There Are No Girls on the Internet - Park Mom Birthday Cake Drama, DeSantis Campaign Deep Fakes, Amazon’s Spy Ring, YouTube Disinfo Is Back, Facebook Still Awful, New Twitter CEO — NEWS ROUNDUP

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

This week we learned Amazon employees spied on Ring customers, YouTube is rolling back its policy about election disinfo, and Instagram is even worse than we thought (which was already very bad). In less terrible news, Twitter has a new CEO, and some low stakes drama between two Birthday Moms in the park reminds us why the Internet is great. Good news! Biden names a point person to counter extremists trying to ban LGBTQ books: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/08/1180941627/biden-pride-month-book-bans Bad News! Instagram Algorithms Boost and Connect Vast Network of Pedophiles: https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/instagram-pedophile-network-child-pornography-researchers-1235635743/  Scary news! DeSantis campaign uses AI-generated deep fake images of Trump and Fauci: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/desantis-ad-uses-fake-ai-images-of-trump-hugging-and-kissing-fauci-experts-say/  The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ The opposite of ‘Enshittification’ is ‘Embiggification’: https://youtu.be/FcxsgZxqnEg  Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino Is Teetering on the Glass Cliff: https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-linda-yaccarino-glass-cliff/  Get more bonus content ad-free and join the TANGOTI Discord chat at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tangoti See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, 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 IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than adds supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call

844-844-I-Hart. 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, 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 IHeart Women's Sports. There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. I'm here with my producer, Mike. Hey, Mike. Hey, Bridget. How about the smoke, right? It's really something here in D.C.

It's like the only thing anybody's been able to talk about for days. I have not left my house in 48 hours. And here's what you might have missed this week on the internet. You know that song that goes, I always feel like somebody's watching me? Well, if you have a ring camera that somebody watching might be an Amazon employee. And that's because before 24, 2017, Amazon employees could just access whoever's ring camera they wanted, and some of them did.

This is according to a court filing from the Federal Trade Commission when it announced a $5.8 million settlement with Amazon over privacy violations. So this whole thing is about as creepy as you would expect. It sounds like there was just overbroad access given to employees and also contractors to customers' ring footage, and that there might have been just a generally lax attitude around accessing that footage at Amazon. According to the filing, Ring gave every employee full access to every customer video before 2017 and failed to patch bugs in the system that allowed hackers to access cameras and scare consumers.

Now, I gotta say, this was not just like a one-time thing. It sounds like a pervasive issue. Ring employees were spying on women. In 2017, an employee of Ring viewed videos made by at least 81 female consumers and Ring employees using Ring products. Undetected by Ring, the employee continued spying for months. He was looking specifically for cameras with labels that suggested they were in people's intimate spaces. So they had labels like master bedroom camera or bathroom camera.

So it's pretty clear what was going on in this instance. This employee was only caught after a supervisor noticed that the male employee was only viewing videos of, quote, pretty girls. which even that supervisor's explanation, I feel like, is pretty gross. In another incident, an employee gave someone's ex-husband access to their ring footage without their consent. So you can kind of get a sense of how dangerous and serious that could be. Like if you're going through a contentious divorce or you have an abusive ex, the fact that ring was just handing over your ring footage to your ex without your consent or knowledge is pretty problematic.

So it was not just random women that these ring employees didn't know. Ring employees were also spying on each other. Another incident allegedly occurred in 2018 when a male employee allegedly accessed a fellow female employee's camera and watched her stored video recordings without her permission. And can you imagine, like, you go to work, there's Greg at the water cooler, cut to Greg watching you in your home? Like, that is so fucked. So, ring employees were also gifting people with cameras and then using those cameras to spy on them. An employee was found to have given ring devices to people and then watch their videos

without their knowledge. Like, some gift. Oh, here's a present. It's a ring camera. I'll see you later. Totally fucked. Give the gift of Greg watching, lurking, spying. Terrible gift.

So separately, Amazon also had to pay $25 million to settle. allegations that it violated children's privacy rights when it failed to delete Alexa recordings at the request of parents and kept them for longer than necessary. Wow. Wow. So parents requested that Amazon delete them and then they just didn't. That's an additional level of egregious. Yeah. My understanding is that they said that they would delete those recordings and then did not. So it kind of goes back to this idea of, you know, I don't think that companies can just say one thing and do another, and it sounds like the FTC agrees. We talked about this last week with Google, where they said they were going to delete

users abortion data, and then they just didn't. Exactly. Like, it definitely paints a larger portrait of negligence. You know, this is all part of a push by the FTC to regulate big tech and hold companies accountable to putting profit above privacy. Now, I have said this probably a hundred times on this show. I get why someone would want a ring camera for their safety or to feel secure in their homes, but I would never allow one of these devices in my home. You know, not that I would ever break any laws myself, but people should be aware that police can and have accessed your ring footage without your consent and without a warrant because ring partners with police departments. And it sounds like even after having to pay out millions

of dollars for these violations around spying and privacy, Amazon is still not admitting wrongdoing, saying in a statement that they disagree with how these instances were framed by the FTC, but they did, you know, pay these fines. And so it just goes to show like these companies don't care. They don't care about your security. They don't care about your privacy. And they're callously preying on and fostering a climate of fear, fear around crime, fear around your neighbors,

and tricking us into thinking that it is a safe choice to have their devices in your home, while all the while they are out here putting us in danger. You know, I completely get a lot of us feel vulnerable right now, feel scared right now. I totally get it. But I believe that Amazon is inflaming and exploiting and taking advantage of this vulnerability that we might feel to sell us technology that ultimately harms us. Yeah, and like you mentioned, this story happens to be about Amazon, but it could just as well be a story about Google, who we talked about last week, or Tesla, who a few months ago was

in the news because their engineers similarly had a... unfettered access to the cameras inside people's cars, and they were using that to share videos of each other of like, hey, look at this guy picking his nose in his car, ha, ha, ha, L-O-L. But, you know, it could be Facebook, could be any of these big companies, because this is just the sort of thing that we get in surveillance capitalism when we bring these devices into our homes where privacy is just an afterthought and the commodification of our personal data is a gold rush for these companies so much so that, you know, a few million dollars in fines

here and there is well worth it to them. And so in this case, you know, it's not like the Amazon executives were getting in on the creeping. I assume it was just Greg and maybe some of his buddies. But I feel like I'm using Greg as a stand-in for the creepy employee because I've had been binge-washing succession. So I'm like, oh, someone was doing something creepy has to be Greg. Just like the name on the top of my mind that I'm associating with like, lecherous creeps. No offense to any Gregs out there listening. You're not all bad.

No, just the one who's a member of the disgusting brothers. But yeah, I mean, yeah, so they, you know, Greg's the one creeping, but it's the executives at the top that allowed it to happen with these lax security controls when they, I would, are you that had a responsibility to limit access in a way that would protect people's privacy. But they didn't because why would they willingly put road bumps in the way of unfettered access to all of the data just to feed back into their profits and helping them make more sales. And without regulation, that's just going to keep happening. And I just don't think that what, like $30 million is an amount that a company like Amazon is really going to feel.

To me, I mean, I am happy that they're having to have some kind of a show of accountability to how they have wronged the public. But I don't think this is an amount of money that they are going to feel. And just the fact that before 2017, anybody, a ring employee and their vast network of contractors could just look at anybody from their ring cameras they wanted is just the scale of harm is so much bigger than the amount that they have to pay in punishes. that I cannot imagine this is going to be something that they, that like gives them pause in terms of how they're harming people in the future. And, you know, I didn't even know about the fact that Tesla was using people's cameras to like share jokes with each other. Think about the grossest, longest car trip that you've ever taken where there's just Wendy's bags and used Kleenex on the ground and you're driving barefoot and you're disgusting. Imagine that video being used in

Greg's Slack channel, just to have a laugh. Yeah, thanks a lot, Greg. We're really beating up on the Gregs here. Let's switch gears. Let's beat up on the Ron's for a minute. Because Ron DeSantis' campaign just recently used AI-generated images of Trump hugging and kissing Fauci in their campaign material. So we've said many times on this show about the spread of deep fakes and on the internet.

And as AI image generation software gets better and more available, it is so easy for bad actors to create fake images of celebrities and politicians. And I think especially when those images are weaponized in political campaigns during climates that are like politically fraught or sensitive or inflammatory. It's concerning because these fake images can often appear real. I am not too proud to admit that I got got by that image of the Pope in the Balenciaga puffer. It was early morning. I hadn't had my coffee.

I was just scrolling Twitter on my iPad. I just saw it and I thought, okay, the Pope's wearing a Balenciaga puffer checks out. It didn't, I didn't, my brain was not primed. Even though I'm somebody who studies disinformation and, like, talks about it for a living, my brain was not yet primed to have that sheer of skepticism. So these fake images can get the best of us, right? You shouldn't have to necessarily be so primed and poised and ready to tell, like, zoom in on the fingers and be like, oh, that's fake, to tell if an image is real or not.

I definitely am not. I've gotten got before. Yeah, it's a good point you make that we shouldn't have to be constantly hyper vigilant. You know, if I think about the times that I'm looking at social media, it's when I'm waiting for the metro or bored or, you know, waiting on this or that or I don't know. I'm not like sitting down to critically engage in like deep and critical thought about what I'm looking at. at, right? Like, I just want to see some cats. I want to see some jokes. I want to see some stupid stuff that makes me laugh. And yeah, you see the Pope in a puffer jacket? I don't know. I probably would have got, got, too. So this week, Rhonda Santis's campaign joined in on the AI generated deep fake fun and shared a set of fake images of Donald Trump hugging and kissing

Anthony Fauci. They were kind of clever about it mixing in the fake images with some real ones, But they weren't that clever about it because with a little scrutiny, the images appear to be obviously big. Like, in one of them, Trump's arm kind of wraps all the way around Fauci's body in a very unnatural way, like a long snake. Like he's like got double the arm around him, kind of. In another one, the letters in the phrase White House are garbled so you kind of know it's AI or that something is going on there. Other details are also off. Like the stars in the American flag have or unnatural details in Trump's hair, which somehow kind of manages to look more unnatural than his actual, honest to God, human hair. I don't know how that's possible.

So the French media entity AFP first reported on the fake photos, which were included in a video released by the official DeSantis campaign. You know, I really thought and hope that we had more time before U.S. presidential candidates were using deep fakes as part of their official campaigns. I don't know why I thought that. I guess maybe it's just wishful thinking. But, you know, politicians like DeSantis and also Trump. Like it happens to be that like DeSantis did this against Trump, but I could just as easily see it going the other way. They have no qualms about speaking lies and spreading lies.

So why wouldn't they take advantage of AI images to spread visual lies? And I think there's really something about visual lies that works on a different level than when you read something that's not true. the same way that I was just like, didn't have my glasses on, hadn't had my coffee, scrolling, and saw a picture of the Pope and said, oh, that's fine. Visual images can hit us so much differently. They can hit us quickly, more quickly than the written word. And they can sort of stoke a more emotionally resonant space in us, I think.

Like, in the interview that we did with the phoma Uzoma, who was formerly at Pinterest, who was kind of in charge of getting medical misinformation and other, you know, bad stuff off of Pinterest. she said that one of the reasons why it was so prevalent on Pinterest is because it's a visual, a visual platform. And so there would be these highly visually visceral images. Like when it came to abortion disinformation, it was these like very visually charged images. And they, of course, would stoke an emotional response on people very quickly. So definitely the threat of image-based AI manipulated, deep fake images is a real concern. Yeah, that's, I think you.

really hit on something there that the like she said the images evoked this visual emotional reaction and also it's just new i think in certainly in my lifetime and i think possibly all of human experience that we have to be so questioning of what we visually see in front of us right we have all these phrases like he says she said you can't believe everything you read uh and so we're used to having to sort through what's true and what isn't in these like verbal domains. But we also have the phrase like you don't believe what what's in front of your own eyes, right, which is usually a pejorative thing because typically in human experience, we can believe what we see for ourselves and we directly see something.

It's generally assumed to be true. But even that is no longer true. And so, you know, of all the scary stuff that you've talked about on this show with our guests. I feel like deep fakes are one of the scariest because if people aren't able to tell what's real and what isn't, it does not bode well for solving the big problems that are coming our way, right? Like outside the windows right now, the city is blanketed in smoke from the worst wildfires on the East Coast that I could remember in my lifetime made worse by climate change. We're going to have like serious problems that is society we need to come together to solve. And yeah, if we can't

have a shared understanding of what is real and what isn't, that's going to be hard. Let's take a quick break. 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 Acapella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter.

Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think

podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real.

From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context and ask the questions everybody wants answered. Sports slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to SportsSlic on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. And we're back. Let's talk about YouTube. YouTube, which is owned by Google, will no longer remove videos falsely claiming that the 2020 presidential election in the United States was stolen.

Reversing a policy put in place after the 2020 vote. In a blog post, the company says, quote, it will stop removing content that advances false claims that, widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in 2020 and other past U.S. presidential elections because things have changed. Well, what's changed? Why are they doing this? According to YouTube? Because free speech. They said, in the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation,

it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence and other real world harm. I just want to jump in there real quick to break down that quote that you. you just read because it's so telling. They say, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech. Right. So they're, on the one hand, they're acknowledging that it does curb misinformation. It is actively today preventing harm from being done.

And yet, they are going to remove those protections out of potential maybe fear about something that could potentially occur in the future. And it's so backwards and silly and infuriating. Yeah, it's like the Gettysburg address of kowtowing tech PR bullshit speak, where they say, we are, we acknowledge that what we are doing will, has prevented harm, but what if it could increase free speech question mark? Let's find out, right? And I got to say, Like, I feel a little bit personally invested in this because getting Google to agree to take down this kind of misinformation is something that I personally worked on in my platform accountability work. This has definitely been, I mean, I've tried not to dwell on it too much because what does that get you? But this has definitely been the year of a lot of policies that did verifiable good and verifiably made platforms safer in, like, clear ways.

this has been the year of seeing those policies be walked back, be changed. So it's a little personally distressing to me, but that's either here nor there. They do say that they will continue to take down content that misleads voters about when, where, and how to vote and claims that discourage voting and content that encourages others to interfere with a democratic process. But knowing a little bit about this, like, that's just not how it works, right? Donald Trump didn't go on television and say, I think people should go to polls and harass poll workers. I don't think he explicitly said that, but that was how that message was interpreted and filtered down.

And so this really flies in the face with what we know about how election disinformation and misinformation works. People don't go on TV and say, do X, Y, Z in an explicit way. It's very roundabout. It's very the implication. And so saying like, oh, well, we definitely understand that misleading people about how to vote, content that encourages people to interfere with the democratic process, saying that that is content that you will take down because you recognize that as harmful and dangerous, it kind of, it doesn't make sense that you would think that that is dangerous, but that is not how it

really works, right? Like, bad actors are really good at staying just on the right side of not needing to to have their content removed. That is like something that they are very good at. It is their bread and butter. And so saying that someone will have to meet this very specific threshold to have their content removed by YouTube is just inviting people to make content that stays just to hair on that side of plausible deniability that essentially encourages

just that, you know? Yeah, that's right. And it's a moving, shifting target. and to really meaningfully address it or moderate that content or remove that sort of content that is sneakily just on the, just a hair shy of being over the line. You know, it's a tough problem. And I can understand why platforms like Google really just want to punt on it.

But it's also super important for our democracy and the cohesion of society And also, let's just talk about this BS. Oh, it could threaten free speech. Literally this morning, I saw a post from Trump on Truth Social that said that the 2020 election was stolen. It's not as if there are no places in society or on the internet that one could say those lies if they wanted to. Trump does it literally every day and has been for the last few years, right? And so what I am saying is that there is no reason for a company like YouTube to allow that on their platform, not being able to say it on YouTube, doesn't mean that people aren't able to say it. People say it all the time, right? It's just like, it's such an abdication of responsibility and leadership. And I should say that this is actually one of the last planks of, like, post-insurrection, digital infrastructure that was put in place after the violent insurrection. YouTube was actually the last, one of the last platforms to have a policy against 2020 election denial. Twitter started adding false labeling of false claims about the

the 2020 election early last year. But then they walked it back saying that it had been more than a year since, you know, Biden took office and there was eventually an exchange of power. Facebook also walked back their labeling of false claims to. The decisions of these platforms about what sort of content they're going to allow and what sort of lying, disingenuous, dangerous content, they might prohibit. That's not a free speech issue, right? Like, that is what these, that is a a business decision by these companies of how they want to operate and what role they want to play in a pluralistic society. And I think it really shows, it's just like another plank in how these platforms are, I guess I'll use the word preparing, but really it's the opposite of preparing

for the upcoming election. Like YouTube restored Trump's account back in March so that users could quote, hear equally from major national candidates. You know, I think it really shows that platforms and also media outlets like CNN. CNN who platformed Trump to just like lie and smear and slander people for an hour. I think that these platforms have really learned nothing from the last few years. You know, verifiable lies about our democratic process and our elections is not discourse. It's not a difference of opinion. It's not an issue that you need to show both sides to or give credence to.

It is a lie. It is a verifiable lie. By now, platforms should have a game plan about how they're going to deal with. verifiable lies about our democratic process in a way that it's ethical and responsible, or at least more ethical and more responsible than just like let anybody lie because that's what free speech is. Yeah. I mean, they just want that sweet, sweet engagement.

They know that Trumpy outrage drives clicks and eyeballs and they want a piece of the action. You know, Google's business is selling ads and integrity and responsibility really have nothing to do with it. And it's tragic and dangerous because YouTube is so powerful and has such a large impact on our discourse, on our democracy, that they should feel a sense of responsibility for the content that they amplify and promote. But they've just demonstrated time and again that they don't and that they're going to choose outraged engagement and selling ads every time. Platforms, huh? Yeah. let's talk about another platform that is generating a bit of outrage, and that is Reddit. So popular platform Reddit announced some changes this week, and users are not happy, to say the

least. So if you don't know what Reddit is, I love Reddit. It's kind of known as the front page of the internet to a point where, like, if you need to answer a question or you need some like real, like human vetted, reliable information, it is a common practice to search whatever you need plus Reddit to quickly get to an actual answer. I want to heard somebody say that, like, if they were in a fire, the last thing Googled on their phone would be like, how to fight fires plus Reddit. Like, I died trying to get the answer from Reddit. And Bridget, didn't you used to be like a power moderator on Reddit like years ago?

I was a former Reddit moderator. I was a site that I spent a lot of my free labor moderating and caring about and thinking about. So if folks use Reddit, then they probably already know that when you log, on to Reddit from a computer, generally, like, it's fine. The user experience is fine. But if you log on on your phone, the app, the Reddit app is very janky. And it's also full of ads to the point that it, I would say that it's like, I won't say unusable, but it's not a pleasant user experience. It's like almost unusable, the amount of ads that pop up when you're trying to use it. So to get around that, a lot of folks who use Reddit on mobile use third-party apps like Apollo. And these

apps only work because Reddit allowed those third-party apps to have access to their API, basically have access to their backends. And all of that is changing because now Reddit announced that they're going to start charging those third-party apps a pretty high price for the access that they've always had. You might remember that Twitter did something pretty recently too. So pretty much every third-party app that relies on Twitter's API has announced that they will not be able to operate if Reddit continues with this plan to charge them. the amount that they're asking to be charged, to continue to have access to the back end. Well, this is like such a surprising trend for platforms to make because I think I was reading

like a Tom Friedman book a while ago. Tom Friedman. Tom Friedman, yeah, it was a, I don't remember why. I think it was like in an airport and it felt like the right thing to do or something. But he was talking about like after the 90s. and the dot-com boom, how like APIs were the big thing that enabled the internet to like take off and flourish because you had all this interoperability. And I think it was right about that. It was wrong about a lot of other stuff.

But, but yeah, like APIs were a great invention, right? And allowed platform, arguably, you know, all the third-party apps that allow people to interact with reds. in ways that are better than Reddit's native app makes available, help people use it, help grow their user base. And it's so surprising to see platforms like Reddit and Twitter clamping down on the very thing that helped them grow. Well, so one of my favorite third-party apps for Twitter, Block Party, which is a great tool to mass block people who are like harassers or bad actors on Twitter, they announced that they're

taking an indefinite hiatus because of this change where they're now charging for Twitter access to Twitter's API. Now, Reddit did walk this back a little bit kind of along the lines of exactly what you were saying, saying that these new API terms would carve out an exception for accessibility apps, which allow users who are blind or visually impaired to browse Reddit because I guess Reddit does not have a way for people who are visually impaired to browse it. So exactly what you were saying that these third-party apps via API access are able to create a more inclusive experience to include more users, which Reddit has not done. So really, like, I'm no expert on this, but in my book, it's like, Reddit should

really be paying the people who it's like, oh, well, you've just completely shut out blind users. Luckily, we have found a workaround to include them. You're welcome. Yeah, and that's a, that is an interesting note here, right? Like, Reddit is pretty different than Twitter in a lot of ways, right? Like, Reddit, to my understanding, really survives and thrives on the active participation of its users. And I would imagine that some of them, particularly, like you just mentioned, those who are blind, who rely on these third-party apps to use it. I would imagine that some of those users might, not love this change? Well, they certainly do not. And in fact, the Reddit community is very vocal, and they do not take stuff like this without a fight. So they are organizing to fight back. The platform relies on an army of unpaid moderators. I used to be one of them. And honestly, like, Reddit would not function without these moderators giving a lot of their free time and labor to keep Reddit subreddits, which are like, they're like, you know, the different communities on Reddit going. They all signed an

open letter to Reddit saying that oftentimes third-party tools offer better moderation tools than the ones that Reddit does. They say many of us rely on third-party apps to manage our communities effectively. The potential loss of these services due to the pricing change would significantly impact our ability to moderate efficiently, thus negatively affecting the experience for users in our communities and for us as mods and users ourselves. It honestly sounds like these moderators are just generally fed up with what they feel is a lack of communication and transparency from redder higher-ups to Reddit moderators, who again, basically their unpaid labor is the reason why the site is able to function. On June 12th, much of the site's subreddits are planning a blackout,

which means that individual subredits will lock into private mode, meaning that anybody who is not already a follower of these subredits will not be able to access them during that time or see that content. So if you don't use Reddit and you're thinking, who cares, what's the big deal? We're talking about millions of people, right? Some of these big subredits that are going dark in protests have upwards of like three or four million people on them. And I think it does kind of come back to what you were saying, Mike, about how, I mean, I don't want to give Thomas Friedman too much credit, but this idea of APIs and opening things up and having it be a more inclusive experience, I really see this Reddit thing and the reason that I wanted to talk about it here. I really say it

as a part of a larger fight about the internet and who the internet is for and what it is for, right? There is this great piece in Wired about the insidification of the internet, which kind of posits that this is how platforms die. First, they are good to their users, then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves, and then they die. I totally agree with this. And I feel it everywhere. Like, not even just on social media platforms, just everywhere. I feel like, every way. I feel like, every. I feel like, every. I feel like, every. everything online eventually has to, whatever little joy or life or love, it has to just bleed it to make a little bit more money for people who are already rich. You know, Instagram, 10 years ago, Instagram felt fun and cool. Like, I remember when Instagram first was a thing, I didn't, I wasn't on Instagram because I didn't feel cool enough. I was like, oh, there's something cool in my life to show. Everybody is like putting sepia filters on their pictures and It felt cool.

It felt like a community where you wanted to be. And now it just feels like a virtual dead mall. You know, it's not enough that HBO Max or Netflix cancels your favorite series only after one season. Now they have to remove the entire back catalog. So you cannot, so it's not as canceled. You can never watch the existing episodes again just to save a little bit of money on residuals and like having to pay the writers and the actors more. You know, on this new version of Twitter,

verification, people with something to sell can buy influence via paying $8 a month for a blue checkmark to give them more influence to sell whatever it is that they sell more effectively. But where is the internet infrastructure that exists to prop things up other than building and squeezing capital from people, you know? Ooh, that is dark and heavy, but you're absolutely right. I do like this phrase and shittification. first they ambiggin, then they inshidify. But yeah, it's a good question. Like, where is that internet infrastructure that exists?

Yeah. Well, it's a perfectly cromulate question. Luke Plummet, a tech writer, captured this feeling so well on Twitter. He writes, A huge part of the bad vibes you feel everywhere these days is because every single aspect of our lives is being squeezed by companies shaking us down.

And we're reaching a breaking point. Every platform, every service, every private. Every form of entertainment just keeps tightening the grip. Each quarterly growth report looks good in isolation, but are reaching the point of collective societal exhaustion. And boy, I really felt that. I really identified with that. I think I'm there where it feels like every little bit of joy is being squeezed and mined for whatever little capital can be taken from it to make some rich guy who's already rich a little bit more rich. And I think I'm really yearning for online spaces. that felt like they felt when I was a bit younger, you know, that felt like connection and community building and joy. And it feels like we are seating more and more of the internet solely to people who want to make money, right? Whether it's capital for wealthy investors or people who want to sell you something or outright scams. Yeah, we got to bring the weird, joyful internet back. Yeah, I want to see, like, I don't want to date myself, but I want to see more weird internet spaces that are just,

like, here's my weird cartoon website. Here's my big spoon or my salad fingers or my teen girl squad. All of those are real things. Look them up. Kids. They're very funny. Yeah, there was like funny stuff. There was joyful stuff.

I feel like it's out there too, right? Like there is still the infrastructure to create those things. Maybe the problem is that we're all spending our time on the big platforms because everybody else is there. Maybe we got to get off. I don't know. I'm just like speculating and losing the thread here. So that's, I mean, it's pretty messed up in dark. And I have to, we have to talk about this. Like, speaking of dark messed up stuff online.

Oh, no. I know. I don't want to spend too much time on it because it like genuinely nauseates me. But we have to talk about this new Wall Street Journal report about Instagram. Trigger warning here about abuse of children. It is horrific. The Wall Street Journal just published an expose showing that Instagram. showing that Instagram has been algorithmically promoting a vast trade of child sexual exploitation material. The journal said that it conducted an investigation into child sexual exploitation material on Instagram in collaboration with researchers at Stanford and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

They found that pedophiles have long used the internet, but unlike forums and file transfer services that cater to people who have interest in illicit content, Instagram does not merely host these activities. It's algorithms promote them. Instagram connects pedophiles and guides them to content sellers via recommendation systems that excel at linking those who share niche interests. Here's how it all works. The researchers found that Instagram enabled people to search explicit hashtags and then connected them to accounts that used those same terms to advertise child sex material for sale. According to the journal, test accounts were set up by researchers that viewed a single such account and then were immediately hit with suggested for you recommendations of purported child sex content sellers and buyers,

as accounts that were linking to off-platform content trading sites. Following just a handful of these recommendations was enough to flood their test account with content that sexualizes children. In addition to that, it's horrifying. In addition to that, certain Instagram accounts invite buyers to commission specific acts with menus listing prices for videos of children harming themselves or imagery of minor children performing sex acts with animals. This is all according to the Wall Street Journal's report.

citing the findings of the Stanford Internet Observatory Researchers. At the right price, children are available for in-person meetups, the journal reported. Yeah, it's stomach churning, it's horrifying, it's terrifying, but I have to say, it is not terribly surprising to me, especially right now when we're having so many conversations about protecting kids online. If lawmakers were serious about that, they would be regulating Facebook and the companies that Facebook runs, like in Instagram, because according to the data, Facebook is by far the biggest defender when it comes to child sexual abuse content online. This is not just when you compare it to other social media

platforms, but when you compare it to pornography sites as well, according to an independent study released by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Mind Geek, which is the parent company of Pornhub, Red Tube, U-Porn, and several other adult tube sites accounted for 13,229 instances of what they deemed child sexual abuse material. While Snapchat had 144,095 instances, Google had 546,704 instances. Facebook topped everybody with 20.3 million instances of this child exploitation material. So if we're actually serious about protecting kids online, it needs to start with looking at the biggest defender, looking at the worst bad actor, and that is undoubtedly by a I have a vast majority, Facebook.

Jesus, I thought we started out dark, but this is like next level stuff. And like it's, I got to hand it to Facebook. You know, we've talked about Amazon in this episode. We've talked about Google, doing bad stuff. But once again, Facebook just blows away the competition at being,

an unbelievably bad actor. Ugh, this is disgusting. And I mean, printing it in the, this was in the Wall Street Journal. So like, hopefully something will come from this. Well, the Wall Street Journal is also where Francis Howgan published her information about harms that Facebook knowingly did against children. So I don't know. I don't know. They're ghouls with no soul.

I don't know what to tell you. Let's move on. It's like a well-traveled Wall Street Journal to nothing pipeline. Got it. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say nothing after Francis Hogan published that information in the Wall Street Journal. Facebook did change their name to meta. So we got that out of it.

All right. That's true. Yeah. Still working on the legs. Yeah. They're not doing Metaverse anymore. You're never going to get those legs, Mike. Keep dreaming.

Okay. Thank God. Okay. Back to jokes, please. Okay, so let's move on. I know, I can't, I, I, we have to move on. I can't, I can't even stomach it. So let's move back to Twitter. So last month, Elon Musk announced that he was stepping down as a CEO of Twitter and named a former NBC universal executive Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO. Musk initially said that she would take over at about six weeks, but on Monday, after about three weeks, she tweeted that she had officially started saying it happened, first day in the books. So who is Linda Yacarino? Well, she spent 12 years at NBC. Universal, where she was most recently the chairperson of global advertising and partnerships. She was a big part of launching NBC's streaming service Peacock in 2020, which I got to say,

shout out to Peacock because I watch a lot of Peacock. She seems pretty buddy, buddy with Elon Musk. At a conference, she interviewed him and said, many of you in this room know me and know that I pride myself on my work ethic, but, buddy, I have met my match. She said that to Elon Musk. When everybody was kind of criticizing Elon Musk in the early days of him at the helm of Twitter, She urged people to give him a minute. Let's see what he's going to do. She has some ties to Trump. In 2018, Yakarino was named by Trump to the president's counsel on sports and fitness and

nutrition. The queer-focused news outlet, them reported that she follows some troubling accounts on Twitter, like Libs of TikTok, which we know is known for attacking LGBTQ people and their allies for just like minding their business. Deb notes that she also follows some like standard, one of the middle Twitter accounts, like mainstream journalists, I actually could kind of see her being the kind of person who thinks that if you follow mainstream journalists, that means that you also have to follow accounts like lives of TikTok to sort of represent both sides and have balance.

Like I was like, I probably, I could easily see her being the kind of person that feels this way. Now, her coming on as CEO does not necessarily signal big changes at Twitter. Musk is staying on as the owner and he says that he wants to focus more on like tech issues. Media Matters reported that Twitter's lawyers told a court that hiring career as a new CEO will not result in different content moderation strategies. So if you had, you know, high hopes for new content moderation strategies that maybe don't allow for things like hate speech, attacks on trans folks, crypto scams and porn bots, you might be disappointed. What's also kind of funny to me is that when she was first announced as CEO, a bunch of right-wing and extremist influencers criticized her because she had. had talked about wanting to hire more women and people of color when she was at NBC. And there had a video of her in 2020 talking about the importance of masks. Like, that was their big find.

Just goes to show that these people are literally never satisfied. Like, anybody that Musk was going to pick, they would still find a way to make that a grievance, to make that an attack on them. Yeah. Anyone to the left of Mussolini is like unacceptable to these people. So she's coming in a CEO at a self-inflicted difficult time for Twitter, the platform is not doing well. It's not doing well with this regular users or with advertisers. A recent poll by Pew found that six and ten adults in the U.S., which is Twitter's largest user base, were taking a break and a quarter of them said that they did not expect to be using Twitter in a year. When it comes to advertisers of Twitter's top 1,000 advertisers from last September before Musk took over, only 43% of them

were still using Twitter as of April. Now, Musk had been kind of cagey about this. Like he has not liked to talk about the dire financial straits that the company was in. But this week, he finally did acknowledge that in a Twitter spaces with presidential candidate and COVID conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Jr. Where he did admit that the revenue at Twitter had been cut by about 50%. You know, advertisers buying ads on Twitter is how the platform makes money. And basically right now, they're not doing that because what advertiser wants to see their brand. next to a tweet calling somebody a racial slur or like a porn bot or a scam or something, right?

I saw a pretty interesting piece in BBC about how with Yacanaro's background working with advertisers, Musk was basically trying to purchase trust to woo advertisers back. Maybe she'll be less like chaotic than Musk, maybe. So if you're thinking that she sounds like she might be a grown up in the room, might be somebody who can sort of steer the ship in a better direction than Musk has. That is a well-worn phenomena in business. There is this theory in business called the Glasscliff, where women are basically brought in to clean up the messes made by terrible men in power.

A good example of the Glasscliff was after the gaming company Blizzard had a massive gender discrimination and harassment lawsuit. They hired in 2021, Jen O'Neill, who was the first female lead of the company, right, who was sort of like brought in seemingly to kind of clean up this mess. Now, I absolutely do think that that is what, some of what's going on here, that a woman is being brought in to clean up this mess made by a man and the sort of signal that a grown-up is in charge and that it's no longer like a frat boy in charge.

But I also think that she is kind of being set up to fail in a lot of ways. You know, it's tough to be a such a high-profile hire, one, have to appease a demagogue, which we know Elon Musk is, two, and then have to handle that, navigate that while also signaling to advertisers that big changes are coming to woo them back. You know, it's this very difficult dance. I would say it's like an impossible dance to have to dance. The way that people are talking about her background really signals to me that she is being set up to have to accomplish something that seems at least. least very difficult, if not impossible. People have described her as someone who really likes to be a superwoman and someone who can, who would see a mess of a company and voluntarily want to go in and

feel like they can fix things. By the way, I hate this framing. I can't even really get, like, verbalize why I hate this. There's just something about it that feels very much like, women have to be super women to be in the room, that they have to be in the room, that they have to to be, they can't just be included from the jump. They have to be super women who are not just able, but excited to clean up a mess that was just clearly made by a man who had too much power and didn't know how to handle it, you know? Yeah. And if you think about the mess that is Twitter, it really all started when Elon took over, right? Like, I guess it had financial problems before then, but it wasn't the chaotic, toxic place that it is now where, I mean, among my friends,

I don't know too many people that really spend much time there at all anymore. He's really, I don't know, tank the brand, however you want to say it. It will be interesting to see how bringing on this new CEO will be for Twitter. There was a very interesting piece about the glass cliff phenomena and wire. to which Jackanero responded on Twitter, quote, as someone used to wearing foreign heels, let's be crystal clear, I don't teeter, which, okay, I'll give it to her. Kind of a good line. I'm not going to lie. But it's clear, like, we need to be clear. Musk is staying on at Twitter. So even with a new CEO, this is still his company. He's not going

away. And Musk does not have a great track record when it comes to working alongside women. I believe that Musk is a misogynist. You don't even have to look very far to see the ways in which he is a misogynist either. There are like a hundred different examples that I could give you off the top of my head that immediately come to mine. If we listed all of the ways that Trump, or Trump, oh my God, he's also a massaginist.

No, keep that shit in. They're both misogynist. They actually remind me of each other. It's not surprising to me that I confuse one for the other. So, you know, if we listed all the different examples that come to the top of my head, we'd be here all night. He tweeted a crass joke about wanting to start a university called the Texas Institute of Technology and Science, aka TITS as the acronym.

Side note, it's never even a good sexist joke, right? Like, I hate misogyny and sexism, but I love humor. And if a sexist joke was legitimately funny, I would acknowledge it. This isn't even a good joke. It's not even good massagin. Like, if you're going to tell, if you're going to be a CEO that is this powerful and tell misogynistic jokes, don't give the joke that a million of us have heard in the frat a thousand different times, you know? It's a bad joke. Like, it's, it's like a Beavis and Buthead level joke,

but, like, not even good enough to actually be on Beavis and Butthead, which is a excellent show, including the reboot. Like, I am someone who deeply appreciates stupid jokes and stupid humor, and this is not even, like, I can't even appreciate it. So the day after he tweeted this, Tesla became the subject of a gender discrimination lawsuit from multiple women. And I remember engineer and tech organizer, Cher Scarlett tweeted in response to all this, I heard that sexualizing women is a top-down systemic issue in tech. Might be wrong, though, IDK. And to be honest, that's how you do a funny joke about gender in tech, Elon.

Take notes. Yeah, acronyms are not the way. Yeah, an acronym that spells out tits, which is a body part that is sometimes, times found on female anatomy. Oh my God. Like, get this, get this guy a Mark Twain award, somebody. So according to a report from Business Insider, Musk secretly fathered twins with Chavon Zills, a female executive at his company, Nerolink. So we don't know much about their relationship, but if you're the head of a company and you're having sex with your underlings and your staff, I feel comfortable saying that like, at the very least, it's not a great look. All of this

information is public, right? So by all the accounts, Yacanaro, this new Twitter CEO, seems like a smart, competent person who would have looked at this information and decided that Twitter and Elon Musk were who and what you wanted to be mixed up with. And if that's what you decided as a competent, smart adult, that's what you wanted. If it doesn't work out, like, you kind of, in my book, like, get what you get. Like, this is all public information. If this is the company that you decided that you wanted to stake your reputation on, girl, do you, but you get what you get. You know, and I want to be clear, I want Yakinero to do well the same way that I want like all women to do well. You know, I'm not like rooting for her to fail.

But to me, doing well is not just bringing back advertisers or appeasing Elon Musk or helping Twitter make money. Doing well would be making Twitter a platform that does not elevate and amplify toxicity, lies, abuse, scams and harassment. And so I wish her well and hope that she's able to achieve that. But I think that her vision for doing well and what I have just articulated might be two different things. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to watch it develop. You know, maybe I've bought into the Glasscliff mythology. But yeah, it seems like having a smart, competent woman in the world. room probably couldn't hurt and hopefully it'll be good, but I guess we'll just have to wait and

see as this Twitter, this latest Twitter drama unfolds. No, I don't trust any institution or company that doesn't have some women at the highest levels. The priesthood, the NFL, yeah, if you don't have, the military, if there's not women all and up through that, I have questions and I'm a little skeptical. Just in general, that's a blanket statement. If I don't see a

woman making decisions, something, yeah. It's a set of... Somebody's tweeting the word tits. I'll just put it at the very least. You know, I've never thought of those three institutions as a set together before, so thank you for that.

More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band

with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not think

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

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

Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context and ask the questions everybody wants answered. 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 Sliced Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Let's get right back into it. So I know that this has been a little dark, but I do have a little bit of good news. Would you like to hear it? Yes, please. So it's going to start with some bad news, but trust me, it'll get good. Stick with me. I probably don't need to tell y'all that book bans are on the rise in the U.S.,

with books that center LGBTQ voices accounting for about 41% of challenged books. This is according to Penn America. Attempted book bans at school and public libraries set a record high in 2022. This is according to information from the American Library Association. Obviously, that is terrible, but here's the good news. At a White House pride event yesterday, Biden announced a slate of actions aimed at curbing discrimination against LGBTQ communities, including the appointment of a new point person who will serve as a coordinator at the Education Department to address the increase in book bans. That's good. I like to see that.

But here's a little bit more positive news. Despite all of those bans and all of those restrictions and all of those attempted attacks by extremists to challenge and ban books about LGBTQ people, people see. still really, really want to read about queer folks and are going out of their way to do so. Sales of LGBTQ plus books soared to record highs in 2022, even as a small but vocal army of extremists try to ban queer themed titles and attack inclusive education across the country. US readers bought 6.1 million LGBTQ plus fiction titles over the past year ending in May 23. This is according to a new report put out on Tuesday by Consumer Analyst Group,

Sarkana. That marks an 11% jump in. growth since last year, when around 5 million total units were sold and a massive 173% explosions since 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic. Yeah, this is a really important context. The growth in LGBTQ fiction has outpaced the overall market for fiction sales, including adult kids and young adult fiction combined, which remained relatively flat. This is from Kristen McLean, a book industry analyst.

So it just goes to show you can try to ban queerness and transness and gayness. Out of existence, people still want to see it represented. People will go out of their way to get that inclusion because that is what people want. The extremists who are trying to ban and legislate that out of existence are out of step with the desires of the majority of the country, I believe. They are a small but vocal group of extremists, and there are more of us and there are of them. And I think that is great news. That is good news. Thank you for sharing that.

It's good to be reminded that the right-wing bigots are a minority and they are freaking out because they know it and they know that they are going to go extinct. So I've got a little bit of bonus good news for you. What? Two different good news stories in one episode. I don't know. It's not really good news exactly. But the good news is that one of my favorite things in the world is low stakes. online internet drama where there are no clear, like, good guys to root for and the entire

internet is like weighing in on what they think. And some of that happened. And so it's good news for me personally, Bridget. So here's what been down. There's two moms. Let's call one Park Mom and the other birthday cake mom. So Park Mom gets on TikTok and explains the situation. She says that she took her kid to a public park and there was another family there who was having a birthday party for kid. Her kid basically starts playing with this other family having this party. It's time to sing happy birthday and do cake. So Park Mom is watching her kid. It sounds like from the other side of the playground. Park Mom says that she watches her kid get a plate, sing happy birthday, and clearly have the intention that they're going to have birthday cake. That is when birthday cake mom takes the

plate away from the kid and says, you're not going to have a piece of cake. These are not your friends. This is not your party. Where is your mother? Devastating. So Park Mom in her TikTok says, basically am I the asshole? Park Mom is horrified. She cannot believe that birthday cake mom would speak to a kid this way.

She cannot believe that birthday cake mom, who had what she describes as a big sheet cake with lots of lots of cake to go around. Plenty of cake for her kid would deny her kid a slice of cake. She asks the internet on TikTok, is she wrong? So this is why I love this drama so much. It's one of those things where there is no clear right answer and everybody is weighing in and what people weigh in with actually says more about them than it does about the situation. because the situation we actually don't have a lot of information. Like, how old are these kids? You know, some people were like, oh, well, I wouldn't give food to someone else's

kid that I didn't know. Like, what if they have an allergy? Other people were like, well, who's allergic to birthday cake? That seems like a weird thing that suggests that maybe they're allergic to birthday cake. Read every comment. Love every minute of it. You know, I, it sounds to me like, if I'm being honest, it sounds to me like Park Mom just kind of let her kid.

join this other family and never went over and introduced herself or said like, hey, I'm whoever. Is it cool if my kid hangs out? Like, let me know if they get annoying. Just assume that it was fine. Kind of a point against Park Mom. Also, I feel like snatching a plate from a kid and saying, these are not your friends. A little bit harsh. I probably wouldn't do that. But I'm like, I don't know who is in the right here. I just love that it's low stakes. There's no clear, correct answer, everyone on the internet is weighing in and their way in says more about who they are and what their values are and who they are as people in the world than it does about the actual situation. 10 out of 10 love this kind of low stakes internet drama. Yes, please. It is nice that it's so low stakes. You know, no, like I feel for the kid who didn't get the cake, it sounds like Park Mom was also pretty upset.

Uh, yeah. Upset or entitled, Mike. Yeah, well, you know, I'm, I'm trying to refrain from sharing my, my thoughts here. No, what do you, if you have a take, like, what's like, who do you think is in the wrong? Well, I mean, just give the kids some damn cake. Like, what the hell? Like, one person's an adult. The other person is a kid who wanted, who, like, came to sing the birthday song and, like, play with some other kids and, like, have some cake.

like regardless of who's like truly morally in the right or like violating someone else's personal property or whatever like one of them is a kid who sang the birthday song and wanted a piece of cake the other one's an adult well so i thought a lot of people on the internet being like this kid the birthday cake mom probably was annoyed by this kid the whole time and was probably like where's your mom to come get you and was like just in this it not not to like excuse her behavior but was like in one of those situations where you're getting more and more and more annoyed. And then you're just like, now it's coming out in a outburst. It doesn't really make sense.

It's kind of at the wrong person, which I know very well in my personal life. But yeah, I kind of see all sides. I think that I've been Park Mom, I probably would have at, I find that frankly unfathomable that at this, that someone could watch their kid playing with another family. And it wouldn't occur to them at some point to go up to them and be like, hey, like, I'm Sally. This is my kid. Like, is this fine? You're cool with this. I think it's surprising to me that a, that a mom wouldn't, you know, do that.

I think that's probably what I would do. Probably, honestly, would have, like, solved this whole thing. And also was surprising to me that a grown woman would be, like, snatching a plate from a child. That's why it's so good because everybody but this kid has done something that I would not suggest adults do. Everybody's behavior is a little bit off. Maybe that's part of what makes this so satisfying.

It's almost like reality TV where like, like, am I the asshole? Like, actually everyone's the asshole. You know, Park mom probably should have been keeping a better out on her kid. Birthday mom probably could have given the kid some cake. I guess I do want to give birthday mom a little bit of grace here because, like, I've thrown a party in my life, you know, a couple times. And it's stressful. And it kind of makes me a bit of a headcase. I like to think that I would still be.

like kind to a child. But, you know, it's a high pressure thing. Maybe she had trouble tracking down the sheetcake and like the kids keep running around and yelling. And like, where's birthday dad? Is he helping? I don't hear anything about him in this story. It makes it better than it's two moms, I feel. Yeah.

It actually, I think I was telling you about this that it reminds me. So you and I had very, I know that you and I had very different upbringing since children. I grew up in the suburbs. you grew up on a farm in a very rural community. So this was not something that you really knew about. But when I was a kid, I have visceral memories of in the summertime going out to play on our street with other kids. One of the other kids would be like, hey, you want to come back to my house?

I would say, sure. I would go back to this kid's house like a couple blocks away. I would get there. Their mom would be there. So they'd be like, oh, you are now expected to keep an eye on this like, stranger kid from down the street. And half the time I think we would expect food. So it's like, oh, hi, mom. It's not just me, the kid that you, that you, you know, aren't caring for. It's a stranger's kid that you don't even know. And she expects lunch. You know, like,

I think there is something kind of entitled about sending your kids with strangers and expecting them to be fed. But I absolutely, that was my, I mean, like, maybe I miss remembering, but I you like that's how it was when I was growing up. Yeah, that was different from my upbringing. You know, there were like four other kids within a mile radius of our house, right? And like, I knew them all. And also needed a ride from my parents if I wanted to go see them. So that just like straight was not happening. So I want to know where you stand on this drama. Again, it's low stakes. So no judgment. If you would have snatched that paper plate from that kid so fast, It makes your head spin.

I want to know about it. If you would have gotten mom's Venmo information to Venmo her for her share of the cake, I want to know that too. I'm obsessed. Let me know. Hit me up on email at hello at tangoity.com. You can find me on social or you can subscribe to our Patreon. We are having interesting conversations over there.

Thank you so much to the folks who have subscribed. I've got some really exciting stuff coming up on Patreon soon. I'll give you a little teaser. It involves Elon Musk and Azale. A Blanche, my problematic fave. So please subscribe. We'd love to have you there. And thanks so much for listening.

We'll see you next time. Yeah. Thanks for listening and thanks for having me, Bridget. Always, Mike. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our merch store at tangootie.com slash store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoati.com.

You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoity.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, I'm Richard Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed creative. Edited by Joey Pat. 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 IHartRadio, check out the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, 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 IHeart 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 IHeart Women's Sports.

I'm Michelle McPhee, and I've been unraveling the strangest, Alliance I've ever reported on, a Mormon polygamist and an Armenian businessman. Multimillion dollar house, Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, a billion dollar fraud. But how long can this alliance last? Tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Thank you.