Thread by @TatianaTMac, OK, Bébé Activists, I see a lot of you are using your [...]

OK, Bébé Activists, I see a lot of you are using your platforms to call out individuals and organisations who are explicitly and repeatedly saying racist shit. Awesome.

I want to provide a few tips as I see some common beginner mistakes.

Take screenshots of everything first, before you engage. The second something feels weird, screenshot it. Rule number one.

Bonus: Save live URLs into apps that unfurl, like Slack or Telegram or Signal.

Analyse before you respond.

If you see someone respond (to a Black/brown person in particular) with something like "You're reverse racist" or "That's racist against white people" you might want to respond with something like "Reverse racism isn't a thing."

But hold on:

Before you respond to that person, look at their profile and determine their trollness:

Weird handle/name combo

Account start date recent

RT weird shit

Replying to big accounts

Missing links/identifying info

Mutuals?

Reverse image search their photo

I can't give you all of the lessons I've learned through endless online abuse and trauma, but learn to develop a bullshit radar WRT trolls. They tend to seem fake and not add up. The above questions should give you a good sense.

If you decide it is a troll, go through their tweets and report them all. DO NOT RESPOND.

Engagement is social media currency. It will only give them platform for hate and to do harm (what they want). It creates vectors for bots.

Report tweets that are bigoted one-by-one. Trust me, there will usually be some.

Reporting is a mystery to me honestly, but it does sometimes work (particularly with more powerful accounts and/or if enough people do it).

If the person appears real:

Check for mutuals.

Does this incident seem isolated or systematic?

Have they been called out before? How did they react?

You might take one of the following paths:

If it's a one-time incident, you might reply or DM something like, "Hey, this comment is racist/ableist/antifat/etc. What's up with this?"

Await their response. If their response is apologetic and remorseful, then great! They should take down the harmful thing. Done.

If their response is defensive and weird and clearly shows they support on-going bigotry, then you can choose to take it out of DMs and say "ok, well this violates X, Y community that you're a part of so I'm going to report you for that behaviour."

Or, you can choose not to tell them and just go ahead and inform the orgs they're a part of. Generally speaking, it's best to go to social media to report this because it keeps everything public. Closed doors are unsafe for vulnerable folks. Bring screenshots. Keep it factual.

"@/org [Person] has been saying racist things on your platform which violates your ToS/CoC. Please deplatform this person as they're causing harm to the community."

Depending on how the org delays/react, you can see if friends who are connected at that org can fast track.

If you their response is curious/unclear, you can choose to educate them. But first, please untag the OP. Say something like "I'm happy to chat about this, but let me untag the OP first."

Untag them, then continue the convo. Continue to take screenshots.

You can choose to take this to DMs but from my experience (remember my multiple marginalisations YMMV), DMs are super unsafe. People will gaslight you in them, and flood your mentions, and divulge traumatic things without your permission. You have no default witnesses.

Most of all, make sure that when you do this, you keep the goal in mind clear: To deplatform people spreading hate and harm towards vulnerable groups. That is what it is about.

Share good examples if situations are handled well. Be vigilant. Take breaks.

Bonus: How I engage with people for these types of sitautions based on our relationship https://twitter.com/TatianaTMac/status/1267254538010005504?s=20

https://twitter.com/TatianaTMac/status/1267254538010005504?s=20

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