Read on Twitter
Bit of an understatement here @benyt + not for lack of warning from lots of us:
"While we were refining the new practice of social media at BuzzFeed, we were slow to realize that the far right was watching closely and eventually imitating us." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/business/media/capitol-anthime-gionet-buzzfeed-vine.html?smid=tw-share
"While we were refining the new practice of social media at BuzzFeed, we were slow to realize that the far right was watching closely and eventually imitating us." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/business/media/capitol-anthime-gionet-buzzfeed-vine.html?smid=tw-share
“Some of the innovative things we did early on, in understanding social media and digital media, have been taken up by alt-right groups, racist groups, MAGA groups,” my old boss, Mr. Peretti, told me in an interview last week.
In this 2018 piece, I referred to this phenom by white supremacist groups as "innovation opportunists" https://contexts.org/articles/the-algorithmic-rise-of-the-alt-right/
And, in this 2017 piece, I talked about how white supremacists saw Twitter as a "target rich environment" for harassment. https://www.damemagazine.com/2017/10/19/twitter-and-white-supremacy-love-story/
Also from 2017, I raised the question about what constitutes a "burning cross" online? https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-online-equivalent-of-a-burning-cross-83185
And, long before that, in a 2009 book, I pointed out that ardent white supremacists like David Duke + Don Black had already been tech innovators for more than a decade at that point. https://www.amazon.com/Cyber-Racism-Supremacy-Perspectives-Multiracial/dp/0742561585
I think often of Charles Mills' concept of "epistemological ignorance" - that we (white people) are so hobbled by our social position that we are unable to understand the world that we ourselves have created.
"epistemological ignorance" seems especially apt for this particular moment of confluence between tech + white supremacy.
