There Are No Girls on the Internet

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
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
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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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Investigative journalist Karen Hao was covering OpenAI years before most of us had ever heard the words "ChatGPT" or "large language model." Her best-selling book, "Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI," paints a gripping and damning portrait of the company's evolution from a sort of nonprofit to an empire-seeking tech juggernaut, drawing on her deep familiarity with the company as well as candid accounts from insiders.

She is one of the most influential and respected tech journalists covering the AI industry today.

In this interview, she shares the story of how she came to journalism, what she's learned from a decade of covering OpenAI and Sam Altman, and what she sees as the biggest threats of AI to intimacy, the environment, privacy, healthcare, and democracy.

Karen has a new podcast published by the BBC called "The Interface," and it is brilliant. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, or by following this link: https://link.mgln.ai/theinterface-TANGOTI

Conversation with Karen is featured prominently in Bridget's forthcoming audiobook about AI and intimate relationships, "Love At First Prompt." Pre-order your copy today at LoveAtFirstPrompt.com !
Let us know what you think about this interview 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.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's News Roundup, Bridget and Producer Mike are covering the tech news stories you might have missed.
Chappell Roan bodyguard controversy fueled by bots online, research finds: https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/music/news/chappell-roan-bodyguard-backlash-bots-b2947029.html
An AI-generated woman in images with President Trump has been going viral on conservative social media: https://wapo.st/3NtfbUi
Meta and YouTube lose two landmark court cases about harm to users:
. . California woman sues Meta and YouTube https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/technology/social-media-trial-verdict.html
.. New Mexico Attorney General sues Meta https://mashable.com/article/new-mexico-meta-court-case-meta-loses
Comedian Druski published a hilarious short video titled "How Conservative Women in America act" and MAGA is real mad: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1s48bw5/druski_parodies_erika_kirk_in_a_new_skit_how/
..Druski church parody: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/58hfPPHCRIU
..Druski NASCAR parody: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/G32siPZXgx0
Barely six months after AI-video app Sora was released to much hype, OpenAI announced they are shutting it down:
https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/openai-shutting-down-sora-video-disney-1236698277/
. . Listen to Bridget predict Sora's demise back when it was announced, in our episode from Oct 10, 2025: https://app.omnystudio.com/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/programs/ad016d13-045e-48f3-9aa5-ae280172b27d/clips/66368931-ff00-467b-97fe-b3730017b21b/details
. . Some of Sora's main use cases are filling the internet with racist and misogynistic slop:
https://www.threads.com/@raisingself/post/DWP08hZmCOj?xmt=AQGzqaZ-H3abT0EW2lfRTONANK8dwciIx844aGm48QTIrQ
..Disney's Sora Disaster Shows AI Will Not Revolutionize Hollywood: https://www.404media.co/disneys-openai-sora-disaster-shows-ai-will-not-save-hollywood/
Black filmmaker Nina Lee asked audiences to watch an unrelated Black rom-com in theaters to help convince studios that Black films are viable. We support Black filmmakers, but in Bridget's opinion this way of thinking is a trap. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/you-me-tuscany-black-rom-coms_n_69c57cb8e4b0a6ee60c3dfa3/amp
Judge dismisses lawsuit by Musk's X Corp accusing advertisers of illegal boycott: https://www.reuters.com/world/judge-dismisses-lawsuit-by-musks-x-corp-accusing-advertisers-illegal-boycott-2026-03-26/
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.