Social Media Gerrymandering
Who you amplify says a lot about you
In 2011 I counted, by hand, the number of women the then “top 20 VCs on Twitter” followed.
All of them, with the exception of one, followed less than ten percent women. Once I excluded women journalists (Sorry Kara Swisher!), the number declined to less than 5%. I won’t name any names except to say at the time, Dave McClure won by a landslide. I gave up counting once the number of women he followed, minus journalists, reached 40%. With my apologies to people of color, I didn’t look into that, but I have no reason to doubt the results would change much.
Over at Hacker News, a quick scan of today’s top 20 stories shows, that all of them were written by men.
In my time on Twitter, I’ve seen many of those same top 20 VCs respond to men who asked them questions, but outright ignore me and any other women who weren’t journalists, or “famous” executives. There’s even science that says that 35% of the time men physically can’t hear the voices of women who are menstruating.
Since I observed all of this, I watch closely who VCs and people of power not only follow, but retweet, reply to on blogs, and so on; and I have come to believe that everyone, myself included, is more likely to follow, and amplify, the thoughts of those we resemble in gender, race, world view, and class. This is dangerous stuff, the choice to insulate ourselves from the rest of the world. This self insulation from thoughtful and sometimes upsetting dissent makes us less likely to listen, to compromise, and to work with others for the most optimal outcomes. Just look at our Congress if you need more proof.
Think Before You Repeat
Everyone can help prejudice in our world by making it a point to respond to women and people of color; in fact anyone who is likely to have had less privilege in life than yourself. Someone who is poor. Someone who didn’t go to an ivy league school. Someone who makes you angry, but deep inside makes you think. Someone who scares you—the right way.
Don’t just take the safe route and retweet Kara, or only share Sheryl, or only invite Marissa to speak at your conference.Challenge yourself to promote more marginalized ideas and peoples(plural intended). Work hard to follow and argue with those who challenge you (intelligently).
Just like each day you try to run a little farther in your workout, or ship better code, or get a little more revenue, make it a point to actively follow and promote marginalized groups in every social media channel you have, including your blog, Twitter, Facebook,and upvoting those voices on sites like this one.
You never know where your next big deal will come from. And when it does, don’t you want to be remembered as the person who helped along the way?
A note on the data: At the time I did my original study, I reached out to Klout, Kred, and Twitter and asked them to share “share” data with me by gender. None would comply. So I was forced to do it by hand. I’ve been tempted to make a Mechanical Turk project out of it, but I have a startup to get off the ground.
