There Are No Girls on the Internet - What we’re leaving behind in the new year - STUFF MOM NEVER TOLD YOU

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

It’s a new year, which is a great opportunity to take stock of what we’re leaving behind in tech in the new year.  Bridget joined Sam and Anney over at Stuff Mom Never Told You to get into what��s not coming with us in 2024.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Happy New Year! Now that the holidays are officially over, I'm looking at what's in and what's out in tech for 2024. And to do that, I joined my friend Samantha and Annie over at the podcast stuff Mom Never Told You to run through what we should be leaving in 2023. I got to ask, what tech things are you leaving in 2023? After you listen to the episode, be sure to let me know. For the topic today that you brought us, you're talking about some of the things

tech in the tech world that we should leave behind or want to leave behind. Exactly. Yeah. If you all know that cartoon that you might see on Twitter a lot where it's like a woman stepping from one year to the next. And behind her, she's leaving behind all of this baggage from the previous year, like fake friends or heartbreak. And then across over her shoulder, she's carrying what she's carrying into the next year. So like love or focus. Do you know the image that I'm talking about? I don't. I had never seen it. But I'm looking at it now. Yes. So fun fact about that image, it was created by a British Ghanaian graphic artist named Penile and Schell,

and it first appeared on the internet in 2014. And BuzzFeed has a great interview with her, but basically this image has been totally mumified, and it kind of pops up around this time of year, every year, to sort of fit the theme of like New Year, New Me. Sometimes it's a joke, which this artist says that she doesn't always agree with or like the way that people, like, do their spins on it.

But it's really become a part of like the shorthand of this time of year of like what we're leaving behind and what we're taking with us into the new year. So when that picture was making its rounds recently, around this time of year, you know, I had just wrapped up podcasting, like my own podcast, there are no girls on the internet, talking about technology and identity and really asking questions about like what we get right and what we get wrong, you know, in those arenas. So this image got me thinking, what tech things should just stay in 2023 and that we should

not be bringing with us into 2024. So I've got my list of things that should stay like, We're done with them. We should not be bringing them with us into the new year. Yeah, and I was thinking about this, too. This has been a big year for tech. This has felt like a very monumental, like a lot of things are changing. And so looking at this list, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah.

It can feel strange because time feels so strange now, but that did all happen this year. Yeah. So what is on your list? Let's get into it. So as you said, it's been a big year for conversations around technology that they're big right now. And I would say there probably is not a bigger conversation than the one happening around AI. So we're all rightly talking about how AI could change the way that we do our jobs or the way that artistic projects get created. And those are all important conversations to be having.

But there is one very serious conversation about the reality of AI. And that is how AI is being used to do things like violate consent and further use. technology to make it seem like our bodies are just like up for grabs once we show up online. So case in point, Nudify apps. So Nudify apps are kind of the catch-all term for apps or platforms that promise to use AI to generate non-consensual nude or semi-nude images of anyone. These kinds of apps have been exploding in popularity. In September alone, 24 million people visited Nudify apps or undressing websites, according to the social network analysis company, Graphica.

So in their analysis, they really talk about how we've, how this year specifically, we've seen this shift where NUify apps kind of went from this niche underground custom thing where like if you were like a singular creep who had a singular fixation on one person, you could find a marketplace for non-consensual images to be made of somebody. But it was like a niche custom thing. Now, in 2023, we have really seen that shift to where these are fleshed out, monetized online businesses, complete with advertising apparatuses. Graphica found that the volume of referral link spam for these kinds of services has increased by more than 2,000% on social media platforms like Reddit and Twitter since the beginning of 2023. And the set of 52 telegram groups used to access non-consensual image sites like these contain at least one.

million users as of September of 2023. So they have really exploded in popularity, yet I think that we're only now, like only recently, come to have any kind of conversation about what that means, not just for, you know, the women who are overwhelmingly targeted by these kinds of apps, but also what it means for our digital landscape more broadly. Okay, I'm not going to lie, none of this is familiar to me. As many social media things as I'm involved in. Didn't know this was a thing.

Didn't know. It's pretty despicable. It first got on my radar, it first seemed to be rolled out to, like, more mainstream platforms with celebrities. So it would be like, oh, you can get a nude of any celebrity. And now it's like, not just celebrities, it's like anybody. You can generate a non-consensual nude of anybody. And so one of the ways that this is becoming more and more ubiquitous is just seeing

the advertisements for. it on social media. After some journalists at Bloomberg were looking into the popularity of these kinds of apps, they contacted both TikTok and Facebook to ask them about, you know, it seems like, hey, it seems like these really gross apps are being allowed to advertise on your platforms. And both Facebook and TikTok, I will say, you know, to their credit, when Bloomberg reached out to them, they both did some work to block search terms related to nudify apps. But one social media platform notably did not do that. Can you guess what platform that was?

Twitter. Probably can. It was Twitter. I'm marrying you just Twitter, obviously. I'm not calling us a new name still. No. We're calling it Twitter still. So it was Twitter.

They were like, we're actually fine with these Nudify apps. Like, we don't see a problem. So this is from Vice. Searching the word undress on TikTok brings up no result in either the top or video tabs. Instead, the platform warns users that the phrase may be associated with activity that violates the platform's guidelines.

Searching the same term on Instagram similarly brings up no results. Searching undress on Twitter, however, readily surfaces a verified account with nearly 20,000 followers promoting Nudify app services. So let's say that you were to search Twitter for the word indress instead of undress. Twitter is actually like, wait, were you actually meeting to search for undress? and it prompts you to search for undress instead. So where other platforms are like, no, we can't have that on our platforms. Twitter is like not just allowing it on platforms,

but like helping people to search it when they get it wrong. And so you might see people, if you ever see Nudify apps advertised on these platforms, sometimes they, like a word is misspelled or like there's a space between some of the letters to try to evade being picked up and like knocked off the platform. but it generally does not seem like Twitter has a problem

with these kinds of services being advertised on their platform. And I feel like this is a big question with like legalities, especially on public platforms like that in general. But like I'm talking about doing news and such, like it seems like it should be illegal. It seems like this could be one of those things, especially like if you think about revenge porn and all that being illegal in so many places. Like is that not a thing? Is that can you not take it to court or at least try to,

stop these images from happening? So that is a great question. When I first saw these, I was like, this has got to be illegal. And it turns out that right now, depending on where you live, it is probably not illegal to do this. It depends on your jurisdiction, but there is currently no federal law criminalizing using AI to generate non-consensual deep fake images. Representative Yvette Clark out of New York has actually proposed legislation that would

criminalize making, you know, non-consensual deep fakes. But as of right now, kind of unbelievably, there is not any legislation federally that prevents somebody from doing that. And yeah, I just think that like as this kind of technology becomes more ubiquitous in our culture, I think it adds to this idea that just by showing up on the internet, women are fair game for anybody who wants to sexualize us. And that I think it's getting to be a, getting to be a, getting, to a point where the idea is like, well, if you didn't want someone to use your images in that way, why did you post them to Instagram, right? Like, I think, and I think that we really got to have a real serious think and a serious

conversation about if that is going to be a social media climate that we want. And I think that that kind of thinking is the kind of thinking that we need to leave behind in 2023, right? Like, women should be able to show up online without non-consensual sexualization, just being the cost of showing up. And so let's leave that behind in 2024. We are not bringing it with us. Please.

Please. Yeah. And that's one of the very frustrating things, because I did see a lot about this. And we even had an episode, Bridget, about it, about journalists getting targeted by stuff like that. Oh, yeah. And revenge porn and things like that.

And this is just making it so much easier. And it's harder to, for some people, for all of us to ascertain what is real and what is not real. But it does kind of disproportionately impact women and marginalized folks. And that's just one example of technology doing that

that you have on your list, right? Yes. And I think like, just like what you said, I think that there are specific groups that we see being targeted for this kind of harm first. And then it's like, oh, now, and then like when those groups, when it's allowed to happen to those groups, it's like, oh, well, you know, nobody really does anything.

And then it's like, oh, surprise, now it's everybody's problem. Now we just live in a society where like, this is commonplace. And like maybe when this was happening to specific groups of people, if we had done something and taken it seriously then, we wouldn't have allowed it to just become ubiquitous, right? And I don't think anybody wants to live in a culture where anybody is fair game just because they put a picture of themselves on the internet to have that picture be distorted and sexualized.

So absolutely right. So that brings me to another thing that we should not be taking with us into 2024, and that is content moderation policies that really hurt women and other marginalized people. So as we were talking about with AI, right now, AI is used in content moderation that really does a lot of the work of deciding what gets amplified and what gets suppressed on social media. This technology, however, also objectifies women's bodies, and is much more likely to flag images that involve women or include women as racy or inappropriate, and thus those images are more likely to be suppressed on social media sites.

So the Guardian actually put together a really interesting investigation into this, where they had journalists use AI tools to analyze hundreds of photos of men and women in their underwear, working out, using medical tests and with partial nudity, and found that the AI used will tag photos of women in everyday situations as sexually suggestive. So I'm talking about images of like women in their underwear, fully covered, or women working out at the gym, fully covered, right? Like images that we would recognize as not racy, but because they include women, the tools that are being used to make decisions about how content is moderated will be like, no, that's racy, can't have that on social media. And so as a result of this, social media companies that leverage these algorithms have suppressed, honestly, countless images of, featuring women's bodies.

We know that this hurts women-led businesses. I was just reading about how a shapeware company essentially can't advertise on social media because images of women's bodies fully covered in shapewear will just be suppressed by these algorithms. And they essentially cannot advertise their product on social media, which is like where you advertise products in 2023. This also, like, not only does it hurt female-led businesses, it also has medical impacts. They found that this disparity is also true for medical images.

AI was shown images from the U.S. National Cancer Institute demonstrating how to do a clinical breast exam. Google's AI gave this photo the highest score for raciness. Microsoft's AI was 82% confident that these images of women doing breast exams was explicit sexually in nature. And Amazon classified it as representing explicit nudity. This is also true for pregnant bellies, Like if you are heavily pregnant and showing a pregnant belly on social media platforms,

AI is much more likely to deem that image to be racy and then suppress that in their content moderation tools. And so you really get a sense of the way that these platforms are creating a disproportionate cost for being a woman who shows up online. Like it prevents women from being able to express themselves. It prevents women from being able to get medical information about our bodies. and ultimately it's just not fair. We shouldn't have to deal with this just because we showed up on a social media platform with our bodies.

There's nothing wrong with women's bodies. They're not racie or explicit just by us having them. Right, right. And I believe, Samantha and I, we talked about this about YouTube because YouTube had a similar, strange thing that was happening

where it was flagging videos of children young girls is just like, this is so sexual. And it's just like literally young girls. And it's telling to what is going on in our society, the problems of objectifying and sexualizing women. But also, this is a big thing that we talk about with you, Bridget, when it matters who's making these things, who's doing this stuff.

And AI is a pretty new space, but I've already seen a lot of conversations about that, about the importance of who is working on it. So that's part of what is going on here, right? Totally. So the Guardian spoke to Margaret Mitchell of the AI company Hugging Face, who said that she believes that the photos used to train these algorithms were probably just being labeled by straight men who probably associate men working out with fitness, but maybe consider an image of a woman working out as being like racie or sexual or explicit, even though it's like the same theme, the same content. And so it's possible that these ratings seem gender biased in the U.S. and in Europe because the labelers, might be from a place that might have more conservative cultures, right? And so, yeah, it really matters who is building technology, who's in the room when the technology gets built,

who is training it, who is rolling it out, who is thinking about it, who's writing about it, who's talking about it. If these people are mostly men, then, like, of course women and other marginalized people are not showing up in an equitable way. With all the conversations that we have around things like inclusion and diversity and equity in tech,

I'm not like harping on those just because it's like nice to do or it's like the right thing to do, which it is. It is because eventually the technology that gets built is worse, is less inclusive, is more dangerous. Like it includes less people and that ends up hurting all of us. Yes, it does. And speaking of that, you have another point on here going back to something we were talking about earlier about women in journalism. Yes. Yes. So I'm so glad that was a great transverse.

which is that, you know, it's like one of the reasons why I started my own podcast about this is that we unfortunately have a tech culture that can treat women like perpetual outsiders, right? Whether by accident or with intention. And that is something that we got to leave in 2023. Really, we could have left it like in many, many, many years past. But this is the time that we should be leaving it in the past because exactly what you said. it is so critical, these tools are going to be shaping our world and how we understand our world. So we got to make sure that people who are publicly talking about it and are included in that conversation are done so in a way that does not treat them like perpetual outsiders.

And so women who are working for that AI company that I mentioned before, hugging face, what you can sort of think of as like a competitor to open AI, the company that makes chat GPT, which is run by that guy, Sam Altman. Hugging Face has a lot of women who work there. And these women do a ton of public speaking about tech and AI in the media, which is great. And I also think, again, it's important because it can help to change the face of, like, who we think of as somebody who gets to speak or gets to have an opinion when it comes to technology. And that's great.

However, the women at Hugging Face also noticed that when they were doing public speaking about AI with the press, they sometimes would get, like, sexist or otherwise kind of messed up questions during interviews that just like really highlighted that they were not necessarily being treated like people who belonged in the space. Margaret Mitchell, she is hugging face's chief ethics scientist, framed it as a research question. She asked, what are patterns and how journalists talk to and about women in AI? She found that compared to male peers, there is a disproportionate focus from the press on their ages, their motherhood, their physical appearance or behaviors, their failures, and what AI gossip they could provide rather than their, like, technical work.

And these are people who are incredibly accomplished. They're, like, doing very important work that they've gone to school for, been trained for. In an article, if you get to interview them and you ask about their age, or you ask if they have kids, or you ask, you know, about the way they look, it's so limiting because it's like,

you have somebody who has dedicated their life to this very important technology, and this is what you ask them. It's such a miss on the part of the journalists. It's like, I thought you by now, at this point in AI, there would be more things to talk about. There's so many questions that we should be asking. Again, things like how are sexist issues being handled in AI? How are you protecting women in AI?

And not about the individual person to be like, so you got a kid? You got to be on the computer while you have a kid? How are you going to do that? Like, well, that seems so far-fetched. Like, why? Is this a skit? Are you kidding? Are we still doing this? And what's frustrating is like, they would never ask a man up. If you were talking to, like, a powerful man, you would never be like, oh, well, who watches your kids while you're working?

Or, like, how do you juggle being a dad and, like, being a scientist? Like, these are things that would not, like, would not come up. They're only coming up because they're women. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Dr. Sasha Lucioni, who is an AI researcher at a climate lead at Hucking Face, was in this, like, pretty glowing piece for ad week. The piece was great, but the headline to the article read, this AI ethics expert juggles motherhood and a tech career. And people had to, like, raise hell to get them

to change it. And yeah, it's just like, I do think that there is a place for conversations about what it looks like to juggle career and family and all of that. But those are not conversations that should only be happening to women. And there's a time and a place for them, right? Like, if you're meant to be interviewing somebody about their technical prowess, that, I don't see how that is relevant to their technical expertise. Right. And that piece in the self, the title is so condescending. Is that definite, like, oh, look at you. How can you? You, look at you doing that. You go, you go, girl.

I'm so proud of you. Instead of seeing this professional scientist who has more degrees and more experience than the person who actually probably wrote the article, I don't know for sure, but just that level of like, wow, really, what are you doing? Is it because you feel insecure that you need to be condescending but be like passive aggressively, like, but no, no, no, I'm really impressed. Really? It is so condescending.

And so in an effort to help the space be better, the women who work. at Hugging Face actually developed a guide for journalists to help get it right, to help create a better dynamic so that it's not just condescending question and sexist question after sexes question. The guide reads, the real achievements of women on our team often get overshadowed by a focus on personal and sometimes very intrusive details that are not relevant to their work. With all the amazing press attention we get at Hugging Face, we're bound to see some journalists rely on outdated tropes. Lately, we've seen more reporters ignoring our amazing achievements of our and these, and instead focusing on stereotypes in tech.

One of the things that I love about the guide that they put out is that it really highlights the importance of not treating tech like a place where women don't belong. And so, for instance, the guide reads, don't rely on antiquated stereotypes about women in tech. This includes describing women as outsiders in the field, which only serves to reinforce the idea that women don't belong in tech. an example of a problematic sentence they give.

Despite being a woman in a male-dominated field, Brooke Brookie has made a name for herself in the tech industry. Better is through her brilliant results on magic and large language models, Brooke Brookie made a name for herself in the tech industry. And so this, I think, is really key. And I think people do this without even really meaning to, is that the tech industry, women and queer folks and trans folks and black folks, and folks with disabilities

and all different kinds of people who are traditionally marginalized in our society have been at the beginning of technology and have been since the very start. We have this idea that, like, oh, tech is this like white male cis boys club and anybody else is trying to break their way in. And that's, I can understand

why people feel that way, but we have been there from the very beginning. And if you don't always hear our stories or our voices, it's not because we're not there, it's because specific choices have been made to keep to like, sideline us and to turn down our voices. And so really starting from a place that like, we do belong in these conversations, we do belong in tech, we do belong in the sector, we're not

outsiders, I think is really, really important. And it also just really matters, you know, if the people who are building technology and talking about technology and thinking about technology are only one type of person, the tech that gets built is going to be a whole lot worse. And so all of us benefit when more voices are included and feel included and feel empowered to join the conversation. You would think that would be an obvious, and also that it would be, it would save money. It would save money in all the revamping and redoing of everything that you knew. Well, I would expect you knew, but that could go wrong when you don't have the right people or all the people at least represented in this conversation, especially if you're wanting these people to use your technology.

You're so right. And what's interesting is I once read this book called Mothers of Invention all about how things like misogyny and bias around women stifle innovation. And something that really struck me from that book is how much money gets left on the table because of things like gender bias and misogyny. It's like you would think in a capitalistic society that for-profit companies would want money above anything. You might be surprised because they are perfectly willing to lose money

if it means further entrenching gender bias and masochity. Yeah. Which is so nonsensical. Right. I guess it's power over money, even though money could be considered power. Yeah. Yeah.

We were doing, I was trying to do a wrap-up episode like this about video games and board games. And I ran across kind of a stunning, upsetting amount of, how often people in power her dudes were like, it's just women don't make good stuff. And they would literally be like, people don't buy those things, those party games, why? Yes, they do.

Yeah, look at the demographics of who is actually playing video games. It is a lot of women. And so set, like, I think not making video games and stuff that women, that, like, women and want when a big chunk of your customer base just is women. It's a fact. That is on you. That is like you don't know how to do it or unwilling to do it.

It's like anything that you could say is just an excuse to not do it. Right. Like you look at Animal Crossing and the fact they made bank, especially during COVID and quarantine. And you're like, you sure? Are you sure? Yeah. This guy in question was he was saying like all the games women like to play,

which are like in his mind or my mind. watched more too political or two, like, parties. Like, animal cross-men. Mobile games, like, aren't good and don't make money. And it's like, are you sure? I can't. Why? This also reminds me of, it's kind of upsetting, but it reminds me of when Sally Ride

was, you know, getting ready to go to space. And they would have these press conferences with her and all these men. and the men, they're asking all these, like, questions related to the job. And her, they'd be like, how are you going to put your makeup on in space? It's like, it's still there that kind of, we still gender these things and we still other people. And it does really matter who's writing about it and whose stories are getting published or getting that traction. because, you know, if it's mostly white men's stories who's getting, like, all of the attention,

then that does help reinforce this idea that, yeah, it's this white male space when it isn't and it hasn't been, as you said. Yeah. Did you ever hear, I mean, I'm sure you all have heard this story, but it really sticks with me that when Sally Ride was going to space, she's going to be there for one week, and the, like, scientists or engineers at NASA, whoever,

were like, they gave her a hunt. I was at 200 tampons or 100 tampons. She was going to be there for one week. And when she was like, oh, 100 tampons, they were like, will that be enough? Like, these are the greatest scientific. Like, nobody can tell me that, like, male scientists are, like, better than women when that's what's going on with our male scientists. Right. Can you imagine if you honestly believe that was true?

And then for to expect the women in your life or the people who, you know, who menstruate in your life to just be going through 200 tampons in a week. And that we have to pay that much when you were like looking at tampons and they're like $30 for $8 for $30 for $30? You're like, bro.

Yeah, $30 to a box. So it's like how much they, I have so many questions. I have so many questions. There's so many questions. There's so many questions. And to be fair, like in everything, like how did you think this was going to work?

Like who invented this? This is not, this doesn't work like that. What are you doing? God. But sometimes, like, this is such a non-sequitur. Sometimes when I think about gender dynamics, like, I remember reading this tweet from a guy who was like, people think Taylor Swift is so pretty, but here she is without makeup. And it's like, did you think that she was born with cat eyes and, like, bright red lips? And you thought all of us thought that.

You clearly thought that. But you thought all of us thought that. And then you're supposed to be getting one over on us, women. And like the whole thing is just laughable. Yeah. And it's like such a great example of who we consider the norm in society, whose experience we consider the norm we base it on. Because I was thinking about that recently too,

about this whole idea that I feel like has faded away largely, but not always. But like women who would wake up early and put on makeup. So their partner would not see them without makeup. So it's like, it's like a lot of us feel that we have to do this thing, because then we'll get this complaint from this random jackass on social media. But then it's also like, dude, what do you think? It's strange.

It's like a strange dynamic that is happening where you feel the pressure to do it. But then also shouldn't they, shouldn't people realize how much work it is? Right. Yeah. And it kind of goes into that another question that I'm kind of concerned about because we've had, like I've been noticing more and more on TikTok, they just have automatic filters. And a lot of people talk about the fact that they use different filters, especially because they don't want to wear makeup and all that. And this makes them feel better, which all on all, whatever, you do you. But then this level of expectation that especially men, especially, I'm going to say, cis heterosexual men, think that this is what you should look like.

And if you don't look like that in real life, holy shit, catfish me and you've lied to me. Like in this new level of standard, a beauty standard, that might be like, okay, this is good for us because it makes us kind of feel better. But at the same time, what is it leading to? That's such an interesting question. And I guess I just think that, like,

a lot of men, like cis heterosexual men, I think are really willing to live in a fantasy world. Like, they're really like, it's like if you think that, you know, some of those TikTok filters, they give you like glitter on your eyes. If you thought that like somebody came out of the womb with like glitter on their eyes, like, sometimes like, it's honestly, it's one of the reasons why I don't really remove my body hair because when you add up how much time it takes to do it, it's like, it's actually not, it's a lot of work.

And it's like, do I want to do extra work and pay whatever extra money it takes to buy the razor and this and that, to feed into a fantasy that adult women don't have body hair? No, I don't. Like, if you're, if you're, like, you should by now know that adult women do generally have body hair. And I'm not, I'm not interested in perpetuating

this, like, very weird fantasy world where this becomes how women are in the world. And then if you see a woman who is not doing that, it's not, it's like out of sync with how you think women should exist, I guess I'll say. I don't know if that makes sense. No, yeah, it absolutely does. It kind of, again, it phase into this narrative that women are supposed to be this

higher level of beauty standard in order to fit with a norm, which is so much less work for men in general. Yeah, and when we're looking at, like, tech, I mean, so many of the things that we've talked about on here do play into that, whether it's filters or social media of these kind of beauty standards that are getting perpetuated, just the vitriol women can receive just by, here's my face, being on social media. So it is really unfortunate because it's, we can't ignore that that does happen. And I know I've told this story before, but I have a lovely collage of all of the horrible things people have said to me online. But it's also like, why can't we just, these are women who are doing amazing things in AI.

We don't have to talk about how they look. We really don't. Right. We really don't. We don't need to know how many children she has. We don't need to know if she has a husband or a partner. Like that's not, we want to know, are you doing better AI that protects people? Yeah.

Let's support that. Yes. And it's such a, yeah, it's just such a missed opportunity because, like, the majority. of people who are making sure that AI is safe or more inclusive or doesn't harm people or is ethical or doing really interesting work, those people tend to also be women, people of color, people who are not necessarily treated as the norm in tech. And so when you have an opportunity to talk to these people, actually use it because what they are working on probably really matters. And like it matters to all of us, even if you're not somebody who

was a techie, you're not somebody who thinks of yourself as like somebody who thinks about AI a lot. This stuff is going to matter to everybody. And I guess that brings me to one of the things that I'm looking forward to in 2024, that I, if I'm the, if I'm the girl in the cartoon, I've got this in my bag slung over my shoulder that I'm taking it with me to the next year. And that is all of us, each and every one of us, being more involved in conversations around tech. Like, I do think I have seen a shift this year around how regular people, like you and me and people listening, you know, are thinking about technology and talking about technology.

I think that we are done with this idea that tech is only decided by a bunch of, like, super smart, genius white guys who don't have to be accountable to us at all because we're, like, not smart enough to understand the brilliance that they do. That is out. I think that in 2023, we are coming to the realization that these people, have been using that dynamic as a way to essentially like get rich off of us. And I think that we're going to start asking some questions about that dynamic and pushing back.

Like should these companies and tech leaders be able to just get rich off of us without us asking any questions or having any say? I think I'm starting to see people be like, no, actually, I am smart enough to understand that I'm being taken advantage of and exploited. And I have questions about that. So let's keep asking those questions in 2024. Let's bring that dynamic into the new year with us. Yes.

Yes. And, of course, always your show is such a good part of that and part of that conversation. So very eagerly awaiting the next season. Do you call it seasons, Bridget? We call it seasons, but they're really just like when I get tired of making the show and I have to take a break. So we are taking a break, but we'll be back real soon. Well, you're here with us answering those questions and asking those questions

and allowing us to ask you those questions. So we are very grateful for that and excited for that for the new year. Yes, yes. And we are hoping maybe we'll get to hang out RRL and do some things in 2024. One day. One day.

It's going to happen soon. Stay tuned, folks. Yes. Well, Bridget, thank you so much as always for being here at the end of this year. Where can the good listeners find you? You can check out my podcast. There are no girls on the internet on IHeartRadio.

You can find me on Instagram at Bridget Marie in D.C. Or on Twitter at Bridget Marie. Yes. And definitely go do that listeners. If you haven't already, Bridget, I hope you have a good relaxing holiday, weirdo Christmas. Yes. Same to you all. Happy, merry, whatever, to all of y'all.

Yes. Thank you. and listeners. If you would like to contact us, you can or email us Stephanie and Momstuff at iHeartMedia.com. You can find us on Twitter at MomStop Podcast or an Instagram and TikTok at Stefan Never Told You. We have a T-Public store and we do have a book.

Thanks as always to our super producer Christina, our executive producer Maya, and our contributor, Joey. Thank you and happy holidays. Yes, yes. And thanks to you for listening. Stefan Never Told You's a projection of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts from MyHeart Radio, you can check out the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite.

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