There Are No Girls on the Internet - Elon Musk’s very weird night on Twitter- STUFF MOM NEVER TOLD YOU

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

Last night Elon Musk banned a bunch of journalists, stormed out of a Twitter Spaces when questioned about it, then (maybe?) turned off the Spaces feature for everyone! Given how weird his tenure has been, let’s revisit how we got here with my friends at Stuff Mom Never Told You. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. It has been a really weird time on Twitter lately. So last night, Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, suspended journalists from big-name publications like CNN and the New York Times for doing pretty straightforward reporting about the banning of a Twitter account that tracked Elon Musk's personal jet using publicly available FAA data. Then Musk joined a Twitter space, which is basically Twitter's audio chat function, to talk about this.

And when BuzzFeed's tech reporter, Katie Notopoulos, grilled him about it and started really asking him some questions about his moderation inconsistencies, Elon abruptly left the spaces. And then Spaces was basically shut down for everyone globally. Now, Elon said this was just a glitch, but I don't know. That timing just seems awful suspicious to me. You know, when Elon first bought Twitter, he went on and on about how he wanted to make it this hands. haven for free speech, even going so far as saying that he had not banned the Twitter account that tweets about the location of his private jet. That is until he did ban that account. And I think if reporters and journalists are going to be retaliated against for doing pretty

straightforward reporting about him, it sends a pretty clear signal about what he actually thinks about protecting speech. And this all comes as Musk is also banning links to the Twitter alternative Mastodon and flagging any links to Mastodon as containing malware. Honestly, it was wild. So given all of this, I thought it might make sense to remember how we got here. So I joined my friends Annie and Samantha over at the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You to talk through the origin stories of Elon Musk buying Twitter. And I'm curious, are you going to stay on Twitter? Are you never on Twitter? Are you looking for alternatives? I'm definitely shopping around where I might wind up. Who knows? So let me know if you have platforms that you're liking or want to talk through any of them. Hey, this is Annie. And Samantha. And welcome to Seth.

Never Told You, production of IHeart Radio. And today we are once again thrilled to be joined by the fabulous, fantastic Bridget Todd. Welcome, Bridget. We're always so happy to have you. Thank you for having me. I was so happy to be back here. And happy late Thanksgiving. Yes, to you too.

Okay. So Bridget, Samantha and I, the topic you brought today, we're very excited. You brought it because we have a lot of questions. But also, we've been meaning to talk about it, but we were hopeful that you. you would talk about it. Oh, yes. I feel like you have a lot more knowledge and expertise in this arena. So I'm so excited that this is what we're talking about today, which is Twitter.

Yeah, and you know what? The last time you were on, we actually talked about the fact that it was the beginning of the end, kind of had them that moment, because at that moment we knew that Elon Musk was coming on. We're like, oh, no, here we go. So definitely, as we were watching this, I feel like it was just yesterday that we mentioned this. So I'm sure you've got so much more in-depth information from the beginning of to today. Yeah. I mean, it's so weird.

And just to level set, like, we, it does feel like we're in a little bit of unprecedented waters. You know, I have a lot of expertise when it comes to technology and platforms and how they run and how they're moderated. But this has never really happened before since I have been working in. in the internet spaces, I have never seen a billionaire by one of our largest digital communications platforms and change the culture

pretty much single-handedly overnight. So I am going to try to bring whatever expertise I have and answer whatever questions folks have, but I don't know a lot because this is just like a very new, weird experience. I am learning right alongside all of y'all and figuring out what's happening in real time.

So it's kind of exciting, kind of interesting, but also TBD. Yeah, which I guess we should say we're recording this on November 28th because things are changing rapidly. Things are changing rapidly. A lot has happened, as you said, Samantha, since Elon Musk came on board.

So, yeah, we'll see. I think there's a lot more to come. Yeah, well, that's a great place to start. You know, just the rapid changing of the situation. I initially started putting together an outline a couple of, I think like last week. And mostly all that stuff that I wrote has now been changed.

So hopefully this will be not totally out of date at the time folks hear it. I have to ask, before we even start, have you sensed that your relationship with Twitter has changed since Elon Musk took over? Yeah, I would say so. Because one of the biggest things that I've experienced with Twitter

since Elon Musk has been either kind of a sense of uncertainty or confusion or people will contact me and be like, I'm not sure what's going on, so you can find me on this other social platform or whatever. And then I have had several experiences where I went to check on something somebody on Twitter is doing that I follow,

and their account is not there anymore, or it's deactivated. And kind of just a general, like, I'm not sure if this is, coming from who I think this is coming from, I guess, like a loss of trust. Like, I'm not sure what is going on and if I can trust anything that is happening. Right. I mean, essentially, I think that's the biggest thing is I don't know if this is a real account to someone at all. The amount of ads I've been getting, have gotten up, the same three ads, but I'm like, oh my God, it is constantly there, which we all know why. But, and I mean,

because they're losing so much money. But I think one of the big things is, like, I will see parody accounts, which because of the verification system has completely gone out the window that I don't know if it's real. I think there was one at one point that I was like, oh, that one is real. Oh, that's real? Ooh, like, that's kind of one of those moments, as well as the amount of misinformation has grown to me.

At least I knew if it was coming from this specific account or type of account what was happening. Now I don't know. I'm like, okay, wait, did that actually happen? And I don't know anymore if it's a lot. real or not. Like, so many things that were aimed specifically at Elon Musk. I'm like, is that, is that real? Is that really happening? Did he do these things? Or are people saying this in order to fearmonger or make it even bigger? And then he comes back and say, just kidding, that didn't

happen. Like, I don't, I don't know at this point who to trust and who not to trust. Of course, on our stuff mom never told you account, we, the followers just dropped because so many people have left, I'm assuming maybe they just all were thoughts. I don't know. But like the amount of people that had left has like increased in the fact that that's impacted our numbers for a while. Not that we, we don't do too much because I am still fearful of writing anything on any of the social media accounts at all. But it's interesting to see how that is fluctuating as well. The people who I again trusted losing their verification because they didn't pay for it, so therefore I don't know if that's them anymore. There's so much like I don't quite know

what's reality, what's fake. And then the. amount of disinformation and people that I'm trying, like, have been banned or back on that I'm like, oh, God, why? So it's really sad because Twitter has been something that I used to, like, let me know what's going on. It's faster than any other news platforms and seeing, like, the truth of what's actually happening, whether it's information about wrongful deaths or protests around the country or around the world. So there's a lot that I'm like, ah, I'm kind of lost, but also at the same time, entertained because it's going in flames. Yes, a thousand times yes. I have seen all the things that y'all have seen and felt and sensed.

I have also seen and felt and sensed. And for folks listening, even if you're someone who doesn't use Twitter, like the majority of Americans, or like we'll never use Twitter or not a social media person, I am confident that I can help you see why this is a big deal for all of us, not just folks who are on Twitter, because I do think that a lot of the reporting on this is like, oh, well, this matters because it's Twitter and everybody uses Twitter. Not so, right? Like, when you compare Twitter to other social media platforms like Facebook, only a small amount

of Americans used or are on Twitter actively, and even less Americans actually tweet and participate there. So we're talking about a small amount of folks. However, the reason why this actually, like, kind of matters is because the people who are active on Twitter are kind of like, I guess you could sort of call them like the taste makers, right? like journalists, researchers, activists, organizers, people who are really able to shape conversation and shape our public discourse and sort of have an influence on what becomes part of our public kind of conversation. And so Samantha, exactly like what you were saying, when people need quick, up-to-date, hopefully somewhat reliable information, they're not going to Instagram, they're not going to Tumblr, they're not going to Snapchat or TikTok. They're going to Twitter.

There's a reason why when there's a mass shooting on a campus, people can follow updates quickly on Twitter. And so Twitter is not just this place where public discourse is shaped. It is also a place where you just go to get easy, quick access to hopefully reliable information about stuff happening near you. And so you can sort of get a sense of why this is a platform where these kind of power struggles happen, right? Like, it's not surprising that, like, a person like Donald Trump, Twitter was his platform to jour because you can have such outsized influence in getting a message out there quickly and effectively. And I just don't think that we have another social media platform that mimics that so effectively.

Like, Facebook moves a little bit slower, even though more people are there. Instagram, the timeline moves in such an algorithmic way that you only, it's like, if I posted something that was really important, it's not even a guarantee that everybody who follows me would see it, right? And so Twitter is such a fast-moving platform. And I think it's one of the reasons why we're seeing it spring up as a battleground in this, like, highly polarized kind of culture war. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy,

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

Sports slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to SportsSlic on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slicelife-Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. I'm really glad that you're here to make this case because we recently, it was recently Thanksgiving and I went home. And a lot of people were kind of, you know, laughing about Elon Musk and Twitter. And there are definitely some funny aspects of it, but they were all like, well, I hate Twitter. So I'm not sad to see it go. And I was like, well, I have a lot of problems with Twitter too.

But it's important. It does matter. And it is a shame that we're seeing this happen. And there have been things, examples of stuff that took off on Twitter and then fundamentally changed our public discourse, whether you use it or not. Totally, right? And so this is the drum I will always beat. Even if you are not someone who is actively using Twitter,

you have felt the cultural impact of movements and conversations that started on Twitter. You know, if you think about the way that, people who traditionally have not necessarily had a lot of access to power and influence, they can use Twitter to build up that power and that voice and that influence. I could give you a million different examples of concrete changes that were all aware of and probably all felt directly that started on Twitter. You know, it's not surprising to me that Twitter has been used as this way to really hold power structures accountable.

When Tarana Burke started the Me Too movement, you know, she had this movement that she had started for black and brown women and girls who were survivors of sexual violence. And when actor Alyssa Milano tweeted about it on Twitter using the hashtag Me Too, that's when it really took off. And so you see the power that, you know, generating conversations on the platform can have. If not for Twitter, I don't know that we would have the Me Too movement the way that it was. I don't know that, you know, all of these different powerful abusers would be eventually held to account.

and that we would be having a national conversation about things like gender and sexual violence. Another great example is a friend of mine, April Rain, she tweeted about how white the Oscars nominees were and tweeted, Oscar's so white. It completely took off. People were tweeting things like, Oscar's so white, it touches my hair without asking.

Oscar's so white, it, you know, da-da-da-da. And because of that conversation, it fundamentally changed how the Oscars were that year. Spike Lee won an Oscar and he said that he doesn't think it would ever have happened without that campaign, which started as a tweet, a hashtag on Twitter. Look at the way that it was instrumental during Arab Spring, right? And so like there are so many ways and times where particularly outside of the U.S., Twitter has been used to document, you know, abuse of power and hold that power to account. And I think even if you're not on Twitter, you have probably felt or seen some kind of the impact of some kind of movement

that was started on Twitter. You know, and as you're talking about these movements, which are so huge, I had to go back to the original idea of, like, our lingo changed completely with what is now the hashtag as well, because that actually originated in 2007, according to one of the resources that I looked at on Twitter. Like, it literally changed how we looked at so much of our conversations online. It brought up a way for us to pass messages and bring up big issues. with what I would have known as Pound Sign,

which the Zillennials don't know what that is, and that's fine. I'm fine with it. I'm okay with it. But that in itself has begun a new conversation. The zeitgeist in itself had changed because of things like that on Twitter. And it's such a big, significant thing that we don't often think about in knowing that before 2007, that didn't exist. And what a powerful tool it is across all social media. Oh, my God. Sam, this is my, you're, I will keep my comments,

as brief as I can. This is like my favorite topic. The way that things that originated on different social media platforms, in this case, Twitter, have changed, fundamentally changed the way that we communicate digitally is fascinating to me. I don't remember when hashtags were first rolled out. And previously, there wasn't really an easy way to quickly figure out what everybody was saying on a particular topic.

And I still remember I was working as a social media manager at the time when the conversation was like, oh, well, should we use hashtags on Facebook? Like, does it work that way? And, you know, people still use hashtag. If you go to TikTok, like one of the biggest, fastest growing platforms out there, when you scroll down to the bottom of a TikTok, people tend to include hashtags. And so it's interesting how this mode of, this particular mode of digital communication did not just stay on Twitter,

how it really shaped other platforms as well. And I think has become a pivotal way in terms of, like, how we just think about the way that discourse works online. I think before the hashtag, we didn't think about it as like, I should be able to pull up a hashtag. and get a sense of like the diversity of thought and conversation on any one topic. And now that is kind of integral to the way that we understand communication online. This is something I could nerd out on for hours. It's probably not interesting to anybody but me. But I find it fascinating.

Yes. I found it fascinating. To be fair, again, I was late in coming to social media. I still am late in understanding social media to a certain extent. So when I first started, I was like, what are these hashtags? I'm just going to write sentences on there. And it made no sense. But I'm like, that makes it blue.

You can click on it. I'm going to do it, which is a whole different conversation. It's subtle. Look, technology, which is, again, how I react to most things. But going back to where we started, because finding something that's coming to this point, which seems apocalyptic for a social media brand, but one of the oldest one that has been out there that still stood the test of time outside of Facebook, it's interesting to see what is happening because it does feel like we have lived this extension of a life of a creation of something, completely different. So with all that, how do we get here? How did this happen? Great question. So this is something, again, that I wish I saw more of in the reporting.

People kind of gloss over it. I think it's actually a really big part of the story, and it's important to not just gloss over it, which is that, you know, Musk's decision to buy Twitter, per his own statements, was rooted in transphobia. He'd been talking about buying Twitter for a while. And in 2018, Twitter added intentionally misgendering people to their list a prohibited behavior on the platform. So you can't like, as a means of trying to harm someone, you cannot misgender them. So in the right wing, I guess you'll call it like a parody site. Even that doesn't seem quite correct. But we'll call it a parody website for the sake of conversation. The Babylon B, they violated this rule when they tweeted a transphobic

joke in scare quotes that Dr. Rachel Levine who is the first openly trans four-star officer in the military and currently the Assistant Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, they made a crack on Twitter that she had been named, quote,

man of the year, right? And so a lot of the report, first of all, it's wild to me how like that level of humor has not evolved since that movie Ace Ventura Pet Detective. Like we're still in 19, Like, oh my God, like, get a new joke, people.

It is so tired. But a lot of people reported that the Babylon B was banned from Twitter for this tweet, but that technically is not correct. Twitter said that the Babylon B could have their account back in 12 hours, but that that countdown could not start until they deleted that particular tweet. They refused to delete that tweet, so they were unable to tweet. So they weren't technically banned. They kind of decided, like, we are not, we are.

going to die on this hill of this tweet. And if we can't tweet, that's fine. So at this time, Musk was already the biggest shareholder of Twitter and he had been invited to join its board of directors. In April, Elon offered to buy Twitter and he said that it was specifically that Babylon B situation that prompted him to do so. That like that was the final straw watching the Babylon B not be able to tweet because they refused to delete this joke. The Babylon B confirmed this to the Washington Times saying, we have had some communication with Musk. He wanted to confirm that we had in fact been suspended from Twitter. He reached out to us before he publicly asked his followers

if they think Twitter rigorously adheres to the principle of free expression. He even mused on that call that he might need to buy Twitter. So to me, it's like pretty disappointing and also very important that Elon Musk's, you know, tenure at Twitter really starts with his desire to protect transphobic jokes, in scare quotes, as protected speech and free speech. on the platform. I think that's terribly disappointing. And I think it's related to the ways that we're seeing him, you know, at the rain at Twitter right now. So disappointed because from what I do understand, he does have a trans child. And like,

obviously the relationship is not good. They disowned Musk as their parental figure. But it seems like just an attack on them. If I were, if I were them, I would think this as well. But it was just so disappointing to know that you could really. care so little of your own child that you're willing to go into $44 billion in debt to go for this. Yes, it is. I mean, this is a weird aside, but like I actually spend a lot of time thinking about Elon Musk's, like, personal motivations. I obviously don't know Elon Musk, why can't like, it's all speculation, but I do think there's something about it. like I can't imagine having a trans child

and going out of my way and spending a lot of money to protect transphobic rhetoric. I cannot imagine it. It's difficult for me to put myself in that position, I guess I'll say. I also think that it really reflects the ways that particularly trans people

have unfortunately kind of become this like, like just the existence of trans people trying to live their lives has become this like flash point. On the one hand, it is surprising to me that he would double down on this having a trans child. On the other hand, I do see the ways that just like the existence of trans people trying to live their lives has become this incredibly like politicized hot button issue. It certainly should not be. But on the other hand, it's not terribly surprising to me that his bid at Twitter starts with that transphobia. That that's where it begins. Right. It makes me want to have him fail, but that's just me. But, you know, with that, it's kind of odd that he also continues to talk about free speech.

I think it's really, really almost ironic. He talks about free speech. And several of the people that I've seen banned are the people that said something about him. Not necessarily anything completely offhand. It was just like, hey, he did this and this is a bad thing. And he's like, banned him. Exactly. Okay, so let's get into this because Elon Musk, he has called himself a free speech absolutist.

he says in a TED talk, like, free speech is the ability for someone you don't like to say something you don't like, right? And so you might be thinking, oh, well, he would probably be working to foster a climate of open discourse and discussion at Twitter now that he's in charge. But you might, you would be wrong if you thought that, right? Because that's not what the vibe has been so far. And so first of all, I have to say, like, obviously when we talk about free speech, really what we are talking about is whether governments can punish people or prevent people. from saying what they want to say, right? And so the conversation around free speech has gotten so muddled about like,

oh, well, this is censorship. It's like, oh, not really. And there are absolutely free speech issues happening in the United States right now. Like, what do you look at, like, anti-CRT bills or, like, don't say gay legislation? Like, we are in a climate where free expression is under attack

specifically from government. So, like, that needs to be clear. But for the sake of conversation, let's talk about free speech as sort of generally fostering a climate of open discourse and debate. If we use that definition of free speech, you might be thinking, like, has Elon Musk worked to create that kind of environment since taking over? Also, no. He has not done that. First, he got started by overseeing a mass exodus of staff at Twitter. Some employees resigned, which I totally get. I would have been out the door. Honestly, there's not a lot of jobs that if I was offered three months,

pay to not do it, that I would keep doing it. It's not, it's not a lot of jobs where that would be the case for me. So I would totally have been on the resignation train. So I totally get that. And some workers were fired. And specifically, they were fired for things that they said about Elon Musk. Engineer Eric Froenhofer was fired very publicly for going against Musk. And it happened to write on Twitter. Eric worked on Twitter's apps for Android. And after Musk tweeted that Twitter for Android had been really slow, the engineer retweeted Musk said, saying that Musk, his technical understanding of Twitter's app was wrong, which I can kind of buy because Elon Musk, it's famously not an engineer. So perhaps might not totally know what he's

talking about when talking to an actual engineer who works on the thing that he is criticizing. And so Musk replied and asked this engineer to elaborate before writing, Twitter is super slow on Android. What have you done to fix that? They kind of go back and forth. And then somebody else comes in and is like, hey, engineer, why don't you raise these issues privately with your boss. And the engineer replies, maybe he should ask questions privately. Maybe use Slack or email.

Elon then weighs it and says, oh, that engineer has been fired. So I find this very interesting because a lot of people said, like, oh, if you publicly disagree with your boss, you know, you can, like, pretty much anywhere,

you would probably be fired. And I guess that's a fair point. Like in most workplaces, you can't, like, get on Twitter and call out your boss. totally get that. But I think the larger point is like, it seems directly at odds with somebody who has called himself a free speech absolutist. And I also think that that engineer has a really good point. Like, why is it that Elon as a boss is allowed to publicly misrepresent his work

on Twitter? And that the staffer, he is the one who has to stay quiet and only set the record straight, like in private. Like if Elon Musk, like Elon Musk made it public by tweeting about it. Why is it that when his boss publicly, I think, cramps on his work, he is not able to publicly reply. I kind of totally get why he did this, even if for most people they might think, like, oh, that's clearly a fireable offense. Yes, yes, agreed.

And also, there's been a lot of stories that, like, even privately, that might not have protected him. Exactly. So even if this engineer had brought it up privately via Slack or email, here probably, I think, probably still would have been fired because it's not just staff who have publicly gone against Musk who have been terminated. ABC reported that dozens of other staffers said that they were fired for raising criticisms on internal slack messages or email. And that kind of tracks with the kind of climate that Musk has run at his other companies.

I don't know how he's been able to dub himself as a free speech warrior because the record of the climate at his other organizations just does not reflect that. Like at SpaceX, for instance, former staff filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board saying that they were retaliated against for writing and organizing a letter that was critical of the company when Musk had been accused of sexual harassment. And so they wrote this letter saying Elon Musk's behavior, the sexual harassment, his like crass jokes on Twitter is making us look bad and it needs to stop. And they say, and they went to the NLRB saying this, that they were unfairly retaliated against for that. And so I don't know, I have a hard time believing that Elon Musk is this champion for free speech when those are the kinds of climates that he has fostered at his organizations. There's so much to all of that, including the fact when we often hear people complaining about free speech, especially today, as you were talking about the anti-CRT stuff, as well as so many other things, don't say gay bills,

that it seems very much coming from the conservative side because they feel like, since they think they don't have the same privilege as they did two years ago that they're now being imposed on and therefore no longer having free speech. And we also know that in Tesla, there was a lawsuit where many black employees talked about the racism within that company, including him, including being called inward and all of that. And I'm thinking that's what he's talking about when there's limiting free speech. Like, okay, white people, you are now allowed to say that here because that's free speech. and not crediting the fact that that's, you know, like, it's racist. That's not an issue of free speech. That's about racism.

But that's what I'm seeing as a pattern as well as the fact that the people who have been defending Musk, like the dude, don't be saying this to your boss, are absolutely to the level. Like, how close in ratio are we to the in-cell link here? Ooh, you, I have so much to say about this. I have so much to say about this. So, one, I hadn't really thought about it. at this before, but you really put, you really laid this out nicely. I do think that the way that people talk about content moderation on a platform like Twitter does kind of connect to conversations

about like, oh, because I can't say what I used to be able to say 20 years ago without repercussions, therefore I am being censored. Therefore, the only way to protect free speech is to allow specifically like racist or transphobic content on these platforms. Like I hadn't really thought about it in that direct of a line, but I think that you're absolutely on to something that the reason why so many people, when they talk about like free speech, free speech, they're not talking about the free speech rights of like, you know, Palestinian activists or, you know, sex workers,

or any of the other marginalized people who we know actually are the recipients of crackdowns on their speech. They're talking about the right to say the N-word. And to your point about Tesla, I would implore folks to read up on this because some of the allegations are, it's not just like, oh, this person made off-color jokes, that allegations, some of which are against Musk himself and the kind of climate that he ran are sickening, right? Like one of them that sticks in my mind is that at the Tesla factory, one of the lawsuits

alleges that when Elon Musk would come to a tour of the factories, that staffers knew that Elon Musk had a problem of seeing black staffers on the floor. And so on days when he was coming, they would have the black staffers like essentially hide because that they knew that like it would be a better walkthrough for Musk if Musk did not see black and brown faces on his floor. So like it's not just like, oh, someone made a joke I didn't like.

that would be bad enough. Some of the allegations are really deep and really, I think, reflect a real, just a deeply culture. And it's so interesting because I read this, I can't verify if this is an accurate thing or not, but I read this thing where someone was like, oh, I used to work at SpaceX. And everybody knew that part of the deal when you worked for Elon Musk was so much management went into managing Elon Musk specifically. And so they would have all of these different window dressing

so that when Elon Musk was there, he could feel certain kinds of ways. And so he talked about how they would have a computer run code in a way that looks like the matrix so that Elon Musk, who is famously not an engineer, would think that really cool, super special tech stuff was happening, even though it was just fars. And so I think some of the allegations coming out of other Elon Musk run companies are so deeply troubling. And I think that these are companies

that have an infrastructure to manage these particular ways that Musk has. Twitter is not a company that has that. And so it's interesting to think, like, what will the vibe at Twitter be like when so much of the staff has been gutted and it's not a company that has been built

to manage Elon Musk's quirks? Yeah, I've heard that too, and that's so sad. that's like people's mental energy is. We've got to keep this guy calm, and here's how we'll do it. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite.

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

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he and a lot of people on the right, very conservative people, would have you believe that this sort of hard right free speech, in quotes, like they're being policed more. They're getting more, they're being more censored. They are very much the victims in this conversation. But that isn't the case, is it?

It is not the case. And this is something that I think really points to the kind of ship that Musk is going to be running at Twitter, is that he gets on Twitter and repeats this thoroughly debunked claim that Twitter has been, quote, censoring the right more than the left. And there is an entire body of research debunking this. Like, I could do a whole episode digging into some of the studies that have come out about this. It's fascinating to me. But I'll just run through a couple. So researchers from MIT, Yale, and the University of Exeter published a study that found that,

While right-leading accounts are banned more frequently, it is not because of anti-right-wing bias, but rather, as the researchers put it, they found that users' misinformation sharing was as predictive of suspension as was their political orientation. Thus, the observation that Republicans were more likely to be suspended

that Democrats provides no support for the claim that Twitter showed political bias in its suspension practices. Instead, the observed asymmetry could be explained entirely by the tendency of Republicans to share more misinformation. And so basically, this idea that, like, when they were looking at misinformation

and who was banned more for spreading it, Republicans or right-leaning accounts were banned more, but because those were the accounts that were more likely to be spreading misinformation in the first place. And this is actually backed up by Twitter's own in-house research team. In the pre-Musk days after Trump was banned on Twitter, the Twitter internal team was facing a lot of criticism that they were censoring the right.

So they put together a team to look into it, and the internal research team at Twitter found that folks on the right are actually amplified on Twitter, more often globally. From the report, our results reveal a remarkably consistent trend. In six out of the seven countries studied, the mainstream political right enjoys higher algorithmic amplification than the mainstream political left.

You can read this report on their website. It's 27 pages long. And so this idea that people on the right have been censored by Twitter or are getting a raw deal, it is just not borne out by the facts or the research has been done. And I also think that it really speaks to this, like, wider misconception about social media more generally, that there is no real body of academic study or academic thought with regards to social media

and that everything that we know about it is either anecdotal or, like, unknowable. So people can just say whatever and be like, oh, yeah, you know how people on the right are censored on social media platforms and not really have that challenged. And so I think that it really speaks to this, I don't know, I think it's a holdover from a time when people just saw social media as the Internet and not their real world, and thus it was not really worthy of serious examination.

But there's entire schools of research and bodies of evidence about social media platforms. And all of them say the same thing, that people on the right are not being censored or cracked down on or anything. or anything like that, and that if anybody tells you that they are, maybe that's their anecdote, maybe they feel that way, maybe that's their anecdotal evidence, but they're not. And also, like, even beyond Twitter, people say the same thing about Facebook when in reality,

you know, Mark Zuckerberg was personally intervening to keep people like Alex Jones on the platform and personally meeting with right-wing leaders. And so it's not going both ways. And so, yeah, I think that Musk repeating this claim really shows how easy it is to like stoke this victim complex. Like I, of course I am the one being victimized here. What else could be happening? I'm not excited about what's coming up

because there's conversations about how Facebook is prepping for the next election, presidential election, and they are way too excited for the return of Donald Trump. And I hate things. But, you know, I find it interesting too because even with the COVID misinformation, it took forever for them to even recognize the misinformation and even talking about,

okay, how are we going to do that without banning everybody? Because they didn't want to. And so first they put the little warning things to all of it. And you're like, it took a lot for a person to be banned. It took a lot to even have any of that warning to be put on there. Because we went through a full year, I feel like, of so much misinformation, so many bad advices about how you can treat yourself to get rid of COVID. It was a, I felt like an ongoing battle.

And it still kind of is. And it's kind of ironic that they were like, they absolutely hate us when they were so much fight to be put up from the people, especially scientists, be like, can you please control this? Because this is really bad for the health of our nation. Totally. And what's so interesting about that is that something that people say a lot, like, well, meaning people will say a lot. It's like, in the early days of COVID, we didn't know about masks. Like it was like, we were getting a lot of, like for a while it was like, oh, only medical professionals need them or only this. And so like, and then eventually it was like, oh, it's masks. We all

these masks, people will, I think, kind of understandably, conflate medical professionals, getting more familiar with how the virus worked and all of that, which is confusing, right? Like, it's like, one day, having someone be like, oh, you don't need to wear a mask. And the next day, it's going to be like, oh, wear a mask. Like, I can understand why people are confused and why that looks like, you know, like, oh, so why is that, why is that not misinformation, you know? And it's like there's a difference between medical professionals, you know,

getting more up to date on a novel virus and people who are spreading clearly, provably false information. And I think that unfortunately with COVID, because it was like a new virus, it created a climate that really made it easy to conflate those things. And so I think it made it easy to not challenge provable, demonstrable, lies about COVID and lies about COVID that were intentional. So like disinformation spread by malicious intent by bad actors. I think that the climate of having a novel virus

or people were still getting up to date on what was going on with it made it easy to not crack down on it. And I think it's just like a reality of the way that inaccurate information on social media works is that there's always going to be that grain of truth. It's like, oh, well, why is this not misinformation? And I can understand why people raise that. But I think it like did us a real disservice to cracking down on things, that we know are just

provably incorrect statements. Does that make sense? I feel like I'm kind of rambling, but hopefully you'll know what I mean. I mean, that virus, we didn't know. No one knew. No one knew where it came from, what to do, how to handle it.

And I got, like, that definitely was. We definitely were told, don't wear masks, please don't buy these masks because we're running out. That's a whole different conversation. But to, like, everybody wear a damn mask, please, for the love of all things. And then having to be like,

hey, they learn new things because they're researching new things and then also like political stuff. But like, yeah, that makes perfect sense that things would change. And of course, the naysayers would be like, do you remember this? They're lying because they didn't say this the first time around.

It's like, this is what it means to learn and to research and to grow. But there was a whole lot of stuff. Yeah, and I think that's one of the things that makes me really sad about what's happening to Twitter as we were talking about at the beginning because there was a tweet

that went viral a couple weeks ago from a reporter that was like, you know, World War III could be breaking out, and here I am not sure what is reality on Twitter anymore, because it is such a big source for news, and that whole thing with COVID, it did get really messy, and it was an example of an interesting and kind of, like,

terrifying example, I guess, of like how does this platform manage this information, perhaps misinformation or disinformation, when, you know, the scientists are, researching and it is changing. And I think because it gets so, a lot of it gets convoluted and there's so many like bad faith conversations that can happen on platforms like that, it is, it's just like one of the, it's an interesting case study to see how Twitter kind of did deal with that and how long it took.

And I think that's another thing that's really upsetting about this is, as you alluded to Samantha, It felt like we were making progress and it was so hard fought. And now we're seeing like a reversal of all of these things that were, it felt like, oh, this is a step forward. It's going to be a platform where a lot of this misinformation. It won't be as prevalent. It will still be there, but not as prevalent. But it's getting reversed.

It's upsetting. I mean, I, not to get too personal, but like in my day job, I do a lot of work trying to make platforms safer. And, you know, I've met with the team at Twitter many times. I don't know who's still there. But, like, to advise them to be like, oh, here are steps that you can take to make the platform more hospitable for marginalized people, women, people of color, whatever.

And so it does feel like a lot of the work that I have done personally, like personally done in the last few years is now being erased. So, like, it's a little bit like, oh, well, glad I said. spent the last three years on this, but Musk reinstated a bunch of previously suspended or banned accounts that had been kicked off the platform for things like spreading COVID misinformation or harassment.

And he signaled that he's planning on doing more of that in the following week. So some of the folks who have been welcome back to the platform include the Babylon B, who we were talking about earlier. Jordan Peterson, who was banned after repeatedly dead naming the actor Elliot Page and misgendering Elliott Page.

Kanye West, whose account was locked after numerous anti-Semitic comments. Andrew Tate, who is, if you don't know who he is, he's like a, like an, I don't even know what you would call him, like a men's rights kind of misogynistic influencer slash coach. Andrew Tate was banned from pretty much all platforms for saying things like women need to be held accountable if they are raped. Marjorie Taylor Green's personal account, not her official account,

was banned for spreading COVID misinformation. And of course, Donald Trump. You may recall that Donald Trump was banned after using Twitter to foment insurrection, which is such a weird thing to say. Since having his account reinstated, Trump has actually not tweeted and he is signaled that he is perhaps not going to be returning to Twitter, even though he can. He has his account back, saying instead that he's going to stay on his own social media platform that he owns, called Truth Social. I've heard that there might be some kind of like contractual obligation there that Trump might be contractually. obligated to only tweet on truth social. But I actually don't know the incident.

That's why I can't really speak to it personally. So all these people who are, who had to leave the platform for things like, I would say that are like fairly serious offenses. Listen, nobody is permanently suspended from Twitter for a one-time offense unless it is something egregious, right? And so I can speak from personal experience. Marjorie Taylor Green had numerous warnings, and this was like a consistent thing with her, right?

Kanye West is the same. It doesn't just come out of the blue unless you're doing something really egregious. And so these are the people that Elon Musk is going to be welcoming back. And he says that he's declaring amnesty next week for banned accounts. But at the same time,

he is also cracking down on accounts that are, you know, associated with like lefty politics as well. So for instance, Chad Loder, the founder of the cybersecurity, specialty company called Habituate. His account was banned from the site after he used Twitter on November 23rd

to warn users about an alleged data breach on Twitter. Loader is known for, like, researching and reporting on right-wing extremism, including unmasking a proud boy member who attacked a police officer during the insurrection. And that report was actually cited by the Department of Justice. So like a fairly, you know,

known person who writes about things like cybersecurity and how to be safe on Twitter and right-wing extremism was one of the first accounts banned while Musk was talking about this amnesty and having Twitter be this place for free speech. Interestingly enough, when Sam Harris asked Elon Musk about bringing back Alex Jones, who you might remember made up egregious lies

about babies who died in Sandy Hook and the parents who grieved them, said that they were paid actors and all of that, Elon Musk tweeted, My firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heart. heartbeat. I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics, or fame. And I actually think that that was one of the more transparent, honest statements from Musk about how

he sees his role in moderation, right? Like, he can personally identify with the pain of losing a child because Elon Musk, unfortunately, has lost a child. And so it allows him to have a sense of how painful it would be to be a grieving parent, grieving that loss, and then also be harassed and called a liar on top of it. And so he's going to make those moderation decisions based on that lived experience. It's interesting because I think it totally puts to rest that Elon Musk is like a free speech

absolutist because it reveals what's pretty obvious that these decisions are just made up by him based on what he does or doesn't like, which fine. But I also think that like, because he can personally identify with losing a child, he is going to moderate from

that lived personal experience. But what about experiences that Elon Musk has not personally had, right? So like the experience of somebody like Elliot Page or somebody like Dr. Rachel Levine who was just a trans person trying to live their life or the experience of being like a woman of color on a platform like Twitter who we know are more harassed than their counterparts, right? Or what about being a person with disabilities who relies on the platform to build community, right? Like, because Elon Musk has no personal lived experience with those marginalized identities, it seems like he really can't see those perspectives as as, as

real as his own perspective. And it really, it reminds me so much of this, like, classic George Carlin joke that I've gotten so much mileage out of in my life. Have you ever noticed that other people's stuff is shit and your shit is stuff? Right. Like, he can only see, like, his lived experience as real. And everybody else's is just theoretical or trivial or doesn't really matter. And I don't think that platforms like Twitter should be moderated based on a white billionaire

what is within the scope of his personal lived experience? Because there's so many lived experiences out there that he has no idea of. I mean, not everybody gets the experience having people on your staff to make you feel comfortable, including avoiding the color orange, I guess. That's a whole different level of experience.

And, you know, not to delegate the fact that he did lose a child and that was heartful, like his wife, ex-wife, came back and was like, dude, you didn't hold that child. I held that child. I held that child. You were a jerk through this entire process. And now who's using the death of a child for publicity?

That's interesting. I mean, I'm glad he's acknowledging that's a bad thing. So I guess half a point for that. But it's quite interesting that even that he couldn't be truly honest about. And he couldn't actually see beyond his own, like, I'm going to make myself look really big by doing this when in actuality. Again, his motive in buying this is hurtful for one child. And then to lie about that.

specific thing against the wife who apparently had a lot of issues with Elon Musk in general and to literally dismiss her experiences. There's so many things to this man that I'm just like, what is wrong with you other than you are a narcissistic sociopath and I don't know what else to say except for, oh my God, you're ruining this. Totally. So if anybody out there like, if you want to read a heartbreaking account of a divorce where you're like, that man is awful, look into the,

look into Elon Musk's divorce. I read it. It like haunts me. The things that were alleged that happened in that divorce haunts me. So yes, yes to all of that. And I think like the kind of person who like requires their staffers to do so much labor and energy to have the workplace be to their liking in these like really particular ways is the kind of person who sees themselves

as the main character of life and doesn't even really question that. I think that's really what's going on here. I think that people like Elon Musk, you know, I don't know him, this is just my opinion. I think it's hard for them to see other people's perspectives as real. And so the kind of person who requires staffers

to go around making computers look super cool in sciencey so that he gets warm fuzzies and doesn't even see that that is what's happening. It isn't even able to see that labor. So he just thinks like, wow, my company is so great. And he doesn't see the, like, 20 frustrated staffers. I've been the staffer who has to go out of my way and do a lot of emotional labor to accommodate a person in power

who will never even see that labor. Doesn't even know that labor has happened. And it's really hard. And it speaks to this perspective of really not being able to see other people. Everybody else is just a side character to your main character, I guess, is how I play it. Yeah. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite.

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I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs,

the moments that never make the highlight reel. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered. SportsSlice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to SportsSlice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. You always do such an excellent job of pointing this out, Bridget, but people forget sometimes that, you know, technology is not without bias because somebody programmed it,

somebody's moderating it. So I think with Elon Musk, without this team of people, with all of these changes, and his kind of like declaration that, oh, well, I'm going to make it somehow less bias. Like, that's just false. That's just such a lie. And I know we've been talking about this throughout, but what, for, you know, everybody who's listening, it's like, oh, well, you know, I don't really use Twitter. I always kind of didn't like it or whatever. What do we stand to lose? Why does this matter? Yeah, I'm so glad that you asked because you might be thinking, okay, I get it, but why do I care? I don't work at Twitter. I'll never work at Twitter. I don't use it. Why do I care? Well, first is the most basic, you know, just Twitter as a

place to get quick information, like we were talking about earlier. You know, it is functioned does this in this way for a long time. You know, when Joe Biden needed to announce the specifics of like student loan debt relief, he didn't go to Reddit or Tumblr or Instagram. Twitter is how you get information out quickly. And so like when there's an emergency, Twitter is how you get information out about it. Like I have a friend who works for the State Department. It's Twitter that is being used right now to get important information out to Americans

who are traveling to the World Cup, for instance, right? And so if the platform is going to be full of bots and hate speech, accounts and personing other people and bad actors, that whole thing breaks down. Like, think about it. If there was an emergency in your neighborhood right now and you want an up-to-date real-time information about it, we don't really have a place to really get that other than Twitter. And I think it really goes to show that we need better public interest communications platforms. But like, if you, like, when there's been emergencies in my neighborhood, I'm looking

at Twitter to see who is talking about it and what is developing, you know, quickly. And so that's just the most basic reason why folks should care. But it's also more than that. You know, earlier I was talking about the massive influence that Twitter has and sort of how it's been used to drive progress, I could give you so many examples of the way that Twitter has been used to push conversations forward to get us someplace better. You know, if not for Twitter, we wouldn't have movements like Me Too,

which was not just something happening on Twitter. It shifted our entire culture and our entire, you know, the progress of our culture, I would say. For instance, you'll have probably heard of Shankila Robinson, who was a 25-year-old black woman from North Carolina who traveled to Mexico on vacation with a group of people and ended up dead. The people that she traveled with tried to say that it was alcohol poisoning, but later a video emerged of one of them getting into a pretty brutal

physical altercation with her. Now there's actual movement in the case, and her mother says that it's because of black Twitter. She says that if not for black folks tweeting about it, raising the alarm about it, generating awareness about it. She said that she was having a really hard time getting any kind of national attention on the story of her daughter's death. And so she actually says it was Twitter that did that.

And so in that case, this rapper, Amina Kane, shared Shenquilla's photo on Twitter on November 9th. Her message went viral, got almost 20,000 retweets, and then later spread to other social media platforms and got so much more attention to her death. And Sherry Williams, who is a professor of race, media and communication at American University,

she put it really well in this interview with NBC News. She says, black folks know that mainstream news media has a history of completely ignoring our stories. So we've been using these tools to amplify our stories ourselves. And it works. We see this cycle of mainstream news media basically following the chatter on black social media like Twitter. And so it really goes to show the real world impact that platforms like Twitter can have. Twitter was not perfect. It is not perfect.

I have had my issues with it. But we lose so much if we don't have platforms like Twitter. Marginalized communities lose so much and our ability to push that culture forward and have those conversations that get us someplace better, there is so much at stake if we do not have social media and digital communications platforms where those kind of conversations can happen.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I totally agree. And I think that that's one thing that kind of gives me anxiety is when I hear people like, well, I didn't like Twitter. I'm like, but that can be a very privileged thing to just be like, oh,

it goes away. Because there are people in other countries that use it to organize and to communicate. Like, it's a very powerful tool, especially if you're kind of isolated

and maybe you don't have a lot of people in your community or like where you grew up to talk to, to share ideas with. Like, it's important. It's really,

really important. So I think I'm glad, I'm glad you brought this today. I'm glad that you brought these points because I just feel like there is so much at stake, and a lot of it's getting kind of lost in the chaos of what's happening with Twitter and why it matters is getting lost in all this chaos. So thank you, as always, Bridget. Oh, of course.

And if folks listening, like, if you have questions about Twitter alternatives, like, let's chat. I have questions. Where should we do? So that's a great question. I have, I guess I, the platforms that I see people going to are Hive and Mastodon. I'm still trying to figure them all out. They all have their issues, but yeah, people have been talking about moving to Hive, Mastodon, post, all of these different platforms all have their issues.

Like there's been big conversations about the funding structure and the moderation structure. So I will be trying them all out myself. and I'm happy to report back and let y'all know what worked, what didn't work. What's a flop, what's a bop? I'll let you all know, TBD. That's amazing. Yes, please. Yeah, please let us know.

It's because, like, Macedon seems super confusing and very specific. Hive may not be ready for the mass movement is what I'm reading. But then also, I know Discord is a thing, which I've been told that we should have one. So, Bridget, let's have any, let's have a Discord for us. Yes. Smithy plus Bridgett and then having, like, questionnaires with that. people and then deciding where to go, maybe? Oh, my gosh.

I love this. Yes. So I actually, even before Twitter was about my mask, I've always loved Discord. Okay. It's super fun. Yeah, let's have a Discord channel. We can like pass all this out. Let's do it.

Oh my gosh. Yes. Get online, y'all. Is that a saying? Is that the saying? Did I do this right? Let's make it a thing. Get online, y'all.

I'm going to do it. I'm fine. I'm fine. We are. the coolest, obviously. This reminds me of the Britney Spears interview where she's like, everyone's talking about the emails.

Yeah, that's about right. I'll take it. Like Britney Spears. That's me. Yes, yes. Well, Bridget, the actual coolest. Where can the listeners find you? You can find me on Instagram at Bridgett Marie in D.C. You can find me, I still have a Twitter account,

but tweeting a lot less these days at Bridgett Marie. You can listen to me on my podcast, there are no girls on the internet. And my new limited series with Cool Zone Media called Internet Hate Machine, where we dive into all the ways that the Internet can be a not-so-fun place for women and people of color.

Yes, super important to this conversation. And definitely, listeners, go check it out if you haven't already. Thank you again, Bridget, for being here. Always a delight. And thank you, listeners, for listening. If you would like to contact us, you can or email Stephanie and Mom Stuff

at IHeartMedia. You can find us on Twitter. at most of the podcast or on Instagram at Stefan Never Told You. Thanks, it's always to your super producer, Christina. Thank you. And thanks to you for listening. Stephon Never Told You's production by A Heart Radio. For more podcasts on My Heart Radio,

you can check out the A Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day

and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. 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 I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Life is full of hurdles.

So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions, about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHart Women's Sports. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. And nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. And every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the best. biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline. And we're going

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