There Are No Girls on the Internet - Sydney Sweeney's jeans; Jet2 Holiday meme hijacked by DHS; Tea app hack lawsuit; Substack promotes Nazis – NEWS ROUNDUP w/ Abbie Richards

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

This week Bridget recaps the tech stories you might have missed with longtime friend of the show indispensable Internet advocate Abbie Richards. She is the Steve Martin of TANGOTI. If you're not following Abbie on TikTok you're missing out! www.tiktok.com/@tofology US labor hero and friend of the show Chris Smalls, co-founder of the Amazon Labor Union, was beaten and choked by IDF soldiers while trying to deliver aid to Gaza. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/29/chris-smalls-amazon-labor-union-gaza Substack sent a push notification for an openly nazi blog, continuing their streak of promoting nazis. https://www.usermag.co/p/substack-sent-a-push-alert-promoting-nazi-white-supremacist-blog The Discourse Is Broken- How did a jeans commercial with Sydney Sweeney come to this? https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/07/sydney-sweeney-american-eagle-ads/683704/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo First YouTube, and now LinkedIn, have changed their policies to allow discrimination against trans people: https://www.advocate.com/business/youtube-scraps-gender-identity-protection and https://www.advocate.com/news/linkedin-transgender-deadnaming-misgendering-policy TikTok adds footnotes in an attempt to add context to misinformation and fake content. We hope it helps! https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/rolling-out-tiktok-footnotes-in-the-us Community Notes and its Narrow Understanding of Disinformation: https://www.techpolicy.press/community-notes-and-its-narrow-understanding-of-disinformation/ Trump Admin uses songs without permission to create cruelty porn. These people have no shame. https://newrepublic.com/post/198600/white-house-jet2-holiday-meme-deportation There's Already a Class Action Lawsuit Against the Viral 'Tea' App: https://lifehacker.com/tech/tea-app-class-action-lawsuit Spotify threatens to delete accounts that fail age-verification: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/07/30/spotify-threatens-to-delete-accounts-unless-users-prove-the/ Not just YouTube: Google is using AI to guess your age based on your activity - everywhere: https://www.zdnet.com/article/not-just-youtube-google-is-using-ai-to-guess-your-age-based-on-your-activity-everywhere/ If you’re listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment there or email us at [e-mail]! Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media! Many vids each week. instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. There are no girls on the internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Welcome to another episode of There Are No Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of social media, technology, and identity. This is another iteration of our weekly news roundup where we talk through the stories that you might have seen on the Internet, so you don't have to.

I am so thrilled to welcome back to the show, friend of the show. I think maybe our longest running guest. You know how Steve Martin was the most, he hosted SNL the most? I think you're the Steve Martin of there are no girls on the internet. Oh my God, what a claim to fame. It's an honor and a privilege. We are so thrilled to be joined by Abby Richards, prolific TikTok user, misinformation expert, media matters, analyst.

How do you describe yourself these days? You're a woman who wears many hats. Yeah, I think I describe myself as a woman who wears many hats. I'm still going with, like, misinformation researcher and content creator as like blanket, you know, just covers all the bases. Yeah, there's a lot more to Abby. She has multitudes. Abby, the last time that we saw each other, I think, was in Ireland, a question mark.

Yeah, it was in Dublin. Dublin, that's right. We were there with Mozilla. And one of the folks that you and I were lucky enough to spend some time with and really get to know when we were in Ireland was Chris Smalls. We've talked about Chris Smalls on the show before. He is one of my personal heroes. You might know him best as one of the main leader. in the fight to unionized Amazon workers.

He was the co-founder and the former president of the Amazon Labor Union, which was the very first ever unionized Amazon worker coalition recognized by the National Labor Relations Board. When we first got on, we were talking about the fact that Chris was part of this Freedom Motilla Coalition, which is a grassroots international collective that has really been trying to give aid to folks in Gaza. They were intercepted by the IDF. They boarded their vessel.

And, you know, I'm sure that nobody. was having a great time once that happened. But all the reporting I saw was that Chris was being uniquely targeted. And I have to imagine that as something to do with him being, I think, the only black man as part of that coalition. Yeah, he was the only black activist on board. And he was reportedly, like, kicked in the head. And, like, they were, like, beating at his, like, knees and legs.

It was, like, seven uniformed, like, people in uniformed. that were assaulting him. And reportedly then when his lawyers went to go like meet with him, they had like six like special police guards on him. And then his conditions like when he was being held were terrible, I think as with other activists. But it did seem like he was specifically targeted. And it was really, really concerning for us who are like his friends and want to make sure that he's safe. Yeah.

And it sounds like he might have actually been released quite recently. Do I have that right? Yeah, so he's in, as far as I'm aware, at the time of recording, I think he's like in Jordan, like boarding a plane or maybe even like on the plane right now and is expected to land tomorrow morning, which like, thank God. I'm really glad that he's made it out. It sounds like conditions were terrible. They were saying that they were like infested with bedbugs and overheated, really unclean, overpacked. And also that the activists like were on like day five of their like 100. a hunger strike. So it just, the conditions were terrible and it sounded absolutely miserable.

But he posted a video, I think, at an airport, like, ready to leave and seemed in good spirits, which is nice. And it's a good reminder of something that we get into sometimes, which is that these issues, at least from my perspective, are very much all connected. The fact that Chris Smalls was the, you know, co-founder of the first Amazon labor union, I don't think is unrelated to what's happening with Palestine. Like, I think these are all tech issues. They're all justice issues, they're all race issues, the fact that a black activist would be uniquely targeted by IDF when coming to provide aid and coming to advocate for the cause. I think all of these issues are connected in ways that sometimes can be difficult to see, but I think that

what happened with Chris really does demonstrate that. And so I think a lot of folks might think like, oh, well, what does this issue have to do with technology? Why would you be talking about this in a tech podcast? I see it as very, as very linked, the fact that someone would see what's happening with Palestine and have the orientation of like, well, the same kind of forces of injustice that are at play with big tech companies like Amazon are certainly at play here. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's connected on so many different angles. There's like the technological colonialism of it all. But there's also like the social media activism of it, of like how he even got there was from a place of like knowing how to,

utilize social media to get eyes on Gaza. Because it's not like the freedom flotilla was bringing like tremendous amounts of aid in. I think like they're they were very aware as with the first round of it too that like they would likely get um boarded and taken into custody and that the aid wasn't going to get through. But it's like a it's activism in that performance of like letting themselves get arrested. Right. A lot of activism revolves around that. And using social social media to get that many eyes on it, right? The types of activists that were on that boat. That is such a technological issue. Of course it is. And those things are so connected and intersecting. And I think that they're really interesting and that we have to like account for that in,

you know, 21st century resistance efforts. Absolutely. Well, Chris, if you are listening, our hearts are with you. We're thinking about you. We love you. Yeah. Good vibe. So proud. Okay, so I want to talk about something that I know you probably have lots of thoughts about, and that is TikTok adding footnotes. Did you see this new kind of a program they're rolling out that will like, let a select group of TikTokers add context and background information to some videos on the app? Yeah, I saw the article, like saying that they were planning to unroll it. I would like to be in that first group, please let me in.

Yes, you would be, like, I can't think of somebody who uses the platform in a better way to call out some of the misinformation that is there. Like, I, there's nobody really doing it the way that you're doing it. And what I love about your work is how you're able to, like, you use the platform. You're a prolific user of the platform. But you also critiques the way that misinformation is able to spread on that platform. And so it's not like you're someone who is only rah-rah, this platform that I've built up can do no wrong. You just come at it from such a place of transparency.

Oh, my God, thank you. I mean, like, I am a TikTok enjoyer. There are things I really enjoy about that app, but also there are things that, like, infuriate me. And I think that we can hold space for, you know, two things to exist at the same time where, like, I have found great, great joy there. And also I have been, like, lied to prolifically.

So, yeah, I think that the community notes function that they're going to try and add. I'm actually pretty in favor of it, as long as it's not also replacing other fact-checking. which it sounds like it isn't. So it's similar to the way that community notes functions on X, but notably TikTok says they are not going to abandon in-house backchecking. X and Meta when they rolled out community notes, that was all they were going to be doing.

And it really did seem like a way to offload that burden from paid staff at these companies and just put the burden on users, right? And so I think that you're exactly right. The fact that TikTok is saying, hey, this is not going to be replacing our in-house fact-checkers, we're going to continue to have that, too, I think is really a key difference. And why, to me, I'm not, like, opposed to this. Yeah, no, I'm not opposed. And I also think that it's kind of community-oriented, which I like, I like that there can be, like, discussions around the accuracy of something. Like, I'm very

interested in that. Again, it doesn't replace, like, journalists and fact-checkers. So as long as, like, it's just like an added thing of like, I think this is AI. I can recognize what this bunny disappeared on the trampoline. The bunny. So it got me. I sent that to somebody. And then I had to send a follow up when I saw the piece in 404 media. Oh, that got a lot of people.

That got millions of people. So the piece in 404 media breaking down this viral TikTok that purported to be backyard ring camera security footage on a bunch of bun. money's adorably jumping on a trampoline. They were so cute. It was so cute. And the reason why it got me was because ring camera footage is always blurry. So you're not, I think that you're not trained to be thinking, is this real or is this not?

You're just expecting to see some low-res video. And I think that's easier to like slip AI into that. Yeah. I think the blurry footage also with, there's been a few of those videos of like animals jumping on a trampoline at night. and it's always at night because if it were during the day, I think it would be a lot more obvious

but that like nighttime ring like ring footage it's just easier for it to look a little shitty. Yes. And when it comes to mis and disinformation in the way that it spreads in video form, it usually adheres to some sort of worldview that you hold and I have the worldview that when night falls,

animals are doing all kinds of cute things and wouldn't it be great if we could see them? And so I was like, oh, I want to believe, I want to believe in a world that bunnies are jumping on a trampoline at night in a coordinated way when we're all asleep. That's the ideology that I want to have. My core belief is that when I go to sleep bunnies get together to jump on trampolines. Bunny nighttime mischief, yeah. Yeah. So this is something interesting about community note.

So I like the fact that TikTok is not replacing their in-house back check. with community notes. But when platforms like X are using community notes only as fact-checking, the studies on whether or not that and that alone is an effective way of handling incorrect information is a little bit mixed. There's a really good analysis in tech policy press written by Nadia Jude, a PhD researcher within the Digital Media Research Center at the Queensland University of Technology and Dr. Adriana Matrimos Fernandez, Associate Professor at the University of Dublin, they found that studies on the effectiveness of community notes are missed. For example, there is a debate about whether or not the tool reduces or heightens engagement

with misleading posts. Notes are also slow, and the public sees less than 12.5% of all submitted notes. Partisanship often motivates volunteers to participate, and the system struggles to fact-check divisive issues from influential counts and hard-to-verify claims that include, for example, sarcasm. These challenges call into question whether or not prioritizing consensus in moderation systems designed to address miss and disinformation is a desirable or worthy aim. And I found that to be so interesting because, you know, on a platform like X where that

really is the only thing that anybody is doing to prevent the spread of false information, you really see how it might not be something that's genuinely affected at keeping incorrect information off the platform. On TikTok, I like the idea that being something where context is added or, you know, background information. or sort of like, let me put this in context for you, as opposed to being like, yes, it is true or no, it is not true. I almost wonder if that false binary of true versus not true, but it's like not working on platforms like X when that's the only thing they have.

I think there's so many other contexts on TikTok where context would be so helpful. I mean, the amount of times that like I'm fully lost trying to find the original video that someone is like mocking and has like done a play on or like, I'm completely lost and don't have context on like what this like discourse I've stumbled into is or or what account posted about it first and like what their username is. Like it's it's so confusing. And like just given the nature of TikTok, you get dropped into like these conversations on your for you page and you're like, I don't know what's happening. So I think like, yeah, focusing on context and adding that is I think that that can actually be like a beautiful thing for community. I'm interested to see how it plays out.

I certainly don't think it can replace fact-checking at all, ever. And I don't think it can replace true, like, content moderation. And I certainly worry about companies who just, like, don't want to deal with content moderation. So they just, like, kind of give that burden to users. And they're like, you figure out what's real. Exactly. Yeah. None of this would be a replacement for expert fact-checkers who know what they're

they're doing who are trained to address things. And particularly like culturally informed content moderators because so much of the content moderation, like, if people aren't culturally informed, it can be very difficult to know what people they're talking about. And you're so right about TikTok. It's a platform that it's really difficult to follow drama on TikTok because you're like, I'm out of the loop. Like who said what? What started it? I can never keep up. And then like, somebody will just post a username that's like scrambled. And then you get like linked to like that person's old videos and you're going through. And it's just it's a lot of,

it's a lot of investigative work to try and understand drama. You've gotten like dropped into the middle of duty or algorithm. And there's like a lot of the times where I look at something and I like have to make a decision of just like, I have to let this go. I don't. Like I can't invest any more of my time to try to figure out who started this random. random dispute. Yeah, I understand that the wordal community is having discourse and that they're fighting, but like I need to not put any energy into understanding why. Ooh, I actually would be interested to know what the wordal community is up at arms about.

That was a while ago, but like there was some beef in the world community. I honestly felt like it was kind of manufactured for attention, but that was just me. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite on humor 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 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. To the group. sides of the group. The yard herds, right?

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

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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 would 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. There are times when the mind becomes a difficult place to live. This is David Eagleman with the Inner Cosmos podcast,

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Listen to Inner Cosmos on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At our back. Okay. Well, speaking of TikTok, I have, this is like not something. I mean, I'll just say, like, I try very hard to not focus on what the Trump administration is doing unless I absolutely have to. And so I blocked all of their social accounts because they're.

all abhorrent. But when I peeked back in, I was surprised to see that, you know, the TikTok viral baby, hold my hand. Nothing beats a Jet 2 holiday. So everybody was on that meme. They were using that song from the Jet 2 holiday commercial to illustrate, you know, things, vacations gone awry or things bad happening while they're on trips. Well, the White House got in on that. They posted on X videos of handcuffed allegedly undocumented people being escorted by blurred out

ICE enforcement officials onto a global X flight, which is an airline provider abused by ICE, with that viral TikTok found. And the post is captioned when X books you a one way jet two holiday to deportation, nothing beats it. Yeah,

I just think we, I know there's a lot of other horrible stuff in the world, but I do think that we should be talking about how abhorrent the official comms channels out of this administration have gotten. I remember earlier they were doing the studio Ghibli, like, AI-generated cartoons. They made one of a woman being deported, like a cartoon version of her crying. And I just feel like they are putting out stuff even for their base. You have to be a depraved sicko to want to see this kind of.

and you have to be like a depraved person to get enjoyment out of this. And it really reminds me of like our country's history with things like lynchings, right? Like big public displays, big spectacles being made out of the suffering of others. And I just think like in the scheme of things that might not be that big of the deal, but the way that the administration uses their official comms channels to signal to the most depraved members of their base just really, I mean, I can't. cannot be overstated. Yeah, no, that meme was, like, truly sickening.

Like, I felt that in my stomach. I mean, same with, like, the, they had, like, the deportation ASMR a while back, too. And it very much is an instance of, like, the cruelty is the point. Right. Like, they're trying to be as cruel as possible because they know that it creates media attention. They know it works people up. So it's also just about, I think, triggering the left to some extent, doing things that they know will make the left upset. And I think it's also partially about desensitization. So the more your

eye sockets are assaulted with abhorrent content like that, you just get used to it. You get desensitized to it. And I think it encourages people to like emotionally shut down. It's absolutely bonkers propaganda, but it does seem to be working for them and getting the attention that they crave. Yeah, I think you're so right about the purpose of this kind of content, because I do think it's about, you could, I mean, this is why I have these channels all blocked, because you can only see this stuff so much.

You can only engage with this so much until you're either, either you're, you become desensitized to it, as you said, or you simply can't go about your day. I mean, Elaine Walth had this great TikTok, where she was like, the experience of scrolling social media right now is horrible tragedy, horrible, despicable comms coming out of an official White House channel and then somebody's makeup tutorial. And I firmly believe that this is not an environment that we were as humans meant to be in. This is, it's like, oh no. We should not have, this should not be normal.

No, our brains were not meant to be assaulted with this much, like, horrendous content. and then simultaneously sold as many things to consume as we possibly can. And that's what going on social media really feels like right now is just like horrible thing, horrible thing, buy this, horrible thing, horrible thing, purchase this. And like, it's really bleak. And I think that there are people who like see that and recognize that like that's the emotional experience that like a lot of us are having and are happy to add on to it. and try to, like, emotionally wear us out and wear us down. Yeah, and I think the fact that they're picking these things that are symbols of joy might be too strong,

but the studio Ghibli cartoons, like, those cartoons are all about celebrating nature and love and innocence. Like, they're very kind of pure and, you know, they're, they're, for me, they are a symbol of joy. So then seeing that perverted and seeing that taken to illustrate cruelty, I think, is a definite, like, intentional choice. Can we talk about how they did the Jet 2 holiday meme wrong, though? Like, that bothers me. Yes. Because the whole point of the Jet 2 holidays is that it's supposed to be something going terribly wrong.

And they are like, oh, we love this. Look at us deporting so well. And it's almost like, they almost kind of got themselves with the fact that they don't know how the meme works and they just used a trending audio. But like the whole point of that meme is that like fun, upbeat audio with like something going just like demonstrably, like wrong. Yes, they've kind of misunderstood them like what makes it a meme, what makes it funny. And in a roundabout way, they're kind of saying these deportations are something that have gone wrong. But I know that's not what they want to say.

No, that's not what they want. They want is just like cruelty and supremacy and to like trigger. I think they want to like trigger the left. And then on the right they want to trigger feelings of superiority and like give people that kind of like emotional hit of other people's cruelty. Yeah. The person who sings the song is Jess Glyne. The song is called Hold My Hand.

And she actually posted a statement on Instagram basically saying that she was horrified to see the White House using her song in this way, even though she was happy to see it take off on TikTok initially. She wrote, this post honestly makes me sick. My music is about love, unity, and spreading positivity, never about division or hate. And then the voiceover artist, the one that sang, nothing beats a jet blue holiday, said, what can be done about the White House using Jet 2 sound and my voiceover to promote their nasty agenda? And I do feel like, it, I mean, it's, like, I can't imagine what it must be like to have the White House take your work and your words and use it to promote something in this way, especially after kind of celebrating that this Jet 2 holiday ad

that you made, people did find joy and sort of recontextualizing it. Like, I don't know. It's like the White House, like we cannot have any small moment of joy or wonder without them being like, how can we pervert this but make it awful? It's so annoying. Let us have have fun. Let us like enjoy things. But no, like let's like they just come in here and completely ruin the vibes. And it's not like this is like the first artist that this

happened to. It was like wasn't Olivia Rodrigo had a song. Oh my God, which song was it? Was it deja vu? Yeah, the Trump administration like used as an audio and she was just like take this down or like never use my audio again. Like don't use my sound. And they deleted her comment. So then she just like removed the sound off of TikTok, I think.

Yeah. And I mean, it also says a lot that they have to steal from artists and use their voices in their work without permission. Because who would want to be associated with this? Like, they're not able, like, it's not like, I mean, part of me wonders, like, why not just work with the artists who voluntarily would sign on for this kind of thing?

It's telling that it's like, you don't want it to be kid rock doing the soundtrack. Somebody who probably would jump at that chance. has to be somebody who doesn't want to be associated with you. Bridget, Bridget, you know they don't have good artists on their side. You know the answer to that. They don't have good artists. They have to steal ours. They have to. They're not making, like what? Carrie Underwood's going to produce a really top audio right now. Like that's what they're working with. Oh my God. This is such a throwback. The Carrie Underwood thing, I found that to be, that was like something out of

out of Veep, where Carrie Underwood, for folks who don't know, this is a little bit of my personal Roman Empire, signed on to perform at the inauguration, really shouldn't have. When she signed up, when she went to perform her, there was a problem with her stage and her performance ended up being really janky and she was panned. And it just was one of those things where it's like, dang, aren't you, don't you wish you would never got mixed up with these people? Like, what a bad choice. It's, oh my God, we always forget how incompetent they are too. They're incompetent and they don't have any good.

artists on their side. And that sucks. And I do feel bad for them. I do. Absolutely. 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 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.

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. Cuba 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 iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast's Point Game is about defining 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 bases on offense.

And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would 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, Isaiah, 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. There are times when the mind becomes a difficult place to live. This is David Eagleman with the Inner Cosmos podcast, and for Mental Health Awareness Month, we're dedicating a series to understanding the mind when it struggles. I'm joined by doctors, researchers, and those with lived experience. We'll talk with singer-songwriter Jewel about anxiety. I started living in my car, and then my car got stolen. I was shoplifting.

I was having panic attacks. I was agoraphobic. And making it through hardship. To be present is a learned skill, and it's hard to be present. We'll talk with John Nelson about clinical depression and the brain implant that saved his life. What I learned is that procedure made me happy because I'm disease-free. And we'll talk with leading experts like Judd Brewer about anxiety and John Hirschfield about obsessive-compulsive disorder

and the science of how the brain can change. This is a month of deeply personal and honest conversations about what happens when the brain goes off course and what we can do about it. Listen to Inner Cosmos on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, so we have to talk about what is going on at Substack.

I don't have a Substack. I, for the longest time, was like, oh, I should get a Substack. I should get a Substack. And then I'm kind of glad I don't have one. We talked about this before. Back in 2024, Substack agreed to remove Nazi content after hundreds of writers, including Casey Newton, who runs this very prominent tech publication platformer on Substack. They all signed an open letter, threatening to quit the podcast.

platform if the platform did not remove Nazi content. The Atlantic reported that prominent white supremacists, people like Richard Spencer, were using the platform to earn money. Spencer was likely at least making $9,000 a year and potentially more than that from his substack. And because substack got a cut, it got 10%. Essentially, substack is profiting from white supremacists who are on their platform. So substack back in 2024 was like, okay, we will do something. And I guess the problem, has not been solved because Taylor Lorenz reported that Substack sent a push notification promoting a Nazi publication on the platform to an unidentified number of their users.

I don't use the term Nazi publication lightly. The blog literally included a swastika icon. So that's like pretty cut and dry. I feel pretty confident saying this is a Nazi publication. They were definitely, I think they self-identified as a national socialist publication. Exactly. This is not something where I'm, I'm, I'm just throwing the word around. Like, they would probably agree that that's how they would, they would self-identify. Yeah. And so Substack apologized.

They said, we discovered an error that caused some people to receive pushed notifications they never should have received. In some cases, these notifications were extremely offensive and disturbing. Yeah, I'll say. This was a serious error, and we apologized for the distress it caused. We have taken the relevant system offline, diagnosed the issue, and are making changes to ensure it does not happen again. So I feel like for as bad as it is to send a push notification that includes a swastika,

I tell people to check out this Nazi blog. That statement to me is like, throw that in the garbage. It doesn't mean anything. Ars-Tetnikas spoke to Joshua Fisher-Berch, a terrorism analyst at the nonprofit NGO, the Counter-Exhumism Project, who's been monitoring substack and their role in helping far-right movement spread propaganda online. He makes a very good point that what should be happening, happening now is more transparency and then outlining exactly what happened and exactly what steps

substack is taking to prevent it from happening again. Just saying, oopsie, B. Sentry with swastika is really not good enough. Would you consider how big of a fuck-up that is? Yeah, no, that's like a really big fuck-up and being like, oh, like that system has been diagnosed. What do you mean? Yes. What do you mean? Can you tell me more about what that system was? Like, how did that even get scooped up there? Like, when we say transparency, we don't mean like a two-sentence statement from your company. We say, like, we mean like true accountability. Like, what rent wrong here?

And, like, how can you explain it to us so that we understand and can have faith that, like, you're taking actions and, like, steps to make sure it doesn't go wrong again? But, like, that's, I don't feel like we're getting real transparency here. No, absolutely not. And Fisher Birch, he made a really good point that all of these like far right Nazi extremist types have gotten the impression that their content is far less likely to be removed from Substack. And they're not wrong. And importantly, they see Substac as, quote, a legitimizing tool for sharing content specifically because the Substant brand, which is widely used by independent journalists and top influencers and cherish content creators can help them convey the image of a thought leader. And so I thought that was such an important point that it's not just that Substack is hosting this kind of content, which that is a problem.

It's also that the people who make this kind of content rightly understand that me being on Substack next to all of these important influencers and contact creators legitimizes whatever it is I have to say. So it's not just that it's being taken down. It's that I'm hobnobbing with all these other important voices. So it seems like my voice is important too. Yeah, it like just it lends them legitimacy. Exactly. It's yeah. And hasn't, um,

Substack like talked about how they don't want to take that content down because they don't want to like overly censor that content and they believe that like it'll just go into the shadows. Like, am I right? That's like also part of their. Like that's just like we, I would so much rather that content be in the shadows than on Substack next to, you know, legitimate journalists like actual.

high quality substacks. Like, it's okay for bad things to be in the shadows where we can't see them. Actually, that's where bad things, like, should be and should stay. I'm okay with that. And I think that's such a good point. And, you know, it's one of those things where I do think that, like, so many prominent journalists who are doing their own thing and, like, have their own, you know, media outlets are on substack.

And it goes back to that old adage about a Nazi bar, right? Like if you're hanging out of a Nazi bar, at what point are people going to start thinking that you're the Nazi? I think that if Substack doesn't do something, I think people who are prominent on the platform who don't want to be associated with this kind of thing and don't want this thing to be out of the shadows, they don't want it to be like next to their piece or something.

I think they might be having to make some changes. Angry Black Lady, Amani Gandhi, who is a journalist and a lawyer who I follow online, she wrote on Blue Sky, but basically it sounds like Substack is, unsustainable and that people either have to move now or move in shame later. Those are really the only two options at this point. And I thought that was such a good point of like, at a certain point, people might have to decide, I don't want to be on a platform like this. And won't it be

embarrassing to have to do that in shame after you've been like, oh, they're going to fix the problem? But also at the same time, it puts like creators of that content in such a shitty position, where like they need that like hosting service and their audience uses it. And it's not like the audience is that good at following people off platform onto different platforms. And so like if they're financially dependent on substack and they've like gone independent and they like rely on it, then like it's a big ask to be like, can you not use this platform that you rely on and that you can't really transfer your audience to anywhere else? because you don't like other content that's being hosted here. Like, it's really hard.

It puts them in a really, yeah, between a rock and a hard place. That's a really good point. They're really doing a disservice to the people that use their platform, that they have to be thinking about this at all. And again, a lot of people who are on Substac, like the state of journalism and media, everyone I know has either been laid off or wakes up being worried about being laid off. And the people who are laid off often use platforms like Substac to do their own thing

while they figure out what's next. But I think they, I think sub-stack is putting a lot of people who are already oftentimes operating from a place of precarity. Not often, not always, but often. I think that they are putting this on them in a way that is, I don't think is acceptable. No, I mean, that's what happens on every platform where, like, they refuse to engage in content moderation. Because, like, arguably, I do the same thing on TikTok where, like, I'm forced to be on

TikTok, like, to reach my audience who I can't transfer over anywhere else. And it's also on a platform that is like, you know, consumed with like misinformation and like a lot of, you know, like I just published about all like the racist AI generated content and I'm forced to like live there. And it's it's not fair to me. I don't think it's fair. I mean, I think that the platform in general would be a lot better if it focused instead on like creators who made like original high quality content. But that's not where they want to invest all of their operations. You know, the last time that you and I spoke on the podcast, we were talking about a potential TikTok ban in the United States. If TikTok was banned, what, like, what would that look like for your voice and your platform? I mean, on one hand, I would lose, like, you know, half a million followers, which is, like, brutal. But on the other hand, my TikTok reach right now is terrible, absolutely horrendous. like I barely can reach like a tenth of those followers. Like I just have, I never have guaranteed access to the people who did choose to opt into my content

and like routinely have them in the comments being like, I haven't seen you on my free page in years or like whatever. And I feel like on TikTok, especially right now, my content's just being flooded out with ads instead. I mean, the place is just becoming like a glorified Amazon. I got 11 sponsored posts in a row, like last month, between like TikTok shop ads and like actual ads. I got 11 in a row. I screened recorded it. 11 in a row. It was crazy.

It's barely usable. I mean, I loved TikTok for a time. I stopped using it precisely because of just the deluge of ads. And I don't mind ads that much in my content. However, there was, there is something particularly, the user-generated TikTok shop ads alongside the regular ad ads. There's something about that that just feels dystopian. You know, you've probably seen this thing on there where it'll be someone who says they're going through a horrible trauma.

and it's like, can you just let this video play for seven seconds so that I can get money? Hit all the buttons so that I can pay my bills or whatever, yeah. I'm very sympathetic to people who need to use platforms like TikTok to raise money to get themselves out of tough situations. But it just makes me sad. It just doesn't feel good to show up on a platform where this is feeling more and more like the norm. and less and less like an unusual experience. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's almost like we now are not just consuming the ads,

but we also produce ads for ourselves to consume alongside other content of people just being like, I need money so badly. And you have to sit there and be like, my attention is currency. I have to pay you in attention so that you can pay rent. And it's just, it's so dystopian. And it feels like it never. ends. And it's, it's brutal because I remember a time where TikTok was fun and not flooded with ads.

And now I go on there and it just feels like I'm reminded of what like a capitalist dystopia we live in. Oh my God. I was seeing this song on TikTok everywhere. And I was like, oh, it's weird that this song I've never heard of by an artist I've never heard of and don't know at all is in all these TikToks at same time. And it turned out that, you probably know this. I learned this for the first time, that TikTok had a program where you could get paid to use artists' songs because they're trying to promote the songs. It's like, oh, if you get ex-views on this song, you might get a payout. And I realized, is nothing organic anymore? No, people, like, if I like a song, I'll use that song on social media. But the idea that someone would be being paid to amplify a song.

just so that it becomes an earworm. I guess it's just what you're saying. It's just so clearly an attention economy where they're just trying to get whatever value they can of me, my eyeballs paying attention to something for a couple of seconds. And it's like they're not asking, did anybody actually like the song?

Would anybody have actually organically used this song in their content? No, they were just trying to get a couple of sense. Okay. Yeah, no, it really, the moment that broke me was one time I had an influencer. tell me that they were paid by JoJo Siwa's team to talk about her negatively.

I absolutely believe this. Because something's going on with JoJo Siwa, and I never, it's always, there's always something going on with her. And I absolutely believe it. I believe her. I believe that influencer. No, I mean, that influencer showed me the video. Like, I saw it and, like, told me about, like,

the money they took. And that, like, their team was very much just like, say whatever you've got to say. Like, anything, anything you want to say. And, yeah, I really do believe that, like, very little is, is organic at these points. And just so much of it is just, like, discourse all the way down. And at the end of the day, it's just, like, meaningless distraction. Oh, my gosh.

I mean, I might even cut this, but when my producer was putting together the different stories that we might talk about, one of the potential things was the Sydney Sweeney controversy around the American and Eagle jeans ad that's like, oh, I have great jeans. And the only thing I have to say about that is that it just demonstrated to me how annoying discourse is on the internet because it's just a very, it just became clear how easily our attention is captured and how easily we're all sort of played in a kind of way that, you know, I think that I thought, I think that company was like, oh, this is going to be a controversial ad that he gets people talking. I think that one of the executives from American Eagle posted on LinkedIn. and basically saying that, oh, Sidney, really wanted to, you know, make this something everybody was talking about.

And I just, that just, I'm just so sick of feeling like, we are all so reactive and that our attention is just so easily gamified. And they're not wrong, right? Like, that's not incorrect. It's very effective. It's so effective. And it, like, distracts us from, like, actual real problems with, like, surface level representations of those problems.

Like, did you read on? Charlie Worsell's piece in, I think it was the Atlantic. I sure did. I literally copied and pasted his last, because I was like, if we talk about this, I need to read this. This last paragraph, because like it had some like stuff on discourse that can I just read it? Oh my God. Hit us with it.

Okay. Discourse suggests a process that feels productive, maybe even democratic, but there's nothing productive about the end result of our information environment. What we're consuming isn't discourse. It's algorithmic grist for the mills that power the platform. we've uploaded our conversations onto. The grist is made of all our very real political and cultural anxieties, ground down until they start to feel meaningless.

The only thing that matters is that the machine keeps running. The wheel keeps turning, leaving everybody feeling like they've won and lost at the same time. That is exactly how it feels. Literally. That like sums it up exactly. Literally. Like that's exactly it. And like it's just so mindless.

And it's about these real things. Like they are these very real political and cultural anxieties. And yet it's just a hamster wheel where it takes us nowhere at all. Yeah. And I mean, I checked back in on the discourse around the ad. And it was like liberals turn on Sidney-Sweeney because they hate hot women. And it's like, who hates hot people? No, like I just, we love hot women.

Yeah. I love hot women. I love hot women. I will speak for the left to be like, I love hot women. And they're like, they hate, they hate her boobs. And I'm like, no, I love her boobs. And also, like, what's, I don't think we need to act like good looking women with big boobs are in a press class. You know what I mean?

Like, they don't, they don't understand the plight. The plight of a hot blonde with big tits. Bridget, we don't know the struggle. Yes. But yeah, it's just, it just, something about that particular story. I found very exhausting. And I think that piece really sums it up that it feels like a hamster wheel where we kind of get near. Like, you're right that there are real anxieties, real political and social anxieties that they kind of represent.

But then we're not actually having a substantive conversation. It just feels like when you eat a bunch of junk food, a bunch of McDonald's, and then you feel good for a minute, but then you're hungry again later because you didn't get any nourishment. I don't, I feel like the discourse is not nourishing. me. It's only, it's like making me feel empty. Yeah, it's, yeah, it reminds me of the discourse around Sabrina Carpenter's album. It was exact same thing of just like, this is so meaningless and it truly doesn't matter and it's not really like representative of all of feminism or like all of all women and like we project so much meaning onto things. And I think it represents like our feelings of

like lack of control. And, And it just, oh my God, that discourse drove me absolutely insane. They were like, she's setting the feminist movement back or like, you know, she's like a feminist icon. And it's just like, I think she's just horny. Yeah. Have you ever seen the movie This Is Vital Tap? No.

So it's such a classic. I'm like outing myself as a big nerd here. But it's a satirical movie about a rock band. It's like a mockumentary. And they put out an album cover where it's a woman. sniffing a glove. You put a greased, naked woman on all fours with a dog collar around her neck and a leash. And a leash.

And a man's arm extended out up to here, holding on to the leash and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it. You don't find that offensive? You don't find that sexist? This is 1988, Bobby. Come on. That's right. It's 1988.

Get out of the 60s. We don't have this mentality anymore. Well, you should have seen the cover they wanted to do. I don't care what they wanted. When I first saw that Sabrina Carpenter album, I was like, oh, is this an homage? A really niche homage. This is a niche. This is a joke for just me specifically.

That's so funny. I also think this is just like, this is like new research that just came out from Media Matters, but is like interesting with the Sydney-Sweeney stuff. They just published that like since Monday, Fox News spent 85 minutes talking about Sidney-Sweeney and three minutes talking about Epstein. Certainly Sydney Sweeney's new American Eagle jeans ad is more important, has more like bigger impacts for the country, no? And it just feels so representative of like how our own like discourse cycle

that like we feel like is somehow scratching an itch of our like political issues actually just becomes a tool to distract us from like real political. power and how it's manipulated. Like, it just, it feels so representative of that phenomenon. Definitely. Oh, more after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.

Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me.

Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The 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. One erection. Listen to you. Humor Me with Robert Smygel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. 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.

What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast's point game is about defining 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. But 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, Isaiah, 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. There are times when the mind becomes a difficult place to live. This is David Eagleman with the Inner Cosmos podcast, and for Mental Health Awareness Month, We're dedicating a series to understanding the mind when it struggles.

I'm joined by doctors, researchers, and those with lived experience. We'll talk with singer-songwriter Jewel about anxiety. I started living in my car, and then my car got stolen. I was shoplifting. I was having panic attacks. I was agoraphobic. And making it through hardship. To be present is a learned skill, and it's hard to be present.

We'll talk with John Nelson about clinical depression, and the brain implant that saved his life. What I learned is the procedure made me happy because I'm disease-free. And we'll talk with leading experts like Judd Brewer about anxiety and John Hirschfield about obsessive-compulsive disorder and the science of how the brain can change.

This is a month of deeply personal and honest conversations about what happens when the brain goes off course and what we can do about it. Listen to Inner Cosmos on the IHeart Radio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. LinkedIn is quietly stripping their explicit protections for trans and non-white users from its English language case speech rules.

The changes, which were flagged by the nonprofit Open Terms Archive and then independently confirmed by the advocate involved edits to LinkedIn's professional community policies, specifically the hateful and derogatory content and harassment and abusive content sections. in both references to protections for trans people and people of color were either weakened or removed entirely. This is something that is I have a B in my bonnet about it because it was work that I worked on when I was at ultraviolet. Like getting platforms like, I will say TikTok was one of the first platforms to be like, oh, of course we will add dead naming and misgendering to our hateful conduct policies. Yeah. Great.

But when Elon Musk bought Twitter, one of his first acts was removing Twitters at dead naming and misgendering policy from. their hate speech policy. And I remember thinking, oh, well, I think that platforms are going to be watching to see if he is able to do this without much fanfare and without much pushback. People did push back against it. It's not like nobody said anything. But I think the fact that he was able to just like unilaterally make that choice and, you know, people kept using the platform at that point, I think signaled to a lot of other platforms that it was okay to roll back these kinds of policies. So when Trump got an office in January, like meta did the same thing, YouTube did the same thing. And I do think, you know, platforms, they see how other CEOs behave, they see what other things that other platforms can get away with.

And I think it informs what they think they can get away with. So I do really think that in part we have Elon Musk to sort of blame for LinkedIn of all places, feeling as if it's fine for them to stop or to roll back these policies to add protection. for trans folks and people of color? I think in general, like, there's group think when it comes to stuff like, you know, content moderation policies on platforms, and they are kind of all looking at each other because, like, they don't want to moderate. It's, it's, like, time intensive. It's money intensive.

It requires they hire people to do that work. Like, the less moderation that they have to do, like, the more cost effective it is for them. So I think that they're always going to look for where they can trim that and just, like, not have to worry about it. It's, it's, I don't understand it. I don't understand why you would just, like, not care if your platform becomes, like, a toxic wasteland. I really can't wrap my head around it. Especially a platform like LinkedIn. Yeah. So it's for, it's really meant to be for professionals, job seekers, that kind of thing. I think not giving trans folks and folks of color, an equal playing field in a digital arena that it's all about job seeking is just not,

it's, it's a, it feels especially cruel, especially as more and more people are getting laid off that are, that nobody, it seems like nobody's hiring right now. It just feels like an extra added burden that cis people and not, and non-black people are not asked to to deal with. If you, if you can't show up to a platform that it's all about talking about professional accomplishments and professional thought leader and thought leadership and like finding a job, if you can't show up there without being dead named and misgendered, I just think it really, it's a, it's a clear way where these platforms are not equitable and people are not having equitable experiences on them. Yeah, and like we've known that and we've known that they also aren't very good at enforcing those

policies. No. But like watching them get taken away and like take away like even like the pretense that they were going to try is just like really sad. And I think. speaks to like the current political moment and the apathy that these companies feel towards like a need to serve historically like marginalized groups. Like they don't like they like that was very much I think a performance for when it was popular. Yeah. And now that they feel like it's not popular, they're not going to do that performance. Like it was never coming from a place of of actual like well-meaning desire to help. Oh, I know it wasn't because they had to be cajoled into it. This can't be real if it only happens because you were cajoled.

I just imagine being like, I'm going to build a platform that's for professionals to discuss their professional work. And I don't care like if people dead name each other. Like I hope there's more dead naming on this platform. Yeah. Why? Like it's a professional platform. It makes no sense. No, I'm with you.

And even the way that they dealt with it is really wild. So the advocate reported on this and they got a. statement from LinkedIn, where a spokesperson initially defended the platform's stance against identity-based abuse, asserting, quote, we regularly update our policies, personal attacks, intimidation, or hate speech towards anyone based on their identity, including misgendering, violates our harassment policy. It is not allowed on our platform. Then, less than an hour later, the company wrote back to the advocate and asked to revise that statement, removing the phrase hate speech, and instead mirroring the new policy language, saying personal attacks or

intimidation toward anyone based on their identity, including misgendering, violates our harassment policy and is not allowed on their platform. So it's like they can't even keep their own whack policy straight internally. Well, also at a certain point, like these words become meaningless because like how is that different than hate speech? And then also you think about like the fact that like, you know, dozens of people were involved in that discussion and there was a whole email thread about like, is hate speech allowed? But like discrimination isn't. And like, like, what are we doing? Like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of mind boggling and like, hard to process. But, like, there are so many people involved in, like, having those conversations of like, are we, is hate speech,

not a word that we're, not a phrase that we're going to be using in our policy anymore? And it's just like, what, what is this? What are we doing? Why? Can we have, like, a group meeting and maybe, like, revise our goals as a species? Because, like, what are we, truly, what are we doing? I think this all the time. My last thing I want to talk about is an update on a story that we did earlier this week. And that is about the tea app. Certainly, you have heard about this, right? Oh, I have heard a lot.

Yes, I'm very, it's very interesting. So for folks that don't know, the tea app was designed for women to spill tea on men. The creator of this app says it was designed to help women feel more safe while dating men so that they could share, women could share their experiences with specific men. And I guess the idea being that if a man was abusive or, you know, they had a bad experience with a man, they could safely and anonymously share that. Well, we know it was not anonymous for a time that app required women to give copies of their driver's licenses to confirm they were women. The app eventually scrapped that requirement but did require women to send selfies. Last week, 1,300 driver's license images of those women, along with 72,000 selfies of women, were all found to be essentially publicly accessible, thanks to the app's atrocious security practices.

So the app said, oh, as soon as you submit your license or your selfie, we deleted as soon as you're confirmed. Obviously, that wasn't the case because images of that stuff was all over 4chan. Additionally, private DMs were also left accessible. So folks want the deep dive into what happened there. Check out the episode that we put out about it this week. But we have a slight update. Ooh, okay. And that is the app, probably unsurprisingly, has been hit with two lawsuits.

Two lawsuits have been filed in the Northern District of California, alleging negligence, breach of implied contract, and other claims. So one was filed on behalf of Griselda Reyes, who said that she submitted a photo while signing up for the app that was included in the breach. She seeks an injunction requiring T to encrypt all data and purge private information as well as monetary damages as determined by the court. I actually think she has that case. Like, I, the app made it clear as day and said, we delete your images and they didn't. Like, they just lied.

That's wild. It's absolutely wild how negligent that is. Yeah. I mean, it almost wasn't fair to call it a hack or like, even breach feels a little bit strong because, these things were essentially publicly accessible. So you can't, like, to hack information, to hack something, it has to be behind some sort of security protocol. Yeah.

This was not. So it's like, you can't even really call it a hack. That's crazy. It was the level to which, I mean, the analogy that, that I spoke to a cybersecurity professional about it, the analogy that they gave me was, imagine if your doctor told you that your private health information that they collected was private, but actually they stored it in an open crate in the alley behind the clinic. I think he was like, that is the level of accessible that this information was.

Oh my God. Wait, isn't that so the T-op, it's all like for women. It's for women to discuss like men and ranging on, you know, their interactions with men. But wasn't it like found and created by a man? Yeah, the creator, businessman and tech capitalist Sean Cook, formerly of Shutterfly, said that he created this app because he, in their marketing, honestly, it does just sound like marketing to me. in the marketing materials for the app, he said, oh, I watched my mother date and get catfished and, like, get mixed up with men who had criminal records. So I wanted an app that would keep women safe and that women could, like, have safer dating experiences. That may very well be true. And I'm not deny that there are women who maybe use this app to bet a man or to find out information about somebody who genuinely was abusive. I'm not saying that that did not happen on this app.

I am saying that when you actually look at the kind of stuff that was posted on the app, it was also women being like, you know, this guy has a bad vibe or like saying things that were not necessarily rooted in trying to keep women safe from abuse. And so I think it's interesting that this man who created this app for women got to enjoy talking about how they were all about women's safety while doing something that put those same women so clearly at risk. Yeah, no, it's, it feels kind of poetic. It's also kind of what I've started to expect from men, especially when they like perform, uh, feminism.

Like I have pretty like low expectations from, from them when they like make their whole persona about like protecting women. Um, I like, I just think that I need to see them go above and beyond and, like, actually, you know, walk that walk. But, yeah, the fact that it's, like, it was that careless. And that easily hacked, not even hacked, I guess, stumbled upon. Yeah. Crazy. And the women, some of the women, they, so not only were these women's driver's licenses,

which have their addresses on them, posted online. Also, some of these DMs that were, that became accessible, were, very serious in nature. The second lawsuit, which was brought on behalf of an anonymous Jane Doe says that she joined the T app because she wanted to anonymously warn other women in her Northern California community

about a man who sexually assaulted at least two other women. The app promised her that anonymity. It promised her safety. It promised to delete her verification data. Tea broke every one of those promises. And so that lawsuit really demonstrates, like, that genuinely could put her at an unsafe situation. If she is reporting this person attacked me, harmed me, having her conversations about that be accessible to anybody who wants to see it is putting her deeply at risk.

And so, yeah, this app, like I had a feeling there were going to be lawsuits. I'm actually surprised it was this quick because this just happened last week. Yeah. But, you know, it really, it really, I think these women have a right to some justice here. Yeah, no, 100%. I kind of am interested. I'm very interested to see how this unfolds. I think the whole conversation around it is fascinating.

How did they make money? Oh, so the app you got up to five free searches on the app. So how it works, let's say that I met Joe Blow on the street and I want to see if anybody's talking about him. I could search him on the app to see, you know, if he appears in any T posts. After those five posts, you then have to buy a paid subscription, which is $15 a month. Or you could share, you could have like five. girlfriends sign up and keep using it for free. Okay. So it was going to be paid. So they weren't doing giving it away for free and then like selling data. I mean that I'm not willing to say. I'm not able to say that. Wouldn't surprise me. I don't know for sure.

Okay. That makes sense. I just think everything about that app is completely fascinating to me and like the fact that so many women flocked to it as a place of safety and then were betrayed is interesting. But also like the discourse that was had there and like what it means for privacy and safety today is interesting. And then the fact that like, you know, all the sudden thousands and thousands of women are doxed is like the fact that we live in in that context too where so suddenly you become essentially like a public figure who is getting harassed is like, I mean, it's it's such a like a rich text for 2025 society and technology. I talked about this in the episode, but genuinely when I first heard about this, I thought this has to be some kind of a setup. There's no

really. I mean, that was my initial gut feeling was it was such a kind of morality play in a kind of way where it this seems so on the nose that I thought this has to be there has to be more to this story. I don't know that that to be true, but that was my

initial, it just felt too just too much of an on the nose gender war story to have actually happened the way that it seemed to have happened. Also, there's something to be said, too, culturally about the way, like, women engage in sleuthing as a means of, like, self-defense. And that almost, it almost put, like, that on steroids of just, like, let's bring sleuthing into, like, let's, like, give it a whole structure. Let's give it a system. When it's already something that, like, so many women do in the name of, like, I think really an example.

and trying to protect themselves. Oh, yeah. I think that sleuthing and gossip and whisper networks, I don't want to stigmatize those things. I think those things exist for a reason, and they have forever because it's about those are how women keep ourselves safe. I don't think that there's anything wrong

with women sharing information with each other. I think the problem is when this app promises to systematize that in a way that is safe and anonymous and so cruelly betrays the women who flocked to it, thinking that it would be safe and anonymous. Yeah. And it's like if a whisper network has that much official structure, like at what point is it no longer a whisper network?

What? Exactly. Exactly. Like I'm not sure. I am pro-whisper network and I am a huge proponent of gossiping. I think that it is like an evolutionary tactic. I think gossiping is like one of the best things we've ever developed. I love it.

But also if you're gossiping like with, you know, a hundred thousand people, like is that, is that still gossiping? Like, is that still protection or like, I don't know. I find it really interesting. Same. And, you know, one of the reasons why I found the T-F breach so concerning was that so much of the Internet is being restricted by A. and age verification sometimes requires a copy of your government ID. And so we already know that platforms that do this have been compromised before. So a version of what happened to the women with the TAP could happen conceivably

when all of us are submitting our IDs to verify that we're old enough to access certain pockets of the internet. And it's already happening in some places like the UK. So on Wednesday, Spotify said that they were going to be rolling out the use of Yodi, which is a smartphone app that uses face scanning. to estimate a person's age. If you appear to be underage, then you need to submit your government ID

in order to not be age restricted on Spotify. And also, YouTube announced this week that it was rolling out technology that was going to use AI to, quote, interpret a variety of signals based on the kinds of videos that someone searches for and watches and the longevity of their account

to determine if they are under 18. So if their AI senses that, because of your viewing habits, that you might be under 18, you will then have to submit your government ID to bypass automatic age restrictions. And so the fact that this is becoming more commonplace really concerns me. Yeah, that's going to be a problem for me on YouTube. I've been watching so many clips from zombies for. They're going to be like, why is this child also watching so many video essays? Yeah, I mean, I think about my my sister-in-law who, when I look on her YouTube, it's 100% bluey.

It's 100% like because they've got toddlers. Yeah, or you know, she's got great taste. Yeah, she's got great taste. Bluey is a fantastic show and I am going to stay on 10 toes down on Bluey. Yeah, we're not, no, no shame for liking Bluey here. But all of this age verification stuff, it's often janky and doesn't work. There's been lots of studies about it being kind of hit or miss. And I think as we sort of move to a place where more and more the internet is age restricted,

and we might have to show our government IDs to get it. You know, I think the T-Ap breach really shows how problematic and concerning that can be because we really don't know that much about these platforms and web, like any company can say, oh, we're going to delete your driver's license picture as soon as you submit it. They don't have to necessarily do that. It's also interesting that like truly the thing that drives all of this is porn. Yes. Like, it's really interesting to me because it's like, you know, both of us have been deep in this world.

of like content moderation and people who make anonymous accounts and can get away with posting the most horrendous things and there's no verification like you know part of the reason why you're able to go online and create a hate account and just troll people and make everybody's lives worse is because like you're making that count completely unconnected to a government ID right like they like there's there's that's part of how the internet has always worked and part of what's made our lives in particular very difficult. But the thing that is driving this, it's always porn. It's always porn and sex and like a panic around it rather than like actual like well-being conversations. I think it's really interesting. And let's be real. If we actually wanted to keep

young people safe and keep them away from things that are harmful, there are a million things we could be doing other than restricting the internet so heavily in the name of keeping children safer. Like, it's interesting to me when we do and when we don't appear to care about the well-being of children and keeping them safe, I argue that we are a deeply anti-child society that we don't care about children. We don't care about their safety at all. But then so it's interesting when we're being told, we all have to start showing our IDs to listen to music on Spotify, to protect the children. It just immediate red flag, red flag, red flag, red flag, red flag, red flag.

Yeah. Of like, yeah, or like, you know, the sex toy, like, legislation in Texas of, like, trying to make sure that you've done, if you want to buy a sex toy online, you need to show, like, a government ID to prove your age. And it's just like, first of all, which children are buying sex toys online? Find me one off. Second of all, I just, I mean, maybe this is a hot, I just, I don't really care about a kid having a sex toy. If a kid wants to have a sex toy and do whatever, like they're, they're going to use something to masturbate their children.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's some, so in Australia, they had done this whole study on, on like, respecting the internet and harm against kids. And one of the things they found was that when you try to keep, like, sexual content and sexual things away from kids, a lot of times those kids are actually using it for educational context. They're trying to learn about their bodies and their sexuality and all of that. And so by trying to legislate that kind of stuff away from them, you might actually be harming them because you're creating an environment where it's harder for them to get that education and they will seek it elsewhere.

Yeah, which I thought was such an interesting perspective and sort of how the way that we restrict things sometimes actually end up introducing new harms. Yeah, because, well, I mean, we're doing this in simultaneously not providing sex ed, right? Like, part of the reason why I think young people might flock to porn is because they're not having those conversations, like, at home or in school. They don't understand, like, how sex works. And, like, they can't make sense of, like, the feelings that they're experiencing in their body and they don't have access to that information. So, of course, they're going to, like, gravitate towards porn. And then porn is going to, like, pull you deeper into some sort of.

internet rabbit hole because it's like an algorithmically kind of like send you somewhere. But it seems like the real like if we cared about kids and taking care of them and respected them as like coming into their own sexuality before the age of 18, which they are like they're going through puberty, like we would make sure to have like resources for them and like teach them about the things that they're experiencing. But instead we're so much more interested. Like it just makes us uncomfortable so we just want to shut it down and just be like, no, like, no sex for them. Nothing, nothing sexual.

Yes. Nothing sexual for them. And also, show your ID when you want to watch something other than bluey on YouTube. But also the second you turn 18, you can be in that porn. Yes, the day, yes. The day you're 18 go wild. I mean, it's always such a pleasure talking to you. You bring such a light to these sometimes tough topics.

Where can people, what are you up to? Where can people keep up with what you're up to? Tell us all the things. What am I up to? I'm just back from vacation and like reassessing some kind of bigger projects that I want to do some deep dives in. So we're going to see where those take me. What I've been up to for the last few months is a big like fascist propaganda series. So doing a lot of breakdowns on different types of fascist propaganda and like how they work and the themes that they typically cover and like use. to manipulate people into buying into the fascist cause. And you can find that work on my TikTok at Tofology or Instagram or Abby S-R. I'm also on YouTube, I think it's just Abby Richards. And you can read my written stuff at Media Matters. Abby is one of my favorite follows on TikTok. It will turn your TikTok experience up a notch to follow Abby.

Thank you. That's so kind. I love your TikTok video. I like to see you. I'm trying. I'm trying me. I've talked about this. It's like, it's like, in bare. I am, I am an audio person because I like the idea of being a voice in somebody's ears.

And then when you get on video, you're like, oh, that's how I look. You're like, I'm trying. Well, you're a delightful voice in my ears and you look great on screen. I'll take it. I'm trying to get like you. Oh, I want to be like you. I want to be a voice in people's ears. I want to start a little podcast.

Sounds fun. We got a freaky Friday where I do the short form video content and you do the, long-form podcast. That sounds so fun. Sign me up. Yeah. Thank you all for listening and hanging out and unpacking these stories. If you want to follow me, you can follow me on Instagram at Bridgett, Marie, D.C., on TikTok at Bridgett Marie in D.C., or on YouTube at there are no girls on the internet. Leave us a comment if you're listening on Spotify. I hope you're over 18, and I will talk to you soon. 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 tangoity.com.

There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry 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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This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hips since high school. Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey.

With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they had a bogo. Well, then you got them. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.