00:00:49.980If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.400Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:04.060Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:01:14.080Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:19.460I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive
00:01:26.780what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:32.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled,
00:01:38.200and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:43.380Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:51.880I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.
00:01:56.280You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.
00:02:01.640Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out.
00:02:08.280You're not hired just to fill time and space.
00:02:11.300You're hired to fill the space with you.
00:02:14.660Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:25.920There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:02:34.040I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:36.760I've brought it up on the show before, but I feel like you and I, Mike, live in and occupy
00:02:46.160very different social media internet spheres. Oftentimes I'll ask you, did you see so-and-so
00:02:53.640or did you see such-and-such online? And I'm asking rhetorically because I already know the
00:02:57.680answer is no, you definitely didn't see that. But I will ask you this rhetorically, even though I
00:03:02.520feel i know the answer have you seen the latest druski skit i think this is more evidence that
00:03:09.340you're right we occupy different internets uh because i have not seen this skit um familiar
00:03:16.600with erica kirk famed widow and alleged girlfriend of jd vance but uh i can't say that i'm familiar
00:03:23.800with druski or his her their skit with erica kirk okay so druski is this comedian youtuber
00:03:34.340he's known for doing skits um he had this skit recently where he is a black mega church pastor
00:03:43.480who comes down from the sky in church and as somebody who grew up in the black church
00:03:48.780it's somewhat sometimes this stuff is like barely even parody because it's so spot on
00:03:54.700uh he's also known for doing like extreme makeup to really dramatically become other people so
00:04:02.860driski's a black dude and he went viral a while back for doing what i can only describe as full
00:04:09.700body, head to toe, makeup to become a very sunburnt white guy at a NASCAR race. And I know0.78
00:04:19.080this is all very visual. We'll add links to the show notes because you obviously can't see what
00:04:22.740I'm describing. But when I say that Drewski became a sunburnt white guy at a NASCAR, they even put
00:04:30.940makeup on his chest and he's wearing denim overalls with one of the straps down. His mannerisms,
00:04:38.400Like he just really he becomes the people that he is that he is trying to become via makeup.
00:04:45.780So his latest video is called How Conservative Women in America Act.0.51
00:04:51.180He wears that extreme makeup to become a white woman with blonde, wavy hair who wears a pink pantsuit and dances around on stage with pyrotechnics going.
00:05:04.440and has this very weird pointed way of speaking0.95
00:05:07.400where everything she says is punctuated
00:05:09.960by intensely staring into the camera for some reason.
00:09:59.860I mean, there's there's not an analogous. It would be convenient for these critics if it was, but there's not an analogous kind of historical context and precedent for whiteface in the United States.
00:10:14.740That's such a funny thing to say, like doing whiteface because, yeah, whiteface is not a thing like a person just putting on white makeup. Not a thing.
00:10:23.680like ted cruz tweeted that the skit was horrible all the voices that you would expect to be
00:10:30.720speaking out about this or speaking out about it what's funny is are these not the same people who
00:10:34.360just spent all this time being like oh you can't even make jokes anymore everything so whoa can't
00:10:39.300even make jokes can you take a joke druski say what you want about druski he is very clever
00:10:46.040because now i think the conversation has kind of become like oh well this is really offensive
00:10:52.420And tonight, as that conversation is really cresting about people who are upset by this,
00:10:58.220Drewski posted a picture of him as a child with his grandfather.
00:12:56.400Because do you remember the conversation that you and I had six months ago when OpenAI released Sora and all these people from people that I respected even and trusted were talking about how this was going to be the thing that turned the tides on AI, that Sora was a mark for the idea that AI was going to truly revolutionize film and television and creativity?
00:17:53.560But this particular partnership, we're not doing that anymore.
00:17:56.920To your point, there was a really good piece in 404 that we'll put in the show notes that basically tried to answer my big question, which is like why a company like Disney that has been so protective of their copyright on IP in Hollywood would suddenly open the doors to what Run Rider called Sam Altman's plagiarism machine.
00:18:16.120And in the piece, they talk about how the only real explanation that makes sense is that the studio executives just really, really hate paying for human labor.
00:18:25.240They hate it so much that they maybe convince themselves that audiences would accept AI content if it was packaged the right way.
00:18:31.960But I think to your point, when the use cases on Sora are mostly low effort, porny, kind of weird, gross stuff, when you strip that away, there just really isn't a lot there.
00:18:47.500As they note in the piece for 404, that's just not something anybody really wants to pay for.
00:18:52.940Yeah, just the lowest common denominator slop that is the easiest, cheapest to mass produce.
00:19:01.300Why would anybody pay for that? Why would anybody even really want to look at it?
00:19:04.480Yeah, there's been a lot of people on social media complaining about this and saying, I built up my Sora presence from zero.
00:19:12.340I have made hours and hours and hours of AI generated content there.
00:19:16.560And then Sora just makes this decision and it wipes out my entire portfolio, for lack of a better word, overnight. And then they would show some of the stuff that they would make. And it's stuff like, it's a lot of trademarked characters from different universes interacting in some way, right?
00:19:34.880So it's Spider-Man hanging out with SpongeBob SquarePants
00:19:52.360And that the quote storyline that they come up with,
00:19:56.680it's always like, what if Ross from Friends
00:19:59.960hung out with the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?
00:20:02.240Like, they're all the most trite ideas imaginable that really are not cinematic and not really good stories.
00:20:12.900And truly, my bedroom production of two Barbies and a G.I. Joe kiss was on the same level as what they're coming up with.
00:20:21.020It just happens to be AI-generated.1.00
00:20:23.080Yeah, I think that's a great analogy for that slop.
00:20:26.560Because that's, it really gets at why people like characters in the first place, right?0.90
00:20:32.240Like, Ross from Friends and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, they had good storytelling around them and, like, relationships with other characters.0.95
00:20:43.100If you take that away, it's just trash.0.94
00:25:05.400speaking of trash let's check in on my favorite trash platform facebook mike i know you have0.69
00:25:15.280been following some pretty big news from facebook this week yeah there were two uh not just one but0.87
00:25:22.100two big lawsuits against social media platforms this week one was against meta and youtube which
00:25:31.400She's owned by Google. The other one was just against Meta, the New York Times and The Guardian and a bunch of other outlets covered in both.
00:25:38.100We'll put some links in the show notes. Both of these, I think, are pretty landmark cases that will be cited a lot as similar cases continue to to pop up and be heard by juries.
00:25:52.180So just real quick, what they actually were, two different cases.
00:25:57.600One was in California brought by a young woman named Kaylee who won her suit claiming that design choices by Meta and YouTube contributed to her poor mental health.
00:26:09.320TikTok and Snap had also been originally named as plaintiffs when she filed her lawsuit, but they settled out of court so they weren't part of this jury's decision.
00:26:18.600And now that we know which way the jury went, that was probably a wise move on their part.
00:26:25.580The other case was in New Mexico and like quite different.
00:26:28.740So instead of being brought by a single individual who was harmed in the New Mexico case, it was brought by the state attorney general on behalf of young people across the state, specifically claiming that design choices that Meta had made facilitated the sexual exploitation of children.
00:26:48.600So we can break down both of them. But first, I think it's important to set up the context that these aren't just two random court cases. There are literally thousands of similar lawsuits filed across America, and these are the first two.
00:27:03.060And, of course, I am not a lawyer, but this is something that I'm pretty interested in just because, you know, you know that I have a history working in tobacco control.
00:27:15.040And so there's a lot of parallels between what's these types of lawsuits being brought against social media companies and lawsuits that people were bringing against the big tobacco companies in the 1990s.
00:27:27.06090s. I've seen so many people kind of compare this to the moment that led us to the master
00:27:31.560settlement agreement with big tobacco that are we hitting the watershed moment of people speaking
00:27:37.240out against tech harms. Yeah, I think that's a very reasonable question, right? Because
00:27:42.100these are the first two cases. There are thousands more across the country. These are the first two.
00:27:48.220And in both of them, the social media companies lost. Right. So certainly not any sort of guarantee
00:27:54.180about how those other cases are going to go,
00:28:24.060of the other case um but so kaylee she originally filed her lawsuit in california in 2023 today
00:28:30.540she's 20 years old but she says she started using social media back when she was six
00:28:35.760during the trial she testified about using social media back then and how as a child she treated it
00:28:43.460as a creative outlet an escape from bullying at school it was a really big part of her life she
00:28:48.640posted very often. For example, she posted hundreds of photos on Instagram and she used a
00:28:55.520lot of beauty filters the platform provided, which she said magnified her insecurities and led to
00:29:00.480body dysmorphia, which is something that we've talked about before on this show. It's not the
00:29:08.160first time anybody is hearing these ideas. And so the jury believed her. The prosecution presented
00:29:14.920a lot of evidence. The court ordered Meta to pay her $4.2 million in damages and ordered YouTube
00:29:21.880to pay $1.8 million. That is not a lot of money for these companies. That is pocket change for
00:29:28.100these companies. Yes, that is complete pocket change for these companies, just like a drop
00:29:34.180in the bucket for them in the uh during the trial kaylee's lawyer held up a jar full of m&ms
00:29:44.160to talk to the jury about what the damages should be awarded and he compared the jar full of m&ms
00:29:50.000he was like each of these m&ms is a million dollars you could take a handful out and it's
00:29:55.260not even going to make any difference uh trying to make that same point uh so it's right they
00:30:01.140It's hard as a drop in the bucket for these companies, but it does set precedent for the thousands of other cases that are pending.
00:30:09.840And so we'll just have to wait and see what happens with all of them.
00:30:16.080OK, so what about the case in New Mexico?
00:30:17.360So the New Mexico case was filed against Meta specifically, just Meta, by the state's attorney general in May of 2023, who accused it of misleading its users about safety.
00:30:29.080The evidence that they submitted included both private and public statements by staff and executives at Meta.
00:30:36.420It also included evidence that state investigators had collected by posing as underage kids online, documenting cases where they were sexually solicited on the platform.
00:30:47.100The lawsuit also cited a two-year investigation of Meta that The Guardian had published in April of 2023, which found that Facebook and Instagram had both become marketplaces for child sex trafficking.
00:30:59.080So it was just a lot of evidence that the prosecutors had been accumulating and working on for a very long time.
00:31:07.520Former Facebook engineering director Arturo Behar, who designed social media safety features for the platform before leaving in 2021, he testified as part of the trial.
00:31:17.080When we were first covering this trial early on, we've actually played his testimony to Congress on the podcast before.
00:31:26.080I would recommend people listen to what he has to say.
00:33:24.480We're going to be hearing about great cases like this for a long time with increasing frequency, I think.
00:33:30.940One notable thing about this case is that the company wasn't able to hide behind Section 230.
00:33:37.200So, as you know, Section 230 is a controversial law that shields social media companies from liability for content posted by their users.
00:33:46.620We've had people on the show who have argued that it needs to be reformed.
00:33:50.980We've had other people on the show who have argued that it needs to be left alone because it is an essential pillar of a free and open Internet.
00:33:58.180In my opinion, very reasonable people disagree sharply on it.
00:34:02.480Yeah, I am in a lot of coalitions and working groups for Internet safety. And for the most part, we all sort of agree on, you know, we all have a similar orientation. For whatever reason, when it comes to Section 230, I have been surprised how much disagreement there is among people who like broadly advocate for the same thing.
00:34:25.380And that's a whole other show, right? Like we've we've had shows on it. We probably will have shows in the future about Section 230. But notably in this lawsuit, the prosecutors stepped around it completely. Right. Because in this case, it wasn't the content that was on trial.
00:34:44.680It was the way Meta had designed their apps to be addictive and the fact that they knew that they were harmful and deliberately tried to mislead the public about that harm.
00:35:02.780Yes. And Mike, you and I were out for a drink the other night and I won't say we got into an argument.
00:35:07.820We had a discussion about this. I take issue sometimes with the framing of social media as addictive.
00:35:19.800I guess per this case, it has set a legal precedent that legally speaking, a jury has found that these design choices were addictive.
00:35:30.780And I know that you this is something that you have a background in is like working with addiction, studying addiction.
00:35:37.820That's right. I've spent more than a decade working in tobacco and nicotine addiction, building apps to help people with treatment, doing research on policies, research on addiction.
00:35:50.480So it is something that I know a bit about. And one of the things that really struck me as I got into this field is that there is not a single accepted definition of addiction or what it means to be addicted.
00:36:08.120um there there just isn't and i think personally one of the best definitions of addiction that i've
00:36:17.340found is the framing it as a learning problem where a person keeps doing something despite
00:36:24.120being harmed by it and for whatever reason just keeps doing it because that's different from most
00:36:31.080behaviors right like humans are really good at learning if a little baby touches a hot stove
00:36:36.740it quickly learns that stoves are hot and it hurts and hopefully the baby's going to be okay
00:36:42.800but it's almost certainly not going to touch a stove again right like that's a very sharp
00:36:47.380learning signal that doing this behavior leads to bad consequences and so in addiction the same
00:36:55.060sort of thing is going on you there's this behavior that leads to bad consequences and yet
00:37:00.180The person just keeps doing it and fails to learn that actually it would be better to not do it.
00:37:06.920And, you know, of course, it's very complicated and addiction is used to describe a whole range of things.
00:37:15.800And some addictions are obviously so much stronger and also so much more devastating than others.
00:37:21.540And thinking about behaviors that are addictive, I think, is often more useful than questions of like, well, is someone addicted or not? And trying to put things in categories of like, this is something to which one can be addicted, and this is something to which it's not possible to be addicted. I don't think that latter framing is very helpful.
00:37:44.400That's a really good distinction. So it's not even really necessarily a question of, can someone be addicted to social media? The question really is, did this company create platforms knowing that they might present in addiction-like behaviors in their users? It's a small distinction, but I see what you mean.
00:38:07.820Yeah. Did they design their product, Facebook and Instagram, to make users, in particular kids, just want to keep using them more and more, even though it was harmful to those kids?
00:38:26.740And did they go out of their way to hide that harm?
00:38:29.600A lot of the internal documents that were submitted as evidence from memos and emails that Facebook folks had sent to each other within the company, as well as some public statements, a lot of them made the case that Facebook was indeed designing its products to maximize engagement.
00:38:47.260even when people on the team pushed back in some cases
00:38:51.540the directives from up top were to keep pushing to maximize engagement
00:38:56.660get children to be using it more and more
00:38:58.460in some cases using tactics that were similar to tactics that casinos use
00:39:04.840except in this case they were using them on kids
00:39:07.300designing products to keep the kids more and more engaged
00:39:11.000holding their attention in the apps so that it could sell more ads
00:39:16.540That's one of the big connections between this case and the case against the big tobacco companies, the idea that the executives at the company were intentionally designing their product to be addictive, to keep the user using it over and over again.
00:39:31.960Another similarity is that prosecutors didn't just claim that Meta had harmed people, but also claimed that the company had taken steps to hide that harm from the public.
00:39:40.640Evidence for that included some internal metadocuments about the results of an internal study the company conducted to measure the mental health effects of disconnecting from Facebook.
00:39:49.840The study found that, quote, people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison, end quote, according to internal metadocuments.
00:40:03.260So they knew that this was their own study that found that harm.
00:43:51.500because the internet is a lifeline for young people,
00:43:53.240particularly marginalized young people.
00:43:54.560And so I don't want anyone to think that I'm saying
00:43:57.260Facebook is good and kids need to have
00:44:00.680unrestricted access to these platforms that we know are harmful like it's not in dispute but i
00:44:07.680just wanted to say that context because i think it i just i just can sort of see the writing on
00:44:13.920the wall of how easily this would play into the way that a lot of people who are trying to restrict
00:44:17.980the internet right now and successfully so in a lot of cases are thinking about it and thinking
00:44:22.260about how they can publicly message around that does that make sense it does make sense and i
00:44:26.960I think that's absolutely a concern, right?
00:44:29.520I think what these, what are the effects of these cases is that it increases pressure on the tech companies to do something about this problem.
00:44:47.360And it also, I think, increases pressure on regulators and legislators to do something about the problem.
00:44:55.840And also, to your point, gives them more fodder and momentum behind policies that might be misguided and maybe are more interested in, you know, staging the safety theater for themselves or using this as like a Trojan horse to crack down on content for morality reasons.
00:45:21.920or because it's too queer or too trans
00:45:25.920or just like content that they don't like.0.82
00:45:27.720I think that's an absolutely valid concern.
00:45:32.140And right now you have Meta really angling
00:45:36.360to be the one to set what these policies look like.
00:45:40.420Meta is really playing a very effective PR trick
00:45:44.140on a lot of us right now by being like,
00:45:45.680oh, we are so interested in, like, please regulate us.
00:45:49.960If you want to come to the table with some guidelines
00:45:51.780and regulations. And I actually don't think that Meta should be able to design and set the rule
00:45:57.380book for how they will behave. They obviously can't be trusted. And right now, I think that
00:46:01.200we're all sort of watching as these very tidy ways of big tech continuing to harm our kids for profit
00:46:11.980while advocating for the companies to be the foxes watching the hen house.
00:46:17.000Absolutely. And I'm glad you brought that up because that absolutely is another parallel to big tobacco, right? Like once it was clear to the big tobacco companies that they were going to lose and that regulation was going to be the new order of the day, they pivoted and they weaponized the regulation to effectively cement their monopolies and prevent other competitors from breaking in.
00:46:45.620So that's absolutely a risk. And they're definitely going to try to do that. Like you say, Facebook is already trying to do that with its big push and lobbying effort for its age gating that is doomed to fail. Right.
00:46:59.980And so there are people in Congress who have introduced alternative approaches that, in my opinion, are much more reasonable, much more workable, and do not, and importantly, do not put the power to be making these decisions in the hands of the companies who are supposed to be policing themselves, which is like a joke.
00:49:45.660Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.0.98
00:49:50.200I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:49:54.780I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:50:02.200They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:50:06.160But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:50:09.600They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:50:12.740Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:50:21.700If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:50:27.640This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:50:40.120I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:50:47.220I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:50:50.820From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:50:56.760It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:51:04.220Whether 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.
00:51:13.840Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:53:58.980please go see this film about you, me, and Tuscany.
00:54:02.460I met with a studio about my already shot rom-com
00:54:05.600and they won't buy it until they see how you, me, and Tuscany does.
00:54:08.980Met with an executive about a romance script I have.
00:54:11.600They won't buy it until they see how you, me, and Tuscany does.
00:54:15.740A film that has nothing to do with me could quite literally change my life.
00:54:19.840Plus, I've heard it's really great, so I'm looking forward to supporting.
00:54:22.840She also cited The Wrap's coverage of the 2025 Reframe report, which is basically a report showing how inclusive the film industry is.
00:54:33.400And the news is not good. The report showed the backsliding and the hiring of women for key roles among Hollywood's top films last year.
00:54:43.360Notably, women-directed films dropped to just 11 out of the top 100, the lowest number since 2019, and a sharp fall from 20 in 2023.
00:54:54.060Female central roles fell from 51 in 2024 to 39 in 2025.
00:54:59.120Only seven of those roles went to women of color, the lowest count in that category since 2018.
00:55:05.340so yes it just seems like whatever gains marginalized folks were making in hollywood
00:55:12.340and we have made serious gains we are really backsliding and thus nina lee is like please
00:55:18.840see this movie because studio executives are saying that they're waiting to see how this one
00:55:25.380rom-com does before they green light other movies with diverse casts and i've talked about this in
00:55:31.700a podcast before, I hate this for so many reasons. One, I just feel that when an audience is sort of
00:55:39.820guilted into seeing a movie, that they're made to feel like they have to support a movie because
00:55:44.520you want it to be successful, to convince studios to give women or Black folks or Asian folks or
00:55:50.160other marginalized people more shots to make movies. That is not compelling to me. That is
00:55:55.480not, that's not a reasonable reason to go see a movie. You should go see a movie because you like
00:56:00.200it because you're curious because you want to you want you want to support it i you know i don't
00:56:05.840know if you remember the movie bros which was kind of billed as oh the first gay the first rom-com
00:56:12.900with the first major rom-com with a gay man at the heart of the love story but i found the marketing
00:56:20.140for that movie to be very heavy on the like you have to support this movie it's very historic
00:56:24.500it's very important and i just don't think that's a compelling reason to see a movie going to see a
00:56:29.840movie should not be activism. And so also I hate this because movies with mostly white casts or
00:56:37.840white directors flop all the time. And then it's not turned around and used as a way for executives
00:56:43.380to say, oh, we shouldn't make more movies like this. I don't think it's a fair precedent that
00:56:47.980marginalized people and people of color and women, we have to wait and see how this movie that has
00:56:52.780nothing to do with us pans out until we can actually make the project that we want to make.
00:56:58.640And furthermore, even when movies with Black casts or Black directors are successful, it's talked about like it's some kind of a fluke. Black Panther is a great example of this and Sinners is a great example of this.
00:57:11.360So, like, diverse and inclusive casts and diverse directors are putting butts in seats, but it's like it doesn't matter.
00:57:19.980It's like any time when that happens, it's going to be another goalpost move.
00:57:23.600It's going to be like, oh, well, you know, Halle Bailey was in this movie and maybe it did well because she's a big star.
00:57:29.980So if she's not in the next movie, we're not going to greenlight it.
00:57:32.440It's like it's always going to be another goalpost or another benchmark for folks to just not want to tell our stories.
00:59:58.120Yeah, it's illegal not to give us millions of dollars.
01:00:00.760That's essentially what he is saying. So X argued that the advertisers coordinated through an initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media to effectively boycott X.
01:00:11.180Back in 2024, this actually did work on some pretty big brands. Low-key extortion. Verizon, which had not advertised on X since 2022, pledged to spend at least $10 million in 2024 on X after X threatened to sue them if they didn't.
01:00:28.400The same thing for the luxury fashion brand Ralph Lauren, but the company also agreed to resume buying ads on X after receiving a threat of a lawsuit.
01:00:38.620We talked about this in an episode of the podcast, but I think that these companies were just like, Musk is very litigious.
01:00:45.420He has a billion dollars. It's cheaper just to throw in a little bit of advertising money, which if I'm Elon Musk, I don't want people advertising on my platform because I have extorted them into doing it.
01:01:02.680I don't know about Ralph Lauren, but I know Verizon spends a ton of money on political contributions to candidates from both parties.
01:01:12.040And I have to assume that they just like wrote this off as another drop out of that bucket to just keep Musk, who is politically connected to the Trump administration, happy, just easier to write a $10 million check than stand up for themselves.
01:01:31.700Well, it turns out they maybe didn't even have to do that because this week a judge in Dallas dismissed X's lawsuit and this judge did not mince words.
01:01:40.240She wrote that the very nature of this alleged conspiracy does not hold up as an antitrust claim and dismissed it with prejudice.
01:01:48.140So that means that X cannot refile this lawsuit. It's over.
01:01:53.920The advertiser's defense was like very straightforward.
01:01:56.700They basically said that they each made an independent business decision about where to put their ad money, and they were largely driven by brand safety concerns following Musk's takeover of Twitter back in 2022.
01:02:07.820They talked about how that was a time of layoffs and chaos, and just, in their words, a less brand-friendly environment, which is one way to put it when there's Nazi stuff on your platform, AI-generated child sexual abuse material on your platforms.
01:02:22.940Less brand-friendly is one way to put that.0.98
01:02:25.040yeah and once again that shit is just like normal now like that's that's just what you get with x0.97
01:02:31.380don't even try to pretend that it's something else yes so the court agreed and this is a pretty big0.99
01:02:38.660loss for elon musk he's been super vocal about what he sees as this politically motivated advertiser
01:02:45.720pullback since taking over the platform and at least for right now the courts are like yeah
01:09:36.660It's so it seems so obviously fake to me that I have a hard time picturing like who is like, oh, yeah, this is a real woman.
01:09:44.780And it's a good thing that Foster is not real, because if she was real, she would be super fucking busy because more than 50 photos and videos have followed in the last few months,
01:09:54.260Revealing that this person met with First Lady Melania Trump, with Ukrainian President Zelensky, with Russian President Putin, soccer star Lionel Messi.0.81
01:10:06.300When she's not doing that, she also finds time to give speeches, have sexy pillow fights with her fellow comrades.
01:10:14.420And also she had a picture of herself holding Maduro captive.
01:10:20.260one of the things that comes up on this show all the time is how fan fiction explains like
01:10:28.10060 of the internet at this point and i feel this fits that too it's like fan fiction
01:10:34.160what did the washington post say like patriotism mixed with soft core pornography this was some
01:10:42.140really interesting reporting from the post they did include one little bit i was like dang y'all
01:10:47.440really blowing up this guy's spot so so many of the comments on this instagram are from people
01:10:54.420who think this person is real right they're like oh you're so beautiful you're so beautiful
01:10:57.500the post writes the verified instagram account of a brazilian transportation official
01:11:02.820liked most of her photos and told foster that she was linda or beautiful another user asked
01:11:09.320why do you never reply part of me is like damn you gotta call y'all gotta like put this brazilian0.95
01:11:15.740transportation official on blast guess who liked all her posts i left pathetic emoji comments on0.98
01:11:21.400all of them this brazilian transportation official you think he did that while he was at work
01:11:26.200and he did it on his verified account i i almost feel a little bad for this guy that the post is
01:11:32.280calling out his like questionable likes on instagram i do wonder how many of the people
01:11:38.840who are liking her following her are from countries outside the united states and so maybe that's why
01:11:46.480the like what seems to you as straightforward like so obviously fake content they're like oh
01:11:54.040that's just how americans talk you know how they are i mean reminds me of the guy who made that
01:12:01.300ai generated girlfriend who was on esther perel's podcast was like that's just she sounds like a
01:12:07.280nine-year-old chipmunk that's just how women in america sound to me they all sound like that to0.76
01:12:11.960me yeah i think the just the way the rest of the world sees us is often different than how we see
01:12:19.200ourselves i think so this ai generated account of this sexy soldier the account was being used
01:12:26.520to link to only fans but because that violates only fans rules like you have to be like a verified
01:12:32.100person on OnlyFans. It was deleted. So now it links to FanView, which is like a smaller
01:12:38.300OnlyFans competitor with looser rules. The caption of her account there reads,
01:12:45.000Public servant by day, troublemaker by night. BT dubs, I respond to every message,
01:12:51.840but be patient since I'm not a robot. You sure about that? Are you sure about that?
01:12:58.080So the Post actually spoke to a friend of the show, Dr. Joan Donovan, an assistant professor at Boston University who studies media manipulation, who we've had on the show before.
01:13:07.700Dr. Donovan said that AI has really helped accounts multiply because they're easy to just endlessly create and customize and offer creators a clear path to making money.
01:13:19.800The account's kind of political sheen also helps ensure that these images appear in people's news feeds.
01:13:26.540Because if you were just making sexy, AI-generated content, you might not be prioritized in an algorithm.
01:13:33.600But if you're making content that has this current events vibe, you might be getting shown to more people who otherwise you probably would not be in their feeds.
01:13:43.660Dr. Donovan said, the danger of this is that we're moving toward a society of the unreal.
01:13:49.140It's one way to get political messaging across, and it's effective.
01:13:53.460we don't even and this is my favorite part of the quote we don't even know of selling feet pics is
01:14:00.000jessica foster's final form no like as far as we know we don't know anything about jessica foster's
01:14:06.700political beliefs but i would venture that i probably don't like a lot of them and that we
01:14:13.740might start hearing about them as we get closer to november yeah i will say when i was thinking
01:14:20.080about this, I feel like men really ought to be insulted by this kind of content because0.99
01:14:25.580whoever is making this, they think that men are so stupid and horny that they will rah-rah1.00
01:14:34.960a war if the fake AI-generated woman behind it is hot. You know what I mean? When I was1.00
01:14:44.400like looking at the content i was like how stupid and horny does whoever made this ai generated0.98
01:14:51.000profile think men are but then again this profile has a million followers so maybe this person is0.99
01:14:55.700not wrong about just how stupid and horny these folks are yeah i wish i could say that uh that0.99
01:15:02.640you were wrong but yeah she's got a million followers somebody wants it okay so really0.99
01:15:07.940quickly i feel like i've really bookended this episode with things that i know that
01:15:12.380the internet is all talking about, and you, I'm sure you have no idea.
01:15:16.960So this super famous Brazilian soccer player, Jorginho, said that his 11-year-old daughter
01:15:23.820was very aggressively confronted by a security guard at a hotel where Chapel Rhone was staying.
01:15:32.320Basically, him and his wife both said on social media that their daughter was eating breakfast
01:15:38.300at this hotel. The daughter is a huge Chapel Rhone fan. She had even made like a cute little
01:15:43.220sign that was like, how does that song go? Like, H-O-T-T-O-G-O, I am seeing Chapel Rhone.
01:15:53.280Very cute for a kid, I thought. And so she sees Chapel Rhone and she says, oh, it's Chapel Rhone.
01:15:59.480According to her parents, she did not ask Chapel Rhone for anything. She just like got up,
01:17:08.340And I thought like, oh, that's a pretty good statement.
01:17:09.900And then immediately there was a video of her walking through an airport with security where she's like visibly pointing to security being like, tell him to stop photographing me.
01:17:20.800So I was sort of like, well, I don't know what to think now.
01:17:24.240And I'm still not 100 percent sure what the truth is here.
01:17:28.020So Chapel Roan clarified that it was not a member of her security team.
01:17:33.340And then the guard himself put out a statement saying that he was not acting on her behalf, that he was there bodyguarding someone else and that he made a judgment call based on the vibe of the of the breakfast and decided on his own to go like scream at this child, which to me is even weirder.
01:17:56.540side note do you remember hearing a story about how kim kardashian was like violently robbed at a
01:18:02.700hotel in paris yeah he was her he was her bodyguard when that happened wow so this this this bodyguard
01:18:11.280he's like the forest gump of celebrities whenever there's like a celebrity scandal he just happens
01:18:16.020to be there somehow also why do i feel like this hotel was not the la quinta of rito de janeiro
01:18:22.280So, like, everyone staying there is an A-list celebrity.
01:18:28.000So the reason I want to bring this up, not because I have any big take about Chapel Rhone or anything like that,
01:18:33.280but because this conversation got very heated online.
01:18:38.900And it turns out that a substantial amount of the conversation was amplified by bots.
01:18:44.900We know that from the research firm Gudea, who we heard from the head of Gudea in our episode about Taylor Swift.
01:18:51.360Well, Gudea analyzed over 100,000 posts across seven platforms in the days following the incident and found that while only about 4% of users were likely bots, those accounts were responsible for more than 23% of the posts, meaning that a small number of bot accounts were driving a hugely outsized chunk of the backlash, including misinformation and calls for boycotts.
01:19:17.120and i say that to say that i spent a non-trivial amount of time reading chapel rhone takes and
01:19:26.860i'm i can admit that the ones that were like chapel rhone she needs to learn how to be
01:19:33.720respectful to her fans i was like yeah you tell them and then it was like chapel rhone she didn't
01:19:39.940do anything wrong and i was like yeah that's probably right too like the way that i was so
01:19:44.000easily swayed in this conversation in a conversation that i have no real stake in i'm i like chapel
01:19:49.700ron i'm not a huge fan so it's not even like i i did not feel strongly about it yet i threw away
01:19:56.420a half an afternoon reading chapel ron brazil takes and you know i have but one life to live
01:20:04.000and i i spent half of a day of it following takes of a story i don't even really care about
01:20:08.820they were probably amplified by bots and you still don't know what happened i still don't know