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

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00:00:50.080 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:00:53.240 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:00:58.760 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

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00:01:51.160 You're listening to Disinformed, a miniseries from There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:01:59.680 I'm Bridget Todd.

00:02:04.440 So if you listened to this week's episode of Disinformed, it featured a conversation 0.95

00:02:07.720 with Shereen Mitchell, who is pretty much the OG of researching women of color and

00:02:11.840 their experiences online, including things like disinformation and online harassment.

00:02:16.000 So in the episode, we talked about how Black women were some of the earliest people to

00:02:19.760 raise the alarm about the threat posed by disinformation. And we name-checked Shafika

00:02:24.000 Hudson a few times as someone who did this years before a lot of people were really talking

00:02:28.020 seriously about disinformation. Here's a clip. You and I know about women like Shafika Hudson

00:02:34.280 and Anissa Crockett, who basically helped to identify, you know, fake accounts pertaining

00:02:42.700 to be Black women. It's looking at the way in which people of color, Black people specifically,

00:02:48.160 are trying to change their environment,

00:02:52.440 trying to stop the harassment,

00:02:54.480 trying to stop being killed by the state,

00:02:57.180 trying to stop all these things

00:02:59.020 that are happening to them and their communities,

00:03:01.220 and they're seen as the problem

00:03:03.380 of which they should not be protected.

00:03:07.180 Shafika's story is a really fascinating look

00:03:09.120 at what happens when social media platforms

00:03:10.900 don't listen to their users.

00:03:12.480 And it turns out the stakes are actually really high,

00:03:14.920 not just for Black women, for everybody.

00:03:16.500 On this classic episode of There Are No Girls on the Internet from July 2020, I spoke to Shafika about uncovering an army of bad actors trying to use social media to sow chaos and division. 1.00

00:03:27.120 When the powers that be did nothing, Shafika did what women always do. She rolled up her sleeves and tried to stop them herself. 1.00

00:03:34.500 Let's listen in to how Black women tried to save Twitter.

00:03:39.640 Okay, so I could tell you this story a hundred times in a hundred different ways. 1.00

00:03:44.040 People just don't listen to women, especially black women. 1.00

00:03:47.500 And it comes with big consequences. 1.00

00:03:50.020 Six years ago, black feminists were experiencing a coordinated pattern of disinformation on Twitter. 1.00

00:03:55.240 They spoke up, but no one listened. 1.00

00:03:57.860 That failure to listen to black women had a big impact. 1.00

00:04:00.920 It allowed for the weaponization of online harassment tactics against other marginalized people on social media 0.95

00:04:05.620 and presents continued threats to our democracy and safety.

00:04:09.860 Okay, so let's just get this out of the way right now. 1.00

00:04:11.960 Twitter is a fucking cesspool. 0.99

00:04:14.380 If you spend any time there, you probably already know this. 1.00

00:04:17.200 Bad faith commentary, reply guys, trolls, harassment.

00:04:20.740 It can really just be an unpleasant place.

00:04:22.840 In May, Twitter announced they would start labeling tweets that spread misleading information. 0.89

00:04:27.380 But this comes years after black feminists raised the alarm about it and were ignored. 1.00

00:04:31.680 These women weren't just being attacked. 1.00

00:04:33.380 They were learning about the tactics that bad actors used to infiltrate online communities. 0.89

00:04:37.720 They spoke up about what they were experiencing online.

00:04:40.080 So why didn't anyone listen?

00:04:41.960 And what might have happened if they had?

00:04:46.960 Shafika Hudson?

00:04:48.620 Freelancer? 0.88

00:04:49.640 Cat lady?

00:04:50.560 Sometimes activist?

00:04:53.480 Shafika had been using Twitter regularly since almost its very beginning, 1.00

00:04:56.820 where she spent most of her time online connecting with other Black feminists. 1.00

00:05:00.260 In 2014, while job searching, she noticed a hashtag that just did not make sense. 1.00

00:05:05.620 End Father's Day. 1.00

00:05:07.140 The people pushing the End Father's Day hashtag on Twitter appeared to be Black feminists. 1.00

00:05:11.880 They talked about how we should abolish Father's Day because too many Black men date outside of their race. 0.98

00:05:16.380 Or because Black men don't support their children. 0.98

00:05:18.480 Stuff that just seemed really out there. 0.96

00:05:21.060 I must have had like 10 different tabs open because I was also like doing a job search.

00:05:27.080 And just going about my life.

00:05:29.180 And one tweet caught my attention because it was so completely off the wall.

00:05:36.880 And I don't know who retweeted it or like how it even arrived. 0.61

00:05:41.420 in my timeline but it wasn't anything that any black feminist anywhere would say it was like 1.00

00:05:49.860 what was it oh gosh yeah in father's day uh i wish these white women would stop stealing our men 1.00

00:05:59.400 something just completely off the wall that had nothing to do with anything and the avatar was 1.00

00:06:07.500 someone who i didn't recognize now the thing about the black feminist community on twitter 0.96

00:06:12.500 the thing about a lot of communities on twitter is that you might not necessarily get along with 0.96

00:06:18.140 everybody but you know who everyone is like and if you haven't met them or seen them out

00:06:24.520 or you know done a tweet up hung out at a party something someone you know has and in this

00:06:31.620 particular instance i'm clicked on the person well the accounts profile i said okay who is this

00:06:37.480 I've never seen this person and it looks like they just joined like two days ago and they're

00:06:46.040 just tweeting about this with this hashtag and they have you know the photo of a black woman

00:06:51.440 but it just nothing adds up so that drove me to click on the hashtag and father's day and lo and

00:06:57.440 behold when I did a twitter search there's a bunch of accounts that are saying things that

00:07:04.320 are completely left like not left like you know politically just kind of left like left you know

00:07:11.580 where are you coming from left and I didn't recognize any of them so I at that point I just

00:07:19.240 kind of asked a general question from my timeline to say okay you guys what's going on I keep seeing

00:07:25.660 this hashtag and these accounts that I don't recognize with people who look like they just

00:07:30.020 joined like five seconds ago. And someone said, yeah, it looks like this is like some kind of

00:07:35.660 4chan thing. That's when I really started digging it. I said, okay, well, this is really awful

00:07:45.740 because they're pretending to be Black women who are saying these awful things. And I'm smart 0.96

00:07:51.880 enough to know that nothing here that they're saying is even remotely what a real Black feminist

00:08:01.500 would say. I honestly think the people who they fooled immediately were already probably biased 0.98

00:08:08.040 against feminists or Black women or some combination of the two. I didn't get the

00:08:14.900 impression that they were fooling most of the people I followed is what I mean, but

00:08:18.400 they were getting some reaction.

00:08:21.380 That's when Shafika went from curious

00:08:22.980 to pissed. 0.96

00:08:24.760 I got so mad.

00:08:26.900 Like, I remember just being so

00:08:29.080 angry, I could feel my cheeks and my ears

00:08:31.220 heat up.

00:08:34.380 Honestly,

00:08:35.360 like, you know, in the cartoons

00:08:37.160 where the character

00:08:38.540 like, starts steaming

00:08:41.140 from their face.

00:08:42.660 Smelt coming through your ears?

00:08:44.060 Yes. You hear the tea kettle whistle.

00:08:48.400 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

00:09:07.420 it because we don't deal with enough out here in real life and online we don't deal with enough 0.95

00:09:14.260 we've got this whole silly operation thing happening so I said well let me just go ahead

00:09:23.740 and take a look and see what's really going on and see how bad this is and as I began to dig

00:09:30.040 I saw just how bad it was and I realized that I would not be able to point out all of these

00:09:37.340 accounts. Alone. You know how in movies when a character discovers this thing they've been

00:09:42.080 investigating is much, much bigger than they realized? There is no Pepe Sylvia and this thing

00:09:46.300 goes all the way to the top? Well, that's how Shafika felt. She knew the Twitter accounts

00:09:50.780 pushing End Father's Day weren't actually Black women. They were just impersonating Black women, 0.99

00:09:55.200 and pretty badly at that. But there were too many of them for this to be a one-off thing. 1.00

00:09:59.580 It had to be coordinated. And there were also too many for her to tackle alone.

00:10:04.020 She wanted to give other black feminists a tool to sniff out these imposters. 1.00

00:10:07.780 So she fought back with a hashtag of her own. 1.00

00:10:10.020 Your slip is showing.

00:10:11.340 I went ahead with your slip is showing.

00:10:13.780 I might have run another line like, I don't know, your mascara is running, something like that.

00:10:19.000 But your slip is showing just seemed to work.

00:10:20.600 It really just seemed to work.

00:10:22.220 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

00:10:27.120 Literally, it means when your slip is peeking out from underneath your skirt or dress. 0.95

00:10:30.640 A big fashion no-no.

00:10:32.060 But where I come from, that one phrase really highlights a subversiveness of what I'll call auntie-speak.

00:10:37.940 Think of it a bit like the phrase, bless your heart.

00:10:40.420 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.

00:10:46.240 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.

00:10:54.260 You know, just the sort of thing that one of your aunties might say to you in church when it's, oh, honey, you need to fix your slip.

00:11:00.680 is showing except mean because

00:11:05.900 right there's a there's a difference between a your slip is showing from one of your aunties

00:11:15.060 and your slip is showing from somebody who doesn't like you

00:11:17.400 and that was what i was going with it like yeah your slip is showing i'm telling you because i

00:11:25.740 was raised right not because I particularly care about you being embarrassed I love that so much

00:11:35.440 I love how you kind of use this southern auntie expression that we all sort of know what it means 0.75

00:11:43.740 what's also funny is that I would imagine the people who are impersonating Black women 0.66

00:11:47.500 probably that probably that that nuance probably goes right over their heads yes that was that

00:11:52.900 Also, one of the things that I also delighted in, because of course I wouldn't get it, because you'd have to, I mean, you have to be somewhat embedded within certain communities to pick up on the nuance.

00:12:07.540 And they really weren't.

00:12:09.520 It's fitting that we're talking about getting the nuance.

00:12:11.680 That's certain something you can't really teach. 0.70

00:12:14.360 This would ultimately be the undoing of people impersonating Black women online, their inability to authentically sound like Black women. 0.90

00:12:21.440 They'd try to use AAVE, or African American Vernacular English, 0.51

00:12:24.540 but get the expressions all wrong in ways that might as well be screaming,

00:12:28.460 I am a white person pretending to be a black woman.

00:12:31.340 This is where I should probably say that around the same time in 2014,

00:12:34.600 I noticed someone on Twitter using my photo and tweeting confusing things about black people.

00:12:39.520 I never knew who was behind it or why it was happening, 0.98

00:12:41.640 but if I had to say, I would say it wasn't an actual black woman,

00:12:45.460 because the things they were saying were just so out there. 0.97

00:12:47.880 Things like, I'm going to be voting for Trump because Hillary Clinton is whack, y'all.

00:12:52.720 Things that just didn't sound right.

00:12:54.840 Because they're not speakers of AAVE, they're approximating.

00:13:00.140 The thing that really, really, really seemed to immediately point them out was this consistent inability to understand and properly use the habitual B.

00:13:16.840 they didn't get it they did not like they they would use the habitual v like just kind of like

00:13:25.040 for the future tense you know what i mean like it was terrible and a lot of the time it was just like

00:13:31.920 really obviously racist word salad obviously racist word salad i love it my new band name

00:13:39.780 ultimately it seemed like the point of end father's day was to see what kind of discord 0.93

00:13:44.240 bad actors organizing on message boards like 4chan could sew within feminist online communities 1.00

00:13:49.320 and to make actual feminists and our issues look like petty, stupid man-haters whose issues were 1.00

00:13:54.940 so outlandish they could never be taken seriously. It turns out this is actually a pretty common 1.00

00:14:00.520 disinformation tactic. Hijacking public conversations about sensitive topics or

00:14:04.920 wedge issues through media manipulation is a way of making people afraid of having an opinion in

00:14:09.580 public and ultimately trying to silence them. I'm Joan Donovan, and I'm the research director

00:14:15.320 at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. Dr. Donovan says the same way that

00:14:22.240 brands and politicians realize the power of social media, the kind of people who want to

00:14:25.940 harass others did too. It can have a big impact, especially as we're using social media to talk

00:14:31.100 about thorny issues like race, gender, and sexuality. Issues that require nuance to discuss

00:14:36.240 thoughtfully. It makes it tough for anyone to have a good faith dialogue online. Over time,

00:14:42.240 just like the politicians learned to use social media, we had white supremacists figure out that

00:14:49.900 you don't actually need to show up in public to have an impact on people's lives. And so we saw

00:14:57.640 networked and coordinated harassment campaigns, it just continue, even to this day, continue to

00:15:06.720 be useful ways to shut down journalists, to impersonate different groups, and to really

00:15:13.980 cause a fracture in public conversation about really important issues that require some level

00:15:23.560 of nuance, some level of understanding and, and a lot of compassion to talk about, you know,

00:15:29.240 especially racism, in this moment, and people are reticent to talk about it, because they're afraid

00:15:35.060 of saying something wrong, especially in the environments online, where if you do make a

00:15:42.480 misstep, you could get dragged, you could get canceled. But also, some of that might be artificial,

00:15:49.100 It might be the case that people do sympathize with you. People do want to help you grow and learn. But certain media manipulators see that as an opportunity to swarm in and really drive the wedge as deep as it can go.

00:16:05.540 A few right-wing news outlets picked up the hashtag End Father's Day and amplified it as a legitimate feminist take. This is how Fox News covered it. 1.00

00:16:13.340 Like some of these tweets here is from Tasha. She wrote in, everyone knows we only need mothers. Why do we even need Father's Day? Fathers are useless. Hashtag end Father's Day.

00:16:23.100 Oh, come on. Just more of this nasty feminist rhetoric that they're not just interested in ending Father's Day, they're interested in ending men. That's really what they want. 1.00

00:16:31.620 But Shafika says only the kind of people who were already predisposed to be skeptical of women and feminists, and especially Black women, fell for it.

00:16:39.060 well it was actually at first i remember i was incredulous like honestly i was looking at people

00:16:46.160 like oh and father's day feminists take a terrible turn and radical and i was like you

00:16:52.640 got to be kidding but then i realized that no they were completely serious

00:16:57.480 and then it dawned on me that these were people who could not possibly understand feminism

00:17:05.080 them, possibly women in general, Black people, or too much of anything outside of their little

00:17:15.800 Fox News bubble. Like, that was the impression that I got. Like, basically, if you fell for this,

00:17:22.460 it's because you already had a certain set of bigotries in place to fall for it. 1.00

00:17:29.100 What was happening with Black women online is much less widely known than Gamergate, 0.92

00:17:32.800 were angry men coordinated to harass progressive voices online

00:17:36.200 who were mostly women in the months following and Father's Day.

00:17:39.660 Shafika thinks it was ignored because the women who were targeted were Black.

00:17:43.360 Not only was she helping to create a tool to stamp out this kind of disinformation online,

00:17:47.900 she also wanted to document that it was happening 1.00

00:17:49.980 so it wouldn't go forgotten or erased just because it was happening to Black women. 1.00

00:17:56.900 As you're probably aware, a lot of us are big on what we call receipts.

00:18:02.800 so there are plenty of receipts we've got the screen caps you can't even you know delete the

00:18:09.140 tweet because we got it we got the information but yeah i mean that's that's been a big part

00:18:17.800 of it for me and it's frustrating for a lot of us to see essentially a history erased

00:18:26.620 it's particularly distressing for me because you know i'm not i wouldn't consider myself a scholar

00:18:33.680 at this particular point and my friend uh so true who also was absolutely integral with formulating

00:18:42.200 your slip is showing and how it kind of played out and became a useful tool but back when i was

00:18:49.780 a scholar i understood that one of the things that people do when they're trying to erase the impact

00:18:56.460 of a movement is they kind of start deleting history it's a huge feature

00:19:04.960 of erasure when people talk about your slip is showing if they talk about it

00:19:12.220 or if they mention it at all it's it's weird it kind of gets vaguely mentioned in relation to

00:19:21.100 Gamergate as this weird thing that sort of happened before Gamergate that

00:19:25.100 wasn't really relevant and didn't provide anybody any tools or, you know, it was, you know, just

00:19:31.480 kind of a blip as opposed to what it was, which was a scary peek into the future.

00:19:44.040 And again, like I said, hindsight being 2020, once when you start to look back on all of these

00:19:50.860 4chan, I'm sorry, I can't say 4chan without making that noise.

00:19:55.100 You have a special 4chan noise

00:19:59.440 I do, I do

00:20:00.440 Oh my gosh, someone else pointed it out to me

00:20:02.400 It's like, do you realize that you just kind of make this disgusted noise

00:20:05.340 Whenever you say 4chan

00:20:07.440 I'm like, ugh

00:20:08.520 Sorry, it's automatic

00:20:10.680 I'm working on it

00:20:14.600 When you try to kind of understand

00:20:18.660 How everything happened

00:20:21.640 You have to take all of it

00:20:25.100 into account. I really think that in Father's Day and, you know, consequently, your slip is

00:20:31.980 showing were a huge part of it. And it's, it can be frustrating to see it left out of the history

00:20:38.580 because it's like, okay, you're missing a really relevant chunk of understanding how all of this

00:20:45.720 mess happened. Even at a time where we're having conversations around women's experiences online,

00:20:51.680 Why do you think your slip is showing and End Father's Day and the way that women and folks of color have been harassed online pretty much goes overlooked?

00:20:59.180 Why do you think that is?

00:21:00.400 Not necessarily. Yeah. And again, it's frustrating.

00:21:03.340 And my theory remains it's because the targeted group at the time for the End Father's Day of 4chan operation were black women.

00:21:14.340 it's honestly that's that's my that's I have no other answer at this point it's been six years

00:21:22.500 I've watched this just kind of repeatedly happen and the only answer unfortunately that I have is

00:21:31.120 that okay well this is being largely ignored and raped because of who the targets were 0.99

00:21:39.780 And the targets were Black women, particularly Black feminists. 0.99

00:21:45.840 We'll be right back after this quick break. 0.98

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00:22:54.340 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:23:00.260 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:23:06.720 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:23:10.340 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.96

00:23:15.760 shut up, don't say anything.

00:23:18.520 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. 0.98

00:23:22.620 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:23:27.420 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed,

00:23:32.160 and I just started screaming.

00:23:34.480 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:23:38.940 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:23:42.400 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:23:46.000 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:23:54.460 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:24:00.400 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.

00:24:12.860 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:24:19.980 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed, so obsessed.

00:24:23.100 from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments

00:24:28.000 nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling

00:24:34.540 characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart

00:24:39.820 pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much

00:24:44.580 you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever

00:24:51.040 you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. People who are traditionally marginalized online

00:25:01.080 like Black women are specifically impacted by things like disinformation and harassment on

00:25:05.480 social media. The ultimate goal is to freak them out so much that they'll shut down their social 1.00

00:25:10.340 media and just stop talking. Here's Dr. Donovan again. Yeah, so we have to remember that a lot

00:25:18.880 of the ways in which disinformation is carried through networks are also related to the ways in

00:25:27.380 which people are harassed online you know so if you're uh there's a concept called gender trolling

00:25:35.500 it's evolved into trans trolling race trolling um queer trolling where the characteristics of

00:25:43.900 your identity become the thing that they focus on. And they'll, you know, there'll be a swarm 0.85

00:25:51.640 of folks that have coordinated in some other place, usually on a message board. And they will

00:25:58.700 target specific public figures or women or trans folks or prominent black activists in order to

00:26:09.580 get them to shut off their social media. And they will use all kinds of horrendous images and

00:26:17.680 threats to try to get you to feel fear and to shut it down. And we don't see that same kind of level

00:26:26.680 of threat making when it comes to trolling male candidates. And that has to do with the

00:26:34.640 characteristics of the harassers themselves, which often see the harassment as a form of activism

00:26:41.900 and as a form of defending themselves or defending their piece of the culture. And so a lot of these

00:26:51.200 people tend to be misogynists as well as racist. And in their smaller online communities where

00:27:00.840 they don't think they're being watched, they'll talk openly about that. And they'll talk openly

00:27:06.300 about who they should target and why and what the problem is. And I think at this stage,

00:27:13.300 we've been through this enough to know it's a serious problem, but it still happens every day.

00:27:21.540 And especially in this moment, we're seeing an incredible amount of

00:27:25.740 trolling around, you know, anti-Black racism.

00:27:30.440 And the responsibility, though, for dealing with this 0.97

00:27:34.700 lies with the platform companies, first and foremost.

00:27:39.700 Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey hasn't always been the most responsive

00:27:43.140 to the misuse of the platform.

00:27:45.040 You'd think he'd be more concerned, but Shafika says that wasn't the case.

00:27:48.140 She and the other Black women targeted were pretty much left on their own 0.85

00:27:50.820 to figure it out.

00:27:51.560 so did the powers that be at twitter or any other social media company or any other official

00:27:59.400 do anything to fix this no um that the short answer there is no now the longer explanation

00:28:06.260 is that we repeatedly brought this whole thing to the attention of twitter support um to jack

00:28:14.720 directly it's not like nobody knew what was happening it had made the news like so it's not

00:28:23.940 it's not as though um he was ignorant the general impression that i got from twitter support was

00:28:31.160 that oh well you know this is we're so sorry our hands are tied and blah blah blah and i started

00:28:37.560 looking into the tech side of everything and i realized that that wasn't the truth

00:28:41.920 They absolutely had and had tools on hand to stop this.

00:28:50.980 And they just didn't.

00:28:52.740 They just let it happen.

00:28:53.880 They just let us clean up the mess and defend our communities, ourselves.

00:28:58.560 As much as being left to fend for her own community online sucked,

00:29:01.620 it did teach Shafika that her online community could do a lot with a little.

00:29:05.200 and while that wasn't cool at all and hopefully at some point in and you know at some point down

00:29:14.260 the line they will be sufficiently shamed for it because it was just really awful we learned

00:29:21.280 what we could do on the ground with just of the very basic tool of like community organization

00:29:30.540 and a hashtag,

00:29:32.840 we were able to do a whole lot

00:29:35.380 to just stop something

00:29:37.580 that could have gotten way out of hand.

00:29:40.780 We outed it early

00:29:41.840 and we ended it early.

00:29:44.720 And if something had been done

00:29:46.520 to make sure that these fake accounts

00:29:50.200 that we were reporting

00:29:51.200 had been taken out of commission,

00:29:54.560 there would have been a lot less

00:29:57.240 for GamerGate

00:30:00.540 to work with. They wouldn't have had to, they wouldn't have had the opportunity to just go

00:30:05.120 ahead and access those same tools that they'd already created. So in a kind of way, it sounds

00:30:10.820 like your work with Your Slip is Showing and your work organizing community responses online

00:30:17.580 was kind of this canary in a coal mine. And you all did all that you could to prevent this,

00:30:23.840 to stamp this out. But if only the powers that be at Twitter or elsewhere had done anything,

00:30:29.860 then it might not be the sort of wide-scale situation that it is now that is exactly correct

00:30:35.540 and that i i know that sounds uh damning but that's accurate they could have stopped it

00:30:41.300 uh they could still stop it but the reason why unfortunately and this was absolutely pointed

00:30:48.840 out by people at the time um and people later uh taking a look the whole situation from like you

00:30:56.100 You know, the whole postmortem of the whole incident.

00:31:00.960 The reason why they didn't is because of the profit model at the time was based on number of accounts and interaction.

00:31:17.160 so you know that when you're selling your product basically to we're the product to

00:31:25.580 advertisers and whatever have you the more users it looks like you have the better so it really

00:31:32.260 wasn't in twitter's best interest to say okay well we have 20 accounts with one ip address

00:31:41.420 that's suspicious and we should look into it and that's why they didn't they didn't took them a full

00:31:49.240 two and a half years I think uh to even really address it in a serious way and I think that was

00:31:55.900 only after the whole congressional meeting like I'm pretty sure that was after everybody who was

00:32:05.300 like the head of social media got called in front of Congress.

00:32:09.140 Mm-hmm.

00:32:11.060 Like, that's what it took.

00:32:14.480 So that pretty much brings us to today.

00:32:17.200 Today, Twitter leads all other social media platforms

00:32:20.440 on the spread of misleading information about coronavirus,

00:32:23.060 according to a study by Oxford researchers called Types, Sources,

00:32:26.160 and Claims of COVID-19 Misinformation.

00:32:28.440 And a study out of Carnegie Mellon found that most of the accounts

00:32:31.780 pushing this misleading content are actually convincing-looking bots

00:32:35.260 using Twitter to prey on people,

00:32:37.580 sow division and increase polarization.

00:32:39.800 This isn't just an online thing either.

00:32:42.080 Kathleen Carley,

00:32:43.400 the director for the Center for Informed Democracy

00:32:45.560 and Social Cybersecurity,

00:32:47.520 says increased polarization

00:32:49.140 will have a variety of real-world consequences

00:32:51.620 and play out in things like voting behavior

00:32:53.620 and hostility toward ethnic groups.

00:32:55.780 And this summer,

00:32:56.400 as Black Lives Matter protests popped up

00:32:58.660 all over the globe,

00:32:59.940 Twitter confirmed that multiple accounts

00:33:01.520 posing as Black Lives Matter activists

00:33:03.240 were calling for violence in white suburbs.

00:33:05.260 But those accounts were actually run by white supremacist groups just posing as activists and, quote, Antifa to cause chaos.

00:33:13.000 Facebook under fire again.

00:33:14.800 A Senate Intelligence Committee report claiming Russian agents use social media sites like Facebook to target African-Americans in an effort to suppress voter turnout.

00:33:24.640 We already know that Russia used social media to interfere with the 2016 election. 0.85

00:33:29.700 And in case you needed a Senate report to confirm what Black women have been saying all along,

00:33:33.620 a Senate inquiry cited an Oxford University report on Russian interference on social media.

00:33:38.560 They found that campaigns targeted no single group more than African Americans on social media.

00:33:42.960 They posed as Black people and ran phony Black activist groups

00:33:46.300 to influence Black voters to either stay home or vote for Trump on Election Day.

00:33:50.980 The Senate Intelligence Report says the posts were aimed at making Americans suspicious of each other.

00:33:56.240 Sound familiar? 1.00

00:33:57.440 These are the very same kind of tactics that Black women like Shafika were complaining about years earlier. 1.00

00:34:03.920 Accounts posing as Black people and infiltrating our online communities to create chaos and distrust.

00:34:09.440 But because the people with power didn't really do anything or take it seriously, it kind of exposed this massive vulnerability.

00:34:16.080 Think of it as an online disinformation test balloon.

00:34:19.400 It showed that these kinds of attacks could happen and they'd pretty much go unaddressed.

00:34:23.460 Instead of identifying and learning to spot tactics used to make our social media communities less safe and less stable,

00:34:28.880 the powers that be just let it happen again and again and again. 0.93

00:34:33.140 I asked Shafika if she thinks that if someone had listened to Black women when they spoke up about being targeted online,

00:34:38.600 things might be different now.

00:34:39.860 It's a tough question for her.

00:34:41.280 this is always going to be a question that kind of hangs in my mind because um

00:34:52.800 while i understand that black voters were absolutely targeted i'm not entirely sure

00:35:00.620 that we were fooled do you know what i mean right like i honestly because it seems like to me we

00:35:10.520 kind of all got out and voted anyway and it also seems like to me donald trump may have lost the

00:35:16.820 popular vote by three million votes but that's neither here nor there i guess not if you ask him

00:35:21.240 he didn't but we don't ask him things because we like honest answers but um yeah i mean just the

00:35:27.900 fact that this happened like it left us arguably vulnerable and that even even though i'm not

00:35:40.440 sure how how ultimately success successful it was just the fact that we had foreign agents

00:35:46.000 targeting voting populations in the united states of america should have been serious and due cause

00:35:56.000 for alarm because even if it doesn't work it's like just it's just the fact that they tried and

00:36:02.620 that they could what are you doing like can we get it together it's because we left we left the

00:36:10.640 door open like this this was that was a failure that was I don't want to say it was on me because

00:36:18.380 I feel like it definitely wasn't on me and it definitely wasn't on you but it was it was a

00:36:23.260 failure um on the side of whatever agents are supposed to be uh protecting us and i i guess

00:36:35.980 that offers that opens up a lot for speculation it's like well you know who's who's looking after

00:36:43.760 us now but um yeah that that was a glaring example of just kind of the general failure

00:36:51.920 to address something that did not have to get as big as it got. 1.00

00:36:57.440 More There Are No Girls on the Internet after this quick break.

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00:37:10.920 Will they finally eat the veggies?

00:37:12.400 Will the pesto survive the first bite?

00:37:14.440 Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

00:37:18.340 And will you finish episode eight before you're done slicing the cucumbers?

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00:38:06.520 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:38:12.440 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,

00:38:18.620 pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the

00:38:23.200 same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books,

00:38:28.620 the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:38:32.040 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed, so obsessed.

00:38:35.600 From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments,

00:38:40.480 nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling

00:38:46.600 characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart

00:38:51.880 pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much

00:38:56.640 you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever

00:39:03.100 you get your podcasts see you between the pages when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held

00:39:10.500 captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive

00:39:16.720 what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just

00:39:22.880 remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything. Every week I'm 0.68

00:39:32.000 with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going

00:39:39.000 to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started

00:39:45.700 screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories

00:39:52.420 about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:39:58.300 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:40:04.220 or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:40:09.000 The 2020 presidential election is 112 days away.

00:40:15.760 Digital security experts agree that American elections are vulnerable and not enough is being done about it.

00:40:20.500 During Trump's impeachment hearing, Fiona Hill, the former National Security Council advisor specializing in Russian and European affairs, said,

00:40:28.000 Right now, Russia's security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election.

00:40:34.580 We are running out of time to stop them.

00:40:36.760 So what do we do?

00:40:38.120 Dr. Donovan says.

00:40:39.600 As we get closer to the election, we know that all different kinds of tactics are going

00:40:46.520 to get utilized, including potentially deep fakes or cheap fakes like manipulated video,

00:40:52.240 manipulated audio.

00:40:53.580 We're going to see probably clips of people quoted out of context.

00:41:01.060 We've seen this happen to Joe Biden a few different times.

00:41:03.640 then of course we've seen gas that he's done that are completely within context and a problem

00:41:08.720 um you know you can't you can't forget that every once in a while you're watching it and you're

00:41:14.680 like this is this can't be real and it's totally real well what's crazy to me about it is as a

00:41:20.700 researcher you're supposed to be attuned to all of this but i still get fooled here and there

00:41:24.420 but the last thing i'll say about the way in which i think platform companies need to

00:41:28.680 better serve our political elections and the integrity of elections is that they need to

00:41:35.900 hire some serious specialists. They need to hire a whole army of librarians to do content curations

00:41:44.280 so that when people are looking for information, they find things that have been fact-checked that

00:41:50.440 are true and correct. I think that we have a right to truth. And part of the problem is the way in

00:41:56.580 which these algorithms are designed is to bring up things that are quote-unquote fresh and relevant

00:42:01.760 and the problem with fresh and relevant content is that disinformation is usually incredibly popular

00:42:09.520 because there are people trying to push it and there are people trying to dispute it and so as

00:42:15.100 a result it rises generally to the top of search algorithms or trending algorithms very quickly

00:42:20.560 because of that feature.

00:42:24.600 But will Twitter actually do any of that?

00:42:27.300 Shafika isn't super confident that the platform will do anything at all.

00:42:30.840 I haven't even thought about it.

00:42:32.580 And I guess that's sort of a reflection on my general skepticism right now

00:42:40.360 with not their ability, but their willingness to address this.

00:42:44.760 I have a good friend who said one of the smartest things I've ever heard anybody say, and I quote it all the time.

00:42:54.720 But he said, when things look like they're not working out, you can always trust that they're working out for somebody.

00:43:02.760 And that's how I'm going to leave that right there.

00:43:08.600 When it looks like, you know, things aren't working.

00:43:12.000 And you start asking questions, and it's a whole rabbit hole.

00:43:20.560 That's the thing about the internet.

00:43:22.280 There's so much darkness lurking in its corners, just waiting to spill out.

00:43:26.440 But where there's darkness, there's light too.

00:43:28.860 Where there's someone being ugly online, there's someone else reaching out to make a genuine connection.

00:43:33.780 There's real community to be built, and laughs to be had.

00:43:37.060 The kind of laughs that can sustain you through difficult times.

00:43:40.180 Being online is a constant tightrope walk of acknowledging that darkness

00:43:44.100 while still being able to see the corners of light peeking through.

00:43:48.000 And even while wading through all of that darkness and ugliness, 0.90

00:43:51.860 it's the light that has really sustained Shafika.

00:43:54.680 After everything she's been through, she's still grateful for Twitter as a platform

00:43:58.500 and all the good things it's brought to her life.

00:44:01.040 Honestly, it really helps that I have a strong and supportive community

00:44:07.500 community, both online and off. I really am super grateful for Twitter for so many reasons,

00:44:16.860 not the least of which is because it's helped me expand my network. And I've met amazing

00:44:24.180 people and connected people who are like me, people who aren't like me, and gotten to know

00:44:31.840 so much about them and learn about their lived experiences. And that has saved me because it

00:44:39.580 helps me kind of get out of my own headspace or likewise, you know, connect with people who

00:44:46.220 understand 100% where I'm coming from. And that's in a world where, you know, we're frequently

00:44:55.080 gaslit about the things that we see and experience uh that is absolutely invaluable

00:45:04.780 oh and one more thing that helps it also helps that i'm funny

00:45:08.940 honestly um having a sense of humor and a wit of will get you through

00:45:17.380 pretty much i don't want to say pretty much anything but how about this it's gotten me

00:45:24.780 through pretty much everything.

00:45:28.280 And you've been through some stuff.

00:45:30.400 I've been through it.

00:45:36.720 Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi?

00:45:40.040 We'd love to hear from you at hello at tangody.com. 1.00

00:45:43.260 Disinformed is brought to you by There Are No Girls on the Internet.

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00:45:48.780 Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - January 29, 2021

TANGOTI Classic： How Black Women Tried to Save Twitter

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