Transcript

Bridget Todd (00:03):

You're listening to Disinformed, a mini series from There Are No Girls on the Internet. I'm Bridget Todd. Today, we are putting on a special emergency episode, because if you were online at all last week, you probably saw Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez use Instagram Live to get a harrowing of what she experienced from inside the Capitol complex during the insurrection on the Capitol. In this account, she also shared that like so many of us, she is a survivor of sexual violence. Now, this triggered a real-time tsunami of disinformation.

Bridget Todd (00:38):

Right-wing figures like Representative Nancy Mace and Jack Posobiec and others falsely accused AOC of not really being at the Capitol at all or exaggerating her claims. It's true. While she was not in the main dome of the Capitol building, that building that you think of when you picture the Capitol in your head, when rioters breached it, she also never claimed to be. She accurately said that she was in Cannon House Office Building, which is part of the Capitol complex and is connected to the main building by tunnels. Here's what she said on Instagram.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (01:08):

I hide back in, in the bathroom behind the door. And then I just start to hear these yells of, "Where is she? Where is she?" And I just thought to myself, "They got inside." It felt like my brain was able to have so many thoughts in that moment.

Bridget Todd (01:39):

So AOC never said that rioters were in her hallway. That's a claim she never made, but that didn't stop Nancy Mace from tweeting, "I'm two doors down from AOC and no one insurrectionists stormed our hallway," even though AOC never said they did. Now, in AOC's Instagram Live, she recounted hearing somebody bang on her office door, come into her office and say, "Where is she?" At the time, she was afraid that rioters had found her, but she later realized this person was a Capitol police officer who was there to help here.

Bridget Todd (02:07):

Now, after this, we saw really ugly trends on Instagram like #aoclied and #alexandriaocasiosmollett, comparing her to Jussie Smollett, to suggest that she was making up her account, despite it being corroborated by multiple people, like Representative Katie Porter and Bernie Sanders' aid Ari Rabin. This is actually a really good example of how disinformation works in real time. This complete distortion of what AOC said has become part of the public dialogue, despite it being based on lies. After this, AOC tweeted, "The sad thing about disinformation is that once the truth comes out, the damage has already been done.

Bridget Todd (02:42):

People have already been misled, radicalized, and believed lies to the point where their hatred has brewed to violence. That's what led to the 6th and that's what's happening now." And you know what? She's right. After she bravely shared her story of what happened at the Capitol and connected it to being a survivor of sexual assault, she faced a coordinated public disinformation campaign. And sadly, this is not an isolated thing for women of color in the public political eye.

Bridget Todd (03:08):

Leslie Mac is a prominent digital activist and organizer who I work with at UltraViolet, where we create resources to curb sexist, racist disinformation, like our media guide that you can find in the show description. And sadly, Leslie really knows what it's like to face these kinds of attacks online.

Bridget Todd (03:23):

You're a long time digital organizer, activist, someone who spends a lot of time making the world a better place via the internet. How did you get into this work? Tell me about your role in this work.

Leslie Mac (03:34):

Yeah. My in this role in this work started in the digital space in 2014. I started organizing faith spaces online after I joined Twitter. I've been in Twitter since like 2008 or something, which seems like ages ago, and I had started doing some legislative organizing that way. We were working in New Jersey to Ban the Box and also some bail reform initiatives. A lot of my initial digital organizing work was around legislative work, which was really interesting and at the time, a little cutting edge. Not a lot of folks were doing it, but we kind of dipped our toes and started organizing folks online.

Leslie Mac (04:19):

And then after Mike Brown was murdered, Feminista Jones had kind of put this call out from Twitter to say, "Hey, would you be interested in hosting a vigil in your city this week?" And I was like, "Sure, I could do one in Philly," and I called that the moment that the full digital organizer that is Leslie Mac was born. That's where I started out was organizing that first vigil in Philadelphia, The National Moment of Silence. I guess I liked it, because I just kept ongoing.

Bridget Todd (04:56):

Yeah, you're kind of a prolific digital organizer. You're someone who I feel was one of the sort of... When I think about some of the foundational black feminists who were showing up online, I definitely think about you. Full disclosure. You and I work together at UltraViolet. Yesterday was kind of a long wild day for folks who are online and in feminist spaces online, because we saw AOC really being at the center of this coordinated right-wing disinformation campaign against her after she really bravely shared her story about what happened in the insurrection on January 6th and her own personal story as a survivor of sexual violence.

Bridget Todd (05:39):

My first question for you is, how do you see disinformation and abuse being linked?

Leslie Mac (05:45):

Well, they're linked on two levels. I was talking about this with you yesterday, which is one is at the personal level, which is that abusers in our real lives, our personal lives, use disinformation against us, right? They'll tell us lies about ourselves, about the world, that nobody will love us. And that's a tool that they utilize at the personal level. And what we're watching is public abusers, right? People that are abusing the system, people that are abusing people within it, using disinformation for that same purpose, which is to degrade, denigrate, and deny the real life experiences of marginalized people.

Leslie Mac (06:27):

Watching that play out with AOC, she bravely not only shared her story, but she went personally one-to-one to the people, which I think this is such a digital story in and of itself that she took to IG Live to have this hour long conversation. And the way I saw it play, I didn't know she was live until I saw on Twitter. People were tweeting about it. They were like, "Wow. AOC is doing XYZ," and I said, "Oh, let me go over to IG and watch her." I was watching her. And while that was happening, somebody was starting a Clubhouse room to talk about it, to debrief it. Shout out to Tracy Corter.

Leslie Mac (07:07):

And then as I was watching it, it said, "Oh, Katie Porter is going to be talking about this IG Live on MSNBC shortly." It was this moment of like, whoa, all of this digital stuff was happening. It was pinging and creating waves all over the place. And then subsequently, that's what we watched was the abusers that AOC was naming in her IG Live namely folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene and really all the insurrectionists and seditionists electives that supported the coup on January 6th. They've subsequently now tried to discount her personal experience in this harrowing moment, and it's been wild to watch people just blatantly lie.

Leslie Mac (07:55):

One of her fellow congresspeople said, "Oh, I'm two doors down from her and there was nobody in the hallway," and then we find out that that person evacuated before anything happened. The level of disinformation is really disturbing to watch in real-time.

Bridget Todd (08:12):

Yeah, it is completely a coordinated attack. You're talking about Nancy Mace from South Carolina. She tweeted yesterday, "I'm two doors down from AOC and no insurrectionists stormed our hallway." But that day she herself tweeted on January 6th that she was being evacuated because of this threat. She described it as "a nearby threat." She later did an interview I think on Good Morning America where she said that she was so frightened by what happened. That she stayed overnight in her office. Her motherly instincts kicked in and that she was so afraid for her life that she was thinking about bringing a gun with her to Capitol Hill from now on because she was so afraid.

Bridget Todd (08:50):

That's how she talked about it right after it happened. It's very telling that now weeks later after AOC essentially says the same thing, "That I was afraid for my life. Somebody knocked on the door and I was afraid for my life," she's saying that didn't happen. I think it's really interesting how you see the way that is coordinated. We saw another big account on the right tweeting a map with arrows trying to indicate that AOC was not in the Capitol when folks stormed. And AOC herself replied and said, "Your arrows are wrong."

Bridget Todd (09:24):

AOC had a really good tweet where she talked about the fact that disinformation, one of the ways that it plays out is that once it's out there in the public narrative, it doesn't matter if it's not based in reality or if it's an outright fabrication. That becomes part of the narrative for so many people in a way that you can almost never correct.

Leslie Mac (09:44):

You never can pull it back once the cat's out of the bag with disinformation, and it also gets spread in such innocuous ways. It just becomes fact and it happens so quickly. It's really an impossible thing to chorale back in. One of thing I'd mention is that even AOC herself never said insurrectionists stormed that hallway. What she said was somebody was walking down there and she was afraid of who it was. Even in the disinformation, they were already twisting the things that AOC said and saying things that she never said at all. The levels of lies start to compound themselves. They've misinterpreted what AOC said at the start.

Leslie Mac (10:27):

Then they're calling her a liar erroneously. And now we have these ridiculous hashtags that are attempting to discredit Alexandria and the real obvious pain that she was in. It's interesting because nobody's discounting Katie Porter's account, though she also gave a very similar account. Talked about when Alexandria was in her office and what happened in there.

Katie Porter (10:56):

She was opening up doors, and I was like, "Can I help you? What are you looking for?" And she said, "I'm looking for where I'm going to hide." And the thing that will always stay with me was when she said, "I just hope I get to be a mom. I hope I don't die today."

Leslie Mac (11:12):

It's fascinating to watch that two people can talk about an incident, their stories match up exactly the same, but only one is targeted for disinformation. That's what tells me it's coordinated. It's deliberate, and it's supposed to be specific to individuals. It's not happenstance.

Bridget Todd (11:32):

Absolutely. I mean, that jives with everything that we know from the research. We know disinformation is worse for women of color in politics. A report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue reveals that women of color candidates and political officials are targeted on the right on social media at alarming rates. This report found that women of color were particularly likely on targeted. Ilhan Omar received the highest proportion, 39%, of abusive messages of all the candidates in their studies, and AOC received the highest ratio of abusive comments on Facebook.

Bridget Todd (12:05):

It completely jives with this research that Katie Porter, her testimony, her sharing her story would not be picked apart and targeted for this kind of coordinated disinformation campaign in the same way that someone like AOC would be. One question I have for you is, why do you think that women of color are such bigger targets for this kind of disinformation online?

Leslie Mac (12:28):

I think we're bigger targets in general and especially for our elected women of color, because we get shit done and we really are there to stand in the gap for those that are marginalized in ways that our white counterparts are not. Off the bat, we're already facing some pushback to the work that we want to do in the work, whether that's in political spaces or wherever. The other side of that is that we're easy targets, which means that somebody attacking Katie Porter is going to be seen as mean. They're going to be seen as not nice. But somebody attacking a woman of color, it's so okay and then the pile on occurs.

Leslie Mac (13:15):

People are just waiting for opportunities to attack women of color. This is something that you and I have been dealing with in digital spaces for a decade plus now. It's not news, but I think those things are why we become such lightning rods. I mean, the goal is to silence us. The goal is to get us out of positions of power. The goal is to make the kinds of changes that we are collectively and individually push for not reality. Starting with attacking women of color, that's the frontline of that pushback.

Bridget Todd (13:49):

What you just said completely jives with what we know about disinformation, right? One of the points of disinformation is to silence people, right? I think that disinformers, they don't want women of color to be putting their ideas out into the world, to be creating the kind of changes that they want to be responsible for in the world. These kinds of really scary coordinated disinformation attacks are meant to have a chilling effect on their targets.

Bridget Todd (14:17):

They're meant to make AOC and women who aspire to be like her, other women of color who might want to be activists, might want to be involved in politics, or might just want to put their ideas about these things into the world via Twitter or social media, it's meant to make these people feel so afraid and be so fearful that this kind of thing is going to happen to them that they just stop. They don't put their opinions out into the world. They don't try to shape the world. They stop with their activism online.

Bridget Todd (14:44):

I think when we have conversations about disinformation, they often turn into conversations about free speech. And we need to be talking about the ways that this is an attempt to shut down free speech and to make it so that people don't feel comfortable engaging in public discourse.

Leslie Mac (15:01):

Absolutely. The thing that has been hitting me so much is how normalized these types of attacks against women of color elected officials have become. I was listening to Rashida Tlaib from the floor last night in the hearing around stripping Marjorie Taylor Greene's committee assignments. And she said, "I wanted to go last because I knew it was going to be hard for me to talk about it." And she talked about the fact that her first day on Capitol Hill, she hadn't been sworn in yet, and there was already a death threat against her serious enough that the FBI had to come and pull her aside.

Leslie Mac (15:37):

It was her first one. Not even sworn in yet. First day in DC. She said she was paralyzed and everyone after that paralyzed. One mentioned her son. She really talked about the trauma of it and her team had to decide to shield her from it moving forward because they recognized how it paralyzed her. She said when she saw what was happening on January 6th, the first thing she thought was, "Thank Allah I'm not there," because she knew that she would be a direct target as well.

Leslie Mac (16:07):

When we think about so much work that's been going into getting more women of color to run for office, getting more women of color elected, the flip side of that is we do not have systems set up to actually hold the space that women of color that serve in that way to hold them in the trauma that is sure to follow. The other thing I want to bring to attention is that our decades of ignoring this kind of violence in digital spaces is why we're seeing it accepted in real world spaces. There's a direct correlation between all of the work that we have been doing in digital spaces to throwing up these red flags for so, so long.

Leslie Mac (16:52):

I know you had Sharene on the podcast a couple weeks ago. She's amazing. Her groundbreaking work to just point out that, nope, this is not just general harassment. It's very specific. It's very targeted, and it's meant to silence women of color. All of that now in the real world. It became normalized in digital spaces, and that's the danger. When things become normalized in digital spaces, it means they're going to be acceptable outside of digital spaces. There's no barrier between the two. We are living beyond the digital age.

Leslie Mac (17:29):

There's a complete melding of digital life and "real life" that means that anything we find acceptable or treat as acceptable online become the same in real world in a very short time.

Bridget Todd (17:44):

Let's take a quick break. And we're back.

Bridget Todd (17:58):

One thing that I wish that people understood is that what happens digitally and what happens in the real world, those two things are not distinct. And I think we're starting to see that. The insurrection was one way that I think that folks who were unwilling to see this maybe are like, "Oh, I think that perhaps what online does have real world impact." But for so long, when it was a lot of women and women of color and black women online who were saying, "Hey, we're being harassed. Hey, this is happening to us," and no one was listening, I think one of the reasons why that was minimized is because it was happening "just online."

Bridget Todd (18:32):

The perception that you could just step away from your computer or turn off your computer or get off social media and it wouldn't be happening anymore completely divorced from the reality that if it's out there in the ether happening online, it's out there in the real world, right? These worlds are not so distinct and so separate.

Leslie Mac (18:50):

If you think of disinfo, at some point, it's an unsharpened pencil, right? Just a thing. Can't do very much, but it is a tool. I would say that what happened was it was sharpened against women of color. It was sharpened against... I just think back to some of the early moments of disinfo that I remember like gamer... That entire thing started with disinfo. The tool of disinformation was sharpened on all of our pain and all of the attacks that came against us. It was sharpened. It was sharpened, and it was perfected.

Leslie Mac (19:25):

Now that it's being used to great effect across the board, not just directed at us, but directed at government, generally speaking, directed at misinformation in election, disinformation in so many sectors, even around COVID-19. It's wild because we are... I wrote an article for BYP100 like two years ago, and I think I called it something like Black Women Always Casted In The Role of Cassandra. The piece was really just like we're really tired of being able to see the future, telling you what's going to happen, and nobody listening to us.

Bridget Todd (20:07):

Uh, it gets exhausting, right? I do feel like we have this narrative of trust black women, listen to black women. I have a shirt that says that. Obviously I agree with that, but we also have to have a very real conversation about what happens when you're expected to be the person who can see in the crystal ball and warn everybody time and time and time again. You and I had a good conversation about this moment regarding AOC, but also disinformation writ large. I do think this is a moment where we can have a reckoning or a hard reset and say no, we're not going to do this again where we after the fact say, "Oh, we should have listened to black women."

Bridget Todd (20:46):

This is an opportunity to really get it right, and that's what I would love to see. I would love to not just see this be another time where in six months we all say, "Oh, well, we should have listened to these black women activists or black women social media users or black women researchers who saw this coming," but we actually say, "Oh, people warned us and we did something. We took meaningful action."

Leslie Mac (21:08):

Yeah, absolutely, and even in the after acknowledgments that never goes as far as what you just said. It's always an acknowledgment like, "Oh, we should have known this. We should have known this, or we should have known from this more recent thing." The acknowledgment needs to go way further back.

Leslie Mac (21:26):

It needs to acknowledgment the fact that the entire ecosystem collectively decided not to listen to women of color, and especially black women in digital spaces, as we were shouting from the rooftops about how abuse was being weaponized, how it was being coordinated in small ways and large ways, and how every single platform has ways in which we can be targeted for harassment that they refuse to close the loop on. I'll use an example, Twitter List. It's a great function.

Leslie Mac (21:56):

You can make list of people like to talk about a specific thing, but there's no setting that allows me to stop anyone from putting me on a list. Once a month, I go through the list that I'm on and invariably I find four, five that are horrible, that say things that are terrible, and have put me on a list with a bunch of great people, but the name of the list is something really egregious and clearly meant for people to target me and anybody else on the list as well. I have to remove myself by blocking the person. They don't even let you remove yourself from the list, by the way.

Leslie Mac (22:30):

These are small functional things wihtin a system, within a platform that enable abuse, that are very easy to correct, and yet doesn't happen. Articles have been written about this. People have pointed it out. Every month I go live and I just screenshot the list that I'm on, and it's like horrible. And I can tell. I can tell when I start getting attacked from like, oh shit, I'm on a list somewhere. I just know it. I can feel it. This tweet is innocuous. Why are so many trolls jumping on it? Ah, okay. I think that you're right that it needs to be a much more proactive approach now that all of this data exist.

Leslie Mac (23:12):

You can't say you don't know. You can't say we don't have the data to back it up. You can't say that we're not seeing the very real dangerous implications and repercussions from unchecked digital harassment. That's the part that I think we need to get to.

Bridget Todd (23:28):

You're someone who is a prominent visible black woman activist in digital spaces, right? That sounds phenomenal. You have a blue check mark. I see people who are like, "Oh, that must mean you're rich or very powerful," but with that visibility comes... It's like a double-edged sword where you also deal with this oversized abusive reaction online. I see people pile on you all the time. You'll say something innocuous and it's like people were waiting in the rafters to attack you. I think that we really have to acknowledge the toll that can take.

Bridget Todd (24:10):

There are people out there who are probably like, "Oh, if you have a zillion followers on Twitter and a blue check mark, you must be having the best time on social media. I wish I had that." But with that kind of visibility and with that kind of platform comes a lot of this abuse and all of this nonsense that makes your experiences online when you're just trying to put your opinions out there difficult. And we have these platforms really doing nothing about it and enabling it.

Leslie Mac (24:35):

Absolutely. It definitely is one of those weird things of realizing that you have become not a real person in digital spaces to a lot of folks. For me, it took some getting used to. Just like, oh... I'm putting air quotes. You all can't see me. "Leslie Mac is not actually a person to people. It's an entity, or it's a thing." And I'm like, I'm just a 45 black woman and I'm a real person. I have feelings. I have a family. I have mental health struggles. I'm just a regular person. And yeah, I think a lot of the mechanisms in digital spaces actually dehumanize us.

Leslie Mac (25:22):

Some of these things that are meant to amplify us or elevate us like a blue check or like a lot of followers, for me it's like great, because I'm able to do more work and deeper work and have my work reach wider, but the price that you have to pay for that is so large. I've left Twitter multiple times because of those pile on moments. And you're right. It does feel like folks were just sitting with a bag of shit to throw at me and waiting for whatever moment when it was deemed okay to do that, right? It's clear you can't do it anytime. You can't just do it out of the blue.

Leslie Mac (25:59):

It has to be when there's a mask of it happening. And I think that that speaks to the connection, again, between abuse and disinformation because we're watching bullies coordinate themselves to attack. This is exactly how abusers act. And disinformation works the same way. The same people with the same mindset pick up on disinformation and they decide that's what they're going to push out as the truth. As AOC said, once it's out there, it's impossible to refute it. Anything you say will be just dismissed. Oh, you're just saying that because XYZ.

Leslie Mac (26:39):

I don't know what the solution is, but I do know we've got to make some strides, because every week I talk to more and more black women in particular in digital spaces that are just like, "I'm just ready to leave. I'm just ready to stop because it's interfering with... The pros of the reach are not weighing out with the cons of how this is affecting me." We are so disposable as black women that there's no consequences and also no empathy when we are feeling and dealing with these moments besides from each other. And it just really has to stop.

Bridget Todd (27:20):

It really makes me reflect on my own use of social media, which is actually quite guarded. AOC was so vulnerable. She really showed up as her full self in this way that I really often don't. I almost never talk about my personal life or my romantic life, because I see the way that people will use it to target women of color online who do.

Leslie Mac (27:38):

Yeah, it's definitely true. I share a lot of my personal life because that's how I build my following and my platform. I still share especially my dogs and I share about whatever other things that I'm doing or working on. The thing that has stopped my interactions more is like I have way less interactions with strangers than I used to. I definitely used to like I didn't know what your... I would rarely even go look at someone's platform before engaging with them around just innocuous topics. And now if I don't know you, I'm not talking to you anymore, because I don't know you.

Leslie Mac (28:20):

You could be suspicious, and the time and effort it takes to vet you is not some time that I'm willing to spend. It's definitely changed the way that I can interact to people. And it's sad to me because I met a lot of amazing people in those earlier days where I was able to interact with strangers and be like, "Oh, this person seems cool. What other stuff other are you doing," and getting to know them more and meeting them and talking with them and having them on my own podcast when I had wanted.

Leslie Mac (28:49):

A lot of that has just stopped and I've just become a little bit walled off in the context of I'll share what I want, but I'm really not interested in as much interaction. One of the tactics that I employ is that I have specific posts that are meant to be interactive or conversational. I usually do one or two a week just to have a conversation with folks. But I've had to systemize it because it can't be organic for me anymore. The risk is too great. And it is sad.

Leslie Mac (29:21):

It's made I would say my interactions with strangers a little less authentic in that I'm trying to craft a moment to talk with them versus organic conversations happening. Some of that is just the way that digital spaces have evolved, but a lot of it is just me having to make different choices because of the harassment.

Bridget Todd (29:45):

More after a quick break. Let's get right back into it.

Bridget Todd (29:59):

Wouldn't it be something if you didn't have to spend your time and your energy and your capacity and your brain space systematizing these things because of these abusive platforms? Wouldn't it be great if these platforms, especially simple things like the Twitter List, wouldn't it be great if these platforms listened to their users and said, "These are the things that you are doing to enable abuse," it'll be very easy to fix to stop it?

Bridget Todd (30:26):

Wouldn't it be great if you did not have to individually dedicate brain space to managing how you are going to deal with this just to show up and do your job, live your life the way that you want to live it online?

Leslie Mac (30:39):

Yeah, I mean, it would be amazing. We have protocols in our house when the attacks really get bad. My phone gets taken away from me. Everybody knows to text my husband if they need me because I won't have it on me anymore. These are coping mechanisms just to protect my own mental health when these things happen. The reason why I have those protocols is because I learned them from other black woman who were like, okay, here's how you can deal with it, or here's when I step away. That's the insidiousness of white supremacy, right?

Leslie Mac (31:12):

Is that the ownness is on those of us that are under its boot to create situations or to create systems just to help us survive. Our white counterparts just don't have to deal with that. They do not have to reckon with the possibility of simply speaking your truth, meaning you're going to have to deal with a whole list of stuff that have nothing to do with your initial purpose for interacting online. We do a lot of our work in digital spaces, so it's not a place that I can step away from.

Leslie Mac (31:49):

I also center a lot of my work around direct giving, and I move a lot of money directly especially to black women and femmes through social media. For me, it's not a place that I'm really willing to leave because the resources are there, and it works. I don't have a position of like I'm going to step away. I just have had to take a position of protecting myself as best I can, sharing that knowledge with other people, and then pushing with folks like you to create actual real change in digital spaces.

Bridget Todd (32:21):

We need people like you. You've been individually responsible for funding so many black women and femmes direct aid to them into their pockets. You are so important in this work. I'm glad that you have steps in place where you can stay in this work because God knows we need you, but it's hard. We need to acknowledge that you're not a Superwoman. You're a person, a real person. It sucks sometimes. Really it sucks sometimes.

Leslie Mac (32:51):

It really does. I started doing these TikTok threads on Sunday on my Twitter, and I did the first one because I really was just like, I need to put something up that's fun. I need to put something up that is not going to be a lightning rod for anything, where I can just interact with people in a fun way and bring some joy. It has changed my entire countenance because now people look forward to the thread every Sunday. It's injected in a strange way just a buffer around me, and I know I have a little bit of time in digital space every Sunday that's joyful and peaceful and fun.

Leslie Mac (33:33):

I had lost that. I really had lost that feeling of enjoying interacting with strangers online, which is such a big part of digital organizing. I needed to figure out a way to bring that back into my platform and into the ways that I interact naturally. This ended up working. I had tried some other things before that weren't as successful, and this seems to be working quite well for that purpose. This sounds strange, but it's sort of like if the temperature has been rising on the stove around negative reactions to me all week, that Sunday thread, it's like throwing water on a fire.

Leslie Mac (34:16):

It just puts it out completely. I sort of have a reset every week now, because now it looks silly that you're arguing in someone's mentions when people are talking about dogs. You seem weird. I mean, those are little tricks that I've started to pick up just to be like, okay, how can I continue to exist in this space and not have it be so toxic to me that I have to build all of these different systems? This trick has seemed to work so far. I'm hoping it will continue because it's been really nice to be able to bring that part of digital interaction back in a safe way.

Bridget Todd (34:55):

That's a great tip. I hope people out there if... I'm going to use it. That's a great tip. And again, it sucks that you have to do these things, but I'm happy that you have systems in place that just protect your health, protect your wellness, and continue to give you that outlet to do that community building and engaging that I know that you're so good at and that you love so much. I'm thankful for that. Leslie, where can folks keep up with you online? You're doing amazing stuff all over the internet. Where can folks keep up with you?

Leslie Mac (35:23):

You can just find me Leslie Mac, M-A-C. You can search that. That's my handle on Twitter. If you just search it in Google, you'll see all the things, Facebook and my website, lesliemac.com. You can find me there as well. I just wanted to thank you too, Bridget, for calling this extra episode, and thank you for all of your podcast, but especially for this series you've been doing around disinformation because I think it's really allowed a lot of folks to put into context the long trail of this work against disinformation.

Leslie Mac (35:57):

We've watched it in this election cycle in a way that I think has woken people up to the realities and dangers of it, but it's really important to put it into the context that we've been screaming about this for almost a decade, more than a decade. I mean, you all could have just listened to black women from the first place, and you can start doing that now, and we can avoid things like 45 and Marjorie Taylor Greene and all the other horrible things that have stemmed from digital spaces. Because frankly, somebody like MTG, the only way that they've built a platform is through digital space.

Bridget Todd (36:38):

Oh, absolutely. I was just talking about this how the problem really is is that... For people like her, we have made it politically advantageous to do things like this online. It's not like, "Oh, she sounds wild. Get her out of here," It's, "Oh, she sounds wild. Amplify her."

Leslie Mac (36:54):

Amplify her, yes. As Bridget disclosed, we both work at UltraViolet, but one of the great things about the media guide is that it really has specific ways for people to not share disinformation. One of the biggest culprits is the media. They share disinformation inadvertently and deliberately in covering it. It's wild that they have not seen the light and understood their role in spreading it. Because if you're considered "fake news" by a portion of the population, and then you report on disinformation in a specific way, you legitimize it really specifically with a specific audience.

Leslie Mac (37:39):

I don't know what the answer is, but I'll say this. When I was in journalism school, clearly I did not become a journalist, because I actually saw... When in J school, I saw this as the future of journalism and it really scared me. I went to Northwestern University and this is in the mid to late '90s, and I remember saying to my mom, "I can't be in this industry. The track that this is on is leading in a really dangerous and scary place. And I don't think it's something that I could do for my career. I don't think it's something I could do."

Leslie Mac (38:14):

She was not thrilled. It was a lot of money. Anyway, but yeah, I just remembered, and it's silly now. I talk about this all the time and certainly age myself, but you go to the computer lab to write your stories and stuff for the paper. People would bring magnets into the computer lab to swipe people's floppy disks so that their stories couldn't get in on time, so that they could get the byline the next day. I remember just being like, these will be my colleagues? Yeah, this is not going to be for me.

Leslie Mac (38:47):

It's been a while sitting back outside of journalism and watching everything that I felt as a 19 year old come to past. Every single thing I was like, this is going really south. The idea of ethics were so loosey-goosey and not at all ethical. And I just was like, this is one of the best journalism schools in the country and these are people they've matriculated and this is the attitude that they have towards women, towards black people, towards marginalized folks, towards poor people? The reckoning has been long coming, and I think that the digital space has only added to that.

Bridget Todd (39:31):

Absolutely. I think we see it in the way that folks are reporting about the AOC situation. I was really disgusted to see it framed as almost like a cat fight or a spat between two female members of congress, as opposed to a wider coordinated disinformation campaign that AOC is at the heart of. This is not two women beefing over a man or something, right? This is people making up lies about someone in a coordinated way to smear for sharing their story. I was really dismayed to see it kind of framed as like a "she said, she said" kind of thing, as opposed to disinformation.

Leslie Mac (40:09):

But that becomes the question, right? Why did anybody feel the need to discount AOC's account of what happened to her personally? That's the ultimate question is, why was that something you felt you needed to do? And that the heart of that is that we go back to the silencing of women of color and especially progressive radical women of color. That's the ultimate goal. People will pay any price to do that.

Bridget Todd (40:35):

That's so true. People who are survivors of abuse, sexual violence, when they see the way that the wagon circled to smear AOC for sharing her story, what do you think the response is? Someone who would speak up that sees what happened to AOC, what do you think that's going to do to them?

Leslie Mac (40:58):

You know, it's going to further tell them that they shouldn't speak out. It's going to let them know that there will be negative consequences to them speaking out. I think it's why it's so important for us to show support for AOC and for all survivors, because there's a survivor listening right now that's contemplating. She's at a crossroads of speaking her truth or burying it and having to deal with it in 10, 15, 20 years.

Leslie Mac (41:27):

The more that we can show support for survivors and for moments like this where AOC is so transparent not only in speaking about her experience as a sexual assault survivor, but also linking the trauma of that moment to January 6th where she also feeling under attack. Katie Porter. It was interesting listening to AOC's account and then Katie talking about it on the Lawrence O Donnell Show, because Katie mentioned some details that Alexandria didn't share. She said to AOC, "I'm a mom. I've got everything covered here. Don't worry. I'm calm."

Leslie Mac (42:08):

And AOC looked at her and said, "I hope I get to be a mom." I want people to hear that this is a young woman who has a huge platform. She takes it very seriously. She does diligent and amazing work, but she's still a young woman who shouldn't be made to feel like this just for doing her job. I don't know what it's going to take, and I think that's what's really been scaring me the most in this last few years, is that I have a sinking suspicion that it's going to take something so violent that...

Leslie Mac (42:56):

I'm just really actually afraid for the physical safety of so many of these elected officials right now, and I don't know what to do with that fear. I can only imagine how they are all feeling. I've been reaching out to my St. Louis crew, "Who is watching Cory?" I'm obsessed about it literally. I find myself just constantly being concerned. Some of them I don't worry about, because like Ayanna, I know she's got a very strong protective system around her. But I just worry.

Leslie Mac (43:34):

I just worry as we're watching continuing to watch these conspiracy theorists and white supremacists continue to take up space, continue to not be challenged. It was really disturbing to watch the hearing yesterday. I was so triggered to hear the GOP representative one after the other get up and make equivocation for MTG's behavior and these false equivalencies that they kept throwing, but I was really buoyed by the Democrats that got up and really were specific about the harms that were done, about who these were targeted against, and why we can't stand for it any longer.

Leslie Mac (44:19):

I have not heard the Democrats speak in such large collective voice about this yet. It's sad that it took someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene to get them to do it, because had they been doing this all along, perhaps there wouldn't be a Marjorie Taylor Greene in congress right now.

Bridget Todd (44:38):

I'm hopeful that in this moment people can see this is real stuff, really serious, and has very real consequences.

Leslie Mac (44:47):

Absolutely. And it needs to be said that these moments always come at the expense of women of color. I think that it plays into our disposability and in this notion that, well, we can just take it, and this notion that we're really just here to serve as an example for other people to learn from. That's a hard reality that we actually live with every single day, that our lives themselves are an example. We really just want to live. I say this all the time. I don't know an organizer that would not rather be doing something else. We are organizers because we are called and because we have to be.

Leslie Mac (45:40):

I love to just go to Paris and go to pastry school and bake all day if I had a choice. But that's not the world that I live in and it demands more of me, because I want my nieces to have a better world, and I want my nephews to be not be raised in a world that would have them become misogynists. I feel called to support people that are in need. The ways in which we are dehumanized in digital spaces, that we become these two-dimensional flattened out personalities in ways that our white counterparts are always seen as three-dimensional.

Leslie Mac (46:22):

It's always about the nuance of their experience. And for us, everything is black and white. It's a while to watch your sisters just become a lesson for people to learn, their pain be a lesson for people to learn from. I want that to stop as well.

Bridget Todd (46:45):

I want better for us all. I almost have tears in my eyes. I want better for us. I want you to be able to go to pastry school and not feel like you have to be in this fight that flattens us so cruelly. I want better for all of us.

Leslie Mac (47:03):

Same.

Bridget Todd (47:09):

If you enjoyed this podcast, please help us grow by subscribing. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? We'd love to hear from you at hello@tangoti.com. Disinformed is brought to you by There Are No Girls On The Internet. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our supervising produce and engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. For more great podcasts, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.