00:00:49.980If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.400Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:04.060Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:02:03.780The two Democratic candidates actually outperformed Joe Biden among key Democratic constituencies, among African-Americans, among young people.
00:02:12.820CBS News projects that both Democrats have won those two seats.
00:02:17.060Really extraordinary development given to not only just about what's changed in the state of Georgia, once a ruby red state.
00:02:26.400The morning of January 6th, I woke up beaming.
00:02:30.520There had been a historic win in the Georgia Senate runoff election, shifting the power of the Senate.
00:02:35.940And people were crediting Black women like Stacey Abrams for the win.
00:02:39.720I felt like I was truly walking in the power of Black women
00:02:42.640and that that power was impossible for anyone to ignore.0.99
00:03:37.120that Black communities were their biggest targets.0.87
00:03:39.920We already know that communities of color
00:03:41.600are disproportionately impacted by disinformation,
00:03:44.400but also, much of the foundational work to combat it0.53
00:03:47.220has been driven by Black women researchers, organizers, and users.0.93
00:03:50.940Women like Shireen Mitchell have been talking about the ways0.99
00:03:53.220they saw disinformation target our communities since the very beginning.0.98
00:03:56.940In 1999, Shireen created Digital Sisters,
00:04:00.280the first organization dedicated to bringing women and girls of color online.
00:04:03.440And later, she founded Stop Online Violence Against Women, a project that addresses laws and policies to provide protections for women online.
00:04:12.080In January 2020, Shireen authored a report outlining the past and present of disinformation campaigns used during election cycles, starting from 2016 leading up to today.
00:04:21.760Black women aren't often cited as experts on disinformation, and while it impacts our communities the most, our stories about it are not often centered.0.99
00:09:22.180But she also couldn't shake the idea0.84
00:09:23.980that maybe these spaces weren't so safe for these women and girls.
00:09:27.360And that assumed lack of safety was a big problem.
00:09:30.700In those moments, there were moments where I had to have conversations with parents,
00:09:35.600especially moms, saying, your daughter will be safe if I teach her how to code.
00:09:42.680Your daughter will be safe if she goes online.0.90
00:09:44.820Because that was one of the reasons why they unplugged their daughters,
00:09:47.860but they had their sons go run amok online in any form, right?0.97
00:09:51.400It was the fear factor harms on their daughters. In some ways, there's a part of me that said, here we are in 2020 and I was lying to those moms. Didn't know I was lying because it wasn't just them being worried about predators because that really wasn't the thing they had to worry the most about.
00:10:09.640They had to worry about their surroundings more than that. It was about the industry of which that would be built, that would be built to target them and target them in a way that no one would show up to protect them in any fashion.
00:10:23.940So when I formed Stop Online Violence Against Women, I specifically formed it because I wanted to have a sense of what women of color saw and what their experience was online.
00:10:35.940But it was that moment that I started to look at the work around looking at what online violence and online harassment looked like specifically to women of color, because it was different than white women.
00:10:48.420It was different than men in general, but also white men in specifically.
00:10:54.420Disinformation, especially when it's weaponized against women and people of color, doesn't just stay online.
00:11:00.800It can have real-world consequences like voter suppression or the kind of violence we saw at the Capitol.
00:11:06.560And this has been a focus of Shireen's work.
00:11:08.960So how have you seen disinformation play out, especially as it pertains to women of color online?
00:11:14.260And you and I know about women like Shafika Huston and Anissa Crockett, who basically helped to identify, you know, you know, fake accounts pertaining to be black women.0.67
00:11:26.560it's looking at the way in which people of color black people specifically are trying to change
00:11:33.300their their environment trying to stop the harassment trying to stop being killed by the
00:11:39.380state trying to stop all these things are happening to them and their communities and they're seen as
00:11:45.720the problem of which they should not be protected but also of which that any violence upon them
00:11:53.000is acceptable, whether it's digital violence or in real life violence, which we know now
00:12:00.740has translated to organizing events like what happened in Kenosha, right? We have seen this
00:12:07.700trajectory. What I'm saying is I have witnessed it and I've collected data on that trajectory.
00:12:14.260I'm saying I not only know that this was going to happen where we are in 2020,
00:12:18.640is that I have been trying to tell us and prepare us for it before we got here.
00:12:23.480My report in the beginning of January 2020 that really defined what digital voter suppression was
00:12:28.620was to define what we had already collected data on, targeted Black voters,
00:12:34.900then which we defined campaigns to do so, of which to give strategies to stop it.0.95
00:12:41.300And nothing has been done. We have still not been protected.
00:12:44.580We have systems in place, not only from tech companies, but even our government systems that are accepting harms against us.
00:12:54.080If people with power had listened to women like Shireen, would things have gone differently?0.59
00:12:59.180Would our social media platforms been as vulnerable for bad actors to exploit like they did in the 2016 election?
00:16:21.100I think what you just really crystallized for me is, and I hate to keep relying on this and keep going back to this,
00:16:27.240But, you know, if we had listened, like so much in our country might have gone differently if we had just listened to black women who have been talking about this, collecting data about this, studying this, raising the alarm about this for so long.
00:16:41.520And here it is. It kind of seems like people get people get on, have got have only just now started to get on board.0.60
00:16:48.480And it's so late. It might be too late.
00:16:51.100I feel strongly about that. I feel I feel extremely strongly about that.
00:17:00.180I don't even remember the date when I wrote that pen to basically say I'm going to put this moment up here on Twitter to basically say if we listen to Black women, the hacking of 2016 would have never happened.0.59
00:17:11.320And I haven't updated as much recently because so much has happened.0.55
00:17:14.800But when I put that up there, it was to stay up there forever until people got it.
00:17:18.920And the sad part is, from that moment to present, people coming to me now going, Shereen, I get it.
00:17:25.840And my thing is, why didn't you hear me before?
00:19:38.860I don't know why that is in its full entirety.
00:19:42.620I think that there is some resistance. I think there's some social commentary that which I feel about the way in which I grew up.
00:19:50.800Right. Which is people still telling me that there's no way I can code at 10 coming from Harlem.
00:19:56.440Like there is something about the body that I have and existence, the place I was born in that says that anything I say or do is not valid in comparison to anyone else.
00:20:07.140And so, in other words, to validate me, somebody else has to do it instead of me.
00:20:11.720That someone else actually has to be able to say even my own identity is valid externally. And we've seen this, Bridget, with 1619. We've seen this with other aspects of us telling our narrative.
00:20:26.700Katherine Johnson existed and people are still pretending that Katherine Johnson is not the reason that a white man made it to the moon.
00:20:35.880Right. That the concept that we are not a part of this historical through on as to why America is what it is and all the pieces that we were a part of.
00:20:47.000Instead, what they do is remove us out of those pieces.
00:20:50.080So when I say why they don't add us to some of these aspects to cite us, it's to make sure that we're removed from the historical narrative. You don't cite me, you don't know I exist.
00:21:05.260What do you think, how do you think things might have been different if people had meaningfully listened to and centered the Black women like yourself, like Shafika Hudson, when you all tried to raise the alarm about this?
00:21:18.800if they had listened to us even in 2018, what we're up against now would have been totally
00:21:25.220different and we've been totally prepared and we've been able to knock out most, if not the
00:21:29.780majority of the disinformation that we're faced with. And that tells me that we were never ever
00:21:35.560wanting to be prepared for reality. We wanted to live in an ahistorical framework. Taking us out
00:21:41.980of the timeline means that you get to have some version of the world that you feel comfortable
00:21:47.400with and that you're saying to us that that version of the world does not include us part of
00:21:53.640this is just me being annoyed on social media but i can't tell you how many times i have seen
00:21:58.720this like breaking news new report you know bad actors are impersonating black people on social
00:22:05.740media to try to influence the election and it's so difficult for me to not reply saying yeah you
00:22:12.540could have just listened to the any number of black women who have been saying this since day
00:22:16.500one it's so it's so difficult to see people make this discovery over and over and over again it's
00:22:22.560a bit like being in that movie groundhog day where exactly we people black women have been
00:22:28.480saying this forever forever and it's now a miracle a miracle someone discovered it a miracle someone
00:22:36.120found this this these these accounts and doing these various things in various ways and it's
00:22:41.960like, uh, you're just seeing one piece of it, the stuff that we've been following since, I don't
00:22:46.700know, 2013. It is, it's amazing. And what's more amazing is the way that those people get elevated
00:22:53.760as if they actually did discover it. No citations to any of us. No, none of that. And that's, and
00:23:01.920then, and then when we say something about it, we're the bad guys, because somehow you just
00:23:07.040learning about it means that um it's important but us who've been doing it for years it's like
00:23:13.380oh we know you were doing it but that was cute we're doing it in this as if we were um
00:23:19.340as if we were as if it was like a hobby this is oh that was a cute little hobby that you did
00:23:25.820no i have data i can collect data i've been collecting data we've been doing synopsis this
00:23:31.020is not a cute thing. I have, I have experience in most of this work anyway. I eat also my
00:23:37.060technological background, but to say that somehow all my experience and skillsets is not as important
00:23:43.740as some reporter who decided that their beat was disinfo in 2020. Yeah. I mean, the more I hear
00:23:49.760from you, the more this sounds like an intentional erasing of our labor and our contributions and our
00:23:54.020work i'm sorry to tell you yes and it's not new i let me let me also explain to you like the basis
00:24:02.800of this like one of the things that happens in the tech industry is around use cases when you
00:24:08.500try to build tech and so in multiple aspects of this you have to you have to come up with what
00:24:13.860you think the technology can be but also what the problem is that you think the technology can solve
00:24:17.920and so when whenever i look at use cases i look at use cases from my perspective
00:24:23.040particularly around my community, issues that impact my community. And I think about that from
00:24:27.580a perspective that could help other communities. I do not think about technology building from the
00:24:33.100concept of the people who are the most privileged to help them. I think about it from centering
00:24:37.200the most marginalized and then building something that would help them and save them or protect them
00:24:42.140and then elevate that to everybody else. We operate in a very different system, not just
00:24:47.400the American system in general, but also a technological system. We operate from the top
00:24:51.480tier level people who are the most privileged coming up with something that works for them
00:24:56.560and then trying to nudge everybody else below to use it even at their own detriment and so when
00:25:02.500you come up with use cases you have to think about like what are the things you're trying to solve
00:25:05.980but what are the one of the other pieces of use cases that you think about you think about people's
00:25:10.360narrative when you look at someone's narrative and you think about how you solve a problem based
00:25:14.400on people's narrative you have to think about them from a very diverse perspective in many many ways
00:25:19.440I've been in multiple aspects of these events, white papers and the like, where I have come
00:25:25.200up with a technology that will eventually people want, but the narrative they don't0.95
00:25:30.480want because the narrative is centered on a woman of color.0.75
00:25:35.000And when I think about that, the erasure is they will come out of that, coming up with0.61
00:25:40.920some technological solution, but writing out and wiping out the narrative where it originated0.87
00:32:49.420And that's the failure of us dealing with disinformation right now.
00:32:52.800We are in the sort of the ocean of disinformation. So either we're trying to counter it or we're trying to or there's some levels of it being elevated unwillingly, whether it's us trying to, you know, trying to counter it and then unfortunately amplifying it.
00:33:13.520Or we have media houses who think they're talking about disinformation or these conspiracy theorists, which, by the way, drives me absolutely crazy, Bridget. It's the elevation of the conspiracy theorists as if they're mainstream. So much so that we now have candidates running with conspiracy theories as their marker.
00:33:33.140I don't know how that makes sense and how we can't look at that and say, have we elevated conspiracy theories this much to the extent that it's considered mainstream instead of a conspiracy and should not be considered a part of a narrative or conversation to be had?
00:33:50.240What my struggle is, is that we aren't having policy discussions. We're having disinfo discussions. And I'm not saying that it's wrong to have disinfo discussions. What I am saying is that because we're having so much more conversations and disinfo discussions, we're not elevating enough of the facts, the real policies, the real impacts, the lives of people.
00:34:16.100What we have done as a society is failed telling more of the factual narrative versus the disinfo.
00:34:25.040As we are all working to stop the disinfo, one of the things we have failed at is telling the true stories.
00:34:33.240That's not going to stop me from doing this work, by the way.
00:34:35.920I'm just making a statement about the visual of what that difference is.
00:34:40.500And so when people think they're going to show up to represent me or speak for me or speak for my community with no context of understanding that, not only is it disingenuous, but it's a full frontal assault.
00:34:55.940Do you, when you look on the horizon, do you feel hopeful or does it feel like you don't even know how we're going to get out of this mess?
00:35:04.380I'm glad you asked that question because I think that when I just, and it's also a good way to like uplift after what I said.
00:35:10.500because it sounds like everything is horrible.
00:35:34.640I'm not going to remove that from this narrative.
00:35:36.980What I am saying is I fully feel in all of my being, I am our ancestors' greatest dreams.
00:35:48.340Like I know that everything I'm doing, all the things I'm embodying, every choice that I've made so far to try to fight this for my community, despite being attacked doing so, is to make sure that I'm helping to protect us in some way.
00:36:04.120Who else is going to know what's going on?
00:36:05.860So I ask people to show up too, for us and for others, to not only protect our democracy, but protect individuals. What I'm saying is what we can do to stop that, stop the disinformation about the virus, the vaccines, stop the disinformation about our democracy and the ways in which we can vote, because we have the power to change that.
00:36:30.080Stop the disinformation from the aspects of what kind of lives we can all possibly live if we weren't giving the wealthiest in this country more tax cuts while we get nothing.
00:36:45.380Most of people, what people don't understand about the disinformation that our culture and our history has been built on is when we erase certain parts of it, disinformation feeds off of it.
00:36:58.660So I'm asking us all to participate in knowing and understanding our entire history as to why we got here.
00:37:06.640But also, you have the ability to counter the disinformation.
00:37:48.880We have horrific versions of our story, and we all need to accept that with the hope that we can change it and not repeat it.
00:37:57.760My thing is, I am hoping that we understand why so many people didn't know Tulsa existed until Watchmen, a TV series, sci-fi, for people to even believe it existed, right?
00:38:13.320it's that removal of history in that way that makes it impossible for us not to repeat it
00:38:19.800so telling that story 1619 and others telling those stories allow us to all walk into our truth
00:38:26.520there's so many people that still think that some of those stories are revisionism of our history
00:38:30.780when it's the truth of our history like we that's part of why i'm asking people to report
00:38:35.880disinformation, because I'm saying you get to say, this is a false narrative. You get to act
00:38:42.920upon it and tell the truth and you get to report the false narrative. So we have a story to tell
00:38:48.480so that we don't repeat any of this. So I am hopeful. I do think there's a lot more people
00:38:54.060who understand what's going on, but I also know that there, in all honesty, there's a sliver of
00:39:00.420this country that doesn't want to ever, ever move forward. And they're okay with the horrific
00:39:08.440nature of this country. I know that. I'm not oblivious to that. However, what I am saying,
00:39:17.100there are more of us that sees what we can be. So I don't agree with the narrative. This is not
00:39:23.660America. This is America. It's exactly who America has always been. But what I'm asking you to do is0.72
00:39:29.900be hopeful with me, is that now that you see who we've always been, you work towards changing