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Is it ever okay to film strangers in public? Getty Images Nobody wants to be filmed without their knowledge. Why does it make up so much of the content we watch? The experience of realizing you are being surreptitiously filmed by a stranger is now a relatively common one, but this is how it happened for Mitchell Clark: The 25-year-old was working a shift at his Atlanta Target when someone propped up a phone nearby. “I thought it was for some dumb prank channel,” he says. It wasn’t until a young woman bent over directly in front of him, her dress short enough to expose her entire bare bottom, that he realized what was going on. The resulting video captures his shock — his eyes widen and his hands grasp his chest, agog — and later ended up on the OnlyFans model’s Instagram account. “It made me look like a creep,” he tells me. The video was an extreme example of a trend where women secretly film men’s reactions to them, often in the gym or in public spaces, either to shame the men for being inappropriate or to highlight the power of their own beauty — in Clark’s case, arguably both. But this time it caused an uproar: After Clark made a video about how uncomfortable he felt, other accounts reposted and responded to it, highlighting the ways in which public filming culture had gotten out of control. (Vox was unable to reach the model for comment.) @mitchelliguesss ♬ original sound - mitchell It’s been a decade and a half since social media made it possible for anyone’s camera phone video to go viral. But it’s TikTok, a platform where overnight fame is more achievable than ever, that has turned filming strangers in public into a controversial cottage industry. While influencers on Vine, YouTube, and Instagram have long used passersby as unwilling background actors to gain clout, TikTok has also allowed those people to offer their sides of the story and actually get heard. This is, in part, because of editing tools like stitching or dueting, and also because you don’t necessarily need to have a large account in order to go viral on the app. Viewers are invested in watching all sides of the drama unfold. Thanks to these responses and a handful of watchdog accounts, a major backlash against public filming has been brewing: Outlets from the Guardian to The Verge to Vice have issued pleas to quit filming strangers, while BuzzFeed christened the unsettling genre with an equally unsettling name: “panopticontent.” Ask pretty much anyone in the world if they’d like to have someone film them without their permission and post it on the internet, and it’s difficult to imagine a normal person saying yes. And yet, these videos continue to rack up millions of views, forcing us to reckon with the fact that in 2024, some of the most-viewed content on social media is essentially nonconsensual voyeurism. There’s clearly an appetite to watch as strangers are shamed, ridiculed, gawked, or generally caught off-guard, even when we know it isn’t exactly morally sound. A precursor to the form came in 2009: The blog People of Walmart was devoted to making fun of customers wearing embarrassing clothing (unsurprisingly, much of the humor relied on classist, fatphobic, and transphobic stereotypes). Instagram wrought the rise of many more of these types of accounts, like Subway Creatures, with nearly 3 million followers, which collects images of bizarre-seeming people and circumstances on the New York City subway; Passenger Shaming, for videos of plane freakouts and other bad airport behavior; or Influencers in the Wild, which has more than 5 million followers and invites people to laugh at those who dare film themselves in public. Its website encourages viewers to submit videos by promising “Your clip could be seen by millions!” The irony that it’s objectively worse to sneakily take a photo of someone else taking a photo of themselves comes secondary to the main goal: driving engagement by laughing at people who don’t know they’re being filmed. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Influencers in the Wild (@influencersinthewild) Even supposedly wholesome content has fallen into the same trap. In 2018, an influencer posted an Instagram Story saga about a potential romance budding between two people on a plane seated in front of her, then later had to apologize when the woman felt that her privacy had been violated. The “Plane Bae” story went massively viral before anyone questioned whether what they were watching was exactly ethical. It would be easier if we all collectively decided that it was never acceptable to film random strangers in public, under any circumstances. But rarely are social questions, especially ones that collide squarely with the ever-evolving norms of our online lives, this uncomplicated. You do, in fact, have the right to film in public places; as the ACLU points out, the ability to do so “creates an independent record of what took place in a particular incident, one that is free from accusations of bias, lying, or faulty memory.” This is especially important when filming the police or recording an encounter that could become violent: The video of George Floyd being murdered, for instance, was crucial in sparking the wave of protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020. Camera phone videos depicting racism and harassment, particularly during and after the lockdown period, have also opened important conversations about acceptable behavior in a uniquely distressing time. Do arguments about First Amendment rights and social justice really apply to people who make strangers uncomfortable for engagement on TikTok? That depends on who you ask. Most will say they’re simply trying to “spread love” or that they never expected the content to go viral, while refusing to ask themselves tougher questions. It’s not difficult to imagine, for instance, someone being concerned about their digital privacy for more serious reasons, such as avoiding a stalker. One woman who was filmed being approached for a high-five by a dancer in Times Square and then began crying was both mocked for her reaction and accused of being racist because the dancer was Black. Her sister then made a video explaining that she was autistic and has contamination OCD, and therefore doesn’t like being touched. Another woman was falsely maligned for riding the subway with monkeypox after someone made a TikTok of her, but the reason for the bumps on her skin was actually due to a genetic condition. There’s little legal recourse for people who find themselves unknowingly caught on camera. As Derigan Silver, chair of the University of Denver’s media, film, and journalism department, explains, a successful defamation case requires proving that the material contains a “false statement of fact” — but a video tends to show events as they happened, even if divorced from crucial context. Clark is hoping to get the help of a lawyer to get the original video taken down, but he’s aware that that’s likely as far as it will go. “It sucks that we’re so far behind with our legal system that not more can be done about this right now. But it’s real, and it’s getting worse,” he says of the scourge of content creators who use strangers as background props. The idea that privacy laws should evolve to incorporate situations like Clark’s, however, could be a dangerous one. “We want the ability to record things in public and to document them because it supports very important First Amendment ideals,” says Silver. “The flip side of that is not everybody is doing this with good motives.” Silver notes that where the law could catch up is by differentiating between newsworthy and non-newsworthy events — say, an encounter with police versus recording an anonymous Target employee — and making it harder to prosecute people who film matters of public consequence. In a paper on what she coined “forced faming,” British intellectual property law scholar Hayleigh Bosher also points out how the legal system must contend with the rise in deepfake content, which creates real-seeming content out of unwilling people’s likenesses. No law can solve the problem of people being assholes on social media, but there are other ways to influence people’s behavior online. “There’s the law, there’s technology, there are cultural norms, and there’s the market,” explains Silver. “We can exert pressure on platforms and say, ‘Stop monetizing these accounts.’ Or they could write technology that makes it more difficult to upload material that violates someone’s privacy. Or we could have people online saying, ‘I’m going to stop watching this stuff.’” Right now, it’s the cultural norms that are shifting most quickly: This moment has given rise to a number of accounts that call out public filming, like Joey Swoll, with his 7.7 million TikTok followers (his was one of the accounts that drew attention to Clark’s case). YouTubers like Kurtis Conner, meanwhile, have made videos calling for the end of filming strangers. But there’s hypocrisy at play here too. Swoll’s account ostensibly exists to maintain a certain ideal of gym culture, but the majority of his content is dedicated to shaming (usually) women’s behavior — even influencers who are innocuously filming themselves without involving anyone else. Some of the instances he calls out are indeed objectively horrible, like the woman who pretended to take a video of herself in order to mock the man exercising behind her, but others are more cringeworthy than anything else, like the girl who did a TikTok dance in front of someone using a bench press. @thejoeyswoll He is NOT staring at you or even looking at you! This gym needs to kick you out NOW! #gymtok #gym #fyp ♬ Funny video "Carmen Prelude" Arranging weakness(836530) - yo suzuki(akisai) Swoll also seems to have a special interest in objecting to women who claim that certain men at gyms make them feel uncomfortable, and then film the alleged “creep.” These examples aren’t always black-and-white: The evidence of the alleged harassment or creepy behavior isn’t always clear from the videos, but never does Swoll allow for any interrogation or curiosity about what might have occurred off-camera. Instead, he’s positioned himself as the head vigilante of the digital Wild West, shaming surreptitious gym recorders by bringing greater attention to them — ironically, the very same thing the women appear to be doing with the “creeps” they film. The fact that both Swoll and Influencers in the Wild tend to have millions more followers than the people they’re criticizing also adds another layer: When is calling out those who film strangers creating a barrage of attention on bystanders who never wished to be dragged into the public eye in the first place? (Swoll did not respond to a request for comment.) The thirst for voyeurism content — whether you’re watching a stranger unknowingly get filmed or watching someone scold a stranger for doing the filming — means that accounts who engage in it have a higher likelihood of going viral and scoring lucrative brand deals. Influencers in the Wild, for instance, has its own merch and board game, while Joey Swoll regularly promotes his brand of low-calorie sauces. Knowing that the demand for “panopticontent” is so high leads creators to produce more of it — often by using TikTok’s stitch or duet feature, which allows them to milk as much clout as they can from a single trending topic or video — whether or not they realize it’s ethically murky. Faced with questions like, “Is it worth it to pull my phone out right now?” or “Am I a shitty person if I film someone without their knowledge?” Silver recommends resorting to the golden rule. We’re already being recorded all the time — by security cameras, by our phones, which track not only our location but every keystroke we make online, and by other people’s cameras — but we’re the ones who decide whether or not to post our own videos online. Platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram could theoretically step in to demonetize accounts that make money from non-consensual voyeurism, but this is almost an unimaginable scenario, in part because it feels impossible to enforce. Until then, it’s up to audiences to shift cultural norms around what’s acceptable behavior online and what isn’t, but given the astonishing popularity of these videos, that doesn’t seem all that likely. After the incident at Target, Clark’s first thought was that he wanted to make sure it wouldn’t happen to anyone else. “Working in retail, you get used to people harassing you. I’m not seen as a person anymore, I’m seen as an object,” he tells me. Increasingly, this is how people on social media view each other: as NPCs, disposable, as background actors with no desires or interests of their own. While TikTok has allowed Clark to respond publicly and have thousands of people rallying behind him, it’s also responsible for helping to create the problem in the first place. “There’s a lack of decency, and I think it may be the allure of getting famous and going viral. People think that justifies the means, but it definitely does not.”vox.com
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Why are Americans spending so much? Shoppers carry Uniqlo bags in the SoHo neighborhood of New York on March 8, 2024. | John Taggart/Bloomberg via Getty Images They say the economy is bad, but they’re spending like it’s booming. Americans have been pessimistic about the economy for years. Weirdly, that’s seemed to have little impact on their willingness to open their wallets. Retail sales surged during the pandemic as home-bound workers clicked “complete purchase” on everything from Pelotons to sourdough starter. In 2020, e-commerce sales rose by 43 percent. Stimulus checks gave Americans newfound savings and excess money to burn. Supply chains couldn’t keep up with the demand. That was all supposed to come crashing down at some point. For more than a year, economists warned about the “death of the consumer” and a resulting recession — neither of which have materialized. Consumers were expected to retreat as inflation skyrocketed, hitting a 9.1 percent peak in June 2022 and remaining stubbornly above the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2 percent. Instead, Americans just kept buying more, even accounting for price increases and beyond growth in their disposable income. Their spending helped drive US economic growth in 2023 and remained high in the first months of this year. In March, consumer spending increased by 0.8 percent, exceeding expectations from financial analysts. There is a sign that Americans’ shopping spree might be finally coming to an end: Retail spending stayed the same in April as compared to the previous month, falling short of analyst projections for growth. However, those numbers don’t capture spending on services — for example, health care, transportation, and insurance — which has increased markedly this year. And both Preston Caldwell, a senior US economist at Morningstar, and Scott Hoyt, a Moody’s Analytics economist, said those numbers could easily bounce back next month, even if they’re expecting spending to cool by the end of the year. “I am anticipating that we do see eventually a consumer slowdown over the course of this year,” Caldwell said. “It’s premature to say that that’s already playing out right now.” Indeed, spending is bound to come down at some point under the pressure of high interest rates, which the Fed isn’t expected to cut until later this year — or potentially at all in 2024. So why, despite all the doom and gloom among consumers, has spending been so resilient? Who is driving high spending? Two things are simultaneously true: People feel really negatively about the economy, and that’s not stopping them from spending. In May, the University of Michigan recorded its lowest consumer sentiment reading in six months — an index of 67.4 out of 100 — as part of its long-running survey. That’s up from this time last year, but still well below pre-pandemic consumer sentiment readings, which hovered in the upper 80s and 90s. The trend in sentiment was widespread across demographic lines: Consumers “expressed worries that inflation, unemployment and interest rates may all be moving in an unfavorable direction in the year ahead,” the University of Michigan report reads. It’s hard to reconcile that with high spending figures. But in short, the rich currently feel rich and account for a large share of overall spending. The middle class feels a little better off too, and likely still has some savings built up they can burn through. They might not yet have felt the pressure of high interest rates and inflation to the same degree as people who rent and have fewer investments. (But that’s due to change.) High-income consumers — households in the top 20 percent of income earning at least $244,025 before taxes as of 2022 — have been largely cushioned from economic headwinds and are flush with cash to spend. The pandemic saw Americans’ average percentage of income saved increase to an all-time high of 32 percent in April 2020 after many households received stimulus checks. That has helped fuel spending, but unlike in other high-income countries where consumers have proved more thrifty, Americans are close to depleting those savings. “The excess savings [are] still kind of sloshing their way through the system. Depending on how you estimate excess savings, they will be depleted sometime in the middle of 2024 or maybe by as late as mid-2025,” Caldwell said. Many high-income consumers also locked in low interest rates on their mortgages before the Federal Reserve started raising rates in March 2022, and they’re seeing their home values continue to go up nonetheless. The average US home price increased from $287,000 in 2019 to $450,000 in 2024. This is in part due to persistent low inventory: High interest rates have kept would-be sellers on the sidelines because their mortgage payments would be higher if they bought a new place. High-income consumers have also seen their investment portfolios balloon in the last year. The stock market repeatedly tested new highs in recent months, with the latest record set on Thursday in the wake of new data showing that inflation is slowing. And wealthy older Americans who allocate more of their portfolios to government bonds are benefiting from higher interest rates. “That sort of gives consumers an incentive to spend out of their newfound wealth,” Hoyt said. “And since this set of consumers still has excess savings left over from the pandemic, that gives them the easy, relatively liquid monies to do so.” The question is how long the stock market can sustain this run. Some analysts think stocks are currently overpriced and due for a correction — which might cause some people to finally close their wallets. “Equity prices are starting to move more into arguably overvalued territory,” Caldwell said. “So that’s probably not going to be a tailwind [for spending] over the next year.” At the same time, the factors currently fueling spending at the highest income levels aren’t universal. Not all consumers can afford to spend more. Even though inflation has come down significantly from its 2022 peak, low-income Americans are struggling with higher prices. Consumers in general say they are budgeting more on everyday essentials like fresh produce and baby supplies. Among people living paycheck to paycheck, pandemic savings (if they ever really had any) might be long gone. Low and moderate-income consumers are also increasingly weighed down by credit card debt and struggling to pay it down due to high interest rates, which research suggests could be a major contributor to overall economic pessimism. Though credit card debt levels dipped during the pandemic, they are now returning to pre-pandemic levels, with the average balance per consumer increasing by 8.5 percent in the last year to $6,218. More than half of people earning less than $25,000 carry a balance on their credit cards. Their only consolation is that the job market remains strong, meaning they might be able to count on another paycheck — but even that might not last. Analysts including Caldwell expect the unemployment rate to rise from 3.8 percent to 3.9 percent and wage growth to slow in 2024. Ultimately, however, low-income consumers “just don’t account for that big of a share of total spending,” Hoyt said. “It’s the high end of the income distribution that accounts for a disproportionate share of the spending.”vox.com
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Blood, flames, and horror movies: The evocative imagery of King Charles’s portrait A visitor looks at the new official portrait of King Charles III, painted by British artist Jonathan Yeo, displayed at the Philip Mould gallery, on Pall Mall, central London, on May 16, 2024 | Henry Nicholls/AFP/Getty Images The furor over the painting points to the Crown’s larger problems. As far back as the 1500s, the British Royal Family has used formal portraits to project a positive and authoritative image. Their most recent entry, however, is giving audiences a very different impression, the latest in a series of public relations blunders at a tenuous time for the monarchy. The new portrait of King Charles, by British artist Jonathan Yeo, features the monarch looking on serenely while wearing a red Welsh Guards uniform against a red backdrop. Aside from his hands and face, the portrait is covered in red paint strokes, a visual that for some onlookers, recalled flames, blood, and horror films. “It looks like he’s bathing in blood,” a commenter quipped on an Instagram post announcing the portrait. “To me it gives the message the monarchy is going up in flames or the king is burning in hell,” another commenter wrote. King Charles unveils his first official portrait since coronation. pic.twitter.com/YVGtlnDhx7— Pop Base (@PopBase) May 17, 2024 In his description of the painting, Yeo says a chief aim was to capture Charles’s evolution as a leader and ascension to the throne. The painting also includes a butterfly hovering above Charles’s right shoulder, an addition the king reportedly suggested himself to illustrate his transformation and commitment to environmental causes. For some, the bold palette of the painting conjured more brutal aspects of the monarchy’s history, however. Certain observers have interpreted the work as a reminder of the Crown’s bloody advancement of colonialism. “It almost alludes to some sort of massacre that he’s been part of,” Tabish Khan, a London art critic, told Business Insider. “Given the royal family’s history and ties to colonialism and imperialism, it’s not hard for people to look at it and then make the leap that it’s somehow related to that.” Others have dabbled in memes referencing The Picture of Dorian Gray, the painting of a villain from Ghostbusters 2, and the anecdote Charles once told about wanting to be Camilla’s tampon. And while much of the response has been poking fun at the portrait, the controversy also points to deeper issues the monarchy faces, as it navigates an uncertain transition after Queen Elizabeth II’s death and grapples with its own past. The painting aimed to capture Charles’s transformation Yeo, an established artist who has also painted former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair as well as Charles’s father Prince Philip and his wife Queen Camilla, sat with Charles four times for his first portrait as King. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh 1921-2021He was a hugely impressive man in person, who’s public persona belied a fierce intelligence, quick humour and seemingly endless curiosity. Very happy memories of sittings at Buckingham Palace back in 2006#rip #princephilip pic.twitter.com/mCYS6odFRv— Jonathan Yeo (@RealJonathanYeo) April 9, 2021 “Royal portraits in the past have had an important role to play in signifying power and projecting an image,” the BBC’s Katie Razzall writes. “They were part of the tools used to ensure the survival of the monarch.” One of Yeo’s aims with the painting, which he began in 2021, was to underscore Charles’s essence as a person, how he’s changed as he’s taken on the role of king and the struggles he’s endured. “My interest is really in figuring out who someone is and trying to get that on a canvas,” Yeo told the BBC. Yeo’s website describes the color scheme as injecting a “dynamic, contemporary jolt” to the work, differentiating it from past portraits. The red is also inspired by the bright red color of the Welsh Guards uniform and is intended to give a nod to Charles’s military service; he became a colonel in the Welsh Guards in 1975. It’s also a color Yeo has used in the past, with paintings of actor Giancarlo Esposito and World War II veteran Geoffrey Pattinson featuring similar color schemes. Many of Yeo’s past works are composed much like Charles’s, with one dominant color serving as the background and the subject’s face seemingly floating in the foreground. According to Yeo, both the king and queen had previously seen parts of the painting and appeared to respond positively at the time. “Yes, you’ve got him,” Camilla reportedly said about his capturing Charles’s personality. The artist notes that Charles was surprised by the color, but broadly seemed to like the unfinished work he saw. In a video clip of the official unveiling, Charles himself appears initially startled by the painting. The portrait’s reception recalls the monarchy’s problems Much like US presidential portraits, the paintings of UK monarchs are intended to send a message about their leadership and character. In one of former President Barack Obama’s portraits, artist Kehinde Wiley featured him surrounded by green foliage, a move that honored his upbringing in different places, and that marked a break from past presidential portraits. The red in King Charles’s portrait had much less flattering connotations for some observers, though, as they see allusions to the country’s colonialism. For centuries, the British Empire violently seized power in numerous countries — including India, Kenya, and New Zealand — and the monarchy was a key symbol of its authority in those places. Even today, the king is still considered a figurehead, and the “head of state” in 15 independent countries that are part of the British Commonwealth. Many — including Jamaica — are actively working to remove Charles as their official “head of state,” a role that’s purely symbolic but nonetheless represents Britain’s history of oppression. In this capacity, and others, the modern monarchy remains a key symbol of the UK’s governance, even though royals don’t have practical policymaking power like Parliament and the prime minister. As such, many experts and people from former colonies have been eager to see the monarchy do more to reckon with its imperial history, and to more explicitly acknowledge it. “Imagine a very different kind of monarchy, where in the name of decency rather than politics, a monarch could say things like, ‘We acknowledge and regret the role of Britain, the British government and the British monarchy in slavery and colonialism.’ That kind of moral leadership could have such a different impact in the world,” Priya Satia, a history professor at Stanford, previously told Time. The portrait is, in a sense, the least of the monarchy’s recent problems as it navigates a difficult transition following Queen Elizabeth II’s 70-year reign. There was the awkward rupture with Charles’s youngest son Prince Harry and his wife, American actress Meghan Markle. Charles publicly disclosed a cancer diagnosis in February. His daughter-in-law, Princess Catherine of Wales, revealed her own cancer diagnosis in March, following months of rampant speculation about her well-being. What was once a canvas for projecting royal authority has instead become another reckoning with what the monarchy stands for and the brutal history it’s failed to fully confront.vox.com
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Why a GOP governor’s pardon of a far-right murderer is so chilling A vigil for Garrett Foster, who was murdered by Daniel Perry in the summer of 2020. | Sergio Flores/Getty Images A Texas man who killed a Black Lives Matter protester in 2020 was pardoned yesterday. Here’s what it says about politics in 2024. Donald Trump advertises his authoritarianism like it’s a golf course adorned with his name. The presumptive GOP nominee has repeatedly promised to sic the Justice Department on his political adversaries, vowing to appoint “a real special prosecutor to go after” President Joe Biden, “the entire Biden crime family, and all others involved with the destruction of our elections, borders and our country itself.” He has repeatedly praised the extrajudicial killing of looters and drug dealers, and implored police officers to brutalize criminal suspects. But Trump’s attitude toward lawbreakers who are aligned with his movement is decidedly more lenient. He has repeatedly assured those who commit violence on his behalf — like the January 6 rioters who tried to forestall the peaceful transfer of power in 2021 — that he will immunize them from legal accountability through presidential pardons. Thus, the frontrunner in America’s 2024 election has adopted a gangster’s mentality toward crime: the criminality of any given action is determined by its compatibility with his interests, not the law. In theory, the constitution — with its elaborate division of powers — should constrain Trump’s assaults on the rule of law. That’s surely true to a point. But if Trump’s authoritarian impulses are backed by his fellow Republicans, then the structural constraints on his power in a second term would be less than reliable. Unfortunately, two recent developments indicate that the long arc of Republican politics is bending toward lawlessness. Texas just let a far-right radical get away with murder First, in Texas, you can commit murder without suffering the legal consequences of that crime, so long as your victim’s politics are loathed by the right and your case is championed by conservative media. Or at least, this is the message sent by Gov. Greg Abbott’s pardoning of Daniel Perry. In the weeks after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, the proliferation of Black Lives Matter protests had filled Perry with apparent bloodlust. Then an active-duty Army officer, Perry texted and messaged friends, among other things: “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.” “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work they are rioting outside my apartment complex … No protesters go near me or my car.” “I wonder if they will let [me] cut the ears off of people who’s decided to commit suicide by me.” When a friend of Perry asked him if he could “catch me a negro daddy,” Perry replied, “That is what I am hoping.” Weeks later, Perry was driving an Uber in Austin, Texas, when he came upon a Black Lives Matter march. According to prosecutors, Perry ran a red light and drove his vehicle into the crowd, almost hitting several protesters. Activists gathered angrily around Perry’s car. Garrett Foster, a 28-year-old Air Force veteran who was openly carrying an AK-47 rifle, approached Perry’s window. Perry then shot Foster dead. At trial, Perry’s defense team alleged that Foster had pointed his rifle at the defendant. But witnesses testified that Foster never brandished his weapon, only carried it, which is legal in Texas. And Perry corroborated that account in his initial statement to the police, saying, “I believe he was going to aim at me. I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me.” A jury convicted Perry of murder last year. But this week, the governor of Texas used his pardoning power to release Perry from prison. In a statement, Abbott said, “Texas has one of the strongest ‘stand your ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive district attorney.” He noted that in the Lone Star State, a person is justified in using deadly force against another if they “reasonably believe the deadly force is immediately necessary” for averting one’s own violent death. The Texas governor argued that it was reasonable for Perry to believe his life was at stake since Foster had held his gun in the “low-ready firing position.” Yet this claim is inconsistent with Perry’s own remarks to the police, which indicated that Foster did not aim a rifle at his killer, but merely carried it. Needless to say, seeing a person lawfully carrying a firearm cannot give one a legal right to kill them. But pesky realities like this carry less weight than conservative media’s delusional grievances. Shortly after Perry’s conviction in April 2023, then-Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson aired a segment portraying Perry as a helpless victim of “a mob of rioters” and a “Soros-funded” district attorney. Carlson decried the jury’s verdict as a “legal atrocity” and lambasted Abbott for standing idly by while his state invalidated conservatives’ right to defend themselves. “So that is Greg Abbott’s position,” he said. “There is no right of self-defense in Texas.” The next day, Abbott pledged to work “as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sgt. Perry.” Republicans are making it clear they can’t be trusted to check Trump’s most lawless impulses During a second Trump presidency, the independent power of Democratic officials might limit the reach of his authoritarian machinations. A Democratic House or Senate would serve as a check on illiberal legislation, while blue states could leverage their own constitutional authority to impede legally dubious executive orders. But as Abbott’s conduct shows, we should not trust Republican politicians to defend the rule of law. Like Trump, many in the conservative movement believe that its supporters should be held to a more lenient legal standard than its enemies. And they also evince some sympathy for political violence aimed at abetting right-wing power. Crucially, this illiberal faction of the GOP seems to include some Supreme Court justices. To this point, the Roberts Court has checked some of Trump’s more egregious affronts to the constitutional order. Should the GOP secure the opportunity to build an even larger conservative majority, however, that could change. This week, Americans received a reminder of just how radical the Supreme Court’s most right-wing justices have become. In the weeks following the January 6 insurrection, die-hard Trump supporters across the country hung upside-down flags in protest of Biden’s supposed theft of the election. On Thursday, the New York Times reported that one such flag had hung outside the home of Justice Samuel Alito, even as he was presiding over judicial challenges to the 2020 election’s results. Alito claims he had no involvement in the flying of the flag, which his wife had hung upside down in response to “a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.” Notably, this explanation does not deny the political meaning of that symbol in January 2021. Alito joined Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch in dissenting from the court’s decision not to hear a challenge to election procedures in Pennsylvania. Thomas’s wife, the conservative activist Ginni Thomas, had also publicly signaled support for the January 6 demonstrators. If Trump secures the opportunity to appoint additional Supreme Court justices, it is all but certain that they will be at least as sympathetic to his extremism as Alito or the Thomas family. None of this means that Trump’s election would mark the end of the American republic. But it does suggest that both Trump and the conservative movement arrayed behind him pose an intolerable threat to the most liberal and democratic features of our system of government.vox.com
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The video where Diddy appears to attack Cassie — and the allegations against him — explained Sean “Diddy” Combs, pictured at Howard University in October, was accused of trafficking and rape a month later by singer Cassie in a civil lawsuit that later inspired other women to come forward. | Shareif Ziyadat/Getty Images for Sean “Diddy” Combs New footage seems to confirm some details of his ex-girlfriend’s lawsuit, as other cases against the rapper continue. With a violent 2016 surveillance video made public on Friday appearing to show rapper-mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs kicking, dragging, and throwing an object at his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura in the hallways of a luxury hotel, the public reckoning facing Diddy is reaching a new boiling point. The graphic video, obtained and published by CNN, seems to confirm some details alleged in Ventura’s November lawsuit against Combs. According to CNN, the footage was filmed on March 5, 2016, at a now-shuttered InterContinental hotel in Los Angeles. The tape appears to show Ventura, a singer who performs under the name Cassie, walking down a hallway toward elevators, and Combs running after her in a towel. He throws her to the ground and repeatedly kicks her, and then attempts to drag her down the hallway, presumably back to their room, though she frees herself. Later, he appears to throw a vase at Ventura. In her lawsuit, Ventura, who dated Combs and was signed to his label, alleged that he abused her, urged her to have sex with male sex workers while he filmed, and that he later raped her. That lawsuit included allegations of a 2016 incident at the InterContinental hotel. In a statement at the time of the suit, Combs’s attorney responded that, “Ms. Ventura has now resorted to filing a lawsuit riddled with baseless and outrageous lies, aiming to tarnish Mr. Combs’s reputation and seeking a payday.” But the publication of the video this week adds a layer of seeming corroboration to at least some of the accusations made against the rapper. Ventura’s case, settled one day after it was filed, set off a torrent of similar lawsuits, several of which include brutal and disturbing details. Plaintiffs state that Diddy — whose birth name is Sean Combs and who has also publicly gone by Puff Daddy, Puffy, and Love — raped them and, in some cases, trafficked them by coercing them to engage in sex with other men. Together, the cases have redirected public attention toward longstanding allegations of violence against Combs, leading some brands to cut ties with him and Hulu to scrap his upcoming reality show. Speculation around the accusations escalated as homes in Los Angeles and Miami Beach linked to Diddy were raided by federal authorities, who revealed that the raids were linked to an ongoing investigation into sex trafficking allegations. Combs has denied the allegations, saying in a December statement, “I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth.” After the February suit, a lawyer for Combs called Jones “nothing more than a liar who filed a $30 million lawsuit shamelessly looking for an undeserved payday.” Especially in the 1990s and 2000s, Diddy was a figure of enormous power, not just in hip-hop but in the business and entertainment worlds writ large. In recent months, however, multiple people have sued him, saying he used that influence and wealth to sexually victimize and, in some cases, traffic them, while avoiding consequences for decades. The cases have captured the public’s attention in part because Combs was such an influential executive and gatekeeper in music and fashion, yet one who had long been the subject of allegations of violence, including arrests. They are among the first major allegations in years against a major figure in the music industry, which many feel has failed to reckon with abuses of power, even at the height of the Me Too movement. Combs is just one of many powerful men who have evaded scrutiny but whose alleged past conduct is being revisited with fresh and more critical eyes — in some cases thanks to the landmark New York laws that have allowed people alleging sexual abuse to file civil lawsuits past the time period specified by the statute of limitations. Indeed, Combs is now drawing comparisons to R. Kelly, with frequent critic 50 Cent announcing that he will produce a series about Combs in the style of the bombshell docuseries Surviving R. Kelly, with the proceeds going to assault survivors. Dream Hampton, producer of Surviving R. Kelly, told the Times late last year that an accounting was arriving for the Bad Boy founder. “Puff is done,” she said. The suits against Combs also show that despite recent backlash, the Me Too movement and the legal and cultural changes that came with it have had an enduring impact. Even if allegations of sexual assault and harassment do not make daily headlines the way they did in 2017, the reckoning is ongoing — and no industry is likely to remain immune forever. Diddy built an empire across multiple businesses Combs is a producer and rapper who rose to be an influential figure across music, media, and fashion. He started Bad Boy Records in New York in 1993, when he was in his early 20s, and soon signed Notorious B.I.G., whose two albums helped define New York hip-hop in that era. Bad Boy grew into a multimillion-dollar business, and Combs produced iconic ’90s acts from Jodeci to Mary J. Blige. When Biggie was killed in 1997, Combs released a Grammy-winning tribute, “I’ll Be Missing You,” which “helped inaugurate a commercial boom in hip-hop that lasted until the end of the nineties,” according to Michael Specter of the New Yorker. Combs was also one of the first to blend the worlds of hip-hop, business, and luxury. His fashion label, Sean John, founded in 1998, became known for high-end menswear. He promoted brands of vodka and tequila and hosted exclusive white parties in the Hamptons with guests like Martha Stewart. Though no longer as central a figure as he was in the ’90s, Combs remains a rich and well-connected celebrity: Within a span of weeks last fall, he held a joint album release and birthday party attended by stars such as Naomi Campbell and Janet Jackson, performed for a sold-out crowd in London, and appeared at the homecoming celebration for his alma mater, Howard University, where he made a surprise $1 million donation. Samir Hussein/Getty Images for Sean “Diddy” Combs Diddy pictured at a performance in London in November. As Combs built his empire, however, he was accused of multiple acts of violence. In 1999, he was arrested for beating another executive with a chair, a phone, and a champagne bottle; he had to pay a fine and take an anger management class, according to the New Yorker. The same year, he was involved in a shooting at a club in Manhattan, where he was attending a party with his then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez; witnesses said they saw him with a gun, but he was ultimately acquitted after a public, much-watched trial. He has also been accused of threats and violence against women. In a 2019 interview, for example, his ex-girlfriend Gina Huynh said he had thrown a shoe at her and dragged her by the hair. But these reports have not received mainstream public attention — until now. Singer Cassie filed suit against Diddy in November In November, Cassie, whose real name is Casandra Ventura, sued Combs, alleging sexual assault and sex trafficking. In the suit, first reported by the New York Times, Ventura said she had experienced years of abuse from Combs, starting soon after she met him in 2005, when she was 19. She said that he beat her repeatedly, at one point kicking her in the face, and that later, in 2018, he raped her. She also said he trafficked her by coercing her to have sex with sex workers in different cities while he filmed and masturbated. She tried to delete the photos and videos afterward, but Combs retained access, she said in the suit, at one point making her watch a video she thought she had deleted. Ventura’s suit also said that Combs and his associates used his power and wealth to intimidate her into silence and compliance, with his employees threatening to damage her music career if she spoke out against him. In one particularly shocking detail, Ventura said Combs threatened to blow up the rapper Kid Cudi’s car because Cudi and Ventura were dating; the car later exploded. “This is all true,” a spokesperson for Kid Cudi told the Times of the car exploding. Leon Bennett/Getty Images Singer Cassie, pictured in 2018 in Los Angeles, sued Combs in a case made possible by New York laws including the Adult Survivors Act, which opened a one-year window to file civil lawsuits in cases of sexual abuse, even if the statute of limitations had expired. Through his lawyer, Ben Brafman, Combs accused Ventura of blackmail. “For the past six months, Mr. Combs has been subjected to Ms. Ventura’s persistent demand of $30 million, under the threat of writing a damaging book about their relationship,” Brafman said in the statement, which also accused Ventura of lying in her lawsuit to seek a “payday.” Ventura’s lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, said Combs had actually offered Ventura money for her silence, which she had declined. Ventura’s suit was settled for an undisclosed amount within a single day. The singer stated that she had “decided to resolve this matter amicably on terms that I have some level of control.” But Ventura’s decision to come forward publicly opened the floodgates, and more reports of assault and abuse began pouring out. Other people say Diddy harmed them Three other women soon filed suit against Combs. In the second suit, Joi Dickerson-Neal says he drugged and raped her in 1991. In the third, Liza Gardner says that in 1990, he coerced her into sex and choked her, causing her to lose consciousness. Jonathan Davis, a lawyer for Combs, said in a statement to the Times that Combs denied these allegations as well: “Because of Mr. Combs’s fame and success, he is an easy target for accusers who attempt to smear him.” In the fourth suit, the woman identified as Jane Doe says she was a junior in high school when she met then-Bad Boy president Harve Pierre and another Combs associate in Detroit. They convinced her to fly on their jet to New York, the suit says, where they and the rapper gave her drugs and alcohol and then violently raped her. “Ms. Doe has lived with her memories of this fateful night for 20 years, during which time she has suffered extreme emotional distress that has impacted nearly every aspect of her life and personal relationships,” the suit says. “Given the brave women who have come forward against Ms. Combs and Mr. Pierre in recent weeks, Ms. Doe is doing the same.” In response to that suit, Combs released a statement denying all reports of violence, calling them “sickening allegations” made “by individuals looking for a quick payday.” Pierre has also denied the allegations, saying in a statement to TMZ, “I have never participated in, witnessed, nor heard of anything like this, ever.” The women came forward last year because two New York laws — one of which paved the way for E. Jean Carroll’s successful lawsuit against Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation — opened limited windows of time in which people can file civil lawsuits alleging sexual abuse, even if the statute of limitations has passed. One of those windows closed in late November, explaining the flurry of complaints. While the suits mostly describe behavior the plaintiffs say happened years ago, the February filing by Rodney Jones Jr., known as Lil Rod, says that Combs subjected him to unwanted touching and attempted to “groom” him when they worked together on The Love Album: Off the Grid in 2022 and 2023. Jones says that at a party in 2023, he was forced to drink tequila mixed with drugs, then woke up “naked with a sex worker sleeping next to him.” He says that Combs offered money and threatened violence to get him to solicit sex workers and perform sex acts with them. Combs has denied Jones’s allegations. In a statement, Shawn Holley, a lawyer for Combs, said, “We have overwhelming, indisputable proof that his claims are complete lies.” In the wake of these civil lawsuits, raids in Los Angeles and Miami Beach in March have pointed to an apparent criminal investigation. According to the Times, the raids on homes connected to the rapper were part of an inquiry by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and agents with the Department of Homeland Security. Few details were available in the immediate aftermath, and lawyers for Combs have not yet responded to requests for comment from Vox or the Times. However, the raids suggest a potential new level in the Combs case, with law enforcement sources also telling the Los Angeles Times they were linked to sex trafficking allegations. Combs was rumored to have left the country on Monday after his private plane traveled to Antigua, but he was later spotted in the Miami-Opa Locka airport. Regardless of his whereabouts, the investigations in Los Angeles and Miami Beach have once again placed the rapper under intense public scrutiny. Is this the music industry’s Me Too moment? The growing number of reports, and their chilling details, have led companies and influential people in media and business to distance themselves from the rapper. Diageo, the beverage brand with which Combs partnered on vodka and tequila, removed his image from its website. Capital Preparatory Schools, a New York charter school network Combs helped expand, posted a statement on the school’s website saying it was cutting ties with him (though the statement was later removed). Combs also stepped aside as chair of Revolt, a TV network he helped start in 2013. The cases against Combs are coming to light against a backdrop of other accusations against major figures in music. In November, a woman sued Neil Portnow, former head of the Grammy Awards, saying he had drugged and raped her in 2018. The same month, a former employee sued music executive L.A. “Babyface” Reid, saying he sexually assaulted and harassed her, leading to irrevocable damage to her career in the music industry. They also occur at a time when Ye, a music and fashion mogul whose career has parallels with Diddy’s, has lost many of his brand partnerships after public antisemitic and racist statements as well as what many say was a years-long pattern of verbal abuse and harassment, which may have been kept quiet in part because partnering with him was so lucrative for brands. While the Me Too movement forced reckonings around sexual assault and harassment in industries from film to other media to restaurants in 2017 and 2018, many in the music business felt that its biggest players were relatively unscathed. R. Kelly, for example, faced few consequences until Hampton’s widely watched 2019 docuseries drew renewed attention to the accusations — despite repeated allegations that he’d had sexual contact with underage girls, several lawsuits, and even a 2008 criminal trial over child sexual abuse material. Many argued that the reason Kelly was given a pass for so long was that the women coming forward to report abuse by him were Black. In 2021, he was convicted of sex trafficking and sentenced to 30 years in prison; a second 20-year sentence was added the following year, with all but one year to be served concurrently with the first sentence. Three women stated publicly in 2017 that another influential music industry figure, Def Jam Recordings co-founder Russell Simmons, had raped them. Like Kelly, he was the subject of a documentary focusing on the allegations, though he has not faced charges. Now, Ventura and the other people filing suit are reporting violent rape, intimidation, and abuse by one of the biggest names in music, someone who symbolized the movement of hip-hop into both mainstream and high-end culture. Combs in his heyday was an icon of power and influence in music, fashion, and business, and the lawsuits represent a new willingness to call that power to account. They also serve as a reminder that the Me Too movement has made enduring changes, including influencing law and policy and creating a road map for survivors of assault to come forward and share their stories. Update, May 17, 3:05 pm ET: This story, originally published on December 20, 2023, has been updated to reflect recent developments, including the publication of a video appearing to show Sean “Diddy” Combs kicking and dragging singer Cassie Ventura.vox.com
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ChatGPT can talk, but OpenAI employees sure can’t Sam Altman (left), CEO of artificial intelligence company OpenAI, and the company’s co-founder and then-chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, speak together at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv on June 5, 2023. | Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images Why is OpenAI’s superintelligence team imploding? On Monday, OpenAI announced exciting new product news: ChatGPT can now talk like a human. It has a cheery, slightly ingratiating feminine voice that sounds impressively non-robotic, and a bit familiar if you’ve seen a certain 2013 Spike Jonze film. “Her,” tweeted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, referencing the movie in which a man falls in love with an AI assistant voiced by Scarlett Johansson. But the product release of ChatGPT 4o was quickly overshadowed by much bigger news out of OpenAI: the resignation of the company’s co-founder and chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, who also led its superalignment team, as well as that of his co-team leader Jan Leike (who we put on the Future Perfect 50 list last year). The resignations didn’t come as a total surprise. Sutskever had been involved in the boardroom revolt that led to Altman’s temporary firing last year, before the CEO quickly returned to his perch. Sutskever publicly regretted his actions and backed Altman’s return, but he’s been mostly absent from the company since, even as other members of OpenAI’s policy, alignment, and safety teams have departed. But what has really stirred speculation was the radio silence from former employees. Sutskever posted a pretty typical resignation message, saying “I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial…I am excited for what comes next.” Leike ... didn’t. His resignation message was simply: “I resigned.” After several days of fervent speculation, he expanded on this on Friday morning, explaining that he was worried OpenAI had shifted away from a safety-focused culture. Questions arose immediately: Were they forced out? Is this delayed fallout of Altman’s brief firing last fall? Are they resigning in protest of some secret and dangerous new OpenAI project? Speculation filled the void because no one who had once worked at OpenAI was talking. It turns out there’s a very clear reason for that. I have seen the extremely restrictive off-boarding agreement that contains nondisclosure and non-disparagement provisions former OpenAI employees are subject to. It forbids them, for the rest of their lives, from criticizing their former employer. Even acknowledging that the NDA exists is a violation of it. If a departing employee declines to sign the document, or if they violate it, they can lose all vested equity they earned during their time at the company, which is likely worth millions of dollars. One former employee, Daniel Kokotajlo, who posted that he quit OpenAI “due to losing confidence that it would behave responsibly around the time of AGI,” has confirmed publicly that he had to surrender what would have likely turned out to be a huge sum of money in order to quit without signing the document. While nondisclosure agreements aren’t unusual in highly competitive Silicon Valley, putting an employee’s already-vested equity at risk for declining or violating one is. For workers at startups like OpenAI, equity is a vital form of compensation, one that can dwarf the salary they make. Threatening that potentially life-changing money is a very effective way to keep former employees quiet. (OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.) All of this is highly ironic for a company that initially advertised itself as OpenAI — that is, as committed in its mission statements to building powerful systems in a transparent and accountable manner. OpenAI long ago abandoned the idea of open-sourcing its models, citing safety concerns. But now it has shed the most senior and respected members of its safety team, which should inspire some skepticism about whether safety is really the reason why OpenAI has become so closed. The tech company to end all tech companies OpenAI has spent a long time occupying an unusual position in tech and policy circles. Their releases, from DALL-E to ChatGPT, are often very cool, but by themselves they would hardly attract the near-religious fervor with which the company is often discussed. What sets OpenAI apart is the ambition of its mission: “to ensure that artificial general intelligence — AI systems that are generally smarter than humans — benefits all of humanity.” Many of its employees believe that this aim is within reach; that with perhaps one more decade (or even less) — and a few trillion dollars — the company will succeed at developing AI systems that make most human labor obsolete. Which, as the company itself has long said, is as risky as it is exciting. “Superintelligence will be the most impactful technology humanity has ever invented, and could help us solve many of the world’s most important problems,” a recruitment page for Leike and Sutskever’s team at OpenAI states. “But the vast power of superintelligence could also be very dangerous, and could lead to the disempowerment of humanity or even human extinction. While superintelligence seems far off now, we believe it could arrive this decade.” Naturally, if artificial superintelligence in our lifetimes is possible (and experts are divided), it would have enormous implications for humanity. OpenAI has historically positioned itself as a responsible actor trying to transcend mere commercial incentives and bring AGI about for the benefit of all. And they’ve said they are willing to do that even if that requires slowing down development, missing out on profit opportunities, or allowing external oversight. “We don’t think that AGI should be just a Silicon Valley thing,” OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman told me in 2019, in the much calmer pre-ChatGPT days. “We’re talking about world-altering technology. And so how do you get the right representation and governance in there? This is actually a really important focus for us and something we really want broad input on.” OpenAI’s unique corporate structure — a capped-profit company ultimately controlled by a nonprofit — was supposed to increase accountability. “No one person should be trusted here. I don’t have super-voting shares. I don’t want them,” Altman assured Bloomberg’s Emily Chang in 2023. “The board can fire me. I think that’s important.” (As the board found out last November, it could fire Altman, but it couldn’t make the move stick. After his firing, Altman made a deal to effectively take the company to Microsoft, before being ultimately reinstated with most of the board resigning.) But there was no stronger sign of OpenAI’s commitment to its mission than the prominent roles of people like Sutskever and Leike, technologists with a long history of commitment to safety and an apparently genuine willingness to ask OpenAI to change course if needed. When I said to Brockman in that 2019 interview, “You guys are saying, ‘We’re going to build a general artificial intelligence,’” Sutskever cut in. “We’re going to do everything that can be done in that direction while also making sure that we do it in a way that’s safe,” he told me. Their departure doesn’t herald a change in OpenAI’s mission of building artificial general intelligence — that remains the goal. But it almost certainly heralds a change in OpenAI’s interest in safety work; the company hasn’t announced who, if anyone, will lead the superalignment team. And it makes it clear that OpenAI’s concern with external oversight and transparency couldn’t have run all that deep. If you want external oversight and opportunities for the rest of the world to play a role in what you’re doing, making former employees sign extremely restrictive NDAs doesn’t exactly follow. Changing the world behind closed doors This contradiction is at the heart of what makes OpenAI profoundly frustrating for those of us who care deeply about ensuring that AI really does go well and benefits humanity. Is OpenAI a buzzy, if midsize tech company that makes a chatty personal assistant, or a trillion-dollar effort to create an AI god? The company’s leadership says they want to transform the world, that they want to be accountable when they do so, and that they welcome the world’s input into how to do it justly and wisely. But when there’s real money at stake — and there are astounding sums of real money at stake in the race to dominate AI — it becomes clear that they probably never intended for the world to get all that much input. Their process ensures former employees — those who know the most about what’s happening inside OpenAI — can’t tell the rest of the world what’s going on. The website may have high-minded ideals, but their termination agreements are full of hard-nosed legalese. It’s hard to exercise accountability over a company whose former employees are restricted to saying “I resigned.” ChatGPT’s new cute voice may be charming, but I’m not feeling especially enamored. A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!vox.com