There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this is there Are No Girls on the Internet. I'm here with my producer, Mike. Thanks for being here.
Mike, Hey, Bridget, thanks for having me.
And here's what you may have missed this week on the Internet.
But first I have to do a little bit of a I don't know PSA announcement. This is the situation I'm calling Cameo Cinderella. So five years ago, somebody from the platform Cameo, which is a platform that you can have public figures or famous people give you like birthday shout outs. About five years ago, somebody from Cameo got in touch with me and they said, hey, you should be on Cameo. This was like a real ego boost
for me. I was like, Oh my god, do you think that people would really want to like pay me to give them like a video greeting.
I signed up. I became of the platform.
Literally five years go by, no one requests a goddamn thing whatever.
I was humbled.
But last week I got my first ever Cameo request. But because I had never used the platform and it had just been dormant for five years. I didn't really know how it worked.
I didn't know that.
The requests expired, so I was not able to fill my first ever cameo request.
I feel terrible about it.
So it was from somebody named Jason and they were requesting a cameo pep talk from me. It sounds like Jason is writing a children's book that sounds really amazing. Jason, if you are listening, or if you know somebody named Jason and you think you know this is the person, email me. I am so sorry that I did not fulfill your cameo request. It was my first ever in five years.
Time email me.
You do not have to pay. I would love to send you a video pep talk. Hit me up at Hello at tangoti dot com. I'm so sorry I'm missing so yeah, I just wanted to say that.
Jason. If you're listening, I'm sorry. Yeah.
I hope Jason is out. I hope you heard from Jason me too.
So let's get into the news.
So first, there's one story that just makes me so happy, even though it was obvious to anybody paying attention, but it's what makes me happy, and that is Ruby and Shae Freeman have been cleared of all wrongdoing officially. Now this is really obvious to anybody who's been paying attention to this story, but it's still a good thing if
you don't remember. Ruby and Shae Freeman are the black mother daughter duo who were poll workers in Georgia who Trump and Rudy Giuliani baselessly accused of tampering with votes in the Georgia presidential election in twenty twenty that Trump lost Farren Square. They have been officially cleared of all wrongdoing.
An investigative report released this week by the Georgia Elections Board of the twenty twenty election found that all of the claims that they had mishandled votes, that they were moving votes, all of that stuff that Trump made up was all found to be false and unsubstantiated. The report also found that fake social media accounts and impersonation played a role, which is something that we talk about a
lot on this podcast. As part of the robe, the Georgia Election Board investigators interviewed a social media user who admitted that they created a fake account and confirmed that the content that was posted on this account was fake.
Vonda Boy, the attorney representing the women said in a statement following the release of the report that this serves as further evidence that Miss Freeman and Miss Moss, while doing their patriotic duty and serving their community, were simply collateral damage and a corugated effort to undermine the results of the twenty twenty presidential election. We talked about this
story kind of in depth on the podcast. The women testified at the January sixth Commission about how terrifying the harassment and violence that they faced got for them after Trump and Juliani basically just lied about them, and their testimony really broke me because I think it put a human face on things like conspiracy theories and disinformation.
This was just like a mother and daughter who wanted to serve their community.
The daughter had been working as a poleworker for a while because she really cared for the elders in her community and wanted to help those elders vote.
These are people who.
Were really really motivated by their civic duties and that motivation was turned against them. And so you know, if folks have not heard their testimony, I definitely recommend checking out the episode that we did on them, But it is heartbreaking because it really puts a face on what ordinary citizens have to deal with when the president uses his office to target them, lie about them, and smeared them.
You know.
Right wing blogs published their pictures and their names and saying they were moving suitcases full of ballots and from polling places they weren't. Giuliani got real racist with it, saying that he had a video of the women passing a USB drive to each other, quote as if they were vials of heroin or crack, even though they were just passing a piece of candy to each other. At one point, an angry mob of Trump supporters descended on their grandmother's home and tried to strong arm their way
into her house to make a citizen arrest. I can't even imagine how terrifying that must have been. Eventually, she had to just pack up and leave her home that she had lived in for twenty years for her own safety. So this was a very real, very terrifying harassment campaign that an elderly black woman and her daughter went through just because they wanted to serve their communities, and Trump and his cronies were looking.
For a scapegoat to pin their election loss on.
I was also really pleased that they both got a presidential medal from Biden, along with ten others who made exemplary contributions to our democracy. Surrounding January six, we did a whole episode on Ruby and Shay on my Cool Zone podcast Internet Hate Machine, So definitely check it out.
We'll link it in the comments. But I think it's really important to point out that what those women went through was a racist, sexist disinformation campaign that really weaponized and relied on their identities as black women to work.
You know. I think that when Trump and Juliani just.
Saw a video of two black women working in the polls in Georgia, he knew that he could capitalize off of their base and society at large's distrust of black women.
And so I think that that is why that.
Particular smear campaign stuck so well for them, because I think they knew, like, oh, be on a video of two black women, you know, work in the polls in Georgia, we could just put it on them. So I'm really pleased that what was obvious now is part of the public record that these women were just collateral damage in a racist, sexist smear campaign for simply trying to serve their communities, and I'm every new update about them that
I hear, I'm just rooting for them, you know. I hope that they sue the pants off of everybody and get everybody's money, But nothing can make right what they went through. These women are heroes, but they should not have to be heroes. They should not have to face Donald Trump, a sitting president, for simply wanting to exist and do their jobs and serve their community. So I'm really deeply rooting for these women. This news makes me.
Really happy, but they should I ever have had to go through this in the first place.
Yeah, it's nice to see the exoneration. I guess it's like years later, right, like three years later. Hopefully they get some peace at this point. And yeah, I wonder if they're gonna be suing people, you know, maybe they should get in contact with Egene Carroll's lawyers. Part of me hopes that this is the last time we talk about them on the show, because they're able to just like step out of the public spotlight that they never
sought and just like return to normal lives. But yeah, part of me wonders if maybe we will hear more from them. You know, they suffered a lot for no reason. Maybe they'll sue people. They probably should. They certainly seems like they could.
I think they were where they had an active lawsuit against the Gateway Pundit, one of the right wing blogs that first put their name and picture into the right wing blog a sphere.
And it's funny that you bring up Egen Carroll.
Something that I think about quite a bit is that Egen Carrol won her defamation lawsuit against Trump. The very next day he went on CNN and continued to defame her. She said that she might actually sue him again, and obviously the same as with Ruby and Shay, I am rooting for Egen Carroll.
But here's the thing.
She should be able to rest, just like you said, she shouldn't have to be constantly gearing up for lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit just to get some peace. And so I'm rooting for these women. I believe that these women should get what they deserve for what Trump and these assholes put them through. But they should not have to continually fight these battles against this person who continues to lie about them. So I'm with you, I'm wishing
them some peace, but always rooting for them. I want them to take these assholes for everything there work because they deserve it.
Yeah, absolutely like they deserve it. They deserve everything they
can get. And then also in terms of the bigger picture, one of the things we talked about at the beginning of this season is how it's starting to look like litigation and defamation lawsuits might be an important strategy in trying to rein in online disinformation in this time when it seems like a lot of platforms are actually going in the opposite direction of making it easier for people to just lie online and spread harmful misinformation and target
people for coordinated attacks. As people are surveying the landscape of what is actually an effective way to try to rein it in, it does seem like these lawsuits might be an important piece of that.
Yeah, I think we're going to see more and more of that.
I think the episode we started the season with Nita jank With sueing Fox News for defamation. I'm curious to see what the future looks like for people who lie for profit. I hope it's not a good one, because I don't think that serves anybody. Speaking of people who profit off the flies and harassment.
Let's talk about Elon Musk.
I should say this episode, we're gonna mention Elon Musk a few times. I feel like y'all have heard me say now, like, oh, I'm not gonna talk about Elon Musk, I'm not gonna bring him up.
I'm just gonna like ignore him.
But then I talk about him every news Roundup because he just stays in the news. So trigger warning, this is a Musk heavy episode and maybe they should actually be a new round Up segment.
What's Elon done now?
Well, now, Elon Musk has declared the words cis and cisgender will now be considered slurs on Twitter that can be punishable with suspension.
Let's get into it.
So Elon Musk has essentially invented two new slurs, cis and cisgender. So the word sis or sis gender is not some big scary word. It simply describes someone who identifies their gender as the same as their birth sex.
So how did this whole thing on Twitter start? Well, it started when James Essy's an Irish right wing social media personality who writes articles about things like the threat of wokeness and trans and inclusion, while he complains that people were calling him sissy on Twitter, writing yesterday, after posting a tweet saying that I reject the word CIS and I don't wish to be called it, I received a slew of messages from transactivists calling me sissy and
telling me that I am sis, whether I like it or not. Just imagine if the roles were reversed. So Musk replied, saying, repeated targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing account to receive at minimum temporary suspensions. The word CIS or cisgender are considered slurs on this platform. Now. Ugh, So this goes back to what we were talking about last week, how so much of Elon Musk's whole thing, not just his personal identity but how he makes business
and strategy decisions is grounded in transphobia. To put this in context with that Glad report that we talked about last week, finding that Twitter is by far the least hospitable social media platform for LGBTQ folks and that Twitter had actually rolled back policies that did the bare minimum of keeping transphobia off the platform, while other social media platforms like Facebook or TikTok try to do some things.
Twitter was like, now we're going in the opposite direction. We're going to do less.
Lgbtqu users are reporting being threatened and harassed on Twitter, and Musk is not just allowing it, but amplifying it and encouraging it. So this gus down into the question of whether or not cis is a slur no end of sentence, it is not. The history behind the word cis is actually like kind of techy and pretty cool, especially like if you're a word nerd, if you're interested in the origins of words. According to history dot org, the term has a long and contested history prior to
its wider cultural adoption. The OED officially cites a nineteen ninety four post to a usenet newsgroup alt that transgendered by user Dana Leland de FOSSi as the term's origin. First established in nineteen eighty, Usenet was a precursor to the World Wide Web. It's a distributed discussion system where users posted messages to topics specific news groups. Given its long history, use net is the origin point for a variety of terminology, providing the first use case for over
four hundred oed entries. Nevertheless, other origin narratives persist some sources for many years. Wikipedia, among them, credit a Dutch transgender man named Carl Bousch as creating the term in nineteen ninety five, a narrative he himself supports. Yet examples of the CIS trans dichotomy in reference to gender nonconformity go back even further, beginning as early as nineteen fourteen
in German sexological literature. This is really interesting. I know we were talking a bit off Mike before we got started, but I actually had never heard of usenet, and you were like, oh, you don't know about and use that.
This is something that you were familiar with, right, Yeah.
It was a little bit before my time. I wish I was cool enough to have been using it, but it's an important piece of like Internet lore. I think all of the founding creators of the Internet, they were using it to connect with each other and collaborate and share software and share ideas. And I think a lot of the the ideas that we had in the early days of the Internet about it, like being a force
for democratization and equality and freedom and openness. I think a lot of those ideas really were incubated on Usenet, which you know, was then eventually supplanted by services like America Online and then the world Wide Web I think was a more similar sort of open I don't even know what the.
World Wide Web?
Is it a protocol, is it whatever? But yeah, Usenet was just a critical important place for early founders and creators of what we now think of as the Internet where it all happened.
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
I love that.
The etymology of the word in this instance is like techie like, I think identity and techiness like. It doesn't surprise me that this is where some where folks think that this may be where some of these terms originated.
And like where their use came from.
Aaron Reid also has a really fascinating breakdown about the use of the word sis in medicine and science going back to the nineteenth century. We'll put it in the show notes. It's fascinating. So of all the moral panics, I find the ones around language and gender to be the most tiresome. You know, it's just like this panic around extremists getting bent out of shape from phrases like pregnant people. Extremists make it sound like it's some big, scary, nefarious plot.
When the reality is so much more boring.
Right, sometimes you need to be able to refer to a group of people at the population, let level using precise language, and that's really all it is. Like the fact that they've been able to turn this into a attack on them as opposed to just like a humdrum, you know, particularity of language needs is beyond me. Like it really just shows how they will use anything to weaponize and turn it into it an attack on them.
And extremists have been attacking terms like CIS and also straight and even white for years to paint it as a pejorative meant to shame. I think there is this idea where like, the only groups who have kind of special quote unquote special words meant to define them are like the other, right, Like the dominant group is like, we're the dominant group, we're the quote normal ones.
Other people they.
Get words attached to them to describe who they are, not us. And so I think there's this idea that if a word is being used to describe them, whether it's CIS or straight or white, even if it's just a humdrum word that is actually a personal attack on them.
Yeah, that's right, and I think that's all correct, and not to minimize the importance of words and language, right, because we know that words and language and labels are very powerful. But yeah, there's like this hostility to to labels like cis or white that apply to the majority group. Like you just said, you know, it's they're they're comfortable with words that refer to members of a minority group
and in fact reinforce their otherness and their minority status. Uh, but to then have a word like white or cists that refers to to them is like deeply threatening because I think it implies that they are not the default. They are not normal, they are not the standard. And it's like, yeah, the word cis it does imply that trans people exist, and I think a lot of these folks, like Elon Musk would argue that in fact, they don't,
you know, don't. I don't know exactly how that works in their brain, but like they seem to believe that like trans people aren't real.
Right.
You know, there was that law I think it was in I can't remember which state it was, but like an anti One of these laws that denied gender affirming care to trans kids was struck down by a judge somewhere in like the Deep South, I want to I'm not sure which, I can't remember which state it was. And the judge like explicitly said, and they're ruling that, you know, gender identity exists. It's a real thing. Like, despite all the vitriol and the huffing and puffing of
these transphobes like Elon Musk, gender identity is real. They can pretend and perhaps wish that it weren't, but but it is.
Yeah, that happened in Arkansas, and it kind of made me kind of cautiously optimistic that at a certain point, it doesn't matter if these extremists like it or get it or not. It's not their business, right, Like, gender exists. It's a thing that can shape people's lives. It's a thing that can determine what kind of medical care you need and what kind of care that you need to show up as your best self and your healthiest self.
Even if transphobes and extremists don't like it, that is not their business.
So that Arkansas ruling made me like cautiously optimistic that we can get to a place as like, Yeah.
You don't have to like it. It's not your business.
It's a real thing, and we need to make sure that people can get care that aligns with the care that they need. And it's really none of your business what that care is like. If you don't like it, fucking deal with it.
Yeah, absolutely, I think Elon Musk has like a real problem with that, Right Like, he spent forty four billion dollars to buy Twitter so that he could be the guy who gets to decide what discourse is a loud and what discourse isn't hidden behind you know, his I don't know veneer of being a free speech champion, which he has revealed over and over again to just be a complete joke. Right Like, he's not in favor of
free speech. He's in favor of the speech that he likes, and and speech that he doesn't like he wants to keep off of the platform. Right We've seen that a whole bunch of times. And now he's gone a step further to think that because he owns Twitter, he cannot only decide which speech is allowed and which speech isn't, but he can like invent new meanings for words, and he can't right, like, cis is not a slur, It's just a descriptive term to describe a phenomenon that exists in the natural world.
Well, as awful as all of this is, and it is awful, at least it can be the final nail in the coffin of the idea that.
Elon Musk is a free speech.
Absolutist, as he has often hilariously claimed. He explicitly said when he bought Twitter, he was used it as a platform to try to police and restrict the language of trans people and people that support them, And it's I think part of a larger attempt to erase and eradicate transness and clearness from public and civic life.
And so yeah, I think that's what he's doing.
At least we've like dropped the conversation about how he's going to turn Twitter into a free speech utopia. At least, I mean, I haven't even seen anybody really say that, even any of his defenders say that, because it's so obviously not true that you can't even continue to say it, because it's like, well, look at all these examples of the ways that he hasn't done that.
Yeah, that's a good observation. I haven't heard anybody say that in a long time because it's like, obviously not true. It's not a free speech utopia. It's like an anti trans healthscape.
An anti trans healthscape.
Speaking of healthscapes, let's talk about the mess over at Reddit. So the Reddit blackout continues as thousands of subreddits remain private. Longtime volunteer moderators who have always been the backbone of Reddit and the communities that it hosts, have lots many popular subreddits in protest of the company's surprise decision to start charging third party apps and individuals for access to
the platform's API. We've talked about this in an earlier news roundup, but previously API access has been free, which enabled the development of many third party apps that made Reddit easier to use, easier to moderate, and more accessible for Internet users with disabilities. But all of that ended earlier this month when Reddit shut down free access and started charging pretty steep fees for any app that used
the API. In response, many major third party app developers said they would have to shut down their apps because they just simply could not afford the fees. Many of these apps were created by small indie developers who simply wanted to contribute to a better Internet with credit, not
because they were particularly profitable. So this move by Reddit to consolidate and centralized power against the wishes of the army of volunteers who make the site an invaluable and fun resource, I think really represents like a dark trend on the Internet. I think it follows a similar move by Twitter shortly after Musk took over. Yep, this is
the second and time we're talking about them. I'm sorry, but by shutting down free API access, Reddit and Twitter are actively making their platforms less friendly to their users. People use third party tools because those tools are useful. They didn't just start using them for fun. They use them for a reason. And now those tools are gone, so users are fewer options and reduced functionality for interacting
with those platforms. And so I mean, I don't know, I don't know if this is like a boring story or not, but I really see it as a battle for the soul and the future of the Internet. One of the things that came up when we were talking about this, I think the week before last, was that how many people type when they have a question or they need some information, they'll type the question into Google and then they'll add Reddit because they want to get
like real good information curated by a human. And I was just like, Oh, isn't that interesting? But then I thought about it more and I was like, well, why is that? And I think it's because we have just accepted that so much of our Internet infrastructure is scams.
And ads an annoying.
Post, Like, the experience of using the Internet in twenty twenty three is actually like an experience of wading through this minefield of scams and advertisements. And so the reason why people need to add Reddit to their Google search queries is because it was the only way to quickly get to information that was hand picked and looked at by a human and not some kind of a SEO
bot scam. Right, Like, I don't know, And it's interesting to me that, Like, I think that this Reddit thing is really a conversation about what the Internet is for.
Who it is for.
Is it for humans who need accurate information or is it for bots and scammers and advertisers and seo hacks.
Or something else?
And so I think when we're thinking about this Reddit protest, I think it really like so goes Reddit, so goes the Internet. And I do think it's interesting that these Reddit moderators are not taking this lying down.
If there's anything I know about Reddit.
They are a vocal and passionate group of people. So you're seeing all of these kind of like roundabout protests where they were forced to when they went they took their subreddits private, and then they were kind of forced by Reddit to open them up, and so now they're finding all of these cheeky ways to continue that protest. Like a women's fashion subredit it's pretty big that I follow. They are now only posting fashion from like the seventeen hundreds as a way to sort of get around it.
I think one of the large photo subreddits is now only posting pictures of John Oliver. So there's all these little ways of like sticking it to Reddit suits in forms of protests that I think have been really interesting.
But it is not surprising to me that users are protesting this decision by Reddit top breasts because it's not good, right, It's not good because I think it makes the user experience worse, but also shutting down free API access also shuts out researchers researchers at universities, bank tanks, government agencies and other organizations have really relied for years on access to the back end of Twitter and red to be able to do research about what's going on on those platforms.
That includes keeping tabs on things like disinformation trends, conspiracy theories, timely monitoring of new disinformation spreading online, analysis of the networks behind disinformation and harassment campaigns, as well as studies on political discourse, health issues, and a whole bunch of topics right like how people are having discourse on the Internet tells us so much about what's happening with us in the real world, what's happening to our government, what's
happening in politics, what's happening in our Pacific world, and not allowing people who research and track and monitor trends in those arenas really puts us all at risk.
Yeah, it's actually personal for me because I have used both Twitter and Reddit's APIs in my own research in the past, and it's it's such a valuable resource for researchers to be able to look into what is going on on the Internet. And like you mentioned, there are some really like high stake things like monitoring disinformation ends. It's been used in violent conflicts to alert people to when there's like some sort of attack happening so that
people can get out of that space. But there's also this huge number of studies that have been done about things that are like somewhat lower stakes but also valuable. For example, I was involved in a study a while ago that was looking at the subreddit quit vaping, And it was a subreddit of people who were trying to quit vaping, and so the researchers wanted to look at, like what were people saying, were they getting, were they
exchanging accurate information? Were they was there like misinformation happening there? And you know, they found that for the most part, people were exchanging accurate information and social support and it was great. And so it's just like a nice little study that contributed to scientific understanding of how people give
each other social support for health behavior change online. So like not super high stakes, but valuable information and also a really accessible way for young researchers and like grad students to do interesting, meaningful research without having a lot of funds. You know, often grad students get paid very little. They can often have little access to resources and so using these APIs was a valuable a way that they could do valuable research despite not having a lot of
access to funds. And so now that these platforms are charging for access to these APIs, it's going to make it much harder, if not impossible, for a lot of
that research to happen. And so these, you know, the army of grad students out there who really fuel a lot of the research that happens in this country and just across academia and across science, they are going to find other ways to do research in other areas, and so our visibility into what's happening on the Internet is going to be that much darker.
Yeah, think about the grad students people. No, you're right, And I think like it comes down to a conversation that I keep returning to that I had with Paris Marx about who it is that is designing the future of the Internet for all of us, right, and like really look, really drilling down deep into who these people are and the internet and digital future that they want and that they're fighting for, and who benefits from that more.
After a quick.
Break, let's get right back into it.
I saw this really interesting thing online about this series of I would say like not great interviews that Reddit CEO Steve Huffman gave to first The Verge and then NBC where he was like really praising Elon Musk and basically saying that the way that Elon Musk is running Twitter is like how he wants to run Reddit, he said, setting a good example of how he wants to run Reddit.
We know that the way that Elon Musk has been running Twitter has been rampant layoffs, being pretty disrespectful to both users and staff.
If that is what you see as.
A role model for how you run a company, that is a big part of how the Internet functions and Internet discourse is, I think that we're all in trouble. Ben Collins at NBC called it CEO contagion, which I
had never heard before and I thought was great. Where executives have effectively rebranded hostility to customers and cruel worker exploitation as being like Elon And apparently this phenomena is everywhere in tech company boardrooms right now, whether they're making it explicit like the Reddit CEO Seve Huffman is and these interviews, or if they're just like keeping their cards close to their chest saying like, yeah, we should start
running our company the way that Elon Musk is. And I think you really have to call into question who these men are who have been given such outsized impact over the future of the Internet. Because the future of the Internet really matters. It matters for all of us. I have made this point so many times. What happens online deeply affects what happens in real life. That then
dioram as a circle. And so when we give people like Steve Huffman and Elon Musk an outsized role in shaping the future of the Internet, we are giving them a role in shaping.
The future of so much.
And so it's really something that we've really got to keep an eye on.
You know, this Reddit story. At first I thought it was kind of.
A niche story, but I keep returning to it because I really deeply do think it is a battle for the future of the Internet and we should all be paying attention.
Completely agree, I think that is exactly the right framing, Like who is the Internet for? Is it for these like rich CEO trolls like Elon Musk who just purchased this platform with money, or is it for the millions of redditors who have been construed beating content, moderating content, building community, maintaining community, uh for decades, right, like they the redditors built reddit, right, like Steve Huffman did not.
It's maddening and like you say, it's it's dangerous because they Yeah, in those interviews, Steve Huffman was, you know, praising Elon Musk and these you know, actions of disrespect. And I think disrespect is the perfect word to characterize this attitude towards users, towards workers. And if that's where he's coming from, what kind of product is going to grow out of that?
Uh?
Not a good one. Not a good internet that serves the needs of the population, and you know, makes people feel safe and valued and want to show up.
So you mentioned internet trolls earlier, and we kind of have to talk about RFK Junior on Joe Rogan. I don't really want to, but let's just step into it anyway. So anti VAX's conspiracy theorist and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Junior did a three and a half hour stint on Joe Rogan's Spotify original podcast last week, and the results were not great. First of all as a podcaster three and a half hours, I can't kidding me.
Ever heard of a fucking editor?
I hope our listeners don't expect the three and a half hour episode because that's just like not happening. I don't. Part of me is like amazed and impressed by it, but part of me is like, that's just like so much time, Like, don't they have other things they need to do?
Maybe not? I guess, I guess not.
I guess this is what they do.
Ugh.
I mean, I feel uncomfortable when I put out an episode's that goes over an hour. I'm like, oh, were really getting into rogan territory? Like, yeah, three hours?
That is a marathon.
So on the show, RFK talked about the usual conspiracy theories about vaccines, five g wi FI and illnesses that.
Have been debunked long ago.
I honestly don't want to list them all here, but if you want to know, if you want to know what specific conspiracy theories these people trafficked in, Anna Merlin has a great breakdown advice which will link in the show notes. She called the episode quote an orgy of unchecked vaccine misinformation, some conspiracy mongering about five G technology and Wi Fi, and of course broke in once again praising ivormetrin and ineffective faux COVID treatment. So I love
the idea. I love the phrase an orgy of unchecked misinformation. That's exactly what it is. Honestly, this stuff is just so boring. When I was going to, you know, write my outline for this bit of the show, I was like, we are just talking about rehashing stuff that we have, like has been done to death. The whole thing just feels very twenty twenty one. Like I was like, we're getting into vaccine misinformation again again. We're talking about I'm a metrin again, Like didn't we do that? It just
feels very like early pandemic twenty twenty one. Merlin asked Spotify if they were going to take the episode down to align with their COVID misinformation policy. They basically kind of danced around it again. You can read their response on the vice piece. You know, folks might remember that there was a whole conversation about Joe Rogan and misinformation when Neil Young and others removed their content from Spotify to protest him continuing to traffic in misinformation.
Yeah, it just feels like we're here again.
Like I don't just feel I feel like this is like a real Groundhog Day of a story where it's like, oh, he's doing it again. Oh they're asking Spotify again, and they're like giving pr nothing speak and doing nothing.
So basically, here's where it gets kind of interesting.
When an actual doctor, Peter Hoats, a vaccine scientist at Baylor College of Medicine, took to Twitter to rebut ourfk's claims about vaccines, Joe Rogan replied by inviting the doctor to come on the podcast and debate our FK. The doctor declined, and he said, I'll come on for like a one on one conversation or an interview, but I'm not doing a debate. Then, of course, Elon Musk, I'm sorry,
this is the third time we've mentioned him. Had to get his two cents in, had to butt in because Joe Rogan RFK Elon Musk, They're all like, like, we need a word for that group of people, like you know what I mean, Like we don't have a we don't have a good word for them.
We need a word for them. But because his buddy Joe Rogan was getting into it. Elon Musk.
Of course he had to get his two cents in, and he said that this doctor was just afraid of open debate because he knew that he would lose, so rather unfortunately, this doctor said that the whole thing ended with two people showing up outside of his house urging him to debate Joe Rogan, which like this is like I can't wrap my.
Head around this.
Can you imagine not one, but two people getting into their car, like taking off work whatever they got to do, getting a babysitter, getting in their car, searching this guy's address, driving to his house, standing outside out of his house, making a nuisance of themselves in the name of defending the honor of Joe Rogan. Like, I can't even wrap my head around the kind of person who does this.
We do need a name for these people. Maybe our listeners can suggest one. Either they could like connect with you on social or you know, write in on email Hello at tangoty dot com. I'd love to hear some ideas. I feel like some form of jock should be in the name, because there's like a very like internet jock or like social media jock or something. I don't know
these I'm not good at coming up with names. But like the whole this whole thing feels very like Sportsey, you know, the idea that this doctor is afraid to debate because he'll he knows it, he'll lose. Like this guy is a he's a doctor, he's a he's a scientist, right, He's trained to use science to learn the truth about viruses is and how they impact the human body. He's not trained in getting on the mic and having like
a debate on a podcast. That is a completely different skill set, and it also has you know, winning a debate like that has very little to do with the
actual truth of the thing. Right. It's like we live in two different worlds from these people, where some of us are interested in what is the truth about the world and the COVID virus and how it affects our bodies and things we can do to protect our bodies from being harmed by it, and other people live in a world where it's all just made up talking points, where there is no truth, and scoring points and winning the debate and getting clicks is the only thing that matters.
And I don't know how we like talk with them.
I mean, it's a great this doctor should not I mean, he was absolutely right to decline the invitation to debate Joe Rogan and RFK. You know, if rfk's vaccine misinformation felt very twenty twenty one, the whole like debate me bro thing feels like very twenty ten. It's just so tired and boring. If anybody ever challenges you to a public debate in twenty twenty three, you should decline on principle alone. And I really like this tweet from the
Guardian's Hamilton Nolan about this. He said, I know you did a PhD and wrote a book on this very complex topic, but if you don't debate my horse on stage at the county Fair, why should I believe you? My horse can clamp his hoof once for yes and
twice for no. And doesn't that really illustrated? I mean, I think like in a lot of ways, we are in this era that is kind of beyond facts and beyond credentials, and there is no point in debating somebody who you cannot find a shared understanding of the facts, right, Like,
it's not going to be a worthy enterprise. It is not to be something that is going to be it's gonna serve anybody or make anybody smarter by watching two people, one of whom is a credentialed scientist in this and the other is Joe fucking Rogan, who is completely making.
Up his own facts.
And any kind of like institutional fact that you have is just going to be discounted because like, oh it came from the mainstream media. Oh, but it came from big Farmer or whatever. Like this doctor is a vaccine specialist. He went to school, he has credentials. It's one thing to do a sit down interview about vaccines, you know, on the show. It's quite another to be debating somebody like RFK is an attorney, this guy is a doctor.
And since when is a debate on a podcast hosted by a former news radio series regular the way that medical facts are established?
You know?
This is one of those things that like, when I was watching the Discourse unfold, it was getting me so angry that I was like, I can't even pay attention to this.
I saw somebody on Twitter.
Say, oh, well, really easy to get on your high horse and hide behind your credentials.
And literally people.
Go to school and contribute to academia and research and get credentials because they want to have expertise on stuff.
That is literally how it works.
Just attacking somebody because they happen to be an expert just really goes to show how we're in this space where to a lot of people, facts don't matter, reality doesn't matter, expertise doesn't matter, and in fact it's to be suspect of and that the only thing that matters is talking points and one upsmanship and clicks and engagement. And that is why people like RFK, people like Elon Musk, people like Joe Rogan do it.
It is a grift. It makes them money.
It makes this poor doctor, you know, have people show up at his house in the middle of the night, which is already unacceptable. This is why they do it, don't I don't actually think they are serious. I think they do it because they know it is a grift and that there's a certain type of person who's always going to be like, wow, they're really going against the grain, they're really think for themselves, and they're always going to give that more engagement.
It is just aggristed, it really is.
And the fact that they're still talking about invermectin that like horse medicine that they for some reason thought was a covid antidote. That really gives lie to the whole thing, right, Like, if they just had vaccine skepticism, I don't think it's justified in twenty twenty three, But like, okay, you have some skepticism about this or that, fine, But the fact that they're still talking about this invermectin as a covid cure when there's zero evidence for it. It's been thoroughly debunked.
To the extent that you can debunk something that like never had any evidence in the first place, is just proof of how disingenuous they are and how insincere they are about any curiosity about this, Right, Like, the most cursory Internet search of, like, okay, what is the the evidence that supports ivermectin would turn up the fact that there is nothing, There is no evidence to support that. It's just a complete fabrication, and yet they still continue
to repeat it. If they were sincerely interested in these questions, they would find some answers, and the answers are easy to find, but they're just not interested in that. They're interested in the theater.
Yeah, that's one of the things that really gets me about this story is that it's things that I feel like have been pretty well settled.
You know.
This is that that is not a cure for COVID. You should not like I have a metron is not a cure for COVID. And then he also went back to the idea that vaccines cause autism, which thank you Jenny mccarsony for, you know, really getting that into the ecosphere. But I think continuing to return to these thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories about health is something that really gets me.
And also there's something about RFK and and maybe sid Joe Rogan to a lessous extent, but I think to people on the left who should know better, I think is kind of attractive. And so I think one of the reasons why I find this whole thing so upsetting is that I have seen folks on the left who should know better parenting this, amplifying this, saying things like, oh, he makes some compelling points, but it's like, no, he's making points that have been thoroughly debunked. If you just
did a Google search, it's not compelling points. And so I'm concerned that the same way that people allowed Trump to spew nonsense and conspiracy theories, and rather than calling them out, they said, like, oh, well, he is asking some questions, or like he is saying what people think, or any number of things excusing things that he would say. I worry that we have learned nothing and we're going to be doing the exact same thing in this upcoming presidential election as well.
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Let's talk about the Grammys, where they've determined that the Grammys are for humans only kind of. The Recording Academy, which is the organization behind the Grammy Awards, outlined brand new rules ahead of next year's competition, one that states outrights that only human creators are eligible for the music industry's highest honors. It's a little bit tricky, but basically, songs generated by AI can still be nominated, but there has to be proof that a human meaningfully contributed to
the song too. So if there's an AI voice singing a song or AI instrumentation, they might consider it. This is what Harvey Mason Junior, the CEO of the Recording Academy, told Grammy dot Com. But in songwriting based categories, it has to have been written mostly by a human. I do have some questions about what things like mostly or you know, a human meaningfully contributing to a song really means, Like it seems like there's some room to be defined there.
But ultimately, I think it's probably a good thing that the Recording Academy is putting some guardrails in place to deal with what I imagine will probably become an inevitability in music and songwriting that more and more human artists are going to be collaborating with AI.
Yeah.
I think they should be commended for attempting to get in front of this and for prioritizing humans. But man, I think we are all headed towards a lot of questions about what does it mean for a human to have meaningfully created something versus that human using AI as a tool to create something, Like I guess like the nature of what it means to create something is going to be something a topic that we all have to start talking about, and I suspect there's going to be very thorny answers.
We're actually doing an episode about AI and the creative arts. We're going to be talking to a screenwriter and a creative about the WGA strike and how AI plays into all of it. I do think that, you know, when you look at what screenwriters are asking for when it comes to AI, they want to ensure that AI is only going to be used to like supplement a human's creative writing process and not be generating the entire thing.
And so I do think that it is commendable that the.
Grammys are drawing a line in the stand and saying no, this is how a human needs to be involved in the process if AI is involved. But I do think, like you said, like it is a question of what this is going to look like, Like.
I don't know. I don't want to see an all robot Grammys.
When I watch the Grammys, I want to see Gloria Estefan and Celine Dion.
I don't want to see a bunch of robots. So we'll see. Yeah.
If you think about great music over the past, you know, like forever, it's always been something new, something transformational, somebody who either crosses genres or invents something entirely new. And AI can't do that, right Like, AI puts out patterns based on what it's learned from what has already seen. So I think, on the one hand, there's always going to be a place for human creativity to come up
with new things that are transformational and change. And it's just a big open question how AI is going to show up in music, but it seems pretty likely that it's definitely going to be there in some form.
This reminds me so much of the very first interview we ever did on this podcast with Claire Evans, who
is so cool. She's one of my idols. She wrote the book Broadband about how women contributed to computers from the very beginning, and she's in the pop group Yacht And one of the things that she talked about is how in the eighties, when dj and musicians were using things like drum machines and sampling to come up with the genre that would then be called hip hop, there was a time where some DJs were afraid that drum machines and samplers were going to replace them, and that
it was the musicians who learned how to combine their human talents with that technology to make a whole new genre. Those were the ones who really thrived and did something cool. And so I don't want to make it seem like I'm, you know, an AI doom and Gloomer. I think that there are going to be use cases in the creative arts where AI can probably be a useful supplement to a human in a studio, or to a human who is writing something, or to a human who is making
some sort of music. But I worry that in a society where we are so interested in exploiting and mining and taking for capital, I worry that it will something that probably does have a use case for creativity and creating an entirely new cool thing that that like does need a human knowing how to use this technology to do.
I worry that we're.
Just going to rely on exactly what you just described, right, just like, how can we just recycle something that already exists to make.
More crap that is derivative?
And I really worry that that's what the use case is going to be. How can we make cheaper and cheaper art. How can we, you know, continue to put the squeeze on the humans that make that art in favor of making worse and more derivative art that costs us less money while continuing to generate capital. So I think it's kind of a TBD how it looks down the road. What the future of this technology looks like
for creative work. But I do think it is important to be putting some early guardrails in place now, and so I guess it seems like that's what the Recording Academy is trying to do.
Yeah, guardrails and also a statement of values, right that it is human creativity that the Academy wants to celebrate.
So speaking of celebrate, I have a little bit of good news. Illinois became the first state in the United States to ban book bans in public libraries. Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker signed a bill to ban public libraries from banning books, the first such legislation in the country. He said, book bans are about censorship, marginalizing people, marginalizing ideas, and marginalizing facts. Regimes banned books, not democracies. This is what he said
out of assigning ceremony at Chicago Public Library. We refuse to let a vitriolic strain of white nationalism coursing through our country determine whose histories are told, not.
In Illinois, which kudos to him.
This new legislation takes place on January first, and it says that public libraries must adopt the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights or their own statement prohibiting book banning to be eligible for any state money. The Association's Library Bill of Rights states that reading materials should not be prescribed or removed because of partisan roductional disapproval, or excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those
contributing to their creation. And so it kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier about the Arkansas thing. This might be cautiously optimistic, and I'm kind of I want to choose my words carefully here, but I do wonder, slash hope if this is a signal that the extremists who are trying to use marginalized people as a wedge issue are losing, and they know they are losing because people don't want this. In a democracy, people don't want
books banned from public libraries, books about marginalized people. People want books about marginalized people. People are buying those books are flying off the shelves, as we talked about in one of our earlier newscasts. People don't want this. And I'm cautiously optimistic that this is a sign that the extremists who are pushing this this very small but vocal number of extremists know that they are losing and know that the rest of the public is not on their side.
Yeah.
I hope you're right in that optimism, because it does seem like the extremes is the right word here, right. The people pushing for these book bands are not middle of the road Republicans who are trying to win elections. They are extremists with an extreme agenda. Whether it's anti gay, anti trans, anti sex, just straight out to lunch, it's extreme extremists. And for years, I think relatively moderate politicians on the right we're more than happy to pander to
these extremists to get their votes. And I am also cautiously optimistic that the bill is coming due and it's catching up to them about issues like these book bans. I think abortion is another issue where they are realizing that by catering to these extreme extremists who are so out of step with what the general population wants, it's a losing recipe electorally.
Uh.
And I hope that continues.
A point that I make all the time as somebody who thinks about and studies disinformation, is that the reason why I know these extremists are losing, and aware that that they're aware that they're losing is that they lie. If they had positions that were popular, that people agreed
with and liked, they would not have to lie. So when extremists like the people who run the organization Moms for Liberty, you know who, by the way, just used a Hitler quote in their flyer recently, so like pretty like saying a loud part loud when they lie about the kind of books and the content of these books. When extremists lie and say that target is selling you know, chess binders for toddlers, or took friendly swimsuits for toddlers, or shirts for children that have Satan on them, which
they're doing, no such thing. When anti abortion extremists lie about their positions on abortion and they say, oh, this is just leaving them up to the states, we're not actually banning abortion, or oh like this is actually quite moderate, that's all lies. When they lie, it is because they know their positions are not popular. If they were popular, if people agreed with them, they wouldn't have.
To lie to get people on board.
And so I think it really I'm cautiously optimistic that people are waking up. They're saying, Oh, these people, the things that they're that they're the positioning as you know, just them moderately asking questions about society and trying to protect kids or whatever lie they're telling.
I think that people are waking up to the.
Fact that that is bs and that that doesn't move people right. I think that we also, for too long, have had a media climate that is too afraid to talk about these issues for what they are. We saw the whole thing with the critical race theory panic, where the mainstream media was all too happy to do the dirty work of extremists for them by lending credence to the ideas that, yeah, kindergarteners are being taught critical race theory, this high minded.
Collegiate level, you know, idea. When they weren't.
They were way too happy to make it seem like, oh, these are just parents concerned about things like bathroom bills and you know, protecting girls in sports. And now I think that all of that stuff is coming home to russ and I hope that people remember this come election time that I don't think that your average American is moved by this. I don't think that your average American walks around on their day to day being really outraged about what Target is selling or what books about LGBTQ
people or black people are in their libraries. I really don't, and so I'm cautiously optimistic that come November we will see that come to fruition. So one last thing, we got to quickly talk about this, Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, what is this the fourth time you've brought him up? I'm so sorry, so Musk heavy episode this cage match that they're talking about. So Elon Musk recently tweeted that he would be up for a cage fight with Facebook meta
CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg shot back with an image of Musk's tweet with the caption send me your locations. It sounds like these two heads of major tech companies intend to have some kind of a cage match, physical fight. And all I have to say about this is that this is what happens when men run tech companies. And that's all I have to say about that. I do
have one more thing I want to talk about. I'm sure folks by now have seen the Ocean Gate tragedy where a billionaire and his kid and other folks went down to check out the ruins of the Titanic and did not make it. There have been so many conspiracy theories around how folks are talking about this tragedy and a really interesting Q question mark online discourse. So I want to talk about this, but this story is everywhere,
so I'm going to save it for the Patreon. So if you want to hear my thoughts about the Ocean Gate tragedy, what conspiracy theories are sort of taking root, because some of them are quite interesting. What conspiracy theories are taking root about how folks are talking about this and the online discourse around this tragedy and how folks were talking about it. Check out our patreon. You can check out at patreon dot com slash Tangody. I would
love to have that conversation with you there, Mike. Thank you so much for being here as always.
Thanks for having me Bridget, it was a pleasure, and.
Thanks so much for listening again. You can check out our patreon from our ad free content and to support the show and I'll see you soon. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, You can reach us at Hello at Tegody dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer.
Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.