WE RECORDED OUR UPDATE ON KATE MIDDLETON BEFORE THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTED NEWS THAT SHE HAD BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER. READ MORE ABOUT THAT HERE: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/22/world/princess-kate-middleton-cancer
Staff at clinic where Kate had surgery ‘tried to access her medical records’ https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/19/inquiry-reportedly-begins-after-claims-clinic-staff-tried-to-access-princess-of-waless-records
TMZ’s Kate video: https://www.tmz.com/2024/03/18/kate-middleton-seen-new-video-windsor-farm-shop-prince-william/
Users say Glassdoor added real names to user profiles without their consent: https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/20/glassdoor-added-real-names-profiles-without-consent/
A third of Bumble’s Texas workforce moved after state passed restrictive ‘Heartbeat Act’ abortion bill: https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/08/bumble-lost-a-third-of-its-texas-workforce-after-state-passed-restrictive-heartbeat-act-abortion-bill/
Washington Post report: Women are getting off birth control amid misinformation explosion https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/03/21/stopping-birth-control-misinformation/
AI Marilyn Monroe Marks Another Step Forward In Extending Celebrity Brand Value Beyond The Grave: https://deadline.com/2024/03/ai-marilyn-monroe-marks-another-step-forward-in-extending-celebrity-brands-1235850875/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, this is Future Bridgid. So we recorded this week's
news roundup on Thursday afternoon, the day before The New
York Times just broke a story about Kate Middleton being
diagnosed with cancer. You can read the New York Times
as full story in the show notes. But this news
came out just as we published the episode for this week,
so we pulled the episode down so that I could
re record this introduction that you're hearing right now to
(00:22):
give that context. Okay, thanks for listening, and here's the episode,
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
is There Are No Girls on the Internet. This is
(00:44):
There Are No Girls on the Internet, where we explore
the intersection of technology, social media, the Internet, and identity.
And you're listening to another one of our weekly roundups
where we summarize and break down the news that you
might have missed on the Internet this week. Mike, thank you,
thank you for being here again. The last time we
saw each other on the mic, we were talking about
Kate Middleton.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
That's right. Uh.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
It was a story that had been going on for
a little while, and it seems to continue to be
going on.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
It has continued, So I did want to give folks
a little bit of a brief update on what's happened
in Kate Middleton Royal's world since we last spoke. So
this week, TMZ released a video of Kate out shopping.
The video was shot by like a random person on
a cell phone, just somebody off the street, who then
(01:32):
provided it to TMZ. So TMZ also published the metadata
of this video. Metadata tells you when and where a
piece of content was recorded, which confirms that this video
was indeed recorded next to Kate Middleton's home and was
recorded on that Saturday. Just like they said, it was
case close right.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Maybe maybe is a good.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Way to put it, because just like we talked about
in that episode, really breaking down Kate Middleton, but really
talking about how conspiracy theories move online more generally, once
a conspiracy theory reaches a certain point, there is like
no amount of hard evidence that will satisfy people who
are deeply, deeply convinced that something fishy is going on. However,
(02:17):
that said, I have to say that the way that
TMZ is acting right now after having published this video
is weird, Like it is they're acting a little bit weird.
So after publishing this video and saying it is Kate
definitively case clothed, here's the metadata. Let's put all the
conspiracy theories to rest. Then two of their executive producers
(02:41):
went on TMZ Live, which is like TMZ's live television show,
and basically kind of walked back whether or not they
thought it was actually her.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Here's what they said.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So she looks great.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Where's the security?
Speaker 5 (02:59):
Where is the security?
Speaker 6 (03:00):
That's a good question. And why is it with all
the people that were there, this is the only video
that surfaced, the video that we secured. Why is it
that they're in the store, moseying around, going to the
cash regiser. Nobody's taking any pictures, any photos, any video,
but we got this.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So I genuinely do not know what is going on
here because I think that TMZ would have authenticated this
video as being Kate before publishing it and saying that
it's Kate. Now, I can hear people out there listening
who are thinking, bridget TMZ is a shady tabloid. Why
(03:41):
would you expect them to verify what they put out
or confirm what they put out before they publish it,
to which I won't say I'll push back on that,
but I would complicate that a little bit because yes,
TMZ is an outlet that is run by pieces of
human garbage who have no ethical or moral compass whatsoever.
(04:03):
They are not good people. I will we could do
a whole other episode on this. However, TMZ is not
an outlet that tends to get stuff wrong. That is
one thing I can say about them, Like, if TMZ
reports that somebody is dead, that person is probably dead
even if no other outlet is reporting it because they're TMZ.
Like I remember when Michael Jackson died. They were the
first to run with that story, and everybody was like,
(04:25):
well it's TMZ, let's wait until we get another outlet.
But the reason why TMZ tends to always sort of
get it right on these big breaking stories is because,
like they are known to have police on their payroll
and like payoff police. Like folks might remember back when
Kobe Bryant and his daughter died in that helicopter crash,
(04:45):
TMZ reported that news first, and it started a whole
conversation of whether or not they should have reported that
because the police had still not notified all of the
family members, and so TMC is an outlet that is
known for reporting things first and correct actually perhaps because
they are unethical.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
Goules with no souls.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
So if TMZ is publishing something generally speaking that is
like they're not an outlet that is known to put
out just like blies.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
But it sounds like maybe this story and this photo
are a little different.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Well, I genuinely don't know what's going on here. Like
it's possible that TMZ has just sensed that, like they
have like what they see as a juicy story.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
So they're they're.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Putting out a video and saying this is confirmed to
be Kate, and then their producers are going on their
channel and saying like, oh, we don't know if it's
Kate or not. Maybe they're thinking that like this will
lead to more engagement on a story that they perceive
as like juicy. Maybe they did not authenticate that video
before publishing it. I really don't know, Like anybody's guest
is as good as mine in terms of what is
(05:50):
actually going on here.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah, and it's probably one of like a thousand stories
where we might never know exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
But I will say, like there are images flowing around
on social media right now that are purporting to show
a quote enhanced still from that video, purporting to prove
that like, oh, it's not really caids, it's a body double,
it's a stand in. Those are one hundred and ten
percent fake, Like I can, I can assure you that
(06:17):
if anybody is pushing around images that are purporting to
use AI to like enhance these this video, that's not
even how it works. Those are fake. As Google's Adriana
porter Felt wrote on Twitter, I keep seeing people post
photo enhancements as fact. This does not actually enhance the
original photo. It invents a plausible new photo and overlays
(06:39):
it on the blurry original. The generated version is actually
less trustworthy than the original blurry video. Don't do this, Like,
I think it's this idea that we all live in
a CSI episode where you can just type type type
type type enhance type type type TI type enhance using AI.
That doesn't work that way.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
These are all bay.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
I think you and I were talking about false precision
in some other context this morning, right, like the idea,
and I think it applies here too, right, that you
can have this photo that looks very highly detailed and precise,
and it tricks your brain into thinking that, like, oh,
this more precise, sharper image clearly must be more true.
(07:22):
But that's just like not the case, for exactly the
way that that well spoken quote from that Google person
mentioned like it looks sharper, but it's just an invented,
plausible image.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And that's why I think some of the conspiracy theories
about this won't die, because your brain tricks you into
thinking this sharp, clear image must be correct, when in
fact it is less trustworthy than that grainy video. So
I have to say this, and this is pretty horrifying.
Kate's private medical information was involved in a data security
(07:57):
breach after at least one member of the staff at
the hospital where she was staying back in January attempted
to view her medical records while she was a patient there.
Authorities are actually now investigating whether or not the hospital
broke the law by failing to report this breach in
a timely manner. So there is no ambiguity or gray
area here. This is just so deeply deeply messed up.
(08:22):
End of sentence period, and I think this was the
point I was trying to make in the episode that
we did breaking all of this down last week, that
there is a difference between the public asking questions about
how Kensington Palace, right a political and social institution, is moving,
and how the Kensington Palace is communicating with the public
(08:43):
without demanding access and you know, an entitlement to information
about an individual's like private sensitive health information right. You know,
I think that when a public who is voracious for
any kind of information about Kate as a person blurs
those lines, we get this dynamic where people really do
(09:03):
feel like it is okay to try to obtain an
individual's personal, private medical information to satisfy that question, and
it's not. Not only is it illegal, it is wrong.
And so I think that's really where we're kind of
getting into this problem of I think it is totally
fair to scrutinize and criticize and ask questions about the
(09:25):
way that the institution that is, the Royal family is
communicating with the public.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
That is totally fair game.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
That is different than demanding information about an individual, in
this case, Kate's private medical information.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
It does make sense, And uh, you know, I know
that we got a few emails from listeners after that
previous episode, and I think it's worth, you know, clarifying
why we're talking about this story on this show. And
you know, so like Bridget, are we talking talking about
(10:00):
this because you have some sort of personal interest in
the royal family, or like some expertise in the royal family,
or because you feel like, you know, all of you
have some personal feelings about Kate Middleton and feel like
we have a right to know, like what's going on
with her personal life? Or are those your motivations for
wanting to talk about it on this show.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Absolutely not. I don't know anything about Kate Middleton. Of
all of the royals that I know anything about, she
is the one that I have followed the least, and
I don't really follow any of them, so that's actually
really saying something. But I do think that when it
comes to institutions that wield public power and do enjoy
a level of public support, it is not just okay
(10:45):
to ask questions and scrutinize how they are communicating with
the public. I think it's necessary, and I think that
when we get into these gray areas of people being like, well,
how dare you demand private information about Kate? I don't
think that anybody should be demanding private information about Kate.
I certainly don't think that if you are someone working
in a clinic where she may have stayed, but you
should be going through her private health records.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
My god.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
However, that is different than asking questions about, well, who
in Kensington Palace used photoshop to doctor images in a
way that they had to have known was against Newswire
rules and then tried to submit them as if they
were not doctored. I think that's a totally fair question
and a question that speaks to how institutions are communicating
(11:29):
with the public. But that's a different thing than like,
what kind of medical issue did Kate have and when
did she have it? Like, that's a completely different question
that I think is Kate's private business. Before we got
on the mic, I was reading about how another image,
another holiday image of the late Queen, it was revealed
that that Kensington Palace had doctored that image similarly to
(11:51):
the one of Kate, and you know, did not tell anybody,
and it got past it got past fact checkers, and
it was distributed via Newswire, and I was a prize
to see a lot of the commenters saying things like
they're celebrities. It's news now that celebrities are photoshopping wrinkles
out of their images and like using photoshop to make
them look better. And no, first of all, these people
(12:12):
are not normal celebrities. So I'm not even interested in
whether or not the Late Queen use photoshop or whatever.
The question is, did they knowingly violate the very clear
and explicit rules around how you submit authenticated photos to
newswire services to get distributed out in an official capacity?
(12:33):
Did they violate that? I'm not interested in with If
they just put photoshopped images on their own personal instagrams
and leave it at that, who cares? But this is
a very different thing. And again, I just think that
the blurriness between individual actions of individuals and the way
that this massive, powerful, publicly supported institution is communicating with
(12:55):
the public, those are two different things. One of them
is fair game, and in fact that I would argue
we should be asking questions about the other.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Who cares?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
And I think that's sort of the thread that we're
losing in this conversation.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
You know, I think the world has really changed a
lot in terms of like what are the rules and
norms around touching up photos. Perhaps the the you know,
the rules for the wire services haven't changed, but just
you know, common practices around what people do personally. You know,
I'm willing to grant that has changed a lot in
(13:27):
the past couple of years with AI filters, but they
it really feels like there's a lot of room for
Kensington Palace, who receives I believe hundreds of millions of
dollars of like taxpayer support. Hopefully this lights of fire
for them to get up to speed on what's needed
(13:49):
to ideally play an active role in helping re establish
rules so that people can have trust in the information
that they see.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Well, that's a great segue to this glassdoor story, which
is a weird one. Like I've one of the reasons
I'm excited to talk to you about this because you
have a background in PII. What is it personal identifying information?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
So here's what's going on.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
If you have ever talked crap about your job anonymously
on the website Glassdoor, which is an anonymous forum for
people to rate and review their workplaces, you might want
to think twice because we are seeing multiple reports that
Glassdoor collected and added people's names to their user profiles
without their consent. So tech Crunch reports that one user
(14:38):
who they're calling Monica, wrote in a post on her
personal blog that Glassdoor added her name in the city
where she lives to her Glassdoor profile following an email
exchange that she had with Glassdoor customer support, despite never
having consensually provided her name during the initial sign up process,
which would happen two years earlier. So basically, it kind
(14:59):
of sounds like if Glassdoor learns your name or learn
some kind of personal identifying information about you, even if
you do not provide it to them when you're signing
up for Glassdoor, they will add it to your profile
without your consent.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
So how does she say that they got her.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Name from this email exchange that she had with Glassdoor
customer support that when she signed up for Glassdoor years earlier,
she didn't use her name she wanted to stay anonymous.
That she had a years later, she had a back
and forth email exchange with Glassdoor customer support. Her email
signature includes her name and location, and they just took
from that email her name, first and last name, and
(15:34):
location and added it to her profile, even though she
never consented to that and didn't want that, And to
be clear, like Glassdoor is a place where anonymity would
be really important, like if you weren't trashing your boss,
or you had something really important to say, it makes
sense why you wouldn't necessarily want to have your first
and last name attached to a what you thought was
an anonymous review of a workplace. And one of the
(15:58):
reasons why I'm having a little bit of trouble with
this story is that this really sounds like a change.
I know from being in the space for a while
that Glassdoor really used to thrive on user anonymity and
was like kind of an industry leader in protecting PII
personal identifying information. But what sounds like changed was a
corporate acquisition. So ours Technical reports that although it is
(16:21):
common for many users online to link services at sign
up to their Facebook or their Gmail account to verify
identity and streamline logins, for years, Glassdoor has notably allowed
users to sign up for its service anonymously. But in
twenty twenty one, Glassdoor acquired Fishbowl, a professional networking app
that integrated with Glassdoor. Last July, this acquisition meant that
(16:42):
every Glassdoor user was automatically signed up for a fish
Bowl account, and because Fishbowl requires users to verify their identities,
Glassdoor's terms of service changed to require all users be verified.
So I should be clear that this is not a
theoretical concern. Lawyers or companies who have been negatively reviewed
on Glassdoor have regularly tried to learn the identities of
(17:06):
the people leaving anonymous reviews on the site. The organization
the Electronic Frontier Foundation regularly defends Glassdoor users from being
unmasked by retaliating employers, particularly for employees who fear retaliation
for reviews. The lawyer for EFF said that Glassdoor users
could historically choose never to share their real names, and
the company is now storing names for all users makes
(17:28):
it much more likely that users could be linked to
their reviews should glassdoors data ever be subpoenaed or leaked.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Yeah, I think that's such a good point that it's
worth like reemphasizing it that. You know, it's one thing
for Glassdoor to have a privacy policy that says like
we will not release your name. That's great, that's good,
but it's if to truly have your name be protected.
(17:55):
It would be better if they never had it in
the first place. Right, Like we've seen this very concerned
playout with concerns about the Kids Online Safety Act, Right
that it's going to be collecting all of this information,
And even if that information is nominally protected, the fact
that it is stored somewhere puts it at risk. Right,
(18:16):
It's at risk of there being some kind of breach
that makes that information public despite the company not wanting
to be public. And it's also at risk if there's
like a change in ownership and a change of privacy policy,
which seems to be the situation here.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
It's funny to hear you say this because just before
we were talking, you were annoyed and I was like, Oh,
what's going on. You were like, Oh, I'm trying to
track a package that I bought, but it wants me
to shine up sign up for Shop to do that,
and I have to give shop this shop app access
to all my emails.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
And I was like, oh, I use Shop all the time.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
And you were like, it doesn't concern you, Like you
don't give your information to anybody.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
No, I really try to jealously protect my privacy. I
think we all have an obligation to you occasionally inconvenience
ourselves to jealously protect our privacy against the constant encroachment
of tech companies that want all of our data. And yeah,
I wasn't going to bring it up, but since you've
brought it up, I'll go down this tangent that I
was so annoyed at shop this morning. Generally I find
(19:15):
shop like fairly convenient to use. They do a good
job tracking packages when I'm buying from some kind of retailer.
But the limitation that drives me up the wall is
that so like earlier this week, I ordered two different
packages from two different retailers. They're both being delivered and
tracked by Shop Okay, I got a text message notification
(19:35):
that says like, Hey, your package is being delivered today.
I was curious which of my two items was it
going to be. I can't know that without using the
Shop app. There's no way to do it through the web.
There's no way to do it unless I install the
Shop app on my phone. I was surprised that I
didn't have the Shop app on my phone, so I
went to install it, and then remember that I had
(19:56):
been here before and the app will not install proper. Really,
unless I give it access to read all of my emails.
Why in the world do they need to read all
of my emails? Not okay, and I'm not going to
do it. And you know, I looked on Reddit and
people were complaining about this, and one of the top
comments was like, oh, just read their privacy policy. They're
(20:17):
you know, they're not going to do anything with your data.
They just have They just want to help you. That's
the stupidest take I've read all day, right, Like, oh, yeah,
I'm just going to trust this online retailer with you know,
all of my personal the contents of all of my
personal emails.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Uh, what could they possibly want with that? Right?
Speaker 3 (20:37):
An online retailer that is into like trying to get
me to buy more things I couldn't imagine. Yeah, so
tangent ended. But I'm glad that I had the opportunity
to connect it to this story, because you know, once
your information is out there, it's out there.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
Let's take a quick break that are back.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Well, So the thing that really worries me about the
glassdoor situation is that I think I have to imagine
that it's going to be a lot of traditionally marginalized
people who are going to suffer if this is just
how glass Door functions from now on, right, I can
imagine that it is women, trans folks, queer folks, people
(21:37):
of color who are raising the alarm about things like
racial or gender discrimination or like sexual harassment. And I
can't help but understanding this story against this creep toward
not being able to use forums that were previously available
to you to privately raise the alarms about concerns. You know,
especially given that we're seeing more and more are people
(22:00):
who do speak up about you know, wrongdoing facing things
like defamation lawsuits for doing so. It's you know, we're
not just talking about people who are complaining about their
boss's coffee breath or whatever. It is people who a
lot of times are raising serious alarms or serious concerns
in a forum that one might think would be anonymous
or private for them to do so safely. And so
(22:22):
I really can't help but see the story against that
backdrop of like, well, shoot, like, are people going to
be able to use glass door safely to report genuine,
real concerns?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
That's my question, Yeah mine too.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
This story like really surprised me and makes me a
little bit sad because I view Glassdoor as a very
valuable resource and historically a very good actor towards transferring
some power back to workers to somewhat reduce the massive
asymmeagery between workers and people who own companies and employ them. Historically,
they've been pretty good about this stuff, and so this
(22:56):
feels really out of character, really disappointing, and I think
it'll it just happened like pretty recently. I think this story,
we'll link it to it in the show notes. But
it was just published yesterday, and I thought, surely Glassdoor
is going to put out a statement saying that this
(23:18):
was a mistake. They haven't done that yet, And what
little they said in quotes to that Ours Technica Reporter
was pretty unsatisfying. They really seem to say that there
wasn't an issue here. But then there's also a bunch
of articles across the internet from other publications, and like
(23:40):
some big ones like NPR really amplifying this story and
this concern in ways that are very unflattering for glass Door.
So I'm maating hopeful that they will recognize what a
catastrophic misstep this is for their product that really depends
on anonymity, that they will take some corrective action to
(24:03):
reassure people that, like Glassdoor is still a place where
you can post anonymous reviews that will truly be anonymous,
because without that, like what even is it?
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Well, speaking of missteps and hopeful corrections on them, let's
talk about the dating app Bumble. So y'all might remember
that a lot of tech companies were relocating from San
Francisco or like other places in California, to Texas. Specifically,
a lot of them are relocating to Austin. Well, that
is maybe not working out for a whole host of reasons,
(24:33):
but one of those reasons is Texas's restrictive abortion laws. So,
at a panel at south By Southwest, ironically held in Austin,
the council for the dating app Bumble that is sort
of supposed to be like a more woman focused dating app,
revealed that the company has lost a third of its
Texas workforce in the month since the state passed horribly
(24:54):
restrictive abortion laws known as SB eight sometimes called the
Texas Heartbeat Act, over a year ago. Because of these
very extremist laws that are completely out of step with
what the majority of the country wants, Bumble it no
longer requires people to work at their Austin headquarters. Bumble
actually became the first company to join an amarchist brief
(25:15):
in support of a lawsuit against the Texas abortion law
filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights. So I wanted
to talk about this for a couple of reasons. One
because I think it's really important to highlight the very
real risk that laws like this poth to people who
are pregnant or the people who support people who are pregnant. However,
this also highlights the business rambifications of extremist abortion laws
(25:36):
as well. The chief council for Bumble said, we were
looking at the lens and what we are putting forth
in the brief was talking about the increased cost to
us to attract and retain talent in Texas, the increased
costs for us to provide healthcare benefits to our employees.
We've found that because of our position, having been founded
with women at the forefront from the beginning and having
that voice and that legitimacy to begin with, we could
(25:57):
combine that with this very business centric art and help
support that case. This actually led to a bunch of
businesses from all over Texas signing on to this anarchist brief,
pointing out that these kind of extremists abortion laws really
do put their business in jeopardy by making it harder
to recruit top talent. Bumble specifically said that they had
started to offer like an enhanced health care coverage that
(26:20):
includes things like gender affirming care and IVF because those
kinds of healthcare have been threatened in the state. Although,
like part of me wonders, you know, it's good to
have that coverage included, but if that kind of healthcare
is illegal, you can't access it in Texas. It does
kind of seem like a moot point.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I yeah, I'm curious about that, but I don't know
anything about it.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yeah, But overall, I mean, I do think that of
all the different avenuess to be talking about how restrictive
abortion laws impact people negatively, I do think I want
to hear more from the business community, because certainly it
is an economic issue, not just for the people who
need abortions, for the people who do any kind of
business all over the country, in addition to being a
(27:06):
reproductive health issue. And so I do want to see
more businesses, particularly businesses who are you know, are about,
you know, sticking up with women, sticking up with marginalized people.
I want I want to see more of these businesses
weighing in as we go into this more and more extremist,
restrictive climate.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
I mean, there's so many reasons why giving people reproductive
freedom and allowing them to make their own medical choices
is like a win win for society, right, like, not
just businesses, but also in terms of like the huge
costs of unwanted pregnancies right like to individuals, to healthcare systems,
(27:51):
UH to social services for years and years.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Well.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
To that end, we have to talk about the growth
in misinformation swirling around social media around birth control. So
there was this new very detailed report by the Washington
Post about how social media platforms are awash in medically
inaccurate content about birth control and how it is leading
to real world consequences. You should definitely read the entire thing.
(28:18):
It is very detailed. We'll put it in the show notes.
But basically, you have these like health influencers I'm using
that in heavy scare quotes, and also right wing extremists
really trying to scare people into thinking that birth control
is dangerous.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Now.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Birth control, like any other medication, does have side effects.
In rare cases, it can cause things like blood clots.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
That is real.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
But these people are not trying to foster fact based
conversations about the real concerns around birth control. They're saying
nonsense like, oh, birth control, if you take it, it
will change your entire personality, it will change the kind
of people that you are sexually attracted to. Things that
are just fear mongering and nonsense. So you have these
(29:06):
health influencers suggesting natural forms of non hormonal birth control,
like only having sex on your period, which by the way,
does not work. And this is all particularly fraught given
how restrictive abortion access is in this country right now
and how criminalized it is. So you have people with
these big platforms essentially suggesting people stop using birth control
(29:29):
and instead only have sex on their periods, a like
a method that is known for unintended pregnancies in a
country where you cannot easily access abortion care if you
need it, or can be criminalized and sent to prison
for doing so. So this is really one of those
issues where you can see how tech issues and social
media platform issues are also reproductive rights issues and gender issues.
(29:54):
Doctors are saying that they're seeing an explosion of birth
control misinformation online target a very vulnerable demographic, people in
their teens and early twenties, who are more likely to
believe what they see on their phones because of algorithms
that feed them a stream of videos reinforcing messages often
divorced from scientific evidence. While doctors say hormonal contraception is
(30:17):
safe and effective, they worry about the profession's long standing
lack of transparency and some of the serious but rare
side effects that have left many patients seeking information from
unqualified online communities. So I have actually personally seen a
lot of this on social media. I'm sad to say
I just like most abortion advocates told us, anti choice
(30:42):
extremists and people who want to tell other people what
to do with their own bodies were never going to
stop at abortion. It was going to be birth control. Weirdly,
it was also tampons. Like for a while I was
seeing that bubble up, like right wing extremists basically suggesting
that having tampons in school bathrooms meant that teachers and
(31:04):
schools were like sexually abusing young people. Because like I
remember seeing this post that was someone being like, as
a father, it should be up to me whether or
not my daughter uses a tampon, and if a school
should have no say and whether or not my daughter
uses a tampon. He was like angry that the school
was providing tampons in the watchrooms. So anybody watching this
(31:27):
could have told you it was not going to stop
with abortion. It was going to be all of these
different things that pertain to reproductive health being demonized. So
this backlash to birth control really comes at a time
where we see this rampant misinformation about basic health combined
with really really poor digital literacy, and this wider political
(31:52):
debate around reproductive rights in which far right conservatives argue
that the broad acceptance of birth control has altered tradition
roles and weaken the family. And so if you're wondering,
like what does Ben Shapiro or Candace Owen care whether
or not I use birth control, that sort of their
ultimate point is that birth control is changing gender roles,
(32:14):
is changing how we think of traditional families, and therefore
it's bad. So in a Daily Wire video, Candace Owens
denounced birth controls and iud's as quote unnatural saying she
is a big advocate of getting women to realize this
stuff is not normal. She also says that her viewers
told her that IUDs can harm fertility, which medical experts
(32:37):
agree there is no evidence that birth control impacts long
term fertility, so that's just not true. Also, she's kind
of doing a little bit of an Elon musk thing.
I don't know if you watched any of that Elon
musk Uh interview with Don Lemon, where Don Lemon is like,
what evidence do you have that pilot that black pilots
are being held to lower standards? And he's like, well,
(32:58):
people on Twitter say that all the time, and it's like, no,
that doesn't make it true. I feel like Candice Owens,
It's like, oh, well, people are saying that iud's cause
long term fertility issues, and it's like, it doesn't that
does it? Just because you read it on the internet
doesn't make it true. Ben Shapiro, noted reproductive health expert
(33:18):
not really. He claims that birth control makes women attracted
to less manly, less masculine men, like these.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
People are just so fucking stupid.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Like part of me is like like what even what
point is there even I don't. Obviously that's not true,
and I don't even I don't even have a little
joke to make. It's just such a ridiculous point that
I can't believe that somebody with a massive platform is
allowed to just go on TV, go on their platform
spread dangerous falsehoods that are not just untrue but also silly.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Many of these people who are like railing against birth control,
it's not like they have families of like twenty kids, right,
Like a lot of these political commentators, I have pretty
small families, and one has to imagine that that has
helped them in their professional careers to achieve the massive
platforms that they have. Are we supposed to believe that
(34:16):
none of them have used birth control?
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Well, the thing with Candice Owen is she's a liar
and a grifter and a scammer baby like she does
not she'll say anything about anybody does not like this.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
It's not work that to.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Try to hold her to any kind of a standard
that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
That it's not what she is about.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
And I would say, like publicly, this is not what
she don't don't think I think that she would agree
that's not what she's about. Like she says things about
how women shouldn't work. How when she gets on a
plane and she sees a woman pilot, she thinks, oh, no,
we're going to die today.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Baby.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
You have a job, you have a career. You are
a woman who works. You are a working mom. So
when you go on TV and you go on your
little podcast and you demonize working moms, look at a mirror,
because you are a mom with a job, You make
a ton of money, you go to work every day.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
I don't want to hear it.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Obviously, if you are a person of reproductive age who
is building a career, you have probably used worth control
at some point to buttress that career and to have
control over your life.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
And more power to you.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
You should everybody should be able to make health residence
for themselves. However, Candice omens she just says whatever, like
and so when it comes to her, especially, I don't
think it's worth trying to make heads or tails of
what she's saying, because she'll say anything for a check.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
She's like Mia off a Real Housewives of Potomac. She'll
say whatever. If you don't watch Potomac, Mia lies, That's
my point.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Mia, just catch it straight. Doesn't you have enough problems
right now?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
She does, She does, I should lay off Mia and
also Mia, there's a whole other topic, but Mia has
kind of like become my fan favorite.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
So even though she's a liar.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
So Washington Post spoke to Brittany Martinez is the founder
of ev Magazine, which you can kind of think of
as like a right wing Cosmo, and she said in
an email to the Post that her outlet's work has
made questioning birth control mainstream, saying women have been silenced
and shamed by legacy media, the pharmaceutical industry, and then
many cases about their own doctors who have guessed lit
(36:18):
them about their.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
Experiences with hermonal birth control.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
So this comment, to me, really illustrates nicely how bad
actors like this work, right. They seize on the very
real and very legitimate anxieties or fears or baggage that
marginalized people have. She is right up until a point
that women really have been like silenced and ignored about
(36:43):
our medical issues by doctors and a pharmaceutical industry that
do not often seem to really care about our pain,
about our health, about our bodies.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
So that part is true.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
But where she fucks up is that she then cruelly
exploits these anxieties and these very real tensions and baggage
that we have to push her own dangerous agenda. And
that is something we see time and time again with
bad actors and extremists like this. Something else this report
points out is how these bad actors are exploiting racialized
(37:17):
and gendered fears and anxieties around medical information to further
push harmful and accurate information about birth control. The report reads,
women of color, whose communities have historically been exploited by
the medical establishment may be particularly vulnerable to misinformation given
the long history of mistrust around birth control in this country.
That's from Kimberly Baker, an assistant professor at ut Health
(37:40):
Houston School of Public Health. For sterilization of tens of
thousands of primarily black, Latina and Indigenous women happened under
the US government programs in the twentieth century. That's another
huge reason why these negative videos around birth control get
a lot of fanfare, because there's already stigma attached to it,
and that's deeped in our history. And so you really
(38:00):
do see these bad actors cruelly and callously picking at
and exploiting these very real traumas that our communities have
been carrying around for decades for real reasons, and exploiting it.
And sometimes they're exploiting people and their anxieties and baggage
and trauma for money.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
Like a lot of.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
These people when they're like like health influencers in quotes,
they'll be talking about how birth control is unnatural or dangerous,
and then you go to their page and they're selling
some kind of a hormonal supplement or hormonal coaching something
that is just like BS And so they're scaring people
in order to scam them, and they have a financial
(38:42):
incentive to do so. And honestly, doctors are already seeing
the irl impact. The reports talks about how doctors are
seeing more and more people come into their offices asking
about something related to birth control that they saw on TikTok.
One doctor says, people are putting themselves out there experts
on birth control and speaking to things that the science
(39:03):
does not bear out. I'm seeing the direct failures of
this misinformation. He says that women frequently come into his
office for abortions after believing what they saw on social
media about the dangers of hormonal birth control and the
effectiveness of tracking periods to prevent pregnancy. Many of these
patients have traveled from states that have completely or partially
banned abortions, such as Texas, Idaho, Georgia, North Carolina, and
(39:26):
South Carolina. And we really can't even have this conversation
without talking about how it is supported by algorithms, because
algorithms really, I mean, if you've ever scrolled on TikTok,
you probably know what I'm talking about. It really supports
people to be surfaced information that is similar or somatically
similar to what they just watched, right, And so rather
(39:48):
than giving them some sort of an alternate viewpoint, it
just completely builds up this rabbit hole and buries them
in it. A twenty year old college student who went
down an algorithmically supported rabbit hole on birth control misinformation
said it created the sense of fear that if I
ever needed to be put on birth control, I would
become a completely different person. I would gain a bunch
(40:08):
of weight, and my life would be over. I was like, well,
obviously this is true. This applies to everybody because it's
the only thing I'm seeing. So I do think that
platforms bear some responsibility here to make sure that the
people that use their platforms are not just being sent
down more and more extremist, dangerous rabbit holes when it
comes to something as important as their reproductive health.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Yeah, sure would be nice.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
And I do think that, like this is related to
something I feel I've seen more and more where people
I just feel like there is a subset of people
who will believe absolutely anything they see on TikTok.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
I think that's probably right, and I don't think it's
limited to TikTok. We've talked about this a lot, but
and definitely digital literacy is a big thing. But I think,
you know, we should be you really careful not to
put it on the people who are you know, digitally
illiterate and being swayed by this information and keep the
focus on the people who are pushing it. Like so, I,
(41:15):
you know, saw that we were going to talk about
this today, and I had this big question, like who
are these people and what is their motivation for pushing
this misinformation? Right? We talked about misinformation on this show
a lot, you know, like political misinformation or disingenuous accounts
that are trying to create racial disharmonies. To like destabilize things.
But this one really like got me. It's like, what
(41:38):
sort of monster would push anti birth control information?
Speaker 2 (41:43):
And why?
Speaker 3 (41:45):
And you know, I guess you provided a couple of
pretty good explanations here. The just like the engagement farming
of it, it gets.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
It gets engagement and people who have a financial investment
in it. So if I'm selling hormonal supplements and I'm like, oh,
hormonal birth control is bad. If you hate it, you've
ruined your your hormonal system. But if you buy my pills,
we can get this back on track.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Money please, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
And then also the it connects to stuff we talked
about before. It feels like there's a big effort, largely
on the right, but not limited to the right, to
just discredit the medical and scientific community in general and
just destroy the idea of expertise and promote the idea
(42:34):
that every influencer can be their own expert and do
their own research.
Speaker 5 (42:44):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Well, the piece really does a good job of speaking
to doctors who are looking inward at the medical profession
and wondering like, have we created this problem by failing
to have transparency and failing to make patients, many of
whom are women, feel like we are adequately listening to
them and answering their questions are And I would argue that,
(43:23):
like typically speaking, when you have some sort of dynamic
like this where bad actors and bs influencers and grifters
are able to really take up a lot of space,
there is some like institutional failing that has allowed those
people to take up so much space in a conversation.
And I think that's really what we're seeing, Like people
(43:44):
women when it comes to reproductive health, women have historically
not really been listened to. There's an entire legacy and
history of the medical community not listening to and not
thinking seriously the pain and issues of women. And you know,
we also live in a world where any healthcare that
(44:04):
is about people who are not cisgendered men. So when
it comes to queer people or trans people that I
think that that is like inherently othered. And so I
think that these doctors are not wrong to be like, well,
in what ways have we really failed the people who
come to us looking for care that allows for grifters
and extremists to take over the conversation and for that
(44:26):
to feel like something that is actually accurate. But I
do think that you're right that there is this larger
demonization of expertise and medical professionals and people who know
what they're talking about. That report talked to this, I guess,
like some sort of hormonal influencer who had her content
taken down from TikTok for being medical misinformation, and she
(44:47):
was like, oh, well, I actually think it's fine to
take it down because I think that people should be
doing their own research. And it's like, well, yes, but
if you're not a doctor, doing your own research into
medical information is kind of a tall order, right, Like,
I'm not a doctor. I would not pretend to be
able to make heads or tails of medical research. And
(45:09):
so it's really cunning how they put it back on
people to really further eroad trust in the medical profession
more generally. And I think you're right that we should
not be demonizing people who fall for this, because I
think a lot of people when you're in a place
(45:31):
where you've just been consuming a lot of information that
is really scary, and you're already in a mental or
emotional place where you're not feeling heard, not feeling supported,
you're looking for alternative avenues for information out there. I
think that it can put anybody in a place where
they're more receptive to these kinds of grifters and extremists, right,
And it is being buttressed by an incredibly powerful algorithm
(45:56):
that is like pushing you toward that conclusion. Right, So
it's you you're not it's it's not just you're stupid
and gullible. There are forces that are pushing you toward it,
and we should be honest about that. But like, I mean,
I don't like to talk about my own health and
body stuff on the podcast because I just think it's
(46:17):
your people's health is so specific and unique to them
and so personal to them. But like as some of
y'all who know me in real life, no, like I
had a pretty tough go of it with COVID, and
I got COVID multiple times, and I got it one
time that was so bad that it really like it
just really like knock the wind out of my sales
for a very long time, right, And so like long,
(46:39):
COVID is one of those things that I do think
that like I've gleaned that it's not the kind of
thing that people want to hear about and so it's
this kind of thing that you're like often dealing with
in a way that feels very isolated, because it's like,
you know, you're dealing with the symptoms, and you're dealing
with the fatigue, and you're dealing with the brain. But
(47:00):
then you've gleaned that people don't really want to hear
you complain about it, so then you're dealing with all
of that alone.
Speaker 4 (47:04):
And when you're dealing.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
With stuff alone, it pushes you to the Internet, which
then algorithmically supports you to fall down rabbit holes that
are not necessarily good for you and also happen to
be inclusive of people who are trying to make a
quick buck off of your issue, off of your isolation,
off of your anxieties. And so I know, I am
(47:25):
somebody who talks about this for a living, and even
I got pretty wrapped up in taking advice like wellness
and health advice from Randos on TikTok right, And so
I started like, because I felt so crummy, and because
I was so isolated in feeling crummy, it really did
lead me to like using social media to figure out
(47:46):
what was going on and figure out how I might
be better. So I started taking supplements that like randos
are suggesting you take on social media in a kind
of a low dark moment. Then I'm like, wait a minute,
maybe it's time for a blood to I go to
a doctor, I get a blood test. The doctor is like, yeah,
whatever supplements you're on, stop taking them. They're not They're
like not doing anything for you, and they're actually making
(48:08):
your health worse. And so I don't feel good sharing that.
But I look back on that and I'm like, yeah,
I was at a low moment when I didn't feel
like I had a lot of support and I didn't
feel like I could really talk about what I was experiencing,
but was desperate for a quick fix. And it got
me right. The algorithms are powerful. The algorithms get you.
(48:30):
You see somebody on TikTok who looks like they have
their shit together, who like is presenting a kind of
a life or a version of yourself that you are
that you see something in and you're like, oh, I
want that to be me. Next thing, you know, you're
buying supplements and don't even fucking regulate it, And so
I just think that like nobody should be getting take
it from me. Somebody who had to see a real
(48:50):
doctor to straighten that out. Don't get your health or
medical advice from some rando on TikTok who might not
even have any actual qualifications or also might have an
agenda that is actually harmful to you. These people are scammers,
They are grifters. They are making money from your isolation,
from your fear, from your concern, from your worry, from
your late nights. The most radical thing we can do
(49:13):
is break that system that tells us that these people
know what we need. I know it is tough, I
know that we are silenced. I know that we're not
listened to. But like forking your money over to a
grifter is never the answer. And so back to what's
happening with these birth control grifters. None of this stuff
is happening in a vacuum because we are already seeing
(49:35):
legislation trying to limit access to birth control. These influencers,
their messaging really helps drive this legislation limiting access to
hormonal birth control. This is from Amanda Stevenson, a sociologist, demographer,
and assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder
who is studying how anti abortion activists and lawmakers are
trying to restrict birth control already. Republican legislators in Missouri
(49:59):
have tried all yet unsuccessfully, to stop the state's medicaid
program from covering iud's and emergency contraceptives. A panel of
the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit this
month upheld a Texas law requiring minders to obtain parental
permission before accessing birth control. So all of this is
sort of like working together, right, these grifters and influencers
(50:21):
using social media to drum up fear about birth control
and anxiety about birth control as harmful, and then right
wing lawmakers passing legislation to then limit and legislate birth
control more harshly.
Speaker 4 (50:34):
It's a real clusterfuck.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
So, speaking of clusterfucks, Mike, do you ever hear one
of those stories that it sounds like was made in
a lab to bother you?
Speaker 4 (50:47):
Specifically?
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yeah, it happens all the time, every day.
Speaker 4 (50:50):
So this is one of those stories for me.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Sixty years after her death, we have the invention of
Digital Maryland, an AI facilitated Lyn Monroe chatbot. I guess
that answers questions in Maryland's style and voice. Here's Digital
Maryland in her own words.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
Hi, darlings, I'm Digital Maryland. Come visit me at Soul Machines.
Speaker 7 (51:14):
It'll be such fun.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
I hate it. I hate everything about it. I hate
the way she speaks, I hate the whole idea.
Speaker 4 (51:22):
Hate it. Thumbs down zero out of ten.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
So Digital Maryland was revealed at south By Southwest and
is the brainchild of Soul Machines, which is a company
that creates what it calls biological AI powered digital people
and Authentic Brands Group, which is a company that acquired
the rights to Marilyn Monroe's intellectual property back in twenty eighteen.
Sole Machine set in a blog post it's as if
the spark of Maryland herself has been translated into the
(51:47):
AI age.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
Yikes. So how does this work? Well?
Speaker 1 (51:53):
According to Deadline, Digital Maryland can interact in real time
using advanced natural language processing deep learning and open ais
chat GPT three point five, which means it is another
step forward in extending the ability to monetize celebrities even
after their death.
Speaker 4 (52:10):
So we talked about this.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
A little bit in the episode that we did about
the Whitney Houston hologram and her residency in Las Vegas.
But Soul Machines is clear that this is another step
forward in terms of celebrities or their like AI likeness
being able to connect with consumers on behalf of brands.
They say this collaboration exemplifies the transformative power of AI
(52:33):
in connecting brands and consumers. Digital Maryland showcases our biological
AI bringing an iconic personality to life through engaging dialogues
and emotional intelligence. It's more than nostalgia. It's a glimpse
into the future of immersive interactions.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
Oh, Bridget, why do you hate this so much?
Speaker 4 (52:49):
Great question?
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Well, I think part of the reason why I hate
it so much is the same reason why the Whitney
Houston hologram I hate that so much. Is because we're
talking about women who spent their entire lives being exploited
by men, and that I just see that exploitation continuing
after their deaths. Like, did you know that Hugh Hefner
(53:11):
is buried in the burial plot above Marilyn Monroe? He
bought it after she died because he, as he said, quote,
spending eternity next to Maryland is an opportunity too sweet
to pass up.
Speaker 4 (53:23):
This was somebody who.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Financially and sexually exploited Marilyn Monroe all the time when
she was still alive, totally cut her out of the
profits for her own likeness, using his money to basically
supend eternity on top of her even in death. And
so I hate that, and I just see this AI
reimagining of these celebrities as another iteration of that. I
(53:46):
hate that they have yet another way to flatten out
these iconic people who lived and existed and were dynamic
and complicated into these like AI tech enabled caricatures of themselves.
Speaker 4 (53:58):
I find it really gross.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
We've covered this happening on the show before, like that
George Carlin AI enabled stand up impersonation. The family of
Robin Williams has also really been clear that they don't
appreciate AI imitations of his likeness. I just think, you know,
even though in this situation, this company, it sounds like,
did purchase the intellectual property of marily Monroe's likeness fair
(54:23):
and square, I just think that it grosses me out
to think of a celebrity, especially a woman who was
exploited for most of her life, having her likeness controlled
by a group of tech gros who unveil it at
south By Southwest like a.
Speaker 4 (54:39):
Side show for all eternity.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
I just don't like it, and I think in all
the different ways that we have seen AI be used,
it's not lost on me that some of the first
are how can we use it to exploit women?
Speaker 4 (54:52):
I just don't like it.
Speaker 3 (54:54):
Yeah, it's it does feel gross. I guess it's not
surprising the tests were ah got started?
Speaker 4 (55:01):
Yeah, yup, yuck is right. But you know what, I
don't hate?
Speaker 1 (55:06):
What's that breaking down all of these internet and tech
stories with you?
Speaker 7 (55:10):
Mike.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Thanks for having me, Bridget.
Speaker 1 (55:13):
And thanks to all of you for listening. I will
see you on the Internet. If you're looking for ways
to support the show, check out our merch store at
tangoti dot com slash store. Got a story about an
interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi?
You can reach us at Hello at teangody dot com.
You can also find transcripts for today's episode at TENG
(55:34):
Goody dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet
was created by me Bridget Todd. It's a production of
iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative, edited by Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almada is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(55:56):
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Speaker 7 (56:01):
Have to w
Hey, this is Future Bridgid. So we recorded this week's
news roundup on Thursday afternoon, the day before The New
York Times just broke a story about Kate Middleton being
diagnosed with cancer. You can read the New York Times
as full story in the show notes. But this news
came out just as we published the episode for this week,
so we pulled the episode down so that I could
re record this introduction that you're hearing right now to
(00:22):
give that context. Okay, thanks for listening, and here's the episode,
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
is There Are No Girls on the Internet. This is
(00:44):
There Are No Girls on the Internet, where we explore
the intersection of technology, social media, the Internet, and identity.
And you're listening to another one of our weekly roundups
where we summarize and break down the news that you
might have missed on the Internet this week. Mike, thank you,
thank you for being here again. The last time we
saw each other on the mic, we were talking about
Kate Middleton.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
That's right. Uh.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
It was a story that had been going on for
a little while, and it seems to continue to be
going on.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
It has continued, So I did want to give folks
a little bit of a brief update on what's happened
in Kate Middleton Royal's world since we last spoke. So
this week, TMZ released a video of Kate out shopping.
The video was shot by like a random person on
a cell phone, just somebody off the street, who then
(01:32):
provided it to TMZ. So TMZ also published the metadata
of this video. Metadata tells you when and where a
piece of content was recorded, which confirms that this video
was indeed recorded next to Kate Middleton's home and was
recorded on that Saturday. Just like they said, it was
case close right.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Maybe maybe is a good.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Way to put it, because just like we talked about
in that episode, really breaking down Kate Middleton, but really
talking about how conspiracy theories move online more generally, once
a conspiracy theory reaches a certain point, there is like
no amount of hard evidence that will satisfy people who
are deeply, deeply convinced that something fishy is going on. However,
(02:17):
that said, I have to say that the way that
TMZ is acting right now after having published this video
is weird, Like it is they're acting a little bit weird.
So after publishing this video and saying it is Kate
definitively case clothed, here's the metadata. Let's put all the
conspiracy theories to rest. Then two of their executive producers
(02:41):
went on TMZ Live, which is like TMZ's live television show,
and basically kind of walked back whether or not they
thought it was actually her.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Here's what they said.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So she looks great.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Where's the security?
Speaker 5 (02:59):
Where is the security?
Speaker 6 (03:00):
That's a good question. And why is it with all
the people that were there, this is the only video
that surfaced, the video that we secured. Why is it
that they're in the store, moseying around, going to the
cash regiser. Nobody's taking any pictures, any photos, any video,
but we got this.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So I genuinely do not know what is going on
here because I think that TMZ would have authenticated this
video as being Kate before publishing it and saying that
it's Kate. Now, I can hear people out there listening
who are thinking, bridget TMZ is a shady tabloid. Why
(03:41):
would you expect them to verify what they put out
or confirm what they put out before they publish it,
to which I won't say I'll push back on that,
but I would complicate that a little bit because yes,
TMZ is an outlet that is run by pieces of
human garbage who have no ethical or moral compass whatsoever.
(04:03):
They are not good people. I will we could do
a whole other episode on this. However, TMZ is not
an outlet that tends to get stuff wrong. That is
one thing I can say about them, Like, if TMZ
reports that somebody is dead, that person is probably dead
even if no other outlet is reporting it because they're TMZ.
Like I remember when Michael Jackson died. They were the
first to run with that story, and everybody was like,
(04:25):
well it's TMZ, let's wait until we get another outlet.
But the reason why TMZ tends to always sort of
get it right on these big breaking stories is because,
like they are known to have police on their payroll
and like payoff police. Like folks might remember back when
Kobe Bryant and his daughter died in that helicopter crash,
(04:45):
TMZ reported that news first, and it started a whole
conversation of whether or not they should have reported that
because the police had still not notified all of the
family members, and so TMC is an outlet that is
known for reporting things first and correct actually perhaps because
they are unethical.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
Goules with no souls.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
So if TMZ is publishing something generally speaking that is
like they're not an outlet that is known to put
out just like blies.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
But it sounds like maybe this story and this photo
are a little different.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Well, I genuinely don't know what's going on here. Like
it's possible that TMZ has just sensed that, like they
have like what they see as a juicy story.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
So they're they're.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Putting out a video and saying this is confirmed to
be Kate, and then their producers are going on their
channel and saying like, oh, we don't know if it's
Kate or not. Maybe they're thinking that like this will
lead to more engagement on a story that they perceive
as like juicy. Maybe they did not authenticate that video
before publishing it. I really don't know, Like anybody's guest
is as good as mine in terms of what is
(05:50):
actually going on here.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah, and it's probably one of like a thousand stories
where we might never know exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
But I will say, like there are images flowing around
on social media right now that are purporting to show
a quote enhanced still from that video, purporting to prove
that like, oh, it's not really caids, it's a body double,
it's a stand in. Those are one hundred and ten
percent fake, Like I can, I can assure you that
(06:17):
if anybody is pushing around images that are purporting to
use AI to like enhance these this video, that's not
even how it works. Those are fake. As Google's Adriana
porter Felt wrote on Twitter, I keep seeing people post
photo enhancements as fact. This does not actually enhance the
original photo. It invents a plausible new photo and overlays
(06:39):
it on the blurry original. The generated version is actually
less trustworthy than the original blurry video. Don't do this, Like,
I think it's this idea that we all live in
a CSI episode where you can just type type type
type type enhance type type type TI type enhance using AI.
That doesn't work that way.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
These are all bay.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
I think you and I were talking about false precision
in some other context this morning, right, like the idea,
and I think it applies here too, right, that you
can have this photo that looks very highly detailed and precise,
and it tricks your brain into thinking that, like, oh,
this more precise, sharper image clearly must be more true.
(07:22):
But that's just like not the case, for exactly the
way that that well spoken quote from that Google person
mentioned like it looks sharper, but it's just an invented,
plausible image.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And that's why I think some of the conspiracy theories
about this won't die, because your brain tricks you into
thinking this sharp, clear image must be correct, when in
fact it is less trustworthy than that grainy video. So
I have to say this, and this is pretty horrifying.
Kate's private medical information was involved in a data security
(07:57):
breach after at least one member of the staff at
the hospital where she was staying back in January attempted
to view her medical records while she was a patient there.
Authorities are actually now investigating whether or not the hospital
broke the law by failing to report this breach in
a timely manner. So there is no ambiguity or gray
area here. This is just so deeply deeply messed up.
(08:22):
End of sentence period, and I think this was the
point I was trying to make in the episode that
we did breaking all of this down last week, that
there is a difference between the public asking questions about
how Kensington Palace, right a political and social institution, is moving,
and how the Kensington Palace is communicating with the public
(08:43):
without demanding access and you know, an entitlement to information
about an individual's like private sensitive health information right. You know,
I think that when a public who is voracious for
any kind of information about Kate as a person blurs
those lines, we get this dynamic where people really do
(09:03):
feel like it is okay to try to obtain an
individual's personal, private medical information to satisfy that question, and
it's not. Not only is it illegal, it is wrong.
And so I think that's really where we're kind of
getting into this problem of I think it is totally
fair to scrutinize and criticize and ask questions about the
(09:25):
way that the institution that is, the Royal family is
communicating with the public.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
That is totally fair game.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
That is different than demanding information about an individual, in
this case, Kate's private medical information.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
It does make sense, And uh, you know, I know
that we got a few emails from listeners after that
previous episode, and I think it's worth, you know, clarifying
why we're talking about this story on this show. And
you know, so like Bridget, are we talking talking about
(10:00):
this because you have some sort of personal interest in
the royal family, or like some expertise in the royal family,
or because you feel like, you know, all of you
have some personal feelings about Kate Middleton and feel like
we have a right to know, like what's going on
with her personal life? Or are those your motivations for
wanting to talk about it on this show.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Absolutely not. I don't know anything about Kate Middleton. Of
all of the royals that I know anything about, she
is the one that I have followed the least, and
I don't really follow any of them, so that's actually
really saying something. But I do think that when it
comes to institutions that wield public power and do enjoy
a level of public support, it is not just okay
(10:45):
to ask questions and scrutinize how they are communicating with
the public. I think it's necessary, and I think that
when we get into these gray areas of people being like, well,
how dare you demand private information about Kate? I don't
think that anybody should be demanding private information about Kate.
I certainly don't think that if you are someone working
in a clinic where she may have stayed, but you
should be going through her private health records.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
My god.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
However, that is different than asking questions about, well, who
in Kensington Palace used photoshop to doctor images in a
way that they had to have known was against Newswire
rules and then tried to submit them as if they
were not doctored. I think that's a totally fair question
and a question that speaks to how institutions are communicating
(11:29):
with the public. But that's a different thing than like,
what kind of medical issue did Kate have and when
did she have it? Like, that's a completely different question
that I think is Kate's private business. Before we got
on the mic, I was reading about how another image,
another holiday image of the late Queen, it was revealed
that that Kensington Palace had doctored that image similarly to
(11:51):
the one of Kate, and you know, did not tell anybody,
and it got past it got past fact checkers, and
it was distributed via Newswire, and I was a prize
to see a lot of the commenters saying things like
they're celebrities. It's news now that celebrities are photoshopping wrinkles
out of their images and like using photoshop to make
them look better. And no, first of all, these people
(12:12):
are not normal celebrities. So I'm not even interested in
whether or not the Late Queen use photoshop or whatever.
The question is, did they knowingly violate the very clear
and explicit rules around how you submit authenticated photos to
newswire services to get distributed out in an official capacity?
(12:33):
Did they violate that? I'm not interested in with If
they just put photoshopped images on their own personal instagrams
and leave it at that, who cares? But this is
a very different thing. And again, I just think that
the blurriness between individual actions of individuals and the way
that this massive, powerful, publicly supported institution is communicating with
(12:55):
the public, those are two different things. One of them
is fair game, and in fact that I would argue
we should be asking questions about the other.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Who cares?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
And I think that's sort of the thread that we're
losing in this conversation.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
You know, I think the world has really changed a
lot in terms of like what are the rules and
norms around touching up photos. Perhaps the the you know,
the rules for the wire services haven't changed, but just
you know, common practices around what people do personally. You know,
I'm willing to grant that has changed a lot in
(13:27):
the past couple of years with AI filters, but they
it really feels like there's a lot of room for
Kensington Palace, who receives I believe hundreds of millions of
dollars of like taxpayer support. Hopefully this lights of fire
for them to get up to speed on what's needed
(13:49):
to ideally play an active role in helping re establish
rules so that people can have trust in the information
that they see.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Well, that's a great segue to this glassdoor story, which
is a weird one. Like I've one of the reasons
I'm excited to talk to you about this because you
have a background in PII. What is it personal identifying information?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
So here's what's going on.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
If you have ever talked crap about your job anonymously
on the website Glassdoor, which is an anonymous forum for
people to rate and review their workplaces, you might want
to think twice because we are seeing multiple reports that
Glassdoor collected and added people's names to their user profiles
without their consent. So tech Crunch reports that one user
(14:38):
who they're calling Monica, wrote in a post on her
personal blog that Glassdoor added her name in the city
where she lives to her Glassdoor profile following an email
exchange that she had with Glassdoor customer support, despite never
having consensually provided her name during the initial sign up process,
which would happen two years earlier. So basically, it kind
(14:59):
of sounds like if Glassdoor learns your name or learn
some kind of personal identifying information about you, even if
you do not provide it to them when you're signing
up for Glassdoor, they will add it to your profile
without your consent.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
So how does she say that they got her.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Name from this email exchange that she had with Glassdoor
customer support that when she signed up for Glassdoor years earlier,
she didn't use her name she wanted to stay anonymous.
That she had a years later, she had a back
and forth email exchange with Glassdoor customer support. Her email
signature includes her name and location, and they just took
from that email her name, first and last name, and
(15:34):
location and added it to her profile, even though she
never consented to that and didn't want that, And to
be clear, like Glassdoor is a place where anonymity would
be really important, like if you weren't trashing your boss,
or you had something really important to say, it makes
sense why you wouldn't necessarily want to have your first
and last name attached to a what you thought was
an anonymous review of a workplace. And one of the
(15:58):
reasons why I'm having a little bit of trouble with
this story is that this really sounds like a change.
I know from being in the space for a while
that Glassdoor really used to thrive on user anonymity and
was like kind of an industry leader in protecting PII
personal identifying information. But what sounds like changed was a
corporate acquisition. So ours Technical reports that although it is
(16:21):
common for many users online to link services at sign
up to their Facebook or their Gmail account to verify
identity and streamline logins, for years, Glassdoor has notably allowed
users to sign up for its service anonymously. But in
twenty twenty one, Glassdoor acquired Fishbowl, a professional networking app
that integrated with Glassdoor. Last July, this acquisition meant that
(16:42):
every Glassdoor user was automatically signed up for a fish
Bowl account, and because Fishbowl requires users to verify their identities,
Glassdoor's terms of service changed to require all users be verified.
So I should be clear that this is not a
theoretical concern. Lawyers or companies who have been negatively reviewed
on Glassdoor have regularly tried to learn the identities of
(17:06):
the people leaving anonymous reviews on the site. The organization
the Electronic Frontier Foundation regularly defends Glassdoor users from being
unmasked by retaliating employers, particularly for employees who fear retaliation
for reviews. The lawyer for EFF said that Glassdoor users
could historically choose never to share their real names, and
the company is now storing names for all users makes
(17:28):
it much more likely that users could be linked to
their reviews should glassdoors data ever be subpoenaed or leaked.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Yeah, I think that's such a good point that it's
worth like reemphasizing it that. You know, it's one thing
for Glassdoor to have a privacy policy that says like
we will not release your name. That's great, that's good,
but it's if to truly have your name be protected.
(17:55):
It would be better if they never had it in
the first place. Right, Like we've seen this very concerned
playout with concerns about the Kids Online Safety Act, Right
that it's going to be collecting all of this information,
And even if that information is nominally protected, the fact
that it is stored somewhere puts it at risk. Right,
(18:16):
It's at risk of there being some kind of breach
that makes that information public despite the company not wanting
to be public. And it's also at risk if there's
like a change in ownership and a change of privacy policy,
which seems to be the situation here.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
It's funny to hear you say this because just before
we were talking, you were annoyed and I was like, Oh,
what's going on. You were like, Oh, I'm trying to
track a package that I bought, but it wants me
to shine up sign up for Shop to do that,
and I have to give shop this shop app access
to all my emails.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
And I was like, oh, I use Shop all the time.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
And you were like, it doesn't concern you, Like you
don't give your information to anybody.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
No, I really try to jealously protect my privacy. I
think we all have an obligation to you occasionally inconvenience
ourselves to jealously protect our privacy against the constant encroachment
of tech companies that want all of our data. And yeah,
I wasn't going to bring it up, but since you've
brought it up, I'll go down this tangent that I
was so annoyed at shop this morning. Generally I find
(19:15):
shop like fairly convenient to use. They do a good
job tracking packages when I'm buying from some kind of retailer.
But the limitation that drives me up the wall is
that so like earlier this week, I ordered two different
packages from two different retailers. They're both being delivered and
tracked by Shop Okay, I got a text message notification
(19:35):
that says like, Hey, your package is being delivered today.
I was curious which of my two items was it
going to be. I can't know that without using the
Shop app. There's no way to do it through the web.
There's no way to do it unless I install the
Shop app on my phone. I was surprised that I
didn't have the Shop app on my phone, so I
went to install it, and then remember that I had
(19:56):
been here before and the app will not install proper. Really,
unless I give it access to read all of my emails.
Why in the world do they need to read all
of my emails? Not okay, and I'm not going to
do it. And you know, I looked on Reddit and
people were complaining about this, and one of the top
comments was like, oh, just read their privacy policy. They're
(20:17):
you know, they're not going to do anything with your data.
They just have They just want to help you. That's
the stupidest take I've read all day, right, Like, oh, yeah,
I'm just going to trust this online retailer with you know,
all of my personal the contents of all of my
personal emails.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Uh, what could they possibly want with that? Right?
Speaker 3 (20:37):
An online retailer that is into like trying to get
me to buy more things I couldn't imagine. Yeah, so
tangent ended. But I'm glad that I had the opportunity
to connect it to this story, because you know, once
your information is out there, it's out there.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
Let's take a quick break that are back.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Well, So the thing that really worries me about the
glassdoor situation is that I think I have to imagine
that it's going to be a lot of traditionally marginalized
people who are going to suffer if this is just
how glass Door functions from now on, right, I can
imagine that it is women, trans folks, queer folks, people
(21:37):
of color who are raising the alarm about things like
racial or gender discrimination or like sexual harassment. And I
can't help but understanding this story against this creep toward
not being able to use forums that were previously available
to you to privately raise the alarms about concerns. You know,
especially given that we're seeing more and more are people
(22:00):
who do speak up about you know, wrongdoing facing things
like defamation lawsuits for doing so. It's you know, we're
not just talking about people who are complaining about their
boss's coffee breath or whatever. It is people who a
lot of times are raising serious alarms or serious concerns
in a forum that one might think would be anonymous
or private for them to do so safely. And so
(22:22):
I really can't help but see the story against that
backdrop of like, well, shoot, like, are people going to
be able to use glass door safely to report genuine,
real concerns?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
That's my question, Yeah mine too.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
This story like really surprised me and makes me a
little bit sad because I view Glassdoor as a very
valuable resource and historically a very good actor towards transferring
some power back to workers to somewhat reduce the massive
asymmeagery between workers and people who own companies and employ them. Historically,
they've been pretty good about this stuff, and so this
(22:56):
feels really out of character, really disappointing, and I think
it'll it just happened like pretty recently. I think this story,
we'll link it to it in the show notes. But
it was just published yesterday, and I thought, surely Glassdoor
is going to put out a statement saying that this
(23:18):
was a mistake. They haven't done that yet, And what
little they said in quotes to that Ours Technica Reporter
was pretty unsatisfying. They really seem to say that there
wasn't an issue here. But then there's also a bunch
of articles across the internet from other publications, and like
(23:40):
some big ones like NPR really amplifying this story and
this concern in ways that are very unflattering for glass Door.
So I'm maating hopeful that they will recognize what a
catastrophic misstep this is for their product that really depends
on anonymity, that they will take some corrective action to
(24:03):
reassure people that, like Glassdoor is still a place where
you can post anonymous reviews that will truly be anonymous,
because without that, like what even is it?
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Well, speaking of missteps and hopeful corrections on them, let's
talk about the dating app Bumble. So y'all might remember
that a lot of tech companies were relocating from San
Francisco or like other places in California, to Texas. Specifically,
a lot of them are relocating to Austin. Well, that
is maybe not working out for a whole host of reasons,
(24:33):
but one of those reasons is Texas's restrictive abortion laws. So,
at a panel at south By Southwest, ironically held in Austin,
the council for the dating app Bumble that is sort
of supposed to be like a more woman focused dating app,
revealed that the company has lost a third of its
Texas workforce in the month since the state passed horribly
(24:54):
restrictive abortion laws known as SB eight sometimes called the
Texas Heartbeat Act, over a year ago. Because of these
very extremist laws that are completely out of step with
what the majority of the country wants, Bumble it no
longer requires people to work at their Austin headquarters. Bumble
actually became the first company to join an amarchist brief
(25:15):
in support of a lawsuit against the Texas abortion law
filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights. So I wanted
to talk about this for a couple of reasons. One
because I think it's really important to highlight the very
real risk that laws like this poth to people who
are pregnant or the people who support people who are pregnant. However,
this also highlights the business rambifications of extremist abortion laws
(25:36):
as well. The chief council for Bumble said, we were
looking at the lens and what we are putting forth
in the brief was talking about the increased cost to
us to attract and retain talent in Texas, the increased
costs for us to provide healthcare benefits to our employees.
We've found that because of our position, having been founded
with women at the forefront from the beginning and having
that voice and that legitimacy to begin with, we could
(25:57):
combine that with this very business centric art and help
support that case. This actually led to a bunch of
businesses from all over Texas signing on to this anarchist brief,
pointing out that these kind of extremists abortion laws really
do put their business in jeopardy by making it harder
to recruit top talent. Bumble specifically said that they had
started to offer like an enhanced health care coverage that
(26:20):
includes things like gender affirming care and IVF because those
kinds of healthcare have been threatened in the state. Although,
like part of me wonders, you know, it's good to
have that coverage included, but if that kind of healthcare
is illegal, you can't access it in Texas. It does
kind of seem like a moot point.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I yeah, I'm curious about that, but I don't know
anything about it.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yeah, But overall, I mean, I do think that of
all the different avenuess to be talking about how restrictive
abortion laws impact people negatively, I do think I want
to hear more from the business community, because certainly it
is an economic issue, not just for the people who
need abortions, for the people who do any kind of
business all over the country, in addition to being a
(27:06):
reproductive health issue. And so I do want to see
more businesses, particularly businesses who are you know, are about,
you know, sticking up with women, sticking up with marginalized people.
I want I want to see more of these businesses
weighing in as we go into this more and more extremist,
restrictive climate.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
I mean, there's so many reasons why giving people reproductive
freedom and allowing them to make their own medical choices
is like a win win for society, right, like, not
just businesses, but also in terms of like the huge
costs of unwanted pregnancies right like to individuals, to healthcare systems,
(27:51):
UH to social services for years and years.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Well.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
To that end, we have to talk about the growth
in misinformation swirling around social media around birth control. So
there was this new very detailed report by the Washington
Post about how social media platforms are awash in medically
inaccurate content about birth control and how it is leading
to real world consequences. You should definitely read the entire thing.
(28:18):
It is very detailed. We'll put it in the show notes.
But basically, you have these like health influencers I'm using
that in heavy scare quotes, and also right wing extremists
really trying to scare people into thinking that birth control
is dangerous.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Now.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Birth control, like any other medication, does have side effects.
In rare cases, it can cause things like blood clots.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
That is real.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
But these people are not trying to foster fact based
conversations about the real concerns around birth control. They're saying
nonsense like, oh, birth control, if you take it, it
will change your entire personality, it will change the kind
of people that you are sexually attracted to. Things that
are just fear mongering and nonsense. So you have these
(29:06):
health influencers suggesting natural forms of non hormonal birth control,
like only having sex on your period, which by the way,
does not work. And this is all particularly fraught given
how restrictive abortion access is in this country right now
and how criminalized it is. So you have people with
these big platforms essentially suggesting people stop using birth control
(29:29):
and instead only have sex on their periods, a like
a method that is known for unintended pregnancies in a
country where you cannot easily access abortion care if you
need it, or can be criminalized and sent to prison
for doing so. So this is really one of those
issues where you can see how tech issues and social
media platform issues are also reproductive rights issues and gender issues.
(29:54):
Doctors are saying that they're seeing an explosion of birth
control misinformation online target a very vulnerable demographic, people in
their teens and early twenties, who are more likely to
believe what they see on their phones because of algorithms
that feed them a stream of videos reinforcing messages often
divorced from scientific evidence. While doctors say hormonal contraception is
(30:17):
safe and effective, they worry about the profession's long standing
lack of transparency and some of the serious but rare
side effects that have left many patients seeking information from
unqualified online communities. So I have actually personally seen a
lot of this on social media. I'm sad to say
I just like most abortion advocates told us, anti choice
(30:42):
extremists and people who want to tell other people what
to do with their own bodies were never going to
stop at abortion. It was going to be birth control. Weirdly,
it was also tampons. Like for a while I was
seeing that bubble up, like right wing extremists basically suggesting
that having tampons in school bathrooms meant that teachers and
(31:04):
schools were like sexually abusing young people. Because like I
remember seeing this post that was someone being like, as
a father, it should be up to me whether or
not my daughter uses a tampon, and if a school
should have no say and whether or not my daughter
uses a tampon. He was like angry that the school
was providing tampons in the watchrooms. So anybody watching this
(31:27):
could have told you it was not going to stop
with abortion. It was going to be all of these
different things that pertain to reproductive health being demonized. So
this backlash to birth control really comes at a time
where we see this rampant misinformation about basic health combined
with really really poor digital literacy, and this wider political
(31:52):
debate around reproductive rights in which far right conservatives argue
that the broad acceptance of birth control has altered tradition
roles and weaken the family. And so if you're wondering,
like what does Ben Shapiro or Candace Owen care whether
or not I use birth control, that sort of their
ultimate point is that birth control is changing gender roles,
(32:14):
is changing how we think of traditional families, and therefore
it's bad. So in a Daily Wire video, Candace Owens
denounced birth controls and iud's as quote unnatural saying she
is a big advocate of getting women to realize this
stuff is not normal. She also says that her viewers
told her that IUDs can harm fertility, which medical experts
(32:37):
agree there is no evidence that birth control impacts long
term fertility, so that's just not true. Also, she's kind
of doing a little bit of an Elon musk thing.
I don't know if you watched any of that Elon
musk Uh interview with Don Lemon, where Don Lemon is like,
what evidence do you have that pilot that black pilots
are being held to lower standards? And he's like, well,
(32:58):
people on Twitter say that all the time, and it's like, no,
that doesn't make it true. I feel like Candice Owens,
It's like, oh, well, people are saying that iud's cause
long term fertility issues, and it's like, it doesn't that
does it? Just because you read it on the internet
doesn't make it true. Ben Shapiro, noted reproductive health expert
(33:18):
not really. He claims that birth control makes women attracted
to less manly, less masculine men, like these.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
People are just so fucking stupid.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Like part of me is like like what even what
point is there even I don't. Obviously that's not true,
and I don't even I don't even have a little
joke to make. It's just such a ridiculous point that
I can't believe that somebody with a massive platform is
allowed to just go on TV, go on their platform
spread dangerous falsehoods that are not just untrue but also silly.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Many of these people who are like railing against birth control,
it's not like they have families of like twenty kids, right,
Like a lot of these political commentators, I have pretty
small families, and one has to imagine that that has
helped them in their professional careers to achieve the massive
platforms that they have. Are we supposed to believe that
(34:16):
none of them have used birth control?
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Well, the thing with Candice Owen is she's a liar
and a grifter and a scammer baby like she does
not she'll say anything about anybody does not like this.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
It's not work that to.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Try to hold her to any kind of a standard
that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
That it's not what she is about.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
And I would say, like publicly, this is not what
she don't don't think I think that she would agree
that's not what she's about. Like she says things about
how women shouldn't work. How when she gets on a
plane and she sees a woman pilot, she thinks, oh, no,
we're going to die today.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Baby.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
You have a job, you have a career. You are
a woman who works. You are a working mom. So
when you go on TV and you go on your
little podcast and you demonize working moms, look at a mirror,
because you are a mom with a job, You make
a ton of money, you go to work every day.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
I don't want to hear it.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Obviously, if you are a person of reproductive age who
is building a career, you have probably used worth control
at some point to buttress that career and to have
control over your life.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
And more power to you.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
You should everybody should be able to make health residence
for themselves. However, Candice omens she just says whatever, like
and so when it comes to her, especially, I don't
think it's worth trying to make heads or tails of
what she's saying, because she'll say anything for a check.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
She's like Mia off a Real Housewives of Potomac. She'll
say whatever. If you don't watch Potomac, Mia lies, That's
my point.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Mia, just catch it straight. Doesn't you have enough problems
right now?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
She does, She does, I should lay off Mia and
also Mia, there's a whole other topic, but Mia has
kind of like become my fan favorite.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
So even though she's a liar.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
So Washington Post spoke to Brittany Martinez is the founder
of ev Magazine, which you can kind of think of
as like a right wing Cosmo, and she said in
an email to the Post that her outlet's work has
made questioning birth control mainstream, saying women have been silenced
and shamed by legacy media, the pharmaceutical industry, and then
many cases about their own doctors who have guessed lit
(36:18):
them about their.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
Experiences with hermonal birth control.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
So this comment, to me, really illustrates nicely how bad
actors like this work, right. They seize on the very
real and very legitimate anxieties or fears or baggage that
marginalized people have. She is right up until a point
that women really have been like silenced and ignored about
(36:43):
our medical issues by doctors and a pharmaceutical industry that
do not often seem to really care about our pain,
about our health, about our bodies.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
So that part is true.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
But where she fucks up is that she then cruelly
exploits these anxieties and these very real tensions and baggage
that we have to push her own dangerous agenda. And
that is something we see time and time again with
bad actors and extremists like this. Something else this report
points out is how these bad actors are exploiting racialized
(37:17):
and gendered fears and anxieties around medical information to further
push harmful and accurate information about birth control. The report reads,
women of color, whose communities have historically been exploited by
the medical establishment may be particularly vulnerable to misinformation given
the long history of mistrust around birth control in this country.
That's from Kimberly Baker, an assistant professor at ut Health
(37:40):
Houston School of Public Health. For sterilization of tens of
thousands of primarily black, Latina and Indigenous women happened under
the US government programs in the twentieth century. That's another
huge reason why these negative videos around birth control get
a lot of fanfare, because there's already stigma attached to it,
and that's deeped in our history. And so you really
(38:00):
do see these bad actors cruelly and callously picking at
and exploiting these very real traumas that our communities have
been carrying around for decades for real reasons, and exploiting it.
And sometimes they're exploiting people and their anxieties and baggage
and trauma for money.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
Like a lot of.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
These people when they're like like health influencers in quotes,
they'll be talking about how birth control is unnatural or dangerous,
and then you go to their page and they're selling
some kind of a hormonal supplement or hormonal coaching something
that is just like BS And so they're scaring people
in order to scam them, and they have a financial
(38:42):
incentive to do so. And honestly, doctors are already seeing
the irl impact. The reports talks about how doctors are
seeing more and more people come into their offices asking
about something related to birth control that they saw on TikTok.
One doctor says, people are putting themselves out there experts
on birth control and speaking to things that the science
(39:03):
does not bear out. I'm seeing the direct failures of
this misinformation. He says that women frequently come into his
office for abortions after believing what they saw on social
media about the dangers of hormonal birth control and the
effectiveness of tracking periods to prevent pregnancy. Many of these
patients have traveled from states that have completely or partially
banned abortions, such as Texas, Idaho, Georgia, North Carolina, and
(39:26):
South Carolina. And we really can't even have this conversation
without talking about how it is supported by algorithms, because
algorithms really, I mean, if you've ever scrolled on TikTok,
you probably know what I'm talking about. It really supports
people to be surfaced information that is similar or somatically
similar to what they just watched, right, And so rather
(39:48):
than giving them some sort of an alternate viewpoint, it
just completely builds up this rabbit hole and buries them
in it. A twenty year old college student who went
down an algorithmically supported rabbit hole on birth control misinformation
said it created the sense of fear that if I
ever needed to be put on birth control, I would
become a completely different person. I would gain a bunch
(40:08):
of weight, and my life would be over. I was like, well,
obviously this is true. This applies to everybody because it's
the only thing I'm seeing. So I do think that
platforms bear some responsibility here to make sure that the
people that use their platforms are not just being sent
down more and more extremist, dangerous rabbit holes when it
comes to something as important as their reproductive health.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Yeah, sure would be nice.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
And I do think that, like this is related to
something I feel I've seen more and more where people
I just feel like there is a subset of people
who will believe absolutely anything they see on TikTok.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
I think that's probably right, and I don't think it's
limited to TikTok. We've talked about this a lot, but
and definitely digital literacy is a big thing. But I think,
you know, we should be you really careful not to
put it on the people who are you know, digitally
illiterate and being swayed by this information and keep the
focus on the people who are pushing it. Like so, I,
(41:15):
you know, saw that we were going to talk about
this today, and I had this big question, like who
are these people and what is their motivation for pushing
this misinformation? Right? We talked about misinformation on this show
a lot, you know, like political misinformation or disingenuous accounts
that are trying to create racial disharmonies. To like destabilize things.
But this one really like got me. It's like, what
(41:38):
sort of monster would push anti birth control information?
Speaker 2 (41:43):
And why?
Speaker 3 (41:45):
And you know, I guess you provided a couple of
pretty good explanations here. The just like the engagement farming
of it, it gets.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
It gets engagement and people who have a financial investment
in it. So if I'm selling hormonal supplements and I'm like, oh,
hormonal birth control is bad. If you hate it, you've
ruined your your hormonal system. But if you buy my pills,
we can get this back on track.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Money please, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
And then also the it connects to stuff we talked
about before. It feels like there's a big effort, largely
on the right, but not limited to the right, to
just discredit the medical and scientific community in general and
just destroy the idea of expertise and promote the idea
(42:34):
that every influencer can be their own expert and do
their own research.
Speaker 5 (42:44):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Well, the piece really does a good job of speaking
to doctors who are looking inward at the medical profession
and wondering like, have we created this problem by failing
to have transparency and failing to make patients, many of
whom are women, feel like we are adequately listening to
them and answering their questions are And I would argue that,
(43:23):
like typically speaking, when you have some sort of dynamic
like this where bad actors and bs influencers and grifters
are able to really take up a lot of space,
there is some like institutional failing that has allowed those
people to take up so much space in a conversation.
And I think that's really what we're seeing, Like people
(43:44):
women when it comes to reproductive health, women have historically
not really been listened to. There's an entire legacy and
history of the medical community not listening to and not
thinking seriously the pain and issues of women. And you know,
we also live in a world where any healthcare that
(44:04):
is about people who are not cisgendered men. So when
it comes to queer people or trans people that I
think that that is like inherently othered. And so I
think that these doctors are not wrong to be like, well,
in what ways have we really failed the people who
come to us looking for care that allows for grifters
and extremists to take over the conversation and for that
(44:26):
to feel like something that is actually accurate. But I
do think that you're right that there is this larger
demonization of expertise and medical professionals and people who know
what they're talking about. That report talked to this, I guess,
like some sort of hormonal influencer who had her content
taken down from TikTok for being medical misinformation, and she
(44:47):
was like, oh, well, I actually think it's fine to
take it down because I think that people should be
doing their own research. And it's like, well, yes, but
if you're not a doctor, doing your own research into
medical information is kind of a tall order, right, Like,
I'm not a doctor. I would not pretend to be
able to make heads or tails of medical research. And
(45:09):
so it's really cunning how they put it back on
people to really further eroad trust in the medical profession
more generally. And I think you're right that we should
not be demonizing people who fall for this, because I
think a lot of people when you're in a place
(45:31):
where you've just been consuming a lot of information that
is really scary, and you're already in a mental or
emotional place where you're not feeling heard, not feeling supported,
you're looking for alternative avenues for information out there. I
think that it can put anybody in a place where
they're more receptive to these kinds of grifters and extremists, right,
And it is being buttressed by an incredibly powerful algorithm
(45:56):
that is like pushing you toward that conclusion. Right, So
it's you you're not it's it's not just you're stupid
and gullible. There are forces that are pushing you toward it,
and we should be honest about that. But like, I mean,
I don't like to talk about my own health and
body stuff on the podcast because I just think it's
(46:17):
your people's health is so specific and unique to them
and so personal to them. But like as some of
y'all who know me in real life, no, like I
had a pretty tough go of it with COVID, and
I got COVID multiple times, and I got it one
time that was so bad that it really like it
just really like knock the wind out of my sales
for a very long time, right, And so like long,
(46:39):
COVID is one of those things that I do think
that like I've gleaned that it's not the kind of
thing that people want to hear about and so it's
this kind of thing that you're like often dealing with
in a way that feels very isolated, because it's like,
you know, you're dealing with the symptoms, and you're dealing
with the fatigue, and you're dealing with the brain. But
(47:00):
then you've gleaned that people don't really want to hear
you complain about it, so then you're dealing with all
of that alone.
Speaker 4 (47:04):
And when you're dealing.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
With stuff alone, it pushes you to the Internet, which
then algorithmically supports you to fall down rabbit holes that
are not necessarily good for you and also happen to
be inclusive of people who are trying to make a
quick buck off of your issue, off of your isolation,
off of your anxieties. And so I know, I am
(47:25):
somebody who talks about this for a living, and even
I got pretty wrapped up in taking advice like wellness
and health advice from Randos on TikTok right, And so
I started like, because I felt so crummy, and because
I was so isolated in feeling crummy, it really did
lead me to like using social media to figure out
(47:46):
what was going on and figure out how I might
be better. So I started taking supplements that like randos
are suggesting you take on social media in a kind
of a low dark moment. Then I'm like, wait a minute,
maybe it's time for a blood to I go to
a doctor, I get a blood test. The doctor is like, yeah,
whatever supplements you're on, stop taking them. They're not They're
like not doing anything for you, and they're actually making
(48:08):
your health worse. And so I don't feel good sharing that.
But I look back on that and I'm like, yeah,
I was at a low moment when I didn't feel
like I had a lot of support and I didn't
feel like I could really talk about what I was experiencing,
but was desperate for a quick fix. And it got
me right. The algorithms are powerful. The algorithms get you.
(48:30):
You see somebody on TikTok who looks like they have
their shit together, who like is presenting a kind of
a life or a version of yourself that you are
that you see something in and you're like, oh, I
want that to be me. Next thing, you know, you're
buying supplements and don't even fucking regulate it, And so
I just think that like nobody should be getting take
it from me. Somebody who had to see a real
(48:50):
doctor to straighten that out. Don't get your health or
medical advice from some rando on TikTok who might not
even have any actual qualifications or also might have an
agenda that is actually harmful to you. These people are scammers,
They are grifters. They are making money from your isolation,
from your fear, from your concern, from your worry, from
your late nights. The most radical thing we can do
(49:13):
is break that system that tells us that these people
know what we need. I know it is tough, I
know that we are silenced. I know that we're not
listened to. But like forking your money over to a
grifter is never the answer. And so back to what's
happening with these birth control grifters. None of this stuff
is happening in a vacuum because we are already seeing
(49:35):
legislation trying to limit access to birth control. These influencers,
their messaging really helps drive this legislation limiting access to
hormonal birth control. This is from Amanda Stevenson, a sociologist, demographer,
and assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder
who is studying how anti abortion activists and lawmakers are
trying to restrict birth control already. Republican legislators in Missouri
(49:59):
have tried all yet unsuccessfully, to stop the state's medicaid
program from covering iud's and emergency contraceptives. A panel of
the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit this
month upheld a Texas law requiring minders to obtain parental
permission before accessing birth control. So all of this is
sort of like working together, right, these grifters and influencers
(50:21):
using social media to drum up fear about birth control
and anxiety about birth control as harmful, and then right
wing lawmakers passing legislation to then limit and legislate birth
control more harshly.
Speaker 4 (50:34):
It's a real clusterfuck.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
So, speaking of clusterfucks, Mike, do you ever hear one
of those stories that it sounds like was made in
a lab to bother you?
Speaker 4 (50:47):
Specifically?
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yeah, it happens all the time, every day.
Speaker 4 (50:50):
So this is one of those stories for me.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Sixty years after her death, we have the invention of
Digital Maryland, an AI facilitated Lyn Monroe chatbot. I guess
that answers questions in Maryland's style and voice. Here's Digital
Maryland in her own words.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
Hi, darlings, I'm Digital Maryland. Come visit me at Soul Machines.
Speaker 7 (51:14):
It'll be such fun.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
I hate it. I hate everything about it. I hate
the way she speaks, I hate the whole idea.
Speaker 4 (51:22):
Hate it. Thumbs down zero out of ten.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
So Digital Maryland was revealed at south By Southwest and
is the brainchild of Soul Machines, which is a company
that creates what it calls biological AI powered digital people
and Authentic Brands Group, which is a company that acquired
the rights to Marilyn Monroe's intellectual property back in twenty eighteen.
Sole Machine set in a blog post it's as if
the spark of Maryland herself has been translated into the
(51:47):
AI age.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
Yikes. So how does this work? Well?
Speaker 1 (51:53):
According to Deadline, Digital Maryland can interact in real time
using advanced natural language processing deep learning and open ais
chat GPT three point five, which means it is another
step forward in extending the ability to monetize celebrities even
after their death.
Speaker 4 (52:10):
So we talked about this.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
A little bit in the episode that we did about
the Whitney Houston hologram and her residency in Las Vegas.
But Soul Machines is clear that this is another step
forward in terms of celebrities or their like AI likeness
being able to connect with consumers on behalf of brands.
They say this collaboration exemplifies the transformative power of AI
(52:33):
in connecting brands and consumers. Digital Maryland showcases our biological
AI bringing an iconic personality to life through engaging dialogues
and emotional intelligence. It's more than nostalgia. It's a glimpse
into the future of immersive interactions.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
Oh, Bridget, why do you hate this so much?
Speaker 4 (52:49):
Great question?
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Well, I think part of the reason why I hate
it so much is the same reason why the Whitney
Houston hologram I hate that so much. Is because we're
talking about women who spent their entire lives being exploited
by men, and that I just see that exploitation continuing
after their deaths. Like, did you know that Hugh Hefner
(53:11):
is buried in the burial plot above Marilyn Monroe? He
bought it after she died because he, as he said, quote,
spending eternity next to Maryland is an opportunity too sweet
to pass up.
Speaker 4 (53:23):
This was somebody who.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Financially and sexually exploited Marilyn Monroe all the time when
she was still alive, totally cut her out of the
profits for her own likeness, using his money to basically
supend eternity on top of her even in death. And
so I hate that, and I just see this AI
reimagining of these celebrities as another iteration of that. I
(53:46):
hate that they have yet another way to flatten out
these iconic people who lived and existed and were dynamic
and complicated into these like AI tech enabled caricatures of themselves.
Speaker 4 (53:58):
I find it really gross.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
We've covered this happening on the show before, like that
George Carlin AI enabled stand up impersonation. The family of
Robin Williams has also really been clear that they don't
appreciate AI imitations of his likeness. I just think, you know,
even though in this situation, this company, it sounds like,
did purchase the intellectual property of marily Monroe's likeness fair
(54:23):
and square, I just think that it grosses me out
to think of a celebrity, especially a woman who was
exploited for most of her life, having her likeness controlled
by a group of tech gros who unveil it at
south By Southwest like a.
Speaker 4 (54:39):
Side show for all eternity.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
I just don't like it, and I think in all
the different ways that we have seen AI be used,
it's not lost on me that some of the first
are how can we use it to exploit women?
Speaker 4 (54:52):
I just don't like it.
Speaker 3 (54:54):
Yeah, it's it does feel gross. I guess it's not
surprising the tests were ah got started?
Speaker 4 (55:01):
Yeah, yup, yuck is right. But you know what, I
don't hate?
Speaker 1 (55:06):
What's that breaking down all of these internet and tech
stories with you?
Speaker 7 (55:10):
Mike.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Thanks for having me, Bridget.
Speaker 1 (55:13):
And thanks to all of you for listening. I will
see you on the Internet. If you're looking for ways
to support the show, check out our merch store at
tangoti dot com slash store. Got a story about an
interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi?
You can reach us at Hello at teangody dot com.
You can also find transcripts for today's episode at TENG
(55:34):
Goody dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet
was created by me Bridget Todd. It's a production of
iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative, edited by Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almada is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(55:56):
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Speaker 7 (56:01):
Have to w
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