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 am here as always with my producer Mike.
Mike, how are you doing tonight?
I'm doing well, Bridget. Thanks for having me back.
It is nice to see you as always. And here's what you may have missed this week on the internet. So are y'all still using Threads.
If you are, there's a chance that you.
Might actually be there alone because after resurgeon downloads, while Twitter was crapping the bed like we told you about a few weeks ago, Threads is daily active user count dropped from forty nine million to twenty three point six million in the span of a week. We're getting this information from similar Web, which is a firm that tracks web traffic. They're only reporting Android data, but it's pretty likely that this is the same across operating systems, and
it still paints a pretty qual hative picture. Here's what they found on its very best day, July seventh, the same day that Twitter was announcing rate limits and all of that nonsense, Threads had more than forty nine million daily active users on Android worldwide. That's about forty five percent of the usage of Twitter, which had more than one hundred and nine million active Android users that day.
But by Friday, July fourteenth, Threads was down to twenty three point six million active users, or about twenty two.
Percent of Twitter's audience.
Usage in the United States, which saw the most activity, peaked at about twenty one minutes of engagement with the app on July seventh, but by July fourteenth that was down to a little over six minutes, so.
Like, not really a lot of engagement.
In the first two full days that Threads was generally available Thursday and Friday, web traffic to Twitter dot com was down five percent compared with the same days of the previous week, although traffic bounced back for the most recent seven days of data, and it's still down eleven percent year over year.
I don't know.
I mean, like, I was pretty skeptical about threads. Mike, have you been using it?
You know, just like everybody else. I checked it out when it became available, and it seemed okay. It was sort of interesting. It was like a new thing, and there were a bunch of people posting it was pretty chaotic. I didn't know what it was going to be. There were like, like every account that I followed on Instagram was suddenly on this totally new platform, and there were a bunch of other accounts that I didn't follow. It
was okay, it was like kind of interesting. I will be honest that I haven't really gone back after those first initial couple days, so I don't know. I checked it out and that was it.
Yeah.
I feel similarly.
I think on the show the last time that we talked about it, I was sort of on the fence on whether I was going to try it or not.
I really took issue with the.
Fact that if you tried it and didn't like it, that you had to delete your whole Instagram account in order to delete it outright because it's linked to your Instagram. So I really took issue with that kind of philosophically, but ultimately, I'm only human and I caved and tried it, and it just wasn't for me. Maybe it'll change, it just wasn't for me, and one of the reasons why I think it just like wasn't calling my name. One of my favorite tech journalists, Morgan Sung.
Really hit the nail on the head.
So Morgan had this really interesting take that really rang true for me that Threads will never be the new platform where all of us are spending our time because it is run by Facebook. And know that it's not just because we all hate Mark Zuckerberg, which of course we do. It's because Facebook meta has notoriously puritanical policies around things like nudity and sexuality.
More on that in just a moment.
But it's not a platform where you can really get weird.
And I think that a big part of what draws.
People into platforms, What makes platforms a place where it's like interesting or exciting to be is weirdos. And part of attracting weirdos is kind of having more open policies around nudity and sexuality. That's what makes these platforms pop. Threads, on the other hand, has this very kind of millennial cringe style. Then it's also this very brand safe style, like Morgan argues that brand Safe in twenty twenty three has become the sort of twenty fourteen BuzzFeed style millennial
cringe Internet discourse speak. Uh no, shade to anybody who uses that, because I certainly was talking like that in twenty fourteen on the Internet.
But when we were all talking like.
That and saying things like dogg oh and I did a thing, brands essentially swooped in and co opted that. And so that kind of speaking online is now synonymous with brand safe speaking, and Breads is very much a place that is about being brand safe. It's one of the reasons why on the very first day where people were getting on threads, the first people there were representing brands and making their little brand safe, brand specific internet jokes.
And yeah, I just think that it's one of the reasons.
Why it doesn't feel like the platform for me, and maybe one of the reasons why it's experiencing a dip in usership. And so yeah, it's just like every time I log in, it's just brand saying adulting or I did a thing. Again, no shade to anybody who speaks like that, because that's definitely how I was speaking on the Internet circa twenty fourteen.
Yeah, it's so funny you say that, I'm like so curious what millennial cringe speak is. I am not sure, and I'm suddenly like hyper aware of everything that I might have to say here. But one of the most prolific accounts on my thread timeline is shake Shack Like Shakeshack was just posting the hell out of threads and it was so many, you know, mediocre burger jokes. I love Shakeshack by the way, I will eat their burgers,
but like the jokes were like mediocre. Not once did they say that they could as cheeseburger.
And what a miss layup.
It was like such a miss you know, like that right there, I'm that's probably it. I'm not going back to threads.
Yeah, you know, no one is going to ever get me to say a bad word about Seakshack.
If Shakeshack is like doing something.
Problematic, truly, I don't want to know, because that's how much I love their burgers.
You know.
I think that Morgan Sung might beyondto something about this idea of the puritanical anti sexuality, anti sex, un sexy vibe over at meta kind of being the thing that
means that threads will never really take off. More on that, because let me ask you something, why if Facebook reject adds about women's sexual health, Well, that is exactly what a group of Congressional Democrats are urging the Federal Trade Commission to look into after a report from the nonprofit from the Center for Intimacy Justice found that Meta is rejecting sexual health advertisements targeted at women while allowing those aimed at men, a possible violation of federal law.
This does not surprise me.
Meta is a deeply unsexy company with deeply unsexy policies.
None of this surprises me.
According to the Center for Intimacy Justice, their report found that of the sixty health businesses studied that serve women's health and the health for people of diverse genders, all of them all one hundred percent had experienced Facebook rejecting an advertisement at some point. Even more concerning, Facebook was also found to have suspended half of the survey respondent's advertising accounts now Meta flagged these ads as containing adult
content or promoting adult products and services. Nine months after publishing the report, Meta published changes to its sexual health advertising policies, newly stating that advertisers can run ads that promote sexual health, wellness, and reproductive products and services now. In this update, Meta said that they change their rules to include more examples of ads that they are saying now are allowed, such as products addressing the effects of
menopause pain relief during sex and sex education. But to be clear, it basically sounds like this nonprofit complained and pointed it out and only then did it force Meta to make this change. And even though Meta made this change, the Center for Intimacy Justice is saying that even though Meta did change the rules, Meta is still quote persistently and systemically rejecting advertisements aimed at women and people of
underrepresented genders while permitting those targeted toward men. So now Senators Hurano, Warren, Klobachar Welch and Representative Adam Shift are urging the FTC to force Meta to investigate how algorithmic bias in its ads review process maybe can contributing to discrimination, and to dedicate more resources and team members to monitoring for potential discrepancies.
This does not surprise me at all.
I think that we live in a culture that is very much like has a double standard around sexuality. U metas ads, I'm sorry, they just like do seem to be biased toward men's sexuality, which is what Jackie Rotman, the head of the Center for Intimacy Justice, says too. Rotman says, while mena's rules prohibit ads that promote products that focus on sexual pleasure or enhancement, such as sex toys or sexual enhancement products.
They exuplicitly allow ads.
Promoting sexual and reproductive health or wellness, such as a rectile dysfunction products or those that prevent premature ejaculation. Rotman goes on to say, we believe that premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction ads should be allowed as an important and valuable part of sexual health. But we think that those are clearly about pleasure, and that there's a discrepancy and just discriminatory aspect how Facebook is writing it's sexual pleasure policy.
So it just sounds like there is absolutely a double standard around how both society and in turn, Facebook are regulating whose sexual wellness is acceptable and whose is It will actually speak to one of my personal heroes, Cindy Gallup of Make Love Not Porn later this season, about this very thing about how Facebook and our social media landscape more broadly really marginalize any conversation about women's sexuality that is related to pleasure.
There is some irony I think of Facebook, which kind of like owns the Internet. They're definitely collecting the most rents on the Internet, maybe them or Google, but like having this intense gatekeeping against any sort of sexual content, even sexual content that many people might agree is like healthy sexual content and not necessarily like illicit. So like they're sitting on top of the Internet collecting all the rents. Well, at the same time, the Internet was like built on
porn and like perverts and weirdos. I don't know, there's something there. I don't know exactly what it is.
So in addition to Cyndy Gallop's amazing conversation, which I can't wait for folks here because she's amazing, we have an episode with Vices Samantha Cole, who wrote a book about how horn and sexuality built to the Internet. So you're exactly right. You'll hear that episode later in the season. Maybe we'll move it up because it's so timely at this point. But yeah, the Internet as an infrastructure would not exist if not for sexuality, pornography, sex work, all the.
Naughty things that we love to explore. And it's interesting to me that Facebook is.
So puritanical, but only as it pertains to policing and marginalizing the expression of pleasure and sexuality of women and people who are non binary or of diverse genders. If it's men talking about erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation, well that's not about sexual pleasure, that's about health. But if it's about women or people of diverse genders and how we get down, no, no, no, no, that can be marginalized, that can be believed.
Completely agree.
Cannot wait to have more conversations about this later in the season.
Let's take a quick break center back.
Speaking of women on the internet, we talked in a previous round up about how women make up a big chunk, a little more than half of the video game playing community. So in that episode, I make the point that video game companies really need to catch up and make games that represent the reality of their audiences, which are a lot of women. And it sounds like EA Sports is kind of doing that. They just came out with FC twenty four. EA Sports is first post FIFA football game.
If folks don't know FIFA, like was the game? Like many an argument was had in my household about the game FIFA. Let's just put it that way. Well, we'll leave it at that. FC twenty four lets male and female players play with and against each other in Ultimate Team mode, which is the game's most popular mode. Now IGN reports that within this mode, women players are not
at a natural disadvantage. If a male and female player have the same attributes or stats, the same height, the same mass governed by weight, then the outcomes on the virtual pitch are exactly the same attributes are relative to the competition the player plays in. EA Vice president and executive producer John Shepherd told Igan that this mode, and sort of like the way that gender is displayed in this game, was something that they really had a deep
think about. He says, we have a vision of connecting not just the one hundred and fifty million fans we have now, but a billion fans. We want this game and this brand, this club, this ecosystem to welcome everybody. In terms of our decision around how we're integrating women's football into Ultimate Team, we feel really strongly about that.
He also says that EA as a company is fully focused on combating toxicity in gaming and understanding what is happening in gameplay in terms of are people being toxic, are they harassing women? And that kind of thing. But guess who is not happy? Can you guess? Mike dick holes, dickles, Yeah, some gamer guys. Honestly, it's probably those very same guys who were annoyed about the report about how many women are gaming.
IGN reports that.
Following the reveal of FC twenty four, some within the FIFA community claimed that mixing women and men an Ultimate Team was unrealistic and in opposition to what they considered quote authentic football simulation. The problem, these dick hole players said was that they felt that women would struggle to compete with men in real life, so that in the gameplay they should also be struggling to compete with men.
Some men said that women players should be restricted to their own modes within Ultimate Team, or suggested that they don't want women players an Ultimate Team at all. Some even threaten to boycott FC twenty four entirely. Listen, I don't play this game, Like I don't. I have not played Viva in many years, But it does sound like they really thought deeply and intentionally about how male and female players would match up against each other in this game.
According to IGN, in general, FC twenty four's women players will probably be shorter and lighter than the male players, while stats for both attributes at that gameplay like a tall player can reach balls, shorter players cannot, a high mass player will out muscle a low mass player, et cetera. Women players are expected to hold their own in Ultimate Team. As someone from EA put it, it's not just about being tall and being strong. The core mess just here.
If everything is equal, they will play the same way. And it kind of reminded me, how did you ever play Mario two, that like very weird Mario game.
Yeah, absolutely, and we could have a whole show about that.
When you play Mario two.
I've always found that Peach the Princess is the best player because she's got the skirt, she can float, and so, like, you know, all the players. You've got Luigi, you've got Mario, You've got Peach, You've got is it the other one, the turtlely guy, I can't remember his name, But they all have their strength and their weaknesses, and it's not
like Peach is the worst player. And in fact, I believe that Peach is like the best player if you're like serious about beating the game, because she can float on that skirt. And so I kind of like that EA is saying, like, well, it's not just that if you're a male player, you're automatically going to be better, because that's really not how it works.
And it's particularly notable that this is the fantasy mode. I forget the name of the mode. What do they call it? Ultimate Ultimate Team? You know, I don't play this game, but I have played played in the past,
but this Ultimate Team, you know. They EA representatives point out that, like, this is a fantasy mode where you have women and men players competing against each other in these fantasy teams that you can create by combining players across teams, much like fantasy football or fantasy baseball or you know whatever people want to play. And if you want to play the like hyper realistic version where it's like the actual team and their roster of twenty twenty
three versus this other team, you can do that. But also there is this other mode that is fantasy. And yet the people who are opposed to this and somehow are like making themselves vocally known as opposed to a video games fantasy mode because that's the important thing in their life. Uh, you know, they they can't even entertain the idea that in a fantasy scenario, men and women would be playing each other. That should really tell you something that's such a.
Good point, and like, it's just fantasy mode, and EA points us out if like, nobody is forcing anyone into mixed gender gameplay if they don't want to, if that's not how they want to play. Because kickoff mode, which as you said, represents the real teams or the real clubs and does not allow for a player to have mixed gender matches, is right there. So if you were like, I hate this, you don't have.
To play it that way.
A way to play it without mixed gender teams, if you like are so limited in your imagination in that way, is right there. These are just people who are haters to get so mad, and that'd be like, we're gonna boycott EA because we don't think women have any place in our game. Hello, the fucking US women's national team is great, Like, people are excited about women players.
And if you don't like it, fine, you don't have to play it.
But to make this much of a stink really tells you all that you need to know. Speaking of making a stink, I got a little bit of a stink to make about something.
You got a yellow card?
Oh that's good. Look, look who.
Knows sports references. I don't, so I don't actually even get a reference. I've always wanted to be the kind of like girl who knows about sports and is like, oh, yeah, the thing, I have no idea, but I'm gonna take that as a sports reference and.
Keep one's a sports reference.
Well, let's talk about Kemba Walden.
Kemba Walden is one of the few black women leaders in cybersecurity, which, as we know, is a field traditionally dominated by white guys. She's been serving as the acting White House National Cyber Director since February.
She's been doing a kick ass job.
She it's very qualified, she has endorsements from all the right people.
But she was informed this week that her.
Current role cannot and will not become a permanent one within the White House. Why well, because she has personal debt, just like most of us do, just like I do, just like most people listening do it.
It's a totally normal thing.
Even though to be clear, she has personal debt and she pays her bills on time. Apparently, people close to the matter said that senators would give her a rough time during her confirmation process and essentially got her to pull out of this process. To become a permanent member of the administration before she even started. So Walden and her husband are both solidly middle class. Her husband is also a public servant, just like she is. He works
as a lawyer for the Commerce Department. They have two little kids who are both in private school, and a mortgage, presumably in the Washington DC like DMV area, which is very expensive. The Washington Post quoted a family friend saying they don't have generational wealth. They've taken on debt to put their kids in private school, and most importantly, they
pay their bills. If the requirement to take a job like this is that you have to be independently wealthy, then it will be a poor place because you'd be cutting out a lot of great talent. So because of all this, Walden withdrew from consideration for the nomination for this job to become permanent. And that does seem to
be a little bit out of the ordinary. The Washington Post talked to an expert in what they call the quote arcane rules and practices of presidential nominee vetting, who said that passing over a qualified candidate due to personal debt is unusual.
They said, I've never heard of that one before.
If she's actually paying the debt or hasn't defaulted on the debt, I think it will be very unusual to be held up because of that.
Now I know a little bit.
About this process and how it works, because I once tried and failed. Might I add to get clearance to join the bombed administration, I had a job offer. I had to go through the vetting process, and I did not make it through. It was a whole thing. We don't have to get into it now, but it was
a whole thing. I'll put it that way. So Walton already has her security clearance, where they vet your credit and your income and your debt to make sure that you don't have unusually high debts that someone like a foreign adversary could use that might make you vulnerable to being blackmailed. Really curious how that worked out with some other prominent White House figures.
But I digress.
I think one of them was just convicted of like seven felonies today.
He wasn't trying to work in cybersecurity.
Was he.
No, he wasn't. He was just trying to overthrow the government.
Okay, thank god, Oh just that, No, no big deal. So I have a lot to say about this. I think that having debt and like working to pay it off and like doing what you can to manage it, it's just the story of being someone in America who is not independently wealthy.
It is not unusual to have debt.
It is like a totally commonplace circumstance, and I think that most people listening. I myself definitely am in this. In this camp, it is a not uncommon circumstances, and I feel like saying that if somebody has a personal debt is disqualifying for the for a White House administration position, you're basically saying that only rich people should be in consideration for presidential administrations.
But I think it's more than that.
I think that there is an unstated race and gender aspect to this. Because she is a black woman, I should say, the person being vetted to become the permanent National Cybersecurity Director.
In her place is a black man.
But the research is very clear, and also from my anecdotal evidence as well, Black women face a very different landscape than their black male counterparts because they are not just black, they are black and also women, So they're up against both gender and racial dynamics and the Biden administration.
I have to give them credit.
They have been really great about making it a point to nominate black women and women of color and other marginalized people in this administration, and that is awesome. They deserve praise for that, But I personally feel like they have not done enough to exuplicitly call it out when those people that they nominate for those positions are completely unfairly raked over the cold and held to a completely
different standard to everyone else who has been nominated. A great example is when Supreme Court Justice Jackson went through her confirmation process, right, we had people like Josh Holly essentially calling her a pedophile for doing her job. These very unfair, disgusting, dangerous attacks. And the administration they definitely publicly championed these black women, but they never ca out and clearly said she is facing these attacks because she
is a black woman. She would not be facing attacks like this if she were not a black woman. And I just feel some kind of way about that, right, Like, you can't champion the leadership of marginalized people, particularly black women, unless you were also going to create the conditions so that those black women that you are championing, can actually do their jobs, face an equal playing field and lead.
I think the White House, like quietly flagging that she will not be confirmed because she has personal debt, is not doing that, and they need to do better if they are actually meaningfully going to support the leadership of black women. It's absolutely one thing to say support black women, listen to black women, black women lead. It is another to create the conditions where black women can meaningfully have an equal playing field that they need to lead.
Absolutely, black women should expect that their allies in you know, wherever they are, including Democratic administrations, would support them and not hold them to a double standard. Right, Like we know that there is a double standard for black women in so many areas of society, and maybe like double standard is not even accurate, right because of the intersectionality of the whole thing. Maybe it's like a triple or quadruple standard. Black women should expect more. And this is
a disappointing story in the case of Justice Jackson. I guess, you know, it's an interesting situation where she was ultimately confirmed, and one could argue that the Biden administrations support for her. Maybe it was strategic that they didn't call out the racism and sexism of it in the interest of getting
her confirmed. But allowing racist, sexist attacks to happen and not calling them out has its own risks as well, And for folks who are competing for appointments at a lower status level than Supreme Court justice, it probably really hits home.
Yeah, I mean, you make a good point.
I'm not totally convinced of it, but I see where you're coming from. I think that it's really tough. I think that as people who are traditionally marginalized, whether you're a black woman, a white woman, a queer person, a trans person, someone who is not always represented, I think we have this really weird bind where we know we're experiencing this stuff, we feel it, We're very aware. I'm sure that Justice Jackson knew exactly why her confirmation process
was so difficult. I'm sure that she's this is not the first time she's experienced that. But we are supposed to never talk about it, like we are supposed to endure this, know exactly what it is, be crystal clear about what is happening. But it's like rude or beyond the pale to talk about it. And so what we actually need is allies and people in our corner and people who are support genuinely supportive of us to call
it out. I will never forget I was in a situation once where someone who I respected and worked with, a white woman, said.
Something pretty uncool.
In a group situation, and it was another non black woman of color who said, even while I was still forming the words of what to say in response, who was just like, that is not cool what you just said because of xyz reason, and you need to apologize right now because it's inappropriate. And the fact that I didn't have to be the one to be like, oh, well, don't love that you just said that in front of
everybody was really powerful. And so I think that races and sexism and all the isms, it's such a weird thing because it kind of festers with this implication that we're never gonna call it out because it's not cool, it's not polite.
You know.
I have smiled and giggled to see more racist, sexist comments than I character relive and all this will never forget. Justice Jackson's confirmation and seeing that familiar look on her face of like this again, I am at the pinnacle of my career, the top of my career. I have a stellar background, and this again, and so I just would have loved to have seen the Biden administration say what Justice Jackson.
They kind of obliquely referenced it.
I don't want to say they never said it, but I never heard an explicit acknowledgment of like, she is facing racist, sexist attacks and it is not okay. She would not be facing this if she was a white woman or a black man is seeing them, particularly because she is a black woman, and it is racist and it is sexist, and we understand it, we see it. She's you're not imagining it. And I think that that is part and.
Parcel of having an inclusive cabinet.
If you want to have the leadership of black women and women of color and people who are marginalized, Like if.
You want all of our shine, you gotta stick up for us.
You got to you gotta say the hard thing that you know we can't say explicitly, we really can't. If she had got up on that stage and said, Josh, Holly, you're being a must this is massaga nor and I will not tolerate it, she would have never been confirmed.
Right, So she can't say that, but other people near her can say it.
White people can say it. Biden can say it, Jensaki can say it. But they didn't say it.
And I'll honest, I will never forget watching that.
It really made an impression on me, and I guess this is part of it, right, this idea that marginalized people watching knew it and saw it and clocked it, and nobody said anything, so we just had to feel.
It and suffer with her in silence. But YO, to the.
Woman who is listening right now, to the to the black woman, to the woman, to the trans person, to the clear person, to the person who is from a working class background, you're not crazy. You're not imagining it when you hear that thing that hits you in your gut, in your spirit, and you're like, damn, they're belittling me right now because of who I am. You really want someone, First of all, I'm with you, I've been there, I
hear it. It's not cool, it's not okay. But you want someone to be the person who is going to say, yo, I heard that. I know what you're trying to do and it's not going to work here, and we need our allies. This is where we really need our allies to be clear, very to have very clear voices when you hear shit like this.
Hell yeah, And you know, I understand that Biden administration has a lot of concerns they're trying to balance and it would be great if they could be better la Is. Maybe they could, maybe they can't. I don't know. Josh Holly insurrectionist, terrible human. In a reasonable society, he would be in jail because he literally tried to overthrow the government and then ran away like flapping his arms the worst.
But I guess that's a nice thing about podcasts, right, Like we don't have any of those concerns, So I'm glad we can talk about it here.
I'm glad we can talk about it here as well, speaking of like talking about things and having nuanced conversations.
How did that my transition?
It's a really good transition. I mean a little force, but like we were in it pretty deep. So let's let's bring it back to a news story.
After that intensity, all I will accept is like high praise for that transition from you, you know what, after all that you've been through, This is scial forces.
Thank you, your transition was immaculate.
I'll take it. You're exactly right. That is an appropriate response to that transition.
So let's talk about this very weird piece in the Washington Post. So Jillian brookel, who writes for the Washington Posts History Vertical.
I need to be super clear.
Jillian is someone who's writing I generally really respect, and I really respect Jillian as a journalist, great writing.
Like I am not saying this to.
Belittle Jillian's record at all, but I do want to mention it. So she published a piece in the Washington Post called We Interviewed Harriet Tubman using AI.
It got a little weird.
They used the online educator con Academy's new artificial intelligence learning tool con Migo, which enables users to have live chats with dozens of simulated historical figures like Abbical Adams, Genghis Khan, Winston Churchill, to interview Harriet Tubman. So essentially, when asked questions about her life and her work, the answers that AI Harriet Tubman. It mostly kind of sounds like she gave kind of stiffer versions of her Wikipedia entry when she asks if Harriet Tubman was scared during
her life. The Ai Harriet Tubman can't really answer it. Says, it is important to remember that I am an AI simulation of Harriet Tubman, and I am here to share my experiences and knowledge with you. What are some challenges you have faced in your own life and how have you found the courage to overcome them? She tries to get the AI Harriet Tubman to answer questions about modern day issues like critical race theory, and AI Harriet Tubman does not really take debait there.
Honestly, really is not a lot more to this piece.
I don't want to come down on the journalist here, but the Internet was just really not pleased about this piece, And to be frank like, I am kind of left scratching my head about this piece too. Brokel has a lot of really thoughtful writing about.
History, but I don't feel like I get what the point of this piece was.
It really feels like a throwback to all those pieces we were seeing maybe like two years ago about AI as kind of a parlor trick, you know, where it was like, oh, we made AI watch one hundred episodes of Seinfelds, and here's what they said as a Speinfeld script.
These kind of.
Like yeah, parlor trick journalism, and I think that we're all kind of over that, so it feels like a little bit of a throwback to an era that we've all kind of progressed from, particularly considering how this technology is really poised to disproportionately harm underrepresented people black women.
And I also think a lot of.
People really rightly picked up on how uncomfortable it is to have a white journalist interviewing Harriet Tubman AI.
Honestly, I'm not even sure why that hits me so weird. Maybe it's because black.
Women who are fighting for racial justice and freedom and autonomy are so underrepresented in legacy media, and so a journalist interviewing an AI version of that black woman just as a little bit funky. And yeah, I just I don't even know why I'm so weirded out by this, and that the internet response was so worded out by it.
But Mike, what do you think?
I do find it super weird? Like, I guess I can maybe giving them the benefit of the doubt, see the value of having some sort of chat, but like this for like elementary school children to introduce them to the concept of Harriet Dubman, but for a journalist and like a grown person to be talking with it. Like we've talked so much this season, on this show and as a society over the past couple of months about AI, and like, that's not Harriet Tubman's voice. That's not speaking
based on the memories and experiences of Harriet Tubman. It is speaking based on the large language model, that is chat GPT being trained on the corpus of like everything on the Internet that they were able to scrape, and trained by the engineers who taught it, who were like mainly white people, certainly with very different experiences than Harriet Tubman, the woman who lived through the nineteenth century. And so
it's just like, like what even is this? What like these responses beyond providing basic information like yeah, she led enslaved people to freedom, she was courageous, she was an outdoors woman, like the basic facts about her. Beyond that,
what is really being added here? It's tempting to say nothing, but it's not nothing, right, Like, the thing that is being added is the filter of the large language model and the corpus it was trained on and the people who trained it, and like the engineers who turned the knobs, And so it's it's not only adding nothing, it's like filtering it through a bunch of tech built by white people, and weird, you know, it's weird.
It's just weird.
And you make a good point that this is filtered through a large language model, Like it's not chat GPT, but it was just reading a report that chat GPT went from correctly answering a simple math problem correctly ninety eight percent of the time to just two percent of the time, I'm according to a study from Stanford.
So these are not even models.
That are like necessarily giving us accurate information when it's.
Simple math problems.
Why would I then trust Again, this was not she was not interviewing it through chat shept a different AI model.
But why would I then.
Trust a AI interview version of Harriet Tubman when we know that that the biases and problems and flaws that are baked into these kinds of AI models are so are there? You know?
And yeah, I just don't. I just don't like it.
Was this a story about AI chatbots or a story about Harriet Tubman.
That's my thing is like I don't understand the point of the story, Like there's not even so it's just like this AI chatbot exists. It can simulate these famous people. I asked it to be Harriet Tubman. Here's what it said. There's not even a so what so I just I don't understand the point of the piece. I don't understand how it makes anybody understand AI better or Harriet Tubman better.
Also unrelated but side note, but I.
Do want to mention you talked about Harriet Tubman as an outdoors woman.
Thank you for that. I consider myself an outdoors woman.
Because I do my fair share of camping and hiking and like pooping in holes. And when people who don't know are like, oh, I'm surprised that you're a black woman who enjoys the outdoors.
Harriet Tubman is always my.
Beacon that like, people don't think of her as an outdoors woman, but she absolutely was an outdoors woman and like an icon in the space. And it pleases me that you remember her for that, because I feel like she doesn't get the shine that she deserves as an outdoor a black outdoors woman. From one black outdoors woman to another.
Yeah, people should know. I don't think that I have like the you know, special knowledge there. I feel it's like kind of common knowledge. Maybe not, I don't know, but like people should know. Yeah, she was an outdoors woman. She was leading people through like legit wilderness, you know, and like they had to eat, they had to get water, they had to feel dress wounds.
Let's say a quick break at our back.
Okay, so Bridget, We've covered a lot of ground. But I have one question for you.
What is it?
What's Elon done? Now?
So we all know that Elon Musk came in and immediately.
Acts staff at Twitter when he took over.
Well, the same thing is happening all over the globe, including Twitter Africa, where former staff were saying that Elon Musk has ghosted them even after agreeing to specific This is from Larry Modoo from CNN, who did some great reporting on this issue. Larry found that Twitter staffers and Ghana accepted Twitter's offers to pay them three months worth of severance the cost of repatriating foreign staff and legal expenses incurred during negotiations with the company, but they have
not received the money or any further communication. This layoff happened just four days after Twitter opened their first physical office in Ghana, and many of the staffers moved to Ghana from other African nations and depended on their jobs at Twitter to support their legal status in the country. The last communication they had with Twitter was in May when they were first let go. So in the United States, Elon is doing the same nonsense, you know, letting staffers go,
not paying severance. But at least there is some movement right there, are you know, some movements of agreements or communication or at least lawsuits. But Africa staffers say there have been crickets. This was really heartbreaking to hear from the piece. Twitter was non responsive until we agreed to the three months because we were all so stressed and exhausted and tired of the uncertainty, reluctant to take on the extra burdens of a court case, so we felt we had no choice but to settle.
This is what a former Twitter employee told CNN.
When CNN reached out for comment, they got Twitter's new auto response, a poop emoji, which tells you how much Elon cares about these staffers. So I think this really mirrors the relationship that tech has had with the global South.
For a while.
More broadly, where African labor and talent is used extracted and then discarded without much care or intention.
But specifically, I think that for Elon Musk, this is.
The person who Elon Musk's own father says that he funded his entire career from a Zambian emerald.
Mind.
I think that Elon Musk is somebody who deceaes the global South as a resource that he can just extract labor and capital and talent from and then just discard it when he's decide that he's gotten all that he.
Can from it. And yeah, that's what Elon Musk has done.
Now yeah, or not done.
Yeah, just pay your bills like nobody likes paying their bills. I don't like paying my bills, but just pay your bills like you owe this money. You agreed, Like I think the four days after opening this office, people moved to Ghana for these jobs and then laying them off and then ghosting them.
Ghosting is their.
Words, by the way, that's like a very specific word to use to be like, yeah, we have not heard from them. People have bills to pay families to feed. Elon Musk, you're supposed to be a billionaire.
What the fuck is going on?
It's so trumpy. The parallels between him and Trump get stronger every day of just like not paying people, like and pretending that that's some kind of savvy business move, like some innovative moves like yeah, I'm just gonna have people do work for me and tell them I'm gonna pay them and then like not pay them.
And I hate how we have a tech press in this country that really supported that, where it's like, oh, Elon Musk has a savvy new way to cut costs.
It's called squatting. It's called not paying the bills that you have wrecked up. Yo, I could do that.
I don't think anybody would call it like innovating or like a groundbreaking if I just didn't pay my rent, of course it's gonna cut costs.
I don't know what it became like a woke snowflake position to like pay people what you owe them.
Yeah, you pc liberal, baby, you pay your bills?
Like what are you doing? Oh, real men just like skip out on the bill, don't you know that?
Yeah? Yeah, real men make promises of that don't follow through.
Okay, So one last story. We gotta go to Finland because I love this story. So I am not somebody even though I make a tech podcast. We were just talking about this earlier. I'm not somebody who considers myself sort of stuck on my phone. I actually like having my phone buried in the bottom of my bag. And then I forget about it and then I have fifteen on red text and I'm shit my phone. Well, I
really need to take a vacation to Finland. Many mental health experts agree that taking a break from your phone and social media.
Sometimes called digital fasting, can be good for you.
People are not meant to be glued to screens all the time, and even a short digital fast can be useful to improve our well being and helpfuliave symptoms of anxiety and depression. This is according to Terry Mustonen, a psychologist quoted in The Independent. This is because Finland's National Park System took all of that advice to heart when crafting the new policies for the island of ucal Tomeo,
a beautiful island wilderness east of Helsinki. The park encourages all visitors to leave their cell phones onshore or keep them in their pockets during the visit to their island, in an effort to get people to connect more with
nature and themselves. Now, I love this idea. I think it's notable, and I think it's notable that it's happening in Finland, the country that kind of arguably invented cell phones and is a recognized leader in technological innovation and consistently ranks at the top of happiest countries on Earth. So they got to be doing something right. If they're like, oh, keep your phones in your pocket and also we're really happy, that can't be happened sance.
That's got to be connected, right.
Yeah, they know what they're doing. They're doing something right. They're doing a lot of things very right.
So we actually believe it or not. Have quite a few listeners in Finland. I check the charts all the time, and I have a we are often doing quite well in the Nordic countries. I have a little bit of a love affair with the Nordic countries. I've never been, but I fantasize about going. So if you end up going to this island, let us know. However, wait till
you're back wherever you live. Don't do not tweet us from the island, email us from the island, because we don't want you to get kicked out and Matt sellin from visit Kotka Hamina Tourism Board in Finland.
If you were.
Listening, I would love to talk to you about how it's going. I love the idea about a phone free visit when I do a lot of travel, and when I travel, I do have this weird mental thing of like I gotta get the best pictures to display where I am, But when I'm having the most fun, my phone is buried in my bag and I'm not thinking about it. Although when I travel, I am like I gotta get like one good picture and then I can
put it away. But I love the idea of just like no, be in the moment, enjoy this beautiful the natural beauty of this island, and like you will have those memories and cherish them.
You do not need to photograph them. What do you think?
Yeah, I think it's so interesting that this, yeah, it is happening in Finland, a country that did invent the cell phone. I like did a little bit of research earlier today, and like the first cell phone like patent was from a finn in like nineteen nineteen nineteen or something like that, like way back before any of us were think of cell phones, and you know, then after that there is a whole lot of twentieth century in between.
But they, you know, with like Nokia and there was like this I forget the exact name, but like a Nordic cell Phone Consortium or something like they really led the development of cell phones. So they've been right there. They continue to be leaders in technological innovation, and yet they're also leaders that like turn off your phone and leave it behind and I just like love it, and it totally makes sense that like they get tech and they also get how to coexist with tech and live
a life that like feels good and nourishes people. So yeah, I'm kind of like banboying a little bit. I do kind of want to go to this island.
I would love to go to this island and tune into Mike's spinoffs mini series of the Nordic cell Phone Tech Connection on iHeart Right.
Well, what's funny? You say? No, I won't go with you.
Wait, do you have like a a mini series I don't know about coming out about Nordic cell phones.
No, I mean I just I just laid it all out right there. It was like thirty seconds.
You're tight five on how they invented cell phones. I love it. I love it. Okay, So for.
Folks listening, obviously, I am the kind of person to whom an island where you don't bring your phone sounds kind of cool. I'm kind of into it. But what do you think would you go on vacation to an island that had this kind of no cell phone policy. Maybe you're the kind of person who thinks, oh, don't tell me to live in the moment, don't tell me to be present. If I paid for my hotel, if I paid for my tickets, I'm going to enjoy my
vaca how I see fit. And if that's a hundred selfies in my bathing suit that I also bought for vacation, so be it. Or maybe you think this sounds like a cool time. Does this phone free island sound like a fun place to vacation? Let me know, Mike as always, thank you.
For going through these stories with me.
Yeah, Bridget, thanks for having me, Thanks for letting me be part of it. These are such important stories, some more important than others. But it feels great to be part of it. And I hope the listeners are enjoyed. And I also hope that the listeners felt like my microphone was better this time, because last time, long story short, I had a good microphone connected, I was recording off a wrong microphone. We ever plugged in zoom and it
like didn't use the right microphone. I feel bad. I feel like our listeners deserve a good quality audio experience.
I made a joke about it earlier tonight and you were like, oh, I made one mistake.
You're gonna mention it every time You've mentioned it, like every day since last week. We got like a couple of comments. I get it. I was using the wrong microphone. Hopefully it sounds better this time.
At the time, I left my jacket at my grandmother's house once like thirty years ago, and my parents today to this day are like, oh, make sure you have everything, And I'm.
Like, it happened once you mentioned it every time.
That's how I feel. But I just want our listeners to know that they do deserve high quality audio and that is what we aspire to. And uh, it's not gonna just.
Remember to turn your mic on. It doesn't matter if it's sitting next to you, if it's ow.
You're oversimplifying. But like the listeners don't need to hear about it, all right, all right.
Well, thank you for listening. We apologize for the tech error. Mike apologizes for the mic error last week.
I didn't do anything wrong. My mic sounded fine.
Uh yeah, it was a mic error.
It was a micare a mic err and a micare. Thank you for listening.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech. I just want to say hi. You can read just Said Hello at tegodi 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 Mead. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.
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