0:11

Shalom, Jesse, you're back.

0:13

Shalom, my friend. How's

0:15

it going?

0:15

Good. How was that? How was what? Your

0:17

big trip to the Middle East. I here's how here's

0:20

how I think it was gonna go. This is this is

0:22

my prediction. I thought there was a fifty

0:24

percent chance that

0:25

on your trip to Israel, the food would

0:28

be so good that you would join

0:30

the IDF and a fifty percent

0:32

chance that you would feel so guilty about

0:34

being in Israel, that you would get

0:36

kicked out of the country for trying to do a land acknowledgment

0:38

center. Was I right?

0:39

Land acknowledgments in Israel would

0:41

be rather broad. It's

0:44

not like this isn't quite like America

0:46

where it's like three hundred years

0:48

ago. like You

0:49

know, sixty years. They

0:51

take a while there.

0:52

Yeah. Yes. I

0:54

was in Israel, there was a

0:56

trip put together by Israel's Foreign Ministry,

0:58

The New York Council and This

1:00

is good. Wait. Let's just pause there for a moment.

1:02

Yep.

1:03

Why?

1:04

Why the trip? Yeah.

1:05

Why did they put this together? I was also

1:07

invited on this trip. I didn't go because I

1:09

thought that if people found out I took a free

1:11

trip to Israel paid for by the Israeli

1:13

consulate. I would never hear the

1:15

end of it. You however are less wise

1:17

than I am.

1:18

Well, Yeah. That would have sucked if people were

1:20

mad at Katie Herzog on Twitter. That's a good basis

1:22

for making decisions about things. Yeah.

1:26

The reason they did it is propaganda. I mean, I mean

1:28

that in a friendly way. I know they get they I'm buddies

1:30

with the the guy who sort of ran it and let

1:32

it The

1:32

head propagandist. The

1:34

head propagandist of the Jewish cabal And

1:36

when they when they invited me, I said, you

1:38

know, because you guys are paying for it, if I'm gonna

1:40

do it, I would wanna come earlier, stay late.

1:43

and do programming with group critical

1:45

of Israel, which they were fine.

1:46

And this was with a a group. You went

1:48

with a bunch of other journalists,

1:49

friends. Yeah. Some are friends. Some have I'm not

1:51

gonna, like, say the names of folks who happen. Although,

1:53

I admit, I disclosed it. I think everyone should disclose

1:55

it, but some of them have already talked about it, like, on

1:57

the fifth column, Michael Moynihan.

1:59

Well, Kimile did not go because they wouldn't

2:02

pay for him to go for class. Yeah.

2:03

He wanted, like, to turn basically slave

2:05

boys to fan him down on the fight and feed him

2:07

grapes, and they were like And

2:08

they said no for some reason. You know what, I think that's racist.

2:11

The fact that they would not invite

2:13

that they would not pay for Camille to go business

2:15

class. Way more black

2:15

shoes than you would think once you get over there, by

2:17

the way.

2:17

Well, I have heard that blacks are the real Jews.

2:20

Mhmm. Yeah. No

2:22

comment on that. So basically, the way I the

2:24

way I squared it with myself was I

2:27

yeah. They they said I could

2:29

they'd fly me there earlier, let me stay late.

2:32

And I said, I would do something with

2:34

a, you know, a group critical of Israel. I would disclose

2:36

it on my website and people can decide for themselves.

2:38

So we did three days with Butzellem, which

2:40

is a lefty group that's very critical of Israel

2:42

and documents what it sees as composite

2:44

human rights abuses against Palestinians, and then

2:46

we did the much better fun day

2:49

six day trip with the Israelis. I

2:51

said early on whichever group sort of wanted

2:53

to guide me more. I would side with him. So

2:56

Shalom Israel. Well, hi. I'm

2:58

Israel. Hi, as I say.

3:00

Can you tell us once or for all is Kanye.

3:02

Right? Did you find the banking center?

3:04

All I'll say

3:06

is that it was it's an incredibly fucked

3:08

up place. As I wrote in my newsletter, I think

3:10

more Jewish people in particular should go to the

3:12

West Bank. But

3:15

it's sort of hard to come back from a trip like

3:17

that and like say anything in particular because

3:19

there's so many layers of, like, trauma and history

3:21

surrounding everything. I've been pretty know,

3:23

it's not something to write about a lot. I think the occupation's

3:26

horrible. I think the situation in the West Bank is

3:28

basically in a part time system. also think Israel

3:30

has legitimate security concerns. So I'm sure

3:32

by saying it's complicated that will satisfy

3:34

everyone and no one will comment angrily.

3:36

What I heard you just say is that you took

3:38

money from an apartheid government That's

3:41

what I'm picking up from

3:42

this. Mhmm. I don't think he's in a part just to

3:44

be clear, I don't think Israel's in a part tied state.

3:46

I think the situation in the West Bank is basically

3:48

a part

3:48

Okay. So semi and part tied. semi

3:50

part. part I'd like But you took

3:52

you take from what

3:55

are your dirty sources of money? Our listeners. Our listeners.

3:58

knows what our listeners are. It's the same

3:59

thing. Five dollars at a time. Yes.

4:01

Yeah. So I was very grateful

4:04

I got you over there to be clear. It's an incredibly

4:06

fucked up place. I wanna learn more about it. I'm trying to read up

4:08

more on the history, but Yeah. On

4:10

the question of, like, should you do junkets like

4:12

that? don't know. Some some outlets you're not allowed

4:14

to, but I think if you disclose

4:16

it, if from now on, whenever I

4:19

write something that's like seen as too soft on Israel,

4:21

people can say, well, you took money from the government,

4:23

which is true. So up to people to

4:25

decide what the what the limit I

4:26

do find it interesting and amusing

4:28

that the propaganda wing

4:31

of the Israeli government decided that the people

4:33

they really needed to target were a bunch of hetero dogs

4:35

podcasting.

4:35

That it is sort of funny. It's like sort of cranking

4:38

out converted. Yeah. Yeah. The only the

4:40

other thing I should say is that partly because

4:43

Israelis are hilariously adversarial

4:46

and argue about everything. One

4:48

thing I will say,

4:49

American Jews are very polarized

4:51

on Israel and there's like a big Not

4:54

everyone, but there's a lot of either Israel

4:56

is an apartheid state. That's the worst place that was

4:58

ever created versus Israel can

5:00

do no wrong. I found anecdotally Israelis

5:03

themselves are much more capable of nuance

5:06

than American Jews are, which which was interesting.

5:09

And also, I joke about it being a propaganda tour,

5:11

which, of course, it was a little bit, but, like, you

5:13

know, we spent some time in or

5:15

in evening in in Nazareth. We talked

5:17

to an Arab Israeli who was

5:19

very critical of Israel, so they didn't

5:21

take us to the West Bank or anything. We didn't meet

5:23

with Palestinians, but it wasn't it wasn't quite,

5:25

like, what I'd love to do is a

5:27

North Korean propaganda tour. I'm trying get in

5:29

on that. It wasn't it definitely wasn't at that level.

5:31

And how is the food? It it's

5:34

incredible. It's probably some of the best

5:36

food in the world. The problem was for these really portion

5:39

of it. We had to be all kosher. This

5:41

means you can't have dairy and meat in the

5:43

same meal. I I destroyed my

5:45

body, Katie. Even by my own standards, I think I

5:48

had eggplant fifteen

5:50

meals in a row.

5:51

Well, is is that just, like, normal

5:53

dietary preferences there? Is that

5:55

Oh, no. There's a lot of people

5:57

Kocher, the idea, which is reasonable, is

5:59

that at some of the meals we were joined by a

6:01

guest like, you know, someone who works in Israel

6:04

or a journalist, some of them might be kosher,

6:06

and they wanted to make sure there's never situation

6:08

where people couldn't. I wish I'd get,

6:10

but, like, Tel Aviv, legit,

6:13

probably

6:15

if you like Middle Eastern foods, some of the best food in the world.

6:17

And we we couldn't quite get the full thing, but we ate

6:19

a lot of delicious stuff. Oh, also Katie, one last

6:21

important thing. I've said this before.

6:23

Israelis are super hot. Really? And there's a

6:25

photo of Michael Moynihan, like, trying not

6:27

to look at nineteen year old

6:29

IDF soldiers. that I highly recommend

6:32

people look at because it's hilarious. People just put it in their

6:34

own show notes. They don't have a copyright on that

6:35

show. So they didn't try to recruit you into the idea.

6:37

did not try to recruit me in the idea if we did

6:40

have some very good jokes that even the

6:42

Zionist left about about

6:44

if hamas launched like a Jewish regiment?

6:47

Wouldn't

6:47

that be funny? Wait. What's the joke? The

6:49

joke, Hamars.

6:50

I got it. But

6:51

it's like, if there was a guy who was like, will

6:54

the will the terror tunnels be dusty?

6:58

Sorry.

6:58

No. It's funny. This this vest

7:00

is too tight. Larry David will be ahead of

7:02

it. Yep. Anyway -- Yep. Maybe

7:05

at some point, we'll revisit this. But for now,

7:07

I'm glad I got to go. And if you think I'm now

7:10

compromised, so be it. Well, welcome

7:12

back. You were sorely

7:14

missed by at least a couple of our listeners,

7:16

but I think we we maintained without you.

7:18

We did bank a lot of think we ran some good

7:20

stuff. This is the first time recording together in

7:22

a while. Yeah.

7:23

Since New York actually yeah. We've been

7:25

it's been a weird couple of months a lot of travel,

7:27

and we are hoping to get back to normal now

7:30

as of today.

7:30

Yes. It's gonna be incredible. Katie,

7:34

What is the name of this increasingly submitted

7:36

podcast? This

7:37

is Black and Reporting. I'm Katie Herzog.

7:39

And I'm Jesse Single. And today,

7:41

we're going to talk about Elon

7:43

Musk. gonna be very few people have heard of them,

7:46

very few people are talking about them. We're finally gonna

7:48

chime in on this whole Musk,

7:50

Twitter, mastodon thing.

7:52

If if you're asking yourself what is mastodon,

7:55

that's good. You shouldn't know what it is because it's dumb.

7:57

We'll explain. But first, can we

7:59

do one little loose ends thing from our live

8:01

shows? Let's do it. Okay. So during the live show,

8:04

we released it was the New York one.

8:06

Right? Yes. It was. There's a segment

8:08

where you talked about the different styles of

8:10

in cell core music. This is music with

8:13

the theme of young men angry. They don't have

8:15

friends are sad. They don't have girlfriends. Blah blah blah.

8:17

You point out there's different styles of it,

8:19

and then I made this hilarious joke.

8:21

Is there klezmer in Zellcorp?

8:24

Like, I want a great

8:26

girlfriend. I want a great girlfriend.

8:28

Okay. So about a week and a half ago, we got

8:30

an email from a listener who just wants to go

8:33

by the name musician with regrets.

8:35

Hi, Katie and Jesse, they wrote. I've been

8:38

listener since the lips of TikTok hoax.

8:40

The furry did nothing wrong. Preach,

8:42

and I've been enjoying it a lot. In

8:44

your recent live episode, Jesse inquired about

8:46

the existence of Klasmer in Cellcor. I

8:48

happen to be an expert at mediocre Klasmer

8:51

sounding mock ups. so I figured I could help.

8:53

I've created a little demo of what that would

8:55

sound like. Jesse, if you wanna hire me for your

8:57

barmature, feel free to reach out.

8:59

and they attached a file called plasma

9:01

in cell core featuring Jesse

9:04

forever single. Here's what

9:06

that sounds like.

9:19

Yeah. They play that at your

9:21

Barbitsa.

9:23

Jesse, that might be even better

9:25

than the sucking and fucking remix. Excellent

9:27

work. So far, I've

9:30

been featured in sucking and sucking. Jesse,

9:33

forever. Wait. Whatever they whatever they called this.

9:35

And replication crisis

9:37

wraps. So I'm really I'm getting out there. I'm

9:40

expanding my media.

9:41

this might be a good theme song for us. I really

9:43

like it. Yeah.

9:43

I like it too. Okay. So should

9:46

we move on Mastodon and Twitter and all this bullshit?

9:48

Yes, let's do it. was afraid that

9:50

everything would have calmed down and

9:52

the story would have moved on since it's been so

9:54

long since we've been able to record together. But thankfully,

9:57

people are still complaining about

9:58

your theory

9:59

was journalist would stop

10:01

being narcissistic and complaining about things. Yes.

10:03

Yes. How did that how did that theory be right? Not well.

10:05

Right?

10:06

I'll take a loss on that one. Okay. So

10:08

when Elon Musk announced that he wanted

10:10

to buy Twitter, I didn't think that

10:12

chain things were gonna change all that much. If

10:14

you will recall, I think my only concerned

10:17

that he was going was that he was going to fuck

10:19

up the verification system, which he immediately did.

10:21

We'll get to that in a moment. And there was so

10:23

much hand wringing and literal tears

10:25

like, literally,

10:27

employees crying when they found out that Elon

10:29

was gonna buy Twitter, that it all seemed

10:31

very hyperbolic And I figured that

10:33

he would buy the company, lose in content

10:35

moderation, and it would basically keep operating

10:37

as normal. But in some sense,

10:39

that's not in some since that is what has happened, and

10:41

in some sense that's not what has happened, especially

10:43

if you're a Twitter employee. And I think the

10:46

catastrophizers were more correct about Elon

10:48

than I thought at first. And I think the employees

10:50

were right be scared and

10:53

to cry. And frankly, if I were a

10:55

Twitter employee, I would be pretty fucking

10:57

mad at the the old leadership for forcing

10:59

Elon to buy the company when he tried

11:01

to back out of it. And I wanna be clear

11:04

here, don't hate Elon Musk. Every

11:06

time I criticize him, I get accused of hating

11:08

him, I don't hate him. And I think he's made a couple

11:10

of good decisions, which I'll get to in a moment.

11:12

let's start with what he's done wrong, and I wanna start,

11:15

of

11:15

course, with the blue check. The most important

11:17

thing in the world, the most important status signal,

11:19

the blue check.

11:19

Exactly. So for people who aren't on

11:21

Twitter, there's a blue check on accounts

11:23

that have been designated notable. That

11:26

in itself is kinda bullshit because there are a lot

11:28

of people with blue checks who got them solely

11:30

because they're like work at a media outlet that

11:32

has a relationship with Twitter. And so

11:34

all staff members or editorial members

11:36

were verified. That's how I got the check mark.

11:38

That's how you got the check mark. Yeah. They

11:40

literally emailed us in New York magazine. They're like, if

11:42

you wanna be verified, send us your name, forward it to Twitter,

11:44

you'll get verified.

11:45

Yeah. Same thing. I was verified when I was at

11:47

Grist. I think I had less than a thousand hours

11:49

at the at the time, there's no reason that I should have

11:51

been verified then. There's arguably no

11:53

reason that I should be verified now, but that's how we

11:55

got

11:55

it. also had to submit a semen sample. I don't know

11:57

what that was but it was part of it.

11:58

We just did a hair sample.

12:00

Okay. Yeah. Anyway.

12:01

So, and a lot of people are

12:03

not verified that should be. There is no reason

12:05

that some buzzfeed staffer with hundred

12:07

followers should be verified when Andrew Sullivan

12:09

and Thomas Shatterton Williams are

12:11

not. I just love if there's no

12:13

lower form of life that some buzzfeed

12:15

center with a hundred followers.

12:18

There well, there's clearly a bias in

12:20

the verification system. And for a while,

12:22

you could apply to be verified. And it said, like,

12:25

you had to have, you know, by lines at

12:27

x number of of outlets or whatever.

12:29

Thomas Shatterton Williams and Andrew Sullivan

12:31

both very clearly fit this metric and they

12:33

weren't verified. I think that shows bias

12:36

within the system. Did they wait did they ask

12:38

to be? know that Thomas did. I don't know about it.

12:40

I doubt Andrew did. Yeah. But

12:42

he he shouldn't be very bud for sure.

12:44

Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. So setting that aside,

12:47

the blue check has value in two

12:49

ways. One is that as a as a

12:51

status symbol, and two, to verify

12:54

someone's identity. So that's it. Basically,

12:56

there's when you look at if you

12:58

have a verified account and you look at your mentions,

13:00

there's a column for verified mentions.

13:03

That's the only sort of, like, extra privilege

13:06

as far as I know. I their problem It's

13:09

like when they used to pull the curtain for

13:11

first class -- Yeah. -- no longer have to deal with

13:13

deal with Apple, basically. Right.

13:14

But now he's fucked it all up, so the

13:16

vacation gollum is absolutely fucking worthless.

13:19

Okay. So Elon Musk takes

13:21

over And one of the first things that

13:23

he does is start selling the checkmarks

13:26

for eight dollars a month and announce that he's

13:28

doing entirely away with legacy checkmarks.

13:30

which means that the check mark will no longer

13:32

demarcate the user as notable. Therefore,

13:35

it loses its utility as

13:37

a status symbol. this ironically

13:39

makes it have basically no value even

13:41

at eight dollars a month. It's going to be

13:43

and think it is cringe as hell

13:46

to pay for a blue check. and this will

13:48

even be more true when legacy checks

13:50

are gone because it's no longer going to be even

13:52

mimicking this thing that used to have value.

13:55

So it's a giant neon sign that says,

13:57

I paid for cloud. Would you

13:59

pay for a blue

13:59

check? Well,

14:01

I would hope I wouldn't, but I will say anecdotally,

14:04

think a huge number of people are. In my opinion,

14:06

at least, I've noticed a huge uptick

14:08

in folks who

14:10

wouldn't have been verified before

14:12

and now are. Maybe I just have a lot of, like, a

14:14

certain type of folk in my mentions, but I I've noticed

14:16

a lot of them, which suggests that, like, there's

14:18

a market for it at least.

14:19

Yeah, there's a ton of people in my mentions

14:22

who are now verified. I don't think

14:24

that that's that we can extrapolate from that,

14:26

that this was a huge success. I

14:28

just don't think that we have the numbers, and I think

14:30

that, yes, we are probably seeing there's

14:32

probably some selection bias there. Okay.

14:36

Again, the BlueCheck

14:38

system was biased. It was fucked up. I

14:40

imagine that's pretty relatively easy fix though.

14:42

Just apply the guidelines evenly and without

14:44

prejudice. But then he did this other

14:46

dumb thing. And so now instead

14:48

of the blue check, there's an official badge

14:51

which just recreates the system in

14:53

a different format. Well, not in

14:54

instead of. It's like in addition because

14:57

you could have one without the other.

14:59

You you

15:00

I don't know if anybody has one without the

15:03

other.

15:03

Yeah. Mine I have a blue check. It doesn't

15:05

say Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't think anybody has official

15:07

without the blue check. Gotcha. Okay. So

15:09

the official means we

15:11

verified this person is who they say they

15:13

are.

15:14

Well, no, because he was only

15:16

initially, he was only rolling it out to

15:18

Twitter advertisers. you'll see

15:20

why in a moment. But okay. I saw exactly

15:22

I've seen exactly one journalist with

15:25

an official

15:25

demarcation, Gessu.

15:29

it's gonna be someone we don't like, but who?

15:31

Jeet here. No comment. How did get

15:34

why are a lot okay. Why are a lot of people

15:36

like pretending to be Jeet here? Is he such a hot

15:38

hot brand?

15:38

Yeah. I don't I highly doubt that there's a

15:40

lot of jeet here in personators. I don't know how he

15:43

got the official badge. Apparently, he lost it. But

15:45

if

15:45

you hired a jeet here in personator for

15:47

Barbitsa. Actually.

15:49

I I think he lost the official badge. I

15:51

don't know why, but he at one point had the official

15:53

badge, and he was literally the only journalist

15:56

who had this thing. don't know who he's been fucking

15:58

on Twitter to get that. Okay.

15:59

So but he just it it it recreates the

16:02

same system.

16:02

He still hasn't he? I I hit I had to

16:04

hit I blocked him, but he's official.

16:06

he lost it at one point, then he got it back.

16:08

How did she hear it? I don't exactly. It's

16:11

a stupid system.

16:11

I'm so confused by the system. Anyway, continue.

16:13

I'm sorry.

16:14

So it but the point is it just recreate

16:16

the same system with a different with

16:18

a different status symbol. Right? But

16:20

then he did something even dumber, which

16:22

was choose not to verify the identity

16:24

of the paid users. So obviously, the first

16:26

thing that people did was start impersonating

16:29

other people, including Elon Musk,

16:31

and then a bunch of brands, including Twitter advertisers

16:33

like Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company.

16:36

Somebody got verified account under the name

16:38

Eli Lilly. and then use it to tweet that

16:40

insulin is now free. So immediately,

16:42

the company stock price plummets, and

16:44

Eli Lilly says that they're no longer going to be

16:46

advertising on Twitter.

16:47

Okay. So if I have this

16:49

right, for a while, if you see

16:51

a blue check next to someone's name, it it means

16:54

like it basically means they are who they say they are.

16:56

although there's there's weird limits to that for, like, synonymous

16:58

accounts. But synonymous accounts, I mean,

17:01

wouldn't have a blue check. No. There

17:03

there's some that

17:04

I guess you're you III wish I could think

17:06

about the topic. Maybe

17:07

you could, like, you you could in theory, get

17:09

the blue check and then change your name.

17:11

Either way, since Twitter started, it's been

17:13

a symbol meaning this person is legit.

17:15

So then he simultaneously changes that

17:17

to either it means you're legit

17:19

and got grandfathered in or it means you paid

17:21

eight dollars at the same time, he introduces

17:24

a new verified thing. And

17:26

and so, of course, everyone is primed to

17:28

think a blue check means something. Right. So the in person

17:30

like, he he this was an incredibly dumb

17:32

fuck up.

17:33

Yeah. And then other social media platforms

17:35

also have some sort of check. Usually, it's a blue check,

17:37

not always, Instagram, Facebook, it it means

17:39

it that's what it mean. Like, it's

17:41

a universal symbol for this identity has

17:43

been verified. This is

17:44

troubling for me because I thought Elon Musk was

17:46

a genius who was great at everything. This is

17:48

why I tried to DM him so much, but it sounds like didn't

17:51

handle this well so far.

17:52

I I don't not think he handled this well. Okay.

17:54

So a bunch of advertisers announced

17:56

that they are cutting ties with Twitter in

17:59

part because of these impersonations. And

18:01

so this thing that he's doing to

18:04

raise money for the company is now

18:06

costing the company money. Does

18:08

it even out in the end I sort of doubt it.

18:10

I don't know that a couple hundred thousand people

18:12

or however many it is that pay for the BlueCheck

18:14

is gonna make up for, like, actual

18:16

-- Yeah. -- these ads. What if

18:18

a billion people would get buy blue checks?

18:20

That'd be eight billion dollars a month. Can't you think

18:22

about it? I

18:22

mean, think that what he should do is just charge everybody

18:24

on the platform a dollar if he needs to monetize

18:26

fall or monetize users. charge everybody dollar.

18:28

There are three hundred million users on Twitter. Charge

18:31

them all dollar. You don't have to fuck with the verification

18:33

stuff. Charge them a dollar a year. You have

18:35

a good Yeah. Well but no.

18:37

As soon as you have to whip out a credit card, you're gonna

18:39

get

18:40

fifteen percent of people pay, I think. Yeah.

18:43

such an interesting thought experiment because that would be

18:45

such a healthier Internet if people had to pay for it

18:47

anyway. I don't know.

18:47

That's classes, Jesse. I'm

18:49

so classes.

18:50

Okay. So he fucks up the the verification

18:52

system. And then he also

18:55

starts immediately laying people

18:57

off. He laid off half the staff

18:59

within, I believe, the first week that he'd had taken

19:01

over. And then he also announced

19:03

that Twitter would no longer be allowing remote

19:05

works starting, like, he did this on, like,

19:07

a Wednesday or something, and it was, like, five PM

19:10

on Wednesday. Everybody has to be in the office

19:12

on Thursday. Twitter

19:14

announced that they were going permanently remote

19:16

during the pandemic, so I imagine that

19:18

a number of people, you know, moved

19:20

when they thought they were never gonna have to go into an office

19:23

again and could live someplace cheaper than Silicon

19:25

Valley. And they find out

19:27

that the next day they have to be in the office. So

19:29

he's making these announcements, things go haywire,

19:31

and then he just walks them back immediately. He's like

19:33

throwing everything at the wall in a very

19:35

public way. Maybe this

19:37

So he he walked back through a remote thing.

19:39

Right? He

19:39

did walk it back. It was but now it's like,

19:42

not everybody has to be in the office. but

19:44

you have to get permission from your manager and

19:46

your manager is not responsible for you.

19:48

So if there's I don't know if you're not performing at

19:50

the task, it's your manager is the person who is

19:52

going to be penalized if the

19:55

employee who's working remotely, is

19:57

it performing? It's just

19:59

bad management.

19:59

No. No. I mean, none of this makes sense. because it just

20:02

it's like he's like, there's a type of

20:04

dude who just loves to I mean, not always

20:06

a dude that often who just loves to throw his weight

20:08

around and be like, I have power. Now none of this

20:10

sounds like he like, what you would do

20:13

if you got to the company is, like, meet with the folks

20:15

who already know how shit works and you can

20:17

still make changes. But you don't just go in

20:19

and start, like, tweeting out massive changes. It's

20:21

crazy. Right.

20:21

And especially, like, tomorrow, you have to be in the

20:23

office tomorrow. It's five PM tomorrow,

20:26

be in the office, be in San Francisco or wherever tomorrow.

20:28

It just like, it shows just this absolute

20:30

lack of consideration for the people who

20:33

work for you. And these are the people who built the company.

20:35

He is not the person who built the company. These people

20:37

have all been there for longer than him. And then

20:39

he issues these weird demands that people

20:42

resign if they're not willing to be, quote,

20:44

hardcore. I assume that is

20:46

some reference to a musical genre? Like,

20:48

what does he what does that even fucking

20:50

mean here? Yeah. It's just publicly

20:53

this was a public demand or, like, an internal

20:55

email? No.

20:55

This was an internal email. Okay.

20:57

You just stay, hey, you have to be hardcore.

20:59

Yeah. You have to be in hardcore. If

21:02

you are willing to be hardcore and you wanna

21:04

stay on check this box in this Google form

21:06

or whatever it was. And if not, we're gonna

21:08

we're gonna take that as your resignation by,

21:11

like, five PM on Friday. If you don't check if

21:13

we

21:13

if we ever have a full blown staff, I'm just gonna

21:15

use Google Docs for retention. Yeah.

21:17

He should do a Twitter poll instead. And

21:19

this apparently was not appealing too much

21:21

of the remaining staff who they were already in

21:23

this extremely chaotic environment. And so a bunch

21:25

of them announced that they are leaving.

21:27

Yeah. And I I thought the this

21:29

article in The New York Times really captured how

21:31

the first part of his tenure went. This is from

21:33

November eighteenth. Elon Musk

21:35

sent a flurry of emails to Twitter employees

21:38

on Friday morning with a plea. quote, anyone

21:40

who actually writes software, please report to the

21:42

tenth floor at two PM today. End quote,

21:44

he wrote in a two paragraph message, which was viewed

21:46

by The New York Times.

21:48

Thanks, Elon. About thirty minutes later,

21:50

mister Musk sent another email saying he wanted to

21:52

learn about Twitter's tech stack, a term used

21:54

to describe a company's software and

21:56

related systems. Then another email,

21:58

he asked some people to fly to Twitter's headquarters

22:00

in San Francisco to meet in person. Later

22:03

in the article it notes, Some

22:05

internal estimates show that at least twelve hundred

22:07

full time employees resigned on Thursday. Three people

22:09

close to the company said Twitter had seventy

22:12

five hundred full time employees at the end of October, which

22:14

dropped to about thirty seven hundred after mass

22:16

layoffs this month. I found this amazing

22:18

because it's like if I took over a cat food factory

22:21

without knowing anything about how to make cat

22:23

food. And then on Monday, I was like, there's gonna

22:25

be big changes around here. Watch out everyone.

22:27

And then by Friday, I'm like, Attention.

22:30

If any of you know how to make cat food,

22:32

please report to my office.

22:33

Yeah. Exactly. And Like,

22:36

there's a lot of speculation that Twitter was gonna

22:38

die. And there was were you online the one night,

22:40

like, Friday at five PM after

22:43

there were all of these resignations and people were

22:45

tweeting as though it was the last day on Twitter.

22:47

I

22:49

saw tweet for that. It was so

22:51

fucking hilarious. It was literally, like, the

22:53

deck of the Titanic. Like, there's

22:55

a band play. People say goodbye to their

22:57

friends. It was so all the

23:01

cringiness and melodrama and

23:03

narcissism of, like, blue check

23:05

media, Twitter, was just a wow to flourish

23:07

in this, like, super nose at Nova Bursch. It was

23:10

hilarious and horrible.

23:10

Yeah. I mean, it was very funny. And

23:12

also the fact that everybody just woke up the next day

23:14

and continued tweeting was very funny. That said,

23:17

I don't think that many people literally

23:19

thought that it was going to evaporate overnight?

23:22

I I just don't think most people thought that. I think

23:24

the concern is that if you lay

23:26

off this huge percentage of your staff,

23:28

that the machine isn't going to be keep running

23:31

forever. Now, it'll probably keep running

23:33

on auto autopilot for a while, but websites

23:35

do need constant maintenance. I I'm

23:37

more skeptical

23:38

on that because don't you think, like, if if

23:40

the firings had this horrible effect,

23:42

we would have noticed, like, performance issues, the site

23:44

would have gone down. It just despite all

23:46

the noise and smoke and lost jobs and

23:48

I don't want these people to have lost their jobs, it

23:50

doesn't seem to have affected the actual product unless

23:52

I'm missing something.

23:53

Okay. Well, so, Ben Smith, formerly

23:55

of the New York Times, his new project, Sema four,

23:58

ran an interview with Alex Stamos, who's the former

23:59

chief of security at Facebook. And he

24:02

said that, basically, Twitter should be able to keep

24:04

running with just a few hundred employees if they

24:06

are the right employees for a while. But he also

24:08

said this, quote, Eventually, there will be

24:10

an issue that has to be addressed by SREs

24:13

that site reliability engineers

24:15

or it will cause a cascading failure. The

24:17

question will be, is if the right team exists

24:20

at that point to stop the cascade? I

24:22

have no idea if the right team exists or not, or

24:24

if Elon is filling those roles or Elan

24:26

even understands those rules. Stainless

24:29

also said, quote, it will be very hard

24:31

to make money with the key relationships broken.

24:33

I think that's that's also a major issue

24:36

as if Is Twitter ever making money? I don't know

24:38

if it was profitable, but if NPR published

24:40

piece today that said that Twitter has lost half

24:42

of its top hundred advertisers since Elon Musk

24:44

came back. And you can see why advertisers

24:47

would be reticent to give

24:49

them money at this point. bad

24:51

press. But regardless, Elon's

24:53

public response to all of his criticism has

24:56

been to shit post, which just confirms

24:58

my belief that anyone who spends of time

25:00

on Twitter should not be running lemonade stand

25:03

much less fucking

25:03

corporation. Dude, the ship posing

25:05

has been so weird. even

25:08

by Elon Musk standards. And one weird

25:10

thing is he's sort of mixing these questions

25:13

about the company's future with shit posting.

25:15

So, like, he did a Twitter poll

25:17

to determine whether he should issue a general

25:20

Twitter amnesty for banned accounts and

25:22

And with Donald Trump, that's why he

25:24

he invited Donald Trump back on the platform

25:26

because Twitter decided. And, hilariously,

25:28

Donald Trump has has sort of ignored him,

25:31

which is, I gotta say, a pretty chad move.

25:32

Yeah, it is. But so so, of course, the

25:34

sorts of people who follow Elon we're gonna be like, yeah,

25:37

do an amnesty, seventy two percent. So then

25:39

he tweets, the people have spoken. Amnesty

25:41

begins next week.

25:42

Vox popularly, Vox day. basically

25:45

translates to the voice of the God. The

25:47

voice of the people is the voice of

25:48

God. Okay. So another hilarious thing

25:50

about this. Okay. Well, first of all,

25:52

I think this is sort of the shady thing that he's doing

25:55

where instead of just making decisions himself and

25:57

taking responsibility of for them, he's saying

25:59

no, no, no, this is

25:59

a democracy that people have spoken. But

26:02

he also like, he himself when he was

26:04

trying to get out of buying Twitter, presumably

26:06

because he realized it was a terrible fucking deal.

26:08

His claim was that Twitter was overrun

26:11

by bots. So why should

26:13

we believe that these polls aren't uncontaminated

26:16

if Twitter is overrun by bots? as

26:18

he himself said that it is. Yeah.

26:20

I mean, that's that's that's true, but just

26:22

like,

26:22

even if it's all real people, Twitter

26:24

polls are completely useless. So it's just Totally.

26:27

Totally useless. there's also a much pure

26:29

shit posting he's done. So, like, he tweeted,

26:31

our love will not never die with

26:33

a still from brokeback mountain

26:36

where It's

26:38

him and

26:39

CBS News. Why can't

26:41

I quit you? It's just bizarre. He

26:44

also had an interesting Well, do you know what that's

26:46

about?

26:46

No. Actually, don't. He had some beef

26:48

with CBS News.

26:49

CBS News, and I'm gonna

26:51

say, this is embarrassing on their part. CBS

26:53

News announced that they would no longer be

26:56

tweeting.

26:56

And then Exactly. took

26:58

it back the next day. Wait. What well, how

27:00

did they explain it?

27:01

Okay. So this was a CBS news

27:04

correspondent. He said this during a

27:06

during a broadcast. In light of the uncertainty

27:08

around Twitter and out of an abundance of caution,

27:11

CBS News is causing its activity on

27:13

the social media site is it continues to monitor

27:15

the bloodworm. It's so dramatic.

27:17

So melodramatic. out

27:19

an

27:19

out of an abundance of caution, like, what do they

27:21

think is gonna happen?

27:22

Marginalized people will be harmed?

27:24

Yes. That's the issue.

27:25

so okay. So he's getting in

27:28

fights with people. He's a CEO of his very

27:30

important media company, social

27:32

media company, and he's just tweeting stuff out.

27:34

He's tweeting memes out. He also had an

27:36

injury. He's

27:36

also he's he, like,

27:38

he steals names, whatever, names are

27:40

meant to be stolen. But I to me, there's something

27:43

just, like, sort of dirty about the fact that he will take

27:45

people's content and repost it without

27:46

crediting them. It's not great. You should

27:48

be banned from Twitter. He also had

27:50

to get an interesting interaction with

27:54

at cat nerd two.

27:56

Do are you familiar with cat nerd two?

27:58

No. I know cat nerd one.

27:59

I was gonna say, I will you understand

28:02

cat nerd two's tweets if you haven't read cat turns.

28:05

This is someone who has a million followers. I I

28:07

think maybe they were recently reinstated, but

28:10

so cat turn two says breaking. forty

28:12

eight hours since Elon Musk reinstated president Trump's

28:14

Twitter account and the world still hasn't ended

28:17

Elon Musk replies. And it

28:19

turns out that Trent nine inch snails

28:21

Resner is actually a crybaby, sideways

28:23

lapping emoji. So he's

28:25

Did we did Trent Resner leave? You

28:27

must

28:27

I don't even know. You must not care.

28:29

But just the you're a CEO

28:32

of a company and you're just constantly picking

28:34

fights with everyone, like, we're allowed to do that because we

28:36

can get content out of it. But if you're a CEO

28:38

of a company, it's a bad idea.

28:40

It's like James Lindsay runs giant

28:42

corporation.

28:43

Oh, yeah. They're not they're they have similar

28:45

dispositions in that.

28:46

He was also back on Twitter.

28:47

Yes. We had that that little sideways laughing

28:49

emoji thing, which comes across is just like deranged.

28:52

Like, I'm not even mad. My buddy Aria

28:54

Cohen Wade sent me a Twitter search

28:56

for Elon Musk using the halfway

28:59

sideways laughing emoji. He's used it forty

29:01

one times since November

29:04

fourteenth or about three point seven today. So

29:06

I'm a I'm a data driven journalist. he

29:08

really likes the half what

29:10

is that? How is it halfway,

29:12

sideways, laughing, crying, emoji? I guess

29:14

that's

29:15

crying, laughing so hard.

29:17

It's turning your face sideways.

29:18

Yes. So You know when that happens? He's

29:20

basically throwing himself headfirst into

29:22

all these culture wars. He he just like,

29:25

opine that people should vote Republican to

29:27

keep, like, checks on powered

29:29

government, which, like, whatever, you're allowed to have your opinion,

29:31

but you can't just, like, you you're the CEO

29:33

of a company. You do not you want to appeal

29:36

to as many people as possible.

29:38

This sort of reminded me of a friend of the

29:40

pod, Ethan's Ethan. Ethan. Ethan

29:42

Strauss. Ethan Strauss often

29:44

points out that, like, the NBA, for example,

29:47

will go way overboard in, like, a woke

29:49

direction that Its audience isn't

29:51

really into, and for lack of better word, whoa. We

29:53

don't like that word, but whatever. Everyone knows what we

29:55

mean. Elon's sort of doing that on

29:57

the opposite direction where he's just like -- Yeah. -- he's

29:59

playing footsy with these, like, weird right wing troll

30:01

accounts saying dumb political shit.

30:03

This the Twitter user

30:05

base is it's not overwhelming the

30:08

liberal, but it is disproportionately liberal. You're just

30:10

you're pissing off your core audience. What's point

30:12

of

30:12

Right. He's trying it's like he's trying

30:15

to drive people away, advertisers

30:17

and users, and he he's doing that.

30:19

He keeps saying that traffic is higher than it's

30:21

ever been. think that's probably true, although I don't

30:23

trust him when he says basically anything. Because he also,

30:26

at one point tweeted that Twitter is

30:28

the social media platform that drives the most traffic.

30:30

That is not true. Twitter drives hardly

30:33

any traffic to other sites. Like

30:35

anybody who's worked in social media can tell you this.

30:37

Like Facebook does. Search does. Twitter does

30:39

not. Well, yeah.

30:40

it's much less effective in

30:42

terms of, like, efficiency than Facebook or least

30:44

it was when I was at

30:46

New York Magazine, but but so many journalists

30:48

are on there and have such big platforms at the end of

30:50

this, like, I think we're in, like, late stage Twitter that

30:52

it it can it can it can help somewhat just

30:55

way less than people.

30:55

Well, he drives the conversation for sure. I just

30:57

don't think it drives a huge amount traffic to, you

31:00

know, to publishers.

31:00

Much less than someone

31:03

would think who who hasn't had access to those

31:05

numbers as I think we have.

31:06

Much less than Elon thinks. Yeah.

31:08

And to me, the most baffling part of this

31:11

is that people treat this

31:13

guy like he is a like,

31:15

their hero. It's this weird demigod

31:17

saying. And I think what's going on is

31:20

that people think that Elon is the enemy

31:22

of their enemy, and therefore he's their friend.

31:24

And so it doesn't matter to to his fans.

31:27

that a bunch of people just lost their jobs because

31:29

those people were woke assholes and so fuck

31:31

them, learned to code, bitches. Except

31:32

they already knew how to code. They

31:34

didn't know how to go. did you journalism? And

31:36

a whole like, this idea that that

31:38

Twitter was full of of Wokies

31:40

for lack of a better term, I'm sure there was a lot

31:42

of that, like, Twitter self selects for

31:44

progressive, I think, in some ways. But

31:47

Twitter, like almost every giant

31:49

Silicon Valley tech company, a huge

31:51

percentage of their employees, are

31:53

Asian. They are immigrants. Do you really

31:55

think that Indian immigrants who are engineers

31:58

at Twitter's are the people who give a shit about pronouns?

32:00

Like, those are people who lost their jobs as well.

32:03

And if you just take, like, step back for a moment

32:05

and look at what happened, here's what happened.

32:07

A billionaire bought a publicly traded

32:09

company, took it private, and

32:11

then laid off out the staff. And under

32:14

what other circumstances would we be cheering

32:16

for that? I cannot think of any. Well,

32:18

it depends who we is. A lot of the people cheering

32:20

for it have politics very different from ours

32:22

even if even if we share the belief that some there's

32:24

like liberal access. These are these are folks who

32:26

who worship tech pros and you hate so called

32:28

SJW. So it just I don't find it surprising

32:31

that they're they they don't care if people get fired. They're they're

32:33

little bit cruel about it.

32:34

No. It's not surprising. It's but it's

32:36

cruel. I find it really great. Like, he's basically, he's

32:38

doing what a predatory capitalist like Karl

32:41

Icahn would do, but instead of criticizing him

32:43

for that. A billionaire buys company and

32:45

lays off half the staff. People are cheering because

32:47

they think that their employees are too woke,

32:49

and I just find this attitude absolutely

32:52

repulsive. Losing a job is one

32:54

of the more stressful life events that people go

32:57

through. That includes people in tech, especially

32:59

because right now, layoffs there are layoffs all

33:01

across the industry. Amazon just laid off ten

33:03

thousand people. Facebook just laid off ten thousand

33:05

people. These are people. You might disagree

33:08

with their politics. but I don't see why

33:10

you should cheer when

33:12

they're losing their jobs. I just I

33:14

find it so

33:16

gross. It's it's the same thing

33:17

whenever there's, like, journalism layoffs. I always try

33:19

to explain to people like, we hear

33:21

disproportionately on Twitter from the ten percent

33:23

of journalists who are annoying ass but most

33:26

most journalists really are just trying to, like, do their

33:28

job and And

33:28

think that's true of Twitter engineers too. Yeah.

33:30

No. That's what I'm

33:31

saying. I don't even want the assholes to lose their jobs. I just

33:33

want them to hashtag do better. So

33:36

cheering for people getting fired, sucks.

33:38

Also, if you're like a big

33:40

capitalist smart money guy, you should

33:42

know that a CEO

33:45

steamrolling in and immediately firing half

33:47

of people without any sign he knows what he's doing,

33:49

this is just ego. It's just like him trying to throw

33:51

his dick around. It's not. There's no there's no

33:54

intelligence at work

33:55

here. No. I don't think he went through and was like, we

33:57

need to make budget cuts here

33:58

and here and here because we're overloaded

33:59

in these areas. is, no, he didn't do

34:02

that. He wouldn't have had time to do that. I will

34:03

say that I can almost understand where some the cruel

34:06

people are coming from just because the hysteria reach

34:08

such a fever pitch. And there's this weird

34:11

wishcasting going on where commentators

34:14

mix reporting

34:15

with what they want to happen.

34:17

So Yeah. Alejandra

34:19

Karabay Bio is a

34:22

just a pretty noxious presence on social

34:24

media. She's like some sort of instructor in

34:26

cyber law at Harvard. So

34:28

on the seventeenth, I don't think Twitter

34:30

will last through the weekend. Twitter is restricting employees

34:32

access to all its buildings through the weekend with no reason

34:34

given. The entire Android team resigned. The world

34:37

topped the largest sporting event in the world starts this

34:39

weekend. She continues, you

34:41

know, payroll tax, SRE, Twitter, Blue

34:43

teams all gone. The end is nigh. you know, that

34:45

was now

34:47

that was

34:47

more than a week ago. Twitter's still around. There haven't even

34:50

been performance issues. Then in

34:52

a Washington Post article, by

34:55

Taylor Rams. Taylor

34:57

quotes Kawabeo saying that

34:59

by letting all these people back on Twitter,

35:02

what must quote, what Musk is doing

35:04

is existentially dangerous for

35:07

various marginalized communities. Existentially

35:09

dangerous, Katie.

35:10

Yes. People die every time someone tweets

35:13

the t word.

35:13

So I think part it's it's

35:16

it's deranged too. There are there

35:18

are

35:19

In the world, communities that face existential

35:22

threat. No one faces existential threats

35:24

because of Twitter. You have to be so far

35:26

up your own ass to think that's the case. So I think

35:29

the people cheering about Twitter engineers

35:31

getting fired see discourse like this. They're like,

35:34

This is crazy. This is so over the

35:36

top. And they maybe adopt a little bit of a nihilistic

35:38

attitude.

35:38

Yeah. I think you're right about that. And I think

35:40

there's also this sense that Twitter

35:43

is now that that leftist on

35:45

Twitter are now experiencing what conservatives

35:47

have always experienced. Like for instance, there's

35:50

this this list going around. basically

35:52

a spreadsheet of thousands, I

35:54

think thousands of leftist accounts.

35:57

And the idea is that right wingers

35:59

will take this list, mass

35:59

report the accounts, and then they'll get banned

36:02

from Twitter. And people like Ben Collins

36:04

are tweeting about this. Lots of people are Ben

36:06

Collins of NBC News, the misinformation reporter.

36:09

Lots

36:09

of Disinformation. I'm sorry. Disinformation

36:10

reporter. Lots of people very upset

36:13

to find themselves on this list.

36:15

These lists have existed.

36:17

wow. Yeah. That much. That much. a sucked out

36:19

fucking people, deranged morons,

36:21

put your name on a list. God. That was Right.

36:23

And it's not like a, it's probably

36:25

not going to have any impact at all.

36:28

But b, these lists have existed forever.

36:31

And

36:31

Dude, it's so bad. Right. They're they're you're

36:33

right. They're just mad. that a in

36:36

some cases, they're just mad that the

36:38

medicine they readily dish out to others, they might

36:40

have to deal with a taste of -- Yeah. -- this fantasy world

36:42

in which until Elon Musk took

36:44

over this was like, and at all functional

36:47

or non sociopathic plates, I

36:49

don't that doesn't resonate with me at all.

36:51

Yeah. They're basically losing what they thought

36:53

of as their site. and

36:55

Twitter wasn't their site. It was never their

36:57

site. Although then again, the people who built it are probably

36:59

more in line with their values than people like Elon Musk.

37:01

And so the other thing about Elon, like,

37:03

he pretends to be a champion of free speech.

37:06

If he actually were, I would support

37:08

him more through all of these mistakes that he's making,

37:11

but he's not proven himself to

37:13

actually be a champion of free

37:15

speech like he tweeted when he got there. He tweeted,

37:18

comedy is now legal on Twitter. And then

37:20

the next day, he permanently banned

37:22

accounts that impersonated him personally.

37:25

Making fun people is free speech,

37:27

but he is incredibly thin skin and he

37:29

can't take it. He fired employees who

37:31

criticized him on Slack, and I realized this is his

37:33

company, and he can do what he wants, blah blah blah.

37:35

But you can't claim to be a champion of free

37:37

speech and then fire people for criticizing

37:40

you personally. And I think there

37:42

is difference between tweeting Elon

37:44

sucks balls on Twitter. I don't think you can tweet

37:46

that the boss sucks balls on Twitter and then expect

37:48

to have your job. But if people were

37:51

criticizing his decisions in good

37:53

faith on Slack and he fired him for

37:55

that, That is not being a champion of free

37:57

speech. Yeah. I think that I'm

37:59

less moved

37:59

by the whole. I think

38:02

you shouldn't criticize your boss. publicly.

38:04

I I think in any But but Slack

38:06

isn't public. Sure. Sure. Yeah. IIII

38:09

don't know. I always find myself little bit of a conservative

38:11

on that because just think, like, a pretty basic thing

38:13

that you need to be, you know, you need

38:16

to if if if they're not allowed to

38:18

internally criticize him or if they get in trouble

38:20

for, like, quietly reporting a qualm they

38:22

have or problem they have. That'd be one thing. But like,

38:24

I don't know. I bet some of people were sloppy

38:26

about it. Well,

38:27

okay. So on

38:28

the media, of course, covered this last weekend, and they

38:30

had somebody who'd been reporting on Twitter. And apparently,

38:32

before Elon took over Twitter

38:34

had a very sort of open door policy about

38:37

criticism, and it was part of the culture, was

38:39

that they wanted to improve the site, and so employees

38:41

were encouraged to criticize the

38:43

leadership decisions. And then

38:45

Elon comes in, and the next day, you're firing

38:47

people who lit who who criticized the boss.

38:49

Okay. I again, I would wanna know more details,

38:51

especially because on the media is sort of a Yeah.

38:55

Okay. That's good. Yeah. Anyway, okay.

38:57

Well,

38:57

okay. So then he he also tweets this.

38:59

New Twitter policy is freedom of speech.

39:02

not freedom of reach. Where have

39:04

we heard that before, Jesse?

39:05

Yeah. That's like a common line from, like,

39:07

progressives who who don't.

39:09

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. This is

39:11

just like a fucking stupid world platitude.

39:13

In that same tweet, he said, negative slash

39:15

hate tweets will be maxed debucid and demonetized,

39:18

so no app ads or other revenue to Twitter,

39:20

you won't find a tweet unless you specifically seek

39:22

it out, which is no different from the rest of the Internet.

39:25

He is correct. That is no different from most of

39:27

the Internet. I don't know who's gonna decide

39:29

what's a hate tweet or a like,

39:31

you can't have negativity on Twitter since

39:33

when. Twitter

39:34

would not exist when. Twitter

39:35

would not exist. but he's just repeating

39:37

the same platitudes that the very people who were

39:39

growing about him buying the company

39:41

claimed to hate freedom of speech, not freedom

39:43

of rage. And frankly none of this

39:45

should be surprising. He has a documented history

39:48

of targeting people who criticize them with legal

39:50

action. He'd once try to get an anonymous

39:52

blogger fired from his job for criticizing Tesla.

39:55

Yeah.

39:55

It's not really going pretty spatchy.

39:56

Come on. I commend him on bringing

39:59

back some people who have been banned including Meghan

40:01

Murphy. He did this last week after Joe Regan

40:03

asked them to, I am less enthralled about

40:05

the fact that he brought back James Lindsay just because

40:07

James Lindsay is so fucking aggravating.

40:09

Yeah. Still, I I do I

40:11

do think that he he brought back some people who deserved

40:14

to be on the platform. But when he was asked

40:16

if he would bring back Alex Jones, he

40:18

said no. Here's why he tweeted,

40:20

my first born child died in my arms.

40:23

I felt his last heartbeat. I have no

40:25

mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children

40:27

for gain, politics, or fame. So I didn't

40:29

realize this before then, but his son died of SIDS

40:31

at ten weeks old. And of course, it's impossible

40:34

not to feel sympathy for Elon Musk in this

40:36

case. and for the parents of Sandy Hook victims

40:38

when you're talking about Alex Jones. But

40:40

again, this reveals what Elon

40:42

Musk actually thinks about free speech, which

40:44

is Free speech is good unless

40:46

it if personally offends Elon

40:49

Musk. That really stuck with me because

40:51

obviously I cannot imagine losing

40:53

a kid that's not the issue here. The issue

40:55

is he's clearly saying that whatever,

40:58

like, most yeah. Whatever

41:00

most offends him or hurts Tim can

41:02

be allowed on Twitter, which is like the exact opposite

41:04

of a principled stance on this

41:06

stuff. Exactly. And there's been this

41:08

spate of anarchist accounts being banned

41:10

or suspended Honestly, it's a lot of

41:12

people I can't stand, so it's hard to really

41:14

mourn them. But I think there is this this

41:17

element from Elon fans.

41:19

That's like, leftists are now experiencing

41:21

what conservative have conservatives have

41:23

always experienced on Twitter. I

41:26

understand that, but I don't think that he

41:28

has shown himself to have really any

41:30

principles beyond Elon Musk

41:32

first. Yeah. I mean, that's

41:34

yeah. I don't know. It's weird that I would think

41:36

otherwise. A lot of these a lot of, like, really

41:39

loud free speechy types. Don't actually

41:41

care about free speech at the end of the day. They just care

41:43

about, like, sticking it to their enemies. Yeah. Totally.

41:45

Alright, Katie. Should we do housekeeping before you

41:47

finish up this tail? Let's do Okay. So,

41:50

oh, I guess, the announcement is merch is back.

41:51

Oh, yeah. Merch is back. Is our website live? It's

41:53

live. Oh, what's what's the URL?

41:55

bar pod merch dot com. I already said that without

41:57

checking. Why don't you check? Bar

41:59

bar how do you spell that? BAR

42:02

How do you spell barpods? mod merch

42:04

dot com. It's barpods merch dot com.

42:06

Did you say dot com? Yep.

42:08

Okay. Yes. It is back. We have our

42:10

pervert for Nuance shirts and

42:12

our Park Slope panther shirt. I'm gonna

42:14

get one of those.

42:15

I'm really happy with this. So, yeah, we're doing

42:17

we're doing things a little bit differently. We have a lot

42:19

of the same, you know, based

42:21

items before if you wanna show your

42:23

support for the podcast, but we're gonna introduce

42:25

new basically, inside jokes, we think

42:27

are funny. I think pervert for Nuance will have

42:30

some legs because there's lot of you perverts out there.

42:32

And then the Parkzel pant if you

42:34

want to help defend Park Slope against

42:37

or prospect park against crime?

42:38

You know, I think our Park Slope Pander's episode

42:40

was a premen episode, so it's good

42:43

portion of our listeners aren't gonna get that one. Joanna

42:45

Blockreport dot org.

42:47

Alright. Joanna Block whoops.

42:49

Yeah. As Joanna Blockreport dot org, so you will

42:51

know the inside jokes on the

42:53

shirts were asking you to buy for

42:56

just five dollars a month or more. You can become a premium

42:58

subscriber. That's three extra episodes a month

43:01

plus It should be part of growing community. Almost

43:03

ten thousand people. Someday we will

43:05

fill one of those creepy

43:07

coder stadiums. built

43:10

by slaves. Yeah.

43:11

We have a weekly open common thread.

43:13

Every Wednesday, people can just talk about whatever they

43:15

want. And the last time I looked at either

43:18

this Wednesday's or last one. There were, like,

43:20

literally a thousand comments on the thread, a thousand

43:23

comments.

43:23

Yeah. There's a lot of really good discussion It's

43:25

a good community. You can also check out our

43:27

subreddit blocked and reported dot Reddit

43:29

dot com. But mostly check out the march. Alright,

43:31

Katie. Where are we in our in our story?

43:33

Okay. So as people

43:35

get more inflamed over Elon Musk,

43:37

some of them, certain number of them, are fleeing

43:40

to new sites. I should say, I don't think

43:42

Twitter is gonna die overnight. I think eventually

43:44

it will die because that's just the nature

43:46

of platforms. I think they all die

43:48

in hand like us humans. Wait

43:50

one. There's a new one called post. Yeah.

43:52

I know it's weird. Yeah. So

43:54

there's a new one called post that's currently in beta

43:57

post dot news. I like the interface that's really have

43:59

you look at this one?

44:00

No. Why why would you look at is

44:02

that you think you need more social media in your life?

44:04

Is that what is?

44:05

Here's why. I'm joining

44:07

all these new platforms under a different name

44:09

so can see the content of people who have blocked

44:11

me on Twitter? It's Hailey Curtis.

44:15

Jesse Single. I like the interface

44:17

on post dot news. It's nice and clean. And

44:19

they're very

44:19

nobody gonna post that

44:20

tomorrow. They're very explicit about

44:23

who they do and don't want on their platform,

44:25

and it's the standard, like, we want diversity, but

44:27

no, not etcetera. They are, however,

44:29

already getting shit because they say

44:31

that protected categories include gender,

44:34

religion, ethnicity, ase sexual orientation,

44:37

net worth, and beliefs, but they failed

44:39

to mention gender identity in there.

44:41

I suspect that's just an oversight or they

44:43

were loving that undergender. Well,

44:45

what if my belief is that nazis

44:47

are right? No. So that's protected?

44:48

That's not protected. No nazis. My beliefs

44:51

are protected. No. Not that one. I'll lose

44:53

with that one.

44:54

Oh, I'll mess around on there later and figure

44:56

it out. But the one that is getting more attention

44:58

is Mastodon. Unfortunately,

45:00

Mastodon is a deeply confusing website.

45:03

I found it very hard to navigate, but it

45:05

does have a pretty interesting

45:06

history. Why don't you tell me about that

45:08

history, Katie?

45:09

Okay. So Mastodon launched

45:11

in twenty sixteen, and it's basically

45:13

open source software that anyone can

45:16

use and adapt for their own purposes. It

45:18

can be somewhat divided into three

45:20

massive non interacting parts.

45:23

First, there's a thriving right wing

45:25

corner, gap and truth social, or the headliners

45:27

of that. Then there's the Japanese

45:30

pedophile corner, and then there's the

45:32

sort of broadly leftist. We're looking for a

45:34

gentler Twitter corner. that's what

45:36

people are leaving Twitter for now. You're gonna

45:39

get to that in a little while. But first,

45:41

I'm gonna talk about the first two, which

45:43

is the right hand corner. and

45:45

the Japanese pedophile corner. Are you ready for this?

45:47

Okay.

45:47

And and you say these don't overlap? They

45:50

don't

45:50

match. They would imagine it's sub

45:51

cases. I'm sure in some cases they do. Yes. Okay.

45:54

So this is key to understanding

45:56

Mastodon. There's no global

45:58

search, and none of these three ecosystems

46:01

can see each other unless they go out of

46:03

their way to look for it. Can

46:04

just say we're off to a very good start about

46:06

this being a useful service that

46:08

there's no global search? So that that sounds

46:11

good. Yeah.

46:11

Right. So people in each of these

46:13

separate corners generally remain pretty

46:16

blissfully unaware of the others. Okay.

46:18

So First, we're gonna talk about

46:21

how mass Mastodon works. So basically, when

46:23

you sign up, you choose a server also

46:25

called an instance. This can be based

46:27

on location or interest. So there are

46:29

servers for different countries and regions and

46:31

servers for things like What

46:32

what I love about this is they could have just

46:34

called it a server because that's what it is. But everything

46:36

on Mastodon needs to be fucking confusing a

46:38

dumb. So it's an instance, which is just

46:40

why.

46:41

Like they called their post or they did until

46:43

recently, they called their post toots,

46:45

which is literally the name that I called Moses

46:47

Farts like this. I tutored everybody

46:49

everybody. Check out my tooth, I tutored.

46:51

Yeah. So as a user, it's pretty

46:53

confusing because, like, how do you know

46:55

what server to sign up for? But, ultimately,

46:58

the server Obviously, the petifier. Obviously. easy

47:00

comp. But it also doesn't really matter which server

47:02

you sign up for because you can still follow people

47:05

on other servers. So I don't know why the server thing

47:07

exists. It's it's just it's like one

47:09

more barrier to get people to sign up. Maybe that's what they're

47:11

trying to do. I'm also going to immediately

47:13

contradict myself because I just said that it doesn't

47:15

matter what server you choose, but because there are

47:17

mass blockings of entire servers, it

47:19

kinda does matter what server

47:21

you choose. Okay. So once

47:24

you sign up and start following people, you

47:26

have local timeline which features

47:28

only posts from your server and public

47:30

timeline which could feature posts from

47:32

anyone your server are you following

47:34

me, Jesse?

47:34

It's very hard too, but I just imagine

47:36

me nodding and drooling

47:37

a little bit. There's no way to view everything

47:39

on Mastodon all at once. And so it looks a

47:41

lot like Twitter, but there are other certain limitations.

47:44

For instance, there's no quote, quote, quote, quote,

47:47

quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote feature. Jesus.

47:48

Yeah.

47:50

And this inherently limits the ryrie

47:52

of post and this is intentional because

47:54

the vibe on Mastodon is supposed to be

47:56

more about actual conversation than

47:58

dunking on your enemies.

47:59

And when it was started, it was thought

48:02

of as this haven for marginalized

48:03

identities like queer and trans people

48:05

who, of course, are always the victims of bullying and

48:08

never the perpetrators of it. the

48:10

writer, Sarah Geon. Do you wanna remind people who

48:12

Sarah Geon is?

48:12

Yeah. Sarah Geon was Geon.

48:14

It's Geon. I don't know. She

48:17

she was a so she was New York

48:19

Times, at one point, editorial

48:21

writer on my tech and the law and related

48:23

subjects, and people are mad at her

48:25

because she'd said, like, a lot of nasty things about

48:28

white people, so conservatives, tried to get

48:30

her, you know, basically fired for that, but

48:32

it didn't work. But then she left anyway. And,

48:35

yeah, She was like a really well,

48:36

maybe she's still a big name. I just feel like

48:39

she doesn't come up as much anymore.

48:40

Yeah. She doesn't. Okay.

48:42

So she wrote about Mastodon for Vice in

48:44

twenty seventeen. Her post was called

48:47

Mastodon is like Twitter without Nazis.

48:49

So why are we not using it? Subhead,

48:51

I quit Twitter to join a kinder, nicer,

48:54

decentralized open source version of Twitter.

48:56

She is, by the way, still on Twitter, so I guess it didn't

48:58

take But in her piece, she hilariously

49:01

mentions Graham Linahan as

49:04

one of the people who recently joined Mastodon

49:07

as though it's a selling point. although

49:10

she says this is a quote, Linahan apparently

49:12

loses interest after finding that the existing

49:14

community discourages posting publicly about

49:16

Trump. She also noted that,

49:19

quote, a user gently suggests that if

49:21

I post political content, I should put it behind

49:23

a content warning. There's a lot of content warnings

49:25

on Mastodon. Hopefully, we'll get to that later.

49:28

Okay. So I mentioned True Social and GAB

49:30

a moment ago. Both of these are right

49:32

wing social networks. True Social is actually

49:34

owned in part by Donald Trump, and that might

49:36

be one of the reasons he has not actually gotten

49:38

back on Twitter because he

49:40

either hasn't in his contract that he needs to

49:43

only be on through social or because he just

49:45

wants to pull people to True Social.

49:47

In twenty twenty one, Wired reported that

49:49

the guy who created Mastodon, his MPG in Roshco,

49:52

was unhappy that True Social was running

49:54

on Mass on software, but he couldn't really do anything

49:56

about it because no one including him owns

49:58

Mastodon. It's decentralized and that's a

50:00

big part of the appeal. but this also

50:03

means that there's no one person or entity

50:05

who can say no, true social or you can't

50:07

play with us. And I suspect that most

50:09

people who have fled to Mastodon over the must buyout

50:12

frankly don't realize they're sharing an ecosystem

50:14

with Donald Trump and literal Nazis, but they are.

50:16

Okay. So that's the first corner.

50:18

That's the red corner. Now we're going to talk

50:20

about the Japanese kitty pawn

50:23

corner. Jesse? My corner. Yeah.

50:25

Your corner. I like what I'm hearing so far. So

50:27

our background from this comes from a very interesting

50:29

twenty seventeen article called Mastodon

50:32

WTF timeline by a guy named

50:34

Matt Scala. willing to this in the show notes,

50:36

but Matt was on Mastodon early.

50:39

He also has an interest in Japanese culture.

50:42

And according to him, in Japan, there

50:44

two different terms for what we in English

50:46

would call child pornography. One

50:48

of them is absolutely taboo and

50:50

one of those is just not. So the

50:53

first type is what we would think of as kiddie porn.

50:55

Picture Jesse Pictures from kiddie porn. Hold

50:56

on. Hold on. Wait. I'm picture. Yeah. Okay.

50:59

The second type is called Lola

51:01

Con. That's short for Lolita complex.

51:04

And it's basically drawings and cartoons

51:06

of young people, including kids, in

51:09

realized situations, and this is

51:11

socially acceptable in Japan. So

51:14

I'm gonna read a bit from Matt's post here.

51:16

He writes, If you like mola

51:18

Con, you're a nerd and that's not a big deal.

51:20

It's legal and popular in sold in bookstores

51:22

everywhere. I cannot emphasize enough

51:25

that Lola Con is not only but

51:27

really acceptable in Japan. It's merely

51:29

nerdy. On the other hand, if you like

51:31

Kitty porn, then you're an evil sickle

51:33

monster in kindergarten is highly illegal.

51:35

It's also unpopular. As a matter of statistics,

51:38

the number of people who are interested in

51:40

kidney borne is vanishingly small as a fraction

51:43

of the Japanese population. Japanese

51:45

see these as two completely and obviously distinct

51:48

things. This doesn't totally surprise

51:50

me. I've never been to Japan, but I have

51:52

seen anime, and it does have

51:54

this sort of Lolita vibe. That's what Lolita's

51:57

short for Lolita complex. and we're

51:59

talking about a country where you can buy used underpants

52:01

and vending machines. They have very different cultural

52:03

norms that we do and whereas drawings

52:05

of child sex or written erotica has gotten

52:08

people jelled in some places. It's just totally

52:10

normal if and dirty in Japan. And

52:12

that says that Japanese people think that

52:14

the American inability to distinguish

52:17

between these two is further proof that Americans

52:19

are dumb as fuck. I am definitely

52:21

having trouble distinguishing them, but think

52:23

we should move on. Well,

52:24

I mean, I don't think it's that. Like

52:26

like, think of one as like anime and

52:28

the other as like photographs of

52:30

kids getting abused. So it's just it's just less

52:32

explicit. Well, like one of them is, like, this stuff that

52:34

happens before their clothes come up, but it's just as

52:36

creepy and sexual. It

52:37

is. But in one, there's, like, real children

52:39

being harmed in the other. There's no children.

52:41

You mean, because it's it's cartoon it's cartoon images

52:43

of children. because it's cartoons. Yeah. Cool.

52:46

Yeah. It seems good. Hey. Hey.

52:48

Hey.

52:48

everyone. Cool. Look, Jesse, if you wanna

52:50

become a protector of cartoon drawings,

52:52

that's that's your hobby. I'm

52:53

gonna go to Japan to become a vigilante.

52:55

Okay. So Twitter

52:57

is obviously an American company, and posting

53:00

Lola Con is banned, and users who post

53:02

that can be banned as well. So Lola Con

53:04

aficionados and artist were looking

53:06

for a platform where they could post their weird drawings

53:09

and they found it surprise surprise at Mastodon.

53:12

So in April twenty seventeen, a

53:14

Japanese site called Pixiv, it's

53:16

basically like a deviant art for Lola

53:18

Con. They started a massive on server

53:20

And there is this massive influx of

53:22

Japanese users to mass it on. And

53:25

in fact, so many Japanese users joined

53:27

the platform that it doubled in size in about

53:29

a day and Lolecon servers quickly

53:31

became among the most popular on Mastodon.

53:34

So this thing that was supposed to be the nicer

53:36

kinder Twitter for marginalized identities,

53:39

was also a massive hub to what

53:41

western eyes look like Kittyporn. So

53:43

this is the the great pervert influx.

53:45

Yeah. Yes. The Japanese pervert

53:48

influx. wondering what percentage of them

53:50

were female.

53:50

JPI?

53:52

Yeah. Yeah. And then so there's this rash of

53:54

thin pieces and blog posts in twenty seventeen

53:56

about how Mastodon had a child pornography

53:58

problem. Of course,

53:59

the very nature of Mastodon makes it

54:02

impossible to believe, and so

54:04

the thing that makes it appealing is decentralized.

54:06

means that there's no one who can ban the LongCon

54:09

servers. They can't be kicked off, so it's

54:11

basically the antithesis of the whole SafeSpade

54:13

vibe that liberal Mastodon who've

54:15

left what Twitter over Elon are trying

54:17

to create. So that said,

54:20

each server or instance can enforce its

54:22

own rules and arms. And as you can imagine,

54:24

this can be very fraught. and nowhere

54:26

is that more apparent, of course, than

54:28

the new server for journalism journalist.

54:32

Jesse, you wanna take it from

54:33

here? Yeah. This is jerna

54:35

dot host. And, basically,

54:38

the center's on Adam Davidson. Davidson

54:41

is a guy who I've read and listened to for a long time.

54:44

And I always found him to be a smart commentator

54:46

on money stuff. I know nothing about money

54:48

stuff.

54:48

Yeah. He was he created planet

54:50

money. Yeah. And And he was on this

54:52

American line for a

54:53

long time. New Yorker, New York Times --

54:55

Yeah. -- very very storied journalistic

54:57

career. If

54:59

you only knew him from his actual work

55:01

and not from Twitter, I can see how you would think

55:03

that this was a very smart and decent guy.

55:04

Yeah.

55:06

And then you look at his Twitter.

55:07

So my sense is that, like like lot

55:09

of other people, Trump and the protests and

55:11

the pandemic have all melted his brain oil

55:14

or at least a part of his brain dedicated to talking

55:16

about, like, in

55:17

turn to seeing conflict on the left.

55:19

He's basically become the purest of, like,

55:21

the good white man. He'll talk a lot about

55:24

his privilege, how there's no such thing as cancel

55:26

culture. This is one of

55:28

the most annoying subset of people on social media.

55:30

It's like the white person who will tell you all about

55:33

how white they are, how many advantages

55:35

they have, how sorry they are about it, how bad

55:37

they feel. But at the end of the

55:39

day, it's off and unclear what all this

55:41

performative flagellation does other

55:43

than, like, causing to talk and think about

55:46

race far more than any healthy

55:48

person Oh,

55:48

it's good for engagement, Josie. Come on.

55:51

It's good for engagement. And it also

55:53

seems to cause them to amplify

55:55

people of color, but they tend to be the tiny

55:57

subset of people of color who have the same

55:59

politics as highly educated white people now.

56:02

So I would find the act a lot more

56:04

believable if if all

56:07

the flage self flagellation was followed up

56:09

by, like, a genuine interest

56:11

in porn and working class black people that

56:13

I I feel like that doesn't tend to be the

56:15

case.

56:15

You don't think the guy who and

56:17

plan at money in his work for this American

56:19

life and the and the the worker

56:21

is really in touch with the working boss.

56:23

Anyway, Adam

56:26

Davidson ends up launching

56:28

jerna dot host, a

56:30

mastodon. So this is an instance

56:32

Right?

56:33

Yeah. It's a server. I'm just using

56:35

a server. It's so

56:36

fucking stupid. It's a server. He

56:38

launches it, and there's this sort of committee of

56:40

moderators. And if you go over there, you'll

56:42

find a mix of, like, random stuff, but also

56:44

the most boring, pointless, predictable,

56:46

political, opining imaginable. You can go there,

56:48

just go to jerna dot host, You

56:51

don't you don't need to sign up for Mastodon. So

56:53

just like imagine Twitter, but only the most

56:55

narrow, already overrepresented, progressive

56:57

side of everything. There appears

57:00

to be no appetite whatsoever there for

57:02

genuine disagreement. Or if there is, I

57:04

couldn't find any evidence of it. Like, The

57:06

things they do agree on include Trump bad,

57:09

musk bad, Twitter bad, fascist

57:11

bad, old ass. So you can imagine,

57:13

yeah, the discourse is is totally scintillating.

57:15

And and Katie, you attempted to join

57:17

this walled garden. No. Well, how did that go?

57:19

I did attempt to join. I attempted

57:22

your to join twice first under

57:24

Sootenum. I thought maybe that would

57:26

get me through the wall. It did not. And

57:28

then under my actual name, and

57:31

my application is I think it

57:33

got lost a bit. Pardon me? Yeah.

57:34

It's been forever pending. How long

57:36

has it been?

57:37

Probably two three weeks. they

57:39

don't they don't in, like, the stuff I've read about

57:42

this, they don't say explicitly that there's

57:44

any, like, ideological component. You should be able

57:46

to join if you're a journalist with an established track

57:48

record writing and or podcasting. Right?

57:50

Yeah. They basically say you need

57:52

to be a legitimate journalist. And Adam Davidson

57:55

did

57:56

this interview that I think

57:58

really tells you everything

58:00

you need to know about Adam Davidson. Let me find

58:03

a quote. We

58:03

had a conversation this morning about somebody

58:05

who has a blog about beer. We said, well,

58:07

this person does reporting. They actually interview

58:10

people. They look at statistics. They're

58:12

not just going to be sharing their opinion on

58:14

beer. and it felt like, yeah, that's journalism.

58:17

So he's a gatekeeper and he's

58:19

the one who's going to decide if your

58:21

particular beat is is

58:23

counts as journalism. However, apparently,

58:26

I don't count as a journalist George Takai

58:28

is on journalists, so he counts as

58:30

a journalist. the Star Trek guy? Yeah. The Star

58:33

Trek guy. So he's obviously not

58:35

enforcing these with any sort of

58:37

consistency.

58:37

Did you DM him to ask him about your application?

58:40

Funny you should say that, Jesse. I can't DM

58:42

him because I am blocked. Okay.

58:43

I mean, that seems pretty gatekeeper to

58:45

me. Maybe that's the point.

58:47

Yeah. And this is sort of my annoyance with project

58:49

is that, like, one of the good things about Twitter

58:52

is that it's public. It's all public.

58:54

Mastodon is not. You can sort of see

58:56

what's going on, but it's just It's like the

58:58

platform is so confusing, and I want journalists

59:01

to be having these idiotic conversations in

59:03

public where everyone can see them. The

59:05

people are being denied access to our dumbness,

59:07

which is not right. Right. So

59:09

yes, this is a pretty ideologically

59:11

narrow minded community and one way that manifested

59:13

was that there's immediate a heated controversy.

59:16

Almost as soon as this thing launched, whose

59:18

controversy involved two very close friends

59:21

of the podcast, Mike Paskett and

59:23

Parker Malone Probably our two best friends in real

59:25

life too.

59:25

Right? Yeah. I like their their initials

59:27

are Palindrome.

59:28

Wow. MPPM So The

59:30

controversy centers on a big important front

59:33

page New York Times article about puberty blockers,

59:35

two of the top investigative journalists there Megan

59:37

Tuohy and Christina Hewitt. They basically

59:40

just laid out many unknowns about puberty blockers,

59:42

a lack of evidence, the physical side effects, some

59:44

kids have experienced, and so on. It

59:46

was an important article on a hot button subject

59:48

on the front page of arguably the world's most

59:51

important newspaper, so you couldn't come

59:53

up with a better example of this sort of article

59:55

journalist like to discuss on social media.

59:57

So Mike Pasquale posts a

59:59

link to it

59:59

on jerna dot host on

1:00:02

November eighteenth. This seemed like

1:00:04

careful through a reporting hero. Mike, Mike,

1:00:07

Mike, Mike, my god. Dude, whoa,

1:00:09

dude. That idea, bro.

1:00:12

Let's just pick up Joe Bernstein's reporting

1:00:15

in the Times. In response,

1:00:17

Parker Malloy, a journalist who writes the Substack

1:00:19

newsletter, the present age, accused mister

1:00:21

Pesca of anti trans bigotry and

1:00:23

then posted a really at mister Davidson for

1:00:25

not removing the post. At

1:00:28

Adam Davidson's decision not to take action

1:00:30

on anti trans content isn't inspiring

1:00:32

confidence, and I totally understand why other places

1:00:35

are doing instant instance level blocking,

1:00:37

meaning other servers are blocking

1:00:39

the servers. She wrote on Jira host.

1:00:41

Zach Evers said one of the Jira host administrators

1:00:44

responded that he agreed with miss Beloy.

1:00:46

Then added, banning someone for posting

1:00:48

a link to an NYPD article sets a precedent

1:00:51

that we really need to work through. On Saturday,

1:00:53

journalists suspended mister Pasca

1:00:55

who's informed via text message from mister

1:00:57

Davidson, a long time, Fred. Prednis,

1:01:00

the two are currently writing an exchange of letters

1:01:02

hosted on SBSAC about the nature of cancer

1:01:04

culture. I will not be reading that by the way. And that's

1:01:06

not because I don't want Heska's work. It's because

1:01:08

III could not stand Davidson's

1:01:12

If

1:01:12

Adam Davidson ever wanted to come on, we would

1:01:14

have a mom, but it's very his views

1:01:16

on this I find to be very bad faith. According

1:01:19

to mister Pascal, this is back to the article. Mister

1:01:22

Davidson told him he had been suspended for

1:01:24

referring to miss Molloy as an activist,

1:01:27

which was dismissive. The suspension

1:01:29

seemed arbitrary in ad hoc, mister Paskett

1:01:32

said in an interview. Miss Molloy didn't respond

1:01:34

to a message he can comment. What'd you make of this,

1:01:36

Katie? this

1:01:36

whole thing is so inevitable.

1:01:39

I tweeted something like this. This is going

1:01:41

to end with Adam Davidson

1:01:43

getting kicked off of his own server for Transphobia.

1:01:46

which point he comes out as non binary. This

1:01:48

is always how this was going to end.

1:01:51

It seems like exactly what you would expect

1:01:53

happen when you give a certain, like, sensorious

1:01:55

type of person, too much power. The

1:01:58

idea of banning Mike Pasquale for calling

1:02:00

Malloy an activist is ridiculous.

1:02:03

I understand my lawyer. wants

1:02:05

to be seen as a I understand she wants to be seen

1:02:07

as a journalist. She does exactly what the

1:02:09

worst activist do, which is scurry around in

1:02:12

back channels trying to get people fired. She's

1:02:14

an activist.

1:02:14

Yeah. I ain't googled Parker Malloy

1:02:16

activists because I wanted to see if she is

1:02:18

commonly referred to as an activist. And I

1:02:20

on this blog post from Qwerty from

1:02:23

twenty fourteen. Let me just read you a second of

1:02:25

this.

1:02:26

Parker Malloy, someone I look to for advice

1:02:28

on occasion and supported through her fundraising for

1:02:30

surgery was telling me to kill myself,

1:02:33

not only was she telling another trans woman

1:02:35

to die she was giving her instructions ranging

1:02:38

from cutting herself to drinking bleach and

1:02:40

what's more demanding that she do it.

1:02:42

She is quite the eye What

1:02:43

what year was that? She's

1:02:44

a pro suicide activist twenty

1:02:46

fourteen. I think right. And so I think she we

1:02:48

should say I think she apologized for that. I mean, she

1:02:51

did. She Did

1:02:51

she ever apologize for trying to get both of

1:02:53

us fired? I think

1:02:54

not. She apologized for that. She apologized

1:02:57

subsequently for this Mike Paskett thing.

1:02:59

She said

1:03:00

that her mental health has, like, interacts

1:03:02

poorly with online stuff. I think maybe --

1:03:04

No. Sure. -- this is this is a fucking pattern,

1:03:06

like, eight years now. Like, just I she

1:03:10

it's really gross, obviously, to tell people to

1:03:12

kill themselves. It's very gross to constantly

1:03:14

try to get people fired and banned from stuff, and

1:03:17

I don't know. I find it. I just can't really

1:03:19

find it pissed about this. This is a whole other level.

1:03:21

It's something that marks you

1:03:23

as, I don't know if she's a bad person. Maybe she,

1:03:25

like, think she's a dog. Maybe she's like good to her dog

1:03:27

and her partner. Hitler

1:03:28

was good as dog too. Hitler

1:03:29

was also good to dog. So we're comparing her directly

1:03:31

to Hitler is what we're saying. No. It's just it's really

1:03:34

shitty behavior. And to suspend Mike

1:03:36

Heska for calling her an activist suggests

1:03:38

this is already a very broken community.

1:03:40

Anyway, moving on from that.

1:03:44

this this, I think, has the desired effect,

1:03:46

which is if you check out journalists, you'll

1:03:49

see no sign of descent on controversial issues

1:03:51

like puberty blockers. Like, it's clear this is not a

1:03:53

community you should go anywhere near if you

1:03:55

want to engage in debate or discussion, which

1:03:57

used to be things journalists did

1:03:59

regularly. They would disagree about stuff and

1:04:01

say so. So you will

1:04:03

clearly get dogpiled or even suspended

1:04:06

if you, for example, post a link to a New

1:04:08

York Times article by two

1:04:10

celebrated investigative reporters. So that's gonna be

1:04:12

a very healthy community that's gonna do good stuff,

1:04:14

I think. Did you try to get in? I I didn't have

1:04:16

it like my ego. I wanted you to as an

1:04:18

fair amount. Oh, you've got to. But my ego

1:04:21

my ego wouldn't let me. I'm not gonna get rejected

1:04:23

by Adam Davidson from this shitty law community

1:04:25

that kicked out of my tasca. So

1:04:27

unlike a lot of people, I'm not gonna make confident

1:04:30

predictions about, like, the future of Twitter, the future

1:04:32

of Mastodon. because who knows what will happen? Maybe

1:04:34

Twitter will collapse. Although, I think people are vast

1:04:36

overstating that likelihood. If I had

1:04:39

to guess, journalists won't

1:04:41

matter six months from now. A few

1:04:43

reasons for that. One is that, as you mentioned,

1:04:45

Mastodon's interface and structure just both

1:04:47

fucking suck. It's extremely confusing

1:04:49

compared to Twitter. The whole, like, federated

1:04:52

servers instance blah blah blah is not

1:04:54

intuitive and you can accuse me

1:04:57

of not putting much effort into trying to learn how

1:04:59

it works because I haven't. but you know what else?

1:05:01

I've never put any effort in understanding Twitter

1:05:03

because you don't have to because it just basically works

1:05:05

even though it sucks and it's horrible and so on. Right?

1:05:08

So

1:05:09

I think the fact that, like, it's hard to even figure

1:05:11

out how to do mastodon is

1:05:13

one obstacle. But I think the biggest reason

1:05:16

journalists probably won't matter in six months is that

1:05:18

journalists are incredibly narcissistic.

1:05:20

And validation from the masses

1:05:22

is incredibly important. them. And so

1:05:24

on Twitter, you get that constantly. I can make a dick

1:05:27

joke and get fifty likes. On a gate

1:05:29

kept Mastodon Server, you won't get that validation

1:05:31

except from the same circle of fellow journalists.

1:05:34

which will get old after a while. Plus, a

1:05:36

journalist has already been banned by a bunch

1:05:38

of other instances or servers apparently

1:05:41

for various reasons. Like, transborder sort

1:05:43

of right. It's been a it's

1:05:45

been accused of transphobia for not

1:05:48

blocking access to a front page

1:05:51

new these

1:05:53

the folks who want to ban everything and get

1:05:55

everyone fired, they're not shy

1:05:57

about showing who they are. Are they? Like, it's very

1:05:59

clear what they want.

1:05:59

They don't they don't think you should be about

1:06:01

allowed to disagree with them on their

1:06:04

pet subjects without getting in trouble. And

1:06:06

they they're not shy about it. it's

1:06:08

crazy that we're still debating whether this is okay,

1:06:10

when it's obviously poison to journalism.

1:06:13

But end

1:06:13

of the day, journalists are not gonna hang out in

1:06:15

a place where they can't have their ego stroke. and you

1:06:17

can't have your ego stroke unmasked it on

1:06:19

when you're just instantly blocked.

1:06:22

So then some of them will surely break off and form

1:06:24

another sense, but that'll dilute everything. That one

1:06:26

will get blocked by other psychos. The project

1:06:28

just seems doomed to fail, I

1:06:29

think. I think you're probably right about I

1:06:31

mean, some people have been on mass it on for six

1:06:33

years now and they love it and it's a totally different community

1:06:36

and they find what they what they are

1:06:38

looking for there. I don't think journalists are those

1:06:40

people and I think this the same things that

1:06:42

make journalists that make Twitter toxic,

1:06:45

the quote tweet button, the dog piles,

1:06:47

all of that shit going viral. that's

1:06:49

exactly why people are on the platform.

1:06:52

And Twitter itself could do away with

1:06:54

that. Like, if you wanted to make talk Twitter less

1:06:56

toxic, get rid of the quote tweet button. course,

1:06:58

people will just take screenshots and find

1:07:00

ways to mimic it. They

1:07:01

could just ban you and hate speech would go down

1:07:03

thirty percent.

1:07:04

Yeah. And they might because I've been shit talking

1:07:06

Elon Musk. But

1:07:08

those are the things that drive traffic

1:07:11

and interest in drama, what people want

1:07:13

is drama. And the only time that Mastodon

1:07:15

was interesting to me was

1:07:18

when this drama was going on with Pesca

1:07:20

in in Parker Boulevard. And there's this other,

1:07:22

like, weird usability thing

1:07:24

where Content warnings are huge on

1:07:26

Mastodon. It's like part of the ethos

1:07:28

is to content warn everything.

1:07:30

And what this means is that

1:07:33

a lot of the post have a little

1:07:35

tag, and it'll be, like, politics

1:07:37

or something like that. But so you have to click that

1:07:39

to see the actual text of the post.

1:07:41

And I just think in terms of usability, like, making

1:07:44

me click one more thing, like, an expand

1:07:46

button for articles or whatever. If you make

1:07:48

me click one more thing, I'm just gonna lose interest

1:07:50

pretty quickly. My fingers are only so strong.

1:07:52

Yeah. I I if you just go to journalists,

1:07:55

you will lose interest because it's like they badly want

1:07:57

this to be the new Twitter, the new thing. It's not going

1:07:59

to be. So I think we're

1:07:59

probably stuck with Twitter for now if it doesn't collapse,

1:08:02

which I don't think it will. But

1:08:03

Let me let me tell you what's at the top of Joanna

1:08:05

host right now.

1:08:08

George Takai, it's follow Friday,

1:08:10

so I hope folks utilize the hashtag

1:08:12

to find my account here. This is Dakota's

1:08:14

scintillating content people get from the service

1:08:16

journalism, the Star Trek dude

1:08:19

asking for people to follow them.

1:08:20

What if we just take the most boring

1:08:22

people on Twitter, folks where you already

1:08:24

know their view on everything, and

1:08:26

have to make another account that will force you to make

1:08:28

another account just to follow them, except you can't get

1:08:30

into journalist unless you're journalist h

1:08:33

up some journalist can't get in. Also, it's mass blocked

1:08:35

by it. Like, it it's -- Yeah. -- good luck,

1:08:37

Adam Davidson, but we would like you to come on

1:08:39

the podcast.

1:08:39

I'll be on post dot news. I'm

1:08:41

not, Katie. Don't even know. Just because

1:08:44

just because just because you can't

1:08:46

get into post

1:08:47

dot I'll be on fucking fuck dot org.

1:08:50

Anything else, Katie?

1:08:52

I think that's it. As

1:08:54

always, thank you to tracing wood grains for

1:08:56

production help. This has been blocked and imported.

1:08:59

I'm Jesse Single, and remember, I

1:09:01

completely support Israelis and

1:09:03

Palestinians equally unless

1:09:05

that's offensive, in which case my apportionment

1:09:08

is different.

1:09:09

And I'm Katie Herzog and also remember.

1:09:11

I want a nice girlfriend. I

1:09:13

want a nice girlfriend. I want a nice girlfriend. I

1:09:15

want a nice girlfriend. I want a nice girlfriend. I

1:09:23

Yeah.

1:09:25

They play that at your barmertsun.