Elon breaks Twitter to save it; Threads app slithers in for the kill; Meghan Markle gets an apology;Digital surveillance in France + Virginia + Sacramento. — NEWS ROUNDUP
00:01:54.020it's like we do our little segment, what's Elon Musk up to? And this is like an extended,
00:02:01.400supersized version of what Elon Musk is up to. So I hope y'all are ready. But first,
00:02:07.080let's talk about what else is going on. So this is a little bit delicate. I don't make any kind
00:02:12.960of judgments about what kind of extracurricular internet searching activities listeners and folks
00:02:22.160are up to. However, here is some news. Because if you've tried to watch pornography online recently,
00:02:28.400you might have encountered some trouble. And that's because a handful of states have rolled
00:02:32.960out age verification policies to access adult sites, where folks have to essentially prove
00:02:38.560that they're over 18. So if you've ever spent any time at all on adult sites, more recently,
00:02:44.380it's been like a little checkbox that you have to check to confirm that you are over the age of 18.
00:02:49.340It feels pretty loose. I think you could probably just say, I am over the age of 18, and I don't think it doesn't really stop you from lying about that if that's what you want to do.
00:03:01.300Now, when you go to sites like Pornhub in these states, it redirects you to a government-run website to prove that you are over 18 by submitting your government ID, driver's license, or passport information.
00:03:12.880Currently, Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, and Utah all have these policies in place.
00:03:18.500Virginia's went into effect just last week.
00:03:20.820And according to The Verge, traffic dropped by 80% for Pornhub
00:03:24.840after it first began enforcing age verification in Louisiana earlier this year.
00:03:28.620And after that, it sounds like Pornhub just decided to start taking its sites offline
00:03:35.380instead of enforcing this age verification policy.
00:03:39.560So just sidestepping the issue altogether, kind of in protest.
00:03:43.200So that also goes for other PornTube sites that its parent company runs, like RedTube.
00:03:49.220So that means that thanks to Virginia's new rollout of this law, users in Virginia will
00:03:53.880not be able to access PornTube sites like RedTube or Pornhub either.
00:03:59.040Perhaps not surprisingly, last week, in the days immediately following this policy going
00:04:03.960into effect, according to Google Trends, Virginia ranked as the highest state when it came to
00:04:09.240searches for VPNs or virtual private networks.
00:04:12.320networks that allow you to circumvent these location-specific barriers to accessing websites.
00:04:19.320So I don't know if this is tacky to mention, but at one point, ExpressVPN was a sponsor of the show.
00:04:26.240I don't think they are anymore. What's your producer hat on, Mike?
00:04:30.380Is it tacky to throw out the promo code for folks who want to try out ExpressVPN?
00:04:35.880I don't think so. You know, it's a useful service. We like ExpressVPN. Maybe they'll want to sponsor us again. We'd love to have them back. But in the meantime, yeah, maybe listeners want a free three months off their subscription. Where can they go to get that, Bridget?
00:04:54.500You can go to expressvpn.com slash no girls to get an extra three months off with a 12 month plan.
00:05:01.320Yeah, I, this is, again, this is, they're not paying me to say this.
00:05:07.560I think it's just a good thing to have, especially when there's like super easy to use, hit a button and, you know, it's working behind the scenes.
00:05:14.280But I do think that legislation like this, I think that we're going to be seeing more and more location-specific internet legislation. And so having a VPN, knowing how to use one wouldn't be the worst idea in the world for somebody, even if you were, you know, don't think of yourself as a techie who's going to need it.
00:05:33.060Do you remember that time that I was in South Africa and you were in the United States and we wanted to watch Weekend at Bernie's 2?
00:05:39.160And it was available in its entirety on YouTube in South Africa, but not in the United States.
00:05:43.740So you used a VPN to try to access it and then you couldn't.
00:05:48.280And we ended up doing like a Zoom screen share so that we can both be watching at the same time.
00:05:54.620It was a very bad cinematic experience, but we did technically watch that movie.
00:06:02.040So I think that age verification online is a terrible idea for so many reasons, not the least of which is that it just doesn't really work.
00:06:11.100The day that the Virginia law took effect last week, people on Reddit were complaining about not being able to access porn sites despite not living in or near the states where it's the law.
00:06:21.260That's because IP addresses are notoriously kind of janky at being able to actually locate where a user is.
00:06:27.920For instance, here in D.C., it's not terribly unusual for a user's IP address to say that they're in a nearby state like Virginia or Maryland, even if they have never been to one of those states, because it's a little bit janky.
00:06:40.400Yeah, it's true. So in some of my research, we try to geolocate people who use various digital tools that we provide.
00:06:49.280And it's hard to geolocate people. IP address is just very unreliable.
00:06:55.620And personally, I don't think that we should be getting in the habit of being comfortable with having to give over our real names and government information and IDs in order to access the Internet.
00:07:06.300Our government does not keep our private data secure and private right now.
00:07:11.120In our episode about doxing with Shauna Sigalow, the digital security expert, we talked all about how if you've ever voted or paid a parking ticket or had the power or electricity turned on in your apartment, your state or local government could be selling your personal data to whoever wants it because that's what they do.
00:07:28.560And so I think giving over more of our information under the guise of, like, keeping us safer just doesn't make sense to me, especially when it's under the guise of, like, quote, protecting kids online.
00:07:40.920Because if we really cared about protecting kids online, there's a hundred other things that we would be doing to actually protect them from the corporate Internet forces that we know are exploiting and harming them.
00:07:51.880And I think Wired really summarized it well.
00:07:54.740The internet isn't a child-friendly place.
00:07:57.300However, introducing age verification across the web is technical and complex.
00:08:01.800In 2019, the UK ditched a multi-year plan to introduce age checks after encountering myriad problems.
00:08:08.400The porn we watch is also highly sensitive.
00:08:11.100Kinks are incredibly personal, and leaks of data online can be devastating.
00:08:15.460Privacy advocates, porn companies, and some regulators say the move to introduce age verification introduces significant problems.
00:08:22.280The concerns about young people accessing adult websites are real and widespread.
00:08:26.940Less widespread is the understanding of the limitations of various age verification tools and the new dangers they might pose.
00:08:33.320This is from Irina Reissu, director of the Internet Ethics Program at Santa Clara University's Markula Center.
00:08:39.320Many regulators and others seem to think of age verification as a solved problem.
00:08:43.920Technologists and privacy activists, including activists focused on protecting children, are trying to explain that that's not the case.0.87
00:08:50.560And I think that's absolutely true. I think that, you know, when we talk about state-specific legislation, for instance, around TikTok bans and things like that, I think that giving states and platforms more access to information about us, I find that a really wonky explanation for how that's supposed to make us more secure online.
00:09:13.320And we just know how legislation can creep when people feel motivated by a desire to protect kids online.
00:09:19.300Like in Mississippi, for example, another piece of new legislation means that nobody under the age of 18 will have access to digital materials made available through public and school libraries without explicit parent or guardian permission.
00:09:32.520So no Libby access for e-books for teens.
00:09:35.800And Book Riot reports that even if they do get a parent's permission, minors can't access digital materials if vendors do not ensure that every single item within their offerings meets this new, wide-reaching definition of, quote, obscenity per the state.
00:09:51.460This legislation went into effect July 1st, and libraries had to sort of scramble to figure out how to comply with it.
00:09:58.440Yeah, it's not clear what harm they're trying to solve here.
00:10:03.240I guess they're kind of I guess the goal here is to protect kids from pornography, which, like you said, is a reasonable, laudable goal that I think most people could get behind.
00:10:17.000But it seems like the result of this law is like huge numbers of adults not being able to access something that they should have every right to be able to access.
00:10:31.340Uh, and I completely agree that it is scary to have to enter your government ID to do something that some people in power have decided is not okay. Right. Because you have to imagine that part of the goal here is just to like eliminate pornography entirely, which is a laughable goal.
00:10:54.820But, you know, these a lot of these people who are caught up in this moral panic about protecting the kids, it's not like they are coming from a place of, you know, evidence based concern or evidence based solutions to actual problems.
00:11:13.520They're like living in a fantasy land where librarians are grooming children by reading them stories that feature gay people.
00:11:22.640And these are the same people who are pushing for these sorts of age restrictions, like you said, in Louisiana and I guess Virginia now, too, where you have to put in your government driver's license, which is nuts.
00:11:40.360You know, I absolutely wouldn't want to give those same people who are putting these laws in place access to data about what I'm looking at online.
00:11:55.000That is like the last thing I want to do.
00:11:56.840And it really I completely agree. And it really comes down to something that Dr. Olivia Snow said that when we talked to her, that when you hear a lawmaker talking about legislation, regulating the Internet in a new way that is meant to keep kids safe, that that should be your big red flag that they are talking about cracking down on the behavior online of consensual adults.
00:12:22.880Right. And that like how often protecting kids online is used as a smokescreen in order to crack down on what adults are doing online consensually.
00:12:33.280And like, yeah, I just who who out there when they are doing their thing, when it's just them in their computer having their private moment, who wants to get their government ID with their first, last and middle name and whatever like their address on it?
00:12:53.100who wants to get that involved in that exchange?
00:12:56.240Nobody, nobody, nobody, like, who is this serving, right?
00:13:23.100That's a great question. Who is it serving? You know, and relatedly, who would it most harm?
00:13:29.740You know, it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to picture a scenario where somebody is being taken to, you know, they're engaged in like a custody battle or something, and somebody gets access to somebody else's records.
00:13:46.800And now it's like part of the public record that like so and so looked at online pornography.
00:13:53.100Yeah, and I think that's a great point. And it also just reminds me of how often when we're talking about the way the internet is legislated, how often it will start in one place with online pornography, and then it'll start someplace completely different.
00:14:07.300When Yahoo bought Tumblr, they were like, oh, we're not going to have there be sexual content. You might be thinking that's like nudity, but by the end, it was a whole host of content that wasn't necessarily sexual. It was content about people learning about their sexual or gender identities, right?
00:14:24.700And so that's not necessarily sexually explicit, but how quickly the bucket of what they were cracking down on expanded.
00:14:33.020And I think with legislation like this, you have to imagine that, like, yeah, maybe they're going to say, starting with pornography, but who knows where that could end up.
00:14:41.280And that actually is a great segue to what's happening in France.
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00:15:39.320that's 844-844-iheart when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine months
00:15:47.400I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:15:54.380I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
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00:16:30.120They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:16:33.760Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:16:45.160and we're back. So lawmakers in France's National Assembly passed a bill that lets police surveil
00:16:55.320suspects by remotely activating their cameras, microphones, and GPS location systems on their
00:17:01.520phones, laptops, cars, and connected devices. Now, a judge will have to approve the use of
00:17:07.400these powers, and a recently amended bill does forbid the use against journalists, lawyers,
00:17:12.660and other people who work in sensitive professions.
00:17:16.340Now, proponents of this measure say that it is meant to be limited in scope to serious cases
00:17:20.760and that the maximum amount of time that police can surveil suspects is six months.
00:17:24.960And geolocation can only be limited to crimes that are punishable by at least five years in prison.
00:17:30.860Now, unsurprisingly, digital privacy experts are, to put it lightly, concerned.
00:17:36.820According to Engadget, the digital rights group La Quadrature du Net,
00:17:40.620I apologize for my bad French, previously pointed out the potential for abuse because the bill is
00:17:45.760just not clear in terms of what it constitutes as a serious crime. So there are fears that the
00:17:51.460French government could use this to target environmental activists and others who are
00:17:56.040not grave threats. You'll notice that even though they say that this won't be used against folks
00:18:00.320with sensitive professions, does that include activists, right? Does that include dissidents?
00:18:04.680They also point out that just like in the United States, security policies do have a habit of
00:18:09.860expanding, just like we were talking about with that porn legislation, right? That they have a
00:18:14.560habit of expanding to less serious crimes. They give the example of genetic registration, which
00:18:19.780used to only be used for sex offenders in France, but La Quadrature says has now been expanded to
00:18:25.760being used for almost every crime in France. Yeah, I don't know about France, but here in the U.S.,
00:18:32.000I feel like every time there's been some law that expands police surveillance powers,
00:18:37.780One, two, three years later, there's a bunch of stories about how that law was abused, used in ways it wasn't intended, targeted people that weren't supposed to be targeted.
00:18:50.600You know, those newspaper headlines, too, it's like the most obvious thing in the world.
00:18:56.000This is all happening against the backdrop of protests in France, sparked by the police shooting and killing teenager Nihilam Razak.
00:19:03.640Gizmodo reported that French President Macron actually threatened to shut down social media platforms as he claimed that protesters were filming, posting and organizing on platforms like TikTok, Telegram and Snapchat.
00:19:15.100And I think that it really goes back to what we were talking about in the last story about how it may seem like something that we it's easy to think that these are things, measures that we should be taking to keep us and our community safe.
00:19:27.820But it's so often that they sort of start out as being about one thing and then can sort of slowly become about another. That is a tale as old as time when it comes to surveillance policies like this one.
00:19:42.700And so I think that these digital rights groups in France are really right to be pushing back on this and saying, hey, giving the police the power to turn on, remotely turn on the camera or the microphone to your phone, to your car, to your laptop, that should be something that we're really concerned about and don't just, you know, become okay with lightly.
00:20:04.040Absolutely. I think privacy is something that we all need to take very seriously and protect. It is under assault. People have been saying that privacy is dead for years, and I don't think that's the case.
00:20:24.440I think we still have a lot of privacy in our lives, thankfully, and I think it's super important that we all protect what privacy we have and resist efforts to make us all register with government ID if we want to watch porn, resist giving the state authority to turn on our phones and record from our cameras without our permission.
00:20:54.440And it's, yeah, it's a, it's a scary world. These technologies really enable a lot of surveillance activity that would have been unthinkable years ago that like despots of the past wish they could have had access to.
00:21:12.300and we've talked a lot on this show about some of the paradoxes of the internet how
00:21:18.940at the outset it promised this like bright democratic future where everyone would have
00:21:25.360a voice and everyone would be connected and like we kind of got that but we also kind of
00:21:31.420got something very different where no one is anonymous and everything you say is traced back
00:21:37.120of people. And that comment from Macron that you just read that he was going to shut off social
00:21:44.200media because people were organizing. How many despots throughout history have wanted that power,
00:21:52.300but just like didn't have it. But now that we are all, you know, communicating on apps that
00:21:59.580are centralized across, you know, maybe half a dozen different apps, suddenly that does become
00:22:04.680possible and what a scary proposition that is yeah and i don't know have you seen that episode
00:22:10.980of that first episode of black mirror joan is awful oh yeah so something i won't give it away
00:22:17.540folks haven't seen it but something that that episode really makes clear about the current
00:22:22.320future that we're or the future the present that we're all in is how surveillance is sold to us
00:22:30.480as for our own good, or even for our own entertainment. We should like being surveilled.
00:22:35.500We should find it funny. We should enjoy the information that our apps and our platforms
00:22:41.740have collected about us and sold back to us. And so it's kind of scary how, I mean, I'm not
00:22:47.520immune to it either. I like looking at my Spotify end of the year list just like anybody. I'm not
00:22:52.480a monster. Of course, I find that fascinating about information about myself. But the way
00:22:57.980that we've been able to be desensitized to it. And sort of more and more and more and more of
00:23:03.500our privacy is sort of for sale. And we are consistently told that it is for our own
00:23:09.700protection, that we should be happy that it's happening. And another great example is what's
00:23:13.440happening in Sacramento. So listeners of this show know that since the Supreme Court overturned
00:23:18.260Roe last year, we have been following the very deep connections between technology,
00:23:22.660digital surveillance, and abortion rights. And here's another update on that front.
00:23:26.520The digital rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sent a letter to Sacramento Sheriff Jim Cooper, urging the sheriff's department to stop their practice of sharing automated license plate reader data with out-of-state authorities in anti-abortion states, including Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas.
00:23:43.200Adam Schwartz, he is the EFF's senior staff attorney, said that this practice is a threat to security and privacy
00:23:49.300and that a sheriff in Texas, Idaho, or any other state with an abortion ban on the books
00:23:53.840could use that data to track people's movement around California,
00:23:57.940knowing where they live, where they work, and where they seek reproductive medical care, including abortions.
00:24:02.980So back in May, the Electronic Frontier Foundation released a report showing that 71 law enforcement agencies
00:24:08.860in 22 California counties, including Sacramento County, were sharing this kind of data, and that
00:24:14.500this practice was actually in violation of a 2015 law that states that a California law enforcement
00:24:20.320agency shall not sell, share, or transfer automatic license plate reader information except to another
00:24:26.920California law enforcement agency. And so they're just, it sounds like, and I'm no lawyer, but it
00:24:33.160sounds like they're just not doing that. They're just not following that law. The Sacramento
00:24:37.740know, Sheriff's Office had a pretty weird response to those allegations, accusing Electronic
00:24:44.580Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of being involved in some sort of like vast conspiracy to spread
00:24:50.900lawlessness. I don't know. You tell me. Here's what they said back in May. Law enforcement
00:24:56.440agencies commonly use information from license plate readers to investigate serious crimes such
00:25:01.640as homicide, child kidnapping, human trafficking, and drug trafficking across state borders. So
00:25:07.220very much like what we were just talking about, right? That like, oh, us collecting this data is
00:25:10.860actually good for you because it makes you safer. Fine. However, they go on, some organizations
00:25:15.840such as the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have lied that law enforcement
00:25:21.820sharing this information is an attempt to violate people's legal rights. These false claims are
00:25:27.560intentional and part of a broader agenda to promote lawlessness and prevent criminals from being held
00:25:33.340accountable so like i don't know if the electronic frontier foundation is in in on this like vast
00:25:39.800conspiracy to enable criminals to just be lawless out on the streets i don't know that seems like a
00:25:48.120pretty big allegation from the sheriff's office in sacramento county just chaos agents their only
00:25:57.680interest is spreading chaos disorder uh yeah that's what they're doing that's where they get
00:26:05.040the big bucks uh because they're out there just trying to foment chaos anywhere they can and
00:26:12.240honestly it sounds like electronic frontier foundation was accusing the sheriff's office
00:26:17.640of not following the law so then for the sheriff's office to turn around and be like actually
00:26:22.660y'all are the ones who are lawless liars it is interesting right it's like their allegations are
00:26:28.880so specific and the response is like well y'all are lawless liars who are just trying to help
00:26:35.980criminals you know murder children one of these allegations seems a lot more believable than the
00:26:42.720other to me i don't know that's just me it's such a good follow-up to those two stories we just
00:26:48.220talked about about the creep of surveillance authority because exactly like you said it sounds
00:26:52.960like from this letter that eff was saying hey you guys are currently violating the law by sharing
00:27:01.820this information that you have collected through like police surveillance uh apparatus i don't know
00:27:10.620what the term is but like through these license plate readers that are reading licenses and you're
00:27:14.680sharing that with people who the law forbids you to share it with and people are going to get hurt
00:27:19.500and the response was shut up we're going after criminals and you're a criminal too even though
00:27:27.580the police are the ones breaking the law and the people pointing that out and pointing out this
00:27:34.640overreach of a law that was intended to have limits and the fact that the police are disrespecting
00:27:41.380those limits that were placed around this law to get it passed. But you have to assume we're put
00:27:46.120there by legislators who couldn't get the law passed without them. So they were like, okay,
00:27:51.380okay, we'll like put these limits around it. They can't share it outside of California
00:27:55.320to get the law passed. And this sheriff is just like uninterested in that, right? He's going,
00:28:00.200he's going after criminals and lawlessness. And why should any God fearing good citizens be
00:28:07.660concerned that their data is just illegally being shared across state lines okay so if you liked
00:28:14.180that response after the electronic frontier foundation sent the sacramento sheriff their
00:28:19.480letter asking him to stop this practice this week he replied on twitter that first response i read
00:28:25.460to you was like sacramento sheriff's department like official twitter this he took to his
00:28:31.440personal Twitter to give this response. He said, quote, the bill and this law has absolutely
00:28:38.300nothing to do with reproductive rights. My record on women's and reproductive rights has been strong
00:28:43.760throughout my time in the state assembly, and nothing has changed since becoming sheriff.
00:28:48.860Electronic Frontier Foundation has a track record of protecting child molesters, fentanyl
00:28:53.740traffickers, rapists, and murderers. Perhaps they should focus more on helping victims rather than
00:28:59.800continuing to shield criminals from prosecution. So if you thought the first response back when
00:29:05.340EFF first made these allegations was a little much, being like, oh, no, no, you are too busy
00:29:11.900holding hands with child molesters and fentanyl traffickers and rapists and murderers. It's just
00:29:18.080a very intense response from what is a very measured letter about how they are following
00:29:25.100the letter of the law. Now, I should say that Adam Schwartz, the attorney for the Electronic
00:29:30.540Frontier Foundation, does say that he was not aware of any cases where license plate data was
00:29:36.760used to prosecute someone for getting an abortion, but added, quote, we think we shouldn't have to
00:29:42.100wait until the inevitable happens. And honestly, I could not agree more. And I think that the fact
00:29:46.920that the sheriff is going back and pointing to his record when he was in the assembly on abortion and
00:29:53.760reproductive care. I just I mean, I honestly think this is kind of a normal or expected take
00:29:59.840from somebody who has not really thought very seriously about the landscape of abortion rights
00:30:05.340here in 2023. And I think a lot of people, one, did not expect Roe to ever be threatened the way
00:30:11.380that it was. And when it did fall, really had a kind of myopic view on the actual threats that
00:30:18.220folks who are looking for abortions or need abortions are allies to people who need abortions
00:30:23.000would face. You know, it's not it's one of the reasons why when I was in the reproductive
00:30:28.560justice space, we're not we were like, oh, don't use like coat hanger imagery or talk about like
00:30:33.240back alley abortions, because in 2023, that's not the threat. The threat is surveillance and
00:30:39.000criminalization. Sheriff Cooper saying that this kind of data tracking and sharing with other
00:30:44.560states has nothing to do with abortion and reproductive rights just goes to show how
00:30:49.080limited his understanding of the reality of our abortion landscape in 2023 really is.
00:30:54.180Because if he's never thought about how tracking somebody's license plate data in California
00:30:58.080and then sending it to a state where abortion is criminalized, like Texas or Idaho, could
00:31:02.300play a role in someone's ability to access abortion care, if he's never thought about
00:31:07.200that, that really tells me all I need to know about how he's thinking about this issue.
00:31:10.940Because even if that license plate data is not being used today, on Thursday, July 6,
00:31:17.4202023, as we've just talked about in this episode, that does not mean that there will not be an
00:31:23.980expansion of how that data is used. And in my opinion, it is not a question of if, it's a
00:31:30.700question of when that data will be used to criminalize people who are looking for abortions.
00:31:35.180And just because Sheriff Cooper doesn't see it and does not have that clear of a view of the
00:31:40.460landscape of abortion rights in 2023 does not mean that it's not a risk. And it's really,
00:31:45.020I can't believe that he would say, like, this has nothing to do with abortion when, I'm sorry, get real, in 2023, when you share license plate data from California to states like Texas and Alabama, it has everything to do with abortion rights.
00:32:00.700And the important thing is that I think this isn't about this one sheriff getting it wrong and, like, isn't he a bad guy or isn't he clueless or something?
00:32:13.000The concerning thing is that he is the one who has the authority to decide how this private data that has been surveilled gets shared.
00:32:23.920And like you just said, he either is clueless about the landscape of reproductive rights and legal threats to people seeking abortions in 2023, or he's faking it.
00:32:37.860But either way, the data that he is sitting on of who has been driving around in Sacramento has real consequences for people.
00:32:50.780And he, by his own admission, is making decisions about who could access that data and who can't without having apparently any clue about the legal risks to the people that he has been entrusted to keep safe.
00:33:10.720um i would take i agree i would take it one step further and i would say because it is he like it
00:33:18.320is not men i don't think that he i don't this might be a controversial take i think that for
00:33:23.620a lot of men it's difficult to see the realities and the concerns of people who are not also
00:33:31.860cis men. Seriously. I think that he's like, I'm pro-choice. That's all I need to do is like,
00:33:42.200be pro-choice. And it's like, no, you need to also not buttress a vast network of interstate
00:33:49.880surveillance. If you truly want to advocate for reproductive rights in this country,
00:33:57.360That's what it looks like in 2023. It's not 1980, right? Just being supportive of abortion rights and voting along those lines is not enough in 2023. If you are propping up a vast surveillance network, that is going to get people who need abortions criminalized one way or another.
00:34:14.920And if you're it's really something to see people who are tasked with supporting and advocating for these constituents not get that and so loudly proclaim that they don't get that.
00:34:33.960So I looked up his record, and it does seem to be a little bit all over the place in terms of his record on abortion care.
00:34:40.940But he obviously, from his statement, wants to think of himself as somebody who is a champion of reproductive care.
00:34:47.980And if that is the case in 2023, you have got to be thinking about this issue a little bit more thoughtfully and with a little bit more foresight about how it's playing out.
00:34:58.200Because in 2023, you cannot be propping up a vast digital surveillance network and tell me that you're on my side when it comes to abortion rights.
00:37:16.480So we have talked a bit about Meghan Markle and how the coordinated hate campaign that she gets online targets her.0.99
00:37:24.540But one of the weirdest aspects of this story is that it's not just random hate mongers on YouTube publishing videos like 10 of Meghan Markle's micro expressions that show that she is actually a huge, mean person.0.93
00:37:40.860I almost said a swear word. I'm trying to swear less. I got some feedback about my swearing.
00:37:44.180I was going to put a swear word there, but I didn't.
00:37:46.680So you're welcome, listeners with children.
00:37:49.100So it's not just like weird YouTube hate mongers.
00:37:53.640It's also the press, like big newspapers who are targeting her.
00:37:58.780Last week, the newspaper The Sun had to print a front page apology for an opinion piece about Meghan Markle written by Grand Tour star Jeremy Clarkson.
00:38:07.940The piece, I can only really describe it as a lot.
00:38:13.720Here's here's a bit from that piece. He writes, I hate her. Not like I hate Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon or serial killer Rose West. I hate her on a cellular level. Oh, no. Meghan is definitely worse than a serial killer. Right. Obviously. Like, what do you think of Meghan Markle? You think serial killer is here. Meghan Markle much further on the on the hate spectrum.
00:38:39.200He goes on, quote, at night, I'm unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets on every town in Britain while the crowds chant shame and throw lumps of excrement at her.0.90
00:38:56.060Everyone who is my age thinks the same way.
00:38:59.600I don't know if that's I don't know if that's correct.
00:39:01.580But like everybody who is your who is your age is like, yes, I stay awake at night, gritting my teeth, thinking about her.
00:39:07.600Now, in his defense, he did say that he was going for like a Game of Thrones reference with that. I don't watch Game of Thrones. So like I you watch the show. Is this does that does that check out?0.84
00:39:18.360Yeah, that does check out. That is a reference to a scene from the show. But it doesn't diminish it in any way. Like it's, it's not like she liked being paraded through the streets naked and having excrement thrown at her, you know, the character who was having to, who legitimately was like, she didn't enjoy it.
00:39:41.740It was, like, very bad, and it was just as sexist in the show as it is in real life, you know?
00:39:52.360So even if he was going for, like, a specific reference, I just think it's a little much to be printed in the newspaper.
00:39:59.180Like, I can't believe that an editor read that and was like, okay, doesn't sound unhinged at all, definitely just publish it.
00:40:08.720Yeah, literary illusions aren't like, like, get out of jail free card for writing messed up stuff, right? Like, they add some context and maybe some some meaning or something, but they don't just like make it all okay, because it was a reference.
00:40:25.720Well, the U.K. newspaper regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organization, agrees with you.
00:40:31.580After this was published, they got 25,000 complaints about the piece, and they ended up launching an investigation into whether the piece breached its editor's code of practice.
00:40:41.440Although, interestingly, the IPSO chairman, Lord Fox, said that the article was, quote, humiliating and degrading toward the Duchess.
00:40:49.060But, according to Deadline, also rejected complaints that the article was racist in tone, inaccurate, or sought to harass the Duchess.
00:40:59.040The piece was ultimately removed and the son was forced to print an apology to Meghan on the front page.
00:41:03.260It is so interesting to me that they specifically go out of their way to say the piece was sexist, it was humiliating, but it was not racist and it was not meant to harass her, nor was it inaccurate.
00:41:19.060I find that so interesting because, I mean, it really goes back to so much of our conversations that we've had on There Are No Girls on the Internet and also Internet Hate Machine about how the responses to Meghan Markle kind of work and how it's always right on the line of racist.
00:41:38.780So it's like they're not going to overtly call her a slur. But I just have a hard time believing that if not for Meghan's race, that somebody would have found this acceptable to print in the newspaper. Right.
00:41:50.980And I also think that because of the way that identity works, gender and race and class and everything else, it's so linked that it is the idea that if someone printed this about me in the paper as a black woman, I would not be able to say, oh, they printed it because I'm a woman, not because I'm black.
00:42:12.380The idea that you can parse it and say, like, definitively not racist, sexist, but not racist, it's just not how it works because of the way that layered identity and the intersections of identity work.
00:42:25.320And so it's fascinating to me to see this, you know, ethics board be able to say, like, nope, not racist, just put a big red stamp on that.
00:42:37.860Like, I would be curious to know how they determined that.
00:48:02.180So I don't know how it was for you all, but this happened on Saturday.
00:48:05.440By Sunday, I was totally unable to see any tweets at all, right?
00:48:10.100So like when I woke up on Sunday, obviously like the clock should have restarted in that 24-hour period.
00:48:16.720But the moment I logged in, I was already getting the error that I had seen all the tweets that I could see, even though I had not been on the platform at all.
00:48:24.760So by Sunday, the platform was just a no-go for me.
00:48:27.620I don't know how it was for y'all, but let me know.
00:48:30.160And in case you're wondering, this also applied to official Twitter accounts for emergency services, like the National Hurricane Center or Amber Alerts.
00:48:38.140They also could only, you know, see the 6,000 tweets per day if they were Twitter Blue subscribers or 600 if they were unverified, which is pretty concerning.
00:48:49.720Like, had there been a hurricane or had there been an Amber Alert, maybe there was, it's probably good to have these organizations be able to see more than a couple of tweets, you know, particularly if they're paying for Twitter Blue.
00:49:03.240That's something that I fully kind of don't understand is how, if I'm paying for like a subscriber experience, how am I getting my tweets capped?
00:49:14.820It's like, what was the point of paying if it's like, oh, you get all these features and also can only see 6,000 tweets a month?
00:49:20.460One other consequence about not being able to see tweets if you're not logged in is that it has caused Google to remove all tweets from Google results.
00:49:31.300So it used to be that if you were searching for something online and Google thought that a tweet was relevant to what you were searching for, it would include that tweet in your search results.
00:49:42.200But that's no longer the case because of this change that only logged in users can see it.
00:49:49.420And that's a pretty big deal because Google's responsible for over 90% of all searches in the U.S.
00:49:56.000And I don't know how much Twitter traffic was coming from Google, but I have to assume some.
00:50:03.280And Twitter being removed from Google seems like one more big step towards Twitter becoming less relevant in the overall information ecosystem that we all live in and get our information from.
00:50:31.100Data scientist and ex-Twitter employee Dr. Ruman Shadri told the BBC that it was unclear if AI organizations had actually been scraping data from Twitter, but suggested that financial issues could be behind the changes.
00:50:44.060Frankly, I think I'm in the majority of people who believe that it's due to Elon's lack of payment of his bills and that he's attempting to reduce his cost, she said.
00:50:51.860I have since seen other people who kind of claim to be in the know saying that it was not related to unpaid bills.
00:51:01.340Former Twitter head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, said that Elon Musk's official explanation about trying to prevent data scraping doesn't sound totally right.
00:51:11.360saying, it just doesn't pass the sniff test that scraping all of a sudden created such a dramatic
00:51:17.180performance problem that Twitter had no choice but to put everything behind a login. So a lot
00:51:23.980of theories being floated around. I should be clear that we don't know which one is the truth.
00:51:29.100Don't leave me a weird comment on Instagram, Elon Musk, a la a certain magazine, because I'm just
00:51:37.760speculating and summarizing other people's theories we don't know what's going on but
00:51:42.740mike you actually have a theory we were talking about the other day no yeah i mean it's not like
00:51:48.500my theory but like you said nobody really knows what was behind all of these like large surprise
00:51:58.440changes some of which were announced some of which just like quietly happened uh but clearly
00:52:03.480something was up. One thing I saw over the weekend was a post from someone speculating that
00:52:09.800this was due to Twitter unintentionally releasing some very bad code in their attempts to restrict
00:52:18.340the site to only authenticated users who were logged in. So the idea here is that for whatever
00:52:25.260reason, Twitter wanted to make that change so that people who weren't logged in couldn't see it.
00:52:29.480Uh, and to do that, they had to change some of their code about how Twitter works and the code that they released to do that was just bad and caused a lot of problems. Uh, and the evidence that this person had for it was that they shared a screenshot of their console from their web browser showing that, uh, you know, as they were logged into Twitter, their computer was just like hammering away at Twitter's servers with a bunch of networks.
00:52:59.480requests. And so they were speculating that perhaps that was what caused Twitter to have
00:53:07.420to put up, put in place these limits because, you know, first they tried to restrict it to
00:53:14.500only logged in users, but they executed that so poorly that it created this enormous drain on
00:53:21.120their, on their resources. And so they had to put the limits in place just to be able to keep
00:53:27.460things moving at all. And so for a while, the hashtag self DDoS was going around for self
00:53:34.720distributed denial of service attack, making fun of Twitter for crashing its own servers through
00:53:39.660its bad code. So that seemed consistent with the screenshot that he had shared. And it seems
00:53:47.900consistent with the chaotic scattershot approach to decision making that Twitter seems to do under
00:53:55.460Elon Musk. But like I said, it's just speculation. Who knows? I also love the Dave's on vacation
00:54:01.900theory, the sort of joke that Elon has fired or laid off so many engineers that Twitter is now
00:54:08.680operating with a skeleton crew. So people are speculating that this engineer named Dave, who
00:54:14.900I guess is like a fictional engineer, took his family on vacation and there was nobody there
00:54:20.420to answer the phone while he was out and twitter imploded i love i love the dave's on vacation
00:54:26.000theory of like oh yeah dave's up with the wife and kids up in the adirondacks for the weekend
00:54:30.160none of this stuff's gonna work yeah i like that one too and it's of all these it's probably the
00:54:38.600closest to correct yeah none of us know and it it really seems like the true answer which we'll0.92
00:54:46.240probably never know maybe we will uh is some version of they tried to do something stupid0.98
00:54:51.820they screwed it up and had to do more stupid things to try to like dig themselves out of that0.99
00:54:58.160hole and i think we're still there maybe maybe they're up and running they're up and running0.99
00:55:03.800now um and whatever the rationale was we may never know the truth what we do know is that
00:55:09.060the vibes on twitter are not good right the engagement is down advertising revenue is way
00:55:15.600down. It's kind of funny to me that we're having this conversation after the new Twitter CEO,
00:55:20.560Linda Iaccarino, was just going on and on about how she was going to make Twitter brand safe again
00:55:25.160and bring back advertisements. This is not doing that, right? I don't know why somebody would want0.91
00:55:31.060to pay to be advertising on a platform that would limit how much tweets people could see,
00:55:37.520advertisement included. Doesn't make any sense to me. What's also funny is that we didn't really
00:55:41.620hear a ton from her when this was going on. She was kind of doing some sneak likes of Elon's
00:55:47.100tweets. But like, I would expect the CEO to be making a statement about this, but she didn't
00:55:52.300really. I guess she's just like, oh, whatever Elon says, I also I'm going to like that on Twitter.
00:55:57.840And not to mention the fact that it's just a janky, confusing experience for folks who are
00:56:03.160trying to navigate it still. Right. Like I was trying to use Twitter to navigate stuff happening
00:56:07.600globally as I often do. And it just was impossible to do that. You know, verified tweets were coming
00:56:14.600up at the top that weren't saying anything that was accurate or useful. It just wasn't a good
00:56:19.400experience. And so I think the vibes were not good over there. And it just seems like it is not
00:56:24.520well thought out in terms of how they are rolling out these changes and then quietly rolling them
00:56:29.260back. Not well thought out really captures it. And it's not just their users. There's an article
00:56:36.300and Mashable this week about how developers of third-party apps are fleeing Twitter, too,
00:56:41.220because they are similarly being jerked around and having functionality that they were promised
00:56:49.020taken away or just break on them without notification. Did you ever use the app
00:56:56.660Who Unfollowed Me? No, I'm way too anxious for that kind of thing. I don't want to know.
00:57:01.380okay yeah no one would ever unfollow me in my mind i guess i'm yeah so it was like a useful
00:57:08.920and kind of fun thing uh but it relied on their api and now it's just gone uh because the the api
00:57:18.320points uh first the developer had to pay for them and so they they paid uh however much it was a
00:57:28.000month but then like twitter changed what endpoints they were able to actually access after they had
00:57:36.380paid for it um and so even like big developers who've shelled out up to 42 000 a month for
00:57:42.440enterprise access have been complaining that the apis just break all the time twitter will make
00:57:47.600changes without telling them which forces them to do like emergency maintenance to try to keep
00:57:53.000their apps working. And according to this article, a lot of them have just given up and are done with
00:58:01.760Twitter. And so that's just, I think, one more sign that things are going poorly in Twitter land
00:58:08.820for everyone involved. So speaking of giving up and being done with Twitter, I can relate.
00:58:14.660And it seems like a lot of other regular users of Twitter can relate as well, because with this big
00:58:19.240roadblock for the platform, a lot of people are looking at alternatives for Twitter in a way that
00:58:24.260I have not seen since Elon Musk first took over like seven months ago. So let's talk about a
00:58:29.240couple of the different alternatives to Twitter floating around out there. There's Blue Sky,
00:58:34.480a platform that I've played with a little bit. It was a platform conceptualized by Jack Dorsey,
00:58:39.840the former CEO of Twitter, that is still in beta and is invite only. It's very similar to Twitter.
00:58:45.500We're going to be doing an episode about it more in depth, but it's kind of like a Twitter
00:58:49.620alternative where a lot of folks who you might see on Twitter are there doing their thing.
00:58:55.820Another is Spill, which launched on July 12th.
00:58:58.200It was conceptualized by two former Twitter staffers.
00:59:01.700Hopefully, we will hear from the creators of Spill on this very podcast very soon.
00:59:06.100Spill kind of strikes me as a spot that is meant to be specifically building community
00:59:11.320around marginalized users, Black folks, queer folks.
00:59:13.960When you log into Spill, which is still invite-only, you have to—like, it's very clear, like, we're not about hate speech.
00:59:21.600We're here for marginalized people to be able to show up.
00:59:26.220I don't think it's, like, explicitly a space just for marginalized people, but I think it's clear that they want it to be a space where marginalized folks can show up.
00:59:34.180And there's a heavy, like, black Twitter contingent to Spill.
00:59:38.420But again, we'll hear more from the creators in their own words, hopefully very soon.
00:59:41.800And the one that I really want to talk about today is IG Threads.
00:59:46.060So I have to admit, I have not tried IG Threads.
01:00:58.160So if you download it and then you decide you don't like it, you have to delete your
01:01:01.960entire Instagram account to entirely get rid of that app.
01:01:06.040So according to the Thread Supplemental Privacy Policy, you may deactivate your Threads profile at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account.
01:01:17.080Ars Technica also quoted my personal nemesis, the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, who said,
01:01:22.920You can deactivate your Threads account, which hides your Threads profile and content. You can set your profile to private. You can delete individual Threads posts, all without deleting your Instagram account.
01:03:43.020So because it's Facebook, that means that there are very big privacy concerns with threads.
01:03:48.360Threads collects a lot of data about you, which can include things like your sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, biometric data, trade union membership, pregnancy status, politics, and religious beliefs.
01:04:01.140Threads can also collect data on users' employment as well as health and fitness activity.
01:04:05.460Beyond that, the app also can collect data monitoring your location and other web activity.
01:04:10.520Now, if you're listening to this in the EU, you do not have access to threads, and that's because of the European Data Protection Board's binding decision that Meta did not have an appropriate basis for processing personal data to serve up behavioral ads.
01:04:25.140It's kind of a whole legal mess, but here's how TechCrunch put it.
01:04:27.880Currently, Meta does not even offer users a general upfront choice to deny its tracking and profiling, let alone explicitly ask if it can share data on your health conditions so advertisers can sell you diet pills or whatever.
01:04:41.160And with even harder limits on surveillance ads coming down the pipe in the EU, an app that proposes to track everything to maximize its appeal to advertisers will be a tough sell to regional regulators.
01:04:52.820And so, yeah, if you are someone who wants to get on threads, you should just be aware of the amount of data that Meta is collecting from you from threads because it's a lot.
01:05:06.240And I should say, obviously, Facebook is not the only platform collecting your data.
01:05:10.460Twitter also collects your data, albeit, I think, a little bit less than Facebook does.
01:05:14.280But it's just generally good to be aware of Facebook's practices and histories around our sensitive data.
01:05:23.740And even though Zuckerberg has talked a big game about wanting threads to be this place for discourse and accurate information,
01:05:30.860it has been up for less than a day, and already this is being called into question.
01:05:36.100Because known harassers and misinformers and disinformers like libs of TikTok are already showing up on threads.
01:05:42.860When Donald Trump Jr. joined, threads added a warning to his account, letting folks know that he is known for spreading misinformation, which he is.
01:05:50.960When Donald Trump Jr. screenshotted that warning and complained, Metta's Andy Stone walked it back, saying the warning was just a mistake.
01:06:00.180So it does kind of seem like the same moderation issues and concerns that already show up on Facebook might also be present on threads.
01:06:08.020I would also just add that, like, I don't really even know how to put this, but there is definitely a cultural vibe of Instagram that makes me wonder if a product connected to Instagram will ever take off and be an actual replacement for Twitter.
01:06:27.620You know, it's hard to explain, but if you use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you probably know exactly what I mean.
01:06:34.000Think about the kind of person who becomes big on Instagram.
01:06:37.220Now, think about the kind of person who becomes big on Twitter.
01:06:40.540Those two groups of people find success for completely different behavior and things,
01:07:16.620It's just that there are two different mediums that are very different, and they have very different audiences.
01:07:22.860And so I feel like the kind of person who would find success on a visual medium and the kind of person who would find success on a text-based medium are very different.
01:07:33.560And having Threads be connected to your Instagram account so that like the people who already have big followings on Instagram, people who are already big influencers on Instagram automatically will have big platforms on Threads as well just makes me think that as a text base.
01:07:50.680I mean, you're shaking your head, but like if I have a million Instagram followers and you have five Instagram followers and Threads automatically pulls your followers from Instagram, I will start out on day one with a million followers on Threads.
01:08:03.920You will start out on day one with five followers on Threads.
01:15:44.640I don't necessarily want those universes meshed together.
01:15:47.560you know i think i said this last week is i kind of like having different apps with for like
01:15:54.240different audiences and different groups of people that i communicate with and different types of
01:15:58.720content that i want to look at something you said just before about what a sad end game for social
01:16:05.440media and you know thinking about threads being essentially uh just a clone of twitter which i
01:16:13.620think everyone agrees like that's exactly what it is twitter like you said really came to prominence
01:16:20.820years ago in a different era twitter was different the internet was different we were different
01:16:26.720and so cloning twitter now it's just like a radically different thing than what twitter was
01:16:37.480And Twitter arguably hasn't been that for a while.
01:16:42.740So it's, you know, if you clone the technology of a platform that was something that people really liked and valued a few years ago and maybe has fallen off in more recent times, you're probably going to end up with something that is similarly not what people are looking for in 2023.
01:17:02.420Then again, 30 million people downloaded it.
01:17:04.920But I don't know, I remain optimistic that we're going to do something new, right? Like we're not just going to all shift to some new platform that is a clone of the old platform that like something genuinely new and different and possibly decentralized is going to come along.
01:17:23.460Maybe it's Spill, you know, maybe it's there are a couple of people who are like, I think all of the interesting new alternatives to social media platforms are all coming from marginalized creators.
01:17:38.320There's Somewhere Good, which is an audio based, intimate audio based social networking platform.
01:17:44.320There's Spill. Yeah, I don't want to make it seem like I'm like doom and gloom.
01:17:49.380I will forever be an optimist. I think that when you get people who care about connection online
01:17:53.860together, really important stuff can happen. Really groundbreaking stuff can happen. But we
01:17:59.300actually need to be centering and empowering those voices and having some of these fucking0.99
01:18:04.400dipshits get out of the way who are just trying to make everything worse. Like, isn't life hard0.99
01:18:11.440enough? Do we have to make everything worse? So on Wednesday, Twitter threatened to sue Metta
01:18:18.300because as you just said, Mike, it's basically, Threads is like basically a Twitter clone.
01:18:24.140I don't even want to like get too much into this because I really hate this kind of Cola Wars,
01:18:30.500Pepsi versus Coke framing. I don't like talking about this as a business story because the reality
01:18:36.680is that we're talking about, as we just demonstrated, we're talking about our ability
01:18:40.580to like connect with people, access information, and like functionally use our largest communications
01:18:47.920platforms that are so connected to our ways of life, social engagement, democracy, politics.
01:18:53.700So that's really what's at risk. So I just mentioned the lawsuit because it's part of a
01:18:57.960story. I think talking about this from a perspective of like, ooh, what are these two
01:19:02.700CEOs going to do? Are they going to cage fight, duke it out? I think it really lends credibility
01:19:08.220into the way that both of these bad actors have been behaving, the way that they've been putting
01:19:13.300all of us at risk. And it kind of adds credence to that. So I don't like that. But I will say
01:19:20.800that in response to the Threads rollout and this lawsuit, Twitter's new CEO, Linda Yaccarino,
01:19:27.760tweeted something that I thought was pretty rich. She tweeted, on Twitter, everyone's voice matters.
01:19:34.520Whether you're here to watch history unfold, which you can't do, discover real-time information all
01:19:39.400over the world, which is all inaccurate, share your opinions, or learn about others at Twitter,
01:19:44.860you can be real unless your account is being impersonated. You built the Twitter community,
01:19:51.600prayer hands emoji, clap emoji, and that's irreplaceable. That is your public square.
01:19:57.500We're often imitated, but the Twitter community can never be duplicated. Now, I agree with her
01:20:03.480in some parts, right? We, the people, we did build Twitter. We did build the community.
01:20:10.540But here's why I think that sentiment is so rich coming from her. It's like when COVID started
01:20:14.980and all the airlines were like, we're a family here at American Airlines. And you're like,
01:20:19.960oh, were we a family when y'all charged me $40 for my suitcase? Were we a family when you bumped
01:20:24.980me from my flight? No, we're not a family. So it's pretty rich for her to be talking about community
01:20:29.540now that they see that there are other games in town, other alternatives for people to get
01:20:35.180their online engagement, now it's about community. Since Elon Musk took over, Twitter has not given
01:20:41.740a single crap about community. Anyone whose job it was to foster community at Twitter,
01:20:46.940from Blackbirds to other identity-specific groups, were all let go. And Elon did so while making it
01:20:53.100crystal clear that as far as he was concerned, the only job or role at Twitter that mattered
01:20:58.640was engineering, which side note, he also sucks at managing because Twitter was broken all weekend.
01:21:04.040So was Twitter a community when Elon blew up verifications and put users who actually built
01:21:10.080the community at risk? Were you looking out for Twitter's community when you let hate mongers,
01:21:14.600extremists, and transos back on? Maybe, but that is not a community that I would ever want to be
01:21:20.520part of. And Linda is right. It is the people, especially marginalized people, who make Twitter
01:21:26.200worth showing up to, that is a community that Elon has attacked and undermined and targeted.
01:21:31.920The people who do that work of building the community on the platform, those are the people
01:21:35.860that he has targeted again and again and again and put at risk. So we did build this community
01:21:41.220on Twitter. And at every turn, Elon Musk treats us, the people who built that community, like
01:21:47.000freeloaders who are behind on rent that we owe him simply for showing up. And so I say like,
01:21:53.720very rich to be talking about how much you value community now where is that value when people
01:21:59.300didn't want to give you eight dollars elon damn that sounds a little personal well it is i mean
01:22:05.800i just don't like being told that my contribution if i'm not willing to personally shell over eight0.56
01:22:13.040dollars to elon musk my contribution as a community member of twitter but on the platform since since
01:22:18.580the beginning, does it make a difference? But now when they're seeing there are other apps out there
01:22:23.980that might be able to recreate what they're doing, whether they do it well or not is, you know,
01:22:29.360remains to be seen. Now they want to talk about community. This is the first time that Elon Musk
01:22:34.040has ever talked about community to me. Where is this coming from? Right. And so like, I just don't
01:22:39.780appreciate the flim flam and I don't appreciate having him talk. I don't appreciate Twitter high
01:22:45.520us talking out of both sides of their mouth and playing at all of our faces. Because if we're a
01:22:49.560community, being a community is not just cashing my checks and treating me like garbage. Being a0.95
01:22:54.800community means actually representing me and actually advocating and supporting my interest
01:23:00.180and my well-being, which I have not seen from Twitter in the last six months. So yeah, I guess
01:23:05.440it is personal to answer your question. Yeah, I'm angry about it. And I guess we'll stop it there.