Combating Online Hate, Bigotry and Discrimination
Session Type(s): Panel
Starts: Friday, Jul. 18 4:30 PM (Eastern)
Ends: Friday, Jul. 18 5:45 PM (Eastern)
A convergence of activists, social media companies, and victims of hate are collaborating to figure out the best way to protect communities from vitriol that turns from hate speech to mobilized campaigns. While the Internet has revolutionized progressive change, it has also rallied others to encourage bigotry, brutal killings, mass protests against a community’s presence, and violence based on hate. This online fear-mongering and bigotry has become increasingly organized and is particularly evident in efforts targeted at vulnerable communities such as immigrants, Muslims, women who speak up about their rights and abuses, LGBT individuals, and African Americans. This panel sheds light on how online hate translates to inequality, disenfranchisement, and life-threatening violence for innocent Americans across the country—and what you can do to change the tides.
Moderator
Madihha Ahussain
Madihha Ahussain serves as special counsel for anti-muslim bigotry at Muslim Advocates and heads the Program to Counter Anti-Muslim Hate. Ms. Ahussain works with a coalition of organizations to combat anti-Muslim efforts by public officials. In addition, she monitors hate crimes targeting American Muslims, works with communities to respond to threats or incidents of violence, and mosque opposition. She also serves as the lead on Muslim Advocates work to hold tech platforms and companies accountable.
Panelists
Kalia Abiade
Kalia Abiade is the Advocacy Director at the Center for New Community, a national research and advocacy organization based in Chicago. There, she spearheads efforts equip and mobilize grassroots organizations and national coalitions to challenge organized nativism and racism in public discourse and policy. She brings to this work more than a decade of journalism experience and is the managing editor of CNC’s blog, Imagine2050.org (Twitter: @imagine2050).
Rebecca Lenn
Rebecca Lenn is the Director of External Affairs at Media Matters for America, a web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. In this position, she works with national and state partners to prevent and combat the spread of lies and extremism in print, broadcast, and online media.
Rebecca is a native of Alexandria, VA. She holds an M.A.R. in ethics from Yale University and a B.A. in Political Science from Mount Holyoke College.
Anthony Nieto
Anthony Nieto is a manager on Twitter’s Trust & Safety team.
His work focuses on policy and tool creation to facilitate Twitter’s compliance with legal requests on a global scale, while maximizing Users’ freedom of expression and privacy considerations.
Prior to joining Twitter, Anthony worked to enforce YouTube’s Terms of Service.