Podcast Summary: "Amazon Ring Super Bowl Ad BACKFIRES; YouTubers Exploit Women's Arrest Videos; Salesforce CEO ICE 'Joke' – NEWS ROUNDUP!"

Podcast: There Are No Girls on the Internet
Host: Bridget Todd (with Mike)
Release Date: February 14, 2026
Producer: iHeartPodcasts

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode is a broad-ranging news roundup centered on the interplay of technology, surveillance, and marginalized experiences online. Host Bridget Todd, joined by Mike, explores current events that often fly under the radar or are framed differently in mainstream tech reporting. Major topics include: the backlash against Amazon Ring’s Super Bowl ad for surveillance, ethical dilemmas around viral arrest videos on YouTube, the Salesforce CEO's "ICE" jokes, and community loss following Meta's closure of the Supernatural VR fitness app.

The tone is sharp, thoughtful, critical, and at times irreverently funny—balancing dismay at tech dystopianism with hope in community resilience and the power of collective refusal.

Episode Breakdown & Key Points

1. News and Escapism: Taking a Break from the Cycle

[01:36–07:36]

• Bridget opens with a candid reflection on feeling overwhelmed by heavy, distressing news, particularly stories involving ongoing abuses and the Epstein files.
• Acknowledges the privilege required to "take a break" from news cycles but emphasizes the importance of giving oneself grace.
• Invites listeners to share their own coping mechanisms and news preferences.
• Quote (Bridget, 05:56):
  "Nobody has the capacity to stay checked in on this stuff all the time... I 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."

2. Super Bowl Ads: Ring’s “Search Party” Surveillance Push and the Backlash

[07:42–23:15]

Super Bowl Ad Reflections

• Mike and Bridget discuss how Super Bowl ads reflected the priorities of the current economy: crypto, gambling, and AI.
• Bridget singles out Amazon Ring’s new “Search Party” ad, which promotes AI-enabled, neighborhood-wide video searching for lost pets—framed as heartwarming, but fundamentally about mass surveillance.

Ring, Surveillance, and Public Sentiment

• Bridget critiques the ubiquity and normalization of Ring cameras, noting:
  [08:41, Bridget]
  "Ring is the police. Ring is surveillance. If you have Ring in your house, you are basically snitching on yourself to the police."

Real Housewives Anecdote on Surveillance Misuse

• Bridget shares a Real Housewives example where a cast member’s Ring footage disproved her own burglary claims—highlighting the system’s double-edged sword.

Norms are Shifting: Pushback Grows

• Mike points out that ICE’s public image may be shifting Americans away from blind trust in surveillance-tech partnerships:
  [14:19, Mike]
  "I have to wonder if all the news about ICE has sort of changed the conversation about people's perception of what—like, who might be looking at this footage."

Corporate Euphemism, Facial Recognition, and Public Outcry

• Bridget summarizes Ring’s integration of facial recognition and other biometric tools, often rebranded euphemistically (“familiar faces”).
• The Ring-Flock partnership (integrating AI-enabled neighborhood scanning) was dropped following public outcry over the Super Bowl ad.
• Skepticism toward official statements is encouraged—Bridget notes that companies may publicly distance themselves from controversial practices while privately persisting.
• Notable Quote (Bridget, 20:23):
  "Amazon and Ring, they did not invent using technology for nefarious purposes of surveillance and control... But they want the public to have warm, fuzzy connotations with their product."

3. Salesforce CEO's “ICE” Jokes and Employee Outrage

[26:08–33:33]

Event Recap and Reactions

• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made multiple “jokes” about ICE monitoring at an internal company conference, directly targeting international employees.
• The jokes were met with boos, and the segment was conveniently missing from the official company video.
• Quote (Bridget, 26:08):
  "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…"

Deeper Implications

• Mike and Bridget analyze how this illustrates a normalization of corporate surveillance and highlights the power imbalance—especially for employees on visas dependent on their jobs for legal status.
• Over 1,500 employees sign an open letter urging Salesforce to cut ICE contracts, specifically objecting to the company pitching its AI to help ICE hire more agents.

Reflecting on Tech Culture’s Shift

• Bridget theorizes that Benioff was “testing the waters” to see what he could get away with in an era of mass layoffs and corporate impunity.
• A broader critique emerges: tech leadership is insulated from the human consequences of their technology; public backlash (boos, media coverage, formal letters) is now one of the few remaining accountability mechanisms.

4. Meta Cancels Beloved VR Fitness Community (Supernatural)

[36:10–51:06]

The Community Meta Killed

• Journalist Victoria Song's Verge article chronicled the end of Supernatural, a VR social fitness app, once widely used by women over 50 and people with mobility challenges.
• After Meta acquired Supernatural, it discontinued content production despite the app's dedicated following and success—primarily out of strategic interest in market dominance, not community value.

Outpouring of Loss and Community Testimonials

• Listeners read standout quotes from Supernatural users expressing anger, heartbreak, and sharp critiques of Meta:
  • [38:52, from Regina Lynn]:
    "Mark Zuckerberg helped buy a ballroom for a fascist. Perhaps it is not surprising that he killed Supernatural."
  • [41:54, user quote]:
    "This is just a small mirror of a huge problem in our society right now... those with the gold make the rules. This is what we're fighting... globally right now."

Larger Context: Shitification and Loss Online

• Bridget frames this as “shitification”—the pattern where genuinely good online spaces are inevitably ruined for profit by tech giants.
• The closure is not just loss of an app, but a site of meaningful community, especially for marginalized groups.
  • [43:50, Bridget]:
    "No, you can't have anything good. You don't actually own anything. Like, it's all ours for the taking to do whatever we want with."

Hope in Resistance

• Despite Meta’s disregard, users mobilize: petitions, community-led alternatives, and a persistent refusal to let the community die.
• Quote (Bridget, 48:24):
  "That is the real lesson here: big tech can and does destroy a lot of things. But community is a lot harder to kill than you think."

5. The Dark Economy of Viral Women’s Arrest Videos

[54:02–73:10]

The Exploitation Pipeline

• YouTube industries dedicated to uploading, ogling, and humiliating women (18–25, usually drunk, often white) arrested on body cam footage are thriving.
  • [54:28, Bridget]:
    "[These videos] are mostly women, mostly between the ages of 18 and 25, and mostly powerless to stop their online humiliations."
• Driven by public records requests and lax transparency laws, these YouTubers make money off women’s worst moments without their consent or recourse.

Analyzing the Sexualization and Double Standards

• Mike and Bridget note these videos read like “porn without the nudity,” with titles aping the tone and structure of adult content. Despite men comprising the majority of DUI arrests, videos almost exclusively feature young women due to higher virality ("giving the people what they want").
• [62:20, Bridget]:
  "It all just feels like porn without the nudity to me."

Legal and Ethical Quagmires

• Transparency vs. privacy: Body cam footage is essential for police accountability, but also enables this predatory secondary market.
  • Some states (e.g., Wyoming) require consent to release such footage, but most do not.
  • Section 230 protects platforms, leaving victims with little recourse except extortionate takedown fees.
• Legislation lags behind; laws written as recently as 2016 are already outmoded by the online humiliation industry.

Moral Reckoning

• An ACLU attorney admits the public interest in accountability generally outweighs individual embarrassment—but affected women push back, noting the burden is gendered, coercive, and falls almost exclusively on young women.
• Bridget urges listeners not to confuse these videos with public good, nor accept humiliation of women as a necessary price for transparency.

6. Listener Mail: The “Save Our Signs” Campaign

[75:58–79:24]

• Listener Deb promotes the Save Our Signs initiative to document and preserve national park signage, especially those recounting less flattering or uncomfortable chapters of American history—efforts are underway to whitewash the historical record under the Trump administration.
• Tips: Photograph culturally significant signs at sites before they are removed and upload to datarescueproject.org.
• Bridget updates on recent events at the Medgar and Merle Evers home and Stonewall National Monument to illustrate the urgency of this campaign.

Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• Super Bowl ad critique:
  "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?"
  — Bridget Todd [08:29]

• On police partnerships and Ring:
  "Ring is the police. Ring is surveillance. If you have ring in your house, you are basically snitching on yourself to the police."
  — Bridget Todd [08:41]

• On Meta killing community:
  "Mark Zuckerberg helped buy a ballroom for a fascist. Perhaps it is not surprising that he killed Supernatural, she says."
  — Regina Lynn, quoted by Bridget [38:52]

• On the persistence of community:
  "...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."
  — Bridget Todd [48:24]

• On viral arrest videos:
  "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."
  — Bridget Todd [54:28]

• On why these humiliating videos proliferate:
  "If it was just dunking on people doing stupid things... you'd see a lot of men in there. Right? 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."
  — Mike [62:20]

• On tradeoffs in transparency:
  "The importance of transparency... outweighs generally a person's personal interest in not being embarrassed... in most cases, it is a trade off that people should be willing to accept."
  — ACLU attorney, paraphrased by Bridget [73:10]

Timestamps for Key Sections

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------------------|:--------------:| | News roundups & staying informed | 01:36–07:36 | | Super Bowl, Ring ad, & surveillance backlash | 07:42–23:15 | | Salesforce CEO “ICE” jokes & the employee response | 26:08–33:33 | | Meta's Supernatural VR app closure / online community| 36:10–51:06 | | The exploitation of women’s arrest videos | 54:02–73:10 | | Save Our Signs campaign / Listener mail | 75:58–79:24 |

Overall Takeaways

• Tech Surveillance Backlash: Public tolerance for surveillance technology is waning, with the Ring ad as a cultural flashpoint.
• Community Matter More Than Platforms: Despite tech giants dismantling beloved online communities, grassroots resistance and the need for connection persist.
• Gendered Exploitation Online: Predatory online economies thrive on public humiliation of young women, enabled by outdated transparency laws and unchecked platform power.
• Accountability is Complex: Transparency tools (like body cams) can have morally ambiguous results—they may expose police violence, but also create new vectors for misogyny and digital harassment.
• Action Steps: Listeners are encouraged to participate in documenting history (Save Our Signs) and to continue advocating for nuanced, survivor-centered tech policies.

Original Language & Tone

As always, Bridget and Mike's conversation is incisive, witty, and deeply empathetic to those affected by tech’s darkest excesses. They engage the topics with humor, vulnerability, and a commitment to both social critique and hope—modeling the very community spirit the episode seeks to defend.