There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Brigittad and this is there Are No Girls on the Internet. I am here at my producer, Mike. Mike, welcome back to the show.
It's great to have you back, Bridgie. It's good to be back. I'm excited to get into all the news from the internet that people might have mixed.
Okay, so let's do it. If you have ever bought anything from Amazon dot com, you might want to check to make sure that you did not accidentally subscribe to Amazon Prime, because you might be paying one hundred and forty dollars a year to Amazon without even knowing it. And that's because, according to a new lawsuit from the FTC, Amazon executives were okay with people being secretly signed up
for Amazon Prime memberships without their knowledge. This has to do with a practice called dark patterns, which is when websites use kind of like iffy practices to trick us into clicking on things that we don't actually want to click on, or making it hard for us to click on things that they don't want us to click on, like us finding that hidden unsubscribed button according to Verge, The lawsuit says that Amazon tricked millions of people into
unwittingly subscribing to Amazon Prime through buttons that were presented prominently during checkout. Their complain includes internal messages and the names of three specific senior Amazon leaders who allegedly played a key role in this scheme. So these three specific Amazon higher ups who were named in the complaint were warned that Amazon was using these deceptive tactics to create an enrollment process for Prime that was easy for customers
to accidentally trigger. Amazon employees were expressing concerns to company leadership about these strategies in twenty sixteen, but those executives
took no action. For example, Amazon designers once asked Neil Lindsay, the senior vice president who oversaw Amazon Prime, about how the company was tricking people in the signing up for Prime, and Lindsay, according to the lawsuit, said that Amazon was okay with this because quote, once customers became Prime members, even unknowingly, they will see what a great program it
is and remain members. The complaint also includes new internal messages and emails indicating that Amazon and its leadership was aware of their deception. One company newsletter reads quote the issue of accidental Prime signups is well documented, while admitting that Prime customers sign up accidentally and don't always see the auto renewal terms. So this would be bad enough. But have you ever actually tried to cancel your Amazon
Prime subscription? Because I have, and the process is so cumbersome and complicated and long that eventually I gave up. I was like, oh, I don't have time for this, I'll just keep Amazon Prime, which I bet is exactly what they want. This is by design, according to the FTC, once customers were signed up, Amazon created an intentionally complicated cancelation process. The process that you have to go through
to cancel. Amazon Prime even had a pretty telling internal code name, the Iliad, preferring to Homer's ancient epic poem. So in addition to making it intentionally super easy to accidentally subscribe to Prime, they made it intentionally super complicated and cumbersome to unsubscribe from Prime. So it really seems like they knew what they were doing there.
I love the use of classical literature to refer to this sort of thing. Obviously they know that what they're doing is not good and deceptive, but naming it the iliad just I don't know, it elevates it a little bit. I respect it, you know. I feel like, if you're an Amazon engineer trapped in this uncomfortable pattern of tricking people into buying shit that they don't want, finding refuge in classical literature, it's kind of sweet and I respect it and I love it. For them, it's like.
A highbrow scam, like they're scamming, but they're doing it in a literary way. Yeah, So the FTC was recently on kind of a tear about this. The FTC even floated banning any subscription, whether it was for a shopping membership or a gym membership, where the cancelation process is much harder than the sign up process. Under the ban that they were initially proposing, people would have to be able to use the same method for canceling a subscription that they use for the sign up. So this includes
letting people use the same method for both actions. So a business could not, for instance, let somebody sign up easily and quickly for a service online, but make them call a phone number or like go in person to cancel. And you know what, I'm gonna name names Washington Sports Club on Fourteenth Street in DC. I am talking to you.
They like you could easily sign up, but then when you wanted to cancel, it was like, oh, well you have to like send a physical email and like physically come to the gym to cancel.
Uh uh.
So, when the FTC was floating this ban on like making it super cumbersome to cancel subscriptions, big businesses and advertisers not happy. I feel like everyone like pretty universally hate not being able to easily cancel a subscription. But the Association of National Advertiser says, actually, maybe we're wrong,
and we all like secretly like it. They said, if sellers are required to enable cancelation through a single click or action by the consumer, accidental cancelations will become much more common, as consumers will not reasonably expect to remove their recurring goods or services with just one click. So they're tricking us, but they're tricking us for our own good. It's like better for us the consumer if we allow them to trick us, and actually maybe we kind of like it.
Yeah, we want it, we need it. And if they make it too easy for us dumb dums to actually cancel, it will.
Be sad, like, please let me, don't let me easily candle the subscription that I never wanted and I'm not even aware that I purchased in the first place.
It's just hard to imagine that anybody would be said about like missing out on a subscription. Like, I subscribed to so many things, and I love all of them. I am happy to support all of them. But you know sometimes like like one time I lost my wallet and I had to cancel my credit card and some of my subscriptions got canceled. It was the most fine thing that has ever happened, Like it could not have been less disruptive. It was like, oh, yeah, this thing that I signed up for, I guess I need to
enter a new credit card. This is not a big problem.
Beyond fine, it's I find it freeing when you got to get a new credit card. If you lose your you lose your credit card, you have to get a new one. And so you realize, like you get those emails rolling in that's like, oh, your credit card payment didn't go through to this, to that, to this to that. You're like, I've actually had a lot of different recurring charges on my card and now I can just start over and like be free. I actually find it very freeing.
And also it's like wild to see, I mean, if you're if you're me, wild to see how many just reoccurring charges you have on your card.
Yeah. I agree. I wish I were a more responsible person who is more on top of all my recurring charges, but like declaring recurring bankruptcy once a year and just like wiping it all clean and being like the things that I was paying for that I don't care about will just go away, and the things that I do care about, they will let me know that my subscription has lapsed, and I will enter a new credit card and two minutes later all problems will be resolved.
Yeah. And I think this story really speaks to sort of a larger trend that we've identified on the show before of everything on the internet feeling like it is a low key scam. These days, we've just come to expect that the experience of navigating the online space is going to be a wash in like dark patterns and tricks and scams and bots and little design choices that are making you click on things that you don't want
to click. I just don't like that. You know, these big platforms that already take so much of our money and take so much of our data, take so much of our attention, so much of our everything also have to be tricking us and scamming us on top of it. I don't like it. I think we deserve better.
It's messed up that we have just accepted that being scammed like this is just a normal part of doing business on the Internet. That is like super easy for us to give our money away to companies who are charging money for stuff, but to try to I don't get something back is a herculean effort that you have to have secret knowledge and scroll deep to the bottom of the footer. It's not okay, it's bad.
It's bad. I believe that we deserve an Internet experience that is not so predatory and not so awash in scams. And speaking of the Internet not being such a trustworthy place, we've talked before about how we can no longer really trust that search platforms like Google are going to provide us with accurate information about something as important as our
health and our medical choices. To combat that, abortion advocates have released Charlie, a chatbot that was built specifically to reach folks and states where abortion has been banned or restricted to help connect them with information about abortion. Access Charlie, which communicates in both English and Spanish, is accessible through the website Chat with Charlie dot org or on the websites for Abortion on Our Terms and Abortion Access Front.
Charlie is a nonprofit platform co created by several reproductive rights and justice organizations, including I Need ana dot com, Plan C, and the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline. Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood and my former boss when I work there, is the co founder. So the bot was created in part because people just cannot trust searching platforms like Google for accurate, not to mention, confidential
information about abortion. Nicole Cushman, who oversees Charlie's content, told Mashable search experience online in particular is really myird in confusion. People wind up going on this scavenger hunt trying to piece together all the resources that make sense for them to get the care that they need. The bot was created in part because, as I was saying, people just cannot trust searching platforms like Google for accurate and confidential
information about abortion. Nicole Cushman, who oversees Charlie's content, told Mashable the search experience online in particular is really mired in confusion. People wind up going on this scavenger hunt trying to piece together all the resources that make sense
for them to get the care that they need. We talked about this on a previous newscast, dipping into accountable text research that found that Google is not deleting location data related to abortion, even though they said that they would. And Google also earned ten million dollars promoting fake abortion clinics on their platforms. So this is a pretty big deal because Google is also the biggest search engine in the world. Eighty four percent of online searches happen on Google.
So if Google is not providing accurate or confidential inform about abortion, it is a problem for the entire abortion landscape. So I would be concerned about any platform where you're entering sensitive medical information. So let's talk a bit about Charlie's privacy policies. Nicole Cushman told Mashable that Charlie does
not request personal identifiable information like name or age. The bot and its platforms do not use cookies and do not share data with any third party, including the metatool pixel, which can send private or sensitive user information to third parties. Cushman also noted that every chat is routinely deleted from Charlie's system and server, and data is removed upon closing
the browser. She said that Charlie's deletion policy would mean that records would likely no longer exist should law enforcement attempt to obtain those records in the future.
Boy, that's really cool. That's reminiscent of how Signal does things right, where they protect privacy by just not keeping records of user transactions and content of what users have said or done.
Yeah, and it makes sense because us, both Signal and Chartly are operating as nonprofits and so it's just like a vastly different setup than a for profit platform like Google, whose entire existence is to get your data and save your data and use your data, right, And so it makes sense that they're operating that way. Yeah, I think this is cool. I'll keep folks updated as I hear more about it. But again, it's I abortion advocates are always out there doing the work to like get people
the access that they need. That is like one of the only things that I put my faith and my trust in these days. Is like advocates are going to advocate or advocate or either or, And so I really applaud them seeing the fact that we just don't have the online infrastructure where folks can get connected to the information that they need and trust that that information will be handled sensitively and privately and confidentially and also just
be accurate. However, that like like Charlie shouldn't have to exist. First of all, people should be able to get the healthcare they need full stop, like people should be able to get abortions when they need them full stop. However, certainly platforms like Google should be in the business of providing accurate information to people people that need it like
like that should be the reason why they exist. And so while I applaud the fact that these advocates stepped in and saw the need and created Charlie to sort of like bridge the gap in services that exist, it makes me sad because, like I said, everybody deserves accurate, timely information to make choices for their own life and
their own health. It is absurd to me that that Google is not providing that when they are the biggest search engine in the world, and that advocates have to step in and and and bridge that gap.
Yeah, and you know, I hope we see more examples like this where some sort of app exists not to harvest our data for the purposes of reselling it, but just to provide a service and deletes all of the user generated data afterwards because it's no longer useful, because every additional service that follows that model is another piece of evidence that the advertising driven model is not necessary and that it's completely reasonable to have applications that respects
privacy and confidentiality, especially when.
It comes to something as sensitive as someone searching for abortion information, like I don't want to search for abortion information, and then a week later get a targeted advertisement that seems to suggest that whatever platform I was doing that on knows that I was still knows that I was
searching for that information. That's not just I think it's I mean, this comes up all the time on the show, but I think that we need to fundamentally rethink the relationship that we have with platforms that says that that is the only way that we can have online experiences, because there are other models that are better, that are safer that just allow for people to get what they actually need and that is accurate information.
Totally.
Let's take a quick break.
At our back.
Do you want to know what one of my favorite songs is?
Yeah, bridge you what's one of your favorite songs?
The song that goes men facing consequences for their bad behavior. So a handful of men behaving badly faced a whisper an inkling of consequences for their bad behavior, and the Internet is melting down over it. So quick heads up that this involves sexual abuse and sexual violence. Last week, comedian, YouTuber and podcaster Russell Brand was accused of sexual and emotional abuse and rape of women between the years twenty
six and twenty thirteen. The allegations are really troubling. A girl who was just sixteen at a time, which is the age of consent in the UK, said that during her three month relationship with Brand, he would sign her out of school to hang out with him, forced himself on her, and once kissed her mother on the lips. Now, Brand says that he absolutely refutes all of the allegations. So if you don't know who Russell Brand is, he's an actor and a comedian. He was a host on
BBC and here in the US. He was known for roles in movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek, which, honestly, when you think about it, that cast is like milakutis Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, that crew is really down bad in the last few weeks, like a lot going on with those three. So Russell Brand was sort of known for having this kind of, I don't know, like cheeky public persona, like a cheeky,
mischievous bad boy. He would talk openly about his drug use and his sexual history, but it seemed like maybe he was curating that persona to mask behavior that was actually like sexually abusive and violent. More recently, Brand has kind of become a right wing adjacent I guess, like alternative content creator. His big things are his podcasts Under the Skin with Russell Brand and a YouTube channel that
has over six point six million subscribers. Now I have not listened to his podcast, but I think what he's trying to do is sort of like an alternative woo
woo kind of wellness thing. He has on folks like journalist Michael Pollan talking about psychedelics or Deepak Chopra talking about meditation, but a lot of that was really taken to the extreme on his YouTube channel, which, if I had to summarize his YouTube channel is that he often gives a contrarian while operating under the premise that they are lying because they don't want us to know the truth.
His videos often have titles like things that are like so this is what they don't want us to know all caps, or this is why they want us to take the COVID vaccine, or this is why they want a war in Ukraine. Interestingly, he rarely provides like direct proof or like makes any kind of definitive direct statement about what he say, Like, he doesn't really make like hard claims. Generally he'll just ask a lot of pointed
leading questions. But the way that he says them, like the tone is like all accusatory, right, like like why do they want us taking that COVID vaccine? Like, and I feel like anything anything sounds suss when you say it, when you say it all accusatory. So he's kind of like Joe Rogan if Joe Rogan had like long flowing hair and wore like an open linen shirt.
Yeah, you gotta be suspicious of that they you know, just the liberal use of they peppered throughout. They want this, they want that, like who are they? Please specify?
Well, so his unstated mostly unstated they is like the mainstream media, Like his whole thing is all about how the mainstream media isn't telling us the truth the mainstream media is feeding us live, and that the mainstream media like is against him because he is challenging what the mainstream media says. It's it's like a pretty I mean, I probably would have found this really compelling when I was like nineteen.
Yeah, and like in twenty twenty three, if I ask who is they? And Russell Brand says the mainstream media, that's not adding much, like it's just moving the question, like who is the mainstream media? In twenty twenty three.
Oh yeah, I'm I'm one hundred percent and that I stoned at a party probably said something very similar and thought I sounded really smart. It's one of those things where to a certain kind of person, making them feel like they are like the truth seekers and they're getting the real information that they the mainstream media won't tell you. That's always going to work on a certain kind of person and so I think that he's really courting that audience.
So since these allegations came out, Brand has been blocked from monetization on YouTube. YouTube said in a statement that it had suspended monetization on Brand's channel for violating its creator responsibility policy. So he's not been kicked off the platform or banned from the platform, much like the Fresh and Fit podcast, he just can't earn money on those videos. YouTube said if a creator's off platform behavior harms our users, employees,
or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community. Brand is also on Rumble, which is kind of like a right wing version of YouTube, and apparently members of Parliament in the UK want to know if Rumble is going to follow YouTube's lead and demonetize Brand's content. But Rumble's whole thing is being quote anti cancel culture, so of
course they're not going to do that. Caroline Dinach, the Conservative chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, wrote to Rumble's CEO, saying we would like to know whether Rumble intends to join YouTube and suspending mister Brand's ability to earn money on the platform. The MP also asked what Rumble was doing to ensure that content creators, don't use their platform to undermine the welfare of victims of
inappropriate and potentially illegal behavior. Rumble replied on Twitter, calling the letter disturbing and said that Parliament's demands were deeply inappropriate and dangerous. The platform added that they were devoted to an Internet where no one arbitrarily dictates which ideas can or cannot be heard or which citizens may or may not be entitled to a platform. Which interesting to me about this is that even before where are these
allegations remade? Public Brand was able to weaponize his history of stoking conspiracy theories and courting that audience of people who really want to believe what he is saying to shield himself from accountability from his own actions. In a YouTube video, he suggested that the allegations are all a campaign by the mainstream media to keep him from speaking the truth. Here's what he had to say.
The relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual. I was always transparent about that then almost too transparent, and I'm being transparent about it now as well. And to see that transparency metastasized into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me question is.
There another agenda at play?
Particularly when we've seen coordinated media attacks before with Joe Rogan, when he dared to take a medicine that the mainstream media didn't approve of, and we saw a spate of headlines from media outlets across the world.
Using the same language.
I'm aware that you guys have been saying in the comments for a while, watch out, Russell, They're coming for you. You're getting too close to the truth. Russell Brand did not kill himself. I know that a year ago there was a spate of articles Russell Brand's a conspiracy theorist, Russell Brand's right wing. I'm aware of news media making phone calls, sending letters to people I know, for ages
and ages. It's been clear to me, or at least it feels to me like there's a serious and concerted agenda to control these kind of spaces and these kind of voices, and I mean my voice along with your voice.
Okay. So Brand put out this video even before the article about the allegations was ever published, and all of the comments on the video were about how his followers and fans saying that he is innocent and that he is obviously being framed by the mainstream media, which I feel like if you have built up an audience who is primed to believe anything that you say, even before they know what it is you're being accused of, even more if they have any information about that, it does
kind of suggest that you've curated an audience of people who cannot think for themselves, not an audience of independent thinkers. Like an independent thinker would be like, I'll wait until these allegations are published, i will read the proof that they say that they have, and I will make up my own mind. An independent, a true independent thinker is not just saying whatever you say, Russell Brand, we trust you will just take your word for it with no
other information. And here's the thing, when you actually look at what these women are saying, Like they have copies of text messages from Brand wherein they discuss his abusive behavior. One woman texted him. When a girl says no, it means no, and then Brand replies saying very sorry. You know, there are records of another woman seeking medical treatment at
a rape crisis center after a Brand assaulted her. So I'm curious, like how Brand is thinking that they fabricated these records from like fifteen years ago.
Yeah, it raises good questions about who's included in they it kind of seems like it maybe it's just like the women that he assaulted.
Yeah, that's what I was say. It's like, even if even if he believes this is some sort of a like coordinated campaign to like to like stop this podcaster and YouTuber. But even if that, even if that was what was going on, if somebody wanted to have a coordinated campaign against me, they would not be able to produce records that showed that somebody got medical treatment after
they after I attacked them, because that doesn't exist. They would not be able to produce text messages where I said very sorry when someone said that I violated their consent, because that doesn't that's not out there. And so yeah, just publishing accounts of what you did is not a coordinated campaign. That's just like reporting about your own actions, Like, yeah, you don't have to. It's interesting to me how he's like, oh, this is just a campaign against me because I'm getting
too close to the truth. It's like, well, they wouldn't be able to publish this shit if you hadn't done it, so you know, in what way? In what way are they like he's not saying that these are fabricated.
Yeah, like what truth? And again, who is they name some names?
Well, you know who has named some names. That is some of the folks who are supporting Brand at this time, folks like Alex Jones. Alex Jones says, it's the globalists.
Oh see, I knew they were right around the corner. I didn't want to bring it up, but I knew the globalists was secretly the they.
When someone says they like that all accusatory, we all know who they're talking about. It's like barely even a dog whistle. So Alex Jones said. And now because Brand comes out against big Pharma, he comes out against the globalists, he comes out against the new world order, and suddenly these allegations are happening to him. Also a woman had
to go to get medical care. I love that this is like allegations are happening to him a lot of questions about how Alex Jones thinks allegations work, like they don't justlike happen to people.
So Alex Jones, there's just a story about how he spent like it was like nine hundred thousand dollars in a month of just like living expenses or something. I could be wrong about that about but it was some like ridiculous number and all the while like he has paid zero dollars to the families of the Sandy Hook families to whom he owes like billions of dollars.
Yeah, that's definitely who you want on your side when you are facing public allegations of wrongdoing. So also in Russell Brand's corner Elon Musk. Elon Musk tweeted when Russell Brand said that he was being attacked because he promotes alternative views. Elon said, of course they all caps don't
like competition. Also, don't forget Elon Musk himself was accused of exposing himself to a flight attendant, So you know, birds of a feather, like if you nobody nobody's got the back of a sexual abuser, like a man who is also a sexual abuser. Also, we've got Tucker Carlson in the mix, who tweeted criticized the drug companies, question the war in Ukraine, and you can be pretty sure this is gonna happen. Elon must chimes in, Sure, seems that way, and then Andrew Tate chimes in.
With, yep, what a collection of fuckos.
Also speaking of Andrew Tate in More Men Facing a Whisper of Consequences. News we did an episode a while back about Andrew Tate's app, The Real World and how it's basically a pyramid scheme. Well, now that app has been taken off of the Google Play Store because it's a pyramid scheme, one that prays on young men and boys.
So Andrew tates app used to be called Hustler's University, and it's a billed as quote, a global community of like minded individuals striving to acquire an abundance of wealth. Tell me that that does not sound like every MLM pyramid scheme. That a girly from your high school like dms you about on Facebook being like hey Gurley, like you should have you ever thought about having your own business? I think you would really slayh at it girl.
Yo. You know what else it sounds like it sounds like the they that they're always talking about a global community of like minded individuals striving to acquire an abundance of wealth.
Oh my god. With Andrew Tate's group, they the whole time Russell Brand the call It's coming from inside the house.
The they is coming from inside the house.
Okay, so this is from Vice. The app promise is to give subscribers expert tuition and business and online entrepreneurship with video lessons and mentorship from a supposed multi millionaire experts on topics like copywriting, e commerce, crypto, and stocks. Targeting young people. In its marketing and design, the platform claims that for a monthly some scription fee might guess how much the subscription fee is a month? Can you guess?
I would say nine?
Oh, my god, it's forty nine dollars and ninety nine cent per month. My god.
Wow.
So for that price, recruits can earn over ten k per month quickly and escape the matrix, which is Andrew Tate's disparaging term for mainstream society and avoid an otherwise inevitable future of being a brokeye. The system slash Matrix wants you to remain poor, week alone, and complacent, says one website promoting the real world. Understand that in about five to ten years time, you will either be rich unlimited money with unlimited options, or you'll be broke slaving
away for social credits. Do you want to escape or not? Wow? I can actually really see how that like over the top language could be enticing for especially a young person, a young person who spends a lot of their time like online playing video games. I can see how that would be enticing.
Yeah, I guess so. I mean they're really trafficking on like the Matrix ideology, which is kind of funny because The Matrix was written by a pair of trans women.
Yeah, Lily Wachowski deserves much better than this.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure they would be in the they according to these people, but they've just like wholesale adopted their ideology. But also, and more importantly, I just want to go back to like their topics which include copywriting, e commerce, crypto, and stocks like those are a pretty disparate set of activities. Like are they going to earn over ten k per month through copywriting? Like what are they copywriting for?
As a former copywriter, I can tell you they probably won't be earning ten km through copywriting. We're actually doing an episode I think this coming Tuesday with an extremism researcher from Media Matters, all about Andrew Tait. And one of the questions I had for this researcher is, like, when they're offering these pyramid scheme, scammy, you know, classes and stuff. There is always such a wide net of offerings.
It will be like how to pick up chicks, and also real estate and also crypto and it's like why do they like, like, how are they related to each other? How does how is one Cherson going like an expert in all of these things, going to teach me about all of these things like and basically he said that it's all related to this concept of grind mentality where they choose all of these buckets or topics that young men traditionally might associate with, you know, being on their
grind and hustling and making money. E commerce and copywriting is a new one for me, Like, I don't know that I associate that with like the hustle, but crypto stocks, real estate, these things that you associate with, like masculinity, question mark. I guess those are the things that these scammers are always saying that they can like teach you to be rich through.
Using yeah, you know, whatever they got to do to be part of that global community of like minded individuals striving to acquire an abundance of wealth aka them them a more.
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
So one of the reasons I find this so deeply, deeply messed up, among a lot of reasons why I find it so messed up, is that the platform is very clearly aimed at children. On the Google Play Store, the platform is labeled as being suitable for people age four end up, which like, what is a fucking four year old take in classes in crypto trading and stocks for? But they actually claim that their youngest student is age six. So they have this six year old who says that
he is a student of Hustler's University. He wants to be a boxer just like Andrew Tait when he grows up, and he takes fitness classes supposedly through the Andrew Tates Real World app. And so this is very much geared toward very young people, and it's clear in the way that it kind of gamifies using the app and mimics video gameplay in some of the promotional language about the real world. It prompts young men and boys to shock their families by leveling up in real life instead of
just leveling up in video games. So importantly, like most MLMs and pyramid schemes, the thing is not just getting doopies to pay for whatever the thing is, like leggings or, in this case, you know, scammy classes about nothing. The thing is a actually convincing other dubies to get duped
into doing it too. Through the Real World's Affiliate Marketing Program, members are required to aggressively promote Tate and his site by flooding websites like TikTok, Instagram, reels, and YouTube with repurposed Andrew Tate content along with distinctive sign up links attached, getting forty eight percent of sales commission for every new recruit to the site that joined through their link. Now, I think that this probably served double duty for Andrew
Tate because he's banned from most social media platforms. He was banned from Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, and TikTok elon Musk, of course brought him back on their besties. But this affiliate marketing program, I believe, not only makes him more money through getting more dubies to sign up for his scam, but also allows him to get around being banned from these platforms because he is individually banned,
but his content is not banned. If people are just spamming TikTok with Andrew tait memes and videos and repurpose content. I think it's a way for him to get around being banned, like his content is all over social media, despite the fact that he himself is banned.
He sucks, He sucks.
He is so gross.
So don't under investigation for like being a sex trafficker, Like, what's the status of that?
He sure is? She sure is? He is currently under investigation for trafficking. People like Tucker Carlson love to talk about trafficking and making that there like cause du jore. But then is fine to publicly associate with somebody who is under literal investigation for trafficking. Make it make sense? The math is not mathing.
It's like one of the most harmful things in our society that these toxic assholes have somehow like claimed the mantle of masculinity.
I almost have a hard time, like I don't even it's not even really cathartic to dunk on him, because because he's so toxic and harmful, and I think he's worse because he targets children, like very young kids six years old, seven years old. I saw a video where like school children, elementary school children were being asked like, oh, what do you look for in a girl? And they were like, oh, got to make sure she's not a
gold digger. And they're little kids, And so I think the fact that Andrew TT is really targeting our youth, and I think it's you know, I think with Andrew T hat what's so upsetting is that I think they that he is poisoning an entire generation of very young boys before they've even had a chance to be out in the world, before they even have been out to experience the world, and putting this insidiary garbage in their heads, making them really align with this like incredibly harmful worldview.
And I hope, I deeply hope that these kids can grow up to unlearn that that it does not, but that it doesn't like set them up for a bad course for life before they even have really gotten a chance to be out in the world. And the fact that he is so brazenly getting rich off of that, like, I think it's yeah, I think he is harming kids at making millions, harming kids, harming women and making millions
from it. And the fact that he is lauded as some kind of a shrewd businessman for doing so really just it's upsetting.
Yeah, it really is.
So of course Google did not just decide one morning to like wake up and do the right thing and delete this app from their app store. They were pressured by campaigns. Nathan Pope, a thirty four year old Australian, launched an online petition in July calling for app stores like Google Play and the App Store, as well as companies that process online subscription payments to the real world,
to stop posting the app. So he was successful at getting Google's Google Play Store to pull it, but as far as I know as of recording this, the app is still available on Apple's App Store.
Really yeah, wow, that's really something. I'm surprised that Google would take that action and Apple would not. I generally think of Apple as like a trusted entity, and it's surprising that they would allow this toxic garbage to continue on their platform.
Yeah, so we will keep you posted if any action is taken. I think that Andrew Tate should not be able to make money to make millions from targeting kids in this way.
Yeah.
Okay, So, speaking of trafficking, we did an episode all about the sex trafficking hero fantasy movie Sound of Freedom. The film depicts a fictionalized account of this guy named Tim Ballard, formerly of Operations Underground Railroad, which is an anti trafficking organization that promotes the idea that anti trafficking work looks like a hero like going into an underground
trafficking ring, allah taken and saving the day. Anti trafficking experts have been cleared that these depictions promote harmful myths about trafficking that could actually make things worse for survivors. So right after our episode about Sound of Freedom went live, Operation Underground Railroad announced that Tim Ballard was no longer part of the organization, and I was sort of like, I wonder what the story is there? Like that seems weird,
and now we know why. According to a Vice investigation, tim Ballard invited women to act as his wife on undercover overseas missions ostensibly aimed at rescuing victims of sex trafficking. He would then allegedly coerce those women into sharing a bed with him or showering with him, claiming that it was necessary to fool sex traffickers.
Yeah, of course, that's the only way that they'll be fooled.
He is said to have sent at least one woman a photo of himself in its underwear with fake tattoos, and have asked another how far she was willing to go to save children. So the total number of women involved in this is believed to be higher than seven, as that would only account for employees, not contractors or volunteers of the organization. So yeah, he was just setting up these overseas stings and then convincing these women to go along with these inappropriate actions under the guys that
they needed to do that to save the kids. It's so predatory. Ballard of course denies these charges. So this is kind of a callback to a recent episode that we did about Ashton Kutcher's support for convicted rapist Danny Masterson. Given Ashton's work starting the organization Thorn, which is a big anti sex trafficking organization that works with all of
the major social media platforms. That episode was really focused on the technology that Thorn produces, but on the Patreon I got into my actual take, which is that people are able to use trafficking work to boost their own profile at the ex event of marginalized people and actual trafficking survivors, I think that Ashton Cutcher used trafficking and technology to sort of go from like a stoner sitcom actor to being like a serious philanthropist and like tech guy.
And I think he did that because he knew it would not be questioned. Because when somebody says they're working to stop trafficking or like trying to curb sex trafficking, it just gives them this automatic high ground that people like. It's like, if you question that, the obvious response is like, oh, what do you like pro sex trafficking? And nobody, everybody obviously hates sex trafficking, So when somebody does that work, it kind of makes it seem like they're above reproach.
And I believe that's what's going on with Ashton Cutcher, and I believe that's what's going on with Tim Ballord. So my anti Ashton Cutcher sentiments have been brewing for like over a decade, So please check out the Patreon
if you want to know more. I deeply think that the focus on trafficking means that people will be so willing to associate sexual violence with like a stranger, bad guy trafficker who's going to grab you in a parking lot, that they might not be so willing to see their friend who is a sexual abuser as a threat, right, Like if you were only if sexual violence begins and ends with bad guy traffickers, your friend who is seems like a really nice guy to you, you're not going
to be that willing to see them as the threat that they are. And in the case of Tim Ballard, I think that doing anti trafficking work was actually a way to distract from his own bad behavior. You know. It's like sometimes they say an accusation is actually a confession.
Yeah. I think your Patreon episode about that is really insightful and it really makes me think about this Tim Ballard and how much he was just like engaging in this fantasy, this like anti trafficking fantasy that really had no connection to actually protecting real people from trafficking, but was like cosplay almost.
Yeah, that's exactly what I think was going on. Part of Vice's reporting found that the organization was actually relying on psychics to set up bumbling and ineffective missions to save traffic children that they believe were being held on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and so all of their information and their intel about where this child was being held came from psychics. That is like
something out of a fantasy movie. I think that this is somebody who was cause playing what he imagined like a big bad white guy busting into like a foreign country to like save kids. I think that he was just setting up an entire machination to you go along
with this fantasy version of himself. And then I bet seeing that version of himself depicted in the movie Sound of Freedom, depicted by Tim Cavizelli, who previously was Jesus Christ in the movie Passion of the Christ, Like, I just think that these people do not have a clear sense of reality. I think that you're exactly right that they are setting up these fantasy versions of this, like
fantasy world where trafficking works like a movie. But in reality, this is not a movie, and actual victims and survivors are being hurt. When you publicly lead people to believe that this is how trafficking works, that it's like something out of a movie, because that's not how it works. Nine times out of ten, people are being groomed into trafficking by somebody that they know, somebody that they trust.
It's not somebody snatching them or you know, a psychic leading them to the whereabouts of like a child being held in a dungeon somewhere, and promoting this idea just makes everybody more vulnerable because it it makes us not understand the actual threat and the actual dangers totally.
But you know they're out there. They are out there.
Yeah, I think from doing this episode, I feel like the real they who is the threat is like Tim Ballard Airs, youw Tate Russell Brand, So let's watch out with them, shall we?
Yeah? You're absolutely right. Yeah, the real they is these misogynist assholes who are engaging in this like cosplay, whipping up a frenzy about fictional harms while they themselves are enacting the actual harms.
Could not agree more. Mike, thanks so much for going to these stories with me.
Bridgett, thanks for having me. It was so good talking with you. I'll see you on the internet. I'll see you on the Internet.
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