Hello, everyone. It is Lizzie. I want to tell you a story about a time I did something incredibly stupid.

It was a couple of years ago, and I got an Instagram message from a woman I went to college with.

I didn't know her all that well, but enough to follow each other on social media.

She had DM'd me a link about her new business, which I clicked on and promptly got hacked.

My account was taken over by crypto scammers who started posting pictures of my kid and

somehow also links to invest in Bitcoin on top of them. I was locked out, the scammers tried to

scam my friends, the whole thing was a huge mess. And despite

emailing and emailing and following all the supposed right protocols, I could not get my

account back from meta. Until, I decided to make an episode about it and enlisted the help of my

colleagues and a great investigative tech reporter named Kirsten Grind. Making a journalistic

fuss got me my account back, but it also earned me tons of letters from listeners. People

who had had similar things happened to them, but had no recourse. And that was what we were

able to highlight. Meta was basically ignoring its users, please. And that is why I make this show, to figure out the places where tech bumps up against our lives and how it helps, how it hurts, how it frustrates us, and how these huge corporations are able to wield such massive power. But to be brutally honest, we cannot make this show without your help. We depend on

Slate Plus memberships. They fund our reporting. And right now, till the end of the year, we are offering

half off on a year-long membership. All you got to do is go to slate.com slash TBD Plus and enter the code TBD50.

That is slate.com slash TBD Plus on the code TBD50.

We will stick a link in the show notes to make it easier for you.

And I would really love for you to become a member so we can keep making these shows for you.

Thank you.

I want you to paint me a picture. If I were to walk into a Whole Foods in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania,

to get some just like regular Whole Foodsy groceries, could I? I mean, as of right now, absolutely.

Peyton Bagora knows grocery stores.

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