There Are No Girls on the Internet - DISINFORMED: Black women tried to tell you

Episode Date: January 26, 2021

Black women have been sounding the alarm about the threat posed by disinformation for years. But people with power weren’t listening. Shireen Mitchell, founder of Stop Online Violence Against Women, wants to know why.Follow Shireen: https://twitter.com/digitalsista?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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844-844-I-Hart. 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, 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. Like, 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. 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 probably. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis come in to, 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. You're listening to Disinformed, a mini-series from there are no girls on the internet. I'm Bridget Todd. The two Democratic candidates actually. outperformed Joe Biden among key Democratic constituencies, among African Americans, among young people. CBS News projects that both Democrats have won those two seats. Really an extraordinary development given to not only just about what's changed in the state of Georgia,

once a ruby red state. The morning of January 6th, I woke up beaming. There had been a historic win in the Georgia Senate runoff election, shifting the power of the Senate. and people were crediting black women like Stacey Abrams for the win. I felt like I was truly walking in the power of black women and that that power was impossible for anyone to ignore. Y'all, we didn't even get a day. Hours later, that feeling of power from the Georgia runoffs

was replaced with feelings of fear and powerlessness as I watched violent insurrectionists stormed the capital. Our moment of joy overshadowed. And the worst part, we likely wouldn't even be here if people with power had just listened to black women. Black women have been warning about the spread of disinformation for years. In 2014, it was black women like Shafika Hudson, who sounded the alarm about coordinated harassment campaigns, meant to spread chaos, distortions, and confusion on social media. This was years before a Senate inquiry would confirm what these women had said all along,

that bad actors were using social media to spread disinformation in the 2016 election. The report also confirmed that black communities were their biggest targets. We already know that communities of color are disproportionately impacted by disinformation, but also, much of the foundational work to combat it has been driven by black women researchers, organizers, and users. Women like Shereen Mitchell have been talking about the ways they saw disinformation target our communities since the very beginning. In 1999, Shereen created Digital Sisters, the first organization dedicated to bringing women and girls of color online, and later, she founded Stop Online Violence Against Women, a project that addresses laws and policies to provide protections for women online. In January 2020, Shireen authored a report outlining the past and present of disinformation campaigns used during election cycles,

starting from 2016 leading up to today. Black women aren't often cited as experts on disinformation, and while it impacts our community's the most, our stories about it are not often centered. Shereen's pretty pissed about this. And now, on the heels of the disinformation-fueled riots at the Capitol, and as more and more institutions and outlets start to see disinformation as a real problem, she wonders, what took you so long? Shireen's life work has been carving out space for women of color and black women online.

And it all started in an unlikely place, an arcade. So you have been involved with the internet. almost for as long as the internet has been a thing. How did you get started online? What were your early experiences on the internet like? I started coding at 10 years old in Harlem, in the projects. But one of the other things I used to do after school every day was to go down the other side of the street,

heading back home, but across the street, to the arcade room. That's when I fell in love with video games, which is we're talking, you know, the stand-up machines, the early days, Pac-Man, Centipede. This is where my age shows. up. We're talking space invaders. Like, we're talking some of the original games. I would go and play. I didn't realize at the time. I was the only girl. The store owner didn't want me there because I would play the entire time on a single quarter so the store owner couldn't make any money.

And the boys were mad that I would beat them and they didn't want to play the games either if I was present. And so the truth is, my mom thought that I was going there every day in terms. in hindsight, like we had debates about this when I got older, in hindsight, as we were fighting about me going there every day, she thought I was going there because there was some boy there I liked when all I was doing is going to to beat boys at the game.

That, you know, there was something else going on. And also she was, you know, Harlem Bronx, you know, the life of a black girl in spaces like that, where she was like, as your mother, I'm just going to bring you home if I can. And she did. So she was like, if you really, really, really do love these games, then I'm going to buy, you know, we're poor,

but she was like, I'm going to buy, you know, the Atari, which is what she did, and you get to play these games at home. And so I'm thinking, I get to go play by myself with no interference. Heck yeah, I'm going to do that. Like, I don't get the boys acting all stupid. I don't get the store. Like, in my view of that, I was like, absolutely. My mom going to pay.

Now, mind you, she spent a lot of money on that. So I didn't even understand the cost of that at that particular time. That led me from just the gaming to when she realized that I actually did love it to the home computer that she bought me. And then I started coding. So it went from that trajectory to there. All by myself, by the way, my mom didn't understand any of it. She just knew this something I love.

So she just bought it. Is that why you feel compelled in your professional life now as an adult to carve out these spaces for women of color and black women online that we can talk about our experiences on the internet? Absolutely 100%. It's like no one even understands what my experience was in that moment and everyone who were projecting upon me

were projecting a whole bunch of different things and what I was dealing with. It was like, I just love to play the video game. I just love to code. Like the concepts of everything else in between. By the way, also people telling me, even at 10, I can't code because I'm black from Harlem and a girl.

I'm going, click, click, click, click, click, a machine telling me I could code. I'm good. Yeah, you're like, you're telling me I can, but this machine told me I know how to do it, so I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. So the concept of someone saying to me or anyone else who looks like me that somehow you can't code just because of what you look like,

I was like, where does that come from? I don't know that world. And so, yes, so it fast-forsed me into a broader context of why I looked at forming digital sisters because I wanted to form. digital sisters for the girls who weren't me. The girls who sent the message and believed the message they couldn't code, believe that some part of their identity made it impossible for them to even know how or to navigate that space.

So I always tell people, after forming digital systems, one of the things that was very clear to me was the easiest part of my job was what? Teaching girls to code. The rest of my job was dealing with parents who was stopping their kids from coding, parents who was stopping their kids from getting online, the system in schools that were doing the same thing, the system in general where we now move into this tech space that we're in in 2020 of dystopia that basically said, we have the right to tell you you cannot be in the space, you do not belong in the space, and you have no reason to even think that you have ownership in this space.

Shireen wanted to reimagine the internet as a space where women and girls of color could feel supported, heard, and protected. But she also couldn't shake the idea that maybe these spaces says weren't so safe for these women and girls. And that assumed lack of safety was a big problem. In those moments, there were moments where I had to have conversations with parents, especially moms, saying, your daughter will be safe if I teach her how to code. Your daughter will be safe if she goes online. Because that was one of the reasons why they unpugged their daughters, but they had their sons go run amok online in any form, right? It was the fear factor harms on their daughters. And some ways, there's a part of me that said, here we are in 2020, and I was lying to those moms.

Didn't know I was lying because it wasn't just them being worried about predators because that really wasn't the thing they had to worry the most about. They had to worry about their surroundings more than that. It was about the industry of which that would be built, that would be built to target them and target them in a way that no one would show up to protect them in any fashion. When I formed stop violent violence against women, I specifically formed it because I wanted to have a sense of what women of color saw and what their experience was online. But it was that moment that I started to look at the work around looking at what online violence and online harassment looked like specifically to women of color, because it was different than white women. It was different than men in general, but also white men specifically. disinformation, especially when it's weaponized against women and people of color, doesn't just stay online.

It can have real-world consequences like voter suppression or the kind of violence we saw at the Capitol. And this has been a focus of Shireen's work. So how have you seen disinformation play out, especially as it pertains to women of color online? Yes, absolutely. And you and I know about women like Shafika Hustin and Anisa Crockett, who basically helped to identify, you know, you know, fake accounts pertaining to be black women. It's looking at the way in which people of color, black people specifically,

are trying to change their environment, trying to stop the harassment, trying to stop being killed by the state, trying to stop all these things are happening to them and their communities, and they're seen as the problem of which they should not be protected, but also of which any violence upon this,

is acceptable, whether it's digital violence or in real life violence, which we know now has translated to organizing events like what happened in Kenosha, right? We have seen this trajectory. What I'm saying is I have witnessed it and I've collected data on that trajectory. I'm saying I not only know that this was going to happen where we are in 2020 is that I have been trying to tell us and prepare us for it before we got here. My report in the beginning of January 2020 that really defined what digital world suppression was was to define what we had already collected data on,

targeting black voters, then which we define campaigns to do so, of which to give strategies to stop it. And nothing has been done. We have still not been protected. We have systems in place, not only from tech companies, but even our government systems

that are accepting harms against us. If people with power had listened to women like Shereen, would things have gone differently? Would our social media platforms been as vulnerable for bad actors to exploit like they did in the 2016 election? 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 headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst?

Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle. age, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again.

More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. bind. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-4-I-Hart. Last night, a blown call changed the game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in.

I'm Timbo. 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 athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama,

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Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Life throws hurdles big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? 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 WMBA 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 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. And we're back. I think what you just really crystallized for me is, and I hate to keep relying. on this and keep going back to this. But, you know, if we had listened, like so much in our country might have gone differently if we had just listened to black women who have been talking about this, collecting data about this, studying this, raising the alarm about this for so long. And here

it is, it's, it kind of seems like people get, people get on, have got, have only just now started to get on board. And it's so late. It might be too late. I feel strongly about that. I feel, I feel extremely strongly about that. I mean, I, you know, I have. have a pen, I left it up there. I can't remember when I wrote that one. I think it was 2016. I don't even remember the date when I wrote that pen to basically say, I'm going to put this moment up here on Twitter to basically say, if we listen to Black Women, the hacking of 2016 would have never happened. And I haven't updated as much recently because so much has happened. But when I put that up there, it was to stay up there forever until people got it. And the sad part is, from that moment

to present, people coming to me now going, Shereen, I get it. And my thing is, why didn't you hear me before? Why do you get it now? And you know why did people get it now? Bridget, like seriously, you know why they get it now? Why do you think?

Because it's happening to them. It's happening to their families. It's happening in their in front of their eyes in a way that they can't look away. But when we were speaking, they could pretend, oh, it's just us being angry. they could pretend that was just us

sort of being sort of out of sync with the rest of the world. Not that we were seeing what we were knowing going to happen down the road. Like that we were predicting it, that we were trying to collect the data and present it. Of which I've done, our first report

was the first report was the first report to even say that Russia targeted African Americans overwhelmingly over any other group. Then there's a report that comes from Oxford, the port that comes from the Senate Intelligence Committee. But my report somehow gets missing in the rest of the dialogue, right? Because they needed all these other quote-unquote institutions to validate what I said. And this has happened, and this happens over and over again.

There are multiple institutions, even in this moment, coming up with versions of my report for them to validate that I was correct. Instead of saying, let me credit Shireen and elevate what she's doing so that we can have more reports from her because she knew what she was looking at and continue that work. Right. That's something that I really, I see a lot in putting together this podcast about disinformation, how rare it is, how rare it is to find black women cited as experts on disinformation when we have been the ones who have been raising the alarm, studying it, writing the reports, trying to legitimize it as an issue for so long. Why do you think that is? I mean, like, there's a hashtag like cite black women, right?

It's really very problematic. In my opinion, in many ways, is that there's a problem with people being able to credit black women for the work that they've done. I don't know why that is in this full entirety. I think that there is some resistance. I think there's some social commentary that which I feel about the way in which I grew up, right? Which is people still telling me that there's no way I can code at 10. coming from Harlem. Like there was something about the body that I have and the existence, the place I was born in that says that anything I say or do is not valid in comparison to

anyone else. And so in other words, to validate me, somebody else has to do it instead of me. That someone else actually has to be able to say even my own identity is valid externally. And we've seen this, Bridget, with 1619, we've seen this with other aspects of us telling our narrative. Catherine Johnson existed and people still pretending that Catherine Johnson is not the reason that a white man made it to the moon, right? That the concept that we are not a part of this historical through on as to why America is what it is and all the pieces that we were a part of.

Instead, what they do is remove us out of those pieces. So when I say why they don't add us to some of these aspects to cite us is to make sure that we're removed from the historical narrative. You don't cite me. You don't know I exist. What do you think? How do you think things might have been different if people had meaningfully listened to and centered the black women like yourself, like Shafika Hudson, when you all tried to raise the alarm about this? If they had listened to us even in 2018, what we're up against now would have been totally different and we've been totally prepared and we've been able to knock out most, if not the majority of the disinformation that we're faced with.

And that tells me that we were never, ever wanting to be prepared for reality. We wanted to live in an ahistorical framework. Taking us out of the timeline means that you get to have some version of the world that you feel comfortable with. And that you're saying to us that that version of the world does not include us. Part of this is just me being annoyed on social media, but I can't tell you. how many times I have seen this like breaking news, new report, you know,

bad actors are impersonating black people on social media to try to influence the election. And it's so difficult for me to not reply saying, yeah, you could have just listened to the any number of black women who have been saying this since day one. It's so difficult to see people to make this discovery over and over and over again.

It's a bit like being in that movie Groundhog Day where... Exactly. we black women have been saying this forever forever and it's a miracle a miracle someone discovered it a miracle someone found this this these these accounts and doing these various things and this various ways and it's like you're just seeing one piece of it the stuff that we've been following since i don't know 2013 it is it's amazing and what's more amazing is the way that those people get elevated as if they actually did

discover it. No citations to any of us. No, none of that. And that's, and then, and then when we say something about it, we're the bad guys, because somehow you just learning about it means that, um, it's important. But us who've been doing it for years is like, oh, we know you were doing it, but that was cute. We're, we're doing it in this, like, um, as if we were, as if it was like a hobby. This is, oh, that was a cute little hobby that you did. No, I have data. I can collect data. I've been collecting data. We've been doing synopsis. This is not a cute thing. I have, I have experience in most of this work anyway, I eat also my technological background, but to say that somehow all my experience and skill sets is not as important as some reporter who decided that their beat was

disinfo in 2020. Yeah, I mean, the more I hear from you, the more this sounds like an intentional erasing of our labor and our contributions and our work. I'm sorry to tell you, yes. And it's not new. Let me also explain to you, like, the basis of this. Like, one of the things that happens in the tech industry is around use cases when you're trying to build tech. And so in multiple aspects of this, you have to come up with what you think the technology can be, but also what the problem is that you think the technology can solve. And so whenever I look at use cases, I look at use cases from my perspective, particularly around my community issues that impact my community. And I think about that from a perspective. And I think about that from a perspective.

that could help other communities. I do not think about technology building from the concept of the people who are the most privileged to help them. I think about it from centering the most marginalized and then building something that would help them and save them or protect them and then elevate that to everybody

else. We operate in a very different system, not just the American system in general, but also a technological system. We operate from the top tier level people who are the most privileged coming up with something that works for them and then trying to nudge everybody else below to use it, even at their own detriment.

And so when you come up with use cases, you have to think about, like, what are the things you're trying to solve? But one of the other pieces of use cases that you think about, you think about people's narrative. When you look at someone's narrative and you think about how you solve a problem based on people's narrative, you have to think about them from a very diverse perspective in many, many ways. I've been in multiple aspects of these events, white papers and the like, where I have come

up with a technology that will eventually people want. but the narrative they don't want because the narrative is centered on a woman of color. And when I think about that, the erasure is they will come out of that, coming up with some technological solution, but writing out and wiping out the narrative where originated from, which is women of color. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygle 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, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your

parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. They're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open.

Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor Me, I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio.

Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying,

and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. 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 athlete 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. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants. answer. Sports Slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live

them. Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Life throws hurdles big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? 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 WMBA 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. So how can we make sure that

our work, our labor, our voices don't go erased in these conversations that are so integral to our communities. That is the most important part. And I am Bridget, you and I are in spaces on on the daily basis where we're still struggling to make this happen. I have been in aspects where stories get told by white people instead of us. I've had people repeat my story in ways that made it look like it was not connected to me at all. I've seen versions. I've also, seeing people present my data as if it was theirs. I've seen so many versions of that. And so I think the challenge is always for us to decide when we stand up, but also decide when we basically hold people accountable. I think that what we are seeing in some ways, what people say,

hey, Shafika, myself, Siddette and others existed, is basically trying to say, you just showed up in 2020, and this has been going on since 2013. That's seven years. You don't get to have ownership over something, i.e., discovering fake accounts pretending to be black people in 2020. And everybody should be stepping up to that, because we've documented over and over and over again. And anyone that dares to do it should be held accountable, and we should all be, all of us, anyone who's hearing my voice should be able to say, we do not allow this to go without us being cited or us being quoted in anything that references that conversation.

Hell, yes. I could not, I could not plus one that enough. It is so, it's, it's so complicated, you know, because I think that on the one hand, it's like we're being told that we should just be happy to be a footnote on something that's ours that we created. We should just be happy to be in the conversation at all, the conversation that we started. That's exactly right. It's like, oh, we're inviting you to this conversation. No, no, no. We started this conversation. What are you talking about you inviting

us to the conversation? You are lucky that we would even show up to your event versus you thinking you're inviting us. It's a very different, like, just a position to be in multiple times. I've been in multiple rooms like that. And it's just like, no, no, no, no, no. No. no, this conversation is based on our first report. This conversation is not like a nuance because other people got their hands in it and they come up with other versions of it. No, thank you for coming out with other versions of my report, but my report is first. Erasure of that is part of this narrative.

And this is why I've been so vocal. But the funny thing is, Bridget, leading up to the election, funny enough, people are like, oh, Shereen, now we see your report. Oh, Sheree, now we know what you were seeing. And that's the bad part, right? Like, for those that are going, oh, finally, I now get what you were saying back then because I didn't get it then, right? Fine. You didn't get it then.

But then you have to credit me for getting it. There's a real cost to allowing lies and distortions to dominate our political discourse. How many real issues have gone overlooked because we were too busy discussing a conspiracy theory? And now, after the attacks at the Capitol, the media is still giving conspiracy theorists and bad faith charlatans a platform to further spread and legitimate. minimize their lies. We're in a, this whole year has been basically a culture of disinformation. We're either talking about the disinformation or talking about combating the disinformation. We are not talking about election politics.

We're not talking about policies. And that's the failure of us dealing with disinformation right now. We are in the, sort of the ocean of disinformation. So either we're trying to counter it or what we're trying to. or there's some levels of it being elevated unwillingly, whether it's us trying to counter it and then unfortunately amplifying it, or we have media houses who thinks they're talking about disinformation

or these conspiracy theorists, which by the way, drives me absolutely crazy, Bridget, it's the elevation of the conspiracy theorists as if they're mainstream, so much so that we now have candidates running with conspiracy theories as, their marker. I don't know how that makes sense and how we can't look at that and say, have we elevated conspiracy theories this much to the extent that it's considered mainstream instead of a conspiracy and should not be considered a part of a narrative or conversation to be

had? What my struggle is is that we aren't having policy discussions. We're having disinfo discussions. And I'm not saying that it's wrong to have disinfoed discussions, but I am saying is that because we're having so much more conversation on disinfoil discussions, we're not elevating enough of the facts, the real policies, the real impacts, the lives of people. What we have done as a society is failed telling more of the factual narrative versus the disinfo. As we are all working to stop the disinfo. One of the things we have failed at is telling the true story. That's not going to stop me from doing this work, by the way. I'm just making a statement about the visual of what that difference is.

And so when people think they're going to show up to represent me or speak from me or speak from my community with no context or understanding that, not only is it disingenuous, but it's a full frontal assault. Do you, when you look on the horizon, do you feel hopeful or does it feel like you don't even know, how we're going to get out of this mess. I'm glad you asked that question because I think that what I just, and it's also a good way to like uplift after what I said because it sounds like everything is horrible. I mean, maybe that's true.

Parts of that is actually true. Why would I say, why would I do this if I didn't think that we, us, individuals, not the government who's failing us, not the health care system who has failed black people in this country, for a long time. I'm not going to remove that from this narrative. What I am saying is I fully feel in

all of my being, I am our ancestors' greatest dreams. Like, I know that everything I'm doing, all the things I'm embodying, every choice that I've made so far to try to fight this for my community, despite being attacked, doing so, is to make sure that I'm helping to protect us in some way. Who else is going to protect us? Who else is going to know what's going on? So I ask people to show up to for us and for others. So not only protect our democracy, but protect individuals. What I'm saying is what we can do to stop that.

Stop the disinformation about the virus, the vaccines. Stop the disinformation about our democracy and the ways in which we can vote because we have the power to change that. stop the disinformation from the aspects of what kind of lives we can all possibly live if we weren't giving taking the wealthiest in this country more tax cuts while we get nothing right like most of people what people don't understand about the disinformation that our culture and our history has been built on is when we erase certain parts of it disinformation feeds off of it so I'm asking us all to participate in knowing and understanding our entire history as to why we got here.

But also, you have the ability to counter the disinformation. Use the true sandwich. Basically, you know, if you see something as disinformation, put out the facts, debunk the disinfo and put out the facts again. You don't have to get into heated debates, but do not allow the disinformation to have more space in our ecosystem than the facts. What I'm saying is that I think what's viscerally happening for some folks is that they're understanding there's a broader context here. There's a power grab here. There's a whole different understanding about American exceptionalism. We are not exceptional in any way. We have horrific versions of our story. And we all need to accept that with the hope that we can change it and not

repeated. My thing is, I'm hoping that we understand why so many people didn't know Tulsa existed until Watchmen, a TV series, sci-fi, for people to even believe it existed, right? It's that removal of history in that way that makes it impossible for us not to repeat it. So telling that story, 1619 and others, telling those stories allow us to all walk into our truth. There's so many people that still think that some of those stories are revisionism of our history, when it's the truth of our history. Like we, that's part of why I'm asking people to report disinformation because I'm saying, you get to say this is a false narrative.

You get to act upon it and tell the truth and you get to report the false narrative. So we have a story to tell. So they don't repeat any of this. So I am hopeful. I do think there's a lot more people who understand what's going on. But I also know that they're, in all honesty, there's a sliver of this of this country that doesn't want to ever, ever move forward. And they're okay with the horrific nature of this country. I know that.

I'm not oblivious to that. However, what I am saying, there are more of us that sees what we can be. So I don't agree with the narrative, this is not America. This is America. It's exactly who America has always been. But what I'm asking you to do is be hopeful with me is that now that you see who we've always been, that you work towards changing to become what we should be.

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. Mike Amato is our 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. Like, 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. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano.

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