Elena Rossini calls social media a "honey pot" for data mining and targeted advertising. In her upcoming documentary, THE REALISTS, the followup to her first feature length doc, THE ILLUSIONISTS, Elena shines a light on the dark side of social media. We talk about how our devises are listening, why we should act like a spy, getting a signal-blocking pouch, bluetooth and grocery shopping, how Zuckerberg covers his cam and mic on his phone, have we given up on privacy, how social media has changed over the years, that Ashton Kutcher ruined Twitter, social media isn't terrible, but it's being used against us in a terrible way...and we aren't pissed off about that enough, the creation of Facebook "reactions" and them giving "angry" the highest score, being 'punished' by the algorithm for not being a regular user, old milk, the importance of 'new', using Tweetdeck and Lists for Twitter, taking control over how we use social media because it has used us for so long, deleting Facebook products (FB, Insta and Whatsapp), going off social media and getting into meditation, staying off devices in front of babies/children, addiction to social media/attention/validation, going viral and TikTok fame, living life through a screen, no one is explaining the algorithm or where this data is going, Face ID, AI, deep fakes, revenge porn, voter apathy, BOOK RECS: AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH and TECHNOPOLY by Neil Postman, the intentional harm of the algorithm, how quickly Facebook can radicalize, cite your source, the amount of time young people are on social media, hacking your home internet to block ads, websites and tracking in your home and on specific devices (NextDNS.io), NO is a complete sentence, being impacted my the internet/social media and how women get the brunt of that, child predators, and that social media is an option and we can opt out.

You can find Elena on Twitter @_elena and on her websites elenarossini.com and therealists.org

Episode recorded on 11/04/21

Episode released on 03/09/22

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Music: Shower Beer by GG Riggs