There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget and this is there are No Girls on the Internet. Hey Mike, thanks for being here. It is finally February. Happy February.
Thanks for having me, Bridget, and Happy Black History Months.
Thank you. Happy Black History Months to you too. You know that I've been on my crusade of wishing random strangers Happy Black History Month to say maybe that you might be like happy Holidays, Merry Christmas. It's been funny because universally Black people are like, hey, I be Black
History Months. Non black people either they will like look at me weird and not be sure how to respond, which I think is really funny, or they'll instinctively be like, oh, happy Black History Month to you too, Like when you say, like when you get your ticket taken at the movies and they're like, enjoy your movie, and then you're like, oh you too. Wait with that the right response. That's been my favorite, the instinctual like you too, and then like wait a minute, was that appropriate?
Yeah? You know, we're all doing our best out here. Is there any content out there, like like Black History Month content that you particularly like.
I'm really glad that you asked, because this time of year, I always share my favorite TikTok about commemorating Black History Month, and it's this I think she might be Australian, like an influencer who is standing in the middle of the sidewalk.
She's got sneakers and running shorts and one of those fanny packs for runners, and she's showing doing kind of an outfit check, like outfit of the day, going running and then this black man behind her is like, move out of the way, it's Black History Month and just keeps going and interrupts her like outfit of the day influencer TikTok. Something about that video really commemorates my feelings on Black History Month.
All right forward to checking it out.
And speaking of TikTok, I have to say, I mean, I know that you're not a big user of the platform, but have you heard that big changes might be coming to TikTok.
I have, uh, and it seems interesting. I haven't really looked too far into it, so I'm hoping that you can hit me with some facts here.
Well, So if you use TikTok, you know that one of the big things about it is music, Like people upload from very big databases of songs across different record labels to sync with their tiktoks, and it's kind of a big part of the music ecosystem on TikTok, Like songs from artists can really blow up if they're being used in tiktoks that go viral. TikTok is clearly part
of like marketing strategies for new songs. It is a big thing, and particularly that TikTok started, Like in the earliest early days of TikTok, it was called byte dance and it was really much more associated with music and dancing. When people say, oh, TikTok is just an app with kids dancing, it's never really been that, but that's what they're for. And so music has always been a big
part of what makes TikTok work. But all of that might be changing because the music label UMG is threatening to pull all of their artists from TikTok permanently because they say TikTok has not been paying artists to use
their music on the platform. They say, TikTok propose paying our artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate that similarly situated music social platforms pay U and G represents some of the biggest and most popular artists in the world, both on TikTok and across the music scene more generally, people like Taylor Swift, Drake, Olivia Rodrigo, The Beatles, U Two, Ariana Grande, Sizza, Billie
Eilish Adele, Coldplay, and a whole lot more. And it really doesn't sound like either party is planning on backing down. TikTok is accusing UMG of quote putting their greed above the interests of artists and songwriters, So I will say it does kind of sound like UMG has a point here.
NBC reported that UMG says TikTok only accounts for one percent of its revenue, despite its artists representing eight out of ten of the most popular bands and singers on the platform last year, and around sixty percent of TikTok videos do include music. UNG published an open letter to their artists about why it's time to call out TikTok, saying, ultimately, TikTok is trying to build a music based business without paying fair value for the music. I absolutely agree with that,
like music is an integral part of TikTok. There is no TikTok as we know it without music, and it does seem like they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. They're trying to build a music based platform full of a library of music and maybe like
not pay for that music. So some of the things that UMG is also concerned about are the growth of AI tools, youth and TikTok videos and that effect on intellectual property, while also complaining about the amount of content that commits copyright infringement, as well as quote a title wave of hate speech, bigotry, bullying, and harassment. These are all valid concerns that UMG is bringing up, but none of these things is wrong. All of these things on
a rampant on the platform. I don't think TikTok would even disbute that. UMG continues saying, as our negotiations continued, TikTok attempted to bully us into accepting a deal worth less than the previous deal, far less than market value and not reflective of their exponential growth. UMG also says that TikTok is trying to bully them and threaten them by taking music from developing artists off of the platform
while keeping audience driving global stars. So, as far as I know, TikTok is not really given like a good response. They've said. The fact is they've chosen to walk away from the powerful support of a platform with well over a billion users that serves as free promotional and discovery
vehicle for their talent. That response kind of gives me pause because it feels like, oh, well, whenever somebody tells me that I'm the reason why I'm not getting pay or money is because I'm getting promotion, it just gets my It just makes my asstch. I'm like, wait, you're telling me that promotion is the same thing as money here,
and I sort of see what they're getting. But the fact that they're trying to use that language of like, oh no, no, promotion is actually better kind of gives me some some warnings, some warning flags about this whole situation.
Yeah, definitely, I mean that's it's like a cliche, right that people are going to get paid in exposure, like you can't you can't eat promotion.
Yeah. I have tried giving my landlord promotion to pay my rent and he doesn't accept it, So I don't know I will say something that I think is really important here is that you know, UMG in their messaging, they sound really like, we are doing this for the artists. We want the artists to get paid, we want the artists to get with their words. Stop it splitting the artists.
I don't believe that either. I think that what UMG is actually saying is that TikTok needs to be paying our label, like our suits, our executives, We need to be making more of that money. I don't think it's a situation where they're planning on like sharing all of that money with like independent artists who need it. I
don't see a record label behaving that way. I think the they're trying to get a bigger payout for themselves and just sort of using this like support the artists, pay the artists language because they know it will be
sort of a more sympathetic argument. However, I do think that TikTok is trying to get around paying artists, and I think that it mirrors a lot of the conversations that we're seeing in other platforms too, like you know, Facebook at a time making money from news content and the content that news outlets put out but intending to not pay them for that content, right, Like you could say like, oh, we're promoting you and people are reading
your content, but it's like, well, is that really translating to off platform downloads or metrics or sales or whatever. Probably not right, And so I think this is sort of a cut from the same cloth kind of situation. I don't know. I'm almost sort of not excited about this, but I'm interested to see how this changes the platform. Already, since this was announced, if people have uploaded tiktoks that have music of these artists, those tiktoks are completely muted.
So like if I was doing a video TikTok where I was talking at the camera and there was a Taylor Swift song playing, the whole thing would be muted, not just the music, also what I was saying. And so I've already seen that happening on the platform. But I mean, I don't know. I am curious if this will actually lead to smaller or less well known artists their having their heyday on the platform, which could be
kind of cool. Like one of my favorite music TikTokers that I follow posted a TikTok with the song one of my favorite songs actually Cruel Summer by Banana Rama, and the commentary was like, oh, now that Taylor Swift's for Taylor Swift's song Cruel Summer is no longer allowed on the platform, the superior Cruel Summer, the one by Banana Rama, can finally rise.
That's pretty funny. Boy. It's really interesting the comparison you made to Facebook not wanting to pay news outlets, because it is very similar. I hadn't thought about that, but it kind of It does raise questions about these platforms business models that depend on serving up content to their users to keep their users engaged, but not wanting to pay the creators of that content. Yeah, it seems incorrect.
That seems to be a square in a circle of what it means to be on the Internet these days of people like platforms that are big business want to be like, oh, well, we're just like it's users generated content, or we're just taking content from the Internet, or like we're just you know, we're promoting. Essentially, they want to build huge lucrative platforms using content and then also somehow
get around paying for that content. And it's like we think of music like that's somebody's labor, that is somebody's intellectual property, That is somebody's somebody put a lot of time and intention and thought and work into that. You don't think you have to pay to use it, of course you do.
Yeah, And it would be one thing if like an artist records a video of them performing their song and uploads that, But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about some you know, just some random user choosing a song that a professional artist has recorded and using that, Like, obviously they should get paid for that.
Yeah, And I think when it comes to music, I do think we are overdue for some conversations about how technology has shaped music in twenty twenty four, Like with Spotify, maybe the model where virtually any song ever that you could ever think of is available on Spotify to be listened to unlimited amounts, And maybe the model that we have is like, isn't working without somebody getting screwed. And I think that somebody is the artists.
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, you know, especially like you talked about emerging artists who are not a big name trying to make it like your Taylor Swift's, your Youtubes, your Drakes, They're going to be fine, but somebody who's trying to make it, they're really caught in a bind because they really do need that promotion, but they also need to make a living. Yeah, I think you're absolutely
right that it's tough out there for musicians. You know, like streaming platforms like Spotify already exponentially reduced the you know, the amount they get paid when people listen to their music, and now TikTok is trying to cut that you know, a fraction of that for action.
Yeah, but again, I don't want to make it seem like the music labels are being so altruistic, like they're just like writing for their artists to get a pay out, because I don't think that's what's happening either. This musician, Chelsea Collins, her brother said, my sister, Chelsea Collins, it's only signed to the publishing side of UMG, but they took down both her universal own songs from years ago and her songs that she released independently on the master side.
And so I just feel like smaller artists are gonna get screwed, whether by this TikTok decision and TikTok trying to like, you know, play hard about this or from the label. And I already think that TikTok has shaped what it means to be a musician in this day and age in some ways that I don't think are great musicians, especially independent and up and coming musicians, have really been candid about the ways that TikTok has forced
them to sort of be their own marketing arm. And so, you know, before social media, before TikTok, if you were a musician, you were making music. You were in the studio, you were songwriting, you were being creative. You were like doing the labor that it takes to make a creative project. Now, on top of that, you need to be like essentially your own one person documentary filmmaker making content in quotes
about the music. And it's like, well, how are you meant to make the music if you also have to be like documenting you making the music to get any traction. There's that thing that happens where it'll be like it's the cringiest thing, but I understand why they do it. It's like somebody will make a musician makes a TikTok and they say, did I just make the song of the summer? And it has their song playing in the background.
And there was another one where a woman made a songwriter had made us a TikTok where she was like kind of complaining about how boring her life is, and it's just like, you have to have this very curated, specific kind of shtick on TikTok to get any traction. And in an earlier era your record label that would have been them paying money to do the labor of
marketing your album. And because of TikTok, they've just like put that onto the plate of the musician, squeezing into the time that the musician can be actually making the music the thing they want to be doing, and like it just I don't know that it's been a great thing for musicians. One of my favorite musicians Fka Twigs.
She talked about how she has had to put her music on TikTok in ways that make her incredibly uncomfortable, that don't feel true or aligned with the vision for the song or the vision that she had as an artist. Like I'm thinking of her song Cellophane, which is this like incredibly beautiful song that it's kind of been turned into a little bit of a joke on TikTok, but they've sped it up and they've made the audio wonky. If you know the song, you know exactly what I'm
talking about. If you've ever heard that song on TikTok that has used a lot that's like, let me do it for you, but it's all like wonky. It has like weird inflections and stuff that's fk. Twigs is a song Cellophane, and it's an incredibly beautiful, intimate, vulnerable song. So the song's Telophane, from what I understand, is about the fracture of Twiggs's relationship with that actor Robert Pattinson.
So Twigs is black, Patentson is white, and Twigs was targeted for like deeply messed up racist online harassment because she and Pattinson were together, and Pattinson had been in that movie Twilight and had been in a relationship previously with his Twilight co star Kristin Stewart. I guess the fans like really wanted this like perfect Twilight couple to get back together, so they flooded Twiggs's social media with
horrible racist harassment and online abuse. So the song Cellophane is about the role that like this racist hate campaign played in this tough breakup of their relationship. But on TikTok, somebody did an impression of I guess their version of the song as sang by Miss Piggy. It's like them
doing an impression of Miss Piggy singing that song. And so whenever you hear that sound on TikTok, what you're actually hearing is somebody doing a Miss Piggy impression of an FKA Twig song about the role that racist online harassment played in the breakup of her relationship. And it's a sound that people use on TikTok to like illustrate jokey, silly situations and the way that that song has been kind of turned into a joke on TikTok, but also it's kind of good for her as an artist because
the song gets more attraction and more play. It's like we're asking artists to do things that are incredibly unusual, and like, I don't know, I just think I don't know that TikTok has been a net good for artists.
Yeah, I could imagine that probably doesn't feel great for FK Twigs to have this like vulnerable song turned into a joke like that, And she sounds like she's like not really even getting paid for it either.
Yeah, And I think last year another one of my favorite artists, Fiona Apple, completely took her music off of TikTok and I totally get it. Like, you know, Fiona Apple has again incredibly poynant songs about her sexual assault
as a child. To see those songs take off on a platform and become jokes or I'm not even saying that that her song would have become a joke, but like to be to be used in a way that you had not intended and does not feel aligned with what you've put out into the world, and then be told like, oh no, actually it's good because that means
people are listening to it and it's being marketed. I do think that it's it's art that we should be having a serious conversation about what TikTok and social media in general has done to the process of making art and music in twenty twenty four. I don't necessarily think that UMG as a label is actually altruistically trying to have that conversation to make sure that artists are getting the pay they deserve. That I'm a little skeptical of, but I do think it's a conversation we should be having.
I'm just trying to imagine so many artists are famous for being very private. I'm trying to imagine Prince like making tiktoks or something, and it's like the image just doesn't work right.
First of all, Prince would never even though Prince was a huge techie, Prince would never be on TikTok. But that's what I've always said this. If Kurt Cobain was still alive, can you imagine how annoying he would be on Twitter? Like like some of these musicians like you like not every musician is made better by getting a
lens into their life, into their creative process. And I think that we've created this dynamic where if you want to succeed and you either a you better be like an industry plant or have a huge apparatus behind you or something, or you know, have some sort of connection or be you better be ready to like be a one person content machine shooting them behind the scenes footage of how this thing came together. And as somebody who makes a creative thing, like the creative process, that's that.
I'm a musician, but like you know, I make things. It's really boring a lot of the times, and it has to be it's like trying things, it's like writing, it's like journaling. It's like, you know, it's not terribly exciting, and so having to like make it seem really cool and engaging and like tell a cool story about why people should want to check it out on top of it, Well, you're already trying to make the thing. It would get really hard.
Let's take a quick break.
Ed are back, So let's talk about another big story this week, which is that CEOs of basically all the major social media platforms TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Discord snap all way before said it to testify about how their platforms have harmed children's safety. Some of them came voluntarily, but others, like Twitter CEO Linda Yakarino, were subpoenaed. The hearing lasted four hours but really ended with not many clear resolutions.
But I will say that the tenseness and the vibe of that hearing made it clear to me that tech CEOs are realizing that this is a problem that is not going away, that they're not going to be able to just like vibe this one that people are really gonna want answers and I also think that that era that we've talked about on the show before, in our episode that we did with Paris Marx from the podcast Tech won't save us. That era of the early aughts, the early two thousands of tech CEOs are all geniuses
and they're all doing really cool things. They're going to save the world. We should have endless optimism on what they're doing. That era is like firmly coming to an end. I think that tech CEOs have enjoyed this benefit of the doubt culturally for a really long time. I think that this hearing makes it clear that that era is over and that people want answers on how they got rich from hurting kids. So if you didn't watch the hearing,
here are the highlights that you should know. So, first of all, as I said, it was just like the tone was very aggressive. Lawmakers were demanding that like CEOs apologized for hurting kids. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina said that companies had blood on their hands.
You have blood on your hands, you have a product, you have a product that's killing people.
And we got to talk about Mark Zuckerberg here because he actually, as far as I know, for the first time ever directly apologized to the families of kids who were hurt by Instagram and Facebook in the hearing room, the families of young people who died by suicide and those deaths were linked to Instagram or Facebook. They were there in the hearing holding up framed pictures of their
lost children. And at one point Josh Holly was like, turn around and apologize to those families, and Zuckerberg actually did it. Here's what he said.
There's families of victims here today. Have you apologized to the victims? Would you like to do so? Now? Well they're here, you're on national television. Would you like now to apologize to the victims who have been harmed by your product?
Show them the pictures?
Would you like to apologize for what you've done to these good people?
Because things that your families have suffered and this is why we.
Invested so much better. So, even though Zuckerberg gave this apology to the families in the room, he would not agree to set up any kind of compensation fund to compensate the families of young people hurt by his products. And so, yeah, I'll give you an apology that's kind of like harangued out of him by Josh Holly. But financial compensation, a compensation fund cannot do but take take these apologies, though these words might help.
It's like one of my favorite Futurama episodes when Hermes's son has like broken a window until her Hermes is taking him to apologize and his son says like, oh am, I gonna have to pay for it, and He's like, oh no, no, just cheap cheap words.
Yeah, cheap cheap words is all Mark Zuckerberg's got for us. So I'll throw a link to it in the show notes. But there was this great op ed in the Hill from Julie Scalfo, who is a journalist and the executive director of Get Media Savvy, a nonprofit working to establish a healthier media vibe for kids and families, and it really gets to the heart of the ghoulishness that was on display when tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg treat our children like commodities. So the whole piece is worth a read,
but listen to this quote. As a CEO, Zuckerberg isn't willing to spend a cent over two hundred and seventy dollars each to keep our kids safe, not even if their lives depend on it, and they might just ask the parents of Angly Roberts, a fourteen year old from Louisiana who took her own life after Instagram's algorithm sent her numerous mentally harmful posts, they say, including one modeling
self strangulation. Or ask the parents of Gavin Guffie, a seventeen year old from South Carolina who died by suicide after being sex storted. Although Meta has denied put in a monetary value on kids, a recently released unredacted version of a lawsuit brought by attorneys general from thirty three states includes an internal email showing how Meta characterized its youngest users in twenty eighteen quote the lifetime value of a thirteen year old is roughly two hundred and seventy dollars
per teen. The email went on to caution Meta employees that this number is core to making decisions about your business, and accordingly, you do not want to spend more than the lifetime value of the user. In other words, our kids are profit centers, and it doesn't make business sense for Meta to spend more than two hundred and seventy dollars to make the platform safe for them. As a corporation. Meta's goal is to maximize profits, even apparently if that
means more kids die. And I feel like that really gets at what we're talking about here, that they are putting a monetary value on the lives of our children and that's core to their business model. And you know, I think it's gonna take a little more than Zuckerbird's cheap, cheap words here to make that right and any meaningful capacity.
Yeah, well, there's the there's so much more harm too than you know, kids who don't die, right, There are kids whose self esteem is really hurt. They can end up with a lot of trauma that they're they have to carry around. And Yeah, and a friend of mine is a defense attorney. He's a public defender, and so he's often dealing, you know, defending young people who've been involved in some kind of dumb crime. And he says that, like all of them have some sort of social media component.
So that's like even another way that social media is like can destroy lives.
Yeah, the harm it makes. It's upsetting that we're talking about children who are no longer with us, our babies, but the harm is so vast and diverse. It's just it's just sickening and the scope is sickening and shocking.
And in addition to compensating the families who've been affected, it's also important to put something in place to stop new kids from being exposed to these same harms.
Well, that's what I'm saying, is that it feels like the dynamic that we have when it comes to big tech and just harms in general, is that at the very the very best they can offer is compensation after harm has occurred. And when we're talking about dead kids, I don't give a fuck how much money you give me if my kid is hurt, if my kid dies by suicide, Like, there's not a dollar amount on this earth that would satisfy me. I Yeah, So I would hope for a dynamic that can be better, that can say,
like we can prevent harm. We can do more than just do something reactive after something bad happens. We know it's happening, we know it's going to continue to happen. What if we put things in place to prevent it
from continuing to happen? Like, I just think that it sickens me that this is this is apparently like the best they can do is like after a harm has occurred, maybe we can step in and talk what if we had a better system that did not need for people to be hurt before somebody did something.
Yeah, it would that would be nice. You know. I was talking with a friend yesterday about that hearing, and this friend was like, it seems really optimistic about something that some sort of meaningful change would come out of this. He was talking about all. You know, it seemed like there was bipartisan support and both Republicans and Democrats were
really like giving it to the tech executives. But it's, as far as I can tell, it's a lot of bipartisan support for grand standing and stunts and you know, yelling at CEOs and forcing them to apologize. I would really love to see some like actual action, some legislation that would do something meaningful here.
Absolutely same, so of course it would not be a Senate hearing where lawmakers talks to TikTok CEO, show z echo without getting real racist with it. Here's Tom Cotton.
So you've said today, as you often say, that you live in Singapore of what nation?
Are you a citizen Singapore?
Is?
Are you a citizen of any other nation?
No?
Senator have you ever applied for Chinese citizenship? Senator, I serve my nation in Singapore. No, I did not. Do you have a Singaporean passport? Yes, and I served my military for two and a half years.
Since you have any other Do you have any other passports from any other names?
No, Senator.
Your wife is an American citizen. Your children are American citizens, that's correct. Have you ever applied for American citizenship?
No?
Not yet. Okay. Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party, Senata, I'm Singaporean.
No.
Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party?
No, Senator again, I'm singapore So yeah, Tom Cotton, what is there even really to say?
Yeah, it's bad. I can't believe that wasn't a bigger thing. Like that's what I'm saying, And that's all they've got. It's like, not only is it grand standing, but it's like racist grand standing. Where are the solutions? All they've got is the Kids Online Safety Act, which, as we've talked about before, is not gonna do It's it's just not meaningful legislation that's gonna be workable to protect kids. But that's all they've got So.
That is actually the only tangible thing that came out of this this hearing. Like for all of the grand standing and all of that, it ended with some leaders of platforms agreeing to support the Kids Online Safety Act, which you'll probably know if I'm listening to this podcast, we are not too thrilled about over here. Separately, Microsoft also came out in supported the Kids Online Safety This
week too. Our producer and guest co host Joey has a great episode of the podcast Stuff Mom Ever Told You breaking down how the Kids Online Safety Act is poised to hurt LGBTQ youth, So legislation that is all about protecting youth is actually poised to hurt those same youth. We will put the episode in the show notes. Definitely worth a listen. Yeah, out of these hearings, Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snap, and Linda Yakarino, who leads Twitter
both agreed to support the Kids Online Safety Act. And yeah, it's just not That's what makes me think that all of this is just bloviating and grandstanding, Right, for all of this grandstanding, for all of this, like Josh Holly making Zuckerberg turn around and apologize to those families. None of it really means anything, and it just feels like theater. It feels like subitting your wheels, Like despite years of railing against big tech, no meaningful legislation has moved through
Congress to be signed into law. So I again I've said this. I think this is just grandstanding to look like we're being tough on big tech without actually doing anything to be tough on big tech. They want to signal to people that they're doing something big and taking it seriously. They want to throw a little like anti Asian xenophobia in there for good measure and call it a day and call it good.
Yeah, they've got to do better.
So I have a little update on a story that we talked about last week, and that is that AI generated Joe Biden deep fake robocall that voters in New Hampshire got right before the primary asking them not to vote. Well, I guess that was a literal wake up call to the powers that be, because the FCC now wants to
criminalize virtually all AI generated robocalls because of it. This proposal would outlaw such robocalls under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA, which is a nineteen ninety one law that regulates automated political and marketing calls made without the receiver's consent. If the TCPA sounds familiar, it is because it's been
used before a people who make illegal robocalls. A big case happened last year, and the FCC imposed a five million dollar penalty against conservative activists who arranged for black voters to receive calls falsely telling them that voting could expose them to deck collectors and police departments in twenty twenty. So obviously a disinformation tactic really grounded in stoking very real, highly racialized fears and traumas like oh, if you vote, you know, the police are going to get you, deck
collectors are going to get you. I've heard of this kind of thing happening all the time, like with like paper flyers being left at black churches that say like, oh, if you go to vote, you know they run your name through the outstanding warrant database, which is not true, or they run your name through the outstanding child support database, which is not true. And obviously those are like racialized, racially charged tactics meant to stoke at like very real
fears and traumas that our communities have. So that's bad enough, and it's paper flyers being put on cars, But with the power of AI and robo call technology, there is no end to how to how damaging this could be to democracy.
Yeah, that sounds like a like a good regulation, right, like government using its authority to prohibit like a whole category of AI generated deception. That seems great.
So NBC reports that basically this change will particularly empower state attorneys general to take legal action against spammers who use AI. So, yeah, I think if that Joe Biden AI deep fake robo call was any indication we need legislation like this to make sure people aren't out there running wild with AI.
Yeah, and you know they're gonna It's already.
Clear they're gunna Like. We don't need to again, just like what I was saying before, We don't need to wait until the harm happens. We can see it like they like, it's clear they're going to keep doing it. We can make changes now to prevent it people.
Yeah, prevention, you know that's so much better than trying to fix something after it's broken.
More after a quick break.
Let's get right back into it. So, speaking of AI, let's go to Australia because this is a weird situation happening with an Australian lawmaker. Victorious parliament member Georgie Purcell saw a picture of herself on local news and was like, wait,
something is off with this picture. She was originally photographed wearing a white sleeveless dress, but in the picture that she saw on the local news, her torso or like her mid drip, is exposed, and she was like, wait a minute, I am heavily tattooed on my torso area. The part of my body that is exposed in this image doesn't have tattoos that I know I actually have.
The picture also made her chest look a little bit fuller too, and her dress, which initially had been a big a one piece, had been turned into like a crop pap or. Her middrift was exposed. She says, they'd given me chiseled abs and a boob job. I felt really,
really uncomfortable about it. Well nine News in Australia apologized and said it was a quote graphics error and blamed photoshops automation tool, saying that in trying to resize the image, the automation by photoshop created an image that was not consistent with the original. However, the New York Times was like, I don't know about that. They talked to Adobe, the company that makes Photoshop, and a representative for Adobe said that the edits to the image would have required human
intervention and approval. So this New York Times write up is actually very interesting, it says. Some commentators familiar with working with Photoshop have suggested that if artificial intelligence is at fault, the modifications could have been made using a Photoshop tool that fills in space above or below an
image with an automatically generated continuation of the image. Others, like Rob Nichols, a professorial fellow at the University of Technology Sydney, said the changes could have been made with an automatic enhancement function similar to selfie filters that modify someone's facial features. The broadcast of the image seemingly without someone checking that it was an accurate depiction of miss Purcell shows that using AI without strong editorial controls runs
the risk of making very significant errors. The incident shows that AI can replicate existing biases. I don't think it's coincidental that these issues tend to be gendered. This is something that we know about AI. If there was one thing about AI that I wish people understood, it is that it is not like robot computer brains making decisions because they're hyper intelligent artificially. It is built by humans.
It is made by humans. Everything that we're seeing when we use AI has been put there by a human. So all of the biases and shortcomings that we know humans have, AI is simply replicating those exact same biases and stereotypes and shortcomings because it was put there by a human. And so it's no wonder that people, particularly people who are not CIS men, have reported that when they use AI image generators of themselves, the images are
made more conventionally attractive. Their busts get bigger, their waists get smaller. When I have used AI technology in the few times that I have used it, it makes my nose more narrow, my lips more narrow, It makes my facial features more eurocentric. As a black woman, it makes me feel like they're saying like, oh, well, we want you to look pretty, and by pretty, we mean we want you to look more white. Sometimes it lightens your skin.
All of these are biases that AI is replicating because the people who built it have those biases, and I think Rob Nichols is exactly right that AI is just replicating egs. This did deeply gendered biases here.
Yeah, definitely, well said. You know, it's an algorithm that is trying to replicate the data that it's fed and trained on, and if the data is sexist and racist, yeah, that's what you're going to end up with in the AI. But it's not clear to me that this even I mean, I guess it it was AI, but I feel like the news company is really trying to pull a fast one saying that like a human didn't do this, Like when you resize an image, it doesn't photoshop doesn't like
automatically alter it in this way. Like there wasn't there. It's not just a case that like the you know, the AI is here is replicating biases from the world, which it is, but also like there was a human sitting at a desk clicking the button to like enhance the image or something like.
That, sitting at a desk clicking a button dead haantsy image and then most importantly not double checking the image after that human clicks the button. Like that's the that's the big thing here. Is like, Okay, using an automated tool to fill in blank space, sure, but then you
have to look afterward. Like That's the thing about these AI tools is like, if you're gonna use them, you as the human that need to double check that if you're showing this person's torso that it is an accurate if you've made the if you've made the already weird fucking choice to show this person's torso who did not show their torso on the original image, at least be like, well, is this an accurate representation of this person's torso? The whole thing is already weird.
Yeah, it is weird. It's and it it feels like a the like the dog ate my homework kind of excuse, or like, you know, I couldn't figure out how to print, so I didn't do my assignment.
For were you? What did you have microphones in conversations I had with my parents and teachers in school. That's a bridgid excuse if I ever heard one.
Yeah, that's what this news company is like basically pointing to here.
Listen, as someone who is in my academic career used every excuse in the book. Sometimes he's gonna be like, yeah, I should have done a better job and this is on me. So something else that Percell, that Australian lawmaker whose image was distorted, says here is that she suspects that her identity is the reason why the news would feel comfortable using this kind of technology to make her
look a certain way without her permission at all. She says, I'm young, I'm blonde, I'm covered in tattoos, I have a past in sex work. So I think that she is rightly picking up on something that whoever was in charge of making this image just didn't feel like they needed to have her consent to distort the way that
she looks in this way. And I do think there's something It kind of gets back to that conversation we had about the Taylor Swift deep fakes that there's some thing about it that is like your body is public property and I actually don't need your permission or consent to manipulate it using the technology that I have to
do that. Like, I think I think that Percell is onto something here that there are identity aspects that make people feel like they don't need to get permission, they don't need to get consent the way that your body and physicality manifest is just up to me. I have control over that, and I don't need to get your permission to do that.
Yeah, this is like a trend that I've noticed with news stories lately that you know, and we all on my phone on social media. I have lots of places where I'm looking at a feed of news stories, right, and they're all trying to get me to click on them. And I've noticed this trend where there will be a lot of news stories in there that are not important news stories, but they're about a woman who is conventionally attractive, and you know, it'll be like, oh, this woman from
county in a different state hasn't paid her taxes. It's like, why is this a news story? And I think it's just because that's a way for whatever algorithm is serving up content to get an attractive woman there and just like use, yeah, use her body, use her image as clickbait. It feels weird and kind of gross.
So I would actually argue that that is not a bug of our current media landscape. It is very much a feature using people, people who happen to all be traditionally marginalized to generate engagement and thus clicks, and that's money for somebody who is likely to not be traditionally marginalized. That is like the system that keeps the whole that
is that the whole thing is built on. And so when we have these situations where it exposes, you know, that our internet landscape is deeply misogynistic or transphobic, or queer phobic or racist, those are not you know, weird instances of something happening. They are reminders that like, oh yeah, that's because that those things are baked into our entire internet landscape right now. So we're just gonna keep repeating that,
because that's the whole thing. That's what the whole thing, the whole house of cards that is today's current digital landscape is built on all of those things. And so is it any wonder that this same system is not fairly or accurately or consistently representing women, queer people, trans people, black people, people of color, or anything like that.
Yeah, it's not surprising at all. So have you got some good news to end to send us out with?
I sure do. I've been saving this story because I it's it's one that is near and dear to me because y'all know I love a good justice is Serbs story. So basically Sandsbury's, which is a grocery store chain in the UK, was supportive of Black Lives Matter, and like, I think we're doing some sort of like black History
Monde thing for their black employees. Barely standard stuff. Well, right wing activists Lawrence Fox, who founded the right wing populist political party Reclaim and is generally the kind of person who makes his whole thing like hating anything related to diversity. You know, the type we don't need to like, you know what I'm saying. Well, he didn't like this, and so he called for a boycott of Sansbury's. So he got into it on Twitter with Colin Seymour, who
does is a drag performer. Colin's drag performer name is Crystal. So during this exchange on Twitter, Lawrence called Colin Seymour a pedophile, which we know is like a dangerous smear, This idea that people who do drag, or that LGBTQ people or the people who support them are dangerous sexual threats to children. It is absolutely baseless not to mention
dangerous in a time of QAnon. Well, Colin Seymour was like, I don't think so and sued Lawrence for libel and this week Q one inter ruling at the High Court just as Colin described Fox calling him a pedophile as seriously harmful, defamatory and baseless, saying the law affords few defenses to decimation of this sort. Mister Fox did not attempt to show these allegations were true, and he was not able to bring himself on the facts within the
terms of any other defense recognized in the law. So Fox tried to counter sue Colin Seymour for calling him a racist, but the court dismissed that counterclaim, saying that the tweets were unlikely to cause him serious harm to his reputation. So this is a good story because I love like justice is served some people. If you listen to old, old old stuff, Mom ever told you you might remember that in the episode that we did revealing our problematic saves, Mike, you might know who mine was.
Oh that's right, who is your Oh?
Who is my number one lady who serves up justice every every day?
Oh Judge Judy, of course. Ugh, I thought you meant a different problematic fave.
Oh my god, I have so many we don't have to get into it. Maybe that's Patreon content. I don't I don't want. I don't want to get like we can move on.
But yeah, so I it's already a long episode. We don't have time to go through your long list of problematic phases.
I know, I know, no, but I basically what I'm saying is like, I love justice. I love watching somebody get what they've got come into them, and so this story I like, but I want to be clear that like,
this shit is dangerous. Seymour did an interview with The Independent, which honestly the whole thing is worth reading, but in it he was talking about like why he sued Fox for defamation and basically talks about how all of this anti gay bigotry is a real dangerous problem and that calling someone a pedophile baselessly is basically the first line of a very dangerous attack. He told The Independent. For some anti gay bigotry never died, but they realized that
it becomes socially unacceptable for them to express it. So now they found a new avenue where they feel emboldened and think that they're to get away with it. Calling somebody pedophile groomer or Nazi is often the first line of attack, a new way of framing very old homophobia, and it's all bound up in modern transpanic. The Independent asked if Fox had given any kind of like remorse during this case, and the answer is no, of course not.
Seymour says, it's always doubling down and digging the hole deeper. And I think until he demonstrates some actual willingness to examine his own behaviors, I can't feel anything for him except contempt. And you know what, he is right because rather than just like shutting up, Fox is back at it, tweeting about the case. Quote. The lifeblood of progressivism is
the myth of white privilege and systemic racism. Both lies certainly in this wonderful country which is being eaten away at from the inside by those who would want to replace a meritocracy with a melaninocracy.
Is that a word that you've seen before? This is my first time.
I have not seen. I have not seen melananocracy. In case you don't know, melanin is the thing that makes people of color our skin, uh the way that it is beautiful brown shades. I have not heard melananocracy before. But best believe I'm about to steal it because this whole month we are celebrating what we're now calling the Melananocracy.
So how does that work in a melananocracy? Like do the people with the most melanin get to be in charge? Is that? Is that what it is here?
I think that's what he is implying is how it works. And you know what, I'm here for it. So we're having a one month Melananocracy for February. Spread it around. It's going to be the new thing. That's it.
Yeah all right, well, I mean it's your month, So here we go, melanan Ate. I'll hail our new melanin overlords.
That's right, It's about time. Mike, thank you so much for being.
Here, Thanks for having me Bridget, always a pleasure.
And thanks so much to all of you for listening. Happy Black History Months. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our March store at teangody dot com slash store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, You can reach us at Hello at tegody dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tenggody dot com. There are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me Bridget Tod. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unboss 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 us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.