TRASHFUTURE - Facebook Thinks I Look Like a Snack: Nudes, Nazis, and Ember ft. Maya Kosoff

Episode Date: November 14, 2017

Milo (@milo_edwards) and Riley (@raaleh), with Alex Kealy (@alexkealy) subbing in for Hussein (@HKesvani) and Charlie (@cfppalmer)... talk to Maya Kosoff (@mekosoff), tech features writer for Vanity Fair! She was sent a wifi coffee cup called Ember that comes with a charging coaster you're not allowed to get wet... So it was immediately clear to everyone she had to come on. We also talk Tiffany "Everyday Objects," Facebook's interest in our nudes, and Twitter's interest in Nazis. Like, subscribe, share!

I want my toilet to be able to tell me what I ate earlier that day. I think that would be the most useful possible feature. A sort of Gillian McKee's branded toilet. No, that's a British joke. Do you understand that already? I as 50% of the people currently on this podcast aren't British. I can kind of guess I might be able to speak for both of us when I say no. Was it embarrassing bodies that she was on?

What was the name of her thing that she was on? It was called You Are What You Eat. That's it. It's true. If You Are What You Eat, she must have eaten a fucking shrew. Oh, good. Excellent. British TV just never scrapes the bottom of the barrel. It was a really bad, healthy living program,

which had this segment where Gillian McKee's would look at a fat person's poo and tell them how fucking fat they were, by analysing their poo. She was a very strange woman. It's obviously vulnerable to at least two criticisms, one being that there's this idea that if you had particularly bad poo, that was indicative of a bad diet. But it's like, what is great poo?

Great poo isn't a thing. There's no like, what are you aiming for? There's no one's ever looked at some poo and be like, you're eating well. I love this. You're going to a public toilet and it's covered in shit and you're like, but to be fair, this guy's clearly getting a lot of fibre. So I think that's as good a time as any to introduce this dumb thing we're doing. This is Trash Future, the podcast about how the future is trash.

And who do I got here with me? We do go on room piracy. If it's room piracy, then I, Alex Keely, I'm in the room with Riley. Subbing in for Hussein Kasvani is Alex Keely and jumping in by a phone line who we got. We have me, Milo Edwards on this sort of chat roulette edition of Trash Future, where we all have our dicks out. And you can find me on Twitter at Milo underscore Edwards.

And I'm here too. Do you want me to introduce myself? Is that how this is going? You can, unless you don't want to be associated with this. One, two, three facts. And you have my cost off here in New York City. I'm a writer for Vanity Fair. Yeah, no, I write about, I write about Silicon Valley and tech and kind of,

yeah, for Vanity Fair's website. Yeah, and you sort of, we ended up talking on Twitter when you said you'd received a particularly egregious bit of something. I don't even know fully what to call it. Bit of late capitalism, I guess. Yes. Yeah. And we just figured we had to have you on to talk about it.

Yeah, I got this box. Yeah, no, we went from there, but it all started the other day. I was, I walked into the office and there was this enormous box thing at my desk. And it was really heavy. And I didn't know what was in it. And there was one word on the box and it said Ember. So I thought it was some awful, it has to be some awful tech thing. So I opened the box and inside the box, there's another box.

That's always a good sign. So I take the box out of the box and I open the second box and inside that box, there's a third box. Oh, it's a Russian box. It's like the Russian nesting dolls of like stupid tech products. Yeah, exactly. So I'm annoyed at this point. So I figured this is like a PR person being cute.

And I opened the third box and inside the third box, lo and behold, there is, I guess you would call it a device of some sort. It was an Ember branded device and it came in parts. And the main part was this, the main part was this like big cylinder. It was this, I pulled it out and it was heavy. And I didn't really know what it was supposed to be. It said Ember on it. And then I took out two more parts.

One was a gold hoop and one was a black ceramic hoop. And I still wasn't really sure. Yeah, right. And I pulled those out. I mean, but judging by it's called Ember, it could be like a fire lighter maybe. Like some kind of very, very like advanced caveman device. I thought maybe it was like some new kind of like voice activated assistant device thing a la and echo or Google home or something.

It was really fucking heavy. Okay, Google. The problem is we have actually done an episode on that, which exists. Those exist. That's terrifying. I remember reading about that. I feel like there was a story about how there was like a data breach with a sex toy, a smart sex toy company a few months ago.

Oh shit. I didn't actually see this. We should probably do an episode about that. Hey guys, we should, we should, we should start a podcast. Okay. So the this. So so far we have three boxes, a cylinder and two rings for the emperor. Yes.

And then I pull out a fourth piece to this puzzle and it is it's it's there's two words on it. It says charging coaster. I'm still like not really sure what's going on here. And then beneath that it says like lexically incompatible with each other. And then beneath that in like small tiny print, it says, do not get wet. And so I'm very confused in this way. Literally a device is designed to protect tables from dampness.

Don't heaven prevent you get it wet. And I still couldn't figure out what this thing was. So I had to Google it to find out what it was, which I think speaks to the how horrible a job their marketing team is doing that I couldn't figure out what this was supposed to be. And the first thing that popped up was an ad for from Starbucks in Google and it said that you can buy ember for $150 at Starbucks, which didn't really make anything more clear about what the thing I had received in the mail was.

But do you have any last guesses before I give it away? I mean, is it if it involves Starbucks? Is it some kind of like mug that keeps your coffee hot or something? And also like such a dick. It doesn't it doesn't suck your dick, but it does keep your coffee at the exact right temperature that you ask it to. So it is a for your dick. It is a smart thermos smart thermos.

Does it does it have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity? The Holy it does have it does have Bluetooth connectivity and there's an app that you can download. So you can like program it to keep your coffee at certain temperature or something like that. But but thermos exist. Normal thermos. It's not a smart thermos.

Maya right now somewhere deep in the Libyanca building. There's a there's an FSB spy who knows exactly what temperature you like your coffee at. Trying to work out how you can be black. Compromat everything is compromise. I think the worst part about the smart thermos is as I was kind of trying to piece together what what the different parts were supposed to be. It became clear to me that the charging coaster was obviously a place for you to charge the the cylinder thing, which was the the the thermos and then charge your coffee.

The two rings that the two rings the two rings that they gave me there's a black ceramic ring, but then the gold ring is a 24 karat gold like rim for your coast or for your for your thermos. So you can like take off the regular rim that the thermos has and put on like this disgusting gold one instead. That's 24 karat gold because like capitalism because you want to marry your smart thermos. I do. Don't you.

If you like it Riley, you should put a ring on it. That applies to all things, even inanimate objects. So just just just to be clear, there is an an app you get for your phone where you can remotely control the temperature of your coffee, which you can keep in a gold rimmed thermos. That is that is all correct. Yes. On a purely sort of British slang point of view, one of the bits on the website says intelligent mug and mug is slang in Britain for a complete idiot.

So that is that is an ox that is an oxymoron. Oh, the other thing that you need to know, there's there's certain there's like some the things that can do its capabilities. So besides selling for $150, the mug keeps your liquid at a constant temperature between 120 and 145 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours. So this really only works for a couple hours. You're paying this like you're paying for this smart mug that keeps your coffee warm for slightly longer than coffee stays warm on its own or less long than in a normal

thermos, which it would keep it. I think normal thermos is keep coffee at a drinkable temperature for sort of much of the day really. And it never cost me more than about 10 pounds. Yeah, but Riley, is it gold? Okay, so I've actually hopped on to the Ember website. I've just found some wonderful details. Go ahead.

Either of you guys have a guess as to how long it took to create this particular intelligent mug. 18 months. Milo. I'm going to go. I'm going to go two years. Keeley's already seen it. I've already seen it.

I'm afraid you guys are both way under. Because too many astronauts were like burning their tongues. I'm going to give you guys a number and a timescale that could give you both stress aneurysms. So I hope you're holding on to something. Hold on to your brain capillaries, lads. Don't let it. Don't let any, um, any coagulated blood clots had into your brainstem because this

shit was eight years in the making. What the fuck? Eight years. That means just for context. That means in 2009, someone sat down, had a cup sip of cold coffee. Well, like Rihanna's umbrella was blowing up the charts as the number one single and decided, ah, there's got to be a better way. Or better, didn't even necessarily have a sip of cold coffee, but had a sip of hot

coffee from their thermos and thought, but what if I could find out how much was in the thermos from an app on my phone, which at this point is still like an iPhone three GS. The, my other favorite fact about Ember is the list of people, the celebrities they have recruited to kind of be investors for the company. So it's a fire festival thing. Yes, it's a fire festival thing. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So, so Demi Demi Lovato is an investor in Ember. So is Tyler the creator. So are the chain smokers. So we're all three Jonas Brothers, the CEO of Rock Nation. I think the list goes on. Oh, wait, if the Jonas Brothers are investing in it, maybe that gold ring thing is actually like a pledge chastity ring for you.

It's a purity ring. Yeah. It's for your sex toy Bluetooth. Putting a ring on my Bluetooth thermos to promise to stay pure. Eight years. Eight years to make something that useless. I mean, like when you consider there are like eight year old children in China who can and do make shoes, you know, it really sheds a stark light.

It took him eight years. I want to read you a headline. I saw this week about the smart thermos. It's from popular science. And as far as I can tell, this is not a sponsored post. This is not. The headline is this is this is someone who really fucking loves this smart thermos. The headline is this temperature control mug is the best product I've tried in 2017.

And the subhead is honestly, it changes. It changed my coffee drinking habits. Why? It works for popular science who was unable to keep their coffee warm before. Like it's like popular science repository for like people who couldn't actually do science. So they went into like writing about science. Like here's something some real scientists did, which I just think is cool.

I thought that was the I fucking love science.com website. Isn't that what they do? Oh God, they are the literal worst in the spirit of continuing to own ember because they're this is just the like the layup of companies on ember technologies about a section. They have a section called changing the world. I guess it's implied that they're doing this in a very specific and targeted way over a long period of time.

So I'm going to read you. I'm going to read you an eight year plan to read you this founded in 2010 by inventor and serial entrepreneur Clay Alexander. Ember is a design led temperature control brand. He says we believe giving people the power to control temperature will revolutionize the way people eat and drink. He said describing the Neolithic Revolution. I'm pretty sure.

I'm pretty sure Prometheus already did this like high tech stuff guys. Soon you'll be able to have a box in your house that stays cold and then your food won't rot. So I guess this actually kind of counts as one of our other segments, which is when Silicon Valley and associated acts accidentally like invent the bus or philosophy. Ember just invented applying heat to food. We've invented cooking things. It's amazing.

All the people who worked at Ember before were all just kept getting like fucking vicious strains of Salmonella from eating like four eggs and turkey. They're like God, there must be something that can be done. Okay. Oh my God. This just gets better and better. The spark of Ember. It all started with cold eggs.

How could eggs fresh off the stove become so cold so quickly? This simple question led entrepreneur Clay Alexander down an exciting and uncharted path to ultimately create one of the world's most. Wait, I thought you were making this up. This is actually on their website. Yes, to create one of the world's most revolutionary consumer product brands. Now you're going to have to let me get through this whole paragraph guys, because you're not going to want to.

In 2009, Alexander sat down for breakfast with his wife. So the eight year thing checks out and within minutes, as always, his eggs were called because he didn't just eat them when they were hot. I guess as a successful serial inventor, AKA definitely a serial killer. Not a serial killer. British libel laws are really intense. Alexander stared at his cold eggs and pondered how he could solve this problem. I don't know.

Make new eggs. There just had to be a better way. Why couldn't the plate keep his food warm and mugs keep his coffee hot? This sparked Alexander's interest in temperature control. He wanted to create a new category of dishware that would maintain a perfect temperature versus just keeping food and drinks hot. Wow. He literally said there has to be a better way.

And then they find Alexander's problem and it's that he either doesn't eat his food fast enough, or he needs to turn thermostat in his house. I feel like the mug is maybe not the problem. He just like makes his wife make him eggs and then like doesn't descend downstairs for ages like some fucking aging monarch. When will sir be coming down for breakfast? When sir is goddamn good and ready. It was like a plate that keeps your food warm like my dad has been warming plates in the

oven for as long as I can remember to put food on them. I mean like literally this guy could have hung out with my dad once. My dad would have been like well you can put the plate in the oven. That's your problem solved there. I love these like origin stories for people who have invent devices because it so reminds me of like watching infomercials where like it's black and white and someone's trying to like the product is like an organizer for your kitchen cabinet. And so they show this video of this woman opening her cabinet door and all this Tupperware

like tumbles out on top of her and like the voiceover is like, the voiceover is like, don't you hate when this happens? And like this is like the Clay Alexander thing is like this is a completely unrelated scenario that nobody has ever had a problem with before except for this guy. I think that is exactly right. It is just like one of the or when the like the knife commercials where they try to like cut the tomato like the flat of the blade and they're like I just can't figure this thing out. I got one more reading from this this website that I think is just incredible, which is

how the how what he did initially how he had cold eggs. He stood up from his table stormed into the basement and then here's back to the website. Alexander went to work and started strapping RC batteries to the back of dish plates. What what perfecting why he not know how electronics works like you can't just put batteries in a regular place and expect it to become like a magic electronic place. I imagine like there's like a more tragic backstory like when Alexander when Alexander's son died he was found to like cramming AA batteries in his son's mouth. Make boy go again.

Alexander like in a in a castle somewhere in Romania with a plate on a slab connected to a lightning rod like live damn you. Okay, I'm gonna finish reading this paragraph. Alexander went to work and started strapping RC batteries to the back of dish plates also dish plates plate plates and perfecting his thermal technology strategy just putting together two different words for two different kinds of like fucking like earth and where like like dishes and plates different things. There's a dish plate. So this this this is why late stage capitalism is I grasped my fork knife.

This is why late stage capitalism is so stupid because a guy's eggs got called and his response was to tape batteries to a plate. The plate won't come to us. We'll take the batteries to the plate. Can you remind us how much this costs? Yes, I believe it retails for $150. Excellent. That's surprisingly cheap actually.

Given given like if we if we are to put it in the context of like the T for you at a juicy $1500 for a product which is like no more useless. I would like to I would like to add that yes the base model is $150. If you want the 24 karat gold halo lid. That's an extra handy. I would like to read a little bit about the some more of the features from the popular science article if that's okay with you. Yes, that is so okay with me.

Okay, great. I and I quote from this glowing popular science review of the of the coffee mug. Connects to your smartphone or Apple watch to address the temperature and senses when there is no liquid inside puts itself into sleep mode when not being used and then uses a three axis three axis accelerometer to recognize movement and wake the mug back up. What? Why? And then he goes on to say I understand that not everybody cares to download an app to

ensure the optimal temperature for their coffee but you're if you're a person who really loves coffee it's worth it and that's how it ends. I understand that not everybody like oh I mean like almost nobody like not everybody's like but still 70% it's like no it's like nobody. Also what I realized and I'm doing I'm actually I have a mug of tea with me. I realized that the mug is effectively in sleep mode when it's empty and not being used. This mug has a built-in sleep mode. I just like so like over the past couple of years we've had phones randomly exploding

like some models of phone and it's like those that's quite a big leap to go from a phone to exploding but this is like an object that's main purpose is to like heat. It just feels like the fail rate needs to be like quite it can be quite low and still cause a lot of accidents. I feel this object. I mean what's because we it is Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connected. What's going to happen is you're like smart duvet and smart fridge are going to work together so it overheats and like burns your hands off before we go on to our our break and our next segment.

There was one more sort of not necessarily tech but very late stage capitalism product. I wanted to highlight and that is a Tiffany and company you know noted bastion of sort of progressivism and equality has released a new range. Notable are the eggs hot enough Tiffany that's what you need to ask yourself. They have released a series of new items that are are like really just peak peak late stage capitalism. It's called their everyday objects range. There are 69 items in the range. Nice nice and it I'm scrolling through here and I'm seeing such things as sets of paper cups that come into a crazy straw

and an empty tin can. What? Yes, an empty tin can. It's a crazy straw made out of like starting silver. They're all they're all made out of like metals but there's there's a ball of silver yarn that retails for $9000 and it's made of sterling silver and that is my favorite. Oh my God. I don't realize is that that ball of yarn can actually help you find your way out of any maze.

GPS mables. It's called just YRN. Next to a sort of GPS database of all of the world's most red. Is it Bluetooth enabled? I'm pretty sure it is. Yeah. It actually connects to your thermos to make sure that your coffee stays warm for the duration of your maze escape. I got kind of I always kind of saw that as more of like a like a Dungeons and Dragons thing that you can find to like you can you buy with some adventuring gold.

You know you can really like yes this enchanted silver yarn. I didn't see the yarn. My favorite was actually the sterling silver sterling silver school supplies. You know because meritocracy is a real paper. It's a $425 silver protractor like that's definitely something like nice like if Jaden Smith. When Betsy DeVos really like sinks her teeth into the Department of Education like every student will be required to have a $500 silver protractor. I mean imagine how how inconvenient a sterling silver geometry set would be like it tarnishes like you'd have to like polish it regularly in order for it to be readable. Right children before we begin the lesson everyone was polished their geometry sets.

I think one of my new things we're scrolling through like being being like a Hapsburg Royal was like in the sort of like 1800s. What do you get the hobo who has everything? A classic style hobo you get a $385 harmonica. What do you get that has everything somewhere to live. My favorite is the statement on their website about this collection of items if I may read it. It says beautiful things shouldn't just live in a drawer handcrafted in sterling silver enamel and wood. This new collection elevates traditional office supplies and accessories. I don't think it tin can is either of those things into works of art meant to become favorite pieces you use every day.

What world is anybody using any of these things? In what world do you use an hourglass? In a world where you use an empty tin can like no like tin like tin cans have no like inherent use like they're just vessels for like you. You never bought tin you don't know and buys tin cans to put things in you buy tin cans for the things that are inside them. Maybe this is too deep and philosophical. So my favorite I just need one which is a tic-tac-toe set in Walnut sterling silver and Amazonite for $1000. But like tic-tac-toe is famous here game you can play with pen and paper like I've never even heard. I've never heard of it being played with sterling silver and Amazonite.

I actually only play tic-tac-toe with sterling silver just to own the lips really. Of course playing tic-tac-toe with sterling silver to own the lips. I'm looking at more of this stuff empty tin cans like candle snuffers like discarded paper cups and stuff. It's become increasingly clear that like big big hobo has taken over Tiffany. That just sounds like it's an actual guy. It's like a fucking huge homeless dude who's known as big hobo. Oh good Lord. Tiffany employees are scared of him so he's just eating all of his demands.

This is too what he said. I want a can. A silver can. He sounds a bit like a pirate for some reason. Various. Yes. I don't know. Oh no, no. Please trash the truck.

The wireless show about how the future is trash. Are your kids spending too much time on the wireless? Are your children spending too much time with their dervishes and whirly doodles? Playing too much stick and hoop and not doing the grueling daily board washing? I mean people did used to work at a young age. But no, what was interesting is that... Is that like your fucking take on this? But people did used to use child labor.

If we thought that all that dish plate shit was dumb, more and worse things have been happening. Like narrator. Yes, they had two of the sort of big socials media have both just done some really fucked up shit in the last sort of seven days or so. What do you want to start with? Do you want to start with Facebook or Twitter? Let's start with Facebook.

You guys good to start with Facebook? Yeah. I mean, you know, I always I always stuck with suck real definite human Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg. Definite not alien billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. So I don't know if you guys saw that Facebook just sent the entire world a text saying send nudes. It's 4am. It's deep in the sash and it's decided it's worthwhile to ask the entire world to send nudes.

Oh, wow. I've never actually asked anyone to send me nudes. Wow. Are you a male feminist? Oh, I'm G. As my business cards will tell you Facebook. Has decided they want users to upload nude pictures of themselves to messenger. I mean, can other other than just like someone is incredibly horny and hasn't heard of porn hub?

Why? Why do you think that they could possibly be doing this? So what so they're trying to stop? They're trying to it's it's it's combating revenge porn. I did genuinely think when reading the headline originally because it was like Facebook like Facebook wanted to come back for revenge porn by sending nudes. I thought it was like a kind of like I am Spartacus. Ask thing where like if everyone sends everyone sends their nudes, then if we are all naked, then no one is naked sort of thing.

But but that apparently is not apparently it's a more tax solution than the destruction of shame as a social concept, which would be impressive if Zuckerberg could achieve that. But Facebook tries to like completely change like the underpinning nature of Western society in order to go about revenge porn. Everyone's just going to release porn of themselves on like a daily basis. I was going to say this is basically this basically makes Facebook the opposite of Savonarilla. Mark Zuckerberg just like uploads a video of him sucking his own dick and is like see guys revenge porn is over. So here I'm just reading from an article in The Independent. Facebook believes the best way to combat revenge porn could be to post intimate pictures of yourself online before anyone else manages to which is I guess the internet equivalent of you can't fire me I quit. The so so what so you're supposed to go into the messenger app and then like you or you message someone a screenshot and then they look they look at it and then they create some sort of numerical hashtag code thing that means that anyone else sending

I'll try and upload an image that is that or manipulations of that won't be able to it will be on a contraband thing, but someone has to someone has to look at it and it said that and the Oscar said something like one of the ones I asked was I said Facebook was like, yeah, it's fine. We're going to have like trained professionals looking at this. Mate, I've got that. What does that mean? I mean, I've got my glad well 10,000 hours. This seems like as good a time as any to to let you guys know that I'm except the new job at Facebook as as a revenge porn viewer. So I am the one who is looking at all of the all the news and screening them.

What was the training you had to go through? Well, it's just a lot of it's a lot of it's a lot of looking at nudes all day just I'm looking at I'm on porn hub eight hours a day. It's it's a Venn diagram at the centre of which is like you people who spent too much time on Omegle and like sort of Renaissance artists. Like surely it's like somebody works at a chocolate factory, right? That those people must be completely decent like that for them clothed is the new nude. That is a new exciting new exciting world. I think what what strikes me about this system for preventing revenge porn is how wildly specific it is because what it is not like Facebook has developed an algorithm to recognize nudes and it's not as though they're sort of going to block nudes in general is that you say it's like you send them a picture and then Facebook will recognize that exact picture

and then prevent it from being uploaded to Facebook Instagram groups Messenger or whatever. That means every time you like take a naked picture of yourself you have to like send it to the person you're sending it to and then CC Facebook. It's pretty good. I'm already thinking of a prank with this where like right now I'm just going to send like all of your profile pictures to Facebook as like my nudes. Get your shut down for revenge. Yeah. But the reason like God Milo what a terribly hairy ass you have. But the reason that they have to have someone look at it.

So the reason they have to have a real person look at it is that if you accidentally send them or if you deliberately try and send them a piece of content that isn't nudes and you just want to not be able to be sent on Facebook. It's like that feels like not a massive. I feel like the problem of like some things being banned for temporary until some works out that are just other images because someone's using it duplicitously is not as bad a problem as like a real person looking at your nude photos to check if they're like actual nudes. Yeah, which I like. I think that was the reason they said they need to add that to the process. Well, look, that's why that's why they have experts like Maya, you know, you can trust Maya knows what a nude is. Exactly. I mean, Maya has a trustworthy voice.

Thank you. That's so nice of you to say. I've never, I've never like actually shown a woman my balls before, but you know, maybe in time with with the help of Maya's trustworthy voice. I could grow and change. So yeah, that's the that's the basis of this of this Facebook thing. If you send them their new your nudes, they promise they're just going to take them to protect you and they're never going to get used for anything else. The FSB are looking at your needs because and here this is a name. This is a name I quite enjoy.

I'm reading a quote from this from Facebook here. The safety and well-being of the Facebook community is our top priority said Antigone Davis, Facebook's head of global safety. Named after the tragic figure. Is this a like, is this a safe enough space in a cave? Is this a safe enough space for me to admit that for quite a long time I thought that it was pronounced Antigone, which I did. Mate, didn't you go to like eating? I went to a number of educational establishments that would suggest that I would know how to correctly pronounce a name from classical tragedy. No, Antigone, which means that they're just present, right?

They're just present. They're Antigone. So they just exist or or it's something that repels your art. Yes, that's also true. It's one of it. You get it in the spray in spray. We needed you in it, right? I mean, there's a Ghostbusters one as well.

I mean, at what point is the pun destroyed? I mean, I think the Greek is probably technically anti-Gonair. So, you know, we're all wrong. So, I mean, that's I don't that's the thing. I don't know about you guys. I just whenever a large tech company says that they're doing something to promote the like safety and well-being of their users and there's no ulterior motive. I basically just as a default don't believe them. The idea that the idea that Facebook has anyone's best interest at heart, I think is pretty far fetched really.

I mean, although I mean, whilst Mark Zuckerberg is definitely a real human born of a real woman who has a normal human life, I am. I do think he will probably sell sell your data to our eventual Chinese overlords. Nothing but respect for my future president. My future lizard president. So any any any other any other hot takes on on on on Facebook being like a creepy 4 a.m. text message, dude? Or are we happy to move on to Twitter? My favorite take I saw the other day was somebody being like, well, this is a bad idea. And I was like, yeah.

And then they were like, but it would be a better idea if every tech company did this together and they work together on it. Wait, what? I was like, no. That article was just like written by like a really pervy dude who's like good at like like SQL queries. What was the basis? The only way to really protect the women is to create a massive national nude database which I personally will ensure is not misused. This this this one army and this one corporation working together doesn't work. But if we could make it some kind of military industrial complex.

So what was what was the basis that someone said that they thought it would be a good idea if every single tech company gathered everyone sort of, you know, amateur pornography. Even companies that have like nothing to do with image sharing. Guys, guys. I think the point they're trying to make was like it would be less creepy if it was like some sort of like task force for revenge porn and like and like Google and Facebook and Twitter like all signed on to it or something like that. But like, no, I would prefer that zero tech companies have my nudes. To be honest, I prefer that zero people have my nudes. Fair. Yeah, I mean, I would also prefer that zero people have Riley's nudes.

I'm just a humanitarian. Yeah, I mean, in general, I actually I definitely prefer the idea of like just publishing everyone's nudes and then it's just done. Everyone's dick and all vagina and that's it now. We just know we know what everyone's dick and all vagina looks like and it's not an event anymore. I feel but this is like I feel like this is like to catch a nude. We must think like a nude like it's like to you have to give you have to give all of your thank you. Okay, I can't believe someone was like, ah, this this idea of sending all of our nudes to a tech company doesn't go far enough. Okay, so just so we're slightly conscious of of time, I'd slightly like to move on to Twitter, who's got some very interesting policies around who can use the service that have come up in the last couple weeks.

I think you by you've seen this as well, right? I have. So can you can you update the listeners what Twitter's official or not official but implied position is now on on on on who they care about. Yeah, so so based on their rules and what they've done over the past few weeks, Twitter's unofficial rules seem to imply that leftist parody accounts are not allowed. But but but the people who are allowed on the website and the people that they will verify on the website are white supremacists. So this week this week. So this week, Twitter verified the account of Jason Kessler who organized the the the neo-nazi Charlottesville rally in August. And he he must have applied to be verified because he tweeted this week on Tuesday and was like, looks like I finally got verified.

What I love is that he said I'm the on top of that tweet. He said I'm the only working class white activist who's been verified. But yeah, I mean, over the past few weeks, I feel like we've seen a lot of kind of left leaning parody accounts get taken down and suspended even for like a few days. And I honestly think that this is because Twitter has been so bad about suspending accounts in the past, like they've neglected to do so that they're going into overdrive now after the Rose McGowan incident a few weeks ago. And now they're just like, like every time somebody reports an account, they take it super seriously. And without even looking at it, they'll just kind of temporarily lock or suspend the account for for a few hours or a few days or whatever. Until you send them that you need. Until you send them your nudes and then they'll unlock if you want to say I was really worried that the that antifa super soldiers would come and take my nudes.

I really I really can't get behind antifa as a pronunciation. It really it just sounds too much like a sort of like niche Caribbean religion. So we're back. We're back to Antigon, right? You've got to verify the white supremacist because I've had a lot of problem as a consumer with fake white supremacist. You know, you think someone's a real white supremacist and then you get them home and then they they break. They don't keep your coffee at the right temperature. The gold rim turns out to be don't even exist on the coffee being white, which is, you know, really worrying. I like to complain. There's I am a favor of this. It's good for that. It's good for the consumer at the end of the day.

I want to know that my racist tweets are being written by a real racist and not just someone pretending to be a racist to get votes like like Theresa May. I think I also think this just like speaks like Twitter is obviously like a dumpster fire where we all spend too much time and it's awful and terrible. And we would be better off if the website just closed down tomorrow. Twitter.com returned a 404 error. My quality of life would go so far. The problem with Twitter is like Twitter never expected that it was going to be like the center of like US political discourse in 2017. So it never bothered to like clarify any of its very like murky opaque policies that it has and doesn't really enforce, including the stupid verification thing. There's an idea that I find sort of more and more convincing, which is that one of the key tenets of like platform capitalism is that sort of the owner of the platform sort of makes a claim on sort of every beneficial externality of every action that takes place on that platform.

Yes, abdicates responsibility for any negative externality saying they couldn't possibly sensor they couldn't possibly see themselves as a publisher until it comes time to collect royalties for clicks. Sounds really smart. Platform platform platform. Which would be kind of like, two D capitalism video game, sort of like super Mario style where you have to like jump onto like various ledges and like collect coins and like, you know, property, which you can then leave to your children and will use that to maintain their own position in society. At the end, you save a princess. It's all fine. It's funny because it's like Twitter platform.

Twitter's been so, I mean, they've been so terrible about enforcing evenly a lot of their policies over, especially over the past few months and like, but, but they they've always been very something that they've always like talked about is like they always point to Arab Spring is like the highlight of like Twitter and and the good which we all know went like when when there's like a domestic political thing happening on their platform. Like they're verifying white supremacists who live in the United States like they are quick to kind of advocate any responsibility for that. Well, it's it's it's almost as though though those in power will do anything to maintain their sort of white knuckled grip on it. It's a white knuckled ride through the prison industrial complex. So fortunately, though, I guess the story doesn't have a completely a completely sort of a downcast anything has a bit of a mixed ending because like one of the sort of leftist parody accounts, Crank T Nelson is sort of back and joking. But we've lot we've lot I think we we've lost to damn Muslim and Ayatollah come on me.

Ayatollah come on me. That's I am such a fan of that as a name is because it's not the real Ayatollah come on me and he just sued them for like defamation. I think I just sort of again sort of pulling from an article on on Gizmodo about sort of Twitter's verification policy. It's sort of it gets to I think the quite usual sort of tech company blow off when you Gizmodo reaches out to Twitter asking why it verified Kessler. We know basically used Twitter to organize events that led to the murder of Heather Haier. Twitter's response was just, you know, hi, we'd like to refer you to this article from our Help Center for further information on our verification policy and sort of treat the rules of their site almost like their laws of nature that can be discovered and are kind of just, you know, ontologically there. Just like the US Constitution. No, it says right here you have to let the retarded by guns and then when they eventually kill people, you can execute them.

That's what freedom is. Freedom is about revenge. I'm going to quick. I mean, they're going to add it out this gap. I'm just scrolling down through this article because I'd like to sort of pull out. Yeah, you guys can say anything because this is get this is getting edited out so I can get to the next place in the article. So, you know, if anyone has any, you know, terrible takes that they want to use to get verified on Twitter, I would suggest now is the time. I promise not to preserve them and use them as Compromat Tony Blair without the rock wall and private finance initiative. Yeah.

That's now fucking now guys. I'm coming out as a it is an all right take isn't it? It's such a large counterfactual. It's like saying there's a number of celebrities that saying X without Y. It's like, yeah, but Y is quite critical to their entire being in a way that Steven Seagal without the without the sexual assault would still have been a mediocre. Right, right, right. Actually, Maya, this is an interesting question again, not not for the not for the podcast, but just for my own interest. Have the term slug and melt made it over to the United States to describe like I don't mean.

To describe like tuna sandwiches and something similar to a snail. Have you guys started hearing these yet? I'm sorry. I didn't hear you. So like, I guess like terms for what they would like self describe like centrist center left people. But then the there's like a kind of words like slug and all melt, which describe. No, no. That's really funny. No. So basically, there's like this.

There's I guess it's it's it's what you could think of as like the closest thing Britain has to choppo is this podcast called real politic. And there's also this other guy like Matt Zarb cousin who was like a Corbin strategist and stuff. And they just it's it's really funny because they created this intense culture of like pearl clutching among sort of sort of centrist non left wing labor MPs. So basically people who be more or less aligned with the Democratic Party, except further left than them because every. Because it's because it's written online just started like making fun of them. And now they're like, I'll always write like panicked articles in like the Times or Telegraph or whatever. This online abuse of labor MPs has to stop. Someone yesterday reversed the first letters of my first name and last name.

I'll have nothing said against warm tots. Yeah, they called they called me Kyatala. I'm on me. It was very okay. So this this was a large digression that is very fun. It did not know within the theme. Okay. So here we go. I'm going to add it back in.

In a moment. It's one thing the article says for Twitter to say that it doesn't want to ban Nazis from a plot from its platform because of free speech concerns, which seems like a reasonable discussion that intelligent people can disagree about. I'm going to disagree with that. You should probably ban Nazis. Yeah. So number one ban Nazis. That's a pretty easy rule because right now your rule is ban leftist parody accounts for making jokes about an anti-fuss super soldier serum.

I love making fun of the Nazis, though, which kind of makes me less keen to have them banned. I like having them there as a sort of like entertainment. You want a Nazi vaudeville where you can like throw tomatoes at something like that. Yeah. Like whether where they're constantly backed by like ragtime piano. It's the dang Libs again. Oh yeah. And so I just sort of sort of to close this out.

Jack Dorsey, CEO said on on this sort of policy of verifying Nazis said we should have communicated faster on this. Our agents have been following our verification policy correctly, but we realized some time ago our system is broken needs to be reconsidered and we failed by not doing anything about it, working now to fix faster. Again, I don't think you really have to think about it that much. I think we can articulate a pretty simple solution. I guess I guess like where where do you draw the line between people who are Nazis and people who aren't Nazis in a world where it's I mean some people are definitely Nazis and some people are like definitely not Nazis, but there's probably like a decent sized gray area of people like you don't know whether they would they really have a holocaust in them or not, you know, God, there was there was a really fantastic. There's really fantastic passage, which I'm going to I'm going to butcher again because I'm not able to. Yeah, all this tech meaning really can't remember things off at the top of his head and just real power off on paragraph of perfect. That's a problem. Isn't it guys?

Okay, so again nightmare Webster's dictionary defines Nazi. Well, it's that I can't remember who this was it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't Foucault or a rent, but it was sort of. One of their when they're sort of contemporaries were saying that sort of the problem with fascist with fascist sort of rhetoric is that fascism sort of has no fascism sort of sees words only in terms of power isn't see them as signifiers of concepts. And so they're kind of free to say literally whatever they want because their sort of concern is purely sort of rhetorical their concern is not to sort of communicate any kind of truth. And that they can just sort of keep playing with language and playing with language to sort of at once play within the rules but equally to sort of signal to their to their followers to sort of do something else because it's something that quote everyone knows. And even when they're sort of rhetorically trapped they can loftily declare that the time for discussion is past and the time for action is now. And so I think when you're dealing with fascists sort of traditional concerns about free speech which sort of I think have some basic assumptions about I guess you could say good faith in the people who are sort of engaging in free speech. It has to sort of break down at some stage.

Oh yeah I mean my point was not like free speech for fascists my point was more like how do you define who is a fascist like without that's why it's good to verify the Nazis because then you know who the Nazis are right instead of make the blue tick like the new swastika. The icon can be like a miniature version of their nude. Yeah because I mean a miniature like you tattoo a picture of their ass on their ass. No that's what I call a signifier signified because I mean as verified it's kind of like the online equivalent of having a driving license right doesn't it doesn't make you a good person it's just like that's who that is. So I guess driving license doesn't mean you're a good driver logical I don't really have a problem with verifying the Nazis on the grounds that like well if that really is they're like yep that's the real one that's the real Nazi I'm like okay I guess yeah that's fine that's him. Guys are our Twitter account at all guys are our esteemed are our esteemed substitute host Alex Keely has to go perform a comedy gig in Oxford yeah that's me so I'm going to say we're we're at about an hour an hour and a bit any final thoughts on Twitter banning joke accounts and verifying Nazis. I mean it's a charming reversal. Twitter.com a normal website in that case Maya thank you so much for coming on it has been a great deal of fun.

Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure to virtually join me. Just met with complete. See you later everyone. Yeah I hate you. I hate myself. All right. Okay see you later everyone.

Yeah. Yeah.