🆕 Never Post! Here’s Looking at You

Friends! Never Post is here again, fresh and ready for your ears.

Georgia talks with politics and internet reporter David Mack about whether disgraced politicians are attempting to launder their reputations on Cameo. Plus, Hans finds out what it feels like to answer an unanswerable question about how many cameras there are in the world. Also: the sounds of our collective TikTok Journey.

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Intro Links

• FCC -- Carr Welcomes Court Order Invalidating President Biden’s Plan to Expand Government Control of the Internet Through Title II Regulations
• MSN -- Brendan Carr is officially in charge of the FCC
• ALA -- Net Neutrality: An Intellectual Freedom Issue

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Cameo’s Reputation Machine

Find David:

• Bluesky
• Slate
• Rolling Stone
• Buzzfeed

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How Many Cameras Are There?

Segment Links:

• Archive.org -- Opening the Era of Outer Space
• Union of Concerned Scientists -- Satellite Database
• FAA -- Drones By the Numbers
• IHS Markit -- Video Surveillance Datasheet
• Allied Market Research -- Video Surveillance Market
• CNET -- Google Maps has now photographed 10 million miles in Street View
• NYC DOT -- Cameras List
• 404 Media -- Researcher Turns Insecure License Plate Cameras Into Open Source Surveillance Tool
• Electronic Frontier Foundation -- Atlas of Surveillance
• International Telecommunications Union -- Facts and Figures 2023
• Business Wire -- Amazon's Ring Remained atop the Video Doorbell Market in 2021
• Decision Research -- Psychic Numbing
• Daniel Västfjäll, Paul Slovic, Marcus Mayorga, Ellen Peters -- Compassion Fade: Affect and Charity Are Greatest for a Single Child in Need
• The Journalist’s Resource -- The effect of CCTV on public safety: Research roundup
• Ars Technica -- Omnipresent AI cameras will ensure good behavior, says Larry Ellison

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta.

Slowly the fog did what fog does, eventually: it lifted, the way
veils tend at some point in epic
verse so that the hero can

see the divinity at work constantly behind
all things mortal, or that's
the idea anyway, I'm not saying I do or don't

believe that, I’m not even sure that belief can change
any of it, at least in terms of the facts of how,
moment by moment, any life unfurls, we can
call it fate or call it just what happened…

Excerpt, Sing a Darkness, by Carl Phillips

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure

Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a podcast for and about the Internet. I am Jason Oberholtzer. Mike is out sick this week, so I am here to read you the news and to let you know that we have a splendid show for you this week. First up, Georgia talks with politics and Internet reporter David Mack about Cameo as a tool for reputation management or laundering, depending on how you look at it, used by politicians in disgrace. And then Hans finds out what it feels like to answer an impossible question.

Just how many cameras are there, like, in the world? But also, specifically, watching, recording, surveilling, you. But first, as it has now fallen on me to read you the news and I have promised to do so, a staggering amount of things have happened since we last spoke about the news together. Donald Trump became president of United States, Elon Musk sieg heil'd twice and somehow portions of the Internet found it within themselves to ask if sig heil is really a sig heil. TikTok was banned and then returned as a Stepford Wives version of itself.

And Mark Zuckerberg, rounding up the names that we have to say to describe what has happened to us, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would discontinue fact checking and no longer moderate posts which for instance referred to women as property or trans folk as mentally ill. So now, once again, we ask if you are still using Meta platforms, why? Oh, and just in case our stance has not been made clear enough given our past coverage, trans rights are human rights. Fix your heart or die.

But now, having caught us all up, this week in the news segment, we are going to cover one topic at length. A topic that became germane on Thursday, January 2nd when a US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati ruled that the FCC does not have the authority to reinstate net neutrality rules that were suspended, pending judicial review, back in August of last year. So with apologies to our sizable international audience, talking to a lot of places that aren't France right now, we're gonna talk about what all of this means and why it may be significant for everybody in the United States, not just the terminally online and not just people who fall left of center. Everyone, this is for you. Net neutrality is a doctrine, not a law.

A set of regulations enforced until this decision by the FCC, an independent regulatory body like EPA, the DOE, the FDA, etcetera. This is a set of regulations that had been advocated for for a long time and was finally instated under Obama as net neutrality, then repealed under Trump, reinstated under Biden, and now re repealed on the eve of Trump too. Net neutrality holds that Internet service providers must treat the information carried by the infrastructure of the Internet with, you're not gonna believe this, neutrality.

Oh. Oh.

This means, very simply, no charging less for certain streams of information, no charging more for others. No slowing down of certain streams arbitrarily or speeding up other streams. Sure. Seems simple enough, I imagine. Now the guidelines which allow for the enforcement of net neutrality also allow for other regulatory oversights, such as requiring ISPs to have robust cybersecurity, forcing accountability measures for outages, and protections over user data transmitted in the system, things that are arguably more important than the prevention of throttling, blocking, etcetera.

Now the weeds here, and welcome to them, are how the FCC was able to do this. What gave the FCC the ability to enforce these regulations was a reading of the Communications Act of 1934. This reading allowed them to interpret Internet infrastructure as a utility, you know, the things we all rely on, like water, gas, electricity, and to regulate it like a utility. And this was all humming along until last June when the Supreme Court overturned a 40 year old legal precedent called the Chevron deference. The Chevron deference allowed government agencies to interpret law and required courts to uphold and enforce those interpretations.

With the Chevron deference gone, the FCC has no standing to interpret the Communications Act of 1934 as being applicable to the Internet or so says the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. As an aside, it's likely the absence of the Chevron deference will be used to disempower multiple government agencies in the coming years. The EPA, the DOE, the FDA, and so on so on so on. Same playbook's available here, so why wouldn't it be used? The Trump administration will claim that these agencies have no ability to interpret and therefore enforce law.

So what happens now? It's hard to say, but, hey, here's some good news from the Internet service providers. Most ISPs claim that net neutrality actually was never needed. See, they want to provide the things it requires already. And what net neutrality really does is it stops them from innovating.

See, being classified as a utility, they say, means that there's so many more hurdles to jump over in order to improve services. And this, they say, is not in our consumer interest. They want so badly to make our services better, and yet we keep putting these hurdles in their way. These onerous hurdles. It's worth noting here that the United States, unlike many other countries, has no federal regulation on Internet access.

There are no laws which address availability, reliability, speed, service price, etcetera. Some states like California, Washington, and Oregon have their own laws which will remain in force after the federal net neutrality guidelines are struck down, but the rest of us are in the position of simply needing to trust that the telecom industry really wants to act in our consumer interest. I don't know if you have ever tried to call your local telecom provider and tried to accomplish anything that was in your best interest. But if you have, my inflection is perhaps painfully obvious here. We're also in the position of needing to trust Trump's FCC chair, Brendan Carr.

Carr, who recently resurrected federal lawsuits against broadcasters who were critical of Trump during his first run for president. Carr praised the end of net neutrality writing, I am pleased that the appellate court invalidated president Biden's Internet power grab by striking down these unlawful title 2 regulations. But the work to unwind the Biden administration's regulatory overreach will continue. What does that work look like? Only time will tell, but calling the enforcement of consumer protections a power grab is likely very telling.

I don't find it particularly challenging to imagine that this fiercely partisan pro industry administration will work primarily in the interest of the telecoms or to imagine that they might find a way to weaponize the lack of oversight to punish their perceived enemies, mostly because Carr is currently doing that right now with broadcast news. Hey. Here's some possibilities. Does the lack of net neutrality mean that service providers block access to Blue Sky because of post critical of their business practices or because it can't pay for prioritized access? Or here's another one.

Might they threaten to block YouTube, Instagram, podcast providers because of media that is critical of the administration? Some of these scenarios may rely, in part, on platforms being liable for the content they publish, which, as of right now, they are not. But some lawmakers and regulators wants to change this and have already been trying to change this, including, you guessed it, FCC chair, Brendan Carr. Alright. Maybe I'm catastrophizing.

But also maybe not, the actual heroes at the American Library Association write the following. "Allowing ISPs to determine which speech receives priority access and which speech can be delayed or even blocked based on commercial and financial interests impairs intellectual freedom. This leads inevitably to censorship of voices without economic or political power." One can't help but reflect on the era of free speech we were promised we were emerging into. Is there a way out?

Well, yes, but also no, because it relies on Congress. Our lawmakers could draft and pass federal laws which solidify these regulations as some states and other countries have done. But to call the house dysfunctional would be generous and not even begin to approach their historic inability to keep regulatory pace with technology. Our last landmark communications bill was nearly 30 years ago before almost everything you identify as part of the Internet, before GTA 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. Take, for example, the regulation around AI, which has been relegated to a brief executive order by Joe Biden, which Trump swiftly counteracted.

We simply don't get things done. What's at stake here is more than I think we can responsibly predict. The information environment is beyond polluted by partisan nonsense, AI slop, and misinformation peddled by actors foreign, domestic, witting, unwitting. Now the Internet as it is currently constructed is certainly a part of those problems, but looking at the broadcast ecosystem in comparison dominated by massive hegemonic corporations and politically motivated conglomerates, the Internet is also one of the few places you might actually find something resembling the truth. For many, it's certainly the only place to find community because access is standardized.

Distribution of information is not costly. That access is, in a lot of ways, the poison tree, but it's also, in a lot of ways, the nourishing fruit. To steal a line for a moment, the Internet truly is the cause of and solution to all of life's problems. The Internet's very ambivalent nature is actually a reason to fight for it and push it towards ecumenism. By restricting, tolling, complicating the access to the Internet, by making it more tiered, more hierarchical than it already is, we run the risk of hastening its descent into an environment polluted like the broadcast environment.

And then, what do we have left? Like, not nothing exactly, but nothing obvious, certainly nothing powerful, certainly nothing resembling a blissful new utopian era of free speech. Oh, we have finally arrived. So what could you do? Now this is where I'm supposed to tell you you can call your reps, and, I mean, you can.

You can call your reps. You can tell them this is important to you at the state level, at the federal level. You can call your ISPs and remember, they have promised that they're keeping our interests at heart. And you can tell them you've got your eye on them, and maybe it's an empty threat as most of us already live in an effective monopoly with regard to access, but it's something. You can also call your city or your community groups and ask them what local mesh networks are available.

Who runs them? How can they be expanded? How can access be expanded? How can it be simplified? Are there volunteer opportunities?

Connecting a community is powerful, even if it's local, especially if it's local. And our communities need our support to make these networks robust in the face of both the political climate and the actual climate. As in so many things these days, increasingly distributed problems require increasingly local solutions. So good luck out there. We're here for you, and we would love to hear from you as you figure out what solutions work for you and your communities.

And that's it. That's the news. Asked and answered. Next up, you'll hear from Georgia and David on the topic of Cameo. But first, we attempted to capture the feeling of those moments where TikTok died, remained dormant, and came back to life again.

We just keep scrolling, right, until we until we can't scroll anymore? I'm so confused.

Goodbye, TikTok. My friend, my friend, my friend, my friend.

I will be watching TikTok as often as I fucking please over the next few days. Like, I don't care if, like, I don't get a wink of sleep. 24 hours of screen time a day.

If TikTok gets banned, I'm not downloading a new app. I'll meet you guys in the Neopet forums like God intended.

You don't understand. It's a perfect opportunity. Post cringe. Post cringe now.

Okay. This is selfish and I promise that I am sad and mad about all the non selfish reasons that TikTok is going away. But I am really gonna miss TikTok because the Instagram reels comments are just, like, really fucking horrible. Fuck. I hate that this is true, but they make me sad.

Regardless of where everything goes, I just wanna say thank you. This app has changed my life in so many ways.

I feel like when I post a video to TikTok, it feeds it to people who are actually gonna like it and, like, relate to it. But when I post on Instagram, it just feeds it to people who are going to just be heinously mean.

I'm gonna say all the words that I think TikTok would not want me to say on here because it's our last day on TikTok. Kill, kill, kill, murder, murder, kill, murder, pain, kill, kill, kill, die, die, die, die, die. Fuck.

If TikTok goes away, I go away from all social media.

Keep scrolling. Keep scrolling. Keep scrolling. Scroll. Scroll.

Scroll. We have to watch every single video by tonight. You guys keep scrolling, please.

Thank you for helping me realize that this was my purpose.

I'm gonna have to rewire my brain to read posts. I'm gonna have to read what people think instead of having a video on while I'm brushing my teeth like it's a podcast. Man. Oh my god. This sucks.

I had an idea for something that we could do because we're both on computers right now.

Yeah.

Why don't we both pull up Cameo

Mhmm.

And just see who's on there?

Let's have a look.

A couple weeks ago, I talked to David Mack. He's a former senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News and more recently has been featured at Slate, New York Magazine, and Rolling Stone. He often covers American politics and the way politics play out online. And I got him on a call because I wanted to talk about Cameo.

Top 10 on Cameo, James Buckley, an actor from the In Betwee Us, only charging $50.

Okay.

I don't know who that is. Jon Gruden, former NFL coach, don't know who that is. Neil Newborn, don't know who that is.

Oh, no.

Sweet yet, don't know who that is.

I will say number 5, Alice Elm, I do know who this is.

I'm looking at actors, and we have a pretty wild array here. I mean, we've got Chuck Norris for $450. Cameo is a very simple premise. Pay a celebrity to make a personalized video. The celebrities decide how much they'll charge for these videos and Cameo takes a 25% cut no matter what.

That means that the cost of these videos can range wildly. $50, $450. Tom Felton, the actor who plays Draco Malfoy, charges $599. The most popular kinds of cameos are birthday messages, pep talks, or general congratulations on life events. There are some prestige actors on the platform, but they're in the minority.

Some of the most popular people on Cameo are viral of the moment celebrities like TikTokers and reality TV stars, and another camp which the site refers to as nostalgia talent, a retired football player, that guy from that show you watched as a kid, or Lance Bass.

These are people who, while you would call them famous, you probably wouldn't call them working actors. Right? These are people who you certainly look at and you know who they are, but we also don't see them on TV every night.

So in general, the highest performing creators on Cameo are comfortably c or maybe d list celebrities, niche talent. But within the last, oh, year or so, another subset of creators has become very popular on Cameo.

You always slay, so I want you girls to keep serving it up. You are going to slay the boots house down next year because you're just gonna give him the charisma, unique nerve, and talent as RuPaul always says, and you're gonna go and do great things.

That is George Santos, the disgraced Republican congressman from New York who was expelled from his position after being charged with wire fraud and identity theft. On Cameo, for $250, you too could receive a video of him telling you to slay the house down boots. George Santos joined Cameo 3 days after losing his job on the hill in December 2023 and he's not the only one to follow this playbook.

Happy birthday and Merry Christmas to Jimmy Pickle from Trent, Sally, George, Virginia and me, Matt Gaetz.

Matt Gaetz, alleged pedophile and Trump's former attorney general nominee also charges $250 per cameo. He joined the platform the day after stepping down. And in a way, this really shouldn't be surprising.

Well, the world of politics is full of just as many has beens. Right? And is full of just as many washed up people, people who are out of a job. And in many cases, these politicians were probably making a lot less money, than these actors were. So, that's you know, you can obviously see the appeal on their end.

Again, here's some easy money. But I think the bigger point and the point of our discussion is the fact that, especially today, the world of politics and entertainment are 1 and the same, really, in many ways, especially in on the conservative right, the new conservative right. We're seeing politics and celebrity, combine in really interesting new ways that have completely upended politics as we know it.

It's not unusual to see a freshly disgraced politician gravitate toward entertainment media as a way of distracting from his public embarrassments. There seems to be this PR playbook that dictates that if you want the general public to hopefully forget about your recent career whoopsie, you go on some glitzy reality competition show and do a little dance. Sometimes, like, literally.

Dancing the salsa with his partner Lindsay, it's Sean Spicer.

Shortly after quitting his job as Trump's press secretary amid the controversial appointment of Anthony Scaramucci as communications director, Sean Spicer went on Dancing with the Stars. He actually did pretty well too. He placed 6th, getting eliminated after subpar tango and foxtrot performances.

Dancing with

the Stars is a show all about the promise of transformation. In her piece Reality Check, Dancing with the Stars and the American Dream, writer Juliette McMainz explains that the show comfortably fits into this narrative that growth is achieved through hard work. The titular American dream. There's a reason that unlikely contestants, politicians, professional athletes, actors pair up with professional dancers. There's a reason that at the beginning of every episode, viewers watch b roll of these celebrities struggling through their routines only to show off the perfected version during the competition itself.

As McMains writes quote, crucial to the fantasy is the assurance that anyone can imagine him or herself in the protagonist role, unquote. It's aspirational and it brings you closer to these celebrities because you're rooting for them. You want them to win. So it's easy to imagine why someone like Sean Spicer might find Dancing with the Stars attractive. It's a show with a baked in redemption arc.

But now, the trend du jour for these politicians isn't going on a network show that has perfect lighting and the promise of a cash prize. It's cameo, a platform that is solidly unglamorous. As far as I can tell, Matt Gaetz records almost all of his cameos in his own house in sweatpants. George Santos records his videos in his car. There's nary a sequin to be seen.

No spotlight to step into. Cameo creates this connection between you and a celebrity not through rooting for them to win something, but through a kind of performance of camaraderie that is extremely informal.

It's as close as you're ever gonna get to FaceTiming them. That obviously is a deeply intimate act. There are I I don't even answer FaceTime for many of my friends. I don't I don't wanna see I don't wanna see your face. I especially don't want you to see mine. But,

I would say that, you know, you're feeling like you're getting a video from someone. It it you're creating that instant connection.

This is a connection that's totally stripped of any professionalism. If you're a politician who has spent your entire career wearing suits to work every day and speaking formally in front of Congress, going on cameo is like a tonal 180. That sheen of self seriousness is completely obliterated and in its place is what? A video of yourself giving a pep talk in your workout clothes? Being a politician, even a former politician on Cameo seems to me like a massive l to your cultural standing.

But clearly, these politicians or their handlers see some kind of merit here. So, does Matt Gaetz giving a stranger a pep talk in his sweatpants actually help his image?

I don't think it helps him in a if you're thinking about a sort of political recovery way. Right? If we're trying to say that he's trying to get back into politics, I don't think he's winning votes here. This is easy money to be made, and, I think that that's probably his main motivation here. But let's try to be specific about the kinds of people that are ordering these cameos.

Right? You've got on the one hand certainly, Matt Gaetz superfans, MAGA superfans who may be wanting that happy birthday message on a genuine level. They may wanna hear from him. They may be a fan of his.

But MAGA Republicans aren't the only people who might shell out $250 for Matt Gaetz.

What's more interesting to me are the people who might be ordering something like this purely, for entertainment value and as a sort of joke. Right? It's inherently funny, right, that this person, whoever they may be, is taking time out of their day to wish you, you know, best wishes in exchange for money. There's something obviously very funny about that. And I think that is further amplified when we're talking about, especially these disgraced politicians like George Santos, like Matt Gaetz, who are sort of washed up onto this platform.

I've not would not be surprised at all if many of the people ordering George Santos or Mac Gates videos were not MAGA at all, were even Liberals who are ordering these, because there's a huge entertainment value.

For people who hate Sean Spicer, it might be ironic and funny to watch him sweat through a sloppy kickball change, but Dancing with the Stars still has this production value that Cameo totally rebukes. For someone who genuinely wants a happy birthday message for Matt Gaetz, a Cameo feels more personal. And for someone who wants to force Matt Gaetz to say something ridiculous for money, the pointedness of that also feels more personal. David explained to me how no matter why you're requesting a cameo, the act of doing that is connecting you to the person making the video. Even for a total of 45 seconds, this celebrity feels like a real person, someone who acknowledges your existence or pretends to.

It is both authentic and completely inauthentic. Right? Matt Gaetz has no idea what you look like, has no idea who you are really, spent all of well, you can imagine 60 seconds thinking about what he was gonna say to you and filmed this maybe in 1 or 2 takes. So it is totally inauthentic, but, of course, as you said, it feels authentic or it feels there's an element of it being tailor made and customized just for you, which might be enough for many people. And I just think that's so interesting.

The the way in which we consume self facing video now, especially in the last 5 years since TikTok and since Instagram live, right, have completely transformed this way of communicating online. And it's almost like the more sort of real and rugged and natural, the better. When you think about an AOC Instagram, right, you're thinking about her going live live on Instagram at 11 PM at night, talking about something that's happened. She's answering questions live. You you know, she gets tens of thousands of views, 100 of thousands, connecting with people, answering questions.

It has the feeling of someone talking to a politician without them with the ma without the media in the way. Right? There's no filter. You you you get to ask the questions. You get to see them struggle or politician being a politician, right?

If I could distill the experience of watching a cameo to a single sentence, it would be, "oh, hey, it's that guy." Like, that's it. You can intone that sentence with genuine excitement or ironic humor or total disgust or whatever you want, but the point of a cameo is literally just that this is a famous person talking to you. And it's perfect for people who have spent their entire career sidling up to and mimicking the ultimate celebrity grifter turned political figure, Donald Trump.

I think that speaks to the nature of our politics today where it is filled with people who do not care about policy, who do not care about solutions to things, and are purely interested in celebrity, not even power. I don't think the goal here for these politicians on Cameo is to humanize them. I think it is about creating a kind of one on one connection for money. Right? That it is a clearly about a a sort of tailor made, message for someone in exchange for for money.

I don't think, you know, even if you are a a super fan getting one of these messages, deep down, you understand the contract that's been made here. Right? That Nat Gates or George Sandoz or Sarah Palin doesn't really care about your birthday. They are doing this because your friend has paid them to do this. Right?

It's it's designed to bring a smile and a laugh to to you, you know, to you. It's not designed to make you think of them as any more human.

The politicians in Trump's orbit have learned the value of making it onto a screen of any size for any reason for as long as you possibly can. And what's a better platform to do that than Cameo where you can crank out 50 videos a day from the comfort of your own home? To put it plainly, the cultural L that these politicians are taking by making happy birthday videos on Cameo, that's the point. That's how Cameo does the work to whitewash the reputations of George Santos, Matt Gaetz and whoever comes next. It's the performance of self awareness, a kind of, yeah, you got me.

I'm a stinker, but you gotta love me, cheated toward anyone who will play along. The reason why you think it's worthwhile to buy a cameo from Matt Gaetz doesn't really matter if the result remains the same which is giving Matt Gaetz $250. You're still reminding people that he exists and so long as there are people who are willing to fork up the cash, this is just going to keep happening.

You and I are talking right now as Trump's defense secretary nomination, Pete Hegseth. Hegseth. Hegseth. Hegseth. My gosh.

Name's blanking me. Mister Fox News is, appearing before the senate committee, and I fully expect that if he doesn't get that job, you can expect to see him on Cameo in a couple of weeks. Same for anyone who misses out, in that world. It's an easy way to continue to to bubble up online and continue to sort of to cash in.

Yeah. I mean, you're right. And I think I think there's something sort of uniquely sinister about basically footing the bill for someone like George Santos, but as a joke? Because you're still doing it.

Yes. I think a lot of people know that deep down, but probably don't want to think about it.

A 1,000,000 thank yous to David Mack for talking with me about this and for traversing the labyrinth of Kameo with me. It should go without saying that you shouldn't spend money on Matt Gaetz even as a joke, but like, come on. Don't do that. But I am curious where else you see this dynamic play out where distraction is used both as a tool for whitewashing and for cashing in. So, let me know.

The links for how to reach us are in the show notes.

I joined the Chinese app, Xiaohangshu, Xiaozhongshu. Still working on the pronunciation.

And it has been an absolute wild ride. There is a huge group chat filled with lesbians from around the world on Red Note.

Going to Red Note is a bad idea.

I just downloaded Red Note and all I can say is that Instagram is gonna go out real sad.

Ni hao fine shit.

These n****s are light years ahead of us. First thing I see on this fucking app is Luigi content and fine shit throw in fits.

If you're going over to Red Note, remember, that's not our home. Peachy.

Used to be famous on TikTok. Please. Me, Kerrigan, Swag Lord. Remember?

Great news to all my fans. I'm now able to post here on Red Note.

I don't speak Chinese.

I was on Red Note for all of 5 minutes before getting serenaded in my DMs.

I downloaded Red Note so you didn't have to. Let me tell you, I've been scrolling for 45 minutes. They ate us up.

So, pay attention, TikTok refugees. Here are some things you need to know about this app. 1st, yes, we can be famine in the club. Nobody's trying to start a war here even though you show up in

my living room without any invitation, but Chinese people still welcome all of you. Why? Because we're just that. Right? Okay?

The best part is I don't even gotta introduce these n****s to communism.

Alright.

Recently, we all had a holiday break and I did two things over that break. I'm gonna show you. That gave me a lot of feelings about photos.

Okay. Come on. Where are we doing?

Okay. Okay. Here we go. Here we go.

This is a secret recording that I made of me and my mom and her husband while we play GeoGuessr, which we played on and off through my whole visit.

Oh, well

We've been here before.

We've been here.

Geoguessr is a game that uses Google Maps and it plunks you down in Google Street View somewhere in the world. A clock counts down and you have to figure out where in the world you are.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Okay. There you go.

Hello.

Spanish.

Part of the appeal is that GeoGuessr could drop you anywhere in the world that Google has been.

I think I figured it out.

Did you?

What is that crop in there?

Oh flag!

You'll be in a city looking for signs, street, traffic, building to figure out where you are. It'll drop you in the road in a dense forest, or on the side of a mountain, or an unbroken stretch of the Australian outback where there is nothing to tell you where you are. It puts you in places that feel like there should not be photos of this.

This is just a gravel long gravel road in the woods. There's no-

Oh, I have big buildings.

What?

And now, here's me in the most relaxed time of my year lounging, goofing off with my family, using those photos from all around the world for fun, and I just kept thinking all of these images. That's amazing. How many cameras are there, like, in the world? I realize it's not a straightforward question. I mean, how do we define camera? How do we measure how many there are? Our answer here is gonna be more of a gesture I think than an answer, but the point isn't really an answer.

Vibes are cool.

To help, I have a fact check bot that will complicate things when the data is a little

Incomplete.

First, we look up, as we've been doing for nearly 80 years now.

The greater the rocket size, the larger the satellite that can be flown into space. Telescopes, cameras, geographical spotting devices, and hundreds of other instruments riding in future satellites may lift the veil from the universe.

The union of concerned scientists, amazing, keeps such a cool database tracking more than 75 100 satellites that are all currently circling Earth. Now, not all of them point towards Earth but most do and many of those are equipped with high resolution cameras.

How many?

Not quite sure, but the ones that have them can take a lot of photos.

Is the Hubble Space Telescope higher than that?

Oh, that's true. Yeah. Hubble is farther into space and the International Space Station is too. Oh, actually, the Mars rovers. Right? Those had cameras and the messenger cameras, they passed Mercury. Actually, the farthest camera out there is Voyager 1 which just left the solar system entirely in 2015. So, yeah. Okay. There are more space cameras than I remembered.

Down in our atmosphere, there are spy planes.

We genuinely did not figure out how many there were.

Below them and just above us, we have low level drones. The Federal Aviation Administration currently has more than 1,000,000 drones registered in the US.

How many have cameras?

That's unclear. Actually, I wonder how many unregistered drones there are.

Not sure. They're not registered.

Lowering our gaze again to a human size level, we see buildings covered in, cameras outside and in. The analytics firm IHS Market estimated that about 10,000,000 professional security cameras were shipped globally in 2,006. In 2023, they estimated there are more than 1,000,000,000 security cameras in the world. That's billion with a b. About half of those actually are in China.

And as lenses get cheaper and cameras get smarter and more connected, the estimates from Allied Market Research predict that that market gonna grow about 13% every year through 2032. Jumping from buildings to street level, we see streets, the domain of GeoGuessr, the arteries of the automotive hegemony, which were fully mapped by 2019, which was the year that Google claimed its cars had photographed 10,000,000 miles in street view, and that it had, quote, mapped out the parts of the world where 98% of people live, End quote. Bully for you, Google. On those streets are traffic and the cameras that watch it. The New York City Department of Transportation lists 932 traffic cameras, each of which are broadcasting images live to the Internet. You could go watch any of them right now.

I see a car. There's another car. A person. Hey, look. There's Mike.

Mike! This is repeated across the world. Not Mike, the cameras. China is estimated to have more than half a billion facial recognition traffic cams all networked to develop a database that is designed to recognize any citizen within 3 seconds. Then there are the license plate cameras.

404 media has been recently reporting on how poorly secured data from some license plate cameras can be turned into an open source stream that allows anyone to track a vehicle anywhere in real time.

If you're in the US and wanna see what tools police are using to photograph you, the Electronic Frontier Foundation keeps an interactive map of police surveillance tools at the Atlas of Surveillance.

Included in that database is information on which police wear body cams. In my little suburban town alone, there are 63 police body cams. Wait. Wait. Wait. Hang on. Let's go back to the street. I just remembered dash cams, built in, clipped on. There are backup cams, door cams, mirror cams. Cars are filthy with cameras these days.

Okay. Back to what we wear or carry. Phones. This is a big one, folks. The International Telecommunications Union says that 78% of the world's population over the age of 10 owns a phone.

Calculating, that gives us around 6 and a half billion phones on the planet. Some of those, most of those have more than one camera and phones bring those cameras everywhere that streets don't. Artificial reality games like Pokemon Go, users can wander around pointing their cameras in pedestrian covered indoor spaces where other cams might not see. Speaking of indoor spaces, those phones live with us every day in our houses along with laptops and tablets, dog and cat cams, smart TVs, robo vacuums, ring cams.

In 2021 alone, business wire estimated that there were 12,000,000 video doorbells sold.

Estimated because that's private data. That's corporate information. Nearly all of the commercial products are like that. Probably tens or 100, question mark, of 1,000,000 sold, but only Amazon knows how many. And Amazon ain't saying. I mean, finding these numbers is just

Murky.

Yeah. I need to take a walk.

Woah. Okay. Minnesota in January. It is cold. So I was right about it being difficult to know how many cameras there are.

But I think we can take some big swing estimates here. Let's take our base number, the number of phones that are currently in the world. That's about 6.5 billion cameras. You add 100 of millions of laptops and tablets, the estimated 1,000,000,000 security cameras, couple 100 more million traffic cams, police cameras. I think it's easy

to make a conservative baseline guess of 10,000,000,000 cameras, which is more than 1 per person on earth. Maybe there are less. I think probably there are more, but does it even really matter whether there are 8,000,000,000 or 10,000,000,000 or 12,000,000,000 cameras? Because this brings me to a new question, which is why am I not feeling alarmed that no matter what, it is a genuinely huge number? Why do I feel apathy about that?

Then I'm just like, yeah. Okay. Well, humans, we're really bad at big numbers. And one of the reasons for this is that we think logarithmically and not linearly. We think of numbers and ratios not absolutes.

And that allows us to more easily make sense of groups of numbers especially when they're smaller numbers. So, for example, it's more important for me to quickly and accurately assess the danger, are there 3 or are there 4 lions in the grass over there than it is for me to know exactly if there are 75 or a 100 antelope on the hill over there. It's the same intuitive ratio, just very different actual numbers, especially when you scale that up and up and up, which means intuitively we live at a smaller scale or what I like to call a human sized scale. I don't have anything in my life that I can look at and be like, well, that's what 1,000,000,000 looks like without it all kind of, like, melting together into one thing. Like, this is one snowbank.

Right? Not 1,000,000,000,000 snow crystals. I can probably see, what, a 1000000000 pine needles on that bank of trees over there, but that is not what my brain computes. I don't intuitively calculate in the billions. And this also makes sense on an emotional level because of something called compassion fade or sometimes psychic numbing.

So we care about a single instance, one infraction, one risk. A murder is a tragedy. But studies have shown that as soon as we understand that there have been even just 2 murders, our brain does this shift. The tragedy has doubled. There are 2 instead of 1, but our compassion does not double alongside it.

Three murders, the ratio goes down even more than that. That's psychic numbing. As the threats grow in number, our concern flattens. It's the same for lies, for misinformation, and for cameras that are taking your image. So a single instance of someone standing over there taking my picture like that guy who's walking his dog without my consent feels like it would be a sinister violation.

It would keep me up at night. I would be upset by this. The idea of thousands of cameras constantly filming me without my direct consent just feels like a Tuesday. Okay. It is cold. I'm going back in.

So, no. I am not aghast at 10,000,000,000 cameras. I am not shocked. I am calm. I am numb, and I am... entertained by the images they generate?

What about the CCTV?

Can you check the CCTV up on the smart board for me? Enhance it.

Enhance then forward frame by frame. Freeze and enhance.

Enhance. CCTV. Oh, wow.

There's a competition show on British TV that's called Hunted, where people are on the run from a team trying to find them using CCTV, ANPR, and all of the other tools labeled, quote unquote, powers of the state, which is it's actually really a fun show to watch. And if not entertained, are we empowered? Citizen surveyors record on behalf of the victimized. I live in the Twin Cities and the world would never have known about George Floyd or Philando Castile if Darnella Frazier and Diamond Reynolds had not taken out their phones and used their cameras. And if not empowered, are we safe?

Even though studies show that it's unclear whether CCTV and surveillance cameras actually increase safety in urban areas, the reaction to them and the way that we are often sold them is emotional. You can think of it as safety washing or I call it police washing. It feels like it'd be true that we are all safer with all these cameras around and those feelings are what matter. This is what Larry Ellison, octogenarian CEO of Oracle, is enthusiastically banking on when a few months ago he said that in his ideal world, everything is filmed, and AI is brought in to make sense of that crush of footage. That quote, citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on. End quote.

I don't think that this just happened to us. This apathy was bought by a 1000000000 little moments of convenience, of amenity, of fun. This apathy was nourished by a mythology of fear and of safety. This apathy was flooded in by numbers that I cannot easily find and that just make me numb.

And this apathy, it takes work. It takes constant work to clear away. Doing this research, I was poking around and I found a video. It's from April 2006 and it's a news piece on the New York City police installing 3, 3, 3 surveillance cameras in lower Manhattan to quote combat street crime and terrorism. And this video is it's kinda cool and a little surreal because it was made by the AP.

So there's no newscaster narration. This is how they do their videos. It just has b roll and ambi sound, and then the local newscaster is supposed to read the script copy in their own voice to localize it. So you just see and hear a wide shot of a New York City street corner with people walking, and that cuts to a close-up of a camera on a light pole, and then a closer one of the lenses in its plastic bubble. And then, suddenly, in a blue knit cap and a red mesh basketball tee, this mustachioed guy appears.

Good. When is it gonna stop? I put up a camera here. What's next? In my bedroom? On the roofs? And that's that you gotta have things to treat people correctly.

I look at the copy and I read that this man is named Ocasio Glenn, local resident. Ocasio lived in a world where that felt inconceivable. It felt scary, invasive.

Anymore because people are afraid.

I lived in that world too. 2006, I was a full on adult in that world. And having the invitation to place myself back there, I can remember the tension following 911. But I can also remember that uncomfortable feeling of seeing those mobile police camera units just staring down. I remember how weird it felt when someone would shoot video on their phone in public because we weren't used to it yet.

It looked weird. It wasn't a part of the body language of our time yet. And I remember realizing that when I rented an Airbnb, there could be cameras hidden kinda anywhere. And here I am, less than 20 years later, so inundated that I can't muster any feelings but complete acceptance? Part of it is overwhelm, and part of that is just feeling like everything is a camera at this point. Even without my picture being taken I am always being watched. What I watch, what I listen to, what I buy and when I consume it. These images are just more data that I don't control.

Over the holiday break, I did something else besides play Geoguessr. I went to my local library and I rented DVDs. I turned on vinyl records. I sat on the couch and I read books on paper. Those are things that I do pretty frequently anyways, but because I was working on this story, it just felt so different to do those activities. These decidedly offline untrackable activities.

No one knew which songs I played or how many episodes I watched, which felt warm. It felt safe. It felt a little sneaky. Definitely personal.

I can't operate outside of surveillance at this point, but I also don't need to be numb to it. Volume and convenience do not have to mean acceptance. I was surprised by what I had gotten used to. And I don't know if we're already cooked, but I do know that I'm at least aware that there is heat all around and that I need to keep watch on that.

Thank you to my mom, Cathy, and her husband, John. I did did get their permission to use my secret recordings of GeoGuessr. I am not surveilling them. And if you feel like counting cameras is a thing that you may have some skill in and want to do, I would still love to know if there is an actual number that anyone can get to. So you can look in the show notes and you can see some of the research that I did, add your own and let me know if you can come up with any better number than I did. Everything is in the show notes.

Wait. What? We're back. We're back. Okay.

Cool. We're going, boyly. Back to my TikTokin'.

Are we back, baby? That was traumatic. What we just went through was trauma. Right? Right?

I don't trust it.

Do you guys see this?

The pathetic, moronic, motherfucking messages that we woke up to from TikTok, like, thanks to president Trump, but I bring it it's like it's like TikTok is our parents and Trump is Santa. And, like, TikTok's like, hey, like, look what Santa did last night. Hey. Why did you have to act like it was a last minute, like, magical thing that Trump brought in the middle of the night and then we go under the tree and we're all supposed to be, like, shitting ourselves and running around and be like, Santa's the best. No. Santa's not the best.

You have got to be you have got to be kidding me. Absolutely not.

That's the show we have for you. We'll be back in the main feed next week with a mailbag featuring the thoughts, opinions, and observations of all of you sent to us via voice message, voice memo in our air table, or email. So if you have anything that is bouncing around your head that the last couple episodes of Never Post has made you consider, please do send it to us before next Monday when we record because we would love to respond to your brilliance. We are also rolling out new membership tiers starting in February, 4 dollars a month for everything we have made and will make for you, our members. That's extended cuts of segments we do here, more in-depth discussions with the experts we talk to, silly little sideshows, interesting little diversions, odd pieces of sonic ephemera, whatever we can think to put in your pocket for the road that you might like.

There are still a few more days left in January to join us at one of the original membership tiers, higher than $4, and become a part of the show's history and give us a little more money which would be fun, but it's also totally fine to wait until the clock ticks us through into February and it is $4 a month for everything for everybody. Slowly, the fog did what fog does eventually. It lifted. The way veils tend to at some point in epic verse, so that the hero can see the divinity at work constantly behind all things mortal. Or that's the idea anyway.

I'm not saying I do or don't believe that. I'm not even sure that belief can change any of it, at least in terms of the facts of how, moment by moment, any life unfurls. We can call it fate or call it just what happened. Excerpt, Sing a darkness by Karl Phillips. Never post producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the mysterious Doctor First Name Last Name.

Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholzer. Hey, that's me. The show's host, get well soon, bud, is Mike Rugnetta. Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure.