00:00:49.980If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.400Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:04.060Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:01:14.080Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:19.460I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive
00:01:26.780what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:32.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled,
00:01:38.200and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:43.380Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:13.380and who gets left out. And this is another installment of our weekly news roundup. We
00:02:17.920dig into all the stories that you might have missed online this week, so you don't have
00:02:21.580to. We usually like to start each of these episodes with a little bit of casual banter.
00:02:27.660Well, today I have a little bit of banter with some backstory because the level of restraint
00:02:32.940I have shown by not talking about summer house drama on the podcast cannot be overstated.
00:02:39.680But I know not everybody watches Bravo like I do.
00:02:43.580But now I have an actual tech reason to talk about Summer House drama on this podcast.
00:02:50.220Jessica Gross published a piece in The New York Times called Stop Location Tracking Your Friends and Lovers.
00:02:55.980And I actually got producer Mike into Bravo.
00:02:59.700We have a whole group chat with our friends about Summer House drama particularly.
00:03:04.640So, Mike, you're like read in. You've been briefed.
00:03:07.260I am. And I really can't emphasize enough what a departure this is from like my attitude towards reality TV, like, I don't know, 10, maybe even five years ago. The extent to which I am now like so deep in the summer house drama. I mean, it's yeah. And not just that, like other Bravo shows, too. I don't know what you've done to me, but I am in it.
00:03:33.200But for people who aren't, Bridget, can you explain what has been going on with Summerhouse in 60 seconds or less?
00:04:21.400But so much of it plays out on social media
00:04:26.040where the characters, not the characters, I guess,
00:04:29.720The cast members are like surveilling each other's social media and using that to call each other out for lying.
00:04:39.260There is like a pretty big tech element, but you are so much better at explaining things than me.
00:04:44.040So I'll give you a little countdown and then you will have 60 seconds to explain what has been consuming the Bravo universe for the past, like, I don't know, months.
00:04:55.320And then we'll get to the tech implications, I promise.
00:06:55.980So this is the tech implication that I want to banter about.0.68
00:07:01.140Amanda's lies to her good friend Sierra about this,
00:07:04.680and I guess to her husband about this,
00:07:07.280were revealed because Amanda had been sharing her location on her phone
00:07:12.160with all of her friends and her husband that she is separating from.0.67
00:07:16.900So when Sierra was trying to find Amanda or reach Amanda, Amanda wasn't responding. Sierra checked Amanda's location and was like, oh, she's at my ex's apartment, West. She's at West's apartment. Then Amanda started turning off her location, which she heretofore had had on for five years.
00:07:41.040I'm sorry, this is absolute insanity to me, no?
00:12:22.360their parents are still tracking them. It feels strange. It feels like perhaps we should all
00:12:29.780take a step back from that and turn it off. Yeah, I got my first cell phone when I was
00:12:34.460late, almost graduating high school. I don't think location tracking was a thing. You could only use
00:12:40.740it to make phone calls and play Snake. So if it wasn't one of those two features, my phone wasn't
00:12:46.340doing it. What about you? Yeah, I got my first cell phone when I went to college. My freshman
00:12:52.140year of college i am that old and you can use it for making calls sending text messages using
00:12:58.180t9 predictive text which if anybody remembers that uh shout out to you i got it's like a skill
00:13:05.820that i got so good at i was so good at the t9 text and then it just like stopped being a skill
00:13:12.740that mattered in any way whatsoever but for a brief period i was like so fast sending text
00:13:17.620messages and yeah playing snake but there was no tracking there was no like sharing thing that
00:13:23.500didn't exist google maps itself didn't even exist then yeah you would if you want it i remember i0.74
00:13:28.460mean this is like people don't want to hear this shit but like when they first started doing google
00:13:33.220maps you could like you could either take a pen and paper and write the step-by-step instructions0.98
00:13:38.940from the computer screen you could print it out with that old janky printer like
00:13:44.660like all streaky or you could be like i know you were and probably currently still are
00:13:52.260have a big stack of road atlases in the back of your car like massively huge road atlases
00:13:59.040that just stay in the back of your car they'll be like oh they added a new highway
00:14:02.800not on this road atlas from 10 years ago they did it i do remember when oh what was that map
00:14:11.540application that we were all using before. MapQuest, yeah. I remember I had a work-study
00:14:16.780job and I was going to go on this camping trip with my friends, like a big group of us. And I
00:14:21.120was planning it. I was so excited. We were going to drive from Boston up to Maine. And it was a
00:14:25.400work-study job. So I just had so much time on my hands and charted out the route for us using
00:14:32.260MapQuest, including like different stops along the way. It was going to be like a six or eight
00:14:37.120hour drive and printing out different segments of the route and binding them together and like
00:14:45.720little binders that I distributed to my friends. Wow. That's that's where we were at back in the
00:14:52.800early aughts. We've come a long way to where we are today. If you are a young person listening
00:14:59.200to Mike tell that story and you're like, what the hell is he talking about? I am talking to you.
00:15:04.220I want to know do if you are if you are 35 and under do you just by default share your location
00:15:11.500with friends or do you not like what's the vibe around location sharing I do not share my location
00:15:17.340with anyone the idea of sharing it with people by default seems wild to me but I want to know
00:15:22.840also you know dovetailing back to Bravo it does sort of remind me of the episode that we did
00:15:29.740about Andrew Huberman, which is if you're living foul, cheating, or I won't say cheating, but like
00:15:37.140doing something in your relationship or life that you know you're not supposed to be doing.
00:15:42.640I've, I said this in that episode about Andrew Huberman. It is always a digital thing or a tech
00:15:49.740thing that is the tell. You gotta be, you gotta have your iPad, iPhone, location, Venmo, you know,
00:15:58.880You got to have all that stuff, like, super locked down.
00:16:01.860You got to have your OPSEC on lock if you are doing something that you know there is someone that you don't want to find out about whatever you got going on.
00:16:11.640I'm telling you, but it's always OPSEC with tech.
00:16:16.740Yeah, and I think those habits can really last a long time.0.99
00:16:19.780And for example, I have a friend who she used to be a serial cheater, let's say, and part of her whole strategy was never saving phone numbers with names in her phone.
00:16:34.620Right. So she so like if she got a message coming up and somebody was like looking over her shoulder, they couldn't be like, oh, who is Frank?
00:16:44.480um and so this hypothetical friend still does this to this day even though to my knowledge she's not
00:16:53.540like living that life anymore it's just like an ingrained habit maybe it's the same thing with
00:16:59.320young people sharing their location where they grew up in uh an environment where they were
00:17:04.900children and not up to anything nefarious and felt safe sharing their information and now that
00:17:12.700You know, they are like Amanda Bacchula, who is, I guess, just embarking on a life of deception.
00:17:23.360Her digital practices have not caught up to her lifestyle.
00:17:27.320Oh, Amanda, honey, get in touch with me.
00:17:29.800You have a lot to learn about this nefarious lifestyle that I would actually caution you against because it is very time consuming.
00:17:37.180And it's actually better to just be honest with people in your life.
00:17:39.720One last thing, I did just start watching Vanderpump Rules from the beginning, a show I've never watched before.
00:17:47.680It's art. That's all I'll say. The journey that I am on.
00:17:52.760If you've watched the show, reach out to me because I have a lot of thoughts.
00:24:11.300I, my favorite George Santos moment was just at the peak of all of his scams coming to light and, you know, the party being over.
00:24:24.860And they were also over the top, you know, scamming other House of Representative members, scamming their moms, scamming his own campaign donors.
00:24:35.640It was just like permeating all levels of media.
00:24:41.460And I remember it was in December, I think, that all of this was like breaking down.
00:24:47.540And so I was at Christmas with my family and, you know, the kids were all excited Christmas morning.
00:24:55.400And my dad was waking up kind of kind of groggy and could hear the kids excited.
00:25:58.780Also, Broadway plays, they have a playbill, right?
00:26:02.500They have a physical playbill and it's online.
00:26:04.480It's such an easily provable lie and such a weird and specific lie.
00:26:10.420Like, I don't think a day has gone by where I don't think about that weird lie.
00:26:16.280He kind of seemed like somebody who just really liked the attention of it all.
00:26:20.240I wonder if his interest in Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark was like, he was like a moss to the flame of the weird attention around that particular ship.
00:26:34.700Some people scam for money, some people scam for the love of the game.
00:26:38.760Honestly, I think that is what's going on here.
00:26:42.260And speaking of scammers, did you see this Instagram news this week about the hacking?
00:26:48.580I did. It was pretty surprising given how many billions of dollars Meta has sunk into its AI program. I think they just laid off like 10% of their workforce because they wanted to pivot those resources towards AI.
00:27:08.580So you might expect that for all of that investment, they would have like a really high functioning AI system.
00:27:19.240You would expect that, but you would be wrong because according to 404 Media, hackers were honestly pretty easily, it sounds like, able to break into the Instagram account of high profile people and high profile organizations like Obama's White House account.
00:27:35.960the Instagram account for the chief master sergeant of Subace Force,
00:27:39.780and the makeup brand Sephora's account.
00:27:43.420How were they able to do this, you might ask?
00:27:45.680They literally just asked Meta's janky-ass AI support chatbot.
00:27:52.040So back in March, Meta phased in AI support to all accounts on Facebook and Instagram
00:27:57.200to do critical maintenance like resetting passwords.
00:28:00.440This is a little bit of a different thing.
00:28:01.880Like, I know this isn't about AI agents,
00:28:03.460But Facebook and Meta have really been regulating a lot of their essential functions to AI lately.
00:28:11.980You know, they've really done a lot more when it comes to AI moderation.
00:28:14.600And I can anecdotally tell you this has been a little bit of a nightmare, right?
00:28:17.800Like a spate of people that I know who run their own brands have had their accounts deleted for really no reason.
00:28:24.040I think because of this uptick in using AI to handle these like critical functions for the platform.
00:28:31.460And so AI agents is obviously a little bit of a different thing, but I do think it speaks to the fact that Meta is really prioritizing outsourcing some of these tasks that heretofore had been done with more human oversight just to AI.
00:28:45.860And the wild thing about all of this is that all these hackers had to do, it sounds like, is basically ask the AI agents for access to the accounts they were trying to get into.
00:28:57.820And the AI agents are like, sure, here you go.
00:29:00.160Yeah, I remember reading that. The trick, the like deep hack of it all was that they first initiated a password reset and then asked politely. And the support bot was like, OK, sure. Yeah, seems seems legit. No way this could be a scam.
00:29:19.400They asked very nicely. This is from 404. Over the last several days, Telegram groups for security
00:29:25.760researchers and hacking groups have been sharing videos and screenshots of the steps taken to
00:29:30.480steal an account, which appeared to be shockingly easy. One video shows a hacker starting a
00:29:35.900conversation with Meta's AI support bot and asking it to link the target account with a new email
00:29:40.980address. Just link my new email address. This is my username, like, and then their email address.
00:29:45.920I will send you the code. Thank you. Then the AI agent sends an eight-digit code to the attacker's
00:29:52.960email address. The attacker enters that code, gets a password reset email, giving them access to that
00:29:58.840account. The vulnerability is an astounding high-profile example of the types of risks that
00:30:04.140companies are putting their users and workers under when they offload important functions to AI.
00:30:09.880That really says it all. Like this is something I mean, if I'm a nobody, although I do have a verified account, but like I would not expect high touch human, you know, I would not be surprised if somebody like me is not getting high touch human help from Instagram.
00:30:27.820But we're talking about Barack Obama's White House account.
00:30:35.600So I will say, this is where things get a little bit funky,
00:30:39.240Meta's spokesperson, Andy Stone, said that the vulnerability had been fixed,
00:30:43.840but completely disputes 404's claim that former President Barack Obama, his account had been hacked.
00:30:51.580I don't totally know what to make of this.
00:30:53.380Stone said that claims that the vulnerability was used to hack into the accounts of world leaders were, quote, totally false.
00:31:00.440But as 404 reported, Meta did acknowledge that the vulnerability coincided with a series of high profile Instagram account takeovers, including a verified account used by Obama when he was in the White House.
00:31:13.720So Meta confirmed to TMZ that this did actually happen, that Obama's account was compromised and that that account at Obama White House was, while it was compromised, started posting these AI-generated images and messages written in Arabic for over the course of several hours on Sunday before the account was fixed and restored to its normal state.
00:31:37.040One of the posts read, quote, the White House is under Shiite's control.
00:31:43.180And so TMZ saw this and confirmed before these messages were deleted that it happened.
00:31:48.720So, like, it's not in dispute that Obama's Instagram account was taken over.
00:33:57.420It's not going well to the point where a former president of the United States had his account compromised.
00:34:02.020I guess I guess thinking about it now was like they can't say that because that is that reveals like I do.
00:34:09.020I guess I feel like this is a sufficient enough screw up that the way that they're they almost kind of can't be honest about it because it's so bad.
00:34:18.920If they were honest and said, yeah, our overuse of AI that wasn't ready and wasn't on the level to save money meant that a former U.S. president's account was compromised in this way, our bad, the smokescreen of AI being this super great investment and a great thing to be investing in and a way to save money and a reasonable reason to let go all of these human employees and expertise, that whole smokescreen comes down.
00:34:48.500So part of me is like, well, I guess the reason why this whole thing just seems so fishy is that they can't say that.
00:34:53.920So then they're like, well, yes, this vulnerability happened.
00:34:57.180And yes, Barack Obama's account was compromised.
00:35:23.160And it's almost like the whole thing is in beta.
00:35:25.060All of us, all of the users of Meta's products are just beta testers.
00:35:30.720And it's like, okay, well, a couple accounts got hacked and hackers had control over posting weird stuff for a few hours.
00:35:40.340Now we've fixed the problem and so let's all move on.
00:35:43.040And I guess that's fine for Meta, and, you know, it seems like Obama hasn't suffered any long-standing damage from his account becoming compromised in this way, but we don't know, and also we don't know if the other people whose accounts were compromised did suffer damage.
00:36:00.380You know, like maybe the hackers were able to access private information of theirs.
00:36:06.160They could have posted something that did cause damage.
00:36:11.320It just feels very shoddy and is clear that the safety and well-being of users is secondary to cost savings from AI.
00:36:25.500And I guess I just just stepping back a little bit, I can't stop thinking about how many AI agents are probably also being used to manage even more sensitive things than an Instagram account, like financial accounts.
00:36:39.900Like, if this AI is this janky that you could just basically ask it, give me access, and it will, it doesn't feel like, yeah, this kind of a shoddy framework should not be propping up our entire financial and internet system, I guess.
00:36:57.080Perhaps that's not a great situation for anybody.
00:41:25.960I've talked about this on the podcast before. At this point, state level AI regulation is just incredibly important. It's one of the things that impacts how AI can or cannot be used, what information you have to be given by law about the way that AI is being used on a local level.
00:41:47.500It impacts how you live your day to day. There's already a spate of this kind of state level AI regulation out there. Colorado passed one of the first comprehensive state AI laws in 2024 focused on protecting people from things like algorithmic discrimination and high stakes decisions, things like hiring or lending or housing.
00:42:08.360It requires companies be transparent about when AI has played a role in those decisions and gives consumers the right to an explanation.
00:42:16.680So if you are trying to get hired and AI just, you know, sifts your resume into the no pile, because of this law, you have a right to an explanation and you have the right to know that AI was used in that decision making process.
00:42:31.560It's not much. We deserve much more. But it is something. Or like in Michigan, where they passed a package of laws requiring disclaimers on AI-generated political ads and banned deepfake political content within 90 days of an election.
00:42:46.700Or the, I think it's like 20 or so states that have some kind of state-level law regarding deepfakes, right?
00:42:54.340This legislation would override all of that state-level legislation.
00:42:58.840So the big criticism of this legislation, even though it sounds kind of like common sense and good on its face, is that in that way, it kind of seems like one big gift to big tech, you know, replacing the stronger state protections with a weaker federal ceiling.
00:43:16.960And often how it works is states will pass regulation or legislation, and then you have all this like piecemeal state-by-state legislation, and that kind of forces some sort of a federal way to address some sort of legislation.
00:43:30.980This would say, no, no, no, states can't do anything.
00:43:33.900There's a federal ceiling, and it's much, much weaker.
00:43:36.240Public Citizen, which is a consumer advocacy group, called this legislation a, quote, disastrous proposal that does nothing to address algorithmic discrimination, deep fakes, youth mental health harms, or things like consumer fraud.
00:43:49.880And interestingly, surveys of the constituents in both of the sponsors' districts found that majorities actually oppose any kind of weakening of their state's existing AI protections.
00:44:03.00056% in Oberynolte's district and 63% in Trahan's district in Massachusetts.
00:44:09.260So, you know, this does not sound like legislation that their own constituents are really that keen on.
00:44:15.200No, what it sounds like is a remix of what the Trump administration was trying to do last year with their moratorium on all state level action or legislation about AI regulation.
00:44:29.900It sounds exactly like that, kind of dressed up in some different clothing.
00:47:33.940the parent company of Glamour, laid off most of its remaining U.S. editorial staff in April,
00:47:39.940including their editor-in-chief, Samantha Berry, who had been there since 2018,
00:47:44.500with no plans to replace her, which to me, I was like, you're letting go of your editor-in-chief
00:47:50.780of a major magazine. You're like, you know, we don't even need an editor-in-chief anymore.
00:47:53.900That should tell you where this is sort of going and where they're sort of going as a media entity.
00:48:00.120So the company has essentially pivoted their publication to almost entirely affiliate commerce content.
00:48:07.480Things like granny sandals are the secret to a stylish summer and the best spray sunscreens for easy application.
00:48:14.820The business model is like earning commissions when readers click through to Nordstrom or to Amazon to buy one of the things highlighted in these, I guess, advertorials, I guess is what you would call them.
00:48:28.640What a grim industry, you know, just like AI slop driving people to affiliate links to buy stuff from.
00:48:41.340I feel like you're being generous, including Nordstrom.
00:48:43.520We know it's Amazon. It's just, it's all Amazon.
00:48:46.020It's always Amazon. It's either, like, Amazon, I'm so sorry to say, Amazon is the ceiling.
00:48:53.360You get a little bit lower, Timu, you get a bit lower than that, like, yes, it's, I was being a little bit generous with saying Nordstrom,
00:49:01.700because it's, these, anybody who's ever clicked one of these knows, it's not, they're not like, how can I put this?
00:49:09.300They're the scammiest feeling brands in the world.
00:49:12.160Yeah, you're clicking a link that's right next to a banner ad
00:49:16.600that's trying to trick you into, like, downloading an executable or something.
00:50:12.020The changes offer a stark example of how women's magazines have declined in size and relevance in the digital era.
00:50:17.620And it could provide a glimpse of the direction more of the remaining women's magazines take as people seeking styling tips and a knowing sharp editorial voice increasingly turn to newsletters, social media platforms, or even chatbots.
00:50:31.100And I guess I just wanted to include this because, one, it just makes me incredibly sad as somebody who cares about the state of women's media.
00:50:39.040And two, I do think that this New York Times piece is right, that it does say something about our current digital landscape as it pertains to women's media.
00:50:50.140So I didn't know much about Glamour's history, but I learned a lot from reading this New York Times article.
00:50:56.300Conde Nast first started the magazine as Glamour of Hollywood in 1939, making it one of the company's oldest titles.
00:51:03.280But then they shortened the name to just Glamour when World War II reshaped the lives and ambitions of American women.
00:51:10.840They decided they wanted to focus on, quote, the girl with a job, which would then guide its coverage for decades.
00:51:18.920Its glossy pages contained fashion and beauty, but also sex tips, coverage of abortion, sexual violence, and women's growing financial independence.
00:51:28.460Glamour was one of the first to affirm Anita Hill after she accused Clarence Thomas, then a Supreme Court nominee, of sexual harassment in testimony before Congress back in 1991.
00:51:39.400And Anita Hill spoke about this in an interview.
00:51:41.260She said that this magazine amplifying her voice and giving her a platform, and it being a women's magazine specifically, she said that it took a women's magazine, quote, to understand what the moment could mean to women.0.97
00:51:53.880So it is sad to me that Glamour would now just be essentially affiliate links for women to buy more crap. It just sounds like Glamour did not make the shift to digital well, like the digital age, and that they could never quite figure out who or what their audience was.
00:52:13.640And because of that, ad sales really struggled because they couldn't get a clear answer.
00:52:18.400And while they were trying to fine tune that and figure it out, readers just left because
00:52:23.820in today's digital climate, they're not going to other competitor magazines.
00:52:28.700They're going to things like Instagram, YouTube, Facebook groups, and sub stacks, like individual
00:52:34.720people with actual opinions and aesthetics.
00:52:38.060One former Glamour editor who now runs her own style newsletter said,
00:52:41.520these magazines were so big, they had to appeal to everybody. And that's exactly the wrong thing
00:52:46.880to try to be right now. People want a person, not a publication. So in all that, the only content
00:52:53.740stream that seemed to actually bring in real revenue for the magazine was the shopping content.
00:52:59.100Glamour kind of understandably started emphasizing commission driving links. And again, it doesn't
00:53:04.860sound like this is a bad financial choice. The piece said that they're getting several millions
00:53:09.500of dollars a year in revenue from these affiliate links. And importantly, it is not only women's
00:53:16.200magazines that do this. You know, a lot of media outlets use affiliate links in one form or another.
00:53:22.400Like the New York Times has Wirecutter where they're giving you all of these reviews of gadgets
00:53:26.480and stuff. And then if you click through and buy one, they get a cut. But it does make me incredibly
00:53:32.180sad that this once strong women's brand is now kind of just about shopping and buying stuff.
00:53:39.000you know, women's media is incredibly important to me. Finding Bitch Magazine when I was in high
00:53:45.180school and my mom took me to Barnes & Noble is probably why I'm a feminist today, why I was kind0.99
00:53:50.760of an early adopter of feminism, you know, in the 10th grade. Watching movies like How to Lose a1.00
00:53:57.160Guy in 10 Days and 13 Going on 30 and my favorite depiction of a female journalist in media living0.68
00:54:03.060single, Khadijah running Flavor magazine. When I was growing up, the coolest job that a woman1.00
00:54:09.300could have was working in women's media and running a women's magazine. And it's just incredibly sad0.96
00:54:15.120to see the state of things. It is sad to see a respected legacy brand just fail to adapt.
00:54:24.240And this strategy of using their name recognition and cachet to push affiliate links to just buy products, it seems like a really short-term strategy to just cash in on what is left of the prestige of the brand.
00:54:45.900And I have to imagine that there's a pretty limited shelf life for how long you can do that.
00:54:51.860I guess it's the natural state of things that like some media brands survive and many don't
00:54:58.300and there's change, but it is sad to see. And I think that's really where I'm at. I think it's
00:55:03.680just a story of media right now, but also any kind of niche or identity media. Like if you make,
00:55:13.240you know, I make media for traditionally marginalized people. If you are making media0.85
00:55:18.340in any kind of niche like that, it's just incredibly fraught. And I think the institutions
00:55:24.140that we, that I grew up thinking were sort of in our corner, could not figure out how to survive.
00:55:30.580And then the void that is left gets filled by individual creators and individual voices on
00:55:36.980things like YouTube and Substack and Instagram. I'm not knocking that. That is not nothing. But
00:55:42.580I really hate this idea that individuals on their YouTube channel or their newsletter or their sub stack or whatever can fill the void left by institutional media.
00:55:54.540Right. Whenever there's like layoffs at the post or something, everybody says, oh, just start a sub stack.
00:59:28.900but also there's a lot of sadness of what we've lost
00:59:31.940And also, I think, risk in the loss of institutions. And like, where is that power going? Because that power is not going to all of the individuals. Maybe it happens to go to a handful of individuals at this particular moment. But really, the power has shifted from institutions to social media companies.
01:00:01.940let's get right back into it don't even get me started as somebody who has been
01:00:15.620making media for a long time i've just seen i've just seen how this works like i remember
01:00:25.760working at a media company when we all got pulled into a meeting and we were told,
01:00:32.320hey, you know how we prioritize the written word? Facebook says that video is king now.
01:00:39.820So all of you journalists who write, you're done. It's video now. And that was all based on lies.
01:00:49.600The way that our entire media ecosystem has been increasingly eaten up and owned by like five assholes, it infuriates me because I don't know what the future is.0.99
01:01:03.300And it's like, even when you start your own YouTube, start your own podcast, you're still doing it, right?1.00
01:01:08.680It just feels less and less like there is a path forward for individual creators or voices or media to do anything where you're not building your entire vision on a house of sand owned by an asshole.0.91
01:01:25.860Like, it just feels like there's, I mean, I feel like people are probably hearing frustration in my voice because I feel a little, I'm in this right now.0.97
01:02:26.040All of these changes are to keep us from having access to what it is that we need,
01:02:31.560which is information, having easy, reliable access to truthful, good information about
01:02:39.180the world around us so that we can be participants of our democracy and of our civic landscape.
01:02:44.660I feel like that is the thing that we are trying to be kept from.
01:02:47.800And so people who are trying to do that, they're making it harder and harder.
01:02:51.200honestly they're making it feel more and more laborious to stay in the game of creating media
01:03:00.640I feel they're making it I honestly do feel like the point is squeeze people out to the point where
01:03:06.900they don't where it's like what's the point of making the show what's the point of making the
01:03:10.040content what's the point if I can if I could make double if I could make a million dollars a year
01:03:14.060just doing dumb affiliate links why wouldn't I do that like I just hate that the things that
01:03:20.120actually feed and nourish and educate people are so de-incentivized in our current media tech0.79
01:03:26.580landscape and just serving people affiliate links for junk they don't need is so incentivized and
01:03:35.060it's like i see this every day and sometimes i ask like like why why what is the point of like
01:03:40.420like it's just it's just an uphill battle that feels very um demoralizing at times and so part
01:03:47.060of me, I can't even really blame Glamour for saying, yeah, it turns out that amplifying Anita
01:03:51.940Hill and coverage of like paid leave and abortion rights didn't make us money. You know what does
01:03:57.160make us money? Selling sunscreen through affiliate links. So we're going to do that from now on.
01:04:01.220Thanks, everybody. Bye. We're packing it up. I think that's exactly the right question. Like,
01:04:05.180what is the point? And my sense is that a lot of journalists do not get into it to make money,
01:04:12.840If your main goal is you want to make money, journalism is probably not the way to go. They get into it because they want to shine light onto the abuses of power. They want to inform people. They want to educate their communities. They want to contribute to culture.
01:04:33.440But then, you know, you do need to keep the lights on. And so there's that tension there. But I feel that, how to even articulate this, the pressure to keep the lights on and to make money has been hijacked by tech companies who have been like so good at it, so good at scale, right?
01:04:56.960Like selling the idea that everything needs to scale. And if we think back to that AI bill that we were just talking about, where the whole point of the bill is to preempt states from passing any sort of laws that might be seen as slowing the ascendancy of AI companies from completely dominating our economy.
01:05:18.100It's just like taken as an article of faith that like, well, of course, if we want the economy to grow, we need to rig all of the rules so that these five companies can, you know, endlessly grow at the expense of everybody else.
01:06:35.480I said this at an event not that long ago when Meta was first rolling out their AI personas on Instagram, where it was an AI-generated person that had an Instagram account and was a chatbot.
01:06:50.220And they were like, oh, you can talk to this person.0.81
01:06:51.740And it was no surprise to me that they started with a black queer woman that was AI generated that had a fake AI generated Instagram account.0.76
01:10:30.920Well, now that I'm good and mad and also existentially all mixed up and confused, I have a little bit of an update for you.
01:10:39.860We did a deep dive into Brayden Peters, a.k.a. the Manosphere livestreamer Clavicular, a few weeks ago.
01:10:47.660That episode ended with me telling y'all that he had had an OD on a livestream and that because of that OD, he said that he was going to be refraining from substances.
01:10:57.720but that that meant that he might have to stop live streaming because he did not feel like he
01:11:02.460could live stream sober. Well, what's he up to now? He has continued to live stream. And a story
01:11:09.720from Wired this week is prompting kind of a bigger conversation about the manosphere
01:11:15.080and what it's doing to women, particularly sex workers, who appear on his streams.
01:11:22.780So Peters showed up to this Miami party hosted by a porn industry podcast called Pillow Talk.
01:11:29.740I don't listen to Pillow Talk, but from what I could tell, Pillow Talk is sort of meant to be like a sex, I guess I'll say like sex worker friendly.
01:11:38.760Like it's not a platform that is about denigrating anybody engaged in sex work from what I could tell.
01:11:44.980We talked about this in our episode about Peters, but he doesn't actually pull huge numbers from his kick live streams. Wired reports that he gets about 7,500 average viewers on his streams, but he has built a much larger profile through the clipping industry, which is where people are paid to cut short excerpts from his streams that will then go viral on Twitter and Instagram and TikTok.
01:12:12.800So even while his streams live don't get a ton of viewers, those clips, those short form clips can get millions of views per clip once they're clipped on social media.
01:12:25.920And listeners will remember that a couple of weeks ago when we originally reported on this, we were talking about how institutions like the New York Times had given him long, glowing spreads, elevating his platform that I can only imagine has contributed to larger audiences than he otherwise would have had.
01:12:46.500Exactly. And the clipping bit, that's been in the news recently. There's this great piece, I think it was in Verge, called Everything is Fake, about how essentially people being paid are able to essentially make anything go viral through short form clipping.
01:13:03.240All of these Manosphere dudes do this. Andrew Tate was a real pioneer of this clipping strategy. He was using it specifically to get around the fact that he had been banned from most mainstream social media platforms. And so basically he was if you were like a young person who was in his Hustlers Academy, the real grift was like you could make a little bit of money short form clipping his podcast and flooding TikTok with them.
01:13:27.980So even though he was banned from TikTok, his content was there because of this short form clipping strategy that we're seeing Peters also employ.
01:14:19.160And so at this pillow talk party, Peters berated multiple women on camera0.97
01:14:25.560calling one a, quote, disgusting porn creature and accusing her of funneling children into0.95
01:14:31.780the adult industry. And she left in tears when adult film star Willow Ryder complained to the0.92
01:14:38.640podcast host, Ryan Ponow. She says that he told her that she was bringing a bad vibe to the whole0.89
01:14:45.140scene, man, and that Peters was the most famous person in the room. And so, like, I don't know,
01:14:51.260i guess that means he's the most famous so no one can have a feeling about the way he's treating
01:14:56.920them because he's the most famous person in the room also i've heard of willow rider she's pretty
01:15:03.720famous like like i don't i don't know how i would compare the fame of an adult film star versus the0.73
01:15:11.160like i guess notoriety of somebody like peters but she's certainly like she's got a million0.88
01:15:15.580followers on X. She's not a nobody. I would even dispute. I don't know how we would compare and
01:15:21.940contrast, but she's not a nobody either. So Willow Ryder, because she has a platform,0.96
01:15:27.580she posted about this publicly and that post got almost a million views. And it blew up into
01:15:32.940a much wider conversation about what is actually happening in this space. The dynamic that Wired
01:15:39.120lays out on their piece about this is just genuinely very grim. They say that the OnlyFans
01:15:45.680economy has shifted so that these performers have to promote themselves individually rather than
01:15:50.720being able to rely on agents or studios, something me and these performers have in common, I have to
01:15:55.640say. And that means that they are then relying on large streams or podcasts as a growth strategy,
01:16:03.860even if that growth strategy is like, oh, come on our podcast and we'll berate you.
01:16:08.180You know, we talked about how Fresh and Fit, they had the same kind of thing where they'll get OnlyFans models or women who do OnlyFans on their live streams, and they're just horrible to them.
01:16:21.180And the whole point is to berate them or, you know, talk down to them or like provoke them into a fight. And that that gets a lot of engagement in streams and that weirdly you could make the argument that like it's good for the performer being berated because, hey, that's, you know, more people are going to subscribe to your channel or whatever.
01:16:42.020you'll get money but like is it good because you're contributing to a culture that is denigrating
01:16:48.000women and denigrating sex workers it's like i don't know when i was researching this episode
01:16:52.240i was reading the comments in this wired piece and so many of the comments were like if these
01:16:57.200performers are getting more subscribers and more money that's good for them right like who cares
01:17:02.400how they're being treated but it's like well no you're you're you're perpetuating stigma towards
01:17:07.720sex workers which could be dangerous right this attitude where it's like sex workers aren't human
01:17:13.040don't deserve respect if you're a porn performer you don't deserve respect it doesn't matter how
01:17:16.940anybody treats you that actually is it might be monetarily and financially beneficial to this0.53
01:17:23.920individual sex worker but it does contribute to a larger climate that i might argue is like
01:17:28.800detrimental to that person in the in the in the long term basically like i don't know i'll be i
01:17:33.880will be curious for other folks's thoughts that like i'm i'm not a sex worker so i don't want to
01:17:37.800say you know one way or the other because how the hell do i know but i guess i i was surprised to
01:17:42.880see so many people saying that the only thing that matters here is that this that this performer
01:17:48.120would be getting more money and a bigger audience it's like well there are other things that matter
01:17:52.320in life you know yeah i also would be so curious for any sex workers or people involved with this
01:17:58.120to write in and let us know how they feel about it.
01:18:00.860You know, I certainly don't want to judge sex workers
01:18:05.240if that's the thing that, like, works for them.0.99
01:18:07.240But, like, we cover a lot of heinous shit on this podcast.0.91
01:18:10.520And for some reason, this story is, like,0.99
01:18:12.600one of the most grim, most depressing to me.
01:18:15.620The idea that there's, like, this whole economy
01:18:18.780that OnlyFans models and sex workers are, like,
01:18:23.120participating in where they, like,0.99
01:19:19.680while profiting from those same sex workers.0.92
01:19:23.060Peters allegedly runs his own OnlyFans agency on the side.
01:19:27.460So he is directly profiting from the same women that he degrades on these live streams.
01:19:33.620He just obviously keeps that quiet because he has trained his audience into hating sex workers while he himself is managing and making money from sex workers.0.98
01:19:47.040And it's worth pointing out that that is different from, like, if you're into a humiliation kink, like a consensual humiliation kink, that's one thing.0.65
01:19:55.860But it sounds like he is actively deceiving his audience in ways that seem likely to be dangerous.0.90
01:20:06.660And the reason that I'm talking about this on the podcast is that it's not about Peters.
01:20:11.540It's not about one individual live streamer.
01:20:14.320This is a business model. Fresh and Fit do this. You know, Andrew Tate does this. We watched that Louis Thoreau Manosphere documentary. This is a business model where these guys denigrate porn performers and sex workers, but also benefit from their exact same business model. They own agencies. They manage sex workers. And so it's, yeah, it's really a business model based on lying to men and boys for views and money.
01:27:13.460there are a few things that like boil my blood more than somebody taking a public good and being
01:27:20.260like i owe this now oh i know this about you that is that is like a specific thing that like gets
01:27:26.240under your skin yeah so the backlash really intensified after screenshots that i saw showing0.93
01:27:34.640requests that she had made for other sellers to remove products featuring the phrase hot girls
01:27:40.940Read. I can't verify whether or not these are real, but I did see screenshots of other small
01:27:48.180business owners appearing to have been DM'd by this person saying, hey, I got the trademark for
01:27:53.760this. You need to take this down. And so a lot of folks who had been using Hot Girls Read long
01:27:59.800before this trademark was filed started worrying that this enforcement could harm their business.
01:28:06.640And these are people who feel like they helped popularize this slogan.
01:28:10.880One thing I should note is that my understanding is that the trademark does not apply to every use of the phrase in every context.
01:28:20.500The registration that she filed, it has to be tied to specific merchandise categories like stickers or mugs or, you know, sweatshirts or something.
01:28:27.480And I think that that detail often gets lost in the social media discussion that she can't come after you just for, you know, saying hot girls read or like if you were selling like a car wrapper that said that or something, she couldn't come after you for that.
01:28:42.200It's like specific merchandise categories.
01:28:44.860So she deleted her celebratory post and then put up a much longer, much more somber post.
01:28:51.880A lot fewer exclamation points and yellow heart emojis in this one.
01:32:16.160I feel like the phrase small businesses in this conversation is playing the same role as like real Americans, where it's like, what exactly are you talking about?
01:32:47.680Allie Rose Co. has trademarked the common phrase of hot girls read, which will screw over smaller businesses and creators for no good reason.0.93
01:32:55.640Allie Rose did not invent this phrase.
01:32:57.800And she also did not trademark her business name.
01:33:26.500Yikes, indeed. And I will say something else. I did see this sort of interesting thing happening where a lot of people are sticking up for Ali and saying, oh, she's being bullied. You know, she took down her post, her celebratory post.
01:33:42.320Listen, nobody should be sending her threats and like a lot of hate and all of that.