![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12Content note: mention of victim blaming and abuse denial.
I, like many Tumblr users, received an email notifying me that I had unknowingly interacted with Russian propaganda accounts. I was pretty horrified by this, and did a search by username to determine the nature of these interactions. (If you wish to do the same thing, type the url YOURUSERNAME.tumblr.com/search/PROPAGANDAACCOUNTUSERNAME, replacing YOURUSERNAME with your Tumblr username and PROPAGANDAAACOUNTUSERNAME with the name of the Russian account(s) in question.)
I determined from this search that my interactions mainly consisted of reblogs from my own friends' accounts of fairly innocuous political/social justice-related content, which had originated with the propaganda accounts. For example:
A post about elections being compulsory and on weekends, which I reblogged from ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
jimtheviking and added some comments about how this is already the case in Australia, my country of origin.
A post with a series of beautiful fanart of US black women athletes (Simone Biles, Serena Williams and so on) drawn as superheroes, which I had reblogged from thelxiepia.
A video interweaving Disney princesses and little girls being awesome, which I had reblogged from thelxiepia.
In other words, this was fairly bog standard content, which I would quite happily have shared had I found it myself, or if someone I know had linked to it themselves. However, when I consider the source, it takes on a much more sinister note - presumably these accounts were set up to target left-leaning USians, particularly those of marginalised identities, with the ultimate aim of discouraging them from voting. The revelation of the identity of the original posters has forced me to rethink my online presence and content, particularly on sites such as Tumblr and Twitter, which allow users to reblog/retweet other users' content, including content which originates with users who they are not following. This aspect of such sites had made me uneasy for a while, particularly as I had observed users sharing blatant misinformation (including, say, advice that would have had adverse effects in medical emergencies or other life-threatening situations), with any challenges going unnoticed.
Several years ago, I quietly made a decision not to share, link to, retweet/reblog or in any way amplify the words and work of people of any person I was aware of who had defended the actions of Benjanun Sriduangkaew/Requires Hate/Winterfox, enabled her behaviour, or minimised the effects her abuse had had on her targets. Even if these individuals said things with which I agreed, or shared information which I considered important, I would not amplify their words. Instead, I either found someone else sharing the same information, or I refrained from sharing it at all. I don't want to spend much more time on this tangent, as it's really not the subject of the post, except insofar as I'm planning to apply this principle much more broadly.
In other words, I've made the decision not to share posts, information or content unless it originates with people I know personally (family, offline friends, online friends with whom I've interacted significantly) or an identifiable public figure (note that I consider pseudonymous people to be 'public figures' if they have demonstrable interests, work, lives and connections with other people, so I'm not taking 'uses their own name' as synonymous with being a public figure). The only exceptions will be feeds dedicated to a specific kind of content (e.g. a feed I follow on Tumblr devoted solely to the art of Alphonse Mucha, a Twitter account that shares women's art), and I'll monitor these closely - if they suddenly start talking a lot about politics and stop posting artwork, for example, that would be a red flag.
Basically, what I'm not going to do is retweet or reblog content that I like, find amusing, agree with politically, or think provides important information unless I know the source, or investigate the source and find them to be credible. I know this goes against some of the major selling points of platforms like Tumblr and Twitter - the easy way to share other people's content without the pressure to add any of your own - but I would strongly encourage others to do the same, or at the very least subject your own online interactions to a level of scrutiny to which you did not previously subject them. It's very easy to see some content you like or agree with, and blindly click the reblog/retweet button. Resist the urge, stop and think, and do a little bit of investigating if you don't know or recognise the source, or if Twitter or Tumblr is the only place in which you've seen a particular piece of information being shared. Our platforms are only as strong as the people using them. For the most part, the sad truth is that the owners of social media platforms are not going to take responsibility for the content being shared on said platforms. That means we have to do so ourselves. We can't control what other people post, but we can control how widely it gets spread.
I, like many Tumblr users, received an email notifying me that I had unknowingly interacted with Russian propaganda accounts. I was pretty horrified by this, and did a search by username to determine the nature of these interactions. (If you wish to do the same thing, type the url YOURUSERNAME.tumblr.com/search/PROPAGANDAACCOUNTUSERNAME, replacing YOURUSERNAME with your Tumblr username and PROPAGANDAAACOUNTUSERNAME with the name of the Russian account(s) in question.)
I determined from this search that my interactions mainly consisted of reblogs from my own friends' accounts of fairly innocuous political/social justice-related content, which had originated with the propaganda accounts. For example:
In other words, this was fairly bog standard content, which I would quite happily have shared had I found it myself, or if someone I know had linked to it themselves. However, when I consider the source, it takes on a much more sinister note - presumably these accounts were set up to target left-leaning USians, particularly those of marginalised identities, with the ultimate aim of discouraging them from voting. The revelation of the identity of the original posters has forced me to rethink my online presence and content, particularly on sites such as Tumblr and Twitter, which allow users to reblog/retweet other users' content, including content which originates with users who they are not following. This aspect of such sites had made me uneasy for a while, particularly as I had observed users sharing blatant misinformation (including, say, advice that would have had adverse effects in medical emergencies or other life-threatening situations), with any challenges going unnoticed.
Several years ago, I quietly made a decision not to share, link to, retweet/reblog or in any way amplify the words and work of people of any person I was aware of who had defended the actions of Benjanun Sriduangkaew/Requires Hate/Winterfox, enabled her behaviour, or minimised the effects her abuse had had on her targets. Even if these individuals said things with which I agreed, or shared information which I considered important, I would not amplify their words. Instead, I either found someone else sharing the same information, or I refrained from sharing it at all. I don't want to spend much more time on this tangent, as it's really not the subject of the post, except insofar as I'm planning to apply this principle much more broadly.
In other words, I've made the decision not to share posts, information or content unless it originates with people I know personally (family, offline friends, online friends with whom I've interacted significantly) or an identifiable public figure (note that I consider pseudonymous people to be 'public figures' if they have demonstrable interests, work, lives and connections with other people, so I'm not taking 'uses their own name' as synonymous with being a public figure). The only exceptions will be feeds dedicated to a specific kind of content (e.g. a feed I follow on Tumblr devoted solely to the art of Alphonse Mucha, a Twitter account that shares women's art), and I'll monitor these closely - if they suddenly start talking a lot about politics and stop posting artwork, for example, that would be a red flag.
Basically, what I'm not going to do is retweet or reblog content that I like, find amusing, agree with politically, or think provides important information unless I know the source, or investigate the source and find them to be credible. I know this goes against some of the major selling points of platforms like Tumblr and Twitter - the easy way to share other people's content without the pressure to add any of your own - but I would strongly encourage others to do the same, or at the very least subject your own online interactions to a level of scrutiny to which you did not previously subject them. It's very easy to see some content you like or agree with, and blindly click the reblog/retweet button. Resist the urge, stop and think, and do a little bit of investigating if you don't know or recognise the source, or if Twitter or Tumblr is the only place in which you've seen a particular piece of information being shared. Our platforms are only as strong as the people using them. For the most part, the sad truth is that the owners of social media platforms are not going to take responsibility for the content being shared on said platforms. That means we have to do so ourselves. We can't control what other people post, but we can control how widely it gets spread.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-02 07:08 am (UTC)This is very sobering. As if I needed another reason to not be active on Tumblr! It does probably mean I should follow you, though ;) I'm surprised Winterfox is still seeing traction and that her supporters are still out and about -- if you were prepared to talk about it, I am all ears!
no subject
Date: 2018-04-14 01:02 pm (UTC)Winterfox doesn't seem to be as visible or well regarded as she was before the connection with her Winterfox/RH identities with the Benjanun Sriduangkaew pseudonym was made public, but she's certainly still getting published, and still being provided with the occasional platform, much to my horror. I have friends who were targets of hers, and I don't know if she's still targetting them in less public ways, although I really hope not.
However, a lot of people in SFF publicly supported her when her identities were connected - a number of them maintained at the time that she had done nothing wrong, or maintained that her abuse of people of colour was merely 'punching sideways' (and therefore somehow justifiable) and her abuse of white people was not abuse at all, or claimed that it was not their place to condemn her actions (therefore contributing to her targets' feeling that they were isolated and without community support). Some of these enablers seem to have changed their tune in recent years, but many others have not, and I'm not prepared to boost their words, treat them as authorities, or support their careers in any way. (The same goes for people who enabled other abusers in my communities, it's just that Winterfox is a particularly stark example of someone whose appalling behaviour was defended by a lot of people who really should have known better.)
no subject
Date: 2018-04-15 04:08 pm (UTC)I was only ever on the fringes of fandom and SFF, so I only watched the Winterfox/RH thing from a great distance and mostly after the fact, but what I got from the episode was an impression of a deeply disturbed individual who got off on hurting many, many people, both personally and professionally. Perhaps punching up/sideways may be less bad than punching downwards, but, good God, since when is any sort of punching of an innocent person who has never harmed you in any way justifiable? So I would agree with your stance towards persons who enabled that kind of toxicity. The community should absolutely know better :(