There Are No Girls on the Internet - SAG strike ends with AI concessions!; New Facebook whistleblower drops; Omegle shuts down; RIP Jezebel; The Future of Online Media – NEWS ROUNDUP

Episode Date: November 11, 2023

“We got the yacht!”  https://www.bravotv.com/the-real-housewives-of-new-york-city/season-8/episode-17/videos/sonja-we-got-the-yacht Actors strike wins concessions that will impact AI and streaming for decades: https://www.wired.com/story/hollywood-actors-strike-ends-ai-streaming/ Zuckerberg personally and repeatedly blocked efforts to make Meta's products less harmful: https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/08/tech/meta-facebook-instagram-teen-safety/index.html How to be a whistleblower with Sophie Zhang: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-be-a-whistleblower-with-sophie-zhang/id1520715907?i=1000539829571 Building a Better Internet with Carrie Goldberg: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/building-a-better-internet-with-carrie-goldberg/id1520715907?i=1000489091000 Omegle’s goodbye: https://www.omegle.com/ Advertisers Don’t Want Sites Like Jezebel to Exist: https://www.404media.co/advertisers-dont-want-sites-like-jezebel-to-exist/ Jezebel and the Question of Women’s Anger https://newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/jezebel-and-the-question-of-womens-angerSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Mike, thank you so much. much for being here as always. Bridget, thanks for having me. It's been a little while, but it's been some news and I'm excited to hear all about it. That's right. So here's what y'all might have missed this week on the internet. And I'm excited to start with a little bit of great news. It's great news for our friends in the entertainment industry, but also I'll explain while it's great news for all of us.

After 118 very long days, making it the longest strike in Hollywood's history, the Screen Actors Guild American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, otherwise known as SAG Astra, has reached a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, aka The Studios. So both sides have been pretty quiet about the particulars and specifics of what's in this deal. But you know how on that episode of Real Housewives of New York when Lou Anne marries Tom and she's like, we got the yacht? Yeah, it's like that. We got the yacht. Well, we got AI. That was the first thing I thought when I heard, when I was, when I was like hearing whispers about the deal. It's like, we got the yacht, but we got AI. Well, we

probably got AI. At least it seems like we got AI. So for folks who don't know, AI was rightfully a major sticking point in these negotiations. Here's how Wired reported it. Back in July, studios claimed that they offered a, quote, groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors digital like this. SAG was like, uh-uh, we don't think so. And countered that proposal, stipulating that background performers, per the proposal that studios had put forth, could be scanned, paid for the day, and then turned into digital characters that studios could use for the rest of eternity. Now, the studios dispute this, but knowing the studios, I don't know, it sounds plausible.

Keep listening. So the issue kind of went back and forth until last weekend when SAG reviewed what the studios were calling their last, best, and final offer. SAG was like, I don't think so. Pass. What else you got? They rejected that offer, claiming, quote, there are several essential items on which we still do not have an agreement, including AI. So this is really wild. A follow-up story in the Hollywood reporter revealed that the studios had issued a proposal that would allow them to pay for AI scans of some performers, and then following those performers'

death, it would allow studios to use scans without the consent of the estate or SAG. So SAG wanted compensation for reuse of those scans along with consent. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they did. Who wouldn't want that incredibly basic respect for their labor protected? Like, the fact that studios were proposing that, even in death, some performers have to have their likeness used without consent for the rest of time. That is such a wild proposal that I cannot believe studios would put it forth. Yeah, anything where you've got a contract that lasts for eternity for all of time. It's like a little bit of a red flag,

especially when it's something like a likeness of an actor performing in a movie or a TV show or a video of some sort that is typically labor that a person gets paid for. If studios are able to do that with somebody's likeness after they're dead forever, that just feels like dark. Yeah, it's pretty dark. I don't like the idea that we're signing contracts that have stipulations that continue after we are dead. Like, what is this? Yeah, right.

And like, I guess it's pretty common for contracts that govern intellectual property to last for eternity. And like that kind of makes sense because you're talking about some sort of work that exists. But it just feels so different when talking about labor or what would be labor, if you're, it were done by a living person, but it's like turning that living person into IP. It really reminds me of the episode that we did on the Whitney Houston hologram. In Vegas, this hologram of Whitney Houston with the permission of her estate was doing a, I guess a digital residency. I don't know what they call it when a hologram is doing a residency.

It probably has some other name, but we'll use the word residency. And essentially, what it means when studios, and executives get to make money off of somebody's digital likeness just forever. Like it's like the zambification of people having to work and make money for others in eternity. It's really creepy. Yeah. Residency doesn't feel like the right word. Installation feels like more the right word, right? Like we're not talking about an artist.

We're talking about an object. Exactly. So again, we don't know specifically what is in this deal, but it's likely that SAG got at some of the AI provisions that they were asking for. So this is huge, and it really matters whether you're in entertainment or an actor or a writer or not. Back when the strike was first starting, writer Akila Hughes tweeted, not to be hyperbolic, but this WGA strike is the canary in the coal mine. If we don't stop this industry from insane automation and devaluing wages, that's a wrap. That's dystopia. Whatever your job is, they're going to get rid of you so they can

buy more yachts and pollute the earth with more shit. This is the action. This is the action. inflection point. And I completely agree. I remember that sentiment really resonating with me. So to put all this in context, just this week, the tech venture capital firm Anderson Horowitz warned that billions of dollars of AI investments could be worth a whole lot less if the companies who are developing AI technology are forced to pay for the copyrighted data that makes them work. Or to put it another way, yo, if we're not able to just steal from people to make this to all work, we won't be able to make the tons of money from AI that we were planning to. Yeah, I guess I agree with him.

You know, it makes sense. If you can't just outright steal and you have to pay for the stuff that you use, yeah, that's going to really cut into your bottom line. I mean, theft is lucrative. That's why people do it. Like, I don't know. I don't know. But they're just discovering this. I'm like, yo, yo, yo.

If we're not able to steal, how are we going to make money? Yeah, like I love stuff, but I hate paying for it. This seems like a natural solution. I'll just take it for free. I'll just take what I want. It's called innovating, Mike. See, this is why we're not making the big tech dollars. It's called innovation.

It's called disrupting. Yeah, we got to do some disrupting of ownership. Yeah. Walk into a target and do a little disrupting. No, no, we're not advocating you still from Target. Do not do that. No, the joke is that stealing is wrong. Okay, so to put this in conversation, Biden just put out that executive order on AI last week.

Did you see that? I did. Yeah, I saw it. I read it. It was, I thought it was pretty good. And it does seem like we're at this inflection point where everyone, perhaps except for the people who were poised to make money from AI, has kind of come to realize that a future where the wealthy get to exploit and steal from the rest of us to get wealthier with no

oversight or no guardrails, just is not it. So I think if actors were able to get the AI provisions that they were asking for, even some of those provisions. I think it is a good sign. I think it is going to be good for the rest of us because it draws a line in the sand that's like, no, you can't just exploit and steal and grift your way into fatter pockets. We will not allow it that it's not the future. Not if we have anything to say about it. Let's take 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 Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you. You funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group.

The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name.

The Harvard yard, but they're open to change. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. Uh, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting.

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

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

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

after you go through a training camp with that, I said, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, so there is a new Facebook whistleblower

that we absolutely need to be talking about. New Facebook whistleblower. Just Dropper just dropped? New Facebook whistleblower just dropped. It is Arturo Bihar, a former Facebook engineering director from 2009 to 2015, who later worked as a consultant at Instagram from 2019 to 2021. Bajar testified that top Facebook officials, people like Mark Zuckerberg, Cheryl Sandberg, enemy of the show, Adam Oseri, the head of Instagram.

They did not do enough to curb harm experienced by their youngest users on the platform. Bridget, I noticed you had a little extra venom in your voice for Adam Masseri. What's the story there? You had more for him than Zuckerberg even. Wait, have we not talked about this on the show? Maybe it's never come up why I hate him so much. Because I do hate him more than the others. Yeah, I don't think you've ever really gotten into it.

I mean, close listeners of the show will notice a pattern where you get a little extra edge in your voice when talking about him. but what exactly is this story, Bridget? Oh, so Adam Osseri, it's so personal and stupid. He just rubs me the wrong way. I just get major bad vibes from him. And me saying that about a tech leader, like a white guy tech leader is really something. I think with people like Mark Zuckerberg,

nobody looks at Mark Zuckerberg and thinks, this is somebody who is meaningfully interested in creating a better world. You look at Mark Zuckerberg and you know what he's about. You know who he is. You know what he does. It's very clear. Cheryl Sandberg, I feel's a little different, but I don't think, and Cheryl Sandberg, we have like met. We've had conversation, well, conversation singular, not plural.

But again, having met her, you meet her and you like, you know who she is, you know what she's about, a little bit more of a PR slick vibe than Zuckerberg, but it's very clear. Adam O'Sary, I feel like it's doing a different thing where he is trying to convince us that he's this super quirky, fun guy. I'm wearing funky socks and a sweater and like my ties got a print on it and I'm wearing horned rimmed glasses. And he also does this thing where he is often obviously with intention the face of announcements. And so if I follow him on Instagram at this point, it's like I do it for the show to get it, you know, whenever there's updates or whatever, like I need to like know them. But it's almost like a hate follow where every time his face shows up, I'm like, oh, what is this dork going to be trying to. what is this hateful dork going to be trying to convince us is actually good for us while it actually harms people? And so Instagram, as folks probably know, was its own app before Facebook bought it.

It felt different. It felt good. Instagram essentially bought it and then turned it into this like marketplace for the pain of children apparently. And I just think that Adam Moseeri is trying to leverage this like quirky kind of non-threatening, inoffensive, nice guy in the office persona. where he shows his face with intention when he speaks to the public as a means to mask the fact that the app actually does incredible harm to children, is damaging children, and that he's making money from it. You look at Mark Zuckerberg and you're like, this is a guy who's making money from the harm of children. No trouble believing that. Cheryl Sandberg, again, I'm like, oh, this is a woman who is like buying pantsuits via the money that she made harming kids.

No trouble believing this. I feel like Adam Osseri wants us to think something else. when we look at him and that's why I hate him so much. It's like a very like, I'm sure people listening are like, wow, she really has strong feelings about this. But I do believe he is leveraging a persona of like quirky, non-threatening guy in the office with like funky socks to mask harm that he is profiting from. That's just a fact.

That's not me. That's not me speculating. He profits from harm. End of sentence. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for sharing your opinions about that. hateful dork.

I just feel like if you're going to have the audacity to profit from the harm of children, don't do it while wearing a funky sweater. Like have the decency to be like, yeah, of course I'm a hateful asshole. Look how I'm dressed. Yeah, put on some like skeletor, like armor or something. So yeah, I mean, yeah, like why I hate him is really grounded in the fact that like his app harms kids. And that's exactly what Bahar is clarifying from the inside. So basically, Bahar testified to the subcommittee.

And this comes after he published a bunch of leaked internal information, including emails from his time working at Facebook to the Wall Street Journal. So his testimony basically confirms what we already know, right? All the stuff I just said, that Instagram was very aware that their product was harming very young people and did nothing to address it. And in fact, they prioritized time spent on platform as a key performance indicator. Bahaar released a trove of email showing exactly this. Something interesting about Bahaar that really sets him apart from earlier Facebook whistleblowers,

people like Francis Hogan, is that Bahaar has a teenage daughter who, like a lot of teenage daughters, his daughter was 14 at the time, uses Instagram. He saw that his own daughter was getting continually harassed, as were her friends who were the same age on Instagram. things like abusive, misogynistic comments and unsolicited graphic pictures. He says in his testimony, I asked, why do boys keep doing that? His daughter replied, if the only thing that happens to them is they get blocked, why wouldn't they? So this understandably, deeply upset Bahar, he decided to go back to work as a consultant at Facebook to genuinely try to help them fix this issue and to flag them to the top people.

Here's a little bit of his testimony. She and her friends began having awful experiences, including repeated unwanted sexual advances, harassment. She reported these incidents to the company, and it did nothing. In large part, because of what I learned as her father, on October of 2019, I returned to Facebook, this time as a consultant with Instagram's well-being team. We tried to set goals based on the experiences of teens themselves. Instead, the company wanted to focus on enforcing its own narrowly defined policies, regardless of whether that approach reduced the harm that teens were experiencing. I discovered that most of the tools for kids that we had put in place during my earlier time at Facebook had been removed.

I observed new features being developed in response to the new features. response to public outcry, which were, in reality, kind of a placebo, a safety feature in name only to placate the price and regulators. I say this because rather than being based on user experience data, they were based on very deliberately narrow definitions of harm. The company was creating its own homework. Later, he makes clear something that I always kind of suspected was happening at Facebook, but it's good to hear validated from somebody who would know, that Facebook does indeed, in his opinion, have the tools and the information to make the platform safer for young people, but that it actively chooses not to do so. In an interview with BBC, he specifically said that

Facebook should implement a button specifically for young users that allows them to flag specifically unwanted sexual advances. From firsthand knowledge working at Facebook, he says that doing this is completely easy and totally plausible, but he told BBC. I believe the reason that they're not doing this is because there's no transparency about the harms that teenagers are experiencing on Instagram. And that's why I'm coming forward right now. This is my retirement from technology. So it's interesting because Instagram already does have like a general report button. Like if somebody sends you a harassing comment or a message, you can like generally report them.

But Bihar says that when you look at what they know about how young people are actually using the platform, that general report button is just not cutting it. He says, research we did in 2011 shows that 13-year-olds are uncomfortable with the word report because they worry that themselves or somebody else is going to get in trouble. Imagine you're a 13-year-old and you get an unwanted sexual advance. How uncomfortable that is, how intense the experience is. And there's nothing they can use to say, hey, can you please help me with this? If that button was available, then there would be data about who's initiating those contacts. So Bihar is really like, we need to be setting our users up to give us more information

about the things that are experiencing on the platform, and that will help. Makes sense. You know, as much as you hate Miseri, I read an article earlier today that was talking about some new court documents that had come out, I think, connected with this, or times to go with this hearing at the subcommittee. And the documents were pretty damning about a lot of conversations that happened between Zuckerberg and a lot of top executives. at Facebook and Instagram, including Adam Useri,

where the other executives were actually trying to convince Zuckerberg to put some safeguards and some tools into effect to protect young people. And it was Zuckerberg personally that shot them all down. I thought that was pretty interesting that they, you know, and I don't think they were acting out of genuine, concern for young people, but they were concerned that this very, that they were going to find themselves in this position a couple years down the road of really being, you know, sued and

looked at heart by legislators and regulators about their lack of action. And I think that totally has come true here. Yeah, something tells me that was probably a bit of a like, do you ever use the phrase cover your ass move? Oh, totally. It was entirely cover your ass. But you know what? Sometimes you want people's asses to be covered. Yeah. I mean, if that's the only like way that you're going to do the right thing is like, well, I don't want this to be read and testimony in front of lawmakers one day. So let's maybe stop harming the kids. Yeah. I'll take it. If that's if that's the best we got, the best we can hope for from them, I'll take it. Yeah. Exactly. I, you know, I have no illusions that capitalists and corporations are acting, you know, in the in the public interest or to benefit

society, right? They're acting in their own selfish interest. And that's why they get fined when they do egregious stuff. I will say, though, this thing about Zuckerberg personally being like, no, I don't think we're going to do this. That is not surprised me. I can't tell you how many times Facebook has made some sort of like horrible policy decision that is really harmful. And it turns out that it was Mark Zuckerberg personally intervening to institute that policy. Alex Jones comes to mind that Mark Zuckerberg personally initiated a loophole to keep him on the platform even after he was banned. And so, yeah, it doesn't surprise me that it's the very tippy, tippy top that is allowing this kind of harm to continue. Yeah.

So Bihar's testimony has really reignited conversations around legislation. like the Kids Online Safety Act, which you might have gleaned if you've been listening to our other episodes, is not legislation that we're really that hopeful about. This legislation and other legislation that seeks to sort of rein in Big Tech as it pertains to harming kids has kind of stalled, despite a lot of bipartisan support. And now lawmakers are blaming Big Tech lobbying and Big Tech money. It is an indictment of this body, to be honest with you, that we have not acted. And we all know the reason why. Big Tech is the biggest, most powerful lobby in the United States Congress. They successfully shut down every meaningful piece of legislation.

Do you have any idea which lawmakers said that? I'll give you a hint. Fist pumping during the insurrection. No, really? Josh Hawley. Yeah, that was a quote from subcommittee ranking member, Josh Hawley. Election denying, insurrection supporting Josh Hawley. Yeah, but I say that to say the kind of strange bedfellows that have found themselves united on this issue.

And I think that is so interesting that people, that for whatever reason, I have my suspicion on those reasons. But this is an issue that is really uniting people across the aisle. Yeah, you got to give Zuckerberg credit for that. He really unites people. Yeah. People hate him so much that they're like. We got to put our differences aside to take him down. We might do it in a way that ends up harming marginal life people, but like that's how much we hate you. Yeah. And we might just talk about it a lot and not actually do anything, but don't worry.

People are talking. It's so frustrating because on the one hand, yeah, it would be great to see bipartisan support to introduce some legislation that would do something serious and meaningful to help protect teenagers in particular, but really all of us, from the abuses of social media platforms and tech companies in general. But the Kids' Online Safety Act is not that. Totally. So if you're thinking to yourself, gee, I haven't really heard of whistleblower Arturo Bahar. Don't feel too bad because I hadn't really heard of him either. You know, I'd seen a few headlines, but I did not listen to his testimony.

And I didn't know about his personal story and personal reasons for speaking up. A move that he said is effectively knowingly ending his career in tech. And that's really one of the reasons why I wanted to include him in this conversation today, because I don't think he's really getting the attention nor the seriousness that his testimony warrants. Think back to when Francis Hogan became a whistleblower. She was everywhere. I was thinking about this. And Mike, you and I happened to be traveling together when Francis Hogan blew the whistle on Facebook.

And I don't know if you remember, we were in the hotel bar and they had a TV. and they were playing her 60 minutes interview on that TV in the hotel bar. Like, it was a pretty big deal. Yeah, I do remember that. It was, it was surprising because hotel bars don't typically play 60 minutes. No, they don't. They don't. And it wasn't like a news-themed bar.

No, although it wouldn't that be fun. And so I think one of the reasons why Francis Hogan's testimony was everywhere, and she was being treated a little bit differently than whistleblowers like Arturo Bahar, is that one, she was kind of billed as the Facebook whistleblower. Even though there were other Facebook whistleblowers before her, women like Sophie Zong, who we interviewed on the show, will link to her episode in the show notes. Sophie spoke to this issue too, how when you present a certain way as a whistleblower, you will be more amplified and probably more supported.

And if you're not able to present in that certain way because of your identity, you might be treated very differently. Sophie was sort of framed as this disgruntled, poor performing former employee of Facebook when she came forward as a whistleblower about Facebook's harms. Hogan was treated very differently. And let's really keep it real. Like, Francis Hogan is a blonde, wealthy, conventionally attractive white lady. I don't say any of that to diminish her or her work or the courage that it took for her to come forward as a whistleblower.

But Arturo Bihar is Latino. And he's also coming at this from like a very specific position that is of a parent, particularly a parent of a teenager of color. You know, when we talk about the impact of social media on young people and how parents can support those young people, more often than not, we are talking about white young people. Yet research, which is mostly done on white youth, is taken to be universal for all youth, despite the fact that kids of color are actually having like very unique and specific experiences online. researchers at the Youth Media and Well-Being Research Lab found that Black and Latino, fifth through ninth graders, adopt social media at younger ages and their white peers. And despite having the highest reported access to the Internet and social media, Asian-American youths still remain underrepresented in studies on digital media and their well-being.

Asian-Americans in later adolescence and early adulthood, so 18 to 24-year-olds, are more likely to be cyber-bullied than their white or Latino counterparts. They are also the least likely to report negative experiences on social media in order to avoid embarrassment and maintain a positive image to the outside world. So Bahar as this whistleblower, the parent of a Latino child, and somebody who worked at Facebook is really feeling this gap in helping us understand this issue and how it impacts marginalized youth and their parents. And I just hope people listen, even if he's not a flashy, wealthy, white, blonde woman

with like a slick PR machine backing her up. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel,

help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group.

The yard herds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Human me.

I need some jokes to. make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business.

Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at IHeart Advertising.com. It's iHeartadvertising.com. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what.

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

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

after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the balls. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At our back. So speaking of harm to youth online,

let's talk about Omagle. Quick heads up that this is involving sexual abuse of minors. The platform Omagle that instantaneously match strangers with each other for video chats la chat roulette shut down on Wednesday. So Omagle shutting down comes as part of a settling of lawsuit that was started in 2021, where a plaintiff was matched with a man in his 30s through Omengel. That man forced her to take naked photos and videos over a three-year period starting when she was 11. Carrie Goldberg, an attorney who specializes in crimes involving tech-facilitated

abuse, who we've interviewed on the podcast before about Section 230. We'll throw her episode in the show description. Was the attorney on the case? She told Wired, the permanent shutdown of Omagle was a term negotiated between Omagle and our client in exchange for Omegel getting to avoid. the impending jury trial verdict. So I thought of Omengel as like technology that was kind of of an era. It started back in 2009, kind of fell off until the pandemic when it gave people isolating in their homes another way to use technology to connect with strangers and save off loneliness. You would enter Omagle and instantly be matched with a random person.

You could click to be instantly rematched with somebody new. So like you could leave that conversation if you weren't feeling it and be connected with somebody else. but you could not go back to who you were just chatting with. So because of this instantaneous nature of Omagle, you really could like sign on and find yourself looking at a stranger's genitals, like instantly. Yeah, right. That's always the risk of the internet.

Yeah. I mean, when I saw this headline, I was like, oh, yeah, Omengel. And I remember like playing with it a few times. And it kind of is like a cultural relic to a time. where, you know, maybe we didn't even realize how unusual it should be to be seeing a stranger doing something sexual online, whether we wanted to or not. Like, when I first started reading about O'Ma shutting down, I was like, oh, yeah, me and my friends saw so many men masturbating on that platform. And I almost caught myself, like, recalling this almost a bit fondly until I was like,

wait a minute, what? Like, that actually wasn't okay. Like, I think it is a relic of a time before maybe I'm always speaking for myself, but before it was clear how not okay that was and how harmful that could be to people and how risky that was. Like, you know, and it's funny because on Twitter,

the conversation was very much like people remembering the same thing. Like I saw somebody be like, oh, shout out to all the 35-year-olds who like showed me their genitals when I was 14. I think we were all sort of thinking of this as a right of passage on the internet and using technology and looking back, it's like, well, should we have been? Should that have been in right of passage? Yeah, it's almost like that was a simpler time back when the idea of being randomly connected with a stranger on the internet with video seemed like something that someone would want.

Yeah, so hold that thought because that's going to be relevant and distant in it. So as y'all might have gleaned by now, Omagle was a place where sex just really ran rampant. Like that was definitely my experience playing with Omagle. In a piece for Mashable, someone using the pseudonym Hannah called it, quote, a digital gloryhole. And that is my recollection of it as well. Some of that sexuality on Omegel was consensual, but a lot of it was not. You know, not all of the explicit stuff happening there was consensual. abusers could, and it sounds like, did have a field day with that platform. In 2022, there were

608,601 reports of child exploitation on Omega to the nonprofit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Of all of the sites, the center tracks, only Facebook, Google, Instagram, and WhatsApp ranked higher. Now, platforms are generally protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which means that they cannot be held liable for what happens on their platforms. But the judge in this case found that Omega was at fault because the site's design is what allowed for minors to be sexually targeted, and thus, Omagle was not protected by Section 230. According to the BBC, Omagle had almost no moderation. The entire company was seemingly run solely by the founder, Leif K Brooks, with no other registered employees. BBC said that it was

operated from his lakeside house in Florida when he was either asleep or offline. No complaints were acted upon. If you go to omagel.com right now, instead of the site, what you will find is a long sort of goodbye post from the founder, Leif K Brooks, in which he argues that shutting down the platform to him is kind of the end of an era of freedom online. We'll post the whole thing in the show notes, but here are a few key snippets. He writes, I launched Omega when I was 18 years old and still living with my parents. It was meant to build on the things I loved about the internet, while introducing a form of social spontaneity that I felt didn't exist anywhere else. If the internet is a manifestation of the global village,

Omega was meant to be a way of strolling down a street in that village, striking up conversations with people that you run into along the way. Unfortunately, there are low lights. Virtually every tool can be used for good or for evil, and that is especially true of communication tools due to their innate flexibility. The telephone can be used to wish your grandmother, happy birthday, but it can also be used to call on a bomb threat. There can be no honest accounting of O'Magle without acknowledging that some people misused it,

including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes. To an extent, it is reasonable to question the policies and practices of any place where crime has occurred. I have always welcomed constructive feedback, and indeed, Omel implemented a number of improvements based on such feedback over the years. Side note, if you believe that BBC article, it does not sound like that was the case. However, the recent attacks have felt anything but constructive. The only way to please these people is to stop. offering the service. Sometimes they say so explicitly and avowedly. It can be inferred from their act of setting standards that are not humanly achievable. Either way, the net result is the same. Omega is the direct target at these attacks, but their ultimate victim is you, all of you out there

who have used or would use Omegel to improve your lives and lives of others. When they say Omegal shouldn't exist, they are really saying that you shouldn't be allowed to use it, that you shouldn't be allowed to meet random new people online. That idea is anathema to the ideals I cherish, specifically to the bedrock principle of a free society, that when restrictions are imposed to prevent crime, the burden of those restrictions must not be targeted at innocent victims or potential victims of crime. I've done my best to weather the attacks

with the interest of Omega's users and the broader principle in my mind. If something as simple as meeting random new people is forbidden, what's next? That is far in a way removed from anything that can be considered a reasonable compromise of the principle I outlined. Analogies are a limited tool, but a physical world analogy might be shutting down Central Park because crime occurs there, or perhaps more provocatively, destroying a universe because it contains evil. A healthy, free society cannot endure when we are collectively afraid of each other to this extent.

So there's a lot more to it. I'm only reading snippets, but it's complicated because in some ways I agree with him, right? I do think that there is an era of freedom and promise coming to a close, kind of what you were alluding to earlier, Mike, that like the era where we might have thought it was a pure net good to be randomly connected to random strangers from the comfort of our own home anonymously. And I kind of, in some ways, I kind of see what he's getting at. But if that promise means just accepting and tolerating the harm of minors, it is not a promise worth keeping.

I think that that's what he's missing, that if this platform that you've built that you've imagined as this great utopia comes at the cost of the safety and well-being of kids, then it is not a utopia. That's not just something that we should just like laugh off or normalize as a right of passage for understanding how to have experiences online. It's not okay. And it sounds like that freedom that he's pointing to, the cost of that freedom is harm at minors. And I don't think that is a cost that we are okay with. Maybe we hadn't realized what that truly cost us before and he yearns for that time. And I understand. But now we have a better understanding of the true cost of this like principled, utopian internet that he's laying out.

What do you think? I think the freedom that he's describing and, you know, lamenting the loss of here is the freedom of a child who has no sense of the responsibility that comes with freedom. And I also think that he uses a lot of analogies to try to justify why it's okay for him to have built this platform that. that led to this child being sexually abused. You know, he made the analogy of a telephone. He's like, oh, you can use a telephone to call in a bomb threat. That's true. But the Internet fundamentally changes the scalability of harm, right?

Like, one of the cool things about the Internet is that some 18-year-old guy can build an app or a web app or whatever it was. And, you know, doesn't cost them a lot of money, doesn't cost them a lot of, like, server capacity to run, just serve it out of his garage and make it available to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. That is super powerful and really cool. But it's also really dangerous, right?

And he alludes to that. And there has to be some kind of receipts. responsibility when you build something that is affecting so many people, it changes the math, right? Like if he built this tool and like a dozen of his friends were using it and one person got unintentionally harmed, that's not great. And he should probably think about that. But that's different than, you know, hundreds of thousands of people around the world using it. it. There's a responsibility there that is just nowhere in this lengthy letter that you read. Yeah, that is something that is really downplayed in his, like, long thing is the ways that he just abdicated responsibility to keeping users safe.

In the ruling, you know, one of the reasons why the judge said that he was not, that subsection 230 did not apply is because the judge said, he could have put some safeguards in place so that adult abusers were not being connected to kids. Like the judge described how because of the like, you know, functionality of Omega, where you can just hit next until you get what you want, abusers essentially are just like shopping for people to abuse. And they can just be like, not what I'm looking for, not what I'm looking for, not what I'm looking for, not what I'm looking for, and what I'm looking for. And so there just seems to be a lot of downplaying of his own responsibility in why this platform had to shut down.

There's no acknowledgement that responsibility even exists. But I think that when he talks about what he's like, oh, I yearn for a different time, I think that what he is actually talking about is a time before we really understood what was at stake and the harm that could be caused. And it's almost like a kind of like good old days when people thought that non-consensual images of genitalia being shown to a child wasn't a big deal. Like I think that he's like, I think that he's thinking about it in a completely different way than we are. Yeah, I think you're right. I think he's yearning for the good old days, which were a time of ignorance before we had thought about any of this stuff. And before we knew, I think.

I think that, you know, it seems like this technology has been around for so long, but it really hasn't. And we're only now starting to, like, truly grapple with the impact, I think, in a real way because it hasn't really been that long. And I think that he, what he's saying is like, remember back before we understood the impact and, like, nobody cared and it was like better, I'm not so sure that it was better. I think that the plaintiff in this place would probably agree that it wasn't better. And so, yeah, a lot of people are trading his goodbye letter around the internet as if it's a treatise on a better time.

And I'm just, I really would caution against that. I think that it is really fundamentally normalizing a time that really maybe wasn't so great for a lot of people. Yeah, I feel you. It's, it just reminds me of like a 16-year-old. reading Voltaire a little bit. Yes. Yeah. And like 16 year old should read Voltaire and that's great.

But, uh, and this particular example is kind of a tricky one because it sounds like maybe he wasn't monetizing this. Maybe he just, he was truly making it because he thought it was fun and, you know, I respect that and I can see how it would be really sad for him to have to shut it down, especially in this, uh, oh, oh, Michael did make money. I didn't know that. He's like profiting off of it. Yeah.

So that's also relevant and does not show up anywhere in his statement, right? That he's profiting on this. It's not like he's trying to foster human connection and serendipity to achieve greater understanding in an altruistic way. He's trying to make money off this. And that also changes the math on the responsibility one has. to keep people safe when you're charging the money for what you're selling them. Yeah, but yet he gets to just talk about this like, I just created this as a force for good in the world and to see what I wanted to see in the world.

Like, yeah, but also you were making money from advertising. So like, like, you can, you, you can write all the like highfalutin, poetic things that you want. But like, let's like not forget that. And you have, you then have a responsibility to not. profit from the harm of young people when you are making money from a platform. Yeah. And there was another path he could have taken, right? He could have gotten some moderation going.

He could have built some kind of functionality to allow blocking or any number of things other than just like pack it up and go home and complain because, you know, he can't just do whatever he wants at any cost. Well, speaking of packing it up and going home, a website that I wish was not packing it up and going home, we have to give a major shout out to you. And that is Jezbell, because Jess Bell's parent company, GO Media, announced today the website is shutting down effective immediately. Boo.

I know. I was a big reader of Jezbel. I don't think I'd be the person I am today, if not for Jess. Bell. It has been around since 2007 when it was founded by Anna Holmes to sort of be the like feminist alternative, although they did, they intentionally did not use the word feminist when they were pitching it, but the feminist alternative to glossy airbrushed women's magazines like glamour. Side note, I once met Anna Holmes at a party and she is a total fucking baller. Shout out to her. She is incredible. So the website was really something special in media, particularly in women's

media, it came about at a time where the dominant understanding of what women wanted from media was like polish and airbrushing and quizzes. On Jezbel's first day, they offered a $10,000 bounty to anybody who sent in pre-airbrushed photos of a model that eventually became a glossy magazine cover photo. The winner was a photo of Faith Hill, unretouched for Red Book Magazine. So this might sound silly, but it's one of those things that if you weren't there, if you didn't live through it, it is really hard to overstate the impact that Jezbel had on media culture and the way that content on the internet exists, especially content for women, but content more broadly

as well. Jezbel came up around the same time as Twitter, and in many ways, the Jezbel comment section was like the prototype for what Twitter would eventually become. Like, their comment section was, oh, God, like, I used to spend a lot of time in their comment section. Jess Bell was started as a spinoff to Gawker media, but eventually surpassed its parent site, Gawker, in popularity and page views. In 2008, the Ottawa citizen found that community-based women's websites were tied with political sites as the internet's fastest-growing category, while also citing ad ages research showing that women's internet use was outpacing men

at that time. So Jess Bell was really foundational to this era that really was like, Women are online. Women are seeking content on the internet. And we've got to give women readers and audiences something they actually want. We absolutely would not have an entire generation of women's focused media, if not for Jess Bell. Sites that you know and love like Reductress, XO Jane, the Frisky, the Hairpin would not exist if not for Jess Bell. You know, there really wasn't a place for this like voicy, zeitgeisty, snarky writing for women that also was like feminist and intersectional and explicitly political. Like, hell, I don't even know about I'd be making this podcast right now, if not for Jezbel. I was a voracious reader of Jezbel. One of the first, like, serious pieces, quote unquote, that I ever got published was about being black in the Occupy Wall Street movement, was for Jezbell. That was like my first big byline. And I think that's probably true for like an entire generation of media folks.

Jess Bell's parent company, GeoMedia, which publishes Gizmodo and The Onion, recently was in some hot water for publishing a slew of AI generated pieces without input from human editors that contained lots of errors and just like flat out false information. And ultimately, we're just not good. After this, they actually stuck by that choice publicly and said that they were going to keep publishing AI generated articles saying, it is absolutely a thing we want to do more of. That's from Merrill Brown, GEO's editorial director. What's worse is that according to Daily Beast, it sounds like the layoffs were just like not handled in a great way. There was this meeting where staff was assured there would not be layoffs, only to later tell everybody that they would all be losing

their jobs effective immediately shortly thereafter. It sounds like the laid off staffers squarely placed the blame on senior leadership. We are devastated, though hardly surprised at GeoMedia and Jim Spanfellor's inability to run our website and the cruel decision to shudder it. That's from the Writers Guild of America East, which represents GeoMedia staffers, adding in their statement, quote, a well-run company would have moved away from an advertising model, but instead they are shuddering the brand entirely because of their strategic and commercial ineptitude. Liz Lenz, who's been on the podcast before, tweeted, Desbel was a place where women could unabashedly write about culture, politics, and everything

with voice and humor and a whole range of human emotions. The fact that it was killed by inept men is truly a metaphor. So what's really resonated with me about how important this specific kind of work that Jezbole produced is at this moment is that in addition to a lot of their like snarky gossipy content, their reporters also publish some of the most in-depth reported pieces on issues that impact women. From the elections in Virginia and Ohio to the Republican debate just last night, it could not be clear how important of a topic abortion is right now. And there are just not a ton of places with really good in-depth reported pieces on the huge intersections of technology and abortion, for instance.

Jess Bell was doing that work, but now there is one less place for it. A lot of folks were understandably wondering how a popular well-liked website like Jess Bell just could not find a way to make it work and had to shut down. A piece in 404 media written by Jason Kobler and Emmanuel Mayberg sheds a little bit of light into that. They actually suggest that Jezbell's in-depth reporting about important topics that I was just describing might have actually been one of the reasons that led to Jess Bell closing. As I said,

Jess Bell did not shy away from tackling tough topics, things that we all need to know about, which understandably are sometimes heavy or complex. But because of the advertising model, brands were sometimes wary about their ads showing next to any content that might have been controversial, in quotes. Lauren Tosan, Jess Bell's interim editor-in-chief, told 404 media that Jess Bell was told that brand safety, you know, the fact that advertisers don't want to be next to the kind of content that Jess Bell was publishing was one of the biggest factors that led to Geo to stop publishing the site and to lay off the whole staff. She adds that a couple of weeks ago, the ad sales team

even asked if the website could remove Jess Bell's tagline, sex, celebrity, politics, with teeth from the site. She says, they took it off because they're like, let's see if this makes a huge difference. So, yeah, it was very much the problem here that no one would advertise on Jez Bell because we cover sex and abortion. I know that taking the tagline off was to see if the algorithm advertising would change. And if it was removed, one of the editorial directors was like, I'm seeing an ad for J. Crew for the first time ever.

Maybe this will be good, which led to the staff really wondering whether or not sticking with that particular advertising model to make money really made any sense at all. And I think that it's closing, to me, like really signals the end of a certain kind of media climate. and a beginning of something that frankly doesn't feel that great. And a really fascinating piece for the New Yorker, Anna Holmes,

Jezbel's founder, looked back on what she built at Jezbel and the media legacy that it's leading behind, writing, I see Jezbel not as the beginning of the end of the digital media era, but as a moment, a spark within an ongoing discussion about gender politics. That conversation has led to new realities around sexual assault and harassment, pay inequity, and cultural depictions of women. It also makes some people uncomfortable, in part because it involves women expressing their anger in public in sustained ways. Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger, Audrey Lord Road, in 1981, which can act as a powerful source of energy serving progress in change.

If that's part of Jezbel's legacy, I'll take it. It's about everything I could have hoped for. Yeah, that's a sad one. Yeah, rest in peace, Jezbel. What, like, what a good fucking sight. Yeah. And you're right. Like of an era really, like it was a leading voice on the internet. I don't know. It was voice isn't the right word, but it was like an important outlet on the internet for years. Yeah. And I also think it just like we wouldn't, I don't think that content on the internet would look the same without Jezbo. Like it changed things. like it was famously satirized on 30 rock it was like angrywomen.com or something like that like when like liz says Liz makes a joke on on TGS and a Jesbel parody website it's like flaming her for it. Yeah it just it just really caught it was like lightning in a bottle. It really caught something special.

Obviously kind of going back to the conversation we were just happening. It wasn't without its fault. Like some if you were around for those Jesbel days, you probably remember. some of the wild conversations that happened there and some of the wild antics of some of the folks that worked there. But yeah, it was of an era. Yeah. There's a certain internet snarkiness that I really associate with feminism. And I think like Jezebel is probably part of that. You know, we'll just have to keep reading Wonkette over at Substack. I know. or fix. Anna Merlin, who used to work at Jezbel, now works at Vice, where, ironically, they also had layoffs today.

She was talking about how, like, our current media climate feels like it's just a handful of legacy publications that cannot possibly cover everything that needs to be covered to the depth that it needs to. AI generated garbage and, you know, independent newsletters or substacks. And it's like, is this our media climate? Is this it? Is this in this time where there is so much going on? There is so much important stuff that we should really be checked in on.

Is this the media climate that we have to help us wade through it? God, I hope not. Yeah, it's interesting because it connects with something else that I think we've talked about on the past and in the past probably we'll be talking about again, the shift in social media platforms like Facebook away from news. Like there was a solid decade, maybe longer, where news content was like the main content that people were posting and commenting on platforms. And that's like explicitly no longer the case, right? Facebook is moving away from it in places like Canada.

They've banned it entirely. And I have to imagine that that is very much connected with this phenomenon that you were just talking about. of our media ecosystem being a handful of legacy outlets and all of the, you know, I don't know, alt journalism or what would have been alt weeklies 30 years ago, are, I don't know, less abundant, less, I'm sure they would love to have some extra money. Yeah, you know, who got that money. Don't you? Don't you? Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, Cheryl Sandberg, and fucking Adam Moseri. So thanks. I'm happy that you have more money in the funky sock budget. And we, local news is dead. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it.

This all sounds very doom and gloom, but I mean, we have to choose hopefulness. Like, we have to choose. I do, I do see hope in the way that people are, saying, I don't fucking think so to a lot of these tech billionaires and a lot of the proposals that they lay out for how they intend to continue to get rich off of us, whether it is exploiting our likeness in perpetuity or forcing ads into more and more of real estate online. So yeah, I think there is reason for hope. We have to be hopeful that something better can be out there on the horizon. Mike, thank you so much for being here, as always.

Thanks for having me and thanks for listening. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our merch store at tangoity.com slash store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangooty.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

Edited by Joey Pat. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. 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.

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