3. A Twitter experiment, YouTube Nazis and the case of the missing Andrew Bolt archives
3. A Twitter experiment, YouTube Nazis and the case of the missing Andrew Bolt archives
Also have you heard about the redditor u/PM_ME_YOUR_AREOLAS who keeps beating AFL journalists to scoops?
Hi all,
Well, I’ve given up on the pretense that this is a weekly-ish newsletter. But, I promise to keep bringing the goods at least semi-occasionally.
I hope you enjoy this edition.
(And subscribe to get all the future editions straight to your inbox, if you haven’t already).
You don’t need a white dude to tell you racism is everywhere.
Events of the last few weeks have amped this up even more. Social media feeds are filled with it. There’s no escaping it.
And even though denouncing racist violence and rhetoric is part of how we challenge and defeat it, seeing it still hurts.
Scott Trindall is a Gomeroi man who recently spent a week logging off Twitter every time he saw something racist. I spoke to him about his experiment:
CAMERON WILSON: so was there a moment that kicked this challenge off?
SCOTT TRINDALL: nah not just the one thing. more of a culmination of the increased focus in the media on racism as a follow on from the US BLM protests and then the Stop Black Deaths in Custody ones here. it can be tiring, and take up a lot of energy.
CW: that makes sense. what did you hope to get out of the challenge?
ST: Couple things probably, 1: a bit less stress in my life - one of the ways racism can affect you is via stress. So reducing my exposure to it via twitter helped. 2, just to look at how prevalent racism as a topic was on twitter at the time, and maybe show some of the other effects calling out racism has on Murris.
CW: right. And reading your wrap up thread, it seems like that bore out. You said that it took no longer than 10 minutes on any of the days — did that surprise you?
ST: Not really, leading into it, it already seemed like every second post was about racism, hence the need to step away. It was surprising to see ppl you'd not normally see posting about racism either rt posts or chucking their own in. Was good to see, but started to wonder if it was more RT's for "likes" rather than rt's for "we'd like this to stop".
CW: Oh yeah, were there any completely unexpected accounts that posted something racist?
ST: No one stuck out hey, but there were noticeably more white ppl on board with rt-ing and making their own posts.
CW: last question: would you recommend people do a similar thing? if not logging off, at least trying to notice how often they come across racist content on twitter?
ST: yeah personally i think it's important for Murris to at least be aware of how much it adds up and to take a break if they can. it's a balancing act between the goodness of calling out racism and feeling part of a community doing the same, and the badness of racism-induced stress. and for non-mob, just to be aware of how racism is framed in stuff they're passively sharing, and to consider how they might use any privilege they have to actively counter it.
Scott wrapped up his thoughts about his experiment here. You should follow him. Thanks to Scott for talking to me
THE CASE OF THE MISSING ANDREW BOLT ARCHIVES
Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I am a keen watcher of Andrew Bolt.
As Australia’s most syndicated columnist and prime time television host, he is one of the loudest voices in one of the most concentrated media markets in the world.
The man was found guilty of racial discrimination (Update: I’ve updated this with the correct charge, kudos to @clothedvillainy) and has a track record of platforming regressive and damaging views.
That’s why I was so interested to see that all of his Herald Sun blog posts pre-2019 have been taken offline in the past week.
This means you won’t be able to read his post about how Australians are being replaced by non-English-speaking immigrants.
Nor will you be able to catch his post about receiving an autographed copy of the book beloved by white supremacists.
Or the time he quoted @dril. lol.
Thankfully, each of these are saved so we won’t forget. But, I’m still curious about why this has happened. It absolutely might just be a tech issue. I checked and other columnists like Miranda Devine and Tim Blair still have working archives.
To get to the bottom of this, I sent Mr Bolt an email. He responded (within 2 minutes! On a Friday night!) saying that was the first he’d heard of it and that he was going to look into it.
I’ll keep you posted.
CONSPIRACY CORNER
I’m using this conspiracy corner to talk about why tech companies are willfully unprepared to deal with those propagating extreme, dangerous views.
Last week, an Australian far right publication hosted an online “conference” (a week of nightly livestreams on YouTube) featuring known white supremacists, including another convicted racist and Sky News guest, Blair Cottrell, seeking to amplify using their abhorrent views.
I got on the blower to YouTube and told them what was going on the week before. They let it go ahead.
After the first night, I sent through screenshots of the presentation about the inferiority of other races.
After the second night, YouTube took down the recordings of the first two accounts and limited the account’s ability to livestream — foiling their attempts to stream the remaining three nights on that account.
“But won’t they just switch accounts?” you ask, astutely.
That’s exactly what they did: the next night, they just switched accounts and streamed. I mean, fucking duh.
So ahead of Mr Cottrell’s speech on Black Lives Matter, I told YouTube again. No response. The livestream went ahead. He said the normal hateful bullshit — like praising Avi Yemini saying “So what if he’s Jewish?”, encouraging people to have white children — and the viewers lapped it up.
I got an email a couple of days after the fact from YouTube saying they were going to age-restrict the video to people over 18 (like that stops anyone).
It’s not just fringe views we’re dealing with. It’s also tech companies who allow (and, therefore, profit off) extremists using them to amplify their message.
There’s only one person I get my AFL news from: u/PM_ME_YOUR_AREOLAS
I’ve been enjoying the Republic of Westralia’s continuing annexation of Australia (you can see all the maps here)
I was literally lolling as I listened to these guys talk about Australian politicians saying they were “hacked”
Don’t be one of those people who says TikTok is just for dancing. It’s not.
These guys cover the fukt fringes of Australia and get great guests too.
Oi, if you like this, don’t be stingy and hog it to yourself. Why not flick it to someone who you think might like it? I’d be grateful.
Cheers,
P.S. I am ALWAYS looking for tips for weird / interesting / important internet stuff. Please email or DM me if you see anything I might be interested in. Nothing is too niche
P.P.S Do you know the horny Melbourne security guard? Pls dm me.