00:04:56.520Disinformation, you know, it was a buzzword for a minute.
00:04:58.700But first of all, disinformation did not start with the Internet.
00:05:01.900It did not start with the digital age. It's been around since time immemorial. So it's really a deliberate and concerted effort to distort information and give people faulty, false information and deliberate really being the key word.
00:05:18.440So, you know, your Aunt Mildred saying, oh, I think the election is on Wednesday. That's just, you know, somebody being misinformed. That's very different than a bad actor putting together a deliberate campaign with the hopes of changing a whole people's behavior.
00:05:35.920I really like how you kind of set that up. The working definitions that I use and that kind of help ground me when talking about these like really abstract concepts is misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, right?
00:05:49.900We think of misinformation as exactly what you said. It's your aunt saying, you know, something incorrect that's based on something that maybe she saw on social media.
00:06:00.000Yeah. Disinformation, I think, often has kind of an agenda or has some sort of seedy background within it.
00:06:05.820And then malinformation is kind of the thing that is meant to cause harm, right?
00:06:12.340That's the thing that's meant to cause hurt, that's meant to divide us, that's meant to alienate people in communities and is meant to really perpetuate not only harm, but lack of trust.
00:06:24.320And we all fall victim to it in various ways.
00:06:26.840That's so true. I love both of you all's definitions. Disinformation is false information spread with an agenda. And misinformation is false information spread, but often unknowingly. And I think it's really important to make that distinction, because if we don't make that distinction, sometimes we end up demonizing the very communities that we're trying to protect from dis and misinformation.
00:06:52.060And I'm really glad, Jaya, that you brought up malinformation because that's not talked about as much. But malinformation can be truthful information that is used within certain narratives to persuade people to react in a certain way.
00:07:11.560So let's get into some of those historical examples, because this is, I really want to get into this. So much of the malinformation and disinformation that I have seen targeting communities of color really are trying to pit us against each other to say, oh, like, you need to be afraid of this community. This community is taking your resources. This community is a threat to you. Why do you think that is? Why are we seeing this? And how have you seen this play out in your own work?0.52
00:07:34.720I can say specifically in terms of the Black community, there is an ongoing disinformation campaign to sow a rift between African-Americans and Black immigrants or descendants of Black immigrants.
00:07:49.900Part of that is meant to break down the power of Black collective activism. There has been solidarity built over time where these communities come together.
00:08:02.760We have people like Kwame Ture. We have Malcolm X, who is a descendant of African-Americans, and his mother was from the Caribbean.
00:08:13.960So we have all these experiences through the Harlem Renaissance, through the black arts period, through the black power movement of people of African descent from various ethnicities and backgrounds coming together to fight for our civil and human rights.
00:08:32.720And it's only getting greater unless you come up with a way to put us at odds with each other to where we feel like we're in competition with each other till we feel like we're taking resources from each other.
00:08:48.400No, absolutely. And it comes back to sowing distrust to make us not trust one another. There's a longstanding history of trying to pit Latinos and black communities against one another.
00:09:02.380as if Afro-Latinos do not exist, you know, so first of all, completely erasing Afro-Latinos,
00:09:10.380you know, off the bat. So one really just awful narrative that I saw was about
00:09:15.720the vice president. So saying, I've heard, I've seen a lot of disinformation in the Latino0.98
00:09:21.000community that because she is black, and here again, erasing the fact that she is also,
00:09:26.500you know, an Asian American, erasing that completely. She's not going to look out for0.98
00:09:32.240the interest of Latinos. How could she? She's a black woman. She's only going to look out for0.87
00:09:36.740the interest of black people. That's so funny. You brought that up because in the black community,1.00
00:09:41.360the disinformation about the vice president Kamala Harris is she's half Asian. She's not0.96
00:09:48.500black enough, she don't represent us. And so it's that distrust on that end as well.0.99
00:09:57.180I mean, and the funniest thing is on the flip side within the Asian community and specifically0.98
00:10:02.260within the South Asian and Indian community, Kamala Harris isn't South Asian enough or her0.99
00:10:06.680hosting parties or trying to kind of build solidarity and community with the AAPI population1.00
00:10:15.260is seen as performative because, you know, she's picking and choosing when she wants to be South
00:10:20.300Asian. She's picking and choosing when she wants to be Asian. And I wanted to get back to your0.96
00:10:23.860previous point around kind of the history of solidarity and the history of inter and intra
00:10:29.040Black solidarity and talk really about the fact that the AAPI, the Asian American solidarity
00:10:34.500movement would not have happened without Black civil rights leaders and the Black power movement,
00:10:40.120The concept, the term Asian-American came out because the term African-American was coined, the term Black American was coined.
00:10:49.820But the politics of division, the politics of saying, you know, oh, those Black kids are getting into Harvard or whatever, and that's because of affirmative action, and Asian kids aren't getting into Harvard enough because of affirmative action.
00:11:04.320And narratives like that really are looking to divide us because when we work together, like we have historically, change happens and change is terrifying to people in power.
00:11:17.220And Bridget, going back to your point about what is disinformation, this dynamic right here was really interesting.
00:11:24.360The three of us seeing the same piece of disinformation from different lenses.
00:11:28.840And so I will tell you, when I have done the research looking into what is happening on the disinfo front in the Latino media space, that narrative doesn't show up. That narrative doesn't show up because it is so targeted, right?0.52
00:11:44.280So that there's a reason in Latino spaces, you don't hear, oh, you know, the vice president is not Asian enough. You know, what we hear is the narrative that will play on the divides within our own community, which we have to address. You know, there's colorism in our communities. There's all kinds of things. But we're not the only ones who are aware of it.
00:12:06.480Bad actors see us fighting amongst ourselves, and they walk right in there and just try and make that gap wider.
00:12:15.020Is part of it that some of these divisions that really do exist, these fractures really do exist in our communities, but we're maybe not talking about them, not doing the work to heal them or really even point them out, and thus we're all sort of more easily exploited?
00:12:30.020It's not just that we're not talking about it enough, especially in terms of African-American history or black American history in general.
00:12:38.660You see right now there's a concentrated effort for it to not even be taught in schools.
00:12:44.300When I was growing up, little black girl in Georgia, we got a paragraph in that social studies book.
00:12:51.260Lincoln freed the slaves. They did sharecropping, civil rights.
00:12:58.940MLK, Rosa Parks, boom, that's our paragraph.0.57
00:18:28.020it's this web that makes it so hard to escape these very pervasive, very inflammatory lies
00:18:34.160about the fabric of who we are. And it all goes back to that distrust that you were talking about
00:18:38.240earlier. And something that I'm curious if you all saw, I definitely saw it, especially in the
00:18:43.020summer of 2020. Do y'all remember that summer? The reckoning. The reckoning. And something that
00:18:49.260I really saw, and I'm wondering how you saw it play out, was I think that bad actors knew that
00:18:55.660that was a particular time that maybe would highlight or inflame some existing historical
00:19:01.040traumas, particularly for immigrants and the descendants of immigrants? Did you all see this
00:19:06.300as well? 100%. And, you know, in 2020, I was working in election administration. So I can tell
00:19:12.180you the deliberate exploitation of the narrative that, you know, undocumented people, illegals,
00:19:19.700you know, as they refer to them in the disinfo circles, we're going to throw the election in
00:19:24.640some way, you know, study after study after study shows that what they were talking about that level
00:19:31.280of, you know, fraud just does not exist in our elections. Instead of being proud of that and
00:19:37.840listening to the folks who run elections, who actually administer elections, telling us
00:19:42.720in every state across the country that in 2020, through a pandemic, we somehow managed to pull off
00:19:50.380an election. They were exploiting that narrative, especially coming after immigrant communities.0.95
00:19:56.480Yeah. Yeah. And I would love to kind of jump into that and talk about, you know,
00:20:02.240with the summer of 2020, we were seeing increasingly high numbers of anti-Asian
00:20:09.000violence, attacks on our elders. You know, we were just being hit by a barrage of violence.
00:20:15.820And at the same time, the solution was being posed that hate crime legislation was the answer, right? That policing was the answer. And we know as communities of color, as communities that are navigating different immigration narratives and experiences, whether you're documented or undocumented or a non-citizen, that the police aren't always the solution.
00:20:39.840But there's also that other wonderful marketing tactic in the U.S. of how to be a good American or how to be a good citizen.
00:20:50.760But, you know, we saw those Band-Aid solutions and we saw those disinfo narratives, right,0.95
00:20:54.760saying that all of these insane rioters were coming and they were all mostly black and brown and they were setting fireworks off0.69
00:21:06.780And they were doing all these horrifying things and breaking windows.0.96
00:21:10.380And it was really speaking to a deep seated fear, thanks to media within communities that we shouldn't trust people who look different from us.0.95
00:21:20.220And I'm so glad you brought up the whole, the PR of the good American or how to be a good citizen, because a lot of that fear mongering about protesters is built off of a centuries long anti-Black narrative, birth of a nationism, if you may, where the Blacks are free and they're running amok.
00:21:42.500Look at the three different stereotypes here, right? So it's Black people running amok. It's Asian people who are making us all sick with COVID, completely separate, right? And then it's Latino immigrants who are voting in droves to throw an election.0.98
00:21:59.920And it's all about marketing. And you're totally right. It's white supremacy at its root. And it's about institutional bias, institutional power dynamics, all of those things.1.00
00:22:09.960And I think something in that reminds me of what you said, Jessica, about how it's so easy to demonize people who, like, quote, fall for disinformation.
00:22:20.020A better question is, like, how could you not fall for it, right?
00:22:22.380Like, it pains me sometimes in the disinfo community that we sometimes are talking down to people and discounting the actual reality of how sometimes well-financed, well-organized, well-coordinated these disinformation campaigns actually truly are.
00:22:37.600And I think that's why research has shown that one of the most effective ways to combat disinfo, instead of going after each individual narrative, is to actually talk to people about the mechanism.
00:22:49.140Because once you show them how to spot it for themselves, they can say, oh, wait a minute, this person is trying to dupe me.
00:22:56.920And I'd love to add in, right, then there's the extra layer of within each ethnic group and ethnic community in the U.S., there's a different method of communication that we're all using, right?
00:23:07.600Some people use WhatsApp. Some people use WeChat. I know the Vietnamese populations often use YouTube for media and use distribution, right? We're seeing different communities are using different methods of communication. I can pull out my phone and show you I have at least 100 WhatsApp messages unread from my family, right?
00:23:28.420most of which, yeah, and most of which is BS, right?
00:23:34.160And it's like bonkers things, conspiracy theories.
00:23:37.480And my family is wonderful and they know what they're doing
00:23:58.420And, you know, as entertainment. So it's so easy to have a good laugh and forward it to somebody.
00:24:03.920I'm so glad you brought that up, because when Jaya raised the aspect of the different platforms that were on, Twitter emerged, especially Black Twitter, emerged as this space for communal conversation.
00:24:18.740Now it's X. And our community was especially vulnerable because we are having all these critical conversations out in the open that anyone can see and then try to divert and sow in disinformation at the same time.
00:24:34.820And then we see it with the entertainment blogs that, good Lord, you put it in the big, bold black print with the white background.
00:24:44.720It's gone. It's millions, millions of views.
00:24:48.640I mean, I want to get into this because I had to personally kind of divest from a couple of very popular Instagram accounts, sort of black infotainment Instagram accounts, I guess I'll call it, where I realized when I scrolled, when I was scrolling Instagram and I would see one of those images of a headline, I won't say a news headline, big, bold, black and white.
00:25:10.040People will believe anything. And so often those pieces of content are either misogynistic, they're they're crapping on black women, they're crapping on black queer youth.0.98
00:25:21.700It's so easy to package that as hatred toward our communities, particularly people in our communities who are really vulnerable and people just eat it up.0.92
00:25:30.100And I guess I wonder, you know, I've sometimes said that I believe that things like racism, misogynoir, queer phobia, transphobia, all of these things are kind of baked into our experience of being online.
00:25:44.040What do you see as the role of social media platforms?
00:31:49.020So I'm curious, how do you see disinformation impacting our democracy, like writ large?
00:31:54.400I mean, it has been impacting our democracy, right?
00:31:58.020We had January 6th happen. That was a direct consequence of disinformation that had been seen and known by Twitter in particular is happening.
00:32:09.400And yet there wasn't really much effort to try and stop that.
00:32:13.080And so it's like, how do you keep track of WhatsApp, YouTube, WeChat, all of these different messenger, right, Twitter?
00:32:21.440Like there's a bajillion different platforms that you have to keep track on.
00:32:24.960And so how do you make sure that those various narratives that are coming out on those various platforms in completely different languages are both being monitored, that accurate information is also being sprinkled throughout that, so that people know when to vote, how to vote, that it's okay to vote, that they can ask for a ballot in their language, that it is actually a violation of their voting right to not get a ballot in a language that they speak.
00:32:54.200Like if their state or city has, you know, certain numbers of languages that they'll translate into.
00:33:00.080It speaks to that distrust of institutions that might already be there.0.58
00:33:03.720Along the lines of distrust is African-Americans and Black Americans in general have a longstanding distrust of our government for very, very legitimate reasons.
00:33:19.120And the cultural or racialized disinformation harps on that and is having a direct or seeking to have a concentrated impact on the way in which we vote or whether or not we feel it's worthy to vote at all.
00:33:35.080And so that aspect of voter suppression in the midst of the Voting Rights Act being stripped down and already having obstacles to face in trying to vote can have a very devastating impact on black communities and the way in which democracy functions or doesn't function for us.
00:33:58.600I wonder, do you all, I know I see this a lot sometimes for my own friends and family.
00:34:03.520One of the things about disinformation is that I think it's meant to just make us check out,
00:34:08.080check out of our democracy, check out of the conversation.
00:34:18.280How do you confront that sentiment in a climate where disinformation is so rampant?
00:34:23.520I think one of the things that has worked has, we've learned over the last few years, talking down to people doesn't work. But narrative building works. Storytelling works. One of the things that we've tried to do at our organization is focus on uplifting narratives, intercultural narratives and storytelling.
00:34:49.900That reminds me of a quote I once heard in a training that the antidote to disinformation is not just truth, it's community, it's connection.
00:34:58.140Yes, definitely. And because we trust our communities the most.
00:35:02.300So we have to lean into that connection, lean into, especially for communities of color, lean into that cultural understanding, lean into that narrative building.
00:35:15.120Let's talk about some additional solutions here, because if there's one thing that has
00:35:19.480really been resonating with me from this conversation, it's that our communities are
00:35:22.840not monolithic. They are diverse. They are multifaceted. They're dynamic. There are so
00:35:28.180many different stories and layers in our communities. So then the solution probably
00:35:33.460can't then be one size fits all. So how do we get to solutions for this massive problem that
00:35:38.740disinformation presents? Yeah, I think that speaks to everything we've brought up throughout the
00:35:43.580conversation, right? It's about inter-intra solidarity building. It's about finding and
00:35:49.180identifying leaders within the community and making sure that they're equipped to have these
00:35:54.460conversations. It's about meeting people where they're at. It's about having compassion in those
00:36:00.100conversations because anyone can fall for disinformation and anyone can be a champion
00:36:05.740in fighting disinformation. Yeah, so I would say first and foremost, understand that disinformation
00:36:13.280that impacts adjacent communities is also impacting you.
00:36:18.100You know, so as an advocate, when I go out and I ask Latinos to come out and vote,
00:36:22.780I'm not just asking those that look like me and live like me.
00:36:30.560I'm asking everybody. So I have to show up for them when I see these attacks against their community.
00:36:36.600One key solution is for communities, for activists, for researchers that are concerned about disinformation to hold institutions accountable.
00:36:50.700They often get out scot-free on these conversations. But I kind of mentioned this earlier. For example, during the COVID shutdown, there was all this conversation about the black community and getting the black community to trust.
00:37:07.760And why is there so much distrust? And I'm like, do you know America? And there there was all these different narratives about medical distrust and not as much that should have been discussed on medical racism.
00:37:25.480And so in order to build that trust again, you're going to have to deconstruct and break down the structural bias, the institutional racism, and all of the things that made our communities distrust you in the first place.
00:37:42.580100%. And then I'll say one more thing, which is about holding tech accountable. Do not fear tech. Do not fear tech because tech is not perfect.
00:37:53.200Right. So I see a lot of people who hear the term AI and they get so intimidated, they clam up and listen.
00:38:00.200They have a lot to learn, too. They're not perfect.
00:38:03.100I'm so glad that you mentioned that, because I think one of the biggest things in this conversation is changing this dynamic that says that tech and tech leaders, they have all the answers.
00:38:12.560And who are we to question them? You're not an engineer. You didn't go to Harvard. You're not Mark Zuckerberg. You're not Elon Musk.
00:38:18.200Who are you to ask questions? This dynamic that says that you get to make as much money as you want exploiting us and causing chaos and distrust in our communities and we don't get to have a say, that is incorrect.
00:38:28.760And so I think, to your point, everybody should understand their role in this dynamic and reject anything that says, who are you to ask questions?
00:38:36.620We're the public. That's who we are. And we deserve transparency and accountability. And you will not exploit us to make money.
00:38:41.280And more specifically, who am I? I am a woman of color who is using your product in a very
00:38:47.620different way than you do, and frankly, than many of the people who were at the table when
00:38:52.720this product was created. I'm sure you've encountered the same disinformation and text
00:38:56.920space and landscape that I have, which is often white men self-congratulating other white men.
00:39:02.180What does it mean for you to be in this fight as a person who is not often represented in
00:39:07.360these conversations I think for me it just means going to bat for my community speaking up for my
00:39:13.740community from a not only a personal it is it is personal because I know the the black struggle
00:39:22.560from transatlantic slave trade to now in the United States and understanding that whole
00:39:32.020cultural history and aspect of it. And so for me, it's a personal dynamic, but it's also an
00:39:39.660informed and culturally competent one that is so very much needed because in these conversations,
00:39:45.500we often get people that are tasked with fighting disinformation, but not really understanding
00:39:52.280the cultural aspects and nuances of different communities.
00:39:56.200Yeah, I mean, everything you said, I think there's a desperate need for faces, experiences, perspectives like ours at the table. And at the same time, you know, sometimes we need to break the table a little bit.
00:40:14.100But I wouldn't call myself an expert because we've all lived these experiences of either being targeted by hate campaigns, seeing loved ones fall victim to it, accidentally falling for disinformation, like all of those things.
00:40:29.060And so we all are users of this platform, of these various platforms.
00:40:33.160We all experience and navigate a world filled with dismiss, malinformation.
00:40:38.280So it's about naming that, pushing our way through gathering in spaces like this and talking really frankly and honestly about the need for movement building that looks to our past so we can build like a better, stronger future and a stronger foundation for multicultural, multilingual solidarity so we can counter this disinformation.
00:41:04.960So for me, this is really a voter suppression issue. I think of disinformation as voter suppression and it's a democracy issue. So I see it as my way to contribute to voting rights struggles that precede me by, you know, centuries.
00:41:22.660And as my way to contribute to a lot of civil rights struggles where folks really need to see that you can come here as an immigrant and see a strong democracy that works, that your vote matters, that you should cast a ballot because you can make a difference and you can move your community forward.
00:41:42.440If you could leave folks listening and watching with one thing, what would it be?
00:41:47.000we all have a lot more power than i think we then it often feels and i feel like we
00:41:57.040as individuals as a collective can really make an impact and make some real change when it comes to
00:42:04.460the issues of disinformation both within our communities but also holding those bad actors
00:42:10.200accountable um don't let the world telling you you're small hold you back because i think there's
00:42:16.020there's a lot of work that we all can do together. I would say that your trust is a really valuable
00:42:22.640commodity. There's a lot of people out there trying to erode your trust. Why is that, right?
00:42:28.240It's a really valuable commodity. So treat it as such and be really careful with where you place
00:42:34.300it. To follow up with that, with trust being a valuable commodity, your actions are a valuable
00:42:40.640commodity, your viewpoint on the world, the way you view culture, democracy is valuable. And so
00:42:50.220I think one of the things that I would leave with people is trying to gain more understanding about
00:42:56.640how this all works, but also understanding that there are systems at play and that we have to
00:43:06.740hold these institutions accountable more so than we would hold the average person accountable
00:43:12.200because the average person is who is being targeted. Jaya, Liz, Jessica, thank you so
00:43:17.900much for being here. And thank you for being in this fight, in this work. We're so grateful for
00:43:21.720you. And thanks to all of you for watching. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech
00:43:31.740or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoti.com. You can also find transcripts