Words matter.
That’s it, that’s the defining phrase of 2021. The world has witnessed the power of words, of disinformation, of hashtags, or praising cult-like leaders since the late 2000’s. The shooting in Kenosha was carried out by a white, cis-male teenager who attended a Donald Trump rally in January. Seven months’ worth of racist and violent calls to action via tweets, campaign, and official White House videos, and Facebook posts by President Trump and his supporters later, we not only see a brazen shooting at a protest, but other attacks on minorities. Rittenhouse was arrested and defended by the President for his actions, calling him a ‘hero.’
The world saw the events of January 6th unfold in real time, influenced again by a series of tweets, posts, hashtags, and in-person campaign rallies. Insurrection led by white-supremacist and right-wing groups that included former military and law enforcement officers. We also saw how the spread of disinformation can lead to assassinations and ethnic wars in countries like Ethiopia, where a popular singer’s murder has led to hate speech and violence and incitement across Facebook in late 2020. Now, on March 17th, we see how the hypersexualization of Asian women, compounded with hashtags like ‘#Chinese Virus’ or ‘#China Flu’ led to the killing of six Asian women in Georgia, but according to law enforcement is not a ‘race-related crime’ but instead fueled by someone who was ‘having a bad day.’
The list of murders, violent attacks, coup attempts, and the like are exhaustive. Words can create pain and they can also make excuses for actions. Justifications for the unjustifiable can be found in hashtags, comments, posts, videos, etc., sometimes even praising the assailant.
Words have always mattered, but in the age of social media, where conspiracy theories, deep fakes, and global disinformation campaigns run rampant — truth and civility matters more. The direct result of social media companies choosing NOT to remove certain content has created space for the legitimacy of hate speech and therefore the green light to act in whatever way makes you feel ‘good.’ For some that means storming the US Capitol with bear spray with the intent of hanging elected officials, for others it’s picking up a gun and shooting people because ‘they had a bad day.’ For the rest of us, the actions taken leave a mark on already highly scarred tissue. Every death is another reminder to every non-cis white male that they aren’t safe.
It’s all too much. Too much weight to carry through the workday and function as normal with partners and children. Too much to have to explain time and time again why someone’s death is a reminder of what could happen to you by just being. Just living. Just breathing.
Think about that, Breonna Taylor was shot and killed while she was sleeping. These six Asian women were shot and killed while at work, a place where for all intents and purposes they felt safe. 9 African Americans were killed in Charleston, South Carolina while in bible study, after welcoming in their murderer to worship with them. Sarah Everard was killed by just being a woman, and while she took all of the proper protocols to ensure her safety, it wasn’t enough.
So what are you supposed to do when we can all see that words matter, but corporations, talking heads, and every day people think our pain is an over-reaction. We fight back.
How we decide to fight back is up to each and every one of us. It starts with answering the following questions: How can I work to create a safer, more equitable, and more just world? How can I help those who are suffering without overextending myself? How can I work with others to even just move the needle a little bit? How can I do it safely? How can I check my own privilege in the process?
Then we tackle the ‘who’ is responsible in the puzzle. In 2020, US based Civil Rights organizations led a ‘Stop Hate for Profit’ boycott targeting Facebook to update their policies and to be more transparent in their decision making. To focus on people instead of profit. The boycott worked, policies were changed and now there are more conversations about social responsibility in the realm of content moderation and what citizens can do about it. That’s just one social media company, where Twitter and TikTok also carry an amount of responsibility as global social media companies who let hate speech, violence and incitement content stay on their platforms as text, videos, and links to off-platform websites connected to known agitators.
It’s not just increasing the number of human content reviewers, it’s analyzing and re-thinking about how companies rely on AI to remove and identify harmful content across all platforms.
Facebook launched an independent deliberative body called the Oversight Board in 2020, it’s most high profile case is that of Facebook’s decision to remove former President Donald J. Trump from the platform. The former US president is just one of thousands of ‘bad actors’ that spread hate speech, incite violence, praise known dangerous individuals that contribute to the attacks that we have witnessed over the past decade. Could you imagine a world when one day, all social media companies were held accountable for their actions, lapses in judgment and progress? It would send a signal, globally, that they are committed to stopping targeted hate speech that can, has and will continue to lead to real world harm.
There’s much work to do. This is only the beginning.
