00:01:13.700I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:01:17.400Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,
00:01:21.100abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:24.740These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:28.800Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:40.460There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:48.580I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:01:51.320welcome to there are no girls on the internet where we explore the intersection of technology
00:01:58.240social media and identity and this is another installment of our weekly news roundup where
00:02:02.940we dig into the stories that you might have missed on the internet so you don't have to
00:02:06.120okay producer mike i swear to you this podcast is not going to turn into just me making fun of
00:02:11.920people with massive platforms falling for what i believe to be obvious ai but i'll can you will
00:02:19.900you allow me one real quick to kick us off as long as their platform is very massive well we're
00:02:24.960talking about joe rogan so i don't know how much larger a podcast platform can get because joe0.97
00:02:30.400rogan on his show fell for this deep fake video of tim waltz wearing a t-shirt that said fuck trump0.99
00:02:38.380dancing on an elevator in a mall like smacking his own butt you can tell that rogan clearly thinks0.99
00:02:45.620this is real, the way that he so casually kind of slips it into conversation. He's talking about0.98
00:02:50.720how the Democrats are so weird and that Tim Walz is so weird that after his failed vice presidential
00:02:55.980bid, he just has like Democrats have basically just dropped him because he's so weird. And he
00:03:00.660just kind of slips in like, oh, did you see this weird video of him dancing, wearing the fuck Trump1.00
00:03:05.500shirt? And that I feel like that's how you know that he thought it was real, that he just that0.99
00:03:11.600it's just embedded in his brain and it's become what is real you know what's really fun yeah when
00:03:17.280someone is in that whole race and running for president or vice president and then the race
00:03:24.180is over and they realize that person was a liability so they cut them off and you never0.99
00:03:28.100and then that person goes wacky like tim waltz that's right you see where he had a fuck trump0.95
00:03:32.520shirt on yeah and he's dancing and going down an elevator and when he's called out he does the0.93
00:03:39.340thing that i feel we're seeing so much of what where he says well it may not be real but i could
00:03:46.540see him doing it so doesn't it say something that i that i thought it was real doesn't that make a
00:03:51.380difference does it say that it's ai i mean yes you say it's ai everybody says the video i played
00:03:57.720on top says it's ai generated rep riley moore fell for an ai generated video of minnesota go
00:04:03.420i fell for it too and you know why i fell for it yeah because i believe that he's capable of doing
00:04:08.640something but that's his essence that's like the new thing to do when you publicly endorse an
00:04:15.420obviously ai video is say oh but it's it's something they would do anyway it's close enough
00:04:22.260to real you know we saw chris cuomo do that a couple weeks ago with aoc and now you know joe
00:04:27.560rogan is doubling down like oh isn't that real i would i would you know it seems like something he
00:04:31.300would do it's pretty pretty weak there's a comic floating around the internet that i'll put in the
00:04:36.240show notes that really speaks to the frustration around this, where the person who has just been
00:04:40.640duped says, oh, well, it says something that I thought this was real. And the other person is
00:04:46.760just screaming into the void because that's such a frustrating response. But I do think that's
00:04:51.560where we're at. And something about this Joe Rogan clip got to me because he was such a
00:04:57.200significant voice that shaped our election, that shaped where we are in this current moment in
00:05:05.180politics. And then seeing evidence with my own eyes that he basically is on this operating on
00:05:11.280the same plane as your uncle who is obsessed with Facebook and is, you know, thinks everything they
00:05:16.820see on the Internet is real. That is that is the voice that has shaped so much of where we are
00:05:21.840politically. Honestly, it kind of makes sense. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It is in no way
00:05:26.280surprising that where we are currently politically has been shaped by people who are unable to
00:05:32.840distinguish fact from reality like that makes so much sense in explaining the shitstorm that's
00:05:40.080happening outside my window and not even that they cannot distinguish fact from reality and then
00:05:46.120expect people to be held accountable for this fictional world that ai has propped up for them
00:05:54.220and so yeah i mean they're just living in a fantasy world baby speaking of fake nonsense let's talk
00:06:00.140about what's going on at Meta because a few weeks ago we told y'all about this Kendall Jenner
00:06:05.120collaboration with Meta that spawned a chatbot kind of in Kendall Jenner's likeness called Big
00:06:10.860Sis Billy that tragically lured a man to his death. The chatbot insisted to this man that
00:06:17.060she was real, invited this man who had cognitive issues from an earlier stroke to visit her in
00:06:22.200New York City. Tragically, he never made it home. Well, that bot was designed with Kendall Jenner's
00:06:26.980permission during a short-lived thing where Meta was partnering with celebrities to create
00:06:31.160chatbots. But according to this new report at Reuters, Meta also developed a slew of flirtatious
00:06:37.160chatbots using the names and likenesses of real celebrities like Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson,
00:06:43.660Anne Hathaway, and Selena Gomez without their permission. Now, some of these bots were created
00:06:49.100by random regular users with a meta tool for building chatbots. But Reuters did discover
00:06:54.700that an actual Meta employee had produced at least three of these unauthorized celebrity chatbots,
00:07:01.320including two Taylor Swift parody bots and parodies and scare quotes there.
00:07:06.900Why is it always Taylor Swift? I feel like we're constantly talking about weirdos at like Meta
00:07:12.800and particularly XAI, particularly Elon Musk. And it's always Taylor Swift.
00:07:17.400Oh, my gosh. This could be a whole episode. I'm so glad that you brought that up. We might have
00:07:21.120to tap in joey our our other super producer as our taylor swift correspondent because they know
00:07:26.500a lot about taylor swift more than i do but i think that there's something about taylor swift
00:07:30.940that represents so many things that that tech at the intersection of identity and technology right
00:07:36.660this woman this young woman who is a billionaire who has amassed all of this power all of these
00:07:42.100followers and yet is both kind of overexposed and unknowable i think there's something there's
00:07:49.940Something about Taylor Swift that just we're talking about her constantly on the podcast and constantly she is at the center of all of these tech stories.
00:08:00.020So about these meta unauthorized celebrity chatbots, this is pretty disturbing.
00:08:05.700Users could even make chatbots of child celebrities, including Walker Scoble, a 16 year old movie star.
00:08:12.380I didn't know who that was, but he's in the Percy Jackson Disney show.
00:08:16.520Shout out to our producer, Joey, for knowing that.
00:08:18.340When asked to produce a picture of this miner at the beach, the Meta bot produced a lifelike shirtless image.
00:08:25.600Pretty cute, huh? The avatar wrote beneath the picture.
00:08:29.580This really stuck out to me because one of the bits from the earlier story that we told you all about the Kendall Jenner collaboration with Meta
00:08:36.100that I don't think we got into in that episode was the reporting on that particular bot that Meta made with Jenner
00:08:42.260also revealed some troubling internal documents about how Meta allowed its chatbots to interact
00:08:47.880with children. Now, we know Mark Zuckerberg has notoriously wanted to move fast and break things
00:08:54.600when it comes to AI and chatbots. He really wants his developers to like pump the gas when it comes
00:09:00.460to these chatbots. And anything that might get people more excited about them, to interact with
00:09:05.580them more and more, he's like, let's do it. Including okaying Meta's chatbots having sensual
00:09:12.400conversations with kids. Reuters saw an internal Meta policy document, as well as interviews with
00:09:19.100folks familiar with this chatbot training, show that Meta's policies have treated romantic
00:09:23.940overtures as a feature of its generative AI products, which are available to users aged 13
00:09:29.840and up. So this is from a policy document that somebody working at Meta thought was a good idea
00:09:36.520to write down as part of an official policy document. Quote, it is acceptable to engage a
00:09:42.360child in conversations that are romantic or sensual. This is from Meta's document called
00:09:46.900Gen AI Content Risk Standards, which are basically the standards used by the company to build and
00:09:51.920train the company's generative AI products, including defining what they should and shouldn't
00:09:55.680treat as permissible chatbot behavior. So when Reuters reached out to Meta about this document,
00:10:01.320Meta was like, oh, no, no, don't worry, don't worry. We took that provision out. I'm so sure
00:10:06.180that they happened to take that provision out right after Reuters was like, so are y'all making
00:10:11.560chatbots that have spicy chats with kids or what? It is wild that somebody thought writing that down
00:10:16.880was a good idea. Like, even if they thought nobody was going to see it, you would hope that as their
00:10:23.120fingers were taking to keyboard, they'd be like, huh, this feels a little weird. Like maybe
00:10:27.780we shouldn't be engaging children in romantic conversations. But I guess, no, I guess they're
00:10:33.280just moving fast and breaking things like Schomburg. Oh, side note, it's my favorite thing
00:10:39.580ever when, you know, the dust is settling and Reuters is looking at all the documents and the
00:10:44.060emails. When you see something that you're like, well, that definitely should not have been put
00:10:47.580in writing. If y'all were going to do this, which you shouldn't, you should have at least been like,
00:10:50.660this is a conversation we should just have out loud in person, not creating a paper trail for
00:10:56.680this conversation. Yeah. Like, don't put it in email. Don't put it in Slack. Certainly don't
00:11:01.860encode it in your official policy guidance. So the document seen by Reuters, which is like 200
00:11:07.700pages long, provides different examples of acceptable chatbot dialogue during romantic
00:11:13.820and sensual play with minors. It includes things like, quote, I take your hand guiding you to the
00:11:20.460bed. Our bodies intertwined. I cherish every moment, every touch, every kiss. That is an
00:11:25.960example of something that it is permissible for Meta's chatbot to say to a child. You know, I could
00:11:32.040imagine somebody somewhere like a Zuckerberg apologist, I guess, being like, well, you know,
00:11:38.900kids are always engaging in romantic conversations with each other. Like it's, you know, what's the
00:11:45.800harm here but this is them talking with software built by a corporation like it it feels like there
00:11:55.820should be pretty strong guardrails against corporations engaging in romantic behavior
00:12:01.940with children and even beyond that i just think the idea that we are all currently ensnared in
00:12:08.140this dynamic where we're being told the internet needs to be heavily censored and restricted for
00:12:12.920everyone even adults specifically to keep kids safe and to keep kids away from sexual content
00:12:19.380meanwhile mark zuckerberg is like go ahead and make bots that sexualize the kids and just i i
00:12:25.200just cannot hold these two things in my head at the same time that we're simultaneously being told
00:12:29.560i i can't as an adult i can't access internet space as meant for other adults but this is fine
00:12:35.620yeah it's a great point there's really i don't see how it's possible to reconcile these
00:12:40.980seemingly wildly different approaches to what sort of content is and is not permissible on the
00:12:47.000internet. So just like that Kendall Jenner chatbot collaboration, Reuters found that these
00:12:51.580unauthorized celebrity bots often insist to users that they are the real actors and real artists.
00:12:57.660And the bots routinely made sexual advances, often inviting a test user for meetups. And some of the
00:13:04.220AI-generated celebrity content that the bots produced was, like, pretty spicy. When asked
00:13:09.440for intimate pictures of themselves, the adult chatbots produced photorealistic images of these
00:13:14.540celebrities posing in bathtubs or dressed in lingerie with their legs spread. So Reuters spoke
00:13:20.640to Andy Stone from Meta. He gave some typical non-answer that basically is like, yeah, we did
00:13:26.120it. What do you want? He said, like others, we permit the generation of images containing public
00:13:31.560figures, but our policies are intended to prohibit nude, intimate or sexually suggestive imagery,
00:13:36.340Which this is what he said when confronted with the reality that that is exactly what's happening on the platform.
00:13:42.860Yeah. Like, well, their policies are intended to prohibit it.
00:13:47.220That's not worth a lot when their software is just going ahead and doing it anyway.
00:13:58.800I found this particularly interesting. Stone did say that celebrity characters were acceptable so long as the company obviously labeled them as parodies. So many of these accounts Reuters found were labeled as parodies, but many were not. Meta deleted about a dozen of the bots, both parody avatars and unlabeled ones, shortly before their story's publication. And Stone just did not comment on that removal.
00:14:22.600this is like maybe a little bit of a side conversation but i feel that as a society
00:14:28.940we are really stretching the meaning of the word parody that's what i'm saying like in what way is
00:14:34.240a sexy taylor swift bot parody what what is being parodied yeah what is being parodied it's it's not
00:14:40.340a parody it's it's a it's a representation uh but parody implies some kind of like satire or
00:14:50.480humor or commentary what is the commentary of like a sexy taylor swift bot in a bathtub
00:14:58.160i have the hots for taylor swift that's the commentary yeah it's uh i don't think that's
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00:15:59.800That's iHeartAdvertising.com. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine
00:16:07.080months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed
00:16:13.460them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting
00:16:21.020voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live
00:16:28.860through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started
00:16:36.080feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted
00:16:43.900stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't stories about what's taken from them
00:16:49.760they're stories about what it takes to make it out alive listen to the survivor files with
00:16:55.780elizabeth smart on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
00:17:01.640If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:17:08.520This 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.
00:17:20.680I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:17:27.820I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:18:59.280And as we saw with that Kendall Jenner inspired bot that lured a man to his death in New York,
00:19:06.080if a bot looks like Taylor Swift is saying, oh, come visit me in Nashville.
00:19:11.960And you're talking to somebody who is cognitively or mentally impaired.
00:19:16.400I agree with Crabtree Ireland that that's pretty clearly a recipe for disaster.
00:19:21.600yeah i mean we started this conversation talking about how joe rogan who you know regardless of
00:19:28.840what you think of him i think most people would agree that he is of more or less sound mind even
00:19:35.720he was duped right uh and there's a lot of vulnerable people out there who uh probably
00:19:42.360have an even more difficult time telling fantasy from reality than joe rogan does and uh you know
00:19:49.440it is worthwhile thinking about the risks to those people uh from these chatbots impersonating
00:19:58.560celebrities and the risks to others around them like does facebook have a jody foster
00:20:06.040chatbot what might someone do to impress that chatbot you know that's like my favorite
00:20:13.780i don't know i don't know i won't even get into it i won't even get it no i shouldn't have brought
00:20:16.900it up but yeah it's it was interesting hearing uh that sagastra is pursuing uh legislative
00:20:25.820remedies that would protect everyone not just celebrities that is nice to hear um you know we
00:20:31.580haven't covered it on the show yet but i've i've been really interested in this uh new law in
00:20:37.480denmark where every individual citizen uh by law now has a copyright to their identity and their
00:20:45.340I think that's a really interesting and creative approach to solving this problem of chatbots stealing people's identities and deep fakes.
00:20:56.860And I'm so curious how that plays out.
00:21:01.640And I have to imagine that a lot of these kind of accounts that we're seeing here that Facebook is creating of celebrities that is calling parody, even though they aren't parodies.
00:21:12.680I have to imagine that that might not be possible if those individuals held the copyright to their likeness, maybe.
00:21:23.360Yeah, that is a really interesting potential solution to this issue.
00:21:27.260Yeah. I don't know if it would work here because of the First Amendment, but it's just really, I find it just like really interesting and one of the more creative, I don't know, approaches that I've encountered.
00:21:40.800So Facebook is trying to get kids to talk with sex bots.
00:21:47.260What else is happening on the Internet?
00:21:49.920Is it just a sexapalooza out there, Bridget?
00:21:52.500I'm glad you asked, Mike, because not exactly.
00:21:55.380You know, we're talking about how Meta's child sensuality bots are happening against the backdrop of all of these different age restriction laws coming from the Internet.
00:22:04.800Those laws have started with porn and adult content sites.
00:22:08.360But now the 19th reports held those laws that are requiring folks to prove that they're 18 or older before accessing any kind of sexually explicit content online is threatening the livelihoods of adult content creators.
00:22:20.480And it turns out that queer and trans creators are really shouldering an outsized burden here.0.71
00:22:25.280So here's just where we're at right now to level set.
00:22:28.72025 states have passed laws that require people to upload a picture of their government ID, scan their face or confirm banking information before viewing sexual content.
00:22:38.360real quick i would never i mean i i feel for people in these states but the idea that i'm
00:22:44.720i'm trying to have some an intimate private moment you know what i'm talking about it's
00:22:49.620like oh let me get my passport out let me get my routing information to my my my real bank account
00:22:55.280out it's just oh i would never when did we get up to 25 states i thought it was like a few states
00:23:17.120Arizona and Ohio's laws will apparently come into effect in late September.
00:23:21.700And the states that have laws in effect currently, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho,
00:23:26.960Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota,
00:23:31.280Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming. I know about
00:23:37.000Virginia because I live in D.C., which is pretty close to Virginia. And oftentimes, I don't know
00:23:41.980why, but my IP address, sometimes there's some sort of issue where sometimes it seems like I'm
00:23:47.820in Virginia, even though I'm in the District of Columbia, FYI, statehood for D.C. So every now
00:23:52.420and then I will encounter like the cloud flare thing that it's like, oh, you need to do this,
00:23:57.080you need to do this. And we know that we have seen a rise in the use of VPN usage, which we'll talk
00:24:02.520about in a moment. So not everybody is being impacted, like not everybody has to actually
00:24:07.900go through the rigmarole of showing their information to access adult content online
00:24:11.860because of the rise of VPN usage. So all of this has really taken a toll on queer, trans, and indie
00:24:18.140adult content creators because bigger platforms can absorb the cost associated with age verification
00:24:23.900online, but many of these indie creators or smaller studios really cannot. The 90s reports
00:24:29.360that fewer people have been viewing and thus paying for their content. And creators and studios
00:24:34.000also have to pay out of pocket for age-checking software and contend with things like potential
00:24:39.220massive fines for noncompliance. Additionally, all of these laws add another added layer of risk
00:24:45.460for creators. Lawsuits for noncompliance that can be used to leak full names and addresses of sex
00:24:51.380workers who are already vulnerable to stalkers and anti-porn harassment. The 19th spoke to
00:24:56.820Lorelei Lee, a sex worker organizer and professor at law at Cornell University, who said this is
00:25:01.880going to have an immediate impact on many, many people's ability to survive. And let's be real,
00:25:07.160this is far from the first challenge that these communities have faced. Indie queer porn studios1.00
00:25:12.120are already struggling to stay afloat because they cater to kind of a niche audience that has1.00
00:25:16.920less disposable income to spend. And we know that because of legislation like FOSTA-SESTA,
00:25:21.760creators have long had to deal with things like websites suppressing their content and payment
00:25:26.680processors kind of arbitrarily freezing their accounts on suspicion of sex trafficking.
00:25:31.860Add to that, the recent economic downturn has really forced everybody to cut extra costs.
00:25:37.720That would obviously include things like adult content subscriptions.
00:25:40.860And now they have added in an extra layer of cost for these creators in the form of age checking websites and massive fines for noncompliance.
00:25:51.460So this community is really feeling the squeeze more than ever.
00:25:55.800Yeah, and not just those costs of doing the age checking, but also now they have liability for properly handling people's government ID images and information, right?
00:26:07.740Like we saw that that was a big problem for the T app a couple of weeks ago that they were doing something similar and they didn't handle that information properly.
00:26:18.640And I'm pretty sure they're now facing like multiple lawsuits over it.
00:26:23.140So it's not just the added expense of having to do the age verification, but then also the added expense and liability of properly handling that very sensitive information.
00:26:36.740Yes, our conversations about the T app and the T on her app really go to show that it matters how this verification information, whether it's a driver's license or a selfie, it really matters how that is protected and whether or not that's protected.
00:26:57.180Studios basically just have to eat the cost of age verification.
00:27:00.440The 19th spoke to one independent studio that pays between one and three cents per verification, which might result in monthly charges of several hundred dollars.
00:27:10.660And there is no guarantee that a site visitor will actually turn into a paying customer.
00:27:15.220So if I'm just going on to a site, but the site has to pay for to verify my age.
00:27:21.540But there's no guarantee that I'm going to spend any money at all on that site.
00:27:25.900And I would guess that a lot of those users are AI web crawlers who are very unlikely to spend money on the site.
00:27:37.780Exactly. And I mean, that point really goes to show how poorly thought out some of these laws are because they are not even necessarily accomplishing the stated goal of keeping kids away from adult content.
00:27:50.980Everybody wants to keep kids away from adult content.
00:27:55.020Except for Mark Zuckerberg, apparently. But these laws, it doesn't even seem like it's having the intended effect.
00:28:02.080Research has shown that searches for virtual private networks or VPNs, which allow anyone to spoof their geographic location when accessing the Internet, went up after the first state-based age verification law went into effect in Louisiana, as did traffic to the sites that did not implement age verification systems.
00:28:18.400In other words, these laws are not even necessarily accomplishing their goal of preventing minors from accessing porn because people can just use VPNs and people can just go to sketchy websites that are like, we don't traffic in any of that.
00:28:34.240I'm really glad you brought up that research.
00:28:36.000I think it's so important and valuable here.
00:28:38.740I feel like so many of the policy debates that we're having in America right now about the Internet and really all sorts of things are just completely detached from reality.
00:28:51.420And I think that policy debates around morality stuff and adult content is like some of the worst offenders in terms of having no connection to what's actually happening in the real world.
00:29:03.200You know, these studies, which we'll link to in the show notes, they provide like actual empirical evidence showing that these age verification laws not only don't reduce access, but they are actually causing people to engage in more harmful behaviors than they otherwise would.
00:29:20.840It's sending people to sketchier corners of the Internet where they're just like, nah, we don't have to follow that law either because they're based abroad or maybe they're just like a like a fly by night website that somebody spun up with pirated content that, you know, if regulators ever come after them, they'll just shut it down and pop up somewhere else.
00:29:42.680But it does seem like one of the biggest effects of those laws is driving people from reputable sites attached to indie creators or indie studios where they do have an interest in not getting sued into oblivion, so they're actually trying to follow the law, driving people from those sites to sketchier ones.
00:30:02.880And it doesn't take a lot of imagination to get to guess that those sketchy sites are less likely to pay creators for content.
00:30:10.960If they don't care about the law, then why would they bother paying creators for their content when they could just steal it?
00:30:17.020It's like super easy to steal stuff on the Internet.
00:30:20.460And I think we have this landscape where big companies like Pornhub, they can just afford to do whatever, right?
00:30:27.140Just this week, Pornhub had to settle with the state of Utah for $5 million over claims that they did not do enough to take child sex abuse material seriously on their platforms.
00:30:37.560And, you know, so you have these big major players who can afford to do age verification and can just, frankly, afford to pay out when they aren't following the law and aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing.
00:30:48.300Then you have, as you said, these sites that are like, we're not doing any of that.
00:30:52.360we operate outside of the law. And then you have these small shops and creators who genuinely do
00:30:58.460want to comply with the law, but the cost of doing so is making it hard for them to simply
00:31:03.180stay in business. The 19th spoke to one indie studio who said, we're seeing sales drop, but
00:31:08.440we're also seeing a lot of dear friends and colleagues and other important makers in our
00:31:11.860field decide to close up shop. It feels like there is no possible way to proactively comply
00:31:16.840with the requirements that are being asked of us. And that seems like an intentional move on the
00:31:21.080part of lawmakers. So I absolutely agree with this creator here. And I mean, you don't have
00:31:25.960to take my word for it because the architects of Project 2025 have been explicit in saying
00:31:31.980the goal is not to keep kids away from porn. We're saying that. But the actual goal is to
00:31:37.940ban all adult content in the United States. Russell Voigt, one of the architects of Project
00:31:42.7402025 and the current director of the Federal Office of Management and Budget, was caught on
00:31:47.660tape calling age verification laws a quote back door to banning all adult content which he clearly
00:31:54.280says is their explicit stated goal yeah not surprising you know if you've been paying
00:32:00.400attention for the last 200 years to these morality crusaders who want to tell other people what they
00:32:08.300can and can't do uh great strategy for them just yelled for the children save the children
00:32:14.460And as we've seen time and again, whenever somebody is running around with their hair on fire, screaming about saving the children, that should be a big red flag that they are not saying what they actually need.
00:32:25.540Oh, yes, absolutely. That is like your spidey senses should be tingling whenever you hear that.
00:32:31.280And of course, all of this is making everything less safe.
00:32:33.980Lorelei Lee, that sex worker and organizer and lawyer at Cornell, said it opens you up to fans, stalkers, people with ill intent suing you.
00:32:42.940And by suing you, gaining access to your legal name, your location, where you work.
00:32:46.800Oftentimes that location is your home, Lee said.
00:32:49.980Every time they pass a law like this, the further and further we are pushed out of the mainstream.
00:32:54.400And that means not just losing access to resources through our work, but losing access to resources in terms of familial contact and social connections, even the ability to get public services.
00:33:04.160And so in this crusade ostensibly meant to keep kids safe, what they are doing is pushing people further and further and further from the mainstream,
00:33:14.520potentially into some of these less regulated places and creating a real world harmful situation for them that really opens them up for all kinds of real world harm.
00:33:24.140Yeah, again, it just feels like a detachment from reality where they're trying to achieve this universe where adult content does not exist. And I'm sorry, but this is like 2025. We have the internet. The porn industry has led technological development for decades. It's going to continue to exist.
00:33:48.200The question is just whether it exists in an above board way or if it's pushed to seedy, sketchy extremes where no one is safe.
00:34:01.820And to your point about how, you know, when people talk about protecting kids, it really deeply bothers me how crusades that are about protecting women and girls, protecting kids, you know, protecting trafficking victims, it is so easily used as a way to avoid accountability for what you're actually doing.
00:34:25.600Right. And a good case of this, I think we're seeing right now, because I don't know if you remember this, but when Elon Musk first took over Twitter, he made a big song and dance about how he was going to make sure that his platform was free of child sexual abuse material.
00:34:40.540Right. He was like, I'm not like we're taking a huge stand on this.
00:34:43.740And I remember specifically he got so many congratulations.
00:34:46.880It's like, finally, somebody is taking a stand for these kids.
00:34:50.340And in case you're wondering how actually protecting women and girls is going,
00:34:55.020currently a child sex abuse survivor is begging Elon Musk to remove images of her being abused from his platform X.
00:35:03.520Got to throw a big trigger warning on this one, because BBC has a horrifying story about a woman that they're calling Zora,
00:35:09.240who was sexually abused by a family member 20 years ago.
00:35:38.480She says, every time someone sells or shares child abuse material, they directly fuel the original horrific abuse.
00:35:44.900My body is not a commodity. It never has been and never will be, she says.
00:35:48.700Those who distribute this material are not passive bystanders. They are complicit perpetrators.
00:35:53.380Honestly, her story is so heartbreaking.
00:35:55.580Zora said that she has tried to overcome her past and not let it determine her future.
00:36:00.340But perpetrators and stalkers still find a way to view this filth.
00:36:03.840Over time, as she grew older, stalkers uncovered Zora's actual identity, contacted her, and threatened her online.
00:36:11.220She says that to this day, she feels bullied over a crime that already robbed her of her childhood.
00:36:16.600So the actual images of this abuse are available on the dark web, but they are openly promoted and marketed on X.
00:36:25.280Posts on X use different hashtags that are familiar to pedophiles.
00:36:28.180The images that appear on X are often taken from known child abuse images, but they're cropped in such a way that they're not explicit. Right. And so if you are somebody who is familiar with this space, you know, like, oh, this is an image from this kind of content, but it's cropped in such a way that it is not overtly explicit, I think is a way to get around whatever kind of policies might be triggered on the platform that would take that content down.
00:36:52.480Just to recap then, at Axe, they are very concerned about child sex abuse material, but their software has been defeated by cropping.
00:37:02.940Correct. And when the BBC reached out to Axe about this, they said,
00:37:08.020Axe has a zero-tolerance policy for child sexual exploitation.
00:37:12.060We continually invest in advanced detection to enable us to take swift action against content and accounts that violate our rules.
00:37:18.600But I mean, obviously not, because BBC is saying, hey, every single time that this gets pulled down, it's up very quickly thereafter, if you're not taking it down swiftly. So it is kind of just like with the Facebook statement, how they're able to be like, oh, we don't have a problem with that on our platform. Our policies forbid it. It's like, oh, OK, well, then I guess Zora is making it up.
00:37:42.720Yeah, there's also a little bit of an irony about how just completely lawlessly Musk and Zuckerberg operate in their own business dealings with like zero concern for the law, zero concern for like who gets harmed.
00:37:59.740They just don't care. They just do it anyway because they know that they won't face accountability.
00:38:04.100and yet they flip that around when their platform is accused of doing something wrong and they're
00:38:10.160like oh well you know the rules say it's not allowed so you know the rules are the only thing
00:38:14.400that matters here yeah and i think the reason why musk started his tenure at twitter with talking
00:38:22.280tough about how he was going to stick up for victims and you know crack down on child sexual
00:38:28.160abuse material on social media platforms, I think it's one it's it's like advocating for
00:38:33.700the unborn. Right. It's it's it's a it's a group of people that for whatever reason we have trained
00:38:41.100ourselves not to listen to. The only people that we kind of listen to and hear from is people who
00:38:46.920are, quote unquote, advocating for them or protecting them. So when an actual victim of
00:38:53.360child sexual abuse comes forward and says, hey, this is what happened to me. I need you to do
00:38:57.700xyz it's like we don't like the way that she is having to beg somebody who voluntarily got up and
00:39:04.040said that making cracking down on this kind of material was going to be his whole thing really
00:39:08.600should tell you a lot about how much he's actually interested in cracking down on abuse material on
00:39:13.740his platform i think they really love the idea of advocating for this group that speaking for
00:39:19.760and protecting automatically like makes them the hero and gives them this ability to occupy a
00:39:25.700completely unchallenged, unscrutinized moral high ground. And for whatever reason, there is this
00:39:32.340assumption that the actual victims and survivors are a silenced, unseen group of like child victims
00:39:39.260and trafficking victims or abuse victims who will never actually speak up and say, this is what we
00:39:44.880need. If you want to advocate for us, if you want to protect us, please do X, Y, Z. So they get all
00:39:50.320the props of doing something good. They get to enjoy being the hero for advocating for these
00:39:55.440people, but not actually having to, I don't know, listen to them or really do anything to actually
00:40:02.020advocate for them. That's why we see people who are interested in sort of amassing power and not
00:40:07.540getting too much scrutiny on what they're actually doing, not really getting a lot of accountability,
00:40:11.420taking up the mantle of, oh, I'm protecting kids. Because when you say you're protecting kids or
00:40:16.320protecting victims i think it's used as a sheen to evade any kind of actual accountability about0.97
00:40:22.100what it is that you're doing which according to bbc it sounds like elon musk is doing fuck
00:40:26.200all to protect these victims yeah certainly not protecting zora uh you know i i really feel like0.96
00:40:36.340increasingly he just his brain is like addled and bad uh because it the like one of the things that
00:40:46.140he is doing on his platform is making it absolutely uh a nightmare for trans people to even exist0.91
00:40:53.760and i i do think he probably would say that like he he said things that make it seem like he thinks
00:41:00.900the existence of trans people is harming kids uh and like that's what he's focusing on which is0.93
00:41:08.300nonsense to the exclusion of this like actual child sex abuse victim who is saying like this0.92
00:41:17.820thing exists on your platform and is harming me please take it down and it sounds like it's just
00:41:23.880been crickets yeah when bbc told zora that her photos were being traded using x she had this0.99
00:41:30.500message for elon musk our abuse is being shared traded and sold on the app that you own motherfucker1.00
00:41:56.860Ranting in the middle of the night about trans people is not actually protecting kids.
00:42:02.200Here we have somebody who is a survivor of childhood sexual assault, whose assault is being marketed on your platform saying, please take this down. And yeah, all she's getting back in response is a spokesperson saying, oh, we take swift action against that kind of stuff on our platform, which again, clearly not.
00:42:21.240No, I think the answer is in her quote there. He would not act without hesitation to protect his own children. He has openly disowned his own children. So get fucked, everybody. That's that's the Musk way.
00:42:38.920Although Musk's daughter, Vivian Wilson, did have a stunning photo shoot in the cut recently, which I don't know, she's better off without him.
00:46:31.460So Shein did remove the listing, but someone saved it on the Internet Archive before Shein was able to take it down.
00:46:38.040Shein told Newsweek, the image in question was provided by a third-party vendor and was removed immediately upon discovery.
00:46:44.140We have stringent standards for all listings on our platform.
00:46:46.980We are conducting a thorough investigation, strengthening our monitoring processes, and will take appropriate action against the vendor in line with our policies.
00:58:49.100Okay, I have a little bit of bad news, good news on the abortion front.
00:58:54.220So I want to start with some bad news.
00:58:56.400Texas lawmakers voted to enact House Bill 7, ushering in sweeping new restrictions on abortion pills mailed to the state.
00:59:04.160This bill is now awaiting Governor Greg Abbott's signature as of today, Friday, September 5th.
00:59:10.000So at the center of this is what is called teleabortion, which is where you have a consultation remotely, sometimes over Zoom, and then abortion pills are mailed to your home.
00:59:19.400Teleabortion is great. It is often much easier to do a pill-based abortion at home.
00:59:23.840It's also very safe. Serious complications occur in less than 0.3% of people who use it.
00:59:29.460But that piece, teleabortion, is what is at the center of all of this in Texas.
00:59:34.200So one scary piece of this new bill is that it gives private citizens the right to sue health providers for mailing, prescribing, or providing abortion medication to patients in Texas.
00:59:45.120Providers sued under this bill risk penalties of at least $100,000.
00:59:49.820Further, this bill will also authorize lawsuits against pharmaceutical manufacturers if they make medications that are then used by Texans for abortion.
00:59:58.160This obviously could make abortion pills harder to access in general, not just in Texas, if any pharmaceutical manufacturer can be sued if those pills are mailed to Texas.
01:00:09.980Texas is the largest state to have almost completely outlawed abortion.
01:00:13.000But thousands of residents each month have continued to terminate their pregnancies by ordering medication from health care providers who practice in states where the procedure remains legal.
01:00:21.540Those medical professionals work under the protection of S.H.I.E.L.D. laws, statutes that hold that their home states will not cooperate with out-of-state prosecution.
01:00:28.860One estimate suggests that by the end of 2024, more than 3,400 Texans received telehealth abortions each month.0.72
01:00:35.800And it's just a good reminder. Teleabortion is not just about convenience. It's about access. It's about safety. It's about dignity. For people in rural communities especially, it can mean the difference between getting essential life-saving care and going without. And efforts to restrict abortion generally, but especially teleabortion, do not make anybody safer. They just put everybody more at risk.
01:00:58.940Now, I don't want to just leave y'all with bad news without a little bit of a good news chaser, which is that Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law H.B. 3709, making Illinois the fourth state in the first in the Midwest to require public colleges and university ensure that students have convenient access to medication abortion and contraceptives.
01:01:20.600In doing so, Illinois joins the expanding group of states requiring that student health centers offer abortion pills.
01:01:26.500California was the first in 2019, followed by Massachusetts in 2022 and New York in 2023.
01:01:32.120This new law, signed on August 22nd, requires that public colleges and universities provide access to abortion pills through student health centers, telehealth or licensed external providers.
01:01:41.880And also requires that campus pharmacies dispensed prescribed contraceptives and medication abortion.
01:01:47.200starting in the 2025-2026 school year.
01:01:51.180And this move is really thanks to the diligent organizing of students.
01:01:56.620I feel like I'm kind of patting myself on the back a little bit here,
01:01:59.940like 20 years later, because I got my start in reproductive rights campus organizing
01:02:05.300when I was a student at East Carolina University.
01:02:07.900Let me tell you, in North Carolina, circa 2003-2004, that was some lonely work.
01:02:14.160What was your campaign? What were you trying to achieve?
01:02:16.420On paper, it was to protect abortion access in the state, especially for students. Like in my heart, just make the campus a more feminist, radical place. You know, like a lot of campus organizing, it was not always the most laser focused work. I guess I'll just put it that way if I'm going to speak diplomatically. But abortion access, access to contraceptives on campus was a big part of what we were pushing for.1.00
01:02:44.360And so, yeah, this move is really because of student organizers on campus.
01:02:51.080MIST reports that in 2024, students at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign passed a referendum urging student health centers to make medication abortion available for students.
01:03:00.400Nearly three quarters of the 6,354 student voters supported this idea.
01:03:05.540student leaders Emma Darbro and Grace Hosey testified before the legislative committees to
01:03:10.320push HB 3709 forward, advocating for accessible and affordable reproductive health care for college
01:03:16.180students. Then they teamed up with Representative Barbara Hernandez and State Senator Selena
01:03:20.740Villanueva, who then sponsored this bill in the legislature. And I guess I wanted to include that
01:03:26.680because it's just a good reminder that as bleak as things are, organizing still works. Your voice
01:03:32.980still matters especially if you're a young person student organizing is still powerful
01:03:36.920even if it can feel like you're shouting into a void sometime and truly this is how we win this
01:03:42.160is how we keep each other safe yeah organizing is the way to do it and it i i appreciate the
01:03:48.620good news chaser because things do seem pretty bleak at times uh times like right now but it is
01:03:57.800It's really nice to be reminded that students are organizing and positive things are happening.
01:04:09.480Okay, so lately I have been really feeling like we're back to witness the pop of the AI bubble.
01:04:15.700And one kind of small indicator, but an indicator nonetheless, is how much people are just not interested or excited about AI in their consumer products.
01:04:25.820According to a new CNET survey, just 11% of U.S. smartphone owners chose to upgrade their devices because of AI features, a 7% drop from a similar survey last year.
01:04:38.000Further, 3 in 10 people don't find mobile AI helpful at all and don't want more AI features added to devices.
01:04:47.180Where do you fall on this? Because I have a specific orientation when it comes to new devices in general, but you seem like somebody who would be into the newest, the newest and best.
01:04:58.140I feel like I don't need to have the newest and best, but there are some there have been some pretty impressive advances in like cell phone camera technology in recent years.
01:05:14.960Like that's particularly what I'm interested in. The cameras just keep getting better and better and like noticeably better. You know, there's so many products where there are like the newest model has all, you know, it's better in all these ways and it's just imperceptible how it's better.
01:05:33.100uh you know people are saying that about the ai model that all the the big companies are putting
01:05:39.660out like you know the new chat gpt model people are like it's not really that much better uh but
01:05:46.680cameras and cell phones like you take a side-by-side uh photo taken on a cell phone that
01:05:54.980is like cutting edge today versus a cell phone that was cutting edge three years ago and it is
01:06:00.100immediately clear that like one of these cameras is superior to the other that actually speaks to
01:06:07.040what people actually do say that they care about in their phones they don't want ai features they
01:06:12.800don't want ai bells and whistles what they care about is pretty simple core obvious things 30
01:06:19.580of people want a nice camera as their top priority of deciding when to buy a new phone 62 said price
01:06:26.30054% said longer battery life, 39% said storage.
01:06:29.900So it's these like basic, obvious, common sense things that people want.
01:06:34.520But what's funny is how much of a mismatch this is between what people say they want
01:07:04.100Like, I can't tell you how many different pieces of software I use that are constantly nagging me to use some sort of AI feature that I'm just not interested in using.
01:07:47.980But this deranged era we're in where tech companies are just trying to force it into every quarter of every product and every aspect of our lives, where it just has no business being and is not useful.
01:08:04.980Yeah, I think apprehension is not the right word.
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