There Are No Girls on the Internet - DISINFORMED: Tech CEOs testify before Congress + Carrie Goldberg on Section 230

Episode Date: March 26, 2021

This week, CEOs of Google, Facebook, and Twitter testified before Congress about misinformation on their platforms and Section 230. In this week’s episode, we heard from digital rights activist Evan Greer about why she fights to protect Section 230. Now, let’s revisit attorney Carrie Goldberg’s position on why she says Section 230 needs to be changed. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You're listening to This Informed, A mini-series from There Are No Girls on the Internet. I'm Bridget Todd. Yesterday, the CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Twitter went before Congress to testify about the role that their platforms played in spreading the misinformation that led to the insurrection in January. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, proposed some limited reforms to Section 230, legislation that says that tech platforms can't be held liable for what people post on those platforms.

First, platforms should have to issue transparency reports that state, the prevalence of content across all different categories of harmful content, everything from child exploitation to terrorism, to incitement of violence, to intellectual property violations, to pornography, whatever the different harms are. On this week's episode, we heard from Evan Greer, digital rights activist, about why she works with the organization fight for the future to preserve Section 230. Now, in the episode, Evan said that rushed changes to Section 230 could do more harm than good. This is not about defending the companies.

I don't particularly care very much about the company's profits or, you know, how much money they have to spend on lawsuits. What I care about is the impact that that then has on marginalized people's speech and particularly social movements. And for me, Section 230 is such a crucial law for protecting speech like, for example, a video of police violence. which in a world without Section 230 would almost certainly invite lawsuits from law enforcement who would claim that it's defamatory or that it's incitement, right? Like the Me Too movement where, you know, people are able to speak out about abusive behavior and platforms are willing to host that speech because they know that they're not going to get sued for giving people a platform to speak and speak their truth.

And so I always think about the impact on those movements. Fight for the Future sees Section 230 as one of the most important laws protecting free speech and human rights in the digital age. And that doesn't mean that we don't think it can ever be changed, right? No law is sacrosanct. Laws are just laws. But we are very concerned that, you know, rushed or uncareful changes to Section 230 will do far more harm than good. So you might have already gleaned. there's a lot of debate about Section 230.

Some people say it shields big tech companies from accountability, while others say it's the backbone of what makes the Internet the Internet. Last season, we heard from Kerry Goldberg, an attorney who fights things like revenge, born, stalking, and harassment on social media. In a groundbreaking case about a horrific harassment campaign being run on the dating app grinder, Carrie argued in favor of changes to Section 230 in front of the Supreme Court. Let's listen in to Carrie's story and why she says Section 230,

needs to be changed. There used to be a time when we didn't really have a term for the idea of revenge porn. Spreading someone's intimate content online without their consent was just a thing that happened on the internet. Just last week, 19-year-old Aaron Coleman won the Democratic primary for a Kansas house seat, even after admitting to obtaining nude photos of a girl when he was 14, trying to blackmail her into sending him more photos and spreading them online when she refused. On Twitter, journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept

called Aaron's behavior, quote, bad middle school bullying. But this kind of behavior isn't just bullying. It's a serious sex crime. When we minimize revenge porn, we're contributing to an attitude that says once someone takes an intimate photo of themselves, they deserve whatever happens next,

even if it means their life is destroyed, they're harassed, or worse. Luckily, women are fighting to build a better internet, one where we have the right to feel safe online. You could be forgiven for thinking of Carrie Goldberg as a real-life superhero. Instead of a cape, she rocks heels, bold statement glasses,

and sometimes even caps it off with a baseball hat reading, I sue abusers. With her law firm, she spent her professional life holding all manner of internet creeps, abusers, and stalkers accountable. Going head to head with powerful abusers and their enablers,

scary. But Carrie has never been one to back down from a challenge. She represented Lucia Evans and Paz de la Huerta, who were among the first women who made public allegations against Harvey Weinstein, which led to his arrest. Her book, Nobody's Victim, is about her own experiences with an abusive ex who vowed to use the internet to ruin her life, and her journey to become the lawyer she needed. Carrie has been responsible for creating a massive cultural change around the kind of experiences marginalized people can expect from the internet. Her work, creating accountability for people who misuse the internet to cause harm, forces us to ask, why should we accept mistreatment as a given?

Why can't things be better? Carrie, it turns out, has been holding creeps accountable since the very beginning. So one of the stories I read about you is that when you were in school, one of your classmates was bragging about having gotten a hand job from one of your girlfriends, and you responded by gluing a bunch of amputated doll hands to a poster and giving it to them with a card that says, we'll give you a hand. Has holding people accountable for their bad behavior always been a mission of yours? It didn't feel like it was a mission of mine, no, but it was a fun pastime. And I remember one of my friends was on the boys' soccer team, and she was the only girl on the team.

We didn't have a girl's soccer team in Aberdeen. and there was an incident where she was on the school bus, and they were going to an away game, and she fell asleep with her mouth open. And she told me about how when she woke up, there were all these pubs in her mouth. And I guess a bunch of her teammates had like plucked their pubs and put them in her mouth.

Now, I was a member of the Euro team, and I got assigned to write this story about the boys' soccer team. and I got kicked off the yearbook team or the yearbook class because the teacher had realized that the first letter of each word in the first couple sentences spelled out pubic pluckers. So, you know, now that's just like that's a Title IX situation. You know, like her waking up and having, you know, that that's a disciplinary. issue. Back then, it was, it was, we didn't think that much of it. It was playful. But I mean, she was the only girl on that team. You know, it was, it's certainly impacting her enjoyment of it. Boys will be boys. It's just a joke. She deserved it. I'd never let something like that

happened to me. It's difficult for me to admit. But I've had these kinds of harmful victim-blaming reactions to hearing about the sexual abuse of a classmate. I was 15 and it was gossip, something to whisper about in homeroom. I got to feel like part of the in-group, judging another girl for something that was done to her. It was wrong, and I wish I had known better. Young Me contributed to a culture that treated serious crimes and violations like some big joke. It wasn't a joke. Your work has been incredibly impactful for me, for my own process of understanding the cultural change that needs to happen around those kinds of stories, right? When I was in high school, I think I was in 10th grade. You know how every high school has that big scandal that

happens in your class or in your school that everybody's talking about? In my school, it was a girl had sent intimate pictures to her boyfriend, clearly just for him. And he sent them to everybody. You know, he said, we lived in a, we went to a pretty small school. There was an all-girls school where there was an all-boys school nearby. And these pictures were seen by everybody. And I hate to say this is like a shameful confession, but 15-year-old Bridget thought this was a joke, right? Like 15-year-old Bridget thought that because she had taken these pictures at all, she deserved what happened to her. She deserved to be shamed. And, you know, I was very young, but looking back, I thought about it as a joke, right? I didn't think it was serious. And I thought that,

you know, it was okay to make fun of her to shame her because she had done this to herself and she deserves it. And it wasn't until becoming older, did I really step back and think, like, I was really complicit in continuing a cultural attitude that, A, when things like this happen, that it's just a joke, it's not serious, it's not a big, it's not a crime, and B, that the victims deserve to, to whatever, like, scorn or shame they get, because they, they put themselves in this situation. And I guess my question is, how do we get to a place where more people go through that process of being like, oh, well, actually, I believe some pretty fucked up stuff about victims, about sexualized violence. And I have a role in making sure that everybody understands that these are very serious.

I mean, Bridget, what you're talking about is, is like, it is the issue. You know, like most of my underage clients, almost all of them are. are that victim, are the person that the scandal around the high school is, is orbiting around. And it's, you know, it is, it is, the issue is that kids don't learn empathy. They don't develop empathetic skills until later on, and they can't roll reverse with, with the victims. And so instead, they want to be, there's a natural instinct in all of us to want to be part of the gossip and part of the story and to see the picture that everyone else is seeing and talking about.

And not to be the upstander who is like, that's actually a sex crime. And everyone who's looking at that and has it on their phone and is sending it to other minors is actually engaging in a felony, you know, child pornography, like felonious behavior. But the issue is that that attitude of a victim blaming and stuff, which is really natural in kids, it's also frequently present in the administrators, in the school resource officers who are cops, and even in the people, in the parents who get involved, including sometimes the victim's parents. A lot of times our clients don't take immediate action because they're afraid of their parents disciplining them. And it's just, you know, we talk about consent education and how we need to keep,

teach kids about consent, but a big component of that is about empathy and just, you know, doing role reversal exercises where kids have to imagine what it's like to be in somebody else's shoes. And I think that's important when we're talking about race and gender and also victimization. One of Carrie's clients, a Brooklyn teen with mental disabilities, was raped at a stairwell while at school. When she reported what happened, her school counselor decided that she was at fault and suspended her.

Sadly, her story is not really that uncommon. School-aged black and brown girls are more likely to face interpersonal violence at school and are also disproportionately criminalized and punished. Carrie's client won a $950,000 settlement against the city, and a city spokesperson promised $47 million annually in school climate training programs. It won't undo the hell she suffered, Carrie said, but it will buy her some comfort and healing.

You know, it's not necessarily about suing, although I am a big believer in that when the circumstances are right. But it's like making, amplifying your voice. And I mean, sometimes when I would be writing my legal complaints in preparation of lawsuits, I would get so emotional that I would just go on these like Twitter, like storms, you know, just like diva fits. But even that, you know, those would get retweeted. And by the time I filed my complaints, I had a lot of journalists that were,

that were in line to cover them. Some of it's just like letting the natural rage of the injustice, like, speak for itself. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from,

Jim Gaffigan, to Bob Odenkirk, to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. The worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me.

Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. But they're open. name suggestion.

We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

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and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-844-I-Hart. Last night, a blown call changed the game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where SportsSlice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source,

the athlete themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context,

and ask the questions everybody wants answered. Sports slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to Sports Slice on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Life throws hurdles big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness,

professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going. from the WMBA standout Kate Martin and rising hockey star Layla Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain. It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like you don't feel like you don't belong.

Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs Gabby Thomas and Katie Ladeke. The ability to show a gold medal to someone and have their face light up and smile, that means the world to me. And that's what motivates me to win more gold medals. at our level at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything.

Because resilience isn't just about winning. It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. And we're back. Carrie has a real connection to her clients. She rages about the injustices they face on Twitter. She uses her own experiences to help them combat stigma and shame and let them know they're not alone.

I feel very invested in making the process of the litigation or getting justice tolerable. Because it can take years and you need you need them to be able to feel like it's worth it. And it's stressful at times and it can be very, invasive, you know, like when you're having to relive, when you're only 16, 17, you're having to relive this awful thing that happened to you when you're 13. You need, you need to like feel like it's for something really important. And also just getting back to what you were talking about, Bridget, about how, you know, when we're young, we can actually be complicit in some of the violation. It makes me think about how much more traumatizing it is to be a victim

when you're young. And we're not only have our violators not developed the skill of empathy, but the victims haven't figured out how to cope. And it can feel like your whole world is crushing around you if you are not only sexually violated, but But then all the students in your class think you're a joke and are spreading it. And you know, you're afraid your parents are going to punish you. And you're afraid your school is going to punish you. And kids already don't have control over their lives. And then to be kind of socially ostracized or put in this category of other

and have your friendships kind of crumble, like that is, that can create such desperation. And every single one of our young clients has been suicidal during those moments. It's just like they don't have the coping skills. I didn't when I was that age. When Carrie was younger, she was victimized by abusive exes. One had intimate images of her and vowed to use them to ruin her life. This was before revenge porn was even really a thing. People didn't know how to talk about it or deal with it when it happened.

And lawyers didn't really know how to handle what she was going through. In your book, you talk about how you became the lawyer that you wish you had had in your 30s. Can you tell me a bit about that? Yeah. Well, I had some violence. You know, I was a victim of some dating violence and incident of sexual violence before I started my law firm. And when I was trying to escape my ex-boyfriend, stalking and he was just besieging me with with text messages and threats and and false

police reports and it was never ending. I had trouble finding a lawyer. I worked with somebody on the domestic violence piece. I worked with somebody on the bogus criminal complaints piece. but for everyone that I talked to, this was a real, like, abnormal case for them. And, you know, you don't want to be the outlier when it comes to getting legal help and having a lawyer, you know, be kind of learning as they go. And it was unpredictable for them, you know, what would happen or the profile of my offender was something really new to them. And when I finally got my orders of protection and he pled guilty, which was six months after the breakup, I quit everything and started my law firm a few months later.

When I was, you know, in retrospect, I was still in the midst of a lot of trauma. But I started this law firm basically to become the kind of, lawyer that I'd needed because I'd gotten this kind of involuntary education into into the world of, you know, being stocked and having no control over what's happening in the internet. And I learned that in New York, we didn't have a law criminalizing, you know, somebody sending around your naked pictures. And so the internet component of the, of the, you know, attack on me was was the most scary thing that um the scariest part about it because even after I got my order of protection I knew that legally he could still be sending around my images

he you know as far as I know he didn't but but there was always this like thing this that he had threatened to and and he had sent me email saying that he with the people picture is saying that he'd blind copied people that I was, like other lawyers and judges and stuff. But it was like this constant anxiety that like I wasn't, I wasn't protected even after all the legal issues had seemingly wrapped up. Carrie became one of the most prominent lawyer specializing in revenge porn and offers victims legal support and a pathway to justice, whatever that looks like for them. Our expertise is dealing with people who've been stalked and harassed and victims of sexual assault and sexual trauma and getting justice for them. Sometimes it's just about getting an order of protection or helping advocate in the criminal justice system or just sending a cease and desist and getting the offender to go away forever.

Other times it's we have to give the victim doesn't want to take any legal action but just wants those images to be removed. from the internet. And then we also do sometimes have really big cases against the city of New York when there's a retaliation against a student or a big case against Grindr because we felt they were facilitating our client being stalked. But basically the idea is that we, every client that comes to us has either been attacked or is under attack. And so we know what to do. And we've seen all these behavioral profiles over and over again. And the more you do something, the more expert you get. And so we can predict, you know, well, by sending a cease-int as this letter to this kind of behavioral profile who is mentally ill and unrelenting and obsessed, we can know that's just

going to escalate things. Whereas, oh, this other person, he's threatening revenge porn, but he's actually got a really stable job and lives with, and has a kid. And he's actually going to feel scared of a threat because it could take things away from him. More after this quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite, unhumored me with Robert Smygel and friends.

friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me.

Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yarn birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open.

Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music. from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster,

IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart.

Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at IHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where SportsSlice comes in.

I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context and ask the questions everybody wants answered.

Sports Slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Life throws hurdles big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions. to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going. From the WNBA standout Kate Martin and rising hockey star Layla Edwards.

If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain. It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like you don't feel like you don't feel like. Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs Gabby Thomas and Katie Ladeke. The ability to show a gold medal to someone and have their face light up and smile,

that means the world to me, and that's what motivates me to win more gold medals. At our level, at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning. It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports.

Let's get right back to it. Carrie's case against the dating app grinder was one of the biggest fights of her career. In it, she sets her site on legislation called Section 230, which basically says that tech platforms can't be sued for what people say on those platforms. Now, free speech advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation say Section 230 is what makes the Internet the Internet. But Carrie says that's exactly the problem. Forgive me if I like bungle this from my kind of like labor. person's research, I understand that it really comes down to section 230, which I know that is something

that you really, really have an issue with. You know, this is the section that allows tech companies to not be held liable for things that are said on their platform, the way that their platforms are used. Free speech advocates say that that section is like what makes the internet what it is, but you say that's exactly the problem, right, that we should be thinking about the internet in a different way. We should be building a different internet. I guess how do we rest of the internet? I guess, reconcile those two arguments, I guess. Is there some way to preserve free speech online while also not letting tech companies just like avoid accountability for the way that their platforms are misused?

Oh my gosh. I have so much to say to this. Pruddin you framed it like better than I could. Our client, Matthew Herrick, was a waiter slash actor slash former reaction. star who lived in Manhattan in Harlem, and he had just ended a relationship with a really controlling and abusive man. And among the ways that that man stalked Matthew was he started creating fake profiles on Grindr, the gay dating app, and then luring people to Matthew's job and to his home, using Grinders' geolocating technology and DMing with the unknowing

people and over the course of several months over 1,300 individuals came in person to Matthew's apartment and to his job, thinking that they were there to have sex with him. So imagine just like in the course of this interview if your buzzer rang three times with, you know, like it was sometimes as many as 23 people a day, Bridgett. And, you know, each time he didn't know who it was going to be. He didn't know if that person was going to be dangerous. Sometimes Matthew's ex would torment and taunt the visitors and say homophobic or racist things or say that Matthew had free drugs.

And so sometimes the visitors would come really angry or tweaked out. but always they were there thinking that Matthew had had great fantasies and and stuff so i mean it was scary like it was it was a crime that was happening to Matthew day in and day out every single day and Matthew had gone to the police 10 times he'd gotten an order of protection that the offender was violating over and over again and nothing nothing mattered Matthew flagged the counts with Grindr about 50 times by the time we came along. And then I was, I had just worked with a bunch of big tech companies at the time. This is like the fall or the end of 2016. And I'd worked with a bunch of tech companies on their revenge porn policies. And so I was super like,

I'll just call up Grinders General Counsel and get them to remove this user. And they ignored me. too. And so I was like raging, raging with him. And we ended up getting a restraining order against Grindr, saying that they had to remove this user, which, you know, it's not super common to get a restraining order against a tech company. But we got it. And Grindr even ignored that. The, the visitors kept coming. And we, as we, you know, plotted our lawsuit against Grindr, we had to, worry about the Communications Decency Act, Section 230, which was this law, as you mentioned, that went into effect back in 1995, when the Internet looked nothing like it does now. And the law was actually, you know, it was just a 26-word law that was part of a bigger law that

basically banned pornography on the internet. But the other part of that law got deemed unconstitutional in case you're wondering why we have porn on the internet. It's not constitutional to outlaw it. But this little section survived. And it originally was supposed to just make it so that, you know, if a bulletin board, which was basically the way that, you know, people talk to one another online, And if somebody posted something defamatory on the bulletin board, there wouldn't be a lawsuit against the bulletin board. But the defamation would be user to user. And it kind of makes sense because then the platforms are not tasked with this burden of having to moderate all the speech and all the posts and stuff like that. But the issue is that over the last, you know, 25 years, that law has been interpreted by our courts in this really expansive way.

And so anytime, you know, Twitter or Facebook or anybody gets sued for something that's happening to a user, they say, we're not liable because of Section 230. You know, like you can't hold this accountable for anything that one user does to another. And courts have, you know, said you're right because all the other cases before you didn't. It's important to emphasize that Carrie isn't just talking about what someone says on a platform. If a platform allows an abusive user to impersonate you and set you up for a dangerous encounter in real life, it's a pretty big flaw. The issue is that the internet and apps and, you know, are so much different now than they were. We're not just talking about defamation. We're talking about, you know, geolocating technology and, you know, social media companies,

which have so much functionality. And we're talking about, you know, dating apps, you know, and apps that are playing a role in matching users. And so, but we had to make it when we were filing this lawsuit so that we were not suing. Grindr for anything that Matt's X was doing to Matt because we knew it would get kicked out of court for violating Section 230. And so when Grinders' lawyers finally came to court and told us that they didn't have the technology to ban an abusive user, we were like, what? You have the world's biggest dating app, and it's so foreseeable, the biggest dating app, you know, for gay people,

it's so foreseeable that sometimes it's going to be abused by stalkers, by predators, and you've not designed into it, like a way to stop abusive users? Well, then you've released a dangerous product into the stream of commerce. And just like our product's liability laws for cars, you know, that have airbags that don't go off or broken breaks or something, like Grindr had created a dangerous product. We say you shouldn't have been on the market in the first place. And the fact that you are, well, that's how we're going to sue you.

Grindr still said, at the end of the day, you're still holding us liable for stuff this user's done to Matthew. It's not us. And the judge agreed with Grindr. And we appealed and kept losing at every stage. and ultimately petitioned to the Supreme Court and lost. And which happened, you know, this was from the beginning a real, it was a very experimental lawsuit.

Like at the time that we filed it, it was novel for us to even be, for anybody to even be referring to apps as products. Everyone was saying, their services, their services. But now this idea has caught on. and it's kind of changed the way that we think about apps and internet products. And the fact that we did have such, you know, that Matthew experienced such a horrific thing and he couldn't get justice, that's actually helped us fight for legislation. And so, as you mentioned, you've got all these people on the other side that, and I don't actually think it's all these people.

I think they're just very vocal and they're getting paid a lot of lobbying money from big tech. Is the internet we have now working for everyone? Is it the version of the internet we want? Is it one worth preserving as is? Carrie doesn't really think so. But they're saying that basically the internet, as we know, it wouldn't exist without Section 230. And we're going to lose, you know, all the, this wonderful free exchange of ideas if we lose Section 230. And I call total BS on that because, number one,

you're assuming that the Internet as we know it is a great place and that as we know it, like, should be, you know, like preserved. Just, you know, it's kind of like any constitutional argument or make America great again. You're assuming that it is, the things are great. And you know, you're assuming that, you know, that everyone has the same level of free speech. But, I mean, speech on the Internet really belongs to those who are the loudest and, you know, four, basically four companies, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple. I mean, they control the Internet.

and we've got all our issues with antitrust. And also the quantity. So the most hostile people on the Internet are the ones who have the greatest protections. But also when we're talking about lawsuits and the right to sue, it's such a fundamental right. Carrie says that as long as tech companies have the kind of legal protection afforded to them

by Section 230, it creates a situation where there's not a lot of avenues to hold them accountable. You know, like, the thing is, like, as you see with our cases against the New York City Department bed, like, for the cost of an index number, which is a couple hundred bucks, which you can get waived, I had a client who, you know, whose mom was a part-time home health aide and didn't speak English, you know, and they had no money to speak of. I had her suing the city of New York, which is just,

worth multi-billion, you know, multi-billion dollar dollars. And that's the great equalizer in our country, is that anybody can sue, you know, if there's been a harm. And it's fundamental. And it's also how we keep our big organizations, our companies, from being total assholes. Because the threat of being sued is, hits you in the bottom, you know, it's a bottom line issue. It costs money. And it's what, you know, like so many safety measures, whether we're talking about pharmaceuticals or cars, it's because of litigation that happened or it's because of the fear of litigation. And also it's because most companies want people to be safe. They want their customers and clients to not have a bad experience.

You don't see that with big tech, though. you know like the the wall off you know like if you had a crisis on Facebook if let's say you're a parent and your kid was manipulated into

giving nudes to a pedophile and then he was sharing them online you're a parent your first instinct was who you know is who do I talk to who do I talk to? What's the phone number? Who's lost?

to help me with this crisis. And it's just like a one-way street here, where we're giving these companies all this information about us and stuff. And we can't. I mean, they are like, it's like Oz. Like they're behind this magic curtain and don't have to interact with us users. As you were talking, it occurred to me that when you first started your law firm, the idea of revenge porn didn't even know.

really exist, and it was through advocating for legal protections and working with victims that you helped usher in both a legal change and a cultural reimagining of what revenge porn actually is. And in listening to you talk about tech companies just now, it seems like you're poised to do that same kind of thing again when it comes to reimagining what role tech companies should play in creating an internet that's safe for her everyone. Like a hard reset of how these companies operate. Yeah. I mean, it's true. There's so much, there's so much work that can be done. And like it's it's a really critical time because you have all this concentrated power and wealth in such a few you know just a few companies and that the inequality in our in our society is just

getting greater you know because of these companies because and and also the power and the omniscience is also you know another thing that's just creating so much more inequality in our country. And the thing is, I do have so many cases where it's, you can't ignore that the facts are horrific. You know, an 11-year-old who was extorted and made to create all these videos and they were sent around on Instagram. Or my client who was, whose murder was basically live streamed, or another client.

who was raped and murdered on a first date through Match.com by a known sex offender. Like, there's going to become a point where the more cases, like, okay, even if these cases can't be brought in court or get kicked out, like, you can't deny that there is extreme negligence by these companies. And we're just, I'm going to just keep producing them until we get new law. And it's just like any other case where if you don't feel like you can become a victim, then you're not going to care. But the whole purpose of my book and everything is to pound into this, into the consciousness that we're all a moment away from becoming victims. Like all it takes is one person to decide they want to destroy you.

You have one bad interaction at the supermarket with somebody who finds out your name. They then have the right to, you know, go to pedophile websites and tell the world that you're a pedophile and good luck getting that down. You know, like, it's anybody can become a victim, but it shouldn't take that in order for us to have empathy toward victims and want to change the internet. And it's, you know, like this, we're not talking about, you know, somebody calling somebody else a bitch on Twitter. That's not the kind of speech that's going to be. be impacted. And we're not even talking about speech, really, because this is all conduct. You know, but our law doesn't even see the difference there. I would, you know, like with Grindr, we weren't suing them for any words on the profile or any words on the DM. We were suing them

because this product was being used, you know, hundreds of times a day to try to get our client injured. It's not a speech issue. This is unjust. Carrie's work isn't just about the law. It confronts the cultural attitude that people who are victimized online deserve it. Or that it's just a sexy scandal rather than a serious crime. Or that we should just expect that the internet is a place where we'll be mistreated. Why can't it be better than that? So what has it been like to have such a personal hand in challenging the internet to be better and safer and stronger?

And working to build one where people with power are held accountable. Well, it's so kind of huge. to describe me that way. I really feel flattered about that. You know, I love my job, and I love that as the owner of this law firm, I can decide what direction we go in and what fights to choose.

I mean, that is incredibly privileged and acquisition to be in. And, you know, like, there are ways to use your law degree in a super awesome, fun, creative, way. I mean, what's it been like? It's just like been fun. But there aren't moments where I wake up and I feel like, oh, I'm this like really, you know, I've done it. You know, like, I've made it because there's always somebody waiting to give me a bad verdict or, you know,

a troll that, you know, cuts me down to size or, you know, like, there's, you know, there's very fleeting moments of, well, what should I call it, fleeting moments of, like, success. I'm proud of what we do. I'm so proud of my staff. But we're always humbled by the next fight. On her website, Carrie says the clients she works with aren't fragile like a flower. They're fragile like a bomb. Through her work with those clients, Carrie is blowing up our understanding of the internet by asking the big, bold questions about how it can be better. She's taken the darkness she faced and used it to build a brighter future.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please help us grow by subscribing. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi. We'd love to hear from you at hello at tangoady.com. Disinformed is brought to you by There Are No Girls on the internet. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative.

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