Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget Todd
Speaker 1: and this is there are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: Black women and other marginalized folks on Twitter have been
Speaker 1: speaking off about things like harassment on the platform for
Speaker 1: a really long time, but for a long time our
Speaker 1: warnings were basically ignored. Now, there was a time under
Speaker 1: former CEO Jack Dorsey when Twitter higher ups did kind
Speaker 1: of seem to be working to curb at least some
Speaker 1: of the harassment and hate speech on the platform, with
Speaker 1: the hiring of folks like Jaya God, Twitter's policy and
Speaker 1: trust lead, whose job it is to curb things like
Speaker 1: hate speech and harassment. Unfortunately, Elon Musk, who may be
Speaker 1: buying Twitter for four billion dollars, spent the week publicly
Speaker 1: attacking her leadership. Basia is a woman of color, and
Speaker 1: we already know that women of color disproportionately face harassment
Speaker 1: on Twitter, So when using the platform to attack his
Speaker 1: would be employee for just doing her job trying to
Speaker 1: make Twitter safer, a wave of his supporters flooded her
Speaker 1: ventions with hate, and it isn't hard to see this
Speaker 1: as a signaled how Musk would handle or not handle
Speaker 1: harassment on the platform, and it seems like the ultimate
Speaker 1: move grounded in our refusal to listen to the users
Speaker 1: who make the platform what it is. We've been here
Speaker 1: before and it has big consequences. So let's revisit one
Speaker 1: of my favorite episodes about what happens when Twitter fails
Speaker 1: to listen to women when we speak up about our
Speaker 1: experiences on the platform. Okay, so I could tell you
Speaker 1: this story a hundred times and a hundred different ways.
Speaker 1: People just don't listen to women, especially Black women, and
Speaker 1: it comes with big consequences. Six years ago, black feminists
Speaker 1: were experiencing a coordinated pattern of disinformation on Twitter. They
Speaker 1: spoke up, but no one listened. That failure to listen
Speaker 1: to black women had a big impact. It allowed for
Speaker 1: the weaponization of online harassment tactics against other marginalizes people
Speaker 1: on social media and presents continued threats to our democracy
Speaker 1: and safety. Okay, so let's just get this out of
Speaker 1: the way right now. Twitter is a fucking cesspool. If
Speaker 1: you spent any time there, you probably already knowe this
Speaker 1: bad faith commentary reply guys, trolls, harassment. It can really
Speaker 1: dispute unpleasant place. In May, Twitter announced they would start
Speaker 1: labeling tweets that spread misleading information. But this comes years
Speaker 1: after black feminists raised the alarm about it and were ignored.
Speaker 1: These women weren't just being attacked. They were learning about
Speaker 1: the tactics that bad actors used to infiltrate online communities.
Speaker 1: They spoke up about what they were experiencing online. So
Speaker 1: why did anyone listen? And what might have happened if
Speaker 1: they had? Shatika Hudson, freelancer tat Lady Sometimes activists. Shafika
Speaker 1: had been using Twitter regularly since almost its very beginning,
Speaker 1: where she spent most of our time online connecting with
Speaker 1: other black feminists. In twenty fourteen, while job searching, she
Speaker 1: noticed the hashtag that just did not makes sense end
Speaker 1: Father's Day. The people pushing the end Father's Day hashtag
Speaker 1: on Twitter appeared to be black feminists. They talked about
Speaker 1: how we should have polished Father's Day because too many
Speaker 1: black men date outside of their race, or because black
Speaker 1: men don't support their children. Stuff that just seemed really
Speaker 1: out there unless they had like ten different ads open.
Speaker 1: Because I was also like doing a job search and
Speaker 1: just going about my life, and it someone tweet caught
Speaker 1: my attention because it was so completely off the wall
Speaker 1: and I don't know who retweeted it or like how
Speaker 1: it even arrived in my timeline, but it wasn't anything
Speaker 1: that any black feminist anywhere would say. It was like,
Speaker 1: what was it? Oh gosh, yeah, in Father's day. I
Speaker 1: wish these white women would stop stealing our men some
Speaker 1: some something just completely off the wall. They had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with end neat thing. And the avatar was
Speaker 1: someone who I didn't recognize. Now, the thing about the
Speaker 1: black feminist community on Twitter, the thing about a lot
Speaker 1: of communities on Twitter is that you might not necessarily
Speaker 1: get along with everybody, but you know who everyone is like,
Speaker 1: and if you haven't met them or seeing them out
Speaker 1: or you know, done a tweet up, hung out at
Speaker 1: a party, something someone you know has And and this
Speaker 1: particular instance, I'm clicked on the person well the accounts profile.
Speaker 1: I said, Okay, who is this. I've never seen this
Speaker 1: person and it looks like they just joined like two
Speaker 1: days ago, and they're just tweeting about this with this
Speaker 1: hashtag and they have, you know, the photo of a
Speaker 1: black woman, but it just nothing adds up. So that
Speaker 1: drove me to click on the hashtag and father's jay
Speaker 1: and lo and behold. When I did a Twitter search,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of accounts that are saying thing that
Speaker 1: are completely left, like not left like you know, politically,
Speaker 1: just kind of left, like left, where are you coming from? Left?
Speaker 1: And I didn't recognize any of them, so I at
Speaker 1: that point I just kind of asked the general question
Speaker 1: from my timeline, just say, Okay, you guys, what's going on?
Speaker 1: I keep seeing this hashtag and these accounts that I
Speaker 1: don't recognize with people who look like they just joined
Speaker 1: like five seconds ago. And someone said, yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: like this is like some kind of fortune thing that
Speaker 1: That's when I really started digging. I said, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: this is really awful because they're pretending to be black
Speaker 1: women who were saying these awful things, and I'm smart
Speaker 1: enough to know that nothing here that they're saying is
Speaker 1: even remotely what a real black feminist would say. I
Speaker 1: honestly think the people who they fooled immediately we're already
Speaker 1: probably biased against feminist or black women, or some combination
Speaker 1: of the two. I didn't get the impression that they
Speaker 1: were fully most of the people I followed, is what
Speaker 1: is what I mean? But um, they were getting some reaction.
Speaker 1: That's when Shaffica went from curious to pist. I got
Speaker 1: so mad, Like I remember just being so angry. I
Speaker 1: could feel my cheeks and my ears heat up, like honestly,
Speaker 1: like you know in the in the cartoons where the
Speaker 1: character like starts seeming from the coming for your ears
Speaker 1: as you hear the tea kettle whistle. I was earious.
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, it's not like we don't
Speaker 1: get enough garbage online just being black women, you know,
Speaker 1: but with people just randomly showing up in our our
Speaker 1: mentions to argue with something that we said, not because
Speaker 1: they necessarily disagree, but because that's what people do when
Speaker 1: you're a black woman online. Apparently, because we don't deal
Speaker 1: with enough out here in real life and online, we
Speaker 1: don't deal with enough. We've got this whole silly operation
Speaker 1: thing happening. So I said, well, let me just go
Speaker 1: ahead and take a look and see what's really going
Speaker 1: on and see how bad this is. And as I
Speaker 1: began to dig, I saw just how bad it was,
Speaker 1: and I realized that I would not be able to
Speaker 1: point out all of these accounts alone. You know how
Speaker 1: in movies when a character discovers this thing they've been
Speaker 1: investigating as much, much bigger than they realized. There is
Speaker 1: no pepe silvia, and this thing goes all the way
Speaker 1: to the top. Well, that's how Shapika felt. She knew
Speaker 1: the Twitter accounts Pushing and Father's Day weren't actually black women.
Speaker 1: They were just impersonating black women, and pretty badly at that.
Speaker 1: But there were too many of them for this to
Speaker 1: be a one off thing. It had to be coordinated,
Speaker 1: and there were also too many for her to tackle alone.
Speaker 1: She wanted to give other black feminists a tool to
Speaker 1: sniff out these impostors, so she fought back with a
Speaker 1: hashtag of her own, your slip is showing. I went
Speaker 1: ahead with your slip is showing. I got to run
Speaker 1: another line like, I don't know your messcare is running
Speaker 1: something like that, but You're slip is showing just seemed
Speaker 1: to work. It really just seemed to work. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: if you're not a lady from the South, the phrase
Speaker 1: your slip is showing might not mean anything to you. Literally,
Speaker 1: it means when your slip isn't peeking out from underneath
Speaker 1: your skirt address a big fashion, no no, but where
Speaker 1: I come from, that one phrase really highlights a subversiveness
Speaker 1: of what I'll call auntie speak. Think of it a
Speaker 1: bit like the phrase bless your heart. A lady at
Speaker 1: church might tell you that your slip is peeking out
Speaker 1: from the bottom of your skirt because they care about
Speaker 1: you look at your best. Or they could tell you
Speaker 1: your slip is showing because they don't like you and
Speaker 1: they're pointing out publicly that you aren't looking as good
Speaker 1: and put together as you think you are. You know,
Speaker 1: just the sort of thing that one of your aunties
Speaker 1: might say to you and church and oh, honey, you
Speaker 1: need to you need to fix your slip is showing?
Speaker 1: Have mean because right, there's a there's a difference between
Speaker 1: a your slip is showing from one of your aunties
Speaker 1: and your slip is showing from somebody who doesn't like you.
Speaker 1: And that was what I was going with it, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: your slip is showing. I'm telling you because I was
Speaker 1: raised right, not because I particularly care about you being embarrassed.
Speaker 1: I love that so much. I love how you kind
Speaker 1: of use this southern auntie expression that we all sort
Speaker 1: of know what it means. What's also funny is that
Speaker 1: I would imagine the people who are in personading black
Speaker 1: women probably that probably that that nuance probably goes right
Speaker 1: over their head. Yes, that was that also, um one
Speaker 1: of the things that I also delighted in, because of
Speaker 1: course I wouldn't get it because you'd have to. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have to be somewhat embedded within certain communities to
Speaker 1: pick up on the nuance, and they really weren't. It's
Speaker 1: fitting that we're talking about getting the nuance. That's certain
Speaker 1: something you can't really teach. This would ultimately be the
Speaker 1: undoing of people in persiating black women online, their inability
Speaker 1: to authentically sound like black women. They try to use
Speaker 1: a v or African American and venacular English, but get
Speaker 1: the expressions all wrong in ways that might as well
Speaker 1: be screaming I am a white person pretending to be
Speaker 1: a Black woman. This is where I should probably say that.
Speaker 1: Around the same time, I noticed someone on Twitter using
Speaker 1: my photo and tweeting confusing things about black people. I
Speaker 1: never knew who was behind it or why it was happening,
Speaker 1: but if I had to say, I would say it
Speaker 1: wasn't an actual black woman because the things they were
Speaker 1: saying we're just so out there, things like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be voting for Trump because Hillary Clinton is whack y'all,
Speaker 1: things that just didn't sound right because they're not speakers
Speaker 1: of a d um they're approximating. The thing that like
Speaker 1: really really really seemed to like immediately point them out
Speaker 1: was this consistent and ability to understand and properly use
Speaker 1: the habitual be. They didn't get it. They did not
Speaker 1: like they would use the habitual be just kind of
Speaker 1: like for the future tens, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like it was terrible, and a lot of the time
Speaker 1: it was just like really obviously racist word salad. Obviously
Speaker 1: racist word salad. I love it my new band name. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: it seemed like the point of End Father's Day was
Speaker 1: to see what kind of discord bad actors organizing on
Speaker 1: message boards like Forshan could sell within feminist online communities
Speaker 1: and to make actual feminists and our issues look like petty,
Speaker 1: stupid man haters whose issues were so outlandish they could
Speaker 1: never be taken seriously. It turns out this is actually
Speaker 1: a pretty common disinformation tactic, hijacking public conversations about s
Speaker 1: set of topics or wedge issues through medium manipulation is
Speaker 1: a way of making people afraid of having an opinion
Speaker 1: in public and ultimately trying to silence them. I'm Joan
Speaker 1: Donovan and I'm the research director at the Shorenstein Center
Speaker 1: on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Dr Donovan says, the
Speaker 1: same way that brands and politicians realized the power of
Speaker 1: social media, the kind of people who want to harass
Speaker 1: others did do it can have a big impact, especially
Speaker 1: as we're using social media to talk about thorny issues
Speaker 1: like race, gender, and sexuality, issues that require nuance to
Speaker 1: discuss thoughtfully. It makes it tough for anyone to have
Speaker 1: a good faith dialogue online. Over time, just like the
Speaker 1: politicians learned to use social media, we had white supremacists
Speaker 1: figure out that you don't actually need to show up
Speaker 1: in public to have an impact on people's lives, and
Speaker 1: so we saw networked and coordinated harassment campaigns. Uh it
Speaker 1: just continue even to this day, continue to be useful
Speaker 1: ways to shut down journalists, to impersonate different groups, and
Speaker 1: to really cause uh a fracture in public conversation about
Speaker 1: really important issues that require some level of nuance, some
Speaker 1: level of understanding, and and a lot of compassion to
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, especially racism in this moment, and
Speaker 1: people are reticent to talk about it because they're afraid
Speaker 1: of saying something wrong, especially in the environments online where
Speaker 1: if you do make a misstep, you could get dragged,
Speaker 1: you could get canceled. But also some of that might
Speaker 1: be artificial. It might be the case that people do
Speaker 1: sympathize with you, people do want to help you grow
Speaker 1: and learn, but certain medium manipulators see that as an
Speaker 1: opportunity to swarm in and really uh drive the wedge
Speaker 1: is deep as it can go. A few right wing
Speaker 1: news outlets picked up the hashtag and Father's Day and
Speaker 1: amplified it as a legitimate feminist take. This is how
Speaker 1: Fox News covered it, Like some of these tweets, heres
Speaker 1: from Tasha. She wrote, and everyone knows we only need mothers.
Speaker 1: Why do we even need Father's Day? Fathers are useless? Hashtag?
Speaker 1: Come on, oh, come on? Just more? Is this nasty
Speaker 1: feminist rhetoric that they're not just like interested in ending
Speaker 1: Father's Day the interesting ending men? That's really what they want.
Speaker 1: But Shafika says, only the kind of people who were
Speaker 1: already predisposed to be skeptical of women and feminists and
Speaker 1: especially black women fell for it. Well, it was actually
Speaker 1: At first, I remember I was incredulous, Like honestly, I
Speaker 1: was looking at people like, oh, and Father's Day feminists
Speaker 1: take a terrible turn and radical, and I was like,
Speaker 1: You've got to be kidding. But then I realized that no,
Speaker 1: they were completely serious. And then it's on on me
Speaker 1: that these are people who could not possibly understand feminism,
Speaker 1: possibly women in general, Black people her too much of
Speaker 1: anything outside of their little Fox News bubble like that.
Speaker 1: That was the impression that I got, Like, basically, if
Speaker 1: you fell for this, it's because you already had a
Speaker 1: certain set of bigotries in place too fall for it.
Speaker 1: What was happening with black women online is much less
Speaker 1: widely known than gamer Gate. Were angry men coordinated to
Speaker 1: harass progressive voices online who were mostly women in the
Speaker 1: months following and Father's Day. Shafika thinks it was ignored
Speaker 1: because the women who were targeted were black. Not only
Speaker 1: was she helping to create a tool to stamp out
Speaker 1: this kind of disinformation online, she also wanted to document
Speaker 1: that it was happening so it wouldn't go forgotten or
Speaker 1: erased just because it was happening to black women as um,
Speaker 1: you're probably aware of a lot of us are big
Speaker 1: on what we call receipts, So there are plenty of receipts.
Speaker 1: We've got the screen cabs. You can't even you know,
Speaker 1: delete the tweets because we got it, we got the information.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, that's that's been a big part
Speaker 1: of it for me, and it's frustrating for a lot
Speaker 1: of us to see essentially a history erased. It's particularly
Speaker 1: distressing for me because you know, I'm not I wouldn't
Speaker 1: consider myself a scholar at this particular point. And my
Speaker 1: friend so True who also was absolutely integral with formulating
Speaker 1: you're slipping showing and how it kind of played out
Speaker 1: and became a useful tool. But back when I was
Speaker 1: a scholar, I understood that one of the things that
Speaker 1: people do when they're trying to erase the impact of
Speaker 1: a movement is the kind of start the leading history.
Speaker 1: It's a huge, huge feature of a racier when people
Speaker 1: talk about You're slip of showing. If they talk about
Speaker 1: it or if they mentioned it at all, it's it's weird.
Speaker 1: It kind of gets vaguely mentioned in relation to gamer
Speaker 1: Gate as this weird thing that sort of happened before
Speaker 1: gamer Gate that wasn't really relevant and didn't provide anybody
Speaker 1: any tools or you know, it was, you know, just
Speaker 1: kind of a blip as opposed to what it was,
Speaker 1: which was a scary peek into the future. And again,
Speaker 1: like I said, hindsight being twenty once, when you start
Speaker 1: to look back on all of these four chan offer
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I can't say four chan without making that noise.
Speaker 1: You have a specialise, I do. I Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Someone else pointed out to me. It's like, do you
Speaker 1: realize that you just kind of just disgusted noise? What
Speaker 1: I mean you say fortunate, I'm just I'm sorry, it's automatic.
Speaker 1: I'm working on it. When you try to kind of
Speaker 1: understand how everything happened, you have to take all of
Speaker 1: it into account. I really think that in Father's day
Speaker 1: and um, you know, consequently you're you're slip is showing
Speaker 1: we're a huge part of it, and it's it can
Speaker 1: be frustrating to see it left out of the history
Speaker 1: because it's like, Okay, you're missing a really relevant chunk
Speaker 1: of understanding how all of this mess happened. Even at
Speaker 1: a time where we're having a conversations around women's experiences online.
Speaker 1: Why do you think your slip is showing and and
Speaker 1: Father's Day and the way that women in folks of
Speaker 1: color have been harassed online pretty much goes overlooked. Why
Speaker 1: do you think that is not? Yeah? That and again
Speaker 1: it's frustrating. And my theory remains it's because the targeted
Speaker 1: group at the time for the end Father's Day of
Speaker 1: four chan operation were black women. It's honestly, that's that's
Speaker 1: my That's I have no other answer at this point.
Speaker 1: Is the six years I've watched this just kind of
Speaker 1: repeatedly happened. And the only answer, unfortunately, that I have
Speaker 1: is that, Okay, well, this is being largely ignored and
Speaker 1: rap because of who the targets were, and the targets
Speaker 1: were of black women, but particularly black feminist. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back after this quick break. People who are traditionally
Speaker 1: marginalized online, like black women, are specifically impacted by things
Speaker 1: like disinformation and harassment on social media. It the ultimate
Speaker 1: goal is to freak them out so much that they'll
Speaker 1: shut down their social media and just stop talking. Here's
Speaker 1: Dr Donovan again. Yeah, so we have to remember that
Speaker 1: a lot of the ways in which disinformation is carried
Speaker 1: through networks are also related to the ways in which
Speaker 1: people are harassed online. You know, So if you're there's
Speaker 1: a concept called gender trolling, it's evolved into trans trolling,
Speaker 1: race trolling, um, queer trolling, where the characteristics of your
Speaker 1: identity become the thing that they focus on, and they'll,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll be a swarm of folks that have
Speaker 1: coordinated in some other place, usually on a message board, uh,
Speaker 1: and they will target specific public figures or women or
Speaker 1: transfolks or prom in it uh black activists in order
Speaker 1: to get them to shut off their social media. And
Speaker 1: they will use all kinds of horrendous images and threats
Speaker 1: to try to get you to feel fear and to
Speaker 1: shut it down. And we don't see that same kind
Speaker 1: of level of threat making when it comes to trolling
Speaker 1: male candidates. And that has to do with the characteristics
Speaker 1: of the harassers themselves, which often see the harassment as
Speaker 1: a form of activism and as a form of defending
Speaker 1: themselves or defending their piece of the culture. And so
Speaker 1: a lot of these people tend to be misogynists as
Speaker 1: well as racists, and in their smaller online communities where
Speaker 1: they don't think they're wat they'll talk openly about that,
Speaker 1: and they'll talk opening about who they should target, it is,
Speaker 1: why and what the problem is. And I think at
Speaker 1: this stage we've been through this enough to know it's
Speaker 1: a serious problem, but it still happens every day, and
Speaker 1: especially at this moment, we're seeing an incredible amount of
Speaker 1: trolling around, you know, anti black racism. And the responsibility though,
Speaker 1: for dealing with this lies with the platform companies first
Speaker 1: and foremost. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey hasn't always been the
Speaker 1: most responsive to the misuse of the platform. You'd think
Speaker 1: you'd be more concerned, but Shafica says that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: She and the other black women targeted were pretty much
Speaker 1: left on their own to figure it out. So did
Speaker 1: the powers that be at Twitter or any other social
Speaker 1: media company or any other official do anything to fix this? No,
Speaker 1: UM that that the short answer, there is no now.
Speaker 1: The longer at explanation is that we repeatedly brought this
Speaker 1: whole thing to the attention of Twitter support um to
Speaker 1: Jack directly. It's not like nobody knew what was happening.
Speaker 1: It had made the news like so it's not. It's
Speaker 1: not as though um he was ignorant. The general impression
Speaker 1: that I got from Twitter support was that, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know this is We're so sorry, are our hands
Speaker 1: are tied and blah blah blah, And I started looking
Speaker 1: into the tech side of everything, and I realized that
Speaker 1: that wasn't the truth. They absolutely have and had tools
Speaker 1: on hand to stop this, and they just didn't. They
Speaker 1: just let it happen, and they just let us clean
Speaker 1: up the mess and defend our communities ourselves. As much
Speaker 1: as being left defend for her own community online stocked,
Speaker 1: it did teach Topika that her online community could do
Speaker 1: a lot with a little And while that wasn't cool
Speaker 1: at all, and hopefully at some point in and you know,
Speaker 1: at some point down the line, they will be sufficiently
Speaker 1: shamed for it because it was just really awful. We
Speaker 1: learned what we could do on the ground with just
Speaker 1: the very basic tool of like community organization and a hashtag,
Speaker 1: we were able to do a whole lot to just
Speaker 1: stop something that could have gotten way out of hand.
Speaker 1: We outed it early, and we ended it early, and
Speaker 1: if something had been done to make sure that these
Speaker 1: fake accounts that we were reporting had been taken out
Speaker 1: a commission, there would have been a lot less for
Speaker 1: game or game to work with. They wouldn't have had
Speaker 1: to they wouldn't have had the opportunity to just go
Speaker 1: ahead and access those same tools that they'd already created.
Speaker 1: So in a kind of way, it sounds like your
Speaker 1: work with your slippers showing and your work organizing community
Speaker 1: responses online was kind of this canary in a coal mine,
Speaker 1: and you all did all that you could to prevent this,
Speaker 1: to stamp this out. But if only the powers that
Speaker 1: be at Twitter or elsewhere have done anything, then it
Speaker 1: might not be the sort of wide scale situation that
Speaker 1: it is now. That is exactly correct, and that I
Speaker 1: know that sounds damning, but that's accurate. They could have
Speaker 1: stopped it. They could still stop it. But the reason why, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: and this was absolutely pointed out by people at the time,
Speaker 1: um and people later taking the whole situation from like,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole post mortem of the whole incident,
Speaker 1: the reason why they didn't is because of the profit
Speaker 1: model at the time was based on number of accounts
Speaker 1: and interaction. So you know that when you're selling your
Speaker 1: product basically too, we're the products to advertisers and whatever
Speaker 1: have you. The more users it looks like you have,
Speaker 1: the better. So it really wasn't in Twitter's best interest
Speaker 1: to say, okay, well we have twenty accounts with one
Speaker 1: I P address that's suspicious and we should look into it.
Speaker 1: And that's why they didn't. They didn't took them a
Speaker 1: full two and a half years, I think, to even
Speaker 1: really address it in a serious way. And I think
Speaker 1: that was only after the whole congressional meeting. Like I'm
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that was after everybody who was like
Speaker 1: the head of social media get called in front of Congress.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, Like that's what it took. So that pretty
Speaker 1: much brings us to today. Today, Twitter leads all other
Speaker 1: social media platforms and the spread of misleading information about coronavirus,
Speaker 1: according to a study by Oxford researchers called Types, Sources
Speaker 1: and Claims of COVID nineteen misinformation, and a study out
Speaker 1: of Carnegie Mellon found that most of the accounts pushing
Speaker 1: this misleading content are actually convincing looking bots using Twitter
Speaker 1: to prey on people. So division and increased polarization. This
Speaker 1: isn't just an online saying either. Kathleen Carly, the director
Speaker 1: for the Center for Informed Democracy and Social Cybersecurity, says
Speaker 1: increased polarization will have a variety of real world consequences
Speaker 1: and play at and things like voting behavior and hostility
Speaker 1: towards ethnic groups. And this summer, as Black Lives Matter
Speaker 1: protests popped up all over the globe, Twitter confirmed that
Speaker 1: multiple accounts posing as Black Lives Matter activists were calling
Speaker 1: for violence and white suburbs, but the as accounts were
Speaker 1: actually run by white supremacist groups just posing as activists
Speaker 1: and quote Antifa to cause chaos. Facebook underfire again a
Speaker 1: Senate Intelligence Committee report claiming Russian agents use social media
Speaker 1: sites like Facebook to target African Americans in an effort
Speaker 1: to suppress voter turnout. We already know that Russia use
Speaker 1: social media to interfere with the election, and in case
Speaker 1: you needed a Senate report to confirm with black women
Speaker 1: have been saying, oh along. A Senate Inquiries cited an
Speaker 1: Oxford University report on Russian interference on social media. They
Speaker 1: found that campaigns targeted no single group more than African
Speaker 1: Americans on social media. They posed as black people and
Speaker 1: ran bony black activist groups to influence Black voters. To
Speaker 1: either stay home or vote for Trump on election Day.
Speaker 1: The Senate Intelligence report says the posts were aimed at
Speaker 1: making Americans suspicious of each other. Sound familiar. These are
Speaker 1: the very same kind of tactics that black women like
Speaker 1: Shafika were complaining about years earlier, accounts posing as black
Speaker 1: people and infortrateing our online communities to create chaos and distrust.
Speaker 1: But because the people with power didn't really do anything
Speaker 1: or take it seriously, it kind of exposed this massive vulnerability.
Speaker 1: Think of it as an online disinformation test balloon. It
Speaker 1: showed that these kinds of attacks could happen, and they'd
Speaker 1: pretty much go on addressed. Instead of identifying and learning
Speaker 1: a spot tactics used to make our social media communities
Speaker 1: less safe and less stable, the powers that be just
Speaker 1: let it happen again and again and again. I asked
Speaker 1: Shafika if she thinks that if someone had listened to
Speaker 1: black women when they spoke up about being targeted online,
Speaker 1: things might be different. Now it's a tough question, for
Speaker 1: this is always going to be a question that kind
Speaker 1: of hangs in my mind because, um, while I understand
Speaker 1: that black voters were absolutely targeted, I'm not entirely sure
Speaker 1: that we were fooled, do you know what I mean? Right,
Speaker 1: like honestly, because it seems like to me we kind
Speaker 1: of all got out and voted anyway. And it also
Speaker 1: seems like to me, Donald Trump may have lost the
Speaker 1: popular vote by three million votes, but that's neither here
Speaker 1: nor there. I get not if you ask himmy didn't
Speaker 1: he But we don't ask him things because we like
Speaker 1: honest answers. But um, yeah, I mean, just the fact
Speaker 1: that this happened, like it left us arguably vulnerable, and
Speaker 1: that even even though I'm not sure how how ultimately
Speaker 1: success successful, it was just the fact that we had
Speaker 1: foreign agents targeting voting populations in the United States of
Speaker 1: America should have been serious and do cause for alarm,
Speaker 1: because even if it doesn't work, it's like just it's
Speaker 1: just the fact that they tried and that they could.
Speaker 1: What do you do it? Like, can we get it together?
Speaker 1: It's because we left we left the door open like
Speaker 1: this This was that was a failure. That was I
Speaker 1: don't want to say it was on me because I
Speaker 1: feel like it definitely wasn't on me and it definitely
Speaker 1: wasn't on you, but it was it was a failure
Speaker 1: um on the side of whatever agents are supposed to
Speaker 1: be protecting us, And I guess that offers that opens
Speaker 1: up a lot for speculations like well, you know who's
Speaker 1: who's looking after us now? But um, yeah, that that
Speaker 1: was a glaring example of just kind of the general
Speaker 1: failure to address something that did not have to get
Speaker 1: as big as a guy more. There are no girls
Speaker 1: on the internet after this quick break. Presidential election is
Speaker 1: a hundred twelve days away. Digital security experts agree that
Speaker 1: American elections are vulnerable and not enough it's being done
Speaker 1: about it. During Trump's and peachment hearing, Fiona Hill, the
Speaker 1: former National Security Council advisor specializing in Russia and European affairs, said,
Speaker 1: right now Russia's security services on their proxies have geared
Speaker 1: up to repeat their interference in the election. We're running
Speaker 1: out of time to stop them. So what do we do?
Speaker 1: Dr Donovan says, As we get closer to the election,
Speaker 1: we know that all different kinds of tactics are going
Speaker 1: to get utilized, including potentially deep figs or cheap figs
Speaker 1: like manipulated video, manipulated audio. We're gonna see uh probably
Speaker 1: uh clips of people quoted out of context. We've seen
Speaker 1: this happened to Joe Biden a few different times. Then,
Speaker 1: of course we've seen gas that these donements are completely
Speaker 1: within con text and a problem. Um, you know, you
Speaker 1: can't you can't forget that. Every once in a while
Speaker 1: you're watching it and you're like, this is this can't
Speaker 1: be real and it's totally real. Well, what's crazy to
Speaker 1: me about it is as a researcher, you're supposed to
Speaker 1: be attuned to all of this, but I still get
Speaker 1: fooled here and there. But the last thing I'll say
Speaker 1: about the way in which I think platform companies need
Speaker 1: to better serve our political elections and the integrity of
Speaker 1: elections is that they need to hire some serious specialists.
Speaker 1: They need to hire a whole army of librarians to
Speaker 1: do content curations so that when people are looking for information,
Speaker 1: they find things that have been fact checked, that are
Speaker 1: true and correct. I think that we have a right
Speaker 1: to treat and part of the problem is the way
Speaker 1: in which these algorithms are designed is to bring up
Speaker 1: things that are quote unquote fresh and relevant. And the
Speaker 1: problem with fresh and relevant content is that disinformation is
Speaker 1: you usually incredibly popular because there are people trying to
Speaker 1: push it and there are people trying to dispute it,
Speaker 1: and so as a result, it rises generally to the
Speaker 1: top of search algorithms or trending algorithms very quickly because
Speaker 1: of that, uh that feature. But well, Twitter actually do
Speaker 1: any of that. Shafika isn't super confident that the platform
Speaker 1: was anything at all. I haven't even thought about it,
Speaker 1: And I guess that's sort of a reflection on my
Speaker 1: general skepticism right now with not their ability but their
Speaker 1: willingness to adjust this. I I I have a good
Speaker 1: friend who said one of the smartest things I've ever
Speaker 1: heard anybody say, and I quote it all the time,
Speaker 1: but he said, when things look like they're not working out,
Speaker 1: you can always trust that they're working out for somebody.
Speaker 1: M hmm. And that's I'm going to leave that right there.
Speaker 1: But it looks like you know things aren't working, you
Speaker 1: started asking questions and as a whole rabbit hole. That's
Speaker 1: the thing about the Internet. There's so much darkness lurking
Speaker 1: in its corners, just waiting to spill out. But or
Speaker 1: there's darkness, there's light to where there's someone being ugly online,
Speaker 1: there's someone else reaching out to make a genuine connection.
Speaker 1: There's real community to be built and laughs to be had,
Speaker 1: the kind of laughs that can sustain you through difficult times.
Speaker 1: Being online is a constant tight rope walk of acknowledging
Speaker 1: that darkness while still being able to see the corners
Speaker 1: of light peeking through, and even while waiting through all
Speaker 1: of that darkness and ugliness. It's the light that has
Speaker 1: really sustained Shafika after everything she's been through, She's still
Speaker 1: grateful for Twitter as a platform and all the good
Speaker 1: things that's brought to her life. Honestly, it really helps
Speaker 1: that I have a strong and supportive community on both
Speaker 1: online and off. I've really and super grateful for Twitter
Speaker 1: for so many reasons, not the least of which is
Speaker 1: because it's helped me expand my network and I've met
Speaker 1: amazing people and connected people who are like me people
Speaker 1: who aren't like me, and gotten gotten to know so
Speaker 1: much about them and learn about their lived experiences. And
Speaker 1: that has saved me because it helps me kind of
Speaker 1: get out of my own headspace or likewise, you know,
Speaker 1: connect with people who understand what d percent where I'm
Speaker 1: coming from. And that's in a world where where you know,
Speaker 1: we're frequently gas lit about the things that we see
Speaker 1: and experience. That is absolutely invaluable. Oh and one more
Speaker 1: thing that helps. It also helps that I'm funny, honestly, um,
Speaker 1: having a sense of humor and a wit of we'll
Speaker 1: get you through pretty much. I don't want to say
Speaker 1: pretty much anything, but how about this. It's gotten me
Speaker 1: through pretty much everything, and you've been through some stuff.
Speaker 1: I've been through it. There Are No Girls on the
Speaker 1: Internet was created by me bridget Tad. It's a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Unboss Creative Jonathan Strickland is
Speaker 1: our executive producer. Tara Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.
Speaker 1: Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Tad.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart, check out the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening to their No Girls on
Speaker 1: the Internet. If you want to help our podcast grow,
Speaker 1: rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.