Move Slow and Fix Things (with Esra’a Al Shafei)

We're surrounded by watcher as an island obviously, but there's palm trees. Um. I could do without the traffic because we're also a very small country, you know. But what I love about it so much is that everything is community and family oriented, and it's oftentimes regardless of what you think and who you are and how you feel. When it's family time, it's family time. That's where you

get together and you eat that type of togetherness. It's where everybody kinds of just melts together and it's chaos, but it's beautiful chaos. You don't have as many fights when you have these get togethers as because nobody can actually hear the other person. Everybody's just talking over people, and it's like you're you're you're talking to somebody, but you also have a mouthful of dates. It's a great place to be, but it's also a terrifying place to be.

You want to be yourself, but you also can't. But you also don't want to fault the communities and the people there. For the most partits it's not our faults. Of course, we are accountable, but it's not like we can just rise up and say, hey, yeah, I would disagree with this and we're going to do something about it, because the consequences are dire. But you also love everything that it stands for when it comes to community and

passion and people really care about each other. I mean, a couple of years ago we lost our house to a fire. There's not a single person in the neighborhood that didn't come to help us. This is Estra al Chaffe. She's the founder of Masall, a network of digital platforms that amplifies underrepresented voices. Today we're going to be focusing on one of those platforms called Awa, a gamified social media app designed for the l g B t q I plus community. In the Middle East and North Africa.

What does that mean exactly? Well, imagine you were on a social media app where you were anonymous but also safe. Are you thinking baratun day? That's impossible. As long as there's an Internet, there will be trolls and threats and surveillance. Oh my, and I hear you trust me. I've got haters too, But it's true. Eestra's built a platform where kindness earns you points, and points give you access and trolling that costs you points. But first, let's learn a

little bit about the person behind the platform. We forget that sometimes, right there's always a person. Hello, Etra, how are you doing. I'm doing very well. Thanks, how are you? I'm doing well as well you should be if you're talking to me, all right, and we're off to a fiery start. I love it. Normally, when I'm doing these conversations, I have the video of the person i'm speaking with up and we can see each other. Your video is off, though, why is that my video is a is off? And

that's for my safety. I've always been physically anonymous with the type of work that I do, which is of course human rights, working with vulnerable communities, including the lgbt q I community in the Middle East and North Africa. If I really want to continue doing this work, There's only so much that I can do from the front line.

There's a lot that I need to keep underground, and my physical anonymity is becoming harder and harder with the types of different surveillance technologies that we have to protect, Especially knowing that I'm amongst millions of activists that are monitored and surveilled on a daily basis. It sounds massively inconvenient and like something that takes a lot of energy to try to remain anonymous in this way. Are there any advantages to it? Absolutely? I mean, it's the reason

I'm speaking to you today. Um, I get to talk about this work. When people go and give talks, they know that this talk is going to be seen not just by the people in the room, but by everybody. Snippets of it are going to be on Twitter and on YouTube and wherever you know it's going to be hosted. And for me, I feel like it's going to stay in that room and I can make very dark jokes and get away with it. You really get to be

your authentic self without fearing for your life. I've seen some of the work you've been up to and it is positively, ridiculously impressive what you've been working on these past many years, over a decade. Tell me about the work you've dedicated yourself to over the years. Sure, So I created Michelle dot org Um somewhere around two thousand five. During that time, you know, this was before Twitter was big.

Facebook was still limited to a lot of colleges and things like that, and not just anybody can can sign up, So our treach was much more challenging because it was hard to reach the communities that you wanted to reach. What communities were you trying to reach? We were trying to reach ourselves. I mean, we were just young people at the time in a country that made censorship the norm.

Where you go to school and there's certain information that you can't find and can talk about where you go in the household, and people are scared to talk about certain things. But you see the injustices around you, but you keep it to yourself, and it's a traumatic situation

to do that. That's really what got me interested in creating a platform where when we see an injustice, we can talk about it we can talk about how migrant workers are being treated in our country, how corrupt leaders were getting away with insane policies that were keeping us away from our own dignity. We wanted to talk to and with communities that were completely visible at the time

and had to be for security reasons. These were really the communities that we wanted to make sure that they felt welcome, that we wanted to build something inclusive, and that it wasn't going to be just about us. It was going to be just a space where we can just share our stories and speak with people that we were discouraged from even acknowledging. What are you not allowed to say that has such direct consequences? I mean, first

and for most, it's it's not to democracy. We don't have to say politically, how things are run, what policies are being enforced upon. US government issues a statement, you do this, we do it. There's direct consequences we need don't So that's for me, a big part of the

fear no fair trial. So if you're an activist and you get accused of something, sometimes even a tweet criticizing a member of parliament, you will get arrested for that and there are laws now that have been revised where there are certain tweets that there are social media crimes, but what makes a social media crime criticism. So it's a scary situation to live in that type of environment, and it's not something that is unique to Behrain, it's

really everywhere we went. So even when we would travel to neighboring countries, we have to be very very conservative in what we are expressing because as much as we are changing, we are getting a lot of pushback from

really well resourced countries. I mean, these are countries that are spending billions of dollars on surveillance technology from some of the most sophisticated companies out there, whether there Israeli companies that specifically build surveillance videos and tools, and or u S companies actually that are not being held accountable working with repressive governments like this, that are putting the lives of activists at risk as it means they get

a couple of hundred thousand dollars. So that type of fear really gets to you. Or we wanted to be sure that we could creatively bypass a lot of that, and that's why we turned to music. That's why we turned to gamification. That's why we turned to art, because we're trying to do things in such a way where it's not just a group of investigative journalists who are going to publish this bombshell report through Human Rights Watch

or something like that. Of course this stuff is important, but this is also the stuff that will get you killed. So we wanted something in the middle. We didn't want to get arrested. At the same time, we didn't want to stay silent and therefore complicit. Everybody I know would be in jail because all we do is mouth off on the internet against people with power. It just doesn't It feels literally foreign. We'll be right back. I want to talk about one of those platforms that you helped create.

Tell me what Awah is and where did the idea begin. So it began in two thousand nine, and it began as a platform for the lgbt Q plus community in the Arab region where we could just share stories, share support um, share resources, and really just build a supportive network where we can be who we want to be without the fear of bullying, prejudice, trolling that we saw was prevalent in many of the other platforms. Everywhere we went.

We felt punished, we felt humiliated, we felt threatened, and it was really tough because you can build, you know, you can go on Facebook, and even when you create those private groups, a lot of the times, what we saw was a lot of them were being deleted because oh you this is against community policy and they're not

obligated to explain any further. They had a lot of moderators in the region, which we felt that for them, being queer was against community policy because it's against cultural norms. We thought, okay, look, nobody out there were sitting saying, hey, let's design something that a bunch of queer Arabs can really Also, you know, nobody's sitting there and saying, well,

what about this community, what about this small niche? You know, let's put monetization aside and growth metrics aside, and let's put the people. Nobody is going to think that. Why do you think it wasn't in a Twitter, for example, in their interest or Facebook and their interests to serve the queer Arab community. I mean, for them, it's really about us grow because it helps our strategic direction on how best and how quickly we can monetize a specific tool.

That's the bottom line for them. It's not security, it's not community, it's not people like me. One time, the Committee to Protect Journalists invited a group of us to go and speak at Facebook headquarters at Twitter headquarters, and nobody cared. It was over like a lunch brown bag. Everybody was disappointed because they didn't get the sandwich order that they wanted, and they're just like, this is just

a meeting for me. This is not a place where I'm going to come and somebody's going to try and push the boundaries for me. The designers were showing up and you could tell that they were just doodling and could not care less about what my colleague from Syria was saying about being hunted, what my colleague in as Our Beijan was saying about being arrested on a weekly basis and investigated. They couldn't care less. I mean, they felt pity, but one person would actually say, well, why

do you use these tools for those purposes? That's not what we designed them for. You know what. Facebook is really a place where you can go and connect with the classmates that you haven't heard from in a long time. And so that was for us. That's them saying we're not building this for you, and we never will. If these are the people who are setting the rules, setting the stage, then that's all they're ever going to care about it. We can force them to care about us.

That scene is so familiar and so infuriating. So so what have you built as a contrast? How does awah work and what is it providing for this l g B t Q plus community that a Facebook or Twitter wasn't willing to provide? Well, first of all, we spoke to everybody that we could. What are you using to find support in this space? And why isn't it working? And so that's that's where we started finding the void and what was already available. It's um, okay, we don't

have proper anonymity. Facebook obviously for a long time, discourage an enimedia altogether. It was crazy, I'm not boarding a flight, I'm using you know, a social media site. And so for a lot of people that's really where the line was drawn and they felt that they just didn't have

that security. So for us, what we felt was what if we built a platform where everybody was welcome, you know, we didn't want to build something clicky and we didn't want to build anything that was invite only where somebody had to know somebody to know somebody to come in, because most of the time the target communities that you are scared to even express, sometimes to even come up to yourself. So we said, okay, you can log in, you can introduce yourself a little by little, based on

the type of interactions that you're having. On the side, if you're posting something that's helpful, some people say they would mark that contribution as helpful, and that gives you more points. And based on the number of points you have, you lock more sections of the platform, for example, access to a page of resources where if you have three thousand points, now you can have resources organized by country, like in Lebanon, this is where you can go to

do this. In Sardi Arabia this is a counselor that is very LGBT friendly, for example. And then you are able to create a chat room. You're able to join a chat room, all based on the different level of points that you have. And the thing is is, of course you can you know game the system, but it requires you to be super tolerant, supportive kind for like hundreds of posts, so that you can call somebody a jerk for one second before that you lose all your points.

This is amazing you have You've increased the price of trolling. I mean it's exhausting. Basically, if you're going to effectively troll on this platform, you've got to go undercover as a decent person. Exactly for weeks. The most homophobic people in our communities won't even put themselves in that. But we have had a couple of stories where people would say, look, I came here to troll. I'm not gonna lie. I

saw this, somebody posted about this. But when I put myself in that situation with fake support, I realized I was actually connecting with people. It was actually changing some mindset because they realized, wow, I'm talking to somebody who would rather kill themselves than come out, and they would really put themselves in that shoes, and they started empathizing. We didn't just want to build a place where it's an advocacy organization, it's like, recognize us, we need this.

We wanted a place where it humanized the community in all of its different phases and with many different people. And we never wanted to say that this was a singular story. It was thousands of stories. I mean now we have about eleven thousand users. That's eleven thousand very different experiences. That clicks with me because as the other platforms are very flat and their incentive structure is around pretty much letting everyone do as much as possible, as

quickly as possible, so there's no there's no investment. It's almost like when I go on a place like Twitter, people are showing up with such a disrespect because they're not actually invested in the platform. They haven't had to work for any of it. And so of course you can trash somebody else's house, and what you set up is a kind of a different incentive structure where people have a sense of belonging, they put time in, which is a form of investment. Here's what I'm not hearing.

I'm not hearing scale, I'm not hearing growth. I'm not hearing maximize shareholder value. Like in the in the language of the commercial internet, this is small, this is cute, this is a failure. What why are you not building to make this the biggest, fastest, growing, most amazing thing. You've got all these great people, now add some zeros behind that eleven thousand. Why are you not doing that? Because scale is moronic. Honestly, every platform that has built

for scale sucks. Either the people they're suck or the features suck, or both, more often than not both. Honestly, people always complain it's like, oh, the Internet is full of idiots, because that's by design. Mark Zuckerberg was very famed for saying, is oh, you have to move fast and break things. And the thing that you're breaking are people's confidence, people's spirits, people's banks. I mean, these are

the things that you break, people's dignity, people's security. These are all things that you cannot build at scale, period. And so that's why the Internet today looks very homogeneous. And so when you move away from that, the Internet starts looking a lot better, a lot healthier. We'll be

right back. So you've painted a hilarious, truthful and clear picture a contrast and how the Internet has been built and a bit of how else we can build it with something with a platform like AWA, who's maintaining a Who are the people that have been operating it for the past decade. So we have a very small group of volunteers, primarily a lot of us are women women in Lebanon, we have women in Jordan's. It's not a lot, it's a small team, but we don't need a lot,

and that's the beauty of it. And then we have a community of volunteers as well, and so these volunteers they show up and they help moderate some of the content just to make sure that people are not maybe sharing something like an address or outing somebody, just to kind of keep things a little bit more safe. But oftentimes they're also helping people with onboarding. Nobody's paid, and that's tough, but at the same time, it kind of keeps things sustainable as well, because you know that they're

doing this because they too. They're doing this because they care about the platform, they care about the community, they care about the integrity of the information that's being shared on there. But it's it's all volunteers. That also is remarkable. I think two parts of that. One the human interaction uh and second is the role of women on the human side. So many of the platforms most of us

are used to, we don't interact with people, right. They try to automate as much of the onboarding as possible to get us on as fast as possible. To get us producing as much as possible, Like we're factory workers on the Internet model that most of us experienced, and it's like, get on there, give us your data, interact, smash that like button, and to have a human slows all that down and makes it more intimate and again

increases that investment. I think the role of women is also fascinating because in the very early Internet in the US, there's history in the early bullets and board systems and forums where women were actually about half or even a near majority of the users, and they were designing different types of spaces that weren't about scale, that weren't about aggression as much, and they essentially got chased out by a bunch of dudes who are like, but we can,

we can maximize things. It's Graham. And so before the trolling and the abuse took over, there was a different Internet possible here, and I'm glad to see it. It's more than possible. You're building a part of it there, so thank you, But I'm I'm still curious, how is this all funded? Like how do you keep this all going? Unfortunately, in the region, when you're building these types of tools,

it's very difficult to get them funded. And so that's one of the biggest challenges that we've had, but also the biggest frustrating points because we see the colossal waste that the philanthropic community in the global North, whether it's you know, in the UK or Canada, but primarily the US were a lot of private foundations give a lot of money to people who don't know what they're doing.

You see that also when people are trying to build a tech platform, it's like, well, that person had to have gone to Stanford and then went on to work at Twitter, and only they will know what and our blesbin may need. In Saudi Arabia, those are the people that helped destroy whether internet could be like and now we're paying them to do the same. But in the nonprofit industry. So it really kills us to see that when we go and when we're asking for funding and

we have look, this is decades worth of work. I mean other people, they would show up with no track record whatsoever, But simply because of who they are and who they may know, they get access to funding a

lot quicker. And not just access to like a hundred thousand These are people getting access to millions and millions and we see platforms low through fifty million dollars because again they were trying to do things at scale and not work directly with the activist communities, with the journalist communities, and they're not collaborating with us. So this is the thing that bothers me the most is a lack of collaboration and the fact that a lot of private foundations

are now encouraging competitiveness. That's what's killing organizations. That's where you come in and they say, we want metrics, we want scale, and we want you to do it. By the way, in a very dangerous setting. Let's get as many LGBT people together to use the tool that has not doesn't have a proven concept, or has not been tested for security. So now we are putting lives at risk so that you can say that you were this many people. So, I mean, I'm just very frustrated at

the current environment of philanthropy. I think it's so broken and they are so in denial that it is, and it's just upsetting. You know, something's got to give. You either remove the obsession with metrics, or you make sure that access to funding is equitable, that is generally inclusive and not just you want to fund the two token organizations that everybody fund to say well, we funded you know this and that organization, and that shows that we're

not racist. You are still you know in many different ways, um. And I love reminding this. And by the way, that's another reason why sometimes it's hard to get funding, is because we became outspoken, you know for too many years. I was sitting and I was like, I'm not going to say anything, you know, because it's gonna ruffle their feathers and there they're not going to give me access to money. And then I realized, you know what, I've always been broken. They will never give me money. So

now the gloves have totally come up. Every time I come across this, I tell them to their face, what you're doing is idiotic. You know, your strategy doesn't work. It hasn't worked for years, and you're part of the problem. And it doesn't bother me that they get Some of them actually say, you know what, we needed to hear this, um, and then they go back to not doing anything about it. Yeah, don't get me started. Ye I mean this is I

think I feel like I wound you yet. So so so what would it take for other social media platforms to create safe digital spaces, like I don't think they can't. Too late for them, Yeah, absolutely, I don't think they can. I don't think they will, and honestly, I don't think

they should. I think it's time for other creators. If they work at these organizations and at these companies, then they feel I don't feel like I'm doing the right thing, leave it and create something else, and don't think that it's going to have all these different metrics to succeed.

It doesn't matter if even you have five thousand super active users that are enjoying generally enjoying your tool, that are finding it super helpful, and you grow every year we grow by just a thousand users, just a thousand. We're at eleven thousand now. We've been at going for a little over eleven years, and that's just fine. We have enjoyed that type of growth because it's meaningful growth, and it enables us to test out these features at a scale that is reasonable and that is manageable, and

that is more efficient and secure, and that's fine. I think we need to start understanding that the Internet is not what is already out there, and we stick to it that's not the Internet. Those are just tools on there. It's kind of like saying, there's all this land and we all have to crime ourselves into these two buildings because we can't build. Honestly, we need to stop looking at the Internet as if what can you do for me? What can you do for the Internet? What role can

you play in building these communities? You know? Oh? You are you? Did you just John F. Kennedy quote the Internet as not what the Internet can do for you, but which you can do for the Internet? As you got me fired up. I mean, I feel like the

parallels to what you're describing abound. If if we thought of the only way we could create food is through some giant agribusiness versus starting with our backyards and growing a few tomatoes, and it's not all our food needs, but those tomatoes are gonna be bound, right, It's gonna

be amazing. Grow those damn tomatoes, you know, And every now and then you're gonna be like, you know what, I'm going to get some cilantro as well, and Parson, suddenly you see that vibrant, amazing thing that you don't have to go with somebody else to rely on and that is empowering. Sometimes we're like, well, we have to wait for that empowerment to arrive to us. We have to do that ourselves most of the time because nobody gives a crap about us the way that we want

them to. We're never gonna be somebody else's priority. M So we're not saying completely dismantle it. I mean, you know me, I'm on Twitter as well. I mean, sure, you're going to grow tomatoes, but then you've got to go to the store and get something else, baking soda. I don't know something that you can make yourself. So it's it's really about creating that healthy balance, but making sure that you don't wait for somebody else to give you a voice. As for this show is called How

to Citizen. We use citizen as a verb. Taking that interpretation, what does it mean for you? What is to citizen mean? It's to be responsible. It's to hold yourself accountable when you're falling short, and to hold others accountable when they're abusing your rights or the rights of those around you. It's the way that I can live with myself to wake up every day and say, I think I citizens my ass off today. You know, how can I citizen

even better? And that's really where the tools come in, because it's not just about you, but sometimes it's about giving those in your position the tools to do exactly what you did and to facilitate that. People are going to be fired up when they hear you era, and they're gonna be like, what what can I do? Tell me what to do? How can we support your work? The most important thing is to help spread the word that scale is not good and to do it in

any setting, in for profit setting and nonprofit setting. We need to get rid of that word or we need to reclaim how it is defined. The second thing would be build your platforms UM support open source communities because just finding places like that where you can contribute to a different kind of web that would be great. Um. You can do it with your skills, you can do it by spreading the word. You can do it with your money. Speaking of money, I've never seen note of that.

I remember that actually you had tweeted about Michelle and he said, hey, you know, I just heard this talk and everybody should give this organization money. UM. I regret to inform you that nobody took you up on that offer. So this is ah. So this is the second opportunity for those UM. But you know, organizations like ours we operate on very little, and that's not by choice, but it is by choice that we will continue to work despite having so little. Well, Eestra, you are not alone.

We hear you. We will get some money to you. This time my tweet failed, but I'm gonna blame the algorithm and the like and the lack of context. We have a lot more context here, is it magele dot org. Is that the best place to direct people? Yes? Or would be the best place UM people can connect with me if they want to support in any other way. And I will say that if you feel this time there will be diret consequences. I won't go into detail

because this is there. And there goes the threat she promised when she when the videos off and she got that anonymity. Sometimes she makes really exactly and you know what, if somebody comes after me after this, I'll say it's a deep fake. There. Thank you, Estra al Chaffee, thank you so much for this time. I am fired up and ready to go good good and I hope you know, I hope you stay fired up and thank you so much for you know, amplifying the story. Um, this is

always a great opportunity to speak with you. And it was definitely the least boring podcast have been a part of. So that's good, you know. Can you put that on our iTunes reviewed? How the Citizen the least boring podcast I've been a part of. Okay, if after that my social media following doesn't give money to ms all, Yo, let's just say we might not even get season four of How the Citizen because this is how you citizen. It's right there in front of you. So please don't

make me look bad. People come on you. But in all seriousness, that's the kind of fire we need to truly think outside the box, or maybe, as might put it, smash the box completely. Next episode, we're speaking with Pia Mancini, another huge advocate of open source. I'm starting to see a theme here, and she's co founder of open Collective, an organization that enables collectives to receive funding without needing a legal entity or a bank account to do so.

You can't beat the nation state, so stop trying build around it until it becomes obsolete. But the nation states weren't always here and they're not going to be here always. As part of how to Citizen, we want to offer you more than a chance to listen to cool conversations. We want to give you ways you concitizen. That's why we're building a universe of citizen actions over at how to citizen dot com. So for this episode, here are some things you can do personally. Reflect on one of

you felt concerned for your safety and security online? What features made you feel vulnerable or exposed? Was it something you could control or was it outside of your control? Next type of action, get informed and question the idea of scale in philanthropy. I want you to check outs dot org, m A j a L dot org that's Esther's joint and take a look at all the platforms

they create. Then, beyond Ra's work, when you're engaging with nonprofits and philanthropic organizations, take a look at who founded the group and who runs it, who's funding it. Then try to find groups that are run by people closest to the problem or experiencing that problem directly. Here's a great way to start that learning journey. Read this dope

book by Edgar Villenueva. He's an Indigenous person, former philanthropic operator, and he's written this beautiful book called de Colonizing Wealth. I can't recommend it enough. Third level of the game. Publicly participate by challenging some of those philanthropic norms. Many of us support large organizations that emphasize scale and unsustainable growth in the way they try to help. Instead, I want you to consider getting as local and grassroots as

you can. So I want you to do an extra favor to all of us here because you heard as recall us out. Donate dot org, m A j A L dot org. All this is available at how to citizen dot com. Find us on Instagram at how to citizen to share your thoughts, to learn from others, and why don't you post with that hashtag how to citizen goodbye for now. How to Citizen with barrittun Day is a production of I Heart Radio podcast and dust Light Productions.

Our executive producers are Me Barritton Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusuf. Our senior producer is Tamika Adams. Our producer is Ali Kilts, and our assistant producer Sam Paulson. Stephanie Cohne is Our editor Valentino Rivera is our senior engineer and Matthew Laie as our apprentice. Additional production help from rwin Nicks, original music by Andrew Eapen with additional original music for season three from Andrew Clawson. This episode

was produced and sound designed by Ali Kilts. Special thanks to Joel Smith from I Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia at Dustlight Production