor.
00:18:51.360I hate the adjective real. I feel it is code for others, like dehumanized others, like real gamers, real games, real Americans, real men. It's like a vacuous term that doesn't actually have any meaning other than them versus us.
00:19:18.060totally absolutely and like some of the tweets i saw i saw one that was like half of the women who
00:19:24.580responded to this survey are probably wine moms playing candy crush on their ipad or things like
00:19:31.580that and it's like what difference does it make you know if you're trying to get a landscape of
00:19:35.560who is playing games and who is making up this industry in like who is representative of the
00:19:39.760space what difference does it make what they're playing what difference does it make like i don't
00:19:43.580know it just it just seems like such a weird arbitrary distinction and it's a way of like
00:19:50.600creating a hierarchy where there is none right because it's not like if you're playing call of
00:19:55.560duty that game is so highfalutin that oh my god like it's the you know most philosophical game
00:20:00.980out there or something like it's just another i mean it's honestly just misogyny it's another way
00:20:05.220to dress up misogyny and say that the things that women enjoy the things that women that are bringing
00:20:10.600women joy, the way that women are spending their time when they're gaming is worse than, less
00:20:16.020worthy than, less worthy of scrutiny and, you know, looking at less serious than what men are0.97
00:20:22.320doing. It's just misogyny. And, you know, I honestly am not surprised by this data. Most of
00:20:28.100my friends who are women play some kind of game. I think a lot of them do have Nintendo Switches.0.92
00:20:33.320I would love to own a Switch. Nintendo, if you are listening, you can send me a Switch. I will
00:20:38.140happily make content about it. So there is a historical precedence of this. As journalist
00:20:43.980Zach Zewin points out, writing, Barbie fashion designer outsold Doom and Quake in 1996 and was
00:20:51.300the ninth best-selling PC game of that year. Of course, women were also playing Doom and Quake
00:20:56.700back then too. So angry dudes online maybe stop acting so defensive and shitty about games being0.95
00:21:02.640played by women and instead realize that they've always been here. And if you feel like they're0.67
00:21:06.760hiding from you, maybe ask yourself why that is. And so I love that as a response. And I think
00:21:13.460it's really about the gaming industry catching up with this information that we have. If nearly
00:21:19.520half of gaming consumers are women, then it is imperative that gaming companies act like it0.94
00:21:24.520and catch up and make sure that these platforms are places where everyone, all of their consumers0.99
00:21:30.000can safely show up to have things like better safeguards against harassment or more gender
00:21:36.080inclusive games, right? So I think for me, it's really about the people who have power in the
00:21:40.880space, recognizing the reality of who makes up that space, who their consumers and who their
00:21:46.200demographic actually is. And according to this data, it's a lot of women because women be gaming.0.84
00:21:51.880Yeah, women be gaming. There's so many domains where this sort of like misogynistic gatekeeping1.00
00:21:59.000plays out. But one nice thing about video games is that there are very well-defined metrics of
00:22:07.140success, right? And that metric is money, right? How much money do you make from the sale of your
00:22:14.420game? And games that appeal to women, it turns out, sell so many more copies than games that
00:22:23.700do not appeal to women, because there's a lot of women in the world, right? Like I was just looking
00:22:28.340it up animal crossing is a game that a lot of women i know like a lot of men i know like it's
00:22:33.720not a gendered game right like you're not uh yeah it's just it's just like a fun game that a lot of
00:22:39.680my friends really love i just looked it up it made like a quarter billion dollars in the past couple
00:22:45.980of years that's so much money i mean like this gets into like a whole other it's a whole other
00:22:50.940topic, but I have seen and I have so many examples where industries would rather leave
00:22:58.260money, good money, on the table than not be misogynistic and not, you know, not perpetuate
00:23:07.240misogyny and racism and all of the bad isms, right? Like, you know, look at Blizzard. Look at
00:23:15.160their, you know, their lawsuit where it sounded like for women working at the uber popular video0.86
00:23:21.680game company, Blizzard, it sounded like a terrible environment. And it's like, if you are a company
00:23:26.840that is producing a product that half of your consumer base are women, that you just can't,1.00
00:23:33.240you just can't run a company like that. But I think that there are definitely other incentives1.00
00:23:39.080than money that these people have. And I think that people are very entrenched in and bought
00:23:44.740into the idea that this is a boys club, they're not women around. And so even if that's not true,0.99
00:23:49.120even if all the evidence is showing them that's not true, even if they can make more money by
00:23:53.700acknowledging that reality, the siren song of misogyny and perpetuating it in that industry
00:24:00.940is just too much to resist. This is a weird moment in the history of there are no girls
00:24:09.260on the internet, Bridget, because it's like, I feel like you and me are both being like,
00:24:13.520yes, capitalism, that is what will free us from the chains of misogyny. I don't know,
00:24:20.280there's a lot of damn women out there, right? It's almost incompatible with a system where1.00
00:24:27.140women are just devalued and locked out. Yeah. Welcome to patriarchy. It harms everyone.1.00
00:24:35.040It doesn't just harm the people who are its targets, women. It harms us all. It keeps us0.59
00:24:39.380all back from innovation. We did a great episode about how misogyny and bias and, you know,
00:24:45.920really rigid, incorrect thinking around gender stifles innovation. And it does. It harms us all.
00:24:53.580Yeah, it really does. And like, what does it say about the people who really cling to the misogyny
00:24:59.200that like they value it so much that they're willing to throw away innovation, inclusivity,
00:25:07.160a larger market share, everything in order to protect a gender hierarchy.
00:25:53.980and two, the fact that we know that legal frameworks
00:25:56.580are necessary and are going to be necessary going forward
00:25:59.420since it's clear that platforms and tech companies
00:26:01.640cannot be trusted to police themselves.
00:26:03.580In this case, ChatGPT just completely made up a bunch of negative, slimy, grimy lies about this radio host.
00:26:12.280ChatGPT confidently stated that he had been the treasurer of an advocacy organization until he was forced to resign following a lawsuit over misappropriation of funds.
00:26:22.460Except none of that ever happened.0.94
00:26:24.660It was just a made-up thing that ChatGPT pulled out of its computer butt, I guess I'll say.
00:26:31.320He was never the treasurer of that organization.
00:26:33.960He was never accused of embezzling funds.
00:26:35.700And he was never part of that lawsuit.
00:26:39.640So you've probably seen stories about ChatGPT hallucinating.
00:26:43.720That's what it's called when ChatGPT spits out facts that are not true, like getting math problems wrong or saying that planets have extra moons or just getting basic facts wrong.
00:26:53.900Most of these hallucinations are kind of funny.
00:32:18.000or pregnant and scared help, you might find results that mix real health information alongside
00:32:24.480these fake clinics, which are peddling harmful lies. And the fact that we're talking about this
00:32:29.860with Google is a really big deal. 93% of all searches worldwide happen on Google. And when
00:32:35.860someone doesn't know what to do, or they find themselves in a situation where they need answers
00:32:39.860and they're looking to the internet, odds are the first thing they're going to do is a Google search.
00:32:44.780And when they do that search, they should not be served up lies. And certainly Google should not be profiting off of those lies. Like it is an economy. It is a scam economy of lies and grifts. And Google is cashing in on it.
00:32:59.060And it really takes me back to something that Ifomo Uzoma, who, you know, formerly worked at Pinterest combating medical misinformation, a lot of which was misinformation around abortion.
00:33:08.160She always says that these people, these extremists who are pushing lies about abortion, they are scammers and spammers, and they have built an industry of lies for profit.
00:33:17.600And Google, as the country's number one search platform, should not be in the business of amplifying these lies, and they certainly should not be in the business of profiting from it.
00:33:28.080Yeah, this it doesn't feel so terrible, but like these are some of the more disgusting actors that we've talked about on this show because they are preying on people who are at their most vulnerable, often young, probably terrified if they have suddenly discovered that they are unintendedly pregnant and looking for some kind of like information about what the hell to do and to deceive people at that moment.
00:33:58.080is terrible yeah it's it's infuriating and the fact that google is profiting off it to such an
00:34:08.120extent uh is not surprising but shameful it is shameful and if you're the biggest search engine
00:34:16.420in the world some responsibility comes with that and you should be in the business of amplifying
00:34:21.440actual information and not lies and scams. Some of the lies that these fake clinics are pushing
00:34:28.480are actually dangerous and harmful. Things like telling people that they can have their
00:34:33.700medication abortions reversed and telling them to take certain medications to reverse
00:34:39.460pill-based abortion, which can harm them, and also is not true. Google should not be in a place where
00:34:46.360they are amplifying these lies and certainly not making money off of it. I mean, it's really
00:34:50.880ghoulish. Speaking of ghoulish, let's talk about Tesla. So this report, like people should read
00:34:56.580the whole report because I found myself gasping each paragraph. I was like, oh God, oh God, oh
00:35:03.420God. It just got worse and worse. So a new report from the Washington Post says that there have been
00:35:08.660736 crashes in the U.S. since 2019 involving Teslas in autopilot mode, which is far more than
00:35:16.000previously reported. According to the report, the number of crashes has surged in the last four
00:35:20.460years because of the increase of the number of Teslas on the road. Some of these crashes sound
00:35:25.060pretty serious. The number of deaths and serious injuries associated with autopilot has also grown
00:35:31.080significantly. When authorities first released a partial counting of accidents involving autopilot
00:35:35.920in June of 2022, they counted only three deaths definitively linked to this technology. But the
00:35:41.260most recent data includes 17 fatal incidents, 11 of them happening since May of 2022, and five
00:35:47.500serious injuries. So you might be asking, why is the number of crashes so much higher
00:35:51.980now than was previously reported? Well, we know all of this because of a 2021 federal order that
00:35:57.800the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is the country's top auto safety regulator,
00:36:03.080required automakers to disclose crashes involving driver assistance technology.
00:36:07.340Now, I should say that the total number of crashes involving this technology
00:36:10.720is really small compared to all road accidents, but it's still pretty troubling. Now, since this
00:36:16.660new reporting requirements were introduced, we now know that the vast majority of the 807
00:36:21.500automation-related crashes have involved Teslas, and it's linked to almost all deaths involving
00:36:27.020automation, in part because Tesla has experimented much more aggressively with automation than other
00:36:31.860car makers have. The uptick in crashes also coincides with Tesla's aggressive rollout of
00:36:36.640full self-driving mode, which has expanded from about 12,000 users to nearly 400,000 users in a
00:36:43.220little more than a year. And this is not just Tesla either. After a mass shooting in San Francisco,
00:36:48.780there was a video of a Cruz, which is General Motors' line of driverless cars, blocking first
00:36:54.560responders from being able to administer aid to the victims. In the video, you can see the police
00:36:59.340screaming about this. He is screaming, you know, that this driverless car is blocking emergency
00:37:05.260medical and fire. They need to get it out of there. In another video, you can hear an officer
00:37:09.280worrying that the car might crash into an ambulance or a fire truck when they're trying
00:37:12.820to get out. So General Motors has said that although the vehicle did stop at the crime scene,
00:37:18.860the car did not actually obstruct any emergency vehicles. They said our car initially stopped as
00:37:23.880it was approaching an active emergency scene, then proceeded to perform a U-turn and pull over.
00:37:28.220Throughout this time, all vehicles, including emergency response vehicles, were able to proceed
00:37:32.340around our car. Emergency personnel in San Francisco seemed to more or less confirm this.
00:37:38.080they told SFGate that the car did not technically obstruct emergency vehicles because another road
00:37:44.500happened to be available that was in an adjoining lane that they could use to get around this
00:37:48.440driverless car. But honestly, they didn't sound too thrilled that this was something they had
00:37:53.080to navigate in order to help nine people who had just been shot. And it's pretty clear, like,
00:37:57.960had this been a car with a human, a human would have been able to be like, oh, this is an active
00:38:03.580emergency scene, let me immediately do a quick U-turn or whatever. But because it was driverless,
00:38:09.840there wasn't a real protocol of what to do or how to move it. They're just very lucky that there was
00:38:15.040an available lane in order to maneuver around this car. So Elon Musk argues that autopilot
00:38:20.120is safer than human drivers and that the use of autopilot will usher in a safer, virtually
00:38:25.540accident-free future. In a March presentation, Tesla claimed that cars in full self-driving mode
00:38:31.960crashes at a rate of at least one-fifth that of vehicles with normal driving
00:38:36.120in a comparison of miles driven per collision.
00:38:39.040But that claim and Musk's characterization of autopilot as unequivocally safer
00:38:43.800is impossible to test without access to the detailed data that Tesla possesses.
00:38:48.480So it's basically impossible to say how many accidents this technology has diverted.
00:38:54.080But what is super clear is how dangerous it is to be testing this out
00:38:57.860on actual roads with the public because it is killing people.
00:39:01.960So I didn't know this. I don't drive a Tesla because I'm a broke bitch, but I was reading this and I was thinking, surely they're not just out here testing out full self-driving mode with just regular motorists on our public road and making anybody who exists out in public, they're a Tesla's guinea pig. But I'm sorry to say that is kind of exactly what is happening.0.87
00:41:36.140One is autopilot, which is standard on all Teslas, which has intelligent cruise control that matches the car to the speed of the surrounding traffic.
00:41:43.720and a lane centering function that helps keep the vehicle in the center of its lane.
00:41:47.960Then there is enhanced autopilot, which adds navigating highway on and off ramps and interchanges
00:41:54.180on top of what autopilot does. It also adds a self-parking system and a summon feature
00:42:00.140that lets owners call the car to them at parking lot speed from nearby.
00:42:04.280And lastly, full self-driving, which Tesla says will do all of the above, but also read and react
00:42:11.140to traffic lights and stop signs and steer around some terms with the driver's, quote,
00:42:16.200active supervision. Now, according to Tesla's own website, full self-driving mode is still
00:42:21.920being tested out. It's still in beta. It is not fully ready to go. The Tesla website says a full
00:42:27.180self-driving mode. This feature is in beta and may not stop for all traffic controls.
00:42:33.400Yeah, that's pretty scary. This is from Blue Book. The term test would seem to suggest some
00:42:40.120sort of laboratory conditions or controlled experiment with close monitoring. But that's
00:42:44.480not how Tesla is testing the software. Instead, it's allowing owners to use it on public roads
00:42:49.560with the rest of us as if it were a finished product. Now, Tesla does require owners to sign
00:42:55.420a waiver to use this mode, but what about the rest of us? You know, I never consented to or
00:43:00.780opted into being, whenever I was out on a public roadway, being part of Elon Musk's text kitchen
00:43:07.600on whether or not this technology is safe.
00:43:10.580Yeah, I'm so curious what the content of that waiver is.
00:46:26.600Like, I almost think that what that shows is that people are just really tired.
00:46:33.860I think as we're seeing, like, the cost of being connected all the time and being, like, hyper aware of what that feels like, being connected via technology all the time, and the ways that tech is becoming even more entrenched in our daily lives, it's like we don't like it, but we're aware of it.
00:46:52.320And it's this kind of, like, resignation that we're going to have to accept it, right? Like, we're going to have to accept that these digital tools and experiences are part of our lives, whether we like it or not. And it turns out we don't really like it that much. Like, I almost see this as a kind of like, I don't know, I find it interesting that people don't like this.
00:47:12.020They yearn for a time, even sometimes in the case of young people, a time that they never
00:47:17.300even experienced before social media, but they understand the importance of keeping
00:47:23.440It makes you wonder if there is a difference in appreciating the costs of what has been
00:47:30.580lost and like what we have to deal with.
00:47:33.240Like we talk on this show all the time about this information climate we live in where
00:47:38.220there's like so much disinformation and we were talking about stochastic harassment earlier where
00:47:44.980people are just like repeating harmful hateful narratives that are just sufficiently under the
00:47:52.740radar that they don't violate terms of service of social media platforms uh and it feels like
00:47:59.220that's just like normal and how it is and like you know with with ai we've talked a lot about the
00:48:04.840how it's increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction and as we look into the future it's
00:48:10.660probably only going to get harder and that doesn't feel good it doesn't make me feel like we're going
00:48:16.040to be approaching a future where things are better than they are now uh and you know no offense to0.96
00:48:24.840baby boomers but maybe they're just not like as clued in to all of these harms i don't know0.60
00:48:30.800And it really takes me back to the conversation that I had with Paris Marks from the podcast Tech Won't Save Us around who are the tech leaders who are building what our future looks like for all of us.
00:48:43.680And when they think about what a good life looks like, a full, meaningful life, what that looks like, what that entails, are they thinking about the same thing that the rest of us are thinking about?
00:48:56.380A lot of these people who are designing what our futures are going to look like probably have a very different idea about what a good future looks like versus what I think or what people listening, 90% of us might think.
00:49:06.060And so when they are the ones who are in charge of using technology and building technology to build that future, we've got to really ask, like, who put them in charge?
00:49:14.600If the majority of us from all these different demographics are wanting to go back to a time before social media, before technology was where it is, before the rise of the ubiquity of the Internet, that really says something.
00:49:27.420I almost feel like it's kind of a positive thing because I hope that the people who build technology are really listening and paying attention to what the rest of us are saying.
00:49:36.460because people don't want futures where we're increasingly being asked to give more and more
00:49:42.000of ourselves, our experiences, our time, our energy, our data to technology companies to make
00:49:47.820some tech billionaire a little bit richer. We are exhausted. Every drop of us, anything that we have
00:49:55.240has already been taken in mind from us. We are exhausted. We cannot give anymore. I think that
00:49:59.920that's what people are responding to. I think that people are tired. They want to slow down.
00:50:03.920They are craving connection. They are craving real experiences. And I think that tech leaders should be listening and not just trying to fill that gap with more tech, with more screens, with more extractive policies and, you know, mining from us.
00:50:21.540because I don't think that's making us happy.
00:50:25.480And I think that it's, I hope that they're really listening
00:50:29.280because I think that what I'm hearing from this poll
00:50:31.760is that people want better for themselves,
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