So if you were online, you're probably familiar with gamer Gate, where a lot of men who were supposedly big mad about quote ethics and video game journalism harassed women on the internet. It was awful, and it rightly got a lot of coverage from the tech press, But a lot of people, even people who were very online, might not know that it was black women who were attacked by the very same people using the very same tactic as gamer Gate years earlier. Only when those women spoke up about it, the people with the power to do something pretty much ignored them. And I'd also be willing to bet that even less people know that the kinds of online harassment and deceptive accounts that those women were reporting would go on to be the very same tactics that a twenty nineteen Senate inquiry confirmed were used by Russian assets to disrupt the election. So there's a pretty clear through line from ignoring black women when they speak up about the harassment they face on the internet and pretty important stuff like I don't know the security of our elections. So what if someone with the power to do something had just listened to black women when they reported what was going on years earlier, I'm Bridget Todd, and I make podcasts about the Internet, specifically the way that women, people of color, LGBTQ, folks, and other marginalized identities show up to do cool stuff on the Internet. But I am sad the same that as true as it is that traditionally marginalized people do a lot of the coolest stuff online, it's also true that those same people are targeted online and really scary ways, And when it happens, it can feel like it just goes overlooked. We don't really get the opportunity to learn from it or take anything away from it, and as the Internet often does, everyone just moves on. And I don't like that. So on my new podcast, Internet Hate Machine, I'm trying to right that wrong. We'll be telling the stories of women who were harassed online, how it happened, why it happened, and what it all means for the rest of us, because these kinds of attacks threaten our democracy that keep marginalized people from doing things like running for office or just participating in civic and public life, and they threaten our ability to have meaningful discourse and make any progress on some of the big issues facing us today, and What's worse, this kind of thing has been steadily creeping from the computer screen into our wider political and social landscape. On the new podcast Internet Hate Machine, I'll be charting how the harassment and abuse of women and other traditionally marginalized people online has led us to our current political health scape and what we can do about it. Listen to Internet Hate Machines starting on October twenty six on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So if you were online, you're probably familiar with gamer Gate, where a lot of men who were supposedly big mad about quote ethics and video game journalism harassed women on the internet. It was awful, and it rightly got a lot of coverage from the tech press, But a lot of people, even people who were very online, might not know that it was black women who were attacked by the very same people using the very same tactic as gamer Gate years earlier. Only when those women spoke up about it, the people with the power to do something pretty much ignored them. And I'd also be willing to bet that even less people know that the kinds of online harassment and deceptive accounts that those women were reporting would go on to be the very same tactics that a twenty nineteen Senate inquiry confirmed were used by Russian assets to disrupt the election. So there's a pretty clear through line from ignoring black women when they speak up about the harassment they face on the internet and pretty important stuff like I don't know the security of our elections. So what if someone with the power to do something had just listened to black women when they reported what was going on years earlier, I'm Bridget Todd, and I make podcasts about the Internet, specifically the way that women, people of color, LGBTQ, folks, and other marginalized identities show up to do cool stuff on the Internet. But I am sad the same that as true as it is that traditionally marginalized people do a lot of the coolest stuff online, it's also true that those same people are targeted online and really scary ways, And when it happens, it can feel like it just goes overlooked. We don't really get the opportunity to learn from it or take anything away from it, and as the Internet often does, everyone just moves on. And I don't like that. So on my new podcast, Internet Hate Machine, I'm trying to right that wrong. We'll be telling the stories of women who were harassed online, how it happened, why it happened, and what it all means for the rest of us, because these kinds of attacks threaten our democracy that keep marginalized people from doing things like running for office or just participating in civic and public life, and they threaten our ability to have meaningful discourse and make any progress on some of the big issues facing us today, and What's worse, this kind of thing has been steadily creeping from the computer screen into our wider political and social landscape. On the new podcast Internet Hate Machine, I'll be charting how the harassment and abuse of women and other traditionally marginalized people online has led us to our current political health scape and what we can do about it. Listen to Internet Hate Machines starting on October twenty six on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.