00:00:53.240and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:58.760I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:02.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:09.920These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:13.740Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:21.360If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:01:27.100Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:35.740Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:01:56.700We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook.
00:01:58.860Every episode, we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers.
00:02:04.740The show is famously super accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on.
00:02:10.880We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenburgen.
00:02:15.840Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:25.780There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:02:33.880I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:39.400Welcome to There Are No Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of technology, social media, and identity.
00:02:45.640And this is another installment of our weekly news roundup, where we dig into all the stories that you might have missed on the Internet so you don't have to.
00:02:53.280I cannot wait to talk to you about that Vanity Fair article and spread.
00:03:41.260Before I even get into the photos, because that's really what I want to talk about, the fact that Susie Wiles said,
00:03:47.660I mean, some of the things that she said about Elon Musk, he's an avowed ketamine user who sleeps in a sleeping bag in the executive office building adjacent to the White House.
00:03:55.960You know, he's an odd duck. He's not helpful, this and that.
00:03:58.880And then her saying, I never said that. I would never say that about Elon Musk.
00:04:10.400I, I, I, I reject the idea that somebody who is as seasoned as Susie Wiles would not know that this would be recorded. Like, my understanding is that this, this profile was almost a year in the making, 11 months.
00:04:26.640I have to imagine that she is thinking that they have some sort of backup to confirm what they've said.
00:04:33.680So her just quickly going to disavow and distance herself from those words was really, I'm not even sure what to make of it.
00:04:40.840I've heard different takes from different political and media insiders, but to this day, I'm not sure what that was.
00:04:47.880Yeah, and you and I talked about it because she didn't just have unhelpful things to say about Elon Musk.
00:04:54.640because she talked about a lot of people, including J.D. Vance.
00:04:58.140You know, she had some unflattering things to say about him
00:05:01.740and other people in the administration.
00:05:04.960And once the story came out, like you said,
00:05:38.560but bare knuckles, knees deep in politics for decades
00:05:43.680how she could let this happen is really baffling.
00:05:48.840My personal theory is that it's hubris
00:05:52.020And it's just like from being in the White House with Trump in a culture of sycophancy and flattery, it like poisoned her mind and she let her guard down around the this reporter, I guess.
00:06:11.960I don't know. It's a little hard to believe, but the whole thing is difficult to believe.
00:06:16.420Yes. And let's talk about the photos. My favorite comparison that I've seen about the photos is, I know you don't watch this show, but the episode of Sex and the City when Carrie is out all night hanging out and partying with her friends. The day before, she's meant to be at New York Mag to shoot a cover photo. And she shows up late to the shoot. She's hungover. She doesn't put on makeup. And so she's sitting for what she is told are just test shots that they're not going to use.
00:06:43.040But then she sees the cover and she thought the cover was going to say single and fabulous exclamation point.
00:06:49.660But the photo they use on the cover is hideous.
00:06:51.960And it says single and fabulous question mark.
00:06:55.200That is the only comparison that I can make here.
00:07:08.740So nobody's photos in this thing look good.
00:07:12.080Everybody looks bad. I think Rubio, there's a photo of Rubio that you clearly understand that the argument being made, the visual argument being made by the by the photos, the way that they're staged.
00:07:25.160it's not just that the people in them don't look good, which they don't.
00:07:29.660It is a set of photos that is clearly making a claim and an argument about the lack of
00:07:35.540leadership in the White House, like staging someone where they're standing defiant next
00:07:43.480to an empty chair, but the chair is posed in such a way where the eye goes right to
00:07:50.080And it just really makes it just you you you cannot look at these pictures and not instantly get the point that they are trying to make visually.
00:07:58.440I guess I'll put it that way. Like there are all these stances meant to telegraph leadership.
00:08:02.800Yet there's visible cords plugged in behind them and like mismatched askew lampshades right beside them.
00:10:29.840the looks and physical features of anybody else, right?1.00
00:10:33.080I think that, you know, I see a lot of women say, oh, well, it's anti-feminist to talk about injection sites around her lips in this photo that were visible.
00:11:07.760But one, I think for the vast majority of people, not everyone, but for most people, cosmetic procedures are voluntary.
00:11:16.740On another podcast that I'm the co-host of, CityCast DC, all about sort of what's happening in DC, we did a whole episode about the rise of what we call Mar-a-Lago face in DC.
00:11:27.860how people who are part of Trump's world, both men and women, are getting specific types of plastic surgery
00:11:36.160because that's what everybody in Trump world looks like, right?
00:11:39.260So men are getting jaw implants and chin implants to give them more sort of square jaw lines.
00:11:45.840Women are getting facelifts and getting stuffed under their eyebrows and lips.0.58
00:11:51.020And, you know, there was a time where plastic surgery was something that you would want to look natural0.77
00:11:55.780And you would want people to look at you and think, you know, maybe you didn't get plastic surgery. But that's not these people are intentionally doing a different thing. You know, if you look at people like Matt Gaetz, like there are people who when you look at them, the first thing you see is that, oh, you've had plastic surgery. Right.
00:12:11.600And so I think for me, when we're talking about voluntary cosmetic procedures, in my opinion, that's very different than something like a physical feature that somebody can't control.
00:12:24.300Right. Their race, their height, their weight, all different kinds of things where it's like, oh, you're born this way.
00:12:29.840You can't control it. It's how you are.
00:12:32.040To me, leave it going to a med spa and getting lip injections and paying for them.0.99
00:12:37.920That's not something she can't control. Quite the opposite.0.97
00:12:40.240That's a voluntary procedure that she paid for.
00:12:43.280And I think especially when you layer that into what I was just talking about, the way that specific physical attributes have been weaponized and prized and explicitly talked about by this administration in the way that they are making policy decisions and deciding who gets to be involved in policy decisions, I think that's worth talking about.
00:13:03.620I also think these are people who believe in like their racial and genetic superiority above the racial and genetic superiority of other people, people like me. Right. And so that being part of their ideological framework, I think the way that they physically present and the choices that they make around their physical presentation is like their game to be part of that conversation.
00:13:28.680You make a compelling point, Bridget. These people talk about people's physical appearances all the time.
00:13:36.940You made a great point before we started recording that Trump has explicitly said things like, oh, I want my cabinet to look straight out of central casting and things like this.
00:13:47.140The administration very explicitly is using physicality and the way people look and cosmetic procedures in a certain kind of way.
00:13:58.800And I just, I don't think that anybody should be shamed for the way that they look. However, I do think that, you know, in an administration that has talked about this in this way, I think it's, it behooves us to look at that.
00:14:12.180And I obviously don't love tearing into a woman for her looks, a move, by the way, leave it herself defended when Trump called a female journalist a pig.
00:14:22.340But I just think that when we blanket say talking about someone's cosmetic procedures is not fair game, we're not allowed to talk about any of the other stuff that directly ties into how our country is being run and by whom.
00:14:33.360Yeah, it's a good point. And it's it is a complicated thing. You know, as a man, I'm pretty. I've gotten the memo that I shouldn't be commenting on women in politics looks, but you make a great point that like they have brought this into the conversation.
00:14:58.740Trump brings it up all the time. A lot of MAGA types, like you said, are into, like, racial superiority, racial comparisons. You know, it's, they've brought it into the conversation.
00:15:16.540And it's it's a tricky thing because, like, I certainly wouldn't want the the bar for the conversation to be set by Donald Trump, who is like one of the worst humans I've personally ever known about existing.
00:15:32.740uh but like caroline leavitt is carrying water for him every day and like you said backing
00:15:41.260him up when he calls reporters pigs or disparages other reporters uh it's it's often reporters and0.92
00:15:51.540it's often black women reporters and so they've made appearance part of the conversation right0.97
00:16:00.760When asked about calling a female journalist a pig, Leverett said, oh, well, I think that we all know that Trump calls it like it is.0.96
00:16:11.420And it's like, OK, so if that's the case, we can't tell the truth about the fact that you've got visible injection sites visible in this image.
00:16:18.100And I will say this is this is just an aside.
00:16:20.560Part of my beef with it is a makeup choice, because if you have injection sites and you're getting a photo taken, why are you wearing translucent lip gloss?
00:16:44.880And it's also not like they went in to photograph her in her office in the back of the White House or something.
00:16:53.140It's like her job is to be up on the podium talking to the press every day.
00:16:59.480She's arguably one of the most photographed people in the government, and the idea that someone taking a photo of her would be inappropriate or unethical, I'm not even sure what the complaint is.
00:17:17.620I guess unethical is the complaint that the photographer shouldn't have taken that photo.
00:17:25.920I guess you were showing me some discourse online that people were suggesting that the photographer should have airbrushed it or used Photoshop or AI to hide those injection sites.
00:17:42.480And that seems ridiculous to think that a photographer for an independent journalistic outfit is going to touch up photos to hide what is real and instead present a fantastical presentation to their readers.
00:18:04.440Like, that doesn't sound like good journalism.
00:18:06.000So the photographer, Christopher Anderson, answered exactly that in an interview with Shane O'Neill from The Post.
00:18:12.440O'Neill asked Anderson for his response to people who thought the photos were unfair, specifically mentioning the photo of Leavitt and, quote, what appeared to be injection sites.
00:18:21.540Anderson said, I didn't put the injection sites on her.
00:18:25.000People seem to be shocked that I didn't use Photoshop to retouch out blemishes and her injection marks.
00:18:30.140I find it shocking that someone would expect me to retouch those things.
00:18:33.400That's the makeup that Leavitt puts on.
00:18:35.440Those are the injections she gave herself.
00:18:37.420If they show up in a photo, what do you want me to say?
00:18:47.800So he goes on to say, Vanity Fair is a magazine that has its feet in two worlds, right?
00:18:52.760One is the journalism world and one is the celebrity entertainment machine.
00:18:56.400Obviously, celebrity portraits on the cover of Vanity Fair are not really about journalism
00:19:00.720in the way that you and I think about journalism.
00:19:02.500But then there's the other side of Vanity Fair, which is real journalism. I'm surprised that a journalist would even need to ask me the question of why didn't I retouch out the blemishes? Because if I had, that would be a lie. I would be hiding the truth of what I saw there.
00:19:17.280And that is exactly what you're saying that, you know, I think that people maybe forget that photojournalists are journalists and why he's not a quinceañera photographer.
00:19:30.120He's not a glamour shot photographer. It is not his job to make her look her best.
00:19:34.540It is his job to visually communicate the truth that was in that room, which I think he did quite well, frankly.
00:19:40.100Yeah, I mean, clearly it is the truth, right? Like, clearly her lips do have those many regular injection sites along them. It's a disturbing photo, honestly. I mean, you know, I guess you let off this segment saying that people should feel free to get whatever cosmetic surgery they want, and certainly they should, you know?
00:20:05.080But, like, she didn't look good in that photo.
00:20:08.100Kind of kind of wonder about the choice.
00:20:11.620I think the fact that so many people who are in Trump's orbit make cosmetic procedure choices that come off this way is worth talking about.
00:20:21.400And just a day ago, the House passed a bill criminalizing gender affirming care for minors.
00:20:26.280And I cannot not see these things as related.
00:20:29.940Lip injections are gender affirming care.
00:20:32.040I avail myself of gender affirming care. I'm sure plenty of our listeners avail themselves of gender affirming care. People in the Trump administration talk about the gender affirming care that they make use of all the time. Right. And so I'm not going to play this game where we don't talk about the fact that Leave It is getting lip injections as she should if that's her choice, while making it so that minors, some of the most marginalized and vulnerable among us, cannot avail themselves of the gender affirming care that they need.
00:21:01.020And let's not forget when we're talking about trans youth, oftentimes that care is life saving and is critical. And I think that expecting a dynamic where the gender affirming care of others is endlessly scrutinized, endlessly weaponized, but theirs, it's not polite to even bring up. I won't have it. I won't have it. That's not a dynamic that I think is one that will serve us well.
00:21:24.800So while I understand where folks are coming from when they say it's not good to talk about her injections and her looks and all of that, I totally get it. I think ultimately, if you follow that thread while they are doing the exact same thing to the most marginalized and vulnerable among us, they are creating a dynamic where it's uncivilized for us to give them any scrutiny.
00:21:47.120And the scrutiny they're getting is, sorry, your injection sites are visible on this photograph in Vanity Fair.
00:25:13.900We started saying goodbye to one another.
00:25:15.840Strangely, it was quite calm on the boat.
00:25:17.920There was not much to do except resign oneself to the inevitability of it all.
00:25:22.400Up to that point, I had not taken many pictures.
00:25:25.500Everyone on the boat knew I was a photographer, but it somehow had not felt right.
00:25:30.080It's difficult to explain, but as the boat sank, David, the Haitian whom I'd followed on this journey, said to me,
00:25:35.840Chris, you better start making pictures. We only have an hour to live.
00:25:39.380And so, without much thought, I began making pictures.
00:25:42.360We were saved at the last moment by a U.S. Coast Guard cutter that happened upon us, but that's another story.
00:25:47.860Much later on, back home safe, I reflected on this question.
00:25:51.520Why make pictures that no one will ever see?
00:25:54.500The only explanation for me was that the act of photographing had more to do with the explaining of the world to myself than explaining something to someone else.
00:26:02.700The pictures were about communicating something about my experience, not about reporting literal information.
00:26:08.560This would be the single most transformative moment of my photographic life.
00:26:12.340That's pretty deep thoughts about photography.
00:26:14.760I just wanted to share that because I think especially in the age of Photoshop and airbrushing and AI and manicured images, it's just a good reminder of the power of photographs and why we take photographs.
00:26:31.460And I think the fact that these Vanity Fair images got, they just, they really struck a nerve and really struck a chord with people just shows how powerful they are. And the importance of having a press that's not going to be afraid, that's going to be fearless and not feel like they have to communicate a lie when it's a medium about communicating some larger truth, even if not in a literal sense.
00:26:55.880Yeah, I love that. You know, thinking about photography and I guess journalism writ large, but specifically photography as a tool for understanding the world and communicating truth. It's kind of beautiful.
00:32:45.340for the post? In the words of Dorinda Medley from Real Housewives of New York, can you guess?
00:32:51.780Not well, bitch. Not well, bitch. This is from Simaphore. Less than 48 hours since the product1.00
00:32:58.140was released, people within the post have flagged what four sources described as multiple mistakes
00:33:03.360in personalized podcasts. The errors have ranged from relatively minor pronunciation gaps to
00:33:08.680significant changes to story content, like misattributing or inventing quotes and inserting
00:33:13.100commentary, such as interpreting a source's quotes as the paper's position on an issue.
00:33:19.440Even journalists from within the paper are cringing about this. According to four people
00:33:24.720familiar with the situation, the errors have alarmed senior newsroom leaders who have
00:33:29.200acknowledged in their internal Slack channel that the product's output is not living up to
00:33:33.440the paper's standards. In a message to other staffers shared with Simahor, head of standards
00:33:38.300Karen Pinsero, wrote that the errors have been frustrating for us all. It is truly astonishing
00:33:43.800that this was ever allowed to go forward at all, one post editor wrote on Slack. Never would I
00:33:47.920have imagined that the post would deliberately warp its own journalism and then push these errors
00:33:52.360out to our audience at scale. And just days after the White House put up a site dedicated to
00:33:57.100attacking journalists, most notably our own, including for stories with corrections or
00:34:01.620editor's notes attached if we were serious we would pull this tool immediately yeah pretty big
00:34:08.860l for the post and just being in the in the podcast sort of media game i do know that the
00:34:15.880post has really been trying to compete with other papers of similar of like comparable size and
00:34:21.860stature when it comes to audio in particular like if you think about the new york times the daily
00:34:26.700is one of the the most important podcasts around like it's it's one of the biggest if not the
00:34:31.400biggest podcast in the world. It's the podcast that a lot of people start their day with.
00:34:34.740Wall Street Journal has a really respected podcast division. The Post just, it seems like
00:34:39.260they're really struggling to get it right. Yeah. And I feel like trust in The Post is
00:34:44.100pretty low these days. It's just like one story after another, diminishing their credibility.
00:34:51.380Honestly, like I know that they have a lot of really good journalists who work there in the
00:34:56.420department still and i feel for them but every story that comes out about their editorial
00:35:02.400department is awful and now there's this story about them pushing ai slop that is not accurate
00:35:13.840it's it's you bring up a good point that like why do their competitors have these
00:35:22.040really powerful widely listens to audio products and the post doesn't uh it it feels like they're
00:35:31.620frankly like on the wrong track i guess i don't know they're they're probably not taking like
00:35:37.180strategic uh business decisions from us but like it's just one l after another yeah i mean i can
00:35:48.320I can sort of give you my sense of what might be happening here.
00:35:51.200I just don't think it's a really it's not a chill time in media or journalism more broadly.
00:35:56.000And I want to be super clear that I know personally and work with and love many, many, many of the journalists at The Post.
00:36:04.720They have a they have great reputations. This is not anything against them.
00:36:08.240It is the decision makers. It's the higher ups. It's people like Jeffrey Bezos.
00:36:11.900I would argue that I don't think that he had any real interest in being in the newspaper game at all.
00:36:17.320I think that he bought that paper to buy Influence and to buy Trump's ear.
00:36:20.920And I don't think he cares that it's losing money.
00:36:22.960I don't think he cares that it's putting out error and lie riddled AI generated podcasts
00:36:29.120that are an embarrassment that their stellar journalists then have to answer for.
00:36:35.020Right. Because you don't want to be a great journalist at a shop that's putting out lies
00:36:39.820via AI generated podcasts. That's so embarrassing.
00:36:42.400And so I think it really is a leadership culture problem. I also think when you think about, you know, it came up in the episode that we did with Karen Atia, the last remaining Black columnist at The Post who was pushed out after Charlie Kirk's death, I would say like completely unfairly.
00:37:00.640I think that it's a problem where when you have a culture that nobody wants to be part of, or for people who are smart or dedicated or hardworking or forward thinking or innovative are pushed out, I think this is what you're left over with, right?
00:37:13.920Like the former editor at the Post, Sally Busby, she was apparently working on a lot of early stage audio concepts before she was pushed out of the paper in 2024.
00:37:22.660before. I think like this is what happens when you push out the good people who actually want
00:37:28.900to make good stuff. You have to turn to AI podcasts full of errors and lies. But it's such
00:37:35.120short-sighted leadership to not see how that's so much worse. It would be better to not have a
00:37:39.720podcast, in my opinion. Yeah. It has the feel of leadership viewing this as like news-flavored
00:37:49.160content without recognizing the special considerations that the journalism needs to
00:37:59.360adhere to to make sure that readers and listeners trust it.
00:38:06.200Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this, that audio is supposed to build trust and intimacy.
00:38:11.900I think Pew did a study that found that people who get information from podcasts have a higher
00:38:17.180expectation that that information will be accurate and true versus other kinds of digital content.
00:38:22.340So the content in the media they're getting on social media, they don't have a high expectation
00:38:28.260that that will be accurate. But when it comes to podcasts, they do. Right. And so if the post is
00:38:33.280just handing over that trust to AI so that it can invent quotes and make up lies, it's really a
00:38:39.660problem. And I think that's what happens when experienced editors are like, nah, I don't want
00:38:45.480I don't want to be involved in this. I also think there's an element here of news versus tech
00:38:51.200products. SEMA4 had this little bit of reporting that I found very interesting about the tensions
00:38:56.540that have arisen between the newsroom division and its product division, right? And so the
00:39:01.300perspective from some of the Post's product team is that AI podcasts, even if they have errors,
00:39:06.780that just represents a normal part of the rollout of features that are still being tested. And
00:39:11.820unsurprisingly the journalists at that newsroom feel otherwise that is really interesting and i
00:39:19.940could totally see see that playing out you know for a newspaper that is owned by jeff bezos the
00:39:28.020owner of amazon which famously works its employees like really hard and is you know very focused on
00:39:38.780metrics that works great if you're running a company that delivers products to people and
00:39:48.160you know you make a few errors and some people you know 0.01 percent of people don't get their
00:39:55.380packages on time it's not that big a deal but with a newspaper and journalism the math is
00:40:03.060very different because when you lose trust, it is really difficult to gain back.
00:40:11.420Yeah, absolutely true. Side note, Sima4 also did report as part of the story that The Post was
00:40:17.700eyeing Larry Summers to be one of their podcast hosts for a while, but that deal fell apart.
00:40:22.000This was obviously before the emails unsurfaced about Summers' connection with Epstein. Boy,
00:40:30.200I part of me is like, I don't know if that was a decision to not go with Larry Summers as a podcast host or if that just like didn't work out.
00:40:36.600But that kind of is like a little bit of a saving grace that they didn't have to pull that podcast down.
00:40:42.320Yeah, I guess they dodged a bullet there.
00:40:49.380And it's also curious that like he is a pretty big name.
00:40:52.740So they presumably would have had to pay him as opposed to these A.I. podcasts, which like, you know, they're probably paying the engineers who work on it, but they don't have to pay a host.
00:41:04.840And I wonder if that's part of it here, too, just trying to turn the screws and do things on the cheap, maybe, question mark.
00:41:14.480I know I'm biased, but throwing a few bucks at a human host might be worth it if it's going to save you from this level of embarrassment.
00:41:21.000Yeah, human hosts wouldn't make these sorts of errors that you listed off of misattributing a quote from a source as the official position of the paper.
00:41:34.660Like, that's a pretty elementary mistake that a human host probably would not make, you would hope.
00:44:25.260how much tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg,
00:44:28.220how much power they have in determining what is the kind of thing that needs to be censored and
00:44:32.860whose sexuality, whose gender issues, whatever, are okay and allowed and whose need to be taken
00:44:40.880down and censored from the platform. They just really have all the power there.
00:44:45.100Martha Demiratu, the executive director of Repro and Censored, told The Guardian,
00:44:49.100within the last year, especially since this new U.S. presidency, we have seen a definitive
00:44:53.260increase in accounts being taken down, not only in the U.S., but worldwide as a ripple effect.
00:44:58.220This has been, to my knowledge, at least one of the biggest waves of censorship we are seeing.
00:45:02.360So I want to make sure that people get what I'm saying here, because keep this in mind.
00:45:07.460If we are talking about organizations that are abortion providers or help connect people who need abortions with abortion services,
00:45:14.980social media is a key way that people are able to get access to information about something that is not only lifesaving and critical, but also time sensitive.
00:45:25.080Arbitrary takedowns like this threaten the ability of these kind of providers to do their
00:45:32.100And, you know, something else that they said in the piece is that Meta is a company that
00:45:35.780is historically not easy to work with.
00:45:38.180They will take down accounts that have not broken any of Meta's rules.
00:45:41.820They will take down accounts that are not breaking the law.
00:45:43.760And then they won't be transparent or clear on what the thing was that got that account
00:45:48.980removed or what to do next or how to appeal.
00:45:51.100So really, if you don't know somebody who works at Meta, if you don't have a friend or a cousin that works there, you might just be out of luck.
00:45:58.760There's one organization that they talk about from the Netherlands called Women Help Women, which is a nonprofit offering information about abortion to women worldwide, including in Brazil, the Philippines and Poland.
00:46:08.640It fields about 150,000 emails from women each year, says the executive director Kinga Jelinska.
00:46:13.640Women Help Women has been on Facebook for 11 years, and they said that while their account has been suspended before, this time around, it was outright banned.
00:46:23.100Kinga, the executive director, said this ban could be life-threatening and push people who need abortion care toward dangerous, less reliable information sources.
00:46:32.720And the frustrating thing is that Meta doesn't even really tell people what they've done to get banned.
00:46:36.980A message from Meta to the group dated November 13th said that its page does not follow our community standards on prescription drugs, adding, we know this is disappointing, but we want to keep Facebook safe and welcoming for everyone.
00:46:49.120The report then says that the providers who are impacted have to go into meetings with Meta.
00:46:54.180I have personally been at meetings like this and they are basically useless.
00:47:00.320Meta has come under criticism after a leaked email showed a consultant inviting reproductive health organizations to a private briefing about problems with Meta's content moderation,
00:47:09.060while explicitly saying the meeting was not a place to criticize the company or suggest any policy changes.
00:47:15.180Critics say these closed-door sessions reinforce a power imbalance where big tech decides which voices are heard and which are silenced.
00:47:22.420i can personally confirm my own experience in these meetings and that is exactly what's going
00:47:29.000on and it speaks to what i was saying earlier where meta is the sole arbiter of whose voices
00:47:36.040are allowed to persist on the platform and whose are silenced and they don't feel the need to give
00:47:39.760anybody transparency around that i'm really reminded of the segment we just covered about
00:47:43.640the washington post where there's just a real sense of them like not realizing or not acknowledging
00:47:52.540the responsibility that they have as a big platform where so many people get information
00:48:01.940that is of critical importance to like their health their financial well-being so many areas
00:48:09.040of their life they're just like not concerned with making arbitrary decisions that prevent
00:48:17.040people from getting that information uh you know in meta's case they they just want the clicks i
00:48:23.880think let me tell you how not concerned they are they told one organization that was impacted
00:48:29.460that they should leave meta altogether and start a mailing list and that their bans would probably
00:48:36.400continue now meta denies sending that email but imagine telling an organization doing critical
00:48:41.640life-saving work connecting people who need abortions with abortion care but you've built
00:48:45.560up an audience for years and years just start a mailing list like like these are not serious
00:48:49.940people no they're certainly not taking the concerns of these organizations seriously
00:48:56.300which is pretty offensive really because if you like i don't know any of these organizations but
00:49:03.260I feel like I've known people at similar organizations who have done this kind of work, and people involved in nonprofits that serve people, they're not getting rich out there.
00:49:19.920They're trying to help people. And it is really disappointing, but not at all surprising to read a report like this about Meta just not being at all concerned about getting in the way of their work.
00:49:35.100And as someone who has followed this kind of thing for a while, a weird thing that Meta loves to do is say that they do allow posts about abortion on their platform as long as those posts don't break the rules.
00:49:45.760But then they take down accounts that are not breaking the rules and they don't even say why.
00:49:51.340Because according to Meta, even they agree that some of these accounts are taken down by mistake.
00:49:56.660Because when Repro Uncensored flagged some of the accounts that they said were taken down that should not have been, Meta said that more than half of the accounts flagged by Repro Uncensored have been reinstated, including Women Help Women, which Facebook said was taken down in error.
00:50:12.720So basically, you know, they like to say on the one hand, oh, we allow posts about abortion.
00:50:19.200Why were these posts about abortion taken down even though they don't violate our policies?
00:50:24.500But if that mistake happens, there is no transparency around why it was taken down, unless there's some sort of uproar, unless somebody flags it for them. And then two, it's incredibly difficult to appeal it. And so even if these are mistakes, it's not a mistake that can be easily rectified if there's no clear, transparent appeal process. It just seems like Meta doesn't actually really care.
00:50:46.820And I think, you know, whether it's a mistake or an error or whatever, the impact really is the same, that these platforms have total control over these digital public spaces arbitrarily, and that ends up silencing abortion providers and queer organizations and really put people at risk from being able to access time-sensitive, life-saving information.
00:51:08.080And I think having a system where there's no transparency, there's no functioning appeal process, I don't think these are glitches.
00:51:16.820I think that they're structural problems that are built in and it's vulnerable people who are paying the price.
00:52:32.880If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:52:39.200This 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.
00:52:51.660I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:52:58.780I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:55:59.520Okay, so Mike, do you remember back when Charlie Kirk was murdered and we talked all about the wave of crackdowns on free speech and expression that followed?
00:56:11.880Oh, yeah. I mean, I feel like we're still living through the repercussions of that crackdown on speech.
00:56:21.340Well, let me tell you. So back when Charlie Kirk was first murdered, Larry Bushart, who was a 61-year-old former cop, posted a meme on the Facebook group, What's Happening in Perry County, Tennessee. He posted this meme on a thread about a visual for Charlie Kirk.
00:56:36.520So the meme shows a picture of Donald Trump saying, quote, we should just get over it, which depicted Trump saying this about a school shooting at Perry High School, which is a direct quote.
00:57:32.060Supposedly, Weems' decision to go after Bushart wasn't due to his political views,
00:57:36.740but to receiving messages from parents who misread Bushart's post
00:57:40.300as possibly threatening an attack on the local Perry County high school.
00:57:44.080To pressure Bushart to remove the post, Weems contacted the Lexington Police Department to find Bushart.
00:57:50.420That led to Larry's arrest and his transfer to Perry County Jail.
00:57:55.620So Weems, the sheriff, justified the arrest by claiming that Bushart posting this meme on Facebook represented a true threat.
00:58:03.720since, quote, investigators believe that Bushart was fully aware the fear his post would cause
00:58:09.380and intentionally sought to create hysteria within the community, the Tennessean reported.
00:58:15.020But as The Intercept points out, there was no evidence of any kind of hysteria. There weren't
00:58:19.680even any comments on the meme that suggested that anybody thought it was anything resembling a
00:58:25.440threat. And that's when people started to look a little bit closer at this sheriff's story.
00:58:29.220Probably the most suspicious thing here is that Weems, the sheriff, claims that Bushart had callously refused to take down his post even after law enforcement told him that people were scared that he was threatening a school shooting.
00:58:42.780They actually, the local news, has body cam footage of his arrest.
00:58:47.280The footage clearly shows that the arresting officer did not understand why the Perry County sheriff had taken issue with Bushart's Facebook post.
00:58:55.960So I'm just going to be completely honest with you. I really have no idea what they are talking about. He just he just called me and there was some concerning post that was made. Bushart clarified that it was likely his Facebook post laughing at the notion that somebody called the cops to report his meme.
00:59:12.000The officer then told Bushart that he wasn't exactly sure what Facebook post that you're referring to, but they said something about insinuating violence.
00:59:19.740Bushart said, no, it wasn't, and confirming that he wasn't going to take it down.
00:59:23.280The arresting officer declined to even glance at the Facebook post and told Bushart, quote, I don't care.
00:59:32.500Now, none of this indifference kept this officer from taking him into custody and booking him where he was charged under a state law passed in July 2024 that makes it a Class E felony to make any kind of threat against schools.
00:59:46.060This is reporting from the Tennessean.
00:59:47.480Wow, they're really like making a meal out of this threat against the school thing, which seems to be completely made up.
00:59:56.260Like, this just seems to be. Is this a new thing that cops make up when they want to arrest somebody?
01:00:01.200Like, oh, he was threatening a school.
01:00:03.420Well, here's how we know it was made up, because the sheriff later admitted to the local news, News Channel 5, that, quote, investigators knew the meme was not about Perry County High School and still arrested him anyway, supposedly hoping to, quote, quell the fears of people in the community who misrepresented it.
01:00:22.060Apparently, that was as close as the sheriff came to basically admitting that the intention was to censor the post.
01:00:29.460So now Larry Bushard is out of prison. He has lost his post-retirement job. And now he is suing the police department. Now, the department said that he had to be arrested because this post caused all this mass hysteria from people who were worried they were misinterpreting this post as a threat of violence against Perry High School with this meme.
01:00:49.760But his lawsuit notes that none of the commenters on the Facebook thread left any kind of comment indicating that this meme was being taken as threatening some sort of violent act at a school.
01:01:01.360And so far, no public records show any concerned citizens who were flagging the meme as violating any laws protecting the schools.
01:01:10.040A request to the school district turned up no records.
01:01:12.060And so far, police have not produced any evidence of this mass hysteria that they said was the reason that he had to be arrested.
01:01:20.860This is all according to Larry Bushard's lawsuit.
01:01:23.600Instead, what they say is actually going on is the sheriff, who we know posted a tribute to Kirk on his own personal Facebook page,
01:01:30.220was just using his capacity as sheriff to arrest Larry over a meme that he didn't like about Trump.
01:01:37.560Yeah, that seems to be what's going on.
01:01:39.480You know, this mass hysteria that the sheriff keeps talking about, I feel like you need, like, the term mass hysteria implies a lot of people.
01:01:47.920If you had to guess, how many people do you say live in Perry County, Tennessee?
01:06:35.660to Larry, who I don't know, for standing up and, you know, not backing down here.
01:06:45.140I hope that Sheriff, like, faces some sort of consequences for this.
01:06:51.780What I think is unfortunate and more likely is that he probably won't,
01:06:56.420And instead, Larry will win his lawsuit and the taxpayers of that county will be on the hook to pay for that sheriff's illegal actions of arresting somebody who said something that he didn't like.
01:08:51.520Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
01:08:56.060I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
01:09:00.640I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
01:09:08.060They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
01:09:12.040But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
01:09:15.460They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
01:09:18.600Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:09:27.560If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
01:09:33.500This 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.
01:09:45.980I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
01:09:53.100I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
01:09:56.680From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
01:10:02.620It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
01:10:10.080Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
01:10:19.700Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:12:14.880And even though it did not result in a project being greenlit, it was super interesting.
01:12:19.220And it was a process in which I learned a ton.
01:12:20.980And one of the things I learned is that there is a rising interest in movies and shows that people can watch essentially while they do something else, essentially be on their phone.
01:12:32.060Weirdly, I will sort of say this kind of works for the medium that I'm interested in making.
01:12:36.540You know, documentary might kind of work without having to visually see what's happening on screen.
01:12:42.700But apparently this also goes for non-documentary projects, so like fictional television and movie projects, too.
01:12:49.140just this assumption that people are not going to be paying close attention to whatever this
01:12:53.760thing is that they're that they're watching they might not even be watching what's happening on
01:12:57.260screen so make projects that work for people who are watching them distracted just really embrace
01:13:04.540the add brain that uh all of us have that is being actively cultivated by social media have you ever
01:13:12.120seen that thing where it's the movie oppenheimer but in one corner it's got like somebody playing
01:13:17.180Mario Kart, like all the different kind of distracting things that some people might need
01:13:21.880to focus on the screen just to keep them locked in. In N Plus One magazine, film writer William
01:13:29.200Tavlin said the exact same thing, that screenwriters who worked for Netflix told him that a common
01:13:34.260note that they were given by the company's executives was, have this character announce
01:13:38.440what they're doing so that the viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.
01:13:42.980So if a character is like writing a text message, even if what they're writing is being shown on the screen, have them say out loud what that message says.
01:13:51.960I actually hate this kind of exposition.
01:13:54.880And when I'm watching something where I know that they're doing that or they're saying something out loud that you wouldn't ordinarily say out loud, it is very distracting to me.
01:14:11.260it like takes the the axiom show me don't tell me and just completely inverts it and is like no
01:14:19.980don't don't even bother with showing just tell everything must be told just tell just tell
01:14:25.140i mean i do have a whole slate of stuff that i have on my hulu or whatever that i i do kind of
01:14:34.940treat as background you know a lot of bravo content that i've got sort of comfort viewing
01:14:40.440I'll put it on the iPad while I clean my apartment or do laundry or do kind of like work that you can do half paying attention, like menial tasks.
01:14:51.540But for an actual show that you're watching for the first time, I'm the kind of person who I like to be locked in for the most part.
01:14:57.600So this piece in Slash film is breaking down Heated Rivalry, which I don't know if you have been watching it, but it's this hockey romance.
01:15:06.260And the piece is really fascinating to me because it says that Heated Rivalry is essentially bucking this trend by being a show that rewards people carefully watching what's happening on screen.
01:15:20.080And it's working because it's actually super popular.
01:15:23.000So Heated Rivalry is like this steamy hockey romance where two major league hockey stars have a sports rivalry, but also a lot of kind of sexy tension.
01:19:12.780Yes, that actually makes a lot of sense.
01:19:15.260They go on to say that it's arguably a natural consequence of what happens when engagement numbers are the only thing that matters.
01:19:21.860So if you've got two people who watch Netflix, one who likes to really focus on what they're watching, and another who likes to leave their TV on autoplay all day while they're doing chores around the house, of course that second person is going to have higher engagement numbers.
01:19:33.820They're streaming for many hours every day, which makes a lot of sense.
01:19:37.900And, you know, I watch a lot of movies and I definitely like to watch movies that you have to really pay attention to.
01:19:45.560I remember you and I and I don't want to put you on the spot, but do you remember when we watched the science fiction thriller Coherence?
01:19:52.440And I was like, OK, it's a really good movie, but it is a film that rewards careful viewing.0.98
01:19:58.460And you were like, OK, better get fucked up before we watch.0.98
01:20:02.540I've since rewatched and you were correct.0.98
01:20:06.120it does reward careful viewing thank you thank thank you thank you for thank you for giving it
01:20:10.980another chance because if you were like not paying attention you would be so confused yeah it just
01:20:16.220wouldn't be a very good movie at all and i i guess i'm now i'm like here's what would be an example
01:20:24.620of a a good movie or or show i feel this casual viewing trend is more about like series than
01:20:31.860movies but like is there one that would be good that does this very overt uh you know announcing
01:20:40.700everything that is happening like telegraphing it because i think about shows like the office
01:20:47.180for example is something that people stream a lot i think it's like one of the most streamed shows
01:20:52.680ever and you know i personally know multiple people who will just put it on for hours uh
01:20:59.400but they are like in that show it's it's not like super complicated what's going on but
01:21:08.640there are lots of little jokes that you will miss if you're not paying attention
01:21:13.120and it's okay for that show because you can miss the little jokes but still understand what's going
01:21:19.780on in the episode uh but they are there to pull you in and uh you know i would i have to feel like
01:21:28.700I probably wouldn't be very interested in a show
01:22:34.940As always, where can folks keep up with us?
01:22:37.360Well, people can keep up with us on social media, but they can also listen to the mailbag episodes that we're going to be publishing next week over the holidays.