There Are No Girls on the Internet - What the upcoming midterm election means for women online - STUFF MOM NEVER TOLD YOU

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

VOTE FOR MOZILLA’S IRL PODCAST TO WIN A SHORTY AWARD: TANGOTI.COM/IRL  A historic number of women of color are running for office this election cycle. But their candidacy comes with an added burden.  Bridget joins Sam and Anney at Stuff Mom Never Told You to talk through the midterm elections and what they mean for women online.  And speaking of voting, vote for Mozilla’s IRL podcast to win a Shorty Award (it only takes a moment!) at TANGOTI.COM/IRLSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It's almost election day here in the United States, and there is so much on the line in this election. There are also historic numbers of women and women of color running for elected office this cycle. And while that is great to see, we know that these women will face racialized, gendered attacks that their white male counterparts simply will not have to deal with. They'll have to take extra security concerns,

both online and IRL, that their male counterparts won't have to deal with. And yep, that is an extra cost burden that we know that they'll have to shoulder just because of their identity. So to discuss all of this, I sat down with my good friends, Samantha and Annie, over at the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You, to lay out our concerns in the upcoming midterm elections and what needs to be done. I love Halloween, but one thing that does always come with Halloween like every couple of years is this tension around voting? Is this tension that the elections are coming up? So it's always like, I'm trying to not think about it. Is there anything spookier?

Yes, yes. So spooky. And as we've hinted at, that's what we're going to be talking about a lot in here. And Georgia, it's been an intense midterm election for us. So yeah, yeah, I guess let's just break down some of the things that are going on. in these midterms. Yes. So when we're recording this,

I don't know how long it will be out when folks hear it, but we are 10 days out from the election while we're recording this. And I mean, it sounds like you kind of feel like I do where particularly around midterms,

it just makes me queasy because I know that GOTV is so different when it's not a presidential election. Like people, it's harder to get people excited. And especially when I know there's so much on the line, you know, you mentioned Georgia, that's an important race. A lot is happening.

A lot is hinging on people actually coming out. And so it's something that I just always feel kind of like queasy about it. And for me, I always kind of, having worked in politics for most of my adult life or like politics adjacent, I always kind of feel meh about elections because I'm not super invested in electoral power. Like I think that there's other ways to build power. And then around like 10 days out, I'm like, oh my God, I need to like start GOTVing. I need to start like calling everyone. It's like it's like something happens. And so I'm sort of waiting for that transformation to happen.

And it sounds like you two are feeling sort of similarly around the elections this time around. Yeah. So for me, I recently was coming home from a trip with my mother. and she drove me past where I vote, my polling place, and it was the first day of early voting in Georgia, and it was packed out. Like, I was like, oh, my God, what is happening? And then I looked it up,

and early voting was happening, and I was so, it's very heartening to see that many people turn out for a midterm. And I waited a couple of days, and when I went back, it was still crowded, and people were excited, there were people filming. Everyone was really warm and not, like oh, it's so glad you came out to vote, which was, it was a pleasant experience for me,

but it was kind of like overshadowed the whole thing was, you know, there's been these crackdowns on voting rights and why are so many people coming out so early, which I think is great, but it was just kind of overhanging the whole thing. And also because it is a very divisive race, senatorial race specifically in Georgia. I don't know. It was one of those things where I was like I've been to midterms before and like nobody was there. And I walk past that area all the time. And so I see it and I would never see a line. And now like every day when I walk past it, there's a line. So that's nice. But I'm still like they, you just can't shake all of the kind of negative things that might be behind why that is, even though I'm happy to see it if that makes sense. Right. Absolutely. Like as right now, we have the highest early voter turned out in our state that we've ever had beating last presidential election. So it's amazing to see that things are happening. And we know that that's great indication of things that come. Again, yes, we have had a huge upsurge in voter suppression laws in the last five years. Actually, that's always been. Let's just be honest. But it's seemingly getting worse and worse. And we know the way they have reduced.

restricted everything. It is very, very shady, although, you know, our current governor was the Secretary of State who controlled his own election, which does a lot in itself. And that's a big point of contention here, as well as the fact that apparently Rafflesberger, that's our current Secretary of State, who actually stood up to Trump at one point in time and got too much credit, in my opinion, for what he did, but it's hired a former staffer of Trump for these elections. So there's a lot of questionable things happening. So we have a lot of concerns and a lot of hope. It's such a mixed bag, as Annie was saying, of what is happening here.

We're seeing what's happening because the governor's race is a pretty big deal as the overturning of Roe v. Wade hasn't made it a huge deal, as we do have a six-week ban in Georgia currently. And then there's a talk about the fact that they're going to punish those who do have abortions as murder, possibly charging them with murder, with the fact that they're doing this whole, like, you know, unborn fetus law and protecting of them as, as like, and crediting them as a citizen type of conversation, which we know is trickery and is leading way to a lot of imprisonment and unfair

treatment. And we know this is completely targeted at marginalized individuals in our state. So there's a lot of concerns. There's so much that feels like it's being really weighty here right now. And it does. It feels like it is life or death for so many of us. And again, I'm being very local on this moment because this is kind of where we are. And Annie and I obviously have to concentrate so hard in these conversations. So there is this level of doom, which I'm wonderful at conversation, bringing up all the time, apparently. There's this fear and level of doom in this election that feels too heavy. At the same time, we are the butt of jokes with our current senator race.

And it's really like you want you you have to laugh but want to cry as well as why why just but why? Yeah. Oh my gosh. I if you got if you all get me started on a hurtful walker, I will never I will never stop talking. So I'm not going to comment on that. Boy, I want to. But truly if you got me going, I would never stop. I will just say that all of that is really valid.

You know, I think this feeling of it's great to see people voting, but that like unease of like, but what does that mean for everyone? I think that's really valid. And just the feeling of knowing how much is on the line, what is at stake this time around. I think that that's, I hate to say it. I think as our elections become more and more contentious

and as things become more and more polarized, I think that's going to be a common sentiment. And, you know, something that kind of speaks to that is the fact that there are more women running for statewide offices than ever before, which, you know, I think is, should be good news. 2022 marks a record high for women running for gubernatorial and Senate races. There's about 65 women running for governor's races across the country in this cycle. I should say it is not all lefties. There are more Republicans than Democrats making those bids. this is all according to data from the Center for American Women in Politics.

And I, it's true. It's like I, when there are long lines at polling places, I'm like, oh, that's great, like democracy and action. And that's definitely preferable to people having elections not go their way and then trying to force them to go their way via violent behavior like we saw on January 6th. And so things feel charged. I'll put it that way. And women are poised to make gains in statewide contests,

but they remain underrepresented in key legislatures around the country. And it's also true for black women. We're seeing more black women and more women of color running for local office. Black women have set record numbers for candidates in gubernatorial, Senate, and House races. It's the cycle. And there's a lot of Latina and Hispanic gubernatorial and U.S. House Senate candidates and a record number of Asian and Pacific Islander women who are running for governor.

And so I, as fraught as that can be, I think it's overall good, you know, not just because representation matters, which it does, but also I think that anything that gets us closer to a representative democracy, one where there's people who actually have the lived experience of the people that they are governing is a good thing. And so like that's one kind of silver lining, I guess, is that particularly when I think about issues like abortion like you were talking about, Sam, I don't have any hard numbers for this. I would suspect that women are motivated to run for office because those issues have taken such a national stage recently. I wish I could say that it's all women who, you know, want to protect abortion access.

I wish I could say that if you were a woman, that was part of your platform, but that would not be correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one thing that is very overwhelming right now in Georgia, and I'm sure in a lot of places. but our political ads are intense and hard to escape.

But yeah, so it's kind of like what I was saying, we have these positives. We have more women running. We have more people of color running. We have more black women running. But that doesn't come without these realities that you have spoke about a lot on the show that often get kind of swept aside

and not talked about even though, they are so important and they are impacting our political landscape. Exactly. And so I think it is so great when we support women, especially black women and women of color, to run for office and to just generally be involved in civic life through things like working as election workers or becoming vocal advocates or activists on an issue. But it is imperative that that support be grounded in the reality of what we know these women will face when they find themselves in those situations that we, you know, championed them to, to hold, right? So we are on the left, we're very fond of saying things like trust black

women, support black women. And that is very true. But we can't just, you know, advocate for black women to get into these positions. We have to be honest about what they will face when they get there and then really do the intentional work of creating the conditions for them to have an equal playing field to make sure that they will thrive in those positions because it's one thing to be like, oh, yes, put black women in leadership positions. But then are you going to support them when they face the attacks that we know they are going to face? You know, for instance, I was super excited when President Biden said that he was going to pick black women to be the vice president and also nominate a black woman to be a Supreme Court justice. But I also know that that means

that those black women would certainly face heightened attacks that their white male counterparts just would not have to face. And so I was then a little bit disappointed to see that the White House didn't really meaningfully deal with this reality, right? Like, I wonder, like, are they setting black women up to deal with the harassment and attacks that we know are going to be, like, racialized and gendered,

not attacks based on their records or their merits or their actions, but attacks on their identity, who they are? So when these attacks happened, which we saw with both Harris and Justice Jackson, the White House didn't really, acknowledge them. And of course, the women themselves can't really talk openly about them. So we all just kind of saw it happen. And nobody was at the very least talking honestly about it, let alone working to create the conditions to combat it. Right. And that's just such a huge thing of,

you know, either it's a drain on you because you're having to deal with these attacks or you just kind of distance yourself from social media. And then that in itself people can interpret in the variety of ways that are probably not good. And then people, especially younger people seeing that, like that, there's just so many unhealthy things about what that says that we're accepting as something that's just like par for the course. That's how it is. And the very unfortunate thing is this is not just like one time or just a few times.

It's like all over the place. Exactly. it's not an isolated thing, I'm sorry to say. According to a report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue called Public Figures, Public Rage, Candidates Abuse on Social Media, Statistically speaking, Black women and women of color are more likely to base racialized gendered attacks than their white male counterparts. The study, which you can find online, is super interesting. They found that abusive messages on social media accounted for 15% of those directed at every female lawmaker that they analyzed, compared to around 5% to 10% when they looked at male candidates. A few of their

findings are that women of color are particularly likely to be targeted online. Male politicians of color are not more vulnerable than their white counterparts. They are attacked at the same rate. An abuse toward women was more likely to be about gender than the abuse targeting men. So abuse targeting men was usually focused on their political stances, while the messages directed at women were more likely to be about their appearance or their general competence. interestingly enough, female Democrats received 10 times more abusive comments than there are male counterparts on Facebook and Republican women received twice as many abusive messages as Republican men.

So it's a bipartisan issue. It is an issue impacting all women and women of color. You know, it's not just women on the left who face it. It's all of us. Right. And one of the things, one of the points you make when you come on here all the time, which I think is very important and I love, is that a lot of times people, people, can distance like, oh, that's online. That's not real life. But that is not at all the case, right?

Yes. So I'm sure people are like sick of me saying this because I, you know, say it, scream it from the rooftops every time I am given a platform. But I think we have this misconception that when we talk about online harassment and abuse, we're talking about online issues. And the research could not be clearer that even though these attacks may start online, they do not always stay online. And a great example that we're seeing right now is Representative Jaya Paul, a man started by sending her violent emails and threatening messages online, showed up outside of her house with a gun. I just had to take a minute from recording this podcast to click send on a statement about the husband of Nancy Pelosi. Someone who had a, just today, while we're recording this, someone with a history of violent, you know,

rhetoric on social media, broke into Nancy Pelosi's house and attacked her husband with a hammer when he found that she was not there. And so it's so important and deeply imperative that if we're going to take this kind of violence seriously, that when someone reports violent threats or violent attacks online, we then take it seriously if we're going to prevent real-world violence from happening

because the two are linked. It's just that the research could not be clearer. Time and time again, when somebody is the perpetrator of a mass shooting or an incident of mass violence, you follow the paper trail and oh, they had an online history where they were threatening women

or being aggressive or hostile toward the women in their life online. And so we cannot get a handle meaningfully on the abuse of women if we do not take it seriously when it happens online. It's just not going to happen. And so real world violence

is connected to online violence and we need to deal with it as such. But unfortunately, that has not been the case. For so long, people have been so quick to belittle it when a woman speaks off about what she's facing online, particularly if that woman is black or a woman of color.

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That's iHeartadvertising.com. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better now. navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation.

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and thoughtful solutions. Sike, I'm a comedian. I'm not qualified to give good advice. Join me and my comedian friends as we riff, rant, and recommend some of the most legally dubious advice known to man. If I'm calling you, even if you're on your phone, let it ring twice. One ring is too scary.

Oh, cream a chicken suit. Hey, cream a chicken suit. This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrite as part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. talked about so much harassment and I know one of the biggest platforms, and I know we're going to talk about this later, and I'm already dreading it, Twitter has been one of the biggest perpetrators in allowing this type of abuse and not actually following through in the policies they've already placed themselves to try to supposedly stop these types of harassment. And then knowing that there's

even ways to actually find specific people to target, like when you were talking about the bots, and then just having pretty much hate farms created on these types of platforms. I can't imagine what it does to, yeah, it's happening to those who are on higher profile levels. I guess it's the best way to say it. But to be fair, like, I am petrified as someone who kind of is supposed to be, I don't know the word, not influence or I don't know. What is, okay, public person. We'll say this. We'll say public person.

My name is out there. Like, I'm petrified with my 500 followers and I'm going to say something wrong and or they're going to hear. Someone's going to hear something that we do. take it and say that means we can go after her and wondering what that would be like because I've seen normal people, regular people, getting attacked like, holy shit, all they said was this one thing

and or just agreed with something and people are going after them. Oh my God. I mean, absolutely. And we're also, I would be remiss to not mention that we're having this conversation on day one of Elon Musk at the helm at Twitter. And people keep asking like, oh, what do you think about that? What do you think about that?

And I can tell you that people who are extremists, bad actors, people who are interested in, you know, perpetrating these, the kinds of harassment campaigns that you were just talking about, Sam, those people are rejoicing, right? Like, just today I already saw a bunch of tweets where someone was like, I'm going to use the N slur as many times as I can because it's okay now on Twitter. These are the kind of people that Elon Musk is welcoming back to the platform. These are the kind of people who are rejoicing because Elon Musk is at the helm of one of our largest and most important communications platforms. And so you're exactly right that I think we started this conversation talking about elected officials, people running for office. More and more we are seeing that trickle down to just regular people. And I want to be clear. So we have seen this kind of online behavior keep marginalized people from doing things like running for office, but also from doing things like just serving their community.

as election officials or poll workers from speaking up about their opinions at school board meetings. Because all people who just generally engage in public civic life, they know that in this climate they are setting themselves up to be attacked. And we're not talking about people. Like, it's bad enough that it's happening to women running for office. But when it's happening to people who are just, you know, everyday people, it's not like they have a security detail. It's not like they have money to protect themselves in the way they would need to. And just a few examples. samples that we're seeing recently. Educators are being attacked by extremists for being suspected of being LGBTQ or for teaching something that these people do not like. And these campaigns

have been incredibly effective. One of them happened right in Georgia, Cecilia Lewis. She's a Georgia educator who was basically run out of town by a group of parents organizing on Facebook because they suspected her of she had not even gotten the job yet. And they already suspected her of planning to teach critical race theory. Never mind the fact that she wasn't, that that's just complete conjecture. It just happened to be that she is a black woman, and so they were able to say,

like, oh, she's going to teach her kids' critical race theory, even though she wasn't even an in-classroom teacher. She was just an administrator, right? And so she had to leave town, and when she left town, these people followed her to the next town that she went to and ran her out of that town to. And so these campaigns are incredibly effective.

And another good example is looking at election workers, 80% of whom are women. Election workers are being baselessly attacked and accused of things like vote tampering if elections don't go the way that these extremists want them to. Again, another example from Georgia is if you watch the January 6th commission, you might have seen the story of Ruby and Shea Freeman. That story broke my heart, a black mother and her daughter with a long storied history of serving their community as election and poll workers. Like the black women in your town who, if you have any questions about voting, they got you.

If you need help voting, they got you. Like people who are called to serve their community and have been for a very long time. Well, the thanks they got for that was being horribly attacked. When Trump lost Georgia in the 2020 election, he and Rudy Giuliani and his other cronies baselessly, repeatedly and publicly accused these women of vote tampering. They had videos of them where they said that they were moving. votes, which never happened. And this led to really terrible, frightening attacks on them where people showed up at their home and the home of their elderly grandmother and they had to flee for their own

safety. And again, these are regular people, not people that have a security detail or people that maybe have the money to scrub their personal information from the internet the way that you would need to if you were facing these kinds of attacks. Yeah, actually, I had volunteered one time to be a just to oversee as people are lining up, make sure everything is okay. Nothing, nothing. I don't talk to anybody. I just make sure everybody has the right to vote. No one was being harassed.

All these things, that's all I did. But the entire group of people who were actually volunteering, handing out the pencils, giving instructions, checking IDs and such were all black women. Every single one of them. And just this last voting when I did, my whole precinct was all black women. Sweet, too. They were so great. And we had the 45-minute.

line and they were so on top of it trying to make sure to get everybody through seamlessly and they did it a beautiful job and they were there like this was the i think the fifth day of the week that they were doing this and they'd been there and they were not complaining they were smiling making conversation and it's like people like them who are making this happen and going on so well and so perfectly as if there's nothing going literally the line was smoothly going and i loved everything about that and i cannot imagine just because they're there they exist and they decided to help their community they're going to be targeted and being yelled at. And honestly, I know there was conversations of people really being scared about being physically harmed because people are pushing and trying to do so many intimidation tactics to accuse and blame somebody for the loss of a bully. Yeah, this is just my opinion. Black women are the backbone of our democracy. They are like an older black woman from the South.

They are the grease of the wheels of German. They really are. Like, I feel like when I go into a place like that, and I'm like, oh, of course there's like, hella black women with clipboards in here. Like, that's the vibe. And, you know, and we know that 80% of election workers and poll workers are women. I would be willing to bet that a bunch of those are black women,

especially in the South. And I think that what we're really doing is allowing for people who are the most marginalized in our society, we are allowing for them to put themselves out there to support our communities and our democracy in these ways for not a lot of money, mind you, because a lot of these women are volunteers are very low-paid,

and we're saying, you also need to absorb these attacks to do so. And we're basically setting these women up to be attacked and giving them no, and not even really talking about it when they are, right? And so I think my experience with voting has been the exact same, that these are the women who are,

at this point, I would say, risking a lot to make sure that our democratic process is able to take place. And honestly, this is probably not surprising to anybody because these kinds of attacks are meant exactly to keep those kinds of people from doing what they do. It is meant to keep them from doing their work of keeping the wheels of democracy going. It is meant to keep them from being engaged in civic life because who would want to serve their community by working as a poll worker or running for office if it means that them and their families are going to be

facing these kinds of attacks? So probably not surprising to anybody that, we are 10 days out from an election, and the United States is facing a national shortage on poll workers. Kim Wyman, who is the senior election security lead at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or the CISA, said that because of a rise in threats against election workers, one in three election workers and poll workers have quit their positions over fears for their safety, and state officials are having a hard time hiring folks for these positions, because, again, who would want to do these, like, low-paid duties if it means, like, oh, you and your family might have to flee for your safety.

This is because you wanted to do this position, helping your community in this way. I can understand why people are not lining up to do this work. But you can see how big those consequences are for our democracy and for all of us when we can't even get people to do enact the labor that needs to happen for our democratic process to exist. Yeah. And as you've mentioned, like, we've arrived at not a great space.

in our democracy. But we've had a long history. Like we had plenty of signs of where we could have listened to, especially black women, and we didn't. And this is where we are. So can you expand on that a little bit? Yes, I believe that this entire thing,

all of these threats to our democracy, is really connected and goes back to not listening to black women. Because I talked about the fact that, you know, these threats that start online, become real-world threats, Black women have been saying this for a very long time, and I feel that nobody has really listened. You know, some of the first people to really raise the alarm about the role that online harassment plays in our landscape were black women. These women have been saying this for years, and people, and by that, I mean people with power, the people with power to do something, pretty much ignored them.

And so I would then argue that not listening to black women has consequences for all of us. A couple of examples. Most people listening are probably familiar with Gamergate, if you are. are not familiar with Gamergate, I am jealous, but essentially it was, like, if that's something that you were like, I've never heard of that before, I want to live the life that you are living. Right. But essentially, Gamergate was when a bunch of men pretty much attacked and harassed mostly women under the guise of being big mad about scare quotes, ethics in gaming journalism. And it got lots of attention, rightly, and most people probably remember it.

But those same people probably don't know that the same folks responsible for GamerGate were using those exact same tactics against black women before GamerGate. Women like Andrea Richards, who was targeted for racist harassment online after she tweeted about a crass joke about dongles that she overheard at a work event. Or women like Shafika Hudson, who in 2014 actually reported and called out bad actors who were using fake accounts to impersonate black women to destabilize Internet communities. You know, these are women who spoke up about what they were facing on the internet, and they were basically ignored. And I wonder what might have happened if somebody with power had actually listened to them and taken some action?

Well, for one, I believe Gamergate might have gone down very differently. If when people use these tactics against black women, somebody was like, hey, wait, this is bad. We should not allow our platform to be used this way and made some changes. Or consider the fact that six years after Shafika Hudson reported people impersonating black folks on Twitter, to cause chaos, white supremacist groups used that very same tactic during the racial uprisings of 2020 to make it seem like Black Lives Matter activists were using the internet to call for people to like loot homes and cause violence. And Twitter actually confirmed this. Twitter was like, oh yeah, we can confirm now that some of the accounts who were using our

platform to call for people to like loot and cause violence during these protests, Those were actually white supremacists pretending to be Black Lives Matter activists. And so, you know, they didn't actually explain why they did all to prevent this from being a tactic on a larger scale down the line if they knew it was a vulnerability of their platform. And when we zoom out even further, these are the same tactics that a Senate inquiry in 2019 would confirm were used to try to destabilize the 2016 election. And so if when these black women reported what they were seeing online, if somebody had done something, I wonder, would bad actors who were trying to use this tactic to destabilize our elections and destabilize our online communities and truly cause violence and chaos, would that have been a viable tactic?

I would argue maybe not. But again, these are the consequences when folks don't listen to black women and don't take them seriously when they speak up about what they're experiencing online. Yeah. And one of the things that annoys me the most is when this whole idea of, like that's just sort of the price of the game, accept it. Like, you know, if you're tough, and sometimes people will try to paint it in a very nice brush.

Like, you're strong enough to make it against all this harassment and all this stuff online. You're so tough. But really, we shouldn't be accepting this or expecting this in the first place. And that is one of the things, the points you're making here is that we've normalized it to the point where I've even heard conversations where people will paint it it's like, oh, it's a good thing.

She's tough. She can survive in this environment. It shouldn't be that way. Right. Right. Yeah, I don't want to have a political landscape where you have to be able to publicly endure and withstand attacks on you and your family. Because when it's women, the research is super clear that it's never just the woman who was attacked.

It's her, her mom, her dad, her kids, her partner, her community, her neighbors, her friends. I don't want a political climate that says that women have to be able to endure these kinds of attacks on their safety and watch their families deal with it as well. If they want to be elected officials, if they want to serve their community, if they want to just take place in civic life. That's not the kind of climate I want. We should not, that's not acceptable. That's not a norm that we should be okay with. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite on human. me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman

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This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrite as part of the Mike Coutura podcast network available on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, and I keep thinking about how the algorithm has changed, and I was talking to Annie about our own algorithm, and because we are so afraid of social media,

we stay away from it, and therefore anytime we do put anything up, it's ignored because we don't have a lot of content out there. And I still think about how Twitter, and I know for all references, it's just that when we talk about Black Twitter, it is the community coming together and having their own space and talking. And because they've kind of become grouped and has become a point where if you don't already follow some of these people or if you're not actually paying attention, it just goes away from your feed, kind of how TikTok is doing. doing that, which is making it harder and harder to actually see what is happening and what the truth really is going down? I have to question. So is the algorithm really a good thing in that it does this to a way you're in your own little

hole and where it's putting pocketing black women who are like, hey, this bad thing is happening. We're trying to tell y'all, but the only people who are seeing those are the people who already know and it's like, what the hell? How do we change that? Yeah, what an insightful question. So this is just my opinion. This is like just representing myself.

I don't think that it is good to have a platform like Twitter especially be so tied to an algorithm. I don't think it's good for all the reasons that you just said. People, their voices can be siloed. You can feel like you're talking to the choir of people who already agree with you and, you know, know, know what you're saying. And I also think that I don't think that platforms have. have shown that they're able to be responsible with algorithmically generated content. Right now, algorithms are just, it's just a fact. They are biased toward content that is untrue.

False information travels on Twitter, specifically, much faster and much further than correct information. They amplify content that is extremist. And I don't mean like extremists, like capital E extremists, although that as well, but like content that is, you know, more extreme. than not extreme. So if I'm saying like, I ate a piece of toast today and it was burnt, I hate all toast. Rather than like, oh, this piece of toast was burnt when some lose some, they're going to amplify the one that sounds more extreme because that's what gets more eyeballs.

They amplify content that is polarizing. They amplify content that is loud and aggressive. And I don't think that platforms can be trusted to be run algorithmically because they are going to make us all more extreme, more polarized, less informed, and less thoughtful. I would love to see an algorithmic model that is amplifies content that is thoughtful, honest, accurate, timely, whatever, but I have not seen it yet. And so I think platforms have shown that they can't be trusted to work with algorithmic models because they're just going to amplify stuff that makes us all worse off. Right. Yeah. And I honestly, just being new to TikTok,

and we've talked about TikTok often on the show, but it also does the same thing. thing with the FYP or for you page, where it only amplifies what seems to be most disturbing. I say that for my own concept, because there's so much out there that the word shadow banning and the idea that many of these algorithms do this, that there's enough that people can complain or make false allegations and their standard of what they think is bullying and or racist is not. And apparently they have a pretty big threshold of saying, no, it's not racist. even though it's obviously super racist and the fact that they seem to keep working on that level

in allowing for things that we know is, I don't know, being threatened, being called by a stereotype, that I would consider racist. But yet for so often it's not that big of a deal, they're not really threatening you. Like, wait. Yeah. So we have to have a police report to actually say that we're being threatened

and that seems to be happening often in these platforms. Exactly. And this is when I said I wasn't really abysed. big fan of algorithmic platforms. One of the reasons is because I think that we're, as humans, we are giving the responsibility of moderating platforms more and more to algorithms or AI. And AI is smart and good at lots of things, but there are some things that you need a human's take on. And so Sam, you know, you talked about how like, oh, I'm being called a racial slur or like, I'm being attacked in this way. Bad actors are so good at using dog whistles

or coded language or things to get around AI or machine learning that is like, you know, working as a content moderator. And they know how to exploit those loopholes. And so I completely agree, especially on TikTok, I feel like they really need to make some changes with how their platform is run if that platform is going to be safer and more inclusive. I think it was the Washington Post recently that just did a little experiment where if you don't follow the Washington Post on TikTok, they have a really interesting TikTok channel. They are doing a series on TikTok where they used all these words that they were certain were going to get their TikTok suppressed.

So they did a TikTok where they said racism, Black Lives Matter, disability, you know, all these other words because they were like, if you use these words in your TikTok, they are more likely to be suppressed. That's what they were doing an experiment. And by golly, it worked, you know. And so it's clear to me that platforms are not being run. one, with a thoughtful, nuanced, sensitive human who is able to understand nuance at the helm, and two, just not being run in a way that amplifies good conversation, thoughtful conversation, substantive conversation, and does not amplify garbage, lies, extremism, hate, racial slurs, all of that.

Yeah, and on top of that, you have, again, as you talk bad players, who, and I've seen this a lot more on TikTok, because, again, I'm that person. But like in the conversations, they thinking that they're doing something good and doing that extreme call out in which they get people fired and canceled and all of these things and go after people on just one video and don't get me wrong. A lot of these, I agree that these people who are saying really nasty crap and being caught on camera or caught on their phone for saying these things should be called out. There should be repercussions.

But it's come to a point that it's entertainment almost. And I'm wondering where this is going to lead because it's a fairly new thing out of the last five years. And I say the for both the left and the right, that it's like, this is, this is getting dangerously toxic. That's a whole different conversation. I know. No, it's so funny that you bring this up because I, so I recorded the first episode of internet hate machine with Sophie earlier in this week. And I have an perhaps unpopular opinion on this. When I first got on TikTok specifically, I followed a lot of creators who made content that was like, this guy is a racist and this is where he works. And I'm going to call his,

employer and get him fired. And I used to be like, yeah, like, fire that racist. I really loved it. As I have, I guess, matured and matured along with the platform, as cathartic as that is, I don't think that that is an appropriate tactic. And I think that even if I am in agreement, like, yeah, this racist shouldn't be doing this. And there are definitely exceptions to this, I'm sure. But in general, I just know how easy it is for bad actors and extremists to weaponize that very same tactic, right? We're going to coordinate and have all these people call this person to get them fired because we didn't like what they tweeted. I don't think that that is a tactic that makes us smarter, that makes us better, that makes us, you know, healthier as a society. So

even when I see it happening with someone who ostensibly, I agree with it, you know, be hired. They deserve it. they deserve it. I feel like I know how easily that is a tactic to be exploited and weaponized by bad actors. And our first episode actually deals with this woman, Adrire Richards, who I was talking about earlier, who was one of the early targets of that, where she tweeted a picture of these two guys at a tech conference who were making a crass joke that she didn't like. And she got horribly mobbed, where they coordinated on sites like Forchand to call her employer they threatened her employer

and rather than supporting her, her employer fired her and was like, okay, yeah, you guys want her to be fired? She's fired. And I've just seen time and time again that that tactic is so easily gamified and weaponized and exploited by bad actors that I don't think anybody should be engaged in it.

Right. And that's that's that other conversation that it keeps going to my head is that the whole level of doxing in, which is this kind of like, again, this is the entertainment level and this is where it's getting really disgusting to me that I'm like, okay, we have used this as a form of entertainment to see if people can be ruined. Yes, consequences should happen.

But there's this whole new level that that's entertainment now. And that needs to be a conversation. Like the whole gist of the entire conversation is it becomes a small thing that becomes bigger and bigger and then normalized. And then it's like we don't realize what we're doing in that we have not only ruined people's lives, but probably a lot of innocent people's lives attached to that. And then you see that, okay, this has been happening. but these platforms like TikTok, which is fairly new, are still allowing it to happen.

How is this not changing? Exactly. And I think we have gotten to a place where it's normalized as entertainment. And it's not even, I mean, like we're talking about pretty serious things like women running for office and being engaged in Democratic and civic life. Do you remember a couch guy on TikTok? The guy who everybody was so convinced was cheating on his girlfriend and it was caught on TikTok because his long distance girlfriend films a TikTok. of her surprising him and his he's not reacting the way that maybe you might expect somebody to react and everybody was like overnight became a body language expert and like I saw people on television news I saw a segment where they had a quote body language expert breaking down his body

language these are strangers right and so I do think we've gotten to this place where we are we've gotten really comfortable making complete like assumptions about people we do not know confidently going on big platforms and airing those assumptions. And because of the way that algorithms work, those assumptions will get millions of people to watch them. And then reply with their own assumptions because of the sort of riff and remix culture of TikTok, then they'll say, well, actually, I think he was cheating like this and not like that. It's not, it's not healthy and it's not good for our society. Oh, the couch guy was such a meme, essentially.

But you know, I've seen something similar to that just recently in Twitter. And I have no opinion. I just was like, wow, okay. Was it Garden Lady? Yes, yes, Garden Lady. I was like, wow, that just, what just happened? Yeah, we did an episode of There Are No Girls on the Internet about this. So if you don't know who Garden Lady is, she is this woman who has a garden,

and she tweeted something along the lines of like, Very sweet. I start every morning with taking my coffee out to my garden with my husband and we talk for hours, never gets old, love him so much. Love the morning. The entire internet was like, boo, we hate it, we hate it, boo, tomato, tomato. Right. It went from like you're being ablest to being, you're being classist.

And there are things I'm like, I don't know anything about this woman. And then someone went in a deep dive into her account and said, oh, she's an awful person. Keep attacking her. And I was just like, what, what just happened? Yeah. And I, so that was so interesting to me. And I feel like it's a great example of, I love social media and the internet.

I don't think millions of people were meant to weigh in on the morning routine of a stranger in this way. Like I saw the same thing where people were like, actually, she's anti-vax. And it's like, well, I don't think the people who are attacking her are attacking her because she, they knew that like she maybe posts. I mean, I don't even, I can't, you know, confirm or deny that, but I was like, I don't know that that's why people are attacking her. And, you know, I saw probably the wildest response to that tweet I saw was someone being like, oh, don't you work? And she was like, oh, I own my own business. So I'm able to have flexibility in the mornings.

And then somebody else replied, oh, so you're exploiting the labor of your employees. And that's why you're able to have these nice mornings terrible. And she was like, I'm the sole employee of my small business. And so just like layers and layers of assumed bullshit about someone they don't even know. But that's the thing. It's like it becomes this really, really tempestuous like grounds of like, okay, her doing an innocuous statement about how she loved this moment with her husband has made it. Some people have weaponized it against her telling her she's all these things.

And you're like, what? How did we get here? Why are we here? And what is this platform? Yes. Like what is this platform? Like, why am I being told that I need to care about this stranger? Why is it being surfaced to me?

What is going on that this is even something that I am aware of? Like the morning routine of this person that I will probably never even meet. Yeah. I feel like so many things, one of my big concerns about social media and the internet now is, you know, like internet literacy, context. I feel like we've thrown context out the window. But also just that kind of idea where this. is a lighter example, but of this, oh, I've got to have an opinion, I've got to have a stance, and I'm going to say something, and then you, like, don't do any other research into it.

And then when you add in, like, misinformation and disinformation, it just frightens me, to be honest. Like, I keep seeing all these stories about, oh, this image was fake. And I haven't even seen the image in question, but I know that a lot of people saw it, and they believed it. And, like, that, it gets my heart running for it. same oh my gosh i really resonate with your point about having to have a take i feel like so the way that social media functions both the algorithmic nature of social media platforms and the speed by which

social media platforms tend to move i think it incentivizes people to feel like they have to have a take and they have to have it right away in reality it's okay to not have a take it's okay to to be like i don't really know anything about this. Me putting my opinion or my voice out there on an issue that I don't know about is not going to be helpful. It's not going to add to the conversation. I'll just listen, right? I don't think that social media platforms incentivize just taking a step back or even just

taking a minute to figure out what you want to say. It's like it has to be quick, has to be now. You have to reply, get that engagement. And that doesn't serve anybody. I don't think that social media platforms incentivize us to be thoughtful or, you know, our best. I think there was like, for instance, when the queen died, I don't really know anything about the monarchy. I don't really know. I don't really, I'm not invested in it. And so I'm not someone that you would, that you need to hear from on it, right? Like I was like, there are people who

are very invested in this. Let them have the spotlight of like saying what they want to say. I think that it's okay to not weigh in. It's okay to not have a hot take. I don't think social media platforms incentivize or encourage us to just listen sometimes. Yeah, and I think we've seen that seep into our daily lives and our politics because I just see that with politicians all the time. And then that muddies the whole conversation because if you have this, I don't know anything about this garden lady, but if you have this whole conversation happening, it's distracting from the very real context and information we have about politicians that are doing these things. So I think I know that this podcast you have coming out is so needed.

And I'm so, so excited to hear it. If you can tell us more about it. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I've got so. Y'all got me worked out in this conversation. I know. We could keep going and going. I know we could. I mean, obviously. I think it does all relate.

And I think that what we're seeing now is these tried and true tactics of online harassment becoming an animating and normalized feature of our political landscape and discourse. And, you know, there's this phrase that black women are, quote, canaries in the coal mine for online harms because first it happens to us and then it happens to everyone. And bad actors are just continuing to use these same tactics. They were able to perfect on black women on others.

And so I think that we need to have leadership, people with power at, you know, elected officials, policymakers and tech companies listening to black women so that we can actually get a handle on this. And, you know, as we were sort of talking about, I think that our internet and our social media platforms have become so weaponized. You know, it's nearly impossible to have a meaningful conversation or meaningful discourse on our communication platforms because the leaders who run those platforms have basically incentivized and amplified lies and grifts and scams and extremism. We're more polarized than ever. And grifters know this and are basically running the show. And I think if we're ever planning on getting a handle on this, if we're ever planning on doing something about this, the first step has to be talking honestly about it.

And so that's why I'm doing the podcast with Cool Zone Media called Internet Hate Machine. And I really want to chart the history of online harassment against women of color specifically and how it has led us to this current political and social movement. And so I hope that folks will listen. It's something that I think is really timely right now as we go into midterm. I think it'll be timely for a long time as we determine what we want our political and social landscape to look like. Right. And it's important. I'm so excited because it definitely needs to be the bigger part of the conversation. As we look at what our democracy looks like in the future, in the near future, let's say, but not just for the United States, but all around the world because we're seeing similar things happen on different timelines. And I feel like you're going to be able to bring in such good perspective and showing the present, the past,

and possibly the future with all of this. So thank you. And I'm excited to listen, especially that first one. Yeah, please check it out. Our trailer and episode zero are already live. So you can go to Internet Hate Machine on wherever you find your podcast, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. You know how to find podcasts. So you know how to find podcasts if you're listening to this.

So Episode Zero is already live, but our first official episode will drop on November 2nd. So please check it out. Yes. Go subscribe. Please support it. It's amazing work. Can't wait to hear it. Where else can the listeners find you, Bridgett?

Well, you can find me on my weekly podcast about women in the internet called There Are No Girls on the Internet. You can definitely find that if you're listening to this podcast. That's not going anywhere so we can listen to them both. You can find me on Instagram at Bridgett Marie in D.C. Or, yes, I'm still going to be on Twitter. Elon Musk be damn. You can find me on Twitter at Bridgett Marie. Yes.

And as always, such a delight to have you, Bridgett, wishing everybody. you and everybody all the best as we enter into this final stretch of the midterms and also listeners you might have heard a cameo from Bridget's cat which was very lovely I'm sorry

I love it can hear this like we needed it annoyed with me even though she doesn't have a job and like has everything and is treated like a queen I'm sure your cat would be like oh I have a job yes I cannot wait till next time.

Thank you so much again, Bridget. If you would like to find us, you can. You can email us at Stuff Media, Mom Stuff at IHeartMedia. You can find us on Twitter at MomStuff Podcast or on Instagram of Stuff One Never Told You. Thanks as always to our super producer, Christina. Thank you, Christina. And thanks to you for listening.

Stuff and Nerdtility's production of IHeartRadio. For a podcast from My Heart Radio, you can check out the Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts wherever you listen to your favorite shows. So if you've been listening to There Are No Girls on the Internet for a while, you probably know that I was lucky enough to work with the amazing team at Mozilla. the makers of Firefox to host a podcast called IRL, where we explored the promise and perils of artificial intelligence.

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