There Are No Girls on the Internet - DISINFORMED: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is facing a coordinated disinfo attack

Episode Date: February 6, 2021

AOC took to Instagram Live to share her story of being in the Capitol complex during the insurrection. But now she's at the center of a coordinated right wing disinformation attack. Digital organizer Leslie Mac explains the double edged sword of being a political woman of color in the public eye comes disinformation campaigns and harassment. Follow Leslie: https://twitter.com/LeslieMacWatch AOC's IG Live: https://www.instagram.com/p/CKxlyx4g-Yb/Check out UltraViolet's disinformation media guide: https://weareultraviolet.org/fairness-guide/ Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You're listening to This Informed. A miniseries from The Mini-Series from The TV. there are no girls on the internet. I'm Bridget Todd. Today we are putting out a special emergency episode because if you were online at all last week, you probably saw Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez use Instagram Live to give a harrowing account of what she experienced from inside the Capitol complex

during the insurrection on the Capitol. In this account, she also shared that, like so many of us, she is a survivor of sexual violence. Now, this triggered a real-time tsunami of disinformation. Right-wing figures like Representative Nancy Mace and Jack Posabic and others falsely accused AOC of not really being at the capital at all or exaggerating her claims. So it's true, while she was not in the main domed capital building, that building that you think of when you picture the capital in your head. When rioters breached it, she also never claimed to be.

She accurately said that she was in the Cannon House office building, which is part of the capital complex and is connected to the main building by tunnels. Here's what she said on Instagram. I hide back in in the bathroom behind the door. And then I just start to hear these yells of, where is she? Where is she? And I just thought to myself they got inside. It felt like my brain was able to have so many thoughts in that moment. So AOC never said that rioters were in her hallway.

That's a claim she never made. But that didn't stop Nancy Mace from tweeting, I'm two doors down from AOC and no insurrectionist stormed our hallway. Even though AOC never said they did. Now, in AOC's Instagram Live, she recounted hearing somebody bang on our office door, come into her office and say, where is she? At the time, she was afraid that rioters have found her,

but she later realized this person was a capital police officer who was there to help her. Now, after this, we saw really ugly trends on Twitter, like hashtag AOC lied and hashtag Alexandria Ocasio Smollett, comparing her to Jussie Smollett to suggest that she was making up her account, despite it being corroborated by multiple people, like Representative Katie Porter and Bernie Sanders aide Ari Rabin. So this is actually a really good example of how disinformation works in real time. This complete distortion of what AOC said has become part of the public dialogue, despite it being based on lies. After this, AOC tweeted, the sad thing about disinformation

is that once the truth comes out, the damage has already been done. People have already been misled, radicalize, and believe lies to the point where their hatred has brewed to violence. That's what led to the six, and that's what's happening now. And you know what?

She's right. After she bravely shared her story of what happened at the Capitol and connected it to being a survivor of sexual assault, she faced a coordinated public disinformation campaign. And sadly, this is not an isolated thing for women of color in the public political eye.

Leslie Mack is a prominent digital activist and organizer, who I work with at Ultraviolet, where we create resources to curb sexist, racist disinformation, like our media guide that you can find in the show description. And sadly, Leslie really knows what it's like to face these kinds of attacks online. You're a long-time digital organizer, activist, someone who spends a lot of time making the world a better place via the Internet.

How did you get into this work? Tell me about your role in this work. Yeah, my role was work started in the digital. digital space in 2014, I started organizing faith spaces online after I joined Twitter, although I had been in Twitter for like 2008 or something, which seems like ages ago. And I had started doing some legislative organizing that way. We were working in New Jersey to ban the box and also some bail reform initiatives. And so a lot of that my initial digital organizing work was around legislative work, which was really interesting.

And at the time, a little cutting edge. Not a lot of folks were doing it, but we kind of dipped our toes in and started organizing folks online. And then after Mike Brown was murdered, Feminista Jones had kind of put this call out from Twitter to say, hey, would you be interested in hosting a vigil in your city this week? And I was like, sure, I could do one in Philly. And I call that the moment that the full digital organizer, that is Leslie Mack, was born. So that that's where I started out was organizing that first vigil in Philadelphia, the national moment of silence. And I guess I liked it because I just kept on going. Yeah, you're kind of a prolific digital organizer. You're someone,

who I feel is one, it was one of the sort of, when I think about some of the foundational black feminists who were showing up online, I definitely think about you. And, you know, full disclosure, you and I work together at ultraviolet. And so yesterday was kind of a long, wild day for folks who are online and in feminist spaces online, because we saw AOC really being at the center of this coordinated right-wing disinformation campaign against, her after she really bravely shared her story about what happened in the insurrection on January 6th and her own personal story as a survivor of sexual violence. And so my first question for you is, how do you see disinformation and abuse being linked? Well, they're linked, you know, on two, on two levels. And I was talking about this with you yesterday, which is one is at the personal level, which is that abusers in our real lives, our personal lives, use disinformation against us, right? So they'll tell us lies about ourselves, about the world, that nobody will love us. And that's a tool that they utilize at the personal level. And what we're watching is public abusers, right? People that are abusing

the system, people that are abusing people within it, using disinformation for that same purpose, which is to degrade, denigrate, and deny the experiences, real life experiences of marginalized. people. So we're watching that play out with AOC. You know, she bravely not only shared her story, but she went personally one to one to the people, which I think this is such a digital story in and of itself that she took to IG live to have this hour-long conversation. And the way I saw it play out, I didn't know she was live until I saw on Twitter. People were tweeting about it. And they were like, wow, AOC is doing X, Y, Z. And I said, oh, let me go over to IG and watch her. So I was watching her.

And while that was happening, somebody was starting a clubhouse room to talk about it, to debrief it. Shout out to Tracy Quarter. And then as I was watching it, it said, oh, Katie Porter is going to be talking about this IG live on MSNBC shortly. So it was this moment of like, whoa, all of this digital stuff was happening. It was pinging and creating waves all over the place. And then subsequently, that's what we watched was the abuse. that AOC was naming in her IG Live, namely folks like Marjorie Taylor Green, and really all the insurrectionists and seditionists elected that supported the coup on January 6th.

And they've subsequently now tried to discount her personal experience in this harrowing moment. And it's been wild to watch people just blatantly lie, you know, one of her fellow Congress Congress people said, oh, I'm two doors down from her. And there were no, there was nobody in the hallway. And then we find out that the person evacuated before anything happened. So the level of disinformation is really disturbing to watch in real time. Yeah, it is completely like a coordinated attack. So you're talking about Nancy Mace from South Carolina.

So she tweeted yesterday, I'm two doors down from AOC and no insurrectionist stormed our hallway. But that day, she herself tweeted on January 6th that she was being evacuated. because of this threat. She described it as, quote, a nearby threat. She later did an interview, I think, on Good Morning America, where she said that she was so frightened by what happened that she stayed overnight in her office.

She was, you know, her motherly instincts kicked in and that she was so afraid for her life that she was thinking about bringing a gun with her to Capitol Hill from now on because she was so afraid. And so that's how she talked about it right after it happened. And so it's very telling that now weeks later, after AOC essentially says the same thing that I was afraid for my life.

Somebody knocked on the door and I was afraid for my life. She's saying that didn't happen. And I think it's really interesting how you see the way that this is coordinated. You know, we saw another big account on the right tweeting a map with arrows trying to indicate that AOC was not, you know, not in the capital when folks stormed. And AOC herself replied and said, your arrows are wrong. And AOC had a really good tweet where she talked about the fact that, that disinformation, one of the ways that it plays out is that once it's out there in the public narrative,

it doesn't matter if it's not based in reality or if it's an outright fabrication. That becomes part of the narrative for so many people in a way that you can almost never kind of correct. Yeah, you never can pull it back once the cat's out of the bag with disinformation. And it also gets spread in such innocuous ways. It just becomes fact. And it happens so quickly. It's really an impossible thing to corral back in. One other thing I'd mention is that even, you know, AOC herself never said insurrectionist stormed that hallway. What she said was somebody was walking down there and she was afraid of who it was. So even in the

disinformation, they were already twisting the things that AOC said and saying things that she never said at all. And so the levels of lies, right, start to compound themselves. They've misinterpreted what AOC said at the start. Then they're calling her a liar erroneously. And now we have, you know, these ridiculous hashtags that are, you know, attempting to discredit Alexandria and, you know, the real obvious pain that she was in. And it's interesting because nobody's discounting Katie Porter's account. So she also gave a very similar account, talked about when Alexandria was in her office. And what happened in there?

She was opening up doors. And I was like, can I help you? Like, what are you looking for? And she said, I'm looking for where I'm going to hide. And the thing that will always stay with me was when she said, I just hope I get to be a mom. I hope I don't die today. It's fascinating to watch that two people can talk about an incident.

Their stories match up exactly the same, but only one is targeted for disinformation. That's what tells me it's coordinated. It's deliberate and it's supposed to be specific to individuals. It's not happenstance. Absolutely. I mean, that jives with everything that we know from the research. We know disinformation is worse for women of color in politics. A report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Reveals that women of color candidates and political officials are targeted on the right on social media at alarming rate. So this report found that women of color, were particularly likely to be targeted, Elon Omar received the highest proportion, 39% of abusive messages of all the candidates in their studies, and AOC received the highest ratio of abusive comments on Facebook. So, you know, we know, it completely jives with this research that Katie Porter, her testimony, her sharing her story,

would not be kicked apart and sort of targeted for this kind of coordinated disinformation campaign in the same way that someone like AOC would be. So one question I have for you is, why do you think that women of color are such bigger targets for this kind of disinformation online? Yeah, I mean, I think we're bigger targets in general and especially for our elected women of color because we get shit done. And we really are there to stand in the gap for those that are marginalized, right, in ways that our white counterparts are not. So off the bat, we're already facing some pushback to the work that we want. want to do in the world or whether that's in political spaces or wherever. The other side of that is that we're easy targets, which means that somebody attacking Katie Porter is going to be seen

as mean. They're going to be seen as not nice. But somebody attacking a woman of color, it becomes something so, it's so okay. And then the pylon occurs. And people are just waiting for opportunities to attack women of color. And this is something that, you know, you and I've been dealing with in digital spaces for, you know, a decade plus now. So it's not news, but I think those two things are why we become such lightning rods. I mean, the goal is to silence us. The goal is to get us out of positions of power. The goal is to make the kinds of changes that we are collectively individually pushed for, not reality. And so starting with attacking women of color, that's like that's the front line of that of that pushback. What you just said completely jives with

what we know about disinformation, right? Like one of the points of disinformation is to silence people, right? So I think that disinformers, they don't want women of color to be putting their ideas out into the world, to be creating the kind of changes that they want to be responsible for in the world. And so these kinds of really scary coordinated disinformation attacks are meant to have a chilling effect on their targets. And so they're meant to make AOC and women who aspire to be like her, other women of color who might want to be activists, might want to be involved in politics, or might just want to put their ideas about these things into the world via Twitter or social media. It's meant to make these people feel so afraid and be so fearful that

this kind of thing is going to happen to them that they just stop. They don't put their opinions out into the world. They don't try to shape the world. They don't, they stop with their activism online. And I think, you know, when we have conversations about disinformation, they often turn into conversations about free speech. And we need to be talking about the ways that this is shut it, an attempt to shut down free speech and to make it so that people don't feel comfortable engaging in public discourse. Absolutely. And it's so, you know, the thing that has been hitting me so much is how normalized, you know, these types of attacks against women of color elected officials have become. You know, I was listening to Rashida Talib from the floor last

night in the hearing around stripping Marjorie Taylor Green's committee assignments. And she said, I wanted to go last because I knew it was going to be hard for me to talk about it. And she talked about the fact that her first day on Capitol Hill, she hadn't even been sworn in yet. And there was already a death threat against her serious enough that the FBI had to come and pull her aside. It was her first one. Not even sworn in yet. First day in D.C. And she said she was paralyzed. And everyone after that paralyzed, one mentioned her son. You know, she was, you know, she was, really talked about the trauma of it and how her team had to decide to kind of shield her from it moving forward because they recognized how it paralyzed her. And she said when she saw what was

happening on January 6th, the first thing she thought was, thank God, thank Allah, I'm not, I'm not there because she knew that she would be a direct target as well. And so when we think about, you know, so many, so much work that's been going into getting more women of color to run for office, getting more women of color elected, the flip. side of that is we do not have systems set up to actually hold the space that women of color that serve in that way to hold them in the trauma that is sure to follow. And the other thing I want to bring to attention is that our decades of ignoring this kind of violence and digital spaces is why we're seeing it accepted in real world spaces. There's a direct correlation between

all of the work that we have been doing in digital spaces to throwing up these red flags for so, so long. I know you had Shereen on the podcast a couple of weeks ago and, you know, just she's amazing. And her groundbreaking work to just point out that, nope, this is not just general harassment. It's very specific. It's very targeted. And it's meant to silence women of color. All of that is now in the real world.

and it became normalized in digital spaces. And that's the danger. When things become normalized in digital spaces, it means they're going to be acceptable outside of digital spaces. There's no barrier between the two. We are living beyond the digital age. There's a complete melding of digital life and quote unquote real life that means that anything we find acceptable

or treat as acceptable online become the same in real world in very short time. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel,

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Because resilience isn't just about winning. It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. And we're back. One thing that I wish that people understood is that what happens digitally and what happens in the real world, those two things are not distinct.

And I think for so long, and I think we're starting to see that, you know, the insurrection was one way that I think that folks who were unwilling to see this, maybe are like, oh, I think that perhaps what happens online does have real world impact. But for so long, when it was a lot of people, of women and women of color and black women online who were saying, hey, we're being harassed, hey, this is happening to us and no one was listening. I think one of the reasons why that was minimized is because it was happening, quote unquote, just online. And the perception that you could just step away from your computer or turn off your computer or get off social media

and it wouldn't be happening anymore, completely divorced from the reality that if it's out there in the ether happening online, it's out there in the real world. These worlds are not so distinct and so separate. Again, if you think of disinfo at some point as an unsharpened pencil, right? Just a thing. Can't do very much, but it is a tool. I would say that what happened was it was sharpened against women of color. It was sharpened against.

I just think back to some of the early moments of disinfo that I remember. Like Gamergate is a, that entire thing started with disinfo. And so the tool of disinformation was sharpened. on all of our pain and all of the attacks that came against us. It was sharpened. It was sharpened and it was perfected. And so now that it's being used to great effect across the board, not just directed at us, but directed at government, generally speaking,

directed at misinformation in elections, misinformation in so many sectors. Even around COVID-19, it's wild because, you know, we are, I wrote an article a couple of, for BIP 100, like two years ago. ago. And I think I called it something like black women always playing, always cast in the role of Cassandra. And the piece was really just like, we're really tired of not, of being able to see the future, telling you what's going to happen and nobody listening to us. It gets exhausting, right? I do feel like we have this, this like narrative of like trust black women, listen to black women. And I have a shirt that says that obviously I agree with that. But we also have to have to have

a very real conversation about what happens when you're expected to be the person who can see in the crystal ball and warn everybody time and time and time again. And I think, you know, you and I had a good conversation about this moment regarding AOC, but also disinformation kind of writ large. And I do think like this is a moment where we can have a reckoning or a hard reset and say, no, we're not going to do this again where we, after the fact, say, oh, we should have listened to black women, this is an opportunity to really get it right. And that's what I would love to see. I would love to not just see this be another time where, you know, in six months, we all say, oh, well, we should have listened to these, these, you know, black women activists or black

women social media users or black women researchers who saw this coming. But we actually say, oh, people warned us and we did something. We took meaningful action. Yeah, absolutely. And even in the like after acknowledgement, it never goes as far as what you just said. It's, was an acknowledgement like, oh, we should have known this, right? We should have known this, or we should have known from this more recent thing. And what I'd like folks, the acknowledgement needs to go way further back. It needs to acknowledge the fact that the entire ecosystem collectively decided not to listen to women of color and especially black women in digital spaces as we were shouting from the rooftops about how abuse was being weaponized, how it was being coordinated, you know, in small

ways and large ways and how every single platform has ways in which we can be targeted for harassment that they refuse to close the loop on. I'll use an example. Twitter lists. Great lists. It's a great function. You can make a list of people that like to talk about a specific thing. But there's no setting that allows me to stop anyone from putting me on a list. So once a month, I go through the list that I'm on. And invariably, I find four or five that are horrible, that say things that are terrible, and have put me on a list with, you know, a bunch of, you know, great people, but the name of the list is something, you know, really egregious and clearly meant for people to target me and anybody else on the list as well. And so I have to remove myself by blocking the person. They don't even let you remove yourself from the list, by the way. These are small functional things within a system, right, within a platform that enable abuse that are very easy to correct and yet doesn't happen.

articles have been written about this people have pointed it out every month I go live and I just like screenshot the list that I'm on and it's like horrible and I can tell I can tell when I start getting attacks I'm like oh shit I'm on a list somewhere like I can I just know it I can feel it like why this tweet is innocuous why are so many trolls jumping on it uh okay you know and it's it's um I think that you're right that that it needs to be a much more proactive approach now that all of this data exists. You can't say you don't know. You can't say we don't have the data to back it up. You can't say that we're not seeing the very real dangerous implications and repercussions from unchecked digital harassment. And that's the part that I think we need to get to.

You're someone who is a prominent, visible black woman activist in digital spaces, right? And so that sounds phenomenal. You know, you have a blue checkmark. I see people who are like, oh, that must mean you're rich or very powerful. But with that visibility, it's like a double-edged sword where you also deal with this oversized, you know, oversized abusive reaction online. Like people, people, I see people pile on you all the time. You'll say something innocuous.

And people, it's like people were waiting in the rafters to attack you. And I think that we really have to acknowledge the toll that can take. You know, there are people out there who are probably like, oh, if you have a zillion followers on Twitter and a blue check mark, you must be having the best time on social media. I wish I had that. But with that kind of visibility and that with that kind of platform comes a lot of this abuse and that all of this nonsense that makes your experiences online when you're just trying to put your opinions out there difficult. And we have these platforms really doing nothing about it and enabling it. Absolutely. It definitely is one of those weird things of realizing that you have become not a real person in digital spaces to a lot of folks. And it takes some, for me, it took some getting used to just like, oh, like, I'll put, I'm putting air quotes up. Y'all can't see me. But Leslie Mac, it's not actually a person to people. It's this, you know, it's an entity or it's a thing. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm just a 45-year-old black woman, and I'm a real person.

I have feelings. I have a family. I have mental health struggles. I'm just a regular person. And yeah, I think a lot of the mechanisms in digital spaces actually dehumanize us. Some of these things that are meant to like, you know, amplify us or elevate us like a blue check or like a lot of followers. For me, it's like Greek, because I'm able to do more work and deeper work and have my, my work reach wider, but the price that you have to pay for that is so large.

You know, I've left Twitter multiple times because of those pile-on moments. And you're right, it does feel like folks were just like sitting with a bag of shit to throw at me and waiting for whatever moment when it was deemed okay to do that, right? Because it's clear you can't do it anytime. You can't just do it out of the blue. It has to be when there's a mass of it happening. And I think that that speaks to the connection again between abuse and disinformation because we're watching bullies coordinate themselves to attack. And this is exactly how abusers act.

And disinformation works the same way. The same people with the same mindset pick up on disinformation and they decide that's what they're going to push out as the truth. And as AOC said, once it's out there, it's impossible to refute it. anything you say will be just dismissed. Oh, you're just saying that because X, Y, Z. And there isn't a, I don't know what the solution is, but I do know we've got to make some strides because, you know, every week I talk to more and more, you know,

black women in particular in digital spaces that are just like, I'm just ready to leave. I'm just ready to stop because it's interfering with the pros of the reach are not weighing out with the cons of how this is affecting me. And, you know, we are so disposable as black women that there's no consequences and also no empathy when we are feeling and dealing with these moments besides from each other. And it just really has to stop. It really makes me reflect on my own use of social media, which is actually quite guarded.

AOC was so vulnerable. She really showed up as her full self in this way that I really often. I often don't. I almost never talk about my personal life or my romantic life because I see the way that people will use it to target women of color online who do. Yeah, it's definitely true. I think, you know, I share a lot of my personal life because that's how I build my following and my, you know, my platform. So I still, I still share, you know, especially about my dogs and I share about, you know, whatever other things I'm doing or working on. But I, the thing that has stopped my interactions more is like I have way less interactions with strangers than I used to.

I definitely used to like, I didn't need to know what you're, you know, I didn't need to, I would rarely even go look at someone's platform before engaging with them around just innocuous topics. And now, if I don't know you, like, I'm not talking to you anymore because I don't have, I don't know you. You could be suspicious. And the time and effort it takes to, you know, vet you is not, it's not some time that I'm willing to spend.

And so it's definitely changed the way that I can interact with people. And it's sad to me because I met a lot of amazing people in those earlier days where I was able to interact with strangers and be like, oh, this person seems cool. Like what other stuff are you doing and getting to know them more and meeting them and talking with them and having them on my own podcast when I had one? And a lot of that has just stopped and I've just become, yeah, a little bit walled off in the context of I'll share what I want, but I'm really not interested in as much. much interaction. Or one of the tactics that I employ is that I have specific posts that are meant to be interactive or conversational. And I usually do one or two a week just to have a conversation with folks, but I have had to systemize it because it can't be organic for me anymore. The risk is too great. And it is sad. It's made, I would say, my interactions with

strangers a little less authentic in that I'm trying to craft a moment to talk with them versus organic conversations happening. And, you know, some of that is just the way that digital spaces have evolved, but a lot of it is just me having to make different choices because of the harassment. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day

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Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athletes themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real.

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On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going. From the WNBA standout Kate Martin and rising hockey star Layla Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain.

It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like you don't belong. Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs, Gabby Thomas, and Katie Ladeki. The ability to show a gold medal to someone and have their face light up and smile, that means the world to me. And that's what motivates me to win.

more gold medals. At our level, at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can, like, I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning. It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Let's get right back into it. Wouldn't it be something if you didn't have to spend your time and your energy and your capacity and your brain space, systematizing these things because of these abusive platforms, wouldn't it be great if these platforms, you know, especially simple things like the Twitter list, you know, wouldn't it be great if these platforms

listen to their users and said, these are the things that you are, these are the things that you are doing to enable abuse if you, it will be very easy to fix to stop it. It wouldn't it be great if you did not have to individually dedicate brain space to managing how. how you were going to deal with this, just to show up and like do your job, live your life, the way that you want to live it online. Yeah, I mean, it would be amazing. I mean, I have, we have protocols in our house when things, you know, when the attacks really get bad.

My phone gets taken away from me. Everybody knows to text my husband if they need me because I won't have it on me anymore. I mean, these are, you know, coping mechanisms just to protect my own mental health when these, when these things happen. And I know, I mean, so the reason why I have those protocols. because I learned them from other black women who were like, okay, here's how you can deal with it, or here's, you know, when I step away. And yeah, I mean, that's the insidiousness of white supremacy, right, is that the onus is those of us that are under its boot to create situations or to

create systems just to help us survive. And our white counterparts just don't have to deal with that. They do not have to reckon with the possibility of simply speaking your truth, meaning you're going to have to deal with a whole list of stuff that have nothing to do with your initial purpose for interacting online. And we do a lot of our work in digital spaces, so it's not a place that I can step away from. I also, you know, center a lot of my work around direct giving and I move a lot of money directly, especially to black women and femms. through social media. So for me, it's not a place that I'm really willing to leave because the resources are there. And it works. So I don't have a position of like, I'm going to step away. I just have had to take a position of protecting myself as best I can, sharing that knowledge with other people, and then pushing with folks like you to create actual real change in digital

spaces. I'm so good. We need people like you. Yeah, you've been individually responsible for funding, so many black women and femmes, you know, direct, direct aid to them into their pockets. You are so important in this work. And so I, I'm glad that you have steps in place where you can stay in this work because God knows we need you, but it's hard. Like, we need to acknowledge that, you know, you're not a superwoman. You're a person or a real person and that, you know, it sucks sometimes. It just really, it sucks sometimes. It really does. You know, I started doing these TikTok threads on Sunday on my Twitter. And I did the first one because I really was just like, I need to put something up that's fun. I need to put something up that is not going to be a

lightning rod for anything where I can just interact with people in a fun way and bring some joy. It has changed my entire countenance because now people look forward to the thread every Sunday. and it's injected in a strange way, just a buffer around me. And I know I have a little bit of time in digital space every Sunday that's joyful and peaceful and fun. And I had lost that. I really had lost that feeling of enjoying interacting with strangers online, which, you know, is such a big part of digital organizing. And I needed to figure out a way to bring that back into my platform and into the ways that I interact.

naturally. And this ends up working. I had tried some other things before that weren't as successful. And this seems to be working quite well for that purpose. And it kind of, it, this sounds strange, but it's sort of like if the temperature has been rising on the stove around, you know, negative reactions to me all week, that Sunday thread, it like, it's like throwing water on a fire. It just puts it out completely. So I sort of have a reset every week now. Because now it looks silly that you're like arguing in someone's mentions when people are like talking about dogs or like, like, you seem weird. So, yeah, I mean, those are just like little tricks that I've started to pick up just to kind of be like, okay, how can I continue to exist in this space and not have it be so toxic to me that I have to like build all of these different systems. And this trick has seemed to work so far.

I'm hoping it will continue because it's been really nice to be able to be able to. bring that part of digital interaction back in a safe way. That's a great tip. I hope people out there, I'm going to use it. That's a great tip. And again, it sucks that you have to do these things, but I'm happy that you have systems in place that just protect your health, protect your wellness, and continue to give you that outlet to do that community building

and engaging that I know that you're so good at and that you love so much. So I'm thankful for that. Leslie, where can folks keep up with you online? you're doing amazing stuff all over the internet where can folks keep up with you you can just find me leslie mac macee you can search that that's my handle on uh twitter uh if you just search it in google you'll see my all the things facebook and um my website leslie mac dot com you can find me there as well yeah i i want to i just want to thank you too bridget for for um calling this uh extra episode and thank you for all of your podcasts but especially for this um series you've been doing around

disinformation because I think it's really allowed a lot of folks to put into context the long, you know, trail of this work against disinformation. You know, we've watched it in this election cycle in a way that I think has woken people up to the realities and dangers of it. But it's really important to put it into the context that we've been screaming about this for almost a decade, more than a decade. And so, yeah, I mean, y'all could have just listened to Black women, from the first place. And you can start doing that now. And we can avoid things like 45 and Marjorie Taylor Green and all the other, you know, horrible things that have stemmed from digital spaces. Because frankly, somebody like MTG, the only way that they've built a platform is through digital space.

Oh, absolutely. I was just talking about this. How the problem really is is that we have, for people like her, we have made it politically advantageous to do things like this online. It's not, you know, it's not like, oh, she sounds wild. Like, get her out of here. It's, oh, she sounds wild. Amplify her. Amplify her, yes. And, you know, as Bridgett disclosed, we both work at ultraviolet.

But, you know, one of the great things about the media guide is that it really has specific ways for people to not share disinformation. And one of the biggest culprits is the media. They share disinformation inadvertently and deliberately in covering it. And it's wild that they have not seen the light and understood their role in spreading it. Because if you're considered fake news, quote unquote, by a portion of the population, and then you report on disinformation in a specific way, you legitimize it really specifically with a specific audience. And I don't know what the answer is, but I'll say this when I was in journalism school, clearly I did not become a journalist because I actually saw when I was in J school, I saw this as the future of journalism.

And it really scared me. I went to Northwest University and this is in the mid to late 90s. And I really, I remember saying to my mom, I can't be in this industry. The track that this is on is leading in a really dangerous and scary place. place. And I don't think it's something that I could do for my career. I don't think it's something I could do. She was not thrilled. It was a lot of money. Anyway, but yeah, I just remember. And it's, it's silly now. I talk about those all the time and certainly age myself, but you know, you go to the computer lab to write your, you know, your stories and stuff or the paper. And, you know, people

would bring magnets into the computer lab to, like, swipe people's floppy disk so that their stories couldn't get it on time so that they could get the byline the next day. And like, I remember just being like, these will be my colleagues. Yeah, I, I, this is not, it's not going to be for me. And it's been while sitting back outside of journalism and watching, you know, everything that I felt as a 19 year old come to pass. Every, every single thing, I was like, this is going really itself. The idea of ethics were so loosey-goosey and not at all ethical.

and I just was like, this is, this is the, one of the best journalists of schools in the country. And these are the people they've matriculated and this is the attitude that they have towards women, towards black people, towards marginalized folks towards poor people. I just, yeah, the reckoning has been long coming. And I think that the digital space has only added to, to that. Absolutely. And I think we see it in the way that folks are reporting about the AOC situation. I was really disgusted to see it sort of framed as, almost like a cat bite or a spat between two female members of Congress, as opposed to a wider

coordinated disinformation campaign that AOC is at the heart of. Like, this is not two women beefing over a man or something, right? Like, this is someone, this is people making up lines about someone in a coordinated way to smear them for sharing their story. I was really dismayed to see it kind of framed as like a she said, she said kind of thing, as opposed to disinformation. But that becomes a question, right? Why did anybody feel the need to discount AOC's account of what happened to her personally? That's the ultimate question, is why was that something you felt you needed to do?

And at the heart of that is that we go back to silencing of women of color and especially progressive, radical women of color. And that's the ultimate goal. And people will pay any price to do that. It's so true. And I think like what do you think it tells, like people who are survivors of abuse, sexual violence, when they see the way that the wagon circled to smear AOC for sharing her story, what do you think that the response is, you know, like someone who would speak up but sees what happened to AOC? What do you think that's going to do to them? You know, it's going to further tell them that they shouldn't speak out. It's going to let them know that there will be negative consequences to them. speaking out. And I think it's why it's so important for us to show support for AOC and for all survivors because there is a survivor listening right now that's contemplating. And she's at a crossroads

of speaking her truth or burying it and having to deal with it in 10, 15, 20 years. And the more that we can show support for survivors and for moments like this where AOC is so transparent, not only in speaking about her experience as a sexual assault survivor, but also linking the trauma of that moment to January 6th, where she was also feeling under attack. And, you know, I'm just put in my, you know, Katie Porter, it was interesting listening to AOC's account and then Katie talking about it on a Morris O'Donnell show

because Katie mentioned some details that Alexandria didn't share. And she said, you know, she's, She said to AOC, you know, I'm a mom. I've got everything covered here. Don't worry. I'm calm. And AOC looked at her and said, I hope I get to be a mom. And I just, I want people to hear that this is a young woman who has a huge platform.

She takes it very seriously. She does diligent and amazing work, but she's still a young woman who shouldn't be made to feel like this just for doing her job. And I don't, I don't know what it's going to take. And I think that's what's really been scaring me the most in this last, you know, a few years is that I, I have a sinking suspicion that it's going to take something so violent that, yeah, I just, I'm just really actually afraid for the physical safety of so many of these elected officials right now. and I don't know what to do with that fear. I can only imagine how they are all feeling. This has been just like I'm reaching out to my St. Louis crew.

Like who's watching Corey? Like I'm obsessed about it. Literally. I find myself just constantly being concerned. Some of them I don't worry about because like Ayanna, I know she's got a very strong, you know, protective system around. her, but I just worry. I just worry as we're watching, continuing to watch these conspiracy theorists and white supremacists continue to take up space, continue to not be challenged.

It was really disturbing to watch the hearing yesterday. I was so triggered to hear the GOP representatives, one after the other, get up and make equivocation for our MTG's behavior. and these false equivalencies that they kept throwing up. But I was really buoyed by the Democrats that got up and really were specific about the harms that were done, about who these were targeted against and why we can't stand for it any longer. I have not heard the Democrats speak in such large collective voice about this yet. And it's sad that it took someone like Marjorie Taylor Green to get them to do it. because had they been doing this all along, perhaps there wouldn't be a Marjorie Taylor Green in Congress right now.

I'm hopeful that in this moment, people can see this is real stuff, really serious, and has very real consequences. Absolutely. And it needs to be said that these moments always come at the expense of women of color. And I think that it plays into our disposability. And in this notion that, well, we can just take it. And this notion that we're really just here to serve as an example for other people to learn from. And that's a hard reality that we actually live with every single day, that our lives themselves are an example. We really just want to live. I say this all the time.

Like I don't know an organizer that would not be rather, that would not rather be doing something else. We are organizers because we are called and because we have to be. I'd love to just go to, you know, Paris and go to pastry school and bake all day if I had a choice. But that's not the world that I live in. And it demands more of me because I want my nieces to have a better world. and I want, you know, my nephews to not be raised in a world that would have them become misogynist. And I feel called to support people that are in need.

And so the ways in which we are dehumanized in digital spaces, that we become, you know, these two-dimensional, you know, flattened out personalities in ways that our white counterparts are always seen as three-dimensional. It's always about the new ones. of their experience. And for us, everything is black and white. And it's a while to watch your sisters just become a lesson for people to learn. Their pain be a lesson for people to learn from. And I want that to stop as well. I want better for us all. Like I almost have tears in my eyes. I want better for us. I want you to be able to go to pastry school and not not feel like you have to be in this, like in this fight that flattens us so cruelly.

I want, I want better for all of us. Sames. If you enjoyed this podcast, please help us grow by subscribing. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi. We'd love to hear from you at hello at tangoity.com. Disinformed is brought to you by there are no girls on the internet. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.

Tari Harrison is our supervising producer. and engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. For more great podcasts, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women

in sports and wellness from professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. I can do anything.

I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, and on my new podcast, How Hard Can It Be? I call on my Gen X squad from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate Midlife's most fantastic BS. Unfiltered conversations from night sweats to futas to scheduling sex. Wait, what sex?

Is it just me? Or does every woman? in my age. Want to look at Pinterest instead of having sex sometimes. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs,

tears, or tears of laughter. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Deanna Maria Riva on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year

on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was crying. You just understood.

That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis coming to you, he's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball.

So listen to Point Game on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.