It’s a Friday news roundup! If you’re new here and looking for a deeper dive into a single topic, check out the episode on Alex Jones from Dec 12, or the (forthcoming) episode on Tuesday Dec 19 about the wild story of an author who created fake Goodreads accounts to review-bomb a bunch of other authors. It’s part scam, part Greek tragedy, and you’ll definitely want to hear it. 

Want to skip the banter and get right to the news? Head to around the 6 minute mark

GLAAD’s report on transphobia online: All Social Media Platform Policies Should Recognize Targeted Misgendering and Deadnaming as Hate Speech: https://glaad.org/social-media-platform-policies-targeted-misgendering-deadnaming-hate-speech/

Part one of Bridget discussing Georgia election workers Shaye and Ruby Freeman on Internet Hate Machine: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/part-one-why-trump-targeted-two-black-election-workers/id1648497305?i=1000590820764 

Part two of Bridget discussing Shaye and Ruby Freeman: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/part-two-why-trump-targeted-two-black-election-workers/id1648497305?i=1000592261007 

Congress Pulls Bill That Would Massively Expand Surveillance After 'Dramatic Showdown': https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3wkdg/fisa-surveillance-bill-congress-pulled

Speaker Johnson adds short term FISA extension to National Defense Bill: https://prospect.org/civil-rights/2023-12-12-mike-johnson-ndaa-surveillance-reform/ 

Twitter Is Just Running Ads for Stealing Semen Now: https://www.404media.co/twitter-x-ads-stealing-semen-make-a-mom/

Hugging Face’s Rules of [Press] Engagement for writing about women in tech: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rules-press-engagement-emily-witko--ohlzf/ 

Discord bands misgendering: https://www.them.us/story/discord-explicitly-bans-misgendering-and-deadnaming-on-its-platform 

Chat GPT might be on winter break (and so are we). As ChatGPT gets “lazy,” people test “winter break hypothesis” as the cause: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/is-chatgpt-becoming-lazier-because-its-december-people-run-tests-to-find-out/