Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
Speaker 1: is there Are No Girls on the Internet. I have
Speaker 1: some sad news to share. Shapika Hudson, whose work basically
Speaker 1: created the field of study on how to mobilize against
Speaker 1: bad actors on social media when she created the hashtag
Speaker 1: your slip is Showing in twenty fourteen, tragically passed away
Speaker 1: last week. Now we talk a lot about how the
Speaker 1: work of making Internet spaces safer for everyone often falls
Speaker 1: on black women like Shappeka, and it's often tough, thankless, ignored,
Speaker 1: and sometimes even dangerous. Even though Shappeka's work changed the
Speaker 1: way we think about the Internet, she did it all unpaid.
Speaker 1: She died crowdfunding for healthcare costs. Shaffika wanted people to
Speaker 1: know the realities of long COVID. Last year, she tweeted,
Speaker 1: when long COVID affects kill me sooner than later, I
Speaker 1: need you all to recognize and say loudly what it was,
Speaker 1: adding this won't be considered a massive crime against humanity
Speaker 1: until we're all gone.
Speaker 2: Just tell them.
Speaker 1: I thought and tried this very podcast, and this work
Speaker 1: would never exist if not for Shafika, a funny, fierce
Speaker 1: cat lady who made the Internet just a better place
Speaker 1: to show up on, who built an entire school of
Speaker 1: thought out of necessity that made the Internet safer and
Speaker 1: better for all of us. She was one of the
Speaker 1: very first interviews I ever did for their No Girls
Speaker 1: on the Internet back in twenty twenty when we first launched,
Speaker 1: and in honor of her brilliant, beautiful life cut short,
Speaker 1: let's hear from her again, Shafika, I am so sorry. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I could tell you this story one hundred times
Speaker 1: and one hundred different ways. People just don't listen to women,
Speaker 1: especially Black women, and it comes with big consequences. Years ago,
Speaker 1: black feminists were experiencing a coordinated pattern of disinformation on Twitter.
Speaker 1: They spoke up, but no one listened. That failure to
Speaker 1: listen to black women had a big impact. It allowed
Speaker 1: for the weaponization of online harassment tactics against other marginalized
Speaker 1: people on social media and presents continued threats to our
Speaker 1: democracy and safety. Okay, so let's just get this out
Speaker 1: of the way right now. Twitter is a bucking cesspool.
Speaker 1: If you spend any time there, you probably already know
Speaker 1: this bad faith, commentary, reply, guys, trolls, harassment, It can
Speaker 1: really just be an unpleasant place. In May, Twitter announced
Speaker 1: they would start labeling tweets that spread misleading information. But
Speaker 1: this comes years after black feminists raised the alarm about
Speaker 1: it and were ignored.
Speaker 2: These women weren't just being attacked.
Speaker 1: They were learning about the tactics that bad actors used
Speaker 1: to infiltrate online communities. They spoke up about what they
Speaker 1: were experiencing online. So why did anyone listen? And what
Speaker 1: might have happened if they had?
Speaker 3: Shadika Hudson, freelancer tat Lady Sometimes activists.
Speaker 1: Shapika had been using Twitter regularly since almost this very beginning,
Speaker 1: where she spent most of her time online connecting with
Speaker 1: other black feminists. In twenty fourteen year old job searching,
Speaker 1: she noticed a hashtag that just did not make sense,
Speaker 1: end Father's Day. The people pushing the end Father's Day
Speaker 1: hashtag on Twitter appeared to be black feminists. They talked
Speaker 1: about how we should have polished Father's Day because too
Speaker 1: many black men day outside of their race, or because
Speaker 1: black men don't support their children.
Speaker 2: Stuff that just seemed really out there.
Speaker 3: Unless have had like ten different tabs open because I
Speaker 3: was also like doing a job search and just going
Speaker 3: about my life, and it some one tweet caught my
Speaker 3: attention because it was so completely off the wall, and
Speaker 3: I don't know who retweeted it or like how it
Speaker 3: even arrived in my timeline, but it wasn't anything that
Speaker 3: any black feminist anywhere would say. It was like, what
Speaker 3: was oh gosh, yeah, in Father's day. I wish these
Speaker 3: white women would stop stealing our men. Something just completely
Speaker 3: off the wall. They had nothing to do with anything,
Speaker 3: and the avatar was someone who I didn't recognize. Now,
Speaker 3: the thing about the black women's community on Twitter, the
Speaker 3: thing about a lot of communities on Twitter, is that
Speaker 3: you might not necessarily get along with everybody, but you
Speaker 3: know whoeveryone is like, and if you haven't met them
Speaker 3: or seen them out, or you know, done a tweet up,
Speaker 3: hung out at a party, something someone you know has
Speaker 3: And in this particular instance, I'm clicked on the person
Speaker 3: well the accounts profile. I said, okay, who is this.
Speaker 3: I've never seen this person and it looks like they
Speaker 3: just joined like two days ago, and they're just tweeting
Speaker 3: about this with this hashtag and they have you know,
Speaker 3: the photo of a black woman, but it just nothing
Speaker 3: adds up. So that drove me to click on the
Speaker 3: hashtag and Father's Day, and lo and behold. When I
Speaker 3: did a Twitter search, there's a bunch of accounts that
Speaker 3: are saying things that are completely left, like not left,
Speaker 3: like you know, politically, just kind of left, like left,
Speaker 3: where are you coming from? Left? And I didn't recognize
Speaker 3: any of them, so I at that point I just
Speaker 3: kind of asked a general question from my timeline to say, Okay,
Speaker 3: you guys, what's going on. I keep seeing this hashtag
Speaker 3: and these accounts that I don't recognize, with people who
Speaker 3: look like they just joined like five seconds ago. And
Speaker 3: someone said, yeah, it looks like this is like some
Speaker 3: kind of fortune thing. That's when I really started digging.
Speaker 3: I said, Okay, well, this is really awful because they're
Speaker 3: pretending to be black women who were saying these awful things,
Speaker 3: and I'm smart enough to know that nothing here that
Speaker 3: they're saying is even remotely what a real black feminist
Speaker 3: would say. I honestly think the people who they fooled
Speaker 3: immediately were already probably biased against feminists or black women,
Speaker 3: or some combination of the two. I didn't get the
Speaker 3: impression that they were fooling most of the people I followed,
Speaker 3: is is what I mean. But they were getting some reaction.
Speaker 1: That's when Shapika went from curious to piste.
Speaker 3: I got so mad, Like I remember just being so angry.
Speaker 3: I could feel my cheeks and my ears heat up, honestly,
Speaker 3: like you know in the in the cartoons where the
Speaker 3: character like starts seeming from their sp coming to your
Speaker 3: ears as he hear the tea kettle whistle. I was curious.
Speaker 3: So I was like, you know, it's not like we
Speaker 3: don't get enough garbage online just being black women, you know,
Speaker 3: with people just randomly showing up in our mentions to
Speaker 3: argue with something that we said, not because they necessarily disagree,
Speaker 3: but because that's what people do when you're a black
Speaker 3: woman online. Apparently, because we don't deal with enough out
Speaker 3: here in real life and online, we don't deal with enough.
Speaker 3: We've got this whole silly operation thing happening. So I said, well,
Speaker 3: let me just go ahead and take a look and
Speaker 3: see what's really going on and see how bad this is.
Speaker 3: And as I began to dig, I saw just how
Speaker 3: bad it was, and I realized that I would not
Speaker 3: be able to point out all of these accounts alone.
Speaker 1: You know how in movies when a character discovers this
Speaker 1: thing they've been investigating as much, much bigger than they realized.
Speaker 1: There is no pepe silvia, and this thing goes all
Speaker 1: the way to the top. Well, that's how she speaks out.
Speaker 1: She knew the Twitter accounts Pushing and Father's Day weren't
Speaker 1: actually black women. They were just impersonating black women, and
Speaker 1: pretty badly at that. But there were too many of
Speaker 1: them for this to be a one off thing. It
Speaker 1: had to be coordinated, and there were also too many
Speaker 1: for her to tackle alone. She wanted to give other
Speaker 1: black feminists a tool to sniff out these imposters, so
Speaker 1: she fought back with a hashtag of her own, your
Speaker 1: slipp ish Showing.
Speaker 3: I went ahead with your slippish showing. I might've run
Speaker 3: another line like, I don't know your mess scare is
Speaker 3: running something like that, but your slippy is showing just
Speaker 3: seemed to work. It really just seemed to work.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, if you're not a lady from the South,
Speaker 1: the phrase your slipp ish showing might not mean anything
Speaker 1: to you. Literally, it means when your slip is peeking
Speaker 1: out from underneath your skirt or dress a big fashion
Speaker 1: no no, but where I come from, that one phrase
Speaker 1: really highlights us a versiveness of what I'll call auntie speak.
Speaker 1: Think of it a bit like the phrase bless your heart.
Speaker 1: A lady at church might tell you that your slip
Speaker 1: is peeking out from the bottom of your skirt because
Speaker 1: they care about you looking your best. Or they could
Speaker 1: tell you your slip is showing because they don't like you,
Speaker 1: and they're pointing out pop that you aren't looking as
Speaker 1: good and put together as you think you are.
Speaker 3: You know, just the sort of thing that one of
Speaker 3: your aunties might say to you in church whence, oh, honey,
Speaker 3: you need to you need to fix your slip. It's
Speaker 3: showing except mean, because right, there's a there's a difference
Speaker 3: between your slip is showing from one of your aunties
Speaker 3: and your slip is showing from somebody who doesn't like you.
Speaker 3: And that was what I was going with of, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: your slip is showing. I'm telling you because I was
Speaker 3: raised right, not because I particularly care about you being embarrassed.
Speaker 3: I love that so much.
Speaker 1: I love how you kind of use this Southern auntie
Speaker 1: expression that.
Speaker 3: We all sort of know what it means. What's also
Speaker 3: funny is that I would imagine the people who are
Speaker 3: impersonating black women probably that probably that nu once probably
Speaker 3: goes right over their head. Yes, that was also one
Speaker 3: of the things that I also delighted in, because of
Speaker 3: course they wouldn't get it, because you'd have to. I mean,
Speaker 3: you have to be somewhat embedded within certain communities to
Speaker 3: pick up on the nuance, and they really weren't.
Speaker 2: It's fitting that we're talking about getting the nuance. That's
Speaker 2: certain something you can't really teach.
Speaker 1: This would ultimately be the undoing of people and personating
Speaker 1: black women online, their inability to authentically sound like black women.
Speaker 1: They'd try to use aave or African American evernacular English,
Speaker 1: but get the expressions all wrong in ways that might
Speaker 1: as well be screaming, I am a white person pretending
Speaker 1: to be a Black woman. This is where I should
Speaker 1: probably say that. Around the same time, in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: I noticed someone on Twitter using my photo and tweeting
Speaker 1: confusing things about black people. I never knew who was
Speaker 1: behind it or why it was happening, but if I
Speaker 1: had to say, I would say it wasn't an actual
Speaker 1: black woman, because the things they were saying were just
Speaker 1: so out there, things like I'm going to be voting
Speaker 1: for Trump because Hillary Clinton is whack y'all, things that
Speaker 1: just didn't sound right because they're not speakers of aav
Speaker 1: they're approximating.
Speaker 3: The thing that like really really really seemed to like
Speaker 3: immediately point them out was this consistent and ability to
Speaker 3: understand and properly use the habitual B. They didn't get it.
Speaker 3: They did not like they they would use the habitual
Speaker 3: B just kind of like for the future tents, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. Like it was terrible, and a
Speaker 3: lot of the time it was just like really obviously
Speaker 3: racist word salad. Obviously racist word salad. I love it
Speaker 3: my new band name.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, it seemed like the point of End Father's Day
Speaker 1: was to see what kind of discord bad actors organizing
Speaker 1: on message boards like Forshan could sew with the feminist
Speaker 1: online communities and to make actual feminists and our issues
Speaker 1: look like petty, stupid man haters whose issues were so
Speaker 1: outlandish they could never be taken seriously. It turns out
Speaker 1: this is actually a pretty common disinformation tactic hijacking public
Speaker 1: conversations about sensitive topics or wedge issues through medium manipulation
Speaker 1: is a way of making people afraid of having an
Speaker 1: opinion in public and ultimately trying to silence them.
Speaker 4: I'm Joan Donovan and I'm the research director at the
Speaker 4: Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
Speaker 1: Doctor Donovan says, the same way that brands and politicians
Speaker 1: realize the power of social media, the kind of people
Speaker 1: who want to harass others did do it can have
Speaker 1: a big impact, especially as we're using social media to
Speaker 1: talk about thorny issues like race, gender, and sexuality, issues
Speaker 1: that require nuance to discuss thoughtfully. It makes it tough
Speaker 1: for anyone to have a good faith dialogue online.
Speaker 4: Over time, just like the politicians learned to use social media,
Speaker 4: we had white supremacists figure out that you don't actually
Speaker 4: need to show up in public to have an impact
Speaker 4: on people's lives, and so we saw networked and coordinated
Speaker 4: harassment campaigns. It just continue, even to this day, continue
Speaker 4: to be useful ways to shut down journalists, to impersonate
Speaker 4: different groups, and to really cause a fracture in public
Speaker 4: conversation about really important issues that require some level of nuance.
Speaker 4: Some level of understanding and a lot of compassion to
Speaker 4: talk about, you know, especially racism in this moment, and
Speaker 4: people are reticent to talk about it because they're afraid
Speaker 4: of saying something wrong, especially in the environments online where
Speaker 4: if you do make a misstep you could get dragged,
Speaker 4: you could get canceled. But also some of that might
Speaker 4: be artificial. It might be the case that people do
Speaker 4: sympathize with you, people do want to help you grow
Speaker 4: and learn, but certain medium manipulators see that as an
Speaker 4: opportunity to swarm in and really drive the witch as
Speaker 4: deep as it can go.
Speaker 1: A few right wing news outlets picked up the hashtag
Speaker 1: and Father's Day and amplified it as a legitimate feminist take.
Speaker 2: This is how Fox News covered it, Like some of
Speaker 2: these tweets, heres from Tasha. She wrote in and everyone
Speaker 2: knows we only need mothers, Why do we even need
Speaker 2: Father's Day? Fathers are useless?
Speaker 3: Hashtag and come.
Speaker 1: On, oh, come on, you're this nasty feminist rhetoric that
Speaker 1: they're not just like interested in ending Father's Day, interesting
Speaker 1: ending men, that's really what they want. But Shafika says,
Speaker 1: only the kind of people who were already predisposed to
Speaker 1: be skeptical of women and feminists, especially black women, fell
Speaker 1: for it. Well, it was actually at first, I remember
Speaker 1: I was incredulous, Like, honestly, I was looking at people like, oh,
Speaker 1: and Father's Day feminists take a terrible turn and blah blah,
Speaker 1: and I was like, you got to be hitting.
Speaker 3: But then I realized that no, they were completely serious.
Speaker 3: And then it dawned on me that these were people
Speaker 3: who could not possibly understand feminism, possibly women in general,
Speaker 3: Black people her too much of anything outside of their
Speaker 3: little Fox News bubble like that. That was the impression
Speaker 3: that I got, Like, basically, if you fell for this,
Speaker 3: it's because you already had a certain set of bigotries
Speaker 3: in place to fall for it.
Speaker 1: What's happening with black women online is much less widely
Speaker 1: known than gamer Gate. Were angry men coordinated to harass
Speaker 1: progressive voices online who were mostly women in the month's
Speaker 1: following and Father's Day. Shafika thinks it was ignored because
Speaker 1: the women who were targeted were black. Not only was
Speaker 1: she helping to create a tool to stamp out this
Speaker 1: kind of disinformation online, she also wanted to document that
Speaker 1: it was happening. Wouldn't go forgotten or raised just because
Speaker 1: it was happening to black women.
Speaker 3: As you're probably aware of, a lot of us are
Speaker 3: big on what we call receipts, So there are plenty
Speaker 3: of receipts. We've got the screen cabs. You can't even
Speaker 3: you know, delete the tweets because we got it, we
Speaker 3: got the information. But yeah, I mean, that's that's been
Speaker 3: a big part of it for me, and it's frustrating
Speaker 3: for a lot of us to see essentially a history erased.
Speaker 3: It's particularly distressing for me because you know, I'm not
Speaker 3: I wouldn't consider myself a scholar at this particular point.
Speaker 3: And my friend so True who also was absolutely integral
Speaker 3: with formulating your slippy showing and how it kind of
Speaker 3: played out and became a useful tool. But back when
Speaker 3: I was a scholar, I understood that one of the
Speaker 3: things that people do when they're trying to erase the
Speaker 3: impact of a movement is they kind of start deleting history.
Speaker 3: It's a huge feature of a ra Sure when people
Speaker 3: talk about your slip is showing, if they talk about
Speaker 3: it or if they mention it at all, it's weird.
Speaker 3: It kind of gets vaguely mentioned in relation to gamer
Speaker 3: Gate as this weird thing that sort of happened before
Speaker 3: gamer Gate that wasn't really relevant and didn't provide anybody
Speaker 3: any tools or you know, it was, you know, just
Speaker 3: kind of a blip as opposed to what it was,
Speaker 3: which was a scary peak into the future. And again,
Speaker 3: like I said, hindsight being twenty twenty once, when you
Speaker 3: start to look back on all of these four chan
Speaker 3: for I'm sorry, I can't say four chan without making
Speaker 3: that noise. You have a special four chan noise I do.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. Someone else pointed out to me. It's like,
Speaker 3: do you realize that you just kind of make this
Speaker 3: disgusted noise? What I mean you say, I'm like, I
Speaker 3: just sorry, it's automatic. I'm working on it. When you
Speaker 3: try to kind of understand how everything happened, you have
Speaker 3: to take all of it into account. I really think
Speaker 3: that in Father's day, and you know, consequently your slip
Speaker 3: is showing were a huge part of it, and it's
Speaker 3: it can be frustrating to see it left out of
Speaker 3: the history because it's like, Okay, you're missing a really
Speaker 3: relevant chunk of understanding how all of this mess happened.
Speaker 1: Even at a time where we're having a conversations around
Speaker 1: women's experiences online. Why do you think your slip is
Speaker 1: showing and end Father's Day and the way that women
Speaker 1: and folks of color have been harassed online pretty much
Speaker 1: goes overlooked.
Speaker 3: Why do you think that is not? Yeah? That and
Speaker 3: again it's frustrating, and my theory remains it's because the
Speaker 3: targeted group at the time for the in Father's Day
Speaker 3: of four chan operation were black women. It's honestly, that's
Speaker 3: my That's I have no other answer at this point,
Speaker 3: has been six years, I've watched this just kind of
Speaker 3: repeatedly happen, and the only answer, unfortunately, that I have
Speaker 3: is that, Okay, well, this is being largely ignored and
Speaker 3: raped because of who the targets were, and the targets
Speaker 3: were of black women, but particularly black feminists.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this quick break. People who
Speaker 1: are traditionally marginalized online, like black women, are specifically impacted
Speaker 1: by things like disinformation and harassment on social media.
Speaker 2: The ultimate goal is to freak them.
Speaker 1: Out so much that they'll shut down their social media
Speaker 1: and just stop talking.
Speaker 2: Here's doctor Donovan again. Yeah, so we have.
Speaker 4: To remember that a lot of the ways in which
Speaker 4: disinformation is carried through networks are also related to the
Speaker 4: ways in which people are harassed online. You know, So
Speaker 4: if you're uh, there's a concept called gender trolling. It's
Speaker 4: evolved into transtrolling, race trolling, queer trolling, where the characteristics
Speaker 4: of your identity become the thing that they focus on,
Speaker 4: and they'll, you know, they'll be a swarm of folk
Speaker 4: that have coordinated in some other place, usually on a
Speaker 4: message board, and they will target specific public figures or women,
Speaker 4: or trans folks or prominent black activists in order to
Speaker 4: get them to shut off their social media, and they
Speaker 4: will use all kinds of horrendous images and threats to
Speaker 4: try to get you to feel fear and to shut
Speaker 4: it down. And we don't see that same kind of
Speaker 4: level of threat making when it comes to trolling male candidates.
Speaker 3: And that has to do with.
Speaker 4: The characteristics of the harassers themselves, which often see the
Speaker 4: harassment as a form of activism and as a form
Speaker 4: of defending themselves or defending their piece of the culture.
Speaker 4: And so a lot of these people to to be
Speaker 4: misogynists as well as racists, and in their smaller online
Speaker 4: communities where they don't think they're watch they'll talk openly
Speaker 4: about that, and they'll talk openly about who they should
Speaker 4: target and why and what the problem is. And I
Speaker 4: think at this stage we've been through this enough to
Speaker 4: know it's a serious problem. But it still happens every day,
Speaker 4: and especially in this moment, we're seeing an incredible amount
Speaker 4: of trolling around anti black racism. And the responsibility though,
Speaker 4: for dealing with this, lies with the platform companies first
Speaker 4: and foremost.
Speaker 1: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey hasn't always been the most responsive
Speaker 1: to the misuse of the platform. You'd think you'd be
Speaker 1: more concerned, but Shafika says that wasn't the case. She
Speaker 1: and the other black women targeted were pretty much left
Speaker 1: on their own to figure it out. So did the
Speaker 1: powers that be at Twitter or any other social media
Speaker 1: company or any other official do anything to fix this?
Speaker 3: No, that the short answer there is no. Now. The
Speaker 3: longer explanation is that we repeatedly brought this whole thing
Speaker 3: to the attention of Twitter support to Jack directly. It's
Speaker 3: not like nobody knew what was happening. It it made the
Speaker 3: news like so it's not as though he was ignorant.
Speaker 3: The general impression that I got from Twitter support was that, oh, well,
Speaker 3: you know this is We're so sorry, our hands are
Speaker 3: tied and blah blah blah, And I started looking into
Speaker 3: the tech side of everything, and I realized that that
Speaker 3: wasn't the truth. They absolutely had and had tools on
Speaker 3: hand to stop this, and they just didn't. They just
Speaker 3: let it happen. They just let us clean up the
Speaker 3: mess and defend our communities ourselves.
Speaker 1: As much as being left to fend for her own
Speaker 1: community online sucked, it did teach Chapika that her online
Speaker 1: community could do a lot with a little And while
Speaker 1: that wasn't.
Speaker 3: Cool at all, and hopefully at some point, and you know,
Speaker 3: at some point down the line, they will be sufficiently
Speaker 3: shamed for it because it was just really awful. We
Speaker 3: learned what we could do on the ground with just
Speaker 3: the very basic tool of like community organization and a hashtag,
Speaker 3: we were able to do a whole lot to just
Speaker 3: stop something that could have gotten way out of hand.
Speaker 3: We outed it early and we ended it early. And
Speaker 3: if something had been done to make sure that these
Speaker 3: fake accounts that we were reporting had been taken on
Speaker 3: a commission, there would have been a lot less for
Speaker 3: gamer Gate to work with. They wouldn't have had to,
Speaker 3: they wouldn't have had the opportunity to just go ahead
Speaker 3: 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 slip is showing and your work organizing
Speaker 1: community responses online was kind of this canary and a
Speaker 1: coal mine, and you all did all that you could
Speaker 1: to prevent this, to stamp this out. But if only
Speaker 1: the powers that be at Twitter or elsewhere had done anything,
Speaker 1: then it might not be the sort of wide scale
Speaker 1: situation that it is now.
Speaker 3: That is exactly correct, and that I know that sounds damning,
Speaker 3: but that's accurate. They could have stopped it. They could
Speaker 3: still stop it. But the reason why, unfortunately, and this
Speaker 3: was absolutely pointed out by people at the time and
Speaker 3: people well later taking the whole situation from like, you know,
Speaker 3: the whole post mortem of the whole incident, the reason
Speaker 3: why they didn't is because of the profit model at
Speaker 3: the time was based on number of accounts and interaction.
Speaker 3: So you know that when you're selling your product, basically
Speaker 3: we're we're the products to advertisers and whatever have you.
Speaker 3: The more users, it looks like you have the better.
Speaker 3: So it really wasn't in Twitter's best interests to say, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: we have twenty accounts with one IP address that's suspicious
Speaker 3: and we should look into it. And that's why they didn't.
Speaker 3: They didn't took them a full two and a half years,
Speaker 3: I think, to even really address it in a serious way.
Speaker 3: And I think that was only after the whole congressional
Speaker 3: me Like, I'm pretty sure that was after everybody who
Speaker 3: was like the head of social media got called in
Speaker 3: front of Congress. Mm hmm, Like that's what it took.
Speaker 2: So that pretty much brings us to today.
Speaker 1: Today, Twitter leads all other social media platforms and the
Speaker 1: spread of misleading information about coronavirus, according to a study
Speaker 1: by Oxford researchers called Types, Sources and Claims of COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen misinformation, and a study out of Carnegie Mellon found
Speaker 1: that most of the accounts pushing this misleading content are
Speaker 1: actually convincing looking bots using Twitter to prey on people,
Speaker 1: so division an increased polarization.
Speaker 2: This isn't just an online saying either.
Speaker 1: Kathleen Carly, the director for the Center for Informed Democracy
Speaker 1: and Social Cybersecurity, says increased polarization will have a variety
Speaker 1: of real world consequences and things like voting behavior and
Speaker 1: hostility toward ethnic groups. And this summer, as Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter protests popped up all over the globe, Twitter confirmed
Speaker 1: that multiple accounts posing as Black Lives Matter activists were
Speaker 1: calling for violence in white suburbs. But those accounts were
Speaker 1: actually run by white supremacist groups just posing as activists
Speaker 1: and quote Antifa to cause chaos.
Speaker 5: Facebook under fire again a Senate Intelligence Committee report claiming
Speaker 5: Russian agents use social media sites like Facebook to target
Speaker 5: African Americans in an effort to suppress voter turnout.
Speaker 1: We already know that Russia used social media to interfere
Speaker 1: with the twenty sixteen election, and in case you needed
Speaker 1: a Senate report to confirm with black women have been
Speaker 1: saying all along, a Senate inquiry cited an Oxford University
Speaker 1: report on Russian interference on social media. They found that
Speaker 1: campaigns targeted no single group more than African Americans. On
Speaker 1: social media, they posed as black people and ran bony
Speaker 1: black activist groups to influence Black voters to either stay
Speaker 1: home or vote for Trump on election day. The Senate
Speaker 1: Intelligence for says The posts were aimed at making Americans
Speaker 1: suspicious of each other sound familiar. These are the very
Speaker 1: same kind of tactics that black women like Shaffika were
Speaker 1: complaining about years earlier, accounts posing as black people and
Speaker 1: infistrating our online communities to create chaos and distrust. But
Speaker 1: because the people with power didn't really do anything or
Speaker 1: 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 unaddressed. Instead of identifying and learning the
Speaker 1: spot tactics used to make our social media communities less
Speaker 1: safe and less stable, the powers that be just let
Speaker 1: it happen again and again and again. I asked Shafika
Speaker 1: if she thinks that if someone had listened to black
Speaker 1: women when they spoke up about being targeted online, things
Speaker 1: might be different.
Speaker 2: Now it's a tough question for her.
Speaker 3: This is always going to be a question that kind
Speaker 3: of hangs in my mind because while I understand the
Speaker 3: black voters were absolutely targeted, I'm not entirely sure that
Speaker 3: we were fooled. Do you know what I mean? Right? Like,
Speaker 3: honestly because it seems like to me, we kind of
Speaker 3: all got out and voted anyway. And it also seems
Speaker 3: like to me, Donald Trump may have lost the popular
Speaker 3: vote by three million posts, but that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 3: I get not if you ask him, he didn't he
Speaker 3: but we don't ask him things because we like honest answers.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, just the fact that this happened,
Speaker 3: like it left us arguably vulnerable, and that even even
Speaker 3: though I'm not sure how ultimately successful successful, it was
Speaker 3: just the fact that we had foreign agents targeting voting
Speaker 3: populations in the United States of America should have been
Speaker 3: serious and due cause for alarm, because even if it
Speaker 3: doesn't work, it's like just it's just the fact that
Speaker 3: they tried and that they could. What do you do it? Like,
Speaker 3: can we get it together? It's because we left we
Speaker 3: left the door open like this. This was that was
Speaker 3: a failure. That was I don't want to say it
Speaker 3: was on me, because I feel like it definitely wasn't
Speaker 3: on me, and it definitely wasn't on you, But it
Speaker 3: was it was a failure on the side of whatever
Speaker 3: agents are supposed to be protecting us. And I guess
Speaker 3: that offers. That opens up a lot for speculations like, well,
Speaker 3: you know who's who's looking after us now? But yeah,
Speaker 3: that that was a glaring example of just kind of
Speaker 3: the general failure. Who addressed something that did not have
Speaker 3: to get as big as a gout.
Speaker 1: More, there are no girls on the internet after this
Speaker 1: quick break. The twenty twenty presidential election is one hundred
Speaker 1: and twelve days away. Digital security experts agree that American
Speaker 1: elections are vulnerable and not enough it's being done about it.
Speaker 1: During Trump's impeachment hearing, Fiona Hill, the former National Security
Speaker 1: Council advisor specializing in Russia and European affairs, said.
Speaker 2: Right now Russia's security services and their proxies are geared
Speaker 2: up to repeat their interference in the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 3: We're running out of time to stop them.
Speaker 2: So what do we do? Doctor Donovan says.
Speaker 4: As we get closer to the election, we know that
Speaker 4: all different kinds of tactics are going to get utilized,
Speaker 4: including potentially deep fakes or cheap fakes, like manipulated video,
Speaker 4: manipulated audio. We're going to see probably clips of people
Speaker 4: quoted out of context. We've seen this happen to Joe
Speaker 4: Biden a few different times. Then, of course we've seen
Speaker 4: gas that these done are completely within context and a problem.
Speaker 4: You know, you can't forget that every once in a
Speaker 4: while you're watching it and you're like, this is this
Speaker 4: can't be real and it's totally real. Well, what's crazy
Speaker 4: to me about it is as a researcher, you're supposed
Speaker 4: to be attuned to all of this, but I still
Speaker 4: get fooled here and there. But the last thing I'll
Speaker 4: say about the way in which I think platform companies
Speaker 4: need to better serve our political elections and the integrity
Speaker 4: of elections is that they need to hire some serious specialists.
Speaker 4: They need to hire a whole army of librarians to
Speaker 4: do content curations so that when people are looking for information,
Speaker 4: they find things that have been fact checked that are
Speaker 4: true and correct. I think that we have a right
Speaker 4: to true and part of the problem is the way
Speaker 4: in which these algorithms are designed is to bring up
Speaker 4: things that are quote unquote fresh and relevant. And the
Speaker 4: problem with fresh and relevant content is that disinformation is
Speaker 4: usually incredibly popular because there are people trying to push
Speaker 4: it and there are people trying to dispute it, and
Speaker 4: so as a result, it rises generally to the top
Speaker 4: of search algorithms or trending algorithms very quickly because of
Speaker 4: that that feature.
Speaker 2: But will Twitter actually do any of that?
Speaker 1: Shapika isn't super confident that the platform will do anything
Speaker 1: at all. I haven't even thought about it, and I
Speaker 1: guess that's sort of a reflection on my general skepticism
Speaker 1: right now with not their ability but their willingness to
Speaker 1: address this. I have a good friend who's said one
Speaker 1: of the smartest things I've ever heard anybody say, and
Speaker 1: I quote it all the time, but he said, when
Speaker 1: things look like they're not working out, you can always
Speaker 1: trust that they're working out for somebody.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to lead that right there. But it
Speaker 3: looks like you know things aren't working, you start asking
Speaker 3: questions and as a whole rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: That's the thing about the Internet. There's so much darkness
Speaker 1: lurking in its corner. It's just waiting to spill out.
Speaker 1: Or there's darkness, there's light too, or there's someone being
Speaker 1: ugly online, there's someone else reaching out to make a
Speaker 1: genuine connection. There's real community to be built and laughs
Speaker 1: to be had, the kind of laughs that can sustain
Speaker 1: you through difficult times.
Speaker 2: Being online is a constant.
Speaker 1: Tight rope walk of acknowledging that darkness while still being
Speaker 1: able to see the corners of light peeking through, and
Speaker 1: even while wading through all of that darkness and ugliness.
Speaker 1: It's the light that is really sustained Shaffika, after everything
Speaker 1: she's been through, she's still grateful for Twitter as a
Speaker 1: platform and all the good things that's brought to her life.
Speaker 3: Honestly, it really helps that I have a strong and
Speaker 3: supportive community, both online and off. I've really am super
Speaker 3: grateful for Twitter for so many reasons, not the least
Speaker 3: of which is because it's helped me expand my network,
Speaker 3: and I've met amazing people and connected of people who
Speaker 3: are like me people who aren't like me, and gotten
Speaker 3: to know so much about them and learn about their
Speaker 3: lived experiences. And that has saved me because it helps
Speaker 3: me kind of get out of my own headspace or likewise,
Speaker 3: you know, connect with people who understand one hundred percent
Speaker 3: where I'm coming from. And that's in a world where
Speaker 3: you know, we're frequently gas lit about the things that
Speaker 3: we see and experience. That is absolutely invaluable.
Speaker 2: Oh and one more thing that helps.
Speaker 3: It also helps that I'm funny, honestly, having a sense
Speaker 3: of humor and a wit of We'll get you through
Speaker 3: pretty much. I don't want to say pretty much anything,
Speaker 3: but how about this. It's gotten me through pretty.
Speaker 1: Much everything, and you've been through some stuff.
Speaker 3: I've been through it.
Speaker 1: There are No Girls on the Internet. What's created by
Speaker 1: me Frigetad. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative
Speaker 1: Jonathan Stricklan is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our
Speaker 1: producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Brigittad. For more podcasts from iHeart, check
Speaker 1: out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcast us. Thanks so much for listening to their
Speaker 1: No Girls on the Internet. If you want to help
Speaker 1: our podcast grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.