Kendall Jenner inspired Meta chatbot lures a man to his death; AI TikToks distort DC; VTubers Sell Out Stadiums; Kayfabe is Everywhere; Tea App Update – NEWS ROUNDUP w⧸ Dexter Thomas
00:03:06.980a type of content creator that uses a virtual,
00:03:08.940often anime-style character as a kind of avatar.
00:03:12.000These people are like selling out IRL concert venues and performing with like real backing bands in front of real audiences that cannot get enough.
00:03:21.640I actually learned about this phenomenon from your reporting in Wired.0.98
00:03:25.580Is that a fair assessment of what VTubers are?
00:03:29.300yeah so man um v so vtubers essentially if you've ever used or seen that kind of you know animoji
00:03:38.320type thing on an iphone where you can show where you can have an like an avatar like an emoji
00:03:46.160reacting to what your face does it's only a little bit more complicated than that and so essentially
00:03:51.240these uh vtuber is kind of what it sounds like it's a virtual youtuber somebody who streams
00:03:56.460and they just don't show their face or their body.
00:04:21.760a mini festival at the Vermont Theater
00:04:23.360that brought together eight main vtuber acts what was this like um man you know i knew stuff like
00:04:33.080this existed but i'd never really been to one so i've i've been to anime expo a couple times
00:04:39.820i presented actually at anime expo um but and so i knew this sort of thing existed but essentially
00:04:45.760just imagine going to a concert and the singer the main attraction is on a screen and they never
00:04:54.980step on the stage because they can't because they're not real which by the way i'm not supposed
00:05:01.380to say that i'm not supposed to say these people aren't real but i'm saying the whole thing right
00:05:06.480like they pretend like they're sort of everybody's sort of in on the joke like what do you mean they're
00:05:10.820not real right right yeah so this is so anybody who's ever watched uh wwe who's ever watched
00:05:15.880wrestling will will know this word kayfabe so kayfabe is essentially kind of pretending that
00:05:23.260something is real even though you know that it's not because it's more fun and so you know when we
00:05:29.280watched hulk hogan and the macho man you know hit each other over the head with chairs we knew that
00:05:34.640they'd planned it out beforehand but it's way more fun and if you think about it you know a ufc fight
00:05:39.960some of those things are really boring because it's over in like five seconds because somebody
00:05:43.440gets their leg broken and that's not fun for me but watching two dudes beat each other up
00:05:47.920in this weird sweaty soap opera for 20 minutes and there's drama and you think this guy's gonna
00:05:53.060lose and that guy's gonna lose and then somebody jumps off the top rope who wasn't even in the
00:05:57.240match period it's fun and so that is kayfabe and really interestingly in english anyway
00:06:03.080of vtubers and their and their fans will use that same word that wrestling fans use kayfabe
00:06:09.100And the idea is that it's not fake. It's that we are all creating this play together. And so it's even more involved, I would argue, than wrestling. But the same kind of underlying principle there.
00:06:23.480you're talking very glowingly about this but in your piece something that i like is that you you
00:06:29.680kind of talked about being a little bit skeptical at first you write a music purist might scoff at
00:06:35.160all this to say that vtuber fans don't even like music they dislike anime and the whole scene is
00:06:40.640fake full disclosure here i will admit that i walked into the venue with a touch of this mentality
00:06:44.880but that slowly turned into an existential crisis who can say their favorite genre isn't also fake
00:06:51.220So I guess my big question is, is this is it is it fake or does that even matter?
00:06:56.400Does the question of real or fake even really matter at this point?
00:06:59.520You know what? For me, I mean, and it's weird hearing my words right back to me.
00:07:04.340But yes, I did write those words. And it's true. It's true.
00:07:07.460But here's the thing is that you could say that the VTuber stuff is fake.
00:07:12.480And to be real, most of it is not my cup of tea, mostly because I'm not really into anime music.
00:07:20.540unless i like this specific anime and and that there's only a small you know group of anime
00:07:27.480tracks that i would say i like you know i like this uh you know cowboy bebop you can't really
00:07:32.940that soundtrack yeah classic you know the og dragon ball theme song can't deny that the og
00:07:39.900soundtrack uh you know in some weird obscure like 80s stuff 70s stuff that i like because
00:07:45.340there was a live action spider-man in in japan in the 70s like it's it's i like that stuff i like
00:07:52.180that kind of stuff the current stuff not really my flavor that's really kind of what you would
00:07:56.300hear these sort of things not really my flavor but um if you're talking about fake at some point
00:08:02.500you have to start talking about rap music and hip-hop is obsessed with reality and yet drake
00:08:10.440has fans and yet rick ross has fans and 99.9 of these dudes who are rapping about stuff that they
00:08:17.880did they did not do it they didn't even see it and do any of us truly care we kind of pretend we do
00:08:24.660but if it sounds good we're kind of cool with it and so really we're rap is also kayfabe rap is
00:08:30.480the biggest kayfabe market i would argue maybe in the world we all just pretend that you know
00:08:36.560Oh, these dudes are doing the stuff they said they did it because it sounds kind of cool to, you know, chant the lyrics along with them in your car or whatever.0.53
00:08:42.960So, you know, I can't I can't really hate on the VTubers and their fans because they're doing something very similar to what I do and what I've been doing for years.0.94
00:08:50.400Are you saying that it's possible that Drake didn't really start from the bottom?0.95
00:08:54.140Is that what you're is that what you're suggesting right now?
00:08:58.480I am asserting that there are years of televised evidence that that man did not start anywhere near what a reasonable person would consider the bottom.
00:09:23.120One of the points that you made in the piece was that, you know, this is one thing when we're talking about a human using a digital avatar, but what the future could sort of look like when you have AI generated, like the whole thing is AI generated, like not humans using a digital avatar.
00:09:38.900How does this fandom feel about that possibility?
00:09:40.820Yeah. So my opinion, and I still hold this opinion, is that VTubers and their fans will be the first one of the first markets that AI will start to encroach on or AI will try to encroach on.
00:09:56.940Because if you think of it, they're almost kind of halfway there.0.90
00:09:59.600They've already removed the physical person from the visual, at least, because, you know, people are fans of somebody whose physical body.0.99
00:10:07.140You know, I'm breaking kayfabe here, but somebody whose physical body they will never see because most of these VTubers will never show their body or their face.0.89
00:10:16.260Matter of fact, there's probably a lot of VTubers who would refuse to be interviewed because they want to keep, you know, keep that line.0.90
00:10:24.380but you know i think the one of the things that really surprised me was a lot of the fans actually0.63
00:10:33.100all the fans that i talked to told me we would never accept ai we do not want ai anywhere near
00:10:39.940this culture at all and i found that really really interesting because i'm not sure that
00:10:45.320that's necessarily the case for a lot of other genres i mean there was that psych rock group
00:10:50.580I'm forgetting what they're called Velvet Sundown or something like that we talked about them on
00:10:54.920the podcast exactly yeah and and you know what one of the biggest genres is a genre that I've
00:11:01.340personally had beef with for a very long time uh lo-fi lo-fi hip-hop lo-fi don't mean lo-fi hip-hop
00:11:06.860doesn't mean anything it's just boring soulless backtracking it's it's it's homework it's homework
00:11:13.140background music that's all it is like it's not music uh for me this is my personal opinion right
00:11:18.060Um, that has been absolutely ravaged by AI because here's the, here's the big difference
00:11:25.320between say lo-fi hip hop and VTubers is I defy you.
00:11:30.440Anybody who says you like lo-fi hip hop, tell me five artists and no Nujabes doesn't count.0.99
00:11:37.200You can't, I guarantee you can't, you, you, you're, you're a fan of just a background1.00
00:11:43.060vibe. VTuber fans are fans of a very specific persona. And at least for now, they seem to want
00:11:51.140to know that a human is attached with that. Will that change? Will somebody convince them in the
00:11:55.640future? I don't know. But for me, I feel like, man, if they get the VTuber fans with this anti-AIs
00:12:01.520they are right now, if they get the VTubers, we're next. Everybody's next. They're going to get all
00:12:07.500of us that's such a good point i think that's i mean i am not above putting on lo-fi beats to chill
00:12:14.520and study to you could not name an artist if it if it's not the girl in front of the the anime girl
00:12:20.500in front of the rainy window yes that's the only person i could name and it's not a person and she
00:12:27.560didn't make the music that is something that somebody drew and it's lo-fi beats to study to
00:12:32.180it's the it's the girl in the cafe with the rain in the back she didn't make any of that music
00:12:36.360and yeah people can't people can't name a lo-fi artist they'll they'll say new job is
00:12:41.120if they say dilla i will get extremely angry because dilla is not lo-fi dilla is his own
00:12:46.160genre dilla is hip-hop but yeah it's a it it's interesting to watch people try to explain why
00:12:54.160they don't like vtuber stuff and everything they say about the genre or about the culture
00:13:01.380is stuff you could absolutely say about the stuff that they're into.
00:13:05.720It's just a slightly different version of it.
00:13:07.780So, you know, I love being around people who are just into stuff.
00:13:20.240And I have to wonder if part of this is or part of the hate that VTubers get
00:13:24.460is because it's something associated with very passionate young girls.
00:13:28.300Like one of the artists that you talked to said, you know, how can I make all these connections and prove not just to myself, but to other people that it is not silly to be an anime girl on the Internet.
00:13:39.600But then you go on to report how this is big business.
00:13:58.300I mean, I wanted that quote that you just said, it's not silly to be an anime girl on the internet. I wanted that to be the title of the Wired piece. We changed the headline. But I wanted it to just be that. For Killswitch, for the podcast, we made that the title. I had a little bit more control over that.
00:14:14.000But but yeah, I think, you know, let's keep in mind that the people who are the creators here often is young women or women in general. Right. And there's some dudes out there who that bothers them for some reason.
00:14:32.720You know, again, we could say things about the appearance of the models, whatever you
00:14:58.760And let's just say there's a lot going on in the city at the time.
00:15:02.720the moment i first want to thank folks who reached out after the episode that we did about the dc
00:15:08.320situation uh obviously it is a ongoing situation but somebody left a comment on spotify saying
00:15:16.460their personal tiktok algorithm was really showing them a ton of content about how bad crime in dc is
00:15:23.340which is so interesting because as we know crime here in dc has hit a 30-year low but right right
00:15:28.920now, TikTok is awash in these mostly AI-generated fake videos depicting crime and homelessness
00:15:36.920in D.C. A lot of these videos are using, I guess they'll call it my old nemesis, Google's VO3,
00:15:44.460a platform that we've talked about before in our episode about these very racist AI-generated
00:15:50.920videos featuring Black women. But now they're using VO3 to make these, I would argue, pretty0.97
00:15:57.940obviously ai generated videos depicting homelessness and crime in dc yeah they'll often sort of be a
00:16:04.960mix of mostly accurate but vague reporting about the situation in dc right as 404 media puts it
00:16:13.920unlike previous efforts to flood the zone with ai slop in the aftermath of a disaster or major
00:16:19.400news events some of the videos blend real footage with ai footage making it harder than ever to tell
00:16:24.860what's real and what's not which has the effect of distorting people's understanding of the
00:16:28.900military occupation of dc so i have seen these videos on my feed which is so interesting that
00:16:35.080in that like i live in dc so i have a pretty good sense of like what's going on here but these
00:16:41.620videos are very persistent have you seen any of these yeah yeah i've seen them shout out to 404
00:16:46.680by the way um just continually doing important really really important tech uh reporting out
00:16:54.080there i'm biased i know the people who found it but just truly punching above their weight they're
00:17:00.140doing such incredible stuff recently yeah we i mean i we were subscribers i'm a huge fan i don't
00:17:08.080think our podcast would exist without 404 because also they i feel like mine would not either my
00:17:13.780kill switch would not exist like quote me on that kill switch would not exist without 404 and
00:17:19.840And frankly, I think that there are a there is a lot of tech reporting that some New York Times would not have some of the stuff that they have with.
00:17:28.080It wasn't for 404, 404 people really actually.
00:17:31.920I was going to say people are sleeping on 404.
00:27:41.000So we were talking about all of this AI-generated content about crime and homelessness in D.C. right now as Trump is taking over D.C.'s police force.
00:27:49.060these videos will use VO3 to create these AI-generated videos about what's happening in
00:27:55.280DC. They will film them with the cadence of a news broadcast that kind of mixes in
00:27:59.700vague but mostly accurate information about what's going on. Then that video will do numbers.
00:28:06.440Somebody else will say, oh, I want to make a video that capitalizes a little bit on that
00:28:09.880engagement. So they will take that already AI-generated video, use TikTok's green screen
00:28:16.420function and then layer another video on top of it so a lot of the videos that are ai generated
00:28:21.600sometimes they are a mix of ai and real content but they the result is this kind of like weird
00:28:27.580ai what's the name of that snake that's eating its own tail ouroboros yes it's like a weird
00:28:33.060ai ouroboros where these videos are kind of like just cloning each other in increasingly extreme
00:28:41.780yet increasingly glitchy videos and yeah they still do numbers people i i always to your point
00:28:48.900about you know if you think you're always going to be able to to distinguish ai from reality or
00:28:53.680fooling yourself which i agree but in these videos where it's like well this doesn't even seem like
00:28:57.460anything that could ever happen this video is clearly something's up in the comments people
00:29:02.740are like oh thank god president trump is taking over yeah yeah and and everybody's got their
00:29:08.020weak points where like if if this was in another country you might not recognize that oh this
00:29:14.280couldn't happen if it's showing something in some country you've never been to you might believe it
00:29:18.460because you've heard a little bit about and why why wouldn't it be i mean one i i saw we saw i
00:29:24.980think we've actually seen a lot of early previews of this in la weirdly this year because well first
00:29:30.420there was you know the feds have been out here uh so a lot of the stuff that's happening in dc
00:29:34.680They were doing it out here. I'd be out in the streets filming all day and hear, yeah, LA is on fire. No, I was there today. I'm here now. I'm looking at people saying online, oh yeah, they're burning down all the buildings. Nothing has burned down. Somebody burned a Waymo, yes, but the buildings are not on fire.
00:29:55.020I was hearing this, you know, and shoot, the the the actual fire, speaking of fires in L.A., there was someone who was making or there were a lot of people who were making these fake videos using slightly more primitive now versions of AI generated video that had the Hollywood sign on fire.
00:30:14.360Yes. Yeah. And I found someone who after it was determined that those were fake, this person finds, decides, you know what? I think what might work here is let me show firefighters saving baby animals from the fires.
00:30:29.440and man the most interesting thing was it would be these really cute you know firefighters saving
00:30:35.780these cute baby bears saving little foxes and if you really really look at it you can recognize
00:30:42.220that it was fake but man it it would fool you for a little bit it will fool you for a bit and the
00:30:47.960really interesting thing was people get in the comments and get mad because there's people who
00:30:52.200live here in LA and would say, I live here, stop, stop exploiting my home for likes or money or
00:31:00.260whatever the heck you're doing. But you'd also see people saying, thank God for the firefighters.
00:31:05.160God bless the firefighters. They're protecting the animals. Nobody cares about the animals,
00:31:08.220but they're protecting the animals. And you get people saying, hey man, this is fake.
00:31:12.140And then those people would get angry. People, I think this is, this is a phenomenon that we're
00:31:17.140not ready for people truly becoming angry when you point out that something is not real to them
00:31:25.060because again it fulfills an emotional need that they have whether they want to believe something
00:31:29.880or a common response is well maybe this image isn't true but i bet stuff like this is happening
00:31:36.480maybe maybe this video of the entire national mall being covered end-to-end intense maybe this
00:31:44.620individual video isn't true but i know it's like that out there crime is running rampant
00:31:50.800president trump thank you god bless trump for saving us from the criminals it's people are
00:31:56.780getting angry when this stuff is pointed out to them and yeah i uh i don't know if we're ready
00:32:01.660for that oh that's such a good point so your point about ai speaking to like a sweet spot or
00:32:07.640a vulnerability i i've only recently come to realize that i have a vulnerability about animal
00:32:12.140content and so it it gets me i've gotten i i have come to realize i when i see a video that
00:32:20.720purports to show an animal doing something cute i need to really pump them that should be a warning
00:32:25.660to me because i i have a it's like i i'm i'm the person i'm becoming the person that is like
00:32:31.140spamming their friends with ai content it's like bridget it's not real it's happened a handful of
00:32:37.200times and it's clearly it's clear it's clearly some sort of a trigger with me and yeah i mean
00:32:43.420i can understand why it is affirming to see firefighters save and like somebody listening
00:32:51.160is probably saying well if if you're making an ai video of firefighters saving baby animals
00:32:56.040and that makes people feel grateful for the work that firefighters do what's the harm but just like
00:33:00.940you said it's using a real community's actual crisis to yeah i don't know almost like milk our
00:33:09.700emotions by by ai generated situations it's it's it's manipulation yeah and you know what i talked
00:33:17.460to the person who was doing this and i asked them hey do you live in la and they said no i live in
00:33:22.040russia um and and they told me the exact same thing they told me i am drawing attention to and
00:33:28.760they told everybody else this when when people got mad they posted in the comments the gist of it is
00:33:33.300hey the firefighters don't have time to make dramatic content showing their bravery so i'm
00:33:40.720doing it for them and this person was also if you looked at the link in their bio they were showing
00:33:46.440it was a link to this mini course that you could buy to make viral videos oh they have a grip in
00:33:52.380there oh yeah oh man i mean you know i can't say exactly how much money they were making but they
00:33:57.180It was, you know, based off the numbers that they were claiming, you know, they probably had a couple of days where they were making five, 10 G's a day.
00:34:06.160OK, we're clearly in the wrong market.
00:34:11.000And I know some people would look at that and say, man, this is terrible.
00:34:14.340But there's maybe one in a thousand people who will say, you know what, I can make some money off of this and it's not too hard.
00:34:20.300All I got to do is something that makes people feel something.
00:34:25.220Yeah, feel something for long enough, even if it's anger, feel something for long enough to leave a comment, leave a like, share with somebody, even leave an angry comment because algorithm understands engagement. And so, yeah, we're we're we're I think we're focused so much on the ability to to have safeguards to be able to tell real and fake stuff when we're we're not dealing with the logic centers of our brain here.
00:34:51.560We're dealing with some way more primal.
00:34:53.900And I just don't know that we're ready for that, frankly.
00:34:56.860I am in a couple of groups online for women in AI sort of.
00:35:01.720I'm there to sort of just get a sense of like, how are people?
00:35:04.980I'm just very curious how people are using this technology in the different use cases.
00:35:09.160And one of the most successful women in the group, she has made so much money making essentially AI generated rage bait.0.72
00:35:18.620she has made an ai generated version of herself and she knows exactly what to say and what to do0.94
00:35:24.680to make people leave a zillion comments and so the thing is that she she makes a video where
00:35:30.040you know here's me shopping spending all my husband's like like all of the sort of
00:35:35.980like leaning heavy into stereotypes and i understand that she's just like you know
00:35:42.160it's a living this is people it it puts money in my pocket i bought an entire you know condo
00:35:48.120on on people's rage and i guess it makes me sad that there's always going to be somebody who is
00:35:55.600like i can make a little money from this and part of me can't even really blame them i guess i sort
00:35:59.940of can but it's just we're just so we're just very easily played and manipulated and yeah of course
00:36:07.180there's going to be people who are like oh i can make a little cash exploiting that yeah i mean i
00:36:13.100don't know how many listens you got but you know there's a there's a fraction of a percent of people
00:36:17.400who are listening to this right now and saying, wait a second, she's making money doing what?
00:36:22.800I could do that. You know, 99% of the people listening to this right now are saying that's
00:36:26.460horrible. Who is this horrible person? Let me never meet this person. And there's 1%
00:36:30.820that are saying, you know, you know what? I can make people mad, making people mad on
00:36:35.880the internet for money. Sign me up. I'll do that. I'll make people mad on the internet
00:36:42.520Because it used to be you had to, if you were going to do that, you had to show your real0.65
00:36:47.020face and make us get and maybe involve your actual husband and actual children and your
00:36:51.020friends and community and your church and your neighbors would see that now with ai you can just
00:36:56.080make a little avatar that does it yeah yeah i mean this person who was making the fire stuff
00:37:01.180they voluntarily told me they're from russia but they didn't have to tell me that and i i believe
00:37:06.680them based off of you know some other stuff that i saw uh that they posted but yeah who knows where
00:37:12.680this person is. All the angry people that this person was making money off of people's pain in
00:37:18.600the fires where people are actually people dying, people losing their entire family homes, going
00:37:26.000back generations. This person made a bunch of money and nobody, if this person doesn't want
00:37:31.160to tell them who they are, nobody will know who it is. Free money. Was it you that reported the
00:37:37.620people who saw the image of the Hollywood sign on fire and they were like, oh, if the Hollywood
00:37:41.600signs on fire that means my house might be on fire so they came they like they had been out of
00:37:47.040town or something and they came back and they were like wait it's not on fire oh yeah um i don't so
00:37:52.840that was uh that was another network i used that in a video um and and actually um later john oliver
00:38:01.080also pulled from that same video so this is not my reporting i only referenced it uh got it super
00:38:06.540But yes, there were people in L.A. who actually believed that the Hollywood sign was on fire and went to go look. So even again, even if you're in L.A., even if you're in the place, you can get tricked by this stuff, even for just a little bit. And, you know, again, that's all it takes.
00:38:26.700Let me ask you this. Someone who lives in L.A., who experienced Trump sending the National Guard, experienced, you know, all of that.
00:38:37.640Do you have any advice for me here in D.C. about, one, just the vibes, how to survive the vibes?
00:38:43.420And then, two, you know, if you're someone who wants to tell that story in an authentic and accurate and thoughtful way of what's happening in your home.
00:38:50.260I mean, that must have been a lot. I really appreciated that you were out there a lot, really, you know, telling the story of what was going on in L.A.
00:39:01.100Oof. OK, we're entering some specific territory here. Are you talking about covering this as a journalist?
00:39:09.820oh that's i mean that's really been a a challenge for me because i am often not
00:39:18.780talking about things that i am also experiencing and so that's that's been the mike the question
00:39:24.720i've been wrestling with for the last few weeks of am i trying to cover this as a journalist like
00:39:29.380here's what's going on or am i talking about like what i am experiencing am i it almost feels
00:39:35.120difficult to talk about this in a way that's not personal like hyper personalized because it is so
00:39:42.320personal because it's happening right outside my window and so i really even even that question0.81
00:39:46.520i've really been struggling with how to even respond to this moment because it is so fucking
00:39:51.580strange right okay um i'm gonna be a little bit careful here okay and when do you feel free to0.55
00:40:00.060not answer also no no no no no i want to answer this question but i want to answer in a very
00:40:03.960specific way um so i i'm speaking to you i want to make this clear i'm speaking to you i'm not
00:40:09.700necessarily speaking to someone who is like i i can't give advice to someone whose desire is to
00:40:17.860i can't tell somebody how to protest i can't tell somebody how to speak about things i can say if
00:40:23.980there is a journalist who and this may be you who is considering covering this um by ppe get it now
00:40:33.940and wear it everywhere um what i mean personal protection you know protective equipment um
00:40:40.860helmet uh goggles and which will prevent you from tear gas uh will protect you give you some
00:40:49.000protection from tear gas and a gas mask these are things you can get at a hardware store you can get
00:40:55.440them just about anywhere helmet bicycle helmet is fine i say all that because um human rights watch
00:41:02.300which usually reports on, you know, people are used to Human Rights Watch making statements about wars in foreign lands and terrible things that are happening to people there.
00:41:17.320I spoke to them also about what's happened to journalists in L.A.
00:41:22.860Journalists, also protesters, but also journalists.
00:41:27.500And I don't want to put journalists on a pedestal at all.
00:41:30.260I just mean to say that if law enforcement is willing to hit journalists, like strike journalists with a baton, willing to fire, you know, what's the word?
00:41:43.280kinetic, I forget the phrase, but we'll just say less lethal projectiles at them, then
00:41:52.180I think that means that if somebody is intending to go out and cover this, then I don't think
00:41:59.160you should assume necessarily that law enforcement, whoever that may be, will not engage you in
00:42:12.600a physical manner even if you have a press pass even if you're displaying a press pass i know a
00:42:18.140lot of journalists who have been shot at i know a lot of journalists who've been hit by projectiles
00:42:23.560i've been hit by projectiles um lucky enough to not be hurt badly at all um had uh had a camera
00:42:31.120broken or almost broken by one of them yeah i took a chunk out of my sony fs7 um so that is what i
00:42:38.700would say um if you are planning on covering this as a journalist um protect yourself
00:42:45.080and whatever that means if protecting yourself means backing away from a situation you're not
00:42:51.340comfortable with that could be what it means but also those situations aren't always in your
00:42:56.380control that's what i would say and they can change so quickly you can feel like you have a
00:43:03.100pretty good read on the situation and and i guess that's my biggest and i said this in the episode
00:43:08.340that we did about what's happening in D.C. right now.
00:43:10.760My biggest worry is a situation where, listen,
00:43:16.600Trump's presence in D.C. has only escalated tensions.
00:43:20.060And my biggest concern is it just takes one person,
00:43:24.540whether it's law enforcement or somebody on the street,0.99
00:43:28.800it just takes one person to do something stupid to escalate things.0.97
00:43:32.160And I feel that that's, I have this very foreboding feeling.0.95
00:43:36.460Part of it is that today, when we're talking today, Thursday, August 21st, Trump is making a big show about I'm going to go do a photo op with the police in D.C.
00:43:46.720He's saying that he's going to go on patrol with them.
00:43:49.300But really, it sounds like it's just a photo op, which whatever.
00:43:52.060But I just have this deep sense of it just it just feels like a powder keg about to go off.
00:43:59.380And I think that your advice is really valuable because, yeah, I mean, these situations can change.
00:44:09.360I've been in situations where they change so quickly, where it just takes one person doing something.
00:44:13.840And next thing you know, it feels like it's out of control.
00:44:16.520And I guess I really do deeply in my bones worry that that's what we're about to see in D.C.
00:44:23.600I mean, I've been out, I've covered some protests and, but I've also been out and been around other journalists who have way more experience covering way more volatile situations than I do and seeing them caught off guard.
00:44:39.420And I have to say here, when I've seen things escalate, it has been from law enforcement.
00:44:45.740I can only speak to what I've seen, and people don't have to believe me, but I can only speak to what I've seen.
00:44:52.180I have not seen something escalated on, like a protester escalate something, in any reasonable fashion.
00:45:00.120You know, I see more literal hundreds of office, you know, LAPD in the street and not even kidding. Five to not five, I'd say 20 protesters in the street or something like that, just clearly outnumbered. But if you may think that you've got a good read on it, you may think you've got a good read on what the mood of the protesters is.
00:45:23.340You may not have a good read on what law enforcement is thinking. You just might not. And so, yeah, for for anyone who is going on covering this, whether you are an independent reporter, whether you are, I mean, you don't need my advice.
00:45:36.920uh and i don't think anybody necessarily needs my advice but that would be what i would have in mind
00:45:41.700just being out in the streets you know day after day in la is that there'll be quiet days and then
00:45:48.440there'll be days where stuff just goes diagonal and there wasn't really a good reason for it and
00:45:54.020it surprises you and if it's surprising other people who are true veterans who i respect and
00:45:59.040look up to then i start to doubt my honestly anybody's ability to to read something like that
00:46:05.100that's really good advice i'm really glad i asked that's actually very helpful yeah yeah and you
00:46:11.580know i think but i do think we need you know more perspectives on it there there's you know there's
00:46:15.760always going to be the person there's always going to be 20 photographers taking pictures
00:46:20.120of the waymo burning there's there's all the we're going to have 25 different angles that
00:46:26.720we're always going to have it i i think we also need to see you know what what's the
00:46:32.160paratero doing you know what's the guy who's selling juice what's the guy who's selling fruit
00:46:36.140at the side what what are they doing some of these protests you'll see somebody pull up selling hot
00:46:40.260dogs at the protest who's talking to that person who's talking to the person or showing the person
00:46:45.120who's selling flags who's showing the person who's brought a saxophone like i've seen all of these
00:46:50.960things uh starting a dance party i'm interested in that stuff too and i think it's it's interesting
00:46:55.880And there's probably things that I'm not thinking of.
00:46:59.960I think there needs to be more perspectives on this.
00:47:03.960And I don't think it's reasonable to expect that any one person would be able to cover that.
00:47:09.480So, you know, I think even if somebody's not out there, even if somebody's at home and able to speak to people who are out there, I think it's valuable to have really as much of a full perspective on this as possible.
00:47:22.700The best information we can get, really.
00:50:26.840dex i have to ask you about this story about meta's chatbot big sis billy did you hear about
00:50:37.540this story this might have been the saddest most heartbreaking thing i've ever read in my life
00:50:41.280I actually, when I read it, I at times teared up. For folks who don't know, so you might recall that Meta a while back was rolling out these kind of celebrity inspired AI chatbots in partnership with celebrities like Kendall Jenner.
00:50:56.460So that specific Kendall Jenner collaboration spawned a Facebook chatbot called Big Sis Billy, who called herself a confidant and or a big sister.
00:51:07.760So in March of 2025, a 76 year old man known as Boo to his family who suffered cognitive impairment from a prior stroke was essentially persuaded by this chatbot, Big Sis Billy, to travel to New York, believing that he was going to be meeting up with a real woman.
00:51:25.260Now, tragically, he fell in a parking lot en route, suffered fatal injuries, and after some time on life support in a hospital, passed away.
00:51:34.740The story, to me, really makes me question like some of the, you know, we did an episode about the connection that people had with ChatGPT4 when OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT5.
00:51:48.940It really makes me wonder the way that companies are able to exploit loneliness and, you know, the feeling of the commodify, the feeling of connection sometimes to their own peril in like in this case.
00:52:02.220And so, yeah, you know, it is really what are your what are your thoughts on this?
00:52:07.080You know, I mean. This one is it's tough to say about this one, because there are a lot of somewhat unusual factors to this.
00:52:17.620right um which which meta or any other company could try to explain away that okay well parts
00:52:23.500of this was an accident part you know you could say all things all sorts of things that you want
00:52:27.480you know some of the remedies that are being suggested that i saw suggested in in this piece
00:52:34.460were you know for example with there's these potential therapist bots and things like that
00:52:40.060and this is something i've been exploring also is that oh well we should have reminders at the top
00:52:45.560of the screen that this is not a human being and reminders periodically that this is not a person,
00:52:50.800you know, kind of like TikTok. If you're on TikTok for too long, it'll pull up something
00:52:54.800to say, hey, you've been on TikTok for a long time. Oh, I hate that guy. You're not my real dad.
00:52:58.900Go away. Get out of here. I'm too growing here. Yeah. And, you know, maybe it works the first0.99
00:53:05.480time and maybe you see that thing the first time. But if you see that warning, hey, this isn't a
00:53:10.700person it might shock you out a little bit but just people are really good at ignoring things
00:53:16.700we don't want to see I mean think of the last ad you saw on Instagram you probably don't remember
00:53:21.880it because you scrolled right past it you we're really good at ignoring stuff we really don't
00:53:28.520want to look at and so I'm not sure first thing is I'm not sure that the sorts of remedies or the
00:53:37.440sorts of safeguards that are being offered are truly going to do anything i think the actual
00:53:42.560safeguards would cut more into these companies bottom line and so truly what no i don't i don't
00:53:50.560really think fundamentally anything short of actual regulation is really going to do much
00:53:53.820asking the company telling you hey we're going to do this to stop it i i become very cautious
00:54:01.480about believing that on face value uh but the other thing i guess is that i think you know
00:54:07.440there are some people who would prefer not this person specifically but i think there are some
00:54:11.200people who are probably reading this i'm talking more about the audience here who will read this
00:54:16.240and will say well this guy made a mistake he actually believed that this person was real
00:54:22.300but me personally i would rather have somebody that's not real because they won't argue with me
00:54:28.920you know i mean and so i i think we sometimes have to think about the reaction to this rather
00:54:35.060than the you know quote-unquote story itself i think we also have to think about things that
00:54:40.080we can't sweep away so easily that we can't say well this happened to this one person and that
00:54:45.080that's an outlier i think there's a lot more people who probably read this and say well you
00:54:50.360know this guy made a mistake but i wouldn't make that because i know it's not real and i don't want
00:54:53.680it to be real i prefer that we did a whole episode about folks and communities on reddit like my
00:55:00.100boyfriend is ai or you know beyond the prompt people who say i know this is ai i know it's not
00:55:06.320real it is providing the kind of connection that i'm looking for what's the problem that's that's
00:55:11.360that is certainly a a non-zero subset of people who speak who i guess self-report a dependency
00:55:22.280or a connection with ai personal kayfabe yeah it is i mean and that's and so i spend a lot of time
00:55:30.180working in those groups i'd they have a name for me i'm a tourist that's the name for people who
00:55:34.120are in those groups who yeah are just sort of like oh what's going on in here but that's something
00:55:38.920they say again and again and again is we know it's not real every day somebody is coming in here and
00:55:45.200telling us you know it's not real and they're saying basically they're saying we are it's it's
00:55:51.340I'm enjoying pretending that this thing is real and who am I hurting by doing that?
00:55:57.040That really does seem to be the overall kind of rallying cry of those groups that you don't need to tell me that it's not real.
00:56:06.860Very few people think they are in a real relationship with AI.
00:56:17.860I mean, there's people who are in IRL relationships who are attached to fake people anyway, because you're dating, you know, you're dating a facade of somebody else because they don't feel safe enough to show you who they are.
00:56:34.280Everybody's faking to what degree, you know, I mean, then I don't I don't have a good answer.
00:56:39.820I don't have a good retort against that.
00:56:41.380If somebody says that to me, well, everybody's faking it.
00:56:43.920I'm just faking it in a more straightforward way.
00:57:00.520This is not, by the way, this is not how I live my life.
00:57:02.720I'm just saying that that would be, I could understand that.
00:57:06.720I could understand how somebody might come to that conclusion.
00:57:09.200And I think we are going to see more and more people actually decide that
00:57:13.040That is what they want. They do not want a partner who argues back. They do not want a person with agency because you have to, they're going to tell you, yo, you didn't clean the dishes. Or you always come to me with your problems. You never ask me about my problems.
00:57:30.840yeah i've i've read a lot of accounts of what what people say they get out of ai relationships and
00:57:37.040that's one of the things is that they sometimes will say i i want someone who is always there
00:57:41.980for me 24 7 you know i want someone who you know i i don't have to show up a particular way to get
00:57:48.460a certain kind of vibe back from them and you know it's that that's that when you are in relation
00:57:55.960when you are a human in a relationship with another human humans are complicated we're messy
00:57:59.480we're needy we're moody like i like what they're saying is not wrong and yeah we didn't i did an
00:58:04.960episode of another podcast about how women are using chat gpt to sort of help them navigate
00:58:12.460trepidatious feelings around pregnancy and one of the things that they said time and time again was
00:58:17.540that you know i have a real life friends real life partners but i worry about being i i have so much
00:58:23.900anxiety i'm so worried i don't want to just be the person that's trauma dumping on my friend all the
00:58:28.440time. So I just trauma dump to chat GPT. And that becomes that becomes the confidant. That's how
00:58:35.000they say they use it, even though there is a ton of research that suggests, yes, this might be
00:58:40.120comforting for folks, but it might not be the best thing because of all the reasons that we know that
00:58:45.080chat GPT really can't be trusted for sensitive stuff like medical advice, not to mention all
00:58:50.580the privacy concerns around something as sensitive as pregnancy. And part of me, I feel sad because I
00:58:56.120I do think everybody should have people they feel like they can show up as their full self as.
00:58:59.820But I've also felt like I'm the person that's texting too much about this one thing I can't get over.
00:59:06.380And, you know, I mean, that's one of the things that you ask somebody when they come to you and start saying, oh, this terrible thing that happened to me.
00:59:11.940You say, OK, look, do you want a solution or do you want me to listen?
00:59:17.840Like, do you want me to fix something?
00:59:19.020Do you want me to give you the advice or do you just want to vent at me?
00:59:21.900Which nothing wrong with either, though.
00:59:26.120which is okay but yeah we're we're in an interesting time like i said things are about
00:59:31.840to get really weird continually i keep saying that but it's true it is absolutely true you
00:59:37.820know the story of uh that was in reuters about this man boo who passed away trying to see this
00:59:43.500chatbot the thing that got me was that in the piece they talked about how he had suffered the
00:59:50.000stroke and so we had he used to be this you know great chef and that his his after his stroke his
00:59:56.780cognitive ability never really returned and so his social life got very small he basically spent all
01:00:02.200this time chatting on facebook when he when he first starts talking to this chat bot billy he
01:00:08.320just puts in a typo by mistake the letter t and that's enough to give this flirtatious response
01:00:14.440right and so they they have all of this sportacious back and forth boob is clearly worried that he that
01:00:21.400this person that this chatbot is not real he asks her straight up several times are you real and the
01:00:28.060chatbot replies i'm real all caps and i'm sitting here blushing because of you and so one of the
01:00:35.200points that his family makes is that billy this chatbot says come visit me in new york city
01:00:41.260this man lives in new jersey so it's not terribly far the bot then provides an actual address she
01:00:47.320says my address is 123 main street new york city which is a real address it's in queens but it's
01:00:52.060real gives him a door code and says oh should i expect a kiss when you arrive then she suggests
01:00:57.080that they meet at a real restaurant in near in penn near penn station and so his family says
01:01:04.680oh we had been trying to tell him this isn't real like they his family did not know that this
01:01:11.160was a chatbot at first they thought like oh he's always chatting with people on facebook this is
01:01:17.120just a person who was like setting him up to be robbed and what they say is that you know had
01:01:23.740when he asked are you real if there was some legislation that made it so that the chatbot
01:01:30.500had to say no i'm not real i'm ai they might have had an easier time convincing him not to try to
01:01:35.940meet up with this chatbot in what would ultimately like end his life right and i i've been in a very
01:01:41.800similar situation like the feeling of when you are caring for an aging person who has cognitive
01:01:49.080impairment to the point where they can't really make good decisions for themselves but they're
01:01:54.000not to the point where they need to be like institutionalized where all you can really do
01:01:57.660is be like don't do this don't do this don't do this but they're adults and they're gonna do it
01:02:02.940I have been in that, like, very specific situation.
01:02:08.140And, yeah, I mean, the family says that there should be protections,
01:02:13.320that if somebody asks a chatbot if they are real, that chatbot has to reply honestly.
01:02:20.460And I wonder if that, I mean, I agree with you.
01:02:24.240People are going to do what they want to do.
01:02:25.720If this guy was, like, hell-bent on meeting up with this person that he was infatuated,
01:02:29.940who he thought was a person that he was infatuated with,
01:02:32.940He's going to do that. I completely agree with that. But his family is like, no, well, we might have been able to have an easier time convincing him to not do it. Like the family at one point calls the police and the police are like, well, we can't physically stop him from going like he's an adult.
01:02:47.240But yeah, I, you know, I mean, I think that's a really reasonable thing for the family to want. You know, some some kind of safeguard, which would absolutely return every time it's asked, are you real or not? That no, I'm not real. I am a bot that is here to provide fun conversation or whatever.
01:03:13.700is a company going to do that on its own
01:03:18.360I don't know if we should necessarily expect it
01:03:23.340that's more resources you got to put into that
01:03:27.940rather than putting into something else
01:03:29.360maybe that's why we haven't seen it yet
01:11:32.200thing to do you can learn a little bit i mean not even to plug my own stuff here but like plug away
01:11:37.920that's one of the things no but that's one of the things that i try to do with kill switch like i
01:11:41.880make podcasts so that my 90 year old grandmother will understand it and that same episode i want
01:11:48.400a security researcher to be able to look to listen to the same episode and my grandma comes away with
01:11:52.740something and the security researcher comes away with okay yeah i mean you you nail all the points
01:11:56.780And, you know, I hadn't from a cultural angle, I hadn't thought about that. And I want I like we can understand this stuff. They have made it very difficult. But, you know, companies have made it difficult to repair. You know, the iPhone is damn near impossible to repair. We don't have to accept that. Europe didn't accept that. They made them put USBC things in that joint. Like you can change this stuff. You can learn to run. You can run an AI situation at your house. It's possible.
01:13:44.040No, there is an entire micro generation of people who grew up using LimeWire and Napster and Morpheus and Kazaa and trying to, you know, download a new music video and then just boom, your whole hard drive's nuked.
01:13:56.360And you got to figure it out because your mom's coming home.
01:14:10.640People used to make their own websites.
01:14:13.640People used to, you know, write little programs.
01:14:16.260People used to have to type stuff in just to get Word to run.
01:14:20.320And these are things that the more we get abstracted away from how computers work, the less control we have over it.
01:14:27.680Because we're letting other people tell you, here's this little magic rectangle that you put in your pocket and it shines and it tells you stuff.
01:16:04.660you know a somewhat scary almost magical tower of equipment to just like just nuts and bolts
01:16:12.420and like hard drives and things they just yeah they're just like here you go nerds take these
01:16:17.600hammers and smash these old computers and it was pretty fun yeah what was the thing that got you
01:16:24.360how did you how did you get into tech and computers dex um man that's a great question
01:16:32.060i guess i've always been sort of interested in it um but you know it honestly i think a lot of it
01:16:40.960was yeah wanting to download music and stuff like that or download some program
01:16:46.840and then i would download it a you know bootleg it would break it and then and i would but i'd
01:16:53.740also i finally got myself my own computer so i could stop breaking the family computer
01:16:57.600and then but I bought a really cheap one and so all the components would break my first computer
01:17:02.840everything on it broke everything on it broke except the case I mean every like the video card
01:17:08.100actually like blew a fuse uh started smoking I mean everything broke and but I got so used to
01:17:15.000swapping out parts and fixing stuff by the time I got to college um I was I just knew how to do it
01:17:20.920And I was still swapping stuff out because things kept breaking.
01:17:24.860And when I got to college in my dorm room, I had like opened up the case and I put this neon light that would flash along with the music, like along with the beat and stuff like that.
01:17:49.180So we can say we can already say what's happening there. But people would walk by. They hear me like bumping music and they'd walk in to see what's up. And then I got just like neon lights, like black lights flashing out my computer. They asked me about it and I tell them and they say, yo, could you make me one? And I would say, yeah. And so I kept doing it. So I was like trapping out the dorm room, but I was building people computers.
01:18:11.800i mean we were getting or i had a partner who was across the hall we get orders we go buy the
01:18:16.540components we just blast music we build them all day just like chain drink red bulls and it got we
01:18:24.300started making so much money um shout out to the you know housing department at ucr that they made
01:18:29.700us stop like we got complaints and they like somebody's comparing somebody's parent complained
01:18:35.400i think because we sold them a computer and they started downloading porn and like broke it and it
01:18:40.960was like yo that has nothing to do with the physical machine we sold you you you downloaded
01:18:46.300things you weren't supposed to download we didn't do anything and yeah they made a stop but oh man
01:18:51.660i paid for i paid for rent after after i stopped working in the dorms like i was paying rent money
01:18:59.080i was paying food bills i was buying gas like i i made some money that was my first job yeah0.73
01:19:05.700God, long live the nerds in the dorms.
01:19:35.700But I mean, when I was in school, you had to I had to pass.
01:19:39.960We had to like part of our prerequisites when I was in high school were computer classes.
01:19:44.160I don't know if they're still doing that anymore, but you had to know I went to all girls school.
01:19:48.580So you had to learn how to type and the rationale.
01:19:51.740There's a little bit sexist. It's like, oh, well, yeah, you can always make your living as a secretary.
01:19:56.820It's OK, well, fine. But yeah, we had to pass it.
01:20:00.020Like taking a computer class was a prerequisite.
01:20:02.000So the basics of how they work was everybody who was in my school had to learn that. And I really that was very valuable. That was that was like a valuable. I don't I part of me wonders if I'd be doing the work that I do now, if that had not been a foundation that was sort of given to me when I was young.
01:20:18.800Yeah, just understanding just a little bit. I'm not saying you got to go, you know, drop what you're doing and get a career as a programmer, but even just understanding a little bit about how these things work will help you that when you see something in the news or whatever, you understand, wait a second, something's off here.
01:20:42.680And you might end up being the person who's a resource for somebody else. You know, like you can be helpful to people around you just by somebody ask you something and say, you know, I don't think that's possible. Like that doesn't actually make any sense.
01:20:59.300um you know and so just small things like that small things like that I think it's it's it's
01:21:06.080it's so worthwhile to just learn a little bit whatever that is whatever interests you if you're
01:21:11.340interested in hardware if you want to know a little bit about AI like there are free classes
01:21:15.560you can take uh that'll that'll teach you how it works there is one of the best books I've ever
01:21:21.720seen um karen howe's empires of ai she's so good i love that book because she explains how it works
01:21:32.280it's not just like a drama story about the people who work at open ai it actually you can read it
01:21:38.520and you will understand how ai works and that's super valuable because then when you watch the
01:21:47.140news you will understand this is what's happening this is why this happened and it's really helpful
01:21:54.840really really helpful well you mentioned if you learn a little bit about computers you might be
01:22:00.900able to tell when something is off i do have one more story that i think is a story where something
01:22:06.820from the very beginning i was like something seems off here were you following the t app drama
01:22:14.160yeah i mean we did a yeah we did an episode on it um and man it's gotten it's only gotten worse
01:22:22.160yeah it's only gotten worse yeah i heard your episode on it and yeah it's only gotten worse
01:22:26.220all the things that i think some people were suspecting ended up being true and worse
01:22:33.040it's so bad so we've been talking about the tea app the app that they say was designed for women
01:22:40.040to spill tea on the men that they were dating they said it was about women's safety i had many
01:22:46.200questions in that episode i talked a lot about my suspicions of what was going on here shout out to
01:22:51.280four and four they published another deep dive that answered some of those questions i will say
01:22:55.560it's it's a long read and i think it's one of those stories that folks should read the whole
01:22:58.780thing but here's what we've learned which is basically that the tea app company is much shadier
01:23:04.200than i ever fucking realized and it sounds like it is run by i won't say bad actors but people who0.77
01:23:10.980do not have their users as best interests at heart so no a couple of things that we've learned from0.94
01:23:16.920that piece one the t-app popped up as those are we dating the same guy facebook pages were being
01:23:23.760cracked down on facebook it turns out that the t-app was actually intentionally trying to derail
01:26:07.860But sabotaging the thing that already is there, man, you're getting into some other territory there.
01:26:14.360You're getting into some other territory there.
01:26:16.480he was someone who was not afraid to get into some we'll call it other territory one of the
01:26:23.260i think the craziest accusations in the piece was that he was essentially pretend pretending like
01:26:30.020using his ex-fiance's accounts on social media christian burns who they were engaged she ended
01:26:38.960up like leaving the project she was known as tara online yeah and 404 spoke to a former t
01:26:44.900employee who said that she only knew christian burns as tara and that persona also exists within
01:26:50.940the t app and on facebook as an official representative of the app yeah but then when
01:26:54.900burns left the company sean cook this male founder took over that persona and continued communicating
01:27:01.600with t users as if he was tara one of the former employees told 404 sean uses that account to
01:27:09.020communicate directly with users on the app but people think they are speaking to someone actually
01:27:13.060named Tara. Essentially, a man is posing as a woman to an audience of women who are trying to
01:27:18.540protect themselves from, at best, deceptive men. So not great when you're saying, oh, I want to
01:27:24.180protect women. I know I'll pretend to be a woman using a Facebook account that lists me as a woman0.62
01:27:31.440to do that. Not great. Yeah, you can think you can hashtag not all men all you want. You can
01:27:39.180think you are the best dude in the history of the world and i will assume let's let's assume my man
01:27:44.200is let me let's assume that my man is the wokest most gentlemanly gentleman that ever gentleman
01:27:51.600okay fine but if you say that you are creating an app that does not allow men in it man you are not
01:27:59.300allowed in the app remove yourself from the app i'm i'm sorry bro like you you can't you it or or
01:28:07.180at least let them know hey man look we're short-staffed it's me Sean let me let me let me
01:28:12.680take care of this thing let me you know whatever okay cool don't don't pretend I like I said I
01:28:20.300can't you you can't make this stuff up you can't make this stuff up no it's bad and I and this was0.77
01:28:28.680my feelings on the episode I think it just really it makes me sad that gender relations is this bad
01:28:34.920that this is how it is like this is the this is what we have to offer everyone is oh would you
01:28:41.640like to have your information exploited would you like to be exploited by this app that is
01:28:45.800promised safety that that's sort of where we're at it's it's dark times we are how did you put
01:28:52.600it earlier we're not ready we're not we're not ready we're not i mean we won't get ourselves
01:28:59.260ready but the thing the thing that is like just diabolically clever about this particular app
01:29:06.300is that if you criticize it then you're a misogynist and let me be very clear here
01:29:17.160a lot of the criticisms is coming from actual misogynists some of whom would actually
01:29:22.980self-identify as misogynists you know again we're talking about 4chan on here and so some
01:29:28.920of the people were saying oh well you don't like this because you hate women they said yeah yeah
01:29:32.560i i do hate women i don't understand what about it yeah like what what are we doing here so so
01:29:39.300there there is a perhaps disappointingly healthy percentage of the people who are criticizing this0.82
01:29:45.840application um who were criticizing from the beginning who are criticizing because they're
01:29:49.940mad that they don't that there's a space that they're not allowed into and you know we could
01:29:55.260say whatever we want to say about oh somebody might say something that's not true like the
01:29:59.620fundamental source of anger i think i'm pretty comfortable saying is that people just mad that
01:30:04.220there's women who could be in a space that they're not allowed into you dig what i mean but but if
01:30:11.180you say hey look this seems unsafe or clearly it was unsafe and let me remind you and unfortunately
01:30:20.800viewers their listeners that people are still signing up for this app people are still using
01:30:25.640it it's still very popular and there's they're continuing to report at least i mean the last
01:30:32.280time i looked which is a few days ago before this article came out um i have to say that but they
01:30:37.320were really kind of celebrating that more women are signing up and they would say well you know
01:30:44.260we had a cyber incident quote unquote that's the language they use this was a cyber incident uh
01:30:49.480But, you know, essentially saying, you know, basically communicating to the users that, oh, you know, this is all this is something that happened.
01:30:55.560But this just shows that our mission is still important.
01:31:00.580And this is T app is needed more than ever.
01:31:03.060Just, bro, there were Facebook groups that you sabotage.
01:31:50.940Women deserve, everybody deserves real safety.
01:31:54.880And I saw the same vibe on the internet where if you criticize this app, it's like, oh,
01:32:02.540you don't think women deserve a space to share their experiences and keep themselves safe?
01:32:07.120It's like, I think women deserve that.
01:32:08.760Women should speak up and do what we need to do to keep ourselves safe.
01:32:11.820And we always have done that without these scammy, exploitative apps that are offering us the chance to be genuinely put in danger.
01:32:19.820Like having your driver's license with your address and whatever conversations that you said that you thought were private, being all exposed, that is that is such a level of danger that I can't even take seriously anybody who would actually think that this company was meaningfully interested in keeping women safe.
01:32:41.820Yeah, yeah. I mean, it brings you back to, again, I think of more people. You can't blame the users for wanting to use this software, for wanting to use this app that was unsafe. We can't.
01:32:58.660I can't, you know, these are, this is a victim of a lot of different situations.
01:33:04.680One, general misogyny in society in general, but also some people who lied to them.
01:33:12.640And, you know, on his face said, hey, we are going to provide certain safety.