Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - the Black TikTok strike of 2021

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

In the summer of 2021, hundreds of Black TikTokers went on strike and demanded proper credit and compensation for dances they made famous. Why? Because, the most famous TikTokers of the pandemic, white teens Charli D'Amelio and Addison Rae, had become extremely famous off of Black choreographers Jalaiah Harmon, Keara Wilson, and others' work -- a continuation of age-old appropriation and theft. Jamie talks with Savage dance creator Keara Wilson, commentator Amanda Bennett, and algorithmic scientist Meredith Broussard to take a closer look at the impact of this moment, and how social media is designed to amplify racism. Follow Keara Wilson here: https://www.tiktok.com/@keke.janajah?lang=en Follow Amanda Bennett here: https://defineandempower.com/our-team Buy Meredith's book here: https://meredithbroussard.com/books/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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CoolZone Media. Two summers ago, I went to a work function. Now, I may never know why that work function was a private screening of the 2022 Bazelerman film Elvis. I may never know, but it was, and I think about it a lot. Now, if you like this movie, I don't care. If you don't like this movie, I do not care. I didn't like it, but there's a moment in this movie that got a really big reaction.

In this Elvis biopic, directed by a white Australian weirdo, there is a moment where Elvis's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks, first hears a young Elvis on the radio. As this movie takes comical measures to note, Elvis was mainly influenced by black blues artists like Big Boy Crudup and Big Mama Thornton, and that's reflected in his entire discography. In the scene, Tom Hanks as Colonel Parker is shocked to hear that Elvis is white. If you spend too much time online, you've probably seen this.

Now, they're not putting a colored boy under hayride. That's a thing. He's white. He's white. Is white? What do you think, Texarkana? Shall we play for the 27th time? What?

Like, I love Moulin Rouge, but applying the Moulin Rouge approach to systemic racism, I don't love it. It has to be camp, or it's just depressing. So this whole movie has a distinct mission to dispel persistent rumors that Elvis's career was built on uncredited black music. Far more than it has any interest in actually writing. a black character. Goofy example, but this scene is the inciting incident of the movie, seeing a white artist co-opting black music and seeing that as a huge marketing opportunity. And while Elvis is a very famous example of this phenomenon, he was far from the first or last white artist to be catapulted to success over his black peers, actively profiting from

their innovations. Music, that's to this day considered pioneering from white artists, have this same narrative. Led Zeppelin demonstrably stole a lot from black artists. They were heavily influenced by American Blues music for what they did write, then at different times plagiarized Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Howland Wolf, and for what it's worth, plenty of white musicians as well. The Beach Boys and the Beatles lifted from Chuck Berry. The list goes on, and while the idea of music authorship and what constitutes a reasonable copyright lawsuit is an extremely complicated one that doesn't always make room for influence or the recent rise in pretty ridiculous music copyright legal cases. But I'm giving examples that I find undeniable. And to compound that, the power dynamic of

white artists lifting from black artists means that the white artist always has a significantly better shot at financial success on something that wasn't originally theirs, regardless of what their interpretation does or does not add to the original material. This same process, took place in the du-up scene in the 1950s. Black groups like the Rivingtons would write a song like, OK, I have to read this. Please don't laugh at me. Papa Ouma Mau Mau, which family guy fans will know,

was popularized by a white group covering the song as The Trash Men's Surf and Bird. Because very few people complained when white artists, did steal like this, and it was far easier to get them on the radio. All of these groups failed to credit or compensate the artists that they took from outside of sometimes acknowledging their influences in interviews. Black artists have been at the forefront of so many artistic movements, only to have those innovations borrowed or stolen by white artists

who had more institutional support put behind them while being a poor imitation. It's one of the many tentacled extensions of white. supremacy. Oh, you thought I wasn't going to bring up white supremacy in the first five minutes of the show? Well, think again. And this oppression continues to take shape in today's social media algorithms. Because who's making these algorithms? According to the 2023 diversity report from tech report, still mostly... They're white. Yeah, they're white. And they are he. At present, only about a quarter of the massive tech industry consists of women and only

7% of the tech industry are black. So this week, we're looking at a few things. There's major precedent in a creative space for theft from black artists. And the way the internet works right now, it enables white artists to do that. Which brings me to TikTok. Oh, brother, this guy stinks! Now everybody stop booing me. Give Auntie Jamie a fair shake here, OK? TikTok. The app where one of the most notorious examples of algorithms passing over black creators came to a head in the summer of 2021. By this time, TikTok was growing fast after first being introduced in the U.S. from China back in 2017. It was already ridiculously popular among young people, but the COVID lockdown in 2020 brought the app into the mega mainstream, introducing a million

little subgenres where you could become a micro-influencer. But what TikTok was best known for at this time were viral dances. These dances tended to be really short. They were designed to be performed to your phone camera. And they would almost always be paired with either a song from a huge artist or an obscure song that happened to be really danceable, which could vault a random musician into the mainstream. The problem was, where was the credit?

You as a TikTok user could choreograph a dance that, a pop star would perform, but there was no place in the app for the choreographer's name. And so all that appropriative failure to credit and music that we just talked about, that applies to dance too. White choreographers have stolen from black choreographers forever. It's the plot of Bring It On. Guys, like every time we get some, here y'all come trying to steal it, putting some blonde hair on it, and calling it something different.

We've had the best squad around for years, but no one's been able to see what we can do. In the first story of 16th Minute, where we talked with and about the Dodson siblings of Hide Your Kids, Hide Your Wife Fame, I spoke with Professor Gabriel Peoples, whose upcoming book, Going Viral, Uncontrollable Black Performance explores how blackness is expressed and interpreted online. And I love asking guests what other stories they'd like to see covered on the show someday. And Professor Peoples did not hesitate. How fucking bleak is it that in 2010 there was more attributes. that still wasn't sufficient than over 10 years later where there was no attribution and no, like, nothing. I don't have anything intelligent to say about it. I just found it depressing.

Well, you know, we can say her name, right? Jalea Harmon, I believe, is her name. So it's like, we bring attention to things when we interact with things. If you don't like it and you don't press play, that is almost like one of the easiest, but also like most significant things you could do. in terms of things going viral or not. Julea Harmon, the Renegade Dance, and the Black TikTok Strike. It's a cultural moment that's top of mind for a lot of Internet historians because of its clear moral stand in the middle of hell.

It's a story of using the Internet to organize, to make artist names known, and not just Jalea Harmon, but other choreographers like Kiara Wilson, Maya Johnson, Chris Cotter, the list goes on. Because when it became clear that the algorithm and the media, we're not going to properly credit these black choreographers work on TikTok. They went on strike. The Black TikTok strike of 2021, your 16th minute begins now. I'm not so bad when you turn up the lights, but I can be perfect all the time.

To make me a star, let's take it too far, then give me one moment. Sixteen minute of fame Sixteen minute of fame Sixteen minute of face One more minute of face I'm not so bad when you're taking your mind by Welcome back. We have our first TikTok story on the show today. So start shaking in your tiny little boots if you're outside Leonardo DiCaprio's fuck range.

The character, or rather the moment that we're covering this week, is the Black TikTok strike in summer 2021. And it's the sort of subject that requires quite a bit of context. because the reason that the Black Tech Talk strike was significant is deeply entrenched not just in internet history, but history history. So return with me, and I'm so sorry, to June 2021. While many in the U.S. are getting their first COVID vaccines, others are in full-blown denial and believe that none of it was real, which ends great for them. The FBI warns the general public that QAnon followers could engage in, quote-unquote, real-world violence.

And if there's anyone that knows about real world violence, I mean, I guess it's the FBI. And I am desperately hoping that M. Night Shyamalan's old will come to the drive-in theater nearest my apartment because it's the funniest idea for a movie that I've ever heard. And the black TikTok strike takes place. And by this time, TikTok had become a major cultural force. Everything I talked about today was also talked about on TikTok, why you should get your COVID vaccine, why you shouldn't get your COVID vaccine,

why old is the funniest idea for a boofy anyone's ever had. But 2019-21-era TikTok was truly all about dance videos. Theoretically, if you could choreograph a short dance to a new song and it caught on, your account could blow up overnight. This wouldn't just be great for users looking to build an audience. It also quickly became an important facet of the music industry, because if you can engineer a song that's a hit on TikTok, you're well on your way to making it to the billboard charts and then in CVS in 10 years. TikTok was considered to be a new and distinct social media platform, but it did bring in a lot of elements that people liked from other apps.

You could find a truncated deep dive or beauty content like on YouTube. The app's algorithm tended to hook on to bad sketch comedy like on Vine, and it connected with music unlike any app before it had. But even though it was unique, a familiar pattern in who became famous on TikTok quickly emerged. While black creators were frequently choreographing the dances that would become most popular, the big success stories suddenly making millions were young white TikTokers. Names like Charlie DiMilio and Addison Ray, white teenagers who have gone on to have successful mainstream careers owed much of their early prominence to the choreography they were performing. and they routinely failed to credit choreographers as their audiences continued to grow in the millions.

And while seeming like perfectly nice people, I'm not here to bully people who were kids at the time, both of them expressed some bafflement as to why they had become famous dancing on TikTok over anybody else. Charlie said this to Mel Magazine in 2020. I wish I could give everyone an explanation as to what happened, but I have no idea. I'm just doing what I do every day and posting it, I guess. It's very insane to me, as it is for everyone else watching. And this was also baffling to the black choreographers making the dances. Lack of credit is something that's affected choreographers of all backgrounds for a long time.

I didn't know this before doing research for this episode, but copywriting a dance is notoriously difficult, and there's really only been ways to do it in the United States since around the 1970s. But in this case, the issue is compounded with who the TikTok algorithm favored. A report from The Intercept in March 2020 featured TikTok employee whistleblowers saying that they were asked to filter people out considered quote-unquote unattractive or who appeared to live in poverty. And on top of that, TikTok just isn't built to credit choreographers in the way it's built to credit musicians.

But that's not to say that things are much better on the musician's side. TikTok, like Spotify, gives its artists the rough mathematical figure of pee-p-p-p-poo when it comes to royalties. But the bare minimum here is that the artist's name and song are listed every time they're used. Not so for choreographers, even when that might be the main draw of the video in the first place. And at the time D'Amalia was becoming famous, late 2019, there were little to know common practices among users to credit people that the app didn't already do automatically. Which could mean that by the time a dance got popular enough to make it into your feed, it might be extremely difficult to figure out who had done the original choreography,

even if you wanted to. So how do we get from TikTok becoming one of the fastest growing apps in the world pre-pandemic to the Black TikTok strike of summer 2021? You've got to understand the most prominent story that led up to this. The story of a Black teenage creator who demanded credit for her own choreography. Jalea Harmon, who Professor Peoples mentioned. This is a superstar.

Jalea Harmon, we bow in her presence. Wow. The original creator of The Renegade. If you don't know Jalea's name, you've definitely seen her most famous work, The Renegade Dance, probably the most famous dance to ever blow up on TikTok that was first choreographed by her

back in September 2019. Jalea, who was then only 14 years old and living in the suburbs of Atlanta, was the daughter of two educators and was a prolific dancer, taking lessons, competing, and generally just being a kid. She choreographed a dance for TikTok to the song Lottery by K-Camp and called it the Renegade Dance. Okay, I'm going to include like three seconds of the song

so that you can remember what it sounded like. Please nobody sue me. That song, if you were on the internet, it was inescapable. And she didn't even post it to TikTok the first time shared it. There's a documentary series that was made about Jolaya in 2021 from director Kayla Johnson, where Jalaya talks about the day that the renegade dance was first posted. And on one hand, it was something that she was doing for fun, but she's got a strategy here too. She's very much a kid of the internet and knows that dances and posts don't always

take off on the first try. So the first day I created a renegade, it was just a normal day for me, I had come home from school, I was getting ready for a dance class that day. And I have found this song called Lottery on somebody else's page. And I just thought it was a really cool song to make a dance too. So I just decided, I was like, sure, why not? After I created the dance, I sent it to my friend on Instagram and I told her to learn so we could do it as like a collab. And I put our videos together on like a little posting.

And so I posted it on Instagram first. It really didn't go viral. I really wasn't on TikTok. I was more so on Instagram. As it went to TikTok, it got viral on TikTok, and I didn't even know. But then I was just laying in my bed one morning, and I saw that everybody was doing this dance.

And at first, I wasn't sure that it was mine because they weren't doing the right one. So I was like, okay, maybe it's really not. But it was like two, maybe two or three people that actually did it the right way. And I was like, okay, yeah, this is my dance. So like, I need credit. And once the dance is cross-posted to TikTok, it blows up quickly.

It was Jolaya's dance everyone was doing, and anybody who was anybody at the time was doing it. Mainstream celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Lizzo, now canceled internet celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Lizzo. The list goes on. Now, for those of you who live under a rock, I hope you're well, and I envy you. And just so you know, what Jolaya just described is how TikTok generally worked for choreographers. at this time. Find a song you like, post your dance, and hope the algorithm swallows it into its big, gaping, H.R. Geiger mouth. And while the algorithm sometimes boosts content for indiscernible

reasons, it's really easy to understand why the renegade dance took off. It's really fucking cool, and Jalea is trained in five styles of dance. But in the algorithm, what takes this dance to the next level are the then-it-girls of TikTok, Charlie Demilio, and Addison Ray. My name is Charlie DeMilleo, Dixie DeMilleo, Addison, R.E. I mean, get with it, guys. Get on TikTok. Follow these ladies. So, the renegade dance is a hit. But, Jalea continues. They weren't tagging me when they did the dance. They either weren't tagging anyone or they were tagging Charlie. When I saw that, I started commenting on the people's post like,

hey, this is my dance. Hey, this is my dance. Can't give me credit. Once Charlie performs the renegade dance in October 2019, it causes the dance to take off even more. But Charlie is repeatedly, mistakenly credited for having choreographed it, something that she and her team do not seem to be in a rush too correct. It's unclear whether Charlie, and because Charlie was a kid, her parents, and the soon-to-be-signed agents at United Talent, knew who they were ripping off when they built a massive career off it. But before you knew it, Charlie was being called the CEO,

of Renegade and was performing and a Super Bowl commercial for Zionist Hamas. Here's Charlie teaching her sister Dixie the renegade dance back in January 2020, without crediting Jalea or even the musician. I taught my sister how to do Renegade so you can learn it to you. I'm such a good dancer, but I'm just going to let her teach me. So... Jalea's parents weren't Internet natives and didn't really get why she was upset for the lack of credit, which left the teenager on her own at first.

But by the time these videos with Charlie and Dixie were coming out at the beginning of 2020, the rest of the extremely online were starting to get as frustrated as Julea was for the D'emielio's failure to credit her. Barry Siegel, who was the head of content at a now-defunct video-sharing platform called Dobsmash, reached out to Julea to confirm that she was Renegade's original creator. When she confirmed that, Siegel asked her if she'd want to speak to someone from the New York Times. That someone was friend of this fairy show, Taylor Loren. twist. And once the mainstream media showed up, it clicked for Jalaya's family. Their daughter was very right to be pissed off, and the failure of other TikTokers to credit her work was cheating

her out of what could be a massively lucrative career online. Because look, Charlie's account was primarily full of other people's dances, and it hadn't prevented her, a wealthy white teenager from Connecticut, from going from less than a million followers in the summer of 2019 to 50 million followers in April 2020, and had translated those numbers on TikTok to millions of dollars in the bank. White creators and their teams were discovering, performing, and profiting from black creators' work, and the entertainment industry took their teeny tiny little sunglasses off and said, And while they made a shitload of money and they're very much fine, are lesser side casualties of this story of algorithmic and entertainment money greed.

Because, no, they weren't great dancers. But in the internet's classic way, there became a corner of TikTok where you could rack up millions of views mocking these girls while they were still kids. But these kids and their families and their agents were making bank off of all of it, all while Jalea Harmon remained invisible to the mainstream. Until February 2020, the profile of Jalea in the Times, as well as a Vox piece from earlier that month by Rebecca Jennings that examined how viral dances were nearly impossible to get copyrighted, finally sparked a public demand for her work to be acknowledged. After months of effort, the girl from Atlanta finally had a massive platform to advocate for herself.

In the Times piece, Lorenz talked to Jolaya about her struggle to be heard while continuing life as a normal kid and expanded on how the lack of crediting practices on TikTok often pushed already marginalized creators out of the picture entirely. Jalea's profile immediately sparked an internet-wide discussion about the erasure of black artists and how easy these platforms made it to not credit anyone at all. In her interview, Jalaya said she wasn't upset with Charlie. She just wanted credit. And the D'amilio's publicist caught wind. Charlie responded,

I know it's associated with me, but I'm so happy to give Jolaya credit and I'd love to collaborate with her. Thanks, Charles. According to her publicist, Charlie hadn't known who had choreographed the dance that she was performing during the largest period of growth in her accounts and TikTok's history. Why didn't anyone check? Okay, Jamie, stay focused. Two days later, on February 15th, the NBA slam dunk contest happens in Chicago, and there were TikTokers who were announced to be attending the game,

Charlie and Dixie DeMilleo and Addison Ray. I'm ready to make a lot of content with a lot of new people. I mean, I'm with two of some of the best TikTokers there are, So I'm excited to just make a bunch of content, a lot of dancing, maybe try some new stuff, you know. This appearance happened so close to Jalea's feature in The Times that people online were pissed. And rightfully so, because at the game and in content posted by the TikTokers and the NBA, the renegade dance was featured. Without credit.

Then on February 16th, the actual NBA All-Star game. Just a quick aside, it took me so long to figure out how All-Star Weekend works. I don't care. Anyways, it appeared that someone at the NBA had done their research because Jalea Harmon was announced as a guest at the game to perform her original choreography. And on that same day, she posted a collab TikTok with Charlie and Addison. So after months of regularly performing Jolaya's work,

Charlie posts a TikTok of herself, Addison Ray, and Jolaya Harmon performing Renegade together. And not for nothing, Jalaya is doing laps around them. Anyways, here's the caption. Guys, I would love to introduce you to at underscore period XOX L-A-I-I. I'm so happy that she's able to teach me the original choreography that she made. She is the best. This move is generally well-received, though some don't hesitate to call it up for what it

appeared to be. The NBA and celebrity TikTokers realizing in the 11th hour to do right by Jalea only after a New York Times profile and a wave of public outrage had encouraged them to do so. Nevertheless, Jolaya performed Renegade at the NBA All-Star Game solo. She was great, it was awesome, and it finally set her up for some of the clout that she had been owed for nearly five months at that point. Later that week, she appeared on Ellen. Her TikTok followers spiked to over two million by April, and the 2021 documentary got put into production. As far as the media was concerned, that was that.

Julea had asked for her credit, she'd received it, and the world had moved on. And so did the TikTok celebrities she'd collaborated with, moving on to careers in reality TV and CVS music. Hey guys, guess what? We have a new show on Hulu. Find out what our lives are really like behind the scenes. After February 2020, things got really awesome. The year was shaped by global tragedy, a cursed American election, and a major reckoning with race in America. particularly with the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer. This was also a moment for racial reckoning on TikTok.

Creators called the platform out for content suppression that may, and TikTok issued an apology, saying, We acknowledge and apologize to our black creators and community who have felt unsafe, unsupported, or suppressed. We don't ever want anyone to feel that way. We welcome the voices of the black community wholeheartedly. But by early 2021, the common consensus was that the tweaks to the algorithm and the diversity of the staff was not moving the needle enough. 2020 into 2021 had also been a major moment for labor discussions online, particularly after so many were unable to work with lockdown restrictions in place and governmental assistance in the U.S. being nearly impossible to come by in a sustainable way.

And so a number of people were motivated to say, what the fuck? Why would I show up for a labor system that has not shown up for me? This prompted a series of strikes in the West, rent strikes, tuition strikes, workers' strikes, and workers organizing in industries where unions had either dissolved or decreased in power in the last several decades. Among young people, the promise of unionization became more prominent than I'd ever seen in my lifetime. I got so into unionizing that I fucked a guy in the union, around the same time that the great resignation took place. Workers were voluntarily leaving their jobs in huge numbers early in 2020 because of how poorly their employers had treated them in terms of safety, wages, and benefits during the pandemic.

And let's be honest, way before. So by spring 2021, the conversations around race and labor among young people had been on a steady uptick. And a lot of demonstration had been organized either online or in person using the Internet. It's literally one of the only things it's good for. That and listening to My Little Podcast. So this would be an exceptionally bad time for Addison Ray to perform a bunch of TikTok dances on Jimmy Fallon that March, right? To perform dances without giving credit while promoting her pivot to pop music, right?

Right? Addison performed dances to songs like Corvette, Corvette, Up, Savage, Laffy Taffy, and more. All of those dances we just named were choreographed by Black creators. So people took to Twitter to write things. things like, the fact that Addison Ray is championed for TikTok dancers, whilst the black creatives that made them never get the same platform will never sit right with me. And this is what white privilege looks like. Black creators innovate dancers and do them amazingly, but Addison Ray gets invited on Fallon

to perform them in a ho-hum way. She's not racist. Fallon's not racist, but somehow the black dancers are erased, even though they dance better. Right. That clip is from clever news, by the way, because I credit people. a year after being confronted about it the first time. Not only a failure on the Addison Ray side, a huge failure on the Jimmy Fallon side. She's the face of the problem, but it's a problem of many faces. And the Fallon team caught on to that because after this wave of criticism,

the description on the YouTube upload of this clip, which, to no one's surprise, no longer exists now, suddenly included links to the original choreographer's TikTok accounts. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Online outrage was so intense that both Addison and Fallon had to respond. Addison Ray apologized when confronted by Human Devils TMZ. I think they were all credited in the original YouTube posting. But it's kind of hard to credit during the show. But they all know that I love them so much. And, I mean, I support all of them so much.

And hopefully one day we can all meet up and dance together. And Jimmy Fallon responded by inviting the creators of the dances that Addison had performed on his next show. On our last show before break, we did a bit with Addison Ray where she taught me eight viral TikTok dances. Now, we recognize

that the creators of those dances deserve to have their own spotlight. So right now, some of the creators will join me to talk about how their dance went viral and then perform the dance themselves. See, bullying works.

Fallon brings on, over Zoom, unfortunately, choreographers, Maya and Nicole Johnson and Chris Carter of the Updance, Dorian Scott of the Corvette Corvette Dance, Flyboy Fu and Indy of the Laffy Taffy Dance, Greg Dahl, Adam Snyder, and Nate Nail of the Blinding Lights Dance, and Kiara Wilson of the Savage Dance. Which was wonderful for these creators, but understandably did not win a lot of trust back.

The fact that this slip had happened made it clear that it would very likely happen again. And so, in June 2021, a number of Black TikTokers announced they were going on indefinite strike. User Cap and Ken Knuckles said in a no longer available video, For all my melanated brothers and sisters of the African diaspora, we are on strike. We are not making a dance for thought shit. We are just going to let them keep flailing. It just shows how much you need us to make a dance. Because on the app, there was a need for a TikTok dance.

On June 11th, Megan the Stallium released Thoughtshit, a song literally designed to dominate TikTok. But when black choreographers agreed to not feed a dance into the algorithm that their white counterparts would take. to Fallon and half-ass apologize for later, no strong trend emerged, all while the Black TikTok strike tag racked up over six million views. And in mainstream media, this became a pretty big story. It was on the nightly news. Kenyon Lee, or Kentai.com, was a participant and organizer in the strike, and spoke to ABC News shortly after the strike was first announced. Them going and creating these challenges under these sounds, like help those sounds get boosted into the algorithm.

Memphis native Kenyan Lee is a viral content creator and computer science major. He says part of the blame goes to TikTok. It's really centered around uniting people under like one trend. So essentially like promotes you to take content. And they don't really have a system in play to show people who start, you know, any dances or anything under that sound. So how can you get credit? It's definitely going to take somebody in like the back end side of like TikTok to really come in and just like find some type of way to like mark whoever is trend. In the meantime, in your video description, you're going to want to make it really clear that you were the one that started this trend, plus the hashtag to, you know, seal the deal.

Another voice in this discussion was TikToker and cultural commentator Amanda Bennett, founder of Define and Empower, a consultancy firm who advises businesses from a black feminist perspective. I caught up with her about the strike almost three years later and why it was so important. Hi, I am Dr. Amanda Bennett. it. I am a poet, a writer, a facilitator, and an educator. I primarily think and write about black feminist cultural criticism and black women and pop culture. How were you first made aware of this strike? I was made aware of it because I was a creator on TikTok at the time and I happened to see a lot of different black TikTokers talking about their work haven't been stolen in the past and no longer wanting to contribute to that cycle of exploitation when Megan the Stallion song

Thought Shit came out. And so they were saying, we're not actually going to make a dance for this song. We're not going to allow you all to steal from us once again. Something I find fascinating is just how community organizing online and how that is extremely complicated, but I mean, I feel like this is a clear case for how successful it can be. Can you walk me through sort of how this strike was organized? Sure. I wasn't one of the organizes, I'm more so a commentator, but it seems that a couple of young black women on TikTok began to notice this pattern and then began to communicate with other dancers, such as Kira Wilson, Angelaya Harmon, to say, hey, we're not going to allow these people to work to

continue to be stolen. And here's how we kind of develop a hashtag to be able to respond to this. And as a commentator, had you seen something like this organized online before? Was there precedent for it in this space? Honestly, not to this degree. I typically only really seeing young black creators making the dances for the different songs, but not actually pushing back against racism. Although in a lot of cases, I did notice that many black creators were being censored or having their videos taken down. And there was ways of push back toward that against TikTok, but it hadn't been organized into this kind of format before. I am curious to get into the historical context for this, because you spoke about this.

in your commentary at the time, what is the historical precedent for this, for this behavior from white creators in general stealing from black creators without creditation? Right. I mean, unfortunately, the history goes back several centuries. Even in the video, I had the example of Jack Daniels whiskey where a slave man named Nearest Green actually came up with the formula and idea for the Jack Daniels whiskey, but Jack Daniels then owned him and his family basically exploited their ideas and their labor. with no compensation toward the family.

And now today we have a brand called Uncle Nears where folks are taking back that idea and that wealth. But this is one example. Even I've been thinking a lot about Beyonce's album, Cowboy Carter, and how she's basically reclaiming the genre of country music for black creators. So much of country music is taken from black culture. So, for example, the banjo is actually an African-derived instrument.

Beyonce talks a lot about Linda Martel, who was a black woman country singer in the mid-20th century. country. And I think that Beyonce's album opens up a wider conversation about cultural appropriation, particularly in music. So even, you know, black artists who had their style and ideas taken to create artists like Elvis, for example, is one of those examples. So there is a really long history of black people creating an idea or a genre of music or a way of dancing and then having larger white corporations or white artists appropriate that without giving them any credit or compensation. I'm interested in as you were observing this rollout, how did you feel about the immediate results? How did you feel about the media response? I always think about the, you know, like the Jimmy Fallon back and forth, what you felt about sort of what the response when this went public was. Absolutely. Yeah.

And I think that is a way that companies and big institutions are able to protect themselves and to avoid kind of doing that internal DEI work. I work in tech. I have a lot of friends who work in tech. And particularly for us as black and brown queer people, people living with disabilities, we notice that there is a tendency to uplift and hire people who identify as white or men or heterosexual. And when there are not people who are from diverse backgrounds in the room, you're not going to be able to make intentional and mindful and inclusive decisions regarding programming and even regarding who gets credited. So the actual infrastructure, of these systems and these algorithms are made by people who are out of touch with these kind of ideas around inclusivity. And that is a problem. So you can actually get substantial responses when these incidents occur because they just don't know or don't care to know. And then in terms of how the public sort of received the organizers kind of going public and saying, hey, we're not going to choreograph anything to the new megan, the stallion work. From your perspective, how did that sort of roll out go? I definitely noticed a lot of pushback from white folks.

on TikTok, I think that there was a kind of entitlement or expectation that black people would kind of always produce these dancers for them. And it's interesting how it has a kind of unspoken expectation in that you don't want to admit that you are paying such close attention to black culture, but you're wanting to rely on it to be able to have a sense of creativity or culture or community. And that kind of goes back to my previous point about the long history of cultural appropriation and white communities often relying on black art and creativity to have a sense of soulfulness, of community, of togetherness, of expression. But, you know, obviously black people are not merely an engine for white creative expression. They're actually human beings

who are entitled to a worthy of respect and consideration and compensation. So I think when that invisible contract is breached, that can trigger a lot of white anger. Are you still actively on TikTok? I actually haven't been active on TikTok the last couple of years for many of the reasons that I actually talked about. I made a post about sexual exploitation of black women during slavery and the stereotypes that emerged around that, such as the Jezabel, and that was taken down because it was inappropriate. And just kind of having conflict with TikTok over me making these videos about Black American history and structural oppression and having to feel as if I was being censored. So I kind of stepped away from that platform. That is incredibly

frustrated. And it's frustrating that that, like, it does end up discouraging creators from making really useful material. I mean, I think that companies are in a place where they are aware, you know, post-storge Floyd, that they have to make some kind of effort to keep up with the times and improve inclusivity. But the infrastructure of most tech corporations is just so Byzantine that it can be difficult to push that actual change forward. And obviously, these closed companies are ultimately existing to create a profit. And so I think a lot of business models are thinking that profit is tied to facilitating white comfort. So if your ideal customer or your centralized customer is a white upper middle class person living in the Midwest, that's

not going to facilitate free speech or free creative expression among, you know, a black working class person living in a city, for example, that's just not being thought of as the target demographic that should be focused on. Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, I think there are a couple of ways. I think you can also offer direct support to creators. So, memo them, them, cash app them, et cetera, share their work, credit their work. As we saw in the thoughtshed example, collective organizing around particular hashtags or strikes, even really looking into the actual structure of these different companies, you know, do they have black people in roles other than DEI? And so what are they? And if they're not present in those roles,

maybe put a bit of pressure on the company of, do you have someone thinking about inclusivity in, you know, your algorithm team, for example? Well, Amanda, thank you so much for talking with us. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be part of the conversation. Thank you so much to Amanda Bennett, whose work you can follow over at Define and Empower. And when we come back, I speak to one of TikTok's most successful choreographers, Kiaro Wilson, creator of the Savage Dance, and one of the first people to copyright their viral dance. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions

and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all. Childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more. And found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal.

he was shot in his house unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. My name is Ed.

Everyone say hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer. and my mom is a cousin, so like, it's not, like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different.

On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. Well, 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sometimes it's hard to remember, but... Going through something like that is a traumatic experience. But it's also not the end of their life. That was my dad, reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not our shame to carry, and that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leitra Tate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority,

we weighed through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like, in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls, mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing. The unwanted sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's lock in.

We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the unwanted sorority, new episodes every Thursday, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A foot washed up a shoe with Some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime.

A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases

to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth. Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you.

Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming, and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning.

Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to 16th minute. The peak of my dance career was doing a hip-hop dance to Rihanna's Disturbia in 2009. I was bad, and we're back with more about the Black TikTok strike of 2021. While Jalea Harmon and the Renegade dance was the most commonly cited dance example that led to the Black TikTok strike, a close second was by TikToker and choreographer Kiyara Wilson. She was one of the creators featured on Jimmy Fallon in April 2021 because Madison Ray had performed it on the show previously without crediting her.

And while Kiara didn't formally participate in the Black TikTok strike, she actually took things one step further. She started the process of copywriting her dance in collaboration with choreographer Jekyll Knight. I wanted to hear all about it and about this process overall, and I was really excited to catch up with her. I am Kiara. I was Wilson. I am now a leech. I got married. Oh my good. Congratulations. Thank you. I have been married for almost two years. So I grew up in a small town in Ohio. Very small town. It's called Mansfield. I probably don't know what that is. But it's right outside of Columbus. So yeah, pretty much there I grew up. I was a dancer my whole life from age seven. I was tumbling, flipping, doing all that. I just absolutely loved the, just dance in general. I was a cheerleader in high school, all that fun stuff. And basically where it all started in a small town, I love dance.

And so I just wanted to pursue it more after high school. So that's when I, that was in 2019. I had graduated. That's when I really started to get into doing it outside of graduating and stuff. so what a weird time to have just graduated high school just graduated then COVID wants to come around and just in 2020 so yeah like you think your life is about to start and then just like you can tell from your TikTok presence even back then but like you're a very experienced dancer you're a very talented choreographer what was sort of your path into choreographing so yes I actually

did choreograph a little bit but it was like just for fun like I never did it like as a job or I just did it for fun like I would just make up a dance in my head and then like maybe I'll show it to somebody but it wasn't nothing like big or spectacular and then I had actually moved away from my hometown when I did graduate I moved in with my sister to Texas and that's where I am currently living now and I actually did join a dance team and I was choreographing for a small kids jazz group. I was just doing little jazz dances to like kids songs, but that was also just for fun. That was just like a little after school program

for the kids. And I just ended up making dances for them and that rolled into TikTok because that was literally the same like not the same month, maybe like a month later. This is always like the stupidest question in the world. But what were you hoping what happened in 2020? When you get out of high school, you move to Texas, you're with your sister, you're choreographing on the side. Like, what were you hoping for in that first year getting out of high school? So I actually was planning on going to the military. Like, that was my plan. And one of the reasons why I did come to Texas was to focus

on getting into the military because my sister was in the military. And I was also watching over my niece at the time because she had to go to work. So that was really the whole reason why I did come down to Texas. So that was really my main focus. I was studied. I would work out and all that. And then on top of that, I was just like, I need a break. I need a break. And then that's when I started to create the dance. So it's crazy how things tie together.

At the time, you started posting on TikTok more. What was your relationship like to the Internet, you know, as you were growing up? So I loved the Internet. I stayed on the Internet all the time. literally I don't think though I didn't really post like I was trying to go viral or anything I just posted like a regular like people posting like Easter pitch or stuff like that I never like tried to go viral I don't know if that makes sense yeah yeah I just I loved it I love TikTok I love dub smash all those different apps I was on them and I was learning all the dances on them so I think that's really what made me gravitate towards TikTok so much because there were so many dances on there. And I'm just like, I just want to learn these. It seems so fun.

And you're fresh out of high school and you were doing dance your whole life. You're like, this is like bring me back to my roots, you know? Do it when you're choreographing a dance for TikTok, are you approaching it differently? I'm assuming yes. But like how do you approach it versus, you know, something for the stage, something for the kids, whatever it is? So first off, good thing about TikTok, you only have to make like a 15 second dance. So you have to think about how you're going to cram the moves and make it look good in 15 seconds. So versus a one minute long dance, you know what I'm saying?

So I think that's really what made my approach like that way because I knew I didn't have as much time. So we have to make it good and short and sweet. that way everybody can do it and it was perfect for all ages versus a minute long dance that you have all the time in the world I think it has a huge part to do with why the Savage Challenge became so successful

is like anyone can do it but anyone can't do it well definitely understand that yeah it's just TikTok dances I guess the Savage Challenge you posted it in March 2020 right? Yes Very, very top of COVID lockdown.

How does your life change immediately around this time, even like notwithstanding with the post? Okay. So it changed like rapid speed. Yeah. I did the dance. It went viral. Everyone was doing it. And in those processes, my numbers were going up.

So I was growing on all platforms. I would get promotions and ads. So like people reach out. be like can you make up a dance to my song that I just recorded or something like along those lines or um an ad so like say like just a brand they will reach out and be like we want you to make a dance um to this song or make a dance to something that we are doing like a service or something so that's really the big shift what was your follower count like before this like How rapid a shift are we talking?

I probably only had 100 followers, maybe, okay, 100 to 1,000. I'll give that rate. And all of this happening, like, in the context of COVID, too, like, when you're dealing with all this, are you just sort of with your sister and your niece? Like, what is your day-to-day life like at this time? I was with my sister and my niece. I was sitting around. Like, I would, when people would reach out for me to choreograph, I would, like, write

it down. Okay, I need to do this for this amount. Just write them down. and then pop in my headphones and I would just choreograph to the song. Like I would listen to the song, get in the groove, whatever. And then the month later, I actually had a boyfriend at the time. So that's who I'm married to now. But he was back in Ohio.

So I went and got him and brought him to Texas with me to live. So that's how we got. I know that you said you made an original post that didn't do great. And then you did it again. what was that like revision process like a lot of what i'm interested in is like how to make these weird confusing like opaque algorithms work in your favor which sounded like you were kind of trying to do so so walk me through sort of what that thought process was so at the time everyone honestly was doing this i feel like so they would post like day one of trying to get

my dance viral or day two day three they will just keep going until until either they went viral or like, you know, they would give up. But I was just like, okay, I'm going to try that because I'm not going to give up on this one. Like, I think this one, this is pretty good. So I did the day one. Like, everyone used to ask me, like, was there like a way you used to dress? Did that change the way? Like, you went viral?

And honestly, no, I can be honest. The first day, I had on some leggings, I believe, and a little crop top. and the second day I had on pajamas so it's kind of like it's like and the second day is the one that went viral so it's like not really on what you're wearing it's just been off of like I don't even I couldn't even tell you still to this day I don't even know how I don't know like yeah it took off I think after day two pretty yes aggressively and so you're you're a teenager that is dealing with COVID you've just graduated from high school. How do you process and handle sort of the volume of people reaching out? How do you sort of sift your way through it and like also protect your

brain? Yeah, it was a lot at first. Trust and believe. Oh my gosh. It was a lot at the time. I did end up getting a PR. So I think that's really what helped so much. And then of course, my family, they were there to help me like set everything. up and tell me like, okay, this is when you need to do this or like you have an interview at this time, you know, but as a teenager, it definitely was a lot. But I learned very fast, like, it's fast-paced. So you got to get it going and got to get it out there. And it worked. And so as you're getting these offers through 2020, you're starting to choreograph kind of full time. Did that feel like a natural transition? Was it like you had to sort of renegotiate what you wanted your life to look like?

or, yeah, as your life kind of changed overnight, how are you processing that? So it was like, should I still go to the military? And then I'm like, no, I shouldn't. Like I'm literally living in like, you know, like the spotlight right now that would ruin everything that I could potentially have going on. So I was just like, I didn't want to risk it. So it was a hard decision to like be like, no, we got to go. different direction, but, you know, God, he is always with me, and that was my path that I was

supposed to walk. So I walked it in faith. That rocks. Oh, that's so cool. It really, like, I, yeah, you're like, oh, yeah, I guess I'll just be a full-time choreographer. Yeah, right. And your family was, I mean, your support system, it sounds like everyone was on board with this, too. Oh, absolutely. Everyone loved that this happened, like no one would ever imagine. In 2021, there's sort of a whole second phase to the Savage Challenge that is tied into this larger conversation around crediting black artists and this whole labor conversation. When did you feel sort of the tenor of that conversation shift? The shift, yeah, I don't know. It wasn't like, I think once everyone realized like what happened with,

Jalaya with the Renegade Dance, we all just collectively decided we need to start crediting creators because we don't need anyone else stealing anybody else's career, I guess, you could say, or just their lifestyle. So I think just after that incident, everyone just decided like we're going to start making sure everybody gives their credit. Was crediting, was that like a conversation you were thinking about prior to your dance sort of being picked up and becoming this huge thing? No, honestly, I did not. I did so long ago. I don't believe. I actually may have back then, though, like I genuinely cannot remember, but I'm going to say no until everyone knew, like, okay, we need to seriously put dance credits and then like tag the creator. And this is also the

of like the Jimmy Fallon appearance and stuff like that. How did that sort of come across your desk? So Jimmy Fallon was receiving backlash from bringing Charlie on. I do believe that's who was on. And she was doing black people's dances. So everyone did not like that.

And everyone was definitely going and attacking. So I, I think it was just in his best interest for him to just bring us on there. And either we do, yeah, we did do our dances, actually, but it was over Zoom. So for me, it was kind of like, dang, like, I wish we still could have, like, went a person. But of course, COVID was a thing. So, yeah, it is what it is. But it was, it was really fun.

It was really fun. And it was a great experience. And, yeah, I mean, the thing that struck me about that was, like, I think this is more of just, like, a PR. So you have this sort of huge burst in followers and work in 2020. Does that multiply again in 2021? Yes, and it still does currently. So it's definitely, it's my full time. And I'm just so thankful that it has continued on.

And I can continue to entertain and inspire people. The last thing I wanted your insight on, getting your dance copyrighted, how did that come about and how do you do that? I'd never heard of that happening on the internet before and it feels like it should just be a precedent that exists. So how did that happen? Yeah, so the idea was always there to copyright even before it was like said and done, I guess you kind of say. Basically, it was Jaquille Knights. He's a big choreographer. It was his idea to get everyone copyrighted. The process is still in the process. So I can't really say much about how it happened, how it works and stuff. I just,

it was just his idea to get everyone's stuff. So I definitely had to copyright my dance because it was just going everywhere. And it's even in a movie called Dumb Money. So did you get compensated for that? Yes, I did. Yes. Good. Good. So. it's nice to see like my work and other things and it's it's just so amazing just like fortnight so seeing you sort of be a part of a movement to be like yeah and you need to pay me yeah everyone deserves it everyone deserves to get paid for something they've created or worked for so what are you up to right now and and is there anything that you are like looking forward to or want to get into moving forward?

So currently, I am a stay-at-home mommy, and I still am a full-time content creator, of course. Right now, I am just trying to transition my content to family, lifestyle, but obviously dance is always going to be a part of me. Really, my goals are for myself and my family is we're trying to punch hard on YouTube. We're trying to just get more traction on YouTube, get more travel type deals and stuff like that. So more family things because I absolutely love my family. To stay in the influencer space, but switch to something that matches more what your life looks like now.

Absolutely. That was a great way of putting it. Yes, that is exactly because that is literally my life. so much to Kiara Wilson, whose work you can follow now over at Kiki.j-a-J-A-J-A-H on TikTok and YouTube. I really hope the copyright works out, and we will be right back with more on why this is actually the computer's fault. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebene, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free.

I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more, and found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner.

He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but... Going through something like that is a traumatic experience,

but it's also not the end of their life. That was my dad, reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not our shame to carry, and that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leitra Tate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we weighed through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like. and sounds like in real time.

Each week, I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls, mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing. The unwanted sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's lock in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the unwanted sorority, new episodes every Thursday,

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. podcasts. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin. So like it's not like, what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called

Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where I'm you get your podcasts. Our IHeart Radio Music Festival, presented by Capital One, is coming back to Las Vegas. Vegas. September 19th and 20th. On your feet. Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen.

Brian Adams. Ed Sheeran. Fade. Glorilla. Jelly Roll. John Fogarty. Lil Wayne. L.L. Cool J.

Mariah Carey. Maroon 5. Sammy Hagar. Tate McCray. The offspring. Tim McRaw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your time.

Tickets today.AXS.com. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny, you might just miss it.

He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to 16th minute.

I was at a hospital recently and there was this choir of church ladies that came every Tuesday night and would just sing outside everyone's room one by one without ever asking if you wanted them to. They didn't take requests. They wouldn't stop singing Abba.

And I felt awkward and started dancing supportively. and so they just kept singing. Get a life, ladies, no one likes it. And today on the podcast, we are talking about something that has nothing to do with that. We are talking about the Black TikTok strike of 2021. And I hope that after hearing from Kiara Wilson and Amanda Bennett, you have a better idea of the cultural forces that led to black users having to fight to be credited for their own work. But I still had questions about how this was enabled through algorithms. Fortunately, biases in algorithms is a fast. growing area of study and there's no shortage of reporting on the issue. One of the leading voices on this issue is Black Poet of Code Joy Balamweeney, the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, an author of Unmasking AI, my mission to protect what is human in a world of machines. She was inspired to do all of the above while in grad school at MIT when she had a firsthand experience of the basic racism that's cooked into our algorithms. She was trying to design a mirror that would detect a user's face and provide a positive affirmation. And to start, Joy used a generic line of face detection

code, only to find that it didn't detect her face. And then, when she put on a creepy V for Vendetta style white mask on, it suddenly did detect her face. The algorithm had not been designed to recognize her as a person. This is from a TED Talk she did back in 2017. So I used generic facial recognition software to build the system, but found that it was really hard to test it unless if I wore a white mask. Unfortunately, I've run into this issue before. Another terrific writer on this topic is Meredith Broussard, author of More Than a Glitch, confronting race, gender, and ability bias in tech. She's currently an associate professor at NYU and the research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology, and she tackles algorithmic bias from all sides.

She examines how racism, transphobia, classism, and more are features of these systems, not bugs. And so I asked her how algorithms like TikTok can get away with it. Important sort of repeating theme in your book is the way that algorithms just in general are presented by the people who design them as this impartial thing that can theoretically make decisions better than a human and all of their. biases. And you pretty cleanly deconstruct why that is. What would need to happen for an algorithm to work cleanly? Is it possible? You know, sometimes it's possible and sometimes it's not. So we get into this binary thinking sometimes when it comes to computers solving problems. And the world is not always binary. So I would say, say two things. I would say that all of the problems that are easy to solve using algorithms

or using code have been solved. And we are only left with the really complicated problems. So we are in a very different era right now. And using mathematical methods to solve social problems is a not always a good strategy. A computer can only calculate mathematical fairness, and mathematical fairness is not the same as social justice. So this explains why we've run into so many problems when we try and use computers to solve social problems. So a computer is not the right tool for every task.

It's about the context, and we just need a more nuanced. approach to computational problem solving. So I'm curious if you have thoughts on how social media has used algorithms. So I think that there are a couple of things going on. I think that we should talk about our shared fantasies around what social media algorithms can do. And then we should also talk about the effect that people using algorithms has on the information that you. ecosystem. At the beginning of the social media era, there was this collective fantasy that somehow is going to be possible to make algorithms that were going to govern our social interaction spaces, that the algorithms were going to replace the curation function of journalists,

that algorithms were going to be able to mediate conversations, that algorithms were going to be able to bring people together, that the algorithmic spaces were going to replace IRL spaces. And this collective fantasy was so compelling, so many people believed it, that people started to act as if that were happening, right, as if that were true. But the algorithms do a really bad job, right? And so now we're left with what we have now, which is misinformation, chaos, journalists without jobs, compromised democracy. It's partly about the collective fantasy, but it's partly about what happens when people use systems and the systems change human behavior, but then also the systems change to adapt to what the people are doing in them. One of the ideas that I really rely on heavily is something that comes from Ruha Benjamin's book, Race After Technology.

And this is the idea that algorithmic systems discriminate by default. So for a very long time, there was this perception out there that algorithms were neutral or unbiased or objective. And that's a kind of pro-technology bias that I call techno-chauvinism. and it's not at all true. Technological solutions are not necessarily superior to others. It's about the right tool for the task, and sometimes the right tool for the task is undoubtedly a computer, and sometimes it's something simple like a book in the hands of a child sitting out a parent's lap.

One is not inherently better than the other. So we can push back against techno chauvinism, and if we adopt the frame that algorithmic systems discriminate by default, well, we can see the poor treatment of marginalized groups on the internet in a different light. We can see it as inevitable, right? So if we assume that there is going to be a lot of sexism, that they're not going to be protections for women or appropriate protections for women in online spaces, the way that there are not appropriate protections. in the real world, well, then, you know, we're a little more prepared when these things happen. So something that I think about a lot is I think about Stack Overflow, which is this

website that has a lot of answers to programming questions. And the profession of professional computer programmers could not exist at this point without Stack Overflow. because everybody goes there to look up answers to code questions and ask code questions. And it has this pretty dreadful and toxic climate. And I was wondered, well, why is this thing so essential and yet so awful? And then I looked one time at a survey of who are the people on Stack Overflow. and it turns out it's mostly like 20-something guys. And I was like, oh, well, this explains a lot about why I have always felt, you know,

unwelcome as a woman of color who is no longer in her 20s. So the fact that this really essential resource on the Internet is populated by people being unpleasant to each other, like says a lot to me about what the dominant culture is among the people who make internet technologies. I wanted to ask a little bit as well how algorithms have a consistent tendency to conspire against and target people of color. I think it goes back to this idea of discrimination by default. So let's take facial recognition. and let's think about the historical view. So facial recognition, a kind of AI technology that we have today,

is biased against people with darker skin. It's better at recognizing men than women. Trans and non-binary folks are generally not recognized at all. Better at recognize people with light skin and people with dark skin. So facial recognition technologies are built on earlier technology. So computer vision as a field is built on top of color photography, color photography, of course, was preceded by black and white photography. And at every step of the way, there has been profound racism in the representation. And so we see that continuing today.

let's go back to color film when kodak developed it was a big revolution but it was tuned for light skin so labs were given these things called shirley cards which featured a white woman named shirley you know usually holding like pillows or balloons or something in primary colors and these were the cards that labs were supposed to use to tune their color photography equipment but the shirley cards did not include a range of browns. And so browns came out muddy in color photos. And this persisted through the 1970s. And in the 1970s, Kodak finally started including a range of browns on the color tuning cards and darker skin people look better in photographs. Well, this was not because Kodak had some kind of racial reckoning or some kind of a weakening.

It was because furniture makers complained. Furniture makers refused to switch over from black and white catalog photography to color photography in the catalogs because they complained that their walnut and mahogany furniture looked muddy. So Kodak responded to the furniture and manufacture. not to the millions of people. We see the same problem happening then, not just in color photography, but it also happened in cinematography.

One of the big revolutions of Issa Rays show Insecure was there were all these articles written about how the lighting was so great because guess what, that a black cinematographer who did the lighting so that people with darker skin looked fantastic. So all of these things have been happening all along. It's not really surprising that facial recognition had these kinds of problems because all the predecessor technologies had these kinds of problems. And so what you need to do is you need to examine what's going on in the underlying social system. So when we have, you know, like the Gender Shades Project, the reveals this big flaw. in facial recognition, people like to talk about that as a glitch, as something that is

easily fixed, you know, just just, oh, let's just like write a ticket for it and just fix it. It's a blip. It's not important. But my argument is that we should look at things like this as indicative of larger social problems. And it's an indicator that we need to take a step back and reassess what's going on socially in addition to rebuilding the code. And rebuilding the code, by the way, is always way more expensive and time-consuming and complicated

than anybody imagines. Thank you so much again to Meredith Broussard. I cannot recommend her book more than a glitch, confronting race, gender, and ability bias in tech enough. Ultimately, it's hard to determine how successful the Black TikTok strike of 2021 was.

Online boycotts of an app as dominant as TikTok are extremely hard to make a dent in, at least for now, because as I record this, there's a possibility it won't be available in the US much longer. But the strike was a critical inflection point. Black TikTokers were sick of getting lip service from the platform, the media, and the white TikTokers ripping them off. It's an ongoing fight, but this was an important battle. Crediting choreographers on TikTok has improved, if not changed entirely, because of stories like Kiara Wilson and Jolaya Harmon. Creators will fight back.

And there's no shortage of things to fight for. Racism in the TikTok algorithm persists. Many cited a continuation of the strike after creators found themselves being flagged for, quote, inappropriate content, unquote, every time they used the word black in their bio. The influencer pay gap is very much a thing. And after TikTok pledged to hire more black employees back in 2020,

years later, reports that racism still persisted within the company and that employees concerned were not taken seriously came to light. And appropriation is still happening in TikTok choreography. Major at dances from black choreographers have been slowly overtaken by algorithm-provided white girls again just last year, another historically black dance style being lifted. But June 2021 was an exciting moment for labor, for racial justice, and for creators demanding to be treated fairly. The internet should not forget about it, and I hope it's inspiration for further action.

The Black TikTok strike of 2021, your 16th minute ends when our algorithms aren't dog shit anymore. Thank you so much for listening to 16th Minute, and if you enjoyed this episode, support our guests and keep learning about the myriad ways that algorithms amplify racism with works like Meredith Broussard's more than a glitch, algorithms of oppression by Sophia Omoja Noble, and the great Joy Bollamweeney's Unmasking AI. Here's that hospital choir singing Abba. God! You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life. Oh, see that girl, watch that scene digging the dancing queen. See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen. You guys.

I couldn't. I could shake my head. 16th Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and I Heart Radio. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichten and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13. And pet shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson, my cat's flea and Casper, and my pet rock bird,

you will out with us all. Bye. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around. around you. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the

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podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number and we own you listen to shock incarceration on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts it's black business month and money and wealth podcast with john hoobriot is tapping in i'm breaking down how to build wealth create opportunities and move from surviving to thriving it's time to talk about ownership equity and everything in between black and brown communities have historically been last in life.

Let me just say this. AI is moving faster than civil rights legislation ever did. Listen to money and wealth from the Black Effect Podcast Network on IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.