There Are No Girls on the Internet - How Black Women Tried to Save Twitter

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00:00:43.740 welcome home pro society is a weekly podcast that's part book club part group chat for anyone

00:00:49.960 who thinks pride and prejudice and love island to serve the same level of discourse each week

00:00:54.500 we're connecting the dots between books the internet and pop culture with your favorite

00:00:58.520 writers book talk creators and plenty of overthought opinions listen to pro society

00:01:05.240 on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts i survived nine months in

00:01:12.540 captivity and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed

00:01:17.900 them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files every week i'm with survivors

00:01:24.200 who lived through the unthinkable,

00:01:26.160 abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:01:30.000 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:01:33.820 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart

00:01:36.600 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:01:39.620 or wherever you get your podcasts. 1.00

00:01:45.440 There Are No Girls on the Internet

00:01:46.920 is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:01:49.340 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:01:59.120 Okay, so I could tell you this story a hundred times in a hundred different ways. 1.00

00:02:03.440 People just don't listen to women, especially Black women. 1.00

00:02:06.860 And it comes with big consequences. 1.00

00:02:08.160 Six years ago, Black feminists were experiencing a coordinated pattern of disinformation on Twitter. 1.00

00:02:21.960 They spoke up, but no one listened. 1.00

00:02:24.540 That failure to listen to Black women had a big impact. 1.00

00:02:27.600 It allowed for the weaponization of online harassment tactics against other marginalized people on social media 0.95

00:02:32.340 and presents continued threats to our democracy and safety.

00:02:36.820 Okay, so let's just get this out of the way right now. 1.00

00:02:39.040 Twitter is a fucking cesspool. 0.99

00:02:41.040 If you spend any time there, you probably already know this. 1.00

00:02:43.900 Bad faith commentary, reply guys, trolls, harassment.

00:02:47.540 It can really just be an unpleasant place.

00:02:49.540 In May, Twitter announced they would start labeling tweets that spread misleading information. 0.89

00:02:54.140 But this comes years after Black feminists raised the alarm about it and were ignored. 1.00

00:02:58.400 These women weren't just being attacked. 1.00

00:02:59.760 They were learning about the tactics that bad actors used to infiltrate online communities. 0.89

00:03:04.440 They spoke up about what they were experiencing online.

00:03:07.080 So why didn't anyone listen?

00:03:08.680 And what might have happened if they had?

00:03:13.700 Shafika Hudson? Freelancer? Cat lady? Sometimes activist?

00:03:20.180 Shafika had been using Twitter regularly since almost its very beginning, 1.00

00:03:23.520 where she spent most of her time online connecting with other Black feminists. 1.00

00:03:26.600 In 2014, while job searching, she noticed a hashtag that just did not make sense. 1.00

00:03:32.340 End Father's Day.

00:03:33.860 the people pushing the end Father's Day hashtag on Twitter 1.00

00:03:36.360 appeared to be Black feminists. 1.00

00:03:38.580 They talked about how we should abolish Father's Day 1.00

00:03:40.460 because too many Black men date outside of their race 0.99

00:03:42.740 or because Black men don't support their children. 0.99

00:03:45.180 Stuff that just seemed really out there. 0.99

00:03:47.580 I must have had like 10 different tabs open

00:03:49.940 because I was also like doing a job search

00:03:53.120 and just going about my life.

00:03:55.900 And one tweet caught my attention

00:03:59.160 because it was so completely off the wall. 0.90

00:04:03.600 And I don't know who retweeted it or like how it even arrived in my timeline, but it wasn't anything that any black feminist anywhere would say.

00:04:15.940 It was like, what was it? Oh, gosh. Yeah.

00:04:21.280 And Father's Day. I wish these white women would stop stealing our men. 1.00

00:04:26.160 Something just completely off the wall that had nothing to do with anything. 1.00

00:04:31.320 and the avatar was someone who i didn't recognize now the thing about the black feminist community 1.00

00:04:38.620 on twitter the thing about a lot of communities on twitter is that you might not necessarily 0.65

00:04:43.700 get along with everybody but you know who everyone is like and if you haven't met them or seen them

00:04:50.860 out or you know done a tweet up hung out at a party something someone you know has and in this

00:04:58.340 particular instance, I'm clicked on the person, well, the accounts profile. I said, okay, who is

00:05:03.940 this? I've never seen this person. And it looks like they just joined like two days ago. And

00:05:11.980 they're just tweeting about this with this hashtag and they have, you know, the photo of a black

00:05:17.900 woman, but it just, nothing adds up. So that drove me to click on the hashtag and father's day. And

00:05:23.860 lo and behold when i did a twitter search there's a bunch of accounts that are saying things that

00:05:31.040 are completely left like not left like you know politically just kind of left like left you know

00:05:38.300 where are you coming from left and i didn't recognize any of them so i at that point i just

00:05:45.960 kind of asked a general question from my timeline to say okay you guys what's going on i keep seeing

00:05:52.360 this hashtag and these accounts that I don't recognize with people who look like they just

00:05:56.740 joined like five seconds ago. And someone said, yeah, it looks like this is like some kind of

00:06:02.360 4chan thing. That's when I really started digging it. I said, okay, well, this is really awful

00:06:12.460 because they're pretending to be Black women who are saying these awful things. And I'm smart 0.96

00:06:18.580 enough to know that nothing here that they're saying is even remotely what a real Black feminist

00:06:28.220 would say. I honestly think the people who they fooled immediately were already probably biased 0.98

00:06:34.740 against feminists or Black women or some combination of the two. I didn't get the

00:06:41.620 impression that they were fooling most of the people I followed is what I mean, but

00:06:45.100 they were getting some reaction.

00:06:48.100 That's when Shafika went from curious

00:06:49.700 to pissed. 0.96

00:06:51.480 I got so mad.

00:06:53.600 Like, I remember just being so

00:06:55.800 angry, I could feel my cheeks and my ears

00:06:57.940 heat up.

00:07:01.080 Honestly,

00:07:02.080 like, you know, in the cartoons

00:07:03.880 where the character

00:07:05.240 like, starts steaming

00:07:07.840 from their face.

00:07:09.400 Smelt coming through your ears?

00:07:10.780 Yes. You hear the tea kettle whistle.

00:07:15.100 I was serious. I was like, you know, it's not like we don't get enough garbage online just being Black women, you know, with people just randomly showing up in our mentions to argue with something that we said, not because they necessarily disagree, but because that's what people do when you're a Black woman online, apparently. 0.98

00:07:34.120 because we don't deal with enough out here in real life and online. We don't deal with enough. 0.96

00:07:41.060 We've got this whole silly operation thing happening. So I said, well, let me just go ahead

00:07:50.460 and take a look and see what's really going on and see how bad this is. And as I began to dig,

00:07:56.740 I saw just how bad it was.

00:07:59.880 And I realized that I would not be able to point out all of these accounts alone.

00:08:06.240 You know how in movies when a character discovers this thing they've been investigating is much, much bigger than they realize?

00:08:11.140 There is no Pepe Sylvia and this thing goes all the way to the top?

00:08:14.660 Well, that's how Shafika felt. 0.98

00:08:16.300 She knew the Twitter accounts pushing End Father's Day weren't actually Black women.

00:08:20.320 They were just impersonating Black women, and pretty badly at that. 0.94

00:08:23.780 But there were too many of them for this to be a one-off thing. 0.96

00:08:26.300 It had to be coordinated.

00:08:28.200 And there were also too many for her to tackle alone. 1.00

00:08:30.740 She wanted to give other Black feminists a tool to sniff out these imposters. 1.00

00:08:34.500 So she fought back with a hashtag of her own. 1.00

00:08:36.740 Your slip is showing.

00:08:38.060 I went ahead with your slip is showing.

00:08:40.420 I might have run another line like, I don't know, your mascara's running, something like that.

00:08:45.700 But your slip is showing just seemed to work.

00:08:47.300 It really just seemed to work.

00:08:48.920 Okay, so if you're not a lady from the South, the phrase your slip is showing might not mean anything to you. 0.70

00:08:53.840 Literally, it means when your slip is peeking out from underneath your skirt or dress. 0.95

00:08:57.360 A big fashion no-no.

00:08:58.780 But where I come from, that one phrase really highlights a subversiveness of what I'll call auntie speak.

00:09:04.660 Think of it a bit like the phrase, bless your heart.

00:09:07.120 A lady at church might tell you that your slip is peeking out from the bottom of your skirt because they care about you looking your best.

00:09:12.940 Or they could tell you your slip is showing because they don't like you, and they're pointing out publicly that you aren't looking as good and put together as you think you are.

00:09:20.060 you know just the sort of thing that one of your aunties might say to you in church when it's oh

00:09:25.180 honey you need to you need to fix your slip because it's showing except mean because

00:09:32.620 right there's a there's a difference between a your slip is showing from one of your aunties

00:09:41.780 and your slip is showing from somebody who doesn't like you

00:09:44.120 and that was what I was going with it like yeah your slip is showing

00:09:50.820 I'm telling you because I was raised right not because I particularly care about you being

00:09:56.120 embarrassed I love that so much I love how you kind of use this southern auntie expression that

00:10:08.980 we all sort of know what it means what's also funny is that I would imagine the people who 0.93

00:10:13.000 are impersonating Black women, that nuance probably goes right over their heads. 0.88

00:10:18.600 Yes, that was also one of the things that I also delighted in, because of course they 1.00

00:10:24.120 wouldn't get it.

00:10:24.960 Because you'd have to, I mean, you have to be somewhat embedded within certain communities

00:10:29.880 to pick up on the nuance.

00:10:34.240 And they really weren't.

00:10:36.220 It's fitting that we're talking about getting the nuance.

00:10:38.360 That's certain something you can't really teach. 0.95

00:10:41.100 This would ultimately be the undoing of people impersonating Black women online, 0.57

00:10:44.940 their inability to authentically sound like Black women. 0.54

00:10:48.160 They'd try to use AAVE, or African American Vernacular English, 1.00

00:10:51.220 but get the expressions all wrong in ways that might as well be screaming,

00:10:55.160 I am a white person pretending to be a Black woman.

00:10:58.040 This is where I should probably say that around the same time in 2014,

00:11:01.000 I noticed someone on Twitter using my photo and tweeting confusing things about Black people.

00:11:06.240 I never knew who was behind it or why it was happening,

00:11:08.340 But if I had to say, I would say it wasn't an actual Black woman because the things they were saying were just so out there. 0.76

00:11:15.180 Things like, I'm going to be voting for Trump because Hillary Clinton is whack, y'all. 0.82

00:11:19.420 Things that just didn't sound right.

00:11:21.000 because they're not

00:11:22.340 speakers of AAVE

00:11:24.600 they're approximating

00:11:26.460 the thing that like really

00:11:28.460 really

00:11:30.500 really seemed to

00:11:32.080 like immediately

00:11:34.660 point them out was

00:11:36.660 this consistent

00:11:38.220 inability to understand

00:11:41.020 and properly use the habitual

00:11:43.140 B. They didn't get

00:11:45.080 it. They did not

00:11:46.280 like they would use the habitual B

00:11:49.060 just kind of

00:11:51.000 like, for the future tense.

00:11:54.920 You know what I mean?

00:11:55.840 Like, it was terrible.

00:11:57.220 And a lot of the time it was just, like,

00:11:58.720 really obviously racist word salad.

00:12:02.740 Obviously racist word salad.

00:12:05.180 I love it.

00:12:05.800 My new band name.

00:12:07.320 Ultimately, it seemed like the point of End Father's Day

00:12:09.720 was to see what kind of Discord bad actors

00:12:11.900 organizing on message boards like 4chan 1.00

00:12:13.720 could sew within feminist online communities 1.00

00:12:16.020 and to make actual feminists and art issues 1.00

00:12:18.540 look like petty, stupid man-haters 1.00

00:12:20.660 whose issues were so outlandish they could never be taken seriously. 1.00

00:12:24.880 It turns out this is actually a pretty common disinformation tactic.

00:12:28.880 Hijacking public conversations about sensitive topics or wedge issues through media manipulation

00:12:33.260 is a way of making people afraid of having an opinion in public and ultimately trying to silence them.

00:12:39.500 I'm Joan Donovan, and I'm the research director at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy.

00:12:47.400 Dr. Donovan says the same way that brands and politicians realize the power of social media,

00:12:51.760 the kind of people who want to harass others did too.

00:12:54.160 It can have a big impact, especially as we're using social media to talk about thorny issues

00:12:58.720 like race, gender, and sexuality.

00:13:00.980 Issues that require nuance to discuss thoughtfully.

00:13:03.960 It makes it tough for anyone to have a good faith dialogue online.

00:13:07.660 Over time, just like the politicians learned to use social media,

00:13:12.940 we had white supremacists figure out that you don't actually need to show up in public to have

00:13:21.080 an impact on people's lives. And so we saw networked and coordinated harassment campaigns

00:13:27.600 just continue, even to this day, continue to be useful ways to shut down journalists,

00:13:37.000 to impersonate different groups, and to really cause a fracture in public conversation about

00:13:46.320 really important issues that require some level of nuance, some level of understanding,

00:13:52.620 and a lot of compassion to talk about, especially racism in this moment. People are reticent to

00:14:00.160 talk about it because they're afraid of saying something wrong, especially in the environments

00:14:06.740 online where if you do make a misstep, you could get dragged, you could get canceled.

00:14:12.600 But also, some of that might be artificial. It might be the case that people do sympathize with

00:14:19.040 you. People do want to help you grow and learn. But certain media manipulators see that as an

00:14:24.640 opportunity to swarm in and really drive the wedge as deep as it can go. A few right-wing

00:14:33.140 news outlets picked up the hashtag End Father's Day and amplified it as a legitimate feminist take. 1.00

00:14:38.720 This is how Fox News covered it. Like some of these tweets here is from Tasha. She wrote in,

00:14:42.700 everyone knows we only need mothers. Why do we even need Father's Day? Fathers are useless. 0.99

00:14:48.100 Hashtag End Father's Day. Oh, come on. Just more of this nasty feminist rhetoric that they're not 0.99

00:14:53.540 just, like, interested in ending Father's Day, they're interested in ending men. That's really 1.00

00:14:56.920 what they want. But Shafika says only the kind of people who were already predisposed to be

00:15:01.960 skeptical of women and feminists, and especially Black women, fell for it. Well, it was actually, 0.95

00:15:08.680 at first I remember I was incredulous. Like, honestly, I was looking at people like, oh,

00:15:13.500 and Father's Day, feminists take a terrible turn and radical, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was

00:15:19.020 like, you got to be kidding. But then I realized that no, they were completely serious. And then

00:15:25.600 it dawned on me that these are people who could not possibly understand feminism, possibly women

00:15:33.860 in general, black people, or too much of anything outside of their little Fox News bubble. Like

00:15:44.120 Like, that was the impression that I got.

00:15:46.420 Like, basically, if you fell for this, it's because you already had a certain set of bigotries in place to fall for it. 0.51

00:15:55.420 What was happening with Black women online is much less widely known than Gamergate,

00:15:59.760 where angry men coordinated to harass progressive voices online who were mostly women in the months following and Father's Day.

00:16:06.360 Shafika thinks it was ignored because the women who were targeted were Black.

00:16:10.080 Not only was she helping to create a tool to stamp out this kind of disinformation online,

00:16:14.120 She also wanted to document that it was happening, so it wouldn't go forgotten or erased just because it was happening to Black women. 1.00

00:16:23.580 As you're probably aware, a lot of us are big on what we call receipts. 0.98

00:16:30.080 So there are plenty of receipts.

00:16:32.480 We've got the screen caps.

00:16:34.380 You can't even, you know, delete the tweets.

00:16:36.960 We got it.

00:16:38.300 We got the information.

00:16:40.160 but yeah I mean that's that's been a big part of it for me and it's frustrating for a lot of us to

00:16:49.340 see essentially a history erased it's particularly distressing for me because you know I'm not I

00:16:59.240 wouldn't consider myself a scholar at this particular point and my friend uh so true who

00:17:03.280 also was absolutely integral with formulating your slip is showing and how it kind of played

00:17:11.640 out and became a useful tool. But back when I was a scholar, I understood that one of the things

00:17:19.060 that people do when they're trying to erase the impact of a movement is they kind of start

00:17:27.320 deleting history it's a huge feature of erasure when people talk about your slip is showing if

00:17:37.880 they talk about it or if they mention it at all it's it's weird it kind of gets vaguely mentioned

00:17:45.880 in relation to Gamergate as this weird thing that sort of happened before Gamergate that

00:17:51.820 wasn't really relevant and didn't provide anybody any tools or, you know, it was, you know, just

00:17:58.200 kind of a blip as opposed to what it was, which was a scary peek into the future.

00:18:10.740 And again, like I said, hindsight being 2020, once when you start to look back on all of these

00:18:17.580 4chan, I'm sorry, I can't say 4chan without making that noise.

00:18:21.820 you have a special foreshand noise i do i oh my gosh someone else pointed it out to me it's like

00:18:29.340 do you realize that you just kind of make this disgusted noise whatever you say

00:18:33.460 i'm like oh i just i sorry it's automatic i'm working on it

00:18:41.100 when you try to kind of understand how everything happened you have to take all of it

00:18:51.820 into account. I really think that in Father's Day and, you know, consequently, your slip is

00:18:58.680 showing were a huge part of it. And it's, it can be frustrating to see it left out of the history

00:19:05.280 because it's like, okay, you're missing a really relevant chunk of understanding how all of this

00:19:12.440 mess happened. Even at a time where we're having conversations around women's experiences online,

00:19:18.400 why do you think your slip is showing and end father's day and the way that women and folks

00:19:23.080 of color have been harassed online pretty much goes overlooked why do you think that is not

00:19:27.300 yeah that and again it's frustrating and my theory remains it's because uh the targeted group

00:19:33.600 at the time for the end father's day of 4chan operation were black women

00:19:41.080 it's honestly that's that's my that's i have no other answer at this point it's been six years 0.68

00:19:49.220 i've watched this just kind of repeatedly happen and the only answer unfortunately that i have is

00:19:57.840 that okay well this is being largely ignored and raped because of who the targets were 0.99

00:20:06.520 And the targets were of black women, particularly black feminists. 0.99

00:20:12.420 We'll be right back after this quick break. 0.98

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00:20:34.400 This product may not be right for you.

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00:21:10.320 if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality

00:21:14.120 welcome home this is prose society the weekly podcast that's part book club part group chat

00:21:21.620 for thought daughters pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and

00:21:25.880 love island deserve the same level of discourse i'm eli rallo and every week we're connecting

00:21:30.860 the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:21:35.860 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

00:21:39.420 From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments,

00:21:44.300 nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling

00:21:50.420 characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives,

00:21:55.140 smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much,

00:22:00.440 you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever

00:22:06.920 you get your podcasts see you between the pages when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held

00:22:14.300 captive for nine months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what

00:22:20.780 should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files i just remember

00:22:27.120 this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything every week i'm with

00:22:35.980 survivors who live through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt

00:22:43.260 i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they

00:22:51.240 are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's

00:22:57.000 taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The

00:23:02.840 Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

00:23:08.880 get your podcasts. People who are traditionally marginalized online like Black women are 0.72

00:23:17.900 specifically impacted by things like disinformation and harassment on social media. The ultimate goal

00:23:23.100 is to freak them out so much that they'll shut down their social media and just stop talking.

00:23:28.640 Here's Dr. Donovan again. Yeah, so we have to remember that a lot of the ways in which

00:23:35.740 disinformation is carried through networks are also related to the ways in which people are

00:23:44.140 harassed online. So there's a concept called gender trolling. It's evolved into trans trolling,

00:23:53.960 race trolling, queer trolling, where the characteristics of your identity become 0.96

00:24:01.440 the thing that they focus on. And there'll be a swarm of folks that have coordinated in some

00:24:10.400 other place, usually on a message board. And they will target specific public figures or women or

00:24:18.940 trans folks or prominent black activists in order to get them to shut off their social media.

00:24:27.260 And they will use all kinds of horrendous images and threats to try to get you to 0.85

00:24:35.740 feel fear and to shut it down. And we don't see that same kind of level of threat making

00:24:43.500 when it comes to trolling male candidates. And that has to do with the characteristics of the

00:24:51.960 harassers themselves, which often see the harassment as a form of activism and as a form of

00:25:00.460 defending themselves or defending their piece of the culture. And so a lot of these people tend to

00:25:08.140 be misogynists as well as racist. And in their smaller online communities where they don't think

00:25:17.080 they're being watched, they'll talk openly about that. And they'll talk openly about who they

00:25:23.340 should target and why and what the problem is. And I think at this stage, we've been through

00:25:30.600 this enough to know it's a serious problem, but it still happens every day. And especially in this

00:25:39.140 moment, we're seeing an incredible amount of trolling around, you know, anti-Black racism

00:25:45.320 And the responsibility, though, for dealing with this lies with the platform companies, first and foremost.

00:25:55.400 Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey hasn't always been the most responsive to the misuse of the platform.

00:26:00.700 You'd think he'd be more concerned, but Shafika says that wasn't the case.

00:26:03.800 She and the other Black women targeted were pretty much left on their own to figure it out.

00:26:07.220 so did the powers that be at twitter or any other social media company or any other official

00:26:15.060 do anything to fix this no um the the short answer there is no now the longer explanation

00:26:21.920 is that we repeatedly brought this whole thing to the attention of twitter support um to jack

00:26:30.380 directly i'm actually not really sure how his mentions work i'm sure

00:26:34.520 they're probably a whole mess most of the time, but it's not like nobody knew what was happening.

00:26:42.660 It had made the news. So it's not as though he was ignorant. The general impression that I got

00:26:51.960 from Twitter support was that, oh, well, you know, this is, we're so sorry. Our hands are tied and

00:26:58.540 blah, blah, blah. And I started looking into the tech side of everything. And I realized that that

00:27:04.040 wasn't the truth. They absolutely had and had tools on hand to stop this. And they just didn't.

00:27:15.680 They just let it happen. They just let us clean up the mess and defend our communities, ourselves.

00:27:21.520 As much as being left to fend for her own community online sucked, it did teach Shafika

00:27:25.560 that her online community could do a lot with a little. And while that wasn't cool at all,

00:27:31.760 and hopefully at some point in and you know at some point down the line they will be sufficiently

00:27:39.320 shamed for it because it was just really awful we learned what we could do on the ground with just

00:27:47.820 of the very basic tool of like community organization and a hashtag we were able to do

00:27:57.280 a whole lot to just stop something that could have gotten way out of hand. We outed it early

00:28:04.800 and we ended it early. And if something had been done to make sure that these fake accounts that

00:28:13.400 we were reporting had been taken out of commission, there would have been a lot less for Gamergate

00:28:22.720 to work with. They wouldn't have had to, they wouldn't have had the opportunity to just go

00:28:28.080 ahead and access those same tools that they'd already created. So in a kind of way, it sounds

00:28:33.760 like your work with Your Slip is Showing and your work organizing community responses online

00:28:40.520 was kind of this canary in a coal mine. And you all did all that you could to prevent this,

00:28:46.800 to stamp this out but if only the powers that be at twitter or elsewhere had done anything

00:28:52.780 then it might not be the sort of wide-scale situation that it is now that is exactly correct

00:28:58.320 and that i i know that sounds uh damning but that's accurate they could have stopped it

00:29:04.260 uh they could still stop it but the reason why unfortunately and this was absolutely pointed out

00:29:12.020 by people at the time and people later taking a look at the whole situation

00:29:18.360 from the whole postmortem of the whole incident.

00:29:23.880 The reason why they didn't is because the profit model at the time

00:29:32.980 was based on number of accounts and interaction.

00:29:42.020 So, you know, that when you're selling your product basically to, and we're the product to advertisers and whatever have you, the more users it looks like you have, the better.

00:29:53.960 So it really wasn't in Twitter's best interest to say, okay, well, we have 20 accounts with one IP address that's suspicious and we should look into it.

00:30:09.180 And that's why they didn't.

00:30:10.580 They didn't. It took them a full two and a half years, I think, to even really address it in a serious way.

00:30:17.960 And I think that was only after the whole congressional meeting.

00:30:25.340 Like, I'm pretty sure that was after everybody who was like the head of social media got called in front of Congress.

00:30:32.140 Mm hmm. Like, that's what it took.

00:30:37.380 So that pretty much brings us to today.

00:30:40.240 Today, Twitter leads all other social media platforms on the spread of misleading information about coronavirus,

00:30:46.020 according to a study by Oxford researchers called Types, Sources, and Claims of COVID-19 Misinformation.

00:30:51.420 And a study out of Carnegie Mellon found that most of the accounts pushing this misleading content

00:30:56.120 are actually convincing-looking bots, using Twitter to prey on people,

00:31:00.520 sow division, and increase polarization.

00:31:02.760 This isn't just an online thing either.

00:31:05.020 Kathleen Carley, the director for the Center for Informed Democracy and Social Cybersecurity,

00:31:10.460 says increased polarization will have a variety of real-world consequences

00:31:14.560 and play out in things like voting behavior and hostility toward ethnic groups.

00:31:18.720 And this summer, as Black Lives Matter protests popped up all over the globe,

00:31:22.880 Twitter confirmed that multiple accounts posing as Black Lives Matter activists

00:31:26.180 were calling for violence in white suburbs.

00:31:28.220 But those accounts were actually run by white supremacist groups

00:31:31.340 just posing as activists and, quote, Antifa to cause chaos.

00:31:35.940 Facebook under fire again.

00:31:37.740 A Senate Intelligence Committee report claiming Russian agents

00:31:40.960 used social media sites like Facebook to target African Americans

00:31:44.780 in an effort to suppress voter turnout.

00:31:47.600 We already know that Russia used social media to interfere with the 2016 election. 1.00

00:31:52.640 And in case you needed a Senate report to confirm what Black women have been saying all along,

00:31:56.340 a Senate inquiry cited an Oxford University report on Russian interference on social media.

00:32:01.340 They found that campaigns targeted no single group more than African Americans on social media.

00:32:05.900 They posed as Black people and ran phony Black activist groups

00:32:09.260 to influence Black voters to either stay home or vote for Trump on Election Day.

00:32:13.920 The Senate Intelligence Report says the posts were aimed at making Americans suspicious of each other.

00:32:19.200 Sound familiar? 1.00

00:32:20.420 These are the very same kind of tactics that Black women like Shafika were complaining about years earlier. 1.00

00:32:26.860 Accounts posing as Black people and infiltrating our online communities to create chaos and distrust.

00:32:32.380 But because the people with power didn't really do anything or take it seriously, it kind of exposed this massive vulnerability.

00:32:39.040 Think of it as an online disinformation test balloon.

00:32:42.340 It showed that these kinds of attacks could happen and they'd pretty much go unaddressed.

00:32:46.080 Instead of identifying and learning to spot tactics used to make our social media communities less safe and less stable,

00:32:51.860 the powers that be just let it happen again and again and again.

00:32:56.020 I asked Shafika if she thinks that if someone had listened to Black women when they spoke up about being targeted online, things might be different now.

00:33:02.840 It's a tough question for her.

00:33:09.700 This is always going to be a question that kind of hangs in my mind because while I understand that Black voters were absolutely targeted,

00:33:20.520 i'm not entirely sure that we were fooled do you know what i mean right like i honestly

00:33:30.700 because it seems like to me we kind of all got out and voted anyway and it also seems like to

00:33:37.660 me donald trump may have lost the popular vote by three million votes but that's neither here

00:33:42.320 nor there i guess not if you ask him he didn't but we don't ask him things because we like honest

00:33:47.420 answers. But yeah, I mean, just the fact that this happened, like it left us arguably vulnerable

00:33:58.820 and that even though I'm not sure how ultimately successful it was, just the fact that we had

00:34:08.000 foreign agents targeting voting populations in the United States of America should have been

00:34:16.720 serious and due cause for alarm because even if it doesn't work it's like just it's just the fact

00:34:24.620 that they tried and that they could what are you doing like can we get it together

00:34:29.860 and it's because we left we left the door open like this this was that was a failure that was

00:34:38.280 i don't want to say it was on me because i feel like it definitely wasn't on me and it definitely

00:34:43.100 wasn't on you but it was it was a failure um on the side of

00:34:49.680 whatever agents are supposed to be uh protecting us and i i guess that offers that opens up a lot

00:35:01.400 for speculation it's like well you know who's who's looking after us now but um yeah that

00:35:08.920 that was a glaring example of just kind of the general failure to address something that did 0.94

00:35:17.520 not have to get as big as it got more there are no girls on the internet after this quick break

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00:36:18.680 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:36:24.480 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:36:31.040 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:36:34.640 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.96

00:36:40.080 shut up, don't say anything.

00:36:42.840 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. 0.98

00:36:47.260 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:36:51.720 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:36:58.800 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:37:03.240 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:37:06.680 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:37:10.320 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:37:18.760 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:37:24.720 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.

00:37:37.180 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:37:44.280 I'm going to have to look up this story.

00:37:46.180 I'm obsessed.

00:37:46.960 So obsessed.

00:37:47.420 From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

00:37:54.200 It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.

00:38:01.320 Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

00:38:10.900 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:38:16.400 See you between the pages.

00:38:23.120 The 2020 presidential election is 112 days away.

00:38:27.880 Digital security experts agree that American elections are vulnerable and not enough is being done about it.

00:38:32.920 During Trump's impeachment hearing, Fiona Hill, the former National Security Council advisor specializing in Russian and European affairs, said,

00:38:40.060 Right now, Russia's security services and their proxies

00:38:43.020 have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election.

00:38:46.660 We are running out of time to stop them.

00:38:48.780 So what do we do?

00:38:50.140 Dr. Donovan says.

00:38:51.700 As we get closer to the election,

00:38:53.660 we know that all different kinds of tactics are going to get utilized,

00:38:59.540 including potentially deep fakes or cheap fakes,

00:39:02.840 like manipulated video, manipulated audio.

00:39:05.440 we're going to see uh probably uh clips of people quoted out of context we've seen this happen to

00:39:14.120 joe biden a few different times then of course we've seen gas that he's done that are completely

00:39:19.020 within context and a problem um you know you can't you can't forget that every once in a while

00:39:25.940 you're watching it and you're like this is this can't be real and it's totally real well what's

00:39:30.720 crazy to me about it is, as a researcher, you're supposed to be attuned to all of this, but I still

00:39:35.420 get fooled here and there. But the last thing I'll say about the way in which I think platform

00:39:39.500 companies need to better serve our political elections and the integrity of elections is

00:39:47.340 that they need to hire some serious specialists. They need to hire a whole army of librarians to

00:39:54.980 do content curations, so that when people are looking for information, they find things that

00:40:01.460 have been fact checked that are true and correct. I think that we have a right to truth. And part of

00:40:07.440 the problem is the way in which these algorithms are designed is to bring up things that are

00:40:12.420 fresh and relevant. And the problem with fresh and relevant content is that disinformation is

00:40:18.960 usually incredibly popular because there are people trying to push it and there are people

00:40:25.140 trying to dispute it. And so as a result, it rises generally to the top of search algorithms

00:40:30.680 or trending algorithms very quickly because of that feature.

00:40:36.780 But will Twitter actually do any of that? Shafika isn't super confident that the platform will do

00:40:41.600 anything at all. I haven't even thought about it. And I guess that's sort of a reflection

00:40:47.740 on my general skepticism right now with not their ability but their willingness

00:40:54.960 to address this I have a good friend who said one of the smartest things I've ever heard anybody say

00:41:04.880 and I quote it all the time but he said when things look like they're not working out you

00:41:11.000 can always trust that they're working out for somebody and that's how I'm gonna leave that

00:41:16.920 Right there.

00:41:20.780 But it looks like, you know, things aren't working.

00:41:25.700 You start asking questions and it's a whole rabbit hole.

00:41:32.660 That's the thing about the Internet.

00:41:34.380 There's so much darkness lurking in its corners, just waiting to spill out.

00:41:38.600 But where there's darkness, there's light, too.

00:41:40.960 Where there's someone being ugly online, there's someone else reaching out to make a genuine connection.

00:41:45.880 There's real community to be built and laughs to be had,

00:41:49.160 the kind of laughs that can sustain you through difficult times.

00:41:52.540 Being online is a constant tightrope walk of acknowledging that darkness

00:41:56.200 while still being able to see the corners of light peeking through.

00:42:00.100 And even while wading through all of that darkness and ugliness, 0.90

00:42:03.960 it's the light that has really sustained Shafika.

00:42:06.780 After everything she's been through,

00:42:08.800 she's still grateful for Twitter as a platform

00:42:10.600 and all the good things it's brought to her life.

00:42:13.460 Honestly, it really helps that I have a strong and supportive community, both online and off.

00:42:22.640 I really am super grateful for Twitter for so many reasons, not the least of which is because it's helped me expand my network.

00:42:33.360 and I've met amazing people and connected people who are like me, people who aren't like me

00:42:42.020 and gotten gotten to know so much about them and learn about their lived experiences. And that has

00:42:49.400 saved me because it helps me kind of get out of my own headspace or likewise, you know,

00:42:57.360 connect with people who understand 100% where I'm coming from. And that's, in a world where,

00:43:05.000 you know, we're frequently gaslit about the things that we see and experience,

00:43:13.820 that is absolutely invaluable. Oh, and one more thing that helps. It also helps that I'm funny.

00:43:21.020 honestly um having a sense of humor and a wit uh will get you through

00:43:29.500 pretty much i don't want to say pretty much anything but how about this it's gotten me

00:43:36.880 through pretty much everything and you've been through some stuff i've been through it

00:43:43.780 there are no girls on the internet was created by me

00:43:49.620 Bridget Todd

00:43:50.200 it's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative

00:43:52.880 Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer

00:43:55.040 Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer

00:43:57.500 Michael Amato is our contributing producer

00:43:59.580 I'm your host Bridget Todd

00:44:01.060 for more podcasts from iHeart

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00:44:19.380 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:44:25.500 Pro 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.

00:44:33.480 Each 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.

00:44:41.740 Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

00:44:43.820 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app,

00:44:46.540 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:44:49.840 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:44:53.100 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive

00:44:56.520 what should have destroyed them.

00:44:58.520 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:45:02.200 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,

00:45:05.900 abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:45:09.540 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:45:13.620 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app,

00:45:18.180 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:45:23.300 Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

00:45:25.200 And Sean Clemens.

00:45:26.400 We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook.

00:45:28.560 Every episode, we're trying to help our guests improve their careers

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00:45:35.980 so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes

00:45:38.540 We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenburgen.

00:45:45.560 Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:45:51.640 I'm Nick Turturro. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman.

00:45:57.640 And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, I deliver pizza to a new guest.

00:46:02.700 I've shared a slice with everyone, from Seth Rollins, to Bill Burr.

00:46:07.460 I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am.

00:46:12.380 And now we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Turturro.

00:46:17.260 It's called happiness.

00:46:18.340 Delivering happiness.

00:46:19.420 And many, many more.

00:46:20.880 Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, and listen now.

00:46:26.320 This is an iHeart Podcast.

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - July 14, 2020

How Black Women Tried to Save Twitter

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