There Are No Girls on the Internet - Park Mom Birthday Cake Drama, DeSantis Campaign Deep Fakes, Amazon’s Spy Ring, YouTube Disinfo Is Back, Facebook Still Awful, New Twitter CEO — NEWS ROUNDUP

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00:00:58.060 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:01:07.240 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:01:12.760 I'm here with my producer, Mike. Hey, Mike.

00:01:15.520 Hey, Bridget.

00:01:16.500 How about the smoke, right?

00:01:19.220 It's really something here in D.C. It's like the only thing anybody's been able to talk about for days.

00:01:24.900 I have not left my house in 48 hours, and here's what you might have missed this week on the internet.

00:01:30.860 You know that song that goes, I always feel like somebody's watching me?

00:01:36.980 Well, if you have a ring camera, that somebody watching might be an Amazon employee.

00:01:41.900 And that's because before 2017, Amazon employees could just access whoever's ring camera they wanted.

00:01:48.180 And some of them did.

00:01:50.180 This is according to a court filing from the Federal Trade Commission

00:01:52.760 when it announced a $5.8 million settlement with Amazon over privacy violations.

00:01:58.300 So this whole thing is about as creepy as you would expect.

00:02:01.560 It sounds like there was just overbroad access given to employees and also contractors

00:02:06.720 to customers' Ring footage and that there might have been just a generally

00:02:10.380 lax attitude around accessing that footage at Amazon.

00:02:13.700 According to the filing, Ring gave every employee full access to every customer video

00:02:18.800 before 2017 and failed to patch bugs in the system that allowed hackers to access cameras

00:02:23.920 and scare consumers. Now, I gotta say, this was not just like a one-time thing. It sounds like

00:02:29.500 a pervasive issue. Ring employees were spying on women. In 2017, an employee of Ring viewed videos 0.97

00:02:35.880 made by at least 81 female consumers and Ring employees using Ring products. Undetected by Ring,

00:02:42.380 the employee continued spying for months. He was looking specifically for cameras with labels that

00:02:48.240 suggested they were in people's intimate spaces. So they had labels like master bedroom camera or

00:02:53.740 bathroom camera. So it's pretty clear what was going on in this instance. This employee was

00:03:00.960 only caught after a supervisor noticed that the male employee was only viewing videos of

00:03:06.740 quote, pretty girls, which even that supervisor's explanation, I feel like is pretty gross.

00:03:13.460 In another incident, an employee gave someone's ex-husband access to their ring footage without

00:03:18.440 their consent. So you can kind of get a sense of how dangerous and serious that could be. Like,

00:03:24.400 if you're going through a contentious divorce or you have an abusive ex, the fact that ring was

00:03:30.900 just handing over your ring footage to your ex without your consent or knowledge is pretty

00:03:36.920 problematic. So it was not just random women that these ring employees didn't know. Ring employees

00:03:42.180 were also spying on each other. Another incident allegedly occurred in 2018 when a male employee

00:03:47.980 allegedly accessed a fellow female employee's camera and watched her stored video recordings

00:03:53.260 without her permission. And can you imagine, like, you go to work, there's Greg at the water cooler,

00:04:03.120 cut to Greg watching you in your home? Like, that is so fucked. So Ring employees were also 1.00

00:04:10.400 gifting people with cameras and then using those cameras to spy on them. An employee was found to

00:04:15.820 have given ring devices to people and then watch their videos without their knowledge. Like some

00:04:20.800 gift. Oh, here's a present. It's a ring camera. I'll see you later. Totally fucked. Give the gift

00:04:27.900 of Greg watching, lurking, spying. Terrible gift. So separately, Amazon also had to pay $25 million

00:04:36.060 to settle allegations that it violated children's privacy rights when it failed to delete Alexa

00:04:41.140 recordings at the request of parents and kept them for longer than necessary.

00:04:45.660 Wow. Wow. So parents requested that Amazon delete them, and then they just didn't. That's

00:04:53.260 an additional level of egregious. Yeah, my understanding is that they said that they

00:04:59.400 would delete those recordings and then did not. So it kind of goes back to this idea of,

00:05:03.520 And, you know, I don't think that companies can just say one thing and do another.

00:05:07.720 And it sounds like the FTC agrees.

00:05:10.800 We talked about this last week with Google, where they said they were going to delete

00:05:14.500 users' abortion data, and then they just didn't.

00:05:17.280 Exactly.

00:05:17.820 Like, it definitely paints a larger portrait of negligence.

00:05:21.060 You know, this is all part of a push by the FTC to regulate big tech and hold companies

00:05:25.420 accountable to putting profit above privacy.

00:05:27.960 Now, I have said this probably a hundred times on this show.

00:05:32.040 I get why someone would want a Ring camera for their safety or to feel secure in their homes, but I would never allow one of these devices in my home.

00:05:41.120 You know, not that I would ever break any laws myself, but people should be aware that police can and have accessed your Ring footage without your consent and without a warrant because Ring partners with police departments.

00:05:54.400 And it sounds like even after having to pay out millions of dollars for these violations around spying and privacy, Amazon is still not admitting wrongdoing, saying in a statement that they disagree with how these instances were framed by the FTC, but they did pay these fines.

00:06:09.500 And so it just goes to show like these companies don't care. They don't care about your security. They don't care about your privacy. And they're callously preying on and fostering a climate of fear, fear around crime, fear around your neighbors, and tricking us into thinking that it is a safe choice to have their devices in your home while all the while they are out here putting us in danger.

00:06:31.100 I completely get a lot of us feel vulnerable right now, feel scared right now. I totally get it. But I believe that Amazon is inflaming and exploiting and taking advantage of this vulnerability that we might feel to sell us technology that ultimately harms us.

00:06:46.880 Yeah, and like you mentioned, this story happens to be about Amazon, but it could just as well be a story about Google, who we talked about last week, or Tesla, who a few months ago was in the news because their engineers similarly had unfettered access to the cameras inside people's cars, and they were using that to share videos of each other of like, hey, look at this guy picking his nose in his car.

00:07:10.500 LOL. But, you know, it could be Facebook, could be any of these big companies, because this is

00:07:16.620 just the sort of thing that we get in surveillance capitalism when we bring these devices into our

00:07:23.220 homes, where privacy is just an afterthought. And the commodification of our personal data

00:07:29.500 is a gold rush for these companies, so much so that, you know, a few million dollars in fines

00:07:35.320 here and there is well worth it to them uh and so in this case you know it's not like the amazon

00:07:41.200 executives were getting in on the creeping i assume uh it was just greg and maybe some of his

00:07:47.180 buddies but i feel like i'm using greg as a stand-in for the creepy employee because i've

00:07:53.780 have been binge watching succession so i'm like oh someone was doing something creepy

00:07:57.880 has to be greg just like a name on the top of my mind that i'm associating with like

00:08:03.560 lecherous creeps no offense to any gregs out there listening you're not all bad 0.98

00:08:08.280 no just the one who's a member of the disgusting brothers 0.64

00:08:11.680 but yeah they i mean yeah so they you know greg's the one creeping but it's the executives at the

00:08:19.980 top that allowed it to happen with these lax security controls when they i would or you had

00:08:25.420 a responsibility to limit access in a way that would protect people's privacy um but they they

00:08:31.900 didn't, because why would they willingly put road bumps in the way of unfettered access to all of

00:08:40.380 the data just to feed back into their profits and helping them make more sales? And without

00:08:48.280 regulation, that's just going to keep happening. And I just don't think that, what, like $30

00:08:52.700 million is an amount that a company like Amazon is really going to feel. To me, I mean, I am happy

00:08:58.940 that they're having to have some kind of a show of accountability to how they have wronged the

00:09:03.520 public. But I don't think this is an amount of money that they are going to feel. And just the

00:09:08.160 fact that before 2017, anybody, a ring employee and their vast network of contractors could just

00:09:16.000 look at anybody from their ring cameras they wanted is just the scale of harm is so much

00:09:24.180 bigger than the amount that they have to pay in punishment that I cannot imagine this is going to

00:09:29.180 be something that they that like gives them pause in terms of how they're harming people in the

00:09:33.480 future. And, you know, I didn't even know about the fact that Tesla was using people's cameras to 0.99

00:09:38.860 like share jokes with each other. Think about the grossest, longest car trip that you've ever taken 1.00

00:09:45.820 where there's just Wendy's bags and used Kleenex on the ground and you're driving barefoot and 0.98

00:09:52.120 you're disgusting. Imagine that video being used in Greg's Slack channel just to have a laugh.

00:10:01.680 Yeah, thanks a lot, Greg.

00:10:03.580 We're really beating up on the Gregs here. Let's switch gears. Let's beat up on the Rons for a

00:10:09.500 minute. Because Ron DeSantis' campaign just recently used AI-generated images of Trump

00:10:14.540 hugging and kissing Fauci in their campaign material. So we've said many times on this

00:10:19.920 show about the threat of deep fakes and on the internet. And as AI image generation software

00:10:24.460 gets better and more available, it is so easy for bad actors to create fake images of celebrities

00:10:29.840 and politicians. And I think especially when those images are weaponized in political campaigns

00:10:34.760 during climates that are like politically fraught or sensitive or inflammatory. It's concerning

00:10:39.960 because these fake images can often appear real. I am not too proud to admit that I got got by that

00:10:46.480 image of the Pope in the Balenciaga puffer. It was early morning. I hadn't had my coffee. I was

00:10:53.020 just scrolling Twitter on my iPad. I just saw it and I thought, okay, the Pope's wearing a Balenciaga

00:10:59.700 puffer. Checks out. It didn't, I didn't, my brain was not primed. Even though I'm somebody who

00:11:05.960 studies disinformation and like talks about it for a living, my brain was not yet primed to have that

00:11:11.200 sheer of skepticism. So these fake images can get the best of us, right? You shouldn't have to

00:11:15.940 necessarily be so primed and poised and ready to tell like zoom in on the fingers and be like oh

00:11:21.900 that's fake to tell if an image is real or not so that I definitely am I've gotten got before

00:11:26.480 yeah it's a good point you make that we shouldn't have to be constantly hyper vigilant you know if

00:11:33.440 you if I think about the times that I'm looking at social media it's when I'm waiting for the metro

00:11:39.220 or bored or you know waiting on this or that or i don't know i'm not like sitting down to

00:11:49.600 critically engage in like deep and critical thought about what i'm looking at right like i 0.97

00:11:55.480 just want to see some cats i want to see some jokes i want to see some stupid stuff that makes 0.98

00:12:00.020 me laugh uh and yeah you see the pope in a puffer jacket uh i don't know i probably would have got 0.99

00:12:08.340 got too. So this week, Ron DeSantis' campaign joined in on the AI-generated deepfake fun

00:12:14.660 and shared a set of fake images of Donald Trump hugging and kissing Anthony Fauci.

00:12:19.660 They were kind of clever about it, mixing in the fake images with some real ones,

00:12:24.060 but they weren't that clever about it because with a little scrutiny, the images appear to be

00:12:28.400 obviously fake. Like in one of them, Trump's arm kind of wraps all the way around Fauci's body in

00:12:34.900 a very unnatural way, like a long snake. He's got double the arm around him, kind of. In another one,

00:12:41.040 the letters in the phrase White House are garbled, so you kind of know it's AI or that something is

00:12:45.400 going on there. Other details are also off, like the stars in the American flag are unnatural

00:12:50.400 details in Trump's hair, which somehow kind of manages to look more unnatural than his actual

00:12:56.900 honest-to-God human hair. I don't know how that's possible. So the French media entity AFP first

00:13:02.960 reported on the fake photos, which were included in a video released by the official DeSantis

00:13:07.040 campaign. You know, I really thought and hoped that we had more time before U.S. presidential

00:13:13.620 candidates were using deep fakes as part of their official campaigns. I don't know why I thought

00:13:19.580 that. I guess maybe it's just wishful thinking. But, you know, politicians like DeSantis and also

00:13:26.000 Trump, like it happens to be that like DeSantis did this against Trump, but I could just as easily

00:13:33.580 see it going the other way. They have no qualms about speaking lies and spreading lies. So why

00:13:40.020 wouldn't they take advantage of AI images to spread visual lies? And I think there's really

00:13:46.360 something about visual lies that works on a different level than when you read something

00:13:51.760 that's not true. The same way that I was just like, didn't have my glasses on, hadn't had my

00:13:56.020 coffee, scrolling and saw a picture of the Pope and said, oh, that's fine. Visual images can hit

00:14:00.800 us so much differently. They can hit us quickly, more quickly than the written word. And they can

00:14:05.680 sort of stoke a more emotionally resonant space in us, I think. Like in the interview that we did

00:14:11.620 with Ifoma Uzoma, who was formerly at Pinterest, who was kind of in charge of getting medical

00:14:15.840 misinformation and other, you know, bad stuff off of Pinterest. She said that one of the reasons why

00:14:21.240 it was so prevalent on Pinterest is because it's a visual platform. And so there would be these

00:14:27.180 highly visually visceral images. When it came to abortion disinformation, it was these very

00:14:34.100 visually charged images. And they, of course, would stoke an emotional response on people

00:14:38.180 very quickly. So definitely the threat of image-based AI-manipulated deepfake images

00:14:44.740 is is a real concern yeah that's i think you really hit on something there that the like she

00:14:51.720 said the images evoke this visceral emotional reaction uh and also it's just new i think in

00:15:01.080 certainly in my lifetime and i think possibly all of human experience that we have to be so

00:15:07.440 questioning of what we visually see in front of us right we have all these phrases like he said

00:15:14.060 she said you can't believe everything you read uh and so we're used to having to like sort through

00:15:20.620 what's true and what isn't in these like verbal domains but we also have the phrase like you

00:15:26.640 don't believe what what's in front of your own eyes right which is usually a pejorative thing

00:15:32.560 because typically in human experience we can believe what we see for ourselves when we directly

00:15:37.420 see something it's generally assumed to be true but even that is no longer true and so you know

00:15:44.880 of all the scary stuff that you've talked about on this show with our guests i feel like deep

00:15:50.280 fakes are one of the scariest because if people aren't able to tell what's real and what isn't

00:15:55.640 it does not bode well for solving the big problems that are coming our way right like outside the

00:16:03.480 windows right now, the city is blanketed in smoke from the worst wildfires on the East Coast

00:16:10.800 that I could remember in my lifetime, made worse by climate change. We're going to have like

00:16:17.780 serious problems that as a society, we need to come together to solve. And yeah, if we can't

00:16:24.160 have a shared understanding of what is real and what isn't, that's going to be hard.

00:16:33.480 Let's take a quick break.

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00:17:23.020 That's 844-844-iHeart.

00:17:25.560 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:17:30.780 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:17:37.780 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:17:41.480 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.

00:17:49.680 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

00:17:53.960 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:17:58.540 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:18:06.160 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:18:10.060 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:18:13.520 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:18:17.160 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:18:28.540 And we're back.

00:18:32.900 Let's talk about YouTube.

00:18:34.580 YouTube, which is owned by Google, will no longer remove videos falsely claiming that the 2020 presidential election in the United States was stolen, reversing a policy put in place after the 2020 vote.

00:18:45.280 In a blog post, the company says, quote,

00:18:47.480 It will stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in 2020 and other past U.S. presidential elections because things have changed.

00:18:58.000 Well, what's changed? Why are they doing this?

00:19:00.220 According to YouTube, because free speech.

00:19:04.260 They said,

00:19:05.140 In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence and other real-world harm.

00:19:17.480 I just want to jump in there real quick to break down that quote that you just read, because it's so telling.

00:19:22.500 They say, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech.

00:19:32.800 Right. So they're on the one hand, they're acknowledging that it does curb misinformation.

00:19:38.160 it is actively today preventing harm from being done. And yet they are going to remove those

00:19:45.820 protections out of potential maybe fear about something that could potentially occur in the

00:19:54.680 future. And it's so backwards and silly and infuriating. Yeah, it's like the Gettysburg 0.97

00:20:00.520 address of kowtowing tech PR bullshit speak where they say we are we acknowledge that what we are

00:20:08.540 doing will has prevented harm but what if it could increase free speech question mark let's find out

00:20:15.800 right and I gotta say like I feel a little bit personally invested in this because getting

00:20:21.100 Google to agree to take down this kind of misinformation is something that I personally

00:20:25.960 worked on and my platform accountability work. This has definitely been, I mean, I've tried not

00:20:31.040 to dwell on it too much because what does that get you? But this has definitely been the year

00:20:36.100 of a lot of policies that did verifiable good and verifiably made platforms safer in clear ways.

00:20:45.980 This has been the year of seeing those policies be walked back, be changed. So it's a little

00:20:52.040 personally distressing to me, but that's neither here nor there. They do say that they will

00:20:58.000 continue to take down content that misleads voters about when, where, and how to vote,

00:21:02.640 and claims that discourage voting, and content that encourages others to interfere with the

00:21:07.160 democratic process. But knowing a little bit about this, that's just not how it works, right?

00:21:12.800 Donald Trump didn't go on television and say, I think people should go to polls and harass

00:21:19.600 poll workers. I don't think he explicitly said that, but that was how that message was interpreted

00:21:24.720 and filtered down. And so this really flies in the face with what we know about how election

00:21:33.640 disinformation and misinformation works. People don't go on TV and say, do X, Y, Z in an explicit

00:21:40.240 way. It's very roundabout. It's very the implication. And so saying like, oh, well,

00:21:46.240 we definitely understand that misleading people about how to vote, content that encourages people

00:21:52.140 to interfere with the democratic process, saying that that is content that you will take down

00:21:56.660 because you recognize that as harmful and dangerous, it doesn't make sense that you

00:22:01.080 would think that that is dangerous, but that is not how it really works. Bad actors are really

00:22:06.800 good at staying just on the right side of not needing to have their content removed. That is

00:22:12.360 like something that they are very good at. It is their bread and butter. And so saying that someone

00:22:16.160 will have to meet this very specific threshold to have their content removed by YouTube is just

00:22:22.220 inviting people to make content that stays just a hair on that side of plausible deniability

00:22:28.140 that essentially encourages just that, you know? Yeah, that's right. And it's a moving,

00:22:36.240 shifting target and to really meaningfully address it or moderate that content or remove

00:22:43.600 that sort of content that is sneakily just on the the just a hair shy of being over the line

00:22:51.300 you know it it's a tough problem and i can understand why platforms like google really

00:22:57.860 just want to punt on it. But it's also super important for our democracy and the cohesion of

00:23:06.960 society. And also, let's just talk about this BS. Oh, it could threaten free speech. Literally

00:23:13.580 this morning, I saw a post from Trump on Truth Social that said that the 2020 election was

00:23:20.380 stolen. It's not as if there are no places in society or on the internet that one could say

00:23:26.080 those lies if they wanted to. Trump does it literally every day and has been for the last

00:23:32.020 few years, right? And so what I am saying is that there is no reason for a company like YouTube

00:23:37.080 to allow that on their platform. Not being able to say it on YouTube doesn't mean that people

00:23:42.520 aren't able to say it. People say it all the time, right? It's just like, it's such an abdication

00:23:46.360 of responsibility and leadership. And I should say that this is actually one of the last planks

00:23:51.980 of post-insurrection digital infrastructure

00:23:55.400 that was put in place after the violent insurrection.

00:23:58.480 YouTube was actually one of the last platforms

00:24:00.680 to have a policy against 2020 election denial.

00:24:03.900 Twitter started adding labeling of false claims

00:24:07.640 about the 2020 election early last year,

00:24:09.540 but then they walked it back saying

00:24:11.480 that it had been more than a year

00:24:13.280 since Biden took office

00:24:14.820 and there was eventually an exchange of power.

00:24:17.440 Facebook also walked back

00:24:18.820 their labeling of false claims too.

00:24:20.380 The decisions of these platforms about what sort of content they're going to allow and what sort of lying, disingenuous, dangerous content they might prohibit, that's not a free speech issue, right?

00:24:34.100 That is a business decision by these companies of how they want to operate and what role they want to play in a pluralistic society.

00:24:46.340 And I think it really shows, it's just like another plank in how these platforms are, I guess I'll use the word preparing, but really it's the opposite of preparing for the upcoming election.

00:24:56.080 Like YouTube restored Trump's account back in March so that users could, quote, hear equally from major national candidates.

00:25:02.920 You know, I think it really shows that platforms and also media outlets like CNN, who platform Trump to just like lie and smear and slander people for an hour.

00:25:13.020 I think that these platforms have really learned nothing from the last few years.

00:25:18.380 You know, verifiable lies about our democratic process and our elections is not discourse.

00:25:23.860 It's not a difference of opinion.

00:25:25.740 It's not an issue that you need to show both sides to or give credence to.

00:25:29.580 It is a lie.

00:25:30.760 It is a verifiable lie.

00:25:32.520 By now, platforms should have a game plan about how they're going to deal with verifiable

00:25:37.400 lies about our democratic process in a way that is ethical and responsible, or at least

00:25:41.900 more ethical and more responsible than just like, let anybody lie, because that's what free speech

00:25:46.920 is. Yeah, I mean, they just want that sweet, sweet engagement. They know that Trumpy outrage

00:25:53.800 drives clicks and eyeballs, and they want a piece of the action. You know, Google's business is

00:25:58.940 selling ads, and integrity and responsibility really have nothing to do with it. And it's

00:26:06.820 tragic and dangerous because YouTube is so powerful and has such a large impact on our

00:26:13.920 discourse, on our democracy, that they should feel a sense of responsibility for the content

00:26:19.460 that they amplify and promote. But they've just demonstrated time and again that they don't and

00:26:25.120 that they're going to choose outraged engagement and selling ads every time. Platforms, huh?

00:26:32.040 Yeah, let's talk about another platform that is generating a bit of outrage, and that is Reddit.

00:26:37.820 So popular platform Reddit announced some changes this week, and users are not happy, to say the least.

00:26:44.280 So if you don't know what Reddit is, I love Reddit.

00:26:47.040 It's kind of known as the front page of the internet to a point where if you need to answer a question

00:26:52.540 or you need some real, human-vetted, reliable information, it is a common practice to search whatever you need,

00:26:58.940 plus Reddit, to quickly get to an actual answer.

00:27:01.420 I once heard somebody say that, like, if they were in a fire, the last thing Googled on their phone would be, like, how to fight fires plus Reddit.

00:27:09.980 Like, I died trying to get the answer from Reddit.

00:27:12.820 And Bridget, didn't you used to be, like, a power moderator on Reddit, like, years ago?

00:27:18.980 I was a former Reddit moderator.

00:27:21.520 I was.

00:27:22.200 I mean, it was a site that I spent a lot of my free labor moderating and caring about and thinking about.

00:27:28.960 So if folks use Reddit, and they probably already know that when you log on to Reddit from a computer, generally, like, it's fine.

00:27:36.100 The user experience is fine.

00:27:37.340 But if you log on on your phone, the app, the Reddit app is very janky.

00:27:42.080 And it's also full of ads to the point that it, I would say that it's, like, I won't say unusable, but it's not a pleasant user experience.

00:27:49.220 It's, like, almost unusable, the amount of ads that pop up when you're trying to use it.

00:27:54.220 So to get around that, a lot of folks who use Reddit on mobile use third-party apps like Apollo.

00:27:59.400 And these apps only work because Reddit allowed those third-party apps to have access to their API, basically have access to their backends.

00:28:07.100 And all of that is changing because now Reddit announced that they're going to start charging those third-party apps a pretty high price for the access that they've always had.

00:28:17.060 You might remember that Twitter did something pretty recently, too.

00:28:19.600 So pretty much every third-party app that relies on Twitter's API has announced that they will not be able to operate if Reddit continues with this plan to charge them the amount that they're asking to be charged to continue to have access to the back end.

00:28:35.220 Well, this is like such a surprising trend for platforms to make because I think I was reading like a Tom Friedman book a while ago.

00:28:46.860 Tom Friedman?

00:28:47.860 Tom Friedman yeah it was a uh I don't remember why I think it was like in an airport and it felt

00:28:54.480 like the right thing to do or something but he was he was talking about like after the the 90s

00:29:00.420 and the dot-com boom how like APIs were the big thing that enabled the internet to like take off

00:29:06.480 and flourish because you had all this interoperability and uh and I think he was right

00:29:10.920 about that. He was wrong about a lot of other stuff, but, uh, but yeah, like APIs were a great

00:29:19.220 invention, right. And allowed platform, arguably, you know, these, all the third party apps that

00:29:27.080 allow people to interact with Reddit, uh, in ways that are better than Reddit's native app

00:29:36.500 makes available, help people use it, help grow their user base. And it's so surprising to see

00:29:43.860 platforms like Reddit and Twitter clamping down on the very thing that helped them grow.

00:29:52.880 Well, so one of my favorite third-party apps for Twitter, BlockParty, which is a great tool to

00:29:59.880 mass block people who are like harassers or bad actors on Twitter, they announced that they're

00:30:05.980 taking an indefinite hiatus because of this change where they're now charging for Twitter,

00:30:11.000 access to Twitter's API. Now, Reddit did walk this back a little bit, kind of along the lines

00:30:15.680 of exactly what you were saying, saying that these new API terms would carve out an exception

00:30:20.740 for accessibility apps, which allow users who are blind or visually impaired to browse Reddit,

00:30:25.780 because I guess Reddit does not have a way for people who are visually impaired to browse it.

00:30:29.860 And so exactly what you were saying, that these third-party apps via API access are able to create a more inclusive experience to include more users, which Reddit has not done. 0.54

00:30:41.580 So really, like, I'm no expert on this, but in my book, it's like Reddit should really be paying the people who it's like, oh, well, you've just completely shut out blind users. 0.96

00:30:50.660 Luckily, we have found a workaround to include them. 1.00

00:30:54.560 You're welcome.

00:30:55.740 Yeah, and that is an interesting note here, right?

00:30:58.920 Like Reddit is pretty different than Twitter in a lot of ways, right?

00:31:04.660 Like Reddit, to my understanding, really survives and thrives on the active participation of its users.

00:31:13.080 And I would imagine that some of them, particularly like you just mentioned, those who are blind, who rely on these third party apps to use it.

00:31:23.340 I would imagine that some of those users might not love this change.

00:31:28.920 Well, they certainly do not. And in fact, the Reddit community is very vocal and they do not

00:31:33.300 take stuff like this without a fight. So they are organizing to fight back. The platform relies on

00:31:38.780 an army of unpaid moderators. I used to be one of them. And honestly, Reddit would not function

00:31:44.080 without these moderators giving a lot of their free time and labor to keep Reddit subreddits,

00:31:50.980 which are like the different communities on Reddit, going. They all signed an open letter

00:31:56.900 to Reddit saying that oftentimes third-party tools offer better moderation tools than the

00:32:02.020 ones that Reddit does. They say, many of us rely on third-party apps to manage our communities

00:32:06.700 effectively. The potential loss of these services due to the pricing change would significantly

00:32:11.080 impact our ability to moderate efficiently, thus negatively affecting the experience for users

00:32:15.900 in our communities and for us as mods and users ourselves. It honestly sounds like these

00:32:21.100 moderators are just generally fed up with what they feel is a lack of communication and transparency 0.99

00:32:25.440 from redder higher-ups to Reddit moderators who, again, basically their unpaid labor is the reason

00:32:31.800 why this site is able to function. On June 12th, much of the site's subreddits are planning a

00:32:36.740 blackout, which means that individual subreddits will lock into private mode, meaning that anybody

00:32:41.020 who is not already a follower of these subreddits will not be able to access them during that time

00:32:45.260 or see that content. So if you don't use Reddit and you're thinking, who cares, what's the big

00:32:50.200 deal? We're talking about millions of people, right? Some of these big subreddits that are

00:32:54.500 going dark in protests have upwards of like three or four million people on them. And I think it does

00:33:00.520 kind of come back to what you were saying, Mike, about how, I mean, I don't want to give Thomas

00:33:05.520 Friedman too much credit, but this idea of APIs and opening things up and having it be a more

00:33:10.380 inclusive experience, I really see this Reddit thing. And the reason that I wanted to talk about

00:33:15.400 it here, I really see it as a part of a larger fight about the internet and who the internet is

00:33:21.060 for and what it is for, right? There is this great piece in Wired about the inshittification of the

00:33:27.100 internet, which kind of posits that this is how platforms die. First, they are good to their

00:33:31.800 users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally,

00:33:37.280 they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves, and then they die.

00:33:43.600 I totally agree with this, and I feel it everywhere. Not even just on social media

00:33:50.140 platforms, just everywhere. I feel like everything online eventually has to, whatever little joy or

00:33:57.640 life or love, it has to just bleed it to make a little bit more money for people who are already

00:34:04.960 rich. You know, Instagram, 10 years ago, Instagram felt fun and cool. Like I remember when Instagram

00:34:11.720 first was a thing, I didn't, I wasn't on Instagram because I didn't feel cool enough. I was like,

00:34:16.160 oh, there's nothing cool in my life to show.

00:34:17.700 Everybody is, like, putting sepia filters on their pictures.

00:34:22.100 And it felt cool.

00:34:24.280 It felt like a community where you wanted to be.

00:34:26.600 And now it just feels like a virtual dead mall.

00:34:29.620 You know, it's not enough that HBO Max or Netflix

00:34:32.340 cancels your favorite series only after one season.

00:34:36.100 Now they have to remove the entire back catalog.

00:34:39.440 So it's not just canceled.

00:34:41.300 You can never watch the existing episodes again

00:34:44.360 just to save a little bit of money on residuals and like having to pay the writers and the actors

00:34:49.060 more. You know, on this new version of Twitter, verification, people with something to sell can

00:34:54.540 buy influence via paying $8 a month for a blue checkmark to give them more influence to sell

00:35:00.560 whatever it is that they sell more effectively. But where is the internet infrastructure that

00:35:04.800 exists to prop things up other than building and squeezing capital from people, you know?

00:35:11.060 Ooh, that is dark and heavy, but you're absolutely right. I do like this phrase,

00:35:19.140 and shittification. First they embiggen, then they unshittify. But yeah, it's a good question. 0.81

00:35:26.160 Like, where is that internet infrastructure that exists? Yeah.

00:35:30.660 Well, it's a perfectly cromulate question. Luke Plummet, a tech writer, captured this feeling

00:35:35.520 so well on Twitter. He writes,

00:35:37.520 A huge part of the bad vibes you feel everywhere these days is because every single aspect of our lives is being squeezed by companies shaking us down.

00:35:46.020 And we're reaching a breaking point.

00:35:47.720 Every platform, every service, every product, every form of entertainment just keeps tightening the grip.

00:35:53.740 Each quarterly growth report looks good in isolation, but we're reaching the point of collective societal exhaustion.

00:36:00.740 And boy, I really felt that.

00:36:03.320 I really identified with that.

00:36:04.640 I think I'm there where it feels like every little bit of joy is being squeezed and mined for whatever little capital can be taken from it to make some rich guy who was already rich a little bit more rich.

00:36:17.500 And I think I'm really yearning for online spaces that felt like they felt when I was a bit younger, you know, that felt like connection and community building and joy.

00:36:25.240 And it feels like we are ceding more and more of the Internet solely to people who want to make money, right?

00:36:30.640 Whether it's capital for wealthy investors or people who want to sell you something or outright scams.

00:36:37.180 Yeah, we got to bring the weird, joyful internet back.

00:36:41.160 Yeah, I want to see, like, I don't want to date myself, but I want to see more weird internet spaces that are just like, here's my weird cartoon website.

00:36:52.900 Here's my big spoon or my salad fingers or my teen girl squad.

00:36:58.780 all those are real are real things look them up kids they're very funny yeah there was like funny

00:37:05.120 stuff there was joyful stuff i feel like it's out there too right like there is still the

00:37:09.820 infrastructure to create the those things and maybe the problem is that we're all spending our

00:37:14.560 time on the big platforms because everybody else is there maybe we gotta get off i don't know i'm

00:37:20.140 just like speculating and losing the thread here so that's i mean it's it's pretty messed up and

00:37:25.680 dark and i have to we have to talk about this like speaking of dark messed up stuff online

00:37:30.740 we gotta talk about this i know we i don't want to spend too much time on it because it like

00:37:35.160 genuinely nauseates me but we have to talk about this new wall street journal report about instagram

00:37:39.620 um trigger warning here about uh abuse of children it is horrific the wall street journal

00:37:47.480 just published an expose showing that instagram has been algorithmically promoting a vast trade

00:37:52.700 of child sexual exploitation material.

00:37:55.520 The journal said that it conducted an investigation

00:37:57.060 into child sexual exploitation material on Instagram

00:38:00.180 in collaboration with researchers at Stanford

00:38:02.140 and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

00:38:04.600 They found that pedophiles have long used the internet,

00:38:07.340 but unlike forums and file transfer services

00:38:09.800 that cater to people who have interest in illicit content,

00:38:12.780 Instagram does not merely host these activities.

00:38:16.140 Its algorithms promote them.

00:38:18.480 Instagram connects pedophiles

00:38:19.860 and guides them to content sellers

00:38:21.500 via recommendation systems that excel at linking those who share niche interests.

00:38:26.300 Here's how it all works.

00:38:27.420 The researchers found that Instagram enabled people to search explicit hashtags

00:38:30.880 and then connected them to accounts that use those same terms

00:38:34.680 to advertise child sex material for sale.

00:38:37.480 According to the journal, test accounts were set up by researchers

00:38:40.000 that viewed a single such account and then were immediately hit

00:38:43.260 with suggested for you recommendations of purported child sex content sellers and buyers,

00:38:48.380 as well as accounts that were linking to off-platform content

00:38:51.220 trading sites. Following just a handful of these recommendations was enough to flood their test

00:38:57.060 account with content that sexualizes children. In addition to that, it's horrifying. In addition

00:39:04.520 to that, certain Instagram accounts invite buyers to commission specific acts with menus listing

00:39:10.260 prices for videos of children harming themselves or imagery of minor children performing sex acts

00:39:15.280 with animals. This is all according to the Wall Street Journal's report, citing the findings of

00:39:19.620 the Stanford Internet Observatory researchers. At the right price, children are available for

00:39:24.480 in-person meetups, the journal reported. Yeah, it's stomach-churning. It's horrifying.

00:39:30.280 It's terrifying. But I have to say, it is not terribly surprising to me, especially

00:39:35.560 right now when we're having so many conversations about protecting kids online.

00:39:40.620 If lawmakers were serious about that, they would be regulating Facebook and the companies that

00:39:47.000 Facebook runs, like Instagram. Because according to the data, Facebook is by far the biggest

00:39:53.100 offender when it comes to child sexual abuse content online. This is not just when you compare

00:39:57.420 it to other social media platforms, but when you compare it to pornography sites as well.

00:40:01.840 According to an independent study released by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,

00:40:06.140 MindGeek, which is the parent company of Pornhub, RedTube, YouPorn, and several other adult tube

00:40:11.420 sites accounted for 13,229 instances of what they deemed child sexual abuse material. While

00:40:19.060 Snapchat had 144,095 instances, Google had 546,704 instances, Facebook topped everybody

00:40:29.100 with 20.3 million instances of this child exploitation material. So if we're actually

00:40:36.320 serious about protecting kids online, it needs to start with looking at the biggest offenders

00:40:41.380 looking at the worst bad actor and that is undoubtedly by a by a vast majority facebook

00:40:47.420 jesus i thought we started out dark but this is like next level stuff and like it's i gotta hand

00:40:58.180 it to facebook you know we've talked about amazon in this episode we've talked about google doing

00:41:06.260 bad stuff. But once again, Facebook just blows away the competition at being an unbelievably

00:41:15.560 bad actor. Ugh, this is disgusting. And I mean, printing it, this was in the Wall Street Journal. 0.99

00:41:25.720 So like, hopefully something will come from this. Well, the Wall Street Journal is also where

00:41:31.500 Frances Haugen published her information about harms that Facebook knowingly did against children.

00:41:38.060 So I don't know. I don't know. They're ghouls with no soul. I don't know what to tell you.

00:41:42.520 Let's move on.

00:41:43.280 So it's just a, it's like a well-traveled Wall Street Journal to nothing pipeline. Got it.

00:41:49.720 Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say nothing after Frances Haugen published that information in

00:41:54.940 the Wall Street Journal. Facebook did change their name to Meta. So we got that out of it.

00:41:59.220 All right. That's true. Yeah. Still working on the legs.

00:42:02.720 Yeah. They're not doing Metaverse anymore. You're never going to get those legs, Mike. Keep dreaming.

00:42:10.860 OK. Thank God. OK. Back to jokes, please.

00:42:14.460 OK. So let's let's move on. I know I can't. I we have to move on.

00:42:18.700 I can't I can't even stomach it. So let's move back to Twitter.

00:42:21.400 So last month, Elon Musk announced that he was stepping down as a CEO of Twitter and named a former NBC Universal executive,

00:42:27.860 Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO. Musk initially said that she would take over in about six weeks,

00:42:33.540 but on Monday, after about three weeks, she tweeted that she had officially started, saying

00:42:37.580 it happened. First day in the books. So who is Linda Yaccarino? Well, she spent 12 years at NBC

00:42:43.620 Universal, where she was most recently the chairperson of global advertising and partnerships.

00:42:48.220 She was a big part of launching NBC's streaming service Peacock in 2020, which I gotta say,

00:42:53.200 shout out to Peacock because I watch a lot of Peacock. She seems pretty buddy-buddy with Elon

00:42:58.540 Musk. At a conference, she interviewed him and said, many of you in this room know me and know

00:43:03.020 that I pride myself on my work ethic, but buddy, I have met my match. She said that to Elon Musk.

00:43:08.960 When everybody was kind of criticizing Elon Musk in the early days of him at the helm of Twitter,

00:43:13.340 she urged people to give him a minute. Let's see what he's going to do. She has some ties to Trump.

00:43:18.260 In 2018, Yakarino was named by Trump to the President's Council on Sports and Fitness

00:43:23.000 and Nutrition.

00:43:24.120 The queer-focused news outlet, Vem, reported that she follows some troubling accounts on

00:43:29.120 Twitter, like libs of TikTok, which we know is known for attacking LGBTQ people and their

00:43:34.600 allies for just, like, minding their business.

00:43:37.700 Vem notes that she also follows some, like, standard, run-of-the-mill Twitter accounts,

00:43:42.460 like mainstream journalists.

00:43:43.840 I actually could kind of see her being the kind of person who thinks that if you follow mainstream journalists, that means that you also have to follow accounts like libs of TikTok to sort of represent both sides and have balance.

00:43:57.380 Like I was like, I probably I could easily see her being the kind of person that feels this way.

00:44:02.820 Now, her coming on as CEO does not necessarily signal big changes at Twitter.

00:44:07.640 Musk is staying on as the owner and he says that he wants to focus more on like tech issues.

00:44:12.860 Media Matters reported that Twitter's lawyers told a court that hiring her as the new CEO

00:44:17.500 will not result in different content moderation strategies.

00:44:21.140 So if you had, you know, high hopes for new content moderation strategies that maybe don't

00:44:26.800 allow for things like hate speech, attacks on trans folks, crypto scams, and porn bots,

00:44:32.280 you might be disappointed.

00:44:33.840 What's also kind of funny to me is that when she was first announced as CEO, a bunch of

00:44:37.840 right-wing and extremist influencers, criticized her because she had talked about wanting to hire

00:44:44.100 more women and people of color when she was at NBC. And they had a video of her in 2020 talking

00:44:50.100 about the importance of masks. That was their big find. Just goes to show that these people are

00:44:55.140 literally never satisfied. Anybody that Musk was going to pick, they would still find a way to make

00:45:01.120 that a grievance, to make that an attack on them. Yeah, anyone to the left of Mussolini is

00:45:08.140 unacceptable to these people. So she's coming in as CEO at a self-inflicted difficult time for

00:45:15.860 Twitter. The platform is not doing well. It's not doing well with just regular users or with

00:45:20.420 advertisers. A recent poll by Pew found that six in 10 adults in the US, which is Twitter's largest

00:45:25.520 user base, were taking a break and a quarter of them said that they did not expect to be using

00:45:30.540 Twitter in a year. When it comes to advertisers of Twitter's top 1,000 advertisers from last

00:45:35.540 September before Musk took over, only 43% of them were still using Twitter as of April.

00:45:41.620 Now, Musk had been kind of cagey about this. He has not liked to talk about the dire financial

00:45:47.420 straits that the company was in. But this week, he finally did acknowledge that in a Twitter

00:45:52.380 spaces with presidential candidate and COVID conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Jr., where

00:45:56.980 he did admit that the revenue at Twitter had been cut by about 50 percent.

00:46:00.840 You know, advertisers buying ads on Twitter is how the platform makes money.

00:46:06.120 And basically right now, they're not doing that because what advertiser wants to see

00:46:11.220 their branding next to a tweet calling somebody a racial slur or like a porn bot or a scam

00:46:17.520 or something, right?

00:46:18.180 I saw a pretty interesting piece in BBC about how with Yacanero's background working with

00:46:23.840 advertisers, Musk was basically trying to purchase trust to woo advertisers back.

00:46:29.620 Maybe she'll be less, like, chaotic than Musk? Maybe? 0.94

00:46:36.600 So if you're thinking that she sounds like she might be a grown-up in the room, might be somebody

00:46:41.360 who can sort of steer the ship in a better direction than Musk has, that is a well-worn

00:46:49.140 phenomena in business. There is this theory in business called the glass cliff, where

00:46:53.480 women are basically brought in to clean up the messes made by terrible men in power. 1.00

00:46:59.560 A good example of the glass cliff was after the gaming company Blizzard had a massive 1.00

00:47:03.900 gender discrimination and harassment lawsuit. 0.71

00:47:06.880 They hired in 2021 Jen O'Neill, who was the first female lead of the company, right, who 0.99

00:47:11.540 was sort of like brought in seemingly to kind of clean up this mess. 1.00

00:47:16.100 Now, I absolutely do think that that is what some of what's going on here, that a woman 0.94

00:47:20.860 is being brought in to clean up this mess made by a man.

00:47:23.260 and the sort of signal that a grown-up is in charge and that it's no longer like a frat boy in charge.

00:47:30.160 But I also think that she is kind of being set up to fail in a lot of ways.

00:47:36.720 You know, it's tough to be such a high-profile hire, one, have to appease a demagogue, which we know Elon Musk is, too,

00:47:46.840 And then have to handle that, navigate that, while also signaling to advertisers that big changes are coming to woo them back.

00:47:57.120 You know, it's this very difficult dance.

00:48:00.700 I would say it's like an impossible dance to have to dance.

00:48:03.520 The way that people are talking about her background really signals to me that she is being set up to have to accomplish something that seems at least very difficult, if not impossible.

00:48:12.960 People have described her as someone who really likes to be a superwoman and someone who would see a mess of a company and voluntarily want to go in and feel like they can fix things.

00:48:25.680 By the way, I hate this framing. I can't even really verbalize why I hate this. There's just something about it that feels very much like women have to be super women to be in the room.

00:48:40.260 that they have to be, they can't just be included from the jump. They have to be super women who are

00:48:46.420 not just able, but excited to clean up a mess that was just clearly made by a man who had too 1.00

00:48:53.840 much power and didn't know how to handle it, you know? Yeah. And if you think about the mess that

00:48:58.460 is Twitter, it really all started when Elon took over, right? Like, I guess it had financial

00:49:08.500 problems before then but it wasn't the chaotic toxic place that it is now where uh i mean among

00:49:20.300 my friends i don't know too many people that really spend much time there at all anymore he

00:49:26.000 he's really i don't know tank the brand however you want to say it it'll be interesting to see

00:49:32.600 how bringing on this new ceo will be for twitter there was a very interesting piece about the glass

00:49:38.500 cliff phenomena and wired, to which Yaconero responded on Twitter, quote, as someone used to

00:49:43.380 wearing foreign cheels, let's be crystal clear, I don't teeter. Which, okay, I'll give it to her.

00:49:48.300 Kind of a good line. I'm not going to lie. But it's clear, like, we need to be clear,

00:49:52.680 Musk is staying on at Twitter. So even with a new CEO, this is still his company. He's not going

00:49:57.440 away. And Musk does not have a great track record when it comes to working alongside women. 0.96

00:50:03.400 I believe that Musk is a misogynist. You don't even have to look very far to see the ways in

00:50:08.420 which he is a misogynist either. There are like a hundred different examples that I could give

00:50:12.580 you off the top of my head that immediately come to mind. If we listed all of the ways that Trump

00:50:16.580 or Trump, oh my God. He's also a misogynist. No, keep that shit in. They're both misogynists. 0.98

00:50:24.340 They actually remind me of each other. It's not surprising to me that I can use one for the other.

00:50:28.560 So, you know, if we listed all the different examples that come to the top of my head,

00:50:32.500 we'd be here all night. He tweeted a crass joke about wanting to start a university called

00:50:37.360 the Texas Institute of Technology and Science, aka TITS as the acronym. Side note, it's never

00:50:44.840 even a good sexist joke, right? Like I hate misogyny and sexism, but I love humor. And if

00:50:52.960 a sexist joke was legitimately funny, I would acknowledge it. This isn't even a good joke.

00:50:58.760 It's not even good misogyny. If you're going to be a CEO that is this powerful and tell

00:51:05.280 misogynistic jokes don't give the joke that a million of us have heard in the frat a thousand

00:51:10.680 different times you know it's a bad joke like it's it's like a beavis and butthead level joke

00:51:15.920 uh but like not even good enough to actually be on beavis and butthead uh which is a excellent show 0.99

00:51:22.780 uh including the reboot like i am someone who deeply appreciates stupid jokes and stupid humor 0.98

00:51:29.460 And this is not even like, I can't even appreciate it. 0.99

00:51:32.480 So the day after he tweeted this, Tesla became the subject of a gender discrimination lawsuit 0.75

00:51:38.000 from multiple women.

00:51:39.280 And I remember engineer and tech organizer Cher Scarlett tweeted in response to all this, 1.00

00:51:44.100 I heard that sexualizing women is a top-down systemic issue in tech. 0.91

00:51:48.220 Might be wrong though, IDK.

00:51:50.060 And to be honest, that's how you do a funny joke about gender in tech, Elon.

00:51:55.040 Take notes.

00:51:56.300 Yeah.

00:51:56.980 Acronyms are not the way. 1.00

00:51:58.260 Yeah, an acronym that spells out tits, which is a body part that is sometimes found on female anatomy. Oh my god, like, get this, get this guy a Mark Twain award, somebody. 1.00

00:52:10.180 So according to a report from Business Insider, Musk secretly fathered twins with Siobhan

00:52:15.120 Zills, a female executive at his company Neuralink.

00:52:17.860 So we don't know much about their relationship, but if you're the head of a company and you're 0.85

00:52:22.420 having sex with your underlings and your staff, I feel comfortable saying that at the very 0.69

00:52:27.820 least it's not a great look. 0.92

00:52:29.300 All of this information is public, right?

00:52:30.800 So by all accounts, Iacanero, this new Twitter CEO, seems like a smart, competent person

00:52:36.300 who would have looked at this information and decided that Twitter and Elon Musk were who

00:52:40.300 and what she wanted to be mixed up with. And if that's what you decided as a competent,

00:52:45.600 smart adult, that's what you wanted. If it doesn't work out, you kind of, in my book,

00:52:50.800 get what you get. This is all public information. If this is the company that you decided that you

00:52:56.060 wanted to stake your reputation on, girl, do you, but you get what you get. And I want to be clear,

00:53:01.780 I want Yakanero to do well the same way that I want all women to do well. I'm not rooting for 1.00

00:53:09.780 her to fail. But to me, doing well is not just bringing back advertisers or appeasing Elon Musk

00:53:17.120 or helping Twitter make money. Doing well would be making Twitter a platform that does not elevate

00:53:22.860 and amplify toxicity, lies, abuse, scams, and harassment. And so I wish her well and hope that

00:53:30.240 she's able to achieve that but i think that her vision for doing well and what i have just

00:53:37.200 articulated might be two different things yeah it's gonna be interesting to watch it develop uh

00:53:44.640 you know maybe i've bought into the glass cliff mythology but uh yeah it seems like having

00:53:53.280 having a smart, competent woman in the room probably couldn't hurt. And hopefully it'll be 0.98

00:54:00.400 good. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see as this Twitter, this latest Twitter drama

00:54:08.960 unfolds. No, I don't trust any institution or company that doesn't have some women at the 0.81

00:54:15.920 at the highest levels the priesthood the nfl uh yeah if you don't have the military if there's 0.99

00:54:23.540 not women all up through that i have questions and i'm a little skeptical just in general that's 1.00

00:54:30.640 a blanket statement if i don't see if i don't see a woman making decisions something yeah it's it's 1.00

00:54:38.120 a set of somebody somebody's tweeting the word tits i'll just put it at the very least

00:54:42.460 you know i've never thought of those three institutions as a set together before so thank

00:54:49.380 you for that more after a quick break

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00:55:13.540 to check availability bell connection is everything run a business and not thinking about podcasting

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00:55:45.380 iHeartAdvertising.com. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your

00:55:50.680 personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part

00:55:58.300 group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and

00:56:02.440 Prejudice, and Love Island to serve the same level of discourse.

00:56:05.880 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books,

00:56:09.580 the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:56:13.000 I'm going to have to look up this story.

00:56:14.900 I'm obsessed.

00:56:15.640 So obsessed.

00:56:16.540 From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators

00:56:19.200 to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

00:56:22.520 It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters,

00:56:28.520 then that is a Trojan horse.

00:56:30.380 Whether you're looking for literary deep dives,

00:56:32.440 smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much,

00:56:37.940 you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app,

00:56:42.560 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages.

00:56:52.900 Let's get right back into it.

00:56:54.200 so i know that this has been a little dark but i do have a little bit of good news would you like

00:57:03.020 to hear it yes please so it's gonna start with some bad news but trust me it'll get good stick

00:57:08.600 with me i probably don't need to tell y'all that book bans are on the rise in the u.s with books

00:57:14.360 that center lgbtq voices accounting for about 41 percent of challenged books this is according to

00:57:19.960 America. Attempted book bans at school and public libraries set a record high in 2022.

00:57:25.620 This is according to information from the American Library Association.

00:57:28.800 Obviously, that is terrible. But here's the good news. At a White House Pride event yesterday,

00:57:34.360 Biden announced a slate of actions aimed at curbing discrimination against LGBTQ communities,

00:57:39.060 including the appointment of a new point person who will serve as a coordinator

00:57:42.800 at the education department to address the increase in book bans. That's good. I like to

00:57:48.380 see that. But here's a little bit more positive news. Despite all of those bans and all of those

00:57:53.680 restrictions and all of those attempted attacks by extremists to challenge and ban books about

00:57:59.220 LGBTQ people, people still really, really want to read about queer folks and are going out of

00:58:05.620 their way to do so. Sales of LGBTQ plus books soared to record highs in 2022, even as a small

00:58:12.380 but vocal army of extremists try to ban queer-themed titles and attack inclusive education

00:58:16.960 across the country. U.S. readers bought 6.1 million LGBTQ plus fiction titles over the past

00:58:23.300 year ending in May 2023. This is according to a new report put out on Tuesday by consumer

00:58:27.940 analyst group Circana. That marks an 11% jump in growth since last year when around 5 million

00:58:34.580 total units were sold and a massive 173% explosion since 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.

00:58:41.640 Yeah, this is a really important context. The growth in LGBTQ fiction has outpaced the overall market for fiction sales, including adult, kids, and young adult fiction combined, which remained relatively flat.

00:58:54.040 This is from Kristen McLean, a book industry analyst. 0.99

00:58:56.960 So it just goes to show you can try to ban queerness and transness and gayness out of existence. 0.99

00:59:03.300 People still want to see it represented. People will go out of their way to get that inclusion because that is what people want. 0.76

00:59:09.460 the extremists who are trying to ban and legislate that out of existence are out of step with the

00:59:16.600 desires of the majority of the country, I believe. They are a small but vocal group of extremists,

00:59:22.800 and there are more of us than there are of them. And I think that is great news.

00:59:27.300 That is good news. Thank you for sharing that. It's good to be reminded that the right-wing

00:59:34.060 bigots are a minority and they are freaking out because they know it and they know that they are

00:59:42.180 going to go extinct so i've got a little bit of bonus good news for you uh two different good

00:59:49.680 news stories in one episode i don't know it's not really good news exactly but the good news is that

00:59:56.500 one of my favorite things in the world is low stakes online internet drama where there are no

01:00:02.320 clear like good guys to root for and the entire internet is like weighing in on what they think

01:00:07.080 and some of that happened and so it's good news for me personally Bridget. So here's what went

01:00:13.780 down. There's two moms. Let's call one Park Mom and the other Birthday Cake Mom. So Park Mom gets 1.00

01:00:21.180 on TikTok and explains the situation. She says that she took her kid to a public park and there

01:00:25.620 was another family there who was having a birthday party for their kid. Her kid basically starts

01:00:30.700 playing with this other family, having this party. It's time to sing happy birthday and do cake.

01:00:36.820 So Park Mom is watching her kid. It sounds like from the other side of the playground.

01:00:41.440 Park Mom says that she watches her kid get a plate, sing happy birthday, and clearly have

01:00:47.460 the intention that they're going to have birthday cake. That is when birthday cake mom takes the

01:00:53.720 plate away from the kid and says, you're not going to have a piece of cake. These are not

01:00:59.540 your friends this is not your party where is your mother devastating so park mom in her tiktok says 0.99

01:01:08.060 basically am i the asshole park mom is horrified she cannot believe that birthday cake mom would 0.99

01:01:16.080 speak to a kid this way she cannot believe that birthday cake mom who had a what she describes as 0.99

01:01:21.680 a big sheet cake with lots and lots of cake to go around plenty of cake for her kid would deny 1.00

01:01:26.760 her kid a slice of cake. She asks the internet on TikTok, is she wrong? So this is why I love

01:01:35.800 this drama so much. It's one of those things where there is no clear right answer and everybody is

01:01:43.200 weighing in and what people weigh in with actually says more about them than it does about the

01:01:50.320 situation. Because the situation, we actually don't have a lot of information. How old are

01:01:54.080 these kids. You know, some people were like, oh, well, I wouldn't give food to someone else's kid

01:02:00.080 that I didn't know. Like, what if they have an allergy? Other people were like, well, who's

01:02:03.340 allergic to birthday cake? That seems like a weird thing to just suggest that maybe they're

01:02:07.320 allergic to birthday cake. Read every comment, love every minute of it. You know, it sounds to

01:02:14.380 me like, if I'm being honest, it sounds to me like Park Mom just kind of let her kid join this other

01:02:22.000 family and never went over and introduced herself or said like, hey, I'm whoever. Is it cool if my

01:02:28.000 kid hangs out? Let me know if they get annoying. Just assume that it was fine. Kind of a point

01:02:32.740 against Park Mom. Also, I feel like snatching a plate from a kid and saying, these are not your

01:02:38.660 friends, a little bit harsh. I probably wouldn't do that. But I'm like, I don't know who is in the

01:02:45.380 right here. I just love that it's low stakes. There's no clear, correct answer. Everyone on

01:02:51.000 the internet is weighing in and their weigh in says more about who they are and what their values

01:02:57.020 are and you know who they are as people in the world than it does about the actual situation

01:03:02.420 10 out of 10 love this kind of low stakes internet drama yes please it is nice that it's so low

01:03:10.460 stakes you know no like i feel for the kid who didn't get the cake it sounds like park mom was

01:03:16.640 also pretty upset uh yeah so upset or entitled mike yeah well you know i'm trying to refrain

01:03:26.540 from sharing my my thoughts here no you what do you what if you have you have a take like what's 0.96

01:03:31.880 like who do you think is in the wrong well i mean just give the kids some damn cake like what the 0.96

01:03:38.040 hell like one person's an adult the other person is a kid who wanted who like came to sing the 0.98

01:03:45.700 birthday song and like play with some other kids and like have some cake like regardless of who's

01:03:51.280 like truly morally in the right or like violating someone else's personal property or whatever like

01:03:58.540 one of them is a kid who sang the birthday song and wanted a piece of cake the other one's an adult

01:04:04.060 well so i saw a lot of people on the internet being like this kid the birthday cake mom probably

01:04:10.040 was annoyed by this kid the whole time and was probably like where's your mom to come get you

01:04:14.440 Not to excuse her behavior, but was in one of those situations where you're getting more and more and more annoyed.

01:04:22.500 And then you're just like, now it's coming out at an outburst that doesn't really make sense.

01:04:26.660 It is kind of at the wrong person, which I know very well in my personal life.

01:04:32.180 But yeah, I kind of see all sides.

01:04:34.800 I think if I had been Park Mom, I probably would have – I find it frankly unfathomable that someone could watch their kid playing with another family.

01:04:43.940 And it wouldn't occur to them at some point to go up to them and be like, hey, like, I'm Sally. This is my kid. Like, is this fine? You're cool with this? I think it's surprising to me that a mom wouldn't, you know, do that. I think that's probably what I would do. Probably, honestly, would have, like, solved this whole thing.

01:05:02.240 It also was surprising to me that a grown woman would be, like, snatching a plate from a child.

01:05:06.440 That's why it's so good, because everybody but this kid has done something that I would not suggest adults do.

01:05:13.960 Everybody's behavior is a little bit off.

01:05:16.160 Maybe that's part of what makes this so satisfying. 0.99

01:05:18.280 It's almost like reality TV, where, like, am I the asshole? 1.00

01:05:21.520 Like, actually, everyone's the asshole. 1.00

01:05:23.700 You know, Park Mom probably should have been keeping a better eye on her kid. 1.00

01:05:27.640 Birthday Mom probably could have given the kid some cake.

01:05:30.500 I guess I do want to give birthday mom a little bit of grace here because like I've thrown a party in my life, you know, a couple of times and it's stressful and it kind of makes me a bit of a head case.

01:05:44.980 i like to think that i would still be like kind to a child but you know it's a high pressure thing

01:05:52.980 maybe she had trouble tracking down the sheet cake and like the kids keep running around and

01:05:58.360 yelling and like where's birthday dad is he helping i don't hear anything about him in this story

01:06:03.540 it makes it better than it's two moms i feel yeah it actually i think i think i was telling

01:06:10.200 you about this that it reminds me so you and i had very i know that you and i had a very different

01:06:14.640 upbringing, says children. I grew up in the suburbs. You grew up on a farm and like in a

01:06:19.720 very rural community. So this was not something that you really knew about. But when I was a kid,

01:06:25.140 I have visceral memories of in the summertime going out to play on our street with other kids.

01:06:32.220 One of the other kids would be like, hey, you want to come back to my house? I would say, sure.

01:06:36.520 I would go back to this kid's house like a couple blocks away. I would get there. Their mom would be

01:06:41.960 there. So it'll be like, oh, you are now expected to keep an eye on this stranger kid from down

01:06:48.900 the street. And half the time, I think we would expect food. So it's like, oh, hi, mom. It's not

01:06:54.520 just me, the kid that you are caring for. It's a stranger's kid that you don't even know. And she

01:07:02.720 expects lunch. I think there is something kind of entitled about sending your kids with strangers

01:07:11.160 and expecting them to be fed.

01:07:13.600 But I absolutely, that was my,

01:07:15.540 I mean, like, maybe I'm misremembering,

01:07:17.340 but I feel like that's how it was when I was growing up.

01:07:19.960 Yeah, that was different from my upbringing.

01:07:22.160 You know, there were like four other kids

01:07:24.880 within a mile radius of our house, right?

01:07:27.460 And like, I knew them all

01:07:28.460 and also needed a ride from my parents

01:07:32.160 if I wanted to go see them.

01:07:33.480 So that just like straight was not happening.

01:07:36.520 So I want to know where you stand on this drama.

01:07:39.180 Again, it's low stakes, so no judgment.

01:07:42.060 If you would have snatched that paper plate from that kid so fast, it makes your head spin, I want to know about it.

01:07:48.200 If you would have gotten mom's Venmo information to Venmo her for her share of the cake, I want to know that, too.

01:07:53.960 I'm obsessed. Let me know.

01:07:55.480 Hit me up on email at hello at tangody.com.

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01:08:02.640 We are having interesting conversations over there.

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01:08:12.060 I'll give you a little teaser

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01:08:18.880 so please subscribe

01:08:20.940 we'd love to have you there

01:08:22.500 and thanks so much for listening

01:08:24.380 we'll see you next time

01:08:25.240 yeah thanks for listening

01:08:26.600 and thanks for having me Bridget

01:08:27.560 always Mike

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01:08:36.960 Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi?

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01:08:45.960 There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.

01:08:48.680 It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - June 09, 2023

Park Mom Birthday Cake Drama, DeSantis Campaign Deep Fakes, Amazon’s Spy Ring, YouTube Disinfo Is Back, Facebook Still Awful, New Twitter CEO — NEWS ROUNDUP

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