Instagram suppresses Palestinians; Don’t use AI to write your closing argument in court!; Elon Musk gets fined; Using VR to help people who hoard — NEWS ROUNDUP
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.
00:00:58.700Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:10.580There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:18.700I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:01:21.440joey thank you so much for being here it has been a whirlwind week honestly there are not
00:01:30.720many people that i would rather get into all of this with than you i feel like you really bring
00:01:36.480such an expertise and a particular background that i really appreciate so i'm i'm kind of
00:01:43.840as hard as things have been i feel grateful that i get to help understand help myself understand
00:01:50.800what's going on with you thank you Bridget um it's been a week it's been a wild two weeks and
00:02:00.300um you know we talked a bit before this recording and uh it is it is rough it is rough uh we are
00:02:07.820witnessing horrific events on a daily basis uh just through our phones and having to
00:02:16.920grapple with that and grapple with you know a lot of very I hate calling it complicated
00:02:23.700political realities because I feel like calling it complicated quote-unquote has been used a lot
00:02:27.840to kind of divert attention away from the issue but also yes very and a lot of very uh complicated
00:02:34.180and and at the same time very real and very horrific realities for uh you know people
00:02:41.380living in gaza and living in israel palestine i think i've talked before on this podcast um
00:02:48.520i am jewish uh i anti-zionism is a fundamental part of my jewish identity what is happening to
00:02:56.000the palestinian people right now is horrifying what has been happening is horrifying and i0.83
00:03:01.880you know i think just trying to sift through all of the information that we're being presented with0.93
00:03:08.260is a lot. It is a lot to go through. I think our brains are not meant to have to deal with that
00:03:14.260amount of information on the daily. That being said, I hope that somehow further deaths and
00:03:23.080destruction can be preventable. And there's a lot of terrible, terrifying possibilities that
00:03:29.960are, I think, on the horizon. And we're just going to have to keep fighting and keep fighting
00:03:34.540for a better future yeah we are in I mean I feel the same way when the conflict first
00:03:45.000like last week I thought I mean I was at a I don't know I found myself going to a dark place
00:03:53.320last week personally when I was everything was unfolding and it was still still felt very kind
00:03:58.920of fresh and new. And I generally kind of think of myself as somebody who was very optimistic,
00:04:04.780who really, you know, often leans toward things will work out, things will be okay. People are
00:04:11.500fundamentally good. People fundamentally want to be united and together. That's not always the case,
00:04:16.960but that's like my core alignment. And last week, I was just like, yeah, not in a great place. I
00:04:25.480I really was afraid because I sensed very deeply that we were going to see more destruction and
00:04:33.140more deaths and more harm, which we definitely have seen. And, you know, I wanted to really
00:04:38.880focus on what I know that I can bring to the table in moments of chaos and terror and anxiety.
00:04:44.280And I have like deep expertise when it comes to social media platforms and technology. And so
00:04:50.000the episode that we made last week was really kind of narrow in focus around the ways that I see
00:04:57.060Twitter really making a tough, scary time worse because people don't know what's going on.
00:05:05.860People are heated. People are understandably confused and afraid and trying to find out
00:05:09.960information. And the platform just like doesn't allow for that. So folks may have heard our
00:05:15.440episode last week that really broke that down. And I think that one of the reasons why the state
00:05:22.020of Twitter was amplifying a lot of the feelings I was personally having was that I have sort of
00:05:28.840known Twitter historically to be a platform that can, in times of crisis, help people get
00:05:36.160information. If you're on the ground, here's what you need to know. Here's where you need to go if
00:05:40.700you need X, Y, Z. If you're not on the ground, you're just following it. Here's the best
00:05:45.320information. Here's voices that are experiencing this on the ground. I have always known it to be
00:05:50.280a platform that helped me feel more informed and thus less afraid and less confused and less
00:05:58.540reactionary. Again, I will be the first person to tell you that Twitter has never been perfect. So
00:06:03.540like, I could go on as long of a rant about its problems, even in the pre-Elon Musk days.
00:06:09.920But Twitter was always something that helped me get information that felt timely and accurate
00:06:15.820and thus helped me feel kind of like more in control.
00:06:19.760And when I went to Twitter to sort of do what I recognize as like how I try to cope when
00:06:26.560things are stressful and hard and just got more lies, more inflammatory content, more like really
00:06:34.860emotionally charged content. Like I was riled up and I'm not somebody who I think of as like easy
00:06:41.860to rile up from online content. My heart was racing. I was seeing images, of course, none of
00:06:47.400which were vetted of things that really were causing a deep emotional response in me. And
00:06:53.180it just really rattled me. It signaled to me that we have reached a new low in our
00:07:00.920digital landscape. I still feel that way. I still feel like things are bad and I'm very concerned
00:07:08.580about how much worse things can get. And going back to this conversation a week later,
00:07:15.540I think the thing that really upset me the most is how on social media, but Twitter particularly, how easy it is to boil things down to like you're talking about a football game, like teams, like, oh, the other side, this side, that side.
00:07:32.580it really creates this just not useful equivalency and also we're talking about people's lives and
00:07:42.120people like real humans lives and like the way that it lends itself to boiling it down to talking
00:07:47.660about teams in this in this very crass way it just it just really did not fill me with good
00:07:52.940feelings i'll put it that way it is sort of it's like almost surreal i a yes the fact that there
00:08:01.700these are people's lives these are people being killed these are children being killed and just
00:08:09.420the way i talked about this a bit before when we were off mic but again i i feel like as i said
00:08:18.520i'm i'm jewish i am very staunchly an anti-zionist i feel like i've spent a lot of my time the past
00:08:28.300week just trying to explain semantics to people and trying to explain why zionism as a political
00:08:35.680ideology is not the same thing as judaism is a diverse you know cultural and religious identity
00:08:45.520and there's a part of me that just feels so heartbroken that this is what i have to focus
00:08:52.000on this is what i have to spend so much of my time and energy focusing on when again yeah there are
00:08:56.380people dying there there's actual human rights catastrophes happening and I will say this is
00:09:05.260an issue where there already has been just sort of this stream of misinformation and propaganda
00:09:12.680that has been difficult to sit through that has been difficult to sit through
00:09:17.620as somebody who is somewhat connected to this conflict I'm sure and and I'm sure for people
00:09:25.140that have no sort of background in it it is even worse and it is it's hard it is I this again it
00:09:32.180has been a really heavy last few weeks what is happening in Gaza is horrifying and my thoughts
00:09:41.960and are with the people on the ground there solidarity with the Palestinian people and
00:09:49.020it is crazy we are back to a point where like I feel like just the dehumanization of people
00:09:54.540has gotten so so intense and so insane that it is it's really hard it is really hard to work
00:10:02.480through and it is really hard to to even as i sit here you know i am in the u.s i am we're less safe0.52
00:10:11.000right now i'm not in any immediate danger and that feels exhausting i can't fucking imagine
00:10:16.540what it's got to be like for people that are there people that have family there um israeli0.79
00:10:21.940are Palestinian again any loss of human life is terrible and tragic and it's yeah it's it's been a
00:10:30.860lot yeah and we were talking about this off mic before you were recording but like the feeling of
00:10:38.100not necessarily feeling like it's okay to speak up in certain ways I think is really hard I think
00:10:49.420it creates a climate where it's really hard to process and really hard to like you know even
00:10:57.980mourn yeah it it really i mean i keep thinking about there have already been like a number of
00:11:04.320jewish protesters in particular who have been arrested uh for speaking out against the u.s
00:11:11.580support of the military support of israel or spooking out or speaking in support of a ceasefire
00:11:16.900have been protesting a number of these people are children of Holocaust survivors are have people in
00:11:24.580their family that directly experienced genocide and directly directly experienced ethnic cleansing
00:11:30.860and everything that comes along with that and it's it is so messed up that even talking about
00:11:37.560this now like I feel nervous I'll be honest like I have almost been doxed a couple times I have
00:11:44.560very good friends that have been doxxed simply for saying like the mildest things in support of
00:11:50.420Palestinian human rights uh mildest criticism of the Israeli government and that's not okay
00:11:56.900that's not okay in any situation but yeah it is it is it's a lot to process and it does a lot to
00:12:03.940to a feel for people that sort of don't have any background in this and don't have any any
00:12:12.160understanding of what is happening and are trying to learn it now it is hard to sift through that
00:12:16.920information that's being presented to you and sift through disinformation um but then also feeling
00:12:23.520like you can't say anything you can't speak out in support of things that are obviously wrong
00:12:29.260things that are obviously crimes against humanity uh without fearing for your own safety and your
00:12:35.280own sort of reputation in the like most basic sense it's scary and it's I really just wish
00:12:47.300people would not lose sight of the fact that it there are people in immediate danger right now
00:12:51.820there are people already who have been killed and whose lives are already I again I think just
00:13:00.960the fact that we're witnessing such horrific events unfolding and the thing that the fact
00:13:09.800that semantics and the fact that going over like how to talk about this and how to talk about this
00:13:15.380in a way that is not going to get you immediately doxed by bad actors that's a lot and that is
00:13:23.460that is only kind of making the conversation around this more hostile and is only going to
00:13:31.300lead to more death and more destruction. Exactly. It really reminds me, you know,
00:13:36.240I'm a little older than you and it reminds me so much of the aftermath of 9-11, which was like
00:13:41.660really my kind of like political and social awakening. And that was like when I got more
00:13:45.960seriously involved in like, or the anti-war movement was like the thing that got me,
00:13:50.500woke me up in terms of like my own political understanding of the world and there was a
00:13:55.720climate that like the climate of like you're for us or you're you're with us or against us you're
00:14:01.180either with us or you're a terrorist and i think that that's that's i'm seeing echoes of that
00:14:07.580climate now you know and last week we were talking about twitter but it's important to remember that
00:14:13.380twitter is only one piece of our larger media ecosystem and was a pretty big scoop from 404
00:14:18.860Media, which is a journalist-run tech media outlet, about how things are playing out on
00:14:23.840Instagram. People on Instagram found that the platform was auto-translating their user bios
00:14:30.740that included the word Palestinian and an Arabic phrase that means praise be to God.
00:14:36.180Instagram was auto-translating this to say, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their
00:14:41.520freedom. So if you had this perfectly innocuous phrase in your Instagram bio, Instagram was
00:14:46.940basically telling the world via translation that you are a terrorist sympathizer yeah i it's
00:14:53.500interesting you brought up 9 11 and i guess you said i'm out of myself for how young i am i i grew
00:14:59.440up in the aftermath of 9 11 like i i was two when 9 11 happened but i really like came of age in
00:15:06.400that era of just very like i i was a child when islamophobia and all of this racism and xenophobia
00:15:12.960was at its height and I think my teen years were really the time when we were starting to unpack
00:15:18.080that and starting to be like hey maybe a lot of this was bad maybe we shouldn't have just jumped
00:15:23.740to very black and white images of like views of the world um and especially I mean the word
00:15:29.440terrorist like you cannot take that word out of the the connotation that it has in the U.S. and
00:15:35.520connotation that it has these past couple of decades um and it it is so strange to be seeing
00:15:45.900so much of that kind of be recirculated and and the way that those terms are kind of used to
00:15:51.940it is weird to see that kind of that level of xenophobia returning and almost the same exact
00:16:01.360patterns that's so that's exactly that's exactly how I feel that like we maybe didn't learn a lot
00:16:10.080from that era you know we I wish we had I was so young and I thought we were gonna stop the war
00:16:19.280we we were part like if you were part of the anti-war movement after 9-11 you were part of a
00:16:26.240historic, like the biggest anti-war protest of all time in the United States. Like I thought,
00:16:33.320like it felt big. And now here I am, however many years later. And then it's like, did we really
00:16:39.060learn a lot? Cause it's like, we're having these same conversations. And like back then we did not
00:16:44.580have the level of like tech, like it wasn't, we didn't have the tech infrastructure to enable
00:16:51.120those conversations, to pour gasoline on those conversations, to make platforms and people who
00:16:56.280were financially invested in those conversations being as inflamed and hostile as possible. We
00:17:02.460didn't have that to the level that we have it now. And so it almost feels like it's like, yeah,
00:17:06.240it's like the same thing, but worse in some ways, which I hate to say. So after Instagram was called
00:17:13.620out by 404 Media for sneaking terrorist sympathizer language into this translation on Instagram
00:17:20.760bios, they, I will say to their credit, they copped to it right away. They said, we fixed a problem
00:17:26.020that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations on some of our products. We
00:17:30.700sincerely apologized that this happened. But they didn't explain how it happened. Like it's a pretty
00:17:36.160like a telling translation. And I think it really reveals some of the problems and the ways that
00:17:42.980like big tech companies, in a way that wasn't the case right after 9-11, big tech companies
00:17:51.320really have the power to shape a lot of the discourse around what's happening with this
00:18:00.600conflict. Like they really just have, like we've put a lot of trust in them. And I would argue
00:18:06.140that these people, they're not always trustworthy actors. And so it's like, oh, wow, like this is
00:18:11.020really a problem yeah and that is really interesting you were talking about twitter at the top and i
00:18:16.800instagram i do feel like a lot of this has migrated over to instagram and and you know
00:18:23.860hearing that instagram is maybe not to the same extent as twitter but it's falling into the same
00:18:28.720sort of traps and misinformation and you know mistranslating things or prioritizing certain
00:18:36.500information above others it really is like a systemic problem that is not unique to twitter
00:18:43.360it is not unique to elon musk it is a problem of how we talk about these issues and how we consume
00:18:48.840information and yeah it's it's bad yeah yeah twitter so like i won't stop beating the drum
00:18:59.420about how bad twitter is because it's like it seems like twitter is like we are intentionally
00:19:03.060trying to be bad like we want people to be confused and like there to be chaos enjoy the show i i
00:19:08.820genuinely believe that that is elon musk's orientation that it's like yeah even if it's
00:19:13.780a shit show you're paying attention you know uh so but instagram i think is unique i'm this is i'm0.83
00:19:22.440like totally going off script here uh but like instagram to me is unique in that there's something0.98
00:19:28.200about the format of like a canva created carousel like graphic with text on it and i i make them
00:19:37.880too like i'm not but like they're just so easy for anybody to make if you have like i have canva pro
00:19:44.280i can i've thrown together an infographic and a carousel in my day or two but it's so easy for
00:19:49.240anybody to make them and there's something about them that i think give a sheen of trustworthiness
00:19:54.000because it's like oh who would take the time to make this carousel full of information and words
00:19:58.100if they hadn't fact-checked it or if it wasn't true.
00:20:01.600And they're just so easy to share on Instagram.
00:23:26.480that time when people were posting things and then taking them down and then wanting to post
00:23:32.280the right thing and then feeling obligated to post something. I think that we're really seeing
00:23:37.160how our social media landscape has led us to these responses and these reactions that are
00:23:43.260not necessarily always helpful. I have learned so much about my own activism, what's going on
00:23:49.920in the world from social media but also on top of like it's like a yes and it can also be hard
00:23:56.340if we're all feeling like well we have to post the right thing and we have to like show up with
00:24:00.220the exact right like there's not really it doesn't feel like there's room for processing anymore
00:24:04.120and it's only feels like there's only room for reacting publicly which I would argue does not
00:24:08.820always get us like to the most helpful thing all the time exactly yeah I think because this
00:24:19.180definitely was a moment too where I kind of you know sat down with myself I was thinking about
00:24:23.760what's the like what is going to be productive for me to post on my Instagram what is not going
00:24:28.840to be productive and I think you know every time there's some big sort of this a similar thing
00:24:35.820happened in 2020 when it was it's there's certain things that kind of get circulated that feel very
00:24:40.700sensationalized and exploitative and then there's things that get circulated that feel like they're
00:24:46.180actually pointing to. If you feel helpless right now, here's what you can do. Here are things that
00:24:50.660you can look into. Here is resources to help you understand if you don't understand. It also is
00:24:56.540okay to admit that you don't know everything. I think that is really hard for people. I'm not
00:25:04.880going to pretend I am the expert on all of this, but I had friends reach out to me last weekend
00:25:10.420that were just sort of like, hey, would you be open to just kind of chatting with me about this
00:25:15.760for a little bit i was like sure yeah like i can totally i like i can tell you what i know i can
00:25:21.560tell you the history that i know again look into your own stuff too i like would send people
00:25:27.820research but it is also like it is it is okay to take a step back and do research it is okay to
00:25:32.160admit if you don't know things um at the same time you know there are certain universal things that
00:25:38.600are like I think we are at a point now where we again we I think we are looking at a genocide
00:25:47.120that is happening and I think it is there there is a reason to speak up now and there is a reason to
00:25:54.560try to learn now and to try to also learn like the way that the U.S. also you know provides
00:26:03.860military support for israel and the role that that plays and just just the history looking into also
00:26:11.320the history of jewish people in the region and how kind of israel as a state as a political entity
00:26:17.640is not necessarily representative of the jewish people uh it's starting so is anti-semitic i will
00:26:23.800say that but also you know the other side of that is also you can criticize the state of israel you
00:26:30.560can criticize Zionism as a political ideology. That in and of itself is not anti-Semitic
00:26:35.200because Israel does not represent the Jewish people. We are a community that exists all
00:26:40.680over the world and that is very diverse culturally, politically. Yeah, it is okay to ask
00:26:49.660questions. It is okay to do research and it is okay to not have to respond right away
00:26:56.360to things. And I wish for us that we had a landscape that just we all understood that and
00:27:03.260that really fostered us to have more thoughtful conversations where we got to really hear
00:27:10.060perspectives, you know, people's perspectives. And I know that there's been a whole history
00:27:15.460of Palestinian folks who say that they are really not able to do that on social media
00:27:19.740with the landscape that we currently have. Right now, folks have said that if they express
00:27:25.520views supportive of Palestinians on Instagram, that those views are being algorithmically
00:27:30.400suppressed on the platform. Generally speaking, I usually, when people are like, I'm being
00:27:35.260shadowbanned, I generally am like, oh, are you really being shadowbanned? It's an overused
00:27:40.600accusation that is thrown around quite a bit. But it does seem like something is going on
00:27:46.780on Instagram right now as it pertains to people trying to talk about Palestine. In another instance,
00:27:53.480People were trying to upload images from the hospital in Gaza that was blown up, and Instagram removed those images, citing that they violated policies forbidding nudity or sexual activity, even though the images did not have nudity.
00:28:07.100In some instances, they didn't have any people in them.
00:28:12.120A Facebook spokesperson, Andy Stone, explained in a statement, he said,
00:28:15.540We identified a bug impacting all stories that reshared Reels and feed posts, meaning they weren't showing up properly in people's stories tray.
00:28:23.480leading to significantly reduced reach. This bug affected accounts equally around the globe and had
00:28:28.560nothing to do with subject matter of the content. We fixed it as quickly as possible. So I don't
00:28:34.020know. People are skeptical because Facebook is using and has used this glitch reasoning quite a
00:28:40.600lot. The Guardian spoke to a former Facebook employee who explained that, quote, you cannot
00:28:45.980keep blaming it on glitches when it's spreading misinformation and dehumanizing Palestinians
00:28:50.220by feeding into the narrative that all Palestinians are terrorists.
00:28:54.480It's very overwhelming for a lot of the employees of the company.
00:28:57.880So this is not even at all close to the first time that Facebook's policies have been
00:29:01.940questionable as it pertains to how people talk about Palestine.
00:29:07.680In 2021, 200 Facebook employees actually signed a letter urging the platform to address concerns
00:29:13.080that pro-Palestinian voices on the platform were being suppressed by content moderation systems.
00:29:17.980The employees were demanding a third-party review of how that kind of content was moderated on the platform and the impact.
00:29:24.700So Facebook ended up commissioning this independent consultancy called Business for Social Responsibility, or BSR,
00:29:30.840who put together this report about the company's censorship practices and the allegations of bias during this previous bout of violence in Palestine.
00:29:38.680The report found the following, quote,
00:29:41.660Metta's actions in May 2021 appeared to have had an adverse human rights impact on the rights of
00:29:47.400Palestinian users to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political participation,
00:29:52.760and non-discrimination, and therefore on the ability of Palestinians to share information
00:29:57.160and insights about their experiences as they occurred. As reported by The Intercept,
00:30:02.360though BSR is clear in stating that Metta harms Palestinian rights with the censorship apparatus
00:30:07.300it alone has constructed, the report absolves Mehta of, quote, intentional bias, but rather,
00:30:13.140BSR pointed to what it called unintentional bias, instances where Mehta's policy and practice,
00:30:18.980combined with broader external dynamics, do lead to different human rights impact on Palestinian
00:30:24.120and Arabic-speaking users, a nod to the fact that these systemic flaws are by no means limited to
00:30:29.660the events of 2021, just like what we're talking about now with Instagram changing bios to, like,
00:30:36.180terrorist sympathizer language is not, like, this is not the first time that kind of thing
00:30:41.380has happened. This has been a pattern. So according to The Intercept, Facebook has been
00:30:45.400long aware that their moderation policies are, to use their words, lopsided. Not only do Palestinian1.00
00:30:52.060users face an algorithmic screening that Israeli users do not, a, quote, Arabic hostile speech0.61
00:30:58.580classifier that uses machine learning to flag potential policy violations and has no Hebrew
00:31:04.440equivalent. The report also notes that the Arabic system does not work well. Arabic classifiers are
00:31:10.400likely less accurate for Palestinian Arabic than other dialects, both because the dialect is less
00:31:15.780common and because the training data, which is based on the assessments of human reviewers,
00:31:20.340likely reproduces the errors of human reviewers due to the lack of linguistic and cultural
00:31:25.660competence. So like, I just really see the ways that our tech landscape and how biased it is and
00:31:32.780how white it is and how all the other things that I've ramped about on this podcast constantly,
00:31:38.760how all of that is coming together to create this system where folks are saying they cannot
00:31:43.640express themselves. They cannot talk about what's going on. They cannot talk about what they're
00:31:49.580seeing on the ground. They cannot share images of what's happening without getting caught by
00:31:53.800Facebook and Instagram's content moderation policies. And that this is not an equally,
00:31:58.660you know they use they the report itself uses the word lopsided that this is not an equal
00:32:03.740landscape in terms of how it is moderated yeah absolutely and like you said too this isn't
00:32:10.000necessarily a new issue i think the fact that you know it is in the spotlight now and it is
00:32:16.660on the other hand this is maybe the good thing of kind of like social media
00:32:21.140and this ability to share information from wherever you are in the world is it
00:32:26.160is harder and harder to repress this stuff if more people are talking about it and more people
00:32:31.060are sharing it. But at the same time, it is very clearly not a new issue and it is very clearly
00:32:35.880something that is happening and something that is clearly biased to certain voices and unbiased
00:32:43.180others. And I think we're kind of like maybe thinking about this in the same way and that
00:32:48.720as awful as all of this is, I do think that we're in a situation in 2023 where people are
00:32:54.460more prone to see clearly and be skeptical of tech platforms and the way that they really are
00:33:02.300guiding this conversation and have a lot of power to shape the public perception and the
00:33:06.760public conversation. And I think that like maybe even five years ago, that wouldn't have been the
00:33:11.660case. I think that people would have just thought like, oh, like Facebook and technology is totally
00:33:15.700neutral. They're not doing anything. They're not making it. They're not, you know, making any kind
00:33:20.800of decisions. They're just like a very neutral platform. I think that we, the fact that we're
00:33:24.800having this conversation makes me hopeful that we've kind of abandoned that incorrect notion
00:33:31.760that tech platforms are neutral, because this is not what neutral looks like.
00:33:38.040So last week in our Twitter episode, we were talking about how the EU is demanding platforms
00:33:42.620give more information about how they're handling content moderation around the conflict. And now
00:33:47.380the United States Senate is getting involved too. Because this week, Colorado Democrat Senator
00:33:51.380Michael Bennett sent letters to all the major platforms saying, deceptive content has ricocheted
00:33:56.220across social media sites since the conflict began, sometimes receiving millions of views.
00:34:00.960In many cases, your platform's algorithms have amplified this content, contributing to a
00:34:05.340dangerous cycle of outrage, engagement, and distribution. Bennett says that whatever steps
00:34:09.560platforms have taken to curb this is not enough, and he is demanding a response by October 31st.
00:34:15.340And I think it's, yeah, just a good reminder that as much as I talk about Twitter, which is a lot, and I still think it's warranted, our larger information ecosystem is also trash, you know? And so if Twitter is not a reliable place to get accurate information, other platforms certainly are not either. And it's just becoming harder and harder and harder to have access to that accurate, thoughtful information that we all really deserve.
00:34:39.580When I talk about how we can't have an equitable world without equitable platforms, this is really what I mean. When I talk about how we can't have true, meaningful safety if our platforms are not safe places for expression and the exchange of ideas and information, this is what I mean. The way that tech companies have really been tasked with shaping our understanding of not just what's happening in the world, but our perception of the people who are involved, our understanding of who they are, that's a problem.
00:35:06.480The decisions and policies of tech leaders can shape our collective understanding of people's humanity. You know, what kind of lives we think they deserve. And these platforms have been given such a huge responsibility to impact people's actual real lives.
00:35:23.260You know, we're letting tech leaders like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have such an outsized power to determine the outcomes of these very real life and death situations, even though these people have shown themselves to be not super trustworthy again and again and again.
00:35:38.440And so, yeah, all of that is to say that it really just feels like a lot.
00:35:42.940Yeah. Yeah. And again, like back to it is a life and death situation.
00:35:47.380Like people, people are dying. More people are going to continue to die due to the rhetoric and the level of dehumanization that leads to this kind of mass catastrophe.
00:36:03.360that is the responsibility of in in the contemporary era that is the responsibility
00:36:11.780of sites like twitter and facebook and instagram um that are kind of just like i'm like the
00:36:19.820contemporary version of like you know reading the newspaper in the morning is i'll open up twitter
00:36:25.120Instagram that has a real world impact that has real lives on the line because of this and
00:36:34.460there needs that needs to be addressed absolutely from your lips to Mark Zuckerberg's ears let's hope
00:38:16.460It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
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00:38:33.540Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:43:32.940So, like, I don't know, like I said, complicated and very involved.
00:43:36.920My point is this is like a very serious like set of charges with like far reaching implications that involve like national security and global domestic issues and presidential candidates and blah, blah, blah.
00:43:50.460Like it's a it's a it's a big bout of charges that have like real, very serious potential jail time.
00:43:56.800So if you were his attorney, you would probably be like, oh, this is a very serious case.
00:44:02.480And maybe you would not want to use an AI program to write your final arguments, which is what his lead defense lawyer did.
00:44:10.180Praz's lead defense attorney improperly relied on an experimental generative AI program called I-Level to draft his closing argument in Praz's high-profile criminal case.
00:44:20.220This is all according to a newly filed brief demanding a retrial.
00:44:23.560So Praz's new attorney said that the AI-generated closing argument by his previous lawyer, David Kenner, was just awful.
00:44:30.600Like, it just sounds like it was like, didn't, I mean, it sounds like it was written by AI.
00:44:34.200Like, it just doesn't sound like it made any sense.
00:44:35.800And that closing argument bungled what was the most important part of the trial, the closing argument.
00:44:43.520Kenner's closing argument made frivolous arguments, misapprehended the required elements, conflated the schemes, and ignored critical weaknesses in the government's side.1.00
00:44:52.160So as bad as that is, here's where it gets really stupid, as if that's not stupid enough.0.96
00:44:57.440Because they also accused Praza's legal team of having an undisclosed financial interest in the AI company that they used to write that final argument, and that his legal team regarded Praza's trial as an opportunity to tout their AI company to advance their own financial interests at Praza's expense.0.98
00:45:14.300They actually did put out a press release after the trial, hailing this as, quote, the first use of generative AI in a federal trial.
00:45:22.680The press release included this, like, very glowing, comma, kind of in retrospect, embarrassing quote from the lead attorney who said that the AI program, quote, turned hours and days of legal work into seconds and called his use of the program a look into the future of how cases will be conducted.
00:45:40.340yeah conducted badly i think because he's asking for a new trial i mean he was convicted yeah0.97
00:45:46.260that's it's just i mean like it's almost there are no words right like it's so stupid and such0.96
00:45:56.140a bad idea and i can't believe that anybody at this legal firm thought this was a good idea and0.99
00:46:00.740also like put out press releases bragging about it exactly like you're you're you're tattling on
00:46:07.280yourself what like you're basically first of all you're already working with like a high
00:46:13.480profile client and you're just bragging about the fact that you are fumbling his case so bad
00:46:22.260i that is crazy that is i don't know what to say i just i have no response and that just seems
00:46:34.600How mad would you be if, like, you're like, oh, yeah, I might go to jail for, like, I might do serious federal jail time on some, like, serious global, like, charges, like, real charges, grown man charges.
00:46:44.560And you're using, like, the legal version of chat GPT to come up with a closing argument to defend me.
00:46:51.920And I think it also just really reveals, like, how much of this is a grift.
00:46:56.940Like, people who make money from AI need us to be thinking that it is possible and also a good idea that AI will be defending people on trial someday.
00:47:06.000It doesn't even matter if this person gets a fair trial or not, if their AI technology, you know, gets press.
00:47:14.040Like, it just feels like another example of how, and I don't want to be like, oh, see, it just goes to show how dumb this technology is, but it clearly doesn't work right now.
00:47:24.220And like maybe in the future it will. And that will also be its own problem to deal with. But like clearly it's not working. Again, I don't think I have seen a single example of something written by an AI in any field so far that has been well done, like maybe mediocre at best.
00:47:42.500but it's also like you know this guy's like making bank for that trial like lawyers make a lot of
00:47:49.860money you're just letting the ai do like the work that you're getting i don't know that which again
00:47:56.620i'm all for finding ways to not have to do work i'm all for being lazy but like at this point
00:48:03.740if somebody's livelihood is on the line it feels a little important joey it's one thing to be lazy
00:48:09.020we're podcasters like nobody's gonna go to jail because of our laziness somebody might have like
00:48:16.060an unpleasant commute like oh that was a waste of 45 minutes
00:48:20.260i'm not gonna go to jail an angry comment yeah i mean
00:48:24.580and like i just think that like it's like
00:48:30.240pros should not nobody should be pros or anybody should not be like a guinea pig
00:48:36.860to have this tech, to like be the test case
00:48:40.420for whether this technology can be used in this way.0.99
00:48:42.600It's just like, it's stupid and funny,0.99
00:48:45.580but ultimately it's like people should not be guinea pigs0.99
00:48:49.580for the efficacy of this kind of technology
00:48:52.820when, as you said correctly, it's not there yet.
00:51:39.720Do you remember back when Elon Musk was like decided that being tough on child sexual abuse material was like his thing?
00:51:46.300He tweeted, removing child exploitation is my number one priority.
00:51:50.720And he just started sort of claiming without evidence that he was cracking down on child sexual abuse material on Twitter more than the previous leadership at Twitter.
00:51:58.960And a lot of people just kind of like bought into it because he said it and it's like, oh, it must be true, even though that wasn't true.
00:52:07.740I bet he was super successful and he there's actually no more child sexual abuse ever in the world.
00:52:15.380Cleaned that cleaned it right up, got rid of it.
00:52:17.760No, no, no. Wait, actually, I'm seeing here that the Australian Watchdog eSafety Commission has actually fined Twitter $350,000 for failing to explain how it is handling child sexual abuse material on the platform.
00:52:30.240The AP reports that the commission issued legal transparency notices earlier this year to Twitter and other platforms, questioning what they were doing to tackle child sexual exploitation material on their platforms, and that Twitter just did not sufficiently answer, and now they're getting this fine.
00:52:45.580Twitter apparently was the worst offender. They provided no answers to some of the questions, including questions like how many staff remained on the trust and safety team that took on the work preventing harmful and illegal content that Musk took over.
00:52:58.440Inman Grant from the commission said, I think there's a degree of defiance there, which like, yeah, I agree. Elon Musk being defiant of like something he has to do. Surprise, surprise.
00:53:07.500Grant says, if you've got basic human resources or payroll, you should know how many people are
00:53:13.020on each team. Yeah, I agree. It seems pretty straightforward. Doesn't seem like a complicated
00:53:17.560question, but Elon Musk refused to answer. I really do not understand how Twitter is still
00:53:24.580functioning as a website right now. I feel like every week there's been another thing where they've
00:53:31.500been like, hey, where are employees doing this thing? And it's like, what? You mean those guys
00:53:38.400we fired a couple months ago? Somehow it's still up. So I'm sure they have. But wow. Yeah. Not
00:53:47.940surprised. Not only is it still up, Joey, but Twitter is rolling out a new program to combat
00:53:55.120bots in New Zealand and the Philippines, where you will have to pay a dollar a year to make
00:54:01.820tweets. You can read tweets for free, but you'll have to pay a dollar a year to make tweets,
00:54:06.560which my favorite response that I saw about this on Twitter was from one of my favorite
00:54:10.160comedians, Vinny Thomas, a dollar a year, brother, I would not pay an acorn a decade.
00:54:17.600Yeah, I'm sorry. If that ever ends up here in the US, like that's it for me. That is officially
00:54:24.140when i'm deleting my twitter i'm not giving elon musk a dollar i'm not getting no like when i would
00:54:30.420not give him a penny that is too much to tweet no no but like i have such i mean we'll be here
00:54:37.940all night i have such big feelings about this fundamentally when you sign on to a social media
00:54:44.300platform we are the product our data information about us that like our eyeballs and ear holes
00:54:51.340absorbing advertisement that is the whether we whether I like it or not I don't like it but that
00:54:56.840is the exchange that you that gives you these platforms I'm not gonna pay a dollar a year or
00:55:03.980any amount of money to have you then continue to extract all of my information everything about me
00:55:10.800to then make more money that's I'm not paying that that is a that is a as a bum deal I'm just
00:55:15.840imagining like paying to go see a movie and you sit in the movie theater and you just watch ads
00:55:21.560for like an hour and somehow you're paying for that it's no yeah no and like here's my thing is
00:55:32.340like i so like elon says like i have to we have to do this to combat bots that is your job homie
00:55:38.640you bought this platform it is your job to figure that out what am i i'm paying to make your plat0.58
00:55:43.480Like, you are paid, like, people are paid, I'm sure, well, to figure out how to combat bots on this platform. Don't go in my pockets. I didn't fucking buy the platform. You did. Like, you figured this out. It is not my job to figure this out for you. It's not my job to give you a dollar a year, nor an acorn a decade to figure it out. And I certainly won't be.
00:56:03.600And yeah, just the thing about him getting fined for not complying with this transparency inquiry into child sexual abuse material and Twitter is the only platform that is on notice.
00:56:19.140Google also did not comply because they gave generic responses to specific questions, which is like a classic Google thing.
00:56:25.600So they actually got a formal warning, not a fine. But Elon Musk kind of touting and puffing up his chest and being like, I'm going to be the person who solves child exploitation on the platform.
00:56:35.420Something about this really reminds me of the moral panics that we've seen around things like trafficking, where folks can just like declare themselves the protector of children, like it's some kind of self-appointed title.
00:56:45.920So you could just say that you're a self-appointed protector of children and do nothing to actually protect children and just kind of go on vibes, I guess.
00:56:56.880I honestly think that Elon Musk just decided to say this, that he was going to be the person who combated sexual exploitation material on the platform as a way to grandstand because he knew people would run with it and the press would publish it.
00:57:42.440it's depressing it's it really it's you know what it's good to see that at least he's facing some
00:57:47.540consequences for this and maybe that's the you know little bit of positivity we can pull out of
00:57:54.600this but it is and hopefully also you know what maybe another part of this is like it does feel
00:57:59.680like maybe we're finally addressing the fact that people just simply saying that they're protecting
00:58:03.760children doesn't necessarily mean they're doing that uh but yeah it's it's not surprised that he
00:58:10.800his uh that seems to be his mo is saying he's gonna do things and then not doing them uh so
00:58:18.240i guess this is on brand it's on brand that is such a positive silver lining and i do have one
00:58:25.500kind of positive story i feel like today's episode was very like we live in a techno
00:58:29.780enabled hellscape like like i felt like it was like a little you know it is how i'm feeling
00:58:35.480lately. Yeah. It's been a, yeah, yeah. So I thought this was pretty cool. Stanford is using
00:58:43.320virtual reality to help people who have hoarding disorder practice organizing their spaces and
00:58:48.900like letting things go. A pilot study by Stanford Medicine researchers suggests that a virtual
00:58:53.980reality therapy might allow those who have hoarding disorder to rehearse relinquishing possessions in
00:58:59.380a simulation of their own home that could help them declutter in real life. The simulations
00:59:04.000help patients practice organizational and decision-making skills learned in cognitive
00:59:07.840behavioral therapy, currently the standard treatment for hoarding youth disorder, and
00:59:11.720desensitized them to the stress that they might feel when discarding things. The results of this
00:59:15.600pilot program was published in the October issue of the Journal of Psychiatric Research.
00:59:19.380So hoarding disorder is a mental condition that affects about 2.5% of the United States,
00:59:25.040which I didn't know it was that high. I think it sounds like it's like kind of a tough issue
00:59:30.500because of things like shame and stigma and because, like, the symptoms of it means that
00:59:36.280it can be hard to let people in. And so those people can involve first responders. So, like,
00:59:41.340if you have an emergency in your home, it can be hard for first responders to get in.
00:59:45.480And that can be, like, specialists who are there to help you with hoarding disorder if those
00:59:50.280specialists are not able to, like, physically enter people's homes. Dr. Carolyn Rodriguez,
00:59:54.920professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and senior author of the study, said that some
00:59:59.440people are in such dire need, but we can't go into their homes. The clutter is stacked so high
01:00:04.260that it is dangerous for our team to go inside. Yet practicing letting go of items is such a
01:00:08.680useful skill that we wanted to create a virtual and safe environment. So here's how the pilot
01:00:12.660program worked. In the study, Rodriguez's team asked nine participants over the age of 55 with
01:00:17.940diagnosed hoarding disorder to take photos and videos of the most cluttered room in their house,
01:00:22.800along with 30 possessions. With the help of a VR company and Stanford University engineering
01:00:27.260students, the photos and videos were then transformed into custom 3D virtual environments.
01:00:32.720The participants navigated around their homes and manipulated their possessions using VR
01:00:36.760headsets and handheld controllers. The outcome? Well, seven of the nine participants improved
01:00:42.160in self-reported hoarding symptoms, with an average decrease of 25%. Eight of the nine
01:00:46.800participants also had less clutter in their homes based on visual assessments by clinicians,
01:00:51.180with an average decrease of 15%. Now, these improvements are comparable to those that are
01:00:56.340found in group therapy alone. So it's not totally clear whether this VR therapy can add value.
01:01:02.580However, importantly, this small initial trial demonstrated that VR therapy for hoarding
01:01:07.060disorder is feasible and well-tolerated, even in older patients. Like, it sounds like they were
01:01:12.180worried that some of the older folks might be not so sure about trying this new technology with a
01:01:18.060headset, but in the end, they actually ended up liking it. So all of this is to say that as grim
01:01:24.560as things might seem sometime, technology still can be and very much is used to help people design
01:01:32.160and architect healthier, happier, brighter, safer futures for themselves. And that's what I love
01:01:38.460about technology. That's the tech future I think that we should all be looking toward. Yeah, it's
01:01:44.480not all bad. For sure, yeah. Yeah, it's nice to hear a story where tech's being used for good and
01:01:51.420for helping people for once um but yeah that is really great to hear and it is like you know
01:01:57.900i don't know as much about like this particular disorder um i didn't realize it was yeah that it
01:02:04.240affected 2.5 percent of the u.s population um but yeah like all mental health stuff in general
01:02:11.780tends to be stigmatized and it is like when i it again it's one of those things i wouldn't even
01:02:15.800really think about, you know, the stigmas behind it. But it's great to hear that, yeah, tech
01:02:23.020can be a really helpful thing and can be a really, you know, useful tool, particularly when it comes
01:02:29.100to people's health and mental health. And yeah, hope to hear more stories like this going forward.
01:02:36.340Yes, more tech being used to help people build healthier, happier lives,
01:02:40.680less tech being used to be awful, please. And thank you.
01:02:47.360Joey, this was a tough one. I really appreciate you being here. I really appreciate your perspective
01:02:51.880and you sharing so much of your full self. It's such an honor to be able to unpack
01:02:57.180all of these stories with you. So I just really appreciate it.
01:03:00.780Of course, Bridget. I'm happy to be on as always. It's great getting to talk about this stuff with you too.
01:03:06.440And listeners, thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for sticking with us.
01:03:10.680Be well, and I will talk to you next week.
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01:04:07.900Pro 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.
01:04:16.560Each 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.