Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Internet Hate Machine. As always,
Speaker 1: I am joined by my lovely producer, Sophie. Sophie, thank
Speaker 1: you for being here. Happy to be here as always. Bridget,
Speaker 1: how are you? I am As I told you earlier,
Speaker 1: I kind of have the bloss. I'm not drinking for
Speaker 1: dry January, which is taking its toll. But I'm good.
Speaker 1: I'm good. How about you? I was telling Bridget off
Speaker 1: Mike that I was like, I'm thinking about doing thirty
Speaker 1: days no dairy, but I don't know how to do
Speaker 1: that without cheese, And Bridget was like, cheese is one
Speaker 1: of the only purely good things that we have in
Speaker 1: this world. You can't give it up. And I take
Speaker 1: that to heart. I'm like, you're You're so right. We
Speaker 1: just don't have that many things that are just pure
Speaker 1: good in this world. We need to protect them, indulge them,
Speaker 1: respect them. I appreciate so. As you know, so far
Speaker 1: on this podcast, we have talked so much about things
Speaker 1: like harassment and abuse and those kinds of things happening
Speaker 1: on social media platforms that we know disproportionately impact marginalized
Speaker 1: people like black women, so much so that black women
Speaker 1: are sometimes called canaries in a coal mine when it
Speaker 1: comes to technology harms because, as I hope I've demonstrated
Speaker 1: in this podcast, first, something harmful online will happen to
Speaker 1: black women, and those black women speak up about it,
Speaker 1: and nobody with power really does anything to address it.
Speaker 1: And then that harmful thing online happens to more and
Speaker 1: more people, and then it just becomes a normalized thing.
Speaker 1: That is everybody's problem. I have argued many many times,
Speaker 1: and I think that our digital media ecosystem is broken
Speaker 1: because lies and conspiracy theories and harassment are amplified and incentivized.
Speaker 1: But I want to be clear that it does not
Speaker 1: have to be this way. I firmly believe that something
Speaker 1: different is possible. In fact, many of the technologists, organizers,
Speaker 1: and activists who are doing the work of trying to
Speaker 1: build that better Internet future come from the same marginalized
Speaker 1: backgrounds that are so often harmed online. But doing that
Speaker 1: critical work of making the Internet safer comes at such
Speaker 1: a high cost for these folks, high cost financially, professionally,
Speaker 1: and personally, and it shouldn't have to be this way,
Speaker 1: and I think that's really part of the problem. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons why this problem is such an ongoing
Speaker 1: persistent one is because a lot of the people who
Speaker 1: are trying to make technology safer are at best ignored
Speaker 1: and at worst like actively punished for it. And until
Speaker 1: we change that aspect of our culture and technology, I
Speaker 1: don't think we're gonna get anywhere. And a story of
Speaker 1: one of my favorite technologists, Efoma Uzoma, I think illustrates
Speaker 1: exactly what I mean. So this episode is gonna be
Speaker 1: a little bit different. Um. I want to tell you
Speaker 1: a bit about I Foma and her story, and then
Speaker 1: we're gonna hear from her in her own words. So
Speaker 1: let's get into it. I love a format up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: switching it up. I think it's it's great whenever you
Speaker 1: can hear somebody's story in their own words. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: It's like why I became a podcaster. I feel like
Speaker 1: there's something you know, you could read someone's op ed
Speaker 1: or read someone's writing, but there's something about hearing someone
Speaker 1: tell their story and how they felt and where they
Speaker 1: were at in their own words that just I don't
Speaker 1: know it. It hits to the quick a little a
Speaker 1: little better. I don't know completely agree. So Ethoma is
Speaker 1: a public policy expert and technologist. She worked at Google,
Speaker 1: and also worked on anti hate speech initiatives and community
Speaker 1: standards at Facebook before landing at the social media platform Pinterest,
Speaker 1: where she was one of the first hires on Pinterests
Speaker 1: then newly formed public policy team. Sophie, Do you do
Speaker 1: you use Pinterest? Uh No, but I definitely did, Like
Speaker 1: I stopped really using it around then as well. Go
Speaker 1: back and look at some of the things that you pinned,
Speaker 1: Like if you were like, oh, my dream wedding board
Speaker 1: and just have a I hate myself had the worst taste.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, if that's I hope that doesn't still exist.
Speaker 1: I am sorry to say it might stops recording in scrubs. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I am actually googling if I have
Speaker 1: atuff still. Oh man, I'm pretty sure it does exist though,
Speaker 1: But I don't think it's like there's much on there.
Speaker 1: There's definitely like a photo of me that should not
Speaker 1: be on the internet because it's atrocious haircut style. But
Speaker 1: you know, I had to go in and like wipe
Speaker 1: mine because also that was the era of American apparel
Speaker 1: kind of like hipster stuff. I was definitely into that.
Speaker 1: So it was a lot of just really questionable fashion
Speaker 1: choices that I am happy that to say that I
Speaker 1: deleted from the Internet. Okay, so I have to I
Speaker 1: have nothing that I've created on picterest. I have too
Speaker 1: safe posts. One is a post that's like twenty five
Speaker 1: ridiculously healthy foods and it's like a graphic. It's like cool, weird,
Speaker 1: problematic diet stuff. And then I have a quote that says,
Speaker 1: your flaws are perfect for the heart that is meant
Speaker 1: to love you. Oh Sophie. And this amazing side Bang
Speaker 1: situation if you can see it you, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's a version of me. Oh my god. I I
Speaker 1: wish I could hear from that version of Sophie. I
Speaker 1: didn't know. I didn't. I didn't know Side Bang inspirational
Speaker 1: quote Sophie. Oh she did a smokey eye. Oh incredible.
Speaker 1: I have like a John and John and Kate plus
Speaker 1: eight haircut in this situation. Like it's like I definitely didn't.
Speaker 1: But this crop is like not helping me. Oh boy boy,
Speaker 1: howdy what a time Anyways, this is not about me, Pintra, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it. It is such an interesting sort of
Speaker 1: digital time capsule of times gone by. I guess I'll say.
Speaker 1: And so Ifoma, you know, she gets hired at Pinterest,
Speaker 1: and before that she had working at Facebook, and she
Speaker 1: describes the company culture of working at Facebook as very direct.
Speaker 1: She told Time Magazine about a time where she directly
Speaker 1: questioned Mark Zuckerberg about why he had not spoken up
Speaker 1: after the death of Heather Higher in Charlottesville at an
Speaker 1: all hands meeting, and Zuckerberg actually admitted in front of
Speaker 1: everybody that it was a mistake to not do so.
Speaker 1: And so she was like, oh, yeah, I came from
Speaker 1: this culture of you know, directness that was tantamount at Facebook.
Speaker 1: So if the culture at Facebook was direct at Pinterest,
Speaker 1: she found it was very very different. Interesting, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: I think like it's interesting because I think that Pinterest
Speaker 1: kind of had a, i guess perhaps unearned reputation of
Speaker 1: being kind of a softer, cuddlier tech company. You know,
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna mistake somebody like Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: for like a cuddly nice guy running a cuddly nice platform, right,
Speaker 1: We're all it's clear the kind of platform that they're
Speaker 1: running and the kind of people they are. Can't even
Speaker 1: imagine Bezos giving somebody a hug. Oh oh, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want it because it would be very sharp.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want it. But yeah, Pinterest had this reputation
Speaker 1: of being like a gentler, cuddlier kind of a tech
Speaker 1: company that cares, for lack of a better phrase, Ifoma's
Speaker 1: job at Pinterest was working on the platform's policies to
Speaker 1: create safer and better online experiences for their users. She
Speaker 1: says that from her very first meetings at pinterest, she
Speaker 1: could kind of tell the vibes were off. She told
Speaker 1: Time that in her very first meeting with senior leadership,
Speaker 1: she questioned the company's decision to keep info wars is
Speaker 1: Alex Jones on the platform and got pushed back. She says,
Speaker 1: quote the entire strategy was lay low, don't wait in
Speaker 1: on anything, And I was like, this is not controversial.
Speaker 1: This is someone who is harassing the parents of Sandy Hook. So,
Speaker 1: you know, wanting to kick somebody like Alex Jones off
Speaker 1: of the platform that shouldn't have been controversial, And in
Speaker 1: fact that it's the kind of thing that she's hired
Speaker 1: to do at Pinterest. I happen to know I Foma.
Speaker 1: She is a get ship done type of woman, and
Speaker 1: so she does not lay low when it comes to
Speaker 1: her work, and they're in kind of lies a little
Speaker 1: bit of the dilemma for women who are tasked with
Speaker 1: making technology and the internet safer. You might get praise
Speaker 1: for it publicly, but then be punished for it privately.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what happened to her, right that, I know,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not great, So listeners might actually know
Speaker 1: a little bit about Efoma's work without necessarily like knowing
Speaker 1: it was hers or knowing her name. She spearheaded a
Speaker 1: lot of policies at pinterest that earned the platform a
Speaker 1: lot of public praise and like really good press. While
Speaker 1: working at pinterest, she ushered in the first real medical
Speaker 1: misinformation policy at a social media platform that included limiting
Speaker 1: vaccine misinformation and searches in into that's and nineteen um.
Speaker 1: This came after a measles outbreak, which you might remember
Speaker 1: that was really driven by you know, parents being like,
Speaker 1: who am going to vaccinate my kid against the measles?
Speaker 1: Because it's trendy, And this was really important because pinterest
Speaker 1: is a kind of platform that a lot of parents use,
Speaker 1: a lot of moms use it. It's where you might
Speaker 1: spend time if you're planning a wedding or setting up
Speaker 1: a nursery. Of mothers and thirty percent of fathers in
Speaker 1: the United States are on Pinterest, according to research, And
Speaker 1: unlike a platform like Twitter or Facebook, it's a platform
Speaker 1: where you might not be mentally prepared or primed to
Speaker 1: expect to encounter medical misinformation, so you're not really like
Speaker 1: you can be more susceptible to it. If you're just scrolling,
Speaker 1: you know, inspirational quotes and nursery ideas on Pinterest, you
Speaker 1: might not be expecting to encounter vaccine misinformation, and then
Speaker 1: your guard is going to be a little bit down
Speaker 1: for sure. And it's a platform that skews heavily female,
Speaker 1: and we know that women are more likely to be
Speaker 1: the sort of medical decision makers in their household, and
Speaker 1: so them being targeted by misinformation on Pinterest, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a big deal. And so Pinterest coming out with
Speaker 1: this policy to ban medical misinformation was like kind of
Speaker 1: a big deal in the misinformation space. This was also
Speaker 1: way before COVID was a thing, So becoming the first
Speaker 1: platform to proactively deal with medical misinformation something that we
Speaker 1: know would become so important during COVID, was like a
Speaker 1: huge deal, right, So like this was this was we
Speaker 1: saw this happen quite a lot and you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: in a performative way but also like in a good
Speaker 1: way during But we're talking about what this is. This
Speaker 1: is twenty okay, so that's still that's like very I
Speaker 1: feel it's very relevant that it was happening before. I mean,
Speaker 1: having done a little bit of this work myself. When
Speaker 1: big platforms make a change like this, it can be
Speaker 1: the domino effect that has other platforms do the same.
Speaker 1: And so you know, if Reddit does something, it might
Speaker 1: create the conditions for other platforms to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I kind of have to do it. And so Pinterest
Speaker 1: becoming pretty much the first platform to do this kind
Speaker 1: of was a big deal, and I think it I
Speaker 1: think it did create the conditions for other platforms to
Speaker 1: be like, oh wait, this is something we have to
Speaker 1: take seriously. Okay, let's let's let's figure it out. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's very uh before the times, Yeah, thank you we foma.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people will probably associate Pinterest with
Speaker 1: planning weddings, and folks might recall that in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: Pinterest also announced that they were going to no longer
Speaker 1: allow plantations that used to house enslaved people to be
Speaker 1: listed as you know, romantic wedding venues on the platform.
Speaker 1: That was also a foma's doing. She worked with Jade
Speaker 1: Magnus of the racial justice organization Color of Change to
Speaker 1: change this policy at pinterest. That got so much good press, like, wow,
Speaker 1: this company is like proactively banning slave plantations as a
Speaker 1: place that you can describe as a romantic venue for
Speaker 1: a wedding, And it kind of created a new conversation around,
Speaker 1: you know, platforms and the responsibility they have to ethically
Speaker 1: talk about things like plantations. Yes, we know that, Jennifer
Speaker 1: Lopez and Ben Affleck, We're not using pinterest. It's so
Speaker 1: wealthy that they got married what like a few months
Speaker 1: ago on a plantation. I don't understand it. Blake Lively,
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, well, maybe it's possible that if you're
Speaker 1: from the West Coast and before we were kind of
Speaker 1: having the national conversation about this, I'll allow that maybe
Speaker 1: you just never thought about it. Jennifer Lopez, I feel
Speaker 1: like there's no excuse. I'm also looking at you the
Speaker 1: Bibers did did they get married on a plantation? I'm
Speaker 1: nodding the listeners. I am nodding my head in South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, yeah, just let me double check my
Speaker 1: factor check that one. I mean I wouldn't know, but
Speaker 1: I wouldn't I wouldn't put it past him. The first
Speaker 1: thing that pops up is plantation weddings will no one
Speaker 1: to be freely promoted on Pinterest. Thank you, Foma. This
Speaker 1: article start. The idea that celebrity says Prominence Black Live
Speaker 1: or Justin Bieber would get me to get married at
Speaker 1: a former concentration camp is particularly inconceivable, and yet both
Speaker 1: Lively and be Ribbon fact chosen to get married at
Speaker 1: the sites of former forced labor camps in recent years. Yep,
Speaker 1: my insult stands. Yes, your insult stands, um so I.
Speaker 1: Foma basically was like a one woman positive press shop
Speaker 1: for Pinterest. She got all of this positive press for
Speaker 1: making these progressive, proactive policy decisions and setting a good
Speaker 1: example for other platforms. But rather than being praised for
Speaker 1: this work that made the company look so great and
Speaker 1: so progressive and so cuddly and warm and YadA YadA YadA,
Speaker 1: and also added a lot of value to the company
Speaker 1: as it was preparing to go public. She was retaliated
Speaker 1: against for this work by her own colleagues. So here's
Speaker 1: where it starts to go down. I Foma suggested that
Speaker 1: Pinterest start adding a content warning to posts made by
Speaker 1: right wing grifter Ben Shapiro. I know he, I can't
Speaker 1: even and I hate him so much. At the time,
Speaker 1: y'all might remember that Shapiro was doing a lot of
Speaker 1: espousing of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which we know
Speaker 1: is a white supremacist conspiracy theory that posits that non
Speaker 1: white lesser people are threatening the white majority with the
Speaker 1: help of globalists and elitists. I eat Jewish people. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so if Alma suggested that these posts from Ben
Speaker 1: Shapiro get a content warning on Pinterest. When she suggested this,
Speaker 1: one of her colleagues at pinterest, who was a software developer,
Speaker 1: dosed her. Shared her full name, her cell phone number,
Speaker 1: her email addressed, and her picture was Project Veritas, which
Speaker 1: led to her personal information and being published on eight
Speaker 1: Chan and Fortune, which we already know. You know, like
Speaker 1: sites full of extremists and abusers and bad actors who
Speaker 1: already had roles in harassing women, like Adrian Richards. We've
Speaker 1: already talked about on the pod and say I eat
Speaker 1: dongle Gate exactly. Um, she gets death threats, rape threats,
Speaker 1: and she was terrified if almost starts keeping a gun
Speaker 1: and eventually she had to move because the harassment got
Speaker 1: so bad by her own fucking colleagues first, like like
Speaker 1: her own fucking colleagues. Also, it's like to hear that,
Speaker 1: like Ben Shapiro, like infiltrated Pinterest is so wild to me,
Speaker 1: Like that just like that as like a concept is
Speaker 1: it just like doesn't comprehend in my brain. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: get what you mean, And I think it really speaks
Speaker 1: to the way that misinformation and conspiracy theories work these days.
Speaker 1: Where again, if you're just if you're just pinning pictures
Speaker 1: of recipes and meal planning ideas and flowers or whatever
Speaker 1: on Pinterest, you might not be expecting to encounter this
Speaker 1: kind of harmful, anti Semitic, racist conspiracy theory. But oftentimes
Speaker 1: on those platforms, these kind of dangerous conspiracy theories can
Speaker 1: be dressed up intentionally to target women. So you might
Speaker 1: be just like looking for nurse ideas, are looking for
Speaker 1: ideas on how to can your own vegetables. Next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, you're ten pins deep into like great replacement
Speaker 1: trad wife in cell manno sphere bullshit, And I think
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of how we're seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: these conspiracy theories spread online today, in these in these
Speaker 1: very unlikely corners of the Internet. So when e Foma
Speaker 1: reported what her coworker had done, rather than investigating whether
Speaker 1: or not, you know, one of their employees had actually
Speaker 1: jeopardized the safety of another employee, if Almo says that
Speaker 1: Pinterest instead wanted to investigate whether or not Ben Shapiro
Speaker 1: was actually indeed a white supremacist. She told the Washington
Speaker 1: Post quote, instead of focusing on security and making sure
Speaker 1: that we were fine and validating the concerns that we had,
Speaker 1: their concern was, is what you said valid? Almost like
Speaker 1: the employee had a legitimate reason to share my personal
Speaker 1: information all over the internet. Pinterest did not help e
Speaker 1: Foma get the information removed, nor did they ever punish
Speaker 1: the employee who was responsible for docs in her and
Speaker 1: spreading her information on the internet. I'm glad I haven't
Speaker 1: used this, sus. Yeah, it's awful. So separate from all
Speaker 1: of this, e Foma had lodged a pay discrimination complaint.
Speaker 1: While working at pinterest, she had been doing all of
Speaker 1: this groundbreaking work, but she had been hired at a
Speaker 1: much more junior role than she should have been compared
Speaker 1: to the workload that she actually had. She said that
Speaker 1: she was doing the same work as her manager. I
Speaker 1: Foma was a good performer during her time at pinterest,
Speaker 1: like all of her performance reviews are stellar. She earned
Speaker 1: two raises and a promotion during her two year span
Speaker 1: at the company, but none of this addressed the fact
Speaker 1: that she had been hired initially at the wrong level,
Speaker 1: which means that she is losing thousands of dollars in
Speaker 1: stock options just because of the like particularities of compensation
Speaker 1: packages at tech companies. She's still getting these great marks
Speaker 1: with the company, but when she starts pushing for fair pay,
Speaker 1: even going so far as pursuing it with a lawyer,
Speaker 1: the company starts to further alienate her. Like during a
Speaker 1: performance review, while she was talking about her work getting
Speaker 1: platforms to stop promoting slave plantations as wedding venues, her
Speaker 1: manager said that I Foma should have provided the pros
Speaker 1: of promoting slave plantations as well as the cons conny,
Speaker 1: What yeah, Like, what are the pros to continuing to
Speaker 1: have these on your platform, I would say none. It's awful.
Speaker 1: And honestly, if you think that's bad, during our conversation
Speaker 1: that you'll hear in a moment, I Foma actually dropped
Speaker 1: another little nugget of something that she found out about
Speaker 1: this particular manager that will make it all makes sense.
Speaker 1: So if you think that's bad, listen to that conversation,
Speaker 1: because it gets a lot worse. What is this person
Speaker 1: that's like what? Yeah, so basically just both sides ing flavory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Like read read the root. What do you
Speaker 1: think about what you're saying before you say it? This
Speaker 1: person should not be anybody's manager. That is so dangerous
Speaker 1: and harmful exactly. So in Mayfoma quits Pinterest. She gets
Speaker 1: six months severance, and honestly, that might have been the
Speaker 1: end of it, right, Like she talks about how she
Speaker 1: wanted things to be professional. She really was loyal to
Speaker 1: the company until summer during the racial justice uprisings in
Speaker 1: the wake of the death of George Floyd. Now, I
Speaker 1: remember this time because it was like it just was
Speaker 1: like a weird time where do you remember, like people
Speaker 1: would put their black lives Matter posts up and it
Speaker 1: would be like, well, actually you're racist, or like actually
Speaker 1: you said this to me? Like it was like a
Speaker 1: time where I was like, before you post your black square,
Speaker 1: really make sure that your own house is in order.
Speaker 1: Like who was the woman from Glee who was like
Speaker 1: I stand with black Live List? Was it Leah Michelle?
Speaker 1: It was Liah Michelle and Amber Riley, her black Glee classmate,
Speaker 1: was like, oh, Liam Michelle, black lives matter? Did black
Speaker 1: lives matter? When you called me a black bitch and
Speaker 1: told everybody you were going to ship in my wig
Speaker 1: when we were on set? Oh god, yeah, It's just
Speaker 1: it's it's like during Pride Month when you're like, Burger King,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Uh yeah, Burger King stands with
Speaker 1: the queer community. You're like, can I have my whopper?
Speaker 1: You're making me uncomfortable. So Pinterest puts up a statement
Speaker 1: in support of Black Lives Matter. They say, with everything
Speaker 1: we do, we will make it clear that our black
Speaker 1: employees matter. And if she them, did she roast them?
Speaker 1: She roast them? So cool? So she tweets I recently
Speaker 1: decided to leave Pinterest, which is just declared solidarity with
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter? What a joke. As a black woman
Speaker 1: seeing Pinterests middle of the night, Black employees matter statement
Speaker 1: made me scratch my head after I just fought for
Speaker 1: a full year to be paid and leveled fairly, a
Speaker 1: year in which I was a docked by a white
Speaker 1: male colleague. He shared my cell phone number, of photo
Speaker 1: and name with violently racist and misogynistic parts of the Internet,
Speaker 1: followed up by a dangerously inadequate response from Pinterest. B
Speaker 1: continued to service the leader of and spokesperson for Pinterests
Speaker 1: biggest public policy wins see scores of interviews and articles
Speaker 1: on addressing health, misinformation, emotional well being, stopping the promotion
Speaker 1: of plantation wedding venues see kept all of the above
Speaker 1: qualet for professionalism and then the hope that pinterest would
Speaker 1: do the right thing. Instead, they doubled down on retaliation.
Speaker 1: Now pinterest is claiming to be listening and acting mere
Speaker 1: weeks after replacing me and another black woman colleague who
Speaker 1: also decided to leave with you guessed it probably a
Speaker 1: white person. I am so proud of the initiatives that
Speaker 1: I led it during my time here, addressing health missinfote decisively.
Speaker 1: It's no longer novel. Thanks to that work. I just
Speaker 1: ship wasn't sulfid by the racism, gas lighting and disrespect
Speaker 1: from my manager and the company's legal and HR leadership.
Speaker 1: Racism is dehumanizing and exhausting. I busted my ass at Yale, Google,
Speaker 1: then Facebook before Pinterest recruited me as the second higher
Speaker 1: on the global public policy team. I lad work that
Speaker 1: raised our public policy profile globally. It didn't matter because
Speaker 1: I'm a black woman. I've seen examples of genuine contrition,
Speaker 1: even reparation this past week from others. I hope Pinterest
Speaker 1: take this opportunity to express not only their solidarity but
Speaker 1: also follows through on their commitment and taking action sharing
Speaker 1: This is scary, especially after being docks and knowing the
Speaker 1: many forms that retaliation can take. I owe it to
Speaker 1: myself and black colleagues still there to hold the company
Speaker 1: to the commitments it's made Pinterest. Black employees do indeed matter,
Speaker 1: pay us fairly. Period periods spelled out and then appear
Speaker 1: in the an actual period period period. So her tweets
Speaker 1: go hella viral. This is when she was first on
Speaker 1: I radar. I was like, oh my god, who is this, Like,
Speaker 1: who is this amazing woman calling out this company publicly
Speaker 1: and like demanding accountability. So cool, so cool. So staffers
Speaker 1: at pinterest they hold a walkout in support of Efoma
Speaker 1: and a Foma was taking a huge She had an NDA,
Speaker 1: so she's taking a huge risk in speaking up. So
Speaker 1: when she tweeted about her experience, she was breaking an
Speaker 1: NDI a uh, and so Pinterest could have pursued legal
Speaker 1: action or sued her for speaking up about her experience
Speaker 1: at the company. That's because of a loophole in the law.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. DiScRIBinATE. There's a there's
Speaker 1: a discrimination loophole exactly, exactly, so you were allowed to
Speaker 1: break an India if you were experiencing gender based harassment
Speaker 1: or discrimination, but not racial harassment or discrimination. And that's
Speaker 1: because the stand Act, which is the Stand Together Against
Speaker 1: Nondisclosure Act, which passed in response to the Me Too movement,
Speaker 1: nullified n d as in cases of sexual harassment, assaulted discrimination.
Speaker 1: I have to be honest, it's like one of those
Speaker 1: things were like as powerful as Me Too was, a
Speaker 1: lot of the legislation and stuff that was championed and
Speaker 1: came out of that movement was not always done with
Speaker 1: like an intersectional framework. And so since i Foma was
Speaker 1: alleging that she was treated unfairly because of her race,
Speaker 1: not specifically her gender, she could not legally break her
Speaker 1: n d A, and she was taking this big risk
Speaker 1: in speaking about what she experienced, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: she became a whistleblower. Her speaking up alerted shareholders, other employees,
Speaker 1: and the public to what was found to be rampant
Speaker 1: gender and racial discrimination at Pinterest. There was an investigation
Speaker 1: into the workplace culture at pinterest and the findings were
Speaker 1: not good. After all this became public, Pinterest had the
Speaker 1: subtle a lawsuit with their shareholders, who sued the company
Speaker 1: saying that executives had breached their fiduciary duty by perpetuating
Speaker 1: or knowingly ignoring the long standing and systemic culture of
Speaker 1: discrimination and retaliation at Pinterest. Separately to all this, after
Speaker 1: e Foma and another black staff or at Pinterest started
Speaker 1: speaking up about the discrimination that they faced at the company,
Speaker 1: a white woman who had formerly been the company CEO,
Speaker 1: name Francois bro Her, also filed a gender discrimination lawsuit
Speaker 1: against the company, and she won. Pinchers had to pay
Speaker 1: her a record twenty two point five million dollars settlement,
Speaker 1: which was the largest known settlement for gender discrimination in
Speaker 1: US history, with two point five million of that being
Speaker 1: earmarked to commit to nonprofits that support underrepresented in marginalized
Speaker 1: groups in technology. Francois Brauer said that I Foma and
Speaker 1: the other black staff or at pinterest Erica speaking up
Speaker 1: is what inspired her to do this, which honestly is
Speaker 1: like great for her. But Francois Brauer was already a
Speaker 1: millionaire before coming to work at Pinterest, and she got
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars when she spoke up and filed this
Speaker 1: discrimination lawsuit. I Foma got almost nothing. She got six
Speaker 1: months severance and like punished for doing her job. And
Speaker 1: so I Foma really did something that we see so
Speaker 1: often when it comes to black women in technology. She
Speaker 1: used this horrible personal experience to make things better for everyone,
Speaker 1: not just for black women, not just for herself, but everyone,
Speaker 1: all of us. She drafted and worked successfully passed the
Speaker 1: Silence No More Act, new legislation in California that makes
Speaker 1: it illegal for companies to bar employees from speaking out
Speaker 1: about harassment and discrimination, and that actually became law in
Speaker 1: in California. So thank you, I Foma. This was also
Speaker 1: around the time when a lot of other tech whistle
Speaker 1: blowers were speaking up, like Francis Hogan and Sophie's on
Speaker 1: speaking up about the harm that they witnessed at tech companies.
Speaker 1: E FOMA published the Tech Worker Handbook, which is a
Speaker 1: free online resource for folks who are thinking about becoming
Speaker 1: whistleblowers at tech companies. It's not meant to encourage people
Speaker 1: to be whistleblowers, but it's just a like fact based
Speaker 1: step by step guide of like, yo, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: blow the listlet some harm that you're seeing at your
Speaker 1: tech company, Here's all the considerations that you should take.
Speaker 1: Here's how you should do it safely so that you're
Speaker 1: not being trapped, and here's what you need to know
Speaker 1: before you do it. To date, i FOMA has successfully
Speaker 1: gotten companies to adopt policies or language that allow workers
Speaker 1: to speak up about discrimination even if they have signed
Speaker 1: n d A s, which will, ultimately, I think, make
Speaker 1: everyone safer, because everything in technology is better when people
Speaker 1: are not beholden to stay quiet about harms or wrongdoing
Speaker 1: that they have witnessed within these companies. And so I
Speaker 1: think i foma story is one that really helps us
Speaker 1: understand I think one one of the reasons why this
Speaker 1: problem will not get better until we have massive culture
Speaker 1: shift in technology. I think that we need to really
Speaker 1: rethink who has the power in tech, who we center
Speaker 1: whose experience as we center in value and technology. And
Speaker 1: I don't think until we do that, and I or
Speaker 1: until people like I Foma, who you know, speak out
Speaker 1: and try to make things safer and better, are welcomed
Speaker 1: instead of being ignored, isolated, alienated and punished. So with that,
Speaker 1: let's hear from A Foma in her own words, Thank
Speaker 1: you Foma. My full name is e Foma Zoma, and
Speaker 1: I'm the founder and principle of the consulting firm I
Speaker 1: started that's called earth Seed, which is actually named after
Speaker 1: the community that Octavia Butler created in parable of the Sower,
Speaker 1: in parable of the talent. So I love that, love
Speaker 1: Butler's work. Really having extra extra meeting the last few
Speaker 1: so I would love to start by talking about some
Speaker 1: of your work at pinterest. You know, before before things
Speaker 1: went south. It sounds like you had a lot of
Speaker 1: really great winds there. Tell me, tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit about how you came to be working there. It's
Speaker 1: so it's even crazier because as things were going south,
Speaker 1: I was still doing the work. But I'll back up
Speaker 1: and start at the beginning. My entire career before starting
Speaker 1: my own consulting firm has been intact, starting in d
Speaker 1: C at Google, working on public policy and public affairs work,
Speaker 1: primarily with elected officials at the federal level and a
Speaker 1: few at the state level. And then after that I
Speaker 1: moved to Google and or to Facebook in California, and
Speaker 1: there I was doing a lot of international work around
Speaker 1: hate speech and programs that we ran with a civic institutions,
Speaker 1: and that's where I started getting more exposed to content
Speaker 1: moderation and to UH particularly hate speech, but how content
Speaker 1: moderation worked at the international level and in the international context,
Speaker 1: especially when companies based in California are making those decisions,
Speaker 1: and the disparate impacts that exist when that's the case.
Speaker 1: And then I was recruited to Pinterest to be the
Speaker 1: second person on the public policy team there, and my
Speaker 1: first week on the job, I pushed our g C
Speaker 1: and our trust and Safety team and the content policy
Speaker 1: team to make the decision that we ended up making
Speaker 1: on Alex Jones and removing him entirely from the platform
Speaker 1: at a time. This is in at a time when
Speaker 1: he was not really being addressed by any platform. And
Speaker 1: the argument I made at that point UM was first
Speaker 1: that he already violated a lot of the policies that
Speaker 1: we had his content UM and two important things. One
Speaker 1: that if you're acting on misinformation. At that point, no
Speaker 1: other platform had a misinformation policy other than like medium.
Speaker 1: And my point was, well, if we're making decisions because
Speaker 1: we know content is misinforming, we have a misinformation policy.
Speaker 1: We need to just write it and be clear and
Speaker 1: stand in our convictions and post it on the site.
Speaker 1: A few researchers will pick it up, others may, I couldopt,
Speaker 1: most people won't, But I do think when you're making decisions,
Speaker 1: you need to be transparent about what those decisions are
Speaker 1: and why and so. From there and the policy that
Speaker 1: came out of that, then I was able to push
Speaker 1: UM for a lot of the health misinformation work that
Speaker 1: I did, which started with getting a landscape analysis. That's
Speaker 1: something that I feel has been missing from a lot
Speaker 1: of platforms. If you don't know what's on your platform
Speaker 1: and others don't know, how do you address it properly?
Speaker 1: If you don't know who it's impacting because mostation misinformation
Speaker 1: is not an equal opportunity harm. It's mostly targeted at
Speaker 1: people of color and at women, and when you're looking
Speaker 1: at health misinformation, it's especially start And so having that information,
Speaker 1: I was then um able to push for things that
Speaker 1: I was retaliated against because of But that's a whole
Speaker 1: other set of stories. I've been working in the misinformation
Speaker 1: space for a while, and you're exactly right that a
Speaker 1: few platforms and had any kind of public facing policy
Speaker 1: around it, and so pinterest was able to really position themselves,
Speaker 1: at least from from my perspective as an outsider at
Speaker 1: that point, as a leader in this space who could
Speaker 1: walk with conviction. Deep down, I think I knew it was.
Speaker 1: You know, there's probably a black woman leading this work somewhere.
Speaker 1: But they were really able to enjoy this public persona
Speaker 1: as a company with a little bit of backbone and
Speaker 1: was going to take responsibility. And yet while enjoying the
Speaker 1: you know that, while enjoying that reputation, they were internally
Speaker 1: making your life harder at pinterest for that work that
Speaker 1: they were getting so much acclaim from folks like me
Speaker 1: from the outside for like, how does that sit how
Speaker 1: are you able to sit with that um with a
Speaker 1: lot of peace that karma is real, um and it
Speaker 1: will come back to get them. But but also that
Speaker 1: was one of the reasons why I had to go
Speaker 1: public about the retaliation that I faced when I raised
Speaker 1: pay discrimination concerns about the docks sing that I experienced
Speaker 1: from a white male supremacist who happened to also work
Speaker 1: at pinterest after I pushed for decisions to be made
Speaker 1: around white supremacist content that had existed on the platform.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of intersections, as you know, with misinformation,
Speaker 1: and so even though pinterest was most well known because
Speaker 1: of a health misinformation work that I did, we took
Speaker 1: a lot of steps to address other types of misinformation.
Speaker 1: And where those two I guess circles and event diagram
Speaker 1: met was on an anti choice site that had been
Speaker 1: posting misinformation around birth control and access to abortion services
Speaker 1: being targeted specifically at black communities to uh push eugenics
Speaker 1: agenda from the pro choice movement, just and the ways
Speaker 1: in which the misinformation aligned. I pushed internally that like
Speaker 1: this is this is why we have to look at
Speaker 1: misinformation in general. We have to look at the specific
Speaker 1: ways in which it it harms people. But if you
Speaker 1: just take a well, this is an opinion point of view,
Speaker 1: then you're missing that this is both health misinformation and
Speaker 1: it's also political because it's targeted at a group using
Speaker 1: language and using imagery. Because they're very good at using
Speaker 1: images of black mothers and black children on these websites
Speaker 1: that are run entirely by white supremacists, that you may
Speaker 1: miss some of the context if you only look at
Speaker 1: the content and not what their entire website is pushing.
Speaker 1: That's a really good point, and I think it's a
Speaker 1: point that we miss about how misinformation works, you know,
Speaker 1: especially on a platform like Pinterest that is so visual.
Speaker 1: You might be on Pinterest just looking to like, you know,
Speaker 1: looking inspiration for your new baby nursery or something. You
Speaker 1: might you're you're not Your users might not really think
Speaker 1: that they're in a space where they're going to be,
Speaker 1: you know, encountering this kind of charge, no racially charged, racist,
Speaker 1: sexist imagery that's meant to mislead them about their health. Right.
Speaker 1: You might be just like using it casually because you're
Speaker 1: looking for for pretty pictures. And I think that's so
Speaker 1: that's so key that people's guards are down often times
Speaker 1: when they're on site side of interest, so they don't
Speaker 1: even realize like, oh, I'm actually being I'm actually consuming
Speaker 1: content specifically meant to to lead me astray and misinformed me.
Speaker 1: And that's why it was particularly harmful. And that was
Speaker 1: my even though the platform had never really done anything
Speaker 1: public in the policy space, wasn't certainly not known by
Speaker 1: any of the reporters I ended up working with about
Speaker 1: policy decisions. One of the reasons why I felt so
Speaker 1: strongly about this is it's a platform that was going
Speaker 1: towards I p O at the time that I had started,
Speaker 1: so I started pre I p O and part of
Speaker 1: the messaging around that is where a platform with eight
Speaker 1: and ten moms in the US on here, lots of
Speaker 1: women use the platform around the world, and women are
Speaker 1: often decision makers when it comes to financial choices for
Speaker 1: their households. So it's a great platform for advertisers. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, that's what made it a prime
Speaker 1: target for misinformation purveyors because you have a captive audience
Speaker 1: folks who are not a tune to looking for miss
Speaker 1: and disinformation because they're not on Facebook, they're not on Twitter,
Speaker 1: they're in a place that feels safe to them, and
Speaker 1: so they're the perfect opportunity to then hawk whatever goods
Speaker 1: you're selling. A point that I made often because I
Speaker 1: get invited by the w h O, CDC and others
Speaker 1: to talk about this health misinformation work um that they
Speaker 1: had not thought about it as much is the financial
Speaker 1: incentives that are tied to a lot of misinformation. Whether
Speaker 1: it's Alex Jones selling his nonsense T shirts and supplements
Speaker 1: and whatever else. These people are scam artists. That's their
Speaker 1: number Their number one job is scamming folks. They use
Speaker 1: the values that people have, they use the fears that
Speaker 1: people have to then sell their products. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, these are spammers and scammers, and
Speaker 1: so you need to also be looking at what it
Speaker 1: is that they're trying to push on your platform. For
Speaker 1: almost every single health misinformation site, they were selling supplements.
Speaker 1: So if you would address dangerous supplements on the platform
Speaker 1: as spam, why would you not consider this at the
Speaker 1: same level of harm to the platform and ultimately harm
Speaker 1: to legitimate advertisers. That's a really good point I had not.
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes so much sense. I think that
Speaker 1: we're so used to thinking about scammers as people you know,
Speaker 1: selling fake Gucci on the street and like no, it can.
Speaker 1: People can can scam online and they're misleading you in
Speaker 1: order to get you to buy whatever bullshit product they're hockeing.
Speaker 1: I would actually argue that the person selling the Gucci
Speaker 1: handbag that's fake, that's not harmful. You got a cheaper
Speaker 1: bag if it's made well, it looks pretty good, like
Speaker 1: you get a deal. They get a deal. Gucci doesn't
Speaker 1: get a deal, but what do they need one for? Um?
Speaker 1: But that's not harmful in the same way that telling parents,
Speaker 1: and especially at the point at which most parents make
Speaker 1: decisions about vaccines in the last trime master before they
Speaker 1: have the kid, that they instead of getting a vaccine
Speaker 1: for their child, which will save their child's life, they
Speaker 1: should instead go buy your vitamin K supplement. That is
Speaker 1: so harmful and dangerous in a way that we need
Speaker 1: to take it more seriously. It's not a difference of opinion.
Speaker 1: It's actually costing people's lives definitely. And I think to
Speaker 1: your point about how many moms are on the platform,
Speaker 1: you know, as we go into talking about you know,
Speaker 1: vaccine rollout for COVID and things like that, it is
Speaker 1: a lot of times moms who are making health decisions
Speaker 1: for the family, and so if moms are being inundated
Speaker 1: with really harmful health misinformation on this platform where they
Speaker 1: think they're going to be safe, it is a real
Speaker 1: problem that could could have a real human cost. And
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, the person scamming fake Gucci belt on
Speaker 1: the street, other than not giving Gucci more money, which frankly,
Speaker 1: I'm not really that mad at. You know, we have
Speaker 1: to look at the kind of harm that these platforms
Speaker 1: can really be responsible for pushing on communities who are
Speaker 1: oftentimes already marginalized or underrepresented. That's exactly right. So I
Speaker 1: want to switch gears a little bit. So a thing
Speaker 1: in technology that is so frustrating is marginalized people being
Speaker 1: punished for speaking honestly and accurately about things like hate
Speaker 1: and extremism. And I feel like we're never gonna get
Speaker 1: anywhere and addressing this if are not even allowed to
Speaker 1: speak honestly about it without consequences. A perfect example is
Speaker 1: you know what happened at get Hub around January six.
Speaker 1: So folks might recall that during the January six insurrection,
Speaker 1: a Jewish staffer who worked at the tech company get
Speaker 1: Hub watched it all unfold on television like we all did,
Speaker 1: and he saw these insurrectionists storming the capital, some of
Speaker 1: whom were objectively holding Nazi flags. So he posted a
Speaker 1: message in slack warning his coworkers to stay safe. He wrote, like,
Speaker 1: stay safe, there's Nazis about and get hub fired him
Speaker 1: for this. Now, eventually the company apologized and all of that.
Speaker 1: But you've spoken with dealing with a very similar kind
Speaker 1: of thing where you spoke honestly and openly about hate
Speaker 1: and extremism within technology and you were punished for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not only punished, I was personally targeted. So the
Speaker 1: story I was referring to earlier, the white supremacist colleague
Speaker 1: who wasn't someone I worked with closely, but worked on
Speaker 1: the engineering side of trust and safety, I saw a
Speaker 1: message that I posted in exactly the right place for
Speaker 1: me to post. It wasn't a general conversation area, but
Speaker 1: I posted that a pretty popular white supremacist was in
Speaker 1: fact a white supremacist. I linked to the content that
Speaker 1: violated our policies that was of concern, and then I
Speaker 1: put in a note as well that the platform or
Speaker 1: the folks working on trust and safety should be mindful
Speaker 1: of these terms, like, here's a set of terms that
Speaker 1: are dog whistles unless you're a white supremacist or unless
Speaker 1: you're the target of the white supremacist harm. And these
Speaker 1: are what we need to look out for, because these
Speaker 1: folks aren't going to title their videos on YouTube as Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm a white supremacist and this is my view. It's
Speaker 1: going to say something about population control around white replacement theory,
Speaker 1: which a lot of folks are not aware of, but
Speaker 1: is a huge red flag and it is a calling
Speaker 1: card for many white supremacists. A few months after posting
Speaker 1: that warning, sharing the context and the content, which was
Speaker 1: my job as a public policy person who helped inform
Speaker 1: content safety decisions that we made, I was then doted.
Speaker 1: This person dots me and two other women, another one
Speaker 1: who was a black woman and a woman that he
Speaker 1: a white woman. He assumed to be a lesbian um
Speaker 1: and we only know that because of the comments that
Speaker 1: came up on Gateway Pundit and in other places where
Speaker 1: we had been targeted. And for me, I guess he
Speaker 1: took a particular disliking to me and so shared my
Speaker 1: phone number as well, and all of the identifying information
Speaker 1: that you would need to find me. At this point,
Speaker 1: I had already separate from all of this and separate
Speaker 1: from the work I was doing. I had already raised
Speaker 1: paid discrimination complaints with UH the appropriate leadership at the company,
Speaker 1: my manager, managers, manager, HR, etcetera, and was getting serious
Speaker 1: pushback from them. And so then when I was docked,
Speaker 1: the lack of response from them to take care of
Speaker 1: my safety to address what was going on was so
Speaker 1: apparently part of the retaliation that I had already been
Speaker 1: facing on the pay discrimination side UH that it was
Speaker 1: pretty traumatizing being at a company where it was clear
Speaker 1: I was not safe. I was not necessarily safe at
Speaker 1: home because it's not very difficult to track someone down
Speaker 1: once you have enough information UH. And then was also
Speaker 1: dealing with everything else at the same time. So I
Speaker 1: really related to the get Hub story because of the
Speaker 1: docks thing that I experienced and the lack of response
Speaker 1: from the company. But then also later on that same year,
Speaker 1: UH Color of Change had come to me because I
Speaker 1: was the liason with outside groups academics and civil society
Speaker 1: on content safety issues. They had come to me sharing
Speaker 1: that they were still seeing slave plantations pop up as
Speaker 1: wedding venues and suggestions for weddings. If you know Pinterest
Speaker 1: or you know someone who uses it, the number one
Speaker 1: use of the platform might be planning a wedding or
Speaker 1: preparing for some sort of celebration. And I agreed with them,
Speaker 1: it's completely inappropriate that the platform would be pushing concentration camps,
Speaker 1: which is what they were uh and torture sites as
Speaker 1: a celebration venue. And so I brought it to our
Speaker 1: content safety team with my recommendation, shared exactly what color
Speaker 1: of Change had shared with me, and then I got
Speaker 1: pushed back from the head of that team, particularly the
Speaker 1: head of content policy, who happens to still be there
Speaker 1: and still speaking on behalf of the company. Um. What
Speaker 1: I later found out was that she was married on
Speaker 1: a plantation that she never shared that in all of
Speaker 1: the fact that I got. But she ended up working
Speaker 1: with my manager, who had already been retaliating against me,
Speaker 1: to ding me on my performance review. So even though
Speaker 1: Pinterest ended up doing exactly what I recommended, ended up
Speaker 1: getting praised in forty plus headlines because of the decision
Speaker 1: to stop promoting slave plantations and the decisions that I
Speaker 1: had pushed to be made I was ding on my
Speaker 1: performance review which affected my pay well. First of all,
Speaker 1: the revealed that this woman had her own I mean,
Speaker 1: yike level, the levels like just like what you said, right,
Speaker 1: These companies get to enjoy the positive press that makes
Speaker 1: them look like a woke company or a company that
Speaker 1: really cares, like I heard so many times people say, oh,
Speaker 1: Pinterest is a company that has a you know, like
Speaker 1: they are a company that prizes like empathy, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: And then to hear the inner workings of how this
Speaker 1: happened is so it's such a disconnect. I feel, it
Speaker 1: really is, you know, it really illustrates how so many
Speaker 1: different levels can come together to suppress and push out
Speaker 1: and harm a black woman for doing her job right,
Speaker 1: Like this was your job. It's not like it's not
Speaker 1: like you were overstepping bounces. Is what you were hired
Speaker 1: to do. And I also think this, you know, and
Speaker 1: this is the conversation that feel comes up again and
Speaker 1: again and again where black women are punished for like
Speaker 1: doing the right thing, for practicing public courage, public morality,
Speaker 1: for doing their jobs trying to make things safer or better.
Speaker 1: Someone else gets to enjoy the benefits of that work.
Speaker 1: But that work is at best, you know, unappreciated, underappreciated,
Speaker 1: at worst dangerous and risky for your own personal safety,
Speaker 1: right like you, Like you did this work of making
Speaker 1: Pinterest as safer, better platform at great personal cost and
Speaker 1: at great risks your own like safe safety. Yep, And
Speaker 1: and all of those things happened. Not only was I
Speaker 1: paid unfairly and I had to pursue legal action because
Speaker 1: of that, I was then also my life was starting,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I got all of it while I was there.
Speaker 1: And people often like to call black women canaries in
Speaker 1: the coal mine or whatever term they want to use.
Speaker 1: But I would like to just do my job, get
Speaker 1: paid fairly, and not be put in danger for for
Speaker 1: doing the right thing for a company. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: something like half more than half of the articles that
Speaker 1: were written about pinterest in the month before the public
Speaker 1: offering which happened in April referenced my work. So not
Speaker 1: only did my work have value to the actual users
Speaker 1: of the platform, end up pushing Facebook and others to
Speaker 1: have to respond about why they weren't addressing health misinformation,
Speaker 1: particularly around vaccines. And remember that was during a different
Speaker 1: health issue, a measles outbreak measles outbreaks on the East
Speaker 1: and West coast. Uh So, not only did it have
Speaker 1: that sort of impact, which is a slam dunk if
Speaker 1: you're in a policy space, but it also had material
Speaker 1: benefit to the company in the form of the I
Speaker 1: p O. And I still was not treated fairly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the company still hasn't actually acknowledged that anything they
Speaker 1: did in my case was wrong. I mean, what is
Speaker 1: that like for you? Like you, you seem like someone
Speaker 1: who and maybe this is just my you know, we're
Speaker 1: talking over squadcast, you know, Uh, you seem like someone
Speaker 1: who has a lot of peace for how horribly you
Speaker 1: were treated, And I just I have to like, I've
Speaker 1: had a lot of age. I've had a lot of
Speaker 1: rage as well. You know, I really do believe in karma,
Speaker 1: and I believe it's not just you, It'll be the
Speaker 1: next seven generations that are hit with whatever evil you
Speaker 1: put out into the world. And so I take the
Speaker 1: long view. I'm like Aria from Game of Thrones. I
Speaker 1: have a list. I'm making my way through the list,
Speaker 1: but you'll get yours eventually. That's that's my long view.
Speaker 1: And then also I'm a student of history and political science,
Speaker 1: None of this is new. What I'm dealing with is
Speaker 1: not new, It's not unique to my situation. Does it suck, yes,
Speaker 1: has it been miserable, Yes, I've paid physical consequences for
Speaker 1: it because my actual health was impaired for the two
Speaker 1: plus years I was in a legal fight with them.
Speaker 1: But like, I'm good at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I'm at peace with every single decision I made. I've
Speaker 1: never lied about what I experienced there. And so when
Speaker 1: they're out here lying about what they did to me,
Speaker 1: um and getting called out on lines, that is enough
Speaker 1: for me. Wow. And then I have to add, you know,
Speaker 1: reading that a former Pinterest CEO, a white woman, was
Speaker 1: able to get what was it, a twenty million dollar
Speaker 1: uh discrimination uh pay out from Pinterest her and she
Speaker 1: explicitly said, you and your other black women colleagues speaking
Speaker 1: up about what you experienced that Pinterest, that was a
Speaker 1: big part of why she felt she was able to
Speaker 1: get this, to get to get this settlement. And you know,
Speaker 1: and you if I remember queestly like I didn't even
Speaker 1: get a year of severance from Pinterest, that's correct, and
Speaker 1: laid the groundwork she was not going to speak up
Speaker 1: publicly and actually in the medium post where she didn't
Speaker 1: reference to us when she first went public. Um, but
Speaker 1: she herself said that women had come to her over
Speaker 1: the course of her career and she actually had not
Speaker 1: been a helpful ally to other women. So I think
Speaker 1: she said everything. Um. But yeah, no, I I what
Speaker 1: was crazy about that situation is people got to see
Speaker 1: in real time what it means to lead a movement
Speaker 1: and then be left out of whatever progress comes. And
Speaker 1: black women are often I mean, when you think about
Speaker 1: me too, who has me too actually benefited if not
Speaker 1: white women, maybe maybe in a sense all women, but
Speaker 1: it is most benefited white women. And yet it was
Speaker 1: started by Toronto Burke, a black woman. So this is
Speaker 1: not it's not new, it's not I didn't speak up
Speaker 1: because I expected them to do the right thing. I
Speaker 1: from the jump expected them not I expected them to
Speaker 1: denigrate my name, my experience, which they've done all of that,
Speaker 1: and then not to pay me what they owe me.
Speaker 1: But seeing it all happen in front of everyone, I
Speaker 1: think was a lesson, not only for the folks who
Speaker 1: were watching it and just expecting that the right thing
Speaker 1: would happen, but then also some of the reporters who
Speaker 1: worked on the story, and we're the very first ones
Speaker 1: to reach out and be like, how is it possible
Speaker 1: that you? Like, I literally remember talking to you and
Speaker 1: then talking to her several months later. You are the
Speaker 1: reason why she came forward. You are the reason why
Speaker 1: she had a strong case, and then this happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you're right that, for better or
Speaker 1: for worse, it always seems that black women we are
Speaker 1: the ones building, Like we're the ones building, and then
Speaker 1: other people are the ones who are benefiting. And I
Speaker 1: think I see that in politics, I see that in tech.
Speaker 1: I see that in so many different It just seems
Speaker 1: to be you know, I at this point it almost
Speaker 1: you know it is what it is. But like that
Speaker 1: seems to be our on this on this earth, like
Speaker 1: building things that we then don't get to to use ourselves, right,
Speaker 1: Like I think it was this writer Clarissa Brooks who
Speaker 1: once wrote like, I, as a black woman, I don't
Speaker 1: want my back to be used as a bridge to
Speaker 1: a world and I'll never see right. I feel like
Speaker 1: I feel like that is our lot, and I see
Speaker 1: it particularly in tech, but in so many different different avenues.
Speaker 1: And that's why even though uh, this was painful personally painful,
Speaker 1: of course to have been the one who experienced all
Speaker 1: of this and then have someone else benefit from it.
Speaker 1: It was instructive for everyone to see it and to
Speaker 1: see the timeline and how quickly and the different way
Speaker 1: in which they responded to her. And then also I
Speaker 1: think it was a helpful lesson for people who considered
Speaker 1: themselves allies to see as well, because there were a
Speaker 1: lot of people who think of themselves as allies who
Speaker 1: saw it and we're like, wait, what, how is it
Speaker 1: possible that this is happening. This happens all of the time.
Speaker 1: You just don't usually see the dollar amount that's attached
Speaker 1: to the progress that certain people get and others do not. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of kind of connected to that idea,
Speaker 1: you know, when we're thinking about how to combat some
Speaker 1: of the more harmful things that black women and other
Speaker 1: underrepresented communities space online disinformation, misinformation, online harassment, I do
Speaker 1: have this feeling that there is this underlying assumption that
Speaker 1: black women like like tech and the internet on all
Speaker 1: of these domains, or it's like not our rightful domain,
Speaker 1: so we should not we are not able to expect
Speaker 1: experiences that are not harmful in these spaces, and I
Speaker 1: think for me, it's kind of this vicious cycle where
Speaker 1: that dynamic is mirrored at tech companies and so black
Speaker 1: women engineers, black women technologists are b are pushed out
Speaker 1: of these companies and are not are not being listen to,
Speaker 1: and thus these platforms are not able to to prioritize
Speaker 1: our safety. So it's like I feel like we, in
Speaker 1: my mind, will never address the true harm that platforms
Speaker 1: have been responsible for if these tech companies cannot figure
Speaker 1: out a way to really have black women be meaningfully
Speaker 1: centered and heard, because it just seems like a this
Speaker 1: like horrible cycle. I'm not sure this makes any sense,
Speaker 1: but um no, it makes complete sense. And it's not
Speaker 1: a lack of figuring it out, it's a lack of desire.
Speaker 1: They I said to I think it was Charlie worzel
Speaker 1: Row column a few months ago about Facebook and it
Speaker 1: may be being a lost cause, and I said, platforms
Speaker 1: reflect the people who lead them. That you're only seeing
Speaker 1: on Facebook, on Twitter, on pinters wherever, what the people
Speaker 1: who lead those platforms want you to see. And so
Speaker 1: if they're operating in a white supremacist structure and worldview
Speaker 1: and that is where their actual interests align. That's what
Speaker 1: we're going to see on the platform. So none of
Speaker 1: this is by accident. None of this is all of
Speaker 1: a sudden out of control. This is exactly what they
Speaker 1: design working in the ways that they want it to work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it always comes out of that question of is it
Speaker 1: a they can't problem or are they won't they won't
Speaker 1: they don't want to problem? And I think if we really,
Speaker 1: if anything, your situation really reflects what the answer might be,
Speaker 1: It's like they could, they just don't want to, because
Speaker 1: this is you know, they've made these choices. They've they've
Speaker 1: made choices about who and what to prioritize and who
Speaker 1: can what to you know, suppress and shut down and
Speaker 1: not prioritize. And the example I it makes usually the
Speaker 1: audiences that I give this or share this analogy with
Speaker 1: our health focus, public health professionals, experts, etcetera. And I say,
Speaker 1: if you want to understand how non accidental any of
Speaker 1: this is, think about pornography. How often do you randomly
Speaker 1: encounter porn on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or wherever else?
Speaker 1: Not that often, not often, it's not often often, and
Speaker 1: yet you see misinformation every other post you see hate
Speaker 1: every other post. There's a financial reason for that. Advertisers
Speaker 1: have said they don't want pornography next to their content,
Speaker 1: and so what have platforms done. Poured every single resource
Speaker 1: into making sure that's the case. They've made a choice here,
Speaker 1: and the choice is not on the side of safety.
Speaker 1: I would argue that if it's legal consenting adult pornography,
Speaker 1: that is way less harmful to randomly encounter on a
Speaker 1: platform than health misinformation or Nazi content. Right. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is such a silly example, but for the longest
Speaker 1: time on Instagram, and maybe it's still a case if
Speaker 1: you showed your nipples on Instagram or like if you
Speaker 1: were breastfeeding on Instagram. There was a woman who had
Speaker 1: a pick sure of of her but where she had
Speaker 1: her period on Instagram and that was removed. But they
Speaker 1: were not removing you know, they were very diligent about
Speaker 1: removing this stuff, but also not removing like this information
Speaker 1: or like violent content or like hate speech. You know
Speaker 1: it really it really you have to ask some questions
Speaker 1: about priorities, you really do, yep. And the priorities are
Speaker 1: clear in all of our experiences on these platforms. Absolutely absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I think justis like you know, black women on
Speaker 1: the Internet. I think that I believe that we have
Speaker 1: come to expect that our experiences with technology and online
Speaker 1: will not be safe. And I want to get to
Speaker 1: a place where we can radically rethink that, radically rethink
Speaker 1: what our experiences on these platforms should should be like
Speaker 1: and can be like. I think that we need to
Speaker 1: really do. I would love to see some like radical
Speaker 1: rethinking about what we can expect from our Internet experiences.
Speaker 1: I agree, And that's the basis of all the work
Speaker 1: that I have done, the work that I'm doing out
Speaker 1: through my consulting firm on tech accountability, whether it's in
Speaker 1: the health misinformation space or whether it's on the organizing
Speaker 1: side and providing protections for whistle bars UM. And I
Speaker 1: think it's it's a conversation that it's unfortunate that we
Speaker 1: have to bear the burden of since we're the people
Speaker 1: who are harmed by it. But even just a few
Speaker 1: days ago, I was part of a conversation on Clubhouse
Speaker 1: UM around content moderation and around the decisions that platforms
Speaker 1: made to the platform Donald Trump, And before we went
Speaker 1: into that conversation, I sent a note to everyone on
Speaker 1: the panel, saying clubhouse is a place that I am
Speaker 1: not frequenting by choice because black women are often targeted
Speaker 1: and people use very loud dog whistles basically just short
Speaker 1: of using the N word and using straight up misogynistic language.
Speaker 1: But there's a ton of that going on, and I
Speaker 1: put the onus on every one on the panel to
Speaker 1: if that happened in the course of our conversation from
Speaker 1: anyone from the audience, to not make it be my
Speaker 1: responsibility to be the only one to say something, and
Speaker 1: every single one was was great and said absolutely, of course,
Speaker 1: But that should be the way that we're setting up conversations.
Speaker 1: It shouldn't be the responsibility of the person who is
Speaker 1: most likely to be harmed to say, like, hey, I
Speaker 1: hate to be the one to bring the mood down,
Speaker 1: but this could happen, so can we please watch out
Speaker 1: for it. God, I have been that person a thousand times,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like what you were saying. It
Speaker 1: just sucks like you you want to you want to
Speaker 1: do your job and be paid what you're owned for
Speaker 1: doing that work. I feel that black women are just
Speaker 1: not often afforded the ability to just do your work
Speaker 1: and keep your head down. It's like you have to
Speaker 1: take on all this often unpaid. Might I add extra labor,
Speaker 1: extra energy, extra every anything, just to exist and do
Speaker 1: your job and put your message out there. Really, it
Speaker 1: is exhausting. I know exactly that that feeling of like,
Speaker 1: oh God, I'm gonna be at to have to be
Speaker 1: the person that raises this again and like everyone's gonna grown.
Speaker 1: I just know that feeling, and it sucks. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: does sucks. So I have one last question for you.
Speaker 1: What do you think platforms or policy policy folks or
Speaker 1: any anybody who has powered decision makers, what should folks
Speaker 1: be doing to keep this and misinformation off of platforms? Well? Um,
Speaker 1: I think the first step is on the platform side,
Speaker 1: having people who are empowered not just there um, who
Speaker 1: are also knowledgeable about the ways that dis and misinformation
Speaker 1: target specific community. Is the ways that it's showing up
Speaker 1: differently on each platform, because these folks are recycle a
Speaker 1: lot of content, but they know what content works best
Speaker 1: and on which platform, and so the platforms also have
Speaker 1: to be aware of the ways in which their platforms
Speaker 1: are being used. On the policy side, I think it's
Speaker 1: great that the administration is passing the bar that was
Speaker 1: on the ground from the Trump administration for diversity and
Speaker 1: so at least they've cleared that low bar and standard.
Speaker 1: But I am not seeing enough um black women in
Speaker 1: positions of leadership when it comes to misinformation and tech
Speaker 1: policy specifically. UM. I was encouraged by the science I
Speaker 1: think it's some sort of science focused department within the
Speaker 1: administration that was announced recently that a Laundron Nelson will
Speaker 1: be on. That's incredible. Uh, But on the tech side,
Speaker 1: it cannot just be pulling that sperat piece of people
Speaker 1: like Eric Schmidt and other white tech executives to then
Speaker 1: reform the same industry that they've made billions off of. Like,
Speaker 1: that's just not how it works. That's not how it
Speaker 1: should work. UM and I and I think it's important
Speaker 1: to pull academics, but you also need practitioners who have
Speaker 1: experienced things on the inside of these platforms to be
Speaker 1: informing the decisions and any regulation or reform that comes
Speaker 1: as a result. Definitely. Actually, do have one last question
Speaker 1: for you. I know, I said, I don't realized, but
Speaker 1: you know we've talked a lot about you know, black
Speaker 1: women's experiences in tech. I'm sure that you know this.
Speaker 1: I know this is from from doing the work. So
Speaker 1: much of the infrastructure of what we rely on to
Speaker 1: make the Internet safer and better. So people who are
Speaker 1: fighting disinformation and misinformation have been for a long time.
Speaker 1: So much of that infrastructure is Black women. What is
Speaker 1: it like to know that we have such a being
Speaker 1: role in doing a lot of the work that is
Speaker 1: making the Internet safer and better for everybody? I mean,
Speaker 1: I it's tough because on the one hand, when we
Speaker 1: when progress is made that we push for everyone benefits
Speaker 1: um and often we benefit the least. And so it
Speaker 1: is it's just a role that many Black women have
Speaker 1: taken on to protect themselves and our communities. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, I don't blame any black women who are like,
Speaker 1: you know what, this is not my fight, this is
Speaker 1: not my battle. I'm tired. I'm just trying to live
Speaker 1: during a pandemic. I'm trying to feed my kids, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to feed myself. I'm trying to take a damn
Speaker 1: nap like. I ascribe wholeheartedly to the NAP Ministry and
Speaker 1: the work that the nat Ministry has been doing because
Speaker 1: I think sometimes we have to say you know what
Speaker 1: I told you, so now I'm going to write that's it.
Speaker 1: I'm done, I'm done, I'm bound out, And so I
Speaker 1: allow the space for that at any point, while also
Speaker 1: hoping that when black women say, you know what, this
Speaker 1: is work that I want to do, that we're uplifted
Speaker 1: and we're empowered. The flip side of that is making
Speaker 1: sure that allies are supposed allies are not then saying,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, you're so good at this, you need
Speaker 1: to be the one leading it. No, no, after the
Speaker 1: fifth and the results in Georgia, when everyone is posting
Speaker 1: about and not black women because black women were not
Speaker 1: doing this, but when everyone else was posting about what
Speaker 1: Stacy Abrams needs to be doing now. If she wants
Speaker 1: to go to a SPA for the next month, for
Speaker 1: the next decade, that is her decision, and that's what
Speaker 1: she should be empowered to do, and those same people
Speaker 1: trying to demand labor of her should donate so that
Speaker 1: she can have her SPA time for as long as
Speaker 1: she wants. Like that is a kind of ally ship
Speaker 1: that I want to see, not just finding new work
Speaker 1: for us to do when we're the only ones paying
Speaker 1: the price for the work. Internet hate machine is a
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Speaker 1: Zone Media, check out our website cool zone media dot com,
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