Nina Jankowicz, the self-described “Mary Poppins of disinformation” whom Joe Biden has tapped to head DHS’ new Disinformation Governance Board, didn’t just get picked at random to be our new Minister of Truth. No, she had to do a lot of work to get to where she is today. She had to demonstrate that she’s very, very serious about and committed to policing speech.
It may very well have been this very thread from January of 2021 that originally put her on the Biden administration’s radar:
Today we release “Malign Creativity: How Gender, Sex, and Lies are Weaponized Against Women Online.”
Yes, we're breaking glass ceilings, but our study shows how far we have to go before women have a truly equal voice, online or off.https://t.co/joz6EyX0vH
Top lines follow:
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
“Malign Creativity”? Sounds … interesting.
Gendered abuse and disinformation are terrifyingly widespread. Of our 13 subjects, 12 faced gendered abuse, and 9 faced gendered disinfo. The overwhelming majority of abuse was posted on Twitter, and targeted @KamalaHarris (78% of our data!).
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
Here are the most prevalent keywords supporting gendered disinformation targeting the subjects in our study, including @KamalaHarris, @IlhanMN, @GovWhitmer, and @AOC. Women were targeted with abuse across party lines. pic.twitter.com/RcHZ5PPt2v
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
Let’s pause for a moment just to say something: cheap sexual innuendo about Kamala Harris and other Democratic women is juvenile and gross, not to mention it only serves to undermine legitimate criticisms of these women. That said, it’s not illegal to be a complete boor on social media — and it shouldn’t be illegal.
Common disinfo narratives were racist, transphobic, or sexual. Women of color faced compounded abuse. Here you can see how users who pushed sexual narratives about @KamalaHarris also posted other abusive content. (Network by @APavliuc of @oiioxford) pic.twitter.com/haP46ib24F
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
The biggest challenge in identifying this content both for our team and for platforms is what we’ve dubbed “malign creativity” — the coded language, memes, and context-based content which allow harmful posts to avoid detection.
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
“Malign creativity.” There’s that term again.
Other challenges:
Platforms lack a coherent definition of “targeted harassment;” as a result, a lot of the abuse women face doesn’t violate terms of service and thus requires no action on the platforms’ part.
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
Platforms also need more intersectional expertise in content moderation, as abuse toward women, POC, and other marginalized communities too often goes undetected and unaddressed.
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
Unfortunately, targets bear the onus of detection and reporting. Managing an onslaught of abuse on social media requires time to block, report, and mute abusers. These burdens are discounted and affect their daily lives offline.
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
If this hasn’t convinced you we need a change, gendered abuse and disinfo is a national security issue. We spoke with @LetaHong, @nicoleperlroth, and @YeganehSalehi, who were targeted by Chinese, Russian, and Iranian state media with gendered disinfo and smear campaigns.
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
We propose several pages of solutions in the report. Most important: introducing incident reports, allowing targets of abuse to group many pieces of content/campaigns together and giving moderators more context than a single tweet/post, reducing the efficacy of malign creativity.
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
“Malign creativity.” There it is again!
We also encourage lawmakers to lead by example and end the gendered rhetoric we see some politicians using in Congress and on campaigns. We also hope VAWA will be reauthorized in the new Congress and include provisions to mitigate online abuse.
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
Finally, too many employers, from newsrooms to universities to think tanks, do not provide enough support for women who might be exposed to abuse as a result of their work-related public engagement. It’s a critical reality of the digital age that has gone largely unacknowledged.
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
This research was born out of reporting I did for @CodaStory back in 2017. You can read that article here: https://t.co/a1BPCmx4MD
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
We looked to @Sobieraj’s Credible Threat (which you should all read) and work by @NDIWomen as well as many other trailblazing women scholars as we conducted this research. Check out our citations and support their work!
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
Huge thanks to @MoonshotCVE for being our partner in this work, and our brilliant research team:@JillianMoria, @APavliuc, Celia Davies, @NatSecMicah, @shannonrpierson, @zkaufmann3.
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
But the biggest thanks of all goes to TikTok for giving her a place to post a video about all this:
PS you better bet I made a TikTok about this 💁🏻♀️ pic.twitter.com/PihnDCKJUx
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) January 25, 2021
What? No musical number? Why would Nina Jankowicz malign her own creativity like that?
Honestly, if there’s any malign force here, it’s someone like Nina Jankowicz who believes in policing other people’s thoughts in the name of protecting “women, POC, and other marginalized communities” from “gendered abuse and disinformation.” (Evidently Jankowicz ran out of time to explain how using a term like “women” is not itself abuse or disinformation).
What exactly is the “disinformation”?
At best these are insults. https://t.co/jGP9cSqZwg
— BiasedGirl (@BiasedGirl) May 2, 2022
They are insults. They’re opinions. And as long as they’re not inciting violence, they’re protected under that scourge of the Left, that pesky First Amendment.
Innuendo is illegal now. pic.twitter.com/81P3m0BgWn
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) May 2, 2022
That’s what she would appear to believe. And that’s pretty terrifying, when you think about it.
‘Malign creativity,’ a close cousin of ‘precrime’ – you haven’t done anything wrong yet, but we all know what’s about to happen, probably. https://t.co/0czzo9MRHH
— Zack Kanter (@zackkanter) May 2, 2022
We’ve seen this movie plenty of times.
