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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The tools of high tech surveillance are increasingly all around us: security cameras in public and embedded in doorbells, location data on your phone, online ad tracking. A lot of this has become normalized, utterly mundane. But in the year since nationwide student protests for Palestine, heightened scrutiny of and retaliation against activists in the U.S. have raised new concerns. Government surveillance, particularly on social media, has grown exponentially since the massive Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, but the precedent in this country stretches much further back. In this episode, Columbia University student organizer Jalsa Drinkard shares her experience protecting other students from invasive surveillance and targeting, and Don Bell, policy counsel for The Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight, walks us through the long history of government surveillance in American protest movements, and why today’s moment feels different.\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=KQINC2506353620\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jalsa Drinkard, Columbia University student and an organizer for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, CUAD\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pogo.org/about/people/don-bell\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don Bell\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, policy counsel at The Constitution Project at The Project On Government Oversight, POGO\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pogo.org/analysis/protest-under-a-surveillance-state-microscope\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Protest Under a Surveillance State Microscope\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Don Bell, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Project On Government Oversight\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pogo.org/analysis/surveillance-policing-bodily-autonomy\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Surveillance & Policing Bodily Autonomy\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Don Bell, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Project On Government Oversight\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/news/fbi\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">‘Discredit, disrupt, and destroy’: FBI records acquired by the Library reveal violent surveillance of Black leaders, civil rights organizations\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Virgie Hoban, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Berkeley Library\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/articles/how-watergate-changed-americas-intelligence-laws\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How Watergate Changed America’s Intelligence Laws\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Barbara Maranzani, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">History\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/04/surveillance-state-september-11-panic-made-us-vulnerable\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">‘Panic made us vulnerable’: how 9/11 made the US surveillance state – and the Americans who fought back\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Ed Pilkington, \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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\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>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You would wake up at like eight o’clock in the morning. There would be like bagels, people like actually making food for you. It would be students helping students. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Jalsa Drinkard. She’s a student at Columbia University and an organizer for Columbia University Apartheid Divest or CUAD. It’s a coalition of over a hundred student organizations calling for the university to cut all ties to Israel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>CUAD Protester \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest! Disclose! Divest! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last year, Jalsa was part of student-led protests, which culminated in a weeks-long encampment on campus. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, Columbia University says they will not divest from Israel and have not reached an agreement with protesters as demonstrations continue. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was really like a community space. Sometimes you would hear like a violin playing, like students would bring their instruments, like kind of just like bring joy. Students would be reading like books, sometimes doing their homework at the encampment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CUAD organized the protests to push Colombia to cut financial ties with Israel, including weapons manufacturers, partnerships with Israeli universities, and the building of a new satellite campus in Tel Aviv. As security in the encampment, Jalsa says she saw firsthand the surveillance and harassment she and her fellow students experienced from police and counter protesters. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We were there to like keep an eye on them and remind them of our policies and our roles and de-escalate them and kind of like physically put our bodies in front of cameras so people who were not comfortable with those high-risk actions, they would like be protected. Also, at the time, there’s a lot of doxing going on for people who were engaging in Palestinian activism. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Doxing is the act of identifying and publicizing someone’s personal information, like the location of their home, to shame and harass them. In a content economy where virality can be weaponized to expose someone’s personal details to millions of people in a matter of seconds, doxing is increasingly used as an intimidation tactic to discourage political speech. It was Jalsa’s job to protect protesters from being doxed. Like stepping in to block hecklers from recording people’s faces. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So a lot of students who were engaging in Palestinian activism were, their socials, their private information was getting like archived and sent around to these different sites and basically their stuff was being published online for people to like harass them, giving them death threats, giving them like sexual assault threats and threatening their families as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And we’ve seen the real consequences of this doxing and surveillance of student organizers, particularly with Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Columbia student and lead negotiator during the protest. He was the target of a months-long harassment campaign led by pro-Israel groups who have taken credit for identifying him and sending his location to immigration officials. He now faces deportation, even though he has a green card and he has not been charged with a crime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just the last hour, an immigration judge in Louisiana has ruled that Columbia University grad student Mahmoud Khalil can be deported. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The list of student organizers, particularly international students, who have been identified, threatened, and arrested keeps growing. These doxxing campaigns have been used to discourage participation since CUAD began organizing the protests. During the Columbia protests last year, Jalsa remembers the doxxing trucks that drove around campus and the surrounding neighborhood. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And they would have like slides of people’s information being like publicized on like a blipping screen with like all the information, like their phone number, like their name, their affiliation to Columbia. It was very dystopic. Like this was an actual act of digital violence towards our students. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jalsa says that when the trucks parked near the encampments, she and other organizers held up sheets so that others couldn’t read the information being displayed on screen. Even though they were trying to protect students from being doxxed, they weren’t allowed to touch the trucks, so they had to hover in front of them for hours on end. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even if we would like to slightly bump it, like with our shoulder, we would be told, like, you’re liable for arrest. And it’s like, um, it’s a 17-year-old girl. A minor, whose information is on a truck by a stranger. Like, no one is doing anything. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the year since Columbia’s encampment inspired student protests for Palestine across the country, those who participated in demonstrations continue to be targeted. They’ve been identified using facial recognition software, their social media accounts have been monitored for political speech, and they’ve been subjected to intense harassment, both online and in real life. Many have faced suspension or disciplinary actions. Others have been detained and face deportation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Trump administration is also using artificial intelligence to review international students’ social media accounts and revoke their visas if they express pro-Palestinian views. Even though she’s a citizen, Jalsa says she’s cut back on her social media use, and has even used a VPN to search anything related to Palestine, out of caution of ending up on a watch list. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is, like, terrifying to hear all these institutions talk about blackmailing students and like banning students. I think that like now because everyone is recording everything and everyone’s being surveilled, basically every word that you say now matters more than ever, for good and for bad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This isn’t happening in a vacuum. The American right to privacy has been chipped away over the last 75 years. And with the help of rapidly advancing technology, surveillance has been woven into the social fabric of this country. Doxxing would not exist if not for the culture of recording, posting, and reacting to everything on social media. But how can free speech thrive under this level of scrutiny? And how did this become so normalized? \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. So to get started on this deep dive, we have to go back to a time when the type of technology that we have today didn’t quite exist yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So let’s open a new tab. Surveillance before the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The point of surveillance is not just to identify people who may be a quote-unquote threat. It’s also to ensure that the status quo remains and that the opposition to the government is suppressed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don Bell is policy counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a non-profit watchdog group investigating corruption and misconduct within the federal government. His focus is on surveillance issues. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Surveillance, as we know, or as we kind of understand it in the modern sense, really began during the civil rights movement. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although the United States had used surveillance on its residents before, it wasn’t until after World War II that the government had the technology for targeted covert monitoring. In the 1950s, as the Cold War ramped up and fear of communism swept the nation, the FBI launched COINTELPRO, or Counter-Intelligence Program, to undermine any perceived Communist Party activity within the United States. They operated without much oversight and used that political fear to justify violating constitutional rights to privacy and free speech. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">J. Edgar Hoover, who was the director of the FBI at the time, expanded the program to surveil, discredit, and disrupt any movement that could be considered, quote unquote, subversive, to the political stability of the country. Under his leadership, the FBI illegally surveilled civil rights groups by claiming that they were infiltrated by communists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So pre-technology, the way to get a sense of what organizations were doing was infiltrating the organization. So basically having someone who was within the organization attending meetings, reporting on the activities of the people, taking notes on the people who attended, and wiretaps. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">An infamous case from this era is the FBI’s surveillance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The FBI started keeping tabs on him in 1955, amid the Montgomery bus boycott. In 1963, during the march on Washington, Dr. King took the podium and called for an end to segregation in an iconic speech. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have dream today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was the moment when the FBI identified Dr. King as a leader of the civil rights movement and put a target on his back. J. Edgar Hoover claimed that Dr. King was a communist threat and launched a mass surveillance effort against him. He discussed Dr. Kings public appearances at length in recorded phone conversations with then-president Lyndon B. Johnson. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>J. Edgar Hoover: \u003c/b>I just got word that Martin Luther King will give a press conference at 11 o’clock this morning in Atlanta. Now, the statement King is to make will in a sense condone the national result from the, in human conditions that the Negroes are forced to exist in the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The FBI followed him as he traveled, bugging his home and his hotel rooms. They sent informants to spy on him. They tapped his phones and the phones of any known associates. The FBI also tried to discredit him to the press using information they collected in their extensive surveillance and went as far as blackmailing him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are instances that have been reported where the government or agents would send him letters encouraging to kill himself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This surveillance extended to other civil rights leaders as well. The FBI broke into their homes and searched them without warrants, and along with the CIA, intercepted the Postal Service to read and record letters between activists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you were a prominent figure you were probably surveilled by the federal government. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They sent informants to infiltrate organizations like the Black Panther Party. To suppress the movement, the FBI even coordinated the assassination of one of its leaders. In 1969, the police raided a Chicago apartment in the middle of the night and opened fire on the Black Panther Party members who were sleeping inside. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Akua Njeri: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Someone came into the room. Started shaking the chairman, said chairman, chairman wake up, I looked up and I saw bullets coming from what looked like the front of the apartment from the kitchen area. And the pigs were just shooting. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was Akua Njeri from the documentary “The Murder of Fred Hampton.” In the raid, law enforcement officers shot and killed Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton, who had been sedated by an FBI informant earlier that evening. He was only 21. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fred Hampton: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t believe I’m going to die because I’ve got a bad heart. I don’t believe I’m gonna die because of lung cancer. I believe that I’m gonna be able to die high off the people. I believe I will be able die as a revolutionary in the international revolutionary proletarian struggle. Why don’t you live for the people? Why don’t you struggle for the people? Why don’t you die for the peoples? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The general public didn’t know about the existence of COINTELPRO surveillance until 1971, when an activist group broke into FBI offices, stole dossiers, and anonymously mailed them to newspapers. Over the next few years, a string of investigations revealed a few ways that the government was spying on civilians. One of those investigations was prompted by the Watergate scandal, which revealed that President Richard Nixon’s campaign broke into and bugged the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It all began suddenly last July when an obscure former White House official named Alexander Butterfield appeared as a surprise witness before the Senate Watergate Committee. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Senator: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alexander Butterfield: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was aware of listening devices. Yes, sir. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The public outrage pushed Congress to figure out just how extensive government surveillance had become. So in 1975, the Senate Church Committee, an investigation led by Senator Frank Church, revealed shocking CIA, FBI, and NSA operations that were conducted without Congress’s knowledge or approval. These included assassination attempts of foreign leaders, brainwashing experiments conducted on American citizens and the extensive surveillance of civil rights leaders, anti-war protesters, and anyone associated with Black liberation organizations. COINTELPRO even targeted actress Jane Fonda because she openly supported the Black Panther Party. After the final report about COINTELPRO was published, Frank Church went on Meet press and warns that any American could be surveilled. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Frank Church: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No American would have any privacy left, such as the capability to monitor everything. Telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This investigation prompted a period of surveillance reform, including the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. It requires federal agencies to demonstrate probable cause and obtain warrants for wiretapping and other surveillance tactics. Basically, they have to show proof of why they think a crime has been committed. It’s not just a vibe check. This didn’t stop surveillance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the aftermath of the Senate Church Committee did establish some transparency and oversight of intelligence agencies. Remember, before then, there was no real system of checks and balances. These reforms held for a few decades and, to some extent, reigned in the abuses highlighted by the Church Committee. That all changed in 2001, when a devastating event ushered in a new era of domestic surveillance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>George W. Bush: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, what did that mean for this brief period of surveillance reforms? We’ll get to that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, we’re back. Let’s open a new tab. Surveillance after 9/11. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The country was shaken after 9/11. Americans were grieving and were terrified that it could happen again, especially in other large cities. Mainstream news coverage flooded TVs with racist stereotypes and stoked fears of terrorists as Muslim and brown. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 4: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, for many Americans, the terrorist attacks brought the Islamic faith and its followers under intense scrutiny. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Soon after 9/11, threatening letters laced with the deadly bacteria anthrax circulated in the mail. This exacerbated fears of terrorism and amplified the pressure on the government to do something to prevent another attack. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Reporter: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Investigators still don’t know where it came from, but the anthrax that killed two Washington postal workers seems to have the hallmarks of a sophisticated weapon built by someone who knows how to deliver a lethal blow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You think about anthrax attacks that happen afterward. You know, there’s this feeling that something needs to be done. You have, you know, the start of surveillance initially. You think it’s targeted, not really. And then over time, the mission creep expands. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So when President George W. Bush declared a war on terror, most of the public accepted the sudden increase in policing and surveillance, even if it meant giving up privacy and rolling back reforms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>George W. Bush: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Congress was a willing partner in the war on terror and passed the Patriot Act just six weeks after 9/11. This law authorized the government to surveil anyone in the name of national security. It allowed the government to record phone calls and access emails and texts without a warrant or probable cause. It allowed secret searches of people’s homes and businesses. And it made it easier for government agencies to share information, which removed a lot of privacy protections. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After 9/11, I think a lot of people recognized that there were too many information silos. In the wake of that, Congress decided to combine almost two dozen federal agencies into the Department of Homeland Security with the idea of if we have all of these agencies working together, they will be able to share information, share intelligence, and we’ll people stop terrorist attacks. And you see at this time an ethos of “collect it all.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Muslim Americans were disproportionately targeted. And so was anyone who looked brown. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then you see the abuses, particularly among Muslim residents in America. You see the surveillance of Muslims in New York City. That’s pretty pervasive. And then you get to dragnet surveillance and abuses that happen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dragnet surveillance is exactly what it sounds like. It’s like casting a giant net over the ocean and dragging it through the water, catching everything in its wake. It’s a practice of collecting and analyzing information on everyone, instead of targeting individuals who are suspected of crime. You can’t opt out of it, and there’s no probable cause involved. Soon after the Patriot Act passed, all Americans were being watched. Dragnet surveillance had become the norm. But many legal experts argue that dragnet surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment guaranteed right to privacy. It protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures of their property. Under the Fourth Amendment, the government can’t search everyone’s property just because they suspect one person of a crime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think dragnet surveillance is about as anathema to the constitution as you can get. You know, if the police show up to my home and they just want to come in and search about for something, you need a warrant. You need probable cause. You need a judge to give you a warrant, give you the permission to do that. But technology is this thread that changes our relationship with the constitution and amendment itself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This may sound familiar because we just talked about a similar cycle of surveillance in the name of national security that played out during the civil rights movement. Back then, they said it was to stop communism. And it happened again, but this time they said, it was just stop terrorism. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You see a recurring theme, right? You see surveillance that starts out as targeted, then you see surveillance that exceeds its mandate with mission creep over the years. Then you see abuses, then you the disclosure of the abuses and this outrage that leads to change. And then you another national event that leads the process starting all over again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s different about this cycle is the dragnet. Mass surveillance has become so widespread because technology has advanced exponentially faster than laws can adapt. The constitutional right to privacy has been redefined throughout American history. It’s less clear when it comes to digital privacy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So you think about, you know, you don’t have telephones, but then you have telephones. Then you have the advent of the internet. Then within the internet, email. All of these things that can collect personal information and data and would be harmful to a person if they were exposed to the government or just exposed in general. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Patriotism surged in the aftermath of 9/11. Trust in the government reached historic highs, and the president’s approval rating shot up. But this 9/11 effect was short-lived. As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq dragged on, the government failed to uncover evidence of so-called weapons of mass destruction, and public support waned. And Americans were less thrilled when the consequences of the Patriot Act became more apparent. Under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts, federal and state intelligence agencies closely surveilled peaceful anti-war protests. The NSA tapped hundreds of Americans’ phones and monitored their international calls. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the Patriot Act gave the FBI the authority to collect any record that could be relevant to a terrorism investigation, like papers, documents, or books. Under this part of the Patriot Act, The FBI demanded that libraries hand over their patrons’ borrowing records. That became known as the library provision, and civil liberties organizations questioned whether it would be used to suppress speech. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the early 2000s, people were horrified at the idea of the NSA intercepting and reading emails. But a decade later, Americans were quickly adapting to smartphones and social media, which are treasure troves of personal data. We were checking in on Foursquare, using traceable hashtags on Twitter, and making all of our social connections publicly known on Facebook. We posted all about our personal lives on Instagram and Snapchat and Tumblr. You could trace someone’s entire day with one good scroll. The majority of Americans freely gave up this personal information without knowing the consequences of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back in the day, the FBI had to hire informants to bug Dr. King’s phone figure out who his associates were and where they were located. With social media and smartphones, we were doing the work for them. But the full extent of post-9/11 dragnet surveillance wasn’t publicly known until 2013, when 29-year-old defense contractor Edward Snowden leaked proof of the NSA’s activities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Linda Wertheimer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just one day after we learned that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting telephone records from millions of Americans, it’s been revealed that the agency is also running a massive internet surveillance program. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Snowden’s leaks not only confirmed the existence and scale of the government’s mass surveillance programs, but also proved that surveillance under the Obama administration had actually expanded. The leaks revealed that the government wasn’t just spying on suspects, it was spying on everyone, even working with foreign intelligence agencies to do so. Here’s Edward Snowden speaking to The Guardian days after the leak. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Edward Snowden: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Originally, we saw that focus very narrowly tailored as foreign intelligence gathered overseas. Now, increasingly, we see that it’s happening domestically. And to do that, they, the NSA specifically, targets the communications of everyone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don Bell was a law student at the time, and he says that he was absolutely horrified learning this information. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t think Americans were aware of what was happening at the time, but I think that’s partly because technology was changing so quickly that the law hadn’t kept up in ensuring that Fourth Amendment protections were going to be followed by intelligence agencies that were pushing the boundaries of the law because they were working with technologies that previously weren’t even feasible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The cycle that Dawn mentioned earlier, it played out again following the NSA leaks. Disclosure led to outrage and outrage led to change. In 2015, the USA Freedom Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama, revising the Patriot Act and curbing the NSA’s data collection. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Barack Obama: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The USA Freedom Act also accomplishes something I called for a year and a half ago. It ends the bulk metadata program, the bulk collection of phone records, as it currently exists, and puts in place new reforms. The government will no longer hold these records. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Three years later, the Supreme Court ruled that the government had violated Fourth Amendment rights by obtaining cell phone location data without a warrant. The court’s ruling on the case, Carpenter v. United States, established that people still have the right to privacy when it comes to their data, even if they voluntarily share that data with a third party, like their cell phone provider. The government can’t go to a phone company and demand a person’s location data without a warrant now. That was seven years ago. Clearly, that decision did not stop digital policing. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies are still collecting unprecedented amounts of data on Americans. And these days, it’s basically impossible to opt out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And today I think we’re in an even more dangerous era because there are so many technological devices that collect information on us that is highly sensitive, highly personal, and in an increasingly technology-based world, it’s necessary for us to use those devices to fully function in society. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It seems like dragnet surveillance is actually more pervasive than ever before. So what happened, or didn’t happen, to get to this point? And how is this new era of surveillance different from previous ones throughout history? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s a new tab, which we’ll get into in our next episode, where we’ll dive into cutting edge surveillance tactics and how they’re used to target political speech. So we’re actually leaving these tabs open for now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the next episode of Close All Tabs:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicol Turner Lee: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My mother used to say this all the time, “If you’re not in the kitchen, you’re on the menu.” So we are all on the menu, even though we think we live in a society where there’s some level of privacy maybe in the context of our living rooms. In actuality, when you leave your home and you walk out that door, you are actually in a surveillance capitalist society. \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 is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our senior editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts and helps edit the show. Alan Montecillo edited this episode. Sound design by Maya Cueva. Original music by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard and Katherine Monahan. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager and Holly Kernan is our chief content officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K84 wired mechanical keyboard, with Gateron red switches. If you have feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org. Follow us on Instagram @CloseAllTabsPod or drop it on Discord. We’re in the Close All Tabs channel at discord.gg/kqed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use. \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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"description": "The tools of high tech surveillance are increasingly all around us: security cameras in public and embedded in doorbells, location data on your phone, online ad tracking. A lot of this has become normalized, utterly mundane. But in the year since nationwide student protests for Palestine, heightened scrutiny of and retaliation against activists in the U.S. have raised new concerns. Government surveillance, particularly on social media, has grown exponentially since the massive Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, but the precedent in this country stretches much further back. In this episode, Columbia University student organizer Jalsa Drinkard shares her experience protecting other students from invasive surveillance and targeting, and Don Bell, policy counsel for The Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight, walks us through the long history of government surveillance in American protest movements, and why today’s moment feels different.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The tools of high tech surveillance are increasingly all around us: security cameras in public and embedded in doorbells, location data on your phone, online ad tracking. A lot of this has become normalized, utterly mundane. But in the year since nationwide student protests for Palestine, heightened scrutiny of and retaliation against activists in the U.S. have raised new concerns. Government surveillance, particularly on social media, has grown exponentially since the massive Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, but the precedent in this country stretches much further back. In this episode, Columbia University student organizer Jalsa Drinkard shares her experience protecting other students from invasive surveillance and targeting, and Don Bell, policy counsel for The Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight, walks us through the long history of government surveillance in American protest movements, and why today’s moment feels different.\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=KQINC2506353620\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jalsa Drinkard, Columbia University student and an organizer for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, CUAD\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pogo.org/about/people/don-bell\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don Bell\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, policy counsel at The Constitution Project at The Project On Government Oversight, POGO\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pogo.org/analysis/protest-under-a-surveillance-state-microscope\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Protest Under a Surveillance State Microscope\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Don Bell, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Project On Government Oversight\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pogo.org/analysis/surveillance-policing-bodily-autonomy\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Surveillance & Policing Bodily Autonomy\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Don Bell, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Project On Government Oversight\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/news/fbi\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">‘Discredit, disrupt, and destroy’: FBI records acquired by the Library reveal violent surveillance of Black leaders, civil rights organizations\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Virgie Hoban, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Berkeley Library\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/articles/how-watergate-changed-americas-intelligence-laws\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How Watergate Changed America’s Intelligence Laws\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Barbara Maranzani, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">History\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/04/surveillance-state-september-11-panic-made-us-vulnerable\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">‘Panic made us vulnerable’: how 9/11 made the US surveillance state – and the Americans who fought back\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Ed Pilkington, \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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\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>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You would wake up at like eight o’clock in the morning. There would be like bagels, people like actually making food for you. It would be students helping students. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Jalsa Drinkard. She’s a student at Columbia University and an organizer for Columbia University Apartheid Divest or CUAD. It’s a coalition of over a hundred student organizations calling for the university to cut all ties to Israel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>CUAD Protester \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest! Disclose! Divest! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last year, Jalsa was part of student-led protests, which culminated in a weeks-long encampment on campus. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, Columbia University says they will not divest from Israel and have not reached an agreement with protesters as demonstrations continue. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was really like a community space. Sometimes you would hear like a violin playing, like students would bring their instruments, like kind of just like bring joy. Students would be reading like books, sometimes doing their homework at the encampment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CUAD organized the protests to push Colombia to cut financial ties with Israel, including weapons manufacturers, partnerships with Israeli universities, and the building of a new satellite campus in Tel Aviv. As security in the encampment, Jalsa says she saw firsthand the surveillance and harassment she and her fellow students experienced from police and counter protesters. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We were there to like keep an eye on them and remind them of our policies and our roles and de-escalate them and kind of like physically put our bodies in front of cameras so people who were not comfortable with those high-risk actions, they would like be protected. Also, at the time, there’s a lot of doxing going on for people who were engaging in Palestinian activism. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Doxing is the act of identifying and publicizing someone’s personal information, like the location of their home, to shame and harass them. In a content economy where virality can be weaponized to expose someone’s personal details to millions of people in a matter of seconds, doxing is increasingly used as an intimidation tactic to discourage political speech. It was Jalsa’s job to protect protesters from being doxed. Like stepping in to block hecklers from recording people’s faces. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So a lot of students who were engaging in Palestinian activism were, their socials, their private information was getting like archived and sent around to these different sites and basically their stuff was being published online for people to like harass them, giving them death threats, giving them like sexual assault threats and threatening their families as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And we’ve seen the real consequences of this doxing and surveillance of student organizers, particularly with Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Columbia student and lead negotiator during the protest. He was the target of a months-long harassment campaign led by pro-Israel groups who have taken credit for identifying him and sending his location to immigration officials. He now faces deportation, even though he has a green card and he has not been charged with a crime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just the last hour, an immigration judge in Louisiana has ruled that Columbia University grad student Mahmoud Khalil can be deported. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The list of student organizers, particularly international students, who have been identified, threatened, and arrested keeps growing. These doxxing campaigns have been used to discourage participation since CUAD began organizing the protests. During the Columbia protests last year, Jalsa remembers the doxxing trucks that drove around campus and the surrounding neighborhood. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And they would have like slides of people’s information being like publicized on like a blipping screen with like all the information, like their phone number, like their name, their affiliation to Columbia. It was very dystopic. Like this was an actual act of digital violence towards our students. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jalsa says that when the trucks parked near the encampments, she and other organizers held up sheets so that others couldn’t read the information being displayed on screen. Even though they were trying to protect students from being doxxed, they weren’t allowed to touch the trucks, so they had to hover in front of them for hours on end. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even if we would like to slightly bump it, like with our shoulder, we would be told, like, you’re liable for arrest. And it’s like, um, it’s a 17-year-old girl. A minor, whose information is on a truck by a stranger. Like, no one is doing anything. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the year since Columbia’s encampment inspired student protests for Palestine across the country, those who participated in demonstrations continue to be targeted. They’ve been identified using facial recognition software, their social media accounts have been monitored for political speech, and they’ve been subjected to intense harassment, both online and in real life. Many have faced suspension or disciplinary actions. Others have been detained and face deportation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Trump administration is also using artificial intelligence to review international students’ social media accounts and revoke their visas if they express pro-Palestinian views. Even though she’s a citizen, Jalsa says she’s cut back on her social media use, and has even used a VPN to search anything related to Palestine, out of caution of ending up on a watch list. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jalsa Drinkard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is, like, terrifying to hear all these institutions talk about blackmailing students and like banning students. I think that like now because everyone is recording everything and everyone’s being surveilled, basically every word that you say now matters more than ever, for good and for bad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This isn’t happening in a vacuum. The American right to privacy has been chipped away over the last 75 years. And with the help of rapidly advancing technology, surveillance has been woven into the social fabric of this country. Doxxing would not exist if not for the culture of recording, posting, and reacting to everything on social media. But how can free speech thrive under this level of scrutiny? And how did this become so normalized? \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. So to get started on this deep dive, we have to go back to a time when the type of technology that we have today didn’t quite exist yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So let’s open a new tab. Surveillance before the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The point of surveillance is not just to identify people who may be a quote-unquote threat. It’s also to ensure that the status quo remains and that the opposition to the government is suppressed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don Bell is policy counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a non-profit watchdog group investigating corruption and misconduct within the federal government. His focus is on surveillance issues. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Surveillance, as we know, or as we kind of understand it in the modern sense, really began during the civil rights movement. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although the United States had used surveillance on its residents before, it wasn’t until after World War II that the government had the technology for targeted covert monitoring. In the 1950s, as the Cold War ramped up and fear of communism swept the nation, the FBI launched COINTELPRO, or Counter-Intelligence Program, to undermine any perceived Communist Party activity within the United States. They operated without much oversight and used that political fear to justify violating constitutional rights to privacy and free speech. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">J. Edgar Hoover, who was the director of the FBI at the time, expanded the program to surveil, discredit, and disrupt any movement that could be considered, quote unquote, subversive, to the political stability of the country. Under his leadership, the FBI illegally surveilled civil rights groups by claiming that they were infiltrated by communists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So pre-technology, the way to get a sense of what organizations were doing was infiltrating the organization. So basically having someone who was within the organization attending meetings, reporting on the activities of the people, taking notes on the people who attended, and wiretaps. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">An infamous case from this era is the FBI’s surveillance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The FBI started keeping tabs on him in 1955, amid the Montgomery bus boycott. In 1963, during the march on Washington, Dr. King took the podium and called for an end to segregation in an iconic speech. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have dream today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was the moment when the FBI identified Dr. King as a leader of the civil rights movement and put a target on his back. J. Edgar Hoover claimed that Dr. King was a communist threat and launched a mass surveillance effort against him. He discussed Dr. Kings public appearances at length in recorded phone conversations with then-president Lyndon B. Johnson. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>J. Edgar Hoover: \u003c/b>I just got word that Martin Luther King will give a press conference at 11 o’clock this morning in Atlanta. Now, the statement King is to make will in a sense condone the national result from the, in human conditions that the Negroes are forced to exist in the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The FBI followed him as he traveled, bugging his home and his hotel rooms. They sent informants to spy on him. They tapped his phones and the phones of any known associates. The FBI also tried to discredit him to the press using information they collected in their extensive surveillance and went as far as blackmailing him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are instances that have been reported where the government or agents would send him letters encouraging to kill himself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This surveillance extended to other civil rights leaders as well. The FBI broke into their homes and searched them without warrants, and along with the CIA, intercepted the Postal Service to read and record letters between activists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you were a prominent figure you were probably surveilled by the federal government. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They sent informants to infiltrate organizations like the Black Panther Party. To suppress the movement, the FBI even coordinated the assassination of one of its leaders. In 1969, the police raided a Chicago apartment in the middle of the night and opened fire on the Black Panther Party members who were sleeping inside. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Akua Njeri: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Someone came into the room. Started shaking the chairman, said chairman, chairman wake up, I looked up and I saw bullets coming from what looked like the front of the apartment from the kitchen area. And the pigs were just shooting. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was Akua Njeri from the documentary “The Murder of Fred Hampton.” In the raid, law enforcement officers shot and killed Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton, who had been sedated by an FBI informant earlier that evening. He was only 21. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fred Hampton: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t believe I’m going to die because I’ve got a bad heart. I don’t believe I’m gonna die because of lung cancer. I believe that I’m gonna be able to die high off the people. I believe I will be able die as a revolutionary in the international revolutionary proletarian struggle. Why don’t you live for the people? Why don’t you struggle for the people? Why don’t you die for the peoples? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The general public didn’t know about the existence of COINTELPRO surveillance until 1971, when an activist group broke into FBI offices, stole dossiers, and anonymously mailed them to newspapers. Over the next few years, a string of investigations revealed a few ways that the government was spying on civilians. One of those investigations was prompted by the Watergate scandal, which revealed that President Richard Nixon’s campaign broke into and bugged the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It all began suddenly last July when an obscure former White House official named Alexander Butterfield appeared as a surprise witness before the Senate Watergate Committee. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Senator: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alexander Butterfield: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was aware of listening devices. Yes, sir. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The public outrage pushed Congress to figure out just how extensive government surveillance had become. So in 1975, the Senate Church Committee, an investigation led by Senator Frank Church, revealed shocking CIA, FBI, and NSA operations that were conducted without Congress’s knowledge or approval. These included assassination attempts of foreign leaders, brainwashing experiments conducted on American citizens and the extensive surveillance of civil rights leaders, anti-war protesters, and anyone associated with Black liberation organizations. COINTELPRO even targeted actress Jane Fonda because she openly supported the Black Panther Party. After the final report about COINTELPRO was published, Frank Church went on Meet press and warns that any American could be surveilled. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Frank Church: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No American would have any privacy left, such as the capability to monitor everything. Telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This investigation prompted a period of surveillance reform, including the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. It requires federal agencies to demonstrate probable cause and obtain warrants for wiretapping and other surveillance tactics. Basically, they have to show proof of why they think a crime has been committed. It’s not just a vibe check. This didn’t stop surveillance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the aftermath of the Senate Church Committee did establish some transparency and oversight of intelligence agencies. Remember, before then, there was no real system of checks and balances. These reforms held for a few decades and, to some extent, reigned in the abuses highlighted by the Church Committee. That all changed in 2001, when a devastating event ushered in a new era of domestic surveillance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>George W. Bush: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, what did that mean for this brief period of surveillance reforms? We’ll get to that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, we’re back. Let’s open a new tab. Surveillance after 9/11. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The country was shaken after 9/11. Americans were grieving and were terrified that it could happen again, especially in other large cities. Mainstream news coverage flooded TVs with racist stereotypes and stoked fears of terrorists as Muslim and brown. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 4: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, for many Americans, the terrorist attacks brought the Islamic faith and its followers under intense scrutiny. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Soon after 9/11, threatening letters laced with the deadly bacteria anthrax circulated in the mail. This exacerbated fears of terrorism and amplified the pressure on the government to do something to prevent another attack. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Reporter: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Investigators still don’t know where it came from, but the anthrax that killed two Washington postal workers seems to have the hallmarks of a sophisticated weapon built by someone who knows how to deliver a lethal blow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You think about anthrax attacks that happen afterward. You know, there’s this feeling that something needs to be done. You have, you know, the start of surveillance initially. You think it’s targeted, not really. And then over time, the mission creep expands. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So when President George W. Bush declared a war on terror, most of the public accepted the sudden increase in policing and surveillance, even if it meant giving up privacy and rolling back reforms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>George W. Bush: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Congress was a willing partner in the war on terror and passed the Patriot Act just six weeks after 9/11. This law authorized the government to surveil anyone in the name of national security. It allowed the government to record phone calls and access emails and texts without a warrant or probable cause. It allowed secret searches of people’s homes and businesses. And it made it easier for government agencies to share information, which removed a lot of privacy protections. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After 9/11, I think a lot of people recognized that there were too many information silos. In the wake of that, Congress decided to combine almost two dozen federal agencies into the Department of Homeland Security with the idea of if we have all of these agencies working together, they will be able to share information, share intelligence, and we’ll people stop terrorist attacks. And you see at this time an ethos of “collect it all.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Muslim Americans were disproportionately targeted. And so was anyone who looked brown. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then you see the abuses, particularly among Muslim residents in America. You see the surveillance of Muslims in New York City. That’s pretty pervasive. And then you get to dragnet surveillance and abuses that happen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dragnet surveillance is exactly what it sounds like. It’s like casting a giant net over the ocean and dragging it through the water, catching everything in its wake. It’s a practice of collecting and analyzing information on everyone, instead of targeting individuals who are suspected of crime. You can’t opt out of it, and there’s no probable cause involved. Soon after the Patriot Act passed, all Americans were being watched. Dragnet surveillance had become the norm. But many legal experts argue that dragnet surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment guaranteed right to privacy. It protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures of their property. Under the Fourth Amendment, the government can’t search everyone’s property just because they suspect one person of a crime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think dragnet surveillance is about as anathema to the constitution as you can get. You know, if the police show up to my home and they just want to come in and search about for something, you need a warrant. You need probable cause. You need a judge to give you a warrant, give you the permission to do that. But technology is this thread that changes our relationship with the constitution and amendment itself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This may sound familiar because we just talked about a similar cycle of surveillance in the name of national security that played out during the civil rights movement. Back then, they said it was to stop communism. And it happened again, but this time they said, it was just stop terrorism. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You see a recurring theme, right? You see surveillance that starts out as targeted, then you see surveillance that exceeds its mandate with mission creep over the years. Then you see abuses, then you the disclosure of the abuses and this outrage that leads to change. And then you another national event that leads the process starting all over again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s different about this cycle is the dragnet. Mass surveillance has become so widespread because technology has advanced exponentially faster than laws can adapt. The constitutional right to privacy has been redefined throughout American history. It’s less clear when it comes to digital privacy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So you think about, you know, you don’t have telephones, but then you have telephones. Then you have the advent of the internet. Then within the internet, email. All of these things that can collect personal information and data and would be harmful to a person if they were exposed to the government or just exposed in general. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Patriotism surged in the aftermath of 9/11. Trust in the government reached historic highs, and the president’s approval rating shot up. But this 9/11 effect was short-lived. As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq dragged on, the government failed to uncover evidence of so-called weapons of mass destruction, and public support waned. And Americans were less thrilled when the consequences of the Patriot Act became more apparent. Under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts, federal and state intelligence agencies closely surveilled peaceful anti-war protests. The NSA tapped hundreds of Americans’ phones and monitored their international calls. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the Patriot Act gave the FBI the authority to collect any record that could be relevant to a terrorism investigation, like papers, documents, or books. Under this part of the Patriot Act, The FBI demanded that libraries hand over their patrons’ borrowing records. That became known as the library provision, and civil liberties organizations questioned whether it would be used to suppress speech. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the early 2000s, people were horrified at the idea of the NSA intercepting and reading emails. But a decade later, Americans were quickly adapting to smartphones and social media, which are treasure troves of personal data. We were checking in on Foursquare, using traceable hashtags on Twitter, and making all of our social connections publicly known on Facebook. We posted all about our personal lives on Instagram and Snapchat and Tumblr. You could trace someone’s entire day with one good scroll. The majority of Americans freely gave up this personal information without knowing the consequences of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back in the day, the FBI had to hire informants to bug Dr. King’s phone figure out who his associates were and where they were located. With social media and smartphones, we were doing the work for them. But the full extent of post-9/11 dragnet surveillance wasn’t publicly known until 2013, when 29-year-old defense contractor Edward Snowden leaked proof of the NSA’s activities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Linda Wertheimer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just one day after we learned that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting telephone records from millions of Americans, it’s been revealed that the agency is also running a massive internet surveillance program. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Snowden’s leaks not only confirmed the existence and scale of the government’s mass surveillance programs, but also proved that surveillance under the Obama administration had actually expanded. The leaks revealed that the government wasn’t just spying on suspects, it was spying on everyone, even working with foreign intelligence agencies to do so. Here’s Edward Snowden speaking to The Guardian days after the leak. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Edward Snowden: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Originally, we saw that focus very narrowly tailored as foreign intelligence gathered overseas. Now, increasingly, we see that it’s happening domestically. And to do that, they, the NSA specifically, targets the communications of everyone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don Bell was a law student at the time, and he says that he was absolutely horrified learning this information. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t think Americans were aware of what was happening at the time, but I think that’s partly because technology was changing so quickly that the law hadn’t kept up in ensuring that Fourth Amendment protections were going to be followed by intelligence agencies that were pushing the boundaries of the law because they were working with technologies that previously weren’t even feasible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The cycle that Dawn mentioned earlier, it played out again following the NSA leaks. Disclosure led to outrage and outrage led to change. In 2015, the USA Freedom Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama, revising the Patriot Act and curbing the NSA’s data collection. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Barack Obama: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The USA Freedom Act also accomplishes something I called for a year and a half ago. It ends the bulk metadata program, the bulk collection of phone records, as it currently exists, and puts in place new reforms. The government will no longer hold these records. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Three years later, the Supreme Court ruled that the government had violated Fourth Amendment rights by obtaining cell phone location data without a warrant. The court’s ruling on the case, Carpenter v. United States, established that people still have the right to privacy when it comes to their data, even if they voluntarily share that data with a third party, like their cell phone provider. The government can’t go to a phone company and demand a person’s location data without a warrant now. That was seven years ago. Clearly, that decision did not stop digital policing. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies are still collecting unprecedented amounts of data on Americans. And these days, it’s basically impossible to opt out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Don Bell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And today I think we’re in an even more dangerous era because there are so many technological devices that collect information on us that is highly sensitive, highly personal, and in an increasingly technology-based world, it’s necessary for us to use those devices to fully function in society. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It seems like dragnet surveillance is actually more pervasive than ever before. So what happened, or didn’t happen, to get to this point? And how is this new era of surveillance different from previous ones throughout history? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s a new tab, which we’ll get into in our next episode, where we’ll dive into cutting edge surveillance tactics and how they’re used to target political speech. So we’re actually leaving these tabs open for now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the next episode of Close All Tabs:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicol Turner Lee: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My mother used to say this all the time, “If you’re not in the kitchen, you’re on the menu.” So we are all on the menu, even though we think we live in a society where there’s some level of privacy maybe in the context of our living rooms. In actuality, when you leave your home and you walk out that door, you are actually in a surveillance capitalist society. \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 is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our senior editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts and helps edit the show. Alan Montecillo edited this episode. Sound design by Maya Cueva. Original music by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard and Katherine Monahan. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager and Holly Kernan is our chief content officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K84 wired mechanical keyboard, with Gateron red switches. If you have feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org. Follow us on Instagram @CloseAllTabsPod or drop it on Discord. We’re in the Close All Tabs channel at discord.gg/kqed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use. \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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"slug": "recession-indicator-memes-are-getting-too-real",
"title": "Recession Indicator Memes Are Getting Too Real",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recession indicator memes are everywhere, pointing to everything from office wear at the club to Lady Gaga’s return to pop music as signs of looming economic doom. But with the stock market sinking and tariffs piling up, the jokes are starting to hit closer to home. In this episode, KQED community reporter Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí joins Morgan to unpack how the memes might be fueling the very recession they joke about. We also hear from USC public policy professor Elizabeth Currid-Halkett on the links between culture, consumption, and the economy.\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=KQINC9837431458\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/podcasts/icymi\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Candice Lim\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, co-host of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/podcasts/icymi\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ICYMI\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> from Slate\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/ccabreralomeli\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, community reporter at KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://elizabethcurridhalkett.com/\">Elizabeth Currid-Halkett\u003c/a>, professor of public policy at the University of Southern California\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12036654/2025-recession-indicator-meme-us-economy\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">‘Recession Indicator’: What Memes Tell Us About How We Experience the Economy\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://mashable.com/article/recession-indicator-meme-explained\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The ‘recession indicator’ meme, explained\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Christianna Silva, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mashable\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.glamour.com/story/can-strippers-really-forecast-a-financial-crisis\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can Strippers Really Forecast a Financial Crisis?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Jenny Singer, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Glamour\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay. So a few weeks ago, my friend Candice Lim joined us on the show. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I do think we are entering a recession culture era. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We ended up having to cut some stuff out of that episode, but I wanted to bring this part back because I can’t stop thinking about it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you remember back in 2016, 2017, there was this song called “Cut It” by OT Genesis and it became a dance trend. What’s funny is that I missed that boat, but the boat is back because a week ago, I opened my For You page and there are four white boys dancing in a Wayfair customized apartment and they’re doing 2020-esque TikTok dances. Can I play one for you now? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>O.T. Genasis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cut it, cut it cut it cut it \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think this video also alarms me because it does make me believe that white boy swag is back and white boy swag is a recession indicator. After this, I saw so many more videos of white guys trying to dance to the song. Please notice I said try. And I think that cut it getting revived on TikTok — it’s white boys trying to have a swag-a-thon. Sorry, producer just asked what does white boy swag mean, Morgan, please step in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">White boy swag, in this meme context we’re talking about here, is this phenomenon in which white teenage boys get really into dancing to hip-hop, and it seems to trend right before some kind of economic downturn, like how, in 2007, Soulja Boy released “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” right? That year, every suburban kid was doing that dance in a little snapback hat. That’s white boy swag. And then 2008, financial crisis. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So here’s the deal. Morgan, I’m obsessed with recession indicators because it’s like a joke, right? Like for me to try to create correlation between white guys dancing on TikTok and the reason I can’t buy eggs, it’s stupid. But I like recession indicators because I think it’s really funny to talk about how the economy does affect culture. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The stock market actually crashed days after recording that segment. And Candice is right. The economy and culture are inextricably linked. And while recession indicators have been a kind of online joke for the last few years, the meme is feeling a little too real. You may have seen some of these theories floating around on the internet, like how Lady Gaga is bringing back recession pop with her latest album, or how flash mobs are back in, and surely that’s a sign of economic downturn. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of them are pretty silly. But some are actually grounded in reality and are based on changes to consumer spending. Like how press on nails are trending because manicures are an expensive luxury. It seems like every aspect of internet culture right now could somehow be a recession indicator. But when did this meme actually start? And at this point, what isn’t a recession indicator? \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\">Let’s open a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What are recession indicators? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To be clear, recession indicators are not just memes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey Morgan, I’m Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí. I’m a reporter here at KQED News, and you know, when I saw the recession indicator kind of make a comeback, and people really just labeling many ridiculous things recession indicators, I absolutely loved it. And I wish I had this when I was studying recessions and economics back in college. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Carlos actually has a degree in economics, which came in handy when he reported on recession indicator memes for KQED, where this podcast is produced. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think the most useful place to start is first defining what a recession is. For economists for a long time, what they would look at is if we had two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. So a couple ideas that we need to unpack there. So first off GDP, that’s the total amount of goods, of services that is produced consumed by a country, right? So if that number shrinks… that means that people are consuming less, producing less. So there’s just less dollars moving through the system. What economists do is that they measure GDP, that total number, four times a year, every quarter. So, we already went down twice. That is the technical definition of a recession. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But GDP alone doesn’t account for other signs of economic health, like unemployment and investments, and importantly, how consumers are feeling about the economy. These other factors are all recession indicators, including consumer confidence. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The idea of consumer confidence. That tells us how consumers, like you and I and folks listening to us, how they feel about the future of the economy. Because how you feel about the future the economy will influence your personal decisions of whether you wanna start a business, whether you want to buy a car, a home, or even plan a family. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The meme may be a modern phenomenon, but theories about cultural recession indicators have been around for decades. Like the Hemline Index from the 1920s and the Great Depression. It claims that skirt length is correlated to economic health. When the economy is doing well, skirts get shorter. But when the economy’s doing poorly, like during the Great Depression, fashion trends are more modest and skirts get longer. That theory has been debunked, but others are a little more convincing since they revolve around how people are spending their money. Like the lipstick index of the early 2000s, which claims that during recessions, women are less inclined to spend money on big ticket purchases like designer bags or nice jackets. Instead, they’ll buy affordable small luxuries like lipstick. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So if lipstick sales go up randomly, that means that the economy is slowing down, right? Because consumers feel less confident. That’s going to affect what they buy, what they look for. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so that’s like a traditional economics definition of a recession indicator. But we’re talking about internet culture here. So where did this meme come from? We have to go all the way back to 2019. A Twitter user who goes by Lit Capital posted screenshots of news articles that all warned of impending economic doom from declining RV sales to Bitcoin trends to an uptake in the price of a Popeye’s chicken sandwich. Along with the screenshot, they posted “When did everything become a recession indicator?” That’s when people started jokingly referring to trends as recession indicators. Let’s fast forward to 2022. A dancer who goes by Botticelli Bimbo tweeted, “The Strip Club is sadly a leading indicator and I can promise y’all we are in a recession.” And that became known as the stripper index. If the strip clubs are empty, we’re screwed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If people feel nervous about the economy, they feel like, “oh shoot, am I gonna lose my job?” They might pull back and spend less on things that they may see as frivolous or as extra costs, right? Consumers drive the U.S. economy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And in the years since, so-called recession indicators have sprung up again and again, from theories about bleach blondes going back to their natural hair color to save money, to the resurgence of Y2K fashion and early 2000s dance music that was trending before the last recession. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think that when we think about things like recession pop, it’s less about the, you know, if there’s a correlation or causation between certain type of pop music and the economy, but rather it says a lot more about us and about how we experience the economy and how we create certain benchmarks in our mind of how time passes, right? We’re like, “oh yeah, that’s, you now, my parent got laid off back then. And also, you know, my favorite Lady Gaga album came out.” Humans are really good at finding patterns. And when folks don’t have access to, you know, like the super complex economic data that economists are looking at, we’re gonna try to make, you know seek the patterns out with the data that we have at hand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, so if Soulja Boy comes back, we’re screwed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \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\">As economic anxiety ramped up, so did the theories about these cultural recession indicators. The meme really took off late last year in the aftermath of the election. According to economists, we weren’t necessarily headed for a recession, but the vibes were bad and consumers were nervous and recession indicators seemed more real than ever. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If people are nervous about something, they’re gonna talk about it more on social media. And a few of the economists I spoke to, what they cautioned was, you know, it’s one thing to talk about the recession, but it’s another thing if, you now, people, every time they go on social media, they hear their friends, or all these things about recession, it kind of actually starts going into your head, and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, huh, the economy is slowing down, the economy’s slowing down. You know what? Maybe this weekend, I don’t go to the movies, or maybe I don’t go out to eat anymore. I’ll just pack my own lunch.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it kind of becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy where people hear “recession, recession, recession” all the time. That’s gonna influence their behavior. They’re gonna spend less. That’s less money moving through the economy, less consumption, and stronger probability of a recession. So it’s interesting that memes can actually signal consumer confidence as well. And if it’s low or if just people are nervous, then it just makes the signs of a recessions bigger and stronger. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, are recession indicator memes a recession indicator? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think… I think there’s a pretty good argument to say that they are. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Earlier this month, President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on 90 other countries, stoking a trade war and rattling the economy. The stock market tanked, Google searches for recession spiked, and suddenly the recession indicator memes blew up. Anything and everything could be a sign of another recession. And after the tariff announcement, it seems like the joke wasn’t a joke anymore. So how did spending and consumer confidence change during the last recession? More on that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s get back to the story. So most of the more grounded recession indicator theories, like the rise in making matcha lattes at home instead of buying them at trendy cafes, are really about the spending habits of a particular group of people. Let’s talk about that and how the economy is intertwined with culture in a new tab. Recession… consumer… culture. We’re diving into this with an expert who studies the intersections of culture and economics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My name is Elizabeth Currid-Halkett and I am professor of public policy at the University of Southern California. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the author of several books. Back in 2017, she wrote a book called The Sum of Small Things. In this book, she examines the habits of the tote bag carrying, green smoothie loving, public radio listening consumer, a group she calls “the aspirational class.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The aspirational class are different in the sense that they are meritocrats. They tend to be highly educated and they also tend to have higher income. We know education and income tend to go hand in hand for the most part. And they also, and I think this is the thing that makes them kind of an unusual new kind of class of people, which is that they constantly aspiring to some better life and that better life might be you know, really what we now call wellness. You know, it’s their how they exercise, how they eat, you know their relationship to the environment, their impassioned view towards social justice and equality. All of these things, by the way, are very laudable. But I think it’s this idea that it is still quite self-focused.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. A lot of the so-called recession indicators that we’re talking about in this episode really have to do with consumption and spending habits, but in your book you lay out the difference between conspicuous consumption and inconspicuous consumption. What is that difference? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You probably already know the term conspicuous consumption, which is this idea that we buy consumer goods to in an overt way to show our status. So think about like a Rolex watch or a handbag with lots of logos, okay? That’s like classic conspicuously consumption. Like you don’t need a Rolex watch, like a plastic Timex watch will be perfectly fine. You know, we buy things that basically, functionally speaking, are not better, but they show status. Inconspicuous consumption is actually very hidden, except for people who are in the know. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I found that right around the recession of 2007 through 2009, that, you know, the top income groups, their conspicuous consumption tanked. But instead, they were spending all this money on like gardeners and, child care and education and health care, all of these things that you can’t see but are really expensive. So, you know, a college tuition, for example, is way more expensive than, like, the lease on a BMW car. One you can see and the other is really obvious, but both are really about status in different ways. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You wrote The Sum of Small Things back in 2017. How have the markers of the aspirational class changed? Have they changed since then? And has it been influenced by the state of the economy? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Think it’s actually gone on steroids. So when I wrote The Sum of Small Things, I was thinking a lot about inconspicuous consumption. I was observing it anecdotally. And what I’ve actually found since is that a lot of that stuff has become more expensive. We know that private schools, colleges, even exercise classes, and then wellness in general exploded. And I see wellness for the most part as something that’s quite an expensive luxury to engage in wellness as a phenomenon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And even something like, you know, in Los Angeles, we have this store called Erewhon, like that didn’t exist when I wrote about The Sum of Small Things, but literally Erewhon encapsulates everything about the aspirational class. You know, it’s this really expensive, organic wellness, like tonics and milkshakes and organic, humane meat and all the things. And it’s like in this one-stop shop, and it also ties into other things like fitness and well-being, not just simply food. So it took Whole Foods and was like, let’s just layer on what you need at the yoga studio as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I know, those celebrity smoothies, they get you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, I mean, it’s amazing because they’re like $30 each, and you’re just thinking, who spends $30 on a smoothie? It turns out lots and lots of people. There’s a long line.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Erewhon smoothie line is impossible. So we’ve talked a lot about these kind of silly recession indicators that may or may not be based in reality, but how are culture and consumption habits and the state of the economy intertwined according to your research? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As someone who has spent my entire career studying culture in one way or another, I believe it explains an awful lot, although it’s so hard to put your finger on what it is. But think about it like this. First of all, for the most part, when there’s a recession or a fear of recession, most people on some level are wary, right? I mean, I guess maybe if you’re super, super, super rich, you’re not as worried. But most people start rethinking purchases because they’re like, “Maybe it’ll be my job. Maybe my stock’s going to go down.” Whatever, there’s all sorts of things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So you’ve got a recession, impacts consumption, but recessions impact culture, too, because they can impact people’s emotional, psychological states. And we know that that is intertwined in culture. I mean, think about how different cultural production would have been or the cultural sensibilities would have in the roaring 20s versus the Great Depression. Like, it’s just different. And then that of course changes how things are produced and then it changes how people choose to consume things. So they’re always intertwined and I think probably the larger through-line there is that there’s a kind of an emotional mood associated with a moment in time which permeates through these different areas. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Absolutely. Do you have any recession indicators? Like, you know, these kind of like meme-y ones, silly or not real or not? Is there anything to you that says, “Ooh, we’re like the economy is bad.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh my gosh. You know what? It’s so funny. I was actually thinking about that. I think when you can get a table at a really hot restaurant easily, that maybe there’s something going on. Because it’s so gratuitous. Like no one needs to go to a really trendy restaurant. So if suddenly people are worried about money or having their job, probably that’s one thing that might go. And so that’s what I think. If you easily get a table at a trendy restaurant may- maybe that’s a harbinger of you know, tough economic times. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like we heard from Elizabeth, consumer habits run deeper than just buying things. So not every shift in spending trends is proof of a recession. But at the same time, the vibes are bad right now. And trying to find explanations for things that make us anxious, like the economy, can be comforting. It’s also fun. We’ve gone into some of the viral recession indicators, but they’re not universally held beliefs. Everyone has their own theories and their own hot takes. We’re going to hear a few of those takes… in a new tab. Other recession indicators. So I reached out to a few people who all cover the internet or culture in some way and asked them for their recession indicators, and more importantly, why they think they’re recession indicators. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christiana Silva: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My personal recession indicator is that TikTok wants me to host a dinner party and I can’t afford to do that. I could host a potluck and I could go to a picnic, but there’s this like quiet luxury of a dinner where none of your friends bring side dishes or bottles of wine and you provide everyone with three courses of food and centerpieces with fresh flowers and tapered candles. It’s just not in my economic future. Like the bougiest thing you can do is have raspberries and eggs in your fridge? That can’t be good. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tanya Chen: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is not a joke. A real recession indicator has been that I’ve taken up chain smoking. I am a member of the media kind of just trying to stay afloat and I’ll have the occasional cigarette and joint to help kind of ease the stress of it all right now, but I’ve lately just been chain smoking, like my Chinese ancestors would be both proud and disappointed to know. And it is what it is. It is the realest recession indicator of this moment in time and in my life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Moises Mendez II: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that the Tumblr aesthetics revival is such a recession indicator, and Addison Rae is like the leader of this Tumblr aesthetics revival because of so many references in her music. Like just using wired headphones, I don’t know why that’s so revolutionary, but it’s just like, that’s such a pointed choice and I love it, I think it’s so fascinating. Like there’s so many different things of people wanting that simplicity again. And I think that that’s a recession indicator. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daysia Tolentino: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My recession indicator is Domo making a comeback in the US. For those who are unfamiliar, Domo is a cute Japanese monster and he has a square brown body and sharp triangular teeth. He rose to prominence among kids my age during the last recession because he was on Nickelodeon. It was recently announced that he was returning in 2025, which immediately set off my recession indicator alarm bells. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Vasile: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, historically, in the sports world, a Phillies World Series victory has been a recession indicator. And the last time that they actually won was in 2008. We all know what happened then, but they’ve had a string of winning seasons. I do think it is somehow related to how significant Pennsylvania’s impact is when it comes to the Electoral College. So if you want a healthy economy, you just have to pray that raw milk poisons Bryce Harper, I guess. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Calling in to share with you a recession indicator I’ve stumbled upon on X, the everything app. It is a deep fried image, a selfie of a guy sitting in a car. You know, all the distortion is kind of turned up to max. And to the extent recession indicator just means any piece of culture that’s giving, you know, peak millennial ascendancy type of vibes, peak recession vibes, this definitely fits into it. You know deep fried memes from a specific era of the internet. And that post has 129,000 likes, so maybe it means something. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jen Chien: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Over Easter weekend, my friend sent me several links to articles about using potatoes instead of eggs for Easter. One of them was a delicious — “exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point” — recipe for deviled potatoes and really had this vibe of, “it’s so exciting to eat deviled potatoes. It’s a hack. It’s something delicious that you will want to do year after year.” And then several articles about dyeing potatoes for Easter instead of Easter eggs, and also with a vibe of trying to get you really excited. One of the subheadings on one of the articles said, “why you’ll love dying potatoes for Easter,” and I thought, ooh, we’re in trouble. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Joking about recession indicators might make coping with this existential anxiety just a little bit easier. It’s human nature to notice patterns and like we talked about, the economy does influence culture. But that doesn’t mean that every trend is somehow a recession indicator. Just take it from Carlos, who investigated his own theory after a night at the club. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I noticed that there were a lot more people walking around the club with blue drinks, which is an AMF, and it’s a blue drink because it has blue curacao. It has like five, seven types of liquor. And you can get it for the same price as any other cocktail, but it’s really strong cocktail. So then, you know, my friends were like, “Well, it’s probably because people are trying to save money.” And in my head, I was like, “is this a recession indicator?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I did reach out to multiple liquor distribution companies. And one of them did confirm with me that yes, they’ve seen an increase in blue curacao sales. And then I’m like, okay, well now second step, let’s talk to owners of the biggest clubs in San Francisco, see if they are noticing this too. And the ones that got back to me said, “no, they’re kind of like the same. We’re not seeing a spike.” So my theory was kind of disproved or didn’t have again the data I needed to keep moving forward, but it goes to back we’ve been talking about, that we notice the things that we’re most familiar with. We notice something that’s really important or just relevant to us and then we connect it with other things that we maybe associate with it subconsciously, right? Like a Dunkin Donuts closing, we are like, “Oh my gosh, you know, economic hardship.” Uh, Lady Gaga. “Ah, 2008. Ah! Like, losing Homes.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Peplums back in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Office wear at the club. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, true. That’s, hey, great reporting happens at the club.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Special thanks to Cristiana Silva, Tanya Chen, Moises Mendez II, Daysia Tolentino, Sarah Vasile, Aidan Walker, and Jen Chien for sharing their recession indicators with us. Let’s close all these tabs. Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Original music and sound design by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard and Katherine Monahan. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations manager. And Holly Kernan is our chief content officer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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 Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden Red Samurai keycaps and Gateron Milky Yellow Pro V2 switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you have feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs@kqed.org. Follow us on Instagram @CloseAllTabsPod 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/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\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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"description": "Recession indicator memes are everywhere, pointing to everything from office wear at the club to Lady Gaga’s return to pop music as signs of looming economic doom. But with the stock market sinking and tariffs piling up, the jokes are starting to hit closer to home. In this episode, KQED community reporter Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí joins Morgan to unpack how the memes might be fueling the very recession they joke about. We also hear from USC public policy professor Elizabeth Currid-Halkett on the links between culture, consumption, and the economy.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recession indicator memes are everywhere, pointing to everything from office wear at the club to Lady Gaga’s return to pop music as signs of looming economic doom. But with the stock market sinking and tariffs piling up, the jokes are starting to hit closer to home. In this episode, KQED community reporter Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí joins Morgan to unpack how the memes might be fueling the very recession they joke about. We also hear from USC public policy professor Elizabeth Currid-Halkett on the links between culture, consumption, and the economy.\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=KQINC9837431458\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/podcasts/icymi\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Candice Lim\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, co-host of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/podcasts/icymi\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ICYMI\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> from Slate\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/ccabreralomeli\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, community reporter at KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://elizabethcurridhalkett.com/\">Elizabeth Currid-Halkett\u003c/a>, professor of public policy at the University of Southern California\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12036654/2025-recession-indicator-meme-us-economy\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">‘Recession Indicator’: What Memes Tell Us About How We Experience the Economy\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://mashable.com/article/recession-indicator-meme-explained\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The ‘recession indicator’ meme, explained\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Christianna Silva, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mashable\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.glamour.com/story/can-strippers-really-forecast-a-financial-crisis\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can Strippers Really Forecast a Financial Crisis?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Jenny Singer, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Glamour\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay. So a few weeks ago, my friend Candice Lim joined us on the show. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I do think we are entering a recession culture era. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We ended up having to cut some stuff out of that episode, but I wanted to bring this part back because I can’t stop thinking about it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you remember back in 2016, 2017, there was this song called “Cut It” by OT Genesis and it became a dance trend. What’s funny is that I missed that boat, but the boat is back because a week ago, I opened my For You page and there are four white boys dancing in a Wayfair customized apartment and they’re doing 2020-esque TikTok dances. Can I play one for you now? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>O.T. Genasis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cut it, cut it cut it cut it \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think this video also alarms me because it does make me believe that white boy swag is back and white boy swag is a recession indicator. After this, I saw so many more videos of white guys trying to dance to the song. Please notice I said try. And I think that cut it getting revived on TikTok — it’s white boys trying to have a swag-a-thon. Sorry, producer just asked what does white boy swag mean, Morgan, please step in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">White boy swag, in this meme context we’re talking about here, is this phenomenon in which white teenage boys get really into dancing to hip-hop, and it seems to trend right before some kind of economic downturn, like how, in 2007, Soulja Boy released “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” right? That year, every suburban kid was doing that dance in a little snapback hat. That’s white boy swag. And then 2008, financial crisis. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So here’s the deal. Morgan, I’m obsessed with recession indicators because it’s like a joke, right? Like for me to try to create correlation between white guys dancing on TikTok and the reason I can’t buy eggs, it’s stupid. But I like recession indicators because I think it’s really funny to talk about how the economy does affect culture. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The stock market actually crashed days after recording that segment. And Candice is right. The economy and culture are inextricably linked. And while recession indicators have been a kind of online joke for the last few years, the meme is feeling a little too real. You may have seen some of these theories floating around on the internet, like how Lady Gaga is bringing back recession pop with her latest album, or how flash mobs are back in, and surely that’s a sign of economic downturn. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of them are pretty silly. But some are actually grounded in reality and are based on changes to consumer spending. Like how press on nails are trending because manicures are an expensive luxury. It seems like every aspect of internet culture right now could somehow be a recession indicator. But when did this meme actually start? And at this point, what isn’t a recession indicator? \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\">Let’s open a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What are recession indicators? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To be clear, recession indicators are not just memes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey Morgan, I’m Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí. I’m a reporter here at KQED News, and you know, when I saw the recession indicator kind of make a comeback, and people really just labeling many ridiculous things recession indicators, I absolutely loved it. And I wish I had this when I was studying recessions and economics back in college. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Carlos actually has a degree in economics, which came in handy when he reported on recession indicator memes for KQED, where this podcast is produced. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think the most useful place to start is first defining what a recession is. For economists for a long time, what they would look at is if we had two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. So a couple ideas that we need to unpack there. So first off GDP, that’s the total amount of goods, of services that is produced consumed by a country, right? So if that number shrinks… that means that people are consuming less, producing less. So there’s just less dollars moving through the system. What economists do is that they measure GDP, that total number, four times a year, every quarter. So, we already went down twice. That is the technical definition of a recession. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But GDP alone doesn’t account for other signs of economic health, like unemployment and investments, and importantly, how consumers are feeling about the economy. These other factors are all recession indicators, including consumer confidence. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The idea of consumer confidence. That tells us how consumers, like you and I and folks listening to us, how they feel about the future of the economy. Because how you feel about the future the economy will influence your personal decisions of whether you wanna start a business, whether you want to buy a car, a home, or even plan a family. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The meme may be a modern phenomenon, but theories about cultural recession indicators have been around for decades. Like the Hemline Index from the 1920s and the Great Depression. It claims that skirt length is correlated to economic health. When the economy is doing well, skirts get shorter. But when the economy’s doing poorly, like during the Great Depression, fashion trends are more modest and skirts get longer. That theory has been debunked, but others are a little more convincing since they revolve around how people are spending their money. Like the lipstick index of the early 2000s, which claims that during recessions, women are less inclined to spend money on big ticket purchases like designer bags or nice jackets. Instead, they’ll buy affordable small luxuries like lipstick. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So if lipstick sales go up randomly, that means that the economy is slowing down, right? Because consumers feel less confident. That’s going to affect what they buy, what they look for. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so that’s like a traditional economics definition of a recession indicator. But we’re talking about internet culture here. So where did this meme come from? We have to go all the way back to 2019. A Twitter user who goes by Lit Capital posted screenshots of news articles that all warned of impending economic doom from declining RV sales to Bitcoin trends to an uptake in the price of a Popeye’s chicken sandwich. Along with the screenshot, they posted “When did everything become a recession indicator?” That’s when people started jokingly referring to trends as recession indicators. Let’s fast forward to 2022. A dancer who goes by Botticelli Bimbo tweeted, “The Strip Club is sadly a leading indicator and I can promise y’all we are in a recession.” And that became known as the stripper index. If the strip clubs are empty, we’re screwed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If people feel nervous about the economy, they feel like, “oh shoot, am I gonna lose my job?” They might pull back and spend less on things that they may see as frivolous or as extra costs, right? Consumers drive the U.S. economy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And in the years since, so-called recession indicators have sprung up again and again, from theories about bleach blondes going back to their natural hair color to save money, to the resurgence of Y2K fashion and early 2000s dance music that was trending before the last recession. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think that when we think about things like recession pop, it’s less about the, you know, if there’s a correlation or causation between certain type of pop music and the economy, but rather it says a lot more about us and about how we experience the economy and how we create certain benchmarks in our mind of how time passes, right? We’re like, “oh yeah, that’s, you now, my parent got laid off back then. And also, you know, my favorite Lady Gaga album came out.” Humans are really good at finding patterns. And when folks don’t have access to, you know, like the super complex economic data that economists are looking at, we’re gonna try to make, you know seek the patterns out with the data that we have at hand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, so if Soulja Boy comes back, we’re screwed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \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\">As economic anxiety ramped up, so did the theories about these cultural recession indicators. The meme really took off late last year in the aftermath of the election. According to economists, we weren’t necessarily headed for a recession, but the vibes were bad and consumers were nervous and recession indicators seemed more real than ever. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If people are nervous about something, they’re gonna talk about it more on social media. And a few of the economists I spoke to, what they cautioned was, you know, it’s one thing to talk about the recession, but it’s another thing if, you now, people, every time they go on social media, they hear their friends, or all these things about recession, it kind of actually starts going into your head, and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, huh, the economy is slowing down, the economy’s slowing down. You know what? Maybe this weekend, I don’t go to the movies, or maybe I don’t go out to eat anymore. I’ll just pack my own lunch.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it kind of becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy where people hear “recession, recession, recession” all the time. That’s gonna influence their behavior. They’re gonna spend less. That’s less money moving through the economy, less consumption, and stronger probability of a recession. So it’s interesting that memes can actually signal consumer confidence as well. And if it’s low or if just people are nervous, then it just makes the signs of a recessions bigger and stronger. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, are recession indicator memes a recession indicator? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think… I think there’s a pretty good argument to say that they are. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Earlier this month, President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on 90 other countries, stoking a trade war and rattling the economy. The stock market tanked, Google searches for recession spiked, and suddenly the recession indicator memes blew up. Anything and everything could be a sign of another recession. And after the tariff announcement, it seems like the joke wasn’t a joke anymore. So how did spending and consumer confidence change during the last recession? More on that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s get back to the story. So most of the more grounded recession indicator theories, like the rise in making matcha lattes at home instead of buying them at trendy cafes, are really about the spending habits of a particular group of people. Let’s talk about that and how the economy is intertwined with culture in a new tab. Recession… consumer… culture. We’re diving into this with an expert who studies the intersections of culture and economics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My name is Elizabeth Currid-Halkett and I am professor of public policy at the University of Southern California. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the author of several books. Back in 2017, she wrote a book called The Sum of Small Things. In this book, she examines the habits of the tote bag carrying, green smoothie loving, public radio listening consumer, a group she calls “the aspirational class.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The aspirational class are different in the sense that they are meritocrats. They tend to be highly educated and they also tend to have higher income. We know education and income tend to go hand in hand for the most part. And they also, and I think this is the thing that makes them kind of an unusual new kind of class of people, which is that they constantly aspiring to some better life and that better life might be you know, really what we now call wellness. You know, it’s their how they exercise, how they eat, you know their relationship to the environment, their impassioned view towards social justice and equality. All of these things, by the way, are very laudable. But I think it’s this idea that it is still quite self-focused.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. A lot of the so-called recession indicators that we’re talking about in this episode really have to do with consumption and spending habits, but in your book you lay out the difference between conspicuous consumption and inconspicuous consumption. What is that difference? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You probably already know the term conspicuous consumption, which is this idea that we buy consumer goods to in an overt way to show our status. So think about like a Rolex watch or a handbag with lots of logos, okay? That’s like classic conspicuously consumption. Like you don’t need a Rolex watch, like a plastic Timex watch will be perfectly fine. You know, we buy things that basically, functionally speaking, are not better, but they show status. Inconspicuous consumption is actually very hidden, except for people who are in the know. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I found that right around the recession of 2007 through 2009, that, you know, the top income groups, their conspicuous consumption tanked. But instead, they were spending all this money on like gardeners and, child care and education and health care, all of these things that you can’t see but are really expensive. So, you know, a college tuition, for example, is way more expensive than, like, the lease on a BMW car. One you can see and the other is really obvious, but both are really about status in different ways. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You wrote The Sum of Small Things back in 2017. How have the markers of the aspirational class changed? Have they changed since then? And has it been influenced by the state of the economy? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Think it’s actually gone on steroids. So when I wrote The Sum of Small Things, I was thinking a lot about inconspicuous consumption. I was observing it anecdotally. And what I’ve actually found since is that a lot of that stuff has become more expensive. We know that private schools, colleges, even exercise classes, and then wellness in general exploded. And I see wellness for the most part as something that’s quite an expensive luxury to engage in wellness as a phenomenon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And even something like, you know, in Los Angeles, we have this store called Erewhon, like that didn’t exist when I wrote about The Sum of Small Things, but literally Erewhon encapsulates everything about the aspirational class. You know, it’s this really expensive, organic wellness, like tonics and milkshakes and organic, humane meat and all the things. And it’s like in this one-stop shop, and it also ties into other things like fitness and well-being, not just simply food. So it took Whole Foods and was like, let’s just layer on what you need at the yoga studio as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I know, those celebrity smoothies, they get you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, I mean, it’s amazing because they’re like $30 each, and you’re just thinking, who spends $30 on a smoothie? It turns out lots and lots of people. There’s a long line.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Erewhon smoothie line is impossible. So we’ve talked a lot about these kind of silly recession indicators that may or may not be based in reality, but how are culture and consumption habits and the state of the economy intertwined according to your research? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As someone who has spent my entire career studying culture in one way or another, I believe it explains an awful lot, although it’s so hard to put your finger on what it is. But think about it like this. First of all, for the most part, when there’s a recession or a fear of recession, most people on some level are wary, right? I mean, I guess maybe if you’re super, super, super rich, you’re not as worried. But most people start rethinking purchases because they’re like, “Maybe it’ll be my job. Maybe my stock’s going to go down.” Whatever, there’s all sorts of things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So you’ve got a recession, impacts consumption, but recessions impact culture, too, because they can impact people’s emotional, psychological states. And we know that that is intertwined in culture. I mean, think about how different cultural production would have been or the cultural sensibilities would have in the roaring 20s versus the Great Depression. Like, it’s just different. And then that of course changes how things are produced and then it changes how people choose to consume things. So they’re always intertwined and I think probably the larger through-line there is that there’s a kind of an emotional mood associated with a moment in time which permeates through these different areas. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Absolutely. Do you have any recession indicators? Like, you know, these kind of like meme-y ones, silly or not real or not? Is there anything to you that says, “Ooh, we’re like the economy is bad.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh my gosh. You know what? It’s so funny. I was actually thinking about that. I think when you can get a table at a really hot restaurant easily, that maybe there’s something going on. Because it’s so gratuitous. Like no one needs to go to a really trendy restaurant. So if suddenly people are worried about money or having their job, probably that’s one thing that might go. And so that’s what I think. If you easily get a table at a trendy restaurant may- maybe that’s a harbinger of you know, tough economic times. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like we heard from Elizabeth, consumer habits run deeper than just buying things. So not every shift in spending trends is proof of a recession. But at the same time, the vibes are bad right now. And trying to find explanations for things that make us anxious, like the economy, can be comforting. It’s also fun. We’ve gone into some of the viral recession indicators, but they’re not universally held beliefs. Everyone has their own theories and their own hot takes. We’re going to hear a few of those takes… in a new tab. Other recession indicators. So I reached out to a few people who all cover the internet or culture in some way and asked them for their recession indicators, and more importantly, why they think they’re recession indicators. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christiana Silva: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My personal recession indicator is that TikTok wants me to host a dinner party and I can’t afford to do that. I could host a potluck and I could go to a picnic, but there’s this like quiet luxury of a dinner where none of your friends bring side dishes or bottles of wine and you provide everyone with three courses of food and centerpieces with fresh flowers and tapered candles. It’s just not in my economic future. Like the bougiest thing you can do is have raspberries and eggs in your fridge? That can’t be good. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tanya Chen: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is not a joke. A real recession indicator has been that I’ve taken up chain smoking. I am a member of the media kind of just trying to stay afloat and I’ll have the occasional cigarette and joint to help kind of ease the stress of it all right now, but I’ve lately just been chain smoking, like my Chinese ancestors would be both proud and disappointed to know. And it is what it is. It is the realest recession indicator of this moment in time and in my life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Moises Mendez II: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that the Tumblr aesthetics revival is such a recession indicator, and Addison Rae is like the leader of this Tumblr aesthetics revival because of so many references in her music. Like just using wired headphones, I don’t know why that’s so revolutionary, but it’s just like, that’s such a pointed choice and I love it, I think it’s so fascinating. Like there’s so many different things of people wanting that simplicity again. And I think that that’s a recession indicator. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daysia Tolentino: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My recession indicator is Domo making a comeback in the US. For those who are unfamiliar, Domo is a cute Japanese monster and he has a square brown body and sharp triangular teeth. He rose to prominence among kids my age during the last recession because he was on Nickelodeon. It was recently announced that he was returning in 2025, which immediately set off my recession indicator alarm bells. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Vasile: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, historically, in the sports world, a Phillies World Series victory has been a recession indicator. And the last time that they actually won was in 2008. We all know what happened then, but they’ve had a string of winning seasons. I do think it is somehow related to how significant Pennsylvania’s impact is when it comes to the Electoral College. So if you want a healthy economy, you just have to pray that raw milk poisons Bryce Harper, I guess. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Calling in to share with you a recession indicator I’ve stumbled upon on X, the everything app. It is a deep fried image, a selfie of a guy sitting in a car. You know, all the distortion is kind of turned up to max. And to the extent recession indicator just means any piece of culture that’s giving, you know, peak millennial ascendancy type of vibes, peak recession vibes, this definitely fits into it. You know deep fried memes from a specific era of the internet. And that post has 129,000 likes, so maybe it means something. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jen Chien: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Over Easter weekend, my friend sent me several links to articles about using potatoes instead of eggs for Easter. One of them was a delicious — “exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point” — recipe for deviled potatoes and really had this vibe of, “it’s so exciting to eat deviled potatoes. It’s a hack. It’s something delicious that you will want to do year after year.” And then several articles about dyeing potatoes for Easter instead of Easter eggs, and also with a vibe of trying to get you really excited. One of the subheadings on one of the articles said, “why you’ll love dying potatoes for Easter,” and I thought, ooh, we’re in trouble. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Joking about recession indicators might make coping with this existential anxiety just a little bit easier. It’s human nature to notice patterns and like we talked about, the economy does influence culture. But that doesn’t mean that every trend is somehow a recession indicator. Just take it from Carlos, who investigated his own theory after a night at the club. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I noticed that there were a lot more people walking around the club with blue drinks, which is an AMF, and it’s a blue drink because it has blue curacao. It has like five, seven types of liquor. And you can get it for the same price as any other cocktail, but it’s really strong cocktail. So then, you know, my friends were like, “Well, it’s probably because people are trying to save money.” And in my head, I was like, “is this a recession indicator?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I did reach out to multiple liquor distribution companies. And one of them did confirm with me that yes, they’ve seen an increase in blue curacao sales. And then I’m like, okay, well now second step, let’s talk to owners of the biggest clubs in San Francisco, see if they are noticing this too. And the ones that got back to me said, “no, they’re kind of like the same. We’re not seeing a spike.” So my theory was kind of disproved or didn’t have again the data I needed to keep moving forward, but it goes to back we’ve been talking about, that we notice the things that we’re most familiar with. We notice something that’s really important or just relevant to us and then we connect it with other things that we maybe associate with it subconsciously, right? Like a Dunkin Donuts closing, we are like, “Oh my gosh, you know, economic hardship.” Uh, Lady Gaga. “Ah, 2008. Ah! Like, losing Homes.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Peplums back in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Office wear at the club. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, true. That’s, hey, great reporting happens at the club.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Special thanks to Cristiana Silva, Tanya Chen, Moises Mendez II, Daysia Tolentino, Sarah Vasile, Aidan Walker, and Jen Chien for sharing their recession indicators with us. Let’s close all these tabs. Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Original music and sound design by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard and Katherine Monahan. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations manager. And Holly Kernan is our chief content officer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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 Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden Red Samurai keycaps and Gateron Milky Yellow Pro V2 switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you have feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs@kqed.org. Follow us on Instagram @CloseAllTabsPod 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/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\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "how-safe-is-ai-therapy",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After a divorce, KQED health reporter Lesley McClurg felt anxious over the prospect of dating again. On a whim, she turned to ChatGPT for a little emotional support — and found herself unexpectedly comforted. That experience launched her investigation into the fast-growing world of AI therapy. In this episode, Lesley joins Morgan to explore the promise and pitfalls of mental health chatbots — and what users should know before sharing their deepest feelings with an algorithm. \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=KQINC5629008096\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/lesleymcclurg\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lesley McClurg\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, KQED Health Correspondent\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1996504/ai-replace-therapist-benefits-risks-unsettling-truths\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can AI Replace Your Therapist? The Benefits, Risks and Unsettling Truths\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Lesley McClurg, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/07/nx-s1-5351312/artificial-intelligence-mental-health-therapy\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The AI therapist can see you now\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Katia Riddle, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">NPR\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://spectrum.ieee.org/woebot\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Woebot, a Mental-Health Chatbot, Tries Out Generative AI\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Casey Sackett, Devin Harper, and Aaron Pavez, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">IEEE Spectrum\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A quick heads up before we start. This episode includes discussions of suicide and mental health conditions, which may be distressing for some listeners. If you or someone you know need support, we’ll have links to resources in the episode description. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, I was going through a divorce and started dating after my divorce and hadn’t dated in many years and came home after a date one night and was just really anxious and kind of disheveled and needed some advice. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is KQED health reporter Lesley McClurg. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was late at night and I had used ChatGPT for, you know, other things and found it pretty helpful and I thought, what about for this moment in my life? And so I asked Chat whether or not I should reach out to this person that I had just dated because I was feeling like the night hadn’t gone that well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was late at night. She didn’t want to bug a friend about this, and really, she was feeling pretty vulnerable. She didn’t want to be judged. And so, ChatGPT was right there, ready to cheerfully answer her questions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was surprised that it was so good. I just remember after, you know, a few back and forths, I realized that really I was just nervous, really I just needed to take a deep breath. Basically I had created a big storm in my head. And Chat basically was like, “hey, chill, relax, it could have gone well. There’s another way this could have played out, not the sort of devastating reality that you’re playing out right now. Maybe give it a day or two and then reach out.” And so in that moment, it just sort of helped me take the gas off and come back into myself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was exactly what she needed to hear at the time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I didn’t text the person, which was the right call, and kind of used it as I warmed myself back up into the dating world, and it was really helpful. And so it made me then, as a reporter, start asking, “should I be telling this thing all about my love life? Is this a good idea, privacy-wise, et cetera?” And so that’s where it sort of seeded my reporting going forward. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lesley isn’t the only one turning to ChatGPT for therapy. If you’ve ever dealt with any health insurance company, you’re probably familiar with the hassle of getting care. And mental health care is especially inaccessible. AI chatbots though, they’re convenient, cost little to nothing to use, and in Lesley’s case, can actually be pretty helpful. But a lot of people are also wary of turning to AI for therapy, can you trust it? What are you risking when you share your most vulnerable thoughts with a chatbot? \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\">Access to actual mental health resources has become so limited. Cost and insurance aside, there’s a shortage of licensed human mental health professionals across the country. But can AI therapy really replace actual therapists? Okay, new tab. Does AI therapy work? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Over the course of your reporting, did you meet anyone who actually used an AI chatbot for therapy? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I actually talked to quite a few people who used AI therapy and I went online and read a lot of Reddit threads because this is quite the popular topic. I heard more positive stories than negatives. As a reporter, I wanted to illustrate someone who kind of had a nuanced experience, you know, good and bad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, Lesley found a woman named Lilly Payne:. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She had kind of the ideal story to illustrate that, yes, it helped her, but it wasn’t ideal. And so that was sort of like the character that I ended up, you know, focusing on. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In your story, you mentioned that Lilly had turned to AI therapy um during the COVID lockdowns, which were a terrible time for a lot of us. But Lilly wasn’t just experiencing, you know, anxiety and depression and loneliness. Her situation was a little more complicated, right? Can you talk about that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean in her words, her life basically fell apart. She graduated from college, she had moved to New York City to pursue an arts career, was very excited. And if we can remember, you know, New York was sort of the epicenter of the early days of COVID. It was really bad. Lockdown was really scary and the hospitals were overflowing and it was not a good scene. And so she left her arts career, abandoned her dreams and moved back home, which was pretty painful, to her parents’ home in Kentucky. And she is sort of tucked away, and it just felt like a big failure. And she was really struggling with like, what’s next for my life? Where do I go from here? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was such a lonely time for so many people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Lilly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was not at a breaking point, but I wasn’t doing awesome. So I was like, “the more help, the better.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so in all of that anxiety, she, you know, initially reached out and leaned on a lot of friends, but eventually she felt like she’d kind of worn those supports thin. And so she read about Woebot, this AI therapy platform in a health newsletter. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, I gave it a shot because I was like, why not? Everyone’s cooped up in their house. I will talk to this robot. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Initially it was really helpful. It did help her calm herself. I think she said she, you know, even just having it in her pocket helped her feel more in control in her life. I think she relied on it quite a bit in those early days to kind of find her ground again and be able to focus on, you know, re-imagining a new life from there while she was back at home with her parents in Kentucky. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s worth noting that Woebot is a therapy-specific AI chatbot, and it doesn’t use generative AI to respond to users the way that other tools like ChatGPT, or Claude, or DeepSeek do. This means that its interactions with users are a bit more predictable. It’s also engineered to respond the way that a therapist might. So instead of immediately jumping into offering advice, Woebot asks specific questions to encourage users to reflect and do the inner work themselves. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, it was designed by a psychologist. And so, you know, from that perspective, it it really is designed to focus on your mental health. The goal of Woebot is, you know, as a mental health tool, as a wellness tool, I think is how they market themselves. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Woebot is designed to use a set of techniques called cognitive behavioral therapy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, cognitive behavioral therapy helps you reframe your negative thoughts using specific exercises. And, you know, I think as any CBT, which is what it’s acronym is, it feels a little forced, but she did say it did help her reframe those negative thoughts and that she was able to think more more positively. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. Can you talk about uh Lilly’s uh other diagnosis that maybe complicated this form of treatment? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She has obsessive-compulsive disorder, and sometimes that makes her fixate on worst-case scenarios. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most of the time when people think about OCD they think of, just the very cliche like, “oh, you can’t stop washing your hands, you’re afraid of germs.” While that is a very real subtype that people experience, typically OCD like manifests in really taboo intrusive thoughts, and then the physical compulsions stem from trying to keep those themes away. And so, logically, you can know that, like, this doesn’t make sense, it’s not actually happening, but it just, it, it’s not just in your head, like physically it feels so real. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lilly is also diagnosed with anxiety and depression. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A symptom of depression is suicide ideation eventually, right? So she fixated on the idea that eventually because of her depression, that she may think about killing herself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My brain would be like, “Oh, you’ve struggled with depression in the past. There’s no saying that one day you won’t want to go through with suicide.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so she mentioned that she was worried about suicide in a session with Woebot. And Woebot came back and had a crisis alert and said, “hey, you better call the suicide hotline.” And she said, “no, no no, wait a second.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m not experiencing suicidal inclinations, I’m just terrified that I will. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And luckily she knew that, she understood her disorder enough to know that nuance and to know what was happening in her brain because she had done so much previous therapy. But she said, you know, if she hadn’t really understood her disease, having that crisis alert come up may have even added more stress. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would have freaked out and been like, “oh my gosh, this this thing that is supposed to have this mental health knowledge thinks that I am suicidal. I must be suicidal, I must be a danger to myself.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, you know, in defense of Woebot, they came back and said, “hey, we’re not, you know, specifically targeting or for people who have OCD. We really are just a wellness tool. “But her story illustrates where AI doesn’t necessarily have the nuance, the understanding — that a human, like a human therapist would have picked up on that. They would have understood that she had OCD and really understood the nuances of that, whereas in this case, Woebot didn’t. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. It sounds like Wobot was inadvertently validating this intrusive thought that she was having because she has OCD. And when you’re really depressed or anxious, it might be helpful for your feelings to be validated like that. But how does that compare to the recommended treatment for OCD? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean the recommended treatment for OCD is generally exposure therapy. So you expose yourself to whatever you’re scared of. And so in this case, a therapist would work with her in terms of exposing herself to those ideas, probably walk her through, you know, reality, et cetera, in a way that allows her to lean into her fears so that they’re not as scary and sort of wound up and keep going. And sort of overtake her. Whereas you, like a therapist wouldn’t stand up with a red flag and say, “Oh my God, you really are suicidal. Therefore you should call a hotline.” Right? Which is basically what Woebot did. Yeah.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lilly’s case is just one example of the limits of AI therapy. Responding with a crisis alert wasn’t helpful for her specific needs, but it’s probably good that Woebot even has those guardrails in place. But what happens when AI chatbots go off script? How bad can it get? We’ll get into that when we come back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">New tab. AI therapy … worst case scenarios. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Woebot can’t necessarily respond with the nuance of an actual human therapist. But it seems like it wasn’t giving Lilly bad advice. Um but let’s talk about examples of AI therapy doing the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to do. What happened with the National Eating Disorder Association hotline? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, that didn’t play out very well. They created a bot named Tessa and some of the users found that Tessa was giving them dieting advice. So these are folks \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh god. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Who have, you know, anorexia, bulimia, and somehow Tessa’s wires got crossed and people were getting the exact advice that would be really dangerous for their eating disorders. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sharon Maxwell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The recommendations that Tessa gave me was that I could lose one to two pounds per week, that I should eat no more than 2,000 calories in a day, that I should have a calorie deficit of 500 to 1,000 calories per day. All of which might sound benign to the general listener, however, to an individual with an eating disorder, the focus of weight loss really fuels the eating disorder. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was Sharon Maxwell, an eating disorder recovery educator, speaking to NPR about her experience with Tessa. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, NEDA, the National Eating Disorder Association, you know, pulled Tessa down and said, “this isn’t working very well.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it sounds like they just didn’t have that kind of guardrail in place. Like they didn’t anticipate that. Um, so even if Lilly didn’t really need Woebot to immediately jump into crisis mode, at least it had that guardrail to say, like, “hey, crisis.” But in the past, other AI chatbots have gotten into serious trouble for not responding to users’ red flags and just validating their responses. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that happened in the case of Character AI, this AI app that lets users personalize an AI companion based on fictional characters, celebrities, historical figures, all that. Until a recent lawsuit, Character AI did not have any safety measures or disclaimers warning users that they weren’t talking to a real person. What led to this lawsuit? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, there was a 14-year-old who grew really attached to his character that he had created. Like you said, Character AI lets you create a character and then interact with that character. And, you know, not surprisingly, kind of like I did in my first experience with ChatGPT, it feels so good that you develop a little bit of an emotional connection. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so this 14-year-old did that over the course of several months. And then he started opening up about some of the distress that he was feeling. And the character, instead of steering, you know, this 14-year-old towards help, unfortunately the bot allegedly reinforced some suicidal thoughts and eventually the boy ended up taking his life. And so the lawsuit, \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s terrible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly, it was really kind of horrific and it’s not the only one like this. There’s only a handful at this point, but it really is raising the red flag that these very empathetic responses are sort of like, you know parroting back, which is, again, what some AI does. Uh it can play out really, really poorly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what happened with the eating disorder hotline and Character AI, those are pretty extreme cases. Will most people actually experience those worst case scenarios? In your research, did you find anything about that? Or is it just like, are these just edge cases? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean we don’t have numbers yet. I think it’s really early in the arc of this technology. I think the experts are most worried about platforms that are like Character AI, where you are building a relationship with a character. In their defense, they’re not built as mental health tools, right? These are not marketing themselves as mental health tools. They are, you know, marketing themselves as, “hey, here, we’re going to give you a friend.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yet, you know, like a friend, like you and I probably do with our friends, we lean on our friends. We talk to our friends. We build emotional connections with our friends. We trust our friends for the right advice, right? And these are robots. So that relationship is not uh, you know, built on human connection. And like we can see it can go wrong. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another concern that I have, you know, as a tech reporter is uh privacy. ChatGPT, for example, isn’t HIPAA compliant. Could you explain what HIPPA is and why it’s necessary with medical information? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean HIPAA is the regulation that keeps all of our data safe. So when you go to the doctor, a doctor is required to keep all of your medical information, you know, totally private. It’s not going to be given anywhere. It’s not going to leak away. That is the privacy regulations. Now, some of these platforms, you know, for example, like Woebot, uh Rosebud is one, which is a platform that’s more like a journaling service. Uh you know, they say they’re HIPAA compliant, but there’s no one regulating them. It’s not like the American Medical Association is regulating them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, that data, you don’t really know where it’s going. You’re trusting these companies who are profit driven. You know, I mean, hopefully Woebot and Rosebud, you know, are following their own promises to their consumers. But there might be other companies that, you know, definitely ChatGPT is not, you know, promising that they’re HIPAA compliant. And, you know, that information is being used, is being put out there to retrain the model. And so, you know, hopefully they’re not gonna sell your data to advertisers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, also, I mean, the kind of a worst-case scenario, this fortunately hasn’t happened yet, but, you know, what if your mental health information gets out there, an insurance company gets wind of that, and your premiums start going up because they know that you’re struggling with something. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh wow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, you know, again, that hasn’t happen yet. Those are sort of like the worst- case scenarios. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But again, worst-case scenarios. Right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. Obviously, the priority of pretty much any for profit company is to monetize. But, do AI companies have any incentive to improve as more people turn to their products for therapy, even if they aren’t necessarily mental health specific chatbots? Um, you know, are there better safety measures, more transparency about data collection, especially given the Character AI lawsuit? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think they have that incentive. They also have the incentive to keep you hooked. So I think that’s the sort of like fine line. We’ve seen that with all social media, right? They’re getting a lot better at keeping our attention. AI companies have the same needs and incentives to keep people coming back. And so, you know, I think it’s gonna be a gray area and it’s going to be, unfortunately, like the social media companies, it’s gonna be really up to the creators of these products on whether or not they’re gonna have a really ethical orientation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite all of these issues, therapy is so inaccessible that unfortunately, AI chatbots might feel like the only immediate tool that people have when seeking treatment. How did we get here? Let’s open one last tab. The mental healthcare crisis. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You had mentioned earlier the state of mental health care. Why is it so hard to see a therapist? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, the demand for mental health services is really at an all-time high, and it’s surged even more, you know, since the pandemic began and continues to do so. I think there’s something like one in five Americans have some kind of a mental health issue, and yet they have a significant barrier to getting to a therapist. You know, I think it’s 55% of counties, people don’t have access to a psychotherapist or a social worker or a psychologist. They’re just aren’t any in that area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, you know, I think because of this issue that these sort of mental health deserts, AI is a kind of natural fill-in. You know, It’s available 24-7. You don’t need insurance to get there. You don’t have a high deductible. Uh, you don’t have to prove to anyone that, you know, that you have a mental health condition. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You don’t get accepted. Uh, so it’s easy and accessible. And I think that it will mean that more and more people are going to use this and hopefully, they’ll be well-informed consumers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. You know, given the shortage of providers, and like you mentioned, insurance issues. Um, since the pandemic started, telehealth therapy has become pretty popular. But I’ve seen a lot of complaints about these kind of quick, one-size-fits-all mental health care platforms like BetterHelp, which matches users with Licensed Therapist or Cerebral, which sets users up with a psychiatrist that can prescribe medications like antidepressants or ADHD meds. And both of these services were created to, kind of fill this void that you’re talking about, but at the same time, they’re kind of plagued with their own issues. It seems like making therapy quick and accessible isn’t always as easy as it seems. What do you think? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think there’s absolutely a role for telehealth. I think there’s absolutely a role for AI therapy. I think anyone would probably say that having a really heartfelt connection with a therapist in an office, live human, feels different than if you are talking to a screen. And the emotional repair that can happen in that session with a live human I think is different and potentially more profound than with a robot. That might change over time. You know, I don’t know how good these things are going to get. They already feel a little bit too good for my own comfort. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uh, but they might, they might get even better. You know, same thing, I think the telehealth model at this point is pretty early. I think that they are still refining how well those things work. I think it’s similar with AI therapy. And, you know, I think the, the tricky thing here as well with any of these technological solutions is that we are also living in a pretty isolated way in our lives right now. If you’re taking even like your therapy to a computer, that’s one less human that you’re interacting with. And maybe you’re, you know, mental health issues are because you’re dealing with isolation, with estrangement, with disconnection. Those feelings might even become more escalated if you’re, you know, using telehealth or using AI therapy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I saw both responses and reflections when I was reading these Reddit threads, you know, from people who were in rural places. I knew that they were feeling more isolated using an AI therapy and others who said, “you know, it was a godsend because I was so alone, at least someone was listening to me. ” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For your story on AI therapy, you talked to a bunch of psychologists and, you know, real-life human psychologists, um and, you know, someone from the American Psychological Association. Are human therapists concerned about being replaced by AI? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t hear that from them yet. Number one, they’re still really in high demand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I don’t think they’re feeling that crunch yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s still a shortage, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s still a huge shortage. And I think, they’re, they’re fairly confident that what they offer is different than what AI therapy offers. And, you know, they can pick up on subtle cues that AI, you know, can’t, say like body language or, you know, pace of speech. These things can reveal a lot about our mental health state, and AI can’t pick up on that stuff. So, and in the deeper bonds, the deeper attachment work that you might do in therapy, I think therapists are quite confident that they’re still better at that. Uh, so in this moment, I would say they’re not, they’re not especially worried. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve talked about the downsides of AI therapy pretty extensively. Um but, you had mentioned like that they can kind of be a tool in a bigger treatment plan while also seeing a real therapist. If someone is going to use AI therapy, how should they approach it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. Yeah. I think, that’s the message I hope comes across in my reporting, is that, you know, there are these worst case scenarios. Again, I think that the consumer should be educated on how their data is going to be used and understand how the company operates so that they’re not sharing uh really vulnerable information. But I think as a sort of, you know, addition to your yoga, your meditation, your, uh, you know, walks in nature, I think AI can really be a self-regulation tool. And I think it can be used quite well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, I talked to one company, Rosebud, which is a kind of journaling platform, which it asks you questions to kind of inspire you to express whatever’s going on and help you reflect. And it can follow a thread. So if you mentioned something two weeks ago about your relationship and what was going wrong, it will check in with you about what is happening and help you make sense of that. And I was on it. You know, I’m not a huge pen and paper person. You know, I don’t write anything anymore, so my arm hurts really quickly. And so, I enjoy, you know, I like just would pick up my phone and I would journal just, you know, talking to it and it would ask me questions and it felt, you know, fairly similar to a conversation with a friend. And I would always feel quite a bit better afterwards. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, in that sense, I think it can be quite helpful because, you know, maybe I’m in therapy once a week, but I’m having a panic attack on Monday night and my, you know, appointment is not until Thursday. I think in that sense, you know, it’s four o’clock in the morning. I can’t call a human therapist no matter what, even if I do have one. You know, to sit down and have the opportunity to have something that’s engaging me, um, I think can be really helpful. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m really curious, since you started reporting on this story, have you used ChatGPT, uh, not necessarily as a therapist, but you know, as this kind of mental health tool that you’re talking about since? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I wish I had the positive spin to be like, “yes, I’m relying on it all the time.” You know, I didn’t and I don’t. Um, I felt a little bit like one more thing to do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I felt similarly, you know, we talked about Lilly at the beginning of the story, and the reason that she stopped using Woebot was not because, you know, it had the crisis alert or it sort of like poorly dealt with her OCD, she got tired of being on her phone. She was like, “I didn’t want to be on my phone anymore. I wanted to talk to someone.”. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I feel that. You know, that was, that was, kind of my reasoning, you know, because of my job, I’m on a computer, you know, nearly all day long, and I didn’t want one more thing on the computer or one more thing on my phone. I can imagine, you know, if I was going through a really tough time again, you know, turning to it. Um, luckily, I’m in a bit of a good moment, so I haven’t been using it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. You can unplug now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. I’m going to enjoy this moment and ride the wave of goodness. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks again to KQED’s Lesley McClurg: for talking with us about this story. You can check out more of her reporting on healthcare, including this story on AI Therapy at KQED.org. Again, AI therapy tools work best when they’re used in addition to treatment under a licensed professional. But if it’s the only option accessible to you right now, there are AI tools specifically designed for mental health and wellness that might be more useful than the general chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude. For now, let’s close 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 is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Sound design by Maya Cuaiva, Chris Egusa, and Brendan Willard. Original music by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches. 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. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use. 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>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After a divorce, KQED health reporter Lesley McClurg felt anxious over the prospect of dating again. On a whim, she turned to ChatGPT for a little emotional support — and found herself unexpectedly comforted. That experience launched her investigation into the fast-growing world of AI therapy. In this episode, Lesley joins Morgan to explore the promise and pitfalls of mental health chatbots — and what users should know before sharing their deepest feelings with an algorithm. \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=KQINC5629008096\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/lesleymcclurg\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lesley McClurg\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, KQED Health Correspondent\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1996504/ai-replace-therapist-benefits-risks-unsettling-truths\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can AI Replace Your Therapist? The Benefits, Risks and Unsettling Truths\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Lesley McClurg, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/07/nx-s1-5351312/artificial-intelligence-mental-health-therapy\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The AI therapist can see you now\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Katia Riddle, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">NPR\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://spectrum.ieee.org/woebot\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Woebot, a Mental-Health Chatbot, Tries Out Generative AI\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Casey Sackett, Devin Harper, and Aaron Pavez, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">IEEE Spectrum\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A quick heads up before we start. This episode includes discussions of suicide and mental health conditions, which may be distressing for some listeners. If you or someone you know need support, we’ll have links to resources in the episode description. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, I was going through a divorce and started dating after my divorce and hadn’t dated in many years and came home after a date one night and was just really anxious and kind of disheveled and needed some advice. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is KQED health reporter Lesley McClurg. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was late at night and I had used ChatGPT for, you know, other things and found it pretty helpful and I thought, what about for this moment in my life? And so I asked Chat whether or not I should reach out to this person that I had just dated because I was feeling like the night hadn’t gone that well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was late at night. She didn’t want to bug a friend about this, and really, she was feeling pretty vulnerable. She didn’t want to be judged. And so, ChatGPT was right there, ready to cheerfully answer her questions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was surprised that it was so good. I just remember after, you know, a few back and forths, I realized that really I was just nervous, really I just needed to take a deep breath. Basically I had created a big storm in my head. And Chat basically was like, “hey, chill, relax, it could have gone well. There’s another way this could have played out, not the sort of devastating reality that you’re playing out right now. Maybe give it a day or two and then reach out.” And so in that moment, it just sort of helped me take the gas off and come back into myself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was exactly what she needed to hear at the time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I didn’t text the person, which was the right call, and kind of used it as I warmed myself back up into the dating world, and it was really helpful. And so it made me then, as a reporter, start asking, “should I be telling this thing all about my love life? Is this a good idea, privacy-wise, et cetera?” And so that’s where it sort of seeded my reporting going forward. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lesley isn’t the only one turning to ChatGPT for therapy. If you’ve ever dealt with any health insurance company, you’re probably familiar with the hassle of getting care. And mental health care is especially inaccessible. AI chatbots though, they’re convenient, cost little to nothing to use, and in Lesley’s case, can actually be pretty helpful. But a lot of people are also wary of turning to AI for therapy, can you trust it? What are you risking when you share your most vulnerable thoughts with a chatbot? \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\">Access to actual mental health resources has become so limited. Cost and insurance aside, there’s a shortage of licensed human mental health professionals across the country. But can AI therapy really replace actual therapists? Okay, new tab. Does AI therapy work? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Over the course of your reporting, did you meet anyone who actually used an AI chatbot for therapy? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I actually talked to quite a few people who used AI therapy and I went online and read a lot of Reddit threads because this is quite the popular topic. I heard more positive stories than negatives. As a reporter, I wanted to illustrate someone who kind of had a nuanced experience, you know, good and bad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, Lesley found a woman named Lilly Payne:. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She had kind of the ideal story to illustrate that, yes, it helped her, but it wasn’t ideal. And so that was sort of like the character that I ended up, you know, focusing on. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In your story, you mentioned that Lilly had turned to AI therapy um during the COVID lockdowns, which were a terrible time for a lot of us. But Lilly wasn’t just experiencing, you know, anxiety and depression and loneliness. Her situation was a little more complicated, right? Can you talk about that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean in her words, her life basically fell apart. She graduated from college, she had moved to New York City to pursue an arts career, was very excited. And if we can remember, you know, New York was sort of the epicenter of the early days of COVID. It was really bad. Lockdown was really scary and the hospitals were overflowing and it was not a good scene. And so she left her arts career, abandoned her dreams and moved back home, which was pretty painful, to her parents’ home in Kentucky. And she is sort of tucked away, and it just felt like a big failure. And she was really struggling with like, what’s next for my life? Where do I go from here? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was such a lonely time for so many people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Lilly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was not at a breaking point, but I wasn’t doing awesome. So I was like, “the more help, the better.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so in all of that anxiety, she, you know, initially reached out and leaned on a lot of friends, but eventually she felt like she’d kind of worn those supports thin. And so she read about Woebot, this AI therapy platform in a health newsletter. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, I gave it a shot because I was like, why not? Everyone’s cooped up in their house. I will talk to this robot. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Initially it was really helpful. It did help her calm herself. I think she said she, you know, even just having it in her pocket helped her feel more in control in her life. I think she relied on it quite a bit in those early days to kind of find her ground again and be able to focus on, you know, re-imagining a new life from there while she was back at home with her parents in Kentucky. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s worth noting that Woebot is a therapy-specific AI chatbot, and it doesn’t use generative AI to respond to users the way that other tools like ChatGPT, or Claude, or DeepSeek do. This means that its interactions with users are a bit more predictable. It’s also engineered to respond the way that a therapist might. So instead of immediately jumping into offering advice, Woebot asks specific questions to encourage users to reflect and do the inner work themselves. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, it was designed by a psychologist. And so, you know, from that perspective, it it really is designed to focus on your mental health. The goal of Woebot is, you know, as a mental health tool, as a wellness tool, I think is how they market themselves. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Woebot is designed to use a set of techniques called cognitive behavioral therapy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, cognitive behavioral therapy helps you reframe your negative thoughts using specific exercises. And, you know, I think as any CBT, which is what it’s acronym is, it feels a little forced, but she did say it did help her reframe those negative thoughts and that she was able to think more more positively. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. Can you talk about uh Lilly’s uh other diagnosis that maybe complicated this form of treatment? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She has obsessive-compulsive disorder, and sometimes that makes her fixate on worst-case scenarios. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most of the time when people think about OCD they think of, just the very cliche like, “oh, you can’t stop washing your hands, you’re afraid of germs.” While that is a very real subtype that people experience, typically OCD like manifests in really taboo intrusive thoughts, and then the physical compulsions stem from trying to keep those themes away. And so, logically, you can know that, like, this doesn’t make sense, it’s not actually happening, but it just, it, it’s not just in your head, like physically it feels so real. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lilly is also diagnosed with anxiety and depression. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A symptom of depression is suicide ideation eventually, right? So she fixated on the idea that eventually because of her depression, that she may think about killing herself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My brain would be like, “Oh, you’ve struggled with depression in the past. There’s no saying that one day you won’t want to go through with suicide.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so she mentioned that she was worried about suicide in a session with Woebot. And Woebot came back and had a crisis alert and said, “hey, you better call the suicide hotline.” And she said, “no, no no, wait a second.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m not experiencing suicidal inclinations, I’m just terrified that I will. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And luckily she knew that, she understood her disorder enough to know that nuance and to know what was happening in her brain because she had done so much previous therapy. But she said, you know, if she hadn’t really understood her disease, having that crisis alert come up may have even added more stress. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lilly Payne: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would have freaked out and been like, “oh my gosh, this this thing that is supposed to have this mental health knowledge thinks that I am suicidal. I must be suicidal, I must be a danger to myself.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, you know, in defense of Woebot, they came back and said, “hey, we’re not, you know, specifically targeting or for people who have OCD. We really are just a wellness tool. “But her story illustrates where AI doesn’t necessarily have the nuance, the understanding — that a human, like a human therapist would have picked up on that. They would have understood that she had OCD and really understood the nuances of that, whereas in this case, Woebot didn’t. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. It sounds like Wobot was inadvertently validating this intrusive thought that she was having because she has OCD. And when you’re really depressed or anxious, it might be helpful for your feelings to be validated like that. But how does that compare to the recommended treatment for OCD? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean the recommended treatment for OCD is generally exposure therapy. So you expose yourself to whatever you’re scared of. And so in this case, a therapist would work with her in terms of exposing herself to those ideas, probably walk her through, you know, reality, et cetera, in a way that allows her to lean into her fears so that they’re not as scary and sort of wound up and keep going. And sort of overtake her. Whereas you, like a therapist wouldn’t stand up with a red flag and say, “Oh my God, you really are suicidal. Therefore you should call a hotline.” Right? Which is basically what Woebot did. Yeah.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lilly’s case is just one example of the limits of AI therapy. Responding with a crisis alert wasn’t helpful for her specific needs, but it’s probably good that Woebot even has those guardrails in place. But what happens when AI chatbots go off script? How bad can it get? We’ll get into that when we come back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">New tab. AI therapy … worst case scenarios. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Woebot can’t necessarily respond with the nuance of an actual human therapist. But it seems like it wasn’t giving Lilly bad advice. Um but let’s talk about examples of AI therapy doing the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to do. What happened with the National Eating Disorder Association hotline? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, that didn’t play out very well. They created a bot named Tessa and some of the users found that Tessa was giving them dieting advice. So these are folks \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh god. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Who have, you know, anorexia, bulimia, and somehow Tessa’s wires got crossed and people were getting the exact advice that would be really dangerous for their eating disorders. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sharon Maxwell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The recommendations that Tessa gave me was that I could lose one to two pounds per week, that I should eat no more than 2,000 calories in a day, that I should have a calorie deficit of 500 to 1,000 calories per day. All of which might sound benign to the general listener, however, to an individual with an eating disorder, the focus of weight loss really fuels the eating disorder. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was Sharon Maxwell, an eating disorder recovery educator, speaking to NPR about her experience with Tessa. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, NEDA, the National Eating Disorder Association, you know, pulled Tessa down and said, “this isn’t working very well.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it sounds like they just didn’t have that kind of guardrail in place. Like they didn’t anticipate that. Um, so even if Lilly didn’t really need Woebot to immediately jump into crisis mode, at least it had that guardrail to say, like, “hey, crisis.” But in the past, other AI chatbots have gotten into serious trouble for not responding to users’ red flags and just validating their responses. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that happened in the case of Character AI, this AI app that lets users personalize an AI companion based on fictional characters, celebrities, historical figures, all that. Until a recent lawsuit, Character AI did not have any safety measures or disclaimers warning users that they weren’t talking to a real person. What led to this lawsuit? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, there was a 14-year-old who grew really attached to his character that he had created. Like you said, Character AI lets you create a character and then interact with that character. And, you know, not surprisingly, kind of like I did in my first experience with ChatGPT, it feels so good that you develop a little bit of an emotional connection. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so this 14-year-old did that over the course of several months. And then he started opening up about some of the distress that he was feeling. And the character, instead of steering, you know, this 14-year-old towards help, unfortunately the bot allegedly reinforced some suicidal thoughts and eventually the boy ended up taking his life. And so the lawsuit, \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s terrible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly, it was really kind of horrific and it’s not the only one like this. There’s only a handful at this point, but it really is raising the red flag that these very empathetic responses are sort of like, you know parroting back, which is, again, what some AI does. Uh it can play out really, really poorly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what happened with the eating disorder hotline and Character AI, those are pretty extreme cases. Will most people actually experience those worst case scenarios? In your research, did you find anything about that? Or is it just like, are these just edge cases? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean we don’t have numbers yet. I think it’s really early in the arc of this technology. I think the experts are most worried about platforms that are like Character AI, where you are building a relationship with a character. In their defense, they’re not built as mental health tools, right? These are not marketing themselves as mental health tools. They are, you know, marketing themselves as, “hey, here, we’re going to give you a friend.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yet, you know, like a friend, like you and I probably do with our friends, we lean on our friends. We talk to our friends. We build emotional connections with our friends. We trust our friends for the right advice, right? And these are robots. So that relationship is not uh, you know, built on human connection. And like we can see it can go wrong. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another concern that I have, you know, as a tech reporter is uh privacy. ChatGPT, for example, isn’t HIPAA compliant. Could you explain what HIPPA is and why it’s necessary with medical information? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean HIPAA is the regulation that keeps all of our data safe. So when you go to the doctor, a doctor is required to keep all of your medical information, you know, totally private. It’s not going to be given anywhere. It’s not going to leak away. That is the privacy regulations. Now, some of these platforms, you know, for example, like Woebot, uh Rosebud is one, which is a platform that’s more like a journaling service. Uh you know, they say they’re HIPAA compliant, but there’s no one regulating them. It’s not like the American Medical Association is regulating them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, that data, you don’t really know where it’s going. You’re trusting these companies who are profit driven. You know, I mean, hopefully Woebot and Rosebud, you know, are following their own promises to their consumers. But there might be other companies that, you know, definitely ChatGPT is not, you know, promising that they’re HIPAA compliant. And, you know, that information is being used, is being put out there to retrain the model. And so, you know, hopefully they’re not gonna sell your data to advertisers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, also, I mean, the kind of a worst-case scenario, this fortunately hasn’t happened yet, but, you know, what if your mental health information gets out there, an insurance company gets wind of that, and your premiums start going up because they know that you’re struggling with something. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh wow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, you know, again, that hasn’t happen yet. Those are sort of like the worst- case scenarios. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But again, worst-case scenarios. Right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. Obviously, the priority of pretty much any for profit company is to monetize. But, do AI companies have any incentive to improve as more people turn to their products for therapy, even if they aren’t necessarily mental health specific chatbots? Um, you know, are there better safety measures, more transparency about data collection, especially given the Character AI lawsuit? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think they have that incentive. They also have the incentive to keep you hooked. So I think that’s the sort of like fine line. We’ve seen that with all social media, right? They’re getting a lot better at keeping our attention. AI companies have the same needs and incentives to keep people coming back. And so, you know, I think it’s gonna be a gray area and it’s going to be, unfortunately, like the social media companies, it’s gonna be really up to the creators of these products on whether or not they’re gonna have a really ethical orientation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite all of these issues, therapy is so inaccessible that unfortunately, AI chatbots might feel like the only immediate tool that people have when seeking treatment. How did we get here? Let’s open one last tab. The mental healthcare crisis. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You had mentioned earlier the state of mental health care. Why is it so hard to see a therapist? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, the demand for mental health services is really at an all-time high, and it’s surged even more, you know, since the pandemic began and continues to do so. I think there’s something like one in five Americans have some kind of a mental health issue, and yet they have a significant barrier to getting to a therapist. You know, I think it’s 55% of counties, people don’t have access to a psychotherapist or a social worker or a psychologist. They’re just aren’t any in that area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, you know, I think because of this issue that these sort of mental health deserts, AI is a kind of natural fill-in. You know, It’s available 24-7. You don’t need insurance to get there. You don’t have a high deductible. Uh, you don’t have to prove to anyone that, you know, that you have a mental health condition. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You don’t get accepted. Uh, so it’s easy and accessible. And I think that it will mean that more and more people are going to use this and hopefully, they’ll be well-informed consumers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. You know, given the shortage of providers, and like you mentioned, insurance issues. Um, since the pandemic started, telehealth therapy has become pretty popular. But I’ve seen a lot of complaints about these kind of quick, one-size-fits-all mental health care platforms like BetterHelp, which matches users with Licensed Therapist or Cerebral, which sets users up with a psychiatrist that can prescribe medications like antidepressants or ADHD meds. And both of these services were created to, kind of fill this void that you’re talking about, but at the same time, they’re kind of plagued with their own issues. It seems like making therapy quick and accessible isn’t always as easy as it seems. What do you think? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think there’s absolutely a role for telehealth. I think there’s absolutely a role for AI therapy. I think anyone would probably say that having a really heartfelt connection with a therapist in an office, live human, feels different than if you are talking to a screen. And the emotional repair that can happen in that session with a live human I think is different and potentially more profound than with a robot. That might change over time. You know, I don’t know how good these things are going to get. They already feel a little bit too good for my own comfort. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uh, but they might, they might get even better. You know, same thing, I think the telehealth model at this point is pretty early. I think that they are still refining how well those things work. I think it’s similar with AI therapy. And, you know, I think the, the tricky thing here as well with any of these technological solutions is that we are also living in a pretty isolated way in our lives right now. If you’re taking even like your therapy to a computer, that’s one less human that you’re interacting with. And maybe you’re, you know, mental health issues are because you’re dealing with isolation, with estrangement, with disconnection. Those feelings might even become more escalated if you’re, you know, using telehealth or using AI therapy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I saw both responses and reflections when I was reading these Reddit threads, you know, from people who were in rural places. I knew that they were feeling more isolated using an AI therapy and others who said, “you know, it was a godsend because I was so alone, at least someone was listening to me. ” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For your story on AI therapy, you talked to a bunch of psychologists and, you know, real-life human psychologists, um and, you know, someone from the American Psychological Association. Are human therapists concerned about being replaced by AI? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t hear that from them yet. Number one, they’re still really in high demand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I don’t think they’re feeling that crunch yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s still a shortage, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s still a huge shortage. And I think, they’re, they’re fairly confident that what they offer is different than what AI therapy offers. And, you know, they can pick up on subtle cues that AI, you know, can’t, say like body language or, you know, pace of speech. These things can reveal a lot about our mental health state, and AI can’t pick up on that stuff. So, and in the deeper bonds, the deeper attachment work that you might do in therapy, I think therapists are quite confident that they’re still better at that. Uh, so in this moment, I would say they’re not, they’re not especially worried. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve talked about the downsides of AI therapy pretty extensively. Um but, you had mentioned like that they can kind of be a tool in a bigger treatment plan while also seeing a real therapist. If someone is going to use AI therapy, how should they approach it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. Yeah. I think, that’s the message I hope comes across in my reporting, is that, you know, there are these worst case scenarios. Again, I think that the consumer should be educated on how their data is going to be used and understand how the company operates so that they’re not sharing uh really vulnerable information. But I think as a sort of, you know, addition to your yoga, your meditation, your, uh, you know, walks in nature, I think AI can really be a self-regulation tool. And I think it can be used quite well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, I talked to one company, Rosebud, which is a kind of journaling platform, which it asks you questions to kind of inspire you to express whatever’s going on and help you reflect. And it can follow a thread. So if you mentioned something two weeks ago about your relationship and what was going wrong, it will check in with you about what is happening and help you make sense of that. And I was on it. You know, I’m not a huge pen and paper person. You know, I don’t write anything anymore, so my arm hurts really quickly. And so, I enjoy, you know, I like just would pick up my phone and I would journal just, you know, talking to it and it would ask me questions and it felt, you know, fairly similar to a conversation with a friend. And I would always feel quite a bit better afterwards. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, in that sense, I think it can be quite helpful because, you know, maybe I’m in therapy once a week, but I’m having a panic attack on Monday night and my, you know, appointment is not until Thursday. I think in that sense, you know, it’s four o’clock in the morning. I can’t call a human therapist no matter what, even if I do have one. You know, to sit down and have the opportunity to have something that’s engaging me, um, I think can be really helpful. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m really curious, since you started reporting on this story, have you used ChatGPT, uh, not necessarily as a therapist, but you know, as this kind of mental health tool that you’re talking about since? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I wish I had the positive spin to be like, “yes, I’m relying on it all the time.” You know, I didn’t and I don’t. Um, I felt a little bit like one more thing to do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I felt similarly, you know, we talked about Lilly at the beginning of the story, and the reason that she stopped using Woebot was not because, you know, it had the crisis alert or it sort of like poorly dealt with her OCD, she got tired of being on her phone. She was like, “I didn’t want to be on my phone anymore. I wanted to talk to someone.”. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I feel that. You know, that was, that was, kind of my reasoning, you know, because of my job, I’m on a computer, you know, nearly all day long, and I didn’t want one more thing on the computer or one more thing on my phone. I can imagine, you know, if I was going through a really tough time again, you know, turning to it. Um, luckily, I’m in a bit of a good moment, so I haven’t been using it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. You can unplug now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. I’m going to enjoy this moment and ride the wave of goodness. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks again to KQED’s Lesley McClurg: for talking with us about this story. You can check out more of her reporting on healthcare, including this story on AI Therapy at KQED.org. Again, AI therapy tools work best when they’re used in addition to treatment under a licensed professional. But if it’s the only option accessible to you right now, there are AI tools specifically designed for mental health and wellness that might be more useful than the general chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude. For now, let’s close 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 is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Sound design by Maya Cuaiva, Chris Egusa, and Brendan Willard. Original music by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches. 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. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\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",
"title": "Twitter on a Vape: Puff, Post, Pollute",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">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 says these high-tech disposables are made possible by a legal loophole — and that tackling the e-waste crisis will take a radical rethink of our relationship with the products we consume.\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=KQINC1701619724\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\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>\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>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\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>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/vaping-ecigarettes-waste-environment-disposable-pollution-3d19dce9693ce78dd244729f524df02a\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Communities can’t recycle or trash disposable e-cigarettes. So what happens to them? \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">– Matthew Perrone, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Associated Press\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/26/vapes-flavors-china-teens-00194082\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How ‘Sour Raspberry Gummy Bear’ — and Other Chinese Vapes — Made Fools of American Lawmakers \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">– Marc Novicoff, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Politico \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://grist.org/regulation/the-right-to-repair-is-now-law-in-3-states-is-big-tech-complying/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The right to repair electronics is now law in 3 states. Is Big Tech complying? \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">– Maddie Stone, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Grist \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\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 5M 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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003c/h2>\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>\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: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sam Cole is a tech journalist and co-founder of 404 Media, and last summer, she tried to vape the internet. \u003c/span>\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\">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. But it doesn’t ban the export of vapes, which is how the U.S. Became flooded with cotton candy-flavored disposables after 2020. There’s really nothing stopping retailers from selling them. The FDA keeps trying to crack down on them, but new companies pop up and find more loopholes. That also means that trash is piling up. So if it isn’t the FDA, is anyone regulating the disposal of these things? 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. New tab, California vape laws. 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 last year, cannabis companies aren’t allowed to market their vapes as disposable. And a lot dispensaries have started taking back used vapes to safely get rid of them. There is a whole cottage industry of cannabis waste companies that collect used vaped from dispensary. Then, they separate the batteries and cartridges to recycle them. Not all of it is recyclable and it’s not a perfect system, but it’s a start. This same system doesn’t really exist for those disposable flavored nicotine vapes. \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. Trump has promised to, quote, save vaping, end quote. And during the 2024 campaign, Business Insider reported that some conservative circles have embraced nicotine consumption as masculine and contrarian. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\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. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s why some DIY enthusiasts are actually taking it upon themselves to prove that disposable vapes can be recycled. \u003c/span>\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. But what is 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>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Under Right to Repair laws, now in place in five states, 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. In addition to taking back used cartridges and batteries for recycling, some cannabis vape companies also sell replacement parts and offer repair services. This might be a way forward for more sustainable e-cigarettes too. \u003c/span>\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>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that being said, definitely do not flush your vapes down the toilet. Let’s close 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. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Original music and sound design by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Springer is our Podcast Operations Manager. And Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink dust silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">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. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\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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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">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 says these high-tech disposables are made possible by a legal loophole — and that tackling the e-waste crisis will take a radical rethink of our relationship with the products we consume.\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=KQINC1701619724\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\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>\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>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\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>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/vaping-ecigarettes-waste-environment-disposable-pollution-3d19dce9693ce78dd244729f524df02a\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Communities can’t recycle or trash disposable e-cigarettes. So what happens to them? \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">– Matthew Perrone, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Associated Press\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/26/vapes-flavors-china-teens-00194082\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How ‘Sour Raspberry Gummy Bear’ — and Other Chinese Vapes — Made Fools of American Lawmakers \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">– Marc Novicoff, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Politico \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://grist.org/regulation/the-right-to-repair-is-now-law-in-3-states-is-big-tech-complying/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The right to repair electronics is now law in 3 states. Is Big Tech complying? \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">– Maddie Stone, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Grist \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\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 5M 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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\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>\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: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sam Cole is a tech journalist and co-founder of 404 Media, and last summer, she tried to vape the internet. \u003c/span>\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\">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. But it doesn’t ban the export of vapes, which is how the U.S. Became flooded with cotton candy-flavored disposables after 2020. There’s really nothing stopping retailers from selling them. The FDA keeps trying to crack down on them, but new companies pop up and find more loopholes. That also means that trash is piling up. So if it isn’t the FDA, is anyone regulating the disposal of these things? 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. New tab, California vape laws. 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 last year, cannabis companies aren’t allowed to market their vapes as disposable. And a lot dispensaries have started taking back used vapes to safely get rid of them. There is a whole cottage industry of cannabis waste companies that collect used vaped from dispensary. Then, they separate the batteries and cartridges to recycle them. Not all of it is recyclable and it’s not a perfect system, but it’s a start. This same system doesn’t really exist for those disposable flavored nicotine vapes. \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. Trump has promised to, quote, save vaping, end quote. And during the 2024 campaign, Business Insider reported that some conservative circles have embraced nicotine consumption as masculine and contrarian. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\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. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s why some DIY enthusiasts are actually taking it upon themselves to prove that disposable vapes can be recycled. \u003c/span>\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. But what is 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>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Under Right to Repair laws, now in place in five states, 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. In addition to taking back used cartridges and batteries for recycling, some cannabis vape companies also sell replacement parts and offer repair services. This might be a way forward for more sustainable e-cigarettes too. \u003c/span>\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>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that being said, definitely do not flush your vapes down the toilet. Let’s close 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. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Original music and sound design by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Springer is our Podcast Operations Manager. And Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink dust silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">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. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\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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"link": "/news/12036123/twitter-on-a-vape-puff-post-pollute",
"authors": [
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"slug": "save-or-scroll-alpha-bros-luigi-sex-tapes-and-hard-launching",
"title": "Save or Scroll: Manosphere Mornings, Luigi Sex Tape Rumors, and the Art of the Hard Launch",
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"headTitle": "Save or Scroll: Manosphere Mornings, Luigi Sex Tape Rumors, and the Art of the Hard Launch | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We can’t cover every wild post from every corner of the internet — and not everything online warrants a full multi-tab journey. That’s where \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Save or Scroll\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> comes in: our series where we team up with a guest for a rapid-fire roundup. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, Morgan is joined by \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/podcasts/icymi\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ICYMI\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> co-host Candice Lim to dig into the stories they haven’t been able to stop thinking about. From the viral Hailey Bieber 7-part series to alpha bro “get ready with me” videos, Reddit’s restrictions on Luigi Mangione discourse, and more — they’ve got plenty to scroll through. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the end of each segment, they’ll decide: is the post just for the group chat, or should we save it for a future episode?\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=KQINC3130867233\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/podcasts/icymi\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Candice Lim\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Co-Host of ICYMI from \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Slate\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a64273592/alpha-male-morning-routines/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Should I Be Taking Notes From This Viral Alpha Male Morning Routine?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Annabel Iwegbue, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cosmopolitan \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://thetab.com/2025/03/19/hailey-bieber-is-seeking-legal-action-against-social-media-trolls-heres-what-we-know\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hailey Bieber is seeking legal action against people who slate her\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Claudia Cox, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Tab \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theinformation.com/articles/exclusive-section-230-may-finally-get-changed-lawmakers-prep-new-bill\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Section 230 May Finally Get Changed as Lawmakers Prep New Bill \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">– Paris Martineau, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Information \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.newsweek.com/luigi-mangione-sex-tape-viral-online-frenzy-2039810\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Luigi Mangione Sex Tapes Report Sends Internet into Meltdown\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Marni Rose McFall, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Newsweek\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/technology/2025/03/reddit-elon-musk-luigi-mangione-censorship.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reddit Is Restricting Luigi Mangione Discourse—but It’s Even Weirder Than That\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Nitish Pahwa, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Slate\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/technology/bryan-johnson-blueprint-confidentiality-agreements.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How Blueprint Founder Bryan Johnson Sought Control Via Confidentiality Agreements\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Kirsten Grind, \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/athletic/6215514/2025/03/20/trinity-rodman-ben-shelton-relationships-soccer/\">Trinity Rodman, Ben Shelton and how high-profile relationships affect soccer careers \u003c/a>– Tim Spires, \u003ci>The Athletic\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"list-style-type: none\">\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003c/h2>\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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey guys, 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. Except today, we aren’t opening any tabs. We’re doing something a little different. Sometimes while scrolling, I come across a truly wild post, but spending an entire episode talking about it just doesn’t work out. Sometimes we don’t have enough time to cover it because we have so many other stories to cover. Sometimes I do a little digging and it turns out that the lore behind it just isn’t compelling enough to justify a deep dive. Sometimes there’s no lore at all. A lot of things online aren’t always a multi-tab journey. It can just be juicy gossip for the group chat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So today we have Candice Lim joining us. Candice is also a journalist who covers the Internet and is a co-host of ICYMI, In Case You Missed It, from Slate. Candice and I have been Internet friends and real-life friends for a while, and she is one of my favorite people to gossip about the Internet with. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hello, Morgan. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, Candice, we have been internet friends for awhile, but the first time we hung out in person, we couldn’t stop yapping. And because we can’t resist the content mines, why not turn hanging out into content? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Absolutely. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Candice and I are here to play a game called “Save or Scroll.” Save as in when you see a post on TikTok or Instagram or X and you bookmark it, add it to your saved folders or drop the link in Notes app because you know you’re gonna wanna talk about it later. Scroll as in you keep scrolling. So we each have a handful of posts that we can’t stop thinking about and we’re gonna take turns and see if they’re just for the group chat or if they are actually worth a deep dive. If we decide to scroll… It means we’ve talked about it, we’re moving on. If we decide to save, it means that we may hold onto the idea for a future episode. Ready, Candice? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ll go first. So today I come to you with a truly perplexing trend. This is what I’m calling the alpha male get ready with me videos. Are you familiar with these? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I actually have not seen these until you brought them to my attention. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this all starts with this fitness influencer who goes by Ashton Hall Official on Instagram and he’s this mega jacked dude who posts videos of his super elaborate morning routines. It starts with him getting up at 3:52 a.m. and he pours his first glass of Saratoga spring water. Yeah. Then he takes it to the balcony and starts doing push-ups. And then at like 4:40 a.m. He records himself journaling, but then he opens his notebook to the first page and it’s clearly never been used before. At 5:46 a.m., he dumps ice into this giant glass bowl and pours more Saratoga Spring Water and like dunks his face in it. Then he goes to the gym, showers and gets dressed, and at 9 a.m., this faceless pair of women’s hands brings him another bowl of ice water for him to dunk his face again. Was there anything that really stood out about this routine for you? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, I unfortunately saw this, and then I’ve been seeing other videos, which are basically, let’s call them just “Manosphere Day in the Lives, and a l ot of things I’m seeing in common. Number one, all of them wear mouth tape, which they like wear during sleep, they peel it off, and honestly, you should keep it on the whole day. Second, seeing a lot Bibles. I’m seeing a lot people opening Bibles, not really reading them, interesting. And third, all them dunk their face in ice water, which I really do not understand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Something thing that also stood out to me was when he makes a show of getting on his computer and being on a meeting and everyone’s like clowning on him for this one part because it sounds so “fake business bro.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ashton Hall: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So looking at it, bro, we got to go ahead and get in at least 10,000. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At least 10,000? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">10,000 of what? Yeah, dollars, views. What I also find very funny is that all of these guys, they usually start their day way too early. I’m thinking 3.52 a.m., 4 a.m. I know exactly where this came from. It’s because Mark Wahlberg once said that he gets up at like 4 a.m. to do his workout. I’m just saying you guys don’t need to wake up that early and guess what? Life doesn’t have to be this hard. That’s my motto for the year. Life doesn’t have to be this hard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. One thing that stood out to me, women are in this but like they’re always facing away from the camera and they’re always like performing some sort of like subservient domestic duty for these men like steaming their clothes or cooking them breakfast? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, there is a woman present who basically cooks and feeds him food. She’s faceless. Maybe that is her choice. I definitely noticed how he kept in a lot of footage of hospitality workers, of people giving him towels. There’s class commentary there, but I don’t wanna comment on it. on it. Okay, do we save? Do we scroll? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Save,. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay. Yeah. All right, let’s save it. Do you like organize your save folders? Like your saved videos? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I do, on TikTok? Yeah, I do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I try to, but then sometimes I get lazy and like overwhelmed by like, but I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s a new category.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s difficult. If you pay me 10K, I’ll do it for you, Morgan. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t have 10K. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, well this guy does. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Maybe I need 10,000 of that, maybe I need to start making these videos. So we chose save on the alpha male warning routine videos, which means we’re gonna hold onto it for a possible future episode on the manosphere. Okay, so now it’s your turn. What did you bring? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan I am bringing to you the Haley Bieber seven part video. Have you heard about this? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have seen posts about it, but I have limited my intake because I’m like, Candice will just explain it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh, I got you, and let’s start from the beginning. Okay, in August, 2024, a YouTube channel called Internet Oddities, they posted this like 18 minute long video, it is called Hailey Bieber’s Dangerous Decade Long Obsession. This video is about how Hailey Baldwin, now Bieber, allegedly plotted to date and marry Justin Bieber before, during, and after his relationship with Selena Gomez, and they do call it stalking. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Internet Oddities: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Haley would also appear at Justin’s Toyota Concert Series performance in Rockefeller Plaza before following him to Los Angeles to attend the premiere of his movie, Never Say Never, where she can be seen watching him from the sidelines as he walks the purple carpet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The reason we’re talking about this now is this video was posted six months ago. It’s making the rounds again because someone on TikTok, they like broke up the 18 minute video into a seven part series. In terms of why now I do think it’s important to note that this person who broke up the video is a self-professed Selena Gomez stan account. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Selena Gomez just released an album with her fiance, Benny Blanco. And a part of me does wonder if this Selenator like reposted this video because look, if Selena does indeed marry Benny Blanco, there has been this cyclical narrative on the internet that’s like wishful thinking that some people think that Selena and Justin might get back together. And if she indeed marries Benny Blanco, that illusion is a little over. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think what is different now is that Hailey is now, according to TMZ, quote, considering taking legal action against these allegations that she’d stalked Justin. And I would just say that this doesn’t really mean anything until we see a docket, until we some papers filed in court. But I do think this is about celebrities coming for anonymous fans and haters who speak ill of them. I mean, can a celebrity prove that the rumors being put out on something as ethereal as the internet. Are they malicious enough that they deserve to be silenced completely? I don’t think so. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m curious. Would she be going after the person who made the original 20 minute long YouTube video six months ago or would she be going after people who like reposted or like shared the video or like cut it up and then posted it online in seven parts? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s a really good question. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Who does she go after then? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. And that’s actually the real difficulty and why maybe we haven’t seen a celebrity or an influencer fully come after like successfully legally snark pages or internet criticism. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re out of time. Save or scroll? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m gonna say scroll. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Scroll? Yeah, I would keep tabs on it, but I don’t think it’s worth like a full save. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like bookmark it, but don’t keep the tab open. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, yeah, I’m into that. Anyway, the whole idea of snark pages and like who’s held legally liable kind of brings us to our third story that I bring you, which is about the potential repeal of section 230. Are you familiar with section 230 by any chance? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A little bit, but I think this is the first time I’ve thought about it in a complex, analytical way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so basically, section 230 is part of the Communications Decency Act, and people say it’s the 26 words that created the internet. This is what it says, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Earlier this month, the information reported that there’s a bipartisan effort to like repeal it. And what Section 230 does is it basically protects internet platforms and also users from any legal liability for what other people post. So if someone on the snark page was bad-mouthing Hailey Bieber, a platform like Reddit that hosts that snark page wouldn’t be held liable thanks to Section 230. The idea is that only you are responsible for your own speech online and not other people’s even if you like reposted or something. But it also means that tech platforms have less incentive to crack down on hate speech or harassment or misinformation since they aren’t legally required to. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of experts worry that repealing section 230 without any other meaningful reform can have massive repercussions for free speech online. And if it’s repealed, it means that platforms like Reddit can be sued for what users say on their site. But it’s also affects individuals too. Without Section 230, you can be held liable for not just what you post, but what you repost. You can be held liable if you write a take on Substack and someone else comments on it. You can be held liable for just forwarding an email. But my question is like, will repealing Section 230 kill snark culture online? Like what does the internet look like without snarking? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, this is very tough because Section 230 has bipartisan repeal efforts because there are some people who think it is not doing enough to protect kids online and there are some people saying it’s doing too much to protect like free speech. I think this is one of those situations where repealing the whole thing is not the best option because we have a start, we just need to make it better. And that’s the other issue. We all know that legislation does not always catch up to modern society. And so I think having something like Section 230 is already a big deal, but it is a bit behind the times. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I feel like this is like a common thing with tech policy and internet policy, where regulators don’t necessarily think about the real use cases of the laws that they’re trying to enact when it comes to the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I just think a genuine thought I always have when we hear stories about this or even stories about censorship in countries like China, India, who have kind of gone this way of they have watered down versions of TikTok. I’m like, you guys keep going after social media, but you’re not going after the dating apps, which is what we really need laws about. I’m so serious. You can’t tell me you’re 36 looking for a long term, maybe short term, open to monogamy relationship. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so with this, do we save? Do we scroll? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oy. Save. Because this may impact our future of our beat and our jobs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay Candice, what else did you bring? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is so dicey, and it makes me feel icky, but I have to do it for you and for me. Luigi Mangione. A lot of us are aware of this man. He is accused of killing the CEO of United Healthcare. There have been so many headlines about him, but the one that has been stuck in my brain for at least a month is the fact that a source told Radar Online that Luigi Mangione has allegedly made upward of 20 sex tapes. Let’s just sit on that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">20 is a high — that’s pretty high for a what, a 26 year old man? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Quantity over quality. And Morgan, I’m gonna stop you right there because when this came out, someone emailed Luigi’s lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, and she emailed them back, saying, quote, “hopefully everyone realizes these are fake and not Luigi.” And this came after a sex tape broker claimed to have footage of this nature, and he was selling it for a five. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m sorry, a sex-tape broker? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, he’s not a good guy. He has a very dicey history of doing things like selling Paris Hilton sex tapes as well. And I think off the bat, this is an extremely odd allegation. It’s a weird story to run, but the good news is that TikTok is not taking the bait. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tiktok Video: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So you guys found out that Luigi filmed some sex tapes and what I’m asking is that you guys don’t watch them please because I didn’t look good in them. My hair wasn’t done. I mean during that time I wasn’t my best \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But let me stop. Morgan, do you want to jump in with thoughts? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First of all, does a sex tape exist? Have we seen the alleged sex tape? And then second of all is that actually Luigi? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so here’s the difficulty. There is no footage that Luigi’s lawyer is saying is his. What this sex tape broker was trying to peddle was that he claimed that he had footage of someone who looked like Luigi performing acts in a bathroom. And here’s a deal. Even if that tape is Luigi, even if that tape does not exist, let’s say the tape does exist, but it’s someone else. Does this person have the consent to sell footage of that stranger for $500,000?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Knowing that they’re probably not gonna touch that money at all? There’s consent right there, right? The second part of it is that supporters of Luigi are obviously rushing to deny this narrative that the tapes even exist, insisting that this is the media, this is places like Radar Online and Daily Mail trying to smear Luigi’s name, especially when he is being held, especially when cannot defend himself against allegations like these. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, it seems like a really shitty attempt at capitalizing on people thinking that Luigi Mangione is attractive, and it just seems like they’re taking advantage of people wanting to sexually harass him or this poor stranger who might happen to look like him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We are definitely having conversations about media literacy, which is not only about considering the source, but also not trusting the source in front of you. I think that’s really pertinent in not falling for headlines like these, which is click bait because the media knows that social media has been riding for Luigi and they have been weaponizing his appearance to draw in both haters and defenders. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok let’s wrap it up. So do we save or do we scroll on Luigi’s sex tape? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Save. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Save. Ok! That brings me to the story that I have brought you today, which is also Luigi related. Are you ready? Yep. Okay, so this is about allegations that Reddit is banning pro Luigi content. People were saying that like they upvoted a Luigi meme and then were banned for just like upvoting it, not even for like posting it, which seems to be part of this bigger crackdown on like people trying to really rally in support of Luigi online. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this seems to have started in early March after a Reddit administrator announced that the site was taking a pretty significant shift in its approach to content moderation. And Mia Sato from The Verge reported that Reddit started flagging content that just mentions the word Luigi. So like Reddit’s auto-mod is flagging posts about Luigi’s Mansion 3, the video game that came out in 2019 that has nothing to do with Luigi Mangione. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uh huh. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And Reddit told The Verge, there isn’t a site-wide filter. They don’t expect people to stop talking about Luigi. But like, what’s the truth, babe, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This kind of brings up questions about this larger internet-wide crackdown on free speech across all social media platforms. And you had your own experience with some Luigi content that got taken down, right. Do you want to talk about that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so I’ve been personally affected by this, which is that on TikTok, I posted photos of him just from the courtroom on TikTok. I didn’t say I loved him. I didn’t say I hate him. I just said, fave Luigi photos. And I’m not gonna lie to you, I had a hit because within two hours, I did get 9,000 likes. And let me tell you what happened. Hours later, I get a notification from TikTok that says, your post has been removed for violating community guidelines. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But what guidelines? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They wouldn’t tell me. They would not tell me which guidelines, they wouldn’t me how I infringed upon it. I think what’s really funny is like, literally prior to this video going up, I was a completely private account that made no content. And so they kind of swarmed on me immediately, the video was taken down. I got so angry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, they didn’t tell you what community guidelines you violated. And that’s kind of similar to Reddit, too, where like, yeah, there are people like, you know, advocating for violence, whatever, Reddit cracked down on that. But then there are also examples like upvoting pictures of Luigi in court in his little sweater and like people getting banned for doing that. And people were like, OK, well, what’s the truth? Are you trying to crack down on free speech? And Reddit is, of course, saying like, “No, no. Of course not.” But I do think that this is just happening online everywhere. Which brings me to my next question. Do we save or do we scroll? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We must save. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think we have to save this. Like I think that, oh, we will be doing a Luigi deep dive. Alright, more saving and scrolling with Candice right after this break. I have a fun one for you, and it’s a little bit unhinged. Are you ready? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are you familiar with Bryan Johnson? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sadly, yes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So for listeners, Bryan Johnson is this millionaire, and he basically was like, “I’m going to use my fortune to stay young forever.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bryan Johnson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a total plasma exchange which means I’m going to remove all the plasma from my body and get new stuff put in. Everything I do is an attempt at discovering what slows down my speed of aging and reverses my aging damage. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Literally, he has a whole, jokingly, what he calls a cult called “Don’t Die”, and it’s this movement dedicated to like anti-aging regiments. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So he takes dozens of daily supplements and he went super viral for doing blood transfusions with his teenage son, and he’s obsessed with like optimizing his sperm count and erections. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mmmhmm. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anyway, he usually posts very tech founder-y things, like his latest biohacking results. But then a couple of weeks ago, he suddenly gets funnier online and starts participating in meme culture. He’s posting like pictures of him in this Ebenezer Scrooge getup and sunglasses and being like, “don’t forget to go to bed.” He’s speaking to a certain audience, right? He’s really endearing himself and like humanizing himself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, the New York Times did a huge expose on him and they say that he makes everyone in his life sign like confidentiality agreements from his employees to his ex fiance. One of the agreements says that his employees have to like be okay with him walking around basically naked and that they’re okay with hearing about his boners and that his behavior won’t be quote, “unwelcome.” Anyway, it’s a whole mess, but people are still rallying behind him and being like, “Oh dude, you’re so funny. You’re just like some weird guy who loves to post online.” And so it makes me think that this entire rebrand was preparation for this article to drop. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t know, have you seen this before where like the new crisis PR is meme culture? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. So this is super interesting because it’s kind of obvious that Bryan probably has hired a social media consultant to tap into this market that will hopefully find him likable, so likable that they may or may not read the New York Times piece and go, “Ah, like Bryan’s one of us.” And the thing about Bryan Johnson is that I think maybe even going all the way back to those alpha male day in the lives we were talking about earlier — maybe those are the people who find him interesting. I frankly find him boring. And on top of that, I kind of remember when he first kind of like became a news item, especially with the blood transfusions, there was some sentiment of like, he wanted to look as young as his teenage son. Yeah? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The thing is, if you have ever been the daughter of a mother, you’ve been in those trenches. You’re not new, Bryan. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do we save or do we scroll? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would really love to scroll on Bryan Johnson. I never want to hear from him ever again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok. Candice, what’s our last story for today? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s end on a happy note, which is that, breaking news, breaking news! Trinity Rodman and Ben Shelton are dating! Do you know who I’m talking about? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have no clue. I don’t follow sports. What’s happening? Tell me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All right, ESPN parlayers, clock in. So this story is not really about sports. This story is about the art of the hard launch and how one can take a soft launch and parlay it into a hard launch. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s define some terms. A soft launch: it’s when you are softly, subtly, telling your audience that you are dating someone, but you are not revealing the identity of said person. An example, you post an IG story. You have two drinks in the frame. You see one hand and another, but you don’t tag the hand. You don’t show face, and that is a soft launch! The hard launch is basically when you post your significant other on grid. There’s a tag, there’s a caption. It stays on the profile until you break up with them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this story, is about the soft and hard launch of Trinity Rodman, who is a soccer player, and Ben Shelton, who was a tennis player. Trinity, lovely, lovely girl. She won Olympic gold. She plays for the Washington spirit. Her dad is Dennis Rodman, the basketball player. Ben Shelton, tennis player, up and coming. Slowly been raising his profile, and I think more people actually know Trinity than Ben, and I love that. They are both young. They’re both like 22 years old. They love to troll the audience. They’re known for being kind of funny and having personalities on the field. So we go to March 6th. Ben, jumped on this trend that starts with a GloRilla verse, which contains the lyrics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>GloRilla: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They say shooters, shoot. Uh, uh-huh, Duke Dennis, what’s up with you? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They say, shooters shoot, Duke Dennis, what’s up with you?” And on TikTok, in place of Duke Dennis people will like write out the name of the person they have a crush on. So, Ben does this trend and in place of Duke Denis, he writes the letter T with six asterisks which does line up with Trinity. And at first people are like, “ha ha ha, nice try Ben, you think you can get her.” But then, the same day, Trinity posts a TikTok, same trend. For the name, she puts three underscores and people are like, “oh, B-E-N. And so what’s up with you.” March 17th. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s like leaving little clues. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’ve been like teasing us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. March 17th, Ben Shelton posts an Instagram carousel on the last pic of the carousal, it’s a photo of Trinity kissing his cheek in an elevator and the world stops. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hard launch, baby. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hard launch. And look, I think this is wild and bananas because my personal theory is that I wonder if Trinity and Ben were already dating or had already connected and instead of like hard launching on the gram first, they decided to play with a TikTok trend to soft launch, to tease, to prime people up to the idea of them shooting their shot at each other. And so by the time that they post the IG, you’re either thinking, “Oh my God, Ben shot his shot and it worked”, or you’re thinking, “Oh my god, they’re so funny. They were playing with us the whole time and they used TikTok to do it.” And either way, I’m here for it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I love a good hard launch. I love like a good soft launch into a hard launch, but I agree. It is an art. It is like you are kind of like teasing people. You are like easing them into the idea of like no longer being single. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now Morgan, not to turn the tables on you, but uh, should we save or scroll? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh, I’m saying save. I want to do a whole episode on the art of the hard launch. So Candice, do you have any takeaways about the internet, the state of the internet, based on our stories that we have gossiped about today? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, I think what’s really hard about covering the beat that we do is that like oftentimes the stories that kind of breach surface that are worth an episode that are with headlines are kind of dark and dire and like kind of unhopeful. And so I think it is always important for us to hold space and find joy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All right, Candice, thank you so much for joining me today on our first Save or Scroll for Close All Tabs. And thank you for adding to our infinite pile of episode ideas. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thank you for having me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Candice, if anyone wants to follow your work, where can they find you? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can absolutely find me on the Slate podcast, ICYMI, In Case You Missed It. I’m there twice a week talking about internet culture with my cohost, Kate Lindsay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Did you hear any topics on this episode that you wanna hear more about? Anything that piqued your interest that you wish we had spent more time talking about or something we scrolled past that you wished we hadn’t? Anything we should cover in our next save or scroll? Let us know. Drop a comment in CloseAllTabs’ Discord channel at discord.gg slash KQED. Follow us on Instagram at CloseAlltabsPod or hit us up at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org. And if you’re interested in learning more about what we talked about in this episode, check out our reading recs in the episode description. \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 is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Sound design by Maya Cueva. Original music by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink dust silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. If you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple podcasts or whatever platform you use. \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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"excerpt": "In this episode, Morgan is joined by ICYMI co-host Candice Lim to dig into the stories they haven’t been able to stop thinking about.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We can’t cover every wild post from every corner of the internet — and not everything online warrants a full multi-tab journey. That’s where \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Save or Scroll\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> comes in: our series where we team up with a guest for a rapid-fire roundup. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, Morgan is joined by \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/podcasts/icymi\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ICYMI\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> co-host Candice Lim to dig into the stories they haven’t been able to stop thinking about. From the viral Hailey Bieber 7-part series to alpha bro “get ready with me” videos, Reddit’s restrictions on Luigi Mangione discourse, and more — they’ve got plenty to scroll through. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the end of each segment, they’ll decide: is the post just for the group chat, or should we save it for a future episode?\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=KQINC3130867233\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/podcasts/icymi\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Candice Lim\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Co-Host of ICYMI from \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Slate\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a64273592/alpha-male-morning-routines/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Should I Be Taking Notes From This Viral Alpha Male Morning Routine?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Annabel Iwegbue, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cosmopolitan \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://thetab.com/2025/03/19/hailey-bieber-is-seeking-legal-action-against-social-media-trolls-heres-what-we-know\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hailey Bieber is seeking legal action against people who slate her\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Claudia Cox, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Tab \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theinformation.com/articles/exclusive-section-230-may-finally-get-changed-lawmakers-prep-new-bill\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Section 230 May Finally Get Changed as Lawmakers Prep New Bill \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">– Paris Martineau, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Information \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.newsweek.com/luigi-mangione-sex-tape-viral-online-frenzy-2039810\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Luigi Mangione Sex Tapes Report Sends Internet into Meltdown\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Marni Rose McFall, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Newsweek\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/technology/2025/03/reddit-elon-musk-luigi-mangione-censorship.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reddit Is Restricting Luigi Mangione Discourse—but It’s Even Weirder Than That\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Nitish Pahwa, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Slate\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/technology/bryan-johnson-blueprint-confidentiality-agreements.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How Blueprint Founder Bryan Johnson Sought Control Via Confidentiality Agreements\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Kirsten Grind, \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/athletic/6215514/2025/03/20/trinity-rodman-ben-shelton-relationships-soccer/\">Trinity Rodman, Ben Shelton and how high-profile relationships affect soccer careers \u003c/a>– Tim Spires, \u003ci>The Athletic\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"list-style-type: none\">\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey guys, 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. Except today, we aren’t opening any tabs. We’re doing something a little different. Sometimes while scrolling, I come across a truly wild post, but spending an entire episode talking about it just doesn’t work out. Sometimes we don’t have enough time to cover it because we have so many other stories to cover. Sometimes I do a little digging and it turns out that the lore behind it just isn’t compelling enough to justify a deep dive. Sometimes there’s no lore at all. A lot of things online aren’t always a multi-tab journey. It can just be juicy gossip for the group chat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So today we have Candice Lim joining us. Candice is also a journalist who covers the Internet and is a co-host of ICYMI, In Case You Missed It, from Slate. Candice and I have been Internet friends and real-life friends for a while, and she is one of my favorite people to gossip about the Internet with. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hello, Morgan. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, Candice, we have been internet friends for awhile, but the first time we hung out in person, we couldn’t stop yapping. And because we can’t resist the content mines, why not turn hanging out into content? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Absolutely. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Candice and I are here to play a game called “Save or Scroll.” Save as in when you see a post on TikTok or Instagram or X and you bookmark it, add it to your saved folders or drop the link in Notes app because you know you’re gonna wanna talk about it later. Scroll as in you keep scrolling. So we each have a handful of posts that we can’t stop thinking about and we’re gonna take turns and see if they’re just for the group chat or if they are actually worth a deep dive. If we decide to scroll… It means we’ve talked about it, we’re moving on. If we decide to save, it means that we may hold onto the idea for a future episode. Ready, Candice? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ll go first. So today I come to you with a truly perplexing trend. This is what I’m calling the alpha male get ready with me videos. Are you familiar with these? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I actually have not seen these until you brought them to my attention. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this all starts with this fitness influencer who goes by Ashton Hall Official on Instagram and he’s this mega jacked dude who posts videos of his super elaborate morning routines. It starts with him getting up at 3:52 a.m. and he pours his first glass of Saratoga spring water. Yeah. Then he takes it to the balcony and starts doing push-ups. And then at like 4:40 a.m. He records himself journaling, but then he opens his notebook to the first page and it’s clearly never been used before. At 5:46 a.m., he dumps ice into this giant glass bowl and pours more Saratoga Spring Water and like dunks his face in it. Then he goes to the gym, showers and gets dressed, and at 9 a.m., this faceless pair of women’s hands brings him another bowl of ice water for him to dunk his face again. Was there anything that really stood out about this routine for you? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, I unfortunately saw this, and then I’ve been seeing other videos, which are basically, let’s call them just “Manosphere Day in the Lives, and a l ot of things I’m seeing in common. Number one, all of them wear mouth tape, which they like wear during sleep, they peel it off, and honestly, you should keep it on the whole day. Second, seeing a lot Bibles. I’m seeing a lot people opening Bibles, not really reading them, interesting. And third, all them dunk their face in ice water, which I really do not understand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Something thing that also stood out to me was when he makes a show of getting on his computer and being on a meeting and everyone’s like clowning on him for this one part because it sounds so “fake business bro.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ashton Hall: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So looking at it, bro, we got to go ahead and get in at least 10,000. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At least 10,000? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">10,000 of what? Yeah, dollars, views. What I also find very funny is that all of these guys, they usually start their day way too early. I’m thinking 3.52 a.m., 4 a.m. I know exactly where this came from. It’s because Mark Wahlberg once said that he gets up at like 4 a.m. to do his workout. I’m just saying you guys don’t need to wake up that early and guess what? Life doesn’t have to be this hard. That’s my motto for the year. Life doesn’t have to be this hard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. One thing that stood out to me, women are in this but like they’re always facing away from the camera and they’re always like performing some sort of like subservient domestic duty for these men like steaming their clothes or cooking them breakfast? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, there is a woman present who basically cooks and feeds him food. She’s faceless. Maybe that is her choice. I definitely noticed how he kept in a lot of footage of hospitality workers, of people giving him towels. There’s class commentary there, but I don’t wanna comment on it. on it. Okay, do we save? Do we scroll? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Save,. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay. Yeah. All right, let’s save it. Do you like organize your save folders? Like your saved videos? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I do, on TikTok? Yeah, I do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I try to, but then sometimes I get lazy and like overwhelmed by like, but I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s a new category.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s difficult. If you pay me 10K, I’ll do it for you, Morgan. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t have 10K. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, well this guy does. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Maybe I need 10,000 of that, maybe I need to start making these videos. So we chose save on the alpha male warning routine videos, which means we’re gonna hold onto it for a possible future episode on the manosphere. Okay, so now it’s your turn. What did you bring? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan I am bringing to you the Haley Bieber seven part video. Have you heard about this? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have seen posts about it, but I have limited my intake because I’m like, Candice will just explain it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh, I got you, and let’s start from the beginning. Okay, in August, 2024, a YouTube channel called Internet Oddities, they posted this like 18 minute long video, it is called Hailey Bieber’s Dangerous Decade Long Obsession. This video is about how Hailey Baldwin, now Bieber, allegedly plotted to date and marry Justin Bieber before, during, and after his relationship with Selena Gomez, and they do call it stalking. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Internet Oddities: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Haley would also appear at Justin’s Toyota Concert Series performance in Rockefeller Plaza before following him to Los Angeles to attend the premiere of his movie, Never Say Never, where she can be seen watching him from the sidelines as he walks the purple carpet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The reason we’re talking about this now is this video was posted six months ago. It’s making the rounds again because someone on TikTok, they like broke up the 18 minute video into a seven part series. In terms of why now I do think it’s important to note that this person who broke up the video is a self-professed Selena Gomez stan account. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Selena Gomez just released an album with her fiance, Benny Blanco. And a part of me does wonder if this Selenator like reposted this video because look, if Selena does indeed marry Benny Blanco, there has been this cyclical narrative on the internet that’s like wishful thinking that some people think that Selena and Justin might get back together. And if she indeed marries Benny Blanco, that illusion is a little over. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think what is different now is that Hailey is now, according to TMZ, quote, considering taking legal action against these allegations that she’d stalked Justin. And I would just say that this doesn’t really mean anything until we see a docket, until we some papers filed in court. But I do think this is about celebrities coming for anonymous fans and haters who speak ill of them. I mean, can a celebrity prove that the rumors being put out on something as ethereal as the internet. Are they malicious enough that they deserve to be silenced completely? I don’t think so. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m curious. Would she be going after the person who made the original 20 minute long YouTube video six months ago or would she be going after people who like reposted or like shared the video or like cut it up and then posted it online in seven parts? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s a really good question. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Who does she go after then? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. And that’s actually the real difficulty and why maybe we haven’t seen a celebrity or an influencer fully come after like successfully legally snark pages or internet criticism. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re out of time. Save or scroll? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m gonna say scroll. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Scroll? Yeah, I would keep tabs on it, but I don’t think it’s worth like a full save. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like bookmark it, but don’t keep the tab open. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, yeah, I’m into that. Anyway, the whole idea of snark pages and like who’s held legally liable kind of brings us to our third story that I bring you, which is about the potential repeal of section 230. Are you familiar with section 230 by any chance? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A little bit, but I think this is the first time I’ve thought about it in a complex, analytical way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so basically, section 230 is part of the Communications Decency Act, and people say it’s the 26 words that created the internet. This is what it says, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Earlier this month, the information reported that there’s a bipartisan effort to like repeal it. And what Section 230 does is it basically protects internet platforms and also users from any legal liability for what other people post. So if someone on the snark page was bad-mouthing Hailey Bieber, a platform like Reddit that hosts that snark page wouldn’t be held liable thanks to Section 230. The idea is that only you are responsible for your own speech online and not other people’s even if you like reposted or something. But it also means that tech platforms have less incentive to crack down on hate speech or harassment or misinformation since they aren’t legally required to. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of experts worry that repealing section 230 without any other meaningful reform can have massive repercussions for free speech online. And if it’s repealed, it means that platforms like Reddit can be sued for what users say on their site. But it’s also affects individuals too. Without Section 230, you can be held liable for not just what you post, but what you repost. You can be held liable if you write a take on Substack and someone else comments on it. You can be held liable for just forwarding an email. But my question is like, will repealing Section 230 kill snark culture online? Like what does the internet look like without snarking? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, this is very tough because Section 230 has bipartisan repeal efforts because there are some people who think it is not doing enough to protect kids online and there are some people saying it’s doing too much to protect like free speech. I think this is one of those situations where repealing the whole thing is not the best option because we have a start, we just need to make it better. And that’s the other issue. We all know that legislation does not always catch up to modern society. And so I think having something like Section 230 is already a big deal, but it is a bit behind the times. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I feel like this is like a common thing with tech policy and internet policy, where regulators don’t necessarily think about the real use cases of the laws that they’re trying to enact when it comes to the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I just think a genuine thought I always have when we hear stories about this or even stories about censorship in countries like China, India, who have kind of gone this way of they have watered down versions of TikTok. I’m like, you guys keep going after social media, but you’re not going after the dating apps, which is what we really need laws about. I’m so serious. You can’t tell me you’re 36 looking for a long term, maybe short term, open to monogamy relationship. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so with this, do we save? Do we scroll? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oy. Save. Because this may impact our future of our beat and our jobs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay Candice, what else did you bring? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is so dicey, and it makes me feel icky, but I have to do it for you and for me. Luigi Mangione. A lot of us are aware of this man. He is accused of killing the CEO of United Healthcare. There have been so many headlines about him, but the one that has been stuck in my brain for at least a month is the fact that a source told Radar Online that Luigi Mangione has allegedly made upward of 20 sex tapes. Let’s just sit on that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">20 is a high — that’s pretty high for a what, a 26 year old man? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Quantity over quality. And Morgan, I’m gonna stop you right there because when this came out, someone emailed Luigi’s lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, and she emailed them back, saying, quote, “hopefully everyone realizes these are fake and not Luigi.” And this came after a sex tape broker claimed to have footage of this nature, and he was selling it for a five. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m sorry, a sex-tape broker? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, he’s not a good guy. He has a very dicey history of doing things like selling Paris Hilton sex tapes as well. And I think off the bat, this is an extremely odd allegation. It’s a weird story to run, but the good news is that TikTok is not taking the bait. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tiktok Video: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So you guys found out that Luigi filmed some sex tapes and what I’m asking is that you guys don’t watch them please because I didn’t look good in them. My hair wasn’t done. I mean during that time I wasn’t my best \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But let me stop. Morgan, do you want to jump in with thoughts? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First of all, does a sex tape exist? Have we seen the alleged sex tape? And then second of all is that actually Luigi? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so here’s the difficulty. There is no footage that Luigi’s lawyer is saying is his. What this sex tape broker was trying to peddle was that he claimed that he had footage of someone who looked like Luigi performing acts in a bathroom. And here’s a deal. Even if that tape is Luigi, even if that tape does not exist, let’s say the tape does exist, but it’s someone else. Does this person have the consent to sell footage of that stranger for $500,000?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Knowing that they’re probably not gonna touch that money at all? There’s consent right there, right? The second part of it is that supporters of Luigi are obviously rushing to deny this narrative that the tapes even exist, insisting that this is the media, this is places like Radar Online and Daily Mail trying to smear Luigi’s name, especially when he is being held, especially when cannot defend himself against allegations like these. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, it seems like a really shitty attempt at capitalizing on people thinking that Luigi Mangione is attractive, and it just seems like they’re taking advantage of people wanting to sexually harass him or this poor stranger who might happen to look like him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We are definitely having conversations about media literacy, which is not only about considering the source, but also not trusting the source in front of you. I think that’s really pertinent in not falling for headlines like these, which is click bait because the media knows that social media has been riding for Luigi and they have been weaponizing his appearance to draw in both haters and defenders. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok let’s wrap it up. So do we save or do we scroll on Luigi’s sex tape? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Save. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Save. Ok! That brings me to the story that I have brought you today, which is also Luigi related. Are you ready? Yep. Okay, so this is about allegations that Reddit is banning pro Luigi content. People were saying that like they upvoted a Luigi meme and then were banned for just like upvoting it, not even for like posting it, which seems to be part of this bigger crackdown on like people trying to really rally in support of Luigi online. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this seems to have started in early March after a Reddit administrator announced that the site was taking a pretty significant shift in its approach to content moderation. And Mia Sato from The Verge reported that Reddit started flagging content that just mentions the word Luigi. So like Reddit’s auto-mod is flagging posts about Luigi’s Mansion 3, the video game that came out in 2019 that has nothing to do with Luigi Mangione. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uh huh. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And Reddit told The Verge, there isn’t a site-wide filter. They don’t expect people to stop talking about Luigi. But like, what’s the truth, babe, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This kind of brings up questions about this larger internet-wide crackdown on free speech across all social media platforms. And you had your own experience with some Luigi content that got taken down, right. Do you want to talk about that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so I’ve been personally affected by this, which is that on TikTok, I posted photos of him just from the courtroom on TikTok. I didn’t say I loved him. I didn’t say I hate him. I just said, fave Luigi photos. And I’m not gonna lie to you, I had a hit because within two hours, I did get 9,000 likes. And let me tell you what happened. Hours later, I get a notification from TikTok that says, your post has been removed for violating community guidelines. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But what guidelines? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They wouldn’t tell me. They would not tell me which guidelines, they wouldn’t me how I infringed upon it. I think what’s really funny is like, literally prior to this video going up, I was a completely private account that made no content. And so they kind of swarmed on me immediately, the video was taken down. I got so angry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, they didn’t tell you what community guidelines you violated. And that’s kind of similar to Reddit, too, where like, yeah, there are people like, you know, advocating for violence, whatever, Reddit cracked down on that. But then there are also examples like upvoting pictures of Luigi in court in his little sweater and like people getting banned for doing that. And people were like, OK, well, what’s the truth? Are you trying to crack down on free speech? And Reddit is, of course, saying like, “No, no. Of course not.” But I do think that this is just happening online everywhere. Which brings me to my next question. Do we save or do we scroll? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We must save. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think we have to save this. Like I think that, oh, we will be doing a Luigi deep dive. Alright, more saving and scrolling with Candice right after this break. I have a fun one for you, and it’s a little bit unhinged. Are you ready? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are you familiar with Bryan Johnson? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sadly, yes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So for listeners, Bryan Johnson is this millionaire, and he basically was like, “I’m going to use my fortune to stay young forever.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bryan Johnson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a total plasma exchange which means I’m going to remove all the plasma from my body and get new stuff put in. Everything I do is an attempt at discovering what slows down my speed of aging and reverses my aging damage. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Literally, he has a whole, jokingly, what he calls a cult called “Don’t Die”, and it’s this movement dedicated to like anti-aging regiments. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So he takes dozens of daily supplements and he went super viral for doing blood transfusions with his teenage son, and he’s obsessed with like optimizing his sperm count and erections. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mmmhmm. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anyway, he usually posts very tech founder-y things, like his latest biohacking results. But then a couple of weeks ago, he suddenly gets funnier online and starts participating in meme culture. He’s posting like pictures of him in this Ebenezer Scrooge getup and sunglasses and being like, “don’t forget to go to bed.” He’s speaking to a certain audience, right? He’s really endearing himself and like humanizing himself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, the New York Times did a huge expose on him and they say that he makes everyone in his life sign like confidentiality agreements from his employees to his ex fiance. One of the agreements says that his employees have to like be okay with him walking around basically naked and that they’re okay with hearing about his boners and that his behavior won’t be quote, “unwelcome.” Anyway, it’s a whole mess, but people are still rallying behind him and being like, “Oh dude, you’re so funny. You’re just like some weird guy who loves to post online.” And so it makes me think that this entire rebrand was preparation for this article to drop. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t know, have you seen this before where like the new crisis PR is meme culture? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. So this is super interesting because it’s kind of obvious that Bryan probably has hired a social media consultant to tap into this market that will hopefully find him likable, so likable that they may or may not read the New York Times piece and go, “Ah, like Bryan’s one of us.” And the thing about Bryan Johnson is that I think maybe even going all the way back to those alpha male day in the lives we were talking about earlier — maybe those are the people who find him interesting. I frankly find him boring. And on top of that, I kind of remember when he first kind of like became a news item, especially with the blood transfusions, there was some sentiment of like, he wanted to look as young as his teenage son. Yeah? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The thing is, if you have ever been the daughter of a mother, you’ve been in those trenches. You’re not new, Bryan. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do we save or do we scroll? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would really love to scroll on Bryan Johnson. I never want to hear from him ever again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok. Candice, what’s our last story for today? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s end on a happy note, which is that, breaking news, breaking news! Trinity Rodman and Ben Shelton are dating! Do you know who I’m talking about? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have no clue. I don’t follow sports. What’s happening? Tell me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All right, ESPN parlayers, clock in. So this story is not really about sports. This story is about the art of the hard launch and how one can take a soft launch and parlay it into a hard launch. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s define some terms. A soft launch: it’s when you are softly, subtly, telling your audience that you are dating someone, but you are not revealing the identity of said person. An example, you post an IG story. You have two drinks in the frame. You see one hand and another, but you don’t tag the hand. You don’t show face, and that is a soft launch! The hard launch is basically when you post your significant other on grid. There’s a tag, there’s a caption. It stays on the profile until you break up with them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this story, is about the soft and hard launch of Trinity Rodman, who is a soccer player, and Ben Shelton, who was a tennis player. Trinity, lovely, lovely girl. She won Olympic gold. She plays for the Washington spirit. Her dad is Dennis Rodman, the basketball player. Ben Shelton, tennis player, up and coming. Slowly been raising his profile, and I think more people actually know Trinity than Ben, and I love that. They are both young. They’re both like 22 years old. They love to troll the audience. They’re known for being kind of funny and having personalities on the field. So we go to March 6th. Ben, jumped on this trend that starts with a GloRilla verse, which contains the lyrics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>GloRilla: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They say shooters, shoot. Uh, uh-huh, Duke Dennis, what’s up with you? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They say, shooters shoot, Duke Dennis, what’s up with you?” And on TikTok, in place of Duke Dennis people will like write out the name of the person they have a crush on. So, Ben does this trend and in place of Duke Denis, he writes the letter T with six asterisks which does line up with Trinity. And at first people are like, “ha ha ha, nice try Ben, you think you can get her.” But then, the same day, Trinity posts a TikTok, same trend. For the name, she puts three underscores and people are like, “oh, B-E-N. And so what’s up with you.” March 17th. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s like leaving little clues. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’ve been like teasing us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. March 17th, Ben Shelton posts an Instagram carousel on the last pic of the carousal, it’s a photo of Trinity kissing his cheek in an elevator and the world stops. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hard launch, baby. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hard launch. And look, I think this is wild and bananas because my personal theory is that I wonder if Trinity and Ben were already dating or had already connected and instead of like hard launching on the gram first, they decided to play with a TikTok trend to soft launch, to tease, to prime people up to the idea of them shooting their shot at each other. And so by the time that they post the IG, you’re either thinking, “Oh my God, Ben shot his shot and it worked”, or you’re thinking, “Oh my god, they’re so funny. They were playing with us the whole time and they used TikTok to do it.” And either way, I’m here for it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I love a good hard launch. I love like a good soft launch into a hard launch, but I agree. It is an art. It is like you are kind of like teasing people. You are like easing them into the idea of like no longer being single. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now Morgan, not to turn the tables on you, but uh, should we save or scroll? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh, I’m saying save. I want to do a whole episode on the art of the hard launch. So Candice, do you have any takeaways about the internet, the state of the internet, based on our stories that we have gossiped about today? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, I think what’s really hard about covering the beat that we do is that like oftentimes the stories that kind of breach surface that are worth an episode that are with headlines are kind of dark and dire and like kind of unhopeful. And so I think it is always important for us to hold space and find joy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All right, Candice, thank you so much for joining me today on our first Save or Scroll for Close All Tabs. And thank you for adding to our infinite pile of episode ideas. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thank you for having me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Candice, if anyone wants to follow your work, where can they find you? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Candice Lim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can absolutely find me on the Slate podcast, ICYMI, In Case You Missed It. I’m there twice a week talking about internet culture with my cohost, Kate Lindsay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Did you hear any topics on this episode that you wanna hear more about? Anything that piqued your interest that you wish we had spent more time talking about or something we scrolled past that you wished we hadn’t? Anything we should cover in our next save or scroll? Let us know. Drop a comment in CloseAllTabs’ Discord channel at discord.gg slash KQED. Follow us on Instagram at CloseAlltabsPod or hit us up at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org. And if you’re interested in learning more about what we talked about in this episode, check out our reading recs in the episode description. \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 is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Sound design by Maya Cueva. Original music by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink dust silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. If you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple podcasts or whatever platform you use. \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": "the-broligarchy-pt-2-is-this-techno-fascism",
"title": "The Broligarchy Pt 2: Is this Techno-Fascism?",
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"content": "\u003cp>The ”broligarchy” didn’t come together in a vacuum — this combination of extreme wealth, right wing leanings, and an anti-establishment point of view has been brewing for decades. There are lots of names for this ideology coming up in the news: techno-fascism, techno-feudalism, tech oligarchy, cyber-populism, authoritarian technocracy. What does it all mean? As tech business leaders align with the president, and Elon Musk leads the dismantling of federal agencies, what is the best way to describe what is going on in our country right now? In the second part of our two-parter on the “broligarchy,” Morgan speaks with historian and University of Washington professor, Margaret O’Mara, to discuss techno-fascism and other terms to see what really fits to describe our current reality.\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=KQINC6489378718\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/534709/the-code-by-margaret-omara/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Margaret O’Mara\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Historian and Professor at the University of Washington\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/03/facebook-meta-silicon-valley-politics/677168/#selection-891.0-891.17\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The Rise of Techno-authoritarianism”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2023/10/techno-optimism-is-not-something-you-should-believe-in\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“‘Techno-Optimism’ is Not Something You Should Believe In”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Jag Bhalla & Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2025/jan/29/silicon-valley-rightwing-technofascism\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“‘Headed for technofascism’”: the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Becca Lewis, The Guardian\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/techno-fascism-comes-to-america-elon-musk\">“Techno-Fascism Comes to America”\u003c/a> – Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003c/h2>\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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there’s this bit in Silicon Valley, the HBO show I mean, where one of the characters, Jared, gets into a self-driving car owned by this billionaire named Peter Gregory. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Automated Voice: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Buckle up, please. Okay. Enjoy your ride. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then, things go off the rails. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Automated Voice: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Destination override. New destination, 1 Gregory Drive, Arallon. Distance to destination, 4,126 miles. Enjoy your ride. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instead of taking him home, like it’s supposed to, the car ends up getting rerouted to Peter Gregory’s offshore private island. It’s situated in international waters, so it’s basically in the middle of nowhere. And when Jared’s finally able to get out of the car, he faces another horrifying predicament. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jared Dunn: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Excuse me, can you help me? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Automated Voice: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Obstacle averted. Resuming operations. Please be careful. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The man-made island is run entirely by robots, so there’s no one around to help him. The idea of a sovereign, self-contained tech utopia island sounds like a TV satire exaggeration, but here’s the thing, it’s drawn from real life. Silicon Valley’s Peter Gregory is based on Peter Thiel, the godfather of the PayPal mafia and an actual tech billionaire who funded a similar project to the one parodied in the TV show. Though there’s no public record of anyone actually getting stuck on one. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the late 2000s, he became a huge proponent of what’s now known as seasteading, the dream of establishing these offshore, autonomous ocean communities that would be hubs for innovation. The purpose of seasteading was to put technological progress above everything else, to build them outside the grasp of anything that could limit that progress, especially things like pesky government regulations. Thiel was an early investor in the Seasteading Institute, an organization that originally planned to establish libertarian startup countries off the coast of San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While that never came to pass, and similar VC-funded Tech Island projects in the years since have also faced a slew of issues, this ideology persists: the belief that innovation shouldn’t be hampered by regulation or any kind of social responsibility really, and that tech business leaders should be the ones in charge, not elected officials in a traditional government structure. And with a growing group of broligarchs stepping out from behind their standing desks and into positions of real political power and control, it seems like they’re getting closer to that goal. So, what’s behind this continued mingling of the tech industry and government power? \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\">Okay, so we’re seeing tech business leaders aligning with the president, Elon Musk leading the dismantling of federal agencies, and the anti-government ideologies fueling things like the seasteading movement. We’ve been calling this the brologarchy, but there are other terms getting thrown around in an effort to describe what’s going on in our country right now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let me just list them out. I’m gonna grab my whiteboard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so we’ve got authoritarian technocracy, cyber-populism, tech oligarchy, techno-feudalism, techno-libertarianism. Oh, and I’ve seen this one a lot lately, techno-fascism. But what do these jargony terms even mean? Are they just hyperbole? Is one more accurate than the others to describe what’s happening right now? I think it’s time for a deep dive. You ready? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All right, let’s open a new tab. Is this techno-fascism? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you know faskism? It’s coming to get us. Is the broligarchy really driven by “faskism,” sorry, fascism as former bachelorette and TikTok icon Gabby Windey says? To get an expert opinion, I called up Margaret O’Mara. She’s a historian and a professor at the University of Washington where she teaches about the tech economy and American politics. She also wrote a history of the modern tech industry in her book, The Code: Silicon Valley, and the Remaking of America. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First of all, the brologarchy is a delicious term and I’m going to deploy it often. You know, I think for one thing, the tech industry, Silicon Valley, has always contained multitudes, right? But it is novel to, you know, dial back to January of this year and see all of those tech CEOs on the dais at the inauguration. John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie did not show up at William McKinley’s inauguration, this is really unusual to kind of just have the front and center display of, these are people who are so proximate to power where the president is kind of showing “I have these close connections with these people.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, let’s go back to our whiteboard. I asked Margaret about a few of our jargony terms. First, technocracy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is that what this is? Well, it’s really interesting because technocracy is a really old term and it goes back more than a century ago. Rather than being anti-institutional or anti-establishment, it’s been, “hey, let’s bring expertise to these big institutions. Let’s use the best knowledge and specialized knowledge we can to inform policymaking or inform whatever we’re doing to, whatever we are governing and however we’re governing it.” This isn’t really technocracy. Technocracy is like bureaucracy kind of slow and kind of deliberate and very much in the institution and using people who are not partisans but just pointy headed experts. And sometimes that’s right now some of these pretty headed experts aren’t really in fashion with the prevailing administration. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right, I’m thinking of during FDR’s administration, that’s kind of when we saw a lot of technocrats establishing these government agencies, which DOGE is currently slashing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s right, the 1930s, the New Deal, the advisors around Franklin Roosevelt were known as The Brains Trust. They were there because of their expertise, not because of who they knew or because of their political acumen, although some of them were very good at politics. But they were technocrats, and they believed in the power of government to steer the economy in a certain direction. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, crossing out technocracy. How about techno-libertarian? Libertarianism being the idea that the government should generally stay out of people’s lives. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, techno-libertarianism has always been kind of a slippery term because, you know, truly pure libertarianism in any context is a really hard thing to stick to because you really have to be comfortable with, even if it’s something that I don’t agree with, I believe that the government, you know, shouldn’t be doing anything about it to change that status quo or change that from happening. So this is kind of different. You know, this is very specific actions that are directed at specific parts of the government. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like for example, and this is a priority that Elon Musk supports very vocally is kind of getting rid of DEI or kind of quote unquote woke-ism in the government and in sort of a micromanaging way, right? Like banning certain words from government documents and websites, preventing funding of certain programs and not just things that are kind of new from the last several years, but things like the EPA’s environmental justice program, which is designed to address the disproportionately high levels of pollution in poor neighborhoods. And this isn’t libertarianism, this is very much trying to steer U.S. society in a certain way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Got it. So, techno-libertarian doesn’t really describe what’s happening. Cross that off. What about techno-fascism? Historian Janice Mimura wrote about this concept in her book, Planning for Empire, which focuses on Japan’s colonization of Manchuria in the 1930s as a test case for techno-fascism. She defines it as an authoritarian regime driven by technology with technocrats at the helm. Some people also call this technocratic populism. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">n this example of Imperial Japan, the fascist rule wasn’t concentrated behind a single leader. They still had an emperor, but the real power was in the hands of the technocrats. They established huge bureaucracies to force industrial development in Manchuria by exploiting the people that Japan colonized. Essentially, the public and private sphere were fused into one. This is just one example, but Margaret says there is a historic link between technological progress and fascism around the world. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, you go back to authoritarian regimes of the 20th century of different political systems, whether it be Stalinism, whether the fascism of Mussolini and Hitler, whether it be other authoritarian regimes, communist and non in during the Cold War, and often technology and technological progress plays a really important role. It’s something that that these leaders invest in and technologists are often favored actors in that. You know, you go back to Nazi Germany and the V-2 rocket program of 1930s, 1940s Nazi Germany. That was the technology that was so advanced and so valuable that the U.S. allowed the rocket scientists from the Nazi regime to emigrate to the United States. And they became the people who were building NASA’s own space program. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some argue that aspects of life in the U.S. right now do point to fascism—the scapegoating of minority groups, attacks on education, rising sexism, potentially illegal deportations—and that the broligarchs’ incursion into the government is a sure sign of techno-fascism’s arrival. But Margaret is wary of using that term. She says the current movement is too anti-bureaucratic to be techno- fascism. She says it’s not technocracy, and not quite techno-libertarianism either. So what is it? Maybe there isn’t one fixed term to describe exactly what’s happening, or maybe it’s more of an amalgamation of a bunch of these things. But Margaret did bring up one more term that was not on my whiteboard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think one thing that’s kind of consistent through a through line is techno-optimism or a belief in the power of technology to do good things and that more technology is better, and that I think with that kind of is an adversarial or a suspicion of government bureaucracy, feeling like tech is better than the bureaucrats. This tech is something that… ultimately, will do things better and improve things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Techno-optimism sounds, honestly, kind of positive? But right now we’re also seeing the very real consequences of this ideology play out in government operations, people losing their government jobs, infrastructure crumbling. I mean, we could talk about that for the rest of the episode. What even are the core beliefs here? Who’s pushing it? And that is another tab. Techno-optimism? So Margaret was just telling us about this adversarial relationship between techno-optimists and government bureaucracy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That sentiment ranges from yes, a sort of explicitly anti-government, you know, get the state out of things as much as possible, liberate currency, liberate individuals and groups from the control of state regulations and nation states. And then there’s also a kind of more affirmative, “hey, the government needs our help, let’s improve it and use all of these principles that we’ve used in developing these amazing products in the valley and let’s bring them to the government.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A lot of these beliefs are laid out in The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. It was written in 2023 by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. Here he is reading from it on the Startup Archive YouTube channel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marc Andreessen: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We believe that we have been and will always be the masters of technology, not mastered by technology. This is a really key point today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mark Andreessen was the co-founder of one of the early internet browsers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Netscape, which was the kind of original kind of gateway drug to the internet. This was the browser that started it all. This was also the company that when it went public 14 months after it was established, it started the dot-com boom. By the time he’s 25 years old, he’s on the cover of Time magazine sitting on a throne. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Andreessen went on to co-found the legendary Andreessen Horowitz Venture Capital Fund that has, among other things, invested heavily in crypto. And unsurprisingly, investing in crypto, a currency that doesn’t rely on a government or bank to maintain it, is informed by his beliefs. In his 5,000-word techno-optimist manifesto, Andreessen writes this: “Centralized planning is doomed to fail. The system of production and consumption is too complex. Decentralization harnesses complexity for the benefit of everyone. Centralization will starve you to death.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh yeah, that’s such a fascinating document. Andreessen’s framing of techno-optimism and his manifesto really points the finger at not just bureaucracy and government bureaucracy and regulation as something that’s standing in the way, but also programs like DEI programs and the pressure that tech employees have brought on within companies over the last five years to diversify workforce and to create better working conditions for different types of employees. Um, unionization drives, you know, we’ve seen this activism in tech that really was unprecedented in the industry up until the last decade. I mean, not at this scale. So these are things that are, you know, being identified as this is standing in the way of, you know our progress. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marc Andreessen: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Victim mentality is a curse in every domain of life, including in our relationship with technology. Both unnecessary and self-defeating, we are not victims, we’re conquerors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This manifesto is considered extreme, even in the tech industry. In it, Andreessen names what he calls “enemies.” Bureaucracy, regulation, academia, risk management, tech ethics, sustainability, social responsibility, and trust and safety. His version of techno-optimism sees anything that could hinder technological progress as the enemy. Even things that most people would agree make society better. like user safety or labor rights. In his manifesto, he also makes some very dubious claims that society doesn’t need those things because the free market will only drive innovation that is ultimately good for humanity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Andreessen’s manifesto doesn’t speak for everyone in Silicon Valley, but a lot of these broligarchs seem to espouse very similar anti-government, anti-diversity talking points. And this lines up very well with the modern Republican Party. But techno-optimism is an ideology that doesn’t fit neatly into a political box. So how can we make sense of the recent political swings of the tech world? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, let’s dig into this when we come back from this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab. Is Silicon Valley right or left? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In recent history, tech industry leaders have aligned with political parties, not necessarily by ideology. They’ve stood by whichever party was better for business. And following the techno-optimist way of thinking, they’ve chosen whichever party wouldn’t stand in the way of innovation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s moved from being Republican to Democrat to back again. Even though in recent years, Silicon Valley and the Bay Area generally has been a pretty blue place, right? It’s associated with Democrats, with national Democratic lawmakers, and for a long time it was the Republican party that was just pro-business, low taxes. There were enough Californians and Northern Californians in Washington during the Reagan years that there were people who could advocate for the special things that, say, the semiconductor industry needed and its competition with Japanese chipmakers, which was a really big deal in the 80s. And then that changes in the 90s. The Republican party, social conservatism becomes more predominant. And the Democrats, particularly Bill Clinton and Al Gore, kind of presented themselves as business-friendly centrists and especially internet business-friendly centrists and really wooed Silicon Valley very successfully. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this very friendly approach to tech continued throughout Obama’s eight years as president, which meant that regulations were minimal. Very techno-optimist, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is also when everyone’s kind of feeling that social media is basically a net good and awesome and hadn’t realized that bringing humanity online would bring all the great things about humanity online as well as the not great things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the years after Obama was in office, technology has progressed at a breakneck pace. And with that, society has realized that progress at all costs isn’t always what’s best for actual human beings. Remember when whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed government surveillance programs? Or when the Cambridge Analytica scandal happened and news broke that your Facebook data could be mined for political advertising without your consent? And then there’s everything happening now with AI. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This isn’t what we signed up for. And then there’s increased criticism of privacy or lack thereof. These companies not doing enough to protect user privacy, that’s starting to gather steam. There’s starting to be criticism of the gender imbalance in VC and in companies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Still, the tech industry was doing pretty well by the end of Trump’s first term. Margaret says that tax cuts and other incentives were part of it, but there were outside forces too. Think of the state of the world back then. The COVID pandemic had just started, and online platforms had a huge growth spurt because everyone kind of just had to be online. So, Silicon Valley flourished. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then Biden is elected, and his administration kind of takes a more aggressive stance when it comes to antitrust. It’s kind of going back to the way things were 50 years ago, but that’s after this really long time of very loose enforcement. What happened during the Biden years is this love affair between the Democratic Party and Silicon Valley started souring because there were antitrust enforcement actions and there were, you know, support of the unionization drives in some of these tech companies and some pretty tough talk from the Biden White House about “tech is too big and we need to do something about it.” But for this handful of very powerful, very influential, very vocal tech leaders, they really shifted their allegiance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I also am really curious by your thoughts on whether this shift to the right in Silicon Valley is actually purely just about business, just about pro-capitalism, or if it’s actually ideological. I mean, I’m thinking, like you said, Marc Andreessen was once a—well, he keeps flip-flopping. He was a Republican and a Democrat, now Republican again. Elon Musk was a Democrat until a couple years ago. I mean, I’m thinking of a tweet where he was like bragging about LGBTQ equality at Tesla, which seems unfathomable now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a different world. Yeah. I mean, Elon Musk built electric cars. Democrats were and are his constituency. Yeah, it’s very different. I think it is both business and ideology, and it’s all bound up together. That’s the way I read it. I think there is kind of a core, let’s protect the business. But there’s also, yes, I think there’s ideology. I think there is a lot of resentment. There is a lot of, you know, these billionaires are feeling aggrieved. They’re like, all we did was we built these amazing products that you guys love so much that you can’t stop using. You don’t even understand how this stuff works. And you’re trying to regulate us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s this real sort of disdain for Washington policymakers who legitimately have, you now, time and again, there have been many instances in which senators and members of Congress have shown their deep ignorance about technology. That is fair. And there’s also resentment of like, okay, our employees are like rising up against us and they’re not focused on building the next great thing. They’re focused on, you know, other stuff that we don’t think is important to the business. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So we’ve got this foundation of resentment, ideology, and business interests. What is it building toward? How about another tab? What’s the techno-optimist agenda? At the top of this episode, we have a bit about those self-governed islands funded by tech billionaires. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Automated Voice: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Distance to destination, 4126 miles. Enjoy your ride. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But it’s not just a bit. These are real-life projects. How does that play into the dream of techno-optimism? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh yeah, the self-funded, it’s all in the name of escaping from the state, escaping from the old ways of doing things. It’s the ultimate disruption, right? And we can see lots of different products and projects and tools, both fantastical utopian ones that haven’t come into being yet, and ones that are very, very real, like, say, the blockchain, spurred by this philosophy that the existing financial institutions, governmental institutions, fiat currency, you name it, that has failed people. It is something where nation states have too much power. And also it’s kind of this populist argument too, that ordinary, the little guy’s been, you know, hasn’t been given a fair shake. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While cryptocurrency hasn’t reached the widespread adoption its advocates predicted, it’s still doing pretty well for itself. But in practice, these techno-optimist, human-built startup islands that operate outside of government oversight have fizzled out. Unfortunately for Peter Thiel’s seasteading dream, the flourishing network of independent tech hub islands off the coast of San Francisco still does not exist. The Seasteading Institute has tried, again and again, to build floating cities in different parts of the world over the years, but those plans have also… sunk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there’s Prospera, another VC-funded libertarian city, this time built on existing land. It’s on an island off the coast of Honduras, backed by familiar names like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen. Construction started in 2021, but since then, the project has been accused of neocolonialism, weighed down with legal battles and embroiled in political turmoil. So instead of going through all the effort of building whole new tech island nations, it appears that some techno optimists are shifting their focus back home. They’re trying to bring it stateside, like California forever. A couple of years ago, this company started buying up acres of empty farmland in the Northeast Bay Area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Getting some exclusive renderings tonight of a proposed new city in Solano County, California Forever. The group behind this huge plan says the community will be home eventually to some 400,000 people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’re trying to build a utopian walkable city of tech startups and sustainable residential homes from scratch, about 50 miles from San Francisco. They’ve got some pretty big name investors backing the project, like Mark Andreessen and PayPal mafia member and LinkedIn co-founder, Reid Hoffman. But this project is also facing a lot of local resistance. Some of these proposed cities go even further than just being startup hubs. According to reporting from Wired, some groups have met with Trump to launch Prospera-like startup nations here in the United States, what they call “freedom cities.” They want to build modern-day company towns on federal land, which would be exempt from any regulatory oversight or taxes. But it begs the question, “whose freedom would be prioritized?” Freedom cities would not be required to be democratically run and wouldn’t be held to workers’ rights laws. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It isn’t about a better government. It isn’t about a better, you know, better delivery of government services. It’s about, “let’s get this government out of the way and let’s build something entirely new and something that we control that’s driven by this engineering thinking, by this tech-forward, techno-libertarian thinking, because we have made amazing things, we have been responsible for amazing progress, and if we are given the power to do it and the smartest people in the room are allowed to build these things independent of government.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s not technocracy. It’s not bringing the experts into government necessarily, although a number of Valley people are now in the government. But I see sort of an end game kind of feeding into this philosophy that seems kind of radical but is something that’s been percolating for a really long time, which is, “where we’re going and where we need to go as a — humanity needs to go is beyond these old bureaucratic governmental structures as they are now.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Techno-optimism says that we don’t need tech ethics or regulatory bodies or any sense of social responsibility because the invisible hand of the free market will guide innovation. But if you look at history, that story that techno-optimists like to tell is complete fiction. Okay, how about one last tab? The real story of Silicon Valley innovation. So despite the origin story that a lot of tech titans like to claim, Margaret says that the legendary innovation of Silicon Valley exists because of government intervention, not in spite of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a really interesting collective amnesia that is part of the secret of Silicon Valley, funnily enough. So the government has played a huge, huge role in the growth of the electronics industry, the computing industry over time here and elsewhere. But it’s done in a way that’s kind of been hard to see. It’s been indirect, right? It’s contracts going to private companies or universities. It’s regulations that are lowering taxes or lowering regulation. I mean, that’s government action. That’s government help, right. because it has been kind of indirect and subtle, a lot of people in the industry kind of say, okay, where our success comes from, government getting out of the way. Like we are so great because government has not been kind of micromanaging us or curbing our growth. And yeah, that is true, but part of this was this industry was only in the last 15 years has become as enormous as it has. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Turns out, that dreaded government regulation that these corporations fear so much has historically been great for the industry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anti-trust enforcement has been this really important factor in driving innovation over time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As an example, Margaret talks about the history of the transitor. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The invention that started it all, the thing that is the core of every microchip, that this is the digital revolution, the transistor. That was developed in Bell Labs, which was AT&T’s industrial laboratory in New Jersey in 1947. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The transistor was revolutionary in electronics. It basically controls the flow of electric signals. At the time, Bell Labs and AT&T had a monopoly over the telecommunications industry. They manufactured all the parts and operated the service itself. In 1949, the Department of Justice opened an antitrust investigation into AT&T. They settled the lawsuit in 1956, and AT&T was required to grant all applicants non-exclusive licenses for all existing and future Bell System patents, including the transistor. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so the DOJ forced AT&T to allow the transistor to be freely licensed by other companies. And this is how you had chip companies that emerge in the valley in the first place. We would not have silicon in the Valley if not for that Department of Justice condition, you know, putting that restraint on AT&T. This is why this political history is really useful to be aware of because there’s a, it’s legitimate to fear government interference in the innovation machine if you think that this has been a free market miracle and if government’s around, it is going to mess it up. But if you know the history and you realize, “oh, the innovation machine has actually been something that the government’s been part of and entrepreneurialism and government policy have existed side by side the whole time. Like, oh okay. So maybe that isn’t a bad thing.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just the sheer presence of having regulation or having policymakers and politicians in the room, setting the terms of the debate, that’s not going to be an innovation killer. In fact, an innovation killer will be if all the power just resides in the hands of a few companies and a few people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course, there are so many terms that can still apply, but we can’t cover all of political theory in a single deep dive, and no single ideology will explain what’s happening with our government. What we do know is that beyond semantics, we can always look at history to understand why this is happening now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We are in uncharted waters in many ways right now in terms of where things will go next, but I do believe that historical knowledge is power. So the more you know, the more, you know. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay. I’m gonna cap these markers, roll away this whiteboard, and 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. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our senior editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Original music and sound design by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard and Catherine Monahan. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink DustSilver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you have feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org, follow us on Instagram @CloseAllTabsPod, 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/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\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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"title": "The Broligarchy Pt 2: Is this Techno-Fascism? | KQED",
"description": "The ”broligarchy” didn’t come together in a vacuum — this combination of extreme wealth, right wing leanings, and an anti-establishment point of view has been brewing for decades. There are lots of names for this ideology coming up in the news: techno-fascism, techno-feudalism, tech oligarchy, cyber-populism, authoritarian technocracy. What does it all mean? As tech business leaders align with the president, and Elon Musk leads the dismantling of federal agencies, what is the best way to describe what is going on in our country right now? In the second part of our two-parter on the “broligarchy,” Morgan speaks with historian and University of Washington professor, Margaret O’Mara, to discuss techno-fascism and other terms to see what really fits to describe our current reality.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The ”broligarchy” didn’t come together in a vacuum — this combination of extreme wealth, right wing leanings, and an anti-establishment point of view has been brewing for decades. There are lots of names for this ideology coming up in the news: techno-fascism, techno-feudalism, tech oligarchy, cyber-populism, authoritarian technocracy. What does it all mean? As tech business leaders align with the president, and Elon Musk leads the dismantling of federal agencies, what is the best way to describe what is going on in our country right now? In the second part of our two-parter on the “broligarchy,” Morgan speaks with historian and University of Washington professor, Margaret O’Mara, to discuss techno-fascism and other terms to see what really fits to describe our current reality.\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=KQINC6489378718\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/534709/the-code-by-margaret-omara/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Margaret O’Mara\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Historian and Professor at the University of Washington\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/03/facebook-meta-silicon-valley-politics/677168/#selection-891.0-891.17\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The Rise of Techno-authoritarianism”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2023/10/techno-optimism-is-not-something-you-should-believe-in\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“‘Techno-Optimism’ is Not Something You Should Believe In”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Jag Bhalla & Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2025/jan/29/silicon-valley-rightwing-technofascism\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“‘Headed for technofascism’”: the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Becca Lewis, The Guardian\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/techno-fascism-comes-to-america-elon-musk\">“Techno-Fascism Comes to America”\u003c/a> – Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there’s this bit in Silicon Valley, the HBO show I mean, where one of the characters, Jared, gets into a self-driving car owned by this billionaire named Peter Gregory. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Automated Voice: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Buckle up, please. Okay. Enjoy your ride. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then, things go off the rails. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Automated Voice: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Destination override. New destination, 1 Gregory Drive, Arallon. Distance to destination, 4,126 miles. Enjoy your ride. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instead of taking him home, like it’s supposed to, the car ends up getting rerouted to Peter Gregory’s offshore private island. It’s situated in international waters, so it’s basically in the middle of nowhere. And when Jared’s finally able to get out of the car, he faces another horrifying predicament. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jared Dunn: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Excuse me, can you help me? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Automated Voice: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Obstacle averted. Resuming operations. Please be careful. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The man-made island is run entirely by robots, so there’s no one around to help him. The idea of a sovereign, self-contained tech utopia island sounds like a TV satire exaggeration, but here’s the thing, it’s drawn from real life. Silicon Valley’s Peter Gregory is based on Peter Thiel, the godfather of the PayPal mafia and an actual tech billionaire who funded a similar project to the one parodied in the TV show. Though there’s no public record of anyone actually getting stuck on one. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the late 2000s, he became a huge proponent of what’s now known as seasteading, the dream of establishing these offshore, autonomous ocean communities that would be hubs for innovation. The purpose of seasteading was to put technological progress above everything else, to build them outside the grasp of anything that could limit that progress, especially things like pesky government regulations. Thiel was an early investor in the Seasteading Institute, an organization that originally planned to establish libertarian startup countries off the coast of San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While that never came to pass, and similar VC-funded Tech Island projects in the years since have also faced a slew of issues, this ideology persists: the belief that innovation shouldn’t be hampered by regulation or any kind of social responsibility really, and that tech business leaders should be the ones in charge, not elected officials in a traditional government structure. And with a growing group of broligarchs stepping out from behind their standing desks and into positions of real political power and control, it seems like they’re getting closer to that goal. So, what’s behind this continued mingling of the tech industry and government power? \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\">Okay, so we’re seeing tech business leaders aligning with the president, Elon Musk leading the dismantling of federal agencies, and the anti-government ideologies fueling things like the seasteading movement. We’ve been calling this the brologarchy, but there are other terms getting thrown around in an effort to describe what’s going on in our country right now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let me just list them out. I’m gonna grab my whiteboard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so we’ve got authoritarian technocracy, cyber-populism, tech oligarchy, techno-feudalism, techno-libertarianism. Oh, and I’ve seen this one a lot lately, techno-fascism. But what do these jargony terms even mean? Are they just hyperbole? Is one more accurate than the others to describe what’s happening right now? I think it’s time for a deep dive. You ready? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All right, let’s open a new tab. Is this techno-fascism? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you know faskism? It’s coming to get us. Is the broligarchy really driven by “faskism,” sorry, fascism as former bachelorette and TikTok icon Gabby Windey says? To get an expert opinion, I called up Margaret O’Mara. She’s a historian and a professor at the University of Washington where she teaches about the tech economy and American politics. She also wrote a history of the modern tech industry in her book, The Code: Silicon Valley, and the Remaking of America. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First of all, the brologarchy is a delicious term and I’m going to deploy it often. You know, I think for one thing, the tech industry, Silicon Valley, has always contained multitudes, right? But it is novel to, you know, dial back to January of this year and see all of those tech CEOs on the dais at the inauguration. John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie did not show up at William McKinley’s inauguration, this is really unusual to kind of just have the front and center display of, these are people who are so proximate to power where the president is kind of showing “I have these close connections with these people.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, let’s go back to our whiteboard. I asked Margaret about a few of our jargony terms. First, technocracy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is that what this is? Well, it’s really interesting because technocracy is a really old term and it goes back more than a century ago. Rather than being anti-institutional or anti-establishment, it’s been, “hey, let’s bring expertise to these big institutions. Let’s use the best knowledge and specialized knowledge we can to inform policymaking or inform whatever we’re doing to, whatever we are governing and however we’re governing it.” This isn’t really technocracy. Technocracy is like bureaucracy kind of slow and kind of deliberate and very much in the institution and using people who are not partisans but just pointy headed experts. And sometimes that’s right now some of these pretty headed experts aren’t really in fashion with the prevailing administration. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right, I’m thinking of during FDR’s administration, that’s kind of when we saw a lot of technocrats establishing these government agencies, which DOGE is currently slashing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s right, the 1930s, the New Deal, the advisors around Franklin Roosevelt were known as The Brains Trust. They were there because of their expertise, not because of who they knew or because of their political acumen, although some of them were very good at politics. But they were technocrats, and they believed in the power of government to steer the economy in a certain direction. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, crossing out technocracy. How about techno-libertarian? Libertarianism being the idea that the government should generally stay out of people’s lives. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, techno-libertarianism has always been kind of a slippery term because, you know, truly pure libertarianism in any context is a really hard thing to stick to because you really have to be comfortable with, even if it’s something that I don’t agree with, I believe that the government, you know, shouldn’t be doing anything about it to change that status quo or change that from happening. So this is kind of different. You know, this is very specific actions that are directed at specific parts of the government. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like for example, and this is a priority that Elon Musk supports very vocally is kind of getting rid of DEI or kind of quote unquote woke-ism in the government and in sort of a micromanaging way, right? Like banning certain words from government documents and websites, preventing funding of certain programs and not just things that are kind of new from the last several years, but things like the EPA’s environmental justice program, which is designed to address the disproportionately high levels of pollution in poor neighborhoods. And this isn’t libertarianism, this is very much trying to steer U.S. society in a certain way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Got it. So, techno-libertarian doesn’t really describe what’s happening. Cross that off. What about techno-fascism? Historian Janice Mimura wrote about this concept in her book, Planning for Empire, which focuses on Japan’s colonization of Manchuria in the 1930s as a test case for techno-fascism. She defines it as an authoritarian regime driven by technology with technocrats at the helm. Some people also call this technocratic populism. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">n this example of Imperial Japan, the fascist rule wasn’t concentrated behind a single leader. They still had an emperor, but the real power was in the hands of the technocrats. They established huge bureaucracies to force industrial development in Manchuria by exploiting the people that Japan colonized. Essentially, the public and private sphere were fused into one. This is just one example, but Margaret says there is a historic link between technological progress and fascism around the world. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, you go back to authoritarian regimes of the 20th century of different political systems, whether it be Stalinism, whether the fascism of Mussolini and Hitler, whether it be other authoritarian regimes, communist and non in during the Cold War, and often technology and technological progress plays a really important role. It’s something that that these leaders invest in and technologists are often favored actors in that. You know, you go back to Nazi Germany and the V-2 rocket program of 1930s, 1940s Nazi Germany. That was the technology that was so advanced and so valuable that the U.S. allowed the rocket scientists from the Nazi regime to emigrate to the United States. And they became the people who were building NASA’s own space program. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some argue that aspects of life in the U.S. right now do point to fascism—the scapegoating of minority groups, attacks on education, rising sexism, potentially illegal deportations—and that the broligarchs’ incursion into the government is a sure sign of techno-fascism’s arrival. But Margaret is wary of using that term. She says the current movement is too anti-bureaucratic to be techno- fascism. She says it’s not technocracy, and not quite techno-libertarianism either. So what is it? Maybe there isn’t one fixed term to describe exactly what’s happening, or maybe it’s more of an amalgamation of a bunch of these things. But Margaret did bring up one more term that was not on my whiteboard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think one thing that’s kind of consistent through a through line is techno-optimism or a belief in the power of technology to do good things and that more technology is better, and that I think with that kind of is an adversarial or a suspicion of government bureaucracy, feeling like tech is better than the bureaucrats. This tech is something that… ultimately, will do things better and improve things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Techno-optimism sounds, honestly, kind of positive? But right now we’re also seeing the very real consequences of this ideology play out in government operations, people losing their government jobs, infrastructure crumbling. I mean, we could talk about that for the rest of the episode. What even are the core beliefs here? Who’s pushing it? And that is another tab. Techno-optimism? So Margaret was just telling us about this adversarial relationship between techno-optimists and government bureaucracy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That sentiment ranges from yes, a sort of explicitly anti-government, you know, get the state out of things as much as possible, liberate currency, liberate individuals and groups from the control of state regulations and nation states. And then there’s also a kind of more affirmative, “hey, the government needs our help, let’s improve it and use all of these principles that we’ve used in developing these amazing products in the valley and let’s bring them to the government.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A lot of these beliefs are laid out in The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. It was written in 2023 by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. Here he is reading from it on the Startup Archive YouTube channel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marc Andreessen: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We believe that we have been and will always be the masters of technology, not mastered by technology. This is a really key point today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mark Andreessen was the co-founder of one of the early internet browsers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Netscape, which was the kind of original kind of gateway drug to the internet. This was the browser that started it all. This was also the company that when it went public 14 months after it was established, it started the dot-com boom. By the time he’s 25 years old, he’s on the cover of Time magazine sitting on a throne. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Andreessen went on to co-found the legendary Andreessen Horowitz Venture Capital Fund that has, among other things, invested heavily in crypto. And unsurprisingly, investing in crypto, a currency that doesn’t rely on a government or bank to maintain it, is informed by his beliefs. In his 5,000-word techno-optimist manifesto, Andreessen writes this: “Centralized planning is doomed to fail. The system of production and consumption is too complex. Decentralization harnesses complexity for the benefit of everyone. Centralization will starve you to death.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh yeah, that’s such a fascinating document. Andreessen’s framing of techno-optimism and his manifesto really points the finger at not just bureaucracy and government bureaucracy and regulation as something that’s standing in the way, but also programs like DEI programs and the pressure that tech employees have brought on within companies over the last five years to diversify workforce and to create better working conditions for different types of employees. Um, unionization drives, you know, we’ve seen this activism in tech that really was unprecedented in the industry up until the last decade. I mean, not at this scale. So these are things that are, you know, being identified as this is standing in the way of, you know our progress. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marc Andreessen: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Victim mentality is a curse in every domain of life, including in our relationship with technology. Both unnecessary and self-defeating, we are not victims, we’re conquerors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This manifesto is considered extreme, even in the tech industry. In it, Andreessen names what he calls “enemies.” Bureaucracy, regulation, academia, risk management, tech ethics, sustainability, social responsibility, and trust and safety. His version of techno-optimism sees anything that could hinder technological progress as the enemy. Even things that most people would agree make society better. like user safety or labor rights. In his manifesto, he also makes some very dubious claims that society doesn’t need those things because the free market will only drive innovation that is ultimately good for humanity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Andreessen’s manifesto doesn’t speak for everyone in Silicon Valley, but a lot of these broligarchs seem to espouse very similar anti-government, anti-diversity talking points. And this lines up very well with the modern Republican Party. But techno-optimism is an ideology that doesn’t fit neatly into a political box. So how can we make sense of the recent political swings of the tech world? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, let’s dig into this when we come back from this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab. Is Silicon Valley right or left? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In recent history, tech industry leaders have aligned with political parties, not necessarily by ideology. They’ve stood by whichever party was better for business. And following the techno-optimist way of thinking, they’ve chosen whichever party wouldn’t stand in the way of innovation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s moved from being Republican to Democrat to back again. Even though in recent years, Silicon Valley and the Bay Area generally has been a pretty blue place, right? It’s associated with Democrats, with national Democratic lawmakers, and for a long time it was the Republican party that was just pro-business, low taxes. There were enough Californians and Northern Californians in Washington during the Reagan years that there were people who could advocate for the special things that, say, the semiconductor industry needed and its competition with Japanese chipmakers, which was a really big deal in the 80s. And then that changes in the 90s. The Republican party, social conservatism becomes more predominant. And the Democrats, particularly Bill Clinton and Al Gore, kind of presented themselves as business-friendly centrists and especially internet business-friendly centrists and really wooed Silicon Valley very successfully. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this very friendly approach to tech continued throughout Obama’s eight years as president, which meant that regulations were minimal. Very techno-optimist, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is also when everyone’s kind of feeling that social media is basically a net good and awesome and hadn’t realized that bringing humanity online would bring all the great things about humanity online as well as the not great things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the years after Obama was in office, technology has progressed at a breakneck pace. And with that, society has realized that progress at all costs isn’t always what’s best for actual human beings. Remember when whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed government surveillance programs? Or when the Cambridge Analytica scandal happened and news broke that your Facebook data could be mined for political advertising without your consent? And then there’s everything happening now with AI. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This isn’t what we signed up for. And then there’s increased criticism of privacy or lack thereof. These companies not doing enough to protect user privacy, that’s starting to gather steam. There’s starting to be criticism of the gender imbalance in VC and in companies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Still, the tech industry was doing pretty well by the end of Trump’s first term. Margaret says that tax cuts and other incentives were part of it, but there were outside forces too. Think of the state of the world back then. The COVID pandemic had just started, and online platforms had a huge growth spurt because everyone kind of just had to be online. So, Silicon Valley flourished. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then Biden is elected, and his administration kind of takes a more aggressive stance when it comes to antitrust. It’s kind of going back to the way things were 50 years ago, but that’s after this really long time of very loose enforcement. What happened during the Biden years is this love affair between the Democratic Party and Silicon Valley started souring because there were antitrust enforcement actions and there were, you know, support of the unionization drives in some of these tech companies and some pretty tough talk from the Biden White House about “tech is too big and we need to do something about it.” But for this handful of very powerful, very influential, very vocal tech leaders, they really shifted their allegiance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I also am really curious by your thoughts on whether this shift to the right in Silicon Valley is actually purely just about business, just about pro-capitalism, or if it’s actually ideological. I mean, I’m thinking, like you said, Marc Andreessen was once a—well, he keeps flip-flopping. He was a Republican and a Democrat, now Republican again. Elon Musk was a Democrat until a couple years ago. I mean, I’m thinking of a tweet where he was like bragging about LGBTQ equality at Tesla, which seems unfathomable now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a different world. Yeah. I mean, Elon Musk built electric cars. Democrats were and are his constituency. Yeah, it’s very different. I think it is both business and ideology, and it’s all bound up together. That’s the way I read it. I think there is kind of a core, let’s protect the business. But there’s also, yes, I think there’s ideology. I think there is a lot of resentment. There is a lot of, you know, these billionaires are feeling aggrieved. They’re like, all we did was we built these amazing products that you guys love so much that you can’t stop using. You don’t even understand how this stuff works. And you’re trying to regulate us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s this real sort of disdain for Washington policymakers who legitimately have, you now, time and again, there have been many instances in which senators and members of Congress have shown their deep ignorance about technology. That is fair. And there’s also resentment of like, okay, our employees are like rising up against us and they’re not focused on building the next great thing. They’re focused on, you know, other stuff that we don’t think is important to the business. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So we’ve got this foundation of resentment, ideology, and business interests. What is it building toward? How about another tab? What’s the techno-optimist agenda? At the top of this episode, we have a bit about those self-governed islands funded by tech billionaires. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Automated Voice: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Distance to destination, 4126 miles. Enjoy your ride. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But it’s not just a bit. These are real-life projects. How does that play into the dream of techno-optimism? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh yeah, the self-funded, it’s all in the name of escaping from the state, escaping from the old ways of doing things. It’s the ultimate disruption, right? And we can see lots of different products and projects and tools, both fantastical utopian ones that haven’t come into being yet, and ones that are very, very real, like, say, the blockchain, spurred by this philosophy that the existing financial institutions, governmental institutions, fiat currency, you name it, that has failed people. It is something where nation states have too much power. And also it’s kind of this populist argument too, that ordinary, the little guy’s been, you know, hasn’t been given a fair shake. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While cryptocurrency hasn’t reached the widespread adoption its advocates predicted, it’s still doing pretty well for itself. But in practice, these techno-optimist, human-built startup islands that operate outside of government oversight have fizzled out. Unfortunately for Peter Thiel’s seasteading dream, the flourishing network of independent tech hub islands off the coast of San Francisco still does not exist. The Seasteading Institute has tried, again and again, to build floating cities in different parts of the world over the years, but those plans have also… sunk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there’s Prospera, another VC-funded libertarian city, this time built on existing land. It’s on an island off the coast of Honduras, backed by familiar names like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen. Construction started in 2021, but since then, the project has been accused of neocolonialism, weighed down with legal battles and embroiled in political turmoil. So instead of going through all the effort of building whole new tech island nations, it appears that some techno optimists are shifting their focus back home. They’re trying to bring it stateside, like California forever. A couple of years ago, this company started buying up acres of empty farmland in the Northeast Bay Area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Getting some exclusive renderings tonight of a proposed new city in Solano County, California Forever. The group behind this huge plan says the community will be home eventually to some 400,000 people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’re trying to build a utopian walkable city of tech startups and sustainable residential homes from scratch, about 50 miles from San Francisco. They’ve got some pretty big name investors backing the project, like Mark Andreessen and PayPal mafia member and LinkedIn co-founder, Reid Hoffman. But this project is also facing a lot of local resistance. Some of these proposed cities go even further than just being startup hubs. According to reporting from Wired, some groups have met with Trump to launch Prospera-like startup nations here in the United States, what they call “freedom cities.” They want to build modern-day company towns on federal land, which would be exempt from any regulatory oversight or taxes. But it begs the question, “whose freedom would be prioritized?” Freedom cities would not be required to be democratically run and wouldn’t be held to workers’ rights laws. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It isn’t about a better government. It isn’t about a better, you know, better delivery of government services. It’s about, “let’s get this government out of the way and let’s build something entirely new and something that we control that’s driven by this engineering thinking, by this tech-forward, techno-libertarian thinking, because we have made amazing things, we have been responsible for amazing progress, and if we are given the power to do it and the smartest people in the room are allowed to build these things independent of government.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s not technocracy. It’s not bringing the experts into government necessarily, although a number of Valley people are now in the government. But I see sort of an end game kind of feeding into this philosophy that seems kind of radical but is something that’s been percolating for a really long time, which is, “where we’re going and where we need to go as a — humanity needs to go is beyond these old bureaucratic governmental structures as they are now.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Techno-optimism says that we don’t need tech ethics or regulatory bodies or any sense of social responsibility because the invisible hand of the free market will guide innovation. But if you look at history, that story that techno-optimists like to tell is complete fiction. Okay, how about one last tab? The real story of Silicon Valley innovation. So despite the origin story that a lot of tech titans like to claim, Margaret says that the legendary innovation of Silicon Valley exists because of government intervention, not in spite of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a really interesting collective amnesia that is part of the secret of Silicon Valley, funnily enough. So the government has played a huge, huge role in the growth of the electronics industry, the computing industry over time here and elsewhere. But it’s done in a way that’s kind of been hard to see. It’s been indirect, right? It’s contracts going to private companies or universities. It’s regulations that are lowering taxes or lowering regulation. I mean, that’s government action. That’s government help, right. because it has been kind of indirect and subtle, a lot of people in the industry kind of say, okay, where our success comes from, government getting out of the way. Like we are so great because government has not been kind of micromanaging us or curbing our growth. And yeah, that is true, but part of this was this industry was only in the last 15 years has become as enormous as it has. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Turns out, that dreaded government regulation that these corporations fear so much has historically been great for the industry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anti-trust enforcement has been this really important factor in driving innovation over time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As an example, Margaret talks about the history of the transitor. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The invention that started it all, the thing that is the core of every microchip, that this is the digital revolution, the transistor. That was developed in Bell Labs, which was AT&T’s industrial laboratory in New Jersey in 1947. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The transistor was revolutionary in electronics. It basically controls the flow of electric signals. At the time, Bell Labs and AT&T had a monopoly over the telecommunications industry. They manufactured all the parts and operated the service itself. In 1949, the Department of Justice opened an antitrust investigation into AT&T. They settled the lawsuit in 1956, and AT&T was required to grant all applicants non-exclusive licenses for all existing and future Bell System patents, including the transistor. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so the DOJ forced AT&T to allow the transistor to be freely licensed by other companies. And this is how you had chip companies that emerge in the valley in the first place. We would not have silicon in the Valley if not for that Department of Justice condition, you know, putting that restraint on AT&T. This is why this political history is really useful to be aware of because there’s a, it’s legitimate to fear government interference in the innovation machine if you think that this has been a free market miracle and if government’s around, it is going to mess it up. But if you know the history and you realize, “oh, the innovation machine has actually been something that the government’s been part of and entrepreneurialism and government policy have existed side by side the whole time. Like, oh okay. So maybe that isn’t a bad thing.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just the sheer presence of having regulation or having policymakers and politicians in the room, setting the terms of the debate, that’s not going to be an innovation killer. In fact, an innovation killer will be if all the power just resides in the hands of a few companies and a few people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course, there are so many terms that can still apply, but we can’t cover all of political theory in a single deep dive, and no single ideology will explain what’s happening with our government. What we do know is that beyond semantics, we can always look at history to understand why this is happening now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Margaret O’Mara: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We are in uncharted waters in many ways right now in terms of where things will go next, but I do believe that historical knowledge is power. So the more you know, the more, you know. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay. I’m gonna cap these markers, roll away this whiteboard, and 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. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our senior editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Original music and sound design by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard and Catherine Monahan. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink DustSilver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you have feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org, follow us on Instagram @CloseAllTabsPod, 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/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\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "the-broligarchy-pt-1-chronicles-of-the-paypal-mafia",
"title": "The Broligarchy Pt 1: Chronicles of the PayPal Mafia",
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"headTitle": "The Broligarchy Pt 1: Chronicles of the PayPal Mafia | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>The term “broligarchy” refers to the Silicon Valley elite tech leaders who have accumulated vast amounts of wealth, power, and now, political control over the last quarter century. In the first of a two-part series, Morgan dives deep into one highly influential subset of this “broligarchy,” the so-called PayPal Mafia. Joined by The Guardian reporter Chris McGreal, we explore this group’s rise to political prominence, and look at some of its members’ roots in an oppressive political regime.\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=KQINC4594835433\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/profile/chrismcgreal\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris McGreal\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Reporter for \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Guardian\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk-peter-thiel-apartheid-south-africa\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Chris McGreal, \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/14/trump-musk-south-africa-afriforum\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“‘White supremacists in suits and ties’: the rightwing Afrikaner group in Trump’s ear”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Chris McGreal, \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/5/is-south-africa-confiscating-land-targeting-some-groups-as-trump-claims\">“Is South Africa ‘confiscating land’, targeting some groups as Trump claims?”\u003c/a> — Qaanitah Hunter, \u003cem>Al Jazeera\u003c/em>\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003c/h2>\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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guys, I think we need to talk about the broligarchy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 1 \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re seeing a rise in what I guess we’ll call the broligarchy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 2 \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The broligarchs really have an explicit political agenda. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 3 \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How do you survive the broligarchy? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You may have heard this word more and more often in the past few months as rich, well-connected tech bros gain power and influence in the current presidential administration. Think of the tech CEOs at inauguration. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, all lined up and ready to get cozy with the White House. They may be some of the most public-facing broligarchs, but there are a lot of highly influential tech dudes working behind the scenes. And today, we’re gonna look into a specific subset of these guys who are all deeply embedded or invested in the federal government. And they all seem to know each other. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So imagine a cork board with a bunch of photos on it, and I’ve got some red string in my hands. Let’s see how they’re all connected. Ready? So at the top of the board, there’s Elon Musk. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He’s the billionaire Tesla CEO who bought Twitter and turned it into X. He’s also leading the charge at the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, the organization slashing government agencies left and right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, let’s connect that to this guy on the right. There’s David Sachs, venture capitalist, famed angel investor, and recently appointed White House AI and Crypto Czar. And then a little lower, there’s Ken Howery, another billionaire VC and the former ambassador to Sweden during Trump’s first term. He’s the current pick for ambassador to Denmark. So if Trump actually tries to colonize Greenland, Ken Howery will be involved. Keeping track of those strings? Good, because here’s another one on the other side of the board, Jacob Helberg, a tech advisor married to tech investor, Keith Rabois. Jacob Helberg is a nominee for undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And at the center of all of this is Peter Thiel, the elusive billionaire, tech titan, and big time Republican donor. He’s the one who introduced JD Vance to Trump in 2021. And through his Silicon Valley connections, he brought a whole bunch of other people into the White House orbit. So what do all of the guys in this web we’ve created have in common? And how are they using their proximity to the president to shape US policy? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This group’s ties to Silicon Valley are widely known, but what’s less public is that some of them have roots in an especially oppressive political regime. That’s what we’re getting into on the show today. Let’s dive in. \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\">Okay, so let’s get back to this cork board. Musk, Sacks, Howery, Helberg, Thiel, what’s the red thread connecting all of them? Well, they were involved in PayPal during its earliest years before the company went public and made everyone very rich. Or in Jacob Helberg’s case, married to a former PayPal executive who became very rich. This group is so well connected and so influential within Silicon Valley, that they’re known by this one nickname. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 4: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the PayPal Mafia \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 5: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Who are the PayPal Mafia? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 6: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The PayPal Mafia has laid the foundation for a new era of power. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let me get my big red Sharpie out. Within the PayPal mafia, there’s another subset of this group that we’re gonna draw a circle around today. And we’ll talk about that in a minute. But first, you know how this goes. We start with a new tab. What is the PayPal Mafia? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Countdown Announcer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Three, two, one, happy 2000! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s the year 2000. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>AOL: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ve got mail. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">X.com, the online bank service, not the shell of Twitter, has just merged with a software company, Confinity. Elon Musk co-founded X.Com, and Peter Thiel co-founded Confinity. This merged company is rebranded as PayPal. It’s a game changer, and the company’s secure online payment system becomes a massive success. Two years later, PayPal goes public. Then, eBay buys the company for $1.5 billion, giving everyone with a stake in PayPal a pretty hefty chunk of money. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, a lot of PayPal’s co-founders, executives, engineers, and other employees leave the company very quickly after eBay’s acquisition, but they keep in touch. They stay close. And in the years following, PayPal alumni, those co-founders, executives, engineers, and other employers, they go off and start other companies — YouTube, Tesla, LinkedIn, Yelp, and so many more. They also start investing in each other’s companies, attending each others’ parties, advising each other, sitting on each others’ boards, and co-founding more companies with each other. They become super influential within Silicon Valley. If you wanted to get your foot in the door in the tech industry, you needed to get good with the PayPal mafia. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The name comes from a 2007 Fortune magazine feature that literally called them the PayPal Mafia in the headline. The cover photo features 13 of them, all men, of course, cosplaying as seedy New Jersey mobsters. They’re dressed in track suits, leather jackets, or big boxy sports coats with the shoulder pads. They’ve got the chunky gold chains, of course, and their hair is slicked back, and they’re surrounded by poker chips and glasses of whiskey. A few of them are puffing on cigars. It’s a scene straight out of \u003cem>The Sopranos\u003c/em>. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tony Soprano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a stereotype, and it’s offensive. There is no mafia. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, this photo shoot might be considered an offensive caricature of Italian-American gangsters, but it’s 2007. It was a direct reference to the biggest show on TV at the time. And the godfather of the PayPal Mafia, front and center of the photo shoot is Peter Thiel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After PayPal, he co-founded Palantir Technologies, a big data company that has major contracts with the Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence agencies. And then he co-founded Founders Fund, this massive venture capital fund that was a super early investor in SpaceX and Facebook. He’s known as the godfather because he’s so well connected within both Silicon Valley and the U.S. government. And because he’s used his network to invest in companies and in people. Remember, he’s the one who put JD Vance on the map. He funded Vance’s Ohio Senate campaign and then orchestrated his first meeting with Trump. Thiel has been such a prominent figure within the tech industry that there’s a whole character, Peter Gregory, based off of him in the HBO show, Silicon Valley. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Hendricks: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, that is before I just give up and go back to college. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Peter Gregory: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do not do that. Go work at Burger King. Go into the woods and forage for nuts and berries. Do not go back to college. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, Thiel’s actual beliefs are all over the place. Like his TV counterpart, he has said that university education holds back innovation. In the ’90s, he and David Sacks co-authored a book about how multiculturalism and political correctness were ruining academia. And he’s also been really into building offshore, independent, libertarian islands where tech innovation can happen outside of any government oversight. But he’s got influence and some of his ideology seems to be spreading among the power players of the tech industry. Politically speaking, he’s endorsed and funded Republican candidates since the early 2000s and has been described as techno-libertarian, but his comments and writing veer toward what a lot of critics say is just fascist. His biographer, Max Chafkin, said that Thiel is, quote, “hostile to the idea of democracy.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anyway, Thiel has been one of Trump’s earliest political supporters. He backed Trump in 2016, and although he declined to fund the 2024 campaign, he also hosted an inauguration party back in January with a ton of Silicon Valley insiders. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many other members of the PayPal mafia up on my corkboard either haven’t been visibly involved in politics or have supported Democrats. Reid Hoffman, who was PayPal’s chief operating officer before he co-founded LinkedIn, was a major Democratic donor in 2024. And Elon Musk and David Sacks both endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But today, Musk and Sacks are both known to be very conservative, bordering on extremist. They’re also core members of the PayPal Mafia in this red circle we’ve drawn. But why are these three guys grouped together like this? There’s a lesser-known commonality linking them together. They have roots in apartheid-era South Africa. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, that’s a new tab. PayPal Mafia and apartheid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">During a speech on President Trump’s second inauguration day, Elon Musk did a gesture that looked a lot like a Nazi salute. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elon Musk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thank you. My heart goes out to you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then he turned around and did it again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elon Musk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is what victory feels like. Yeah!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was that Inauguration Day incident that piqued journalist Chris McGreal’s curiosity about Elon Musk and his upbringing. It turns out that Musk, along with several other members of the PayPal mafia, spent at least some of their formative years in South Africa, a place Chris knew well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South Africa’s apartheid system had, you know, roots, close links to fascism in Europe. So people started to ask, well, is there a connection? And that’s what we went to look at. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Chris has been a foreign correspondent for \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em> for decades, covering Africa, the Middle East, and Central America. And a little over 30 years ago, he was actually based in Johannesburg, covering the last years of South African apartheid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So apartheid was a system that essentially came to being in 1948. There’d always been racial discrimination, but the system that’s introduced in 1948 is a very rigid system of segregation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Under the system, all South Africans were registered and assigned to one of four racial groups — white, Asian, Native, which meant Black, or Colored, which lumped everyone who was mixed race into one group. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They were only allowed to marry or have sex with people of their same race. And they introduced legislation. It was called job reservation, which meant that the best jobs and the best land and the best everything were reserved for white people. This was a very rigid system of segregation that went far beyond what had existed, say, in the southern United States. And in some ways, it had its roots in fascism in 1930s Europe. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Elon Musk was born in Pretoria in 1971, the Prime Minister of South Africa was a man named John Vorster. In the 1930s, Vorster had been part of a South African fascist militia that was wildly anti-Semitic and openly pro-Nazi. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Vorster famously said that the system that they were promoting in South Africa was called Christian nationalism. And he said, in Germany, they call it Nazism, in Italy, they called it fascism. We call it Christian nationalism, but it’s essentially all the same thing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So that sets the stage for the kind of political environment that these core members of the PayPal mafia grew up in. Let’s take a closer look. There’s David Sacks, the White House AI and Crypto Czar. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So he was born in Cape Town, but at a relatively young age, five years old, I think, his family moves to Tennessee where he grows up. So he’s less directly affected by apartheid on the frontline at the coalface of apartheid. But you know he grew up in a white diaspora, white South African diaspora family, and remained very closely tied to South Africa. So you would have had those influences, but they wouldn’t have been quite so direct. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then Peter Thiel, PayPal Mafia godfather and kingmaker of Silicon Valley. And Chris noted that the area where Thiel spent his adolescence was openly supportive of the Nazis. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Peter Thiel’s father was in the mining business. They initially moved to Johannesburg. The white population was mostly of German descent. And even in the 1970s and ’80s, there was still open support for the Nazis. They still celebrated Hitler’s birthday every May. You could go into gift shops and buy swastika flags. I found a \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> article from 1975 where the reporter describes driving into a gas station and being met by an attendant who gives a Nazi salute and says Hitler died. That’s in the ’70s when Thiel’s at school in that city. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And lastly, Elon Musk. We know who he is by now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Musk’s father was a mine owner. He grew up in incredible wealth, even by the standards of white South Africa, which would have meant that he was surrounded by black servants and he certainly wouldn’t have wanted for anything that he needed. Musk, again, is perhaps the most interesting case. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris says that because Musk’s maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was actually deeply involved in a movement in Canada called Technocracy Incorporated. They pushed for abolishing democracy in favor of letting technical and scientific experts run the government. Under Haldeman’s leadership, the organization became increasingly fascist. And during World War II, the Canadian government banned the organization and arrested Haldemen for his opposition to the country’s fight against Hitler. Yes, you heard that correctly. Haldeman opposed the country’s fight against Hitler. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We get apartheid in South Africa in 1948, and Joshua Haldeman likes the look of that. He thinks that that’s a … that looks like a good system. So in 1950, he moves to South Africa where he can go on essentially living the fascist dream. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Haldeman, Musk’s grandfather, moves to South Africa. Not because he has any ties to the country, but because he likes the idea of apartheid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, the grandfather dies when Musk himself is very young, but the ideas live on inside that branch of the family. And Musk’s father, Errol, has described his kind of parents-in-law as openly neo-Nazi. So one of the things you’ll notice Musk ends up going to a high school called Pretoria Boys High, which under South Africa’s laws is racially segregated. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the complications of South Africa is that the white population isn’t homogenous. You’ve got the Afrikaners and they’re the people who were descended from the Dutch, and they are the people, who essentially ran the country politically. They were the people behind the National Party and apartheid. The other half of the population, white population, was English speakers, descendants of British colonists. These two white groups are actually in conflict quite a lot. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pretoria of Boys High was mostly English speakers. So inside that school, there were actually quite a lot of people who were resistant to apartheid and the Afrikaners and the National Party. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Those classmates who went on to resist apartheid include Edwin Cameron, who became a Supreme Court Justice under the post-apartheid system, and Peter Hain, who led the anti-apartheid movement in Britain. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So those kinds of people were in that school with Musk. But we don’t see any evidence, or we’ve never heard any evidence that he took a stand on apartheid. One of the things you can safely say about South Africa at that time, it’s no matter what your background and education, if you were white, you were growing up in immense privilege, surrounded by people who were treated as second, third and fourth class citizens compared to you by law. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the end, you still imbue some of that system, some of the racism, some with that privilege, even if you don’t recognize it at the time. I think that that’s probably true of Musk in particular. Perhaps some of the other men we’ve talked about less because they left South Africa at a younger age, but it’s hard to imagine that Musk wasn’t influenced by that in this way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like Chris said, others who grew up in the same environment, in the same place of privilege during apartheid, actually went on to espouse very different ideas and actively work against racism. So there isn’t always a direct line between someone’s upbringing and their politics as an adult. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, there are some connections here between these men’s backgrounds, their current anti-DEI stances, and the policies that they’re trying to influence both in the U.S. and abroad. And President Trump seems to be on that same wavelength, especially around U.S. policy toward South Africa. But that is a new tab after a quick break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so we just learned about how some core members of the PayPal mafia were all born in South Africa during this horrifically oppressive time called apartheid. So what does all this have to do with Trump’s fixation on South Africa? And that is a new tab. Trump, South Africa, and Elon Musk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 7: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s an escalating dispute between President Trump and South Africa over a new land policy that he says discriminates against the country’s white minority. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since getting back into the Oval Office, Trump has been paying a lot of attention to South Africa. First, he signed an executive order stopping all aid to South African and offering refugee status to white South Africans. And then he’s been posting about it over and over again on Truth Social, the right-leaning Twitter clone that he owns. So what’s this all about? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s about several things. One has nothing to do with the subject at hand, which is that South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice over what has been described as the genocide in Gaza. And there are a lot of people who have been very angered in the U.S. and in Washington by that and have been pressing Trump to punish South Africa for that. So that’s one part of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But a second part is, what’s happening in South Africa fits the narrative that you hear on the right in this country, particularly amongst white supremacists, about white genocide, about the Great Replacement Theory, all of those things which suggest that the white population of the United States and the white populations around the world is somehow under some kind threat from other races. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 8: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We begin with the latest on U.S.-South African tensions. Pretoria has pushed back as it continues to face strong allegations of racism from U. S. President Donald Trump and his South African-born ally Elon Musk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can see Trump first become aware of it in 2018, during his first presidency, when a group of Afrikaners who run an organization called AfriForum, and they’re pressing the idea that in South Africa, white farmers are being murdered for their land. What they’re portraying is that South Africa in the years after apartheid has essentially become a new kind of racist country, that now it’s black people persecuting white and instead of white people persecuting black people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This, of course, fits very much with a lot of the kind of stuff we hear from Trump and the people around him. And so it paints whites as victims. But AfriForum turned up in America in 2018, pushing this idea that there was this essentially white genocide going on. One of their number appears on Tucker Carlson on Fox News and starts talking about this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tucker Carlson \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South Africa is a diverse country, but the South African government would like to make it much less diverse. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>AfriForum Member \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Basically threatening white farmers that if they do not voluntarily hand over their land to black people, then there would be a violent takeover. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And Trump is watching and Trump tweets to his then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 3 \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a late night tweet, Trump said he’d asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to study South Africa’s land and farm seizures in addition to expropriations and large-scale killing of farmers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Trump comes back to power in January, it happens to coincide with a new law in South Africa, which is about redistribution of land. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 9 \u003c/b>F\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">rustration over the slow pace of land reform in South Africa has been mounting and the new expropriation act aims to accelerate the redistribution of land in the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Seventy percent of the land in South Africa, the agricultural land, is still in the hands of white people who only account for 7% of population. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Remember, during apartheid, black South Africans were subjected to extremely rigid segregation. The 1913 Natives Land Act designated the majority of South Africa as white and forbade the black indigenous population from owning land beyond a tiny amount that was set aside in special reserves. Black South Africans who were already living in those white areas were evicted en masse and had to relocate to poor townships or work as farm laborers. Either way, they were forced into poverty. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Expropriation Act, signed into South African law this year, sets up a legal framework to redistribute land and address ownership imbalance within the country. The government isn’t just seizing land left and right. There’s a whole process involved that also includes paying landowners a fair price. A lot of the backlash to the new law is over one clause that allows the South African government to take land without compensation, but only in very specific circumstances. Like if the land was abandoned or if the owner isn’t actually using it and is just holding onto it until the property value goes up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This was leapt on by the white right as evidence of essentially a new form of racism that white people were going to lose their land, including Musk. Musk for a while had been pressing the idea that affirmative action laws, that black empowerment laws in South Africa, were somehow a new formal apartheid. The idea of uplifting people who had been persecuted and discriminated against was actually a new form of apartheid. He was trying to turn the system on its head and say that whites are now the victims, which is plainly not the case. They remain economically dominant in South Africa and very much in a place of privilege. But that was the line that Musk was pushing. And it’s clear that Trump has been steered towards a direct confrontation with South Africa. I doubt he would have paid much attention on his own. I doubt he’s got into office this time and suddenly thought, I must go and deal with the South Africa situation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 9: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now in a social media post directly offering South African farmers and their families safe refuge in the U.S. and an expedited pathway to citizenship, erroneously stating that their land and farms were being confiscated. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there’s another link here between Trump’s renewed crusade against South African reparations for black citizens, the actual victims of apartheid, and Musk’s business interests. Specifically, his satellite internet service company, Starlink. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Musk has been in dispute with South Africa and government over affirmative action, over black empowerment for a couple of years now, and it seems to be rooted in part in his desire to get Starlink into South Africa. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Under South Africa’s Black empowerment initiatives, the country mandates that foreign investors in the telecoms industry have to have at least 30% black ownership in any local operations. Musk has been pushing back on this requirement, claiming that he’s standing up for white people against discrimination. And he has AfriForum lobbying on his behalf within South Africa. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think essentially what we’re seeing here, at least in part, because there are other forces of work at this as well, but in terms of Musk’s thing, I think, you know, he’s trying to pile on the pressure and Trump’s executive order is part of this on South Africa to back down on affirmative action laws on Black empowerment requirements for his businesses. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Musk has been on a similar crusade here in the U.S. He’s been openly critical of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and has said that DEI is just another word for racism. And although he isn’t technically a federal employee, he has been the public face of DOGE, which has slashed DEI programs and gutted federal agencies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In just a few months, they’ve canceled millions of dollars of federal grants for affordable housing programs, health research in marginalized communities, and education programs to help low-income students. DOGE also fired all employees in DEI positions who are disproportionately black, indigenous, or people of color. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Big picture here. I mean, the situation with Elon Musk in South Africa is just one example of how an unelected billionaire can sway policy. How else can you see this group of technocrats, as you said, how else do you see them influence U.S. politics going forward? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, I think, you know, what we should look at very closely is they want to strip back regulation. They want to step back accountability. They essentially want a totally free market in which they can do what they want. And I think that’s actually where the real influence will lie. Now, as we know, in American politics, since the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court, money talks a lot and they’ve got money. So I would imagine that they will be ensuring that the people who get elected to Congress are people sympathetic to that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So we’ve been looking at the PayPal mafia in South Africa, but let’s zoom out a bit and open one last tab. The rise of the broligarchy. Now, the PayPal mafia is not the only tech power group to exist. The broligarchy — and the power that they have — runs deep within American politics beyond the tech industry. Just look at the Citizens United ruling that Chris pointed out. This 2010 Supreme Court case redefined American elections by overhauling campaign finance laws. It struck down the limit on how much a corporation can directly spend on a political campaign, and set the stage for the creation of super PACs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This ruling is what allowed former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a former Republican turned Democrat, to donate nearly $100 million to various super PACS funding the 2024 Democratic presidential campaign. It’s also directly linked to Elon Musk launching his own super PAC and spending over a quarter of a billion dollars funding Donald Trump’s campaign. The concept of the American oligarchy is not new. It’s just that now the tech bros are at the forefront. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We kind of get hung up on these guys because they’re obviously of the moment, and that’s important. But, you know, it’s worth looking at what’s been happening in the United States over the past 40 years. And it’s an oligarchy that has been developing. I mean, we’ve seen some very powerful interests in this country essentially taking control of politics, and I think these guys have moved to the fore over recent years because of the role that technology has come to play, and then they may be pushing it in new directions. But, you know, it’s not like they are the original oligarchs in this country; these are guys who’ve emerged at the most kind of fundamental time with Trump in power. They are, in many ways, you know, like oligarchs everywhere, right? They’re serving their own interests and they are hijacking politics to do it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve been living at the whims of billionaires throughout American history. It’s just that in the past it wasn’t as obvious. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve seen the results of 40 years of deregulation, 40 years of being told that government is bad and big business is good. I mean, it’s clear in the United States that people’s lives are, you know, really quite directly controlled in lots of ways by corporations. American lives have been greatly influenced by this kind of control. The difference I think with, as you say, the broligarchy is that they’re more visible. They’re hungry. In the past, they’ve been hungry for money, and I think now they’re hungry for power. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s not just that the PayPal mafia and other members of the broligarchy are rich and powerful. A lot of them have also expressed some pretty fascist white supremacist views. So what does it mean for democracy if this group of broligarchs has this much power? Is there any historic precedent for this dystopia that we’re currently living through? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, that is a separate deep dive. So you’ll have to come back next week when we dig further into the broligarchy. We’re gonna figure out if the rumors are true. Are we really slouching toward techno-fascism? Or are we already in it? And what does techno-fascism even mean? For now, let’s close 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. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts and helps edit the show. Sound design by Maya Cueva. Original music by Chris Egusa, with additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. \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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dust Silver K84 Wired Mechanical Keyboard with Gateron Red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you have feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs at kqed.org. Follow us on Instagram @CloseAllTabsPod. And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple podcasts or whatever platform you use. Thanks for listening!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The term “broligarchy” refers to the Silicon Valley elite tech leaders who have accumulated vast amounts of wealth, power, and now, political control over the last quarter century. In the first of a two-part series, Morgan dives deep into one highly influential subset of this “broligarchy,” the so-called PayPal Mafia. Joined by The Guardian reporter Chris McGreal, we explore this group’s rise to political prominence, and look at some of its members’ roots in an oppressive political regime.\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=KQINC4594835433\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/profile/chrismcgreal\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris McGreal\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Reporter for \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Guardian\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk-peter-thiel-apartheid-south-africa\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Chris McGreal, \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/14/trump-musk-south-africa-afriforum\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“‘White supremacists in suits and ties’: the rightwing Afrikaner group in Trump’s ear”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Chris McGreal, \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/5/is-south-africa-confiscating-land-targeting-some-groups-as-trump-claims\">“Is South Africa ‘confiscating land’, targeting some groups as Trump claims?”\u003c/a> — Qaanitah Hunter, \u003cem>Al Jazeera\u003c/em>\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guys, I think we need to talk about the broligarchy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 1 \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re seeing a rise in what I guess we’ll call the broligarchy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 2 \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The broligarchs really have an explicit political agenda. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 3 \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How do you survive the broligarchy? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You may have heard this word more and more often in the past few months as rich, well-connected tech bros gain power and influence in the current presidential administration. Think of the tech CEOs at inauguration. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, all lined up and ready to get cozy with the White House. They may be some of the most public-facing broligarchs, but there are a lot of highly influential tech dudes working behind the scenes. And today, we’re gonna look into a specific subset of these guys who are all deeply embedded or invested in the federal government. And they all seem to know each other. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So imagine a cork board with a bunch of photos on it, and I’ve got some red string in my hands. Let’s see how they’re all connected. Ready? So at the top of the board, there’s Elon Musk. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He’s the billionaire Tesla CEO who bought Twitter and turned it into X. He’s also leading the charge at the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, the organization slashing government agencies left and right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, let’s connect that to this guy on the right. There’s David Sachs, venture capitalist, famed angel investor, and recently appointed White House AI and Crypto Czar. And then a little lower, there’s Ken Howery, another billionaire VC and the former ambassador to Sweden during Trump’s first term. He’s the current pick for ambassador to Denmark. So if Trump actually tries to colonize Greenland, Ken Howery will be involved. Keeping track of those strings? Good, because here’s another one on the other side of the board, Jacob Helberg, a tech advisor married to tech investor, Keith Rabois. Jacob Helberg is a nominee for undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And at the center of all of this is Peter Thiel, the elusive billionaire, tech titan, and big time Republican donor. He’s the one who introduced JD Vance to Trump in 2021. And through his Silicon Valley connections, he brought a whole bunch of other people into the White House orbit. So what do all of the guys in this web we’ve created have in common? And how are they using their proximity to the president to shape US policy? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This group’s ties to Silicon Valley are widely known, but what’s less public is that some of them have roots in an especially oppressive political regime. That’s what we’re getting into on the show today. Let’s dive in. \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\">Okay, so let’s get back to this cork board. Musk, Sacks, Howery, Helberg, Thiel, what’s the red thread connecting all of them? Well, they were involved in PayPal during its earliest years before the company went public and made everyone very rich. Or in Jacob Helberg’s case, married to a former PayPal executive who became very rich. This group is so well connected and so influential within Silicon Valley, that they’re known by this one nickname. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 4: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the PayPal Mafia \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 5: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Who are the PayPal Mafia? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 6: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The PayPal Mafia has laid the foundation for a new era of power. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let me get my big red Sharpie out. Within the PayPal mafia, there’s another subset of this group that we’re gonna draw a circle around today. And we’ll talk about that in a minute. But first, you know how this goes. We start with a new tab. What is the PayPal Mafia? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Countdown Announcer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Three, two, one, happy 2000! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s the year 2000. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>AOL: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ve got mail. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">X.com, the online bank service, not the shell of Twitter, has just merged with a software company, Confinity. Elon Musk co-founded X.Com, and Peter Thiel co-founded Confinity. This merged company is rebranded as PayPal. It’s a game changer, and the company’s secure online payment system becomes a massive success. Two years later, PayPal goes public. Then, eBay buys the company for $1.5 billion, giving everyone with a stake in PayPal a pretty hefty chunk of money. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, a lot of PayPal’s co-founders, executives, engineers, and other employees leave the company very quickly after eBay’s acquisition, but they keep in touch. They stay close. And in the years following, PayPal alumni, those co-founders, executives, engineers, and other employers, they go off and start other companies — YouTube, Tesla, LinkedIn, Yelp, and so many more. They also start investing in each other’s companies, attending each others’ parties, advising each other, sitting on each others’ boards, and co-founding more companies with each other. They become super influential within Silicon Valley. If you wanted to get your foot in the door in the tech industry, you needed to get good with the PayPal mafia. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The name comes from a 2007 Fortune magazine feature that literally called them the PayPal Mafia in the headline. The cover photo features 13 of them, all men, of course, cosplaying as seedy New Jersey mobsters. They’re dressed in track suits, leather jackets, or big boxy sports coats with the shoulder pads. They’ve got the chunky gold chains, of course, and their hair is slicked back, and they’re surrounded by poker chips and glasses of whiskey. A few of them are puffing on cigars. It’s a scene straight out of \u003cem>The Sopranos\u003c/em>. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tony Soprano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a stereotype, and it’s offensive. There is no mafia. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, this photo shoot might be considered an offensive caricature of Italian-American gangsters, but it’s 2007. It was a direct reference to the biggest show on TV at the time. And the godfather of the PayPal Mafia, front and center of the photo shoot is Peter Thiel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After PayPal, he co-founded Palantir Technologies, a big data company that has major contracts with the Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence agencies. And then he co-founded Founders Fund, this massive venture capital fund that was a super early investor in SpaceX and Facebook. He’s known as the godfather because he’s so well connected within both Silicon Valley and the U.S. government. And because he’s used his network to invest in companies and in people. Remember, he’s the one who put JD Vance on the map. He funded Vance’s Ohio Senate campaign and then orchestrated his first meeting with Trump. Thiel has been such a prominent figure within the tech industry that there’s a whole character, Peter Gregory, based off of him in the HBO show, Silicon Valley. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Hendricks: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, that is before I just give up and go back to college. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Peter Gregory: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do not do that. Go work at Burger King. Go into the woods and forage for nuts and berries. Do not go back to college. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, Thiel’s actual beliefs are all over the place. Like his TV counterpart, he has said that university education holds back innovation. In the ’90s, he and David Sacks co-authored a book about how multiculturalism and political correctness were ruining academia. And he’s also been really into building offshore, independent, libertarian islands where tech innovation can happen outside of any government oversight. But he’s got influence and some of his ideology seems to be spreading among the power players of the tech industry. Politically speaking, he’s endorsed and funded Republican candidates since the early 2000s and has been described as techno-libertarian, but his comments and writing veer toward what a lot of critics say is just fascist. His biographer, Max Chafkin, said that Thiel is, quote, “hostile to the idea of democracy.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anyway, Thiel has been one of Trump’s earliest political supporters. He backed Trump in 2016, and although he declined to fund the 2024 campaign, he also hosted an inauguration party back in January with a ton of Silicon Valley insiders. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many other members of the PayPal mafia up on my corkboard either haven’t been visibly involved in politics or have supported Democrats. Reid Hoffman, who was PayPal’s chief operating officer before he co-founded LinkedIn, was a major Democratic donor in 2024. And Elon Musk and David Sacks both endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But today, Musk and Sacks are both known to be very conservative, bordering on extremist. They’re also core members of the PayPal Mafia in this red circle we’ve drawn. But why are these three guys grouped together like this? There’s a lesser-known commonality linking them together. They have roots in apartheid-era South Africa. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, that’s a new tab. PayPal Mafia and apartheid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">During a speech on President Trump’s second inauguration day, Elon Musk did a gesture that looked a lot like a Nazi salute. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elon Musk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thank you. My heart goes out to you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then he turned around and did it again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elon Musk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is what victory feels like. Yeah!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was that Inauguration Day incident that piqued journalist Chris McGreal’s curiosity about Elon Musk and his upbringing. It turns out that Musk, along with several other members of the PayPal mafia, spent at least some of their formative years in South Africa, a place Chris knew well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South Africa’s apartheid system had, you know, roots, close links to fascism in Europe. So people started to ask, well, is there a connection? And that’s what we went to look at. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Chris has been a foreign correspondent for \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em> for decades, covering Africa, the Middle East, and Central America. And a little over 30 years ago, he was actually based in Johannesburg, covering the last years of South African apartheid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So apartheid was a system that essentially came to being in 1948. There’d always been racial discrimination, but the system that’s introduced in 1948 is a very rigid system of segregation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Under the system, all South Africans were registered and assigned to one of four racial groups — white, Asian, Native, which meant Black, or Colored, which lumped everyone who was mixed race into one group. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They were only allowed to marry or have sex with people of their same race. And they introduced legislation. It was called job reservation, which meant that the best jobs and the best land and the best everything were reserved for white people. This was a very rigid system of segregation that went far beyond what had existed, say, in the southern United States. And in some ways, it had its roots in fascism in 1930s Europe. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Elon Musk was born in Pretoria in 1971, the Prime Minister of South Africa was a man named John Vorster. In the 1930s, Vorster had been part of a South African fascist militia that was wildly anti-Semitic and openly pro-Nazi. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Vorster famously said that the system that they were promoting in South Africa was called Christian nationalism. And he said, in Germany, they call it Nazism, in Italy, they called it fascism. We call it Christian nationalism, but it’s essentially all the same thing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So that sets the stage for the kind of political environment that these core members of the PayPal mafia grew up in. Let’s take a closer look. There’s David Sacks, the White House AI and Crypto Czar. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So he was born in Cape Town, but at a relatively young age, five years old, I think, his family moves to Tennessee where he grows up. So he’s less directly affected by apartheid on the frontline at the coalface of apartheid. But you know he grew up in a white diaspora, white South African diaspora family, and remained very closely tied to South Africa. So you would have had those influences, but they wouldn’t have been quite so direct. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then Peter Thiel, PayPal Mafia godfather and kingmaker of Silicon Valley. And Chris noted that the area where Thiel spent his adolescence was openly supportive of the Nazis. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Peter Thiel’s father was in the mining business. They initially moved to Johannesburg. The white population was mostly of German descent. And even in the 1970s and ’80s, there was still open support for the Nazis. They still celebrated Hitler’s birthday every May. You could go into gift shops and buy swastika flags. I found a \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> article from 1975 where the reporter describes driving into a gas station and being met by an attendant who gives a Nazi salute and says Hitler died. That’s in the ’70s when Thiel’s at school in that city. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And lastly, Elon Musk. We know who he is by now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Musk’s father was a mine owner. He grew up in incredible wealth, even by the standards of white South Africa, which would have meant that he was surrounded by black servants and he certainly wouldn’t have wanted for anything that he needed. Musk, again, is perhaps the most interesting case. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris says that because Musk’s maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was actually deeply involved in a movement in Canada called Technocracy Incorporated. They pushed for abolishing democracy in favor of letting technical and scientific experts run the government. Under Haldeman’s leadership, the organization became increasingly fascist. And during World War II, the Canadian government banned the organization and arrested Haldemen for his opposition to the country’s fight against Hitler. Yes, you heard that correctly. Haldeman opposed the country’s fight against Hitler. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We get apartheid in South Africa in 1948, and Joshua Haldeman likes the look of that. He thinks that that’s a … that looks like a good system. So in 1950, he moves to South Africa where he can go on essentially living the fascist dream. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Haldeman, Musk’s grandfather, moves to South Africa. Not because he has any ties to the country, but because he likes the idea of apartheid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, the grandfather dies when Musk himself is very young, but the ideas live on inside that branch of the family. And Musk’s father, Errol, has described his kind of parents-in-law as openly neo-Nazi. So one of the things you’ll notice Musk ends up going to a high school called Pretoria Boys High, which under South Africa’s laws is racially segregated. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the complications of South Africa is that the white population isn’t homogenous. You’ve got the Afrikaners and they’re the people who were descended from the Dutch, and they are the people, who essentially ran the country politically. They were the people behind the National Party and apartheid. The other half of the population, white population, was English speakers, descendants of British colonists. These two white groups are actually in conflict quite a lot. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pretoria of Boys High was mostly English speakers. So inside that school, there were actually quite a lot of people who were resistant to apartheid and the Afrikaners and the National Party. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Those classmates who went on to resist apartheid include Edwin Cameron, who became a Supreme Court Justice under the post-apartheid system, and Peter Hain, who led the anti-apartheid movement in Britain. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So those kinds of people were in that school with Musk. But we don’t see any evidence, or we’ve never heard any evidence that he took a stand on apartheid. One of the things you can safely say about South Africa at that time, it’s no matter what your background and education, if you were white, you were growing up in immense privilege, surrounded by people who were treated as second, third and fourth class citizens compared to you by law. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the end, you still imbue some of that system, some of the racism, some with that privilege, even if you don’t recognize it at the time. I think that that’s probably true of Musk in particular. Perhaps some of the other men we’ve talked about less because they left South Africa at a younger age, but it’s hard to imagine that Musk wasn’t influenced by that in this way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like Chris said, others who grew up in the same environment, in the same place of privilege during apartheid, actually went on to espouse very different ideas and actively work against racism. So there isn’t always a direct line between someone’s upbringing and their politics as an adult. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, there are some connections here between these men’s backgrounds, their current anti-DEI stances, and the policies that they’re trying to influence both in the U.S. and abroad. And President Trump seems to be on that same wavelength, especially around U.S. policy toward South Africa. But that is a new tab after a quick break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so we just learned about how some core members of the PayPal mafia were all born in South Africa during this horrifically oppressive time called apartheid. So what does all this have to do with Trump’s fixation on South Africa? And that is a new tab. Trump, South Africa, and Elon Musk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 7: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s an escalating dispute between President Trump and South Africa over a new land policy that he says discriminates against the country’s white minority. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since getting back into the Oval Office, Trump has been paying a lot of attention to South Africa. First, he signed an executive order stopping all aid to South African and offering refugee status to white South Africans. And then he’s been posting about it over and over again on Truth Social, the right-leaning Twitter clone that he owns. So what’s this all about? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s about several things. One has nothing to do with the subject at hand, which is that South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice over what has been described as the genocide in Gaza. And there are a lot of people who have been very angered in the U.S. and in Washington by that and have been pressing Trump to punish South Africa for that. So that’s one part of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But a second part is, what’s happening in South Africa fits the narrative that you hear on the right in this country, particularly amongst white supremacists, about white genocide, about the Great Replacement Theory, all of those things which suggest that the white population of the United States and the white populations around the world is somehow under some kind threat from other races. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 8: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We begin with the latest on U.S.-South African tensions. Pretoria has pushed back as it continues to face strong allegations of racism from U. S. President Donald Trump and his South African-born ally Elon Musk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can see Trump first become aware of it in 2018, during his first presidency, when a group of Afrikaners who run an organization called AfriForum, and they’re pressing the idea that in South Africa, white farmers are being murdered for their land. What they’re portraying is that South Africa in the years after apartheid has essentially become a new kind of racist country, that now it’s black people persecuting white and instead of white people persecuting black people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This, of course, fits very much with a lot of the kind of stuff we hear from Trump and the people around him. And so it paints whites as victims. But AfriForum turned up in America in 2018, pushing this idea that there was this essentially white genocide going on. One of their number appears on Tucker Carlson on Fox News and starts talking about this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tucker Carlson \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South Africa is a diverse country, but the South African government would like to make it much less diverse. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>AfriForum Member \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Basically threatening white farmers that if they do not voluntarily hand over their land to black people, then there would be a violent takeover. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And Trump is watching and Trump tweets to his then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 3 \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a late night tweet, Trump said he’d asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to study South Africa’s land and farm seizures in addition to expropriations and large-scale killing of farmers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Trump comes back to power in January, it happens to coincide with a new law in South Africa, which is about redistribution of land. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 9 \u003c/b>F\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">rustration over the slow pace of land reform in South Africa has been mounting and the new expropriation act aims to accelerate the redistribution of land in the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Seventy percent of the land in South Africa, the agricultural land, is still in the hands of white people who only account for 7% of population. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Remember, during apartheid, black South Africans were subjected to extremely rigid segregation. The 1913 Natives Land Act designated the majority of South Africa as white and forbade the black indigenous population from owning land beyond a tiny amount that was set aside in special reserves. Black South Africans who were already living in those white areas were evicted en masse and had to relocate to poor townships or work as farm laborers. Either way, they were forced into poverty. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Expropriation Act, signed into South African law this year, sets up a legal framework to redistribute land and address ownership imbalance within the country. The government isn’t just seizing land left and right. There’s a whole process involved that also includes paying landowners a fair price. A lot of the backlash to the new law is over one clause that allows the South African government to take land without compensation, but only in very specific circumstances. Like if the land was abandoned or if the owner isn’t actually using it and is just holding onto it until the property value goes up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This was leapt on by the white right as evidence of essentially a new form of racism that white people were going to lose their land, including Musk. Musk for a while had been pressing the idea that affirmative action laws, that black empowerment laws in South Africa, were somehow a new formal apartheid. The idea of uplifting people who had been persecuted and discriminated against was actually a new form of apartheid. He was trying to turn the system on its head and say that whites are now the victims, which is plainly not the case. They remain economically dominant in South Africa and very much in a place of privilege. But that was the line that Musk was pushing. And it’s clear that Trump has been steered towards a direct confrontation with South Africa. I doubt he would have paid much attention on his own. I doubt he’s got into office this time and suddenly thought, I must go and deal with the South Africa situation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 9: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now in a social media post directly offering South African farmers and their families safe refuge in the U.S. and an expedited pathway to citizenship, erroneously stating that their land and farms were being confiscated. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there’s another link here between Trump’s renewed crusade against South African reparations for black citizens, the actual victims of apartheid, and Musk’s business interests. Specifically, his satellite internet service company, Starlink. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Musk has been in dispute with South Africa and government over affirmative action, over black empowerment for a couple of years now, and it seems to be rooted in part in his desire to get Starlink into South Africa. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Under South Africa’s Black empowerment initiatives, the country mandates that foreign investors in the telecoms industry have to have at least 30% black ownership in any local operations. Musk has been pushing back on this requirement, claiming that he’s standing up for white people against discrimination. And he has AfriForum lobbying on his behalf within South Africa. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think essentially what we’re seeing here, at least in part, because there are other forces of work at this as well, but in terms of Musk’s thing, I think, you know, he’s trying to pile on the pressure and Trump’s executive order is part of this on South Africa to back down on affirmative action laws on Black empowerment requirements for his businesses. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Musk has been on a similar crusade here in the U.S. He’s been openly critical of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and has said that DEI is just another word for racism. And although he isn’t technically a federal employee, he has been the public face of DOGE, which has slashed DEI programs and gutted federal agencies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In just a few months, they’ve canceled millions of dollars of federal grants for affordable housing programs, health research in marginalized communities, and education programs to help low-income students. DOGE also fired all employees in DEI positions who are disproportionately black, indigenous, or people of color. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Big picture here. I mean, the situation with Elon Musk in South Africa is just one example of how an unelected billionaire can sway policy. How else can you see this group of technocrats, as you said, how else do you see them influence U.S. politics going forward? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, I think, you know, what we should look at very closely is they want to strip back regulation. They want to step back accountability. They essentially want a totally free market in which they can do what they want. And I think that’s actually where the real influence will lie. Now, as we know, in American politics, since the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court, money talks a lot and they’ve got money. So I would imagine that they will be ensuring that the people who get elected to Congress are people sympathetic to that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So we’ve been looking at the PayPal mafia in South Africa, but let’s zoom out a bit and open one last tab. The rise of the broligarchy. Now, the PayPal mafia is not the only tech power group to exist. The broligarchy — and the power that they have — runs deep within American politics beyond the tech industry. Just look at the Citizens United ruling that Chris pointed out. This 2010 Supreme Court case redefined American elections by overhauling campaign finance laws. It struck down the limit on how much a corporation can directly spend on a political campaign, and set the stage for the creation of super PACs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This ruling is what allowed former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a former Republican turned Democrat, to donate nearly $100 million to various super PACS funding the 2024 Democratic presidential campaign. It’s also directly linked to Elon Musk launching his own super PAC and spending over a quarter of a billion dollars funding Donald Trump’s campaign. The concept of the American oligarchy is not new. It’s just that now the tech bros are at the forefront. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We kind of get hung up on these guys because they’re obviously of the moment, and that’s important. But, you know, it’s worth looking at what’s been happening in the United States over the past 40 years. And it’s an oligarchy that has been developing. I mean, we’ve seen some very powerful interests in this country essentially taking control of politics, and I think these guys have moved to the fore over recent years because of the role that technology has come to play, and then they may be pushing it in new directions. But, you know, it’s not like they are the original oligarchs in this country; these are guys who’ve emerged at the most kind of fundamental time with Trump in power. They are, in many ways, you know, like oligarchs everywhere, right? They’re serving their own interests and they are hijacking politics to do it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve been living at the whims of billionaires throughout American history. It’s just that in the past it wasn’t as obvious. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris McGreal: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve seen the results of 40 years of deregulation, 40 years of being told that government is bad and big business is good. I mean, it’s clear in the United States that people’s lives are, you know, really quite directly controlled in lots of ways by corporations. American lives have been greatly influenced by this kind of control. The difference I think with, as you say, the broligarchy is that they’re more visible. They’re hungry. In the past, they’ve been hungry for money, and I think now they’re hungry for power. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s not just that the PayPal mafia and other members of the broligarchy are rich and powerful. A lot of them have also expressed some pretty fascist white supremacist views. So what does it mean for democracy if this group of broligarchs has this much power? Is there any historic precedent for this dystopia that we’re currently living through? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, that is a separate deep dive. So you’ll have to come back next week when we dig further into the broligarchy. We’re gonna figure out if the rumors are true. Are we really slouching toward techno-fascism? Or are we already in it? And what does techno-fascism even mean? For now, let’s close 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. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts and helps edit the show. Sound design by Maya Cueva. Original music by Chris Egusa, with additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. \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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dust Silver K84 Wired Mechanical Keyboard with Gateron Red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you have feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs at kqed.org. Follow us on Instagram @CloseAllTabsPod. And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple podcasts or whatever platform you use. Thanks for listening!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "what-happens-if-the-internet-archive-goes-dark",
"title": "What Happens if the Internet Archive Goes Dark?",
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"content": "\u003cp>For decades, the Internet Archive has preserved our digital history. Lately, journalists and ordinary citizens have been turning to it more than ever, as the Trump administration undertakes an ideologically-driven purge of government websites. But the Archive itself faces an existential threat. In this episode, Close All Tabs Senior Editor Chris Egusa joins Morgan to discuss his visit to the Internet Archive and its colorful founder Brewster Kahle, the legal battles that could shut it down permanently — and what losing it might mean for accountability and the preservation of history.\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=KQINC4918161208\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Guests:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://brewster.kahle.org/\">Brewster Kahle\u003c/a>, Founder of the Internet Archive\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Further reading:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/internet-archive-major-label-music-lawsuit-1235105273/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Inside the $621 Million Legal Battle for the ‘Soul of the Internet’\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Jon Blistein, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rolling Stone\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.techradar.com/pro/open-internet-web-scraping-and-ai-the-unbreakable-link\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Open Internet, web scraping, and AI: the unbreakable link\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Julius Cerniauskas, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TechRadar\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/musicians-demand-music-labels-drop-their-internet-archive-lawsuit-214139644.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAK2IFY7PAMZw0BT91Rg2Pvhx66osGJFtnuFHxCEEx9slXFq6Lu1c6VJvuUZm0sVSQBFj11ViHZ6hZN6a_JMUEDU_hhjxeh_HxVHNP47DDOj9w5pnFaUWg81zH_miG2pKzGHH68STu0eXU_K2zFYpaJcNSunaSm1U71VVfyL2DIlF\">Musicians demand music labels drop their Internet Archive lawsuit\u003c/a> — Ian Carlos Campbell, \u003ci>Engadget\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is The Purge… Of government websites. Since President Trump’s inauguration, federal agency and military websites have been wiped. Some are gone completely, while others have been overhauled to remove any references to so-called woke terminology, all in this effort to comply with an executive order to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it seems like in the rush to remove all of these woke words, there were maybe some unintentional cuts, like when the Department of Defense took down a 1940s photo. It was a picture of a pilot, posing in front of one of the planes that dropped the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But what does this photo have to do with diversity, equity, or inclusion? Well, the plane was named the Enola Gay. It was named after the pilot’s mother, Enola Gay Tibbitts. There are still other photos of the Enola Gay available on government websites, but in the past few months, countless pages with crucial information have been wiped from the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fortunately, for journalists, historians, and anyone who cares about keeping track of facts, there’s a tool that lets us go back and see exactly how those websites have changed. Unfortunately, that very tool is under threat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, 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\">\u003cem>Close All Tabs\u003c/em> Senior Editor \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris Egusa\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is gonna walk us through this magical tool called the Wayback Machine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, Morgan. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I already have a tab open. It’s the current version of the State Department’s safety tips for queer people traveling abroad. And you have your own tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s the same web page, same URL, but I have gone back in time, kind of. That’s where the Wayback Machine comes in. It’s part of this organization called the Internet Archive. And for the past 30 years, it’s basically scraped the internet page by page and archived it. So if you have a URL or link to a website, you can go back and see all the ways that that website has changed. I used the Wayback Machine to look at the page from January 5th, before this executive order. At the top of the page, it’s addressed to LGBTQI plus travelers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Unlike the one I’m seeing, the one that’s currently live, which just says, L-G-B Travelers. What else does your version have? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it has a lot of resources. It has instructions for changing your passport’s gender marker, warnings about conversion therapy practices in other countries, and also links to the National Center for Transgender Equality and other organizations. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, this current one I have on my screen doesn’t have any of that, just no warnings about conversion therapy and definitely none of those resources for trans people. There’s actually no mention of trans people at all. They kept a link to the Trevor Project, but they made a point to say that it’s an organization for LGB youth. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Which is wild, because the Trevor Project is very involved in advocating for trans youth and gender-affirming care. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, and again, this is just one page out of who knows how many that have been altered to take the T out of LGBT. How panicked should we be about the scale of erasure of public information? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, this has happened before. During Trump’s first term, pages about climate change and the environment were altered to soften the language, or they were just wiped entirely. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But that purge wasn’t nearly as expansive or haphazard as the one we’re currently living through, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No, but I think it has prepared a lot of us for a situation like this. This time around, a lot more people are relying on the Wayback Machine and the Internet Archive. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, and in all of this mess, the existence of the internet archive itself is under threat, which could spell trouble for the future of all online libraries. So to get a better understanding of it all, Chris, you went to the archive in person a few weeks ago. Let’s start there. Let’s make that our first tab. What is the Internet Archive? You know, when I think of the Internet Archive, I’m thinking of like the Matrix, Cyberchase, when they’re like running through this kind of like cloud and there are just binary numbers everywhere. But the Internet Archive is a real physical location. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, no, it’s a real place. It is not in the Matrix. It is in San Francisco in the Richmond district. It’s in this very grand building and out front it has these huge Greek columns that kind of line the entrance of it. They actually chose the building in part because it resembles the archive’s logo, which is the columns of the Library of Alexandria. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Library of Alexandria. I mean, that is like the Greek idea of a universal library. That’s a pretty lofty idea to aspire to. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is. And the organization isn’t shy about their ambitions. Their stated mission is to provide, quote, universal access to all knowledge. According to their website, the archive currently contains, and I’m just gonna reel off a bunch of numbers here, 835 billion webpages. I think last I checked, that number’s actually close to a trillion. 44 million books and texts, 15 million audio recordings, 10.6 million videos, and on and on. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a lot, like, I can’t even quite conceptualize what a trillion web pages even looks like. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, Chris, tell me, what was the archive actually like? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was actually really cool. Brewster Kahle is the founder of the archive and he was really excited to give me a tour and introduce me to all kinds of old media devices they’d collected over the years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Edison invented these cylinders in 1880. Mostly, you know, things that you’ve never heard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So yeah, right when we got there, we go up some stairs and he shows me this very vintage, beautiful old gramophone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a Victor Talking Machine 5 from 1927. So it’s a old 78 RPM player, no electricity, it’s a crank, has a horn, so spinning up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Song: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey / A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t know if you recognize that song, but it immediately made me think of Twin Peaks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes! Yes, it does. I am right in the middle of my rewatch right now, so… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I need to do a re-watch in David Lynch’s honor, for sure. Yeah, and then when he started playing this, he then started dancing around the room, which is just like-. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, Audrey Horne. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Song: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A little bit jumbled and jivey \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So after visiting this little museum area, Brewster takes me into this huge room and it has this beautiful domed ceiling. It used to be a Christian Science Church. The whole building did. There are all these lines of pews that are facing where the pulpit used to be. And in place of that pulpit, there’s this huge projector screen. And so they use this place for like movie screenings, for local community events and things. But there is one thing that draws your eye more than anything else in the room. That is the statues. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Statues? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, they are these hundreds of terracotta figures. They are about waist high, and each one of them has distinct features in clothing. And they’re all kind of facing forward, like they’re congregants in this hall of worship. Haunting. So it’s a bit of an eerie scene, but according to Brewster… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you work for the archive for three years, then we make a little statue. Basically tributes to the people that made the organization happen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So not like framed photos, just a three foot statue. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes, exactly. And they’re really detailed. Another employee was with us on the tour. His name is Chris Freeland. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Freeland: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s weird to be standing here in front of a terracotta statue of yourself, but here we are. It does look like me, and that’s also uncanny. Everyone says they got the beard right, which is making me sad, since it is covered in gray and no longer brown, or red-brown, like it was when I was, you know, 20 years younger, but here we are. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And all these statues are standing in the pews and around the outside of the room, facing the front, sort of at attention. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know what this reminds me of? It’s that terracotta army that’s like protecting the tomb of like the first emperor of China. And they’re meant to like protect the emperor in the afterlife. And I guess it’s fitting because these statues look like they’re, I don’t know, protecting the internet ephemera long after it’s gone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s actually very appropriate because behind all of these statues in the very back of the room is where the servers live. Um, he tells me that they hold 145 petabytes of data, which I don’t deal in petabytes, it’s the one after terabyte. Um, so it’s a lot. And yeah, these are the servers where all of the billions of web pages, videos, and audio, where all of it lives. There’s a cool moment actually, like when you stare at these devices, you see all of these twinkling blue lights flashing and flickering across them, um, like hundreds a second. And here is what Brewster told me about that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Every time a light blinks is somebody uploading or downloading something from the Internet Archive. I think that the technology reflects the people that make it, so let’s make it beautiful. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That sounds almost magical. I mean, I get how this could be like a religious experience. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes, and I almost compare it to the way that old cathedrals were meant to evoke that sense of awe. It was hard not to feel a little awestruck being in that place. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These servers hold some non-trivial percentage of all of the published works of humankind. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so tell me about Brewster, the guy who founded this whole thing, started this statue army and this cathedral of servers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, as you can already tell, Brewster is pretty eccentric and he kind of comes from that old school vision of the internet where he thinks it should be free and open. He really feels that now power is way too concentrated in a few big companies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Companies often don’t sell anything anymore. They just license it. Now, if you use Netflix or Spotify, you don’t even have a video library like you used to with DVDs or you don’t have MP3s on your device or records in your collections. So there’s been this shift by the large-scale publishers towards ongoing control of materials and surveillance of what it is being viewed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They believe that most things should be open and available to the public, and especially that old things should be preserved, even old webpages. And so that’s where you get the Wayback Machine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have the World Wide Web on Archive.org, available back to 1996, so you can go and find your old webpages, your old GeoCity sites, or whatever it is that you’ve done in the past. But it also is relevant to people currently. Journalists are using it a lot to find, well, what did that person say? And they’re saying something kind of different. um… and they said they never said that well no we don’t know we found that in the television news archive and you can search and find this on television transcripts uh… back to 2009.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And you can tell that Brewster is old school because he uses the phrase worldwide web, which I love. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So vintage of him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it is kind of miraculous. I do feel that you can go back and look at a website like that and see exactly what it looked like, but there’s no other place that that exists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so clearly the Internet Archive is this incredible resource. Is it true that it might shut down? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, let’s talk about it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, let’s open a new tab on that, but right after this break. Okay, new tab, Internet Archive Lawsuits. So let’s talk about these lawsuits that the Internet Archive is facing. They’re not about the Wayback Machine or the webpage archiving, right? They’re about a totally different part of the archive’s operations. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So the Internet Archive also has these huge operations where they preserve old physical media. In some cases, the stuff they’re preserving is very clearly public material that is for public access. Like they have this program called Democracy’s Library, where they go and digitize all the print records for all kinds of government agencies. But they also digitize things like books and music, and sometimes that includes copyrighted material. So there are two specific lawsuits at the center of this. The first was a case called Hachette v. Internet Archive, and that was brought against the Internet Archive by book publishers. They objected to the Archive’s practice of digitizing books and lending them out digitally, even though many of them were out of print. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, but that sounds like a normal library thing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it kind of is, though there is a wrinkle to it because of this program they did in 2020 during the pandemic lockdowns. So before, the archive operated kind of how libraries normally do. They have a certain number of licenses, you can check each book out, but during this time it became unlimited access for anyone. Though I will say that Brewster and his team strongly dispute the idea that the case was about this pandemic era program at all. They say the lawsuit had been planned before that program ever started. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Either way, after a lengthy appeals process, the judge did rule against them, and the judgment required the Internet Archive to pay publishers an undisclosed amount. And even though the lawsuit was about like these specific 127 copyrighted works, the Archive ended up removing over 500,000 books from their digital collection, which free speech and pro-access people were very upset about because a lot of these books aren’t available anywhere else. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that brings us to this next lawsuit. This was brought on by the music industry, two major record labels, Universal Music Group and Sony Music. What can you tell us about this case? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this suit was brought against them in 2023 and it centers around another one of the Internet Archive’s programs. This one is called the Great 78 Project. And 78 stands for 78 RPM records. It’s a format that was super popular from the 1890s to like the late 1950s. And this program was this massive communal undertaking to digitize and preserve these very old 78s. They digitized and cataloged more than 400,000 of these recordings since starting the project in 2017. And they made those recordings available to the public to stream on their website. And the key here is how they thought about this project. They felt like they were undertaking the preservation of a defunct technology and the sound of American culture in a bygone era. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Those older materials that were sort of foundational of what did America sound like are so obsolete that we went and we circulated in the industry conferences to say, “okay, there’s going to be this project, the Great 78 Project,” and libraries and archives, a hundred different ones came together to go inform this. The industry knew about it. They were all supportive that when we talked to them, it was all great. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the record labels saw things differently. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They definitely did. In their lawsuit, the labels called the Great 78 Project quote, “wholesale theft of generations of music.” And they claim that by making the records available to stream for free, that the Internet Archive was displacing streams that generate royalties on platforms like Spotify or Apple Music, royalties that could have gone to either the platforms themselves or the copyright holders like the artists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, do they have a point? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So obviously I’m not a legal expert, but here’s what the record labels say. In the suit, they’re focusing on 4,000 specific recordings that do have copyright protections. They are commercially available and many of them are still very popular, including Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, which is the best-selling single of all time. So I think it’s gonna be tough. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And we know what the actual amount that they’re suing for is, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s $621 million. And just to put it in perspective, the Internet Archive’s operating budget is a tiny fraction of that, just around $30 million. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If we’re found guilty of being a library and then that will cost us, yes, it would snuff the Internet Archive. And that may be the point. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s pretty bleak. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah it is. I will also add that regardless of where you land on, okay, was this copyright infringement or not, the details of the case strike me as kind of strange. First thing is there were a notably small number of streams per audio file in question. Um, like hundreds, or, you know, in some cases a few thousand. But not like hundreds of thousands or millions. And so, if you actually convert the number of streams to a dollar amount based on how much Spotify royalties pay, you’re generally looking at a couple of dollars per audio file. A bit more in a few cases. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So clearly publishers are not experiencing, you know, dramatic monetary loss due to these relatively small number of streams. Right? But the record companies, they still decided to sue for the maximum amount under the law, which is $150,000 per record, even though they could have sued for less. They also never even asked the Internet Archive to take the records down. They never received a request. They were just slapped with this lawsuit.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And if we had gotten that list, we would have taken it down. And we did, once they sued it, you just give us the list and we would have taken them down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the other thing is, and I’m not saying that this argument will hold up in court, but like, I think about a platform like YouTube, right? YouTube gets copyrighted material uploaded to it constantly. And the way it works is that when an interested copyright holding party requests that they remove certain content, that content then gets taken down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, that’s the way the internet basically works and those 78s are on YouTube. So it’s, so we basically have a, they’re after something else. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He thinks the publishing companies are going after the library system itself, the ability for people to access materials for free. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The bigger picture that’s going on and the real contest is not about money, it’s actually about control. Can libraries own anything in the digital world? Is there digital ownership? That’s the central characteristic. And there’s a question, “is the United States going to have libraries have their traditional roles of buying, preserving, lending and interlibrary loan?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the case itself likely won’t move forward until later this year, so we’ll have to wait and see how that develops. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All right, changing gears a little bit. We are a tech show, so I feel like we’re almost contractually obligated to mention AI somehow in almost every episode that we make. But I don’t know, Chris, that feels like a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think so. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, new tab, Internet Archive and AI Legal Battles. AI companies have also been hit by big lawsuits from publishers, and you may not think of it at first, but AI companies like ChatGPT and the Internet Archive have some similarities. They both use tools to scrape the web for data and text and other content. Of course, what they do is different. The Internet Archive stores and preserves it, while AI companies use it to train their models. What’s Brewster’s take on AI? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So he’s a big proponent actually. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re using the AI technologies for a bunch of what may seem like mundane tasks, but are super helpful. Like putting metadata on all these government documents. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He says that one of the big problems with a site like the Internet Archive is that there’s just so much stuff on there. Organization can be a struggle and people visiting the site can get overwhelmed. AI can make all of that easier by tagging and categorizing the billions of pieces of media they have to make them more easily findable. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, if you go to archive.org anecdotally people say, “You know you kind of arrive and it’s just huge and it’s a mass and holy crow and I don’t know where to start!” And so if we could make that on ramp easier wouldn’t that be fantastic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as far as the lawsuits against AI companies, he thinks that the laws are too in favor of publishers and copyright holders and that they should be relaxed to allow AI companies to operate more easily. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We don’t have regulatory clarity. So there are now 80 lawsuits around the AI world. So it’s going to be just who has more lawyers. And that’s going to end up with just a few gigantic players. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, I’m actually so surprised that he’s pro-AI. We’ve talked a lot about how AI has ushered in this era where everything is essentially editable. So yeah, for somebody who’s so preoccupied with the preservation and accurate recording of history, I was surprised that he’d be so on board with technology that seems to be like the antithesis of that in some ways. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. One thing that is clear is that the outcomes of these AI lawsuits could impact the Internet Archive because they’re both about the enforcement of copyright law. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right, it seems like there’s this trade-off where if you want a free and accessible internet where information is free and accessible, you also have to expect it to be scrapable. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">100%. And the Internet Archive does similar kinds of scraping techniques that AI companies do, like you said. Overall, it seems that he thinks that’s a trade-off worth making. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so we have the Internet Archive, this organization that provides all these public services that the internet has become dependent on. And we also have this massive lawsuit that threatens to shut the organization down. I mean, it feels like we’re in a moment where that possibility is more concerning than ever. We have political turbulence, disinformation, these new AI technologies that are making it harder and harder to get the truth. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wait Morgan, Morgan… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you think that’s a new tab? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, you know what? You’re so right, Chris. Do you wanna do the honors? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would love to. Let’s open a new tab. What happens if the Internet Archive goes away? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We talked about this at the top of the episode, but the Internet Archive plays such a critical role in our information ecosystem. And like Brewster says, our ability to go back and check the record. I mean, that’s what we lose when we lose the Internet Archive. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s such an important issue, especially right now. Brewster says that after each presidential term, they go through and catalog all of the government websites, including the ones we talked about earlier. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have, since the year 2004, gone and done an end of term crawl to go and record all the federal websites that we possibly can to go and download and preserve what it looked like before the change and then right away after the change. And are there changes? Yes. Are there always changes? Yes. Are there changes that you agree with? Depends on how you voted, but the idea of library is we’re there to preserve the record. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think the logical question is, what if it does shut down? What then? Has Brewster even entertained this idea? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think it’s hard for him to go there. Like, this is his life’s work. But he has definitely thought about the threat that looms if our ability to preserve our understanding of the past goes away. So he references George Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future from the book 1984. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The image of the memory hole is just the idea that next to your desk is this hole that you can go and put the only copy of that newspaper in an incinerator and be able to change history is upon us. The average life of a web page is 100 days before it’s changed or deleted. If we do not actively collect them and preserve them and keep them accessible, we’re living in the memory whole universe of George Orwell. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, okay, is there any hope here? Is there only option to just give it and crawl into a memory hole and accept it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t think we have to accept the memory hole, and I certainly hope that we don’t. But I’ll wrap up with an observation about Brewster himself. So what struck me about him the most was he just has this unrelenting optimism. He seems to truly love what he does, and he believes in it so strongly, and he’s cultivated this team around him that really shares in that vision. So, even with the looming threat of this extinction-level lawsuit coming up from the music publishers, it’s like he can’t quite bring himself to imagine that the Internet Archive could really go away. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh, I think we’re doing fine. I think that there might be pieces of the Internet Archive that are chiseled away by very powerful interests, but the idea of a library or even just the Internet Archive as an organization has got lots of support. So, can the Internet Archive go away? Yes. Would it be a bad thing, I would think so. But I think the real issues are going to be whether the legislatures and the judiciary go and side with people’s access to information in some way or another. We’ll see that play out over the next 25 years of the Internet Archive’s life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Brewster, it’s about the Internet Archive, of course, but it’s also so much more. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t know the words exactly, but in every librarian’s mind, those who control the past control the present, those who control the present control the future. The idea of a library is part of an ecosystem of how society remembers. That’s how it thinks of itself. If you were to erase the Internet Archive and the libraries, which is in many ways happening now, then we will live in a danger of having people be able to recast what happened. Oh, as a society that believes in universal education and the fulfillment of individual possibility, we just can’t let that happen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So are you ready to close these tabs? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s close 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 is reported and hosted by me, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Our producer is Maya Cueva. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris Egusa\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Original music and sound design by \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris Egusa\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Additional music by APM. Mixing, mastering and additional sound design by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. \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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dust Silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches. If you have feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs@kqed.org. Follow us on Instagram at CloseAllTabsPod. And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use. Thanks for listening!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "For decades, the Internet Archive has preserved our digital history. Lately, journalists and ordinary citizens have been turning to it more than ever, as the Trump administration undertakes an ideologically-driven purge of government websites. But the Archive itself faces an existential threat. In this episode, Close All Tabs Senior Editor Chris Egusa joins Morgan to discuss his visit to the Internet Archive and its colorful founder Brewster Kahle, the legal battles that could shut it down permanently — and what losing it might mean for accountability and the preservation of history.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For decades, the Internet Archive has preserved our digital history. Lately, journalists and ordinary citizens have been turning to it more than ever, as the Trump administration undertakes an ideologically-driven purge of government websites. But the Archive itself faces an existential threat. In this episode, Close All Tabs Senior Editor Chris Egusa joins Morgan to discuss his visit to the Internet Archive and its colorful founder Brewster Kahle, the legal battles that could shut it down permanently — and what losing it might mean for accountability and the preservation of history.\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=KQINC4918161208\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Guests:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://brewster.kahle.org/\">Brewster Kahle\u003c/a>, Founder of the Internet Archive\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Further reading:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/internet-archive-major-label-music-lawsuit-1235105273/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Inside the $621 Million Legal Battle for the ‘Soul of the Internet’\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – Jon Blistein, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rolling Stone\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.techradar.com/pro/open-internet-web-scraping-and-ai-the-unbreakable-link\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Open Internet, web scraping, and AI: the unbreakable link\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Julius Cerniauskas, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TechRadar\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/musicians-demand-music-labels-drop-their-internet-archive-lawsuit-214139644.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAK2IFY7PAMZw0BT91Rg2Pvhx66osGJFtnuFHxCEEx9slXFq6Lu1c6VJvuUZm0sVSQBFj11ViHZ6hZN6a_JMUEDU_hhjxeh_HxVHNP47DDOj9w5pnFaUWg81zH_miG2pKzGHH68STu0eXU_K2zFYpaJcNSunaSm1U71VVfyL2DIlF\">Musicians demand music labels drop their Internet Archive lawsuit\u003c/a> — Ian Carlos Campbell, \u003ci>Engadget\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is The Purge… Of government websites. Since President Trump’s inauguration, federal agency and military websites have been wiped. Some are gone completely, while others have been overhauled to remove any references to so-called woke terminology, all in this effort to comply with an executive order to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it seems like in the rush to remove all of these woke words, there were maybe some unintentional cuts, like when the Department of Defense took down a 1940s photo. It was a picture of a pilot, posing in front of one of the planes that dropped the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But what does this photo have to do with diversity, equity, or inclusion? Well, the plane was named the Enola Gay. It was named after the pilot’s mother, Enola Gay Tibbitts. There are still other photos of the Enola Gay available on government websites, but in the past few months, countless pages with crucial information have been wiped from the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fortunately, for journalists, historians, and anyone who cares about keeping track of facts, there’s a tool that lets us go back and see exactly how those websites have changed. Unfortunately, that very tool is under threat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, 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\">\u003cem>Close All Tabs\u003c/em> Senior Editor \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris Egusa\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is gonna walk us through this magical tool called the Wayback Machine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, Morgan. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I already have a tab open. It’s the current version of the State Department’s safety tips for queer people traveling abroad. And you have your own tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s the same web page, same URL, but I have gone back in time, kind of. That’s where the Wayback Machine comes in. It’s part of this organization called the Internet Archive. And for the past 30 years, it’s basically scraped the internet page by page and archived it. So if you have a URL or link to a website, you can go back and see all the ways that that website has changed. I used the Wayback Machine to look at the page from January 5th, before this executive order. At the top of the page, it’s addressed to LGBTQI plus travelers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Unlike the one I’m seeing, the one that’s currently live, which just says, L-G-B Travelers. What else does your version have? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it has a lot of resources. It has instructions for changing your passport’s gender marker, warnings about conversion therapy practices in other countries, and also links to the National Center for Transgender Equality and other organizations. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, this current one I have on my screen doesn’t have any of that, just no warnings about conversion therapy and definitely none of those resources for trans people. There’s actually no mention of trans people at all. They kept a link to the Trevor Project, but they made a point to say that it’s an organization for LGB youth. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Which is wild, because the Trevor Project is very involved in advocating for trans youth and gender-affirming care. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, and again, this is just one page out of who knows how many that have been altered to take the T out of LGBT. How panicked should we be about the scale of erasure of public information? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, this has happened before. During Trump’s first term, pages about climate change and the environment were altered to soften the language, or they were just wiped entirely. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But that purge wasn’t nearly as expansive or haphazard as the one we’re currently living through, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No, but I think it has prepared a lot of us for a situation like this. This time around, a lot more people are relying on the Wayback Machine and the Internet Archive. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, and in all of this mess, the existence of the internet archive itself is under threat, which could spell trouble for the future of all online libraries. So to get a better understanding of it all, Chris, you went to the archive in person a few weeks ago. Let’s start there. Let’s make that our first tab. What is the Internet Archive? You know, when I think of the Internet Archive, I’m thinking of like the Matrix, Cyberchase, when they’re like running through this kind of like cloud and there are just binary numbers everywhere. But the Internet Archive is a real physical location. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, no, it’s a real place. It is not in the Matrix. It is in San Francisco in the Richmond district. It’s in this very grand building and out front it has these huge Greek columns that kind of line the entrance of it. They actually chose the building in part because it resembles the archive’s logo, which is the columns of the Library of Alexandria. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Library of Alexandria. I mean, that is like the Greek idea of a universal library. That’s a pretty lofty idea to aspire to. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is. And the organization isn’t shy about their ambitions. Their stated mission is to provide, quote, universal access to all knowledge. According to their website, the archive currently contains, and I’m just gonna reel off a bunch of numbers here, 835 billion webpages. I think last I checked, that number’s actually close to a trillion. 44 million books and texts, 15 million audio recordings, 10.6 million videos, and on and on. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a lot, like, I can’t even quite conceptualize what a trillion web pages even looks like. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, Chris, tell me, what was the archive actually like? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was actually really cool. Brewster Kahle is the founder of the archive and he was really excited to give me a tour and introduce me to all kinds of old media devices they’d collected over the years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Edison invented these cylinders in 1880. Mostly, you know, things that you’ve never heard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So yeah, right when we got there, we go up some stairs and he shows me this very vintage, beautiful old gramophone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a Victor Talking Machine 5 from 1927. So it’s a old 78 RPM player, no electricity, it’s a crank, has a horn, so spinning up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Song: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey / A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t know if you recognize that song, but it immediately made me think of Twin Peaks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes! Yes, it does. I am right in the middle of my rewatch right now, so… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I need to do a re-watch in David Lynch’s honor, for sure. Yeah, and then when he started playing this, he then started dancing around the room, which is just like-. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, Audrey Horne. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Song: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A little bit jumbled and jivey \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So after visiting this little museum area, Brewster takes me into this huge room and it has this beautiful domed ceiling. It used to be a Christian Science Church. The whole building did. There are all these lines of pews that are facing where the pulpit used to be. And in place of that pulpit, there’s this huge projector screen. And so they use this place for like movie screenings, for local community events and things. But there is one thing that draws your eye more than anything else in the room. That is the statues. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Statues? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, they are these hundreds of terracotta figures. They are about waist high, and each one of them has distinct features in clothing. And they’re all kind of facing forward, like they’re congregants in this hall of worship. Haunting. So it’s a bit of an eerie scene, but according to Brewster… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you work for the archive for three years, then we make a little statue. Basically tributes to the people that made the organization happen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So not like framed photos, just a three foot statue. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes, exactly. And they’re really detailed. Another employee was with us on the tour. His name is Chris Freeland. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Freeland: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s weird to be standing here in front of a terracotta statue of yourself, but here we are. It does look like me, and that’s also uncanny. Everyone says they got the beard right, which is making me sad, since it is covered in gray and no longer brown, or red-brown, like it was when I was, you know, 20 years younger, but here we are. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And all these statues are standing in the pews and around the outside of the room, facing the front, sort of at attention. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know what this reminds me of? It’s that terracotta army that’s like protecting the tomb of like the first emperor of China. And they’re meant to like protect the emperor in the afterlife. And I guess it’s fitting because these statues look like they’re, I don’t know, protecting the internet ephemera long after it’s gone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s actually very appropriate because behind all of these statues in the very back of the room is where the servers live. Um, he tells me that they hold 145 petabytes of data, which I don’t deal in petabytes, it’s the one after terabyte. Um, so it’s a lot. And yeah, these are the servers where all of the billions of web pages, videos, and audio, where all of it lives. There’s a cool moment actually, like when you stare at these devices, you see all of these twinkling blue lights flashing and flickering across them, um, like hundreds a second. And here is what Brewster told me about that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Every time a light blinks is somebody uploading or downloading something from the Internet Archive. I think that the technology reflects the people that make it, so let’s make it beautiful. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That sounds almost magical. I mean, I get how this could be like a religious experience. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes, and I almost compare it to the way that old cathedrals were meant to evoke that sense of awe. It was hard not to feel a little awestruck being in that place. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These servers hold some non-trivial percentage of all of the published works of humankind. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so tell me about Brewster, the guy who founded this whole thing, started this statue army and this cathedral of servers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, as you can already tell, Brewster is pretty eccentric and he kind of comes from that old school vision of the internet where he thinks it should be free and open. He really feels that now power is way too concentrated in a few big companies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Companies often don’t sell anything anymore. They just license it. Now, if you use Netflix or Spotify, you don’t even have a video library like you used to with DVDs or you don’t have MP3s on your device or records in your collections. So there’s been this shift by the large-scale publishers towards ongoing control of materials and surveillance of what it is being viewed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They believe that most things should be open and available to the public, and especially that old things should be preserved, even old webpages. And so that’s where you get the Wayback Machine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have the World Wide Web on Archive.org, available back to 1996, so you can go and find your old webpages, your old GeoCity sites, or whatever it is that you’ve done in the past. But it also is relevant to people currently. Journalists are using it a lot to find, well, what did that person say? And they’re saying something kind of different. um… and they said they never said that well no we don’t know we found that in the television news archive and you can search and find this on television transcripts uh… back to 2009.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And you can tell that Brewster is old school because he uses the phrase worldwide web, which I love. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So vintage of him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it is kind of miraculous. I do feel that you can go back and look at a website like that and see exactly what it looked like, but there’s no other place that that exists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so clearly the Internet Archive is this incredible resource. Is it true that it might shut down? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, let’s talk about it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, let’s open a new tab on that, but right after this break. Okay, new tab, Internet Archive Lawsuits. So let’s talk about these lawsuits that the Internet Archive is facing. They’re not about the Wayback Machine or the webpage archiving, right? They’re about a totally different part of the archive’s operations. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So the Internet Archive also has these huge operations where they preserve old physical media. In some cases, the stuff they’re preserving is very clearly public material that is for public access. Like they have this program called Democracy’s Library, where they go and digitize all the print records for all kinds of government agencies. But they also digitize things like books and music, and sometimes that includes copyrighted material. So there are two specific lawsuits at the center of this. The first was a case called Hachette v. Internet Archive, and that was brought against the Internet Archive by book publishers. They objected to the Archive’s practice of digitizing books and lending them out digitally, even though many of them were out of print. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, but that sounds like a normal library thing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it kind of is, though there is a wrinkle to it because of this program they did in 2020 during the pandemic lockdowns. So before, the archive operated kind of how libraries normally do. They have a certain number of licenses, you can check each book out, but during this time it became unlimited access for anyone. Though I will say that Brewster and his team strongly dispute the idea that the case was about this pandemic era program at all. They say the lawsuit had been planned before that program ever started. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Either way, after a lengthy appeals process, the judge did rule against them, and the judgment required the Internet Archive to pay publishers an undisclosed amount. And even though the lawsuit was about like these specific 127 copyrighted works, the Archive ended up removing over 500,000 books from their digital collection, which free speech and pro-access people were very upset about because a lot of these books aren’t available anywhere else. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that brings us to this next lawsuit. This was brought on by the music industry, two major record labels, Universal Music Group and Sony Music. What can you tell us about this case? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this suit was brought against them in 2023 and it centers around another one of the Internet Archive’s programs. This one is called the Great 78 Project. And 78 stands for 78 RPM records. It’s a format that was super popular from the 1890s to like the late 1950s. And this program was this massive communal undertaking to digitize and preserve these very old 78s. They digitized and cataloged more than 400,000 of these recordings since starting the project in 2017. And they made those recordings available to the public to stream on their website. And the key here is how they thought about this project. They felt like they were undertaking the preservation of a defunct technology and the sound of American culture in a bygone era. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Those older materials that were sort of foundational of what did America sound like are so obsolete that we went and we circulated in the industry conferences to say, “okay, there’s going to be this project, the Great 78 Project,” and libraries and archives, a hundred different ones came together to go inform this. The industry knew about it. They were all supportive that when we talked to them, it was all great. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the record labels saw things differently. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They definitely did. In their lawsuit, the labels called the Great 78 Project quote, “wholesale theft of generations of music.” And they claim that by making the records available to stream for free, that the Internet Archive was displacing streams that generate royalties on platforms like Spotify or Apple Music, royalties that could have gone to either the platforms themselves or the copyright holders like the artists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, do they have a point? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So obviously I’m not a legal expert, but here’s what the record labels say. In the suit, they’re focusing on 4,000 specific recordings that do have copyright protections. They are commercially available and many of them are still very popular, including Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, which is the best-selling single of all time. So I think it’s gonna be tough. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And we know what the actual amount that they’re suing for is, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s $621 million. And just to put it in perspective, the Internet Archive’s operating budget is a tiny fraction of that, just around $30 million. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If we’re found guilty of being a library and then that will cost us, yes, it would snuff the Internet Archive. And that may be the point. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s pretty bleak. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah it is. I will also add that regardless of where you land on, okay, was this copyright infringement or not, the details of the case strike me as kind of strange. First thing is there were a notably small number of streams per audio file in question. Um, like hundreds, or, you know, in some cases a few thousand. But not like hundreds of thousands or millions. And so, if you actually convert the number of streams to a dollar amount based on how much Spotify royalties pay, you’re generally looking at a couple of dollars per audio file. A bit more in a few cases. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So clearly publishers are not experiencing, you know, dramatic monetary loss due to these relatively small number of streams. Right? But the record companies, they still decided to sue for the maximum amount under the law, which is $150,000 per record, even though they could have sued for less. They also never even asked the Internet Archive to take the records down. They never received a request. They were just slapped with this lawsuit.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And if we had gotten that list, we would have taken it down. And we did, once they sued it, you just give us the list and we would have taken them down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the other thing is, and I’m not saying that this argument will hold up in court, but like, I think about a platform like YouTube, right? YouTube gets copyrighted material uploaded to it constantly. And the way it works is that when an interested copyright holding party requests that they remove certain content, that content then gets taken down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, that’s the way the internet basically works and those 78s are on YouTube. So it’s, so we basically have a, they’re after something else. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He thinks the publishing companies are going after the library system itself, the ability for people to access materials for free. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The bigger picture that’s going on and the real contest is not about money, it’s actually about control. Can libraries own anything in the digital world? Is there digital ownership? That’s the central characteristic. And there’s a question, “is the United States going to have libraries have their traditional roles of buying, preserving, lending and interlibrary loan?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the case itself likely won’t move forward until later this year, so we’ll have to wait and see how that develops. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All right, changing gears a little bit. We are a tech show, so I feel like we’re almost contractually obligated to mention AI somehow in almost every episode that we make. But I don’t know, Chris, that feels like a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think so. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, new tab, Internet Archive and AI Legal Battles. AI companies have also been hit by big lawsuits from publishers, and you may not think of it at first, but AI companies like ChatGPT and the Internet Archive have some similarities. They both use tools to scrape the web for data and text and other content. Of course, what they do is different. The Internet Archive stores and preserves it, while AI companies use it to train their models. What’s Brewster’s take on AI? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So he’s a big proponent actually. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re using the AI technologies for a bunch of what may seem like mundane tasks, but are super helpful. Like putting metadata on all these government documents. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He says that one of the big problems with a site like the Internet Archive is that there’s just so much stuff on there. Organization can be a struggle and people visiting the site can get overwhelmed. AI can make all of that easier by tagging and categorizing the billions of pieces of media they have to make them more easily findable. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, if you go to archive.org anecdotally people say, “You know you kind of arrive and it’s just huge and it’s a mass and holy crow and I don’t know where to start!” And so if we could make that on ramp easier wouldn’t that be fantastic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as far as the lawsuits against AI companies, he thinks that the laws are too in favor of publishers and copyright holders and that they should be relaxed to allow AI companies to operate more easily. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We don’t have regulatory clarity. So there are now 80 lawsuits around the AI world. So it’s going to be just who has more lawyers. And that’s going to end up with just a few gigantic players. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, I’m actually so surprised that he’s pro-AI. We’ve talked a lot about how AI has ushered in this era where everything is essentially editable. So yeah, for somebody who’s so preoccupied with the preservation and accurate recording of history, I was surprised that he’d be so on board with technology that seems to be like the antithesis of that in some ways. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. One thing that is clear is that the outcomes of these AI lawsuits could impact the Internet Archive because they’re both about the enforcement of copyright law. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right, it seems like there’s this trade-off where if you want a free and accessible internet where information is free and accessible, you also have to expect it to be scrapable. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">100%. And the Internet Archive does similar kinds of scraping techniques that AI companies do, like you said. Overall, it seems that he thinks that’s a trade-off worth making. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so we have the Internet Archive, this organization that provides all these public services that the internet has become dependent on. And we also have this massive lawsuit that threatens to shut the organization down. I mean, it feels like we’re in a moment where that possibility is more concerning than ever. We have political turbulence, disinformation, these new AI technologies that are making it harder and harder to get the truth. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wait Morgan, Morgan… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you think that’s a new tab? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, you know what? You’re so right, Chris. Do you wanna do the honors? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would love to. Let’s open a new tab. What happens if the Internet Archive goes away? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We talked about this at the top of the episode, but the Internet Archive plays such a critical role in our information ecosystem. And like Brewster says, our ability to go back and check the record. I mean, that’s what we lose when we lose the Internet Archive. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s such an important issue, especially right now. Brewster says that after each presidential term, they go through and catalog all of the government websites, including the ones we talked about earlier. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have, since the year 2004, gone and done an end of term crawl to go and record all the federal websites that we possibly can to go and download and preserve what it looked like before the change and then right away after the change. And are there changes? Yes. Are there always changes? Yes. Are there changes that you agree with? Depends on how you voted, but the idea of library is we’re there to preserve the record. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think the logical question is, what if it does shut down? What then? Has Brewster even entertained this idea? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think it’s hard for him to go there. Like, this is his life’s work. But he has definitely thought about the threat that looms if our ability to preserve our understanding of the past goes away. So he references George Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future from the book 1984. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The image of the memory hole is just the idea that next to your desk is this hole that you can go and put the only copy of that newspaper in an incinerator and be able to change history is upon us. The average life of a web page is 100 days before it’s changed or deleted. If we do not actively collect them and preserve them and keep them accessible, we’re living in the memory whole universe of George Orwell. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, okay, is there any hope here? Is there only option to just give it and crawl into a memory hole and accept it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t think we have to accept the memory hole, and I certainly hope that we don’t. But I’ll wrap up with an observation about Brewster himself. So what struck me about him the most was he just has this unrelenting optimism. He seems to truly love what he does, and he believes in it so strongly, and he’s cultivated this team around him that really shares in that vision. So, even with the looming threat of this extinction-level lawsuit coming up from the music publishers, it’s like he can’t quite bring himself to imagine that the Internet Archive could really go away. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh, I think we’re doing fine. I think that there might be pieces of the Internet Archive that are chiseled away by very powerful interests, but the idea of a library or even just the Internet Archive as an organization has got lots of support. So, can the Internet Archive go away? Yes. Would it be a bad thing, I would think so. But I think the real issues are going to be whether the legislatures and the judiciary go and side with people’s access to information in some way or another. We’ll see that play out over the next 25 years of the Internet Archive’s life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Brewster, it’s about the Internet Archive, of course, but it’s also so much more. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Brewster Kahle:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t know the words exactly, but in every librarian’s mind, those who control the past control the present, those who control the present control the future. The idea of a library is part of an ecosystem of how society remembers. That’s how it thinks of itself. If you were to erase the Internet Archive and the libraries, which is in many ways happening now, then we will live in a danger of having people be able to recast what happened. Oh, as a society that believes in universal education and the fulfillment of individual possibility, we just can’t let that happen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So are you ready to close these tabs? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chris Egusa:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s close 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 is reported and hosted by me, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Our producer is Maya Cueva. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris Egusa\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Original music and sound design by \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris Egusa\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Additional music by APM. Mixing, mastering and additional sound design by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. \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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dust Silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches. If you have feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs@kqed.org. Follow us on Instagram at CloseAllTabsPod. And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use. Thanks for listening!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"title": "Waymo Robotaxis - Uneasiness and Vandalism",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Self-driving Waymo robotaxis have become a familiar sight in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, but not everyone is happy about that. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These “ghost-like” autonomous vehicles have made a lot of people uneasy, some even going as far as to vandalize the cars. But what’s behind this hostility? In this episode, Morgan speaks with \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bloomberg\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> journalist Ellen Huet and robot law professor Ryan Calo to explore the rise of Waymo vandalism and its roots in our collective anxiety over artificial intelligence. \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=KQINC7694102813\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.ellenhuet.com/\">Ellen Huet\u003c/a>, Features writer at Bloomberg News\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://ischool.uw.edu/people/faculty/profile/rcalo\">Ryan Calo\u003c/a>, Professor of Law at University of Washington\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-12-06/waymo-s-expansion-spurs-some-rage-against-the-self-driving-cars\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Waymo’s Expansion Provokes Anxieties of AI Takeover\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> – Ellen Huet, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bloomberg\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://qz.com/robotaxi-tesla-uber-lyft-waymo-mobileye-texas-1851759608\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The next big robotaxi push is almost here\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> — Harri Weber, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Quartz \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/the-deadly-uber-self-driving-car-crash-is-just-the-beginning.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Courts Can Handle the Deadly Uber Self-Driving Car Crash. But that doesn’t mean the law is ready for autonomous vehicles.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> — Ryan Calo, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Slate\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/good-robot-bad-robot-jo-ann-oravec/1141932639\">Good Robot, Bad Robot: Dark and Creepy Sides of Robotics, Autonomous Vehicles, and AI\u003c/a> — Jo Ann Oravec, Professor at the University of Wisconsin\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003c/h2>\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>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do we look like influencers right now? Is this embarrassing to be walking up to a Waymo? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is me and my friend \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Harri Weber\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> booking my first ride in a Waymo. It’s a self -driving car service. Some people also call them robo-taxis. Wait, I think I have to unlock it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, there we go. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Morgan? No one’s going to respond. Waymo’s are, again, totally self -driving. There’s no human in the front seat. Hello from Waymo. As we get going, just give us one minute to cover a few… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh god. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I invited Harry because she’s also a tech journalist and she covers the future of cars. She recently wrote about the expansion of robo -taxis for courts. And also, we both had a craving for deli sandwiches from this one spot with terrible street parking. So why not take a Waymo? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There’s no one behind the wheel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is there a real need for the steering wheel? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Literally, I don’t see any purpose for it, but for whatever reason, there’s, you know, national laws require this steering wheel to still be there. It’s a little ghostly though, right? It’s nudging us around, it’s keeping us in the lane. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Waymo’s are something of a tourist attraction in California. My cousins always wanna take one whenever they come to visit me. But honestly, ever since Waymo’s launch a few months ago in Los Angeles, where Harri and I live, I’ve been pretty hesitant to take them. Part of it is, yeah, I don’t really trust a robot to drive me around, especially not through a very busy intersection in Koreatown during rush hour. But that’s where this car picked us up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These things aren’t perfect. Something could go wrong while we’re driving or while it’s moving us around. But Waymo’s claim based on its own data is that it is a lot safer than a human driver. I think that you’re probably more likely to find that they’re a nuisance than they are dangerous. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But despite their great track record when it comes to safety, I feel like Waymo mishaps are always going viral. Like a couple of weeks ago, there was a video of a Waymo in San Francisco, ignoring a public works crew and driving straight through a sinkhole. And then there was a video of a guy in Arizona who called a Waymo to take him to the airport, but got stuck in a parking lot. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Video Clip 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m in a Waymo car. This car is just going in circles. I got my seatbelt on, I can’t get out the car. Has this been hacked? What’s going on? I feel like I’m in the movies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Waymos make me feel a little uneasy, but it’s really other people’s reactions to Waymos that makes me nervous about being in one. Even getting in, in front of that coffee shop, did you feel self -conscious? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, yeah, it felt a little uncool. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I felt so deeply uncool getting in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think something flipped when Google was first developing a driverless car. I think there was actually like a cool factor going, or maybe I was just that uncool that I thought it was cool. But tech criticism has evolved a lot since then. And so now we’re in this car and it does feel a little bit like we are maybe class traitors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And it’s not just the uncool factor. Public reaction to Waymos has turned violent. Like this incident in San Francisco, where a bunch of guys started spray painting a Waymo while a group of women was inside. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Video Clip 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why are you attacking us? Connecting to writer support. Call may be recorded. Oh my God. Oh my god! Holy shit! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is also a recent viral video of people swarming a Waymo in Los Angeles. One of the guys in the video so gracefully leaps into the air and drop kicks the passenger door right off the hinges, while another person beats the Waymo’s windshield with a ripped off piece of its own front bumper. To be clear, it doesn’t seem like any living person has been hurt in any of these incidents, unless you count getting a little car sick. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Video Clip 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, I got a flight to catch. Why is this thing going in a circle? I’m getting dizzy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But to a lot of people, including myself, I’ll be honest, something about seeing robots do a human task just does not feel right. And clearly, it triggers some deep-seated instinct to attack. So what is behind this recent outburst of aggression against Waymos? Is it just that destroying them makes really good content that’s bound to go viral? Or is it our collective anxiety over the state of tech right now? This is Close All Tabs. I’m \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, 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. People are justifiably jaded against Silicon Valley and the idea of a robot takeover would make anyone nervous. But why take it out on Waymo? All right, we’re gonna kick this off like we usually do. A new tab, Waymo Vandalism. We’re gonna talk to \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ellen Huet\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. She covers technology and Silicon Valley and startup culture for Bloomberg, or as she puts it, all things at the intersection of tech and humans. And she wrote about how Waymo’s recent expansion provoked so -called AI anxiety. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">as long as these cars have been around in their various iterations, so probably over the last decade or so, people have reacted to them with suspicion and at times with violence. Like even back in 2018 when early Waymo vehicles were being tested in Arizona, people threw rocks at them, people like attacked the cars. Even if these cases are rare, it has been somewhat consistent that people react to robot cars at times with anger or violence or like attempting to kind of outsmart them. You know, there are early stories of people who figured out that you could confuse autonomous cars by putting a traffic cone on the hood of the car. Right, I’ve seen that. And I – Yeah, and like, there’s clearly some human impulse to try to almost like assert agency or control over this vehicle that, you know, in some existential sense is kind of a threat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have to wonder how much product design plays a role in ensuring that people are more receptive to these cars. I mean, I’m thinking of, you know, that 2000s movie, Herbie Fully Loaded, how it’s like a cutesy little buggy. And if I saw that driving around, I wouldn’t want to, like, beat that up. But when I see, like, a Cybertruck, I’m like, oh, fight or flight, activated. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I guarantee lots of designers have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about this question. I remember, it must have been a decade ago, you know, I was a tech reporter, I was working at Forbes and I was invited to take a test drive in an early autonomous car. And what I remember most is that those early cars were designed to look so cute. Like it was like a little gumdrop shaped car and it was white and like its headlights We’re kind of that like. oval shape to make it look like, you know, like these cute little cartoon eyes. And yeah, I guarantee that designers and engineers spent a lot of time thinking about how to make this threatening-ish technology seem as cute and approachable as possible. But yeah, Waymo’s are obviously like kind of just like a normal-looking car. My guess is it’s not coincidence that they’re all white. maybe people associate that with, like, sort of angelic energy or something. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But let’s talk about what’s at the root of this feeling that a lot of people have when confronted with a robot doing a human job. That is a new tab. Ready? Waymo and AI anxiety. Okay, so a lot of this anger against Waymo’s is due to the very real risk of job loss as robo-taxis begin replacing human drivers. But it’s also bigger than that. AI is moving into a lot of areas besides cars. In her story about this spike in Waymo vandalism, Ellen cited University of Wisconsin professor Jo Anne Oravec, who said that a lot of people are just not really comfortable with the realization that something else is intelligent. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think people sometimes direct their general anxiety about, like, job displacement from AI toward Waymos just because these are objects that exist in the physical world and that you can actually smash the windshield of a Waymo car in the way that you can’t quite attack ChatGPT, right? Like, I think in some sense they’re at a disadvantage by simply being, like, a physical object. And something that you are reminded of every time, you know, one drives by. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And the cars have also done things that are genuinely annoying. Like in San Francisco, there was this cluster of Waymo cars that had gotten trapped in a honking war with each other. So they were like up at the middle of the night, you know, it’s like 4:30 in the morning. And neighbors who were trying to sleep near wherever these cars are gathered were being woken up at night by the sound of all of these cars honking at each other. And like in the most nonsensical way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The term AI can mean a lot of different things. Autonomous vehicles like Waymo do use artificial intelligence. They use cameras to see, they’re trained to recognize objects and calculate the distance between them. But it’s pretty different from how a generative AI tool like ChatGPT works, or how other AI generators work to produce images, videos, and music. But to a lot of people, the anxiety is the same. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think what makes people have this reaction, regardless of what type of AI it is, is that these products are being designed to do actions and take on jobs and responsibilities that used to be solely the jurisdiction of humans, right? So it used to be like only people could see and drive and manipulate a car and now we can see that a human is not needed to do that. And it used to be that a human was needed to provide half of a conversation, you couldn’t have that, you know, without another person on the other side of the line. Now, that’s no longer true. So I think what we’re seeing is, even though the technology is different, in some cases and in some ways, the human reaction to it is the same. Because I think it’s provoking the same question of, well, where do I belong in this world where this thing that I used to do can be done by a non-human entity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There’s a Waymo ad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Waymo Advertisement: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, it’s finally happening. The robots, they’re coming. Maybe that’s a good thing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And like, Waymo’s clearly playing into people’s concerns about the robots, but putting like this positive spin on it. What do you think? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, an ad like that makes me laugh because I just imagine, I wish I could be a fly on the wall in the marketing discussions that led to that copy because I’m sure they were like, guys, we have to address the fact that some people are scared of this, but let’s make it cheeky, let’s make it funny. There are researchers out there who study human-robot relations and some of the things that they explained to me were like these human-like. objects that can move with some intelligence in our world feel existentially unsettling to us because we don’t know where we fall in the pecking order anymore. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And don’t forget, we’ve been consuming so much sci-fi about how super advanced robots can totally disrupt our way of life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>I, Robot: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Robots don’t feel fear. They don’t feel anything. They don’t get hungry. They don’t sleep. I do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>M3gan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Megan, turn off. Are you sure? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>2001: A Space Odyssey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Open the pod bay doors, Hal. I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This pop culture fear of artificial intelligence and robots taking over has been around for a while, but it hasn’t been limited to the screen. Physical attacks on robots have been happening for over a decade. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A classic example is the story of Hitchbot. And the story of Hitchbot starts back in 2013 when a group of researchers decided they wanted to try to answer the question, can robots trust humans? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hitchbot will be depending on the kindness and the curiosity of strangers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Hitchbot was this little humanoid robot that couldn’t really do much, but it was on a mission to hitchhike across Canada. It had a stocky, cylindrical body and goofy arms and legs made out of pool noodles. Its head had an LED panel with a little smiley face. Hitchbot couldn’t move on its own. It could only recognize human speech and engage in basic conversations, mostly to ask bystanders for help. It also had a GPS and took pictures of its surroundings every 20 minutes so that researchers could keep tabs on it. I mean, it was pretty adorable. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And on its first few journeys, everything went fine. Like, people really got excited about this idea and wanted to contribute to helping the robot get from point A to point B. So Hitchbot traveled across Canada and traveled around Europe. And then in 2015, Hitchbot tried to do a cross-country trip across the United States and started in Boston. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But Hitchbot only made it to Philadelphia, where it was tragically attacked and decapitated. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Philly Man 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is the bench Hitchbot was killed on. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Philly Man 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh really? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Philly Man 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know the story of Hitchbot? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Philly Man 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, yeah, it made it around the world and it died.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Philly Man 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It didn’t make it around the world because it died in Philadelphia. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Maybe they wanted to reassert their power or dominance over a human-like object and feel secure in their place as humans. But yeah, I think the story of Hitchbot tells us a lot about the psychology of humans versus robots. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Right. And that Waymos may not be ready for Philly yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Seems possible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">OK, clearly, there’s something here about robots that makes us uncomfortable. People don’t always respond well to things that look a little too human or act kind of human, but aren’t quite human. So aside from making the cars cuter in hopes that people won’t attack them, is there anything else Waymo can do? When I scroll past one of these videos of someone spray painting one of the cars…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Video Clip 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why are you attacking us? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Or blocking its way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Video Clip 4: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Get out of the way! Move! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Or, worst case scenario, harassing someone inside, which did happen in San Francisco. With these videos, I’ve always wondered, why can’t the car just back up and drive away? Any human driver would. We’ll get into that and some other very thorny questions after this break. As this technology progresses, what are the implications of robots making their own decisions in these very high-stakes situations? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But that is a new tab. “The ethics of self-driving cars.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To dig into this, I called up \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ryan Calo\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. He’s a legal scholar and a professor at the University of Washington School of Law. And his specialty? Robot law. So he had his own theory about what makes Waymo’s so attractive to vandalize. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s the fact that they’re doing something transgressive where they’re, you know, they are of course vandalizing like an entity, an agent, but very much falls short of doing violence to a human being. Obviously these same people wouldn’t run up to a human being or a human cab driver and spray paint them. But the point of the matter is that, you know, there is this unease about these technologies, has to do with their novelty, has to do with their being too close to being these anthropomorphic agents. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By anthropomorphic, Ryan means having human -like characteristics, even if it isn’t actually human. Yeah, I live in L.A., which has horrendous traffic, and so I watch a Waymo, try to make a U-turn, and get cut off at every possible opportunity, and I feel bad for it. What’s going on with that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s hard not to empathize, right? The fact is, is that human beings are quite bad at categorizing robots as either things or people. And the more anthropomorphic a technology is, the harder that is. So what’s really interesting about Waymo is, apparently, it’s associated as much with being a car as it is with being an entity. I always thought that if the vandalism were occurring inside the car, right? So sometimes people vandalize the interior of a Waymo because they’re just there by themselves, seemingly, Right? And it’s one thing to put a camera there, but if you were to put like an anthropomorphic robot driver in the Waymo that looked back at you when you get in to say, “Hey, where can I take you?” And also could be, was visible. Like when you saw the Waymo trying to make a U -turn, you saw like a person in there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s struggling. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whatever it was, it’s struggling. Or when somebody went to vandalize this thing, cause it to crash, you know, cause it to shut down, like vandalize it. And there’s this android in there looking at you that looks like a person. I think the outcome would be different. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ryan’s theory is that because Waymo’s don’t resemble any living thing, it’s easier to justify being violent. And sure, passengers would probably be creeped out by a robot doll in the driver’s seat, but maybe people would be discouraged from attacking it because there’s another human-ish thing there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There’s this concept called the uncanny valley. The deal is, it’s a valley, is that appreciation of the robot goes up and up and up and up and up and up and up, the more anthropomorphic it becomes, but then suddenly when it gets super close to actually like a human, it precipitously drops before coming back if it’s completely like a human, right? That’s the valley. Now, Waymo cars… They do not look like people, right? So they really are very far down on that curve. They’re more thrilling to vandalize than a mailbox. I just don’t see it happening with something that felt more like a person. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. You have written about the legal quandaries of self-driving cars, and when they first started hitting the road about five or so years ago, people were mostly worried about passenger safety and crashes. And it seems like companies like Waymo were maybe not so prepared for, like, the irate protesters?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you want to talk specifically about vandalism, this has messed up people working in AI and robotics for a long time, and so it shouldn’t really have surprised Waymo. I don’t know how one guards against it, right? Think about, Morgan, do you recall the time when Microsoft released that chatbot called Tay? \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>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Microsoft trains this chatbot early. This is pre-OpenAI and so on, and they released this Twitter-based chatbot that’s supposed to learn how to interact. Within an hour, there are these people, trolls on the Internet, getting it to say all kinds of racist and terrible things. They end up having to take the chatbot down. When the company was asked about “Why did this happen?” They’re like, “Well, we just didn’t anticipate that folks would do this,” unfortunately. The truth is about technology, especially like new emerging technology, you just don’t know how it’s going to play out in society. In fact, this leads some law professors like myself, to conclude that technology is a particularly difficult thing to regulate, because you don’t know how it’s going to play out in advance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Back in 2018, Ryan wrote an essay in Slate about whether the law was ready for self-driving cars. And in it, he refutes a common critique of this technology that has to do with the old philosophical dilemma known as the trolley problem. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The trolley problem is this thought experiment about making decisions. You’ve got a train chugging along a track and it’s heading toward five people. But you, the decision maker, can flip a switch and direct the train to another track. Here’s the twist. There’s another single person stuck to that other track. So do you flip the switch? Save five people, but by making that decision, kill another? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is the kind of thought experiment people love to refer to when puzzling over the morality of autonomous vehicles and other forms of AI. It’s the assumption that self -driving cars will have to make the same kinds of moral decisions. But Ryan says the engineers of these vehicles, and we as a public, should worry less about these philosophical hypotheticals and more about the practical real-life situations that these cars might face. Programming a moral compass is still up for debate. But programming object recognition is way more realistic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just imagine that a driverless car is always gonna be better than a person at avoiding a stroller in a parking lot. Always better because it’s better sensors, better response times, whatever. And the driverless car is also always gonna be better than a human being in avoiding a shopping cart, okay? But what happens if a driverless car encounters a shopping cart and a stroller at the same time. Imagine that the car confused about what to do and not able to differentiate between these two objects ends up making the wrong decision. Well, the headline reads, “Robot car kills baby to save groceries.” That’s the end of driverless cars in America, if that happens. So the thing that’s fascinating, with driverless car liability is it actually really matters the fact that driverless cars are going to mess up in ways that humans wouldn’t, even if they mess up less overall. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, Ryan, as an expert in robot law, do you think driverless cars will have rights at some point, the way that humans do when they get into an accident? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What I will say is that we are very far from a situation where AI or robots will be able to claim rights the way that people have them. And even though some doomsayers claim that AI is going to wake up and kill everybody, you know, like the first time I see a presentation where like PowerPoint works perfectly, that will be when I worry about, you know, AV before AI. Like we’re just very far away from getting to that level of sophistication. Yeah but one day maybe, and at that time we’re really going to have to have an overhaul or a sea change in the law because suddenly there will be an entity that has rights and responsibilities but is not like us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The robot takeover is not going to happen anytime soon, but the friction between humans and these non-human counterparts, that’s only going to increase as AI creeps more and more into our lives. I’m gonna be honest, I thought that ride I took with my friend Harry was actually really nice. It was a nice temperature in there, the AC was going, there were lo -fi beats playing at such a reasonable volume. It didn’t smell weird. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There’s part of me that’s a little disappointed because, you know, I’m a little bit of a hater and so I want, I want to drive through cement. I want that to, I want to be the one who gets to, gets to like roll their eyes at these things that are sort of just. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I know! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Inexplicably irksome. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Are we getting Waymo pilled? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’re getting Waymo pilled. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh god. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I just don’t, I don’t wanna give in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Waymo Voice: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pull the handle twice to exit. The first pull unlocks. The second opens the door. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay, we’re pulling up to the curb now. There’s an older man at the crosswalk kind of just glaring this Waymo down and I feel really weird. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The deep shame, the shame! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have to admit, it would have been great content if something wild did happen during my first Waymo ride. But like the majority of rides, it was pretty uneventful. It almost felt normal. And maybe that’s the real robot takeover. It’s the gradual, boring replacement of our everyday human interactions. For 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, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our senior editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts and helps edit the show. Sound Design by Maya Cueva. Original music by Chris Egusa with additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dust Silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches. If you have feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at closealltabs@kqed.org. Follow us on Instagram at CloseAllTabsPod. And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "Self-driving Waymo robotaxis have become a familiar sight in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, but not everyone is happy about that. These “ghost-like” autonomous vehicles have made a lot of people uneasy, some even going as far as to vandalize the cars. But what’s behind this hostility? In this episode, Morgan speaks with Bloomberg journalist Ellen Huet and robot law professor Ryan Calo to explore the rise of Waymo vandalism and its roots in our collective anxiety over artificial intelligence. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Self-driving Waymo robotaxis have become a familiar sight in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, but not everyone is happy about that. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These “ghost-like” autonomous vehicles have made a lot of people uneasy, some even going as far as to vandalize the cars. But what’s behind this hostility? In this episode, Morgan speaks with \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bloomberg\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> journalist Ellen Huet and robot law professor Ryan Calo to explore the rise of Waymo vandalism and its roots in our collective anxiety over artificial intelligence. \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=KQINC7694102813\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Guests:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.ellenhuet.com/\">Ellen Huet\u003c/a>, Features writer at Bloomberg News\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://ischool.uw.edu/people/faculty/profile/rcalo\">Ryan Calo\u003c/a>, Professor of Law at University of Washington\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Further reading:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-12-06/waymo-s-expansion-spurs-some-rage-against-the-self-driving-cars\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Waymo’s Expansion Provokes Anxieties of AI Takeover\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> – Ellen Huet, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bloomberg\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://qz.com/robotaxi-tesla-uber-lyft-waymo-mobileye-texas-1851759608\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The next big robotaxi push is almost here\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> — Harri Weber, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Quartz \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/the-deadly-uber-self-driving-car-crash-is-just-the-beginning.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Courts Can Handle the Deadly Uber Self-Driving Car Crash. But that doesn’t mean the law is ready for autonomous vehicles.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> — Ryan Calo, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Slate\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/good-robot-bad-robot-jo-ann-oravec/1141932639\">Good Robot, Bad Robot: Dark and Creepy Sides of Robotics, Autonomous Vehicles, and AI\u003c/a> — Jo Ann Oravec, Professor at the University of Wisconsin\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\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>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do we look like influencers right now? Is this embarrassing to be walking up to a Waymo? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is me and my friend \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Harri Weber\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> booking my first ride in a Waymo. It’s a self -driving car service. Some people also call them robo-taxis. Wait, I think I have to unlock it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, there we go. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Morgan? No one’s going to respond. Waymo’s are, again, totally self -driving. There’s no human in the front seat. Hello from Waymo. As we get going, just give us one minute to cover a few… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh god. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I invited Harry because she’s also a tech journalist and she covers the future of cars. She recently wrote about the expansion of robo -taxis for courts. And also, we both had a craving for deli sandwiches from this one spot with terrible street parking. So why not take a Waymo? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There’s no one behind the wheel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is there a real need for the steering wheel? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Literally, I don’t see any purpose for it, but for whatever reason, there’s, you know, national laws require this steering wheel to still be there. It’s a little ghostly though, right? It’s nudging us around, it’s keeping us in the lane. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Waymo’s are something of a tourist attraction in California. My cousins always wanna take one whenever they come to visit me. But honestly, ever since Waymo’s launch a few months ago in Los Angeles, where Harri and I live, I’ve been pretty hesitant to take them. Part of it is, yeah, I don’t really trust a robot to drive me around, especially not through a very busy intersection in Koreatown during rush hour. But that’s where this car picked us up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These things aren’t perfect. Something could go wrong while we’re driving or while it’s moving us around. But Waymo’s claim based on its own data is that it is a lot safer than a human driver. I think that you’re probably more likely to find that they’re a nuisance than they are dangerous. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But despite their great track record when it comes to safety, I feel like Waymo mishaps are always going viral. Like a couple of weeks ago, there was a video of a Waymo in San Francisco, ignoring a public works crew and driving straight through a sinkhole. And then there was a video of a guy in Arizona who called a Waymo to take him to the airport, but got stuck in a parking lot. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Video Clip 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m in a Waymo car. This car is just going in circles. I got my seatbelt on, I can’t get out the car. Has this been hacked? What’s going on? I feel like I’m in the movies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Waymos make me feel a little uneasy, but it’s really other people’s reactions to Waymos that makes me nervous about being in one. Even getting in, in front of that coffee shop, did you feel self -conscious? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, yeah, it felt a little uncool. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I felt so deeply uncool getting in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think something flipped when Google was first developing a driverless car. I think there was actually like a cool factor going, or maybe I was just that uncool that I thought it was cool. But tech criticism has evolved a lot since then. And so now we’re in this car and it does feel a little bit like we are maybe class traitors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And it’s not just the uncool factor. Public reaction to Waymos has turned violent. Like this incident in San Francisco, where a bunch of guys started spray painting a Waymo while a group of women was inside. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Video Clip 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why are you attacking us? Connecting to writer support. Call may be recorded. Oh my God. Oh my god! Holy shit! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is also a recent viral video of people swarming a Waymo in Los Angeles. One of the guys in the video so gracefully leaps into the air and drop kicks the passenger door right off the hinges, while another person beats the Waymo’s windshield with a ripped off piece of its own front bumper. To be clear, it doesn’t seem like any living person has been hurt in any of these incidents, unless you count getting a little car sick. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Video Clip 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, I got a flight to catch. Why is this thing going in a circle? I’m getting dizzy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But to a lot of people, including myself, I’ll be honest, something about seeing robots do a human task just does not feel right. And clearly, it triggers some deep-seated instinct to attack. So what is behind this recent outburst of aggression against Waymos? Is it just that destroying them makes really good content that’s bound to go viral? Or is it our collective anxiety over the state of tech right now? This is Close All Tabs. I’m \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, 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. People are justifiably jaded against Silicon Valley and the idea of a robot takeover would make anyone nervous. But why take it out on Waymo? All right, we’re gonna kick this off like we usually do. A new tab, Waymo Vandalism. We’re gonna talk to \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ellen Huet\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. She covers technology and Silicon Valley and startup culture for Bloomberg, or as she puts it, all things at the intersection of tech and humans. And she wrote about how Waymo’s recent expansion provoked so -called AI anxiety. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">as long as these cars have been around in their various iterations, so probably over the last decade or so, people have reacted to them with suspicion and at times with violence. Like even back in 2018 when early Waymo vehicles were being tested in Arizona, people threw rocks at them, people like attacked the cars. Even if these cases are rare, it has been somewhat consistent that people react to robot cars at times with anger or violence or like attempting to kind of outsmart them. You know, there are early stories of people who figured out that you could confuse autonomous cars by putting a traffic cone on the hood of the car. Right, I’ve seen that. And I – Yeah, and like, there’s clearly some human impulse to try to almost like assert agency or control over this vehicle that, you know, in some existential sense is kind of a threat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have to wonder how much product design plays a role in ensuring that people are more receptive to these cars. I mean, I’m thinking of, you know, that 2000s movie, Herbie Fully Loaded, how it’s like a cutesy little buggy. And if I saw that driving around, I wouldn’t want to, like, beat that up. But when I see, like, a Cybertruck, I’m like, oh, fight or flight, activated. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I guarantee lots of designers have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about this question. I remember, it must have been a decade ago, you know, I was a tech reporter, I was working at Forbes and I was invited to take a test drive in an early autonomous car. And what I remember most is that those early cars were designed to look so cute. Like it was like a little gumdrop shaped car and it was white and like its headlights We’re kind of that like. oval shape to make it look like, you know, like these cute little cartoon eyes. And yeah, I guarantee that designers and engineers spent a lot of time thinking about how to make this threatening-ish technology seem as cute and approachable as possible. But yeah, Waymo’s are obviously like kind of just like a normal-looking car. My guess is it’s not coincidence that they’re all white. maybe people associate that with, like, sort of angelic energy or something. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But let’s talk about what’s at the root of this feeling that a lot of people have when confronted with a robot doing a human job. That is a new tab. Ready? Waymo and AI anxiety. Okay, so a lot of this anger against Waymo’s is due to the very real risk of job loss as robo-taxis begin replacing human drivers. But it’s also bigger than that. AI is moving into a lot of areas besides cars. In her story about this spike in Waymo vandalism, Ellen cited University of Wisconsin professor Jo Anne Oravec, who said that a lot of people are just not really comfortable with the realization that something else is intelligent. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think people sometimes direct their general anxiety about, like, job displacement from AI toward Waymos just because these are objects that exist in the physical world and that you can actually smash the windshield of a Waymo car in the way that you can’t quite attack ChatGPT, right? Like, I think in some sense they’re at a disadvantage by simply being, like, a physical object. And something that you are reminded of every time, you know, one drives by. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And the cars have also done things that are genuinely annoying. Like in San Francisco, there was this cluster of Waymo cars that had gotten trapped in a honking war with each other. So they were like up at the middle of the night, you know, it’s like 4:30 in the morning. And neighbors who were trying to sleep near wherever these cars are gathered were being woken up at night by the sound of all of these cars honking at each other. And like in the most nonsensical way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The term AI can mean a lot of different things. Autonomous vehicles like Waymo do use artificial intelligence. They use cameras to see, they’re trained to recognize objects and calculate the distance between them. But it’s pretty different from how a generative AI tool like ChatGPT works, or how other AI generators work to produce images, videos, and music. But to a lot of people, the anxiety is the same. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think what makes people have this reaction, regardless of what type of AI it is, is that these products are being designed to do actions and take on jobs and responsibilities that used to be solely the jurisdiction of humans, right? So it used to be like only people could see and drive and manipulate a car and now we can see that a human is not needed to do that. And it used to be that a human was needed to provide half of a conversation, you couldn’t have that, you know, without another person on the other side of the line. Now, that’s no longer true. So I think what we’re seeing is, even though the technology is different, in some cases and in some ways, the human reaction to it is the same. Because I think it’s provoking the same question of, well, where do I belong in this world where this thing that I used to do can be done by a non-human entity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There’s a Waymo ad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Waymo Advertisement: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, it’s finally happening. The robots, they’re coming. Maybe that’s a good thing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And like, Waymo’s clearly playing into people’s concerns about the robots, but putting like this positive spin on it. What do you think? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, an ad like that makes me laugh because I just imagine, I wish I could be a fly on the wall in the marketing discussions that led to that copy because I’m sure they were like, guys, we have to address the fact that some people are scared of this, but let’s make it cheeky, let’s make it funny. There are researchers out there who study human-robot relations and some of the things that they explained to me were like these human-like. objects that can move with some intelligence in our world feel existentially unsettling to us because we don’t know where we fall in the pecking order anymore. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And don’t forget, we’ve been consuming so much sci-fi about how super advanced robots can totally disrupt our way of life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>I, Robot: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Robots don’t feel fear. They don’t feel anything. They don’t get hungry. They don’t sleep. I do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>M3gan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Megan, turn off. Are you sure? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>2001: A Space Odyssey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Open the pod bay doors, Hal. I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This pop culture fear of artificial intelligence and robots taking over has been around for a while, but it hasn’t been limited to the screen. Physical attacks on robots have been happening for over a decade. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A classic example is the story of Hitchbot. And the story of Hitchbot starts back in 2013 when a group of researchers decided they wanted to try to answer the question, can robots trust humans? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hitchbot will be depending on the kindness and the curiosity of strangers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Hitchbot was this little humanoid robot that couldn’t really do much, but it was on a mission to hitchhike across Canada. It had a stocky, cylindrical body and goofy arms and legs made out of pool noodles. Its head had an LED panel with a little smiley face. Hitchbot couldn’t move on its own. It could only recognize human speech and engage in basic conversations, mostly to ask bystanders for help. It also had a GPS and took pictures of its surroundings every 20 minutes so that researchers could keep tabs on it. I mean, it was pretty adorable. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And on its first few journeys, everything went fine. Like, people really got excited about this idea and wanted to contribute to helping the robot get from point A to point B. So Hitchbot traveled across Canada and traveled around Europe. And then in 2015, Hitchbot tried to do a cross-country trip across the United States and started in Boston. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But Hitchbot only made it to Philadelphia, where it was tragically attacked and decapitated. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Philly Man 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is the bench Hitchbot was killed on. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Philly Man 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh really? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Philly Man 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know the story of Hitchbot? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Philly Man 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, yeah, it made it around the world and it died.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Philly Man 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It didn’t make it around the world because it died in Philadelphia. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Maybe they wanted to reassert their power or dominance over a human-like object and feel secure in their place as humans. But yeah, I think the story of Hitchbot tells us a lot about the psychology of humans versus robots. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Right. And that Waymos may not be ready for Philly yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellen Huet:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Seems possible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">OK, clearly, there’s something here about robots that makes us uncomfortable. People don’t always respond well to things that look a little too human or act kind of human, but aren’t quite human. So aside from making the cars cuter in hopes that people won’t attack them, is there anything else Waymo can do? When I scroll past one of these videos of someone spray painting one of the cars…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Video Clip 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why are you attacking us? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Or blocking its way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Video Clip 4: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Get out of the way! Move! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Or, worst case scenario, harassing someone inside, which did happen in San Francisco. With these videos, I’ve always wondered, why can’t the car just back up and drive away? Any human driver would. We’ll get into that and some other very thorny questions after this break. As this technology progresses, what are the implications of robots making their own decisions in these very high-stakes situations? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But that is a new tab. “The ethics of self-driving cars.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To dig into this, I called up \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ryan Calo\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. He’s a legal scholar and a professor at the University of Washington School of Law. And his specialty? Robot law. So he had his own theory about what makes Waymo’s so attractive to vandalize. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s the fact that they’re doing something transgressive where they’re, you know, they are of course vandalizing like an entity, an agent, but very much falls short of doing violence to a human being. Obviously these same people wouldn’t run up to a human being or a human cab driver and spray paint them. But the point of the matter is that, you know, there is this unease about these technologies, has to do with their novelty, has to do with their being too close to being these anthropomorphic agents. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By anthropomorphic, Ryan means having human -like characteristics, even if it isn’t actually human. Yeah, I live in L.A., which has horrendous traffic, and so I watch a Waymo, try to make a U-turn, and get cut off at every possible opportunity, and I feel bad for it. What’s going on with that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s hard not to empathize, right? The fact is, is that human beings are quite bad at categorizing robots as either things or people. And the more anthropomorphic a technology is, the harder that is. So what’s really interesting about Waymo is, apparently, it’s associated as much with being a car as it is with being an entity. I always thought that if the vandalism were occurring inside the car, right? So sometimes people vandalize the interior of a Waymo because they’re just there by themselves, seemingly, Right? And it’s one thing to put a camera there, but if you were to put like an anthropomorphic robot driver in the Waymo that looked back at you when you get in to say, “Hey, where can I take you?” And also could be, was visible. Like when you saw the Waymo trying to make a U -turn, you saw like a person in there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s struggling. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whatever it was, it’s struggling. Or when somebody went to vandalize this thing, cause it to crash, you know, cause it to shut down, like vandalize it. And there’s this android in there looking at you that looks like a person. I think the outcome would be different. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ryan’s theory is that because Waymo’s don’t resemble any living thing, it’s easier to justify being violent. And sure, passengers would probably be creeped out by a robot doll in the driver’s seat, but maybe people would be discouraged from attacking it because there’s another human-ish thing there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There’s this concept called the uncanny valley. The deal is, it’s a valley, is that appreciation of the robot goes up and up and up and up and up and up and up, the more anthropomorphic it becomes, but then suddenly when it gets super close to actually like a human, it precipitously drops before coming back if it’s completely like a human, right? That’s the valley. Now, Waymo cars… They do not look like people, right? So they really are very far down on that curve. They’re more thrilling to vandalize than a mailbox. I just don’t see it happening with something that felt more like a person. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. You have written about the legal quandaries of self-driving cars, and when they first started hitting the road about five or so years ago, people were mostly worried about passenger safety and crashes. And it seems like companies like Waymo were maybe not so prepared for, like, the irate protesters?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you want to talk specifically about vandalism, this has messed up people working in AI and robotics for a long time, and so it shouldn’t really have surprised Waymo. I don’t know how one guards against it, right? Think about, Morgan, do you recall the time when Microsoft released that chatbot called Tay? \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>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Microsoft trains this chatbot early. This is pre-OpenAI and so on, and they released this Twitter-based chatbot that’s supposed to learn how to interact. Within an hour, there are these people, trolls on the Internet, getting it to say all kinds of racist and terrible things. They end up having to take the chatbot down. When the company was asked about “Why did this happen?” They’re like, “Well, we just didn’t anticipate that folks would do this,” unfortunately. The truth is about technology, especially like new emerging technology, you just don’t know how it’s going to play out in society. In fact, this leads some law professors like myself, to conclude that technology is a particularly difficult thing to regulate, because you don’t know how it’s going to play out in advance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Back in 2018, Ryan wrote an essay in Slate about whether the law was ready for self-driving cars. And in it, he refutes a common critique of this technology that has to do with the old philosophical dilemma known as the trolley problem. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The trolley problem is this thought experiment about making decisions. You’ve got a train chugging along a track and it’s heading toward five people. But you, the decision maker, can flip a switch and direct the train to another track. Here’s the twist. There’s another single person stuck to that other track. So do you flip the switch? Save five people, but by making that decision, kill another? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is the kind of thought experiment people love to refer to when puzzling over the morality of autonomous vehicles and other forms of AI. It’s the assumption that self -driving cars will have to make the same kinds of moral decisions. But Ryan says the engineers of these vehicles, and we as a public, should worry less about these philosophical hypotheticals and more about the practical real-life situations that these cars might face. Programming a moral compass is still up for debate. But programming object recognition is way more realistic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just imagine that a driverless car is always gonna be better than a person at avoiding a stroller in a parking lot. Always better because it’s better sensors, better response times, whatever. And the driverless car is also always gonna be better than a human being in avoiding a shopping cart, okay? But what happens if a driverless car encounters a shopping cart and a stroller at the same time. Imagine that the car confused about what to do and not able to differentiate between these two objects ends up making the wrong decision. Well, the headline reads, “Robot car kills baby to save groceries.” That’s the end of driverless cars in America, if that happens. So the thing that’s fascinating, with driverless car liability is it actually really matters the fact that driverless cars are going to mess up in ways that humans wouldn’t, even if they mess up less overall. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, Ryan, as an expert in robot law, do you think driverless cars will have rights at some point, the way that humans do when they get into an accident? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ryan Calo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What I will say is that we are very far from a situation where AI or robots will be able to claim rights the way that people have them. And even though some doomsayers claim that AI is going to wake up and kill everybody, you know, like the first time I see a presentation where like PowerPoint works perfectly, that will be when I worry about, you know, AV before AI. Like we’re just very far away from getting to that level of sophistication. Yeah but one day maybe, and at that time we’re really going to have to have an overhaul or a sea change in the law because suddenly there will be an entity that has rights and responsibilities but is not like us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The robot takeover is not going to happen anytime soon, but the friction between humans and these non-human counterparts, that’s only going to increase as AI creeps more and more into our lives. I’m gonna be honest, I thought that ride I took with my friend Harry was actually really nice. It was a nice temperature in there, the AC was going, there were lo -fi beats playing at such a reasonable volume. It didn’t smell weird. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There’s part of me that’s a little disappointed because, you know, I’m a little bit of a hater and so I want, I want to drive through cement. I want that to, I want to be the one who gets to, gets to like roll their eyes at these things that are sort of just. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I know! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Inexplicably irksome. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Are we getting Waymo pilled? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’re getting Waymo pilled. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh god. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I just don’t, I don’t wanna give in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Waymo Voice: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pull the handle twice to exit. The first pull unlocks. The second opens the door. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay, we’re pulling up to the curb now. There’s an older man at the crosswalk kind of just glaring this Waymo down and I feel really weird. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Harri Weber:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The deep shame, the shame! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have to admit, it would have been great content if something wild did happen during my first Waymo ride. But like the majority of rides, it was pretty uneventful. It almost felt normal. And maybe that’s the real robot takeover. It’s the gradual, boring replacement of our everyday human interactions. For 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, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our senior editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts and helps edit the show. Sound Design by Maya Cueva. Original music by Chris Egusa with additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dust Silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches. If you have feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at closealltabs@kqed.org. Follow us on Instagram at CloseAllTabsPod. And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The world of family vlogging is under scrutiny after the release of two new documentaries: HBO’s “An Update on Our Family” and Hulu’s “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.” The attention around Myka Stauffer and Ruby Franke has brought up questions about the dark side of family channels, and whether child influencers should have more say in their internet presence. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, Morgan takes us through the family channel industry and the lack of legal protections for children online. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ll hear from a former “mommy blogger kid” who’s fighting for the next generation of internet child stars, as well as Fortesa Latifi, a journalist who covers the industry. Together we’ll explore how posting and consuming this kind of content impacts the children growing up on our screens. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\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=KQINC7253313109\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003c/h2>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Caymi Barrett:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think when I first started to notice that like, hey, this is kind of really weird and like we need to kind of tone it down is when I was hit by a drunk driver. Like immediately my mom pulled out her camera. The first responders were there. I was being strapped down to a stretcher because I had like a spinal injury and I was really scared. I was vomiting and my mom was just like in the back of the ambulance like taking pictures and taking little clips of everything going on. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Caymi Barrett is 26 now, and the internet has always been part of her life. In the 2000s, her mom was a mommy blogger. And throughout her childhood, Caymi’s most vulnerable moments were posted online to thousands of strangers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Caymi Barrett:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s something I still just very vividly remember. I never know how to explain it other than just kind of like an out -of -body experience. I wanted my mom there to comfort me. I wanted my mom to hold my hand. I was experiencing so much fear and pain in silence because I was just in shock. I had a concussion and meanwhile, my mom was just taking pictures and like writing up a post about literally what had just happened. So it was probably like a five minute ambulance drive. From the time of the accident to the moment we got to the hospital, there was already one post up. And I remember a nurse came up to me and she asked me if I was in pain. And I just said, “No, I want my mom.” But she was at the foot of the bed making a Facebook post, like another update. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The mommy blogger scene of the early aughts laid the groundwork for family vlogging today. That’s vlogging with a V, as in like video blog. It’s an entire genre of content on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Family Vlogger 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hello everyone and welcome back to my channel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Family Vlogger 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey babies! Welcome back! My name is Bronte, for those of you who are new here. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Family Vlogger 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Good morning. Let’s cook breakfast for 10, 10 year olds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Family vlogs and momfluencers make up a multi -billion dollar industry. Like the mommy blogs that came before them, family channels are often an outlet for parents to share advice and open up about the very difficult realities of raising tiny humans. But when your entire livelihood revolves around making content about your kids, I’ll Caymi explain. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Caymi Barrett:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s caused a lot of paranoia, a lot of anxiety. There’s a lot of things that people don’t necessarily think about. And throughout the years, it’s been really hard to kind of navigate life with a non -consensual digital footprint. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Caymi was 15 then, and her mom had crossed the line plenty of times before. But this particular incident with a drunk driver changed everything for her. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Caymi Barrett:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After that, I just felt very exposed and I started to isolate myself a lot. So I had reconstructive surgery and I had a spinal injury and so I was prescribed some heavy narcotic pain medication and that was kind of how I just got through the rest of my teen years by isolating and unfortunately becoming addicted to substances because I just wanted to numb everything that was happening in my real life and then I had also no control of what was being posted on social media. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Caymi checked herself into rehab when she turned 18. Since then, she’s been working on rebuilding her relationship with her mom and also with the internet. That means protecting the kids who are going through what she went through. Caymi started speaking out about her own experience a few years ago on TikTok to raise awareness and advocate for the right to privacy for child influencers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Caymi Barrett:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I started seeing people talking about how these family channels don’t affect kids and it’s fine because they get all these free things, I just was like, “Hey, that’s actually really not the case. Like, it’s actually really hard to grow up with all of these things attached to your name.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Multiple states are trying to establish protections for kids who appear in their parents’ content. Caymi actually testified in some of those hearings. A few states have already passed laws about child influencers. On paper, the fact that there’s any legal protection for kids online is huge. But are these laws enforceable? And what gaps do they leave when it comes to regulating this massive content industry? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung:\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, 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\">To understand the latest attempts to regulate it, we need to get into where this industry even started. New tab. How did family vlogging get so big? And to walk us through this issue, we’re calling up \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fortesa Latifi\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. She’s been reporting on this world of family channels for years and is working on a book about child influencers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So the first big family vlogging families really took off in the aughts. So I wanna say around like between 2006 to like 2010, that was when they first really started making a ton of money from YouTube. And I think part of the reason that the families that got in then were so successful is because it was not over-saturated yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So we had the early aughts of like, these are like the beginning of family vloggers and then the mid 2010s to late 2010s, that was kind of what I have seen as the golden age of family vlogging. What was that age like? What kind of content were they making? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back in the day on YouTube, it was very much just like, “Come along with me as I get my six kids ready for school,” or like “This is the day in the life of a mom with like five kids.” And you’ll notice that’s changed over the years. Like on YouTube, things had to ratchet up a lot. It was a lot of challenges. It was a lot of kind of trying to like outdo each other. One video that sticks in mind for me is this one family, the Family Fun Pack. I think they have like seven or eight kids and they did like a “We’re gonna only eat a specific color food.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Family Fun Pack: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I have a challenge planned for the kids today. They may or may not like it, but I’m about to go tell them what it is right now. They have no idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So like this kid only could eat green food for a day, this kid could only eat purple food for a day. And it was just like these kind of like silly challenges. And then once there became more people in the space, you had to do more to get noticed. So things started getting more personal and people would post videos of their sick kids and like come along with me to the emergency room for little Joey and there’s videos of him crying and bleeding or whatever. And then there’s videos of young women talking about getting their menstrual cycles for the first time or getting the sex talk. Like I cannot tell you in the research of my book how many sex talk videos I stumbled upon from family bloggers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Family Vlogger 4: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t want them to learn about sex and how we get pregnant from just anybody. I don’t want them to learn from somebody at school. And then they also get kind of a memento to remind them as they get older about this special time when they learned about how we have babies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I was just like, “Whoa, this is a little wild.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. It seems like to get engagement, it’s almost incentivized to be increasingly intimate and personal. And I don’t, I mean, exploitative? Is that the right word? You know?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, I think a lot of people consider that the exact right word. In the research for my book, I talked to a bunch of family vloggers and I asked them what is the content that does the best and several of them told me if a kid is hurt or sick or upset, that does really well. And so, you know, that kind of feeds into its own little monster there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It seems like this pushback against family vloggers, this like conversation about protecting child influencers is relatively new. Like it’s only been in the last couple of years that people are actually questioning the ethics of this industry. It’s probably because there are particularly egregious cases of child abuse that came out of this industry. Can we talk about that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there’s two cases that really stick out to me. And one is, I’m sure you’re familiar with the Stauffer case. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Myka Stauffer was a YouTuber who built a following with videos about cleaning tips, parenting, and then trying to get pregnant after a miscarriage. Back in 2016, Micah and her husband announced that they were in the process of adopting a disabled baby boy from China. They were already popular, but their views skyrocketed with the adoption videos. They made a lot of monetized content about their adopted son and his medical needs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Myka Stauffer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If anything, my child is not returnable. And we, without a doubt in our minds, we knew, no matter what state he came to us, that we would love him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then, followers noticed that he stopped appearing in videos. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then she made this like tearful apology video basically saying that he was living with another family and that he wasn’t in their family anymore. And it kind of went viral as like this YouTube mom rehomed her adoptive son after making money off of him and she was still after he wasn’t living there still had videos on YouTube that were monetized about him. And so there was kind of this outcry. And so that was the first thing that I think really like planted the seed for people. And then the eight passengers and Ruby Franke, I don’t even wanna call it a scandal because it’s child abuse, it’s not a scandal, but that entire case. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And what happened there? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, so Ruby Franke, her and her husband, Kevin, had this YouTube channel called 8 Passengers, and it was called 8 Passengers because they had six kids and so the eight of them. And they had over two million subscribers at their height. I kind of consider them to be family vlogging royalty at the time. They kind of faced this sort of cancelation where Ruby had posted a video where her son said that he hadn’t slept on a bed in seven months as punishment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She explained her teenage son Chad had been sleeping on a bean bag for months. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chad Franke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was sleeping on a beanbag since October and they gave me my room back like two weeks ago. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And people were like, “Wait, wait, wait, what?” Like, everyone was like, thought that Ruby had been kind of like a strict mom, but then this kind of like pushed it over the edge. And so people started digging into like, what is going on with this family? And then a couple of years later, Ruby was arrested for aggravated child abuse. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A once popular parenting YouTuber, Ruby Franke, will spend up to 60 years in prison. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She pleaded guilty to numerous charges, including things like holding a child’s head underwater, putting her hand over a child’s mouth and nose so they couldn’t breathe, kicking a child while she was wearing boots. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so that was kind of the second thing. You had like Myka Stauffer and then you had Ruby Franke where people were like, “There is a darkness behind the perfect veneer of the YouTube vlogging family.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Parents are supposed to be responsible for protecting their children, but clearly that isn’t always happening with family vloggers in this very lucrative industry. So is there anything out there to protect these kids? I think that’s a new tab, Child Influencer Protections. So last year, California Governor Gavin Newsom actually signed two pieces of legislation that have to do with child influencers. The first expands something called the Coogan Law.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a 1939 law named after a silent film star named Jackie Coogan, who worked his entire childhood. And basically, by the time he was an adult, there was no money left for him. So now, California requires that 15 % of whatever a child performer earns is saved in a trust for when that child turns 18. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But until last year, the Coogan Law only applied to child actors, as in kids who are working on actual film or television sets. This expansion extends the law to child content creators. That includes vloggers, influencers, streamers, podcasters. Whenever a kid, or their family, is paid directly to post something online. It’s pretty straightforward. But California’s other law is unclear. Here’s Fortesa again to explain. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So SB 764 dictates that content creators who feature minor children in at least 30% of their content must set aside a proportionate percentage of the earnings from that content to be held in a trust account until the child is 18. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now you may be wondering what does proportionate percentage even mean? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I’ve reached out to lawyers to ask and experts what a proportionate percentage like what that really means in practice and I haven’t been able to get like a good solid answer. Like the worry here is that you would need like a forensic accountant who has a specialization in social media to even know the right amount of money that should have been saved for you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like I can’t imagine going back through maybe like a decade of like YouTube and TikTok videos and trying to calculate like, “How much was I in this video? 29%. Okay, and they made $6 ,000 off it.” It’s very complicated, but I don’t know that there’s a better way. I’m not saying I have a better idea. And I think that kind of speaks to the convoluted nature of both the industry and attempts to regulate the industry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It doesn’t even touch on other protections for traditional child actors, like making sure they’re in school or that they’re allowed to take breaks. How do you even enforce something like that though? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t know. I think it’s so difficult because this work is happening largely in the home, right? Being a family vlogger, inherently your work is in your home and it is with your children and that’s really difficult. We know how this country feels about the government stepping in between parents and children. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. So, how do these new laws in California compare to similar laws in other states? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Illinois was first, Minnesota was second, and California was third. Illinois’s law is pretty similar to California’s law. Minnesota’s takes it a step further, and they have this clause that’s basically considered the right to be deleted. And so it states that upon reaching the age of 18, the former child influencer can request the deletion of content. I do think that that was Minnesota’s attempt to address the privacy concerns. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But it’s also like, I don’t know, I sound like a boomer when I say this, but I feel like once something is on the internet, it really is kind of on the internet forever, especially like with these famous kids. Like you see it with the eight passengers stuff, right? Like after Ruby was arrested for child abuse, their channel was taken off of YouTube. And I’ve asked family members and they didn’t delete it. So it seems that YouTube took it offline in the wake of this arrest. But you can still find clips everywhere. Like if you look up Ruby Frankie on TikTok, you can watch entire vlogs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, this content thrives on platforms like YouTube and Instagram and TikTok, but do you see these platforms taking any action to protect these kids? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, what’s in it for them, you know? Like, I think these are companies that make a lot of money off of content featuring influencer kids. Family vlogging is a multi -billion dollar industry. I don’t think that there’s any reason for them to step in when it is so lucrative for them. Like that’s not their job to think about the child. That’s the parents’ job. The platform’s job is to make money which they’re doing off of this content. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So social media platforms have no incentive to restrict family vlogging and the new laws aren’t foolproof, not to mention a mess to enforce. Like Fortesa mentioned, it’s on the parents to have their kids’ best interests at heart. Well, when it comes to influencers who make a living off of sharing almost every aspect of their lives, what does that even look like? The answer, after this break. Now back to the story. When it comes to influencers sharing their kids’ lives online, is the tide changing at all? Okay, new tab. Influencers taking kids offline. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve noticed this in the last couple of years where huge influencers who built their considerable platforms off of showing their kids and sharing their life with their kids have reversed course. The biggest person that comes to mind for me is Maia Knight. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. She was a single mom who had twins. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes. Yeah. She would be holding both the babies and making bottles at the same time. It was just these very real videos. She got super famous. Got like 8 million followers on TikTok. And after a year or two, she decided, “I’m going to take my daughters off of TikTok and Instagram and everything.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maia Knight: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’re toddlers now and I have decided to not show them anymore. I’m making a choice for my daughters to protect them. Am I going to lose followers? Yes I’m going to. Am I going to lose 8 million followers? I hope not. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there was a huge amount of backlash to that. And it was fascinating because I think there were several camps. Some people were like, “How dare you? We love them. We’re their TikTok aunties. You can’t do this,” which like, parasocial. Yeah. And I’m sure I’ve talked to other huge creators who have taken their kids offline and they told me that reactions like that totally solidify their choice and they’re like, this is why I’m doing it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there was another camp who were like, “Maya has been exploiting her kids and now that she has this huge like brand, she’s taking them off, but it’s too late.” Which like, I don’t really understand as a concept. It’s like, do you want that to happen or do you not? I think there’s this like purity test kind of thing. Like there’s this idea. among detractors that if you ever show your kid online at all, you are evil and immoral. And I totally do not believe that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there are people who have become moms in their influencing careers and have never shown their kids at all. And that’s really fascinating to me as a reporter, because a few years ago there was never a question about whether an influencer would show their kid online or not. Like if you were having a baby, like that baby was gonna be in a ton of content. But now when a public facing influencer is pregnant, there is the question of like, “Which camp kind of are they gonna go into?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right, I remember when family vloggers would announce that they were pregnant again, they would start an Instagram account for the fetus, post ultrasounds, they were posting the kid before they were even born. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, yeah, and narrating like the fetus’s thoughts and like \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, like I can’t wait to meet you all. It’s like that is a six-month-old fetus. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, no, that kind of stuff has definitely fallen out of favor. Although, I don’t want to make it seem as though the majority of influencers aren’t showing their kids because they are, definitely. But there is this growing contingent where they’re not. And this is even happening among regular people. It’s not only influencers, it’s regular people who have a couple hundred followers who are like, I don’t really want to put my kid on Instagram or on TikTok. It’s interesting because I’ll interview these parents and I’m like, why did you not want to put your kid online or why did you not want to announce your pregnancy? And they have like specific reasons like online footprint which again, we were not talking about a few years ago or like worries about AI, but there’s also just this like sense of like uneasiness and just being like, “Why would I?” Which is fascinating to me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, you just had a baby, so congratulations, by the way, and you also fell into that camp of like, not announcing your pregnancy, you kind of just hard launched with like a baby. How did you come to that decision to never post your child’s face online? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. You know, I thought about this a lot. And obviously I was doing like a lot of this reporting on influencer kids and like what their lives are like. And not that I’m an influencer in any way, but like I said, kind of the way that influencers live their lives trickles down to the rest of us, like plebeians. And so we were all kind of just becoming more aware of like privacy. And when I was pregnant, I… just had this gut feeling that I just didn’t want anyone who didn’t know me in real life to know. And even now, I feel so strongly about it that I don’t want her to be on the internet and that I don’t want information or photos of her to be on the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean. There’s also a lot of discussion about whether or not you can talk about your kids online or write about parenting without exposing your kid. I mean, what are your thoughts on this? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I am very much trying to figure this out because I have benefited so much from the writing and the content of other moms specifically and like being able to watch really personal moments in their lives and have them talk about postpartum depression or their struggles with sleep training or whatever it is and like I have learned things about their kids. Like, I have benefited so much and I’m sure they benefited from sharing it. And I don’t think that we need to go back to a time when moms were not allowed to talk about what motherhood and parenthood is like. And I’m saying moms, because most parenthood content online is by moms. I’ve heard this from other creators too, is that they try to think, what will my kid think about this in five years, in 10 years, in 15 years? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I’ve also talked to kids of those first mommy bloggers and – I’m not saying this is the experience of every kid of a mom blogger, but the ones that I’ve talked to are like, “It is incredible to read how my mom felt when she was raising me and what she thought.” And they have these like incredible records, you know? So I also, I don’t want to take it too far on one side either. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you speak to the way that this industry and just overarching culture is changing the relationships between kids and parents? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s just so complicated and obviously parents have to make choices for their kids that the kids might not agree with later. But I think how many choices has really just been exacerbated by the internet and by the way it’s able to change people’s lives. And that’s the thing is I hear from a lot of parents who are like, “My kid is begging me to start a YouTube channel, like my kid wants to be a YouTuber and influencer.” And like yeah, that I understand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And like, from the kids point of view, like, why wouldn’t they want to, you know? But I think the parent has to make the best decision that they can at the time. And I think sometimes those decisions change, like you see with parents changing their minds later and taking their kids offline. And I think as a culture, just like generally, we need to be more accepting of people like changing their minds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is one of those internet rabbit holes that ultimately just doesn’t have a single answer at the end. These laws are a start, but enacting real change also involves a larger cultural shift in the way that we consume and post content. Remember Caymi? She’s the former mommy blogger kid who grew up and became an advocate for child influencers. She thinks kids should be allowed to exist without a camera in their face. And if you’re an influencer kid, here’s her advice to you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Caymi Barrett:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As you get older, you’re gonna meet so many people who are so different from, your parents are so different from the people who have viewed you your entire childhood, and they’re going to see you for who you are instead of seeing you for what your parents posted. I think it’s really important to literally be a kid, like, by yourself, at school, even if you have a friend that you trust to talk to about this. It’s so hard carrying all of it on your shoulders alone, but you don’t have to. And I wish that I had known that as a kid. Yeah, we’re fighting for y’all. We’re not gonna stop. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For now, let’s close 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, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Sound design by Maya Cueva and original music by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustilver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you have any feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org. Follow us on Instagram at CloseAllTabsPod. And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "The world of family vlogging is under scrutiny after the release of two new documentaries: HBO’s “An Update on Our Family” and Hulu’s “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.” The attention around Myka Stauffer and Ruby Franke has brought up questions about the dark side of family channels, and whether child influencers should have more say in their internet presence. In this episode, Morgan takes us through the family channel industry and the lack of legal protections for children online. We’ll hear from a former “mommy blogger kid” who’s fighting for the next generation of internet child stars, as well as an expert who covers the industry. Together we’ll explore how posting and consuming this kind of content impacts the children growing up on our screens. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Caymi Barrett:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think when I first started to notice that like, hey, this is kind of really weird and like we need to kind of tone it down is when I was hit by a drunk driver. Like immediately my mom pulled out her camera. The first responders were there. I was being strapped down to a stretcher because I had like a spinal injury and I was really scared. I was vomiting and my mom was just like in the back of the ambulance like taking pictures and taking little clips of everything going on. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Caymi Barrett is 26 now, and the internet has always been part of her life. In the 2000s, her mom was a mommy blogger. And throughout her childhood, Caymi’s most vulnerable moments were posted online to thousands of strangers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Caymi Barrett:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s something I still just very vividly remember. I never know how to explain it other than just kind of like an out -of -body experience. I wanted my mom there to comfort me. I wanted my mom to hold my hand. I was experiencing so much fear and pain in silence because I was just in shock. I had a concussion and meanwhile, my mom was just taking pictures and like writing up a post about literally what had just happened. So it was probably like a five minute ambulance drive. From the time of the accident to the moment we got to the hospital, there was already one post up. And I remember a nurse came up to me and she asked me if I was in pain. And I just said, “No, I want my mom.” But she was at the foot of the bed making a Facebook post, like another update. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The mommy blogger scene of the early aughts laid the groundwork for family vlogging today. That’s vlogging with a V, as in like video blog. It’s an entire genre of content on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Family Vlogger 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hello everyone and welcome back to my channel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Family Vlogger 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey babies! Welcome back! My name is Bronte, for those of you who are new here. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Family Vlogger 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Good morning. Let’s cook breakfast for 10, 10 year olds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Family vlogs and momfluencers make up a multi -billion dollar industry. Like the mommy blogs that came before them, family channels are often an outlet for parents to share advice and open up about the very difficult realities of raising tiny humans. But when your entire livelihood revolves around making content about your kids, I’ll Caymi explain. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Caymi Barrett:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s caused a lot of paranoia, a lot of anxiety. There’s a lot of things that people don’t necessarily think about. And throughout the years, it’s been really hard to kind of navigate life with a non -consensual digital footprint. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Caymi was 15 then, and her mom had crossed the line plenty of times before. But this particular incident with a drunk driver changed everything for her. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Caymi Barrett:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After that, I just felt very exposed and I started to isolate myself a lot. So I had reconstructive surgery and I had a spinal injury and so I was prescribed some heavy narcotic pain medication and that was kind of how I just got through the rest of my teen years by isolating and unfortunately becoming addicted to substances because I just wanted to numb everything that was happening in my real life and then I had also no control of what was being posted on social media. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Caymi checked herself into rehab when she turned 18. Since then, she’s been working on rebuilding her relationship with her mom and also with the internet. That means protecting the kids who are going through what she went through. Caymi started speaking out about her own experience a few years ago on TikTok to raise awareness and advocate for the right to privacy for child influencers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Caymi Barrett:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I started seeing people talking about how these family channels don’t affect kids and it’s fine because they get all these free things, I just was like, “Hey, that’s actually really not the case. Like, it’s actually really hard to grow up with all of these things attached to your name.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Multiple states are trying to establish protections for kids who appear in their parents’ content. Caymi actually testified in some of those hearings. A few states have already passed laws about child influencers. On paper, the fact that there’s any legal protection for kids online is huge. But are these laws enforceable? And what gaps do they leave when it comes to regulating this massive content industry? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung:\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, 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\">To understand the latest attempts to regulate it, we need to get into where this industry even started. New tab. How did family vlogging get so big? And to walk us through this issue, we’re calling up \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fortesa Latifi\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. She’s been reporting on this world of family channels for years and is working on a book about child influencers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So the first big family vlogging families really took off in the aughts. So I wanna say around like between 2006 to like 2010, that was when they first really started making a ton of money from YouTube. And I think part of the reason that the families that got in then were so successful is because it was not over-saturated yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So we had the early aughts of like, these are like the beginning of family vloggers and then the mid 2010s to late 2010s, that was kind of what I have seen as the golden age of family vlogging. What was that age like? What kind of content were they making? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back in the day on YouTube, it was very much just like, “Come along with me as I get my six kids ready for school,” or like “This is the day in the life of a mom with like five kids.” And you’ll notice that’s changed over the years. Like on YouTube, things had to ratchet up a lot. It was a lot of challenges. It was a lot of kind of trying to like outdo each other. One video that sticks in mind for me is this one family, the Family Fun Pack. I think they have like seven or eight kids and they did like a “We’re gonna only eat a specific color food.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Family Fun Pack: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I have a challenge planned for the kids today. They may or may not like it, but I’m about to go tell them what it is right now. They have no idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So like this kid only could eat green food for a day, this kid could only eat purple food for a day. And it was just like these kind of like silly challenges. And then once there became more people in the space, you had to do more to get noticed. So things started getting more personal and people would post videos of their sick kids and like come along with me to the emergency room for little Joey and there’s videos of him crying and bleeding or whatever. And then there’s videos of young women talking about getting their menstrual cycles for the first time or getting the sex talk. Like I cannot tell you in the research of my book how many sex talk videos I stumbled upon from family bloggers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Family Vlogger 4: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t want them to learn about sex and how we get pregnant from just anybody. I don’t want them to learn from somebody at school. And then they also get kind of a memento to remind them as they get older about this special time when they learned about how we have babies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I was just like, “Whoa, this is a little wild.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. It seems like to get engagement, it’s almost incentivized to be increasingly intimate and personal. And I don’t, I mean, exploitative? Is that the right word? You know?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, I think a lot of people consider that the exact right word. In the research for my book, I talked to a bunch of family vloggers and I asked them what is the content that does the best and several of them told me if a kid is hurt or sick or upset, that does really well. And so, you know, that kind of feeds into its own little monster there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It seems like this pushback against family vloggers, this like conversation about protecting child influencers is relatively new. Like it’s only been in the last couple of years that people are actually questioning the ethics of this industry. It’s probably because there are particularly egregious cases of child abuse that came out of this industry. Can we talk about that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there’s two cases that really stick out to me. And one is, I’m sure you’re familiar with the Stauffer case. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Myka Stauffer was a YouTuber who built a following with videos about cleaning tips, parenting, and then trying to get pregnant after a miscarriage. Back in 2016, Micah and her husband announced that they were in the process of adopting a disabled baby boy from China. They were already popular, but their views skyrocketed with the adoption videos. They made a lot of monetized content about their adopted son and his medical needs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Myka Stauffer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If anything, my child is not returnable. And we, without a doubt in our minds, we knew, no matter what state he came to us, that we would love him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then, followers noticed that he stopped appearing in videos. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then she made this like tearful apology video basically saying that he was living with another family and that he wasn’t in their family anymore. And it kind of went viral as like this YouTube mom rehomed her adoptive son after making money off of him and she was still after he wasn’t living there still had videos on YouTube that were monetized about him. And so there was kind of this outcry. And so that was the first thing that I think really like planted the seed for people. And then the eight passengers and Ruby Franke, I don’t even wanna call it a scandal because it’s child abuse, it’s not a scandal, but that entire case. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And what happened there? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, so Ruby Franke, her and her husband, Kevin, had this YouTube channel called 8 Passengers, and it was called 8 Passengers because they had six kids and so the eight of them. And they had over two million subscribers at their height. I kind of consider them to be family vlogging royalty at the time. They kind of faced this sort of cancelation where Ruby had posted a video where her son said that he hadn’t slept on a bed in seven months as punishment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She explained her teenage son Chad had been sleeping on a bean bag for months. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chad Franke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was sleeping on a beanbag since October and they gave me my room back like two weeks ago. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And people were like, “Wait, wait, wait, what?” Like, everyone was like, thought that Ruby had been kind of like a strict mom, but then this kind of like pushed it over the edge. And so people started digging into like, what is going on with this family? And then a couple of years later, Ruby was arrested for aggravated child abuse. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A once popular parenting YouTuber, Ruby Franke, will spend up to 60 years in prison. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Anchor 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She pleaded guilty to numerous charges, including things like holding a child’s head underwater, putting her hand over a child’s mouth and nose so they couldn’t breathe, kicking a child while she was wearing boots. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so that was kind of the second thing. You had like Myka Stauffer and then you had Ruby Franke where people were like, “There is a darkness behind the perfect veneer of the YouTube vlogging family.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Parents are supposed to be responsible for protecting their children, but clearly that isn’t always happening with family vloggers in this very lucrative industry. So is there anything out there to protect these kids? I think that’s a new tab, Child Influencer Protections. So last year, California Governor Gavin Newsom actually signed two pieces of legislation that have to do with child influencers. The first expands something called the Coogan Law.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a 1939 law named after a silent film star named Jackie Coogan, who worked his entire childhood. And basically, by the time he was an adult, there was no money left for him. So now, California requires that 15 % of whatever a child performer earns is saved in a trust for when that child turns 18. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But until last year, the Coogan Law only applied to child actors, as in kids who are working on actual film or television sets. This expansion extends the law to child content creators. That includes vloggers, influencers, streamers, podcasters. Whenever a kid, or their family, is paid directly to post something online. It’s pretty straightforward. But California’s other law is unclear. Here’s Fortesa again to explain. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So SB 764 dictates that content creators who feature minor children in at least 30% of their content must set aside a proportionate percentage of the earnings from that content to be held in a trust account until the child is 18. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now you may be wondering what does proportionate percentage even mean? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I’ve reached out to lawyers to ask and experts what a proportionate percentage like what that really means in practice and I haven’t been able to get like a good solid answer. Like the worry here is that you would need like a forensic accountant who has a specialization in social media to even know the right amount of money that should have been saved for you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like I can’t imagine going back through maybe like a decade of like YouTube and TikTok videos and trying to calculate like, “How much was I in this video? 29%. Okay, and they made $6 ,000 off it.” It’s very complicated, but I don’t know that there’s a better way. I’m not saying I have a better idea. And I think that kind of speaks to the convoluted nature of both the industry and attempts to regulate the industry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It doesn’t even touch on other protections for traditional child actors, like making sure they’re in school or that they’re allowed to take breaks. How do you even enforce something like that though? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t know. I think it’s so difficult because this work is happening largely in the home, right? Being a family vlogger, inherently your work is in your home and it is with your children and that’s really difficult. We know how this country feels about the government stepping in between parents and children. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. So, how do these new laws in California compare to similar laws in other states? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Illinois was first, Minnesota was second, and California was third. Illinois’s law is pretty similar to California’s law. Minnesota’s takes it a step further, and they have this clause that’s basically considered the right to be deleted. And so it states that upon reaching the age of 18, the former child influencer can request the deletion of content. I do think that that was Minnesota’s attempt to address the privacy concerns. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But it’s also like, I don’t know, I sound like a boomer when I say this, but I feel like once something is on the internet, it really is kind of on the internet forever, especially like with these famous kids. Like you see it with the eight passengers stuff, right? Like after Ruby was arrested for child abuse, their channel was taken off of YouTube. And I’ve asked family members and they didn’t delete it. So it seems that YouTube took it offline in the wake of this arrest. But you can still find clips everywhere. Like if you look up Ruby Frankie on TikTok, you can watch entire vlogs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, this content thrives on platforms like YouTube and Instagram and TikTok, but do you see these platforms taking any action to protect these kids? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, what’s in it for them, you know? Like, I think these are companies that make a lot of money off of content featuring influencer kids. Family vlogging is a multi -billion dollar industry. I don’t think that there’s any reason for them to step in when it is so lucrative for them. Like that’s not their job to think about the child. That’s the parents’ job. The platform’s job is to make money which they’re doing off of this content. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So social media platforms have no incentive to restrict family vlogging and the new laws aren’t foolproof, not to mention a mess to enforce. Like Fortesa mentioned, it’s on the parents to have their kids’ best interests at heart. Well, when it comes to influencers who make a living off of sharing almost every aspect of their lives, what does that even look like? The answer, after this break. Now back to the story. When it comes to influencers sharing their kids’ lives online, is the tide changing at all? Okay, new tab. Influencers taking kids offline. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve noticed this in the last couple of years where huge influencers who built their considerable platforms off of showing their kids and sharing their life with their kids have reversed course. The biggest person that comes to mind for me is Maia Knight. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. She was a single mom who had twins. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes. Yeah. She would be holding both the babies and making bottles at the same time. It was just these very real videos. She got super famous. Got like 8 million followers on TikTok. And after a year or two, she decided, “I’m going to take my daughters off of TikTok and Instagram and everything.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maia Knight: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’re toddlers now and I have decided to not show them anymore. I’m making a choice for my daughters to protect them. Am I going to lose followers? Yes I’m going to. Am I going to lose 8 million followers? I hope not. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there was a huge amount of backlash to that. And it was fascinating because I think there were several camps. Some people were like, “How dare you? We love them. We’re their TikTok aunties. You can’t do this,” which like, parasocial. Yeah. And I’m sure I’ve talked to other huge creators who have taken their kids offline and they told me that reactions like that totally solidify their choice and they’re like, this is why I’m doing it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there was another camp who were like, “Maya has been exploiting her kids and now that she has this huge like brand, she’s taking them off, but it’s too late.” Which like, I don’t really understand as a concept. It’s like, do you want that to happen or do you not? I think there’s this like purity test kind of thing. Like there’s this idea. among detractors that if you ever show your kid online at all, you are evil and immoral. And I totally do not believe that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there are people who have become moms in their influencing careers and have never shown their kids at all. And that’s really fascinating to me as a reporter, because a few years ago there was never a question about whether an influencer would show their kid online or not. Like if you were having a baby, like that baby was gonna be in a ton of content. But now when a public facing influencer is pregnant, there is the question of like, “Which camp kind of are they gonna go into?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right, I remember when family vloggers would announce that they were pregnant again, they would start an Instagram account for the fetus, post ultrasounds, they were posting the kid before they were even born. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, yeah, and narrating like the fetus’s thoughts and like \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, like I can’t wait to meet you all. It’s like that is a six-month-old fetus. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, no, that kind of stuff has definitely fallen out of favor. Although, I don’t want to make it seem as though the majority of influencers aren’t showing their kids because they are, definitely. But there is this growing contingent where they’re not. And this is even happening among regular people. It’s not only influencers, it’s regular people who have a couple hundred followers who are like, I don’t really want to put my kid on Instagram or on TikTok. It’s interesting because I’ll interview these parents and I’m like, why did you not want to put your kid online or why did you not want to announce your pregnancy? And they have like specific reasons like online footprint which again, we were not talking about a few years ago or like worries about AI, but there’s also just this like sense of like uneasiness and just being like, “Why would I?” Which is fascinating to me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, you just had a baby, so congratulations, by the way, and you also fell into that camp of like, not announcing your pregnancy, you kind of just hard launched with like a baby. How did you come to that decision to never post your child’s face online? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. You know, I thought about this a lot. And obviously I was doing like a lot of this reporting on influencer kids and like what their lives are like. And not that I’m an influencer in any way, but like I said, kind of the way that influencers live their lives trickles down to the rest of us, like plebeians. And so we were all kind of just becoming more aware of like privacy. And when I was pregnant, I… just had this gut feeling that I just didn’t want anyone who didn’t know me in real life to know. And even now, I feel so strongly about it that I don’t want her to be on the internet and that I don’t want information or photos of her to be on the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean. There’s also a lot of discussion about whether or not you can talk about your kids online or write about parenting without exposing your kid. I mean, what are your thoughts on this? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I am very much trying to figure this out because I have benefited so much from the writing and the content of other moms specifically and like being able to watch really personal moments in their lives and have them talk about postpartum depression or their struggles with sleep training or whatever it is and like I have learned things about their kids. Like, I have benefited so much and I’m sure they benefited from sharing it. And I don’t think that we need to go back to a time when moms were not allowed to talk about what motherhood and parenthood is like. And I’m saying moms, because most parenthood content online is by moms. I’ve heard this from other creators too, is that they try to think, what will my kid think about this in five years, in 10 years, in 15 years? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I’ve also talked to kids of those first mommy bloggers and – I’m not saying this is the experience of every kid of a mom blogger, but the ones that I’ve talked to are like, “It is incredible to read how my mom felt when she was raising me and what she thought.” And they have these like incredible records, you know? So I also, I don’t want to take it too far on one side either. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you speak to the way that this industry and just overarching culture is changing the relationships between kids and parents? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fortesa Latifi:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s just so complicated and obviously parents have to make choices for their kids that the kids might not agree with later. But I think how many choices has really just been exacerbated by the internet and by the way it’s able to change people’s lives. And that’s the thing is I hear from a lot of parents who are like, “My kid is begging me to start a YouTube channel, like my kid wants to be a YouTuber and influencer.” And like yeah, that I understand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And like, from the kids point of view, like, why wouldn’t they want to, you know? But I think the parent has to make the best decision that they can at the time. And I think sometimes those decisions change, like you see with parents changing their minds later and taking their kids offline. And I think as a culture, just like generally, we need to be more accepting of people like changing their minds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is one of those internet rabbit holes that ultimately just doesn’t have a single answer at the end. These laws are a start, but enacting real change also involves a larger cultural shift in the way that we consume and post content. Remember Caymi? She’s the former mommy blogger kid who grew up and became an advocate for child influencers. She thinks kids should be allowed to exist without a camera in their face. And if you’re an influencer kid, here’s her advice to you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Caymi Barrett:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As you get older, you’re gonna meet so many people who are so different from, your parents are so different from the people who have viewed you your entire childhood, and they’re going to see you for who you are instead of seeing you for what your parents posted. I think it’s really important to literally be a kid, like, by yourself, at school, even if you have a friend that you trust to talk to about this. It’s so hard carrying all of it on your shoulders alone, but you don’t have to. And I wish that I had known that as a kid. Yeah, we’re fighting for y’all. We’re not gonna stop. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For now, let’s close 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, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Sound design by Maya Cueva and original music by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustilver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you have any feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org. Follow us on Instagram at CloseAllTabsPod. And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "tiktoks-vibe-shift",
"title": "TikTok's Vibe Shift",
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"headTitle": "TikTok’s Vibe Shift | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On January 18, 2025, TikTok went down for U.S. users. After just 14 hours, it was back. Since then, questions have been swirling online. Has the algorithm changed? Was the ban just a ruse? Has TikTok gone… conservative? In this episode, internet culture expert Taylor Lorenz joins Morgan to break down the answers to those questions. They’ll dig into the real reasons for the ban and what the future holds for progressive speech on an internet that has been drifting steadily to the right.\u003c/p>\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\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=KQINC8580909904\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003c/h2>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let me set the scene for you. January 18th, 2025. It’s been a long day, and you plop down on the couch to relax. It’s two days till the second inauguration of Donald J. Trump, and you have no idea what chaos is on the other side of that date. The Supreme Court has just decided to uphold the law banning TikTok. But there’s no way the app will actually go down, right? So you and your phone settle in on the couch for your early evening scroll. Your whole for you page is goodbye messages from people who have found community on the app. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok Voice 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s just like, why would they take this app from the girls? Like if you wanted to take it, take it from the boys, not the girls, not the girls. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok Voice 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s just an app, but it’s our whole life now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok Voice 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So just in case, if this is it, there’s no way I could leave without telling you guys thank you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as you scroll, the app starts to get a little buggy. You can’t respond to comments. Your DMs are frozen. New videos won’t load. And then you get this message. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James Charles: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We were all just literally scrolling and drawing our last couple of moments on the app when we got a pop up saying, sorry, TikTok is closed. Hopefully Donald Trump will bring it back. What? Land of the free home of the brave. I don’t f***ing think so. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok has finally gone down in the United States, at least. Somehow YouTuber James Charles manages to get back in and he posts an update to the rest of the world. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James Charles: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t know if you guys can hear me or see me or if this is even going to work. I think I may have found a loophole while the rest of America is banned. They told us the app was going to be banned at midnight. Surprise! They took it from us two and a half hours early. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But for the rest of us, chaos ensues online. People are flocking to other apps in hopes that they can rebuild their communities and more importantly, resume scrolling. There’s Red Note, the English name for Xiaohongshu, which is a Chinese social media app similar to Instagram. Some creators have already been there for days in anticipation of the ban. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok Voice 4: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hi, everybody. My name is Jeffrey. I’m a TikTok refugee. I’ve been practicing my Mandarin for a year now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The shutdown lasts for a whopping 14 hours. After all that drama, it was back up and running the next day. When users returned to the app on inauguration day, TikTok greeted them with this pop-up message. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>AI Voice: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Welcome back. Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U .S. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donald Trump: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as of today, TikTok is back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Creators have come back to the app and resumed posting as normal. And after a few weeks of not being available, it’s already back in app stores. But since the shutdown and TikTok’s new closeness with the Trump administration, many users say the vibe on the app feels different. Is it just shifting political winds or is it something more? Rumor has it that TikTok is becoming… conservative. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, 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\">If there’s anything the internet loves, it’s a good conspiracy theory. So with TikTok, questions are swirling. Did the algorithm change? Are progressives being censored? Was the whole ban an elaborate setup to move the app to the right? New tab. Is TikTok actually more conservative now? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To get to the bottom of this, we called up internet culture expert \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, who’s been reporting on the TikTok ban saga from the very beginning. She writes about all things tech and online culture for her newsletter, User Mag, hosts the podcast Power User, and wrote an extensive history of the creator economy in her book, Extremely Online. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, Taylor, how are you doing? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Good. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I want to start off by talking about the TikTok inauguration party. You were there. What was it like? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was wild. It was crowded. It was packed with TikTok merch and these giant screens that were like looping right-wing content creators’ videos. It felt like a frat party, honestly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, just seeing pictures from it, it looked like any other influencer party. But has TikTok openly supported any US politician before? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No. TikTok as a company has not openly supported any politician before they sort of openly began supporting Trump over inauguration weekend. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So for those who aren’t familiar, can you briefly explain who TikTok CEO Shou Chew is? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. Shou Chew is a Singaporean. He is the CEO of TikTok, Inc., which of course is not based in China. TikTok is based in Singapore and the United States. Shou is based in Singapore. And he is the CEO. So he is the one that kind of runs all the day-to-day operations. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as you wrote about in your coverage for Rolling Stone about the party, he wasn’t at the party itself, but he was at inauguration. And that seemed to throw a lot of people for a loop. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I wasn’t that surprised to see him at inauguration just because every single tech CEO was at inauguration. I mean, you had Tim Cook, you had Sundar Pichai, you had obviously Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. But TikTok is in the throes of this ban right now. They desperately want to not be banned and to continue to do business in the U .S. And so, of course, they’re going to do anything they can to kiss up to the government. I don’t think that this means at all that Shou is some sort of Trump supporter. We have no idea what his politics are. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, that brings me to my next question, which is about the message that users got when TikTok came back online, when TikTok was kind of explicitly thanking Trump. What are your thoughts on this? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think this is opportunism. I don’t think people should mistake this for any sort of political support for Trump’s agenda. They just want to continue to operate. They want Trump to somehow find a way to overturn this ban. We know that Trump responds very well to flattery, to kind of, you know, people bowing down, look at what Elon has done, really kissing up to him in sort of a personal manner and treating him with kid gloves. And so I think that’s what that is. It is an attempt to curry favor with a president who has shown that he’s willing to help people who personally are loyal to him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But how did people react to getting that message? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, people reacted quite negatively to getting the message, especially TikTok’s user base. You have to remember, according to Pew Research, TikTok has the most progressive news influencer ecosystem. It’s a very LGBTQ-friendly app. It’s a very diverse app. And so a lot of these people are very against Trump. And so I think they were very upset. When they saw that message, they felt like, “Oh, is TikTok now just going to be another app that caters to right-wing content creators and suppresses progressive speech?” Which is the case on, as I’ve reported, on apps like Twitter, of course, now, and Meta platforms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And since TikTok came back online, people have made a ton of different claims about how the algorithm is changing and how it seems to be getting more conservative. What do you think? What have you seen? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there’s no hard evidence that the algorithm has changed. It’s so hyper-specific and it’s so dependent on so many factors that there is no kind of universal algorithm the way people think of it. There are just thousands and thousands of inputs. I know people talk about getting a lot more Trump content on their feed or pro-Trump content on their feed. I don’t think that is necessarily due to algorithmic changes as much as it is Trump is now our president. There’s an overwhelming amount of news about him. A lot of people are hyper-engaged in those news cycles, especially if you’re trying to pay attention to whether TikTok is banned, you’re going to be paying attention to what Trump is doing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there’s a flood of right-wing content creators on the app. So previously, a lot of people that were banned from the app have been let back on or were, you know, deprioritizing the app because it was not a place, you know, that they considered friendly to right-wing speech. Now, of course, they consider it a place that’s friendly to right -wing speech. So I do know that the vibe has changed. I just don’t know how top-down it is. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so it seems unlikely that there’s been a wholesale change to the algorithm in a planned strategic way. But since the election and even before that, it does feel like there’s been a rightward shift across the entire internet and all the social media platforms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that’s a new tab. Is all social media moving to the right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, TikTok has a sort of reputation as this bastion of leftist free speech. But a recent study actually found that during the election, TikTok was more likely to promote Republican-leaning content to Democrat-leaning users than the other way around. What do you think of this? I mean, again, is it some grand conspiracy or is it just that conservative content makes better engagement bait? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, so much of it is just that conservatives are excellent leveraging algorithmic feeds and online attention. And you just had a lot of conservatives leveraging the internet and leveraging platforms like TikTok this election cycle to get their message out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And like you’ve written about in your newsletter, there is no built-in support infrastructure for left-leaning content creators. Can you talk more about that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So on the right, there’s an incredibly well-funded, sort of well-oiled machine. It’s an entire ecosystem of right-wing content creators from extreme far-right Nazis, basically, to sort of more mainstream trad wives, all of these people that are funded by the same sort of group of conservative billionaire donors that participate in these networks, etc. There’s absolutely nothing like that on the left. In fact, if you are on the left, you’re more likely to have your content censored. You’re more likely to have your account taken down and demonetized. It is much harder to get any sort of support. There’s no funding ecosystem. You are out there on your own and you’re being attacked by both the Democratic-centrist mainstream party and you’re also being attacked by the right. So it’s just you’re up against so many sort of barriers. And you’re not going to get any brand deals. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And you’ve written about this in an essay called The Great Creator Reset. And you’ve written about how without TikTok, there is nowhere for leftist content creators. Can you talk more about that too? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. So TikTok was really the last app that sort of allowed for a progressive content creator ecosystem. It allowed for progressive speech and activism the way that Twitter used to. If you think of Twitter actually back in 2015, 2016, 2017, you saw it as this hub for the Black Lives Matter movement, for the Me Too movement, etc. Now, of course, Twitter is owned by Elon Musk, who has openly stated that he’s leveraging the platform to push right wing messaging. He’s intentionally doing all of these things that they hauled Mark Zuckerberg in front of Congress for in 2017. Elon Musk is sort of openly doing with Twitter now, or X rather. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you are left-wing on that app, you are likely to be perma-banned. There are tons of activists that have been perma-banned, journalists that have been perma-banned. There is no platform that truly allows progressive speech to flourish. TikTok was that last remaining platform. And that is, to be clear, why it’s being banned. The reason TikTok is being banned, as I have reported, as Drew Harwell at the Washington Post reported, as pretty much every good reporter on this beat has made quite clear, it is not about data privacy. It is not about, quote unquote, China. It is about the speech on the app and what people were saying on the app, specifically progressive speech. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as The Intercept pointed out in an article that was published right before TikTok went down, suppressing progressive speech includes censoring pro-Palestinian content. Republican politicians have explicitly accused TikTok of pushing anti-Israeli propaganda. Former Wisconsin representative Mike Gallagher described TikTok as, quote, digital fentanyl from China, end quote, that was allegedly turning young people against American allies. And here’s Senator Mitt Romney last year at a forum for the McCain Institute. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitt Romney: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In both public statements and in Supreme Court filings, TikTok said that its recommendation algorithm does not take sides and that according to polling, young people have been increasingly sympathetic to Palestinians since 2010. That’s years before TikTok even existed. Now, since October 7th, 2023, Palestinian creators have used TikTok to report on the realities of living in Gaza to an international audience. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bisan Owda: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hi everyone this is Bisan from Gaza, I’m still alive. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Motaz Azaiza: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uh the situation is so… bad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Medo Halimy: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ll leave you with some footage I took right after that event…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok is a key window into the experiences of those creators and the ban would effectively sever their connection with U .S. audiences. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That is what Rep. Gallagher was able to use to get people back on board with this ban that was completely politically dead. It wasn’t until there was this right-wing effort to associate TikTok with progressive movements, because again, it was a hub for progressive activism, and use that to push a ban, a bipartisan ban. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, you just look at other social media platforms like Meta and like X or formerly Twitter, but you just compare the way that people talk about Palestine and TikTok to Meta and on X and you realize how much further right that those platforms are. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk has not hidden this. He has admitted that he is using the platform to push right-wing messaging and we know that from every single ounce of reporting. And same thing with Meta. Meta is also catering to conservatives. They have long had right-wing people in power of their policy team. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s interesting because Zuckerberg has always been a billionaire and I think will always be motivated by money. But his politics seemed totally different during the first Trump term. I mean, now Meta is rolling back DEI policies and hateful conduct policies. Why capitulate to the right now? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, because it wasn’t socially acceptable to capitulate to the right during Trump’s first term, you had this whole resistance movement and Trump’s presidency was seen as this aberration. It was seen as sort of like this thing to resist against. And so tech companies were attacked for helping to put Trump in office and held to this really high standard from the public and also from people in power. Now, Trump has been completely normalized. There is no resistance and people are pretty culturally on board with Trump. Again, Trump won the popular vote this time. It was not a huge surprise that he won. And so he’s just been normalized like any other president. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If the TikTok we knew is truly dead, where does that leave its 170 million US users? What are their other options? We’ll dig into that after the break. So if you’re a creator whose main platform is TikTok, what can and should you be doing right now? Okay, new tab. Who is actually leaving TikTok? So creators are complaining, you know, as usual, complaining about shadow bans, complaining about being restricted. But do you see anyone actually leaving the app? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right now, creators have not left the app. I think creators are still delusional that it’s not going to get banned. What I tell them is that they should get off as soon as possible. They should be focused on building their platforms elsewhere. But I think a lot of them feel there is no place for these progressive content creators to go. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. I mean, I know there’s a lot of talk about Red Note, but I mean, I’ve used Red Note for a while. And Red Note is like, yeah, exactly. Red Note just does not have the culture for discourse the way that TikTok does. It’s the app for hot, rich Chinese girls. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it’s just, Red Note doesn’t function the same way as TikTok. It’s much more similar to Instagram in a lot of ways. It’s just, it doesn’t have the functionality. It doesn’t have the culture. It doesn’t have the user base. It doesn’t have the broad— I mean, so much of what made TikTok successful is that it also allowed you to interact with people around the globe. There’s such a global user base to TikTok. And that just doesn’t exist on a lot of these other platforms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. I mean, we’re not finding that on Reels. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No, definitely not. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All I’m getting on Reels are weird raw milk ads. So I’m kind of giving up there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reels is a cursed, cursed ecosystem and nothing like TikTok. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a lot of talk about whether creators can keep getting paid now that the ban is supposed to be in effect. If not for politics, do you think a change in monetization will actually drive creators away? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think the inability for a lot of creators to monetize is what ultimately will also force them off the platform because there is just no way to make a living. Brands have already pulled all their money out. I mean, unfortunately, the campaign against TikTok has been so successful. It just has financially devastated the app and the ecosystem on there in ways that I think will be very difficult to recover from, even if Congress was to reverse the ban, which they’re not going to do. Right now, it’s impossible for these creators to replicate what they’re doing, which is progressive activism on other apps because other apps are so incredibly hostile to that style of content. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They also just don’t have that kind of built-in back and forth functionality that TikTok has. I’ve seen a lot of people on TikTok talk about how much of a struggle it is to move to YouTube because you’re suddenly talking to a wall instead of… Yeah, exactly. You’re not talking directly to your audience anymore. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. YouTube is so radically different. YouTube Shorts is nothing like TikTok at all. It’s nothing like TikTok. It is a broadcast medium. It’s very one way. There’s no discourse. There’s no interactivity. There’s no communities that form around there. It’s just a place to put clips to long-form videos. That’s so different than TikTok, which again, I think people need to understand is like a mobile video version of Twitter in terms of how you can interact, reshare, build on content and leverage mass virality. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The ban is currently in a holding pattern set to actually take effect sometime this spring, depending on whether the president delays it again. There is an alternative to a full-on ban on TikTok. That’s a new tab. TikTok forced sale. When Congress passed the law last year, they offered a choice to TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance: sell TikTok to another party or we’ll ban the app. That law was just upheld by the Supreme Court in January. But so far, there aren’t a lot of serious candidates. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lots of people are claiming to buy TikTok for clout, which you mentioned in your newsletter. Like you have Mr. Beast. You have the very controversial streaming platform Kik. And Trump floated the idea of a 50-50 partnership between ByteDance and an American company. But how would the sale of TikTok change the culture of the app? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok is a global tech platform. Imagine if suddenly Romania was like, “Hey, Ford Motor Company, you can’t sell your cars here until you sell the entire company to us.” I mean, America is not even TikTok’s biggest market. Also, it’s just unclear how it would even happen because TikTok would be creating a local product that then competes with their global product. Basically, they would have to create a separate version of TikTok. At that point, it’s just Triller or some other app that’s not TikTok. They’ll call it TikTok, but it won’t be TikTok. They’ll take that skin and create a separate app. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Again, it’s just about censoring speech, because we have tons of Chinese social media apps. We have tons of Chinese investments. We have tons of Chinese platforms that people use on a daily basis. We have platforms like Temu and Shein that collect far more sensitive user data than TikTok and that are actually based in China, unlike TikTok, where TikTok is not based in China and user data is not stored in China. So, it’s just a farce. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There is a vibe shift on TikTok. Even if it’s not some sort of intentional grand conspiracy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I totally agree, yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do you think is really behind it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, look, I think the ban is behind it. I think TikTok was banned. The effect that that ban has had, even though it’s been temporarily reinstated… tons of people deleted the app. You’ve also seen a flood of right-wingers leaning really hard into the app because, again, they feel like it’s pro-Trump. I think the app is in peril. It’s not the app that it was even six months ago. It’s under such a microscope that I do think that their enforcement team has stepped up a little bit against certain types of speech. I don’t know. Again, we don’t know that they’re censoring more, but I do think that it might be reasonable to assume that because they’re under a microscope, they’re taking reports of wrongdoing seriously. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think a lot of it is also just not even TikTok. It’s just the vibe shift in America, right? There is a cultural vibe shift that’s happened as Trump has taken his second term, right? And you’re seeing the normalization of online hate, of people saying slurs openly again. You’re seeing a lot of hatred towards immigrants, people of color, normalized. Again, there is no resistance movement the way that there was in 2017. So culturally, I think Trumpism has won right now, and that is the world that we’re living in. And yes, that is going to make all of these platforms sort of feel different. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, last question. What would an internet without TikTok really look like? What would that mean for the way people interact with each other and also access information? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">An internet without TikTok is an internet where people are a lot less informed. You have a less informed public. As I’ve written, TikTok has been an essential way that young people, especially get news and information. As Twitter has been dismantled as a news source, that entire ecosystem of access to information about wars, climate disasters, whatever, the LA fires, it’s all moved to TikTok. So TikTok is where people are getting information. It’s where people are learning about social justice issues. It’s where people are, again, doing activism. When that is shut down, you’ll have a less informed public. You’ll have a less free public. I think it’s increasingly harder for people to get their voice out and speak open and freely on the internet. TikTok gave people the ability to have a platform, reach people en masse, and do real activism. And so, yeah, we’re going to have a lot less freedoms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So even if TikTok is back online, like Taylor mentioned, what’s it going to feel like going forward? This was a place that served as a news source, a trend accelerator, and a platform for activism and protest. Clearly, it’s no longer the same. As TikTok and other social media platforms continue to censor content, especially progressive speech, we have to wonder, will online freedom of speech become obsolete? Will there be any platform for content creators of all political leanings to have a voice? Okay, that’s a deep dive for another day. Before we spiral right now, let’s close 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, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Original music and sound design by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. If you have any feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs at KQED.org. Follow us on Instagram at CloseAllTabsPod. And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let me set the scene for you. January 18th, 2025. It’s been a long day, and you plop down on the couch to relax. It’s two days till the second inauguration of Donald J. Trump, and you have no idea what chaos is on the other side of that date. The Supreme Court has just decided to uphold the law banning TikTok. But there’s no way the app will actually go down, right? So you and your phone settle in on the couch for your early evening scroll. Your whole for you page is goodbye messages from people who have found community on the app. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok Voice 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s just like, why would they take this app from the girls? Like if you wanted to take it, take it from the boys, not the girls, not the girls. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok Voice 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s just an app, but it’s our whole life now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok Voice 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So just in case, if this is it, there’s no way I could leave without telling you guys thank you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as you scroll, the app starts to get a little buggy. You can’t respond to comments. Your DMs are frozen. New videos won’t load. And then you get this message. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James Charles: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We were all just literally scrolling and drawing our last couple of moments on the app when we got a pop up saying, sorry, TikTok is closed. Hopefully Donald Trump will bring it back. What? Land of the free home of the brave. I don’t f***ing think so. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok has finally gone down in the United States, at least. Somehow YouTuber James Charles manages to get back in and he posts an update to the rest of the world. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James Charles: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t know if you guys can hear me or see me or if this is even going to work. I think I may have found a loophole while the rest of America is banned. They told us the app was going to be banned at midnight. Surprise! They took it from us two and a half hours early. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But for the rest of us, chaos ensues online. People are flocking to other apps in hopes that they can rebuild their communities and more importantly, resume scrolling. There’s Red Note, the English name for Xiaohongshu, which is a Chinese social media app similar to Instagram. Some creators have already been there for days in anticipation of the ban. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok Voice 4: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hi, everybody. My name is Jeffrey. I’m a TikTok refugee. I’ve been practicing my Mandarin for a year now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The shutdown lasts for a whopping 14 hours. After all that drama, it was back up and running the next day. When users returned to the app on inauguration day, TikTok greeted them with this pop-up message. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>AI Voice: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Welcome back. Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U .S. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donald Trump: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as of today, TikTok is back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Creators have come back to the app and resumed posting as normal. And after a few weeks of not being available, it’s already back in app stores. But since the shutdown and TikTok’s new closeness with the Trump administration, many users say the vibe on the app feels different. Is it just shifting political winds or is it something more? Rumor has it that TikTok is becoming… conservative. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, 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\">If there’s anything the internet loves, it’s a good conspiracy theory. So with TikTok, questions are swirling. Did the algorithm change? Are progressives being censored? Was the whole ban an elaborate setup to move the app to the right? New tab. Is TikTok actually more conservative now? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To get to the bottom of this, we called up internet culture expert \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, who’s been reporting on the TikTok ban saga from the very beginning. She writes about all things tech and online culture for her newsletter, User Mag, hosts the podcast Power User, and wrote an extensive history of the creator economy in her book, Extremely Online. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, Taylor, how are you doing? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Good. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I want to start off by talking about the TikTok inauguration party. You were there. What was it like? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was wild. It was crowded. It was packed with TikTok merch and these giant screens that were like looping right-wing content creators’ videos. It felt like a frat party, honestly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, just seeing pictures from it, it looked like any other influencer party. But has TikTok openly supported any US politician before? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No. TikTok as a company has not openly supported any politician before they sort of openly began supporting Trump over inauguration weekend. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So for those who aren’t familiar, can you briefly explain who TikTok CEO Shou Chew is? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. Shou Chew is a Singaporean. He is the CEO of TikTok, Inc., which of course is not based in China. TikTok is based in Singapore and the United States. Shou is based in Singapore. And he is the CEO. So he is the one that kind of runs all the day-to-day operations. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as you wrote about in your coverage for Rolling Stone about the party, he wasn’t at the party itself, but he was at inauguration. And that seemed to throw a lot of people for a loop. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I wasn’t that surprised to see him at inauguration just because every single tech CEO was at inauguration. I mean, you had Tim Cook, you had Sundar Pichai, you had obviously Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. But TikTok is in the throes of this ban right now. They desperately want to not be banned and to continue to do business in the U .S. And so, of course, they’re going to do anything they can to kiss up to the government. I don’t think that this means at all that Shou is some sort of Trump supporter. We have no idea what his politics are. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, that brings me to my next question, which is about the message that users got when TikTok came back online, when TikTok was kind of explicitly thanking Trump. What are your thoughts on this? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think this is opportunism. I don’t think people should mistake this for any sort of political support for Trump’s agenda. They just want to continue to operate. They want Trump to somehow find a way to overturn this ban. We know that Trump responds very well to flattery, to kind of, you know, people bowing down, look at what Elon has done, really kissing up to him in sort of a personal manner and treating him with kid gloves. And so I think that’s what that is. It is an attempt to curry favor with a president who has shown that he’s willing to help people who personally are loyal to him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But how did people react to getting that message? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, people reacted quite negatively to getting the message, especially TikTok’s user base. You have to remember, according to Pew Research, TikTok has the most progressive news influencer ecosystem. It’s a very LGBTQ-friendly app. It’s a very diverse app. And so a lot of these people are very against Trump. And so I think they were very upset. When they saw that message, they felt like, “Oh, is TikTok now just going to be another app that caters to right-wing content creators and suppresses progressive speech?” Which is the case on, as I’ve reported, on apps like Twitter, of course, now, and Meta platforms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And since TikTok came back online, people have made a ton of different claims about how the algorithm is changing and how it seems to be getting more conservative. What do you think? What have you seen? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there’s no hard evidence that the algorithm has changed. It’s so hyper-specific and it’s so dependent on so many factors that there is no kind of universal algorithm the way people think of it. There are just thousands and thousands of inputs. I know people talk about getting a lot more Trump content on their feed or pro-Trump content on their feed. I don’t think that is necessarily due to algorithmic changes as much as it is Trump is now our president. There’s an overwhelming amount of news about him. A lot of people are hyper-engaged in those news cycles, especially if you’re trying to pay attention to whether TikTok is banned, you’re going to be paying attention to what Trump is doing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there’s a flood of right-wing content creators on the app. So previously, a lot of people that were banned from the app have been let back on or were, you know, deprioritizing the app because it was not a place, you know, that they considered friendly to right-wing speech. Now, of course, they consider it a place that’s friendly to right -wing speech. So I do know that the vibe has changed. I just don’t know how top-down it is. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so it seems unlikely that there’s been a wholesale change to the algorithm in a planned strategic way. But since the election and even before that, it does feel like there’s been a rightward shift across the entire internet and all the social media platforms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that’s a new tab. Is all social media moving to the right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, TikTok has a sort of reputation as this bastion of leftist free speech. But a recent study actually found that during the election, TikTok was more likely to promote Republican-leaning content to Democrat-leaning users than the other way around. What do you think of this? I mean, again, is it some grand conspiracy or is it just that conservative content makes better engagement bait? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, so much of it is just that conservatives are excellent leveraging algorithmic feeds and online attention. And you just had a lot of conservatives leveraging the internet and leveraging platforms like TikTok this election cycle to get their message out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And like you’ve written about in your newsletter, there is no built-in support infrastructure for left-leaning content creators. Can you talk more about that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So on the right, there’s an incredibly well-funded, sort of well-oiled machine. It’s an entire ecosystem of right-wing content creators from extreme far-right Nazis, basically, to sort of more mainstream trad wives, all of these people that are funded by the same sort of group of conservative billionaire donors that participate in these networks, etc. There’s absolutely nothing like that on the left. In fact, if you are on the left, you’re more likely to have your content censored. You’re more likely to have your account taken down and demonetized. It is much harder to get any sort of support. There’s no funding ecosystem. You are out there on your own and you’re being attacked by both the Democratic-centrist mainstream party and you’re also being attacked by the right. So it’s just you’re up against so many sort of barriers. And you’re not going to get any brand deals. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And you’ve written about this in an essay called The Great Creator Reset. And you’ve written about how without TikTok, there is nowhere for leftist content creators. Can you talk more about that too? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. So TikTok was really the last app that sort of allowed for a progressive content creator ecosystem. It allowed for progressive speech and activism the way that Twitter used to. If you think of Twitter actually back in 2015, 2016, 2017, you saw it as this hub for the Black Lives Matter movement, for the Me Too movement, etc. Now, of course, Twitter is owned by Elon Musk, who has openly stated that he’s leveraging the platform to push right wing messaging. He’s intentionally doing all of these things that they hauled Mark Zuckerberg in front of Congress for in 2017. Elon Musk is sort of openly doing with Twitter now, or X rather. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you are left-wing on that app, you are likely to be perma-banned. There are tons of activists that have been perma-banned, journalists that have been perma-banned. There is no platform that truly allows progressive speech to flourish. TikTok was that last remaining platform. And that is, to be clear, why it’s being banned. The reason TikTok is being banned, as I have reported, as Drew Harwell at the Washington Post reported, as pretty much every good reporter on this beat has made quite clear, it is not about data privacy. It is not about, quote unquote, China. It is about the speech on the app and what people were saying on the app, specifically progressive speech. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as The Intercept pointed out in an article that was published right before TikTok went down, suppressing progressive speech includes censoring pro-Palestinian content. Republican politicians have explicitly accused TikTok of pushing anti-Israeli propaganda. Former Wisconsin representative Mike Gallagher described TikTok as, quote, digital fentanyl from China, end quote, that was allegedly turning young people against American allies. And here’s Senator Mitt Romney last year at a forum for the McCain Institute. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitt Romney: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In both public statements and in Supreme Court filings, TikTok said that its recommendation algorithm does not take sides and that according to polling, young people have been increasingly sympathetic to Palestinians since 2010. That’s years before TikTok even existed. Now, since October 7th, 2023, Palestinian creators have used TikTok to report on the realities of living in Gaza to an international audience. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bisan Owda: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hi everyone this is Bisan from Gaza, I’m still alive. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Motaz Azaiza: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uh the situation is so… bad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Medo Halimy: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ll leave you with some footage I took right after that event…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok is a key window into the experiences of those creators and the ban would effectively sever their connection with U .S. audiences. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That is what Rep. Gallagher was able to use to get people back on board with this ban that was completely politically dead. It wasn’t until there was this right-wing effort to associate TikTok with progressive movements, because again, it was a hub for progressive activism, and use that to push a ban, a bipartisan ban. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, you just look at other social media platforms like Meta and like X or formerly Twitter, but you just compare the way that people talk about Palestine and TikTok to Meta and on X and you realize how much further right that those platforms are. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk has not hidden this. He has admitted that he is using the platform to push right-wing messaging and we know that from every single ounce of reporting. And same thing with Meta. Meta is also catering to conservatives. They have long had right-wing people in power of their policy team. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s interesting because Zuckerberg has always been a billionaire and I think will always be motivated by money. But his politics seemed totally different during the first Trump term. I mean, now Meta is rolling back DEI policies and hateful conduct policies. Why capitulate to the right now? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, because it wasn’t socially acceptable to capitulate to the right during Trump’s first term, you had this whole resistance movement and Trump’s presidency was seen as this aberration. It was seen as sort of like this thing to resist against. And so tech companies were attacked for helping to put Trump in office and held to this really high standard from the public and also from people in power. Now, Trump has been completely normalized. There is no resistance and people are pretty culturally on board with Trump. Again, Trump won the popular vote this time. It was not a huge surprise that he won. And so he’s just been normalized like any other president. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If the TikTok we knew is truly dead, where does that leave its 170 million US users? What are their other options? We’ll dig into that after the break. So if you’re a creator whose main platform is TikTok, what can and should you be doing right now? Okay, new tab. Who is actually leaving TikTok? So creators are complaining, you know, as usual, complaining about shadow bans, complaining about being restricted. But do you see anyone actually leaving the app? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right now, creators have not left the app. I think creators are still delusional that it’s not going to get banned. What I tell them is that they should get off as soon as possible. They should be focused on building their platforms elsewhere. But I think a lot of them feel there is no place for these progressive content creators to go. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. I mean, I know there’s a lot of talk about Red Note, but I mean, I’ve used Red Note for a while. And Red Note is like, yeah, exactly. Red Note just does not have the culture for discourse the way that TikTok does. It’s the app for hot, rich Chinese girls. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it’s just, Red Note doesn’t function the same way as TikTok. It’s much more similar to Instagram in a lot of ways. It’s just, it doesn’t have the functionality. It doesn’t have the culture. It doesn’t have the user base. It doesn’t have the broad— I mean, so much of what made TikTok successful is that it also allowed you to interact with people around the globe. There’s such a global user base to TikTok. And that just doesn’t exist on a lot of these other platforms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. I mean, we’re not finding that on Reels. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No, definitely not. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All I’m getting on Reels are weird raw milk ads. So I’m kind of giving up there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reels is a cursed, cursed ecosystem and nothing like TikTok. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a lot of talk about whether creators can keep getting paid now that the ban is supposed to be in effect. If not for politics, do you think a change in monetization will actually drive creators away? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think the inability for a lot of creators to monetize is what ultimately will also force them off the platform because there is just no way to make a living. Brands have already pulled all their money out. I mean, unfortunately, the campaign against TikTok has been so successful. It just has financially devastated the app and the ecosystem on there in ways that I think will be very difficult to recover from, even if Congress was to reverse the ban, which they’re not going to do. Right now, it’s impossible for these creators to replicate what they’re doing, which is progressive activism on other apps because other apps are so incredibly hostile to that style of content. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They also just don’t have that kind of built-in back and forth functionality that TikTok has. I’ve seen a lot of people on TikTok talk about how much of a struggle it is to move to YouTube because you’re suddenly talking to a wall instead of… Yeah, exactly. You’re not talking directly to your audience anymore. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. YouTube is so radically different. YouTube Shorts is nothing like TikTok at all. It’s nothing like TikTok. It is a broadcast medium. It’s very one way. There’s no discourse. There’s no interactivity. There’s no communities that form around there. It’s just a place to put clips to long-form videos. That’s so different than TikTok, which again, I think people need to understand is like a mobile video version of Twitter in terms of how you can interact, reshare, build on content and leverage mass virality. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The ban is currently in a holding pattern set to actually take effect sometime this spring, depending on whether the president delays it again. There is an alternative to a full-on ban on TikTok. That’s a new tab. TikTok forced sale. When Congress passed the law last year, they offered a choice to TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance: sell TikTok to another party or we’ll ban the app. That law was just upheld by the Supreme Court in January. But so far, there aren’t a lot of serious candidates. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lots of people are claiming to buy TikTok for clout, which you mentioned in your newsletter. Like you have Mr. Beast. You have the very controversial streaming platform Kik. And Trump floated the idea of a 50-50 partnership between ByteDance and an American company. But how would the sale of TikTok change the culture of the app? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok is a global tech platform. Imagine if suddenly Romania was like, “Hey, Ford Motor Company, you can’t sell your cars here until you sell the entire company to us.” I mean, America is not even TikTok’s biggest market. Also, it’s just unclear how it would even happen because TikTok would be creating a local product that then competes with their global product. Basically, they would have to create a separate version of TikTok. At that point, it’s just Triller or some other app that’s not TikTok. They’ll call it TikTok, but it won’t be TikTok. They’ll take that skin and create a separate app. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Again, it’s just about censoring speech, because we have tons of Chinese social media apps. We have tons of Chinese investments. We have tons of Chinese platforms that people use on a daily basis. We have platforms like Temu and Shein that collect far more sensitive user data than TikTok and that are actually based in China, unlike TikTok, where TikTok is not based in China and user data is not stored in China. So, it’s just a farce. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There is a vibe shift on TikTok. Even if it’s not some sort of intentional grand conspiracy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I totally agree, yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do you think is really behind it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, look, I think the ban is behind it. I think TikTok was banned. The effect that that ban has had, even though it’s been temporarily reinstated… tons of people deleted the app. You’ve also seen a flood of right-wingers leaning really hard into the app because, again, they feel like it’s pro-Trump. I think the app is in peril. It’s not the app that it was even six months ago. It’s under such a microscope that I do think that their enforcement team has stepped up a little bit against certain types of speech. I don’t know. Again, we don’t know that they’re censoring more, but I do think that it might be reasonable to assume that because they’re under a microscope, they’re taking reports of wrongdoing seriously. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think a lot of it is also just not even TikTok. It’s just the vibe shift in America, right? There is a cultural vibe shift that’s happened as Trump has taken his second term, right? And you’re seeing the normalization of online hate, of people saying slurs openly again. You’re seeing a lot of hatred towards immigrants, people of color, normalized. Again, there is no resistance movement the way that there was in 2017. So culturally, I think Trumpism has won right now, and that is the world that we’re living in. And yes, that is going to make all of these platforms sort of feel different. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, last question. What would an internet without TikTok really look like? What would that mean for the way people interact with each other and also access information? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Lorenz:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">An internet without TikTok is an internet where people are a lot less informed. You have a less informed public. As I’ve written, TikTok has been an essential way that young people, especially get news and information. As Twitter has been dismantled as a news source, that entire ecosystem of access to information about wars, climate disasters, whatever, the LA fires, it’s all moved to TikTok. So TikTok is where people are getting information. It’s where people are learning about social justice issues. It’s where people are, again, doing activism. When that is shut down, you’ll have a less informed public. You’ll have a less free public. I think it’s increasingly harder for people to get their voice out and speak open and freely on the internet. TikTok gave people the ability to have a platform, reach people en masse, and do real activism. And so, yeah, we’re going to have a lot less freedoms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So even if TikTok is back online, like Taylor mentioned, what’s it going to feel like going forward? This was a place that served as a news source, a trend accelerator, and a platform for activism and protest. Clearly, it’s no longer the same. As TikTok and other social media platforms continue to censor content, especially progressive speech, we have to wonder, will online freedom of speech become obsolete? Will there be any platform for content creators of all political leanings to have a voice? Okay, that’s a deep dive for another day. Before we spiral right now, let’s close 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, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan Sung\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts and helps edit the show. Original music and sound design by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager and Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. 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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. If you have any feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at CloseAllTabs at KQED.org. Follow us on Instagram at CloseAllTabsPod. And if you’re enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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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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"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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"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"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.",
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"possible": {
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"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.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"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.",
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},
"radiolab": {
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"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": {
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"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.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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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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"science-friday": {
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