There Are No Girls on the Internet - Elon's Election Interference, JP Morgan's 'Sex Slave' Lawsuit, Charlie Kirk Facebook Post & Take It Down Act Explained — NEWS ROUNDUP

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

THIS WEEK ON THERE ARE NO GIRLS ON THE INTERNET There Are No Girls on the Internet is a weekly podcast hosted by Bridget Todd. Every week we drop our news roundup — the tech and internet stories that don't get enough attention, the ones about AI, power, gender, race, and who actually gets hurt when systems fail. This week: A man films men at urinals to catch "groomers." A Texas woman gets arrested for a Facebook post about brown water. And the word "Black" keeps disappearing from places it needs to be. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. New roundup episode every Friday. 📰 Here's what we were watching this week: Schools posted photos of their students online — now criminals are turning them into explicit deepfakes and demanding money. For years, schools have proudly posted photos of their students online. Now criminals are scraping those photos, using AI to create explicit images of children, and blackmailing schools to keep them quiet. One UK school had 150 images made from their website alone. Experts are now urging schools to take all student photos down immediately. 🔗 The Guardian A female JPMorgan banker was accused of turning her male colleague into a sex slave — now she's suing him back, saying he made it all up. Last month, a JPMorgan VP accused his female colleague of coercing him into sex, threatening him with racial slurs, and saying she "owned" him. The story went viral. Now she's fighting back, saying he fabricated everything to get money and attention — and that the lies have destroyed her life with nonstop harassment and memes. JPMorgan offered him $1 million to settle before he even filed. 🔗 The Guardian Elon Musk's ex says he told her he had secret access to real-time election data before the results came in. Ashley St. Clair, who dated Elon Musk, is claiming he bragged to her about having access to election numbers before they were publicly announced — and that he knew Trump was going to win hours early. He also allegedly referenced "10,000 lasers in space" and an "anomaly in the matrix." Musk's team is calling it total nonsense. She has no proof — but the internet has thoughts. 🔗 Yahoo A new law now forces social media platforms to remove explicit deepfakes and revenge porn within 48 hours of reporting — or face massive fines. The Take It Down Act is now fully in effect. If someone posts explicit images of you without your consent — real or AI-generated — platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit are legally required to take them down within 48 hours of reporting. Companies that don't comply face fines of over $53,000 per violation. It's already led to one conviction. But critics warn the law could be abused as a censorship tool — and Trump himself joked at his State of the Union that he planned to use it for himself. 🔗 The 19th | 🔗 The Verge A man was jailed for 37 days for sharing a meme after Charlie Kirk was killed — a court just ordered the sheriff to pay him $835,000. After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed last year, a Tennessee man shared some memes on Facebook. His local sheriff decided that was a threat and had him arrested in the middle of the night. His bail was set at $2 million. He sat in jail for over a month before the charge was dropped. Now the sheriff owes him $835,000. 🔗 The New York Times The DOJ just punished PayPal for creating a fund to help Black-owned businesses — and called it illegal discrimination. In 2020, PayPal created a $530 million fund to help Black and minority-owned small businesses. The Trump DOJ investigated it as illegal discrimination against white people. To settle, PayPal must now redirect that support to veteran-owned and farming businesses instead. No law was found to have been broken — but PayPal caved anyway. 🔗 Reuters Congress quietly removed the word "Black" from a bill designed to save Black mothers' lives — and advocates are furious. Black women in America are three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Congress has been trying to pass a bill to fix this for years. It was called the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act. Now, under pressure from Trump's anti-DEI crackdown, lawmakers have stripped "Black" from the title and almost everywhere in the text. Supporters say it had to be done to survive. Critics say a bill that won't name Black women can't save them. 🔗 What I'm Reading A white doctor is suing a directory called "Find A Black Doctor" for not letting him list his practice on it. "Find A Black Doctor" is a directory founded to help Black patients find Black physicians. A white Colorado dermatologist, backed by a conservative anti-DEI group, is now suing it for not listing him. The same group previously went after a Coca-Cola distributor for hosting a women's empowerment event. 🔗 Black Enterprise A Texas woman posted on Facebook that her town's water was making people sick — the city had her arrested for it. Jennifer Combs posted on Facebook that residents in Trinidad, Texas were being hospitalized from bacteria in the water. The city arrested her for "filing a false report." But the water was brown. A boil notice was later issued. The mayor admitted the pipes date back to the 1950s. She's now suing the city for political retaliation. 🔗 FOX 4 A man who wore Meta smart glasses to a Pride event to catch "groomers" was arrested for secretly filming men at the urinals. A Florida man wore Meta smart glasses to a Pride event, claiming he was there to expose child groomers. He used them to secretly record men at the urinals and posted the video online. The men he filmed were undercover cops. He also tried to bring a gun — then came back with an AR-15. Naples Pride responded: "A man who publicly accused our community of 'grooming' now stands accused of unlawfully recording people in a place where privacy is expected. The irony is difficult to ignore." 🔗 LGBTQ Nation Bridget's forthcoming audiobook with Simon & Schuster, Love At First Prompt, explores AI, sex, and intimate relationships. Pre-order at LoveAtFirstPrompt.ai Follow Bridget: Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | Bluesky  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Open your free IHeart Radio app. Search Joy 101, and listen now. Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby is presented by CVS. 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. This is There Are No Girls on the Internet, a podcast where we cover tech, power, and who gets left out. And this is another installment of our weekly news roundup, where we dig into the stories that you might have missed online this week so you don't have to. And a little bit of a change here, I can actually start with a little bit of free.

advice for listeners, if you happen to be giving the speech at a graduation or a commencement ceremony in the next few weeks, maybe don't mention AI. Because AI is ruining college graduations, right, Mike? Yeah, it seems to be a common thing across graduations. I've read a bunch of stories about it now. I saw this video from Glendale Community College, their commencement, where the person running the commencement ceremony, realized that a bunch of graduating students, their names had not been called. And she said, oh, well, it was a screw up because we're using a new AI system that glitched. So those graduates that did not get their names called just did not get to walk across the stage to get their diploma in front of their friends and family that were attending the ceremony.

And there wasn't enough time to like redo it. So the person running the graduation just said, sorry, that's AI. What are you going to do? and the choir of booze that followed was pretty epic. Of all the things that you might use AI for, I really struggle to understand how just like a list of names would be part of it. How is this better? I mean, this is not to even get off topic from the first banter bit,

but it reminds me of, I need to speak carefully because I don't want to put anybody on blast. Nobody that I work with in putting this show together. This is not a story about anybody who has any of the, to do with there are no girls on the internet. But in another part of my life, people are very excited about AI. And somebody said, oh, I'm having Claude do this task that usually I have to do every day to start the day. And I said, oh, how is it working? And they were like, well, I have to spend a lot of time correcting it and actually more time than it probably would have taken. But Claude did

it. And everybody was so impressed. And I was kind of quietly the grumbly person thinking, if it actually took you more time to fix what Claude messed up, did it really save you any time? And why are we applauding it? Just because they figured out a way to have AI do it? Like, are we all listening to ourselves? In any event, Mike, your point is taken of why is it better to have AI read the names and just having somebody at the college read the names?

Yeah, you got me. I feel like we have reading names off of a list technology down. Like, we don't need continued innovation. this area. Yes. And even beyond reading names from lists, a handful of people were also booed at college graduations for bringing up AI in their speech. At University of Central Florida, a real estate executive got booed after calling AI the next industrial revolution. During a speech to arts and humanities graduates, which, yeah, unsurprising, that was not an audience that wanted to hear about AI. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was,

really booed at University of Arizona at their commencement on May 15th when he said, quote, the question is not whether AI will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence. Steve Borchetta, who is not a name that I knew before reporting the story, but he started big machine records, which I think at one point was Taylor Swift's record label. He might have actually been the person who, quote, discovered Taylor Swift, but don't quote me on that. He was giving a speech at Middle Tennessee State University where he said, we are the agents of change and the agents of next and this industry will change on you in a heartbeat. It has already changed more in the last 10 years than in the 50 years prior. AI is rewriting

production as we sit here. So when the graduates all booed, he spoke over the booze and said, hey, like I said, you can hear me now or pay me later. As they continued to boo, he said, and do something about it. It's a tool. Make it work for you. Oh, man. I love the like getting hostile with the crowd. Like fighting back.

Yeah. So first of all, I kind of like, we'll give it to him that he kind of went, was like, I'm going down with a ship on this one. Yeah. He's giving it to him like Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty style. Your booze mean nothing to me. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he probably thinks he's hot shit and he's getting booed by a bunch of college kids, a bunch of brokies.

Yes. The reviews are in. College students do not want to hear about AI at their commencement. I do think there is a connotation that all college kids are just using Chad GPT to do all their work. But young people are not that into AI, even as they use AI. I was looking at this poll from Gallup, the Walton Family Foundation, and GSV Ventures, which is a venture capital firm that works in education technology. The poll found that the percentage of respondents aged 14 to 29, who said that they felt hopeful about AI, declined sharply since last year, down to 18% from 27.

Young adult excitement about AI also dropped. Nearly a third of the respondent said that AI technology made them feel angry. So that poll really aligns with the booze that are being lobbed out at these commencement speakers who use their platform and their time to speak to champion AI. It does, and it's notable that neither of those questions suggest that people aren't necessarily using AI, right? I would guess that a lot of those graduating students who are doing the booing probably do use AI. Some of them probably all the time. But that doesn't mean that they want to hear about it in their graduation speech, right? Like they're graduating from college about to go into the world as adults and make their way.

If the main thing that commencement speakers are offering to them is the opportunity to not get left behind by some technology that threatens to grind them into dust, it's hard to imagine a less inspiring message. Yes, and read the room. They're graduating into a pretty dismal economic situation, a pretty dismal job market. Do you think they want to, after their accomplishment of graduating college, do you think they want to sit here and listen to you talk about how great the technology is that is potentially making it harder for them to find a job that is making the landscape in which they are graduating into more difficult for them economically?

Like all of that is happening, and you expect me to applaud. it, that graduation speech on top of it, I can understand why these young people are angry. Also, here's my thing. At this point, we have already seen these speakers be booed for mentioning AI. Like, the Eric Schmidt speech happened this week, a full week after that real estate person was booed in Florida. At this point, why mention AI at all? The reviews are in. People don't like it. Yeah, people don't like it. They don't want to hear about it. Not at something like that. It takes me back to an earlier, perhaps simpler time when people were booing at a graduation back in 2015. Do you remember the incident where, I shouldn't laugh, but it really tickled me.

Oh, no, I know exactly what you're going for. Look who's leaving all the black people. I've never seen, if y'all have not, if y'all don't remember that, I can't even do. I can't it justice. We will put it in the show notes. Oh, and you, it needs to, you need to see it to believe it because I've never seen a more collective response. Independently, everybody collectively stands and booze. I've never seen anything like it. Basically, the graduation ceremony gets messed up. The woman who is white, who is doing the ceremony, comes back on to try to restore order because they're like, oh, the ceremony's been messed up. This was human error, by the way, because this is back in 2015.

As, like, a kid is trying to give a speech after the graduation ceremony should have ended, people, I guess, are getting up. They're like, and we're not listening to this speech. This woman tries to restore order. She's like, it's my fault that this young man was missed on the program. Y'all are being so rude to not listen. Stop, like, stop leaving. And then as everybody continues to collect their things to leave, she says,

look who's leaving, all the black people. We should have laughed. I am appalled. I shouldn't laugh. Yeah. I mean, that was also a message people didn't want to hear. People didn't want to hear it. And the response, I've never, to this day, I don't think I've ever seen a clearer,

with 100 percent, like, I've never seen a clearer collective response where everybody immediately got the memo of we're standing and booing collectively together in unison. Yeah, you know, we're really coming down harshly on that woman, but she probably did more to inspire racial harmony in that school at that time than anyone before her. Y'all probably watched that clip a hundred times the day that I saw it. I bet she really regretted saying that. Oh, my God. I want to know where she is now.

You can sort of see from the clip that she kind of puts her face to the mic, like, oh, should I say it? I'm not going to say it. Fuck it, I'm going to say it. Like, you can sort of see her thought process in real time. And this was in 2015. We didn't get a lot of violence. viral videos like that back then.

This was like, if you got one and it made you laugh, you were lucky. It was just a simpler time. We do need a where are they now on her. Oh my God. I would, if anybody is from that town, let me see what town it is. If anybody is from Stone Mountain, Georgia, and you know about the 2015 graduation ceremony at TNT Academy, you know principal Nancy Gordock, let me know. because I need a follow up.

I need a where are they now? I would listen to a three-episode deep dive podcast on it. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that she's working in AI now. What if it looped back around? She's giving a speech about AI and she gets booed. Look who's booing, all the humans. Boo! Let's leave.

Oh, my God. Too funny. So y'all might have seen this story about a J.P. Morgan executive who was sued a few weeks ago by a former coworker who accused her of sexual harassment, sexual assault, drugging, blackmail, and racial discrimination. So to be clear, a male J.P. Morgan employee was accusing a female J.P. Morgan employee of sexual harassment, assault, drugging, blackmail. The allegations were very graphic. He claimed that shortly after joining the team, this woman told, told him, quote, if you don't fuck me soon, I'm going to ruin you. Never forget, I fucking own you. If you don't fuck my brains out tonight, I'm going to sabotage your promotion, things like that. He also claimed that she drugged him, made racist comments, called him a slur, and essentially, according to the lawsuit, made him her sex slave. That's a direct

phrase from the suit. The way that the suit describes the allegations, it's almost sort of written like pornography. The details are very salacious. At one point, the lawsuit claims that she told him, does your Asian wife have these cannons while exposing her breasts? The way that it's written is full of very salacious details. So when I first saw this story, it was because all of these manosphere adjacent big accounts were on it, like really, really sharing it deeply. And it make sense why they would because it sounded very much like an example of a man being sexually abused by a woman and then perhaps not being taken seriously. I want to be super clear here. Obviously, men can be sexually victimized by anyone. You know, anyone can sexually victimize anyone.

When we talk about it, I'm often talking about people who are not men, but men can absolutely be victims and survivors of sexual violence. And I also want to be clear that, you know, I'm not a lawyer. I don't have any kind of inside information here. If I sound like I'm speaking about it very carefully, it's because I am. I don't want to make it seem like I know for certain what's happening because I don't. And so I'm just trying to be very careful. That's very responsible of you.

Well, part of it is just the way this story has been. written about is so salacious. For instance, before any of this information was verified or, you know, anybody had their day in court, I saw AI generated videos and images that showed these two J.P. Morgan employees together. I saw a video on X that purported to show them like, sipping wine, like being cuddled up in a cafe and saying, oh, my God, it really happened. These videos got millions of views, even though they're AI-generated. They're not real. So why I'm being really careful is that, in my opinion, it does seem like this case is very suspicious.

Not suspicious in the way that, you know, a woman would never sexually abuse a man, so that's why this case is suspicious. For instance, the lawsuit was pulled from the court records for corrections. J.P. Morgan said that the claims had no merit after doing an internal investigation. To be clear, I don't put a lot of merit into who internal investigations like J.P. Morgan saying, oh, we looked into it and turns out nothing happened that was untoward. Everybody can go home. Just earlier this week, we were talking about eBay's internal investigation into the stalking incident with the Steiner's, right? an internal investigation is designed to protect the company.

Yes, and that eBay story is a great example of the fact that, like, you really can't trust companies and corporations. They will do a lot. They will go to extremes to protect themselves. And so I'm not one to take J.P. Morgan at their word because they've done an investigation and they say it's case closed. Her lawyers denied everything, saying that she never dated this individual, never had a sexual or romantic encounter with him of any kind,

never gave him drugs. In the investigation, one of the things that came out was that in the suit, it said that she told him that, oh, if you don't have sex with me, you won't get your promotion, but that in the structure of J.P. Morgan, he did not report to her. Like, she had no control over his compensation. They didn't report to the same people. All right, maybe.

But I've worked in big corporations where maybe I didn't directly report to my boss's peer, but I definitely wanted to stay on that person's good side. Totally fair. Totally fair. Again, that's why I'm trying to be cautious in talking about this. But I will say the way that this woman is being digitally dragged through the mud, I have seen so much AI-generated garbage that is, like, very sexualizing about her. I've seen AI-generated images that purport to show her JP Morgan headshot, but they're, you know, they've been digitally edited so that they show like a lot of cleavage. So the point that they're trying to make, obviously, is that, oh, this woman in her professional headshot was like showing her cleavage, which is not the images are fake. And so I say this to say, they're going to have their day in court.

And so, you know, we'll know more. even still, the way that big manosphere-adjacent accounts have jumped on this case and used it as an excuse to sexually harass this woman is despicable. But I think that's kind of where we are now. Like I was listening to the podcast Good Noticing when this case first came out and they put it very well that these kind of anti-feminist Manosphere accounts get to essentially use AI. to sexually harass a woman and feel like they have the moral high ground to do so because this woman has been accused of sexually abusing a man. And so they get to feel like, oh, we're doing like men's rape survivor activism by digitally harassing this woman when we don't even know the truth yet. We don't even know what happened yet. And so now she is fighting back. She filed a countersuit this week

accusing this guy of defamation, and her attorneys are not pulling punches. They're calling his allegations entirely false, malicious, and fabricated, and accusing him of trying to destroy her reputation for leverage to extort millions of dollars. So that extortion piece is rather important. Her legal team is alleging that this is not the first time this guy has done something like this. According to her filing, this guy made what her attorneys called, quote, an eerily similar fabricated allegation of sexual misconduct against a supervisor at a prior place of employment. Specifically, he claimed that he was sexually assaulted, drugged, and raped by that supervisor, too.

In addition to that, this is a little bit of a strange thing. Her team also claims that he once falsely claimed that his father had died in order to obtain bereavemently when his father was and still is alive. So it sounds like her legal team is to say, like, oh, this is a person. person who fabricates stories in the workplace. Also interesting is that the New York Times reported that after he filed an internal complaint at J.P. Morgan last May, he was put on paid leave and then later offered $1 million in a settlement, which was roughly two years of his salary. J.P. Morgan says that that offer was made to avoid litigation and to protect an employee facing reputational harm. But his attorney pushes back on that framing saying, quote, in my 30-year-plus career as an

employment litigator, I have never had an employer defend it, make such a substantial offer if he truly believed the allegations have no merit. So what her attorneys are alleging is that essentially this guy is an extortionist and that he was trying to extort both J.P. Morgan and other previous employers out of money by saying, hey, I will say this happened if you don't pay me off. Which, to connect it back to the Manosphere is an accusation that is often thrown against women who complain of harassment or sexual assault in the workplace. Yeah, they really nailed it very well on the Good Noticing's podcast that I think that the reason why the Manosphere seized on this like they did, was because either outcome is kind of a win for a manosphere types, right?

Either A, this is an example of a woman sexually abusing a man and the man not being believed, and that's why feminists are bad. If this guy is not telling the truth, well, then it's an example of false accusations, and this is why Me Too went too far. Either way, they get to do what they actually want to be doing, which is using technology like AI to create the, porn scenarios to sexually harass this woman off of the internet. I should also say that his side is not backing down. His spokesperson responded to her countersuit saying defamation requires the statement

to be false. Truth is an absolute defense. His statements are true. This will be proven in a court of law. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 26, so this is far from over. And again, I'm trying to be sort of careful about how I speak about this because I don't know what I mean, I have my opinion about what I think happened, but I don't know for sure. And so I don't want to be saying definitively, this is what happened, because I genuinely don't know. But whatever the court decides, whatever the truth trends out to be, the AI harassment machine and the internet and the manosphere did not wait to find out. And it's concerning to me how they're turning around the language that people who care about survivors and sexual violence will say,

like, oh, we should believe victims and saying, oh, well, why aren't people believing this guy? And I just hate how disingenuous the conversation is online. And I just hate how easily we have made it to smear and digitally harass people like this. In her court filing, she describes her daily life as, quote, a daily living nightmare. citing severe harm to her reputation, career, relationships, and emotional well-being in what she calls an increasingly permanent digital environment. And I'm not saying anybody's name on purpose here because, like, she's right. Like, she's right that when you Google her, you know, and like part of it is like, okay, well, now you've filed a countersuit. So, like, it is part of the public record. But when you Google her

from now on, this is what will come up. Like, whether or not is, you, it's a counter suit. It's, like, it's, turns out to me the truth or not, I don't think that she's wrong that we do live in an increasingly permanent digital environment. And when I searched her name on X, all I saw was essentially AI-generated pornography about her. So we'll stay on this case. And once they have their hearing, we'll let you know how that goes. But yeah, just a really tough situation. Let's take a quick break. From live music under the stars to immersive public art. Local food and drink and story that shaped a nation. There's nowhere quite like Base 31.

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Let us show you at IHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. I love the sounds. The buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place soccer, football at home. Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed?

I inherited that fandom from my mom. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great.

A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull. It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that.

As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer,

and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you Get your podcasts. And we're back. So let's talk about the Take a Down Act because I have been a little bit hesitant to do too deep of a dive into specific pieces of tech policy, unless it's tech policy that I feel is objectively and obviously horrible. And there is a lot of legislation like that out there, such as legislation to agegate the Internet in specific ways.

That's not the kind of thing that I support and I'll talk about it all day. but mostly why I kind of am a bit hesitant to get into policy is that I'm not a policy professional. And the times when I did work with platforms to design and recommend and advocate for policy changes, not laws, like their internal policies, I really saw firsthand how complex policy can be when you're talking about the internet. We would run into situations where you would advocate for one policy thinking, oh, this is going to alleviate harm. but that policy would actually end up creating harm for a group that you had not fully considered. And so my work was a lot of that kind of thing and like working in coalition and talking to people and talking to, you know, different marginalized communities about policies that they wanted to see enacted.

It was very complicated work. But from doing some of that work, it made me see like actual legal tech policy as sort of above my pay grade. I have opinions about them, but for the most part, I think we should listen to people who are smarter about actual law and policy than I am. However, I do want folks who listen to the podcast to feel informed. And so part of that is having conversations about policy. As a side question, I actually would want to know if listeners want more discussion on policy. Again, it comes up sometimes, but I try to not get too deep into it. I have my opinions, but there are sometimes situations where more opinions from people who are not policy professionals are not what's going to help people understand the situation more clearly, if that makes sense.

So, like, I'm just very aware of that. But if folks want more of my take on policy, I'd be happy to give it. I just don't want to be the person that's like, here's my uninformed opinion. Everybody should just take it. again, very responsible of you. And Mike, you and I have a lot of conversations about tech policy and tech law on Mike, off mic, in all the ways in the comment section of our research docs. Yeah, there's a lot of nuance.

Like you said, when you solve one problem, often you open the door to two or three additional problems that maybe weren't even on your radar. it's a nuanced, challenging space. Yes, and I was lucky that I was always doing work in coalition with people that I did not always see 100% eye on everything with. We all kind of like broadly want the same things. These are all like reasonable, smart, thoughtful people. I think when we're talking about the Trump administration and their cronies, I start to be like, ooh, like, are these reasonable people like who are talking about reasonable enforcement of reasonable law? So let's talk about the Take It Down Act.

It has come up on the podcast before when we were talking about how Groff was being used to generate AI non-consensual images of women and girls. Take-It-Down Act was first submitted to Congress back in 2024, then ultimately was signed into law by Trump last May. It had multiple co-sponsors from both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

It has two main components. One, a criminal prohibition on sharing non-consensual intimate images. or NCI, real or AI generated, which many states had already addressed through their own state laws, which, by the way, separately, remember when the Trump administration was trying to curb state's abilities to put forth any of their own state level laws on AI? Oh, yeah. They really love power and having a monopoly over it. They sure do. The second part of the Take a Down Act is a broader take-down requirement,

and that's the piece that kicked in this week on May 19, 26, a year after the law was signed by Trump. So that means, as of this week, under that provision, online platforms must remove flagged content within 48 hours or they could face penalties. The Verge reported that Federal Trade Commission chair, Andrew Ferguson, sent letters to over a dozen tech companies ahead of the deadline. A list that included Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Automatic, Bumble, Discord, Match, group meta, Microsoft, Pinterest, Smug, Mug, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, and X. It told platforms that they needed to offer users an easy takedown request process

and remove offending content within 48 hours as well as any known identical copies. The FTC, which is the agency tasked with enforcing the law, reminded companies that violating it could result in civil penalties of more than $53,000 per violation. All of the big social media platforms all supported this bill. Major platforms including meta, Microsoft, Google, TikTok, and

Snap all supported it and all expressed confidence that they could and would comply. I know what you're thinking. How about Elon Musk? Well, even X supported the Take It Down Act. So this is my issue with a lot of tech legislation in general. I have no trouble believing that this law will probably do some good, that people will get their non-consensual intimate imagery taken down. And I really hope that is the case. And I guess I don't want to sound like a Debbie Downer here, but I am just incredibly suspicious of this kind of legislation. So I'm not fully ready to say this is a definite win for Internet safety.

I have some concerns about the legislation. I would welcome the thoughts of listeners and how this is landing for people, but there are a few issues that I take with this legislation. One is that the way this legislation works still puts quite a bit of the onus on the victims to find the offending content or image, to report it to the platforms, to really do the work of getting this taken. and down. Mind you, as we saw earlier this year when Grok was being used to flood X with non-consensual intimate imagery, a lot of that imagery was of children, youth, teenagers. And so I don't think it is a reasonable dynamic to expect teens to be doing the work of trying to get platforms to take this kind of garbage down. It should be on the platforms to make sure that garbage like this is not on the platforms.

And I don't really love the dynamic that says, okay, like a high school girl is now tasked for doing the job of people like Elon Musk for him. These platforms have people who are paid to keep the platforms free of illegal offending content. And the fact that a high school girl would be taking it upon herself to have to do the work of the platforms for them doesn't sit right with me. So that's, again, I'm happy that create some kind of a mechanism for that to be done, whether or not that, you know, the jury is out on whether or not this will be a reasonable mechanism to actually do that. The fact that we had no requirement to have a mechanism to easily report this kind of content is absurd. But there you have it.

And as you mentioned, a lot of states already have laws on the books prohibiting and making criminally illegal, non-consensual, intimate. imagery, both minors and adults, already had some form of legal recourse. And I think that's one of the big criticisms of the take-it-down law is people arguing that it's not necessary because it is just further criminalizing something that in many cases is already criminalized. I've also seen supporters of it argue that it opens up some additional opportunities for victims to seek recourse and the fact that it is a single federal law creates opportunities for victims to pursue violations that cross state or country lines. But particularly in the case that you just described

of minors, that is content that is already criminal in like multiple different ways. It's my understanding. Again, not a lawyer. Yeah, it is criminal in multiple different ways. And the European Commission said that the stuff that was being generated by Grock on X, they deemed that unlawful. And yet, when Elon Musk was summoned by French investigators about this, quote, unlawful content, that's not me saying that. That's the European Commission saying that. The American Department of Justice said that he didn't have to go and that he was being unfairly, politically persecuted, and that they were going to have his back if he decided to not show up for this investigation.

So he just didn't go. He just goes to them. He just didn't show up. It's hard to talk about because we're talking about stuff that already is illegal. And yet, if that illegality is not really being meaninglessly enforced,

what does that really mean? I'm concerned about the fact that the FTC is the body that would be enforcing all of this. Back when we were first having a conversation about GROC being used to generate these non-consensual images, friend of the show,

Cat Tenbarge had a great piece at her outlet Spitfire News where she spoke to Dr. Marianne Franks, who drafted the template for several laws against non-consensual distribution of intimate imagery, who said, the FTC has made it clear that they're fighting for Trump. It's actually never going to be used against the very players who are the worst in this system. X is going to continue to be one of the worst offenders and probably one of the pioneers of horrible ways to hurt women. Mary Ann Franks was saying this before this provision was enacted with the Take a Down Act. She spoke to the verge about this more recently and basically said that she wondered if the reason why the platforms were supporting this legislation is because they knew that it was never actually going to be applied to them in the first place. So why wouldn't they, you know, get some good PR points by being seen publicly supporting it?

She also made another good point, which I think to me seems pretty obvious, that this law could be set up to selectively be applied to platforms that don't play ball with the administration. This is what she told The Verge. I think what is the worst thing that can happen is it turns out to be a paper tiger against the companies that are actually doing the worst and turns out to be a way to penalize and to actually truly go after unpopular platforms and a censor speech. She goes on to say that that speech could include things like LGBTQ expression, especially as gender-affirming care for trans youth, is already currently being targeted by this FTC. Quote, I'm very worried about that being used as a pretext to crack down even further on either consensually sexually explicit material or specifically on educational materials for kids who are exploring their gender identity or exploring their sexual orientation. And the Verge reports that even if a court decides that that is not within the scope of, of this law, it would send a very clear message to the platforms about how this administration, including the FTC, expects them to moderate. And we don't even really have to sort of glean this,

because Trump more or less said this explicitly that he intended to use the Take a Down Act himself, potentially as a way to crack down on his perceived political enemies. At the state of the union in 2025 when talking about the Take a Down Act, he said, quote, I'm going to use that bill for myself because nobody gets treated worse than I do online. At the signing ceremony for the Take Down Act, then ex-CEO Linda Yaccarino, remember her? Well, she was there at the signing. And the Trump administration praised her for doing a great job. And so it's hard for me not to sort of see the signals of which this could easily be just being used to give Trump allies like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg a past and perceived enemies, this being used

to crack down on them. I am of the belief that when Trump says things, I know he lies a lot, but I don't like when people say, oh, he just says that, he's not going to really do that. When people show you who they are, believe them. Like, that's an axiom that I find useful when dealing with Trump. While there is every reason to believe that the Trump administration absolutely will exploit this law to enrich its buddies and and pursue its perceived enemies and abuse it in that way. The National Association of Attorneys General also points out that there is a huge opportunity for abuse of this law

by just random people on the internet. Others have pointed this out as well, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, that the law requires platforms to take down reported violations within 48 hours, but offers platforms very little protection for situations where something is reported as a violation fraudulently, where no real violation has occurred.

So the way the law is set up, it really incentivizes platforms to just take everything down immediately when it is reported without any sort of investigation into whether it truly is a violation or not. And I think there is huge concern about that being abused. And it's not even a question of if, right? it's a question of when

both of those organizations, the National Association of Attorneys General and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and I assume many others, have compared the Take It Down Act to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which many of our listeners will be familiar with, is a 1998 law that protects

against copyright violations. And it's often criticized, often fairly, in my opinion. We've criticized it many times on this podcast. But in this regard, the DMCA actually has stronger protections against that kind of fraudulent reporting abuse than the Take It Down Act has, which is a huge concern. And speculatively is probably one that is going to have to be fixed in the future with future legislation because it just seems like a huge problem. That is such a good point.

and, you know, you don't have to spend that much time on the internet to know that very motivated collectives of people on places like Reddit already are self-organized to brigade online spaces. I agree with you. It's not a question of if it's a question of when. They already do that in other pockets of the internet. Also, this law is pretty specific. Here's how the 19th describes it. The definition of sexually explicit content builds on previous federal code and includes, quote, the uncovered genitals, pubic area, anus, or post-pubescent female nipple of an identifiable individual. The, quote, display or transfer of bodily sexual fluids, graphic, sexual intercourse, bestiality, masturbation, stodistic or masochistic abuse, and graphic or simulated lascivious

exhibition of anus, genitals, or the pubic area. Synthetic images or digital forgeries, as the bill labels them must be indistinguishable from an authentic visual depiction of an identifiable individual. And as the 19th puts it, the definition that this bill uses is tailored to not apply to all instances of what you might consider to be non-consensual AI generated intimate imagery, even the ones that might seem sexually explicit on the surface. And so if you're hearing that and you're like, what do you mean what you're talking about? This is the thing that really shocked me about this law, which is that we did so much reporting about the non-consensual images being created by Grok on X earlier this year. According to this piece that I read in Verge,

which again, I am no lawyer, what shocked me is that this law might not even cover those kinds of images, like what you think of when you think of non-consensual AI generated images. Those kinds of images might not even be triggered by this law because technically the people in those images were depicted wearing clothes, just very skimpy or very, or like see-through AI-generated clothes. Here's how the Verge put it. The law may not even cover what might seem like cut and dry digital violations of consent. Some of GROC's non-consensual sexualized imagery, for an instance, might not count as sexually explicit enough.

It's unclear whether AI tools like GROC count as creators of non-consensual intimate imagery whose owners could bear criminal liability, and if the images are put to be a sexual-execlimate liability. And if the images are produced privately, it's not necessarily clear if they are subjected to take down provisions either. So that to me is a problem. I want to celebrate good legislation that makes a meaningful impact as it pertains to making the internet a safer place. I genuinely don't want to make it seem like I'm crapping on this legislation if this legislation has the possibility of making it easier for people to meaningly get justice and meaningfully have. have a pathway for taking this kind of garbage down. That is a good thing. I am just, I've been

burned before. I get very skeptical when all of the men who run every major social media platform are publicly supportive and putting money into a piece of legislation passing. That just gives me pause. And I want to be clear that I want there to be good legislation. If this law helps, somebody get justice, that is truly a good thing. But my concern is that women and girls who are being targeted for this kind of abuse are sort of being used by tech leaders and elected officials to make it seem like they really care about protecting us when I don't think that they actually do. When Elon Musk was asked directly about people using grok to generate these kinds of images of women and girls' children on his platform, he made a big joke out of it. He literally,

laughed about it and took a public victory laugh about how great Grok was going. And so you're not going to get me to believe that he genuinely cares about women and girls being harmed by his technology. When given the chance to demonstrate that he cares, he fails to do so in epic dramatic ways time and time again. I am concerned that people like him are banking on him being supportive of this legislation, making it look like he really does care when I know the truth that he does not. The 19th has a really good breakdown of the legislation and how victims and survivors of this kind of abuse

might use it to get justice by Jasmine Methaney. I've never met Jasmine, but I read a lot of her work and she's always really on it. We will put that piece in the show notes. More after a quick break. Summer is on at base 31. The Drill Hall RBC stage is packed with. with big shows, live music, and electric summer nights.

Featuring acts like Father John Misty, the beaches, and wild rivers. From Can't Miss concerts to food, drinks, art, history, and places to gather across the B-31 district. There's never been a better time to visit Base 31 in Prince Edward County. Plan your visit at base31.ca. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad support,

streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business.

Think IHart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-I-Hart. I love the sounds, the buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place soccer, football, at home.

Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed? I inherited that fandom from my mom. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots.

We go beyond the game to the people and the people, and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull. It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though.

Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people.

Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer, and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. We have been covering the way the Trump administration is cracking down on companies who really do anything having to do with minoritized people, women, people of color.

I have been seeing this story about PayPal reported in pretty dry terms, but it is actually a story that deeply infuriates me. So here's what's going on. PayPal just settled with the Department of Justice over a program. the company launched back in 2020 called the Economic Opportunity Fund, which was a $530 million commitment to support black and minority-owned business. It was created in the wake of George Floyd's murder when all those corporations were making public commitments to address racial inequality, and I don't know, people were buying how to be an anti-racist from their local black-owned bookstore and then like not picking it up.

Remember that era? I do. Boy, that seems like a different era than we are. are in now. Nancy Pelosi, taking a knee wearing kente cloth. It's like a fever dream that any of that actually happened. Yeah, and set in motion the current fever dream that we are all living through. Oh, my God, tell me about it. So the Trump Department of Justice decided that the program constituted, quote, a legal DEI and that trying to help minority-owned businesses was itself a form of discrimination. So what is this settlement look like? Papers. Papers. will waive processing fees on $1 billion in transactions.

That's about $30 million for small businesses that are veteran-owned or operate in farming, manufacturing, or technology. Interesting to me, I mean, I feel that there is some stuff being implied there about who veterans in this country are and who farmers and manufacturers in this country are. Basically, what I think they're saying is, you will give money to white people. And white people are the only people who work in manufacturing or farming or are veterans. I don't think it's true, actually, that the majority of people in those industries are disproportionately white. No, of course not. That's what I'm saying.

Basically, it sounds like the Trump administration is like, you gave black people money. Well, the analogous to black people is veterans and farmers because none of those people are black, but they are. What I'm saying is they've tried to create a very stupid racial binary where no real binary exists, where you gave black people something. Now you've got to give white people something. And to translate that into policy, it's going to be veterans and farmers. Because the trauma administration is really stupid. So they don't know that all veterans and all veterans and all farmers and all manufacturers are not uniformly all white people. They think that they are, but that's actually not correct.

The thing that gets me about this is that it's so simplistic. It assumes the world works in this tit-for-tat way when it just doesn't. And I know that on paper, some people might say this is a win for PayPal, and it's financially it sort of is. They don't have to pay any kind of cash penalty. The Department of Justice make no actual finding that PayPal broke the law. So to be clear, the DOJ does not say PayPal broke the law or did anything wrong. PayPal explicitly denies any liability.

but we should also be clear what happened here, which is that the company voluntarily created a program to help close the racial wealth gap, which is a real thing that exists in this country, and the federal government came after them for it. PayPal did not lose a court case. They just got pressured and investigated until finally they were like, okay, we'll kill the program and replace it with something that helps veterans and farmers. So to me, even though it's kind of a legal victory for PayPal, it's also very clearly a shakedown. And the Trump administration is basically saying that acting attorney general Todd Blanche, who is worth mentioning is Trump's former personal attorney, celebrated this settlement with a statement saying, quote, American corporations are on notice. You will face our aggressive enforcement if you use race or national origin to discriminate against qualified Americans, which, come one now,

what he means is white Americans because in their understanding of the United States, the only people who are ever qualified are white people. The fact that black people are non-white people or women would get anything is giving something, taking something away from qualified Americans, hint, hint,

and giving it away to a group of people who don't deserve shit. Let's keep it a buck. That's really what he's saying. Yeah, it's a funny phrase, qualified Americans because he doesn't specify like qualified for what? Just generally globally qualified. Yeah, I mean, come on.

You get it. Yeah, you're picking up what we're putting down. So it's been a minute since you've asked me. You want to ask me the question that I know is on everyone's minds? Oh, it has been a minute. But Bridget, what's Elon done now? Well, according to the mother of his child, Ashley St. Clair, possibly rigging the 2024 presidential election question mark? We have covered Ashley St. Clair before. She's that right-wing influencer who had a baby with Elon Musk, turned down a 15 million NDA offer, and has been in a nasty custody battle with him ever since.

We did an episode about her after she apologized for her past comments about trans people, and the episode was really about whether or not folks should buy that apology. while she's back and she's saying that Elon Musk maybe sort of rigged the election. On a TikTok video that she posted this week, she says that one night she and Elon were alone together and he told her that he had lasers in space ready to create what he called, quote, an anomaly in the matrix during the 2024 election. She says that immediately she told him, stop talking about this because she did not want to be deposed about it later, which, if that's true, I will, like, good on her. So she never actually got to find out what he meant exactly.

She also claims that Musk was sending her real-time data during the campaign that she does not believe that he should have ever had access to, given what she knows about political candassing. She said that on election night, he bailed on her at Mar-Lago, texting that he had to leave because his team had numbers showing that Trump was going to win because his team had, in his words, the best real-time data. Not for nothing, this does sort of jive with how Musk has talked about the election publicly before. She closed the video by saying that she could take a lot of hush money from Musk right now,

but she won't because she is not motivated by her own self-interest. So what did Elon have to say about these allegations of space lasers and election rigging? Well, a source close to Elon Musk told TMZ, quote, This is total nonsense. The laser sky thing is just a three-dimensional chess metaphor, which she just doesn't understand. I love that they're like, it's a three-dimensional chess metaphor, which like, I believe three-dimensional chess is also serving as a metaphor in that statement.

It's a metaphor within a metaphor. She's just too stupid to understand. How deep does this thing go? It's all metaphors, the whole way down, metaphors. So what do we make of all this, Bridget? We have Ashley St. Clair accusing Elon Musk of rigging the election. I feel like we have reason to view both of them with, let's say, skepticism. What do you think?

I think that's a good rule of thumb. You know, to be clear, I am not endorsing what she is saying, although I do think that the claims about him having more information about the election and more access to real-time election data than he should have had. That, to me, sounds substantive and sort of worth taking seriously and kind of, again, jives with what we know about what Elon did during his time in the federal government with Doge. So I think that's worth like taking seriously. But in any event, it is clear to me that Ashley St. Clair is like done being quiet when it comes to Elon Musk. And whatever you make of her specific claims, I think the broader picture is really clear that we're talking about a guy who tried to silence her. And when she would not be silence, retaliated against her and is now fighting for custody of a child that he reportedly barely knows. So whether or not you buy these claims that she said about what he said about the election,

like that part's not in dispute. Let's talk about some Florida man grooming. Oh, my gosh. More after a quick break. From live music under the stars to immersive public art, local food and drink and stories that shaped a nation. There's nowhere quite like Face 31. Wander historic hangers.

Catch world-class concerts. Discover exhibitions, patios, and moments you'll remember. remember long after summer ends. History isn't kept behind glass here. It surrounds you. This season, experience Prince Edward County's hottest cultural destination. Explore what's on now at base 31.ca. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, I hearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

Plus only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. I love the sounds. The buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans,

the announcers calling the place soccer, football, at home. Why do I watch the walk up? That's like asking me, why do I, Agreed. I inherited that fandom for my mom. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about

soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head, which crows. my skull. It is an American game.

The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the My Coutura Podcast Network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating.

people, like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer, and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. This Florida man grooming story can't make this stuff up. Okay. So, A 61-year-old Florida man named Andrew Sheets was arrested after he was secretly recording men in the bathroom at the Naples Pride Fest back in April. So why was he doing this?

He claims he was there to catch so-called, quote, grooming. Let's back up. Sheets showed up to this Pride event wearing meta-smart glasses and posted a 40-minute video that he took with those glasses. glasses to YouTube. The video included footage of men using the bathroom. He titled the video something about documenting grooming at a, quote, T-sler event, a slur for trans people, and then he put it up on the internet. So here is the real kicker to this story. The people that he filmed going to the bathroom just happened to be too undercover. police officers.

Only in Florida. So these police officers said that they felt shocked and embarrassed when they found a video of them using the bathroom had been posted on YouTube for the world to see. No shit they felt embarrassed about that. I don't know. What are they trying to hide?

Are they trying to do some grooming in there? So this guy was trying to defend himself in a local news outlet. He said, my intent was not to get expletive picks. I don't know what expletive. they took out there. I was trying to figure that out too. It's like in the quote,

it's just in brackets, the word expletive. What could it be? What could it be? Knowing what I know about this guy could be literally anything. Yeah, like, horny picks or naked picks,

but like neither of them would be removed. Oh, yeah. Maybe it's also a slur? It's probably a slur. He seems like a slurty kind of guy. Yeah. My intent was not to get. get slur picks like they're trying to say. If it was illegal, why didn't the cops have it taken down?

He has now been charged with video voyeurism and video voyeurism dissemination. But it actually gets worse with this guy because detectives apparently were already keeping an eye on him during this Pride event, and for good reason. He initially had tried to enter the Pride Festival with a handgun. When security stopped him, he went back to his car and then allegedly returned later, trying to bring an AR-15-style rifle into the entrance. Yikes. This guy sounds like a menace. Naples Pride really put it best in their statement, saying, a man who publicly accused our community of grooming

now stands accused of unlawfully recording people in a place where privacy is expected. The projection is truly something. I love this story, and I am thrilled to talk about it. Mike, do you remember a while back on a roundout we talked about a man named Larry Bouchard, who was a 61-year-old retired cop from rural Tennessee, who spent 37 days in jail over a Facebook meme? I definitely do. I love that story. I felt inspired listening to it. Do we have an update? Do I have an update for you? And it's a good one. And it's a great story to end on.

So for those who missed it, quick recap, after Charlie Kirk was killed last September, Larry Bushart posted a meme on a local community Facebook page, one that quoted Donald Trump saying, quote, we have to get over this after a school shooting that happened in Iowa. He posted this meme with a caption, quote, this seems relevant today. He posted it in a thread about a Charlie Kirk visual that was being organized in Perry, County about 30 miles from his home. Now, Larry, by his own description, is like a rare outspoken progressive voice in a deeply conservative part of central Tennessee. He calls himself a Facebook warrior who relished relish confronting acquaintances and strangers alike online over their political

opinions. I got to say, I really identify with this because that used to be me, but now I have a podcast. Larry should start a podcast. Larry is welcome on the show anytime, but Larry should start a podcast. If you are someone who is like lighten up the Facebook comments over politics, do it in front of a microphone and make it your job, you know? So it sounds like, yes, Larry knew exactly what he was doing, like spreading progressive cantankerism on Facebook. But like what he's doing is legal. It is nothing, there is nothing illegal about it. He's allowed to have opinions on Facebook. Except for the fact that Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems, who had been publicly mourning Charlie Kirk's death on his own Facebook page and also promoting this visual, decided that that

meme was somehow a threat against a local high school. So, what did Sheriff Nick Weems do? He contacted the police in Larry's hometown of Lexington and had the police go pick Larry up. The body cam footage from that visit is wild. Basically, it's just the police showing up, and Larry is just confused. And mind you, Larry himself is a former police officer. The police officer who showed up at his door told Larry, I'm just going to be completely honest with you. I really have no idea what they are talking about. And Larry laughed because he was like, I know exactly what they're talking about. And he told the officer, the post was obviously referring to the school shooting in Iowa, not anything local to Tennessee where he lived. The officer essentially shrugged and said,

I don't care, this is nothing to do with me. So Larry told that officer that he was not going to take that post down, and that was that, or so Larry thought, because the cops came back later that night and arrested him. He was charged under a Tennessee law, making it a felony to threaten violence against a school and hit with a $2 million bail he could not afford. So he sat in a Perry County jail for 37 days before the charge was eventually dropped. importantly, the whole thing was an obvious setup. Sheriff Weems later admitted on a TV interview that he and his investigators knew that

that meme was referencing the Iowa school shooting because it was obvious and that it had nothing to do with anything local to Perry County. But he claimed that he pushed for the arrest anyway to calm fears in the community because the post had created a panic and created hysteria. But Larry's lawsuit said that there was no evidence of any community hysteria. to speak of. Not Nary one concerned citizen had flagged the post to police. The local school district had, quote, no records at all relating to Larry or his Facebook post. And none of the commenters on the actual Facebook thread had said anything about having interpreted his message as a threat.

So Sheriff Weems just made up an excuse and lied about it. It sounds like he had a boner for Charlie Kirk and used his authority as an agent of the state to squash free speech. Honestly, just like Charlie Kirk loved to do. That is what it sounds like. It's so funny that also like Charlie Kirk, he apparently loved attention and spotlight because he went on TV to talk about it. Probably not the smartest move,

considering that he probably should have anticipated some kind of repercussions. Oh, my God. Also, how glad are you that that era, This is the era where Charlie Kirk was killed and everybody was like, it's time to arrest anyone who was not sufficiently sad about it. And now I feel like a lot of those same people are like, Charlie Kirk, who? Yeah, they move on.

They have short memories. I mean, there are videos of people going to Starbucks and ordering Charlie Kirk's favorite drink and then writing, I am Charlie Kirk on the cup. And if the barista didn't say, I am Charlie Kirk when the drink was ready, like flipping their shit and getting a video of it. Like, what a time. Yeah. You know, they just really cared about free speech.

Yeah. I'm going to get that barista fired for not saying Charlie Kirk. Okay, so Larry gets out of prison and he's like, okay, bet. It's lawsuit time, motherfuckers. According to the lawsuit, weems allegedly collaborated with an investigator named Jason Morrow to leave a critical detail out of the arresting affidavit. The fact that the meme was referencing that 2024 Iowa school shooting. Why does that matter?

Well, including that detail might have led the reviewing magistrate to realize the cops were trying to arrest someone for what is obviously protected speech, so they just didn't include it. Larry filed a federal lawsuit in December, and this week we got the resolution an $835,000 settlement. with Sheriff Weems and Perry County.

I will say the sad thing here is that just knowing what I know about how these things work out, it is likely that this settlement might be paid by the taxpayers. So if you live in Perry County, let us know if you think Sheriff Weems' pathetic little power trip was worth almost a million dollars. Oh, man, that is so sad and, like, infuriating. I'm curious if Perry County is one of the counties where sheriffs are elected. I can't imagine that this is going to help Sheriff Weems' re-election campaign. Or then again, maybe it will. I mean, whoever, if they are elected in Perry County, whoever runs against him,

perfect opportunity for an attack ad. Like, this motherfucker's boner for Charlie Kirk cost you a million dollars. You're going to vote for him again? Yeah, but, you know, counterpool. point. This guy loves Charlie Kirk. Hey. And aren't we all Charlie Kirk after all? So what's interesting is that Larry is not the only person who was want to pay out in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's death. A professor at Austin Pay State University settled for $500,000 after being penalized for his comments about Charlie Kirk's death. A public defender in Iowa was rehired and paid $125,000. But Larry's almost $1 million.

appears to be the largest settlement so far. So Larry did lose his post-retirement job through all of this, but he said that he did not regret the post, but he did regret the toll that it took on his family. He said, I could have been more dignified, classy, but hell, we all could be. Larry, you're my dude. I've never met Larry.

Something about the way that he, his comments read. I'm like, I feel like Larry and I would get along. I bet you would. I'm also very intrigued by Larry. Maybe we should try to get him on the show. Oh my God, Larry. His attorneys did send us a statement back when he was first arrested, which is why we ended up covering this case

and why it was on my radar in the first place. So, yeah, Larry, you don't know me, but you're an official friend of the show. Come on the podcast anytime. And this is what I love. In a rare moment of compromise, Larry promised his wife one thing when it was all over that he would stay off Facebook.

Honestly, just good advice. Just good advice. Nice, yeah. Just in general. Well, Bridget, before we wrap up, do you have any updates about the forthcoming audio book, Love at First Prompt? I sure do. Thank you to everybody who was pre-ordered Love at First Prompt. It comes out July 14th. Is that right? It does. It comes out July 14th. We haven't mentioned this in a little while, but we are still sending stickers to people who pre-order. So if you pre-order the book, you can get it at love at firstprompt.a.i or anywhere you get your audio books. Take a screenshot, email it to us at hello at tangoody.com, and we will so happily mail you a,

there are no girls on the internet sticker. Even if you live abroad, we have lots of listeners abroad that we love very much. You can get the stickers in Iceland. You can get the stickers in Sweden. And to sweeten the pot, since we're spending so much on shipping for them anyway, I usually stick an extra sticker in there. Oh! The Nordic country show us so much love, so we got to show love right back.

Mike, thank you so much for helping me run down these stories, and thanks to all of you for listening. I will see you on the internet. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoati.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.

It's a production of IHeart Radio 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. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's that time to put on your jersey and wave your flag, whoever you root for.

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