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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.
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00:01:19.460I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive
00:01:26.780what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:32.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled,
00:01:38.200and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
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00:01:52.260If you're on Clubhouse, join me for a virtual happy hour this Friday, February 26th.
00:01:56.760I'll be hosting a dynamic group of Black women technologists, researchers, and digital organizers for a conversation on disinformation and the internet.
00:02:04.140All are welcome, so grab a Bev and meet us there.0.80
00:02:07.220More info in the show description.0.99
00:02:08.620You're listening to Disinformed, a miniseries from There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:06:18.620Snapchat has now removed the ad with this statement.
00:06:21.340The ad was reviewed and approved in error. We are sorry that this happened.
00:06:26.600It was almost just my entire time of working in Silicon Valley in tech.
00:06:30.700I tried to attribute it to the tech company. I tried to attribute it to different environmental factors,
00:06:35.780but I really just felt an avalanche of so many different things constantly happening
00:06:40.020that I really felt the tech industry was just deeply problematic.
00:06:45.300And so I pivoted from there to the Kapor Center, really focused on diversifying the tech industry and bringing in specifically Black folks, as well as Indigenous, Latinx folks, and just more people of color, more women into the tech industry.
00:07:00.900and after working there for about two and a half years I came into this work earlier this year
00:07:08.660actually with everything happening with the uprisings and the way that tech continued to
00:07:15.240handle and react all of these things at such a surface level I knew I wanted to go deeper
00:07:19.720in fighting a lot of these systems and there's a lot of different places in resistance against tech
00:07:26.460I've tried and believed in resistance in the tech company.
00:07:30.380I've believed and tried resistance at the level where you're working directly with them, working at the foundational level and partnering with tech companies.
00:07:38.780And I am really enjoying this space that I'm in now of being in movement against and resisting against tech companies,
00:07:45.920because I think that there needs to just be a different power shift in the way that all of these actions take place,
00:07:53.740which is what brought me to a lot of disinformation work.
00:07:57.280So I'm very passionate about tech company accountability, tech culture,
00:08:08.520And that's what brought me to my work at United We Dream.
00:08:10.940So how have you seen disinformation playing out in immigrant communities?
00:08:14.660Right. So disinformation, to be clear,
00:08:16.780has been around since the beginning and the age of the internet.
00:08:19.620And we've experienced it in so many different ways,
00:08:22.020But with this particular year, something has shifted. With 2020, many of us are socially isolated. We are on the internet more than ever, using our devices more than ever. And these disinformation campaigns are really coming in to take advantage of a lot of people's emotional vulnerabilities, their financial vulnerabilities, our unhappiness with the way that society has been upholding us.
00:08:49.100And particularly within the Latinx and the immigrant community, there is a way that disinformation and misinformation campaigns have preyed on immigrant communities' general fear of political instability, right?
00:09:03.580So my family moved to the United States seeking a better life than what we were previously offered.
00:09:09.720And that's how most immigrant families come to the United States is just hoping for a better situation for our families, for our children, et cetera.
00:09:18.760There's a lot of fear there in being associated or brought back to a previous situation or
00:09:28.000And the U.S. does a really good job of playing up this facade of being a very stable, almost0.97
00:09:34.040perfect utopian society, particularly in the immigrant eyes.
00:09:38.400So ways that this does come out or transpire is these affiliations with socialism and creating0.51
00:09:44.260false associations with socialism that instill fear in people, trying to create this image that
00:09:51.240America has been great, will be great, and just needs to continue on a certain trajectory.
00:09:56.800Particularly with the Latinx community, there's also a lot of work being done by white supremacists
00:10:02.920to create a wedge racially with the Latinx community and other communities of color.
00:10:09.100And the way that this is done is very strategically almost creating a race hierarchy of affiliating Latinx with more whiteness and kind of trying to create a separation from Blackness.
00:10:21.900It also is a full erasure of the Afro-Latinx identity.0.61
00:10:24.520So by using race as this wedge issue to divide communities and create this superiority among some Latinx folks, there is really a way to misinform people that by accepting and siding with white supremacy, you are now offered the privilege of being white.
00:10:44.500When I have dug into different types of disinformation I've seen, especially around the uprisings, I definitely saw, particularly on Facebook, these images of attacks on Latinx businesses or churches and clearly meant to be giving this impression that, oh, this wave of violence and instability is coming.0.53
00:11:09.820And the logical next step is like, so vote for Trump, so be afraid, so whatever it is that they're trying to get you to feel or get you to believe.
00:11:22.720And it's really just so insidious how it taps into these deeply held fears and deeply held emotions.
00:11:32.220it really, they so expertly exploit it. It really is like, I hate to say this, but I have found
00:11:38.940myself saying this over and over again during the series. Like these disinformers are just really1.00
00:11:43.600good. You know, it's like, they really are effective. They know these things that are1.00
00:11:47.540going to tap into something that really can like trigger you to feel this emotion.
00:11:52.460Well, the thing is, is we've set up an infrastructure for them to be good, right?
00:11:55.980Like we've really made it easy because we almost thirst for the kind of information that they're
00:12:01.280providing. And I think something really important to acknowledge, because again, this disinformation
00:12:06.260work has been led by so many Black researchers, by so many female researchers who've been doing
00:12:14.260this work for a very long time. But this year has provided a very different opportunity,
00:12:20.280just in the same way that social media and internet algorithms have kind of been snowballing
00:12:26.360out of control, right? There's a lot of ways that our attention is commodified, a lot of ways that
00:12:32.680our attention is driven towards these really wild news headlines. And that's been the case for years
00:12:39.020and years. And of course, there's been many different political situations for the past
00:12:43.080years. But 2020 is something different, right? There's a pandemic, the recession, uprisings,
00:12:48.940the climate change. I mean, there were the few days when, I mean, I've been living in Oakland
00:12:53.920for the past five years and the sky was orange you know it's a kind of different sensation
00:13:00.380happening right now where a lot of things are coming to a head to the point where the news
00:13:05.640headlines are pretty wild but they've been wild for the past five six years because that's what
00:13:11.860gets attention that's what gets engagement with the algorithm and I really like to frame it as
00:13:17.140a sort of gaslighting honestly um my friends and I have this radio show called dystopia now that we
00:13:23.200do on a local Oakland station for fun. And something we talk about very often is how
00:13:29.520confusing it is to live in a society that gaslights you constantly, that tells you that COVID isn't
00:13:35.840real, even though you're staying at home, and you're isolating, you haven't seen your friends
00:13:40.300in weeks or months, but then you're being told that this disease or this virus isn't that serious.
00:13:46.500There's so much gaslighting around just accepting the unknown, right? There are so many things that
00:13:51.940we just need to be okay with we don't know what's going to happen and some of that's just okay it's
00:13:57.620okay to not know the answer and on top of that a lot of these situations and political situations
00:14:03.880climate situations are really really complex and they're nuanced and you can't just generalize
00:14:10.520about them but what happens is these headlines and these articles and these different types of
00:14:18.160information, they create an outlet. They create almost this really easy gesture of if I just
00:14:24.520accept this information or this theory, then everything makes sense. Then I understand
00:14:31.200exactly what's happening, why these things are happening and how they all come together.
00:14:35.380And so it's almost an escape route from just having to sit with the unknown
00:14:39.440and sit with the reality of what this year is. Let's take a quick break.
00:18:22.040Earlier this week, I was working with a colleague
00:18:24.060and writing a memo on what we'll do if there's a coup.
00:18:28.240and it was funny because we were framing it in the reality of the situation right like if this
00:18:34.380happens we all need to move now we need you to sign up for these things and I said to my colleague
00:18:39.800like this kind of sounds like a boilerplate email because we've been talking in this tone for so
00:18:45.620long but in reality this email is like a pretty crazy email if I received this email I would be
00:18:52.180like, wow, where are we at? And at the same time, it just feels like we've been in this
00:18:58.340state for so long that there's almost no emotional capacity to reckon with what's
00:19:03.800happening or process what's going on. Absolutely. I had a very similar moment
00:19:08.460earlier this week. So as you know, I work with Ultraviolet and we were doing our
00:19:13.740election, post-election scenario planning. And I realized, I looked at my notebook and I realized
00:19:20.520The thing I was planning for was like a mass violence, like a mass violent event triggered by the election. And I just had this moment where I was like, what is this? I am in a meeting right now planning for our contingency plan for what will happen if our election triggers some sort of like big, scary thing.
00:19:44.740And truly, it was a real moment that I could not wrap my head around. On the one hand, it seems very dystopian that I would be, you know, preparing for this. But on the other hand, it's something that we needed to prepare for. And I just, I truly like never thought that I would, the things that we are talking about and preparing for and dealing, dealing with, I never in a million years thought I would find myself dealing with them.
00:20:10.620yeah and I think that's also kind of attributed to again going back to this gaslighting feeling of
00:20:17.560the way that we have accepted normalcy or we're still expecting people to work eight to five
00:20:23.260when all of these different things are happening around us it's pretty wild and I think the way
00:20:29.960that disinformation also allows a place for people to put blame on really specific people
00:20:35.960really specific parties, instead of understanding the way that all of this is so systemic. It's
00:20:41.620something that's rooted in the way that we move every single day. You know, we're still attuned
00:20:46.420to, yes, there's a pandemic and these different things happening, but I still need to be productive.
00:20:51.860I still need to output all of these things. It's so rooted into all of our behavior. And it's part
00:20:58.940of, I think, the way that we do consume this information and disinformation and conspiracies
00:21:04.980as almost a pacifier in these moments.
00:23:20.280It tears apart families and creates deep divisions.
00:23:23.900Last fall, Meghna and United Be Dream held a healing space for people harmed by its impact.
00:23:29.140Something that I've really found is that disinformation, it really can impact relationships, you know, finding out that you're someone that you have like your cousin or your aunt, someone that you love and trust.
00:23:42.060And you, you know, you think like this is a smart, thoughtful person and a like a thoughtful addition to my life and to my community, finding out that they have been really misled by a conspiracy theory or different disinformation can be jarring.
00:23:57.020And I think that's something that I love about what you're doing with United We Dream.
00:24:00.240You know, you actually held a healing space around disinformation yesterday.
00:24:04.340Can you tell me a bit about why that made sense for your organization to be framing it in that way?
00:24:09.840Like not a webinar or a training, but a healing space.
00:24:14.460I think the thing with immigrant communities to understand is that there's a lot of cultural difference that happens.
00:24:20.020And especially being a child of immigrants in the United States, I can definitely attest to feeling like you come from two different worlds.
00:24:28.380My family immigrated from India. I feel like I have this Indian world at home.
00:24:33.460And then I also am this other not quite American person.
00:24:36.920And it's very difficult to merge the two.
00:24:40.060On top of that, being an immigrant, there's also a lot of value to coming to America.
00:24:46.920You know, there's a whole narrative with your folks and your family back home that you made it.
00:25:00.780So to then come to America and question its political stability, its ability and power to be the life that you have always dreamed for your generations to follow and your children.
00:25:12.460it's a really hard thing to do to question the infrastructure whereas um i mean even if i look
00:25:19.740at my own family right so my grandmother was married um at age nine and she had 10 children
00:25:25.600and my parents come from the villages they didn't have running water or electricity really until
00:25:32.980they were in their mid-20s and then my sister and i who live a pretty liberal life in the united
00:25:39.000States. So the cultural difference is very vast or can be very vast. And what we've seen with a
00:25:46.460lot of our staff is a lot of confusion and difficulty explaining what's going on with
00:25:52.500family and getting to realize that there's a lot of political differences in what's happening
00:25:58.360right now. And it's not necessarily that the values are different, right? As I was saying
00:26:03.780earlier a lot of people believe in racial solidarity they are folks of color but what
00:26:08.600happens and it's actually pretty concerning the way that misinformation campaigns are being run
00:26:12.820but they are truly understanding or believing the misinformation in a way where it is fully
00:26:19.860indoctrinated into their understanding or it's they're so deep in the conspiracy theory that
00:26:27.180it's very difficult to pull someone out and especially with topics that are so close to the
00:26:32.460heart um so things where we're talking about who we're voting for for president to understand that
00:26:39.680suddenly you're realizing that your parents are trump supporters is extremely painful it's
00:26:46.240extremely emotional to realize that your parents are also uplifting and sharing the wrong videos
00:26:53.560of different contexts of um birthday parties that are showing racial conflict or like black lives
00:27:00.920matter issues, and they are picking the wrong side, it's extremely personal. So what we're
00:27:06.900finding, there's been a lot of different situations I can talk about. But some of our staff have had
00:27:11.300to fully divorce from their families at this time, because when you're doing movement work,
00:27:18.800or you're even trying to be in this space, it's really difficult to reckon with kind of having to
00:27:25.360explain who you are and your core values. Because in some way, it's almost trying to explain your
00:27:30.220vision of this world. And it's scary with your family to feel invalidated with your vision for
00:27:35.260the world. It really is that serious when people start to reveal the thoughts behind their politics.
00:27:41.380But the reason we're holding Healing Space, and we had an amazing time yesterday with our partner
00:27:46.100of Listening Works, to really talk about the malicious actors behind the disinformation. And
00:27:53.440I think it's important here to also call out the distinction between disinformation and
00:27:56.880misinformation in that everyone's really looking for the truth right now like what's actually
00:28:01.560happening with the government what's actually happening with the pandemic and in doing that
00:28:05.500a lot of people are spreading misinformation where they're just trying to keep others informed
00:28:09.300then there's actors who have a malicious goal beneath what they're doing and for most of us
00:28:16.620our family and friends don't have a malicious goal but they have become caught and were targeted
00:28:22.020by people who are spreading disinformation.
00:28:24.940And we need to understand how this is really a racialized effort
00:28:28.160that's preying on some of the biggest vulnerabilities
00:28:30.960of immigrant communities, of communities of color.0.58
00:28:34.340And that's where they're really getting into the heads of people
00:28:38.300who are vulnerable and who do need basic societal things.
00:28:43.820And that's what's important for us to find ways to heal as a community
00:28:46.760because, yes, we can look at tech companies
00:28:49.040and tell them that they need to have more accountability.
00:28:50.740Yes, we can ask journalists to change their headlines, but at the end of the day, are they really going to do it?
00:33:09.040There's an accountability gap of checking Spanish sources, of checking Spanish articles.0.93
00:33:14.820And that just really leaves the door open for people to prey on communities of color
00:33:19.760and Latinx communities in that way and manipulate the power that we all have as communities
00:33:25.660of color and Latinx communities have to really shape their own agenda.1.00
00:33:31.280Yeah, that's really what I see these, I mean, like, if we were to like zoom out on these1.00
00:33:37.720conversations, I want to build a world where disinformation is not profitable, where, you
00:33:44.820know, I think that would be the only thing that gets platforms to really act.
00:33:48.400If we built a world where this was not a profitable thing to do and not a profitable thing to
00:33:52.680have on your platform, I think that will be the way to actually solve it. I don't see any other
00:33:58.060way. I think that is, yes, Bridget, you have a nail on the head. There's so many issues with1.00
00:34:04.600the way that we make money off of disinformation, right? One, it's just the general social media
00:34:09.140algorithm because I think at this point, we're already here, right? The disinformation is
00:34:13.320rampant. People are deeply manipulated. Every single time that we hold a session, whenever I
00:34:18.540get into the weeds of getting on the ground floor of the way that Florida, Arizona, Texas,
00:34:23.320all these battleground states, people have been deeply targeted and are getting deeply
00:34:27.340manipulated in a way where we really need to make a significant effort to pull people out
00:34:33.060of this information that has fully entrenched and confused them.
00:34:37.800But a big part of it is our social media algorithm makes money off of the engagement of articles
00:34:44.320And the articles that get the most engagement and the news that gets the most engagement is the news that's disinformation and misinformation in the way that it's framed, the way that it's created.
00:34:55.260So we're already at this point in 2020, but these algorithms are learning on their own and the Internet's learning on its own.
00:35:02.000So we're only going to fall deeper unless we have a serious intervention and unless we teach people how to protect themselves from the vulnerabilities on the Internet.
00:35:11.400Well, that's a great segue to my next question.
00:35:13.240And how can folks protect themselves in their communities?
00:35:16.440So I think part of this, it's kind of going back to healing, but we need to be understanding
00:35:33.660We all kind of immigrated here together from India.
00:35:36.160We have been trying to hold our family accountable.
00:35:39.820So we have monthly meetings where we bring up different topics and we talk about what's going on and it's really, really hard. It's hard to sit and listen to someone's opinion no matter what it is. And that's something I think we've only had an increasing intolerance for or decreasing tolerance for with the way that we have these comfortable internet silos where we can live within only people who have our own opinion.
00:36:05.900But we need to make a call to unity. This country, no matter what the election outcome is, no matter what happens, we are so divided. Our families are so divided. Our communities are so divided. We need to make time and effort to listen and bring our communities together on the same page and heal.
00:36:25.320I think that's something I really want to uplift as an effort to push against disinformation and misinformation.
00:36:33.400And I think that also creates a stronger support system for people who do fall deep into the webs of conspiracy theories and disinformation.
00:36:43.500Another piece of that is whenever we're seeing things on the Internet, before we share them and amplify them, we need to just learn to pause.
00:36:53.080there's such an emotional experience and even an embodied experience when we're on the internet
00:36:58.620right most people when they're on their phones are bent over neck down pretty disassociated from
00:37:04.800their physical existence and lost in the internet we need to learn to reconnect with our physical
00:37:09.760selves but even when we're on our devices and notice if something is making you feel uncomfortable
00:37:14.800if it's making you anxious think twice before you share it fact check it think about why might
00:37:20.240someone have put this article out there? Why is this news being created? Who made it? What's the
00:37:26.720agency? What am I trying to do by resharing this? And really thinking through the chain,
00:37:31.980the part that we all play in the chain of information. Oh my God. I have to tell you,
00:37:37.000but right before we got on this, on this call, I had had that moment myself, right? So I train
00:37:42.180on disinformation. I give people that same advice, right? Don't amplify it. If you think
00:37:48.100something is fake, if you think something is disinformation, misinformation, take a beat,
00:37:52.480don't amplify it. I saw a video of T.I., the rapper from Atlanta. I'm sure you know who you're
00:37:58.360from. We love, we stan not really. So I saw this video of the rapper T.I. on a pretty big hip hop
00:38:05.520and culture website. And in it, he says that he can't get COVID because he drinks hot tea.
00:38:10.680Now we know that is completely inaccurate and ridiculous. Hot beverages like tea do not cure0.53
00:38:16.340COVID. And when I saw this video, you know, my heart was racing. I was thinking about all the
00:38:21.180different Black people who have died of COVID, the harm that COVID has done to our communities
00:38:25.220in particular, and all the different Black people who probably think of TI as a leader in our
00:38:29.580communities, as a voice of someone that they look up to or should listen to. And I got more and more
00:38:34.680angry. My first instinct was to retweet it and call him out and call the video out and force him
00:38:40.320to be accountable for it. But then I was like, do I really want more people seeing this video? Do I
00:38:45.420really want more people seeing this completely inaccurate, dangerous information. So I had to
00:38:50.180go through that process of kind of taking a minute, taking a breath, sitting with my emotions and
00:38:55.040really just taking a step back. But in that moment, it was a real moment of emotional and
00:39:00.460cognitive surge. And that's what they're so good at because what they're looking for is that
00:39:06.240engagement. And, you know, even if you like it, if you look at it for a long time, all these media
00:39:12.280companies are tracking that, how long you're looking at it, how many times you're watching
00:39:15.640the video. And that's what brings it engagement. And I think actually what comes to mind when you
00:39:20.880share that story is the amazing guide that you made at Ultraviolet when Kamala Harris was
00:39:26.640selected as a vice presidential candidate. And I thought that was really powerful. So this guide
00:39:32.120about what are the tropes that happen most commonly in the way that we talk about female
00:39:38.660political candidates and black female political candidates and interracial immigrant female
00:39:44.500candidates. So I think the way that you frame that of here are things not to uplift. Don't talk too
00:39:50.520much about the way that she's dressed or her makeup or her facial expressions or her family
00:39:56.360role. And that was super helpful to me. And I wish we even thought through that on a broader level
00:40:02.360in general about social media, the internet, and the way that we engage with any talking points
00:40:07.580to really decolonize and understand the way that we are uplifting racism by talking so much about
00:40:14.840what's Lil Wayne doing, what's TI doing, et cetera.
00:40:20.620Yeah. I mean, we were on a panel together, you and I, where you made this great point that
00:40:24.400disinformation, it keeps us from seeing who we really are, right? It keeps us from seeing each
00:40:30.120other fully. And I think, you know, it's important to have those conversations when we talk about
00:40:34.700this information. But I would love to have that conversation more broadly. What are the things
00:40:38.960that keep us from being able to fully see each other for who we really are? And it's like we
00:40:43.840have these filters on that when you see a woman like Harris, it's like, oh, family role. Oh,1.00
00:40:52.880complexion. Oh, speak like the way that she speaks. All of these little things that keep us1.00
00:40:58.040from really seeing each other and engaging with each other for who we really are and seeing each
00:41:01.680other fully? Yeah, what a beautiful question to ask, Bridgette. You know, I was actually reading
00:41:07.440again last night. I think it's Asada Shakur is that you can't dismantle the master's house with
00:41:13.560the master's tool. You know what I'm talking about? Yes, the classic. I was like, I need something0.67
00:41:19.420uplifting. And I think it's really interesting in these times. So first of all, yeah, I want to
00:41:24.220credit that these are ideas that came from her. But I think it's a really great question in this
00:41:30.260moment where we are starting to finally begin to scratch the surface of the Black Lives Matter
00:41:37.320movement and talking about race in a more nuanced way, talking about intersectionality.
00:41:42.480For the first time, I mean, I was pretty shocked to hear this, that I think it was Biden that said,0.93
00:41:48.340you know, Black trans women are dying. And I thought that was really powerful.1.00
00:41:53.500One, it was very late in the game to start realizing it. But at the same time,
00:41:57.360we are finally beginning to scratch the surface of intersectional identities and racial identities.
00:42:03.160And at the same time, the way that people want to talk about it is still by generalizing to the
00:42:09.020black experience, to the trans experience, to very particular things, and still try to categorize
00:42:14.680people into boxes. And I think in the same way, the reason that disinformation offers so much to
00:42:20.980people is because we don't want to really get nuanced. And at the end of the day, I'm talking
00:42:25.860all these things about unifying and we need to unify but at the same time part of unifying is
00:42:31.620also celebrating our differences we need to understand and acknowledge the differences that
00:42:36.840we have and really figure out ways to define and understand the complexity of those experiences
00:42:43.100and uplift them because that's really where our creativity lies and that's where our power lies
00:42:49.240And that's why we're stronger together is because we're different.
00:42:58.840And I mean, I think that there's a lot of different narratives around race that are that can be lazy, that can be kind of followed up into like a quick tweet.
00:43:09.400But it really shouldn't be that short or pithy of a statement.
00:43:13.620It is very nuanced and the more comfortable we get with the nuance, with the unknown, with patience, I think that's what it'll take for us to really start to see each other and uplift one another.