Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - I Can't Quit You (or Can I？)

00:00:00.000 I don't even know if I have the words to tell you how I feel now.

00:00:09.000 So I'm driving down the street to bring one of my children to school.

00:00:14.720 And I'm looking around out my window and taking everything in.

00:00:20.500 Taking in the weather, taking in the bear trees, taking in some other people walking down the street,

00:00:26.660 taking in the other vehicles.

00:00:27.840 and I'm like crying as I'm looking at all these things.

00:00:34.360 It almost makes me emotional talking about it

00:00:36.280 because I don't quite know when the last time

00:00:39.780 I was able to truly take in my surroundings like that.

00:00:49.040 Wow, that all sounds really nice, doesn't it?

00:00:54.840 That is Lindsay Coughlin. 0.97

00:00:57.140 She's an emergency room physician's assistant as well as a mom blogger and entrepreneur.

00:01:02.200 But she's not on Instagram.

00:01:05.140 At least not anymore.

00:01:06.480 Last year, Lindsay abandoned her very profitable Instagram account and her nearly half a million followers

00:01:11.600 because she felt like the app was just messing with her head.

00:01:15.320 She felt like it wasn't serving her anymore.

00:01:17.440 I owe it to Instagram and just clouding my brain with unnecessary information

00:01:23.860 at such a fast pace that even I didn't even know what was happening. To have my own brain back and

00:01:30.180 my own thoughts back and to be able to appreciate shit like the snow falling outside and the way 0.99

00:01:36.380 that the fucking trees are curved a certain way. Like I, I mean, I feel like I'm just like passing 0.99

00:01:41.540 a joint back and forth right now, but that's, but I mean, it's true. It is true. Like I truly believe

00:01:51.860 that I have my life back. I am much more present with everyone and everything in my life compared

00:01:59.640 to how I've been for the past couple of years. And that to me is more important than fucking 0.98

00:02:05.300 anything. We talk about this a lot. So many of us know that we want to get off Instagram, 0.99

00:02:11.200 but let's be honest here because we're always honest on this show. It is so fucking hard to 0.96

00:02:16.360 quit it entirely. Even if you aren't an influencer who directly makes their livelihood on Instagram, 0.88

00:02:21.860 you're probably using it for a dozen other reasons.

00:02:25.720 Getting off Instagram is harder than quitting the gym.

00:02:30.280 And yeah, that is a Friends reference from 1997.

00:02:33.800 I am an old.

00:02:38.120 Now, we're going to get back to Lindsay in a little bit.

00:02:41.000 But I also want to tell you that I talked to another influencer for this episode.

00:02:46.040 Her name is Katie Rose Pritchard,

00:02:48.360 and she had an experience that made Instagram a complete nightmare

00:02:51.600 for her and her family.

00:02:54.180 They gave us new names.

00:02:56.300 They gave us basically new personalities.

00:02:59.420 They made us all into these like fictional,

00:03:04.040 but also very real characters with our images.

00:03:07.640 My heart sank and I started flipping through it

00:03:09.980 and discovered that it was this thing called role play

00:03:15.540 that I had no idea existed.

00:03:18.780 You'd think that'd be enough to get someone off Instagram. 0.99

00:03:22.080 But Katie stayed. 1.00

00:03:24.260 Why'd she make that choice?

00:03:26.580 We're going to find out. 0.93

00:03:29.600 In the last episode, we went over the many ways that women are taken advantage of by companies like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all of the social platforms. 0.81

00:03:38.960 We also went through why we need to take a stand against it.

00:03:42.700 These two examples show us that in the end, everyone has to make the decision about how to live with social media for themselves.

00:03:49.880 so today i'm going to tell you two stories about one woman who quit the last two years were just

00:03:57.620 a lot of trying to figure out what i really wanted to get out of instagram and the short 1.00

00:04:05.380 answer to that was fucking nothing and one who despite a completely hellish black mirror style 0.97

00:04:12.600 experience decided to stay on i'm in no place to get off of instagram you know i've poured my 0.99

00:04:18.880 blood, sweat, and tears into this, and I don't want to just throw that away.

00:04:22.260 I'm Jo Piazza, and you're Under the Influence.

00:04:48.880 Episode two, getting off the gram.

00:04:54.000 Hi, Glynis.

00:04:55.600 So I hear that we're planning like a global women's day off the internet, which sounds like the biggest power move in history and also a huge ask.

00:05:05.580 And while I don't doubt your ability to do this, because I've known you for a long time, how are we going to convince people to get off the internet? 0.71

00:05:15.280 Well, I'm going to ply them with french fries and MDMA.

00:05:18.880 as one does no so look it's gonna I know it's gonna be hard I know it's almost impossible to

00:05:27.540 get people to put down their phones for any length of time but frankly since season one of

00:05:32.680 Under the Influence came out I get thousands of messages a week from women saying either I want 0.99

00:05:38.780 to get off or I just I just want to control how I use social media more or I want more power over 0.98

00:05:46.320 what I'm putting out and how people are using it. So through that, I've gotten so many good

00:05:53.320 examples of how women are using Instagram and how they want to take a step back. Look, 0.55

00:06:00.120 I think we have to get off to get back on, to get back on in a better way that is satisfying

00:06:08.100 for all of us. So much of the time we think of getting off these things as a sacrifice.

00:06:12.880 And I think framing this as a power move, like this is women exerting all the power we have

00:06:20.680 in a way that demonstrates to us the extraordinary reach of it.

00:06:26.360 Totally.

00:06:27.200 And I think the word satisfying is really important too.

00:06:30.560 We don't want this to be about deprivation.

00:06:33.100 We want it to be about finding more places of joy in your life.

00:06:38.420 And more control, I think too.

00:06:40.400 So much of, for me, social media makes me feel like I'm out of control, that this idea of putting us in control or demonstrating how much control we actually have and may not realize it is really appealing to me.

00:06:55.160 So the stories in today's episode are kind of like Harvard Business School case studies for if and when we should get off Instagram completely or how we can control how we use it.

00:07:07.760 And our first case study is a mom influencer named Lindsay.

00:07:11.980 I first discovered Lindsay's Instagram account and her blog after she mentioned me on her Instagram.

00:07:18.180 I love a fan. I do.

00:07:19.860 She had listened to season one of Under the Influence.

00:07:23.200 And she mentioned that after listening to season one and for so many other reasons, she was completely ready to be done with Instagram.

00:07:32.760 She had nearly half a million followers, and she still decided she was going to get the hell off.

00:07:39.180 And so she decided to take her company, her brand, her influence, her power into her own hands and away from the instability and everything else of Instagram.

00:07:50.420 And she's off it now.

00:07:54.080 She just poof, poof.

00:07:56.460 here's the thing you're gonna recognize a lot in lindsey's story that we heard in season one

00:08:00.880 because she's one of those og mom bloggers she's been doing this a really long time and in the

00:08:06.840 beginning like so many women she freaking loved it she found so much community and so much great

00:08:13.660 storytelling and camaraderie and then right we've heard this story before haven't we what happens

00:08:19.540 What happens? It all goes bad. It all goes to shit. We need a sound effect in there.

00:08:25.960 Dun, dun, dun. I started out, you know, 14 years ago, created a blog, creative outlet for me,

00:08:36.680 aside from the ER, because things were crazy stressful. And I just needed to have that space.

00:08:42.980 blogging, like old school blogging, took a lot of thought. You sat down, you're like,

00:08:49.540 I want to create this look. And there was a lot of writing that went behind the scenes. There was

00:08:55.360 a lot of photography and it was just like beautiful content creation and so much thought would go into

00:09:01.360 it. And then Instagram came along and then it became a little bit faster paced. Lindsay was

00:09:06.620 able to keep up with this social media frenzy, but frankly, the algorithm controlling everything

00:09:11.960 made it a lot less fun. And so then Instagram stories came along and I think they broke the

00:09:19.860 internet and ruined everybody. They're just a way to get people back onto their phone before that

00:09:27.820 24 hour mark because you don't want to miss out, right? It's the fear of missing out. We all have

00:09:32.580 the FOMO. And so I think this was the downfall, honestly, of society. Of society? Of society?

00:09:40.480 It's not, it's not.

00:09:41.680 Listen to me.

00:09:42.600 I'm like negative Nancy.

00:09:44.440 Let's write a book together called The Downfall of Society. 0.99

00:09:47.000 Hey, I'll fucking do it. 0.92

00:09:48.180 It's all about the moment that Instagram stories came into the world. 0.98

00:09:51.620 When it was born.

00:09:52.580 I mean, that's, yeah.

00:09:53.880 I mean, I truly believe it is.

00:09:55.500 And I think there was, you know, probably a year where I was just posting every single day.

00:10:00.220 And I had like 50 stories a day.

00:10:03.260 Jesus Christ.

00:10:04.600 You know what I mean, Joe?

00:10:05.460 Like, just like slow down, you know, like what is happening? 0.99

00:10:08.880 Like who gives a shit? 0.99

00:10:09.580 No one cares. 0.99

00:10:10.480 When the pandemic hit, Lindsay finally got the wake-up call that she needed to break up with

00:10:14.900 Instagram. So then you fast forward to March of 2020 when COVID hit. And for myself as a medical

00:10:22.060 professional, my husband, also a medical professional, we got COVID early on. I was

00:10:27.220 pregnant. It was very scary. And it was a huge eye-opener for me. We're filling out living wills

00:10:34.260 because we truly didn't know if we were going to die. I mean, at that point, we knew nothing

00:10:37.620 about COVID, you know, and I was pregnant. So I was like, I'm definitely gonna be the first one

00:10:41.360 dead because I'm immunocompromised and I'm carrying around this baby. I started thinking to myself,

00:10:46.680 I would sign on to Instagram, like, what am I actually doing on here? And I think that happens

00:10:52.380 with anybody that kind of comes face to face with something that's bigger than themselves. And they

00:10:57.100 realize that life is staring them right in the face and that it could end in an instant. And you

00:11:00.700 start thinking like, why am I doing the things I'm doing? So that's March of 2020. And then

00:11:06.720 And that just amplified over the next couple of months because I would sign on to create content or talk about whatever.

00:11:15.160 A lot of what I wanted to do was education now. 0.99

00:11:18.060 Lindsay decided to use her background in medicine to keep her audience informed about the pandemic. 0.99

00:11:23.160 It was then that she realized just how much of an impact influencers have on their audience.

00:11:28.020 A lot of followers really do take what their favorite creators say is gospel.

00:11:33.100 And Lindsay didn't and does not take that power lightly.

00:11:38.000 It is such a huge responsibility to have a platform like that.

00:11:42.040 And literally everything and anything you post about or talk about,

00:11:47.140 some people are truly taking that all in.

00:11:51.100 And I don't know that everybody takes it as seriously as it is.

00:11:57.280 But yeah, so the last two years

00:12:00.060 were just a lot of reflection

00:12:02.080 and trying to figure out

00:12:04.480 what I really wanted to get out of Instagram. 0.99

00:12:08.140 And the short answer to that was fucking nothing. 1.00

00:12:13.680 Fucking nothing. 1.00

00:12:15.120 I love the fact that I finally met someone on this podcast 0.99

00:12:17.760 who can match me F word for F word. 0.98

00:12:20.540 So Lindsay wanted off Instagram, 0.59

00:12:22.540 but she wanted to keep her brand.

00:12:23.820 If the great Instagram blackout of 2021

00:12:26.360 taught us anything, it is that Instagram could just disappear. So we should all be prepared

00:12:32.040 to get off of it. We should all have our go bag. What the hell's an Instagram go bag? I don't know.

00:12:36.860 But what Lindsay did is she kind of made an Instagram go bag. She made a plan. 0.87

00:12:41.140 I built this community and I wanted to bring that elsewhere. I just wasn't sure how.

00:12:46.240 And in 2020, the end of 2020, I decided, you know what, Lindsay, you need to marry both

00:12:53.580 with what you used to talk about on your blog in the good old days with what you do as a profession

00:12:59.360 and put them together and create a podcast. And so that's how Motherhood Meets Medicine was born.

00:13:07.160 And then I said to myself, you know what, I'm going to make a timeline for myself. And by

00:13:12.000 December 2021, I want to be off social media for good. Lindsay also went through all the reasons

00:13:17.600 she decided to leave Instagram. She wrote this sort of manifesto about it on her webpage. It

00:13:23.340 was very Jerry Maguire. Who's coming with me? With influencing, you always make more money

00:13:29.480 the more you work. This has taken its toll over the years. We see these detrimental effects in

00:13:34.060 all ages, not just children or teens, but adults too. When something is designed to be addictive,

00:13:41.100 it doesn't exclude anyone from its wrath. I felt suffocated. My mental health is not worth any

00:13:48.760 amount of money I will make on Instagram. My mental health is not worth sticking around

00:13:53.120 just to please other people. I am so happy that I realize this now.

00:13:58.700 And with that epiphany, those epiphanies, all of the epiphanies, poof, she was off. I admire her

00:14:06.200 so much for this, and it has made me realize the ways that social media really does stop my family

00:14:12.040 from being present with each other. And not just social media, phones, freaking phones in general,

00:14:16.900 just staring at phones all the time.

00:14:18.880 The fact that we just pick it up out of our pocket

00:14:20.740 instead of being present with the world.

00:14:24.980 There's a lot of things we don't like to say out loud.

00:14:27.380 Like one of the things that I don't like to say out loud

00:14:29.820 is that I feel terrible

00:14:31.340 every time my husband picks up his phone

00:14:33.340 because I'm like, oh, he wants to do something on his phone

00:14:35.820 instead of talking to me or our kids.

00:14:38.540 And I can't even imagine what that makes my kids feel like

00:14:41.740 when I pick up my phone.

00:14:43.600 And I know that I'm modeling terrible behavior for them

00:14:46.600 Did that have anything to do with your decision too?

00:14:50.320 Yes.

00:14:51.040 A big decider for me was being the example I want to live by for my own children.

00:15:00.000 I want them to see me reading.

00:15:02.340 I want them to see me walking outside, appreciating nature.

00:15:06.460 I want them to see me cooking.

00:15:07.900 I want them to see me present with them, doing the normal things that we do without our phones.

00:15:14.960 And I personally wouldn't be able to do that if I was still on social media.

00:15:20.300 I think there's just such a drastic pull for me that not having it has been the most wonderful thing that has happened.

00:15:30.620 Like, it's changed my life drastically.

00:15:35.240 Hearing Lindsay describe her life on the other side of the gram is a little like reading Tom Wolfe's electric Kool-Aid acid test for the first time.

00:15:43.560 I want to be right in it right now with her.

00:15:47.080 I want to see the swirling colors and the trees.

00:15:50.380 It just sounds so nice.

00:15:53.060 But here's the big question. 0.97

00:15:55.680 Can she still make money?

00:15:57.300 It sounds crass, but come on, it matters.

00:16:00.020 And you know what?

00:16:00.780 When men talk about making money, no one says it sounds crass. 0.99

00:16:03.920 Just when the ladies do it. 1.00

00:16:06.600 After a quick break, I'm going to get a little crass. 1.00

00:16:09.460 I'm going to ask Lindsay about the money.

00:16:11.460 Be right back.

00:16:12.680 so what i want to hear is how was life on the other side business-wise you made such a concerted

00:16:26.720 effort to move your audience off this platform onto platforms that i think you have more control 0.65

00:16:32.700 over your newsletter your patreon your podcast was that really fucking hard it what it wasn't 0.97

00:16:42.180 for me because I didn't fucking care. You know, as I had mentioned, like over the last two years, 0.89

00:16:49.720 I lost over 100,000 followers talking about COVID and the vaccine just in general. And maybe for

00:16:55.840 some other reasons, maybe just my no filter. I don't have no idea. But, you know, I had just

00:17:01.200 gotten to the point where I was like, it doesn't matter to me. Like, this is me. And I'm going to

00:17:05.700 talk about whatever I want to talk about on this free platform. I mean, people can choose to come

00:17:11.220 over to it and watch or they can choose not to, you know. And so I didn't find it difficult to

00:17:19.680 switch over to a different platform. Other than that, it is obviously a significant

00:17:26.600 financial difference. But for all the other reasons, I didn't find it difficult. I don't

00:17:32.400 have nearly the amount of following or community that I had on Instagram. But for me now, I don't

00:17:39.920 give a shit. It's kind of where I'm at. That's a really good place to be. That's a really freeing 0.99

00:17:44.460 place to be. It is. Yes, freeing is definitely the way I would, yeah, describe it. So what kind

00:17:51.520 of response did you get from your following when you said, I'm leaving? Joe, it was the coolest

00:17:58.020 fucking thing. I would get messages and emails from people saying, I thought you were such a 0.99

00:18:05.360 hypocrite. I was in such significant denial of my social media use that I unfollowed you and like 0.95

00:18:12.280 cursed you out. And then after a couple months, I came back and I saw you reposting, you know,

00:18:17.600 this resource or this resource. And I finally read it or I finally watched it. And it has

00:18:22.220 changed my life. And I deleted social media and I gained my life back. So one of the things that

00:18:30.400 we are doing this season is that we are calling for all women all over the world to get off

00:18:38.460 the social media, to get off the Instagram, just for a day, just to see how it feels.

00:18:44.780 And also so that the world generally, especially the men who run all these companies and make all

00:18:51.260 the money from these companies, so that they can see how powerful women are in creating all of 0.97

00:18:57.400 the content that drives their stock prices. So we're calling it the Women's Day off the 1.00

00:19:02.480 internet. It's modeled off a Women's Day off in Iceland back in the 70s.

00:19:07.280 Yes, love that. I think you kind of hit the nail on the head with that where you mentioned

00:19:12.300 that women influencing has such a huge financial impact on some of these platforms. And I think

00:19:21.840 it's completely underrated. Thank God. One down. A billion more women to go. But I'm here for it.

00:19:32.680 I'm going to get those billion. I am very, very excited that Lindsay is going to help spread the

00:19:37.720 word that there are so many reasons for us to be more conscious of how we use social media

00:19:42.020 and who's really profiting from it. I think and hope that being off social media

00:19:51.700 will be the norm and that being on will be the rarity in the future. And I think the more of us

00:20:02.040 that pull together to talk about things openly and candidly, like we are here,

00:20:07.740 I think that opens the door for other people to do the same. And I think the money will follow that.

00:20:14.700 I love it. Let's just leave the audience with that, with then some just like really great

00:20:19.020 Riot girl music.

00:20:22.680 Yes.

00:20:32.340 After talking to Lindsay and headbanging to some Veruca Salt and Early Hole,

00:20:37.580 I'm pretty riled up about this.

00:20:39.640 Oh yeah, I'm going to go mosh.

00:20:42.080 Why should I keep giving these platforms my time?

00:20:49.020 Oh, right. It's because I've still got a book to sell and a podcast to promote, and frankly, this mama's got to hustle. 1.00

00:21:01.100 Even in the darkest moments on the internet, when mental health and safety is put at risk, most influencers are not going to make the choice Lindsay made. 0.74

00:21:10.660 Most are going to decide to keep hustling and stay on the platform.

00:21:14.180 Because Instagram and social media have become a part of our lives,

00:21:17.700 a part of our brands, a part of our work.

00:21:21.020 That's the decision Katie Rose Pritchard made.

00:21:24.000 Katie's yet another hard-working mom influencer. 0.99

00:21:26.960 Constantly hustling to keep up with whatever challenges Instagram throws her way. 1.00

00:21:31.820 Whatever challenges the world throws her way.

00:21:34.960 She's worked so incredibly hard to build a lifestyle brand

00:21:37.640 and cultivate an audience on and off Instagram.

00:21:40.560 So far, Katie's got a loyal following of about 100,000 people, which is a lot.

00:21:45.120 But she's still got a ways to go to get into, like, you know, the big time. 0.90

00:21:49.240 And that means she can't leave.

00:21:51.280 Since the beginning of getting on social media, Katie has always posted pictures of her growing family and all of her kids.

00:21:57.520 Then, last Christmas Eve, Katie learned something that made her reconsider every single thing she'd ever done online.

00:22:04.060 so on Christmas Eve my 13 year old comes in my room and she had her Instagram account up

00:22:14.060 and had it pulled up of another account that was mimicking me or whatever I didn't know at the time

00:22:22.460 all I knew was my photo it was six or so photos of mine and she was like mom this is so weird

00:22:29.740 And also funny that they are trying to be like you and like us.

00:22:33.980 And I was like, that is creepy.

00:22:37.940 It's not funny.

00:22:39.560 And I instantly like my heart sank and I started going through it and flipping through it and

00:22:45.220 discovered that it was this thing called role play that I had no idea existed.

00:22:53.580 And so that's when I started going down the rabbit hole.

00:22:56.880 It was pretty crazy.

00:22:58.700 Yeah, I mean, it sounds a little bit like a horror movie, to be honest.

00:23:02.940 So there were pictures of you on this other Instagram account that you'd never seen before and pictures of your kids, right?

00:23:10.700 Right.

00:23:11.880 Yeah, I think I would die.

00:23:13.460 And again, I was just figuring all this out and I still kind of am like learning about it.

00:23:19.380 But one of the things that they were doing or seemed like to me was they were like painting this storyline.

00:23:27.840 They gave us new names. They gave us basically new personalities.

00:23:32.700 They obviously made it look like I ran the account as the mom.

00:23:37.460 Okay, I want to slow us down for a second and recap exactly what is happening here.

00:23:42.820 Katie's 13-year-old daughter comes into her room on Christmas Eve and says,

00:23:46.540 Hey mom, I just found this Instagram account and it's all pictures of our family.

00:23:52.500 Except it isn't controlled by us.

00:23:54.400 They've given us new names and new personalities, and they're pretending to be us.

00:24:00.540 Pretending to be Katie Pritchard and her children.

00:24:04.300 Let's not pretend that's normal, because this is some real Black Mirror territory, and I don't want to mince words about it.

00:24:10.680 This is digital kidnapping.

00:24:11.860 It was just really strange how they made us all into these fictional, but also very real characters with our images.

00:24:24.400 What names did they give you guys?

00:24:26.260 So my name was something with an A.

00:24:28.300 It's like Aofi or A...

00:24:30.920 And they named my four-year-old Oakley.

00:24:34.100 And then my son was Mathis.

00:24:36.280 Oh.

00:24:36.840 I'll forever hate these names, by the way.

00:24:38.840 Oh, yeah, no.

00:24:39.600 They just gross me out.

00:24:41.020 So will I.

00:24:41.600 I now hate these names.

00:24:42.880 Sorry, listeners.

00:24:43.340 They can be like an innocent little kid name out there, but I like hate it.

00:24:47.800 They made like spinoff accounts for my four-year-old and my 13-year-old.

00:24:52.240 So they like would tag them in a story and they would give them personalities and be like, I'm a girly girl.

00:25:00.380 I love ice cream, which is just like totally disgusting.

00:25:04.720 Oh, you hear about predators and things online, like using like symbolic food and candy and stuff.

00:25:12.100 And it just yeah, I discovered all of this like in a matter of under a minute.

00:25:16.560 And I was just like disgusted.

00:25:18.700 I did a little bit of my own digging into the world of Instagram role-playing.

00:25:23.660 And frankly, I was crazy surprised at how little this has been reported on.

00:25:28.740 Most of the news stories I found about it were from way back in 2014,

00:25:33.020 which was like the golden oldie days of Instagram.

00:25:35.880 But there were a few months back then where there was a rash of reporting

00:25:39.740 on Instagram role-playing and, in particular, stolen baby pictures.

00:25:44.780 Here's a pretty good description of baby and family Instagram role-play

00:25:48.140 from the Washington Post in 2014.

00:25:52.560 A group of Instagram users are creating

00:25:54.860 strange fictional relationships

00:25:56.380 using photos of other people's children.

00:25:59.260 Often the accounts are anonymous or private.

00:26:01.900 They are filled with photos of babies and kids,

00:26:04.740 presumably stolen from social media sites.

00:26:07.340 In comments, the fantasy comes to life.

00:26:11.020 Users have conversations

00:26:12.760 pretending to be the parent or the baby.

00:26:15.300 The baby says things like

00:26:17.340 Mies wove flowers, while other users might ask what the baby's favorite color is or if it wants

00:26:24.060 to be held. They use hashtags like hashtag open RP, hashtag baby RP, and hashtag kid RP so other

00:26:33.200 enthusiasts can play along. Some users have entire fake families. Others create Instagram

00:26:38.720 accounts where they invite followers to adopt babies, posting stolen photos along with made-up

00:26:44.120 profiles. Here's another bit that truly disturbed me from the Toronto Star.

00:26:50.660 Even a cursory search brings up dozens of baby roleplays on Instagram, many of which describe

00:26:55.860 sex in front of or with babies. As time went on, the posts we were seeing went from disturbing

00:27:01.400 to vile, says Karine Chamovitz, a Toronto-area mother. Some were being abused both physically

00:27:07.000 and sexually, and some were even being killed off. Now, not every roleplaying account is sexual.

00:27:13.180 In fact, some of them are run by women who've lost children

00:27:15.920 and are playing out an online fantasy of building a family.

00:27:19.760 But others are inviting sexual predators to look at the pictures

00:27:23.160 and act out their sexual fantasies in the comments.

00:27:32.300 This is the most terrifying thing that I've discovered 0.99

00:27:35.120 while reporting a podcast about a lot of fucked up things.

00:27:39.200 It also made me so happy that I've already removed most of my kids' faces from the Instagram.

00:27:44.740 But I've got to be honest, it also depressed me so much.

00:27:49.520 I genuinely believe there are beautiful parts of social media

00:27:52.780 that allow women to connect and share and find community.

00:27:56.580 And frankly, we can't even have that. 1.00

00:27:58.460 We can't have nice things without the potential threat of something absolutely disgusting

00:28:03.000 happening with the pictures that we post.

00:28:05.820 That's the world we live in. 0.98

00:28:09.140 Even though it is scary as fuck, 0.97

00:28:12.000 we're going deeper into this corner of the internet. 0.97

00:28:14.920 Did you think we wouldn't?

00:28:16.520 Frankly, this is the only way we can figure out how to survive it.

00:28:19.840 Let's all grab our go-backs.

00:28:21.920 More after the break.

00:28:38.520 If you post a picture of your child online and it reaches even one other person who chooses to repost it,

00:28:50.760 you now have two copies of this image on the internet.

00:28:54.080 And even if you take the image down, other people could still find that image.

00:28:59.140 That's Ross Ewald.

00:29:00.820 She's a cybersecurity researcher and Impact Fellow at Stanford's Brown Institute.

00:29:05.360 I found her because she co-authored an academic paper on Instagram role-playing.

00:29:09.440 The title of this paper was fantastic.

00:29:11.820 It was called Fake Profiles, Real Children.

00:29:15.320 A look at the use of stolen child imagery in social media role-playing games.

00:29:20.280 Even the name of that paper is chilling.

00:29:22.900 While Ross was doing her research, she tried to find out exactly how these photos that were being used in role-playing accounts were actually found after a parent posted them.

00:29:31.820 One huge theme that we saw emerge from the paper, like fake profiles, real children was that a lot of these images were sort of harvested up and put on Pinterest boards. And when we were going back, we'd find a role playing account. And we try to find the original source of the image.

00:29:49.620 and the farthest back that we could trace was, you know, sometimes we'd find these Pinterest boards

00:29:56.420 of a huge number of images of children and that was as far as it went. And so I'm thinking about

00:30:05.000 the verb that you just used, harvesting. Someone harvesting photos of children and then putting

00:30:11.880 them off in a field or a warehouse so that other people can use those images. And of course,

00:30:18.300 We as parents have chosen to put them in a place that is ostensibly a public marketplace.

00:30:24.100 I mean, I think that's one of the challenges because there's such an intimacy to posting these photographs.

00:30:30.820 And so many parents and so many people use these platforms as a place where they can connect with others and form bonds and like share pieces of their lives in a very intimate way and in a very like emotionally sensitive and vulnerable way.

00:30:47.140 And then to have this other side to it, which is, you know, now that piece of data is out there and copyable is something that isn't necessarily very clear when you're posting the image.

00:30:59.380 And one of the deep challenges is the fact that the photograph might go to another Instagram account, but it also may leave Instagram and end up on like some random image website or Pinterest or Twitter or something like that. And chasing those images down after the fact is a challenge.

00:31:21.580 Yeah. And I think that as parents, we have to stop thinking about each thing that we post as

00:31:27.460 a cute image. And at the end of the day, it is just data. It's data that can be shared,

00:31:32.020 that can be copied. Yeah. The images can end up anywhere. A lot of it's a numbers game in that

00:31:37.740 the more people who see photographs of children, the more likely it is that they'll be lifted

00:31:42.980 and used for some purpose that the original poster did not intend.

00:31:50.580 So the more time influencers spend online, the more successful they become, the more danger they're in.

00:31:57.220 It's a vicious cycle.

00:31:59.800 Katie now understands this danger all too well.

00:32:02.700 The first thing she did after processing what happened to her was to completely wipe her kids off the Instagram.

00:32:09.420 I went straight to deleting.

00:32:11.660 That was just where my mind went because if you think about it, what we post online is just out there.

00:32:19.400 It doesn't matter who you trust necessarily, because once it's out there, like things can be screenshot, things can be cropped.

00:32:27.240 You know, there's high technology these days, and that's just what happens to these images.

00:32:33.280 To parents listening who I have just scared completely shitless with this information.

00:32:39.440 Yeah, yeah, I know. I know.

00:32:41.560 Katie shared a couple of ways that you can try to stay ahead of this.

00:32:45.600 You can regularly mine role-playing hashtags to make sure your kids aren't on there, 0.95

00:32:50.620 which that seems like a fucking lot of work.

00:32:53.840 You can also do something called a reverse Google image search 0.60

00:32:56.760 to find out if your photos have been stolen and used anywhere, but it doesn't really work.

00:33:01.780 So what I say to parents who really are shocked and want to be safe

00:33:09.620 and really want to know that they're being safe is just to not post it.

00:33:13.820 And I know that that's like being the bearer of bad news.

00:33:16.840 But once your images are online, they can literally be taken away from you.

00:33:22.540 Because, listen, before the 24th of December, I was posting my kids left and right.

00:33:29.420 To me, this is a personal journey.

00:33:31.540 This is something that everybody has to do on their own.

00:33:34.460 And they feel their way through it, whatever that looks like for them.

00:33:38.520 It's not going to be the same for everybody.

00:33:40.280 And I don't have a desire to shame parents into feeling like you need to follow me right

00:33:45.300 now and do exactly what I'm doing.

00:33:46.820 Absolutely not.

00:33:47.800 I think that a lot of it is let's be aware of it and let's just be cautious.

00:33:52.100 And from then we build a healthier relationship with social media in general.

00:33:59.340 Right.

00:33:59.780 Yeah.

00:34:00.220 No, I mean, I think we all we're all on our own journey.

00:34:02.800 Like we're all trying to figure it out.

00:34:05.080 Like there's there's no right or wrong here, but except for the wrong of these things.

00:34:10.280 complete weirdos stealing our baby's pictures and doing, discussing things with them online.

00:34:16.860 Right. And there's also people who believe this only happens to large accounts or influencing

00:34:22.660 accounts. I'm here to bring some more bad news that I've had so many moms and parents reach out

00:34:29.080 to me that are not in the influencing space that have small accounts, even some that had

00:34:35.200 private accounts, because we have to remember those are still out in the internet and those

00:34:39.940 photos still float around, they get cropped, they get screenshot, you know, it's a lot lower risk

00:34:44.420 for sure, but it's not no risk. And we just need to remember that this thing can happen to anybody.

00:34:49.900 It is not restricted to larger accounts, unfortunately. So you're not in the clear

00:34:54.980 just because you have 100 followers. It really is something to always be mindful of.

00:35:00.580 But the other thing is, I really want to call Instagram to task and be like, figure this out.

00:35:04.620 You do a lot of things, figure out how to make this stop. It's not okay.

00:35:07.540 I know. And they decide when they want to censor something, but came right back at me saying that

00:35:15.100 that was not against community guidelines. Are you kidding me? Like, how is it not?

00:35:21.440 How is it not?

00:35:22.180 I don't understand. So, you know, we know that Instagram is not going to hold any kind of

00:35:27.940 responsibility. They're always going to blame it on the user. And that's kind of the hard truth back

00:35:36.220 to facing that it falls on our shoulders,

00:35:39.860 what we post and what we feed the predators online

00:35:42.980 and just in general.

00:35:45.820 But Katie did take responsibility. 0.89

00:35:48.640 She immediately complained to Instagram about this.

00:35:51.680 In her report, she said,

00:35:52.900 this account is pretending to be me.

00:35:55.340 20 minutes later, she was notified by Instagram

00:35:57.700 that they will not remove the post

00:36:00.240 because it, quote,

00:36:01.480 does not go against community guidelines, end quote.

00:36:06.220 It's ironic, then, that Katie posting about this violation on her Instagram account and it going viral and so many people responding to it, that, that public scrutiny, that eventually made Instagram disable some of these accounts.

00:36:22.260 But remember, in the beginning, when they thought Katie wasn't going to make a fuss, they told her that this kind of activity didn't violate community guidelines.

00:36:29.720 we reached out to instagram too because journalism the first response is something that i have not

00:36:38.060 gotten in 20 years of being a reporter not from angelina jolie's lawyer not from hillary clinton's

00:36:44.920 press secretary no those people actually answer your questions instagram not so much their first

00:36:50.180 response to me was hey just go read this blog post that we posted somewhere on the internet

00:36:55.260 and that answers your question.

00:36:57.300 After pressing them further,

00:36:59.160 and I believe after Good Morning America

00:37:01.060 decided to air a story on this issue,

00:37:04.060 we were sent a written statement.

00:37:06.140 It said, quote,

00:37:08.420 claiming to be another person on Instagram

00:37:10.420 violates our community guidelines

00:37:12.560 and we have a dedicated team

00:37:14.920 to detect and block these kinds of scams.

00:37:18.080 We are also aware that we have more work to do here,

00:37:21.020 which is why we keep introducing new features

00:37:23.340 and tools to prevent abuse and keep our community safe.

00:37:26.940 And then they told us to read their community guidelines again.

00:37:32.040 Their community guidelines do indeed state, quote,

00:37:35.440 share only photos and videos that you have taken or have the right to share.

00:37:40.840 As always, you own the content you post on Instagram.

00:37:45.100 Remember to post authentic content. 1.00

00:37:48.100 Back to authenticity, bitches. 1.00

00:37:49.520 and don't post anything you've copied or collected from the internet 1.00

00:37:53.300 that you don't have the right to post.

00:37:57.220 So, right there, that is proof from Instagram itself

00:38:00.260 that stolen photos and impersonation are not allowed

00:38:03.500 according to their terms of service.

00:38:05.600 So the question is, why wasn't the account that was role-playing as Katie

00:38:09.500 taken down immediately when she flagged it?

00:38:13.020 Why did it take multiple attempts for them to finally take action?

00:38:17.420 Why the lag?

00:38:18.560 And if Instagram knows about this problem, which they clearly do,

00:38:22.580 why are there still role-playing accounts on the platform?

00:38:29.240 Every single platform on the web has a set of things that they don't allow.

00:38:34.460 But whether they go out and proactively identify content

00:38:37.540 that is against their terms of service or against their community standards

00:38:41.520 is a very different thing.

00:38:43.320 That's Rossi Wald from Stanford again.

00:38:45.380 So all of these accounts that we identified, just the child role-playing games using stolen images, all of them violated both Twitter's and Instagram's terms of service.

00:38:57.760 Both Twitter and Instagram ban the use of photos that you don't have the copyright of.

00:39:03.880 And it's not like these communities are really trying to hide.

00:39:08.880 You know, it's pretty obvious that they're stealing these photos and it's pretty obvious that they're pretending to be, you know, kids.

00:39:17.600 Here's the thing.

00:39:19.540 Instagram, Facebook, Meta, whatever they're calling themselves these days, they can do more.

00:39:25.780 They can do more.

00:39:27.340 They're choosing not to.

00:39:29.820 And I just, frankly, I don't get it.

00:39:33.260 Platforms basically can respond to these issues in whatever way they choose.

00:39:37.340 on the really, really extreme end of the spectrum, which not a lot of people expect is banning

00:39:43.120 children from the platform and banning pictures of children from the platform. Platforms are

00:39:49.220 totally within their rights to do this, and it would solve these problems. It would create other

00:39:53.900 problems as well, but it is one way that they could address these problems. Another is they could

00:40:00.060 rework their algorithm, their content recommendation algorithm, in order to be

00:40:05.400 less hungry for kids.

00:40:09.440 Ross's last point was so interesting

00:40:12.120 that the content recommendation algorithm

00:40:14.740 could just be less hungry for kid pictures.

00:40:18.540 Maybe less people would come back to the platform,

00:40:21.260 but then other people, dangerous people,

00:40:24.080 would have less of an incentive

00:40:25.580 to post pictures of your kids. 1.00

00:40:28.760 So as I mentioned, Katie took her kids off Instagram. 0.92

00:40:32.360 She told me that she would love 0.98

00:40:34.360 to do what Lindsay did. She'd love to get off Instagram entirely. In fact, she told me that

00:40:39.520 she knows Lindsay and has been following her entire journey. But frankly, Katie can't get

00:40:45.520 off Instagram. She can't if she wants to keep doing what she's doing, which is building a 0.97

00:40:49.820 business and a lifestyle brand, all while raising and homeschooling for children.

00:40:56.080 I'm in no place to get off of Instagram. I would literally be throwing away years of

00:41:02.020 my, you know, I've poured my blood, sweat and tears into this. And I don't want to just throw

00:41:06.840 that away. No, exactly. Exactly. And honestly, I mean, I say it all the time. I am an author.

00:41:13.080 I publish books with big publishing houses and great marketing campaigns. But my Instagram

00:41:18.540 sells more books than anything. I know. And it's hard to throw that away. You can't just do that.

00:41:23.940 That's your livelihood. So I think setting boundaries with addiction and how we use it,

00:41:32.420 how much we're tapping into it, I think is a really good place to start. And as long as you're

00:41:37.400 cautious of those things and aware, then you're in a much better place than a lot of us. And that's

00:41:44.560 where I feel really good. I feel I'm at peace with everything I mentioned about my kids. You

00:41:50.160 know, I'm as freaky as it was, I'm not dwelling on it. I don't carry regret or guilt for it

00:41:57.140 because it is what it is. I'm so thankful, if anything, to just know. And it's allowed me to

00:42:01.960 make better decisions moving forward, healthier decisions. We make so many choices every single

00:42:10.540 day. How we use technology is just one of a billion choices that we make. But more and more,

00:42:16.960 Instagram and all of the other forms of social media are just becoming a habit, like a really

00:42:22.260 quick impulse, essentially a spiral that makes us more and more reliant on platforms that don't give 0.98

00:42:28.500 a fuck if they're exploiting us. It really is healthy to take a step back and just to think

00:42:35.060 about things and decide if that's what we really want, if that's how we want to spend our time.

00:42:39.980 And if we do, cool. Good on you.

00:42:47.700 But that is why I think that the Women's Day off the internet could be so incredibly powerful. 1.00

00:42:54.220 It'll make all of us interrogate exactly why we're on these platforms. 0.94

00:42:58.440 And it'll make us just think, just think a little bit, just be a little present

00:43:02.580 and think about what we really want and how we want to spend our time. 0.98

00:43:06.780 Maybe some of us will decide that we want to get the fuck off it, like Lindsay did.

00:43:11.200 But others might decide to use the experience to make the internet a better place. 0.88

00:43:16.520 That's what I want to do.

00:43:17.800 Honestly, it is.

00:43:19.040 It is.

00:43:19.400 I have a mission.

00:43:20.000 I didn't have a mission when we started this podcast, but I've got one now.

00:43:23.440 I'm going to make this better. 0.88

00:43:25.060 I'm going to try to fucking fix this because there are a lot of reasons to stay on. 0.95

00:43:30.160 And we're going to talk about one of those reasons next week in our episode on Teachergram. 0.98

00:43:36.260 Yes, teachers on Instagram.

00:43:39.000 And why?

00:43:39.760 Why, might you ask?

00:43:40.800 Are teachers on Instagram?

00:43:43.180 Well, you're going to have to listen to find out.

00:43:45.820 off of my teaching salary.

00:43:50.340 I could not have paid my rent

00:43:52.300 and my living expenses.

00:43:54.400 So for me,

00:43:55.900 the only way I was even able

00:43:57.400 to make that move

00:43:58.300 is because I had

00:43:59.280 that supplemental income.

00:44:01.880 Yep.

00:44:04.420 America, America, God shed.

00:44:07.580 Just close out this episode

00:44:08.660 with some God bless America.

00:44:10.980 Can we do that?

00:44:11.940 Emily, can I close out?

00:44:15.820 Under the Influence is hosted and reported by me, Joe Piazza.

00:44:36.700 Our senior producer is Emily Marinoff.

00:44:39.160 Glynis McNichol is our editor.

00:44:41.220 Abu Zafar is our producer.

00:44:42.800 We got additional production help from Erin Peterson, and our associate producer is Lauren

00:44:47.460 Phillip. Sound design and mixing from Jackie Huntington. Our theme was composed by Jessica

00:44:52.600 Kreinchich. Additional music by Jessica Kreinchich and Jackie Huntington. Anna Stumpf is our

00:44:58.480 consulting producer, and we are executive produced by me, Joe, and Nikki Torr. Extra special thanks

00:45:05.940 to Ross Ewald for helping us understand all this, and for some really great fact-checking.

00:45:11.220 The paper that she co-authored was published by the Stanford Internet Observatory and does not reflect the views of the Brown Institute.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - February 17, 2022

I Can't Quit You (or Can I？)

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