Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio and Unbuss Creative. I'm Bridget Todd,
Speaker 1: and this is there Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: I know. It's been a while since I've been in
Speaker 1: your ears, and I've missed it so much. And I
Speaker 1: hope you've been enjoying your summer. If you're anything like me,
Speaker 1: you got vaccinated, you were looking forward to having some
Speaker 1: kind of normal ish summer, whatever that means. But then
Speaker 1: not so much. Cases started rising again, and vaccine misinformation
Speaker 1: is still running rampant on social media platforms. So even
Speaker 1: though we're on hiatus, I couldn't stay away. I just
Speaker 1: have to come talk about it with y'all. Okay, So
Speaker 1: here's what's going on. A new report confirmed that the
Speaker 1: most viewed article on Facebook was a news story that
Speaker 1: baselessly suggested that the COVID nineteen vaccine may have led
Speaker 1: to a doctor's death. This story was the most viewed
Speaker 1: link on Facebook in the United States for the first
Speaker 1: three months of TOYE, when the pandemic was still very
Speaker 1: much a thing. But don't worry. Facebook did the right thing.
Speaker 1: They quickly went public about their platform pushing this kind
Speaker 1: of deadly anti vaccine misinformation and apologized for the harm
Speaker 1: that it caused. Oh wait, actually just kidding. What they
Speaker 1: actually did was refused to publish the report because they
Speaker 1: worried it would make their company look bad. This is
Speaker 1: according to The New York Times, Platforms have got to
Speaker 1: get a handle on COVID misinformation if we're ever going
Speaker 1: to have a chance of getting back to some semblence
Speaker 1: of normal life. And it made me want to revisit
Speaker 1: the story of the Foma Uzoma. Now we heard from
Speaker 1: a Foma this past winner. She's a black public policy
Speaker 1: and technology professional who was fighting to keep health misinformation
Speaker 1: all social media platforms way before the COVID nineteen pandemic
Speaker 1: ever began. And I think her story really says a
Speaker 1: lot about what social media platforms need to be doing
Speaker 1: to her medical misinformation about vaccines and COVID to keep
Speaker 1: us all safe. So let's listen to the story of
Speaker 1: the Foma Uzoma versus misinformation. I believe black women are
Speaker 1: the future of the Internet. Much of the work to
Speaker 1: create that future, a safer, more inclusive one, has been
Speaker 1: built by black women. But we need to acknowledge the
Speaker 1: sad reality that that work doesn't always come easy for
Speaker 1: the black women trying to build better platforms and push
Speaker 1: for changes in systems and institutions. That work comes at
Speaker 1: a huge personal cost. This is something that tech policy
Speaker 1: expert E Foma Zoma knows all too well. My full
Speaker 1: name is i Foma Zoma, and I'm the founder and
Speaker 1: principle of the consulting firm that's called earth Seed, which
Speaker 1: is actually named after the community that Octavia Butler created
Speaker 1: in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents
Speaker 1: in Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sour. Earth Seed
Speaker 1: is a community based around the idea that God has changed.
Speaker 1: It's all about the future and the possibilities of what
Speaker 1: can be and knowing I Foma, this name is no accident.
Speaker 1: Before she started her own firm, I Foma was already
Speaker 1: an early champion of chain, busy architect in the future
Speaker 1: of the Internet, an early higher on pinterest Public Policy Team.
Speaker 1: Her work set Pinterest apart, and headline after headline applaud
Speaker 1: and Pinterest for taking early action to keep dangerous diss
Speaker 1: and misinformation off their platform. You'd think this would make
Speaker 1: her a superstar within the organization, but like so many
Speaker 1: black women who fight for change. That wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: As things were going south, I was still doing the work.
Speaker 1: Misinformation is kind of a trendy thing now, but back
Speaker 1: when the fomo was hired at Pinterest, people weren't really
Speaker 1: talking about the need to keep it off platforms. She
Speaker 1: hit the ground running as soon as she was hired
Speaker 1: and basically designed an early framework of moderation policies to
Speaker 1: keep dangerous diss and misinformation off Pinterest, first by banning
Speaker 1: prolific conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and later health misinformation. My
Speaker 1: first week on the job, I pushed our g C
Speaker 1: and our trust and Safety team and the content policy
Speaker 1: team to make the decision that we ended up making
Speaker 1: on Alex Jones and removing him entirely from the platform
Speaker 1: at a time. This is in at a time when
Speaker 1: he was not really being addressed by any platform, And
Speaker 1: the argument I made at that point um was first
Speaker 1: that he already violated a lot of the policies that
Speaker 1: we had his content um and two important things. One
Speaker 1: that if you're acting on misinformation. At that point, no
Speaker 1: other platform had a misinformation policy other than Medium. And
Speaker 1: my point was, well, if we're making decisions because we
Speaker 1: know content is misinforming, we have a misinformation policy. We
Speaker 1: need to just write it and be clear and stand
Speaker 1: in our convictions and post it on the site. A
Speaker 1: few researchers will pick it up, others may pick it up,
Speaker 1: most people won't. But I do think when you're making decisions,
Speaker 1: you need to be transparent about what those decisions are
Speaker 1: and why and so from there and the Paul see
Speaker 1: that came out of that, then I was able to
Speaker 1: push UM for a lot of the health misinformation work
Speaker 1: that I did, which started with getting a landscape analysis.
Speaker 1: That's something that I feel has been missing from a
Speaker 1: lot of platforms. If you don't know what's on your
Speaker 1: platform and others don't know, how do you address it
Speaker 1: properly if you don't know who it's impacting. Because most
Speaker 1: misinformation is not an equal opportunity harm. It's mostly targeted
Speaker 1: at people of color and at women, and when you're
Speaker 1: looking at health misinformation, it's especially start and so having
Speaker 1: that information, I was then UM able to push for
Speaker 1: things that I was retaliated against because of But that's
Speaker 1: a whole other set of stories. Moderation on a platform
Speaker 1: like Pinterest is no easy thing, but he film a
Speaker 1: champion moderation policies that targeted how savvy disinformers actually can be.
Speaker 1: For instance, there's huge amounts of inaccurate content about abortion
Speaker 1: targeting the black community. Team they used rhetoric like black
Speaker 1: jettocide and accused Planned Parenthood of wanting to abort black babies,
Speaker 1: using imagery of black moms and babies to target black folks.
Speaker 1: But there's also huge overlap in the anti choice movement
Speaker 1: and the white supremacist movement, so some of this content
Speaker 1: is actually produced by white supremacist groups trying to target
Speaker 1: the Black community. Efoma's ability to build out thoughtful moderation
Speaker 1: policies around this kind of complex content was bolstering pinterest
Speaker 1: public reputation as a company who stood apart as an
Speaker 1: early model of what it looked like to build safer
Speaker 1: and more ethical platforms. They were championed in the press,
Speaker 1: but all the while, I Foma was being mistreated internally
Speaker 1: by her own colleagues for the very work that allowed
Speaker 1: Pinterest to be seen as a success story. So few
Speaker 1: platforms had any kind of public facing policy around misinformation
Speaker 1: and disinformation, and back then, I feel like Pinterest was
Speaker 1: really able to set themselves apart at least from someone
Speaker 1: from the outside looking in. And you were doing so
Speaker 1: much of that work all the while they were making
Speaker 1: your life harder for doing it. You know, how do
Speaker 1: you fit with that? Um? With a lot of peace
Speaker 1: that karma is real, um and it will come back
Speaker 1: to get them. But but also that was one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why I had to go public about the
Speaker 1: retaliation that I faced when I raised pay discrimination concerns
Speaker 1: about the docks sing that I experienced from a white
Speaker 1: male supremacist who happened to also work at Pinterest after
Speaker 1: I pushed for decisions to be made around white supremacist
Speaker 1: content that had existed on the platform. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of intersections, as you know, with misinformation, and so
Speaker 1: even though pinterest was most well known because of a
Speaker 1: health misinformation work that I did, we took a lot
Speaker 1: of steps to address other types of misinformation. And where
Speaker 1: those two I guess circles and event diagram met was
Speaker 1: on an anti choice site that had been posting misinformation
Speaker 1: around birth control and access to abortion services being targeted
Speaker 1: specifically at black communities to uh push eugenics agenda from
Speaker 1: the pro choice movement just and the ways in which
Speaker 1: the misinformation aligned I pushed internally that like this is
Speaker 1: this is why we have to look at misinformation in general.
Speaker 1: We have to look at the specific ways in which
Speaker 1: it it harms people. But if you just take a well,
Speaker 1: this is an opinion point of view, then you're missing
Speaker 1: that this is both health misinformation and it's also political
Speaker 1: because it's targeted at a group using language and using imagery,
Speaker 1: because they're very good at using images of black mothers
Speaker 1: and black children on these websites that are run entirely
Speaker 1: by white supremacists, that you may miss some of the
Speaker 1: contact if you only look at the content and not
Speaker 1: what their entire website is pushing. Well, especially on a
Speaker 1: platform like Pinterest that is so visual. You know you
Speaker 1: might be on there because you're designing a new nursery,
Speaker 1: you're planning a wedding. You're not necessarily primed to be
Speaker 1: hit with content that could be racially charged or politically charged,
Speaker 1: or be delivering health misinformation. You know your guard is down,
Speaker 1: and that's why it was particularly harmful. And that was
Speaker 1: my even though the platform had never really done anything
Speaker 1: public in the policy space, wasn't certainly not known by
Speaker 1: any of the reporters I ended up UM working with
Speaker 1: about policy decisions. One of the reasons why I felt
Speaker 1: so strongly about this is it's a platform that was
Speaker 1: going towards I p O at the time that I
Speaker 1: had started, so I started pre I p O and
Speaker 1: part of the messaging around that is where a platform
Speaker 1: with eight and ten moms in the US on here.
Speaker 1: Lots of women use the platform around the world, and
Speaker 1: women they're often decision makers when it comes to financial
Speaker 1: choices for their households. So it's a great platform for advertisers.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, that's what made it a
Speaker 1: prime target for misinformation purveyors because you have a captive
Speaker 1: audience folks who are not a tune to looking for
Speaker 1: miss and disinformation because they're not on Facebook, they're not
Speaker 1: on Twitter, they're in a place that feels safe to them,
Speaker 1: and so they're the perfect opportunity to then hawk whatever
Speaker 1: goods you're selling. A point that I made often because
Speaker 1: I get invited by the w h O, CDC and
Speaker 1: others to talk about this health misinformation work UM that
Speaker 1: they had not thought about it as much is the
Speaker 1: financial incentives that are tied to a lot of misinformation,
Speaker 1: whether it's Alex Jones selling his nonsense T shirts and
Speaker 1: supplements and whatever else. These people are scam artists. That's
Speaker 1: their number Their number one job is scamming folks. They
Speaker 1: use the values that people have, they use the fears
Speaker 1: that people have to then sell their products. But at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, these are spammers and scammers,
Speaker 1: and so you need to also be looking at what
Speaker 1: it is that they're trying to push on your platform.
Speaker 1: For almost every single health misinformation site, they were selling supplements.
Speaker 1: So if you would address dangerous supplements on the platform
Speaker 1: as spam, why would you not consider this at the
Speaker 1: same level of harm to the platform and ultimately harm
Speaker 1: to legitimate advertisers. I think that we're so used to
Speaker 1: thinking about scammers as people, you know, selling fake Gucci
Speaker 1: on the street, and like, no, it can people can
Speaker 1: can scam online and they're misleading you in order to
Speaker 1: to get you to buy whatever bullshit product they're hocking.
Speaker 1: I would actually argue that the person selling the Gucci
Speaker 1: handbag that's fake, that's not harmful. You get a cheaper
Speaker 1: bag if it's made well, it looks pretty good, like
Speaker 1: you get a deal. They get a deal Gucci doesn't
Speaker 1: get a deal, but what do they need one for? Um?
Speaker 1: But that's not harmful in the same way that telling parents,
Speaker 1: and especially at the point at which most parents make
Speaker 1: decisions about vaccines in the last trime, master before they
Speaker 1: have the kid, that they instead of getting a vaccine
Speaker 1: for their child, which will save their child's life, they
Speaker 1: should instead go buy your vitamin case supplement. That is
Speaker 1: so harmful and dangerous in a way that we need
Speaker 1: to take it more seriously. It's not a difference of opinion.
Speaker 1: It's actually costing people's lives definitely. And I think to
Speaker 1: your point about how many moms are on the platform,
Speaker 1: you know, as we go into talking about you know,
Speaker 1: vaccine rollout for COVID and things like that, it is
Speaker 1: a lot of times moms who are making health decisions
Speaker 1: for the family. And so if moms are being inundated
Speaker 1: with really harmful health misinformation on this platform where they
Speaker 1: think they're going to be safe, it is a real
Speaker 1: problem that could could have a real human cause. And
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, the person scamming fake Gucci belt on
Speaker 1: the street, other than not giving Gucci more money, which
Speaker 1: frankly I'm not really that mad at you know, we
Speaker 1: have to look at the kind of harm that these
Speaker 1: platforms can really be responsible for pushing on communities who
Speaker 1: are oftentimes already marginalized or underrepresented. That's exactly right. The
Speaker 1: day of the insurrection, as pro Trump mobs swarmed the capital,
Speaker 1: one of whom was wearing a shirt reading Camp Auschwitz.
Speaker 1: Microsoft owned tech firm get Hub fired a Jewish employee
Speaker 1: for posting stay safe, Homies, there's Nazis about in a
Speaker 1: company slack channel. The company eventually reversed our decision and
Speaker 1: apologized to the employee after an investigation, but even still,
Speaker 1: it establishes a pretty concerning dynamic when we're marginalized employees
Speaker 1: are punished for correctly identifying white supremacists. EFOMA can relate,
Speaker 1: You're actually punished for speaking up about white supremacists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not only punished. I was personally targeted. So the
Speaker 1: story I was referring to earlier, the white supremacist colleague
Speaker 1: who wasn't someone I worked with closely, but worked on
Speaker 1: the engineering side of trust and safety, I saw a
Speaker 1: message that I posted in exactly the right place for
Speaker 1: me to post. It wasn't a general conversation area, but
Speaker 1: I posted that a pretty popular white supremacist was in
Speaker 1: fact a white supremacist. I linked to the content that
Speaker 1: violated our policies that was of concern, and then I
Speaker 1: put in a note as well that, uh, the platform
Speaker 1: or the folks working on trust and safety should be
Speaker 1: mindful of these terms, like here's a set of terms
Speaker 1: that are dog whistles unless you're a white supremacist or
Speaker 1: unless you're the target of the white supremacist harm. And
Speaker 1: these are what we need to look out for, because
Speaker 1: these folks aren't going to title there videos on YouTube
Speaker 1: as Hey, I'm a white supremacist and this is my view.
Speaker 1: It's going to say something about population control around uh,
Speaker 1: white replacement theory, which a lot of folks are not
Speaker 1: aware of, but is a huge red flag and is
Speaker 1: a calling card for many white supremacists. A few months
Speaker 1: after posting that warning, sharing the context and the content,
Speaker 1: which was my job as the public policy person who
Speaker 1: helped inform content safety decisions that we made, I was
Speaker 1: then um dots this person docs me and two other
Speaker 1: women another one who is a black woman and a
Speaker 1: woman that he a white woman. He assumed to be
Speaker 1: a lesbian um and we only know that because of
Speaker 1: the comments that came up on Gateway Pundit and in
Speaker 1: other places where we had been targeted and for me,
Speaker 1: I guess he took a particular disliking to me and
Speaker 1: so shared my phone number as well and all of
Speaker 1: the identifying information that you would need to find me.
Speaker 1: At this point, I had already separate from all of
Speaker 1: this and separate from the work I was doing. I
Speaker 1: had already raised paid discrimination complaints with UH the appropriate
Speaker 1: leadership at the company, my manager, managers, manager, HR, etcetera,
Speaker 1: and was getting serious pushback from them. And so then
Speaker 1: when I was docked, the lack of response from them
Speaker 1: to take care of my safety to address what was
Speaker 1: going on was so apparently part of the retaliation that
Speaker 1: I had already been facing on the paid discrimination side
Speaker 1: UH that it was pretty traumatizing being at a company
Speaker 1: where it was clear I was not safe. I was
Speaker 1: not necessarily safe at home because it's not very difficult
Speaker 1: to track someone down once you have enough information UH,
Speaker 1: and then was also dealing with everything else at the
Speaker 1: same time. So I really related to the get hub
Speaker 1: story because of the docks sne that I experienced and
Speaker 1: the lack of RESPONSI soe Foma was facing egregious targeted
Speaker 1: harassment from her own colleagues in retaliation for her work
Speaker 1: that garnered Pinterest so much positive attention, but she got
Speaker 1: other kinds of internal pushback to a sick A quick break,
Speaker 1: and we're back. In an earlier episode of There Are
Speaker 1: No Girls on the Internet, we explored how the racial
Speaker 1: justice group Color of Change advocated for Pinterest to change
Speaker 1: their policies around slave plantations that were being advertised as
Speaker 1: romantic wedding venues on the platform. The company was widely
Speaker 1: celebrated for this change, which was led by Epoma, but
Speaker 1: that didn't keep them from retaliating against her for it.
Speaker 1: Later on that same year, uh Color of Change had
Speaker 1: come to me because I was the liason with outside groups,
Speaker 1: academics and civil society on content safety issues. They had
Speaker 1: come to me sharing that they were still seeing slave
Speaker 1: plantations pop up as wedding venues and suggestions for weddings.
Speaker 1: If you know Pinterest or you know someone who uses it,
Speaker 1: the number one use of the platform might be planning
Speaker 1: a wedding or preparing for some sort of celebration, and
Speaker 1: I agreed with them, it's completely inappropriate that the platform
Speaker 1: would be pushing concentration camps, which is what they were,
Speaker 1: and torture sites as a celebration venue. And so I
Speaker 1: brought it to our content safety team with my recommendation,
Speaker 1: shared exactly what Color of Change had shared with me,
Speaker 1: and then I got pushed back from the head of
Speaker 1: that team, particularly the head of content policy, who happens
Speaker 1: to still be there and still speaking on behalf of
Speaker 1: the company. Um. What I later found out was that
Speaker 1: she was married on a plantation. She never shared that
Speaker 1: in all of the pushback that I got, but she
Speaker 1: ended up working with my manager, who had already been
Speaker 1: retaliating against me, to ding me on my performance review. So,
Speaker 1: even though Pinterest ended up doing exactly what I recommended,
Speaker 1: ended up getting praised in forty plus headlines because of
Speaker 1: the decision to stop promoting slave plantations and the decisions
Speaker 1: that I had pushed to be made, I was ding
Speaker 1: on my performance review, which affected my pay Wow. First
Speaker 1: of all, the revealed that this woman had her own
Speaker 1: I mean, yike her own I mean we did an
Speaker 1: episode about We spoke to Jade from Color of Change
Speaker 1: in an earlier episode about Pinterest in the decision to
Speaker 1: not have not promote plantation weddings, and just like what
Speaker 1: you said, right, these companies get to enjoy the positive
Speaker 1: press that makes them look like a woke company or
Speaker 1: a company that really cares. Like I heard so many
Speaker 1: times people say, well, Pinterest is a company that has
Speaker 1: a you know, like they are a company that prizes
Speaker 1: like empathy, YadA, YadA, YadA. And then to hear the
Speaker 1: inner workings of how this happened is so it's such
Speaker 1: a disconnect I feel, it really is, you know, it
Speaker 1: really illustrates how so many different levels can come together
Speaker 1: to suppress and push out and harm a black woman
Speaker 1: for doing her job right, like this was your job.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's not like you were overstepping bounces.
Speaker 1: Is what you were hired to do. And I also
Speaker 1: think this, you know, and this is the conversation that
Speaker 1: feel comes up again and again and again where black
Speaker 1: women are punished for like doing the right thing, for
Speaker 1: practicing public courage, public morality, for doing their jobs trying
Speaker 1: to make things safer or better. Someone else gets to
Speaker 1: enjoy the benefits of that work. But that work is
Speaker 1: at best, you know, unappreciated, underappreciated, at worst, dangerous and
Speaker 1: risky for your own personal safety, right like you? Like
Speaker 1: you did this work of making Pinterest a safer, better
Speaker 1: platform at great personal cost and at great risks your
Speaker 1: own safety. Yep, And and all of those things happened.
Speaker 1: Not only was I paid unfairly and I had to
Speaker 1: pursue legal action because of that, I was then also
Speaker 1: my life was certain. So yeah, I got all of
Speaker 1: it while I was there. And people often like to
Speaker 1: call black women canaries in the coal mine or whatever
Speaker 1: term they want to use. But I would like to
Speaker 1: just do my job, get paid fairly, and not be
Speaker 1: put in danger for for doing the right thing for
Speaker 1: a company. I mean, uh, something like half more than
Speaker 1: half of the articles that were written about pinterest in
Speaker 1: the month before the public offering which happened in April
Speaker 1: of referenced my work. So not only did my work
Speaker 1: have value to the actual users of the platform, end
Speaker 1: up pushing Facebook and others to have to respond about
Speaker 1: why they weren't addressing health misinformation, particularly around vaccines. And
Speaker 1: remember that was during a different health issue, a measles
Speaker 1: outbreak measles outbreaks on the East and West coast. Uh,
Speaker 1: So not only did it have that sort of impact,
Speaker 1: which is a slam dunk if you're in a policy space.
Speaker 1: But it also had material benefit to the company in
Speaker 1: the form of the I p O. And I still
Speaker 1: was not treated fairly. Yeah, and the company still hasn't
Speaker 1: actually acknowledged that anything they did in my case was wrong.
Speaker 1: You see, like someone who has a lot of peace
Speaker 1: for how horribly you were treated, I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of rage as well. You know, I really do believe
Speaker 1: in karma, and I believe it's not just you, It'll
Speaker 1: be the next seven generations that are hit with whatever
Speaker 1: evil you put out into the world. And so I
Speaker 1: take the long view. I'm like Aria from Game of Thrones.
Speaker 1: I'm making my way through the list, but you'll get
Speaker 1: yours eventually. That's that's my long view. And then also
Speaker 1: I'm a student of history and political science. None of
Speaker 1: this is new. What I'm dealing with is not new.
Speaker 1: It's not a unique to my situation. Does it suck, Yes,
Speaker 1: hasn't been miserable. Yes, I've paid physical consequences for it
Speaker 1: because my actual health was impaired for the two plus
Speaker 1: years I was in a legal fight with them. But
Speaker 1: like I'm good at the end of the day, I'm
Speaker 1: at peace with every single decision I've made. I've never
Speaker 1: lied about what I experienced there, and so when they're
Speaker 1: out here lying about what they did to me um
Speaker 1: and getting called out on lies, that is enough for me.
Speaker 1: I Foma publicly resigned from Pinterest this past summer, when
Speaker 1: racial justice protests were happening all over the globe and
Speaker 1: brands were rushing to put out statements in support for
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter. She tweeted, I'm an alum of Yale, Google, Facebook,
Speaker 1: Washington Post, Tech, et cetera, and recently decided to leave Pinterest,
Speaker 1: which just declared solidarity with Black Lives Matter. What a joke.
Speaker 1: As a black woman, seeing Pinterest middle of the night,
Speaker 1: Black Employees Matter statement made me scratch my head after
Speaker 1: I just fought for a full year to be paid
Speaker 1: and leveled fairly. A year in which I was docked
Speaker 1: by a white male colleague. He shared my cell phone number,
Speaker 1: my photo, and my name was a violently racist, misogynistic
Speaker 1: part of the Internet, followed by a dangerously inadequate response
Speaker 1: from Pinterest. I continued to serve as the leader and
Speaker 1: spokesperson for pinterest biggest public policy wins kept all of
Speaker 1: the above quiet for quote nationalism in the hope that
Speaker 1: Pinterest would do the right thing. Instead, they doubled down
Speaker 1: on retaliation. After he Foma left Pinterest, former CEO franc
Speaker 1: wib Brower, who was white, accused Pinterest of gender discrimination.
Speaker 1: In December, Pinterest paid Brower twenty two point five million
Speaker 1: dollars to settle her lawsuit. She says she was encouraged
Speaker 1: to speak out against the discrimination she fasd at Pinterest
Speaker 1: after he Foma and Erica Shmizu Banks, another black former
Speaker 1: Pinterest employee, spoke out first. Only they never got any
Speaker 1: big payout if I remember correctly, you didn't even get
Speaker 1: a year of severance from Pinterest, that's correct, and laid
Speaker 1: the groundwork she was not going to speak up publicly,
Speaker 1: and actually in the medium post where she didn't reference
Speaker 1: to us when she first went public. Um, but she
Speaker 1: herself said that women had come to her over the
Speaker 1: course of her career and she actually had not been
Speaker 1: a helpful ally to other women. So I think she
Speaker 1: said everything. Um, But yeah, no, I I what was
Speaker 1: crazy about that situation is people got to see in
Speaker 1: real time what it means to lead a movement and
Speaker 1: then be left out of whatever progress comes. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you think about me too, who has me too
Speaker 1: actually benefited? If not white women, maybe maybe in a
Speaker 1: sense all women, but it is most benefited white women.
Speaker 1: And yet it was started by Toronto Burke, a black woman.
Speaker 1: So this is not it's not new, it's not I
Speaker 1: didn't speak up because I expected them to do the
Speaker 1: right thing. I I from the jump expected them not.
Speaker 1: I expected them to denigrate my name, my experience, which
Speaker 1: they've done all of that, and then not to pay
Speaker 1: me what they owe me. But seeing it all happen
Speaker 1: in front of everyone, I think was a lesson, not
Speaker 1: only for the folks who were watching it and just
Speaker 1: expecting that the right thing would happen, but then also
Speaker 1: some of the reporters who worked on the story. And
Speaker 1: we're the very first ones to reach out and be like,
Speaker 1: how is it possible that you? Like, I literally remember
Speaker 1: talking to you and then talking to her several months later.
Speaker 1: You are the reason why she came forward, You are
Speaker 1: the reason why she had a strong case, and then
Speaker 1: this happens. Yeah, for better or for worse, it always
Speaker 1: seems that black women we are the ones build, like
Speaker 1: we're the ones building and then other people are the
Speaker 1: ones who are benefiting. And I think I see that
Speaker 1: in politics, I see that in tech, I see that
Speaker 1: in so many different It just seems to be you know,
Speaker 1: I at this point it almost you know it is
Speaker 1: what it is. But like that seems to be our
Speaker 1: lot on this on this earth, like building things that
Speaker 1: we then don't get to to use ourselves, right Like.
Speaker 1: I think it was this writer Clarissa Brooks who won
Speaker 1: wrote like, I, as a black woman, I don't want
Speaker 1: my back to be used as a bridge to a
Speaker 1: world and I'll never see right's Like I feel like,
Speaker 1: I feel like that is our lot, and I see
Speaker 1: it particularly in tech, but in so many different different avenues. Yep.
Speaker 1: And that's why I even though uh, this was painful
Speaker 1: personally painful of course, to have been the one who
Speaker 1: experienced all of this and then have someone else benefit
Speaker 1: from it, it was instructive for everyone to see it
Speaker 1: and to see the timeline and how quickly and the
Speaker 1: different way in which they responded to her. And then
Speaker 1: also I think it was a helpful lesson for people
Speaker 1: who considered themselves allies to see as well, because there
Speaker 1: were a lot of people who think of themselves as
Speaker 1: allies who saw it, and we're like, wait, what, how
Speaker 1: is it possible that this is happening. This happens all
Speaker 1: of the time. You just don't usually see the dollar
Speaker 1: amount that's attached to the progress that certain people get
Speaker 1: and others do not. More after a quick break, let's
Speaker 1: get right back into it. I do have this feeling
Speaker 1: that there is this underlying assumption that black women like
Speaker 1: like tech and the internet on all of these domains,
Speaker 1: or it's like not our rightful domain, so we should
Speaker 1: not We are not able to expect experiences that are
Speaker 1: not harmful in these spaces, And I think for me,
Speaker 1: it's kind of this vicious cycle where that dynamic is
Speaker 1: mirrored at tech companies and so black women engineers, black
Speaker 1: women technologists are b are pushed out of these companies
Speaker 1: and are not are not being listened to, and thus
Speaker 1: these platforms are not able to to prioritize our safety.
Speaker 1: So it's like I feel like we probably in my mind,
Speaker 1: will never address the true harm that platforms have been
Speaker 1: responsible for if these tech companies cannot figure out a
Speaker 1: way to really have black women be meaningfully centered and heard.
Speaker 1: Because it just seems like this like horrible cycle. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if this makes any sense, but um no,
Speaker 1: it makes complete sense. And it's not a lack of
Speaker 1: figuring it out, it's a lack of desire they I
Speaker 1: said to I think it was Charlie worzel Row column
Speaker 1: a few months ago about Facebook and it may be
Speaker 1: being a lost cause, and I said, platforms reflect the
Speaker 1: people who lead them. That you're only seeing on Facebook,
Speaker 1: on Twitter, on Pinterest, wherever, what the people who lead
Speaker 1: those platforms want you to see. And so if they're
Speaker 1: operating in a white supremacist structure and worldview and that
Speaker 1: is where their actual interests aligned, that's what we're going
Speaker 1: to see on the platform. So none of this is
Speaker 1: by accident. None of this is all of a sudden
Speaker 1: out of control. This is exactly what they designed, working
Speaker 1: in the ways that they want it to work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it always seems to come back to that question of
Speaker 1: is this an issue of they can't fix this or
Speaker 1: an issue of they won't fix this. It seems like
Speaker 1: tech leaders have made some deliberate choices about what to prioritize,
Speaker 1: and the example I it makes usually the audiences that
Speaker 1: I give this or share this analogy with our health focus,
Speaker 1: public health professionals, experts, etcetera. And I say, if you
Speaker 1: want to understand how non accidental any of this is,
Speaker 1: think about pornography. How often do you randomly encounter porn
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or wherever else? Not
Speaker 1: that often, not often, It's not often that happened. And
Speaker 1: yet you see misinformation every other post, you see hate
Speaker 1: every other post. There's a financial reason for that. Advertisers
Speaker 1: have said they don't want pornography next their content, and
Speaker 1: so what have platforms done poured every single resource into
Speaker 1: making sure that's the case. They've made a choice here,
Speaker 1: and the choice is not on the side of safety.
Speaker 1: I would argue that if it's legal consenting adult pornography,
Speaker 1: that is way less harmful to randomly encounter on a
Speaker 1: platform than health, misinformation or Nazi content. You have to
Speaker 1: ask some questions about priorities, you really do, yep, And
Speaker 1: the priorities are clear in all of our experiences on
Speaker 1: these platforms. I think a lot of black women on
Speaker 1: the Internet have just come to internalize this idea that
Speaker 1: when it comes to experiences online or on technology or
Speaker 1: on the Internet, we just cannot expect to have experiences
Speaker 1: that feel safe, and I want to get us to
Speaker 1: a place where we can rethink the kinds of experiences
Speaker 1: that we actually can't expect from the Internet and from text.
Speaker 1: Bass I agree, and that's the basis of all of
Speaker 1: the work that I have done, the work that I'm
Speaker 1: doing now through my consulting firm on tech accountability, whether
Speaker 1: it's the health misinformation space or whether it's on the
Speaker 1: organizing side and providing protections for whistle bars UM. And
Speaker 1: I think it's it's a conversation that it's unfortunate that
Speaker 1: we have to bear the burden of since we're the
Speaker 1: people who are harmed by it. But even just a
Speaker 1: few days ago, I was part of a conversation on
Speaker 1: Clubhouse UM around content moderation and around the decisions that
Speaker 1: platforms made to deep platform Donald Trump. And before we
Speaker 1: went into that conversation, I sent a note to everyone
Speaker 1: on the panel saying Clubhouse is a place that I
Speaker 1: am not frequenting by choice because black women are often
Speaker 1: targeted and people use very loud dog whistles basically just
Speaker 1: short of using the N word and using straight up
Speaker 1: misogynistic language. But there's a ton of that going on,
Speaker 1: and I put the onus, on everyone on the panel too,
Speaker 1: if that happened in the course of our conversation from
Speaker 1: anyone from the audience, to not make it be my
Speaker 1: responsibility to be the only one to say something. And
Speaker 1: every single one was was great and said absolutely of course.
Speaker 1: But that should be the way that we're setting up conversations.
Speaker 1: It shouldn't be the responsibility of the person who is
Speaker 1: most likely to be harmed to say, like, Hey, I
Speaker 1: hate to be the one to bring the mood down,
Speaker 1: but this could happen, so can we please watch out
Speaker 1: for it. God, I have been that person a thousand times,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like what you were saying. It
Speaker 1: just sucks, like you you wanna you want to do
Speaker 1: your job and be paid what you're owned for doing
Speaker 1: that work. I feel that black women are just not
Speaker 1: often afforded the ability to just do your work and
Speaker 1: keep your head down. It's like you have to take
Speaker 1: on all this often unpaid might I add extra labor,
Speaker 1: extra energy, extra everything just to exist and do your
Speaker 1: job and put your message out there really exhausting. I
Speaker 1: know exactly that that feeling of like oh God, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be to have to be the person that raises
Speaker 1: this again and like everyone's gonna grown. I just know
Speaker 1: that feeling, and it sucks. Yeah, it does. What do
Speaker 1: you think platforms or policy policy folks or any anybody
Speaker 1: who has power decision makers? What should folks be doing
Speaker 1: to keep this and misinformation off of platforms. I think
Speaker 1: it's great that the incoming administration is passing the bar
Speaker 1: that was on the ground from the Trump administration for
Speaker 1: diversity and so at least they've cleared that low bar
Speaker 1: and standard. But I am not seeing enough UM black
Speaker 1: women in positions of leadership when it comes to misinformation
Speaker 1: and tech policy specifically. UM. I was encouraged by the
Speaker 1: science I think it's some sort of science focused department
Speaker 1: within the administration that was announced recently that a Laundron
Speaker 1: Nelson will be on. That's incredible. Uh, But on the
Speaker 1: tech side, it cannot just be pulling the expertise of
Speaker 1: people like Eric Schmidt and other white text executives to
Speaker 1: then reform the same industry that they've made billions off of. Like,
Speaker 1: that's just not how it works. That's not how it
Speaker 1: should work. UM and I and I think it's important
Speaker 1: to pull academics, but you also need practitioners who have
Speaker 1: experienced things on the insides of these platforms to be
Speaker 1: informing the decisions and any regulation or reform that comes
Speaker 1: as a result. So much of the infrastructure of what
Speaker 1: we rely on to make the Internet safer and better,
Speaker 1: so people who are fighting disinformation and misinformation have been
Speaker 1: for a long time. So much of that infrastructure is
Speaker 1: Black women in What is it like to know that
Speaker 1: we have such a big role in doing a lot
Speaker 1: of the work that is making the Internet safer and
Speaker 1: better for everybody? I mean, I it's tough because on
Speaker 1: the one hand, when we when progress is made that
Speaker 1: we push for everyone benefits um and often we benefit
Speaker 1: the least. And so it is. It's just a role
Speaker 1: that many Black women have taken on to protect themselves
Speaker 1: and our communities. On the other hand, I don't blame
Speaker 1: any black women who are like, you know what, this
Speaker 1: is not my fight, this is not my battle. I'm tired.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to live during a pandemic. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to feed my kids, I'm trying to feed myself. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to take a damn nap like I ascribe wholeheartedly
Speaker 1: to the NAP Ministry and the work that the NA
Speaker 1: Ministry has been doing, because I think sometimes we have
Speaker 1: to say, you know what I told you, so now
Speaker 1: I'm going to rest. That's it. I'm done, I'm done,
Speaker 1: I'm bound out, And so I allow the space for
Speaker 1: that at any point while also hoping that when Black
Speaker 1: women say, you know what, this is work that I
Speaker 1: want to do, that we're uplifted and we're empowered. The
Speaker 1: flip side of that is making sure that allies are
Speaker 1: supposed allies are not then saying, oh my gosh, you're
Speaker 1: so good at this, you need to be the one
Speaker 1: leading it. No no, after uh the fifth and the
Speaker 1: results in Georgia when everyone is posting about and not
Speaker 1: Black women because black women were not doing this, but
Speaker 1: when everyone else was posting about what Stacy Abrams needs
Speaker 1: to be doing now. If she wants to go to
Speaker 1: a SPA for the next month, for the next decade,
Speaker 1: that is her decision and that's what she should be
Speaker 1: empowered to do, and those same people trying to demand
Speaker 1: labor of her should donate so that she can have
Speaker 1: her SPA time for as long as she wants. Like
Speaker 1: that is the kind of our ship that I want
Speaker 1: to see, not just finding new work for us to
Speaker 1: do when we're the only ones paying the price for
Speaker 1: the work. For i Foma, the work continues. Just last week,
Speaker 1: she introduced the Silent No More Act, new legislation she
Speaker 1: released with California State Senator Connie Lava that would prevent
Speaker 1: the use of non disclosure agreements or n d as
Speaker 1: in workplace situations involving discrimination and harassment of any kind.
Speaker 1: When he Foma spoke out about what she experienced at Pinterest,
Speaker 1: she was breaking an NDA, and because the current legislation
Speaker 1: only protects employees from speaking out of its gender discrimination,
Speaker 1: not race based discrimination, Pinterest could have suited her for
Speaker 1: speaking up. I Foma is working to change the future,
Speaker 1: to build when we're marginalized, people don't have to pay
Speaker 1: such a huge personal cost for trying to build a
Speaker 1: better world. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech.
Speaker 1: I just want to say hi you and we just
Speaker 1: said hello at tang godi dot com. You can also
Speaker 1: find transcripts for today's episode at tang godi dot com.
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
Speaker 1: me Bridget Tod. It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss.
Speaker 1: Creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is
Speaker 1: our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help
Speaker 1: us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts