00:00:59.020Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:09.100There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:17.220I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:01:19.860this is there are no girls on the internet where we explore the intersection of technology
00:01:26.100social media and identity joey we are so thrilled to have you back on the show hey bridget um it's
00:01:32.920great to be back happy pride month happy pride are you doing anything fun for pride um oh god
00:01:40.280what am i not doing yeah i have a couple events that like friends are doing i had my my household
00:01:47.800through something last weekend to kind of kick off the beginning of the month. So I'm busy. I'm
00:01:54.840out and about, you know. I'm glad to hear it. I'm still in COVID recovery mode, but I'm living
00:02:00.120vicariously through folks like you who are out having a good time. I am very envious. Well,
00:02:06.840I have to tell you, I feel like a new tech gripe of mine has just dropped. And that is,
00:02:14.120Maybe you've seen them. These seemingly wholesome, but very obviously AI generated images. It'll be like the ones I've been seeing lately are, it'll be these AI generated images of three older black people. And the caption will be like, oh, these three triplets just turned 100. Leave them some love for their birthday.
00:02:38.220and every single comment is like how beautiful yay like happy birthday love it have you seen this
00:02:46.700i i haven't seen that one but i did see something yesterday where it was like
00:02:51.300it was like a food influencer like our publication account and they were they did one of those things
00:02:57.100where it's like which picture are you based on your birth month except it was all ai generated
00:03:02.700food like that was the prompt and i was kind of like wait what like why why did this like you
00:03:08.780couldn't have taken pictures of like actual cakes like you're doing which ai generated cake are you
00:03:14.200like i don't know but yeah it's it's weird i am so sick of it and like the cake thing part of me
00:03:21.520needs to take a step back and be like this is obviously all things considered it's pretty
00:03:27.540benign because people are using ai to do all kinds of things that are that are much more
00:03:32.680problematic and worrisome than what ai generated cake or are you or show these fake 90 year old
00:03:40.720elderly people some birthday love but i just it just it feels like one additional small way
00:03:46.780that the internet is becoming worse and worse and worse and i think the thing that bugs me is
00:03:51.980seeing how much like obviously the people who do this are just trying to get easy engagement
00:03:56.580and I guess part of me is like well they could be doing it in worse ways but
00:04:00.160the fact that there are people who seemingly
00:04:03.000like this and like they will actually be like oh I'm cake one or happy birthday
00:04:08.280to the elderly people. I think it's the like it's the normalizing of it like it's the normalizing
00:04:14.040that this is something that we're just going to be seeing on our feeds all the time and I think
00:04:18.140I mean I do think like I agree with you where it's like this is so benign compared to
00:04:22.420some of the other things that AI has been used for but it's like
00:04:26.580okay yeah it's almost like like normalizing the use of ai images so then when it is used for more
00:04:33.680nefarious purposes it's it kind of slides under the radar a little bit more easily because we're
00:04:38.400so used to seeing these images all the time anyways i think that's exactly why that's my
00:04:42.880that's my issue too i mean on top of the whole like copyright thing i think that's my issue too
00:04:47.680with a lot of the like movie studios that are using like ai generated images or or uh uh stuff
00:04:55.820for like there like there was just some like marvel show from i think last summer that came
00:05:00.500out there was a whole scandal about how they used like ai for for like the opening credits and it's
00:05:05.140like that's part of the bigger issue is it's just normalizing this the use of this technology to
00:05:10.180make these fake things that you know could be used in a much more nefarious way yes there was a
00:05:17.280recent controversy over a netflix true crime documentary called what jennifer did about a
00:05:23.340young woman who spoiler alert if you can't tell from the title did something awful to her family
00:05:27.980and in part of i assumed it was going to be like jennifer's body i wish i wish the remake
00:05:35.180part two oh my god i i am a justice for jennifer's body i am i was on the right
00:05:43.460side of history on that one but yeah the movie used ai to generate what is what purport to be
00:05:51.060historical images of her or like archival images of her. And so in one of the images, it's like,
00:05:56.680well, that's clearly AI generated. And especially for a documentary that is supposedly trying to
00:06:02.640show us something true, something real, something that really happened to be using AI generated
00:06:07.300images without any kind of warning, letting you know that this is it, we've recreated this.
00:06:11.820Really, I think it brings up some ethical questions. And I think it really comes back
00:06:15.980to what you just said, that these things might not be nefarious now, but because they are benign,
00:06:23.900it helps it sort of normalize it, right? So it helps it so like, oh, we shouldn't be asking
00:06:28.300questions when we see AI used for this. And so what happens when that use case is not so benign,
00:06:33.500right? What happens when it's a more important use case? I think you've helped me understand
00:06:37.840why when i see malicious use of ai i'm angry or whatever but something about these like
00:06:46.260wholesome uses of it makes me even more angry i don't know why i'm like i hate this even more
00:06:50.840i think you i think you really nailed it i think it's the it's also the kind of collective like
00:06:56.160wait wait i thought we just like i thought we were at a point where we were like hey guys let's
00:07:01.120think a little bit more critically about ai and whether we should be using it so casually i thought
00:07:05.760we reached that point as a society but i guess not um yeah i will say i know this is awful another
00:07:12.580like this is one where there's a lot of bad things that could come from it but those videos
00:07:18.060of i mean not the videos the the ai pictures of trump getting arrested i remember that we're
00:07:24.680going around recently there's some new ones that were going around because of the ruling that were
00:07:28.840kind of funny okay i'll need to check those out objectively yeah i know objectively i'm like this
00:07:35.260is bad this is bad that these images are out there but they were kind of funny i felt the same way
00:07:41.460about the first crop where it's like oh i would i would i would have if only i think it's just
00:07:46.960the idea of him like running on the street like god yeah we can only wish so speaking of stuff
00:07:54.660online not always being what it seems we've got to talk about this huge news about the
00:08:00.300disinformation campaign out of Israel. So Israel organized a large-scale disinformation campaign
00:08:06.980which used fake accounts and disinformation to target progressive activists and Black members
00:08:12.480of Congress in the United States and Canada. Harrods first reported on the existence of this
00:08:16.900operation way back in March, but now we have more details about how it worked and exactly who was
00:08:21.820behind it. They reported that it was launched after the start of the war in Gaza, and it was
00:08:26.720intended to sway certain segments of the public on Israel's conduct. It really sounds like the
00:08:32.920point of this whole thing was to use social media to, quote, promote content that is pro-Israel,
00:08:38.160anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim, as well as disinformation about anti-Semitism on American
00:08:42.800campuses, according to an investigation by the Fake Reporter Organization published this week.
00:08:48.080I will say the Fake Reporter Organization, maybe not the best name.
00:09:08.900So according to this reporting, this disinformation campaign came straight from the Israeli government.
00:09:14.440Harris reports that it was established by Israel's Diaspora Affairs Ministry, but it was run by a private organization for fear of it being exposed and, like, traced back to Israel.
00:09:25.000So how this whole thing worked is that they set up fake news websites with names like No Agenda or Unfold News, and then they make fake social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook that are kind of trying to seem like real people.
00:09:38.020It seems like maybe they didn't do a great job. We'll get to that in a moment.
00:09:40.440They would then use these accounts to amass followers and then push out these news stories.
00:09:45.840The news stories themselves on the websites that they were setting up, they would just steal and repurpose content from places like CNN.
00:09:52.740And the New York Times reports that they were using ChatGPT to generate many of the posts.
00:09:58.080The campaign also created three fake English language news sites featuring pro-Israel articles.
00:10:03.820So something I found really interesting about this whole thing is that it sounds like why they were doing this, according to the reporting, was this understanding that perhaps Israel is like losing the social media war of public opinion.
00:10:18.100Harris reports, various Israeli officials say that the war in Gaza has exposed, quote, a great failure in Israel's Hasbara or public diplomacy.
00:10:26.640Despite the massive investment in different PR enterprises over the years, Israel has not been able to effectively cope with the flood of pro-Palestinian messages on social media.
00:10:36.100Israel lacked the necessary digital assets to contend with what it called, quote, the pro-Palestinian poison propaganda machine and to adequately publicize Hamas atrocities to defend the war in Gaza.
00:10:47.300So it just sounds like they were like, people on social media are too pro-Palestinian, so we have to make some fake accounts to see if that turns the tides.
00:10:56.640Yeah. And I mean, I think in this situation, too, like we've really seen some of the ways that social media can be a really powerful tool for spreading misinformation and also like getting important information out there, where I think a lot of this backlash and a lot of this kind of a lot of the backlash to what Israel is doing is because we're getting these images that are out of Gaza and out of Rafa that are, you know, real awful images.
00:11:25.400a lot of us it's like the first time we're really witnessing this like not firsthand but I guess
00:11:31.620like through these actual images of what's happening and they're like seriously I just
00:11:35.860I'm sure people listening feel the same but like I have seen some of literally the worst things I've
00:11:42.080ever seen in my life over the past year uh coming out of Gaza and coming out of Rafa and and
00:11:47.360that has power like those images have power and I think the Israeli government and uh the
00:11:55.260is really hasbara kind of machine has relied a lot on these images like not getting out there
00:12:01.500and relied on kind of them being the the primary drivers of what the narrative is and we're seeing
00:12:07.960that start to fall apart and you know it makes sense if the the reaction is gonna be to go to
00:12:14.840these extreme measures like creating fake support i mean this is and this has been happening like
00:12:20.340there was an image early on when there were a lot of these big protests that were happening
00:12:24.980in support of Palestinians there was literally a fake image I remember that was going around of
00:12:30.360like a pro-Israel protest that was entirely AI generated like it was a it was like a very
00:12:36.380obviously AI generated photo and this was like early on so yeah I'm not surprised to hear this
00:12:41.680again I think like as somebody who is a Jewish American who you know a lot of my Judaism is
00:12:51.300rooted in a lot of like anti-Zionist diaspora values. It's not surprising to see this happen
00:12:59.340because this has been happening and this kind of has been the direction that the Israeli state has
00:13:04.740been going, especially recently. And I think it goes back to a conversation you and I had about
00:13:11.680campus protests, how there's this, I do feel like there's this underlying attitude that people could
00:13:20.320not possibly be watching what's going on and be basing their stances on what they're seeing right
00:13:28.240and so like if if young people on campuses are protesting in support of palestinians it has to
00:13:34.060be tiktok influencing influencing them in some way if people on social media are are not supportive
00:13:40.820of what israel has been doing to palestinians it might like we need to get in there and like
00:13:45.440correct the record. Right. I think a big kind of point that the Israeli government has relied on
00:13:51.600for a while is drawing the focus away from what is happening to the Palestinian people and instead
00:13:56.520of turning it into an issue of like, quote unquote, Jewish safety, which it isn't. It is
00:14:00.440not an issue of Jewish safety to be murdering civilians and murdering children. Like that is0.97
00:14:07.560so obviously not an equivalency. And again, I think going back to the campus protests,
00:14:12.700very much like turning it into an issue of like oh well Jewish students don't feel safe
00:14:16.140that is not the case that is a huge generalization I'm sure there are some students out there that
00:14:21.260don't feel safe but that is an individual issue I personally have a lot of friends that are Jewish
00:14:26.800that have been involved with the protests I know like Jewish Voice for Peace has been a big
00:14:31.400organization that has a lot of chapters on college campuses that have been really involved with these
00:14:36.100protests I think like it has been a very kind of important propaganda point for them to draw
00:14:42.220attention away from the real issue which is yes these are students that are protesting human rights
00:14:48.580atrocities that they're witnessing every day through social media through you know family
00:14:54.880or friends that were on the ground there like just just the main thing is just driving that
00:15:00.680focus away when that yeah that is the issue it has nothing to do with like honestly it has nothing
00:15:08.560to do with me as a jewish american it has nothing to do with my other fellow jewish americans it
00:15:12.660has to do with what is clearly a human rights atrocity that is happening right now so it's
00:15:18.280it's funny that you say this because the fake accounts that it's when you look at what they
00:15:23.420were saying and who they were targeting the kind of messages they were putting out it is it is so
00:15:27.300clear that it's like oh we are trying to get the get the perspective the perspective away from what
00:15:34.640is actually happening to palestinians it's like so clear so when you look at the messages they
00:15:38.220were putting out, they had these different messages meant to appeal to different groups
00:15:41.220they were trying to target. They had the United Citizens for Canada site, which had multiple
00:15:45.500social media accounts and disseminated heavily Islamophobic material, including claims that
00:15:50.220Muslim immigrants were a threat to Canada and demanding a Sharia state. Another was the Arab
00:15:55.540slave trade site, which was copied almost entirely from Wikipedia and aimed at Black Americans trying
00:16:01.020to repeat the message that the Arabs had been slave traders in Africa. I actually saw this
00:16:05.840messaging my like organically via social media and also repeated by people that I I know like
00:16:13.640this this was messaging that I will say like anecdotally personally I saw sort of like
00:16:18.600breakthrough on social media a little bit yeah that's crazy and I will say with that one too
00:16:23.740that's wild because that is also an anti-semitic talking point that's been used by you know other
00:16:31.360people on the right that have wanted to spread misinformation like anti-semitic misinformation
00:16:35.240has been saying that it was like jewish people that were involved with the straight that were
00:16:39.060leading the straight and slave trade and all that so it's like wow okay we can't even come up with
00:16:42.520our with another with another narrative we're just gonna copy and paste it but like switch it from
00:16:47.360jewish people to arab people like we can't the israeli state can't even come up with their own
00:16:52.660hate narratives now like yes so much of this stuff is so sloppy that is something that i i really like
00:16:59.100when i was reading about this influence campaign i was like y'all couldn't even like get like get
00:17:04.140this could have there be consistency in this so this one's my favorite yet another site was called
00:17:09.580serenity now which branded itself as an anarchist and anti-establishment group it sought to convince
00:17:15.700young americans to oppose the creation of a palestinian state because states are man-made
00:17:20.580structures and a palestinian state would hurt the goals of the progressive movement oh my god
00:17:26.880serenity now i feel like this like brought me back to like my college organizing days because0.86
00:17:32.720i swear to god there was like one dude who like this would be his talking oh i i know that dude
00:17:39.060oh god oh my gosh it's like you can be so left that you like swing back around to the other side
00:17:47.000and now you're like repeating a right wing point yeah or you're like just too too deep in like the
00:17:51.440theory spiral that it's like you have not talked to a single other human being about like the
00:17:56.600realities of their like oh my god but yeah that's i i mean but yeah i i on the other hand the fact
00:18:03.460that they're going in that direction and i can read that and be like oh my god i recognize this
00:18:07.540like line of thought that just shows that this is like a decent propaganda technique yeah um yeah
00:18:14.460and i think that i think the technique of driving wedges and pitting marginalized groups against
00:18:21.420to each other and pitting like anarchist progressive activists against like like like
00:18:25.960it's a it's a it's a time-tested strategy they also were targeting specific black elected0.78
00:18:31.260officials the operation focused on more than a dozen members of congress who are black
00:18:35.200and democrats according to fake reporter representative richie torres uh democrat
00:18:40.420out of new york who is pretty outspoken about his pro-israel views was targeted in addition to
00:18:45.220jeffries and warnock so some of the fake accounts would respond to richie torres's posts on twitter
00:18:50.700commenting on anti-Semitism on college campuses and in major U.S. cities.
00:18:55.460In response to a December 8th post on Twitter by Torres about fire safety,
00:29:27.100Ars Technica reports that the super spreaders are 60% more likely to be female. They're also a little bit older, on average 58 years old, nearly 20 years older than the sample group as a whole. And while much of the misinformation about the election largely circulated within Republican circles, only 64% of the super spreaders were registered Republicans. Nearly 20% were registered as Democrats.
00:29:49.680so it is like ladies in their late 50s but i actually have a theory on what's going on this
00:29:57.840is just my theory this is not in the study i think it's this sounds like peak auntie behavior
00:30:04.260to me like spending oh you know what i mean yeah it's like like you're on twitter just like expend
00:30:12.840yeah yes like when i think about how some of my the women in my life who are in their late 50s
00:30:18.960how they roll online the fact that it's a lot of retweets really speaks to me i'm like oh that's
00:30:23.920they my aunties they love they they love a share people of our of my generation and maybe your
00:30:29.660generation joey you've had some sense of like if you went to your facebook page and you had shared
00:30:36.560a hundred things in one day your friends might be like are they okay oh yeah but i don't think
00:30:42.460that aunties have the same vibe yeah i mean i like barely open facebook anymore for for this
00:30:48.140reason because it is mostly like yeah a lot of the older people in my family sharing a lot of
00:30:54.900these articles and I'm like I don't even have the energy to keep getting annoyed at like every
00:31:00.600single piece of misinformation but yeah it is like I mean Facebook has kind of just become this like
00:31:07.540fear of yeah where people okay so this this might stick with me here this might sound a little bit
00:31:16.000a stretch but I this is why and one one day Bridget I feel like I come on a do a bigger
00:31:21.880episode about this but I I am a little bit critical of the sort of the the for lack of a
00:31:30.480better word kind of structure that we have right now on Instagram where a lot of people are their
00:31:35.440activism or what they're doing to raise awareness is just like sharing a lot of stuff on their story
00:31:40.100and I do this too and like we've talked about that like I mean we all kind of do it and I think there
00:31:43.620are a lot of benefits and there is something about especially if you're sharing like kind of
00:31:47.800going back to the other story like sharing stuff about you know fundraising or missing or or
00:31:53.160debunking misinformation or like there are there are important stuff to be sharing I do that too
00:31:57.380but that being said I think I've kind of I'm realizing like I I think this is like our our
00:32:03.160two generations kind of version of this is like this spiral of people just sharing a lot of stuff
00:32:08.580in their story because it speaks to that and obviously it's something that like speaks to
00:32:12.860them but this is what makes me nervous is i feel like we we are now seeing with facebook and kind
00:32:17.920of the like boomer gen x generation like how that goes in a negative direction i'm a little bit
00:32:25.080worried that we're like setting ourselves up for a similar thing to happen um but yeah i agree i do
00:32:31.840i think this is like it's just it's the gossip like expanded on a world stage yeah oh we have
00:32:40.860to do an episode about the dynamics of instagram share or instagram being used as a place to share
00:32:48.800information what i always say is just remember anybody can get a canva subscription like just
00:32:55.720because like yeah just because i have a canva subscription i have put together a few infographics
00:33:01.820in my day i am i am i am a i am a cog in this system i'm calling myself out but just remember
00:33:07.260just because it's a slick looking graphic with good colors and it's a carousel on instagram
00:33:12.620anybody can get a canva subscription they they don't like have to pass a test or anything
00:33:16.940so we should all just remember that when we're when we're using social media in general and
00:33:20.980deciding what to share huh yeah definitely and i mean last week you did the story about the
00:33:26.800all eyes on raw image that there was sort of some backlash that for that same reason and i kind of
00:33:32.380was in the same boat with you where i had shared it originally and i kind of was like okay maybe
00:33:36.460You know, like, that actually, like, I understand a lot of the reasons why people are upset about this.
00:33:41.220But I think that was, like, a perfect example where it was just, like, there was so much, like, back and forth about, like, what we should be doing.
00:33:47.720And then it got to the point where I was kind of like, what even is the point of this?
00:33:53.520I, yeah, I, one day we'll do a bigger episode about that.
00:33:57.880Yeah, I kind of got, it sounds like we had a very similar trajectory with the all eyes on Aratha AI generated image we talked about in last week's roundup.
00:34:05.440But yeah, to the end of it, I was like, I had overthought it to a point where I'm like, why did I even feel like I should share it? When you really pull apart the reasonings on social media, you can get so granular where the focus gets so lost.
00:34:21.860And, you know, initially I'm like, oh, yeah, if something comes across my stories about Palestine that speaks to me and I feel like might speak to somebody else, I'll share it.
00:34:30.620And then it's like, but with that image, it's like, well, why?
00:34:37.600I'm in the same boat where I kind of have, like, stopped sharing a lot of stuff where, like, I think early on I was kind of, like, I felt like I should be sharing this stuff constantly because I reached a point where I kind of needed to step back and be like, is this productive?
00:34:47.760Like, is what I'm doing actually productive?
00:34:49.520or because and again like this is a different situation obviously like this this story is about
00:34:54.760misinformation specifically but like going back to this story a big point of misinformation and
00:35:01.640these kind of campaigns is just kind of creating chaos and putting a lot of information out there
00:35:05.860so like you don't even really know what's true anymore so even if it's something where I'm like
00:35:11.060I'm sharing images that are coming from trusted news sources or whatever that I know are real
00:35:17.120is there any benefit of me like what is actually going to be beneficial is that am i just posting
00:35:23.180stuff on my story to show that i'm like paying attention to show that i'm like staying with it
00:35:28.700or like is this actually meant to like share resources or share something that i think is
00:35:33.980important that people might not know otherwise uh or is it just kind of creating more noise
00:35:38.100yeah we have to do a longer conversation about this because these are these are things that
00:41:29.800And again, there are so many reasons why this is a stupid, terrible idea.0.99
00:41:33.520Transphobia aside, like, we know facial recognition technology is really faulty.0.99
00:41:37.780it routinely misidentifies black cis women as men shout out to dr joy bolamwini for her gender
00:41:44.380shades work about this and yeah it's like so if you actually use this technology you would
00:41:52.140definitely be casting out the the very people that you say are the demographic that you want
00:41:59.660like it doesn't make any sense yeah and like you said with um like there is a whole history of like
00:42:06.060how this is tied to racism and how this is tied to a lot of like
00:42:10.080like this feels like we're trying to do eugenics again like just in a different form like it is so
00:42:16.800weird and yeah like gender you know when people say gender is a performance gender is like you0.86
00:42:25.100know all the fucking butler's work is all about this like it very much is like0.96
00:42:29.700base yeah like you're able to this is the whole point of drag it's like you can you can mess with0.98
00:42:37.260gender you can you can present different ways and it i god this is just such a weird this is0.84
00:42:44.340such a shit show like what the hell it really is and like yeah i mean there are like my on my own0.98
00:42:52.020gender journey there are days where i am like rocking straight androgyny and there are days0.99
00:42:58.680where I'm like oh I'm gonna like fam up because I want to or need to for some reason like the idea
00:43:03.220that a machine learning app would be able to zoom in on the particulars of that is it's just it's
00:43:09.260just not how it works and I think your point is a good one about how it's like it's a good reminder
00:43:15.220that all this stuff is connected that their transphobia is also anti-blackness it's like
00:43:19.240it's all it's like one big bag of awful yeah yeah yeah and I the same I mean like I I've done a
00:43:26.760total of one drag performance in my life i would love to do more but i don't know um but i i did0.97
00:43:33.460like a you know femme drag where i was like wearing a wig and i did all my makeup and stuff
00:43:38.140and i like my friends did not recognize me like i was a completely different person and then also
00:43:43.180like when i went out and was like walking down the street like people just assumed i was like a
00:43:46.580super femme like cis woman like it's all yeah it's all very superficial but yeah and i did want
00:43:54.920to keep it really real for a second which is that i believe just having just being a person a woman
00:44:01.160a cis woman who is out there on who's been on a few apps whatever whatever the real threat to
00:44:07.480women on a lesbian dating app is not from trans people it is cis men looking to set up threesomes
00:44:14.760i think like if you were going to call out one section of like well that's the real problem
00:44:19.320it's gotta be them no oh god okay so i know in the past i have been defending dating apps in
00:44:25.800general on this podcast i will say i've had some really weird hinge messages over the last couple0.70
00:44:32.880months but i need to do an episode where i just read through all the weird shit that oh my god
00:44:37.920yes please because also okay so i get like as i mentioned i'm trans like i i do not date straight
00:44:43.760men i date men i'm bisexual like i date people of all genders but i don't date straight people
00:44:48.720period i have that in my hinge bio some of the weirdest like i i had a man my both the most
00:44:54.220recent one that i cannot stop thinking about when somebody messaged me this man messaged me and was
00:44:57.980like well am i am i straight if i like being the little spoon and i was like what and that's like
00:45:08.580one of the milder ones i know one day i like literally i've just started saving them because
00:45:13.460i like i was like i had a moment where i was like maybe this is unethical but then i was like these
00:45:17.020men are sending me these they're sending you this unprompted like what is up or like i'll get a lot
00:45:23.580of the like well maybe i'm not straight because i think you're hot i'm like yeah let's let's unpack0.52
00:45:30.300that like what the hell yeah anyways i agree with that sentiment the the the problem is cis straight0.94
00:45:37.860men the problem is cis men looking for three subs looking to be creepy looking to be weird0.97
00:45:45.000this should be common sense but you know it's them them they're the problem0.99
00:45:53.080they're the problem straight men yeah oh my god speaking of straight men being problematic i guess0.63
00:46:00.360i don't know that this this next story only involves straight men but you know i'm gonna0.67
00:46:04.120take a leap and say that it does there's probably a lot of them all yeah yeah historically and
00:46:09.100that historically right so that is this horrible landlord scheme so we got to talk about real page
00:46:17.520which is the quote property management software company that has been accused of helping landlords
00:46:23.300orchestrate a price fixing scam among large corporate landlords by algorithmically predicting
00:46:28.980the highest possible rents that landlords can get away with charging tenants so these people are0.99
00:46:34.840like scumbags of the highest order. Even reading this story, I was like, these people0.98
00:46:39.960are not good people. Listen to how ProPublica reported on how they talked about their rent
00:46:46.340hiking technology back in October during a convention. Never before have we seen these
00:46:51.400numbers, said Jay Parsons, a vice president of RealPage, as convention goers wandered by.
00:46:56.860Apartment rents had recently shot up by as much as 14.5%, he said, in a video touting the company's
00:47:03.320services. Turning to his colleague, Parsons asked, what role has a software played? I think it's
00:47:08.920driving it quite honestly, answered Andrew Bowen, another RealPage executive. As a property manager,
00:47:14.780very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing
00:47:19.760it manually. So they're basically just like bragging like, oh yeah, we raised, this technology
00:47:24.840helps you raise rents in ways you never thought. You didn't think that that family with like small
00:47:31.160children and a single mom would pay this much, you might be wrong. You should raise their rent0.99
00:47:35.460and see. Oh my God. I just, what the hell? It's bad. So according to BizNow, RealPages system,
00:47:46.280which provides rental price recommendations based on real-time data from landlords,
00:47:50.080is alleged to be a key tool in manipulating the rental market. The firm's influence covers 70%
00:47:55.460of multifamily apartment buildings and impact 16 million units nationwide. So this is very much
00:48:01.800like a coordinated scheme. Landlords are encouraged to adopt RealPages pricing recommendations,
00:48:07.120a practice that they follow 80 to 90% of the time. This coordinated approach reduces the
00:48:12.480availability of rental units, driving up prices. One of the architects of RealPages system reportedly
00:48:17.720stated that the aim is to prevent landlords from undervaluing their properties, ensuring
00:48:22.800consistently higher rates across the board. Yeah, that's the real problem here. It's landlords
00:48:27.620undervaluing their property. Oh my God, the poor landlords. Won't someone think about the
00:48:34.040landlords? The poor properties that have been undervalued. So if the majority of landlords
00:48:39.660in a single area are all using this pricing tool, it kind of feels like a coordinated
00:48:45.260price fixing scam, right? Which you would think should be illegal, right? Well, last week,
00:48:50.660The FBI did a surprise raid on the Atlanta headquarters of Cortland Management, marking a significant escalation in a criminal antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice into allegations of a nationwide conspiracy to artificially inflate apartment rents.
00:49:05.960The implications of this probe are far reaching, potentially affecting millions of renters across the U.S.
00:49:11.640Yeah. Surprising, like, you know, moment where I'm supporting the FBI here because this is a real issue.
00:49:19.920I live in New York like I sometimes if I'm feeling particularly you know like getting in a depressive spiral about the state of the world I'll just think about the fact that it's like it is so weird how it's just completely normalized that I like I don't know anybody who isn't constantly in like a state of just like not stable like not having super stable housing because you you don't know when your rent's gonna go.
00:49:49.920up or if like it's already so insanely expensive to live here and then they're constantly raising
00:49:55.680prices and all of the buildings are kind of also like awful too like i the building that i live in0.83
00:50:01.720has like a billion fucking problems that they like never respond to and they're still like trying to0.80
00:50:06.940raise rent for the next like you know cycle of our lease and all that and i you know it is a huge0.98
00:50:14.280problem and it's not something that should be normalized it's not something that should just
00:50:17.680be accepted as, oh, it is the way it is. People should be able to live and exist and have shelter
00:50:26.500because that's an important part of life. But yeah. Yeah. And you're right. It really is
00:50:33.340deeply impacting renters. In Atlanta, for instance, where this raid happened,
00:50:37.700software-driven pricing affects 81% of multifamily rental units. BizNow reports that since 2016,
00:51:14.240You know, I would have loved to have been doing a ride along and like wearing one of the FBI jackets and like aviator glasses, kicking indoors and like busting the heads of these guys.1.00
00:51:24.060Like, I just think these people are scumbags. And I hate that when we think about technology, that this is the use case that a lot of people will go for.0.97
00:51:33.640Like, how can we use it to extract and squeeze and exploit people? And I hate it.
00:51:38.440So like the algorithmic pricing is a racket that preys on us renters.
00:51:42.480And yeah, I just think that when we think about crime and the way that crime and technology
00:51:49.120intersect, I don't like the idea of bad facial recognition being used to misidentify shoplifters.
00:51:57.080This is the kind of tech-enabled crime that is impacting more people, right?
00:52:06.560i i'm sure somebody listening is like wow bridget todd shill for the fbi who knew
00:52:12.900i got it it's like one of the it's the it's the like one in a million times where it's like oh
00:52:18.940my god the the justice system working the way it's supposed to surprise we'll see we'll see
00:52:24.360we'll see i guess but it's like the like the tv show version of the fbi where you're like wow yeah
00:52:30.240i don't know i feel the same where i'm like cautious cautious praise to the fbi i guess
00:52:37.860in this case but yeah um once again the problem is capitalism how how this technology is used
00:52:46.940um how this technology is used not to make our lives easier but just to to help uh you know
00:52:53.960select few people make a little bit more money from from the rest of our our misery oh exactly
00:53:01.380okay so my last question for you is are you familiar with the k-pop group new jeans i think
00:53:08.660i've like just heard of i'm not a big k-pop listener but like i feel like you know being
00:53:12.780on the internet you you it it comes into my feed uh often so i i think i like just heard of this
00:53:20.580group from like some post somewhere but i'm not super familiar okay i never heard of them and i
00:53:26.120was asking my friend who does like k-pop like oh do you know about new jeans and she was like
00:53:29.860they are literally one of the biggest groups in the world that's like being like oh have you
00:53:34.320heard of this group the beatles like oh i had no idea so earlier this year the korean pop apparently
00:53:42.640super group new jeans was asking for help and identifying an anonymous youtuber to sue them
00:53:48.100for defamation. And this week, 404 Media reported that a U.S. federal court actually allowed the
00:53:53.840group to subpoena that information from Google about a YouTube account so they can sue that
00:53:58.680person for defamation under South Korean law. The group alleges that this account, which according
00:54:03.860to court documents, posts under the handle at middle seven, has posted as many as 33 defamatory
00:54:09.960videos that have been viewed nearly 14 million times as of their filing. Because the account is
00:54:14.640anonymous, the lawsuit cannot continue until that user has been identified. Some of the statements
00:54:19.540that New Jeans are saying are defamatory include calling one of the members of the group the eldest0.98
00:54:25.260daughter of a Vietnamese farmer and a video titled, Reasons Why New Jeans is a Crap Group.0.72
00:54:31.760I mean, is that defamatory or is that just... I mean, if that's defamatory,0.89
00:54:40.040Harry Styles might be sending me a cease and desist sometime soon.
00:54:44.640Well, that's why I wanted to ask about this. So like, I'm no lawyer. What do I know? If you're a lawyer and you have insight into this, let me know. But I was so curious, like, so this is not the first case of this nature. And that is like why Google was ordered to actually provide the name and birth date and address and email address of the person on YouTube who was doing this because it's like there's already established legal precedent.
00:55:09.660however i can't help but wonder like what does this mean for haters like me like people who
00:55:17.260just like i want to make a long youtube video about how much i hate harry styles or whatever
00:55:21.200like like what does that what does that mean for those kind of people you know yeah yeah i and i
00:55:28.120mean i don't know i guess i would need to look a little bit more into this case and like what
00:55:32.680specific claims are being made but it's like like those two up front a like the eldest daughter of
00:55:38.860a vietnamese father i don't know maybe that's not true but also that doesn't really seem like
00:55:45.640it's like defamatory like i don't know um and then also yeah the whole like why it's a like
00:55:52.140if it's an opinion i am also a bridge and i'm in the same court i i love being a hater i like i
00:56:00.380if they make being a hater illegal on the internet like i don't know what i'm gonna do
00:56:05.720i guess this is it for me uh i know i i'm so curious how it shakes out well joey thank you
00:56:14.420so much for being here where can folks keep in touch with what you're up to of course um you
00:56:19.040can find me on twitter and instagram at pat not pratt p-a-t-t-n-o-t-p-r-a-t-t also same day that
00:56:30.260this is coming out i have an episode of uh stuff mom never told you in honor of pride month uh
00:56:38.400talking about the movie bottoms uh so uh if you want to hear me talk about honestly a lot of it
00:56:47.680is me talking shit about other queer high school movies that i don't like but if you want to hear0.70
00:56:52.400me talk about uh bottoms and and uh all of that yeah the movie uh you can check it out not the0.98
00:57:01.140body part not the body part you know you can uh check them out on stuff mom never told you
00:57:07.240also also for pride month uh there's a new show called uh but we loved that's from the
00:57:13.800outspoken network i would it's all about queer history told through kind of a kind of personal
00:57:19.560personal storytelling. I've been working on that as well. So go ahead and check that out if that
00:57:24.600is of interest to you. Definitely check that out. We'll put the links in the show notes to all of
00:57:29.740this. Thanks so much for being here, Joey. And thanks to all of you for listening. I will see
00:57:33.660you on the internet. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our merch store
00:57:42.920at tangoti.com slash store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi?
00:57:48.760You can reach us at hello at tangody.com.
00:57:51.640You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangody.com.
00:57:54.980There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.
00:57:57.700It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, edited by Joey Pat.
00:58:02.160Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.
00:58:04.360Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.
00:58:07.000Michael Amato is our contributing producer.