Introducing: Internet Hate Machine

Our social media platforms are being used to silence marginalized people, disrupt our democracy, and keep all of us more fearful and polarized than ever. Bridget Todd chronicles how our current social and political hellscape started with attacks on Black women that went overlooked. And what we can do to fight back.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So if you were online, you're probably familiar with gamer Gate,
where a lot of men who were supposedly big mad
about quote ethics and video game journalism harassed women on
the internet. It was awful, and it rightly got a
lot of coverage from the tech press, But a lot
of people, even people who were very online, might not
know that it was black women who were attacked by

(00:23):
the very same people using the very same tactic as
gamer Gate years earlier. Only when those women spoke up
about it, the people with the power to do something
pretty much ignored them. And I'd also be willing to
bet that even less people know that the kinds of
online harassment and deceptive accounts that those women were reporting
would go on to be the very same tactics that

(00:44):
a twenty nineteen Senate inquiry confirmed were used by Russian
assets to disrupt the election. So there's a pretty clear
through line from ignoring black women when they speak up
about the harassment they face on the internet and pretty
important stuff like I don't know the security of our elections.
So what if someone with the power to do something
had just listened to black women when they reported what

(01:06):
was going on years earlier, I'm Bridget Todd, and I
make podcasts about the Internet, specifically the way that women,
people of color, LGBTQ, folks, and other marginalized identities show
up to do cool stuff on the Internet. But I
am sad the same that as true as it is
that traditionally marginalized people do a lot of the coolest
stuff online, it's also true that those same people are

(01:26):
targeted online and really scary ways, And when it happens,
it can feel like it just goes overlooked. We don't
really get the opportunity to learn from it or take
anything away from it, and as the Internet often does,
everyone just moves on. And I don't like that. So
on my new podcast, Internet Hate Machine, I'm trying to
right that wrong. We'll be telling the stories of women

(01:47):
who were harassed online, how it happened, why it happened,
and what it all means for the rest of us,
because these kinds of attacks threaten our democracy that keep
marginalized people from doing things like running for office or
just participating in civic and public life, and they threaten
our ability to have meaningful discourse and make any progress
on some of the big issues facing us today, and
What's worse, this kind of thing has been steadily creeping

(02:09):
from the computer screen into our wider political and social landscape.
On the new podcast Internet Hate Machine, I'll be charting
how the harassment and abuse of women and other traditionally
marginalized people online has led us to our current political
health scape and what we can do about it. Listen
to Internet Hate Machines starting on October twenty six on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.