There Are No Girls on the Internet - TikTok surveillance plan revealed; Fresh & Fit manosphere podcast demonetized & emasculated; Elon is blocking links and faking followers; Court affirms copyrights are for humans, not AI; and more — NEWS ROUNDUP

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

Welcome our producer Joey Patt, who is joining Bridget for their first news roundup!  Fresh & Fit, misogynistic manosphere podcast and enemies of the pod, demonetized on YouTube: https://www.insider.com/fresh-and-fit-host-cries-when-announcing-podcast-demonetization-2023-8 Bridget’s piece on Fresh & Fit from the Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/toxic-podcasting/ DON’T MISS: Bridget’s long, petty take on Fresh & Fit on the patreon! https://www.patreon.com/tangoti Tik Tok’s draft plan with the Biden Administration revealed, would give U.S. government broad censorship powers that should make all Americans uncomfortable: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/08/21/draft-tiktok-cfius-agreement/?sh=3ee00abe112a Have you ever taken an Uber or gotten Instacart and then had a worker contact you to hit on you after the fact, and they could because they have your information? Yuck, right? Well you are not alone, sadly: https://www.businessinsider.com/delivery-drivers-asking-customers-sex-dates-2023-8?r=US&IR=T&utm_source=reddit.com Can AI creative work be copyrighted? NO. Silly rabbit, copyrights are for humans! https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-generated-art-cant-by-copyrighted-federal-judge-rules-2023-8 Elon wants to  remove headlines on news articles on Twitter: https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/22/x-is-planning-to-hide-headlines-from-news-links-for-improved-aesthetics/    And maybe he’s making his terrible jokes on Twitter to nobody because his followers are fake... https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-inactive-followers-whole-x-platform  And he’s asking for your government ID (please don’t give it to him)   New data about autonomous vehicles is scary: https://gizmodo.com/driverless-cars-worse-kids-dark-skinned-people-study-1850770302 Autostraddle and independent queer media: https://defector.com/autostraddle-to-be-acquired-by-queer-wellness-company-for-hemSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. Today, I am not joined by my producer, Mike. I am joined by my producer, Joey Pat. You don't always hear Joey's voice on the show, but you do hear their phenomenal editing and their phenomenal, I don't know, internet cultural takes. We talked about Joey's appearance on the podcast Stuff Mom Ever Told You, really doing a phenomenal and thoughtful job breaking down that kids' online safety act that we're all discussing on the show. Joey, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Bridget, for having me on.

Super excited. I'm excited, too. So first, I would love to just sort of let folks get to know you. What is your experience like on the Internet? What do you care about online? What brings you to conversations on the Internet? For sure, yeah. So, again, my name is Joey.

I am a producer here at Eye Heart. I work on a couple different shows. I do work on a half stuff. Mom never told you, like Bridget said. Should check out that episode if you can. But yeah, I am very much on the Internet. kind of person, a very chronically online person, I will call myself sometimes. Not necessarily in a positive way, but I, you know, I am Gen Z. I'm an older Gen Z person, so I grew up with social

media more or less, like in high, I don't know, I got on social media on like high school, I guess was more or less going up with social media. Anyways, I was a big like, you know, I was really into Tumblr back in the day when that was a big thing. I personally, um, You know, if you listen to Sminti, you know this. I'm a big, like, fandom person. So that always was my introduction to, like, social media sites and all of that. I am still on Twitter, unfortunately. Hanging on.

We'll see. Although, I don't know. That might be ending soon. But, yeah, I do use TikTok a lot. I'm big on TikTok. I won't be telling you all of my TikTok app. But if you find it on your own, congratulations. I don't use the same ad as I do for my other social media.

Do love TikTok, do love sort of, you know, my view is always, I think social media is, it's a medium. It can be a great tool for activism and for, you know, one thing I talk about a lot is like I grew up queer in the early 2000s, early 2010, or 2000s, early 2010 kind of era. Like, I think I was probably like 2014 when I first came out. like it was, but which was still like a time when there wasn't a lot of like visibility with queerness. And I really credit like the internet and social media for being my sort of safe space. So that always going to have a place in my heart. You know, at the same time, I think really appreciate this show for being a place to talk about like some of the negatives too. But yeah.

We have such similar trajectories when it comes to how we think about the internet. Like similarly, the internet, I guess it's a double-edged sword. You know, I think for marginalized youth, it can be the. this new, this place to find community and explore yourself. Sometimes depending on where you grew up and what your upbringing was like, sometimes for the very first time. And it also can be this place for that very identity, that very thing that the internet is this way to explore can be weaponized against you, can be used to further marginalized you. So yeah, it's just, it's all of the promise and all of the peril, like that is what it means to be a marginalized person online today, I feel. And you

really bring your fandom lens, I think, is really helpful to understanding a lot of what happens on the internet. We were just talking about, you know, how you could say something about activism or radical politics. And people are like, okay, you talk about a fandom, then you can really upset some folks. Yeah. I was like Richard before we started recording. I recently got in some I'm going to say accidental beef with a very prominent TikToker. was not my intention that's why I'm saying accidental I pointed out that he made a comment

that was a little bit misogynistic and you know accusing a male ally of not being a feminist is apparently the worst offense to feminism that's been a week anyway it's not going to go super into that but I yeah it's I existing as a marginalized person on the internet is always a

fun time always get some fun comments you know yeah Well, speaking of TikTok, that's a great segue into talking about news y'all might have missed on the internet this week. So we talked on the show about TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media platform owned by the parent company, Fight Dance, was potentially going to be banned in the United States and how the platform was working with the U.S. government to figure out what it needed to do to avoid being banned. Well, now we've gotten our very first look about what all that might entail, because Forbes obtained a draft of a deal. from around this time last year between TikTok and the Biden administration's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS.

So one quick sort of side note here is that Forbes has a little bit of a history with TikTok. Fight Dance did confirm to Forbes that they had essentially been spying on Forbes journalists through monitoring their physical locations via their IP addresses in an attempt to sniff out leaks from inside the company. A TikTok executive actually had to resign over this. So Forbes has really been on this TikTok beat, which is probably why they were the outlet that got this agreement between the government and TikTok in the first place. So their reporting shows that if it were to be finalized, the agreement would provide the government near unfettered access to internal TikTok information and unprecedented control over essential functions that it does not have over any other major platform. The draft agreement, as it's being negotiated, or as it was being negotiated at the time around this time last summer, would give government agencies like the DOJ and the DOD the authority to examine TikTok's U.S. facilities, records, equipment, and servers with minimal or no notice, block changes to the apps U.S. Terms of Service, moderation policies, and privacy policy, veto the hiring of any executive involved in leading TikTok's U.S. Data Security org, order TikTok and BightDance to pay for and subject themselves to various audits, assesses, and other reports on the security of TikTok's U.S. functions, and in some circumstances,

require BightDant to temporarily stop TikTok from functioning within the United States. So what's really interesting to me here that Forbes points out is that this agreement would essentially give the United States government a very similar kind of access and power that lawmakers have worried about China having. Forbes writes, in one revealing comment exchange, attorneys for Bight Dance explained to C-F-I-U-S that they have addressed language that prevents the government from demanding changes to TikTok's recommendation algorithm simply because it recommended content that the government does not like. And so that is exactly what foes have been like, oh, China will do that. And now this agreement is saying maybe the United States government should be able to do that. Yeah, that is what's been so weird to be about this whole debate, which is like, I mean, and like obviously that, I guess not obviously.

but like they made it clear the intention behind it is just that they're mad that they're not the ones that are like Facebook has been doing worse shit for like the long I don't know it's very strange um I also I don't know whatever this comes up I'm always like what do what politicians think people are like doing on TikTok like what I don't know most of my for you page is like I get a lot of those like the things with people playing video games and there's like a sitcom clip over it like I don't know anyways that's a whole This whole thing is so silly and somehow also terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. And you make a good point that so much of what lawmakers in the U.S. have talked about when it comes to this threat that they say that TikTok poses from being a Chinese own company is very hypothetical. It's not like they're saying the videos where somebody is playing Mario Kart and then there's a sitcom on top of it. Those are national security.

It's not like they have some smoking gun. It's all very hypothetical. And if the government and TikTok were to go ahead with this agreement, that would mean that TikTok would be subjected to more government oversight and scrutiny than any other social media platform that's run in the United States, like Facebook or Twitter, which I'm sure is making folks like Zuckerberg and Elon Musk very, very happy. That's sort of one of my overall concerns about legislation around TikTok is that I feel like The United States, their real quibble is that they want the U.S. to be the only game in town when it comes to big tech.

And so they want to have this dynamic where American companies basically go unscrutonized by the American government, you know, unless they really break the law. And even then, it's not really that much scrutiny. And where TikTok has this completely different operating standard where they have complete scrutiny and oversight by the American government. Like, it's just a weird dynamic that I just feel like is not actually rooted in keeping our data safe and secure. It's rooted in something else. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, again, it's very clearly sort of rooted in this weird sort of like anti-China xenophobia that happens.

The thing to me, too, is it's always like, look, I'm not, I don't think any country should be getting my. data, collecting my data, but at the same time, it's like, doesn't the U.S. do that to, like, every other country they use this art? Like, isn't that every hundred things of Facebook? Like, we also, I don't know. It's the whole, yeah, like, America wants to control all the big tech. I just think it's kind of silly. Yeah, remember also, like, when Facebook, when China banned, like, Facebook and that was, like, a big thing and they were, like, see how repressive this government. It's like, this is not the same version of that? I don't, not saying that was a good move either, but, yeah, it's, but yeah, it's the, it's like, it's like,

same things was like, if that was horrible and, you know, repressive, what is this? Like, you know, I just have a lot of questions. And I also think it puts a lot of power in the hands of government. Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU's National Security Project, told Forbes, if this agreement would give the U.S. government the power to dictate what content TikTok can or cannot carry or how it makes those decisions, that would raise serious concerns about the government's ability to censor or distort what people are saying or watching on TikTok. And I completely agree. And I think that doing that in service of, quote, you know, having a more secure data privacy practice doesn't really, I mean, it just, I just think that we're, it's such a big grandstanding around one app when what we actually need is meaningful, comprehensive data privacy laws. Like, if, if this agreement were to be in place, I don't think that our data would be made that much more safe.

Yeah. No, I totally agree. I also the point about like it's the government is going to be allowed to kind of dictate what can and cannot be seen. I mean, the whole that episode that I did for Sinti about the whole problem with like COSA and all these other like internet bills that are going around is that yeah, they're not really addressing the data privacy issue. They're just sort of trying to monitor what is or is not going to be on the internet. And honestly, like I said in that episode, if you listen back to it, I learned about that issue from TikTok from a lot of like TikTokers that were doing activism and trying to raise awareness. raise awareness about this bill. Yeah, it's just so weird.

This also makes you think I remember, like, because this started with Trump, right? Trump tried to ban TikTok. And it was also right after there was that whole thing where like he had some huge rally that was supposed to happen. And then like it ended up being like a fraction of like the people that had bought tickets because it was like, there was a whole thing on TikTok that like kids were like reserving seats and then not so that, yeah, yeah.

And I was like, because I remember when that happened. and it was like, oh, this is, yeah, Trump's clearly trying to ban TikTok because he's just mad about it. Like, this just seems like it's carried over from that, which I don't know. It's all very strange to me. That is actually when I got TikTok. I was like, I was totally one of those people who was like, it's just kids dancing. Like I was like a TikTok skeptic. And then when Trump was going to ban it, I remember reading a news headline.

It was one of those headlines were like, I didn't click into it. And like, actually one of the reasons why I do the newscasts is like, headlines that you might see you didn't click into. And like, here's the, here's what you need to know. But so like the headline I saw was like, oh, you have until X day to download TikTok if you want to download it. And I was like, well, I don't want the chance. I don't want to like want to have it and not have it. So let me download it. So like, that was the first time that I ever got it.

And then I was like, oh, it's actually an app that I enjoy. So yeah, I forgot about that. but I remember it now. Yeah, that was a really funny time to be on TikTok. I think it was before I was also like using it a lot. Like I was working on, I just like had the app because everybody was downloading it. I was like, but yeah, that was like, again, yeah, it's a, it's a platform.

There are problems with the platform. I would be happy to go into all the many, many problems that have a TikTok, but also like it's a platform that exists in the world. There's good and bad. And yeah, ultimately it's, you know, this is just going to be used to curb organizing and free speech. None of the free speech absolutists are shown up around this issue. I wonder why. Yeah, where are they?

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And we're back. Okay, so question for you, Joey. This has never happened to me, but I know that it's happened to people. have you ever taken an Uber or gotten an Instacart order or something like that? And then had a worker contact you after the fact because they had your information because they wanted to date or wanted to ask you out or like some other inappropriate vibes given. Has that ever happened to you? So that has not happened to me.

That's definitely something I've like been worried about. Like it's something I feel like especially if you're somebody who like presents female or feminine, you're going to have that kind of anxiety in the best of. back of your head. I mean, maybe everybody does. I'm even making assumptions. But yeah, it's definitely, I've definitely, like, worried about that. Haven't had it happen, though. Same. I've not had it happen, but it's definitely something in the back of my head. And we are not alone because according to a new survey, the rise of things like gig work also means a rise in this kind of inappropriate behavior. 2,000 British adults were surveyed by the Information Commissioner's Office or the ICO. And the survey found that 17% of people have had their personal information used for,

a romantic or sexual proposition after handing it over to a business. That figure rises to 33% in London where apparently this kind of thing is more common. Almost one in three Brits between the ages 18 and 34 have received unwanted contact from delivery drivers or other workers asking them out on dates or propositioning them for sex. It is, the way that you put it, Joey, is so true. Like, this has not happened to me before. I've heard of it happening. I've seen reports of it happening. I, it's like a thing in the back of your mind whenever you use a service like this, you know, and I think it's one of the reasons why it feels that way is by nature when you are giving your information and your contact information over to a company, by default, you're like a

little bit vulnerable, especially if somebody is coming to your house to deliver something or dropping you off at home if you're alone. Like, I understand the feeling of like, oh no, is this person going to proposition me, you know, I don't have any data on it, but I have to assume that this is an issue that impacts women or people who present as women disproportionately. Like, I just have to assume. And I think, like, yeah, it can feel unsafe, despite never having had to deal with this myself. I can imagine feeling really unsafe. And Emily Keeney, a deputy commissioner at the ICO, said, people have the right to order a pizza or give their email for a seat or have shopping delivered without being asked for sex or on a date a little while later.

And I completely agree. I also think that some of this might be like partly cultural. I think that we have so many signals in society that suggests that this is the kind of quirky or romantic or like big grand gesture way to sort of show someone that you're taking the initiative to show romantic interest. Like how many movies do we have that suggest that like, oh, Just go up and, like, do some big grand gesture. They're going to love it. And I think that, like, we have been training people that this is a romantic thing and that the person on the receiving end of it is going to be, is going to like it. But, you know, we're just trying to get, take, like, get our delivery food and go back into our apartment, right?

Like, we're not trying to get a date. Everybody should have the right to use services and not feel like the person is going to be texting them after the fact because they have their number, you know? No, that's so true, though. I feel like I'm not a big rom-com person. I feel like this is... I always say that, that I'm, of course, whenever I watch a rom-com that I really like,

I'm like, this is so cute. But I think that's the issue is there's so many where it's like, this is a little weird. Like, there's something a little off here. Yeah, no. I also, like, I could totally see that being something that would be, like, go viral on, like, Twitter, where it's like, oh, my God, this person messaged me

after dropping off my pizza and now we're married. Like, it's weird. It is weird, like, the kind of stories that we see as normal. Yeah, it's something that I really, I like rom-coms, but it's something that I hate in rom-coms where it's like, it's like in the romantic comedy universe boundaries. It's not a thing. Like, you know, I don't like that. I did once get into a long conversation that lasted after the fact with my Instacart shopper because I have. had ordered Tabasco sauce.

And rather than Tabasco sauce, the Instacart shopper gave me liquid smoke. And I was like, it wasn't a big deal, like, whatever. But I was like, this person should know that like, Tabasco sauce and liquid smoke are not synonymous. And so I mess. And so I was like, hey, just so you know, like, for your own cooking, this is not a like synonymous thing. And it was a perfectly pleasant interaction. But it ended with, boy, you really have a lot of opinions about cooking.

I'm like I should do. That's accurate. I love that. That's like a nice interaction. Yeah. You could have nice interactions. Yes. It was a nice one.

I've had plenty of really great conversations with the Uber drivers. Yeah. That's always the thing too. I feel like, you know, the particular demographic that all responds to these sort of things with like, oh, so we can't be nice to do. It's like, no, I've had, like, lovely conversations with, like, my Uber drivers about, like, I'm pretty young. I look like I'm still in college.

usually. It's like, you know, parents telling me about their kids that are in college, that kind of stuff. But it's always like it's super nice and cute. I don't know. There's definitely a very clear line about what's, what is too far and what is, at least I think there is. I think I agree. I think if you're propositioning somebody, propositioning somebody for sex or a date, that's probably on the other side of that line. And England is actually cracking down on this. The ICO is urging people who have been victims of this kind of thing to come forward and reminding companies of their data protection responsibilities that they are bound to uphold by law, companies who are violating data protection laws can be fined up to 17.5 million pounds. That's about $22.1 million.

And so, yeah, they're just reminding folks that, like, it is doing this, getting someone's number because they did a service with you is against the law and contacting them after the fact is against the law. And I think there needs to be a cultural understanding that somebody who is doing service with you, just because you have their information that is not give you the green light to, like, text them after the fact for a date. So I'm happy to see England cracking down on this. So let's move to the AI world, something we talk quite a bit about on this show.

So this week we spoke to actor and producer Francesca Ramsey on the podcast about the Hollywood strikes and how writers and actors are demanding guardrails about how AI will be used in writers' rooms and on sets. Hollywood Studios have already put up job listings for like very lucrative jobs for AI specialists amidst the strike, which kind of gives you a lens into how they're thinking about the strike and how they're thinking about the culture of how content gets made already. And what writers really want to know is like how AI is going to impact, you know, their presence on set. Like, are studios going to try to be funny with the math and sneak in AI? and then use that to not pay human writers.

You know, they want to know if AI is the example that Francesca Ramsey used in this week's episode was if AI generates the first janky version of a script and then a human writer punches that script up, who gets credit for that script? Who gets paid for that script? Does the human writer get paid for it? I bet the studios would love it if they were to say, like, oh, no, you just get paid on making tweaks, even though, you know, the original script is probably super janky and did need a heavy lift from a human hand. And so in Hollywood, writers and actors really want some guardrails around how studios plan to use AI. But this new ruling might throw a wrench in studios plans around AI because a federal judge just ruled that a piece of art generated by AI cannot be copyrighted. The lawsuit was brought by plaintiff Stephen Thaler, who wanted to list his own AI system as the sole creator of an artwork called a recent,

entrance to paradise. And the courts basically said, nah, humans only. Copyright is for human work only. The judge said, humans are an essential part of a valid copyright claim and that human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright. Plaintiff can point to no case in which a court has recognized copyright and a work originating with a non-human. This is not a cut and drive ruling, I should say. The judge did suggest that cases in the future could be more complicated and, quote, will prompt challenging questions regarding how much human input is necessary to qualify the user of an AI system as an author of a generated work. So if studios are not able to retain copyright of creative work created solely by AI, the whole, you know, we'll just let AI write scripts instead of paying writers thing might not shake out in their favor.

This whole story is so funny. I mean, obviously, okay, like everything that has happened does let up to this with like the fact that, you know, the writers and the actors have had to go on strike, which full solidarity with them. Of course. Walked by the picket line earlier today because I had to run some errands in Midtown and love it, love seeing the, yeah, it was great. But anyways, this whole

I just this whole situation, because especially watching like what, the way that these big companies and these big production companies have used copyright to like screw over people in the past, I

like, I'm a big Marvel fan, but like the way that the company runs is totally messed up. Like, again, they use copyright to screw over a lot of their writers and to like kind of not give people credit for shit they were doing in the past. And it's, I don't know, it's just funny to see this now, them being like, oh, nope, we can't use copyright for AI. Yeah. I don't know. I also have like the whole idea of like AI writing a script. Like, that's not going to work. It's not going to be good.

No, exactly. So that was the question that I had for Francesca Ramsey in the episode. It was like, I believe the idea that AI would write a good script, like, you know, good enough to be a show is like a fantasy. And Francesca agrees. She's like, right now there has to be a human in the mix somewhere for a script to be good. And like, we probably all, I don't know if you ever did those parlor tricks where it's like, oh, we trained AI on a bunch of episodes of Seinfeld. And then here's what they came up with. And the joke is that they're always janky and funny and don't make sense.

Like, the reason why we do those is because they're bad at it. But Francesca points out that, while that might be the case now, that might not be the case forever. And so, like, three years down the road, you know, is what if AI can write a passable first draft. And so really looking to the future and sort of anticipating what's on the horizon. Because, you know, again, it's, it's, I keep referencing. referencing the interview because it was a fascinating conversation, but she references how when in 2012, the new contracts with the writers union talked about like content made solely for the internet. But that was like in 2012, there weren't really like shows on the internet like that.

Like maybe you had a web series, but it was before streaming. And so people didn't know. People couldn't predict like how content made for the internet would take off and like streaming would become a thing. And it kind of bit them in the end. ass not being future forward. And so I think with the AI stuff, the writers and actors are trying to think what's on the horizon. How will this be used to exploit my labor? How will this be used to like undercut me and underpay me? Because that's, unfortunately, that's how a lot of these executives think. Like, how can we use this technology to like scam the people who make our jobs possible? Exactly. Yeah. It's so, there's so many scary things that could happen because of this, I, I, I,

like already wasn't there some movie they made that they like they they like used cg i to like make like james dean to be in it it was some whole thing or like the most recent like star wars movie when they had like after carrie fisher died they had like a cgai carry fisher like that was a whole thing where it's like it's stealing people's like this how does that that was weird like we already have that and that's personally is somebody watching like watching those movies it's kind of creepy like i don't know i didn't like that when they did that in like star awards. I haven't seen any other movies where they've done it yet, but it's like, it's a little weird. But yeah, it's, it's scary to see that that's a possibility. And they definitely like, yeah.

Yeah. So I've even, I've heard of actors and musicians adding provisions into their contracts saying that like, don't use my likeness in AI. Do not use technology to make AI, you know, fabricated versions of me. And I think we're going to see more and more of that of, of creatives really getting particular about how their usage and their likeness shows up even in death. Like, there's just something very off to me personally about, like Robin Williams is no longer with us. Robin Williams died before AI took off using that fact that someone died before this technology was ubiquitous to be like, oh, we're going to put them in, you know, after

their death in a movie that they can't, they can't agree to do, they can't say whether or not they do it. That just feels really off to me. Yeah, it is, it's, it's, it's really strange. It feels very, like, I don't know, especially if you're an actor, like, you're putting yourself in that role. You are, you are putting your image, you're attaching your image to that movie or whatever, and it's, these people aren't giving, they're not giving their consent to be, you know, a part of whatever they're being put in now after their death. Yeah, it's so weird. The music thing, too, I think, is interesting because kind of going back to TikTok and all this thing, one thing that I've been seeing lately that has been annoying me is there's all these, like, videos going around that are like, have you ever wondered, like, this pop song, but like we did a Frank Sinatra AI.

And it's really like, it's always presented as this like, oh, this is so cool, like mashing jazz. And it's like, or you could have like found somebody to like do a cover of it and like a jazz style or whatever. Like that it's weird. I think like I get the appeal of it and I get the like especially like I've gotten a couple times where I've like seen one or I've been like this is really cool and then been like, huh. Like maybe it is a little messed up that they're like having an AI do this when. But yeah, it's it's strange and weird and I think we should just let people be creative because that's part of being human and it's I don't know. Yeah. I got to take my cues from Prince on that one.

Prince was notoriously against, like, I'm a huge Prince man, by the way. I'm like obsessed with Prince. It was notoriously against things like holograms or AI digital likenesses of his image. And he has this line that says, that is the most demonic thing imaginable. Everything is as it is and as it should be. If it was meant to jam with Duke Ellington, we would have lived in the same age. And that really speaks to me of like, some things aren't and they weren't meant to be. And like some, it can be like a cool parlor trick to be like, oh, this is what it would sound like if like Biggie Smalls sang a Olivia Rodriguez song or whatever.

Like I get it. I get it. I get it. But like some things are not because they were not meant to be. And I think some of those are good examples. Yeah. Now the question of the hour, Bridget. I'm on your show for the first time.

Like, I don't know. What's Elon done now? Glad you asked. Well, he's talking about wanting to remove. All of the headlines, all of the text from news articles on Twitter, so that when you see a news article, all you would see is an image. No headline, no helper text. It's because he wants, like, journalists, this is what he says.

He wants journalists to publish directly on Twitter and, like, see that as a valuable thing to do. I think the outcome will be really obvious. People already, like, barely click into the article to read what they're about. And I can only imagine that's going to happen even less with this move, further eroding the platform as a place to get accurate news and undermine news publishers as well. They don't have their name on them that will undermine the ability for them to really get their name out there. And I also think it's meant to sort of further blow up the division between journalists from reputable platforms and people who just like make content. Because Elon does not respect journalists or a free press.

That has been a notable thing about him. It's been clear. He has shown us that with his actions and behavior. your time and time again. And so I think that he wants internet personalities, like you're Brian Krenzenstein's and you're like, I don't know, right wing grievance grifters who use social media platforms. I think that by removing anything but the image, those people are going to be seen in the same way as like people from legit news platforms like Reuters or something, right? And so I think that like that's why he's doing it. We hate it. Hate to see it.

Yeah, that is weird. It is like, it's a text-based platform. People are mostly going for the, you know, and also, again, it is sort of frustrating that people just read the headlines. We'll repost things based on the headlines, but I don't know. This doesn't seem like the way to solve that. This is a really weird move. Weird move. This ain't it.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and he's maybe making his terrible jokes and, like, tweeting the word concerning with a thinking face emoji, which he loves to tweet, to nobody because his followers might be fake. If that was true, it will be very housewives of him to have fake followers, just saying, going back to my point about how all of their behavior can be understood through the lens of housewives, Mashable reports that a significant chunk of Elon Musk's more than 153 million followers on Twitter appear to be fake, or at the very least, inactive. Here's some stats. 42% of Musk's followers

have zero followers on their own account. Over 72% of the users who follow Musk have less than 10 followers on their accounts. More than 62.5 million of Musk's followers have zero tweets. More than 100 million of Musk's followers have less than 10 tweets.

And another very interesting detail is the timing of when he got followers. So he's currently the most followed person on Twitter. Surprise, surprise. When his followers created their account is pretty interesting. Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter on October 27, 2022. Out of all of Musk's current followers, more than 25% or 38.9 million were created on or after that date.

So that's suspicious. And I think it really, if we're to understand Musk's followers as a microcosm of Twitter itself and who's showing up there, it doesn't paint a very, like, this is a very damage. report and I think it's not just about his followers but also about like who's using the platform who's showing up on the platform in general like just very not not good that's so funny I this that's funny because I feel like recently I just recently was like getting on Twitter again mostly because I was avoiding TikTok because I was trying to avoid all this drama that was happening recently but um I like was on my Twitter again and like posted something for the first time in like a couple months and like the first account that like did with some random like blue check mark account that I was like who like with no like I was like where did this person come from and then it was like going through

there was just so many like blue checkmark accounts that I was seeing and I was like there's no way that this many people this many people sent in the like eight dollars or whatever um I it's yeah yeah it adds up it makes sense if that is the case well speaking of blue check marks apparently in order to get blue check marks, Twitter is testing out a verification process for Twitter Blue to have your blue check that would involve submitting the front and back of your government ID along with a selfie to verify your identity, to verify your account to get a blue check mark. So hopefully I don't need to say this, but please don't give Elon Musk a copy of your government ID. That is a terrible idea. Please don't do it. Don't do it. Mistake. 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 head writer 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 Yardt Yard's, right? 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.

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 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 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. Let's get right back into it. Okay, so speaking of Elon Musk, let's talk a little bit more about how unsafe autonomous vehicles can be. We talked about the dismal record on autonomous vehicles and crashes a few weeks ago. Well, the technology on those vehicles does a worse job of identifying people with darker skin and children as pedestrian.

So pretty concerning. This is according to new research from Dr. Ji Zhang from the Department of Infomatics at King's College, who assessed eight artificial intelligence-powered pedestrian detection systems used in autonomous vehicle research. Their research found that detection accuracy for adults was almost 20% higher than it was for children. and just over 7.5% more accurate for light-skinned pedestrians compared to their darker-skinned counterparts. The researchers also found that this bias toward darker-skinned pedestrians increases significantly under scenarios of low contrast and low brightness, posing increased issues for nighttime driving. So basically, children and people with darker skin are less likely to be recognized as pedestrians by autonomous driving vehicles. Pretty scary to me.

I think especially the thing about kids is that if you spend any time at all around kids, you really can't trust a little one to not dart out in an unexpected way. And so if these vehicles are already less likely to recognize them as pedestrians and then add on the fact that they're scrimmy little six-year-olds or whatever, it paints a pretty terrifying picture. And, you know, it should be said that black women, technologists, and researchers I'm thinking of Dr. Sophia Noble and Dr. Joy Boulanweeney have been saying this for a really long time. And it actually points back to the reason why I was inspired to start this podcast in the first place.

Side note, there was a must-read Rolling Stone profile of how black women like them have been trying to sound the alarm about AI for years. And it is just a really good reminder that inclusion in technology is not important just because it's like the right thing to do or the nice thing to do. It is. But that's not the only reason it matters. matters. It is because there are real consequences when the spaces that where technology is made are not inclusive, right? When the people who make technology like autonomous vehicles are too homogenous or they're not thinking enough about being inclusive and different kinds of people, they're not then testing them and training them on a diverse enough data set, right? And so

it's this weird thing where the erasure or lack of inclusion means that we're not, we aren't just not represented in the rooms of the technologies being made, in turn, that erasure can actually get us killed and have real-world, light, or death consequences. As Dr. Zong explains, fairness when it comes to AI is when an AI system treats privileged and underprivileged groups the same, which is not what is happening when it comes to autonomous vehicles. Car manufacturers don't release the details of the software they use for pedestrian detection, but they are usually built upon the same open source systems we used in our research, we can be quite sure that they are running into the same issues of bias. While the impact of unfair AI systems is already well documented from AI recruitment

software favoring male applicants to facial recognition software being less accurate for black women than for white men, the danger that self-driving cars can pose is acute. Before, minority individuals may have been denied vital services. Now, they might face severe injury. And I think that is exactly, right? It is like one of the reasons why I will scream from the rooftops that this technology, it's so easy to think of technology like AI, like it's some kind of robot computer brain that is like acting on a different plane than we humans are. But in reality, that technology is trained and built and designed by humans. And so it's going to be replicating the very same biases that we know that humans have. And so if that is the case and these biases come into play where

the technology is trained to not fully recognize children or people of color as human, as pedestrians that autonomous vehicles should not hit, that is a problem. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's honestly, like all of this, it's not a coincidence that this is happening at the same time, like, we're having this conversation about, like, facial recognition and how facial recognition. Because, like, you would do that story last week about the woman who is, like, you know, arrested for a crime she didn't commit because these facial recognition systems, hey, are best stuff to begin with. I don't think we should be having them to begin with. So that's another point.

But it's like they're being designed a specific way. They're being designed with a specific type of person in mind. And oftentimes it's very exclusionary. And yeah, again, this is another example that is going to lead to people being killed. And that's terrifying. Yeah. It's absolutely terrifying. I don't know, Bridget, I don't know if you've ever been in a self-driving car,

but in a self-driving Tesla specifically. But I have had this experience. and it is not fun. It is very scary. That was my personal experience. I'm sure other people, this is not me saying. But it is,

I don't think that that technology is anywhere near safe enough for people to be using in public. But yeah. Joey, I never have, nor would I ever. Like, this is, I don't have a choice. Oh, my God. I want to know everything. Like, I don't, I'm sure people listening are like,

actually, it's safer than, I don't care. It is not for me. It's a personal choice. What was it like? This was from my experience. Okay, this is a couple years ago. So it's a little. But I just remember, like, it was super rocky.

It was, like, very, there were a lot of, like, close caught. We weren't, like, we were in, like, a pretty empty kind of street. But it was just, like, very sharp turns. I just, and again, this was a couple of years ago. This is my experience. I'm not saying this is, I'm sure somebody is going to be like, actually, it's really great. I'm sure, whatever.

This is not me trying to slander Tesla. But I, my personal experience from the one time that I was in a self-driving car from the time that I was in a Tesla and the person driving it went, hey, actually, do you want me to turn on the self-driving feature and then did? It was really scary and I would not do that again. I would not recommend that you do that. So, yeah. Yeah. That, I mean, I, it's just not for me.

There are certain things. I don't need to see the stats on the safety. Like, self-driving cars, not for me. Small planes, not for me. There are just certain things. It's like, we've assessed it. We've made a call. not for us.

Just being in a car that's already so dangerous. Oh my God, yes. We don't really think about that because we use cars for like everything. We live in a very car-based kind of society, but it's, it is like, it's very dangerous to be in a car. And I don't know. I don't really want to add another layer to that of another reason that I can get killed or somebody else could get killed because of a vehicle that I'm in. Yeah, there are plenty of ways to die.

I don't need to add one to the, I don't need to pile on to already have. high list. 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 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 Yardt. 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. You know 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, 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 would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers while 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. Let's get right back into it. Okay, so this might sound like kind of a niche story, but I promise you have a bigger point in why I'm mentioning it. Okay, so did you ever read Autostraddle, the outlet? I do, yes. I think one of the first, like, queer publications I remember hearing about, yeah.

Yes. same. So it is an independent LGBTQ media outlet. It is very influential. Publish as some of the most thoughtful writing from queer voices. It has for the last 14 years. I would put it up there in terms of foundational media outlets. I'd put it up there with like bitch magazine, the hair pen, and Jess Bell, in terms of being foundational parts of the internet discourse for marginalized perspectives and voices. The hairpin and bitch magazine have sadly closed their doors, RIP. Jess Bell still the exists, but like as a shell of its former self. So like many independent media outlets, it has had a lot of economic ups and downs and struggles. It seemed like autostraddle was either going to fold or be

sold or something like they've had a lot of issues. And it turns out it's the latter. Defector media reports that autostradle is being acquired by the two-year-old queer wellness company for them in an all-equity deal. Autostradle would maintain their editorial independence. according to a press release from for them, for them plans to continue to build on Auto Stradle's editorial work like podcasts. And for what it's worth, it sounds like the staff at Autostraddle may be kind of cautiously optimistic because like at least this move avoids a shutdown of the site. At least they get to still be paid to make their content. Totally sounds like it's something that they're like cautiously optimistic about. And this is all happening at a time when independent media, let alone independent queer focus.

media is really suffering. And so I think it's definitely good to be funding these vital voices and perspectives. For them, I was not a company that I was really familiar with before this story. You know, they seem like a cool company. They have all the right branding. They use all the right like words and phrases in their, on their website. Their flagship product is a chess binder, but they also offer a subscription and membership. So it sounds like for them's plan was to bundle auto-straddles existing bonus subscription plan into their membership program, which includes access to a gender tracking app, which they describe as, quote, the first gender tracking app for real-time gender evolution using biometric data. So it sounds like this app was meant to be something

where it was like you would put in information about how you're feeling about your gender so that you can track your evolution of where you're at with your own understanding of in relationship to your gender. But the use of the word biometric data to describe this process is like red flagged city to me. And taking a look at the app, their privacy policy is like pretty minimal. It's like pretty scant. As we discussed in our episode around BetterHelp, a lot of these apps that seem great on their face and maybe are great on their face, when you actually look down into them, what they're actually doing is taking pretty intimate information and data about us and selling it. To be clear, this is not the kind of information that I would suggest anyone to share with an app that does not have a clear and robust privacy policy.

And even then, it's not, I like wouldn't suggest that people share this kind of information with an app. Yeah, so I have heard it for them before this because I, because of the way data works, I'm somebody, I'm non-binary, I'm transmasculine. I do bind on occasion. I actually was considering buying a binder from them. I still might. We'll see. But I've heard good things. Again, I've heard good things about their binders.

I'm sure that's great. But I get targeted ads from them a lot. And I get a lot of like these companies that are like targeted for queer people, for trans people, for non-binary people. And yeah, that really, the whole like having an app to track your gender journey, that seems really nice. but also like I said this in the smitty episode that I was on. I've said this before.

Like we're living in a time when there's like this active attack on trans people. Like I think any sort of situation where you are and again like I'm again, I'm somebody who's I'm trans. I talk a lot about being trans. I talk a lot about being queer. I'm very open about that. But like you don't necessarily want people like be tracking that. Like you don't necessarily want these like third party companies be tracking that.

There's so many ways that could go wrong. not to sound like, I don't know. I feel like when I say that, people are like, it's a little conspiracy theory is. But I'm like, no, it's just being cautious. If you have a marginalized identity, there's a very good chance. Like, yeah, no, I kind of want to keep that under abs as much I can because like I could be targeted for that.

Yeah, that is so weird, especially when it was like, you can journal. I journal. I love journaling. I draw a lot to, and again, like, I deal with gender dysphoria and all that, all the things that come with being, you know, a trans person. There's a lot of outlets that are, that are not you putting more information into some random company. But yeah, again, this is the thing that I think is so frustrating. There's all, there's all these kind of things that pop up, or it's like a, you know, company that is for queer people, by queer people. And it seems

great in theory, but it's like, what are they going to do with that data again? Yeah, like, going back to better help, it's like a similar thing where it seems like a great idea. But I, yeah, And again, I think, like, having a company that sells binders that is run by queer people and is run by trans basketball in particular, like, that's really important because there are people who are going to understand what's needed and how, like, how different ways it's going to affect you. But it's like, yeah, that, that seems concerning. Any sort of like, also having like a publication attached to some sort of like corporation or capitalist structure seems, you know, concerning. but that's a whole other conversation, yeah. Well, that's definitely part of it. And I think that's probably why the one of the reasons why the gender tracking app hit me wrong is that what you said does not sound conspiratorial to me.

It's just unfortunately the reality that like marginalized people are under attack in this country and abroad globally as well. And so having a company that again, it's like this is no. shade to them. Like, they seem like a cool company. By all accounts, I'm not trying to apply nefarious intent here, but I'm just keeping it real, which is that, like, if you are asking trans people and non-binary people and queer people to put intimate information about their gender and their identity into an app, you better, you need a really robust privacy policy. And if you don't have one, to me, that sounds like you're not really attuned to the realities of what the community is up against right now. Because, yeah, I just, so like that's one.

Two, I think that, you know, I don't want to make this about for them or auto straddle specifically, because I do think it seems like a genuine partnership with possibility, but our communities really do deserve better than to only be able to get thoughtful stories that really center our perspectives if also our complex understandings and relationships to gender and sexuality and identity are turned into a product, commodified, mind, and taken from us to make someone else money. And that is what that gender tracking app sounded like to me when I first heard it. Like, our experiences are so much more thoughtful and complex and complicated and hard and fucked up and beautiful and joy.

It's like there's so much there. And they're ours. They don't belong to some third-party app or they don't exist. Like we're not grappling with them just to have them taken from us so that someone else can profit. And I feel like that relationship, I feel like I really take issue with like that being presented to us as liberation as something that is good. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, it's, I feel like we have this conversation every pride about like corporations being in. involved in pride. It's the whole idea of like rainbow capitalism and all of that. It's,

it's definitely that the end kind of, end game of all of this is making somebody a lot of money. And it's, again, it's nice to, it's nice to have resources. It's nice to have, you know, resources for talking about gender identity and sexuality and all that that that are, you know, run by queer people, aimed towards queer people. But yeah, I don't want somebody to be like capitalizing off of my experience just existing as somebody like who is not cisgender who is not straight like that but it's very weird yeah because then yeah because how much of a how much of a obviously not in this situation because they are like a queer company but like other companies that are like positioning themselves as like allies but then if

you're putting people in danger because you're not protecting their data how much of an ally are you or how much of like an activist for your community are you if you're actively putting people in danger. This whole situation just seems very shady to me. Yeah, active allyship, this is going to sound nerdy as hell, but it's what I believe. Like, you can't be an, like, active allieship is protecting my privacy and protecting my data as a marginalized person, right? Active allyship is, do not track. Active allyship is like, when we're talking about tech, like, it's not just like, yeah, give us your information. We'll probably keep it safe. We don't really have a policy about it, but we'll do our best.

Like, that is not allyship and that's not, that is not like a community of safety that I want to be part of. And I think that we are both in good company because after some outcry for them did change the wording on their site, defector reports, for them has removed the phrase, biometric data from its gender tracking apps ad copy, and an Instagram comment addressing the concerns, they characterized the app as more of a reflective journal

and said, biometric data is likely the wrong word to be used here and we will course correct to not raise false alarms. So I get that. Like, I'm glad that they're backing away from that. I feel like the word biometric data has such a specific, like, I journal every morning. I do my morning pages. I can't, I'm not like writing biometric data.

Like, that has such a specific definition and connotation that I have to imagine that someone somewhere thought that was going to be like a buzzy phrase to get, to make these like venture capital funders happy or excited and that's how it got in there. But it's wild to me that they could be like, oh, we didn't really mean biometric data. We really meant more like feelings, like a journal. Because like biometric data is like a very specific thing. Yeah. That's so weird.

Especially like gender and sexuality. There's such complicated experiences and there are such personal experiences for people. Like, I don't know. that's not necessarily something I want on like an alley. Yeah, that's something I keep in my journal. That's for me. I don't want anybody. Like it is a, yeah, that is a weird way of putting it. It also is very, again, especially in the middle of this whole like anti-trans backlash so much of which revolves around sort of these weird. You know, the thing that keeps coming up to people being like, oh, it's just biology is just science. And none of these people have actually, you know, studied biology in depth and whatever. But that being said, like, it's such a like, It also is almost kind of like a buzzword for like the other side too where it's like why are you focusing so much on like the biolo? Like I'm never I'm not waking up and being like hmm thinking about my gender identity right now like I'm not like how does this work biochemically or bio-mecetic? Like that's such a weird way of like putting it. It's very weird. Yeah. So here's one other reason why I think this story is important because I think it says something about the state of media more generally right now. The state of media is like. Like, very sad and very scary to me. Like, I don't know anybody who works in media or journalism who is not kind of having a tough time of it right now. You know, for a while, I feel like we were told that the path forward was venture capital funding, you know, VC, a rich funder comes by and pumps a media brand full of cash and then profit, right?

Well, not if your BuzzFeed News or Vice or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, like any number of the different media outlets that got fat VC funding. and then shut down. The journalist at Weiss, who were all laid off recently, like Samantha Cole, who's one of my favorite journalists who writes about the intersection of sex and the internet, started their own independent media brand called 404 Media recently. And I know that a lot of folks are pivoting to things like that, like worker and writer-owned media collaboratives or independent media entities. And they're pivoting toward things like Substack, which I have my issues with, but I get it. And Patreon, myself included. And so I think that we're coming to see that if you want to be making media and like telling stories, not just, but also about marginalized voices, that center marginalized voices and you

want to do it independently, I think that the way forward seems to be not attaching yourself to an outlet that is going to financially mismanage things or like be beholden to VC expectations because they took that big VC funding. I think that this is like a larger, story about the precarity of independent media right now. And I think more and more folks, like writers and creators and podcasters and journalists that you love, are going to start doing their own things. And what's funny to me about that is like, as I'm kind of taking that journey myself, it feels very like precarious and unstable, trying to pin your livelihood on Patreon or substack subscriptions or whatever. But here's the thing. The alternative

of being at like a big VC-backed media company right now also feels unstable and uncertain and precarious. So like you may as well, if it's going to be precarious regardless, you may as well be like, fuck it. I'll at least be the person who's in charge of my precarious feeling destiny and like the sort of my own ship. And so I don't know, the autostraddle thing, it signals to me that we are really experimenting with paths forward

of how we have a media. climate that is sustainable. And I don't know, maybe, like, I don't want to be all doom and gloom. Maybe this reshapes the space for the better. Yeah. I mean, as somebody who's at, like, the early parts of their career is, like, a media person. It is, it is, I mean, I don't know when I was getting into it.

It was going to be a mess. But it's scary. And, I mean, I always say, like, the things that I really was watching when I was in high school and college that really, like, inspired me were things that were coming from like vice and buzzfeed and um teen vogue was the big one i remember like with the big teen vogue sort of shift happened that was like a big thing and it's it's it's so weird to see now like a lot of these sites coming down are like these kind of yeah like buzzfeed and vice sort of falling apart um and also yeah like a lot of my like mentors a lot of my journalism like mentors have come from

these companies too and i'm like i don't know i'm i'm super grateful for like them and everything they sort of taught me and and everything i've learned from them but it's it's it's it is sort of like interesting to be like seeing people that have gone through that now being somebody who's getting into the media industry and yeah i i sort of straddled the line between like production and journalism too where like again i work at i heart i am an i heart employee so like i do work for a big media company but um yeah it is it is definitely a strange time for media when isn't it but it's yeah and yeah i guess we'll see yeah it's yeah it's funny that you talk about where your mentors were

before you got into the media game because I might be a little bit older than you. My mentors all came from an era that like, I was like too young to have been in any kind of meaningful profession, but the era of like the late 90s early aughts where like it seemed like being in media was like the fucking best where it was like,

yeah, you get like a dollar per word and you like get to go to all these swing parties, like the era of like, um, accessibility kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who was it, was it G magazine? Who was the Kennedy that had his own like vanity magazine? Okay, it was, um, so John F. Kennedy Jr. before he died, had a vanity magazine called George. And like, it was just a time of like, glossy magazines and like big parties and like all the magazines seemed really cool. It was like, if you ever watched a movie, like, I feel like also it's no cool. that that coincided with the aughts where the cool career in, like, movies was, I'm a

journalist, like the devil wears Prada and how to lose a guy in 10 days. That was, that was an era that we will probably never see again in media where that, you know, it just was flush with cash, and it was like the coolest time. And it's a time that, like, most people, it's like a, it's like a bygone era. Like, what you would make for a story then and what you would make for a story now is like, night and day. Like I was watching almost famous the other day. And that kid is getting a cover, like a feature in Rolling Stone and they're going to

pay him like $7,000 or something, which like today we've paid $300. Like that was supposed to be the 70s, you know? So it is a very weird field and always has been. And yeah, it's just, I don't know the answer. Maybe it is Patreon and

substack. Maybe it is starting your own media brands. Maybe it is you know, queer binder companies acquiring your brand. Like, we'll see. It's just everyone's doing what they can. For real. Oh, man.

It's so funny because, yeah, I also grew up, like, watching, yeah, like, devil's worms, Prada and I'm a bit young for Sex for the City. I sort of miss that. But, like, that whole era of, like, yeah, it was always the, you know, the New York journalist kind of thing. And I just, it's, like, it's just such a different world. Like, I never, like, crossed my mind that that would be me, like, that that would be my life because yeah I got like what I was starting to get interested in journalism and in media

it was always like yep you're going to have to freelance you're going to have to like you're going to be like starving artist kind of thing for a hill and I don't know it was it was very bleak yeah I guess I guess we'll see so yeah almost famous is always the one that pisses me off because I'm like I that would never happen now that's never none of it like like Not, yeah. Okay, so one last thing, which is that I am celebrating today a little bit, I think slash hope, question mark, maybe, that people probably think of me as like a pretty thoughtful, measured person and not someone who is really petty, not someone who would revel in the downfall of her enemies. Luckily, that means that if you think that way, I have fooled you into thinking that's the kind of person that I am, because I am celebrating. a little bit today because Enemy of the Pod, Walter Weeks, and Myron Gaines,

of the podcast, Fresh and Fit, were demonetized on YouTube this week. That does not mean that their content is going away, don't I wish. It just means that they will not be able to earn money from it on YouTube.

Fresh and fit is one plank of what is sometimes called the Manosphere, basically just like the misogynistic men who should not have podcast brigade. Think of them that way. Anytime you've ever thought to yourself,

like, why does this man have a podcast? Bad is them. like they're in that group. When they got the news that their YouTube was going to be demonetized, they made a very tearful video about how hard it was to be demonetized and how it wasn't about the money for them. It was about wanting to have a platform to help people. Yeah, if by help people, you mean stoke their worst instincts for personal gain because that is what the guys at Fresh and Fit podcast do. They have said that they believe they were demonetized because of their, quote, controversial

takes. But my years of platform accountability work, urging platforms like YouTube, the takedown content that breaks community guidelines tells me that that is probably not likely. I just do not think that that is the reason why they were removed. Joey, it is your first time recording with me. I had written out a whole thing and then I was showing it to producer Mike and Mike was like, this might be a little much for their first recording with you. Like, you don't want to make Joey fully think that like they are recording with a crazy person, a petty, betty. So I have a lot more to say about Fresh and Fit. If you want to hear my full, full, uncensored take on why Fresh and Fit is a boil on the

ass of the internet and why I believe they were actually demitititized from YouTube and why this is something that we should all be celebrating, please check out the Patreon. I have a lot to say. I've written about it for the nation. I will throw the link to my Nation piece about Fresh and Fit in the show notes. But yeah, this is personal for me if you can't tell. I try really hard to, when we cover unsavory characters, I try very hard to just make it about, like, what they say, what they do and not reveal my personal thoughts on them. But this is different.

I have a real personal distaste for these two. So if you want to know more about how I feel, check out the Patreon. Yeah, no, I am a, I will admit that I am a very petty thing. Yes. There's nothing you could say. And I would be like, I open our conversation being like, do you want to hear my TikTok drama the week? I had to gauge it.

I was like, I don't know how petty they are. Like, let's, well, like, now that I know, I can, like, okay, this is good to know. This is good to know. Joey, thank you so much for being here. Where can folks keep up with what you're doing? For sure. You can find me on Twitter for who knows how long and Instagram at Pat Not Pratt. that is P-A-T-T, not N-O-T, P-R-A-T-T, Pratt.

My last name is Pat, and people often misspell it as Pratt. So that was how that happened. I did the same mistake. I don't think I've ever had, like, an employer get it right on the bird. What is it? Like, why is it, why does this happen? I don't know. I think it's just because it's such a, like, people are so used to saying Pratt.

they're like, they just look over it. It's okay. There was a brief period of time where I kept getting asked if I was related to Chris Pratt and then once he kind of fell out of favor, people stopped doing that, which was nice. But it was weird. Anyways, yeah, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram. I'm also occasionally on stuff Mom Never Told You. I've been to show that's coming out in a couple months that I don't think I can talk about yet, but I probably will at some point.

Anyways, yeah. And as always, thanks to you for, listening at please keep in touch. You can check us out on Patreon, find me on social, and please be well. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our merch store at tangoody.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 tangooty.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. Edited by Joey Pat. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.

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