I found the concept of certain groups of people collectively migrating to a new platform really interesting. It makes me want to learn more about what was making them dislike the previous platform and like the new one (e.g. Twitter). I’m really surprised to learn that different races would shift at the same time. But I suppose if there was already groups that existed on a platform who knew each other let the others know, that would make sense. I’d love to read the other articles referenced that cover this topic. Interesting how white people began shifting from MySpace to Facebook before others and black/tech savvy or fans of celebrities found Twitter to be exciting.
This began to remind me though the stories that keep coming up of fake Trump supporters on Twitter who claim to be black voters taking advantage of this black community online. I just wonder if they are even aware enough to use these race centric hashtags as well- though they seem pretty lazy to me just copy pasting the same information into multiple tweets and even their usernames, “They'd all joined Twitter recently; their Twitter handles usually included a reference to "MAGA" or "KAG," Trump’s newer campaign slogan that stands for "Keep America Great;" and their profile pictures were often stock images of Black men and women.”
The story of Robert Williams is insane how many times his photo was used in these fake accounts: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/14/tech/twitter-suspends-fake-black-trump-supporters-trnd/index.html
It’s just so upsetting and brings us back to the idea proposed in the beginning that it can be anyone sitting behind that screen and you won’t know if a word of it is a truth or lie until potentially disproved otherwise - like these accounts. “Williams was profiled in the paper for his wrongful arrest after facial recognition software led Detroit police to accuse him of shoplifting.”
I think in terms of this article I’m more on the side of Danielle Belton’s point of how it’s sort of fetishizing black actions. Though the more I thought about it the more this sentiment might be a bit of an “I don’t see color” idea and how we are charged to give notice to cultural difference or then it’s balancing on a fence of cultural erasure.
Comments