There Are No Girls on the Internet - September 06, 2022


LIVE FROM NYC： Sydette Harry on why tech keeps failing Black women at UNFINISHED LIVE

Topics
listening to black women
Britney Spears speaks out about #FreeBritney movement and conservatorship - BEST OF TANGOTI Why trad wife content is taking over social media right now (with Under the Influence's Jo Piazza)

Episode Stats


Length

59 minutes

Words per minute

173.53

Word count

10,365

Sentence count

473

Harmful content

Misogyny

36

sentences flagged

Toxicity

32

sentences flagged

Hate speech

32

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
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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
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00:01:12.540 captivity and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed
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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 0.90
00:01:46.920 as a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:49.320 I'm Bridget Todd
00:01:54.620 and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet
00:01:56.380 If you don't know Sudette Harry
00:02:00.260 she is one of my heroes
00:02:02.020 and a piece that she wrote for Wired magazine
00:02:04.300 interrogating the way that technology sees black women
00:02:07.020 is actually one of the biggest inspirations for this podcast
00:02:10.560 Sudette is constantly speaking truths to power and technology
00:02:14.120 and I was lucky enough to sit down with her 1.00
00:02:16.340 for a live taping of There Are No Girls on the Internet
00:02:18.740 in New York City during Unfinished Live,
00:02:21.660 a festival celebrating technology, culture, and the arts,
00:02:25.100 where Sudeik got really real about power and technology.
00:02:29.160 And if you want to hear Sudeik again, you are in luck.
00:02:32.340 She'll be back at Unfinished Live 2022,
00:02:34.960 September 21st through the 24th,
00:02:37.100 both IRL from New York City and streaming online.
00:02:40.340 She'll be joined by some of the most interesting people
00:02:42.440 in technology and culture,
00:02:44.120 like Dr. Safiya Noble, Denise Duncan,
00:02:46.540 Bartende Thurston,
00:02:47.360 and the founding member of Pussy Riot.
00:02:50.020 You might even see me there.
00:02:52.000 So if you do, be sure to come say hi.
00:02:54.200 Go to live.unfinished.com for tickets
00:02:56.640 and please enjoy this live episode
00:02:58.500 of There Are No Girls on the Internet
00:02:59.960 from Unfinished Live last year.
00:03:03.140 Hello, everyone.
00:03:04.660 Thank you so much for being here.
00:03:06.000 How's everybody feeling?
00:03:08.500 Yeah.
00:03:10.980 My name is Bridget Todd.
00:03:12.720 I am the creator and host of the podcast
00:03:14.580 There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:03:16.260 This is my first ever live show, so thank you so much for being here.
00:03:20.600 It means so much to me.
00:03:24.500 I'm so thrilled to be here with my guest, the brilliant Sedet Harry.
00:03:28.260 Give it up for Sedet.
00:03:29.180 Hello.
00:03:31.840 So a little bit about my podcast for folks who don't know.
00:03:34.540 It's called There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:03:36.680 And one of the first questions I often get is, what's with that name?
00:03:40.580 What do you mean, there are no girls on the Internet?
00:03:43.640 Well, there's an old saying that everybody on the internet is a guy.
00:03:47.620 And if they say they're a woman, they're just pretending.
00:03:49.980 They're not actually a woman.
00:03:51.440 Or if they are a woman online, that identity doesn't actually matter.
00:03:56.280 You know, we're all the same on the internet.
00:03:58.740 Exactly.
00:03:59.180 So that identity and all of the issues that come along with that identity, there's this
00:04:05.060 misconception that we just leave it at the door.
00:04:07.860 And I actually truly believed both of these things for a very long time. 0.98
00:04:12.760 I believe that black queer women like me were outliers in technology and the internet.
00:04:17.420 And I believe if we did show up in these places, our identities and all of the issues connected
00:04:22.100 with those identities, well, just didn't matter.
00:04:24.860 You know, we left them on the door when we logged in.
00:04:27.380 But that is not true.
00:04:29.240 Women, black folks, people of color, queer folks, people who have all been traditionally
00:04:33.540 marginalized, we've been showing up online to make it better, safer, more fun, more inclusive.
00:04:39.300 And we've been there from the very beginning.
00:04:41.640 I mean, think about it. What would the internet be like without black folks, queer folks, trans folks?
00:04:49.320 It would be so boring, y'all. It would just be journalists making boring jokes and having boring opinions about baseball, right? 1.00
00:04:57.160 Well, we couldn't even have that without black people because a lot of journalists' boring jokes are stolen from black interactions. 1.00
00:05:03.200 Thank you. Thank you. 0.99
00:05:05.180 What would they report about if it wasn't watching us?
00:05:07.080 Exactly, exactly. It would be a nightmare without us. But because people from traditionally marginalized backgrounds, we've always been there since the very beginning. And we often are the ones doing the unpaid, difficult, sometimes dangerous and personally costly work of making Internet spaces safer, better, more inclusive and better. And when we do this work, it's not just for us as marginalized people. This work makes spaces better and safer for everyone. And so I want to give you a little pop quiz to sort of illustrate what I mean.
00:05:37.080 So, which of the following, and I know that you know the answers, which of the following is something that we know about the internet?
00:05:44.700 Ahead of the 2016 election, an army of fake social media accounts targeted black voters in an attempt to destabilize our election process.
00:05:53.400 Two, Facebook's moderation practices disproportionately remove posts from black people talking about our experiences with racism.
00:06:00.840 Lastly, on TikTok, white supremacist groups create extremist content using TikTok's own
00:06:07.920 features not just to avoid detection, but to even have their content surface on users
00:06:12.560 for you page.
00:06:13.560 So, which one of those three things is the thing that we know about the Internet?
00:06:17.160 Raise your hand if you think it's one.
00:06:19.480 Raise your hand if you think it's two.
00:06:21.700 How about three?
00:06:23.300 Okay, so if you said all of the above, good job, you get an A. Here's another question.
00:06:30.040 Of all of those things I just said, which of those things are things that black organizers,
00:06:35.540 black social media users, black cultural critics have been vocally raising the alarm about
00:06:40.280 for a very long time?
00:06:42.520 Any guesses?
00:06:44.860 All of the above.
00:06:45.860 You guys are all getting it perfectly.
00:06:47.360 If you said all of the above, you would be right. 0.99
00:06:50.420 In a piece for Wired called Listening to Black Women, the innovation that tech can't quite 0.97
00:06:54.180 figure out, my guest today, the brilliant cultural critic and all around tech troublemaker
00:06:58.280 argues that when black women speak up about the abuses and harms we face online, people 0.95
00:07:03.520 with power just don't listen, that is, until that harm is experienced by other users. 0.99
00:07:08.560 She writes, harmful behavior toward black women isn't enough to inspire change until
00:07:12.880 others are harmed, but the original harms are often lost by journalists tasked with
00:07:17.040 covering tech.
00:07:18.300 The power and rhetoric that went unchecked becomes common, and tactics used against black
00:07:22.700 women for lulls become weapons used in conspiracies destabilizing the very nature of truth. From
00:07:28.620 the swarming of victims to posing as black women to destabilize communities or even countries, 0.52
00:07:33.820 defining the systemic abuse becomes a frustrating exercise of describing an empty space that no one
00:07:39.500 believes is there. If we can follow, surveil, and automate everyone, how could we miss anything
00:07:45.500 important? And if it is important, it is only important for how it changes the mythical
00:07:51.660 standard user, no matter how many people were hurt before. So, Siddet, when I heard those words,
00:07:57.880 I have to tell you, it was the impetus for me creating my podcast at all, in general,
00:08:03.620 because it made me feel so seen as a black woman showing up online. I think people often miss our
00:08:10.900 issues, and you spoke to it so beautifully in that piece. And so I'm so excited to talk to you today
00:08:16.220 about that harm, what accountability looks like
00:08:19.280 for folks who have ignored that harm,
00:08:21.400 enabled that harm, and in some cases profited from that harm,
00:08:24.140 and how we move forward to an internet 0.98
00:08:26.000 that meaningfully listens to black women. 0.89
00:08:28.900 Oh my gosh, you never told me that before. 1.00
00:08:31.620 It's true.
00:08:34.140 First and foremost, I want to do the thing
00:08:37.020 where we name the fact that this is my second
00:08:40.720 kind of public thing without a face mask
00:08:43.740 then that doesn't involve like family members so I'm fidgety um these are all things and it's like
00:08:49.600 let's be honest about the place we are in and the level of comfort we are feeling because part of
00:08:55.180 the work is just we like high-tech solutions we like the things that are shiny and sexy but we
00:09:02.440 are ultimately all using the web for our lives we need to use the web to connect to each other we
00:09:07.260 need to use the web at this point to get groceries, get vaccines, to do our jobs. And the issue with
00:09:16.220 what I've seen and what I've experienced with specifically that piece that led to the writing
00:09:22.060 of that piece is that there's no way around when you have certain marginalizations or even
00:09:30.900 in the current world for you not to be online. There's no way for you not to bring your whole
00:09:36.240 self to the work you do online, the way you are online. What usually happens is that you package
00:09:42.660 it so that whoever you're dealing with at the time feels comfortable, but you're still your
00:09:46.560 whole self. You're still having all of these issues. And with some of the things that we
00:09:50.460 talked about, I wrote that in January. I've never told the story about that article, but I, and it's
00:09:58.500 kind of indicative to the way I've been online most of my life. But what happened was it was
00:10:04.000 Breonna Taylor, rest in peace, rest in power, the protest started for Breonna Taylor and there was
00:10:11.040 a uproar of how could we have known and what is going on and how do we do this? And a lot of this
00:10:20.120 was also in post-George Floyd. But one of the things that happened is people were just like,
00:10:25.660 how do we really describe this? Where's this thing? And I had written an article for Model
00:10:31.520 view culture about people posing as black women in in to um kind of drive a web wedge within 0.99
00:10:42.740 feminism in 2014 it had been a phenomenon we had been exposing in 2013 and if we're talking about 0.60
00:10:51.380 last year 2020 so 2013 minus 2020 how many years ago is that how many years passed seven now we
00:11:00.100 work in tech we are in social media you suddenly become sexy and hot usually it moves within minutes 0.90
00:11:05.660 or months the metaverse nfts those blow up and go in months but suddenly to talk to black women 0.89
00:11:13.880 takes seven months and the editor of wire at the time said something and i was like pay me to write
00:11:20.000 this i just said maybe if you just paid me to write this and a lot of things went back and forth
00:11:25.240 and then pandemic was happening.
00:11:27.380 I said that in June of 2020,
00:11:28.840 the article got published in January of 2021.
00:11:31.960 So that still took an additional seven months.
00:11:34.140 And that is a common theme 1.00
00:11:35.620 for things that have to do with women, 0.98
00:11:38.320 I think often in general,
00:11:39.200 but specifically women of color.
00:11:40.800 And once I finished writing the article,
00:11:43.940 Facebook, whatever, what have you,
00:11:45.820 what has dropped within the past couple of weeks?
00:11:47.940 We are getting,
00:11:48.620 which is a really great piece of journalism,
00:11:50.820 the Facebook reports,
00:11:52.160 but they're in Wall Street Journal.
00:11:53.620 they've been the facebook podcast and one of the reports and this was really done in depth
00:11:58.520 for the mit technology review points out that something like five of the top 10
00:12:04.440 revenue slash groups may for centered on black people and like three of the 10 for indigenous
00:12:11.700 people are fake and are known to be fake pretending to be black people i wrote this
00:12:19.060 I wrote my article in Model View Culture in 2014. 0.94
00:12:23.100 I wrote an article for Wired in 2020.
00:12:27.840 There was a report that went to the Senate from Oxford.
00:12:31.900 So this is not a small independent report.
00:12:34.820 It was in Oxford.
00:12:36.180 And we also have Shireen Mitchell in the audience
00:12:37.960 who wrote a report about this in, I think, 2014
00:12:42.260 and also 2017 and at various points.
00:12:44.560 So we had all of this,
00:12:46.520 But suddenly it becomes a thing when Wall Street Journal writes about it.
00:12:51.360 It becomes a thing, like, even Oxford couldn't get these people off.
00:12:55.600 It was in the Senate hearing.
00:12:57.120 Like, one of the things that I say is, like, bam.
00:12:59.140 This was also in the Amnesty International report.
00:13:01.780 And that was an interesting thing because I was interviewed for that report,
00:13:05.360 and I made some very specific comments on race and got told in the way that women who are multiply marginalized are often told,
00:13:12.440 it's divisive what you said
00:13:14.580 so we're pulling it out
00:13:16.020 and what I said was
00:13:17.200 the first targets of these issues 1.00
00:13:20.520 are usually black women 1.00
00:13:21.560 we don't pay attention 1.00
00:13:22.840 and in fact we incentivize
00:13:24.760 not paying attention
00:13:25.600 because it makes great leaders
00:13:27.000 and people get very good
00:13:28.320 at talking about misinformation
00:13:29.820 or harm online
00:13:31.080 by making those people 0.98
00:13:32.200 usually singly marginalized white women 1.00
00:13:34.060 but it was divisive
00:13:36.780 and I think four of those Facebook groups
00:13:40.380 have been mentioned in the study
00:13:42.200 by Oxford, which was still done after the studies and the observations
00:13:46.240 of black women. And once they were mentioned in the Wall Street Journal 0.62
00:13:49.820 article and the reports, how long do you think it took them to take it off the
00:13:54.100 internet?
00:13:57.820 Not seven years. 24 hours?
00:14:00.620 Oh, y'all are so helpful.
00:14:04.140 Twelve. Twelve. By the time one of
00:14:08.060 and some of them are just so openly offensive. 1.00
00:14:11.380 Like, the number one was, my baby daddy ain't shit, because that's how they think black people talk online. 0.99
00:14:18.240 So they thought that that was a real group when it made it wasn't. 1.00
00:14:22.980 And that came down in 12 hours, as long as the person reporting it wasn't black.
00:14:28.640 And that has been a common theme in so many things that I've found for multiply marginalized people, but specifically for how black women are interacting with online.
00:14:36.780 Now, usually for things like this, we are asked when we have these discussions, the issue and part of what I wrote the article for and hearing about your podcast is I really like being black.
00:14:54.720 I like being black.
00:14:56.660 And I like doing tech work and I like analyzing things.
00:15:03.260 And I don't feel that I should have to answer everything through a lens of how do I make it diverse and inclusive?
00:15:11.640 Or how do we answer our problems with the lack of representation?
00:15:16.140 Because it's not an our problem.
00:15:18.320 That's a you problem.
00:15:19.840 I am this person everywhere I go.
00:15:21.720 Now, also, when I'm thinking about tech issues and why I wrote that article was I like to
00:15:28.280 think about tech issues.
00:15:30.280 I like to think about things like QA.
00:15:32.880 I like to think about things about, I like to think about, so what does the GitHub repo
00:15:36.780 is?
00:15:37.780 Why is GitHub designed like that?
00:15:38.900 My primary thing right now is community and comms.
00:15:41.820 So if you've actually worked in product design, you know if you do anything that involves
00:15:45.060 community, comms, copy, everybody's working in GitHub.
00:15:48.320 You are usually porting tickets.
00:15:51.240 But we don't talk about those things and we often don't ask people who do work to talk
00:15:55.900 about things.
00:15:56.960 There is a separation between the social and the technical.
00:16:01.860 And the problem and the thing that I want, I constantly am trying to push is that those
00:16:06.200 divisions are built into the internet.
00:16:08.780 So the first, even the start of the World Wide Web, Unfinished Live is about decentralized
00:16:12.920 protocols and you will look at these things and you'll see that the original meetings
00:16:17.160 with Tim Berners-Lee and all of these people were divided.
00:16:20.280 is the technical protocol this is the social protocol that's a big problem and that is a huge
00:16:25.000 problem that we have carried through the web since its inception of separating those things except
00:16:29.960 they influence each other if you don't have social representation you don't design well if you don't
00:16:35.240 have a good analysis of technical work you don't make good choices for what happens in social and
00:16:41.000 it's an artificial separation and it's also socially influenced by where people think you 0.99
00:16:46.840 are because the other part about the 2020 thing of like let's listen to black women is that when 0.91
00:16:52.540 I get pulled into things or sometimes where things like people want you to be oh we want to we want 0.80
00:16:58.440 to hear what you have to say can you can you talk about that and they really want me to sing the
00:17:05.480 ballad of how terrible it is to be black and why they should be nice to me and when you want to 0.96
00:17:12.200 sing the song of joy of I love being black but your your product design is bad and the fact that 0.99
00:17:17.500 me being black means your product doesn't work is a you problem I need you to get better on that 1.00
00:17:21.480 cobu they suddenly don't want to have the conversation people love to have diversity 0.94
00:17:26.000 conversations but I'm like okay public please do me a favor someone who works in product who looks
00:17:31.320 at these tickets publish all your diversity numbers don't tell me you're going to do better
00:17:34.520 I want to see all of those numbers in an easily accessible place that I can pull up every single
00:17:39.720 time my background is the libraries so don't don't you don't have to tell me anything you
00:17:47.440 know I don't need to part and part of the joy of being black is I don't have to be the singular
00:17:51.200 black person I don't want to be a spokesperson I like librarians I like library stuff I like
00:17:56.980 thinking and reading I like creating and coding and all of that I don't need to be the singular
00:18:01.720 black person there are people who are often much better served than this but I want my work to be
00:18:06.400 done well. I want it to be well compensated for the things I do. I want you to credit me and I
00:18:11.640 want you to credit mine and I want you to have good practices. I happen to be black while asking
00:18:17.460 for these things, but that doesn't make it a social justice request. It makes it a request for
00:18:23.060 good systems. And the problem with these things is that people will treat this like, oh, you want to
00:18:28.100 do diversity because you're talking about how the neuro-linguistic programming penalizes black
00:18:36.100 people more than it penalizes people who pretend to be black. So you're talking about diversity.
00:18:39.480 I'm like, oh, I'm talking about your machine learning set doesn't work. And then when it
00:18:44.320 stops, and then when it hits somebody you actually care about, it's like, what is our problem with AI?
00:18:48.780 There might be a math problem. So it's not a math problem when it's penalizing me or picking me out
00:18:53.320 or penalizing black people, but it's a math problem when it stops white people. Are we using
00:18:59.740 two different kinds of math? Which if we are, it's fine, but let's lean into that reality.
00:19:06.100 And the danger becomes, it's like, you will listen to me bemoan being black. 0.96
00:19:11.220 You will not listen to me and have effectual steps for us to do this work better. 0.97
00:19:17.380 And that is an issue that keeps coming up.
00:19:21.820 And we're going to see more of it with the idea of the now content creator economy, 0.59
00:19:26.200 where everybody's response when a black person has a problem, it's like,
00:19:28.780 are you a content creator? Because we really want to boost your profile.
00:19:32.280 I don't want you to boost my profile. I want you to fix this.
00:19:36.100 i don't need i like making podcasts i love your podcast but i don't need to make a podcast to get
00:19:42.900 you to fix the ai that would make both of us gorillas and i especially don't need to make
00:19:47.300 a podcast for this three or four times every single goddamn year when somebody pointed it 0.83
00:19:52.580 out in 2013 and you can't provide me a change log for what actual interventions and reports 0.65
00:19:58.660 and white papers you published and synthesized to make it stop happening i don't need a podcast i
00:20:04.420 I need a paper trail.
00:20:06.120 But they don't believe that we should have those things
00:20:10.240 or it's right for us to ask for those things.
00:20:12.200 And that, I think, is what is really,
00:20:15.160 especially as we are in these times,
00:20:16.820 it's really getting stressful
00:20:18.080 because we are asking for changes and responses
00:20:21.660 to these Herculean, once-in-a-lifetime,
00:20:24.920 once-in-a-millennia occurrences.
00:20:27.920 But the thing about change and innovation
00:20:30.220 is that you don't just innovate a product.
00:20:32.520 You don't just change the technical things.
00:20:34.420 you've got to change society and what is very I think is most uncomfortable for a lot of the
00:20:39.300 people who don't want to listen or things like that and sometimes even for me is that I have
00:20:44.260 to change myself so I when you tell me how do we deal with diversity first of all who's we
00:20:50.600 but the second question is why are we talking about diversity why are we talking about it being
00:20:57.520 a fundamental part of what's not functioning well right why aren't we talking about it be a
00:21:02.060 fundamental part of the reason we're here. I do not like models that constantly ask me to be
00:21:08.480 supplicant to deal with racism when you've already set it up in such a racist way that I'm constantly
00:21:13.340 requesting things. And there are times when I feel you have more of a problem with the fact that when
00:21:17.480 I tell you no or this is wrong and it sticks and you can't shut us down or get us out that we're
00:21:23.100 at that place in some ways, then you have a problem with the fact that the thing don't work.
00:21:29.960 Let's take a quick break.
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00:22:28.160 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.
00:22:33.560 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:22:39.940 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:22:43.640 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.99
00:22:48.760 Shut up. Don't say anything. 0.99
00:22:52.060 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:22:56.240 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:23:00.720 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:23:08.320 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:23:12.240 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:23:15.680 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:23:18.800 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:23:27.760 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:23:33.680 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.
00:23:46.160 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books,
00:23:49.860 the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:23:53.280 I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:23:55.160 I'm obsessed.
00:23:55.920 So obsessed.
00:23:56.860 From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators
00:23:59.480 to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:24:02.820 It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters,
00:24:08.800 then that is a Trojan horse.
00:24:10.680 Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations,
00:24:14.300 or a community of readers who love to think a little too much,
00:24:18.240 you're in the right place.
00:24:19.880 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app,
00:24:22.840 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:24:25.920 See you between the pages.
00:24:33.000 And we're back.
00:24:34.640 You said earlier how we are often having to scream
00:24:38.960 at the top of our lungs for someone to hear us to fix things, right?
00:24:42.300 in that everybody wants to say, oh, listen to black women, amplify black women, we support 0.99
00:24:46.260 black women, until we're pointing out these problems that cause us harm.
00:24:50.480 And if we're not singing this sad song about how hard it is, and we're actually saying, 0.83
00:24:55.260 no, your product, your platform is creating this harm, you shouted out one of my kind
00:25:00.400 of tech heroes, Shereen Mitchell, I don't want to put you on the spot, but founder of
00:25:04.200 Stop Online Valiance Against Women, who really did a lot of the reporting early on about
00:25:08.300 the way that black women experience harm online.
00:25:10.620 So one of my questions for you is like, what if you're someone who just wants to use social media to talk about Real Housewives or do your job and you didn't really sign up to be this unpaid sort of person who is always flagging these issues to make these products function the way they should?
00:25:27.240 Like what like it? How do we exist online if we want to not have this extra unpaid burden that we really shouldn't have just to show up?
00:25:36.800 Well, for me, it's not a what if. I got started online because I'm a sci-fi geek. But that's where a lot of these problems happen. Fandom, nerddom, recently Twitch was having hate raids where they basically were flooding the thing, flooding people's, they were flooding people's streams because of this.
00:25:58.780 And the response is, for me, there's a two-pronged response.
00:26:05.240 The response that I would give you as someone who cares about your mental energy and your
00:26:10.020 faces, like curate your feed list, do this, do that, et cetera, you have to kind of approach
00:26:16.400 it because that's the only way you will be able to operate cleanly online.
00:26:21.500 The other part about it is in the way that I feel as a person who makes these things,
00:26:27.480 someone who looks at the features and such that it's that it's not your responsibility this is
00:26:34.220 no longer a question to me and that might be a response I'm annoyed and tired of the pandemic
00:26:39.580 and how we haven't addressed racism sexism and everything to the point we are now worried about
00:26:44.780 going outside because of what's happening it is the point it is the it is the need and the
00:26:50.360 necessity of the people to fix it I I don't I don't want to have another unpaid conversation
00:26:56.900 Can you do free QA research?
00:26:59.300 Can you do free design research and free user interviews?
00:27:02.760 Because you don't believe me when I say I have a different experience,
00:27:06.320 so I've got to cut and paste and do a whole report,
00:27:08.920 but you're paying somebody within your organization
00:27:11.160 who's usually not black and doesn't use the platform six figures to do it.
00:27:15.880 At this point, get that person to do their job 0.51
00:27:18.240 or design it so that I can report for free
00:27:23.040 because the other side of this is as someone who looks at community,
00:27:25.700 as someone who looks at user feedback.
00:27:28.100 Most of the time when we are experiencing things like that,
00:27:30.720 we want to tell someone because we want it to stop.
00:27:32.740 So we'll intrinsically go, hey,
00:27:34.600 and some of it is carceral telling a homeowner,
00:27:37.400 but we'll turn to somebody and be like,
00:27:38.520 hi, I'm experiencing these things.
00:27:40.540 I think one of the things that is most enraging to me
00:27:43.580 about the content creator distinction specifically
00:27:46.980 is watching TikTok users and watching TikTok creators.
00:27:52.360 There is, yes, the power of black,
00:27:54.000 storytelling, the power of black,
00:27:55.280 art and culture but if you are a young person of color but specifically black i am in awe of you
00:28:04.140 you are learning high level video editing and algorithmic justice and machine learning and
00:28:09.500 you are putting it into a medium on the medium that is that is marginalizing you and you are
00:28:15.420 quick and good about it because how quickly does tiktok respond when somebody publishes and goes
00:28:19.860 hey, you're surfacing unnatural material, which means that these, and I say young kids, to me,
00:28:26.040 I'm right now, anybody under 25. I don't mean, I don't mean to infantilize, but anyone who's
00:28:32.200 under 25. So these are people who, if they had gone to school for this, would not be finished
00:28:36.880 with the PhD. But they are already quick at recognizing these patterns, recognizing the
00:28:42.720 tech reporting it. They are doing that work already. And they're working as scientists,
00:28:48.560 they're working as observers, they're working as researchers, they're working as organizers,
00:28:52.440 not making dances, and we're saying to them, all you're doing is content creation, but the honest
00:28:58.980 truth is they have to run a small think tank for every single account to respond, to curate,
00:29:07.920 because we have done so poorly in actually building the product and building the processes
00:29:13.620 for harm reduction and harm mitigation
00:29:16.100 or just moderating our content.
00:29:19.060 That's, one of the things that I'm starting to find
00:29:21.900 with the frame, and it's often confrontational,
00:29:24.900 eh, I'll be confrontational a little bit,
00:29:26.680 is I'm no longer accepting the framing of,
00:29:29.220 so let's hear more about my problem.
00:29:32.040 Okay, if we're going to start there,
00:29:34.000 tell me how you got to 2021
00:29:36.060 and didn't know this was a problem.
00:29:38.300 Tell me how you got to 2021 0.99
00:29:40.520 and you didn't know that marginalized people
00:29:43.040 have a harder time online. Tell me how you are in a think tank, in a nonprofit, in a job, when you
00:29:49.400 didn't, if you don't know this, when I can pull reports now from Harvard, Oxford, Yale, at one
00:29:54.940 point Clemson University, Amnesty International, myself, all of this is open publication. These are
00:30:01.520 the publications you mix. So why are you talking to me like I don't know what's going on? And number
00:30:06.180 two, don't tell me about my tone of the fact that I'm angry. We've seen what these people do
00:30:12.520 unchecked. I have been getting death threats since I was 22. I'm going to let people in on a secret.
00:30:20.720 I'm 37. I've been getting death threats for 15 smooth straight years. I'm not here to babysit
00:30:30.520 you. I'm not here to make you feel good about the dereliction of your duty. I'm here to fix this
00:30:36.600 problem, and if I can't fix it for me, I'm here to fix it for the people behind me. Now, we can do
00:30:40.440 it with some social things, but we also can do that by you just doing your job. Don't automatically
00:30:45.080 turn on contents. Don't use an AI that recognizes me as a gorilla. Don't do it. We don't have to
00:30:50.980 have a discussion. You don't have to hear my thoughts. I'm not a small child. Just fix it.
00:30:56.040 Start making products that help people tell you what they need. And then when they tell you them,
00:31:01.500 don't try and finesse it so you do something different because you're not comfortable.
00:31:04.760 you've been told what is needed either do it or be honest about the fact of why you're not doing it
00:31:11.220 and also allow and start allowing us to have those discussions where we just get to do our job
00:31:17.000 we're coders and creators and thinkers and writers and we want to go in and write a good
00:31:22.600 bit of code we want to write some good copy we want to build these communities make it so i can
00:31:27.180 do that i my part of my job description shouldn't be how do i help you solve racism no we're going
00:31:36.300 to do it together great but i would just really like to build the code that i'm building i'm
00:31:42.400 working on a product now and with mozilla rally so we are specifically trying to build ways of
00:31:53.400 tracking data, tracking everything from doomscrolling, which was coined by a woman of color, Karen
00:32:02.100 Hough, about how you are online to how ads are targeted to you without having to go through
00:32:07.440 platforms. It's built through web extension. And it's great because right after that, what
00:32:12.760 is it? Facebook shut down. Facebook observer. We found out that all the data everybody was
00:32:16.580 getting wasn't true and what that is it takes everything in me not to start with so I told you
00:32:24.960 so and everything in me is not good enough so I told you so that there is um there are so many
00:32:32.640 people who told these people this one of the jokes I have is that there are people who have
00:32:37.640 formed a coalition of oh my god don't do that when it comes to social media who don't agree on
00:32:42.460 anything else. Don't agree on anything else. But you've found it from sex workers, ex-religious
00:32:50.660 conservatives, abortion rights activists, black women, tech people. All of us have come together
00:32:57.720 and been like, I need you to think about this. Why would you trust Facebook? Why would you
00:33:02.480 organize anything to make you trust Facebook? As a tactical decision, not as a whatever decision.
00:33:08.980 And that comes not from our notice, because we're not on the inside.
00:33:11.680 We've been the people these attack.
00:33:13.240 I need to know why you don't trust them, and I need you to build in better parts.
00:33:18.320 And there's like, no, no, no, you don't understand how we work in Silicon Valley.
00:33:22.020 We're friends, blah, blah, blah.
00:33:24.000 Now you get this, that most of this data is not good.
00:33:26.940 How many people's PhDs just got screwed?
00:33:29.940 Because that data isn't viable.
00:33:32.720 But nobody wanted to even think in terms of teaching.
00:33:36.260 Let's be prepared if we're hostile.
00:33:38.980 you and I and other marginalized people have no other option but to think what happens if this
00:33:45.380 goes left and that is a reality in the world and they have been watching it for years so why aren't
00:33:51.700 they prepared and it's if you feel uncomfortable about giving me an answer that feels like a thing
00:34:00.040 you need to work out right when you have a jailbreak or something like that you fix that
00:34:07.000 immediately. What is it about our issues? What is it about the issues of people represented
00:34:11.880 that you can take so long? And I think the point that we really need to move from now if we want
00:34:16.880 to get better is that we're not going to get past this until we do that. Why are certain people's
00:34:23.020 issues, why are certain responses always secondary? That's not if we keep dancing around this and
00:34:28.240 we're going to keep up coming up with funny terms we're more concerned with, but we're not getting
00:34:31.500 past that until we answer it and it's super uncomfortable and i am a human so i understand
00:34:37.920 why you don't want to but we're now in a pandemic that is going into its second possibly third year
00:34:43.980 because we don't have we can't understand huge basic kind of empathetic social reactions there
00:34:50.900 was a run-up on the capital of racists who were trying to kill people you don't hang a noose on
00:34:58.260 the front of the Capitol just as a symbolic gesture in the United States of America. Do not
00:35:03.200 tell that black lie to my black face. I know what my people have been through. You put a noose on 0.99
00:35:08.580 a, you put a noose somewhere, you trying to hang some people. They did that on the Capitol. They
00:35:14.000 still haven't had a real full hearing. We've had all of this happen and we're still just listening.
00:35:20.280 Why aren't we acting? And until we get to this point, we're going to keep having spares up and
00:35:25.880 flurs up and goes up and goes down until we answer that question of why aren't we moving
00:35:30.040 more after a quick break
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00:36:30.940 if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality
00:36:34.900 welcome home this is prose society the weekly podcast that's part book club part group chat
00:36:42.440 for thought daughters pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and
00:36:46.700 love island deserve the same level of discourse i'm eli rallo and every week we're connecting
00:36:51.680 the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:36:56.660 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From best-selling
00:37:00.960 authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off
00:37:05.740 the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that
00:37:12.420 is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations,
00:37:17.700 or a community of readers who love to think a little too much,
00:37:21.600 you're in the right place.
00:37:23.260 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app,
00:37:26.220 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:37:29.200 See you between the pages.
00:37:31.320 When I was 14 years old,
00:37:33.560 I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.
00:37:37.080 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring
00:37:39.780 how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:37:43.420 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. 0.70
00:37:47.080 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.
00:37:55.600 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:37:59.860 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:38:04.420 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:38:11.840 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:38:15.080 silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it
00:38:20.640 takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the
00:38:26.320 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:38:36.580 Let's get right back into it. One of the things that I feel so frustrated about as someone who
00:38:41.740 has worked in the disinformation and online extremism space for a while, is this idea
00:38:46.100 that we had to combat for so long that it's just jokes and people make these comments
00:38:50.640 online, it's not serious.
00:38:52.420 It didn't take a rocket scientist to see that online commentary doesn't just stay online
00:38:59.200 and that what we saw on January 6th is directly related.
00:39:02.280 But talk about like lying to my face, how often I would be in meetings with tech leadership
00:39:09.520 and they would say, oh, well, it's about speech.
00:39:12.200 You know, this is not about, like, we're not trying to, you know,
00:39:14.640 this is not going to be related to, like, in real life actions.
00:39:17.580 We know things that start online don't stay online.
00:39:20.580 And so what we, I mean, I live in D.C.
00:39:22.980 What I saw in my own backyard on January 6th,
00:39:25.420 I saw it as a direct reaction to the inaction that you just described,
00:39:30.560 to all of these different little cutesy names
00:39:33.580 for what we could all plainly see.
00:39:35.260 It's like extremism.
00:39:36.140 um how spicy you want me to get get spicy i have a hard time believing that spaces and
00:39:45.020 confederations that are whiter than the racists and the proud boys are well versed in protecting me
00:39:51.700 if you do a misinformation panel and everybody's white i've stopped listening 0.89
00:39:58.900 at this point if you can't grab somebody to be hey let's talk just stand there and talk
00:40:07.500 that's a base level of work that you're not willing to do that i now know that i can't trust
00:40:13.900 anything else i'll really i'll really come up because there is you've had time and the reason
00:40:21.480 it's a joke is because it's a joke to them it is jokes and speech to them and i and i'm actually
00:40:28.660 before this I worked with the choral project so I was the community research
00:40:32.220 lead for the choral project and that was about comment moderation so we worked on
00:40:36.980 building things to moderate comments and there are times depending and like
00:40:42.660 there's a whole separate thing he's like you have to set what you'll accept etc
00:40:45.040 etc there are times where I would moderate something or look at something 0.98
00:40:48.060 and this is something that I would punch someone in the face for if they were
00:40:52.020 standing right in front of me but as a content moderator based on what we had
00:40:57.740 defined our parameters were, I had to let it go. I might not like it, but I would let it go.
00:41:04.960 The thing that is often grounded in a lot of these decisions is that
00:41:11.860 often we are not asking them to do anything they have not set out in their own rules or bylines or
00:41:19.300 anything like that. We are asking them to merely enforce them for marginalized people the way they
00:41:25.920 enforce them for people who might matter. That's literally the only thing I'm asking you to do. 0.65
00:41:32.060 I actually had an experience with Twitter
00:41:34.100 last year. I think it was last year. Time means nothing right now. But there is a congressperson
00:41:42.140 who said something so violently anti-Asian and xenophobic. I don't want to repeat it,
00:41:52.640 but it was Congresswoman, that speech warning, I just went, you racist, raggedy bitch. 1.00
00:42:04.280 This is not something my mom's going to be proud of. 1.00
00:42:06.640 That's not necessarily what I'm necessarily proud of at that moment.
00:42:08.760 Because it was just such a gut reaction of what?
00:42:12.040 And there was, and I knew I was in good company because that was not, I wasn't the only person
00:42:18.560 who said that.
00:42:19.260 It was me. It was a reporter from, I think, the South China Post.
00:42:23.880 I think there was a white mom in Texas who was like, oh, my God, you racist bitch. 1.00
00:42:28.740 I was the only person who was blocked. 0.99
00:42:31.680 I'm a verified account for whatever that means, but I was blocked.
00:42:35.860 They were a whole bunch of things, and there was no way for me to appeal that.
00:42:39.840 I actually had to contact someone separately.
00:42:41.740 And that for moderation, as a person who has moderation experience, that's a really bad model.
00:42:52.360 If you're worried about things like that, and especially for a targeted congresswoman, you actually should be more concerned about that language because she's a congresswoman.
00:43:00.780 So I actually was not against the fact that I was blocked because you actually have to worry about that because, again, one of the most targeted people online for racism and has been for about 10 years is Diane Abbott, the MP in London, the most targeted person in the Anglophone world, is a black woman, black MP for labor in London.
00:43:24.480 that's almost never mentioned
00:43:26.800 she's targeted more than anyone you can think of
00:43:29.480 I think at certain points she was targeted more than
00:43:31.280 Michelle Obama
00:43:32.260 but we don't talk about that because of her 0.57
00:43:35.480 specific status
00:43:36.600 but when the problem came
00:43:39.160 the hammer came down on me
00:43:41.740 the hammer did not
00:43:43.780 come down on other folks
00:43:45.600 and there was no way to aggregate
00:43:47.020 these decisions and I had
00:43:49.380 another friend
00:43:50.740 who had become friendly with
00:43:52.440 who experienced a similar a similar thing and had someone say well we're not sure that happens 1.00
00:44:00.360 to black women and you're lying or you're bad at your job but also 0.96
00:44:14.600 how much do you want us to do how do you get us through if you're going to gaslight us at every 0.99
00:44:19.400 turn. If it always is something you kick down the road, we'll get to it. What we're getting
00:44:24.680 to is that black women are leaving these platforms. Twitter just had to pay $800 million to somebody 0.99
00:44:31.480 at its own board because engagement numbers were fudged. I have a slightly more than hunch
00:44:38.300 that some of it has to do with how badly they've moderated these racists and bots accounts
00:44:44.140 versus the actual content those people create and you've got to be you've got to be willing to get
00:44:52.300 better at the work and what i think is often the issue for some things is that some people
00:45:00.220 do not want to change they don't want to change it is not to them even with the nazis in the
00:45:05.900 streets the fascists running up and down the the planet on fire and are still in the middle of a
00:45:10.940 pandemic it's not serious enough for them yet to change the way they do things
00:45:19.100 and that is a hard thing to say and it's a hard thing to hear but until there's an actual change
00:45:26.300 i don't know that we can say anything different and for someone who if i was going back to the
00:45:33.340 loop-de-loop i started with but if i'm going to be a talk to a black woman i care about online 0.95
00:45:40.460 the first thing I would tell you is they have yet to make steps that are 0.96
00:45:47.180 clear for your protection. That's a them problem, that's not you problem, but I want to make sure
00:45:51.740 that you are aware of that. And that would be the thing, because my first concern is going to be how 0.58
00:45:58.620 you are doing, not how the tech is doing. In terms of, like, what do I see before,
00:46:03.980 one of the things I really like about my job right now and the project we're doing
00:46:08.860 with Mozilla Rally is it's starting to address what I think is always the fundamental problem
00:46:14.040 with these things is how do you start getting information that people can independently
00:46:17.740 corroborate? How do you start getting that kind of raw data that these platforms have been siloing
00:46:25.380 and keeping to themselves? How do you get people who honestly want to have a good experience and
00:46:30.340 will then tell you that to be able to get some real context? So when you tell me when you because
00:46:35.220 of some of these studies we're working with, we're working with Princeton, we're working
00:46:38.660 with Stanford, and we are going to be working with the markup, and I'm very excited about
00:46:42.800 that because they do great work. But couple the data with talking to people and asking,
00:46:49.060 hey, how did you feel? What was going on when you saw this? And it's going to be done with
00:46:54.560 respect, it's going to be done with transparency, and it's going to be done in ways that are
00:46:59.860 not directly under the people who have taken so long to do right by you and still fail.
00:47:05.220 And I think that is what I am hoping more works through
00:47:10.460 is that we stop making the idea of people
00:47:12.740 and things secondary at work
00:47:15.140 and we start moving into the know.
00:47:17.020 It is important to us
00:47:18.680 that we think about how people experience things.
00:47:21.840 Yeah.
00:47:22.860 You know, I love all of this.
00:47:26.300 One of the reasons why I'm so interested
00:47:27.980 in these conversations
00:47:28.980 about how these online spaces are moderated 0.93
00:47:31.220 is because, you know, you talk about women
00:47:33.060 who are essentially pushed out of these spaces 1.00
00:47:35.720 because of this kind of harassment
00:47:37.280 that just you don't see it ever ending.
00:47:40.000 And I was one of those women.
00:47:41.340 There was a time in my life
00:47:42.360 where I was a very, very avid Redditor.
00:47:45.260 I would like wake up
00:47:46.400 and I was unpaid, moderating
00:47:48.540 all of these different spaces.
00:47:49.840 And, you know, it was a big part of who I was.
00:47:53.480 It was a big part of like what made me, me.
00:47:56.160 And if you've ever been on Reddit,
00:47:57.560 you know sometimes it's a place
00:47:59.100 where you are going to be harassed.
00:48:01.540 Not just people- 0.55
00:48:02.180 That lady subreddit was one of the most targeted reddits online up until, like, 2018.
00:48:07.180 Exactly.
00:48:08.180 And, you know, I remember thinking, so when it was harassment that wasn't just, like, they're saying mean things to me.
00:48:14.720 It was, like, I know where you live, and it sounds like this person maybe does know where I live.
00:48:18.700 I remember thinking, like, I've given so much of my time and my energy and myself to this platform.
00:48:24.360 Certainly someone is going to hear me.
00:48:26.200 Certainly when I speak up, I will be listened to.
00:48:29.060 I will be heard.
00:48:30.040 And when I realized that there was no one to hear what I had to say, there was nowhere to turn to, I realized it just wasn't worth it.
00:48:38.100 And so I checked out.
00:48:41.080 I just logged off.
00:48:42.400 And so I think back to, like, how much those communities meant to me, how much those spaces meant to me.
00:48:48.140 And I just let them go because every time I raised what I was experiencing, that some of this stuff was really scary, no one listened.
00:48:57.220 It was like I was shouting into a void.
00:48:58.620 And so I always think about all the women, what it feels like to go through this, what it feels like to be on the other side of it, and what it feels like to finally be like, enough is enough.
00:49:07.460 I'm so happy that you talk about the actual emotional experience of going through it, not just like as a user, but as a person who experiences things.
00:49:16.560 So I'm going to tell you something that I want to tell everybody.
00:49:19.820 And this is something that I have not learned, but therapy helps.
00:49:23.560 it is not your responsibility to set yourself on fire
00:49:28.500 so other people have warmth and heat.
00:49:33.760 You didn't just let it go.
00:49:36.940 I don't like that.
00:49:38.600 You were exposed to a level of abuse,
00:49:41.680 non-response, and trauma
00:49:45.440 because the things we are called and said to us online
00:49:48.480 are traumatic
00:49:49.620 that ended up not being worth the effort you put in.
00:49:55.740 There is, I don't know why there becomes,
00:49:58.600 like I feel like there's often a belief
00:50:00.060 that hard work must be terrorizing
00:50:03.260 that I do not like. 0.97
00:50:04.920 Because sometimes hard work sucks.
00:50:05.900 You just got to do the thing. 0.76
00:50:06.760 You got to do the rep.
00:50:07.360 You got to do the rep.
00:50:08.060 You got to do the project.
00:50:08.900 But you shouldn't have to be hazed
00:50:13.700 to talk about your hair. 1.00
00:50:16.460 You shouldn't have to be hazed
00:50:17.580 to talk about yourself in a movie.
00:50:18.960 And if you are, and it's against their guidelines,
00:50:23.880 there is someone's job for this to be done.
00:50:26.460 And it's also the thing to talk about moderation
00:50:28.520 is that even when moderation is done,
00:50:30.160 most content moderation farms are farmed off 1.00
00:50:32.740 to usually women in the Philippines. 1.00
00:50:35.500 So we are hurting women of color coming and going 0.99
00:50:37.700 because not only are they reading our trauma, 0.79
00:50:39.960 they're also seeing the things we never see,
00:50:42.180 which are assault videos.
00:50:45.680 Soria Chamale wrote about this, I think for Verge,
00:50:48.480 again five years ago but we're getting all of that and it's just like tapping out for what
00:50:55.180 doesn't serve you is a completely and normal human response and you're a human and i remember
00:51:03.920 specifically around reddit because like i get sometimes spicy but alexis ohani was like i
00:51:09.200 don't understand what's this house is happening why are people getting like this online sir
00:51:14.180 you were the president and CEO of Reddit. Sir, I'm going to need you to give me more than a tweet.
00:51:24.480 I'm going to need to give me more than a wonderfully edited podcast with the rising music.
00:51:32.860 If you really want to know how we got here, you're going to sit down with some people,
00:51:39.760 and they're not going to just be content creators. They're going to be black designers. They're going
00:51:43.500 to be black PhDs. They're going to be black users, and they're going to be queer users, 0.96
00:51:48.340 and they're going to be Asian users, and they're going to be Latine users, and we're going to sit 0.77
00:51:53.380 down and actually go back, and we're going to make some hard lines in the sand, and if we're 0.70
00:51:58.380 not going to back it up, what you're actually telling me is you don't want to do this, and
00:52:03.740 honestly, my shocking opinion, it is fine that you don't want to do this, but every moment you play
00:52:09.900 in my face, every moment you make a big declaration, every moment you don't follow through, every
00:52:14.000 moment we really want to meet with you and dodge that call, or you say that you're doing
00:52:18.320 a fellowship and it's $30,000 less than you pay the lowest paid person who gets a job.
00:52:26.000 Every single time you do that, you sap energy from people. You sap energy from movements. You
00:52:32.520 sap the energy for people to have good communities online. And you don't have to do
00:52:39.840 it to me personal, even though it's been done to me personal, for it to matter to me. And if you
00:52:46.060 don't want to change, that's fine. But do not be surprised when your connection numbers go down.
00:52:50.960 Don't be surprised when people find new ways to do this. And don't be shocked when as people who
00:52:55.860 are against you, the thing that I cannot abide by is for all of these people who are listening and
00:53:01.540 pretending and caring, but do not actually do the work. At the end of the day, your user,
00:53:07.320 those people want to have you to have a good experience because they want to
00:53:11.140 have a safe place to be the people who are the racist the Nazis all of them
00:53:14.840 they fundamentally don't want your platform to work they don't want your
00:53:17.880 product to work they don't want people to be able to use it
00:53:20.020 they want you to fail why are you focused on the people who want you to
00:53:25.120 fail more than you are focused on the people who want you to win
00:53:27.520 and what social cues and what social biases do you have
00:53:32.900 that make this something that you keep doing
00:53:35.500 are you if you're and again we're not going to get past if you don't answer that question
00:53:41.540 so i have a final question for you this is a question i usually end every interview with
00:53:50.060 so we've said all of this all of a sudden are you hopeful about the state of the internet
00:53:56.400 and technology when you look at where we are are you hopeful for what's on the horizon
00:54:00.400 do you think it's better than where we are now or worse i think it's different
00:54:04.880 and I am
00:54:06.300 I'm built to be hopeful
00:54:08.580 my mother
00:54:11.020 sometimes says about me
00:54:12.760 I'm very very brilliant but not sometimes very smart
00:54:15.060 I've got more hope than sense
00:54:17.080 but
00:54:18.180 I am hopeful
00:54:21.000 about technology because I'm hopeful
00:54:23.100 about people
00:54:23.980 that's part of the reason why I'm drawn to the work I do
00:54:26.500 I'm hopeful about people
00:54:27.620 again I say the analysis
00:54:30.740 and the things I see
00:54:32.280 the young folks on TikTok
00:54:34.580 talk to you oh my god I can't imagine being hopeful when you see someone reviving an ancient
00:54:40.760 indigenous practice of throat singing with their mother how can you not be hopeful when you see 0.93
00:54:47.500 young queer kids be able to get help how how can you not be how can you not be hopeful when someone
00:54:55.760 teaches you how to magically get curry stains out of a tupperware part I'm Guyanese I actually have
00:55:03.860 on my hat but I'm Guyanese and you know that that's a mystical magical thing and you see that
00:55:07.800 someone can do that you are I'm inexplicably hopeful that you can see that in the streets
00:55:14.140 but I also think that hope is not enough I don't think that there's I'm not excited by far away
00:55:21.100 things I'm excited by the work that's being done and so many people are showing up to do that work
00:55:26.140 but I am also very very frightened because sense that is common with something that was given to
00:55:32.320 me is how much longer people will have the energy and the resources to do that work is what scares
00:55:40.060 me and how committed people are to actually redistributing or revolutionizing so that
00:55:46.340 they can do the work that's what scares me but when it comes down to do I feel hope at all of
00:55:51.000 course I get up and I got if I get up and I have something to do and somebody is saying that they
00:55:56.360 are thinking about a thing or they've noticed a thing and they still committed to making a piece
00:56:00.820 of art or making a piece of media or even a tweet that says, this is important to me
00:56:06.880 and I want the world to be slightly better. God, I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful every day.
00:56:12.820 Sidette Harry. We are just about out of time. I have to thank each and every one of you
00:56:22.800 for being here. You have no idea how much this means to me. Thank you so much for leaning
00:56:26.060 into this conversation. Thank you again, Sidette, for being here. If you want to hear more,
00:56:30.540 like this, please tune into my podcast. There are no girls on the internet. We would love to have 1.00
00:56:34.520 you. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you. So terrifying. You're so good.
00:56:53.380 Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at
00:56:57.500 hello at tangody.com you can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangody.com there are no
00:57:02.860 girls on the internet was created by me bridget todd it's a production of iheart radio and unbossed
00:57:07.100 creative jonathan strickland is our executive producer tari harrison is our producer and sound
00:57:11.740 engineer michael amato is our contributing producer i'm your host bridget todd if you want to help us
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00:57:22.380 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
00:57:24.440 your podcasts.
00:57:38.220 I survived nine months
00:57:40.480 in captivity, and I've spent
00:57:42.400 my life exploring how other people
00:57:44.440 survive what should have destroyed them.
00:57:46.940 I'm Elizabeth Smart,
00:57:48.320 and these are the Survivor Files.
00:57:50.240 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:57:58.200 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
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00:58:09.940 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:58:15.380 Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride
00:58:20.660 and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting
00:58:24.940 the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk
00:58:29.560 creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro
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00:58:39.440 I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast
00:58:42.560 Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb
00:58:44.180 You know, I'm always searching for
00:58:46.380 inspiration and useful tools
00:58:48.520 to maximize joy
00:58:49.760 Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice
00:58:52.340 to aspiring actors
00:58:53.920 and really anybody hoping to stand out
00:58:56.560 You're not hired just to fill
00:58:58.660 time and space, you're hired to
00:59:00.520 fill the space with you
00:59:02.600 Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb
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00:59:06.980 Apple Podcasts or wherever
00:59:08.660 you get your podcasts.
00:59:10.520 I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 3 podcast.
00:59:14.920 This is a story about a horrendous situation that destroyed two families.
00:59:19.960 It's a scorched earth war that shows just how far someone will go to get what they want.
00:59:25.920 Cindy said, I had to choose between the truth and my family, and I had to choose the truth.
00:59:31.160 Listen to Season 3 of Burden of Guilt on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
00:59:37.400 you get your podcasts this is an iheart podcast guaranteed human