There Are No Girls on the Internet - Elon Musk’s Twitter is making the Israel - Hamas conflict worse

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

The changes Elon Musk has made to Twitter are making it impossible to sort out what’s happening in the Israel / Hamas conflict. From gutting the Trust & Safety team to making verification meaningless and paying for engagement, Elon Musk has systematically removed the few safeguards we had that were able to keep disinformation on the platform (somewhat) in check. Today, while the world is watching in terror as the Israeli-Hamas conflict unfolds and intensifies, Twitter is more awash in fake claims and fake news than ever before.    What is Hamas, and what’s happening in Israel and Gaza? A really simple guide: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67039975    Inside X’s Community Notes, fact-checks on known misinformation are delayed for days: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/elon-musk-x-fact-check-israel-misinformation-rcna119658    Unverified reports of ‘40 babies beheaded’ in Israel-Hamas war inflame social media: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/unverified-allegations-beheaded-babies-israel-hamas-war-inflame-social-rcna119902 Tensions had been building in Jerusalem for months, especially around the Al-Aqsa Mosque: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/4/israeli-settlers-storm-al-aqsa-mosque-complex-on-fifth-day-of-sukkot See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. By now you know that on October 7th, the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack on Israel.

Hamas fighters entered communities near the Gaza Strip, where a music festival was happening, killing hundreds of people and taking dozens of hostages. BBC published a really helpful breakdown of what's going on and how we got here that we'll put in the show notes. BBC writes that although the attack was, quote, unexpected, it came at a time of soaring Israeli-Palestinian tensions. This year has been the deadliest on-record for Palestinian. who live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which could have motivated Hamas to strike Israel with a spectacular attack.

Now, this whole situation is truly heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking to hear about the loss of life in Israel, and it's heartbreaking to hear about what's happening to the Palestinian people. According to Axios, more than 1,530 Palestinians and 1,200 Israelis have been killed. Thousands more have been injured since the latest fighting between Israel and Hamas began. Hamas is believed to be holding about 150 hostages in Gaza. The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said on Friday the number of Palestinians displaced in Gaza has risen to over 423,000 amid the intensified fighting.

And things seem to be getting worse quickly, according to Axios. The Israeli Ministry of Defense and the IDF notified the UN to evacuate its staff and to notify Palestinians living in northern Gaza that they should evacuate the southern part of the Gaza Strip in the next 20. 24 hours, which is really not something they could do. We're talking about over a million people. So, yeah, it is a bad situation that is escalating quickly. And making everything worse is that Twitter, which at one time was the best place to follow rapidly changing global news and to get updates from folks on the ground during complex situations like this one, is completely broken.

It's full of incidiary, inflammatory, and false claims. And to me, it really taps into so much. about what I know about disinformation, especially how disinformation functions to tap into emotional, tense situations like this one. Now, this obviously is not new, but what does feel new is just how bad things are now. Twitter, you know, is a platform that has always had its problems. I'll be the first person to tell you about all of them. But before Elon Musk, it used to be the best platform for following breaking news stories as they unfolded. But now, Twitter is simply not a place I can recommend people follow to get accurate information. Like, I honestly feel like I need to say that one more

time and really emphasize it. At this point, I think whatever you read on Twitter, especially whatever you read about this specific conflict between Hamas and Israel, needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt and really read with skepticism and critical thinking, because Twitter is simply no longer a platform where accurate information can be counted on. And yes, you know, all social media platforms are like this to a degree. When some, new diet fad or new diet tip pops up on TikTok, you should definitely be wary of just taking it at face value. We've always known that about information we get on social media. But what's going on with Twitter specifically is different.

As someone who studies disinformation and media, it is unlike anything I have ever seen, and I'm hearing the same thing from other folks in the disinformation space too. Like political scientist Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, wrote, quote, quote, the level of disinformation on Israel Hamas war being algorithmically promoted on Twitter is unlike anything I've ever been exposed to in my career as a political scientist. Justin Pendin, an open source intelligence researcher, wrote, for many reasons, this is the hardest time I've ever had covering a crisis on here. Credible links are now photos.

On the ground news outlets struggle to reach audiences without an expensive blue checkmark. Venophobic goons are boosted by the platform CEO. End times, folks. And that's really what I've been seeing while trying to cover this on Twitter. You know, trying to make heads or tales of what's going on via Twitter necessitates so far beyond what you would think of as the normal critical thinking that we should all be expected to have when we're engaging with content online. It is basically impossible to find out what's going on, make sense of it,

and find out what's true and what's not. It's like Elon Musk's Twitter policies have turned Twitter into a place where nobody can tell what is going on and what the truth is. And honestly, it seems like that is by design. I know that we joke about this a lot on the podcast, and I think it really comes from a place of, like, laugh to keep from crying. But this week was a really sobering reminder, at least for me, that this is real. The stakes are real. The stakes are very high.

And I really have to say something that might not sound like me, or like I usually sound on the podcast, which is that we are simply not prepared for how bad this is. We are simply not prepared for how much worse this could get. So there are a few specific new Twitter policies under Elon Musk that I think are responsible for where we are today. The first is Elon's pay-for-verification scheme, where folks pay $8 to get blue check marks. It obscures who is a credible person, and people who pay for verification get their content

algorithmically amplified on the platform. Next is the new monetization scheme where people can get paid for how much in fact. their tweets get. And then last is that legit news articles now just show up as pictures with no text, thus making them hard to get any context at all when scrolling by them. All of this has led to Twitter feeling like a place where you really cannot make heads or tales of anything, which is especially troubling when it comes to an emotionally charged, highly polarized, ongoing conflict, like the one that we're seeing now. So one of the biggest issues is that it's just

very difficult to verify what is being said on Twitter right now. In a crisis or a breaking news situation, the most important bit of digital hygiene that one can practice is not amplifying or spreading claims that are unverified, especially big claims that are sure to trigger an emotional response. It is a personal standard that I try to live by when I'm online, though it's often difficult just due to the nature of how social media platforms work. You know, I think Twitter is especially prone to making us want to move very quickly because the platform has historically moved very quickly. So it takes a little bit of like mindfulness and, I guess, deprogramming to make yourself move a little bit slower and actually take a few steps to verify whatever you're seeing before just quickly smashing that retweet button. But on Twitter right now, verifying claims before spreading them is near impossible. It used to be much easier. And that was one of the good things about having a legit verification program pre-Elon Musk.

Because if somebody had a blue checkmark, you could click on their profile and be reasonably sure they were who they were. said they were. You know, you click on a journalist account with a blue checkmark, at least, you know, hey, the person making this claim has been verified to work at XYZ news organization that probably has some kind of journalistic standards. If they tweet something that is wrong, they will probably correct it or have some kind of accountability around it. But now, anyone can buy a blue checkmark, which ensures that more of us will see their tweets, because people who buy blue checkmarks have their content algorithmically prioritized on this new version of Twitter. And even though we all had that campaign of de-legitimizing and, like, making fun of

people who bought blue checkmarks, I do still feel like we might have a holdover feeling of a blue checkmark indicating accuracy, especially in times of crisis, because in a crisis, we're all moving quickly just trying to quickly verify information. So it might take another moment or another additional layer of scrutiny for us to be like, wait, this blue checkmark is actually meaningless. I shouldn't just trust what this person is saying at face value. Just because they have to be. have the blue check mark. It's just another way that one of the very few garbails that we had to depend on has now been removed and how risky that is during times of crisis or confusion. So there are a few big claims that I saw about the attack on Israel that I was working to verify before amplifying.

But one that I want to focus on is one that you might have heard, which is that Hamas, quote, beheaded 40 infants. Kat Tenbarge and Melissa Chan over at NBC had a really good breakdown of trying to verify this claim. Their piece was published on Thursday. We're recording this on Friday morning. This is a developing situation, so whatever I'm about to say, things might change after we actually published this episode. So keep that in mind. NBC dug into where these viral claims about beheading babies came from and what we know about them now. They write, an IDF spokesperson told Business Insider on Tuesday that soldiers had found decapitated babies but said Wednesday that it would not investigate

or provide further evidence regarding the claim. Late Wednesday, an IDF spokesperson said on a video on Twitter that the IDF had relative confidence of the claims. But on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told CNN that babies and toddlers were found with their heads decapitated in southern Israel after Hamas' attack. But Thursday morning, an Israeli official told CNN, the government had not confirmed claims of the beheadings. A senior State Department official said Thursday morning, the agency was not on a position to confirm the beheading claims. Now, the NBCP suggests that the claim about the 40 babies being beheaded came from one news report, kind of being telephoned into

something else after it blew up on Twitter. Mark Owens Jones, an associate professor of Middle East Studies at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar, who studies misinformation, told NBC news that he found the source of the 40 beheaded babies allegations largely stemmed from one viral Israeli news broadcast clip from I-24 News that did not specifically refer to that allegation. Nicole Zedek, a correspondent for the privately owned Israeli news outlet I-24 News, said in the video that Israeli soldiers told her that they'd found, quote, babies, their heads cut off. The video has been viewed more than 11 million times on Twitter, according to its view counter, which might be inaccurate, because Twitter might be inflating their view counts.

That's a conversation for a different day. In another tweet, Zendek wrote that the soldiers told her that they believe, quote, 40 babies slash children were killed, not beheaded specifically. Mark Owen Jones said that somehow those two bits of information about a baby being found beheaded and 40 babies or children being killed were connected. So the story became 40 babies were beheaded. And in the British press today, about six or seven newspapers had it on their front pages. An IDF spokesperson, Dorian Spielman, told NBC News on Tuesday that he could not confirm I-24 News's report.

But this did not keep that claim from being repeated by President Biden, who said, quote, I never really thought I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children. But soon after the White House clarified that Biden was referring to reports from Israel about beheaded children and cited several media reports of beheadings. So why are these claims such a big deal? Because now they've kind of become part of how we understand what's happening, whether it's accurate or not. And they become part of the justification for escalation. And sort of just become the truth of the situation, whether or not it is grounded in fact.

NBC reported that on Wednesday, the phrase, did Hamas kill babies, saw the biggest increase in search interest on Google of anything related to the war, and that 40 babies beheaded claim had over 44 million impressions on Twitter. Now, these claims are obviously highly emotionally resonant and disturbing. It's the kind of specific detail that would get an emotional rise out of anyone. But right now, as of Friday morning, I cannot tell you whether this incredibly viral claim that is dominant. the conversation is actually true or not. It might be true, it might be false, it might be somewhere in the middle. And it strikes me that we ought to be able to verify a claim that 44 million different people engaged with. And like, I'm not even really sure how to describe this, but I have seen this vibe on Twitter where people are kind of pushing back against the idea that journalists would even need to or want to verify this claim before amplifying it.

kind of making it seem like verifying it is a way to minimize the horror of the situation. And I think that really shows the danger of making these kind of specific claims if they are not verified. Because ultimately, it makes the conversation about that specific claim, you know, that X amount of babies were killed in X specific horrific way. And it becomes about trying to find out if that specific claim is true or not, you know, tracing the origins, researching it, all of that. so that one specific big claim becomes a sticking point that kind of takes us away from the larger conversation. Because here's the thing, that situation is truly awful.

We don't need to add highly emotionally charged specific unsubstantiated claims to the conversation to understand that. And ultimately, I think that is the kind of climate that bad actors want, where it doesn't really matter what the truth is. It's how we get to a world where the truth and facts and the reality of what happened kind of don't matter. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.

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this podcast is for you to hear more. Listen to deeply well with Debbie Brown from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your. podcast. And we're back. So another kind of complex claim that I want to dig into that I saw on Twitter is that Black Lives Matter is celebrating the attack on Israel. So Black Lives Matter Chicago published a graphic depicting a Hamas militant in a parachute.

The militants used parachutes in the initial attack on October 7th. Obviously, the implication being that they were glorifying the attack. So I saw this tweet with my own eyes, so it is not in dispute that a Twitter account associated with Black Lives Matter Chicago did in fact tweet it out. But something that I know is that when people say Black Lives Matter as an entity, they could be referring to a few different things. You know, there is the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization with all of the nonprofit like paperwork and certifications

from the government like 990s that was founded by Patrice Cullors, Opel Tometti, and Alicia Garza. There's Black Lives Matter state affiliates. There's people or groups who are sort of loosely associated with Black Lives Matter, and then there's Black Lives Matter kind of the movement, you know, where you may have somebody who has no official affiliation with any one organized group, but is in solidarity with racial justice sort of generally. And sort of as a side note, one of the ways that we've kind of gotten here is through this vibe where anybody who was protesting against racial justice was being called,

quote, a Black Lives Matter activist, regardless of their affiliation. with the actual organization, which just kind of created this nebulous idea that anybody who was black and against racial justice was somehow affiliated with Black Lives Matter, even if they weren't. So a Twitter account called Black Lives Matter Chicago did, in fact, tweet out this image with a picture of a Hamas fighter in a parachute, kind of glorifying the attack. And lots of people, you know, even elected officials, were condemning it, saying, oh, Black Lives Matter is despicable for celebrating this attack on Israel, and specifically saying things like, oh, well, this is why I never supported Black Lives Matter or, you know, Black Lives Matter is anti-Semitic, all of that.

But on October 10th, the Black Lives Matter Global Network, which is the Black Lives Matter nonprofit organization, basically said, we have no affiliation with that account. The statement reads, it has come to our attention that a number of right-wing media outlets and far-right moguls have been falsely claiming that Black Lives Matter organization issued those statements and then falsely claiming that Black Lives Matter showed up for Hamas in yet another effort to spread anti-BLM propaganda based on screenshots from fake independent Twitter and Instagram BLM branded accounts on social media. Please be advised the actual Black Lives Matter organization, Black Lives Matter Global Network LLC, has not issued any statement in regard to the Israel-Palestine

conflict at all, and there are no plans to. BLM Chicago is an independently run Twitter account that is run by one individual and does not have any association with our company at all, nor is that Twitter account run by our organization. So any statement from any BLM-branded account on social media claiming to support Palestine did not come from our organization. Since day one of this war, high-profile right-wing media moguls on Twitter have been falsely trying to blame, link BLM and black people to this Israel-Palestine conflict. There are literally over 100 different BLM-branded Twitter and Instagram accounts.

People and independent online city chapters use our logo and brand for clout and to get more attention to their pages. We have no legal ability to stop this. We have previously consulted with lawyers to stop others from using the Black Lives Matter branding and logo so that we cannot be blamed in the event one of these accounts says something controversial, but have not been successful in shutting down these fake BLM accounts. So literally anyone can create a Black Lives Matter branded account. No social media account from the actual Black Lives Matter or

organization will be issuing support or any press release regards to the Israel-Palestine conflict at all. So basically, Black Lives Matter of the organization is saying, this has nothing to do with us. This is just one person acting independently. The Black Lives Matter Chicago account spent the last few days after posting the image defending it until eventually they deleted it saying, yesterday we sent out messages that we aren't proud of. We stand with Palestine and the people who will do what they must to live free. Our hearts are with the grieving mothers, those rescuing babies from rubble, who are in danger of being wiped out completely. But the damage is already done. People seized on that one post and used it to paint all of Black Lives Matter or anyone even loosely affiliated with it

or really anybody black as endorsing that post. And of course, this was just used to further stoke existing divisions. Lots of people were using that one social media post as a justification for where they don't support racial justice. People tweeted that they were made to feel like they had to support Black Lives Matter back in 2020 and making it seem like now Black Lives Matter and really Black people in general were endorsing what happened in Israel. Bad actors, like the mostly peaceful meme account on Twitter, which is verified and has almost half a million followers, replied to Black Lives Matter Chicago's post saying, at mentioning Chick-fil-A asking, do you approve this message with a link showing that Chick-fil-A donated money to black nonprofits.

Did Chick-Fillet donate money to Black Lives Matter or any Black Lives Matter affiliated organization? No, they didn't. If you go to Chick-Fillet's website about the donations, the recipients are organizations like the Precious Lamb School, which supports babies who are experiencing homelessness. But the implication is that they are somehow associated with Black Lives Matter just because they are a black nonprofit. And thus, they are responsible or need to be able to be a Black nonprofit. And thus, they are responsible or need to answer for this one person's tweet, and that Chick-fil-A also needs to answer for it too, because of their, quote, association with them.

Now, this is something that we need to be very, very aware of. Bad actors will always use moments like these to try to exploit and inflame our very real existing tensions. Bad actors do not want us to be in solidarity with each other. They want us to be divided. They will exploit and inflame those divisions because when we're operating from a place of solidarity with each other, we are much less likely to fall for their lies.

So now more than ever, we all need to be operating from a place of empathy and genuine solidarity with each other. That is the only way to confront this. So there's unverified or difficult to verify claims, but we also have the issue of just fake or intentionally misrepresented claims flooding Twitter right now. On Saturday, a doctored White House news release posted online falsely claimed that Biden had authorized $8 billion in emergency aid to Israel.

The fact that it was fake did not stop it from being posted across the internet and rising to the top of Google's search results. NBC reported that one of the first results on Google is a false article from the Mumbai-based publication First Post. The article appeared on the top stories module on Google alongside articles by Axios and the Wall Street Journal. Even though it's fake, it did not stop several news outlets from writing it up as if it were a real story,

and then those news reports showing up with high prominence on Google search. Verified accounts on Twitter were then sharing this fake White House report. And keep in mind, verified accounts are eligible for Twitter's revenue sharing scheme, if Elon pays up, that is. And that means they can make money off of spreading lies and are incentivized to post things that get lots of eyeballs. Post-sharing the fake document in its claims, many of which are still up,

have accrued hundreds of thousands of views on the platform. We've also seen several instances of old videos from older conflicts or videos that are not even related to the conflict at all being repurposed on Twitter with claims that they are from the current conflict. Shahan Sardar Azade, journalist for BBC Verify, has even found video game footage being posted on Twitter purporting to show the conflict. Think about that. You know, video games are designed specifically to look engaging in cinematic.

So, of course, when those videos are put on Twitter, they're going to rack up engagement and spread far and wide. It's basically an engagement farm. These accounts are incentivized by Twitter's current monetization program to tell these outlandish lies because they know they can make money from 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, Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that 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 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.

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Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. Hey, I'm Jared Adano. You might know me as that loud guy who yells out, help on the internet. Help! Somebody! Please! But there's so much more to me than me.

I'm an actor. I'm a comedian. And recently, I've become quite the helper myself. And on my new podcast, Hope from a Hippocrat, I'll be changing lives, helping people in need with my sage advice and thoughtful solutions. Sike, I'm a comedian. I'm not qualified to give good advice. Join me and my comedian friends as we riff, rant, recommend some of the most legally dubious advice known to man. If I'm calling you, even if you're on your phone, let it ring twice. One ring is too scary.

Oh, cream of chicken suit. Hey, cream. Cream and chicken soup. This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrite as part of the Mike Coutura Podcast Network available on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. So as we've talked about, a lot of the features that would help curb the spread of inaccurate information on Twitter,

Elon has either gotten rid of or really scaled back. Instead, he has promoted the Community Notes program, where people can add notes to post to give more context. So how's that going? Well, as NBC's Ben Goggin reports, not well. The system's community notes relies on approved volunteers to suggest notes to be appended to posts. Those posts are then voted on by other volunteers

and eventually published after they reach a certain threshold of helpful votes from people with different points of view, according to Twitter. This is just a really ineffective way to fact-check things. And basically, it sounds like there is just too much inaccurate information on Twitter right now that the community notes program just cannot keep up. NBC looked at two viral claims related to the conflict. The doctorate press released saying that Biden had approved billions in aid and a debunked claim that an Orthodox church in Gaza was destroyed. Only 8% of 120 posts related to those stories

had published community notes, while 26% had unpublished notes from volunteers that had yet to be approved. About two-thirds of the top post NBC News reviewed had no proposed or published community notes on them. So just debunked false information with no fact check or note whatsoever on Twitter to be viewed, amplified, spread, and monetized. Kim Pekazio, a community notes volunteer, wrote on Instagram's threads, all weekend we were furiously vetting, writing, and approving community notes on hundreds of posts, which were demonstrably fake news. It took two plus days for the backroom to press whatever button to finally make all of our warnings publicly viewable.

By that time, you know the rest of that sentence. Pekazio told NBC News that she ends up just tweeting out proposed community notes herself in response to misinformation out of total frustration. Which I completely understand that frustration because this system does not work. And it seems like Twitter has kind of realized that it's not working. According to a post from at Community Notes on October 3rd, Twitter wrote,

Starting today, notes will appear on average of 1.5 hours faster, and as much as 3.5 hours faster in some cases. Twitter's new maybe CEO, Linda Yaccarino added, Community Notes now appear more quickly on X. They're a vital tool for adding contacts and combating potential misinformation, become part of this important community. And I just find it gross that she is talking about this, like it's some cool new bell or whistle that people should be excited about,

as opposed to an obviously ineffective way to approach what should be a standard infrastructure of how a platform as important as Twitter should be responsibly run. Because here's the thing, Twitter should not be depending on a crew of frustrated volunteers to ensure that false information that could actually put people's lives in danger is not being amplified and monetized on the platform they run. You know, these people are volunteers. not even being paid. And even Elon Musk seemed to see this as an issue. He tweeted, as always, please try to stay as close to the truth as possible, even for stuff you don't like. But that was after

he himself was telling his 44 million followers to follow accounts known for amplifying lies in anti-Semitism. Must suggested that folks follow war monitors and sent defender, quote, for following the war in real time. But both of these accounts spread a false claim that there had been an explosion near the White House back in May. And the war monitors account that Elon suggested folks follow has a history of posting anti-Semitic comments on Twitter. The account replied to a post from Kanye West during his anti-Semitic meltdown, adding, quote, the overwhelming majority of people in the media and banks are Zionists,

while telling another Twitter user in June to go worship a Jew, little bro. Now, Musk did eventually delete that post, suggesting that people follow those two accounts for news about the conflict, but he did. did so after it was up for three hours and viewed by 11 million people. So to be clear, I think this is particularly bad on Twitter right now. And I'm not alone. Business Insider spoke to Sandra Vanderlinden, a professor at the University of Cambridge, and author of foolproof why misinformation infects our minds and how to build immunity,

who said, I would be fairly confident to say that a lot of what we're seeing right now is a direct result of the policy changes that were implemented by Musk. Fanderlandon said that Musk's early changes to the platform, including gutting the trust and safety team, changing the verification process, and introducing monetized content, are not only allowing, but also motivating the spread of misinformation on the platform. The fact that people with verified accounts can monetize their content means they have the wrong incentive, he said. They're incentivized to spread content that's going to get engagement, clicks, and ultimately make them money. Whatever polarizing images they can find, whether it's real or fake, is going to elicit.

hit clicks, which I think is part of how we got to where we are today. Now, there might be a silver lining because a change might be coming. EU commissioner theory Breton served Musk and other social media platforms with a letter, giving them 24 hours to comply with our request for information about how Twitter is following EU's Digital Services Act, which has very strict rules about how platform handle inaccurate information and material from extremist groups. And of course, because it's Elon Musk we're talking about. Musk basically tried to debate theory Brenton into a public fight demanding that the EU publicly posts the violations that Twitter is responsible for, which like, give me a break. Like, you can just look with your eyes and

see the violations that Twitter is responsible for, like anybody who has been on Twitter at all the last week could probably tell you, or you could just listen to this podcast. So why does any of this matter? Well, Twitter has historically been a platform where elected officials and policy and newsmakers spend a lot of time. These are the folks who are getting a lot of their information from Twitter. So if it's full of emotionally charged inaccurate information that is impossible to verify, that's really not good. And when you add in things like AI generated deep fake images, I think it's only going to get worse. And this is one of the reasons why our digital ecosystem just feels so irreparably broken. We have a real problem if one billionaire can single-handedly buy

one of our most important platforms for information and not just make it useless, but dangerous. So what can we do in the meantime? Well, I will repeat this until the cows come home. Twitter is not your friend right now. Do not take anything that you see on Twitter right now at face value, especially if you do not have an hour to spend

doing background research into whatever claim you're seeing there. Now, to be clear, that is not right. That should not be the statement. everyday people should not have to do that level of research while they're scrolling their morning coffee just to verify what they're seeing. We deserve a digital media landscape that you can trust within reason. We shouldn't have to do any of this. We deserve a better platform. But until then, it is so important that all of us really understand how bad Twitter has gotten and act accordingly. look to trusted news sources for information about the conflict, beyond Twitter, professional

journalists at established outlets that have standards. And while you should always be thinking critically about everything that you read, in general, you can usually have confidence that a big established media outlet or newspaper is going to verify facts before printing them. And the last thing I'll leave you with is just the importance of all of us leading with empathy right now. You know, people are suffering. People are scared.

are mourning and things are likely about to get worse. Bad actors, they are counting on us giving into that fear, that anxiety, that distrust, and that chaos, and really being reactionary. Those are perfect conditions for people who are interested in spreading lies and chaos. And the best thing we can do in this climate is have empathy for each other and move in genuine solidarity with one another, because we really are stronger together and that. That's the only way that we're going to make it through. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi?

You can reach us at hello at tangoady.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.

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