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How Grok is Hurting Women and Children · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm welcome to Steffan
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Never Told You prodictre of iHeart Radio, and today we
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: are once again so happy to be joined for the
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: first time in the new Year by the fabulous, the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: fantastic Bridget Todd.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Welcome Bridget, Thanks for having me. Happy New Year.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: This is my first, I think my first podcast recording
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: of twenty twenty six. So if I sound a little rusty,
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: that's what's going on.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: You're in good company. You're in good company. And also,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: as we were joking about in that sad way before
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: we started recording, you picked a doozy of a topic
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: to come out swinging with, which we'll get into more
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: in a second. But how have you been, Bridget, How
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: has the New Year been? Etc?
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the New Year has been.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: I know how if other folks are feeling this, it's
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: just still been a little bit of a lot. Like
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: I don't know, I am someone who I think I've
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: said this on this show before. I like New Year.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: I like all the sort of ra rah this year
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: is gonna be different, fresh start. That stuff really works
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: on me. Even I didn't do that this year. I
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: didn't even buy a planner and a bunch of pens
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: to like sit and rot in my tone, I know
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: you love pens. I love buying pens I won't use,
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: and buying a planner I'll use for a week and
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: then forget about.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I didn't even do that.
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: That makes me sad.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's we were. We had an episode on this recently.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I don't think I said this in the episode though,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: but I I'm very meticulous about my calendar and planning
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: and I have not even updated my calendar to January.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I I have made a note to do it today.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: We shall see if it happens. But yeah, it's just
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: felt something off or something strange about the whole thing.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: It doesn't feel like a new year to me. It
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: just blurs all together. I'm not sure, but maybe the
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: calendar will help me.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how I'm feeling too. About Where did you
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: put that note?
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: If not on a calendar, I have a little sticky
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: digital sticky note on my desktop.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Oh you better'll think it out.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I mean I don't think so, but I do have
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: backup plans. What about you, Samantha.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: That is amazing. Yeah, how's your new year? Sam?
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: Again, I think that's why I'm being silent because I'm like, I.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Don't, don't.
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: We're here, We've made it to this year. So you know,
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: as the older generation would say, blessed to be around
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: for another year. You know, the alternative is dark. But
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: these reports have gotten me. That's the words I think.
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: I like everything. You know, we talk about the millennial freeze,
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: the h the reactions that everyone is having Millennials slash
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: uh for me, excellennial who have gone through all of
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: the chaos in our lifetimes and then coming in having
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: that small slither of hope will be like, yeah, maybe
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: this will be a better year, and then the year happens,
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: you're like, maybe it's going to be the same. Maybe
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: it's just going to be the same.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: So I think part of it for me, I felt
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: the exact same thing.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: And I think part of it for me was that,
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: you know, over the over the holidays, you're sometimes you're families,
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: you're not checking the news as much. When I checked
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: back in, I was like, oh, let's see what's going
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: on in the world.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: The world was on fire.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: It felt like, oh, so it's sort of hard to
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: start the new year on a hopeful note, feeling like
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: we might have a chance for stability and feeling a
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: little bit better than being like, oh, just kidding, and
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: and it's gone right.
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: Like I feel like for a little while we had
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: the main hope of being like, we're the bad guys,
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: but we're not the absolute main villain. And as we
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: see things are like, oh, we've become the main villain,
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: like international main villain. Oh that's interesting, that's the new Ones.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: And we are.
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: Anyway, That's how I'm doing. And I laugh, and we
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: are in this episode and I'm so glad we get
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: to be educated and distracted by you today.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: Yes, well I hope that's I don't know if it's
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: going to make anybody feel happier about our situation, but
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: you know, sometimes you just have to have a clear
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: eyed understanding of what's happening and just deal with it.
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: Just deal with it.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Yes, And it is really important that we talk about it.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: And Samantha and I have been discussing how we've noticed
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: a real ramp up in very very destructive online behaviors
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: and so as difficult as a conversation like this is,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: we do need to talk about it. So, yes, what
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: are we discussing today?
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I just have to give a warning because
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: the whole conversation is going to be pretty grim and
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: pretty dark. So just a trigger warning upfront. But I'm sure,
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: as we all know by now, we're in a good poet,
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: mother wife. She was shot and killed by ice in Minnesota,
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: right and I watched the video was horrifying. The response
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: from the administration has been also predictably horrifying. The conversation
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: online probably predictably has been just a wash in lies
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: and distortions about both Good and then what happened to her.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: All of these things, I feel, we're.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: Pretty at this point are pretty predictable when this kind
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: of thing happens. Unfortunately, however, something that I did not
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: and could not predict, and maybe I should have, is
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: that when I was scrolling X, I saw a screenshot
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: from the video of Good being shot and killed. So
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: it's a video of her, an image of her dead
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: body covered in blood, and somebody under the image asking
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: GROC to generate an AI version of that image that
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: puts her in a bikini. And guess what, GROC complied
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: and generated an AI image of Good dead, covered in blood,
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: but wearing an AI generated bikini. And do you know
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: those things that you see where you're like, that's it.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: I have hit my limit. This is that's enough Internet
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: for me. I genuinely had to log off and go
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: for a walk outside because something about that I think
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: just I don't have the words for that kind of
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: depravity that it showed, like it just really I'm not
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: bummed out by a lot on the Internet these days,
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: but this really bummed me out.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that legitimately unders standably so that it is incredibly upsetting.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: And I'm sorry to say that this is not even
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: an isolated thing because when you go to X and
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: I should say, up off the top, I'm not really
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: spending a lot of time on X. I still have
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: an account there, but when you go to my account,
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: it says please see pen tweet, and then the pen
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: tweet is like, I'm not on X, so please don't
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: send me anything here because I'm not gonna see it.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: But if you were to go to X and you
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: type in put her or make her, you will see
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: how many creeps are posting under images on the platform
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: of women and children, in some cases asking groc x
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: is ai to generate that person in a bikini or
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: some otherwise sexually suggestive thing or pose like sometimes they
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: will ask, oh, make this person look heavily pregnant, like
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: things like that. Some of the things I've seen in
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: the last few weeks are things like Groc being asked
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: to undress an image of a fourteen year old actress
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: on the platform, which Groc did. I think I think
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: it's important to say up top that we were talking
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: about non consensual AI generated sexualized images of women and girls. However,
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: like that Renee Good photo I talked about earlier, it's
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: also just like dark. It's not it would be bad
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: enough if we were talking about just sexualized images of
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: women and girls without their consent, that's bad enough.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: We're talking about like.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: Dark, hateful, sexualized images of women and kids. Right like
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: Groc accepted a prompt to add a swastika bikini to
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  Speaker 3: a photo of a Holocaust survivor, it will, you know,
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: accept prompts to make women look like they've been beaten up,
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  Speaker 3: things like that, Like, not just regular sexualized images which
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: are already bad, much darker, weirder, more depraved stuff.
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: I'm just the linking of this type of content and
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: the usage of AI. Once again, when we had our
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: last episode with you. We talked about all of these
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: things inevitably being a part of the in cell red
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: pill community. It just this is an action as we
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: are watching it unfold, and people actually not having obviously
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: for those of us who know the consequences and what
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: this is showing evidence of, and any person of good
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: human humanity understands that this is gross but not really
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: paying attention of understanding where this is coming from, and
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: the normalization of accepting things like this like this is alarming,
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: like nauseatingly alarming.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: You really put it so well.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: I think it's not just that this kind of thing exists,
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: because okay, it's the Internet. Of course, there's dark corners
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: whe people are doing dark things. X is one of
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: our largest social media platforms. It's not you know, I'm
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: not there and a lot of people have left, but
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: it's not a niche platform. There's still lots and lots
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: of people who show up there. We're not talking about
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: on alternate of space like a telegram. This is one
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: of our biggest communications platforms, and this is happening openly
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: and publicly, and in a lot of cases, the person
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: who runs that platform, Elon Musk, is laughing about it.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: Joking about it, seemingly celebrating it. And so I'm glad
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: that you brought that up. That it's not just that
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: this is occurring, it's the normalization and the way that
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: it is being tolerated in our mainstream online spaces. And
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: really it's not just what's happening on X because Grock
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: is also available as a standalone app in addition to
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: being something that you could find on X, And as
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: the Outlet Indicator points out, the standalone Grock app has
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: been used to generate sexual imagery of kids aged eleven
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: to thirteen.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: This is according to the Internet Watch Foundation. So yeah,
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: it's just.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: A gross situation all around.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: And for any of our listeners who might be blissfully
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: unaware what is groc Bridget.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: I'm glad that you asked.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: So for folks who don't know, or maybe you've left
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: the platform before Grock became a thing like me, Groc
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: is x's AI chatbot. But something to know about Groc
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: is that Groc is with intention different than other chatbots
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: that you might be familiar with, like chat geet BT
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: or Claude, because Groc has been designed to basically be
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: like an edge lord chatbot there's no other real way
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: to put it. Because we know Elon Musk is a
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: loser creep. Groc has basically been been designed for loser
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: creeps by loser creeps, right, and so it is absolutely
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: true that other chatbots like chat Gept and Claude absolutely
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: have their issues. Groc, however, is distinct for being uniquely
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: awful in ways that are intent to really built in
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: for when people use it. And I guess I wanted
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: to start with Groc because folks might have seen headlines
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: that say some version of Groc has apologized for generating
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: sexualized images of young girls, and I wanted to start
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: there because I just want to make it very clear.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: I didn't know that this was something that needed clarifying,
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: but just in case it does, Groc is not sentient.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: Grek is not a human. Groc is technology. Groc's not
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: a person. So Groc doesn't do anything. Humans like Elon
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: Musk built Groc, They trained Groc, they run it as
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: a commercial service, and they make it available for other
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: humans to do things with. And right now, what those
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: humans are doing with Groc is undressing women and children
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: without their consent to create sexualized images, also known as
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: here in the United States crimes criminal activity.
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: And as a reminder, when Musk he literally kind of
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: went on a platform about making sure to get c
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: SAM or child sexual expectation content off and protecting the kids.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: By the way.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I don't remember if I talked about this
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: with you all or not, but that one of his
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: big but one of the big things that he did
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: a lot of grand standing about was that we're gonna
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: wipe child sexual assault material off the platform.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: And then he really didn't do that at all.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: Right, Like, one of the first things that he did
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: when taking over Twitter was to fire I think eighty
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: percent of the staff responsible for building tools that look
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: for and combat and stamp out sexualized material involving children.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: And so yeah, he sure didn't, but he sure loves to.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, he doesn't really grandstand about it that much anymore,
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: because anymore, how could you? But yeah, that was his
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: tenure at Twitter began with a lot of grand standing
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: and then doing nothing.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: Right. He literally did this because of the election. And
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: as we know, the right wing love to scream about
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: protecting children, protecting women, protecting babies, but not in actuality.
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: They just love that sentiment and it works for me,
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: and I've talked about this, We've talked about this on
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: the show often how it does hone in on women, specifically,
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: making sure if you don't stand for these things, then
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: you are a monster that hates children, that wants to
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: kill all children. And eight children by the way, that
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: was also you know, we love the pizza Gate, which
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: still happens, we know, but that was that beginning. And
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: then once Grok was released, if I remember correctly, it
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: actually worked okay in that it would call out misinformation,
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: but when the misinformation was correcting the far right, I mean,
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: they were like, oh no, no, I got to fix this.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's exactly what happened. So well put for folks
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: might remember that Groc was not being biased enough and
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: was saying things that were we know to be true,
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: and then Elon Musk himself stepped in and said no, no, no, no,
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: I got We're working to make GROC less woke that
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: at that point Grok started calling itself Mecha Hitler went
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: down a.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Real weird rabbit hole on that one. Uh yeah, but
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: that is exactly what happened.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: I just remember this. And then, as we know, since then,
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: all of those green standing outside of making sure that
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: the right is not censored because you know, we don't
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: want that anything else. It seems like, yeah, they have
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: kind of been the beginning of all of this nastiness.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm glad that you said that, because I
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: want to back up a little bit, because you know,
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: we're talking today about GROC rightly so, but it didn't
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: really start with Groc. Like X has been a hotbed
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: of this kind of material for a while. Like folks
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: might recall that the teenage Marvel star Social Gomez was
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: targeted with deep fake images that flood X and this
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: happened when she was only a minor, she was seventeen,
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: and she's spoken out about this publicly that she basically
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: was just told there's nothing that can be done. You
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: just have to make peace with the fact that these
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: images are out there. Back in January of twenty twenty four,
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: Taylor Swift was a target of the same thing. AI
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: generated sexualized images of her flooded the platform. Those images
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: actually originated on an alternative social media platform called Telegram.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: At the time, Telegram had this channel that was essentially
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: kind of a marketplace for celebrity deep stakes, where users
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: would like request and trade images that they had made
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: of celebrities.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Those images then made their way to X where they
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: really took off.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: Like Telegram is still pretty niche, but once those images
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: went from Telegram to X, that's when they got a
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: lot more visibility. When this happened, in my opinion, I
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: don't think that X handled it very well, which I
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: think we can really see as a precursor to how
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: we got to where we are right now with it. Initially,
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: X their way to deal with it was to try
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: to block people from being able to search Taylor Swift's name,
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: which I think is not a real fix anyway. But
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: when you put her name in quotes, you still could
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: search her name, and so obviously that did not work
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: as a fix. But also that solution would only work
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: for women named Taylor Swift, right Like, It's not any
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: kind of like meaningful way to combat the actual problem
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: on the platform. It might just be preventive to have
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: people search Taylor to Swift, but even not really at that. So, yeah,
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: did not handle it well. And so this was happening
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: before grock was a thing and then but back then,
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: these images would start on niche or alternative platforms and
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: then go to Twitter to get reach in visibility, then
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: inter Grock, which essentially allows users to use natural language
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: to ask Groc to generate whatever they want to see
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: women and girls do. So you could just say, hey,
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: Grock do xyz. Grock's going to do it now again, Sam,
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: As you rightly pointed out, keep in mind that when
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Elon Musk took over at Twitter, he very early on
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: dissolved Twitter's Trust and Safety Council and fired eighty percent
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: of the engineers working on child exploitation issues. This is
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: from a really talented journalist at spitfire News, Cat Tenbarg,
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: who's been writing about this for a really long time.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: So you know, Musk comes into Twitter, he fires the
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: people who are working on this. He knows that they
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: already have this issue with non consensual sexualized images on
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: the platform and.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Are not really handling it well.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: And yet over the summer, X rolls out what it
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: calls Spicy Mode for Rock, which is going to be
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: a way to let people generate images in video to
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: produce sexual content. And so I want to put it
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: that way because to me, none of this stuff is
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: happening in a vacuum.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: These are very clear decisions that I would say, it's
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: very foreseeable. What kind of results decisions like these are
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: going to.
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: You know, with all of the KOSA stuff happening and
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: the banning or the exclusionary stuff, with things like porn
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: Hub and all of that, this is interesting. I'm not
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: trying to be conspiratorial here, but on the far reaching
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: of the conspiracy side, this seems like a really interesting
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: monopoly for sexualized content.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: I've been racking my brain because this just seems weird, right,
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: it's just.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: A very yeah. I mean, and again, I just I
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: can't wrap my head.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: Around living in a world where miners aren't allowed to
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: talk to other miners on social media because that's dangerous,
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: but they can be undressed and sexualized by GROC and
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: that's fine.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Like, I just I can't square that circle if we will.
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: Be with all of the porn child porn laws, which
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: is pretty explicit like about the laws and like children
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: can be charged with it just by taking pictures of
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: themselves and having it in their phone, that is childborn.
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: I have seen kids being charged with child porn.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: By the way.
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: Wow, So it's interesting, uh huh is interesting to see
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: this where they're like, but it's not real. We didn't
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: harm a kid. We just took their likeness and then
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: dot dot Yes.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: So I wasn't totally sure about this, so I looked
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: it up and according to Enough Abuse, which is an
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: anti child sexual abuse organization, forty five states in the
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: United States have enacted laws that criminalize AI generated or
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: computer edited child sexual assault material, while five states and
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: the districts of Columbia where I live have not as
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: of August twenty twenty five.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Right, and so you're exactly right.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: One of the I guess criticisms or pushback sometimes I
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: will hear is like, oh, well they're not actually harming
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: real kids, it is still a real crime.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: So that's all I can say.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't want to jump too far ahead, but
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: I'm like, the alarm bells are ringing over.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Here, as they should be.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think also calling something spicy mode is
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: so unseerious, Like they're treating this so unseriously of like, oh,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: this is just a fun and I think it's a
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: very convenient excuse of being like, well, it was the AI.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: But like you said, there are people behind this that
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: created it this way. But I think they're using it
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: very conveniently for them to be like, I don't know,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: it's just spicy mode.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And I want to kind of underline that
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: because we have to. We can't not mention that X
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: is run by Elon Musk. And I'm sorry, but this
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: is just part and parcel of what Elon Musk is about.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: Before I got on with you two, I was like, Oh,
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: what's Elon Musk talking about. He was posting on X
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: jokey pictures that showed a toaster in a bikini, So
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: not taking this seriously at all. And I think we
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: have to say Elon Musk has been a really toxic
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: decision maker for a long time, and I can't help
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: but wonder if if some of the people in power
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: and people in media, if they had not treated this
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: like oh, just the acceptable quirkiness of a brilliant genius
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: and rather chaotic, volatile leadership decisions that are bad for business.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: I wonder if we would not be in this situation
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: where somebody like Elon Musk feels totally comfortable talking about
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: this in a way that makes it clear he thinks
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: it's a joke and it's not serious to him. The
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: whole thing is like very unseerious.
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: I mean, let's this is gonna be if one day
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: someone gets a hold of our episodes that don't like us,
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: this is gonna be a bad take. But let's just
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: for a minute, imagine what would have happened if someone
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: did those with a Charlie Kirk picture of this death?
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Are you? I mean, like yeah, it would be I mean,
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: don't even get me sing why.
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: The people went off on just quoting his words as
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: being offensive? Yeah, could you imagine.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: I could not write And I don't think we would
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: ever see that, like like it just it's yeah, And
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: you know, it's the scale, the scale of the issue
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: on X. It's it's really kind of mind boggling how
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: much of this content is flourishing there right now. Copy Leaks,
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: which is like a content analysis firm, they reported on
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: December thirty first that X users were generating roughly one
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: non consensual sexualized image per minute.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: That is so many images, that's so.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: Much and not to like even think about the environmental
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: impact of this, like I had, like I need to
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: see this miner in a bikini is worth the environmental
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: impact of doing this one image per minute? That something
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: about that I just it's hard for me to wrap
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: my head around.
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: That people have the goal to do it. This is
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: a form that used to be used for social and
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: political conversation.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, now this, and you know, people like Elon Musk
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: love to talk about X or Twitter as like, oh,
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: it's the digital town square where people can enter the
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: marketplace of ideas. Okay, Well, as a woman, I'm not
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: going to enter a marketplace where my top my kit
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: yanked off when I go in there.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: So I don't believe that X is a marketplace of ideas.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: But even if it were, if it's not safe for
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: women to show up, women are not going to be
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: able to have a chance to engage in this so
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: called marketplace of ideas, right, It's just ridiculous and so
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: according to Bloomberg, during a twenty four hour analysis of
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: images the Grock account posted to X, the chapbot generated
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: about six seven hundred every hour that we're ident as
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: sexually suggestive or new toifying. According to Genevieveo, a social
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: media and deep sake researcher, the other top five websites
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: for such content average seventy nine new AI undressing images
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: per hour in the twenty four hour period from January
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: fifth to January six, oh found. So again, it's not
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: like X is the only place where this kind of
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: content shows up. It's on Facebook. It's a problem across
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: the internet. However, it is very clearly a much bigger
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: problem in happening on a much bigger scale on X
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: as compared to other social media platforms. And just to
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: make something else clear, we've been talking about celebrities and
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: things like that. To be clear, it is not just celebrities.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: It's also this regular, non famous, non public figures who
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: post their images on X that this is happening to.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: And I feel like.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: This is the part of the podcast where I should
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: say women should be careful, like don't post your picture
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: on social media, YadA, YadA, YadA, And I guess I
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: feel some responsibility to say that. But on the other hand,
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: women should be allowed to post normal pictures on social media.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: I kind of hate this advice that says, like, oh, women,
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: it's not safe for you to show up here, So
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't show up in these places. Women not doing
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: anything wrong, right, We're not the ones who are generating
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: this kind of creepy imagery. And I just hate that
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: guidance because it creates a climate where it's just normalized
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: that women can no longer show up on these platforms
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: in ways that are safe.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: But of course I have to imagine that's the point.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And it feels very like I used to think
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: this a lot when I was running, and I would
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: see advice given towards male runners and female runners, and
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: it's very it would be very much like blaming you
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: already for something that could go wrong, like don't put
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: your hair in a ponytail because a man could grab it,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: don't wear a headphones because you won't hear something like
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: it was making it feel like it was your fault
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: for whatever might happen to you. And that's it's so
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: unfortunate because I agree with you, Bridget. It's one of
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: those things where I'm like, yes, I sometimes feel like
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I have to give this advice, but it feels so
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: horrible to give that advice because it's not your fault
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: and it shouldn't be this way.
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: Right, Yes, it's that cautionary tale that you have to tell,
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: which you're like, but it's not your fault. You didn't
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: do anything wrong. But because this is the state of
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: the world and everything is awful. Let me tell you this,
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: and if something does go wrong, you're going to remember
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: that in your head and say what could I have done?
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: Which is also another layer that again is not your fault,
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: is not our fault, but because that's how it is
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: laid out, it's almost a trap for you to blame yourself.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: So I was scrolling around social media just trying to
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: get a sense of like what people are saying, and
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: there was an image that somebody had taken off of
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: a woman's LinkedIn, and then somebody asked roc like, oh,
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: put it in a bikini, do this, do that? And
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: then someone was like, well, if she didn't want this
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: to happen, she shouldn't, like, like, if you put your
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: picture on the internet, you get what you get. And
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: I thought, you can't even have your headshot on a
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: link on LinkedIn a professional platform without it being like that,
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: like that, that's not consenting to have your image be
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: manipulated in ways that are sexual, And I was just really,
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: I think it really shows how much we have normalized
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: that women bring this on themselves via visibility, even when
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: the visibility is totally normal, right, Like a totally normal
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: picture of you know, a woman's face. If you are
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: not allowed to post that, then women can't safely show
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: up on the internet. It's just very frustrating. And any
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: of your point about being a woman who runs it, really,
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: I think that's a really good analogy because it is
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: very frustrating, Like you want to give advice, but why
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: should you have to get this kind of advice?
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, to your point about LinkedIn. Samantha
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: and I I think last year around this time we
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: were talking about what was going on on next door
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: because I was like, what in the world is this?
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: Because I was seeing people men being like, well, this
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: woman was asking for me to give her my number
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: and now she's mad about it. But look at what
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: she was wearing in this mixture, And.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: I was like, what.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: This is Like, it's everywhere. It is so pervasive and
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: so insidious that even yeah, just going online, I'll be like, oh,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: this must be a safe space. No, never, not that
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: next door I ever thought was a safe space. But
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: I was surprised that that was coming up on there.
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: We know next door is a hotbed of many things
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: and messes, including Rachel process, but unlat of drama.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I also again.
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: Going with my ringing alarms here because I've become real
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: conspiratory today apparently. But this just feels like a ploy
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: may be a part of the Esther project, maybe project
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: twenty five. I could be just blowing this out of
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: proportion in that they are trying to eliminate women from
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: these spaces because we know that being able to access
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: like LinkedIn and Internet give you accessibility to jobs, to pops,
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: possibly being able to do content, to be able to
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: grow your business, to be able to grow your name,
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: whatever whatnot. And if you shame them and victimize them
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: to a point, or at least like bully them off
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: of these spaces, then they we cannot connect. Marginalized communities
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: cannot connect as we know it. That's how kind of
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: Twitter blew up is being able to connect with each other.
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: And it was a space for black women and women
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: of color to come together and be able to lay
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: down the grounds for changes that wipes up from just
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: do not want. So it does feel like maybe they
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: are doing this purposely. I could absolutly. Even though I
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: don't think he's smart, I think he's smart enough to
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: use his evil to being like if we show them
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: that you're going to be demeaned to nothing but sexual
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: objects by no, like nothing from you, not because you
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: posted something, but because we used your post against you,
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: then we can get rid of you. And therefore you
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: do not have the same leg up as those who
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: are able to access this area.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: Oh, I mean this doesn't sound conspiratorial to me at all,
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: because one only needs to read Project twenty twenty five
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: to see that pushing women and other marginalized people out
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: of public and civic life is part of the point. Like,
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: that's what they're trying to do. And so if women
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: and other marginalized people are not safe showing up online,
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: and if they show up online, they either have to
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: say like, oh, yeah, you might somebody might take your
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: image and put it in a horrifying AI generated sexualized scenario,
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: and everybody will be like, well that's what you get.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: Come into the internet, even though it's not happening equitably
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: across all people. Yeah, that does have the effect of
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: pushing folks out of these spaces. And in twenty twenty six,
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: you're exactly right. Part of being civically engaged, part of
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: being economically engaged, is being online. You know that's not
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: me that's the un saying that, right. And so if
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: we create the conditions where everybody cannot equitably and equally
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: and safely show up online, that means that people who
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: can't show up are not going to be full participants
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: in their democracy, because that's U's more and more how
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: democracy is unfolding is online in twenty twenty six.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: And so you're exactly right. It doesn't sound conspiratorial to
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: me at all.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know I bring this up a lot,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: but that episode Bridget we did together about journalism in India,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: I think about that all the time, where women journalists
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: were getting sent these deep fakes, these nudes of them
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: being threatened, like if you print the story, we'll send
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: it to your family, and that's like the news. That's journalism,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: and they're trying to scare women away. And I've been
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: I don't want to do this episode, but I've been
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: thinking about doing this episode about how Donald Trump treats
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: women who are journalists and how he speaks to women
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: who are journalists. And it feels very similar to what
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: you're talking about, Samantha. It feels very like, let's just
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: demean these women, Let's make it so miserable for them
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: that they go away and we don't have to answer
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: these questions and we don't have to change anything.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: Yes, I think that's exactly it's exactly the same thing.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: And like I it's been you know, as women in media,
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: you kind of have to have a thick skin, but
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: nobody should be calling you piggy, right, Like, there's a line.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: And I think the fact that we've normalized this.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: I watched Caroline leave it when Trump called that female
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: reporter or a piggy. Leva got a question about it, and
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: she was like, well, you know, we all appreciate that
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: Trump speaks his mind and says it like it is.
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: And it's like the fact that that's normalized, Now, what
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: message does that sin to little girls like me who
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: wanted to be journalists when they were little kids, right, Like, oh,
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: you'll have to withstand this level of attacks about your identity,
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: your appearance, who you are. It just really again, it
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: just really makes me sick. But I think it is
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: intentional because the signal is very clear of like, don't
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: ask questions, don't make waves, because this is what's going
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: to happen. And let me be real, no woman journalist
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: wants to become the story because the President called her
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: a pig. No, no, and so you have to decide, like,
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: is do you want this to be part of your
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: career if you challenge Trump? It's just a really impossible
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: bargain and that women should not be having to make
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: in twenty twenty six.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Agree. I mean it's one of those things where
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: I feel like we're in such a backslide. But if
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: at one point I would have said, in any other job,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: a boss calling you that you would get fired. But
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: now it's like, no, no, just that was a joke.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Let's just move on.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: That's okay, it was barely a blip. I'll tell you
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: something else. There's just no reality where I would let
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: a man that looks like Donald Trump call me say
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: say anything about my appearance. Shout out to the.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: Women that just took it on the chin, because I
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: would never let a man that looks like Donald Trump
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: say to me about the way I.
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: Look, the pettiness that would have come out of my mouth.
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: All oh, oh, oh, okay, Well, going back to grook,
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: you have some numbers here that are pretty disturbing.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: Yes, So The Guardian spoke to PhD researcher at Dublin's
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: Trinity College AI Accountability Lab, Nana Nwachukwu, whose research investigated
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: the different types of requests that users were submitting to GROC,
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: and she found that nearly three quarters of all requests
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: were direct non consensual requests for GROC to remove or
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: replace clothing.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Three quarters. That is a lot.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: She showed the Guardians some of the different GROC created
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: photos that she was collecting as part of her research,
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: and The Guardian confirmed that dozens of them were pictures
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: of women, including celebrities, models, stock photos as well as
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: just regular ordinary, non public figure women posing in snapshots.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: And so her research really paints a portrait that this
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: is like an ecosystem where users are not just making
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: these images, they are also interacting with each other and
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: like iterating on the different non consensual images that they've
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: made GROC.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: To make right.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: And so something about that is no to me that
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: it's not just GROC make this horrifying image.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: It's GROC make this horrifying image. Oh cool image, bro,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna make it like this.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: Like it's like they're really building community around this and
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: they're they're bold enough to do it.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: In public.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, this kind of thing has been
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: going on in on alternative channels like telegram, where people
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: are you know, kind of engaging in community and conversation
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: about it. But the fact that this is happening in
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: public is so different to me. And also, of the
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: several posts that the Guardian saw, lots of them that
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: got tens of thousands of impressions are coming from premium users,
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: so blue check accounts, including accounts with tens of thousands
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: of followers, and so just a reminder, premium accounts that
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: have more than five hundred followers and five million impressions
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: over three months are eligible for excess revenue sharing eligibility.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: So yeah, just it's not a marketplace of ideas. It's
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: a marketplace of non consensual images where there is a
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: financial incentive for people to post this kind of content because.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: If they go viral, they could get paid for it
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: from X.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: We're making a Marvel Faces listeners. You can't see it,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: but oh my goodness, and you know, I know we're
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: gonna get into this later. Feels legal, It feels feels
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: wrong and illegal to me.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's me too.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: I mean the animating question that I sort of started
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: this conversation out with when I set down to plan
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: out the episode is how is this allowed?
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: How is this legal? Is anybody gonna do anything like?
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: What is going on?
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: And again, you know we're talking about AI generated images,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: but really this is nothing new because X has also
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: just been a platform where AI and non AI generated
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: illegal child sexual assault material doesn't just exist but can flourish.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: There's a great piece that I read by one of
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: my favorite journalists, Samantha Cole from four for Media called
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: grox AI sexual abuse didn't come out of nowhere. Coll writes,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: this is the culmination of years and years of rampant
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: abuse on the platform. Reporting from the National Center for
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: Missing and Exploited Children, the official organization social media platforms
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: report to when they find instances of child sexual abuse material,
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: which then reports to the relevant authorities, shows that Twitter
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: and eventually X has been one of the leading hosts
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: of this kind of material every year for the last
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: seven years. In twenty nineteen, the platform reported forty five,
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: seven hundred and twenty six instances of abuse. In twenty twenty,
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: it was sixty five thousand, sixty two. In twenty twenty four,
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: it was six hundred and eighty six thousand, one hundred
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: and seventy six. So yeah, I mean again, this is
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: a problem all across the Internet, but it does sort
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: of paint a picture of the fact that this is
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: much worse on Twitter, and Cole points out that these
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: numbers should be considered with the caveat that platforms voluntarily
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: report this kind of content, and more reports can also
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: mean wronger moderation systems that catch this kind of content
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: when it appears, but the scale of the problem is
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: still apparent. So Jack Dorsey, who was the CEO of
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: the earlier iteration of Twitter, he was not very good.
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: I don't I'm not gonna like sit here and say
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: that he was great at moderation. As Cold points out,
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: Jack Dorsey's Twitter was a moderation clown show much of
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: the time. But moderation on Elon Musk's X, especially against
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: abusive imagery, is a total failure. So yeah, not going
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: well or going very well, depending on you.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: Know what perspective you take.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: You know, if you're a child pornographer, you might be like, oh,
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: it's actually going great.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Oh yes, which does bring us back to the question of, yeah,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: why is this allowed? Why is this legal.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Question.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: So this kind of content definitely violates x's own policies,
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: which prohibit sharing a legal content like child sexual abuse material,
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: but as a piece for Wired points out, it could
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: also violate Google's play like app store and the Apple
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: App stores guidelines Wired rights. Apple and Google both explicitly
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: ban apps containing CSAM, which is illegal to host and
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: distribute in many countries. The tech giants also forbid apps
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: that contain pornographic material or facilitate harassment the Apple App
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: stores as it doesn't allow overtly sexual or pornographic material,
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: as well as defamatory, discriminatory, or means spirited content, especially
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: if the app is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or harm
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: a targeted individual or group. The Google play Store bands
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: apps that contain or promote content associated with sexually predatory
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: behavior or distribute non consensual sexual content, as well as
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: programs that contain or facilitate threats, harassment, or bullying, and
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: there is some precedent for this, because both Apple and
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: Google have removed other kinds of newdify apps from their
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: platforms because they're not allowed. However, the standalone Grock app
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: is still available on both Apple and Google, so I think,
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: you know, private companies, you just cannot always count on
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: them to take action against other private companies.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: I think that just really shows.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: Like the weakness in having the you know, barrier of
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: accountability be private companies making decisions about other private companies,
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: which brings me to the law. So I am no
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: lawyer just to give that warning upfront, but the framing
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: that I am taking is that to me, this seems
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: like criminal behavior. I understand this as a criminal enterprise
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: that Elon Musk is personally financially profiting from. And so
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: I am not a lawyer or a legal expert, so
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: like I would love to have somebody explain to me
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: how it is not criminal, But I understand this to
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: be criminal activity. As I said, forty five states have
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: laws that criminalized AI generation or computer edited child sexual
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: abuse material. If you or I used AI to create
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: such material, we would probably be having legal trouble. If
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: we were financially benefiting from the sale and trade of that.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Material, we would have legal trouble.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: I do not understand why Elon Musk does not have
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: legal trouble in the United States over this, but he
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: does not.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know every time we do these episodes
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: forever ago. We did one about Xbox, which wow, oh my.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: God, I forgot about that.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: But you know, you have those like where the rules
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: the regulations of a platform, and they'll say something like
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: you can't do this or you'll get in trouble, but
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: they're doing it and they're not. And so I remember
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: it was a big push on Twitter before it became
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: x to report Donald Trump or anybody it was inciting violence,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: which was against their guidelines, and be like this is it,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: and you know you're never going to hear anything about
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: that ever. See anything happened about that. Recently, I tried
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: to report YouTube for something and it was almost impossible
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: to do. It's like, but this is against the guidelines
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: you said that you had, and now you're ignoring it,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: giving me no avenue to really to really complain about
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: it or low to complain to like, hey, this is
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: violence or this is illegal or sexual content that should
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: not be there exactly.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: And you know, speaking of Trump, people might remember that
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: I think around last year he signed in the law
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: that Take It Down Act, which makes it illegal to
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: knowingly host or share non consensual sexual images, and so
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: people might be thinking, well, why is like, shouldn't this this.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Law prevent this.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: One main thing to know about that law is that
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: companies do not have to respond or do anything until
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: a victim reports it. And so if nobody is reporting
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: this to the police, to exesn't have to do anything.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: So so I just wanted to note that because if
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: you would reasonably think like, we have a law against
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: this now not really?
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Well, well, what has the response from xpin about all
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: of this?
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: Well, as I mentioned, people were really circulating a I
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: believe user generated response from GROC quote I deeply regretted
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: an incident on December twenty eight, twenty twenty five, where
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: I generated and shared an AI image of two young
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: girls estimated ages twelve to sixteen in sexualized attire based
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: on a user's prompt. It was a failure in safeguards
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: and I'm sorry for any harm caused. And I mentioned this.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: I wanted to say this, and I mentioned earlier how
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: all of these headlines about how grok is apologizing and
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: taking responsibility again, Grok is not sentient and setting it
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: up like a non sentient piece of technology could take
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: the blame from or something that humans did, and humans,
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: you know, facilitated it lets the humans off the hook,
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: because humans like Elon Musk are really not doing anything.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: Per indicator, Musk, while this was all going on, shared
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: at least thirty different posts celebrating Groc and talking about
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: how great Groc is. While this was happening between January
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: seventh and eighth, he has not expressed remorse for what's
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: happening on X, and in fact, has been basically joking
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: about it. I will say that at one point he
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: might have been like, oh, let should probably ly say
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: something that's you know, it's not often joke. He did
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: say that anybody who used Groc to create anything illegal
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: will face consequences. They haven't, but he's doing that while
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: also laughing about the fact that Groc is being used
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: in this way. As cat ten BArch put it, the
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: reality is that X has not taken this as seriously
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: as one of Groc's user prompted posts might seem to suggest. Instead,
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: Musk has encouraged, laughed at, and praised grok for its
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: ability to edit images of fully closed people into bikinis.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: Growk is awesome, he tweeted, while the AI was being
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: used to undress women and children, make it look like
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: they're crying, generate fake bruises and burnmarks on their bodies
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: and write things like property of Little Saint James Island,
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: which is a reference to Jeffrey Epstein's private island, and
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: sex trafficking. So yeah, he is not taking it very seriously.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: And in one of her pieces, Kat said that she
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: reached out to X for like an official comment on
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: the record, and she got back an automated email that
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: just says legacy media lies, which, by.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: The way, Kat's not legacy media.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: She runs an independent news outlet, So that's not even
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: like a it's a complete non sequit er. It's like
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: not even a relevant thing to say. As she puts it,
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: there's no reason to make X and Musk seem more
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: concerned about this than they really are. They've known about
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: this happening the entire time, and they've made it easier
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: to inflict on victims. They are not investing in solution,
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: they are investing in making the problem worse.
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: YEP, a lot of.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: Heavy size this episode. I keep going back to the
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: point you made at the beginning, Bridget, that is it's hateful.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: It's very very hateful. It's not just like, oh, let's
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: put women in bikinis or children in bikinis, which is
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: horrible enough, but it's like actively these attacks that I
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: mean are damaging if you're just going online and this
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: is what you face, that can impact your entire day
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: that you weren't expecting to have to deal with this.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: And I do think for sure that they are investing
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: in making the problem worse, which I guess does bring
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: us to the question of, well, where do we go
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: from here.
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I'm sorry to say I don't think the
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: United States is going to do anything at all about this.
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: I think the way that I've been hearing elected officials
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: talk about it, I don't think anything's going to happen
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: to MUSCA in the United States. Kat ten Bard spoke
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: to doctor mary Anne Franks, who drafted the template for
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: several laws against non consensual distribution of intimate imagery. She
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: told Kat the FTC has made it clear that they're
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: fighting for Trump. It's actually never going to be used
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: against the very players who are the worst in the system.
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: X is going to continue to be one of the
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: worst offenders and probably one of the pioneers of horrible
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: ways to hurt women. And unfortunately, I do think that's
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: the case in the United States. However, Europe is not happy.
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: Earlier this week, a spokesperson for the European Commission criticized
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: the sexually explicit, non consensual images generated by GROCK, calling
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: them a legal which they are appalling and saying they
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: have no place in Europe. Then a few days later,
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: the EU ordered X to retain all internal documents and
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: data tied to GROC through twenty twenty six, which extended
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: their earlier directive to preserve evidence relevant to the Digital
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: Services Act, even though there was no new formal probe announced. Similarly,
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: regulators in the UK, India, and Malaysia have also signaled
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: investigations into X now. In response to this, X announced
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: that they were going to restrict the ability to create
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: images using ROC to users who pay for premium who
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: pay for a blue check. This is not at all
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: a fix to the problem. All it means is that
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: the ability to make non consensual sexualized content will become
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: a premium service. So not only is it not addressing
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: the problem, it's just becoming a way for X to
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: make money off of it. Again, I would love for
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: somebody to explain to me how this is not a
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: financially beneficial criminal enterprise for Elon Musk.
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: Well, that also goes to show that if we as
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: a country fill like another country is harming us. So,
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: you know, child porn is pretty bad and seen as
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: like a whole international thing, right, trying to prevent trafficking
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: and such. Could these other countries and invade and try
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: to arrest Musk like the US?
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, great question, right, since since the United States
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: can just rush in and kidnap a corrupt elected official or.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: Leader, I don't know, I would be curious to know
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: where that begins it ends. I mean saying if you'll
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: take it requests.
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: CC is pretty high up on that, you know, no
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: no list.
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: So yeah, so X trying to make it so that
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: you have to just pay for premium in order to
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: generate images with ROC. The British government is really not
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: impressed by this, a spokesperson told The Guardian. Quote the
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: move simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: of unlawful images into a premium service. So that's pretty
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: much what's going on, right, Like, I think we'll see
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: if other countries cracked down on this. I mean, even
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: doing the research for this episode, it's like I had
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: to go to the Guardian, I had to go to
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: UK or overseas papers to get real reporting, because it's
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: just I don't think that people are really taking it
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: as seriously. Here in the States, regulatory bodies definitely are
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: not right obviously.
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: I mean he has by creating this premium X standard,
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: he's kind of become the Epstein of child porn.
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: I mean, if you can pay for it, then.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: Go for it. I mean I have to imagine Epstein
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: is probably financially benefiting from the trade and exchange of
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: minors for sex. Again, I would love to have somebody
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: who knows more about the law explained to me how
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: Elon Musk becoming personally financially enriched through the generation of
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: a legal material is not similar. It seems very similar
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: to me. And you know, to sort of wrap up,
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: I think it's important to note that this. You know,
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: we've been talking about this as a tech issue, which
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: it definitely is, but it's really a culture issue. And
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: I just I kind of keep coming back to that
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: again and again and again, because you know, when Google
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: released this that their like AI image generator Nano banana
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: pro were of like conventionally attractive women. When you go
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: to that the Nano Banana subreddit, it's basically like post
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: after post after a post of like hot woman, And
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: it just makes me realize how much technology is being
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: used to reinforce this, this worldview where women are just
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: meant to be consumed and controlled and exploited, And to me,
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: it really does express this desire to live in a
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: world where women just exists to be consumed and controlled
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: and stripped of whatever agency we have been managed to
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: claim over our own bodies, our own on our own lives.
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: And I think until we can front that reality, this
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: is not a problem that you can build technical safeguards
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: to fix. I do think that these platforms should be
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: building technical safeguards, and we should be advocating for that,
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: But I don't think it's a problem where you can
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: like guardrail your way out of it. People who have
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: been reporting on deep fakes since before we had a
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: word for it, folks like Samantha Cole, have really pointed
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: this out. Cole writes in twenty eighteen, less than a
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: year after reporting the first story on deep fakes, I
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: wrote about how it's a serious mistake to ignore the
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: fact that non consensual imagery, synthetic or not, is a
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: societal sickness and not something companies can guard. Railegance into infinity.
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: Users feed off one another to create a sense that
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: they're the kings of the universe, that they answer to
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: no one. This logic is how you get in cells
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: and pickup artists, and it's how you get deep fakes,
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: a group of men who see no harm in treating
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: women as mere images and view making and spreading algorithmically
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: weaponized revenge porn as a hobby as innocent and timeless
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: as trading baseball cards. I wrote at the time that
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: is what the root of deep fakes, and the consequences
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: of forgetting that are more dire than we can predict.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I just really really agree with that.
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: I think that it's a tech problem and we should
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: be talking about it as a tech problem, but deeper
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: than that, it's like a societal and cultural rot at
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: the heart of our society that we really do have
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: to deeply address, because the deep fakes is only but
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: one aspect of how this is showing up in increasingly
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: dangerous ways.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, and I think you've put it so well when
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: you're it's there's just so many different threads to this.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: I can think of so many different episodes we've done
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: that this rings true, Like I can't even list all
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: of them, but of course a lot of video game
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: episodes come to mind for me.
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: Meloliness epidemic.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's true. It's like everywhere, and it's I
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: think one thing. I know we've used the word alarming
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: a lot in this episode, but one thing that really
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: struck me in this was that huge rise in the
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: request for like non consensual images or just like it
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: does feel like it's getting worse. It does feel like
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: it's getting worse. And we everybody who's listening and everybody,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: all of us, we know that this has been a problem.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: We've been saying it for a long time, and now
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: it's worse.
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: I hate to leave it there. I hate to not
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: have there be I mean, I think the thing that
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: makes me feel a bit hopeful is that I think
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: that most people agree that this is despicable. I think
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: that the people who are creating this and benefiting from
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: it are a minority of people, and I think that
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: there are forces that would like to normalize its behavior,
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: but it's not really taking right, Like it's normal among
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: but I don't think. I think that the way that
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: people are responding to it, it's clear to me that
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: there are more of us that think this kind of
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: thing is unacceptable than there are people who are getting
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: their rocks off to it. So maybe that's a little
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: bit of hope. I do agree it's getting worse, but
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: you know, there are more of us than there are
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: of them.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Well, you know, I'm wondering, did you
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: say The Social Network has a sequel?
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: Yes? Oh my god, Yes it does have a sequel.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: I'm just curious what that would be now. So will
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: we ever get an elon MUFK version?
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: Oh my god.
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: I want Aaron Zorkin to keep making sequels. I want
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: it to be like a trilogy. So we've got The
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: Social Network too, officially cut titled The Social Reckoning is
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: a confirmed sequel companion film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin,
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: set for release on October ninth, twenty.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: Twenty six, So coming up not too long.
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: It's a blow Facebook's Harmful Social Impacts, based on The
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: Facebook File, starring Jeremy Strong as Zuckerberg, Oh Mikey Madsen
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: as whistleblower Francis Hogan and Jeremy Allen White.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: You know you go ahead and pencil it in for
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: me coming back to to talk about it. Go ahead
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: on write that right when you get your calendar together.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: And but I was thinking about it because we still
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: haven't done our watch because Samantha's never seen.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: I've never seen it the social network, So watch it
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: this weekend.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: I'm wondering how it will hit differently now, That's what
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: I'm curious about, because I haven't watched it in a
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: long time. Knowing what we know now, I'm wondering how
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: it will hit now. But yeah, I think we should.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: I think we should pencil it in. I think I'll
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: get cale see you in October. Well, thank you, thank you,
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: thank you so much, Bridget. This was definitely a tough topic.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: So we appreciate you doing the work and doing the
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: research and helping us go through it because it is
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: so important. And happy happy new Year, and we're looking
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: forward to continuing to work together.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: Happy new year to you, Happy new year listeners. Thanks
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: for having me.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, and where can the good listeners find you? Bridget?
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: You can listen to my podcast. There are no girls
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: on the Internet. You can find me on Instagram at
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: bridget Marie and DC and you can check me out
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: on YouTube. There are no girls on the internet.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, and definitely go do that. If you have not
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: already listeners, if you would like to contact us, you can.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: You can email us at Hello at stuff I Never
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: Told You. You could find us on Blue skyt Mom
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: Stuff podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff We
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: Never Told You. We're also on YouTube. We have some
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: merchandise at cop Bureau and we have a book you
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: can get wherever you get your books. Thanks as always
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: too our super due Christine or executive pducer my undercomputer Joey.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: Thank you and thanks you for listening.
• 59:56
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• 59:58
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