There Are No Girls on the Internet

There Are No Girls on the Internet

Marginalized voices have always been at the forefront of the internet, yet our stories often go overlooked. Bridget Todd chronicles our experiences online, and the ways marginalized voices have shaped the internet from the very beginning. We need monuments to all of the identities that make being online what it is. So let’s build them.

Episodes

November 14, 2025 52 mins

Christmas has come early for Bridget, because Joyce Carol Oates is beefing with Elon Musk on Twitter. Bridget explains to Producer Mike what it's about, why Joyce Carol Oates is one of her all-time problematic faves, and why Elon is now performatively demonstrating his commitment to literacy with insightful takes like "great movie" and ads declaring that he likes to read.

If you’re listening on Spotify, you can leave a commen...

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Birth control is the latest battleground in a wave of online misinformation targeting young women — and doctors and reproductive health advocates are sounding the alarm about its impact.

But this isn’t your typical fearmongering about birth control coming from Bible-thumpers or conservative men in suits. This new wave is coming from wellness influencers — the ones in matching pastel workout sets — who are li...

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It’s just turtles and scams all the way down.

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show: https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/

‘You’re not rushing. You’re just ready:’ Parents say ChatGPT encouraged son to kill himself: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/06/us/openai-chatgpt-suicide-lawsuit-in...

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Black women are leaving the workforce and it’s a warning sign for the entire economy. From media to tech, more than 300,000 Black women have left their jobs in the last year. What’s driving this exodus, and what does it reveal about the state of work in America? Bridget speaks with:

Anna Gifty, economist and author of the fascinating new book The Double Tax: How Women of Color Are Overcharged, and Underpaid, and 

s...

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Happy Halloween, boys and ghouls! In this week's news roundup Bridget is recapping all the tech news stories you might have missed, so you don't have to.

Creeps in Meta Raybans are nonconsensually filming massage women in massage parlors: https://www.404media.co/metas-ray-ban-glasses-users-film-and-harass-massage-parlor-workers/

China implements a new law cracking down on influencers who spread misinformation. https://www.cnet.com/...

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October 28, 2025 49 mins

We all know the internet loves a viral story. But what happens when that story is about a real woman being harassed and the platforms that ostensibly should be protecting her instead punish her? That’s what happened to Livie, a DoorDash driver in New York State whose story is currently going viral on TikTok. Bridget breaks down what actually happened, why the story is drowning in misinformation and AI generated fake videos, a...

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When Elon Musk took over X, a lot of us left the platform, searching for alternatives. One platform that gained attention is Bluesky. It looks a lot like Twitter, but it’s different. Bluesky is built on a decentralized system, and that decentralized nature has allowed powerful pockets of community to emerge. To date, Blacksky is the biggest and most successful effort to take advantage of Bluesky's decentralization. 

It's...

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Welcome to the weekly News Roundup! Bridget recaps the week's tech stories that you might have missed.

Pop superstar apparently pulls controversial necklace after Nazi imagery backlash: https://www.cleveland.com/news/2025/10/pop-superstar-apparently-pulls-controversial-necklace-after-nazi-imagery-backlash.html

Here's Bridget's 2016 take on Taylor Swift: https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/smnty-classics-problematic-faves-taylor-s...

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Taylor Swift is getting married. And on her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, she sounds over the moon about it. But online, everyone’s asking: Is Taylor Swift a “trad wife” now?

In this episode, Bridget dives into the rise of trad wife culture with author and journalist Jo Piazza, host of the podcast Under The Influence and author of the juicy new book about trad wives, Everyone Is Lying to You. They unpack what...

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Welcome to the weekly News Roundup! Bridget and Producer Mike recap the week's tech stories that you might have missed. 

It’s True: The Internet Skews the Reality of Women (and Men) in the Workforce https://www.motherjones.com/media/2025/10/nature-study-berkeley-haas-online-internet-images-gender-bias-workforce-false-reality-women/

Read the study (Guilbeault et al., 2025) 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-...

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Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is all about free speech, just not when it comes to abortion.

New reports from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reveal how Facebook and Instagram censor abortion content, even when it’s medically accurate and completely legal. Bridget joins Samantha and Anney and Stuff Mom Never Told You to unpack how Meta’s abortion content moderation really works, why posts about reproductive heal...

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Transgender for everybody! Everything is computer! We’re in a silly, tangent filled mood for this one!


Every week Bridget recaps the tech news stories you might have missed, so you don't have to. This week she's joined by TANGOTI producer Joey Patt.

Elon Musk calls for a Netflix Boycott, but we're not linking to him and you can't make us.

Misinformation/disinformation leads to US couples’ divorces, breakups: https:/...

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Wellness influencers are perfecting the art of turning pseudoscience into profit. Whether they're selling supplements, offering classes, or just chasing engagement, an army of wellness grifters has weaponized mistrust of institutions and Big Pharma, peddling false health claims that trick people into treatments and practices that are ineffective at best, and in some cases outright dangerous. 

Last week the Trump administration...

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App for outing people who were insufficiently mournful of Charlie Kirk critics leaked its own users’ personal data through security blunders: https://san.com/cc/app-for-outing-charlie-kirks-critics-leaked-its-users-personal-data/

Meta is using parents’ back-to-school photos of their girls to advertise Threads to grown men: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/20/parents-outraged-meta-uses-photos-schoolgi...

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In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, the Trump Administration and their collaborators are prosecuting a widespread crackdown on free expression. Karen Attiah has been a columnist at the Washington Post for 11 years, and was the last remaining Black columnist at the newspaper until last week. She was fired, allegedly for being insufficiently mournful over murdered racist Charlie Kirk, but at this point her firing seems less a...

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Not gonna lie - it's been a rough week. The Trump administration has used Charlie Kirk's murder to crack down on dissent, shocking even their allies with their willingness to threaten critics and trample First Amendment values. But these authoritarians will fail. Bridget is joined by L. Joy Williams, president of the New York NAACP and host Sunday Civics on Sirius XM and wherever you get your podcasts, to recap the latest developme...

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Welcome to our weekly news round up, where we dig into some of the tech stories you might have missed. This week, Bridget is joined by guest co-host Ashley Ray, host of Courier's smart podcast "TV I Say."

 

CBS just keeps caving harder and harder to appease the Trump administration. https://newrepublic.com/article/199889/kristi-noem-attack-cbs-kilmar-garcia-trump-scam 

 

Creator of porn site "Girls Do Porn" sentenced...

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Charlie Kirk built his career by debating students and spreading rhetoric that was too often dismissed as “spirited debate.” 

Now, in the wake of his death, politicians and media outlets are rushing to rewrite his legacy. In this episode, Bridget digs into what Kirk really stood for, why his words mattered, and why violence doesn’t erase bigotry.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Last week in Wired, Taylor Lorenz published an exposé on Chorus, a new force in Democratic politics that is funding Democratic influencers. Her piece has sparked major controversy among political influencers and their observers online.  

In this episode, Bridget breaks down what the article reveals (and what it leaves out), and explores what this fight says about money, power, and trust in American democracy.

Read ...

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