Breaking the Silence: Marginalized Voices in the Tech Industry

Last month, the Institute for Rebooting Social Media at the Berkman Klein Center hosted a discussion to explore “the experiences of underrepresented employees at tech companies (including Trust & Safety workers).” The event featured two speakers:

• Anika Collier Navaroli is a writer, lawyer, and researcher focused on the intersections of technology, media, policy, and human rights. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, a Public Voices Fellow on Technology in the Public Interest with The OpEd Project in partnership with The MacArthur Foundation, and a 2023 Unicorn Fund awardee. Previously, she held senior policy official positions within Trust & Safety teams at Twitter and Twitch.
• Nadah Feteih is an Employee Fellow at the Institute for Rebooting Social Media. She holds B.S and M.S degrees from UC San Diego in Computer Science with a focus on systems and security. Her background is in privacy and trust & safety, working most recently as a Software Engineer at Meta on Messenger Privacy and Instagram Privacy teams. She was promoted to Senior Software Engineer within two years and was involved in various integrity workstreams at the company, escalating content moderation issues and bringing awareness to bias in product features and enforcement systems.

Based on their own experiences working for major technology companies, Navaroli and Feteih discussed how employees from minority communities feel compelled to react and respond to political, social, and human rights issues that arise on these platforms, and why they often bear the brunt of microaggressions and backlash along the way. The conversation touched on issues such as retaliation, whistleblowing, compelled identity labor, and the urgent need for tech companies to change the way they respond to and engage with vulnerable communities.

Key Takeaways

1. Lack of Diversity in Tech Leadership: Navaroli and Feteih discussed the lack of diversity within tech companies and how to address that disparity. “I think a lot of times these conversations happen in a vacuum where we don't involve all the different stakeholders that maybe play a part in thinking of the best solution,” said Feteih. Navaroli addressed the diversity concern by speaking about the importance of recognizing the power of being a minority. “One of the things that was kind of brought to light [in my research] was the lack of diversity within leadership,” she said. “And so there are so many folks who are involved in teams who might be in lower-level positions or might feel powerless. And one thing that I will say is being inside of a company, there is so much power already at your disposal. And I think being able to understand how to find moments of opportunity, even windows of opportunity to jump through when they come, and being able to identify when those happen, when you can use your seniority, when you can use the power that's within your hands is really important.”
2. Tokenization: Minority groups often feel tokenized in conversations about diversity and inclusion. “Those of us that are underrepresented and as a person of color and a minority, there are times when we feel like we are tokenized,” said Feteih. “We’re involved in diversity and inclusion and allyship training, but then there's times when it feels like it's performative when there's a crisis that actually emerges, like what's happening in Palestine right now.”The inherent power asymmetry between tech workers and their bosses makes it hard to always speak against tokenization and racism in the workplace. ”I explained to them about how I'm a Black queer woman who was raised in the south who has seen those words used or had them used in very violent situations in circumstances and the impact that it would have on me and why we shouldn't necessarily be saying that in the workplace. But the reality is this was my boss and I realized, do I want to go have a confrontational conversation with someone who might misconstrue this? They might think I'm calling them a racist, saying that they're racist, and that ruins our relationship. Again… my livelihood is in their hands. And so I decided, honestly, I'm not going to say anything”, said Navaroli.
3. Hiring a multi-ethnic workforce: Navaroli also emphasized the importance of hiring experts across different ethnic groups to address the challenges faced by marginalized groups in the tech industry. “It's really important first that companies hire experts in things like race, ethnicity, national origin. Just to say, I once worked on a policy that had to do with ethnicity, and I went to the United States census, and according to the United States, there are two ethnicities: Hispanic and non-Hispanic, right? That's literally all there is. If I, as a policy person who's working in a global company, were to take that binary and apply it to the rest of the world, we are in trouble. And that's why we need to have these experts from all around the world who have a better concept of ethnicity than I do being an American and really growing up in this binary system. And I think hiring those experts is important because compelled identity labor, it's not sustainable. It's not a good business practice.”
4. Internal backlash: Navaroli makes the case that the censorship faced by minority groups on social media platforms mirrors the experiences of minority employees inside tech companies. “There is also a small minority of people who have a different opinion, who can band together and maybe create some sort of movement for change, the same thing that's happening inside of companies,” she said. “So I think that sort of parallel is really important to understand, especially when it comes to things like censorship or self-censorship.When we see things like Palestinian folks being censored or mistranslations or whatever the case may be, this is also happening to employees.”
5. Making a Difference: Feteih and Navaroli also discussed avenues for people to contribute to furthering and diversifying tech policy discourse. “There are so many practitioner fellowships now, that was not a thing four years ago. There are so many new spaces to be able to contribute your ideas, your writing, your voice to helping regulators, to furthering conversations. And so I would encourage folks who are trying to figure out what to do with their unique skill set that they have developed in this work that they have done. Come join us, come join these conversations. There have been so many people recently who have left the industry and have been publishing, and I've just been so excited to see these voices coming into this space with these incredibly nuanced recommendations.”

Nadah Feteih:

Anika and I met at Rights Con in June 2023 and reconnected the last few months as I was having a lot of conversations with previous colleagues and friends that are Palestinian, Muslim and allies that have been observing a lot of biases and mistakes happening on these platforms at their companies and sometimes internal hostile environments and were feeling unable to speak up. I could empathize and relate because I was in that position in 2021, but couldn't quite figure out what resources to point them to and what we could do constructively because there was no precedent set as to respond when these situations come up. She was one of the first people that I reached out to when we realized a lot of folks aren't really having these conversations and open spaces. And so we're excited to have to start this through this first fireside chat.

We have a lot of tech workers that are calling in from different places. And to start us off, I wanted to talk about a broad view of what it means to be underrepresented and a tech worker in the industry today. There are elections, complex geopolitical situations, humanitarian crises, civil unrest, and social movements that have shaken a lot of us to our core and impact our personal lives. And how do our interactions with these platforms that our employers change as our personal and professional lives start to become intertwined in this way?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I wrote some research called Black and Moderation, which I spoke to six Trust and Safety who identified as Black Americans who represented 12 different companies. And so in this research, the way I actually described the experience, the word I used was “wild.” I actually thought an editor was going to take it out and be like, please use more precise language. And I think after reading it, that is the most descriptive way of explaining the sort of yoyo rollercoaster that you end up in these situations. I think there are so many of us, you mentioned the sort of crises, the geopolitical situations, the things that are happening in the world. So many of us end up in these jobs because we care about those things and we have a skillset that we believe can be useful or helpful in helping to determine things like human rights in the middle of a crisis, or we come from regions that are under crisis or in some sort of geo tension. We have a deep understanding and want to be able to help with that. I think what happens is very, very quickly the personal and the professional become the same and they collapse. It feels wild and you're kind of looking around and thinking, is it just me that this kind of seems problematic and then other people start to talk about it. And you see a lot of parallels across the industry and different companies.

Nadah Feteih:

How can we bring these people into the rooms where policies are being developed and involving people (i.e. Trust and Safety workers) that are doing the work?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

We don't have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to regulation because there are so many people who have done this for so long who have worked through so many different crisis situations and have tried out various things. And I think it's really important for folks who have done trust and safety, who have worked in tech companies to be a part of these conversations. There's so much regulation that I have read and literally it's been laughable, right? Because I read it and I'm like, we tried that. It didn't work. And so being able to talk to people who have already tried out these experiences know what works, what doesn't work, it gives us a better place to start from. And it's like the drum beat that I won't let up. We have to talk to the people who have been doing the work because I think it's the key to being able to understand and effectively regulate.

Nadah Feteih:

Very true. Yeah. I think a lot of times these conversations happen in a vacuum where don't involve all the different stakeholders that maybe play a part into thinking of the best solution. And so when we talk about how we can move into this world where folks that aren't in leadership positions get a seat at the table, what is your advice or how are ways that we can move to involving them more in this process?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

One of the things that was kind of brought to light [in my research] was the lack of diversity within leadership. And so there are so many folks who are involved in teams who might be in lower level positions or might feel powerless. And one thing that I will say is being inside of a company, there is so much power already at your disposal. And I think being able to understand how to find moments of opportunity, even windows of opportunity to jump through when they come, and being able to identify when those happen, when you can use your seniority, when you can use the power that's within your hands is really important. And the example that I'll give, I was recently asked about the work that I was the most proud of, which was the first time anybody had asked me about that.

And I realized I had never actually talked about it, right? I've talked about so many different things and I've said so much, but I never had actually spoken about the work I was the most proud of because it was not my actual job. And so the work that I looked at and I look at tech companies that I think was the most impactful. I worked on amplifying the voices of women, of trans folks, of people of color, of queer folks, not just on the platform but inside of the platforms as well by starting speaker series and having folks come in. And so the information flow became different and that was something that lasted beyond my time there. But again, it wasn't my job. I just happened to be working at the company. I happened to see an opportunity, recognized that it was something that needed to be done and was able to do it.

Nadah Feteih:

I think a lot of us resonate with that as someone who's also underrepresented in the tech industry. And as an engineer, I always felt like the only person that looked like me in this room and that I had this responsibility to speak up when things were going on or to be that representative of my community. So it is like an added burden and load on all of us. But then those are the moments where you feel like you can be that voice for folks that aren't in these rooms and it becomes incredibly powerful for sure. And so this kind of segues into my next question and this concept that you brought up in your piece on being Black In Moderation was published in the Columbia Journalism Review and this term of Compelled Identity Labor, which is this concept that as a minority in these positions, we feel like we have to represent your community at a company. And I finally found the vocabulary to describe what I was doing for so long. And in 2021, me and a handful of other employees at the company were starting to notice mistakes in content moderation and escalating them to the right policy teams to try to make sure that these biases weren't happening and it felt like it was on the shoulders of just a few. So tell us more about this idea and other examples.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, so I called it Compelled Identity Labor and the idea and the sort of concept came about based on my own experience, which was much like yours. Before I worked in trust and safety, I worked in academia, so I was always aware of the literature that was coming out and the research that was coming out, and I was reading it and realizing that nothing was reflecting the experiences that I was personally having. And the very first thing that I saw that kind of identified with that was Sarah Roberts book, Behind The Screen. She talks a little bit with a third party content moderator. And one of the things that they said was there seems to be someone inside of the trust and safety team who just has a special heart for the Middle East. And when I read that, I literally was like, oh my God, I know exactly what's happening here.

My mind immediately went to the Palestinian women that I have worked with at so many different companies who at times of intense geopolitical crisis were being called in to make decisions that were extremely personal. And so this was a concept that I also didn't have words for. And so when I was talking to so many of the people for this research at the time, I literally was calling, I think “shouldering a community.” I was like, I need to put together some words to be able to explain this experience. But it is something that I think since I've written about it, has really resonated with a lot of people and is really given kind of terminology and a phrase just to the experience that so many of us have had, which is what I'm very grateful to be able to do.

Nadah Feteih:

Those of us that are underrepresented and as a person of color and a minority, there are times when we feel like we are tokenized. We’re involved in diversity and inclusion and allyship training, but then there's times when it feels like it's performative when there's a crisis that actually emerges, like what's happening in Palestine right now. And you're kind of met with sense from leadership when this is actually the time when those values need to be shown in the decisions and actions and it’s exhausting. Can you tell us more about how tech workers that are engaging in compelled identity labor are overburdened?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

It's a complete burden. I wrote this down. One of the people that I spoke with said, “You don't want to always have to be that person. People start to look at you funny.” And another person described it, they said that they had to divorce themselves from themselves and they had to put on a different mask in order to be able to do this work. And it becomes, you mentioned the sort of sometimes you're the only person in the room, and so it feels like it is your responsibility because if it's not you raising your voice, then there's going to be an entire room that doesn't necessarily think about the people who identify the way that you do. And so that places, again, the sort of extraordinary burden on a handful of people to be able to have these really tough conversations.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I'm going to share an example that I have actually never talked about publicly before. When I was working at a tech company that shall remain nameless, and we were in a crisis situation. A user had done something. And so we get called into the emergency meeting in which all of us, the company, all the cross-functional stakeholders were in a room talking together about what we're going to do about this user who has done something and gotten themselves into trouble.

When I joined the room, someone was sharing their screen to kind of show what's happening. And I see that the user that we are talking about is a Black person. I also see that the piece of content that we're looking at, this person has used the N word. And I remember sitting there thinking very specifically, I really hope that nobody reads this out loud. Just having that specific moment. And very quickly, not only did that happen, but the head of trust and safety goes on to read this piece of content. And again, it was a Black user, so they are using the N word and it ends with an A, and the head of trust and safety decides to say it ending with a hard er.

And so in that moment, somebody actually explained this to me and they said, you have this physical reaction to these words, even if someone is just reading a word on a piece of paper. And so I remember reacting, but very quickly I get called on, you're the most senior policy person in the room. What should we do, Anika? And so I have to take myself and say, okay, what do I do in this situation? How do I very quickly explain the way that Black people communicate the sort of expression that happens, why we shouldn't penalize users for being Black and speaking the way that they do, and do that very, very quickly, while also having this super emotional reaction. And I said, I haven't told this story before, and one of the reasons why I've never talked about this story before is because of the burden that was placed on me.

And I wish, I’m Ms. whistleblower or Ms. truth teller, always talking about things, and I wish that I could sit here and tell you all that I put some time on this head of trust and safety's calendar. And we sat down and we had a nuanced conversation, and I explained to them about how I'm a Black queer woman who was raised in the south who has seen those words used or had them used in very violent situations in circumstances and the impact that it would have on me and why we shouldn't necessarily be saying that in the workplace. But the reality is this was my boss and I realized, do I want to go have a confrontational conversation with someone who might misconstrue this? They might think I'm calling them a racist, saying that they're racist, and that ruins our relationship.

Again, my boss, my livelihood is in their hands. And so I decided, honestly, I'm not going to say anything. It was a Friday afternoon as well. And so I remember thinking, I have the whole weekend to get over this, but the other question that came up for me is sort of the burden. Was it my responsibility as the most senior Black person at that company or in that room to have to go talk to a senior leader and explain to them why using racial slurs in the workplace might not be appropriate and why having that conversation would negatively impact me? That's the burden.

Nadah Feteih:

And being put in that situation and having to think that you have to pick and choose your battles because it's constantly happening and is this worth escalating or bringing up and resolving? But I think a lot of people of color are fearful and worried about this affecting their livelihood and their jobs and being targeted more than other employees. And so a lot of times those are suppressed and then they're never shared. And it's this culmination of things that never end up being talked about. And so one example that I had observed the last few months that maybe was an innocent mistake too, and didn't happen intentionally, was a mistake that happened on Instagram with a user's bio when someone had written Palestinian and had Arabic texts after it. There was a mistake with the AI translations that would translate the Arabic to say, Palestinians are terrorists, and this is clearly dehumanizing and pushing this narrative that is harming Palestinians right now. It was quickly kind of brushed off as a hallucination and a mistake and it wouldn't happen again. But it was hard to divorce your own reaction of this being shared about your community and not really knowing how to respond when you're an employee at the company and you understand the way technology's working and how there's mistakes that come up, but also wanting to make sure this doesn't continue to happen.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, I think that's a really important thing that you brought up. And I'll say, I think the current circumstances and the current crises that are happening are bringing so much of this work to light. We now have the reporting on the situation that you have talked about. The reality is, every single crisis situation that has happened all over the world, this work has been done by a handful of humans. There's always someone who's in there advocating. And I think being able to see now and have this conversation here first, bringing these things to light, but also seeing journalists report on what's happening has been really, really enlightening because it's been great to see the work noticed and to recognize the activism and the burden and the reality that so many people are living on top of their regular job. That's not anyone's job to do that. And yet there they are.

Nadah Feteih:

There's groups of internal activists at these companies that are doing this in addition to their jobs as data scientists or engineers. And so for these people that are doing this additional work, what institutional support and responsibilities should be provided to them? They're clearly really needed in those situations where the context isn't really understood by a lot of folks in leadership and their force to explain, to clarify. But what can be done to provide more of that support?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

It's really important first that companies hire experts in things like race, ethnicity, national origin. These are exceedingly complex ideas. Just to say, I once worked on a policy that had to do with ethnicity, and I went to the United States census, and according to the United States, there are two ethnicities: Hispanic and non-Hispanic, right? That's literally all there is. If I, as a policy person who's working in a global company, were to take that binary and apply it to the rest of the world, we are in trouble. And that's why we need to have these experts from all around the world who have a better concept of ethnicity than I do being an American and really growing up in this binary system. And I think hiring those experts is important because compelled identity labor, it's not sustainable. It's not a good business practice.

I think the other thing that's really important is to support workers. I think I talked to the folks that I talked to, I was asking them, what do you do? How do you take care of yourself when you're doing this work? And so many people were telling me that they were relying on their own sort of wellness practices. People were journaling or they were going to the gym or they were going for a walk, but there was no sort of institutionalized support for this work. I think being able to provide therapists or stipends for therapy to be able to provide very, very real logistical support for people who are literally being damaged while doing this work is essential for companies to be able to invest in.

Nadah Feteih:

An interesting observation I had these last few months in how a lot of these social media platforms, there's this governance of online speech, but how this is also kind of extending into the way leadership is enforcing internal guidelines in a more extreme way. So very, very overt internal censorship that's happening when employees can't even talk about the problems that are affecting their communities without being deemed disruptive due to some policies and employees that can't even mourn their family members that were killed. And they can't post in a company Q&A asking how they can be there and stand in solidarity with their coworkers that are Palestinian during this difficult time. They can't even have an organized internal support group without screenshots being taken and leaked. And these have happened across all the major tech companies. And so this feels very dehumanizing and very opposite from what the platitudes that these workplaces tell with bringing yourself to work your whole self to work.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I think one thing that I will say that I noticed working inside of tech companies is that very often the way that a platform runs externally or it functions or is governed externally is the way that the company's actually managed internally too. There is a through line between the philosophies and the way that they are translated. And so this, most platforms, you have this sort of very loud vocal group of people who tend to drive the conversation. The exact same thing is happening inside of companies. There is also a small minority of people who have a different opinion, who can band together and maybe create some sort of movement for change, the same thing that's happening inside of companies. So I think that sort of parallel is really important to understand, especially when it comes to things like censorship or self-censorship.

When we see things like Palestinian folks being censored or mistranslations or whatever the case may be, this is also happening to employees. And I think it's unfortunate, but again, I am happy that it's being brought to light because this has been happening. You said you were doing this in 2021. I was doing this in 2019, 2020. This is four years that we ourselves have been doing this work. There are people who've been doing this before us. So finally having it being brought to light and being able to have these conversations, I think is really important. The other thing that I will say is, again, you have more power than you think you do. And I think again, there's a burden of feeling like you have to be the person to be able to do this. And there is something that is so important and critical about this work, and I think you've done the work and you recognize so often the sort of reality is that it's life or death for people who happen to identify with you. And when those are the stakes, it's really, really hard to not get involved.

Nadah Feteih:

And I know folks at these companies where when it becomes this intense and extreme, they'll leave out of principle. But the folks that do choose to stay, for them to recognize that they're in a position of privilege and there's a lot of advocacy they can do internally, and we need people pushing for this change from all different sides.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

We will always need people working inside of tech companies. Change will never happen. I mean, it might happen, but my theory of change and the way that I have seen things work takes a variety of people and a variety of different angles advocating for change. And so you can have the external advocacy, but you need somebody internally who's going to be able to write the policy, who's going to be able to have the conversation, who's going to be able to make the argument when it counts. And so to that person, to all of those people who are continuing to do that work, that is the Lord's work. More power to you, because it is so incredibly important. And I just want to say we see you. We honor that work, and part of why we are here is to talk about it and to honor it.

Nadah Feteih:

It feels like we've been doing this work for years and right now it still feels like a lot of times as we're pushing for these changes internally, there's still a lot of reactive measures that are taken and responses from leadership that are either made just to placate employees or just band-aid solutions that aren't really addressing the foundational issues and senior leadership that also say things like, usually when employees escalate things, it's just an HR problem, so how can we really push for these changes to happen so that we're not constantly bringing up the same things year over year?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting sort of approach. And I think when you're sitting inside of a company, it's really easy to also feel like you're being ignored or that what you're saying doesn't necessarily matter. And again, I want to encourage folks who are doing that work that it is incredibly important because so many moments that I have seen, there have been people internally who have been pushing for a change or pushing for a policy or pushing for something, and it's never been prioritized. And next thing you know, there's a crisis or the New York Times has you on the front page talking about the thing that you have been trying to work on, and all of a sudden it's a priority and there's resources. And if you are the person who has been beating that drum, you are able to then at that moment pick it up and run with it. But it's incredibly unfortunate that sometimes it really does take that sort of external pressure for it to happen, but also it requires that internal person as well.

Nadah Feteih:

Yeah. And it's got to a point where you had decided to leave and you became a whistleblower, which I think is what put you in the spotlight. So I wanted to ask and understand and share with the audience why you decided to become a whistleblower, what advice you have for tech workers that want to share their experiences externally. And there's still taboo and there's a stigma around linking information.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yes, I did decide to come forward publicly as a whistleblower, and I'm not the first whistleblower from trust and safety. And in the research that I did, I talked specifically about Ifeoma at Pinterest, and Charlotte at Amazon, and Joel at TikTok, and how all these folks coming forward has given sort of the first inside insight that we have into how so many people are treated, right? And I also think working in trust and safety, you see the worst things day in and day out. Can you imagine how bad things must have to be for you to be willing to risk your career, risk everything to be able to come forward and say, this thing has happened? And in my case, it was democracy, and that was something that continues to be much bigger than me.

And so it was important. I felt that it was important for me. I think the thing about whistleblowing is it kind of has a bad rep, and I get it. When I first became a whistleblower and people called me whistleblower, I was like, please don't. I’ve gotten a little better with it now. But I think there's a lot of negative connotations with it. But I think the thing is, you don't have to do what I did. You don't have to come forward, go talk to Congress, testify to Congress under oath on c-span. That's a very specific path. I think that there are so many other ways to be able to tell the truth, and I would encourage people to do this first, actually, let me say this. I encourage nobody to tell the truth or talk to anybody without first talking to a lawyer or a whistleblower organization so you understand your rights and your risks.

I am a lawyer, and I really mean that as a person who was actually a lawyer, I also had to go talk to lawyers first. So please, please, please make sure that you are protected. But again, there are other ways to do it. I think of the folks who talked to me while doing the research. That is a form of truth telling. They're pseudonymous and their names will never be known. Their identities will never be known. But their stories have now created an impact. There's writing. There's what we're doing right here that is important too.

Nadah Feteih:

Exactly. Yeah. And I think a lot of these avenues people just don't know about, right? Whistle blowing is the one that's most public. A lot of people have, there's a lot more attention on it. And a lot of people worry about even going to the media about things because sensationalist headlines and how this can sometimes frame not really the most accurate picture. So for folks that maybe don't really want to talk to the media, like you're saying, join us on the other side, there's a lot of work that can be done in public interest tech and work that you can do that's not within tech.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

There are so many practitioner fellowships now, that was not a thing four years ago. There are so many new spaces to be able to contribute your ideas, your writing, your voice to helping regulators, to furthering conversations. And so I would encourage folks who are trying to figure out what to do with their unique skill set that they have developed in this work that they have done. Come join us, come join these conversations. There have been so many people recently who have left the industry and have been publishing, and I've just been so excited to see these voices coming into this space with these incredibly nuanced recommendations. And I think that that is so important. And again, we still need folks inside of tech companies too. It's an entire, I think, ecosystem of change.

Question from the audience:

Have the burdens of compelled identity labor gotten worse in light of some of those layoffs, which have really affected centers of advocacy and knowledge and expertise within platforms that you've described?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

When I was doing my research, it was during the first wave of layoffs in 2022. Yes. And it impacted my ability to do the research. I think there were folks who I talked to who came back to me and said, the industry has completely changed. We no longer have job stability, and I can't be involved in this research. And that was the first round. There have been so many more rounds of layoffs now that I think the job security is even more fragile than what it ever was. I told my story about why I didn't necessarily speak up in a moment because of job security. I'm certain that those situations have only become more strenuous when you realize there's a round of layoffs happening every couple of months, and all that is necessary is for my boss to have one thing that we might not necessarily agree on. For me to be the person that's on the chopping block, it makes you be a little bit less hesitant or less willing to take on the risk. And I think that that is so unfortunate because the conversation that we're having is how important these things are because it's literally very often the digital human rights around the entire world of people who happen to identify with you. It's unfathomable how big of a task and how big of a deal that it is. And I think the market uncertainty has only made it worse.

Question 2:

How best can we understand the concept of solidarity and inclusion, especially in the context of emerging technologies and better ways to conceptualize it than how it's commonly understood?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I think Nadah, you and I talked about this a little in one of our conversations. I think these are big concepts. It’s like compelled identity labor. They're words. You can put definitions to it. What does it actually really mean? I can give a very, very concrete example. I remember there was a time at a company that, again, shall remain nameless, that I was also doing my compelled identity labor during a specific moment. And I remember feeling completely overwhelmed. I had had an intense argument and by the time the arguments finally finished and we come around to we're going to do something, you're tired, and then you have to open up a blank Google Doc and start writing. And I remember I had a colleague at the time who saw what was going on, an non-Black colleague and said, I'll write it for you.

And I remember in that moment thinking, this is what it means. This is exactly what these ideas mean in action of, I literally see what you have been going through in order to make this happen and going to take this labor off of your plate so that you are not going to have to be the person that has to carry this on. And they ended up writing the thing. I came back, we reviewed it, we had this great sort of conversation and back and forth, but it's in those moments of understanding what does solidarity really look like, right? It's not being silent in moments. It's not. Sometimes it's sending the slack message that says, I see you. And sometimes it's literally picking up the work and taking the burden from somebody else and deciding this one doesn't really hurt me as much, so I can do it.

Question 3:

As we talked about the war in Ukraine or now the war in Gaza and where we see, despite all the layoffs, there are lots of adverts looking for people speaking these particular languages to get involved. And obviously that puts a huge strain on the organizations dealing with all of the awful things that are coming in. And I was wondering if you think that in the long term, these kind of crisis situations that also open up to different ways of seeing the world that are maybe beyond the very US-centric ways of dealing with issues, if that can be a longer-term learning for these companies, or if you've seen that in the past or if you think it's really just crisis moments and once they are kind of no longer the center of attention, it all goes back to normal and there's not really a way forward.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I think it has to be a learning lesson. If we are going to get this “right,” I think it has to be a learning opportunity. I think one of the biggest biases that are baked into technology companies is the San Francisco bias. That's where a lot of people are headquartered in so many different ways and in so many different things. Like you cannot get an answer or a decision unless it goes through the top bosses in San Francisco, and I think that provides and creates an extreme bias. The other thing that I want to pick up on what you said is language specialties and being a native speaker, I think there's been a lot of reporting that's come out recently, the Guardian did this expose where they were like, oh my gosh, TikTok doesn't have native speakers, and people who don't speak English are using Google Translate.

And I was like, yeah, right. This has been going on for a very long time. Mudge, the other Twitter whistleblower, when he came forward, said the misinformation team at Twitter is using Google Translate in order to figure out what is happening here. That's a problem. I speak English. It's the only language I speak, and I always refused to make a decision on content that was in a language that I didn't speak. It was like a serious thing that I had that is not a conviction that everybody has, and I think it's really important, again, for people who are in these positions to make those sorts of stances.

Nadah Feteih:

To build off of that too, in these times of crisis, like Anika was saying, use it as a learning lesson and figure out where is the best place to put that pressure and build off of that momentum in 2021. I remember when you're taking this reactive approach of just trying to bring this Facebook group back up or getting this account restored, you're constantly fighting these fires. But then 2023 comes, and then we're seeing the same thing over and over again because we were so focused on just mitigating what's happening and instead making sure you reflect holistically, realize that maybe there's just not the right people in the places that should be there to make sure that we're changing the policies when they need to, or that people are properly trained in the languages and dialects when it's needed, so that when another crisis comes, we're not constantly fighting the same doubts.

Question 4:

How can we as average trust and safety workers who've been on the ground, share our views on how to make policies actually effective with policymakers when they are only hearing either from tech executives or lobbyists or a few big names in the industry? Are there ways that we can provide input without taking a government job or a think tank job?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Absolutely right. There are so many congressional people who are willing to have off the record conversations with tech workers about these very specific things. Part of my astonishment in talking to Congress was recognizing how little people actually knew about how social media worked. There were so many assumptions. And so I think one thing I would recommend if you're into it is writing these things down. I've been writing a lot of op-eds, so op-eds are a way to go if that's what you're interested in. But I think sharing your ideas and sharing the knowledge and the skill set that you have is incredibly important. And I think again, you don't necessarily have to work in civil society. You don't have to work at a think tank. You can stay working inside of a tech company and establish relationships.

Nadah Feteih:

Right before this event, we were also talking about outlets like Tech Policy Press that invite contributors from all different spaces. When I first started this fellowship, I wrote an op-Ed published it with them and was joking saying this was the first time I've written something more than code. But the thing is they do want practitioners and technologists to give their perspective because we see how things work with social media companies and a lot of times we just didn't know that anyone else wanted to.