Kinja reply list

Read More
StartingOverAgainAmy L. Alexander
11/17/17 9:55am
Russia-controlled bots capitalized on whites’ fears of and disdain for black Americans.
That wasn’t all they did.
But regardless, I was in the same boat, sort of pissed off at the tech companies, until I saw a sampling of these ads.
While I still want the tech companies to have OFAC/SDN style checks for advertisers, I’m a little more pissed off at Americans.
If images, memes and communications as cheesy, hoakey and flat out dumb as the ones I saw are capable of taking in enough of the American populace to drive us apart, then my thinking is we are too stupid to effectively govern ourselves.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t be the ones governing ourselves regardless, because dictatorships suck, but maybe we just aren’t equipped to do a much better job of it.
So I’m mad at the tech companies, but ultimately they aren’t the root cause of the chaos here, and neither are the Russians. It’s our own stupid tribalism that would have eventually found a way to cause the same amount of damage regardless of whether Twitter or Facebook did a good job of checking up on where content in their networks was coming from. Tribalism that manifests itself in the form of white supremacy, misogyny, classism, bigotry and plain ol’ prejudice.
Reply
- Read More
  eyemajeenyusStartingOverAgain
  11/17/17 12:07pm
  That’s because a majority of white “Americans” are the worst humans on the planet.
  Reply
- Read More
  StartingOverAgaineyemajeenyus
  11/17/17 12:26pm
  Well, maybe, but I think the evidence would suggest that, if we are the worst, we’re not exactly winning that contest by any stunning margins.
  Regardless of the truth of that though, shrewd strongmen recognize that tribalism driven fear exists inside of everyone, including oppressed peoples.
  Whether it’s Kim-Jong Un using Trump’s words to keep his population controlled through fear, or Robert Mugabe telling people that if they would just trust him with all the power they could cast off the shackles of white colonialism and gain freedom ... tribalism exists in all of us and if we don’t acknowledge that and fight it there will always be Donald Trumps who come along and try to take advantage of it.
  Reply
Read More
DolemiteAmy L. Alexander
11/17/17 9:04am
“How could the educated, experienced “technologists” who built and run these companies have missed the Russians’ insidious gaming of their platforms” As someone who runs adverts on Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc., that’s easy to answer. They don’t care one bit. As long as they get the money for their ad, they run it. They won’t devote actual manpower to vetting ads or helping customers. They have almost no one checking these things. It’s a huge problem in the tech industry. They hire no one to assist customers, check ads, follow up complaints. They see no value in human customer assistance, and basically hire a skeleton crew to run billion dollar operations, hoping automation can do the work of thousands of people.
Reply
- Read More
  Amy L. AlexanderDolemite
  11/17/17 6:32pm
  Right. S’why I’ve also been watching the Inclusive Innovation movement (it does exist!) A few folks in engineering, design, and INVESTMENT (important) do understand the implications of all this powerful tech and the gap between who owns/controls it, and the rising new majority in the US (black and brown people, hello!) Trouble is, the train is pretty far down the track....
  Reply
Read More
NikAmy L. Alexander
11/17/17 2:00pm
I’m not even really sure Russian bots are to blame. This anti-Black rhetoric has been on the internet since its inception. Breitbart and Bannon were good at tapping into how many White Americans already felt. They were pissed off after 8 years of a Black first family.
How many Black shows get low scores on IMDB? How many Black people get harassed in gaming forums? The internet and the tech world is a celebration of Whiteness. The only time they want to see Black people when they need to steal ideas. If Black people had the actual money from the social capital we provide to this nation Black wealth wouldn’t be in danger of hitting 0. Look how they stole “on fleek” for example. Most ad rooms are still lily white.
I personally was all the way done with Apple when Tim Cook said DACA is the biggest issue of our time. There’s no need to lie just because you want to keep mining cheap labor. Meanwhile, all the tech world has for Black people is empty promises and hashtags.
Reply
- Read More
  Amy L. AlexanderNik
  11/17/17 6:35pm
  “...empty promises and hashtags.” Yep. But the stakes are high. There’s no chance of changing the game if you’re not in it.
  Reply
- Read More
  Rooo sez BISH PLZAmy L. Alexander
  12/31/17 5:13pm
  As absolutely true as that is — meaning, I’m starting out by saying “You’re right” — there’s an innumerable mass of us who are able to sketch the expanse of the problem out accurately with a few strokes and can recite the relevant IP statutes in front of the partner at the drop of the hat who are, nonetheless, still getting shut out at the gates in favor of the laissez-faire young white boy who stutters over the relevant elements of infringement even though it’s been spoon-fed to him ad infinitum ad nauseam by countless mentors.
  So (and I feel as though I’ve been asking this question for more than a minute) … what is it you’re suggesting we DO exactly (that differs from what we’ve been trying to do) ... ??
  
  Reply
Read More
MikePenceNoneTheRicherNowVPAmy L. Alexander
11/17/17 12:37pm
And, as usual, blacks and other marginalized communities have solutions. We have the brain-power, problem-solving acumen, and moral fortitude to right the ship of state.
Yep. Unless we get more POC in the brain-power mix, problems like this will continue.
I have worked in the tech sector for the past 9 years and have volunteered on occasion to do screening interviews during job fairs and campus recruiting. A typical frustration for folks like me is that tech HR defaults to the same pool of schools (i.e. majority white). Having a strong affinity network is important to combat this. For example the African American networking group at my previous company did a great job partnering with HR and they did an event at NC A&T, which was a success and several offers went out for new engineers (I didn’t go on that trip, I was asked to help out recruit at Notre Dame LOL). This kind of thing needs to happen more often.
Reply
- Read More
  Bob, pendejo!MikePenceNoneTheRicherNowVP
  11/17/17 2:45pm
  Well, get on in there and fix it.
  Reply
- Read More
  Amy L. AlexanderMikePenceNoneTheRicherNowVP
  11/17/17 6:33pm
  Agree! I hope you can keep at it.
  Reply