Speaker 1: So if you were online, you're probably familiar with gamer Gate,
Speaker 1: where a lot of men who were supposedly big mad
Speaker 1: about quote ethics and video game journalism harassed women on
Speaker 1: the internet. It was awful, and it rightly got a
Speaker 1: lot of coverage from the tech press, But a lot
Speaker 1: of people, even people who were very online, might not
Speaker 1: know that it was black women who were attacked by
Speaker 1: the very same people using the very same tactic as
Speaker 1: gamer Gate years earlier. Only when those women spoke up
Speaker 1: about it, the people with the power to do something
Speaker 1: pretty much ignored them. And I'd also be willing to
Speaker 1: bet that even less people know that the kinds of
Speaker 1: online harassment and deceptive accounts that those women were reporting
Speaker 1: would go on to be the very same tactics that
Speaker 1: a twenty nineteen Senate inquiry confirmed were used by Russian
Speaker 1: assets to disrupt the election. So there's a pretty clear
Speaker 1: through line from ignoring black women when they speak up
Speaker 1: about the harassment they face on the internet and pretty
Speaker 1: important stuff like I don't know the security of our elections.
Speaker 1: So what if someone with the power to do something
Speaker 1: had just listened to black women when they reported what
Speaker 1: was going on years earlier, I'm Bridget Todd, and I
Speaker 1: make podcasts about the Internet, specifically the way that women,
Speaker 1: people of color, LGBTQ, folks, and other marginalized identities show
Speaker 1: up to do cool stuff on the Internet. But I
Speaker 1: am sad the same that as true as it is
Speaker 1: that traditionally marginalized people do a lot of the coolest
Speaker 1: stuff online, it's also true that those same people are
Speaker 1: targeted online and really scary ways, And when it happens,
Speaker 1: it can feel like it just goes overlooked. We don't
Speaker 1: really get the opportunity to learn from it or take
Speaker 1: anything away from it, and as the Internet often does,
Speaker 1: everyone just moves on. And I don't like that. So
Speaker 1: on my new podcast, Internet Hate Machine, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: right that wrong. We'll be telling the stories of women
Speaker 1: who were harassed online, how it happened, why it happened,
Speaker 1: and what it all means for the rest of us,
Speaker 1: because these kinds of attacks threaten our democracy that keep
Speaker 1: marginalized people from doing things like running for office or
Speaker 1: just participating in civic and public life, and they threaten
Speaker 1: our ability to have meaningful discourse and make any progress
Speaker 1: on some of the big issues facing us today, and
Speaker 1: What's worse, this kind of thing has been steadily creeping
Speaker 1: from the computer screen into our wider political and social landscape.
Speaker 1: On the new podcast Internet Hate Machine, I'll be charting
Speaker 1: how the harassment and abuse of women and other traditionally
Speaker 1: marginalized people online has led us to our current political
Speaker 1: health scape and what we can do about it. Listen
Speaker 1: to Internet Hate Machines starting on October twenty six on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.