There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Tot and this is there Are No Girls on the Internet. This is There No Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of technology, social media, and identity. Joey, we are so thrilled to have you back on the show.
Hey, Bridget, it's going to be back. Happy Pride months.
Happy Pride. Are you doing anything fun for Pride?
Oh?
God? What am I not doing?
Yeah?
I have a couple events that like friends are doing. I had my household through something last weekend, kind of kick off at the beginning of the month.
So I'm busy. I'm out and about, you know.
I'm glad to hear it. I'm still in COVID recovery mode, but I'm living vicariously through folks like you who are out having a good time. I am very.
Well.
I have to tell you, I feel like a new tech gripe of mine has just dropped. And that is maybe you've seen them, these seemingly wholesome but very obviously AI generated images. It'll be like the ones I've been seeing lately. Are It'll be these AI generated images of three older black people and the caption will be like, oh, these three triplets just turned a hundred, leave them some love for their birthday, and every single comment is like how beautiful, yay, like happy birthday? Love it.
Have you seen this?
I haven't seen that one, but I did see something yesterday where it was like it was like a food influencer like or publication account, and they were they did one of those things where it's like which picture are you based.
On your birth month?
Except it was all AI generated food like that was the prompt and it was kind of like wait, what, like why why did this? Like you couldn't have taken pictures of like actual cakes, like you're doing which AI generated cake are you?
Like?
I don't know, but yeah, it's it's weird.
I am so sick of it, and honest, like the cake thing part of me needs to take a step back and be like, this is obviously, all things considered, it's pretty benign because people are using AI to do all kinds of things that are that are much more problematic and worrisome than what AI generated cake or are you or show these fake ninety year old elderly people some birthday love? But it just it feels like one additional small way that the Internet is becoming worse and
worse and worse. And I think the thing that bugs me is seeing how much like obviously the people who do this are just trying to get easy engagement, and I guess part of me is like, well, they could be doing in worse ways, but the fact that there are people who seemingly like this and like they will actually be like, oh, I'm cake one or happy birthday, so they elder think it's.
Like it's the normalizing of it, Like it's the normalizing that this is something that we're just going to be seeing on our feeds all the time. And I think, I mean, I do think, like I agree with you where it's like this is so benign compared to some of the other things that AI has been used for.
But it's like, okay, yeah, it's almost like like normalizing the use of AI images, so then when it is used for more nefarious purposes, it's it kind of slides under the radar a little bit more easily cause we're so used to seeing these images all the time.
Anyways, I think.
That's exactly why that's my issue too. I mean, on
top of the whole like copyright thing. I think that's my issue too with a lot of the like movie studios that are using like AI generated images or stuff for like there, Like there was just some like Marvel Show from I think last summer that came out that there was a whole scandal about how they used like AI for for like the opening credits, and it's like, that's part of the bigger issue is it's just normalizing this, the use of this technology to make these big things
that you know could be used.
In a bunch more nefarious way.
Yes, there was a recent controversy over a Netflix true crime documentary called What Jennifer Did, about a young woman who spoiler alert if you can't tell from the title did something awful to her family, and in part of it, I assumed it.
Was gonna be like Jennifer's Body.
I wish, I wish the reading two, Oh my God, I am a justice for Jennifer's Body.
I am.
I was on the right side of history on that one. But yeah, the movie used AI to generate what is what purport to be historical images of her or like archival images of her, and so in one of the images it's like, well, that's clearly AI generated, and especially for a documentary that is supposedly trying to show us something true, something real, something that happen to be using AI generated images without any kind of warning letting you
know that this is that we've recreated this. Really, I think it brings up some ethical questions and I think it really comes back to what you just said, that these things might not be nefarious now, but because they are benign there, it helps it sort of normalize it. Right, So it helps it so like, oh, we shouldn't be asking questions when we see AI used for this, and so what happens when that use case is not so benign? Right,
what happens when it's a more important use case? I think you really you've helped me understand why when I see malicious use of AI, I'm angry or whatever. But something about these like wholesome uses of it makes me even more angry. I don't know why. I'm like, I hate this even more. I think I think you really nailed it.
I think it's the it's also the kind of collective like wait, wait, I thought we just like I thought we were at a point where we were like Hey, guys, let's think a little bit more critically about AI and whether we should be using it so casually. I thought we reached that point as a society, but I guess not. Yeah, I will say, I know this is awful. Another like this is one where there's a lot of bad things
that can come from it. With those videos of I mean not the videos, the AI pictures of Trump getting arrested.
I remember that. I'm going around.
Recently, there's some new ones that were going around because of the ruling that we're kind of funny. Okay, objectively, yeah, I know. Objectively, I'm like, this is bad. This is bad that these inventures are out there, but they were kind of funny.
I felt the same way about the first crap where it's like, ooh, I wouldn't I would have. I would have if only.
Like it's just the idea of him like running down the street.
Like god, yeah, can I only wish. So, speaking of stuff online not always being what it seems, we've got to talk about this huge news about the disinformation campaign out of Israel. So Israel organized a large scale disinformation campaign which used fake accounts and disinformation to target progressive activists and black members of Congress in the United States
and Canada. Herrit's first reported on the existence of this operation way back in March, but now we have more details about how it worked and exactly who was behind it. They reported that it was launched after the start of the war in Gaza and it was intended to sway
certain segments of the public on Israel's conduct. It really sounds like the point of this whole thing was to use social media to quote promote content that it's pro Israel, anti Palestinian, and anti Muslim, as well as disinformation about anti Semitism on American campuses. According to an investigation by the Fake Reporter Organization published this week.
I will say the Fake Reporter Organization maybe not the best name.
I know, but I was reading this, I was like a little confused. I was like, are they the fake reporters?
Hello, I'm here from the Fake Reporter or like that sounds like it would feel like a bit but you know what, glad they're doing.
The work that they do was that it's importing totally.
So according to this reporting, this disinformation campaign came straight from the Israeli government. Parrot's reports that it was established by Israel's Diaspora Affairs Ministry, but it was run by a private organization for fear of it being exposed and like traced back to Israel. So how this whole thing worked is if they set up fake news websites with names like no Agenda or Unfold News, and then they make fake social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook that
are kind of trying to seem like real people. It seems like maybe they didn't do a great job. We'll get to that in a moment. They would then use these accounts to amass followers and then push out these news stories. The news stories themselves on the websites that they were setting up, they would just steal and repurpose content from places like CNN and The New York Times reports that they were using chat gpt to generate many of the posts. The campaign also created three fake English
language news sites featuring pro Israel articles. So something I found really interesting about this whole thing is that it sounds like why they were doing this, according to the reporting, was this understanding that perhaps Israel is like losing the social media war of public opinion. Herot's reports. Various Israeli officials say that the war in Gaza has exposed quote
a great failure in Israel's hesebara, or public diplomacy. Despite the massive investment in different pr enterprises over the years, Israel has not been able to effectively cope with the flood of pro Palestinian messages on social media. Israel lacked the necessary digital assets to contend with what it called quote the pro Palestinian poison propaganda machine and to adequately
publicize hamostrocities to defend the war in Gaza. So it just sounds like they were like people on social media are too pro Palestinian, so we have to make some fake accounts to see if that turns the tides.
Yeah, And I mean I think in this situation too, like we've really seen some of the ways that social media can be.
A really powerful tool for.
Uh spreading misinformation and also like getting important information out there.
Where I think a.
Lot of this backlash and a lot of this kind of uh, A lot of the backlash to what Israel is doing is because we're getting these images that are out of Gaza and out of Rafa that are.
You know, real awful images.
A lot of us it's like the first time we're really witnessing this, like not firsthand, but I guess like through these actual images of what's happening, and they're like seriously, I just I'm sure people listening feel the same, but like I've seen some of literally the worst things I've ever seen in my life over the past year, uh, coming out of coming out of Rafa, and and that
has power, Like those images have power. And I think the Israeli government and the Israeli Hasbara kind of machine has relied a lot on these images, like not getting out there and relied on kind of them being the primary drivers of what the narrative is. And we're seeing that start to fall apart. And you know, it makes sense if the reaction is gonna be to go to these extreme measures like creating fake support.
I mean, this is and this has been happened.
Like there was an image early on when there were a lot of these big protests that were happening in support of Palestinians. There was literally, I think image I remember it was going around of like a pro Israel protest that was entirely AI generated, Like it was a it was like a very obviously AI generated photo. And this was like early on, So yeah, I'm not surprised to hear this.
Again.
I think, like, as somebody who is a Jewish American who you know, a lot of my Judaism is rooted in a lot of like anti Zionists.
Diaspora values.
It's not surprising just see this happen, because this has been happening, and this, this kind of has been the direction that the Israeli state has been going, especially especially recently.
And I think it goes back to a conversation you and I had about campus protests. How there's just I do feel like there's this underlying attitude that people could not possibly be watching what's going on and be basing their stances on what they're seeing, right, and so like, if young people on campuses are protesting in supportive Palestinians, it has to be TikTok influencing influencing them in some way.
If people on social media are are not supportive of what Israel has been doing to Palestinians, it must like we need to get in there and like correct the record, right.
I think a big kind of point that the Israeli government has relied on for a while is drawing the focus away from what is happening to the Palestinian and people, and instead of turning it into an issue of like, quote unquote Jewish safety, which it isn't. It is not an issue of Jewish safety to be murdering of billions and murdering children like obvious.
That is so obviously not an equivalency.
And again, I think going back to the campus protests very much like turning it into an issue of like, oh, well, Jewish students don't feel safe, that is not the case.
That is a huge generalization.
I'm sure there are some students out there that don't feel safe, but that is an individual issue. I personally have a lot of friends that are Jewish that have been involved with the protests. I know, like Jewish Voice or Peace has been a big organization that has a lot of chapters on college campuses that have been really
involved with these protests. I think like it has been a very kind of important propaganda point for them to draw attention away from the real issue, which is, yes, these are students that are protesting human rights atrocities that they're witnessing every day through social media, through you know, family or friends that were on the ground there. Like just just the main thing is just driving that focus away when that yeah, that is the issue.
It has nothing to do with.
Like, honestly, it has nothing to do with me as a Jewish American. It has nothing to do with my other follow Jewish Americans. It has to do with what is clearly a human rights atrocity that is happening right now.
So it's funny that you say this because the fake accounts that it's when you look at what they were saying and who they were targeting, the kind of messages they were putting out, is it is so clear that it's like, oh, we are trying to get the perspective, ship the perspective away from what is actually happening to Palestinians.
It's like so clear. So when you look at the messages they were putting out, they had these different messages meant to appeal to different groups they were trying to target. They had the United Citizens for Canada site, which had multiple social media accounts and disseminated heavily Islamophobic material, including claims that Muslim immigrants were a threat to Canada and
demanding a Shari estate. Another was the Arab Slave Trade site, which was copied almost entirely from Wikipedia and aimed at black Americans, trying to repeat the message that the Arabs had been slave traders in Africa. I actually really saw this messaging my like organically via social media and also repeated by people that I know like this. This was messaging that I will say, like anecdotally personally I saw sort of like breakthrough on social media a little bit.
Yeah, that's crazy. And I will say.
With that one too, that's wild because that is also an anti Semitic talking point been used by you know, other people on the right that if wanted to spread misinformation, like anti Semitic misinformation, has been saying that it was.
Like Jewish people that were involved with the Strength that we're leading the Strength slave train and all that. So it's like, wow, okay, we can't even come up with our with another with another narrative. We're just gonna copy and paste it, but like switch it from Jewish people to Arab people, like we can't the Israeli state can't even come up with their own hate narratives now, Like yes, insane.
So much of this stuff is so sloppy. That is something that I really like when I was reading about this, influenced campaign. I was like, y'all couldn't even like get that, get this, cause have there be consistency in this. So this one's my favorite. Yet another site was called Serenity Now, which branded itself as an anarchist and anti establishment group.
It sought to convince young Americans to oppose the creation of a Palestinian state because states are man made structures and a Palestinian state would hurt the goals of the progressive movement.
Oh my god, Serenity Now I really like brought me back to like my college organizing days, because I swear to god, there was like one dude who like this would be his talking.
Oh I know that dude. Oh god, Oh my gosh. It's like you can be so left that you've got to swing back around to the other side, and now you're likeying a right wing point.
Yeah, or you're like just too too deep in like the theory spiral that it's like you have not talked to a single other human being about like the realities of their Like oh my god.
But yeah, that's I mean. But yeah.
I on the other hand, the fact that they're going in that direction, I can read that and be like Oh my god, I recognized this, like line of thought. That just shows that this is like a decent propaganda technique.
Yeah, yeah, and.
I think that. I think the technique of driving wedges and pitting marginalized groups against each other and pitting like anarchists progressive activist against like like like it's a it's a it's a time tested strategy. They also were targeting specific black elected officials. The operation focused on more than a dozen members of Congress who are black and Democrats.
According to fake reporter, representative Richie Torres, a Democrat out of New York who's pretty outspoken about its pro as real views, was targeted in addition to Jeffreys and Warnock. So Some of the fake accounts would respond to Richie Torres's posts on Twitter commenting on anti semitism on college campuses and in major US cities. In response to a December eighth post on Twitter by Torres about fire safety,
one fake account replied harmas is perpetrating the conflict. The posts included a hashtag that said Jews are being persecuted. Over On Facebook, the fake accounts posted on Jeffrey's public page asking if you had seen a report about the United Nations allegedly employing members of Hamas in Gaza. So it is really fascinating to me to see how they
were targeting black folks in specific. Like it reminds me that we often see like foreign influence campaigns that target black people specifically, and part of me wonders if they just see our community as like less critical or like more easily swayed. That is complete like bs, but it makes me wonder if like that's how they see us as easily swayed, easily cajoled, easily influenced, and so like that's why they target us, whether or not that's true.
Yeah, I mean I wouldn't. I mean I wouldn't be surprised. And like we're talking about like Israel is legally in apartheized state, like it is the Israeli government like runs on a racist sideology.
I would not be surprised if that were the case.
Yeah, Like when I was reading this, I was like, this feels anti black, even though I can't exactly name why that is, it feels anti black to me. I'll get back to you on on the why this I feel it. So I should say it sounds like they did not do a great job of this influence campaign. In at least two instances, accounts with profile photos of black men would then post about being middle aged Jewish women.
On one hundred and eighteen posts in which the fake account shared pro Israel articles, the same sentence appeared, quote I gotta reevaluate my opinions due to this new information, which like, that's so someone trying to sound like a black person but like getting it wrong. And this is why I always say, if somebody is on the Internet purporting to be a black person, but the way that they're speaking or however, it just sounds off your sobidy senses should be tingling.
Oh man, I can't even do their racism right.
Exactly exactly.
Let's take a quick break. Ed are back.
So Facebook has now removed these fake profiles. Fake Reporter's executive director Achia Shots told Herod's that quote running the foreign influence campaign against American lawmakers is amateurish, irresponsible an anti democratic. Fake Reporter has called on the Israeli government to take steps against foreign influence campaigns. He added, the Israeli government is expected to refrain from taking similar actions,
especially ones at target israel Significant democratic partners. The money spent on this campaign would have been better spent in protecting the Israeli public from foreign intervention. And that is a great point that I don't understand how I want to paying somebody, paying a firm to run a bunch of fake accounts and make a bunch of fake news sites. Is making people in Israel more safe?
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, you know, it's like the same It's the same thing the US does where it's like, God, I remember there was some tweet a while ago about like, you know, the brave soldiers like keeping our countries or like protecting our freedom and.
Somebody who's like, what what's my freedom doing in the Middle East? Like they're protecting our freedom like on the other side of the.
World, and like, I yeah, it's like the same thing where it's like oh wow, Like once you start digging deeper, I think into a lot of these like very militant kind of campaigns, it's very clear that what they say they're doing is not what they're actually doing.
Right, Well, that's exactly the point. And I should add that when we talk about these kinds of influence campaigns, and it's always important to note that they are not generally very successful in their intended impacts. It sounds like this one did not have the biggest impact. Both Facebook and Open ais that the campaign did not have widespread impact. The fake accounts did accumulate more than forty thousand followers
across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. However, many of those followers may have been bought, and it did not generate a meaningfully large audience. But I think it is still worth talking about that, you know, even if it wasn't particularly effective in swaying the communities it was targeting, it's still important to note that, like this day kind of thing is going on, and so when you are using social media, it's just kind of like what we were talking about
with the AI images. Like I think that this kind of thing is becoming more normalized, and that it creates an Internet landscape where we can't just count on getting authentic information or content from real humans. You never know what's going on, and I just think it makes us all less safe and less secure when our Internet landscape is just a wash in these kinds of media manipulation campaigns exactly.
And I mean it goes back to the whole conversation.
About X, right, now and how it hurts me to call it X, but you know, I'm talking negatively about it, so I will infer to its X.
It's like your child I don't know or whatever.
Like I was just thinking that, like when I when when I'm purporting on something that X that they've done bad, I'm like, it's X. When it's something that's like kind of okay, I'm like on Twitter. Yeah, it's like when I when I mentioned behave, I'm like, oh, your child has skipped school. My mom would always say my dad right.
But yeah, but it's it's the whole bigger conversation about X right now and how it uses to be, you know, with still having lots of flaws, but it used to be a place where you could get information, you could get first hand accounts, you could get all these different kind of journalists and experts like weighing on things, and now it's just kind of turned into like bots following thoughts and like sharing misinformation and.
Like bots hyping each other up.
Like it's like not even I don't, like I don't even feel like I'm like communicating with real people when I open like Twitter now, like I'm just like, oh, I'm just seeing it's like content that is either super not relevant to what I care about, or yeah, or it's just this kind of like nightmare of like bots and artificial like AI generated stuff and whatever.
Yeah, I feel the same way. And I should say, like in our life, we were just talking about disinformation campaigns being run by other countries, which we talk about a lot when we talk about medium manipulation online, but we should also keep in mind that it's not always about another country like Israel or Russia trying to manipulate us. In addition to all the bots, there are just still fashion and blood humans out there on Twitter spreading misinformation.
And a new study is actually shedding light on who is that that is on Twitter, and I am sorry to say that it is a lot of women in their late fifties, specifically, so Ours Technica reports that there's this new study by researchers Shahar Barbie Bartov, Brianni Swier Thompson, and Near Grinberg that was released this week that looks at a large panel of Twitter accounts that are associated
with US based voters. So it identifies that a kind of shockingly small handful of misinformation super spreaders is what they're calling them, which represents just zero point three percent of the accounts, but are responsible for sharing eighty percent of Twitter's links to fake news or unreliable news sources. So that means a lot less people than you might think are responsible for the spread of the bulk of
misinformation from unreliable sources on Twitter. It really just does sound like this is people who are like power sharers on Twitter. According to the study, on an average day on Twitter at this time, only seven percent of the news story shareed linked to sites prone to publishing misinformation, but super spreaders ended up accounting for most of these
for two reasons. One is if they shared more newslengths than anybody else on the platform an average of sixteen a day compared to less than one from the random sampling. And most of the time these people are just like smashing that retweet button like nobody's business. The study found that three quarters of these super spreaders their contact was just retweets. So you might be wondering, like, who are these people? Well, Ours Technica says they are kind of
like our aunties and our moms. There are women in their late fifties. Ours Technical reports that the super spreaders are sixty percent more likely to be female. They're also a little bit older, on average fifty eight years old, nearly twenty years older than the sample group as a whole. And while much of the misinformation about the election largely circulated within Republican circles, only sixty four percent of the
super spreaders were registered Republicans. Nearly twenty percent were registered as Democrats. Well, it is like ladies in their late fifties. But I actually have a theory on what's going on. This is just my theory. This is not in the study. I think it's this sounds like peak auntie behavior to me, like spending, you know what I mean?
Yeah, like that, it's like like just like expend.
Yes, Like when I think about how some of my the women in my life who are in their late fifties, how they roll online. The fact that it's a lot of retweets really speaks to me. I'm like, Oh, that's my aunties. They love they they love us share people
of our of my generation and maybe your generation. Joey, you've had some sense of like if you went to your Facebook page and you ha had shared a hundred things in one day, your friends might be like, are they okay, oh yeah, but I don't think that aunties have the same vibe.
Yeah, I mean, I like fairly open Facebook anymore for this reason because it is mostly like, yeah, a lot of the older people in my family sharing a lot of these articles that I'm like, I don't even have the energy to keep getting annoyed at like every single.
Piece of misinformation.
But yeah, it is like, I mean, Facebook has kind of just become this like.
Fear of yeah, we're people. Okay, So this might snick wing be here, this might sound a little bit of astrautge, but I this is why.
And on one day, Pridget that I feel like I come on to do a bigger episode about this. But I I am a little bit critical of the sort of the through lack of a better word, kind of structure that we have right now on Instagram or a lot of people are their activism or what they're doing to raise awareness is just like sharing a lot of
stuff on their story. And I do this too, and like we've talked about that, like, I mean, we all kind of do it, and I think there are a lot of benefits and there is something about especially if you're sharing like kind of going back to the other story, like sharing stuff about you know, fund raising or miss or or debunking misinformation or like there are there are important stuff to be sharing.
I do that too. But that being said, I think i've kind of I'm.
Realizing like I think this is like our our two generations kind of version of this is like the spiral of people just sharing a lot of stuff in their story because it speaks to that and obviously it's something that like speaks to them. But this is what makes me nervous, is I feel like we are now seeing with Facebook and kind of the like Boomer gen X generation, like how that goes in a negative direction. I'm a little bit worried that we're like setting us helps up for a similar thing to happen.
But yeah, I agree, I do.
I think this is like it's just it's the gossip like expanded on a on a world stage.
Yeah, we have to do an episode about the dynamics of Instagram share Instagram being used as a place to share information. What I always say is just remember anybody can get a Cannavas subscription, like just because yeah, just because I have a Canvas subscription, I have put together a few Canada infographics in my day. I am I am, I am, I am a cog in this system. I'm calling myself out. But just remember, just because it's a slick looking graphic with good colors and it's a carousel
on Instagram, anybody can get a canvas subscription. They they don't like have to pass a test or anything. So we should always remember that when we're when we're using social media in general and deciding what to share.
Huh, yeah, definitely.
And I mean last week you did the story about the the all eyes on rough image that there was sort of so backlash that for that same reason, and I kind of was in the same boat with you where I had shared it originally and I kind of was like, Okay, maybe not like that.
Actually, like I understand a lot of the reasons our people.
Are upset about this, but I think that was like a perfect example where it was just like there was so much like back and forth about like what we should be doing.
And then it like to get out to the point where I was kind of like, what even is the point of this? It's like what even like I don't know.
I yeah, I one day I'll do a figure episode about that.
Yeah, I kind of got it. Sounds like we had a very similar trajectory with the all eyes on a Ratha Ai generated an image we talked about in last week's round up. But yeah, we're to the end of it. I was like, what, like, like I had overthought it to a point where I'm like, what even, Like why
did I even feel like I should share it? Like it just like you, when you really pull apart the reasonings on social media, you can get so granular where the focus gets so lost, and you know, initially I'm like, oh, yeah, if something comes across my stories about Palestine that speaks to me and I feel like might speak to somebody else, I'll share it. And then it's like but but with that image, is like, well why why why did that? What am I hoping to accomplish? What's the end goal?
Right?
I'm in the same boat where I kind of have like stopped sharing a lot of stuff for it. Like I think early on, I was kind of like I felt like I should be sharing this stuff constantly because I had a regional point where I kind of need
to step back and be like is this productive? Like this is what I'm doing actually productive or because and again, like this is a different situation obviously, like this this story is about misinformation specifically, but like going back to this story, a big point of misinformation and these kind of campaigns is just kind of creating chaos and putting a lot of information out there, so like you don't even really know.
What's true anymore.
So even if it's something where I'm like, I'm sharing images that are coming from trusted news sources or whatever that I know are real, is there any benefit of me, Like what is actually going to be beneficial is that I'm not just posting stuff on my story to show that I'm paying attention to show that I'm like staying with it, or like is this actually meant to like share resources or share something that I think is important that people might not know otherwise, or is it just
kind of creating more noise.
Yeah, we we have to do a longer conversation about Yeah, these are these are things that.
These are I have a lot of thoughts.
Yeah, I will say We're definitely gonna do.
More.
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
So we have to talk about this. I guess I guess I'll call it transphobic dating app la app. Have you heard of this?
I have not, but I just see the lesbian dating app, which I feel like we've tried.
To do this so many times.
Its yeah, strap in for this one. So app is an app that bills itself as being for lesbians to meet other lesbians, but with a twist. They're using facial recognition technology in an attempt to keep trans women off of the platform. Pink News reports that app has been created by a gender the gender critical campaigner Jenny and says it will scan a prospective users face via their smartphone, allegedly being able to text if that person is CYS
or trans with ninety nine percent accuracy. First of all, I have you. I'll say that's over and over and over again. Complete bs. That's a lie, No way, no how, I'll pause there. What are your thoughts?
Yeah?
Also, okay, I'm turfs are so fucking goofy. I'd like, especially like lesbian and by women that are terfed because I'm sorry, like this is my issue. All of the obvious like things aside, like the lesbian community and like the queer women in general, like even if you're not trans, there's a lot of like different There's a whole history of like different varying like gender expressions. I I'm somebody who's like transvasculine, I present like I I kind of look like a twelve year old boy.
I don't know, I've I've talked about.
This before, but it's always like the thing too where I think like TERFs when whenever it's like the bathroom issue, when they like like hyper fixing the bathroom issue. I have gotten weird looks in public bathrooms before because people see me, and especially if I'm wearing a mask, like I have short hair, and I'm like, you know, i'm
our masculine presenting. I'm not like I'm pretty like introgynous looking, where like people will give me weird looks and I'm like, I know you think that I am trans in the other direction, and that's why you're being weird to me.
But this just proves that your whole point is stupid because under.
That logic, like I should be the like quote unquote like women that you're trying to protect you right, and like, oh my god, it's that.
Is so insane. I'm also yeah, the idea of being able to like detect if somebody's trans based on like.
Bullshit not true, that's such bullshit, Like oh my gosh, oh my god. It like I mean, I was when I was thinking about this earlier, I was like, dang transphobes and turfs, in service of their transphobia, they will get taken by charlatan's. And now I'm like, oh, and it's like tech charlatans who are purporting that technology can be used in a way that it can't be and like to your point about how like this kind of being like, oh well, our technology can tell who's this
or who's that. The scholar Alejandra Carrabello made a great point on thread saying that basically, you are trusting technology that we already know is falty to say that Kim Petras isn't a woman, or that Late Ashley isn't a man based on a photo. There is no machine learning model in existence that could do this consistently and accurately based on a photo. Like people like, it doesn't work
that way. People are complex, and it's wild to me that people would be making the claim that facial recognition technology can do this. It absolutely cannot. I cannot stress this enough. And again there are so many reasons why this is a stupid, terrible idea transphobia aside, Like we know, fatial cognition technology is really faulty. It routinely misidentifies black
CIS women as men. Shout out to doctor Joe Bolomwuini for her gender shades work about this, and yeah, it's like so if you actually use this technology, you would definitely be casting out the very people that you say are the demographic that you want. Like it doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, and like you said with like there is a whole history of like how this is tied to racism and how this is tied to a lot of like like this feels like we're trying to do eugenics again, like just in a different form. But like it is so weird, and yeah, like gender, you know when people say gender is the performance, gender is like you know, all the fucking Jude Butler's.
Work is all about this, Like it very much is like basically yeah, like you're able to. This is the whole point of drags.
You can you can mess with gender, you can you can present different ways and it, I god, this is.
Just such a weird.
This is just such a shit show, like what the hell.
It really is, and like, yeah, I mean there are days like my on my own gender journey. There are days where I am like rocking straight androgyny, and there are days where I'm like, oh, I'm gonna like them up because I want to or need to for some reason, Like the idea that a machine learning app would be able to zoom in on the particulars of that is. It's just it's just not how it works. And I think your point is a good one about how it's like it's a good reminder that all this stuff is connected,
that their transphobia is also anti blackness. It's like it's all it's like one big bag of awful.
Yeah yeah, yeah, And I the same.
I mean, like I I've done a total of one drag performance in my life.
I would love to do more, but.
I but I did, like you know, I'm drag was like wearing a wing and I did all my makeup and stuff, and I like my friends did not recognize me, like.
I was a completely different person. And then also like when I went out and was like walking.
Down the street, like people just assumed I was like a super fam like sis.
Woman, Like it's all, yeah, it's all very superficial.
Yeah, And I did want to keep it really real for a second, which is that I believe just having just being a person, a woman, a SIS woman, who is out there on who's been on a few apps, whatever, whatever, the real threat to women on a lesbian dating app is not from trans people. It is SIS men looking to set up threesomes. I think, like, if you were gonna fall out one section of like, well, that's the real problem. It's gotta be them.
Nope, Oh god, Okay.
So I know in the past I have been defending dating apps in general on this podcast.
I will say I've.
Had some really weird hinge messages over the last couple of months. But I need to do an episode where I just read through all the weird shit that oh yes please because OsO Okay, So I get like, as I mentioned, I'm trans, like I I do not date straight men.
I date men.
I'm bisexual like I date people of all genders, but I don't date straight people period.
I have that in my hinge bio. Some of the weirdest like I.
Had a man I'm both the most recent one that I cannot stop thinking about when somebody messaged me. This man messaged me and was like, well, am I am I straight? If I like being the little spoon And.
I was like what.
Oh, and that's like one of the milder ones.
I know.
One day I like, literally, I've just started saving them because I like, I was like, I had a moment where I was like, maybe this is unethical, but then I was like, these men.
Are sending me these send this prompted like what is up? Or like I'll get a lot of the like well maybe I'm not straight because I think you're hot.
I'm like, yeah, let's.
Unpack that, like what the hell? Yeah, anyways, I agree with that sentiment. The the the problem is sis straight men. The problem is sis.
Men looking for the suns, looking to be creepy, looking to be weird.
This should be common sense.
But you know it's them, them, they're the problem. There's them straight men.
Yeah, oh my god, speaking.
Of straight men being problematic, I guess I don't know that this next story only involves straight men, but you know, I'm gonna take a leap and say that there's probably a lot of them all. Yeah, historically and historically right,
So that is this horrible landlord scheme. So we got to talk about Real Page, which is the quote property management software company that has been accused of helping landlords orchestrate a price fixing scam among large corporate landlords by algorithmically predicting the highest possible rents that landlords can get away with charging tenants. So these people are like scum bags of the highest order. Even reading this story, I
was like, these people are not good people. Listen to how pro Publica reported on how they talked about their rent hiking technology back in October during a convention. Never before have we seen these numbers, said Jay Parsons, a vice president of Real Page, as convention goers wandered by apartment rents had recently shot up by as much as fourteen point five percent, he said in a video touting the company's services. Turning to his colleague, Parsons asked, what
role has a software played. I think it's driving it, quite honestly, answered Andrew Bowen, another Real Page executive. As a property manager, very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing it manually. So they're basically just like bragging, like, oh yeah, we raised this. This technology helps you raise rents and ways you never thought. You didn't think that that family with small children and a single mom would
pay this much. You might be wrong. You should raise their rent and see.
Oh my god, just what the hell it's bad.
So, according to biz Now, Real Pages System, which provides rental price recommendations based on real time data from landlords, is alleged to be a key tool in manipulating the rental market. The firm's influence covers seventy percent of multifamily apartment buildings and unpacks sixteen million units nationwide. So this is very much like a coordinated scheme. Landlords are encouraged to adopt Real Pages price and recommendations, a practice that
they follow eighty to ninety percent of the time. This coordinated approach reduces the availability of rental units, driving up prices. One of the architects of Real Pages System reportedly stated that the aim is to prevent landlords from undervaluing their properties, ensuring consistently higher rates across the board.
Yeah, that's the real problem here, it's landlords under yeah, doing their property.
Oh my god, the poor landlords. Won't someone think about the land properties that have been under So if the majority of landlords in a single area are all using this this pricing tool, it kind of feels like a coordinated price fixing scam, right, which you would think should
be illegal. Right. Well, last week, the FBI did a surprise raid on the Atlanta headquarters of Courtland Management, marking a significant escalation and a criminal anti trust investigation of an Apartment of Justice into allegations of a nationwide conspiracy to artificially inflate apartment rents. The implications of this probe are far reaching, potentially affecting millions of renters across the US.
Yeah, surprising, Like you know, moment where I'm supporting the FBI here because this is a real I live in New York. Like I sometimes if I'm feeling particularly you know, like getting in a depressive spiral about the state of the world, I'll just think about the fact that it's like it is so weird, how it's.
Just completely NORMALI is that.
I, Like, I don't know anybody who isn't constantly in like a state of just like not stable, like not having super stable housing because you don't know when your rent's gonna go up, or if like it's already so insanely expensive to live here, and then they're constantly raising prices and all of the buildings are kind.
Of also like awful too.
Like the building that I live in has like a billion fucking problems that they like never respond to, and they're still like trying to raise rent for the next like you know cycle of our our lease and all of that, and I you know, it's it is a huge problem and it's not something that should be normalized, and it's not something that should just be like accepted as like, oh it is the way it is like that, like people should be able to live and exist and
you know, have the shelter because that's an important part of life.
But yeah, yeah, and you're right, like it really is deeply impacting renters. In Atlanta, for instance, this raid happened. Software driven pricing affects eighty one percent of multifamily rental units. Biznow reports that since twenty sixteen, rencident Atlanta have surged by eighty percent, despite rising vacancy rates that would typically
result in lower rents. The widespread adoption of real pages pricing recommendations by several landlords between twenty fifteen and twenty seventeen, followed by Real Pages acquisition of its main rival lease rent Option in twenty seventeen, has given the company unprecedented control over rental pricing. So I'm with you, like, this is a bit of a weird stance for me, but I was like, I'm glad they got raided. I'm glad
it was a surprise raid. I hope it was, Like you know, I would have loved to have been doing a ride along and like wearing one of the FBI jackets and like aviator glasses, kicking indoors and like bust in the heads of these guys. Like I just think these people are scumbags. And I hate that when we think about technology that this is the use case that a lot of people will go for, Like how can we use it to extract and squeeze and exploit people? And I hate it so like the algorithmic pricing is
a racket that prays on us renters. And yeah, I just think that when we think about crime and the way that crime and technology intersect, I don't like the idea of bad facial recognition being being used to misidentify shoplifters. This is the kind of tech enabled crime that is impacting more people, right, Like we should be talking about this, This should be big news. Yeah, I'm sure somebody listening is like, wow, bridget Todd show for the FBI. Who knew?
I got it.
It's like one of the the It's the like one in a million times where it's like, oh my god, the justice system working the way it's supposed to. We'll see, We'll feel like, we'll see, we'll see. I guess it's like the like the TV show version of the FBI where you're like, wow, yeah, they're I don't know, I feel the same like cautious cautious is to the f Yeah, I guess in this case. But yeah, once again, the
problem is capitalism. How how this technology is used, How this technology is used not to make our lives easier but just to help, you know, select few people.
Make a little bit more money from from the rest of our misery.
Exactly. Okay, so my last question for you is are you familiar with the K pop group New Genes.
I think I've just heard of that.
I'm not a big K pop listener, but like I feel, like, you know, being on the internet, it comes into my feed often, so I think I like, just heard of this group from like some posts somewhere, but I'm not super familiar.
Okay, I had never heard of them, and I was asking my friend who does like K pop, like, oh, do you know about New Genes? And she was like, they are literally one of the biggest groups in the world. That's like being like, oh, have you heard of this group? The Beatles? Like It's like, oh, I had no idea.
So Earlier this year, the Korean pop apparently supergroup New Genes was asking for help and identifying an anonymous YouTuber to sue them for defamation, and this week for or For Media reported that a US federal court actually allowed the group to subpoenaed that information from Google about a YouTube account so they can sue that person for defamation
under South Korean law. The group alleges that this account, which according to court documents, posts under the handle at middle seven, has posted as many as thirty three defamatory videos that have been viewed nearly fourteen million times as of their filing. Because the account is anonymous, the lawsuit
cannot continue until that user has been identified. Some of the statements that New Genes are saying are defamatory include calling one of the members of the group the eldest daughter of a Vietnamese farmer, and a video titled reasons why New Genes is a crap group.
I mean, it is that defavatory or is that just?
I mean, I mean, if that's the bavatory, Harry Styles might be sending me a cease and desist sometime soon.
That's why I wanted.
To ask about this. So, like, I'm no lawyer. What do I know if you're If you're a lawyer and you have insight into this, uh, let me know. But I was so curious, Like so this is not the first case of this nature, and that is like why Google was ordered to actually provide the name and birth date and address and email address of the person on YouTube who was doing this, because it's like a there's
already established legal precedent. However, I can't help but wonder, like what does this mean for haters like me, like people who just like I want to make a long YouTube video about how much I hate Harry Styles or whatever, like like what does that? What does that mean for those kind of people? You know?
Yeah, yeah, I And I mean I don't know.
I guess I would need to look a little bit more into this case and like what specific claims are being made. But if like like those two up front, a like the eldest daughter of a Vietnamese father, I don't know, maybe that's not true, but also that doesn't really seem like it's like defamatory, like I don't know. And then also yeah, the whole like why it's like if it's an opinion. I am also a bridge and I'm in the same court.
I love being a hater.
I like I if they make being a hater illegal on the internet, like.
I don't know what I'm gonna do.
I know, I'm so curious how it shakes out. M Well, Joey, thank you so much for being here. Where can folks keep in touch with what you're up to?
Of course you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Pat not Pratt p A T T n OT p r A T T. Also, same day that this is coming out, I have an episode of stuff Mom never told you, an Honor of Pride month, talking about the movie Bottoms. So you want to hear me talk about Honestly, a lot of it is me talking about other queer high school movies that I don't like but if you want to hear me talk about bottoms.
And all of that. Yeah, the movie.
Check it out, not the embody part, the body part.
You know. You can check them out on stuff Mom Never told you.
Also, also for Pride Month, there's a new show called but We Loved that's from the Outspoken Network.
I would it's all about.
Queer history told through kind of a kind of personal personal storytelling.
I've been working on that as well. To go ahead and check that out. If that is of interest to.
You, definitely check that out. We'll put the links in the show notes to all of this. Thanks so much for being here, Joey, and thanks to all of you for listening. I will see you on the Internet. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our merch store at tangody dot com slash store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, You can read us at Hello at tangody 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 Toid. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, edited by Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almada is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review.
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