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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do pissed off farmers and broken McFlurry machines have to do with each other? More than you’d think. Both are part of the story behind the modern right-to-repair movement. In this episode, Jason Koebler, tech journalist and co-founder at 404 Media, explains how an unlikely alliance between Midwestern farmers and electronics repair technicians helped win right-to repair-protections across multiple states — and why the farmers’ fight to fix their own tractors is far from over. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7702059355\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/author/jason-koebler/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jason Koebler\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, tech journalist and co-founder of \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">404 Media\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/it-is-now-legal-to-hack-mcflurry-machines-and-medical-devices-to-fix-them/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It Is Now Legal to Hack McFlurry Machines (and Medical Devices) to Fix Them\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Jason Koebler, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">404 Media \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/the-walls-are-closing-in-on-john-deeres-tractor-repair-monopoly/\">The Walls Are Closing in on John Deere’s Tractor Repair Monopoly\u003c/a> — Jason Koebler, \u003ci>404 Media\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://civileats.com/2026/02/05/epa-affirms-farmers-right-to-repair/\">EPA Affirms Farmers’ Right to Repair \u003c/a>\u003ci>—\u003c/i> Lisa Held\u003ci>, \u003ci>Civil Eats\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/latest-repair-battlefield-iowa-farmlands-again/\">The Latest Repair Battlefield Is the Iowa Farmlands—Again\u003c/a> — Boone Ashworth, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Wired \u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://reason.com/2024/01/08/how-john-deere-hijacked-copyright-law-to-keep-you-from-tinkering-with-your-tractor/\">How John Deere hijacked copyright law to keep you from tinkering with your tractor\u003c/a> — Luke Hogg, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Reason Magazine\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/tractor-hacking-right-to-repair/\">Tractor-Hacking Farmers Are Leading a Revolt Against Big Tech’s Repair Monopolies\u003c/a> — Jason Koebler, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Vice\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-american-farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Jason Koebler, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Vice\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you’ve ever tried to order a McFlurry at McDonald’s and couldn’t get one, you’re not alone.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s this kind of meme where if you want a McFlurry, you have maybe like a 50% chance of trying to order it and the cashier saying that the machine is broken.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jason Kabler is a tech journalist and co-founder of 404Media. That’s the worker-owned independent tech publication.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so it became this kind of like nationwide phenomenon where people were trying to order McFlurries and basically half the time they couldn’t get them. There was this guy who created a McFlurry tracker that would track like the thousands of McDonald’s locations that didn’t have McFlurries at any given moment.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s called McBroken.com, and it shows up as an interactive map of McDonald’s locations all over the world. If a store has a working ice cream machine, it gets a green dot. If its machine is down, that’s a red dot. When the McFlurry tracker launched in 2020, the US was scattered with red dots.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And sort of like as this cult item, people got like really frustrated with this state of affairs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Conspiracy theories started spreading about why the McFlurry machines were always broken.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip from TikTok user@filspixel] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You are not ready for how diabolical the McFlurry conspiracy rabbit hole really is.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip from TikTok user@iancarrollshow] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I am talking about the McDonald’s ice cream conspiracy, and oh boy is it bigger and more sinister than you might think.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip from TikTok user@mariannenafsu] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rumor has it that the machine isn’t always broke. It just needs cleaning.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That last one is actually the closest to the truth.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The franchises that I spoke to, they were like, we know how to clean the machine. We just don’t know how to reset it so that it actually works again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You see, only an authorized repair tech from the company that made the machines could get them running again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Essentially what was happening was you just needed to reset the McFlurry machine. Like there was a series of buttons that you needed to hit, uh, like a code that you need to enter and it would go into this, like refresh mode. And it’s not that it was like so difficult to repair the McFlurry machines. It’s just that the franchises didn’t have this code.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Only the authorized repair techs had the code, but there weren’t nearly enough of them to repair all of the machines. So the employees were stuck.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They would have to wait a long time to actually get their machines repaired. And then you multiply that by all the McDonald’s in the United States and you get a situation where like McFlurry machines are broken all the time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then something happened that was kind of surprising.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what happened was folks in the right to repair movement, they basically argued to the federal government that it should be legal to bypass this artificial password slash code that was preventing McDonald’s franchises from fixing and resetting their machines.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Right to Repair is a consumer rights movement that advocates for people’s ability to repair and maintain their own things.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And they actually won, and now it’s legal to hack your McFlurry machine in order to repair it. I think they’re still broken more often than people would like, but for the most part, it’s like a better state of affairs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time of writing this narration, McBroken.com reports that roughly 9% of the world’s McFlurry machines are broken. Still a lot of red dots, but way down from before. Okay, but this episode isn’t just about McFlurries. McDonald’s employees getting the ability to maintain their own equipment is part of a much bigger story, the Right-to-Repair movement. We’ve been diving into this movement over the last few weeks. We’ve looked into DIY vape modders and the legal fights over electronic repairs, like fixing laptops. And here’s the interesting part. Jason says that a lot of the Right-to-Repair protection we have now exists because of farmers who’ve been fighting for this for more than a decade.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s actually a pretty direct line, like basically the problem that McDonald’s franchises have had fixing McFlurry machines, farmers have had fixing their John Deere tractors, their combines, their harvesters, like all sorts of different farm equipment. And farmers got very pissed and they essentially joined the Right-to-Repair movement where they were basically saying like, it’s a political movement to essentially like, free the tractors from this tyranny.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, we’re getting into a relatively unknown piece of Right-to-Repair history: the world of farmers, gray market tractor hacking, and an unlikely alliance with DIY repair nerds, a partnership responsible for many of the right to prepare protections we have today.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As usual, we’re starting with a new tab, Farmers and the Right-to-Repair. Jason has been covering the right to repair for almost a decade. And like many who get interested in the movement, his story begins with a mishap.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I had a MacBook and I got drunk one night. I was watching a comedy special or something and I fell asleep. And I woke up and I kicked the laptop off of my bed. It landed like face down on the screen and the LCD broke. Like actual glass didn’t break but the LCD behind it broke. And I was, I don’t know, like 21 years old. I didn’t have a lot of money. I had kind of just bought this MacBook and I needed to get it fixed. It had like, you know, a rainbow screen. I couldn’t see anything on it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Jason took his broken MacBook to the Apple Store, and guess what they quoted him to fix this $1,000 laptop, $800!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I didn’t have $800 at the time, so I just started Googling, like, how to fix MacBook. And I came across this website called iFixit, which is this community of people who create repair guides. And I saw that with a simple, like 65-step process or something, like a really long process that it was possible to fix the problem that I had, and I just needed to find the part. And so, I went on eBay. And I found the LCD screen for my MacBook and I’ve found one for $50.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He ordered the part and a couple tools and spent a long night painstakingly replacing the screen.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Disconnecting little tiny wires and like unscrewing tiny little screws and losing the screws and then finding them again By the end I had fully fixed my computer and I used that computer for like six more years and it worked, no problem. And the total cost to me was like, I don’t know 70 bucks with the parts in the, you know, the screen.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">and the sleepless night.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The sleepless night for sure. It awakened something in me where I was like, huh, why did Apple want $800 to do this? Maybe because it was so hard for me to fix it, but I did fix it nonetheless. And so I started looking into this and started learning that this is actually like the business model of a lot of electronics companies where they’ll sell you the gadget, but then when it breaks, the repair cost is so high or so inaccessible that you’ll either just buy a new one or you’ll pay them to repair it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a common theme. A lot of people we spoke to described a moment when they started asking why things were so hard to repair. And once they noticed, they couldn’t unsee it. So Jason started reporting on the Right-to-Repair, mostly covering the obstacles in fixing consumer tech, iPhones, laptops, that kind of thing. He also went to repair conventions and profiled some of the leaders of the movement. He became the reporter on the Repair Beat at Vice, where he worked at the time. And then one day, a few years in, he got an email from a farmer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Saying, hey, like, you’re writing about this problem of fixing MacBooks, but we are facing the exact same problem in agriculture. And it’s pretty crazy because tractors cost upwards of $100,000, sometimes they cost like half a million dollars. Like we’re not talking about a $1,000 MacBook. We’re talking about something that is core to someone’s livelihood, is really time sensitive because if a tractor breaks while you’re trying to plant during these really tight planting windows, or if you’re tryin’ to harvest during these tight harvest windows, the crops will just over-ripen and die. And so they were like, this is really critical, but we’re facing the exact same thing. Like, John Deere is controlling all of the repairs. We can’t get the parts. It’s really expensive. We have to wait sometimes for days or weeks, depending on how busy the repair people are. You should come to Nebraska and see what we do.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so he did. And it was there that Jason learned about the underground community of farmers trading pirated software so they could hack their tractors. Not for any crazy mods, but just to get them to run. Next, we head to Nebraska after this break.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Welcome back. Ready for a quick trip to the Corn Belt? Let’s open a new tab: The tractor hacking problem. So Jason Kepler was reporting for Vice at the time, covering the right to repair movement when a farmer reached out and invited him to Nebraska. He spent a few days there and met with multiple farmers who all had the same issue with their tractors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What has happened is for decades and decades and decades, farmers have considered themselves to be incredibly self-sufficient. When something breaks, like they know how to change the oil, they know to change different sensors, they know change different parts on their tractors. That hasn’t necessarily changed, but what changed is that John Deere, which is the most popular tractor manufacturer in the country, has started adding these technical protection measures to tractors So it’s not that there’s like, anything wrong with the replacement parts, or that it’s now that the farmers don’t know how to do these repairs. It’s that there is just like an artificial code that they need in order to make it talk to the tractor that they have.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sound familiar? It’s the McFlurry machine debacle all over again. These protection measures are like digital locks put in place by copyright holders. They’re used in digital games, or ebooks, or tractor software. Getting around them could be considered copyright infringement.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And a lot of them are sort of legacy farmers where their dad was a farmer, their grandma was a farmer on that same land. And for decades, it was like, well, my dad fixed the tractor, like, why can’t I fix the tractor anymore? And I think that not being able to do that makes them feel disempowered and like they don’t own their farm anymore. Like, the success of their farm has been outsourced to John Deere or like a major ag tech company.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Not getting a McFlurry because McDonald’s employees don’t have the digital key to reset the machines, annoying. But not having the key for farm equipment during the peak of harvesting season, financially devastating.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They used to do this repair all the time before tractors were so computerized. It’s the same general process. They do it, it won’t turn on. They have to call a John Deere dealer or authorized repair person. They’re told to wait a day or two days or a week. And all that time, they’re losing money. And these farms run on such small margins already. So they’re mad and they’re like, my crops are dying, what can I do? And so they just start Googling around. And one farmer told me basically that he learned that because of some European Union law, the Ukrainian version of this software was available and also could work with the American version of a John Deere tractor. And so we pulled up to this farm and he met us with a laptop, like a really old like, ThinkPad and he had this…he had like a USB dongle that was like a USB dongle to like, a tractor port dongle…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What?!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">…that basically is like connected to the computer of the tractor.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jason wanted to see it himself. The farmer told him that you could download the software from a torrent site, aptly named the Pirate Bay. Or you could try to join a web forum, which on its surface was about car repair and modification. Jason did the latter. He found one and after he requested entry, he got an email with a link to a third party website. On that website, he had to buy a $25 car diagnostic tool. But they didn’t ship him the tool he purchased. Instead, they sent him a password to join the forum.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then on there, there was like all of these threads about different versions of John Deere software that you could download and how to use it and like all these guides and things like that. And so it was just like a few farmers who were really fed up and they like learned that this was possible. They went into these modification forums, like, it’s really affiliated with people who like modify their cars to, you know, make them run faster or like overclock the engine, like that sort of thing. It’s like, that was some of the other stuff that was happening on this forum. And then there was like a whole separate section where it was like agricultural equipment. It was like how to like make your Mustang go faster or like how to replace an air intake sensor in your John Deere tractor.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The forums had all this software that you could download and sold the cables, that dongle that Jason mentioned, to connect a tractor to a computer. The farmer showed Jason how it worked.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He, like, opened his laptop, connected the laptop to his tractor, and he ran the program and then was able to like activate the part that he was showing me, which was some sort of like, emission sensor or something like that. And it was really crazy because I had actually just spent a day with another farmer who didn’t have this dongle and didn’t have this software and he was trying to fix the exact same thing. And he’s like, look, I can’t, like I’ve put the new part in, but I can activate it. It just, now my tractor won’t turn on, it doesn’t work. It was like, well, this guy has figured it out somehow.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tractor hacking was full of legal landmines. The software was technically pirated, which raised all these questions around copyright and licensing agreements. Farmers started speaking out and connecting with people from totally different industries facing similar issues. And so, an unlikely alliance was born between legacy farmers and tech repair DIYers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Time for a new tab: Big tractor versus farmers and tech nerds? So farmers had actually found a way to keep their equipment running, but it wasn’t exactly on the up and up. And there was always the chance that John Deere would implement a fix to foil these hacking attempts, and the farmers would be back at square one. To find a permanent solution, they needed help.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They eventually got connected to groups like iFixit and some of these other electronics repair people who had already been talking about this problem in electronics and realizing that it was the same problem for farmers as well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the most outspoken advocates for farmers actually has roots in the tech world, Kyle Wiens, the co-founder and CEO of the repair community, iFixit. Kyle’s background is in computer programming, but then a friend asked him for help bypassing his tractor’s sensor issue. Both Kyle, a software engineer and repair expert, and his farmer friend, a pretty adept DIYer, were stumped. They started lurking in agriculture forums and realized that this was actually a very common issue in the tech world and in farming. Kyle wrote about this whole experience in Wired in 2015, advocating for a copyright exemption for farmers to fix their equipment. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, buckle up. We’re about to dive into copyright law. So, in 1998, the US passed a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. It basically modernized copyright law for the digital age. There’s one part of the DMCA that matters for our story, section 1201. It governs technical access to all kinds of machines, like the McFlurry machine or tractors. The software lock on McFlurry machines is allowed to exist because of section 1201. But there are also exemptions to this law, rules that decide who gets to bypass these software locks and how. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Every three years, the Librarian of Congress revisits these exemptions. And every three years, Right-to-Repair advocates have pushed to expand them. In 2015, iFixit and other digital rights groups successfully won an exemption for land vehicles. That exemption allows owners to modify their vehicles’ computer programs, as long as it’s for legal repair, this includes tractors. And though that sounds promising, the reality was still extremely thorny. For instance, was it legal to pirate software for repair? Unclear. Plus, third party hacking, AKA taking the tractor to a local repair shop, was still super illegal. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then there is this other sneaky part of it, licensing agreements. Around the time the copyright office approved the land vehicle exemption, John Deere started requiring farmers to sign contracts promising that they wouldn’t modify their tractor software. So hacking your own tractor, even to fix it, could get you sued for breach of contract. Hacking someone else’s, even as a repair tech, could get your arrested for copyright infringement.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve watched many hearings at state houses where a farmer will go up and they’ll talk about this problem and then a lobbyist for John Deere or for an industry group will say, okay, but if you give farmers access to this stuff, they might modify their tractors in a way that makes them unsafe. They might modify them in a way that causes them to fail emissions tests. And for the first few years, this argument was really persuasive to lawmakers who didn’t really understand the problem. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then there was just so much, kind of, momentum behind this problem. Like, it became worse and worse and worse over the years as older tractors started getting phased out and farmers started buying more computerized tractors and more people started having this problem. It became like a much stronger political movement and over the last few years there’s been quite a lot of gains for farmers, both through negotiated agreements with John Deere, but then also through state-level legislation that has passed that does enshrine some of these Right-to-Repair ideals.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So each exemption cycle, the Right-to-Repair movement makes some progress and the impact snowballed. The 2018 exemptions allow third-party repair technicians to bypass the digital locks for land vehicles, like tractors, which means that repair techs are also allowed to hack tractors now, for repair, of course. In 2021, the land vehicle exemption was expanded to cover all consumer electronics, like smartphones and TVs. And then in 2024, it expanded again, this time for food preparation equipment. That’s right, I’m talking about the McFlurry machine.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[News clip fron FOX4 Dallas-Fort Worth]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> For the first time ever McDonald’s store operators are now allowed to fix their own ice cream machines! Can you believe it?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But when it comes to tractors, it’s still very much illegal to make and distribute the software that breaks these digital locks. And it’s also still technically illegal to buy the tools that you need for tractor hacking.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, it’s like really complicated. It’s like the concept is so simple. It’s, like, the farmers just want to be able to fix their tractors. But then the actual details of it are incredibly complicated in terms of what they can fix, when they can fix it, how they can fix it which software they need, where they can get that software, which parts.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">John Deere hasn’t made it any easier either. Let’s get into that in one last tab: can farmers finally fix their tractors?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The answer is that they can do more than they could do when I first started covering this. But what’s happened is John Deere has made some repairs accessible and some parts accessible, but some parts are still not. And as farming gets more high tech, it’s called precision agriculture. Like, a lot of tractors now essentially drive themselves. They’re guided by like GPS and cameras and all these sensors. There are increasingly things that are still not able to be fixed by the average farmer. But by and large, the situation is better now. It is legal to hack a tractor now. And when I say it’s legal to track a tractor, it is legal to hack your own tractor to fix your own tracker. It’s not legal to like, hack your tractor and make it drive a hundred miles an hour. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right now it’s a situation where, kind of like, the devil is in the details where farmers still want more. And I think they also want better protections because a lot of what’s happening right now is John Deere is, kind of, voluntarily saying, okay, you can fix these things and we can decide what you can fix. And the farmers want it enshrined in law saying, no, anything that your dealer can fix, we should also be able to fix essentially. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of farmers also, I’ve heard from, they’ll go to buy a part that they need to fix their tractor and it just won’t be in stock. And so the dealer that sells them will not say like, you can’t have this part. They’ll just say, oh, we don’t have it and it’s on backorder. And maybe it’s backorder for months. And so like functionally, they are not able to access the parts that they should be able to access just because there’s not anything in the legislation that says these companies have to sell you parts and they also have to have them in stock at all times. And so compliance is a really big problem. And then also just like what’s the enforcement gonna be because very often the penalties are like a slap on the wrist if that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So although seven states now have right to repair laws, only two of them have laws that cover farm equipment. So how does that complicate the issue for farmers who started this movement? What is the state of fixing their tractors like for them?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The fact that only some states have passed this legislation actually complicates things for everyone, not just farmers. It complicates things for John Deere as well, because you’re a big company, like, companies generally don’t like regulations. But if there are gonna be regulations, they want the regulations to be the same everywhere so that they don’t have to comply with 50 different laws in 50 different states. And if you’re farmer, it’s like, well, you want the same rights that someone in another state might have. And so it has created a bit of a patchwork system. That said, the fact that there is right to repair legislation in some states has made things better for all farmers because it’s not like John Deere can sell a part in one state and prevent that part from traveling to another state. And it can’t like, release a repair guide in one state and not have that repair guide be shared over the internet. And so what’s happened is like the fact that some of these states have passed laws has made the situation a lot better for everyone.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The right to repair is an issue internationally, but these roadblocks are especially prevalent in the U.S. Jason said that other countries either have stronger consumer protection laws, a more widespread culture of DIY repair, or they don’t enforce copyright laws as strictly. That’s why farmers depended on pirated Ukrainian software for tractor hacking. So the Right-to-Repair movement isn’t uniquely American. But what is unique about it, for Americans, is that it’s a political movement that both sides can agree on.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right-to-Repair is one of the few things that I’ve ever covered as a journalist where there is like very broad bipartisan support. Like this is not a Republican issue, it’s not a Democratic issue. It is like, everyone is pissed about this. It’s like, a lot of the farmers I spoke to are like, you know, pretty like, very conservative, not all, but a lot of them are very conservative. A lot of the electronics repair people are very liberal. They’re facing the exact same issue. And this is something that they’ve been able to find common ground on. And there’s only been like a few polls about Right-to Repair that I’ve seen, but it’s an issue where like 90% of Americans agree that this is an ideal worth fighting for.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the last few days of Joe Biden’s presidency, former FTC chair Lena Kahn filed an antitrust lawsuit against John Deere. When Trump took office, the second time, his administration dismantled a lot of Lena Kahan’s antitrust efforts. But they decided to keep pursuing the lawsuit against John Deere. That’s how bipartisan this is. This is an issue that affects everyone, legacy farmers and tech DIYers alike. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I, for one, am beefing with the company that makes my fridge. The sensor on the ice dispenser is broken, but the company doesn’t sell that. They have to replace the entire fridge door. The door is backordered and hasn’t been in stock all year. And once it is in stock, I’ll probably have to wait for an authorized repair tech to come by and install it. So now I have this fridge that has all these cool app controlled features, but I’m still manually filling the ice tray. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I didn’t even want a smart fridge in the first place, but I didn’t have a choice because my apartment building already had an exclusive contract with the company that makes it. According to Reddit and the many repair guides I found online, I could probably replace the sensor myself. However, doing that might violate my lease. So I’m back to using old-fashioned ice trays. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Right-to-Repair is a constant fight. Companies love malicious compliance. You know, doing things that are technically legal but still unproductive. Some advocates are pushing to repeal Section 1201 of the DMCA altogether, or at least reform it so that the exemption process for software locks is less cumbersome. At least things are starting to look up for farmers. John Deere had argued that the FTC lawsuit should be thrown out, but last year, a judge ruled that it can and should move forward. Equipment manufacturers, like John Deere, have long argued that they limit independent repair to comply with emissions regulations in the Clean Air Act. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last month, the EPA issued new guidance that said that, actually, they aren’t allowed to do that. The Clean Air Act can’t be used to stop farmers from fixing their own stuff. And then, also last month, lawmakers in Iowa voted to advance a bill that would allow farmers to repair their equipment, including tractors. The big tractor lobby isn’t as strong as it used to be. And every day, people gain a little more of the right to repair tractors and McFlurry machines and everything in between. Okay, now let’s close all these tabs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. The Close All Tabs team also includes editor, Chris Hambrick and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our director of podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor in chief. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi-75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you like these deep dives? Are you closing your tabs? Then don’t forget to rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Maybe drop a comment too. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org slash podcasts. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "What do pissed off farmers and broken McFlurry machines have to do with each other? More than you’d think. Both are part of the story behind the modern right-to-repair movement. In this episode, Jason Koebler, tech journalist and co-founder at 404 Media, explains how an unlikely alliance between Midwestern farmers and electronics repair technicians helped win right-to repair-protections across multiple states — and why the farmers’ fight to fix their own tractors is far from over.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do pissed off farmers and broken McFlurry machines have to do with each other? More than you’d think. Both are part of the story behind the modern right-to-repair movement. In this episode, Jason Koebler, tech journalist and co-founder at 404 Media, explains how an unlikely alliance between Midwestern farmers and electronics repair technicians helped win right-to repair-protections across multiple states — and why the farmers’ fight to fix their own tractors is far from over. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7702059355\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/author/jason-koebler/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jason Koebler\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, tech journalist and co-founder of \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">404 Media\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/it-is-now-legal-to-hack-mcflurry-machines-and-medical-devices-to-fix-them/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It Is Now Legal to Hack McFlurry Machines (and Medical Devices) to Fix Them\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Jason Koebler, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">404 Media \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/the-walls-are-closing-in-on-john-deeres-tractor-repair-monopoly/\">The Walls Are Closing in on John Deere’s Tractor Repair Monopoly\u003c/a> — Jason Koebler, \u003ci>404 Media\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://civileats.com/2026/02/05/epa-affirms-farmers-right-to-repair/\">EPA Affirms Farmers’ Right to Repair \u003c/a>\u003ci>—\u003c/i> Lisa Held\u003ci>, \u003ci>Civil Eats\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/latest-repair-battlefield-iowa-farmlands-again/\">The Latest Repair Battlefield Is the Iowa Farmlands—Again\u003c/a> — Boone Ashworth, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Wired \u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://reason.com/2024/01/08/how-john-deere-hijacked-copyright-law-to-keep-you-from-tinkering-with-your-tractor/\">How John Deere hijacked copyright law to keep you from tinkering with your tractor\u003c/a> — Luke Hogg, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Reason Magazine\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/tractor-hacking-right-to-repair/\">Tractor-Hacking Farmers Are Leading a Revolt Against Big Tech’s Repair Monopolies\u003c/a> — Jason Koebler, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Vice\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-american-farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Jason Koebler, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Vice\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you’ve ever tried to order a McFlurry at McDonald’s and couldn’t get one, you’re not alone.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s this kind of meme where if you want a McFlurry, you have maybe like a 50% chance of trying to order it and the cashier saying that the machine is broken.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jason Kabler is a tech journalist and co-founder of 404Media. That’s the worker-owned independent tech publication.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so it became this kind of like nationwide phenomenon where people were trying to order McFlurries and basically half the time they couldn’t get them. There was this guy who created a McFlurry tracker that would track like the thousands of McDonald’s locations that didn’t have McFlurries at any given moment.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s called McBroken.com, and it shows up as an interactive map of McDonald’s locations all over the world. If a store has a working ice cream machine, it gets a green dot. If its machine is down, that’s a red dot. When the McFlurry tracker launched in 2020, the US was scattered with red dots.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And sort of like as this cult item, people got like really frustrated with this state of affairs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Conspiracy theories started spreading about why the McFlurry machines were always broken.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip from TikTok user@filspixel] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You are not ready for how diabolical the McFlurry conspiracy rabbit hole really is.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip from TikTok user@iancarrollshow] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I am talking about the McDonald’s ice cream conspiracy, and oh boy is it bigger and more sinister than you might think.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip from TikTok user@mariannenafsu] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rumor has it that the machine isn’t always broke. It just needs cleaning.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That last one is actually the closest to the truth.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The franchises that I spoke to, they were like, we know how to clean the machine. We just don’t know how to reset it so that it actually works again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You see, only an authorized repair tech from the company that made the machines could get them running again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Essentially what was happening was you just needed to reset the McFlurry machine. Like there was a series of buttons that you needed to hit, uh, like a code that you need to enter and it would go into this, like refresh mode. And it’s not that it was like so difficult to repair the McFlurry machines. It’s just that the franchises didn’t have this code.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Only the authorized repair techs had the code, but there weren’t nearly enough of them to repair all of the machines. So the employees were stuck.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They would have to wait a long time to actually get their machines repaired. And then you multiply that by all the McDonald’s in the United States and you get a situation where like McFlurry machines are broken all the time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then something happened that was kind of surprising.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what happened was folks in the right to repair movement, they basically argued to the federal government that it should be legal to bypass this artificial password slash code that was preventing McDonald’s franchises from fixing and resetting their machines.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Right to Repair is a consumer rights movement that advocates for people’s ability to repair and maintain their own things.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And they actually won, and now it’s legal to hack your McFlurry machine in order to repair it. I think they’re still broken more often than people would like, but for the most part, it’s like a better state of affairs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time of writing this narration, McBroken.com reports that roughly 9% of the world’s McFlurry machines are broken. Still a lot of red dots, but way down from before. Okay, but this episode isn’t just about McFlurries. McDonald’s employees getting the ability to maintain their own equipment is part of a much bigger story, the Right-to-Repair movement. We’ve been diving into this movement over the last few weeks. We’ve looked into DIY vape modders and the legal fights over electronic repairs, like fixing laptops. And here’s the interesting part. Jason says that a lot of the Right-to-Repair protection we have now exists because of farmers who’ve been fighting for this for more than a decade.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s actually a pretty direct line, like basically the problem that McDonald’s franchises have had fixing McFlurry machines, farmers have had fixing their John Deere tractors, their combines, their harvesters, like all sorts of different farm equipment. And farmers got very pissed and they essentially joined the Right-to-Repair movement where they were basically saying like, it’s a political movement to essentially like, free the tractors from this tyranny.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, we’re getting into a relatively unknown piece of Right-to-Repair history: the world of farmers, gray market tractor hacking, and an unlikely alliance with DIY repair nerds, a partnership responsible for many of the right to prepare protections we have today.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As usual, we’re starting with a new tab, Farmers and the Right-to-Repair. Jason has been covering the right to repair for almost a decade. And like many who get interested in the movement, his story begins with a mishap.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I had a MacBook and I got drunk one night. I was watching a comedy special or something and I fell asleep. And I woke up and I kicked the laptop off of my bed. It landed like face down on the screen and the LCD broke. Like actual glass didn’t break but the LCD behind it broke. And I was, I don’t know, like 21 years old. I didn’t have a lot of money. I had kind of just bought this MacBook and I needed to get it fixed. It had like, you know, a rainbow screen. I couldn’t see anything on it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Jason took his broken MacBook to the Apple Store, and guess what they quoted him to fix this $1,000 laptop, $800!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I didn’t have $800 at the time, so I just started Googling, like, how to fix MacBook. And I came across this website called iFixit, which is this community of people who create repair guides. And I saw that with a simple, like 65-step process or something, like a really long process that it was possible to fix the problem that I had, and I just needed to find the part. And so, I went on eBay. And I found the LCD screen for my MacBook and I’ve found one for $50.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He ordered the part and a couple tools and spent a long night painstakingly replacing the screen.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Disconnecting little tiny wires and like unscrewing tiny little screws and losing the screws and then finding them again By the end I had fully fixed my computer and I used that computer for like six more years and it worked, no problem. And the total cost to me was like, I don’t know 70 bucks with the parts in the, you know, the screen.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">and the sleepless night.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The sleepless night for sure. It awakened something in me where I was like, huh, why did Apple want $800 to do this? Maybe because it was so hard for me to fix it, but I did fix it nonetheless. And so I started looking into this and started learning that this is actually like the business model of a lot of electronics companies where they’ll sell you the gadget, but then when it breaks, the repair cost is so high or so inaccessible that you’ll either just buy a new one or you’ll pay them to repair it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a common theme. A lot of people we spoke to described a moment when they started asking why things were so hard to repair. And once they noticed, they couldn’t unsee it. So Jason started reporting on the Right-to-Repair, mostly covering the obstacles in fixing consumer tech, iPhones, laptops, that kind of thing. He also went to repair conventions and profiled some of the leaders of the movement. He became the reporter on the Repair Beat at Vice, where he worked at the time. And then one day, a few years in, he got an email from a farmer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Saying, hey, like, you’re writing about this problem of fixing MacBooks, but we are facing the exact same problem in agriculture. And it’s pretty crazy because tractors cost upwards of $100,000, sometimes they cost like half a million dollars. Like we’re not talking about a $1,000 MacBook. We’re talking about something that is core to someone’s livelihood, is really time sensitive because if a tractor breaks while you’re trying to plant during these really tight planting windows, or if you’re tryin’ to harvest during these tight harvest windows, the crops will just over-ripen and die. And so they were like, this is really critical, but we’re facing the exact same thing. Like, John Deere is controlling all of the repairs. We can’t get the parts. It’s really expensive. We have to wait sometimes for days or weeks, depending on how busy the repair people are. You should come to Nebraska and see what we do.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so he did. And it was there that Jason learned about the underground community of farmers trading pirated software so they could hack their tractors. Not for any crazy mods, but just to get them to run. Next, we head to Nebraska after this break.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Welcome back. Ready for a quick trip to the Corn Belt? Let’s open a new tab: The tractor hacking problem. So Jason Kepler was reporting for Vice at the time, covering the right to repair movement when a farmer reached out and invited him to Nebraska. He spent a few days there and met with multiple farmers who all had the same issue with their tractors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What has happened is for decades and decades and decades, farmers have considered themselves to be incredibly self-sufficient. When something breaks, like they know how to change the oil, they know to change different sensors, they know change different parts on their tractors. That hasn’t necessarily changed, but what changed is that John Deere, which is the most popular tractor manufacturer in the country, has started adding these technical protection measures to tractors So it’s not that there’s like, anything wrong with the replacement parts, or that it’s now that the farmers don’t know how to do these repairs. It’s that there is just like an artificial code that they need in order to make it talk to the tractor that they have.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sound familiar? It’s the McFlurry machine debacle all over again. These protection measures are like digital locks put in place by copyright holders. They’re used in digital games, or ebooks, or tractor software. Getting around them could be considered copyright infringement.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And a lot of them are sort of legacy farmers where their dad was a farmer, their grandma was a farmer on that same land. And for decades, it was like, well, my dad fixed the tractor, like, why can’t I fix the tractor anymore? And I think that not being able to do that makes them feel disempowered and like they don’t own their farm anymore. Like, the success of their farm has been outsourced to John Deere or like a major ag tech company.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Not getting a McFlurry because McDonald’s employees don’t have the digital key to reset the machines, annoying. But not having the key for farm equipment during the peak of harvesting season, financially devastating.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They used to do this repair all the time before tractors were so computerized. It’s the same general process. They do it, it won’t turn on. They have to call a John Deere dealer or authorized repair person. They’re told to wait a day or two days or a week. And all that time, they’re losing money. And these farms run on such small margins already. So they’re mad and they’re like, my crops are dying, what can I do? And so they just start Googling around. And one farmer told me basically that he learned that because of some European Union law, the Ukrainian version of this software was available and also could work with the American version of a John Deere tractor. And so we pulled up to this farm and he met us with a laptop, like a really old like, ThinkPad and he had this…he had like a USB dongle that was like a USB dongle to like, a tractor port dongle…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What?!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">…that basically is like connected to the computer of the tractor.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jason wanted to see it himself. The farmer told him that you could download the software from a torrent site, aptly named the Pirate Bay. Or you could try to join a web forum, which on its surface was about car repair and modification. Jason did the latter. He found one and after he requested entry, he got an email with a link to a third party website. On that website, he had to buy a $25 car diagnostic tool. But they didn’t ship him the tool he purchased. Instead, they sent him a password to join the forum.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then on there, there was like all of these threads about different versions of John Deere software that you could download and how to use it and like all these guides and things like that. And so it was just like a few farmers who were really fed up and they like learned that this was possible. They went into these modification forums, like, it’s really affiliated with people who like modify their cars to, you know, make them run faster or like overclock the engine, like that sort of thing. It’s like, that was some of the other stuff that was happening on this forum. And then there was like a whole separate section where it was like agricultural equipment. It was like how to like make your Mustang go faster or like how to replace an air intake sensor in your John Deere tractor.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The forums had all this software that you could download and sold the cables, that dongle that Jason mentioned, to connect a tractor to a computer. The farmer showed Jason how it worked.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He, like, opened his laptop, connected the laptop to his tractor, and he ran the program and then was able to like activate the part that he was showing me, which was some sort of like, emission sensor or something like that. And it was really crazy because I had actually just spent a day with another farmer who didn’t have this dongle and didn’t have this software and he was trying to fix the exact same thing. And he’s like, look, I can’t, like I’ve put the new part in, but I can activate it. It just, now my tractor won’t turn on, it doesn’t work. It was like, well, this guy has figured it out somehow.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tractor hacking was full of legal landmines. The software was technically pirated, which raised all these questions around copyright and licensing agreements. Farmers started speaking out and connecting with people from totally different industries facing similar issues. And so, an unlikely alliance was born between legacy farmers and tech repair DIYers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Time for a new tab: Big tractor versus farmers and tech nerds? So farmers had actually found a way to keep their equipment running, but it wasn’t exactly on the up and up. And there was always the chance that John Deere would implement a fix to foil these hacking attempts, and the farmers would be back at square one. To find a permanent solution, they needed help.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They eventually got connected to groups like iFixit and some of these other electronics repair people who had already been talking about this problem in electronics and realizing that it was the same problem for farmers as well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the most outspoken advocates for farmers actually has roots in the tech world, Kyle Wiens, the co-founder and CEO of the repair community, iFixit. Kyle’s background is in computer programming, but then a friend asked him for help bypassing his tractor’s sensor issue. Both Kyle, a software engineer and repair expert, and his farmer friend, a pretty adept DIYer, were stumped. They started lurking in agriculture forums and realized that this was actually a very common issue in the tech world and in farming. Kyle wrote about this whole experience in Wired in 2015, advocating for a copyright exemption for farmers to fix their equipment. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, buckle up. We’re about to dive into copyright law. So, in 1998, the US passed a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. It basically modernized copyright law for the digital age. There’s one part of the DMCA that matters for our story, section 1201. It governs technical access to all kinds of machines, like the McFlurry machine or tractors. The software lock on McFlurry machines is allowed to exist because of section 1201. But there are also exemptions to this law, rules that decide who gets to bypass these software locks and how. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Every three years, the Librarian of Congress revisits these exemptions. And every three years, Right-to-Repair advocates have pushed to expand them. In 2015, iFixit and other digital rights groups successfully won an exemption for land vehicles. That exemption allows owners to modify their vehicles’ computer programs, as long as it’s for legal repair, this includes tractors. And though that sounds promising, the reality was still extremely thorny. For instance, was it legal to pirate software for repair? Unclear. Plus, third party hacking, AKA taking the tractor to a local repair shop, was still super illegal. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then there is this other sneaky part of it, licensing agreements. Around the time the copyright office approved the land vehicle exemption, John Deere started requiring farmers to sign contracts promising that they wouldn’t modify their tractor software. So hacking your own tractor, even to fix it, could get you sued for breach of contract. Hacking someone else’s, even as a repair tech, could get your arrested for copyright infringement.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve watched many hearings at state houses where a farmer will go up and they’ll talk about this problem and then a lobbyist for John Deere or for an industry group will say, okay, but if you give farmers access to this stuff, they might modify their tractors in a way that makes them unsafe. They might modify them in a way that causes them to fail emissions tests. And for the first few years, this argument was really persuasive to lawmakers who didn’t really understand the problem. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then there was just so much, kind of, momentum behind this problem. Like, it became worse and worse and worse over the years as older tractors started getting phased out and farmers started buying more computerized tractors and more people started having this problem. It became like a much stronger political movement and over the last few years there’s been quite a lot of gains for farmers, both through negotiated agreements with John Deere, but then also through state-level legislation that has passed that does enshrine some of these Right-to-Repair ideals.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So each exemption cycle, the Right-to-Repair movement makes some progress and the impact snowballed. The 2018 exemptions allow third-party repair technicians to bypass the digital locks for land vehicles, like tractors, which means that repair techs are also allowed to hack tractors now, for repair, of course. In 2021, the land vehicle exemption was expanded to cover all consumer electronics, like smartphones and TVs. And then in 2024, it expanded again, this time for food preparation equipment. That’s right, I’m talking about the McFlurry machine.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[News clip fron FOX4 Dallas-Fort Worth]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> For the first time ever McDonald’s store operators are now allowed to fix their own ice cream machines! Can you believe it?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But when it comes to tractors, it’s still very much illegal to make and distribute the software that breaks these digital locks. And it’s also still technically illegal to buy the tools that you need for tractor hacking.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, it’s like really complicated. It’s like the concept is so simple. It’s, like, the farmers just want to be able to fix their tractors. But then the actual details of it are incredibly complicated in terms of what they can fix, when they can fix it, how they can fix it which software they need, where they can get that software, which parts.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">John Deere hasn’t made it any easier either. Let’s get into that in one last tab: can farmers finally fix their tractors?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The answer is that they can do more than they could do when I first started covering this. But what’s happened is John Deere has made some repairs accessible and some parts accessible, but some parts are still not. And as farming gets more high tech, it’s called precision agriculture. Like, a lot of tractors now essentially drive themselves. They’re guided by like GPS and cameras and all these sensors. There are increasingly things that are still not able to be fixed by the average farmer. But by and large, the situation is better now. It is legal to hack a tractor now. And when I say it’s legal to track a tractor, it is legal to hack your own tractor to fix your own tracker. It’s not legal to like, hack your tractor and make it drive a hundred miles an hour. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right now it’s a situation where, kind of like, the devil is in the details where farmers still want more. And I think they also want better protections because a lot of what’s happening right now is John Deere is, kind of, voluntarily saying, okay, you can fix these things and we can decide what you can fix. And the farmers want it enshrined in law saying, no, anything that your dealer can fix, we should also be able to fix essentially. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of farmers also, I’ve heard from, they’ll go to buy a part that they need to fix their tractor and it just won’t be in stock. And so the dealer that sells them will not say like, you can’t have this part. They’ll just say, oh, we don’t have it and it’s on backorder. And maybe it’s backorder for months. And so like functionally, they are not able to access the parts that they should be able to access just because there’s not anything in the legislation that says these companies have to sell you parts and they also have to have them in stock at all times. And so compliance is a really big problem. And then also just like what’s the enforcement gonna be because very often the penalties are like a slap on the wrist if that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So although seven states now have right to repair laws, only two of them have laws that cover farm equipment. So how does that complicate the issue for farmers who started this movement? What is the state of fixing their tractors like for them?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The fact that only some states have passed this legislation actually complicates things for everyone, not just farmers. It complicates things for John Deere as well, because you’re a big company, like, companies generally don’t like regulations. But if there are gonna be regulations, they want the regulations to be the same everywhere so that they don’t have to comply with 50 different laws in 50 different states. And if you’re farmer, it’s like, well, you want the same rights that someone in another state might have. And so it has created a bit of a patchwork system. That said, the fact that there is right to repair legislation in some states has made things better for all farmers because it’s not like John Deere can sell a part in one state and prevent that part from traveling to another state. And it can’t like, release a repair guide in one state and not have that repair guide be shared over the internet. And so what’s happened is like the fact that some of these states have passed laws has made the situation a lot better for everyone.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The right to repair is an issue internationally, but these roadblocks are especially prevalent in the U.S. Jason said that other countries either have stronger consumer protection laws, a more widespread culture of DIY repair, or they don’t enforce copyright laws as strictly. That’s why farmers depended on pirated Ukrainian software for tractor hacking. So the Right-to-Repair movement isn’t uniquely American. But what is unique about it, for Americans, is that it’s a political movement that both sides can agree on.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jason Koebler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right-to-Repair is one of the few things that I’ve ever covered as a journalist where there is like very broad bipartisan support. Like this is not a Republican issue, it’s not a Democratic issue. It is like, everyone is pissed about this. It’s like, a lot of the farmers I spoke to are like, you know, pretty like, very conservative, not all, but a lot of them are very conservative. A lot of the electronics repair people are very liberal. They’re facing the exact same issue. And this is something that they’ve been able to find common ground on. And there’s only been like a few polls about Right-to Repair that I’ve seen, but it’s an issue where like 90% of Americans agree that this is an ideal worth fighting for.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the last few days of Joe Biden’s presidency, former FTC chair Lena Kahn filed an antitrust lawsuit against John Deere. When Trump took office, the second time, his administration dismantled a lot of Lena Kahan’s antitrust efforts. But they decided to keep pursuing the lawsuit against John Deere. That’s how bipartisan this is. This is an issue that affects everyone, legacy farmers and tech DIYers alike. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I, for one, am beefing with the company that makes my fridge. The sensor on the ice dispenser is broken, but the company doesn’t sell that. They have to replace the entire fridge door. The door is backordered and hasn’t been in stock all year. And once it is in stock, I’ll probably have to wait for an authorized repair tech to come by and install it. So now I have this fridge that has all these cool app controlled features, but I’m still manually filling the ice tray. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I didn’t even want a smart fridge in the first place, but I didn’t have a choice because my apartment building already had an exclusive contract with the company that makes it. According to Reddit and the many repair guides I found online, I could probably replace the sensor myself. However, doing that might violate my lease. So I’m back to using old-fashioned ice trays. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Right-to-Repair is a constant fight. Companies love malicious compliance. You know, doing things that are technically legal but still unproductive. Some advocates are pushing to repeal Section 1201 of the DMCA altogether, or at least reform it so that the exemption process for software locks is less cumbersome. At least things are starting to look up for farmers. John Deere had argued that the FTC lawsuit should be thrown out, but last year, a judge ruled that it can and should move forward. Equipment manufacturers, like John Deere, have long argued that they limit independent repair to comply with emissions regulations in the Clean Air Act. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last month, the EPA issued new guidance that said that, actually, they aren’t allowed to do that. The Clean Air Act can’t be used to stop farmers from fixing their own stuff. And then, also last month, lawmakers in Iowa voted to advance a bill that would allow farmers to repair their equipment, including tractors. The big tractor lobby isn’t as strong as it used to be. And every day, people gain a little more of the right to repair tractors and McFlurry machines and everything in between. Okay, now let’s close all these tabs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. The Close All Tabs team also includes editor, Chris Hambrick and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our director of podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor in chief. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi-75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you like these deep dives? Are you closing your tabs? Then don’t forget to rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Maybe drop a comment too. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org slash podcasts. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "the-fight-for-your-right-to-repair",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today’s culture of overconsumption urges us to simply throw broken items away and buy new ones. But there’s a growing shift to treat non-working devices differently. In this episode, we dig into the “right to repair” movement with Louis Rossmann, a repair technician, YouTuber and consumer rights advocate. Rossmann has spent years pushing back against the companies that make our devices harder, or even impossible, to fix. From parts pairing to “authorized repair” loopholes, we unpack how tech companies maintain control over the products you’ve already paid for. As devices like phones and even cars move toward subscription-based use models, we examine the question ‘do you truly own something if you can’t repair it?’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC9606298932\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/@rossmanngroup\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Louis Rossmann\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, repair technician and advocate at Rossman Repair Group\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/expired-tired-wired-right-to-repair/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Gloves Are Off in the Fight for Your Right to Repair\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Boone Ashworth, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WIRED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57763037\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Apple founder Steve Wozniak backs right-to-repair movement\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BBC\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fastcompany.com/91387927/clippy-is-back-as-a-mascot-for-big-tech-protests\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Clippy is back—this time as a mascot for Big Tech protests\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Eve Upton-Clark, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fast Company\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/08/power-wheelchair-duopoly-right-repair-law/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wheelchair Users Are Finally Winning the Right to Repair\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Julia Métraux, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mother Jones\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11976969/a-growing-right-to-repair-culture-in-california\">A Growing ‘Right to Repair’ Culture in California\u003c/a> — Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, \u003ci>KQED’s The Bay\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio From Repair Cafe Silicon Valley] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A vacuum is it.. Oh, we need to ring the bell, let’s ring the bell. All right everybody, pay attention, uh, we’re going to ring the bell here.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung,Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We’re at a repair cafe. These days, it’s one of the hottest spots in town.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio From Repair Cafe Silicon Valley] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We just repaired, what did we repair? A vacuum! Alright, ring the bell now, let’s go! Woohoo! We fixed the vacuum! Thank you! Thank you all the lovely repair people!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Repair cafes are community events, where people bring in their faulty espresso machines, vacuums on the fritz, and other broken items. Volunteers help with repairs, to the best of their abilities, like soldering wires or replacing errant bike chains. The whole point is to encourage people to repair and reuse their stuff, instead of tossing them into a landfill as soon as they stop functioning. Last month, Close All Tabs senior editor Chris Egusa popped into the library in Milpitas, California for Repair Cafe, Silicon Valley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How many of these repair cafes do you think that you’ve done or the organization is running?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jesse Kornblum:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Oh, my God! We’ve certainly ramped up over the past few years. It used to be about one a month, now it’s two, sometimes three a month.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Jessie Kornblum is one of the organizers for this repair cafe.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jesse Kornblum:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The one thing I do know is between now and the end of May, we have 12 events planned.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Here’s how it works: members of the community bring in their broken stuff, fill out a form, and then get paired with a volunteer who might have the skills to fix that specific item.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jesse Kornblum: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have volunteers who sign up ahead of time. They specialize in things like sewing or bikes, and we have a lot of general fixers who can work on electronic devices, some mechanical devices, and we’ve a few people with special skills for things like microwaves.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At this repair cafe, a volunteer with a shock of red hair helps a woman with her tower fan. The fan only spun for a few seconds before shutting off.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kay, Volunteer at Repair Cafe Silicon Valley Usually that means that there’s like a dead capacitor somewhere on the power supply. So operating on that assumption, we opened it up and we found a capacitor and we found a whole bunch of brown gunk around it, which means that the capacitor’s electrolyte has probably leaked out and the capacitor has gone dead.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Kay, the volunteer, takes a closer look inside the fan.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kay, Volunteer at Repair Cafe Silicon Valley:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So this capacitor is probably good. I think this capacitor is fine, which is upsetting because now we don’t know what’s wrong with it. [\u003cem>laughs\u003c/em>]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At a nearby table, another volunteer, Sofia, hunches over a disassembled device, wielding a soldering iron with surgical precision. Tragedy had struck.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sofia, Volunteer at Repair Cafe Silicon Valley:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We have a Dyson hairdryer right now that has been chewed up by a German shepherd. And since there’s some warranty issues with it, they weren’t able to get it repaired by Dyson. So we are here doing some re-soldering on some wires that have been chewed up.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dyson hairdryers are pricey. They’re like top of the line. We’re talking hundreds of dollars. For the person who brought it in, this repair cafe is her last resort.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Repair Cafe Silicon Valley Attendee :\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I also checked the appliance repair shop. They say they don’t fix those small appliance. And my last hope is here, and it’s also my first time here. And I’m super happy to have this helped by somebody.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is part of the reason repair cafes are taking off. They’ll try to fix things that manufacturers like Dyson or authorized repair shops won’t touch. For many, the biggest draw is a shift in mindset, feeling empowered by fixing what they own, even if the companies that made them discourage repair. Shonu Sen first came to one of these events with a pair of jeans that needed mending. Yes, they fix clothing too. Inspired by the experience, she later joined as a volunteer to learn new skills and to give back.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Shonu Sen, Attendee Repair Cafe Silicon Valley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It doesn’t matter if you want to save something, if you don’t have a way to learn how to maintain and repair your things, then there’s no one to teach you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This repair cafe, and the many others popping up around the country, represent a bigger shift from consumers across industries, but especially in electronics. Do you really own what you bought if you can’t fix it? I mean, even the word consumer suggests a lack of ownership. Today, we’re talking about the Right to Repair movement, what it is, how big tech companies have responded, and why this movement is changing our relationship to our stuff.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Leading us through this deep dive is one of the key voices in the movement. He started out as a DIY guy, flipping broken laptops as a side hustle, and went on to build a massive YouTube following and push for actual legislation. Ready? Let’s open a new tab. What is the right to repair?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Right to repair to me is the idea that you should have the ability to fix what you bought and paid for. It doesn’t mean that you have to fix everything that you own. It doesn’t mean that the manufacturer has to make it easy. It simply means not putting intentional barriers in place to you being able to repair what you bought and paid for.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This is Louis Rossman. He owns a data recovery and laptop repair company, and he’s been fighting for the right to repair across the United States. If his voice sounds familiar, it might be because he followed one of his repair tutorials on YouTube. Also, he’s a pretty fast talker, especially today. He isn’t a regular coffee drinker, but told me he had some caffeine before this interview. So try to keep up.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If you are unable to fix what you own, do you really own it? Is it yours or are you just leasing it from the manufacturer? Who has control over your product, the manufacturer or you?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back in the 2000s, Louis started working at a recording studio in Manhattan. As an aspiring recording engineer, he needed a demo reel. To make that, he need a program called Logic, what some of you might know as a DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation. The thing with Logic is that it’s owned by Apple and will only run on Apple products. The problem, MacBooks were super expensive. Louis didn’t have that kind of money.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I’ve got a used one on eBay. It showed up broken. I got a partial refund for it. And when I finished the session, I sold it and I made $250. And I thought I’ve never made more than $400 to $600 a month in my life at that point. And here I just made $200 for what was about 15 to 20 minutes of work. Let me try that again. And it has kind of snowballed into the repair company that I have today.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This started as his side hustle. Louis doesn’t have any formal training in tech repair, but working at the recording studio, he started to think like a technician. He got into the mindset of troubleshooting, learning to problem solve the way other engineers did.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as time went on, I started adding to the services I offered. So instead of just basic screen repairs, here, we’ll do component-level motherboard repairs. So if Apple says it’s $1,200 to fix, we will fix it for a few hundred dollars by just replacing the one thing that’s broken, rather than replacing everything. I started hiring more people, I got a real store, and I showed people how to do these repairs on YouTube because my customers would tell me, Apple has told me if somebody says they can fix the motherboard instead of replacing it, they’re probably scamming you. So I thought, oh, really? Okay, cool. You’re calling me a scammer? Let’s go.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Louis had started a second business that sold replacement parts, but was struggling to keep it afloat. He found it really therapeutic to talk about what he was dealing with on camera, on YouTube, like a video diary. Then he started making repair videos.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Originally it was just for my own customers to show like, I’m not scamming you and I didn’t expect the channel to explode into like millions of subscribers. Anybody that looks at my early content probably sees this and just thinks like why would anybody watch this? I had no idea why anybody would watch it, but it just kind of exploded and went from there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Right, I was going to ask like how did you learn how to fix a laptop, right? If your background was in fixing like recording equipment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You don’t learn how to fix it, you learn how not to break it by virtue of breaking it. So usually there’s two types of technicians, and I’ll fully admit to being the second type. There are technicians that can open something and follow instructions and go, oh, here’s exactly what I do to do a good job. I’m not that person. What I’m good at is messing with something like, how hard can I pull on this tab before it breaks? Oh, okay. So once you break it, you know how to not break it. I would go through all the excuses I had. Well, I would fix this, but I don’t know what chip is which. Okay, why don’t I know that? I don’t have a schematic. Okay, now I have the schematic, but I don’t know how to read this, so, uh, I don’t know what the components do. Okay, I know what components do, but I don’t what the circuit does. And now I would just go through all the excuses that I had in my head for why I didn’t know how something worked, and then use those to try and figure it out. And I would tell myself, well, I’m a tech. Not, I, I dunno what I’m doing, I’d say, I am a tech, and a tech would say, if they don’t now what this is, they’d probably ask for somebody’s opinion, and they’d read a book. And if the book didn’t make sense, they’d ask somebody else. If they asked somebody else and it didn’t makes sense, then they’d try to find a video on it. I just kept going through all the things that were excuses to me for five years and… I would have students when I was teaching a class on this that would feel really bad if they made a mistake three or four days in and then they corrected themselves and I would always have to remind them, you corrected yourself four days, I corrected myself like after two or three years of making that same mistake, so don’t feel bad.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> As Louis honed his own skills, his client base grew. And that’s when he started to notice the barriers to actually repairing phones and laptops. A few years in, another repair shop owner told him about their spot getting raided by law enforcement. Because they weren’t authorized Apple repair providers, the police assumed that the shop’s replacement parts were stolen. It didn’t help that a lot of these parts, from iPhone screens to laptop motherboards, were recycled. Louis remembers being frustrated that even back then, it was nearly impossible to get individual parts from Apple. They only sold pre-assembled replacements.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If I go to Apple, they’re gonna want me to pay almost $400 to buy this entire assembly when all I need is this $30 or $50 screen. I don’t need your hinges. I don’t need your camera. I don’t need the Wi-Fi antenna, the invertible, all this other extra stuff that’s showing up there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That was just one of dozens of hurdles he faced as a repair tech. His suppliers would get shut down and Louis would have to scramble to find new parts. Apple, for one, would force authorized recyclers to shred old MacBooks and iPhones so that their parts couldn’t be reused. Companies would release new laptop models, but wouldn’t make the new schematics available to even authorized service providers. So fixing a faulty motherboard was a process of trial and error, which took a lot longer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I’ve never really asked the question of, why is this entire business based on dumpster diving? Why is it based on Alibaba and eBay and random people, like random suppliers that go in business and go out of business? I never really ask that question. I never even had the consciousness to ask that question until around 2013 to 2015. And then when I heard about right to repair in the automotive field, where in 2012, I believe there was a law or a memorandum of understanding in Massachusetts where it was, yeah, the manufacturer should make available to the people fixing vehicles, the parts and diagnostics software, everything else needed to fix a vehicle. Why don’t we have that? Why do I need to buy a donor board and then pray that the chip on the donor board, that was in a garbage somewhere, is good? Why can’t I just go to any vendor and just buy the chip? It never really occurred to me. And then when I started asking that question, it was impossible to unring that bell. And once I started unraveling that and asking about it, it kind of took on a life of its own.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> All he wanted to do was fix laptops. It didn’t have to be this hard. And that’s when he started speaking out about it on his YouTube channel and got involved in the Right to Repair movement. We’ll hear more of his story in a new tab after this break.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back with Louis Rossman, data recovery technician, right to repair activist and YouTuber. Let’s open a new tab: The Fight for the Right to Repair. Let’s talk about the history of the right to repair movement. Like you said, this affects almost every person, tech people, farmers, people who work in the medical field. Can you give us a little history of the Right to Repair movement? When did people start to push back?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think 2012 in Massachusetts with the Memorandum of Understanding for Motor Vehicle Repair. Most of the right to repair legislation that you see coming out around 2015 was a copy and paste of that and they just crossed out motor vehicles and put in consumer electronics.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As these legal efforts spread, more and more states held hearings to consider repair protections for consumers. Right to Repair advocates showed up to make their case, but so did tech industry lobbyists.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I started showing up to these hearings and I would bring my camera and the idea is if I win, I win and if I lose, I’m hoping that people will see this and just understand how frustrating it is for me. When I sit in front of a politician and I bring up my argument, and my opposition says something like, these people stand to make a lot of money being here today. And it’s just like, you’re getting paid $200,000 to $300,000 a year as a lobbyist to be here today. I paid $250 for my hotel and my plane ticket and I gave up on income to be here today. Yeah, who’s making money to be here, motherf*cker? I wanted people to hear this and like, instead of me making the argument as to why you should care about rights of repair because then I’m putting a thought in your head and it’s not my place to tell you what to think. I want you to listen to what I said and listen to they said and tell me what you think. And people would listen to this and go, my God, that is the biggest bunch of b*llshit I’ve ever heard in my life. And the thing is, a lot of these rooms that I was going into to record these hearings, they were set up for newscasters. They had a good position to put a camera. They had an XLR patch panel, so you’d have the microphones for all the different people testifying. It was all set up, but nobody was taking the time to do this. The news was covering something else because, again, when you look at even just the news right now, you’re talking about invading Greenland, the Epstein files, ICE. Regardless of where anybody watching this is on any of these issues, whether or not somebody can clear an error code in their tractor just kind of falls to the bottom of the list of priorities for CBS and Fox and MSNBC. They’re not showing up. To these local hearings to hear Louis talk about not being able to get a charging chip to somebody’s luxury Facebook machine. They just don’t care. It was simply having these people that have been lying and saying crazy, messed up sh*t for years. The one that was the biggest to me was in 2015, where this one politician, assemblyperson in New York said, “the opposition lobbyist for Apple said that when you work on a MacBook motherboard, you actually have converted it to a PC. You’re converting it to PC, but then you don’t tell your customer that you’ve converted it into a PC, and you misrepresent it to them as if it’s still a MacBook, which is fraud.” And I just had steam coming out of my ears.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What does that mean?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s kind of like, well, if you have a Ford F-150 truck, and if you change the tires from Goodyear to Michelin, now it’s not an F- 150. You have to rip the Ford badge off of it. Like really? And I tried to explain this to him, and I brought the broken device with a wire on it that fixed it, and I purposely disconnected it. I showed him the schematic and I said, ‘here’s why this wire is important. See when I reattached the fan spins? This is what I do. I teach people how to do this. Explain to me how this is no longer a MacBook and explain to me how this analogy would work if we were talking about your truck changing from Goodyear to Michelin.’ And then he just starts writing and I’m like, ‘are you even listening to me? What are you doing? I spent all this time to show up here…’ He’s like, I’m co-sponsoring your bill, *sshole, and then he hands it back to me. He says…he shows me, and I realized it was that simple. And I wished I had a camera in the room. I was so mad to this day, 11 years later, that I did not have a camera in that room so that I could have on record that that’s what somebody who was Apple lobbyist said. It pisses me off. So I said, I’m gonna show up with a camera to every single one of these. Because the reason that all these people have been getting away with this is because there hasn’t been any sunlight. Nobody looks at it. Nobody listens and watches. And if they did watch it, they would realize. That they can’t make things up like this anymore. They’re getting away with these lies because they’re talking to legislators that don’t understand technology and there’s nobody calling them out on it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> From 2017 to 2020, Louis was posting right to repair updates on YouTube, traveling across the country to show up to state hearings, rallying his viewers to urge their representatives to sponsor consumer rights bills, all while still running his repair shop. In 2020, Louis got a phone call from an unknown number. He picked up. There was a mysterious voice on the other end…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> …who asked, what would I do if I had, let’s say, a million dollars to help push forward right to repair? I’m like, yeah, this is a scam. Never mind, what do I have to do? Let me guess, I have the wire you 5,000 first.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung: He thought it was “total b*llshit,” his words, and hung up. But then the number called again. As it turned out, that voice on the other end was calling on behalf of a billionaire, Eron Jokipii, the founder of Yahoo Games and one of the first investors in WhatsApp. He’s big into tech freedom and consumer ownership. Eron offered initial funding for Louis to start Repair Preservation Group, a nonprofit organization dedicated to repair education. The group launched RepairWiki, a massive online repository for repairing all kinds of consumer electronics, from printers to e-bikes. But as a 501c3 organization, Repair Preservation Group is limited in how much it can spend on lobbying efforts. So, Louis started a second nonprofit, Repair Preservation Group Action Fund, specifically for pushing for Right to Repair laws. With the help of his viewers, he crowdfunded nearly $800,000.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Louis Rossmann: Instead of just me showing up with my camera and giving my testimony, I was able to actually help work with grassroots organizations. I was about to hire lobbyists to do that job. And after that happened, you started seeing Right to Repair get talked about a lot more. It wasn’t just me anymore. It was a lot of people organizing at the local level to try to get things pushed forward.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Louis even got Steve Wozniak to respond to a cameo request about it. Yes, that Steve Wozniak, as in the co-founder of Apple.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from Steve Wosniak Cameo\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">] \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hi Louis, Steve Wozniak here. I’ve read a lot of articles about the right to repair issue. I’m always totally supportive and I totally think the people behind it are doing the right thing. We wouldn’t have had an Apple had I not grown up in a very open technology world, an open electronics world. Back then when you bought electronic things like TVs and radios, every bit of the circuits and designs were included on paper, total open source. Someone with skill could get in and modify things to fix broken radios or televisions or to improve them or to even replace destroyed parts. Very motivating for creative minds. Believe me, that’s how I grew up. Anyway, it’s time to recognize the right to repair more fully.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So far, all 50 states have introduced right to repair legislation. Seven states have passed actual laws: California, Colorado, Minnesota, Maine, New York, Oregon, and Washington. It’s a huge win for the movement, but there’s a catch, several actually.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Most of those laws have loopholes that make them not very worthwhile. So like culturally, there’s been a lot of progress. A lot of people know what Right to Repair is that didn’t before. They know how their rights are being violated. They know ownership is going away every single day, but the law has not really kept up or had any teeth to push back against it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Which means that the fight for the right to repair is far from over. Each state’s laws are different, and this patchwork of right to prepare requirements leaves many gaps in actual consumer protection. What does the right-to-repair landscape look like now? We’re getting into that in a new tab: Right to Repair loopholes. The existing right to repair laws vary state by state. California covers consumer electronics, wheelchairs, and appliances, but not farm equipment. Maine and Massachusetts only cover car data, like access to diagnostic information. New York only covers personal electronics. Minnesota doesn’t cover wheelchairs, but does cover business equipment. And so far, of all of the state right to prepare laws, only Colorado, Oregon, and Washington banned this tricky practice called “parts pairing.” That practice has become increasingly common among tech manufacturers, and it makes it much harder to actually repair products.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Parts pairing is the idea that even if I take a new part from a new device and put it in my device, it will not work because that part has a serial number on it. And when the device senses that even if it’s an OEM part, it’s not my original OEM part, It won’t work properly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Versus some random other person making it. So there’s aftermarket parts, there’s knockoff parts, there’s used originals, and then there’s OEM, which is this part is what the original equipment manufacturer used and the same grade and quality. Starting maybe five to seven years ago, this started to become more popular where you would change a part and it wouldn’t work. And people would say, “well, you must have put a knockoff.” And you say, no, I took this out of a new device. And then they would buy a new device just to see if they were going insane, put the part in to their device and it would work. Because the device could sense that it wasn’t my original one. And that’s a problem because it makes the whole concept of recycling go away. If I have a device where everything is broken on it, it’s not economically viable to repair, but this thing still works, I want to be able to use this part to fix this thing. It destroys that in a very bad way.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But how else has Big Tech responded to the right to repair movement? Are companies behind it? Are they pushing against it? What’s your read?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fake programs. They say, look, we released our right to repair program. Here’s our parts list on our website. And I don’t blame the press for this. The press covers thousands of different news items across thousands of things every day. So if I see, look, a repair program. I see pictures of parts, I see in stock, I see it’s not $10,000, I’ll think it’s okay. But when a repair person looks at this, they see you want $206 for a smartphone battery because you say that it is glued to the screen. A lot of these programs are put together in a way where it makes no economic sense whatsoever. Now, when I say no economic sense, I don’t mean that it’s just the repair person says, I wanna make 100,000 a year and I can only make 50,000 year. No, I mean that when I buy that part, if I were to charge my customer for the repair, just the cost of the part by itself, my customer would look at me and give me the middle finger and say, that’s a ripoff. And that’s the problem with a lot of these programs is they were made to appease legislators and the press, they weren’t actually made to be viable repair programs that repair technicians actually wanna use.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah, I was also going to ask like, you know, what does the current landscape of Right to Repair laws look like in the United States right now? Do some states have better laws than others? What are these laws missing?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Every law has something missing, like in New York, there’s an exemption for trade secrets and safety. Now, when you have people showing up to legislative hearings and saying that if independent technicians fix your microwave, a magtrometer will explode, that’s a safety issue. What is a magtrometer? A magtrometer doesn’t exist. So I don’t want there to be something in the bill that says, you know, we can have exemptions if the manufacturer says there’s a safety issue, because they’ve made up safety issues. They’ve made names of parts that don’t exist and testified in front of state legislatures numerous times to fear monger politicians into believing that everything’s gonna blow up if people can fix things. So I don’t like the idea of a safety exemption because they’re just gonna say anything. Like what if a replacement screen, man, you could get glass, you could get a paper cut. What if that person has like a blood clotting disorder? Maybe they’ll bleed out and die. I wouldn’t be surprised if a manufacturer tried to say something silly like that. A lithium-ion battery could explode. And true, a lithium- ion battery could explore. Your car could also not stop when going 80 miles down the highway and kill 30 people. We don’t say that you can’t replace your brakes. The other is that in Minnesota, there is Right to Repair that was pushed through a budget process, and that excludes game consoles. So I mean, game consoles are a really big field of consumer electronics. So when you have a bill that says it excludes this, it excluds that, there are so many exemptions in many of these laws and carve-outs for all these industries. Like you can’t repair medical equipment, you can’t repair farm equipment, you can’t prepare this, that, and the other. And even if you didn’t have those carve-out at all, when it says make available what you make available to your authorized service centers. The entire reason that people are coming to repair shops like mine to begin with is because the authorized repair center doesn’t fix anything. It’s easy to legislate, you must have a one year warranty on your product. When it comes to repair, you’re really trying to legislate, don’t be a dick. And that’s why the battle, as I see it, is the cultural one. I want people that have watched my channel or got into engineering and electronics who become designers and engineers of these businesses because they grew up watching me live streaming in 2016 at two in the morning, cursing as I’m trying to figure out where this trace goes without a schematic. When they get into this field and they’re asked to do something that’s anti-repair, when they’re asked to send that email, oh, by the way, make sure that this part is only available to our authorized people and nobody else can buy that charging chip. I want them to remember what got them into this and then say, ‘you know what, I’m not doing that. And if you want to make me do that, I quit.’ And I want to live in a society where everybody is open to doing that. So I realize that a lot of what I’m pushing for, very likely, I will be dead or long dead by the time we actually get it. All of these seeds that I’m planting are cultural seeds that will take a few generations to actually change. Hopefully there’s some success there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But like you said, in the past, people did just fix their stuff, it was the norm to just fix your stuff. It seems like we can still go back to that, hopefully.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I would like to see things go back to that and I’d like to see more people across more industries become aware of this. And the biggest pushback that I’ve seen is not even what companies do, it’s what people accept. And I would to see people be more open to sticking together rather than saying, you deserve it. This happens in my comment section all the time and I always point it out. What kind of moron would buy a digital picture frame? You should buy something like this. But that person who made fun of that user for that may also have a fridge that they didn’t even realize has ads in it. Or that person may have a smart TV that they didn’t realize was spying on them. It’s like, well, what kind of moron buys a smart tv that has this? And they’re like, you should have bought what I bought. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I really want to see people coalesce and come together and realize that simping for billion dollar companies that are ripping you off, stealing your data, robbing you blind and trying to take away the rights of ownership is not the thing to do. It’s to band together and say, you know what, I don’t accept this practice. And even if I would not buy the thing my neighbor bought, that may happen to me someday. Let’s work together rather than all sh*t on each other as we get robbed blind.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Some companies are featuring repairability as like a key selling point in their marketing. One example is the laptop manufacturer, Framework, which builds laptops that are easily disassembled, upgraded and repaired. What do you think about this trend? What does it signal for the Right to Repair movement?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The fact that they have not gone bankrupt several years in, in a very difficult and wavy economy, like, I think that their products just started to become popular right as interest rates were soaring and all this economic volatility I think it’s very cool. They actually do try to make things repairable and for any of the faults the company has had on like certain issues with certain products, I think their heart is in the right place and I like seeing that. And the fact that there’s actually a market for it is great now the problem is, they’re competing in a very low profit margin industry. Like, companies like Lenovo and Acer, and the companies that are making these products that a lot of people buy, their profit margins are in the single digit percentage, and that’s acting at economies of scale at tens of hundreds of billions of dollars.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So for a new player to come in and do anything here, they’re either gonna have less choices available, which means less people buy the product, or they’re gonna have a higher price. So I love seeing it, I’d love to see more of it. The fact that they exist at all is very validating for the fact that people are actually willing to spend more money just for a company that respects them, and I think that’s a big part of it. It’s not always about the money, it’s about the respect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what do you want people to take away from the Right to Repair movement? Like, why should, why should they care?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s about ownership in general. And right to repair is a very small portion under the ownership umbrella, and that’s where I’ve been focusing more of my work on in the past few years. Everything is moving to the subscription model. So look around at all these different products and take note of the fact that you don’t really own them. The fact that hundreds of thousands of Nest thermostats across the world stopped functioning with the functionality that they were advertised with simply because Google decided we don’t want to support it anymore. If Google can flip a switch and your device has stopped working, if your car manufacturer could flip a switch and your heated seats are no longer activated, do you actually own any of the things that you bought and paid for?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It seems like that’s the kind of mentality of a lot of Right to Repair is just like trial and error instead of just giving up and accepting that you have to buy something new.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah, and the thing is the people that are authorized or say you’re not authorized and you don’t know what you’re doing, the way you figure out how to work on it to begin with very often is by tinkering and messing around when you don’t know what you’re, doing. And I hope that people who don’t know what they’re doing feel confident in, in trying to open things. At the very…again, if it doesn’t belong to somebody else. If it belongs to you and you’re not sacrificing, you know, your significant other’s data or something, mess with something that you’re clueless about and constantly learn something. And even if you’ve taken a chip off and you just put the chip back on it still works, celebrate that. Celebrate every time you’ve done something without making the device work. Trying to figure things out as you go is one of the best ways to learn and I hope that more people feel confident in telling themselves, I’m completely clueless and that’s okay, I’m just going to try it anyway.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That mentality is exactly what community repair cafes are all about. Back in the Milpitas Library, at the Silicon Valley Repair Cafe, volunteers dissected faulty appliances, rearranging and re-soldering guts of wires in hopes of sparking some life back into them. One of the volunteers, named Tara, recalled the repair cafe’s early days.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tara, Volunteer at Repair Cafe Silicon Valley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, yeah, last year, a woman came walking up cradling this beautiful cherry apple red toaster. It looked gorgeous. And so I looked at it and said, I know what it is. It’s a spring, and it can be fixed. And I said, what’s the story with your toaster? And she just beamed, her face lit up, and she’s like, this was the toaster I won on “Price is Right.” This is the only thing I have left over from college. And she said she and a whole bunch of her friends went to the “Price is Right” one morning and she was the first person. Kareen, come on down and she won $25,000.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I said, “Did you get to spin the wheel?” She’s like, “Oh, yes I did,” and she’s like “Well, the only thing left is this toaster and it’s my college toaster.” And so we were able to fix it and she walked away beaming and that was just a great example of the kinds of things that we see here on a regular basis. It’s just a toaster, but it was her college toaster that she won at “Price is Right! ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Irreplaceable.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tara, Volunteer at Repair Cafe Silicon Valley:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Irreplaceable.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We’ve heard about the consumer electronic side of the right to repair movement, laptop repair technicians like Louis, who just want to replace hard drives without the headache of everything we drove into today. But did you know that a lot of today’s repairs are only legal because of farmers who were sick of hacking their tractors? That’s next week. For now, let’s close all these tabs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and it’s reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by our senior editor, Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. It was edited by Chris Hambrick, additional production help from Gabriela Glueck. Our team includes producer Maya Cueva. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. Jen Chien is our director of podcasts. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor in chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Do you like these deep dives? Are you closing your tabs? Then don’t forget to rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Maybe drop a comment too. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. Thanks for listening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "Today’s culture of overconsumption urges us to simply throw broken items away and buy new ones. But there’s a growing shift to treat non-working devices differently. In this episode, we dig into the “right to repair” movement with Louis Rossmann, a repair technician, YouTuber and consumer rights advocate. Rossmann has spent years pushing back against the companies that make our devices harder, or even impossible, to fix. From parts pairing to “authorized repair” loopholes, we unpack how tech companies maintain control over the products you’ve already paid for. As devices like phones and even cars move toward subscription-based use models, we examine the question ‘do you truly own something if you can’t repair it?’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today’s culture of overconsumption urges us to simply throw broken items away and buy new ones. But there’s a growing shift to treat non-working devices differently. In this episode, we dig into the “right to repair” movement with Louis Rossmann, a repair technician, YouTuber and consumer rights advocate. Rossmann has spent years pushing back against the companies that make our devices harder, or even impossible, to fix. From parts pairing to “authorized repair” loopholes, we unpack how tech companies maintain control over the products you’ve already paid for. As devices like phones and even cars move toward subscription-based use models, we examine the question ‘do you truly own something if you can’t repair it?’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC9606298932\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/@rossmanngroup\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Louis Rossmann\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, repair technician and advocate at Rossman Repair Group\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/expired-tired-wired-right-to-repair/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Gloves Are Off in the Fight for Your Right to Repair\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Boone Ashworth, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WIRED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57763037\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Apple founder Steve Wozniak backs right-to-repair movement\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BBC\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fastcompany.com/91387927/clippy-is-back-as-a-mascot-for-big-tech-protests\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Clippy is back—this time as a mascot for Big Tech protests\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Eve Upton-Clark, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fast Company\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/08/power-wheelchair-duopoly-right-repair-law/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wheelchair Users Are Finally Winning the Right to Repair\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Julia Métraux, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mother Jones\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11976969/a-growing-right-to-repair-culture-in-california\">A Growing ‘Right to Repair’ Culture in California\u003c/a> — Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, \u003ci>KQED’s The Bay\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio From Repair Cafe Silicon Valley] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A vacuum is it.. Oh, we need to ring the bell, let’s ring the bell. All right everybody, pay attention, uh, we’re going to ring the bell here.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung,Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We’re at a repair cafe. These days, it’s one of the hottest spots in town.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio From Repair Cafe Silicon Valley] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We just repaired, what did we repair? A vacuum! Alright, ring the bell now, let’s go! Woohoo! We fixed the vacuum! Thank you! Thank you all the lovely repair people!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Repair cafes are community events, where people bring in their faulty espresso machines, vacuums on the fritz, and other broken items. Volunteers help with repairs, to the best of their abilities, like soldering wires or replacing errant bike chains. The whole point is to encourage people to repair and reuse their stuff, instead of tossing them into a landfill as soon as they stop functioning. Last month, Close All Tabs senior editor Chris Egusa popped into the library in Milpitas, California for Repair Cafe, Silicon Valley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How many of these repair cafes do you think that you’ve done or the organization is running?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jesse Kornblum:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Oh, my God! We’ve certainly ramped up over the past few years. It used to be about one a month, now it’s two, sometimes three a month.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Jessie Kornblum is one of the organizers for this repair cafe.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jesse Kornblum:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The one thing I do know is between now and the end of May, we have 12 events planned.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Here’s how it works: members of the community bring in their broken stuff, fill out a form, and then get paired with a volunteer who might have the skills to fix that specific item.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jesse Kornblum: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have volunteers who sign up ahead of time. They specialize in things like sewing or bikes, and we have a lot of general fixers who can work on electronic devices, some mechanical devices, and we’ve a few people with special skills for things like microwaves.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At this repair cafe, a volunteer with a shock of red hair helps a woman with her tower fan. The fan only spun for a few seconds before shutting off.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kay, Volunteer at Repair Cafe Silicon Valley Usually that means that there’s like a dead capacitor somewhere on the power supply. So operating on that assumption, we opened it up and we found a capacitor and we found a whole bunch of brown gunk around it, which means that the capacitor’s electrolyte has probably leaked out and the capacitor has gone dead.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Kay, the volunteer, takes a closer look inside the fan.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kay, Volunteer at Repair Cafe Silicon Valley:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So this capacitor is probably good. I think this capacitor is fine, which is upsetting because now we don’t know what’s wrong with it. [\u003cem>laughs\u003c/em>]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At a nearby table, another volunteer, Sofia, hunches over a disassembled device, wielding a soldering iron with surgical precision. Tragedy had struck.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sofia, Volunteer at Repair Cafe Silicon Valley:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We have a Dyson hairdryer right now that has been chewed up by a German shepherd. And since there’s some warranty issues with it, they weren’t able to get it repaired by Dyson. So we are here doing some re-soldering on some wires that have been chewed up.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dyson hairdryers are pricey. They’re like top of the line. We’re talking hundreds of dollars. For the person who brought it in, this repair cafe is her last resort.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Repair Cafe Silicon Valley Attendee :\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I also checked the appliance repair shop. They say they don’t fix those small appliance. And my last hope is here, and it’s also my first time here. And I’m super happy to have this helped by somebody.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is part of the reason repair cafes are taking off. They’ll try to fix things that manufacturers like Dyson or authorized repair shops won’t touch. For many, the biggest draw is a shift in mindset, feeling empowered by fixing what they own, even if the companies that made them discourage repair. Shonu Sen first came to one of these events with a pair of jeans that needed mending. Yes, they fix clothing too. Inspired by the experience, she later joined as a volunteer to learn new skills and to give back.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Shonu Sen, Attendee Repair Cafe Silicon Valley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It doesn’t matter if you want to save something, if you don’t have a way to learn how to maintain and repair your things, then there’s no one to teach you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This repair cafe, and the many others popping up around the country, represent a bigger shift from consumers across industries, but especially in electronics. Do you really own what you bought if you can’t fix it? I mean, even the word consumer suggests a lack of ownership. Today, we’re talking about the Right to Repair movement, what it is, how big tech companies have responded, and why this movement is changing our relationship to our stuff.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Leading us through this deep dive is one of the key voices in the movement. He started out as a DIY guy, flipping broken laptops as a side hustle, and went on to build a massive YouTube following and push for actual legislation. Ready? Let’s open a new tab. What is the right to repair?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Right to repair to me is the idea that you should have the ability to fix what you bought and paid for. It doesn’t mean that you have to fix everything that you own. It doesn’t mean that the manufacturer has to make it easy. It simply means not putting intentional barriers in place to you being able to repair what you bought and paid for.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This is Louis Rossman. He owns a data recovery and laptop repair company, and he’s been fighting for the right to repair across the United States. If his voice sounds familiar, it might be because he followed one of his repair tutorials on YouTube. Also, he’s a pretty fast talker, especially today. He isn’t a regular coffee drinker, but told me he had some caffeine before this interview. So try to keep up.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If you are unable to fix what you own, do you really own it? Is it yours or are you just leasing it from the manufacturer? Who has control over your product, the manufacturer or you?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back in the 2000s, Louis started working at a recording studio in Manhattan. As an aspiring recording engineer, he needed a demo reel. To make that, he need a program called Logic, what some of you might know as a DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation. The thing with Logic is that it’s owned by Apple and will only run on Apple products. The problem, MacBooks were super expensive. Louis didn’t have that kind of money.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I’ve got a used one on eBay. It showed up broken. I got a partial refund for it. And when I finished the session, I sold it and I made $250. And I thought I’ve never made more than $400 to $600 a month in my life at that point. And here I just made $200 for what was about 15 to 20 minutes of work. Let me try that again. And it has kind of snowballed into the repair company that I have today.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This started as his side hustle. Louis doesn’t have any formal training in tech repair, but working at the recording studio, he started to think like a technician. He got into the mindset of troubleshooting, learning to problem solve the way other engineers did.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as time went on, I started adding to the services I offered. So instead of just basic screen repairs, here, we’ll do component-level motherboard repairs. So if Apple says it’s $1,200 to fix, we will fix it for a few hundred dollars by just replacing the one thing that’s broken, rather than replacing everything. I started hiring more people, I got a real store, and I showed people how to do these repairs on YouTube because my customers would tell me, Apple has told me if somebody says they can fix the motherboard instead of replacing it, they’re probably scamming you. So I thought, oh, really? Okay, cool. You’re calling me a scammer? Let’s go.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Louis had started a second business that sold replacement parts, but was struggling to keep it afloat. He found it really therapeutic to talk about what he was dealing with on camera, on YouTube, like a video diary. Then he started making repair videos.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Originally it was just for my own customers to show like, I’m not scamming you and I didn’t expect the channel to explode into like millions of subscribers. Anybody that looks at my early content probably sees this and just thinks like why would anybody watch this? I had no idea why anybody would watch it, but it just kind of exploded and went from there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Right, I was going to ask like how did you learn how to fix a laptop, right? If your background was in fixing like recording equipment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You don’t learn how to fix it, you learn how not to break it by virtue of breaking it. So usually there’s two types of technicians, and I’ll fully admit to being the second type. There are technicians that can open something and follow instructions and go, oh, here’s exactly what I do to do a good job. I’m not that person. What I’m good at is messing with something like, how hard can I pull on this tab before it breaks? Oh, okay. So once you break it, you know how to not break it. I would go through all the excuses I had. Well, I would fix this, but I don’t know what chip is which. Okay, why don’t I know that? I don’t have a schematic. Okay, now I have the schematic, but I don’t know how to read this, so, uh, I don’t know what the components do. Okay, I know what components do, but I don’t what the circuit does. And now I would just go through all the excuses that I had in my head for why I didn’t know how something worked, and then use those to try and figure it out. And I would tell myself, well, I’m a tech. Not, I, I dunno what I’m doing, I’d say, I am a tech, and a tech would say, if they don’t now what this is, they’d probably ask for somebody’s opinion, and they’d read a book. And if the book didn’t make sense, they’d ask somebody else. If they asked somebody else and it didn’t makes sense, then they’d try to find a video on it. I just kept going through all the things that were excuses to me for five years and… I would have students when I was teaching a class on this that would feel really bad if they made a mistake three or four days in and then they corrected themselves and I would always have to remind them, you corrected yourself four days, I corrected myself like after two or three years of making that same mistake, so don’t feel bad.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> As Louis honed his own skills, his client base grew. And that’s when he started to notice the barriers to actually repairing phones and laptops. A few years in, another repair shop owner told him about their spot getting raided by law enforcement. Because they weren’t authorized Apple repair providers, the police assumed that the shop’s replacement parts were stolen. It didn’t help that a lot of these parts, from iPhone screens to laptop motherboards, were recycled. Louis remembers being frustrated that even back then, it was nearly impossible to get individual parts from Apple. They only sold pre-assembled replacements.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If I go to Apple, they’re gonna want me to pay almost $400 to buy this entire assembly when all I need is this $30 or $50 screen. I don’t need your hinges. I don’t need your camera. I don’t need the Wi-Fi antenna, the invertible, all this other extra stuff that’s showing up there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That was just one of dozens of hurdles he faced as a repair tech. His suppliers would get shut down and Louis would have to scramble to find new parts. Apple, for one, would force authorized recyclers to shred old MacBooks and iPhones so that their parts couldn’t be reused. Companies would release new laptop models, but wouldn’t make the new schematics available to even authorized service providers. So fixing a faulty motherboard was a process of trial and error, which took a lot longer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I’ve never really asked the question of, why is this entire business based on dumpster diving? Why is it based on Alibaba and eBay and random people, like random suppliers that go in business and go out of business? I never really ask that question. I never even had the consciousness to ask that question until around 2013 to 2015. And then when I heard about right to repair in the automotive field, where in 2012, I believe there was a law or a memorandum of understanding in Massachusetts where it was, yeah, the manufacturer should make available to the people fixing vehicles, the parts and diagnostics software, everything else needed to fix a vehicle. Why don’t we have that? Why do I need to buy a donor board and then pray that the chip on the donor board, that was in a garbage somewhere, is good? Why can’t I just go to any vendor and just buy the chip? It never really occurred to me. And then when I started asking that question, it was impossible to unring that bell. And once I started unraveling that and asking about it, it kind of took on a life of its own.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> All he wanted to do was fix laptops. It didn’t have to be this hard. And that’s when he started speaking out about it on his YouTube channel and got involved in the Right to Repair movement. We’ll hear more of his story in a new tab after this break.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back with Louis Rossman, data recovery technician, right to repair activist and YouTuber. Let’s open a new tab: The Fight for the Right to Repair. Let’s talk about the history of the right to repair movement. Like you said, this affects almost every person, tech people, farmers, people who work in the medical field. Can you give us a little history of the Right to Repair movement? When did people start to push back?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think 2012 in Massachusetts with the Memorandum of Understanding for Motor Vehicle Repair. Most of the right to repair legislation that you see coming out around 2015 was a copy and paste of that and they just crossed out motor vehicles and put in consumer electronics.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As these legal efforts spread, more and more states held hearings to consider repair protections for consumers. Right to Repair advocates showed up to make their case, but so did tech industry lobbyists.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I started showing up to these hearings and I would bring my camera and the idea is if I win, I win and if I lose, I’m hoping that people will see this and just understand how frustrating it is for me. When I sit in front of a politician and I bring up my argument, and my opposition says something like, these people stand to make a lot of money being here today. And it’s just like, you’re getting paid $200,000 to $300,000 a year as a lobbyist to be here today. I paid $250 for my hotel and my plane ticket and I gave up on income to be here today. Yeah, who’s making money to be here, motherf*cker? I wanted people to hear this and like, instead of me making the argument as to why you should care about rights of repair because then I’m putting a thought in your head and it’s not my place to tell you what to think. I want you to listen to what I said and listen to they said and tell me what you think. And people would listen to this and go, my God, that is the biggest bunch of b*llshit I’ve ever heard in my life. And the thing is, a lot of these rooms that I was going into to record these hearings, they were set up for newscasters. They had a good position to put a camera. They had an XLR patch panel, so you’d have the microphones for all the different people testifying. It was all set up, but nobody was taking the time to do this. The news was covering something else because, again, when you look at even just the news right now, you’re talking about invading Greenland, the Epstein files, ICE. Regardless of where anybody watching this is on any of these issues, whether or not somebody can clear an error code in their tractor just kind of falls to the bottom of the list of priorities for CBS and Fox and MSNBC. They’re not showing up. To these local hearings to hear Louis talk about not being able to get a charging chip to somebody’s luxury Facebook machine. They just don’t care. It was simply having these people that have been lying and saying crazy, messed up sh*t for years. The one that was the biggest to me was in 2015, where this one politician, assemblyperson in New York said, “the opposition lobbyist for Apple said that when you work on a MacBook motherboard, you actually have converted it to a PC. You’re converting it to PC, but then you don’t tell your customer that you’ve converted it into a PC, and you misrepresent it to them as if it’s still a MacBook, which is fraud.” And I just had steam coming out of my ears.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What does that mean?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s kind of like, well, if you have a Ford F-150 truck, and if you change the tires from Goodyear to Michelin, now it’s not an F- 150. You have to rip the Ford badge off of it. Like really? And I tried to explain this to him, and I brought the broken device with a wire on it that fixed it, and I purposely disconnected it. I showed him the schematic and I said, ‘here’s why this wire is important. See when I reattached the fan spins? This is what I do. I teach people how to do this. Explain to me how this is no longer a MacBook and explain to me how this analogy would work if we were talking about your truck changing from Goodyear to Michelin.’ And then he just starts writing and I’m like, ‘are you even listening to me? What are you doing? I spent all this time to show up here…’ He’s like, I’m co-sponsoring your bill, *sshole, and then he hands it back to me. He says…he shows me, and I realized it was that simple. And I wished I had a camera in the room. I was so mad to this day, 11 years later, that I did not have a camera in that room so that I could have on record that that’s what somebody who was Apple lobbyist said. It pisses me off. So I said, I’m gonna show up with a camera to every single one of these. Because the reason that all these people have been getting away with this is because there hasn’t been any sunlight. Nobody looks at it. Nobody listens and watches. And if they did watch it, they would realize. That they can’t make things up like this anymore. They’re getting away with these lies because they’re talking to legislators that don’t understand technology and there’s nobody calling them out on it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> From 2017 to 2020, Louis was posting right to repair updates on YouTube, traveling across the country to show up to state hearings, rallying his viewers to urge their representatives to sponsor consumer rights bills, all while still running his repair shop. In 2020, Louis got a phone call from an unknown number. He picked up. There was a mysterious voice on the other end…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> …who asked, what would I do if I had, let’s say, a million dollars to help push forward right to repair? I’m like, yeah, this is a scam. Never mind, what do I have to do? Let me guess, I have the wire you 5,000 first.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung: He thought it was “total b*llshit,” his words, and hung up. But then the number called again. As it turned out, that voice on the other end was calling on behalf of a billionaire, Eron Jokipii, the founder of Yahoo Games and one of the first investors in WhatsApp. He’s big into tech freedom and consumer ownership. Eron offered initial funding for Louis to start Repair Preservation Group, a nonprofit organization dedicated to repair education. The group launched RepairWiki, a massive online repository for repairing all kinds of consumer electronics, from printers to e-bikes. But as a 501c3 organization, Repair Preservation Group is limited in how much it can spend on lobbying efforts. So, Louis started a second nonprofit, Repair Preservation Group Action Fund, specifically for pushing for Right to Repair laws. With the help of his viewers, he crowdfunded nearly $800,000.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Louis Rossmann: Instead of just me showing up with my camera and giving my testimony, I was able to actually help work with grassroots organizations. I was about to hire lobbyists to do that job. And after that happened, you started seeing Right to Repair get talked about a lot more. It wasn’t just me anymore. It was a lot of people organizing at the local level to try to get things pushed forward.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Louis even got Steve Wozniak to respond to a cameo request about it. Yes, that Steve Wozniak, as in the co-founder of Apple.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from Steve Wosniak Cameo\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">] \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hi Louis, Steve Wozniak here. I’ve read a lot of articles about the right to repair issue. I’m always totally supportive and I totally think the people behind it are doing the right thing. We wouldn’t have had an Apple had I not grown up in a very open technology world, an open electronics world. Back then when you bought electronic things like TVs and radios, every bit of the circuits and designs were included on paper, total open source. Someone with skill could get in and modify things to fix broken radios or televisions or to improve them or to even replace destroyed parts. Very motivating for creative minds. Believe me, that’s how I grew up. Anyway, it’s time to recognize the right to repair more fully.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So far, all 50 states have introduced right to repair legislation. Seven states have passed actual laws: California, Colorado, Minnesota, Maine, New York, Oregon, and Washington. It’s a huge win for the movement, but there’s a catch, several actually.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Most of those laws have loopholes that make them not very worthwhile. So like culturally, there’s been a lot of progress. A lot of people know what Right to Repair is that didn’t before. They know how their rights are being violated. They know ownership is going away every single day, but the law has not really kept up or had any teeth to push back against it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Which means that the fight for the right to repair is far from over. Each state’s laws are different, and this patchwork of right to prepare requirements leaves many gaps in actual consumer protection. What does the right-to-repair landscape look like now? We’re getting into that in a new tab: Right to Repair loopholes. The existing right to repair laws vary state by state. California covers consumer electronics, wheelchairs, and appliances, but not farm equipment. Maine and Massachusetts only cover car data, like access to diagnostic information. New York only covers personal electronics. Minnesota doesn’t cover wheelchairs, but does cover business equipment. And so far, of all of the state right to prepare laws, only Colorado, Oregon, and Washington banned this tricky practice called “parts pairing.” That practice has become increasingly common among tech manufacturers, and it makes it much harder to actually repair products.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Parts pairing is the idea that even if I take a new part from a new device and put it in my device, it will not work because that part has a serial number on it. And when the device senses that even if it’s an OEM part, it’s not my original OEM part, It won’t work properly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Versus some random other person making it. So there’s aftermarket parts, there’s knockoff parts, there’s used originals, and then there’s OEM, which is this part is what the original equipment manufacturer used and the same grade and quality. Starting maybe five to seven years ago, this started to become more popular where you would change a part and it wouldn’t work. And people would say, “well, you must have put a knockoff.” And you say, no, I took this out of a new device. And then they would buy a new device just to see if they were going insane, put the part in to their device and it would work. Because the device could sense that it wasn’t my original one. And that’s a problem because it makes the whole concept of recycling go away. If I have a device where everything is broken on it, it’s not economically viable to repair, but this thing still works, I want to be able to use this part to fix this thing. It destroys that in a very bad way.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But how else has Big Tech responded to the right to repair movement? Are companies behind it? Are they pushing against it? What’s your read?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fake programs. They say, look, we released our right to repair program. Here’s our parts list on our website. And I don’t blame the press for this. The press covers thousands of different news items across thousands of things every day. So if I see, look, a repair program. I see pictures of parts, I see in stock, I see it’s not $10,000, I’ll think it’s okay. But when a repair person looks at this, they see you want $206 for a smartphone battery because you say that it is glued to the screen. A lot of these programs are put together in a way where it makes no economic sense whatsoever. Now, when I say no economic sense, I don’t mean that it’s just the repair person says, I wanna make 100,000 a year and I can only make 50,000 year. No, I mean that when I buy that part, if I were to charge my customer for the repair, just the cost of the part by itself, my customer would look at me and give me the middle finger and say, that’s a ripoff. And that’s the problem with a lot of these programs is they were made to appease legislators and the press, they weren’t actually made to be viable repair programs that repair technicians actually wanna use.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah, I was also going to ask like, you know, what does the current landscape of Right to Repair laws look like in the United States right now? Do some states have better laws than others? What are these laws missing?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Every law has something missing, like in New York, there’s an exemption for trade secrets and safety. Now, when you have people showing up to legislative hearings and saying that if independent technicians fix your microwave, a magtrometer will explode, that’s a safety issue. What is a magtrometer? A magtrometer doesn’t exist. So I don’t want there to be something in the bill that says, you know, we can have exemptions if the manufacturer says there’s a safety issue, because they’ve made up safety issues. They’ve made names of parts that don’t exist and testified in front of state legislatures numerous times to fear monger politicians into believing that everything’s gonna blow up if people can fix things. So I don’t like the idea of a safety exemption because they’re just gonna say anything. Like what if a replacement screen, man, you could get glass, you could get a paper cut. What if that person has like a blood clotting disorder? Maybe they’ll bleed out and die. I wouldn’t be surprised if a manufacturer tried to say something silly like that. A lithium-ion battery could explode. And true, a lithium- ion battery could explore. Your car could also not stop when going 80 miles down the highway and kill 30 people. We don’t say that you can’t replace your brakes. The other is that in Minnesota, there is Right to Repair that was pushed through a budget process, and that excludes game consoles. So I mean, game consoles are a really big field of consumer electronics. So when you have a bill that says it excludes this, it excluds that, there are so many exemptions in many of these laws and carve-outs for all these industries. Like you can’t repair medical equipment, you can’t repair farm equipment, you can’t prepare this, that, and the other. And even if you didn’t have those carve-out at all, when it says make available what you make available to your authorized service centers. The entire reason that people are coming to repair shops like mine to begin with is because the authorized repair center doesn’t fix anything. It’s easy to legislate, you must have a one year warranty on your product. When it comes to repair, you’re really trying to legislate, don’t be a dick. And that’s why the battle, as I see it, is the cultural one. I want people that have watched my channel or got into engineering and electronics who become designers and engineers of these businesses because they grew up watching me live streaming in 2016 at two in the morning, cursing as I’m trying to figure out where this trace goes without a schematic. When they get into this field and they’re asked to do something that’s anti-repair, when they’re asked to send that email, oh, by the way, make sure that this part is only available to our authorized people and nobody else can buy that charging chip. I want them to remember what got them into this and then say, ‘you know what, I’m not doing that. And if you want to make me do that, I quit.’ And I want to live in a society where everybody is open to doing that. So I realize that a lot of what I’m pushing for, very likely, I will be dead or long dead by the time we actually get it. All of these seeds that I’m planting are cultural seeds that will take a few generations to actually change. Hopefully there’s some success there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But like you said, in the past, people did just fix their stuff, it was the norm to just fix your stuff. It seems like we can still go back to that, hopefully.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I would like to see things go back to that and I’d like to see more people across more industries become aware of this. And the biggest pushback that I’ve seen is not even what companies do, it’s what people accept. And I would to see people be more open to sticking together rather than saying, you deserve it. This happens in my comment section all the time and I always point it out. What kind of moron would buy a digital picture frame? You should buy something like this. But that person who made fun of that user for that may also have a fridge that they didn’t even realize has ads in it. Or that person may have a smart TV that they didn’t realize was spying on them. It’s like, well, what kind of moron buys a smart tv that has this? And they’re like, you should have bought what I bought. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I really want to see people coalesce and come together and realize that simping for billion dollar companies that are ripping you off, stealing your data, robbing you blind and trying to take away the rights of ownership is not the thing to do. It’s to band together and say, you know what, I don’t accept this practice. And even if I would not buy the thing my neighbor bought, that may happen to me someday. Let’s work together rather than all sh*t on each other as we get robbed blind.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Some companies are featuring repairability as like a key selling point in their marketing. One example is the laptop manufacturer, Framework, which builds laptops that are easily disassembled, upgraded and repaired. What do you think about this trend? What does it signal for the Right to Repair movement?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The fact that they have not gone bankrupt several years in, in a very difficult and wavy economy, like, I think that their products just started to become popular right as interest rates were soaring and all this economic volatility I think it’s very cool. They actually do try to make things repairable and for any of the faults the company has had on like certain issues with certain products, I think their heart is in the right place and I like seeing that. And the fact that there’s actually a market for it is great now the problem is, they’re competing in a very low profit margin industry. Like, companies like Lenovo and Acer, and the companies that are making these products that a lot of people buy, their profit margins are in the single digit percentage, and that’s acting at economies of scale at tens of hundreds of billions of dollars.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So for a new player to come in and do anything here, they’re either gonna have less choices available, which means less people buy the product, or they’re gonna have a higher price. So I love seeing it, I’d love to see more of it. The fact that they exist at all is very validating for the fact that people are actually willing to spend more money just for a company that respects them, and I think that’s a big part of it. It’s not always about the money, it’s about the respect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what do you want people to take away from the Right to Repair movement? Like, why should, why should they care?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s about ownership in general. And right to repair is a very small portion under the ownership umbrella, and that’s where I’ve been focusing more of my work on in the past few years. Everything is moving to the subscription model. So look around at all these different products and take note of the fact that you don’t really own them. The fact that hundreds of thousands of Nest thermostats across the world stopped functioning with the functionality that they were advertised with simply because Google decided we don’t want to support it anymore. If Google can flip a switch and your device has stopped working, if your car manufacturer could flip a switch and your heated seats are no longer activated, do you actually own any of the things that you bought and paid for?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It seems like that’s the kind of mentality of a lot of Right to Repair is just like trial and error instead of just giving up and accepting that you have to buy something new.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Louis Rossmann:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah, and the thing is the people that are authorized or say you’re not authorized and you don’t know what you’re doing, the way you figure out how to work on it to begin with very often is by tinkering and messing around when you don’t know what you’re, doing. And I hope that people who don’t know what they’re doing feel confident in, in trying to open things. At the very…again, if it doesn’t belong to somebody else. If it belongs to you and you’re not sacrificing, you know, your significant other’s data or something, mess with something that you’re clueless about and constantly learn something. And even if you’ve taken a chip off and you just put the chip back on it still works, celebrate that. Celebrate every time you’ve done something without making the device work. Trying to figure things out as you go is one of the best ways to learn and I hope that more people feel confident in telling themselves, I’m completely clueless and that’s okay, I’m just going to try it anyway.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That mentality is exactly what community repair cafes are all about. Back in the Milpitas Library, at the Silicon Valley Repair Cafe, volunteers dissected faulty appliances, rearranging and re-soldering guts of wires in hopes of sparking some life back into them. One of the volunteers, named Tara, recalled the repair cafe’s early days.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tara, Volunteer at Repair Cafe Silicon Valley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, yeah, last year, a woman came walking up cradling this beautiful cherry apple red toaster. It looked gorgeous. And so I looked at it and said, I know what it is. It’s a spring, and it can be fixed. And I said, what’s the story with your toaster? And she just beamed, her face lit up, and she’s like, this was the toaster I won on “Price is Right.” This is the only thing I have left over from college. And she said she and a whole bunch of her friends went to the “Price is Right” one morning and she was the first person. Kareen, come on down and she won $25,000.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I said, “Did you get to spin the wheel?” She’s like, “Oh, yes I did,” and she’s like “Well, the only thing left is this toaster and it’s my college toaster.” And so we were able to fix it and she walked away beaming and that was just a great example of the kinds of things that we see here on a regular basis. It’s just a toaster, but it was her college toaster that she won at “Price is Right! ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Irreplaceable.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tara, Volunteer at Repair Cafe Silicon Valley:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Irreplaceable.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We’ve heard about the consumer electronic side of the right to repair movement, laptop repair technicians like Louis, who just want to replace hard drives without the headache of everything we drove into today. But did you know that a lot of today’s repairs are only legal because of farmers who were sick of hacking their tractors? That’s next week. For now, let’s close all these tabs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and it’s reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by our senior editor, Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. It was edited by Chris Hambrick, additional production help from Gabriela Glueck. Our team includes producer Maya Cueva. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. Jen Chien is our director of podcasts. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor in chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Do you like these deep dives? Are you closing your tabs? Then don’t forget to rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Maybe drop a comment too. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. Thanks for listening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "twitter-on-a-vape-puff-post-pollute-2",
"title": "'Twitter on a Vape' and The Great E-Waste Crisis",
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"headTitle": "‘Twitter on a Vape’ and The Great E-Waste Crisis | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A legal loophole has led to a surge in single-use vapes packed with a surprising amount of electronic components. It’s a glimpse into how our disposable tech habits are fueling a growing e-waste problem. In this episode, tech reporter Samatha Cole shares what happened when she tried to “vape the internet” after seeing a viral post about a disposable touchscreen vape with built-in social media. We also hear from environmental philosopher and public health researcher Yogi Hale Hendlin, who explains how flavored vape bans have led to the flood of high-tech disposables — and how tackling the e-waste crisis will take a radical rethink of our relationship with the products we consume.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode first aired on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12036123/twitter-on-a-vape-puff-post-pollute\">April 16th, 2025\u003c/a> \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7649358517\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/author/samantha-cole/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Samantha Cole\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, reporter and co-founder of \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">404 Media\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eur.nl/en/people/yogi-hendlin\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yogi Hale Hendlin\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, environmental philosopher and assistant professor at Erasmus University\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/twitter-internet-vape-touchscreen-swype/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I Tried to Vape the Internet\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Samantha Cole, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">404 Media\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/vaping-ecigarettes-waste-environment-disposable-pollution-3d19dce9693ce78dd244729f524df02a\">Communities can’t recycle or trash disposable e-cigarettes. So what happens to them? \u003c/a>– Matthew Perrone, \u003ci>Associated Press\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/26/vapes-flavors-china-teens-00194082\">How ‘Sour Raspberry Gummy Bear’ — and Other Chinese Vapes — Made Fools of American Lawmakers \u003c/a>\u003ci>– \u003c/i>Marc Novicoff, \u003ci>\u003ci>Politico \u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://grist.org/regulation/the-right-to-repair-is-now-law-in-3-states-is-big-tech-complying/\">The right to repair electronics is now law in 3 states. Is Big Tech complying? \u003c/a>– Maddie Stone, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Grist\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.materialfocus.org.uk/?press-releases=disposable-single-use-vapes-thrown-away-have-quadrupled-to-5-million-per-week\">Disposable vapes thrown away quadruples to 5 M per week\u003c/a> – \u003ci>Material Focus\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi! You’re listening to Close All Tabs, I’m Morgan Sung. About a year ago, we aired an episode about the great vape e-waste crisis. You know those disposable little bricks that let you puff nicotine clouds that taste like icy candy? Well, so-called “disposable” vapes have gotten pretty advanced, and are increasingly actually complex electronic devices. Some even have LED screens. Yeah, you can play games on your vape now!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while they could be recycled, more often than not, they’re tossed in the trash. California actually proposed a ban on the sale and distribution of disposable nicotine vapes by 2028 — the bill passed the assembly and is now in the state senate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since releasing that episode, we’ve been thinking about our relationship with disposable culture and how it’s changing. Specifically, we’ve been keeping tabs on the right to repair movement — this idea that if you buy something, you should be allowed to maintain it, repair it, and even modify it, instead of just replacing it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re digging into this movement in the next two episodes. But first, here’s a refresher on the story that sparked our interest in the right to repair in the first place. Today, we’re re-airing Twitter On A Vape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have never been a smoker, period. I have never smoked nicotine of any kind. Such a loser. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sam Cole is a tech journalist and co-founder of 404 Media, and in the summer of 2024, she tried to vape the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There was this tweet going super viral back in July. It was a guy that was like, “no way we got Twitter on my vape.” And it was a photo of him holding a vape with Twitter on it, reading tweets on it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was exactly what it sounds like, a little flip phone-sized disposable vape, with a digital screen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And everyone was freaking out about it. It became a meme format. Like, there was one where someone was putting Zillow on a vape. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In other posts, people were getting breaking news alerts on their vapes or playing games like Tetris and 2048. And Sam, being an intrepid journalist, was determined to figure out if it was real. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m always looking for new ways to ingest the internet. So I was like, let me look in the comments or in the replies and see if anybody actually has it. And it turned out someone did have a link. God bless the internet. A lot of them were sold out. The other flavors were Fucking Fab — I wish I knew what Fucking Fab tasted like — Juicy Peach, obviously you can imagine. Violent Rainbow was also sold out, I’m sure it was disgusting, but Watermelon Ice was like the only one left. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sam lives in New York, but was staying in California for a few weeks. So she bought the Watermelon Ice smart vape and shipped it to her friend’s house in Los Angeles. This is relevant. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was like, first of all, I can’t believe this goes through the mail. This definitely seems like something that shouldn’t between the battery and the vape juice and everything else and the electronics involved. I was like house sitting. I was, like, “I hope this doesn’t catch fire while I’m not at home.” It looks like a phone. It was, a pink, like a light pink square, kind of like a deck of cards almost. It had a touch screen that wasn’t, like, as janky as I expected a vape touch screen to be. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so the vape looked like a phone, but it didn’t really function as one. It couldn’t connect to the internet by itself. Sam actually had to download a separate app and connect it to the vape via Bluetooth, and then authorize different apps to send notifications to the vape. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once you connected it to your phone, it would start getting push notifications from whatever apps that you set up to connect to the vape. So that’s where the Twitter on the vape came from. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There was a calculator in case you need to do math while you’re vaping, and it also had a step tracker and a weather app and a few games, but a lot of the apps didn’t really work unless Sam’s phone was nearby. She said she couldn’t actually browse the internet on her vape, but because she was getting notifications on it, it created this cycle of getting pinged while puffing some watermelon ice and then checking her phone and then puffing again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, I was very quickly like literally addicted to this thing, cause it was nicotine. I was bringing it everywhere. I was like, it was like a fun thing to show people ’cause obviously it’s like weird and kooky. I had it out like drinking and then I was vaping. I was, like, “man, this is, I need to put this away. I need you to put it in a drawer and not think about it.” And then it was just like calling me like the Green Goblin mask. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Green Goblin Mask: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">COWARD! We have a new world to conquer. Hahaha!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was like, “I need a little, I need Watermelon Ice.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Sam wrote up this tongue-in-cheek blog post for 404 Media about trying to “vape the internet,” but after publishing it, she still found herself reaching for the vape. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I was just like, this is like the dumbest blog I’ve ever written. It’s up there on like “the dumbest ways to get addicted to vaping” is this stunt where I’m trying to read Twitter on a vape. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it’s like you’re addicted to the nicotine and you’re addicted to your feed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right, yeah, I was addicted to all of it at the same time, which is just so dark. Connecting like this very like neurochemical process of like being addicted to nicotine and then getting like dms on the vape and being like, “ooh who’s DMing me on twitter.” This is like such a dark path uh to go to down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sam ended up kicking the habit when she left the vape at her friend’s house in LA. She said she was scared to take it through airport security. And when she got back to New York, she resisted the temptation to buy another one. Since then, she’s managed to keep her nicotine consumption limited to the very occasional analog cigarette shared among friends. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Sam said that her vape experience was an eye-opener in more ways than one. There was her brush with this combined nicotine and internet addiction, sure, but she’s also been thinking about another issue: just how wasteful these vapes are. Remember, they’re disposable. There’s no vape pod to swap out if you want to change flavors. You can’t refill it once it’s empty. And a lot of them aren’t even rechargeable. You can easily go through one in a few weeks or a few days if you’re really puffing. Which means that you’re constantly replacing them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There was a time in like New York / Bushwick, surely you recall this, but just the ground was just covered in used Juul pods. It was just everywhere. At the time, I was like, “this is an ecological disaster.” And now I think- \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was like plastic everywhere. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, and it’s disgusting. And like, and you know, it’s like, I guess they put them in like cigarette butts, except they don’t degrade or anything. But then this I was like, “okay, when I finish this vape, I can’t refill it?” Even though it has all this stuff in it. Like it has like the touch screen, like it has chips inside of it, it has a battery inside of obviously, lots of plastic. So I was like, “damn, there’s a lot of like engineering that goes into this thing and then it becomes disposable within like a couple of weeks?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so what exactly makes vapes an “ecological disaster,” like Sam said? Are you supposed to recycle them? And how big of a problem is this really? That’s what we’re getting into today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung:, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">E-waste, or electronic waste, includes any electronic device that’s thrown away instead of recycled. It’s copper wires, semiconductors, circuit boards, LED screens, heavy metals, batteries, and more. It’s the stuff in our refrigerators and our old iPhones, and in our vapes. When these materials are dumped in landfills, they don’t really break down. And the sheer rate at which people are now buying, puffing, and then tossing disposable vapes, is rapidly adding to the e-waste crisis. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s make that our first tab. Disposable vapes and e-waste. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To explain how disposable vapes became so popular, let me take you back in time to the year 2019. This was the first ever “hot girl summer” as coined by Megan Thee Stallion and mango Juul pods were everywhere. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ty Dolla $ign: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Does she got it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a simpler time. And then, fear of popcorn lung swept the nation. Popcorn lung is the informal name for a lung condition in which the small airways in your lungs become so inflamed and scarred that breathing becomes extremely difficult. It’s from inhaling a chemical called diacetyl, which is used as a buttery flavoring in products like popcorn. It’s safe to eat, but when inhaled, it can cause permanent damage. That year, a ton of people especially teenagers, started to get really sick with mysterious lung issues. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A seemingly healthy Texas teenager suddenly unable to breathe and hospitalized with lung failure. His doctors suspect vaping was the cause. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The CDC released some new numbers today. The new numbers show more than 2,000 people now have been diagnosed with a vaping illness. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the United States, there were over 2,700 confirmed cases related to this mysterious vape illness and 68 deaths. One teenager in Canada had symptoms that aligned with popcorn lung, but all of the cases in the US involved pneumonia and other symptoms that aren’t present in popcorn lung. That pointed to another culprit. The CDC actually identified a different chemical as the probable cause of these vape-related cases: Vitamin E acetate. It was used in a lot of black market weed vape cartridges to dilute cannabis oil and essentially make a cheaper product. The CDC never confirmed whether diacetyl, the flavoring chemical, was related. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Still, the fear of popcorn lung and the amount of teenagers getting sick contributed to a nationwide crackdown on flavored vapes, whether or not they contained diacetyl. At the time, Juul was the biggest e-cigarette company. They sold different flavor pods, like mango, crème brûlée, and berry, which were all interchangeable and worked with a rechargeable battery. In 2020, the FDA banned most flavored cartridges, like Juul pods. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A targeted ban on the fruit-flavored e-cigarette cartridges, including mint, most popular with teens. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And a recent Supreme Court decision sided with the FDA over its flavored vape ban. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 4: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court has given the FDA victory in its ability to regulate e-cigarettes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I confess that I was once a Juul kid. Frankly, the flavor ban made getting ahold of my beloved mango flavored nicotine so inconvenient that I stopped vaping entirely. But that flavor ban did not apply to disposable vapes. And in the years since, an entire unregulated gray market opened up, offering more dessert flavors than Juul ever carried. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So to break this down, we’re going to hear from someone with expertise in both public health and the environment. Dr. Yogi Hale Hendlin. He’s an environmental philosopher who currently teaches at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. But when he was a researcher at UC San Francisco during the height of the vape illness crisis, he very closely studied vaping and nicotine habits. And that included keeping tabs on how people were getting rid of their vapes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The FDA banned flavors for refillable, reusable vapes, but not for disposable ones. Because at the time they weren’t a thing really. Juul was the thing. They were 70% of the market for a while. You can hold them accountable at least. But when you get this disposable vape market taking this loophole and exploiting it as much as they can for the thousands and thousands of flavors. Guess which market is most interested in flavors, it’s not 80-year-old smokers looking to quit. It’s kids and young adults, and the industry knows this. The FDA has had years to close this loophole, to do something about it, because it’s really all about flavors. So flavors is driving the disposable vapes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For a while, it seemed like smoking was really falling out of popularity. I mean, cigarettes were really out, at least in the United States. But now it seems like vaping is more popular. What impact is this having on the environment? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If we look at these devices, they’re not being recycled, they’re not being built for long time use, but to last as long as necessary for a disposable vape and then thrown out. And that’s accumulating in our dumps, in our incinerators. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A 2023 report commissioned by the United Nations found that 844 million vapes are thrown away every year. That is enough lithium to make batteries for 5,000 electric cars. Lithium is already a finite resource and mining it involves significant water consumption and deforestation. Even though lithium itself isn’t renewable, batteries that contain it can be rechargeable or can be repurposed. But single-use vapes aren’t always meant to be taken apart or recycled, so these lithium batteries are usually just discarded. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this is really quite alarming that we’re allocating our resources towards continued addiction by other means, and at the same time, junking the planet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. Can you talk about why disposables are so popular, whether for e-cigarettes or even for weed vapes? Which, weed vape cartridges aren’t banned the same way that a mango Juul pod is, but people do gravitate toward disposables anyway. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right now, they’re making them so cheap. We’re not reflecting the true cost of these items in our economy. We are basically subsidizing the waste at the end of life. There’s no extended producer responsibility where the manufacturer has to be responsible for it. There is no brand loyalty where you have to make sure that your device works properly for a certain amount of time. Right now, it is really a race to the bottom in terms of how much can you pack into this single thing, then you throw away. It makes it much easier for students who they can flush it down the toilet if it’s about to get confiscated, which unfortunately happens way too much. And it’s something that they can pass around. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are you familiar with those very advanced, like vapes with screens on them that can connect to your smartphone? They have games, some of them have step trackers. Have you seen these? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Absolutely. They are the logical progression of tracking multiple addictions all on one device. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. And what is astonishing to me is that, yeah, these aren’t refillable. You’re not going to buy like, you know, nicotine juice at a vape shop and refill it. You are just going to use it and then get rid of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, there’s no way to even refill it if you’d want to. You know, you’d probably like break the thing. But these things have LED screens. They have like, you know, they’re like basically old school game boys. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, can you speak about like how this trend of super advanced gamified vapes exacerbates the waste issue? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m just gonna take a step back to the problem of disposables, right? So, before you would finish your juice and you’d get a refill and you do that with the same device for a year or two or three. But now you have like this whole unit, this thing that has the battery, that has now these screens, but all this circuitry too, the heating component, and you’re throwing that all away as soon as the juice is gone. Sometimes they integrate with your smartphone, but they also have like GPS tracking, social media notifications, like you said, fitness tracking and built-in games. So it’s like increasing the association of entertainment and sort of the practicality and weaves in like seamlessly with the rest of your life. And I think that this sort of integration is the dream of any product manufacturer. But when you do it with something that’s so addictive and isn’t good for you, that this raises a host of moral problems and societal ones. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I also wanted to clarify the difference between what goes into a disposable vape and what goes in to a rechargeable vape battery. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Obviously with a 10,000-hit, non-rechargeable, disposable vape, you need a bigger battery to compensate for all of those hits, right, to get the heating coil to work. So you’re actually using a bigger in a disposable than you would in your standard rechargeable like a Juul, but you’re only using the battery once. Rather than renewing it, like, you know, 100 or 1,000 times, you’re using that battery once. None of these are really being made in the US anyhow, so there’s also questions about safety for health, safety for the environment, and yeah, it’s a Wild West right now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What happens when a vape is, you know, dropped in the environment? Like what happens to the environment, how does it break down? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, the lithium batteries, oftentimes in dumpsters, you get dumpster fires if the thing gets impacted. Chemical fire is not so easy to put out either. Sometimes you just have to let it burn out. What happens when it’s on the curb, ultimately, it probably goes into our storm drains and probably leaches a lot of particulate matter, heavy metals into our water stream that goes out to the ocean ultimately. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh great, so we’re turning the ocean into a giant like vape juice container. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Totally with the lithium ion batteries and all the like soldering components that are usually made with mercury it’s no bueno \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to CDC data released last year, Americans threw away 5.7 disposable vapes \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">per second\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in 2023 — roughly five hundred \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">thousand\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, every day, in the US alone.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trying to regulate the disposable vape market is like playing a game of whack a mole. Nearly all of them are manufactured in China, which ironically also bans flavored e-cigarettes.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But it doesn’t ban the export of vapes — which is how the US became flooded with cotton candy flavored disposables after 2020. There’s really nothing stopping retailers from selling them, despite attempts from local lawmakers.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The FDA keeps trying to crack down on them, and has seized tens of millions of dollars worth of illegal vape shipments.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But, new companies pop up and find more loopholes, or just sell them on the black market. And although the Trump administration’s tariffs \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">have\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> put a dent in the disposable vape supply,\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> there’s no national standard for actually recycling these things. That also means that trash is piling up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So if it isn’t the FDA, is anyone regulating the disposal of these things? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ll talk about that after the break.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California has some of the strictest e-waste laws in the country, but when it comes to nicotine vapes, disposal guidelines are fuzzy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">New tab, California vape laws. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So in California, it’s actually illegal to throw away a lot of electronics, from old computers to TVs to even weed pens. They have to be disposed of at special facilities. As of 2024, cannabis companies aren’t allowed to market their vapes as disposable, and a lot of dispensaries have started taking back used vapes to safely get rid of them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In fact, there is a whole cottage industry of cannabis waste companies that collect used vapes from dispensaries. Then, they separate the batteries and cartridges to recycle them.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Not all of it is recyclable, and it’s not a perfect system, but it’s a start.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It helps that THC products in California are pretty vigorously regulated, so weed vapes have to be made to a certain standard. This same system doesn’t really exist for those disposable, flavored nicotine vapes. And local recycling programs often refuse to take them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the major conundrums that keeps these things from being more recyclable than they are currently is that vapes are currently treated as both hazardous waste because of the nicotine and electronic waste, right? So you basically have this thing that you can’t just put in electronic waste and deal with it because it has nicotine. And so you can really have a circular economy with the way that the laws are currently set up. Circular economy is an economy where the products that you’re using are made to be disassembled, refurbished, reassembled and re-appropriated into new products with minimum energy use, minimum waste. In California, I believe that our laws are still preventing us from fully being able to recycle these things. Currently they’re not made to spec so that we can all say, okay, so this is how you take it apart and easily get the valuable metals, take the battery out. They’re not modular. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. I mean, I didn’t know about the vape disposal law until I started reporting on this story, and a lot of people I’ve talked to also just did not know about this law. As a public health expert, is there anything California should be doing to get the message out about vape recycling? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We need to make it easy as pie. And this is how we do it. You put the deposit on the vape. You say, hey, you wanna buy a vape? Great, here is $5 deposit that you pay when you buy it. When you deposit your vape to be recycled, you get your five bucks back. And everybody, especially those who are in need of money, especially those were young, are going to properly deal with their vape. It’s called the deposit return system. It’s been used for milk bottles for over a century. It’s also in California on our computers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So California lawmakers also introduced a bill that wants to ban disposable vapes entirely. Some are concerned that banning disposable vaping entirely will push people to buy it from the black market instead. What do you think of this? Is this just fear-mongering from the big vaping industry? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes, it is. I mean, we’ve heard for a long time from the tobacco industry that, you know, if you tax cigarettes, the black market will be the place where people get their cigarettes. Most kids are not getting their things from the black market. So it’s an idea of proportionality. It’s not that those arguments are absolutely incorrect, it’s just that they overplay their hand. If we want to protect kids and young adults from these devices, if we want to get rid of the environmental harms, which are so considerable, of single-use vapes, then all you have to do is ban single- use vapes and then they’re not going to become the cool thing anymore. That’s not what people will be using. And the overton window will shift and consumer preferences will change. And so the black market issue for me is sort of a non-starter if you think it logically all the way through. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. I mean, again, going back to my 21 year old little Juul addicted brain, I stopped dueling because it became inconvenient to buy Juuls. Like, is it that simple, really? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It really is that simple. If we make access a little bit more difficult, and a deposit is a great way to do that for an addictive drug that harms the environment, you can easily put a deposit on it and it makes it a little less accessible for kids. And it also makes sure that people who do use these devices, that they return them where they’re supposed to go. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There was a recent study showing that somewhere between 70 and 80 percent all vapes are improperly disposed of. Where are they going? They’re going in our waterways. I have a whole collection that I found on the streets of San Francisco. Not that people are always just discarding them, but people also lose them. They fall out of backpacks. So there’s a lot of carelessness because they’re so cheap and disposable and because there’s no accountability. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If this ban passes, will moving to rechargeable vapes actually do anything for the environment, or will people just keep treating their rechargeable vape like they’re disposable and keep losing them and keep easily tossing them without actually recycling them, just paying more for it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Obviously, just moving to reusable versus disposable is not going to solve the whole issue. I think we still need to deposit because there’s still going to be an end of life issue. If we want to make sure that we get those in the proper place, we also need accessibility. We need it to make it easy for people like you go to your supermarket and there’s a bin and you go the grocer and you give your device, you get your five bucks back and it’s over. So we need to integrate it into our recycling infrastructure. Yeah, there’s going to be a lag time. Just as every generation has to learn new technologies, people are going to have to get used to moving from disposable to non-disposable, just as they also did move from reusable to disposable. That was also a learning curve. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With the current administration, the likelihood of further federal regulation on disposable vapes is unclear. Despite spearheading the flavored vape ban in 2019, Trump has backtracked. He’s since promised to, quote “save vaping. He made it one of the hallmarks of his 2024 campaign, with Business Insider reporting that some conservative circles have embraced nicotine consumption as masculine and contrarian.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Just this week, the FDA released a document that said it would consider allowing \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">some\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> flavored vape options, like coffee or tea or mint — while continuing to ban fruity, sweet flavors that appeal to teenagers.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But the FDA didn’t say anything about disposables specifically. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Look, we can regulate vapes until we’re blue in the face, but to meaningfully reduce vape waste, we need a culture-wide shift in how we consume tech products. The current state of vape prohibition hasn’t stopped people from buying flavored vapes, or curbed e-waste. That’s why some DIY enthusiasts are actually taking it upon themselves to prove that disposable vapes \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">can\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> be recycled. \u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s do one more tab, the circular economy and the right to repair. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last month, this YouTuber who goes by NekoMichi went super viral after someone dumped a single-use vape on their doorstep. Instead of tossing it, NekoMichi broke open the plastic casing, pried the lithium battery out, and wired it to an old iPod Touch. They actually managed to power the iPod using the vape battery. NekoMichi is one of many DIYers who salvage batteries and other parts from so-called disposable vapes and repurpose them for power banks, gaming controllers, and other small devices. One person on the DIY electronics subreddit even built an e-bike battery out of 130 disposable vapes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That is a great reuse of these batteries that otherwise would just end up in our landfills or incinerated. At the same time, you can’t expect your average vaper to know how to use Arduino chips and be able to do this. I think it’s a great proof of concept, right? It shows these things are totally reusable. Like it’s insane that we’re just throwing them out after, you know, a single run. We also have to be aware however, that because the batteries are not made to last, that there are lots of possible hazards that could come from that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like Yogi pointed out, DIY recycling is not exactly going to solve a massive systemic issue. Taking apart, and then repurposing, vape components is extremely labor intensive, requires highly technical skills, and may cause a fire that’s nearly impossible to put out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But what \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">is\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> inching us closer to building the circular economy that Yogi was talking about earlier is the right to repair movement. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Under right to repair laws – now in place in at least seven states\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — if you buy a new electronic device, the company that sold you that device has to sell the repair manuals and spare parts to fix it if it breaks — instead of forcing you to buy a whole new one.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> In addition to taking back used cartridges and batteries for recycling, some cannabis vape companies also sell replacement parts and offer repair services.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This might be a way forward for more sustainable e-cigarettes, too. \u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t want to be in disposable relationships. I like having my old cell phone that works exactly the way I like it to, and I don t have to use a month of my time figuring out the new configurations on a new one and getting them exactly how I like. I like stuff that lasts a while so that I can get cozy with it, that I get to know it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, people will always be determined to get their nicotine fix. So when addressing this e-waste issue and having that in mind, is there any sustainable way forward? Do you think? Like, is the answer just to go back to cigarettes? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No, I don’t think so. But, you know, at the birth of the e-cigarette movement, there were a lot of these mods, they called them, right? So it was sort of-. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I remember the Vapelords. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, exactly, right. So build your own e-cigarette. And it really did have a lot of that maker’s sort of ethos behind it, where you could optimize, you know, the liquid, the juice, and the battery, and the heating coil, look at the right ohms, so that everything’s perfect and you can blow these amazing clouds, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I do think that we can help raise awareness of making things more sustainable in terms of reusable, number one, by taking off the market the option just to be totally mindless about it. And hopefully all of this is in tandem with raising awareness of the long-term effects of vaping as well because if people need their nicotine fix, they’re going to get it. But there are so many better ways to do so than with disposables. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so here’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re ready to throw away a vape. Don’t toss them in your regular trash or rinse them out. We don’t want those chemicals hitting municipal water systems. Treat it like getting rid of batteries. Put it aside in a cool, dry place until you can drop it off at a household hazardous waste disposal spot. You can look up your local site online, contact your waste management company, or ask at the place where you bought the vape, and maybe… Consider leaving disposable vapes behind. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I really understand that we are social animals. We are mammals that mimic each other. And so when we are in situations where it’s just easy, out of sight, out-of-mind, hey, that’s really convenient for us. But when we’re forced to understand, okay, so maybe you had to blow up a mountain to get the lithium to make that vape, maybe you have to deforest lots of land in Malawi and have people who got green leaf sickness from harvesting the tobacco leaves. And then you had to flu cure them and extract the nicotine and make that juice. And that’s how I got my thing. Like you become a lot more aware and you treat it in a more sacred way because I’m not saying that people shouldn’t do X or Y, but when we’re aware of the full ramifications of what we’re doing, the whole commodity chain, the global commodity chains that make it super simple just to press a few buttons on the internet, have this thing delivered to me, I suck on it, I throw it in the garbage can, it goes away and that’s it, that’s my entire relationship to it. That makes it all too easy for me to totally bypass the actual impacts that it’s having on people and the environment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Hambrick is our editor. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor and wrote our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Director of Content Operations.Jen Chien is our director of podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsay is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you have feedback, or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs@kqed.org. Follow us on instagram at “close all tabs pod.” Or drop it on Discord — we’re in the Close All Tabs channel at discord.gg/KQED. And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple podcasts or whatever platform you use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I wish this thing had like a little Tamagotchi on it so then I could like. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh my god, yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Care, care for my little pet and then also be vaping. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t give them ideas.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I bet that exists.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "A legal loophole has led to a surge in single-use vapes packed with a surprising amount of electronic components. It’s also a glimpse into how our disposable tech habits are fueling a growing e-waste problem. In this episode, tech reporter Samatha Cole shares what happened when she tried to “vape the internet” after seeing a viral post about a disposable touchscreen vape with built-in social media. We also hear from environmental philosopher and public health researcher Yogi Hale Hendlin, who explains how flavored vape bans have led to the flood of high-tech disposables — and how tackling the e-waste crisis will take a radical rethink of our relationship with the products we consume.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A legal loophole has led to a surge in single-use vapes packed with a surprising amount of electronic components. It’s a glimpse into how our disposable tech habits are fueling a growing e-waste problem. In this episode, tech reporter Samatha Cole shares what happened when she tried to “vape the internet” after seeing a viral post about a disposable touchscreen vape with built-in social media. We also hear from environmental philosopher and public health researcher Yogi Hale Hendlin, who explains how flavored vape bans have led to the flood of high-tech disposables — and how tackling the e-waste crisis will take a radical rethink of our relationship with the products we consume.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode first aired on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12036123/twitter-on-a-vape-puff-post-pollute\">April 16th, 2025\u003c/a> \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7649358517\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/author/samantha-cole/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Samantha Cole\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, reporter and co-founder of \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">404 Media\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eur.nl/en/people/yogi-hendlin\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yogi Hale Hendlin\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, environmental philosopher and assistant professor at Erasmus University\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/twitter-internet-vape-touchscreen-swype/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I Tried to Vape the Internet\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Samantha Cole, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">404 Media\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/vaping-ecigarettes-waste-environment-disposable-pollution-3d19dce9693ce78dd244729f524df02a\">Communities can’t recycle or trash disposable e-cigarettes. So what happens to them? \u003c/a>– Matthew Perrone, \u003ci>Associated Press\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/26/vapes-flavors-china-teens-00194082\">How ‘Sour Raspberry Gummy Bear’ — and Other Chinese Vapes — Made Fools of American Lawmakers \u003c/a>\u003ci>– \u003c/i>Marc Novicoff, \u003ci>\u003ci>Politico \u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://grist.org/regulation/the-right-to-repair-is-now-law-in-3-states-is-big-tech-complying/\">The right to repair electronics is now law in 3 states. Is Big Tech complying? \u003c/a>– Maddie Stone, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Grist\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.materialfocus.org.uk/?press-releases=disposable-single-use-vapes-thrown-away-have-quadrupled-to-5-million-per-week\">Disposable vapes thrown away quadruples to 5 M per week\u003c/a> – \u003ci>Material Focus\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi! You’re listening to Close All Tabs, I’m Morgan Sung. About a year ago, we aired an episode about the great vape e-waste crisis. You know those disposable little bricks that let you puff nicotine clouds that taste like icy candy? Well, so-called “disposable” vapes have gotten pretty advanced, and are increasingly actually complex electronic devices. Some even have LED screens. Yeah, you can play games on your vape now!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while they could be recycled, more often than not, they’re tossed in the trash. California actually proposed a ban on the sale and distribution of disposable nicotine vapes by 2028 — the bill passed the assembly and is now in the state senate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since releasing that episode, we’ve been thinking about our relationship with disposable culture and how it’s changing. Specifically, we’ve been keeping tabs on the right to repair movement — this idea that if you buy something, you should be allowed to maintain it, repair it, and even modify it, instead of just replacing it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re digging into this movement in the next two episodes. But first, here’s a refresher on the story that sparked our interest in the right to repair in the first place. Today, we’re re-airing Twitter On A Vape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have never been a smoker, period. I have never smoked nicotine of any kind. Such a loser. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sam Cole is a tech journalist and co-founder of 404 Media, and in the summer of 2024, she tried to vape the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There was this tweet going super viral back in July. It was a guy that was like, “no way we got Twitter on my vape.” And it was a photo of him holding a vape with Twitter on it, reading tweets on it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was exactly what it sounds like, a little flip phone-sized disposable vape, with a digital screen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And everyone was freaking out about it. It became a meme format. Like, there was one where someone was putting Zillow on a vape. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In other posts, people were getting breaking news alerts on their vapes or playing games like Tetris and 2048. And Sam, being an intrepid journalist, was determined to figure out if it was real. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m always looking for new ways to ingest the internet. So I was like, let me look in the comments or in the replies and see if anybody actually has it. And it turned out someone did have a link. God bless the internet. A lot of them were sold out. The other flavors were Fucking Fab — I wish I knew what Fucking Fab tasted like — Juicy Peach, obviously you can imagine. Violent Rainbow was also sold out, I’m sure it was disgusting, but Watermelon Ice was like the only one left. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sam lives in New York, but was staying in California for a few weeks. So she bought the Watermelon Ice smart vape and shipped it to her friend’s house in Los Angeles. This is relevant. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was like, first of all, I can’t believe this goes through the mail. This definitely seems like something that shouldn’t between the battery and the vape juice and everything else and the electronics involved. I was like house sitting. I was, like, “I hope this doesn’t catch fire while I’m not at home.” It looks like a phone. It was, a pink, like a light pink square, kind of like a deck of cards almost. It had a touch screen that wasn’t, like, as janky as I expected a vape touch screen to be. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so the vape looked like a phone, but it didn’t really function as one. It couldn’t connect to the internet by itself. Sam actually had to download a separate app and connect it to the vape via Bluetooth, and then authorize different apps to send notifications to the vape. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once you connected it to your phone, it would start getting push notifications from whatever apps that you set up to connect to the vape. So that’s where the Twitter on the vape came from. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There was a calculator in case you need to do math while you’re vaping, and it also had a step tracker and a weather app and a few games, but a lot of the apps didn’t really work unless Sam’s phone was nearby. She said she couldn’t actually browse the internet on her vape, but because she was getting notifications on it, it created this cycle of getting pinged while puffing some watermelon ice and then checking her phone and then puffing again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, I was very quickly like literally addicted to this thing, cause it was nicotine. I was bringing it everywhere. I was like, it was like a fun thing to show people ’cause obviously it’s like weird and kooky. I had it out like drinking and then I was vaping. I was, like, “man, this is, I need to put this away. I need you to put it in a drawer and not think about it.” And then it was just like calling me like the Green Goblin mask. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Green Goblin Mask: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">COWARD! We have a new world to conquer. Hahaha!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was like, “I need a little, I need Watermelon Ice.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Sam wrote up this tongue-in-cheek blog post for 404 Media about trying to “vape the internet,” but after publishing it, she still found herself reaching for the vape. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I was just like, this is like the dumbest blog I’ve ever written. It’s up there on like “the dumbest ways to get addicted to vaping” is this stunt where I’m trying to read Twitter on a vape. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it’s like you’re addicted to the nicotine and you’re addicted to your feed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right, yeah, I was addicted to all of it at the same time, which is just so dark. Connecting like this very like neurochemical process of like being addicted to nicotine and then getting like dms on the vape and being like, “ooh who’s DMing me on twitter.” This is like such a dark path uh to go to down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sam ended up kicking the habit when she left the vape at her friend’s house in LA. She said she was scared to take it through airport security. And when she got back to New York, she resisted the temptation to buy another one. Since then, she’s managed to keep her nicotine consumption limited to the very occasional analog cigarette shared among friends. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Sam said that her vape experience was an eye-opener in more ways than one. There was her brush with this combined nicotine and internet addiction, sure, but she’s also been thinking about another issue: just how wasteful these vapes are. Remember, they’re disposable. There’s no vape pod to swap out if you want to change flavors. You can’t refill it once it’s empty. And a lot of them aren’t even rechargeable. You can easily go through one in a few weeks or a few days if you’re really puffing. Which means that you’re constantly replacing them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There was a time in like New York / Bushwick, surely you recall this, but just the ground was just covered in used Juul pods. It was just everywhere. At the time, I was like, “this is an ecological disaster.” And now I think- \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was like plastic everywhere. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, and it’s disgusting. And like, and you know, it’s like, I guess they put them in like cigarette butts, except they don’t degrade or anything. But then this I was like, “okay, when I finish this vape, I can’t refill it?” Even though it has all this stuff in it. Like it has like the touch screen, like it has chips inside of it, it has a battery inside of obviously, lots of plastic. So I was like, “damn, there’s a lot of like engineering that goes into this thing and then it becomes disposable within like a couple of weeks?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so what exactly makes vapes an “ecological disaster,” like Sam said? Are you supposed to recycle them? And how big of a problem is this really? That’s what we’re getting into today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung:, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">E-waste, or electronic waste, includes any electronic device that’s thrown away instead of recycled. It’s copper wires, semiconductors, circuit boards, LED screens, heavy metals, batteries, and more. It’s the stuff in our refrigerators and our old iPhones, and in our vapes. When these materials are dumped in landfills, they don’t really break down. And the sheer rate at which people are now buying, puffing, and then tossing disposable vapes, is rapidly adding to the e-waste crisis. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s make that our first tab. Disposable vapes and e-waste. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To explain how disposable vapes became so popular, let me take you back in time to the year 2019. This was the first ever “hot girl summer” as coined by Megan Thee Stallion and mango Juul pods were everywhere. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ty Dolla $ign: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Does she got it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a simpler time. And then, fear of popcorn lung swept the nation. Popcorn lung is the informal name for a lung condition in which the small airways in your lungs become so inflamed and scarred that breathing becomes extremely difficult. It’s from inhaling a chemical called diacetyl, which is used as a buttery flavoring in products like popcorn. It’s safe to eat, but when inhaled, it can cause permanent damage. That year, a ton of people especially teenagers, started to get really sick with mysterious lung issues. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A seemingly healthy Texas teenager suddenly unable to breathe and hospitalized with lung failure. His doctors suspect vaping was the cause. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The CDC released some new numbers today. The new numbers show more than 2,000 people now have been diagnosed with a vaping illness. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the United States, there were over 2,700 confirmed cases related to this mysterious vape illness and 68 deaths. One teenager in Canada had symptoms that aligned with popcorn lung, but all of the cases in the US involved pneumonia and other symptoms that aren’t present in popcorn lung. That pointed to another culprit. The CDC actually identified a different chemical as the probable cause of these vape-related cases: Vitamin E acetate. It was used in a lot of black market weed vape cartridges to dilute cannabis oil and essentially make a cheaper product. The CDC never confirmed whether diacetyl, the flavoring chemical, was related. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Still, the fear of popcorn lung and the amount of teenagers getting sick contributed to a nationwide crackdown on flavored vapes, whether or not they contained diacetyl. At the time, Juul was the biggest e-cigarette company. They sold different flavor pods, like mango, crème brûlée, and berry, which were all interchangeable and worked with a rechargeable battery. In 2020, the FDA banned most flavored cartridges, like Juul pods. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A targeted ban on the fruit-flavored e-cigarette cartridges, including mint, most popular with teens. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And a recent Supreme Court decision sided with the FDA over its flavored vape ban. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 4: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court has given the FDA victory in its ability to regulate e-cigarettes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I confess that I was once a Juul kid. Frankly, the flavor ban made getting ahold of my beloved mango flavored nicotine so inconvenient that I stopped vaping entirely. But that flavor ban did not apply to disposable vapes. And in the years since, an entire unregulated gray market opened up, offering more dessert flavors than Juul ever carried. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So to break this down, we’re going to hear from someone with expertise in both public health and the environment. Dr. Yogi Hale Hendlin. He’s an environmental philosopher who currently teaches at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. But when he was a researcher at UC San Francisco during the height of the vape illness crisis, he very closely studied vaping and nicotine habits. And that included keeping tabs on how people were getting rid of their vapes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The FDA banned flavors for refillable, reusable vapes, but not for disposable ones. Because at the time they weren’t a thing really. Juul was the thing. They were 70% of the market for a while. You can hold them accountable at least. But when you get this disposable vape market taking this loophole and exploiting it as much as they can for the thousands and thousands of flavors. Guess which market is most interested in flavors, it’s not 80-year-old smokers looking to quit. It’s kids and young adults, and the industry knows this. The FDA has had years to close this loophole, to do something about it, because it’s really all about flavors. So flavors is driving the disposable vapes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For a while, it seemed like smoking was really falling out of popularity. I mean, cigarettes were really out, at least in the United States. But now it seems like vaping is more popular. What impact is this having on the environment? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If we look at these devices, they’re not being recycled, they’re not being built for long time use, but to last as long as necessary for a disposable vape and then thrown out. And that’s accumulating in our dumps, in our incinerators. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A 2023 report commissioned by the United Nations found that 844 million vapes are thrown away every year. That is enough lithium to make batteries for 5,000 electric cars. Lithium is already a finite resource and mining it involves significant water consumption and deforestation. Even though lithium itself isn’t renewable, batteries that contain it can be rechargeable or can be repurposed. But single-use vapes aren’t always meant to be taken apart or recycled, so these lithium batteries are usually just discarded. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this is really quite alarming that we’re allocating our resources towards continued addiction by other means, and at the same time, junking the planet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. Can you talk about why disposables are so popular, whether for e-cigarettes or even for weed vapes? Which, weed vape cartridges aren’t banned the same way that a mango Juul pod is, but people do gravitate toward disposables anyway. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right now, they’re making them so cheap. We’re not reflecting the true cost of these items in our economy. We are basically subsidizing the waste at the end of life. There’s no extended producer responsibility where the manufacturer has to be responsible for it. There is no brand loyalty where you have to make sure that your device works properly for a certain amount of time. Right now, it is really a race to the bottom in terms of how much can you pack into this single thing, then you throw away. It makes it much easier for students who they can flush it down the toilet if it’s about to get confiscated, which unfortunately happens way too much. And it’s something that they can pass around. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are you familiar with those very advanced, like vapes with screens on them that can connect to your smartphone? They have games, some of them have step trackers. Have you seen these? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Absolutely. They are the logical progression of tracking multiple addictions all on one device. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. And what is astonishing to me is that, yeah, these aren’t refillable. You’re not going to buy like, you know, nicotine juice at a vape shop and refill it. You are just going to use it and then get rid of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, there’s no way to even refill it if you’d want to. You know, you’d probably like break the thing. But these things have LED screens. They have like, you know, they’re like basically old school game boys. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, can you speak about like how this trend of super advanced gamified vapes exacerbates the waste issue? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m just gonna take a step back to the problem of disposables, right? So, before you would finish your juice and you’d get a refill and you do that with the same device for a year or two or three. But now you have like this whole unit, this thing that has the battery, that has now these screens, but all this circuitry too, the heating component, and you’re throwing that all away as soon as the juice is gone. Sometimes they integrate with your smartphone, but they also have like GPS tracking, social media notifications, like you said, fitness tracking and built-in games. So it’s like increasing the association of entertainment and sort of the practicality and weaves in like seamlessly with the rest of your life. And I think that this sort of integration is the dream of any product manufacturer. But when you do it with something that’s so addictive and isn’t good for you, that this raises a host of moral problems and societal ones. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I also wanted to clarify the difference between what goes into a disposable vape and what goes in to a rechargeable vape battery. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Obviously with a 10,000-hit, non-rechargeable, disposable vape, you need a bigger battery to compensate for all of those hits, right, to get the heating coil to work. So you’re actually using a bigger in a disposable than you would in your standard rechargeable like a Juul, but you’re only using the battery once. Rather than renewing it, like, you know, 100 or 1,000 times, you’re using that battery once. None of these are really being made in the US anyhow, so there’s also questions about safety for health, safety for the environment, and yeah, it’s a Wild West right now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What happens when a vape is, you know, dropped in the environment? Like what happens to the environment, how does it break down? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, the lithium batteries, oftentimes in dumpsters, you get dumpster fires if the thing gets impacted. Chemical fire is not so easy to put out either. Sometimes you just have to let it burn out. What happens when it’s on the curb, ultimately, it probably goes into our storm drains and probably leaches a lot of particulate matter, heavy metals into our water stream that goes out to the ocean ultimately. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh great, so we’re turning the ocean into a giant like vape juice container. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Totally with the lithium ion batteries and all the like soldering components that are usually made with mercury it’s no bueno \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to CDC data released last year, Americans threw away 5.7 disposable vapes \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">per second\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in 2023 — roughly five hundred \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">thousand\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, every day, in the US alone.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trying to regulate the disposable vape market is like playing a game of whack a mole. Nearly all of them are manufactured in China, which ironically also bans flavored e-cigarettes.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But it doesn’t ban the export of vapes — which is how the US became flooded with cotton candy flavored disposables after 2020. There’s really nothing stopping retailers from selling them, despite attempts from local lawmakers.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The FDA keeps trying to crack down on them, and has seized tens of millions of dollars worth of illegal vape shipments.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But, new companies pop up and find more loopholes, or just sell them on the black market. And although the Trump administration’s tariffs \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">have\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> put a dent in the disposable vape supply,\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> there’s no national standard for actually recycling these things. That also means that trash is piling up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So if it isn’t the FDA, is anyone regulating the disposal of these things? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ll talk about that after the break.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California has some of the strictest e-waste laws in the country, but when it comes to nicotine vapes, disposal guidelines are fuzzy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">New tab, California vape laws. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So in California, it’s actually illegal to throw away a lot of electronics, from old computers to TVs to even weed pens. They have to be disposed of at special facilities. As of 2024, cannabis companies aren’t allowed to market their vapes as disposable, and a lot of dispensaries have started taking back used vapes to safely get rid of them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In fact, there is a whole cottage industry of cannabis waste companies that collect used vapes from dispensaries. Then, they separate the batteries and cartridges to recycle them.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Not all of it is recyclable, and it’s not a perfect system, but it’s a start.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It helps that THC products in California are pretty vigorously regulated, so weed vapes have to be made to a certain standard. This same system doesn’t really exist for those disposable, flavored nicotine vapes. And local recycling programs often refuse to take them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the major conundrums that keeps these things from being more recyclable than they are currently is that vapes are currently treated as both hazardous waste because of the nicotine and electronic waste, right? So you basically have this thing that you can’t just put in electronic waste and deal with it because it has nicotine. And so you can really have a circular economy with the way that the laws are currently set up. Circular economy is an economy where the products that you’re using are made to be disassembled, refurbished, reassembled and re-appropriated into new products with minimum energy use, minimum waste. In California, I believe that our laws are still preventing us from fully being able to recycle these things. Currently they’re not made to spec so that we can all say, okay, so this is how you take it apart and easily get the valuable metals, take the battery out. They’re not modular. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. I mean, I didn’t know about the vape disposal law until I started reporting on this story, and a lot of people I’ve talked to also just did not know about this law. As a public health expert, is there anything California should be doing to get the message out about vape recycling? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We need to make it easy as pie. And this is how we do it. You put the deposit on the vape. You say, hey, you wanna buy a vape? Great, here is $5 deposit that you pay when you buy it. When you deposit your vape to be recycled, you get your five bucks back. And everybody, especially those who are in need of money, especially those were young, are going to properly deal with their vape. It’s called the deposit return system. It’s been used for milk bottles for over a century. It’s also in California on our computers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So California lawmakers also introduced a bill that wants to ban disposable vapes entirely. Some are concerned that banning disposable vaping entirely will push people to buy it from the black market instead. What do you think of this? Is this just fear-mongering from the big vaping industry? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes, it is. I mean, we’ve heard for a long time from the tobacco industry that, you know, if you tax cigarettes, the black market will be the place where people get their cigarettes. Most kids are not getting their things from the black market. So it’s an idea of proportionality. It’s not that those arguments are absolutely incorrect, it’s just that they overplay their hand. If we want to protect kids and young adults from these devices, if we want to get rid of the environmental harms, which are so considerable, of single-use vapes, then all you have to do is ban single- use vapes and then they’re not going to become the cool thing anymore. That’s not what people will be using. And the overton window will shift and consumer preferences will change. And so the black market issue for me is sort of a non-starter if you think it logically all the way through. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. I mean, again, going back to my 21 year old little Juul addicted brain, I stopped dueling because it became inconvenient to buy Juuls. Like, is it that simple, really? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It really is that simple. If we make access a little bit more difficult, and a deposit is a great way to do that for an addictive drug that harms the environment, you can easily put a deposit on it and it makes it a little less accessible for kids. And it also makes sure that people who do use these devices, that they return them where they’re supposed to go. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There was a recent study showing that somewhere between 70 and 80 percent all vapes are improperly disposed of. Where are they going? They’re going in our waterways. I have a whole collection that I found on the streets of San Francisco. Not that people are always just discarding them, but people also lose them. They fall out of backpacks. So there’s a lot of carelessness because they’re so cheap and disposable and because there’s no accountability. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If this ban passes, will moving to rechargeable vapes actually do anything for the environment, or will people just keep treating their rechargeable vape like they’re disposable and keep losing them and keep easily tossing them without actually recycling them, just paying more for it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Obviously, just moving to reusable versus disposable is not going to solve the whole issue. I think we still need to deposit because there’s still going to be an end of life issue. If we want to make sure that we get those in the proper place, we also need accessibility. We need it to make it easy for people like you go to your supermarket and there’s a bin and you go the grocer and you give your device, you get your five bucks back and it’s over. So we need to integrate it into our recycling infrastructure. Yeah, there’s going to be a lag time. Just as every generation has to learn new technologies, people are going to have to get used to moving from disposable to non-disposable, just as they also did move from reusable to disposable. That was also a learning curve. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With the current administration, the likelihood of further federal regulation on disposable vapes is unclear. Despite spearheading the flavored vape ban in 2019, Trump has backtracked. He’s since promised to, quote “save vaping. He made it one of the hallmarks of his 2024 campaign, with Business Insider reporting that some conservative circles have embraced nicotine consumption as masculine and contrarian.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Just this week, the FDA released a document that said it would consider allowing \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">some\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> flavored vape options, like coffee or tea or mint — while continuing to ban fruity, sweet flavors that appeal to teenagers.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But the FDA didn’t say anything about disposables specifically. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Look, we can regulate vapes until we’re blue in the face, but to meaningfully reduce vape waste, we need a culture-wide shift in how we consume tech products. The current state of vape prohibition hasn’t stopped people from buying flavored vapes, or curbed e-waste. That’s why some DIY enthusiasts are actually taking it upon themselves to prove that disposable vapes \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">can\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> be recycled. \u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s do one more tab, the circular economy and the right to repair. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last month, this YouTuber who goes by NekoMichi went super viral after someone dumped a single-use vape on their doorstep. Instead of tossing it, NekoMichi broke open the plastic casing, pried the lithium battery out, and wired it to an old iPod Touch. They actually managed to power the iPod using the vape battery. NekoMichi is one of many DIYers who salvage batteries and other parts from so-called disposable vapes and repurpose them for power banks, gaming controllers, and other small devices. One person on the DIY electronics subreddit even built an e-bike battery out of 130 disposable vapes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That is a great reuse of these batteries that otherwise would just end up in our landfills or incinerated. At the same time, you can’t expect your average vaper to know how to use Arduino chips and be able to do this. I think it’s a great proof of concept, right? It shows these things are totally reusable. Like it’s insane that we’re just throwing them out after, you know, a single run. We also have to be aware however, that because the batteries are not made to last, that there are lots of possible hazards that could come from that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like Yogi pointed out, DIY recycling is not exactly going to solve a massive systemic issue. Taking apart, and then repurposing, vape components is extremely labor intensive, requires highly technical skills, and may cause a fire that’s nearly impossible to put out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But what \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">is\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> inching us closer to building the circular economy that Yogi was talking about earlier is the right to repair movement. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Under right to repair laws – now in place in at least seven states\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — if you buy a new electronic device, the company that sold you that device has to sell the repair manuals and spare parts to fix it if it breaks — instead of forcing you to buy a whole new one.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> In addition to taking back used cartridges and batteries for recycling, some cannabis vape companies also sell replacement parts and offer repair services.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This might be a way forward for more sustainable e-cigarettes, too. \u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t want to be in disposable relationships. I like having my old cell phone that works exactly the way I like it to, and I don t have to use a month of my time figuring out the new configurations on a new one and getting them exactly how I like. I like stuff that lasts a while so that I can get cozy with it, that I get to know it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, people will always be determined to get their nicotine fix. So when addressing this e-waste issue and having that in mind, is there any sustainable way forward? Do you think? Like, is the answer just to go back to cigarettes? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No, I don’t think so. But, you know, at the birth of the e-cigarette movement, there were a lot of these mods, they called them, right? So it was sort of-. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I remember the Vapelords. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, exactly, right. So build your own e-cigarette. And it really did have a lot of that maker’s sort of ethos behind it, where you could optimize, you know, the liquid, the juice, and the battery, and the heating coil, look at the right ohms, so that everything’s perfect and you can blow these amazing clouds, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I do think that we can help raise awareness of making things more sustainable in terms of reusable, number one, by taking off the market the option just to be totally mindless about it. And hopefully all of this is in tandem with raising awareness of the long-term effects of vaping as well because if people need their nicotine fix, they’re going to get it. But there are so many better ways to do so than with disposables. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so here’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re ready to throw away a vape. Don’t toss them in your regular trash or rinse them out. We don’t want those chemicals hitting municipal water systems. Treat it like getting rid of batteries. Put it aside in a cool, dry place until you can drop it off at a household hazardous waste disposal spot. You can look up your local site online, contact your waste management company, or ask at the place where you bought the vape, and maybe… Consider leaving disposable vapes behind. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yogi Hale Hendlin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I really understand that we are social animals. We are mammals that mimic each other. And so when we are in situations where it’s just easy, out of sight, out-of-mind, hey, that’s really convenient for us. But when we’re forced to understand, okay, so maybe you had to blow up a mountain to get the lithium to make that vape, maybe you have to deforest lots of land in Malawi and have people who got green leaf sickness from harvesting the tobacco leaves. And then you had to flu cure them and extract the nicotine and make that juice. And that’s how I got my thing. Like you become a lot more aware and you treat it in a more sacred way because I’m not saying that people shouldn’t do X or Y, but when we’re aware of the full ramifications of what we’re doing, the whole commodity chain, the global commodity chains that make it super simple just to press a few buttons on the internet, have this thing delivered to me, I suck on it, I throw it in the garbage can, it goes away and that’s it, that’s my entire relationship to it. That makes it all too easy for me to totally bypass the actual impacts that it’s having on people and the environment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Hambrick is our editor. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor and wrote our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Director of Content Operations.Jen Chien is our director of podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsay is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you have feedback, or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs@kqed.org. Follow us on instagram at “close all tabs pod.” Or drop it on Discord — we’re in the Close All Tabs channel at discord.gg/KQED. And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple podcasts or whatever platform you use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I wish this thing had like a little Tamagotchi on it so then I could like. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh my god, yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Care, care for my little pet and then also be vaping. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t give them ideas.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Samantha Cole: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I bet that exists.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "sex-workers-tried-to-warn-us-about-age-verification-laws",
"title": "Sex Workers Tried to Warn Us About Age Verification Laws",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Requiring internet users to verify their ages before accessing mature content may sound reasonable. Shouldn’t we be doing a better job protecting kids from online vulgarities? But free speech advocates say the push for age verification isn’t really about protecting children — and that bills like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would open the door to greater surveillance, censorship and control of what people can do online. Those same free speech advocates say the evidence lies in what happened to sex workers after the passage of the bills known as Allow States and Victims To Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) in 2018. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, Morgan is joined by writer, researcher and dominatrix Dr. Olivia Snow and Mashable associate editor Anna Iovine to explore the connections between porn, sex work and surveillance — and what age verification laws could mean for the future of the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5614462230\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://datax.ucla.edu/people/olivia-snow\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dr. Olivia Snow\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, research fellow at UCLA’s Center on Resilience & Digital Justice\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://mashable.com/author/anna-iovine\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anna Iovine\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, associate editor of features at \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mashable\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://mashable.com/article/age-verification-is-going-to-destroy-the-entire-internet\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Age verification is going to destroy the entire internet \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Anna Iovine, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mashable\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/roe-abortion-sex-worker-policy/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are You Ready to Be Surveilled Like A Sex Worker?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Dr. Olivia Snow, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WIRED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.thenation.com/article/society/airbnb-banning-sex-workers/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sex Workers Have Been Banned From Airbnb for Years. Will You Be Next?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Dr. Olivia Snow, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Nation\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.polygon.com/discord-delays-age-id-verification/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Discord delays age verification measures as it admits what it got ‘wrong’\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Austin Manchester, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Polygon\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://whyy.org/segments/fosta-sesta-was-supposed-to-thwart-sex-trafficking-instead-its-sparked-a-movement/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">FOSTA-SESTA was supposed to thwart sex trafficking. Instead, it’s sparked a movement \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Liz Tung, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WHYY \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theswaddle.com/the-internet-loves-sex-why-does-it-hate-sex-workers\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Internet Loves Sex. Why Does it Hate Sex Workers? \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Luna, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Swaddle\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2023/09/12/breast-cancer-content-creators-at-odds-with-social-media-rules/70731774007/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When social media censorship gets it wrong: The struggle of breast cancer content creators\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Savannah Kuchar, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">USA Today\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://mashable.com/article/ethical-age-verification-assurance\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What would ethical age verification look like online? \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Anna Iovine, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mashable\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://theintercept.com/2024/08/16/project-2025-russ-vought-porn-ban/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Project 2025 Co-Author Caught Admitting Secret Conservative Plan to Ban Porn\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Shawn Musgrave, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Intercept\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eff.org/pages/algorithmic-suppression-abortion-content-creators#main-content\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Going Viral vs. Going Dark: Why Extremism Trends and Abortion Content Gets Censored\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Kenyatta Thomas, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Electronic Frontier Foundation: Stop Censoring Abortion Campaign \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/super-bowl-lx/article/fcc-clears-bad-bunny-21357728.php\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">FCC finds no violations in Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show at Levi’s Stadium\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Aidin Vaziri, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco Chronicle \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So you know the messaging app Discord? Well, they recently announced that later this year, everyone on Discord will be a teen by default. Does this mean you’ll be transported back to middle school, confront your teenage bullies, and kiss your childhood crush like some kind of reverse 13 going on 30? Sorry, but no. It does mean that the way you can use Discord now might be very different. It’s part of a bigger push to “age gate” the internet. Discord’s new Teen by Default setting means that all users automatically get the teen version of the platform. So sensitive content is blurred out, and certain servers are off-limits. Discord said it’ll use both AI detection and human review to decide which servers are for adults only. How do you get past the age gating? Easy. Just upload a face scan or a photo of your government ID. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So on its face, that seems like a pretty good idea. Like, I mean, who needs to be accessing adult content on Discord? Like, sure, we’ll all be safe, fine, but I mean none of this was ever about protecting children, ever. This is about data farming and mass surveillance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Dr. Olivia Snow. She’s a researcher at UCLA’s Center for Resilience and Data Justice, where she studies sex work and algorithmic surveillance. And she’s writing a book about this topic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I’m also a dominatrix. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It turns out, being a sex worker has become increasingly perilous on today’s internet. As a sex worker herself, Olivia has seen firsthand the way platforms have targeted and surveilled sex workers, even if they aren’t posting explicit or sexual content that violates the site’s rules. She says that Discord’s new age verification policy raises a lot of red flags about privacy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By requiring ID, like on one hand, that can prove that you’re of, you know, the right age. On the other, it also provides a digital footprint of the content that you are consuming, which under our current administration can be really dangerous if that content happens to be, for example, like queer-related. If it’s organizing around racial justice. Now Discord could potentially just offer up a list of names. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Discord said they’re offering privacy forward verification options. They claim that facial scans would never leave the user’s device and that IDs would only be used to verify age. They also said that users’ real identities would never be associated with their accounts and that their third-party vendors wouldn’t store any of this verification data. It’s all supposedly deleted right after users are age-checked. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course they’re not doing that, but like there have been multiple reports of that data getting breached and leaked. And you know, how would that happen if they were getting rid of our data? Oh, right. They aren’t. They’re selling it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, Discord had a major data breach last year that exposed about 70,000 users’ government IDs. The company initially enforced age checks in the UK and Australia last year to comply with local social media regulations. But hey, the company said that the vendors they’re working with now had nothing to do with that huge violation of user privacy, so it’s all good now. Last week, we talked about Roblox, the super popular kids’ gaming platform and their new age verification policy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That came on the heels of dozens of lawsuits against the company over allegations of predators grooming children on the platform. Age gating is becoming the norm online as platforms face increasing pressure to keep kids from seeing potentially harmful content. With age verification laws sweeping the UK, Australia, much of Europe and even here in the U.S. Free speech advocates are sounding the alarm about censorship and surveillance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course we want to protect children. We always want to protect children, but that’s not what the legislation is actually about. If any legislation were about protecting children, then we’d have like gun reform, but we don’t. It’s really about expanding the surveillance state and using protecting kids and protecting, you know, children’s purity, whatever, as an excuse. And it’s an excellent excuse. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there’s one group that’s been warning us about this exact issue for decades, sex workers. Today, we’re diving into the link between porn and the First Amendment and how the tactics first used to censor and surveil sex workers are now being used against everyone else. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what does sex work have to do with free speech? A lot more than you’d think. The UK’s Online Safety Act went into effect last year, which puts the onus on platforms to ensure that minors aren’t exposed to, quote, harmful content like porn or violence or self-harm. It’s a very broad and subjective umbrella, which means that all kinds of content can now be age-gated, like footage of police brutality against pro-Palestinian protesters. Or discussions of LGBTQ relationships. The UK’s Online Safety Act is responsible for the most recent and widespread changes, but it’s definitely not the first piece of legislation to require age verification. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s start with a new tab. Why do I have to verify my age on Discord? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Joining me is Anna Iovine, associate features editor at Mashable, who primarily covers dating, relationships, sex, and sex work, and how they’re all linked to this current digital landscape. So she’s been covering the effects of age verification laws pretty closely. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Very broadly, age verification laws require personal data, such as a facial scan or a government ID, in order to access data that might be deemed, quote, harmful for minors. So in a lot of cases, this has to do with pornography. And in the United States, around half of the country has these laws now, but they’re all different because they’re state laws. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Indiana was the first state to enact one of these laws back in 2023. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And we’ve seen this moral panic around pornography really for years leading up to that point. And since then, there have been copycat bills of the Louisiana law. And then last year, the Supreme Court deemed that the Texas age verification law was constitutional. So that proved that age verification laws were here to stay in the country, at least for now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act went into effect this year. What are some of the unexpected places that we’re seeing this rollout? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So some platforms that are not NSFW have started age gating their content such as Spotify and now we see Discord. And even some subreddits have been age gated in the UK such as Stop Drinking, which obviously doesn’t have anything to do with pornography. But the UK Online Safety Act deemed some content categories potentially harmful for minors and addiction content does fall into that, even if you’re talking about recovery — which is the issue with some of these laws in that if you are discussing some of these quote unquote adult topics, you might not even be posting anything harmful or you might be trying to get help. So that’s just one ill effect of these law, but it’s spread way beyond pornography. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, we’re seeing this across the world, like these laws initially targeted porn sites and sexually explicit content. But now we have to submit your face to Discord to chat with strangers. What is the logic behind trying to age gate some of this content? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are the outward purposes of these bills, which is to protect children. But in actuality, children are not protected when they have to scan their face and input their personal data, sensitive data, into websites that might not know how to hold this data. I don’t think that makes children safe. And I also don’t it’s safe to prevent children from seeing certain types of content. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For instance, one category that falls under the Online Safety Act is eating disorder content, which can be very harmful. But if you’re in eating disorder recovery, why should you not have access to recovery content? I don’t think that algorithms or AI or whatever systems they use to filter out what content is, quote unquote, for adults, knows the difference between what can be helpful and what can be harmful. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I also think that, at least in the United States historically, moral panics have been outwardly centered on children, like, “Oh, think of the children.” Such as the satanic panic in the 80s. But really, I would speak for myself, I think it’s to chill speech and to chill sexuality and just blame it on like, “Oh, we cannot have this content around children.” But as a result, now adults have to input their personal data, adults may not have access to content that is their right to. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are these policies effective? Like, can’t you just use a VPN to get around it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. You can use a VPN and they are not effective is the problem. What people see when these laws go into effect is that searches for VPNs go way up because people will figure out a way to get around them. That’s what happens with censorship. And in the case of porn sites that have to implement an age verification system, In the US and in the UK, if a site is based there, there’s a high likelihood that they will comply or will try to comply. But otherwise, if the website isn’t based in one of these territories, then they might not comply at all. And that’s something that Pornhub has pointed out that if other porn sites are based in other European countries or what have you, why would they want to follow a law in a different territory? It doesn’t make sense. So people can either use a VPN or just go to a site that doesn’t comply with the law. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While the use of age verification technology is relatively recent, the crackdown on porn really ramped up almost a decade ago. And similar to age verification laws today, the legislation that led to the porn crackdown made online platforms responsible for the content their users posted, sweeping changes that heavily surveilled and censored sex workers. We’re now seeing similar tactics being used against the general public. We’ll dive into the ripple effects of a pair of laws. Called FOSTA and SESTA, but first, a quick break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back, and we’re diving into the great porn ban of 2018. Let’s open a new tab. Are you ready to be surveilled like a sex worker? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right now, age verification laws in the UK, Australia, and in the US are leading to a crackdown on porn in the name of protecting children. We saw similar restrictions years ago, but that was in the name of stopping sex trafficking. So back in 2018, President Trump signed a pair of bills into law called FOSTA and SESTA and drastically changed the internet. Here’s Mashable editor Anna Iovine again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So FASTA-SESTA stands for Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and Stop Enabling Sex Traficking Act. And outwardly, it was to stop online sex trafficking and it had bipartisan support because if you said, “Oh, I’m not voting for the bill that stops online sex-trafficking,” it looks really bad. But in actuality, this bill made sex workers less safe and did not do much for sex trafficking at all. I was actually looking at a report released in 2021 that there was only one federal conviction from FOSTA-SESTA of a sex trafficker. But this made people less safe because as a result of FOSSTA-SESTTA, which was a carve out of Section 230, all these online platforms will now be liable for any content that is quote unquote soliciting or enabling prostitution or sex work. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you may notice that Section 230 comes up pretty often. It’s known as the 26 words that made the internet. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act protects online platforms from liability for what their users post. It also protects platforms from liability if they choose to remove or restrict user content, even if it’s not criminal. That’s why platforms are allowed to remove hate speech. Now, section 230 doesn’t let platforms get away with criminal activity, like openly selling drugs. It holds platforms responsible for their own actions, but not for those of third parties. It means that if you have a blog and someone else leaves a comment that says, hey, buy drugs here, you aren’t liable for what they commented on your post. And they also can’t sue you if you delete their comment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Section 230 enabled Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Substack, and even the New York Times recipe comments section to become the vibrant town squares of discourse that they are today. Okay, maybe that’s optimistic. Whether you love or hate the incessant arguing online, that level of openness and exchange is only possible because of Section 230. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, FOSTA and SESTA removed that legal immunity for platforms that “facilitate sex trafficking.” A phrase that has been interpreted very broadly. Platforms are now held legally accountable for any of their users’ activity that could be linked to sex work. One of the biggest sites to go down after FOSTA-SESTA passed was Backpage. It was kind of like Craigslist, an online bulletin board where users could advertise equipment rentals, seasonal gigs, and escort services. Backpage was notorious for its role in trafficking minors. And multiple investigations shut down the site. But FOSTA-SESTA also wiped out platforms for consensual sex work. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a result of this, people who wanted to do sex work suddenly found that they had fewer resources. They couldn’t talk to each other about clients or the like. They couldn’t vet clients online because all these avenues of finding clients suddenly went away. And if they wanted to, say, advertise their services or just live online and have an online presence like all of us do, they had their accounts banned or what’s called shadow banned, which means it gets deprioritized by the platform and it can’t be searched and they don’t show up on the explore page and such. So if anything, it actually was a boon to sex traffickers because it made sex workers more vulnerable. They were suddenly more disconnected from each other and potential safer clients. And I think it made it easier who prey on sex workers because they didn’t have the, because they had fewer online resources than they did before FOSTA-SESTA. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there are multiple studies that say that as a result of FOSTA-SESTA, sex workers are less safe now. I also want to mention the ripple effects of FOSTA-SESTA, a ton of people that are not sex workers are also getting their accounts shut down or getting shadow banned, especially if they’re people of color or LGBTQ people and maybe show a little bit of skin. And these are all people who do not have power. Like Kim Kardashian can post whatever she wants, whatever scantily clad photo she wants. She can show it. She will not get de-prioritized because she’s rich and famous. But if someone, if an erotic artist or a content creator or God forbid someone has an OnlyFans and wants to find some clients, they cannot post on Instagram the way that Kim Kardashian does. And that is a big effect of FOSTA-SESTA as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This overcorrection has made it much harder to post anything related to sexuality or women’s bodies. And it extends into all online platforms. Pole dancing instructors have been banned for showing off their athletic feats. Sex educators have been banned for trying to raise awareness about STIs and birth control. Instagram bans images of, quote, female breasts that include the nipple, but makes exceptions for depictions of breastfeeding or posts about mastectomies. However, like many other platforms, Instagram’s automated moderation isn’t great at understanding context. So, content about breast cancer awarneness is still taken down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And in terms of women’s health, we’ve also seen that on Meta in particular, women’s health ads get rejected, such as if you’re trying to sell period products or rather create ads for period products, you can get rejected for being sexual. And yet in a lot of cases, ads for male sex toys or erectile dysfunction medications often don’t have that problem. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s not just social media platforms. Payment processors, for example, don’t want to be held liable for potentially facilitating sex trafficking. So they’ve refused to service anything related to sex, from adult content creator subscriptions to the sale of sex toys. FOSTA SESTA has rippled into every online service, and it’s affected sex workers on platforms totally unrelated to their work. Like how Airbnb flags sex workers and anyone close to them, like roommates and partners. Dr. Olivia Snow, the UCLA surveillance researcher and dominatrix, has been flagged on Venmo and Cash App. Even her DoorDash account was suspended a few years ago. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So one day I had a friend who had just moved to Los Angeles and she was struggling and like living in a hostel and I was like, “Yeah, I’m gonna send her a sandwich. Like I’m going to be a good pal.” And I like get on DoorDash and I’m sending her a sandwich and it just suspended my account like as the transaction was about to go through. And then I got an email about it that was like your account has been suspended due to like X, Y, and Z. I was flagged as a high-risk user the same way that I’ve been flagged on Venmo or Cash App, but Venmo and Cash App make a little bit of sense because I’ve received tribute from clients on those. I haven’t received the same on DoorDash, but it’s still the same technologies that were able to flag me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How do platforms know? According to Olivia, algorithmic surveillance. Like everyone else on the internet, sex workers have been tracked across platforms. All of this data has been used to identify certain users as high risk. It’s not unlike the way that platforms track user activity to figure out what their specific demographic likes to buy. For example, Olivia’s cat made an appearance right before we started recording this interview. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We were talking about my cat earlier, right? It is not unlikely that after me saying that or you hearing that or anyone watching this, if they open up Instagram, they’re gonna get an ad for cat food, right? They share data and they sell it to each other, mainly to better market to us. By us, I mean like everyone who’s using the internet. They know what device we’re on, they know our phone number, they know our email address, they know credit card number, social security number. So when you have like this, like these constellations of data points that we are willingly sharing with these platforms and it’s really not too difficult to link these things together. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Olivia often compares sex workers to “the canary in the coal mine” when it comes to surveillance. She said sex workers are often the test population for data collection, surveillance, and censorship. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One thing I really love about the canary and the coal mine metaphor is that the way that the canaries functioned in coal mining was that it was when the canary stopped singing that you wanted to take note because that meant that the oxygen levels weren’t enough to sustain the canary’s consciousness. So it’s not that like, “Oh, I finally hear the canary,” like, which is how I feel that is that’s often misinterpreted as. It’s more like, “Oh, the canary’s been singing and now just isn’t anymore.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that is openly the plan for how to deal with sex workers on the internet and on various technologies. We don’t want to see porn. And then when we don’t see the porn, we know that our content moderation is working. But the people who you’re moderating out of sight are same people who are saying like, “Hey, you know, this is going to get you used against you next,” but you don’t hear that because you can’t hear them anymore. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s look at a real-world example of this. Surveillance and censorship after Roe v. Wade was overturned. FOSTA-SESTA cast a very broad net around the quote, facilitation of trafficking, which meant that platforms cracked down on anything related to sexuality. They responded similarly after the Dobbs decision in 2022. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We almost immediately saw this censorship expand to people sharing information on how to access abortions, how to excess contraceptives, safe sex in general. There’s no language in there that criminalizes talking about abortion on Instagram, especially if you’re in a state where abortion is protected. But, out of, you know, whether it’s an abundance of caution or plausible deniability or a genuine desire to silence activists or, you know, censor this information and stymieing its circulation, platforms just started going after abortion and like safe sex content, you know, pretty immediately. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Olivia pointed to the Texas Heartbeat Act, which effectively bans abortions after six weeks. The law also allows private individuals to sue anyone who performs, induces, or aids and abets abortions, after the cutoff. “Aids and abets” is very broad. It can include clinic staff members, Uber drivers who take someone to an abortion clinic, or even friends who help pay for the procedure. The same methods used to identify sex workers as “high risk,” like tracking activity across platforms, collecting location data, tracking keystrokes, can also be used to flag anyone seeking or providing abortions, especially in states where it’s criminalized. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So that certainly mimics FOSTA-SESTA in the criminalization of facilitation. And I mean, that rhetoric and that language and these other policies around prostitution already existing made it really easy to justify expanding that to people seeking or accessing or providing abortions. Another demographic that I’ve seen absolutely throttled is Palestinians and pro-Palestine activists. Like I noticed myself when I was tweeting about Palestine, I got far more severe shadow banning doing that than I ever did tweeting about sex work. But you know, the reason they were able to do that is because the infrastructure was already in place. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, FOSTA-SESTA led to a widespread suppression of sexual content, and much more surveillance, in an effort to stop trafficking. And now, a few years later, we’re seeing another legislative push to restrict the internet. But this time, it’s in the name of protecting children. The era of age verification is here. Since 2022, Congress has been trying to pass a federal law, similar to the UK’s, called the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA. Here’s Anna again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KOSA is interesting because it almost combines FOSTA-SESTA with age verification laws because it requires platforms to have a duty of care to basically make it so children cannot see quote-unquote harmful content. And like the Online Safety Act, what qualifies as content harmful for children is really broad and includes harmful behaviors such as the eating disorders and addiction and also covers. Bullying, and such, in addition to pornographic and sexual content. So what would this do? It’s so broad, I think it signals that people don’t know about how the internet works because it’s like, how would this even happen? How can you prevent children from seeing this? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anna thinks it’ll result in a combination of FOSTA-SESTA and age verification laws, which means that a lot of content will be wiped from the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think a lot of this content would be removed. I think tech platforms would just delete everything. Or if they’re using different tools, I think they would install age verification systems in order to corner off this content from minors. So it potentially has the power to be worse. Granted, KOSA has been introduced and failed and reintroduced a bunch of times, so I don’t know the viability of this law, but it keeps coming back. So it does seem like it’s not going away, but it does have the potential to be scary because I think it’s internet policy written by people who don’t know how the internet works. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there’s a real dilemma here. Obviously, we don’t want to expose kids to sexual or harmful content. But do we have to give up our privacy for that? Let’s open one more tab. Protecting kids versus the First Amendment. Free speech advocates are very concerned about KOSA and laws like it. So how does age-gating porn affect the way we can interact with the internet outside of just sexual content? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It seems like as age verification laws become more and more widespread that it will be harder to be anonymous online, which I think is a huge privacy and security concern. And it also is scary because it, in terms of content that can be harmful for children, there’s a capacity for people to point at something that they don’t like such as criticism of the government and saying “you’re actually bullying,” or to look at two people of the same sex and say that’s pornography. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, it really has the capacity to chill free speech and make it so you cannot be yourself online or you cannot say what you want to say, and the internet can be fundamentally changed from 30 years ago when Section 230 was passed. Whenever there is censorship, people will try to go around that, which is exactly what people are doing with VPNs, and now there’s a push to ban VPNs or at least ban them for children, which according to First Amendment and internet experts that I’ve spoken to, falls under second-order censorship. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So a lot of lawmakers are making the assurance that they’re not trying to just ban porn with AV laws. But in Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump’s second term, they literally did lay out a plan to ban porn and imprison sexual content creators. What is the environment right now around a so-called porn ban? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They don’t want porn, I think because they don’t like it, they don’t like human sexuality, they think it’s disgusting, what have you, but I also think it’ because they know that if porn is banned, they can call things that are not pornographic porn and just chill speech that has nothing to do with explicit content. We’re already seeing it. There was a congressman who called Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show pornography, which I think is exactly the kind of thing that we should be seeing because it shows that it’s not just about the explicit content. It’s not about just people being naked and having sex on camera. It’s about much more than that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. Is there an ethical way to keep kids from seeing sexual or harmful content without severely restricting the internet for everyone else? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes, there is a way. It’s called device level filters. So free speech advocates and sex workers and the like have been advocating for this method for years. A device level filter is on the actual device and it blocks all websites deemed “restricted to adults,” and you cannot get around it. You can’t use a VPN on the device. You can’t like suddenly, I don’t know, turn it off and turn it back on again and it’s gone. It is on to device. And yet, if you’re an adult, you won’t have this filter and you won’t have to submit your ID or a facial scan or what have you. So according to these advocates, it is the best way. And it’s also what Pornhub and its parent company have been advocating for for years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why is sex so intertwined with free speech online? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think because it is so shamed in our society because people in person don’t talk about sex a lot. We’re not taught it in schools. Our parents maybe don’t talked about it as much. So I think it’s really the third rail in a lot of these cases because it’s such a charged topic in our society. But human sexuality exists and it’s within us and it’s natural to want to express it whether it’s talk about sex, learn about it, or watch people have it. And we also see that whenever technology advances, porn is the first thing to go on it. Pornographers were very early adopters of the internet. They were early adopter of VR, and now they’re seeing they’re early adopters of AI — if it’s done consensually, deepfakes are a whole different story. But I think it’s natural. It’s one of those things like food and sleep, and even though it’s not compulsory like those other two things, I think it’s natural to want to discuss it, especially when it’s so squashed as a topic of conversation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Porn is often credited as the driving force behind the internet. The sex industry pioneered streaming, digital advertising, and e-commerce. Sex and the internet are so intertwined that it’s been enshrined in internet lore. Rule 34 is this meme that says, “If it exists, there’s definitely porn of it online.” And like we’ve heard throughout this episode, banning porn, or even restricting sexual content will affect everyone, regardless of whether you google smut. Olivia warns that teenagers will always be able to access porn if they’re determined enough, but these restrictions on sexual or harmful content will ultimately stop them from accessing information about safe sex or consent. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many free speech advocates argue that it should be up to parents, not the government, to monitor and limit what their kids do online. In December, a House subcommittee advanced 18 bills that revolve around protecting kids online, including KOSA. The debate between protecting kids and protecting free speech and privacy is an ongoing fight. And Olivia said that it’s never been a better time to listen to sex workers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because what they’re doing to us, they will do to you next and you’re not going to like it. It sounds excessive, it sounds like a moral panic, and yet all of these things that sex workers have been predicting for years are happening every day. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Discord’s Teen-by-Default policy was supposed to start this month. It would require users to submit facial scans and upload their government IDs in order to access flagged servers. But last week, after significant backlash from users, the company announced that it’s postponing age verification requirements until the second half of this year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a blog post, Discord CTO and co-founder Stanislav Vyshnevskiy acknowledged that the platform “missed the mark.” And said that he “gets the skepticism.” Discord’s age verification is still going to happen, but Vyshnevskiy at least promised more transparency and alternative options that don’t involve giving her face to a third-party vendor. Okay, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva. It was edited by Chris Hambrick and Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Our team includes Jen Chien, who is the director of podcasts. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor in chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Epomaker Aula F99 keyboard with Greywood V3 switches and Cherry Profile PBT keycaps. Do you like these deep dives? Are you closing your tabs? Then don’t forget to rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Maybe drop a comment too. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org slash podcasts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "Requiring internet users to verify their ages before accessing mature content may sound reasonable. Shouldn’t we be doing a better job protecting kids from online vulgarities? But free speech advocates say the push for age verification isn’t really about protecting children — and that bills like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would open the door to greater surveillance, censorship and control of what people can do online. Those same free speech advocates say the evidence lies in what happened to sex workers after the passage of the bills known as Allow States and Victims To Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) in 2018. In this episode, Morgan is joined by writer, researcher and dominatrix Dr. Olivia Snow and Mashable associate editor Anna Iovine to explore the connections between porn, sex work and surveillance — and what age verification laws could mean for the future of the internet. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Requiring internet users to verify their ages before accessing mature content may sound reasonable. Shouldn’t we be doing a better job protecting kids from online vulgarities? But free speech advocates say the push for age verification isn’t really about protecting children — and that bills like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would open the door to greater surveillance, censorship and control of what people can do online. Those same free speech advocates say the evidence lies in what happened to sex workers after the passage of the bills known as Allow States and Victims To Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) in 2018. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, Morgan is joined by writer, researcher and dominatrix Dr. Olivia Snow and Mashable associate editor Anna Iovine to explore the connections between porn, sex work and surveillance — and what age verification laws could mean for the future of the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5614462230\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://datax.ucla.edu/people/olivia-snow\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dr. Olivia Snow\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, research fellow at UCLA’s Center on Resilience & Digital Justice\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://mashable.com/author/anna-iovine\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anna Iovine\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, associate editor of features at \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mashable\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://mashable.com/article/age-verification-is-going-to-destroy-the-entire-internet\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Age verification is going to destroy the entire internet \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Anna Iovine, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mashable\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/roe-abortion-sex-worker-policy/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are You Ready to Be Surveilled Like A Sex Worker?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Dr. Olivia Snow, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WIRED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.thenation.com/article/society/airbnb-banning-sex-workers/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sex Workers Have Been Banned From Airbnb for Years. Will You Be Next?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Dr. Olivia Snow, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Nation\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.polygon.com/discord-delays-age-id-verification/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Discord delays age verification measures as it admits what it got ‘wrong’\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Austin Manchester, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Polygon\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://whyy.org/segments/fosta-sesta-was-supposed-to-thwart-sex-trafficking-instead-its-sparked-a-movement/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">FOSTA-SESTA was supposed to thwart sex trafficking. Instead, it’s sparked a movement \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Liz Tung, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WHYY \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theswaddle.com/the-internet-loves-sex-why-does-it-hate-sex-workers\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Internet Loves Sex. Why Does it Hate Sex Workers? \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Luna, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Swaddle\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2023/09/12/breast-cancer-content-creators-at-odds-with-social-media-rules/70731774007/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When social media censorship gets it wrong: The struggle of breast cancer content creators\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Savannah Kuchar, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">USA Today\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://mashable.com/article/ethical-age-verification-assurance\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What would ethical age verification look like online? \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Anna Iovine, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mashable\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://theintercept.com/2024/08/16/project-2025-russ-vought-porn-ban/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Project 2025 Co-Author Caught Admitting Secret Conservative Plan to Ban Porn\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Shawn Musgrave, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Intercept\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eff.org/pages/algorithmic-suppression-abortion-content-creators#main-content\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Going Viral vs. Going Dark: Why Extremism Trends and Abortion Content Gets Censored\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Kenyatta Thomas, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Electronic Frontier Foundation: Stop Censoring Abortion Campaign \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/super-bowl-lx/article/fcc-clears-bad-bunny-21357728.php\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">FCC finds no violations in Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show at Levi’s Stadium\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Aidin Vaziri, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco Chronicle \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So you know the messaging app Discord? Well, they recently announced that later this year, everyone on Discord will be a teen by default. Does this mean you’ll be transported back to middle school, confront your teenage bullies, and kiss your childhood crush like some kind of reverse 13 going on 30? Sorry, but no. It does mean that the way you can use Discord now might be very different. It’s part of a bigger push to “age gate” the internet. Discord’s new Teen by Default setting means that all users automatically get the teen version of the platform. So sensitive content is blurred out, and certain servers are off-limits. Discord said it’ll use both AI detection and human review to decide which servers are for adults only. How do you get past the age gating? Easy. Just upload a face scan or a photo of your government ID. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So on its face, that seems like a pretty good idea. Like, I mean, who needs to be accessing adult content on Discord? Like, sure, we’ll all be safe, fine, but I mean none of this was ever about protecting children, ever. This is about data farming and mass surveillance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Dr. Olivia Snow. She’s a researcher at UCLA’s Center for Resilience and Data Justice, where she studies sex work and algorithmic surveillance. And she’s writing a book about this topic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I’m also a dominatrix. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It turns out, being a sex worker has become increasingly perilous on today’s internet. As a sex worker herself, Olivia has seen firsthand the way platforms have targeted and surveilled sex workers, even if they aren’t posting explicit or sexual content that violates the site’s rules. She says that Discord’s new age verification policy raises a lot of red flags about privacy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By requiring ID, like on one hand, that can prove that you’re of, you know, the right age. On the other, it also provides a digital footprint of the content that you are consuming, which under our current administration can be really dangerous if that content happens to be, for example, like queer-related. If it’s organizing around racial justice. Now Discord could potentially just offer up a list of names. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Discord said they’re offering privacy forward verification options. They claim that facial scans would never leave the user’s device and that IDs would only be used to verify age. They also said that users’ real identities would never be associated with their accounts and that their third-party vendors wouldn’t store any of this verification data. It’s all supposedly deleted right after users are age-checked. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course they’re not doing that, but like there have been multiple reports of that data getting breached and leaked. And you know, how would that happen if they were getting rid of our data? Oh, right. They aren’t. They’re selling it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, Discord had a major data breach last year that exposed about 70,000 users’ government IDs. The company initially enforced age checks in the UK and Australia last year to comply with local social media regulations. But hey, the company said that the vendors they’re working with now had nothing to do with that huge violation of user privacy, so it’s all good now. Last week, we talked about Roblox, the super popular kids’ gaming platform and their new age verification policy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That came on the heels of dozens of lawsuits against the company over allegations of predators grooming children on the platform. Age gating is becoming the norm online as platforms face increasing pressure to keep kids from seeing potentially harmful content. With age verification laws sweeping the UK, Australia, much of Europe and even here in the U.S. Free speech advocates are sounding the alarm about censorship and surveillance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course we want to protect children. We always want to protect children, but that’s not what the legislation is actually about. If any legislation were about protecting children, then we’d have like gun reform, but we don’t. It’s really about expanding the surveillance state and using protecting kids and protecting, you know, children’s purity, whatever, as an excuse. And it’s an excellent excuse. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there’s one group that’s been warning us about this exact issue for decades, sex workers. Today, we’re diving into the link between porn and the First Amendment and how the tactics first used to censor and surveil sex workers are now being used against everyone else. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what does sex work have to do with free speech? A lot more than you’d think. The UK’s Online Safety Act went into effect last year, which puts the onus on platforms to ensure that minors aren’t exposed to, quote, harmful content like porn or violence or self-harm. It’s a very broad and subjective umbrella, which means that all kinds of content can now be age-gated, like footage of police brutality against pro-Palestinian protesters. Or discussions of LGBTQ relationships. The UK’s Online Safety Act is responsible for the most recent and widespread changes, but it’s definitely not the first piece of legislation to require age verification. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s start with a new tab. Why do I have to verify my age on Discord? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Joining me is Anna Iovine, associate features editor at Mashable, who primarily covers dating, relationships, sex, and sex work, and how they’re all linked to this current digital landscape. So she’s been covering the effects of age verification laws pretty closely. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Very broadly, age verification laws require personal data, such as a facial scan or a government ID, in order to access data that might be deemed, quote, harmful for minors. So in a lot of cases, this has to do with pornography. And in the United States, around half of the country has these laws now, but they’re all different because they’re state laws. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Indiana was the first state to enact one of these laws back in 2023. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And we’ve seen this moral panic around pornography really for years leading up to that point. And since then, there have been copycat bills of the Louisiana law. And then last year, the Supreme Court deemed that the Texas age verification law was constitutional. So that proved that age verification laws were here to stay in the country, at least for now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act went into effect this year. What are some of the unexpected places that we’re seeing this rollout? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So some platforms that are not NSFW have started age gating their content such as Spotify and now we see Discord. And even some subreddits have been age gated in the UK such as Stop Drinking, which obviously doesn’t have anything to do with pornography. But the UK Online Safety Act deemed some content categories potentially harmful for minors and addiction content does fall into that, even if you’re talking about recovery — which is the issue with some of these laws in that if you are discussing some of these quote unquote adult topics, you might not even be posting anything harmful or you might be trying to get help. So that’s just one ill effect of these law, but it’s spread way beyond pornography. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, we’re seeing this across the world, like these laws initially targeted porn sites and sexually explicit content. But now we have to submit your face to Discord to chat with strangers. What is the logic behind trying to age gate some of this content? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are the outward purposes of these bills, which is to protect children. But in actuality, children are not protected when they have to scan their face and input their personal data, sensitive data, into websites that might not know how to hold this data. I don’t think that makes children safe. And I also don’t it’s safe to prevent children from seeing certain types of content. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For instance, one category that falls under the Online Safety Act is eating disorder content, which can be very harmful. But if you’re in eating disorder recovery, why should you not have access to recovery content? I don’t think that algorithms or AI or whatever systems they use to filter out what content is, quote unquote, for adults, knows the difference between what can be helpful and what can be harmful. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I also think that, at least in the United States historically, moral panics have been outwardly centered on children, like, “Oh, think of the children.” Such as the satanic panic in the 80s. But really, I would speak for myself, I think it’s to chill speech and to chill sexuality and just blame it on like, “Oh, we cannot have this content around children.” But as a result, now adults have to input their personal data, adults may not have access to content that is their right to. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are these policies effective? Like, can’t you just use a VPN to get around it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. You can use a VPN and they are not effective is the problem. What people see when these laws go into effect is that searches for VPNs go way up because people will figure out a way to get around them. That’s what happens with censorship. And in the case of porn sites that have to implement an age verification system, In the US and in the UK, if a site is based there, there’s a high likelihood that they will comply or will try to comply. But otherwise, if the website isn’t based in one of these territories, then they might not comply at all. And that’s something that Pornhub has pointed out that if other porn sites are based in other European countries or what have you, why would they want to follow a law in a different territory? It doesn’t make sense. So people can either use a VPN or just go to a site that doesn’t comply with the law. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While the use of age verification technology is relatively recent, the crackdown on porn really ramped up almost a decade ago. And similar to age verification laws today, the legislation that led to the porn crackdown made online platforms responsible for the content their users posted, sweeping changes that heavily surveilled and censored sex workers. We’re now seeing similar tactics being used against the general public. We’ll dive into the ripple effects of a pair of laws. Called FOSTA and SESTA, but first, a quick break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back, and we’re diving into the great porn ban of 2018. Let’s open a new tab. Are you ready to be surveilled like a sex worker? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right now, age verification laws in the UK, Australia, and in the US are leading to a crackdown on porn in the name of protecting children. We saw similar restrictions years ago, but that was in the name of stopping sex trafficking. So back in 2018, President Trump signed a pair of bills into law called FOSTA and SESTA and drastically changed the internet. Here’s Mashable editor Anna Iovine again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So FASTA-SESTA stands for Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and Stop Enabling Sex Traficking Act. And outwardly, it was to stop online sex trafficking and it had bipartisan support because if you said, “Oh, I’m not voting for the bill that stops online sex-trafficking,” it looks really bad. But in actuality, this bill made sex workers less safe and did not do much for sex trafficking at all. I was actually looking at a report released in 2021 that there was only one federal conviction from FOSTA-SESTA of a sex trafficker. But this made people less safe because as a result of FOSSTA-SESTTA, which was a carve out of Section 230, all these online platforms will now be liable for any content that is quote unquote soliciting or enabling prostitution or sex work. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you may notice that Section 230 comes up pretty often. It’s known as the 26 words that made the internet. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act protects online platforms from liability for what their users post. It also protects platforms from liability if they choose to remove or restrict user content, even if it’s not criminal. That’s why platforms are allowed to remove hate speech. Now, section 230 doesn’t let platforms get away with criminal activity, like openly selling drugs. It holds platforms responsible for their own actions, but not for those of third parties. It means that if you have a blog and someone else leaves a comment that says, hey, buy drugs here, you aren’t liable for what they commented on your post. And they also can’t sue you if you delete their comment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Section 230 enabled Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Substack, and even the New York Times recipe comments section to become the vibrant town squares of discourse that they are today. Okay, maybe that’s optimistic. Whether you love or hate the incessant arguing online, that level of openness and exchange is only possible because of Section 230. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, FOSTA and SESTA removed that legal immunity for platforms that “facilitate sex trafficking.” A phrase that has been interpreted very broadly. Platforms are now held legally accountable for any of their users’ activity that could be linked to sex work. One of the biggest sites to go down after FOSTA-SESTA passed was Backpage. It was kind of like Craigslist, an online bulletin board where users could advertise equipment rentals, seasonal gigs, and escort services. Backpage was notorious for its role in trafficking minors. And multiple investigations shut down the site. But FOSTA-SESTA also wiped out platforms for consensual sex work. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a result of this, people who wanted to do sex work suddenly found that they had fewer resources. They couldn’t talk to each other about clients or the like. They couldn’t vet clients online because all these avenues of finding clients suddenly went away. And if they wanted to, say, advertise their services or just live online and have an online presence like all of us do, they had their accounts banned or what’s called shadow banned, which means it gets deprioritized by the platform and it can’t be searched and they don’t show up on the explore page and such. So if anything, it actually was a boon to sex traffickers because it made sex workers more vulnerable. They were suddenly more disconnected from each other and potential safer clients. And I think it made it easier who prey on sex workers because they didn’t have the, because they had fewer online resources than they did before FOSTA-SESTA. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there are multiple studies that say that as a result of FOSTA-SESTA, sex workers are less safe now. I also want to mention the ripple effects of FOSTA-SESTA, a ton of people that are not sex workers are also getting their accounts shut down or getting shadow banned, especially if they’re people of color or LGBTQ people and maybe show a little bit of skin. And these are all people who do not have power. Like Kim Kardashian can post whatever she wants, whatever scantily clad photo she wants. She can show it. She will not get de-prioritized because she’s rich and famous. But if someone, if an erotic artist or a content creator or God forbid someone has an OnlyFans and wants to find some clients, they cannot post on Instagram the way that Kim Kardashian does. And that is a big effect of FOSTA-SESTA as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This overcorrection has made it much harder to post anything related to sexuality or women’s bodies. And it extends into all online platforms. Pole dancing instructors have been banned for showing off their athletic feats. Sex educators have been banned for trying to raise awareness about STIs and birth control. Instagram bans images of, quote, female breasts that include the nipple, but makes exceptions for depictions of breastfeeding or posts about mastectomies. However, like many other platforms, Instagram’s automated moderation isn’t great at understanding context. So, content about breast cancer awarneness is still taken down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And in terms of women’s health, we’ve also seen that on Meta in particular, women’s health ads get rejected, such as if you’re trying to sell period products or rather create ads for period products, you can get rejected for being sexual. And yet in a lot of cases, ads for male sex toys or erectile dysfunction medications often don’t have that problem. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s not just social media platforms. Payment processors, for example, don’t want to be held liable for potentially facilitating sex trafficking. So they’ve refused to service anything related to sex, from adult content creator subscriptions to the sale of sex toys. FOSTA SESTA has rippled into every online service, and it’s affected sex workers on platforms totally unrelated to their work. Like how Airbnb flags sex workers and anyone close to them, like roommates and partners. Dr. Olivia Snow, the UCLA surveillance researcher and dominatrix, has been flagged on Venmo and Cash App. Even her DoorDash account was suspended a few years ago. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So one day I had a friend who had just moved to Los Angeles and she was struggling and like living in a hostel and I was like, “Yeah, I’m gonna send her a sandwich. Like I’m going to be a good pal.” And I like get on DoorDash and I’m sending her a sandwich and it just suspended my account like as the transaction was about to go through. And then I got an email about it that was like your account has been suspended due to like X, Y, and Z. I was flagged as a high-risk user the same way that I’ve been flagged on Venmo or Cash App, but Venmo and Cash App make a little bit of sense because I’ve received tribute from clients on those. I haven’t received the same on DoorDash, but it’s still the same technologies that were able to flag me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How do platforms know? According to Olivia, algorithmic surveillance. Like everyone else on the internet, sex workers have been tracked across platforms. All of this data has been used to identify certain users as high risk. It’s not unlike the way that platforms track user activity to figure out what their specific demographic likes to buy. For example, Olivia’s cat made an appearance right before we started recording this interview. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We were talking about my cat earlier, right? It is not unlikely that after me saying that or you hearing that or anyone watching this, if they open up Instagram, they’re gonna get an ad for cat food, right? They share data and they sell it to each other, mainly to better market to us. By us, I mean like everyone who’s using the internet. They know what device we’re on, they know our phone number, they know our email address, they know credit card number, social security number. So when you have like this, like these constellations of data points that we are willingly sharing with these platforms and it’s really not too difficult to link these things together. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Olivia often compares sex workers to “the canary in the coal mine” when it comes to surveillance. She said sex workers are often the test population for data collection, surveillance, and censorship. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One thing I really love about the canary and the coal mine metaphor is that the way that the canaries functioned in coal mining was that it was when the canary stopped singing that you wanted to take note because that meant that the oxygen levels weren’t enough to sustain the canary’s consciousness. So it’s not that like, “Oh, I finally hear the canary,” like, which is how I feel that is that’s often misinterpreted as. It’s more like, “Oh, the canary’s been singing and now just isn’t anymore.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that is openly the plan for how to deal with sex workers on the internet and on various technologies. We don’t want to see porn. And then when we don’t see the porn, we know that our content moderation is working. But the people who you’re moderating out of sight are same people who are saying like, “Hey, you know, this is going to get you used against you next,” but you don’t hear that because you can’t hear them anymore. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s look at a real-world example of this. Surveillance and censorship after Roe v. Wade was overturned. FOSTA-SESTA cast a very broad net around the quote, facilitation of trafficking, which meant that platforms cracked down on anything related to sexuality. They responded similarly after the Dobbs decision in 2022. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We almost immediately saw this censorship expand to people sharing information on how to access abortions, how to excess contraceptives, safe sex in general. There’s no language in there that criminalizes talking about abortion on Instagram, especially if you’re in a state where abortion is protected. But, out of, you know, whether it’s an abundance of caution or plausible deniability or a genuine desire to silence activists or, you know, censor this information and stymieing its circulation, platforms just started going after abortion and like safe sex content, you know, pretty immediately. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Olivia pointed to the Texas Heartbeat Act, which effectively bans abortions after six weeks. The law also allows private individuals to sue anyone who performs, induces, or aids and abets abortions, after the cutoff. “Aids and abets” is very broad. It can include clinic staff members, Uber drivers who take someone to an abortion clinic, or even friends who help pay for the procedure. The same methods used to identify sex workers as “high risk,” like tracking activity across platforms, collecting location data, tracking keystrokes, can also be used to flag anyone seeking or providing abortions, especially in states where it’s criminalized. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So that certainly mimics FOSTA-SESTA in the criminalization of facilitation. And I mean, that rhetoric and that language and these other policies around prostitution already existing made it really easy to justify expanding that to people seeking or accessing or providing abortions. Another demographic that I’ve seen absolutely throttled is Palestinians and pro-Palestine activists. Like I noticed myself when I was tweeting about Palestine, I got far more severe shadow banning doing that than I ever did tweeting about sex work. But you know, the reason they were able to do that is because the infrastructure was already in place. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, FOSTA-SESTA led to a widespread suppression of sexual content, and much more surveillance, in an effort to stop trafficking. And now, a few years later, we’re seeing another legislative push to restrict the internet. But this time, it’s in the name of protecting children. The era of age verification is here. Since 2022, Congress has been trying to pass a federal law, similar to the UK’s, called the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA. Here’s Anna again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KOSA is interesting because it almost combines FOSTA-SESTA with age verification laws because it requires platforms to have a duty of care to basically make it so children cannot see quote-unquote harmful content. And like the Online Safety Act, what qualifies as content harmful for children is really broad and includes harmful behaviors such as the eating disorders and addiction and also covers. Bullying, and such, in addition to pornographic and sexual content. So what would this do? It’s so broad, I think it signals that people don’t know about how the internet works because it’s like, how would this even happen? How can you prevent children from seeing this? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anna thinks it’ll result in a combination of FOSTA-SESTA and age verification laws, which means that a lot of content will be wiped from the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think a lot of this content would be removed. I think tech platforms would just delete everything. Or if they’re using different tools, I think they would install age verification systems in order to corner off this content from minors. So it potentially has the power to be worse. Granted, KOSA has been introduced and failed and reintroduced a bunch of times, so I don’t know the viability of this law, but it keeps coming back. So it does seem like it’s not going away, but it does have the potential to be scary because I think it’s internet policy written by people who don’t know how the internet works. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there’s a real dilemma here. Obviously, we don’t want to expose kids to sexual or harmful content. But do we have to give up our privacy for that? Let’s open one more tab. Protecting kids versus the First Amendment. Free speech advocates are very concerned about KOSA and laws like it. So how does age-gating porn affect the way we can interact with the internet outside of just sexual content? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It seems like as age verification laws become more and more widespread that it will be harder to be anonymous online, which I think is a huge privacy and security concern. And it also is scary because it, in terms of content that can be harmful for children, there’s a capacity for people to point at something that they don’t like such as criticism of the government and saying “you’re actually bullying,” or to look at two people of the same sex and say that’s pornography. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, it really has the capacity to chill free speech and make it so you cannot be yourself online or you cannot say what you want to say, and the internet can be fundamentally changed from 30 years ago when Section 230 was passed. Whenever there is censorship, people will try to go around that, which is exactly what people are doing with VPNs, and now there’s a push to ban VPNs or at least ban them for children, which according to First Amendment and internet experts that I’ve spoken to, falls under second-order censorship. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So a lot of lawmakers are making the assurance that they’re not trying to just ban porn with AV laws. But in Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump’s second term, they literally did lay out a plan to ban porn and imprison sexual content creators. What is the environment right now around a so-called porn ban? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They don’t want porn, I think because they don’t like it, they don’t like human sexuality, they think it’s disgusting, what have you, but I also think it’ because they know that if porn is banned, they can call things that are not pornographic porn and just chill speech that has nothing to do with explicit content. We’re already seeing it. There was a congressman who called Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show pornography, which I think is exactly the kind of thing that we should be seeing because it shows that it’s not just about the explicit content. It’s not about just people being naked and having sex on camera. It’s about much more than that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. Is there an ethical way to keep kids from seeing sexual or harmful content without severely restricting the internet for everyone else? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes, there is a way. It’s called device level filters. So free speech advocates and sex workers and the like have been advocating for this method for years. A device level filter is on the actual device and it blocks all websites deemed “restricted to adults,” and you cannot get around it. You can’t use a VPN on the device. You can’t like suddenly, I don’t know, turn it off and turn it back on again and it’s gone. It is on to device. And yet, if you’re an adult, you won’t have this filter and you won’t have to submit your ID or a facial scan or what have you. So according to these advocates, it is the best way. And it’s also what Pornhub and its parent company have been advocating for for years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why is sex so intertwined with free speech online? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna Iovine:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think because it is so shamed in our society because people in person don’t talk about sex a lot. We’re not taught it in schools. Our parents maybe don’t talked about it as much. So I think it’s really the third rail in a lot of these cases because it’s such a charged topic in our society. But human sexuality exists and it’s within us and it’s natural to want to express it whether it’s talk about sex, learn about it, or watch people have it. And we also see that whenever technology advances, porn is the first thing to go on it. Pornographers were very early adopters of the internet. They were early adopter of VR, and now they’re seeing they’re early adopters of AI — if it’s done consensually, deepfakes are a whole different story. But I think it’s natural. It’s one of those things like food and sleep, and even though it’s not compulsory like those other two things, I think it’s natural to want to discuss it, especially when it’s so squashed as a topic of conversation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Porn is often credited as the driving force behind the internet. The sex industry pioneered streaming, digital advertising, and e-commerce. Sex and the internet are so intertwined that it’s been enshrined in internet lore. Rule 34 is this meme that says, “If it exists, there’s definitely porn of it online.” And like we’ve heard throughout this episode, banning porn, or even restricting sexual content will affect everyone, regardless of whether you google smut. Olivia warns that teenagers will always be able to access porn if they’re determined enough, but these restrictions on sexual or harmful content will ultimately stop them from accessing information about safe sex or consent. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many free speech advocates argue that it should be up to parents, not the government, to monitor and limit what their kids do online. In December, a House subcommittee advanced 18 bills that revolve around protecting kids online, including KOSA. The debate between protecting kids and protecting free speech and privacy is an ongoing fight. And Olivia said that it’s never been a better time to listen to sex workers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Olivia Snow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because what they’re doing to us, they will do to you next and you’re not going to like it. It sounds excessive, it sounds like a moral panic, and yet all of these things that sex workers have been predicting for years are happening every day. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Discord’s Teen-by-Default policy was supposed to start this month. It would require users to submit facial scans and upload their government IDs in order to access flagged servers. But last week, after significant backlash from users, the company announced that it’s postponing age verification requirements until the second half of this year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a blog post, Discord CTO and co-founder Stanislav Vyshnevskiy acknowledged that the platform “missed the mark.” And said that he “gets the skepticism.” Discord’s age verification is still going to happen, but Vyshnevskiy at least promised more transparency and alternative options that don’t involve giving her face to a third-party vendor. Okay, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva. It was edited by Chris Hambrick and Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Our team includes Jen Chien, who is the director of podcasts. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor in chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Epomaker Aula F99 keyboard with Greywood V3 switches and Cherry Profile PBT keycaps. Do you like these deep dives? Are you closing your tabs? Then don’t forget to rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Maybe drop a comment too. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org slash podcasts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "send-pics-roblox-wants-to-know-your-age",
"title": "Send Pics? Roblox Wants to Know Your Age",
"publishDate": 1772017226,
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"headTitle": "Send Pics? Roblox Wants to Know Your Age | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox is one of the most popular gaming platforms for kids, with millions of young gamers playing user-created games. It’s also been heavily criticized for its track record on child safety, and is now facing more than 80 lawsuits alleging child abuse and grooming. In response, the company recently rolled out a new safety measure: AI-powered facial age verification that restricts who players can talk with. The reception from players has been anything but warm.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, host Morgan Sung is joined by youth mental health reporter Rachel Hale, who explains how predators operate on the platform, why everyone seems to hate Roblox’s new AI age verification feature, and the incredible lengths some users are willing to go to get around it. And while Roblox says age verification is about improving safety, questions have emerged about its accuracy, digital privacy and how this move impacts the broader push for age verification across the internet.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8728402132\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel Hale, youth mental health reporter at \u003cem>USA Today\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2026/01/05/roblox-face-scan-child-safety-features/87970290007/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I got an up-close look at Roblox’s new safety feature. Here’s what I found.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Rachel Hale, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">USA Today \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2025/12/18/roblox-lawsuits-sexual-abuse/87780803007/\">She just wanted to play Roblox with friends. Then the messages from a predator began.\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Rachel Hale\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003ci>USA Today\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://restofworld.org/2026/social-media-age-verification-tools/\">Can social media age verification really protect kids?\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Rina Chandran\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003ci>Rest Of World\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.engadget.com/gaming/robloxs-age-verification-system-is-reportedly-a-trainwreck-220320016.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox’s age verification system is reportedly a trainwreck\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Will Shanklin, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Engadget \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, a quick heads up: this episode discusses abuse and grooming, which may be triggering for some people, so listen with care. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio clip from Youtube User \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Foxboy12\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, as a content creator, you can see why all this is really bad because how am I supposed to communicate with my fans if Roblox just doesn’t let me hear what they have to say?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, let me explain what’s going on here. This is a Roblox creator who’s complaining about the new Roblox age verification system. It limits interactions between players depending on their age. This creator, and many others, are pretty frustrated about it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio clip from Youtube User \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Foxboy12\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I won’t be able to chat to them! Because they’ll have no idea what I’m saying because Roblox just filters everything out. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you have kids, or nieces or nephews or little neighbors you’ve probably heard of Roblox. If not, let me try to explain just how popular this game is among children. It has 83 million daily users\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and 42% of them are under the age of 13.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And it’s not actually a single game, but really a platform with lots of different games, all created with the Roblox’s game engine, Roblox Studio. And it has millions of user-created games, called experiences.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s Dress To Impress, where you get six minutes to put together an outfit based on a theme, and then strut down a runway with other players who vote on the best look.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">[\u003cem>Audio clip from Youtube User CakeMiix\u003c/em>]\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>She said she hated my videos and needed to learn how to dress. I decided to copy my hater’s outfits every round, but make them better.\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Or there’s Siberian Coal Mining Simulator, where the only objective is to work the mines, collaborating or competing with other players. And if you don’t meet your quota, the debt collectors might come for you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">And then there’s the very popular Steal a Brainrot, which is kind of like capture the flag, but you’re stealing creatures called brainrots. The more rare the brainrot, the more valuable it is. And you can build fortresses to protect your brainrot collection. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Almost all of these games are multiplayer experiences, and revolve around interaction with other players. Here’s the snag: Roblox introduced the new age verification system in select countries late last year, and in January, made it a worldwide requirement. It limits players’ ability to chat with others, based on their Roblox-determined age group. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Here’s another creator pointing out how much quieter Roblox is now.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">[\u003cem>Audio clip from Youtube User Flamingo\u003c/em>]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003cspan class=\"s1\">We have officially entered the new era of Roblox. We are in the silent era of Roblox. We are in the “shh” era.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox rolled out age checks because the platform does have a real child safety issue on its hands. The company is facing over 80 lawsuits\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> over allegations of child abuse and grooming. The lawsuits allege that Roblox not only markets its games to children, but also enables predators to contact underage users. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But a lot of players aren’t happy with the new system — and it’s not just because they’re siloed by age group. The way Roblox is determining players’ ages raises red flags when it comes to privacy. Many parents aren’t thrilled about the new system, either. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, we’re diving into the world of Roblox — and why age checks aren’t the perfect solution to child safety issues.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it.\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before we get into the privacy questions, we need to understand the Roblox landscape. Let’s open a new tab: The Roblox predator problem.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel Hale is a USA Today reporter who covers youth mental health. She’s been reporting on child safety across digital platforms, and has been following the Roblox lawsuits. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She’s spoken to several parents who allege that their children were groomed by predators they met on the platform. Here’s Rachel, telling the story of Amie and her 13-year-old daughter. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale, Guest:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> In Amie’s case as well as in many others, the Predator initially reached out on Roblox and then moved the interactions and messaging to another platform. In Amie’s specific case, you know, you had someone who asked. Something that is irresistible to, to kids all around the world, “Do you wanna make Robux?”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Robux is the in-game currency that costs real money. Like a lot of freemium games, Roblox runs on micro-transactions; you get the base experience, but with Robux, you can buy cool outfits, use unique weapons, and get game passes that grant perks like accessing special areas. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After the predator reached out to Amie’s daughter through Roblox’s in-game chat feature, and told her that she could make Robux by playing a game. They told her that in order to play, they had to move to Discord. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> They first asked Amie’s daughter to hold up two fingers to verify before they started the game, and then asked Amie’s daughter to send sexually explicit videos and images. But it didn’t stop there. It turned into, you know, what many people would classify as grooming. If Amie’s daughter went more than a few hours without contacting the predator, they would message, I’ve missed you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He would shower her with affection saying, “I love you so much,” or sending her sexually explicit content of himself. “I would never leave you,” messages like that. It was relentless. And when Amie discovered what was happening to her daughter, she discontinued her daughter’s use of both Roblox and Discord and reported the username to the FBI. And this is a situation that has happened countless times and that I spoke with numerous parents about, um, with stories that sound really similar to Amie’s.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is such a common problem that some creators have taken it upon themselves to confront predators. Like this one YouTuber, who goes by Schlep. He’s conducted Roblox sting operations, where he and other creators pretend to be minors, collect incriminating explicit messages from predators, lure them into in-person meetings and then alert police about it. To date, he’s documented six arrests in his YouTube videos.\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio from the account of Youtube user Schlep\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">] \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He was arrested and charged with three felony counts related to illicit material . . . I’m so proud to see our efforts at stopping predators finally make an impact beyond the screen… I don’t hate Roblox. I love it. And that’s why I care so much about this problem. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Schlep is kind of like a modern day version of Chris Hansen and \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To Catch A Predator.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Schlep was even referenced in one of the child safety lawsuits against Roblox. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bad actors exist on all online platforms, but child predation is especially prevalent on Roblox. Part of it is sheer volume because it’s so popular with kids — again, more than 40% of users are under 13.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But other games are also popular with minors, like Fortnite or Minecraft. What makes Roblox different? Here’s Rachel again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s a combination of the business model and the steps a company is willing to take towards safety, even if that could potentially harm their usage patterns and profits.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Roblox uses a free model, some people might call it a freemium model. The game is free to download and play, and the company makes their money from players spending Robux. So from their in-game interactions. And the more time a user spends on the platform, the more likely they are to spend Robux and generate, um, money for the platform.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Minecraft, on the other hand, is a paid model and you buy it upfront, so there’s less incentive to push user interaction with each other. Take another example, like Fortnite. It’s got a similar freemium model to Roblox, but some safety advocates that I spoke with have credited Fortnite for choosing to implement it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kid protective features, like more options for private or controlled play zones. Roblox does have some of those same features, including parent controls, but in Fortnite, kids are usually playing with a smaller group, sometimes with their preexisting friends as opposed to roaming in these social spaces.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Roblox is really set up based on having people, um, move through these different experiences and interacting with strangers in the public.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> How has Roblox responded to this issue? How are people criticizing the way that they’ve responded?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I visited Roblox’s headquarters in San Mateo, California in December, to ask them about the steps that they’ve taken following these lawsuits and the criticism that they’ve received, and they emphasized that they take their child safety very seriously.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The biggest step that they’ve taken, uh, in this area is implementing a new facial age verification feature. It started rolling out in November in select markets and became mandatory on January 7th for anyone looking to use the chat bar feature. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So the way that it works is that once you open the app, if you wanna go to the chat bar, Roblox will now prompt any users past, present, anyone who’s on the platform to decide if they would like to go through facial age estimation or if they would like to not use the chat bar feature.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And if you choose to continue, it uses AI to take a scan of your face and estimates your age. Roblox, as executives told me that their data shows that it can estimate an age within two years of accuracy. And after that, users are placed into one of six different age groups. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They said that they were working on this feature and they wouldn’t necessarily portray it as like directly a response to these lawsuits, but of course it is in response to, um, the child safety issues that they’ve had. And they’ve really tried to emphasize that they’re the one of the largest platforms that has implemented this type of age verification. So that’s really the biggest step that they’ve taken in conjunction with their parental controls, which they say can make a big difference in how users, um, are, are engaging on the platform.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because of Roblos’s new features, the age checks to chat now look like this and, bear with me here, you’re about to hear a lot of numbers. So if your child is under 9 years old, they can’t talk to anyone 13 or older. Kids between 10 and 13 can’t message anyone over 16. Users in the 13 to 15 group can’t chat with anyone over 17. But users who are 16 to 17 can’t chat with anyone under 13, or over 21. If you’re 18-20, you can chat with anyone over the age of 16, but not under. And if you’re over 21, you can only chat with users who are over 18. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you’re overwhelmed right now, I don’t blame you. Roblox’s age-gating is pretty granular. It’s supposed to imitate the clusters of age groups that would interact in real life. Like, it’s appropriate for a 14 year old and 16 year old to hang out and be friends, but it would raise red flags if it was a 12 year old and a 19 year old. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that it is confusing for players. The way that Roblox has described it is that these groups are supposed to kind of mimic real life groups that you would see at like, a lunch table or you know, on sporting teams. So the idea is that users would be playing alongside other users who are of similar ages.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The AI estimation works by analyzing the user’s face for physiological markers that correlate with a specific age. A person’s face changes the most when they’re young, so it’s easier for the system to estimate someone’s age when they’re, say, between 6 and 10 years old as opposed to 40 or 45. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Once you go through the facial age estimation, you’re able to upload a photo of an ID if you, if it was incorrect, um, in estimating your age. But you know, as they’ve started to roll it out, there’s been a lot of talk about it online, especially in online communities like the r/roblox subreddit. So we’ve been able to already start to see some of the feedback there from current users of Roblox and I think that what users are concerned about is those cases where the facial age estimation feature is inaccurate.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then you might have a user who’s 12, who is able to talk with 17 year olds or 18 year olds if their age is inaccurately estimated as 16. So these of course, are more the outlier cases, but there are enough of them that people have criticized it pretty heavily online.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re going to get into the community backlash against Roblox’s age checks in a new tab … after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Welcome back! Roblox rolled out a new age verification system, but it can be inaccurate and now, Roblox players and their parents are raising concerns over it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab: Did Roblox Age Verification flop?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back in December, USA Today reporter Rachel Hale flew out from New York to visit the Roblox headquarters in San Mateo, California. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And when I was there, I was able to meet with multiple Roblox executives, including Matt Kaufman, who is the chief Safety Officer there, then Elizabeth Milo, Roblox Global Head of Parental Advocacy, and both of those people walked me through how they think about, uh, safety on the app. After we did our standard interviews, we did a demo of the facial age estimation feature and of the parental control features with two of the safety leads who had helped put together these features. So I was able to kind of pick their brains about how the AI was going to work in the facial age estimation feature. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So we walked through it with a phone and an iPad so that I could see what it would be like for a parent who had kids of two different ages, and I could see how that would change users experiences playing on the app.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So what did you expect going in? I know you tried the feature ahead of time and it wasn’t quite right.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I will say I was disappointed with the features accuracy, because Roblox had emphasized in prior press conferences that it would be within two years of accuracy. And because I’m under 25, so I’m still in that younger range that they said the accuracy is usually within those two years. I was hoping that it would get my age within one to two years. But when I did the demo, I tried it the night before in my hotel room, not wearing any makeup, you know, with kind of different lighting behind me. And then I did it again the next day at their office wearing a full face of makeup with much brighter, better lighting on me. I’m 24, and both times it estimated my age as 18 to 20.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I found that that didn’t make a difference. I have seen users online talk about things like, how facial hair, things like that, how that might impact what age you’re estimated as. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some players have complained that they were incorrectly placed in older age groups because they went through puberty earlier than their peers. And others have complained that they were incorrectly placed in younger age groups because they just look younger. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another thing that I’ve seen anecdotally online in some of these same online forums, um, or in direct messages to me, are concerns about kids who might have different developmental markers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So maybe someone who’s, you know, has developmental disability that might change the way that they look and that’s a valid concern. I think that that exists across platforms with age verification. So that’s not specific to roblox. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If you spend some time, like you said, in Roblox Communities online, a lot of users are really unhappy with this change. Their concern is that it hasn’t actually worked to solve child safety because of issues with accuracy.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve seen parents who are concerned because their kids who are maybe 12 years old have used the feature and it’s estimated them as 15 and now they’re able to be on the platform without the parental controls. And it’s very hard for the parent to kind of roll that back, um, unless the kid is willing to cooperate with them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And now, YouTube and TikTok are brimming with tutorials for bypassing the age check system. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Snippet from How to unlock chat in Roblox video\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">] \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this video, I’m going to be showing you exactly how you can verify your age on Roblox and unlock any Roblox feature you want, including the chat. And this works for all ages.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The facial recognition system isn’t that difficult to trick, either. Users have managed to pass as adults by drawing fake mustaches on themselves, or by caking on really heavy, Jersey Shore-type makeup. They’ve also gotten around it by scanning videos of other people’s faces. On YouTube, there’s this video from 12 years ago, of a woman slowly turning her face left and right, for artists to use as a figure drawing reference.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Today, that video has more than half a million views … and nearly all of the 800 comments are from Roblox users who’ve used her face to pass the age check. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel isn’t surprised at how far users are going to pass as adults. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I wish I could say that I was, but I think when you have a platform this big, you know, there are going to be people who will go to any links, uh, especially just at scale with how many users there are. So taken in isolation it does feel, um, pretty alarming, but put into context, it makes sense with what we know about Roblox.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve also seen people start to try to work around the chat feature as a whole by making custom avatars that might say their discord username or username for another platform, which then circumvents the, the whole purpose of the safety in the feature and the idea of getting people to keep the chat in game.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve also even seen things as extreme as people talking about someone selling an underage account on eBay (this was later taken down.) So we’ve definitely seen Roblox users start to try to either circumvent the system, uh, and who have been extreme in their criticisms that it hasn’t really been accurate in solving the safety issue.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The AI facial age estimator seems pretty concerning to a lot of people, especially parents. Can you explain why this technology is so controversial?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So part of the reason that the artificial intelligence is controversial is because people have data privacy concerns. The artificial intelligence here is used to estimate the user’s age after the face scan and the picture is deleted afterwards. Roblox outsources this to a company called Persona and says that users can trust that their picture is deleted afterwards.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But some families that I spoke with, and you can also find this on Reddit and online communities, people have concerns because of issues with similar features on other platforms. For example, in October of last year, the messaging platform Discord had hackers who compromised five CA, their third party vendor that they used for age verification, and stole nearly 70,000 images of government issued IDs in Australia and the UK.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So even though Roblox says that you can trust that artificial intelligence, um, I think that people have some concerns because of what’s happened on other platforms with similar features.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that parents who are tuned in enough to what’s happening on Roblox are already having conversations with their children about digital safety. Um, I think that the real issue is kids whose parents aren’t tuned in, and so they’re probably making decisions about whether or not to use the feature without parental input.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I do think that a lot of parents who are already tuned into Roblox and are closely following their children’s gameplay, some of those parents have made the decision to not use the feature and to instead decide that their child won’t use the chat bar feature.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox’s age checks are an attempt to prevent predators from interacting with children, but that’s not the only reason the platform rolled it out. It’s also to comply with the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act, which went into effect last year.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This law requires all internet users to be at least 18 to access quote, “harmful content.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Certain Roblox experiences that are more graphic or have more mature themes are rated as “Restricted.” They’re for players who are at least 18. Now, only players who have verified their age with Roblox can access this content.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Harmful content” is a very broad umbrella — and now, many websites and social platforms are enforcing age checks like Roblox. Efforts to age-gate the internet are sweeping Europe, Australia, and here, in the US, too. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But like we’ve explored in this deep dive, it’s not going great for Roblox. Surely there are other ways to protect children.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have time to open one more tab. Right?: Is Roblox’s method the future of age verification?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki isn’t exactly helping the situation, either. Late last year, he went on the New York Times tech podcast Hard Fork to talk about the age-gating policy. Here’s how he responded to a question about Roblox’s predator problem: \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hard Fork Podcast clip\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">David Baszucki: We think of it not necessarily just as a problem but an opportunity as well. How do we allow young people to build, communicate and hang out together? How do we build the future of communication at the same time? So we, you know, we’ve been, I think, in a good way working on this ever since we started.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Here’s Rachel again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I mean, there’s been a lot of criticism toward Roblox. And as you’ll see in that New York Times interview, you know, uh, a lot of head employees at the company, it’s really tense when they’re asked about it because they know that they’re pushed between a rock and a hard place.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, uh, Dave and other top employees there who are in charge of safety, like Matt Kaufman, have faced a lot of personal and direct criticism over the ways that they’ve led child safety on the app. And I think it’s an issue that Roblox will continue to have to deal with.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> In some ways Roblox seems to be in a real lose-lose situation. Um, I mean, they had to respond to the predator issue and the lawsuits, and yet the solution that they’ve come up with has been received incredibly poorly. How do you think the company views the situation that they’re currently in?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that question is what they’re going to have to think about this year. And ultimately if more of these lawsuits continue to come out. I think that they will have to consider more heavily if they want to continue to prioritize profits or if they would move to implement safety features that would maybe take a hit toward the number of users on the platform.\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think that they’re going to have to think about that decision much more heavily this year than they have in the past as these lawsuits have continued to gain a lot more publicity and traction. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The other two things that the company has faced a lot of scrutiny over that I think they’ll need to consider in line with this, um, is their removal of so-called vigilantes from the platform who, you know, call themselves predator hunters. Roblox faced a lot of scrutiny over their removal of these vigilantes, uh, without more efforts put toward the actual child safety issues on the platform.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there’s also been a push for some legal cases to be resolved via arbitration instead of in public court. And Roblox has faced a lot of criticism over not having these cases play out more publicly, uh, because a lot of safety advocates and families feel that that’s what would be in the best interest for, for the public in terms of transparency and accountability. So I think that Roblox is going to have to really think about those different things in line with the child safety this year.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Are there any other solutions that have been suggested?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A lot of people have suggested that Roblox remove the chat feature altogether for in-game. How plausible this is? I’m not sure. Um, I think that that would change the entire nature of the game. Other people have brought up that Roblox could implement more options for private play among friends that you already know.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The way that that works right now is through something called trusted users. So you could play with someone who’s not your exact age, but who through parental controls has been listed as a trusted user, like an older cousin or an aunt or uncle, that type of thing. Um, but some safety advocates have brought up that it would be beneficial for Roblox to put more efforts into those private play places, uh, or groups as opposed to putting so much emphasis on the public gameplay, uh, between each other.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The issue there, again, is it comes back to profits and the way that the platform is set up and because the profits are based off of users, um, generating new games or experiences and using those in-game robux. The incentive is definitely to keep people playing with each other in a public space and moving through as many new games as possible.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think that Roblox will have to make some decisions about their priorities in terms of, um, profits compared to child safety.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> As you mentioned like, earlier in our interview, Roblox really sees themselves as pioneering this technology. Do you see other companies like Fortnite, like Minecraft, um, I guess Club Penguin, if it was still around by like, also adopting a kind of facial recognition, age verification?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that based on how Roblox’s rollout has gone, places who may have been looking into this will probably take a longer pause to think about the best way to implement it. I do think a lot of the concerns come down to AI and how accurate it is, and even though Roblox has emphasized that they’ve been the first to do this and that they’ve been leading the way. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox also has a much larger issue with child predators than Minecraft or Fortnite does. So I don’t necessarily see other platforms moving to implement this right away as a result of Roblox. If anything, I think people are probably looking at how Roblox’s user database has responded and thinking about that and how they’re shaping their responses to safety on their own platforms.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This situation with Roblox especially, it comes at a time when age verification is being pushed all over the internet, um, often through legislation in Australia and the UK, soon enough probably here in the U.S. How does that impact the larger conversation around this issue and the way that other gaming platforms will probably also have to, in some way, age-gate their content?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that it continues to make it so that it’s a norm of these platforms. You know, um, five years ago, hardly any platform had an age verification feature. We’re seeing the same thing with Beyond Games, things like sports betting platforms, you know. We’re seeing it go from a user-oriented age verification, where it’s just you’re putting in an email and checking and it’s very easy to just check the box they’re over 13, to an actual form of verification. What that verification looks like likely will differ between platforms, but I do think that Roblox implementing this feature has contributed to that wider norm of age verification being a more common practice on online platforms.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> As a youth mental health reporter, what are you keeping your eye on when it comes to this situation?\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that right now I am really looking at how not just the general community is responding, but how parents are responding. One thing that we did is we did an AMA, like, an ask-me-anything in the r/roblox subreddit and it was really interesting to see the questions that different families had about Roblox and about this new feature.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think I’m keeping my eye on how that community continues to respond and then also on how these lawsuits are going to play out. and if we’re going to see more. The other thing that I’m looking at in conjunction with Roblox is Discord and other platforms. Because even if the initial messaging with a predator happens on Roblox, it is then usually turning to other platforms that, you know, have turned into situations where a child is really unsafe. So I think that that goes hand in hand with the issues on Roblox, and it’s something that I’m continuing to look into.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox’s age verification system is unique, because the platform is trying to tackle a very real problem with predators. But age gating is becoming the norm online, as platforms face increasing pressure to keep kids from seeing potentially harmful content, namely, porn. But restricting access to sexual content opens the door for broader censorship, beyond just porn.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what does this have to do with free speech? A lot more than you’d think. For years, sex workers have been ringing the alarm bell when it comes to online surveillance and censorship. If age verification does become the norm, the internet will change for everyone and cracking down on porn is the first step. \u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re diving into that next week. But for Roblox, let’s close all these tabs.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was produced by Maya Cueva, with support from Gabriela Glueck. It was edited by Chris Hambrick.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our team includes our senior editor Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music and Jen Chien, who is the Director of Podcasts. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Epomaker Aula F99 keyboard with Graywood v3 switches, and Cherry profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you like these deep dives? Are you closing your tabs? Then don’t forget to rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! Maybe drop a comment too! And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate dot KQED.org/podcasts\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "Roblox is one of the most popular gaming platforms for kids, with millions of young gamers playing user-created games. It’s also been heavily criticized for its track record on child safety, and is now facing more than 80 lawsuits alleging child abuse and grooming. In response, the company recently rolled out a new safety measure: AI-powered facial age verification that restricts who players can talk with. The reception from players has been anything but warm.In this episode, host Morgan Sung is joined by youth mental health reporter Rachel Hale, who explains how predators operate on the platform, why everyone seems to hate Roblox’s new AI age verification feature, and the incredible lengths some users are willing to go to get around it. And while Roblox says age verification is about improving safety, questions have emerged about its accuracy, digital privacy and how this move impacts the broader push for age verification across the internet.",
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"socialDescription": "Roblox is one of the most popular gaming platforms for kids, with millions of young gamers playing user-created games. It’s also been heavily criticized for its track record on child safety, and is now facing more than 80 lawsuits alleging child abuse and grooming. In response, the company recently rolled out a new safety measure: AI-powered facial age verification that restricts who players can talk with. The reception from players has been anything but warm.In this episode, host Morgan Sung is joined by youth mental health reporter Rachel Hale, who explains how predators operate on the platform, why everyone seems to hate Roblox’s new AI age verification feature, and the incredible lengths some users are willing to go to get around it. And while Roblox says age verification is about improving safety, questions have emerged about its accuracy, digital privacy and how this move impacts the broader push for age verification across the internet.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox is one of the most popular gaming platforms for kids, with millions of young gamers playing user-created games. It’s also been heavily criticized for its track record on child safety, and is now facing more than 80 lawsuits alleging child abuse and grooming. In response, the company recently rolled out a new safety measure: AI-powered facial age verification that restricts who players can talk with. The reception from players has been anything but warm.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, host Morgan Sung is joined by youth mental health reporter Rachel Hale, who explains how predators operate on the platform, why everyone seems to hate Roblox’s new AI age verification feature, and the incredible lengths some users are willing to go to get around it. And while Roblox says age verification is about improving safety, questions have emerged about its accuracy, digital privacy and how this move impacts the broader push for age verification across the internet.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8728402132\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel Hale, youth mental health reporter at \u003cem>USA Today\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2026/01/05/roblox-face-scan-child-safety-features/87970290007/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I got an up-close look at Roblox’s new safety feature. Here’s what I found.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Rachel Hale, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">USA Today \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2025/12/18/roblox-lawsuits-sexual-abuse/87780803007/\">She just wanted to play Roblox with friends. Then the messages from a predator began.\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Rachel Hale\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003ci>USA Today\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://restofworld.org/2026/social-media-age-verification-tools/\">Can social media age verification really protect kids?\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Rina Chandran\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003ci>Rest Of World\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.engadget.com/gaming/robloxs-age-verification-system-is-reportedly-a-trainwreck-220320016.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox’s age verification system is reportedly a trainwreck\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Will Shanklin, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Engadget \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, a quick heads up: this episode discusses abuse and grooming, which may be triggering for some people, so listen with care. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio clip from Youtube User \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Foxboy12\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, as a content creator, you can see why all this is really bad because how am I supposed to communicate with my fans if Roblox just doesn’t let me hear what they have to say?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, let me explain what’s going on here. This is a Roblox creator who’s complaining about the new Roblox age verification system. It limits interactions between players depending on their age. This creator, and many others, are pretty frustrated about it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio clip from Youtube User \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Foxboy12\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I won’t be able to chat to them! Because they’ll have no idea what I’m saying because Roblox just filters everything out. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you have kids, or nieces or nephews or little neighbors you’ve probably heard of Roblox. If not, let me try to explain just how popular this game is among children. It has 83 million daily users\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and 42% of them are under the age of 13.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And it’s not actually a single game, but really a platform with lots of different games, all created with the Roblox’s game engine, Roblox Studio. And it has millions of user-created games, called experiences.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s Dress To Impress, where you get six minutes to put together an outfit based on a theme, and then strut down a runway with other players who vote on the best look.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">[\u003cem>Audio clip from Youtube User CakeMiix\u003c/em>]\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>She said she hated my videos and needed to learn how to dress. I decided to copy my hater’s outfits every round, but make them better.\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Or there’s Siberian Coal Mining Simulator, where the only objective is to work the mines, collaborating or competing with other players. And if you don’t meet your quota, the debt collectors might come for you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">And then there’s the very popular Steal a Brainrot, which is kind of like capture the flag, but you’re stealing creatures called brainrots. The more rare the brainrot, the more valuable it is. And you can build fortresses to protect your brainrot collection. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Almost all of these games are multiplayer experiences, and revolve around interaction with other players. Here’s the snag: Roblox introduced the new age verification system in select countries late last year, and in January, made it a worldwide requirement. It limits players’ ability to chat with others, based on their Roblox-determined age group. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">Here’s another creator pointing out how much quieter Roblox is now.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">[\u003cem>Audio clip from Youtube User Flamingo\u003c/em>]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003cspan class=\"s1\">We have officially entered the new era of Roblox. We are in the silent era of Roblox. We are in the “shh” era.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox rolled out age checks because the platform does have a real child safety issue on its hands. The company is facing over 80 lawsuits\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> over allegations of child abuse and grooming. The lawsuits allege that Roblox not only markets its games to children, but also enables predators to contact underage users. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But a lot of players aren’t happy with the new system — and it’s not just because they’re siloed by age group. The way Roblox is determining players’ ages raises red flags when it comes to privacy. Many parents aren’t thrilled about the new system, either. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, we’re diving into the world of Roblox — and why age checks aren’t the perfect solution to child safety issues.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it.\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before we get into the privacy questions, we need to understand the Roblox landscape. Let’s open a new tab: The Roblox predator problem.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel Hale is a USA Today reporter who covers youth mental health. She’s been reporting on child safety across digital platforms, and has been following the Roblox lawsuits. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She’s spoken to several parents who allege that their children were groomed by predators they met on the platform. Here’s Rachel, telling the story of Amie and her 13-year-old daughter. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale, Guest:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> In Amie’s case as well as in many others, the Predator initially reached out on Roblox and then moved the interactions and messaging to another platform. In Amie’s specific case, you know, you had someone who asked. Something that is irresistible to, to kids all around the world, “Do you wanna make Robux?”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Robux is the in-game currency that costs real money. Like a lot of freemium games, Roblox runs on micro-transactions; you get the base experience, but with Robux, you can buy cool outfits, use unique weapons, and get game passes that grant perks like accessing special areas. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After the predator reached out to Amie’s daughter through Roblox’s in-game chat feature, and told her that she could make Robux by playing a game. They told her that in order to play, they had to move to Discord. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> They first asked Amie’s daughter to hold up two fingers to verify before they started the game, and then asked Amie’s daughter to send sexually explicit videos and images. But it didn’t stop there. It turned into, you know, what many people would classify as grooming. If Amie’s daughter went more than a few hours without contacting the predator, they would message, I’ve missed you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He would shower her with affection saying, “I love you so much,” or sending her sexually explicit content of himself. “I would never leave you,” messages like that. It was relentless. And when Amie discovered what was happening to her daughter, she discontinued her daughter’s use of both Roblox and Discord and reported the username to the FBI. And this is a situation that has happened countless times and that I spoke with numerous parents about, um, with stories that sound really similar to Amie’s.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is such a common problem that some creators have taken it upon themselves to confront predators. Like this one YouTuber, who goes by Schlep. He’s conducted Roblox sting operations, where he and other creators pretend to be minors, collect incriminating explicit messages from predators, lure them into in-person meetings and then alert police about it. To date, he’s documented six arrests in his YouTube videos.\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio from the account of Youtube user Schlep\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">] \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He was arrested and charged with three felony counts related to illicit material . . . I’m so proud to see our efforts at stopping predators finally make an impact beyond the screen… I don’t hate Roblox. I love it. And that’s why I care so much about this problem. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Schlep is kind of like a modern day version of Chris Hansen and \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To Catch A Predator.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Schlep was even referenced in one of the child safety lawsuits against Roblox. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bad actors exist on all online platforms, but child predation is especially prevalent on Roblox. Part of it is sheer volume because it’s so popular with kids — again, more than 40% of users are under 13.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But other games are also popular with minors, like Fortnite or Minecraft. What makes Roblox different? Here’s Rachel again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s a combination of the business model and the steps a company is willing to take towards safety, even if that could potentially harm their usage patterns and profits.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Roblox uses a free model, some people might call it a freemium model. The game is free to download and play, and the company makes their money from players spending Robux. So from their in-game interactions. And the more time a user spends on the platform, the more likely they are to spend Robux and generate, um, money for the platform.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Minecraft, on the other hand, is a paid model and you buy it upfront, so there’s less incentive to push user interaction with each other. Take another example, like Fortnite. It’s got a similar freemium model to Roblox, but some safety advocates that I spoke with have credited Fortnite for choosing to implement it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kid protective features, like more options for private or controlled play zones. Roblox does have some of those same features, including parent controls, but in Fortnite, kids are usually playing with a smaller group, sometimes with their preexisting friends as opposed to roaming in these social spaces.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Roblox is really set up based on having people, um, move through these different experiences and interacting with strangers in the public.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> How has Roblox responded to this issue? How are people criticizing the way that they’ve responded?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I visited Roblox’s headquarters in San Mateo, California in December, to ask them about the steps that they’ve taken following these lawsuits and the criticism that they’ve received, and they emphasized that they take their child safety very seriously.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The biggest step that they’ve taken, uh, in this area is implementing a new facial age verification feature. It started rolling out in November in select markets and became mandatory on January 7th for anyone looking to use the chat bar feature. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So the way that it works is that once you open the app, if you wanna go to the chat bar, Roblox will now prompt any users past, present, anyone who’s on the platform to decide if they would like to go through facial age estimation or if they would like to not use the chat bar feature.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And if you choose to continue, it uses AI to take a scan of your face and estimates your age. Roblox, as executives told me that their data shows that it can estimate an age within two years of accuracy. And after that, users are placed into one of six different age groups. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They said that they were working on this feature and they wouldn’t necessarily portray it as like directly a response to these lawsuits, but of course it is in response to, um, the child safety issues that they’ve had. And they’ve really tried to emphasize that they’re the one of the largest platforms that has implemented this type of age verification. So that’s really the biggest step that they’ve taken in conjunction with their parental controls, which they say can make a big difference in how users, um, are, are engaging on the platform.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because of Roblos’s new features, the age checks to chat now look like this and, bear with me here, you’re about to hear a lot of numbers. So if your child is under 9 years old, they can’t talk to anyone 13 or older. Kids between 10 and 13 can’t message anyone over 16. Users in the 13 to 15 group can’t chat with anyone over 17. But users who are 16 to 17 can’t chat with anyone under 13, or over 21. If you’re 18-20, you can chat with anyone over the age of 16, but not under. And if you’re over 21, you can only chat with users who are over 18. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you’re overwhelmed right now, I don’t blame you. Roblox’s age-gating is pretty granular. It’s supposed to imitate the clusters of age groups that would interact in real life. Like, it’s appropriate for a 14 year old and 16 year old to hang out and be friends, but it would raise red flags if it was a 12 year old and a 19 year old. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that it is confusing for players. The way that Roblox has described it is that these groups are supposed to kind of mimic real life groups that you would see at like, a lunch table or you know, on sporting teams. So the idea is that users would be playing alongside other users who are of similar ages.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The AI estimation works by analyzing the user’s face for physiological markers that correlate with a specific age. A person’s face changes the most when they’re young, so it’s easier for the system to estimate someone’s age when they’re, say, between 6 and 10 years old as opposed to 40 or 45. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Once you go through the facial age estimation, you’re able to upload a photo of an ID if you, if it was incorrect, um, in estimating your age. But you know, as they’ve started to roll it out, there’s been a lot of talk about it online, especially in online communities like the r/roblox subreddit. So we’ve been able to already start to see some of the feedback there from current users of Roblox and I think that what users are concerned about is those cases where the facial age estimation feature is inaccurate.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then you might have a user who’s 12, who is able to talk with 17 year olds or 18 year olds if their age is inaccurately estimated as 16. So these of course, are more the outlier cases, but there are enough of them that people have criticized it pretty heavily online.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re going to get into the community backlash against Roblox’s age checks in a new tab … after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Welcome back! Roblox rolled out a new age verification system, but it can be inaccurate and now, Roblox players and their parents are raising concerns over it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab: Did Roblox Age Verification flop?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back in December, USA Today reporter Rachel Hale flew out from New York to visit the Roblox headquarters in San Mateo, California. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And when I was there, I was able to meet with multiple Roblox executives, including Matt Kaufman, who is the chief Safety Officer there, then Elizabeth Milo, Roblox Global Head of Parental Advocacy, and both of those people walked me through how they think about, uh, safety on the app. After we did our standard interviews, we did a demo of the facial age estimation feature and of the parental control features with two of the safety leads who had helped put together these features. So I was able to kind of pick their brains about how the AI was going to work in the facial age estimation feature. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So we walked through it with a phone and an iPad so that I could see what it would be like for a parent who had kids of two different ages, and I could see how that would change users experiences playing on the app.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So what did you expect going in? I know you tried the feature ahead of time and it wasn’t quite right.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I will say I was disappointed with the features accuracy, because Roblox had emphasized in prior press conferences that it would be within two years of accuracy. And because I’m under 25, so I’m still in that younger range that they said the accuracy is usually within those two years. I was hoping that it would get my age within one to two years. But when I did the demo, I tried it the night before in my hotel room, not wearing any makeup, you know, with kind of different lighting behind me. And then I did it again the next day at their office wearing a full face of makeup with much brighter, better lighting on me. I’m 24, and both times it estimated my age as 18 to 20.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I found that that didn’t make a difference. I have seen users online talk about things like, how facial hair, things like that, how that might impact what age you’re estimated as. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some players have complained that they were incorrectly placed in older age groups because they went through puberty earlier than their peers. And others have complained that they were incorrectly placed in younger age groups because they just look younger. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another thing that I’ve seen anecdotally online in some of these same online forums, um, or in direct messages to me, are concerns about kids who might have different developmental markers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So maybe someone who’s, you know, has developmental disability that might change the way that they look and that’s a valid concern. I think that that exists across platforms with age verification. So that’s not specific to roblox. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If you spend some time, like you said, in Roblox Communities online, a lot of users are really unhappy with this change. Their concern is that it hasn’t actually worked to solve child safety because of issues with accuracy.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve seen parents who are concerned because their kids who are maybe 12 years old have used the feature and it’s estimated them as 15 and now they’re able to be on the platform without the parental controls. And it’s very hard for the parent to kind of roll that back, um, unless the kid is willing to cooperate with them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And now, YouTube and TikTok are brimming with tutorials for bypassing the age check system. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Snippet from How to unlock chat in Roblox video\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">] \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this video, I’m going to be showing you exactly how you can verify your age on Roblox and unlock any Roblox feature you want, including the chat. And this works for all ages.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The facial recognition system isn’t that difficult to trick, either. Users have managed to pass as adults by drawing fake mustaches on themselves, or by caking on really heavy, Jersey Shore-type makeup. They’ve also gotten around it by scanning videos of other people’s faces. On YouTube, there’s this video from 12 years ago, of a woman slowly turning her face left and right, for artists to use as a figure drawing reference.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Today, that video has more than half a million views … and nearly all of the 800 comments are from Roblox users who’ve used her face to pass the age check. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel isn’t surprised at how far users are going to pass as adults. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I wish I could say that I was, but I think when you have a platform this big, you know, there are going to be people who will go to any links, uh, especially just at scale with how many users there are. So taken in isolation it does feel, um, pretty alarming, but put into context, it makes sense with what we know about Roblox.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve also seen people start to try to work around the chat feature as a whole by making custom avatars that might say their discord username or username for another platform, which then circumvents the, the whole purpose of the safety in the feature and the idea of getting people to keep the chat in game.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve also even seen things as extreme as people talking about someone selling an underage account on eBay (this was later taken down.) So we’ve definitely seen Roblox users start to try to either circumvent the system, uh, and who have been extreme in their criticisms that it hasn’t really been accurate in solving the safety issue.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The AI facial age estimator seems pretty concerning to a lot of people, especially parents. Can you explain why this technology is so controversial?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So part of the reason that the artificial intelligence is controversial is because people have data privacy concerns. The artificial intelligence here is used to estimate the user’s age after the face scan and the picture is deleted afterwards. Roblox outsources this to a company called Persona and says that users can trust that their picture is deleted afterwards.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But some families that I spoke with, and you can also find this on Reddit and online communities, people have concerns because of issues with similar features on other platforms. For example, in October of last year, the messaging platform Discord had hackers who compromised five CA, their third party vendor that they used for age verification, and stole nearly 70,000 images of government issued IDs in Australia and the UK.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So even though Roblox says that you can trust that artificial intelligence, um, I think that people have some concerns because of what’s happened on other platforms with similar features.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that parents who are tuned in enough to what’s happening on Roblox are already having conversations with their children about digital safety. Um, I think that the real issue is kids whose parents aren’t tuned in, and so they’re probably making decisions about whether or not to use the feature without parental input.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I do think that a lot of parents who are already tuned into Roblox and are closely following their children’s gameplay, some of those parents have made the decision to not use the feature and to instead decide that their child won’t use the chat bar feature.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox’s age checks are an attempt to prevent predators from interacting with children, but that’s not the only reason the platform rolled it out. It’s also to comply with the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act, which went into effect last year.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This law requires all internet users to be at least 18 to access quote, “harmful content.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Certain Roblox experiences that are more graphic or have more mature themes are rated as “Restricted.” They’re for players who are at least 18. Now, only players who have verified their age with Roblox can access this content.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Harmful content” is a very broad umbrella — and now, many websites and social platforms are enforcing age checks like Roblox. Efforts to age-gate the internet are sweeping Europe, Australia, and here, in the US, too. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But like we’ve explored in this deep dive, it’s not going great for Roblox. Surely there are other ways to protect children.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have time to open one more tab. Right?: Is Roblox’s method the future of age verification?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki isn’t exactly helping the situation, either. Late last year, he went on the New York Times tech podcast Hard Fork to talk about the age-gating policy. Here’s how he responded to a question about Roblox’s predator problem: \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hard Fork Podcast clip\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">David Baszucki: We think of it not necessarily just as a problem but an opportunity as well. How do we allow young people to build, communicate and hang out together? How do we build the future of communication at the same time? So we, you know, we’ve been, I think, in a good way working on this ever since we started.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Here’s Rachel again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I mean, there’s been a lot of criticism toward Roblox. And as you’ll see in that New York Times interview, you know, uh, a lot of head employees at the company, it’s really tense when they’re asked about it because they know that they’re pushed between a rock and a hard place.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, uh, Dave and other top employees there who are in charge of safety, like Matt Kaufman, have faced a lot of personal and direct criticism over the ways that they’ve led child safety on the app. And I think it’s an issue that Roblox will continue to have to deal with.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> In some ways Roblox seems to be in a real lose-lose situation. Um, I mean, they had to respond to the predator issue and the lawsuits, and yet the solution that they’ve come up with has been received incredibly poorly. How do you think the company views the situation that they’re currently in?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that question is what they’re going to have to think about this year. And ultimately if more of these lawsuits continue to come out. I think that they will have to consider more heavily if they want to continue to prioritize profits or if they would move to implement safety features that would maybe take a hit toward the number of users on the platform.\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think that they’re going to have to think about that decision much more heavily this year than they have in the past as these lawsuits have continued to gain a lot more publicity and traction. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The other two things that the company has faced a lot of scrutiny over that I think they’ll need to consider in line with this, um, is their removal of so-called vigilantes from the platform who, you know, call themselves predator hunters. Roblox faced a lot of scrutiny over their removal of these vigilantes, uh, without more efforts put toward the actual child safety issues on the platform.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there’s also been a push for some legal cases to be resolved via arbitration instead of in public court. And Roblox has faced a lot of criticism over not having these cases play out more publicly, uh, because a lot of safety advocates and families feel that that’s what would be in the best interest for, for the public in terms of transparency and accountability. So I think that Roblox is going to have to really think about those different things in line with the child safety this year.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Are there any other solutions that have been suggested?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A lot of people have suggested that Roblox remove the chat feature altogether for in-game. How plausible this is? I’m not sure. Um, I think that that would change the entire nature of the game. Other people have brought up that Roblox could implement more options for private play among friends that you already know.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The way that that works right now is through something called trusted users. So you could play with someone who’s not your exact age, but who through parental controls has been listed as a trusted user, like an older cousin or an aunt or uncle, that type of thing. Um, but some safety advocates have brought up that it would be beneficial for Roblox to put more efforts into those private play places, uh, or groups as opposed to putting so much emphasis on the public gameplay, uh, between each other.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The issue there, again, is it comes back to profits and the way that the platform is set up and because the profits are based off of users, um, generating new games or experiences and using those in-game robux. The incentive is definitely to keep people playing with each other in a public space and moving through as many new games as possible.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think that Roblox will have to make some decisions about their priorities in terms of, um, profits compared to child safety.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> As you mentioned like, earlier in our interview, Roblox really sees themselves as pioneering this technology. Do you see other companies like Fortnite, like Minecraft, um, I guess Club Penguin, if it was still around by like, also adopting a kind of facial recognition, age verification?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that based on how Roblox’s rollout has gone, places who may have been looking into this will probably take a longer pause to think about the best way to implement it. I do think a lot of the concerns come down to AI and how accurate it is, and even though Roblox has emphasized that they’ve been the first to do this and that they’ve been leading the way. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox also has a much larger issue with child predators than Minecraft or Fortnite does. So I don’t necessarily see other platforms moving to implement this right away as a result of Roblox. If anything, I think people are probably looking at how Roblox’s user database has responded and thinking about that and how they’re shaping their responses to safety on their own platforms.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This situation with Roblox especially, it comes at a time when age verification is being pushed all over the internet, um, often through legislation in Australia and the UK, soon enough probably here in the U.S. How does that impact the larger conversation around this issue and the way that other gaming platforms will probably also have to, in some way, age-gate their content?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that it continues to make it so that it’s a norm of these platforms. You know, um, five years ago, hardly any platform had an age verification feature. We’re seeing the same thing with Beyond Games, things like sports betting platforms, you know. We’re seeing it go from a user-oriented age verification, where it’s just you’re putting in an email and checking and it’s very easy to just check the box they’re over 13, to an actual form of verification. What that verification looks like likely will differ between platforms, but I do think that Roblox implementing this feature has contributed to that wider norm of age verification being a more common practice on online platforms.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> As a youth mental health reporter, what are you keeping your eye on when it comes to this situation?\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Rachel Hale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that right now I am really looking at how not just the general community is responding, but how parents are responding. One thing that we did is we did an AMA, like, an ask-me-anything in the r/roblox subreddit and it was really interesting to see the questions that different families had about Roblox and about this new feature.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think I’m keeping my eye on how that community continues to respond and then also on how these lawsuits are going to play out. and if we’re going to see more. The other thing that I’m looking at in conjunction with Roblox is Discord and other platforms. Because even if the initial messaging with a predator happens on Roblox, it is then usually turning to other platforms that, you know, have turned into situations where a child is really unsafe. So I think that that goes hand in hand with the issues on Roblox, and it’s something that I’m continuing to look into.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roblox’s age verification system is unique, because the platform is trying to tackle a very real problem with predators. But age gating is becoming the norm online, as platforms face increasing pressure to keep kids from seeing potentially harmful content, namely, porn. But restricting access to sexual content opens the door for broader censorship, beyond just porn.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what does this have to do with free speech? A lot more than you’d think. For years, sex workers have been ringing the alarm bell when it comes to online surveillance and censorship. If age verification does become the norm, the internet will change for everyone and cracking down on porn is the first step. \u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re diving into that next week. But for Roblox, let’s close all these tabs.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was produced by Maya Cueva, with support from Gabriela Glueck. It was edited by Chris Hambrick.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our team includes our senior editor Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music and Jen Chien, who is the Director of Podcasts. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Epomaker Aula F99 keyboard with Graywood v3 switches, and Cherry profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you like these deep dives? Are you closing your tabs? Then don’t forget to rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! Maybe drop a comment too! And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate dot KQED.org/podcasts\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "lessons-for-u-s-netizens-from-behind-chinas-great-firewall",
"title": "Lessons for U.S. Netizens from Behind China’s Great Firewall",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are you going through “a very Chinese time in your life”? If so, maybe you’re one of the many American social media users who’ve jumped on the Chinamaxxing trend (or…you’re Chinese). But it’s more than just slippers in the house and hot water at breakfast — as Western netizens experience increased surveillance and censorship across internet platforms, they are ironically turning to one of the most repressive regimes in the world for respite. On today’s episode, Morgan talks to Yi-Ling Liu, author of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/708614/the-wall-dancers-by-yi-ling-liu/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, about the Chinese government’s history of internet censorship, how online creativity has still flourished inside China’s “walled garden,” and what Americans have to learn from our neighbors in the East. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5900146793\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.yi-lingliu.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yi-Ling Liu\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, writer and editor\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/708614/the-wall-dancers-by-yi-ling-liu/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Wall Dancers Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Yi-Ling Liu\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/magazine/blued-china-gay-dating-app.html\">How a Dating App Helped a Generation of Chinese Come Out of the Closet\u003c/a> — Yi-Ling Liu, \u003ci>The New York Times Magazine\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/made-in-china-chinese-time-of-my-life/\">Why Everyone Is Suddenly in a ‘Very Chinese Time’ in Their Lives\u003c/a>\u003ci> —\u003c/i> Zeyi Yang and Louise Matsakis\u003ci>, \u003ci>Wired \u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/tiktok-fixed-power-outage-not-censorship-work-views-down-rcna255964\">TikTok censorship claims spark California probe of app’s handling of anti-Trump content\u003c/a> — Kevin Collier and Bruna Horvath, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>NBC News\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/01/tiktok-first-week\">Why TikTok’s first week of American ownership was a disaster\u003c/a> — Blake Montgomery\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>, \u003ci>The Guardian\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://restofworld.org/2023/china-grindr-blued-gay-dating-app/\">China’s biggest gay dating app wants to beat Grindr\u003c/a> — Viola Zhou and Andrew Deck, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Rest of World\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/11/china/china-gay-dating-apps-removed-intl-hnk\">Two of China’s most popular gay dating apps have disappeared from app stores \u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>— \u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>Chris Lau and Steven Jiang\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>, \u003ci>CNN \u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yesterday was the first day of the lunar new year. I grew up celebrating it as Chinese New Year, and this year is kind of funny. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but being Chinese is like, really in right now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the TikTok account @kaynicole.m]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, I’ve been Chinese for about 90 minutes now, and so far these are the things that I’ve learned.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from Youtube user \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">@WillNeff\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve been Chinamaxxing all day, feeling like a shu shu, you know what I mean? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the TikTok account @seanghedi\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Send this video to a friend that you met during a very Chinese time in your life\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the TikTok account @nurseblake/video\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To all the Chinese baddies who told us all to drink a cup of hot water in the morning, thank you! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“You’ve met me at a very Chinese time in my life.” Speaking from a Chinese American perspective, this trend is pretty loaded. Being Chinese, for a Chinese person, isn’t something you can really opt in and out of. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re going to unpack these memes today, but first, let’s talk about when this obsession with China started. It goes back to just over a year ago, when TikTok went down in the United States. And we actually covered this in our very first episode of Close All Tabs. Some of you might remember when Americans fled to RedNote and called themselves TikTok refugees?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the Close All Tabs episode “TikTok’s Vibe Shift”]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dajia hao, Hi everybody! My name is Jeffrey, I’m a TikTok refugee. I’ve been practicing my Mandarin for a year now…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">RedNote is also known by its Chinese name, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Xiǎohóngshū\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. In January last year, the Supreme Court decided to uphold the law banning TikTok, unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance sold its U.S. assets and operations to an American company. So this mass migration of users from TikTok to another Chinese-owned app was like a collective middle finger to the U.S. government. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the TikTok account@bsant102]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ni hao, fine shyt \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok’s 14-hour shutdown actually led to some very sweet cultural exchange. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu, Guest:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was delightful in a very earnest way, because this was the first time that I was seeing Chinese internet users. And, uh, American internet users actually engage with each other in this very direct way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yi-Ling Liu is a writer and journalist covering technology and censorship in China. She’s also the author of a new book: The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet. Her book opens with this moment when TikTok went down and Americans went to RedNote. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and they were like, genuinely curious about each other’s lives. Right? American users were volunteering English tutoring and Chinese users were like, demanding that they get paid a cat tax in return, which is like, essentially like, send me a cute photo of your, your cat. Um, and they were like flirting and like sharing jokes, So I, I just found it a to be a very beautiful moment of exchange \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok came back online in the United States the next morning, and returned with an ominous message crediting President Trump with “saving” the app. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of users noticed a kind vibe shift when TikTok returned — this sense that political content was being suppressed. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last month, ByteDance finalized a deal to sell its U.S. operations of TikTok to a group of American investors which included some Trump allies. And now, users are noticing that their For You Pages seem different. Content about immigration protests, ICE raids, and anything critical of Trump seems to be censored. And many TikTok creators have raised concerns over the app’s new data collection policies.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This system of surveillance and censorship online is what Yi-Ling calls a “walled garden.” Chinese social media users have been living in one for decades. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> People kind of assume that, um, it’s this like, complete barren landscape because of censorship, when in reality it’s this garden that’s just flowering with fauna and plants that are unique to its own cultural system and its own ecosystem.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the flip side, people just assume that the American internet is this like, free and vast frontier, like, this open space where anyone can do whatever what they want. But increasingly we’re realizing it is also a walled garden in itself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, we’re talking about how China’s walled garden was built, and we’ll dive into the story of one particular bloom inside those walls. Also, we’re talking about what Americans can learn from Chinese netizens especially now.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs, I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\nOk, let’s open a new tab: What is China’s great firewall? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yi-Ling was born in 1995, two years before the British handover of Hong Kong back to China. And growing up in Hong Kong at that time, she had a very different understanding of censorship than someone growing up in mainland China. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And Hong Kong in many ways is this faultline between two systems, both politically, culturally, but also online. And so, you know, moving back and forth between Hong Kong and the mainland and the U.S. where I ended up going to college, allowed me to straddle between these different divides and experience the internet ecosystems, both in mainland China and outside mainland China. And that has really shaped my worldview, being able to kind of be both an insider and outsider, \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yi-Ling didn’t understand the reality of China’s censorship until she was 15. She was interning at a state media newspaper in Beijing, and had written an article about Hong Kong’s literary magazine scene. One of the subjects of her article had mentioned the Tiananmen Square protests. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And when I brought this to my editor, she was like, oh, this absolutely cannot be included in your article.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s not like her internship orientation included a list of explicitly forbidden topics. And growing up in Hong Kong, this had never been an issue for Yi-Ling. But those who grew up on the mainland had developed this sense for what was and wasn’t permitted to publish. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> One of the things that makes this censorship in China so tricky to live under, is that it’s very vague and vagueness is very powerful because it means that there’s no guidebook. And so it’s almost like following a kind of intuitive gut instinct, of, oh, maybe I shouldn’t go there. Most people will censor themselves before they’re even censored. I think this was the first time that I felt the hand of the censor and that really galvanized me and sparked a question, which is what does it mean to actually write truthfully and with integrity from within the bounds of the firewall?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Ok, let’s talk about this firewall. China got its first internet service provider in 1995. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was really exciting. Like, it was chaotic. It was overwhelming. It was, one of my friends described as, steamy, you know. Like it, it was this sense of wow, the entire world is opening up before me. Like, I can access things that I never could have accessed before. And you know, we see this in, in the lives of the subjects that I write about. So there’s this like overwhelming rush of information, I would say, just an incredible, incredible moment to be part of.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But this rush of information also had the potential to destabilize the authority of the Chinese Communist Party. The Party controls all aspects of the government, and political opposition is not allowed. At the time, the state maintained a tight grip on all media in the country — newspapers, TV shows, radio and then, state officials cracked down on the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So, you know, the Golden Shield project was created in 1997, and in some sense, the Chinese government was confronted with a dilemma. Right? The internet in their minds was this double edge sword. On one hand, it was gonna let in all this information that was gonna be a source of huge innovation. On the other hand, it was gonna be a huge source of instability. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Golden Shield Project took two approaches to censorship. First, it blocked forbidden websites and certain IP addresses from outside the country. It also included a complex system of surveillance to flag and track anyone who posted politically sensitive content. In 1997, Wired magazine dubbed the censorship system, “The Great Firewall of China” — a play on the nearly 3,000 year old Great Wall of China. And over the last 30 years, the censorship system has become even more robust as technology advances. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think it’s effective for its purposes. Right? The point of it was to prevent, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">um\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, I would say at core collective action. And so if we were to follow that logic, it doesn’t really need to get rid of all information it doesn’t like. Like, if some information that’s even critical of government officials come in that’s okay. I think the thing that they’re really worried about is people gathering and mobilizing and in that sense it has been very successful, um, at stopping that from happening. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So if success is measured in that way, yes. But if success is measured in terms of stifling vibrant, creative expression, um, turning China into kind of a barren landscape where everyone believes what the government believes, then no, I still think there’s like huge amounts of vibrant discourse, um, and creative expression even taking place within the bounds of the firewall.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yi-Ling refers to them as “the wall dancers” — the people who push the boundaries of creative expression even in this system of censorship. It comes from the phrase “dancing in shackles,” which Chinese journalists used in the early 2000s to describe what it’s like to report under state constraints. It’s not just journalists in this position, though. Musicians, writers, artists, entrepreneurs even have all pushed the limits of state censorship. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> To live in Chinese society is this vacillation between freedom and control. It is very contradictory. It’s very dynamic, this push and pull between state and society. And so I found myself really gravitating towards people, individuals who were very adept at navigating this terrain. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re going to go deep into the story of one of these dancers: Ma Baoli. He created one of the most popular gay dating apps not just in China, but in the world. And it all started with a blog in the 90s, when being gay was still a crime. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s a new tab … but first, a quick break. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back! Let’s get into the story of one particular wall dancer. His story will show us how people can learn to work the system — to survive and thrive under repression. And for that? We’re opening a new tab: \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ma Baoli, and the rise and fall of China’s gay dating app. We’re going back to the 90s. This story starts with a teenager. Here’s Yi-Ling Liu again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> His name is Ma Baoli and he grew up in Qinhuangdao, which is a small town up in northern China by the sea. And he attended a police academy as a young student before joining the police bureau. He kind of started having crushes on boys. From his school textbooks, he realized that he was “homosexual” and, according to his textbook, this was a crime and an illness. So he kept his secret to himself, hoping that one day he would be cured. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Historically, Chinese culture didn’t condemn homosexuality. They weren’t celebrating being gay, but they also weren’t persecuting people for same-sex relationships. There are references to queer life throughout Chinese literature. One of the most famous ones, of the Emperor and his cut sleeve, is nearly 2,000 years old. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Really kind of strong, explicit repression only took place in the modern era after the 1900s through a combination of both, you know, Western influence as well as, the communist revolution, in the mid 1950s. Being gay was included under this broad umbrella of hooliganism, um, and considered a crime, uh, up until 1997. So it was only decriminalized in 1997, and it was only declassified as a mental illness until 2001. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: So \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Up until the mid 90’s, when Ma Baoli was growing up, gay men and women were arrested, forced into conversion therapy, and even sent to labor camps.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Eventually, Ma became a police officer. In 1998, a new internet cafe opened in his town, right next to the police bureau. He wandered in, and by chance, stumbled across a story posted by an anonymous writer. It was a romance, about two young men who fall in love and start an affair. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And it was this hugely cathartic experience for him because he realized like, oh my gosh, I’m not alone; In this world there are other people who love like me. And it just opens up this portal into a whole array of other websites where he connects and, you know, reads about the experiences of gay men.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The internet was life changing for him. A few years later, he taught himself how to code and built his own website. He named it Dànlán, or Light Blue, after the sea in his hometown. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was a very kind of like bare bones, HTML, lots of ads, kind of blurry photos and at some point there was also like a chat function where people could message each other across, uh, different provinces and cities. I don’t know what their exact user base looked like, I would say maybe in the thousands at first, but it grew pretty quickly. Within like, five years, Ma had recruited five other young men who he found through the website to join the team.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the early 2000s, same-sex relationships were decriminalized, but depictions of homosexuality were still prohibited. The site was repeatedly shut down for “violating public morality.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And when they got shut down, they would have to, uh, get a new server, literally like buy a new server, shuttle a new server to a different location, which is something that’s very hard for us to like wrap our head around now, like literally moving a physical server. I had to like, get them to explain this to me many times. But say your server gets shut down in Qinhuangdao, you then like, apply for a server in Shanghai and you go and move that server to Shanghai and like, reapply for one there. You know, there’s this whole process of kind of like dodging different local and competing internet service providers and internet, um, bureau officials to try to, uh, what Ma called, you know, engage in guerilla warfare in some ways to keep the site alive. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So those early days were really hard, but after 2008, is a big turning point for China, most crucially because of the Beijing Summer Olympics.They wanted the world to see it step onto the global stage as this modern, um, cosmopolitan country, this modern nation. And a lot of people at the time actually referred to this moment as China’s coming out party. which is funny because China’s coming out party just also happened to coincide with Ma Baoli decision to come out, or at least to, to come out to Beijing. And so I think this was a moment of liberalization for China, and this also translated into a moment of liberalization for China’s queer community.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That summer, ahead of the Olympics, the newspaper People’s Daily published an article on Beijing’s burgeoning gay scene, and featured the hottest gay club in the city. People’s Daily was the biggest newspaper in China, and\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. This was essentially the government’s mouthpiece, extolling Beijing’s queer community. And to top it off, the article even mentioned Ma’s website really positively. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And he was thrilled. He was really delighted and he thought, well, this is the time A, to move to Beijing, kind of like moving from a small town and to see what, uh, queer life is like there, to build up his team, to hire more and to see if he can kind of gain legitimacy, uh, in the eyes of authority. And his way of doing this was through orchestrating collaborations with the government.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ma’s gay friends were very concerned about safe sex and had reached out to him with questions about HIV. This was 2010 — sex education wasn’t mandatory yet, and many of Ma’s gay friends didn’t know that condoms prevented more than just pregnancy. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Chinese government was very concerned about transmission, but their efforts weren’t reaching gay people. Ma saw a way in. After all, he was the founder of China’s largest gay website.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And so he literally just like, picked up the phone and called someone at the Center for Disease Control and was like, can you support me? And they agreed and that collaboration changed everything.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It started with an HIV testing site on the first floor of a Beijing gay club. China’s CDC gave him a small grant to run HIV screenings and distribute educational resources. That led to Danlan’s national partnership with the Ministry of Health. They opened testing centers across the country. Ma’s website became the go-to source for HIV education. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then in 2012, he was invited to a health conference with several high-ranking government officials.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Including the premier at the time, Li Keqiang. And when he was invited to this conference, he shook the premier’s hand, which was captured in a photograph. And this was a huge turning point for him. It’s definitely not a fair equivalent, but if like, RuPaul shook hands with Ronald Reagan. I think that’s definitely not a fair equivalent, but, you know, that was what it was what it looked like. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ma had been estranged from his parents since coming out, but that photograph convinced his mother that her son’s work wasn’t shameful at all. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That photograph is still in the office. That photograph is given to investors because it essentially was proof to anyone who sees this photo, like, I am legitimate, my company is legitimate, my cause is legitimate from one of the most powerful men in the party. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This stamp of approval was invaluable as Ma’s business grew. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a website Danlan had been very successful, but the world was moving toward apps. This American gay dating app called Jack’d was sweeping China’s queer scene. Like Grindr, Jack’d was location-based. Users in China called it the “Hookup King.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ma jumped at the opportunity to make a Chinese version. And that handshake with the premier? It turned out to be really helpful for attracting investors to fund the app. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, he and a team of Danlan’s software engineers launched “Blued.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was essentially like a straight up copy of Jack’d. Um, and this was how a lot of Chinese apps were formed, you know, in the early 2010s. People like copycat apps essentially. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Blued was a hit. It was so successful that Ma even considered buying Grindr, the preeminent queer hookup app. Blued expanded to other countries, and kept adding more features. It eventually became a whole queer social network, with a newsfeed, a livestreaming function, resources for HIV testing and education, Snapchat-like disappearing photo messaging, and chatrooms. At one point, Blued even ran a service to match aspiring gay fathers with potential surrogates.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the same time, other Chinese tech companies were trying to market specifically to gay people – trying to get in on what’s called the “pink economy.” Queer acceptance was growing – and it was profitable. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But under the surface, the reality of gay rights was very different. Gay marriage wasn’t legal, and neither was adoption by same-sex couples. There were no openly gay government figures, and there was no protection against discrimination in the workplace. And attempts to establish institutional rights for gay people were heavily suppressed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would say at its peak, you know, we were seeing a lot of gay content online. There was a really popular gay television show, as you were saying, all these companies were jumping on, uh, the pink economy bandwagon. The reality was, and I think this was what drove a lot of Ma Baoli’s logic when he was thinking about Blued, was that he was going to “build community without activism.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That he was going to, uh, create greater visibility for gay people in China, but specifically through the marketplace, like specifically through business. And this meant not veering into politics, not veering into protest, not veering into civil society activism. And this really reflected what the state of gay rights was like in China at the time, which is you can be gay. You can live however you choose to live as a queer person, as long as you don’t organize, like, as long as you don’t try to create community that agitates for rights or that pushes for activism. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But around 2018, the tide had turned and this time, against China’s queer community. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> First I would say there was a much stronger crackdown on civil society. So a lot of LGBT groups were being shut down. A lot of, uh, LGBT activists were being told to stop doing their work or interrogated. Queer content was being scrubbed off the media. It was this clear shift towards a more patriarchal attitude towards gender and sexuality. And, um, there is like a promotion of like traditional marital norms, also part of an effort to get people to have more babies. So another part of it is like a fear of demographic decline, which was an issue in China. \u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Blued was already facing increased scrutiny from the government, even as the company skirted actual political advocacy for gay people. In 2020, Blued went public on the New York Stock Exchange. This was a huge deal, for a gay company to be recognized as legitimate not just in China, but also in the global marketplace. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Unfortunately, this was the peak of the COVID pandemic, and U.S.-China relations were souring. This coincided with the Party’s larger crackdown on tech companies, too. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Throughout the book I have mentioned these kind of waves of freedom and control or opening and tightening that’s actually taken place throughout the course of Chinese history. And I call this fang and shou. Fang being opening and shou being tightening. I think there was this sense that this like, freewheeling period of the mid 2000 and 2010’s where entrepreneurs were really emboldened to do whatever they want to, you know, start companies to raise funding to be innovative and bold was getting to kind of a fever pitch. So I think part of it was a sense of these tech moguls are getting out of hand. Like they need to remember, they need to fall in line and remember who the boss is. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Blued couldn’t turn a profit after going public — venture capital money wasn’t coming in like it used to, the stock price was plummeting, and the company struggled to monetize the app. So in 2022, Ma Baoli took the company private and delisted it from the New York Stock Exchange. To cover his losses, he sold a majority of Blued’s shares to another social media company, which asked him to resign as CEO. Then late last year, Blued was removed from the app store in China at the request of state regulators. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s hard to say for sure exactly why it got taken down But I would say at the end of the day, it’s all linked to what I’ve been talking about. It’s all linked to this broader turn against, queer content and the shutting down and the silencing of queer voices in general in the public sphere.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ma ended up moving back to his hometown by the sea, where it all started. For a while, he was depressed. But by the time Yi-Ling followed up with him for her book, he had already found a new purpose in his family, with his partner, their son, and Ma’s father all under the same roof for the first time. Despite the government’s mounting suppression of LGBTQ advocacy, Chinese society had changed — becoming more accepting of queer families than ever before. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s happening now with TikTok isn’t really a one to one equivalent of the censorship and surveillance in China. But this walled garden of the American internet is becoming increasingly restrictive. So what can we learn from Chinese netizens? And what does this have to do with the internet’s new obsession with China? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open one more tab: You’ve met me at a very Chinese time in my life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This phrase became a meme late last year. It’s a twist on this line in the final scene of \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fight Club. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the film Fight Club\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ve met me at a very strange time in my life. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It blew up as this absurdist meme phrase online, kind of riding on the coattails of this other viral TikTok from a few years ago. It’s captioned, “When you get to heaven, but it’s Chinese.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from TikTok user@\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">papist_dalton\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No it’s fine, I just didn’t expect it to be Chinese. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So to become Chinese has kind of, become a joke online. Speaking as a Chinese-American, I think a lot of the surface-level jokes are just orientalism repackaged into a meme format. No, drinking hot water and wearing slippers in the house does not make you Chinese. But then there’s this deeper side to this trend, where people are genuinely becoming interested in Chinese food, Chinese herbalism, Chinese city infrastructure, Chinese tech, Chinese languages, Chinese internet culture and memes, and most of all, Chinese high speed rail. Welcome to Chinamaxxing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Absolutely not.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s go back to last year, to when American TikTok refugees fled to RedNote. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> There was just this like lovely irony to the whole situation, you know, for so many years the reverse was taking place like this desire to get out of the firewall and step into U.S. platforms and step into platforms outside of China. And now it was happening the other way around, like the American internet sphere had become, um, so boxed in and siloed that people we’re going into like literally the most, one of the more repressive internet spheres in the world to look for what they believe to be a, a freer, you know, a freer internet ecosystem. So the irony was hilarious.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Americans are treating Red Note as like a lifeboat outta the censorship that they were experiencing. What do you think about that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> To me it’s just a sign that the American internet is paradoxically starting to look a lot more like the Chinese one. That, you know, I think for a long time Americans kind of took for granted that their internet would remain free and open and unsiloed, but in fact, it’s not. Like, in fact, like a lot of decisions and the way people engage on platforms are dictated by a handful of tech moguls in Silicon Valley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, x, which used to be this like, uh, place that I think one journalist called it, like “throbbing networked intelligence,” where anyone who could say anything they want. This like, beautiful platform of democratic discourse is now like what some people call a hell site. Right? Where it’s just, at least when I open my x feed, it’s just like Andrew Tate YouTube videos, you know? And I didn’t even sign up for that. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And a lot of, we don’t know how its algorithms or being decided, it could very well be, you know, shaped by the whims of Elon Musk, who also happens to be, even though he’s not a political leader, like one of the most powerful men in the world. So I think there’s this sense of Americans realizing that their internet actually kind of sucks. Um, and like the, the, the irony of it is they’re turning to an internet that also kind of sucks.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We eventually got TikTok back, um, even though who knows if it’ll stay in, you know, in the capacity that we have it in but that cultural exchange that we had that night did really plant a seed. And now everyone on the Western internet is obsessed with China. We’re all Chinamaxing. I mean, as part of the Chinese diaspora myself, I have very mixed feelings about this meme. But then again, why do you think that everyone is in such a “Chinese time” in their lives? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I’ve been thinking about this a lot and kind of can unpack it. I think it’s part of a broader vibe shift that started with the TikTok refugees moving to Red Note and part of the vibe shift that started when DeepSeek was released in January of last year where a lot of Americans were kind of shocked by the power and the vibrancy of Chinese technology and freaking out. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think it started with maybe like the chattering class. So a lot of like policy wonks, um, and Silicon Valley tech bros. And a lot of these guys were making like two week trips to China. You have like everyone from like Tom Friedman for the New York Times, Sador, Kash Patel, Silicon Valley podcasters, flocking to China and being like, oh my gosh, like, there are dancing humanoids and like, oh my gosh, high speed rail is so fast here. Or like, I, I have a TV screen in my Huawei car. And I think to me what I wanna point out is, is this discourse does really not reveal anything about China. Um, and it reveals a lot about America. Like it, when I speak to my friends in China, um, they don’t think their lives have really drastically changed over the past year, have become shinier or more incredible.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like what has shifted is the American perspective. And it’s like, you know, Wired recently wrote a really great article, I think it was like Louise Matsakis and Zeyi Yang, um, where they said it, it isn’t really about China or or Chinese people. It’s a symbol of what Americans believe their country has lost.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there’s this sense of like, it being really, I think a projection like it being China becoming this mirror onto which American fears and dreams and desires are being projected on. And I think the U.S. is suddenly obsessed with China’s ability to build bridges, you know, and on TikTok you’re seeing all this kind of infrastructure porn, because they’re increasingly aware of their own dysfunction and America’s own ability, inability to build and the erosion of its political system.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And suddenly China becomes just like more appealing as a result of that. Americans are looking at this like alien empire in some ways and realizing like, oh actually they’re kind of like us. Like we’re the same in many ways except their OS is at least functioning. Like at least they have functioning infrastructure, you know?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> At least they have high speed rail.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Exactly. Exactly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The U.S. has several pieces of legislation in the works that do restrict speech online from age verification laws, potential repeal of section 230, de-platforming adult content, but framing it as child safety, uh, vetting social media profiles before letting people into the country. And I’ve seen a lot of people being like, oh, this is just like China. This is what China does. They’re really trying to make comparisons to Chinese state censorship. Are those comparisons misguided? Like what similarities are there here?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The U.S. state is using a lot of tactics of control and surveillance and censorship that are starting to look very similar to what I see in China. I think for example, like a border control and going through, um, phones and social media accounts before allowing people to enter the country. That’s something that has taken place in China pretty frequently. And the fact that it’s taking place in the U.S. now is actually quite eerie and they are quite similar.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that another similarity that I find quite startling is how big tech and the government are now working actually quite closely together to centralize power into their own hands. Like, that used to be something that I associated more with China, the fact that big tech companies would like, kowtow essentially to the party and do its bidding. When Trump was inaugurated last year, it was shocking to me to see, you know, the leaders of Meta and Apple and OpenAI essentially do the same thing and start speaking in the rhetoric of the administration.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So for all its differences, I do think that both of the internets or and both of those societies are becoming increasingly illiberal and increasingly putting the hands of technological control in the hands of a small elite.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Despite the amount of surveillance and censorship that Chinese netizens have existed under online, Chinese internet culture is still fun. It’s still vibrant. There’s still so much happening and still ways that people do try to get around these, these firewalls. Given the state of, of the U.S. right now, what can American internet users learn from Chinese netizens?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think maybe U.S. netizens already know this,\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">don’t assume that your internet is freewheeling and not subject to censorship. Like always assume to a certain extent that the information you’re getting may be filtered in some shape or form and it might not be through the government, but it may be through specific digital and algorithmic ecosystems that you’re already living in. That’s something that I think American internet users are starting to become more aware of in the way that it’s always been the sixth sense in China.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The other thing that I would say is like, try to understand what other internet ecosystems look like outside of your own bubble. Because this also allows people to like, communicate and build solidarity across, um, different ecosystems and different platforms. And then lastly, it’s just like, be creative, and this is actually something that I do think American netizens have already, but like memes, viral slang, pushing it back against authority through jokes. Like, it’s both fun and extremely powerful. Like people really love a good joke and it brings people together and it creates solidarity and it creates like, a rallying cry around causes that you care about and I think Chinese people have always, um, turned to this during moments that they can’t come together because of various restraints. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Those are all my questions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Thank you Morgan.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. Thank you for joining us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Of course.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To all my fellow Chinamaxxers: Happy New Year! Let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was produced by Gabriela Glick with support from our show’s producer, Maya Cueva. It was edited by Jen Chien, who is KQED’s director of podcasts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our team includes our editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor is Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additional music by APM. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. and\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Epomaker Aula F99 keyboard with Graywood v3 switches, and Cherry profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, and I know it’s podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives, and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends, too. Or even your enemies! Or… frenemies? And if you \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">really\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">donate.KQED.org/podcasts\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are you going through “a very Chinese time in your life”? If so, maybe you’re one of the many American social media users who’ve jumped on the Chinamaxxing trend (or…you’re Chinese). But it’s more than just slippers in the house and hot water at breakfast — as Western netizens experience increased surveillance and censorship across internet platforms, they are ironically turning to one of the most repressive regimes in the world for respite. On today’s episode, Morgan talks to Yi-Ling Liu, author of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/708614/the-wall-dancers-by-yi-ling-liu/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, about the Chinese government’s history of internet censorship, how online creativity has still flourished inside China’s “walled garden,” and what Americans have to learn from our neighbors in the East. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5900146793\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.yi-lingliu.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yi-Ling Liu\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, writer and editor\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/708614/the-wall-dancers-by-yi-ling-liu/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Wall Dancers Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Yi-Ling Liu\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/magazine/blued-china-gay-dating-app.html\">How a Dating App Helped a Generation of Chinese Come Out of the Closet\u003c/a> — Yi-Ling Liu, \u003ci>The New York Times Magazine\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/made-in-china-chinese-time-of-my-life/\">Why Everyone Is Suddenly in a ‘Very Chinese Time’ in Their Lives\u003c/a>\u003ci> —\u003c/i> Zeyi Yang and Louise Matsakis\u003ci>, \u003ci>Wired \u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/tiktok-fixed-power-outage-not-censorship-work-views-down-rcna255964\">TikTok censorship claims spark California probe of app’s handling of anti-Trump content\u003c/a> — Kevin Collier and Bruna Horvath, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>NBC News\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/01/tiktok-first-week\">Why TikTok’s first week of American ownership was a disaster\u003c/a> — Blake Montgomery\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>, \u003ci>The Guardian\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://restofworld.org/2023/china-grindr-blued-gay-dating-app/\">China’s biggest gay dating app wants to beat Grindr\u003c/a> — Viola Zhou and Andrew Deck, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Rest of World\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/11/china/china-gay-dating-apps-removed-intl-hnk\">Two of China’s most popular gay dating apps have disappeared from app stores \u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>— \u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>Chris Lau and Steven Jiang\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>, \u003ci>CNN \u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yesterday was the first day of the lunar new year. I grew up celebrating it as Chinese New Year, and this year is kind of funny. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but being Chinese is like, really in right now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the TikTok account @kaynicole.m]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, I’ve been Chinese for about 90 minutes now, and so far these are the things that I’ve learned.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from Youtube user \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">@WillNeff\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve been Chinamaxxing all day, feeling like a shu shu, you know what I mean? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the TikTok account @seanghedi\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Send this video to a friend that you met during a very Chinese time in your life\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the TikTok account @nurseblake/video\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To all the Chinese baddies who told us all to drink a cup of hot water in the morning, thank you! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“You’ve met me at a very Chinese time in my life.” Speaking from a Chinese American perspective, this trend is pretty loaded. Being Chinese, for a Chinese person, isn’t something you can really opt in and out of. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re going to unpack these memes today, but first, let’s talk about when this obsession with China started. It goes back to just over a year ago, when TikTok went down in the United States. And we actually covered this in our very first episode of Close All Tabs. Some of you might remember when Americans fled to RedNote and called themselves TikTok refugees?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the Close All Tabs episode “TikTok’s Vibe Shift”]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dajia hao, Hi everybody! My name is Jeffrey, I’m a TikTok refugee. I’ve been practicing my Mandarin for a year now…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">RedNote is also known by its Chinese name, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Xiǎohóngshū\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. In January last year, the Supreme Court decided to uphold the law banning TikTok, unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance sold its U.S. assets and operations to an American company. So this mass migration of users from TikTok to another Chinese-owned app was like a collective middle finger to the U.S. government. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the TikTok account@bsant102]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ni hao, fine shyt \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok’s 14-hour shutdown actually led to some very sweet cultural exchange. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu, Guest:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was delightful in a very earnest way, because this was the first time that I was seeing Chinese internet users. And, uh, American internet users actually engage with each other in this very direct way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yi-Ling Liu is a writer and journalist covering technology and censorship in China. She’s also the author of a new book: The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet. Her book opens with this moment when TikTok went down and Americans went to RedNote. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and they were like, genuinely curious about each other’s lives. Right? American users were volunteering English tutoring and Chinese users were like, demanding that they get paid a cat tax in return, which is like, essentially like, send me a cute photo of your, your cat. Um, and they were like flirting and like sharing jokes, So I, I just found it a to be a very beautiful moment of exchange \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok came back online in the United States the next morning, and returned with an ominous message crediting President Trump with “saving” the app. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of users noticed a kind vibe shift when TikTok returned — this sense that political content was being suppressed. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last month, ByteDance finalized a deal to sell its U.S. operations of TikTok to a group of American investors which included some Trump allies. And now, users are noticing that their For You Pages seem different. Content about immigration protests, ICE raids, and anything critical of Trump seems to be censored. And many TikTok creators have raised concerns over the app’s new data collection policies.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This system of surveillance and censorship online is what Yi-Ling calls a “walled garden.” Chinese social media users have been living in one for decades. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> People kind of assume that, um, it’s this like, complete barren landscape because of censorship, when in reality it’s this garden that’s just flowering with fauna and plants that are unique to its own cultural system and its own ecosystem.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the flip side, people just assume that the American internet is this like, free and vast frontier, like, this open space where anyone can do whatever what they want. But increasingly we’re realizing it is also a walled garden in itself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, we’re talking about how China’s walled garden was built, and we’ll dive into the story of one particular bloom inside those walls. Also, we’re talking about what Americans can learn from Chinese netizens especially now.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs, I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\nOk, let’s open a new tab: What is China’s great firewall? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yi-Ling was born in 1995, two years before the British handover of Hong Kong back to China. And growing up in Hong Kong at that time, she had a very different understanding of censorship than someone growing up in mainland China. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And Hong Kong in many ways is this faultline between two systems, both politically, culturally, but also online. And so, you know, moving back and forth between Hong Kong and the mainland and the U.S. where I ended up going to college, allowed me to straddle between these different divides and experience the internet ecosystems, both in mainland China and outside mainland China. And that has really shaped my worldview, being able to kind of be both an insider and outsider, \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yi-Ling didn’t understand the reality of China’s censorship until she was 15. She was interning at a state media newspaper in Beijing, and had written an article about Hong Kong’s literary magazine scene. One of the subjects of her article had mentioned the Tiananmen Square protests. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And when I brought this to my editor, she was like, oh, this absolutely cannot be included in your article.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s not like her internship orientation included a list of explicitly forbidden topics. And growing up in Hong Kong, this had never been an issue for Yi-Ling. But those who grew up on the mainland had developed this sense for what was and wasn’t permitted to publish. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> One of the things that makes this censorship in China so tricky to live under, is that it’s very vague and vagueness is very powerful because it means that there’s no guidebook. And so it’s almost like following a kind of intuitive gut instinct, of, oh, maybe I shouldn’t go there. Most people will censor themselves before they’re even censored. I think this was the first time that I felt the hand of the censor and that really galvanized me and sparked a question, which is what does it mean to actually write truthfully and with integrity from within the bounds of the firewall?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Ok, let’s talk about this firewall. China got its first internet service provider in 1995. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was really exciting. Like, it was chaotic. It was overwhelming. It was, one of my friends described as, steamy, you know. Like it, it was this sense of wow, the entire world is opening up before me. Like, I can access things that I never could have accessed before. And you know, we see this in, in the lives of the subjects that I write about. So there’s this like overwhelming rush of information, I would say, just an incredible, incredible moment to be part of.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But this rush of information also had the potential to destabilize the authority of the Chinese Communist Party. The Party controls all aspects of the government, and political opposition is not allowed. At the time, the state maintained a tight grip on all media in the country — newspapers, TV shows, radio and then, state officials cracked down on the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So, you know, the Golden Shield project was created in 1997, and in some sense, the Chinese government was confronted with a dilemma. Right? The internet in their minds was this double edge sword. On one hand, it was gonna let in all this information that was gonna be a source of huge innovation. On the other hand, it was gonna be a huge source of instability. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Golden Shield Project took two approaches to censorship. First, it blocked forbidden websites and certain IP addresses from outside the country. It also included a complex system of surveillance to flag and track anyone who posted politically sensitive content. In 1997, Wired magazine dubbed the censorship system, “The Great Firewall of China” — a play on the nearly 3,000 year old Great Wall of China. And over the last 30 years, the censorship system has become even more robust as technology advances. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think it’s effective for its purposes. Right? The point of it was to prevent, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">um\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, I would say at core collective action. And so if we were to follow that logic, it doesn’t really need to get rid of all information it doesn’t like. Like, if some information that’s even critical of government officials come in that’s okay. I think the thing that they’re really worried about is people gathering and mobilizing and in that sense it has been very successful, um, at stopping that from happening. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So if success is measured in that way, yes. But if success is measured in terms of stifling vibrant, creative expression, um, turning China into kind of a barren landscape where everyone believes what the government believes, then no, I still think there’s like huge amounts of vibrant discourse, um, and creative expression even taking place within the bounds of the firewall.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yi-Ling refers to them as “the wall dancers” — the people who push the boundaries of creative expression even in this system of censorship. It comes from the phrase “dancing in shackles,” which Chinese journalists used in the early 2000s to describe what it’s like to report under state constraints. It’s not just journalists in this position, though. Musicians, writers, artists, entrepreneurs even have all pushed the limits of state censorship. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> To live in Chinese society is this vacillation between freedom and control. It is very contradictory. It’s very dynamic, this push and pull between state and society. And so I found myself really gravitating towards people, individuals who were very adept at navigating this terrain. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re going to go deep into the story of one of these dancers: Ma Baoli. He created one of the most popular gay dating apps not just in China, but in the world. And it all started with a blog in the 90s, when being gay was still a crime. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s a new tab … but first, a quick break. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back! Let’s get into the story of one particular wall dancer. His story will show us how people can learn to work the system — to survive and thrive under repression. And for that? We’re opening a new tab: \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ma Baoli, and the rise and fall of China’s gay dating app. We’re going back to the 90s. This story starts with a teenager. Here’s Yi-Ling Liu again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> His name is Ma Baoli and he grew up in Qinhuangdao, which is a small town up in northern China by the sea. And he attended a police academy as a young student before joining the police bureau. He kind of started having crushes on boys. From his school textbooks, he realized that he was “homosexual” and, according to his textbook, this was a crime and an illness. So he kept his secret to himself, hoping that one day he would be cured. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Historically, Chinese culture didn’t condemn homosexuality. They weren’t celebrating being gay, but they also weren’t persecuting people for same-sex relationships. There are references to queer life throughout Chinese literature. One of the most famous ones, of the Emperor and his cut sleeve, is nearly 2,000 years old. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Really kind of strong, explicit repression only took place in the modern era after the 1900s through a combination of both, you know, Western influence as well as, the communist revolution, in the mid 1950s. Being gay was included under this broad umbrella of hooliganism, um, and considered a crime, uh, up until 1997. So it was only decriminalized in 1997, and it was only declassified as a mental illness until 2001. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: So \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Up until the mid 90’s, when Ma Baoli was growing up, gay men and women were arrested, forced into conversion therapy, and even sent to labor camps.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Eventually, Ma became a police officer. In 1998, a new internet cafe opened in his town, right next to the police bureau. He wandered in, and by chance, stumbled across a story posted by an anonymous writer. It was a romance, about two young men who fall in love and start an affair. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And it was this hugely cathartic experience for him because he realized like, oh my gosh, I’m not alone; In this world there are other people who love like me. And it just opens up this portal into a whole array of other websites where he connects and, you know, reads about the experiences of gay men.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The internet was life changing for him. A few years later, he taught himself how to code and built his own website. He named it Dànlán, or Light Blue, after the sea in his hometown. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was a very kind of like bare bones, HTML, lots of ads, kind of blurry photos and at some point there was also like a chat function where people could message each other across, uh, different provinces and cities. I don’t know what their exact user base looked like, I would say maybe in the thousands at first, but it grew pretty quickly. Within like, five years, Ma had recruited five other young men who he found through the website to join the team.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the early 2000s, same-sex relationships were decriminalized, but depictions of homosexuality were still prohibited. The site was repeatedly shut down for “violating public morality.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And when they got shut down, they would have to, uh, get a new server, literally like buy a new server, shuttle a new server to a different location, which is something that’s very hard for us to like wrap our head around now, like literally moving a physical server. I had to like, get them to explain this to me many times. But say your server gets shut down in Qinhuangdao, you then like, apply for a server in Shanghai and you go and move that server to Shanghai and like, reapply for one there. You know, there’s this whole process of kind of like dodging different local and competing internet service providers and internet, um, bureau officials to try to, uh, what Ma called, you know, engage in guerilla warfare in some ways to keep the site alive. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So those early days were really hard, but after 2008, is a big turning point for China, most crucially because of the Beijing Summer Olympics.They wanted the world to see it step onto the global stage as this modern, um, cosmopolitan country, this modern nation. And a lot of people at the time actually referred to this moment as China’s coming out party. which is funny because China’s coming out party just also happened to coincide with Ma Baoli decision to come out, or at least to, to come out to Beijing. And so I think this was a moment of liberalization for China, and this also translated into a moment of liberalization for China’s queer community.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That summer, ahead of the Olympics, the newspaper People’s Daily published an article on Beijing’s burgeoning gay scene, and featured the hottest gay club in the city. People’s Daily was the biggest newspaper in China, and\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. This was essentially the government’s mouthpiece, extolling Beijing’s queer community. And to top it off, the article even mentioned Ma’s website really positively. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And he was thrilled. He was really delighted and he thought, well, this is the time A, to move to Beijing, kind of like moving from a small town and to see what, uh, queer life is like there, to build up his team, to hire more and to see if he can kind of gain legitimacy, uh, in the eyes of authority. And his way of doing this was through orchestrating collaborations with the government.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ma’s gay friends were very concerned about safe sex and had reached out to him with questions about HIV. This was 2010 — sex education wasn’t mandatory yet, and many of Ma’s gay friends didn’t know that condoms prevented more than just pregnancy. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Chinese government was very concerned about transmission, but their efforts weren’t reaching gay people. Ma saw a way in. After all, he was the founder of China’s largest gay website.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And so he literally just like, picked up the phone and called someone at the Center for Disease Control and was like, can you support me? And they agreed and that collaboration changed everything.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It started with an HIV testing site on the first floor of a Beijing gay club. China’s CDC gave him a small grant to run HIV screenings and distribute educational resources. That led to Danlan’s national partnership with the Ministry of Health. They opened testing centers across the country. Ma’s website became the go-to source for HIV education. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then in 2012, he was invited to a health conference with several high-ranking government officials.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Including the premier at the time, Li Keqiang. And when he was invited to this conference, he shook the premier’s hand, which was captured in a photograph. And this was a huge turning point for him. It’s definitely not a fair equivalent, but if like, RuPaul shook hands with Ronald Reagan. I think that’s definitely not a fair equivalent, but, you know, that was what it was what it looked like. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ma had been estranged from his parents since coming out, but that photograph convinced his mother that her son’s work wasn’t shameful at all. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That photograph is still in the office. That photograph is given to investors because it essentially was proof to anyone who sees this photo, like, I am legitimate, my company is legitimate, my cause is legitimate from one of the most powerful men in the party. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This stamp of approval was invaluable as Ma’s business grew. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a website Danlan had been very successful, but the world was moving toward apps. This American gay dating app called Jack’d was sweeping China’s queer scene. Like Grindr, Jack’d was location-based. Users in China called it the “Hookup King.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ma jumped at the opportunity to make a Chinese version. And that handshake with the premier? It turned out to be really helpful for attracting investors to fund the app. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, he and a team of Danlan’s software engineers launched “Blued.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was essentially like a straight up copy of Jack’d. Um, and this was how a lot of Chinese apps were formed, you know, in the early 2010s. People like copycat apps essentially. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Blued was a hit. It was so successful that Ma even considered buying Grindr, the preeminent queer hookup app. Blued expanded to other countries, and kept adding more features. It eventually became a whole queer social network, with a newsfeed, a livestreaming function, resources for HIV testing and education, Snapchat-like disappearing photo messaging, and chatrooms. At one point, Blued even ran a service to match aspiring gay fathers with potential surrogates.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the same time, other Chinese tech companies were trying to market specifically to gay people – trying to get in on what’s called the “pink economy.” Queer acceptance was growing – and it was profitable. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But under the surface, the reality of gay rights was very different. Gay marriage wasn’t legal, and neither was adoption by same-sex couples. There were no openly gay government figures, and there was no protection against discrimination in the workplace. And attempts to establish institutional rights for gay people were heavily suppressed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would say at its peak, you know, we were seeing a lot of gay content online. There was a really popular gay television show, as you were saying, all these companies were jumping on, uh, the pink economy bandwagon. The reality was, and I think this was what drove a lot of Ma Baoli’s logic when he was thinking about Blued, was that he was going to “build community without activism.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That he was going to, uh, create greater visibility for gay people in China, but specifically through the marketplace, like specifically through business. And this meant not veering into politics, not veering into protest, not veering into civil society activism. And this really reflected what the state of gay rights was like in China at the time, which is you can be gay. You can live however you choose to live as a queer person, as long as you don’t organize, like, as long as you don’t try to create community that agitates for rights or that pushes for activism. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But around 2018, the tide had turned and this time, against China’s queer community. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> First I would say there was a much stronger crackdown on civil society. So a lot of LGBT groups were being shut down. A lot of, uh, LGBT activists were being told to stop doing their work or interrogated. Queer content was being scrubbed off the media. It was this clear shift towards a more patriarchal attitude towards gender and sexuality. And, um, there is like a promotion of like traditional marital norms, also part of an effort to get people to have more babies. So another part of it is like a fear of demographic decline, which was an issue in China. \u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Blued was already facing increased scrutiny from the government, even as the company skirted actual political advocacy for gay people. In 2020, Blued went public on the New York Stock Exchange. This was a huge deal, for a gay company to be recognized as legitimate not just in China, but also in the global marketplace. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Unfortunately, this was the peak of the COVID pandemic, and U.S.-China relations were souring. This coincided with the Party’s larger crackdown on tech companies, too. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Throughout the book I have mentioned these kind of waves of freedom and control or opening and tightening that’s actually taken place throughout the course of Chinese history. And I call this fang and shou. Fang being opening and shou being tightening. I think there was this sense that this like, freewheeling period of the mid 2000 and 2010’s where entrepreneurs were really emboldened to do whatever they want to, you know, start companies to raise funding to be innovative and bold was getting to kind of a fever pitch. So I think part of it was a sense of these tech moguls are getting out of hand. Like they need to remember, they need to fall in line and remember who the boss is. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Blued couldn’t turn a profit after going public — venture capital money wasn’t coming in like it used to, the stock price was plummeting, and the company struggled to monetize the app. So in 2022, Ma Baoli took the company private and delisted it from the New York Stock Exchange. To cover his losses, he sold a majority of Blued’s shares to another social media company, which asked him to resign as CEO. Then late last year, Blued was removed from the app store in China at the request of state regulators. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s hard to say for sure exactly why it got taken down But I would say at the end of the day, it’s all linked to what I’ve been talking about. It’s all linked to this broader turn against, queer content and the shutting down and the silencing of queer voices in general in the public sphere.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ma ended up moving back to his hometown by the sea, where it all started. For a while, he was depressed. But by the time Yi-Ling followed up with him for her book, he had already found a new purpose in his family, with his partner, their son, and Ma’s father all under the same roof for the first time. Despite the government’s mounting suppression of LGBTQ advocacy, Chinese society had changed — becoming more accepting of queer families than ever before. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s happening now with TikTok isn’t really a one to one equivalent of the censorship and surveillance in China. But this walled garden of the American internet is becoming increasingly restrictive. So what can we learn from Chinese netizens? And what does this have to do with the internet’s new obsession with China? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open one more tab: You’ve met me at a very Chinese time in my life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This phrase became a meme late last year. It’s a twist on this line in the final scene of \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fight Club. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the film Fight Club\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ve met me at a very strange time in my life. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It blew up as this absurdist meme phrase online, kind of riding on the coattails of this other viral TikTok from a few years ago. It’s captioned, “When you get to heaven, but it’s Chinese.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from TikTok user@\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">papist_dalton\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No it’s fine, I just didn’t expect it to be Chinese. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So to become Chinese has kind of, become a joke online. Speaking as a Chinese-American, I think a lot of the surface-level jokes are just orientalism repackaged into a meme format. No, drinking hot water and wearing slippers in the house does not make you Chinese. But then there’s this deeper side to this trend, where people are genuinely becoming interested in Chinese food, Chinese herbalism, Chinese city infrastructure, Chinese tech, Chinese languages, Chinese internet culture and memes, and most of all, Chinese high speed rail. Welcome to Chinamaxxing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Absolutely not.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s go back to last year, to when American TikTok refugees fled to RedNote. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> There was just this like lovely irony to the whole situation, you know, for so many years the reverse was taking place like this desire to get out of the firewall and step into U.S. platforms and step into platforms outside of China. And now it was happening the other way around, like the American internet sphere had become, um, so boxed in and siloed that people we’re going into like literally the most, one of the more repressive internet spheres in the world to look for what they believe to be a, a freer, you know, a freer internet ecosystem. So the irony was hilarious.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Americans are treating Red Note as like a lifeboat outta the censorship that they were experiencing. What do you think about that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> To me it’s just a sign that the American internet is paradoxically starting to look a lot more like the Chinese one. That, you know, I think for a long time Americans kind of took for granted that their internet would remain free and open and unsiloed, but in fact, it’s not. Like, in fact, like a lot of decisions and the way people engage on platforms are dictated by a handful of tech moguls in Silicon Valley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, x, which used to be this like, uh, place that I think one journalist called it, like “throbbing networked intelligence,” where anyone who could say anything they want. This like, beautiful platform of democratic discourse is now like what some people call a hell site. Right? Where it’s just, at least when I open my x feed, it’s just like Andrew Tate YouTube videos, you know? And I didn’t even sign up for that. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And a lot of, we don’t know how its algorithms or being decided, it could very well be, you know, shaped by the whims of Elon Musk, who also happens to be, even though he’s not a political leader, like one of the most powerful men in the world. So I think there’s this sense of Americans realizing that their internet actually kind of sucks. Um, and like the, the, the irony of it is they’re turning to an internet that also kind of sucks.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We eventually got TikTok back, um, even though who knows if it’ll stay in, you know, in the capacity that we have it in but that cultural exchange that we had that night did really plant a seed. And now everyone on the Western internet is obsessed with China. We’re all Chinamaxing. I mean, as part of the Chinese diaspora myself, I have very mixed feelings about this meme. But then again, why do you think that everyone is in such a “Chinese time” in their lives? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I’ve been thinking about this a lot and kind of can unpack it. I think it’s part of a broader vibe shift that started with the TikTok refugees moving to Red Note and part of the vibe shift that started when DeepSeek was released in January of last year where a lot of Americans were kind of shocked by the power and the vibrancy of Chinese technology and freaking out. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think it started with maybe like the chattering class. So a lot of like policy wonks, um, and Silicon Valley tech bros. And a lot of these guys were making like two week trips to China. You have like everyone from like Tom Friedman for the New York Times, Sador, Kash Patel, Silicon Valley podcasters, flocking to China and being like, oh my gosh, like, there are dancing humanoids and like, oh my gosh, high speed rail is so fast here. Or like, I, I have a TV screen in my Huawei car. And I think to me what I wanna point out is, is this discourse does really not reveal anything about China. Um, and it reveals a lot about America. Like it, when I speak to my friends in China, um, they don’t think their lives have really drastically changed over the past year, have become shinier or more incredible.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like what has shifted is the American perspective. And it’s like, you know, Wired recently wrote a really great article, I think it was like Louise Matsakis and Zeyi Yang, um, where they said it, it isn’t really about China or or Chinese people. It’s a symbol of what Americans believe their country has lost.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there’s this sense of like, it being really, I think a projection like it being China becoming this mirror onto which American fears and dreams and desires are being projected on. And I think the U.S. is suddenly obsessed with China’s ability to build bridges, you know, and on TikTok you’re seeing all this kind of infrastructure porn, because they’re increasingly aware of their own dysfunction and America’s own ability, inability to build and the erosion of its political system.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And suddenly China becomes just like more appealing as a result of that. Americans are looking at this like alien empire in some ways and realizing like, oh actually they’re kind of like us. Like we’re the same in many ways except their OS is at least functioning. Like at least they have functioning infrastructure, you know?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> At least they have high speed rail.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Exactly. Exactly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The U.S. has several pieces of legislation in the works that do restrict speech online from age verification laws, potential repeal of section 230, de-platforming adult content, but framing it as child safety, uh, vetting social media profiles before letting people into the country. And I’ve seen a lot of people being like, oh, this is just like China. This is what China does. They’re really trying to make comparisons to Chinese state censorship. Are those comparisons misguided? Like what similarities are there here?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The U.S. state is using a lot of tactics of control and surveillance and censorship that are starting to look very similar to what I see in China. I think for example, like a border control and going through, um, phones and social media accounts before allowing people to enter the country. That’s something that has taken place in China pretty frequently. And the fact that it’s taking place in the U.S. now is actually quite eerie and they are quite similar.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that another similarity that I find quite startling is how big tech and the government are now working actually quite closely together to centralize power into their own hands. Like, that used to be something that I associated more with China, the fact that big tech companies would like, kowtow essentially to the party and do its bidding. When Trump was inaugurated last year, it was shocking to me to see, you know, the leaders of Meta and Apple and OpenAI essentially do the same thing and start speaking in the rhetoric of the administration.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So for all its differences, I do think that both of the internets or and both of those societies are becoming increasingly illiberal and increasingly putting the hands of technological control in the hands of a small elite.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Despite the amount of surveillance and censorship that Chinese netizens have existed under online, Chinese internet culture is still fun. It’s still vibrant. There’s still so much happening and still ways that people do try to get around these, these firewalls. Given the state of, of the U.S. right now, what can American internet users learn from Chinese netizens?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think maybe U.S. netizens already know this,\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">don’t assume that your internet is freewheeling and not subject to censorship. Like always assume to a certain extent that the information you’re getting may be filtered in some shape or form and it might not be through the government, but it may be through specific digital and algorithmic ecosystems that you’re already living in. That’s something that I think American internet users are starting to become more aware of in the way that it’s always been the sixth sense in China.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The other thing that I would say is like, try to understand what other internet ecosystems look like outside of your own bubble. Because this also allows people to like, communicate and build solidarity across, um, different ecosystems and different platforms. And then lastly, it’s just like, be creative, and this is actually something that I do think American netizens have already, but like memes, viral slang, pushing it back against authority through jokes. Like, it’s both fun and extremely powerful. Like people really love a good joke and it brings people together and it creates solidarity and it creates like, a rallying cry around causes that you care about and I think Chinese people have always, um, turned to this during moments that they can’t come together because of various restraints. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Those are all my questions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Thank you Morgan.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. Thank you for joining us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yi-Ling Liu:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Of course.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To all my fellow Chinamaxxers: Happy New Year! Let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was produced by Gabriela Glick with support from our show’s producer, Maya Cueva. It was edited by Jen Chien, who is KQED’s director of podcasts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our team includes our editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor is Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additional music by APM. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. and\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Epomaker Aula F99 keyboard with Graywood v3 switches, and Cherry profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, and I know it’s podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives, and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends, too. Or even your enemies! Or… frenemies? And if you \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">really\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">donate.KQED.org/podcasts\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "love-in-the-time-of-doom-scrolling",
"title": "Love In The Time Of Doom Scrolling",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In honor of Valentine’s Day, we’re bringing you an episode about love. We start with TikTok creator Jojo Manzo, who turned his late-night doomscrolling into a matchmaking experiment when he invited thousands of strangers to flirt in his comment section. Then we talk to Maria Avgitidis, a third-generation matchmaker, about why friction, community, and a little discomfort might actually be the point of dating. And finally, we get to the physical … or, at least, geographical. When you find someone you care about, do you share your location with them? Is it intimacy, convenience, surveillance or all three? We explore what it looks like to find human connection in a deeply digital world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8381904068\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.matchmakermaria.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Maria Avgitidis Pyrgiotakis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Matchmaker and CEO of Agapematch\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@thisshouldbeatrend\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jojo Manzo\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Musician and content creator\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Friends of Close All Tabs: Mandy Seiner and Jackson Maxwell, Anna Iovine, Tanya Chen, Amanda Silberling, Harriet Weber, and Taj Weaver\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/technology/ai-dating-apps.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You Don’t Need to Swipe Right. A.I. Is Transforming Dating Apps\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Eli Tan, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The New York Times\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/podcasts/location-sharing-relationships.html\">To Share or Not to Share? How Location Sharing Is Changing Our Relationships\u003c/a> — \u003ci>Modern Love Podcast\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/perfection-without-connection-how-ai-is-becoming-digital-wingman-2025-10-04/\">‘Perfection without the connection’: How AI is becoming a digital wingman\u003c/a> — Hani Richter, \u003ci>Reuters\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2025/09/ai-matchmaking-online-dating/684386/\">The Doomed Dream of an AI Matchmaker\u003c/a> — Faith Hill, \u003ci>The Atlantic\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.matchmakermaria.com/book\">Ask A Matchmaker: Matchmaker Maria’s No Nonsense Guide to Finding Love\u003c/a> — Maria Avgitidis, \u003ci>Matchmaker Maria\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bustle.com/articles/157064-is-u-hauling-real-heres-whats-behind-the-lesbian-stereotype\">Is U-Hauling Real? Here’s What’s Behind The Lesbian Stereotype \u003c/a>— Lea Rose Emery, \u003ci>Bustle\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pagingdrlesbian.com/p/whats-the-deal-with-u-haul-lesbians\">What’s The Deal With U-Haul Lesbians?\u003c/a> — Kira Deshler,\u003ci> Paging Dr. Lesbian\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Look, covering what we cover on this show, things right now can feel pretty bleak — surveillance culture, environmental injustice, the erosion of constitutional rights, the way algorithms silo and divide us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At a time when it feels like the machines are taking over, we thought we could spend an episode reminding all of you of what makes us most human: Love. And what better time to do that than a commercialized holiday designed to sell mass-produced chocolate? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Welcome to our Valentine’s Day episode! Today, we have a little heart shaped box of chocolates for you: three stories about how we connect as humans … even in this modern digital hellscape.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whether it’s through a human matchmaker, in a sea of AI-powered dating apps, or stumbling across a comment thread of hot singles in your area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or, literally finding the one and that involves unpacking a very thorny relationship debate: Do you share your location with your partner? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s get into our first story today. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, dating apps have been part of the romance ecosystem for over a decade. And they can be exhausting. But, we live so much of our lives online these days, and it’s not easy to meet someone in real life either. So some people have taken it upon themselves to play digital matchmaker. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open up a new tab: Doom scroll speed date. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So picture this: It’s late at night, you’re doomscrolling. Just consuming content until your brain shuts down and you can finally fall asleep. And then you come across a guy who also appears to be laying in bed, in the dark, in the same situation as you. And he starts talking directly to you, through the screen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the TikTok account @thisshouldbeatrend\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Oh, hi. It appears as though we’re both doom scrolling at the same time right now. Uh, how, how’s it going? What the hell’s going on on your feed right now?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These are doomscroll dates. It’s like a meet-cute, in the middle of the night when neither person should be awake. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the TikTok account @thisshouldbeatrend\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Actually, you know what? Don’t answer that. Um, it’s getting late. You should probably go to bed and I should probably go to bed, so it was cool bumping into you. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Joseph Manzo, also known as Jojo Manzo, also known by his TikTok handle, ThisShouldBeATrend, started his TikTok account as marketing research for his job. Then last year, on a whim, Jojo started a series where he pretended to take viewers on dates in the middle of a doom scrolling session.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People started really responding to his series. And Jojo realized that he could use his platform to play matchmaker. So he put together what he calls the doomscroll speed date. I’ll let Jojo tell the story. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jojo Manzo, Guest:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I noticed how many people in the comment sections of the doom scroll date videos that I was putting out. I, I feel like everyone’s just like craving connection, you know? Speaking for myself, I love being the matchmaker. Like I, I really want to put a bunch of people in a room just to see what happens and hope that some of them fall in love or some of them like connect in some way, shape, or form.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So Jojo posted a video asking his audience to respond with comments, and laid out some instructions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jojo Manzo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So, basically the ground rules of this, uh, doom scroll, speed date, is what I called it, is basically post a photo of yourself or a meme that you really like, and then your age and where you’re from. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once people did that. Other users were encouraged to leave a reply underneath with a photo of themselves or another meme that might match the energy, and whoever left the original comment, was the only person that is allowed to reach out to someone who replied to them. So that way it kind of respected boundaries on everyone’s parts.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The comments poured in, gym selfies, polished headshots, goofy unposed photos that you probably wouldn’t find on a typical dating app profile and lots of memes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jojo Manzo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This user said Dallas, Texas with a meme of a very nefarious cartoon just kind of sticking out their tongue, all like, and then someone said, ain’t too far drive for me with the eye emojis. But as this user, so absolutely put, “I don’t have a meme, but I did see this cool apple in the store the other day. This is flirting, right? Why does this feel like a better dating opportunity than hinge? “\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Someone decided to post a photo of them on Halloween, dressed as Benjamin Franklin, and yes, this is a woman dressed as Benjamin Franklin, uh, with a 0.5 camera selfie, and also put some of their music taste \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jojo’s doom scroll speed date video got thousands of comments overnight. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jojo Manzo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that post resonated with people so well is because I was almost selling them on a pitch to be like. H Hinge and Bumble aren’t working, but TikTok might work Dating app algorithms are very much like Instagram, like everyone really curates their profiles, whereas I feel like people on TikTok are. A lot more comfortable in being careless. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That kind of just develops this opportunity for people to not feel like there’s so much pressure. like it is a casual interaction. You either connect or you don’t \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: While a lot of people \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">did\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> put themselves out there in the comments, they weren’t getting many replies … \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jojo Manzo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> All the comments that were coming in were largely women:, \u003c/span>\u003cb>“\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The comments are full of baddies, but I’m not seeing a male in New York City.” The straight men were not making moves. I actually left a reply to somebody who had asked, “Where are all the men at?” And I think one of my comments verbatim was, “Yo! Respectfully, y’all aren’t flirting enough.” And that comment got lit up with likes and then a lot of replies started coming in for the people who already posted.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jojo Manzo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> “38-year-old anime nerd in Columbus, Ohio. Forgive the gym photo, don’t have a lot of full body pictures.” And it’s, it’s a dude in the gym, \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uh, that this person sent high with five eyes and a classic smiley face really, really cheesing. Aw, she’s so cute. With a little cardigan on and the glasses. Aw, I hope they work out. I hope they get to meet up.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I did not follow up with anyone. Quite frankly, there are thousands of comments on that post that I would have to, I would have to doom scroll the comment section that that’s how many there are and that’s how much time it would take. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I think some of the, these ones, like I just mentioned, might have a little bit of merit and I’ll need to reach out to them on the side. Just be like, so, uh, you guys meet up yet? and then there were a lot of, there was actually a lot of requests for me to do this again, but to do it by city, which I haven’t done yet.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I really do think this experiment was a success. I mean, my head canon is that there’s at least one potential couple now, you know, I, I really do feel like. This was a good exercise for people to put themselves out there and, um, for either starting the conversation or to drive the conversation. Um, and man, I really, really hope that I can be invited to somebody’s wedding someday\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jojo Manzo tapped into people’s frustration with dating apps and swipe fatigue and tried to DIY a solution. Like he said, he likes playing matchmaker. Tech companies also say they have a solution, with the hottest feature in dating apps right now: AI matchmakers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But will they actually help? Well, let’s open a new tab. What are AI matchmakers missing?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To be clear, these aren’t AI companions that would replace human dates. These are AI-powered features to help users connect with dates. Like one called Amata, that talks to users, and then describes them to potential matches. Or Rizz, the digital wingman that analyzes screenshots of messages, and generates a quippy, conversation-sparking response. Sliding into DMs? You can outsource your flirting! There are now dozens of apps that offer AI-powered relationship advice. A dating coach in your pocket, available 24/7. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of these features are designed to alleviate swipe fatigue: the mental, emotional, and physical burnout of modern dating. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I wanted to hear from a human matchmaker about why she’s so suspicious of integrating AI features into dating apps, and what it really takes to find a match. What’s the secret sauce to meeting new people?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Matchmaker Maria.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis, Guest:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I am Maria Avgitidis better known as Matchmaker Maria, and I am the founder of Agape Match, which is a matchmaking service based out of New York City. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She’s also an author, and the host of the podcast Ask A Matchmaker. Maria comes from a long line of matchmakers. Before her, her grandmother, her great grandmother, and her great great grandmother were matchmakers in Greece. These previous generations lived through times of famine and political unrest. So back then, matchmaking was really more about building alliances between families. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And so when I say alliance, you have to think about bartering and trade. And you know, if my family makes milk and your family makes glass bottles, that’s a pretty good match. So these are the things that they were thinking about.They weren’t thinking about are these two people in love? They were thinking about are these families gonna get on. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, when my grandmother was matchmaking, first of all, there’s no computers, let alone the internet, let alone mobile phones where we would swipe on potential soulmates while sitting on the couch. And a lot of my clientele now in 2026 and didn’t just start now, it started, I wanna say 11 years ago. In 2015 we started getting the new audience of people who just felt a lot of dating fatigue.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it, they didn’t have problem going on dates, you know, they could open up an app, but if it takes too long to go from online to offline, you can feel a bit of dating fatigue. But in 2026 what I see the biggest difference in singles is how the algorithm and also how an AI can reaffirm things that might not necessarily be the right thing for us. And I think about that a lot because, there is a rise in AI in dating.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. I’m so glad you brought up AI because that’s what we’re here to talk about today. the biggest trend in, in dating app tech right now is so-called AI matchmaking. Everyone’s trying to get their LLMs to be the next cupid. Um, a lot of them use AI chatbots to basically ask users questions and then match them with other users based on their answers so that they don’t have to build a profile, they don’t have to swipe, removing a lot of that friction, you know, what do you make of this trend?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Um, first of all, I resent the fact that it’s called matchmaker. just because I’m maybe a generational matchmaker. I know what it takes to be a professional matchmaker. It’s so much about community building. At the end of the day, you know, matchmaking is considered one of the oldest professions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It ranks up there with a midwife and uh, and sex work and, The reason why matchmaking has always existed is because dating is a communal activity. You know, don’t look at yourself right now if you are single, laying on the couch, swiping while an episode of Friends or Big Bang Theory playing in the background.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s not what dating, that’s not what courtship is supposed to be like. It’s supposed to be your parents meddling. It’s supposed to be your cousin setting up with their friends. It’s your friends setting you up with their friends and you meeting their coworkers at a barbecue. Like dating is a communal effort, ’cause we were not meant to date alone. Humans have this instinct to connect. So that’s the first part, but now what is it exactly doing? And it goes back to my suspicions of, you know, what algorithms and AI can do. I’m not saying that they’re not helpful in certain elements of our jobs, \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, I just actually put the privacy policy of a social media site on my ChatGPT to be like, what am I, what’s wrong with it? You know, and like, let me know so I don’t have to read the whole privacy policy. So I’m not saying that there’s not some really great benefits with having ai, um, help us, but I do feel like people have a very poor perception of who they actually are.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think when you talk to an AI, you wanna say really good things about yourself. You’re not necessarily being tasked to look at yourself critically and. Because the AI is built to reaffirm you, even if you’re making a very bad decision. So now take it to dating, what questions are these apps asking to really get to know you, to really understand what kind of partner you will be? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think a chat bot can do a really great job at making some assumptions on your horoscope or numerology or your Enneagram because a lot of content in on the internet already exists, where it pulls from. I wonder what kind of content it would pull from to help someone who is experiencing extreme loneliness. And then it goes back to the end of who is this for? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No one’s building an AI matchmaking company from the goodness of their heart. There’s probably gonna be investors, there’s probably gonna be shareholders. There’s probably a company that wants to buy it and someone’s gonna profit. And I’m not saying that a dating company or a dating service provider should not get paid for the work that they do. They should absolutely get paid. I’ll be the first to say it. Hello!\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I, as a human matchmaker, have a motivation to get my client into a relationship as quickly as possible, because as a human being, I don’t wanna talk to my clients longer than I have to. Right? Like, I really want them in relationships because I want them to leave me alone. That’s not, that’s an optimistic way of looking at it. Right? I wanna be good at my job. I wanna be a good matchmaker. Right? But dating companies, they don’t have that, they can tell us, oh, you know, it’s not just about shareholders.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, we wanna help people fall in love. Okay. But you, you, you’re not creating apps that are providing that safe environment. Women are looking for. And you are showing men, women that don’t wanna date them, so they’re having a terrible dating experience and all this because they get to pay every month their subscription to make the shareholders happy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> a lot of these dating apps or a lot of these, I, I know you hate the term, but that’s what they’re calling themselves, AI matchmakers, um, report to. Yeah. Just take that kind of friction out of, swiping,out of like having to sift through all these new people and all these new profiles. I mean, Facebook’s dating assistant for example, it works by basically telling the chat bot, uh, a bunch of unique traits that you’re looking for in a partner and they will present you with matches. And the example that meta itself used was find me a Brooklyn girl in tech and.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The chatbot will present profiles of Brooklyn Girls in Tech. I, it’s not dissimilar to what you do, but also, you know, it’s, it seems to be the final evolution of everything that people have been complaining about when it comes to dating apps.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We are all living pretty frictionless lives in 2026 in the United States. What I mean by that is you do most things that you need to do on technology on your phone. You can order food through Uber Eats. You can order a car through Lyft you can go to the Starbucks checkout line and actually use the app, not have to interact with a barista at all. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so when you look at dating, I just said before that, you know, dating was never meant to be done, like solo. It’s supposed to be a communal thing because at the end of the day, should you two work out, the alliance of family is still there. And it, that is important because family is what determines our long-term values, even the ones we don’t agree with. that is where our attachment comes from.That is where our initial beliefs, our initial philosophies in life come from. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like it’s all developed from these families that we are a part of and what we might create, so for dating apps or AI matchmakers, which I hate that I’m even using that word, but whatever, um, what I find really shocking is that it’s because the environment is so frictionless that people are experiencing dating fatigue. Why would you make it even more frictionless? Like, I don’t know how that helps people. and by the way, I’m not anti dating app, but we, we, you don’t have to participate in it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There is a world out there where you could use. An an online tool to get offline. And those tools are called Eventbrite. There’s also social clubs in New York. The fastest growing social club is New York City Backgammon Club. Uh, people, hundreds of people show up to play an ancient game.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> They put their phones away. And I know that sounds for some people it’s like, ‘oh my God, you want me to go out?’ But you wouldn’t be thinking, this is weird. If it was 2016 or if it was 2006. But now that we have worked from home, now that we have these hybrid work schedules, which again, I’m not against, I think these are fantastic opportunities, but if you’re gonna work from home,\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">that means you have to put in even more effort to actually be involved in social events.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. You’ve really talked about how friction is necessary for. Community. You need to be a little uncomfortable to meet people, and that community is the secret to relationships. Can you expand on that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The reason why I say that you have to fill up a social calendar is because it’s not just romantic relationships, but friendships. We have this idea that friendship is supposed to be organic, but romantic relationships are supposed to be intentional. And it’s actually the reverse. Your friendships have always been intentional, right? The friendships you made in high school or in elementary school, it wasn’t your intention, but your parents intended to live in that neighborhood.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You and your group of friends went to the same school and you met, and through proximity, you became friends. You see this with your college friends, you see this with your work friends. You see this with most adult friendships, that these were intentional choices that had you meet this person.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So to think that friendship is now organic, it really collapses like how we make friends, because you typically don’t make friends just walking in the supermarket. more than half of you’re wearing AirPods when you go in there. So you know, no one’s really talking to you either. So. The way to create any sort of relationship is we have to have the baseline foundation of friendship.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Well, friendship can only happen with two things in this formula, proximity and familiarity. If your algorithm is only showing you one single race, one single body type, one single lifestyle, then that is what you’re familiar with. And I can understand when people say to me, I’m just not attracted to this, or I’m not attracted to that. I, I get it. Your, your own upbringing is going to influence what you are familiar with. Right? But then there’s that proximity and that re, you know, proximity is also about repetition. You have to have that time invested in that person. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So if you were to develop friendships, if you really put that as your goal in 2026, the odds of you getting a relationship through this friendship circle, through this brand new social circle would exponentially grow. Because the people that are going to have the most influence over what your future looks like at this point is whoever is new to that social circle that you’re developing, \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I remember when I met my spouse, my husband, the people that introduced us, who I intentionally met, I actively did things to meet these people. I had only met them three months before and they completely changed my life and I will forever be grateful for them. But that’s it though, is why did that friendship flourish? Familiarity, proximity. I was constantly seeing them, so that way when I met the rest of their friendship circle. I was familiar with the values that both my spouse and our mutual friend shared.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What my grandmother, her mother, and her grandmother did really well was build community and they also understood that marriage was a long term commitment, not necessarily by just two people, but by two families because you know, they had a village and that village has to be there for each other.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Thank you so much for joining us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Thank you for having me.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was Matchmaker Maria, the host of the podcast Ask a Matchmaker and author of the book, Matchmaker Maria’s No Nonsense Guide to Finding Love.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So we’ve been talking about how to find someone online and in real life — and hate to break it to you, but sometimes that does involve going outside. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But once you’ve found the one do you keep tabs on them? That’s after this break.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this episode is all about finding love in this very online landscape. And so far, we’ve heard about how people are finding connection — whether it’s through a matchmaker, an AI-powered dating app, or a doom scroll speed date. Now, for the last chocolate in our Valentine’s Day assortment, it’s time for a story about literally finding your love … Or at least, finding your love’s location. And this one’s personal for me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ready? How about opening one last tab?: Did I digitally u-haul?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Chinese folklore, there is the Red Thread of Fate. It’s a magical red cord that connects lovers who are destined to be together, no matter what happens. The lore says that the old god of matchmaking binds the couple together by tying the cord around their ankles or their pinkies, depending on who you ask. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although the cord might twist and tangle, it’ll never break. They’ll always find their way back to each other in the end. Today, we just have Find My Friends. With this nifty little app, you can see all your loved ones as little dots on a map, whenever you want! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I share my location with over a dozen people — family members, close friends, and my partner. Over the holidays, a relative who isn’t much older than me was shocked that I’m so cavalier about sharing my location with others. Especially because we just put out an episode on digital hygiene and personal security. And their reaction made me reevaluate some of my online habits: Am I a digital u-hauler? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you aren’t familiar with this, u-hauling is a lesbian stereotype. Many queer women are inclined to develop intense emotional bonds and commit to new relationships, very quickly. So quickly, they move in together. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio clip from TikTok account @Madeitoutpodcast]\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A u-haul! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was comedian Lea DeLaria recently retelling her 30-year old joke. She first told it during her comedy special in the 90s, and the u-haul lesbian has been a community-defining punchline ever since. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And now, the so-called “urge to merge” is influencing digital habits, too. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have managed to avoid the stereotype of actually u-hauling. It took me well over a year of dating, and before that, eight years of friendship, to move in with my partner. And in previous relationships, I’d always been adamant that we really know each other before sharing a home. In fact, I didn’t even want to share an Instagram grid. Up until my partner and I got together, I had never hard launched a girlfriend. I always had very firm boundaries in relationships. But when it comes to sharing my location? Maybe it’s a different story. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I’m definitely not the first queer person to hop into the proverbial digital u-haul. For this story, our team asked people to send voice notes about their experiences with location sharing and romance. Our producer Maya Cueva got this voice note from her friend, Taj. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Taj:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I sent this person, who I was dating, my location and I thought that was fine. They shared their location with me uh, really early on, like probably in the first, like month or two. And at the time I shared locations with all my friends, like 15 people at this time, like, I didn’t think anything of it. Did it early on. Had no idea it was called digital U-Hauling.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: Ok, it’s not really a thing. I made it up, because I’ve done it so often. \u003cb> \u003c/b>I may not be a serial u-hauler, but I am definitely guilty of \u003ci>digital\u003c/i> u-hauling. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it may be a surprise that I myself am guilty of this, because, as a tech journalist you’d think that I’d be more guarded about this. Right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But sharing my location like that felt like wearing my heart on my sleeve. Here! I’m giving you access to my whereabouts all the time! I’m trusting you to find me, but only when it’s socially appropriate! And I would never expect the object of my very trackable affections to send me \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">their \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">location — although, whenever they did reciprocate, it was always like, a nice affirmation that we were on the same page. And more importantly, it was convenient. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My friend Tanya, though, has a completely different approach to this than I do. Tanya is a tech journalist too, and she takes privacy pretty seriously. She sent me this voice note: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tanya Chen:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> it’s not that I refuse to share my location, especially with, close, uh, trusted friends and family and I have, it’s just something I really prioritize just to be unsearchable and unknowable, just to kind of like be able to exist freely without people knowing where I am. Or bothering me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I do not like knowing, you know, where I am. I do like knowing where you are though, but you can’t have a one way situation, uh, relationship as it turns out like that. so if I were to offer my own thoughts on this yeah.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just to be really precious about like who you share it with, I mean, for the obvious reason, like precarious stalking stuff. Right? it’s an absolute right. And even, um, now something that’s kind of rare to just like, not have anyone find you. Um, love you. Bye. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> U-hauling may be a lesbian stereotype, but the practice of sharing locations is of course, not exclusive to sapphic relationships. And It’s not always a philosophical debate about privacy and personal freedom. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of times, it’s just a matter of practicality. Like, I have these friends, Mandy and Jackson. They’re engaged now, been together for six and a half years, and they’ve been sharing their location for most of their relationship. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mandy Seiner:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Jackson only shares his location with me, but I actually share my location with 14 people, including my mom. I just, I like to look at my little sims and see where my friends are. When do you check my location? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackson Maxwell:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> it’s pretty rare that I do, uh, Mandy recently had a foot surgery a few months ago, and, uh, getting around, uh, with limited mobility on the New York City subway system, really not easy. Uh, getting around on the streets also not easy, so I would just double check \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mandy Seiner:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and similar, I mean, Jackson making sure I’m okay. but Jackson used to have. seizures. and so if he was out like taking a walk or running errands and I hadn’t heard from him for a while, it gave me a lot of peace of mind to be able to see where he was and know that if something happened and he was stuck somewhere, that I would be able to come find him.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think of our long-term partnership or any long-term partnership as being like the buddy system in school. Like you always have to know, be with your buddy and know where your buddy is. And that’s what, that’s what having a fiance is, is the buddy system. so I just gotta be able to check on my buddy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Location sharing in relationships has been a decade long debate at this point. It’s super polarizing. Some see it as another form of surveillance, while others can’t trust their partners without location sharing. Like, for my friend Amanda, location sharing is a sticking point. Not between Amanda and her boyfriend, but between the couple and everyone else they know. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Amanda Silberling:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I am very online. I am an internet culture reporter. I am professionally, very online. I share my location with a bunch of people, but I don’t have my boyfriend’s location.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is interesting to me how some friends, when I’ve told them I don’t have his location, they’re like, what are you doing? That’s a red flag. Like, is that okay? And I’m like, I don’t think he’s hiding anything. and I don’t think that we should assume that not sharing your location means you’re hiding something. Because like. Like, I think it’s very reasonable to not want someone to know where you are at all times of the day, like as long as he texts me when he gets home, if he’s out late, I don’t really care that I don’t have his location. But then it’s funny because some of our other friends have been like, I would be worried if you did have your, that their location, like that’s a sign of distrust. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s almost like a micro generational gap where people born in like 1998 think it’s weird that I don’t have my boyfriend’s location and people born in like 1994 are like, it would be really weird if you had it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are legitimate reasons to hide or obscure your location, and it’s not always to hide cheating or anything nefarious. On this show, we’re always talking about the surveillance state, and how our right to privacy is getting chipped away every day. Big tech companies are collecting all of our data and selling it off to the highest bidder, all the time. And at the individual level, people do abuse these apps to stalk and monitor and control others. My friend Anna is a journalist who’s covered sex and relationships for years, so I consider her an expert in the realm of love and the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna lovine:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I’m pretty ambivalent about location sharing because it’s absolutely a tool to surveil people and I ultimately think that breeds more paranoia and, honestly hiding things that don’t need to be hidden. I generally think that more surveillance doesn’t work and just like encourages people to find loopholes.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That being said, Anna and her fiancee, Kat, do share their locations with each other. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna lovine:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and I prefer it that way. I think it’s a great utility. And I ultimately think if someone, if you share your location and someone’s doing something nefarious, they will figure out a way to, um, not be seen. And even in like other ways where you don’t really want someone to know what you’re doing. Like last year when I was. Planning on proposing, um, a week before Kat had plans. So I went to the location and I swapped the location of my device to my iPad. So if Kat did check my location, in that instance I was like, oh, I need her to see that I’m home. So I changed my location. Bu that was like, so galaxy-brained. I was like, what am I doing? But hey, she didn’t find out.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">is\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> a degree of vulnerability involved in sharing locations, especially in a new relationship. In a way, it’s like giving a piece of yourself to another person. Screw the predestined red thread of fate! With a couple of taps, you can give someone\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the other end of a digital tether to yourself. No old god of matchmaking needed! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But not everyone is comfortable with that. My friend Harriet has the complete opposite approach to new relationships than I did. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harriet Weber:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I would need to build a lot of trust with someone before wanting to do that. It, it was even a big deal to me to share my location with friends. Um, and I only started doing that because I’ve been going on dates, uh, with total strangers. So if you’re my friend and I’ve shared my location with you, that is a big deal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m honored to be one of the select few that Harriet does share her location with. We swapped locations when she got back on the apps, and wanted to make sure that her friends knew that she got home safe. And since then, it has been really convenient. Like, having each others’ locations came in handy when we were trying to find each other in a crowded park during Pride. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like many other people in this story, Harriet is also a tech journalist. Hey, a lot of my friends are, ok? And I, as well as a lot of my friends, are hyperaware of the fact that convenience often comes at the cost of personal privacy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harriet Weber:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Something I have feelings on myself is, um, the feeling of being surveilled. It’s so abstracted that it’s not really in my face, like a camera would be in my face. For example. If, if a camera’s in your face, you’re gonna act a little different, um, regardless of what you’re doing. There’s just something about it that reminds me a little bit too much of like, spyware.I guess it just makes me a little bit uncomfortable.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is something I had grappled with, amid all of my digital u-hauling antics. You’re giving the other person the \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">option\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to surveil you, sure, but you’re also trusting that they won’t. The social contract dictates that location sharing is a sacred bond. When you opt in, you’re agreeing that you’ll only use that connection when it’s appropriate. To me, the inherent vulnerability in location sharing is what makes it feel like such a romantic gesture. I mean, it’s commitment, right?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taj:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I don’t recommend it. Clearly, I think it is a little too much.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Taj again. They had shared their location after just a month of dating their new girlfriend. Long story short, they aren’t together anymore.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taj:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think it put a lot of stress in like, I don’t know, a weird surveillance on the relationship and there was a few times where it was like, okay, she could see my location. And she’s like, oh, like, ‘what’s up? You haven’t hit me,’ versus like, oh, maybe you’re just at home focusing on yourself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It only takes one weird experience to drain the romance out of location sharing. Years ago, amid a breakup, I felt that exact sense of surveillance that Taj was talking about. The whole thing made me a lot more parsimonious about sharing my location especially when there are romantic stakes involved. When it came to finding my dates in crowded places, I had become a big fan of the “share for one hour” option. The other person can see where you are, but that link expires. You get all the convenience, without any of the commitment or vulnerability. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then when \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">is\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> the right time to \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">permanently\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> share locations? When do you take that leap of faith? My friend Anna weighed in on this again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna lovine:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I don’t remember having a discussion like, oh, are we gonna share locations now? Or, oh, can I have your location? I’m sure it was an instance where, like, oh, the subway’s down and I’m gonna be late, so why don’t, I’m gonna give you my location so you can see where I am. It definitely felt good. It didn’t feel like as significant as, say, becoming girlfriends or obviously like moving in together or something like that. But it felt nice. It’s like an even deeper level of trust.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My days of digital u-hauling, of sharing and then un-sharing with new people, came to an end three years ago, when my partner and I got together. We were best friends for nearly a decade at that point, and had each others’ locations the entire time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the time we finally started dating, we had already established a routine of following the other person’s little blue dot to find each other — at concerts, at the farmer’s market, and yes, even as friends at the giant IKEA in Burbank, California. In fact, I didn’t know her address for a good year, because I would just drive to her location on Find My Friends. Although we didn’t \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">literally\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> u-haul, we were already sharing this hugely vulnerable connection. I don’t remember when we actually \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">started\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> sharing our locations with each other. But I like to think that the red thread of fate bound us together long before an app ever did. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In all of my digital u-hauling, things would end, and I would inevitably cut that tether — digital and emotional. But this time, I know it won’t break. \u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Special thanks to our friends for sending us their location sharing stories: Taj Weaver, Tanya Chen, Mandy Seiner and Jackson Maxwell, Amanda Silberling, Anna lovine, and Harriet Weber. If there’s anything I love more than love stories, it’s a juicy voice note. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, happy Valentine’s day, lovers. Let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was produced by Maya Cueva, with support from Gabriela Glueck. It was edited by Jen Chien, who is KQED’s Director of Podcasts.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\nOur team includes editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Epomaker Aula F99 keyboard with Graywood v3 switches, and Cherry profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, and I know it’s podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives, and want us to keep making more, it would \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">really \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends, too. Or even your enemies! Or… frenemies? And if you \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">really\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.KQED.org/podcasts.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "In honor of Valentine’s Day, we’re bringing you an episode about love. We start with TikTok creator Jojo Manzo, who turned his late-night doomscrolling into a matchmaking experiment when he invited thousands of strangers to flirt in his comment section. Then we talk to Maria Avgitidis, a third-generation matchmaker, about why friction, community, and a little discomfort might actually be the point of dating. And finally, we get to the physical … or, at least, geographical. When you find someone you care about, do you share your location with them? Is it intimacy, convenience, surveillance or all three? We explore what it looks like to find human connection in a deeply digital world.",
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"socialDescription": "In honor of Valentine’s Day, we’re bringing you an episode about love. We start with TikTok creator Jojo Manzo, who turned his late-night doomscrolling into a matchmaking experiment when he invited thousands of strangers to flirt in his comment section. Then we talk to Maria Avgitidis, a third-generation matchmaker, about why friction, community, and a little discomfort might actually be the point of dating. And finally, we get to the physical … or, at least, geographical. When you find someone you care about, do you share your location with them? Is it intimacy, convenience, surveillance or all three? We explore what it looks like to find human connection in a deeply digital world.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In honor of Valentine’s Day, we’re bringing you an episode about love. We start with TikTok creator Jojo Manzo, who turned his late-night doomscrolling into a matchmaking experiment when he invited thousands of strangers to flirt in his comment section. Then we talk to Maria Avgitidis, a third-generation matchmaker, about why friction, community, and a little discomfort might actually be the point of dating. And finally, we get to the physical … or, at least, geographical. When you find someone you care about, do you share your location with them? Is it intimacy, convenience, surveillance or all three? We explore what it looks like to find human connection in a deeply digital world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8381904068\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.matchmakermaria.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Maria Avgitidis Pyrgiotakis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Matchmaker and CEO of Agapematch\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@thisshouldbeatrend\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jojo Manzo\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Musician and content creator\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Friends of Close All Tabs: Mandy Seiner and Jackson Maxwell, Anna Iovine, Tanya Chen, Amanda Silberling, Harriet Weber, and Taj Weaver\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/technology/ai-dating-apps.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You Don’t Need to Swipe Right. A.I. Is Transforming Dating Apps\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Eli Tan, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The New York Times\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/podcasts/location-sharing-relationships.html\">To Share or Not to Share? How Location Sharing Is Changing Our Relationships\u003c/a> — \u003ci>Modern Love Podcast\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/perfection-without-connection-how-ai-is-becoming-digital-wingman-2025-10-04/\">‘Perfection without the connection’: How AI is becoming a digital wingman\u003c/a> — Hani Richter, \u003ci>Reuters\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2025/09/ai-matchmaking-online-dating/684386/\">The Doomed Dream of an AI Matchmaker\u003c/a> — Faith Hill, \u003ci>The Atlantic\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.matchmakermaria.com/book\">Ask A Matchmaker: Matchmaker Maria’s No Nonsense Guide to Finding Love\u003c/a> — Maria Avgitidis, \u003ci>Matchmaker Maria\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bustle.com/articles/157064-is-u-hauling-real-heres-whats-behind-the-lesbian-stereotype\">Is U-Hauling Real? Here’s What’s Behind The Lesbian Stereotype \u003c/a>— Lea Rose Emery, \u003ci>Bustle\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pagingdrlesbian.com/p/whats-the-deal-with-u-haul-lesbians\">What’s The Deal With U-Haul Lesbians?\u003c/a> — Kira Deshler,\u003ci> Paging Dr. Lesbian\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Look, covering what we cover on this show, things right now can feel pretty bleak — surveillance culture, environmental injustice, the erosion of constitutional rights, the way algorithms silo and divide us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At a time when it feels like the machines are taking over, we thought we could spend an episode reminding all of you of what makes us most human: Love. And what better time to do that than a commercialized holiday designed to sell mass-produced chocolate? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Welcome to our Valentine’s Day episode! Today, we have a little heart shaped box of chocolates for you: three stories about how we connect as humans … even in this modern digital hellscape.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whether it’s through a human matchmaker, in a sea of AI-powered dating apps, or stumbling across a comment thread of hot singles in your area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or, literally finding the one and that involves unpacking a very thorny relationship debate: Do you share your location with your partner? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s get into our first story today. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, dating apps have been part of the romance ecosystem for over a decade. And they can be exhausting. But, we live so much of our lives online these days, and it’s not easy to meet someone in real life either. So some people have taken it upon themselves to play digital matchmaker. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open up a new tab: Doom scroll speed date. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So picture this: It’s late at night, you’re doomscrolling. Just consuming content until your brain shuts down and you can finally fall asleep. And then you come across a guy who also appears to be laying in bed, in the dark, in the same situation as you. And he starts talking directly to you, through the screen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the TikTok account @thisshouldbeatrend\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Oh, hi. It appears as though we’re both doom scrolling at the same time right now. Uh, how, how’s it going? What the hell’s going on on your feed right now?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These are doomscroll dates. It’s like a meet-cute, in the middle of the night when neither person should be awake. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audio clip from the TikTok account @thisshouldbeatrend\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Actually, you know what? Don’t answer that. Um, it’s getting late. You should probably go to bed and I should probably go to bed, so it was cool bumping into you. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Joseph Manzo, also known as Jojo Manzo, also known by his TikTok handle, ThisShouldBeATrend, started his TikTok account as marketing research for his job. Then last year, on a whim, Jojo started a series where he pretended to take viewers on dates in the middle of a doom scrolling session.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People started really responding to his series. And Jojo realized that he could use his platform to play matchmaker. So he put together what he calls the doomscroll speed date. I’ll let Jojo tell the story. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jojo Manzo, Guest:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I noticed how many people in the comment sections of the doom scroll date videos that I was putting out. I, I feel like everyone’s just like craving connection, you know? Speaking for myself, I love being the matchmaker. Like I, I really want to put a bunch of people in a room just to see what happens and hope that some of them fall in love or some of them like connect in some way, shape, or form.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So Jojo posted a video asking his audience to respond with comments, and laid out some instructions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jojo Manzo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So, basically the ground rules of this, uh, doom scroll, speed date, is what I called it, is basically post a photo of yourself or a meme that you really like, and then your age and where you’re from. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once people did that. Other users were encouraged to leave a reply underneath with a photo of themselves or another meme that might match the energy, and whoever left the original comment, was the only person that is allowed to reach out to someone who replied to them. So that way it kind of respected boundaries on everyone’s parts.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The comments poured in, gym selfies, polished headshots, goofy unposed photos that you probably wouldn’t find on a typical dating app profile and lots of memes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jojo Manzo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This user said Dallas, Texas with a meme of a very nefarious cartoon just kind of sticking out their tongue, all like, and then someone said, ain’t too far drive for me with the eye emojis. But as this user, so absolutely put, “I don’t have a meme, but I did see this cool apple in the store the other day. This is flirting, right? Why does this feel like a better dating opportunity than hinge? “\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Someone decided to post a photo of them on Halloween, dressed as Benjamin Franklin, and yes, this is a woman dressed as Benjamin Franklin, uh, with a 0.5 camera selfie, and also put some of their music taste \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jojo’s doom scroll speed date video got thousands of comments overnight. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jojo Manzo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think that post resonated with people so well is because I was almost selling them on a pitch to be like. H Hinge and Bumble aren’t working, but TikTok might work Dating app algorithms are very much like Instagram, like everyone really curates their profiles, whereas I feel like people on TikTok are. A lot more comfortable in being careless. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That kind of just develops this opportunity for people to not feel like there’s so much pressure. like it is a casual interaction. You either connect or you don’t \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: While a lot of people \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">did\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> put themselves out there in the comments, they weren’t getting many replies … \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jojo Manzo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> All the comments that were coming in were largely women:, \u003c/span>\u003cb>“\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The comments are full of baddies, but I’m not seeing a male in New York City.” The straight men were not making moves. I actually left a reply to somebody who had asked, “Where are all the men at?” And I think one of my comments verbatim was, “Yo! Respectfully, y’all aren’t flirting enough.” And that comment got lit up with likes and then a lot of replies started coming in for the people who already posted.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jojo Manzo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> “38-year-old anime nerd in Columbus, Ohio. Forgive the gym photo, don’t have a lot of full body pictures.” And it’s, it’s a dude in the gym, \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uh, that this person sent high with five eyes and a classic smiley face really, really cheesing. Aw, she’s so cute. With a little cardigan on and the glasses. Aw, I hope they work out. I hope they get to meet up.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I did not follow up with anyone. Quite frankly, there are thousands of comments on that post that I would have to, I would have to doom scroll the comment section that that’s how many there are and that’s how much time it would take. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I think some of the, these ones, like I just mentioned, might have a little bit of merit and I’ll need to reach out to them on the side. Just be like, so, uh, you guys meet up yet? and then there were a lot of, there was actually a lot of requests for me to do this again, but to do it by city, which I haven’t done yet.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I really do think this experiment was a success. I mean, my head canon is that there’s at least one potential couple now, you know, I, I really do feel like. This was a good exercise for people to put themselves out there and, um, for either starting the conversation or to drive the conversation. Um, and man, I really, really hope that I can be invited to somebody’s wedding someday\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jojo Manzo tapped into people’s frustration with dating apps and swipe fatigue and tried to DIY a solution. Like he said, he likes playing matchmaker. Tech companies also say they have a solution, with the hottest feature in dating apps right now: AI matchmakers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But will they actually help? Well, let’s open a new tab. What are AI matchmakers missing?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To be clear, these aren’t AI companions that would replace human dates. These are AI-powered features to help users connect with dates. Like one called Amata, that talks to users, and then describes them to potential matches. Or Rizz, the digital wingman that analyzes screenshots of messages, and generates a quippy, conversation-sparking response. Sliding into DMs? You can outsource your flirting! There are now dozens of apps that offer AI-powered relationship advice. A dating coach in your pocket, available 24/7. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of these features are designed to alleviate swipe fatigue: the mental, emotional, and physical burnout of modern dating. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I wanted to hear from a human matchmaker about why she’s so suspicious of integrating AI features into dating apps, and what it really takes to find a match. What’s the secret sauce to meeting new people?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Matchmaker Maria.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis, Guest:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I am Maria Avgitidis better known as Matchmaker Maria, and I am the founder of Agape Match, which is a matchmaking service based out of New York City. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She’s also an author, and the host of the podcast Ask A Matchmaker. Maria comes from a long line of matchmakers. Before her, her grandmother, her great grandmother, and her great great grandmother were matchmakers in Greece. These previous generations lived through times of famine and political unrest. So back then, matchmaking was really more about building alliances between families. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And so when I say alliance, you have to think about bartering and trade. And you know, if my family makes milk and your family makes glass bottles, that’s a pretty good match. So these are the things that they were thinking about.They weren’t thinking about are these two people in love? They were thinking about are these families gonna get on. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, when my grandmother was matchmaking, first of all, there’s no computers, let alone the internet, let alone mobile phones where we would swipe on potential soulmates while sitting on the couch. And a lot of my clientele now in 2026 and didn’t just start now, it started, I wanna say 11 years ago. In 2015 we started getting the new audience of people who just felt a lot of dating fatigue.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it, they didn’t have problem going on dates, you know, they could open up an app, but if it takes too long to go from online to offline, you can feel a bit of dating fatigue. But in 2026 what I see the biggest difference in singles is how the algorithm and also how an AI can reaffirm things that might not necessarily be the right thing for us. And I think about that a lot because, there is a rise in AI in dating.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. I’m so glad you brought up AI because that’s what we’re here to talk about today. the biggest trend in, in dating app tech right now is so-called AI matchmaking. Everyone’s trying to get their LLMs to be the next cupid. Um, a lot of them use AI chatbots to basically ask users questions and then match them with other users based on their answers so that they don’t have to build a profile, they don’t have to swipe, removing a lot of that friction, you know, what do you make of this trend?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Um, first of all, I resent the fact that it’s called matchmaker. just because I’m maybe a generational matchmaker. I know what it takes to be a professional matchmaker. It’s so much about community building. At the end of the day, you know, matchmaking is considered one of the oldest professions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It ranks up there with a midwife and uh, and sex work and, The reason why matchmaking has always existed is because dating is a communal activity. You know, don’t look at yourself right now if you are single, laying on the couch, swiping while an episode of Friends or Big Bang Theory playing in the background.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s not what dating, that’s not what courtship is supposed to be like. It’s supposed to be your parents meddling. It’s supposed to be your cousin setting up with their friends. It’s your friends setting you up with their friends and you meeting their coworkers at a barbecue. Like dating is a communal effort, ’cause we were not meant to date alone. Humans have this instinct to connect. So that’s the first part, but now what is it exactly doing? And it goes back to my suspicions of, you know, what algorithms and AI can do. I’m not saying that they’re not helpful in certain elements of our jobs, \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, I just actually put the privacy policy of a social media site on my ChatGPT to be like, what am I, what’s wrong with it? You know, and like, let me know so I don’t have to read the whole privacy policy. So I’m not saying that there’s not some really great benefits with having ai, um, help us, but I do feel like people have a very poor perception of who they actually are.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think when you talk to an AI, you wanna say really good things about yourself. You’re not necessarily being tasked to look at yourself critically and. Because the AI is built to reaffirm you, even if you’re making a very bad decision. So now take it to dating, what questions are these apps asking to really get to know you, to really understand what kind of partner you will be? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think a chat bot can do a really great job at making some assumptions on your horoscope or numerology or your Enneagram because a lot of content in on the internet already exists, where it pulls from. I wonder what kind of content it would pull from to help someone who is experiencing extreme loneliness. And then it goes back to the end of who is this for? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No one’s building an AI matchmaking company from the goodness of their heart. There’s probably gonna be investors, there’s probably gonna be shareholders. There’s probably a company that wants to buy it and someone’s gonna profit. And I’m not saying that a dating company or a dating service provider should not get paid for the work that they do. They should absolutely get paid. I’ll be the first to say it. Hello!\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I, as a human matchmaker, have a motivation to get my client into a relationship as quickly as possible, because as a human being, I don’t wanna talk to my clients longer than I have to. Right? Like, I really want them in relationships because I want them to leave me alone. That’s not, that’s an optimistic way of looking at it. Right? I wanna be good at my job. I wanna be a good matchmaker. Right? But dating companies, they don’t have that, they can tell us, oh, you know, it’s not just about shareholders.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, we wanna help people fall in love. Okay. But you, you, you’re not creating apps that are providing that safe environment. Women are looking for. And you are showing men, women that don’t wanna date them, so they’re having a terrible dating experience and all this because they get to pay every month their subscription to make the shareholders happy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> a lot of these dating apps or a lot of these, I, I know you hate the term, but that’s what they’re calling themselves, AI matchmakers, um, report to. Yeah. Just take that kind of friction out of, swiping,out of like having to sift through all these new people and all these new profiles. I mean, Facebook’s dating assistant for example, it works by basically telling the chat bot, uh, a bunch of unique traits that you’re looking for in a partner and they will present you with matches. And the example that meta itself used was find me a Brooklyn girl in tech and.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The chatbot will present profiles of Brooklyn Girls in Tech. I, it’s not dissimilar to what you do, but also, you know, it’s, it seems to be the final evolution of everything that people have been complaining about when it comes to dating apps.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We are all living pretty frictionless lives in 2026 in the United States. What I mean by that is you do most things that you need to do on technology on your phone. You can order food through Uber Eats. You can order a car through Lyft you can go to the Starbucks checkout line and actually use the app, not have to interact with a barista at all. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so when you look at dating, I just said before that, you know, dating was never meant to be done, like solo. It’s supposed to be a communal thing because at the end of the day, should you two work out, the alliance of family is still there. And it, that is important because family is what determines our long-term values, even the ones we don’t agree with. that is where our attachment comes from.That is where our initial beliefs, our initial philosophies in life come from. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like it’s all developed from these families that we are a part of and what we might create, so for dating apps or AI matchmakers, which I hate that I’m even using that word, but whatever, um, what I find really shocking is that it’s because the environment is so frictionless that people are experiencing dating fatigue. Why would you make it even more frictionless? Like, I don’t know how that helps people. and by the way, I’m not anti dating app, but we, we, you don’t have to participate in it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There is a world out there where you could use. An an online tool to get offline. And those tools are called Eventbrite. There’s also social clubs in New York. The fastest growing social club is New York City Backgammon Club. Uh, people, hundreds of people show up to play an ancient game.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> They put their phones away. And I know that sounds for some people it’s like, ‘oh my God, you want me to go out?’ But you wouldn’t be thinking, this is weird. If it was 2016 or if it was 2006. But now that we have worked from home, now that we have these hybrid work schedules, which again, I’m not against, I think these are fantastic opportunities, but if you’re gonna work from home,\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">that means you have to put in even more effort to actually be involved in social events.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. You’ve really talked about how friction is necessary for. Community. You need to be a little uncomfortable to meet people, and that community is the secret to relationships. Can you expand on that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The reason why I say that you have to fill up a social calendar is because it’s not just romantic relationships, but friendships. We have this idea that friendship is supposed to be organic, but romantic relationships are supposed to be intentional. And it’s actually the reverse. Your friendships have always been intentional, right? The friendships you made in high school or in elementary school, it wasn’t your intention, but your parents intended to live in that neighborhood.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You and your group of friends went to the same school and you met, and through proximity, you became friends. You see this with your college friends, you see this with your work friends. You see this with most adult friendships, that these were intentional choices that had you meet this person.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So to think that friendship is now organic, it really collapses like how we make friends, because you typically don’t make friends just walking in the supermarket. more than half of you’re wearing AirPods when you go in there. So you know, no one’s really talking to you either. So. The way to create any sort of relationship is we have to have the baseline foundation of friendship.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Well, friendship can only happen with two things in this formula, proximity and familiarity. If your algorithm is only showing you one single race, one single body type, one single lifestyle, then that is what you’re familiar with. And I can understand when people say to me, I’m just not attracted to this, or I’m not attracted to that. I, I get it. Your, your own upbringing is going to influence what you are familiar with. Right? But then there’s that proximity and that re, you know, proximity is also about repetition. You have to have that time invested in that person. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So if you were to develop friendships, if you really put that as your goal in 2026, the odds of you getting a relationship through this friendship circle, through this brand new social circle would exponentially grow. Because the people that are going to have the most influence over what your future looks like at this point is whoever is new to that social circle that you’re developing, \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I remember when I met my spouse, my husband, the people that introduced us, who I intentionally met, I actively did things to meet these people. I had only met them three months before and they completely changed my life and I will forever be grateful for them. But that’s it though, is why did that friendship flourish? Familiarity, proximity. I was constantly seeing them, so that way when I met the rest of their friendship circle. I was familiar with the values that both my spouse and our mutual friend shared.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What my grandmother, her mother, and her grandmother did really well was build community and they also understood that marriage was a long term commitment, not necessarily by just two people, but by two families because you know, they had a village and that village has to be there for each other.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Thank you so much for joining us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maria Avgitidis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Thank you for having me.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was Matchmaker Maria, the host of the podcast Ask a Matchmaker and author of the book, Matchmaker Maria’s No Nonsense Guide to Finding Love.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So we’ve been talking about how to find someone online and in real life — and hate to break it to you, but sometimes that does involve going outside. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But once you’ve found the one do you keep tabs on them? That’s after this break.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this episode is all about finding love in this very online landscape. And so far, we’ve heard about how people are finding connection — whether it’s through a matchmaker, an AI-powered dating app, or a doom scroll speed date. Now, for the last chocolate in our Valentine’s Day assortment, it’s time for a story about literally finding your love … Or at least, finding your love’s location. And this one’s personal for me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ready? How about opening one last tab?: Did I digitally u-haul?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Chinese folklore, there is the Red Thread of Fate. It’s a magical red cord that connects lovers who are destined to be together, no matter what happens. The lore says that the old god of matchmaking binds the couple together by tying the cord around their ankles or their pinkies, depending on who you ask. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although the cord might twist and tangle, it’ll never break. They’ll always find their way back to each other in the end. Today, we just have Find My Friends. With this nifty little app, you can see all your loved ones as little dots on a map, whenever you want! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I share my location with over a dozen people — family members, close friends, and my partner. Over the holidays, a relative who isn’t much older than me was shocked that I’m so cavalier about sharing my location with others. Especially because we just put out an episode on digital hygiene and personal security. And their reaction made me reevaluate some of my online habits: Am I a digital u-hauler? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you aren’t familiar with this, u-hauling is a lesbian stereotype. Many queer women are inclined to develop intense emotional bonds and commit to new relationships, very quickly. So quickly, they move in together. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio clip from TikTok account @Madeitoutpodcast]\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A u-haul! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was comedian Lea DeLaria recently retelling her 30-year old joke. She first told it during her comedy special in the 90s, and the u-haul lesbian has been a community-defining punchline ever since. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And now, the so-called “urge to merge” is influencing digital habits, too. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have managed to avoid the stereotype of actually u-hauling. It took me well over a year of dating, and before that, eight years of friendship, to move in with my partner. And in previous relationships, I’d always been adamant that we really know each other before sharing a home. In fact, I didn’t even want to share an Instagram grid. Up until my partner and I got together, I had never hard launched a girlfriend. I always had very firm boundaries in relationships. But when it comes to sharing my location? Maybe it’s a different story. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I’m definitely not the first queer person to hop into the proverbial digital u-haul. For this story, our team asked people to send voice notes about their experiences with location sharing and romance. Our producer Maya Cueva got this voice note from her friend, Taj. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Taj:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I sent this person, who I was dating, my location and I thought that was fine. They shared their location with me uh, really early on, like probably in the first, like month or two. And at the time I shared locations with all my friends, like 15 people at this time, like, I didn’t think anything of it. Did it early on. Had no idea it was called digital U-Hauling.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: Ok, it’s not really a thing. I made it up, because I’ve done it so often. \u003cb> \u003c/b>I may not be a serial u-hauler, but I am definitely guilty of \u003ci>digital\u003c/i> u-hauling. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it may be a surprise that I myself am guilty of this, because, as a tech journalist you’d think that I’d be more guarded about this. Right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But sharing my location like that felt like wearing my heart on my sleeve. Here! I’m giving you access to my whereabouts all the time! I’m trusting you to find me, but only when it’s socially appropriate! And I would never expect the object of my very trackable affections to send me \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">their \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">location — although, whenever they did reciprocate, it was always like, a nice affirmation that we were on the same page. And more importantly, it was convenient. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My friend Tanya, though, has a completely different approach to this than I do. Tanya is a tech journalist too, and she takes privacy pretty seriously. She sent me this voice note: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tanya Chen:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> it’s not that I refuse to share my location, especially with, close, uh, trusted friends and family and I have, it’s just something I really prioritize just to be unsearchable and unknowable, just to kind of like be able to exist freely without people knowing where I am. Or bothering me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I do not like knowing, you know, where I am. I do like knowing where you are though, but you can’t have a one way situation, uh, relationship as it turns out like that. so if I were to offer my own thoughts on this yeah.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just to be really precious about like who you share it with, I mean, for the obvious reason, like precarious stalking stuff. Right? it’s an absolute right. And even, um, now something that’s kind of rare to just like, not have anyone find you. Um, love you. Bye. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> U-hauling may be a lesbian stereotype, but the practice of sharing locations is of course, not exclusive to sapphic relationships. And It’s not always a philosophical debate about privacy and personal freedom. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of times, it’s just a matter of practicality. Like, I have these friends, Mandy and Jackson. They’re engaged now, been together for six and a half years, and they’ve been sharing their location for most of their relationship. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mandy Seiner:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Jackson only shares his location with me, but I actually share my location with 14 people, including my mom. I just, I like to look at my little sims and see where my friends are. When do you check my location? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackson Maxwell:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> it’s pretty rare that I do, uh, Mandy recently had a foot surgery a few months ago, and, uh, getting around, uh, with limited mobility on the New York City subway system, really not easy. Uh, getting around on the streets also not easy, so I would just double check \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mandy Seiner:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and similar, I mean, Jackson making sure I’m okay. but Jackson used to have. seizures. and so if he was out like taking a walk or running errands and I hadn’t heard from him for a while, it gave me a lot of peace of mind to be able to see where he was and know that if something happened and he was stuck somewhere, that I would be able to come find him.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think of our long-term partnership or any long-term partnership as being like the buddy system in school. Like you always have to know, be with your buddy and know where your buddy is. And that’s what, that’s what having a fiance is, is the buddy system. so I just gotta be able to check on my buddy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Location sharing in relationships has been a decade long debate at this point. It’s super polarizing. Some see it as another form of surveillance, while others can’t trust their partners without location sharing. Like, for my friend Amanda, location sharing is a sticking point. Not between Amanda and her boyfriend, but between the couple and everyone else they know. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Amanda Silberling:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I am very online. I am an internet culture reporter. I am professionally, very online. I share my location with a bunch of people, but I don’t have my boyfriend’s location.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is interesting to me how some friends, when I’ve told them I don’t have his location, they’re like, what are you doing? That’s a red flag. Like, is that okay? And I’m like, I don’t think he’s hiding anything. and I don’t think that we should assume that not sharing your location means you’re hiding something. Because like. Like, I think it’s very reasonable to not want someone to know where you are at all times of the day, like as long as he texts me when he gets home, if he’s out late, I don’t really care that I don’t have his location. But then it’s funny because some of our other friends have been like, I would be worried if you did have your, that their location, like that’s a sign of distrust. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s almost like a micro generational gap where people born in like 1998 think it’s weird that I don’t have my boyfriend’s location and people born in like 1994 are like, it would be really weird if you had it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are legitimate reasons to hide or obscure your location, and it’s not always to hide cheating or anything nefarious. On this show, we’re always talking about the surveillance state, and how our right to privacy is getting chipped away every day. Big tech companies are collecting all of our data and selling it off to the highest bidder, all the time. And at the individual level, people do abuse these apps to stalk and monitor and control others. My friend Anna is a journalist who’s covered sex and relationships for years, so I consider her an expert in the realm of love and the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna lovine:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I’m pretty ambivalent about location sharing because it’s absolutely a tool to surveil people and I ultimately think that breeds more paranoia and, honestly hiding things that don’t need to be hidden. I generally think that more surveillance doesn’t work and just like encourages people to find loopholes.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That being said, Anna and her fiancee, Kat, do share their locations with each other. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna lovine:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and I prefer it that way. I think it’s a great utility. And I ultimately think if someone, if you share your location and someone’s doing something nefarious, they will figure out a way to, um, not be seen. And even in like other ways where you don’t really want someone to know what you’re doing. Like last year when I was. Planning on proposing, um, a week before Kat had plans. So I went to the location and I swapped the location of my device to my iPad. So if Kat did check my location, in that instance I was like, oh, I need her to see that I’m home. So I changed my location. Bu that was like, so galaxy-brained. I was like, what am I doing? But hey, she didn’t find out.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">is\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> a degree of vulnerability involved in sharing locations, especially in a new relationship. In a way, it’s like giving a piece of yourself to another person. Screw the predestined red thread of fate! With a couple of taps, you can give someone\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the other end of a digital tether to yourself. No old god of matchmaking needed! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But not everyone is comfortable with that. My friend Harriet has the complete opposite approach to new relationships than I did. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harriet Weber:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I would need to build a lot of trust with someone before wanting to do that. It, it was even a big deal to me to share my location with friends. Um, and I only started doing that because I’ve been going on dates, uh, with total strangers. So if you’re my friend and I’ve shared my location with you, that is a big deal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m honored to be one of the select few that Harriet does share her location with. We swapped locations when she got back on the apps, and wanted to make sure that her friends knew that she got home safe. And since then, it has been really convenient. Like, having each others’ locations came in handy when we were trying to find each other in a crowded park during Pride. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like many other people in this story, Harriet is also a tech journalist. Hey, a lot of my friends are, ok? And I, as well as a lot of my friends, are hyperaware of the fact that convenience often comes at the cost of personal privacy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harriet Weber:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Something I have feelings on myself is, um, the feeling of being surveilled. It’s so abstracted that it’s not really in my face, like a camera would be in my face. For example. If, if a camera’s in your face, you’re gonna act a little different, um, regardless of what you’re doing. There’s just something about it that reminds me a little bit too much of like, spyware.I guess it just makes me a little bit uncomfortable.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is something I had grappled with, amid all of my digital u-hauling antics. You’re giving the other person the \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">option\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to surveil you, sure, but you’re also trusting that they won’t. The social contract dictates that location sharing is a sacred bond. When you opt in, you’re agreeing that you’ll only use that connection when it’s appropriate. To me, the inherent vulnerability in location sharing is what makes it feel like such a romantic gesture. I mean, it’s commitment, right?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taj:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I don’t recommend it. Clearly, I think it is a little too much.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Taj again. They had shared their location after just a month of dating their new girlfriend. Long story short, they aren’t together anymore.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taj:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think it put a lot of stress in like, I don’t know, a weird surveillance on the relationship and there was a few times where it was like, okay, she could see my location. And she’s like, oh, like, ‘what’s up? You haven’t hit me,’ versus like, oh, maybe you’re just at home focusing on yourself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It only takes one weird experience to drain the romance out of location sharing. Years ago, amid a breakup, I felt that exact sense of surveillance that Taj was talking about. The whole thing made me a lot more parsimonious about sharing my location especially when there are romantic stakes involved. When it came to finding my dates in crowded places, I had become a big fan of the “share for one hour” option. The other person can see where you are, but that link expires. You get all the convenience, without any of the commitment or vulnerability. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then when \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">is\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> the right time to \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">permanently\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> share locations? When do you take that leap of faith? My friend Anna weighed in on this again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anna lovine:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I don’t remember having a discussion like, oh, are we gonna share locations now? Or, oh, can I have your location? I’m sure it was an instance where, like, oh, the subway’s down and I’m gonna be late, so why don’t, I’m gonna give you my location so you can see where I am. It definitely felt good. It didn’t feel like as significant as, say, becoming girlfriends or obviously like moving in together or something like that. But it felt nice. It’s like an even deeper level of trust.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My days of digital u-hauling, of sharing and then un-sharing with new people, came to an end three years ago, when my partner and I got together. We were best friends for nearly a decade at that point, and had each others’ locations the entire time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the time we finally started dating, we had already established a routine of following the other person’s little blue dot to find each other — at concerts, at the farmer’s market, and yes, even as friends at the giant IKEA in Burbank, California. In fact, I didn’t know her address for a good year, because I would just drive to her location on Find My Friends. Although we didn’t \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">literally\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> u-haul, we were already sharing this hugely vulnerable connection. I don’t remember when we actually \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">started\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> sharing our locations with each other. But I like to think that the red thread of fate bound us together long before an app ever did. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In all of my digital u-hauling, things would end, and I would inevitably cut that tether — digital and emotional. But this time, I know it won’t break. \u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Special thanks to our friends for sending us their location sharing stories: Taj Weaver, Tanya Chen, Mandy Seiner and Jackson Maxwell, Amanda Silberling, Anna lovine, and Harriet Weber. If there’s anything I love more than love stories, it’s a juicy voice note. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, happy Valentine’s day, lovers. Let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was produced by Maya Cueva, with support from Gabriela Glueck. It was edited by Jen Chien, who is KQED’s Director of Podcasts.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\nOur team includes editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Epomaker Aula F99 keyboard with Graywood v3 switches, and Cherry profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, and I know it’s podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives, and want us to keep making more, it would \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">really \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends, too. Or even your enemies! Or… frenemies? And if you \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">really\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.KQED.org/podcasts.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "how-the-ai-data-center-boom-impacts-black-communities",
"title": "How the AI Data Center Boom Impacts Black Communities",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Picture this… You move to a cozy home in an idyllic neighborhood: fresh air and birdsong in the morning and gorgeous sunsets at night. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One day, you wake up to find an AI data center is being built right across the street. Your view of trees turns into piles of dirt, the songbird’s trill replaced by the hum of machinery. That’s the reality for many Atlanta metro area residents right now, facing an explosion of AI data center construction. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, Morgan is joined by \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">reporters DorMiya Vance and Marlon Hyde from WABE in Atlanta\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Vance and Hyde recently looked into why so many companies are targeting the Atlanta suburbs for their builds. They’ll break down what this means for the infrastructure of local energy companies, how to contextualize this trend within the historical strain placed on predominately Black communities, and what can be done to prepare for “stranded assets” if the bubble bursts.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1658905284\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wabe.org/people/dormiya-vance/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">DorMiya Vance\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Southside reporter at \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WABE\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wabe.org/people/marlon-hyde/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Marlon Hyde\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, business reporter at \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WABE\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wabe.org/data-centers-are-growing-faster-in-atlanta-than-anywhere-else-in-the-us/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Data centers power our online lives. The business is growing faster in metro Atlanta than anywhere else in the US\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Marlon Hyde, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WABE\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wabe.org/south-atlanta-residents-brace-for-major-data-center-development/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South Atlanta residents brace for major data center development \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— DorMiya Vance, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WABE\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/01/microsoft-vows-to-cover-full-power-costs-for-energy-hungry-ai-data-centers/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Microsoft vows to cover full power costs for energy-hungry AI data centers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Benj Edwards, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ars Technica\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://capitalbnews.org/data-center-south-carolina-black-community/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After a White Town Rejected a Data Center, Developers Targeted a Black Area\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Adam Mahoney, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Capital B\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://capitalbnews.org/musk-xai-memphis-black-neighborhood-pollution/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Historic Black Community Takes On the World’s Richest Man Over Environmental Racism\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Adam Mahoney, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Capital B\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://mediajustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/MediaJustice-Data-Centers-Report.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Media Justice\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/01/01/data-centers-prince-georges-county/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Data centers spark a ‘fight for the soul’ of this mostly Black Maryland county\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Lateshia Beachum, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Washington Post\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/26/georgia-datacenters-ai-ban\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Georgia leads push to ban datacenters used to power America’s AI boom\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Timothy Pratt, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Guardian\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Up until recently, the neighborhood of Planters Ridge in Fayetteville, Georgia was just another cozy suburb outside of Atlanta.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it was like real chill, real quiet, like one of those sort of like sleepy neighborhoods.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is DorMiya Vance. She’s a reporter at WABE in Atlanta, and she covers the city’s Southside and the suburbs around it, where Planters Ridge is.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nothing too crazy, just nice woodland area, kind of cul-de-sac. But like, as soon as sort of the trees started coming down, the construction started, it just looked, it looked crazy. And like the way her house is set up, she can see all of it through her front window.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After reporting, DorMiya talked to this resident, Kecia Scott. Kecia had bought her house in 2024. She moved into what she thought was a sleepy neighborhood, not too far from the city, but just suburban enough for some peace and quiet. And Kecia spent a lot of time and money renovating her new home—a crisp, modern house with a floor-to-ceiling front window and views of the cozy cul-de-sac surrounded by woodlands. And then, less than a year after she moved in, the construction started.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it was like, torn down trees, like no more green land, just woods and tractors and machines. And then like her neighbors in front of her, they either moved or sold their house because of the construction. However, Miss Kecia, she didn’t. Like, she had just built her house. She wasn’t trying to leave despite, you know, everything that happened and despite her neighborhood being somewhat just infiltrated a little bit. It was just a lot, it was a lot. Last time I was up there, it was not great. She had like a more modern house, so like the whole front window was like just straight, you know, window floor to ceiling. So like she could just walk by and just see everything. She didn’t have any curtains either. It was tough, it tough to see.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kecia had unknowingly built her house just across the street from a QTS development site. QTS, for Quality Technology Services, a data center company that’s built more than 75 campuses across the country. The campus going up across the streets from Kecia’s house will consist of 16 buildings, spanning over 600 acres. That’s about 450 football fields.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> These areas where some of these data centers are being built on the Southside where there is more land are sort of these more suburban residential areas and so obviously if I’m living in a nice neighborhood I don’t want to see construction for a data center right in front of it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Data centers like these have been the backbone of the digital world for the last 60 years. Streaming a Netflix show, gossiping on a Discord call, or uploading a photo dump on Instagram, all of that processing takes place in data centers—massive, windowless buildings on sprawling campuses filled with racks of networking equipment and storage systems and humming servers. They need a lot of electricity to run and a lot clean water to keep cool. Data centers aren’t actually new, but then the AI industry exploded. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You might remember this stat from last week’s episode: generating one 5-second AI video is like running a microwave for an hour. It adds up fast, which is why AI companies are scrambling to build more and more data centers to feed this insatiable demand for computing power. As big tech companies prioritize AI, They’re building data centers all over the country, especially in the South. And as we heard from DorMiya, it’s not like these centers are all being built in the middle of nowhere. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Take the Atlanta metro area. It’s known for being a foundational hub of the civil rights movement, for its booming music and film industry, and for its excellent food scene. Now, Atlanta is one of the fastest growing hubs for data center construction. Here, and in other cities throughout the South, developers are eyeing predominantly black suburbs for their new facilities, like in Planters Ridge, where Kecia built her house. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, we’re heading to Atlanta to understand why the data center boom is happening here, what it means for the communities living alongside these facilities, and how residents are pushing back. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s get into it. You know how this goes, we’re opening a new tab: What’s happening with data centers in Atlanta? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For this deep dive, we teamed up with DorMiya Vance and her colleague Marlon Hyde. They’re two reporters from WABE in Atlanta, and they’ve been working on an ongoing series about the explosion of data centers around the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a lot of money involved, a lot of opportunity, however, my coverage kind of comes into play when it comes to, okay, cool, what are we going to do about the people that live here?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">DorMiya has been covering the ways that these centers are affecting the Southside communities that live around them. And she says the impacts start well before the facilities ever come online.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The concerns around like noise and just like appearance, like, you know, the lights, construction, and having to build these large campuses for months on end.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Construction is more than just an eyesore. It’s loud, disruptive, and in some parts of the state, so close to homes that it’s actually affecting residents’ water supply. About an hour from Atlanta is a massive data center owned by Meta. Residents there have complained about construction sediment and light pollution making their homes nearly unlivable. In a video shared with a news outlet, More Perfect Union, one resident talked about some of the effects she’s seen.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[More Perfect Union Video Clip]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reporter Dan Lieberman: So you can see the sediment from the data center. Wow, and that’s just from the water coming out of your faucet.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mansfield Resident Beverly Morris: Yeah, and this is what’s in our pipes. I think eventually that affected our well water.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> She told More Perfect Union that she’s had to replace a hot water heater, two washing machines, and a dishwasher because of the construction sediment. Her tap water is undrinkable. And then, once these data centers are built and running, residents face other issues too. A major one, noise. A few years ago, the TV station WUSA measured noise levels around an Amazon data center in Virginia. Here’s what a neighborhood without a data center sounded like [birds and wind sounds] and the neighborhood of Great Oak near a data center [machinery hum sound]. It’s that low-frequency hum that’s just enough so that you can’t quite tune it out, going on 24-7. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Prince William Times is a newspaper that covers a neighborhood of Great Oak, where that data center you just heard is located. They recently spoke to a resident who’s lived next to that noise for the last few years. Here’s what it sounds like in his backyard.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Great Oak resident Rob Pixley]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If it were like a highway that never stops. This is continual. It is just inordinately loud. Some people have claimed, well, but ‘it’s just like a conversation’ that never stops, is in your bedroom and you can never turn off. So it’s not, you know, 80 decibels, but it’s constant.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there are the concerns about air quality. Around Elon Musk’s xAI data center in Memphis, residents have complained about respiratory issues and a rotten, sulfurous cabbage smell pervading the neighborhood. Here’s what a few residents told Time Magazine.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Boxtown Resident Alexis Humphries]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It smell like gas now, and it didn’t smell like as before Elon came.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Memphis Community Against Pollution President KeShaun Pearson]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I literally can taste it, I can taste the difference now.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To be clear, the reason the xAI data center is causing so many air quality issues is because it’s running its own methane gas turbines. Musk brought them in because the Memphis power grid could only provide a third of xAI’s electricity needs. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency just ruled that Musk may have acted illegally by essentially building an unsanctioned in-house power plant. It’s not the industry standard to circumvent power grid limitations like that. That’s just an Elon Musk thing. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But like we talked about in our last episode, data centers need a lot of energy to function, and the xAI situation shows just how far some companies are willing to go to secure it. In Atlanta, the city’s power grid isn’t equipped to handle the scale of data center development planned in the area. Not yet, at least.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to Science for Georgia, a nonprofit, they estimate that there are about 100 data centers in use and about 42 planned.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s business reporter Marlon Hyde, who works with DorMiya at WABE.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In use and planned data centers are expected to draw about 14,000 megawatts of power from our grid. That’s enough to power about 6.3 million homes, according to the nonprofit, and Georgia has about 4.6 million housing units. So these data centers that are drawing more power than all of us combined in the state can use.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Georgia Public Service Commission before the year ended approved Georgia Power’s new plan, which is about a $16 billion plan to add about another 10,000 megawatts of new power generation to the grid to meet the rising demand for data centers. And especially for the data centers, the power has to be built now. They need new transmitters, they need new substations. So to do all of that, Georgia Power has to go to work right now. They have to start building out the grid right now so that those data centers can come in and it can support more data centers that are in the pipeline.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That brings us to another criticism of data centers, higher electricity bills for residents. All that power infrastructure Marlon mentioned, someone has to pay for it and critics worry that the costs could be passed on to residents of those areas. And as new data centers come online, all the extra energy demand is likely to raise rates. One study from Carnegie Mellon University found that by 2030, the average electricity bill in the highest demand markets could go up by 25%.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Very recently, people are paying more and more on their bills. We’re seeing higher bills, especially, I’m a resident as well. So if you’re already seeing bills increase and we’re not talking about data centers, now we’re talking about a huge entity that’s gonna continue to draw electricity 24 seven. And I’m expected to pay for it? That’s how a lot of residents feel. And that’s where state legislators are looking in the direction of. How do you hold these data centers accountable, these data center companies accountable for what they’re causing in the community, for what they’re building and how much they are paying? There was a proposal to make data centers pay their fair share on energy costs and it didn’t end up reaching the Senate floor for a vote.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have seen some recent evidence that big tech companies are responding to the pushback. In January, Microsoft actually vowed to foot the electricity costs for its data centers, including the cost of expanding the power grid. They’re calling it the community-first AI infrastructure plan. As part of the plan, the company will turn down any local property tax reductions and invest in AI training for local schools and libraries. Whether Microsoft follows through with the plan is yet to be seen. But the company has already developed new designs to reduce its environmental footprint in Georgia. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last year, Microsoft unveiled its second Fairwater AI Superfactory. This one’s in Atlanta. The facility uses a closed-loop system that doesn’t rely on drinking water for cooling. Microsoft says the system uses almost zero water, reducing the strain on local water supplies. But the Fairwater site is just one of hundreds of data center campuses in the area. Is it enough to make a difference? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Virginia and Texas are leading the data center boom. There’s no comprehensive database of data centers in Georgia. So it’s hard to assess the full scope of this industry. Science for Georgia estimates around a hundred operational data centers. The data center research company Baxtel estimates that there could be almost 200. But what we do know is that Georgia is one of the fastest growing states for data center development. Media company Axios reported that as of the end of last year, the state had plans for 285 more. So what’s driving Georgia’s data center boom? Where these facilities are being built isn’t accidental. It’s shaped by policies, incentives, and longstanding inequalities. We’re opening a whole new tab on that after this break.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab: Why are there so many data centers in Georgia? The tech companies that are building these massive complexes around Atlanta aren’t actually based there. We’re getting into this with DorMiya and Marlon again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The data center boom here in Georgia has been largely supported by investments from major tech companies like Amazon Web Services, Meta, Microsoft, and Google. Google actually announced that they were investing $300 million to expand the data center campus and their footprint in Georgia. So we’ve also seen Amazon pledge billions into expanding its data center infrastructure here in George. So there’s a lot of money coming down south.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so here’s why so many tech companies are flocking to the Atlanta metro area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Georgia has land, it has power, and it has connectivity to the internet. On top of that, the state offers incentives. So looking at the liberal leaning economic advocacy group, Good Jobs First, Georgia is estimated to wave close to $300 million in sales and use taxes on data center equipment purchases in 2025. So it’s like, imagine you’re thinking of moving to another state, or, you know, even for example—we both have New York roots—imagine somebody said, ‘hey, if you’re willing to move back to New York, I’m gonna waive your first year of rent.’ You’re gonna move there pretty quickly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, let’s talk about some of these economic incentives at work here. Marlon, you’ve reported on this a lot. What else is at play?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Business speaks volumes. Economic development, they’re willing to give away incentives. You know, one of the first instances of reporting on data centers was Twitter known as X now, Elon Musk’s company, was applying for a $10 million tax abatement in Fulton County, a tax abate not having to pay taxes on sales and use taxes for the equipment that is being bought, mind you they’re buying millions of dollars worth of equipment. Everything we do, even right now as we’re talking, is passing through a data center, and you have to have up-to-date equipment to handle all of this processing power. So, for example, if Twitter wanted to get $200 million worth of the equipment, they would probably ask Fulton County, where their data center is, for some type of tax relief so that they don’t have to pay that money and that they could either save it and pocket it or push it forward in other ways to invest and grow their data center infrastructure. The money is here, the money is flowing and I do not see any of this investment slowing down anytime soon.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Data centers bring promises of jobs and economic growth, but Marlon, based on your reporting, are those jobs permanent?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A majority of those jobs are not permanent. When I went to the data center that’s run by Georgia Tech, CODA in Tech Square, they had security. They had people throughout the building. But when you’re looking around, you’re not seeing 200-300 people ready and working on it. There were about 200 to 300 people involved in the actual building of it. But when it comes to the operations, you’re bringing only 20 to 30 jobs in and those are highly skilled jobs majority of the time. So, these companies are not employing hundreds of Georgians just for these data centers. It’s just, that’s not the reality.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We also need to talk about where in Georgia these data centers are being built. As DorMiya has reported, the neighborhoods closest to these new developments are predominantly Black suburbs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If we’re thinking about like Atlanta or Georgia and the areas that I reported on, you have to think about history. There’s certain areas that have been either redlined or certain barriers that may have been placed that were historically, systemically racist. And so there’s more Black people on the Southside that may have been pushed out. And there’s also more land, which, that land is cheaper. It’s unfortunate that that’s where the cheaper land is and that’s where the population is heavily dense, you know, people of color. From my reporting, like if I just think about the city of South Fulton, where it’s basically, you know almost 100% Black residents, and that is where data centers are coming. It goes back to sort of like, historical route and just land, like where is it located? If you’re heading north, it’s more dense. So yeah, those north Atlanta more white or more wealthy or whatever you want to name it. There’s no space.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re seeing a similar trend around other data centers built in other states too. Developers are flocking to areas where land is cheap and there’s a lot of it. But as environmental justice advocates have pointed out, those areas tend to be Black and Latino communities. The smelly xAI data center in Memphis that residents say is ruining the air quality, that’s in Boxtown, which was founded by formerly enslaved people after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. To this day, Boxtown is still a predominantly Black neighborhood. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last year, residents of Jones County, Georgia, a majority white community, rejected the construction of a new data center complex. As Capital B News reported in January, the developers of that project are now trying to build it in a rural Black community in South Carolina. The community there has already been grappling with industrial pollution for generations. And in Prince George’s County in Maryland, another predominantly Black area, residents are pushing back against the development of another new data center. During a community meeting, residents confronted county officials over the history of pollution in the area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Speaker at Community Meeting] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m a three-year cancer survivor. I have been exposed to extreme environmental toxins in the PG County. PG County is the toilet of the state. Stop treating PG County as the toilet of the state. We deserve more. We deserve more.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The data center location trend is part of a larger history of environmental injustice, especially in Georgia. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio clip from short film, Pine Packs a Punch] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The land has always been an important commodity in Georgia. In the 19th century, stately plantation homes spelled a way of life unique in a changing world.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, another news outlet, analyzed years of EPA and census data. They found that communities near toxic waste sites in Georgia had a larger percentage of Black residents and lower property values. And in the city of South Fulton, where many neighborhoods are near industrial facilities, residents have been complaining about chemical odors, soil contamination, and air quality issues. And residents have left out of the loop when it comes to new industrial developments. From the 1950s to the present day. Data centers are adding to the environmental burden there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Really just boils down to like, you know, systemic racism and segregation, like it’s a little bit of a history lesson.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So developers are flocking to these areas that have a lot of land, for cheap, and promising that data center complexes will bring economic benefits to the marginalized communities that already live there. As Marlon has pointed out, there is so much money flowing into the construction of these facilities, all driven by the expectation that the AI industry will continue its exponential growth. But what happens if that investment dries up? Let’s open one last tab. What happens to data centers if the AI bubble pops?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s a question that researchers, professors, and data center developers are all asking themselves right now as well. There’s no answer right now. You could be potentially left with a stranded asset.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stranded assets are resources or infrastructure that are no longer valuable. They were built with a purpose, but can no longer be used and are now a financial liability. Think nuclear power plants that have been shut down or coal reserves that can’t be burned. There’s no economic value, but all of that stuff, that investment, it’s just sitting there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Regardless, that’s still gonna be a warehouse full of technology. You can do something with it, potentially, but it’s really up to who owns it, who’s developing it, and what are the plans for the future. There’s no real answer for what if this AI bubble pops and we’re left with, at this point, about 100 data centers that are no longer operable.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a nationwide question, but our eyes are on Georgia, where it’s hitting right now. Marlin told me about this one project that’s supposed to be built out by 2037.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Forsyth Technology Campus, it is a $21 billion, let me say that one more time, $21 Billion, over 1,600 acre data center development in Monroe County. And it has the potential to become the single largest economic project in Middle Georgia. There is a desperate need for people that can build data centers because it’s already on the books. It’s planned, it’s ready to go. They need the people to build it. Now, back to your point, there’s not gonna be many permanent jobs that comes out of it afterwards. So we’re gonna have to continue to look at are data centers worth it? Is it worth it to continue building these structures? And for cities, municipalities, is it worth to attract these data centers here? Are we gonna be left with a stranded asset where it’s a warehouse full of servers and cables, but there’s no use for it anymore? What do you do there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that’s why we’re seeing so many more like moratoriums and pauses because like these counties and cities, they want to genuinely try to understand what is it, like, what are you doing here? Are we going to have to worry about this later? What regulations do we need to put in place so our residents aren’t fearful of what you’re doing? I’m just thinking about residents of South Fulton who kind of have this issue already kinda. You know, where they have abandoned warehouses and different things that have been basically stranded there. And they’re still trying to figure out what do we even do with this from years ago.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So whose responsibility is it to deal with these data centers if they’re no longer functional?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the end of the day, it’s an investment from these companies and the state that are creating these data centers. So it’s also their responsibility whether or not these data centers continue to operate into the future. And if they’re just gonna be sucking up resources and not giving back anything in terms of economic development, they’re actually worsening our environment. If that all continues to be true, then it goes back on those municipalities and those data center companies to figure out what to do next.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How are local communities responding to all of this construction? Like, are people getting more involved in local government?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">100%. There was recently, and this is around like Marlon’s reporting on DeKalb County and their moratorium, but they had a town hall and it was basically packed. It was overflowing with residents speaking out, basically like, we don’t want this.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Residents are going to remain vocal. We are in Georgia, Atlanta, one of the hearts of the civil rights movement. People here feel connected to their local government. People here feel connected to the story and the history of Atlanta as we are a part of it at this current point in time. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">DeKalb County voted to extend a moratorium, a pause on data centers being built, constructed to the summer, 2026, June of 2026. And that’s because their phones have been ringing off the hook, according to the County Commissioner. There’ve been non-stop calls, texts, emails about residents not wanting these data centers here. People showing up to community meetings, town halls, any type of forum where they can have their voice heard. People are showing up to let commissioners and the economic leaders know that they don’t want these data centers here. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And we understand that there is a need for data centers and for this infrastructure. But if you’re telling me that we need it, but it has to be built right next door to me and I have to hear it, I have be on the same power grid as it, I don’t want this around me. Go find somewhere else for it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is there anything that these data center operators or regulators can do to mitigate these risks if the construction of the centers is inevitable?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, they need to have meetings. They need to talk to city officials. The mayor of Palmetto, she had a meeting and like had work sessions with Microsoft because there’s a Microsoft data center in Palmetto, Georgia. She told me that she had sort of hands-on meetings with the folks from Microsoft so they can interact with residents saying like, hey, this is what we’re building, you know, showing them exactly what they’re going to get. And I think that there needs to be more of that, however, the missing piece is the developer. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You probably won’t see the developer until like the county commission meeting where they’re trying to approve or rezone, you know, where that’s when they pop up but they need to be in the more like regular meetings, town halls. I think that that’s where they need to sort of meet the people because if you’re just going to come into our neighborhood and not even announce yourself, of course we’re going to feel away about it. Like you just want to come in here and not even introduce yourself like, hmm. So I think they just need to meet the people where they are and being that, hey, you know, AI is rising, the internet is here, we have to have these things. How can we work together so that we are getting both ends of the deal met basically.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do you want people to know about the way that big tech is changing Atlanta?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lynn McKee, a professor at Georgia State University, he mentions that for places like Butts County that it’s fighting for more economic development, more tax revenue, data centers could be beneficial. Now the question becomes, what is the overall value? You know, we could see in the short-term, yes, while this warehouse is running, it’s going to be paying whatever share was determined through, you know, whatever deals and arrangements they’re making. But outside of that, what is the city giving up? You know, are we giving up land that could be used for, you know schools, hospitals, homes? Are residents getting burdened with higher energy bills with more instances of environmental pollution, sound noise pollution, things of that nature? Is it gonna be worth it in the long term to put our residents through that? If artificial intelligence is growing in importance, growing in use, you can only expect data centers to grow and for the infrastructure to continue to expand, to support it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Georgia could actually be the first to issue a statewide pause on data center construction. Just last week, at the end of January, Georgia state lawmakers introduced a bill proposing a statewide moratorium on all data center projects until March of 2027. This legislation isn’t a ban on data centers. It’s just buying time. Putting all of these new developments on hold will give local governments and municipalities time to figure out how to regulate data centers. And at the very least, it would give residents a break from all the construction. Okay, now let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Hambrick and Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor-in-chief. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Apple Maker Ala F99 keyboard with Greywood V3 switches and Cherry Profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, It would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends too, or even your enemies, or frenemies. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "As AI data centers move into Atlanta's suburbs, Black communities pay the price.",
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"title": "How the AI Data Center Boom Impacts Black Communities | KQED",
"description": "Picture this… You move to a cozy home in an idyllic neighborhood: fresh air and birdsong in the morning and gorgeous sunsets at night. One day, you wake up to find an AI data center is being built right across the street. Your view of trees turns into piles of dirt, the songbird’s trill replaced by the hum of machinery. That’s the reality for many Atlanta metro area residents right now, facing an explosion of AI data center construction. In this episode, Morgan is joined by reporters DorMiya Vance and Marlon Hyde from WABE in Atlanta. Vance and Hyde recently looked into why so many companies are targeting the Atlanta suburbs for their builds. They’ll break down what this means for the infrastructure of local energy companies, how to contextualize this trend within the historical strain placed on predominately Black communities, and what can be done to prepare for “stranded assets” if the bubble bursts.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Picture this… You move to a cozy home in an idyllic neighborhood: fresh air and birdsong in the morning and gorgeous sunsets at night. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One day, you wake up to find an AI data center is being built right across the street. Your view of trees turns into piles of dirt, the songbird’s trill replaced by the hum of machinery. That’s the reality for many Atlanta metro area residents right now, facing an explosion of AI data center construction. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, Morgan is joined by \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">reporters DorMiya Vance and Marlon Hyde from WABE in Atlanta\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Vance and Hyde recently looked into why so many companies are targeting the Atlanta suburbs for their builds. They’ll break down what this means for the infrastructure of local energy companies, how to contextualize this trend within the historical strain placed on predominately Black communities, and what can be done to prepare for “stranded assets” if the bubble bursts.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1658905284\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wabe.org/people/dormiya-vance/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">DorMiya Vance\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Southside reporter at \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WABE\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wabe.org/people/marlon-hyde/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Marlon Hyde\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, business reporter at \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WABE\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wabe.org/data-centers-are-growing-faster-in-atlanta-than-anywhere-else-in-the-us/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Data centers power our online lives. The business is growing faster in metro Atlanta than anywhere else in the US\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Marlon Hyde, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WABE\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wabe.org/south-atlanta-residents-brace-for-major-data-center-development/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South Atlanta residents brace for major data center development \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— DorMiya Vance, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WABE\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/01/microsoft-vows-to-cover-full-power-costs-for-energy-hungry-ai-data-centers/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Microsoft vows to cover full power costs for energy-hungry AI data centers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Benj Edwards, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ars Technica\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://capitalbnews.org/data-center-south-carolina-black-community/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After a White Town Rejected a Data Center, Developers Targeted a Black Area\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Adam Mahoney, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Capital B\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://capitalbnews.org/musk-xai-memphis-black-neighborhood-pollution/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Historic Black Community Takes On the World’s Richest Man Over Environmental Racism\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Adam Mahoney, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Capital B\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://mediajustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/MediaJustice-Data-Centers-Report.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Media Justice\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/01/01/data-centers-prince-georges-county/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Data centers spark a ‘fight for the soul’ of this mostly Black Maryland county\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Lateshia Beachum, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Washington Post\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/26/georgia-datacenters-ai-ban\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Georgia leads push to ban datacenters used to power America’s AI boom\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Timothy Pratt, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Guardian\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Up until recently, the neighborhood of Planters Ridge in Fayetteville, Georgia was just another cozy suburb outside of Atlanta.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it was like real chill, real quiet, like one of those sort of like sleepy neighborhoods.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is DorMiya Vance. She’s a reporter at WABE in Atlanta, and she covers the city’s Southside and the suburbs around it, where Planters Ridge is.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nothing too crazy, just nice woodland area, kind of cul-de-sac. But like, as soon as sort of the trees started coming down, the construction started, it just looked, it looked crazy. And like the way her house is set up, she can see all of it through her front window.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After reporting, DorMiya talked to this resident, Kecia Scott. Kecia had bought her house in 2024. She moved into what she thought was a sleepy neighborhood, not too far from the city, but just suburban enough for some peace and quiet. And Kecia spent a lot of time and money renovating her new home—a crisp, modern house with a floor-to-ceiling front window and views of the cozy cul-de-sac surrounded by woodlands. And then, less than a year after she moved in, the construction started.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it was like, torn down trees, like no more green land, just woods and tractors and machines. And then like her neighbors in front of her, they either moved or sold their house because of the construction. However, Miss Kecia, she didn’t. Like, she had just built her house. She wasn’t trying to leave despite, you know, everything that happened and despite her neighborhood being somewhat just infiltrated a little bit. It was just a lot, it was a lot. Last time I was up there, it was not great. She had like a more modern house, so like the whole front window was like just straight, you know, window floor to ceiling. So like she could just walk by and just see everything. She didn’t have any curtains either. It was tough, it tough to see.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kecia had unknowingly built her house just across the street from a QTS development site. QTS, for Quality Technology Services, a data center company that’s built more than 75 campuses across the country. The campus going up across the streets from Kecia’s house will consist of 16 buildings, spanning over 600 acres. That’s about 450 football fields.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> These areas where some of these data centers are being built on the Southside where there is more land are sort of these more suburban residential areas and so obviously if I’m living in a nice neighborhood I don’t want to see construction for a data center right in front of it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Data centers like these have been the backbone of the digital world for the last 60 years. Streaming a Netflix show, gossiping on a Discord call, or uploading a photo dump on Instagram, all of that processing takes place in data centers—massive, windowless buildings on sprawling campuses filled with racks of networking equipment and storage systems and humming servers. They need a lot of electricity to run and a lot clean water to keep cool. Data centers aren’t actually new, but then the AI industry exploded. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You might remember this stat from last week’s episode: generating one 5-second AI video is like running a microwave for an hour. It adds up fast, which is why AI companies are scrambling to build more and more data centers to feed this insatiable demand for computing power. As big tech companies prioritize AI, They’re building data centers all over the country, especially in the South. And as we heard from DorMiya, it’s not like these centers are all being built in the middle of nowhere. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Take the Atlanta metro area. It’s known for being a foundational hub of the civil rights movement, for its booming music and film industry, and for its excellent food scene. Now, Atlanta is one of the fastest growing hubs for data center construction. Here, and in other cities throughout the South, developers are eyeing predominantly black suburbs for their new facilities, like in Planters Ridge, where Kecia built her house. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, we’re heading to Atlanta to understand why the data center boom is happening here, what it means for the communities living alongside these facilities, and how residents are pushing back. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s get into it. You know how this goes, we’re opening a new tab: What’s happening with data centers in Atlanta? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For this deep dive, we teamed up with DorMiya Vance and her colleague Marlon Hyde. They’re two reporters from WABE in Atlanta, and they’ve been working on an ongoing series about the explosion of data centers around the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a lot of money involved, a lot of opportunity, however, my coverage kind of comes into play when it comes to, okay, cool, what are we going to do about the people that live here?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">DorMiya has been covering the ways that these centers are affecting the Southside communities that live around them. And she says the impacts start well before the facilities ever come online.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The concerns around like noise and just like appearance, like, you know, the lights, construction, and having to build these large campuses for months on end.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Construction is more than just an eyesore. It’s loud, disruptive, and in some parts of the state, so close to homes that it’s actually affecting residents’ water supply. About an hour from Atlanta is a massive data center owned by Meta. Residents there have complained about construction sediment and light pollution making their homes nearly unlivable. In a video shared with a news outlet, More Perfect Union, one resident talked about some of the effects she’s seen.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[More Perfect Union Video Clip]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reporter Dan Lieberman: So you can see the sediment from the data center. Wow, and that’s just from the water coming out of your faucet.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mansfield Resident Beverly Morris: Yeah, and this is what’s in our pipes. I think eventually that affected our well water.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> She told More Perfect Union that she’s had to replace a hot water heater, two washing machines, and a dishwasher because of the construction sediment. Her tap water is undrinkable. And then, once these data centers are built and running, residents face other issues too. A major one, noise. A few years ago, the TV station WUSA measured noise levels around an Amazon data center in Virginia. Here’s what a neighborhood without a data center sounded like [birds and wind sounds] and the neighborhood of Great Oak near a data center [machinery hum sound]. It’s that low-frequency hum that’s just enough so that you can’t quite tune it out, going on 24-7. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Prince William Times is a newspaper that covers a neighborhood of Great Oak, where that data center you just heard is located. They recently spoke to a resident who’s lived next to that noise for the last few years. Here’s what it sounds like in his backyard.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Great Oak resident Rob Pixley]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If it were like a highway that never stops. This is continual. It is just inordinately loud. Some people have claimed, well, but ‘it’s just like a conversation’ that never stops, is in your bedroom and you can never turn off. So it’s not, you know, 80 decibels, but it’s constant.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there are the concerns about air quality. Around Elon Musk’s xAI data center in Memphis, residents have complained about respiratory issues and a rotten, sulfurous cabbage smell pervading the neighborhood. Here’s what a few residents told Time Magazine.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Boxtown Resident Alexis Humphries]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It smell like gas now, and it didn’t smell like as before Elon came.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Memphis Community Against Pollution President KeShaun Pearson]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I literally can taste it, I can taste the difference now.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To be clear, the reason the xAI data center is causing so many air quality issues is because it’s running its own methane gas turbines. Musk brought them in because the Memphis power grid could only provide a third of xAI’s electricity needs. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency just ruled that Musk may have acted illegally by essentially building an unsanctioned in-house power plant. It’s not the industry standard to circumvent power grid limitations like that. That’s just an Elon Musk thing. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But like we talked about in our last episode, data centers need a lot of energy to function, and the xAI situation shows just how far some companies are willing to go to secure it. In Atlanta, the city’s power grid isn’t equipped to handle the scale of data center development planned in the area. Not yet, at least.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to Science for Georgia, a nonprofit, they estimate that there are about 100 data centers in use and about 42 planned.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s business reporter Marlon Hyde, who works with DorMiya at WABE.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In use and planned data centers are expected to draw about 14,000 megawatts of power from our grid. That’s enough to power about 6.3 million homes, according to the nonprofit, and Georgia has about 4.6 million housing units. So these data centers that are drawing more power than all of us combined in the state can use.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Georgia Public Service Commission before the year ended approved Georgia Power’s new plan, which is about a $16 billion plan to add about another 10,000 megawatts of new power generation to the grid to meet the rising demand for data centers. And especially for the data centers, the power has to be built now. They need new transmitters, they need new substations. So to do all of that, Georgia Power has to go to work right now. They have to start building out the grid right now so that those data centers can come in and it can support more data centers that are in the pipeline.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That brings us to another criticism of data centers, higher electricity bills for residents. All that power infrastructure Marlon mentioned, someone has to pay for it and critics worry that the costs could be passed on to residents of those areas. And as new data centers come online, all the extra energy demand is likely to raise rates. One study from Carnegie Mellon University found that by 2030, the average electricity bill in the highest demand markets could go up by 25%.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Very recently, people are paying more and more on their bills. We’re seeing higher bills, especially, I’m a resident as well. So if you’re already seeing bills increase and we’re not talking about data centers, now we’re talking about a huge entity that’s gonna continue to draw electricity 24 seven. And I’m expected to pay for it? That’s how a lot of residents feel. And that’s where state legislators are looking in the direction of. How do you hold these data centers accountable, these data center companies accountable for what they’re causing in the community, for what they’re building and how much they are paying? There was a proposal to make data centers pay their fair share on energy costs and it didn’t end up reaching the Senate floor for a vote.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have seen some recent evidence that big tech companies are responding to the pushback. In January, Microsoft actually vowed to foot the electricity costs for its data centers, including the cost of expanding the power grid. They’re calling it the community-first AI infrastructure plan. As part of the plan, the company will turn down any local property tax reductions and invest in AI training for local schools and libraries. Whether Microsoft follows through with the plan is yet to be seen. But the company has already developed new designs to reduce its environmental footprint in Georgia. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last year, Microsoft unveiled its second Fairwater AI Superfactory. This one’s in Atlanta. The facility uses a closed-loop system that doesn’t rely on drinking water for cooling. Microsoft says the system uses almost zero water, reducing the strain on local water supplies. But the Fairwater site is just one of hundreds of data center campuses in the area. Is it enough to make a difference? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Virginia and Texas are leading the data center boom. There’s no comprehensive database of data centers in Georgia. So it’s hard to assess the full scope of this industry. Science for Georgia estimates around a hundred operational data centers. The data center research company Baxtel estimates that there could be almost 200. But what we do know is that Georgia is one of the fastest growing states for data center development. Media company Axios reported that as of the end of last year, the state had plans for 285 more. So what’s driving Georgia’s data center boom? Where these facilities are being built isn’t accidental. It’s shaped by policies, incentives, and longstanding inequalities. We’re opening a whole new tab on that after this break.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab: Why are there so many data centers in Georgia? The tech companies that are building these massive complexes around Atlanta aren’t actually based there. We’re getting into this with DorMiya and Marlon again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The data center boom here in Georgia has been largely supported by investments from major tech companies like Amazon Web Services, Meta, Microsoft, and Google. Google actually announced that they were investing $300 million to expand the data center campus and their footprint in Georgia. So we’ve also seen Amazon pledge billions into expanding its data center infrastructure here in George. So there’s a lot of money coming down south.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so here’s why so many tech companies are flocking to the Atlanta metro area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Georgia has land, it has power, and it has connectivity to the internet. On top of that, the state offers incentives. So looking at the liberal leaning economic advocacy group, Good Jobs First, Georgia is estimated to wave close to $300 million in sales and use taxes on data center equipment purchases in 2025. So it’s like, imagine you’re thinking of moving to another state, or, you know, even for example—we both have New York roots—imagine somebody said, ‘hey, if you’re willing to move back to New York, I’m gonna waive your first year of rent.’ You’re gonna move there pretty quickly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, let’s talk about some of these economic incentives at work here. Marlon, you’ve reported on this a lot. What else is at play?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Business speaks volumes. Economic development, they’re willing to give away incentives. You know, one of the first instances of reporting on data centers was Twitter known as X now, Elon Musk’s company, was applying for a $10 million tax abatement in Fulton County, a tax abate not having to pay taxes on sales and use taxes for the equipment that is being bought, mind you they’re buying millions of dollars worth of equipment. Everything we do, even right now as we’re talking, is passing through a data center, and you have to have up-to-date equipment to handle all of this processing power. So, for example, if Twitter wanted to get $200 million worth of the equipment, they would probably ask Fulton County, where their data center is, for some type of tax relief so that they don’t have to pay that money and that they could either save it and pocket it or push it forward in other ways to invest and grow their data center infrastructure. The money is here, the money is flowing and I do not see any of this investment slowing down anytime soon.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Data centers bring promises of jobs and economic growth, but Marlon, based on your reporting, are those jobs permanent?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A majority of those jobs are not permanent. When I went to the data center that’s run by Georgia Tech, CODA in Tech Square, they had security. They had people throughout the building. But when you’re looking around, you’re not seeing 200-300 people ready and working on it. There were about 200 to 300 people involved in the actual building of it. But when it comes to the operations, you’re bringing only 20 to 30 jobs in and those are highly skilled jobs majority of the time. So, these companies are not employing hundreds of Georgians just for these data centers. It’s just, that’s not the reality.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We also need to talk about where in Georgia these data centers are being built. As DorMiya has reported, the neighborhoods closest to these new developments are predominantly Black suburbs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If we’re thinking about like Atlanta or Georgia and the areas that I reported on, you have to think about history. There’s certain areas that have been either redlined or certain barriers that may have been placed that were historically, systemically racist. And so there’s more Black people on the Southside that may have been pushed out. And there’s also more land, which, that land is cheaper. It’s unfortunate that that’s where the cheaper land is and that’s where the population is heavily dense, you know, people of color. From my reporting, like if I just think about the city of South Fulton, where it’s basically, you know almost 100% Black residents, and that is where data centers are coming. It goes back to sort of like, historical route and just land, like where is it located? If you’re heading north, it’s more dense. So yeah, those north Atlanta more white or more wealthy or whatever you want to name it. There’s no space.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re seeing a similar trend around other data centers built in other states too. Developers are flocking to areas where land is cheap and there’s a lot of it. But as environmental justice advocates have pointed out, those areas tend to be Black and Latino communities. The smelly xAI data center in Memphis that residents say is ruining the air quality, that’s in Boxtown, which was founded by formerly enslaved people after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. To this day, Boxtown is still a predominantly Black neighborhood. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last year, residents of Jones County, Georgia, a majority white community, rejected the construction of a new data center complex. As Capital B News reported in January, the developers of that project are now trying to build it in a rural Black community in South Carolina. The community there has already been grappling with industrial pollution for generations. And in Prince George’s County in Maryland, another predominantly Black area, residents are pushing back against the development of another new data center. During a community meeting, residents confronted county officials over the history of pollution in the area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Speaker at Community Meeting] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m a three-year cancer survivor. I have been exposed to extreme environmental toxins in the PG County. PG County is the toilet of the state. Stop treating PG County as the toilet of the state. We deserve more. We deserve more.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The data center location trend is part of a larger history of environmental injustice, especially in Georgia. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio clip from short film, Pine Packs a Punch] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The land has always been an important commodity in Georgia. In the 19th century, stately plantation homes spelled a way of life unique in a changing world.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, another news outlet, analyzed years of EPA and census data. They found that communities near toxic waste sites in Georgia had a larger percentage of Black residents and lower property values. And in the city of South Fulton, where many neighborhoods are near industrial facilities, residents have been complaining about chemical odors, soil contamination, and air quality issues. And residents have left out of the loop when it comes to new industrial developments. From the 1950s to the present day. Data centers are adding to the environmental burden there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Really just boils down to like, you know, systemic racism and segregation, like it’s a little bit of a history lesson.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So developers are flocking to these areas that have a lot of land, for cheap, and promising that data center complexes will bring economic benefits to the marginalized communities that already live there. As Marlon has pointed out, there is so much money flowing into the construction of these facilities, all driven by the expectation that the AI industry will continue its exponential growth. But what happens if that investment dries up? Let’s open one last tab. What happens to data centers if the AI bubble pops?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s a question that researchers, professors, and data center developers are all asking themselves right now as well. There’s no answer right now. You could be potentially left with a stranded asset.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stranded assets are resources or infrastructure that are no longer valuable. They were built with a purpose, but can no longer be used and are now a financial liability. Think nuclear power plants that have been shut down or coal reserves that can’t be burned. There’s no economic value, but all of that stuff, that investment, it’s just sitting there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Regardless, that’s still gonna be a warehouse full of technology. You can do something with it, potentially, but it’s really up to who owns it, who’s developing it, and what are the plans for the future. There’s no real answer for what if this AI bubble pops and we’re left with, at this point, about 100 data centers that are no longer operable.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a nationwide question, but our eyes are on Georgia, where it’s hitting right now. Marlin told me about this one project that’s supposed to be built out by 2037.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Forsyth Technology Campus, it is a $21 billion, let me say that one more time, $21 Billion, over 1,600 acre data center development in Monroe County. And it has the potential to become the single largest economic project in Middle Georgia. There is a desperate need for people that can build data centers because it’s already on the books. It’s planned, it’s ready to go. They need the people to build it. Now, back to your point, there’s not gonna be many permanent jobs that comes out of it afterwards. So we’re gonna have to continue to look at are data centers worth it? Is it worth it to continue building these structures? And for cities, municipalities, is it worth to attract these data centers here? Are we gonna be left with a stranded asset where it’s a warehouse full of servers and cables, but there’s no use for it anymore? What do you do there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that’s why we’re seeing so many more like moratoriums and pauses because like these counties and cities, they want to genuinely try to understand what is it, like, what are you doing here? Are we going to have to worry about this later? What regulations do we need to put in place so our residents aren’t fearful of what you’re doing? I’m just thinking about residents of South Fulton who kind of have this issue already kinda. You know, where they have abandoned warehouses and different things that have been basically stranded there. And they’re still trying to figure out what do we even do with this from years ago.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So whose responsibility is it to deal with these data centers if they’re no longer functional?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the end of the day, it’s an investment from these companies and the state that are creating these data centers. So it’s also their responsibility whether or not these data centers continue to operate into the future. And if they’re just gonna be sucking up resources and not giving back anything in terms of economic development, they’re actually worsening our environment. If that all continues to be true, then it goes back on those municipalities and those data center companies to figure out what to do next.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How are local communities responding to all of this construction? Like, are people getting more involved in local government?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">100%. There was recently, and this is around like Marlon’s reporting on DeKalb County and their moratorium, but they had a town hall and it was basically packed. It was overflowing with residents speaking out, basically like, we don’t want this.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Residents are going to remain vocal. We are in Georgia, Atlanta, one of the hearts of the civil rights movement. People here feel connected to their local government. People here feel connected to the story and the history of Atlanta as we are a part of it at this current point in time. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">DeKalb County voted to extend a moratorium, a pause on data centers being built, constructed to the summer, 2026, June of 2026. And that’s because their phones have been ringing off the hook, according to the County Commissioner. There’ve been non-stop calls, texts, emails about residents not wanting these data centers here. People showing up to community meetings, town halls, any type of forum where they can have their voice heard. People are showing up to let commissioners and the economic leaders know that they don’t want these data centers here. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And we understand that there is a need for data centers and for this infrastructure. But if you’re telling me that we need it, but it has to be built right next door to me and I have to hear it, I have be on the same power grid as it, I don’t want this around me. Go find somewhere else for it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is there anything that these data center operators or regulators can do to mitigate these risks if the construction of the centers is inevitable?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>DorMiya Vance: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, they need to have meetings. They need to talk to city officials. The mayor of Palmetto, she had a meeting and like had work sessions with Microsoft because there’s a Microsoft data center in Palmetto, Georgia. She told me that she had sort of hands-on meetings with the folks from Microsoft so they can interact with residents saying like, hey, this is what we’re building, you know, showing them exactly what they’re going to get. And I think that there needs to be more of that, however, the missing piece is the developer. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You probably won’t see the developer until like the county commission meeting where they’re trying to approve or rezone, you know, where that’s when they pop up but they need to be in the more like regular meetings, town halls. I think that that’s where they need to sort of meet the people because if you’re just going to come into our neighborhood and not even announce yourself, of course we’re going to feel away about it. Like you just want to come in here and not even introduce yourself like, hmm. So I think they just need to meet the people where they are and being that, hey, you know, AI is rising, the internet is here, we have to have these things. How can we work together so that we are getting both ends of the deal met basically.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do you want people to know about the way that big tech is changing Atlanta?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlon Hyde: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lynn McKee, a professor at Georgia State University, he mentions that for places like Butts County that it’s fighting for more economic development, more tax revenue, data centers could be beneficial. Now the question becomes, what is the overall value? You know, we could see in the short-term, yes, while this warehouse is running, it’s going to be paying whatever share was determined through, you know, whatever deals and arrangements they’re making. But outside of that, what is the city giving up? You know, are we giving up land that could be used for, you know schools, hospitals, homes? Are residents getting burdened with higher energy bills with more instances of environmental pollution, sound noise pollution, things of that nature? Is it gonna be worth it in the long term to put our residents through that? If artificial intelligence is growing in importance, growing in use, you can only expect data centers to grow and for the infrastructure to continue to expand, to support it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Georgia could actually be the first to issue a statewide pause on data center construction. Just last week, at the end of January, Georgia state lawmakers introduced a bill proposing a statewide moratorium on all data center projects until March of 2027. This legislation isn’t a ban on data centers. It’s just buying time. Putting all of these new developments on hold will give local governments and municipalities time to figure out how to regulate data centers. And at the very least, it would give residents a break from all the construction. Okay, now let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Hambrick and Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor-in-chief. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Apple Maker Ala F99 keyboard with Greywood V3 switches and Cherry Profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, It would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends too, or even your enemies, or frenemies. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How much does your own AI use matter? With all the warnings about AI’s adverse impact on the environment, it can be tough to understand what that means at the individual level. In this episode, Morgan breaks down the hidden costs of generative AI into something more relatable: microwave time. She’s joined by MIT Technology Review reporters Casey Crownhart and James O’Donnell, who spent months investigating how much energy and water AI systems actually use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Together, they unpack how AI models are trained and which ones are more resource-intensive, what effect the expansion of AI data centers has on local energy grids and just how much electricity it takes when we ask AI to generate text, images and videos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC3471727862\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/author/casey-crownhart/\">Casey Crownhart\u003c/a>, senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/author/james-odonnell/\">James O’Donnell\u003c/a>, senior AI reporter at MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Casey Crownhart and James O’Donnell, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://huggingface.co/blog/sasha/ai-energy-score-v2\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AI Energy Score v2: Refreshed Leaderboard, now with Reasoning ?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>Sasha Luccioni and Boris Gamazaychikov, \u003ci>Hugging Face\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/11/06/1127579/ai-footprint/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stop worrying about your AI footprint. Look at the big picture instead.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Casey Crownhart, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MIT Technology Review \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/report/763080/google-ai-gemini-water-energy-emissions-study\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Google says a typical AI text prompt only uses 5 drops of water — experts say that’s misleading\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Justine Calma, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Verge\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You may have heard this one warning over and over recently. AI is bad for the environment. It’s using up all our clean water. It’s draining the power grids. It’s polluting our one precious world. But how? Let’s start with a video that fooled me a couple of months ago: bunnies on a trampoline. This video has like 250 million views on TikTok.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bouncing sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a nighttime video, so it’s pretty dark and grainy. It looks like it could be in some suburban backyard. We see six or seven curious rabbits hopping onto the edge of a trampoline. Three of them move bravely toward the center and test a few jumps. Suddenly, all of the bunnies are bouncing up and down. It’s absolutely delightful. I mean, it’s bunnies on a trampoline. The person who posted it said they caught this moment on their ring camera. But my delight was cut short when I realized that one of the bunnies disappeared midair. The entire video was AI generated. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to researchers, one five-second video, like this one, generated using one of top-of-the-line open source AI models, uses about 3.4 million joules. Joules are the standard unit to measure energy. I’ll say that again. One five-second video uses 3.4 million joules to generate. Now, what does that mean to the average person who probably doesn’t measure their day in joules? Well, MIT Technology Review published a report on AI energy use. For that report, Casey Crownhart, who covers the climate, and James O’Donnell, who covers AI, did the math to translate that energy usage into something accessible. Here’s Casey.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One thing we really set out to do with this project was be able to answer that question for people who are using AI in their lives and wanna really understand what the energy footprint looks like. So we looked at a lot of things in our story. We also used distance on an e-bike, light bulbs, electric vehicles, but we found that the microwave was something that most people have experience with and it was units that sort of made sense.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As part of this project, Casey and James worked with researchers to figure out how much AI generation really costs in microwave time. So that video of the bunnies on the trampoline, let’s say that five second video cost 3.4 million joules. That’s the equivalent of running the microwave for about an hour. You can get 30 bags of popcorn out of that if you’re lucky. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The video of the bunnies on the trampoline was just one of dozens of AI-generated videos that I happen to scroll by every day. There are the videos of cats playing the violin, the physically impossible firework shows that my older family members keep sending the group chat, the many totally inappropriate videos of deep fake celebrities, the Facebook slop bait of animals rescuing old people from natural disasters, the AI- generated influencers shilling drop shipped products. Like, I could go on forever. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The reality is that all of this content that’s being generated, seemingly 24-7, comes at a huge cost, energy-wise. Slop is literally draining our resources. And that’s not even accounting for the constant ChatGPT queries or the flood of image generation prompts every hour of every day, and that is only what we see produced by AI. There’s a lot going on in the backend that also takes up a ton of energy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In our reporting, we found that, you know, those different use cases that can come with very different energy footprints. If you add it all up, ultimately, it can be significant. It’s probably a relatively small part of your total energy footprint, but it is definitely something that I think people are right to be thinking about in this new age.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Concern is growing about AI’s toll on the environment. And yet, AI companies would have you believe that their products are indispensable and that their impact is manageable. So, what’s the truth? How do we know what to believe? And what, if anything, should we do about it? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically-online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Casey and James spent six months crunching the numbers to give us some real world comparisons for the amount of energy it really takes every time you type up a prompt. This was actually more complicated than it seems. The companies that run the most popular models aren’t the most upfront about the numbers. So the stats that we do have are based on the AI companies that are a bit more open. Casey and James worked with researchers at the University of Michigan’s ML Energy Initiative as well as researchers at Hugging Face’s AI Energy Score Project. Hugging Face is a platform that allows users to share AI tools and data sets. With the help of the researchers, Casey and James were able to get under the hood of a pretty closed off industry, which they’ll break down for us today. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The explosion of AI use comes with many impacts, societal, economic, public health, and so none of them are equally distributed in terms of harm. But today, we’re just focusing on the environmental cost. And speaking of cost, let’s open our first tab. How much energy does a query cost? Let’s start with a little AI 101. When we talk about the environmental impact and energy use, where is all of this computing actually taking place? MIT Technology Review’s James O’Donnell broke it down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The computing is really taking place in buildings called data centers, which there’s about 3000 of them, uh, around the country. There’s even more as you go worldwide and really to visualize this, these are just like monolithic, huge, boring looking buildings that don’t have any windows or anything interesting on the outside and inside are just racks and racks of computers and chips and servers, crunching a lot of numbers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What we call artificial intelligence has existed in some form since the 1950s. But the technology that we call AI today is very different. There are many types that we now lump together under the AI umbrella, which all have different energy requirements. But for this deep dive, when we say AI, we’re referring to generative AI, specifically, the models that produce content based on a human entering a prompt. They include large language models, or LLMs, like ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini. When it comes to generative AI models, there are typically two different processes involved: training and inference. These also factor into the total energy use.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So training is what you do when you want to build an AI model from scratch, from nothing and you, you have a large language model that is only going to be as smart as the data that you feed it. So training is basically the phase where you’re taking massive amounts of data. Normally this is a lot of language and text, which could be everything from the internet, could be every book that’s ever been written, uh, regardless of if these companies have the legal right to access that data, but they’re putting a bunch of data into this AI model. And the AI model is basically learning how to create better and better guesses of the text that it outputs. So it’s learning to generate texts, to string words together, to string sentences together and paragraphs together that sound realistic and accurate. And it’s doing that by noticing patterns of what words go together in this large data set.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So training is sort of the number crunching of feeding all of that data into an AI model and at the end, it spits out this model that has learned millions and millions of parameters, we call them, basically like knobs on an AI model that help the model understand the connections between different words. And at the end, you have this model that can generate text.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A lot of electricity is used in the process of training that AI model. Years ago, that was like, when I say years ago, maybe two or three years ago that was the main concern of how much energy AI was using was really in that training phase. And what Casey and I discovered in our reporting is that that has changed really significantly. So most AI companies today are, you know, they’re planning for their energy budgets to be spent more on inference.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, what is inference?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Inference is every time you ask an AI model something, so every time you ask a question or have it generate an image or a video, anytime it actually does the thing of generating something that’s called inference. And so the individual amounts of energy that are used at the time of inference can be quite small or, or sort of big. Um, but it’s really the summation of all of that, that gives you kind of the energy footprint of a given AI model.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The generated output also changes the energy usage. The more complicated the prompt, the more energy it uses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, in our reporting we looked at text, images, and video. So kind of really broadly, and again, it can still vary, even within kind of a text query, depending on how complicated your ask is. So are you asking something to rewrite the whole works of Shakespeare, but like, in pirate speak, or are you just asking for a suggestion for a recipe? The open source models that we looked at, we found that the smallest models, if you were kind of asking a sort of standard query, might use about 114 joules of electricity. That’s equivalent to roughly a 10th of a second in a microwave, so a very, very small amount of electricity. A larger text model and one of the largest text models we looked at would use a lot more, so more like 6,700 joules, that’s about eight seconds in a microwave. So again, fairly small numbers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Also, the bigger the model, the more energy it uses. AI models have parameters. Like James said earlier, these are basically the adjustable knobs that allow models to make a prediction. With more parameters, AI models are more likely to generate a better response and are better equipped to handle complex requests. So, asking a chat bot, “What year did Shakespeare write Hamlet?” Is generally a less complex request than, say, “Translate all of Hamlet into pirate speak.” The smallest model that Casey and James tested had eight billion parameters. The largest had 405 billion parameters. OpenAI is pretty hush-hush about their infrastructure, but some estimate that the company’s latest model, GPT-5, is somewhere up in the trillions. So, as models get bigger, they need to run on more chips, which needs more energy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What was really surprising and what I think really stood out in our reporting was that videos, based on the models that we were looking at, used significantly more energy, so thousands of times more energy than some of the smallest text models. So one model that we looked at used about 3.4 million joules of energy. That’s about an hour of microwave time. So there’s a really wide range here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s another factor: reasoning models. Investors are all over these right now. Reasoning models are marketed as literal thinking machines that are able to break down complex problems into logical steps instead of just predicting the next answer based on the patterns it recognizes. They’re advertised to think like a human would and supposedly will become more energy efficient the smarter the model gets. One of the researchers that Casey and James worked with at Hugging Tree put this to the test.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, a lot of people are excited about this idea of reasoning models. And so when this researcher studied these and figured out whether or not they’re energy efficient, she found that a lot these reasoning models can actually use 30 times more energy than a non-reasoning model.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there’s the water usage. AI datacenters use massive quantities of water.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, this is something that has been a conversation and there’s still I think, to some extent, a lot of uncertainty about. But basically, data centers use water directly for a lot cooling systems. A lot of data centers are cooled with what’s called evaporative cooling. So, you know, water evaporates to cool down the equipment. There’s also sort of indirect water use, which is a little trickier to calculate, but there’s also water that’s used in power plants. And so if you kind of think, okay, the power plant is needed to power the data center. So the water used in the power plant, you can kind of attribute to AI as well. Oftentimes the water that is required in a data center has to be very, very high quality, very pure water because you’re dealing with very sensitive equipment. And so there is this big conversation about water. Google released estimates about its water use per query as well, but kind of to sum it up, there is a pretty major water requirement and we’re starting to see that as, again, data centers are being built in places, including those that are very water stressed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So that’s what we do know about AI and energy consumption. This is the usage that can be measured, even if companies aren’t the most upfront about their numbers. But what about everything else? We’re opening a new tab, after this break. Welcome back, we’re opening a new tab. What AI energy use isn’t being measured? So we’ve talked about the front and most visible uses, energy usages, generating videos, generating lists, translating Shakespeare’s text into pirate speak, right. What’s happening in the background that’s also using up energy? Like, how many times do you have to run a microwave for those processes?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, I think it’s hard to know. Like since we’ve done this reporting, AI is being put into many parts of our online life and we don’t always have a lot of choice or visibility into how AI is being using used. So for example, Google famously, uh, went from just presenting you search results to then summarizing those search results with AI overviews. So now for the most part, people aren’t looking very far down that search page, they’re actually just relying on the AI overview. We would love to know how much energy is used by Google every time it creates an AI overview and the percentage of those searches that it uses overviews for, we weren’t able to get that information. Uh, Google wouldn’t share it with us. And so, you know, AI is being put into all these different parts of our online life. And I think we’ll look back on this as the sort of like simplest calculation of, of being able to estimate, you now, how much is used when you try and make a recipe or generate an image or something. But the truth is, as you point out, AI is sort of being put into everything and it’s going to be harder and harder to sort of track the footprint as that goes on.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you elaborate on why this topic appears to be so divisive and so confusing for so many people having to confront their energy usage through AI?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay. I have thoughts, but I’m sure Casey does too. So, you know, it’s not like asking ChatGPT a question is like, you know, polluting the earth as much as driving a 3000 mile road trip, right? Like ,we’re talking about small, relatively small numbers here, but it gets a lot of attention, I think, because public opinion for AI right now is just so abysmally low because so many people are skeptical of whether or not it’s really benefiting all of us. And I think the energy footprint is just kind of this glaring issue for people that say, like, what are we getting out of this technology, especially if it’s sort of draining us of resources.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think part of the interesting phenomenon is that AI has really like crashed onto the scene for the general public. It’s this whole kind of new thing that we’re all having to kind of reckon with, like what is this doing to our brains? What is this going to our grids? It’s I think it’s natural to question this like entirely new thing. Another thing that I think is really interesting is that, as James mentioned, this is becoming less so, but to this point, it’s kind of discreet and countable in a way that a lot of our other activity, especially online activity, isn’t. You can go out on and, you know, how many times am I messaging this thing? So I think that kind of has lended itself to the natural kind of like, well, how much does each one of these queries, what does that mean for energy?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Google recently released data on the energy footprint of its AI model, Gemini, a couple of months after you guys put out your report. What did you make of that? Like, was it helpful? Can we trust those numbers? I guess wouldn’t they be incentivized to portray themselves as very energy friendly?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it would have been nice to get these when we were reporting, but as James mentioned earlier, these companies know better than anybody what their energy footprint is. So I think there’s such value in getting some of this data. And Google had a really good technical report that went through kind of in-depth, you know, here’s where the energy is coming from this much from, you know the AI chips, this much from other processes. But I think it’s really significant what wasn’t included in that report. And what wasn’t included in the report is any sort of information about, you know, the total queries that its Gemini model gets in a day. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Google is able to point to this number and say, hey, look, this is such a small number. It’s in line with what we found for, kind of, our median text model. You know, something like a second or so in the microwave per query. But that’s, you know, for what Google says is an average or median query. You know, it’s not kind of giving us the full range, including, you now, different kind of queries that we know would take up a lot more energy. It doesn’t include image and video, which we know are more energy intensive. And ultimately we’re not able to, without that total number of, you not, how many times is this model being queried and giving responses a day? How many users, how many daily users? We don’t know the total footprint. We can only say, here’s this little number.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the energy grid. The type of energy matters, right? Like there are a lot of discussion on renewables versus fossil fuels. What might impact where that energy comes from when it comes to building data centers and maintaining them?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is something that I really focused on in our reporting because as I think I put it in the piece, if we just had data centers that were hooked up to a bunch of solar panels and they ran when the sun is shining, oh, what a lovely world it would be, and I would be a lot less worried about all this. But the reality is that today, grids around the world are largely reliant on fossil fuels. So burning things like, you know, natural gas and coal to run the grid, keep the lights on. And one concern is what the grid will look like as energy demand from AI continues to rise.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So today, we see that data centers are really concentrated on the East Coast, in places like Virginia, tends to be very natural gas heavy, reliant on coal. There are data centers that are on grids that have a lot more solar and hydropower and wind, and that means that the relative climate impact of data centers in those places can be lower than in the more fossil fuel-heavy places.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I think there’s a concern that as a lot, a lot of data center come online really quickly and need more electricity added to the grid in order to run, what is being added to grid in in order support those? Right now, the overwhelming answer is natural gas. And so that means that a lot of these new data centers will come with a pretty significant climate footprint attached.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We may not know the exact amount of energy that the AI industry is actually using, but what we do know is that it’s a lot, and it is putting a strain on our already limited resources. Each individual query does cost something, and it adds up. Plus, there’s everything running in the background that we can’t measure. So what is each individual person responsible for? I mean, should we be worried about the future? Is there anything that we could actually do? Time for a new tab: does my AI footprint matter in the big picture? Luckily, Casey dove into this exact topic last year. She believes that policing individual AI usage isn’t as helpful in the grand scheme of things. Here’s why we should shift our focus, instead of putting the onus on each person to change their own behavior.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As we went through this reporting, I got a lot of questions and I had a lot of questions myself about, you know, what does this mean for me and my personal choices about AI? And again, kind of as somebody who spent a lot of time reporting on climate change, it really reminded me of the conversation around climate footprint. You know, what is my climate footprint? What should I personally do differently to help, kind of, address climate change? And what I’ve come to kind of understand through my reporting and believe is that climate change is this massive problem that goes beyond any single one of us. And there’s a really significant limit to how much our individual choices can address a global problem that is very systemic. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can compost all you want, but if only gas vehicles are available to you and that’s the only way you can get around in your community, there’s only so much you can do. And we now know that some fossil fuel funded PR campaigns helped to popularize this idea of carbon footprint to kind of shift the focus on to individuals and away from these big, powerful companies. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think that I see some parallels with AI today, you know, this attempt to kind of shift focus on, you now, well, are you using ChatGPT too many times in a day rather than what is the global impact and like, why aren’t these companies being more transparent about what the energy use of AI is on their scale. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think ultimately, you know, there are limits to this. Like if you’re making a million AI slop videos every single day, I think that’s an individual action that you could probably safely make a choice that would be better for energy use. But overall, I think we should more be using our limited time and energy in the day to push for more transparency. You know, ask for regulations around AI and what’s powering it, and just generally not be so hard on ourselves because we operate in this system where it’s increasingly hard to get away from AI. As we’ve talked about, even if you don’t choose to go onto, you know chatgpt.com, you’re often, you’re part of this AI ecosystem. So we need to be talking about what that overall system looks like and how we can change it rather than the limited power of individuals.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the biggest unanswered questions every time a data center is open is actually like, what’s the energy source going into that? And is it going to be, you know, powered with renewable sources or not? Is it just going to run 24 seven on natural gas? And so sometimes if you hyper focus on this question of your own individual footprint, it can kind of make you forget that actually there are decisions still to be made every time the data center goes up that will arguably have a bigger impact on the sort of net footprint, net emissions of it all.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do we know about where the AI industry wants to take us in the future, near future, like three years from now? What do they need energy-wise or water-wise to get us there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AI companies are planning for some pretty, uh, unprecedented levels of investment in, in data centers and, you know, to power all of those unprecedented levels of investment in power plants and nuclear energy and things like that. Um, I think where they want to go, uh, is to build AI models that are bigger first of all. To do that you need more and more chips and more and more power, and so there’s an incentive to just amass all of this energy and electricity. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then on the product side of it, I think these AI companies imagine that the world of AI in five years will not just be large language models that people type to and get an answer back, but that image generation and video generation and real time voice chats are kind of a part of our everyday lives. And so they’re planning for a lot more demand as well. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so you could think of this project from OpenAI and others called Stargate, which is basically a half a trillion dollars of investment into data centers that they want to pop up around the country. And I think the reason why they’re seeing success politically from this is that AI companies have framed AI as a question of national security, right? If the US wants to win this AI race against China, then the country that has the most energy is the country will create the best AI and the sort of you know, impedance to all of that is access to, to energy. And that’s why these companies have sort of made it their top priority.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, and just to add to that, I mean, I think these big dreams about, you know, how big AI could get, it’s going to be a lot of electricity. So as of 2024, data centers used over 400 terawatt hours of electricity, about 1.5% of all electricity used around the world. By 2030, the International Energy Agency says that that could more than double reaching 945 terawatts. Sorry to use inscrutable units, but that’s about 3% of global electricity consumption.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is that in microwave hours? [\u003cem>Laughter\u003c/em>]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A whole lot of microwaves, so many microwaves. So I think that basically we’re seeing really significant, really fast shifts and fast growth in electricity, including in places like the US that have seen very flat electricity demand for over a decade. And so I think that this is all going to add up to really complicated effects and really complicated, kind of, effects for local communities where these data centers and where these power plants are gonna be used.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, this is something I didn’t totally get before I learned more from Casey and before we started reporting on this. So data centers were doing a lot of stuff in the early 2000s, like, this is Netflix, social media, like, all sorts of streaming, but electricity going to those data centers stayed pretty flat, and it wasn’t until AI that you actually started to see a huge jump in the amount of electricity that data centers required.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most AI companies, or AI hype guys who are investing very heavily in AI companies will say something like, oh, AI can solve problems like climate change, so the energy usage is worth it. How much do you guys buy into that argument? Llike, does it hold any water?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s so much potential for all kinds of AI, again, beyond chatbots, in all kinds problems that are related to climate change, from materials discovery, finding new materials that could make better batteries or help us capture carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, superconductors that can move electricity around super efficiently. There’s also ways that AI could be used to help the grid run more efficiently. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s really interesting research in all of these areas that I’m following very closely. But at this point, it’s all early stage. It’s all research. And I think there’s great potential for AI to be a positive force for the climate. But I think it’s absolutely irresponsible for us to punt on all of this concerns about AI’s current energy use because of some potential. Because there’s always the chance that this doesn’t work. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think in any case, the progress could be significant, but it’s not gonna be a silver bullet. So I think we need to reckon very seriously with the current energy problems that we’re seeing now, rather than try to make some future promise that may never come true, build all this infrastructure that will be online for decades to come and could change our climate forever. Just doesn’t make sense.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do you think the most misunderstood part of this whole energy AI use conversation is?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that there’s kind of a nuanced picture of just how important AI energy use is in context. So it is true that AI is probably a small part of your individual energy picture. And in fact, in terms of like the global energy use picture, it’s 3% in 2030. That doesn’t seem like very much. But that kind of change over such a short amount of time is going to be very significant for especially local grids where this is taking place. It will have significant impacts for climate change. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This kind of build out will definitely not go unnoticed by the climate, but I think the biggest impacts here will be faced by local communities seeing data centers going up, local communities with new fossil fuel infrastructure going up. And so all at once, this is a small fraction of individual and even global energy use, and a very, very significant trend for the energy system of the world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Looking toward the future is important, but the AI industry is changing residential communities right now in real time. The data center room promises to bring jobs and economic growth, but are AI companies following through on that? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Next week, we’re taking our deep dive to one of the fastest growing hubs for AI data centers, Atlanta. But for now, let’s close all of these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was edited by Chris Hambrick and produced by Chris Egusa, who’s our senior editor and also composed our theme song and credits music. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additional music by APM. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs producer is Maya Cueva. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager a\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">nd Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California local. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Apple Maker Ala F99 keyboard with Greywood V3 switches and Cherry Profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\nOkay, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but… if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends too, or even your enemies, or frenemies. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"title": "The Real Cost of AI Slop | KQED",
"description": "How much does your own AI use matter? With all the warnings about AI’s adverse impact on the environment, it can be tough to understand what that means at the individual level. In this episode, Morgan breaks down the hidden costs of generative AI into something more relatable: microwave time. She’s joined by MIT Technology Review reporters Casey Crownhart and James O’Donnell, who spent months investigating how much energy and water AI systems actually use. Together, they unpack how AI models are trained and which ones are more resource-intensive, what effect the expansion of AI data centers has on local energy grids and just how much electricity it takes when we ask AI to generate text, images and videos.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How much does your own AI use matter? With all the warnings about AI’s adverse impact on the environment, it can be tough to understand what that means at the individual level. In this episode, Morgan breaks down the hidden costs of generative AI into something more relatable: microwave time. She’s joined by MIT Technology Review reporters Casey Crownhart and James O’Donnell, who spent months investigating how much energy and water AI systems actually use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Together, they unpack how AI models are trained and which ones are more resource-intensive, what effect the expansion of AI data centers has on local energy grids and just how much electricity it takes when we ask AI to generate text, images and videos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC3471727862\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/author/casey-crownhart/\">Casey Crownhart\u003c/a>, senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/author/james-odonnell/\">James O’Donnell\u003c/a>, senior AI reporter at MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Casey Crownhart and James O’Donnell, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://huggingface.co/blog/sasha/ai-energy-score-v2\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AI Energy Score v2: Refreshed Leaderboard, now with Reasoning ?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>Sasha Luccioni and Boris Gamazaychikov, \u003ci>Hugging Face\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/11/06/1127579/ai-footprint/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stop worrying about your AI footprint. Look at the big picture instead.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Casey Crownhart, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MIT Technology Review \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/report/763080/google-ai-gemini-water-energy-emissions-study\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Google says a typical AI text prompt only uses 5 drops of water — experts say that’s misleading\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Justine Calma, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Verge\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You may have heard this one warning over and over recently. AI is bad for the environment. It’s using up all our clean water. It’s draining the power grids. It’s polluting our one precious world. But how? Let’s start with a video that fooled me a couple of months ago: bunnies on a trampoline. This video has like 250 million views on TikTok.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bouncing sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a nighttime video, so it’s pretty dark and grainy. It looks like it could be in some suburban backyard. We see six or seven curious rabbits hopping onto the edge of a trampoline. Three of them move bravely toward the center and test a few jumps. Suddenly, all of the bunnies are bouncing up and down. It’s absolutely delightful. I mean, it’s bunnies on a trampoline. The person who posted it said they caught this moment on their ring camera. But my delight was cut short when I realized that one of the bunnies disappeared midair. The entire video was AI generated. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to researchers, one five-second video, like this one, generated using one of top-of-the-line open source AI models, uses about 3.4 million joules. Joules are the standard unit to measure energy. I’ll say that again. One five-second video uses 3.4 million joules to generate. Now, what does that mean to the average person who probably doesn’t measure their day in joules? Well, MIT Technology Review published a report on AI energy use. For that report, Casey Crownhart, who covers the climate, and James O’Donnell, who covers AI, did the math to translate that energy usage into something accessible. Here’s Casey.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One thing we really set out to do with this project was be able to answer that question for people who are using AI in their lives and wanna really understand what the energy footprint looks like. So we looked at a lot of things in our story. We also used distance on an e-bike, light bulbs, electric vehicles, but we found that the microwave was something that most people have experience with and it was units that sort of made sense.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As part of this project, Casey and James worked with researchers to figure out how much AI generation really costs in microwave time. So that video of the bunnies on the trampoline, let’s say that five second video cost 3.4 million joules. That’s the equivalent of running the microwave for about an hour. You can get 30 bags of popcorn out of that if you’re lucky. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The video of the bunnies on the trampoline was just one of dozens of AI-generated videos that I happen to scroll by every day. There are the videos of cats playing the violin, the physically impossible firework shows that my older family members keep sending the group chat, the many totally inappropriate videos of deep fake celebrities, the Facebook slop bait of animals rescuing old people from natural disasters, the AI- generated influencers shilling drop shipped products. Like, I could go on forever. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The reality is that all of this content that’s being generated, seemingly 24-7, comes at a huge cost, energy-wise. Slop is literally draining our resources. And that’s not even accounting for the constant ChatGPT queries or the flood of image generation prompts every hour of every day, and that is only what we see produced by AI. There’s a lot going on in the backend that also takes up a ton of energy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In our reporting, we found that, you know, those different use cases that can come with very different energy footprints. If you add it all up, ultimately, it can be significant. It’s probably a relatively small part of your total energy footprint, but it is definitely something that I think people are right to be thinking about in this new age.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Concern is growing about AI’s toll on the environment. And yet, AI companies would have you believe that their products are indispensable and that their impact is manageable. So, what’s the truth? How do we know what to believe? And what, if anything, should we do about it? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically-online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Casey and James spent six months crunching the numbers to give us some real world comparisons for the amount of energy it really takes every time you type up a prompt. This was actually more complicated than it seems. The companies that run the most popular models aren’t the most upfront about the numbers. So the stats that we do have are based on the AI companies that are a bit more open. Casey and James worked with researchers at the University of Michigan’s ML Energy Initiative as well as researchers at Hugging Face’s AI Energy Score Project. Hugging Face is a platform that allows users to share AI tools and data sets. With the help of the researchers, Casey and James were able to get under the hood of a pretty closed off industry, which they’ll break down for us today. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The explosion of AI use comes with many impacts, societal, economic, public health, and so none of them are equally distributed in terms of harm. But today, we’re just focusing on the environmental cost. And speaking of cost, let’s open our first tab. How much energy does a query cost? Let’s start with a little AI 101. When we talk about the environmental impact and energy use, where is all of this computing actually taking place? MIT Technology Review’s James O’Donnell broke it down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The computing is really taking place in buildings called data centers, which there’s about 3000 of them, uh, around the country. There’s even more as you go worldwide and really to visualize this, these are just like monolithic, huge, boring looking buildings that don’t have any windows or anything interesting on the outside and inside are just racks and racks of computers and chips and servers, crunching a lot of numbers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What we call artificial intelligence has existed in some form since the 1950s. But the technology that we call AI today is very different. There are many types that we now lump together under the AI umbrella, which all have different energy requirements. But for this deep dive, when we say AI, we’re referring to generative AI, specifically, the models that produce content based on a human entering a prompt. They include large language models, or LLMs, like ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini. When it comes to generative AI models, there are typically two different processes involved: training and inference. These also factor into the total energy use.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So training is what you do when you want to build an AI model from scratch, from nothing and you, you have a large language model that is only going to be as smart as the data that you feed it. So training is basically the phase where you’re taking massive amounts of data. Normally this is a lot of language and text, which could be everything from the internet, could be every book that’s ever been written, uh, regardless of if these companies have the legal right to access that data, but they’re putting a bunch of data into this AI model. And the AI model is basically learning how to create better and better guesses of the text that it outputs. So it’s learning to generate texts, to string words together, to string sentences together and paragraphs together that sound realistic and accurate. And it’s doing that by noticing patterns of what words go together in this large data set.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So training is sort of the number crunching of feeding all of that data into an AI model and at the end, it spits out this model that has learned millions and millions of parameters, we call them, basically like knobs on an AI model that help the model understand the connections between different words. And at the end, you have this model that can generate text.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A lot of electricity is used in the process of training that AI model. Years ago, that was like, when I say years ago, maybe two or three years ago that was the main concern of how much energy AI was using was really in that training phase. And what Casey and I discovered in our reporting is that that has changed really significantly. So most AI companies today are, you know, they’re planning for their energy budgets to be spent more on inference.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, what is inference?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Inference is every time you ask an AI model something, so every time you ask a question or have it generate an image or a video, anytime it actually does the thing of generating something that’s called inference. And so the individual amounts of energy that are used at the time of inference can be quite small or, or sort of big. Um, but it’s really the summation of all of that, that gives you kind of the energy footprint of a given AI model.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The generated output also changes the energy usage. The more complicated the prompt, the more energy it uses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, in our reporting we looked at text, images, and video. So kind of really broadly, and again, it can still vary, even within kind of a text query, depending on how complicated your ask is. So are you asking something to rewrite the whole works of Shakespeare, but like, in pirate speak, or are you just asking for a suggestion for a recipe? The open source models that we looked at, we found that the smallest models, if you were kind of asking a sort of standard query, might use about 114 joules of electricity. That’s equivalent to roughly a 10th of a second in a microwave, so a very, very small amount of electricity. A larger text model and one of the largest text models we looked at would use a lot more, so more like 6,700 joules, that’s about eight seconds in a microwave. So again, fairly small numbers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Also, the bigger the model, the more energy it uses. AI models have parameters. Like James said earlier, these are basically the adjustable knobs that allow models to make a prediction. With more parameters, AI models are more likely to generate a better response and are better equipped to handle complex requests. So, asking a chat bot, “What year did Shakespeare write Hamlet?” Is generally a less complex request than, say, “Translate all of Hamlet into pirate speak.” The smallest model that Casey and James tested had eight billion parameters. The largest had 405 billion parameters. OpenAI is pretty hush-hush about their infrastructure, but some estimate that the company’s latest model, GPT-5, is somewhere up in the trillions. So, as models get bigger, they need to run on more chips, which needs more energy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What was really surprising and what I think really stood out in our reporting was that videos, based on the models that we were looking at, used significantly more energy, so thousands of times more energy than some of the smallest text models. So one model that we looked at used about 3.4 million joules of energy. That’s about an hour of microwave time. So there’s a really wide range here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s another factor: reasoning models. Investors are all over these right now. Reasoning models are marketed as literal thinking machines that are able to break down complex problems into logical steps instead of just predicting the next answer based on the patterns it recognizes. They’re advertised to think like a human would and supposedly will become more energy efficient the smarter the model gets. One of the researchers that Casey and James worked with at Hugging Tree put this to the test.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, a lot of people are excited about this idea of reasoning models. And so when this researcher studied these and figured out whether or not they’re energy efficient, she found that a lot these reasoning models can actually use 30 times more energy than a non-reasoning model.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there’s the water usage. AI datacenters use massive quantities of water.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, this is something that has been a conversation and there’s still I think, to some extent, a lot of uncertainty about. But basically, data centers use water directly for a lot cooling systems. A lot of data centers are cooled with what’s called evaporative cooling. So, you know, water evaporates to cool down the equipment. There’s also sort of indirect water use, which is a little trickier to calculate, but there’s also water that’s used in power plants. And so if you kind of think, okay, the power plant is needed to power the data center. So the water used in the power plant, you can kind of attribute to AI as well. Oftentimes the water that is required in a data center has to be very, very high quality, very pure water because you’re dealing with very sensitive equipment. And so there is this big conversation about water. Google released estimates about its water use per query as well, but kind of to sum it up, there is a pretty major water requirement and we’re starting to see that as, again, data centers are being built in places, including those that are very water stressed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So that’s what we do know about AI and energy consumption. This is the usage that can be measured, even if companies aren’t the most upfront about their numbers. But what about everything else? We’re opening a new tab, after this break. Welcome back, we’re opening a new tab. What AI energy use isn’t being measured? So we’ve talked about the front and most visible uses, energy usages, generating videos, generating lists, translating Shakespeare’s text into pirate speak, right. What’s happening in the background that’s also using up energy? Like, how many times do you have to run a microwave for those processes?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, I think it’s hard to know. Like since we’ve done this reporting, AI is being put into many parts of our online life and we don’t always have a lot of choice or visibility into how AI is being using used. So for example, Google famously, uh, went from just presenting you search results to then summarizing those search results with AI overviews. So now for the most part, people aren’t looking very far down that search page, they’re actually just relying on the AI overview. We would love to know how much energy is used by Google every time it creates an AI overview and the percentage of those searches that it uses overviews for, we weren’t able to get that information. Uh, Google wouldn’t share it with us. And so, you know, AI is being put into all these different parts of our online life. And I think we’ll look back on this as the sort of like simplest calculation of, of being able to estimate, you now, how much is used when you try and make a recipe or generate an image or something. But the truth is, as you point out, AI is sort of being put into everything and it’s going to be harder and harder to sort of track the footprint as that goes on.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you elaborate on why this topic appears to be so divisive and so confusing for so many people having to confront their energy usage through AI?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay. I have thoughts, but I’m sure Casey does too. So, you know, it’s not like asking ChatGPT a question is like, you know, polluting the earth as much as driving a 3000 mile road trip, right? Like ,we’re talking about small, relatively small numbers here, but it gets a lot of attention, I think, because public opinion for AI right now is just so abysmally low because so many people are skeptical of whether or not it’s really benefiting all of us. And I think the energy footprint is just kind of this glaring issue for people that say, like, what are we getting out of this technology, especially if it’s sort of draining us of resources.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think part of the interesting phenomenon is that AI has really like crashed onto the scene for the general public. It’s this whole kind of new thing that we’re all having to kind of reckon with, like what is this doing to our brains? What is this going to our grids? It’s I think it’s natural to question this like entirely new thing. Another thing that I think is really interesting is that, as James mentioned, this is becoming less so, but to this point, it’s kind of discreet and countable in a way that a lot of our other activity, especially online activity, isn’t. You can go out on and, you know, how many times am I messaging this thing? So I think that kind of has lended itself to the natural kind of like, well, how much does each one of these queries, what does that mean for energy?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Google recently released data on the energy footprint of its AI model, Gemini, a couple of months after you guys put out your report. What did you make of that? Like, was it helpful? Can we trust those numbers? I guess wouldn’t they be incentivized to portray themselves as very energy friendly?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it would have been nice to get these when we were reporting, but as James mentioned earlier, these companies know better than anybody what their energy footprint is. So I think there’s such value in getting some of this data. And Google had a really good technical report that went through kind of in-depth, you know, here’s where the energy is coming from this much from, you know the AI chips, this much from other processes. But I think it’s really significant what wasn’t included in that report. And what wasn’t included in the report is any sort of information about, you know, the total queries that its Gemini model gets in a day. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Google is able to point to this number and say, hey, look, this is such a small number. It’s in line with what we found for, kind of, our median text model. You know, something like a second or so in the microwave per query. But that’s, you know, for what Google says is an average or median query. You know, it’s not kind of giving us the full range, including, you now, different kind of queries that we know would take up a lot more energy. It doesn’t include image and video, which we know are more energy intensive. And ultimately we’re not able to, without that total number of, you not, how many times is this model being queried and giving responses a day? How many users, how many daily users? We don’t know the total footprint. We can only say, here’s this little number.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the energy grid. The type of energy matters, right? Like there are a lot of discussion on renewables versus fossil fuels. What might impact where that energy comes from when it comes to building data centers and maintaining them?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is something that I really focused on in our reporting because as I think I put it in the piece, if we just had data centers that were hooked up to a bunch of solar panels and they ran when the sun is shining, oh, what a lovely world it would be, and I would be a lot less worried about all this. But the reality is that today, grids around the world are largely reliant on fossil fuels. So burning things like, you know, natural gas and coal to run the grid, keep the lights on. And one concern is what the grid will look like as energy demand from AI continues to rise.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So today, we see that data centers are really concentrated on the East Coast, in places like Virginia, tends to be very natural gas heavy, reliant on coal. There are data centers that are on grids that have a lot more solar and hydropower and wind, and that means that the relative climate impact of data centers in those places can be lower than in the more fossil fuel-heavy places.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I think there’s a concern that as a lot, a lot of data center come online really quickly and need more electricity added to the grid in order to run, what is being added to grid in in order support those? Right now, the overwhelming answer is natural gas. And so that means that a lot of these new data centers will come with a pretty significant climate footprint attached.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We may not know the exact amount of energy that the AI industry is actually using, but what we do know is that it’s a lot, and it is putting a strain on our already limited resources. Each individual query does cost something, and it adds up. Plus, there’s everything running in the background that we can’t measure. So what is each individual person responsible for? I mean, should we be worried about the future? Is there anything that we could actually do? Time for a new tab: does my AI footprint matter in the big picture? Luckily, Casey dove into this exact topic last year. She believes that policing individual AI usage isn’t as helpful in the grand scheme of things. Here’s why we should shift our focus, instead of putting the onus on each person to change their own behavior.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As we went through this reporting, I got a lot of questions and I had a lot of questions myself about, you know, what does this mean for me and my personal choices about AI? And again, kind of as somebody who spent a lot of time reporting on climate change, it really reminded me of the conversation around climate footprint. You know, what is my climate footprint? What should I personally do differently to help, kind of, address climate change? And what I’ve come to kind of understand through my reporting and believe is that climate change is this massive problem that goes beyond any single one of us. And there’s a really significant limit to how much our individual choices can address a global problem that is very systemic. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can compost all you want, but if only gas vehicles are available to you and that’s the only way you can get around in your community, there’s only so much you can do. And we now know that some fossil fuel funded PR campaigns helped to popularize this idea of carbon footprint to kind of shift the focus on to individuals and away from these big, powerful companies. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think that I see some parallels with AI today, you know, this attempt to kind of shift focus on, you now, well, are you using ChatGPT too many times in a day rather than what is the global impact and like, why aren’t these companies being more transparent about what the energy use of AI is on their scale. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think ultimately, you know, there are limits to this. Like if you’re making a million AI slop videos every single day, I think that’s an individual action that you could probably safely make a choice that would be better for energy use. But overall, I think we should more be using our limited time and energy in the day to push for more transparency. You know, ask for regulations around AI and what’s powering it, and just generally not be so hard on ourselves because we operate in this system where it’s increasingly hard to get away from AI. As we’ve talked about, even if you don’t choose to go onto, you know chatgpt.com, you’re often, you’re part of this AI ecosystem. So we need to be talking about what that overall system looks like and how we can change it rather than the limited power of individuals.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the biggest unanswered questions every time a data center is open is actually like, what’s the energy source going into that? And is it going to be, you know, powered with renewable sources or not? Is it just going to run 24 seven on natural gas? And so sometimes if you hyper focus on this question of your own individual footprint, it can kind of make you forget that actually there are decisions still to be made every time the data center goes up that will arguably have a bigger impact on the sort of net footprint, net emissions of it all.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do we know about where the AI industry wants to take us in the future, near future, like three years from now? What do they need energy-wise or water-wise to get us there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AI companies are planning for some pretty, uh, unprecedented levels of investment in, in data centers and, you know, to power all of those unprecedented levels of investment in power plants and nuclear energy and things like that. Um, I think where they want to go, uh, is to build AI models that are bigger first of all. To do that you need more and more chips and more and more power, and so there’s an incentive to just amass all of this energy and electricity. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then on the product side of it, I think these AI companies imagine that the world of AI in five years will not just be large language models that people type to and get an answer back, but that image generation and video generation and real time voice chats are kind of a part of our everyday lives. And so they’re planning for a lot more demand as well. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so you could think of this project from OpenAI and others called Stargate, which is basically a half a trillion dollars of investment into data centers that they want to pop up around the country. And I think the reason why they’re seeing success politically from this is that AI companies have framed AI as a question of national security, right? If the US wants to win this AI race against China, then the country that has the most energy is the country will create the best AI and the sort of you know, impedance to all of that is access to, to energy. And that’s why these companies have sort of made it their top priority.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, and just to add to that, I mean, I think these big dreams about, you know, how big AI could get, it’s going to be a lot of electricity. So as of 2024, data centers used over 400 terawatt hours of electricity, about 1.5% of all electricity used around the world. By 2030, the International Energy Agency says that that could more than double reaching 945 terawatts. Sorry to use inscrutable units, but that’s about 3% of global electricity consumption.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is that in microwave hours? [\u003cem>Laughter\u003c/em>]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A whole lot of microwaves, so many microwaves. So I think that basically we’re seeing really significant, really fast shifts and fast growth in electricity, including in places like the US that have seen very flat electricity demand for over a decade. And so I think that this is all going to add up to really complicated effects and really complicated, kind of, effects for local communities where these data centers and where these power plants are gonna be used.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, this is something I didn’t totally get before I learned more from Casey and before we started reporting on this. So data centers were doing a lot of stuff in the early 2000s, like, this is Netflix, social media, like, all sorts of streaming, but electricity going to those data centers stayed pretty flat, and it wasn’t until AI that you actually started to see a huge jump in the amount of electricity that data centers required.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most AI companies, or AI hype guys who are investing very heavily in AI companies will say something like, oh, AI can solve problems like climate change, so the energy usage is worth it. How much do you guys buy into that argument? Llike, does it hold any water?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s so much potential for all kinds of AI, again, beyond chatbots, in all kinds problems that are related to climate change, from materials discovery, finding new materials that could make better batteries or help us capture carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, superconductors that can move electricity around super efficiently. There’s also ways that AI could be used to help the grid run more efficiently. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s really interesting research in all of these areas that I’m following very closely. But at this point, it’s all early stage. It’s all research. And I think there’s great potential for AI to be a positive force for the climate. But I think it’s absolutely irresponsible for us to punt on all of this concerns about AI’s current energy use because of some potential. Because there’s always the chance that this doesn’t work. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think in any case, the progress could be significant, but it’s not gonna be a silver bullet. So I think we need to reckon very seriously with the current energy problems that we’re seeing now, rather than try to make some future promise that may never come true, build all this infrastructure that will be online for decades to come and could change our climate forever. Just doesn’t make sense.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do you think the most misunderstood part of this whole energy AI use conversation is?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that there’s kind of a nuanced picture of just how important AI energy use is in context. So it is true that AI is probably a small part of your individual energy picture. And in fact, in terms of like the global energy use picture, it’s 3% in 2030. That doesn’t seem like very much. But that kind of change over such a short amount of time is going to be very significant for especially local grids where this is taking place. It will have significant impacts for climate change. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This kind of build out will definitely not go unnoticed by the climate, but I think the biggest impacts here will be faced by local communities seeing data centers going up, local communities with new fossil fuel infrastructure going up. And so all at once, this is a small fraction of individual and even global energy use, and a very, very significant trend for the energy system of the world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Looking toward the future is important, but the AI industry is changing residential communities right now in real time. The data center room promises to bring jobs and economic growth, but are AI companies following through on that? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Next week, we’re taking our deep dive to one of the fastest growing hubs for AI data centers, Atlanta. But for now, let’s close all of these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was edited by Chris Hambrick and produced by Chris Egusa, who’s our senior editor and also composed our theme song and credits music. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additional music by APM. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs producer is Maya Cueva. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager a\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">nd Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California local. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Apple Maker Ala F99 keyboard with Greywood V3 switches and Cherry Profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\nOkay, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but… if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends too, or even your enemies, or frenemies. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"planet-money": {
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"politicalbreakdown": {
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"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
"airtime": "SAT 4pm-5pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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"rss": "http://feeds.revealradio.org/revealpodcast"
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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"order": 16
},
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