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2026-01-19
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ICE's New Surveillance System Can Follow You Everywhere

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ICE just bought a massively powerful new surveillance system that can monitor every single phone in your neighborhood, track the movements of those devices and their owners over time, and follow you home from work and to other locations.

Joe Cox at 404 Media broke the story of these new ICE systems called Tangles and Webloc. He joined me to break down how this new ICE tech works, what these systems do, why the online advertising market is secretly dangerous, and how we can fight back.

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2026-01-16
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Ashley St Clair's Political Awakening: Trans Rights, AI, and Elon Musk

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Until recently, Ashley St Clair was a star in the conservative influencer world. She built a large and powerful following by leaning into culture-war rhetoric and boosting MAGA policies. She worked for Charlie Kirk?s Turning Point USA and gained national attention by publishing an anti trans Children?s book. She was welcomed into the upper echelons of right-wing media and activism, and her proximity to power on the right deepened when she began a relationship with Elon Musk, who she later had a child with.

But lately, Ashley?s public posture has begun to shift. After Grok, Elon Musk?s AI chatbot, began to flood the internet with nonconsensual deepfake content undressing Ashley and countless other women (and children), she became increasingly outspoken in her criticisms of Musk and unchecked AI development.

In her posts, Ashley has also suggested that some of her other earlier views on things like trans rights, have changed.

I sat down with Ashley to talk about how she got her start in conservative influencing, Maga 1.0 vs MAGA 2.0, the right wing internet pipeline, Elon Musk, and how her positions on issues like LGBTQ rights, healthcare, and immigration have changed.

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2026-01-14
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Congress Is Pushing Another Internet Censorship Law: The SCREEN Act

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Every week it feels like Congress cooks up a new bad internet law. This week we're diving deep into the SCREEN Act. Framed as a child safety bill, this law is an insidious trojan horse for mass censorship and surveillance.

It's been getting a lot of traction thanks to its backing from extreme far right groups and the religious right, and Democrats are now signing on board claiming the law will protect kids online.

In reality, this law could end up forcing you to scan your face to access websites, ban VPNs, and more. To break it all down Michael Stabile, director of public policy at the Free Speech Coalition, joined me. Mike has been fighting these censorship laws on the state level and has been in the rooms in state legislatures where a lot of these debates are taking place.

We get nitty gritty into how the SCREEN Act works, what it does, how it came to fruition, what sets it apart from some of these other child safety laws, and why we need to band together to kill it!

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2026-01-09
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ICE Is Treating Immigration Raids Like Content

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Since Trump took office, ICE has rapidly transformed itself from an under the radar agency into an influencer-style media machine, churning out non-stop viral videos of tactical operations and immigration raids.

ICE's ability to dominate the internet has come to serve as a blueprint for other Trump administration agencies, and their relentless focus on virality is already reshaping public opinion on immigrants.

Drew Harwell is a reporter at The Washington Post and he recently published an investigation into ICE's social media blitz. He joins me to:

Reveal the inside information he uncovered about how ICE's internet meme team operates

Expose what ICE's internal chat logs reveal about their approach to the internet

The Gen Z clip farming operation ICE is employing

Break down how a previously under the radar federal law enforcement group became an ?influencer-style media machine?

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2026-01-07
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4Chan's Battle to Stop the UK From Censoring the Global Internet

<<< Free Speech Friday!!! >>>

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A few months ago, the UK's Online Safety Act went into effect, causing chaos across the internet. The UK government has censored information about police violence, silenced protesters, banned the subreddit for War Crimes, and effectively removed dozens of forums for everything from new motherhood advice to alcoholic anonymous treatment communities.

While the big tech companies have rolled over and complied with the law, a small, unlikely group of platforms is fighting back. These platforms include Kiwi Farms, Gab, and 4Chan, and they're waging a legal battle that could reshape the entire global internet.

Preston Byrne is the lawyer representing these platforms in their fight against the UK government and the EU's Digital Services Act, a similar "online safety" law that's led to significant censorship. A fierce free speech defender, Byrne is making the legal case that UK and EU regulators do not have the right to censor American's speech in America.

He joined me to discuss the global battle he's undertaken and how some of the worst websites online might just save the internet for all of us.

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2026-01-02
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The Insane Overnight Rise of Clavicular: the black-pilled Gen Z looksmaxxer taking over the internet

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Over the past few months, a 19 year old Looksmaxxing livestreamer called Clavicular has become inescapable online, collaborating with an ever growing cadre of massive influencers and conservative online figures. Just last week, he made headlines for running a man over with his Cybertruck on Christmas eve.

It's rare to see someone blow up so quickly near overnight, but I think Clavicular's rise reveals a lot about the current state of online culture and the growing influence of a Nick Fuentes-adjacent black-pilled nihilistic zoomer ideology that seems to be spreading across the internet.

Jarvis Johnson is a YouTuber and friend of mine, and we have been texting about Clavicular's rise for months. So I brought him on to go deep on who exactly Clavicular is, where he came from, how he blew up, and what his rise reveals about the state of the internet and Zoomer politics.

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2025-12-31
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[BONUS] Why Everything Feels Life or Death Now

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Why has everyone become so obsessed with game shows where the losers die!? Over the past decade, ?The Hunger Games? became a multibillion-dollar media franchise. Netflix?s ?Squid Game? took off, and MrBeast's challenges are growing increasingly deadly.

Teddy Brown is a freelance writer for the New Yorker. He wrote a fantastic review of The Running Man, a movie starring Glen Powell where game show contestants must survive 30 days while being hunted down by professional assassins.

He has been studying our obsession with deadly game shows. He joined me to chart the rise of deadly entertainment and discuss what the shifting stakes of game shows reveals about the current state of culture, the national mood, and where entertainment is heading.

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2025-12-29
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Is This The End of The Open Web?

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>>> Free Speech Friday <<<

Across the U.S. parents and lawmakers are calling for tech companies to verify users' ages online. They frame these efforts as a smart, reasonable, and harmless way to keep kids safe. But that's not what age verification does!!!

Age verification efforts are a massive threat to privacy, freedom, and the very idea of an open web. No one knows this better than Eric Goldman. He is the associate dean for research at Santa Clara University School of Law and co-Director of the High Tech Law Institute.

He recently wrote a fantastic paper on age verification, soon to be published in the Stanford Technology Law Review. Today he's joining me for Free Speech Friday to talk about how age verification works online and how it's all ultimately a trojan horse for government control, surveillance, and censorship.

(This episode originally ran in June)

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2025-12-26
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Elon Musk's God Complex

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As Elon Musk's influence has grown, so too has a darker, more troubling side of his persona: his rampant egomania.

Faiz Siddiqui is a former colleague of mine at The Washington Post and he's the author of the new book Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk.

In this episode of Power User we break down exactly how Musk's narcissism has evolved throughout his career, and the key moments that reveal just how deeply Elon's self-obsession has shaped his life and the future he claims to build.

(This episode originally ran in June)

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2025-12-24
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Is There A Vibe Shift in Silicon Valley? [PATREON EXCLUSIVE]

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Over the past few years, Silicon Valley startups have been becoming more and more dystopian. Crypto, gambling, AI friends, and other products that sound like they've been ripped from Black Mirror. But lately, there's been a little bit of backlash.

Marc Andreessen tried to dunk on the Pope asking for safety in AI development and got dragged, and more founders are talking about building things with purpose. Is Silicon Valley having a vibe shift?

John Coogan is the host of TBPN, a daily live show that's like sports center for the tech world. He is the go-to guy for what's going on in Silicon Valley. He joined me to discuss current Silicon Valley founder mindsets, what current trends are coming out of the tech world that you probably haven't heard of yet, and what the rightward shift in Silicon Valley really reveals.

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2025-12-22
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Social Media Addiction Isn't Real? Here is What's Really Happening

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<<< FREE SPEECH FRIDAY>>>

People cannot stop claiming they are "addicted" to social media. Lawmakers continue to compare social media use to drug or alcohol addictions, while the media pushes an addiction framework for quitting social media.

But last week, a big new research paper dropped that debunks all of these narratives. The studies found that not only are a lot of our perceptions around social media and addiction completely wrong, just framing social media use as addiction *itself*is actually extremely harmful and makes it even HARDER to moderate your use of tech products.

Ian Anderson is one of the researchers at the California Institute of Technology who conducted the study. He's joined me today to break down what the research on social media and addiction actually says, how the media's framing of technology use as addiction is causing enormous harm, and what we can all do to actually fight back against big tech. He also gives tips on how to cut down on your own social media use.

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2025-12-19
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How Charlie Kirk Memes Are Radicalizing Gen Z w/ Ryan Broderick

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After Charlie Kirk was killed in front of a crowd of students in Utah, right wing influencers and pundits claimed that his killing would result in millions of Charlie Kirks. Almost immediately, mini me Charlie Kirk clones began cropping up, and far right Gen Z influencers began attempting to mimic Charlie's viral debate formats.

But pretty soon, things went off the rails. Hardly a month after Charlie died, his widow Erika Kirk was pictured giving an awkwardly close embrace to JD Vance in skin tight pleather pants. Donld Trump all but forgot Charlie existed, and very quickly, Charlie became a meme.

Ryan Broderick is an online culture journalist and he's been covering The Great Kirkification. He joined me to talk about the rise of Charlie Kirk slop and what it's morphing into. Because as fun as it is to laugh at absurd memes featuring Charlie Kirk's face plastered into some mpreg emoji, the whole thing has taken a sharp turn lately and is now funneling a lot of people right back into the far right.

We dig into this new hyper online esoteric form of Naziism, explain the lore behind the mythical city of Agartha, and explain what all of this says about the current state of the internet, politics, and culture.

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2025-12-17
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The Global Internet Is Dying: America Is Repeating China's Biggest Mistake

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IT'S FREE SPEECH FRIDAY!!!!!

For years, the United States villainized China for its restrictive internet landscape and mass censorship of online speech. But lately, things are changing. The U.S. and other western countries are careening towards authoritarianism and seeking to pass laws that mandate invasive surveillance and extreme censorship of online speech.

The pattern is very similar to what we saw in China and have seen in other authoritarian countries. Mass censorship and surveillance is ushered in with justifications about "child online safety," governments seeking to ban VPNs, removing anonymity from the web, constructing walled gardens, and so on.

James Griffiths is a Hong Kong based journalist who has covered China for over a decade. He is the author of the book The Great Firewall of China: How to build and control an alternative version of the internet. He joined me to talk about what China's internet is really like, the mass erosion of free speech on the western internet, and why the situation we're in right now is so dangerous.

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2025-12-12
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Everyone Is Wrong About The Olivia Nuzzi RFK Scandal w/ Kat Tenbarge

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Recently, journalist Olivia Nuzzi has been at the center of the biggest political media scandal in years. A star journalist for New York Magazine, it was revealed that Nuzzi had secretly had a torrid love affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after profiling him for the magazine.

She came out of hiding this month to announce a new job at Vanity Fair and release her book, American Canto, about the whole experience. But within days of re-emerging she was once again at the center of a full blown firestorm after her ex fiance, political journalist Ryan Lizza, began to release Nuzzi's intimate text messages on his Substack.

Now, she's been fired by Vanity Fair and all of the media has been excoriating her for her blatant violations of journalistic ethics. But what about the men in this story? Journalist Kat Tenbarge joins me to break down Olivia Nuzzi's journey from teenage pop star to top political reporter to her relationship with RFK Jr, the Ryan Lizza saga, what's actually going on, and why we both think MSM news reporters are missing the real story underneath the whole saga.

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2025-12-10
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Congress Is About to Break the Internet

>>> FREE SPEECH FRIDAY <<<

KOSA Won?t Just Silence LGBTQ Voices; It Will Also Be Used To Hide Abortion Info From The Internet

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On Tuesday, members of the House of Representatives gathered for a big hearing called Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online. The hearing was the latest attempt by lawmakers to force through a slate of horrifying surveillance laws that would censor the internet, strip the ability to freely access information, and cause great harm to children, especially marginalized youth. The mainstream media has been covering none of this.

Kate Ruane is a director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and she testified this Tuesday in front of congress about these evil laws. Today, she joins me to break down what's going on in congress, what these proposed laws would do, and why we're at such a crucial moment when it comes to preserving privacy and free expression on the internet.

Read up via the links below and call your representatives today and tell them to stop The SCREEN Act, kill The App Store Accountability Act, and kill the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).

Heritage Foundation Says That Of Course GOP Will Use KOSA To Censor LGBTQ Content

Why The Fuck Are Democrats Helping Build MAGA?s Censorship Machine With KOSA?

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2025-12-05
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The Radicalization Pipeline Nobody Sees Coming

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Lately, growing swaths of the online left have embraced a messaging strategy known broadly as Dark Woke. While traditional Democrats still try to reach across the aisle and find common ground with conservatives, more on the left are becoming comfortable embracing outright bigotry, slurs, hateful rhetoric, dunking on conservatives, and going full "dark woke."

Twitch streamer SeanDaBlack has been covering the rise of this culture, and he joined me to talk about the rise of "woke" culture in America, how social justice movements have been warped by the internet, what Dark Woke really means and whether it's a winning strategy to counter Trump's online dominance.

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2025-12-03
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None Of This is About Online Safety

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For decades, the Eelam Tamil ethnic group in Sri Lanka has been persecuted. They are dealing with ongoing occupation by the Sri Lankan government, which has also incited violence against Muslims in the country.

As tensions have escalated, the government has cracked down on speech, leaning hard into online censorship to censor anyone who questions the authority of the Sri Lankan government.

The government has banned social media, passed a restrictive "online safety act" and sought to enact strict controls over what can be said online, all under the guise of "online safety" and curbing "misinformation."

ArunAnnow has been covering the persecution of the Eelam Tamil people and the atrocities of the Sri Lankan government. He's an independent journalist and content creator. Today he's joining me to talk about the situation in Sri Lanka and how their "online safety" crusade is serving as a blueprint for authoritarian U.S. laws.

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https://grief-stricken-winds.com/

Grief-Stricken Winds Documentary Website:

News Sources/Orgs:

https://x.com/TamilGuardian

https://x.com/JDSLanka

https://x.com/lankafiles

https://x.com/PEARL_Action

People to Follow:

https://x.com/kumanan93

https://x.com/ambikasat

https://x.com/JeraThampi

Other Resources:

https://ptsrilanka.org

2025-11-28
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The MAGA Twitter Apocalypse w/ Charlie Warzel

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Over the weekend, Twitter descended into complete and utter chaos. Elon Musk rolled out a feature called ?About This Account? that allowed people to click on the profile of an X user and see exactly what country the account was created in, where its user is currently based, and how many times the username has been changed.

Dozens of major accounts masquerading as ?America First? or ?MAGA? were identified as originating in places like India, Pakistan, Russia, or Nigeria, engagement farming to earn money through X's creator revenue program, available to those who purchase a blue check.

Charlie Warzel is a longtime technology writer at The Atlantic who has been covering this rollout. Today he's joining me to discuss whether the "about this account" feature is truly 9/11 for pro MAGA accounts, how our internet is being warped by inauthentic activity, whether this truly signifies the end of the social web, and what comes next.

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2025-11-26
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[PATREON PREVIEW] How Zohran Won The Internet w/ the Creators 4 Zohran Founders

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Since Kamala Harris lost the election, there's been an endless debate among the Democrats on how to best reach young people online. Many centrists have claimed liberals need a "Joe Rogan of the left" and by left they usually mean center right. Others have leaned into memes and shitposting like Gavin Newsom.

Zohran Mamdani didn't do any of that and he won young voters, and especially young men, in a landslide. His digital strategy leaned into creator-style content and leveraged a ton of influencers, but in a way that felt natural, organic and centered his policies, which were the real engine behind his success.

Part of his success was due to Creators For Zohran, an influencer-led coalition aimed at boosting Zohran's messaging online, and Emilia Rowland, Zohran's new media and creator partnerships advisor, who led creator partnerships for Mamdani's campaign.

Emilia, along with Aiden Kohn Murphy and Alexis Williams, co-founders of Creators for Zohran, joined me to pull back the curtain on the work they did with Zohran, talk about what made his creator strategy so effective, and discuss how to build relevance and mobilize people in an increasingly fractured online world.

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2025-11-24
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The Most Depraved Commentary I've Ever Heard

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Right now, there's a clip going viral from former Obama White House aide and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz that is so appalling and depraved it's hard to believe it's real.

But many people are missing the most dangerous part of her commentary. Her comments reveal exactly what the ruling class in America wants to do to online speech, and why we need to fight back so hard to protect our online freedoms.

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2025-11-21
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The Epstein Saga Is Sending the Internet Into Chaos w/ Brace Belden

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Jeffrey Epstein is back in the news after a massive new cache of emails and text messages was released last week. Now, Congress is set to send to Trump legislation to compel the Justice Department to release even more records. The whole saga has become a messy political fight that?s causing chaos in the MAGA movement and warping the right wing internet.

No one knows the Epstein saga more than my friend Brace Belden, co-host of the Trueanon podcast and one of the internet's foremost experts on Epstein and MAGA influencers.

He joins me to break down what this latest Epstein cache reveals, the real tea on Donald Trump and Bill Clinton's relationship, and how off this Epstein stuff might impact Trump and the influencers in his movement going forward.

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2025-11-19
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The Government Is Spying on College Football Games

FREE SPEECH FRIDAY

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The Department of Homeland Security has deployed a powerful surveillance tool at college football games, and that's not the only place where they're using it. If you were one of the thousands of people who attended the Old Miss vs Georgia game a few weeks ago, a DHS system could have been monitoring you.

At that game and others schools have been using a little-known Department of Homeland Security platform called the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN). FOIAball, a newsletter reporting on college football and public records, got a hold of documents related to this surveillance effort.

All of this information and monitoring is now being fed into facial recognition systems, as those systems of surveillance expand. And, HSIN isn't just being used at concerts and game days, it's not being deployed against protesters, activists, and peaceful crowds.

Story on FOIAball: https://www.foiaball.com/p/dhs-college-football-hsin-surveillance-ole-miss-ohio-state

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2025-11-14
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How Sydney Sweeney Lost The Culture War

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Sydney Sweeney just had one of the worst box office weekends of all time. Her new movie Christy, about a female boxer, made barely over $1 million, making it one of the worst-performing films of all time,

This disastrous flop comes on the heels of yet another culture war controversy that she was at the center of, stemming from a viral GQ interview, and now she's locked in a bitter feud with Zendaya, her co-star on Euphoria, the HBO show that arguably skyrocketed her to stardom.

So all of this begs the question: can Sydney Sweeny survive becoming an avatar for the culture war? Why does every viral moment now become a referendum on politics? Kat Tenbarge joins me to discuss!

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2025-11-12
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He Was Tortured in an Israeli Prison for Speaking Out

FREE SPEECH FRIDAY

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Tommy Marcus, better known online as Quentin Quarantino online, first became famous during the early days of the pandemic. He posted timely memes and news roundups, but what started as a funny Instagram account quickly turned into a massive fundraising machine. Tommy got more involved in activism and political causes and began using his platform to raise money for humanitarian issues and injustice around the world.

A few months ago, he joined an aid boat headed to Gaza, hoping to deliver supplies to people caught in the ongoing crisis. His ship was intercepted just miles off the coast and the IDF abducted him and fellow activists before holding them in a notorious Israeli super prison. Tommy, one of the few Jewish activists on the boat, was tortured and abused by the IDF.

He finally made it out and is speaking about the experience for the first time. He opens up about how the experience affected him and changed his beliefs about power, justice, and the United States sanction of the slaughter in Palestine.

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2025-11-07
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Why Every Hit Pop Song Sounds the Same Now

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Did you know that hit songs in the late 1950s were regularly about gruesome death? Or that a US vice president wrote a number one hit? Chris Dalla Riva is one of my favorite music journalists out there. He writes the substack Can't Get Much Higher where he publishes pieces on the intersection of music and data.

A couple years ago he embarked on a quest to listen to every single number 2 hit from the last six decades, and wrote about what he learned in his new book Uncharted Territory. The book is part celebration, part takedown of popular music, and also provides new ways to think about your favorite songs, genres, and artists. This book is genuinely so good and changed the way I think about so many songs and just how different periods in history were reflected in the music from their time.

Chris joined me this week to discuss the past half a century of number 1 hits and what they say about our culture, political system and world at large.

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2025-11-05
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The New Legal Fight to Destroy Super PACs Forever

FREE SPEECH FRIDAY

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For the first time in fifteen years, there?s a real shot at ending billionaire control of American politics.

A groundbreaking legal effort spearheaded by Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, backed by an unlikely coalition of billionaires like Mark Cuban and Reid Hoffman, is taking direct aim at the legal foundation that created Super PACs.

I'm going to be covering this legal fight closely. Larry Lessig joined me on this week's Free Speech Friday to break down his legal fight, where things stand, and what needs to happen next in order to win this fight.

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2025-10-31
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Has Taylor Swift Finally Peaked? Why Billionaires Can't Make Good Art

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Over the past two decades, Taylor Swift has dominated the pop charts and risen to the pinnacle of mainstream fame. She has amassed a $2 billion fortune, won 14 Grammy Awards, sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, headlined the highest-grossing concert tour in history, and built a vast real-estate and music catalog empire.

But lately, the backlash to Swift is growing louder. She has been criticized for her silence on major political issues, for palling around with Trump supporters, her carbon footprint, and many are calling her latest album a flop.

All of this raises the question, has Taylor Swift peaked, not just in popularity, but in cultural authority? Or is this just another cynical reinvention that she'll use to amass even more money and power? Journalist and Swiftie Kat Tenbarge joined me to discuss it all.

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2025-10-29
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A Woman Streamer Was Assaulted, Is Twitch To Blame?

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FREE SPEECH FRIDAY

Last weekend, popular cosplay Twitch streamer Emiru was assaulted at a meet-and-greet during Twitchcon. A man cut across several meet and greet lines and attempted to grab her for a kiss. The incident was obviously a catastrophic failure when it comes to keeping women creators safe

But, after the Emiru incident, tons of big content creators began piling on on Twitter, pushing out of context clips attempting to show lax security at the event and calling for Dan Clancy's resignation. They began weaponizing the attack on a woman creator to push their own reactionary agendas.

Kat Tenbarge has been covering gender-based violence for nearly a decade and she joined me this week to break down what exactly went down at Twitchcon, why more security doesn't exactly lead to more safety for women, and what the true issue at the heart of all of this is. These attacks on women creators silence women and prevent them from speaking and expressing themselves freely.

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2025-10-24
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Can Twitch Survive? CEO Dan Clancy at Twitchcon

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As live-streaming becomes an increasingly dominant form of entertainment, Twitch is at a crossroads. Dan Clancy is the CEO of Twitch, and I sat down with him this weekend at Twitchcon to discuss how Twitch is evolving, its broader role in the creator economy over the next 10 years, competition from Hollywood, AI, and how he thinks about balancing streamers' creative freedom with safety concerns. Here's our interview.

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2025-10-22
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Fighting For LGBTQ Rights is Terrorism Now: NSPM-7 Explained w/ Ken Klippenstein

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Welcome back to Free Speech Friday!

Recently, Trump signed a little-noticed national security directive identifying a slew of views like ?anti-Christian? and ?anti-American? beliefs as indicators of "radical left violence" and terrorism. The directive is called NSPM-7.

NSPM-7carries serious implications for freedom of speech and opens the door to dangerous levels of censorship. In NSPM-7, Trump directs the Justice Department, the FBI, and other national security agencies to fight his version of political violence, retooling a network of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to focus on ?leftist? political violence in America.

Ken Klippenstein has been covering all this. He joined me today to break down NSPM-7 and what it means for speech in America. Under the new directive, anyone expressing views that could be construed as any of the following, could be classified by the government as a terrorist:

anti-Americanism,

anti-capitalism,

anti-Christianity,

support for the overthrow of the United States Government,

extremism on migration,

extremism on race,

extremism on gender

hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,

hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and

hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.

Ken's story: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-nspm-7-labels-common-beliefs

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2025-10-17
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Hasan Piker and the Future No One Is Ready For

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Hasan Piker has never abused his dog, but you'd never know that from the video clips spreading all over the internet. The backlash that Piker is facing shows the consequences of a world where everyone is constantly being recorded and our internet is built to reward outrage and controversy.

In this episode, I dive into the recent viral conspiracy and false claims about Piker and Kaya, unpacking how a single, out-of-context clip spiraled into a full-blown harassment campaign, fueled by bad actors and politically motivated smear tactics.

I unpack how the Hasan Piker dog collar incident is a warning sign of a dystopian future where 24/7 video surveillance merges with online outrage farming. As AI and algorithmic amplification make it easier to manipulate and weaponize video, the problems influencers face today will soon affect us all.

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2025-10-15
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[PATREON PREVIEW] How Raunchy AI Country Songs Took Over The Internet

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We're facing a tsunami of AI-generated music that is rapidly transforming the digital soundscape and expanding far beyond Spotify. It's already beginning to dominate platforms like YouTube, SoundCloud, and other major streaming services. Generative tools are able to produce entire songs complete with realistic vocals, melodies, and high production quality. AI artists are flooding recommendation algorithms and trending charts.

Kieran Press Reynolds is a writer at Pitchfork, and he's been covering all of this. He joined me to talk about the rise of AI music and what deepfake vocals, manufactured sounds and this flood of AI generated content means for the future of the music industry and the role music plays in our culture.

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2025-10-13
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You Are Probably Being Tracked By ICE Right Now

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ICE is preparing to deploy a sweeping new surveillance system that would allow it to monitor the real-time movements and online activity of millions of people. Internal documents. The two key tools, Tangles and WebLoc, were originally designed by the Israeli intelligence firm Cobwebs. Together, they enable ICE analysts to fuse billions of mobile location points with data scraped from platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Reddit to build detailed digital dossiers on anyone.

This expansion of ICE?s data surveillance efforts comes amid broader federal initiatives to monitor social media and suppress dissent. Reports indicate ICE will contract private analysts to continuously scan major platforms for ?anti-American? or ?anti-Christian? speech under the Trump administration?s new NSPM-7 directive. This is yet another dangerous escalation of mass surveillance and political targeting, undermining First and Fourth Amendment protections.

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2025-10-10
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A Crypto Convict's Spectacular Comeback Tour: How Ross Ulbricht Became A Powerful MAGA Influencer

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Nearly a decade ago, Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road dark web marketplace was sentenced to a double life sentence in prison. Now, he's out and has become a powerful influencer and political figure in the MAGA movement.

Ryan Mac at the New York Times has been covering Ulbricht for over a decade. He joined me to dive deep into Ulbrict's' past, how the Silk Road transformed the web, and how this crazy alliance between bitcoin billionaires, libertarians, and MAGA die-hards has skyrocketed Ulbricht to fame and set him up for a major role in politics.

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READ RYAN'S FANTASTIC NYT STORY: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/technology/ross-ulbricht-silk-road-comeback.html

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2025-10-08
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The Shocking Plan to Kill Online Privacy: A VPN Ban Will Break the Web

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A VPN hides your IP address, making it harder for hackers, corporations and the government to track your activity. Most people know VPNs as a way to get around geogating (like if content is banned in one country you can use a VPN to get around the ban).

But as authoritarian governments in places like America and the UK seek to crack down on online speech, VPNs are under attack. It's getting harder and harder to use them effectively, and recently there's even been talk of an outright ban.

Lia Holland is an activist at Fight for the Future, a civil liberties group fighting to protect VPN access. She joined me to dig into the political campaign against VPNs and talk about how to fight back.

PS: A lot of VPNs are owned by Israel!! Or they trap you into subscription plans. Be careful before downloading one, here's a guide from the EFF on VPNs: https://ssd.eff.org/module/choosing-vpn-thats-right-you

Fight For the Future's Defend VPNs campaign: https://www.defendvpns.com

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2025-10-03
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The AI Slop-pocalypse: How The Slop Economy Took Over

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AI slop is slowly taking over every platform. "But the flood of financially incentivized sloe has also given way to a strange new internet, where social media feeds overflow with unsettlingly lifelike imagery and even real videos can appear suspect," WaPo reports. "Some viral clips now barely rely on humans at all, with AI tools generating not just the imagery but also the ideas."

There's YouTube Slop, Instagram Reel Slop, Slop all over TikTokk LinkedIn, and X. But who's behind this deluge of deranged and often extremely surreal content?

Drew Harwell is a journalist at the Washington Post and he's been digging into the slop economy. He joins me to talk about the mad rush of creators using AI video tools to flood the internet, how they're making money, and what the future of content looks like as slop eats the world.

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2025-10-01
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How To Become Invisible Online (Delete Your Digital Footprint and Protect Your Privacy Forever)

Visit https://joindeleteme.com/Taylor20 and use code Taylor20 for 20% off and protect yourself today! SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenzAds are following us everywhere, data brokers and hackers are stealing our info, social media companies and AI are hoovering up our data. It can all feel SO overwhelming. In this final installment of my data broker series, I sat down with two of the top security experts on YouTube, John Hammond and Josh from All Things Secured, to break down how vulnerable you might be and what practical things you can do to protect your information online.

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2025-09-29
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The Truth About Nepal?s Gen Z Uprising

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Welcome back to Free Speech Friday:

Nearly a month ago peaceful student demonstrators protesting corruption in Nepal were shot and killed, sparking nationwide outrage. Government buildings were set in fire, leaders were forced out, and the prime minister resigned, leaving the country?s future uncertain.

But that's not how the mainstream media reported it. They misrepresented Nepal's Gen Z youth movement, portraying young protesters as spoiled children upset about losing social media access, rather than as citizens fighting corruption and authoritarian suppression of free speech. It was a lot of the same framing that the media has used over other authoritarian crackdowns on speech like the TikTok ban here in the U.S.

I brought on Bala Krishna Sha, one of the top journalists in Nepal, who writes for The Himalayan Times, the country's number 1 English language newspaper. He joins me to break down exactly what happened in Nepal, what the real story is that you won't see in traditional western media, and why the free speech fight happening in Nepal has global implications.

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2025-09-26
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The Secret Role Of Influencers In Global Propaganda

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From Israel to Saudi Arabia to Russia to the UAE and more, influencers are increasingly being used for political propaganda and foreign influence campaigns.

Makenna Kelly is a senior reporter at WIRED and she joined me to talk about how foreign governments are leveraging content creators to quietly push political propaganda and shape foreign policy, how MAGA influencers are embracing these campaigns, and the big money behind it all.

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2025-09-24
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Trump's Censorship of Jimmy Kimmel Is Just The Beginning

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WELCOME BACK TO FREE SPEECH FRIDAY!

Earlier this week, ABC and Nexstar yanked Jimmy Kimmel's show off the air after he made a joke about Charlie Kirk's death that the Trump admin didn't like. FCC commissioner Brendan Carr called the comments ?offensive and insensitive,? and warned ABC and Disney that there could be regulatory consequences if the network didn?t respond.

All of this is a gross assault on free speech, and to discuss it (and more!) I brought on Ari Cohn, Lead Counsel for Tech Policy at the Foundation For Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). He's one of the leading first amendment lawyers in the country.

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2025-09-19
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The Truth Behind The Rise of 'Robot Racism'

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People on TikTok, YouTube and X are recreating 1950s style racism towards robots. Using slurs like ?clanker,? ?wireback,? and ?cogsucker,? content creators are framing robots as a marginalized group, parodying old racist stereotypes in a retro aesthetic. The videos have gone viral and amassed millions of views.

But while you might think this is just an excuse for creators to be racist, the trend reflects something a lot deeper. I dive deep into the phenomenon of "robot racism" or "robophobia" and unpack where these terms like clanker are coming from, what they say about our culture and society, automation, exploitation, and how technology is entangled with race and power.

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2025-09-17
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A New Kind of AI Deepfake is Taking Over TikTok [PATREON PREVIEW]

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We're all familiar with the concept of deepfakes, but now, AI is being harnessed in a new way to deceive. AI generated TikTokers are reciting the actual words of real people, right down to the stumbles, "ums" and "uhs."

This new form of AI-driven identity theft is slipping past moderation filters, misleading millions, and leaving creators feeling powerless. Bobby Allyn is a reporter who's been covering this phenomenon and the rise of TikTok deepfakes, he joined me for this bonus episode of Power User to break it all down and explain why this is happening.

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2025-09-15
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We Need to Talk About 'Political Violence?

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When a powerful right-wing figure like Charlie Kirk is attacked or killed, political leaders and media rush to mourn them as a martyr and condemn "political violence."

But what does political violence actually mean? While violence against elites is treated as a national tragedy, violence against poor, Black, immigrant, queer, and disabled people is sanctioned. The truth is that political violence has always been part of life in America, but somehow it only becomes a ?national emergency? when that violence threatens power.

In this video, I talk about the history of "political violence" in the U.S., what the term actually means in practice, how it's weaponized, and what we need to do if we actually want to put a stop to it.

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