There Are No Girls on the Internet - Dylan Mulvaney breaks returns to social media; debunking affirmative action myths; Canva’s Black hair backlash; Is ChatGPT stealing your data？; Google blocks Canadian news sites — NEWS ROUNDUP

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00:00:34.940 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:00:38.460 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:00:43.680 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:00:47.300 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,

00:00:51.020 abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:00:54.640 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:00:58.680 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:10.380 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:01:18.500 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:01:21.220 i'm here with my producer mike mike how you doing today doing pretty good there's a lot of smoke in

00:01:29.520 the air but other than that i'm doing pretty good well let's see if we can clear out some of that

00:01:34.020 smoke with news stories that you may have missed this week on the internet so we have to start

00:01:39.440 with talking about the supreme court by now you've probably seen that the supreme court ruled on

00:01:43.680 affirmative action ruling that race can no longer play a part in college admissions notably the

00:01:49.160 decision just applies to race. It does not apply to things like gender or legacy status or donor

00:01:55.000 status being considered in college admissions. So I thought, what better time than now to revisit

00:01:59.980 some of the myths about affirmative action and break down some of the online chatter that I'm

00:02:04.560 seeing and have seen about the issue. So first, I think it's really easy to think that affirmative

00:02:10.300 action has only helped Black folks like me, but that is not the case. In fact, that is actually

00:02:15.340 not even a little bit true. According to the United States Labor Department, the primary

00:02:19.920 beneficiaries of affirmative action are white women. And because the Supreme Court ruling only 1.00

00:02:25.760 applies to race and not gender, that means that white women will continue to benefit.

00:02:31.120 What's weird is that despite being the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action,

00:02:35.480 white women are also more likely to be against affirmative action. This is according to a 2014

00:02:40.400 Cooperative Congressional Election Study that found that nearly 70% of the 20,694

00:02:46.720 self-identified non-Hispanic white women surveyed either somewhat or strongly opposed affirmative 0.90

00:02:52.820 action. So I've already seen a lot of people online saying that the reason why this happened

00:02:57.640 and the reason why affirmative action was struck down was because Asian American people were big

00:03:02.640 mad about not getting into Harvard. Now, I get how it is easy to think that, but it's not exactly

00:03:07.340 true. I would actually argue that Asian American people were being exploited by one person who

00:03:13.240 pretended to actually care about them and their interests in order to better serve his own agenda,

00:03:18.660 right? Like, tail as old as time. And it's also worth pointing out that it's just messed up,

00:03:23.200 I think, to blame this on Asian Americans as a group. In fact, Asian Americans are actually

00:03:28.660 more likely to be supportive of affirmative action. According to NBC, polling found that

00:03:33.800 a higher share of Asian Americans support affirmative action, with 53 percent who have

00:03:38.600 heard of the policy saying that it's a good thing. Another 19 percent say it's a negative thing.

00:03:43.420 A different 2022 survey, which polled registered Asian American voters, found that 69 percent of

00:03:48.460 them favored affirmative action programs designed to help Black people, women, and other minorities

00:03:53.620 get better access to higher education. So branding Asian Americans as against affirmative action

00:03:59.140 just is not correct. You know, we're already living through a time where there's so much

00:04:03.580 anti-Asian hate going on, and we need to be crystal clear about this. This ruling is a

00:04:08.800 symptom of white supremacy, full stop. And that means that it is a victory for the same white 0.96

00:04:13.760 supremacists who are fueling that current wave of anti-Asian hate. So when people try to blame 0.52

00:04:18.800 this ruling on Asian Americans, they are falling into the trap of white supremacy that pits

00:04:24.660 marginalized groups against each other in service of white supremacy. So how did we get here? Well,

00:04:31.000 it all started with conservative litigant Edward Blum. I say litigant because that's what he is,

00:04:36.680 right? Like if you go to his Wikipedia entry, that's how it describes him. He is a professional

00:04:41.640 lawsuit bringer. He connects potential plaintiffs with attorneys who are willing to represent them

00:04:47.100 in test cases, which he then tries to use to set and establish legal precedence. He's the founder

00:04:52.740 and also the only member of the Project on Fair Representation, which he founded in 2005,

00:04:58.220 which focuses on voting, education, contracting, employment, racial quotas, and racial reparations.

00:05:03.240 So you can kind of think of him as like a professional hater.

00:05:07.200 He isn't even a lawyer.

00:05:08.980 He's just wealthy and well-connected.

00:05:11.560 He is actually responsible for the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

00:05:14.720 This is from The Guardian.

00:05:16.020 Shelby County v. Holder, a case that he sponsored in 2013,

00:05:19.260 led to the Supreme Court to overturn a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

00:05:24.680 Now, Blum told The Guardian that he was worried from the fallout of that ruling,

00:05:28.060 even though it's not clear what he thought was going to happen.

00:05:31.560 But that ruling spurred conservative legislators in Texas, North Carolina, and other states

00:05:36.200 to revive laws that the Justice Department had previously blocked or were expected to block

00:05:40.640 on the grounds that they were vehicles for voter suppression.

00:05:43.700 So basically, Blum has been trying to come for affirmative action since 2013.

00:05:48.500 Y'all might remember that back then he was working with Abigail Fisher, who was this white woman with red hair.

00:05:54.540 Like, if you don't remember her name, you probably remember this image of her standing on the Supreme Court steps with Blum.

00:06:00.680 She had this, like, red hair. Like, you might remember that image in your mind.

00:06:05.440 So who is Abigail Fisher?

00:06:06.740 Well, Abigail Fisher did not get into the University of Texas because her GPA was mid, basically.

00:06:13.400 She sued the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 after it denied her admission.

00:06:18.500 Interestingly, she sued them when she was 30, so like several years after this denial took place.

00:06:25.100 Her GPA was 3.59 as a senior, which put her just below the cutoff of the state law requiring University of Texas to accept students that graduate in the top 10% of her class.

00:06:37.000 So she was not in the top 10% of her class.

00:06:39.660 She was under the top 10% of her class.

00:06:42.220 Although she argued that her extracurricular activities combined with her academic record would have qualified her if UT had not used race as a factor in its holistic approach to selecting the remainder of its 2018 freshman class in what she said was a violation of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.

00:06:58.600 Now, it didn't work with Abigail. And if folks remember, she actually kind of was treated like a little bit of a joke. Mike, do you remember this at all? 0.67

00:07:06.540 I have to admit I don't. But like hearing you describe it, it's pretty wild that she feels like race and all of the historical baggage that comes with that should not be considered for college admission.

00:07:23.260 And yet, you know, her extracurricular activities should and that they somehow counted up to make up for her totally middling GPA. 0.75

00:07:36.380 And somehow she wants like the law to come in on this side.

00:07:41.360 I don't know.

00:07:41.820 It's I actually don't remember this story.

00:07:45.280 I kind of wish I did, but it sounds wild.

00:07:48.660 Yeah, she was, I have to say, like roundly mocked.

00:07:52.940 I think because her GPA, like it's a fine GPA, 359 is like nothing to sneeze at, but it's not

00:07:59.340 an automatic acceptance to the school of your choice. Like you would still have to work and

00:08:04.080 be well-rounded and all of that to be accepted with a GPA like that. I think the reason why she

00:08:08.500 was sort of treated as a joke is because she was just not a very sympathetic character, right? Like

00:08:14.300 she had a pretty good, not great GPA. And I think that she came off as somebody who was entitled,

00:08:22.080 Like, you know, I believe that I'm good enough to get into this college.

00:08:25.280 Like, I can't imagine that it was me, that my GPA and my extracurriculars weren't as good as I thought they were in my mind.

00:08:34.820 I have been wrong because I did not get into UT.

00:08:39.020 Yeah, I think entitled sounds about right based on this story. 0.95

00:08:44.440 So Blum, when the Abigail thing didn't work, Blum stepped back and regrouped and he came back and decided to make the face of the victims, in scare quotes, of affirmative action Asian Americans. 0.57

00:08:59.940 So this is why I say it's not accurate to say that Asian-Americans were angry about not having gotten into their colleges of choice and that that is why affirmative action has been rolled back.

00:09:11.980 It is because this guy made a deliberate, specific choice to make Asian-American students the faith of the, quote, victims of affirmative action.

00:09:21.460 So Blum and his group brought two cases that led to this decision, one on behalf of Asian-American students who claimed that Harvard's admission policies discriminated against them, and another for white and Asian students denied admission by the University of North Carolina.

00:09:34.640 So why I bring this up is because it is a great example of how effective it is to pit marginalized groups against one another in service of white supremacy.

00:09:44.040 Because I believe that these Asian American students probably thought that Blum had their interests, you know, at heart and was doing this for like genuinely doing this to serve their interests.

00:09:56.500 And they might have like genuinely had questions about the policies at these universities or whatever.

00:10:03.080 However, this ruling, I don't think, is actually going to help these Asian American students because it basically, I think, is going to help white people.

00:10:11.820 If legacies and donors and people who are well-connected and white women are still allowed to get whatever leg up that university admissions policies have been giving them, I don't see how that will actually end up helping these Asian American students.

00:10:26.140 And so I think that these students have been misled by Blum and, in fact, are having their interests exploited by somebody in service of their larger agenda to roll back progress in this country, which they have done time and time again, like has made no mistake about that being what they want to do.

00:10:45.460 Yeah, it seems pretty transparent that that is what he's after here.

00:10:49.740 Yeah. And, you know, just something else that I find interesting about these conversations around affirmative action is just how many people in the United States think that Black people, one, get automatic entrance to whatever college we want, and two, get to go to college for free. 0.59

00:11:09.380 I've had people tell me this to my face.

00:11:11.720 It is a, this might sound shocking or surprising, it is a commonly held piece of misinformation

00:11:18.300 that people actually genuinely believe. 0.75

00:11:21.760 And again, it really goes to show you how insidious but also nonsensical racialized

00:11:28.560 misinformation is because it doesn't even really have to make sense if it feels true

00:11:33.280 and speaks to people's worst imaginings of marginalized people.

00:11:37.600 Because think about it.

00:11:39.380 If Black people can get into any college we want, automatic acceptance, and also attend college for free, take spots from white students, and then another piece of, like, commonly held misinformation that it is mostly Black people who are, like, living off welfare or living off of the system more than other groups, how do those two things make sense together, right? 0.50

00:12:00.400 Like, how is it that, like, Black people can go to any college they want for free but also are the largest recipients of things like welfare and social programs?

00:12:08.220 It doesn't make any sense.

00:12:09.380 no it totally doesn't make sense and i think like i don't know it's just a it's just a

00:12:15.800 tough time i think when we think about like where our country is i can't help but mention that we're

00:12:24.140 talking about this almost a year to the day after the role after supreme the supreme court rolled

00:12:29.860 back row um you know book bans left and right like it does feel like we're in this place where

00:12:38.300 the very fabric of our country is being eroded and it is difficult to know what to do like

00:12:46.080 and people who say like oh you got to go out and vote the thing that gets me about that that

00:12:52.060 narrative of the like voting narrative and obviously voting is very important but I think

00:12:56.720 it was like, what? The majority of the justices who helped usher this decision in were put there

00:13:06.840 by presidents who lost the popular vote. So I don't think we can vote our way out of this.

00:13:12.000 Like, that's not really how it works. And so people being like, oh, the importance of voting,

00:13:15.060 it doesn't really seem like a good answer to the kind of cosmic problem it feels like we're facing

00:13:20.600 right now yeah i get that like voting is totally necessary and it's completely insufficient yeah i

00:13:28.900 mean i i could go on about supreme court reform which is also necessary and also insufficient

00:13:35.180 right like this is a cultural thing you were just talking about those irreconcilable nonsensical 0.99

00:13:40.920 beliefs that people have about affirmative action and the like yeah the the ways in which black

00:13:49.560 people are like super privileged in our American society and like get all this free stuff given to

00:13:55.500 them uh and and how like white people are excluded from uh this and that and it's obviously so

00:14:04.220 bananas right like that's just like it's obviously not true I mean I got my free car from the

00:14:11.380 government I got I got my college was paid for I could go to any college that I wanted to for free

00:14:17.360 and yet I still decided to attend 0.90

00:14:19.780 a shitty state school in North Carolina. 0.99

00:14:22.020 Weird. 0.99

00:14:22.440 I know when I could have gone to Harvard,

00:14:25.180 I don't have to apply.

00:14:26.540 I can just show up and be like,

00:14:28.200 I'm here, Harvard.

00:14:29.400 I just get to go for free.

00:14:30.980 You know, we get all this free stuff.

00:14:32.380 You know how it goes. 1.00

00:14:33.220 I guess you don't because you're white. 0.98

00:14:34.320 You don't get it. 0.96

00:14:35.100 No, I don't get it.

00:14:36.020 I'm shut out.

00:14:37.060 I'm, you know,

00:14:39.340 I'm completely shut out from all these things.

00:14:42.400 I mean, everybody knows that for too long 1.00

00:14:44.780 it has been the black woman 0.99

00:14:46.400 who has had her boot on the throat 1.00

00:14:48.360 of white men like you, Mike. 1.00

00:14:50.500 This shit is so sad, though, 1.00

00:14:52.680 because, like, affirmative action was so positive, right? 1.00

00:14:56.500 Like, it made colleges more diverse.

00:14:59.680 And it's interesting because it is a population-level intervention

00:15:04.540 that is designed to address population harms

00:15:08.860 that have been done to Black people over generations

00:15:13.560 due to a legacy of slavery and then Jim Crow and whatever term historians want to give to this era

00:15:23.460 we're currently living through. There are like deep systemic forces keeping black people down

00:15:31.580 and affirmative action and college admissions is one way to address those population level harms.

00:15:40.660 And also it is like a population level remedy to not just like provide justice for those past harms, but also like fix the future by making our society more equal and providing more paths to opportunity.

00:16:02.520 So that the people who graduate from college and go on to have more influence in society and government and business and our communities are a more diverse set of people, which just makes us all better, healthier, more resilient.

00:16:24.780 Well, I think that's the point. I think that the reason why people like Plum and the people who support this rolling back, they don't want a world where people who look like me have have a chance to be to even have a I wouldn't even say equal footing to be in those positions.

00:16:43.640 And I also think, like, they for so long have been drumming up this fear about sending your kids to college or your colleges are going to be hotbeds of, like, woke indoctrination or whatever.

00:16:55.560 I think that for them, rolling back affirmative action is another way to be like, oh, I can safely send my kids to school.

00:17:04.420 There's going to be less marginalized people there.

00:17:06.980 They will be less likely to be influenced by those people.

00:17:09.300 What they're actually doing is preventing their children from being around different people, people who have different backgrounds, different perspectives.

00:17:16.980 That is what college is all about.

00:17:18.660 And so it's so funny how these are the same people who have been able to call, you know, other people like, oh, you're snowflakes.

00:17:25.480 You're so afraid of what happens at college campuses.

00:17:27.700 You're not letting speakers come, blah, blah, blah, all of that.

00:17:30.620 When it's really them, they are the ones who are afraid, are afraid.

00:17:34.280 They are the ones who don't want their, you know, daughters to have to go to school with people who are different. 0.95

00:17:39.640 And I think that's really what it comes down to. That's why these people are championing this.

00:17:43.220 I think it's exactly what you said, that they want. 1.00

00:17:45.980 It feels like payback for what little progress black and brown people have made in this country.

00:17:51.840 And it is a way to kind of hopefully from their perspective, make it so that when their kids go to college, they are not having to come home on weekends and be like, Dad, are you a racist? 0.98

00:18:04.280 Dad, are you like, do you have like shitty attitudes about people of color? 0.97

00:18:08.920 Yeah. And I think it's important to also, you know, to not think about this in a vacuum, 0.97

00:18:13.560 but to consider it in the context of what other changes and policy debates are happening around higher education.

00:18:21.720 I suspect a lot of the people who are cheering this ruling are the same people who are demanding,

00:18:29.700 budget cuts to universities, demanding that curricula be stripped of any sort of discussion

00:18:37.420 of race or gender identity, and also probably the same people who are insisting that what little

00:18:47.620 resources are left over for higher education all get funneled into STEM or engineering or

00:18:57.340 technical skills, which are like great fields. Uh, I, I love science. I love technology. I love

00:19:02.540 engineers. Uh, I love math. Uh, these are great things and people should definitely pursue them,

00:19:07.580 but they are not sufficient for a well-rounded education. They don't, they alone do not train

00:19:15.780 people how to, uh, be good citizens who contribute to a good society, uh, on their own. And I think

00:19:24.240 that people who are advocating for that really view college as just like like a certificate

00:19:30.780 program that makes people eligible for such and such of a job and in some ways you know i think

00:19:37.180 those criticisms are maybe kind of fair but in the bigger ways i think they completely miss the mark

00:19:45.240 of what a college education can be to opening up people's minds to this world that we all live in

00:19:53.180 together and, and this life that each individual student lives on their own, uh, and just, you

00:20:01.640 know, shutting people out, making it a more narrow experience in terms of the people that a student

00:20:06.640 gets to interact with a more narrow experience in terms of the ideas and, uh, subject matter that

00:20:13.500 they get exposed to just, yeah, just really is limiting and narrow and sad. Yeah. It's, it's sad

00:20:23.160 And also scary and reinforces a white supremacist worldview of oppression.

00:20:35.420 Let's take a quick break.

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00:21:25.140 That's 844-844-IHEART.

00:21:27.620 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:21:33.420 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:21:39.780 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:21:43.360 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.

00:21:51.940 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

00:21:56.200 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:22:00.760 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:22:08.200 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:22:12.020 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:22:15.680 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:22:19.280 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:22:32.760 And we're back.

00:22:36.040 So this is not the only thing happening in the courts right now.

00:22:40.460 let's talk about OpenAI versus the people. A new class action lawsuit has been filed against

00:22:45.380 OpenAI, the company run by Sam Altman that developed ChatGPT, which has kind of become

00:22:50.360 like the face of AI. The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI stole, quote, massive amounts of personal

00:22:56.240 data to train ChatGPT. The lawsuit claims that OpenAI has basically been mining the digital

00:23:01.800 footprints of you and me, regular people, whether you use AI tools or not. OpenAI crawled the

00:23:08.860 internet to collect huge amounts of data to train its programs to learn language, including a lot

00:23:13.700 from social media sites. The lawsuit claims that OpenAI went far beyond simply scraping the public

00:23:18.880 internet and that the data access included, quote, private information and private conversation,

00:23:24.940 medical data, including information about children, essentially every piece of data exchanged on the

00:23:30.740 internet it could take without notice to the owners or users of such data, much less without

00:23:36.280 anyone's permission, end quote. So this amounted to, quote, the negligent and otherwise illegal

00:23:41.860 theft of personal data of millions of Americans who do not even use AI tools, the lawsuit claims.

00:23:47.480 So it's about everybody, whether you use ChatGPT or not. The suit also claims that OpenAI stores

00:23:54.220 and discloses users' private information, including the details they enter to create

00:23:58.300 OpenAI accounts, their chat log data, and social media information. And in case you're thinking,

00:24:03.500 well, I've never used ChatGPT or another OpenAI program,

00:24:07.820 the suit says that it also disclosed the data of people who used sites that were integrated with ChatGPT.

00:24:13.660 That includes sites like Snapchat, Stripe, Spotify, Microsoft Teams, and Slack.

00:24:19.180 Now, the lawsuit is calling for OpenAI to basically pause until this is all dealt with

00:24:23.400 by issuing a temporary freeze on commercial access to and commercial development of OpenAI's products

00:24:28.960 until the company has implemented more regulations and safeguards,

00:24:31.680 including allowing people to opt out of data collection and preventing its products from

00:24:36.100 surpassing human intelligence and harming others. The lawsuit also seeks financial compensation

00:24:41.020 for people whose data was accessed to train bots. Yeah, there's a lot there. And I will admit that

00:24:47.780 I don't know the details behind the claims in this lawsuit, but the claims of the lawsuit are

00:24:52.600 pretty intense, right? Like the idea that they didn't just scrape the open internet, but they

00:24:58.300 essentially, and I'm paraphrasing here, if I understand correctly, looked into every nook

00:25:03.300 and cranny to find any piece of private information that was not locked down, whether it should have

00:25:09.660 been or not, and then use that. And that's not cool. Yeah. The lawsuit makes it sound like it

00:25:16.660 wasn't just a once over. It was like a deep cavity search of these internet nook and crannies. Any

00:25:22.820 information that was out there, according to this lawsuit, it took to train their models.

00:25:27.340 And I think this lawsuit makes it pretty clear that AI is developing way more quickly than we have guardrails for.

00:25:34.780 And clearly, we need those guardrails.

00:25:37.840 The people who make AI are in such a rush to skip over that part that now we're already in the, like, convincing everyone that AI is the future and that we all need to get on board part.

00:25:48.500 But we don't even necessarily know what it is we're getting on board with.

00:25:52.400 How will we be used?

00:25:54.320 How will we be exploited?

00:25:55.960 Will we be harmed?

00:25:57.140 Who will make money off of us?

00:25:58.420 These are all questions that have not really been answered, even by Sam Altman, the head

00:26:03.240 of ChatGPT and OpenAI.

00:26:05.080 He has not answered these questions.

00:26:06.520 And so I do think it just shows that we can't just move so quickly for technology that is

00:26:12.240 so powerful.

00:26:13.100 I don't want to get to the part where I just accept all of this as the future without answering

00:26:18.540 some of these critical questions about my role in this, even if I'm somebody who's

00:26:22.320 never used an OpenAI program a day in my life.

00:26:25.320 Yeah, this is a super interesting story.

00:26:26.800 and i am really interested to see where it goes and and how it evolves i think a pretty

00:26:34.100 interesting thing about it is that it's a it's a class action suit brought on the behalf of a

00:26:40.120 bunch of individuals but really those individuals represent all of us and it's completely consistent

00:26:47.580 with a lot of stuff that sam altman has said uh that they would just take what data they could

00:26:56.120 get, right? Whether they had permission to use it or not, that wasn't their concern. They just

00:27:02.040 wanted to get the data, train these models, get as much data as they could. And it's an interesting

00:27:07.460 contrast with some other domains that have been using AI. Video games, for example, I read a

00:27:16.600 story earlier this week about Valve, the company that owns Steam, and how they had rejected a

00:27:23.000 developer's game because it relied on some AI. And he couldn't prove that he owned the rights

00:27:29.100 to the underlying intellectual property that was used to train the AI. And I think that's related

00:27:36.240 here because in that story, it's business entities who are very prone to suing each other,

00:27:45.300 especially over things like intellectual property. And I think there is this sense that

00:27:52.240 the internet uh and the the data that belongs to you and me ordinary internet users who are not

00:27:59.580 engaged in some sort of commercial activity but just like using the internet there's a sense that

00:28:05.640 that data is just like up for grabs and this lawsuit if i understand it correctly says that

00:28:11.240 that's not the case that uh actually we should have some expectation of privacy uh regardless

00:28:17.240 of whether you're trying to build the world's greatest AI tool or anything.

00:28:23.460 And so I think that's an interesting aspect of it, too, that I hope gets affirmed.

00:28:27.880 Yeah, this is I mean, I could talk all day.

00:28:29.540 I find this so fascinating.

00:28:30.640 But there is a precedent online where when we're talking about regular people, our information,

00:28:37.580 the things that we put online, when it can financially benefit somebody else, then there

00:28:44.940 tends to be this idea of like, well, the internet is just like ideas and data and information out

00:28:50.740 there and who knows who owns what and like whenever somebody else can benefit. But it's

00:28:55.600 interesting to me when it's like business entities, of course they need to protect their intellectual

00:29:01.160 property and their data. And so it's like, you know, I think taking a step back here, it's easy

00:29:06.700 to create technological innovation when you steal, when you just take things that don't belong to

00:29:13.880 Like, that's just what's going on here. When we talked about it in our episode about AI art, when the Lensa selfies were all over social media, half of those, quote, AI generated selfies had watermarks on them. They weren't AI generated. They were stolen. They were art that a human artist made and put online and that Lensa's, their AI art selfie app, just stole.

00:29:38.900 So yeah, it's easy to rush technological innovation when you just take what doesn't

00:29:44.280 belong to you. And I think that it's time for us as regular people to say, yeah, some stuff

00:29:50.280 belongs to me. My data belongs to me. If you don't have my permission to my private information and

00:29:57.140 my private data that I put online, you can't just scrape it for profit. Unacceptable. And so I'm

00:30:02.580 curious to see how this lawsuit shakes out. Yeah, it's an interesting take you just

00:30:07.580 articulated there it's like an anti-colonialist approach to privacy and protection of intellectual

00:30:15.780 property uh because you know it kind of feels like there's parallels right like if you can just

00:30:22.660 go and take resources from uh another people and make them your own yeah that's gonna fuel a lot

00:30:31.580 of growth and wealth. And I think that's something that we've seen happen a lot of times throughout

00:30:40.860 history. People love to take stuff from other people. And, you know, that's also something

00:30:46.020 that is really facilitated by othering specific groups. Oh, that is a great setup to this whole

00:30:54.400 story with Canva. Okay, so last year, the graphic design company Canva, who I actually, I actually

00:30:59.960 love Canva. I use it almost every day. If you don't use Canva, it is a tool that makes it easy

00:31:04.420 to create kind of plug-and-play, drag-and-drop graphics. Many folks use it for work if they

00:31:09.660 don't have access to a graphic designer. So Canva last year announced its Text-to-Image app,

00:31:15.120 which uses AI to curate and design images. According to their website, they say,

00:31:20.040 with this magic new feature, you can turn your imagination into reality by watching your words

00:31:24.640 transform into stunning, one-of-a-kind images. In the announcement, Canva says that they invested

00:31:29.280 heavily in safety measures that help the millions of people using our platform be a good human and

00:31:34.460 minimize the risk to our platform being used to produce unsafe content. For text-to-image,

00:31:39.460 this includes automated reviews of input prompts for terms that might generate unsafe imagery

00:31:44.100 and of output images for a range of categories, including adult content, hate, and abuse.

00:31:49.120 And apparently, these unsafe images include hairstyles of Black women like me. That's 0.61

00:31:57.360 according to Adrielle Parker, a diversity and inclusion professional and the author of the

00:32:01.960 Inclusive Leadership Journal, who posted on LinkedIn that she was playing around with Canvas

00:32:06.060 text-to-image app and prompted it to generate a picture of a Black woman with Bantu knots,

00:32:10.780 which if you don't know what that is, it's a Black natural hairstyle where you kind of like 0.99

00:32:15.320 twist your hair up into little tiny little buns all over your head. It's a cute style. I can't

00:32:20.540 really pull it off, but it's a cute style. And when she did this, an error appeared telling

00:32:24.700 me that ban two may result in unsafe or offensive content. In response to her LinkedIn post,

00:32:31.060 Canva apologized, saying, yes, we fixed this in text to image and have raised the elements

00:32:35.520 concerned with that team too. This is from their trust and safety product lead at Canva,

00:32:40.020 who also said, thank you for flagging it, Adriel Parker. These are actually a great pair of examples

00:32:44.900 of the balancing act that we have. On the one hand, if the safeties over-trigger, like in text

00:32:49.840 to image, it can result in perceptions like you raise here. On the other, if the safeties don't

00:32:55.320 trigger, we can end up showing offensive results, like in the elemental search that you've also

00:32:59.920 highlighted. He continued, of course, we do strive for simply not having offensive representations.

00:33:06.040 That is not easy to do at scale, and feedback like yours is crucial to helping us find things

00:33:10.140 that slip through the gaps. But Parker wasn't having any of it, right? Parker said, honestly,

00:33:16.080 doubling down on a message and implying that an image of Black women with natural hairstyles

00:33:19.720 like Bantu knots is potentially unsafe or inappropriate content for your community is

00:33:23.780 not it. At the very least, craft a more thoughtful and intentional Canva spots. Again, please do

00:33:29.180 better. There are plenty of folks out there like myself who are ready and willing to support.

00:33:34.360 So yeah, I mean, again, I love Canva and I have been a big champion of Canva's story,

00:33:40.580 which is like very inspiring. It was founded by a woman who got lots of no's for funding until

00:33:45.640 finally getting a yes and the rest is history. But I do think this kind of goes to show that

00:33:51.220 technology like AI really is not neutral. It's easy to think that AI is like a computer brain

00:33:57.380 like a sci-fi movie that is just like spitting out computer stuff that we don't understand that

00:34:02.160 is not coming from us. That is not true. It is being trained and programmed by humans. And as

00:34:08.360 humans, we all have biases and baggage. And if you're not careful, those things can just be

00:34:14.620 recreated by that technology. And I would say having that, having those biases be even more

00:34:21.120 entrenched in our society because the technology is so powerful. We talked a bit about this off

00:34:26.540 mic. You have some like very interesting questions about what's going on here, right, Mike?

00:34:32.560 I do. I am so curious. My primary question is this, and I would love for somebody from Canva

00:34:39.060 to come on the show and and answer it for us oh my god as a canva devotee i would welcome that

00:34:45.620 yeah so like my big question is how did the word bantu end up on the disallow list right and like

00:34:53.520 i've been thinking about this a lot and you know maybe it's naive of me but i really want to give

00:35:00.420 them the benefit of the doubt here that you know there there was no malice that canva was really

00:35:06.060 just trying to like prevent their platform from producing offensive images uh and they they messed

00:35:14.940 it up like they said they got this balancing act wrong it's pretty rare that i'm willing to give

00:35:19.540 tech companies the benefit of the doubt but i'm willing to do that here maybe just because for

00:35:24.500 the sake of argument it makes things more interesting it's like how did the word ban

00:35:29.440 to end up on that list it's it's a name for a hairstyle it's a name for a people it is not a

00:35:35.540 slur and it you know it really made me think that at the end of the day you can have like the

00:35:42.160 the fanciest most sophisticated ai platform available but between the outputs of that

00:35:50.120 platform and the end users there is a list of words that one or more humans have put together

00:35:57.220 and been like yep that one's not allowed that one's not allowed like is that how it happened

00:36:01.540 how did this happen that's one of my questions how did this happen how did this word get on that

00:36:05.320 list and then the other question is less direct but and you know you and i talked about this

00:36:12.660 a little bit of like where where is the line where trying to police an algorithm so that it

00:36:26.880 never produces anything offensive crosses over into territory where it starts to other people

00:36:34.280 who are just trying to use it and like you said reinforce those entrenched uh you know racism

00:36:42.100 sexisms uh all the isms that we try so hard on this show to to fight against uh where is that

00:36:54.640 line it's it's a hard question it's a good question and i would say like i don't know if

00:37:01.280 this is the answer and it might sound simplistic, but this is why you need to make sure from the

00:37:06.260 start you have people in the room who are training and designing and building this technology

00:37:12.580 who look like and can share the background of the people who are going to be using it. Because

00:37:18.900 I mean, again, I don't know, but I can imagine someone being like, ooh, Bantu. I don't really

00:37:25.220 know if that's an offensive term or not. We'll just add it to the problematic terms list. And

00:37:30.220 That is so deeply marginalizing to just sort of say, like, even if it's done with good intentions, to just sort of say, like, we'll just sidestep the issue by saying any word that is indicative of blackness or race, we're just going to add that to the list.

00:37:47.260 Interestingly enough, I have heard in our episode that we did with Nandini Jami from Check My Ads, the ad tech watchdog organization, she's talked about how brands who don't want their advertising or their images next to things that are offensive will just be like, okay, anything to do with blackness, gender, sexuality, anything like that, we'll just not include that.

00:38:08.740 And so they're doing it because they don't want to have to figure out, like, is this going to be brand safe? Is this not? But in doing so, they are just further marginalizing communities and identities who are already marginalized.

00:38:21.100 And I guess, yeah, like, this is why it's important to have inclusive teams.

00:38:25.320 Like, it's not just because it's the right thing to do or the nice thing to do, which it is.

00:38:30.300 It's because that is how we can make decisions that are not marginalizing, even decisions that are made with, like, good intentions of not wanting to offend or not wanting to have offensive things on your platform.

00:38:42.960 Hell yeah.

00:38:43.880 You know, can't be neutral on a moving train.

00:38:46.380 Nope, you cannot.

00:38:51.780 More after a quick break.

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00:39:41.720 That's 844-844-iHeart.

00:39:44.700 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:39:50.100 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:39:56.480 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:40:00.180 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.99

00:40:05.300 Shut up. Don't say anything. 0.99

00:40:08.600 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

00:40:11.940 So I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:40:17.400 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:40:24.800 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:40:28.760 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:40:32.220 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:40:35.340 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:40:49.120 Let's get right back into it.

00:40:52.520 So let's quickly talk about this kind of interesting new study.

00:40:56.200 So you might associate falling for fake news with your boomer parents, but younger folks might actually be the most susceptible to misinformation online.

00:41:04.620 This is according to a new test developed by some psychologists at the University of Cambridge, which is the first validated misinformation susceptibility test that is meant to give an indication of how vulnerable a person is to being duped by fake news online.

00:41:18.520 So they paired examples of real news from real news outlets like Pew and Reuters, and then they made confusingly credible headlines, similar to the misinformation encountered in the wild, in an unbiased way using ChatGPT.

00:41:32.600 Hope their data was safe when they were using it.

00:41:36.380 It wasn't.

00:41:37.240 It's out there.

00:41:38.700 Okay, so here's what the test found.

00:41:39.880 The good news is that we're actually not doing too, too badly.

00:41:44.400 On average, adult U.S. citizens correctly classified two-thirds or 65% of headlines that they were shown as either real or fake.

00:41:53.160 That's actually pretty good news. I'm surprised that it was that good.

00:41:56.200 Yeah, it is nice to highlight the good news. 1.00

00:42:01.260 Yeah, maybe people aren't the dum-dums we think they are. 1.00

00:42:05.480 Maybe they're not. 0.81

00:42:06.340 they did find that younger adults are worse than older adults at identifying false headlines,

00:42:11.740 and that the more time someone spent online recreationally,

00:42:15.060 the less likely they were to be able to fail real news from misinformation.

00:42:19.660 Some 30% of those spending zero to two recreation hours online each day

00:42:24.440 got a high score compared to just 15% of those spending nine or more hours online.

00:42:29.880 So that's super interesting.

00:42:31.460 We do need to keep in mind that this was a cross-sectional study, so we can't say...

00:42:35.480 What does that mean?

00:42:35.900 So it means, that's a great question, Bridget. A cross-sectional study is a study that was conducted at a single moment in time across a group of people, right? So it just found associations. The result you just described there, you know, they split people into two groups of people who spent zero to two hours online each day versus a group who spent nine or more hours online each day, right?

00:43:01.000 We've got these two extreme groups. They're extreme in the sense that they're, they're very different. And they found that those in the, you know, the people who only spent two hours online each day, 30% got a high score, meaning that they were pretty good at telling apart misinformation from real information. And the people who spent nine or more hours online, uh, got a low score.

00:43:23.180 Uh, you don't leave. And so that's interesting. And so one might want to jump to the conclusion

00:43:31.260 that like, okay, spending time online on social media makes one worse at telling apart the

00:43:39.340 difference between truth and falsehood, but that's not a conclusion that this data supports,

00:43:45.220 right? Uh, it's just as likely based on these data from this cross-sectional study that was

00:43:50.780 conducted a single moment in time, that maybe those people spend more time online because

00:43:57.480 they're more susceptible to misinformation and all the misinformation they're encountering

00:44:03.100 out there is more appealing to them or more enraging or emotionally evocative to them

00:44:08.300 or something like that.

00:44:09.680 So this study can't say that spending time online causally makes anybody better or worse

00:44:16.980 at telling apart misinformation from truth.

00:44:19.680 what this study does tell us is that people who spend a lot of time online those are the people

00:44:26.020 that have the biggest problem telling apart truth from um mike who died and made you the expert on

00:44:33.060 studies like this and how they're done i mean nobody died i'm not the expert i do have a phd

00:44:39.720 in psychology uh this is the kind of thing that i do you know uh i experimental design

00:44:46.380 design is something that I get paid to do. So I'm not the expert, but I think most experts would

00:44:55.020 agree that one cannot infer causality from a cross-sectional design like this, which is fine.

00:45:01.340 We can still learn a lot of valuable things about these associations.

00:45:04.940 Okay. So maybe unsurprisingly, people who get their news mostly from social media scored worse

00:45:09.720 than people who get their news from legacy news organizations like NPR or the Associated Press.

00:45:14.620 And again, we can't make any inferences about the direction of causality there, but it is a very interesting association.

00:45:21.740 And lastly, there was a party split.

00:45:24.520 Democrats performed better than Republicans on this test, with 33 percent of Democrats achieving high scores compared to just 14 percent of Republicans.

00:45:31.860 However, almost a quarter of both parties as followers were in the low scoring bracket.

00:45:37.100 One thing I really like about the method that they used for this test is that the fake stories were truly fake. They were literally made up by chat GPT. So there's zero room for anybody to whine about researcher bias or anything like that.

00:45:53.320 So I think it's kind of interesting to see these commonly held beliefs about misinformation and who was falling for it be challenged, right? Like, it's easy to think that young people who grew up online as digital natives are, like, too savvy to fall for fake news. This is a good reminder that it can happen to the best of us. Even me, I fall for it. Mike, have you fallen for it?

00:46:13.940 for fake news yeah i do uh you know you're you're right it's nice to see our commonly held

00:46:20.240 attitudes challenged and uh it's nice to see some data affirming the fact that there is wisdom in

00:46:28.500 age that's kind of a nice thing to take away uh but i'm just kind of like stalling for time have

00:46:33.840 i fallen for fake news yeah of course like earlier this week uh somebody who i really like

00:46:39.400 and respect and think of as a very like smart person sent me uh uh a post saying that twitter

00:46:48.300 was suspending the accounts of people who blocked too many other accounts and particularly other

00:46:55.540 advertisers and i was like oh my god this is what elon's done now uh and i was like ready to take it

00:47:02.400 to the bank and file it away and talk about it on this news take it to the bank well you know the

00:47:08.860 the pod oh you mean the bank where we put our like the document where we like our like our

00:47:14.200 news idea roundup bank not like the bank where the money is stored yeah right the news idea

00:47:20.840 roundup bank yeah not the money bank no i don't i don't take anything there but i'm i make

00:47:27.240 uh but i was like all good to go at it i'll set and then i was like well let me just look into

00:47:35.560 this and like find some evidence that supports this thing that this guy said and and it just

00:47:42.560 wasn't there there was just zero evidence to support it there were like a couple people who

00:47:47.920 said that they thought maybe there was a rumor that it was happening but and maybe it is happening

00:47:54.740 right like i would not put it past twitter uh but i was not able to find any evidence to suggest

00:48:02.700 that that was happening and if listeners are aware of evidence uh i'd love to see it you know we can

00:48:08.240 talk about it next week but uh but i was totally taken in with it because it really fit with my

00:48:16.100 preconceived ideas of what kind of nonsense shenanigans elon musk's twitter would get up to

00:48:23.480 it seemed like a totally believable thing i wanted to believe it because it was just one more piece

00:48:29.460 of evidence about what nefarious people they were or he is uh but you know fortunately there was a

00:48:39.700 couple days between then and now and uh you know cooler heads prevailed and now we're just talking

00:48:47.480 about it as a fake thing yeah i saw that story and i also was willing to believe that that's

00:48:54.140 something that elon musk would do yeah and to be clear i still believe it is something he would do

00:48:59.020 i just am not confident that it is something he has oh anything that anyone would say is some i

00:49:05.500 would be like yep that's he would do that i believe he would do that there's not there's

00:49:08.500 not much out there that i would not believe that he would do just to be really clear but

00:49:14.200 something about the story also seemed not legit to me so i didn't share it i didn't like i don't

00:49:22.600 i don't know why something about it i was like i don't know like i don't know uh i to be clear i

00:49:27.180 don't know if it's, if it, I cannot, I can either confirm or deny that it's happening. I have not

00:49:31.100 looked into it, but something about the story didn't seem correct to me. And I saw it and did

00:49:35.580 not engage with it. I had a, I myself shared some fake news recently. It was a, and I, I unshared

00:49:41.340 it and was like, oh, this was not true. So it was a video that purported to show South African

00:49:47.200 firefighters who were all dancing in an airport in route to being sent to Canada to help fight

00:49:54.200 the wildfires it was like a cute video of these men dancing I shared it immediately and I know

00:49:59.840 you know usually when someone shares something incorrect online it's because it is like speaking

00:50:07.200 to some emotional need that they have or some sort of like emotional like place that they're in

00:50:12.380 and I can tell you exactly what it got in me you know this is the second or third day this summer

00:50:18.140 that I've been unable to leave the apartment because of the wildfire smoke you know I have

00:50:22.480 I have pretty bad asthma and a whole host of respiratory issues.

00:50:26.400 And so I really, when stuff like this happens, I really can't go outside.

00:50:30.060 And seeing this video of, like, smiling South African men, black men, like, dancing and, you know, the idea that, like, oh, these are the men who are going to, like, go to Canada and, like, fix the smoke, it really gave me warm fuzzies.

00:50:45.160 Come to find out that video was taken, like, five years ago.

00:50:47.760 It had nothing to do with the current wildfires.

00:50:50.340 So, like, technically, it's not fake news, but it is, like, taken out of context.

00:50:58.860 But I shared it because it spoke to my emotional needs.

00:51:02.980 Like, I've been stuck in the house.

00:51:04.740 The idea that these men were coming to fix the fire so that I could go outside finally

00:51:09.140 really spoke to me.

00:51:10.340 And I shared it.

00:51:11.360 And then I had to unshare it.

00:51:12.400 So it does definitely happen to the best of us.

00:51:14.720 It does not matter if you're young, digital native, tech savvy, grew up online.

00:51:19.800 it can happen to the best of us. Yeah, it can. We all got to be vigilant, especially for things

00:51:27.220 that fit with our preconceived notions of how things are going to be or, like you said,

00:51:34.360 fulfill some sort of emotional need that we have. Facebook and Google have both been battling with

00:51:40.600 the Canadian government over a new law that was just passed in Canada called the Online News Act.

00:51:45.520 Now, this law would require that Google and Facebook pay news organizations and publishers for distributing links to news stories.

00:51:52.260 The law has not gone into effect just yet, but once it does, Google and Facebook say that they're going to start removing news articles by Canadian publishers from their services in the country.

00:52:01.880 According to NPR, the Canadian government estimates that the law would result in a cash injection of some $329 million into the Canadian news industry,

00:52:10.260 which, just like here in the United States, has been plagued by news staff layoffs and other downsizing in recent years.

00:52:17.560 Supporters of this legislation have argued that it could provide a much-needed lifeline to the ailing news industry,

00:52:22.580 which has been gutted by Silicon Valley's ironclad control of digital advertising.

00:52:26.980 Now, this Canadian law is modeled after the law in Australia.

00:52:30.080 We did a whole episode on that like a few years ago, which we'll link to in the show notes.

00:52:34.300 And folks might remember, I'm sure Australians do, that that tense negotiation between Facebook and news publishers led to Facebook being temporarily shut down in Australia.

00:52:44.720 There's a similar bill here in the U.S. in California that would force tech companies to pay publishers.

00:52:50.280 And yep, Facebook and Google have threatened blackouts there, too.

00:52:53.160 Now, both Facebook and Google, like, don't seem to see news as a key part of their strategies.

00:52:59.840 And it seems like they're thinking, like, oh, it'll be easier just to block news altogether rather than pay for it.

00:53:05.100 Now, I want to be clear that I absolutely think that something needs to be done.

00:53:09.720 But how this should play out is, like, a little bit above my pay grade.

00:53:13.800 NPR has a great summary of some of the different positions.

00:53:16.560 They write,

00:53:17.600 While most major publishers in Canada back the new law, outside media observers have not been so sure.

00:53:23.160 Tech writer Casey Newton has argued that attacks on displaying links would effectively break the internet if it was applied to the rest of the web.

00:53:29.940 Other critics have pointed to the lack of transparency over who would actually receive the cash infusion from the tech companies.

00:53:35.580 Some feared that programs could be hijacked by disinformation sites that learn how to game the system.

00:53:41.000 Yet press advocates insisted that tech companies retaliating by threatening to systemically remove news articles will be a blow to civil society and the public's understanding of the world.

00:53:50.500 At a moment when disinformation swirls in our public discourse, ensuring public access to credible journalism is essential.

00:53:57.440 So it's deeply disappointing to see this decision from Google and Meta.

00:54:00.640 This is from Liz Woolery, who leads digital policy at PEN America, an organization that supports freedom of expression.

00:54:06.520 Woolery continued, as policymakers explore potential solutions to the challenges facing the journalism industry, platforms are free to critique, debate, and offer alternatives.

00:54:15.480 But reducing the public's access to news is never the right answer.

00:54:18.980 yeah it's a tough one uh like i hear what she's saying but like you pointed out newsrooms are

00:54:27.120 facing cuts after decades of facing cuts right like it's it's just been decades of cuts cuts

00:54:34.040 cuts cuts and you know there's at least two sides to giving the public access to news there is

00:54:43.060 making the news available to them to read when it's been written. And there is funding the

00:54:51.080 news outlets that pay the people that write the news. And we need both.

00:54:59.180 Yeah, I mean, I, listen, I worked in media for a long time. It's not a coincidence that that is

00:55:07.720 no longer the case for me. Broadly, I think that Facebook has had way too much control over our

00:55:13.380 media landscape. For a while, Facebook would actually direct traffic to media sites, and now

00:55:20.420 it just keeps you on Facebook, right? It used to be when you clicked a link on Facebook, it would

00:55:23.980 take you out of Facebook. Now, Facebook is just interested in keeping you on Facebook.

00:55:28.680 When I was working in media, the great pivot to video fraud happened, which I'm still angry about.

00:55:34.900 Nobody except for Facebook executives are served when Facebook is allowed to just gut entire industries that people rely on to stay informed like they have.

00:55:45.680 And I think that Facebook and honestly, like, media executives who are chasing the shiny new thing have vastly contributed to this precarity of media in general, right?

00:55:55.320 Like, all of my friends who still work in media, they are all either laid off, about to be laid off, or they're, like, delusional, or they're just starting a freelancing business because they know they're probably going to be laid off and rehired to do their same job at a fraction of the cost, so they may as well get a leg up on that now.

00:56:15.620 And so it's not a good time to be in media. It is an incredibly precarious situation. And I think that Facebook really should take a lot of the blame there. You know, entire strategies and budgets were built around things that Facebook said. In the case of the pivot to video, things that Facebook said that weren't even true, they were lies, right?

00:56:35.060 And then Facebook will just change course with no warning. And all that money, all that energy, all that capacity is just gone. So those people just get let go. And for a while, Facebook was saying like, oh, we want to be involved in journalism. We want to save local journalism by partnerships with local newsrooms.

00:56:54.520 And now Facebook has basically been like, no, actually, we don't even need news. And the people who were leading those partnerships have been laid off from Facebook. And so I don't know what the answer is. But I do think that people need access to accurate news. I think that Facebook, like the answer can't just be that Facebook gets to take whatever it wants without paying for it. And the only people who benefit here are Facebook.

00:57:21.240 You know, I don't know what to do, but it's it's it is a it it doesn't look good for media.

00:57:27.300 And I think that is in part because of Facebook.

00:57:32.340 Yeah, I mean, between Facebook and Google, I think that is most of the advertising online.

00:57:40.320 I guess TikTok has taken a big chunk out of it.

00:57:43.520 I couldn't say how much that's not an area that I'm an expert in.

00:57:47.400 But yeah, Facebook and Google, they're they're like it.

00:57:50.740 They they sell all the advertising online and there sure are a lot of news outlets posting stories that we all read all the time.

00:58:02.320 It doesn't seem radical to think that they should get some of that money, how to make that work in practice.

00:58:09.600 Like you said, it's above my pay grade.

00:58:15.640 More after a quick break.

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00:59:08.520 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:59:14.320 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:59:20.880 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:59:24.480 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.96

00:59:29.920 shut up, don't say anything.

00:59:32.680 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. 0.98

00:59:37.100 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:59:41.540 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed,

00:59:46.300 and I just started screaming.

00:59:48.620 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:59:53.080 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:59:56.520 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

01:00:00.160 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:00:13.740 Let's get right back into it.

01:00:15.220 so folks might remember that trans influencer dylan mulvaney who became the target of an

01:00:21.580 extremist hate campaign after she did a brand partnership with bud light well dylan mulvaney

01:00:26.420 broke her silence this week dylan rose to prominence for her series on tiktok where

01:00:31.200 she chronicled her life as a trans woman it was a cute series it would be like day

01:00:35.940 whatever of being a girl i thought it was cute people liked it it's like why she became

01:00:41.580 kind of an influencer, Bud Light was trying to kind of shed their frat boy image and did a brand

01:00:48.200 partnership with Dylan. Now, the logistics of this brand partnership were way overblown.

01:00:54.780 Basically, Bud Light sent Dylan Mulvaney one beer can, like a promotional beer can,

01:01:00.760 with her face on it. These cans were not for sale in stores. These cans, it wasn't like they

01:01:06.620 were stamping her face on every Bud Light can ever and that everybody had to use it.

01:01:10.340 they sent her a can with her face on it. One. She made a video on her social media profile

01:01:16.920 about Bud Light, talking about this can they sent her, and that was it. You would have thought that

01:01:22.600 Bud Light had named Dylan Mulvaney their new CEO and that every time that you bought a Bud Light,

01:01:28.580 a dollar personally went into her pocket. No, it was just one social media post and one can.

01:01:34.620 But extremist groups melted down over this, right? And to be clear, they were explicit that this was a specific tactic, right? To target and go after one brand at a time and attack them for what they perceived as like woke positions, like partnering with a trans woman or supporting pride in the case of Target, the store.

01:01:54.100 So these people are a very vocal minority, but they know they can drum up attention like we talked about many times in Internet Hate Machine. Brands do not always respond well, and sometimes they just cave to this bullying, essentially.

01:02:07.740 You know, extremists would be filming themselves. I think it was, like, Kid Rock, which, like, who the fuck is listening to Kid Rock in 2023? But he posted a video of himself shooting Bud Light cans with a gun. People were driving steamrollers over them, like, all because of this one can. Like, I can't. It's so ridiculous, I can't. 0.94

01:02:30.920 Bud Light actually did have a dip in sales because of these protests against Bud Light. 0.55

01:02:37.140 Marketing Vice President Alyssa Heinershed actually stepped away from the company when she became a target, too.

01:02:42.840 It's not clear if she was fired or she just, like, stepped away. 0.66

01:02:46.380 Like, I read reports that she was fired.

01:02:48.700 Then I read reports that Bud Light was like, oh, she wasn't fired, so I'm not totally sure.

01:02:53.400 She became a target of this, too.

01:02:54.920 extremists found a picture of her drinking a beer at a call at college like back when she was in 0.91

01:03:01.620 college and they tried to make her look like a hypocrite because oh you liked beer then but like 1.00

01:03:06.180 now you think it's fratty or whatever it's it's just so stupid i just gotta stop you there for 0.99

01:03:11.680 just a second though because like yeah she was drinking beer she was the vice president of 0.98

01:03:16.360 anheuser-busch right like she sells beer the the idea that that is somehow disqualifying or

01:03:23.020 embarrassing just emphasizes how separated from reality any of this is it wasn't even like a good

01:03:31.380 like gotcha photo of like look at this like like i could see if she was doing like a keg stand it

01:03:36.620 was just a normal it's like a normal person drinking at college like it wasn't even like 0.95

01:03:41.140 anything exciting yeah like person who sells beer drinks beer what a hypocrite right okay so back to 0.98

01:03:48.160 Dylan. Dylan, after all of this, basically had to go offline because of the hate that she got 0.98

01:03:54.480 that got so bad. She was stalked. She was harassed. She feared for her life. These people, their anger

01:04:01.940 toward her was so intense, again, over one beer can and one video. So Dylan finally came back

01:04:10.340 online for the first time, and here's what she had to say. For a company to hire a trans person

01:04:15.920 and then not publicly stand by them is worse in my opinion than not hiring a trans person at all

01:04:21.760 because it gives customers permission to be as transphobic and hateful as they want

01:04:26.540 and and the hate doesn't end with me it has serious and grave consequences for the rest of

01:04:32.220 our community and and you know we're customers too i know a lot of trans and queer people who

01:04:37.360 love beer and i have some lesbian friends who could drink some of those haters under the table

01:04:41.600 but to turn a blind eye and pretend everything is okay it just isn't an option right now

01:04:49.640 so this is heartbreaking and I feel like if you listen to Dylan's experiences and you don't feel

01:04:58.560 bad for what she went through that really says a lot about you like if somebody could

01:05:04.160 listen to what she says that she experienced and still feel like oh well good for her she

01:05:11.040 deserved it. Like you're not a good person. And what really is wild to me and like bums me out

01:05:18.620 is that nobody from Bud Light reached out to her. And I think that that's my thing. Like just an

01:05:23.860 email, a phone call, how are you holding up? It doesn't have to be a public, a public, I mean,

01:05:29.180 it should be a public thing, but like it's, it's like a lack of, at that point, that's like a lack

01:05:34.520 of class. It's not even, I'll get to what it says about how they treat people that they seek out for

01:05:40.220 brand partnerships. But at the end of the day, it's like there's a standard for how people treat

01:05:45.480 people. And that shocks me. And I just think that a company like Bud Light, if you're going to work

01:05:52.040 with marginalized people, particularly trans people right now in this climate, this drummed

01:06:00.160 up climate of hate and targeting of those people, you've got to have their backs. You've got to

01:06:07.360 support them, if you're just going to back away and abandon them without so much as an email to

01:06:14.700 check up on them, if saying yes to your partnership means death threats for them, means they will have

01:06:21.300 to flee their homes for their own safety and fear for their lives, and you're not even going to 0.98

01:06:26.660 check in to see how they're doing, you should not be working with marginalized people at all if that 1.00

01:06:31.700 is the case. Dylan is the one who is being courageous. Dylan is the one who is taking 1.00

01:06:37.520 all of this heat simply because she said yes to Bud Light's offer of being a brand ambassador for

01:06:44.340 their brand. Bud Light, if Dylan is being made to shoulder all of this for doing nothing wrong,

01:06:52.060 for just saying yes to you, you got to stick up for her or don't work with talent like that.

01:06:58.280 like that's just not how you treat people like i'm really appalled yeah and i think brands that

01:07:07.020 want to make it in 2023 and in the future should be standing up for people like dylan right like

01:07:15.860 that's the young people are tolerant the people who are running over these beers with steamrollers

01:07:23.100 and shooting them uh they do not represent the future of america and they're just so hateful

01:07:30.940 like who would want to be associated with them all dylan did was like be trans you know she's 0.96

01:07:36.920 not even accused of doing anything other than just being trans and like that's enough to spur

01:07:45.400 all of this hate it's despicable well that's really what these people are saying

01:07:52.680 they're you know they have so many ways of kind of like masking it when it's like oh we're just

01:07:57.800 concerned about girls in sports we're just concerned about the safety of women in bathrooms 0.52

01:08:03.400 when it comes down to issues like this you really just see like we don't like trans people and we 1.00

01:08:08.740 don't want to have to see them we don't think they belong in public life we don't think they should 0.97

01:08:13.700 be here right like issues like this make it because because dylan is not a controversial

01:08:17.820 person like she likes cute outfits and you know sunglasses and stuff like she doesn't she's not

01:08:25.020 someone who like has done something wrong and it just makes it so clear what these people are angry

01:08:31.860 at it's her existence it's the fact that she exists and is affirmed that's what they don't like

01:08:37.620 yeah that's a great point it really just lays it out you know there's there's no

01:08:43.460 school competition issue there's no like bathroom scare you know none of that like smoke and mirrors 0.93

01:08:53.880 nonsense it's like she's a trans person and they don't like it uh and i really feel for her like

01:09:01.780 you know she she didn't ask for any of this a brand sent her a product and she held up that 0.90

01:09:09.280 product on her social like that's it yeah because they asked her to like saying yes to bud light

01:09:17.500 asking her to do this gets her death threats and she has to go dark you like yeah and you can't

01:09:26.020 like you can't even be bothered just to be like hey girl you're all right like yeah it just it's

01:09:32.560 despicable. It's despicable. Speaking of despicable, we're going to do a new segment

01:09:39.140 on the roundup called What's Elon Done Now? And I have to give major shout outs to my favorite

01:09:46.420 podcast, Who Weekly. If you listen to Who Weekly, it's kind of inspired by their segment, What's

01:09:51.860 Rita Up To? They have this amazing theme song before they do it where they introduce the segment.

01:09:58.240 I won't sing it, but if you know the show, you know it's very catchy. So hopefully we can have

01:10:02.520 some sort of like

01:10:03.380 What's Elon Done Now

01:10:05.640 theme song

01:10:06.600 in the style

01:10:07.660 of that one.

01:10:09.080 Yeah, we're going to work on it.

01:10:10.300 If anybody

01:10:10.660 has anything

01:10:11.940 they'd like to share,

01:10:13.220 we'd love to hear it.

01:10:14.260 We aspire to be

01:10:15.480 anything like

01:10:16.880 Who Weekly.

01:10:18.180 I think of us

01:10:18.800 as the Who Weekly of tech.

01:10:20.380 Okay, yeah.

01:10:21.560 All right.

01:10:22.300 Maybe someday

01:10:23.120 we'll be a them. 1.00

01:10:24.700 Oh, being a Who 0.99

01:10:25.420 is so much funner. 0.99

01:10:27.540 Okay, so you got to ask me,

01:10:29.140 okay, Bridget,

01:10:29.680 so what's Elon Done Now?

01:10:31.080 Okay, Bridget,

01:10:32.520 What's Elon done now?

01:10:34.180 Well, here's what Elon's up to.

01:10:36.200 So back in October, Twitter rolled out a TikTok competitor that mimics TikTok's swipe up for more videos functionality.

01:10:43.420 Musk just recently highlighted it, introducing it to droves of new users.

01:10:48.120 So how's it going?

01:10:49.440 Because it involves Elon Musk, not well.

01:10:51.760 And by that, I mean animal torture, homophobia, and violent assaults.

01:10:55.760 assaults, NBC reports that many users using the video feature were alarmed by a stream of graphic

01:11:01.200 videos that they encountered while scrolling through the feed, including videos showing gun

01:11:05.080 violence, police brutality, physical altercations, and vaccine misinformation. So where TikTok is

01:11:10.920 like, oh, here's some videos about how to properly use your washing machine or your dishwasher or

01:11:16.600 whatever, Twitter is like, here's some videos of a cat being abused. And because it's swipe up

01:11:22.080 functionality, these videos are just being surfaced to you algorithmically, right? It's not

01:11:26.920 like you're clicking on them to view them. They're just being surfaced to you. Some of the original

01:11:33.000 posts were seen on the timelines of millions of users within less than 24 hours since they were

01:11:38.140 posted. And Musk, what's he doing now? Well, it sounds like he is well aware of this issue because

01:11:45.160 he tweeted that some of the videos on the platform could be quite edgy. Ooh, he's such an edgy guy.

01:11:51.280 So I think that that just really shows that Elon Musk doesn't get what people are looking for from social media, why they come to social media. You know, I don't think he understands why people come to Twitter.

01:12:06.220 No.

01:12:06.540 I think that was clear from how he has the changes he has made on Twitter that he's not he doesn't understand like what makes it good. And I think, you know, when people come to a platform like TikTok, if TikTok was all garbage videos, people wouldn't stay there. Right.

01:12:23.060 If it was just videos of stuff that was upsetting, it might generate engagement, perhaps, but it won't make people feel good about being there.

01:12:34.700 It almost feels like Elon Musk's strategy is like, how can I make people feel bad?

01:12:40.680 And how can I make showing up to this platform feel not good?

01:12:45.540 You know, I just don't think that he's someone who understands what people are coming to social media platforms for, what they want to feel when they come to those platforms and what keeps them there. 0.99

01:12:54.940 Yeah, it's not surprising that Twitter's new feature is stupid and bad and, like, offensive and mean. That's just, like, what he's going for. 0.98

01:13:06.520 But I also just want to take a minute to step back and reflect on how we've all just accepted as normal that these big legacy social media platforms like Twitter, companies like Meta, they've just abandoned any pretense of innovating, and they're just aggressively copying each other.

01:13:29.920 it's like that trend in the mid aughts when like every restaurant had to become every other

01:13:36.360 restaurant and like they all started selling chicken sandwiches and burgers uh it's like

01:13:41.060 every social media platform has to be exactly the same and like have the same functionality of

01:13:47.320 everyone and there's there's no innovation there's just copycat and like if that if those sorts of

01:13:57.120 videos were what i wanted why would i go to twitter why wouldn't i just look at it on tiktok

01:14:03.240 like as a user of social media platforms i kind of like that they're different right like if they

01:14:12.480 were all the same that would be boring and somehow over the past like year or two that just became

01:14:22.100 the standard strategy for these big legacy companies uh and you would expect them to be

01:14:29.880 embarrassed about it but they're just like up front and open about the fact that they do not

01:14:37.500 have any ideas that all they can do is try to like steal steal the idea of somebody else um it

01:14:45.460 reminds me so much of this article that i read back when instagram like last year when instagram

01:14:51.260 basically said that they wanted to become TikTok and they were going to focus on video.

01:14:55.380 I forget who said it. It was a great quote. He said that Facebook doesn't know why it is that

01:15:00.140 people come to Instagram and they're trying to become more like TikTok. It's as if your

01:15:05.960 mistress got plastic surgery to look more like your wife. You would be like, don't you understand 0.97

01:15:11.640 what this is? Don't you understand why I'm coming to you? This is not what I want at all.

01:15:17.520 that's a good analogy

01:15:21.300 in our last newscast we put out a call that people like elon musk rfk joe rogan i might

01:15:34.160 throw glenn greenwald in there um that like brand of guy we don't have a name for that brand of guy

01:15:41.480 we have names for other brands of guy like we've got if i say bernie bro you probably conjure up

01:15:48.020 in your head the kind of guy i'm talking about if i say oh that guy is a member of the dirtbag left

01:15:54.440 you probably have an idea in your head of what i'm talking about but we don't have a name for

01:15:58.460 that particular subsection of guy and i think we need one and actually listener elizabeth

01:16:05.340 dm'd me on instagram and said that she thinks they should be called tinkerbells because

01:16:09.600 quote, they don't feel like they exist if they aren't filling the internet with their hot takes,

01:16:14.560 which I love. Thank you, Elizabeth. It is finally nice to have a collective term for your Elons,

01:16:20.720 your Joe Rogans, and the rest of the Tinkerbells. Yeah, it's a great term. Thank you, Elizabeth. 0.98

01:16:26.160 Yeah, now we got a term for these Tinkerbells. Well, thank you so much for listening. And Mike,

01:16:31.000 as always, thanks for going through these stories with me.

01:16:33.660 Thanks for having me here, Bridget. It was a pleasure.

01:16:35.480 as you can probably tell it was kind of a big news week this week and there were so many stories we

01:16:42.480 wanted to talk about that we couldn't get to them all here so to hear the full rundown check out our

01:16:46.920 patreon at patreon.com slash tangody if you're looking for ways to support the show check out

01:16:55.140 our merch store at tangody.com slash store got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just

01:17:01.040 want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangody.com. You can also find transcripts for

01:17:05.600 today's episode at tangody.com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.

01:17:10.500 It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, edited by Joey Pat. Jonathan Strickland

01:17:15.780 is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our

01:17:20.680 contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on

01:17:25.280 Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

01:17:30.560 or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:17:37.980 I survived nine months in captivity,

01:17:41.580 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive

01:17:44.720 what should have destroyed them.

01:17:46.800 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

01:17:50.380 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,

01:17:54.100 abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

01:17:57.740 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

01:18:01.780 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app,

01:18:06.380 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:18:09.700 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality,

01:18:13.880 welcome home.

01:18:15.460 Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club,

01:18:18.620 part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island

01:18:21.660 deserve the same level of discourse.

01:18:23.700 Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture.

01:18:27.260 with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.

01:18:32.020 Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

01:18:33.800 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 0.97

01:18:39.820 Why do some women yearn for Shakira's black hair to make a comeback? 1.00

01:18:44.740 And whatever happened to the power couple of my dreams, Mariah Carey and Luis Miguel?

01:18:50.620 I'm Maria Garcia.

01:18:52.060 You may remember me from my podcast, Anything for Selena, or My Divo.

01:18:56.080 And now I'm back to unpack more stories from the present and the past.

01:19:01.300 Listen to Muy Excited with Maria Garcia on the iHeartRadio app,

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01:19:09.400 This is an iHeart Podcast.

01:19:12.280 Guaranteed human.

There Are No Girls on the Internet - July 01, 2023

Dylan Mulvaney breaks returns to social media; debunking affirmative action myths; Canva’s Black hair backlash; Is ChatGPT stealing your data？; Google blocks Canadian news sites — NEWS ROUNDUP

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