00:00:38.460and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:43.680I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:00:47.300Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,
00:00:51.020abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:00:54.640These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
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00:01:07.000It's one thing if you show up to a party and there's a few people there who are awful.
00:01:11.260It is quite another if you show up to the party and the host is awful.
00:01:20.640There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:24.640I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:01:34.280Okay, so Mike, for folks who listen to the newscast, they might recall that we do a little segment from time to time all about Elon Musk and Twitter.
00:01:43.200Yeah, that's right. We're doing it like every week for a while because it was just like one dumb thing after another, nonstop.0.78
00:01:51.120Yeah, and I've kind of been, I don't know if you've noticed, kind of been lessening the amount of times I talk about Elon Musk or trying to, I guess if I'm going to be keep it really real, trying to lessen the amount of times I talk about Elon Musk on the podcast.
00:02:04.860It has been a while since we've heard about Elon on here.
00:02:10.920I think it just got to be a little bit too much.
00:02:13.000I still plan on doing those segments on the newscast, but it just felt like every day he was doing something infuriating and it was taking up a lot of room from other things that we could be diving into.
00:02:25.800Honestly, I think if I talked about every instance of Elon Musk doing something infuriating or objectionable, it would be all we talked about on this podcast.
00:02:35.720And listen, there are many good tech podcasts out there that are dedicated to solely covering Elon Musk and solely covering his tenure at Twitter.
00:03:44.740I don't necessarily feel like it got enough attention when he was first in talks to buy
00:03:48.240Twitter way back when, but the whole reason that he said that he wanted to buy Twitter
00:03:52.740in the first place was rooted in transphobia.
00:03:55.480According to his own text messages revealed in court, he didn't like that Twitter had rules against deadnaming and misgendering trans people, and it prompted his interest in buying the platform initially to turn it into some kind of so-called, quote, free speech utopia.
00:04:12.900So let's be really, really clear about who he is and who he has always been.
00:04:17.660I feel like a lot of folks, even folks that I respect in tech journalism, tech media,
00:04:23.960really kind of sold this false narrative that, oh, Elon is a genius.
00:04:28.460If he's doing these hateful things, if he is tweeting sexist, transphobic, racist things,
00:04:34.500he must be playing three-dimensional chess.
00:04:37.600This must be some genius move we don't understand.
00:04:40.600Either that or they did not cover this aspect of who he is at all.
00:04:45.920Only now do I think we're starting to see places really catch up and cover him thoughtfully
00:04:51.400and accurately to who he is, what he says, and the things that he does.
00:04:55.520But for a long time, I don't think that was the case.
00:04:58.480So I just want to root this whole conversation in that reality that none of this is new.
00:05:06.880He's always shown himself to be this kind of person.
00:05:09.320And we ought to believe him that this is who he is.
00:05:12.260Yeah, he does a very good job acting the role of a fun party boy genius who's trying to do good in the world.
00:05:22.520And I think that's like really appealing and captivating to people.
00:05:25.620And maybe that's why so many people are like not only eager to take him at his word, but almost like trying to actively erase these things that he says with his words, you know, like trying to wanting to buy Twitter because he didn't like its policies against trans people.
00:05:51.580I mean, the word that I would use is launder.
00:05:54.020I have to say that a lot of my colleagues who make content about technology have done
00:06:00.060the dirty business of laundering his bad behavior and making it more palatable.
00:06:05.400And I have a lot of suspicions as to why that was.
00:06:08.480But I think that, one, a lot of these places just don't have the range, right?
00:06:12.160Like, if you don't have the range to dive into the way that things like transphobia,
00:06:16.520sexism, racism are impacting not just who he is as a person, but his business and financial moves,
00:06:23.040moves that impact all of us, you might be less inclined to have that inform your reporting about
00:06:29.020him, even though it is absolutely unequivocally part of the story of how he runs businesses.
00:06:35.440This is someone who has been accused of mistreating his workers along racial lines,
00:06:41.480along gender lines. This is absolutely part and parcel to how he runs businesses.
00:06:46.520So if you're somebody who makes media or writes or covers about technology and you're leaving that out, well, you're leaving out a huge relevant part of the story.
00:06:54.940Yeah, I think the idea that people don't have the range to cover the implications of his hateful statements is really interesting because I think he counts on a similar thing regarding his – a lot of his technical statements.
00:07:11.040It's I feel it's almost a meme at this point that it's easy to think Elon Musk is a genius until he says something about a domain that you happen to know something about.
00:07:24.460And I feel it feels like there's a lot of parallels with what you were just talking about, where journalists don't maybe don't have the range to really contextualize the impact of his transphobic or racist or anti-Semitic statements.
00:07:39.880Similarly, people just take him at his word that, like, he's a tech genius who will revolutionize social media and create the new everything app that users have been clamoring for, which doesn't seem to be working out super great.
00:08:00.640I think never underestimate how much people will believe you when you are a wealthy white guy who says you're a genius.
00:08:08.260And Mike, to your point about buying Twitter and like revolutionizing it, if I were to get into the depths of it, we would be here for hours. But let me just say this, as somebody who has studied social media, worked at social media companies, been in a space for a long time, been in rooms with people who are way smarter than I am, who have been working at this for many, many years longer than I have.
00:08:34.920And we all cannot agree on how to do this right. Like, what we're going to talk about today, content moderation and how you keep hate off of platforms is very complicated. It's very complex. There's not like one simple answer.
00:08:50.200smart people, learned people, accomplished people have been arguing about it since there was social
00:08:57.880media. The hubris that it takes to walk in and be like, well, I can do this. It fills me with
00:09:05.820such a deep rage. And to have people be like, maybe he can do it. He has never done this before
00:09:13.600and has no background in it. And people who have been doing it for decades haven't been able to
00:09:18.280figure it out and it's not really an easy thing but i don't know maybe he's a genius and he can
00:09:22.160figure it out he's so obviously not up to the task of figuring out social media these like really
00:09:29.680difficult abstract high-level problems i remember one of the first things he did when he took over
00:09:35.280twitter was uh you know fire a bunch of people and then the engineers who were left i forget the
00:09:41.120exact details but it was like they had to meet with him and show him like how many lines of code
00:10:12.500that's always what engineers are saying.
00:10:15.680It's like if a caveman was running Twitter.
00:10:20.960Okay, so Elon Musk, he tweets and does misogynistic things, racist things, transphobic things, and has trafficked in anti-Semitism before too.
00:10:31.480A lot of times in the past, it's been this brand of kind of wink, wink, nod, nod anti-Semitism, like dog whistles.
00:10:39.060But last week, he engaged in pretty overt anti-Semitism.
00:10:44.460You have said the actual truth in response to a post that claimed that Jewish people support, quote, dialectical hatred against whites.
00:10:54.120I feel like the word dialectical is having a renaissance.
00:10:58.560Maybe people have been talking about dialecticals this whole time and I've just been laid to the party.
00:11:02.280Well, I kind of get what you mean, that it might be one of those words that people who are trying to make their terrible, messed up opinions sound like high art and like highfalutin.
00:11:18.700There are a couple of words like that that I've definitely heard in college classes where it's like, oh, you are just trying to make your horrible opinion sound refined.
00:11:30.640That is kind of what I mean. It feels like one of these words that like you just you just kind of sprinkle it in and it adds an air of authority or learnedness.
00:11:41.400It's like I'm referencing 19th century philosophers. Clearly what I'm saying isn't dumb. But like, what is it actually adding? Right.0.72
00:11:50.460Like my flavor of anti-Semitism is actually very learned.
00:11:54.880Right. Like, you know, he in this quote that you just read, he said that they were supporting dialectical hatred against whites. What is the word dialectical really adding in that sentence other than connotations of, you know, I'm someone who's read philosophy. This is a learned take, not just hate.
00:12:14.920Totally agree. So this kind of feels like yet another tipping point for the platform. I think
00:12:22.980I've said that before on the podcast that like, oh, this is a new low. This is a new low. But no,
00:12:27.420this is a really, this is a real new low. I think it feels like a new low in a situation that was
00:12:34.200already not so great. Elon Musk's remarks drew widespread condemnation. The White House even
00:12:40.040weighed in saying, it is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of
00:12:45.480antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the
00:12:50.960Jewish people since the Holocaust. This is from White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a
00:12:55.600statement. A little side note here, which is that the White House putting out this statement is one
00:12:59.340thing, but the reality is that the American government is pretty deeply entangled with
00:13:05.420Elon Musk right now to provide communications and technology infrastructure. In addition to
00:13:10.540owning and tanking Twitter and also Tesla, Musk runs the high-speed satellite internet provider
00:13:17.500Starlink that's been a major factor in both the war in Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza. And right
00:13:22.920now there's over a billion dollars worth of Elon Musk's SpaceX technology about to launch
00:13:28.320Pentagon tech into space. And so, you know, I agree with this statement. However, the reality
00:13:35.180is, is that American civic infrastructure and public infrastructure remains pretty entangled
00:13:42.220with and reliant on, in a lot of ways, Elon Musk. And so, yeah, it sounds great, but what can they
00:13:50.400really do when that is the case? Yeah, and not just our civic infrastructure, our military
00:13:57.360infrastructure, right? Like we should definitely link to Ronan Farrow's piece in the show notes
00:14:03.180about how Starlink has been kind of instrumental in Ukraine's war against Russia and how awkward
00:14:17.380a position that has put the pentagon into of uh you know this this military ally in a life and
00:14:27.380death conflict being so dependent on starlink which is a private company owned by this mercurial
00:14:39.220guy and i think that's the thing like at the very like base level do you really want like if you
00:14:49.300see the way that elon musk tweets if you've ever seen him on the joe rogan show which it used to
00:14:54.280be part of my job to watch joe rogan podcasts and i have seen him on those podcasts you would say
00:15:01.100this is not somebody that we want deeply entangled in like life or death military operations right
00:16:58.880And it's a real catch-22 because I think exactly that feeling is what keeps people there and perpetuates its status as, like, the place that people are.
00:17:23.380Platforms intentionally make you feel like your entire world is on their platforms.
00:17:27.680So it's that much easier for you to be like, I'm out. I don't want this. Because it means that breaking up with that platform is going to feel like breaking up with your friends, your community, how you remember birthdays, how you keep track of people that you went to school with, how you keep track of events happening in your local community, all of that.
00:17:43.840And so that's by design. However, the White House actually announced today that they were joining the Twitter alternative threads, which we talked about on the podcast before. I think you and I both tried it briefly. I haven't logged in in a while. Maybe it's popping over there. I need to like dip back in. Maybe I will.
00:18:00.900And I do think that Biden's campaign being on threads will cause a lot of journalists and media makers, the folks who made up a big contingent of like what kept Twitter moving, to be spending more time on threads.
00:18:13.640So that's I thought that was kind of an interesting kind of we'll see about this whole situation.
00:19:49.360It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:19:57.260Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:20:06.420Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:22:11.080It's interesting that Apple spent $48 million in a single quarter advertising on Twitter. That's kind of mind-blowing.
00:22:18.120And as the Media Matters piece points out, this comes after Twitter's maybe kind of sort of question mark CEO, Linda Iaccarino, had been talking a very big game about wooing back advertisers and brands, promising them that their ads will not be showing up next to Nazi content, which I got to be honest, that's like such a sad promise.
00:22:39.140first of all it's not like there's not nazi content it's like yeah we all know there's
00:22:43.900nazi content on this platform but we can let's just start from there we all know that it's not
00:22:48.060your ads will be seen by lots of people or your ads will perform well it's just there will not be
00:22:54.400a literal picture of adolf hitler next to it and they can't even deliver on that like very sad
00:23:01.000would you say it like that it's it is very sad it's such a such a low bar that they're still
00:23:07.980failing to hit another thing to note here is that one of the brands that is pulling their
00:23:12.460advertising is comcast comcast owns bravo and nbc and linda yaccarino was formerly in a high up
00:23:20.980advertising executive at nbc so if she's not even able to confidently woo back her where she worked
00:23:29.540most recently before she was at twitter she's not even able to woo back them as an advertiser
00:23:34.540that is really telling me something that like something is deeply wrong and advertisers are
00:23:38.900not happy yeah understandably so and it's i mean it's bad the media matters report which we'll put
00:23:44.360in the show notes is pretty damning it has all of these screenshots of brand tweets like
00:23:49.300advertisements next to like literal overt nazi posts like actual pictures and quotes of hitler
00:23:57.040so but that'll be next to like an ad for an apple product or like an ad inviting you to hang out
00:24:02.920with the Real Housewives at BravoCon, right?
00:25:06.620I never click on them because I try to never click on, I don't know, shit that people are trying to, like, pay money to get me to click on.0.69
00:25:15.040But there's – some of them are so good at, like, appealing to my basest interest of, like, what does Jan from The Brady Bunch look like now?
00:25:26.840Like, that sure is an unflattering picture of her.1.00
00:25:29.340what a terrible angle her mouth is open. Let's just see.
00:25:34.640So ads showing up to this kind of problematic content online is not new. And brands have always
00:25:39.940had to navigate that for like as long as they've been advertising online. But what is new and
00:25:44.600specific and unique to Twitter is that you don't usually have the owner who has made himself this
00:25:50.000like very visible person on the platform endorsing those same kind of problematic views. Like it's
00:25:57.260one thing if you show up to a party and there's a few people there who are awful it is quite another
00:26:02.120if you show up to the party and the host is awful and that awful host is also high-fiving and like
00:26:10.160hyping up all of the awful people at the party it's a totally different thing and i think that
00:26:14.980that's what brands are responding to in this moment that is such a good analogy why would
00:26:20.880a person want to stay at this party you would leave you would be like oh i have to get out of
00:26:26.220here, right? I've been at parties like that, not with Nazis, but with other less objectionable
00:26:34.400forces. And you know what you do? You leave. That's what these brands are doing. These big
00:26:38.980companies like your IBMs and your Apples can really set the tone for the space. And so if
00:26:43.540they are pausing, it can create a domino effect where other companies will get the idea and pause
00:26:49.300as well. So after these advertisers left, Elon Musk took responsibility for his tweets and the
00:26:55.180way that they had normalized hate on the platform. Oh, wait, sorry. I'm misreading that. What he
00:27:00.440actually did is what he always does, which was tweet a million tweets and then threaten the
00:27:04.920lawsuit. He tweeted, the split second the court opens on Monday, X-Corp will be filing a thermonuclear
00:27:11.840lawsuit against Media Matters and all those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company.
00:27:18.300Ooh, I'm sure they're terrified. A thermonuclear lawsuit.
00:27:22.660Also, side note, does this not sound like something a supervillain would tweet?
00:27:27.280Like, this is giving Lex Luthor, it's giving supervillain.
00:27:51.800Okay. So I actually have to give Elon a little bit of credit here because he actually tweeted something and then followed through on it, which for him, you know, you never know. He tweets all kinds of stuff and like it doesn't come to fruition. But here he tweeted that there was going to be a lawsuit and there is a lawsuit because earlier today, we're recording this on Monday, he actually did file the lawsuit.
00:28:13.300In it, he accused Media Matters of defaming Twitter, saying that they, quote, manufactured or contrived the screenshots in their report, and that Media Matters had not found the ads as claimed, but rather, quote, created these pairings in secrecy.
00:28:29.840The suit specifically names the individual Media Matters staffer who wrote the report, Eric Hononoke, in the lawsuit.
00:28:35.960Twitter's, again, maybe CEO, Linda Yaccarino, responded to the Media Matters report, confirming that the screenshots were real, like in a literal sense.
00:31:10.120It's really interesting that that's how she phrased it.
00:31:14.140Like it kind of suggests that that's how they think about it, that maybe they're not thinking about X as a social media platform.
00:31:23.620Maybe they're thinking about it as like an in-group or a club of their people who want to be there reading Elon's inane tweets, entering their banking information so they can bank there, using it for video calls, all the stuff that they talk about wanting to do with it.
00:31:46.140I think there are a small faction of people for whom that is the case.
00:31:50.800I think it's Elon Musk fanboys, probably some aspiring tech thought leader types who have kind of bought in.
00:32:01.860But listen, you need more than that small faction of people to run a successful company.
00:32:07.820You can't just, like, build out this, like, small in-group of people who will always agree with what you say to build your company, a company like Twitter.
00:32:20.660That's just, like, it's not going to be a fruitful and sustainable way to build a platform.
00:32:26.420Certainly not financially sustainable.
00:32:28.920But maybe that's not what they care about.
00:32:30.620Maybe Elon just wants his fanboys to stand with X.
00:32:35.620Stand with X is the craziest thing that I've heard all week long.
00:32:39.740It's like patriotic sounding incitement for people to stand with X.
00:32:48.180I mean, we are talking about Elon Musk, the same person who launched an AI chatbot to tell him how funny he is and how much everybody likes him, how much everybody thinks he's so funny on social media.
00:35:22.240Yeah. Okay. Cool. Probably not a great defense.
00:35:27.180No, no dispute that Nazi imagery is like available for people to see.
00:35:33.140But yeah, but they're disputing that non-Nazis would see it. They're like, no, no, we only show Nazi stuff to Nazis.
00:35:40.820yeah basically they're saying like you would have to be a nazi who also follows like ibm and apple
00:35:46.880to to see this content which like that's probably not a ton of people but i don't think that's some
00:35:53.380like wild scenario that like media matters quote manufactured yeah the whole idea here is that
00:36:02.520People who believe in a free society should be actively trying to thwart Nazis, not serve content to them that they want to see.
00:36:13.940That seems to be a point that is missed.
00:36:16.660But the other thing that you just said, these accounts that were producing the Nazi material in question in the report, they were monetized.
00:36:25.680They were like getting paid to produce this material for Twitter.
00:39:06.160So we're talking about the thermonuclear lawsuit that Elon Musk filed against Media Matters for their report showing ads next to Nazi content on Twitter.
00:39:15.760Musk and Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino are saying that no actual users saw ads next to the content, which they do not dispute is on the platform, notably.
00:39:25.360But they say that Media Matters is only seeing it because they followed or searched a bunch of Nazi content themselves.
00:39:32.220They're arguing that this is Media Matters, quote, manufacturing the content, which they say is fraud.
00:39:52.420She said, the issue at the heart of Elon Musk's law salute against Media Matters is who is
00:39:57.420responsible for data voids when they're discovered.
00:40:00.100Media Matters identified a bunch of mini data voids on Twitter where problematic content
00:40:04.660lives and then reported on it rather than exploiting them.
00:40:07.500When you search for an obscure or rarely used hashtag or set of keywords, like what Media Matters did, and what a lot of people are doing now on Twitter, you will often stumble upon data voids or informational dark spaces.
00:42:18.200throwing out its own like his party was in control of the the legislature in congress and they
00:42:27.180indicted him for corruption and uh somehow he beat it and uh we were talking about his
00:42:33.840some previous little stunt of his right yeah his last the last time that we talked about him on
00:42:38.720the podcast he was doing a little stunt where he was suing the platform yelp because yelp was
00:42:44.740accurately, per his own office, accurately describing crisis pregnancy centers on their
00:42:52.280platform. And so he was like, I'm going to sue them because this is Texas. So Texas Attorney
00:42:57.900General Ken Paxton, don't worry, because he is on the case. He is going to open up an investigation
00:43:02.520into media matters for potential fraudulent activity. Himself only having been recently,
00:43:08.520as in like a few months ago, cleared up corruption and fraudulent activity himself.
00:43:13.220keep that in mind he says he's just the guy to go after them right he if there's one thing he
00:43:18.480knows it's fraudulent activity yeah it's like oh frauds and scams that's my forte baby i want it
00:43:26.460he said we are examining the issue closely to ensure that the public has not been deceived
00:43:34.400by the schemes of radical left-wing organizations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom
00:43:39.600by reducing participation in the public square oh my god so yeah i mean like it doesn't surprise
00:43:46.420me that he's pulling a little stunt sticking up for elon musk game recognized game like he's like
00:43:51.400oh scams and stunts scams and stunts right right right let's do this is there some sort of like
00:43:56.300texas connection here that i don't know about i don't know like i'm i'm giving him too much credit
00:44:02.060i guess it's not like that kind of legitimate thing it's it's a little stunt yeah it's a little
00:44:08.260stunt. So Twitter is suing Media Matters for defamation, saying that they lost revenue when
00:44:12.740the brands left the platform. However, most of these brands did not say it was Media Matters'
00:44:18.100report as the reason why they left. Lionsgate specifically said that it was Elon Musk's
00:44:24.240anti-Semitic tweet was the reason why they left. So this is really just like classic Elon blaming
00:44:29.860everyone else for his own behavior when that behavior causes a problem. He did the same thing
00:44:34.540earlier this year when he launched a lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate
00:44:37.960for publishing a report about how hate speech was flourishing on the platform since Musk took over.
00:44:43.940Like, this is just not how good leaders lead.
00:44:46.760Like, blaming everyone and passing the buck to avoid responsibility.
00:44:51.100Yeah, I mean, just continuously suing every organization that talks about rampant hate speech on Twitter
00:45:00.280kind of gives the impression that he's not really that concerned with hate speech on Twitter.
00:45:05.920No. And I think that's what bugs me so much about it when Linda Yaccarino is talking about like, oh, brands, it's safe to be here. Your content won't be next to Nazi pictures. It's like that's the only way they can conceptualize how a platform can feel healthy is that if brands feel good to show up there.
00:45:27.740I just think it's like the wrong metric. And it really makes me wonder if they meaningfully care what the platform is like. Do they really care that hate speech is there? Do they really care that like, you know, there are slurs and conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism? Like, I would argue no. I think the only thing they care about is our brands there because they're 90% of our revenue.
00:45:52.000And speaking of Linda Yaccarino, you know, we've talked about her a lot on the podcast. I'm kind of fascinated by her in a lot of ways. I see her as this sort of very intriguing figure.
00:46:02.840Forbes actually reported that Linda Yaccarino's advertising colleagues have been texting her0.97
00:46:07.880trying to be like, honey, you need to get out of Twitter to save her own reputation1.00
00:46:13.140because they are worried that she's going to tank her own personal brand0.98
00:46:17.140by being associated with an anti-Semite, racist, misogynist like Elon Musk.0.89
00:46:23.300Marketing industry veteran Lou Pascalis said that he texted Linda Yaccarino
00:46:27.320and he told CNN, she thinks quitting is failing.
00:46:31.460She believes that she can mother Elon Musk into someone who could be respected by the
00:46:35.280advertising community, and that ship has definitely sailed.
00:46:38.720But she's not going to come off the mechanical bull without all of us telling her it's time
00:48:21.100you like there is no world where you can be like i didn't know or i thought i could fix him
00:48:27.320you knew we all saw you made a choice i'm just really curious what her inner monologue is like
00:48:35.400and how she feels about how it's going her tweets are absurd like when elon musk is like tweeting
00:48:43.580anti-semitic stuff and it's like making headlines she'll literally be tweeting like
00:48:47.940does anyone like beverages i love beverages like not that but basically that you know what i mean
00:48:55.220like the most inane stuff and it's just like it's hard to not i don't know maybe it's maybe i'm
00:49:00.660alone in this it's hard for me to not be fascinated by her yeah you're you're not alone there i guess
00:49:06.000i guess i get it you know i also find her interesting i don't really know why though
00:49:12.820To that point, you know, lawsuit or no lawsuit, this is all bad for Twitter's economic outlook.
00:49:18.040All of the verification and Twitter blue subscriptions are not really paying off.
00:49:22.240Advertising is still 90% of Twitter's revenue model.
00:49:25.780According to TechCrunch, before any of this even happened, Twitter's ad revenues were already forecasted to be declining by 54.4% from 2022 to 2023.