There Are No Girls on the Internet - DISINFORMED: How'd we get here?

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

Melissa Ryan, extremism and disinformation expert, joins Bridget to talk about how disinformation and conspiracy theories led to the riots at the Capitol and where we go from here.Subscribe to Melissa's newsletter, Ctrl Alt-Right Delete: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/subscribe-to-ctrl-alt-right-delete/ 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 finally. You just understood. That's how personal it got.

Wow. Then after that game seven, Mark keep coming 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. So I live in Washington, D.C., and it's been a rough few weeks. My city is still reeling from the violent attack on the Capitol by white supremacist Trump supporters. And now, we're all hunkering down to prepare for the threat of inauguration violence. And I'm still making sense of everything. How we got here.

And most importantly, how we moved forward. And I know I'm not alone. Melissa Ryan is a longtime digital organizer turned extremism and disinformation expert. In October, we said, down to discuss the ways that she was seeing disinformation playing out in the lead-up to the 2020 election. Now, at the time, we didn't know what would happen in the election, or the kind of violence that would follow. In hindsight, the signs were always there. But after four years, you couldn't really blame anybody who was just tuning Trump out as a coping mechanism. His Twitter

feed was an all-caps mishmash of lies, threats, racism, and whatever Kovifi is. Like a lot of us, the 2016 election was a turning point for Melissa. She'd seen violent rhetoric and conspiracy theories online. But in 2016, she remembers the temperature being turned up in a way she had never seen before. This was different. It was as if Trump being elected to the White House just dialed everything up. So why disinformation? Why is this something that you've dedicated so much of your life to? Oh, Lord, I don't know. No, I think it's the, The 2016 election really broke me because what I saw online in the weeks leading up, you know, you know I have a long history as an online organizer.

And what I was seeing didn't make any sense. Everything that Trump was doing was over amplified. Nothing that the left was doing seemed to be getting any play. And there was just more hate speech and more misogyny than I had ever seen before. And like, I'm a woman on the Internet. So I'm just used to a baseline of a certain amount of that. And it just seemed to be increasing and frequency and the dangers seemed to be increasing.

And after the election, I decided that I had to make it my job. Do you feel like, I guess maybe this is a big question, but do you feel, when you think of the state of disinformation and the conversations that we have online as women, as communities of color, do you feel hopeful or do you feel this is a dumpster fire, it will only get worse? That's a good question. I think it varies from day to day. I think there are things that make me hopeful. You know, I hope we're about to win an election and send, I think, a very big message to the far right about how America at large feels about them.

But I do worry. I worry that a lot of progressives still don't quite understand the problem, that they think of disinformation as something that affects. their aunt or uncle who watch Fox News and not that's largely targeting women or communities of color, or they think that it's just going to go away if Biden is elected. And, you know, both of those both of those are incorrect and make me worry. I'm really worried that if the election goes our way, then it's going to be like, oh, we don't have to worry about disinformation anymore. We don't have to worry about hate speech because they're all going to be gone. And that's just simply not the place. Biden was elected, and once again, it was like the temperature got turned up. Only this time, it was turned way up.

Six days after watching the violent insurrection take place at the Capitol that was largely fueled by the repeated baseless false claim that Trump won the election and it was being stolen from him, Melissa and I spoke again. Were two people whose work has consisted of warning people that something awful is coming, trying to get tech companies to take action to prevent it, and generally waiting through the darkest corners of the internet. So if we sound like we're not in a great place, well, we weren't.

So I have to say, you know, we are in this intense moment. You've been doing this work for such a long time. Just in general, how the hell are you? It is a wild time to be someone who works in this space. How are you? Yeah, thank you for asking. I can't say that I'm okay and I don't think that any of us are okay. It's been such an awful experience sort of watching this unfold and be organized online so very publicly.

And then every day we find out news that says that the attack was much worse, I think, even than what we realized. Like the news just keeps getting worse every day. And it's very unsettling to think about how many folks who hold elected all. office up to the president were inciting violence and how many members of Congress and Hill staff and frankly, like support staff, maintenance and food service have to go back to work with some of these folks every day, less than a week after an attempted coup. I'm going to be sitting with that for a long time. Yeah, I definitely feel you on that. I think that's one of the things that really breaks my heart. You know, nobody should be going through this full stop. But then when you think about

the other staffers, and then just, you know, folks, everyday folks in D.C., who don't have the kind of support, who don't have the kind of, you know, who maybe are not being taken care of in this way. Like I remember seeing an image of the largely black Capitol Hill staffers cleaning up. And I thought, you know,

did these folks also get the benefit of, you know, gas masks or protection? Or were they just out here on their own trying to do their jobs? Yeah, I read a, a harrowing anecdote about how after 9-11, no one actually came to evacuate the support staff and tell them that it was safe. And I'm just thinking like, oh, man, I hope that there are better procedures in place now. There was also an anecdote about how members of Congress were told

that bulletproof vests were a reimbursable expense. And I was like, well, I wonder if you're a food service worker who's outsourced. I'm guessing it's not a reimbursable expense or even something that can be on your radar. So it's really horrible. A day before the violent riot at the Capitol, Melissa tweeted, We should probably talk more about how Donald Trump wants his supporters to get violent on his behalf tomorrow. He's been encouraging them to come for weeks and now inciting them. What concerns me is how many people are heading to D.C. hoping for violence.

Though they don't seem to be clear with one another, if Trump is supposed to start the insurrection, or if they are. her tweet would prove to be prophetic. Only no one really wants to be able to say, I told you so, when they're talking about a violent mob attack. Yeah, I love being right generally in my life, but there is no worse time to be right than it's thinking about a president

inciting violence against Americans. It was horrible. I spent my holidays at Trump on December 19th announced this event, and he said, be there, be wild. And he crowd-built forward over Twitter a couple more times. Who could have seen the events at the Capitol coming? Well, pretty much anyone who was looking.

In fact, Trump's own administration found that homegrown white supremacist groups were a growing threat in America. The Department of Homeland Security called the threat from white supremacists the most deadly domestic terror threat facing the country. And yet, the Trump administration chose to instead prioritize what they called, quote, black identity extremists, or essentially anyone who was black and happened to be connected to Black Lives Matter as the bigger threat. What's hard for Melissa is the fact that these attacks were so openly planned on social media platforms.

Folks were just in Maga World were so openly organizing. They were on The Donald, they were on parlor and Facebook groups, and the rhetoric just kept getting increasingly violent. They were talking about storming the Capitol. They were talking about how they were going to hang and execute members of Congress. and anyone who is in the deep state. And it was all just happening out in the open, and it was very disturbing.

And partly it's very disturbing because it's really hard to tell, who is fantasizing and who is actually making plants. Yeah, I can imagine that. And I think from what you just said, you know, if you knew where to look, these things were being organized in plain sight. What is it like then to have so many officials kind of make it seem as though we could never have predicted this?

we could have never prepared for this. What is that? I mean, it almost kind of feels like a kind of gaslighting where you're thinking, oh, I literally just saw this being planned on Twitter.com in public or on parlor, you know, having all these officials kind of like lean on this language that makes it seem like no one could have seen this coming. What does that like to see? Yeah.

I mean, what I'll say is whiteness is a hell of a drug. It's, I have no doubt in my, I mean, I think about how. we know law enforcement surveils and infiltrates supposedly groups of all political stripes, but we know what happens to folks on the left. We know it's been happening to Black Lives Matter. I can't imagine if something on a Black Lives Matter forum or group or conversation was said that was like a quarter of this vitriolic that there wouldn't be just an incredible police presence in response and that all this was happening for weeks. And again, like there's no way folks didn't see it was happening. It's just that they saw it was happening.

and chose not to take it seriously. You know, folks like you and other organizations and the organization that I represent, Ultraviolet, we've been calling on tech platforms to take disinformation and violent rhetoric on social media seriously forever. I mean, you and I have been in some of the same meetings with leadership from companies like Facebook and Twitter,

and we just listen to them say over and over again, oh, well, we can't do this, we can't do this, we can't do this, and throw up their hands. And it turns out they could do it this whole time. Yeah, all it took was a violent adjustment. attempted coup. No, I mean, what I go back to is the tech platforms and Facebook is the worst actor, but I think, you know, YouTube and Twitter have to take some heat too. They've always treated this like a PR problem. And when we see big changes is after terrible tragic events happen. And then it's like

no one could have predicted, no one could have prevented. Cheryl Sandberg actually had the audacity to say yesterday that this attack wasn't organized on Facebook, which was just, I don't even know how still after all these years you can say that with a straight face or what PR person would advise you to do that. But again, it's like, I think hope, you know, we know from news, public reporting that Twitter seems to indicate that part of the reason that they took down Trump's account and did another round of takedowns was because of intelligence they received about more violence. So I'm sure that plays into it as well. But after the past four years, it's hard not to be cynical and be like, oh, you just see this as another PR problem.

Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. To go back to Cheryl Sandberg, in that video yesterday, she said, oh, we Facebook moved to take down all the stop-the-steel groups. And I happened to have all my other monitor Facebook up. And I was looking at the group. So I was like, well, she's telling me that they're down. But here I am with my eyes looking at them. Well, I mean, how much, you know, we talk about being in some of the same meetings.

How often have, you know, we've been there with nonprofit organizations who are saying, is what we're seeing. This is what it is. Here's the list. And then Facebook dances around it. Like, oh, they've only had two strikes and our review is different. And it's just, you know, abdicating responsibility again and again. It's always something. It really, it really is like a crisis of leadership. It's, you know, passing the buck. It's blaming, you know, contract content moderators or something. It's, it's, it's, there's always something I feel where they're able to really skirt accountability. And I think it's interesting. to watch how quickly they're moving now with how slowly they've been moving in the past

and how they've just been, you know, parroting this idea that there's not much they can do when it's clear that's not the case. Yeah, you saw that in the early days of COVID, too. I mean, I think Facebook took a lot more proactive action than they have in the past because they could sort of, you know, see what was coming. And they still didn't do enough. But it's like, well, we know you can move fast when you need to. What was your reaction to Trump being kicked off social media, you know, first Facebook and then Twitter. I was truly stunned when he was finally suspended from Twitter, especially when it was permanent. I remember just like that night just like staring at the space where his page used to be.

I think I tweeted, you know, your moment of Zen. And honestly, like selfishly, I was like, oh my God, I'm never going to have to wake up and wonder what he tweeted. I'm never going to have to worry if he like started a war or fired someone or anything over Twitter. So personally, it was, God, it was like this giant weight had been lifted off. I have seen so many people, some of whom are people that I respect or who's, you know, I think are thoughtful people making this argument of like, well, if they can do this to Trump because they don't like what he has to say, what's stopping them from doing it to me or to you or to anybody else, making Trump being deplatformed about a free speech issue?

Do you believe that Trump being de-platform from Facebook and Twitter and social media is a free speech issue? I don't because again, he was inciting violence. And when we're talking about free speech, we're talking about free speech of a select few. And it completely ignores everyone who has been de-platformed or harassed offline over the number of the years by these same folks. I also think Twitter's world leader's policy in particular is something we haven't talked about enough in this. And I think you know I've got kind of an obsession with it. For a long time, if you were a world leader, they were going to leave your tweet up no matter what it was because it was newsworthy. And basically what that did was it gave world leaders another weapon to abuse.

And obviously, every world leader isn't going to abuse it. But it was, if you know that your tweet is not going to be taken down, that gives you a lot more leeway to do things like incite violence and make threats. 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 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 yard herds, 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 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 podcast. 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.

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-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-844-I-Hart. 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 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. From viral moments to historical moments to historical.

games from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered. SportsClyce brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to SportsClace on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slicelife 12 in 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 feel on. 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 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. I wish we lived in a world where world leaders could be trusted to not incite violence and make threats. But let's be real. That's not the world Americans have spent the last four years living in. The seductive power of violence and threats combined with the power of unrestricted social media access proved to be too much for demagogues like Trump to resist.

Social media companies need to be held accountable when their platforms are used. used to spread hatred and incite violence. There need to be standards, and elected officials whose voices are amplified by the power of their office should be held to them too. So I've always maintained that world leaders should actually be held to the same standard that any other user on Twitter is, partly because the idea of newsworthiness is silly, because world leaders have a million other channels where things that they say are newsworthy, but also because it just gives already powerful people an extra weapon to wield. against their political opposition.

Another question I have for you is, you know, I think that for so long we had this idea that people who were spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation were like fringe groups. What is it? How do we combat it when you have elected officials, some of it who took part in the, you know, insurrection? How do we combat this idea that we're dealing with a handful of fringe people when in fact it is elected officials? it is like the official GOP repeating, you know, false claims about Antifa being behind the attacks on the Capitol.

How can we combat it when it's, in some times, in some cases, seems to have gone so mainstream? Yeah, I mean, look, the biggest purveyor of disinformation in the 2020 election was Donald Trump. And he used his presidential campaign and the White House and every lever of federal government that he had to spread disinformation. That's not fringe. We've also had an increasing amount of far-right candidates run for office and win. There are currently two members of Congress who are known believers of QAnon, Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Borenne in Colorado. I don't think I said the latter's name correctly, but it's fine. And we see an increasing amount, like there's Amanda Littman on Twitter has been keeping a list of all the state legislators who showed up at the Capitol and were involved in the insurrection.

So these folks have been building political power in the Republican Party for a long time. They hold elected office. That's not French. Yeah, that's a great point. You know, when people talk about how Donald Trump's free speech is being suppressed, he could, you know, do a press conference, do a press release. I mean, presidents were able to get their thoughts out before social media existed. So he certainly has a plethora of channels with which to put his opinions out into the world. And I think it's really something that we're acting as if, you know, as if the only avenue,

the only avenue that he can do that as social media. That might be the way that Trump personally feels, but it is not the case. Yeah. No, I really enjoyed Republicans going on national television complaining about how they're being silenced. Yeah, it's like, ooh, I didn't realize that when you have your speech, like, suppressed, you get to go on, like, the major cable news networks to talk about it. I think it really speaks to this idea of. of who, like free speech for who, because, you know, we know that black activists, progressive

groups have long complained about being suppressed on social media platforms. And so those are conversations that completely predate what we're talking about. And yet now when it's Trump, who is, you know, having his accounts banned for terms of service violations repeatedly, that is the free speech issue. But all of the times where progressive groups and black activists and folks like that have said, oh, we're being, we're having our, we're being suppressed on social media platforms. It didn't seem to be that same issue. And all the folks who have been driven, and again, particularly black people, people of color, women who've been driven offline by harassment from these folks. And we don't talk about that either. Like, that's a form of

deplatforming as well. So this is actually something I know a bit about firsthand. Once a by time I used to love the social media platform Reddit. And there was a time in my life where I spent hours every day moderating a subreddit that I loved. But that all ended after getting a lot of coordinated sexist, racist harassment on the platform. It pretty quickly became clear that staying on Reddit would mean subjecting myself to a nonstop torrent of harassment and threats. So I left. I had been deplatformed.

You know, as someone who has, you know, makes my living on the internet and has been online for a long time, even before all of this, something that I was always struck by is this idea that things that happen online aren't real or aren't real. or don't really matter or aren't, don't have real world consequences. And I think that's something that I have bumped up against pretty much my whole adult life, that if something happens online, just shut your computer, you know, go outside. Why don't you, you know, delete your Twitter and focus on the real world? I wonder if we're finally getting to a point where folks can't say that anymore.

Folks can't say like, oh, it's just happening online. It's just happening on 4chan and what have you. But actually, what we know, these things have real world consequences. Yeah, I mean, there's just not a recognition of how much online rhetoric radicalizes folks and leads to offline action, whether that's terrorism, whether that's online harassment. In the case of progressive activists, your personal safety is often in danger. You know, this week might have been a turning point in understanding that, but I feel like people who just don't want to think about it, that's an easy thing that they can say, oh, you know, just turn your computer off. Yeah, I hate that. I mean, the first time that I ever had, you know, kind of a scary harassment online, I remember going to law enforcement. And this was many, many years ago. And it was just so clear to me that they did not understand what I was describing or what I was dealing with. And the officer that I spoke to was like, oh, you should just stay off of the internet. And at that point in my life, I was a budding, you know, internet critic and budding online organizer. So I was like, so essentially you're telling me to quit my job. go back to college, find a brand new career. You know, it is like, like, this idea that I could just end all of this by logging off,

I found to be just really deeply exposed how little, at that time, law enforcement was taking this seriously. Yeah, I mean, there's not a recognition that for so many of us, our jobs are largely online and our lives are largely online. And just logging off just isn't an option for most of the population. Exactly. Something that you tweeted that I found so interesting, you said, this is the last gas of the Trump administration, but I worry about what it might have birthed. Tell me about that. What do you think, where do you think we go moving forward? Yeah, I mean, it's going to be interesting. And I think a lot of where we go has to do with how much we hold the people responsible for this accountable. You know, if we sweep this under the rug, we are sending a strong signal that you can, terrorism is an okay way to get what you want politically. But I do think it's important to recognize that in what eight days now, Trump is no longer going to be the president. He's not going to have the power of the White House. He's not going to have the power of every agency in the federal government.

So his power to influence is going to be greatly diminished. And I think Joe Biden has an opportunity, you know, to hold folks to account, to hold organizations to account and really start to get into the systemic changes that need to happen for this not to happen again. I think it's also going to be really interesting to see what Republicans do because, I mean, they're rattled. You saw McConnell on the floor that night. The man was visibly shaken. And so is, you know, what are they going to do? And that's going to tell us a lot about where things are going as well. More after this 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 and headwriter Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella 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, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open.

Since you guys are middle-aged. Uh, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smygel 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.

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 IHart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-I-Hart. 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 answered. Sports slice brings you closer to the action, with stories told by 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 Slicelife-Life 12 in 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 feel on. 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 IHart Women's Sports. Let's get right back to it. I've been seeing a lot of people calling for unity right now. Let's try to come together. I think the first thing we need to do as leaders in America is lower the temperature and try to come together. I think we need to lower the rhetoric. We need to get some unity going. But you can't have unity without accountability, without justice. And as one of the half a million Americans who calls Washington, D.C., my home,

it's obvious we aren't there yet. Today, I'm preparing for an inauguration weekend where it might not be safe to leave my apartment. I'm buying groceries and making plans, in case the mayor declares an emergency curfews. is an emergency curfew, like she did the day of the riots. I'm watching elected officials and far-right media outlets continue to traffic in the same kind of baseless conspiracy theories

that got us here in the first place. That, quote, Antifa or Democrats who are responsible for the terror at the Capitol. Here's Representative Matt Gett repeating a false claim on the House floor that a facial recognition company found, quote, Antifa members were part of the Capitol riots. And I don't know if the reports are true, but the Washington Times has just reported some pretty compelling evidence from a facial recognition company showing that some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters. They were masquerading as Trump supporters and, in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group Antifa. That's a total lie, by the way.

The Washington Times retracted the story after the facial recognition company threatened legal action. So where's the accountability? Melissa hopes President-elect Biden can unite the country, but not without accountability for everyone, the insurgents who stormed the Capitol, but also the elected officials, media outlets, and social media platforms who helped them get there. So you actually published what you called a roadmap to accountability. Tell me about that. I think what has happened here is, like, you can't even describe it as a systemic failure.

And we all, I think, as Americans, have a role. to play in holding institutions and people accountable. So I just mentioned, you know, where I thought were good places to start. And some of them, you know, we've talked about already, the tech companies, Trump and his administration, the Republican Party, law enforcement, particularly the white supremacy problem that we know and have in law enforcement and the rioters themselves. And I think what's interesting about Joe Biden, you know, his, most of his, most of his rhetoric has been about unity and coming together, but he's also been very specific about the need for accountability. He called the rioters seditionists yesterday, which I thought was great. And when

he was introducing his Justice Department nominees, he talked about the importance of holding these folks accountable, calling them out, calling what they did crimes. He called them, you know, he used the words like terrorism and terrorist. So I don't necessarily, want to discount what Joe Biden is going to do. So are you hopeful in this moment, you know, when you think about the state of disinformation and how we got here, are you hopeful for what's on the horizon? I mean, I'm not a hopeful person by nature. If I was, I probably wouldn't do this work because it would like kill my soul.

You know, I will just say that I can see what's possible. I have also seen us, you know, particularly in the past decade of American politics, make the wrong choice again and again. But I finally see a landscape where it is possible to start having some of these changes and accountability. We have the Senate, we have Congress, we have an administration that has signaled they're going to take domestic terrorism and white supremacy and disinformation seriously. So we have all the pieces in place. Yeah, that's a good way to think about it. So maybe not hopeful, but cautiously, like, we'll see what happens. Yeah. So one of my last questions for you is, you know, I know that you've written quite a bit about this. Women and

underrepresented communities are some of the biggest targets of disinformation and we disproportionately deal with it. What does it feel like to know that so many of, so much of the, I guess, infrastructure of combating disinformation and violent rhetoric are women. You know, when we are in these meetings, sometimes I look around on Zoom and I'm like, oh, this is all the people who are here calling for accountability are women. What is it like? You know, Also seeing when intersectionists are unmasked online, I feel a lot of the people doing that very dangerous but critical work are women. Are women. Exactly. Like I just want to highlight our role in this work. Do you ever feel the same way? I do. I both feel a great source of pride and then also a frustration when it's a panel of disinformation and they try to do all men who work in tech.

So I think it's a situation that I see reflected in politics a lot where women, are like digging in and doing the work and, you know, a certain contingent of men are sort of building profiles for themselves. So I think it's, you know, it's a mixed bag. I'm really glad to see that that work is happening. But I really wish more women got credit. I was so happy about, you mentioned women who were unmasking these guys, the profile in the Washington Post this weekend of Molly Conger and Emily Gorseski who have been doing this work of unmasking, Nazis online just since Charlottesville. And it was so great to see them get their due and their credit for this work. Absolutely. And I also think, you know, not even that long ago,

they were kind of vilified for that work. It was seen as like starting trouble online. And now we read, I think that now I hope we're able to step back and say, actually that that very dangerous, thankless work they were doing is actually a reason why we're here now that we have some hope and have some infrastructure for how we can move on from this and get accountability. Yeah, and it's been really gratifying seeing the whole internet being like, oh, we have to identify these guys. It still blows my mind how they were so not worried about consequences that they all live streamed themselves committing crimes in the Capitol. And I mean, it's terrifying, right? Because I think they truly thought they were going to win and hold on to the Capitol. But also it's just like, man, it's just the stupidity that's on display right now.

Yeah, I think one of the, I forget which guy it was, but one of his lawyers was on TV and was like, well, my client took selfies while doing it. You know, I'm not a magician. And I thought, it's like the last thing I want to hear your lawyer say is I'm not a magician. I watched that video so many times yesterday. I will. Do the best that I can. Oh, it really, what a time that we are living through. Melissa, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.

Where can folks keep up with all the amazing work that you're doing and support it? Oh, thank you so much. It's always great to talk to you, Bridget. So you can subscribe to control. Control Altright Delete.com. It goes out every Sunday night. It's free. We now have more than 16,000 weekly readers.

And you can also find me on Twitter at Melissa Ryan. 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 Smygel 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.

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