What Elon Musk Could Learn from the #EndFathersDay Hoax

We’re joined by Joelle Monique to revisit the 4chan hoax #EndFathersDay and what it says about impersonation as a destabilization tactic on Twitter. 

Mikki Kendall's Guardian piece about starting #SolidarityIsforWhiteWomen: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/14/solidarityisforwhitewomen-hashtag-feminism

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Internet hate Machine. I'm Bridget and I'm joined
with my producer Sophie, and we are also so thrilled
to have our very first guest in the studio with us.
I am joined by the lovely Joel Monique. Joel, thank
you so much for being here, Hi, Bridget, what's up?
Thank you for having me so Joel. I have to
start by saying, like, you're a pretty prolific Twitter user.

(00:22):
What has that been like for you as a black
woman with a pretty visible public profile on Twitter. I
really liked Twitter up until recently. Now it's causing me
headaches because I have to leave it. And I realized
that what I really like about it was the fact
that it's just words. How do you think about my image?
I'm not trying to tell you where I've been, Like,

(00:42):
I could just be like I really love this TV
show or the song rocks or sucks or whatever. You
can just so easily to share an opinion and it
can live there and you can respond or not respond,
and it's been great. And I mean, yes, there have
always been assholes on Twitter, but my black fingers are strong.
I'm not you know. I know. Maggie was like let
him talk, and I'm like, I can't. I'm not as
strong as you my knees nor my emotions. Apparently I

(01:05):
can't deal with people being mean, and so I just
blocked heavy and it's been a pretty smooth journey. And
now man, I'm on not Mams Sabertooth. I know it's Masthodon, Mastodon.
There it is. I got me one of those don't
know how to use it yet. I presumeed my TikTok
name ages ago have never posted anything. So now I'm

(01:27):
just lurking in there, like do I want to come
to this space? How life? You know? On camera? All
that much? That frequently you know? And so I just
don't know. I don't know what I'm gonna do when
the trolls take over, but I do, like if I'm
looking for silver linings. Elon must downfall on this. He
spent so much money and people, really I can tell
because my follower account drops every day by like way

(01:50):
too many of you. I haven't posted anything controversial or like,
no strong opinions as of late, and so I can
tell people are like and it's done. The worst part
those I have a black Lady professional group chat on
there that has been life saving, got me a lot
of jobs, got me through a lot of crap, like
has really helped solidify my career. And that check mark,

(02:10):
you know, when I first got it, I was freelance
and it really boosted my profile and gave me a
lot of access that I didn't have previously. I do
worry about what's going to happen. You know, we're trying
to as a group or tegure out like where do
we go next, and we're just not quite sure what's
going to have that same kind of connection. So it's
been a whild ride on Twitter. That's such a good

(02:30):
point that you make about the access, particularly for folks
and industries that are more traditionally marginalized. It's different for
us to build up a platform, and it just has
the stakes are different. And you know, I'm also verified
on Twitter, and I do think that it's gotten me
into spaces and gotten me access that I don't think
I would have otherwise. And so like, if you're an

(02:51):
editor and I tweet something I've gotten the d M
that's like, oh, do you want to turn this into
a piece for us? And I would be lying if
I said that I wasn't going to miss that, But
you're right, like, who who wants to be on a
platform that is run by someone who has made it
clear that they don't really care about the safety of
the folks who are showing up on a platform like Twitter.

(03:13):
I knew it was over when he was like, I'm
going to charge for verification. I was like, well, then
that defeats the point of verification, Like the check mark
was there solely. I know a lot of people think
it was like for a cloud that came with it,
But the initial thing was like this famous person that
you think you're talking to, that's actually them If they
have the check mark, no check mark, you don't know

(03:34):
who you're talking to. And I wonder like, if I
set up on account it's called like the Rock, can
I verify it? And then people think they're talking to
Dwayne the Rock Johnson, Like there's what value is there
in that check mark except that and and and the
cloud that came with it before. Now that you can
purchase it, I don't think companies or celebrities or anybody

(03:54):
who was following you because you had that check mark
is going to continue that behavior. I don't think people
are going to get booked jobs because they have the
checkmark once you can pay for it. When the when
the actual like transition happens and it's and you are
paying for it, I can't wait to find out who
actually is paying for it. That will that will because

(04:15):
it was again, unless if I was still freelanced, I
might because without the profile I have now, I think
I would still consider it because it did, like I said,
coming so many jobs when I first got it, and
so I do feel bad for those people who are
like sort of on the cusp of having like a
well known career. That checkmark really sort of verifies a
lot for you. But yeah, as of now, like it

(04:36):
would be weird again unless people really feel the need
to try to verify, like yes, you're talking to me,
you know. I saw some actor the other day was
posting about how they don't like social media, but when
it first started, they got concerned messages from parents saying,
why are you talking to my fifteen year old child,
and they were like, I'm not, and so that caused
it a whole downward spiral for them. And it's like, yeah,

(04:59):
to your you know, bridge, and I just don't think
they care about safety that's clearly not an issue, and
there's so much danger online. We we've been known. We
grew up in the early odds. I remember early Internet
safety danger lessons and news reports, and so it's it's
weird to me that that's suddenly not a concern. So

(05:21):
I that's right. That you're talking about is actor Robert
Kazinski talking about, you know, what verification has meant for
him and his career as an actor. And I'm so
glad that you bring all of this up because it
really dovetails exactly into what I want to talk about today,
which is that's sort of dirty, messy business of people
being able to impersonate others on Twitter and the incredibly

(05:43):
high stakes that it comes with your experiences of maybe
wanting to leave the platform. Really set us up nicely
into that conversation because we know that Twitter has not
always banned the most secure platform, has not always delivered
a very secure experience for its users, and now with
Elon Musk at the helme, I think it's poised to
only get worse. And f y I we're recording this

(06:04):
on a Friday. My understanding is Twitter is planning on
rolling out this new pay to be verified system on Monday,
so in just a couple of days, the same day
or like just days before firing half their staff and
a day before a fucking election. So I'm I'm very concerned,

(06:24):
and I think that my concerns have real historical precedent,
which I want to get into right now. So, a
classic bad actor tactic is pretending to be somebody that
you're not on social media, specifically to create confusion and
to stabilize online spaces. Right, Like, this is probably not
a surprise to you, Joel, This is like something we
all have mainly know, right, yes, And I think something

(06:48):
that really just burns me up about this is that
it's very much unknown tactic. Right. The leadership at social
media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have been made well
aware that this is a tactic that bad actors used
to threaten the security of their platforms, but they have
really done fuck all to prevent it from happening, and,
in the case of Twitter, or maybe making it easier
to happen, which is a real head scratcher. So another

(07:12):
classic bad act or tactic is inflaming existing tensions around
groups of people who are traditionally marginalized, right and so
that is a common day. Yeah, who who would have
guessed it right, that that would be a common tactic
to distabilized communities. So what happened around End Father's Day,
around we don't want to talk about today? That's like

(07:34):
one of the reasons why I think it's so important
because it utilized both of those tactics to hijack and
exploit conversations around feminism, race, and gender online. And it's
really concerning because you know, it's concerning that our social
media platforms are so easily gamified in this way and
that social media platforms aren't really doing anything to prevent it.

(07:56):
So let's talk about End Father's Day. To really understand
what the fun was going on with End Father's Day,
you really need to understand what Fortune was calling Operation Lollipop,
and essentially Operations Lollipop was this campaign to create fake
activist causes on social media. Basically, people on Fortune, trolls,

(08:17):
bad actors, whatever you want to call them, would pose
as feminists of color, so like black feminists, brown feminists, etcetera,
and essentially try to get people to agree with these
bogus campaigns. They would start and just generally try to
seed conflict with one another. The whole point is to
create confusion inflame tensions, generally to make feminists look like

(08:40):
a bunch of you know, crazy man haters whose causes
have no merit and who can't even agree with one another.
This is so wild when you see it happen just
organically on your timeline, where you'll be like, so, here's
a picture of you know, some as a black woman,
sometimes a black man using way too much like currently

(09:04):
popular and the guy's black lingo, where you're like, they're like, yeah,
no cap. You be like, I don't know if the
situation necessarily calls for a no cap and yeah, And
then you go on their page and they follow a
bunch of people, but maybe only have like a handful
of followers. Most of their tweets are retweets. It's they
become easier to spot the more you come across them organically.

(09:27):
But it's very strange to be like this is this
like internet black face, and it's annoying and upsetting and
again ruining these spaces that have you know, I know
some people don't agree with the idea that there's community
on these spaces, but I just think that for somebody
who has found a great group of friends that I
meet with regularly. I r L who you know again

(09:51):
uses a space and platforms for for job opportunities, Like
it does feel communal to me, and it does feel
almost it's just invasive. It's invasive to have people come
into those communities and try to erect them in that way.
The reason why these bad actors pretending to be black
women were exposed, it's exactly what you just picked up

(10:12):
on when they use language where you're like, I don't
know if a black person would actually say no cab
in this situation. I don't know that a black person
would actually say, you know, as a black I think
Trump is lit little things where you're like, my spidy
since it's tingling, I don't know if you're a black
woman like you say you are Twitter user like five

(10:35):
five six seven. And I think this is one of
the reasons why I am always kind of screaming from
the rooftops that this kind of disinformation and media manipulation
is a clear racial and gender justice issue because bad
actors and trolls know that exploiting and inflaming these legitimate

(10:57):
like tensions and trigger points per particularly between marginalized groups
can really work because it does tap into these like
legitimate traumas and baggage and anxieties that we do have.
You know, the experience of being a black woman, or
a queer person, or a trans person, or really any
kind of marginalized identity in the United States is often
marked with these very real historical traumas and baggage. And

(11:21):
so people who are interested in using the Internet to
spread chaos target marginalized people, and they do it by
tapping into these existing traumas. And you know, a good
example is like, as we approach the midterm elections, the
kind of disinformation that we're seeing around the election is
really meant to dissuade people of color from voting. You know,
they tend to do this via things like fogus images

(11:43):
purporting to show ice making arrests of undocumented people at
polling places, or you know, images warning that, oh, you know,
when you go to vote, they're gonna be checking if
you have outstanding warrants when you do try to vote, right,
These lies that are clearly meant to tap into very
real fears and anxieties that black and brown folks have
around being criminalized in the United States. So it plays

(12:06):
on these like real traumas that we have in ways
that exploit these things, these like tensions that we carry
around just by virtue of being a marginalized person in
the United States. Yeah, it's sinister when you essentially try
to brainwash someone into acting in their own disinterest, right,
particularly when we're talking about voting, This idea of if

(12:30):
you exercise, you're right, there's a threat there and you
should avoid that threa at all costs. It's it's really cruel.
And the craziest thing is like when we see a
lot of like who is participating in these acts, Like
it's either very young kids who've been indoctrinated over many
years YouTube fix your system, or like old people who

(12:55):
again have been indoctrinated mostly by Fox News slash Fox
News to feel it's and that sort of gets really
under my skin, to this idea of either people who
should know better or people who never had a chance
to learn better doing so much damage. You know, I'm
really glad that you framed it that way. It's sometimes
difficult for me, but I always try to remember that,

(13:17):
like it's not necessarily the individual, it's like systems and
institutions that are getting rich and profiting off of, you know,
misleading individuals in this way. It can be hard to
remember that when I'm like, why can't you just not
fall for this? But you're exactly right that sum is
a very effective tool that is being wielded expertly right now.

(13:39):
It's hard because you do you do. Your instinct is
to just get angry about it. You know, I am
angry about it, But at the same time, I know
my anger can't resolve the issue. And so my hope
is that more white mothers, if we're just being very
honest about it, are figuring out ways to talk to
their young sons about how to better navigate the internet,

(14:02):
are making sure they're putting up roadblocks and interventions where necessary.
You know, I think that's the only way we can
hope to really get ahead of this, because it seems
to be a wave that isn't stopping anytime soon. Unfortunately.
I think that you are correct. Um So, when we
look at end Father's Day and the kind of tensions
and traumas historically that that campaign really tapped into, it's

(14:25):
this clear wedge between black women and white women. And
on the one hand, I kind of get it. You know,
for a very long time, black feminists have not always
felt meaningfully represented or centered by white feminists. If you
look at early the early Suffragette movement, for instance, they
left black women's voting rights out of their advocacy altogether

(14:45):
as a strategic turn. It's not your turn, they said,
we're not for women, we are for white women, exactly right.
And so when you look a little further in time,
you know white feminists writing about things like being stuck
at home with domestic duties, they weren't really talking to
Black women. They were not centering our lived experience in
their in their advocacy. In that way, this reminds me

(15:08):
of the Health when if for listeners, if you don't
know anything about the help or how it was crafted. Uh,
a guy, a white man from the South, was essentially
writing and from the perspective of his childhood maids. And
when you go into a larger cinematic history and you
understand birth of a nation and how a lot of

(15:29):
that was sort of you know, the guy who crafted
that was so proud of it. He invited again a
childhood made who taking care of him, who was not
taking care of his son uh and she she left
service after that. She said you were a racist and
this is ridiculous and I'm going to bounce. But yeah,
this idea that there's so much space available and so

(15:50):
much um I want to say, like bad blood, but
definitely four hundred years of oppression and discord that we
have to advocate. It's a it's an easy place to
spark a fire, exactly that right, and so these tensions
are very much still with us today. Author of Mickey Kendall,

(16:10):
who wrote an excellent book called Hood Feminism, which you
should definitely get if you have not read it. I
love it. It's one of my favorite books. Basically, her
book is all about the ways that white feminism have
left the most marginalized women behind in their causes. Here's
Mickey Kendall speaking to now This News about her work
with hood feminism. Hood feminism is about survival because for
those who are facing all of these issues from gun

(16:31):
violence the housing, their first concern has to be staying
alive long enough to fight for their rights. The movement
has to do a better job of addressing displacement and
hunger if it expects support for reproductive justice marches or
for electing the first woman to be president of the
United States. It's hard to believe that women will be
better leaders when the feminist women you've seen gaining power

(16:51):
not only don't help you, but are likely to actively
participate in harmony. Okay, I think that gives a good
sense of it. But Nickey, yes, So Mickey Kendall started
the hashtag. Hashtag solidarity is for white women to really
have a real conversation about the ways that feminists, white
feminist namely had really failed Black women. And a great

(17:14):
example of this is that a sensibly feminist organizations and
outlets continue to have a relationship with a white male
writer named Hugo Schweizer. You don't know who that is.
Hugo Schweiser is a passage or was a Pacadya City
College professor of history and gender studies, a blogger, and
a self described male feminist who wrote about feminism. I know, like,

(17:36):
is there anything more of a warning than someone who
was a self proclaimed male feminist? Right? Uh? And he
really like he had that's at this time he did
have a like pretty big footprint on online feminist basis.
He wrote about feminism for places like The Atlantic and
Jez bell Um and some other like feminist sites in
the sort of ecosystem of online feminism back in the

(17:59):
two fourteen era. Here's a little taste of Hugo speaking
at a slot walk in l A. For too long,
there's been division in the feminist community over the issues
of sexuality and sex work, and that's one of the
things we are here to end today. So I wrote

(18:23):
a little speech, and I can't read a speech. Um,
I have to say, it is very difficult to stand
up here as a man after the stories that you've
just heard and that I've heard as well. The fact
is that we've heard a series of very personal, very powerful,

(18:43):
very painful accounts of sexual violence, and in every one
of those cases, the violence was committed by men against women.
And while it is true that men can also be
the victims of sexual violence, and while it is true
that in a few cases women can be the perpetrators
of sexual violence, there is no question that the vast
majority of sexual violence is men assaulting women. And part

(19:07):
of the reason why we allow that to continue, and
part of the reason why the words slut continues to
have its enormous power in our lives, is because of
a myth we believe in and a myth we need
to march against today. It's a myth I call the
myth of male weakness. All right, I think you get
the idea there. So you know something to know about

(19:29):
Hugo Schweizer is that he his thing was kind of
being this sort of reformed bad boy, like bad boy
turned feminist. He wrote, really, yeah, so that was what
like that? That was his like being that I would
say allowed him to kind of grow in his public profile.
He wrote very openly about how when he was struggling

(19:52):
with addiction issues, he tried to murder his girlfriend by
turning on the gas stove in their apartment. And he
also wrote about having sexual flings with his female students
when he was a professor. So it's interesting that he
would get up on a stage at a slut walk
and talk about like man, this man of male weakness,
blah blah blah. Here's the other thing. If you are

(20:16):
coming to a marginalized community and you are not actively
a member of that marginalized community, and then you speak
on behalf of that marginalized community, you have not fully
done your work or your research, Like there's that time
should have been given to an actual woman, like any
woman with any kind of sense could have taken that

(20:36):
spot and done what you did in much much better. Uh.
That is foolish and ridiculous. Yes, absolutely, And you know
who didn't let any of that ship slide? Black women?
They were no. Black women have been calling this guy
out for a very long time, and he was really
able to use this behavior test a mass power at

(20:58):
a public profile in online feminist spaces for a long time.
When black women would speak up against him, he would
like attack them pretty pretty horribly on social media. And
despite all this, he was able to really remain this
kind of feminist darling writing for you know, ostensibly feminist
outlets like jez Bell that had this large white woman

(21:19):
readership and writership. He ended up having this public meltdown
on Twitter in which he all but admitted all of
this behavior. He talked about how he didn't really have
the educational credentials to be teaching a class on feminism
at the college level, and yet he did it anyway.
He talked about how he had been trashing black women
and he kind of apologized for it and all of that.

(21:40):
So all of these things that black women had been
accusing him of this whole time and basically have been
had been going ignored, he admitted in a meltdown on Twitter.
But it seems like when he admitted all this in
his meltdown, but the white feminists and the websites who
who were frequented by those white feminist they didn't really

(22:02):
take ownership of what they had done to allow him
to build such a platform in these online feminist spaces.
You know, they weren't really denouncing him like you might
have expected them too. And they certainly were not, you know,
seeking solidarity or trying to make amends with the women
that he pretty clearly the black women that he pretty
clearly harmed. I think there was just this general sense

(22:25):
of of no accountability and to really move forward, they
gotta have accountability. And so Mickey Kendall spelled it out
really well on a piece that she wrote for The Guardian.
Folks should really read the whole things. It's a great piece,
but here's a little snippet. She writes, it appeared that
these feminists were once again dismissing women of color in
favor of a brand of solidarity that centers on the

(22:45):
safety and comfort of white women. For it to be
at the expanse of people who were doing the same
work was exceptionally aggravating. Admittedly, this is not a new problem.
White feminism has argued that gender should trump race since
its inception. That rhetoric not only erases the experiences of
women of color, but also alienates many from a movement

(23:05):
that claims to want equality for all. This is especially
clear when posts and articles about racism and feminism from
five years ago involved some of the very same players.
When I launched the hashtag solidarity as for white women,
I thought it would largely be a discussion between people
impacted by the latest bout of problematic behavior from mainstream
white feminists. It was intended to be a Twitter shorthand

(23:28):
for how often feminists of color are told that the
racism they experience isn't a feminist issue. The first few
tweets reflect the deeply personal impact of such a long
running structural issue. And damn that that bit really speaks
to me, because I totally get at this tension in
this fracture that she is naming and exposing here. Yeah,

(23:52):
and this is what we used to sit at intersectionality, right,
It's it's weird because sometimes as black women will or
you know, as a queer black woman, I'll get the
same question from black men, like you're gonna put your
gender or your queerness ahead of your race, which is
a ridiculous question no matter who it's asked by, because

(24:15):
we don't get to choose any of it. None of
it is a decision, none of it can come one
before the other, or like it's all equal. It's always present,
and that's it's infuriating to have to sometimes link up
with people who are not um understanding that intersectionality in
an effort to make things better for you know, a

(24:38):
community that you're a part of. It's a lot of work.
It's why we're all tired. I would also say, if
you're a white feminist in any of this, is you know,
ringing out for you to borrow a quote from a
show that has some of its own feminist issues, but
you know, desire to be free and not make a
window in the wall of your own prison. Okay, it's

(25:00):
really weird to me anyway to rely on a van
to to speak up for your woman community. That's it's
how did he get on stage? It's very confusing to me.
It is confusing and honestly, I mean like I had
to give like major, major props and shouts to Mickey

(25:20):
Kendall because she was doing the work of exposing these
fair the same kinds of very real, deep fractures between
black feminists and white feminists that you were just talking about.
And I need to be like super clear here, Mickey
Kendall was doing this like important, necessary work of bringing
these tough conversations to the forefront. And it is a
shame that Twitter as a platform failed Kendall and all

(25:44):
of these other women who really needed to have this
conversation failed them all by failing to provide a safe,
secure platform to have this conversation about these very real
fractures and how they show up in our communities. Right.
I also think that white feminists really should have done
a better job of digging into this conversation and taking accountability.

(26:06):
And it might have they done that, it might not
have been left this like open wound for bad actors
to swoop in and exploit. But that is a common
tactic of bad actors, trolls, extremists whoever, when conversations require
a little bit of like thoughtfulness or new ones, or
are just tough conversations to have, so folks don't really

(26:28):
have them. You can met that these trolls will step
in and hijack that conversation and exploit it for their
own means. In this case, their means we're making feminists
all look bad, and this is the backdrop against which
Fortune starts their end Father's Day campaign. So basically, trolls

(26:54):
on board Chane decide they want to pose as black
feminists and start the hashtag and Father's Day to make
it seem like black feminists and feminists more generally are
actually calling to an end to the holiday Father's Day.
The hashtag Solidarity is for White Women exposed all of
these rightly raw feelings and tensions between black and white feminists,

(27:16):
which we know are the perfect conditions for bad actors
to swoop in and inflame those very real, pre existing
tensions within a community. Their goal is to undermine solidarity
so that when those tensions are exposed like they were
with Solidarity Is for White Women, bad actors want to
deepen and exploit those tensions because what they really want

(27:37):
is chaos. They want people being distrustful of one another,
people not being able to reach common ground, or move
forward on any of those big issues that caused those tensions.
That's the goal. You know, if black women are appearing
to get on board with a hashtag as silly and
stupid as end Father's Day, maybe some of the white
women looking on are like, well, that's ridiculous, and they

(28:00):
they start thinking that some of the issues that these
black feminists are raising are also kind of ridiculous, and
maybe they start thinking that these black women are not
worth taking seriously and are not worth meaningfully centering in
their movement and in their activism. So you can really
see how bad actors can destabilize a whole community or
a whole movement through these tensions. So trolls on for

(28:23):
Chane decide that they're going to pose as black feminists
and try to start the end Father's Day hashtag to
make it look as though black feminists are actually genuinely
calling for an end to the holiday Father's Day. On June,
a Furtune user posts this to Fortune. Almost all cases
of domestic violence, domestic rave, child abuse, adultery, and discontent

(28:45):
in the home are caused by men i e. Fathers.
A holiday that celebrates this is another symptom in the
disease known as patriarchy, and it has no place in
a progressive society. This is a holiday celebrating misogyny, demanding
appreciation and gifts for doing what a father should be
doing anyway, especially when in almost all cases domestic abuse
stem from the father. Fathers all over the country are

(29:06):
refusing to pay alimony or child support, which should not
be celebrated and rewarded, but it should be shamed fathers.
They should not be about celebrating the role of fathers
in the family, but about correcting it. It should not
be celebrated in its current in its present form, we
are calling on all feminists and social justice warriors to
join us in a campaign to redefine this disgustingly misogynistic
holiday and Father's Day in its present form, if not entirely,

(29:30):
we will be descending on Twitter and Tumblr to get
this message out that the patriarchal holiday has no place
in our society. So that's all bullshit, right Like, this
was them, This was them trying to feed their fake campaign,
right Like, Like that is definitely not I mean, and
you could probably almost tell from the way that they've
written it it's not It's not commentary written in seriousness.

(29:53):
They're trying to mess with feminists and disrupt online feminist spaces.
I mean, there's zero logic and it all the idea
that because there is domestic abuse, then there are no
good fathers is such a wild and congruent leap that
it's it's wild that and it took off at all
even within this zone like group, Like, I don't know,

(30:16):
you think they want to think these things out a
little bit more and make um stick, you would think,
but but but I do think like you're onto something.
I think the reason why these fake campaigns can kind
of like have a little bit of stickiness even when
they're so ridiculous on their face, is because they tend
to follow this like very specific cycle who have these
accounts using abbey images of black women purporting to be

(30:39):
black women tweeting about this campaign, and then real social
media users start reacting to the hashtag, giving it more
reach and more visibility and helping it grow. Side note,
this is a great reason not to engage with hashtags
that you see popping up on Twitter that might look
a little bit sass. Another good example would be the
the Twitter trend hashtag hut for amber that was a

(31:01):
top trend earlier this year that was purporting to call
for Amber Heard supporters to self harm in the aftermath
of the verdict in the defamation trial that she had
against Johnny Depp or john against her happening. Oh my god.
So these trends can be like harmful. And what what
sometimes happens is that people who either are skeptical of

(31:25):
them or know that they're fake, will tweet using the hashtag,
calling it out or being like can you believe this?
And they might think that they're actually, you know, shedding
light on it, but by engaging with it, they're actually
just helping it grow. So whenever you see one of
those hashtags that you're like, this seems us, do not
engage with it, because nine times out of ten you're
just helping it get more visibility and helping it spread

(31:47):
to more people. So the next part of that cycle
is that it gets picked up in the pressed. In
this case, first it was smaller right wing blogs like
The Daily Caller who wrote about it, and then it
actually made its way to Fox News and they had
this to say about it. Let's start out as a joke,
but the hashtag end Father's Day is picking up steam

(32:09):
with feminists online and with others in social media. Tweets
like end Father's Day because it's a celebration of patriarchy
and oppression have been popping up all over the place.
Let's bring in Susan Patton, a k a. The Princeton Mom.
She gave notoriety for imploring young women to lock down
their future husbands while still in college. Remember this we
talked about this morning should be here Like some of

(32:31):
these tweets, here is from Tasha. She wrote, and everyone
knows we only need mothers. Why do we even need
Father's Day? Fathers are useless? Hashtag and oh come on
you more? Is this nasty feminist rhetoric that they're not
just interested in ending Father's Day of interesting ending men?
That's really what they want. It's absurd for them to
say that Father's Day is a creation of male oppression.

(32:54):
It's ridiculous. But why is for women? I mean, there's
a reason that there are more women living in poverty
now than it ain's time in my lifetime. Because there
if you, I mean, when you rush men, you hurt
women without a doubt. And we're obviously not talking about
celebrating the deadbeat dads are celebrating the men who abandoned
the family. We're talking about men who love their children,
who provide for their family, right. I think you get

(33:15):
the idea hate these people so many thoughts, Like first
of all, both of the tweets they pulled had egg abbeys,
which people get a life. One of them, I don't
remember the name, but it definitely started ana something and
it felt like somebody pulling a joke, which is nuts.

(33:37):
And the other thing, it's like I want to be like, gosh,
I wish Bill Hooks were alive and willing to go
on these shows. Should you give me like that's actually true.
When you crush men, you do her women, but not
for the reasons you're thinking. It's not about providing financially
for people that we're emotionally hurting men and we could
be doing better as a community, as a society. Ridiculous

(34:00):
and Joel very good eye because the the Twitter, the
tweet that they showed belonged to Twitter USERNA can't stop
who if you go to that Twitter profile now, oh wait,
you can't because it's been suspended because it was a
fake account. They showed someone who is a known troll
impersonating a black woman to create chaos and confusion on

(34:22):
social media platforms. They showed that tweet not knowing or
maybe I'm not even gonna say not knowing, not caring
to check to see whether or not that was an
actual person espousing their actual views to showing show and
pop up. I wonder if there's because some of these
people actually went to journalism school, and you wonder if

(34:42):
there's any like moment where there's just like deep regret
or concern or like they have to know that the
rest of the journalism community is just like beside themselves,
like what are you doing? Your one job is to
research and report facts, you fools? I mean, who has

(35:03):
who has time for deep regret when there's money to
be made? And you know what's interesting and I feel
like I should should really know is that I'm talking
about how this campaign was like sort of successful, but
I mean successful. You know, every person that I talked
to in my research, who was every black woman who
was involved in all of this, They really make it

(35:25):
clear that it was really people who were predisposed to
be suspicious of black women and feminists in general who
fell for this. So it wasn't not. Like when I
say it was effective, I mean effective specifically among people
who don't like black women are feminists and also have
platforms like thoughts News, And I I don't think that black
women because we're you know, we're a skeptical bunch. We're

(35:46):
like a like a we're you know, where we do
our due diligence as black women, we weren't the ones
who were being fooled. And I actually don't think this
campaign was necessarily meant to target us. I think this
campaign was meant to trick people like the folks at
bots News into amplifying it. So in that way it
was successful. I don't mean to say that like black
black women didn't fall for this, No, and we went

(36:08):
like the black community has some of those active fathers
as far as like directly direct involvement with children on
a day to day basis in America anyway, Like the
statistics are very clear, So it's always funky and pretty
noticeable when someone's like black dads are not around and
be like boo, sir, no, this is not the eighties.

(36:29):
And we're very aware of what's happening in our own
communities because we're part of them fools exactly and what
you just said, like like if if a black person,
if somebody who says they are a black person says
certain things on social media and then this makes you
kind of scratched your head and say are you really black?
Because I don't know that a black person would really
say that. That is exactly what kind of undid this

(36:52):
troll and Father's Day campaign. You know, if you've ever
seen somebody on social media pretending to be a black woman,
some ms will say things that are just off, well,
let's same things that just like don't make sense. Um.
In an interview that I did with Twitter user Safika Hudson,
she says that the big giveaway is how often these
people pretending to be black women bungled the linguistic construction

(37:14):
that we call the habitual be I see you nodding.
Are you familiar with the habitual will be? Yes? Yeah.
My My favorite little truism about the habitual will be
is that some linguists were doing studies on children and
they showed a bunch of white children a picture of
Cookie Monster and a picture of Oscar the Grouch, and

(37:35):
they and Oscar was eating cookies and cookie Monster wasn't
and so they asked who is eating cookies? And they
were like cookie monster. Even though that wasn't correct. They
showed black children the same question, and they asked who
is eating cookies and they were like Oscar the Grouch
And they were like, but who be eating cookies? And
they were like, oh, cookie monster. Of course, like they know.

(37:58):
And so all of these little nuances of black lived
experience and black identity. You really can't think that if
you have no proximity with blackness, and you really don't
know what you're talking about. And so all of these
black women were ended up reporting to Twitter that people
were pretending to be black feminists and using the platform
to try to so discord and confusion. But Twitter pretty

(38:20):
much didn't do anything. They were like okay and like
took no action. And so Shafika Hudson created a hashtag
called hashtag your slip is Showing to help weed out
these trolls pretending to be black women. Um, Joel, where
are you from? Geographically? Are you from the South? I'm
from Chicago. Okay, does the phrase your slip is Showing?

(38:42):
Does this mean anything to you? Yes, my folks did
come up from the Mississippi mind half feeling yes and
heard it as a child in church because I did
wear a slip under my dress in church because I
went to a Southern Baptist exactly. So if a black

(39:03):
Southern lady tells you, oh, your slip is showing, basically
what she's telling you is that you don't look as
put together as you think that you do. And that
is why Shefika Hudson used that phrase to weed out
these people posing as black women, right, like, you think
that you're coming off as a black woman, but actually
your hashtag, your slip is showing. She created a list

(39:26):
of Twitter users pretending to be black women, and some
of them were really really obvious, Like one of them
they they're avy image was of like well known black
podcaster Heaven negat To so like someone that people know,
just like really stupid. And I think, to me, the
fact that a regular Twitter user like Safika had to

(39:47):
take it upon herself to do this work like creating
a hashtag, creating a whole list that she added to
doing that labor of making Twitter a safer platform, despite
the fact that like she didn't work at Twitter, she
was doing it completely unpaid at a time when she
was actually between jobs. It says a lot to me
about the way that platforms like Twitter operate. You know,

(40:10):
shouldn't tech leaders at places like Twitter want their platforms
to be more secure. Shouldn't they be interested in not
having their platforms be places where bad actors can completely
hijack conversations? You know, it should not be up to
just regular black women like Shafika Hudson to do the
work of making Twitter safer. Yet time and time again

(40:32):
that labor, which is often unpaid and often dangerous work
falls on the shoulders of just regular black women because
the powers that be do nothing when we are harmed. Yeah,
it's absolutely shouldn't be anybody outside of getting a Twitter
paycheck responsibility to keep its users safe. That's foolish. But

(40:58):
capitalism being what it is is and these social media
spaces making money the way they do. I mean, even YouTube,
which has a pretty good system of like, here's how
we make money, here's how we pay out the users
who create content for us, still understands at the end
of the day, it's down to videos watched and ads consumed.
And because of that, I have no interest in people's

(41:21):
safety Because this sort of unrelegated wild West of post
what you want. Let's create a lot of hate, which
is going to hopefully create more comments. I mean, it's
it's weird because we're sort of seeing Netflix happ into
this too, where they create these shows that are like
mildly devised. If you think, like an Emily in Paris, right,
Emily in Paris has a pretty sackcast, but it didn't

(41:44):
cause that much to make. It's easy and fast to make,
so I can turn that out. And if you hate it,
all the better because when you hate watch it. At
least you're tweeting about it. At least you're giving that
show promotion. At least you're watching it. At least you're
spending more time on Netflix. And I think we're seeing
this throughout our internet landscape. You know, we're still in
the infancy of the internet, uh just by you know,

(42:05):
a lot of us grew up with me. I had
the Internet since I was like four or five. I
don't really recall a time without their being Internet access
available to me. And because of that, I think, to
a our degree, because our government has not stepped in
and decided to make any rules or structures or has
made very limited rules and structures for how the Internet
is to be used. I think we're just going to

(42:26):
keep conceiving these things until something like that, until there's
actual laws passed, because it's financially uh, people are financially
behooved to continue to allow this kind of negative reactions
and interactions. I could not have put that better myself,
and I think that at this point what we we
really the first step is we need to acknowledge the

(42:46):
way that this kind of hate as an engagement strategy
on social media platforms, one typically targets people who are
traditionally marginalized and to just keeps us all locked into
this same toxic engagement system of hate. The studies are
super clear that people who use social media are not happier.

(43:08):
It makes us all unhappy, and that social media algorithms
by design amplify content that makes us angrier, more polarized,
more divided, and less less informed. And so it's not
doing any of us any good. But I'll tell you
what it is doing. It is lining a lot of
people's pockets. And I don't want to create I don't

(43:28):
want us to have an Internet ecosystem and landscape where
it's a marketplace for our pain, right, Like, I don't
want our negative experiences to just be lining the pockets
of some asshole tech leader somewhere. We deserve so much better.
And the people, the young people who come behind us,
the next generation, they don't deserve to have, you know,
their negative experiences be weaponized and marketed and profited from

(43:53):
in this callous way. Like, we really need to think
about what kind of Internet landscape we want to have.
Do we want to have one that makes us more
informed and more thoughtful or one that allows people like
Elon Musk to add another fucking comma to their paycheck.
You know, I would argue, it's it's not that. Yeah,

(44:16):
it's hard too, because as much as I know I
should be avoiding the negative, you know, like on the
day that we're recording this, Drake dropped his new album
late last night, I think earlier this morning, and so
it has been a wave of black women being like
not you, going after Serena and Megan in the same
album You Fool, And it's hard not to instantly be like,
what's happening? Like gz Jake out here, Slandering black women

(44:40):
is number one? Like holding down fan base? What is
going on. You're like, you're probably just telling my voice,
like there's an actively engaging aspect about that, but I do.
But you're right when we continue to modify our own English. Really,
I mean even you can go pandemic days when we

(45:01):
were starting to see the beginnings of an uprising, uh
and at the very least activation of a lot of
black people in America. I mean, there's a time that's
pretty much all we or It felt like all we
were talking about was like black liberation in America and
the struggles to find it. It was dark and a challenge.
And I don't know the Internet as a tool, as

(45:23):
a mother would say, and you can use a tool
to help build something great and you can use a
tool to destroy. And I think we are struggling to
find a good balance between those two positions, just like snap.
So give it up for Joel's mom first of all,
because I had someone them. But I think you know,
I was reading the Drake stuff before I hopped out,

(45:45):
and I think it really shows that attacking black women
will always have an audience. If you trash black women
on the Internet, that will always be a winning engagement strategy.
And I think it's hell to engage because we have
to protect our cells. As you've just perfectly laid out,
we feel compelled to because if we don't know one
else is going to do it. Yeah, exactly, And yeah,

(46:09):
I think that we need to be honest about the
ways that massage, noire and and hate against the black
women has propped up our Internet landscape and really been
a feature, not a bug, that is at the heart
of engagement strategies for so many Internet platforms, and we're
not even being honest about it. Like you see it,
I see it. I feel it when I'm on the Internet.

(46:32):
I cannot help myself but to engage when a black
woman is being smeared in this way. And I know
that I am just a cog in this hate cycle,
this Internet hate machine that tells me that I have
to vocally support this black woman. But that's just another
engagement point that it's helping to amplify an ugly toxic

(46:54):
conversation that I know to humanize as us. It's like,
we are so locked into this fucked up cycle. I
ate it, and why I think we're all about to
figure out how we get off of it, just by
virtue of a new owner, which is sort of crazy
to think about, Like we maybe all should have made
this move much earlier, but it was hard. It's hard
to leave Twitter. There's a lot of comfort and a

(47:16):
lot of support there as almost as much as there is. Hey,
I'm gonna be really interested to see where black women
as a community, specifically this this corner of black women
wind up. Yeah, I'd be tumbler. And it's it's sad
because like black women and black people more broadly, like,
we make these platforms. Nobody was sucking showing up on

(47:36):
Twitter before Black Twitter, Like, we made these platforms cool
places to be and it amazing exactly, and here we
are feeling like we need but we're being pushed off
of these platforms. So so so let's talk about Elon Musk
and his ownership of Twitter, because I feel like it
just feels so this conversation we're having feel so timely.
You know, we're talking about this against the backdrop of

(47:58):
Elon Musk taking over Twitter and talking about making users
pay for verification. As we've talked about. I feel like
so much in this episode. Having a blue check mark
is not just a vanity thing. You know, it started
as a way to help users identify people that that
they actually were who they say they are. And this
is an extra level of security for people who were
at risk of being impers stated online. And we already

(48:21):
know from all the stuff I've talked about in this
episode that marginalized people are particularly at risk for being
impers stated online. We already know that this is a
thing that is used to create chaos on the part
of bad actors. And so you know, I got verified
on Twitter not because I'm like so great or this
and that. It was because in twenty sixteen, somebody was
using my picture, like a terrible picture of me from

(48:43):
LinkedIn to create a Twitter account essentially to like shoot
on Hillary Clinton. Not that I was something like huge
Hillary Clinton like person, but like clearly they just wanted
an image of a black woman who would say things
about Hillary Clinton. Right, And so we already know this
is a huge issue on Twitter, and it kind of
seems like a bad idea to overhaul this one tool

(49:05):
that we have to combat it via verification. And it
also seems like a really bad idea to do this
when you've like gutted your staff days away from an election,
the staff whose job it is to make the platform
a little bit safer. Um. You mentioned the Twitter thread
by the actor Robert Kazynski earlier, and I really really

(49:25):
appreciated um what he had to say. He writes years ago,
before verified accounts were a thing. Back when I was
on East Enders, I was contacted multiple times by parents
of children who had been conversing with me online. Eleven
and fifteen year old children who had been talking with
the fake me. I was informed that one of these
children went missing. I didn't have social media at the time.

(49:47):
I didn't understand it. It's a horror show. For years,
people pushed for some way to root out the fakes.
There was a phase, if you remember, of people posting
images of themselves with their U r L. I did
that on every side. I could find Facebook, my Space,
b boot anything. I felt powerless to stop people using
my face and name a scam or groom people. That's
why verification came to be, because it was important to

(50:07):
protect people. It wasn't for cloud or for leveraging money
from a platform. It was to protect people from utter scumbags.
I think that perhaps in the age of social media,
there are some CEOs who may have forgotten the importance
of protecting people or having trustworthy sources. I don't tweet much.
I'm scared of the Internet. I struggle with a lot
of things in life. But this account exists so that

(50:28):
fake accounts can't. If Elon Musks removes that simple ability
to protect people, to protect children with verification, then this
company is dead in the water. I don't know if
it's been expressed to him. I doubt he will see
this thread, but I hope someone is explaining to Elon
Musk the actual dangers to children and the vulnerable and
why removing that protection is an action that will lead
directly to children being endangered. Verification is a public service.

(50:51):
It is a good deed performed by companies who contribute
very little good to the world. In my opinion, we
should be making easier, clearer paths to verification for everyone,
not making it harder. It is their responsibility, not a
business model, and I really identified with that because it
shouldn't be a business model. It should be a base
responsibility for you know, one of our largest communication platforms

(51:14):
in the fucking world. And what's worse, you know, as
we're about to have an election, one that you know
officials have already warned, is an election where we could
see political violence, violence at the polls, blowing up verification
and having users be able to pay eight dollars to
be verified after gutting half of your staff. I think

(51:35):
it could create a disaster in terms of people being
able to depend on our communications platform to get information
about the election. Uh. And I would just also just add, like,
I think that bad actors are going to continue using
this as a tactic, you know, impersonating people, gamifying platforms
via importonation. And I also think that, like we know

(51:57):
that folks can really steer and dominate and hijack national conversations.
You know, if you look back at amidst the mobilizations
for Racial justice and Twitter announced that a fake account
at antifa underscore US that was yeah, that was called
for violence was actually run by the white supremacist group
Is it identity Europa? Is how you say it? I

(52:20):
think I think it's Europa who cares. It's one of
the most active white supremacist groups in the US. From
nineteen and so this was during the height of like protests.
Intention This account tweeted Alert Tonight's Tonight Comrades, Tonight, we
say funk the city, we move into residential areas, the
white hoods, and we take what's ours hashtag black Lives

(52:42):
Matter hashtagu America and Twitter has confirmed that this was
not the only account that they booted off of the
platform for impersonating racial justice like demonstrators. Uh. Donald Trump
Junior tweeted absolutely insane with a screenshot at that tweet.
Just remember what Antifa really is a terrorist organization. They're

(53:03):
not even pretending anymore. And this was the same I
think that's like the same day that Trump basically blamed
Antifa scare quotes for violence that you know, for like
violence during protests, and you know, I just think back
to that, and I think, how long did we have
to endure this ridiculous news cycle about like law and

(53:25):
or violence and like, it is very concerning that extremists
are successfully able to dominate the national dialogue of like
what our convert what the conversation is, Uh, just by
using these tactics on Twitter that Twitter is aware of.
I would say that are if bad actors can hijack

(53:45):
our communication platforms in that way, these platforms are not
secure and they're not safe, and they're not really serving us.
It was super crazy. So like, historically this is the call, right,
Like they clearly know their audience, which is like, how
do scare white people? You know, no person of color
is using the term white hood. First of all, unless

(54:07):
we're referring to KKK members like, oh, this is the
white hood. I was like, are you out of your mind?
The second of all, we understand clearly as as black
people in America that white people have this natural fear
that white that black people are going to retaliate and
create like white slavery. It's a it's a narrative. We've
heard a lot. It's how a lot of lynchings take place.

(54:30):
I mean, we can look as far back as him
until and the fact that he whistled at a white woman,
and that was considered a threat because the twelve year
old boy whistled, whistled a thing we know didn't happen
at a white woman. And so for them to tap
all the way back into that fear even today on
social media, to say, hey, they're going to come into
your neighborhoods and like shake things up, it's it's frustrating

(54:53):
and kind of horrifying to still think about just your
your blackness, just your presence being a threat. And again,
you know, as we've been articulating throughout the episode, every
time that's stated, it's it causes us to have to
be extra defensive, extra alert for ourselves and for our
direct community, because we don't know who's going to take again,

(55:16):
just our presence as a threat and then act on
that threat. Exactly. I think it was Tony Morrison who
said that the business of racism is like creating a
situation where you can't get anything done because you're so
busy defending yourself and defending your blackness and defend like
showing up defensive, but you then can't do the good
work that you want to do. You can't put your

(55:36):
your energy towards something else. And I think that's exactly
what is happening here, that these bad actors and trolls
and extremists are able to create the conditions where folks
like you and me, just like regular black folks, are
put in a situation where we have to constantly be
defending ourselves against the backdrop of a complete fabrication. Right
like a black activists didn't tweet that a white suprematist did,

(55:59):
and so I'm having to offend myself against something I
guess a caricature that a white supremacist dreamed up on
my behalf that I had nothing to do with. Yeah,
and then we see the real life percussions, not only
so not only the emotional and mental toil online, but
then you know, when we're out in the streets protesting
for our goddamn lives, then all of a sudden again

(56:20):
just our presidence of being in the street, even if
the peaceful protests, it's abots to be the difference in
police presence. Where I went to the women's march where
too many people hit on that stupid pussy hat. Uh,
the police presidence, they're soups calm, just lots of daughters
hanging out, totally fine. Whatever. Two. If you know, if
you were at any of the early Black Lives matters rallies,

(56:42):
if you marched for George Floyd or anything like that,
you saw us start difference and how you were just
being treated for doing the exact same action. And I
think a lot of it is like this year mongering
that we saw on social media spilling into real life.
And that is kind of my point. These are sent
aative conversations that involve very real hot button issues that

(57:04):
are super raw for many of us, and the fact
that our social media platforms are so easily exploited and
hijacked by extremists and bad actors to completely derail these
conversations is a problem with very big implications. In the
case of End Father's Day, many of the people reporting
on it, you know, journalists, they talked about it like

(57:25):
the four controls behind the hoax were just joking, you know,
just trolling. But black feminists they knew it wasn't a
joke because they could see what was at stake, and
they could probably see down the line what was going
to happen next. When it comes to online harms, it's
always marginalized people who are harmed. First. First, it's error problem,
and nothing is done because nobody takes black women seriously,

(57:47):
and then it is everyone's problem. Back in it was
just destabilizing black feminist online spaces through impersonating black folks
on Twitter with hoaxes like end Father's Day, and then
about a year or two later, it's gamer Gate. Then
it was bad actors using that same tactic in an
attempt to sway the presidential election. It's hijacking, and in

(58:10):
flaming national conversations around protest, race crime, and policing. And
by the time folks are listening to this episode, it
will be election day. Elon Musk is blowing up verification
on Twitter and gutting the teams that actually exist on
the platform to try to make some kind of headway
into making those platforms safer. So what's next? Where does

(58:34):
it end? Jabel? Thank you so much for being here.
Where can folks follow all the amazing stuff that you've
got going on? Pretty? Thank you so much for having me.
This is really lovely and I'm so excited about this show.
Thank you. Folks can follow me all over the internet. Actual, Moniqu,
I don't know if I be on Twitter anymore, so
we're expanding on the internet as well. Anique, It's j
O E L L E M O N I q

(58:56):
u E. If you find me on Instagram. I got
there too late, so there's an underscore between the two names.
But please come come find me on all I'm on
on on the discords, the Masodons, try Sarah tops all
of them now, just looking for a new home. If
you like a social media space that's mostly word based,
hit me up and tell me about it. I'll try it.
I am, I need the outlet. I love it. Thank

(59:18):
you for being here. I think that's it. So yeah,
I'll do this week on Internet Hate Machine. Joe will
be appreciate you. I appreciate you, guys, so be so
good to see your face and hopefully I'll talk to
you you definitely about next anything you need the answer? Yes,
all right, thank you girl. You have a good one.
Bye guys. Internet Hate Machine is a production of Cool

(59:44):
Zone Media. But more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Check
out our website cools on media dot com, or find
us on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.