There Are No Girls on the Internet is a weekly podcast hosted by Bridget Todd covering tech, power, and the people who get left out of both. Every week we find the stories about technology and the internet that deserve more attention — especially when they're about gender, race, and who actually gets harmed when things go wrong online.

This is what we do every week. If you like what you see here, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts — and follow Bridget on Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | Bluesky

Here's everything we covered this week with links to the original reporting:

🔗 This week's big culture story was about money, labor, and who gets to claim the spotlight. Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez spent at least $10 million to sponsor the Met Gala — and on the same night, Amazon workers staged their own fashion show outside. Labor unions dubbed it the "Ball Without Billionaires," with SEIU President April Verrett declaring: "Labor is art." Democracy Now coverage here.

🔗 Also at the Met Gala: Sarah Paulson wore a dollar bill mask and called her look "The One Percent." Some called it out of touch.

🔗 This week's AI scam story involves a fake Black woman and a book app. A book app called My Handbook used AI-generated images of a Black woman to falsely claim legitimacy — including a fake story about working at Random House. When people pushed back, they posted another AI video doubling down. More on how it unraveled here. And the original post that started it all.

🔗 AI bias in education is getting worse — and we're moving faster than the research. A Stanford study found AI writing feedback tools treat students differently based on race, gender, and disability status. Black students got more praise. White students got more substantive feedback. And we're pushing this into classrooms faster than we can verify it works. Nature just retracted a major paper claiming ChatGPT improved student learning — turns out it was built on junk science.

🔗 Online harassment against women is getting worse — and AI is making it easier. When Cambridge academic Dr. Ally Louks went viral for her PhD in 2024, right-wing accounts on X dogpiled her with rape threats and death threats serious enough that she went to the police — and Vox documented exactly how X became the platform where this kind of coordinated harassment against women thrives. Since Musk took over, it's only gotten worse. Now someone is paying large accounts to use her face and story to advertise a fetish marketplace — and the platforms won't do anything about it.

🔗 A new UN Women report connects the dots on why this keeps happening. The report found that online violence against women in public life is coordinated, systemic, worsened by the rise of AI, and it's working. The platforms' algorithms make misogynistic hostility frictionless and rewarding — and 45% of female journalists now self-censor because of it.

🔗 This week's most alarming AI story involves a stalking victim, a sycophantic chatbot, and a company that ignored three warnings. A woman is suing OpenAI after ChatGPT allegedly validated a man's delusions, helped him stalk her, and OpenAI restored his account even after she filed a formal abuse report. OpenAI's own safety systems flagged his account. A human reviewer gave it back.

🔗 And finally, a story that's equal parts funny and damning. Kids are bypassing age verification checks online with fake drawn-on mustaches — and it's working. Half of kids surveyed said age checks were easy to get around. Full Internet Matters report here.

Bridget's forthcoming audiobook with Simon & Schuster, Love At First Prompt, explores AI, sex, and intimate relationships. Pre-order it at LoveAtFirstPrompt.ai

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You saw the video. A DoorDash driver named Livie goes viral on TikTok after reporting that a customer answered the door naked and flashed her. The internet rallied behind her. And then — the story got complicated.

Bridget breaks down what actually happened, why the story became a breeding ground for misinformation and AI-generated fake videos, and what it tells us about where we're at when it comes to women speaking up online.

Plus the update nobody was expecting: Livie is now facing charges for posting the man naked without his consent.

Is this justice? A technicality? Or proof that the system was never built to protect women like her in the first place?

See Livie's video(s) for yourself: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/19jTtPWjZH/?mibextid=wwXIfr 

MuURLS, a creator on TikTok was cloned by AI: https://www.tiktok.com/@muurlz/video/7563725293693783309?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc

NotKristen’s TikTok on AI clones: https://www.tiktok.com/@notkhristen/video/7563433687476358430?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc

Liberal feminist “triggered”: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maxime-Dafaure/publication/343261281/figure/fig4/AS:918257242501121@1595940995904/Triggered-Feminist-Ficki-Fiona-MFW-My-Face-When-Someone-Tells-Me-There-Are-Only-Two.png

The real “triggered feminist” video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byOlBCpNKeM

If you’re listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment there to let us know what you thought about these stories, or email us at [email protected] 

Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet 

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There Are No Girls on the Internet is an independent media company covering tech, power, and who gets left out.

We produce a weekly podcast, viral social content, and in-depth reporting on the tech stories that matter — especially the ones that don't get enough attention.

Host Bridget Todd and her producer Mike have been covering these issues for over decade. Bridget's forthcoming audiobook with Simon & Schuster, Love At First Prompt, explores AI, sex, and intimate relationships. Pre-order it at LoveAtFirstPrompt.ai.

If you found us through our Instagram carousel, welcome!

Here's everything we covered this week with links to the original reporting:

🔗 A man sued his female JPMorgan boss for sexual coercion. It went viral, AI harassment videos followed, and the lawsuit has since been pulled from court records. AI-generated videos recreating the allegations spread on X before anyone verified a single fact. More on the AI component here.

🔗 Taylor Swift is trademarking her own voice because AI scams are out of control Scammers are using AI-generated versions of celebrities to steal people's personal information — and the platforms aren't stopping it.

🔗 Cops are using Flock surveillance cameras to stalk their exes A new Institute for Justice report found at least 14 cases of police abusing license plate readers to track romantic interests.

🔗 A university destroyed an Asian American scientist's career in a racist federal witch hunt that found nothing Jane Wu's family is speaking out one year after her death and has filed a lawsuit against Northwestern. NBC News coverage here.

🔗 Men built a business turning women's Instagram photos into AI porn — and taught other men how to do it Three Arizona men sold a course teaching subscribers how to scrape and sexualize women's photos. Three women are now suing.

🔗 A new UN report found AI is making online violence against women dramatically worse Nearly a quarter of female journalists surveyed have been diagnosed with anxiety or depression because of it.

🔗 The Oscars just banned AI actors and AI-written scripts from winning awards The Academy's strongest stance yet on AI in film.

🔗 Andrew Tate sued Meta for banning him and lost A federal judge threw out his $50 million lawsuit. The First Amendment doesn't apply to private companies.

🔗 New reporting reveals how close Peter Thiel and Jeffrey Epstein really were Private emails show Epstein was actively coaching Thiel on how to get embedded in Trump world.

🔗 A murder suspect allegedly used ChatGPT to research how to dispose of a body. OpenAI had no comment. Prosecutors allege he asked ChatGPT about disposing of a body three days before two doctoral students went missing.

New to the show? Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow Bridget on Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | Bluesky

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This is the second part of a 2-part series, so if you haven’t listened to part 1 (published on April 21, 2026), please listen to that first. In part 1, we explain who Clavicular is, how the media elevated him to national prominence, and why his looksmaxxing ideology is just a new veneer on old tropes of self-harm and white supremacy. 

What happens when a teenage boy spends his formative years on incel forums, starts injecting steroids at 14, hits himself in the face with a hammer in the name of self-improvement, injects his underage girlfriend with unlicensed substances on a live stream — and the response from mainstream media is a New York Times profile and a Fashion Week runway? This week we're digging into looksmaxxing: where it actually came from, what the TikTok version obscured, and why a movement rooted in white supremacist beauty standards got repackaged as self-help. Then we talk about Braden Peters, the influencer known as Clavicular, and make the case that the media didn't just cover his rise — it manufactured it.

Let us know what you think by emailing [email protected] or leaving a comment on Spotify. 

Pre-order Bridget's forthcoming audiobook about AI and intimate relationships at LoveAtFirstPrompt.com ! 

Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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In this week's News Roundup, Bridget and Producer Mike cover the tech news stories you might have missed.

MrBeast’s Beast Industries Sued by Former Employee Alleging Sexual Harassment and Retaliation; Company Says Suit Is Based on ‘Categorically False Statements’: https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/mrbeast-sued-former-employee-sexual-harassment-retaliation-1236728069/ 

IG video from the plaintiff: https://www.instagram.com/p/DXcvv2xAfcw/  

'I think we can all agree we owe Hailey Bieber an apology.' https://www.mamamia.com.au/hailey-bieber-apology/ 

The Shocking Secrets of Madison Square Garden’s Surveillance Machine

https://www.wired.com/story/madison-square-garden-jim-dolan-surveillance-machine/ 

This Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift ‘Super Dumb’ Men: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-generated-maga-girls/

I Started the Media Men List My name is Moira Donegan: https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/moira-donegan-i-started-the-media-men-list.html

'The Comeback' Season 3 review: Lisa Kudrow warns us of the AI apocalypse: https://mashable.com/article/the-comeback-season-3-review-ai

Here’s a few other stories we’re watching:

OpenAI CEO Apologizes for Not Warning Authorities About Mass Shooting Suspect: https://www.pcmag.com/news/openai-ceo-deeply-sorry-for-not-warning-authorities-about-mass-shooting

Elon Musk does not appear at hearing in French prosecutors’ X probe: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/musk-summoned-by-french-prosecutor-x-probe-unclear-if-he-will-comply-2026-04-20/Amazon employees say they were told to work as employee lay dead: https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/amazon-employees-forced-work-corpse/

App Stores Push Users Toward Nudify Apps, New Research Shows: https://www.404media.co/app-stores-apple-google-nudify-undress-deepfakes/

Forbes Prediction Market Gamifies Story About Mass Shooting of 8 Children: https://www.404media.co/forbes-prediction-market-gamefies-story-about-mass-shooting-of-8-children/

Let us know what you think by emailing [email protected] or leaving a comment on Spotify. 

Pre-order Bridget's forthcoming audiobook about AI and intimate relationships at LoveAtFirstPrompt.com ! 

Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when a teenage boy spends his formative years on incel forums, starts injecting steroids at 14, hits himself in the face with a hammer in the name of self-improvement, injects his underage girlfriend with unlicensed substances on a live stream — and the response from mainstream media is a New York Times profile and a Fashion Week runway? This week we're digging into looksmaxxing: where it actually came from, what the TikTok version obscured, and why a movement rooted in white supremacist beauty standards got repackaged as self-help. Then we talk about Braden Peters, the influencer known as Clavicular, and make the case that the media didn't just cover his rise — it manufactured it.

Let us know what you think by emailing [email protected] or leaving a comment on Spotify. 

Pre-order Bridget's forthcoming audiobook about AI and intimate relationships at LoveAtFirstPrompt.com ! 

Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's News Roundup, Bridget and Producer Mike cover the tech news stories you might have missed. TRIGGER WARNING - one story discusses disturbing sexual assaults.

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Reese Witherspoon thinks women should embrace AI more. The comments were not kind. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXKphAtkbgW/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

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Gisèle Pelicot's story of being drugged and raped by her husband and other men for a decade captured headlines. A new CNN investigation reveals a large ecosystem of men helping each other commit similar crimes around the world with something like an "online rape academy." https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2026/03/world/expose-rape-assault-online-vis-intl/index.html

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Lauren Sanchez Besos is a cultural force, revolutionizing the way Americans live, and inspiring everyone with her embrace of joy and her perfect marriage to Jeff Bezos. Right? RIGHT?! (wrong) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/11/business/lauren-sanchez-bezos-jeff-bezos.html?unlocked_article_code=1.blA.i7qg.dQZ7G1_RUIcF&smid=url-share [gift link]

Anti-Occupy Wall Street Champagne Toast Later Today? https://gothamist.com/news/anti-occupy-wall-street-champagne-toast-later-today

Rich people watching Occupy protestor: https://www.threads.com/@yungbooks/post/DEEOKfUOXkA

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Workers at surveillance company Flock inexplicably accessed cameras in a gymnasium and pool, prompting the city of Dunwoody, Georgia, to delay their contract renewal after a citizen's open records request revealed anomolies in the logs. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/06/flock-cameras-privacy-concerns

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Why Are Flock Employees Watching Our Children? https://jasonhunyar.substack.com/p/why-are-flock-employees-watching-720

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Women in northern Nigeria have been writing steamy romance books for decades. They are fighting morality censorship by innovating new models of distribution and monetization on WhatsApp. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/article/love-is-universal-but-nigerias-romance-lit-market-is-one-of-a-kind and https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/world/africa/nigeria-erotica-writers-censors.html

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Here are more stories we were watching this week:

NAACP lawsuit accuses Elon Musk’s xAI of polluting Black neighborhoods near Memphis: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/14/naacp-lawsuit-elon-musk-xai-memphis

A Redditor Criticized ICE. Trump Is Trying to Unmask Them by Dragging the Company to a Secret Grand Jury: https://theintercept.com/2026/04/10/reddit-ice-protest-grand-jury/

What is dynamic pricing at grocery stores? Maryland now bans it: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2026/04/15/maryland-bans-dynamic-pricing-practice-popular-among-retailers/89621751007/

Meta’s new rules let it ban users or suppress comments that include the word “antifa” alongside “content-level threat signals.” https://theintercept.com/2026/04/14/facebook-instagram-antifa-censor/

Let us know what you think by emailing [email protected] or leaving a comment on Spotify.

Pre-order Bridget's forthcoming audiobook about AI and intimate relationships at LoveAtFirstPrompt.com !

Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fake AI-generated Black women are flooding your social media feeds, performing self-hatred, pushing porn sites and drop shipping scams, and raking in cash for anonymous creators who'll never be held accountable.

Jeremy Carrasco, the internet's go-to AI debunker, breaks down who's behind it, why platforms keep looking the other way, and why one Black student researcher's testimony made him want to do something about it.

AI Blackface: Profiting on racist depictions at scale: https://www.riddance.ai/p/ai-blackface-profiting-on-racist

AI videos of sexualised black women removed from TikTok after BBC investigation: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c070e283k8vo

Bridget explains the evolution of digital Blackface from its antebellum roots in this Youtube video: https://youtu.be/yh-2il78AEA

Digital rapper FN Meka and the new era of digital Blackface: https://omny.fm/shows/there-are-no-girls-on-the-internet/digital-rapper-fn-meka-and-the-new-era-of-digital

Let us know what you think by emailing [email protected] or leaving a comment on Spotify.

Pre-order Bridget's forthcoming audiobook about AI and intimate relationships at LoveAtFirstPrompt.com !

Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's News Roundup, Bridget and Producer Mike cover the tech news stories you might have missed.

Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In is fighting the gender gap in AI adoption, but raising questions about its own leadership. https://www.fastcompany.com/91521751/sheryl-sandbergs-lean-in-is-fighting-the-gender-gap-in-ai-adoption

Gen Z Goes to the Movies! The new Zendaya film 'The Drama' is a smash hit. Younger Audiences Are Driving Box Office Sales, Study Shows

https://variety.com/2026/film/box-office/gen-z-driving-box-office-1236703551/

The FBI was able to recover deleted Signal messages from a user's phone because they were stored in his notification history. Check your Signal settings now to stay safe "Settings > Notification > Store" https://www.404media.co/fbi-extracts-suspects-deleted-signal-messages-saved-in-iphone-notification-database-2/

She Was in Labor at a Florida Hospital. Then She Was in Zoom Court for Refusing a C-Section. https://www.propublica.org/article/florida-court-hearing-c-section

BBC breached editorial standards over BAFTAs racial slur but no big deal, BBC investigation finds.  https://news.sky.com/story/bbc-breached-editorial-standards-over-baftas-racial-slur-investigation-finds-13529270

Ohio creep becomes first to be convicted under new Take-It-Down law for sexually explicit images:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/08/ohio-man-convicted-ai-sexually-explicit-images

Instagram reportedly deletes Bellesa sex toy shop account for using the word 'clitoris': https://mashable.com/article/instagram-deletes-bellesa-shop-account-with-700000-followers

‘This Is Not Me’: Inside the AI Scams Driving Musicians Crazy: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/ai-scams-musicians-streaming-services-spotify-1235535753/

Let us know what you think about these stories by emailing [email protected] or leaving a comment on Spotify.

Pre-order Bridget's forthcoming audiobook about AI and intimate relationships at LoveAtFirstPrompt.com !

Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You've probably heard about author Mia Ballard. Her debut novel "Shy Girl" has been at the center of a controversy about whether she used AI to help write it. After a New York Times article, her publisher dropped her book. She's since deleted most of her social accounts and gone dark. 

This story is much bigger than whether one writer did or didn't use AI. It's about the question of who gets to set the standard in AI and creative work? And more importantly who gets protected, and who gets sacrificed to it?

Subscribe to Drey's excellent substack for sharp reporting and open source investigative journalism into tech and power: https://thedreydossier.substack.com 

Read / Watch Drey’s reporting on Shy Girl: https://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/the-shy-girl-ai-scandal-is-way-worse

Follow Drey on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok: @thedreydossier

Read more about the limitations of AI-detection software, and why many of the country's most respected universities have banned it. https://timrequarth.substack.com/p/why-you-shouldnt-trust-ai-detector 

Read Thad’s blog post called Shy Girl: The Background to the New York Times Story: https://thefutureofpublishing.com/2026/03/shy-girl-the-background-to-the-new-york-times-story/

Bridget’s SMNTY ep about ShyGirl: What the Shy Girl Conversation Says About AI and Art: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-mom-never-told-you-21123631/episode/what-the-shy-girl-conversation-says-about-ai-and-art-328745937

Let us know what you think by emailing [email protected] or leaving a comment on Spotify. 

Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Publishing is having a trust crisis. With AI accusations swirling around authors like Mia Ballard, whose novel Shy Girl was dropped by her publisher despite her denying any AI use, questions about authenticity in publishing have never felt more urgent. But this kind of chaos isn't new. We saw it coming.

We're revisiting one of our wildest deep dives: the Cait Corrain Goodreads scandal. Corrain had a highly anticipated debut novel, Crown of Starlight, coming out in 2024 — until she admitted to using fake Goodreads accounts to review bomb other writers' forthcoming books. Most of her targets were Black or queer authors. Corrain is white.

The story has a lot of twists and turns, including a fabricated conversation with a completely made-up person that Corrain invented to take the fall.

Canadian author Xiran Jay Zhao was the first to bring it to wider attention, noticing that Crown of Starlight was getting glowing reviews from the same accounts trashing other books — some of which weren't even out yet. Zhao also compiled a 31-page Google document of screenshots and receipts: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1__mO1uqIqcmupBAPKwXDzlUbZIwtY6fKf0S1Y0SNz0E/edit?tab=t.0

Let us know what you think by emailing [email protected] or leaving a comment on Spotify.

Pre-order our forthcoming audiobook about AI and intimate relationships at LoveAtFirstPrompt.com !

Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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