There Are No Girls on the Internet - Elon Musk turns Twitter into an MLM with payout promises; AI deep fakes put voice actors in porn with lawsuits aplenty; Surgeon live streams and loses license; Buffalo shooting victims sue; Smartphone removable batteries; Happy Birthday TANGOTI! – NEWS ROUNDUP

Episode Date: July 15, 2023

Happy Birthday There Are No Girls on the Internet! The podcast turned 3 years old this week! We are officially a toddler! Thanks to everyone who made this possible by listening! Twitter promises payouts for ad share...but will they pay up? https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/13/twitter-creators-payments-right-wing/ The FTC is reminding Open AI that laws are a thing! https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/13/ftc-openai-chatgpt-sam-altman-lina-khan/ Did Google steal everything you ever searched online? Yes they did: https://gizmodo.com/google-bard-ai-stole-data-class-action-suit-says-1850631307  Sarah Silverman is suing Open AI for stealing her book: https://apnews.com/article/sarah-silverman-suing-chatgpt-openai-ai-8927025139a8151e26053249d1aeec20 Voice over actors are pissed their voices are being cloned in AI porn:  https://www.gamesradar.com/voice-actors-call-out-ai-as-imitations-spread-in-erotic-skyrim-mods-i-do-not-give-consent/ Buffalo shooting victims sue social media companies and demand change: https://gizmodo.com/google-reddit-facebook-instagram-sued-buffalo-massacre-1850635671 Don’t live stream yourself performing surgery! https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/us/dr-roxy-tiktok-operations-livestream.html Your next smartphone will have a removable battery! https://mashable.com/article/replaceable-batteries-smartphones-iphones-2027 Bridget has a bone to pick with Jeff Lewis, formerly of Bravo.  Listen on Patreon: Patreon.com/tangotiSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. I'm here with my producer Mike. Mike, thank you for being here as always. Bridget, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. And here's what you may have missed this week on the internet. But first, we have a little, I don't know, good news to commemorate, share.

I don't know. I was surprised to find that earlier this week, there are no girls on the internet had a birthday. We turned three. Three years ago, we were just launching this show. It feels, honestly, feels more. or like 10. I'm being honest. But I just, I wanted to say something. I literally didn't realize it. You know, I was looking at that Facebook, like on this day. And three years ago on this day,

on that day, I was literally begging my friends to leave me good reviews because I was terrified that no one was going to listen to this show. I was terrified that it was going to be such a flop. I was terrified that it was going to be just me talking to myself, which maybe it was for a little while. But yeah, three years later, going strong. And I wanted to thank you, Mike, for all the support. You know, I still remember when we were first trying to get the show green lit or green lighted, whatever the past tense of green lit is. And it was a process. And I really was the first thing I ever conceptualized and pitched and got, you know, got to see in the world all on my own. It was my first time ever doing that.

It was a real process. And I just want to thank everybody who listens. Like, thank you, listeners. It really, truly means so much to me. Every now and then, someone will DM me and say something like, oh, I love the show. Or like, you said, talked about XYZ and I really liked it. You have no idea what that means to me. Like, I don't make a ton of money doing this.

The reason why I do it, like don't I wish. The reason why I do it is genuinely because it really means so much to connect with listeners and to tell these stories and to make sure that everybody gets to have their stories of the ways that they have impacted technology and the internet told. And so, yeah, thank you to everybody who listened, everybody who's ever left a review, everybody who's ever sent a DM. It means the world to me truly. And thank you, Mike, for going on this journey with me. Yeah, happy birthday Tangote. Happy birthday, Bridget, three years. You know, we are solidly toddling at this point.

And similarly, it's been such an honor and a privilege for me to be part of this. I don't think there's anything I've ever done that has felt more important than helping produce this show. and I'm just so happy to have been able to play a part in helping you produce it. And, you know, I see a lot of those reviews. We get real reviews now, not just your friends who have been conversed into leaving them. People leave real reviews that are nice and kind. And, you know, people thank you for producing the show. and creating it and say what it means to them.

And I get it. It's great. And it means so much to see them to me. And I know it means a lot to you, Bridget. And so listeners, if you appreciate this show and you wanted to leave a review saying that, it means so much to Bridget. So as like a birthday present. I didn't make him say this. She didn't.

But, you know, it's a birthday. And so if anybody wants to leave a review as a birthday present for Bridget of the show, please do. It means so much to her. She reads every one of them. I do. Like multiple times, like a crazy person. It's fine, you know. Like a normal person who cares about the quality of the thing that she produces.

That's right. Like a totally normal person. So leave a review. Or don't. Do whatever. Just listen or not. Do what feels good. But thank you for letting me be part of the show. Oh, my God. It's watching you grow as for the first two seasons, you were totally behind the scenes. And now, like, we do this newscast together every week. And yeah, watching you grow as a producer and as on Mike Talent has been great. And I just want to say to anybody listening, if you are thinking, like, wow, three years of doing this show, maybe I'll have a show one day. Do it. If I could, if I could, if I could, if I could. conceptualize this show, get it off the ground,

do it for three years. I'm such a fuck up. If I can do it, you can do it and probably do it better than me. So I mean, like, I don't want to go on too long, but it means a lot to me. And I want other people to do it too. Like, I want to be a model for other people that it is possible. So if everyone had to have a podcast or have a platform,

you could do that. You should do that. If I can do it, you can do it. Go forth. And I'll leave it there. Happy birthday. There are no girls on the internet. Happy birthday. Okay, so let's get into some of these news stories. So there was a whole lot of legal movement to put some guardrails around the public and AI this week.

Let's take a look at some of what's going on. First up, the FTC. The Federal Trade Commission has opened an expansive investigation into OpenAI. It's a company behind ChatGPT that has kind of become like the AI company, right? Like Sam Altman is like kind of becoming the face of AI in the United States. The FTC is investigating whether or not chat GPT is flouting consumer protection laws by putting personal reputations and data at risk. Before we got to this point, the FTC had been warning open AI. They basically were like, hey, have y'all ever heard about laws?

Well, just because you run a tech company doesn't mean that laws don't exist. They actually apply to you. The FTC issued multiple warnings that existing consumer protection laws do apply to AI. But it is a little bit wonky right now because as of right now, it is not totally clear. what the regulations are as they pertain to AI, and who is supposed to be enforcing them. The Washington Post reports that the United States has trailed other governments in drafting AI legislation and regulating the privacy risks associated with the technology. Countries within the European Union have taken steps to limit U.S. companies' chatbots

under the Block's privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which we talked about a few times on the show. Like Italy temporarily blocked chat GPT from operating there due to data privacy concerns, and Google had to postpone the launch of its chatbot, BARD, more on Google and BARD in a moment, after receiving requests for privacy assessments from the Irish Data Protection Commission. The European Union is also expected to pass AI legislation by the end of the year. So in the same way that other countries, like the crap food in the United States, would probably be illegal in other countries. Other countries are regulating the United States as tech, while U.S. lawmakers are basically dragging their feet. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has predicted that new AI legislation is still months away.

So we talked a little bit about this in a previous newscast, but that radio DJ who was suing ChatGPT for making up lies that he was fired for embezzlement from an organization that he never worked for, also there was another similar lawsuit where ChatGPT made up that a lawyer had made sexually suggestive comments and attempted to inappropriately touch a student on a class trip, which never happened. can sort of get a sense of what kinds of stories chat GPT is making up about real people and why these real people are not thrilled that AI is making up these kinds of hallucinations about them. When AI spits out a fact that is not actually correct or not based in truth or reality, that's called a hallucination. So the FTC is calling on OpenAI to provide detailed descriptions of all complaints that it's received of its product, making false, misleading, disparaging, or harmful statements about people. And the agency is also looking into whether or not open AI engaged

in unfair or deceptive practices that resulted in reputational harm to consumers. The Washington Post has a real deep dive into this investigation, but what's really annoying about this to me is that in that piece, they also quote a couple of folks who oppose this kind of regulation, and they do so by really setting up this kind of false choice between protecting consumers and innovation, as if anybody who would have questions or be interested in investigating how this technology is going to be used is automatically trying to stifle tech innovation. And I firmly believe that we can and need to do both. Yeah, false choice is such a good way to describe that. I mean, you can have innovation in a way that protects privacy. Like, none of us live under the illusion that we're going to have complete privacy on the internet.

But, like, there can be some kind of reasonable safeguards where people have some kind of expectation of privacy, protection of copyrighted information, something, anything, as opposed to just, like, everything is completely up for grabs, right? Like you mentioned that Google had to postpone the launch of Bard after Ireland requested a privacy assessment. The fact that they had to postpone the launch just because they were like asked for an assessment really says a lot. It does. So let's talk about Google. That's a great segue. So Google is being accused of, quote, stealing everything that's ever been shared on the internet. This is from a class action lawsuit from a group of individuals who claimed that Google broke copyright law and collected people's personal information without consent. So this case comes after Google changed its AI privacy policy to say that the company reserves the right to scrape all the Internet's public information for its artificial intelligence projects. Ryan Clarkson, he's the lawyer who's representing the plaintiffs in this case, is really arguing against the precedent that you just laid out, Mike, that Google and tech companies just get to own.

anything any of us has ever done, searched, typed online. He says, Google does not own the internet. It does not own our creative works. It does not own our expressions of personhood, pictures of our families and children, or anything else simply because we share it online. We have only recently learned that Google has been taking everything ever created or shared online by millions of internet users, including all our personal information, creative works, and professional works, and using all of that data to train and build commercial AI products. The plaintiff, gifts in this case are a pretty wide range of folks, a New York Times bestselling author, a six-year-old boy, a software developer, a TikTok influencer, an actor, and several others. And I should say,

like, I am no lawyer, but per Gizmodo, who did some great reporting on this, Google might have actually kind of disclosed all of this in their privacy policy, you know, that thing that we all just scroll to the bottom of and instantly click without reading a word of it. Actually, Mike, do you read those? I wish I read them more often than I do. Sometimes, I look through them, usually I don't. I should. It's shameful that I don't. But who's going to read those things?

Right? Often they are written in a way to like intentionally discourage people from reading them intentionally be obtuse. Some of them are written in a way that is accessible to like facilitate people to actually understand how their data is being used. But the irony is that the company

that take the time to write their privacy disclosure or their end user license in a way that people can understand. Those are the companies that generally actually respect their users and their privacy. It's the ones where it's like a 200-page document of dense legalese that, you know, they're just using your data for anything they can. Well, that's exactly what this attorney says Google is doing. So Google's privacy policy used to read that it uses publicly available information to train language models such as Google Translate. But obviously, as you said, most people don't read that. And even more importantly, does the general public truly understand what it means to train language models?

Like, if you told me that my data was being used to train a language model, I don't know that I would automatically assume that that means that it's going to train a kind of AI or that you're talking about a kind of AI. I don't know that that's like a thing that everybody knows. And so kind of to your point, if it's written in such a dense, an obscure way, how can you really say that, like, oh, well, we made people aware. That's what this lawsuit is arguing. Yeah, the idea that your data might be used to train a language model until a few months ago when ChatGPT had its big splashy debut, nobody would have thought that

training a language model meant that an AI chatbot would be able to repeat verbatim lengthy passages of a book you wrote or a chapter you wrote or an article that you wrote, nobody would have thought that because, of course, they can't just repeat your copyrighted material as if they own it. And yet that's exactly what they're doing. Ooh, I'm glad that you brought that up. More on that in a moment. So in the class action case against Google,

the plaintiffs in the case are asking for $5 million in damages, and they're asking the court for a temporary freeze on commercial use of AI technology until guardrails are in place. They also ask for, quote, data dividends to be paid to every person whose information was used to develop Google's AI, which would probably be so many people. But to your point about not thinking that AI would be able to just duplicate it verbatim a chapter from your book, that is exactly why Sarah Silverman, yes, that Sarah Silverman, the comedian, is also suing Open AI. Sarah Silverman is suing Open AI and meta, alleging that the firms trained their large language model,

on copyrighted materials, including works that she published without obtaining consent. It's a little bit complicated, but basically her legal team says that one of ChatGPT's data sets pulled from, quote, shadow libraries of a legally available copyrighted material, which are available in bulk online. Sarah Silverman's attorneys had an exchange with ChatGPT, which then became an exhibit or like a piece of evidence in their lawsuit, where basically her legal team asked Chat GPT to summarize her memoir, bedwetter. Fun fact, Sarah Silverman is a bedwetter.

Her memoir is all about her being a bedwet. And ChatGPT, when asked this, outlined entire parts of her book, including parts of her book that were reproduced verbatim. So it's exactly what you're saying, that nobody would expect that a book that you, a copyrighted book, your intellectual property, ChatGPT would just be reproducing verbatim,

large sections of it without your consent or knowledge. necessarily. Like, that is a problem, I think. Yeah. Google's not particularly innovative here. The idea that all information on the internet is free and should be available to everyone is not new. Right. In the early aughts, we were all downloading songs and movies on Napster and then Limewire and then U-Torrent and a million other Torrent clients until HBO and Metallica and a bunch of other production companies that didn't like that, sued the hell out of everyone, and shut it all down because copyright law, right? Like, because copyright law.

And the only thing that's different here is that instead of end users in college dorms downloading stuff for their personal consumption, it is giant tech companies downloading illegally obtained copyrighted material to train their language models. That's the only difference here. Oh my God. Ask Mr. and Mrs. Todd, who ruined multiple family desktop computers trying to download music and movies from Kazah and LimeWire in the Outs. It was definitely me.

Were you just like installing everything? I don't think I had any sense that it was bad. Like, like back then, you didn't necessarily necessarily know. know that if you, if you're like, I'm going to get every Pink Floyd album ever, ever release, I'm going to just download them all. I didn't have a sense that that was like a bad thing to do or that was like not, we didn't, we didn't know. Also, I was like 15.

Like, I wasn't, I didn't care about the, you know, well-being of the family desktop. Oh my God. My parents still to this day are like, she has ruined multiple computers downloading chunk off of the internet. It's a funny analogy, but it's kind of apt, right? It's like this new technology enabled access to all of this data and information. And we weren't prepared to handle that responsibility. And it sounds like several desktops in the Todd family household suffered the consequences.

Today's kids will never know what it will be like to download a song that was mislabeled. You know, there were multiple times in the late aughts when the new death punk album was leaked, except it was not a new daft punk album. It was just like DJ whoever, you know, like labeling their track as daft punk. I listened to all them. Some of them I was like, yeah, this kind of slaps. Oh, boy, this is kind of a weird direction for them. Then you get to college and you're like, have you all heard that new daft punk single rat attack? And they were like, what?

That's not a tap fuck song. Yeah. Downloading stuff on Kazah and LimeWire led to a lot of misunderstandings about who did what music and what music belonged to what group. Today's kids will never know. 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 headwriters, Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella 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 yard birds, right?

That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open to change. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle. A one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smygel and Friends on the IHeart 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 ads 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. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast's point game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what.

He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid.

He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash will get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers why he got the ball.

Like, after you go through a training camp with that, I said, you figure it out real quick. Oh, yeah. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So we're summarizing all of these different AI-related investigations and lawsuits from this week. this one hasn't reached lawsuit levels yet, but voice actors are very angry after having AI versions of their voices used in pornographic video games. I got to give major shoutouts to

Austin Wood at Games Radar for his reporting on this because it was very in-depth. So, for those of you who don't know, modding a video game is when a video game's code is altered to create a new version of that game. It's very popular with role-playing games, first-person shooters. Don't feel bad if you didn't know this. I actually I didn't know this was a popular thing either until researching this episode, but it is. You can do this on a platform called Nexus Mods. So modified versions of the video game Skyrim used AI deep fakes of voice actors from the original game. And some of those modified versions were pornographic in nature.

Some of these actors have now publicly spoken out against the practice of scraping and cloning their vocal performances without their permission, especially for pornographic purposes. I am a voice actor in addition to doing this podcast. Every now and then you'll catch me doing voiceover for things. If you ever think you hear my voice in a commercial or something, it probably is my voice because I am a voice actor. So I can completely understand why these voice actors are pissed. I would also be pissed. The official stance of Nexus mods is that AI generated mod content is not against their rules.

However, these voice actors are angry. anime and Elder Scrolls voice actor Kyle McCarley said, please tell me if you find my voice print somewhere like this. I don't want people using AI to put words in my mouth. Abby Vephyr, who voiced several characters in the game, Genshin Impact and the Elder Scrolls online, wrote, If you find my voice in any of these mods, please let me know so I can request it be taken down.

I do not and never will consent to my voice being used for AI synthesis, cloning, deep fakes, etc. This is not okay. Ryan Lawton, whose voice can be found in the likes of Diablo 4, Hitman 2 and Return of Oberlin said, this is wrong on every level. It is disturbing. WTF is wrong with people. AI voice cloning is out of hand. Do not support the AI replication of VA voices in any way, shape, or form. Please let me know if you ever encounter my voice being used like this, I do not give consent. Now, the counter argument is that, you know, a lot of these people making these, you know, modded games, which is there's something wrong with, like, making a modded game. But a lot of people who make them are just independent.

creators. And so the counter argument is that you would have to use a professional voice actor, you would have to pay them. And so that makes using voice over talent in modified games less accessible. But, and I sort of like kind of understand that argument. But the bottom line is just using AI to essentially steal the work and the voice of voice professionals just cheats that professional out of work. And I think it devalues all of our work. It actually really reminds me of what's going on with the SAG strikes and the writer strikes. I saw this reporter today that one studio's AI proposal for SAG Actra included scanning a background actor's likeness for one day's worth of pay and then using their likeness forever in any form without any pay or consent. So you would be paid for

one day's work as as talent, and then they can just use your image via AI forever and not pay you over again. I saw a really good take about that online. In fact, like that exact thing. Somebody made the great point that like, it's already pretty simple to use AI to like create background actors. So if all you wanted was some background actors like in a scene, you could do that using AI. The only reason that you would want an actor to sign, agreement like this to be in the background of some scene as an extra is in the event that that actor then becomes famous at some point down the road, then you, the studio, have their consent to use their likeness in perpetuity. I thought that was a really interesting and insightful take on exactly that kind of clause. Yeah, I think we are, I just hate this kind of, like, new

normal that is being, I think, pushed on us, forced on us, especially as creatives, that this is what we have to accept. That, like, yeah, that, like, studios would be able to behave in this way. That just seems so tailor-made to short and exploit us, the workers, and make somebody else rich. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. That's the whole name of the game here for this kind of thing, right? Like, nobody is cloning voice actors' voices and inserting them in porn.

because they want to support those actors, right? Like they're doing it because they want to take the value that those actors have created and just expropriate it and own it without having to pay them. And I think it really comes back to what you were saying earlier about what is treated as communal and what people in power feel entitled to, right?

Like as a voice professional, a voiceover actor myself, my voice is really important to me. It's mine. I have shaped it and honed it over many, many years. I've taken vocal coaching. I've done breathing exercises. I'm getting a nasal surgery in two weeks so that the quality of my voice and throat and breathing comes through. It is important to me. It is something that I have honed. It is mine. And the fact that using technology, people would be like, well, I can just take it. I don't have to pay you for it or get your consent. It's mine. now. I really think that like it's not just a financial or a labor issue. It definitely is those things. But it's also an ethical and philosophical question of like, don't some things just belong to the people they belong to? Like, I don't want to, like, go off on a tangent. When I was young

and growing up, I was had to really become comfortable with the way that my speaking voice sounds. It was really a process. I have a high voice. I have a high voice. I have been. been called shrill before. That might not surprise people listening to this show. I have been told that I don't talk black enough, that I talk too black. It was, it's a, it was an incredibly personal journey to get to a place where I speak for a living. I'll just leave it there. And that journey is mine. And the fact that a company would feel like they can just take that from me, I think really it's not just a financial or labor concern. It's also an ethical and philosophical concern of what we are comfortable with companies

mining and other people mining for their own financial benefit. And I really agree with what this voice actor, Zane Schacht had to say. He says, if you want voice acting, pay an actor. If you can't afford an actor, ask around and see if someone will do it for free. If you can't find someone to do it for free, you don't get voice acting. It's one thing to grab an actor's voice and make it say a silly meme. he said. It's another to make them engage in sexual acts. I have nothing against not safe for work mods. I have nothing against not safer work art. But at the core of this is a fundamental disrespect for the original voice actor, seeing them as pure data to be molded and not an individual.

Consent is everything. And if you're creating sexual content without consent of the involved parties, that's just vile. And I actually do think it's kind of almost worse that they were taking VO actors and then using AI, have put them into sexually explicit and pornographic games because there's plenty of voice actors who their specialty, their thing is pornographic content, right? That's a lane that voice actors can go into. And I think it's bad all around, but I think it's worse to undermine their rates. I think if you're a voice actor that specifically works in pornographic or sexually explicit content, you're probably being undermined in all types of ways. You probably really have to keep a hard line to keep people from exploiting your labor. And the fact that these people would just turn around and people who

specifically are not doing pornographic voice actor work, AI clone them, it then undermines the people who do that work, which there are plenty of. And so it's just like, it's just very insulting and very degrading. And at the end of the day, it's really about not paying people for their labor, not paying people what they deserve. It worries me that we're talking about the financial implications of this, but not the deeper implications of what all of this means that people feel so entitled to just take whatever they want from people and not pay them or get their consent. Totally.

You know, it goes back to what we were talking about, about that Google lawsuit, where they just took it because it was there and they could and felt entitled to it. So it's similar in that regard, but you also make a great point that it's not just about unpaid labor of it and how wrong that is. It is about that, but it's not just about that. The idea that you would take someone's voice and put it into sexually explicit scenarios without their consent, that's really vile, like the quote that you read. Vile is the word for it. It's messed up. It's disturbing.

that shouldn't be allowed, right? Like, people should have a say over whether or not their voice gets used to get somebody else off. Like, ugh. And also, whose voices, like, I don't know whose voices are getting used without their consent in these sexually explicit situations and games. I'm guessing it's not men, right? Like, it's probably women. So there's that as well, the, like, misogynistic angle to it that, I don't know, maybe people are doing it with a bunch of men's voices. But I have to suspect that it's mainly women that are having their voices stolen and used in sexual ways without their consent.

And that feels extra gross. I can tell you that it's disproportionately women. When it comes to AI fakes, this was a study that I saw that was specifically about visual fakes, like graphics and videos, but I can only imagine that would also extend to voiceover fakes and audio fakes as well. It is overwhelmingly women who are put in sexual positions via AI. And I think we've already seen this. We've already seen a marketplace for AI deep fakes. I think it's going to be incredibly disruptive to our democracy. when people are able to make convincing deep fakes of women and women of color and other marginalized candidates trying to run for office or hold public office, I don't think that we're talking enough about the deep, deep threat that that plays to our democracy and to all of us.

But I think that I think that you're right. I think that the consent part of it is really troubling to me. Zane Shack has another good quote. He says, see how people react when you tell them no. No, you cannot use my voice and likeness against my will. No, you cannot make me say the meme. People go feral and the mask comes off. I think that we're at that point where the mask is off. I think that people with power and institutions with power feel that they are entitled to mine and use anyone however they want if it means that they make money. So if that's me, Bridget, as a voice actor, if that's some parent who put their kids picture on Google and now that picture is going to be used to train an AI model, if that's Sarah Silverman who wrote a voice actor, if that's some parent who put their kids picture on Google and now that picture is going to be used to train an AI model. if that's Sarah Silverman who wrote a touching memoir about her life that ChatGBT JBT just steals. I think that the mask is off and it is clear that if institutions and people

with power can make money off of it, all bets are off. They will take it and they will see it as theirs and they will expect us to praise them for it, to be like, oh, it's innovation. It's going to make all of our lives better. They will expect us to praise them for taking them for taking from us. And that's the, that's the thing I'm like, really think we need to really pump the brakes on. Yeah. I think the mask is off as a good phrase for it. Like, they have the technology. They can do it. So the only thing standing between doing it and not doing it is the ethics of it. And are there standards? Are we going to live in a society where people's voices are not ripped off and used in ways that they didn't consent to or not.

And who is going to line up on which side of that? I think that's what we're looking at right now. So let's talk about that because Nexus mods, I said earlier that they did not have a rule against AI generated content. They now have come out and said that they may remove AI generated content in response to, quote, a credible complaint from a party who feels that a mod is damaging to them, including a voice actor or an asset owner. It also advised users to avoid using these tools, AI tools, unless you have explicit permission to use all the assets.

But voice actor consent has clearly been ignored by many. Nexus mods even added that this is particularly true of AI-generated voice acting, but has not stemmed the tide. And I think that really goes back to our conversation from a few weeks ago, that it does seem to be that right now, the only guardrail seems to be protecting intellectual property or some kind of an asset, right? The question of like,

is this, it's, we're not wrestling with it as an ethical dilemma, only a financial one. And so the only person who could be like, I have been harmed would have to be like, I have been harmed in some material way because my intellectual property, a business thing that needs consideration, is at risk.

I just feel like we only care when, when it's like a business interest. We're not interested in having a conversation about the ethical dilemmas. Yeah, and I guess maybe to be generous to, I don't know, society, we haven't really had to grapple with this before. We're kind of in like new territory here where like these new technologies have enabled these new types of transgressions where we need some new protections.

But, you know, I don't have a copyright to my voice. That's not a thing that has ever even like come up before. Not that people are trying to take it, but if somebody wanted to, there's not a legal framework to protect it. And like, same with you. Same with everyone, right? Like, it really does feel like uncharted territory. And I guess a bazillion lawyers are going to make a bazillion dollars sorting it all out. Hopefully we land in a place where there are some protection.

for people that are based on, like, privacy and the right to own one's own likeness and voice and not just completely tied to business value. So speaking of trying to figure out kind of a new paradigm for how this technology fits into our lives and accountability around it, that actually brings me to this story with the victims of the Buffalo Shoe. shooting. So families of the victims of the Buffalo shooting that happened last year are suing social media platforms. Y'all probably remember that horrible mass shooting at the top supermarket in a black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. It was absolutely horrifying. I will never forget it. The

gunmen was specifically looking for black neighborhoods to terrorize. He researched the area online, drove 200 miles from his home and opened fire in the supermarket, killing 10 black people and injuring others. He is currently serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to murder and domestic terrorism motivated by hate. And now, the relatives of those killed and wounded said that social media platforms should share the blame for the attack because the gunmen was fueled by racist conspiracy theories that he encountered online on social media platforms. The suit names nearly a dozen companies, meta, Reddit, Amazon, which owns Twitch, Google, YouTube, Discord, 4chan. They're also including RMA armament, a body armor manufacturer, and vintage firearms LLC, a gun retailer. They basically

said that by the killer's own admissions, these social media sites radicalized him. This is from the lawsuit. The killer, a vulnerable teenager, was not racist until he became addicted to social media apps and was lured unsuspectingly into a psychological vortex by defective social media applications, designed, marketed, and pushed out by social media defendants, and fed a steady stream of racist and white supremacist propaganda and falsehoods by some of those same defendants products. Addiction to these defective social media products leads users like him into social isolation. Once isolated, he became radicalized by overexposure to fringe racist ideologies and was primed for the reckless and wanton conduct of the

weapons and body armored defendants. He pulled the trigger, but he did so only after years of exposure to addictive social media platforms, which led to his radicalization and encouragement via the internet to purchase weapons and body armor to commit this heinous act. So the lawsuit is seeking unspecified financial damages. And the victim's families also want changes to how social media companies are operated. Something that really broke my heart was that the mother of one of the victims who was killed talks about being tagged in videos depicting the murder of her child because the killer live streamed his rampage. It also really reminds me of the situation with Andy Parker, whose daughter Alison Parker and her colleague, Adam Ward, were shot and killed on camera by one of her co-workers

while she was doing her job as a TV news reporter. The video of her death is still circulating on social media platforms to this day. And her father, Andy Parker, has been fighting tooth and nail to have it removed. He filed complaints to the FTC, alleging that YouTube and Facebook failed to enforce their own terms of service by keeping certain video content off of their platforms. And the last I heard about this was that he was trying to have the video minted as an NFT so that he might be able to use a copyright claim to force platforms to remove it, which again kind of goes back to what we were talking about before,

which is that he's been fighting so hard to remove essentially a snuff video of his daughter being murdered, which he has to see over and over and over again. He's described how sometimes it'll have an ad in front of it, and like that's just a terrible experience, and how he has just exhausted the avenue of appealing to, the government and the platforms, and his only recourse now is trying to have a copyright claim. Like, it's just so heartbreaking that that is the only way that he could get these platforms to take a video of his daughter being murdered down.

That is such a heartbreaking story. And it just really underscores how complex and what a weird space we're in, where this man has dedicated his life to trying to take down this video of his daughter being murdered. and he's been working on it for years, and he's not being successful. Like, I think most people would agree that video should not be publicly available. Like, it should be taken down.

It's not even like it's on fringe sites and, like, dark, you know, seedy corners of the internet. He's trying to get it taken out from, like, YouTube. And he's failing. Yeah. And if he's, unfortunately, he's right that if it was a copyright,

claim, they would take it down like that. They would take it down, they take those down very quickly. But because he doesn't have some kind of a business interest to protect, it's just, I don't know, the murder of his baby. Yeah, it just is online. He just has to see it sometime. So in response to the suit brought by the Buffalo families, YouTube put out a statement that honestly just really says nothing. They said, we regularly work with law enforcement, other platforms and civil society to share intelligence and best practices. That was from Jose Castanata said in a statement. He emailed to the Associated Press. Okay. Great. Good. That just says nothing. It doesn't, it doesn't say anything. Is that such a like non-statement? And so I will say this, that like, there is so much research,

overwhelming research showing how platforms push users down extremist pipelines. And they are very aware that they are doing it. Like, according to Facebook's own internal data from 2016, Facebook found that 64% of people who joined an extremist group on Facebook only did so because Facebook's algorithm recommended it to them. So, you know, they're aware of it and it's radicalization is a business model for these platforms, right? It's not a bug. It's not a mistake. It is a business model that they are profiting from. And while we're all being harmed, they're getting rich off of it. More after 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 head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella 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 yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt Yard's, right? Do you have a name suggestion?

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What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defining the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never

seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid.

He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers

why he got the ball, like, you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the bomb. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. Let's talk about Twitter.

So, you know how we just said an episode, a long episode all about how Meta's threads was smoking Twitter and they got millions of downloads overnight, became the most downloaded app really quickly after Twitter was having all of these problems and glitches? Well, totally unrelated to that. Twitter is now saying they're giving users surprise money from the platforms ad revenue sharing system. Isn't that interesting?

So, I mean, to me, it kind of seems like when morale is really low at work and everybody is like about to quit and then management is like, oh, we're doing bagels in the conference room, guys. Like, hey, we got cake. Like, we brought lunch for everybody. Users on Twitter were sharing screenshots of the payouts that Twitter. was promising them. Some of them were pretty big. So this thing kind of seems like an obvious scam to me. It does seem like Musk and the Twitter team are just making the rules up so that they can

hand-select who gets to be paid out for this program. Taylor Lorenz reports that Twitter claimed in a blog post that creator's share of advertising revenue would be based on a calculation of replies to their post and monthly impressions. It was supposed to be 5 million tweet impressions over, I think they said, three months. But then Musk tweeted that the payouts were actually not. not tied to public impressions, but they were calculated using a proprietary metric based on ads served to other verified users. So that if you tweet something and you're a verified user who bought Twitter Blue and other people who bought Twitter Blue see it,

that's what it's based on. But then I thought if you paid for Twitter Blue, the whole point of doing it was that you would see less ads. It doesn't make sense. It really does seem like he's just making it up as he goes along. So we really have no idea how these payouts are being calculated. It does not seem to be the kind of thing that is applied across the board. And if you do want in on this program, if you're seeing all these fat checks and thinking I want in, I don't know what to tell you because you need to apply to this program and you have to be hand-approved,

which people are saying can take kind of a while. So I think that a lot of people are probably seeing these big-name influencers showing screenshots of making tons of money, and Musk is hoping that they'll just cave and pay for Twitter Blue without realizing that this system on how you would be paid out does seem like it's kind of rigged. it basically sounds like how an MLM or a pyramid scheme works, that the people who bought in early get actual checks, like actually get paid out. And the people who see that and then come in because of it,

well, they just get scammed. The notices said that they were going to be paid in 72 hours. Now, Elon Musk and Twitter say a lot of things. They specifically say a lot of things to people to whom they owe money. Sometimes those things are some variation of, I'm not going to pay you. To put this in context, just the day before Twitter announced these payouts, they were hit with a $736 million lawsuit for allegedly refusing severance for fired employees after an employee alleged the company is refusing to pay severance to her and former colleagues that could total $500 million. So I will believe that these people are getting this money when I see hard evidence of it hitting accounts.

We're recording this at 1041 p.m. Eastern Time Thursday, July 13th. That notices said 72 hours. I will happily report back if money hits accounts, but I will believe that when I see that. I suspect, I don't know, this is my speculation. I suspect it's not going to be like a lump payment. It's going to be like, oh, well, actually, we're metering it out and you'll get like, X amount a month or something like that. I think that Elon Musk owes so many people money from the Twitter deal that, I mean,

imagine all these other creditors that are owed watching checks hit accounts. That's like when you lend somebody money and then you look on Instagram and they're in fucking Greece, right? It's like, what do you think? Yeah, maybe he's going to pay them in Twitter bucks. I don't know. I think you're right. I'll believe it when I see it.

I don't know. It's the way that it was phrased that, you know, they have to have, what was it, five million tweet impressions each month for the last three months. A, that's going to be maybe made a little bit harder with all the rate limits that they had going on. Are they still going on, question mark? I don't know.

Also, it's only available with Twitter Blue users. So that's what, like, 1% of Twitter users. I haven't seen estimates in a little bit, but like, not a lot of Twitter users are subscribed or blues. So there's just like a lot of outs for them to not pay people. Like, I don't know why they would say this. It seems almost certain that they're not going to pay people. And so it's just going to create more bad will. But who knows?

I wouldn't pretend to know what they, what Elon and Twitter. are thinking. Oh, my God. Elon Musk, I know he's not listening. But if he, if they promised payouts, specific high number payouts, and then they said they were going to pay in a specific number of hours, and then they didn't, it's over. Pack it up. Like, can you imagine that would be, oh, like, I'm embarrassed thinking about it. I'm not even involved in this. I mean, it's interesting to think about because the only people who stand to receive this money are the reply guys that sign up for Twitter Blue. So if he screws them over, what does that look like? Where do they go from there? So let's talk about some of the people who were talking about their big payouts and why I hate this.

So the people who were sharing screenshots of their big payouts were some of the worst people on Twitter. people like Benny Johnson, who if you don't know who that is, right-wing Grifter from Turning Points USA, people like the account and wokeness that has 1.4 million followers. They tweeted a screenshot showing they were going to be paid $10,400. And don't forget Andrew Tate, who was banned from most social media platforms. But then when Musk fought Twitter, he brought him back. Tate was just released from prison for rape and human trafficking charges. And he said that Twitter owes him $20,000.

Good money. It honestly does seem like it's mostly big right-wing and extremist influencers, the kind of people who gamify grievance and outrage to get clicks and engagement, which I think are exactly the kind of people that it sounds like Musk is trying to woo to the platform with this payout scam. But importantly, it is not just right-wing grifters. It is also lefty grifters like Brian Cranzenstein who tweeted about earning just over $24,000, which is a lot of money. So if you don't know who that is, him and his brother Ed were really, really big on Twitter in the days right after Trump was elected. Like, if you remember, like, when hashtag resist was a thing? Do you remember that era of the Trump administration when everybody was like, yeah, hashtag resist?

They would like put it in their Twitter bios and we were all going to like tweet Donald Trump out of office or something and then it kind of lost steam. Yeah, I've kind of blocked it out like a nightmare, but I guess it did happen. So Brian and his brother Ed were really big in that era. They had millions and millions of followers. And they just had this real knack for getting a ton of engagement on Twitter. I think it was a mix of them playing on people's fears and anxieties and doom scrolling. And also tweeting in a really kind of bombastic, loud, over-the-top exaggerated way. They were super alarmist.

They would always tweet like all cabs break. colon, and then it would be like a story that was reported yesterday or something. So it was a lot of stuff like that. They would beg for retweets and so they got a lot of traction on Twitter. And I think they really did a lot of kind of capitalizing on our outrage in those specific Trump days when people were like really feeling lot. If you were like me, really feeling locked to your phone, really feeling like you wanted something to do that would make you feel like you were, you know,

resisting because we were in this like very scary time and people were really rightly angry and scared and frightened and looking for something to fill that void and these why did these two fill it yeah looking for something to fill the void and it felt like every day there was some new thing some new outrage and it was like is this the thing that's going to bring down the Trump administration and like somehow break us out of this waking nightmare like I do remember waking up every day and being like, opening my phone and being like, is this, what am I going to find? It could be anything. Yeah.

As the A.V. Club put it, they used that time to build a cottage industry out of relentless, self-serving anti-Trump sentiments. Listen, I don't want to say that they're scammers. I personally don't want to say that. But this is how the A.V. Club reported it. Quote, in 2016, their homes were raided by the FBI because they were. running a number of websites that promoted investment scams in blatant Ponzi schemes. Their brothers were not formally charged and within a year they had pivoted their focus to

capitalizing on anti-Trump fever. So these are people who like maybe low-key scam adjacent question mark if you if you are to believe this reporting. What kind of Ponzi schemes did they say in that quote? Blatent. Oh, blatant. Blatent. Blatent Ponzi schemes. Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying it. I'm reading what the AV Club reported. So they were both permanently banned from Twitter in the pre-Musk days for operating multiple fake accounts and purchasing account interactions, which is big time against Twitter's rules. Like, back then Twitter actually had rules. That was like the number one no-no of Twitter.

But Elon Musk, when he kind of had amnesty for people who had kicked off Twitter, let them back on. And now is it paying one of them almost $25,000? And so this is one of the reasons why I don't like this, because I think it will obviously encourage the people on Twitter who have the worst kind of discourse to keep doing what they're doing. You know, whenever you see somebody, it's like when I'm scrolling Twitter, you ever see somebody who you know is intentionally making an inflammatory point because they want engagement, because they want eyeballs. I see it all the time. It's so difficult to resist the temptation to engage, because that's exactly, but that's exactly what's. they want. And so for a long time, I have been saying it is really important to not engage with people who are purposely being inflammatory or purposely just trying to get engagement, purposely just

like trying to rile you up because you're only helping them grow because you're boosting their engagement. The algorithm is going to be like, oh, this piece of content is getting lots and lots of engagement. So let's service it to more and more people. So if you dunk on them or rage reply, you're just helping them grow. And now it's going to be even worse because that engagement is going to be putting actual money in their pockets. That is, assuming that Elon Musk pays up, which we'll see. I don't know. I think it turns social media discourse into a Ponzi scheme where you are encouraged to

have bad takes to do whatever it takes to get eyeballs on your page because it will put money in your pocket. And I can't imagine this is going to make Twitter a more pleasant place to be around. You know, I don't think that people who are tweeting just, because they want attention and engagement is going to make us more thoughtful, more less polarized, more informed. And it just is another reason why I think that, like, we're in a really strange era when it comes to social media. Certainly when it comes to Twitter, like, as you mentioned to the top of this piece, it seems more than coincidental that this new payout system is announced, like, a couple days after three. threads stole so many of their user, so much of their engagement, and is like really threatening

Twitter in an existential way. But it just feels like not even too little too late, but like so misguided in even trying to address the problem. You know, people are just so sick of Twitter. They're sick of Elon Musk. and they really want something else. A lot of people don't like meta. It's not like it's a big secret that meta is a bad company that does bad things and like hurts people to make money.

And yet people are, we're still like eager to jump ship and check out threads, partly because they're sick of Elon's antics. And I think part of it is just like wanting to stick it too. him for being such a jerk for like months and months. And his response here is so comically flat, you know, to just like pay people. It's like an idea born from his weird libertarian worldview of like, oh, the only thing that matters is money. I'm surprised he's not trying to pay him in crypto, you know? Oh, my God.

You know what it is? It just hit me. When you were growing up, it's the rich kid who's a jerk and nobody likes, but he tries to buy friends. So he's like, well, I'm having a big party, and my mom's getting, we're going to the water park, and there's going to be trampolines and a clown and supersoakers and gift bags, be my friend. But then he's a jerk.

And so you get there and you're like, actually, I want to leave because you're a jerk. That's exactly what it is. Tell me I'm wrong. Yeah. That's exactly what it is. And also, he's not going to pay them. Yeah. Do you think he's going to pay?

I mean, he's probably going to pay like a couple people or something. But there are going to be way more people who right now at 10.54 p.m. Eastern time on July 13th Thursday night think that they're going to get paid and come Sunday or Monday or Tuesday or next Friday when we're doing the next. news roundup, they're not going to be paid. They're definitely going to outnumber the people who got paid. And yeah, I bet they are going to get paid in crypto. Okay, so if you are someone listening and you are expecting a payout, you don't have to give us specifics and we'll keep you anonymous unless you want to be on the record. Let us know if you get paid. I am so invested. As I said, I will not believe it until I confirm that money, but like money is in an account.

That is dollars that you can spend. I don't want any kind of like, it's crypto, it's a percentage. You get half now, half later. He said he was paying the full amount at 72 hours. If you can help us confirm this, we're going to be doing a follow up on this. I'm very invested. So let's find out. You think we have Twitter blue subscribers you listen to this podcast?

I don't know. Maybe. I don't want to shake. people for, we did a whole episode about how like sex workers like Twitter blue, like plenty. People have their reasons for getting Twitter blue. I don't want to like, if you are a Twitter blue subscriber, I don't want to shame you for that choice. You might have your reasons. That's fair.

Yeah. If there is a Twitter blue subscriber listening to this podcast, please let us know, hello at tangoody.com. No judgment. You know, obviously you listen to the podcast, so you've got good taste. Tell us why. Tell us I would love to hear. Yeah, please. There will be absolutely no shame.

We will, yeah, we would love to hear. Okay, we got to talk about the weirdest story that I've heard in a long time. And that is Dr. Roxy from TikTok. So if you've ever seen Dr. Roxy, she is a plastic surgeon who had lots and lots of TikTok followers. She would do these live streams of herself. doing plastic surgery, and I always wondered, how is this allowed? Well, it turns out it's not allowed. She permanently lost her license to practice medicine. So her license was suspended back in November, and yesterday, the State Medical Board of Ohio voted in a hearing to permanently revoke

her license and find her $4,500 based on her failure to meet the standard of medical care. The board also found that the people that she operated on had complications. Quote, these outcomes were not normal complications like those that exist in the routine practice of medicine, but were rather caused by recklessness and disregard for the rules of governing medicine in Ohio. So he said that her social media presence amplified her reckless behavior and accused her of using it to grow her brand, not educate. So Dr. Roxy said she just wanted to teach, that's like why she was on social media. She really wanted to teach people outside of the medical field about plastic surgery, which is why she made these social media videos.

This is what she said during the board hearing, she said, but as I stand here today, I see how many of those videos appeared silly and unprofessional. And like, yeah, girl, they sure did seem silly and unprofessional. You were live streaming while you were doing surgery. Yeah, they did seem really unprofessional. That doesn't seem professional at all. So her videos were wild.

Some of them were just a little bit cringy, like her dancing in her office. Okay, fine. Others were shocking. So she would live stream literally while doing surgery. She would pause to do polls or take questions or interact with the audience while performing surgery. The New York Times reports that in one of the videos, Dr. Roxy looks at and spoke to the camera while engaged in liposuction on a patient's abdomen, the board said. A few days after that surgery, the patient was hospitalized and found to have a perforated small bowel and soft tissue infections. This kind of thing also happened to two other patients of hers as well.

She got warnings in 2020 and 2021 about the need to protect patient privacy, then gave the board documents to show that she had completed remedial classes, including ethical social media in December 2021. But the board said that she still continued to record video and do live broadcasts of medical procedures through October 14, 2022. What do you even make of a story like this? Like, I think it just goes to show, like, social media validation and feeling like you are getting lots of engagement on social media can really mess with people's thinking. And, I mean, I don't know, like erode their sense of judgment. The only thing I want to know is did she tag the patience? Some of the patients appeared to be like fine to be in the videos like, hey guys, just getting surgery. Like I do have kind of a hot take on this, which is that I'm not speaking for myself.

I'm speaking generally. I think in general as a society, I don't think people want their doctors to be talking about doctor stuff on social media. Like I remember reading something about these nurses on TikTok who were complaining about their patients. in a public TikTok, I think they were all let go. And there was a piece about like, well, who gets to complain about their jobs? Like, people complain about their jobs on social media all the time. I think there is something specific about certain positions. Teachers, care workers, nurses, doctors, where we are not, we don't want, like, it's not

appropriate and people don't want to see their surgeon making this kind of context. on social media. I don't think that people are comfortable with that. And I think like, yeah, there's a way to, there's, there are plenty of doctors on social media who are making content about their work

in a way that is not this invasive and this unprofessional. Yeah. I'm stumped by this one. I guess if the patients, like, signed a waiver and they were like, yeah, I really want you to put my surgery on TikTok I guess in that case, like, go for it.

But anything short of that is wildly inappropriate. Oh, I totally don't agree. Because I think that, like, if you are live streaming, you're a surgeon. You've got somebody's life in your hands. You've got somebody opened up. They're vulnerable. You should be focused on that. I don't know how that's possible while you're live streaming.

I'm podcasting right now and I have to have anything any visual that indicates that we're recording I have to have that covered because I'll get distracted I can't like and so like

and I'm just making a podcast she's cutting people open and you said she you said she like stopped and like turned to the camera and like did a little VO mid-surgery that I guess you're right

like even if the patient can sense that feels unprofessional. And the board said that her live streaming and social media presence really was like putting patients in harm's way that she was too busy focused on social media. That she was making mistakes, like, making mistakes, not routine mistakes. Like, like, mistakes, like real complications. You think I should stitch him up?

Vote in my poll. If I get a thousand likes, I'll use anesthesia. Yeah. Imagine going to med school for however many years and this is how it ends. I just like social media is a hell of a drug. We've really, it's fascinating to me. More after 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 head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between-souple 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 yard 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 Eye Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Huber 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 ads 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 I-Hard. Streaming, radio, and podcasting.

Call 844-E-Hart to get started. That's 844-Ey-Hart. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game.

His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin. I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall.

And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got it. at the bar like, after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court and you're going to get the ball.

So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. Okay, so real quick, something that you might actually be excited about. This is a special, just for Mike story. By 27, most smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries. Yes, even your iPhone. By 27, all phones released.

in the EU must have a battery that the user can easily replace with no tools or expertise. Now, this law technically only applies to the European Union, but phone manufacturers are pretty unlikely to make one smartphone for Europe that has a replaceable battery and then other smartphones for the rest of the world. So it will probably just change most, if not all, smartphones. This change is meant to create a circular economy for phone batteries, which is a manufacturing model where the resources put into the phones are recycled. or reused as much as possible. As somebody who has a lot of phone problems,

loves to tinker with electronics. I feel like this is a good, a good thing for Mike. I don't have a lot of phone problems. You never get texts, but okay. My phone works fine, but this is very exciting. It's going to cut down on e-waste.

It's going to be a really positive thing. even more exciting than the replaceable batteries for me. I don't know how it measures up in terms of like cutting down on e-waste and greenhouse gases and stuff. But the fact that the EU is going to start requiring all cell phones to use USBC charging cables next year, that is going to be the best thing. Right? Like we can all use the same cable to charge our phones to charge our laptops. it's just going to make everybody's life so much better. There should just be one cable.

Let's simplify. Like, there should just be one cable. USBC, we figured it out. We took a couple of decades with USB to really perfect the technology. We've got it now. It's a little cable. It can do everything. Yeah, one cable is going to be great.

Before we head out, I just wanted to thank everybody who listened to our Patreon episode on Jonah Hill, Kiki Palmer, and social media boundaries in controlling or abusive relationships. We have had such an overwhelming response, and it's not really the content that I make often, so I really appreciate everybody who listened, everybody who chimed in with their thoughts. Thank you so much for listening. Not to be somebody who can't stop having a bee in her bonnet, but that seems to be the theme right now. I have something else that I want to say.

It is not often that I will call in another podcast. or audio professional, but I feel I need to do that. That person is Jeff Lewis of Bravo flipping out fame. Now he has his own show on Sirius. I don't know if anybody caught Matt Rogers of my favorite podcast, Las Culturistas, on Jeff Lewis's Sirius show this week. Matt Rogers is on a podcast called Las Culturistas with Bowen Yang, who they are my, like, best friends in my mind.

It is my favorite podcast. We are eye-heart colleague. Boen Yang recently shared that he was temporarily stepping back from Las Culturistas for a little bit to deal with mental health issues, specifically depersonalization. Jeff Lewis had some, I think, pretty disrespectful, degrading things to say about Bowen Yang that I found really insulting as a fellow I-Heart podcaster. So I want to talk about it. So here's a little preview of our conversation.

I think that to trivialize and make fun of the way that a person is openly expressing, dealing with a mental health issue is not acceptable. I was personally insulted. I don't know why. I don't even know these people, but I was personally insulted. I guess as like a queer person of color who also makes a podcast on IHeart, I feel like it's really not okay. It's not funny.

It's not cute. I think it's very regressive. I think it sets us back to a place where people feel like they should feel stigma when they're going through something heavy or something tough. I am happy for the strides that we have made where people feel like they can openly say that they're dealing with something like depersonalization and that they need to take some time. We should be wanting to live in a society like that. Yeah, I just like really didn't appreciate it at all.

If you want to hear what I have to say, check out the Patreon at patreon.com slash tangoity. Yeah, Jeff Lewis, you owe Matt Rogers an apology. You owe Bowen Yang an apology and you owe all IHeart podcasters an apology as well for coming for our network's sweethearts. So yeah, take a listen if you want. I know that sounds cryptic, but yeah, I'll end it there. Mike, thanks so much for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me, as usual. And happy Tangoti birthday.

Oh, happy Tangoti birthday to you too. And thanks so much for listening. Honestly, doing this show is meant the world to me. and I can't believe that I get to do this every week with people that I care about, and I can't believe that I get to engage with all of you listeners, and it's really been a dream. I can't even begin to tell you how much it means that I get to tell these stories. So thank you for listening, as always.

If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our merch store at tangooty.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 tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today. episode at tangoity.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeartRadio and Unbossed creative.

Edited by Joey Pat. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Taray Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato 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 IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guide. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam?

It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Tolodano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was hungry. You just understood. That's how personal it got.

Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis come in too, he's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There are times when the mind becomes a difficult. place to live. This is David Eagleman with the Inner Cosmos podcast, and for Mental Health

Awareness Month, we'll talk with singer-songwriter Jewel about anxiety. I started living in my car, and then my car got stolen. I was having panic attacks. I was agoraphobic. This is a month of deeply personal and honest conversations about what happens when the brain goes off course. Listen to Inner Cosmos on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.