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.
Mike, I missed talking about the news with you last week, but I'm excited to be here doing it with you now.
Yeah, it's been over a week, but things gept happening, and so here we are, let's talk about them.
Things kept happening. Just right off the top. We are usually having this conversation on Thursday nights for Fridays, We're having it on Monday night. Coming out tomorrow on Tuesday. Because I was off last week getting nasal surgery. I am mostly recovered from it. Thanks for all the bell witches, but looking forward to be capping the news that you may have missed this week on the internet. So let's start with one that has really kind of got me
boiling my beans over here. So just today, Texas A and M negotiated an updated settlement agreement with doctor Kathleen McElroy. The university also announced that they were replacing their outgoing president, who resigned over doctor mccolroy's racist botched hiring. So if you've not been following this story, it is infuriating to me, and I think it really shows how far we have
fallen when it comes to conversations about inclusion in this country. Basically, doctor McElroy is a black woman with a long and storied career in journalism spanning twenty years in different editing positions at.
The New York Times.
Ever heard of it before helming University of Texas Austin's Journalism School from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two, where she is also a tenured professor, So she was meant to be joining Texas A and M's journalism school, which is also her alma mater. However, Texas A and M had originally hired her on a tenured track program to
really revive the school's journalism department. But because doctor McElroy is a black woman with a history of doing media work that's sometimes involves race, conservative stakeholders made a huge stink about her appointment. Her tenured track offer was later changed to a five year contract and then ultimately just a one year contract. So, as somebody, both you and I have had stints in academia, what if you're offered ten year track, then five years, then one year.
What is your takeaway there, Uh.
Not a place that is super excited to have you on right, Like they're just trying to get out of it without actually following through on the job offer.
The difference between a ten year track offer and a one year contract is pretty stark and like pretty insulting, so as she was probably right to do, she publicly declined the offer. Doctor McElroy told The Texas Tribune earlier this month that she felt quote damaged by the controversy and said, I think I am being judged by my maybe gender, and I don't think other folks would face the same bars or challenges. I think she's exactly one
hundred percent right now. The Runner Association, which is a collection of current and former Texas A and M students and staff, said that they had concerns about her hiring, basically that they were concerned that the university was not quote embracing egalitarian and merit based traditions and instead that the university was turning toward quote divisive ideology of identity politics.
Let me just break that down for you right now.
That is code for she's a black woman like there's nothing else. Why would you automatically assume that merit wasn't being followed, that this was not an egalitarian hiring. Do you know how hard it is to become a like do you know how difficult it is to become the head of a journalism department, which she is. She has been an editor for twenty years at the New York Times.
You're gonna tell me that she doesn't have merit? That is just there is just no way that that means anything other then she is a black woman, and we don't like that. The group also objected to claims that alumni, donors, and taxpayers constitute outside influence, because a big part of this story was that I guess stakeholders is the word they were using, and the piece that I read people
who are not necessarily directly affiliated with the university. They were the ones who were really making a big stink. And so it sounds like this group is like, well, I think that taxpayers and donors don't aren't considered to be outside influence, And I don't know. I mean, I am a taxpayer for plenty of things that I don't then get to have a direct say on just because
you're a taxpayer for this public university. I don't know that I would really say that that means that you get to have this level of scrutiny over journalism department hires. So the entire fiasco actually led to the resignation of the president of Texas a and M. Catherine Banks, who said that she took responsibility for what she called the flawed hiring process and also said that doctor Calori had fallen victim to anti woke hysteria, which I completely agree.
We covered so many of these kinds of stories with our mini series that we did with Cool Zone Media Internet Hate Machine about how like just being a marginalized person, like just being a black woman is enough to have your tenure question. And I think that question of just asking like like, how do we know she really deserved this job? How do we know this was a merit
based hiring? I know It's like any black woman, woman of color, marginalized person knows exactly what they are trying to say when they say stuff like that, because it's I mean, it's barely even a dog whistle, Like what like why would you assume this person is not qualified?
They've been doing this job for twenty years.
It's just it's just another way to be little and other and continue to further marginalize people who are already marginalized. It's not like black women are overrepresented in universities. And also can't we to keep it like really real about the concept of merit and like egalitarianism real quick, because merit and a galitarianism, like, we all know people who get to high level positions of power in society and
it is not on merit. Looking at you, Elon Musk, it is because of connections, family, your name, money, relationships, gender, whatever it is. But it is not always merit. Your boss is not automatically smarter than you simply because of the fact that they were made your boss. And it's interesting to me to see which folks that the stakeholders at Texas A and M decide get that merit scrutiny, like are you really did you really earn this position?
In conversations about who gets offered a position in the journalism school.
The language of meritocracy is particularly inauthentic.
Here.
Clearly, she like led a department in New York Times for decades. It's pretty difficult to conceive that she got through all the rounds of review by the various hiring committees as someone who wasn't qualified to have that sort of position, right, So like it's just almost impossible to believe that, in fact, she truly was not qualified. Like you said, it sounds like it has everything to do with her having a point of view that is not
concordant with what Texas A and M is going for. Right, it seems like maybe they're trying to compete with Florida to see who can have the most regressive fantasy land curriculum.
Yeah, I completely agree.
And you know this is all happening in Texas where Governor Greg Abbott has just signed into law a bill to dismaysntle DEI programs at state funded public universities, including Texas A and M. But importantly, doctor mclvroy is not a DEI professional. I feel like DEI Diversity and Inclusion is like the new boogeyman. Like for a while it was woke, and then it was like leftists, and now it's just like the association with DEI because she's a
black woman. Just because you're a black woman who works in media doesn't make you a DEI specialist.
I'm not a DEI specialist.
Just because I'm a black woman in media, And I think that you're exactly right the language of meritocracy and just this blanket assumption that she couldn't have just been qualified. How often do we use that regressive thinking to keep marginalized people from holding positions of power and influence. Just if I guarantee you if this has been a white man, nobody would be saying, well, let's see, were they really qualified?
What really?
What merit do they have? Was this a galitarian process of getting them in here? It is just a way to keep marginalized people from positions of power and influence. It's so obvious to me, and I think that we should really be concerned about how effective this rebrand of DEI and inclusion and even people like even people who don't do that for a living, just being a black person is enough to have it be synonymous with, oh,
you must be doing DEI work. And it's already bad enough that in Texas, if you your university does DEI work, you don't get public funding. That's already bad enough. But now just being able to associate any black professional with DEI because of their race, like it is just so clearly meant to keep marginalized people from these positions.
And particularly in a journalism school. You know, the idea of meritocracy, I think is connected to the idea of like an objective reporting of the news, like purely objective both sides telling, you know, the truth is somewhere in the middle, the idea that journalists would not have any sort of perspective that they bring to a story, but that they should really to be a good journalist, a good you know, a good objective journalist, they should just
you know, report the facts. But of course that's an absurdity, right, Like any sort of telling is going to be a selection of facts. Every journalist is going to have a perspective. And yeah, it really seems like her big crime here was having a perspective that did not align with what the Texas A and m powers that be wanted.
Yeah, so she just today they agreed on a settlement. I actually hope that we find out more information about this story, Like I want emails, I want text messages, I want to know who said what, I want to know when what was said. I have a feeling the story is not going to end here. The fact that the university president resigned over it tells me that it's.
A big deal and there's probably more to this story.
So I hope this is one that we find out more information about, because something is going on here that just doesn't sound right to me.
Well, it's also going to be very interesting two or three years from now to take a look at what does the faculty body at Texas A and M look like, because I can't imagine this very public national news story is making a whole lot of you know, top faculty from around the country want to go there, right. It really makes it seem like a very provincial, backwards little school.
Okay, So I have another kind of infuriating story for you, this must read piece from the Intercept on the rise of survivors of sexual violence being sued for defamation. So, in the years after the Me Too movement, more people accused of sexual misconduct are now suing their accusers. The entire Intercept piece is worth a read. We will definitely
throw it in the show notes. But they write this, in the five years since I started the metwo movement, a quiet but effective legal backlash has swept over those who spoke at against sexual harassment and abuse. The accused have turned around and sued their accusers, effectively silencing them.
This silencing is even more acute in the aftermath of the libel judgment in Johnny Depp's case against Amber Heard, where a jury found her allegations of abuse and an op ed on op ed that did not actually name Johnny Depp were false. Experts warned that anti feminist groups were mobilizing to bring defamation suits and that it could make survivors of sexual violence and domestic abuse to come forward. Herd's own teams said that the outcome would have a
chilling effect, and it sounds like it really has. Most of the people being sued for speaking out against sexual abuse or domestic violence are not like a list famous celebrities. They are regular people who probably don't have access to the kinds of money, support or legal teams that you would need to challenge a defamation lawsuit. Like imagine speaking up about being a survivor of sexual violence and trying to warn others, and then finding yourself with a legal
summons because you're being sued for defamation. The piece also talks to Kenneth White, a partner at a law firm called Brown, White and Osborne White said that he used to only get the occasional request for help with the defamation case after writing and speaking up frequently about handling such cases, and he says over the last I would say five years, I really saw a significant increase in the number of these that had to do with women
being threatened for speaking or writing about some form of abuse.
He said.
Being labeled as a harasser or a rapist carries more reputational damage than it used to, thanks to me to this is a way for abusers to try to claw back that lost status. I mean, I've been seeing this in so many cases playing out with famous people. I don't want to mention any names because there are cases that are still ongoing, but you could probably guess so.
I think it's clear that people who are famous or public figures have really set a new tone for how abuse and conversations around things like sexual misconduct cases will be handled for all of us. Me too, really use the platforms of a lot of famous people, but it was honestly never just about Hollywood starlits or a lusters or famous people.
It was about what kind of climate.
We want to live in as it pertains to abuse and sexual misconduct, because we all, all of us, whether you're famous or not, truly deserve a better world, one where sexual abuse and violence is just not tolerated. It's not part of life, and it's not something that is just excused or overlooked. If the abuser is like a genius or like really good at making money for people, or really does not want to have to contend with the fact that they abuse. Somebody really does not want accountability,
you know. I think we made some progress in this system that created a little bit of a cost for things like sexual abuse and sexual violence. But I think there are people who are really invested in going back to that old system where things like sexual abuse and violence are just like private matters or like matters of the house or domestic, rather than being invested in seeing the truth, and the truth is that abuse and violence are systemic issues and that there should be a cost
associated with it. But now abusers and the people who enable them are simply just like using the state and the courts to swing that pendulum back the other way and create a cost for calling out the system for what it is and create a cost for speaking up a bad abuse, and the cogs and the machines.
That enable it. It's one of the reasons.
Why I think Me Too was kind of criticized because of its association with like Hollywood A listers, even though it was started by Toronto Burke, a black woman, specifically to center other black women survivors of sexual violence. Because not everybody who speaks up about abuse has the money or the support or a legal team to support them
through it. And the choice to center a lot of survivors of abuse who do have that kind of support because they have money or they're famous, I think, really minimize the reality that the vast majority of people speaking up about abuse do not have that kind of support. I struggle with the idea that we tell survivors that they should be naming their abusers because of exactly the
climate that is described in this Intercept article. I would only ever advocate for a survivor of violence to like speak up if they really felt sure and they really felt like they had support. It's a complicated, fucked up climate that is going to lead to survivors not speaking up.
And these people don't have a ton of support, right, Like, these.
Are not a list people who have lots and lots of funds for long drawn out legal battles. Like, imagine how terrified you would be if you got a legal sumon saying that you were going to be sued for defamation and you don't even have a lawyer, maybe you don't even have you know, the kind of support that would that you would need to know what to do as your next step.
Yeah, it's you know, really interesting you framed it as an anti me too movement because it does seem like that is a fitting description of this pattern of defamation cases against women who have accused abusers. And so you know, if you think about it as an anti movement or like a backlash, who benefits from that?
Right?
Like?
Who are the people like in this movement? Abusers?
Abusers and the people who protect the power structures and institutions that enable their abuse, Like people who are abusers, people who are uncomfortable with the power structure being challenged that enables abuse.
Like maybe they are not abusers.
Themselves, but they feel like, you know, oh, the way things are supposed to go is like being an abuser should not you know, be disqualifying to be to hold power being an abuse? Like just because you you know, people, I think people who want us to go back to a certain way of life. I think that we made some progress, not even that much progress, but some progress. And I think some people see this and they're like, oh, well, they want abuse to remain something that is in the
sphere of the domestic. And what we're saying is that, like, yeah, if you're an abuser, you're If you're you probably are abusing people in your life outside of the domestic.
This is not a private issue or a personal issue.
And in fact, this is an issue that deeply intersects with how you hold pass So if you were a power holder, no, you shouldn't be able to treat people in your life any kind of way. They need that structure to be maintained. I think that there are a lot of people who are very invested in that structure. And I think me too was a challenge to that structure.
And I think the people who don't want that structure challenge are like, wait, wait, wait, wait wait, we need to how can we use the state to put things back how they're meant to be, which is that nobody cares when somebody is an abuser.
Woo.
If that is dark, it's bad.
I like many of us kind of got duped by a really effective social media campaign that led me to believe that there was a lot more happening with the Johnny Depp Amber Heard defamation trial than was there. I was like a low information person on that, like I wasn't something that I followed, and I was being surfaced so much content that really completely painted a different portrait
than what was actually happening. And once I actually looked into it, I was like, wait, this is actually like very cut and dry, Like this is actually like not that complicated. I don't know why I thought that it was like some big murky thing. And the article in the intercept, which I think everybody should read, really makes clear that Johnny depp that trial is one of the reasons we are seeing this new climate, and that is
something that we are seeing play out right now. That is the climate that Johnny Depp's legal team has left us with.
Let's take a quick break at our back.
Well, Elon's been up to a lot since I've been offline. It's all like a mixed bag of terrible Let's just get into it. I want to do it quickly because like part of me was like do I even do what's Elon up to this week? Because it's so it's so ridiculous. So I'm late to the game because I was offline. Twitter is trying to change their name to X. What is there really to say? It's like a terrible name,
it's a the logo is terrible. It's it's like a throwback to like do you remember back when like X was really cool, like for some reason, like I want to say, like late nineties, X was like a really cool branding, so very much on brand for Mosk to get into something like fifteen years too late for it to be relevant.
I don't know.
I saw that he that Linda yakan Arrow was like had this breathless string of tweets about how their new vision for Twitter is to be X and X is going to be like an everything app that is like video. By the way, there's already a pretty popular video streaming service with the name X, so that's already taken.
But they want to do like video audio banking.
They should go without saying, please do not give Elon Musk your banking information, like terrible idea. I continue to like weirdly feel bad for Linda Yakanaro because I feel like her.
She is like the CEO of Twitter, and it.
Seems like most of her job is just like turning random choices that Elon Musk makes into a thread of, like really enthusiastic tweets, which I still feel like she could get out of this thing if she really, like, you know, she could drive herself out of this I think, what do you think?
There is a brief moment when she's like, well, maybe she would be a person with power to influence the direction of the company, but in hindsight that was always silly to think, and it's certainly proven to not be the case. You know, being the multi post cheerleader for whatever Elon's latest thing is seems to be like her
only public facing thing. I don't know. Maybe she's having a lot of deep conversations with brands behind the scenes that we don't get to see, but everything we do get to see is not much Wow, So like her breathlessly enthusiastic thread of or string of tweets or exes.
I don't know about this new thing seats. People were compared zeats. Is that what they're calling?
Oh that's terrible? Is it really zeats?
Or I heard somebody's it's heard somebody say they're calling them zeats.
No, no, no, it's calling.
I actually have a theory that this is it actually is brilliant marketing because it's so terrible it forces everybody to like talk about it, like you can't even talk about it in a normal way.
It's like the branding equivalent of comic sins. You know about this, right, yes? Why like basketball players, So for folks you don't know, Like when NBA players were where the like I can't breathe shirt, everybody was like, oh for a game and they were like, why are they in comic sands? And it's actually like a like an effective tactic because the logo is so bad, even though I actually kind of like comic sands, but the font is so bad people talk about it and then it
gets more attention. So maybe that's what he's doing. So yeah, lots of stuff on the X thing. People probably already know this by now, but both Meta and Microsoft already owned trademarks for variations on X, which is probably gonna open them up to lawsuits. In Indonesia, X was temporarily
blocked because of the association with adult content. The country has laws forbidding, gambling and pornography online, and so whoever used X as a domain before Musk broke that country's content law And it seems like Elon Musk's team just like didn't check to see if that would be a problem. It honestly sounds like Musk has been trying to make X happen since his PayPal days. People don't like like that was probably the last time that this branding was like a cool thing y.
It's yeah, he's trying to make X happen. Stepping back is like, of all the things we've talked about happening on Twitter over the past several weeks or months or however long it's been, at least this one doesn't isn't like hurting anyone, but it is worth stepping back and just reflecting on how bizarre it is that Elon Musk just kind of likes the X branding and he wants to have like one app to do everything, and he like started that with PayPal and then it didn't work,
and so then he just like went and bought Twitter, and now he's trying to like pursue his vanity project with Twitter, which like I would almost respect, you know, I have lots of projects that I'm working on that like no one else is interested in that, Like I know no one else would ever be interested in but it would like personally be gratifying for me to like
have it see the light of day. But those none of those involve like the information infrastructure on which our democracy depends, right, Like the stakes are so much lower.
So you said that the ex branding isn't hurting anybody, Let's talk about some people.
Elon Musk is hurting.
So one he erected a giant glowing X on Twitter's HQ in San Francisco, pissing off everybody, failed to have the city come check it out, and then unceremoniously took it down. So I'm sure the I saw on Twitter. Somebody was like, oh, imagine living right across the street from this, And somebody was like, I don't have to imagine it, it's my reality.
Here's a picture. Terrible.
He also quietly reinstated Kanye West's Twitter account. You might remember that Kanye's account was pulled in December after posting a series of very anti Semitic tweets, including an image of a Nazi swastika blended with the star of David Musk clarified that the account had been suspended for the incitement to violence.
Well, Connie is back.
Musk also reinstated an account that shared a screenshot from a child sexual abuse video, completely caving to right wing pressure. This is after, of course, Elon Musk went on and on about how he was going to be cracking down on child sexual abuse material on the platform and had a zero tolerance policy for it, so I guess it's
more like a sum tolerance policy. And also he'd threatened to sue a nonprofit that studies hate speech and misinformation on social media called the Center for Counting Digital Hate for you guessed it reporting on hate speech on Twitter. One of their reports looked at one hundred different account subscribed to Twitter Blue and found that Twitter failed to act on ninety nine percent of hate posted by the subscribers, and questioned whether or not Twitter's algorithm boosts toxic tweets.
They also found that Twitter failed to act on eighty nine percent of anti Jewish hate speech and ninety seven percent of anti Muslim hate speech on the platform, and Elon Musk replied by saying that the Center for Countering Digital Hate has made inflammatory, outrageous, and false or misleading assertions about Twitter and suggested that it conspire to drive advertisers off of Twitter by smearing the company and its owners.
It sounds like this the Center, I mean, I know, the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
They do good work.
Yeah, it sounds like Elon Musk just doesn't like hearing the truth about himself or his platform. And yeah, so he's trying to sue them and also like a pressure campaign to smear them, which is something that we see time and time again, like people who work in disinformation work being personally threatened for doing that work as a way to sort of push them out of it.
Oh.
Also another thing that Elon Musk is doing shaking down verified accounts for one thousand dollars a month. This is according to the Wall Street Journal, Twitter is asking brands to spend at least one thousand dollars per months on
ads to maintain their verified status on the platform. In response to the Wall Street Journal reporting this, Musk says that as he describes that price tag is moderately high, which I think moderate, it's doing a lot of work in that sentence, but okay, but the high cost, according to Musk, is a preventative measure to keep scammers from the platform, which I don't know why you would have to pay a thousand dollars a month to in advertising fees to just get Elon Musk to do his job
and run a platform.
But there you have it.
Boy, that's.
Yes. I told you it was gonna be.
It was.
I think I warned you it's gonna be a lot of like.
I mean, it's we were we were only off for a week and we got this much musk nonsense.
Yeah, my god, it's been so much, so much musk. A x X is such a bad name, Like, how do you even talk about it? I feel like you can't even say it. Everything I've read about it is like the you know X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. It's like like I almost want to compare it to Prince, but I'm not going to. I know I'm not going to. Uh, X can't.
Stick my best friend in the world, Andrew Nasden shout out to Andrew Nasden in front of the show the day So, like, I go offline, I get surgery, I'm on drugs.
They changed the name to X.
The first text that I come to is just my good friend Andrew Nasden saying are you ready for this?
X gonna give it to you?
And I was like, oh shit, DMX, it hadn't even occurred to me. So then we just texted back and forth the lyrics of that one DMX song. I thought it was very clever when I was on painkillers. But yeah, it's just bad branding. Also, it's like it's hard. It's just hard to say the logo. Someone I think astuteley said that it looks like Berlin based human trafficking app for like gentlemen in Berlin or some sort of a like weird like just a It's like it's like a black like weathered X.
It just looks it just looks very nineteen ninety nine. That's all.
It reminds me of the clothing store structure. Remember the store structure, the men's clothing store reminds me of that, just like a very of an era, and that era is nineteen ninety nine.
Thousand dollars a months worth it.
So, speaking of companies changing their names, this is really quick, but I just have to get it out. So chalk this up to just me needing to like make it part of the public record that I was right about something that I suspected all along. This week is National
Whistleblower's Day. So remember back when whistleblower Francis Hogan released what became known as the Facebook Papers, blowing the whistle on a grip of knowing wrongdoing that Facebook did, including the way that their platforms harm youth and messing up democracies abroad. Well, shortly after this wave of bad press, that is Facebook's words, because I don't think that that level of harm is bad press. I think it's like
deep wrongdoing. But that's how they would frame it. After that wave of bad press, Facebook announced that they were changing their name from Facebook to Meta. I was fairly certain they were doing this to distract from this like damaging news cycle. You know, Facebook has been knowingly harming our kids for a while. To Facebook has changed his name to Meta in classic like oh it's Malibu Stacy, but she's got a new hat kind of vibe, you know, like just like just change the conversation about it.
Mark Zuckerberg of course denied.
This, saying that, you know, any indication that the company was changing the name to try to get away from bad press was quote ridiculous. That was the word that he used, because Facebook was just really interested in the metaverse. They were just doubling down on the metaverse like that was nothing to do with bad press or harming kids, or disabling democracies, any of that. They were just really
really invested in the metaverse. Well, as Mark Zuckerberg was busy saying that his chief product officer, Chris Cox was basically saying that that's exactly what they were doing. About two weeks later, according to a new report from Business Insider, here's what the report found. During a company wide q and A with employees in November led by Cox and Sheryl Sandberg, then Facebook's chief operations officer, an employee asked about the overall success of.
The new meta name.
A longtime employee who has since left the company recalled Cox said the name change was successful, explaining his measure of success was the amount of press coverage of the name change compared to the whistleblower disclosures. It was more than double the volume of the Facebook papers coverage, Cock said on the call. He added that the coverage was also neutral to positive in tone. That's the kind of thing we only could have dreamed of when we did
the change in terms of press coverage. He went on, and it's a really big deal because the Facebook papers was a big story, especially inside the US. So that whole song and dance that Mark Zuckerberg did saying, we just loved the metaphorse so much. We loved it so much we quietly basically dropped it a few months later. Well, that was just a life as everybody knew, myself very much included. They were just changing the name to try to pivot the story away from their knowing harm and
wrongdoing onto the fact that they change their name. And this is like a time honored strategy of companies. I don't really think it's really what's happening with Twitter. I think that like Elon Musks is just stuck on X and trying to make fetch happen, and like is stuck in nineteen ninety nine, I don't know that. I think that he is trying to pivot from bed press there. But Philip Morris became Altria, the Lance Armstrong Foundation became Livestrong.
Like this is a thing that companies do when they are caught doing something that they ought not be doing, and so they just want everybody to sort of forget it, change the conversation pivot. So the next time you see a company do this, don't just take for face value that they're genuinely interested in the metaverse and want their name to reflect that. Know that it's a classic play from the bad actor playbook to avoid accountability.
It's a good call that anytime a company changes their name, sh really ask why what is it that they're trying to distract from right now? It's also a good reminder that we just cannot believe anything that Meta or Mark Zuckerberg say right will just openly lie in public, and that's just what they do.
We talked about this a little bit when Threads came out. They did finally add a chronological feed to Threads. So if you're still on Threads and that's something that excites you, it's not just like an algorithmic mishmash of people that you follow on people that you don't. But I remember when Threads first came out, they had us like low
key rooting for Mark Zuckerberg. That's how much everybody hates Elon Musk, And I wonder did Mark Zuckerberg like enjoy that three day Sapan, where people kind of didn't hate him.
I would assume, you know, he kind of seems like the kind of guy who wants to be liked. But I don't know. I don't have any special insight there. Either way, he's probably comforted by his tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars. He's probably feeling, Okay.
It's funny, like I nobody wants and I'm doing the things that I hate.
But like where you start, like.
Trying to get into the head of these tech billionaires who just live such different lives than us, Like the life that any of us you, that you live, that I live, that anybody listening lives is so different than the lives of these people. Trying to glean what they're thinking their motivations is like it's a fool's errand. But I think Elon Musk is someone who genuinely, deeply wants to be liked, And I think a lot of the way that he makes decisions is rooted in a deep
chasm of need to be liked. And I think that he needs us to think that he's funny. He needs us to think that he's like in On the so we make when people make fun of him and cut him down, his response and I feel like I know this response because I have this, I'm capable of these kinds of responses that are so like little and small as well. So like game recognized game, I like to see the gears turning where it's like, oh, it didn't
hurt my feelings that you said that. Actually I'm getting in on the joke, haha, Like you know when people make fun of him, you know, like when he when
he suspended Kanye West from Twitter back in December. One of the things among the very anti semitic things that he tweeted that were like completely inappropriate and messed up, he tweeted an image of Elon Musk shirtless on a boat, and Elon Musk had to be like, oh, just in case you were wondering, suspending Kanye West had nothing to do with that unflattering picture of me shirtless on the boat. If anything, it was good motivation for my weight loss.
And it's like this vibe of like having two can work over time to convince people that you are aware, self aware of the joke that you know that they're thinking. That I think is really rooted in like this deep well of need for approval but not getting it. It's kind of sad when you think about it.
It is a little sad.
I mean, I don't spend time feeling sad for Elon Musk. Yeah, but just imagine if somebody like him, like felt validated, felt you know, like didn't need to buy a platform so that he could like see his own jokes amplified on it to be like they like me, they think I'm funny.
There's so much better stuff that one could do with forty four billion dollars. I think so, But then again, I don't have forty four billion dollars, so a lot of good it does me.
Give me one billion dollars, they'll never hear from me again, Like I'll do it for a fracture that you will never hear from my ass again.
Like there's so many things, so many possibilities, and yeah, he's barked on this journey to try to make everyone like him, like you were saying, and failing so spectacularly.
It is sad when you think about it that way.
I mean, he's really taggd his brand like he used to be somebody that I think most people liked or at least didn't loathe. That's gone.
And it's funny because I often go back and listen to old podcast interviews with him or read old articles about him or profiles, and he really did have a sweet grift going where he comes off so genuinely both unlikable, uncharismatic and like doesn't know what he's doing, but that the interviewer or the profiler or whoever was there was a time where they were giving him a lot of benefit of the doubt.
I think that time is over.
I think people are like, yeah, this person is like exactly who he's been saying he is. But imagine having so much money and kind of lucking your way into buying companies that are like kind of successful, having the press mostly fooled, and having them carry water for this concept that you're like a smart guy who knows what he's doing, and then ruining all of that.
Got to get it back, you know, maybe that's why he's out there trying so hard.
Now xcom give it to you, X come deliver to you more.
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
So let's talk about these two bills that are both making their way through Senate regulating the Internet and children. Last week, the Senate Commerce Committee advanced two bills in the United States, both regulating how young people show up online. Bill number one is the Children and Teens Online Privacy
Protection Act, introduced by Senators Marky and Bill Cassidy. This would update the nineteen ninety eight Children's Online Privacy Act to raise the age of consent for data collection to sixteen and build a new Federal Trade Commission Division to enforce it. The second bill, is the one that we're sort of focusing on right now, is the Kids Online Safety Act, introduced by Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn.
This would place a duty of care on platforms to prevent promoting to users under seventeen content that includes disordered eating and suicide. The bill carves out explicit protections for support services such as suicide, health potlines, school and educational software. An amendment to the bill approved Thursday would also require companies to be transparent about if they're filtering content using an algorithm and giving users a chance to opt out.
So the Kids Online Safety Act is the one that I think that a lot of privacy and civil liberties experts are concerned about. It's a little bit complicated because I've actually seen people that I trust and like respect coming out in support of the Kids Online Safety Act.
But I think it's complicated in that most people who are not like in the pocket of big tech and making money from this, I think agree that like something needs to be done with the way that tech companies are harming young people and really everybody, but young people in particular. But the concern is that we will like push through a sloppy bill that ends up regulating the Internet in ways that harm more people and that actually
do more to harm marginalized kids. Because I've seen a lot of folks who care about things like privacy and like digital harms raising the alarm. One of them is Aliah Bathia, policy analyst for the Center for Democracy and Technologies Free Expression Team. She published a blog post where she expressed concern around giving more information to platforms to verify ages, saying this is essentially meaningless if the very nature of the bill requires online services to treat miners
differently from adult users. Doing so pire online services to know the ages of their users adults and children alike. So I kind of get what she's saying there that there is like a weird mental thing of like, in order to keep kids privacy safe online, we all need to give more information about ourselves to tech platforms. Like I get what she's saying about why that sort of hits weird maybe.
Yeah, it's such an interesting and also important problem. I mean important for so many reasons, but interesting because, like you said, I think most people agree that there is a serious problem with young people young people in the internet, right, like trying to get beyond that and more specifically name what the problem is, I think that consensus breaks down
pretty quickly. But there's definitely privacy concerns, and there's also concerns about young people accessing content that is inappropriate for them. You know, people have different ideas about what might be inappropriate if it's sexual or about drugs or violence, but most people would probably agree that, like, there's some content that kids shouldn't see. But those are like very different
problems privacy and content restrictions. And it kind of sounds like it's maybe a little bit muddled which problem this bill is actually trying to solve, And that's pretty problematic.
Yeah, And you know, to your point about the content that like, we all have ideas about what kind of content is or is not appropriate for young people to be seeing. Verge reports that digital rights advocates have suggested that this bill could prevent queer youth from finding resources that they need online without coming out to their parents due to the prevental consent requirement of the bill. And
this is not an unfounded concern. In fact, the Right Being organization, the Heritage Foundation, already flat out admitted that they planned to use this legislation to censor LGBTQ content
in an attempt to barrow children from such content. Right and so, what I think the kind of content that young people should not be have access to online and the content that the Heritage Foundation, who is this like incredibly lobbied, well resourced right being organization would say that kids should not have access to online are two different kinds of content.
And you know, to your point about it's not.
Clear what problem exactly this legislation is meant to tackle.
We in our episode that we.
Did with doctor Olivia Snow, who is a sex worker and an Internet privacy expert, she talked about how that is like a real red flag when someone is telling you that legislation is going to protect kids online, but it seems kind of lofty, not really clear like how it's actually going to do that.
That it should really get.
Your spidey senses tingling about this legislation being something that really has the power to shape the future of the Internet, not for good. You know, we talked about Sesta Fasta, how much that did to change the landscape of so much but particularly the Internet, And yeah, I just I'm concerned that a bill like this. I can see how for some folks it seems like it's better than nothing, because most people agree that we have a problem.
But I don't want.
To just push through a bill that is actually going to create more harm for marginalized youth and queer youth and like change the landscape of our internet to make it less private, more draconian, you know, more harmful, more surveillance, more of our data being given up and then having
them tell us it's for our own good. Like I like, I understand the need to do something, and I understand that need to be like, well, we have to make it seem like we're taking some sort of an action on this, But I don't want it to be an action that ends up creating more harm totally.
I mean, the red flag warning is probably a good one here, right, Like, Oh, we have to protect kids, like protect them from what? Like what are you protecting them from? Protecting them from accessing content about what it means to be gay? Like that's probably okay if they access that. Yeah, it's the rhetoric is so lofty and vague. I think red flag is absolutely the right term to understand it. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I think that, uh, you know, I personally feel like the
threat to privacy is the big risk here. I mean, obviously there's a ton of threats and risks to young people, and absolutely legislators, business leaders, tech companies should be you know, addressing all of them. But the creeping risk to privacy that we all face right now, like that seems like the clear, big flashing red light for legislators to like step in and do something about.
Yeah, I agree, And like, just to be super clear, like, I'm not a policy person internet legislation. I talk to people much smarter about it than me all day long. I am not the person to ask about whether or not we should be advocating for a specific piece of legislation. My job is to like talk to people about it and to talk to people who know more about it than me to help other people figure out what we
should be doing. And so I get, I get that it is complex, But I don't think that it's going to be any one, Bill, I guess is what I'm saying. I think that we need a real rethinking and restructuring about how we think about privacy our data as it pertains to our children, but adults deserve it as well, and who gets to make money off of it? What is for sale, what's not for sale? I don't think
it's going to be any one, Bill. I think we need a real overhaul in that department to make the kind of like sweeping, meaningful change that we truly do need in this country.
Let's take a quick break.
At our back, so I have a little bit of an update add on to a story that we talked about a couple of weeks ago. So y'all might recall that we did a story all about how Google is making money from lies about abortion and reproductive health. Well, that's not all that they're making money from, because it turns out that Google owned YouTube makes millions of dollars from channels pushing climate disinformation.
Researchers from the.
Global nonprofit that Echo examine YouTube videos in Brazil related to climate change and deforestation. This comes at a time of real political controversy in Brazil, as the Lula administration is attempting to halt and reverse the aggressive anti indigenous
pro deforestation policies of the previous Bolsonnario administration. The researchers found that many of the videos repeated and promoted well worn conspiracy theories that fires in the Amazon rainforest either were not real so like did not happen, or that they had been intentionally started by non governmental organizations to
help with their fundraising. This is despite a policy announced by YouTube in twenty twenty one that expressly prohibited quote ads for and monetization of content that contradicts well established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change. And just as like a side note, because these issues, you know, I've focused mostly on like domestic United States issues, but these issues really are global because here in the US we have a very similar well worn conspiracy theory.
Joe Rogan has used his massive platform to repeat the lie that like Antifa or Black Lives Matter was responsible for forest fires that we had here in the United States last year. There was no truth to this claim. It was just an outright lie. But it was a particularly sticky conspiracy theory because it really overlapsed with a lot of like flash points and tensions around things like race and climate that we're always feeling what we were
feeling so intensely a few years ago. So I'm not totally sure why these like extremist right wing lies about leftists or Antifa or Black Lives Matter starting forest fires is so hot right now pun not intended but acknowledged. But maybe it's like a consequence of climate change getting worse and worse in the immediate So maybe we should really come to expect even more over the top efforts to really shift the blame away from fossil fuel companies
and their defenders that brought us here. Like it's so much easier to believe a wild conspiracy theory that leftists or NGOs are intentionally starting fires because they want to get more funding, and like it's not even really a big issue, and like maybe the fires aren't even happening than it is to be like, oh wow, corporations and fossil fuel companies have really gotten us into a big problem, the consequences of which are all around us all the time.
Yeah, I think you're probably right that we're going to see a lot more scapegoating as the effects of climate change just get like more real in the here and now. And it really speaks to the success of the fossil fuel industries. They're like decades long campaigns to like firmly link climate change denial with the culture wars, where you know, they've got foot soldiers who aren't even on the payroll carrying their water for them, saying that, oh, it's leftists starting these fires.
Yeah.
You know what's really funny is a couple of weeks ago, I was in a webinar about how to report on climate misinformation and learning about these like vast networks of pr companies that put out talking points and coordinative campaigns to make us think that corporations are not responsible for climate change.
And it was literally the literal hottest day on.
Earth, and I was just thinking, like, how am I How am I like sitting here in my kitchen sweating, unable to breathe, clearly because of there's forest fires and there are people out here trying to tell me like, no, there's not that's not true.
You're not experiencing that. What are you talking about?
Forestbar Like I was like, I'm being We're like being gas lit on a massive scale.
Yeah, the East Coast has always been blanketed in smog for the entire summer.
Like, don't you remember when you were a kid and you couldn't go outside because of the small You're like, no, I don't remember that.
Actually, Okay, So back to these videos.
So not only were these videos on YouTube obviously promoting a false, alternate reality about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, but those videos were also making money. The researchers calculated that YouTube channels behind these videos made between six hundred thousand and ten million dollars in YouTube monetization. And I know that sounds like a pretty huge range, but regardless, if that's how much creators were making, it means that
Google was making even more by selling ads around those videos. Now, Google is not the first company that we've talked about on this show to have some big, flashy moderation policy.
About taking down or not allowing.
A certain kind of conspiracy theory or false information only to like not really enforce that policy or just kind of like quietly drop it after that new cycle of good press ends. Nor would they be the first company to have one set of standards in the US where their base and a completely different set of standards abroad. Facebook famously implemented policies around racist disinformation in the United States in twenty seventeen while they were actively aggressively promoting
racist disinformation campaigns in Myanmar. Now, whether or not this was like a deliberate strategy or a crime of neglect by failing to invest in non English language moderation and moderation software, the end result was a lot of death and a lot of profit for these companies. But hopefully this report does prompt Google to be more actively moderating its Brazilian content and actually start enforcing policies against climate misinformation.
The report also noted that adds for several major brands, including Calvin Kline, Tommy Hillfigure, Lift, Capital One, and others, appeared alongside these videos touting these lies about forest fires, And you really have to wonder how excited is Tommy Hillfigure or Calvin Klein to be knowing that their advertising dollars are directly funding a network of dangerous c lils.
I'm a denial.
Yeah, you'd have to assume not very excited. I would hope.
Yeah, And I think it really does remind me quite a bit of other techt stories we've covered, where for as much guff as I give Facebook, the version of Facebook that we use in the United States, like is the best version of Facebook that they offer, because it's the version that they are like actively doing the most work to like moderate and have the most moderators. And so if you don't like what we have here in the United States, you're gonna hate what they have in
the global South, right, because it's much worse. And Yeah, I think I think it really goes back to this idea that we've talked about before of like this colonialist vibe, where like, I don't even I think that we're just like not supposed to think about how if the platform is bad here, how much worse.
It is globally. I just think that we're like not supposed to think.
The whole system kind of relies on this unwillingness to acknowledge the kind of harm that these platforms are responsible for globally.
Totally colonial list is I think the right framework to think about it. It's just a very extractive model where whatever they need to do in the name of profit in other countries is fine. And as infuriated as we are at Meta a lot of the time, it's got to be so much worse in one of these other countries where they are just completely unencumbered by concerns about trying to, I don't know, be responsible actors. I think in Brazil in particular, Meta built a Wi Fi network
or like a cell network. I don't know whether it was Wi Fi or sell. But you know, when What'sapp was a new thing, it took off like wildfire in Brazil because they did not have great cell coverage everywhere. But so because Facebook built a proprietary network, everybody was using What's App. And it's got to be super hard to regulate a company like that that like built and owns the Internet.
Yeah, same way that AOL was the Internet when I was a kid. Facebook is the Internet. Facebook, What's App they maybe they have, maybe they own the cell service whatever, Like it is the Internet. It functionally is a public service, but it is not being regulated that way because it is a private company being run by, you know, for profit, by somebody who has shown himself again and again did not really cared that much about the people he is serving.
Yeah, I think he just hit the nail on the head. It's like a it is a public service. We can pretend it isn't and we can fetishize the market and be like, oh, everything needs to be privately owned, but like it is a public service. We all depend on the internet all the time in our personal lives and our professional lives, and to just have it be run
at the whim of some billionaires is bad enough. When those billionaires live in a totally different country and don't care about the local country at all, it's really a recipe for disaster.
Yeah.
I mean, back in twenty sixteen, the UN declared Internet access a human right. So it's not great to think of these companies that do so much harm and think so little of these populations that they're the ones who are meant to be providing what the UN's as is a human right.
It doesn't sit right with me. And yeah, I think that we deserve better all globally, we deserve better. Yeah, I'll leave it there.
What else you got for us?
Bridget Well, speaking of deserving better, I have to apologize Mike.
Last week I gave the last time that we talked.
I guess the week before last, I gave you a lot of crap because you recorded an episode with your mic off and the audio was bad and some listeners complained and I really enjoyed taking the piss. But I have to complain. And now this is really like karma coming back to get me because I made a pretty big tech screw up that I have to own up to, which is that at the end of every episode, we say email us if you want to say hi, if we've got a text story, we give out the email
address hello at tangoti dot com. In our last episode, I said that I'm doing a live Patreon ask Me anything, and I asked folks to email me questions. Please also email me questions. You don't have to be a Patreon subscriber to send a question. Patreon dot com slash tangoty. However, this whole time because of a screw up with my inbox.
I won't bore you with the details.
It turns out that that email address was going unchecked because it was not filtering into my main email. Long story short, if you have sent me an email to Hello at Tangodi dot com in the last like six months, I just now got it totally screwed up. And what's awful is that I literally had a point where I was like, nobody ever emails me. I've never I have never get emails, Like, are people not listening to the show? I was like, I was like down in the dumps
about it. Come to find out they were emailing me. I just wasn't getting them.
Yeah, I feel pretty bad about it. You know, I could have been checking the email too.
Can I find a way to blame this on you?
I mean, I'm trying to be generous right now like you were supposed to be doing it, So no, you can't blame this on me after the mic incident last week. But yeah, listeners, please email us. We're very sorry. We are on it now. We'll get a timely response. Hello at Tangoti dot com.
So we're working our way through the backlog of emails that I have neglected to check because of my own tech ineptitude. But we got one recently that was just super interesting and it was a response to the piece that we did about how people are modifying video games using AI deep fakes of the voice actors, and that sometimes those games have adult content. Y'all might remember that as a voice professional, I was very not pleased to hear that this was being done to voice actors. The
voice actors were also not pleased about it. But we actually got an email from a listener that which is really interesting and I wanted to share it.
So they write in Hi, new listener, first time caller. I love the show, and as I was listening to one of the latest episodes in the story about voice actors and video game moding came up. I was offended. Question mark. Don't know how to describe it, but it hit me wrong when it was described as disgusting to use someone's voice without permission, especially to make pornographic material. And I understand how it must feel. And I agree with all of your points about work and exploitation and
the problem with AI. But I'm a fanfic writer, reader, and fandom enthusiasts. I know there is a difference, but we use characters from shows and books to our own stories, and the actor who brings the character to life is the model we use when we write stories. Often explicit sex and sometimes right fandom also makes art of the characters and sexual situations, some of which the actor might be uncomfortable with. There are interesting questions there, bridget.
Yeah, I appreciate that this person wrote in It really got me thinking. I think it underscores something that we come back to time and time again on the show, where we are entering this new landscape where things like AI deep fakes might be ubiquitous, And so the.
Line of like what is okay? What isn't okay?
You know, what's the difference between if you used someone's likeness in fan fiction that they didn't consent to, but you've just like written about them, Like how in what way is that like ethically different than a deep fake AI version of their voice? These are all like new questions that we're grappling with. I want to be clear that I do not have all of the answers for these questions. We're actually going to be digging this this letter, like it really inspired us to like think on the topics.
So we're going to be doing a follow up episode or we talk to a fan fiction expert a couple other folks about how they think about this. But I think this letter writer is spot on that there is not one right answer for where the line is, and it's sort of like we're all kind of building the plane as we fly it in terms of building out those ethical guardrails for how we deal with these things going forward.
And yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to that episode. I think it's there's a lot of interesting questions here about like, as you mentioned, with AI changing and evolving and getting better, so rapidly existential questions about like what is the self? What do we own? Like is is your physical voice part of the self. These are interesting things that I'm really looking forward to listening to you talk with some experts about it.
Me too.
So thank you to this writer for writing in. Thank you to everyone who's written in in the last six months. Sorry that I have not read those emails.
But I'm on it.
I've got a backlog, please keep emailing me.
And lastly, before we wrap, obviously we usually.
Do these newscasts at the end of the week on Fridays, and today we're doing it on Tuesday because I've been recovering from surgery, so I'm also on painkillers. So if I sound weird because I'm on painkillers, but let us know how this feels to you, because usually on a Tuesday episode, you're getting like a produced interview me with somebody else about one topic. Today you're getting a newscast. I'm curious how that is landing for folks. You can email me and let me know and I will read
the email. Yes, please email me. I feel like I've just discovered this new technology called emailed.
Everybody's doing emails.
You've got mail. Our second AOL reference of the episode.
Ah, okay, that's our cue to call it. That's our cue to call it. Okay.
Thank you so much for listening, Thank you for all the well wishes on my surgery.
And Mike, thanks for being here as always, Buddy.
Thanks for having me Bridget, it was a pleasure.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi. You can reach us at Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengodi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget tod. It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almato 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