November 19, 2024 • 34 mins
Last year Bridget hosted a roundtable on racialized disinformation attacks with three incredible experts. They talked about the long historical foundations that bad actors have built on to amplify divisions and racial divisions, and the ways tech platforms and other institutions have been used to not only perpetuate disinformation but also make record profits doing it. While marginalized people are disproportionately at risk, disinfo affects everyone. These narratives were a huge problem leading up to the election, and I'm sad to say they will remain a huge problem going forward.
The roundtable was part of a video project with the great production company Exposure Labs. We're grateful to them and showrunner Josh Clark for the opportunity to be part of it, and for DCP Entertainment for making it possible.
And special thanks to the incredible panelists for sharing their prescient insight: Jessica Ann Mitchell Aiwuyor, Founder of the National Black Cultural Information Trust; Liz Lebron, Founder & President of Blue Nexus Group; and Jaya Savita Aiyer, Director of the Asian Pacific Islanders Civic Action Network.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridgeton and this is
There Are No Girls on the Internet. So we're still
in between seasons, but I've got something really special I
wanted to share with y'all. About a year ago, I
hosted a roundtable on gendered and racialized disinformation with three
(00:28):
incredible women of color disinformation experts really doing the work
in the field to understand and combat the weaponization of
inflammatory lives about our identity, and as part of my
post election kind of personal come to Jesus post mortem,
I re listened to it and I was struck by
how prescient our conversation was. What the terrible election we
(00:49):
all just lived through, one where racialized and gender disinformation
really took center stage. We talked about the long historical
foundations that bad actors have built on to amplify divisions
race and gender lines, and the way that tech platforms
have been used to not only perpetuate that disinformation, but
also make record profits by doing it. The roundtable was
(01:10):
part of a video documentary project I did with Exposure Labs,
the company behind the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma and
many other excellent projects, and I am particularly grateful to
director and showrunner Joshua Clark for leading this incredible project
and for making it available to share with all of
you here at there are no growth.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
On the Internet.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
It is important work and I am glad we are
able to air it here. Check it out. Welcome to
(02:01):
the Disinfo Dialogue, where we're exploring the legacy of cultural disinformation,
how it has targeted traditionally marginalized communities both before and
during the Internet Age, and what it means for all
of us. I'm your host, bridget Toad. We're joined by
an expert roundtable featuring Jessica and Mitchell Awuiar, founder of
the National Black Cultural Information Trust, Liz Lebron, disinformation researcher
(02:22):
at Blue Nexus Group, and Jaya Savita Ayer, director of
the Asian Pacific Islanders Acific Action Network. So I want
to start with the word disinformation. I've sometimes had a
little bit of discomfort with this word because I think
it can be kind of a buzzword and might not
actually get at the ways that inaccurate, inflammatory content about
our identity and our communities really impacts us in our democracy.
(02:45):
So what do you think when you hear the word disinformation?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
You're so right, disinformation. You know, it was a buzzword
for a minute. But first of all, disinformation did not
start with the Internet. It did not start with the
digitally just been around since time immemorial. It's really a
deliberate and concerted effort to distort information and give people
faulty false information, and deliberate really being the keywords. So
(03:12):
you know your aunt Mildred saying, oh, I think the
election is on Wednesday, that's just, you know, somebody being misinformed.
That's very different than a bad actor putting together a
deliberate campaign with the hopes of changing a whole people's behavior.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
I really like how you kind of set that up,
the working definitions that I use, and that kind of
help ground being when talking about these like really abstract concepts.
Is misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation? Right, we think of misinformation
as exactly what you said. It's your aunt saying, you know,
something incorrect that's based on something that maybe she saw
(03:52):
on social media. Disinformation, I think often has kind of
an agenda or has some sort of CD background within it.
And then information is kind of the thing that is
meant to cause harm. Right, That's the thing that's meant
to cause hurt, that's meant to divide us, that's meant
to alienate people in communities, and is meant to really
(04:14):
perpetuate not only harm, but lack of trust.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
And we all fall victim to it in various ways.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
That's so true. I love both of you all's definitions.
Disinformation is false information spread with an agenda, and misinformation
is false information spread but often unknowingly. And I think
it's really important to make that distinction because if we
don't make that distinction, sometimes we end up demonizing the
(04:41):
very communities that we're trying to protect from this and misinformation.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
And I'm really.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
Glad Jaya that you brought up mal information because that's
not talked about as much. But mal information can be
truthful information that is used within certain narrative to persuade
people to react in a certain way.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
So let's get into some of those historical examples, because
this is I really want to get into this. So
much of the malinformation and disinformation that I have seen
targeting communities of color really are trying to pit us
against each other to say, oh, like you need to
be afraid of this community. This community is taking your resources.
This community is a threat to you. Why do you
think that is? Why are we seeing this and how
(05:26):
have you seen us play out in your own work?
Speaker 5 (05:28):
I can say specifically in terms of the Black community,
there is an ongoing disinformation campaign to sow a rift
between African Americans and Black immigrants or descendants of Black immigrants.
Part of that is meant to break down the power
of black collective activism. There has been solidarity built over
(05:53):
time where these communities come together. We have people like
Kwame Terray. We have Malcolm X who is a descendant
of African Americans and his mother was from the Caribbean.
So we have all these experiences through the Harlem Renaissance,
(06:13):
through the Black Arts period, through the Black Power movement,
of people of African descent from various ethnicities and backgrounds
coming together to fight for our civil and human rights.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
And it's only getting.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
Greater unless you come up with a way to put
us at odds with each other to where we feel
like we're in competition with each other till we feel
like we're taking resources from each other.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
No, absolutely, and it comes back to sowing distrust to
make us not trust one another. There's a long standing
history of trying to pet Latinos and Black communities against
one another, as if after Latinos do not exist, you know.
So first of all, yeah, it's completely erasing after Latinos,
(07:03):
you know, off the bat. So one really just awful
narrative that I saw was about the Vice president so
saying heard, I've seen a lot of disinformation in the
Latino community that because she is black and here again
erasing the fact that she is also you know, an
Asian American, erasing that completely, she's not going to look
(07:24):
out for the interest of Latinos. How could she. She's
a you know, a black woman. She's only going to
look out for the interest of a black people.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
That's so funny you brought that up, because in the
black community, the disinformation about the Vice President Kamala Harris
is she's half Asian, she's not black enough, she don't
represent us, and so it's that distrust on that end
as well.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
I mean, And the funniest thing is on the flip side,
within the Asian community and specifically within the South Asian
Indian community, Kamala Harris isn't South Asian enough. For her,
hosting parties or trying to kind of build solidarity in
community with the API population is seen as performative because
(08:10):
you know, she's picking and choosing when she wants to
be South Asian.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
She's picking and choosing when she wants to be Asian.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
And I wanted to get back to your previous point
around kind of the history of solidarity and the history
of inter and intra black solidarity and talk really about
the fact that the API, the Asian American solidarity movement
would not have happened without black.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Civil rights leaders and the black power movement.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Right, the concept the term Asian American came out because
the term African American was coined, the term Black American
was coined. But the politics of division, the politics of saying,
you know, oh, those black kids are getting into Harvard
or whatever, and that's because of affirmative action, and Asian
(08:54):
kids are getting into Harvard enough because of affirmative action, right,
or narratives like that, We really are looking to divide
us because when we work together like we have historically,
change happens, and change is terrifying to people in power.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yes, yeah, And Bridget going back to your point about
what is disinformation. This dynamic right here was really interesting,
the three of us seeing the same piece of disinformation
from different lenses. And so I will tell you when
I have done the research looking into what is happening
on the disinfo front and the Latino media space, that
(09:32):
narrative doesn't show up. That narrative doesn't show up because
it is so targeted, right so that there's a reason
in Latino spaces you don't hear. Oh, you know, the
vice president is not Asian enough. You know, what we
hear is the narrative that will play on the divides
within our own community, which we have to address. You know,
(09:54):
there's colorism in our communities. There's all kinds of things,
but we're not the only ones who are aware of it.
That actor see us fighting amongst ourselves, and they walk
right in there and just try and make that gap wider.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
It's part of it that some of these divisions that
really do exist, these fractures, really do exist in our communities,
but were maybe not talking about them, not doing the
work to heal them or really even point them out,
and thus we're all sort of more easily exploited.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
It's not just that we're not talking about it enough,
especially in terms of African American history or Black American
history in general. You see right now, there's a concentrated
effort for it to not even be taught in schools.
When I was growing up, little black girl in Georgia,
we got a paragraph in that social studies book, Lincoln
(10:45):
freed the slaves, they did sharecropping, civil rights, MLKA, rosa
parts boom. That's our paragraph. That was it. So there
was a lot to do with the educational ructure in systems,
the institutions where if you wanted to learn the vastness
(11:05):
and the robustness of Africana studies and Black history and
Pan African history, that would really help people to better
understand the interconnections that could help with those conversations in
that dialogue.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
A lot of times that.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Education is restricted to higher education, to college. So it's
not even that we're not necessarily not talking about it enough.
Many of us are not given that education to begin with,
and then we become more and more vulnerable.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
You got a whole paragraph from Jealous. I mean, I'm
Puerto Rican, and the number of times people have asked
me if I'm a citizen, I can't even I mean,
oh my god. Yeah, so you know, we're we've found
a part of this country since eighteen ninety eight, we've
been citizens by birth since nineteen seventeen. And I mean
the number of people who have no idea who you know?
(11:57):
Oh do I need a passport together? I mean, so
I'm jealous of your paragraph.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I'll take it.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
At our back.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I mean, I really do think it goes back to
something that I wanted to start with, this idea that
we're not talking about individuals spreading individual pieces of misinformation
or disinformation. It's institutional, right, It's like all connected. It's
this web that makes it so hard to escape these
very pervasive, very inflammatory lies about the fabric of who
we are. And it all goes back to that distrust
(12:44):
that you were talking about earlier, and something that I'm
curious if you all saw. I definitely saw it, especially
in the summer of twenty twenty. Don't remember that summer
the reckoning, the reckoning and something that I really saw,
and I'm wondering how you saw it play out. Was
I think that bad actors knew that that was a
particular time that maybe would highlight or inflame some existing
(13:07):
historical traumise, particularly for immigrants and the descendantive and the
descendants of immigrants.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Did you all see this as well?
Speaker 3 (13:13):
One hundred percent. And you know, in twenty twenty, I
was working in an election administration, so I can tell
you the deliberate exploitation of the narrative that, you know,
undocumented people, illegals as you know, as they refer to
them in the disinfo circles, We're going to throw the
election in some way. You know, study after study after
(13:33):
study shows that what they were talking about, that level
of you know, fraud just does not exist in our elections.
Instead of being proud of that and listening to the
folks who run elections, who actually administer elections, telling us
in every state across the country that in twenty twenty,
(13:54):
through a pandemic, we somehow managed to pull off an election,
they were exploiting that narrative, especially coming after immigrant communities.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Yeah, yeah, and I would love to kind of jump
into that and talk about you know, with the summer
of twenty twenty, it was we were seeing increasingly high
numbers of anti Asian violence, attacks on our elders. You know,
we were just being hit by a barrage of violence,
(14:23):
and at the same time, the solution was being posed
that hate crime legislation was the answer, right, that policing
was the answer. And we know as communities of color,
as communities that are navigating different immigration narratives and experiences,
whether you're documented or undocumented or a non citizen, that
(14:43):
the police aren't always a solution. But there's also that
other wonderful marketing tactic in the US of how to
be a good American or how to be a good citizen.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So you call nine to one one when you feel unsafe.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
But you know, we saw those band aid solutions, and
we saw those decinfo narratives right saying that all of
these insane rioters were coming and they were all mostly
black and brown, and they were setting fireworks off, and
they were doing all these horrifying things and breaking windows,
and it was really speaking to a deep seated fear,
(15:20):
thanks to media within communities that we shouldn't trust people
who look different from us.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
And I'm so glad you brought up the whole the
pr of the good American or how to be a
good citizen, because a lot of that fear mongering about
protesters is built off of a centuries long anti black narrative,
birth of a nationism, if you may, where the blacks
(15:47):
are free and they're running a mug.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Look at the three different stereotypes here, right, So it's
black people running a mug, it's Asian people who are
making us all sick with COVID completely separate, right, And
then it's Latino immigrants who are voting in droves to
throw an election.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
And it's all about marketing.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
And you're totally right, it's white supremacy at its root,
and it's about institutional bias, institutional power dynamics, all of
those things.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And I think something in that reminds me of what
you said, Jessica about how it's so easy to demonize
people who like quote fall for disinformation. The better question
is like, how could you not fall for it?
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Right?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Like, it pains me sometimes in the disinfo community that
we sometimes are talking down to people and discounting the
actual reality of how sometimes well financed, well organized, well
coordinated these disinformation campaigns actually truly are.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
And I think that's why research has shown that one
of the most effective ways to combat disinfo, instead of
going after each individual narrative is to actually talk to
people about the mechanism, because once you show them how
to spot it for themselves, they can say, oh, wait
a minute, this person is trying to dupe me, and.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I'd love to add in. Right.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
Then there's the extra layer of within each ethnic group
and ethnic community in the US, there's a different method
of communication that we're all using.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Right. Some people use WhatsApp, some people use weed chat.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
I know the Vietnamese populations often use YouTube for media
and use distribution. Right, We're seeing different communities are using
different methods of communication.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I can pull out my phone and show you I have.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
At least one hundred WhatsApp messages unread from my family, right.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Most of which yeah, and most of which is BS.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
Right.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
It's like bonkers things, conspiracy theories. And my family is
wonderful and they know what they're doing, and they know
about the world.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
They're well educated all of these things.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
And it's so easy because you see a funny meme
and you don't think about it, right, or you see
a video and you're like, oh, I don't know if
this is real, what if it is attended?
Speaker 3 (18:00):
It's entertainment.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
It's entertainment.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Disinformation is often disguised and you know, as entertainment. So
it's so easy to have a good laugh and forward
it to somebody.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
I'm so glad you brought that up because when Jay eraised,
the aspect of the different platforms that were on Twitter
like emerged, especially black Twitter emerged as this space for
communal conversation. Now it's x and our community was especially
vulnerable because we are having all these critical conversations out
(18:33):
in the open that anyone can see, and then try
to divert and sew in disinformation at the same time.
And then we see it with the entertainment blogs that
good lord. You put it in the big bold, black
print with the white background, and it's gone. It's millions
and millions of views.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I mean, I want to get into this because I
had to personally kind of divest from a couple of
very popular Instagram accounts, sort of black infotainment Instagram accounts.
I guess i'll call it where I realized when I
scrolled when I was scrolling Instagram and I would see
one of those images of a headline I won't say
a news headline, big bold, black and white.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
People will believe.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Anything, and so often those pieces of content are either misogynistic,
they're they're crapping on black women, they're crapping on black
queer youth. It's so easy to package that as hatred
toward our communities, particularly people in our communities who are
really vulnerable, and people just eat it up. And I
guess I wonder, you know, I've sometimes said that I
(19:40):
believe that things like racism, massogynire, queer phobia, transphobia, all
of these things are kind of baked into our experience
of being online. What do you see as the role
of social media platforms, like are they benefiting from this?
What should they be doing? What are they not doing?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
What's going on now?
Speaker 4 (20:00):
I think many Americans see social media platforms as the
digital town square, when in reality, they're private corporations, right,
and private entities that have control over what you see
and what you don't see.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
We have more and more research coming out.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Saying that social media platforms promote content that elicits anger, hurt, feelings, sadness, frustration,
because that.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Keeps people on the platform longer. It's like a drug.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
It's addictive, and so if you're seeing only happy things,
like you're going to want to go outside and see
the sun and I don't know, sit on the grass.
Whereas if you're seeing things that are intensely speaking to
a feeling of anger or hate or frustration.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
You will go down that rabbit hole.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
You will fester on that, and that'll bring in more revenue.
Right going back to the money. If we follow the money,
it always goes back to that, right to the people
that are profiting the most from it.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
And social media platforms profit from disinformation. And I think
the reality is, not only do we need.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
To open that conversation up and think about us as
users as having a stake in in what the platforms
do and how they act, but we also think about
regulation because we have outdated policy that is supposedly trying
to regulate tech from the nineties.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
And I think the reality is we need.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Legislation that meets the needs and the reality of tech
right now and the potential with what we're seeing with
AI and other new technologies that are emerging. Because it
is playing a role in our democracy, and it is
playing a role in voter suppression, it is playing a
role in dividing our communities, It's playing a role at
every level, and these bad actors are.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Getting rich.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
So I'm curious, how do you see disinformation impacting our democracy?
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Like writ large, I mean it has been impacting our democracy, right.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
We had January sixth.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
Happen that was a direct consequence of disinformation that had
been seen and known by Twitter in particular. It's happening,
and yet there wasn't really much effort to try and
stop that.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And so it's like, how do you keep track of WhatsApp?
Speaker 4 (22:36):
You two, we chat all of these different messenger right, Twitter, Like,
there's a bajillion different platforms that you have to keep
track on, and so how do you make sure that
those various narratives that are coming out on those various
platforms in completely different languages are both being monitored, that
accurate information is also being sprinkled throughout that so that
(22:59):
people know when to vote, how to vote, that it's
okay to vote, that they can ask for about it
in their language, that it is actually a violation of
their right. They're voting right to not get a palot,
and you know, in a language that they speak, if
their state or city has you know, certain numbers of
languages that they'll translate into.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
It speaks to that distrust of institutions that might might
already be there.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Right.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
Yeah, along the lines of distrust is African Americans and
Black Americans in general have a long standing distrust of
our government for very very legitimate reasons, and the cultural
or racialized disinformation harps on that and is having a
(23:46):
direct or seeking to have a concentrated impact on the
way in which we vote, or whether or not we
feel it's worthy to vote at all. And so that aspect,
the voter suppression in the midst of the Voting Rights
Act being stripped down and already having obstacles to face
(24:08):
and trying to vote, can have a very devastating impact
on Black communities and the way in which democracy functions
or doesn't function for us.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
I wonder, do you all?
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I know I see this a lot sometimes from my
own friends and family. One of the things about disinformation
is that I think it's meant to just make us
check out, check out of our democracy, check out of
the conversation. It's too confusing, I can't keep it straight.
And I think a consequence of that is exactly what
you just said of I'm not going to vote. It's
not worth it, it doesn't matter. How do you confront
that sentiment in a climate where disinformation is so rampant.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
I think one of the things that has worked has
we've learned over the last few years. Talking down to
people doesn't work, but narrative building works, storytelling works. One
of the things that we've tried to do at our
organization is focus on uplifting narratives, intercultural narratives, and storytelling.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
That reminds me of a quote I once heard in
a training that the antidote to disinformation is not just truth,
it's community.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
It's connection.
Speaker 5 (25:18):
Yes, definitely, and because we trust our communities the most,
so we have to lean into that connection, lean into
especially for communities of color, lean into that cultural understanding,
lean into that narrative building.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Let's talk about some additional solutions here, because if there's
one thing that has really been resonating with me from
this conversation is that our communities are not monolithic. They
are diverse, they are multifaceted, they are dynamic. There's so
many different stories and layers in our communities. So then
the solution probably can't then be one size fits all.
So how do we get to solutions for this massive
(25:58):
problem that disinformation presents.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Yeah, I think that speaks to everything we've brought up
throughout the conversation. Right, It's about inter intrat solidarity building.
It's about finding and identifying leaders within the community and
making sure that they're equipped to have these conversations. It's
about meeting people where they're at. It's about having compassion
in those conversations, because anyone can fall for disinformation, and
(26:24):
anyone can be a champion in fighting disinformation.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
So I would say, first and foremost understand that disinformation
that impacts adjacent communities is also impacting you.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
So as an advocate, when I go out and I
ask Latinos to come out and vote, I'm not just
asking those that look like me and live like me.
I'm asking queer Latinos, I'm asking after Latinos, I'm asking
age and Latinos. I'm asking everybody. So I have to
show up for them when I see these attacks against
their community.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
One key solution is for communities, for activists, for researchers
that are concerned about disinformation to hold institutions accountable. They
often get out scott free on these conversations, but I
kind of mentioned this earlier. For example, during the COVID shutdown,
(27:21):
there was all this conversation about the black community and
getting the black community to trust and why is there
so much distrust? And I'm like, do you know America?
And there was all these different narratives about medical distrust
and not as much that should have been discussed on
(27:44):
medical racism. And so in order to build that trust again,
you're going to have to deconstruct and break down the
structural bias, the institutional racism, and all of the things
that made our communities distrust you in the first place.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
One hundred percent. And then I'll say one more thing,
which is about holding tech accountable. Do not fear tech.
Do not fear tech because tech is not perfect. Right,
So I see a lot of people who hear the
term AI and they get so intimidated they clam up
and listen. They have a lot to learn too, They're
not perfect.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
I'm so glad that you mentioned that, because I think
one of the biggest things in this conversation is changing
this dynamic that says that tech and tech leaders they
have all the answers, and who are we.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
To question them?
Speaker 1 (28:34):
You're not an engineer, You didn't go to Harvard, You're
not Mark Zuckerberg or not Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Who are you to ask questions?
Speaker 1 (28:39):
This dynamic that says that you get to make as
much money as you want, exploiting us and causing chaos
and distrust in our communities, and we don't get to
have a say that is incorrect. And so I think
to your point, everybody should understand their role in this
dynamic and reject anything that says who are you to
ask questions? We're the public, That's who we are, and
we deserve transparency and accountability, and you will not exploit
(29:00):
us to make money.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
And more specifically, who am I? I am a woman
of color who is using your product in a very
different way than you do, and frankly than many of
the people who were at the table when this product
was created.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I'm sure you've encountered the same disinformation and tech space
and landscape that I have, which is often white men
self congratulating other white men. What does it mean for
you to be in this fight as a person who
is not often represented in these conversations.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
I think for me, it just means going to bat
for my community, speeding up for my community, from a
not only a personal it is personal because I know
the Black struggle from transatlantic slave trade to now in
the United States and understanding that whole cultural history and
(29:53):
aspect of it, and so for me is a personal dynamic,
But it's also an informed and culturally competent one that
is so very much needed, because in these conversations we
often get people that are tested with fighting disinformation but
not really understanding the cultural aspects and nuances of different communities.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Yeah, I mean everything you said.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
I think there's a desperate need for faces, experiences, perspectives
like ours at the table. And at the same time,
you know, sometimes we need to break the table a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
But I wouldn't call myself an expert because we've all lived.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
These experiences of either being targeted by hate campaigns, seeing
loved ones fall victim to it, accidentally falling for disinformation,
like all of those things.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
And so we all are users of.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
This platform, of these various platforms, we all experience and
naviate a world filled with dismiss malinformation. So it's about
naming that, pushing our way through gathering in spaces like
this and talking really frankly and honestly about the need
for movement building that looks to our past so we
(31:13):
can build like a better, stronger future and a stronger
foundation for multicultural, multi lingual solidarity so we can counter
this disinformation.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
So for me, this is really a voter suppression issue.
I think of disinformation as voter suppression, and it's a
democracy issue. So I see it as my way to
contribute to voting rights struggles that precede me by centuries,
and as my way to contribute to a lot of
(31:46):
civil rights struggles where folks really need to see that
you can come here as an immigrant and see a
strong democracy that works, that your vote matters, that you
should cast a ballot because you can make a difference
and you can move your community forward.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
If you can leave folks listening and watching with one thing,
what would it be.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
We all have a lot more power than I think.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
Then it often feels, and I feel like we as
individuals as a collective can really make an impact and
make some real change when it comes to the issues
of disinformation, both within our communities, but also holding those
bad actors accountable.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Don't let the world telling you you're small.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
Hold you back, because I think there's a lot of
work that we all can do together.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
I would say that your trust is a really valuable commodity.
There's a lot of people out there trying to erode
your trust. Why is that right. It's a really valuable commodity,
So treat it as such and be really careful with
where you place it.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
To follow up with that would trust me in a
valuable commodity. Your actions are valuable commodity. Your viewpoint on
the world, the way you view culture, democracy is valuable,
and so I think one of the things that I
would leave with people is trying to gain more understanding
(33:16):
about how this all works, but also understanding that there
are systems at play and that we have to hold
these institutions accountable more so than we would hold the
average person accountable, because the average person is who is
being targeted.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Jaya, Liz, Jessica, thank you so much for being here,
and thank you for being in this fight, in this work.
We're so grateful for you, and thanks to all of
you for watching. Got a story about an interesting thing
in tech. I just want to say hi. You can
reach us at Hello at Tegody dot com. You can
(33:55):
also find transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
There are no girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
With Brigit Toad. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed.
Creative Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Terry Harrison is
our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer.
I'm your host, bridget Toad. If you want to help
us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(34:20):
or wherever you get your podcasts.
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridgeton and this is
There Are No Girls on the Internet. So we're still
in between seasons, but I've got something really special I
wanted to share with y'all. About a year ago, I
hosted a roundtable on gendered and racialized disinformation with three
(00:28):
incredible women of color disinformation experts really doing the work
in the field to understand and combat the weaponization of
inflammatory lives about our identity, and as part of my
post election kind of personal come to Jesus post mortem,
I re listened to it and I was struck by
how prescient our conversation was. What the terrible election we
(00:49):
all just lived through, one where racialized and gender disinformation
really took center stage. We talked about the long historical
foundations that bad actors have built on to amplify divisions
race and gender lines, and the way that tech platforms
have been used to not only perpetuate that disinformation, but
also make record profits by doing it. The roundtable was
(01:10):
part of a video documentary project I did with Exposure Labs,
the company behind the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma and
many other excellent projects, and I am particularly grateful to
director and showrunner Joshua Clark for leading this incredible project
and for making it available to share with all of
you here at there are no growth.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
On the Internet.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
It is important work and I am glad we are
able to air it here. Check it out. Welcome to
(02:01):
the Disinfo Dialogue, where we're exploring the legacy of cultural disinformation,
how it has targeted traditionally marginalized communities both before and
during the Internet Age, and what it means for all
of us. I'm your host, bridget Toad. We're joined by
an expert roundtable featuring Jessica and Mitchell Awuiar, founder of
the National Black Cultural Information Trust, Liz Lebron, disinformation researcher
(02:22):
at Blue Nexus Group, and Jaya Savita Ayer, director of
the Asian Pacific Islanders Acific Action Network. So I want
to start with the word disinformation. I've sometimes had a
little bit of discomfort with this word because I think
it can be kind of a buzzword and might not
actually get at the ways that inaccurate, inflammatory content about
our identity and our communities really impacts us in our democracy.
(02:45):
So what do you think when you hear the word disinformation?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
You're so right, disinformation. You know, it was a buzzword
for a minute. But first of all, disinformation did not
start with the Internet. It did not start with the
digitally just been around since time immemorial. It's really a
deliberate and concerted effort to distort information and give people
faulty false information, and deliberate really being the keywords. So
(03:12):
you know your aunt Mildred saying, oh, I think the
election is on Wednesday, that's just, you know, somebody being misinformed.
That's very different than a bad actor putting together a
deliberate campaign with the hopes of changing a whole people's behavior.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
I really like how you kind of set that up,
the working definitions that I use, and that kind of
help ground being when talking about these like really abstract concepts.
Is misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation? Right, we think of misinformation
as exactly what you said. It's your aunt saying, you know,
something incorrect that's based on something that maybe she saw
(03:52):
on social media. Disinformation, I think often has kind of
an agenda or has some sort of CD background within it.
And then information is kind of the thing that is
meant to cause harm. Right, That's the thing that's meant
to cause hurt, that's meant to divide us, that's meant
to alienate people in communities, and is meant to really
(04:14):
perpetuate not only harm, but lack of trust.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
And we all fall victim to it in various ways.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
That's so true. I love both of you all's definitions.
Disinformation is false information spread with an agenda, and misinformation
is false information spread but often unknowingly. And I think
it's really important to make that distinction because if we
don't make that distinction, sometimes we end up demonizing the
(04:41):
very communities that we're trying to protect from this and misinformation.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
And I'm really.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
Glad Jaya that you brought up mal information because that's
not talked about as much. But mal information can be
truthful information that is used within certain narrative to persuade
people to react in a certain way.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
So let's get into some of those historical examples, because
this is I really want to get into this. So
much of the malinformation and disinformation that I have seen
targeting communities of color really are trying to pit us
against each other to say, oh, like you need to
be afraid of this community. This community is taking your resources.
This community is a threat to you. Why do you
think that is? Why are we seeing this and how
(05:26):
have you seen us play out in your own work?
Speaker 5 (05:28):
I can say specifically in terms of the Black community,
there is an ongoing disinformation campaign to sow a rift
between African Americans and Black immigrants or descendants of Black immigrants.
Part of that is meant to break down the power
of black collective activism. There has been solidarity built over
(05:53):
time where these communities come together. We have people like
Kwame Terray. We have Malcolm X who is a descendant
of African Americans and his mother was from the Caribbean.
So we have all these experiences through the Harlem Renaissance,
(06:13):
through the Black Arts period, through the Black Power movement,
of people of African descent from various ethnicities and backgrounds
coming together to fight for our civil and human rights.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
And it's only getting.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
Greater unless you come up with a way to put
us at odds with each other to where we feel
like we're in competition with each other till we feel
like we're taking resources from each other.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
No, absolutely, and it comes back to sowing distrust to
make us not trust one another. There's a long standing
history of trying to pet Latinos and Black communities against
one another, as if after Latinos do not exist, you know.
So first of all, yeah, it's completely erasing after Latinos,
(07:03):
you know, off the bat. So one really just awful
narrative that I saw was about the Vice president so
saying heard, I've seen a lot of disinformation in the
Latino community that because she is black and here again
erasing the fact that she is also you know, an
Asian American, erasing that completely, she's not going to look
(07:24):
out for the interest of Latinos. How could she. She's
a you know, a black woman. She's only going to
look out for the interest of a black people.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
That's so funny you brought that up, because in the
black community, the disinformation about the Vice President Kamala Harris
is she's half Asian, she's not black enough, she don't
represent us, and so it's that distrust on that end
as well.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
I mean, And the funniest thing is on the flip side,
within the Asian community and specifically within the South Asian
Indian community, Kamala Harris isn't South Asian enough. For her,
hosting parties or trying to kind of build solidarity in
community with the API population is seen as performative because
(08:10):
you know, she's picking and choosing when she wants to
be South Asian.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
She's picking and choosing when she wants to be Asian.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
And I wanted to get back to your previous point
around kind of the history of solidarity and the history
of inter and intra black solidarity and talk really about
the fact that the API, the Asian American solidarity movement
would not have happened without black.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Civil rights leaders and the black power movement.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Right, the concept the term Asian American came out because
the term African American was coined, the term Black American
was coined. But the politics of division, the politics of saying,
you know, oh, those black kids are getting into Harvard
or whatever, and that's because of affirmative action, and Asian
(08:54):
kids are getting into Harvard enough because of affirmative action, right,
or narratives like that, We really are looking to divide
us because when we work together like we have historically,
change happens, and change is terrifying to people in power.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yes, yeah, And Bridget going back to your point about
what is disinformation. This dynamic right here was really interesting,
the three of us seeing the same piece of disinformation
from different lenses. And so I will tell you when
I have done the research looking into what is happening
on the disinfo front and the Latino media space, that
(09:32):
narrative doesn't show up. That narrative doesn't show up because
it is so targeted, right so that there's a reason
in Latino spaces you don't hear. Oh, you know, the
vice president is not Asian enough. You know, what we
hear is the narrative that will play on the divides
within our own community, which we have to address. You know,
(09:54):
there's colorism in our communities. There's all kinds of things,
but we're not the only ones who are aware of it.
That actor see us fighting amongst ourselves, and they walk
right in there and just try and make that gap wider.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
It's part of it that some of these divisions that
really do exist, these fractures, really do exist in our communities,
but were maybe not talking about them, not doing the
work to heal them or really even point them out,
and thus we're all sort of more easily exploited.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
It's not just that we're not talking about it enough,
especially in terms of African American history or Black American
history in general. You see right now, there's a concentrated
effort for it to not even be taught in schools.
When I was growing up, little black girl in Georgia,
we got a paragraph in that social studies book, Lincoln
(10:45):
freed the slaves, they did sharecropping, civil rights, MLKA, rosa
parts boom. That's our paragraph. That was it. So there
was a lot to do with the educational ructure in systems,
the institutions where if you wanted to learn the vastness
(11:05):
and the robustness of Africana studies and Black history and
Pan African history, that would really help people to better
understand the interconnections that could help with those conversations in
that dialogue.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
A lot of times that.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Education is restricted to higher education, to college. So it's
not even that we're not necessarily not talking about it enough.
Many of us are not given that education to begin with,
and then we become more and more vulnerable.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
You got a whole paragraph from Jealous. I mean, I'm
Puerto Rican, and the number of times people have asked
me if I'm a citizen, I can't even I mean,
oh my god. Yeah, so you know, we're we've found
a part of this country since eighteen ninety eight, we've
been citizens by birth since nineteen seventeen. And I mean
the number of people who have no idea who you know?
(11:57):
Oh do I need a passport together? I mean, so
I'm jealous of your paragraph.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I'll take it.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
At our back.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I mean, I really do think it goes back to
something that I wanted to start with, this idea that
we're not talking about individuals spreading individual pieces of misinformation
or disinformation. It's institutional, right, It's like all connected. It's
this web that makes it so hard to escape these
very pervasive, very inflammatory lies about the fabric of who
we are. And it all goes back to that distrust
(12:44):
that you were talking about earlier, and something that I'm
curious if you all saw. I definitely saw it, especially
in the summer of twenty twenty. Don't remember that summer
the reckoning, the reckoning and something that I really saw,
and I'm wondering how you saw it play out. Was
I think that bad actors knew that that was a
particular time that maybe would highlight or inflame some existing
(13:07):
historical traumise, particularly for immigrants and the descendantive and the
descendants of immigrants.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Did you all see this as well?
Speaker 3 (13:13):
One hundred percent. And you know, in twenty twenty, I
was working in an election administration, so I can tell
you the deliberate exploitation of the narrative that, you know,
undocumented people, illegals as you know, as they refer to
them in the disinfo circles, We're going to throw the
election in some way. You know, study after study after
(13:33):
study shows that what they were talking about, that level
of you know, fraud just does not exist in our elections.
Instead of being proud of that and listening to the
folks who run elections, who actually administer elections, telling us
in every state across the country that in twenty twenty,
(13:54):
through a pandemic, we somehow managed to pull off an election,
they were exploiting that narrative, especially coming after immigrant communities.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Yeah, yeah, and I would love to kind of jump
into that and talk about you know, with the summer
of twenty twenty, it was we were seeing increasingly high
numbers of anti Asian violence, attacks on our elders. You know,
we were just being hit by a barrage of violence,
(14:23):
and at the same time, the solution was being posed
that hate crime legislation was the answer, right, that policing
was the answer. And we know as communities of color,
as communities that are navigating different immigration narratives and experiences,
whether you're documented or undocumented or a non citizen, that
(14:43):
the police aren't always a solution. But there's also that
other wonderful marketing tactic in the US of how to
be a good American or how to be a good citizen.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So you call nine to one one when you feel unsafe.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
But you know, we saw those band aid solutions, and
we saw those decinfo narratives right saying that all of
these insane rioters were coming and they were all mostly
black and brown, and they were setting fireworks off, and
they were doing all these horrifying things and breaking windows,
and it was really speaking to a deep seated fear,
(15:20):
thanks to media within communities that we shouldn't trust people
who look different from us.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
And I'm so glad you brought up the whole the
pr of the good American or how to be a
good citizen, because a lot of that fear mongering about
protesters is built off of a centuries long anti black narrative,
birth of a nationism, if you may, where the blacks
(15:47):
are free and they're running a mug.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Look at the three different stereotypes here, right, So it's
black people running a mug, it's Asian people who are
making us all sick with COVID completely separate, right, And
then it's Latino immigrants who are voting in droves to
throw an election.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
And it's all about marketing.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
And you're totally right, it's white supremacy at its root,
and it's about institutional bias, institutional power dynamics, all of
those things.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And I think something in that reminds me of what
you said, Jessica about how it's so easy to demonize
people who like quote fall for disinformation. The better question
is like, how could you not fall for it?
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Right?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Like, it pains me sometimes in the disinfo community that
we sometimes are talking down to people and discounting the
actual reality of how sometimes well financed, well organized, well
coordinated these disinformation campaigns actually truly are.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
And I think that's why research has shown that one
of the most effective ways to combat disinfo, instead of
going after each individual narrative is to actually talk to
people about the mechanism, because once you show them how
to spot it for themselves, they can say, oh, wait
a minute, this person is trying to dupe me, and.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I'd love to add in. Right.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
Then there's the extra layer of within each ethnic group
and ethnic community in the US, there's a different method
of communication that we're all using.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Right. Some people use WhatsApp, some people use weed chat.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
I know the Vietnamese populations often use YouTube for media
and use distribution. Right, We're seeing different communities are using
different methods of communication.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I can pull out my phone and show you I have.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
At least one hundred WhatsApp messages unread from my family, right.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Most of which yeah, and most of which is BS.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
Right.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
It's like bonkers things, conspiracy theories. And my family is
wonderful and they know what they're doing, and they know
about the world.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
They're well educated all of these things.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
And it's so easy because you see a funny meme
and you don't think about it, right, or you see
a video and you're like, oh, I don't know if
this is real, what if it is attended?
Speaker 3 (18:00):
It's entertainment.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
It's entertainment.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Disinformation is often disguised and you know, as entertainment. So
it's so easy to have a good laugh and forward
it to somebody.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
I'm so glad you brought that up because when Jay eraised,
the aspect of the different platforms that were on Twitter
like emerged, especially black Twitter emerged as this space for
communal conversation. Now it's x and our community was especially
vulnerable because we are having all these critical conversations out
(18:33):
in the open that anyone can see, and then try
to divert and sew in disinformation at the same time.
And then we see it with the entertainment blogs that
good lord. You put it in the big bold, black
print with the white background, and it's gone. It's millions
and millions of views.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I mean, I want to get into this because I
had to personally kind of divest from a couple of
very popular Instagram accounts, sort of black infotainment Instagram accounts.
I guess i'll call it where I realized when I
scrolled when I was scrolling Instagram and I would see
one of those images of a headline I won't say
a news headline, big bold, black and white.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
People will believe.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Anything, and so often those pieces of content are either misogynistic,
they're they're crapping on black women, they're crapping on black
queer youth. It's so easy to package that as hatred
toward our communities, particularly people in our communities who are
really vulnerable, and people just eat it up. And I
guess I wonder, you know, I've sometimes said that I
(19:40):
believe that things like racism, massogynire, queer phobia, transphobia, all
of these things are kind of baked into our experience
of being online. What do you see as the role
of social media platforms, like are they benefiting from this?
What should they be doing? What are they not doing?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
What's going on now?
Speaker 4 (20:00):
I think many Americans see social media platforms as the
digital town square, when in reality, they're private corporations, right,
and private entities that have control over what you see
and what you don't see.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
We have more and more research coming out.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Saying that social media platforms promote content that elicits anger, hurt, feelings, sadness, frustration,
because that.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Keeps people on the platform longer. It's like a drug.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
It's addictive, and so if you're seeing only happy things,
like you're going to want to go outside and see
the sun and I don't know, sit on the grass.
Whereas if you're seeing things that are intensely speaking to
a feeling of anger or hate or frustration.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
You will go down that rabbit hole.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
You will fester on that, and that'll bring in more revenue.
Right going back to the money. If we follow the money,
it always goes back to that, right to the people
that are profiting the most from it.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
And social media platforms profit from disinformation. And I think
the reality is, not only do we need.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
To open that conversation up and think about us as
users as having a stake in in what the platforms
do and how they act, but we also think about
regulation because we have outdated policy that is supposedly trying
to regulate tech from the nineties.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
And I think the reality is we need.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Legislation that meets the needs and the reality of tech
right now and the potential with what we're seeing with
AI and other new technologies that are emerging. Because it
is playing a role in our democracy, and it is
playing a role in voter suppression, it is playing a
role in dividing our communities, It's playing a role at
every level, and these bad actors are.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Getting rich.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
So I'm curious, how do you see disinformation impacting our democracy?
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Like writ large, I mean it has been impacting our democracy, right.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
We had January sixth.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
Happen that was a direct consequence of disinformation that had
been seen and known by Twitter in particular. It's happening,
and yet there wasn't really much effort to try and
stop that.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And so it's like, how do you keep track of WhatsApp?
Speaker 4 (22:36):
You two, we chat all of these different messenger right, Twitter, Like,
there's a bajillion different platforms that you have to keep
track on, and so how do you make sure that
those various narratives that are coming out on those various
platforms in completely different languages are both being monitored, that
accurate information is also being sprinkled throughout that so that
(22:59):
people know when to vote, how to vote, that it's
okay to vote, that they can ask for about it
in their language, that it is actually a violation of
their right. They're voting right to not get a palot,
and you know, in a language that they speak, if
their state or city has you know, certain numbers of
languages that they'll translate into.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
It speaks to that distrust of institutions that might might
already be there.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Right.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
Yeah, along the lines of distrust is African Americans and
Black Americans in general have a long standing distrust of
our government for very very legitimate reasons, and the cultural
or racialized disinformation harps on that and is having a
(23:46):
direct or seeking to have a concentrated impact on the
way in which we vote, or whether or not we
feel it's worthy to vote at all. And so that aspect,
the voter suppression in the midst of the Voting Rights
Act being stripped down and already having obstacles to face
(24:08):
and trying to vote, can have a very devastating impact
on Black communities and the way in which democracy functions
or doesn't function for us.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
I wonder, do you all?
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I know I see this a lot sometimes from my
own friends and family. One of the things about disinformation
is that I think it's meant to just make us
check out, check out of our democracy, check out of
the conversation. It's too confusing, I can't keep it straight.
And I think a consequence of that is exactly what
you just said of I'm not going to vote. It's
not worth it, it doesn't matter. How do you confront
that sentiment in a climate where disinformation is so rampant.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
I think one of the things that has worked has
we've learned over the last few years. Talking down to
people doesn't work, but narrative building works, storytelling works. One
of the things that we've tried to do at our
organization is focus on uplifting narratives, intercultural narratives, and storytelling.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
That reminds me of a quote I once heard in
a training that the antidote to disinformation is not just truth,
it's community.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
It's connection.
Speaker 5 (25:18):
Yes, definitely, and because we trust our communities the most,
so we have to lean into that connection, lean into
especially for communities of color, lean into that cultural understanding,
lean into that narrative building.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Let's talk about some additional solutions here, because if there's
one thing that has really been resonating with me from
this conversation is that our communities are not monolithic. They
are diverse, they are multifaceted, they are dynamic. There's so
many different stories and layers in our communities. So then
the solution probably can't then be one size fits all.
So how do we get to solutions for this massive
(25:58):
problem that disinformation presents.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Yeah, I think that speaks to everything we've brought up
throughout the conversation. Right, It's about inter intrat solidarity building.
It's about finding and identifying leaders within the community and
making sure that they're equipped to have these conversations. It's
about meeting people where they're at. It's about having compassion
in those conversations, because anyone can fall for disinformation, and
(26:24):
anyone can be a champion in fighting disinformation.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
So I would say, first and foremost understand that disinformation
that impacts adjacent communities is also impacting you.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
So as an advocate, when I go out and I
ask Latinos to come out and vote, I'm not just
asking those that look like me and live like me.
I'm asking queer Latinos, I'm asking after Latinos, I'm asking
age and Latinos. I'm asking everybody. So I have to
show up for them when I see these attacks against
their community.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
One key solution is for communities, for activists, for researchers
that are concerned about disinformation to hold institutions accountable. They
often get out scott free on these conversations, but I
kind of mentioned this earlier. For example, during the COVID shutdown,
(27:21):
there was all this conversation about the black community and
getting the black community to trust and why is there
so much distrust? And I'm like, do you know America?
And there was all these different narratives about medical distrust
and not as much that should have been discussed on
(27:44):
medical racism. And so in order to build that trust again,
you're going to have to deconstruct and break down the
structural bias, the institutional racism, and all of the things
that made our communities distrust you in the first place.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
One hundred percent. And then I'll say one more thing,
which is about holding tech accountable. Do not fear tech.
Do not fear tech because tech is not perfect. Right,
So I see a lot of people who hear the
term AI and they get so intimidated they clam up
and listen. They have a lot to learn too, They're
not perfect.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
I'm so glad that you mentioned that, because I think
one of the biggest things in this conversation is changing
this dynamic that says that tech and tech leaders they
have all the answers, and who are we.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
To question them?
Speaker 1 (28:34):
You're not an engineer, You didn't go to Harvard, You're
not Mark Zuckerberg or not Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Who are you to ask questions?
Speaker 1 (28:39):
This dynamic that says that you get to make as
much money as you want, exploiting us and causing chaos
and distrust in our communities, and we don't get to
have a say that is incorrect. And so I think
to your point, everybody should understand their role in this
dynamic and reject anything that says who are you to
ask questions? We're the public, That's who we are, and
we deserve transparency and accountability, and you will not exploit
(29:00):
us to make money.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
And more specifically, who am I? I am a woman
of color who is using your product in a very
different way than you do, and frankly than many of
the people who were at the table when this product
was created.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I'm sure you've encountered the same disinformation and tech space
and landscape that I have, which is often white men
self congratulating other white men. What does it mean for
you to be in this fight as a person who
is not often represented in these conversations.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
I think for me, it just means going to bat
for my community, speeding up for my community, from a
not only a personal it is personal because I know
the Black struggle from transatlantic slave trade to now in
the United States and understanding that whole cultural history and
(29:53):
aspect of it, and so for me is a personal dynamic,
But it's also an informed and culturally competent one that
is so very much needed, because in these conversations we
often get people that are tested with fighting disinformation but
not really understanding the cultural aspects and nuances of different communities.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Yeah, I mean everything you said.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
I think there's a desperate need for faces, experiences, perspectives
like ours at the table. And at the same time,
you know, sometimes we need to break the table a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
But I wouldn't call myself an expert because we've all lived.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
These experiences of either being targeted by hate campaigns, seeing
loved ones fall victim to it, accidentally falling for disinformation,
like all of those things.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
And so we all are users of.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
This platform, of these various platforms, we all experience and
naviate a world filled with dismiss malinformation. So it's about
naming that, pushing our way through gathering in spaces like
this and talking really frankly and honestly about the need
for movement building that looks to our past so we
(31:13):
can build like a better, stronger future and a stronger
foundation for multicultural, multi lingual solidarity so we can counter
this disinformation.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
So for me, this is really a voter suppression issue.
I think of disinformation as voter suppression, and it's a
democracy issue. So I see it as my way to
contribute to voting rights struggles that precede me by centuries,
and as my way to contribute to a lot of
(31:46):
civil rights struggles where folks really need to see that
you can come here as an immigrant and see a
strong democracy that works, that your vote matters, that you
should cast a ballot because you can make a difference
and you can move your community forward.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
If you can leave folks listening and watching with one thing,
what would it be.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
We all have a lot more power than I think.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
Then it often feels, and I feel like we as
individuals as a collective can really make an impact and
make some real change when it comes to the issues
of disinformation, both within our communities, but also holding those
bad actors accountable.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Don't let the world telling you you're small.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
Hold you back, because I think there's a lot of
work that we all can do together.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
I would say that your trust is a really valuable commodity.
There's a lot of people out there trying to erode
your trust. Why is that right. It's a really valuable commodity,
So treat it as such and be really careful with
where you place it.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
To follow up with that would trust me in a
valuable commodity. Your actions are valuable commodity. Your viewpoint on
the world, the way you view culture, democracy is valuable,
and so I think one of the things that I
would leave with people is trying to gain more understanding
(33:16):
about how this all works, but also understanding that there
are systems at play and that we have to hold
these institutions accountable more so than we would hold the
average person accountable, because the average person is who is
being targeted.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Jaya, Liz, Jessica, thank you so much for being here,
and thank you for being in this fight, in this work.
We're so grateful for you, and thanks to all of
you for watching. Got a story about an interesting thing
in tech. I just want to say hi. You can
reach us at Hello at Tegody dot com. You can
(33:55):
also find transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
There are no girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
With Brigit Toad. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed.
Creative Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Terry Harrison is
our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer.
I'm your host, bridget Toad. If you want to help
us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(34:20):
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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