← There Are No Girls on the Internet
There Are No Girls on the Internet
Amazon Ring Super Bowl Ad BACKFIRES; YouTubers Exploit Women's Arrest Videos; Salesforce CEO ICE "Joke" – NEWS ROUNDUP!
01:10:54
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- [00:00]
Bridget Todd
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Wilmer Valderrama
Guaranteed Human this live check in is brought to you by State Farm. Porque elvinestarde tu familia ta mien merese protecion. When we had our first baby, I had it all planned out, right? Everything. Apps, books, todo. Now that baby number two is here, I'm definitely going more with the flow. Hi, I'm Wilmer Valderrama and I've learned that with family it's not about being perfect, it's about showing up every single day, breathe respira, change a diaper and I guess repeat like a good neighbor. State Farm is there have you or.
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Mike
Sound familiar?
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Bridget Todd
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Bridget Todd
See store or website for details.
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Bridget Todd
A small business owner means holiday time is still go time, still get those orders, ship time and still re up on stamps and supplies time. That's why this upcoming holiday, while others close up shop will be open and happy to help you keep being unstoppable. Come into your local stor. Most locations are independently owned. Products, services, pricing and hours of operation may vary. See center for details. The UPS Store Be Unstoppable. There Are no Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this is There are no girls on the Internet so it has been a little while since we've done a news roundup. Folks might have noticed that we took a little bit of a break. Mike honestly is not my favorite thing. Believe it or not, I really value sitting down and just riffing and giving my takes on some news stories and what's going on every week. But as you know, we sat down to do it, I think, was that two weeks ago now. And I don't know if it was just the news was really getting to me. I kind of caught myself really needing a break. I imagine that if I was feeling that way, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that the listeners were also feeling that way. Just sort of feeling a little bit overwhelmed and needing a break. It's hard because, you know, it's important to stay informed. But one of the drawbacks of being informed and staying informed is that sometimes it is truly just such a bummer, 100%.
- [03:16]
Mike
Like the news can be pretty depressing.
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And.
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Mike
Yeah, sometimes you do just need a break.
- [03:24]
Bridget Todd
And it really made me think about sort of what we do here on the show, the news roundup. I always try to talk about stories that you might not hear elsewhere. I might start with a story that everybody's talking about or throw a couple in there, if I really am interested to talk about it. But I try to have this be something that, you know, you're not going to hear stories necessarily that you would hear anywhere else. I try very hard to not talk about the President because unless I have a reason, unless it's like there is a reason to talk about what he's doing or what he said, otherwise it would just be him all the time and who wants that. There's a. There's such a thing as Trump fatigue. I think for me, especially some of the Epstein files stuff were really getting to me. That was the week that I decided I needed a little bit of a break, was an Epstein heavy week. And I think it's one of those things where it's a story that everybody's talking about, rightly so, but I think we can like, forget that. It's. It's actually a story about horrific abuse and the survivors of that abuse are still around. They're. They're like, they're like participating in the conversation. And I just. Something about that, the way that some of the tenor of the conversation was going just was hard for me to stay pretty checked in with. I did have a little bit of a mild spin out about everything. I'm. I'm fine, but it was just a little bit of a rough time. And I just, I think that's part of showing up in today's media and news climate where sometimes you're like, you know what? I don't have the mental and emotional capacity for this right now. I need to, like, not be so checked in for a little bit and come back when I'm feeling More fortified.
- [05:02]
Mike
I think it's a good instinct to take care of yourself, make sure that you're in a place where you can show up and contribute. And you know, in your case, as someone in media, help people stay informed. And I, you know, it, I think with the, I mean, I was gonna say 24 hour news cycle, but it's like, feels like we've been saying that for 30 years and it's much faster, but like things happen so quickly. Especially with this Trump administration and their explicit strategy of flooding the zone with horrible stories designed to overwhelm people like us. I think it can be tempting to feel like every day is a new crisis and there's urgency to respond to this thing right now, but you just can't sustain that indefinitely. So I'm glad you took a little break.
- [05:57]
Bridget Todd
So, yeah, I'm just curious. I wanted to do a sort of listener check in. You can let us know, you can email us, you can hit us up on Spotify. Comments. I genuinely want to know, one, just how are folks feeling with everything? And then two, you know, what is. If you have an. Maybe you're like, I'm just listening to the podcast. I like Bridget, I like Mike, I like Joey. I'm the sort of philosophical bent of where you end up and what you end up talking about is not something I'm not interested in. I dislike the show. That is totally fine. I appreciate you. We're so happy that you're here. But if you do have thoughts or feedback about how you engage with news in this moment, you know, especially things like news roundups. Do you are if, if do you want to hear the, the hard hitting stories that everybody's talking about? Do you want to it. Are you, are you looking for a little bit of an escape from that? Like, I don't know, I find it's such a complicated thing. I find myself in the last two weeks, I found myself really gravitating toward escapism and stories that I could really just sort of nerd out about. And I hate this feeling of, oh, well, I'm turning to escapism to get a break from all these horrible news cycles that people who are in them don't get a break from. So, like, what a privilege to say. I'm opting out for a little while because I need a break, y', all. But nobody has the capacity to stay checked in on this stuff all the time. And so I just, I'm trying to honor that balance in me and give myself a little bit of grace and say like, oh, you're not, you know, a jerk if you just need two weeks to not think about this stuff and come back later. And so I'm just, I want to honor that in our, the lives of our listeners because I imagine they might be dealing with finding that same balance. And so, yeah, let's go through this together, shall we?
- [07:36]
Mike
Yeah, that sounds great. All right, well, let's get into it. What news have you got for us to round up this week, Bridget?
- [07:43]
Bridget Todd
Well, we watched the Super Bowl. Did you watch it?
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Mike
I did watch it. Yeah. I watched it with my parents and we made snacks and it was a nice time.
- [07:52]
Bridget Todd
Don't you feel like the ads for the super bowl were, one, just super depressing and two, were kind of a bellwether for where we're all at? It was, it was, every ad was crypto gambling AI. Crypto AI.
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Mike
Yeah. It's kind of a reflection of the weird, depressing state of our economy, I guess. Like, those are the, those are the companies just making the most money, just bringing it in from, from workers and redistributing it to a handful of billionaires. That's who's doing it.
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Bridget Todd
Yeah. You mean our scam economy built on a Ponzi scheme of robbing Peter to pay Paul that is currently propping up our entire economic system?
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Mike
Yeah, that's the one. That's what they're advertising.
- [08:41]
Bridget Todd
You know, my old faux ring owned by Amazon made an appearance. Y' all know I hate ring. I've, I mean, I, I, this will be spicy with some of our listeners, especially if you live in the suburbs. I live in the city, so I, I, when I visit my friends or visit home in the burbs, I am always surprised by how ubiquitous ring is, how it's just everywhere. Everywhere, everyone has it. It's just like infrastructure that people don't really question that much. Or maybe they do question or they say, but they say, like, I'm not going to be the only person without a ring. So I get it. I care about safety, I care about security. But I hate ring. Ring is the police. Ring is surveillance. If you have ring in your house, you are basically snitching on yourself to the police. Side note, I know we talked about this. I don't know if you watch Real Housewives of Potomac. Wendy Osefo, she was, her and her husband were arrested for insurance fraud charges. And when I went, I'm obsessed with Real Housewives of Potomac. I was very surprised in this news drop when I, when she was arrested, I went through the investigative documents. And one of the things I could not believe was that she has not been found guilty of a crime. She's still going through the court process, but one of the things I was shocked by is that she is being accused of staging a fake burglary while she was out of town and then calling the police and reporting a bunch of luxury goods on her insurance, getting the insurance money and then still having those luxury goods like physically present in the house. Like that's what she's being accused of. When the police came, they noted that she has a ring camera in like an outdoor ring camera facing her driveway and a camera inside of her house. And during the time that she claimed she was out of town and being robbed by people who broke in to take her luxury goods, neither of those cameras showed any suspicious activity. So I'm thinking if you are allegedly, as Wendy Osetho is being accused of doing, committing some kind of a fraud in your home, why would you have a ring camera? That is a camera that like records stuff for the police. You've just recorded yourself. You've just become your own op. What are you doing?
- [10:49]
Mike
It's really bad practice. Yeah, like if you're going to be doing financial crimes, don't have surveillance devices in your home, you know, like pointed at the scene of the crime. It's, it's a really like mind boggling story. Like I, I would have expected more from Wende, you know, maybe she was burgled by a ghost.
- [11:16]
Bridget Todd
I mean, that's what I'm saying. I think that that concept of ring cameras, Amazon has been so good at making them so ubiquitous, like really making us believe that you have to have one, that if you don't have one, you're basically being negligent. So even if you're someone who. And I also think there's a, I'm kind of going waxing philosophical about this now. But I also think there's a dynamic at play where people, where the assumption, the default assumption is I have a ring camera to look at other people, other people are going to be doing things, I need to be aware of other people. And the idea that like, oh, that camera would be recording me and my actions and that would be going to the police. I think that doesn't really occur to people because I think that we've normalized the idea that surveillance is about other people. I'm fine. I don't. Even if I'm doing a mild financial crime in, out from within my home, I'm fine. That's what I. That's the. To me, that's the only thing that, that makes it make sense why you would be doing crimes and also have a Ring camera in your home while you do them.
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Mike
I think you're exactly right. I think the idea of surveillance has just been so normalized to the extent people are thinking about it. I think you're right that they're like, oh, it's. It's for other people, it's for the bad guys. It's not. Surely this is not going to be turned on me. But I also think people just don't really think about it that deeply at all. They're just like, oh, yeah, you know, surveillance cameras, that'll. That'll be great. That'll solve things.
- [12:53]
Bridget Todd
Yeah. Well, I don't know if you saw that ad for Ring's new service Search Party during the Super Bowl. It's an ad that really exploits our love of pets and dogs and basically posits that with Ring, you can. When a pet is reported missing, the search party feature that is turned on by default, mind you, allows Ring doorbell cameras to scan the footage across Ring devices in any neighborhood, using AI to identify the potential dog match among many personal devices along a network. They made this ad seem super heartwarming, like, oh, missing pets. Oh, this is so sweet. But pretty much everybody who saw this ad was a collective boo. I do. Side note, I do think that the super bowl revealed how fed up with this kind of stuff we are. I think that, like, if you're listening to this podcast, you, you probably are already on the side of this. But I think more and more, like Normie, Americans are fed up with this dynamic that you described where more and more of our rights, our money, our data, our privacy are being extracted from private citizens and handed over to a. A small number of billionaires for their profit. I think that something about seeing ad after ad after ad on the super bowl really just shows what garbage this all is. And I think Americans are starting to wake up and say, actually, do I want this?
- [14:19]
Mike
I agree. And I actually am, like, pretty heartened by the response to this Ring ad for exactly that reason. It does seem like something about that broke through, that these norms are changing and people like the general public who haven't been super clued into these conversations about Ring and Flock and all of the other everyday devices that. That are sold to us as helpful but are actually spying on us, I think people are starting to notice, like, wait, that this, this is not good. Like, I don't. And I'm not Sure. If it's just the ubiquity of them and the sheer number. I also have to wonder if all the news about ICE has sort of changed the conversation about people's perception of what, like, who. Who might be looking at this footage. Right. Like, it's one thing when it's the police. A lot of people, I think, have pretty favorable views of the police because they keep our neighborhoods safe for some people. But like, ICE, I think, has really changed that, where you have these masked goons dragging people out of their cars and like, arresting kids and shooting people, acting really violently. So I. I have to wonder if it's been like a convergence of these things that, that have led to this moment where I. I've personally been quite surprised by the backlash to this ad, but pleasantly so.
- [15:54]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, this is a little bit of a non sequitur, but we did this great interview with the attorney for Mel Kirk, that trans grad student who was pulled from classes after that student wrote that paper, and she lives in Minnesota. And she was telling me one of the things, like we were talking about what was going on in Minnesota, and she was like, also the ICE agents, they all drive like assholes. And I was just thinking, what, like, even if you were someone and she, like, she obviously is not, but let's say that you were someone who was nominally supportive of police, but then you have 3,000 federal ICE agents descending on your small town and they drive around the streets like assholes. Yeah, I was just surprised by. I was like, oh, yeah, that would be something of note. That would, that would, that would turn the public, even. Even a potentially sympathetic public against the actions of what these people are doing. Something I want to say about Ring is that, you know, Amazon and Ring, they did not invent using technology for nefarious purposes of surveillance and control and harm. That. They certainly did not invent that. The thing that bothers me so much about Ring is that they want to make lots of money by building this kind of surveillance technology that harm that I believe harms us all. And they want the public to have warm, fuzzy connotations with their product.
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Mike
That's a great point, Bridget. You know, I was just listening to an episode of the great podcast sawbones where they were talking about the history of tear gas.
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Bridget Todd
And.
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Mike
You know, it was developed. It's a whole category of different chemical agents, actually. It's not just one thing, but they were developed as part of World War I as, like, military grade weapons. And then after the war ended, these big chemical manufacturing giants in The US Wanted they. You know, they needed to create a market to keep selling these products. And so they pushed this big public awareness campaign about how tear gas could be used by police departments to. To help protect the peace and disperse mobs and used as a defensive weapon for safety, which I think is a little bit analogous to what you're saying here.
- [18:14]
Bridget Todd
It is sort of analogous, but Ring isn't just saying, oh, it's. We're. We're. It's not just crime and police. It's also heartwarming moments with your kids. It's also funny pet videos. You know, I don't know if you recall this. Ring once asked us here at this podcast to make an ad that basically described Ring camera footage as the new version of America's Funniest Home Videos, that they were really trying to sort of say, like, oh, what we're trying to do is tell people the ways that Ring can be used to capture funny or heartwarming footage that you would want to have for your family. So would you be willing to summarize and run down some of those instances for Ring? Obviously, the answer was a hard no, but I think that demonstrates it's not just that they want to be seen as, oh, well, we have other use cases. It is. So I think that your tear gas analogy does sort of work. But also it would be like if the people who made tear gas were like, also, you could use tear gas to. When you're having a party and you want everybody to go home, just launch tear gas in your kitchen and people will leave, and that'll be a cuddly use case of it.
- [19:28]
Mike
I am getting a great image of, like, Joan Cleaver being like, okay, party's over. Time for the tear gas, like, wafting through the kitchen. You know, I think one of the things that makes this. That dynamic that you just described so dystopian, like, yes, that's exactly what they're doing. It's like the sort of thing that an Orwellian government would do, like a duplicitous ad campaign to trick people into being surveilled. But that's not actually what's happening here. I don't think Amazon is actually interested in, like, surveilling people for law enforcement. That's just, like, an unfortunate byproduct. I think they're doing all of this, you know, building the surveillance equipment, creating these campaigns to sell it to us with cute, cuddly photos and jokes. They're doing all of it just to sell more widgets and Harvest our data so they can sell other widgets as well.
- [20:24]
Bridget Todd
Yes, this is from cnbc. In recent years, the company had adopted a softer image, positioning its devices as tools to capture porch pirates and family friendly hijinks. After founder Jamie Smedoff returned as CEO last year, the company has re embraced its original mission of fighting crime.
- [20:41]
Mike
It's like Batman has returned.
- [20:43]
Bridget Todd
Yes. So according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Amazon Ring already does integrate biometric identification like facial recognition into its products. It always has some cutesy name, like instead of saying oh, facial recognition, it's familiar faces. Which depends on scanning faces of those in sight of the camera and matching it against a list of pre saved pre approved faces. It does not take much to imagine Ring eventually combining the two features, facial recognition and neighborhood search. What they're calling search party. So when this ad was on the Super Bowl, Ring was all set to partner with Flock, the company that you mentioned, which is a company that makes police surveillance. We've talked about them a few times before. Once because police used Flock to mistakenly accuse a random woman of stealing packages off of someone's porch, even though she never did it. And they were going to prosecute her for this had she not taken matters into her own hands and like prove that she had not done this. There was also a story where Flock's network of license plate readers was used by police to track a woman suspected of having had an abortion. And I think 404 once did a follow up investigation that showed that police intended they were looking for her because they intended to proc to like bring charges on her for criminal behavior. And so Ring was set to partner with Flock. But people hated that surveillance nightmare pet super bowl ad so much that this week Ring announced they are no longer partnering with Flock. This is from cnbc. The partnership between Flock and Ring came under scrutiny after the Amazon doorbell company ran an ad during the super bowl that touted a search party feature that uses AI to help locate lost pets. Eff called it, quote, a surveillance nightmare. So it sounds like exactly what you described, that enough people saw this ad. They were not buying that this is going to begin and end with cute, cuddly dogs and lost pets. And there was enough backlash that Ring was like, no, we're going to drop this partnership. Just to be clear, this is what Ring publicly has said. It would not surprise me if they're still back channeling with them. I am just, I'm just reporting what they said. I have learned you really cannot take, especially when it comes to how companies are working with law enforcement, they absolutely will say one thing and then continue to quietly do another. But the fact that they felt the need to at least publicly signal that they are not going to be pursuing this partnership, I think says a lot about how that adult hit people, which is not good.
- [23:11]
Mike
Yeah, people don't want it. You know, the only good ring camera is a smashed ring camera.
- [23:16]
Bridget Todd
I agree with you. Let's take a quick break.
- [23:28]
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- [24:03]
Wilmer Valderrama
This live check in is brought to you by State Farm. Okay, real talk. I'm about to become a dad again. And wow, it hits different the second time. Hi, I'm Umar Valderrama and I've done, you know, I've done the red carpets, the long days on set and all that. But nothing prepares you for that moment when you're building a crib and you realize you're building a future. Familia is everything to me. The laughs, the chaos, the unconditional love, but also the pressure. La respona. If you're stepping into something big right now, starting a family, getting engaged, moving cities, you're not alone. Take one step at a time. Why breathe? Be present and lean into the people. They've got your back. It is fruta. Like a good neighbor. State Farm is there.
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- [26:08]
Bridget Todd
At our back. Speaking of ICE and surveillance and not meeting the moment, to put it lightly, the Salesforce ICE joke. I. Oh my God. I. I mean, do you ever have secondhand. It's not even embarrassment, it's secondhand. I don't even know the word for it. Because of someone else's I'm putting it in air quotes joke. I have that times 100, basically. Marc Benioff, he's the CEO of Salesforce. He was giving his keynote address at Salesforce's internal conference in Las Vegas. He asked all of the international employees who had traveled to the United States for this event. Specifically, he asked them all to stand. So these are people who are probably a lot of immigrants, probably a lot of them working on visas, not living in the United States. He asked them all to stand before joking that ICE agents were present and monitoring them. And this joke, I'm gonna put that in quotes, drew booze from the crowd. Several employees told media outlets. There's a great piece in a 404 media that's almost like a real time play by play of all the different staffers reaching out to 404 anonymously to be like, can you believe he said this? You should report that he said this. He said this, y'. All, The GP already said he said this. So that gives you a sense of how much people were not feeling this joke.
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Mike
And I, I mean, one of the things about a joke is that it's generally not just a true statement of fact. I just, I suspect ICE was monitoring many of them.
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Bridget Todd
Well, when the recording of his speech was published on the internal Salesforce, wouldn't you know it, there was some sort of glitch. And that little bit of the speech that Drew Booze was not included in the recording. Isn't that weird?
- [27:54]
Mike
Oh, wow. Yeah, it is weird. I guess maybe the, the batteries in the video cameras must have died or something.
- [28:01]
Bridget Todd
This is wild to me. According to the news outlet Inc. That was not even his only joke about ICE at the event because later in that meeting, he asked the audience how many of them had not yet used a Slackbot tool before joking about ICE being there again. And then he Also commented that he wasn't sure what Bad Bunny super bowl halftime show was about, but then he threw that in there, too.
- [28:25]
Mike
Like, who's this audience here?
- [28:28]
Bridget Todd
This just sounds like you're like, kind of out of touch Republican uncle. Just free associating things that he doesn't like about culture. What's with all these. What's with all these foreign language movies? Back in my day, we had American movies like the wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind. Whatever happened to that? Like, he's just. Is he.
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Wilmer Valderrama
I'm.
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Bridget Todd
It just sounded like his type 5 on how culture has changed.
- [28:53]
Mike
Yeah, like, like, I don't know if he's going to give me a Werther's original or, or go on Bill Maher.
- [28:59]
Bridget Todd
So it's an especially messed up thing considering that Salesforce has contracts with ICE and this has been really controversial from within the company. And after he made this, this joke, I, I don't. I. It's being reported as a joke. I don't. I want to be clear. I don't think it's a joke. It does not have the cadence of a joke to me. I'm not sure who would be the, the, like, what the punchline is, but sure. Well, after that. Now, almost 1500 employees have signed an open letter asking him to cut business ties with ice. In the letter, the employees say that they are deeply troubled by media reports detailing Salesforce's pitch to use its AI to help the agency expeditiously hire 10,000 new agents and vet tip line reports. And. Yeah, I mean, I just think. I don't understand how somebody makes a comment like that and then doubles and seemingly triples down on it. I just think it's what happens when tech CEOs are just so insulated from the consequences of the technology that they're building and even the, the real ramifications for the people that they are employing. It just. I think you really got to be. I think. I think it's very, very revealing.
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Mike
It is. I, I have to wonder how much of it is driven by that same normalization of surveillance that you were just talking about in the last segment about, you know, this, this idea that, like, oh, surveillance and law enforcement, that's for other people. Surely all of you employees who have traveled here from abroad aren't at any risk when, in fact, a lot of them probably are at risk. Right. Like, there's so many stories in the news of people with visas, citizens also, but especially people who are here in the US Legally on some kind of a Visa oftentimes working, getting arrested and detained by ICE for long periods. I just read a story about some guy from Ireland who was here on a visa, got detained for like three months. So the risk to these workers is very real. And yeah, I have to wonder if he just assumed it isn't because Benioff surely is not at risk of getting picked up by ice, and so therefore neither is anybody else in his mind.
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Bridget Todd
I also think it's an indication of how tech leaders are feeling about the climate. You know, I think other than the federal government, my understanding is tech has been the number one industry by being targeted for layoffs. And so I think that he. I almost wonder, and maybe I'm putting too much past this guy, but I almost wonder if this is him kind of testing the waters of like, what can I get away with? What can I say? What horrible thing can I say? And you all basically just have to, like, nervously laugh through it, even though that he got booze because you want to keep this job, because your visa depends on this job. I almost wonder if that's what's going on, is that, you know, for a long time, tech workers were really advocating it from within their companies. And I think that. That it's almost like a. Like a. A show that, oh, the tides have turned. You all are just grateful to have a job. I can get up here and say whatever I want. I don't have any kind of consequences. I'm not worried about it at all. But we see how that gamble played off because we're reading about it in a million different news outlets. He was audibly booed by his own people, and now he's got this open letter from his staff asking him to cut ties with ice. So I think he might have miscalculated on this one.
- [32:35]
Wilmer Valderrama
Yeah.
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Mike
I mean, who knows what he is thinking? I. I read something online a little bit ago that. From some Salesforce executives complaining that they had laid off too many people. So I think you're right. They've done a pretty substantial number of layoffs also around AI Right. They. They had this idea that they would just use AI to replace all these people. And it sounds like some of the executives now regret that because they're finding out that AI can't replace all of the people. So maybe that message hasn't reached the top of the organization yet. But I can't imagine comments like that really engender a lot of goodwill, as evidenced by the flood of tips to 404 Media.
- [33:21]
Bridget Todd
Yeah. Clearly got their top minds on this one more after a quick break.
- [33:34]
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- [36:11]
Bridget Todd
Let's get right back into it. Okay, so a little bit of a change in gears. This is just a really interesting piece out of Verge by journalist Victoria Song. We'll put it in the show notes obviously, but it really, I had. It was a story that I had not heard about. So there is this VR game for Meta's VR called Supernatural, which kind of sounds like a mix between Peloton and Just Dance, where people, they wear the VR headsets and they do a group workout class or dance class with a human coach who is also in VR. And so what's interesting about this game, Supernatural, is that where Most of the VR space is like young men, 18 to 34 year old men. Supernatural was really popular with women, people over 50, and people with mobility challenges. These folks reported finding what sounds like genuine community on Supernatural. If folks read the piece of they describe. You know, when one of the coaches, when their partner died, everybody rallied around this coach. People talk about how, you know, they just got grouped virtually with strangers in these workout classes. And then those strangers, they would become close friends and basically family despite never having met. A pretty sweet, heartwarming story about the way that technology can build community, right?
- [37:32]
Mike
It is a sweet story. And you know, when I was reviewing your these notes ahead of the show, I was like, huh, this is a really surprising, nice story about something Meta has done. What a pleasant change. Can't wait to read more.
- [37:45]
Bridget Todd
Well, Meta is saying screw those people and shut the program down. This is from Burge. For a game like Supernatural, shutting down content production was a death knell that left Dickinson and countless other Supernatural fans blindsided with shock, then grief. The Supernatural Facebook page has over 110,000 members, many of whom have written sprawling odes to the game. Over 7,000 and counting have also signed a change.org petition begging Meta and Mark Zuckerberg to rethink the decision. They're pissed and they want Meta to know two things. Not only has the company royally screwed up, but they're not letting Supernatural go without a fight. So I loved this article, unless you can't tell. And one of the reasons why is that the piece includes quotes from a bunch of women in their in their 40s and 50s who are upset about Supernatural being pulled. Their emails are amazing. These women are amazing. I was going to try to pick a few quotes to read, but they're all gold. So I was like, oh, I'm just going to be reading the whole article. Here's one. My opinion of Meta can be Summed up as. And then it's just a bunch of expletives.
- [38:51]
Mike
Just like a bunch of comic book swearing.
- [38:53]
Bridget Todd
Yeah. This is from Regina Lynn, a Supernatural athlete in her 50s. Athlete is a term that the Supernatural community prefers. Lynn has been playing for five years, roughly three to four times a week. Mark Zuckerberg helped buy a ballroom for a fascist. Perhaps it is not surprising that he killed Supernatural, she says.
- [39:12]
Mike
Yeah, she's right.
- [39:13]
Bridget Todd
So, like, that's the thing. Every quote is. Just not only is it spot on, factually correct, it also has so much, like, flair to it. So Lynn, that woman that we just heard from, is not alone. Several Supernatural fans contacted the Verge saying that they have really noticed that connection between Meta's broader controversies and how the company runs things since buying within, which is the studio that made the game that they shut, that Meta shut down. Now, before Meta acquired Within, it was an indie studio that came out of music and films and creative work. It was not really a tech company. In an interview on the Decoder podcast, Within's co founder talked about Supernatural as something that he had built to to be meaningful to other human beings. He thought of it as more as immersive art than a product designed to help Meta dominate the VR market. And so it really does sound like they had built this thing, really with community in mind, like genuinely trying to build space for other people. It got acquired by Meta, and basically the philosophy that the founder described is the exact opposite of what seems to be Meta's philosophy, and that is why the fans are taking this change so personally. And the sad thing is, before Meta got involved, it sounds like Supernatural was very successful. This is from Verge. Supernatural was widely considered a successful VR app before Meta ever entered the picture. In fact, when Meta announced its plan to buy it in 2021, the FTC launched a probe to try and block the acquisition, partly because Meta had already acquired Beat Saber, a similar VR game, and Supernatural threatened its dominance. It was also reported that Meta was keen to snap up the game before Apple, which was rumored to be interested in the game. The FTC probe ultimately failed. The acquisition was complete in 2023. So it does just seem like Meta didn't have any real interest in this community and keeping it running, even though it was so thriving. What they actually had interest in was market share of VR, making sure that Apple didn't get it before they were able to get it, and just buying it as a way to build up their empire in the VR space.
- [41:20]
Mike
Yeah, and that was back, you know, three years ago. Now when the Metaverse was still, you know, kind of limping along and they were pretending like it was going to be a thing. It is such a sad example of how distorting it can be when companies like Meta, with so much money are just able to buy, to buy things up without a clear plan for, you know, continuing the value that people get out of it. It's. This is a sad story.
- [41:55]
Bridget Todd
It's especially sad to me because I, you know, I really appreciate pockets where people are able to carve out digital community for themselves, especially people who are not often reflected in technology. Right. So like older folks, women, people with mobility challenges. And I think it's a indication of exactly what we were talking about when we were talking about the vibes around the Super Bowl. I think that it's a small example of how society feels on a larger level right now. In shitification, you can't have anything that is genuinely good for very long until that thing is ruined for profit. Here's another quote from one of the supernatural athletes quoted in the piece. This is just a small mirror of a huge problem in our society right now. The blunt way of saying it is those with the gold make the rules. This is what we're fighting on every single level, globally right now. We're fighting those with money telling us how our lives will be lived, what we can access, what we can do, and what we can say. Of course, there are far bigger things to fight for right now, and I do. But if I don't take care of my health, my mental health, my physical body, I have nothing to give or fight with for the big causes. That really stuck with me. And I think it's one of the reasons why this piece and this story has been such a bug in my brain because it does sort of feel all connected that on the, on the scale of things, yes, losing your favorite physical fitness VR game because Meta bought it and ruined it and closed it is a small thing, but it does feel like a small mirror to how people are feeling right now. That, like, no, you can't have anything good. You don't actually own anything. Like, it's all hours for the taking to do whatever we want with. I think that's the feeling that people, people are, are rejecting and being told and like it being a fitness app where these, these folks feel like it has given them. It has given, given them a place to, to show up differently in that space, also feels connected. It just, I just, it just really makes me sad.
- [43:50]
Mike
Yes, it is sad. And it's. It's not like they just lost an app. Right. It sounds like these people really lost community and a source of meaning in their life. And like you said, a. And an outlet, an opportunity to, to work on their physical health, which is connected to, to mental health as well. Like all of those things are so valuable. And it, it's. There's like this notable asymmetry that when Meta is selling some new product or feature, it's going to revolution our, revolutionize our lives and become the, the most important thing that turns society upside down and is just like transformative. But then when something is taken away, well, it's, you know, it's just, just an app. Like, you know, get another app.
- [44:39]
Bridget Todd
Yeah. And as you were speaking, I mean, you know this, but I love movies. I'm obsessed with film. And for a while somebody used Reddit in my neighborhood to start a, an in person movie club where the idea was they pick a movie every month, anybody who wanted could go watch the movie. Then you would go to a bar across the street and then talk about the movie. And that was really the extent of it. And I came to realize how much I didn't just enjoy this as a filmgoer, the community aspect of it, having a reason to like it was, it was during a bit of a tough time for me personally where I was having a lot of trouble socially and feeling quite isolated and having this low level thing that got me out of my apartment, got me around other people, got me talking, but in this kind of safe feeling way of like, oh, you're talking about a movie that you just saw. So you don't have to go deep, you can just talk about the movie. Then when all of the stuff happened around ICE and immigration, the person who was running that community, unfortunately, that was, they were impacted by that. So they chose to leave the United States and that community shut down. And I took it like, I cried. I took it very hard. And I think I had not realized exactly what you said. These, we don't, you really don't get a lot of places where you genuinely feel like, this is my community, these are my people, I can show up. It is, I can show up. Where I'm at, it is. It is low lift to show up the barrier. Like there are less barriers. It feels good when that is taken away. It's so tempting to be like, why am I so upset? It's just a video game, it's just a movie club. Da da da da. But that is real. Those are real things. And the way that people are Responding, I think really shows that. And yeah, I just really appreciate what these folks are going through and what the loss that it actually does constitute for their life because that is meaningful. This is from the article. It's not just about making friends. Marginalized users say Supernatural let them exercise without judgment inside the headset. They could lunge, squat and swipe at targets just like anyone else. They didn't have to worry about being looked down on for not having six pack abs, being older, working out in a wheelchair, or having limited range of movement. The feeling is that if you have something that truly makes people feel seen and allowing people to build community, selling it to a company like Meta will just end up killing it. Other app developers should take note of how capriciously Meta fought for and then ditched Supernatural. If you make something you love, you might make a pile of money selling it to Meta, but they're likely to mismanage and kill it. This is from an early adopter of Supernatural. Yes.
- [47:22]
Mike
And you know, one of the things you mentioned in there is how rare it can feel to find these little pockets of community and just generally good vibes on the Internet. And I think this story neatly illustrates a theme that we mention on this show often, which is the state of our Internet is not the result of forces of nature. Right? There's not like some natural order that dictates that our Internet needs to feel as bad as it often does. These are choices that people, many of them men, most of them men, but like humans, are making business choices that humans are making to buy those pieces of good places on the Internet and and then integrate them into this profit machine that just obliterates the community spirit for the purpose of feeding their shareholders.
- [48:25]
Bridget Todd
And it's one of the drawbacks of what happens when these companies get so big and powerful that they can just do that and think nothing of it. Here's a quote from another Supernatural athlete. I despise Meta along with the oligarchs, the top 1% that continue to destroy our world and kill anything that brings joy and beauty of human experience and connection because their only goal is to make a profit. This person says that she finds it overwhelming to convey just how much Supernatural's community has impacted her. And yeah, I think it's exactly what you're saying that these companies, it's not happenstance. I think it is part of the strategy is to obliterate the things that the little pockets that people are able to carve out that make them feel good. One silver lining is that there is one Supernatural fan who was trying to build his own version for the Apple Vision Pro. When asked why he is building something for Apple's VR headset and not Quest, which is Metas, they said, quote, shutting down one of the only meta services that actually made me feel healthier was. Was kind of my last straw. So I think that is probably the most hopeful part of the story for me, that when meta kills something that people love, those people don't just give up. They do mourn and grieve, but then they find other platforms. They build their own version. They advocate. They refuse to let go of that community that they built. And like, meta might have the money and the power to shut down Supernatural, but they cannot kill what these people created together. That is community. That will outlast Mark Zuckerberg, that will outlast all of these platforms. And I think that is the real lesson here, that big tech can and does destroy a lot of things. But community is a lot harder to kill than you think. Especially when you've got, like, women in their 60s who know how to write a great quote, reaching out to reporters, like, good luck.
- [50:17]
Mike
Yeah, you know, I suspect a lot of these women are going to be fine and find. Find something better. And it. It sucks that they have to go through this. And it's, like, really depressing that it often feels like everything good is only temporary because it's just a matter of time before meta buys it and kills it, basically. I guess maybe that's like, if we're gonna look for a silver lining, sort of the bright side of insidification, that it forces us to constantly find new things, rediscover, rebuild. Because you're right, people want community. They want to feel connected to each other and have the capacity to provide it to each other. Right? And meta can't kill that.
- [51:06]
Bridget Todd
That's kind of beautiful. More after a quick break.
- [51:20]
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- [51:54]
This stress check, AKA friendly reminder that your hobbies matter, is brought to you by State Farm because you deserve to lose yourself in the stuff that brings you joy. Here's mine. Painting my tabletop battle miniatures. Yeah, seriously. After a long day, I grab a brush, pop in some music and just get into it. And there's no wrong way to do it. It helps me clear my head, slow down and just breathe. But it works. Big stress. Mini warriors. Total reset. No pressure. Just paint. Creativity and a little reminder of what makes me happy. Some people bake, some people garden. Me, I paint warriors with interesting tech. And guess what? It works. You don't have to be good at your hobby, you just have to enjoy it. So carve out that time, tune out the noise, and do something that's just for you. Like a good neighbor. State Farm is there.
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Bridget Todd
Always secure cargo have heart disease and.
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- [54:03]
Bridget Todd
Let's get right back into it. Okay, so a little bit of a switch of gears. Have you ever been scrolling social media or Reddit or TikTok and seen police body cam footage? Or Maybe it's on YouTube of a young woman being arrested? Have you ever seen content like that?
- [54:26]
Mike
I definitely have, so.
- [54:29]
Bridget Todd
Me too. I've seen so many videos like this on the Internet, but it really never occurred to me why that is or where they're coming from. The reason why we're seeing so much of them is because it is an industry online of obtaining police body cam footage of arrests, specifically arrests of young women and then putting those videos on YouTube for profit. This was all revealed In a fascinating deep dive into all of this in New York mag, the piece speaks to this woman who used to have a drinking problem. She got a DUI when she was younger. You know, there was police body cam footage of the arrest. She has since gotten sober, gotten into aa, changed her life. She's become a teacher. And, and this video of her arrest from years ago is still on, on social media, on YouTube. And she basically lives in fear that this video will go viral. It doesn't have that many views yet. Her, as far as she knows, her family has not seen it and her work, which is a school, has not seen it. But she basically kind of lives in fear that this video of her worst moment is going to come back to haunt her because somebody has put it on YouTube for their own profit. And so this apparently is a thing. The article reads, the unlucky ones have been watched and mocked millions of time. They have been ogled, insulted and abused. They are mostly women, mostly between the ages of 18 and 25, and mostly powerless to stop their online humiliations. So far, YouTube channels featuring such videos have generated over a billion views and counting. When you go to videos like this, like, I, I encounter them on social media all the time and never really thought about them. The comments are always, what a brat. Like, they're, they're all. They're almost kind of sexualized, not in the way where people are saying that they want to have sex with these women, but the, the. It's, it's just comments humiliating women. That's, I mean, I, as the only way I can describe it, like, go pull up one of these videos and look at the comments. And it's clear that people are really enjoying ogling and humiliating these women in the comments. And I think it's a gross example of something that we talk about on the show a ton, which is how misogyny and the chance for people to leave comments humiliating women across the Internet. Admittedly, women behaving badly, you know, DUIs are not a good thing to get, but that will always find a market. There will always be a marketplace for that online. There will always be an audience for that online. And I think, you know, we really have to contend with what that means for society. So the reason why this is possible at all is because of the widespread adoption of body cameras by police departments across the country. The piece reads, Footage from cameras is only useful if it's made available to the public. And the pressure, transparency is contingent on access. In turn, states have scrambled to regulate the release of recordings. The Most lenient, turn over almost everything. Redacting only footage of minors and particularly sensitive scenes. Stricter jurisdictions require the consent of those filmed. That's states like Wyoming. Or treat all recordings as closed investigations. That's states like Kansas. Blue states are more likely than red states to mandate cameras and far more likely to make the recordings public. It is a complex issue because ultimately you do. I am a transparency advocate and I do advocate for transparency. And I get what they're saying. That body cam footage is only going to be useful if that footage is also transparent and gets to the public and gets to the press and gets to all of us. However, when the footage is used in these ways that it was not intended to be used, that's obviously a problem. And so we have to figure out how to combat that without limiting the transparency that I think that we need in, in law enforcement. Big caveat that I have a lot of problems with the, with the mindset that says that body cameras actually make us safer or like make police better at their jobs. There's a whole, that's a whole other conversation. I don't want anybody to think that I'm just uncritically pushing that as, oh, the, the big solution to police violence is body cams, because I am not, it's very complicated. But I, I, I just, I say that to say that it is a complex, layered problem.
- [58:55]
Mike
It really is. Yeah, I'm glad you brought it up because I've been thinking about this a lot too. You know, with, with ice in Minnesota and all over the country. You know, there was a big push to get all of them wearing body cams. And then some people started to say, like, hold on, hold on, let's think this through. Is that actually going to make people safer or is it just gonna create a, a new vector for surveillance? Just like we were talking about with ring cams? And yeah, it does seem like a complicated issue that, that we really need to think through. It was really interesting to learn that Wyoming actually has protections requiring people's consent for their body cam footage to be released. And for one, I, I, I guess I don't know much about Wyoming, but I know it's like pretty right wing, I think. So it surprised me they would have those protections and also the protection they have of requiring people's consent seems like a, maybe a good place to start looking for solutions of how to balance this sort of thing. I don't know, I'm not, I'm not an expert in it. I'd love to hear from others about how to tackle this problem. But, you know, starting with consent seems like a decent place to start.
- [60:18]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, that. That really gets at the complexities of this issue very well. The piece really makes it clear that we. It's kind of been an evolution where the. The thinking around transparency and automatically making this footage released to the public or available to the public. It was perhaps grounded in good intentions around transparency, but we did not foresee some of the other outcomes, like creating this marketplace to create these. You. This. These YouTube channels. So the piece reads, for the first few years of camera use, footage requests generally came from defendants, attorneys, and journalists. Lawyers wanted evidence. Reporters wanted to see what happened. But soon a different genre of requests began to trickle in. YouTubers and TikTokers with viral policing accounts started to request footage for their channels. They wanted lively, contentious arrests, DUIs, underage drinking, crimes committed on nights out. They wanted college towns, girls dressed for clubbing, thumbnails sure to win a click. There are now more than 150 YouTube channels devoted to the unredacted arrest of everyday people. The most popular uploads are the most salacious and humiliating. They have titles like when suspects try to flirt with cops. That has almost 8 million views. Hooters waitress tells cop I can take it all off that. That claims 2.4 million views. Body cam Colon Exotic dancer tries to seduce cop, throws drunk tantrum and pees herself in squad car. That has 3.4 million views. When I said that it's sexual, I. I'm not really sure how to. I'll just say what I think they have, like, porn titles. You know, how porn titles will be things like, I don't know, you know, like redheaded brat destroyed by dead. Like, there's. There is a. There is a cadence to porn labeling that I have seen more and more on YouTube, and I think I really see that in these titles. Do that.
- [62:12]
Mike
Does what.
- [62:13]
Bridget Todd
Is what I'm saying make sense? I don't. I don't know. I. I just. The whole thing feels like porn without the nudity to me.
- [62:20]
Mike
Yeah, I mean, obviously that's what this is like. I. It took me a minute to figure out that that's what you're talking about, because, yeah, obviously this is, like, sexualized. You know, there's. If it was just dunking on people doing stupid things in front of cops, you'd see a lot of men in there. Right? It would. It would be like an episode of cops. But that's not what this is. This is, like, exclusively women, and not just women, but, like, Young women. Yeah, it's. It 100 feels like one or two steps removed from. From a pornography video.
- [63:00]
Bridget Todd
Yes. So they actually talked to one of the men who runs one of these channels for YouTube. They speak that he wants to be kept anonymous, which is, like, pretty ironic, considering the nature of the videos that he publishes. But he. He says initially, oh, well, what I'm doing is a public. Public service to discourage illegal behavior, saying that he wants to, quote, illustrate the consequences of drunk driving, shoplifting, and other illicit activities. And so, like, he wants to educate people by deterring them from engaging in that kind of behavior. But then when the interviewer asks, okay, well, if you want to dissuade people from driving drunk, how come you only upload videos of women when men are much more likely to face arrest for drunk driving? I think men are. 80% of DUIs are committed by men. So then he's like, okay, well, I'm just giving the people what they want. I cannot control what people. Like he said, I cannot control what others watch or what the algorithm ultimately chooses to promote. So it's exactly that. Like, he tries to be like, oh, it's a public service. It's about crime deterrent. And then it's like, okay, well, then why is it all women when men are committing more DUIs? Well, you know what it is? You know.
- [64:07]
Mike
You know what it is? You know what this is giving them what they want. That crime deterrent argument also is, like, just so. Just such a facade.
- [64:19]
Bridget Todd
And if we.
- [64:20]
Mike
Even if we were to take it on its face, it's so cruel to use this, you know, these unfortunate things that are happening to very young women. Like, it sounds like a lot of them, teenagers in their early twenties having what might be the worst moment of their life. Right. Like, I had. I have a uncle who was a state trooper for many years, and one of the things he said to me once, I always think about. He's like, everyone you meet, they're having one of the worst days of their life. And I thought that was pretty thoughtful. And I try to keep that in mind. When, you know, I see some video of somebody getting arrested, acting ridiculous, it's like, well, maybe we could give them a little bit of a break. Just because they're doing this one bad thing right now doesn't mean that they're, like, a bad person who should have this humiliating video, follow them around for the rest of their life. Like, that's not the world we want to live in.
- [65:22]
Bridget Todd
Yes, I. A lot of the comments in his videos will Say like, oh, well, you know, who cares if we're making fun of this woman who drove drunk. She could have killed somebody. And the woman that I was talking about earlier, who got a DUI before getting sober, getting her life together and essentially turning her life around, she basically the point that people are meant to be dissuaded or educated from behavior like drunk driving by these videos that people are making money by uploading, she does not agree that that is what's going on at all. She completely agrees with you. She says public humiliation does not prevent people from doing things. I saw the clips of when I was drinking. It did not stop me from getting arrested. The videos used to come up on her TikTok and she would scroll through and stare. Part of the kick of watching videos like that is to feel holier than thou. It inflates your ego watching others flounder drunk and confused. Then one day the person in the video is you. And yeah, I think the idea that if these kinds of videos flooding social media kept people from getting GUIs, we wouldn't still have DUIs, we wouldn't still have this kind of crime. That's clearly not working if that's what people are saying.
- [66:28]
Mike
That's a good point. You've told me about this newspaper from the town where you grew up, right?
- [66:36]
Bridget Todd
The Gotcha.
- [66:37]
Mike
The Gotcha, yeah. They've been publishing that for decades, right?
- [66:40]
Bridget Todd
Yes. So I don't know if it's. I know that we had it in my town. I don't know if it's like a national thing or if it's a smattering of states. I think it might probably be in states that have more lenient transparency laws. But there's a paper in my town called the Gotcha that it was just pictures of mug shots and usually it was either hot women or like people who had. I mean, it was either hot women or people who had like face tattoos or teeth missing. Very, very clearly misogynistic and meant to like, for people to gawk at lower income people and people essentially having the worst day of their lives. And. And the thing about the Gotcha was it was your mugshot before you ever even had your day in court. So someone could have been legitimately mistakenly arrested or like exonerated or, you know, charges dismissed. You, you are still holding a picture of their mugshot in the Gotcha.
- [67:35]
Mike
It's an unsettling fact of human nature how much we love to gawk at the misfortune of others.
- [67:43]
Bridget Todd
I was really surprised to find out how Easy it is to obtain these arrest videos. So New York Mag spoke to Andrew Kajiano, who was the president of the New Jersey State association of Chiefs of Police, and he basically explained the process. Somebody will submit a public records request for every DUI arrest in the township. They'll go through the list and cross out all the men's names. Then they'll request the arrest footage for what's left, just the women. A few months later, those videos start appearing online. Young women drunk or barely able to speak clearly during their arrests. And this guy who is like the chief of police or whatever says exactly what you said. Like, why should someone who faces their day in court faces consequences, pays fine, whatever. That should be the end of it. Why should these people be having the worst moment of their lives broadcast across the Internet forever? You know, these videos capture people at rock bottom having the worst day of their lives. Like your uncle said, why should that moment haunt them for the rest of their lives so that somebody else can make a quick buck by putting it out of YouTube. They spoke to the city clerk in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and basically she said that we have been inundated by public records requests, which increased 140% from 2024 to 2025 since these videos channels have become a thing. What we have been told is that we are on some kind of list for requesters stating that we are a municipality that is easy to get records from. And again, inevitably that footage, it winds up on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. The people who wind up in this video really have very little recourse. You know, the more humiliating the arrest, the better the content. The most viral videos can be really devastating for the people who are in them. It could damage relationship with friends and family, frustrating job searches, scarring their psyches, and they really can't do anything about it, because unless a video has been excessively editorialized, there's really not a legal recourse here. You know, they can't sue YouTube or Facebook because of Section 230, which largely shields content providers from responsibility for the videos on their platforms. And so they don't really have that option. Notably, there is also a shakedown element of what's happening here too, because the people who are in the arrest videos are essentially extorted to have those videos taken down. Some subjects have complained to channel owners and then been shaken down for a fee. It's a variant on mugshot extortion, a practice in which websites acquire booking photos of recent arrests, post them online, and then Remove them only when compensated. So I, they. In the article, they talked to, like, a couple of lawyers who basically say, if I had a client who had a video on one of these platforms, and they reached out to the person who owned the channel to be like, oh, can you take this down? It's a picture. It's a video of me. And they were like, if you give me $2,000, the lawyers said I would just pay it like that. That you don't really have a lot of legal recourse. Your only option is to allow yourself.
- [70:39]
Mike
To be extorted, which we know is not a good option because they can just put it up on a different channel.
- [70:45]
Bridget Todd
Exactly. And so just to give you a sense of how complex this all is, they spoke to a few advocates who worked on that body camera legislation. And so some of the suggestions that people have made is like, oh, maybe you could automatically blur people's faces in the footage that gets uploaded. But really, it sounds like the spirit of the body camera footage process is designed to mostly be about the officer and their conduct, not the person they've arrested. So it seems like this kind of change might be harder to institute after the fact. They spoke to Drew Hansen, who was a state senator from Washington state, who introduced this complex comprehensive bill on body camera footage back in 2016, which he described as by far one of the most complex pieces of legislation I have ever worked on in my 15 years of public service. He said that it was extremely thorny, vexing, and difficult to write the bill balancing the public's right to know with people's reasonable expectations for privacy, which makes complete sense to me. Ultimately, the bill that they did draft relied on a standard from common law. Anything that is, quote, not of legitimate concern to the public was prohibited from release, including footage captured inside of medical buildings or. Or footage of domestic violence victims. But that bill predates the online humiliation industry, so it is not really able to address this situation at all. So it's like one of those situations where the legislation, even though it only came out in 2016, it's not current enough to address our actual digital climate in 2026.
- [72:14]
Mike
Boy, isn't that interesting? Yeah, what a thorny problem. I suspect that this is something that we're going to be talking about more and more. Right. As there are more cameras, more microphones deployed in our public environments and attached to police officers bodies and AI systems just constantly integrating them. Face search, facial recognition, getting so easy. These, I. I think these problems are just going to keep getting more acute. And yeah, I I really hope that we start taking it more seriously. And, you know, that. That the backlash to that ring camera ad suggests that maybe people are ready to start having that conversation.
- [73:11]
Bridget Todd
I think it. I think that's true, but I think it. This story really goes to show how complex some of those conversations ultimately need to be. They. There was the. An idea floated in the piece that basically, even though these videos are sexist and gross and coercive and humiliating, they spoke to an ACLU attorney who basically said, yes, these videos are awful, but the importance of transparency and the importance of the public interest in knowing how people are interacting with the government outweighs generally a person's personal interest in not being embarrassed. And that, you know, in most cases, it is a trade off, according to this ACLU attorney, that people should be willing to accept. And he goes on to describe a terrible situation of a black youth who was shot and killed by police. The police said, oh, he, he. The kid lunged at me with a knife. The body cam footage, once they were able to sue for the release showed that he was walking away when he was shot. Right. And so this attorney basically says that occasional online humiliations are an unfortunate price to pay for the broader interest in transparency. New York Mag took that argument to one of these women who has a video of her DUI arrest on YouTube right now that she's terrified is going to be revealed and go viral and ruin her life. They presented her with that argument and asked her what she thought. And she said she understands the point, but she is very frustrated by the either or. She cannot accept that the only way to help one set of marginalized people is by punishing another set of marginalized people. And the video that she points out are usually of young women like herself. I've never seen a dude. So why is it incumbent on these women to suffer all to prevent injustices that should not be occurring in the first place. And I just. I think that is really an interesting point and speaks to how if we're going to get serious about talking about and addressing surveillance and what it actually means and how it actually impacts and shows up on our lives, we're going to have to have some complex, thorny conversations. And I think her point really shows that. But I will say one other thing, which is that all of that is true. The same way that we don't have to tolerate ring camera ads that try to sell us surveillance as warm and cute and funny and, like, cuddly and about finding lost pets, we don't have to tolerate these coercive sexist, gross videos of young women, drunk young women being arrested as public sources of education. Just, you know, their humiliation content. And humiliation content involving young women always will generate a quick buck and a click. You don't have to pretend they're a social good on top of it.
- [75:59]
Mike
So, Bridget, just one thing real quick before we wrap up here. Listener Deb, who's written in before, asked us to share something about the Save Our Signs campaign, which is this campaign to document signage at national parks and national sites, which, you know, when you think of national sites, you often think of like Yosemite park and natural beauty, which is. Is a big part of it. But there's also a lot of cultural stuff that is captured and described at these national sites of things that have happened there so that we can learn about our past, which is not always super great, Right? Like, there's a lot of stuff in American history that does not paint white settlers in the most flattering light. For example, um, it's super important to talk about that stuff. But the Trump administration does not like it. And so they have this campaign to take down any signage and any national sites that can be interpreted as critical of Americans or any particular race. Just really an effort to whitewash history. And so the Save Our Signs campaign is trying to document these signs before they are taken down as like, an act of preservation. And Deb has been involved with that, and she just asked us to pass this along, that if you are going to a national park or some sort of national site and you see a sign that has some cultural commentary that doesn't even have to be that provocative, Right? Like, I think the. The administration is taking a pretty blunt tool to this, but they ask you to take a photo of that and upload it so you can find it atdata Rescue Project.org Just go there, upload your photos, and help preserve these cultural signs that help us acknowledge our past and see where we are so that we can all go to a better future together. So thanks, Deb, for writing with that again. You can just go to data rescueprojects.org yeah, thanks, Deb.
- [78:23]
Bridget Todd
Thanks, Mike. You know, this has been in the news just this week. I know that. I've been to the Medgar and Merle Evans Home National Monument in Mississippi. And it's Medgar Evers was a civil rights leader who was killed. And heretofore when you went to visit, that the National Park Service would tell you about, you know, he was shot. There's like a blood stain in the driveway. Somebody went recently and they, they have taken that part of the tour out of. Of what they say. When asked why that part of the tour is taken out, one of the National Park Service members said that they are no longer able to discuss that. In New York City, the famous Stonewall National Monument used to have this iconic pride flag. Trump had that removed. It was reinstated, I think yesterday. So, you know, we're holding onto it. But I think that Deb, we, I think it's incumbent on all of us to take this into our own hands. And so, yeah, save our signs. Send in. Send in your images. Really important.
- [79:24]
Mike
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Bridget, I'm so glad that we were able to do this news roundup. I know it's been a couple weeks, but it's nice to have you back.
- [79:34]
Bridget Todd
Thanks for being here, Mike, and thanks to all of you for listening. Yeah, let us know how you're feeling. I want to do a little bit of a check in for where folks are at. How you feeling? Let us know. You can email us. You can leave us a Spotify comment. Yeah, just hope everybody is taking care of themselves and being well. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi. You can reach us@helloangodi.com youm can also find transcripts for 20 today's episode@tangoity.com There are no girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [80:43]
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Bridget Todd
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