Episode 7: Social Media - The Robots are Racist Now [TRANSCRIPT]
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R: So I also want to talk about the problem with verified accounts. There is a genuinely very funny article by someone named Anita Hagh, I hope I'm saying that, right? We'll call her Anita. What's up, Queen? She talks about all of the ways that Elon Musk haters on Twitter have taken some of his power away by simply just trolling the hell out of him using his own stupid policies.
D: Hell yeah.
R: I was hysterical when I was reading this article, because I remember when all of these happened in real time, and it's just memory lane, you know?
K: Mhm.
R: A blue check mark next to someone's name on Twitter used to mean what you would expect it to: that this person has been verified to be the official Twitter account for that individual or that brand.
K: Right.
R: It was a way to stop people from making parody accounts, or at least believing those parody accounts.
K: Oh yeah, I remember the parody accounts, those were fun.
R: But then, Musk made the verification check mark something you could simply just buy, no matter who you are, completely eliminating the entire point of why it existed at all. So naturally, users started making parody accounts and then paying for a verification check mark so that they could fool users into believing false stories. Are you guys familiar with the Eli Lilly scandal?
D: Yes, I watched it in real time, and it was great.
R: Oh, it's so funny. I love talking about it. So Eli Lilly and Company is a company that manufactures insulin, because, for some reason, you can own patents on properties that are related to life saving medicine. Say it with me. Our slogan:
Everyone: That's capitalism, baby!
R: Oh Katie got in there! She knows now! But anyway, one user had changed their name to @ Eli Lilly and CO, and then they bought the verified symbol. They then tweeted in quotes, “we are excited to announce insulin is free now.”
D: Yay.
R: Not only did millions of people believe that tweet, but it also forced the actual Eli Lilly company to tweet a correction that they weren't actually giving up their profits on insulin, which led to a dramatic 4.37% stock market decline for the company.
D: Yay. Twitter's good actually.
K: No, don’t say that.
R: That’s the funniest thing. It- that makes me laugh every single time, because what did you think was going to happen?
K: Really.
D: It's heartwarming.
K: I misheard that as heart “worming,” and I was like, well, Eli Lilly could help with that.
R: So now we are at the half point of this episode, which damn, hope you're still listening. So we're gonna switch gears into censorship and information governance, like what even is all of that? Basically, these platforms have the power to decide what you see, but more importantly, they have the power to decide what you do not see. So what do you guys know about typical social media content regulations? Like, what are you not allowed to post? Like, standardized?
D: Usually, like porn, dick pics.
R: Exactly.
K: I was gonna say you're usually not allowed to be a trans woman on most sites.
D:Yeah, you can’t post while trans.
R: And that was a sociological point of view.
K: Ah.
R: Like you really are. You're coming through.
K: Can I go back to film school?
R: So yeah, while that is all like violence, porn, all of that- while that is all a form of censorship in a way, it is different to what I'm actually talking about. Censorship or information governance is specifically the moderation that happens completely behind the scenes.
K: Right.
R: It might be written into policy, but it would be included in those terms and conditions that we all agree to without ever actually reading, because who the hell reads those? Lawyers everywhere just started sweating with me saying that. But like, genuinely, who the hell reads those?
D: They're designed to be unreadable.
R: Exactly. This type of censorship is usually done by the algorithm. These platforms write moderations, like hiding specific words or phrases that someone might say into the algorithm, and it does everything for them.
D: So it like, doesn't actually delete the post or prevent you from posting it, right? What we're talking about is like.
R: It just kind of shadowbans it.
D: Yeah, taking a hashtag and making it so if you search it, nothing comes up that kind of stuff.
R: Yes, yeah.
K: Mm.
R: So following the same format as before, we're going to start with Facebook, and it's a doozy.
K: Oh boy.
R: Before I get into it. Have you heard anything about Facebook censorship or information governance? Specifically on Facebook?
K: There are so many different opportunities for that to have happened that I can't point to a specific one, but I’m like-
D: Yep.
R: Yeah, exactly. So have either of you heard of drill rap? I know Diana has because I know that you wrote a whole section on it. But prior to that, do you know what drill rap is?
D: I did not, actually. I had to learn what it was
R: Me neither.
D: So that I could participate in the episode properly. Katie?
K: Dril, like the funny Twitter user who said he's gonna walk backwards into hell?
D: No, not that drill.
R: Dril, that’s so funny.
D: I wish that- that drill had a sound cloud that I could give him money on.
R: No, I agree. So, drill rap is essentially, this is, for lack of a better term. It is defined as really aggressive or even violent rap music.
K: Oh, okay.
R: So, Mark Zuckerberg was caught censoring drill rap music videos on Facebook. So it turns out that the reason why he did this is because he took an under the table informal deal with the UK police that was having issues with these proclaimed and this is in quotes, “aggressive and violent youth that didn't respect authority,” making these music videos and then sharing them on Facebook. If he can accept informal requests of what to censor to the masses on his platform, what the fuck is stopping him from making way more under the table deals about what to hide on his website? I need to hear your immediate thoughts on this.
D: Nothing. It's nothing. Nothing is stopping him from doing that.
K: No, that's it, broken. Brain broken like it just- my mind is an enigma. The milk carton falls over. I've got nothing, like…
D: Well.
K: It’s horrifying.
D: Don't worry. Come with me. Jump on my back. We're going to the sociological consultant corner. Yay!
K: Ow, I dislocated my shoulder!
D: So I’ll admit, I didn’t know what drill rap was before you posed this question to me, and we are specifically talking about drill rap as it exists today in the United Kingdom.
R: Correct.
K: Oh, okay.
D: It is a rap subgenre. It tends to be pretty explicit about the realities of being poor and black in London.
K: Uh huh.
D: I'm saying that it's the UK version because the genre actually has its roots in Chicago, I think, in the 70s and 80s, but they cover similar themes and have similar names, and they sound different, like it's a different music format.
K: Okay.
D: But very similar content wise, and about two different cities.
R: Got it.
D: So I want to make that distinction at the top. But naturally, because it's an art form primarily practiced by black people and talks about their lived experience, the police immediately started blaming it for causing crimes.
R: Classic police behavior.
D: This is a classic American tradition. Goes back at least to the 1950s. I know we're talking about the UK, but stick with me here. When house parties used to get broken up in the 50s for playing ska and reggae music, because that was just corrupting the minds of the children- all those trumpets and chill vibes. I know that all these genres are also very political, and we're at the time too, and still are now. But also it's very funny in 2025 to think of that as being a “think of the children!” genre of music. It is the same anti black bias, just a different music genre and a different country.
K: I mean, like, it's jazz from the 20s as well.
D: Yeah, jazz from the 20s had the same thing. Anti-rock and roll sentiment was anti-black. It was called Race music.
K: Yeah.
D: Hip hop was blamed for causing the violence when we grew up. So, you know, it goes on in to infinity.
K: Yeah.
R: This is just the current day genre that is getting blamed.
D: Yeah, this is just what we do with black culture. So while drill rap does deal with themes of violence and crime, that itself doesn't cause violence and crime, and we have plenty of data gathered scientifically backing this up.
R: Exactly.
D: As always, my sources are down in the show notes. The lyrics do, however, reflect the lived trauma of these black artists that scares the bajesus out of white people, and I believe that is the scientific term, bajesus. This ties into a much larger topic in history, which is general criminalization of blackness. I'm gonna bring in arguably the father of American sociology.
R: My king.
D: Even though we're talking about the United Kingdom, because anti blackness is really an American invention.
R: Yup.
D: We really started that. So let's talk about W.E.B Du Bois.
K: Yo! I know that name. He's huge in education too!
D: Yeah. He's huge in education. He wrote about a ton of stuff. He was also a huge civil rights activist and the first black man to earn a doctorate from Harvard.
R: Hell yeah.
D: He was born in 1868, died in 1963, so he was really right in the thick of it.
K: Wow.
D: Historically speaking, for the civil rights movement. Yeah. He talked about crime as an expression of rebellion against one's social environment, and basically viewed criminal behavior as a symptom of an unequal society because black Americans weren't able to advance after the Civil War ended.
R: Period.
D: This wasn't just a coincidence that “oh, they just didn't know how to make money after they stopped being slaves.” Nor was it because slavery had only recently ended, and they were acclimating to that new status quo- though, that is certainly a piece. The criminalization of blackness, many have argued, is due to a loophole in the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, except as a punishment for crimes in the south especially. And this is well documented history. Politicians would talk about this in speeches. It wasn't a secret. It was the point.
R: Crazy.
D: It creates an incentive. If you arrest a now free black person, they can be forced to work for free again, and slavery can essentially continue- only now, you don't even need to pay for the initial purchase of a slave. The state does it for you.
R: This is rough.
K: I saw the John Oliver episode on this.
D: Yes, yes. It's a very good one. That's a good talking point. If you want to learn more about this actually, is go watch John Oliver's.
K: I think it was the prison industrial complex and the prison labor.
D: Yes, prison labor. So, yeah, go type John Oliver prison labor into YouTube. Go watch it. This is how you get things like black codes, which were laws designed to criminalize existing while black and make it nearly impossible to exist in public space without getting arrested. That's actually where we get laws against loitering, for example.
R: That's crazy!
K: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
D: That was just standing while black is the crime that loitering is. This is also where we get laws against, you know, the classic things you think about when you think segregation in the South: colored water fountains, black people are forced to sit on the back of the bus, the works. Laws against being unemployed while black.
R: Yeah. D: Laws against being homeless: vagrancy. These are all crimes-
K: Incredible.
D: …that came out of this period of time. Because the more black people you can arrest, the larger your free labor force gets. So it becomes very profitable to criminalize as many aspects of being black as you can. That brings us back to black music being thought of as violent or dangerous because America has spent so long criminalizing just blackness in general, anything associated with it also becomes taboo, especially if you're a white person engaging with it.
K: It's almost a phobia.
D: It's almost a phobia.
R: Yeah.
D: It really is. Actually, fatphobia is also rooted in anti-blackness, because fatness was seen as something only black people were. So being thin meant you were more white than a fat white person. This is also how Irish people ended up being considered black in the early 1900s- is because Irish people were poor, and poor people get poor nutrition, and thus gain weight because they're eating more carbs to make up for it. Read “Fearing the Black Body” if you want more on that topic, it was really eye opening for me. So American culture is exported en masse all over the globe through movies, music, TV, the internet, and its influence is especially strong in Europe, especially the United Kingdom. So it doesn't really surprise me to hear that police are trying to censor and criminalize drill rap at all. It's just part of a much longer story of conditioning society to think being black is the same thing as being a criminal.
R: Yeah.
D: So now that we're all depressed, let's get back to Mark Zuckerberg.
R: Yeah, he's s so good at that. I love when that man does anything it like, really helps bring my mood up.
K: Like surfing in Kauai and like, terrible sunscreen to distract from the fact that he bought half the island. I thought that one was fun.
D: Yeah, that all of the native Hawaiians are really upset about it, because it sucks.
K: Yeah.
D: That's another episode.
R: Speaking of Zuckerberg making us really happy. Another fun thing that he's been caught doing was manipulating his users psychology in order to be as addicted to his platform as possible. So there's a really interesting article by someone named Douglas Youvan or Youvan from this year that really drives home the power that this one man has over the psychology of our brains. He argues that Zuckerberg is pretty much immune to needing to take any accountability for his actions because of how powerful he is as a person, despite the fact that there is actual data that shows that his manipulation into the algorithm to make us as addicted as possible has led to broad mental health declines and a more divided society. Do you guys know about the policy change that Zuckerberg made this year about the way that Facebook manages censorship?
D: Uh huh, of course.
K: Oh yeah. Is this the one where they said we're not gonna moderate it anymore?
D: Yeah.
R: Yeah.
D: Why would we do that? By the way, if you listened to our generative AI episode, you already know this, but if you didn't, the real reason they did that is because the moderators working for them in Kenya unionized. And then all of a sudden, like three days later, “just kidding, we're not going to do content moderation anymore! You guys do it for us for free, okay? You the user.
K: Wow.
R: Like the content here writes itself.
D: It really does.
R: That'so…hmm. Okay, so I'm gonna move on to Tiktok censorship, because in my research for this episode, I came across the most shocking information about Tiktok censorship that has straight up become my Roman Empire ever since. And I don't know if it'll ever move on from being my Roman Empire There is a thesis written by someone named Rebecca, and I'm skipping her middle name, Busto or Busto. I can't pronounce names, I don't know if y'all can tell. But this explores the algorithmic censorship that Tiktok uses to control what content is able to come up on your for you page. Bo Tiktok has like very publicly putting out- Whoa. Tiktok has very publicly put out their policies on what they use to train their algorithm And the things that are on there are so foul. They have moderators go through and train the algorithm to ignore and to like shadow ban and hide people that are deemed to have: abnormal body shapes…
D: Oh, great.
R: Too many wrinkles on their face, to have physical deformity in the form of like disability, just- and those are public policies that they have come out and said.
D: “We stand by these. This is how we do it!”
R: We hide videos from content creators that have, like, physical, I guess, unattractive attributes, which-
D: Sure- or fat people.
R: yeah, yes.
K: And this is the bite dance company that owns them. So the the Chinese company, correct?
D: Yeah.
R: Yes. So, not only do they have the physical appearance there, but they also are hiding videos that show, like, backgrounds of like what they call “shabby environments.” So like, a crack in the wall, or like a landscape that's not- like your yard's not mowed. If you have backgrounds that are also shown to be non-attractive, they also hide that. There are so many implications of this. Not only is it-
D: You can't see poor people.
R: Yeah, it's- it's classist, it's fat phobic, it's racist, it's, like, it's ageist. It’s all of those things.
D: It’s every -ist!
R: It’s every -ist that is like, that you can imagine. That is absolutely crazy that that is just public knowledge. I mean, it's public knowledge in the sense of, like, if you go searching for it. I had no idea about this, and I use, like we said, I use Tiktok, non-stop. But I had to go searching for this, for this episode.
D: Yeah.
R: That is, like, the most mind-blowing thing that I can think of.
K: Yeah.
R: That they train their algorithm specifically to censor all of these videos that come from all of this. So the part that like that is so incredibly mind-blowing to me is that people who are in shabby environments, as they say, and they're trying to make Tiktoks to maybe promote a small business, to maybe, like-
D: Sure!
K: Change their status in society
R: Exactly. Yeah, to maybe better their circumstances that they're in are automatically being discriminated against by the algorithm, A robot.
D: They made the robot racist.
R: Exactly!
K: I want to be surprised.
D: Yeah.
K: I really want to be surprised.
D: Me too, but I’m not. Ugh.
R: It's also important that I at least devil's advocate just a little bit here of that. Obviously, the algorithm does not completely eliminate all of those videos. It is just that they're less likely to make it onto a for you page in order to get picked up by the algorithm and have a lot more people engaging with it.
D: Right. So like, they're still there, but again, they're shadow banned. They're not able to get the kind of reach that a- a thin, white person with a nice backdrop and etc, etc, is able to do. It's just, they just baked the discrimination into the machine.
R: Exactly.
K: Right.
D: Finally, we can automate racism.
R: Yeah.
D: About time.
K: Well, we've already automated all the fun parts of humanity, like art and writing, so why not the racism too?
D: Yeah. Though, I have heard a little bit about a different kind of censorship on Tiktok, specifically after it came back, because Trump resurrected it from the dead?
R: So Tiktok has been in the news lately for another kind of alleged censorship. And I'm- and I'm being very clear with my word alleged here, because, please, don't sue.
D: Alleged!
R: Don't sue us. Please.
D: I have no money. I'm a sociology major.
R: Yeah, I'm a full-time grad student, so, like, I don't got- I don't have anything. In fact, I'm, like, so deeply in the hole I don't know how I'm gonna get out of it.
D + K: That’s capitalism, baby!
R: That’s the price of just getting educated at all- unless you listen to this podcast for free.
D: We said it here first, folks. We are providing you at least $20,000 worth of value per episode. So really, can you afford not to listen?
R: Exactly! So some reports are coming out with claims that Tiktok is suppressing political information after the ban in order to make Trump look better.
D: Allegedly!
R: But many users have reported searching for certain words or phrases in America, such as election rigging, and getting a screen that shows no results found. Tiktok’s official statement on this matter simply says that they do not suppress political information and that different countries have different policies of what's allowed to be discussed on the app and what's different. So like, say in the UK, these same phrases do show information like that. They do come up with videos, and it does not say there’s no videos found. But-
D: Great.
R: That's- that's just an interesting point.
D: I did see some stuff about, like, right after that happened of people using Canadian VPNs and then searching the same thing and getting way more results. So like, this particular censorship, seems like it, allegedly, might not be coming from Tiktok, but, allegedly, could be coming from the United States Government instead. Because Trump made a backroom deal to bring Tiktok back, even though the Senate and House had already banned it and it had been signed into law.
R: Yeah. So I don't know, necessarily, if saying that the different countries have different policies on what's allowed to be discussed on the app and what's not, really covers…
D: Sure.
R: The whole issue that's being brought up, but again-
D: Right.
R: That's just alleged. So it is what it is. So we're gonna move on to Twitter, or X. Whatever. It's Twitter to me. One issue that has become incredibly noticeable to every user since Musk's takeover is the amount of bots on the damn app.
D: But Elon Musk said he bought it to get rid of the bots. Are you saying Elon Musk is either lying or incompetent?
R: Allegedly.
K: Let's say both!
R: Every popular tweet, mostly from paid verified accounts, will be filled with countless replies from bots. It is widely thought that the only reason for these bots is to try to sway public opinion in the favor of conservative politics. Allegedly.
D: That's not dystopian.
R: No, it's not at all. The information governance on Twitter is only getting more and more severe, because as a business, Twitter is failing.
D + K: Yay!
R: Since Musk took over, Twitter has lost 72% of its entire financial value.
D + K: Hooray!
R: That is a massive number of loss. So he is flailing trying to control what people are able to see on the site in order to try to get more- just any kind of success here, because he's failing. Tons of users have reported having right-wing propaganda pushed onto their feeds despite not following or even engaging in any of right-wing content. I'm included. Diana was included, Katie’s included. That's- and you can say allegedly, all you want, but just all three of us have experienced that.
D: Anecdotally, I don't know anyone who did not have that experience that was using Twitter.
R: Exactly. So fairly recently, Musk also changed the way that blocking works on the platform. Even when you have blocked someone, they can still see your content, they just can't engage with it.
K: This is when I- that's when I left officially. I was like, “Okay, no.”
D: That is when I deleted my account.
K: My block- my block button doesn't work? Okay, the whole account's going private, and I’m uninstalling the app.
R: And so let's talk about the implications of that.
D: The reason I ended up just deleting my Twitter entirely after that. So I first privated it, and then I realized that, like, even the people who already followed me, I didn't know if all of them were people I could trust necessarily, because I had someone who abused me when I was in college, who I really don't want to know things about what I'm doing and where I am. She's the first person I block on every social media platform I've ever used. Not having the block function is incredibly dangerous. I also know other people who were abuse victims who like, their abuser, could use their Twitter to figure out where they are and go physically harm them.
R: Exactly.
D: It's absolutely catastrophic. I do wonder if Musk just did this because so many people blocked him once he started forcing posts on your feed.
R: Yes. Well, allegedly.
D: Allegedly. And also because you can block advertising accounts in order to not see their ad.
K: Yeah, I used to do that, something I actively did.
D: Same- all the time. So I'm wondering if those are the reasons. But it just- it's such a huge safety concern.
K: Yeah.
D: But also for like-
R: Yeah.
D: For kids- need to be able to moderate their own safety!
R: All of it's insane. In fact, I got into an argument on Twitter yesterday with someone who I have had blocked for like, nine months.
D: Oh, great.
R: What the hell?
D: So the system's working.
K: Why are you back?
R: How the hell are we able to interact with each other?
D: Yeah!
R: Exactly. Like there's no way to just rid someone from your feed.
K: That is insane.
R: And that is, like, so frustrating when there is someone just seeing them pop up at all, even if they're not even talking directly to you, like deteriorates your mental health.
D: Yeah.
R: So many people on Twitter I don't like.
D: Awful.
R: And I would just like to protect my own brain, and I can't, because they will show up regardless.
D: Yeah.
R: Like it does- like the blocking essentially does absolutely nothing now. Interestingly, both Apple and Google have incredibly strict regulations on their app stores that social media apps must have a proper blocking function because it is a violation of privacy and safety to not. However, Twitter, X, is still available on both the App Store And the Google Play Store. That's interesting. Why? How?
D: Money?
K: But like, I'm like- isn't this why they made Tumblr get rid of porn, like, in 2018 or so?
D: Yeah, so they could be on the App Store.
K: You know, you'll never guess. But guess what’s also still all over Twitter.
D: Is it porn?
K: It's porn.
R: Yeah, every time I open that app up, I am faced with stuff I don't want to see, both politically and visually.
D: It sounds like a great app, and you're having a good time.
R: Yeah, I am. It's awesome over there. So with everything that we've talked about here, I want to get both of your final thoughts about the amount of power that both the company aspect of a social media platform, but also the power of the individuals behind these platforms have. What did you learn? I- especially Katie- I want to know what you learned.
K: I- I knew some of this already. It's just- seeing it… it’s like taking a step back and seeing the whole forest like, oh, there is so much more than you know, people are actively thinking about, especially for something as ubiquitous as social media. And like, my other thought was, oh, I'm glad that Jeff Bezos also doesn't have a dog in this fight. But he does, because Amazon owns, like, most of the data storage for everything that is cloud based. A ton of it is based in Amazon servers. So, like, he already has control over some of this stuff. We just don't even know it yet.
D: Yeah.
K: And I'm so tired. I have a poster in my classroom that says how to fight the fake news invasion, and it's like a 10 step thing about how to learn, like what you read online. I don't think kids have looked at it if completely honest with you.
D: Yeah, I'm sure some of them did.
K: Yeah, the Shakespeare poster next to it is actually somehow more interesting to them. So…
D: Huh. Nerds.
K: But like, I feel a little bit like this is the oil baron era. Uh, from the 1910s and 1920s. Everybody controlled these small stakes and things. And something had to give, and it eventually did, and it- it brought in a cycle of regulation. I think that's coming. But what concerns me is who is in power when that regulation starts to come through.
D: Right.
R: Yep.
K: On the one hand, we could, you know, these things get broken up, and they could get given to more different people. I don't know. Or it could just be put into new shell companies for the same three people, like…
D: Yeah, but I think that's a really good analogy, like the- the robber baron image that we all learned about in history class. Which is also why I think I resonate with the digital colonialism angle too.
K: Yes.
R: Yeah.
D: Because it just, it feels- it rhymes. It's not as violent on its face as like, real colonialism is, for example, but it is taking what used to be a public space, and it's enclosing it. It's putting a fence around the public park.
R: Yeah. Exactly.
D: So that and putting anti-homeless benches in so people can't stay there.
R: Yeah, another episode.
D: But yeah. I mean, I think, and this is my sociological opinion, that it is bad when like, three dudes can control all of the information we see.
R: Oligarchy.
D: Oligarchy!
R: In the digital space.
K: they're an information oligarchy.
D: Like it just- it really is. That's a good term. I'm stealing that for my next paper.
K: Hooray!
D: Like it is really an information oligarchy, and it works more efficiently than any kind of government censorship really could ever dream to be.
R: Yeah.
D: I am glad we got to talk about this, because this is my white whale, and this is what I went back to graduate school to study, is how social media works and how it changes people. And you did a great job with the research on this one. Rayne,
R: Oh, thank you. You did as well.
K: It was fascinating.
D: Yay.
R: It's a little sad that every episode, everybody, including our guests and all of our listeners, are going to end each episode being like, “bummer.”
D: Yeah. Like, well, this is a bummer.
K: I mean- I watched John Oliver for fun. He admits that its white guy tells you status statistics for an hour, punctuated by dick jokes like I get it-
R: Yeah.
D: Yeah, I know why I'm here,. But the format works.
D: But, uh, yeah, thank you for hosting.
K: Thank you for having me.
R: Thank you! That's all we have for this week. Thank you for listening to the armchair sociologist where what you don't know can and will hurt you.
K: Actively.
R: As always, all sources used in this research of the episode are in the description, along with how to find us on all of these social media platforms that we just talked shit about. Until next time!
[The Armchair Sociologist is an independent podcast produced by Diana Heslin. Any opinions stated are her own, unless they're somebody else's. Our theme song is Armchair, provided by our in-house band, Karl Marx and the Dialectics. If you or your loved one are in a high risk demographic for podcasting, don't stay silent. Help is available.]
