Redrafting African American History through Social Media

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 led many citizens to believe the United States had entered a post-racial society in which African Americans were no longer subject to white prejudice and discrimination. Yet the recent deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner confirm the persistence of unbridled racism in contemporary America. These unpunished abuses of power summon the image of Radio Raheem being choked to death in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and the memory of fourteen year-old Emmett Till, whose body was mutilated with barbed wire and thrown into the Tallahatchie River along with a seventy-pound cotton gin fan.

The crimes committed against these individuals are among the most visceral manifestations of racism imaginable. Although well intentioned, the hailing of a post-racial America demonstrates that whites in the United States are still incapable of perceiving and thus, denouncing the daily discrimination that African Americans endure on a daily basis. This is especially true for milder, though equally disturbing, forms of racism. High schools across the country, for instance, continue to utilize textbooks that underreport and whitewash the historical role of African Americans. The worst offenders are often privatized Christian schools in southern states. In Louisiana, in particular, some charter schools rely on Bob Jones University Press textbooks to teach the history of racial politics. Students are tested on their ability to assimilate the following information:

 Few slaveholders were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common…the majority of slaveholders treated their slaves well.

The [Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross. The Klan’s targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies. In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians.

Despite the racist motive of such textbooks, America’s public curriculum is arguably the worst offender in preserving black history. Most Americans, for instance, are familiar with the horrors of slavery and the KKK and would publicly condemn the textbooks being used in Louisiana’s private Christian schools. That is unsurprising given that most Americans attended schools that sought to communicate an unbiased interpretation of history. Public schools and, as a result, the masses are powerless, however, in policing accurate historicism if something was omitted from the historical narrative altogether.

Throughout history, white supremacists have made a conscious effort to remove the achievements and efforts of black leaders from the national consciousness in an effort to both dismiss the African Americans of that time and to dictate how historical events were retold to subsequent generations. As a result, many African Americans were never honored for their actions. This form of whitewashing, then, has a far greater potential for disempowering minorities than the blatant distorting of common knowledge events. Today, most well educated people would argue, for instance, that Abraham Lincoln, and his mostly white Union Army, was largely responsible for abolishing slavery in the United States. In reality, however, blacks living along the Eastern seaboard participated in a series of “Gullah Wars” for over a century that helped precipitate the abolishment of slavery:

One such Gullah War occurred in Florida during the 1830’s and was led by an extraordinary group of black men named Abraham, John Caesar, and John Horse. Yet rather than acknowledge the true nature of the event, the conflict was termed the Second Seminole War. Most newspapers from that time attempted to portray the conflict as a Native American war due a very rational fear of inspiring widespread, regional slave unrest. In addition, by minimizing the participation of plantation slaves, and instead claiming that Indians kidnapped runaways, white plantation owners could seek restitution from the U.S. government for war damages. The war ultimately involved more than three hundred slaves and nearly a thousand Black Indians.

It is difficult to believe that an event as important as the Florida Gullah War is still not being taught in American schools today. It is equally difficult to assign blame to any modern entity centuries after African Americans were deliberately removed from the historical record. On one hand, for instance, the U.S. Department of Education is absolved from any blame associated with the discriminatory processes that whitewashed American history because it was not created until 1979. On the other hand, however, the public must now hold the department accountable for revising the inherited version of events.

Social media is quickly becoming the preferred means of expressing discontent with the current curriculum. In some cases, social media is replacing the regulatory role of the U.S. Department of Education altogether and inserting itself as the primary repository of African American history. Applications like YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram, in particular, are now being utilized to disseminate vast quantities of information to the wider public. Given the increasingly growing presence of African Americans on these social media applications, the strategy could potentially alter popular perception of blacks in U.S. history. Online community forums, though far less prominent, are also striving to accomplish the same goal.

With its constant activism in revising African American history and policing modern attempts to distort the role of blacks, the Twitter account @BlackCognizance merits individual analysis. Founded in November 2011 with the tagline “Once you have been awakened from mental slavery, it’s hard to go back to sleep,” the account now has nearly eight thousand tweets and over sixteen thousand followers. Moreover, its creators are also responsible for the Instagram account BlackHistory, which has nearly twenty-five thousand followers. Both accounts seek to demonstrate that “there is more to [black] history than Egypt and slavery.” The Twitter account also provides African American users with a platform to voice educational injustices—facilitating a grassroots cultural renaissance.

A recent trending topic on the account focused on boycotting the upcoming film “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” which features an almost all-white cast. Director Ridley Scott, for instance, chose to portray Moses and Rhamses with actors Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton. Twitter followers such as @Dr_Asrat, featured above, and @Sharifkadir protested, “Hollywood could have easily funded Afar people who closely resembled Egyptians to star in Exodus #BoycottExodusMovie.” As a result, other, more traditional outlets, such as ThinkProgress, which carry millions of daily viewers, have joined the movement online. Likewise, Sojourners, a progressive monthly publication of Christian social justice, has decried the film for whitewashing Middle Eastern and African history:

When retelling a Biblical story, the effects of whitewashing are amplified. In the case of the movies Noah and Exodus, whitewashing continues a well-established practice of white sacralization through religious indoctrination. Throughout the history of European imperialism and colonialism this type of indoctrination was present. Depictions of white only Biblical figures (including prophets, angels, Jesus, etc.) were intentionally used to subconsciously indoctrinate the false belief of white divinity (and therefore superiority) upon the minds of the oppressed and conquered.

The amplifying power of social media in revising the historical record, as illustrated in the case of #BoycottExodusMovie, must not be understated. Yet, unsurprisingly, academic research on the topic is almost nonexistent. In order to determine the effectiveness of social media in disseminating minority-based history in the United States, I designed a survey study that was conducted on five college campuses around the country. The survey was distributed through former high school friends who are now attending school at each location.

At each school, the survey study was designed to target members of different backgrounds in order to capture the diversity found on social media. At the same time, however, the survey controlled for self-selection bias through an online randomization process. In order to do this, my friends obtained a student roster at each school through their class year’s Facebook page. A computer program selected fifteen names at random which my friends later emailed me. I subsequently messaged each individual through Facebook and asked him or her if they would be willing to participate in the study. If not, the randomization process was once again conducted in order to arrive at a total fifteen willing participants per school. The schools were also chosen based on geographic location in order to control for regional variations in the data.

The use of Facebook in the survey study ensured that I could easily contact potential participants and that I was reaching people who were actively engaged with social media. Out of the seventy-five college students surveyed, for instance, more than 80% reported an online presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The inclusion of different cultural backgrounds, moreover, allowed the study to create benchmarks with which to compare black educational social media accounts. The study was able to gauge, for instance, whether black accounts like @BlackCognizance were truly the most engaged with revisionist historicism or whether this was simply an illusion caused through the overrepresentation of African Americans on Twitter.

In attempting to conduct the study, I was particularly worried that the tragic deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner would skew the results to show a temporary anomaly in the amount of people following black social media accounts, such as @YesWeRise. After speaking to African American participants in the study, however, I realized this fear was unfounded. Once people start following these accounts, they explained to me, they generally become long-term users. The study, therefore, represents accurate demographic trends despite a turbulent sociopolitical atmosphere. Below, I have included the racial breakdown of the students who participated in the survey by school:

In the Southeast region, I surveyed 4 African Americans, 5 Hispanics, and 6 Caucasians at the University of Miami.

In the Southwest region, I surveyed 4 African Americans, 2 Hispanics, and 9 Caucasians at the University of Texas.

In the West region, I surveyed 5 African Americans, 6 Hispanics, and 4 Caucasians at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In the Midwest region, I surveyed 5 African Americans, 4 Hispanics, and 6 Caucasians at the University of Michigan.

In the Northwest region, I surveyed 7 African Americans, 1 Hispanic, and 7 Caucasians at the University of Oregon.

In total, I surveyed 25 African Americans, 18 Hispanics, and 32 Caucasians across the country—for a total of 75 students. The presence of Caucasians, which make up nearly half of the data set, may initially seem contrary to the aims of the study. In reality, however, the population breakdown of the survey follows that of the larger student population at each of the schools in the study—a welcomed byproduct of eliminating self-selection bias. Additionally, the presence of white students enabled the study to gauge the penetration of minority-based social media accounts in the larger population, outside African American and Hispanic communities.

Among African American students, nearly 65% reported following some form of black history on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Within that group 80% reported Twitter as their primary source of historical information. On the other hand, only 40% of Hispanic students reported some form of engagement with Latino history on social media. Again, Twitter dominated the competition—claiming 75% of all Hispanics who actively sought to read such information online.

Within the white surveyed population, less than 20% of students reported following any form of social media associated with American history. Within that group of students, half said they followed minority-based cultural accounts in order to obtain a more expansive version of historical events. Within the group of students who were not associated with historical social media accounts, only one was able to name an African American or Hispanic focused Twitter or Instagram account.

Within the 35% of African Americans and 60% of Hispanics who claimed to not follow any forms of minority-based social media accounts, an overwhelming proportion (80% of African Americans and 75% of Hispanics) claimed they had never heard of accounts like @BlackCognizance or @LatinoHistory, but planned on following them as a result of the survey.

I also showed all non-participating students a wide variety of tweets in order to better understand why some accounts were more successful than others in drawing in new members. Students were not necessarily attracted to the most radical retellings of history. Instead, they were interested in reading novel accounts grounded in fact. This is unsurprising because the second-most cited reason for not following these accounts in the first place was an inherent distrust for information found on the Internet. Below, I have listed the three most popular tweets in order. Whether through an image or link, all three tweets provide users with varying degrees of authenticity:

In the case of the third tweet, for instance, users are redirected to an educational segment featuring Rick Steves, a well-respected American author and television personality. The video segment informs users:

The story of Granada is all about the Islamic Moors. In the year 711, these North African Muslims crossed the straits of Gilbratar and quickly conquered the entire Iberian Peninsula. For over 700 years, Spain was a predominantly Muslim society living under Muslim rule. For two centuries, until 1492, Alhambra reigned as the capital of Grenada. While the rest of Europe slumbered through much of the Middle Ages, the Moorish civilization was wide awake. The math necessary to construct this palace would have dazzled Europeans at that age. The Moors made great gains in engineering, medicine, and even classical Greek studies. In fact, some of the great thinking of Ancient Greece had been forgotten by Europe but was absorbed into Africa and actually given back to Europe via scholars here in Spain.

These Twitter accounts thus provide an authentic and verifiable version of events that is rarely if ever portrayed from an Afro-centric point of view in classrooms. The survey revealed that this process of investigative, multimedia learning is not only highly informative, but something that college students enjoy doing in their free time. The engaging presentation of information, moreover, helps explain why African American accounts are more popular than their Hispanic counterparts, which for the most part tend to only include static text.

In addition, the survey revealed that despite the overall popularity of African American accounts, the people utilizing them as educational instruments are also overwhelming black. In other words the burden of revising whitewashed American textbooks is disproportionally falling on the blacks that are producing and consuming this type of revisionist work. One caveat, however, concerns my inability to incorporate Native American online accounts and students into the study—something that may or may not displace African Americans as the distinguished leader of this online movement.

In order for this movement to succeed, however, the public must, as mentioned earlier, hold American institutions accountable for what is being taught in public schools. At a certain point, the online community must transition from an information gathering entity to a politically active constituency, willing to exert pressure on the government. My interest in this topic stems from my own research on the Gullah Wars, which I am writing about in a thesis entitled “Restless Liberty: Territorial East Florida’s Maroon Haven and the Largest Slave Rebellion in US History, 1835-1836.” As I read through military documents detailing the lives of slaves in Florida throughout the antebellum period, I grew increasingly frustrated that few people outside of Harvard would learn about this crucial part of African American history. Consequently, I decided to reach out to one of the curators at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is set to open next year. I talked about what I was researching and how I hoped to someday turn it into a book. In the meantime, I explained that there were certain things the museum could incorporate into their exhibits to rectify historical inaccuracies. Among other things, I explained that the Underground Railroad flowed not only to the northern border of the United States with Canada, but also to the south where slaves were able escape to the Bahamas via Florida.

Six months later, the Smithsonian Museum posted the following message alongside the photo included above:

The Underground Railroad, the secret system that ferried thousands of enslaved people from bondage to freedom, had stops in cities across a wide expanse of our country – and some of the “stations” were in places that were not in a direct line from a slave state to a free one.

“While primary attention is given to the drama of slave escapes to the free states of the North and to Canada, there was also a flow of runaways into Spanish Florida and into Spanish Mexico and the subsequent Mexican Republic,” notes the National Park Service.

Whatever path an enslaved person took for their escape – wagons, boats, river crossings – they often found their way to hiding places within private homes, churches and barns. Helping them along were abolitionists, including free blacks and others sympathetic to their plight who risked fines and imprisonment for aiding them.

Look for upcoming posts about cities such as Atlanta, Cincinnati and New York – all known for their efforts to help enslaved persons become free men and women. Check out this link to see various routes of the Underground Railroad: http://1.usa.gov/1y4FCM4

This is only one small example of how an individual can exert pressure on a larger institution to help reunite people with their ancestors’ pasts. Going forward, I have maintained my relationship with the Smithsonian and hope to establish a temporary exhibit demonstrating the importance of the Gullah Wars in precipitating the abolishment of the domestic slave trade in the United States. I am confident that in the future other individuals will demand a redrafting of African American history too. I would not be surprised to see social media play a crucial role in that effort.

Works Cited

“#BoycottExodusMovie.” Twitter. Dr_Asrat. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. https://twitter.com/Dr_Asrat/status/541711660134985728

“BlackCognizance.” Twitter. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. https://twitter.com/blackcognizance

“BlackHistory.” Instagram. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. http://instagram.com/blackhistory

“Black History: John Horse And The Black Seminoles.” YouTube. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TT2TthezYU

Brock, Andre. “From the Blackhand Side: Twitter as a Cultural Conversation.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media: 529-49. Print.

“Crushing White Supremacy (Part 3: The Gullah Wars).” YouTube. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoNTDABXBxU

Dawson, Michael C., and Lawrence D. Bobo. 2009. One year later and the myth of a post-racial society. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 6(2): 247–249.

“Do The Right Thing: Radio Raheem’s Death.” YouTube. Phillip Branch. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGM5x1qQUOI

Ho, Pauline. “Twitter Post.” Twitter. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. https://twitter.com/paulineptho/status/523667354207932416

“King Henry VII and WWI.” Twitter. BlackPresence. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. https://twitter.com/blackpresence

“Largest Slave Rebellion.” Cocoa Lounge. 13 May 2013. Web. http://www.cocoalounge.org/viewthread.php?tid=61299&page=2

McLean, Nick. “Black Men and Depression, Part 2: PTSD.” Yes, We Rise. BlogSpot. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. http://yeswerise.blogspot.com/

Potter, Woodburne. The War in Florida. 1836. Reprint, Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1966.

“Ridley Scott on Exodus.” PageSay. ScreenRant. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. http://pagesay.com/ridley-scott-says-exodus-gods-and-kings-is-his-biggest-epic-yet/

“Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.” The Underground Railroad. Google. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. https://plus.google.com/u/0/116010930245123207334/posts

“Teaching African History.” Twitter. Racialicious. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. https://twitter.com/racialicious/status/540525431892750337

“The Alhambra.” Black History Heroes. Twitter. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. https://twitter.com/historyheroes

“The Murder of Emmett Till.” The American Experience. PBS. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/

United States History: Heritage of Freedom, 2nd ed., A Beka Book, 1996

United States History for Christian Schools, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2001

“United States History For Christian Schools.” Amazon. Web. http://www.amazon.com/United-States-History-Christian-Schools/dp/1591664241

A Racialized Online Environment: YouTube’s Profit-Driven “Hood Pranks”

In 2005, three former PayPal employees launched YouTube as a “consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos worldwide through a web experience.” In 2006, the platform became the fastest growing website on the Internet. YouTube’s content managers quickly realized that they were not fully realizing the financial potential of their creation and, as a result, introduced video advertising the next year. The website is projected to generate more than a billion dollars in marketing revenue alone in 2014. Users, who typically receive 55% of the income, are therefore incentivized to post controversial and, in the case of “hood pranks,” immoral content in order to increase their online viewership and personal salaries.

A “hood prank” on YouTube is typically characterized as a video in which an amateur comedian enters a predominantly African-American neighborhood in order to elicit violent behavior on camera. The proliferation of such videos on YouTube can be traced to a Russian male, Vitaly Zdorovestskiy, who in 2012 decided to dress up as a zombie and terrorize African Americans in Miami’s historically black downtown area. The video quickly went viral and received nearly thirty million views. Despite the video’s inconspicuous title—“Miami’s Zombie Attack Prank”—Vitaly’s motives are blatantly clear. In a span of three minutes, the user chases after eighty African Americans and makes a deliberate effort to show he is filming near Miami’s MLK Drive. Based on contemporary estimates, the video generated over sixty thousand dollars for Vitaly Zdorovestskiy.

As the genre of videos was popularized, profit-driven users felt the need to create increasingly lewd and disturbing videos in black neighborhoods. As a result, African Americans defended themselves and were unfairly characterized as irrational and violent. OckTV, an account managed by the Ettayim brothers from New York, became one of the worst perpetrators of the trend in early 2014. With titles like “Domestic Abuse in Public!” “Stealing Strangers’ Money Prank!” “Selling Cocaine to a Security Guard!” and “Can I Kick You!?” the two males quickly garnered national attention and received millions of views on each of their videos. Viewers repeatedly racialized the understandable and rational reactions from innocent pedestrians in uncensored YouTube comments.

          Despite international condemnation, OckTV continued to post videos every month and accounts were generated in an effort to profit from the controversial practice. Today, many new comedic users attempt to establish themselves through this medium. With small initial fan bases, these users often push the racialized standard in a self-perpetuating process for revenue and fame. A recent video in Oakland, for instance, features a young man impersonating a police officer and slapping handcuffs on individuals walking on the sidewalk or engaged in conversation with friends and family members.

Unfortunately, this trend will continue as long as YouTube continues to allow users to profit off of racist “pranks.” Indeed, the most disturbing financial aspect of these videos is that Google and YouTube also profit from them. As previously mentioned, the company receives nearly half of the revenue from each video. Clearly, there is an imperative for institutional intervention that has gone unacknowledged for far too long in the online community. The media is powerless in stopping the trend on its own. On the contrary, media attention generates more viewers and incentivizes unscrupulous users to participate in the lucrative practice. Despite the efforts of users like RicemanTV, people will unfortunately continue to make and watch “hood pranks” for personal enrichment and entertainment. It is sad and discouraging that people even feel the need to make such videos. I look forward to the day when people will cease to think in racial terms. Until then, online content managers will need to police cases of discrimination in a manner that creates a safe online experience for every user, regardless of their background.

Works Cited

“Are Black Guys Violent? (Social Experiment).” YouTube. September 10, 2014. Accessed November 25, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb4GfbR98EE.

Broderick, Ryan. “Meet The Two Brothers Behind The Shocking “Hood Prank” YouTube Videos People Can’t Stop Sharing.” BuzzFeed. August 7, 2014. Accessed November 25, 2014. http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/meet-the-two-brothers-behind-ocktv-hood-pranks.

“Can I Kik You Prank!?” YouTube. September 2, 2014. Accessed November 25, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaiaaEbbkwE.

Faughnder, Ryan. “YouTube U.S. Ad Revenue to Cross $1 Billion This Year, EMarketer Says.” Los Angeles Times. September 11, 2014. Accessed November 25, 2014.

Freeman, B., and S. Chapman. “Is “YouTube” Telling or Selling You Something? Tobacco Content on the YouTube Video-sharing Website.” Tobacco Control, 2007, 207-10. Accessed November 25, 2014. http://www.jstor.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/stable/20748159.

Garrahan, Matthew. “YouTube Advertising Revenue Surges 50% to $5.6bn.” Financial Times. December 11, 2013. Accessed November 25, 2014. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/377ed152-6220-11e3-bba5-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3K7hCL3z1.

Glenn, Pia. “I Only Hope That the Hood Pranks…” Twitter. July 25, 2014. Accessed November 25, 2014. https://twitter.com/PiaGlenn/status/492818268843810816.

Kaufman, Leslie. “Chasing Their Star, on YouTube.” The New York Times. February 1, 2014. Accessed November 25, 2014.

“Miami Zombie Attack Prank!” YouTube. June 2, 2012. Accessed November 25, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4awVqRr1eCo.

Readhead, Harry. “Pranksters Warned.” The UK Metro. July 12, 2014. Accessed November 25, 2014. http://metro.co.uk/2014/07/12/pranksters-told-they-are-putting-their-lives-in-jeopardy-after-latest-jokes-turn-violent-4795567/.

Schilling, Dave. “Stop Using Black People as Props for Viral Videos | VICE | United States.” VICE. June 27, 2014. Accessed November 25, 2014. http://www.vice.com/read/ranking-the-racism-of-the-hood-pranks-phenomenon-twir-845.

Who’s Funding You?

Founded in 2010, GoFundMe, a crowdfunding website that allows everyday people to create donations pages for personal causes, now boasts itself to be “The World’s #1 Personal Funding Websites.” GoFundMe’s website states that the website has raised over $480 million dollars, with a daily payment volume of over $1million. As examples of causes people have chosen to use their company to fund, GoFundMe lists medical expenses, educational costs, volunteer programs and even animals and pets, stating that “the possibilities are endless.” However, recent GoFundMe controversies show that this is not necessarily the case, and that GoFundMe can, sometimes arbitrarily, choose which causes are permissible.

As reported by various online news outlets and blogs such as Think Progress, in early September GoFundMe removed the funding campaign of an Illinois woman named Bailey who, according to her GoFundMe site, was raising money for an abortion for a “rough, unplanned, and unexpected pregnancy.”

Screenshot of “Bailey’s” fundraising campaign. With her GoFundMe campaign and external help she was able to reach her goal. The campaign has since been deleted, but GoFundMe deposited all of her donations, according to The Daily Dot.                                                                                                                                                                                                   Credit: Think Progress via GoFundMe

In an email sent to Bailey by the company and attained by The Daily Dot, a Customer Happiness representative let’s Bailey know that GoFundMe has concluded that her campaign was not appropriate for their site. The email states, “GoFundMe reviews campaigns that have received a high number of complaints on a case-by-case basis. In this particular case your campaign contains subject matter that GoFundMe would rather not be associated with.” A few days later GoFundMe updated its official Content Guidelines to prohibit many campaigns, including those regarding abortion or “content associated or relating to it,” according to several sites including one in the International Business Times entitled “GoFundMe’s New Guidelines For Acceptable Content Are Confusing and Inconsistent” by Zoe Mintz. As expected, GoFundMe received significant backlash, with one Facebook user even calling the site misogynistic and racist. Despite the language used in the new guidelines, many pro-life or anti-abortion campaigns remained on the crowdsourcing site. Moreover, according to Mintz’s IBT article, several other campaigns exist on the website related to other controversial topics such as gun rights, marijuana legalization and euthanasia, some of which directly violate GoFundMe’s content prohibition guidelines.

The perseverance of various other controversial campaigns speaks to the inability of GoFundMe, and the majority of public, user-dominated websites, to create and enforce universal standards of censorship. As Ethan Mollick, management professor at UPenn’s Wharton School of Business notes “there is an ongoing battle among various crowdfunding sites about how much to curate and how much not to. There is probably some combination of curation or censoring that is optimal, and nobody knows quite what that is,” (quoted by Jillian Berman in her Huffington Post article on the controversy). Although GoFundMe later modified its content guidelines once again in an attempt to clarify (stating it now prohibits “directly funding an abortion (animal or human)”) their ability to actually universally enforce its 35 separate categories of prohibited content across over 1 million campaigns seems limited.

In addition, GoFundMe is a private company and as such, and as stated in their Content Guidelines, they reserve the right to approve or shut down any campaign they choose, even if it does not directly violate its regulations. Conversely, the company can also refuse to shut down any campaign it chooses, raising questions surrounding what information GoFundMe uses “on a case-by-case basis” to decide which campaigns it will tolerate and for what reasons. One oft cited example is the fact that despite a barrage of criticism calling for the termination of GoFundMe campaigns in support of Darren Wilson, the Missouri police officer who shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown, GoFundMe refused to shut down the campaign, telling Business Insider that the campaign is not in violation of the company’s terms of service. Many of the donors’ comments, however, sampled below, did violate the terms of service by spewing overtly racist and hateful sentiments, and were subsequently removed.

Compilation of screenshots of inappropriate comments on the “Support Officer Darren Wilson” GoFundMe campaign                                                                     Credit: Business Insider, via Twitter

The campaigns stayed active however, raising approximately $400,000 in funds. GoFundMe so vehemently refused to take down the campaigns that it has threatened to sue one of the civil rights organizations protesting the site, Color of Change. According to an article by Christopher Zara in the International Business Times, the non-profit organization has been in negotiations with GoFundMe to change its content policy, but as agreements could not be made, Color of Change is allegedly moving forward with its plan to place a billboard denouncing the company, similar to the one pictured below, in GoFundMe’s headquarter city of San Diego.

Plans for a billboard, by the non-profit organization Color of Change, to be placed in San Diego.                                                                                      Credit: International Business Times, via Twitter

Although, as GoFundMe sated, the Darren Wilson campaign does not violate its terms and conditions, it received numerous complaints about it, a reason it cited in its email to Bailey as to why her campaign came under review. At the time, Bailey’s campaign did not violate any terms and conditions of GoFundMe, and still it was taken down because it contained content that “GoFundMe would rather not be associated with.” Thus this discrepancy raises questions of why GoFundMe would tolerate some campaigns over others. Many of the articles cited above note that GoFundMe retains 5% of each donation, meaning that in the case of the campaigns to support Darren Wilson,  GoFundMe was slated to rack in 20K. What role does this monetary benefit play in which moral codes GoFundMe enforces and which ones it doesn’t? Moreover, as stated above, GoFundMe is a private company, run by real people, with their own personal beliefs and biases. In this new digital age where almost anything is publicly acceptable, it seems we sometimes forget that although websites may be for public use, they are still privately owned, and the stipulations they place on their production often reflect that.

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Works Cited 

08, Dell Cameronon September, and 2014. “GoFundMe Cancels Crowdfunded Abortion.” The Daily Dot. Accessed October 6, 2014. http://www.dailydot.com/politics/gofundme-crowdfund-abortion/.

22, Maya Kosoff Aug, 2014, 9:54 Am 18, and 115 44. “People Are Urging GoFundMe To Shut Down A $200,000 Campaign Supporting The Officer Who Killed Michael Brown.” Business Insider. Accessed October 6, 2014. http://www.businessinsider.com/gofundme-campaign-supporting-darren-wilson-2014-8.

Berman, Jillian. “Crowdfunding Site GoFundMe Won’t Let Crowds Fund Abortions.” Huffington Post, September 11, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/11/gofundme-abortions_n_5804228.html.

By. “GoFundMe Threatens Lawsuit Against Civil Rights Group Critical Of Officer Darren Wilson Campaign.” International Business Times, September 29, 2014. http://www.ibtimes.com/gofundme-threatens-lawsuit-against-civil-rights-group-critical-officer-darren-wilson-1696475.

———. “GoFundMe, Officer Wilson, Daniel Holtzclaw, And The Myth Of ‘Neutral’ Technology Platforms.” International Business Times, September 5, 2014. http://www.ibtimes.com/gofundme-officer-wilson-daniel-holtzclaw-myth-neutral-technology-platforms-1679990.

———. “GoFundMe’s New Guidelines For Acceptable Content Are Confusing And Inconsistent.” International Business Times, September 11, 2014. http://www.ibtimes.com/gofundmes-new-guidelines-acceptable-content-are-confusing-inconsistent-1686106.

Dewey, Caitlin. “GoFundMe, the Site That Has Raised Money for Convicted Murderers, Will Draw the Line at Abortion and ‘sorcery’.” The Washington Post, September 9, 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/09/09/gofundme-the-site-that-has-raised-money-for-convicted-murderers-will-draw-the-line-at-abortion-and-sorcery/.

“Important Update to Our Content Guidelines.” Accessed October 6, 2014. http://www.gofundme.com/2014/09/09/content-guidelines/.

Rosch, Amelia. “Popular Crowdfunding Site GoFundMe Won’t Let People Raise Money For Abortion.” Accessed October 6, 2014. http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/09/11/3566105/gofundme-abortion-policy/.

 

Striking a Balance: Freedom of Speech and Institutional Censorship Online

Note: I have censored words from social media posts that could be perceived as culturally offensive or inappropriate

According to Jessie Daniels, cyber racism refers to “a range of white supremacist movements in Europe and North America and to the new horizons the Internet and digital media have opened for expression of whiteness across national boundaries.” (4) As demonstrated in the two readings for this week, the Internet is both an empowering tool for personal expression and a lawless haven for racism and bigotry. In order to ensure a safe online experience, many people are pressuring companies like Facebook and Twitter to devise better censorship algorithms capable of detecting and eliminating offensive behavior, such as the racist tweets following Amandla Stenberg’s casting as Rue in the 2012 Hunger Games movie.

Cyber racism, however, is not always easy to identify. As Irene Kwok and Yuzhou Wang explain, the presence of “racist tweets against blacks…may not be obvious against a backdrop of half a billion tweets a day.” (1621) In their research, Kwok and Wang demonstrate the future difficulties online companies could face in their efforts to systematically censor racially charged comments. The filter designed for the study, for instance, was only able to capture offensive language 76% of the time and was unable to identify relationships between words—causing it to erroneously censor innocent language. Their study also revealed the added complication of determining which words are exclusively appropriate within certain communities. In other words, according to Kwok and Wang, an effective filtration system will need to have the ability to recognize statements as racist or non-racist depending on the racial identity of the person who said it. The following two tweets provide a good example. Should Case A be allowed in the Twitter community or should the company take an all-or-nothing stance on the use of certain words? How do you think Facebook and Twitter should treat repeat offenders?

 Case A: African-American female quoting a contemporary cultural icon:

Case B: White male attacking an African-American teenager:

The difference between the two statements is obvious to any person consciously searching for online slurs, but appear equally offensive to an algorithm that is unable to analyze the context of the conversation. Computers, and even humans, face a similar predicament in identifying the cloaked comments and websites discussed in Jessie Daniels’ book. She provides an extensive array of examples in her well researched and encompassing writing. I was particularly captivated by her analysis on the cultural impact of cyber racism. According to the author, the “least recognized—and, hence, most insidious—threat posed by white supremacy online is the epistemological menace to our accumulation and production of knowledge about race, racism, and civil rights in the digital era.” (8) In one example, Daniels describes how a user attempted to employ “moderate-sounding rhetoric and an appeal to the nation’s founding ideals to make a point that runs counter to the democratic ideals of equality for all.” (53) The excerpt is included below:

I found this user’s comment particularly troubling because, unlike personal attacks made over Twitter, it is virtually undetectable to filtration systems and has the potential to indoctrinate unsuspecting readers. As Daniels points out, the regulation of such websites is a highly controversial and polarizing topic of debate. She persuasively argues that the United States must first recognize the racial realities of its history and then embrace the urgent need to restrict hate-speech online. According to the author, the United States tends to “ignore and downplay the formative effects of colonialism, slavery, ongoing and systemic racism, and the white racial frame on the acceptance of white supremacy online.”(179) That is particularly worrying given the amount of influence the United States wields online. After reading this chapter, I asked myself two questions: Can governmental entities regulate the Internet in an effective manner? If so, should regulation be crafted at the national level, despite the “border-less” nature of cyber-space?

The questions generated from these readings are crucial to the integrity and sustainability of the Internet as a productive platform for exchanging information. However, both users and governmental actors must accept that free speech cannot take precedence in every online situation. With free speech online, individuals must assume a greater responsibility in order to ensure it is used properly. As stated in response to a recent ruling in Australia, “free speech is not absolute…there is a point where it comes into conflict with other rights and should be legally curtailed.” (The Australian) Indeed, in the case of Twitter I believe the company should begin to enforce a filtration system in a transparent and user-friendly manner—communicating to users why their tweets are being blocked and signaling which words to avoid. Twitter could employ a bigram system, as Kwok and Wang suggest, to analyze the relationship between words and minimize the risk of blocking non-racist tweets. Similarly, Twitter should provide ample warning before deactivating the account of an alleged repeat offender. Those users should also have access to a resolution center in order to appeal their case. Many other sites, such as PayPal and eBay, already include such services on their customer service section.

Similarly, I am confident that national government officials need to play a central role in the effort to combat racism online. Despite a lack of results at the judicial level, past cases have provided great insight into how national governments could potentially regulate the Internet. In her discussion of the French lawsuit against Yahoo in 2000, for instance, Daniels mentions the development of a new technology, geo-ID, which can “identify and screen Internet content on the basis of geographical source.” (177) This tool could not only help restrict the flow of racist information onto public sites, but also, more importantly, could enable the government to match IP addresses to known hate groups, as catalogued in the Southern Poverty Law Center website.

Class Discussion Questions

1. Would you be wiling to have your Twitter and Facebook posts screened in order to guard against hate-speech online, despite knowing you would never engage in such behavior?

2. As an online user, do you feel there are adequate mechanisms currently in place to report abusive or hurtful language? Which social media platform do you feel is best at doing this? Which do you feel is the worst?

3. Do you think it is more important to prosecute individual actors online that are bullying others based on their race or established organizations that create cloaked websites to misrepresent historical information? Please describe what you deem would be the most effective mechanism for regulating the option you picked.

Works Cited

“Balotelli Tweet: The ‘Ugly Side’ Of Social Media.” YouTube. YouTube, 22 Sept. 2014. Web. 29 Sept. 2014.

Daniels, Jessie. Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009. Print.

“Facebook Can’t See the Problem with Horrible Racism.” Us Vs Th3m. 2 Apr. 2014. Web. 29 Sept. 2014.

“Global Internet Map 2006.” Global Internet Map 2006. Web. 29 Sept. 2014. http://www.telegeography.com/telecom-resources/map-gallery/global-internet-map-2006

“Hate Map.” Southern Poverty Law Center. Web. 29 Sept. 2014.

Jasmine. “I Ain’t Got No Quarrel with Them Viet Cong … They Never Called Me Nigger.” Muhammad Ali, 1966.” Twitter, 29 Sept. 2014. Web. 29 Sept. 2014.

Kwok, Irene, and Yuzhou Wang. “Locate the Hate: Detecting Tweets against Blacks.” Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Print.

Liftoffs. “Because You Can’t Afford Air Conditioning Because You’re a Nigger.” Twitter. Twitter, 29 Sept. 2014. Web. 29 Sept. 2014.

“Racist Hunger Games Fans Are Very Disappointed.” Jezebel. 26 Mar. 2013. Web. 29 Sept. 2014.

“What Does the Online Hate Prevention Institute (OHPI) Do?” YouTube, 19 Aug. 2014. Web. 29 Sept. 2014.

Wilson, Tim. “Free Speech Is Best Medicine for the Bigotry Disease.” The Australian. 26 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 Sept. 2014.