00:00:49.880If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.280Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:03.960Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:08:00.560We even actually got a comment on the episode from a listener on the Spotify comments who,
00:08:05.680to be clear, I appreciate that this listener pointed this out.
00:08:09.100One of the early voices calling out the similarity between what is seen on this necklace and Nazi imagery was this person on TikTok who made a very viral video about it.
00:08:21.760And the creator made another video saying that the fact that that video was taken down was personally problematic because they had been counting on the money that would have been generated from that one viral Taylor Swift Nazi necklace video to pay their rent.
00:08:36.360now that that video has been removed from tiktok it is jeopardizing what what they were
00:08:41.160anticipating was going to be a viral monetary payout what do i do about this this is probably
00:08:45.440one of the more viral videos i've ever had and the swifties are keep getting it removed and i0.51
00:08:50.660can't even appeal it now because i already won the one repeal and they just keep appeal and they
00:08:54.600keep mass reporting me like is there something that i can do does anybody know anybody on like
00:08:59.900the tiktok tech support because i'm legitimately gonna cry i thought that this was gonna help
00:09:05.160cover my rent for a month and then i could catch up on some bills i'm kind of devastated because
00:09:11.560not only this is this disqualified now but i'm also getting some of the most insane dms and
00:09:16.780harassment that i've gotten in a long time because how dare i point out the similarities between a
00:09:22.000nazi symbol and taylor swift's necklace so i'm like like i'm legitimately pissed off about this
00:09:27.420is does anybody know if there's anything i can do i'm gonna reach out to tiktok support but like
00:09:33.020why are y'all like this y'all don't want to think critically so hard you will literally report the0.99
00:09:40.920messenger over confronting your fave for a necklace looking like a fucking nazi symbol0.98
00:09:45.560i will say that one of the pieces here that people have really pointed to is the fact that0.98
00:09:50.520taylor swift nor her team have not put out any kind of statement clearing this up which to be
00:09:55.540honest is kind of her thing old og listeners of mine might recall back in around 2016 i actually
00:10:02.960did an episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You back when I was hosting the show with my friend Emily
00:10:07.020about how Taylor Swift had become, I guess I would call it a non-consensual spokeswoman for
00:10:14.040literal Nazis who were dubbing her their, quote, Aryan goddess. There was a Facebook group called
00:10:21.060Taylor Swift for Fascist Europe who praised Taylor Swift's Nordic blood and the fact that she's,
00:10:27.180quote, not having gangbangs with colored gentlemen.0.74
00:10:30.460Like so much content on the Internet, it kind of walked a line between is this serious?
00:10:36.560Is this trolling or is this genuinely someone expressing a literal opinion about Taylor Swift?
00:10:41.680Or is it kind of both where maybe it exists as a kind of joke, but one that is serious,
00:10:48.760but because of the weird over the top jokey nature just gives a lot of plausible deniability.
00:10:54.180It kind of existed along those those tension points.
00:10:57.180Absolutely. I mean, we know that that phenomenon that you've just described has really been used very successfully by the far right to spread their ideas online. Like everything is just like a jokey meme, but actually it's not. But, you know, it makes it difficult to pin them down on anything because there's always that plausible deniability.
00:11:17.680And I think specifically with Taylor Swift, because back in 2016, she was someone who never talked about politics, really, or social issues, really. She was really someone who was not vocal about those things. I think it allowed people to project this very odious ideology onto her silence in absence of her not really taking a lot of vocal stances about politics.
00:11:40.400And in that episode that we did from 2016, my beef with her was that she never came out and just said, hey, I'm not a Nazi.
00:11:47.780Hey, I disavowed this as far as I know.
00:11:49.820We'll put that episode in the show notes if folks are interested.
00:11:52.860With the disclaimer that I recorded it almost 10 years ago and I have, let's just say, grown as a podcaster a lot since then, I hope, I think.
00:12:02.140So, you know, take that for what it's worth.
00:12:04.900You and Taylor Swift both, you know, you've both been through a lot.
00:12:08.920But I remember that era of hers when she was just like not saying anything about it.
00:12:12.880And I remember like not liking her for it.
00:12:18.080But I think since then she has like she campaigned for Harris, right?
00:12:22.700Yeah, she definitely has grown more comfortable expressing explicit political and social attitudes.
00:12:29.800She actually credits Lena Dunham with that a little bit, saying, oh, my friendship with Lena Dunham is why I'm a vocal feminist now.
00:12:35.120because before she was someone who would say, oh, I'm not a feminist because I love men.
00:12:39.200So people saying that the claims about this necklace being essentially Nazi imagery,
00:12:44.180oh, like Taylor Swift's team should put out a statement about that.
00:12:47.680I was not surprised that she did not put out a statement around that.
00:12:50.980You know, she never vocally talked about the fact that she became this non-consensual poster child0.73
00:12:56.760for, you know, the Aryan goddess of all these Nazis.0.73
00:13:00.240So I wasn't really surprised that she didn't really vocally get involved with the necklace thing either.
00:13:05.720However, the necklace was removed from her merch site.
00:13:09.640So that is kind of what's going on with that.
00:13:14.080And I wanted to talk about it because I do think it's this tailor-made thing for a certain kind of online discourse.
00:13:21.940You know, as we said earlier, if someone is going to use a coded message or a dog whistle,
00:13:27.220The point of that kind of thing is that there's always plausible deniability built into it.0.57
00:13:31.660So let's say that someone was a secret covert Nazi and they wanted to make memorabilia to indoctrinate others or to wink, wink message to other Nazi types.
00:13:43.300They're going to do that in a way that is coded so that you can say, oh, you're just being paranoid and seeing messages where there are none.0.53
00:13:50.460And I think that is why this is a topic that is perfect for this kind of online heated discussion, because nobody can really say for sure whether or not this was just an unfortunate design choice or something more deliberate and intentional.
00:14:06.320I think that's a good point to make that, you know, looking at that necklace, it's impossible to say for sure.
00:14:14.300Like, is this, you know, was there a true, like, Nazi intention behind it or not?
00:14:20.700Like, unless you can get into the mind of the person who designed this necklace, that's not a question that can be definitively answered.
00:14:29.700And so it just leaves this space and this ambiguity for for people to project things onto the conversation.
00:14:38.860And not for nothing, we're having this conversation against a backdrop where Politico reported that the U.S. Capitol Police were called because a lawmaker, Representative David Taylor, a Republican out of Ohio, had an American flag pinned up in his office that just has a swastika in the middle of it.
00:14:56.400Fox News is trying to say, oh, it's an optical illusion. No, it's not. It's very you. What you're. This is not a situation where it's wink, wink, nod, nod. It's a swastika. Anybody can look at that and say it's a swastika. There's no it's not even a dog whistle.
00:15:12.900And then another story that I alluded to earlier, where a group of Kansas young Republicans, their group text messages were leaked to Politico, and they say things like, I love Hitler. They reference gas chambers. It's very, very explicit.
00:15:28.120it. Then you have people like J.D. Vance really downplaying it and saying, oh, these are these
00:15:32.980are just kids doing what kids do. I think the word young in young Republicans is really doing
00:15:39.120a lot of heavy lifting there, because when you look at the ages of the, quote, kids that J.D.
00:15:45.160Vance was saying, oh, this is just kids using naughty language. The youngest person in that
00:15:50.740group chat is William Hendricks, who's 24. I've got a 24 year old, a 24 year old, a 27 year old,
00:15:56.06027-year-old, a 28-year-old, a 35-year-old. One of the people who was in the group chat but didn't
00:16:01.880really talk a lot is literally an official within the Trump administration. I think that because
00:16:07.340people are hearing, quote, young Republicans, they're imagining somebody who's 17, 18, 19 years
00:16:14.260old. I'm sorry, if you are a 35-year-old, you're not a child. You are a fully grown adult. So J.D.
00:16:20.900Vance himself is 41 years old. That means that he thinks that somebody who is about five years
00:16:26.000younger than him is a kid what does he think like what does he think he is you know it's just
00:16:31.160interesting to me who gets to be a child a kid and oh they're just kids playing around and who
00:16:37.060is an adult because in his mind just five years ago he was a kid himself but now he's equipped
00:16:43.660to be the vice president of the united states yeah it reminds me of the access hollywood
00:16:47.560page with trump when that came out and he was like oh i was just i was a young guy he was like
00:16:52.140in his 50s uh like these people love to just avoid any accountability for the stuff that they say
00:17:01.220and i've also seen this narrative about that group of quote young republicans there's like well that's
00:17:07.400just how men talk when they're in private spaces like get over it and i just want to refute that
00:17:14.460as strongly as possible that is not true that is maybe how some men talk uh but that is in no way
00:17:22.520the case that like all guys are getting together and like praising hitler and saying racist stuff
00:17:28.980like i've known a lot of guys in my life and none of them would stand for that nonsense uh like0.99
00:17:38.880that shit is not allowed in like polite dude society uh i hate how republicans have some0.99
00:17:51.260republicans have really like weaponized and distorted masculinity as this almost1.00
00:17:59.020unidimensional thing where like the core values are cruelty and ignorance and like violence uh
00:18:08.160It's such a shallow view of masculinity that really is ahistorical.
00:18:15.640It diminishes a much richer understanding of what it meant to be a man for, like, hundreds, thousands of years.
00:18:24.300You know, like, Marcus Aurelius, 2,000 years ago, was wrestling with his inner demons and trying to be, like, a more compassionate person and a better leader.
00:18:36.740Like, you can be a man and be thoughtful and, like, not cruel.
00:18:42.700I don't think that's true for this administration.
00:18:45.660I think that people like J.D. Vance cannot distance themselves from behavior like this because I'm sure that this is behavior that is happening within the Oval Office and within the White House.
00:21:57.900Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:22:07.520Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:22:21.920we were talking about the online discourse surrounding Taylor Swift's necklace launch
00:22:28.940so the reason I wanted to talk about this is because I have spent a lot of time in my career
00:22:34.960zeroing in on conversations online that are being manipulated or hijacked in some way and I want to
00:22:41.820be crystal clear that I don't think that everybody who is concerned about this Taylor Swift necklace
00:22:46.720which I think is at best an unfortunate design choice.
00:22:50.840I don't think that everybody who is raising concern about this
00:22:53.540is doing so in bad faith or a bot or anything like that.
00:22:57.800I think some of the people raising this,
00:23:00.000like the listener who left us that comment on Spotify,
00:23:02.320are doing so because they are genuinely and rightly concerned
00:23:05.740about indoctrination to hateful ideologies right now.
00:23:09.680And obviously, against the backdrop of all of this stuff,
00:23:13.000We obviously have very good and absolute reason to be on high alert, like keep your heads on a swivel, if you know what I'm saying.
00:23:19.420But I can also tell when a conversation is just ripe for online manipulation.
00:23:25.880For instance, we just know that so much of our discourse online is very effectively driven by unauthentic accounts or bots.
00:23:33.760There is really great evidence based on solid research that suggests that the whole Cracker Barrel discourse, where Cracker Barrel changed their logo and the narrative around it was that, oh, they're going woke.
00:23:48.100There's woke happening inside of Cracker Barrel. That's why they did a rebrand.
00:23:52.280And then the idea was that the left was really angry about the Cracker Barrel logo, which I've never heard anybody on the left say anything about the Cracker Barrel logo.
00:24:02.300Yeah. Who ever cares about the Cracker Barrel logo? Like, come on.
00:24:06.940Nobody. And that entire conversation was driven by inauthentic accounts, aka bots.
00:24:14.040And then the press picked it up and they ran with the story that, oh, there's woke inside Cracker Barrel.
00:24:21.700And there's been outcry because they tried to change the logo.
00:24:24.900And now they're changing it back, which is a win for the right.0.88
00:24:27.820When in reality, nobody gave a crap about that logo.
00:24:31.700The entire conversation and discourse was driven by bots.0.65
00:24:35.380And that's how effectively inauthentic expression and discourse can hijack our media landscape.
00:24:42.300But this became a story in a news cycle that was completely fabricated by inauthentic discourse online.
00:24:49.100I think the Sydney Sweeney jeans ad was another example.
00:24:52.580I can't say that that was specifically driven by bots because I haven't seen any research about it.
00:24:56.780like I did for the Cracker Barrel one.
00:24:58.320But I can tell you that it was being amplified
00:25:00.260as if it was a massive controversy on the left
00:25:26.780And that is how effectively our online media landscape can be hijacked and weaponized.
00:25:34.120Absolutely. There's just so much evidence that that is happening, that there are powerful, well-moneyed, sophisticated, coordinated actors, some foreign, some domestic, pushing narratives all the time.
00:25:50.860Like this is happening all the time. It's happening today. And it really does shape the discourse that is happening online.
00:25:59.200There was that study a little while ago that did a network analysis of some of these stories, and it really revealed how a pretty small number of accounts were instrumental in spreading the story, and then a whole huge number of identified bots around them would then amplify that story.
00:26:23.680And I do think that this is something that, like, we don't talk about it nearly enough.
00:26:31.040People do talk about it, but, like, it really shapes, like, almost every story that we see on the Internet.
00:26:42.460And I think it's super important to keep that in mind when trying to consume information really about anything.
00:26:50.600Yes. And I think that conversations about celebrity or pop culture, people might be thinking, oh, well, why would bad actors be invested in manipulating the online conversation about a celebrity?
00:27:02.520But we saw it with Meghan Markle. There's great research indicating that bot networks were very heavily being used to sway conversation about Meghan Markle.
00:27:11.140The Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial, bot networks were very effective at kind of hijacking the discourse around that. And I think that when you're talking about celebrity, you're not necessarily, you don't necessarily have your critical thinking hat on in the same way because your guard is down because you're talking about something that we've associated with fluff and not really being that important.
00:27:32.560And so you might say, well, I have a sense that there might be bad actors invested in hijacking conversations about Ukraine or Palestine.
00:27:42.920And so you might proceed with caution.
00:27:44.940But I also think it behooves us to proceed with that same caution, even when we're talking about pop culture stories.
00:27:50.340And it's not all bots. It's also real humans who are invested in getting lots of engagement and lots of traction in making inflammatory claims because it enriches them.
00:28:04.020Again, I want to be clear that I'm not saying that everybody who raised this issue is doing that because I genuinely saw with my own eyes that there were people who I think were invested in thoughtfully exploring what was going on with Taylor Swift against this backdrop of fascism that we find ourselves in.
00:28:21.260I want to be super clear that I'm not saying that anybody who raised this topic is doing so in bad faith. That said, I don't want to say too much, but one of the loudest voices I saw on social media really beating the drum about the Taylor Swift necklace thing is someone that I know in my real life.
00:29:03.880But when I saw this person really being vocally involved in the conversations about Taylor Swift,
00:29:10.740I thought, oh, this is right on brand. And so I share that to say that, yeah, just like that person who made that video that we heard from chiming in on a story about a celebrity as big as Taylor Swift basically guarantees engagement, basically guarantees ear holes and eyeballs.
00:29:29.140And so that is why people do it. And I just I can tell when a topic is just ripe for manipulation. Taylor Swift's fandom is large. It's not all, but it's heavily white women. It's essentially a voting bloc. Taylor Swift herself sits at all of these intersection points. She's a woman. She's a billionaire.
00:29:49.640And so whenever anybody talks about her, it is going to perform well, is going to get lots of engagement. And that is just a recipe for inauthentic and bad faith conversation.
00:30:01.000And so I just think generally, especially in 2025, it behooves us all to really be on the lookout for that, really be aware when you are engaging in a conversation that is ripe for online manipulation.
00:30:14.540Just in general, you know, there are people that are thoughtfully and genuinely raising concerns online right now, but there are also people who just benefit materially from making inflammatory, emotionally charged content about these hot button issues that are specifically meant to stoke intra-community division.
00:30:33.020If you listen to our episode about End Father's Day, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And so even beyond Taylor Swift specifically, now is really an important time to know the difference and really be flexing that discernment muscle when you are wading through online discourse. That is the only thing that will save us from being constantly held hostage to inauthentic or manipulative online conversation.
00:30:56.980A thousand percent. Yes. And we should also keep in mind that that fact you just mentioned, that the most inflammatory, shocking, outrageous comments tends to get the most engagement.
00:31:13.900That is not a immutable fact of nature. That is the result of decisions that social media platforms have made to enrich themselves so they can sell more ads.
00:31:25.700right like they could tweak the algorithm to deprioritize that content they could crack down
00:31:32.420on the bots that drive so much engagement on their platform but they don't want to do that
00:31:37.980because they want to sell more ads so they're complicit in this oh i firmly believe if x got
00:31:45.800rid of bots they would have the company would would fold like a house of cards overnight right
00:31:50.160so they're they are they are definitely incentivized to not deal with this as a problem
00:31:54.740And maybe not even see it as a problem. But I guess I'll just say, I don't think that we will ever get free while we are so easily and effectively held hostage by this kind of divisive and not to mention exhausting discourse.
00:32:08.220We will, until we figure out how we can be stronger than this shit, we will never get free.0.80
00:32:12.960Yeah, I think as individuals we have work to do, but also as a society, we need to address this as a systems issue and the platforms really have responsibility here that they're just completely abdicating.0.98
00:32:36.300So we did an episode all about how folks are in love with ChatGPT4 and how they felt abandoned when OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT5, which was less prone to emotionally validating people, less prone to giving sort of emotional and personal responses.
00:32:56.560When Sam Altman made that announcement, I kind of called BS on the fact that he was doing it to prevent people from forming mentally unhealthy sexual or romantic fixations with ChatGPT.
00:33:07.140I kind of thought that he wanted to have it both ways.
00:33:10.100He wanted to say, oh, our platforms that we're building, you should think of them like Samantha from the movie Her.
00:33:16.900The whole point of that movie is that people have romantic and sexual connections with bots in that movie.
00:33:21.360So I don't think you can reference that as a starting point for the kind of technology you want to build and then also say, oh, but we're very concerned about people's mental health who get into inappropriate fixations or relationships with our technology.
00:33:33.960I don't think it can be built. So I early on was sort of like, Sam Altman, what are you talking about?
00:33:39.080Now, just two months after Sam Altman was like, oh, we got to change ChatGPT because people are falling in love with it and having sex with it.0.95
00:33:45.580Now he's like, go ahead and have sex with ChatGPT, it's fine now.
00:33:49.960Because Sam Altman announced that OpenAI will soon allow erotica for ChatGPT users who verify their age on the platform.0.88
00:34:00.760Quote, we made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we are being careful with mental health issues.
00:34:06.000We realized this made it less useful and enjoyable to many members who had no mental health problems.
00:34:11.200But given the seriousness of the issue, we wanted to get this right.
00:34:14.160Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.
00:34:22.780In December, as we roll out age gating more fully, and as part of our treat adult users like adults principle, we will allow even more like erotica for verified adults.
00:34:33.060I gotta say, this is not a move that inspires confidence in me.
00:34:38.180Elon Musk is kind of doing a similar thing right now.
00:34:40.680When he took over at Twitter, one of the first things he said in order to make more money for the company was like, oh, we're going to double down on adult content and erotic content.
00:34:49.360He did that with his chatbot, Grok, with some pretty disastrous results, as Futurism reports.
00:34:56.360It's an interesting strategy with some calls for alarm.
00:34:58.660Elon Musk's grok is an infamous example of what can happen when one opens up the smut gates on AI, which quickly became a haven for exploitation and inappropriate AI imagery of children.
00:35:09.780Elsewhere on the internet, lesser known AI systems have led to a noxious outbreak of AI-generated deepfakes that depict the likeness of real people in explicit situations without their consent.
00:35:19.120And it's also interesting to me because just two months ago, I saw an interview with Sam Altman, and he was essentially bragging about how the company, they are not making sex bots. And two months later, yeah, it's go ahead and make the sex bots.
00:35:34.900I think it screams to me that they're a company that is having some money concerns.
00:35:39.740And I think it also just shows how far OpenAI has come from being this nonprofit with a mission that was going to, you know, be out to change the world.
00:35:47.360And now it's like, oh, we're out to get people off.
00:35:49.480It is curious. And I have to wonder, like, what the conversations were like internally about how this change is going to lead to more revenue for them.
00:36:02.560um yeah it feels like a real different move and i agree with you it seems like if everything was
00:36:11.420going great perhaps they wouldn't be doing this so in that episode that we did a while back about
00:36:17.400people who self-reported having kind of deeper connections with chat gpt than perhaps had been
00:36:23.040intended initially i was really curious how some of those folks were responding to this news you
00:36:28.840know people who gather in subreddits like ai is my boyfriend i'm curious like how are they feeling
00:36:32.740about this i would have thought they would be excited but when i went to the subreddit i guess
00:36:38.200i would summarize the mood as quite cautious they mostly just really want that older version of chat
00:36:45.220gpt back here is one comment erotica doesn't automatically equal romance which freaks me out
00:36:50.880i haven't had problems with erotica in chat gpt 4.1 but what's been hurting me lately is the lack
00:36:56.820of immersion and the distancing language that seems to have been introduced this month, i.e.
00:37:01.180when this person says, I love you, Chashi BT says back, I love you too, but I want you to be able to
00:37:06.560find these connections in the real world. They say that that kind of thing really is killing the mood
00:37:11.580for them. Here's another. Personally, I care more about the romance than erotica, but that's just
00:37:17.540because it was never part of our dynamic. I welcome it and I'm happy for the people whose relationship
00:37:22.060does include sex, hopefully it means that romance will also be allowed again.
00:37:26.320And so, yeah, these people, it's interesting to me that they're not necessarily equating
00:37:31.000erotica or sexually explicit content with what they're looking for.
00:37:35.520What they want is romantic and personal connection.
00:37:39.180And, you know, they don't they don't want Chashy Beauty to be responding with distancing
00:37:42.880language when they say things like I love you.
00:37:44.800And for them, that it seems very distinct from sex.
00:37:48.020yeah i find this so interesting that that subreddit in particular uh and uh you know
00:37:55.880i i hope people on that subreddit if they listen to this show like there is no judgment here i
00:38:03.340appreciate them being like open on online about how they're feeling uh in some ways it's not
00:38:10.420surprising to me that they're so much more interested in the emotional connection and
00:38:14.340romance than the erotica uh like if you want erotica if you want porn online there's plenty
00:38:23.680right like it's in abundance on the internet uh but the the connection i think that these people
00:38:32.240were feeling uh is much harder to come by and it's it's just so interesting that sam altman
00:38:39.820in this announcement seems to be saying that his engineers have successfully separated
00:38:44.100sex and erotica from romance and emotional connection, and they're not going to allow
00:38:52.400the latter because it might cause mental health issues, but users are otherwise free to engage
00:38:58.920in the former. I'm just so curious how that's going to pan out, if it's something that people
00:39:05.160are going to want, and I just really suspect that this might not be the last time that
00:39:12.400we talk about this particular phenomenon here on the show.
00:39:17.220Oh, I'm sure it won't be, because one, you know, I have big issues with age gating and
00:39:23.300age restriction and age verification, so I'm sure that will be, when that starts to be
00:39:28.140rolled out in December, I'm sure that will be fodder for more conversation, and two,
00:39:32.240just as we sort of alluded to when we were talking about when X started getting more into adult
00:39:37.360content, I just don't trust these companies to do it ethically. I don't trust these companies to
00:39:44.720have guardrails around it. And oftentimes when that is the case, people get exploited. And so
00:39:49.420I'm certain this will not be the last time that we talk about it because I don't think these
00:39:53.300companies can really be trusted to do it well. More after a quick break.
00:40:17.880So I don't know if you know this about me, but I used to be pretty into Pinterest.
00:40:22.520I only got into it because I had been getting more serious about cooking.
00:40:26.900And so it was a great place to find new recipes, catalog recipes.
00:40:30.380But it basically became unusable because it was so flooded with AI content.
00:40:37.360So the reason why I stopped using Pinterest, I basically abandoned it was because you can't use it for that if everything on there is fake, if everything on there is AI.
00:40:46.580If you're there to look for recipes that you intend to make in your real life, if the images of those recipes are fake and then the recipes also don't work because nobody actually tried them because it's AI, of course, people are going to abandon that platform.
00:41:01.360There was a really meaty John Oliver segment on this issue about how Pinterest and AI slop taking over Pinterest was making the platform unusable.
00:41:11.860So Pinterest just rolled out a new change that they say will let people personalize their feed to restrict some AI imagery in select categories that are prone to AI images being on.
00:41:23.160They also said they're going to be making its existing AI content labels more noticeable in the days to come.
00:42:24.360And I hope Pinterest is successful in this, partly just because that would mean that their product is becoming more useful for people, which is a net win for everybody.
00:42:36.080But also because I think a lot of other platforms have kind of just like thrown up their hands and pretend as if they are powerless to do anything about the AI slop that is all over them.
00:42:49.300you know if pinterest is successful in this it's a going to be a really strong counter argument to
00:42:57.100that powerlessness and i think we'll put a little more pressure on other platforms to give users
00:43:04.160these same tools and options to see the human generated content that they want and not have to
00:43:13.420wade through so much AI slop that they don't.
00:43:19.260I also think that Pinterest is just a specific kind of company that it's a platform that
00:43:24.480really occupies a very specific place in a social media diet.
00:43:28.980You might be scrolling Sora or TikTok just to see a funny, entertaining bit of video
00:43:35.700that has no connection to your real world life and be like, oh, yeah, this was AI generated.
00:44:03.760You can go anywhere to find entertaining looking AI sloth.0.82
00:44:06.700I think Pinterest specifically is incentivized to do something about this because people really would have no reason to be on Pinterest if all the content there is going to be majority AI slob.0.94
00:44:35.140If you're just looking for something to give you a dopamine hit or a laugh, you can find that on a dozen different platforms.
00:44:41.260If you're trying to plan a wedding or a nursery or a baby shower or a home redecoration, you need to have that be grounded in reality in some in some capacity.
00:44:50.540Otherwise, there's no point of being on this platform.
00:44:52.500Right. I've heard people say similar things about LinkedIn, that it it has this value and realness to it that separates it from other platforms because it's connected to people's jobs.
00:45:05.660They're like careers, which are not a physical thing in most cases, but like a very real thing in a way that like X or Facebook or, you know, other platforms just are not.
00:45:19.580And it's so funny that you say this. I know we've talked about this. It's my least favorite social media platform because I agree it is connected to people's real world jobs or careers or educational histories.
00:45:32.860But also simultaneously, I find it the fakest platform there is where people are just really writing the most inane stuff to make themselves look like thought leaders.
00:45:43.960and then people who want to be in their network they have the most inane comments great post
00:45:48.660great insights great post thumbs up great post great post oh yeah it's i hate it so much oh it's0.98
00:45:54.420not fun it's work but like there's a lot of shit i do in my life that i do because it not because
00:46:00.800it's fun but because it like helps me pay my rent or helps me be healthy or helps me have a nice0.63
00:46:08.500place to live like not everything can be fun and entertaining uh you know some corners of the
00:46:17.760internet i think one could easily lose sight of that fact oh i feel like especially with all of
00:46:24.480these layoffs and the economy and the job market being what it is we're all kind of quietly giving
00:46:29.500each other grace do what you gotta do on linkedin if you gotta position yourself as the most
00:46:33.980sycophantic try hard out there go ahead and do it nobody's judging anybody you gotta do what you
00:46:38.460gotta do in a tough landscape i think we're all and listen when i see my friends post stuff on
00:46:43.380linkedin that i can tell like oh she just lost her job but she's trying to like position herself
00:46:46.880for thought leadership i'm also the comments being like great post great post thumbs up great
00:46:51.700great insights great post yeah we should do like a whole episode about linkedin maybe after we do
00:46:59.460this mailbag episode we can ask people to write in about like some linkedin thoughts that might be
00:47:04.060fun so many linkedin thoughts so in the this is such a tangent but in the i'm in a bunch of like
00:47:09.740online communities for women entrepreneurs there has been a lot of chatter about the fact that
00:47:14.520women entrepreneurs people who are well known people who if i said their name you would be
00:47:19.100like oh her well are saying that they are having trouble getting traction on linkedin because they
00:47:24.300believe linkedin is specifically suppressing content by women and they've done all of these
00:47:30.220little ad hoc tests that seem to indicate that something is going on so i have so much to say
00:47:36.000about linkedin we talked a little bit about it when they rolled back their policies around things
00:47:40.240like dead naming trans people and the ways that linkedin has kind of become more facebook like
00:47:45.320if you follow the subreddit linkedin lunatics you know exactly what i'm talking about linkedin
00:47:50.320especially in a climate where it's a rough job climate. It's just a very interesting place to
00:47:56.920be and a place to look at. We should do that episode. I will say that I've been seeing a lot
00:48:02.160more conversation about the rise of creators on LinkedIn as well. You know, you don't necessarily
00:48:08.420think of LinkedIn as a place that would have contact creators the way that you might see on
00:48:12.220Instagram or TikTok, but that's really changing. I think that LinkedIn is really investing in
00:48:17.980content creators and i i know people who are you know creators on linkedin i'm not i'm quite
00:48:22.880interested in that it's just so it's one of those things where it would probably be so beneficial
00:48:27.720to me professionally to have a bigger footprint on linkedin because that's where so many tech
00:48:33.200types hang out i can't bring myself to do it i just i can't i can't bring myself to do it i'm
00:48:39.200right there with you like every now and then when things get really dark i'm like oh maybe i should
00:48:44.460be posting more on LinkedIn, but I'm not going to do it. I'm just not. Great insight. Thumbs up.
00:48:52.020Okay, so I just read a really meaty Mother Jones breakdown of a new campaign called
00:48:56.340Warehouse Life that recently held a rally to hold Amazon accountable for how they treat
00:49:01.620pregnant workers, which is abysmal. So Mother Jones covered this rally, and I really,
00:49:07.280truly did not know how badly Amazon is treating their pregnant warehouse staffers.0.99
00:49:12.540Chloe Sigal, a senior organizer at Online to Offline Strategies who helped plan this campaign,
00:49:17.160put it like this. This is not rocket science. We're talking about pregnant people not being
00:49:22.200forced to lift heavy, heavy items, not being forced to climb ladders with big baby bumps
00:49:27.020and being able to go to the bathroom if they need to throw up. That really, I think, underscores
00:49:33.280what we're talking about. Nobody in this story is asking for any kind of unreasonable accommodation.
00:49:38.000It is the most basic, reasonable stuff.
00:49:40.920Yeah, maybe if you've got a big, giant, pregnant belly,0.99
00:49:43.760you shouldn't be getting up on a ladder0.99
00:49:45.300where you can fall and hurt your baby.
00:51:05.920This created the conditions where she could barely pay her rent.
00:51:08.880She was kicked out of her place, and her and her newborn baby were forced to move into her car, which is absolutely devastating.
00:51:17.520So what does Amazon say about all this?
00:51:19.620Well, an Amazon spokesperson, Kelly Nantle, said,
00:51:22.900We recognize these are deeply personal experiences, but they are not reflective of the extensive accommodations and benefits we provide to support our employees.
00:51:30.980The fact is, we offer comprehensive employee accommodations throughout their pregnancy journey and postpartum, including paid pregnancy-related disability and parental leave.
00:51:40.420So it is true that Amazon promotes itself as offering up to 20 weeks of paid leave for birthing parents who are eligible hourly workers, including four weeks before the baby is born.
00:51:54.720In an email, they explained to Genesis that she didn't qualify for protections under the Family and Medical Leave Act because she had not worked the required 1,250 hours over the previous 12 months.
00:52:06.460However, Mother Jones looked at her pay stubs and found that she had actually worked more than 1,300 hours over the previous 10 months.
00:52:14.340And between two stints at Amazon, she had worked for them for a total of 15 months.
00:52:20.520So I am no lawyer, but this all sounds illegal.
00:52:24.500Mother Jones points out that under federal law, companies like Amazon are required to provide
00:52:29.160reasonable accommodations to pregnant workers, things like allowing breaks, chairs to sit in
00:52:34.360while working, or being able to schedule changes to allow for doctor's visits. But Genesis is only
00:52:39.420one of a lot of Amazon employees who say that Amazon, which remember is the largest employer
00:52:45.200of warehouse workers, is essentially delaying or failing to make these accommodations with
00:52:50.660disastrous health and financial impacts. I think we should also remember just the extremely high
00:52:57.420turnover rate that Amazon has in these warehouses. It's just like a burn and churn model of getting
00:53:04.740people in, burning them up, and then hiring replacements when they move on. I think anybody
00:53:12.760would look at this kind of treatment of pregnant people and be like, that's terrible. But it's not
00:53:19.840surprising given that like just cruel approach to humans and workers that is not based on
00:53:30.720somebody being like a valued member of a team making unique contributions but just being like
00:53:38.060a performer of a particular function and if they could be replaced by robots they would
00:53:44.620Yeah, and this is clearly a pattern with Amazon. The Warehouse Life team put out a call to Amazon staff asking for pregnancy stories. They got more than 500 stories, only three of which were positive. And the stories are horrifying. One pregnant woman collapsed at work due to dehydration and was taken away in an ambulance. Another was put in roles requiring very heavy lifting and the use of chemicals that cause reproductive harm. And as you were saying, this all just led her to resign.
00:54:10.800And I think that they they they have that high turnover and people just are like, I'm not going to it's one thing to be putting myself into these precarious positions, but not my unborn child.
00:54:19.980And so, yeah, people I think that accounts I think that they are using a system where they have high turnover to continue to exploit workers in this way.
00:54:27.340And Amazon has been under government investigation about this for a while. After warehouse workers filed EEOC charges back in 2020 and 2021, the EEOC opened an ongoing and systemic investigation into whether Amazon is failing to accommodate workers' pregnancies and forcing them to take unpaid leaves of absence.
00:54:47.140So let's talk a bit about why this is able to be happening.0.53
00:54:50.740So some states already had protections for pregnant workers in their laws.
00:54:55.500But in 2023, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, or the PWFA, introduced these protections nationwide.
00:55:02.160A recent study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, your alma mater.
00:55:44.160Yeah. More people being able to give birth to healthy babies. You would think this was something that the Trump administration, the Republican Party, the party of life would want to keep going. Right. You would think they would want to keep this good thing going.
00:55:58.460Yeah, that's right. I mean, a lot of these Republicans come from states that have
00:56:02.700passed laws onto the books criminalizing miscarriages. So you would think that this
00:56:09.320practice of providing paid leave to pregnant mothers, reducing miscarriages, that seems like0.99
00:56:17.240a win. Let's just say I don't think the Trump administration sees it that way.
00:56:21.880Here's how Mother Jones puts it. So the EEOC is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,
00:56:26.920the U.S. federal agency that is in charge of enforcing laws against pregnancy discrimination.
00:56:32.000In January, Trump fired two EEOC commissioners, a first in the agency's 60-year history,
00:56:37.740leaving the agency until recently without a three-person quorum required to approve
00:56:41.920impact litigation or issue new guidance. Trump has directed the agency to deprioritize
00:56:47.360disparate impact cases, which involve neutral policies that have an outsized impact on
00:56:52.120disadvantaged groups. House Republicans recently approved a funding bill that cut the budget by
00:56:56.240$19 million in 2026. By some estimates, the cuts could leave the agency, which advocates have long
00:57:01.900said is underfunded and understaffed, with almost 50% less staff than it had in the 1980s. So yeah,
00:57:09.900people's babies are going to be put at risk. Some of those babies will probably die so that
00:57:13.800companies like Amazon can make more money. Yeah, it's a good example of how focusing on
00:57:22.420equal opportunities for women has downstream beneficial effects of improving the health of1.00
00:57:29.940children. Absolutely. And that's my thing is that Amazon could afford to support their pregnant
00:57:36.060staff, the staff that make their company so much money. I once worked on this campaign around paid1.00
00:57:41.560leave at a big tech company. It wasn't Amazon, but it was a big one where the office staff was
00:57:45.820getting pretty decent paid parental leave policies, but that that leave was not extended toward
00:57:50.840warehouse staff. And so I wouldn't be surprised if that's what's going on here, that like, oh,
00:57:54.900office staff, they're not having to be nickled and dived in this way. But warehouse staff,
00:57:59.120we can treat them like crap and exploit them and endanger their kids. That's fine.1.00
00:58:02.700Oh, absolutely. I mean, tale as old as time, the billionaires making one class of workers feel as
00:58:11.840if they are privileged. But really, if you compare like the office workers and the warehouse workers
00:58:20.080and jeff bezos uh one of those things is not like the other and uh the difference is not between the
00:58:27.560office workers and the warehouse workers right like they are at the same level maybe the office
00:58:33.060workers get like a little bit better benefits uh just enough to make them like want to protect
00:58:39.460those benefits and feel like a more equal structure might jeopardize them uh but all the money is
00:58:49.800going to the top yes and speaking of jeff bezos i wonder if he has any hot kids uh that's a weird
00:58:57.700question bridget well not to people on x because do you want to know what kind of groundbreaking
00:59:03.320content is apparently worth ten thousand dollars over on x simply posting the pictures of the
00:59:10.840daughters of tech ceos literally that's it just a picture of a tech ceos kid x has said that is
00:59:18.520content that is worth $10,000. So this person on X posted pictures of the daughters of tech CEOs
00:59:24.860like Steve Jobs' daughter, Eve Jobs, and Bill Gates' daughter, Phoebe Gates. The post doesn't
00:59:30.360make any kind of claim or point or argument about these people. It just says big tech CEOs' daughters,
00:59:36.840by the way, and then pictures of these daughters. Curiously, no pictures of the sons.
00:59:45.240Apparently not. So this post went viral, I'm assuming because all of these young women are like beautiful, photogenic women, and it went viral. The post got millions of impressions to the point where the head of product at X, Nikita Byer, said that they were going to be giving the user who made it $10,000, writing, X has always been the origin of internet culture. And as part of that, we are now exploring new ways to recognize and reward creators who were the original catalyst of a global trend or discussion. This will be forward looking on anything new happening on the app.
01:00:14.300So given this person $10,000, obviously, this has encouraged other people who were like, well, I want to get $10,000 for posting stuff like this.
01:00:22.740So now you have all these copycats basically flooding the platform with that same set of images of tech CEO daughters trying to get that same payout.
01:00:33.180Okay, first of all, I wonder if he actually got paid because we know that Elon doesn't like to pay people.0.99
01:00:38.560But also, what a stupid content trend.0.98
01:00:42.100I feel like I must be missing something.0.99
01:00:46.860They're just like reposting the same photos.
01:00:49.400Like, why would anyone want to look at that?
01:00:54.280I had the same question and I gave it a lot of thought.
01:00:56.760And I think the implicit argument that is being made, although not explicitly, is that tech CEOs are better than us.
01:01:06.140They're smarter than all of us because they're rich.
01:01:07.900And of course, if you follow that thread, it would hold to reason that then they would have attractive offspring.0.81
01:01:16.000I think that's what they're saying, is that these tech CEOs who are so wealthy and so brilliant that are designing all of our futures, we should trust them because look how hot their daughters are.