S03E10 – AI Sex Bots, Trump’s Second Indictment, and Reddit Blackout

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we tackled three topics. We started with the news that a social media influencer worked with a company to create a chatbot for her followers that, when prompted, turned into a sex chat bot. We then discussed the implications of sex chat bots and eventually sex robots for humans, with a little disagreement about the negative outcomes for humanity. We then turned to a discussion of Trump’s latest indictment for the mishandling of classified documents. Again, we generally agreed but Tom is confident that the indictment isn’t worth the hassle and is worried about the optics – that a sitting President’s Justice Department is prosecuting his chief rival in the upcoming election. Ryan recognized the optics but insisted that the law is the law. Finally, we turned briefly to a discussion of the Reddit Blackout in which a number of subreddits went dark to protest monetization and sanitization changes at Reddit, potentially in preparation for an IPO. While we both agreed with the value of free speech, Ryan ultimately argued that free speech on “free” platforms is now largely regulated by what advertisers are willing to allow.