00:03:32.440Like it is, they're acting a little bit weird.
00:03:34.760So after publishing this video and saying it is Kate, definitively, case closed, here's
00:03:40.600the metadata. Let's put all the conspiracy theories to rest. Then two of their executive
00:03:45.400producers went on TMZ Live, which is like TMZ's live television show, and basically kind of
00:03:53.720walked back whether or not they thought it was actually her. Here's what they said.
00:04:00.240So she looks great. Where's the security? Where is the security? That's a good question.
00:04:06.600And why is it with all the people that were there, this is the only video that surfaced, a video that we secured.
00:04:14.700Why is it that they're in the store moseying around, going to the cash register, nobody's taking any pictures, any photos, any video, but we got this.
00:04:24.180so i genuinely do not know what is going on here because i think that tmz would have authenticated
00:04:34.320this video as being kate before publishing it and saying that it's kate now i can hear people
00:04:41.360out there listening who are thinking bridget tmz is a shady tabloid why would you expect them to
00:04:47.780verify what they put out or confirm what they put out before they publish it to which i i won't say
00:04:53.520of push back on that, but I would complicate that a little bit because yes, TMZ is an outlet that0.98
00:05:00.400is run by pieces of human garbage who have no ethical or moral compass whatsoever. They are0.99
00:05:08.900not good people. We could do a whole other episode on this. However, TMZ is not an outlet
00:05:15.020that tends to get stuff wrong. That is one thing I can say about them. If TMZ reports that somebody
00:05:20.060is dead, that person is probably dead, even if no other outlet is reporting it because they're TMZ.
00:05:25.660I remember when Michael Jackson died, they were the first to run with that story. And everybody
00:05:29.480was like, well, it's TMZ. Let's wait until we get another outlet. But the reason why TMZ tends to
00:05:36.240always sort of get it right on these big breaking stories is because they are known to have police
00:05:42.560on their payroll and pay off police. Folks might remember back when Kobe Bryant and his daughter
00:05:48.580died in that helicopter crash, TMZ reported that news first and it started a whole conversation of
00:05:54.920whether or not they should have reported that because the police had still not notified all
00:05:59.900of the family members. And so TMZ is an outlet that is known for reporting things first and
00:06:04.580correctly, perhaps because they are unethical ghouls with no souls. So if TMZ is publishing
00:06:12.340something, generally speaking, that is like, they're not an outlet that is known to put out
00:06:17.140just like lies but it sounds like maybe this story and this photo are a little different
00:06:22.780well i genuinely don't know what's going on here like it's possible that tmz has just sensed that
00:06:29.240like they have like what they see as a juicy story so they're they're putting out a video and
00:06:36.100saying this is confirmed to be kate and then their producers are going on their their channel and
00:06:40.680saying like oh we don't know if it's kate or not maybe they're thinking that like this will lead
00:06:44.220to more engagement on a story that they perceive as like juicy. Maybe they did not authenticate
00:06:49.120that video before publishing it. I really don't know. Like anybody's guess is as good as mine
00:06:53.980in terms of what is actually going on here. Yeah. And it's probably one of like a thousand
00:06:59.000stories where we might never know. Exactly. But I will say like there are images floating around
00:07:05.300on social media right now that are purporting to show a quote enhanced still from that video
00:07:12.260purporting to prove that like, oh, it's not really Cade. It's a body double. It's a stand-in.
00:07:18.520Those are 110% fake. Like I can assure you that if anybody is pushing around images that are
00:07:25.380purporting to use AI to like enhance this video, that's not even how it works. Those are fake.
00:07:32.000As Google's Adriana Porter Felt wrote on Twitter, I keep seeing people post photo enhancements as
00:07:38.160fact. This does not actually enhance the original photo. It invents a plausible new photo and
00:07:44.040overlays it on the blurry original. The generated version is actually less trustworthy than the
00:07:49.900original blurry video. Don't do this. I think it's this idea that we all live in a CSI episode where
00:07:56.220you can just type, type, type, type, type, enhance, type, type, type, type, type, enhance using AI.
00:08:02.780It doesn't work that way. These are all BS. Yeah, that's right. I think you and I were talking
00:08:07.340about false precision in some other context this morning right like the idea and i think it applies
00:08:12.880here too right that you you can have this photo that looks very highly detailed and precise and
00:08:18.640it tricks your brain into thinking that like oh this more precise sharper image clearly must be
00:08:25.060more true but that's just like not the case for exactly the way that that uh well-spoken quote
00:09:00.000was involved in a data security breach after at least one member of the staff at the hospital
00:09:05.920where she was staying back in January attempted to view her medical records while she was a
00:09:10.860patient there. Authorities are actually now investigating whether or not the hospital broke
00:09:15.600the law by failing to report this breach in a timely manner. So there is no ambiguity or gray
00:09:21.960area here. This is just so deeply, deeply messed up. End of sentence, period. And I think this was
00:09:29.900the point I was trying to make in the episode that we did breaking all of this down last week,
00:09:34.100that there is a difference between the public asking questions about how Kensington Palace,
00:09:40.440right, a political and social institution is moving and how the Kensington Palace is communicating
00:09:46.620with the public without demanding access and, you know, an entitlement to information about
00:09:54.700an individual's like private sensitive health information, right? You know, I think that when
00:10:00.440a public who is voracious for any kind of information about Kate as a person blurs those
00:10:06.520lines, we get this dynamic where people really do feel like it is okay to try to obtain an
00:10:11.740individual's personal private medical information to satisfy that question. And it's not, not only
00:10:18.440is it illegal, it is wrong. And so I think that's really where we're kind of getting into this
00:10:23.160problem of, I think it is totally fair to scrutinize and criticize and ask questions about
00:10:29.900the way that the institution that is the royal family is communicating with the public.
00:10:34.700That is totally fair game. That is different than demanding information about an individual,
00:10:40.360in this case, Kate's private medical information. Does that make sense?
00:10:44.540It does make sense. And, you know, I know that we got a few emails from listeners after that previous episode. And I think it's worth clarifying why we're talking about this story on this show.
00:11:01.380So and, you know, so like Bridget, are we talking about this because you have some sort of personal interest in the royal family or like some expertise in the royal family or because you you feel like, you know, all of you have some personal feelings about Kate Middleton and feel like we have a right to know, like what's going on with her personal life.
00:11:23.240Are those your motivations for wanting to talk about it on this show?
00:11:27.460I don't know anything about Kate Middleton. Of all of the royals that I know anything about,
00:11:32.580she is the one that I have followed the least. And I don't really follow any of them. So that's
00:11:35.940actually really saying something. But I do think that when it comes to institutions that wield
00:11:42.740public power and do enjoy a level of public support, it is not just okay to ask questions
00:11:50.860and scrutinize how they are communicating with the public. I think it's necessary. And I think
00:11:54.780that when we get into these gray areas of people being like, well, how dare you demand private
00:11:59.540information about Kate? I don't think that anybody should be demanding private information about Kate.
00:12:03.920I certainly don't think that if you are someone working in a clinic where she may have stayed,
00:12:08.020that you should be going through her private health records. My God. However, that is different
00:12:13.700than asking questions about, well, who in Kensington Palace used Photoshop to doctor images
00:12:21.320in a way that they had to have known was against Newswire rules and then tried to submit them as
00:12:27.400if they were not doctored. I think that's a totally fair question and a question that speaks to how
00:12:33.080institutions are communicating with the public. But that's a different thing than like, what kind
00:12:38.380of medical issue did Kate have and when did she have it? Like, that's a completely different
00:12:43.020question than I think is Kate's private business. Before we got on the mic, I was reading about how
00:12:48.500another image, another holiday image of the late queen, it was revealed that Kensington Palace had
00:12:54.400doctored that image similarly to the one of Kate and, you know, did not tell anybody and it got
00:13:00.280past fact checkers and it was distributed via Newswire. And I was surprised to see a lot of
00:13:06.260the commenters saying things like, they're celebrities, it's news now that celebrities
00:13:10.260are photoshopping wrinkles out of their images and like using Photoshop to make them look better.
00:13:15.080And no, first of all, these people are not normal celebrities. So I'm not even interested in whether or not the late queen used Photoshop or whatever. The question is, did they knowingly violate the very clear and explicit rules around how you submit authenticated photos to newswire services to get distributed out in an official capacity? Did they violate that?
00:13:39.100I'm not interested in web. If they just put Photoshop images on their own personal Instagrams and leave it at that, who cares? But this is a very different thing. And again, I just think that the blurriness between individual actions of individuals and the way that this massive, powerful, publicly supported institution is communicating with the public, those are two different things.
00:14:02.420One of them is fair game. And in fact, I would argue we should be asking questions about the other. Who cares? And I think that's sort of the thread that we're losing in this conversation.
00:14:10.960You know, I think the world has really changed a lot in terms of like, what are the rules and norms around touching up photos? Perhaps the rules for the wire services haven't changed, but just common practices around what people do personally, you know, I'm willing to grant that that has changed a lot in the past couple of years with AI filters.
00:14:34.140But it really feels like there's a lot of room for Kensington Palace, who receives, I believe, hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer support.
00:14:45.800Hopefully this lights a fire for them to get up to speed on what's needed to ideally play an active role in helping reestablish rules so that people can have trust in the information that they see.
00:15:04.900Well, that's a great segue to this Glassdoor story, which is a weird one. Like, one of the reasons I'm excited to talk to you about this is because you have a background in PII, what is it, personal identifying information.
00:15:19.660So here's what's going on. If you have ever talked crap about your job anonymously on the website Glassdoor, which is an anonymous forum for people to rate and review their workplaces, you might want to think twice because we are seeing multiple reports that Glassdoor collected and added people's names to their user profiles without their consent.
00:15:41.660So TechCrunch reports that one user, who they're calling Monica, wrote in a post on her personal blog that Glassdoor added her name in the city where she lives to her Glassdoor profile following an email exchange that she had with Glassdoor customer support, despite never having consensually provided her name during the initial signup process, which would happen years earlier.
00:16:03.080So basically, it kind of sounds like if Glassdoor learns your name or learns some kind of personal identifying information about you, even if you do not provide it to them when you're signing up for Glassdoor, they will add it to your profile without your consent.
00:16:17.020So how does she say that they got her name?
00:16:19.100From this email exchange that she had with Glassdoor customer support, that when she signed up for Glassdoor years earlier, she didn't use her name.
00:16:27.580But years later, she had a back and forth email exchange with Glassdoor customer support.
00:16:32.120Her email signature includes her name and location. And they just took from that email her name, first and last name and location, and added it to her profile, even though she never consented to that and didn't want that.
00:16:44.640And to be clear, Glassdoor is a place where anonymity would be really important. Like if you were trashing your boss or you had something really important to say, it makes sense why you wouldn't necessarily want to have your first and last name attached to what you thought was an anonymous review of a workplace.
00:17:02.120And one of the reasons why I'm having a little bit of trouble with this story is that this really sounds like a change.
00:17:07.660I know from being in the space for a while that Glassdoor really used to thrive on user anonymity and was like kind of an industry leader in protecting PII, personal identifying information.
00:17:20.180But what sounds like changed was a corporate acquisition.
00:17:24.060So Ars Technico reports that although it is common for many users online to link services at signup to their Facebook or their Gmail account to verify identity and streamline logins, for years, Glassdoor has notably allowed users to sign up for its service anonymously.
00:17:38.960But in 2021, Glassdoor acquired Fishbowl, a professional networking app that integrated with Glassdoor last July.
00:17:45.600This acquisition meant that every Glassdoor user was automatically signed up for a Fishbowl account.
00:17:51.520And because Fishbowl requires users to verify their identities, Glassdoor's terms of service changed to require all users be verified.
00:17:59.940So I should be clear that this is not a theoretical concern.
00:18:04.380Lawyers for companies who have been negatively reviewed on Glassdoor have regularly tried to learn the identities of the people leaving anonymous reviews on the site.
00:18:13.060The organization, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, regularly defends Glassdoor users from being unmasked by retaliating employers, particularly for employees who fear retaliation for reviews.
00:18:24.460The lawyer for EFF said that Glassdoor users could historically choose never to share their real names, and the company is now storing names for all users makes it much more likely that users could be linked to their reviews should Glassdoor's data ever be subpoenaed or leaked.
00:18:39.200Yeah, I I think that's such a good point that it's worth like reemphasizing it, that, you know, it's one thing for Glassdoor to have a privacy policy that says, like, we will not release your name.
00:18:53.040That's great. That's good. But it's if to truly have your name be protected, it would be better if they never had it in the first place.
00:19:03.540Right. Like we've seen this very concern play out with concerns about the Kids Online Safety Act.
00:19:09.620Right. That it's going to be collecting all of this information.
00:19:12.680And even if that information is nominally protected, the fact that it is stored somewhere puts it at risk.
00:19:19.560Right. It's at risk of there being some kind of breach that makes that information public, despite the company not wanting to be public.
00:19:27.980and it's also at risk if there's like a change in ownership and a change of privacy policy
00:19:33.560which seems to be the situation here it's funny to hear you say this because just before we were
00:19:39.460talking you were annoyed and i was like oh what's going on you were like oh i'm trying to
00:19:43.840track a package that i bought but it wants me to shine up sign up for shop to do that and i have
00:19:49.100to give shop the shop app access to all my emails and i was like oh i use shop all the time and you
00:19:56.000Like, you don't give your information to anybody.
00:19:58.860No, I really try to jealously protect my privacy.
00:20:02.120I think we all have an obligation to occasionally inconvenience ourselves to jealously protect our privacy against the constant encroachment of tech companies that want all of our data.
00:20:13.340Yeah, I wasn't going to bring it up, but since you brought it up, I'll go down this tangent.
00:20:16.820I was so annoyed at shop this morning.
00:20:19.460Generally, I find shop, like, fairly convenient to use.
00:20:22.880they do a good job tracking packages when I'm buying from some kind of retailer. But the
00:20:26.640limitation that drives me up the wall is that, so like earlier this week, I ordered two different
00:20:33.180packages from two different retailers. They're both being delivered and tracked by shop. Okay.
00:20:38.820I got a text message notification that says like, Hey, your package is being delivered today. I was
00:20:44.020curious, which of my two items was it going to be? I can't know that without using the shop app.
00:20:50.280There's no way to do it through the web.
00:20:51.900There's no way to do it unless I install the shop app on my phone.
00:20:55.820I was surprised that I didn't have the shop app on my phone.
00:20:58.640So I went to install it and then remembered that I had been here before and the app will not install properly unless I give it access to read all of my emails.
00:21:08.660Why in the world do they need to read all of my emails?
00:21:48.660So, yeah, so tangent ended, but I'm glad that I had the opportunity to connect it to this story because, you know, once your information is out there, it's out there.
00:24:06.240Well, so the thing that really worries me about the Glassdoor situation is that I think I have to imagine that it's going to be a lot of traditionally marginalized people who are going to suffer if this is just how Glassdoor functions from now on.0.94
00:24:22.700Right. I can imagine that it is women, trans folks, queer folks, people of color who are
00:24:29.220raising the alarm about things like racial or gender discrimination or like sexual harassment.
00:24:34.020And I can't help but understanding this story against this creep toward not being able to use
00:24:41.180forums that were previously available to you to privately raise the alarms about concerns,
00:24:47.040you know, especially given that we're seeing more and more people who do speak up about
00:24:52.700wrongdoing facing things like defamation lawsuits for doing so. We're not just talking about people
00:24:58.460who are complaining about their boss's coffee breath or whatever. It is people who a lot of
00:25:02.700times are raising serious alarms or serious concerns in a forum that one might think would
00:25:09.300be anonymous or private for them to do so safely. And so I really can't help but see the story
00:25:14.420against that backdrop of like, well, shoot, are people going to be able to use Glassdoor safely
00:28:29.520We were looking at the lens, and what we are putting forth in the brief
00:28:32.660was talking about the increased cost to us to attract and retain talent in Texas,
00:28:36.780The increased costs for us to provide health care benefits to our employees, we found that because of our position, having been founded with women at the forefront from the beginning and having that voice and that legitimacy to begin with, we could combine that with this very business-centric argument and help support that case.
00:28:52.680This actually led to a bunch of businesses from all over Texas signing onto this amicus brief, pointing out that these kind of extremist abortion laws really do put their business in jeopardy by making it harder to recruit top talent.
00:29:04.880And Bumble specifically said that they had started to offer like an enhanced health care coverage that includes things like gender affirming care and IVF, because those kinds of health care have been threatened in the state.
00:29:16.660Although part of me wonders, you know, it's good to have that coverage included.
00:29:22.840But if that kind of health care is illegal and you can't access it in Texas, it does kind of seem like a moot point.
00:29:31.720Yeah, I'm curious about that, but I don't know anything about it.
00:29:34.420Yeah, but overall, I mean, I do think that of all the different avenues to be talking about how restrictive abortion laws impact people negatively, I do think I want to hear more from the business community because certainly it is an economic issue, not just for the people who need abortions, for the people who do any kind of business all over the country, in addition to being a reproductive health issue.
00:29:58.400And so I do want to see more businesses, particularly businesses who are, you know, are about, you know, sticking up with women, sticking up with marginalized people.
00:30:09.560I want to see more of these businesses weighing in as we go into this more and more extremist restrictive climate.
00:30:17.260I mean, there's so many reasons why giving people reproductive freedom and allowing them to make their own medical choices is like a win-win for society, right?
00:30:27.600Like not just businesses, but also in terms of like the huge costs of unwanted pregnancies, right?
00:30:38.220Like to individuals, to health care systems, to social services for years and years.
00:30:47.260Well, to that end, we have to talk about the growth in misinformation swirling around social media around birth control.
00:30:54.460So there is this new, very detailed report by the Washington Post about how social media platforms are awash in medically inaccurate content about birth control and how it is leading to real world consequences.
00:31:07.300You should definitely read the entire thing.
00:31:11.240But basically, you have these like health influencers, I'm using that in heavy scare quotes, and also right wing extremists really trying to scare people into thinking that birth control is dangerous.
00:31:26.140Now, birth control, like any other medication, does have side effects. In rare cases, it can cause things like blood clots. That is real. But these people are not trying to foster fact-based conversations about the real concerns around birth control. They're saying nonsense, like, oh, birth control, if you take it, it will change your entire personality. It will change the kind of people that you are sexually attracted to. Things that are just fear-mongering and nonsense.
00:31:55.020So you have these health influencers suggesting natural forms of non-hormonal birth control, like only having sex on your period, which, by the way, does not work. And this is all particularly fraught, given how restrictive abortion access is in this country right now and how criminalized it is.
00:32:14.540So you have people with these big platforms essentially suggesting people stop using birth control and instead only have sex on their periods, like a method that is known for unintended pregnancies in a country where you cannot easily access abortion care if you need it or can be criminalized and sent to prison for doing so.
00:32:33.640So this is really one of those issues where you can see how tech issues and social media platform issues are also reproductive rights issues and gender issues.
00:32:45.020doctors are saying that they're seeing an explosion of birth control misinformation online,
00:32:50.280targeting a very vulnerable demographic, people in their teens and early 20s, who are more likely
00:32:55.720to believe what they see on their phones because of algorithms that feed them a stream of videos
00:33:00.620reinforcing messages often divorced from scientific evidence. While doctors say hormonal contraception
00:33:07.240is safe and effective, they worry about the profession's longstanding lack of transparency
00:33:12.200and some of the serious but rare side effects that have left many patients seeking information
00:33:17.760from unqualified online communities. So I have actually personally seen a lot of this on social
00:33:25.200media, I'm sad to say. Just like most abortion advocates told us, anti-choice extremists and
00:33:33.620people who want to tell other people what to do with their own bodies were never going to stop
00:33:37.440at abortion. It was going to be birth control. Weirdly, it was also tampons. For a while,
00:33:43.840I was seeing that bubble up, right-wing extremists basically suggesting that having
00:33:49.800tampons in school bathrooms meant that teachers in schools were sexually abusing
00:33:58.380young people. I remember seeing this post that was someone being like,
00:34:03.700as a father, it should be up to me whether or not my daughter uses a tampon. And a school should
00:34:10.880have no say in whether or not my daughter uses a tampon. He was angry that the school was providing
00:34:15.020tampons in the washrooms. So anybody watching this could have told you it was not going to
00:34:20.620stop with abortion. It was going to be all of these different things that pertain to reproductive
00:34:25.960health being demonized. So this backlash to birth control really comes at a time where we see this
00:34:33.180rampant misinformation about basic health combined with really, really poor digital literacy and
00:34:41.480this wider political debate around reproductive rights in which far-right conservatives argue
00:34:47.040that the broad acceptance of birth control has altered traditional roles and weakened the family.
00:34:52.240And so if you're wondering, what does Ben Shapiro or Candace Owen care whether or not I use birth
00:34:57.940control, that's sort of their ultimate point is that birth control is changing gender roles. It's
00:35:04.880changing how we think of traditional families, and therefore it's bad. So in a Daily Wire video,
00:35:11.220Candace Owens denounced birth control and IUDs as, quote, unnatural, saying she is a big advocate
00:35:18.500of getting women to realize this stuff is not normal. She also says that her viewers told her
00:35:24.400that IUDs can harm fertility, which medical experts agree there is no evidence that birth
00:35:29.760control impacts long-term fertility. So that's just not true. Also, she's kind of doing a little
00:35:35.800bit of an Elon Musk thing. I don't know if you watched any of that Elon Musk interview with Don
00:35:41.160Lemon, where Don Lemon is like, what evidence do you have that black pilots are being held to lower
00:35:47.560standards? And he's like, well, people on Twitter say that all the time. And it's like, no, that
00:36:29.040And I don't even have a little joke to make.0.94
00:36:31.080It's just such a ridiculous point that I can't believe that somebody with a massive platform is allowed to just go on TV, go on their platform, spread dangerous falsehoods that are not just untrue, but also silly.0.68
00:36:44.400Many of these people who are like railing against birth control, it's not like they have families of like 20 kids, right? Like a lot of these political commentators have pretty small families. And one has to imagine that that has helped them in their professional careers to achieve the massive platforms that they have. Are we supposed to believe that none of them have used birth control?0.92
00:37:09.280Well, the thing with Candace Owen is she's a liar and a grifter and a scammer, baby. She'll say anything about anybody. It's not worth it to try to hold her to any kind of a standard that makes sense. That is not what she is about.1.00
00:37:26.700And I would say, like, publicly, this is not what she, I don't, I don't think, I think that she would agree that's not what she's about. Like, she says things about how women shouldn't work, how when she gets on a plane and she sees a woman pilot, she thinks, oh, no, we're going to die today.
00:37:40.220baby you have a job you have a career you are a woman who works you are a working mom so when you0.99
00:37:46.360go on tv and you go on your little podcast and you demonize working moms look at a mirror because
00:37:51.760you are a mom with a job you make a ton of money you go to work every day i don't want to hear it1.00
00:37:57.600obviously if you are a person of reproductive age who is building a career you have probably
00:38:04.060used birth control at some point to buttress that career and to have control over your life
00:38:09.300and more power to you you should everybody should be able to make health decisions for themselves0.69
00:38:13.780however candace owens she just says whatever like and so when it comes to her especially
00:38:19.400i don't think it's worth trying to make heads or tails of what she's saying because she'll say
00:38:24.520anything for a check she's like mia off of real housewives of potomac she'll say whatever
00:38:28.520if you don't watch potomac mia lies that's my point mia just catching strange1.00
00:38:33.820doesn't she have enough problems right now she does she does i should lay off mia and also mia
00:38:40.080this is a whole other topic but mia has kind of like become my fan favorite so even though she's0.94
00:38:45.580a liar um so washington post spoke to britney martinez who is the founder of evie magazine
00:38:52.200which you can kind of think of as like a right-wing cosmo and she said in an email to the post that0.87
00:38:57.720her outlet's work has made questioning birth control mainstream saying women have been silenced
00:39:03.460and shamed by legacy media, the pharmaceutical industry, and in many cases by their own doctors
00:39:08.060who have gaslit them about their experiences with hormonal birth control. So this comment to me
00:39:14.060really illustrates nicely how bad actors like this work, right? They seize on the very real
00:39:21.020and very legitimate anxieties or fears or baggage that marginalized people have. She is right up1.00
00:39:28.500until a point that women really have been silenced and ignored about our medical issues by doctors
00:39:36.580and a pharmaceutical industry that do not often seem to really care about our pain, about our
00:39:43.340health, about our bodies. So that part is true. But where she fucks up is that she then cruelly
00:39:49.860exploits these anxieties and these very real tensions and baggage that we have to push her1.00
00:39:57.200own dangerous agenda. And that is something we see time and time again with bad actors and
00:40:02.020extremists like this. Something else this report points out is how these bad actors are exploiting
00:40:06.860racialized and gendered fears and anxieties around medical information to further push
00:40:12.620harmful, inaccurate information about birth control. The report reads,
00:40:16.860women of color whose communities have historically been exploited by the medical establishment
00:40:20.560may be particularly vulnerable to misinformation given the long history of mistrust around birth
00:40:26.220control in this country. That's from Kimberly Baker, an assistant professor at UT Health Houston
00:40:30.840School of Public Health. Forced sterilization of tens of thousands of primarily Black, Latina,
00:40:36.340and Indigenous women happened under the U.S. government programs in the 20th century.
00:40:40.360That's another huge reason why these negative videos around birth control get a lot of fanfare,
00:40:45.100because there's already stigma attached to it, and that's deep in our history. And so
00:40:49.680you really do see these bad actors cruelly and callously picking at and exploiting these very
00:40:58.760real traumas that our communities have been carrying around for decades for real reasons
00:41:03.740and exploiting it. And sometimes they're exploiting people and their anxieties and baggage and trauma
00:41:09.680for money. A lot of these people, when they're like health influencers, in quotes, they'll be
00:41:16.220talking about how birth control is unnatural or dangerous. And then you go to their page and
00:41:20.780they're selling some kind of a hormonal supplement or a hormonal coaching, something that is just
00:41:26.440like BS. And so they're scaring people in order to scam them and they have a financial incentive
00:41:33.720to do so. And honestly, doctors are already seeing the IRL impact. The report talks about
00:41:40.000how doctors are seeing more and more people come into their offices asking about something related
00:41:45.100to birth control that they saw on TikTok. One doctor says people are putting themselves out
00:41:50.160there as experts on birth control and speaking to things that the science does not bear out.
00:41:55.080I'm seeing the direct failures of this misinformation. He says that women frequently
00:41:59.640come into his office for abortions after believing what they saw in social media
00:42:03.440about the dangers of hormonal birth control and the effectiveness of tracking periods to prevent
00:42:08.420pregnancy. Many of these patients have traveled from states that have completely or partially
00:42:12.820banned abortions, such as Texas, Idaho, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
00:42:18.120And we really can't even have this conversation without talking about how it is supported
00:42:38.180And so rather than giving them some sort of an alternate viewpoint, it just completely
00:42:42.100builds up this rabbit hole and buries them in it.
00:42:45.920A 20-year-old college student who went down an algorithmically supported rabbit hole on
00:42:50.380birth control misinformation said, it created this sense of fear that if I ever needed to
00:42:54.860be put on birth control, I would become a completely different person.
00:42:58.480I would gain a bunch of weight and my life would be over.
00:43:01.400I was like, well, obviously this is true.
00:43:03.780This applies to everybody because it's the only thing I'm seeing.
00:43:07.040So I do think that platforms bear some responsibility here to make sure that the people that use their platforms are not just being sent down more and more extremist, dangerous rabbit holes when it comes to something as important as their reproductive health.
00:43:22.120And I do think that like, this is related to something I feel I've seen more and more, where people, I just feel like there is a subset of people who will believe absolutely anything they see on TikTok.
00:43:39.900Yeah, I think that's probably right. And I don't think it's limited to TikTok. We've talked about this a lot. And definitely digital literacy is a big thing. But I think we should be really careful not to put it on the people who are digitally illiterate and being swayed by this information and keep the focus on the people who are pushing it.
00:44:03.140Like, so I, you know, saw that we were going to talk about this today and I had this big question, like, who are these people and what is their motivation for pushing this misinformation, right? We talked about misinformation on this show a lot, you know, like political misinformation or disingenuous accounts that are trying to create racial disharmony just to like destabilize things.
00:44:24.240But this one really got me. It's like, what sort of monster would push anti-birth control information and why? And I guess you provided a couple pretty good explanations here. Just like the engagement farming of it, it gets engagement.
00:44:45.660And people who have a financial investment in it. So if I'm selling hormonal supplements and I'm like, oh, hormonal birth control is bad. If you take it, you've ruined your hormonal system. But if you buy my pills, we can get this back on track. Money, please.
00:45:02.520Yeah. And then also the it connects to stuff we talked about before, where it feels like there's a big effort largely on the right, but not limited to the right to just discredit the medical and scientific community in general and just destroy the idea of expertise and promote the idea that every influencer can be their own expert and do their own research.
00:47:36.520Well, the piece really does a good job of speaking to doctors who are looking inward at the medical profession and wondering, like, have we created this problem by failing to have transparency and failing to make patients, many of whom are women, feel like we are adequately listening to them and answering their questions?
00:47:58.160And I would argue that like, typically speaking, when you have some sort of dynamic like this, where bad actors and BS influencers and grifters are able to really take up a lot of space, there is some like institutional failing that has allowed those people to take up so much space in a conversation.
00:48:15.840And I think that's really what we're seeing. Like people, women, when it comes to reproductive health, women have historically not really been listened to. There's an entire legacy and history of the medical community not listening to and not taking seriously the pain and issues of women.
00:48:34.620And, you know, we also live in a world where any health care that is about people who are not cisgender men, so when it comes to queer people or trans people, I think that that is inherently othered.
00:48:49.460And so I think that these doctors are not wrong to be like, well, in what ways have we really failed the people who come to us looking for care that allows for grifters and extremists to take over the conversation and for that to feel like something that is actually accurate?
00:49:04.620But I do think that you're right that there is this larger demonization of expertise and medical professionals and people who know what they're talking about. That report talked to this, I guess, some sort of hormonal influencer who had her content taken down from TikTok for being medical misinformation. And she was like, oh, well, I actually think it's fine to take it down because I think that people should be doing their own research.
00:49:28.840And it's like, well, yes, but if you're not a doctor, doing your own research into medical information is kind of a tall order, right?
00:49:40.600Like, I'm not a doctor. I would not pretend to be able to make heads or tails of medical research.
00:49:45.960And so it's really cunning how they put it back on people to really further erode trust in the medical profession more generally.
00:49:56.140And I think you're right that we should not be demonizing people who fall for this, because I think a lot of people, when you're in a place where you've just been consuming a lot of information that is really scary, and you're already in a mental or emotional place where you're not feeling heard, not feeling supported, you're looking for alternative avenues for information out there.
00:50:20.680I think that it can put anybody in a place where they're more receptive to these kinds of grifters and extremists, right? And it is being buttressed by an incredibly powerful algorithm that is pushing you toward that conclusion, right?
00:50:37.280So it's not, you're not, it's not just you're stupid and gullible.1.00
00:50:41.860There are forces that are pushing you toward it.1.00
00:50:57.720But like, as some of y'all who know me in real life know, like I had a pretty tough
00:51:02.400go of it with COVID and I got COVID multiple times.
00:51:06.060And I got it one time that was so bad that it really, like, it just really, like, knocked the wind out of my sails for a very long time, right? And so, like, long COVID is one of those things that I do think that, like, I've gleaned that it's not the kind of thing that people want to hear about.
00:51:24.640And so it's this kind of thing that you're like often dealing with in a way that feels very isolated because it's like, you know, you're dealing with the symptoms and you're dealing with the fatigue and you're dealing with the brain fog, but then you glean that people don't really want to hear you complain about it.
00:51:39.340So then you're dealing with all of that alone.
00:51:40.700And when you're dealing with stuff alone, it pushes you to the internet, which then algorithmically supports you to fall down rabbit holes that are not necessarily good for you and also happen to be inclusive of people who are trying to make a quick buck off of your issue, off of your isolation, off of your anxieties.
00:51:59.820And so I know I am somebody who talks about this for a living. And even I got pretty wrapped up in taking advice like wellness and health advice from randos on TikTok. Right. And so I started like because I felt so crummy and because I was so isolated in feeling crummy, it really did lead me to like using social media to figure out what was going on and figure out how I might be better.
00:52:24.960So I started taking supplements that like randos are suggesting you take on social media in a kind of a low, dark moment.
00:52:33.540Then I'm like, wait a minute, maybe it's time for a blood test.
00:52:38.660The doctor is like, yeah, whatever supplements you're on, stop taking them.
00:52:42.060They're not doing anything for you and they're actually making your health worse.
00:52:45.880And so I don't feel good sharing that.
00:52:49.180But I look back on that, and I'm like, yeah, I was at a low moment when I didn't feel like I had a lot of support, and I didn't feel like I could really talk about what I was experiencing, but was desperate for a quick fix. And it got me, right? The algorithms are powerful. The algorithms get you.
00:53:06.180you see somebody on TikTok who looks like they have their shit together, who like is presenting0.83
00:53:10.900a kind of a life or a version of yourself that you are, that you see something in and you're0.95
00:53:15.860like, oh, I want that to be me. Next thing you know, you're buying supplements that don't even
00:53:19.820fucking regulate it. And so I just think that like, nobody should be getting, take it from me,0.95
00:53:25.600somebody who had to see a real doctor to straighten that out. Don't get your health or medical advice
00:53:29.980from some rando on TikTok who might not even have any actual qualifications or also might have an
00:53:36.380agenda that is actually harmful to you. These people are scammers. They are grifters. They
00:53:40.880are making money from your isolation, from your fear, from your concern, from your worry, from
00:53:45.980your late nights. The most radical thing we can do is break that system that tells us that these
00:53:52.080people know what we need. I know it is tough. I know that we are silenced. I know that we're not
00:53:57.000listened to, but like forking your money over to a grifter is never the answer. And so back to
00:54:04.460what's happening with these birth control grifters, none of this stuff is happening in a vacuum
00:54:09.920because we are already seeing legislation trying to limit access to birth control. These influencers,
00:54:16.820their messaging really helps drive this legislation, limiting access to hormonal birth control.
00:54:22.140This is from Amanda Stevenson, a sociologist, demographer, and assistant professor at the
00:54:26.200University of Colorado at Boulder, who is studying how anti-abortion activists and lawmakers are
00:54:30.860trying to restrict birth control. Already, Republican legislators in Missouri have tried,
00:54:36.040albeit unsuccessfully, to stop the state's Medicaid program from covering IUDs and emergency
00:54:41.440contraceptives. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit this month
00:54:45.660upheld a Texas law requiring minors to obtain parental permission before accessing birth
00:54:50.980control. So all of this is sort of like working together, right? These grifters and influencers
00:54:56.860using social media to drum up fear about birth control and anxiety about birth control as
00:55:02.640harmful, and then right-wing lawmakers passing legislation to then limit and legislate birth
00:55:08.960control more harshly. It's a real clusterfuck. So speaking of clusterfucks, Mike, do you ever0.99