There Are No Girls on the Internet - Zuckerberg’s glow up; Bumble Fumble; Celebrity Digital Guillotine; Better Help gets busted – NEWS ROUNDUP

Episode Date: May 18, 2024

The weekly news roundup is back! Bridget’s piece on Elizabeth Holmes’ hair: https://www.instyle.com/hair/elizabeth-holmes-white-privilege-messy-hair Zuck's new style was on full display at his birthday: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/rapper-swag-zuck-gone-too-085234346.html #Blockout2024: Why people are blocking celebrities on social media: https://mashable.com/article/tiktok-blockout-2024-celebrity-met-gala About 800,000 BetterHelp online therapy customers receive refund notices for privacy violations: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/betterhelp-online-therapy-customers-receive-refunds-over-data-misuse-rcna151546 On Instagram, a Jewelry Ad Draws Solicitations for Sex With a 5-Year-Old: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/us/instagram-child-safety.html Women no longer have to make the first move on Bumble. Will it make the app better? https://www.npr.org/2024/05/06/1249296671/bumble-dating-apps-women-opening-moves Bumble apologizes for its mean anti-celibacy ad fumble: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/14/24156746/bumble-dating-app-anti-celibacy-billboard-ad-apology See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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844-844-I-Hart. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Welcome to There are No Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of identity, technology, and social media. And this is another installment of our weekly news roundup where we break down and explain all the different news stories from the Internet that you might have missed. Yes, it has been a while since we've done one of these. I took a little bit of a break from the news, but now we are back and better than ever.

Mike, you are also back. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Bridget. It's great to be back. It has indeed been a minute. It's been a lot of tech news in that time, and it's great to be here talking with you again. I'm a little bit distracted because I'm scrolling through these like polished Mark Zuckerberg pictures. Have you seen these? I have, yeah. It's like a whole new Zuck. Someone from Mark Zuckerberg or Meta PR is working overtime to try to convince us the public that Mark Zuckerberg is a more polished, more stylish, more refined kind of.

guy and far be it of me to spend a lot of time talking about the sartorial choices of a tech leader. However, we know there is a ton of precedent for tech leaders using their fashion and style and hair to try to project things at us the public. So it does kind of seem like their game to be talking about Mark Zuckerberg, rock at a chain at his 40th birthday party, etc., etc., clearly trying to signal to us that he's a little more polished, a little more refined, a little more stylish. Yeah, right. You've, you know, you've talked about this before. Didn't you write a whole op-ed about Elizabeth Holmes's hair and her active choices to have questionably nourished-looking hair?

Good memory. I definitely did. I wrote a whole piece about Elizabeth Holmes's hair choices. If you remember her, she definitely was known for a certain type of hairstyle that I think was with intention. It did not look nourished or conditioned. And I think that was by choice. We'll throw the article in the show notes if you want more information. But she was definitely somebody who knew how to use her fashion and hair to signal a certain kind of thing to us. Yeah. I think you're right that, you know, all of these tech leaders do that. You know, they get up on a stage. There's a lot of photos of them. It's all, I think, pretty deliberate. And so like for this new Zuckerberg rebrand, do you think they brought in the Rick Perry guy, the guy who brought up?

brought us the smart Rick Perry, the one who wears glasses. Oh, that was my favorite, like, re-brand when it was like, they put him in glasses and it was like, guess what, y'all? Rick Perry is smart now. From the team that brought you smart Rick Perry comes Zuckerberg glow up. Zuckerberg glow up. The Zuckerlow up. The Zuckerlow. So basically in these pictures, there's one, he made an announcement about meta-AI, and he was wearing like a silver, like a silver Cuban-linked chain.

And everyone was like, oh, nice chain. And then somebody, like, used AI deepfakes to put a little, like, one of those kind of thin beards on him. So if you, if you saw that picture, the chain that was legit, the beard that was not legit. But even though that picture wasn't real, it really highlights my belief that what contouring makeup is for some women, beards are for some men. Like a beard can completely change the way a man's face looks.

can like, it is like magic. Yeah, absolutely. Beard really changes a man's face. So it sounds like over the weekend, Zuckerberg had a birthday party where for the party, his wife recreated all of the places that he lived

when he was growing up. So like, his Harvard dorm room where he created Facebook. And there are all these pictures of him wearing like a fitted black tea and a chain, like in a fake dorm room. kind of diorama, like adult-sized diorama.

The whole thing is like, I don't know, it's clear to me that somebody wants us to think of Mark Zuckerberg as this affable guy with friends and family who love him. You know what I mean? That's that clear to me that that's what we're all supposed to be taking away from this. God, I have to look for those photos of him in the dorm rooms with a chain because that was definitely a type of guy in Boston in like the early 2000s when he was there. That's when I was in dorms in Boston.

And like, that was definitely type of guy, like fitted black shirt, chain, usually not like, you know, a 40-something-year-old Zuckerberg. What a nice and strange gift from his wife. The pictures are unreal. I did see someone comparing it to Marie Antoinette, that apparently Marie Antoinette had built an entire fake village in Versailles that was equal. equipped with like a working farm and fake people to work it so that whatever she wanted to pretend to be a peasant girl on the farm, she could do that. And somebody compared Mark Zuckerberg's kind of fake set pieces of his college dorm and like crappy first apartment to that, which I thought was kind of funny. That's actually a pretty good segue into what I want to talk about first,

which is the digital guillotine movement, aka Digitine. If you don't know what that is, basically people on social media are using hashtags like hashtag let them eat cake, hashtag blockout 24, and hashtag celebrity blocklist to rally people to boycott celebrities like Zendaya, Taylor Swift, and the Kardashians. Here's how Mashable describes it. Labelled, quote, celebrity blackout 24 and Digitine, aka the digital guillotine, the movement is a protest against celebrity culture, specifically blocking people of influence who have not yet used their power or privilege to take a stance on the humanitarian crisis that has devastated millions. So this all seems to have really been sparked by the Met Gallo last week.

The night of the Mecgala was also the night that airstrikes targeted Ratha in Gaza, which is an enclave on the border of the Gaza Strip, which is really key for transporting aid and supplies to Palestinians. So there has been a lot of chatter about the Met Galla as this symbol for out of touch, wealthy celebrities, really reveling in their privilege and opulence, while just a few blocks away, protesters are on the streets calling for a ceasefire in Palestine. People were even comparing this to the Hunger Games.

And honestly, from like an optics perspective, it is kind of hard to disagree. I will say that for what it's worth, I don't really feel like I have a clear take here. On the one hand, I totally get how it looks very out of touch to have these celebrities like blanching their wealth while so much is going on in the world.

I don't say that to say that I'm like, above paying attention to the mechala. In fact, I own a T-shirt that says Rihanna is my pope, which is a reference to the time that Rihanna dressed as the pope at the mechala. But I didn't even watch it this year and I didn't even really pay attention to any of the coverage or any of the like online posts about it, in part because Kande Nast staff were boycotting the mechala. So I was like, I'm not going to pay attention.

And also it just seemed like kind of boring. Like not in a not in a like I'm above this kind of way. More Anna like this just doesn't seem like a good use. of my time to be paying attention to kind of way. I also really get the argument around how much money is spent at the mecgala. I've seen people say things like, oh, well, the mech gala is really expensive, but celebrities aren't actually paying to attend. And of course, all the proceeds from the mecgala goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Arts

Costume Institute, which is like a worthy cause, and that's true. But I also feel that like bringing that up feels like a bit of a dodge to what people are pointing out when they are talking about the mech gala, which is like this dissonance between the mecgala and what is going on in the world, which I think is like a valid point. And I don't think people should just be dismissing that. However, I also don't want this to be a conversation where women are just being scolded for enjoying things like deemed trivial, right? It's so easy to fall into that. This could sort of be a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I do feel a little bit weird about the entire thing.

Like, truthfully, there has been a humanitarian crisis in Palestine for many, many years, right? And in all of those years, there were met gala's and rich celebrities doing rich celebrity things. You know, I think there's an element of people scolding celebrities for partying while there's a big human rights crisis going on. But it seems to me that has been the dynamic for a very long time. And like, I don't know, it almost sort of reads like, how dare you go to a party when I have just started being more tuned into this.

situation in Palestine that has been ongoing for many years, which I'm not sure that is a useful stance. But that said, counterpoint, some of these people seem freaking insufferable, and it kind of almost sounds like they were asking for it. So I'm talking about people like influencer Haley Bailey Khalil, who goes by Haley Bailey on TikTok, who posted a video of herself at the Mechalla pre-event, lip-sinking to the alleged Marie Antoinette quote, let them eat cake, from the Sophia Coppola 2006 movie Marie Antoinette, which is a masterpiece, go see it. However, I just learned this. Did you know that Marie Antoinette might not have actually even ever said, let them eat cake?

I did not know that. I thought it was an actual quote. No, historians don't even think she ever actually said that. Huh. Fascinating. So basically, this influencer really not something I would have recommended she do. She posted a video from the MacGala, lip-syncing. Marie Antoinette's let them eat cake.

And people, unsurprisingly, did not like this. And so this whole celebrity blockout thing started with TikTok user Ray, who goes by Lady from the Outside, who really kicked off the movement, specifically asking for TikTok users to unfollow Bailey, the influencer who made that Let Them Eat Cake video from the Met Gala, specifically asking for users to block her in particular. But now it has led the people making lists of celebrities to block just generally who have not used their platforms to speak up. Here's what Ray said about the celebrity blockout movement on TikTok.

She said, we gave them their platforms. It's time to take it back. Take our views away. Our likes, our comments, our money. Now, there has been a suggestion that this movement could be making a real dent in some celebrities' social media followings. Middle East Monitor reported that according to Social Blade, a U.S.-based social media and a Lids website, it has caused some celebrities to lose followers.

They reported that Selena Gomez lost 1 million followers on Instagram and 100,000 on X. Zendaya lost 153,000 followers on Instagram and 40,000 on X. Kim Kardashian lost 780,000 followers on Instagram and her sister Kylie Jenner lost 540,000 followers on Instagram and 53,000 followers on X. So I would say those are like decent chunks of followings that they have lost. However, I don't know, if you have millions and millions and millions of followers, I don't know that that, it seems like a drop in the bucket. I don't know, I don't know that they're really going to feel this in their wallets, I guess is what I'm saying, if that is the intent of this movement. Yeah. I mean, I, and you said the hashtag was digitine, like a mashup of

digital and guillotine? That's right. That's like pretty intense, you know? Like, you can be mad at celebrities, but I don't know. I feel like maybe invoking the French Revolution and the reign of terror specifically is like not what we need in 2024. Maybe these people feel differently. Mike doesn't make it's time to roll in the gallows. Yeah, like, maybe not. Yeah, I mean, I'm not necessarily saying that, you know, who knows who's going to be in power when, you know. I'm not trying to be some sort of counter-revolutionary here.

I mean, I kind of, I'm, I guess I'm a little bit conflicted. I do think this whole thing represents where we are when it comes to celebrity right now. I think that unless you are somebody who was a hardcore stand of somebody, I don't think that in general, people are really looking to celebrities the same way that maybe they once were. Ultimately, I personally just do not have any kind of faith in celebrity whatsoever. Like, obviously, I think it's like nice and good or whatever when they use their platforms for good and they should do that and all of that. but I just think that we should be looking the celebrities less in general. And truly, if there was one moment in the recent past that I think solidified how useless celebrity is and how we all should be looking to celebrity less for all things,

it was the 2020 Imagine video when it was the early days of COVID and celebrities were like, you know what? Everyone is in their houses. People are scared. You know what we can offer the world, us singing John Lennon's Imagine. Do you remember this? I do. Yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe that was like, I don't know that caused the end of celebrity, but it definitely does

seem like a good indicator that things are not like they were, right? Like, yeah, we, celebrities do not have that place in culture that they used to. They're just like, they're just like us, right? It's like page five, everywhere. Yeah, I really think of that video. That imagined video is my Roman Empire. I always wonder,

do people, our celebrities like, well, I only got roped into this because Gal Godot asked me or Will Farrell asked me, he rope me into it. Like, like, do celebrities look at who convinced them to do that? And they're like, why did I get mixed up in that? And I really see it in conjunction with, I know you're not going to know what this is, so bear with me. But the 2014 selfie that Ellen took at the Oscar, where it's like Ellen and Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence and Kevin Spacey, I think. Like it's like a bunch of celebrities all crowded into a selfie that Ellen is taking. And I remember when it came out, everybody was like losing their mind. Like, oh my God, all these celebrities together.

Oh my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And it's just funny now how like five years later, six years later in 2020, how collectively we were like, we don't need celebrities right now. we don't want to see this. Yeah, not like that. Yeah, I guess is it influencers now?

Is it nobody? Is it Mr. Beast? You keep trying to sprinkle Mr. Beast into conversation. And then you'll be like, I don't want to talk about him. I don't want any follow-up. I want to reference him and I want to move on. I guess I'm curious, yeah. I don't get it.

You've not done this on the mic, so listeners have no idea what I'm talking about. But in non-recorded conversation, you will reference Mr. Beast. Like, who is this Mr. Beast? Why is he everywhere? Why am I reading about him in the New York Times? And I'll start to go, like, tell you and you're like, I don't actually want to know. I just want to, like, raise the question. I'm just asking questions, Bridget. Yeah, you're just asking questions that need answers about Mr. Beast.

Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Bodenkirk 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 yard, but they're open to change.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to 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 ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

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Last night, a blown call changed the game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies,

and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls,

we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants. answer. Sports Slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. And we're back. So who else is just asking questions? The FTC to BetterHelp.

And if you get your therapy and mental health services from BetterHelp, you might have gotten a notice that we'll be getting an insultingly low refund soon. Around 800,000 customers of the online therapy platform BetterHelp will start getting refund notices related to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission because last year, BetterHelp agreed to pay $7.8 million to settle the FTC charges that it co-opted user data, including personal health questions for advertising purposes, sharing sensitive information with social media platforms like Facebook and Snapchat. So the FTC alleges that BetterHelp not only failed to get consent before sharing this data, they also misled users by promising they would keep their data private, but then sharing it with advertising companies like Meta and Snapchat. Now, BetterHelp did not admit to any of this, although they are paying the settlement. They said in a statement this week that they were, quote, deeply committed to the privacy of our members

and we value the trust people put at us by using our services. So I don't know how deeply committed to the privacy of their members they can be if they're just given their sensitive information to whoever wants it for money. Yeah. And after telling people that they wouldn't do that, that they would keep their information private. Yeah, it was some pretty damning allegations. And this is something that you have particular expertise in, right, Mike? Yeah, some.

I mean, it's not like, you know, rocket science, the idea that when you are dealing with people's sensitive health information and you tell them that it will be kept private, they could reasonably expect that it would be kept private and not shared with advertising companies to market goods to them. You know, it was, I think I was reading the FTC complaint here, and it seemed like that misleading aspect was a big core part of their complaint. So it is not just better help. Eligible refund customers include anybody who paid for.

for services on BetterHelp or any of its affiliated websites that cater to certain communities like youth or queer people, places like teen counseling, faithful counseling, or pride counseling. If you use those services from August 1st, 2017 to December 31st, 2020, you are eligible for a refund. Okay, so you are a member of a vulnerable community, right? Your therapy app has just gotten pinched for selling your deepest, most intimate details that you thought you were sharing with your mental health professional and them alone, right? So now better help is like, okay, maybe we did this.

We need to compensate you for this wrongdoing. What do you think is a number amount that you think is commiserate with that was what happened there? Like, what is the value of my privacy? Like, how much would it be worth to me to not unwittingly share personal? personal information about me and my health? How much would that be worth? Yes. I don't know.

I mean, that seems like some pretty big stuff. It's hard to put a dollar amount on that kind of personal information, you know? How about less than 10 of them? Dollars. How about less than $10? People got less than $10. When I saw that, it's just, it's, I'm a big proponent of like, take their little money, like, even if it's a dollar,

get your coffee, whatever, $10 is like insultingly low for what they have been alleged to have done wrong. Selling the most intimate data and then telling people like, don't worry, it's going to be between you and a doctor and Snapchat and Mark Zuckerberg and his stylist team. And like, it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Here's how Ella Unchained put it on threads. Better help sold my data to Facebook and all I got was this $9.72 refund. corporate accountability is a joke. And I completely agree. When I saw that amount of money, I was like, shocked that that is how low that they were

giving out. And I think that thread, is that what we're calling threads? I think that thread or whatever post on threads really nails how I feel about it that tech platforms and lax policy and lack of accountability have created this dynamic where nothing private or intimate about us is not for sale. Even if they tell you that it's not for sale, it is still for sale. even the stuff that you talk about with your mental health professional, a dynamic that we once really understood as private and sacred and intimate, even that is for sale. And when they sell it

in a way that the government says it breaks the law, they will barely face any consequences for it. And the compensation that you as the person who is exploited will get from that will be not just low, insultingly low, like an embarrassingly low. Yeah, you're right. It really speaks to the the expectation we have that people don't have privacy, that all of our private information is available to be sold and traded and used to market us goods. And I think that's a really destructive norm to have. And, you know, it's not, like, in some ways, it's just endemic to everything being online. right? Like it's just a fact of the digital world that every product, every service is just like one business entity away from an advertising company who's trying to use your eyeballs and your attention to sell you stuff.

And so there's just like so much pressure there and incentive to violate people's privacy and use personal information to surface them advertising that just wasn't. there in previous eras of like health in, you know, personal health information when it was all kept in paper files at a hospital. They just didn't have the opportunity or the incentive to try to use that for advertising. Whereas now that's, you know, for companies like better help. I think probably a big part of their business model is advertising. Yeah. And I guess just philosophically, I think that we should all be stopping to wonder, like, do we want the most intimate parts of who we are, the parts that we share when we're vulnerable, the parts that we share when we're told no one else will hear them except for this one health professional? Do we want that to be fair game to be taken from us and used to exploit us? I just, you know, you know I went to Catholic school.

It would be like if you did confession and you confessed something in the confessional, which you were told was between you and your religious leader. And then the next thing you know, it's like, oh, did you cheat on your spouse? Here's an advertisement for a spouse cheating. Like, you're like, wait a minute, what? Like that would be, we would not accept that. So, like, I think it's really like a philosophical thing of like, do we want these very intimate things that we share to just be fodder to exploit us further? And for some tech company to make money from us, I argue no. This indulgence has been brought to you by Ashley Madison.

I'm sure somebody somewhere is working on, if it doesn't exist already, somebody somewhere is working on like a confessional app where when you make the confession, how they make money is selling the data about the confession about you. Totally. Someone has that app. You can't convince me that it's not exist. Yeah. And I think I totally agree. There's there needs to be more, I don't know, safeguards against this, right? Like we need a federal law, protecting privacy. We don't have that, right? So we're left with companies like better help that can do things like this and, you know, point to the fact that it's kind of a new space and there aren't really rules so maybe they can, you know, write a check and not have to admit to any wrongdoing. What we need are some like clear standards around privacy where, you know, as a society and, you know, backed up by laws, we've clearly stated that this sort of thing is not okay.

Privacy is worth something. And hopefully that is more than $9.72. Yes. So the reason that I wanted to talk about this is because we actually did an episode about better help in the wake of the Astro World crowd crush incident that left a bunch of people, including children dead. I was really shaken up by that story, especially when in the wake of that, the organizers announced that they were going to be offering free, like a free trial of better health, mental health services. That whole thing that's left a terrible taste in my mouth from the fact that they were, that it was better help to begin with and not like go talk to a licensed mental health professional in your community or whatever.

And the fact that it was like, I think they were offering like three months or something. And I'm like, oh, yeah, if you almost died at a crowd crush incident, you might need more than a free BetterHelp trial to help you navigate that. And it just felt to be like, oh, these people were harmed. And now to compensate for that harm, they are going to be served up for another platform that will only further exploit and take from them. I found it really despicable. And so one of the things that came up in that episode that we did about BetterHelp was the relationship that BetterHelp has with the podcasting industry. If you listen to podcasts, which I guess you obviously do because you're hearing me say this right now, or I guess maybe you're my upstairs neighbor who is like listening to me record this, I bet. You know, if you listen to podcasts, you've probably heard an ad for BetterHelp or two.

According to NBC, in March, BetterHelp spent $8.3 million on podcast opportunities, nearly double the next biggest sponsor, which is Amazon. And also, just to put that in context, they spent $8.3 million on podcast. Podcasting Opportunity Advertising in March alone, what they had to pay for misusing the data of almost a million people was $7.8 million. So there's really, it's like, when I say that it feels like a slap on the wrist or a drop in the bucket to them, that is what I mean. They could just pull their advertising from podcasts for a month, and it would still be more than they paid out to these people whose data they misused.

And despite the fact that we have made episodes talking about better help and they're sometimes not so great policies. They have reached out to us to advertise on this podcast. And it kind of goes back to something that came up in our Andrew Huberman episodes that, you know, podcasting is this weird space where it's a business and that in a lot of cases you just have to take ads to make sure that the people who make the show can continue to be paid. But you walk this line of not wanting to take money from companies whose practices are not on

the level with wanting to keep the lights on. And so I don't want to make it seem like I'm gloating that like, oh, podcasters who made ads for BetterHelp are bad and they should be doing XYZ because I recognize, like, as a podcaster, I completely get that it is complicated. But because BetterHelp took up so much space in the podcasting landscape, I just think it's important to talk about this on a podcast. And if you've heard BetterHelp ads and you've thought about using BetterHelp, this is just information and context that you should know about how a government says, they have been exploiting people who pay for their services. Okay, so a quick heads up that this story does involve sex crimes against children. A New York Times piece just added a lot more context to a story that we've been talking about a ton on the podcast. And that is the way that Instagram has been knowingly connecting children to adult men who are sexually interested in kids.

So people who run brands related to children for products like children's jewelry or children's clothing, will run paid ads on Instagram, and they'll tell Instagram, like, I want to show these ads to people who are interested in things related to kids, like obviously trying to reach moms who might buy kids clothing or kids jewelry, which makes a ton of sense. But then they will look at their back-end data, and that data will show them that Instagram is actually serving those ads, which are pictures of kids using these products, to adult men. This whole thing started when a mom happened to reach out. to the New York Times after seeing their previous reporting. The New York Times writes, When a children's jewelry maker began advertising on Instagram, she promoted photos of a five-year-old girl

wearing a sparkly charm to users interested in parenting children ballet and other topics identified by meta as appealing mostly to women. But when the merchant got the automated results of her ad campaign from Instagram, the opposite had happened. The ads had gone almost entirely to adult men. Perplexed and concerned, the merchant contacted the New York Times, which had recently published multiple articles

about the abuse of children on social media platforms. In February, the Times investigative Instagram accounts run by parents for their young daughters and the dark underworld of men who have sexualized interactions with those accounts. With the photos from the jewelry ads in hand, the Times set out to understand why they attracted an unwanted audience.

Test ads run by the Times using the same photos with no text, not only replicated the merchant's experience, they drew the attention of convicted sex offenders and other men whose accounts indicated a sexual interest in children or who wrote sexual messages. So the Times was like, we're going to get to the bottom of this. They did an investigation where their reporters opened two Instagram accounts and promoted posts showing a five-year-old girl. Her face turned away from the camera, wearing a tank top and a charm.

Then separate posts showed the clothing and jewelry without the child model or with a black box kind of covering her up. All of the paid ads were promoted to people interested in topics like childhood, dance, and cheerleading, which meta's audience tools estimated as predominantly women. What they found from this experiment is horrifying. Aside from reaching a surprisingly large proportion of men, the ads got direct responses from dozens of Instagram users, including phone calls from two accused sex offenders,

offers to pay the child for sexual acts and professions of love. Ugh, that is gross. That seems like the sort of thing that... we should be involved in. Well, yeah, and I guess what makes it even more horrifying is that all of this really suggests that the platform's algorithms are playing a role in directing these men to photos of children to sexualize and DM and reach out to. And so previously we had talked about this bombshell New York Times investigation about

how Instagram was using a loophole to allow grown adult men to connect directly with children, as young as like 5, 6, 7 on the platform by allowing men to subscribe to these like mommy run accounts that were set up on behalf of the children because adults are not meant to be able to subscribe to the accounts of kids. But if the account is technically like a mom run account, that is a loophole where adults can subscribe to the content of kids. And like this New York Times investigation showed that people who worked at Facebook were like, oh, this seems to be. a loophole that is allowing grown men to connect with children. So Facebook was certainly aware this was happening, like their own engineers were telling them this was happening. And so this new report says there is a lot of overlap between the men who are connecting to children via these mom-run accounts and the men for whom the algorithm is surfacing this paid ad content involving kids.

The New York Times writes, an analysis of the users who interacted with these ads posted by the Times found an overlap between these two worlds. About three dozen of the men followed child influencer accounts that were run by parents and were previously studied by the Times. One followed 140 of them. In addition, nearly a hundred of the men followed accounts featured or advertising adult pornography, which is barred under Instagram's rules. So all of this is like pretty horrifying, pretty terrible. Do you want to take a guess at Instagram's response to all of this? Was it like a snappy sweater and a silver chain? It was, have you seen Mark Zuckerberg's new look?

People are saying he has a hashtag glow up. No, their response was, it's really not that big of a deal. Danny Lever, a spokesperson for meta, dismissed the Times ad test as, quote, a manufactured experience that failed to account for the many factors that contribute to who ultimately sees an ad and suggested that it was flawed and unsound to draw conclusions from limited data. This really reminds me of how Twitter responded when media matters and other watchdog organizations were pointing out these dark pockets where nefarious people were using the platform together. And they were like, oh, well, you would only see that if you met XYZ circumstances. That's manufactured

data. But that is exactly the point. Like pedophiles are taking advantage of these unexamined corners of the platform to connect with kids. So even if they're saying, well, most people wouldn't get these results. And most people that wouldn't have this experience, that is exactly what these people are saying, is that pedophiles are taking advantage of the fact that this is a little bit under the radar to operate in plain sight. So the way that Facebook is responding, it makes me feel like they don't really understand what's actually the threat here. Yeah. And I think I totally agree that it sounds a lot like that way the way Twitter responded to that Media Matters investigation of like how easy it was to get to hateful comment through specific searches.

But this actually feels substantially different from that. When you were describing what the Times did, it sounded like a quite good experiment that was set up using paid ads to see what the algorithm would do and to, you know, who it would surface this ad to. So, you know, this spokesperson can say that the methodology was flawed and unsound. But when you described it to me, it sounded pretty sound. Well, what's interesting is that the New York Times talked to, like, former Facebook engineers. And then they talked to Peter Sapiensky, a research scientist at Northeastern University,

who specializes in testing online algorithms. And he basically said that, like, it sounds like these algorithms are working as intended and as designed by Facebook. So what's really interesting to me is that the potential algorithmic reason that this is happening, which is that most ads on Instagram are designed to reach women because women are more likely to be buying stuff from Instagram ads. And so we're like a more competitive audience. However, reaching men is a lot easier.

Peter Sapiensky, that research scientist at Northeastern, put it this way. He said that advertisers compete with one another to reach women because they dominate U.S. consumer spending. He said as a result, the algorithm probably focused on highly interested, easier to reach men who had interacted with similar content. The men do engage, he said, the machine is doing exactly what you want it to do. Yeah, like on one level that is what the machine is supposed to do, on another level, it seems pretty bad that that is what the machine is supposed to do. Like, there should probably be something to prevent that. from happening. So it's horrifying as all of this is. The Times also looked into the kind of men who were

DMing and engaging with these accounts, some of whom use their real names or linked to their real identities and their Facebook pages. And some of them have convictions for sex crimes against children. Now, per meta's rules, people who are sex offenders or have been convicted of sex crimes against kids are not allowed to have Instagram accounts. However, these people did have Instagram accounts. And it's not clear how they did have Instagram accounts. Like they're meant to be registering their email addresses and META has a program that is meant to keep them from having these accounts. I don't know why or how, but that did not work. So when the New York Times used META's internal tool to flag these accounts and tell Facebook like,

hey, these people have been convicted of sex crimes against kids or, hey, these people are on sex offender registries. Per your rules, they should not have Instagram accounts. they used meta's own internal tools to flag these accounts, and meta did not remove them. According to the New York Times, the accounts remained online for about a week until the Times flagged them to a company spokesperson. And so I guess this is my point. If you have these rules in place, but then do nothing to make sure that they are followed, in what way is it a meaningful rule? The fact that your own tool that you internally use to flag accounts that should not be on your platform, that the New York Times could be flagging people who have been convicted of sex crimes against kids

that you know are then using your platform to try to connect with children sexually, and you just leave them up until the New York Times has to directly reach out to a spokesperson. I would say that something is very broken, but per the algorithm expert at Northeastern, things are working as intended. And so, you know, it's really hard to say that something is broken. when it actually kind of seems like things are working like they were designed to work. Yeah, well said.

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Let's get right back into it. Okay, so we have to talk about what is being called on the internet, Bumble Fumble. So there is a ton going on in the dating app scene right now, namely that a lot of women are just fed up with dating apps. As y'all might recall, Bumble, the dating app founded by Whitney Wolf heard used to have this thing where their whole sort of gimmick was that the women on the dating app would have to message first. And you couldn't talk to a woman without her being the first.

first person to initiate conversation. But last week, they announced they are not doing that anymore. According to NPR, women can now add prompts to their profiles for men to respond to for same sex and non-binary users. Either person can set and respond to these prompts called opening moves. This is all happening against a backdrop of, I guess, what you could call dating app fatigue. People are sort of sick of dating apps. I think that the idea that you would have to put so much work in to actually find a suitable mate. I also think there's some screen time fatigue happening where the idea that you would be on your phone, on your screen all the time, and that that is the key to finding your mate. I think a lot of people are just fed up with that. So listen, I have to say,

like, I am fascinated by the dating app Bumble as a company. When it first started, the creator, Whitney Wolf Hurd was working at Tinder. And in 2014, she was part of a team that launched Bumble. after this pretty tumultuous departure from Tinder, which she also helped launch. According to NPR, she had this string of bad relationships, one of which even involved a sexual harassment lawsuit against one of Tinder's co-founders, which was later settled. So she used all of this experience to build a platform that put more power in the hands of women. So all of that sounds great, right?

Like more power and the women messaging first, like that gives women a lot. more autonomy, right? Sounds great. However, NPR spoke to Demona Hoffman, an online dating coach and the author of the book, F. The Fairy Tale, who basically said this whole women message first thing just leads a lot of women feeling like they have to do the bulk of the work on dating sites and like of the bulk of the work to like keep the conversation going, keep things moving, is on them, which if you are already working a full-time job, who wants dating to feel like another job? like dating is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be enjoyable. Who wants something that's like, oh yeah, more work piled on it. And because it's dating apps and they're like algorithmically

generated, at the end of the day, we're only surfacing you the duds. Not the duds. Oh man. It's a rough group to be in, the dud group. Yeah. I mean, your mileage may vary for what a dud is to you, but you know a dud when you see one. And algorithms know who the duds are. and they, those are the only profiles they surface to you unless you are willing to pay for premium. Then they might show you somebody that you might actually want to have sex with. But until you pay up, it's duds. Oh, poor broke duds. So I think all of this is kind of adding to this backdrop of dating app fatigue that people, particularly women, are feeling with these, these apps.

However, Whitney will have heard the co-founder of Bumble. actually has suggested an answer. Your AI could just go on a date for you. Here's what she said. If you want to get really out there, there's a world where your AI dating concierge could go on a date for you with other dating concierges. Truly, and then you don't have to talk to 600 people. It will scan all of San Francisco for you and say, these are the three people you really ought to meet. So, for example, you could in the near future be talking to your AI dating concierge and share your insecurities. I've just come out of a breakup. I've got commitment issues. And it could help you train yourself into a better way of thinking about yourself. Sounds nice, but also creepy.

And also, like, come on, that's, that's not going to work. I would be remiss if I did not mention there was literally a Black Mirror episode about two people's AIs dating each other within the framework of a dating app. And like, that's how they find each other and know they're compatible. So given the story that we talked about earlier about better help, about how they just give the most intimate data and information about us to Facebook and Snapchat and whoever else for money, I think we really should be wary of this kind of AI integration into our romantic and sexual lives. So I know that the idea of an AI dating concierge is very different from like an AI enabled chatbot or love bot or a sex bot or romantic partner. but Mozilla Foundation looked into it and found it in an analysis of 11 romantic chatbot apps released in February that nearly every app tested, sells user data, shares it for advertising, or doesn't provide adequate information about any of these points in its privacy policies.

So basically, it's just the Wild Wild West already when it comes to AI and romance. And I think these kinds of things become even more concerning for like queer or, or gender expansive people? Like, are you someplace where it's safe to have AI offering up intimate information about who you are and your identity to a potential date that you yourself have not personally vetted? Like, are you safe if that information has pretty much no policies around who that platform is going to share it with, how they will share it with them, what third parties will have access to it? You know, I have said this before that when you're talking about connecting with people in ways that are intimate and happening IRL, safety and privacy isn't just a nice to have.

Like, it genuinely does matter. And I'm just not sure that I would trust AI designed by like mostly white, straight cis men that we know is like buggy and full of problems to do that for me if the stakes really were high. Yeah, the stakes definitely do seem pretty high. Yeah, especially if you're dating someplace where it's not safe to be your identity. If you're queer or trans or gay, like this is real. So we have to talk about those bumble ads, which are sort of being referred to as the bumble-fumble. When I first saw this reported, I was like, wow, they're really missing an opportunity to, like, make Bumble-fumble a thing. But we got there eventually, so Bumble-fumble.

Basically, Bumble released these billboards saying things like, you know, full well, event. thou of celibacy is not the answer, and thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun. The ads were criticized, and Bumble apologized saying, we made a mistake. Our ads referencing celibacy were an attempt to lean into a community frustrated by modern dating. And instead of bringing joy and humor, we unintentionally did the opposite. So I actually saw a lot of the criticism of these billboards. And people were saying, like, oh, they're knocking celibacy as a lifestyle, all of that. Totally get that. But I actually have a different take. So I think that if anything, the problem that Bumble was actually like making light of in a way that was in poor taste is that Bumble is just no longer serving women who they say is their like main intended user base. So more and more women are just getting off of these platforms. And on top of that, more and more bots are on these platforms too. Like I recently

watch the Ashley Madison documentary on Netflix. And it is so wild how they're basically like, oh yeah, on top of the like cheating, most of the time we were just like charging stupid men $20 a month to chat with bots and other men and themselves. Right. So like dating apps are kind of a like house of cards where women have been like, this sucks. We're leaving. And these platforms are like, oh God, we have to charge men who want to be in conversation. with women for something, and a lot of that is buts. And so I actually see these ads as almost this like weird tone death plea to women to come back to these platforms, even though these platforms are kind of acknowledging that they failed them because the platforms need women on them

to make money. And so I totally see what people who are saying, like, oh, this was a dig on celibacy are saying. But I think it's actually more insulting than that. I think what these platforms are saying is like, listen, women, we need you on this platform to make money. So like, what are you going to do, be celibate? No way. Come back to our platform. Yeah, it does feel a little like desperate and like trying to be edgy, but just coming off as desperate, which is definitely not a good look if you've ever been on a dating platform. Especially if you are the dating platform. And I think Desperate is the right word for it. And I just feel like I wish we lived in a world where what these platforms were offering was functionally and meaningfully just something better,

something that feels like respect and fun and exploration and excitement, not just fatigue. Like, I don't know. I think it mirrors a lot of the different ways that people are feeling about digital experience these days, but it's just fatigue. So Bumble, really fumble, on this one. I'm glad they apologize, but I think the problem is deeper than just these billboards. I think that they are not serving women. Women are smart enough

to not stick around where they are not having good experiences and where it's clear that they, you know, aren't wanted or aren't valued. And I think it's a real, it's a real problem not just for the women that they're failing to serve, but also for their business model. Like you can't just have

a dynamic that women feel like they're being mistreated. and not served and expect them to continue showing up for more of the same. Yeah, and maybe the problem is even broader and deeper that, you know, the problem they're trying to solve is people lacking human connection in their life. And there's just a fundamental tension of offering people a digital tool to solve that problem where the financial success of that digital tool depends on people continuing to use that tool and continuing to engage with it and pay subscription fees month after month.

Yes. You know, you can have one, but you can't have them both. And I fundamentally believe, you know, in later on in this conversation with Bloomberg that Wendy Wolf heard had about the future of online dating, she was talking about this loneliness, epidemic that we're all in. And that's very real, but I'm not sure that the people who have given us our current tech and digital landscape are the same ones that I would trust or want to be using technology to solve our current loneliness crisis. Like the people that got us into our current situation are not the people that I would trust to get us out of it. Like,

if you drove my car into a ditch, I don't think I would trust you to drive it out of the ditch. I might say, it's time for you to sit in the backseat to let somebody else take a turn at the wheel. Yeah. Well, Mike, thanks for being in the passenger seat on this journey through this week's tech stories. I appreciate it. Bridget, it's always a pleasant ride. And let's do it again sometime soon.

And thanks to all of you for listening. I will see you on the internet. 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 tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody. 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. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, write and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts,

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