the Black TikTok strike of 2021

In the summer of 2021, hundreds of Black TikTokers went on strike and demanded proper credit and compensation for dances they made famous. Why? Because, the most famous TikTokers of the pandemic, white teens Charli D'Amelio and Addison Rae, had become extremely famous off of Black choreographers Jalaiah Harmon, Keara Wilson, and others' work -- a continuation of age-old appropriation and theft. Jamie talks with Savage dance creator Keara Wilson, commentator Amanda Bennett, and algorithmic scientist Meredith Broussard to take a closer look at the impact of this moment, and how social media is designed to amplify racism.

Follow Keara Wilson here: https://www.tiktok.com/@keke.janajah?lang=en

Follow Amanda Bennett here: https://defineandempower.com/our-team

Buy Meredith's book here: https://meredithbroussard.com/books/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Two summers ago, I went to a work function. Now
I may never know why that work function was a
private screening of the twenty twenty two Baz Luhrmann film Elvis.
I may never know, but it was, and I think
about it a lot. Now, if you like this movie,
I don't care. If you don't like this movie, I
do not care. I didn't like it. But there's a

(00:27):
moment in this movie that got a really big reaction.
In this Elvis biopic, directed by a white Australian weirdo,
there is a moment where Elvis's manager, Colonel Tom Parker
played by Tom Hanks, first hears a young Elvis on
the radio. As this movie takes comical measures to note,
Elvis was mainly influenced by black blues artists like Big Boy,

(00:51):
Crewed Up and Big Mama Thornton, and that's reflected in
his entire discography. In the scene, Tom Hanks as Colonel
Parker is shocked to hear that Elvis is white. If
you spend too much time online, you've probably seen this.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Now they are not putting a colored boy on the
hay Ride.

Speaker 4 (01:09):
That's a thing. It is white.

Speaker 5 (01:16):
Is white?

Speaker 6 (01:17):
What do you think tex Arcadam, shall we play for
the twenty seven time?

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Why?

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Like I love mulin rouge, but applying the mulin rouge
approach to systemic racism, I don't love it. It has
to be camp or it's just depressing. So this whole
movie has a distinct mission to dispel persistent rumors that
Elvis's career was built on uncredited black music, far more
than it has any interest in actually writing a black

(01:47):
character Goofy example. But this scene is the inciting incident
of the movie, seeing a white artist co opting black
music and seeing that as a huge marketing opportunity. And
while Elvis is a very famous example of this phenomenon,
he was far from the first or last white artist
to be catapulted to success over his black peers, actively

(02:09):
profiting from their innovations music that's to this day considered
pioneering from white artists. Have this same narrative. Led Zeppelin
demonstrably stole a lot from black artists. They were heavily
influenced by American blues music. For what they did right
then at different times plagiarized Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Howland
Wolf and for what it's worth, plenty of white musicians

(02:32):
as well, the Beach Boys and the Beatles lifted from
Chuck Berry. The list goes on. And while the idea
of music authorship and what constitutes a reasonable copyright lawsuit
is an extremely complicated one that doesn't always make room
for influence or the recent rise in pretty ridiculous music
copyright legal cases, but I'm giving examples that I find undeniable.

(02:55):
And to compound that, the power dynamic of white artists
lifting from black artartists means that the white artist always
has a significantly better shot at financial success on something
that wasn't originally theirs, regardless of what their interpretation does
or does not add to the original material. This same
process took place in the do wop scene in the

(03:17):
nineteen fifties. Black groups like the Rivingtons would write a
song like I have to read this, Please Don't Love
at Me Papa Ooma Mau Mau paaaa Ma Ma Ma
Ma Ma, which Family Guy fans will know was popularized
by a white group covering the song as the trash
Men's Surf and bird.

Speaker 7 (03:39):
Butt Ma Ma Map Button Map.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Because very few people complained when white artists did steal
like this, and it was far easier to get them
on the radio. All of these groups failed to credit
or compensate the artists that they took from outside of
sometimes acknowledging their influences in interviews. Artists have been at
the forefront of so many artistic movements, only to have

(04:04):
those innovations borrowed or stolen by white artists who had
more institutional support put behind them. While being a poor imitation,
it's one of the many tentacled extensions of white supremacy.
Oh you thought I was going to bring up white
supremacy in the first five minutes of the show, Well,
think again. And this oppression continues to take shape in

(04:24):
today's social media algorithms, because who's making these algorithms, According
to the twenty twenty three Diversity report from Tech Report,
still mostly Yeah, they're white and they are he At present,
only about a quarter of the massive tech industry consists
of women, and only seven percent of the tech industry

(04:47):
are black. So this week we're looking at a few things.
There's major precedent in a creative space for theft from
black artists, and the way the internetworks right now, it
enables white artists to do that which brings me to TikTok.

Speaker 5 (05:07):
Brother, this guy steaks.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Now, everybody stop booing me. Give Auntie Jamie a fair
shake here, okay. TikTok, the app where one of the
most notorious examples of algorithms passing over black creators, came
to a head in the summer of twenty twenty one.
By this time, TikTok was growing fast after first being

(05:31):
introduced in the US from China back in twenty seventeen.
It was already ridiculously popular among young people, but the
COVID lockdown in twenty twenty brought the app into the
mega mainstream, introducing a million little subgenres where you could
become a micro influencer. But what TikTok was best known
for at this time were viral dances. These dances tended

(05:54):
to be really short, they were designed to be performed
to your phone camera, and they would almost always be
paired with either a song from a huge artist or
an obscure song that happened to be really danceable, which
could vault a random musician into the mainstream. The problem
was where was the credit you, as a TikTok user,
could choreograph a dance that a pop star would perform,

(06:16):
but there was no place in the app for the
choreographer's name. And so all that appropriative failure to credit
and music that we just talked about that applies to
dance too. White choreographers have stolen from black choreographers forever.
It's the plot of bring it on, guys, Like every
time we get some here, y'all come trying to steal it,
pins some blonde hair on it and calling it something different.

(06:39):
We've had the best squad around for years, but no
one's been able to see what we can do. In
the first story of sixteenth Minute, where we talked with
and about the Dodson siblings of Hide Your Kids, Hide
Your Wife Fame, I spoke with Professor Gabriel Peoples, whose
upcoming book Go and Viral Uncontrollable Black Performance explores how
blackness is expressed and interpreted online and I love asking

(07:01):
guests what other stories they'd like to see covered on
the show someday, and Professor Peebles did not hesitate.

Speaker 8 (07:07):
How fucking bleak is it that in twenty ten there
was more attribution that still wasn't sufficient than over ten
years later, where there was no attribution and no, like nothing,
I don't have anything intelligent to say about it.

Speaker 5 (07:22):
I just found it depressing.

Speaker 6 (07:24):
Well, you know, we can say her name, right, Juliah Harmon, Yeah,
yea yeah. So it's like we bring attention to things
when we interact with things. If you don't like it
or you don't press play, that is almost like one
of the easiest but also like most significant things you
could do in terms of things going.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Viral or not. Julia Harmon, the Renegade Dance, and the
Black TikTok Strike, it's a cultural moment that's top of
mind for a lot of Internet historians because of its
clear moral stand in the middle of hell. It's a
story of using the Internet to organize to make artist
names known, and not just Julia Harmon, but other choreographers

(08:04):
like Kiara Wilson, Maya Johnson, Chris Cotter, the list goes on.
Because when it became clear that the algorithm and the
media were not going to properly credit these black choreographers
work on TikTok, they went on strike, the Black TikTok
Strike of twenty twenty one. Your sixteenth minute begins now.

Speaker 4 (08:44):
Sixteen.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Welcome back. We have our first TikTok story on the
show today, So start shaking in your tiny little boots
if you're outside Leonardo DiCaprio's fuck range. The character, or
rather the moment that we're covering this week is the
Black TikTok strike in summer twenty twenty one, and it's
the sort of subject that requires quite a bit of

(09:35):
context because the reason that the Black TikTok strike was
significant is deeply entrenched, not just an Internet history, but
history history. So return with me, and I'm so sorry
to June twenty twenty one. While many in the US
are getting their first COVID vaccines, others are in full
blown denial and believe that none of it was real,

(09:57):
which ends great for them. The FBI w the general
public that QAnon followers could engage in quote unquote real
world violence, and if there's anyone that knows about real
world violence, I mean, I guess it's the FBI. And
I am desperately hoping that m Night Scheimelin's Old will
come to the drive in theater nearest my apartment because
it's the funniest idea for a movie that I've ever heard.

(10:20):
And the Black TikTok strike takes place, and by this
time TikTok had become a major cultural force. Everything I
talked about today was also talked about on TikTok. Why
you should get your COVID vaccine, Why you shouldn't get
your COVID vaccine, Why old is the funniest idea for

(10:41):
a movie anyone's ever had. But twenty nineteen to twenty
twenty one era TikTok was truly all about dance videos. Theoretically,
if you could choreograph a short dance to a new
song and it caught on, your account could blow up overnight.
This wouldn't just be great for users looking to build
an audience, it also quickly became an important facet of

(11:01):
the music industry, because if you can engineer a song
that's a hit on TikTok, you're well on your way
to making it to the Billboard charts and then in CVS.
In ten years, TikTok was considered to be a new
and distinct social media platform, but it did bring in
a lot of elements that people liked from other apps.
You could find a truncated deep dive or beauty content

(11:23):
like on YouTube. The app's algorithm tended to hook on
to bad sketch comedy like on Vine, and it connected
with music unlike any app before it had. But even
though it was unique, a familiar pattern in who became
famous on TikTok quickly emerged. While black creators were frequently
choreographing in the dances that would become most popular, the

(11:45):
big success stories suddenly making millions were young white TikTokers
names like Charlie Demilio and Addison Ray, White teenagers who
have gone on to have successful mainstream careers, owed much
of their early dominance to the choreography they were performing,
and they routinely failed to credit choreographers as their audiences

(12:07):
continued to grow in the millions. And while seeming like
perfectly nice people, I'm not here to bullyeve people who
were kids at the time, Both of them expressed some
bafflement as to why they had become famous dancing on
TikTok over anybody else. Charlie said this to mel magazine
in twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
I wish I could give everyone an explanation as to
what happened, but I have no idea. I'm just doing
what I do every day and posting it I guess
it's very insane to me, as it is for everyone
else watching.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
And this was also baffling to the black choreographers making
the dances. Lack of credit is something that's affected choreographers
of all backgrounds for a long time. I didn't know
this before doing research for this episode, but copywriting a
dance is notoriously difficult, and there's really only been ways
to do it in the United States since around the
nineteen seventies. In this case, the issue is compounded with

(13:03):
who the TikTok algorithm favored. A report from The Intercept
in March twenty twenty featured TikTok employee whistleblowers saying that
they were asked to filter people out considered quote unquote
unattractive or who appeared to live in poverty. And on
top of that, TikTok just isn't built to credit choreographers
in the way it's built to credit musicians. But that's

(13:25):
not to say that things are much better on the
musician side. TikTok, like Spotify, gives its artists the rough
mathematical figure of peep and poop poo when it comes
to royalties, But the bare minimum here is that the
artist's name and song are listed every time they're used.
Not so for choreographers, even when that might be the

(13:46):
main draw of the video in the first place. And
at the time Demilio was becoming famous late twenty nineteen,
there were little to no common practices among users to
credit people that the app didn't already do automatically, which
could that by the time a dance got popular enough
to make it into your feed, it might be extremely
difficult to figure out who had done the original choreography,

(14:09):
even if you wanted to. So how do we get
from TikTok becoming one of the fastest growing apps in
the world pre pandemic to the black TikTok strike of
summer twenty twenty one. You've got to understand the most
prominent story that led up to this the story of
a black teenage creator who demanded credit for her own choreography,
Julia Harmon, who Professor Peoples mentioned, there's.

Speaker 9 (14:30):
A superstar Jelaiah Harmon we bow in her presence, wow,
the original creator of the Renegade.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
If you don't know Julia's name, you've definitely seen her
most famous work, the Renegade Dance, probably the most famous
dance to ever blow up on TikTok that was first
choreographed by her back in September twenty nineteen. Julia, who
was then only fourteen years old and living in the
suburbs of Atlanta, was the daughter of two educators and
was a prolific dancer, lessons, competing and generally just being

(15:02):
a kid. She choreographed a dance for TikTok to the
song Lottery by k Camp and called it the Renegade Dance. Okay,
I'm going to include like three seconds of the song
so that you can remember what it sounded like. Please
nobody sue me that song. If you were on the internet,
it was inescapable and she didn't even post it to

(15:24):
TikTok the first time she shared it. There's a documentary
series that was made about Julia in twenty twenty one
from director Kayla Johnson where Julia talks about the day
that the Renegade Dance was first posted. And on one hand,
it was something that she was doing for fun, but
she's got a strategy here too. She's very much a
kid of the Internet and knows that dances and posts

(15:45):
don't always take off on the first try.

Speaker 10 (15:47):
So the first day I created Renegue, it was just
a normal day for me. I come home from school,
I was getting ready for a dance class that day,
and I have found this song called Lottery on somebody
else's page, and I just thought it was a really
cool song to make a dance too, So I just decided.

Speaker 5 (16:03):
I was like, sure, why not.

Speaker 10 (16:05):
After I created the dance, I sent it to my
friend on Instagram and I told her to learn it
so we could do it as like a collapse, and
I put our videos together on like a little posting
and so I posted it on Instagram.

Speaker 5 (16:18):
First.

Speaker 10 (16:18):
It really didn't go viral. I really wasn't on TikTok.
I was more so on Instagram. As it went to TikTok,
it got viral on TikTok and I didn't even know.

Speaker 5 (16:27):
But then I was just like laying in my bed
one morning and.

Speaker 10 (16:30):
I saw that everybody was doing this dance and at
first I wasn't sure that it was mine because they
weren't doing the right one. So I was like, Okay,
maybe it's really not. But like it was like two
maybe two or three people that actually did it the
right way, and I was like Okay, yeah, this is
my dance, so like I need credit.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
And once the dancers cross posted to TikTok, it blows
up quickly. It was Julia's dance. Everyone was doing and
anybody who was anybody at the time was doing it.
Mainstream celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Lizzo now canceled. Internet
celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Lizzo. The list goes on. Now,
for those of you who live under a rock, I

(17:11):
hope you're well and I envy you. And just so
you know, what Julia just described is how TikTok generally
worked for choreographers at this time. Find a song you like,
post your dance, and hope the algorithm swallows it into
its big, gaping hr Geiger mouth. And while the algorithm
sometimes boosts content for indiscernible reasons, it's really easy to

(17:33):
understand why the renegade dance took off. It's really fucking cool,
and Julia is trained in five styles of dance, but
in the algorithm, what takes this dance to the next
level are the then it girls of TikTok, Charlie d'milio
and Addison Ray my.

Speaker 11 (17:48):
TikTok name is Charlie d'milio, Dixie dmilio, Addison r E.

Speaker 4 (17:53):
I mean, get with it, guys, get on TikTok, follow
these ladies.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
So the Renegade Dance is a hit.

Speaker 10 (17:58):
But Jua continues, they weren't tagging me when they did
the dance. They either weren't tagging you, no, or they
were tagging Charlie. When I saw that, I started comming
a hunred people's post, like hey my nance, Hey does
my nance? Can't give me credit.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Once Charlie performs the Renegade Dance in October twenty nineteen,
it causes the dance to take off even more, but
Charlie is repeatedly mistakenly credited for having choreographed it, something
that she and her team do not seem to be
in a rush too correct. It's unclear whether Charlie and
because Charlie was a kid, her parents and as soon
to be signed agents at United Talent knew who they

(18:38):
were ripping off when they built a massive career off it.
But before you knew it, Charlie was being called the
CEO of Renegade and was performing in a Super Bowl
commercial for Zionist Thomas. Here's Charlie teaching her sister Dixie
the Renegade dance back in January twenty twenty, without crediting
Juleia or even the musician.

Speaker 5 (18:57):
I taught my sister how did do Renegade?

Speaker 12 (18:59):
So I'm such a good dancer, but I'm just gonna
let her teach me so.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Julia's parents weren't Internet natives and didn't really get why
she was upset for the lack of credit, which left
the teenager on her own at first, but by the
time these videos with Charlie and Dixie were coming out
at the beginning of twenty twenty, the rest of the
extremely online were starting to get as frustrated as Julia
was for the Damelio's failure to credit her. Barry Siegal,

(19:27):
who was the head of content at a now defunct
video sharing platform called Dubsmash, reached out to Julia to
confirm that she was Renegade's original creator. When she confirmed that,
Siegel asked her if she'd want to speak to someone
from The New York Times. That's someone was friend of
this very show, Taylor Lorenz Twist, and once the mainstream
media showed up, it clicked for Jelia's family. Their daughter

(19:49):
was very right to be pissed off, and the failure
of other TikTokers to credit her work was cheating her
out of what could be a massively lucrative career online.
Because look, Earley's account was primarily full of other people's dances,
and it hadn't prevented her, a wealthy white teenager from Connecticut,
from going from less than a million followers in the
summer of twenty nineteen to fifty million followers in April

(20:13):
twenty twenty, and it translated those numbers on TikTok to
millions of dollars in the bank. White creators and their
teams were discovering, performing and profiting from black creators work,
and the entertainment industry took their teeny tiny little sunglasses
off and said, what And while they made a shitload
of money and they're very much fine, are lesser side

(20:36):
casualties of this story of algorithmic and entertainment money greed.
Because no, they weren't great dancers. But in the internet's
classic way, there became a corner of TikTok where you
could rack up millions of views mocking these girls while
they were still kids. But these kids and their families
and their agents were making bank off of all of it,

(20:57):
all while Julia Harmon remained invisible to the mainstream until
February twenty twenty, the profile of Jelaia in The Times,
as well as a Vox piece from earlier that month
by Rebecca Jennings that examined how viral dances were nearly
impossible to get copyrighted, finally sparked a public demand for
her work to be acknowledged. After months of effort, the

(21:18):
girl from Atlanta finally had a massive platform to advocate
for herself. In the Times piece, Lorenz talked to Julia
about her struggle to be heard while continuing life as
a normal kid, and expanded on how the lack of
crediting practices on TikTok often pushed already marginalized creators out
of the picture entirely. Jelaia's profile immediately sparked an internet

(21:41):
wide discussion about the erasure of black artists and how
easy these platforms made it to not credit anyone at all.
In her interview, Julia said she wasn't upset with Charlie,
She just wanted credit and the Damelio's publicist caught wind.
Charlie responded, I know.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
It's associated with me, but I'm so happy to give
Julaiya credit and I'd love to collaborate with her.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Thanks Charle. According to her publicist, Charlie hadn't known who
would choreographed the dance that she was performing during the
largest period of growth in her accounts and TikTok's history.
Why didn't anyone check? Okay? Jamie's stay focused? Two days later,
on February fifteenth, the NBA Slam Dunk Contest happens in Chicago,

(22:23):
and there were TikTokers who were announced to be attending
the game, Charlie and Dixie Demilio and Addison Ray.

Speaker 4 (22:30):
I'm ready to make a lot of content with a
lot of new people.

Speaker 5 (22:33):
I mean, I'm with two of some of.

Speaker 9 (22:35):
The best TikTokers there are, so I'm excited to just
make a bunch of pre a lot of dancing, maybe
try some new stuff.

Speaker 13 (22:41):
You know.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
This appearance happened so close to Julia's feature in the
Times that people online were pissed, and rightfully so, because
at the game and in content posted by the TikTokers
and the NBA, the Renegade dance was featured without credit.
Then on February sixteenth, the actual NBA All Star Game.

(23:02):
Just a quick aside, it took me so long to
figure out how All Star Weekend works. I don't care. Anyways,
it appeared that someone at the NBA had done their
research because Julia Harmon was announced as a guest at
the game to perform her original choreography, and on that
same day, she posted a collab TikTok with Charlie and Addison. So,

(23:24):
after months of regularly performing Julaia's work, Charlie posts a
TikTok of herself, Addison Ray, and Julia Harmon performing Renegade
together and not for nothing, Julaia is doing laps around them. Anyways,
here's the caption.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Guys, I would love to introduce you to at underscore period.
XO x LAII. I'm so happy that she's able to
teach me the original choreography that she made.

Speaker 5 (23:48):
She is the best.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
This move is generally well received, though some don't hesitate
to call it out for what it appeared to be.
The NBA and celebrity TikTokers realizing in the eleventh to
do right by Julia, only after a New York Times
profile and a wave of public outrage had encouraged them
to do so. Nevertheless, Jalaya performed Renegade at the NBA

(24:13):
All Star Game solo. She was great, It was awesome,
and it finally sent her up for some of the
cloud that she had been owed for nearly five months
at that point. Later that week, she appeared on Ellen.
Her TikTok followers spiked to over two million by April,
and the twenty twenty one documentary got put into production.
As far as the media was concerned, that was that

(24:34):
Julia had asked for her credit, She'd received it, and
the world had moved on, and so did the TikTok
celebrities she had collaborated with, moving on to careers in
reality TV and CVS music.

Speaker 5 (24:46):
Hey guys, guess what, we have a new show on Hulu.
Find now what our lives are really like behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
After February twenty twenty, things got really awesome. The year
was shaped by global tragedy, a curse to American election,
and a major reckoning with race in America, particularly with
the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer. This was
also a moment for racial reckoning on TikTok, creators called
the platform out for content suppression that may, and TikTok

(25:14):
issued an apology saying.

Speaker 14 (25:17):
We acknowledge and apologize to our black creators and community
who have felt unsafe, unsupported, or suppressed. We don't ever
want anyone to feel that way. We welcome the voices
of the black community wholeheartedly.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
But by early twenty twenty one, the common consensus was
that the tweaks to the algorithm and the diversity of
the staff was not moving the needle enough. Twenty twenty
into twenty twenty one had also been a major moment
for labor discussions online, particularly after so many were unable
to work with lockdown restrictions in place and governmental assistance

(25:53):
in the US being merely impossible to come by in
a sustainable way, and so a number of people were
motivated to say, what the fuck? Why would I show
up for a labor system that has not shown up
for me. This prompted a series of strikes in the West,
rent strikes, tuition strikes, workers' strikes, and workers organizing in
industries where unions had either dissolved or decreased in power.

(26:16):
In the last several decades among young people, the promise
of unionization became more prominent than I'd ever seen in
my lifetime. I got so into unionizing that I fucked
a guy in the union. Around the same time that
the Great Resignation took place, workers were voluntarily leaving their
jobs in huge numbers early in twenty twenty because of
how poorly their employers had treated them in terms of safety, wages,

(26:39):
and benefits during the pandemic, and let's be honest, way before.
So by spring twenty twenty one, the conversations around race
and labor among young people had been on a steady uptick,
and a lot of demonstration had been organized either online
or in person using the Internet. It's literally one of
the only things that's good for that and listening to

(27:01):
my little podcast. So this would be an exceptionally bad
time for Addison Ray to perform a bunch of TikTok
dancers on Jimmy fallon that March right, to perform dances
without giving credit while promoting her pivot to pop music.

Speaker 15 (27:16):
Right right, Addison performed dances to songs like Corvette, Corvette Up, Savage,
Laffy Taffy, and more. All of those dances we just
named were choreographed by black creators. So people took to
Twitter to write things like the fact that Addison Ray
is champion for TikTok dancers whilst the black creatives that
made them and never get the same platform. Will never

(27:37):
sit right with me, and this is what white privilege
looks like. Black creators innovate dances and do them amazingly,
but Addison Ray gets invited on Fallon to perform them
in a who hum way. She's not racist, Fallon's not racist,
but somehow the black dancers are erased even though they
dance better.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
Right. That clip is from Clever News, by the way,
because I credit people just a year after being fronted
about it the first time. Not only a failure on
the Addison Ray side, a huge failure on the Jimmy
Fallon side. She's the face of the problem, but it's
a problem of many faces. And the Fallon team caught
on to that because after this wave of criticism, the

(28:15):
description on the YouTube upload of this clip, which to
no one surprise no longer exists, now suddenly included links
to the original choreographer's TikTok accounts. Uh huh uh huh
uh huh. The online outrage was so intense that both
Addison and Fallon had to respond. Addison Ray apologized when
confronted by Human Devil's TMZ.

Speaker 11 (28:37):
I think they were all credited in the original YouTube posting,
but it's kind of hard to credit during the show.
But they all know that I love them so much,
and I mean I support all of them so much,
and hopefully one day we can all meet up and
dance together.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
And Jimmy Fallon responded by inviting the creators of the
dances that Addison had performed on his next show.

Speaker 16 (29:00):
On our last show before break, we did a bit
with Addison Ray where she taught me eight viral TikTok dances.
Now we recognize that the creators of those dances deserve
to have their own spotlight. So right now, some of
the creators will join me to talk about how their
dance went viral and then perform the dance themselves.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
See Bullying Works. Fallon brings on over Zoom. Unfortunately, choreographers Maya,
Nicole Johnson and Chris Carter of the Updance, Dorian Scott
of the Corvette Corvette Dance, Flyboy Fu and Indy of
the Laffy Taffy Dance, Greg Dahl, Adam Snyder and Nate
Nail of the Blinding Lights Dance, and Kiara Wilson of

(29:38):
the Savage Dance, which was wonderful for these creators but
understandably did not win a lot of trust back. The
fact that this slip had happened made it clear that
it would very likely happen again, and so in June
twenty twenty one, a number of black TikTokers announced they
were going on indefinite strike. User capin Ken Knuckles said

(29:59):
in a no longer available video, for all my melanated
brothers and sisters of the African diaspora, we are on strike.
We are not making a dance for thoughtshit. We're just
going to let them keep flailing. It just shows how
much you need us to make a dance, because on
the app there was a need for a TikTok dance.
On June eleventh, Megan thee Stallion released thought Shit, a
song literally designed to dominate TikTok, But when black choreographers

(30:23):
agreed to not feed a dance into the algorithm that
their white counterparts would take to fallon and half ass
apologize for later, no strong trend emerged all while the
black TikTok strike tag racked up over six million views
and in mainstream media this became a pretty big story.
It was on the nightly news. Kenyon Lee or Kenti
dot Heaven on TikTok, was a participant and organizer in

(30:45):
the strike and spoke to ABC News shortly after the
strike was first announced.

Speaker 7 (30:49):
Them going in creating these challenges under these sounds, like
help those sounds get boosted into the algorithm and.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
If its native.

Speaker 12 (30:56):
Kenyon Lee is a viral content creator and computer science major.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
He says part of the blame goes to TikTok.

Speaker 7 (31:02):
It's really centered around uniting people under like one trend,
So essentially like promotes you to take content, and they
don't really have a system in play to show people
who start, you know, any dances or anything under that.

Speaker 5 (31:15):
Sound, So how can you get credit.

Speaker 7 (31:17):
It's definitely going to take somebody in like the back
end side of like TikTok to really come in and
just like find some type of way to like mark
whoever is trending in the meantime in your video description,
You're going to want to make it really clear that
you were the one that started this trend, plus the
hashtag to you know, seal the deal.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Another voice in this discussion was TikToker and cultural commentator
Amanda Bennett, founder of Define and Empower, a consultancy firm
who advises businesses from a black feminist perspective. I caught
up with her about the strike almost three years later
and whytt was so important.

Speaker 4 (31:51):
Hi. I am doctor Amanda Bennett. I am a poet,
a writer, a facilitator, and an educator. I primarily think
and write about black feminist cultural criticism and black women
of pop culture.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
How were you first made aware of this strike?

Speaker 4 (32:10):
I was made aware of it because I was a
creator on TikTok at the time, and I happened to
see a lot of different black TikTokers talking about their
work having been stolen in the past and no longer
wanting to contribute to that psycho exploitation. When Megan the
Stallion's song thought Shit came out and so they were saying,
We're not actually going to make a dance for this song.
We're not going to lie y'all to steal from us once.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Again, something I find fascinating is just how community organizing
online and how that is extremely complicated, But I mean,
I feel like this is a clear case for how
successful it can be. Can you walk me through sort
of how this strike was organized?

Speaker 4 (32:47):
Sure, I wasn't one of the organizers. I'm more so
a commentator, but yeah, it seems that a couple of
young black women on TikTok began to notice this pattern
and then began to commune kate with other dancers such
as Kiera Wilson and Jelia Harman, to say, Hey, we're
not going to a lot of people to work to
continue to be stolen, and here's how we kind of

(33:09):
develop a hashtag to be able to respond to this.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
And as a commentator, had you seen something like this
organized online before? Was there precedent for it in this space?

Speaker 4 (33:20):
Honestly, not to this degree. I typically only really seeing
young black creators making the dancers for the different songs,
but not actually pushing back against racism. Although in a
lot of cases I did notice that many black creators
were being censored or having their videos taken down, and
there was ways of pushback toward that against TikTok, but
it hadn't been organized into this kind of format before.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
I am curious to get into the historical context for this,
because you spoke about this in your commentary at the time.
What is the historical precedent for this, for this behavior
from white creators in general, stealing from black creators with outccreditation.

Speaker 4 (34:01):
Right, I mean, unfortunately, the history goes back several centuries.
Even in the video, I had the example of Jack
Daniels whiskey where and a slave man named near Sprain
actually came up with the formula and idea for the
Jack Daniels whiskey. But Jack Daniels then owned him and
his family basically exploited their ideas and their labor with
no compensation towards the family. And now today we have

(34:21):
a brand called Uncle Nears where folks are taking back
that idea and that wealth. But it's just one example.
Even I've been thinking a lot about Beyonce's album Cowboy
Carter and how she basically reclaiming the genre of country
music for black creators. So much of country music is
taken from black culture. So for example, the banjo is
actually an African derived instrument. Beyonce talks a lot about

(34:44):
Linda Martel, who was a black woman country singer in
the mid twentieth century, and I think that Beyonce the
album opens up a wider conversation about cultural appropriation, particularly
in music. So even you know, black artists who had
their style and ideas taken to create artists like Elvis
for example, is one of those examples. So there is

(35:06):
a really long history of black people creating an idea
or a genre of music, or a way of dancing,
and then having larger white corporations or white artists appropriate
that without it giving them any credit or compensation.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
I'm interested in, as you were observing this roll out,
how did you feel about the immediate results? How did
you feel about the media response. I always think about
the you know, the Jimmy fallon back and forth. What
you felt about sort of what the response when this
went public was?

Speaker 4 (35:37):
Absolutely yeah, And I think that is a way that
companies and big institutions are able to protect themselves and
to avoid kind of do that internal di work. You know,
I work in tech. I have a lot of friendsy
work in tech, and particularly for us as black and brown,
queer people, people living with disabilities, we notice that there
is a tendency to uplift and higher. People who identify

(36:00):
as white or men are heterosexual, and when there are
not people who are from diverse backgrounds in the room,
you're not going to be able to make intentional and
mindful and inclusive decisions regarding programming and even regarding who
gets credited. So the actual infrastructure of these systems and
these algorithms are made by people who are out of

(36:20):
touch with these kind of ideas around inclusivity, and that
is a problem. So you can actually get substantial responses
when these incidents occur because they just don't know or
don't care to know.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
And then in terms of how the public sort of
received the organizers kind of going public and saying, hey,
we are not going to choreograph anything to the new
Megan thee Stallion work. From your perspective, how did that
sort of roll out go?

Speaker 4 (36:44):
I definitely noticed a lot of pushback from white folks
on TikTok. I think that there was a kind of
entitlement or expectation that black people would kind of always
produce these dancewers for them. And it's interesting how as
a kind of unspoken expectation and that you don't want
to admit that you are paying such close attention to
Black culture, but you're wanting to rely on it to
be able to have a sense of creativity or culture

(37:07):
or community. And that kind of goes back to our
previous point about the long history of cultural appropriation and
white community is often relying on Black art and creativity
to have a sense of soulfulness of community, of togetherness,
of expression. But obviously black people are not merely an
engine or white creative expression. They're actually human beings who
are entitled to and worthy of respect and consideration and compensation.

(37:31):
So I think when that invisible contract is breached, that
can trigger a lot of white anger.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Are you still actively on TikTok?

Speaker 4 (37:39):
I actually haven't been active on TikTok the last couple
of years for many of the reasons that I actually
talked about about. I made a post about sexual equoitation
of black women during slavery and the stereotypes that emerged
around that, such as the Jezebel, and that was taken
down because it was inappropriate, and just kind of having
conflict with TikTok over me making these videos about Black

(38:00):
American history and structural oppression and having to feel as
if I was being censored, so I kind of stepped
away from that platform.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
That is incredibly frustrated, and it's frustrating that that it
does end up discouraging creators from making really useful material.

Speaker 4 (38:17):
I mean, I think that companies aren't a place where
they are aware, you know, post orgeployed, that they have
to make some kind of effort to keep up with
the times and improve inclusivity. But the infrastructure of most
tech corporations is just so byzantine that it can be
difficult to push like actual change forward. And obviously, these
coled companies are ultimately existing to create a profit, and

(38:40):
so I think a lot of business models are thinking
that profit is tied to facilitating white comfort. So if
your ideal customer or your centralized customer is a white,
upper middle class person living in the Midwest, that's not
going to facilitate free speech or free creative expression among
you know, a black working class person living in a city,

(39:03):
for example. They're just not being thought of as the
target demographic that should be focused on. Yeah, that's a
really good question. I mean, I think there are a
couple of ways. I think you can also offer direct
support to creators. So demo them, cash app them, et cetera.
Share their work, credit their work, as we saw on
the boshed example, collective organizing around particular hashtags or strikes.

(39:26):
Even really looking into the actual structure of these different companies,
you know, do they have black people in roles other
than DEI and so what are they and if they're
not present in those roles, maybe put a bit of
pressure in the company of do you have someone thinking
about inclusivity in your algorithm team for example?

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Well, Amanda, thank you so much for talking with us.

Speaker 4 (39:47):
Of course, thank you so much for having me. I'm
happy to be part of the conversation.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Thank you so much to Amanda Bennett, who's work you
can follow over at Define and empower. And when we
come back, I speak to one of TikTok's most successful choreographers,
Kiara Wilson, creator of the Savage Dance and one of
the first people to copyright their viral dance. Welcome back

(40:20):
to sixteenth minute. The peak of my dance career was
doing a hip hop dance to Rihanna's Dysturbia in two
thousand and nine. I was bad. And we're back with
more about the black TikTok Strike of twenty twenty one.
While Julia Harmon and the Renegade Dance was the most
commonly cited dance example that led to the Black TikTok Strike,
a close second was by TikToker and choreographer Kiara Wilson.

(40:43):
She was one of the creators featured on Jimmy Fallon
in April twenty twenty one because Addison Rey had performed
it on the show previously without crediting her. And while
Kiara didn't formally participate in the Black TikTok Strike, she
actually took things one step further. She started the process
of copywriting her dance in collaboration with choreographer JAKEL. Knight.

(41:05):
I wanted to hear all about it and about this
process overall, and I was really excited to catch up
with her.

Speaker 12 (41:10):
I am Kiara, I was Wilson. I am now a leech.
I got married. I got congratulations, thank you.

Speaker 5 (41:18):
I have been married for almost two years.

Speaker 14 (41:21):
So.

Speaker 12 (41:21):
I grew up in a small town in Ohio, very
small town.

Speaker 5 (41:25):
It's called Mansfield. Probably don't know what that.

Speaker 12 (41:28):
Is, but it's right outside of Columbus, so yeah, pretty
much there.

Speaker 5 (41:32):
I grew up. I was a dancer my whole life.

Speaker 12 (41:36):
From age seven, I was tumbling, flipping, doing all that.
I just absolutely loved the just dance in general. I
was a cheerleader in high school, all that fun stuff
and basically where it all started in a small town.

Speaker 4 (41:52):
I love dance and.

Speaker 12 (41:54):
So I just wanted to pursue it more after high school.
So that's when I That was in twenty nineteen and
I had graduated. That's when I really started to get
into doing it outside of graduating and stuff.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
So what a weird time to have just graduated high.

Speaker 12 (42:11):
School, just graduated, then COVID wants to come around and
just in twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
So yeah, like you think your life is about to start.
And then just like you can tell from your TikTok
presence even back then that like you're a very experienced dancer,
you're a very talented choreographer. What was sort of your
path into choreographing?

Speaker 12 (42:32):
So yes, I actually did choreograph a little bit, but
it was like just for fun, Like I never did
it like as a job or I just did it
for fun, Like I would just make up a dance
in my head and then like maybe I'll show it
to somebody, but it wasn't nothing like big or spectacular.
And then I had actually moved away from my hometown
when I did graduate, I moved in with my sister

(42:54):
to Texas and that's where I am currently living now.
And I actually did join a dance team and I
was choreographing for a small kids jazz group. I was
just doing cool through jazz dances to like kids songs,
but that was also just for fun. That was just
like a little after school program for the kids, and
I just ended up making dances for them and that

(43:18):
rolled into TikTok because that was literally the same, like
not the same month, maybe like a month later.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
This is always like the stupidest question in the world,
But what were you hoping? What happened in twenty twenty
when you get out of high school, you moved to Texas,
You're with your sister, you're choreographing on the side, Like
what were you hoping for in that first year getting
out of high school?

Speaker 12 (43:41):
So I actually was planning on going to the military,
like that was my plan. And one of the reasons
why I did come to Texas was to focus on
getting into the military because my sister was in the military,
and I was also watching over my niece at the
time because she had to go to work. So that
was really the whole reason why I didn't come down
to Texas. So that was really my main focus. I

(44:03):
was studying, I would work out and all that, and
then on top of that, I was I was just like,
I need a break. I need a break, and then
that's when I started to create the dance.

Speaker 5 (44:14):
So it's crazy how things tie together.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
At the time you started posting on TikTok more, what
was your relationship like to the internet, you know, as
you were growing up.

Speaker 5 (44:29):
So I love the Internet. I stayed on all the time, literally,
I don't think though.

Speaker 12 (44:37):
I didn't really post like, okay, I was trying to
go viral or anything. I just posted like a regular
like people posting like Easter pitch or stuff like that.

Speaker 5 (44:46):
I never like try to.

Speaker 4 (44:50):
Go viral.

Speaker 5 (44:51):
I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, I
just I loved it.

Speaker 12 (44:55):
I love TikTok, I loved dubsmash, all those different apps.
I was on them and I was learning all the
dances on them. So I think that's really what made
me gravitate towards TikTok so much because there were so
many dances on there and I'm just like, I just
want to learn these these it seems so fun. And
you're fresh out of high school and you were doing
dancer whole life. You're like, this is like bring me

(45:17):
back to my roots, you know.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
So, dude, when you're choreographing a dance for TikTok, are
you approaching it differently? I'm assuming yes, but like, how
do you approach it versus you know, something for the stage,
something for the kids, whatever it is.

Speaker 12 (45:33):
So, first off, good thing about TikTok you only have
to make like a fifteen second dance.

Speaker 5 (45:39):
Yeah, so you have.

Speaker 12 (45:40):
To think about how you're going to cram the moves
and make it look good in fifteen seconds, so versus
a one minute long dance, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (45:50):
So I think that's really.

Speaker 12 (45:53):
What made my approach like that way, because I knew
I didn't have as much time, so we have to make.

Speaker 5 (45:59):
It good in short and sweet.

Speaker 12 (46:02):
That way everybody can do it and it was perfect
for all ages versus a minute long dance that you
know you have all the time in the world.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
I think it has a huge part to do with
like why you're why the Savage Challenge became so successful,
as like anyone can do it, but anyone can't do it.

Speaker 5 (46:19):
Well, definitely understand that.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, yeah, it's just TikTok dances. I guess the Savage Challenge.
You posted it in March twenty twenty, right, yes, very
very top of COVID lockdown. How does your life change
immediately around this time, even like notwithstanding with the post?

Speaker 5 (46:42):
Okay, so it changed like rapid speed.

Speaker 12 (46:46):
Yeah, I did the dance, It went viral, everyone was
doing it, and in those processes, my numbers were going up,
so I was growing on all platforms. I would get
promotions and ads, so like people reach out and be like,
can you make up a dance to my song that
I just recorded or something like along those lines or

(47:09):
an ad, so like say like just a brand, they
would reach out and be like, we want you to
make a dance to this song or make a dance
to something that we are you doing, like a service
or something.

Speaker 5 (47:23):
So that's really the big shift.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
What was your follower account like before this? Like how
rapid a shift are we talking?

Speaker 12 (47:32):
I probably only had one hundred followers maybe okay, one
hundred to one thousand, I'll give that right.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
And all of this happening like in the context of
COVID too, like you're when you're dealing with all this,
are you just sort of with your sister and your niece,
Like what is your day to day life like at this.

Speaker 5 (47:48):
Time, I was with my sister, my niece.

Speaker 12 (47:49):
I was sitting around like I would when people would
reach out for me to choreograph. I would like, write
it down, Okay, I need to do this for this
amount that just write them down in the pop in
my headphones, and I would just choreograph to the song
like I would listen to the song, get in the groove, whatever.
And then the months later, I actually had a boyfriend

(48:12):
at the time, so that's who I'm married too now.
But he was back in Ohio, so I went and
got him and brought him to Texas with me to live.

Speaker 5 (48:21):
So that's how we got.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
I know that you said you made an original post
that didn't do great, and then you did it again.
What was that like revision process? Like a lot of
what I'm interested in is like how to make these weird,
confusing like opaque algorithms work in your favor. Which sounded
like you were kind of trying to do. So walk

(48:44):
me through sort of what that thought process was.

Speaker 12 (48:47):
So at the time, everyone honestly was doing this, I
feel like. So they would post like day one of
trying to get my dance viral or day two, day three.

Speaker 5 (48:57):
They would just keep.

Speaker 12 (48:57):
Going until either they went viral or like you know,
they would give up. But I was just like, Okay,
I'm gonna try that because I'm not going to give
up on this one. Like I think this one, this
one's this is pretty good. So I did the day one.
Like everyone used to ask me, like, was there like
a way you used to dress? Did that change the way?

(49:17):
Like you went viral? And honestly, no, I can be honest.
The first day I had on a some some leggings,
I believe in a little crop top, and the second
day I had on pajamas.

Speaker 5 (49:30):
So it's kind of like it's like and the second
day is the one that went viral, so it's like
not really on what you're wearing.

Speaker 12 (49:38):
It's just like I don't I don't even I couldn't
even tell you still to this day.

Speaker 5 (49:43):
I don't even know how.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
I don't know, Like, yeah, it took off, I think
after day two pretty aggressively. And so you're you're a
teenager that is dealing with COVID, You've just graduated from
high school. How do you process and handle sort of
the volume of people reaching out? How do you sort
of sift your way through it and like also protect

(50:05):
your brain?

Speaker 12 (50:06):
Yeah, it was a lot at first, trust Yeah, Oh
my gosh, it was a lot at the time.

Speaker 5 (50:14):
I did end up.

Speaker 12 (50:15):
Getting a PR, so I think that's really what helped
so much. And then of course my family they were
there to help me like set everything up and tell
me like, okay, this is when you need to do this,
or like you have an interview at this time, you know.
But as a teenager, it definitely was a lot. But
I learned very fast, Like it's fast paced. So you

(50:37):
got to get it going and got to get it out.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
There and it worked. And so as you're getting these
offers through twenty twenty, you're starting to choreograph kind of
full time. Did that feel like a natural transition? Was
it like you had to sort of renegotiate what you
wanted your life to look like or yeah, as your
life kind of changed overnight, how are you processing that.

Speaker 12 (51:00):
So it was like, uh, should I still go to
the military, And then I'm like, no, I shouldn't.

Speaker 5 (51:07):
Like I'm literally living in like you know, like spotlight
right now.

Speaker 12 (51:11):
That would ruin everything that I could potentially have going on.
So I was just like I didn't want to risk it.
So it was a hard decision to like be like, no,
we got to go in a different direction. But you know, God,
he is always with me, and that was my path
that I was supposed to walk, So I walked.

Speaker 5 (51:30):
It in faith.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
That rocks. Oh that's so cool. It really like I yeah,
You're like, oh, yeah, I guess I'll just be a
full time choreographer.

Speaker 12 (51:38):
Yeah right.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
And your family was, I mean, your support system. It
sounds like everyone was on board with this too.

Speaker 4 (51:45):
Absolutely.

Speaker 12 (51:46):
Everyone love that this happened like no one would ever imagine.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
In twenty twenty one, there's sort of a whole second
phase to the Savage challenge that is tied into this
larger conversation around crediting black artists and this whole labor conversation.
When did you feel sort of the tenor of that conversation.

Speaker 5 (52:12):
Shift the shift? Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 12 (52:16):
It wasn't like I think once everyone realized like what
happened with Jilea with the Renegade dance, we all just
collectively decided we need to start crediting creators because we
don't need anyone else stealing anybody else's career I guess
you could say, or just their lifestyle. So I think

(52:41):
just after that incident, everyone just decided, like, we're going
to start making sure everybody gives their credit.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Was crediting? Was that like a conversation you were thinking
about prior to your dance sort of being picked up
and becoming this huge thing.

Speaker 5 (52:57):
No, honestly I did not, and so long ago.

Speaker 12 (53:01):
I don't believe I actually may have back then though,
like I genuinely cannot remember, but I'm gonna say no,
until everyone knew like, okay, we need to seriously put
dance creds and then like tag the creator.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
And this is also the year of like the Jimmy
Fallon appearance and stuff like that. How did that sort
of come across your desk?

Speaker 12 (53:25):
So Jimmy Fallon was receiving backlash from bringing Charlie on.
I do believe that's who was on and she was
doing black people's dances. So everyone did not like that,
and everyone was definitely going and attacking, so I think

(53:49):
it was just in his best interest for him to
just bring us on there and either we do Yeah,
we did do our dances actually, but it was over zoomed.
So for me, it was kind of like, dang, she
still could have like when a person, But of course
COVID was a thing.

Speaker 5 (54:03):
So yeah, it is what it is, but it was it.

Speaker 12 (54:07):
Was really fun. It was really fun, and it was
a great experience.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
And yeah, I mean the thing that struck me about
that was like, I think this is more of just
like a pr So you have this sort of huge
burst in followers and work in twenty twenty. Does that
multiply again in twenty twenty one.

Speaker 12 (54:27):
Yes, and it still does currently. So it's it's definitely
it's my full time and I'm just so thankful that
it has continued on and I can continue to entertain
and inspire people.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
The last thing I wanted your insight on getting your
dance copyrighted? How did that come about? And how do
you do that? I'd never heard of that happening on
the internet before, and it feels like it should just
be a precedent that exists, So how did that happen?

Speaker 12 (55:01):
Yeah, so the idea was always there to copyright even
before it was.

Speaker 5 (55:07):
Like said and done.

Speaker 12 (55:09):
I guess that you kind of say. Basically it was
JaQuel Knights. He's a big choreographer. It was his idea
to get everyone copyrighted. The process is still in the process,
so I can't really say much about how it happened,
how it works and stuff. I just it was just
his idea to get everyone's stuff. So I definitely had

(55:33):
a copyright my dances because it was just going everywhere,
like and it's even in a movie called Dumb Money.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
So did you compensated for that or yeah?

Speaker 5 (55:43):
I did. Yes.

Speaker 12 (55:45):
So it's nice to see like my work and other
things and it's it's just so amazing, just like for.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
My So seeing you sort of be a part of
a movement to be like yeah, and you need to.

Speaker 12 (55:59):
Maybe everyone deserves to get paid for something they've created
or worked for.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
So what are you up to right now and is
there anything that you are like looking forward to or
want to get into moving forward?

Speaker 12 (56:14):
So currently I am a stay at home mommy and
I still am a full time time content creator. Of course,
right now, I am just trying to transition my content
to family lifestyle, but obviously dance is always.

Speaker 5 (56:31):
Going to be a part of me.

Speaker 12 (56:33):
Really, my goals are for myself and my family is
we're trying to punch hard on YouTube. We're trying to
just get more traction on YouTube, get more travel type
deals and stuff like that, you know, so more family
things because I absolutely love my family.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
To stay in the influencer space, but switch to something
that matches more of what your life looks like.

Speaker 12 (57:02):
Now, yeah, absolutely, that was a great way of putting it. Yes,
that is exactly because that is literally my life.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
Thank you so much to Kiara Wilson, whose work you
can follow now over at keykey dot ja na Jah
on TikTok and YouTube. I really hope the copyright works
out and we will be right back with more on
why this is actually the computer's fault. Welcome back to

(57:40):
sixteenth minute. I was at a hospital recently and there
was this choir of church ladies that came every Tuesday
night and would just sing outside everyone's room, one by one,
without ever asking if you wanted them to. They didn't
take requests, they wouldn't stop singing aba, and I felt
awkward and started dancing supportively, and so they just kept
singing get a life, ladies. No one likes it. And

(58:01):
today on the podcast we are talking about something that
has nothing to do with that. We are talking about
the black TikTok strike of twenty twenty one. And I
hope that after hearing from Kiara Wilson and Amanda Bennett,
you have a better idea of the cultural forces that
led to black users having to fight to be credited
for their own work. But I still had questions about
how this was enabled through algorithms. Fortunately, biases in algorithms

(58:26):
is a fast growing area of study and there's no
shortage of reporting on the issue. One of the leading
voices on this issue is black poet of code, Joy Bollamwini,
the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League and author of
Unmasking AI, My mission to protect what is human in
a world of machines. She was inspired to do all
of the above while in grad school at MIT, when

(58:48):
she had a first hand experience of the basic racism
that's cooked into our algorithms. She was trying to design
a mirror that would detect a user's face and provide
a positive affirmation and the art. Joy used a generic
line of face detection code, only to find that it
didn't detect her face, and then when she put on
a creepy V for Vendetta style white mask on, it

(59:11):
suddenly did detect her face. The algorithm had not been
designed to recognize her as a person. This is from
a TED talk she did back in twenty seventeen.

Speaker 3 (59:21):
So I used generic facial recognition software to build the system,
but found that it was really hard to test it
unless if I wore a white mask. Unfortunately, I've run
into this issue before.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
Another terrific writer on this topic is Meredith Broussard, author
of More Than a Glitch, Confronting race, gender, and ability
bias in Tech. She's currently an associate professor at NYU
and the Research director at the NYU Alliance for Public
Interest Technology, and she tackles algorithmic bias from all sides.
She examines how racism, transphobia, classism, and more are features

(59:58):
of these systems, not bugs. And so I asked her
how algorithms like TikTok can get away with it. Important
sort of repeating theme in your book is the way
that algorithms just in general are presented by the people
who design them as this impartial thing that can theoretically

(01:00:18):
make decisions better than a human and all of their biases,
and you pretty cleanly deconstruct why that is what would
need to happen for an algorithm to work cleanly? Is
it possible?

Speaker 9 (01:00:35):
You know, sometimes it's possible and sometimes it's not. So
we get into this binary thinking sometimes when it comes
to computers solving problems, and the world is not always binary.
So I would say two things. I would say that
all of the problems that are easy to solve using

(01:00:59):
algorithms or using code have been solved, and we are
only left with the really complicated problems. So we are
in a very different era right now, and using mathematical
methods to solve social problems is not always a good strategy.

(01:01:25):
A computer can only calculate mathematical fairness, and mathematical fairness
is not the same as social justice. So this explains
why we've run into so many problems when we try
and use computers to solve social problems. So computer is

(01:01:46):
not the right tool for every task. It's about the context,
and we just need a more nuanced approach to computational
problem solving.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
So I'm curious if you have thoughts on how social
media has us algorithms.

Speaker 9 (01:02:01):
So I think that there are a couple of things
going on. I think that we should talk about our
shared fantasies around what social media algorithms can do, and
then we should also talk about the effect that people
using algorithms has on the information ecosystem. At the beginning

(01:02:24):
of the social media era, there was this collective fantasy
that somehow was going to be possible to make algorithms,
that we're going to govern our social interaction spaces, That
the algorithms were going to replace the curation function of journalists,

(01:02:46):
That algorithms were going to be able to mediate conversations,
that algorithms are going to be able to bring people together,
that the algorithmic spaces were going to replace irl spaces.
And this collective fantasy was so compelling so many people
believed it that people started to act as if that

(01:03:10):
were happening, right, as if that were true. But the
algorithms do a really bad job, right, and so now
we're left with what we have now, which is misinformation, chaos,
journalists without jobs, compromise democracy. It's partly about the collective fantasy.

(01:03:32):
But it's partly about what happens when people use systems
and the systems change human behavior, but then also the
systems changed to adapt to what the people are doing
in them. One of the ideas that I really rely
on heavily is something that comes from Rehab Benjamin's book

(01:03:54):
Race After Technology, and this is the idea that algorithmic
systems discriminate by default. Right, So, for a very long time,
there was this perception out there that algorithms were neutral
or unbiased or objective, and that's a kind of pro
technology bias that I call technoschauvinism, and.

Speaker 5 (01:04:15):
It's not at all true.

Speaker 9 (01:04:16):
Technological solutions are not necessarily superior to others. It's about
the right tool for the task. And sometimes the right
tool for the task is undoubtedly a computer, and sometimes
it's something simple like a book in the hands of
a child sitting at a parent's lap. One is not
inherently better than the other. Right, So we can push
back against technoschauvinism, and if we adopt the frame that

(01:04:38):
algorithmic systems discriminate by default, well, we can see the
poor treatment of marginalized groups on the internet. In a
different light, we can see it as inevitable. Right, So
if we assume that there is going to be a

(01:05:00):
lot of sexism, that there are not going to be
protections for women in or appropriate protections for women in
online spaces the way that there are not appropriate protections
in the real world, well then you know we're a
little more prepared when these things happen. So something that

(01:05:21):
I think about a lot is I think about stack overflow,
which is this website that has a lot of answers
to programming questions. And the profession of professional computer programmers
could not exist at this point without stack overflow because

(01:05:42):
everybody goes there to look up answers to code questions
and ask code questions, and it has this like pretty
dreadful and toxic climate. And I always wondered, well, why
is this thing so essential and yet so And then
I looked one time at a at a survey of

(01:06:05):
who are the people on stack overflow, and it turns
out it's mostly like twenty something guys, and I was like, oh, well,
this explains a lot about why I have always felt,
you know, unwelcome as a woman of color who is
no longer in her twenties, So the fact that this

(01:06:30):
really essential resource on the Internet is populated by people
being unpleasant to each other, it says a lot to
me about what the dominant culture is among the people
who make Internet technologies.

Speaker 2 (01:06:50):
I wanted to ask a little bit as well, how
algorithms have a consistent tendency to conspire against some target
people of color.

Speaker 9 (01:07:01):
I think it goes back to this idea of discrimination
by default. So let's take facial recognition and let's think
about the historical view. So facial recognition, a kind of
AI technology that we have today, is biased against people
with darker skin. It's better at recognizing men than women.

(01:07:23):
I Trans and non binary folks are generally not recognized
at all, better at recognized people light skin people.

Speaker 4 (01:07:30):
With dark skin.

Speaker 9 (01:07:32):
So facial recognition technologies are built on earlier technologies. So
computer vision as a field is built on top of
color photography. Color photography, of course, was preceded by black

(01:07:53):
and white photography, and at every step of the way
there has been profound racism in the representation, and so
we see that continuing today. Let's go back to color film.
When Kodak developed it was a big revolution, but it

(01:08:14):
was tuned for light skin, so labs were given these
things called Shirley cards, which featured a white woman named Shirley,
usually holding like pillows or balloons or something in primary colors.
And these are the cards that labs were supposed to
use to tune their color photography equipment. But the Shirley

(01:08:35):
cards did not include a range of browns, and so
browns came out muddy in color photos. And this persisted
through the nineteen seventies, and in the nineteen seventies Kodak
finally started including a range of browns on the color

(01:08:56):
tuning cards, and darker skinned people looked better in photographs. Well,
this was not because Kodak had some kind of racial
reckoning or some kind of a weakening. It was because
furniture makers complained. Furniture makers refused to switch over from

(01:09:18):
black and white catalog photography to color photography and the
catalogs because they complained that their walnut and mahogany furniture
looked money. So Kodak responded to the furniture and manufacturers,
not to the millions of people. We see this same
problem happening then, not just in color photography, but it

(01:09:42):
also happened in uh cinematography. One of the big revolutions
of Isa's show Insecure was there were all these articles
written about like how the lighting was so great because
guess what that a black cinematographer who had like did
the lighting so that people with darker skin looked fantastic.

(01:10:02):
So all of these all of these things have been
happening all along. It's not really surprising that facial recognition
had these kinds of problems because all the predecessor technologies
had these kinds of problems.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
And so what you need.

Speaker 9 (01:10:20):
To do is you need to examine what's going on
in the underlying social system. So when we have you know,
like the gender Shades project that reveals this big flaw
and facial facial recognition, people like to talk about that
as a glitch, as something that is easily fixed, you know,
just just oh, let's just like write a ticket for

(01:10:43):
it and just fix it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
It's it's a blip, it's not important.

Speaker 9 (01:10:46):
But my argument is that we should look at things
like this as indicative of larger social problems, and it's
an indicator that we need to step take a step
back and reassess what's going on socially. In addition to
rebuilding the code, and rebuilding the code, by the way,
is always way more expensive and time consuming and complicated

(01:11:10):
than anybody imagines.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
Thank you so much again to Meredith Broussard. I cannot
recommend her book more than a glitch confronting race, gender,
and ability bias in tech enough. Ultimately, it's hard to
determine how successful the Black TikTok strike of twenty twenty
one was. Online boycotts of an app as dominant as
TikTok are extremely hard to make a dent in, at
least for now, because as I record this, there's a

(01:11:33):
possibility it won't be available in the US much longer.
But the strike was a critical inflection point. Black TikTokers
were sick of getting lip service from the platform, the media,
and the white TikTokers ripping them off. It's an ongoing fight,
but this was an important battle. Crediting choreographers on TikTok
has improved, if not changed entirely, because of stories like

(01:11:55):
Kiara Wilson and Julia Harmon. Creators will fight back, and
there's no shortage of things to fight for. Racism in
the TikTok algorithm persists. Many cited a continuation of the
strike after creators found themselves being flagged for quote inappropriate
content unquote every time they used the word black in
their bio. The influencer pay gap is very much a thing,

(01:12:16):
and after TikTok pledged to hire more black employees back
in twenty twenty years later, reports that racism still persisted
within the company and that employees concerns were not taken
seriously came to light and appropriation is still happening in
TikTok choreography. Major atte dances from black choreographers have been
slowly overtaken by algorithm provided white girls. Again just last year,

(01:12:39):
another historically black dance style being lifted. But June twenty
twenty one was an exciting moment for labor, for racial
justice and for creators demanding to be treated barely. The
Internet should not forget about it, and I hope it's
inspiration for further action the Black TikTok strike of twenty
twenty one. Your sixteenth minute ends when our algorithms aren't

(01:12:59):
don shit anymore. Thank you so much for listening to
sixteenth minute, and if you enjoyed this episode, support our
guests and keep learning about the myriad ways that algorithms
amplify racism with works like Meredith Brizard's more Than a Glitch,
Algorithms of Oppression by Sophia Omosha Noble and the Great
joy Bolamwini's Unmasking Ai. Here's that hospital choir singing Abba God, you.

Speaker 13 (01:13:25):
Can, you can job having the time of your love. Oh,
watch that scene, dancing, Watch that scene, dig in the dancing.

Speaker 4 (01:13:57):
Could.

Speaker 2 (01:14:04):
Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans Lee.
Izzie ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Our theme song is by Sad thirteen and Pet. Shout
outs to our dog producer Anderson my Kat's Flee and

(01:14:26):
Casper and by Pet Rockbert who will outlive us all Bye.