Zoom drops (maybe？) AI training policies; Black pregnant women arrested by facial recognition; Twitter CEO (kind of？) Linda Yaccarino gives first big interview; Did Elon ever pay those creators？ — NEWS ROUNDUP
00:05:17.640Pointing to the ability to opt in to Zoom settings for things like meeting transcriptions
00:05:22.020and summaries and how it will, quote, improve the performance and accuracy of these AI services.
00:05:28.000So if you want to use these services with Zoom, then you will have to opt in to sharing
00:05:32.720your data with the platform. Something that I find kind of interesting about this, like I was
00:05:36.960talking to somebody about this and they were like, well, what do I care if like Zoom wants to use my
00:05:42.160data in this way? Like, explain it to me like I'm five, why this is a problem. Well, first of all,
00:05:47.940there are pretty big intellectual property concerns. Anybody who uses a platform like Zoom
00:05:52.940to discuss things where their ownership of those things is key. So like for me, I'm a podcaster.
00:06:00.680Or if I were having podcast interviews on Zoom, Zoom could essentially say, oh, hey, actually, because you use Zoom, we could have the rights to what you talk about in this episode.
00:06:11.620We've talked about how folks like Sarah Silverman are suing companies like OpenAI for intellectual property threats because they have taken her intellectual property, which she owns, to train their algorithms and machine learning.
00:06:24.500So if you are somebody who has to discuss scripts that you own or discuss creative content that you own, using Zoom under those original terms of service would not be a really secure place to do that.
00:06:36.120Because just by using Zoom, you're kind of giving them consent and ownership to use that intellectual property however they see fit to make money for their company.
00:06:43.940And not just intellectual property, but any sort of trade secrets or internal information that you wanted to keep private among you and your team, your business associates, your partner, anything, right?
00:06:59.600Like a chat GPT can, just using that as one example, but, you know, a lot of these large language models are different and who knows how any of them work, but chat GPT seems pretty good at repeating back information from specific copyrighted works, you know, specific pieces of its training corpus.
00:07:17.560And so who's to say that what might happen to something that you say during a Zoom meeting that you think is private that then gets used to train a large language model is a pretty like brazen attack on privacy and confidentiality.
00:07:35.440Well, exactly that. And I think that's another big issue is that, yes, to all of the intellectual property concerns and trade secret concerns, kind of like what you were saying, it's also just kind of the principle that people's private meetings should not be fodder for training Zoom's AI.
00:07:53.480That like that dynamic where just by using this software that has become so ubiquitous to all of our lives, how work gets done, how people communicate and connect with each other, that just by showing up on that platform, you are consenting that basically you're like an employee of Zoom, that whatever comes up in that space belongs to them.
00:08:15.440And that's like a fundamental dynamic that I think that it's the principle of that. That's kind of what why people felt so outraged by this move by Zoom. It's just like the fundamental shift that we as users of these programs are just fodder for whatever Zoom wants to do and however Zoom wants to make money.
00:08:39.080And I think that people are, the fact that people really raised hell about this to the point where Zoom had to, like, walk it back, I think shows that there's a little bit of a shift happening in terms of how folks are thinking about the relationship between themselves, tech companies, and how their data is used or misused.
00:08:56.460And this is not the first time that Zoom has really stepped in it with regards to things like user privacy.
00:09:02.860Mike, you got a little bit of a check from Zoom because of this, right?
00:09:06.100That's right. I got a check for $53 from a class action settlement against them.
00:09:10.120Wow. What did you spend that whopping $53 on?
00:09:16.220Well, the reason why you were able to get that Uber Eats is because Zoom had to pay out a
00:09:20.140historic $85 million lawsuit for Zoom bombing, basically not having a secure enough system
00:09:26.600that allowed for bad actors to disrupt the privacy of folks' private meetings.
00:09:30.960This has happened to me before. I have been on pretty high stakes, important calls on Zoom where like presentations about things that are like important but need to be secure for specific security reasons.
00:09:45.020And bad actors and folks looking to disrupt have been able to gain access to those spaces to disrupt them.
00:09:51.100So it's pretty serious. Like it's pretty high stakes is what we're talking about.
00:09:55.760And like I said, I think that people are just starting to ask questions about whether or not these tech companies are actually, obviously they're not acting with our best interest as users in mind, but like how much are they not acting with our best interest as users in mind?
00:10:12.980I think really recently there have been a lot of big examples of people being like, wait a minute, you're using my data or my work or my intellectual property for what exactly?
00:10:23.160And really pushing back against that dynamic that everything of theirs should just be for the taking of whoever wants it for them to make money.
00:10:31.100For instance, this week, this guy Benji Smith was rightly like kind of bullied by authors of the Internet into taking his platform Prosecraft down.
00:10:41.020Perthcraft was meant to use AI to analyze the structure of a whole library of thousands and thousands of books.
00:10:47.120Books he notably did not have any right to be using or reproducing.
00:10:51.680Authors like Roxane Gay were pissed and eventually he took the platform down
00:10:56.300because it turns out that authors really don't love it when their material is being taken without their consent.
00:11:02.580So they spoke up about it until he put out a statement apologizing and eventually was like,
00:11:08.000oh, wow, y'all really hated this, and announced he was closing up shop.
00:11:12.740On the show, we're actually going to be talking to another author, Jane Friedman,
00:11:16.380who recently found out that somebody, or some buddies, is impersonating her name as an author
00:11:21.880and using AI to create poorly written AI-generated knockoffs of her books under her name,
00:11:29.480and that Amazon then added those books that were not written by her to her Goodreads author profile.
00:11:35.800And Google, for instance, just recently went on record as saying that their AI systems should have the right to mind publishers' work unless those publishers specifically opt out of doing so.
00:11:47.360When asked how a system like this might work, Google didn't say they didn't really have an answer.
00:11:52.340And I think that we've really hit a wall with how regular people are thinking about the future and the way that tech companies are using all of us.
00:11:59.660I think folks are starting to push back against this idea that everything we do, everything we do online, everything we say, whatever we bring to these platforms can just go to enriching these tech companies that already have so much, have so much money and have so much impact on how all of us live our lives.
00:13:15.280If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:13:21.200This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club,
00:13:25.580part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and
00:13:30.220Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're
00:13:35.500connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:13:40.620I'm gonna have to look up this story. I'm obsessed, so obsessed. From best-selling authors and your
00:13:45.900favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:13:50.320It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:13:58.220Whether 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.
00:14:07.400Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:14:20.320at our back. So speaking of that, we have to talk about this Black woman in Detroit who was0.88
00:14:29.780falsely arrested. This story is infuriating. So back in February, a 32-year-old, eight-month
00:14:36.380pregnant Black woman in Detroit named Portia Woodruff was arrested for a carjacking that
00:14:41.360she did not commit. Why? Well, facial recognition technology misidentified her, as it often does
00:14:48.580with black people. The New York Times reports that when the police came to her house,
00:14:52.880she actually gestured to her stomach to indicate how pregnant she was and that like how unlikely0.91
00:14:59.960it would be to have an eight month pregnant woman commit armed carjacking and robbery.0.98
00:15:05.760However, that did not stop them from putting her in handcuffs in front of her neighbors and her0.78
00:15:09.960four babies, leaving her four babies at home with her fiance as they cried and taking her to the
00:15:15.860Detroit Detention Center for Booking. She says that she was held for 11 hours, questioned about
00:15:20.600a crime that she had no knowledge of, and had her phone seized to be searched for evidence.
00:15:25.080She told the New York Times, I was having contractions in the holding cell. My back
00:15:29.200was sending me sharp pains. I was having spasms. I think I was probably having a panic attack.
00:15:34.160And the reason that she knows all of this is because she's a nursing school student.
00:15:37.840I was hurting, sitting on those concrete benches. So she was charged with robbery and carjacking,
00:15:43.180released on a $100,000 bond, and when she was released on bond, went straight to the hospital,
00:15:48.820where she was diagnosed with dehydration and had to be given two bags of IV fluids.
00:15:54.140A month later in March, the Wayne County prosecutor dismissed the case against her.
00:15:58.180And this week, she filed a lawsuit for wrongful arrest against the city of Detroit in the U.S.
00:16:03.540District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan. Portia is the sixth person to report
00:16:08.620being falsely accused of a crime because of facial recognition technology.
00:16:13.180All six of these people have been black because we already know that facial recognition technology disproportionately misidentifies black faces.
00:16:21.980Portia Woodruff is the first woman reporting it.
00:16:24.580So basically what happened in this situation is that a man called the police to report that he had picked up a woman who he had been drinking with outside of a liquor store and that this woman pulled out a gun, robbed him and stole his car.
00:16:37.640The police department uses a facial recognition vendor called DataWorks Plus to run unknown faces against a database of criminal mugshots.
00:16:45.420The system returns matches ranked by their likeliness of being the same person.
00:16:49.520A human analyst is ultimately responsible for deciding if any of the matches are a potential suspect.
00:16:54.780The police report said that the crime analyst gave the investigator Portia Woodruff's name based on a match to a 2015 mugshot that she had because she had been arrested for being pulled over while driving with an expired license.
00:17:05.760They then showed the victim six photos of Black women, and the police say that he, the victim, picked out Portia Woodruff's picture.
00:17:13.740If Portia gets her settlement, which she should, this would be the third case where the city would have to settle for folks who have been falsely arrested of a crime because of faulty facial recognition technology.
00:17:24.860The New York Times reports that on average, Detroit runs over 125 facial recognition searches a year, almost entirely on Black men.
00:17:32.200An attorney for the ACLU who represented a man who was falsely arrested for shoplifting because of facial recognition technology is trying to get Detroit to agree to collect more evidence in cases involving automated face searches to end what he called the facial recognition to line up pipeline.
00:17:50.000It is not like we do not already know the dangers of the use of this kind of technology.
00:17:54.920Dr. Joy Bollamwini, researcher at MIT back in 2018, did a whole bunch of research showing that facial recognition technology routinely fails to accurately read the faces of marginalized people.
00:18:06.340There's an entire fascinating Netflix documentary about it called Hidden Bias.
00:18:10.900However, apparently police officers in Detroit have not seen this film and have not heard of this research.
00:18:16.580This is a good example of how technology can really harm marginalized people and how we know when that technology is allowed to become commonplace anyway, it is a real problem.
00:18:27.240Like there are real world consequences.
00:18:29.500And unfortunately, this technology, despite being knowingly faulty, is also becoming really commonplace.
00:18:36.600You have probably gone into venues that use facial recognition technology and might not have even known it.
00:18:42.320And then used like Madison Square Garden, Citi Field, Cleveland's First Energy Stadium, Miami's Hard Rock Stadium, the Pechanga Arena in San Diego, and others use this technology on fans entering venues for concerts and sporting events.
00:19:07.300And the skating rink happened to be using facial recognition technology.0.95
00:19:10.740It misidentified her as someone else. And the skating rink owners basically threw this girl into the night without her parents because they said that she was someone that she was not based on this technology.
00:19:23.200There was another case with Madison Square Garden where an attorney who was representing like the parent group of Madison Square Garden, she was representing them in a legal suit, but not directly involved with Madison Square Garden, just like their parent group.
00:19:41.620And that apparently that parent group has a rule where if you are not just one of the lawyers involved in a litigation against Madison Square Garden or their parent company, even if you are a lawyer who just works at that firm, you are not allowed to come into Madison Square Garden.
00:19:58.500And so she was taking her kid to, like, see the Rockettes for Christmas.
00:20:03.160They stop her at the door and they say, we know you're an attorney and you can't come in.
00:20:06.620And so this technology is becoming more and more used and commonplace, even though we already know it is disproportionately misidentifying Black folks, women and folks of color.
00:20:18.760In fact, the organization Fight for Our Future organized a boycott led by musicians like Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine of venues that utilize this technology.
00:20:27.860And they actually got smaller venues like House of Yes in Brooklyn, one of my favorite spots, the Lyric Hyperion in Los Angeles, and the Black Cat here in D.C.
00:20:36.340These smaller venues actually pledged not to use facial recognition at their shows.
00:20:41.100But as this technology grows, I think these problems are going to become more and more pronounced and happen more and more often with bigger and bigger consequences.
00:20:52.680It's one thing to not be let in for a concert.
00:20:55.360It's quite another to spend 11 days in jail when you're eight months pregnant.
00:20:59.920The fact that she was so pregnant and had to spend her eighth month of pregnancy in jail feels inhumane.
00:21:11.820And something that she said that kind of like broke my heart was that she said that she was as horrible as it was to be very pregnant in this holding cell for 11 hours, that she was kind of happy that she was so pregnant because at least it provided some kind of a seed of doubt to the police officers and investigators that this could not have been her because the victim in the carjacking did not say that this person, the person who did this to him was pregnant.
00:21:39.860And so it's pretty obvious when someone is eight months pregnant. So she said that as much as it was horrifying to her, which I'm sure it was, being pregnant, she believes this was almost kind of a saving grace because at least the police officers, it put some doubt in their mind that they had the correct person.
00:21:56.820And maybe we just need to figure out a way to move that doubt a little bit further up the causal chain of events and like not arrest the pregnant, innocent women from the beginning.0.54
00:22:10.120Yeah, I mean, that's what the lawsuit is calling for, that when facial recognition gives a match, doing actual police work and actual investigating to see if you have the right person before you arrest them and hold them for 11 hours, especially if they're pregnant, but even if they're not.
00:22:29.560That, like, I think it might be a case where it's very easy to just rely on the technology because you have it and you can have that cover of saying, like, this is why we arrested her, right?
00:22:43.600Like, the city of Detroit is saying, like, oh, well, in this case, her arrest was actually warranted because of the situation because the facial recognition technology said it was her.
00:22:54.300The victim picked her out on a lineup of six.
00:22:57.380But, you know, anybody who's ever done one of those police lineups knows how faulty those are, too.
00:23:04.080So relying on two different faulty mechanisms, facial recognition technology, which we know is faulty, and just a human being's ability to recognize faces in a moment that was probably like scary or traumatic.
00:23:16.620Just relying on those two things that are so faulty to lock somebody up for 11 hours is not enough.
00:23:23.700And so I agree. I think that we need to have clearly we need to have protocols in place where this kind of thing doesn't happen and that human investigators are doing work, which I know nobody likes to do extra work, but that you can't just cut corners when it's people's lives like this.
00:23:42.540And it sounds like that's happened too many times in Detroit. But I think the fact that the powers that be are like, let's start using it first, make it commonplace first, and then the kinks will reveal it.0.87
00:23:55.540It seems like they're just saying that, like, it's okay.0.99
00:23:58.660The human cost, the human impact is just part of working at the kinks.
00:24:02.620And if an eight-month pregnant woman had to, you know, be dehydrated in a cell for 11 hours, that's just the cost of getting on the road of perfecting this technology so that we can have a pitch-perfect digital surveillance state.
00:24:17.660The whole thing is like a big casserole of awful when I think about it that way.
00:24:22.740So speaking of a big casserole of awful, let's talk about Linda Iaccarino, new CEO, question mark, of Twitter.
00:24:34.840She had her first big, splashy, boss of Twitter televised interview this week.
00:24:41.340By the way, you may have realized that we're not calling it X.
00:25:09.380I guess I'm trying, but it just feels so awkward that it feels weird every time I say X.
00:25:15.480So basically, as we reported a couple months ago, Linda Yacanero was made Twitter's new CEO. It was a weird situation because during that time, Twitter had, like, very big moves. Like, they changed the name. They announced the payouts, which we'll get to later.
00:25:35.640All of these big changes, and these changes seem to be, from the outside, just Elon Musk's whims, and then Yak and Arrow would have to sort of play catch up and have a very enthusiastic thread of tweets about whatever random change they just made.
00:25:55.360It just did not seem like the behavior of someone who is the CEO of the company, which she supposedly is, she often publicly anyway, seemed to be like an afterthought.
00:26:10.100Like she, I remember the day that they announced the Twitter payouts, she posted like, oh, in order to be eligible for payouts, you have to have 44 million impressions a month or whatever.
00:26:21.220And then Elon Musk that same day said like, oh, well, we're using internal metrics to determine who gets payouts. There's no way to know who gets what publicly. And it's like, well, then why did she just tweet literally something else? Like, why didn't you at least tell her that? So she didn't tweet that and then have you say something totally different. And then it's like, OK, well, my tweet says a completely different thing. Like, get on the same page.
00:26:41.580basically what I'm saying is that it did not seem like CEO behavior to me publicly. And so I was
00:26:48.220happy to see that she was doing some kind of a public-facing CEO-ish interview. Let's talk about
00:27:00.020how it went. So you really don't need to watch the whole thing. There's really nothing too surprising
00:27:05.740that you need to see if you didn't watch it.
00:27:08.400Basically, Yecanero did a lot of spin around Twitter being a healthy place.
00:27:13.520It is very clear that she really wants brands to feel safe on the platform and come back.
00:27:19.040Many brands have left Twitter, rightly so, since Elon Musk took over because they probably
00:27:24.260don't want to see their advertising next to, like, you know, slurs or hate speech or child
00:27:31.600So a lot of brands left the platform and took their advertising revenue with them.
00:27:37.240Yacanero was really excited to talk about the fact that two big brands, State Farm and Coke, have come back to the platform.
00:27:44.360Although, funny enough, Media Matters, after this interview, showed Coke and State Farm ads where it's like, here their ads are on the platform next to hate speech and harassment.
00:27:56.040And she really kept championing this idea of Twitter being a place for free expression.
00:28:03.500Like that was like she probably said that three different times in this interview.
00:28:07.160As someone who has done a little bit of work around platforms and sort of how people think about platforms, researchers think about platforms, something that she did that I really want to call out is that she repeated a lot of made up metrics that truly mean nothing, like truly are meaningless.
00:28:24.260She said, I can confidently sit in front of you and say that 99.9% of all posted impressions are healthy.
00:28:34.680It's just, it's not, it's like not a metric that any researcher would be like, oh, sure, of course, 99.9% of all posted impressions are healthy.
00:28:43.820She just made that up and it probably sounds good.
00:28:46.460It's probably something they're going to be using in their marketing to try to get brands back to the platform.
00:28:50.860Because it's a very brand safe platform if you didn't know.
00:28:54.260Like, lots of healthy discussion and free expression is taking place there.
00:28:59.240Coke and State Farm and other advertisers, please come back.
00:29:24.260Is porn healthy? Are conspiracy theories healthy?
00:29:27.620You know, it goes back to my point about our success with freedom of speech, not reach.
00:29:36.800And if it's if it is lawful, but it's awful, it's extraordinarily difficult for you to see it.
00:29:46.780But how many millions of people follow Kanye West? Lawful, but awful. And he's allowed back on.
00:29:51.840You know, Kanye, who hasn't rejoined the platform yet, but is planning to do so, will operate within the very specific policies that we have established, that we're clear on, that everyone who's watching this or listening on spaces can access themselves.
00:30:14.540And we have an extraordinary team of people who are overseeing hands on keyboards, monitoring all day, every day to make sure that that ninety nine point nine nine percent of impressions remain at that number.
00:30:30.640But we also have to remember what's at the core of free expression. You might not agree with what everyone is saying.
00:30:39.680we want to make it a healthy debate and discourse but free expression at its core
00:30:46.000will really really only survive when someone you don't agree with says something you don't agree
00:30:54.660with i mean so so what are your what are your takeaways on that bet oh it was pretty empty
00:31:00.720she used a lot of rhyming phrases the business the business world's johnny cochran yeah uh she
00:31:09.340was asked how do you define that and she responded i think with another rhyme uh at first she said
00:31:16.74099.9 percent of posts are healthy which like what does that mean and she said it was 99.99
00:31:23.420percent which further makes it seem like she's just making this number up and it just sounded
00:31:30.080like very pr speech in a way that was like transparently so like she wasn't even trying
00:31:40.180to make it seem like she was actually talking about these problems she she sees no problems
00:31:47.660they from her point of view she is they have solved all the problems and
00:31:52.820And it's just all about free speech, which to her means anybody can say anything.
00:32:01.620So her obsession with free expression and open dialogue, healthy dialogue, I don't think that's really what we're talking about when we're talking about problems on platforms like Twitter.
00:32:14.340I don't think that anybody could say that they go onto platforms like Twitter and they only see takes they agree with.
00:32:21.760it's it's it's such a like false reality that like oh what people are upset about is that they're
00:32:28.120seeing takes that they don't agree with but have you ever considered dear user that that is freedom
00:32:33.500of speech it's like no that's not really what people are upset about like me being called a
00:32:38.680slur is not an opinion that i don't agree with right and here's some and here's an actual metric
00:32:43.580according to twitter's own api usage of the n-word on twitter jumped from about 390 instances
00:32:50.140on October 26, 2022, before Elon took over,
00:32:54.300to 27,706 on November 5, 2022, after Elon took over.
00:32:59.780So that is an actual, tangible, specific metric.
00:33:16.260And so she's doing this very tricky rhetorical thing0.71
00:33:19.480where she's making it seem like people's complaints and concerns about the way Twitter
00:33:25.600is being moderated now is grounded from a place of not wanting to see opinions they don't agree
00:33:31.300with. Who on any social media platform ever is only engaging with or seeing opinions they agree
00:33:38.400with? That's not what people are saying. And it's like this insistence on digging into this false
00:33:44.660self-serving reality. Really, it's just so obvious. I also think the person interviewing
00:33:51.260her in this clip really did a good job of kind of trying to hold her accountable a little bit
00:33:56.320for some of the things that she was saying. Saying like, oh, we are going to be focusing
00:34:02.460on healthy speech on the platform. Kanye West tweeted a literal swastika and got his platform
00:34:09.840back. And so she's saying, oh, well, he's going to be operating under specific rules. First of all,
00:34:15.360Kanye West is probably not doing anything that you expect him to be doing at this point. It's
00:34:19.660all clear. What she's actually saying is that he will not be eligible for the revenue sharing
00:34:28.640model and that advertising won't be next to his tweets. But he still has millions and millions
00:34:34.520and millions of followers. He has more followers than there are Jewish people worldwide. And so
00:34:39.400You're going to tell me that when he tweets a swastika, it's no big deal because, oh, don't worry, there's not going to be ads next to that.
00:34:46.500Like, she speaks like somebody for whom the only thing she can think about, the only measure of success of this huge, important platform is whether or not brands are there.0.78
00:34:56.800And that Kanye West using his millions of followers to tweet anti-Semitic garbage is only a problem in so much as it affects advertising.
00:35:06.720there's no other reason why one would have a problem with that the only other reasons that
00:35:12.340she articulates to you know care about content moderation policies is to ensure that free0.93
00:35:18.760speech is protected like by her telling you know we should welcome the opportunity to
00:35:26.860see swastikas and hate speech and slurs right because it's like a difference of opinion and
00:35:32.860That's valuable in itself, which is just wrong, right?
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00:39:25.520If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:39:31.980This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,
00:39:38.100pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:39:44.140I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:39:51.260I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:39:54.300from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments
00:39:59.280nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling
00:40:05.840characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart
00:40:11.120pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much
00:40:15.860you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever
00:40:22.340you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Let's get right back into it.
00:40:34.120Linda Yaccarino's big first public interview as Twitter CEO was happening against kind of a weird
00:40:40.260backdrop. I have to give a little bit of a heads up for child abuse on this one because the day
00:40:45.300before her big interview, Nick Pickles, who is the head of global government affairs at Twitter,
00:40:49.520was grilled by the Australian Parliament about why Twitter restored the account of someone who
00:40:55.640shared a still from childhood sexual abuse material. Remember that Elon Musk touted how
00:41:01.640he was going to crack down on childhood sexual abuse material on the platform and was like
00:41:06.600bolstering this zero tolerance policy. And they actually criticized Twitter's former leadership
00:41:12.800as being too busy censoring conservatives and speech to care about protecting children online.
00:41:19.220Well, now it sounds like the new policy is kind of like, hmm, depends on the vibe.
00:41:23.220So a right-wing social media influencer, Dominic McGee, who goes by Dom Luker, who has over a half a million followers on the platform and is big into QAnon, posted an image from a well-known child sexual abuse material video.
00:41:38.480He said that he posted these images to spread awareness about child trafficking.
00:41:43.020The still is from a video that is known to investigators.
00:41:46.300It's actually the specific video that led to the arrest of Josh Duggar from the show 19 Kids and Counting.
00:41:51.900The Washington Post reports that when this image was posted to Twitter, it got more than 3 million views and 8,000 retweets.
00:41:59.040And when he posted it to Twitter, he watermarked the image, which I feel like is a special kind of, like, you got to be a real creep to do something like that.
00:42:11.940So Nick Pickles, the head of global government affairs at Twitter, basically said that he felt the person that shared that image did so because he was outraged by the image, which, again, that is not a zero tolerance policy, right? That's not what a zero tolerance policy is. Pickles testified, quote, one of the challenges we see is, for example, people sharing this content out of outrage because they want to raise awareness of an issue and see something in the media.
00:42:39.800So I guess if you put, like, a sad face emoji next to it or, like, you're like, this, like, hate this, then, like, it's okay.
00:42:50.080You know, there is nothing in Twitter's terms of service that says it's okay to share child sexual abuse material if the user is doing it because they're outraged or looking to, quote, raise awareness.
00:43:00.940The policy says viewing, sharing, or linking to child sexual exploitation material contributes to the re-victimization of the depicted child.
00:43:08.760And it's one of the platform's most serious violations. And it's just beyond obvious that regardless of anybody's intent, nobody should be sharing that kind of material ever, point blank, full stop, end of sentence.
00:43:21.960And it really kind of goes back to something that came up in our interview with Miles Klee two weeks ago, the author of that Rolling Stone article about the trafficking movie Sound of Freedom, where so much is done to, quote, raise awareness.
00:43:38.520They're like, oh, well, even if it's even if it upsets you, it raises awareness and that's okay. And it's like, no, actually, it re-victimizes the person depicted in this harmful image. And it has no place. It's not discourse. It has no place in polite society.
00:43:52.660Yeah, and raises awareness towards what end like the field of public health is littered with failed awareness campaigns that did successfully raise awareness of something but achieved zero impact in like reducing the harm of it or reducing the scope of how many people it affected.
00:44:15.520uh so like how does it help anyone to raise awareness of the specifics of an image of
00:44:23.420childhood sexual abuse material uh it just reinforces the idea that the people who are
00:44:32.220like deep down this rabbit hole of uh like fixation on trafficking like it just feels
00:44:42.100like a lot of them just kind of like it right like it's like a smokescreen to share stuff yeah that
00:44:48.020came up in that miles clee interview as well that like that film is like very gratuitous and so all
00:44:55.540these people who were like we are trying to raise awareness about trafficking are also like watching
00:45:01.580a movie that kind of like has a gratuitous depiction of it and so it's like well you're kind
00:45:06.640of consuming the thing with which you are saying repulses you in a way that is like
00:45:13.260And, you know, this idea of raising awareness, I don't think that people need to see an image
00:45:18.680from childhood sexual abuse material to know that that is wrong and that is bad.
00:45:24.760I truly don't think people need to see that to have their awareness.
00:45:27.760I think that most people already know it's wrong and horrible.
00:45:31.600I don't think that that image really helps change anybody's mind.
00:45:34.280And in that interview with Linda Iaccarino, I do think that, you know, the way that the tenor of that interview seemed to me that folks are interested in asking pointed questions to get at what the truth is because they understand that this platform is so important to our discourse.
00:45:52.620And I think kind of in the same way that the tide is sort of turning around how we respond to big tech companies who want to be using us and everything we do online to train their AI, I think that we're kind of seeing folks turn on Musk and the people in his orbit as well.
00:46:09.560Casey Newton published a piece over at Platformer called It's Time to Change How We Cover Elon Musk. In it, he breaks down Musk's many, many, many, many lies and calls for a shift in how journalists cover him. Kind of not totally dissimilar to Trump. Like, how do you cover someone who lies so much?
00:46:30.760I mostly agree with the substance of the piece. I have a couple of big quibbles. One is that
00:46:36.220Newton says that in business reporting, it is generally commonplace to take CEOs at their word
00:46:42.780and not assume that they're just lying, bold-faced lying to you. I would really push back on that.
00:46:48.840I would say, yeah, if you're lazy, yeah, if you can't imagine a CEO ever lying or distorting the
00:46:55.560truth. Yeah, if you are caught up in the fact that this person has power and a company and money and
00:47:01.200access and privilege, and therefore are bought into this idea that they are smart and worthy and
00:47:07.160valid and upstanding, sure, maybe. But I think that for the most part, if I'm talking to a CEO,
00:47:13.540I'm not going to assume that CEO is automatically telling me the truth. And it's also worth noting
00:47:18.300who, like which specific journalists0.51
00:47:21.640take hucksters and liars like Elon Musk0.57
00:47:25.220at their word, because I sure didn't, right?0.84
00:47:47.920like blatant transphobia. All of that, choosing that those things are not part of the story and
00:47:54.200choosing to not include them in stories is a choice. It is not being objective. It is not
00:48:00.020being unbiased. It is a choice. And I do think that the tech press has spent a long time really
00:48:05.520not including these things that I believe are so at the core of who Elon Musk is, not just as a
00:48:11.880person, but as a leader as well. And they basically helped him rise to power. They helped
00:48:18.220give him this reputation as a brilliant genius who, you know, is playing three-dimensional
00:48:24.520chess, who is so brilliant, we could never fully understand the moves that he's making
00:48:29.880because he's just too smart. When in reality, he's actually just like a wealthy man-child
00:48:35.180born on third base who thinks he hit a home run, right? Like, I think that a lot of tech
00:48:41.800folks got really invested in this idea of who musk was telling them by the time they opened their
00:48:50.240eyes to who musk actually is and who he has been for a really long time and who he has made clear
00:48:56.360time and time again who he is i think they were like oh wait i have spent a long time not asking
00:49:01.940these questions and so you know i'm glad folks are getting there i do think the tide is turning
00:49:09.020a little bit. I think that the fact that this big first interview of the new CEO wasn't just
00:49:15.800a cushy Q&A about her rise to power or whatever, but it was real questions of substance about this
00:49:23.340platform that is so important to all of our lives and our democracy, I think it illustrates that
00:49:28.400the tide is turning a little bit. And I guess I would just say this, that if we are reaching a
00:49:39.020I hope that when the next tech leader comes along selling us a lie and a dream or snake oil or giving us harm in a package that they've wrapped up and said is good for us, that we are not so quick to launder that.
00:49:53.140That people with power and platforms really do the work of asking the question of, like, who is this person really?
00:49:59.260Not who are they saying they are or who would it be nice if they were?
00:56:47.880there's i this i'm gonna this is this comparison is apt this comparison is apt
00:56:54.500x by elon yes it's like she by sheree i would i i see a sheree elon musk collab in the future
00:57:07.420so if you are owed money from elon musk the check's not in the mail basically you're not
00:57:12.960getting it. Just like I said, I knew it. I knew he wasn't going to pay all. It sounds like he did
00:57:17.960pay out like a select handful of right wing influencers, but did not pay the vast majority
00:57:23.620of them. I think that he's thinking that people will see these big numbers and be like, I'm going
00:57:28.540to join. But there's the pot of money is like empty. Just today, this week, they were selling
00:57:33.680off not just old Twitter memorabilia with birds on it, but also like couches and stuff. So like
00:57:39.240not just now off-brand stuff, all their furniture. That is not the behavior of somebody who has this
00:57:45.240big pot of money to pay people out. Yeah. So if he owes you money, I don't know. Don't bank on it.
00:57:50.900This is not the behavior of somebody who has the money to pay. Yeah. Their whole thing is that they
00:57:54.520don't have any money. They're leveraged up to their eyeballs. They're losing all their
00:57:59.140advertisers and revenue. Yeah. Paying out a bunch of people doesn't really help that.
00:58:06.120Yeah, well, I will say at least Sheree Whitfield, when, like, push comes to shove, you can, like, back her into a corner and she will pay.1.00
00:58:16.180It takes some work, but she'll pay eventually.
00:58:19.640Elon Musk is going to think about life from Sheree Whitfield.1.00
00:58:23.220Yeah, I'm still waiting for those ex-joggers.0.99
00:58:30.300People who don't watch Housewives are like, what the hell are they talking about?
00:58:32.700I also have a little bit more to say, specifically about the Tory Lanez trial for shooting Meg Thee Stallion and how disinformation played a role in that.
00:58:41.920If you want to hear that, you can find it on Patreon at patreon.com slash tangody, where you can get ad-free content and support the show.
00:58:48.700Mike, thank you so much for writing down these stories with me.