Johnny Depp case sets standard; Texas A&M President Hiring Fiasco; Senate Bills Save the Children; Google’s Anti-Climate Cash-In; Twitter is X and X gone give it to you — NEWS ROUNDUP
00:01:37.700Just right off the top, we are usually having this conversation on Thursday nights for Fridays.
00:01:43.940We're having it on Monday night, coming out tomorrow on Tuesday, because I was off last week getting nasal surgery.
00:01:51.080I am mostly recovered from it. Thanks for all the well wishes.
00:01:54.780But looking forward to recapping the news that you may have missed this week on the Internet.
00:01:59.380So let's start with one that has really kind of got me boiling my beans over here.
00:02:04.800So just today, Texas A&M negotiated an updated settlement agreement with Dr. Kathleen McElroy.
00:02:10.600The university also announced that they were replacing their outgoing president who resigned over Dr. McElroy's racist botched hiring.
00:02:18.560So if you've not been following this story, it is infuriating to me, and I think it really shows how far we have fallen when it comes to conversations about inclusion in this country.
00:02:28.560Basically, Dr. McElroy is a Black woman with a long and storied career in journalism spanning 20 years in different editing positions at the New York Times.
00:02:38.840Before helming University of Texas Austin's journalism school from 2018 to 2022, where she is also a tenured professor.
00:02:46.300So she was meant to be joining Texas A&M's journalism school, which is also her alma mater.
00:02:52.060However, Texas A&M had originally hired her on a tenure-track program to really revive the school's journalism department.
00:02:59.980But because Dr. McElroy is a Black woman with a history of doing media work that sometimes involves race,
00:03:08.200conservative stakeholders made a huge stink about her appointment.0.75
00:03:13.100Her 10-year track offer was later changed to a five-year contract and then ultimately just a one-year contract.
00:03:19.420So as somebody, both you and I have had stints in academia, if you're offered 10-year track, then five years, then one year, what is your takeaway there?
00:03:31.340Not a place that is super excited to have you on, right?
00:03:36.340Like, they're just trying to get out of it without actually following through on the job offer.
00:03:44.040The difference between a 10-year track offer and a one-year contract is pretty stark and, like, pretty insulting.
00:03:52.020So as she was probably right to do, she publicly declined the offer.
00:03:56.860Dr. McElroy told the Texas Tribune earlier this month that she felt, quote, damaged by the controversy and said,
00:04:02.860I think I'm being judged by my race, maybe gender, and I don't think other folks would face the same
00:04:08.220bars or challenges. I think she's exactly 100% right. Now, the Rudder Association, which is a
00:04:14.560collection of current and former Texas A&M students and staff, said that they had concerns about her
00:04:20.160hiring. Basically, they were concerned that the university was not, quote, embracing egalitarian
00:04:26.600and merit-based traditions, and instead that the university was turning toward, quote,
00:04:31.800divisive ideology of identity politics. Let me just break that down for you right now.
00:04:37.280That is code for she's a black woman. Like there's nothing else. Why would you automatically assume1.00
00:04:43.480that merit wasn't being followed, that this was not an egalitarian hiring? Do you know how hard
00:04:49.120it is to become a, like, do you know how difficult it is to become the head of a journalism department,
00:04:55.600which she is? She has been an editor for 20 years at the New York Times. You're going to tell me
00:05:00.460that she doesn't have merit, that is just, there is just no way that that means anything other than1.00
00:05:05.200she is a Black woman and we don't like that. The group also objected to claims that alumni,
00:05:10.680donors, and taxpayers constitute outside influence because a big part of this story was that,
00:05:17.580I guess, stakeholders is the word they were using in the piece that I read.
00:05:21.500People who are not necessarily directly affiliated with the university, they were the ones who were
00:05:26.620really making a big stink. And so it sounds like this group is like, well, I think that taxpayers
00:05:31.220and donors aren't considered to be outside influence. And I don't know. I mean, I am a
00:05:38.660taxpayer for plenty of things that I don't then get to have a direct say on. Just because you're
00:05:43.540a taxpayer for this public university, I don't know that I would really say that that means that
00:05:48.660you get to have this level of scrutiny over journalism department hires. So the entire
00:05:54.160fiasco actually led to the resignation of the president of Texas A&M, Catherine Banks, who said
00:05:59.160that she took responsibility for what she called the flawed hiring process and also said that Dr.
00:06:04.900McElroy had fallen victim to anti-woke hysteria, which I completely agree. We covered so many of0.87
00:06:11.680these kinds of stories with our mini series that we did with Cool Zone Media Internet Hate Machine
00:06:16.040about how like just being a marginalized person, like just being a black woman is enough to have
00:06:23.260your tenure questioned. And I think that question of just asking, like, how do we know she really
00:06:30.900deserved this job? How do we know this was a merit-based hiring? I know, like, any Black woman,
00:06:38.380woman of color, marginalized person knows exactly what they are trying to say when they say stuff
00:06:43.660like that, because it's, I mean, it's barely even a dog whistle. Like, why would you assume this
00:06:48.400person is not qualified? They've been doing this job for 20 years. It's just another way to
00:06:53.000belittle and other and continue to further marginalize people who are already marginalized.1.00
00:06:59.100It's not like Black women are overrepresented in universities. And also, can we just keep it0.91
00:07:05.500like really real about the concept of merit and like egalitarianism real quick? Because
00:07:12.200merit and egalitarianism, like we all know people who get to high level positions of power
00:07:19.060in society, and it is not on merit. Looking at you, Elon Musk, it is because of connections,
00:07:27.840family, your name, money, relationships, gender, whatever it is, but it is not always merit. Your
00:07:35.060boss is not automatically smarter than you simply because of the fact that they were made your boss.
00:07:41.280And it's interesting to me to see which folks, the stakeholders at Texas A&M,
00:07:46.960decide, get that merit scrutiny, like, are you really, did you really earn this position
00:07:53.860in conversations about who gets offered a position in the journalism school?
00:07:58.660The language of meritocracy is particularly inauthentic here. Clearly, she led a department
00:08:08.080of the New York Times for decades. It's pretty difficult to conceive that she got through all
00:08:15.120the rounds of review by the various hiring committees, uh, as someone who didn't, wasn't
00:08:23.600qualified to have that sort of position. Right. So like, it's just almost impossible to believe
00:08:29.040that in fact, she truly was not qualified. Like you said, it's, it sounds like it has everything
00:08:36.100to do with her having a point of view that is not concordant with what Texas A&M is going for,
00:08:46.120right? It seems like maybe they're trying to compete with Florida to see who can have the
00:08:51.400most regressive fantasy land curriculum. Yeah, I completely agree. And, you know,
00:08:59.080this is all happening in Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott has just signed into law a bill to
00:09:04.640dismantle DEI programs at state-funded public universities, including Texas A&M. But importantly,
00:09:11.620Dr. McElroy is not a DEI professional. I feel like DEI, diversity and inclusion,
00:09:18.160is like the new boogeyman. For a while, it was woke, and then it was leftist. Now it's just
00:09:23.860like the association with DEI because she's a Black woman. Just because you're a Black woman0.99
00:09:28.600who works in media doesn't make you a DEI specialist. I'm not a DEI specialist just
00:09:32.580because I'm a black woman in media. And I think that you're exactly right. The language of0.96
00:09:36.640meritocracy and just this blanket assumption that she couldn't have just been qualified.
00:09:43.840How often do we use that regressive thinking to keep marginalized people from holding positions1.00
00:09:49.820of power and influence? Just if I guarantee you, if this had been a white man, nobody would be
00:09:55.320saying, well, let's see, were they really qualified? What really what merit do they have?
00:10:00.460Is this an egalitarian process of getting them in here? It is just a way to keep marginalized people from positions of power and influence. It's so obvious to me. And I think that we should really be concerned about how effective this rebrand of DEI and inclusion and even people like, even people who don't do that for a living, just being a black person is enough to have it be synonymous with, oh, you must be doing DEI work.
00:10:29.680And it's already bad enough that in Texas, if your university does DEI work, you don't get public funding. That's already bad enough. But now just being able to associate any black professional with DEI because of their race, like, it is just so clearly meant to keep marginalized people from these positions.
00:10:48.620And particularly in a journalism school, you know, the idea of meritocracy, I think, is connected to the idea of like an objective reporting of the news, like purely objective, both sides telling, you know, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
00:11:12.740Uh, the idea that journalists would not have any sort of perspective that they bring to
00:11:20.100a story, but that they should really, uh, to be a good journalist, a good, you know,
00:11:25.820a good objective journalist, they should just, you know, report the facts.
00:11:31.580But of course that's an absurdity, right?
00:11:36.500Like any sort of telling is going to be a selection of facts.
00:11:39.800every journalist is going to have a perspective and uh yeah it really seems like her big crime
00:11:50.600here was having a perspective that did not align with what the texas a&m powers that be wanted
00:12:02.560yeah so she just today they agreed on a settlement i actually hope that we find out
00:12:08.860more information about this story. I want emails. I want text messages. I want to know who said what.
00:12:15.040I want to know when what was said. I have a feeling the story is not going to end here.
00:12:19.540The fact that the university president resigned over it tells me that it's a big deal and there's
00:12:24.040probably more to this story. So I hope this is one that we find out more information about because
00:12:28.680something is going on here that just doesn't sound right to me. Well, it's also going to be
00:12:32.580very interesting two or three years from now to take a look at what does the faculty body at Texas
00:12:39.520A&M look like? Because I can't imagine this very public national news story is making a whole lot
00:12:50.140of, you know, top faculty from around the country want to go there, right? It really makes it seem
00:12:58.600like a very provincial, backwards little school.0.98
00:13:06.520Okay, so I have another kind of infuriating story for you.
00:13:10.060This must-read piece from The Intercept
00:13:11.960on the rise of survivors of sexual violence
00:13:29.520In the five years since the start of the Me Too movement, a quiet but effective legal backlash has swept over those who spoke out against sexual harassment and abuse.
00:13:38.240The accused have turned around and sued their accusers, effectively silencing them.
00:13:43.360This silencing is even more acute in the aftermath of the libel judgment in Johnny Depp's case against Amber Heard, where a jury found her allegations of abuse in an op-ed, an op-ed that did not actually name Johnny Depp, were false.
00:13:56.800Experts warned that anti-feminist groups were mobilizing to bring defamation suits
00:14:00.980and that it could make survivors of sexual violence and domestic abuse fearful to come forward.
00:14:06.720Heard's own team said that the outcome would have a chilling effect.
00:14:12.280Most of the people being sued for speaking out against sexual abuse or domestic violence
00:14:17.840are not like A-list famous celebrities.
00:14:21.140They are regular people who probably don't have access to the kinds of money, support or legal teams that you would need to challenge a defamation lawsuit.
00:14:31.660Like, imagine speaking up about being a survivor of sexual violence and trying to warn others and then finding yourself with a legal summons because you're being sued for defamation.
00:14:42.740The piece also talks to Kenneth White, a partner at a law firm called Brown, White & Osborne.
00:14:48.060White said that he used to only get the occasional request for help with a defamation case after writing and speaking up frequently about handling such cases.
00:14:55.840And he says, over the last, I would say, five years, I really saw a significant increase in the number of these that had to do with women being threatened for speaking or writing about some form of abuse.
00:15:06.520He said, being labeled as a harasser or a rapist carries more reputational damage than it used to, thanks to Me Too.
00:15:13.200This is a way for abusers to try to claw back that lost status.
00:15:17.520I mean, I've been seeing this in so many cases playing out with famous people.
00:15:23.360I don't want to mention any names because there are cases that are still ongoing, but you could probably guess.
00:15:28.440So I think it's clear that people who are famous or public figures have really set a new tone for how abuse and conversations around things like sexual misconduct cases will be handled for all of us.
00:15:40.220Me Too really used the platforms of a lot of famous people, but it was honestly never just
00:15:46.060about Hollywood starlets or A-listers or famous people. It was about what kind of climate we want
00:15:52.300to live in as it pertains to abuse and sexual misconduct, because we all, all of us, whether
00:15:57.600you're famous or not, truly deserve a better world, one where sexual abuse and violence is just not
00:16:03.760tolerated. It's not part of life, and it's not something that is just excused or overlooked if
00:16:09.680The abuser is like a genius or like really good at making money for people or really
00:16:14.840does not want to have to contend with the fact that they abuse somebody, really does
00:16:20.340You know, I think we made some progress in this system that created a little bit of a
00:16:25.020cost for things like sexual abuse and sexual violence.
00:16:28.160But I think there are people who are really invested in going back to that old system
00:16:34.040where things like sexual abuse and violence are just like private matters or like matters
00:16:39.500of the house or domestic, rather than being invested in seeing the truth. And the truth is
00:16:44.860that abuse and violence are systemic issues and that there should be a cost associated with it.
00:16:50.480But now abusers and the people who enable them are simply just like using the state and the courts
00:16:56.440to swing that pendulum back the other way and create a cost for calling out the system for
00:17:02.100what it is and create a cost for speaking up about abuse and the cogs and the machines that enable it.
00:17:08.320It's one of the reasons why I think Me Too was kind of criticized because of its association with like Hollywood A-listers, even though it was started by Tarana Burke, a black woman specifically to center other black women survivors of sexual violence.
00:17:23.240because not everybody who speaks up about abuse
00:17:26.240has the money or the support or a legal team
00:19:04.160Abusers and the people who protect the power structures and institutions that enable their abuse.
00:19:10.220Like, people who are abusers, people who are uncomfortable with the power structure being challenged that enables abuse, like, maybe they are not abusers themselves, but they feel like, you know, whoa, the way things are supposed to go is, like, being an abuser should not, you know, be disqualifying to hold power.
00:19:30.800being an abuser, like just because you, you know, I think people who want us to go back to a certain
00:19:35.520way of life, I think that we made some progress, not even that much progress, but some progress.
00:19:42.040And I think some people see this and they're like, oh, well, they want abuse to remain something that
00:19:48.500is in the sphere of the domestic. And what we're saying is that like, yeah, if you're an abuser,
00:19:54.480you probably are abusing people in your life outside of the domestic. This is not a private
00:19:59.600issue or a personal issue. And in fact, this is an issue that deeply intersects with how you
00:20:04.100hold power. So if you were a power holder, no, you shouldn't be able to treat people in your
00:20:08.720life any kind of way. They need that structure to be maintained. I think that there are a lot
00:20:14.020of people who are very invested in that structure. And I think Me Too was a challenge to that
00:20:18.960structure. And I think the people who don't want that structure challenged are like, wait,
00:20:23.300wait, wait, wait, we need to, how can we use the state to put things back how they're meant to be,
00:20:28.000which is that nobody cares when somebody is an abuser.
00:20:34.380I, like many of us, kind of got duped by a really effective social media campaign
00:20:43.340that led me to believe that there was a lot more happening
00:20:47.540with the Johnny Depp Amber Heard defamation trial than was there.
00:20:54.200I was like a low information person on that.
00:20:57.240Like I wasn't something that I followed and I was being surfaced so much content that really completely painted a different portrait than what was actually happening.
00:21:09.160And once I actually looked into it, I was like, wait, this is actually like very cut and dry.
00:21:14.440Like this is actually like not that complicated.
00:21:16.480I don't know why I thought that it was like some big murky thing.
00:21:19.360And the article in The Intercept, which I think everybody should read, really makes clear that Johnny Depp, that trial is one of the reasons we are seeing this new climate.
00:21:31.140And that is something that we are seeing play out right now.
00:21:33.740That is the climate that Johnny Depp's legal team has left us with.
00:35:57.640During a company-wide Q&A with employees in November led by Cox and Sheryl Sandberg,
00:36:02.540then Facebook's chief operations officer, an employee asked about the overall success of the new meta name.
00:36:08.820A longtime employee who has since left the company recalled,
00:36:11.620Cox said the name change was successful, explaining his measure of success
00:36:15.300was the amount of press coverage of the name change compared to the whistleblower disclosures.
00:36:19.600It was more than double the volume of the Facebook Papers coverage, Cox said on McCall.
00:36:24.380He added that the coverage was also neutral to positive in tone.
00:36:28.540That's the kind of thing we only could have dreamed of when we did the change in terms of press coverage, he went on.
00:36:33.680And it's a really big deal because the Facebook Papers was a big story, especially inside the U.S.
00:36:38.420So that whole song and dance that Mark Zuckerberg did saying we just loved the metaverse so much, we loved it so much, we quietly basically dropped it a few months later.
00:36:50.780As everybody knew, myself very much included, they were just changing the name to try to pivot the story away from their knowing harm and wrongdoing onto the fact that they changed their name.
00:37:01.580And this is like a time-honored strategy of companies.
00:37:04.620I don't really think it's really what's happening with Twitter.
00:37:06.920I think that, like, Elon Musk is just stuck on X and trying to make Fetch happen and, like, is stuck in 1999.
00:37:13.800I don't know that I think that he is trying to pivot from bad press there.
00:37:17.280But Philip Morris became Altria. The Lance Armstrong Foundation became Livestrong. Like, this is a thing that companies do when they are caught doing something that they ought not be doing. And so they just want everybody to sort of forget it, change the conversation, pivot. So the next time you see a company do this, don't just take for face value that they're genuinely interested in the metaverse and want their name to reflect that. Know that it's a classic play from the bad actor playbook to avoid accountability.
00:37:46.200It's a good call that anytime a company changes their name, we should really ask why, what is it that they're trying to distract from right now. It's also a good reminder that we just cannot believe anything that Meta or Mark Zuckerberg say, right? They will just openly lie in public. And that's just what they do.
00:38:08.740We talked about this a little bit when Threads came out.
00:38:11.900They did finally add a chronological feed to Threads.
00:38:15.740So if you're still on Threads and that's something that excites you,
00:38:18.620it's not just like an algorithmic mishmash of people that you follow and people that you don't.
00:38:23.760But I remember when Threads first came out, they had us like low-key rooting for Mark Zuckerberg.
00:38:29.920That's how much everybody hates Elon Musk.
00:38:31.940And I wonder, did Mark Zuckerberg, like, enjoy that three-day span where people kind of didn't hate him?
00:39:01.100Like I, nobody wants, and I'm doing the thing that I hate, but like where you start like trying to get into the head of these tech billionaires who just live such different lives than us.
00:39:12.960Like the life that any of us, you, that you live, that I live, that anybody listening lives is so different than the lives of these people trying to glean what they're thinking, their motivations is like, it's a fool's errand.
00:39:26.000But I think Elon Musk is someone who genuinely, deeply wants to be liked. And I think a lot of the way that he makes decisions is rooted in a deep chasm of need to be liked.
00:39:43.560And I think that he needs us to think that he's funny. He needs us to think that he's like in on the joke. So when people make fun of him and cut him down, his response, and I feel like I know this response because I'm capable of these kinds of responses that are so like little and small as well.
00:40:03.380So, like, game-recognized game, I, like, see the gears turning where it's like, oh, it didn't hurt my feelings that you said that.
00:40:14.040Like, you know, when people make fun of him, you know, like, when he suspended Kanye West from Twitter back in December,
00:40:23.340one of the things among the very anti-Semitic things that he tweeted that were, like, completely inappropriate and messed up,
00:40:29.940He tweeted an image of Elon Musk shirtless on a boat and Elon Musk had to be like, oh, just in case you're wondering, suspending Kanye West had nothing to do with that unflattering picture of me shirtless on the boat.
00:40:44.400If anything, it was good motivation for my weight loss.
00:40:47.340And it's like this vibe of like having to work overtime to convince people that you are aware, self-aware of the joke that you know that they're thinking that I think is really rooted in like this deep well of need for approval, but not getting it.
00:41:06.820It's kind of sad when you think about it.
00:42:47.200I think people are like, yeah, this person is like exactly who he's been saying he is.
00:42:50.860But imagine having so much money and kind of lucking your way into buying companies that are like kind of successful, having the press mostly fooled and having them carry water for this concept that you're like a smart guy who knows what he's doing and then ruining all of that.
00:45:58.420introduced by Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn.
00:46:01.620This would place a duty of care on platforms
00:46:03.820to prevent promoting to users under 17
00:46:05.880content that includes disordered eating and suicide.
00:46:09.440The bill carves out explicit protections for support services
00:46:12.520such as suicide help hotlines, school and educational software.
00:46:15.720An amendment to the bill approved Thursday would also require companies to be transparent about if they're filtering content using an algorithm and giving users a chance to opt out.
00:46:25.760So the Kids Online Safety Act is the one that I think that a lot of privacy and civil liberties experts are concerned about.
00:46:33.520It's a little bit complicated because I have actually seen people that I trust and like respect coming out in support of the Kids Online Safety Act.
00:46:41.960And I think it's complicated in that most people who are not like in the pocket of big tech and making money from this, I think agree that like something needs to be done with the way that tech companies are harming young people and really everybody, but young people in particular.
00:46:55.580But the concern is that we will like push through a sloppy bill that ends up regulating the Internet in ways that harm more people and that actually do more to harm marginalized kids.
00:47:09.160Because I've seen a lot of folks who care about things like privacy and, like, digital harms raising the alarm.
00:47:16.300One of them is Aaliyah Bathia, policy analyst for the Center for Democracy and Technology's free expression team.
00:47:22.240She published a blog post where she expressed concern around giving more information to platforms to verify ages, saying,
00:47:28.480This is essentially meaningless if the very nature of the bill requires online services to treat minors differently from adult users.
00:47:35.020Doing so would require online services to know the ages of their users, adults and children alike.
00:47:40.680So I kind of get what she's saying there, that there is like a weird mental thing of like, in order to keep kids' privacy safe online, we all need to give more information about ourselves to tech platforms.
00:47:56.400Like, I get what she's saying about why that sort of hits weird, maybe.
00:48:01.680yeah it it's such an interesting and also important problem uh i mean important for so
00:48:09.780many reasons but interesting because like you said i think most people agree that there is
00:48:15.960a serious problem with young people uh young people and the internet right like
00:48:24.020trying to get beyond that and more specifically name what the problem is i think that consensus
00:48:29.600breaks down pretty quickly uh but there's definitely privacy concerns and there's also
00:48:37.660concerns about uh young people accessing content that is inappropriate for them uh you know people
00:48:45.540have different ideas about what might be inappropriate if it's sexual or about drugs or
00:48:50.280violence uh but most people would probably agree that like there's some content that kids shouldn't
00:48:56.720But those are like very different problems, privacy and content restrictions. And it kind of sounds like it's maybe a little bit muddled which problem this bill is actually trying to solve. And that's pretty problematic.
00:49:14.300Yeah. And, you know, to your point about the content that, like, we all have ideas about what kind of content is or is not appropriate for young people to be seeing, Verge reports that digital rights advocates have suggested that this bill could prevent queer youth from finding resources that they need online without coming out to their parents due to the parental consent requirements of the bill.
00:49:36.880And this is not an unfounded concern. In fact, the right wing organization, the Heritage Foundation, already flat out admitted that they plan to use this legislation to censor LGBTQ content in an attempt to bar children from such content.
00:49:50.000Right. And so what I think the kind of content that young people should not be have access to online and the content that the Heritage Foundation, who is this like incredibly lobbied, well-resourced right wing organization, would say that kids should not have access to online are two different kinds of content.
00:50:06.000And, you know, to your point about it's not clear what problem exactly this legislation is meant to tackle, in our episode that we did with Dr. Olivia Snow, who is a sex worker and an internet privacy expert, she talked about how that is like a real red flag.
00:50:25.780When someone is telling you that legislation is going to protect kids online, but it seems kind of lofty, not really clear how it's actually going to do that, that it should really get your spidey senses tingling about this legislation being something that really has the power to shape the future of the internet, not for good.
00:50:45.940You know, we talked about SESTA-FOSTA, how much that did to change the landscape of so much, but particularly the internet. And yeah, I just, I'm concerned that a bill like this, I can see how for some folks, it seems like it's better than nothing because most people agree that we have a problem.
00:51:04.180But I don't want to just push through a bill that is actually going to create more harm for marginalized youth and queer youth and change the landscape of our internet to make it less private, more draconian, more harmful, more surveillance, more of our data being given up, and then having them tell us it's for our own good.
00:51:25.120Like, I understand the need to do something, and I understand that need to be like, well, we have to make it seem like we're taking some sort of an action on this, but I don't want it to be an action that ends up creating more harm.
00:51:37.760Totally. I mean, the red flag warning is probably a good one here, right? Like, oh, we have to protect kids. Like, protect them from what? Like, what are you protecting them from? Protecting them from accessing content about what it means to be gay?
00:51:54.640Like, that's probably okay if they access that. Yeah, it's the rhetoric is so lofty and vague. I think red flag is absolutely the right term to understand it.1.00
00:52:08.640Ultimately, at the end of the day, I think that, you know, I personally feel like the threat to privacy is the big risk here.
00:52:19.140I mean, obviously, there's a ton of threats and risks to young people and absolutely legislators, business leaders, tech companies should be, you know, addressing all of them.
00:52:32.960But the creeping risk to privacy that we all face right now, like, that seems like the clear, big, flashing red light for legislators to, like, step in and do something about.
00:52:50.120And, like, just to be super clear, like, I'm not a policy person, internet legislation.
00:52:56.400I talk to people much smarter about it than me all day long.
00:53:00.880I am not the person to ask about whether or not we should be advocating for a specific piece of legislation.
00:53:07.320My job is to, like, talk to people about it and to talk to people who know more about it than me to help other people figure out what we should be doing.
00:53:14.760And so I get I get that it is complex, but I don't think that it's going to be any one bill, I guess, is what I'm saying.
00:53:23.580I think that we need a real rethinking and restructuring about how we think about privacy, our data, as it pertains to our children, but adults deserve it as well.
00:53:35.020And who gets to make money off of it? What is for sale? What's not for sale?
00:53:39.560I don't think it's going to be any one bill.
00:53:42.600I think we need a real overhaul in that department to make the kind of like sweeping, meaningful change that we truly do need in this country.
00:56:37.020of the previous Bolsonaro administration.
00:56:39.820The researchers found that many of the videos repeated
00:56:42.280and promoted well-worn conspiracy theories that fires in the Amazon rainforest either were not
00:56:48.180real, so like did not happen, or that they had been intentionally started by non-governmental
00:56:53.040organizations to help with their fundraising. This is despite a policy announced by YouTube
00:56:57.440in 2021 that expressly prohibited, quote, ads for and monetization of content that contradicts
00:57:04.020well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.
00:57:08.560And just as like a side note, because these issues, you know, I focus mostly on like domestic United States issues, but these issues really are global because here in the U.S., we have a very similar well-worn conspiracy theory.
00:57:22.220Joe Rogan has used his massive platform to repeat the lie that like Antifa or Black Lives Matter was responsible for forest fires that we had here in the United States last year.
00:57:33.700There was no truth to this claim. It was just an outright lie. But it was a particularly sticky conspiracy theory because it really overlaps with a lot of like flashpoints and tensions around things like race and climate that we're always feeling, but we were feeling so intensely a few years ago.
00:57:53.000So I'm not totally sure why these, like, extremist right-wing lies about leftists or Antifa or Black Lives Matter starting forest fires is so hot right now.
00:58:07.420But maybe it's like a consequence of climate change getting worse and worse in the immediate.
00:58:11.880So maybe we should really come to expect even more over-the-top efforts to really shift the blame away from fossil fuel companies and their defenders that brought us here.
00:58:21.200It's so much easier to believe a wild conspiracy theory that leftists or NGOs are intentionally starting fires because they want to get more funding and it's not even really a big issue and maybe the fires aren't even happening than it is to be like, oh, wow, corporations and fossil fuel companies have really gotten us into a big problem, the consequences of which are all around us all the time.
00:58:48.620Yeah, I think you're probably right that we're going to see a lot more scapegoating as the effects of climate change just get like more real in the here and now.
00:59:00.040And it really speaks to the success of the fossil fuel industries. They're like decades long campaigns to like firmly link climate change denial with the culture wars where, you know, they've got foot soldiers who aren't even on the payroll carrying their water for them saying that, oh, it's leftists starting these fires.
00:59:28.560Yeah. You know, what's really funny is a couple of weeks ago, I was in a webinar about how to report on climate misinformation and learning about these like vast networks of PR companies that put out talking points and coordinated campaigns to make us think that corporations are not responsible for climate change.
00:59:48.760and it was literally the literal hottest day on earth and I was just thinking like how am I
00:59:55.860how am I like sitting here in my kitchen sweating unable to breathe clearly because of there's
01:00:01.920forest fires and there are people out here trying to tell me like no there's not that's not true
01:00:06.780you're not experiencing that what are you talking about forest fire like I was like I'm being gas
01:00:10.420we're like being gaslit on a massive scale yeah the east coast has always been blanketed in smog
01:00:16.640for the entire summer like don't you remember when you were a kid and you couldn't go outside
01:00:21.940because of the smog you're like no i don't remember that actually okay so back to these
01:00:27.940videos so not only were these videos on youtube obviously promoting a false alternate reality
01:00:33.280about the destruction of the amazon rainforest but those videos were also making money the
01:00:39.100researchers calculated that youtube channels behind these videos made between 600 000 and
01:00:44.420$10 million in YouTube monetization. And I know that sounds like a pretty huge range,
01:00:50.160but regardless, if that's how much creators were making, it means that Google was making
01:00:54.100even more by selling ads around those videos. Now, Google is not the first company that we've
01:00:59.740talked about on this show to have some big, flashy moderation policy about taking down
01:01:05.280or not allowing a certain kind of conspiracy theory or false information only to not really
01:01:11.280enforce that policy or just kind of like quietly drop it after that news cycle of good press ends.
01:01:17.120Nor would they be the first company to have one set of standards in the U.S. where they're based
01:01:20.780and a completely different set of standards abroad. Facebook famously implemented policies
01:01:25.780around racist disinformation in the United States in 2017 while they were actively aggressively
01:01:30.860promoting racist disinformation campaigns in Myanmar. Now, whether or not this was like a
01:01:35.800deliberate strategy or a crime of neglect by failing to invest in non-English language
01:01:40.780moderation and moderation software, the end result was a lot of death and a lot of profit
01:01:45.800for these companies. But hopefully, this report does prompt Google to be more actively moderating
01:01:51.940its Brazilian content and actually start enforcing policies against climate misinformation.
01:01:57.360The report also noted that ads for several major brands, including Calvin Klein,
01:02:01.600Tommy Hilfiger, Lyft, Capital One, and others appeared alongside these videos touting these
01:02:08.200lies about forest fires. And you really have to wonder, like, how excited is Tommy Hilfiger or
01:02:14.720Calvin Klein to be knowing that their advertising dollars are directly funding a network of
01:02:21.040dangerous climate denial? Yeah, you'd have to assume not very excited, I would hope.
01:02:25.940Yeah, and I think it really does remind me quite a bit of other tech stories we've covered where
01:02:31.540for as much guff as I give Facebook the version of Facebook that we use in the United States like
01:02:37.680is the best version of Facebook that they offer because it's the version that they are like
01:02:42.080actively doing the most work to like moderate and have the most moderators and so
01:02:47.000if you don't like what we have here in the United States you're gonna hate what they have in the
01:02:51.520global south right because it's much worse and yeah I think it I think it really goes back to0.56
01:02:56.300this idea that we've talked about before of like this colonialist vibe where like i don't even i
01:03:04.560think that we're just like not supposed to think about how if the platform is bad here how much
01:03:10.700worse it is globally i just think that we're like not supposed to think the whole system kind of
01:03:15.060relies on this unwillingness to acknowledge the kind of harm that these platforms are responsible
01:03:19.500for globally totally colonialist is i think the right framework to think about it it's just a very
01:03:27.300extractive model where whatever they need to do in the name of profit uh in other countries is
01:03:35.340fine and as infuriated as we are at meta a lot of the time it's got to be so much worse in one of
01:03:45.480these other countries where uh they are just completely unencumbered by concerns about
01:03:53.980trying to i don't know be responsible actors i think in brazil in particular meta built a
01:04:02.940a wi-fi network or like a cell network i don't know whether it was wi-fi or cell but you know
01:04:09.220when whatsapp was a new thing it took off like wildfire in brazil because they did not have
01:04:16.120great uh cell coverage everywhere but so because facebook had built a proprietary network everybody
01:04:24.800was using whatsapp and it's got to be super hard to regulate a company like that that like built
01:04:31.680and owns the internet yeah same way that aol was the internet when i was a kid facebook is the
01:04:39.040internet facebook whatsapp they they maybe they have maybe they own the cell service whatever like
01:04:43.740it is the internet it functionally is a public service but it is not being regulated that way
01:04:49.300because it is a private company being run by you know for profit by somebody who has shown himself
01:04:54.580again and again did not really care that much about the people he is serving yeah i think you
01:04:58.880just hit the nail on the head it's like a it is a public service we can pretend it isn't and we can
01:05:06.200fetishize the market and be like oh everything needs to be privately owned but like it is a
01:05:11.640public service we all depend on the internet all the time in our personal lives and our professional
01:05:17.120lives and to just have it be run at the whim of some billionaires is bad enough when those
01:05:25.700billionaires live in a totally different country and like don't care about the local country at
01:05:32.460all, it's really a recipe for disaster. Yeah. I mean, back in 2016, the UN declared
01:05:38.140internet access a human right. So it's not great to think of these companies that do so much harm
01:05:43.680and think so little of these populations that they're the ones who are meant to be providing
01:05:48.860what the UN says is a human right. It just, it just, it doesn't sit right with me. And yeah,
01:05:53.960I think that we deserve better. Globally, we deserve better. Yeah. I'll leave it there.
01:06:01.040what else you got for us bridget well speaking of deserving better i have to apologize
01:06:08.360mike last week i gave the last time that we talked i guess the week before last i gave you
01:06:14.600a lot of crap because you recorded an episode with your mic off and the audio was bad and some0.80
01:06:19.980listeners complained and i really enjoyed taking the piss but i have to complain and that this is0.99
01:06:28.540really like karma coming back to get0.57