There Are No Girls on the Internet - Big Tech and Their Responses to Black Lives Matter

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00:01:51.500 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:02:03.980 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:02:09.080 In the wake of the murders of unarmed Black people like Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and George Floyd,

00:02:15.100 tech companies changed their logos to Black squares and put out statements affirming their commitment to Black Lives Matter.

00:02:21.240 But many of those same companies have spent the last few years

00:02:24.140 pretending like their platforms and technology have nothing to do with politics

00:02:27.960 and pretty much just trying to stay out of it.

00:02:31.300 Last week, two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, were shot and killed by Kyle Rittenhouse,

00:02:36.580 a 17-year-old vigilante who traveled to the protests with an illegal weapon.

00:02:41.580 The Verge reported that Facebook allowed a self-proclaimed militia group

00:02:45.180 calling itself the Kenosha Guard

00:02:47.140 and used its Facebook page to issue a, quote,

00:02:50.420 call to arms in violation of Facebook's own policies.

00:02:55.000 Now, this group remained online even after at least two people reported it before the shootings.

00:03:00.620 And even after the incident,

00:03:02.640 The Guardian reports that many people used Facebook to spread messages supportive of the suspected murderer.

00:03:08.540 One fundraiser, they report, was shared more than 17,700 times on Facebook,

00:03:14.160 including being shared by 291 public groups and pages

00:03:17.780 with more than 3.9 million aggregate followers.

00:03:21.760 And all of this happened after Facebook said

00:03:24.140 it was working to enforce its policy banning content

00:03:26.580 that praises, supports, or represents mass shooters.

00:03:30.380 So I'm not gonna lie,

00:03:31.760 watching all of this unfold was depressing as hell.

00:03:35.460 And it left me feeling like tech companies

00:03:37.120 have a tight grip on our democracy and our discourse

00:03:40.160 while simultaneously gaslighting us

00:03:42.720 by telling us their platforms are apolitical and neutral.

00:03:46.600 Which doesn't make any sense at all.

00:03:48.620 The decisions that tech leaders make,

00:03:50.500 from what they do or don't allow on their platforms

00:03:52.620 to the money they pay in property taxes,

00:03:55.080 has a very, very real impact on the lives of Black, brown,

00:03:59.100 and other marginalized communities.

00:04:01.700 So how have tech leaders been able to get away

00:04:03.840 with sitting on the sidelines for so long?

00:04:06.280 And how can they put out statements

00:04:07.880 affirming the lives of marginalized people

00:04:09.740 to whom their own unwillingness to be active allies

00:04:12.660 have hurt for so long?

00:04:15.260 How can there be such a huge disconnect?

00:04:17.680 And what will it take for them to meaningfully get into the game?

00:04:20.920 I know that the internet has the potential to be the most democratizing platform,

00:04:26.180 communications platform in human history.

00:04:28.900 And so the industry that's growing up on top of it,

00:04:31.840 the fact that it is driving so much inequality and displacement is a tragedy.

00:04:38.600 That's Catherine Bracey speaking at the PDF conference.

00:04:42.360 Catherine is a civic technologist, and instead of just accepting that tech companies have

00:04:46.680 to make inequality worse, she asked, why couldn't we build a tech-driven economy that works

00:04:51.360 for everyone instead?

00:04:53.460 She co-founded the Tech Equity Collaborative and organizes tech companies to make communities

00:04:57.700 more equitable.

00:04:59.080 In a recent piece for TechCrunch, she urged tech leaders to move beyond the statement

00:05:03.320 and take more meaningful action, writing,

00:05:06.240 Staying out of it is a cop-out.

00:05:08.060 Staying out of it leads to platforms being used to harm marginalized people,

00:05:12.060 while tech leaders look the other way and do nothing.

00:05:17.980 The White House is saying that those authorities moved in on those peaceful protesters

00:05:21.980 in order to enforce Washington, D.C.'s 7 p.m. curfew.

00:05:25.780 I am your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters.

00:05:33.020 I live in D.C., and while I was getting ready to speak with Catherine,

00:05:36.980 my city was still reeling from watching the Trump administration

00:05:39.760 shoot tear gas at protesters in Lafayette Square.

00:05:43.240 When I saw that kind of chaos happening in my own backyard,

00:05:46.940 I also saw the ways that platforms like Twitter and Facebook

00:05:49.900 have gotten us to this place.

00:05:52.200 So I was good and angry and really ready to spend our talk

00:05:56.100 screaming about immoral tech leaders

00:05:58.320 and how they've contributed to the climate that has led us to all of this.

00:06:02.800 But I didn't really get to have that conversation.

00:06:05.740 Most tech workers, Catherine says, actually want to contribute to things like equality and justice. 0.95

00:06:12.460 And part of her work is making the pathways to getting them there clear, to get them off of the sidelines and into the game.

00:06:20.140 How did you get started working in tech?

00:06:23.280 Oh, it was a little bit of an accident.

00:06:27.680 I graduated into a post 9-11 world where, you know, the economy was not great.

00:06:34.780 I thought at the time I wanted to be a journalist and had a pretty unfortunate internship experience at a local news station in Boston.

00:06:47.540 And at that point, kind of had a crisis of what am I going to do with my life and decided, like any college student who doesn't know what they want to do with their life, decided I was going to go to law school.

00:07:00.600 Um, but I hadn't, you know, taken the LSATs or anything. So I needed to study up. And so I

00:07:07.020 decided I was going to work, you know, in some legal arena for a year while I studied for the

00:07:11.900 LSATs and, um, and go from there. And the job I ended up landing in was a very low level admin

00:07:20.080 role at a place called the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, um, at Harvard Law School.

00:07:25.720 And I, at that point, realized that my desire and passion about journalism was really a

00:07:34.860 desire and passion about how citizens accessed the information that they needed to make informed

00:07:42.460 decisions in a democracy.

00:07:44.340 And I really thought that that was a critical piece of, you know, a healthy democracy, and

00:07:52.180 I wanted to be a part of that.

00:07:55.080 And that, you know, over the course of the first decade of this millennium, the Internet became the place where that was actually happening and happening in actually a really exciting way.

00:08:05.480 You know, these were back in the days when we thought that the Internet was going to fix all of our democratic woes and, you know, break down all these barriers to entry to the conversation for people who had been left out.

00:08:17.340 And so that's where I decided I wanted to be.

00:08:21.280 katherine's accidental stumble into the tech world took her to some pretty interesting places

00:08:27.620 she ran the technology field office in san francisco on obama's re-election campaign in 2012

00:08:33.660 a first of its kind in american politics and even went on to design obama's tech policy

00:08:40.000 she joined code for america but wanted to continue bringing the focus in tech

00:08:44.540 back to tough issues like power and inequality after trump was elected she started the initiative

00:08:50.380 of tech resistance, a hub to harness the tech world's silent majority of workers who wanted

00:08:55.200 to push for social change. Yeah, I mean, you know, I had been doing, I'd started obviously

00:08:59.980 with the Obama campaign and, you know, obviously that was political organizing, but it was still

00:09:05.620 pretty, you know, mainstream, I guess I would say. And then at Code for America, the work was very

00:09:13.100 sort of focused on the administration of government. It didn't deal at all with sort

00:09:19.600 of political power or, you know, equity issues or any of that, we kind of kind of stayed away

00:09:26.540 from it and honestly had our head in the sand a little bit about, you know, power dynamics and

00:09:31.480 how that impacted our work. It's one of the reasons I ended up leaving Code for America, but

00:09:36.980 I, you know, I knew I wanted to take the work to be a little bit more, I don't know, radical is

00:09:43.380 the right word, but certainly more interrogative of power. Catherine started to see tech employees

00:09:49.500 folks who tend to be pretty comfortable getting out of their comfort zones to challenge power

00:09:54.140 dynamics in the tech space. And amidst all the darkness that most of us felt in the beginning

00:09:59.160 of the Trump administration, it gave her a little hope. It was hard to get tech people to really

00:10:04.920 understand that because they didn't have a lived experience with it. Like these are comfortable

00:10:09.120 people who come from privilege and they get it when it's like this thing doesn't work and it

00:10:15.360 should work and it's hurting people that it doesn't work. So I want to fix it, but they don't

00:10:19.660 get it when it's like, and there are all these structural dynamics underlying that, that make it

00:10:24.820 so it doesn't work and we need to fix those too. And so I kind of knew that there was an interest

00:10:31.200 in civic engagement within the tech industry, but I was surprised after the election of how

00:10:36.740 much of it came to the forefront and how much of it was willing to challenge entrenched power

00:10:41.820 structures. And that's been pretty exciting to see. So, you know, I'm optimistic about our ability

00:10:48.260 to really move the rank and file of the tech community to a place where we are really getting

00:10:55.260 into some of the deeper, more structural issues behind the stuff that we're building.

00:11:00.480 So why do you think it's so easy for tech leaders to really not engage when it comes to political

00:11:04.560 or social issues when they actually have so much power and so many resources to make change?

00:11:09.600 and especially as their rank and file employees are getting more and more involved?

00:11:13.520 You know, because they're comfortable.

00:11:15.560 They're not, like I said, I mean, organizing this kind of,

00:11:19.320 usually when people are doing organizing,

00:11:21.780 it's really focused on the people who are most passionate about the issues

00:11:25.720 or they have a lived experience of it and, you know, it's going to directly affect them.

00:11:29.760 So they're motivated and incentivized to be engaged on a certain issue.

00:11:33.480 And we're trying to organize people who are comfortable

00:11:35.740 and they're at a remove from the pain.

00:11:39.600 And, you know, the richer you are, the higher up the hierarchy you are in the tech sector, the further away from the pain you are. And so it's just hard for them to understand, you know, that life experience because they don't have it.

00:11:53.960 They don't have a lot of exposure to other perspectives and ways of living.

00:12:00.040 And so it's, you know, it's difficult for them to get it.

00:12:05.740 And I also think it's hard just psychologically for people to be implicated.

00:12:10.280 You know, we're having analysis of how we got here and what the problems are and how

00:12:15.620 Pat contributed to them.

00:12:17.340 That's going to implicate the people who got rich off of it.

00:12:21.120 And people don't like to be implicated.

00:12:23.480 You know, they want to be given invitations to participate in a way that's hopeful.

00:12:29.200 And, you know, it's just a lot harder if what you're doing is embedding feelings of shame and guilt to get people to move to a place of, like, productive action from that.

00:12:43.780 In organizing, it's incredibly difficult to make people feel motivated to take productive action from a place of shame.

00:12:50.320 And in this moment of reckoning around racial justice,

00:12:53.340 I think big tech companies have a lot to feel shameful about.

00:12:56.860 Even after posting statements supportive of Black Lives Matter,

00:13:00.180 it's often the rank-and-file employees who are pushing tech companies

00:13:03.560 and leaders to be better than they are.

00:13:06.480 For instance, Amazon currently deals with hundreds of law enforcement agencies

00:13:10.660 to share footage from people's ring cameras,

00:13:12.960 which the Electronic Frontier Foundation says allows for residents

00:13:17.240 to make snap judgments about who does and doesn't belong in their neighborhoods and

00:13:21.460 summon police to apprehend them. 0.98

00:13:23.240 So obviously not great for Black and brown people. 1.00

00:13:26.800 And until very recently, Amazon sold facial recognition technology to police departments,

00:13:32.660 technology that according to a U.S. National Institutes of Standards and Technology study

00:13:37.400 is likely to misidentify Black people and would unquestionably be used to further over-surveil

00:13:43.220 Black and brown communities.

00:13:45.260 Amazon only ended that policy after their own employees sent a letter to Amazon higher-ups

00:13:50.120 saying they wouldn't contribute to tools that violate human rights

00:13:53.400 and that as ethically concerned Amazonians,

00:13:56.100 they demand a choice in what they build and a say in how it's used.

00:14:00.560 And even as Amazon General Counsel David Zablosky hit send on a memo

00:14:04.880 affirming the company's support of Black Lives Matter,

00:14:07.940 he didn't mention that just a few weeks earlier,

00:14:10.600 the company had fired Chris Small, a Black former Amazon employee,

00:14:14.520 who spoke out against unsafe conditions at Amazon warehouses due to COVID-19.

00:14:19.840 In a leaked memo, Soblosky called him not smart and not articulate.

00:14:25.160 After Trump quoted Miami police chief and noted racist Walter Heatley by posting,

00:14:30.580 when the looting starts, the shooting starts,

00:14:33.080 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explicitly declined to remove the post,

00:14:37.680 even as his own employees staged a walkout,

00:14:40.680 which The Verge called the most significant collective worker action in the company's 15-year history.

00:14:46.320 And in light of Kyle Rittenhouse, the alleged murderer we told you about in Kenosha,

00:14:51.140 it was the rank-and-file Facebook employees who pushed back against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's leadership.

00:14:57.440 Tech employees are a valuable resource for making change at tech companies.

00:15:01.500 And a lot of them are already coming from a place where they don't want to build technology that actively contributes to inequality.

00:15:08.860 So how do we get to a place where tech leaders are listening to the tone set by these employees

00:15:13.260 to move from just making a statement and get them to use their tremendous power to actually

00:15:18.160 protect the communities they say they support and not actually contribute to making our

00:15:23.060 lives more difficult or more dangerous?

00:15:25.720 Well, that is the million-dollar question, and it is something that we are working on

00:15:30.080 every day at tech equity is just how do we create the momentum, the political will

00:15:37.600 among decision makers? I mean, our theory of change and, you know, the hypothesis that we're

00:15:42.520 testing and have seen, you know, a pretty promising results is that a very powerful

00:15:49.800 constituency that tech companies have to answer to are their employees. And so if we can get them

00:15:55.940 sufficiently organized, then maybe that's a lever that we can use to exert influence across the

00:16:03.540 industry. And I don't even think it needs to be, I think, you know, a lot of the tech organizing

00:16:08.840 we've seen has been very antagonistic. And I think there's a place for that. But I also think

00:16:13.260 there's a place for, you know, like, this is a shared problem, we want to solve this. And we're

00:16:17.940 going to, you know, build alternative solutions that show you that there's a way to do this,

00:16:22.420 that isn't the way you're doing it.

00:16:24.320 And also we're going to like,

00:16:26.200 we want to go work for companies

00:16:27.540 that are doing it better.

00:16:29.620 So we're going to vote with our feet kind of thing.

00:16:33.940 Let's take a quick break.

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00:19:34.060 And we're back. In addition to statements of support, in the last few weeks, I've seen a lot

00:19:39.400 of people and companies that I like and respect in the technology space, hosting initiatives in

00:19:43.460 support of the Black community. Offers of mentorship, offers of seed money for Black

00:19:48.060 businesses and startups. I want to be clear that I think these offers are coming from the right

00:19:52.380 place, and I'm happy to see them. But when you pull them apart, sometimes they can be a little

00:19:57.000 weird. Like the assumption that Black folks in tech automatically need white mentorship,

00:20:02.200 or framing funding a Black-led project as a kind of charity. Some of it just didn't sit right with

00:20:06.680 me. And even that assertion feels fraught. Can I be critical of an offer that was made

00:20:11.300 with good intentions, but actually kind of supports a system that assumes Black voices

00:20:14.940 are charity cases? It's uncomfortable. And I guess that's sort of the point. We need

00:20:20.940 to be willing to be uncomfortable. If tech leaders with power, money, and resources truly

00:20:26.120 want to help, it might involve putting themselves in uncomfortable positions that directly challenge

00:20:31.180 or implicate them.

00:20:34.040 In the last few weeks of momentum around Black Lives Matter,

00:20:36.900 I've seen so many well-intentioned white people

00:20:39.620 that I really like and respect

00:20:41.180 reaching out and trying to help.

00:20:44.460 But, you know, when you take apart their offers of help, 0.99

00:20:46.940 they're actually kind of fucked up. 0.98

00:20:49.320 Saying things like, oh, I'll mentor you 0.99

00:20:51.100 or, oh, I'll invest in your company

00:20:52.520 and framing it as a kind of charity,

00:20:54.960 it's still sort of rooted in this place of white benevolence.

00:20:58.280 Or like they're giving you a gift to helping you out

00:21:00.480 to sort of alleviate their guilt around white supremacy.

00:21:03.520 And, you know, I hate picking apart

00:21:05.400 what I think are very well-intentioned, well-meaning gestures,

00:21:08.780 but if we're not willing to be critical of this kind of thing,

00:21:10.900 we probably won't get anywhere.

00:21:12.680 Yeah, I mean, I like to think of it as, like,

00:21:14.780 great, that's a really good first step.

00:21:16.660 It is hardly enough.

00:21:18.500 And another way to think about it is, like,

00:21:21.600 when you look at those well-meaning, 0.93

00:21:23.640 but maybe, like, kind of fucked up offers of help, 0.68

00:21:27.280 oftentimes what you read between the lines is like, I'm willing to do a thing that doesn't 0.81

00:21:32.520 challenge my power. Um, so like I, I will mentor you. Um, but it doesn't, but like, I'm still

00:21:38.740 above you, like a mentor mentee kind of thing. Um, or I will invest in your company, but like

00:21:43.720 I'm investing, you know, like I, there's something in it for me there. When you start talking about

00:21:49.000 the solutions that are really going to break down structural inequity, it requires that people give

00:21:54.400 something up. And it doesn't need to be giving something up in a way that like disempowers them

00:22:04.260 or like makes them poorer, but they are going to have to release the stranglehold, right? Like

00:22:09.420 they're going to have to share in order to make the whole greater for everybody. And those kinds

00:22:14.740 of solutions become a much harder ask. So this is like the TechCrunch piece that I wrote that was

00:22:22.420 laying out some of those options. And we have found that like, when you move past the sort of

00:22:26.780 charitable, you know, offers of help to the like, what is going to make meaningful structural change

00:22:34.240 asks, then you start getting hard nose, or getting ignored. And these are things like we're working

00:22:39.240 on a ballot initiative to reform the property tax code and the corporate property tax code in

00:22:43.640 California, which has been probably the most fundamental structural flaw in California's

00:22:49.420 economy and the reason why California is the fifth largest economy in the world, but has the highest

00:22:53.460 poverty rate in the country. And that's the kind of thing where it's like, okay, you care about

00:22:59.520 black lives. Well, there's this policy decision we made 40 years ago. It was very explicitly racist

00:23:04.680 and defunded all of these services that would have helped black families over the last several

00:23:12.480 decades. We can undo that. Are you willing to, you know, let go lay down for that? And the answer 0.64

00:23:19.200 has been, eh, sounds like a, you know, I get it, but it's not really ringing my bell, you know,

00:23:28.060 or like we can't, that's not the kind of thing we get involved in without really being able to

00:23:32.840 articulate why. And those are the kinds of things that, and that's even one that is actually,

00:23:38.100 for a bunch of reasons I won't get into, does actually benefit the tech industry because

00:23:41.800 they're a newer, you know, sector than some of the companies who would be paying more in taxes.

00:23:46.740 So, you know, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me other than to look at it as like a deeply entrenched.

00:23:53.620 I mean, this is how deeply entrenched white supremacy is, is that people don't even understand or recognize when it is playing out in these ways of like, yes, I will mentor you, but no, I won't put you on my board.

00:24:08.080 In the wake of calls for racial justice, online publishing platform Medium announced Colin Kaepernick would be joining their board.

00:24:14.760 Full disclosure, I worked on Medium's politics team and had a good experience there.

00:24:19.340 Catherine felt uncomfortable with the idea of Kaepernick joining the board.

00:24:22.940 Kaepernick is great, and his legacy and commitment to racial justice is so clear.

00:24:26.640 But why pick a Black celebrity instead of a Black person with direct experience in technology, media, and inclusion?

00:24:33.080 Yeah, I mean, I found that just really, and I couldn't, I wasn't sure I could articulate why it rubbed me the wrong way at the time.

00:24:40.460 But yeah, I mean, it's like he doesn't have any experience, you know, for all the good he's done.

00:24:46.340 He's a football player and that's fine.

00:24:48.680 Like he may actually end up being a great board member.

00:24:51.700 But why did you go to him?

00:24:54.140 You know, when there are all these people with, you know, black folks who have experience in media and technology,

00:25:00.880 who would be way more relevant, bring way more relevant experience to the board.

00:25:07.160 and it you know the implicit the thing I heard implicitly was like well we had to go to this guy

00:25:13.620 because we couldn't find anyone else that could fill that seat you know and that that was the

00:25:20.000 thing that I found kind of offensive and there's also this thing of like you know well famous black

00:25:24.800 people you know are fine um but you know we're not willing to do the thing that would like

00:25:31.620 actually create equity. And we've seen this for the, you know, the last hundred years in Hollywood

00:25:37.100 and elsewhere, it's like black celebrities are, you know, get a pass. And that allows white people, 0.76

00:25:45.500 white people in power to kind of say, yeah, we've done the thing. See, I've got my black friend. 0.59

00:25:51.760 And, you know, Jack Dorsey, love him. I think his, the commitments he's making lately are great,

00:25:56.800 a really great step forward, but like, and the, you know, transparency he's doing around his 1.00

00:26:00.620 giving is great, but like the transparency around his giving has shown that basically the Black

00:26:04.480 organizations he's giving to are just like people Jay-Z and Beyonce told him to give money to.

00:26:09.360 And it's like, how is that, you know, meritocratic or, you know, that's not helping the overall

00:26:17.400 question of equity. I want to be clear. It's not like you're crapping on celebrities like Colin

00:26:22.120 Kaepernick, but it really is a nuanced question of who do folks feel comfortable lifting up and

00:26:27.220 amplifying and giving a seat at the table and who does that allow to be shut out yeah and i think

00:26:32.740 it's like oh you're you know you're dogging on him but also like gosh we can't you know nothing's 0.99

00:26:39.160 ever good enough you know we put somebody black on the board and now you're shitting on us still 0.99

00:26:43.220 and you know so i don't want it to be like you know uh everything's bad all the time and you 0.98

00:26:50.740 can never do anything that's going to be good enough i also think that it's important to get

00:26:54.120 that. They're like, yes, that's great. This is a great move in the right direction, but you really

00:26:58.700 need to understand why it's a problematic decision and like make the next decision based on this new

00:27:04.280 understanding of what's going on. He might turn out to be an amazing board member. But I think

00:27:09.760 really what's under, it's not really about him. It's really about the decision-making process.

00:27:15.580 More There Are No Girls on the Internet after this quick break. 0.96

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00:28:12.800 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:28:18.720 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:28:25.080 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:28:28.800 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.96

00:28:34.220 shut up, don't say anything.

00:28:36.880 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. 0.98

00:28:41.420 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:28:45.980 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:28:53.420 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:28:57.380 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:29:00.820 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:29:03.960 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:29:12.900 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:29:18.840 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:29:31.320 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:29:38.440 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed, so obsessed.

00:29:42.020 From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

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00:30:05.040 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:30:11.100 See you between the pages.

00:30:16.140 And we're back.

00:30:17.820 Technology isn't neutral and it isn't apolitical.

00:30:20.380 And I hate watching tech leaders do gymnastics to avoid having to own up to the fact that their technology has had a real impact on people's lives.

00:30:28.620 It's even worse to watch them use that lie, that their platform is very political, to avoid accountability and justify their own silence as their technology hurts marginalized communities.

00:30:38.240 To be silent is to be complicit.

00:30:40.340 In your TechCrunch piece, you wrote, silence is complicity.

00:30:44.300 As we've learned over the last five years, almost everything tech companies do is political, whether they like it or not.

00:30:50.160 It's time for them to pull their heads out of the sand and use their power to support

00:30:53.300 true racial and economic equity.

00:30:55.760 We're going to link to your piece in the show notes.

00:30:57.480 I hope everybody reads it because it is a word.

00:31:00.560 You definitely had time.

00:31:02.080 It was a Friday morning and I was like, you know what?

00:31:04.600 I have some things to do.

00:31:08.160 So how have tech leaders been able to get away with framing their technology and platforms

00:31:12.500 as apolitical?

00:31:14.040 Well, I mean, I don't know how they've been able to get away with it.

00:31:17.260 I've been really surprised and actually I have a beef with a lot of the activist community that

00:31:23.820 they're focused so much on Facebook you know on getting Mark Zuckerberg to do something differently

00:31:28.960 when really this needs to be a public policy conversation and they should be banging down

00:31:32.880 the doors of every congressperson asking them what they're going to do to regulate companies

00:31:37.460 like Facebook but you know I will say and this might be controversial but I think there's some

00:31:43.900 truth in that like it is true that these platforms in a vacuum are neutral and but it's just like

00:31:51.420 you know the was the mike tyson quote of like everybody has a plan until they get punched in

00:31:56.160 the face they're all neutral platforms until people get on them you know and then like once

00:32:02.540 you have more than like five or ten people on the internet together shit starts it just amplifies

00:32:09.020 all the other shit that's happening in the world and so when you have a bunch of people who don't 0.92

00:32:13.540 have any life experience, who don't have a wide range of perspectives dealing with a diverse set 0.93

00:32:18.560 of people and, you know, experiences and all these things, it's a lot easier for them to believe that

00:32:24.940 we can just hide from this because it's not our issue if people are going to be people, right?

00:32:30.640 Like we're not facilitating that. And they don't understand, you know, the level of

00:32:36.280 the depth of their understanding of how power dynamics work is very superficial.

00:32:42.440 And so they don't get it because they haven't lived it.

00:32:46.520 And this is one of the reasons why it's important that we have more representation of people

00:32:50.080 and companies who have lived it.

00:32:53.100 But also we need, and this is the work that we're doing, we need people, rank and file

00:32:58.220 people who work in the companies to get out and understand the world more.

00:33:01.460 And so create these opportunities for them to develop some new life experiences.

00:33:07.040 I mean, it might be too late for Mark Zuckerberg, but like I said, if we get the company to

00:33:11.400 people who work in the company to get it, maybe he starts changing his mind or at least responding

00:33:17.340 to a different set of incentives than he has been responding to. So yeah, I mean, A, we need to use

00:33:25.540 our political power to put pressure on regulators. And B, we need to look at folks who work in the

00:33:33.340 companies and how we can create more opportunities for them to understand the world around them if

00:33:38.420 we're going to expect these tools are built in a more ethical way.

00:33:42.180 What would it look like for these tools and platforms to be built with the quality in

00:33:45.040 mind?

00:33:46.100 Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit hard to, it's very intangible, right?

00:33:50.740 Like, so we, it's, it's hard to explain implicit bias to people.

00:33:55.560 It's kind of the same way.

00:33:56.940 Like you can't, you can't measure what you can't see kind of thing.

00:34:01.060 And you don't really, you know, it's like the unknown unknowns, you don't know when

00:34:06.700 they're showing up. And I feel like, you know, in the product decision making cycle, there's some

00:34:13.360 things that like, just aren't anticipated that not like they're actively making bad decisions.

00:34:18.960 They're not actively, you know, setting out to screw people over. But they just don't can't

00:34:25.520 anticipate that their tools might be used in that way. And so one of the things is like having these

00:34:30.460 ethical frameworks, we're like, wait a minute, let's run this through a process that might help

00:34:34.820 us see our blind spots, but also having those ethical frameworks sit within this applied,

00:34:40.840 you know, real world situation, right? So if you're building tools that are going to create

00:34:47.680 workplace efficiency, well, maybe you should like, and those are going to be in the hands of like,

00:34:52.780 let's say a UPS driver, like this is going to make your route better. So like, maybe you should sit

00:34:58.220 with a UPS driver and like understand, I feel like a lot of those companies don't care about,

00:35:02.400 you know, they're not talking to the driver because the person that's paying for the thing

00:35:05.760 is actually the driver's boss. Right. Um, and so it's just like things like that. Like maybe we

00:35:10.740 should, you know, it, would it occur to you in the product planning meeting? Huh? Maybe we should

00:35:14.760 like sit with the drivers and see how this is going to go and like take their, you know, the

00:35:19.100 way that they use the tool into account or how it screws up their life. Like they, they can't plan,

00:35:24.580 you know, to pick up their kids from school because they don't know what their schedule

00:35:28.040 is going to be. Whatever that thing is that they wouldn't have known otherwise. Those are the kinds

00:35:33.320 of experiences we need to create for folks. And that's a very, I mean, then there's just like a

00:35:38.520 broader, can we get you out in the world connected to people who aren't like you to just deepen your

00:35:45.820 empathy? That is just like basic. And we do a lot of that work. I've got story after story of just

00:35:52.860 like eye-opening experiences that tech workers had, that might seem obvious to you or I,

00:35:58.560 but they just didn't, that's not the world they came from. And they can't really be blamed for

00:36:03.280 that, but it is their responsibility to kind of expand their horizons. I don't know that I ever

00:36:08.800 would have thought that a major part of making tech more equitable starts with helping tech

00:36:12.740 employees understand empathy and how to understand other people's experiences that they might not be

00:36:17.420 able to identify with. Yeah. And I think, you know, I, I, a lot of people put us in the like

00:36:22.460 diversity and inclusion bucket and that, that kind of rubs me the wrong way. Not because I don't

00:36:28.060 think that that's important work. Like I do think representation is extremely important,

00:36:31.680 but oftentimes when we say that like, well, what we really need are people in the companies who

00:36:37.220 have these lived experiences, the implication is, and those people are going to carry the burden

00:36:43.040 for making sure that the company doesn't fuck up, right? 0.99

00:36:46.920 And then it pushes the rest, the white folks 0.99

00:36:50.600 and the privileged folks,

00:36:51.800 it pushes them into a passive role.

00:36:54.460 And then it's like, well, we don't have to do anything. 1.00

00:36:56.940 This is on the black folks or the Latino folks 0.99

00:36:59.300 or the queer folks to figure out. 1.00

00:37:02.060 Or like the CEO can say, 0.76

00:37:03.800 well, I hired a diversity director.

00:37:05.580 So like box checked.

00:37:08.880 And it's actually, that's not okay, right?

00:37:11.000 Like everybody in the company needs to see this as their responsibility.

00:37:15.460 And the way that folks who come from a place of privilege are going to take action is going

00:37:20.460 to be different.

00:37:21.140 And so we need to, from the folks who are underrepresented, right?

00:37:24.140 And so we need to create programming that matches that experience for those folks to

00:37:29.020 make them active participants, but understand like we have to meet them where they are.

00:37:35.060 And so that's got to look different than, you know, just a diversity and inclusion program. 0.96

00:37:41.000 I've been the person in a lot of companies whose job it is to give a shit about that kind of thing 0.96

00:37:45.420 so that other people don't have to. And it can be like really siloing, isolating work. 0.98

00:37:50.580 It was basically my job to care about diversity and inclusion so that the rest of the team

00:37:54.540 didn't have to be burdened by it. Right. And then it becomes, you know,

00:37:58.940 extra work. I mean, I have been in that position too, the only person of color on a leadership

00:38:03.720 team in an organization of 15 people on it and always had to be the one who was bringing it up

00:38:08.740 at the staff meetings and you know it's just like emotionally draining and then you want to you feel

00:38:14.580 like I don't want to be seen for just that like I'm good at my job and I want to do my job well

00:38:19.760 and be known for that too and um why can't we all think of this as like an organizational issue and

00:38:26.140 not just like put it on the black person to deal with um you know I've been there so I I think

00:38:32.300 that's why I feel like the approach at tech equity is like okay and yes representation and also all

00:38:38.060 these white folks have to get in on it too. We shouldn't just be fighting for a more inclusive

00:38:42.560 tech sector because it's the right thing to do. Having more people with a diversity of life

00:38:47.340 experiences and backgrounds working in tech is one way we can address inequality because that

00:38:52.740 means that more people will be able to meaningfully understand experiences around inequality.

00:38:57.660 And we need more people like that working as decision makers around technology and how it

00:39:02.180 impacts our world. How do we make people understand that we all have a stake in this and we all have

00:39:08.020 a voice in this. And we should all be allowed to demand accountability from tech leaders,

00:39:12.260 even if we're not quote unquote tech people. Yeah, I think that that's a really pervasive

00:39:19.880 kind of like unspoken caste system within the tech world. I do think it's starting to change

00:39:27.680 in the same sort of on that along the same trajectory as the like platforms are neutral

00:39:32.760 thing. Like people understand that that's not true. And I think people also are starting to

00:39:36.820 understand that like the humanities side of building technology is, is just as, or it may

00:39:43.080 potentially even more important than the actual writing of the code. Um, and I, so I, my feeling

00:39:51.220 is that's going to start to change a lot and people are going to, um, start to understand that

00:39:56.560 like, even if you're technical, like you also have to have a more well, well, well-rounded set of

00:40:02.020 skills and that the stuff that you're bringing to the table as a communicator, you know, is

00:40:09.400 as just as important, if not more than the writing the good code. So I'm starting, I feel a lot

00:40:17.340 better about that than I did say two or three years ago. And that also, like, I do think it's

00:40:22.920 important for folks who want to get into tech. I feel like a lot of, you know, people from

00:40:28.440 underrepresented communities who don't have like traditional educational backgrounds feel like they

00:40:32.720 have to learn how to code in order to break into tech. And you really don't. Like if you're a

00:40:37.080 really, you know, kick-ass retail manager, you can work at a tech like doing customer success

00:40:43.860 or sales or whatever and get your foot in the door. There's a lot of applicable experience.

00:40:49.180 And I worry that with this focus on like learning how to code, where there's like a chilling effect

00:40:55.540 for our people who bring a whole bunch

00:40:56.840 of different kinds of skill sets to the table.

00:40:59.700 And we need folks to like put themselves forward 0.83

00:41:02.200 and apply for those kinds of jobs.

00:41:04.860 Yeah, I think we need a massive cultural change

00:41:07.120 around who feels qualified to go into tech

00:41:09.040 and who feels qualified to take up space

00:41:10.620 and call themselves a person in tech

00:41:12.800 who has the authority to have an opinion

00:41:14.740 or be a decision maker.

00:41:16.420 We have, you know, we obviously organize tech workers.

00:41:21.120 So we ask people, are you a tech worker?

00:41:23.020 And I didn't think that was a complicated question before we started asking it, but there are people who work at, say, Google or somewhere, but if they're in a non-technical role, they'll say, no, I'm not a tech worker.

00:41:34.940 It's like, no, you absolutely are a tech worker.

00:41:38.120 You are critical to the product getting out into the world.

00:41:43.740 So, yeah, it is a weird dynamic that we're hoping to change.

00:41:49.580 For Catherine, building a more just and equitable world and working for a tech company doesn't have to be in opposition with each other.

00:41:56.860 And she's hopeful that most folks in tech actually want to do both.

00:42:01.000 That emphasis on doing both while building bridges and finding common ground is something that runs deep for her.

00:42:08.400 So I'm biracial. My dad's black and my mom's white.

00:42:11.380 and um they got married in 1971 uh uh and were you know that was pretty early they were the

00:42:21.740 hipsters of interracial couples really that was like four years after the lovings case so um we

00:42:28.160 both were alienated from both sides of the family for a while um ended up getting closer with my

00:42:34.580 dad's side over time. Um, but it was still kind of like, I don't fit in either one of these spaces.

00:42:43.040 Um, you know, I think this is something we don't talk about a lot is like the biracial black

00:42:47.700 experience. Um, and you know, a lot of the work that I, how that's played out in my life has

00:42:55.560 really been uh an ability to be both and all the time right so i see things um from multiple

00:43:04.880 perspectives naturally and i can do i feel like i can fluidly move between different kinds of um

00:43:13.240 you know cultural contexts more easily than some other folks might be able to do and that for me

00:43:19.420 i'm always looking to like how do i carve out the common ground here how do i build the bridge

00:43:25.400 How do I create the like common understanding? Because I felt like I always had to do that growing up, was like, bring two sides together. You know, I'm like the physical manifestation of that.

00:43:36.440 So, you know, it's been it's at some point I'll have enough therapy and we'll write a book and, you know, be able to, like, actually speak more intelligently about what that has meant, like that biracial black existence has meant for just my identity in the way that it's made my work richer.

00:43:58.120 You know, I've recently started, and I think the TechCrunch article maybe was the first

00:44:02.220 place I said this.

00:44:02.900 I always feel, you know, uncomfortable saying that I'm a Black woman, even though I am.

00:44:10.180 And I am also uncomfortable saying I'm biracial because I feel like that leaves out a very

00:44:14.080 important part of my identity.

00:44:16.960 So I've now started just saying I'm a biracial Black woman.

00:44:20.760 And that feels like, you know, I can be both of those things at the same time and figuring

00:44:26.300 out how those identities sit together is, you know, an important thing for me and I think makes

00:44:34.380 the work better. So I don't know if that was like me offloading a bunch of like

00:44:41.000 psychology on to you. So I appreciate you being my therapist for the day.

00:44:48.640 As depressing as it's been to watch racial animosity intensify in the last few weeks,

00:44:53.620 talking to Catherine reminded me

00:44:55.120 that it's our diversity that makes us great,

00:44:57.400 and it can be our strength and our salvation.

00:45:01.120 It's something that can give us

00:45:02.360 a little bit of hope for the future.

00:45:04.580 The more people from different backgrounds

00:45:06.320 with different life experiences

00:45:07.600 who feel included and lifted up in tech,

00:45:10.720 this powerful industry that controls

00:45:12.600 so much of our lives and democracy,

00:45:14.780 the more it can be used as an effective agent of change.

00:45:18.720 That's why it's important to have, you know,

00:45:21.840 people from all kinds of walks of life represented in this industry that is really central to

00:45:27.800 building the public square. And so that's, you know, why I do the work that I do.

00:45:34.820 To learn more about Catherine's work with TechEquity, visit techequitycollaborative.org.

00:45:44.280 Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at

00:45:48.480 hello at tangody.com you can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangody.com there are no

00:45:53.840 girls on the internet was created by me bridget todd it's a production of iheart radio and unbossed

00:45:58.080 creative jonathan strickland is our executive producer tari harrison is our producer and sound

00:46:02.720 engineer michael amato is our contributing producer i'm your host bridget todd if you want to help us

00:46:08.460 grow write and review us on apple podcasts for more podcasts from iheart radio check out the

00:46:13.360 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:46:28.860 This is an iHeart Podcast.

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - September 01, 2020

Big Tech and Their Responses to Black Lives Matter

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