CanCon Podcast Ep. 104: #weneedboth, but not like this

We all know the aphorism about where good intentions get you. Without paying close attention to where we’re headed, and doing the required work, even the best us can look up and find ourselves a long way from where we thought we’d be.

Members of the Canadian tech and business community have been signing the #weneedboth pledge, claiming the need for rich and inclusive conversations about gender diversity in tech. But what are these tech luminaries actually pledging to do, and why does the whole thing read so… gendered? Maybe Canadian tech should spend less time making pledges and more time acting on them.

And now for something completely different: porn. Porn has long been at the forefront of cutting-edge tech, whether or not we actually want to admit it. Now, the porn industry (and all those ‘social media platforms’ that rely so heavily on porn for traffic) is banding together to stop ‘deepfakes’ porn. Why is this important? For one, deepfakes porn (and the technology behind it) is horrifying. More importantly, this isn’t about porn; it’s about a battle for truth on the Internet.

What happens when the technology to create deepfakes videos becomes democratize like real videos were with YouTube and smartphones? We live in a world where your digital representation is you. Even if it’s not real. What happens when you can’t tell the real from the fake anymore? Will anyone care?

Join us as the CanCon crew – Erin Bury, Managing Director of Eighty-Eight; Nora Jenkins Townson, Bright + Early founder; Rob Kenedi, TWG’s General Manager in New York; and Douglas Soltys, BetaKit Editor-in-Chief – pledges to deliver at least one good podcast per week.