Speaker 1: Welcome to Internet hate Machine. I'm Bridget and I'm joined
Speaker 1: with my producer Sophie, and we are also so thrilled
Speaker 1: to have our very first guest in the studio with us.
Speaker 1: I am joined by the lovely Joel Monique. Joel, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being here, Hi, Bridget, what's up?
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me so Joel. I have to
Speaker 1: start by saying, like, you're a pretty prolific Twitter user.
Speaker 1: What has that been like for you as a black
Speaker 1: woman with a pretty visible public profile on Twitter. I
Speaker 1: really liked Twitter up until recently. Now it's causing me
Speaker 1: headaches because I have to leave it. And I realized
Speaker 1: that what I really like about it was the fact
Speaker 1: that it's just words. How do you think about my image?
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to tell you where I've been, Like,
Speaker 1: I could just be like I really love this TV
Speaker 1: show or the song rocks or sucks or whatever. You
Speaker 1: can just so easily to share an opinion and it
Speaker 1: can live there and you can respond or not respond,
Speaker 1: and it's been great. And I mean, yes, there have
Speaker 1: always been assholes on Twitter, but my black fingers are strong.
Speaker 1: I'm not you know. I know. Maggie was like let
Speaker 1: him talk, and I'm like, I can't. I'm not as
Speaker 1: strong as you my knees nor my emotions. Apparently I
Speaker 1: can't deal with people being mean, and so I just
Speaker 1: blocked heavy and it's been a pretty smooth journey. And
Speaker 1: now man, I'm on not Mams Sabertooth. I know it's Masthodon, Mastodon.
Speaker 1: There it is. I got me one of those don't
Speaker 1: know how to use it yet. I presumeed my TikTok
Speaker 1: name ages ago have never posted anything. So now I'm
Speaker 1: just lurking in there, like do I want to come
Speaker 1: to this space? How life? You know? On camera? All
Speaker 1: that much? That frequently you know? And so I just
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know what I'm gonna do when
Speaker 1: the trolls take over, but I do, like if I'm
Speaker 1: looking for silver linings. Elon must downfall on this. He
Speaker 1: spent so much money and people, really I can tell
Speaker 1: because my follower account drops every day by like way
Speaker 1: too many of you. I haven't posted anything controversial or like,
Speaker 1: no strong opinions as of late, and so I can
Speaker 1: tell people are like and it's done. The worst part
Speaker 1: those I have a black Lady professional group chat on
Speaker 1: there that has been life saving, got me a lot
Speaker 1: of jobs, got me through a lot of crap, like
Speaker 1: has really helped solidify my career. And that check mark,
Speaker 1: you know, when I first got it, I was freelance
Speaker 1: and it really boosted my profile and gave me a
Speaker 1: lot of access that I didn't have previously. I do
Speaker 1: worry about what's going to happen. You know, we're trying
Speaker 1: to as a group or tegure out like where do
Speaker 1: we go next, and we're just not quite sure what's
Speaker 1: going to have that same kind of connection. So it's
Speaker 1: been a whild ride on Twitter. That's such a good
Speaker 1: point that you make about the access, particularly for folks
Speaker 1: and industries that are more traditionally marginalized. It's different for
Speaker 1: us to build up a platform, and it just has
Speaker 1: the stakes are different. And you know, I'm also verified
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and I do think that it's gotten me
Speaker 1: into spaces and gotten me access that I don't think
Speaker 1: I would have otherwise. And so like, if you're an
Speaker 1: editor and I tweet something I've gotten the d M
Speaker 1: that's like, oh, do you want to turn this into
Speaker 1: a piece for us? And I would be lying if
Speaker 1: I said that I wasn't going to miss that, But
Speaker 1: you're right, like, who who wants to be on a
Speaker 1: platform that is run by someone who has made it
Speaker 1: clear that they don't really care about the safety of
Speaker 1: the folks who are showing up on a platform like Twitter.
Speaker 1: I knew it was over when he was like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to charge for verification. I was like, well, then
Speaker 1: that defeats the point of verification, Like the check mark
Speaker 1: was there solely. I know a lot of people think
Speaker 1: it was like for a cloud that came with it,
Speaker 1: But the initial thing was like this famous person that
Speaker 1: you think you're talking to, that's actually them If they
Speaker 1: have the check mark, no check mark, you don't know
Speaker 1: who you're talking to. And I wonder like, if I
Speaker 1: set up on account it's called like the Rock, can
Speaker 1: I verify it? And then people think they're talking to
Speaker 1: Dwayne the Rock Johnson, Like there's what value is there
Speaker 1: in that check mark except that and and and the
Speaker 1: cloud that came with it before. Now that you can
Speaker 1: purchase it, I don't think companies or celebrities or anybody
Speaker 1: who was following you because you had that check mark
Speaker 1: is going to continue that behavior. I don't think people
Speaker 1: are going to get booked jobs because they have the
Speaker 1: checkmark once you can pay for it. When the when
Speaker 1: the actual like transition happens and it's and you are
Speaker 1: paying for it, I can't wait to find out who
Speaker 1: actually is paying for it. That will that will because
Speaker 1: it was again, unless if I was still freelanced, I
Speaker 1: might because without the profile I have now, I think
Speaker 1: I would still consider it because it did, like I said,
Speaker 1: coming so many jobs when I first got it, and
Speaker 1: so I do feel bad for those people who are
Speaker 1: like sort of on the cusp of having like a
Speaker 1: well known career. That checkmark really sort of verifies a
Speaker 1: lot for you. But yeah, as of now, like it
Speaker 1: would be weird again unless people really feel the need
Speaker 1: to try to verify, like yes, you're talking to me,
Speaker 1: you know. I saw some actor the other day was
Speaker 1: posting about how they don't like social media, but when
Speaker 1: it first started, they got concerned messages from parents saying,
Speaker 1: why are you talking to my fifteen year old child,
Speaker 1: and they were like, I'm not, and so that caused
Speaker 1: it a whole downward spiral for them. And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: to your you know, bridge, and I just don't think
Speaker 1: they care about safety that's clearly not an issue, and
Speaker 1: there's so much danger online. We we've been known. We
Speaker 1: grew up in the early odds. I remember early Internet
Speaker 1: safety danger lessons and news reports, and so it's it's
Speaker 1: weird to me that that's suddenly not a concern. So
Speaker 1: I that's right. That you're talking about is actor Robert
Speaker 1: Kazinski talking about, you know, what verification has meant for
Speaker 1: him and his career as an actor. And I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that you bring all of this up because it
Speaker 1: really dovetails exactly into what I want to talk about today,
Speaker 1: which is that's sort of dirty, messy business of people
Speaker 1: being able to impersonate others on Twitter and the incredibly
Speaker 1: high stakes that it comes with your experiences of maybe
Speaker 1: wanting to leave the platform. Really set us up nicely
Speaker 1: into that conversation because we know that Twitter has not
Speaker 1: always banned the most secure platform, has not always delivered
Speaker 1: a very secure experience for its users, and now with
Speaker 1: Elon Musk at the helme, I think it's poised to
Speaker 1: only get worse. And f y I we're recording this
Speaker 1: on a Friday. My understanding is Twitter is planning on
Speaker 1: rolling out this new pay to be verified system on Monday,
Speaker 1: so in just a couple of days, the same day
Speaker 1: or like just days before firing half their staff and
Speaker 1: a day before a fucking election. So I'm I'm very concerned,
Speaker 1: and I think that my concerns have real historical precedent,
Speaker 1: which I want to get into right now. So, a
Speaker 1: classic bad actor tactic is pretending to be somebody that
Speaker 1: you're not on social media, specifically to create confusion and
Speaker 1: to stabilize online spaces. Right, Like, this is probably not
Speaker 1: a surprise to you, Joel, This is like something we
Speaker 1: all have mainly know, right, yes, And I think something
Speaker 1: that really just burns me up about this is that
Speaker 1: it's very much unknown tactic. Right. The leadership at social
Speaker 1: media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have been made well
Speaker 1: aware that this is a tactic that bad actors used
Speaker 1: to threaten the security of their platforms, but they have
Speaker 1: really done fuck all to prevent it from happening, and,
Speaker 1: in the case of Twitter, or maybe making it easier
Speaker 1: to happen, which is a real head scratcher. So another
Speaker 1: classic bad act or tactic is inflaming existing tensions around
Speaker 1: groups of people who are traditionally marginalized, right and so
Speaker 1: that is a common day. Yeah, who who would have
Speaker 1: guessed it right, that that would be a common tactic
Speaker 1: to distabilized communities. So what happened around End Father's Day,
Speaker 1: around we don't want to talk about today? That's like
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I think it's so important
Speaker 1: because it utilized both of those tactics to hijack and
Speaker 1: exploit conversations around feminism, race, and gender online. And it's
Speaker 1: really concerning because you know, it's concerning that our social
Speaker 1: media platforms are so easily gamified in this way and
Speaker 1: that social media platforms aren't really doing anything to prevent it.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about End Father's Day. To really understand
Speaker 1: what the fun was going on with End Father's Day,
Speaker 1: you really need to understand what Fortune was calling Operation Lollipop,
Speaker 1: and essentially Operations Lollipop was this campaign to create fake
Speaker 1: activist causes on social media. Basically, people on Fortune, trolls,
Speaker 1: bad actors, whatever you want to call them, would pose
Speaker 1: as feminists of color, so like black feminists, brown feminists, etcetera,
Speaker 1: and essentially try to get people to agree with these
Speaker 1: bogus campaigns. They would start and just generally try to
Speaker 1: seed conflict with one another. The whole point is to
Speaker 1: create confusion inflame tensions, generally to make feminists look like
Speaker 1: a bunch of you know, crazy man haters whose causes
Speaker 1: have no merit and who can't even agree with one another.
Speaker 1: This is so wild when you see it happen just
Speaker 1: organically on your timeline, where you'll be like, so, here's
Speaker 1: a picture of you know, some as a black woman,
Speaker 1: sometimes a black man using way too much like currently
Speaker 1: popular and the guy's black lingo, where you're like, they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: no cap. You be like, I don't know if the
Speaker 1: situation necessarily calls for a no cap and yeah, And
Speaker 1: then you go on their page and they follow a
Speaker 1: bunch of people, but maybe only have like a handful
Speaker 1: of followers. Most of their tweets are retweets. It's they
Speaker 1: become easier to spot the more you come across them organically.
Speaker 1: But it's very strange to be like this is this
Speaker 1: like internet black face, and it's annoying and upsetting and
Speaker 1: again ruining these spaces that have you know, I know
Speaker 1: some people don't agree with the idea that there's community
Speaker 1: on these spaces, but I just think that for somebody
Speaker 1: who has found a great group of friends that I
Speaker 1: meet with regularly. I r L who you know again
Speaker 1: uses a space and platforms for for job opportunities, Like
Speaker 1: it does feel communal to me, and it does feel
Speaker 1: almost it's just invasive. It's invasive to have people come
Speaker 1: into those communities and try to erect them in that way.
Speaker 1: The reason why these bad actors pretending to be black
Speaker 1: women were exposed, it's exactly what you just picked up
Speaker 1: on when they use language where you're like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if a black person would actually say no cab
Speaker 1: in this situation. I don't know that a black person
Speaker 1: would actually say, you know, as a black I think
Speaker 1: Trump is lit little things where you're like, my spidy
Speaker 1: since it's tingling, I don't know if you're a black
Speaker 1: woman like you say you are Twitter user like five
Speaker 1: five six seven. And I think this is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why I am always kind of screaming from
Speaker 1: the rooftops that this kind of disinformation and media manipulation
Speaker 1: is a clear racial and gender justice issue because bad
Speaker 1: actors and trolls know that exploiting and inflaming these legitimate
Speaker 1: like tensions and trigger points per particularly between marginalized groups
Speaker 1: can really work because it does tap into these like
Speaker 1: legitimate traumas and baggage and anxieties that we do have.
Speaker 1: You know, the experience of being a black woman, or
Speaker 1: a queer person, or a trans person, or really any
Speaker 1: kind of marginalized identity in the United States is often
Speaker 1: marked with these very real historical traumas and baggage. And
Speaker 1: so people who are interested in using the Internet to
Speaker 1: spread chaos target marginalized people, and they do it by
Speaker 1: tapping into these existing traumas. And you know, a good
Speaker 1: example is like, as we approach the midterm elections, the
Speaker 1: kind of disinformation that we're seeing around the election is
Speaker 1: really meant to dissuade people of color from voting. You know,
Speaker 1: they tend to do this via things like fogus images
Speaker 1: purporting to show ice making arrests of undocumented people at
Speaker 1: polling places, or you know, images warning that, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: when you go to vote, they're gonna be checking if
Speaker 1: you have outstanding warrants when you do try to vote, right,
Speaker 1: These lies that are clearly meant to tap into very
Speaker 1: real fears and anxieties that black and brown folks have
Speaker 1: around being criminalized in the United States. So it plays
Speaker 1: on these like real traumas that we have in ways
Speaker 1: that exploit these things, these like tensions that we carry
Speaker 1: around just by virtue of being a marginalized person in
Speaker 1: the United States. Yeah, it's sinister when you essentially try
Speaker 1: to brainwash someone into acting in their own disinterest, right,
Speaker 1: particularly when we're talking about voting, This idea of if
Speaker 1: you exercise, you're right, there's a threat there and you
Speaker 1: should avoid that threa at all costs. It's it's really cruel.
Speaker 1: And the craziest thing is like when we see a
Speaker 1: lot of like who is participating in these acts, Like
Speaker 1: it's either very young kids who've been indoctrinated over many
Speaker 1: years YouTube fix your system, or like old people who
Speaker 1: again have been indoctrinated mostly by Fox News slash Fox
Speaker 1: News to feel it's and that sort of gets really
Speaker 1: under my skin, to this idea of either people who
Speaker 1: should know better or people who never had a chance
Speaker 1: to learn better doing so much damage. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: really glad that you framed it that way. It's sometimes
Speaker 1: difficult for me, but I always try to remember that,
Speaker 1: like it's not necessarily the individual, it's like systems and
Speaker 1: institutions that are getting rich and profiting off of, you know,
Speaker 1: misleading individuals in this way. It can be hard to
Speaker 1: remember that when I'm like, why can't you just not
Speaker 1: fall for this? But you're exactly right that sum is
Speaker 1: a very effective tool that is being wielded expertly right now.
Speaker 1: It's hard because you do you do. Your instinct is
Speaker 1: to just get angry about it. You know, I am
Speaker 1: angry about it, But at the same time, I know
Speaker 1: my anger can't resolve the issue. And so my hope
Speaker 1: is that more white mothers, if we're just being very
Speaker 1: honest about it, are figuring out ways to talk to
Speaker 1: their young sons about how to better navigate the internet,
Speaker 1: are making sure they're putting up roadblocks and interventions where necessary.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that's the only way we can
Speaker 1: hope to really get ahead of this, because it seems
Speaker 1: to be a wave that isn't stopping anytime soon. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1: I think that you are correct. Um So, when we
Speaker 1: look at end Father's Day and the kind of tensions
Speaker 1: and traumas historically that that campaign really tapped into, it's
Speaker 1: this clear wedge between black women and white women. And
Speaker 1: on the one hand, I kind of get it. You know,
Speaker 1: for a very long time, black feminists have not always
Speaker 1: felt meaningfully represented or centered by white feminists. If you
Speaker 1: look at early the early Suffragette movement, for instance, they
Speaker 1: left black women's voting rights out of their advocacy altogether
Speaker 1: as a strategic turn. It's not your turn, they said,
Speaker 1: we're not for women, we are for white women, exactly right.
Speaker 1: And so when you look a little further in time,
Speaker 1: you know white feminists writing about things like being stuck
Speaker 1: at home with domestic duties, they weren't really talking to
Speaker 1: Black women. They were not centering our lived experience in
Speaker 1: their in their advocacy. In that way, this reminds me
Speaker 1: of the Health when if for listeners, if you don't
Speaker 1: know anything about the help or how it was crafted. Uh,
Speaker 1: a guy, a white man from the South, was essentially
Speaker 1: writing and from the perspective of his childhood maids. And
Speaker 1: when you go into a larger cinematic history and you
Speaker 1: understand birth of a nation and how a lot of
Speaker 1: that was sort of you know, the guy who crafted
Speaker 1: that was so proud of it. He invited again a
Speaker 1: childhood made who taking care of him, who was not
Speaker 1: taking care of his son uh and she she left
Speaker 1: service after that. She said you were a racist and
Speaker 1: this is ridiculous and I'm going to bounce. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this idea that there's so much space available and so
Speaker 1: much um I want to say, like bad blood, but
Speaker 1: definitely four hundred years of oppression and discord that we
Speaker 1: have to advocate. It's a it's an easy place to
Speaker 1: spark a fire, exactly that right, and so these tensions
Speaker 1: are very much still with us today. Author of Mickey Kendall,
Speaker 1: who wrote an excellent book called Hood Feminism, which you
Speaker 1: should definitely get if you have not read it. I
Speaker 1: love it. It's one of my favorite books. Basically, her
Speaker 1: book is all about the ways that white feminism have
Speaker 1: left the most marginalized women behind in their causes. Here's
Speaker 1: Mickey Kendall speaking to now This News about her work
Speaker 1: with hood feminism. Hood feminism is about survival because for
Speaker 1: those who are facing all of these issues from gun
Speaker 1: violence the housing, their first concern has to be staying
Speaker 1: alive long enough to fight for their rights. The movement
Speaker 1: has to do a better job of addressing displacement and
Speaker 1: hunger if it expects support for reproductive justice marches or
Speaker 1: for electing the first woman to be president of the
Speaker 1: United States. It's hard to believe that women will be
Speaker 1: better leaders when the feminist women you've seen gaining power
Speaker 1: not only don't help you, but are likely to actively
Speaker 1: participate in harmony. Okay, I think that gives a good
Speaker 1: sense of it. But Nickey, yes, So Mickey Kendall started
Speaker 1: the hashtag. Hashtag solidarity is for white women to really
Speaker 1: have a real conversation about the ways that feminists, white
Speaker 1: feminist namely had really failed Black women. And a great
Speaker 1: example of this is that a sensibly feminist organizations and
Speaker 1: outlets continue to have a relationship with a white male
Speaker 1: writer named Hugo Schweizer. You don't know who that is.
Speaker 1: Hugo Schweiser is a passage or was a Pacadya City
Speaker 1: College professor of history and gender studies, a blogger, and
Speaker 1: a self described male feminist who wrote about feminism. I know, like,
Speaker 1: is there anything more of a warning than someone who
Speaker 1: was a self proclaimed male feminist? Right? Uh? And he
Speaker 1: really like he had that's at this time he did
Speaker 1: have a like pretty big footprint on online feminist basis.
Speaker 1: He wrote about feminism for places like The Atlantic and
Speaker 1: Jez bell Um and some other like feminist sites in
Speaker 1: the sort of ecosystem of online feminism back in the
Speaker 1: two fourteen era. Here's a little taste of Hugo speaking
Speaker 1: at a slot walk in l A. For too long,
Speaker 1: there's been division in the feminist community over the issues
Speaker 1: of sexuality and sex work, and that's one of the
Speaker 1: things we are here to end today. So I wrote
Speaker 1: a little speech, and I can't read a speech. Um,
Speaker 1: I have to say, it is very difficult to stand
Speaker 1: up here as a man after the stories that you've
Speaker 1: just heard and that I've heard as well. The fact
Speaker 1: is that we've heard a series of very personal, very powerful,
Speaker 1: very painful accounts of sexual violence, and in every one
Speaker 1: of those cases, the violence was committed by men against women.
Speaker 1: And while it is true that men can also be
Speaker 1: the victims of sexual violence, and while it is true
Speaker 1: that in a few cases women can be the perpetrators
Speaker 1: of sexual violence, there is no question that the vast
Speaker 1: majority of sexual violence is men assaulting women. And part
Speaker 1: of the reason why we allow that to continue, and
Speaker 1: part of the reason why the words slut continues to
Speaker 1: have its enormous power in our lives, is because of
Speaker 1: a myth we believe in and a myth we need
Speaker 1: to march against today. It's a myth I call the
Speaker 1: myth of male weakness. All right, I think you get
Speaker 1: the idea there. So you know something to know about
Speaker 1: Hugo Schweizer is that he his thing was kind of
Speaker 1: being this sort of reformed bad boy, like bad boy
Speaker 1: turned feminist. He wrote, really, yeah, so that was what
Speaker 1: like that? That was his like being that I would
Speaker 1: say allowed him to kind of grow in his public profile.
Speaker 1: He wrote very openly about how when he was struggling
Speaker 1: with addiction issues, he tried to murder his girlfriend by
Speaker 1: turning on the gas stove in their apartment. And he
Speaker 1: also wrote about having sexual flings with his female students
Speaker 1: when he was a professor. So it's interesting that he
Speaker 1: would get up on a stage at a slut walk
Speaker 1: and talk about like man, this man of male weakness,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. Here's the other thing. If you are
Speaker 1: coming to a marginalized community and you are not actively
Speaker 1: a member of that marginalized community, and then you speak
Speaker 1: on behalf of that marginalized community, you have not fully
Speaker 1: done your work or your research, Like there's that time
Speaker 1: should have been given to an actual woman, like any
Speaker 1: woman with any kind of sense could have taken that
Speaker 1: spot and done what you did in much much better. Uh.
Speaker 1: That is foolish and ridiculous. Yes, absolutely, And you know
Speaker 1: who didn't let any of that ship slide? Black women?
Speaker 1: They were no. Black women have been calling this guy
Speaker 1: out for a very long time, and he was really
Speaker 1: able to use this behavior test a mass power at
Speaker 1: a public profile in online feminist spaces for a long time.
Speaker 1: When black women would speak up against him, he would
Speaker 1: like attack them pretty pretty horribly on social media. And
Speaker 1: despite all this, he was able to really remain this
Speaker 1: kind of feminist darling writing for you know, ostensibly feminist
Speaker 1: outlets like jez Bell that had this large white woman
Speaker 1: readership and writership. He ended up having this public meltdown
Speaker 1: on Twitter in which he all but admitted all of
Speaker 1: this behavior. He talked about how he didn't really have
Speaker 1: the educational credentials to be teaching a class on feminism
Speaker 1: at the college level, and yet he did it anyway.
Speaker 1: He talked about how he had been trashing black women
Speaker 1: and he kind of apologized for it and all of that.
Speaker 1: So all of these things that black women had been
Speaker 1: accusing him of this whole time and basically have been
Speaker 1: had been going ignored, he admitted in a meltdown on Twitter.
Speaker 1: But it seems like when he admitted all this in
Speaker 1: his meltdown, but the white feminists and the websites who
Speaker 1: who were frequented by those white feminist they didn't really
Speaker 1: take ownership of what they had done to allow him
Speaker 1: to build such a platform in these online feminist spaces.
Speaker 1: You know, they weren't really denouncing him like you might
Speaker 1: have expected them too. And they certainly were not, you know,
Speaker 1: seeking solidarity or trying to make amends with the women
Speaker 1: that he pretty clearly the black women that he pretty
Speaker 1: clearly harmed. I think there was just this general sense
Speaker 1: of of no accountability and to really move forward, they
Speaker 1: gotta have accountability. And so Mickey Kendall spelled it out
Speaker 1: really well on a piece that she wrote for The Guardian.
Speaker 1: Folks should really read the whole things. It's a great piece,
Speaker 1: but here's a little snippet. She writes, it appeared that
Speaker 1: these feminists were once again dismissing women of color in
Speaker 1: favor of a brand of solidarity that centers on the
Speaker 1: safety and comfort of white women. For it to be
Speaker 1: at the expanse of people who were doing the same
Speaker 1: work was exceptionally aggravating. Admittedly, this is not a new problem.
Speaker 1: White feminism has argued that gender should trump race since
Speaker 1: its inception. That rhetoric not only erases the experiences of
Speaker 1: women of color, but also alienates many from a movement
Speaker 1: that claims to want equality for all. This is especially
Speaker 1: clear when posts and articles about racism and feminism from
Speaker 1: five years ago involved some of the very same players.
Speaker 1: When I launched the hashtag solidarity as for white women,
Speaker 1: I thought it would largely be a discussion between people
Speaker 1: impacted by the latest bout of problematic behavior from mainstream
Speaker 1: white feminists. It was intended to be a Twitter shorthand
Speaker 1: for how often feminists of color are told that the
Speaker 1: racism they experience isn't a feminist issue. The first few
Speaker 1: tweets reflect the deeply personal impact of such a long
Speaker 1: running structural issue. And damn that that bit really speaks
Speaker 1: to me, because I totally get at this tension in
Speaker 1: this fracture that she is naming and exposing here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is what we used to sit at intersectionality, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's weird because sometimes as black women will or
Speaker 1: you know, as a queer black woman, I'll get the
Speaker 1: same question from black men, like you're gonna put your
Speaker 1: gender or your queerness ahead of your race, which is
Speaker 1: a ridiculous question no matter who it's asked by, because
Speaker 1: we don't get to choose any of it. None of
Speaker 1: it is a decision, none of it can come one
Speaker 1: before the other, or like it's all equal. It's always present,
Speaker 1: and that's it's infuriating to have to sometimes link up
Speaker 1: with people who are not um understanding that intersectionality in
Speaker 1: an effort to make things better for you know, a
Speaker 1: community that you're a part of. It's a lot of work.
Speaker 1: It's why we're all tired. I would also say, if
Speaker 1: you're a white feminist in any of this, is you know,
Speaker 1: ringing out for you to borrow a quote from a
Speaker 1: show that has some of its own feminist issues, but
Speaker 1: you know, desire to be free and not make a
Speaker 1: window in the wall of your own prison. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: really weird to me anyway to rely on a van
Speaker 1: to to speak up for your woman community. That's it's
Speaker 1: how did he get on stage? It's very confusing to me.
Speaker 1: It is confusing and honestly, I mean like I had
Speaker 1: to give like major, major props and shouts to Mickey
Speaker 1: Kendall because she was doing the work of exposing these
Speaker 1: fair the same kinds of very real, deep fractures between
Speaker 1: black feminists and white feminists that you were just talking about.
Speaker 1: And I need to be like super clear here, Mickey
Speaker 1: Kendall was doing this like important, necessary work of bringing
Speaker 1: these tough conversations to the forefront. And it is a
Speaker 1: shame that Twitter as a platform failed Kendall and all
Speaker 1: of these other women who really needed to have this
Speaker 1: conversation failed them all by failing to provide a safe,
Speaker 1: secure platform to have this conversation about these very real
Speaker 1: fractures and how they show up in our communities. Right.
Speaker 1: I also think that white feminists really should have done
Speaker 1: a better job of digging into this conversation and taking accountability.
Speaker 1: And it might have they done that, it might not
Speaker 1: have been left this like open wound for bad actors
Speaker 1: to swoop in and exploit. But that is a common
Speaker 1: tactic of bad actors, trolls, extremists whoever, when conversations require
Speaker 1: a little bit of like thoughtfulness or new ones, or
Speaker 1: are just tough conversations to have, so folks don't really
Speaker 1: have them. You can met that these trolls will step
Speaker 1: in and hijack that conversation and exploit it for their
Speaker 1: own means. In this case, their means we're making feminists
Speaker 1: all look bad, and this is the backdrop against which
Speaker 1: Fortune starts their end Father's Day campaign. So basically, trolls
Speaker 1: on board Chane decide they want to pose as black
Speaker 1: feminists and start the hashtag and Father's Day to make
Speaker 1: it seem like black feminists and feminists more generally are
Speaker 1: actually calling to an end to the holiday Father's Day.
Speaker 1: The hashtag Solidarity is for White Women exposed all of
Speaker 1: these rightly raw feelings and tensions between black and white feminists,
Speaker 1: which we know are the perfect conditions for bad actors
Speaker 1: to swoop in and inflame those very real, pre existing
Speaker 1: tensions within a community. Their goal is to undermine solidarity
Speaker 1: so that when those tensions are exposed like they were
Speaker 1: with Solidarity Is for White Women, bad actors want to
Speaker 1: deepen and exploit those tensions because what they really want
Speaker 1: is chaos. They want people being distrustful of one another,
Speaker 1: people not being able to reach common ground, or move
Speaker 1: forward on any of those big issues that caused those tensions.
Speaker 1: That's the goal. You know, if black women are appearing
Speaker 1: to get on board with a hashtag as silly and
Speaker 1: stupid as end Father's Day, maybe some of the white
Speaker 1: women looking on are like, well, that's ridiculous, and they
Speaker 1: they start thinking that some of the issues that these
Speaker 1: black feminists are raising are also kind of ridiculous, and
Speaker 1: maybe they start thinking that these black women are not
Speaker 1: worth taking seriously and are not worth meaningfully centering in
Speaker 1: their movement and in their activism. So you can really
Speaker 1: see how bad actors can destabilize a whole community or
Speaker 1: a whole movement through these tensions. So trolls on for
Speaker 1: Chane decide that they're going to pose as black feminists
Speaker 1: and try to start the end Father's Day hashtag to
Speaker 1: make it look as though black feminists are actually genuinely
Speaker 1: calling for an end to the holiday Father's Day. On June,
Speaker 1: a Furtune user posts this to Fortune. Almost all cases
Speaker 1: of domestic violence, domestic rave, child abuse, adultery, and discontent
Speaker 1: in the home are caused by men i e. Fathers.
Speaker 1: A holiday that celebrates this is another symptom in the
Speaker 1: disease known as patriarchy, and it has no place in
Speaker 1: a progressive society. This is a holiday celebrating misogyny, demanding
Speaker 1: appreciation and gifts for doing what a father should be
Speaker 1: doing anyway, especially when in almost all cases domestic abuse
Speaker 1: stem from the father. Fathers all over the country are
Speaker 1: refusing to pay alimony or child support, which should not
Speaker 1: be celebrated and rewarded, but it should be shamed fathers.
Speaker 1: They should not be about celebrating the role of fathers
Speaker 1: in the family, but about correcting it. It should not
Speaker 1: be celebrated in its current in its present form, we
Speaker 1: are calling on all feminists and social justice warriors to
Speaker 1: join us in a campaign to redefine this disgustingly misogynistic
Speaker 1: holiday and Father's Day in its present form, if not entirely,
Speaker 1: we will be descending on Twitter and Tumblr to get
Speaker 1: this message out that the patriarchal holiday has no place
Speaker 1: in our society. So that's all bullshit, right Like, this
Speaker 1: was them, This was them trying to feed their fake campaign,
Speaker 1: right Like, Like that is definitely not I mean, and
Speaker 1: you could probably almost tell from the way that they've
Speaker 1: written it it's not It's not commentary written in seriousness.
Speaker 1: They're trying to mess with feminists and disrupt online feminist spaces.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's zero logic and it all the idea
Speaker 1: that because there is domestic abuse, then there are no
Speaker 1: good fathers is such a wild and congruent leap that
Speaker 1: it's it's wild that and it took off at all
Speaker 1: even within this zone like group, Like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you think they want to think these things out a
Speaker 1: little bit more and make um stick, you would think,
Speaker 1: but but but I do think like you're onto something.
Speaker 1: I think the reason why these fake campaigns can kind
Speaker 1: of like have a little bit of stickiness even when
Speaker 1: they're so ridiculous on their face, is because they tend
Speaker 1: to follow this like very specific cycle who have these
Speaker 1: accounts using abbey images of black women purporting to be
Speaker 1: black women tweeting about this campaign, and then real social
Speaker 1: media users start reacting to the hashtag, giving it more
Speaker 1: reach and more visibility and helping it grow. Side note,
Speaker 1: this is a great reason not to engage with hashtags
Speaker 1: that you see popping up on Twitter that might look
Speaker 1: a little bit sass. Another good example would be the
Speaker 1: the Twitter trend hashtag hut for amber that was a
Speaker 1: top trend earlier this year that was purporting to call
Speaker 1: for Amber Heard supporters to self harm in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the verdict in the defamation trial that she had
Speaker 1: against Johnny Depp or john against her happening. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So these trends can be like harmful. And what what
Speaker 1: sometimes happens is that people who either are skeptical of
Speaker 1: them or know that they're fake, will tweet using the hashtag,
Speaker 1: calling it out or being like can you believe this?
Speaker 1: And they might think that they're actually, you know, shedding
Speaker 1: light on it, but by engaging with it, they're actually
Speaker 1: just helping it grow. So whenever you see one of
Speaker 1: those hashtags that you're like, this seems us, do not
Speaker 1: engage with it, because nine times out of ten you're
Speaker 1: just helping it get more visibility and helping it spread
Speaker 1: to more people. So the next part of that cycle
Speaker 1: is that it gets picked up in the pressed. In
Speaker 1: this case, first it was smaller right wing blogs like
Speaker 1: The Daily Caller who wrote about it, and then it
Speaker 1: actually made its way to Fox News and they had
Speaker 1: this to say about it. Let's start out as a joke,
Speaker 1: but the hashtag end Father's Day is picking up steam
Speaker 1: with feminists online and with others in social media. Tweets
Speaker 1: like end Father's Day because it's a celebration of patriarchy
Speaker 1: and oppression have been popping up all over the place.
Speaker 1: Let's bring in Susan Patton, a k a. The Princeton Mom.
Speaker 1: She gave notoriety for imploring young women to lock down
Speaker 1: their future husbands while still in college. Remember this we
Speaker 1: talked about this morning should be here Like some of
Speaker 1: these tweets, here is from Tasha. She wrote, and everyone
Speaker 1: knows we only need mothers. Why do we even need
Speaker 1: Father's Day? Fathers are useless? Hashtag and oh come on
Speaker 1: you more? Is this nasty feminist rhetoric that they're not
Speaker 1: just interested in ending Father's Day of interesting ending men?
Speaker 1: That's really what they want. It's absurd for them to
Speaker 1: say that Father's Day is a creation of male oppression.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. But why is for women? I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a reason that there are more women living in poverty
Speaker 1: now than it ain's time in my lifetime. Because there
Speaker 1: if you, I mean, when you rush men, you hurt
Speaker 1: women without a doubt. And we're obviously not talking about
Speaker 1: celebrating the deadbeat dads are celebrating the men who abandoned
Speaker 1: the family. We're talking about men who love their children,
Speaker 1: who provide for their family, right. I think you get
Speaker 1: the idea hate these people so many thoughts, Like first
Speaker 1: of all, both of the tweets they pulled had egg abbeys,
Speaker 1: which people get a life. One of them, I don't
Speaker 1: remember the name, but it definitely started ana something and
Speaker 1: it felt like somebody pulling a joke, which is nuts.
Speaker 1: And the other thing, it's like I want to be like, gosh,
Speaker 1: I wish Bill Hooks were alive and willing to go
Speaker 1: on these shows. Should you give me like that's actually true.
Speaker 1: When you crush men, you do her women, but not
Speaker 1: for the reasons you're thinking. It's not about providing financially
Speaker 1: for people that we're emotionally hurting men and we could
Speaker 1: be doing better as a community, as a society. Ridiculous
Speaker 1: and Joel very good eye because the the Twitter, the
Speaker 1: tweet that they showed belonged to Twitter USERNA can't stop
Speaker 1: who if you go to that Twitter profile now, oh wait,
Speaker 1: you can't because it's been suspended because it was a
Speaker 1: fake account. They showed someone who is a known troll
Speaker 1: impersonating a black woman to create chaos and confusion on
Speaker 1: social media platforms. They showed that tweet not knowing or
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not even gonna say not knowing, not caring
Speaker 1: to check to see whether or not that was an
Speaker 1: actual person espousing their actual views to showing show and
Speaker 1: pop up. I wonder if there's because some of these
Speaker 1: people actually went to journalism school, and you wonder if
Speaker 1: there's any like moment where there's just like deep regret
Speaker 1: or concern or like they have to know that the
Speaker 1: rest of the journalism community is just like beside themselves,
Speaker 1: like what are you doing? Your one job is to
Speaker 1: research and report facts, you fools? I mean, who has
Speaker 1: who has time for deep regret when there's money to
Speaker 1: be made? And you know what's interesting and I feel
Speaker 1: like I should should really know is that I'm talking
Speaker 1: about how this campaign was like sort of successful, but
Speaker 1: I mean successful. You know, every person that I talked
Speaker 1: to in my research, who was every black woman who
Speaker 1: was involved in all of this, They really make it
Speaker 1: clear that it was really people who were predisposed to
Speaker 1: be suspicious of black women and feminists in general who
Speaker 1: fell for this. So it wasn't not. Like when I
Speaker 1: say it was effective, I mean effective specifically among people
Speaker 1: who don't like black women are feminists and also have
Speaker 1: platforms like thoughts News, And I I don't think that black
Speaker 1: women because we're you know, we're a skeptical bunch. We're
Speaker 1: like a like a we're you know, where we do
Speaker 1: our due diligence as black women, we weren't the ones
Speaker 1: who were being fooled. And I actually don't think this
Speaker 1: campaign was necessarily meant to target us. I think this
Speaker 1: campaign was meant to trick people like the folks at
Speaker 1: bots News into amplifying it. So in that way it
Speaker 1: was successful. I don't mean to say that like black
Speaker 1: black women didn't fall for this, No, and we went
Speaker 1: like the black community has some of those active fathers
Speaker 1: as far as like directly direct involvement with children on
Speaker 1: a day to day basis in America anyway, Like the
Speaker 1: statistics are very clear, So it's always funky and pretty
Speaker 1: noticeable when someone's like black dads are not around and
Speaker 1: be like boo, sir, no, this is not the eighties.
Speaker 1: And we're very aware of what's happening in our own
Speaker 1: communities because we're part of them fools exactly and what
Speaker 1: you just said, like like if if a black person,
Speaker 1: if somebody who says they are a black person says
Speaker 1: certain things on social media and then this makes you
Speaker 1: kind of scratched your head and say are you really black?
Speaker 1: Because I don't know that a black person would really
Speaker 1: say that. That is exactly what kind of undid this
Speaker 1: troll and Father's Day campaign. You know, if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen somebody on social media pretending to be a black woman,
Speaker 1: some ms will say things that are just off, well,
Speaker 1: let's same things that just like don't make sense. Um.
Speaker 1: In an interview that I did with Twitter user Safika Hudson,
Speaker 1: she says that the big giveaway is how often these
Speaker 1: people pretending to be black women bungled the linguistic construction
Speaker 1: that we call the habitual be I see you nodding.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with the habitual will be? Yes? Yeah.
Speaker 1: My My favorite little truism about the habitual will be
Speaker 1: is that some linguists were doing studies on children and
Speaker 1: they showed a bunch of white children a picture of
Speaker 1: Cookie Monster and a picture of Oscar the Grouch, and
Speaker 1: they and Oscar was eating cookies and cookie Monster wasn't
Speaker 1: and so they asked who is eating cookies? And they
Speaker 1: were like cookie monster. Even though that wasn't correct. They
Speaker 1: showed black children the same question, and they asked who
Speaker 1: is eating cookies and they were like Oscar the Grouch
Speaker 1: And they were like, but who be eating cookies? And
Speaker 1: they were like, oh, cookie monster. Of course, like they know.
Speaker 1: And so all of these little nuances of black lived
Speaker 1: experience and black identity. You really can't think that if
Speaker 1: you have no proximity with blackness, and you really don't
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. And so all of these
Speaker 1: black women were ended up reporting to Twitter that people
Speaker 1: were pretending to be black feminists and using the platform
Speaker 1: to try to so discord and confusion. But Twitter pretty
Speaker 1: much didn't do anything. They were like okay and like
Speaker 1: took no action. And so Shafika Hudson created a hashtag
Speaker 1: called hashtag your slip is Showing to help weed out
Speaker 1: these trolls pretending to be black women. Um, Joel, where
Speaker 1: are you from? Geographically? Are you from the South? I'm
Speaker 1: from Chicago. Okay, does the phrase your slip is Showing?
Speaker 1: Does this mean anything to you? Yes, my folks did
Speaker 1: come up from the Mississippi mind half feeling yes and
Speaker 1: heard it as a child in church because I did
Speaker 1: wear a slip under my dress in church because I
Speaker 1: went to a Southern Baptist exactly. So if a black
Speaker 1: Southern lady tells you, oh, your slip is showing, basically
Speaker 1: what she's telling you is that you don't look as
Speaker 1: put together as you think that you do. And that
Speaker 1: is why Shefika Hudson used that phrase to weed out
Speaker 1: these people posing as black women, right, like, you think
Speaker 1: that you're coming off as a black woman, but actually
Speaker 1: your hashtag, your slip is showing. She created a list
Speaker 1: of Twitter users pretending to be black women, and some
Speaker 1: of them were really really obvious, Like one of them
Speaker 1: they they're avy image was of like well known black
Speaker 1: podcaster Heaven negat To so like someone that people know,
Speaker 1: just like really stupid. And I think, to me, the
Speaker 1: fact that a regular Twitter user like Safika had to
Speaker 1: take it upon herself to do this work like creating
Speaker 1: a hashtag, creating a whole list that she added to
Speaker 1: doing that labor of making Twitter a safer platform, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that like she didn't work at Twitter, she
Speaker 1: was doing it completely unpaid at a time when she
Speaker 1: was actually between jobs. It says a lot to me
Speaker 1: about the way that platforms like Twitter operate. You know,
Speaker 1: shouldn't tech leaders at places like Twitter want their platforms
Speaker 1: to be more secure. Shouldn't they be interested in not
Speaker 1: having their platforms be places where bad actors can completely
Speaker 1: hijack conversations? You know, it should not be up to
Speaker 1: just regular black women like Shafika Hudson to do the
Speaker 1: work of making Twitter safer. Yet time and time again
Speaker 1: that labor, which is often unpaid and often dangerous work
Speaker 1: falls on the shoulders of just regular black women because
Speaker 1: the powers that be do nothing when we are harmed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely shouldn't be anybody outside of getting a Twitter
Speaker 1: paycheck responsibility to keep its users safe. That's foolish. But
Speaker 1: capitalism being what it is is and these social media
Speaker 1: spaces making money the way they do. I mean, even YouTube,
Speaker 1: which has a pretty good system of like, here's how
Speaker 1: we make money, here's how we pay out the users
Speaker 1: who create content for us, still understands at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, it's down to videos watched and ads consumed.
Speaker 1: And because of that, I have no interest in people's
Speaker 1: safety Because this sort of unrelegated wild West of post
Speaker 1: what you want. Let's create a lot of hate, which
Speaker 1: is going to hopefully create more comments. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's weird because we're sort of seeing Netflix happ into
Speaker 1: this too, where they create these shows that are like
Speaker 1: mildly devised. If you think, like an Emily in Paris, right,
Speaker 1: Emily in Paris has a pretty sackcast, but it didn't
Speaker 1: cause that much to make. It's easy and fast to make,
Speaker 1: so I can turn that out. And if you hate it,
Speaker 1: all the better because when you hate watch it. At
Speaker 1: least you're tweeting about it. At least you're giving that
Speaker 1: show promotion. At least you're watching it. At least you're
Speaker 1: spending more time on Netflix. And I think we're seeing
Speaker 1: this throughout our internet landscape. You know, we're still in
Speaker 1: the infancy of the internet, uh just by you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of us grew up with me. I had
Speaker 1: the Internet since I was like four or five. I
Speaker 1: don't really recall a time without their being Internet access
Speaker 1: available to me. And because of that, I think, to
Speaker 1: a our degree, because our government has not stepped in
Speaker 1: and decided to make any rules or structures or has
Speaker 1: made very limited rules and structures for how the Internet
Speaker 1: is to be used. I think we're just going to
Speaker 1: keep conceiving these things until something like that, until there's
Speaker 1: actual laws passed, because it's financially uh, people are financially
Speaker 1: behooved to continue to allow this kind of negative reactions
Speaker 1: and interactions. I could not have put that better myself,
Speaker 1: and I think that at this point what we we
Speaker 1: really the first step is we need to acknowledge the
Speaker 1: way that this kind of hate as an engagement strategy
Speaker 1: on social media platforms, one typically targets people who are
Speaker 1: traditionally marginalized and to just keeps us all locked into
Speaker 1: this same toxic engagement system of hate. The studies are
Speaker 1: super clear that people who use social media are not happier.
Speaker 1: It makes us all unhappy, and that social media algorithms
Speaker 1: by design amplify content that makes us angrier, more polarized,
Speaker 1: more divided, and less less informed. And so it's not
Speaker 1: doing any of us any good. But I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what it is doing. It is lining a lot of
Speaker 1: people's pockets. And I don't want to create I don't
Speaker 1: want us to have an Internet ecosystem and landscape where
Speaker 1: it's a marketplace for our pain, right, Like, I don't
Speaker 1: want our negative experiences to just be lining the pockets
Speaker 1: of some asshole tech leader somewhere. We deserve so much better.
Speaker 1: And the people, the young people who come behind us,
Speaker 1: the next generation, they don't deserve to have, you know,
Speaker 1: their negative experiences be weaponized and marketed and profited from
Speaker 1: in this callous way. Like, we really need to think
Speaker 1: about what kind of Internet landscape we want to have.
Speaker 1: Do we want to have one that makes us more
Speaker 1: informed and more thoughtful or one that allows people like
Speaker 1: Elon Musk to add another fucking comma to their paycheck.
Speaker 1: You know, I would argue, it's it's not that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard too, because as much as I know I
Speaker 1: should be avoiding the negative, you know, like on the
Speaker 1: day that we're recording this, Drake dropped his new album
Speaker 1: late last night, I think earlier this morning, and so
Speaker 1: it has been a wave of black women being like
Speaker 1: not you, going after Serena and Megan in the same
Speaker 1: album You Fool, And it's hard not to instantly be like,
Speaker 1: what's happening? Like gz Jake out here, Slandering black women
Speaker 1: is number one? Like holding down fan base? What is
Speaker 1: going on. You're like, you're probably just telling my voice,
Speaker 1: like there's an actively engaging aspect about that, but I do.
Speaker 1: But you're right when we continue to modify our own English. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean even you can go pandemic days when we
Speaker 1: were starting to see the beginnings of an uprising, uh
Speaker 1: and at the very least activation of a lot of
Speaker 1: black people in America. I mean, there's a time that's
Speaker 1: pretty much all we or It felt like all we
Speaker 1: were talking about was like black liberation in America and
Speaker 1: the struggles to find it. It was dark and a challenge.
Speaker 1: And I don't know the Internet as a tool, as
Speaker 1: a mother would say, and you can use a tool
Speaker 1: to help build something great and you can use a
Speaker 1: tool to destroy. And I think we are struggling to
Speaker 1: find a good balance between those two positions, just like snap.
Speaker 1: So give it up for Joel's mom first of all,
Speaker 1: because I had someone them. But I think you know,
Speaker 1: I was reading the Drake stuff before I hopped out,
Speaker 1: and I think it really shows that attacking black women
Speaker 1: will always have an audience. If you trash black women
Speaker 1: on the Internet, that will always be a winning engagement strategy.
Speaker 1: And I think it's hell to engage because we have
Speaker 1: to protect our cells. As you've just perfectly laid out,
Speaker 1: we feel compelled to because if we don't know one
Speaker 1: else is going to do it. Yeah, exactly, And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that we need to be honest about the
Speaker 1: ways that massage, noire and and hate against the black
Speaker 1: women has propped up our Internet landscape and really been
Speaker 1: a feature, not a bug, that is at the heart
Speaker 1: of engagement strategies for so many Internet platforms, and we're
Speaker 1: not even being honest about it. Like you see it,
Speaker 1: I see it. I feel it when I'm on the Internet.
Speaker 1: I cannot help myself but to engage when a black
Speaker 1: woman is being smeared in this way. And I know
Speaker 1: that I am just a cog in this hate cycle,
Speaker 1: this Internet hate machine that tells me that I have
Speaker 1: to vocally support this black woman. But that's just another
Speaker 1: engagement point that it's helping to amplify an ugly toxic
Speaker 1: conversation that I know to humanize as us. It's like,
Speaker 1: we are so locked into this fucked up cycle. I
Speaker 1: ate it, and why I think we're all about to
Speaker 1: figure out how we get off of it, just by
Speaker 1: virtue of a new owner, which is sort of crazy
Speaker 1: to think about, Like we maybe all should have made
Speaker 1: this move much earlier, but it was hard. It's hard
Speaker 1: to leave Twitter. There's a lot of comfort and a
Speaker 1: lot of support there as almost as much as there is. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be really interested to see where black women
Speaker 1: as a community, specifically this this corner of black women
Speaker 1: wind up. Yeah, I'd be tumbler. And it's it's sad
Speaker 1: because like black women and black people more broadly, like,
Speaker 1: we make these platforms. Nobody was sucking showing up on
Speaker 1: Twitter before Black Twitter, Like, we made these platforms cool
Speaker 1: places to be and it amazing exactly, and here we
Speaker 1: are feeling like we need but we're being pushed off
Speaker 1: of these platforms. So so so let's talk about Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and his ownership of Twitter, because I feel like it
Speaker 1: just feels so this conversation we're having feel so timely.
Speaker 1: You know, we're talking about this against the backdrop of
Speaker 1: Elon Musk taking over Twitter and talking about making users
Speaker 1: pay for verification. As we've talked about. I feel like
Speaker 1: so much in this episode. Having a blue check mark
Speaker 1: is not just a vanity thing. You know, it started
Speaker 1: as a way to help users identify people that that
Speaker 1: they actually were who they say they are. And this
Speaker 1: is an extra level of security for people who were
Speaker 1: at risk of being impers stated online. And we already
Speaker 1: know from all the stuff I've talked about in this
Speaker 1: episode that marginalized people are particularly at risk for being
Speaker 1: impers stated online. We already know that this is a
Speaker 1: thing that is used to create chaos on the part
Speaker 1: of bad actors. And so you know, I got verified
Speaker 1: on Twitter not because I'm like so great or this
Speaker 1: and that. It was because in twenty sixteen, somebody was
Speaker 1: using my picture, like a terrible picture of me from
Speaker 1: LinkedIn to create a Twitter account essentially to like shoot
Speaker 1: on Hillary Clinton. Not that I was something like huge
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton like person, but like clearly they just wanted
Speaker 1: an image of a black woman who would say things
Speaker 1: about Hillary Clinton. Right, And so we already know this
Speaker 1: is a huge issue on Twitter, and it kind of
Speaker 1: seems like a bad idea to overhaul this one tool
Speaker 1: that we have to combat it via verification. And it
Speaker 1: also seems like a really bad idea to do this
Speaker 1: when you've like gutted your staff days away from an election,
Speaker 1: the staff whose job it is to make the platform
Speaker 1: a little bit safer. Um. You mentioned the Twitter thread
Speaker 1: by the actor Robert Kazynski earlier, and I really really
Speaker 1: appreciated um what he had to say. He writes years ago,
Speaker 1: before verified accounts were a thing. Back when I was
Speaker 1: on East Enders, I was contacted multiple times by parents
Speaker 1: of children who had been conversing with me online. Eleven
Speaker 1: and fifteen year old children who had been talking with
Speaker 1: the fake me. I was informed that one of these
Speaker 1: children went missing. I didn't have social media at the time.
Speaker 1: I didn't understand it. It's a horror show. For years,
Speaker 1: people pushed for some way to root out the fakes.
Speaker 1: There was a phase, if you remember, of people posting
Speaker 1: images of themselves with their U r L. I did
Speaker 1: that on every side. I could find Facebook, my Space,
Speaker 1: b boot anything. I felt powerless to stop people using
Speaker 1: my face and name a scam or groom people. That's
Speaker 1: why verification came to be, because it was important to
Speaker 1: protect people. It wasn't for cloud or for leveraging money
Speaker 1: from a platform. It was to protect people from utter scumbags.
Speaker 1: I think that perhaps in the age of social media,
Speaker 1: there are some CEOs who may have forgotten the importance
Speaker 1: of protecting people or having trustworthy sources. I don't tweet much.
Speaker 1: I'm scared of the Internet. I struggle with a lot
Speaker 1: of things in life. But this account exists so that
Speaker 1: fake accounts can't. If Elon Musks removes that simple ability
Speaker 1: to protect people, to protect children with verification, then this
Speaker 1: company is dead in the water. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's been expressed to him. I doubt he will see
Speaker 1: this thread, but I hope someone is explaining to Elon
Speaker 1: Musk the actual dangers to children and the vulnerable and
Speaker 1: why removing that protection is an action that will lead
Speaker 1: directly to children being endangered. Verification is a public service.
Speaker 1: It is a good deed performed by companies who contribute
Speaker 1: very little good to the world. In my opinion, we
Speaker 1: should be making easier, clearer paths to verification for everyone,
Speaker 1: not making it harder. It is their responsibility, not a
Speaker 1: business model, and I really identified with that because it
Speaker 1: shouldn't be a business model. It should be a base
Speaker 1: responsibility for you know, one of our largest communication platforms
Speaker 1: in the fucking world. And what's worse, you know, as
Speaker 1: we're about to have an election, one that you know
Speaker 1: officials have already warned, is an election where we could
Speaker 1: see political violence, violence at the polls, blowing up verification
Speaker 1: and having users be able to pay eight dollars to
Speaker 1: be verified after gutting half of your staff. I think
Speaker 1: it could create a disaster in terms of people being
Speaker 1: able to depend on our communications platform to get information
Speaker 1: about the election. Uh. And I would just also just add, like,
Speaker 1: I think that bad actors are going to continue using
Speaker 1: this as a tactic, you know, impersonating people, gamifying platforms
Speaker 1: via importonation. And I also think that, like we know
Speaker 1: that folks can really steer and dominate and hijack national conversations.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look back at amidst the mobilizations
Speaker 1: for Racial justice and Twitter announced that a fake account
Speaker 1: at antifa underscore US that was yeah, that was called
Speaker 1: for violence was actually run by the white supremacist group
Speaker 1: Is it identity Europa? Is how you say it? I
Speaker 1: think I think it's Europa who cares. It's one of
Speaker 1: the most active white supremacist groups in the US. From
Speaker 1: nineteen and so this was during the height of like protests.
Speaker 1: Intention This account tweeted Alert Tonight's Tonight Comrades, Tonight, we
Speaker 1: say funk the city, we move into residential areas, the
Speaker 1: white hoods, and we take what's ours hashtag black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter hashtagu America and Twitter has confirmed that this was
Speaker 1: not the only account that they booted off of the
Speaker 1: platform for impersonating racial justice like demonstrators. Uh. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: Junior tweeted absolutely insane with a screenshot at that tweet.
Speaker 1: Just remember what Antifa really is a terrorist organization. They're
Speaker 1: not even pretending anymore. And this was the same I
Speaker 1: think that's like the same day that Trump basically blamed
Speaker 1: Antifa scare quotes for violence that you know, for like
Speaker 1: violence during protests, and you know, I just think back
Speaker 1: to that, and I think, how long did we have
Speaker 1: to endure this ridiculous news cycle about like law and
Speaker 1: or violence and like, it is very concerning that extremists
Speaker 1: are successfully able to dominate the national dialogue of like
Speaker 1: what our convert what the conversation is, Uh, just by
Speaker 1: using these tactics on Twitter that Twitter is aware of.
Speaker 1: I would say that are if bad actors can hijack
Speaker 1: our communication platforms in that way, these platforms are not
Speaker 1: secure and they're not safe, and they're not really serving us.
Speaker 1: It was super crazy. So like, historically this is the call, right,
Speaker 1: Like they clearly know their audience, which is like, how
Speaker 1: do scare white people? You know, no person of color
Speaker 1: is using the term white hood. First of all, unless
Speaker 1: we're referring to KKK members like, oh, this is the
Speaker 1: white hood. I was like, are you out of your mind?
Speaker 1: The second of all, we understand clearly as as black
Speaker 1: people in America that white people have this natural fear
Speaker 1: that white that black people are going to retaliate and
Speaker 1: create like white slavery. It's a it's a narrative. We've
Speaker 1: heard a lot. It's how a lot of lynchings take place.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can look as far back as him
Speaker 1: until and the fact that he whistled at a white woman,
Speaker 1: and that was considered a threat because the twelve year
Speaker 1: old boy whistled, whistled a thing we know didn't happen
Speaker 1: at a white woman. And so for them to tap
Speaker 1: all the way back into that fear even today on
Speaker 1: social media, to say, hey, they're going to come into
Speaker 1: your neighborhoods and like shake things up, it's it's frustrating
Speaker 1: and kind of horrifying to still think about just your
Speaker 1: your blackness, just your presence being a threat. And again,
Speaker 1: you know, as we've been articulating throughout the episode, every
Speaker 1: time that's stated, it's it causes us to have to
Speaker 1: be extra defensive, extra alert for ourselves and for our
Speaker 1: direct community, because we don't know who's going to take again,
Speaker 1: just our presence as a threat and then act on
Speaker 1: that threat. Exactly. I think it was Tony Morrison who
Speaker 1: said that the business of racism is like creating a
Speaker 1: situation where you can't get anything done because you're so
Speaker 1: busy defending yourself and defending your blackness and defend like
Speaker 1: showing up defensive, but you then can't do the good
Speaker 1: work that you want to do. You can't put your
Speaker 1: your energy towards something else. And I think that's exactly
Speaker 1: what is happening here, that these bad actors and trolls
Speaker 1: and extremists are able to create the conditions where folks
Speaker 1: like you and me, just like regular black folks, are
Speaker 1: put in a situation where we have to constantly be
Speaker 1: defending ourselves against the backdrop of a complete fabrication. Right
Speaker 1: like a black activists didn't tweet that a white suprematist did,
Speaker 1: and so I'm having to offend myself against something I
Speaker 1: guess a caricature that a white supremacist dreamed up on
Speaker 1: my behalf that I had nothing to do with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then we see the real life percussions, not only
Speaker 1: so not only the emotional and mental toil online, but
Speaker 1: then you know, when we're out in the streets protesting
Speaker 1: for our goddamn lives, then all of a sudden again
Speaker 1: just our presidence of being in the street, even if
Speaker 1: the peaceful protests, it's abots to be the difference in
Speaker 1: police presence. Where I went to the women's march where
Speaker 1: too many people hit on that stupid pussy hat. Uh,
Speaker 1: the police presidence, they're soups calm, just lots of daughters
Speaker 1: hanging out, totally fine. Whatever. Two. If you know, if
Speaker 1: you were at any of the early Black Lives matters rallies,
Speaker 1: if you marched for George Floyd or anything like that,
Speaker 1: you saw us start difference and how you were just
Speaker 1: being treated for doing the exact same action. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it is like this year mongering
Speaker 1: that we saw on social media spilling into real life.
Speaker 1: And that is kind of my point. These are sent
Speaker 1: aative conversations that involve very real hot button issues that
Speaker 1: are super raw for many of us, and the fact
Speaker 1: that our social media platforms are so easily exploited and
Speaker 1: hijacked by extremists and bad actors to completely derail these
Speaker 1: conversations is a problem with very big implications. In the
Speaker 1: case of End Father's Day, many of the people reporting
Speaker 1: on it, you know, journalists, they talked about it like
Speaker 1: the four controls behind the hoax were just joking, you know,
Speaker 1: just trolling. But black feminists they knew it wasn't a
Speaker 1: joke because they could see what was at stake, and
Speaker 1: they could probably see down the line what was going
Speaker 1: to happen next. When it comes to online harms, it's
Speaker 1: always marginalized people who are harmed. First. First, it's error problem,
Speaker 1: and nothing is done because nobody takes black women seriously,
Speaker 1: and then it is everyone's problem. Back in it was
Speaker 1: just destabilizing black feminist online spaces through impersonating black folks
Speaker 1: on Twitter with hoaxes like end Father's Day, and then
Speaker 1: about a year or two later, it's gamer Gate. Then
Speaker 1: it was bad actors using that same tactic in an
Speaker 1: attempt to sway the presidential election. It's hijacking, and in
Speaker 1: flaming national conversations around protest, race crime, and policing. And
Speaker 1: by the time folks are listening to this episode, it
Speaker 1: will be election day. Elon Musk is blowing up verification
Speaker 1: on Twitter and gutting the teams that actually exist on
Speaker 1: the platform to try to make some kind of headway
Speaker 1: into making those platforms safer. So what's next? Where does
Speaker 1: it end? Jabel? Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1: Where can folks follow all the amazing stuff that you've
Speaker 1: got going on? Pretty? Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: This is really lovely and I'm so excited about this show.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Folks can follow me all over the internet. Actual, Moniqu,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I be on Twitter anymore, so
Speaker 1: we're expanding on the internet as well. Anique, It's j
Speaker 1: O E L L E M O N I q
Speaker 1: u E. If you find me on Instagram. I got
Speaker 1: there too late, so there's an underscore between the two names.
Speaker 1: But please come come find me on all I'm on
Speaker 1: on on the discords, the Masodons, try Sarah tops all
Speaker 1: of them now, just looking for a new home. If
Speaker 1: you like a social media space that's mostly word based,
Speaker 1: hit me up and tell me about it. I'll try it.
Speaker 1: I am, I need the outlet. I love it. Thank
Speaker 1: you for being here. I think that's it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll do this week on Internet Hate Machine. Joe will
Speaker 1: be appreciate you. I appreciate you, guys, so be so
Speaker 1: good to see your face and hopefully I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you you definitely about next anything you need the answer? Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, thank you girl. You have a good one.
Speaker 1: Bye guys. Internet Hate Machine is a production of Cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. But more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Check
Speaker 1: out our website cools on media dot com, or find
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Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.