Thinking Outside the Dox: What 'consensual doxing' can teach us about internet privacy

Kristen Sotakoun (@notkahnjunior https://www.tiktok.com/@notkahnjunior?lang=en on TikTok) says she has always been 'the FBI of the friend group' – that person you can count on to dig up the juicy details on anyone's social media. It's a skillset that has earned her millions upon millions of views on TikTok in a series she has dubbed 'consensual doxing.' In her videos, Kristen completes challenges from her viewers to find their birthdays, using only publicly posted information online. Kristen is now a handful of creators on TikTok who are making consensual doxing videos as educational content, encouraging viewers to think more deeply about what they post online, and where. On this week's Endless Thread, we dive into the world of consensual doxing, what it can teach us about our privacy, and host Ben Brock Johnson gets (consensually) doxed. Show notes: I got popular on TikTok by being a total creep https://www.businessinsider.com/i-got-popular-on-tiktok-by-doxxing-people-with-permission-2022-12 (Business Insider) This Man Proves You Can Find Anyone Using Geolocation — and It's a Scary Lesson for All of Us https://www.distractify.com/p/man-uses-geolocation-to-find-anyone (Distractify) ‘Consensual doxxing’ reveals the confronting truth about online privacy - you’re not as hidden as you think https://7news.com.au/news/cyber-security/consensual-doxxing-reveals-the-confronting-truth-about-online-privacy-youre-not-as-hidden-as-you-think-c-9211450 (7NEWS Australia)

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. A recent episode explores how AI is reshaping our schools. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

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• 1:18Speaker 03

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 1:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hey, y'all. Before the show starts, we just want to remind you that we set up secure lines for you to communicate with us. If there's anything you need to share anonymously or very carefully in this time that we are living.

• 1:40Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, we have a Proton Mail account. That is [email protected]. Or you can text or call us on Signal. That number is 646-456-9095.

• 1:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  We should also mention that WBUR is an NPR member station and that the CEO of NPR, Catherine Marr, chairs the board of the Signal Foundation, the nonprofit that supports the messaging app. Anyway, if there's anything you need to be in touch with us about, and you want to be careful with how you share that information and protected, that's how you get in touch. [email protected], or call us, or text Signal, 646-456-9095.

• 2:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  I wanted to start by saying I stand by everything that you found. And I'm gonna take some time to spend with my family, so.

• 2:43Speaker 06

  Oh, by your family, do you mean your brother, who's 10 years older than you? Or your mom, who writes poems?

• 2:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  She's found me out.

• 2:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  So, the other day, I got doxed.

• 3:05Amory Sivertson?

  Doxed, as in when someone posts your personal information online without your consent for malicious purposes? But before you get too concerned, this wasn't exactly that.

• 3:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right, this doxing was consensual, which we understand is kind of an oxymoron, but it's true, and it was done by a professional of sorts.

• 3:26Speaker 06

  My name is Kristin Sodakun. On TikTok, my username is notconjunior, and I find people's birthdays who ask. And I do all of this based out of my favorite city in the world, Chicago, Illinois.

• 3:38Amory Sivertson?

  Kristin, aka notconjunior, is the aforementioned professional of sorts. She's a TikTok creator who uses social media sleuthing skills to find out people's birthdays. And she shows her process step by step in her videos.

• 3:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Nobody freak out, because as Kristin says, she only finds the birthdays of people who ask her to. It's like a big game of social media hide and seek that Kristin plays with her followers, a game that she scrolled into a few years ago.

• 4:11Speaker 06

  I was a server in the city of Chicago. I had no cybersecurity background, just always have been the friend who is the FBI of the group. And I was just scrolling on TikTok, and this girl posted.

• 4:27Speaker 06

  A video and I don't, I didn't follow her. I didn't know who she was. And she said, Don't she all guess my age? And I said, well, I don't need to guess her age. I can probably just go find it.

• 4:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  So Kristin did what any friend group FBI agent would do and began to employ her thumb skills.

• 4:44Speaker 06

  Your Instagram is posted on your TikTok profile. If you go to Instagram, you go to your tag photos on Instagram. A friend tagged you in a photo of a Throwback Thursday, but you're all wearing formal dresses. It's like a high school.

• 4:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Another trademark of Kristin's videos is how fast they go by. So we're going to break it down a little. Basically, she finds this tagged photo of the formal dresses and she figures that this was some kind of college sorority event. And in another post, the same friend who shared that photo, shared a picture of her old driver's license with the last two digits of her birth year showing.

• 5:15Speaker 06

  So she was born in 1992. If she's from Florida, but she tagged the photo of all of you in Montgomery, Alabama, in formal dresses. I'm going to assume it was like a college event. So if you went to the same college and you were friends in college and you're the same age, you're like 30, 31. Bye. I posted it and I went to work at the restaurant that I worked at. And then I came home and looked at my phone and I said, what the heck just happened? This video blew up and there was someone else who said, oh, this looks really fun. How about you try mine next?

• 5:46Amory Sivertson?

  And thus Kristin's internet niche was born.

• 5:50Speaker 06

  Leash McGee says, if you can find my birthday, I'll eat my hat. I hope you're starving, Leash McGee. You turned 40 on October 31st, 2022. Oh, JD, you think because your profile picture is a truck that I won't find you? Well, guess what? My nickname is the bus driver. Why? Because I'm about to take your ass to school. Your birthday is April 26th, 1991. Happy birthday, Jase. Dale594, I know you think you were hidden away because your profile picture is Bob Dylan, but what if I told you Bob Dylan is the reason I found your birthday? Happy birthday, August 29th, 1985, Haley. Okay, bye.

• 6:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  Birthday finding has gotten Kristin over a million followers on TikTok. The series is such a hit, she's been able to become a content creator full time. She even accidentally added a new term to the real world cybersecurity lexicon.

• 6:38Speaker 06

  So I made a playlist on my TikTok and I said, well, okay, what can I name this? Birthday doxing or something like that. And then I said, okay, I'll just call it consensual doxing because I'm only doing it for people who ask me. I have never even said the words consensual doxing in a TikTok. I just named the playlist that. And then, all of a sudden, these news articles are coming out. These cybersecurity experts are like referring to my series, Consensual Doxing. And I said, oh, my God.

• 7:07Amory Sivertson?

  Experts like the National Cyber Security Alliance, which has Kristin doing live consensual doxings as part of their seminars, which is pretty cool when you think back to the fact that Kristin doesn't have any professional investigative or cybersecurity background. And she doesn't use any official databases or even public records to help her find people's birthdays.

• 7:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  Those tools are pretty widely available. We journalists use stuff like that all the time. But no, all Kristin has to find her willing victims is her phone and a nosy disposition. Nosy disposition. Amory, you have another long lost sister there?

• 7:46Amory Sivertson?

  I guess so. Kristin is my gal. But anyway, we wanted to know, what can consensual doxing teach us about actual doxing? And about how we might be unintentionally blowing up our own spots and each other's?

• 8:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm Ben Dox Johnson.

• 8:05Amory Sivertson?

  I'm Amory Sleuth Sivertson, and you're listening to Endless Thread.

• 8:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR. Today's episode, Thinking Outside the Dox.

• 8:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  How do you get ready to dox somebody?

• 8:30Speaker 06

  I have a specific corner of my couch. It's like the good corner, you know, when you get the good corner.

• 8:39Speaker 06

  And I tell my husband, hey, I'm not going to respond to anything that you say to me, probably because I'm going to be locked in scrolling on someone I don't know's social media for however long this takes me. And he's like, all right.

• 8:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's nice you give him a warning. That's nice. I'm curious, what's the wildest goose chase you've been on? What's the hardest one that you've ever had to do?

• 9:02Speaker 06

  Oh, man. I think a recent one I did was this girl who she didn't have a picture on her TikTok. Her profile picture was just a cartoon. You want me to find your birthday, but you have a private profile? That's really tough. I'm here to destroy every single semblance of safety and security you have ever felt on the internet. Are you ready?

• 9:24Speaker 06

  It was just a blonde, you know, blonde girl with glasses cartoon that looked drawn. That kind of looked like it may be her. When I'm backed into a corner with info like this, the only thing to do is to Google your username. I got four results and three were irrelevant. But one led back to TikTok. I eventually got through her friends and her college. Someone tag your username and two other people in a caption. That TikTok with that caption has this photo. It's someone named Meg with glasses and blonde hair like that TikTok profile picture. And Meg is wearing a University of Pittsburgh hoodie. But I could not figure out her birthday. Meg, I looked at every single family member's Facebook that you have. I am not joking.

• 10:09Speaker 06

  I was getting so angry because your family does post about celebrations. Does your dad on Facebook say Happy Mother's Day? Is your dad posting about you hugging a llama saying Happy Nine Years Going to Camp? Here's your dad wishing himself Happy Birthday on Twitter. Here's your grandma posting about you having your first horseback ride. I've watched every single volleyball video of yours on every sports website that your dad has uploaded, hoping someone would say your age. They were just celebrating everything except not saying her birthday. And I knew in my heart that this meant that her birthday had to be on a holiday because there had to be other things going on. I dug up her dad's alumni newsletter. And in the fall 2004 edition, on page 60, it says that he and your mom welcomed

• 10:50Speaker 06

  a beautiful baby girl on December 31st, 2003. Happy Birthday, New Year's Eve, 2003, McGuire. Yeah, I said your full first name.

• 11:04Speaker 06

  I screamed when I found that one.

• 11:11Amory Sivertson?

  So how long did that take you from when you started to when you were screaming with joy?

• 11:17Speaker 06

  I think that one took me about an hour and a half, two hours.

• 11:20Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, my God. That's it? She is fast and furious.

• 11:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  I love it. I love it.

• 11:26Amory Sivertson?

  And very funny, like a natural comedian, natural comedic timing.

• 11:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  Natural comedian who's blowing up your spot.

• 11:34Amory Sivertson?

  A funny sleuth. Maybe she is. I would love for her to be my actual sister.

• 11:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right.

• 11:39Amory Sivertson?

  One thing that's consistent is that Kristen's challengers all seem pretty confident in their ability to elude her.

• 11:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  And they fail every time miserably. It's amazing.

• 11:49Amory Sivertson?

  She finds them anyway. It's impressive.

• 11:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  So impressive that Kristen's got copycats, or should we say copy monkeys?

• 11:59Speaker 07

  She kind of inspired me to do what I'm doing in my videos.

• 12:05Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jose Monkey, and I find people who ask to be found.

• 12:09Amory Sivertson?

  Jose Monkey is a stage name. We're going to refer to him that way because for right now, Jose Monkey is not interested in being found by you. Sorry.

• 12:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Jose Monkey is another TikTok creator. He's also friends with Kristen, aka NaKong Jr., so the copying is flattery, not theft. The participation requirements for Jose Monkey's content are similar to Kristen's: over 18 and full consent.

• 12:34Amory Sivertson?

  But his methods are different. Instead of sifting through social media posts to find personal details, Jose Monkey relies on just small clues in a photo or video to find your exact location.

• 12:47Speaker 07

  I think we don't realize what an information-dense society we live in sometimes. There are always signs and bumper stickers and license plates and things like that around you that give information. One time I found someone because they were holding a very small dog. As the video opens, we can see that there's a body of water behind this person and their dog. We can see that there's what looks like a path going around the body of water. Their video was quite difficult. There weren't a lot of stores. There weren't like signs. There were really not, you know, a lot of things like that. We can see what looks like a porta potty across the way here, but I didn't think that'd be too much help. Next, we get a view in the other direction, and it's really just trees and grass. It seemed like a park-type area. There was like a trail, and I believe there was like a dam or spillway or something like that.

• 13:31Speaker 07

  And guys, if that was all that there was to see here, I would have been very pessimistic about finding this place. But we've got one more clue. The dog had a rabies vaccination tag. Toward the end of the video, I was able to see a few frames where we can make out a phone number. I quickly discovered that that phone number is associated with the DuPage County Animal Services in Illinois. So I started looking around for trails in that area. I switched to the satellite view, and it didn't take me long to find this place that looked promising. We had a path around a body of water, and when I looked on the west side, it looked like we might have something that might be that spillway that we saw in the video. Guys, that was it.

• 14:04Speaker 07

  You are here, near Maple Lake, on the north central DuPage Regional Trail in Roselle, Illinois.

• 14:13Speaker 07

  I surprised myself with that one.

• 14:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  To date, Jose Monkey says he's found over 600 locations in 60 countries, which is coconut nuts.

• 14:23Amory Sivertson?

  Like he mentioned, Jose Monkey really strives to show you just how much we can unwittingly disclose about ourselves online. Kristin does this too, of course, but she also takes it a step further.

• 14:36Speaker 06

  If I'm gonna go on Instagram, I'm not gonna look through every single post you've ever made if you have thousands of posts. I'm gonna scroll through your timeline and I'm gonna see maybe you holding a balloon that has a number on it, or a picture of a baby, because that could be you as a baby. People love to post themselves as babies for their birthday. You go to tagged photos and see a picture of you by yourself, because your friend would say happy birthday to you, and they would only post a picture of you.

• 15:02Amory Sivertson?

  So Kristin is looking at not just your posts, but also the posts of people in your social network.

• 15:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right, because even if you don't share a lot about yourself online, your friends who love you very, very much and just want the world to know, well, they might.

• 15:19Amory Sivertson?

  And speaking of people who love you very much, there's someone even more passionate about sharing your personal details on the internet.

• 15:28Speaker 06

  It is always the grandmas. It's always they post a picture of their grandchildren and their friend comments. I've seen this like dozens of times. They'll post a picture and then their friend will say, oh, this is so lovely of your grandchildren. And then they will respond and say, thanks. Lucy is 12. Judd is eight. This was in 1996 when we were staying at this lodge for Christmas. Like it's, it's so crazy to me.

• 15:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ah, grandmas, grandmas. I love a grandma. They're the best. Um, but also grandma, please don't, please don't post. We've talked, I think, on the show about this before, but I keep my kids off the internet. I store my digital photos privately. I don't post them. And it's been interesting over the last almost eight years that they've been in the world, how many times, you know, their photo has been inadvertently posted and published by friends or like school groups or, you know, camp. It really happens even when you're really trying hard not to let it happen.

• 16:32Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. And it's really hard to undo those posts and the spreading of that information once it's out there.

• 16:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  And it gets awkward too, right? Like where you have to go to the person who posted the thing and you're like, hey, man, I'm really sorry. It's you did this thing out of joy and you wanted to like share with the world this thing, but like, I actually prefer you didn't.

• 16:51Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 16:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  You know what I mean?

• 16:53Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. So it's not just grandma's fault. It's, uh, it's maybe yours for having too many friends.

• 17:01Speaker 06

  There is a concept called context collapse.

• 17:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  Casey Fiesler is an information science professor at University of Colorado Boulder. And she actually uses Kristin's videos to teach her students about context collapse.

• 17:16Speaker 06

  This is basically the idea that like in most people's kind of offline lives, there's not a situation in which like your boss would be interacting with your grandmother, would be interacting with that girl who sat behind you in high school Spanish class. But this happens on social media a lot.

• 17:36Amory Sivertson?

  Basically, imagine that your Facebook friends list is the guest list to the biggest party you've ever thrown.

• 17:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  And at this party, your boss, your grandmother and that girl from Spanish class are all doing shots together and gossiping about you. Just kidding. That's a nightmare I had once, I think, although I never took Spanish. It was Latin. Anyway.

• 17:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  And there were no girls in Latin class, let me tell you.

• 17:59Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, I was a girl in Latin class.

• 18:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Really? You were my girl in Latin class?

• 18:04Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, doing shots with your grandma, yeah.

• 18:10Amory Sivertson?

  Anyway, the party represents how social media can blur the lines between your IRL social circles, which is context collapse in a nutshell. Your grandma would probably never hang out with your boss, but online, they sort of do.

• 18:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  And we're all used to this now. You know all these people. You added them on social media because presumably you want them to know a little bit about you.

• 18:34Amory Sivertson?

  But what about the people in their networks?

• 18:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right, because your friends and family might share something about you to their own expansive circle of Facebook friends. And you don't have any control over what they post. You might not even know everyone who's going to see it.

• 18:50Amory Sivertson?

  Which could be anyone, depending on people's privacy settings.

• 18:54Speaker 08

  NotCon Jr.'s videos, I think, are really striking examples of network privacy. And that's basically what this is. It's like, privacy is not just individual, but is based on the people around you, the networks that you are part of. The big lessons are that it's usually the people around you that become the sort of failure points as related to privacy.

• 19:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  All social media platforms have the potential for context collapse to occur. But there is one platform in particular where NotCon Jr., Kristin, notices people making all kinds of disclosures.

• 19:41Speaker 06

  People treat Facebook as a private Instagram profile or a Snapchat that goes away, but Facebook is so permanent. And I think that Facebook is the least safe out of all of the apps because you can just search anything on there.

• 19:56Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, but Casey says Facebook's interface isn't solely to blame either.

• 20:01Speaker 08

  I don't actually think this has anything to do with the way that Facebook is. It's the norms about how people use Facebook, which, to be fair, their design has encouraged these norms, right? But the fact that people use their real name, the fact that they are prompted to share information like birthdays and marital status and where they live and these sorts of things, it changes the way that people use the platform.

• 20:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  So Facebook's design encourages oversharing and we sheeple, humans, we oblige.

• 20:40Amory Sivertson?

  Which makes Facebook a treasure trove of information for someone like Kristin. How exactly does she do it? We're about to find out, step by step.

• 20:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep, coming up after the break. It's time for me to get doxed.

• 20:56Amory Sivertson?

  Consentually.

• 21:22Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. How should employers measure real skills in the age of AI?

• 21:34Speaker 09

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• 21:43Speaker 00

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• 22:01Speaker 10

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• 22:31Speaker 02

  When you shop Kroger Delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. From delicious produce to everyday essentials, enjoy the convenience of delivery and the trusted selection you've come to know from Kroger, because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. Right now, enjoy free delivery on orders of $50 or more with your digital coupon. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger: Fresh for everyone.

• 23:03Amory Sivertson?

  So, yes, we asked Kristin, aka NotConJunior, to dox Ben consensually. And not only was she up for the challenge, she, in fact, wanted to make it more challenging.

• 23:15Speaker 06

  I wanted to find your age only using things that you yourself have said. So I knew that I could avoid Facebook, because on Facebook, I will find people's birthdays very easily, because people will wish them happy birthday, right? So that was a no-go for me. You have an open Instagram. It is not private. Lucky for me.

• 23:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's not very active either.

• 23:40Speaker 06

  Not very active, but it used to be active, right? And I wanted to get a general gauge of your age, and that was really helpful from a 2014 post, where you said you were in Godspell in high school. It was a throwback. So...

• 23:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  That is true. Nobody gets to see those pictures. I'll say that.

• 23:58Speaker 06

  Oh, I've seen one. I've seen one.

• 24:02Speaker 06

  So you have a picture with your dad from 2014 that says, "Love you, Dad." And you post a lot about your mom and how she writes poems and things like that. So I have this whole aggregate of your family. I could not find any indication of your birthday, but luckily, luckily, I have all this information already. And you posted your Twitter link, excuse me, X, the everything app.

• 24:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 24:29Speaker 06

  In your, in your bio.

• 24:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, I did. Yep, link in bio. Yep, guilty as charged.

• 24:38Speaker 06

  And the greatest thing for me when I'm finding these birthdays is when I go to someone's X slash Twitter and it says that they joined a long time ago. And you joined in March 2010 because that means to me that I can look through your, I can search keywords and I'm going to find things about you.

• 24:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  I gotta delete X.

• 24:58Speaker 06

  Don't we all? Don't we all, though?

• 25:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, we really do.

• 25:02Speaker 06

  Yes, we do. Obviously, I look up the words birthday on your profile. So on July 28th, 2014, you said, "Google doodle changed just for me. This is scary tech." And you posted a screenshot of the birthday animation that Google does on your birthday. And then you replied to someone and said, "My trolling for Twitter birthday wishes totally worked." But you could be joking, right? Also, you used the word troll, so I was worried that you were not telling the truth or you had changed something or something like that, right?

• 25:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Fair, yeah.

• 25:37Speaker 06

  I went back to your Instagram and usually when people don't want to post about their own birthdays on Instagram, they will still post other pictures. In 2019, you posted four photos on July 29th and all on Instagram, separate posts.

• 25:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  What an annoying Instagram move.

• 25:57Speaker 06

  But it says a lot, right? It says a lot because to me, that says you're excited about things you wanted to share. A cool thing that happened to you. I looked up July 29th, 2019. It's a Monday, so it must have meant to me, it meant you had a fun weekend. July 27th, you posted with three of your friends and you said, met one in middle school, one at the first job, one at college and one in high school. And I said, they had to be there to celebrate your birthday. But I couldn't find the year, right? I, I had to go back to Twitter slash X for the year. I looked up the word old and in 2022, uh, May 30th, 2022, you said, I just stopped to let a couple of 10 year olds use the crosswalk and I gave them the gnarliest hang loose this 41 year old could muster.

• 26:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, busted. Wow.

• 26:43Speaker 06

  So with all of that put together, I'm gonna guess that your birthday is 19.

• 26:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  You are fully correct. Well played.

• 27:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  I have to say, I was pretty, I was floored.

• 27:06Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 27:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  I expected her to poke more fun at me than she did, uh, considering her other videos. So I feel like she was very, it was the softest gentlest consensual doxing, I feel. But it, and I appreciate that. So we had a lot of fun doing this, but some people out there might not feel so warm and fuzzy about what they just heard.

• 27:27Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. Kristin's consensual doxing videos are all very funny and lighthearted, but we live in a reality that is just a lot darker. Doxing by definition is a malicious act and it can put people in real danger. That fact isn't lost on us or Kristin.

• 27:45Speaker 06

  People think it's, it's fun to message me my address or they think it's fun to message me the name of my family because I have been doing that online. I think they, they miss the consensual part of my consensual doxing series, you know? I get comments and I hope people are kidding sometimes when they say, oh, this helped me stalk my ex. Thank you so much. You know, I'll get, uh, things like that, but I like to think I'm doing more good because people who see it, hopefully that makes a lot of people be more mindful of what they post online going forward.

• 28:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  Both Kristin and Jose Monkey, our consensual geolocator doxer, say the point of their content is not to make people stop posting entirely. They just want us to be making more intentional decisions around what we post on social media, whether it's about us or someone else in our lives. Because in our context collapsed world...

• 28:50Speaker 07

  Remember that to someone else, you're the third party who's revealing their information.

• 28:54Amory Sivertson?

  And that's the thing I think I'm really taking out of this. It seems like if we can all collectively make just small changes to our own behavior on social media, we can actually keep each other a lot safer.

• 29:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  Where do we draw the line, though? Human connection and friendship are some of the best things the internet has to offer.

• 29:13Amory Sivertson?

  And some of our favorite things to talk about on this show. And some of Kristin's favorite things when she's deep diving into her doxies' social media profiles.

• 29:22Speaker 06

  I feel like I'm getting to know somebody and getting to know like who they love and who they cherish. And Ben, you just seem like you have a lot of people who love you and you love your family. And that's all I got. That's all I got from all of this. I didn't find anything sus, but unless you're doing sus things all over Facebook, I know nothing about that.

• 29:40Amory Sivertson?

  No, no, on Reddit. He's doing them on Reddit.

• 29:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  It is true. All of my shitposting is on Reddit. That's true. That's fair. What does this make you think about? I mean, it makes me think about like that the internet is forever and we have to remember that. Because it's just like, we think of it as ephemera and we are trained to think of it as ephemera and just share with the world without really thinking that that lasts forever and can potentially be used against us. And I don't like, just to say this, like, I don't think Kristin's point or Jose Monkey's point is to assume malintent. You know what I mean? Like, I don't, like, I'm not a believer in stranger danger as like a widely, as like a massive problem.

• 30:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  But like, being aware and being careful when you are moving through a world where there is danger, I think, is valid. So like, I'm not saying don't be open. I'm just saying be intentional, right? And I think that's what Kristin and Jose Monkey are also advocating for is just like... Don't put the bar on the floor when you're thinking about what to put online.

• 30:51Amory Sivertson?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Think about it.

• 30:53Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, for me, it's just like, check my privacy settings on all of my social media pages. Step one. And step two, just treat every little comment and post like, like anyone will find it whenever they want.

• 31:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Step three, have a talk with Graham Graham.

• 31:16Amory Sivertson?

  Graham Graham, all the Graham Grahams of the world. Please, please stop lovingly spilling all of your family's tea on your Facebook.

• 31:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  Start an OnlyFans account. Only grams.

• 31:27Amory Sivertson?

  Only grams.

• 31:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Only grams.

• 31:37Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.

• 31:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  This episode was co-hosted by me, Ben Brock Johnson, and also Emery Sivertson. It was produced by Franny Monahan.

• 31:48Amory Sivertson?

  Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

• 31:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  Our managing producer is Suma Tajoshi. The show is edited by Meg Kramer.

• 31:55Amory Sivertson?

  The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, and production manager Paul Vikes.

• 31:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or other wild story from the internet you want us to tell, hit us up. You can email us [email protected].

• 32:09Amory Sivertson?

  All right, I'll see you on Onlygrams in 40 years.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts, and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, executive director of the Just Horizons Alliance on who stands to benefit from AI in education.

• 32:55Speaker 11

  I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context.

• 33:00Speaker 12

  And just to explain why you're excited about it.

• 33:02Speaker 11

  Oh, my gosh, individualized support, right? Personalization and to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles and disabilities, for example, speakers of different languages, there are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in because it is very different depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 33:52Speaker 10

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 34:21Speaker 13

  Ugh, I hate Mondays.

• 34:23Speaker 14

  King's Hawaiian cinnamon swirl bite?

• 34:25Speaker 13

  Uh, Taylor Hansen? Sure, I'll try one. Mmm.

• 34:31Speaker 12

  Hey, let's get back to work, please.

• 34:32Speaker 13

  But Taylor Hansen's making my day way better with these new soft and swirly King's Hawaiian cinnamon bites.

• 34:36Speaker 12

  Taylor Hansen? Nice.

• 34:38Speaker 14

  Try one.

• 34:40Speaker 12

  Mmm.

• 34:44Speaker 12

  King's Hawaiian cinnamon bites. There's nothing like it.