00:00:53.240and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:58.760I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:02.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:09.920These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:13.740Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:21.360If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:01:27.100Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:35.740Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:08:24.320They were championed in the press.0.98
00:08:26.460But all the while, Ifoma was being mistreated internally by her own colleagues for the very work that allowed Pinterest to be seen as a success story.
00:08:35.220So few platforms had any kind of public-facing policy around misinformation and disinformation.
00:08:39.740And back then, I feel like Pinterest was really able to set themselves apart, at least from someone from the outside looking in.
00:08:46.440And you were doing so much of that work, all the while they were making your life harder for doing it.
00:08:52.980um with a lot of peace that karma is real um and it will come back to get them but but also
00:09:02.880that was one of the reasons why i had to go public about the retaliation that i faced when i raised
00:09:09.560pay discrimination concerns about the doxing that i experienced from a white male supremacist who
00:09:16.620happened to also work at Pinterest after I pushed for decisions to be made around white supremacist
00:09:24.540content that had existed on the platform. There are a lot of intersections, as you know, with
00:09:29.760misinformation. And so even though Pinterest was most well known because of the health misinformation
00:09:35.140work that I did, we took a lot of steps to address other types of misinformation. And where those
00:09:43.780two, I guess, circles and a Venn diagram met was on an anti-choice site that had been posting
00:09:53.200misinformation around birth control and access to abortion services being targeted specifically at
00:10:02.220Black communities to push a eugenics agenda from the pro-choice movement. And the ways in which0.70
00:10:12.280the misinformation aligned, I pushed internally that this is why we have to look at misinformation
00:10:21.200in general. We have to look at the specific ways in which it harms people. But if you just take a,
00:10:27.720well, this is an opinion point of view, then you're missing that this is both health misinformation
00:10:32.960and it's also political because it's targeted at a group using language and using imagery because
00:10:40.480they're very good at using images of Black mothers and Black children on these websites
00:10:46.060that are run entirely by white supremacists, that you may miss some of the context if you
00:10:52.160only look at the content and not what their entire website is pushing.
00:10:56.940Well, especially on a platform like Pinterest that is so visual, you know, you might be
00:11:00.100on there because you're designing a new nursery or planning a wedding.
00:11:03.580You're not necessarily primed to be hit with content that could be racially charged or
00:11:08.140politically charged or be delivering health misinformation. You know, your guard is down.
00:11:13.260And that's why it was particularly harmful. And that was my, even though the platform had
00:11:18.480never really done anything public in the policy space, was certainly not known by any of the
00:11:25.180reporters I ended up working with about policy decisions. One of the reasons why I felt so
00:11:32.100strongly about this is it's a platform that was going towards IPO at the time that I'd started.
00:11:39.580So I started pre-IPO. And part of the messaging around that is we're a platform with eight and
00:11:45.28010 moms in the US on here. Lots of women use the platform around the world and women are often1.00
00:11:52.220decision makers when it comes to financial choices for their households. So it's a great platform for
00:11:57.920advertisers. But at the same time, that's what made it a prime target for misinformation purveyors,
00:12:03.940because you have a captive audience, folks who are not attuned to looking for mis- and
00:12:11.560disinformation, because they're not on Facebook, they're not on Twitter, they're in a place that
00:12:15.840feels safe to them. And so they're the perfect opportunity to then hawk whatever goods you're
00:12:24.060selling, a point that I made often, because I'd get invited by the WHO, CDC and others to talk
00:12:31.380about this health misinformation work, that they had not thought about as much as the financial
00:12:38.180incentives that are tied to a lot of misinformation. Whether it's Alex Jones selling his
00:12:43.940nonsense t-shirts and supplements and whatever else, these people are scam artists. That's their0.98
00:12:49.000number their number one job is scamming folks they use the values that people have they use
00:12:55.340the fears that people have to then sell their products but at the end of the day these are
00:13:01.020spammers and scammers and so you need to also be looking at what it is that they're trying to push
00:13:07.920on your platform for almost every single health misinformation site they were selling supplements
00:13:13.720So if you would address dangerous supplements on the platform as spam, why would you not consider this at the same level of harm to the platform and ultimately harm to legitimate advertisers?0.75
00:13:28.360I think that we're so used to thinking about scammers as people, you know, selling fake Gucci on the street and like, no, people can scam online and they're misleading you in order to get you to buy whatever bullshit product they're hawking.
00:13:43.920I would actually argue that the person selling the Gucci handbag that's fake, that's not harmful. You get a cheaper bag. If it's made well, it looks pretty good. Like you get a deal, they get a deal. Gucci doesn't get a deal, but what do they need one for?
00:13:59.840But that's not harmful in the same way that telling parents, and especially at the point at which most parents make decisions about vaccines in the last trimester before they have the kid, that they instead of getting a vaccine for their child, which will save their child's life, they should instead go buy your vitamin K supplement.
00:14:22.840That is so harmful and dangerous in a way that we need to take it more seriously.
00:14:57.000And I think, yeah, the person scamming fake Gucci belt on the street, other than not giving Gucci more money, which, frankly, I'm not really that mad at, you know, we have to look at the kind of harm that these platforms can really be responsible for pushing on communities who are oftentimes already marginalized or underrepresented.
00:15:16.300The day of the insurrection, as pro-Trump mobs swarmed the Capitol, one of whom was wearing a shirt reading Camp Auschwitz,
00:15:26.720Microsoft-owned tech firm GitHub fired a Jewish employee for posting,0.89
00:15:31.840stay safe, homies, there's Nazis about, in a company Slack channel.
00:15:36.040The company eventually reversed their decision and apologized to the employee after an investigation.0.60
00:15:40.680But even still, it establishes a pretty concerning dynamic, one where marginalized employees are punished for correctly identifying white supremacists.
00:15:52.380You were actually punished for speaking up about white supremacists.
00:15:55.800Yeah, and not only punished, I was personally targeted.
00:15:58.200So the story I was referring to earlier, the white supremacist colleague who wasn't someone I worked with closely, but worked on the engineering side of trust and safety, saw a message that I posted in exactly the right place for me to post it.
00:16:15.980It wasn't a general conversation area, but I posted that a pretty popular white supremacist
00:20:17.120If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:20:23.440This 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.
00:20:35.820I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:20:42.860I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:20:46.180From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:20:52.920It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:21:00.080Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:21:09.620Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:22:24.100In an earlier episode of There Are No Girls on the Internet, we explored how the racial justice group Color of Change advocated for Pinterest to change their policies around slave plantations that were being advertised as romantic wedding venues on the platform.
00:22:37.800The company was widely celebrated for this change, which was led by EFOMA.
00:22:41.980But that didn't keep them from retaliating against her for it.
00:22:44.500Later on that same year, Color of Change had come to me because I was the liaison with outside groups, academics, and civil society on content safety issues.
00:22:56.200They had come to me sharing that they were still seeing slave plantations pop up as wedding venues and suggestions for weddings.
00:23:04.100If you know Pinterest or you know someone who uses it, the number one use of the platform might be planning a wedding or preparing for some sort of celebration.0.98
00:23:16.140It's completely inappropriate that the platform would be pushing concentration camps, which is what they were, and torture sites as a celebration venue.
00:23:26.380And so I brought it to our content safety team with my recommendation, shared exactly what Color of Change had shared with me.
00:23:34.700And then I got pushback from the head of that team, particularly the head of content policy, who happens to still be there and still speaking on behalf of the company.
00:23:46.920What I later found out was that she was married on a plantation.
00:23:51.440that she never shared that in all of the pushback that I got, but she ended up working with my
00:23:58.020manager who had already been retaliating against me to ding me on my performance review. So even
00:24:05.820though Pinterest ended up doing exactly what I recommended, ended up getting praised in 40 plus0.94
00:24:12.440headlines because of the decision to stop promoting slave plantations and the decisions that I had
00:24:18.920pushed to be made, I was dinged on my performance review, which affected my pay. Wow. First of all,
00:24:26.600the reveal that this woman had her own, I mean, yikes.
00:24:34.320The levels. I mean, we did an episode about, we spoke to Jade from Color of Change in an earlier
00:24:40.620episode about Pinterest and the decision to not promote plantation weddings. And just like what
00:24:47.060you said, right? These companies get to enjoy the positive press that makes them look like a woke
00:24:53.060company or a company that really cares. Like I heard so many times people say, oh, Pinterest is
00:24:57.660a company that has a, you know, like they are a company that prizes like empathy, yada, yada, yada.
00:25:03.400And then to hear the inner workings of how this happened is so, it's such a disconnect, I feel.
00:25:09.440It really is, you know, it really illustrates how so many different levels can come together to suppress and push out and harm a Black woman for doing her job, right?0.59
00:25:27.920And I also think this, you know, and this is the conversation that I feel comes up again and again and again, where Black women are punished for, like, doing the right thing, for practicing public courage, public morality, for doing their jobs trying to make things safer or better.
00:25:47.320someone else gets to enjoy the benefits of that work, but that work is at best, you know,
00:25:54.860unappreciated, underappreciated, at worst, dangerous and risky for your own personal
00:25:59.980safety, right? Like you did this work of making Pinterest a safer, better platform at great
00:26:06.080personal cost and at great risk to your own safety. Yep. And all of those things happened.
00:26:12.080Not only was I paid unfairly, and I had to pursue legal action because of that, I was then also, my life was starting. So yeah, I got all of it while I was there. And people often like to call black women canaries in the coal mine, or whatever term they want to use.
00:26:34.160But I would like to just do my job, get paid fairly and not be put in danger for for doing the right thing for a company.
00:26:43.760I mean, something like half, more than half of the articles that were written about Pinterest in the month before the public offering, which happened in April of 2019, referenced my work.
00:26:59.080So not only did my work have value to the actual users of the platform end up pushing Facebook and others to have to respond about why they weren't addressing health misinformation, particularly around vaccines.
00:27:12.220And remember, that was during a different health issue, a measles outbreak, measles outbreaks on the East and West Coast.
00:27:19.440Uh, so not only did it have that sort of impact, which is a slam dunk if you're in a policy space,
00:27:26.200but it also had material benefit to the company in the form of the IPO. And I still was not
00:27:34.720treated fairly. Yeah. And the company still hasn't actually acknowledged that anything
00:27:41.220they did in my case was wrong. You seem like someone who has a lot of peace
00:28:14.860That's my long view. And then also I'm a student of history and political science. None of this is new. What I'm dealing with is not new. It's not unique to my situation. Does it suck? Yes. Has it been miserable? Yes.
00:28:32.000I paid physical consequences for it because my actual health was impaired for the two plus years I was in a legal fight with them.
00:28:42.740But, like, I'm good at the end of the day.
00:28:46.280I'm at peace with every single decision I've made.
00:28:48.800I've never lied about what I experienced there.
00:28:51.920And so when they're out here lying about what they did to me and getting called out on lies, that is enough for me.
00:29:01.380Ifoma publicly resigned from Pinterest.
00:29:03.880This past summer, when racial justice protests were happening all over the globe
00:29:07.740and brands were rushing to put out statements in support for Black Lives Matter,
00:30:20.300another Black former Pinterest employee, spoke out first.
00:30:23.200only they never got any big payout. If I remember correctly, you didn't even get a
00:30:29.380year of severance from Pinterest. That's correct. And laid the groundwork. She was
00:30:34.440not going to speak up publicly. And actually in the Medium post where she didn't reference us
00:30:41.160when she first went public, but she herself said that women had come to her over the course of her
00:30:47.960career, and she actually had not been a helpful ally to other women. So I think she said everything.
00:30:55.420But yeah, no, I what was crazy about that situation is people got to see in real time,
00:31:01.740what it means to lead a movement, and then be left out of whatever progress comes. I mean,
00:31:07.400when you think about Me Too, who has Me Too actually benefited, if not white women, maybe,
00:31:14.040maybe in a sense, all women, but it is most benefited white women. And yet it was started
00:31:20.600by Tarana Burke, a black woman. So this is not, it's not new. It's not, I didn't speak up because
00:31:28.320I expected them to do the right thing. I, from the jump expected them not. I expected them to
00:31:35.380denigrate my name, my experience, which they've done all of that. And then not to pay me what
00:31:42.300they owe me, but seeing it all happen in front of everyone, I think was a lesson, not only for
00:31:51.700the folks who were watching it and just expecting that the right thing would happen, but then also
00:31:56.160some of the reporters who worked on the story and were the very first ones to reach out and be like,
00:32:01.760how is it possible that you, like, I literally remember talking to you and then talking to her
00:32:08.260several months later, you are the reason why she came forward. You are the reason why she had a
00:32:14.240strong case. And then this happens. Yeah. For better or for worse, it always seems that black
00:32:21.500women, we are the ones build, like we are the ones building. And then other people are the1.00
00:32:26.820ones who are benefiting. And I think I see that in politics. I see that in tech. I see that in
00:32:32.360so many different it just seems to be you know i i at this point it almost you know it is what it is
00:32:39.640but like it that seems to be our lot on this on this earth like building things that we then don't
00:32:47.160get to to use ourselves right like i think it was um this writer clarissa brooks who once wrote like
00:32:53.240i as a black woman i don't want my back to be used as a bridge to a world i'll never see right
00:32:58.680Right. I feel like I feel like that is our lot.
00:33:01.420And I see it particularly in tech, but in so many different different avenues.
00:33:06.080Yep. And that's why even though this was painful, personally painful, of course, to have been the one who experienced all of this and then have someone else benefit from it.
00:33:16.860It was instructive for everyone to see it and to see the timeline and how quickly and the different way in which they responded to her.
00:33:25.100And then also, I think it was a helpful lesson for people who consider themselves allies to see as well, because there are a lot of people who think of themselves as allies who saw it and were like, wait, what?
00:33:41.580How is it possible that this is happening?
00:35:26.800Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.0.98
00:35:31.220I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:35:35.680I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:35:42.740They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:35:47.200But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:35:50.660They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:35:54.280Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:36:02.720If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:36:08.660This 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.
00:36:21.140I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:36:28.240I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:36:31.380From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:36:37.780It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:36:45.700Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:36:54.860Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:37:10.000I do have this feeling that there is this underlying assumption that Black women, like tech and the internet and all of these domains, it's like not our rightful domain.
00:37:21.440So we should not, we are not able to expect experiences that are not harmful in these spaces.
00:37:27.820And I think, for me, it's kind of this vicious cycle where that dynamic is mirrored at tech companies. And so Black women engineers, Black women technologists are pushed out of these companies, are not being listened to, and thus these platforms are not able to prioritize our safety.
00:37:48.860So it's like, I feel like we, in my mind, we'll never address the true harm that platforms have been responsible for if these tech companies cannot figure out a way to really have Black women be meaningfully centered and heard.
00:38:04.880Because it just seems like this horrible cycle.
00:38:07.000I'm not sure if this makes any sense, but...
00:38:14.980I said to, I think it was Charlie Warzel wrote a column a few months ago about Facebook and it maybe being a lost cause.
00:38:26.500And I said, platforms reflect the people who lead them, that you're only seeing on Facebook, on Twitter, on Pinterest, wherever, what the people who lead those platforms want you to see.
00:38:39.660And so if they're operating in a white supremacist structure and worldview, and that is where their actual interests align, that's what we're going to see on the platform. So none of this is by accident. None of this is all of a sudden out of control. This is exactly what they designed working in the ways that they want it to work.
00:39:00.360Yeah, it always seems to come back to that question of, is this an issue of they can't fix this or an issue of they won't fix this?
00:39:08.460It seems like tech leaders have made some deliberate choices about what to prioritize.
00:39:12.260And the example, it makes usually the audiences that I give this or share this analogy with are health focused, public health professionals, experts, et cetera.
00:39:23.040And I say, if you want to understand how non-accidental any of this is, think about
00:39:30.000pornography. How often do you randomly encounter porn on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or wherever
00:39:37.540else? Not that often. Not often. It's not often. Not often. And yet you see misinformation every
00:39:44.060other post. You see hate every other post. There's a financial reason for that. Advertisers have said
00:39:50.940They don't want pornography next to their content.
00:40:18.920Yep. And the priorities are clear in all of our experiences on these platforms.
00:40:24.520I think a lot of Black women on the Internet have just come to internalize this idea that when it comes to experiences online or on technology or on the Internet, we just cannot expect to have experiences that feel safe.
00:40:36.440And I want to get us to a place where we can rethink the kinds of experiences that we actually can't expect from the Internet and from tech spaces.
00:40:42.860I agree. And that's the basis of all the work that I have done, the work that I'm doing now through my consulting firm on tech accountability, whether it's in the health misinformation space or whether it's on the organizing side and providing protections for whistleblowers.
00:40:59.640And I think it's a conversation that it's unfortunate that we have to bear the burden of since we're the people who are harmed by it. But even just a few days ago, I was part of a conversation on Clubhouse around content moderation and around the decisions that platforms made to deplatform Donald Trump.
00:41:21.480And before we went into that conversation, I sent a note to everyone on the panel saying clubhouse is a place that I am not frequenting by choice because black women are often targeted and people use very loud dog whistles, basically just short of using the N word and using straight up misogynistic language.
00:41:43.480But there's a ton of that going on. And I put the onus on everyone on the panel to if that happened in the course of our conversation from anyone from the audience to not make it be my responsibility to be the only one to say something.
00:42:00.340And every single one was was great and said, absolutely, of course. But that should be the way that we're setting up conversations. It shouldn't be the responsibility of the person who is most likely to be harmed to say, like, hey, I hate to be the one to bring the mood down, but this could happen. So can we please watch out for it?
00:42:22.080God, I have been that person a thousand times. And it's kind of like what you were saying. It just sucks. Like you want to do your job and be paid what you're owed for doing that work.
00:42:34.580I feel that black women are just not often afforded the ability to just do your work and1.00
00:42:40.380keep your head down. It's like, you have to take on all this often unpaid, might I add,1.00
00:42:44.820extra labor, extra energy, extra everything just to exist and do your job and put your message out
00:42:52.000there. Really, it is exhausting. I know exactly that feeling of like, oh God, I'm going to have
00:42:57.280to be the person that raises this again. And like, everyone's going to groan. I just know that
00:43:03.680feeling and it sucks. Yeah, it does. What do you think platforms or policy folks or anybody who
00:43:15.460has power, decision makers, what should folks be doing to keep dis and misinformation off of
00:43:20.800platforms? I think it's great that the incoming administration is passing the bar that was on
00:43:29.060the ground from the Trump administration for diversity and so at least they've cleared that0.99
00:43:35.280low bar and standard but I am not seeing enough black women in positions of leadership when it0.99
00:43:45.240comes to misinformation and tech policy specifically. I was encouraged by the science1.00
00:43:53.740I think it's some sort of science-focused department within the administration that
00:44:02.420was announced recently that Alondra Nelson will be on. That's incredible. But on the tech side,
00:44:09.360it cannot just be pulling the expertise of people like Eric Schmidt and other white tech executives0.56
00:44:16.520to then reform the same industry that they've made billions off of. That's just not how it
00:44:23.500works. That's not how it should work. And I think it's important to pull academics, but you also
00:44:28.880need practitioners who have experienced things on the inside of these platforms to be informing
00:44:35.580the decisions and any regulation or reform that comes as a result. So much of the infrastructure
00:44:42.180of what we rely on to make the internet safer and better, so people who are fighting disinformation
00:44:49.080and misinformation have been for a long time, so much of that infrastructure is Black women.
00:44:53.500what is it like to know that we have such a big role in doing a lot of the work that is making
00:45:01.600the internet safer and better for everybody? I mean, I, it's tough, because on the one hand,
00:45:11.600when we, when progress is made, that we push for everyone benefits. And often we benefit the least.
00:45:19.960And so it is, it's just a role that many black women have taken on to protect themselves and our communities. On the other hand, I don't blame any black women who are like, you know what, this is not my fight. This is not my battle. I'm tired. I'm just trying to live during a pandemic. I'm trying to feed my kids. I'm trying to feed myself. I'm trying to take a damn nap.
00:45:44.560Like I ascribe wholeheartedly to the NAP ministry and the work that the NAP ministry has been doing, because I think sometimes we have to say, you know what, I told you so, now I'm going to rest. That's it. I'm done. I'm done. I'm bowing out.0.99
00:46:00.660And so I allow the space for that at any point, while also hoping that when Black women say, you know what, this is work that I want to do, that we're uplifted and we're empowered.
00:46:12.960The flip side of that is making sure that allies or supposed allies are not then saying, oh, my gosh, you're so good at this, you need to be the one leading it.
00:46:21.640no no uh after uh the fifth and the results in georgia when everyone is posting about and not
00:46:30.020black women because black women were not doing this but when everyone else was posting about1.00
00:46:34.180what stacy abrams needs to be doing no if she wants to go to a spa for the next month for the0.94
00:46:40.120next decade that is her decision and that's what she should be empowered to do and those same people0.99
00:46:46.200trying to demand labor of her should donate0.56