Doing it for the 'gram?

Five Social Media Moves That Helped Or Hurt #BlackLivesMatter

We use platforms like Instagram, Twitter and TikTok to share trivial details of our day-to-day lives and exchange serious information, resources and calls-to-action about important things going on across the world — from COVID-19 to Black Lives Matter.

But whenever hashtags start to trend, things also get complicated. How have efforts like #blackouttuesday impacted the movement for Black lives, in productive or harmful ways? To answer that question, we’re taking a look at five moments produced by social media that shine a light on the best and worst of these platforms as solidarity tools.

Black Out Tuesday

Blackout Tuesday, initially dubbed #TheShowMustBePaused by Jamila Thomas and Brianna Agyemang, was a way to memorialize the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The idea, which originated in the music industry, soon caught on, and people across social media started posting black squares as a sign of solidarity. The only problem? Because people were adding #blacklivesmatter to those posts, social media algorithms boosted images of black squares instead of important information related to Black Lives Matter organizing.

Whiteout Wednesday

In response to Blackout Tuesday, white supremacists decided to create their own event and hashtag, #whiteoutwednesday, to advance their racist agenda. However, K-pop fans soon caught on and decided to flood the hashtag with videos of their favorite stars. Soon, K-pop videos were all you could see when you searched #whiteoutwednesday or #whitelivesmatter. This isn’t the first time K-pop fans have done this kind of thing. When the Dallas Police department tried using a video app to identify protesters, K-pop fans flooded the app with videos of their top stars and crashed the app. More recently, K-pop stans, along with TikTok users, have taken some credit for Trump’s underwhelming Tulsa rally on June 20th — reporting that they registered thousands of tickets and then didn’t show up, creating a prime photo op: rows of empty seats.

Shadowban Controversy

TikTok has been accused of preventing people from seeing posts with the hashtags #blacklivesmatter and #GeorgeFloyd. Users reported that when they searched for the terms “blacklivesmatter” and “GeorgeFloyd,” there were 0 views. TikTok claimed that, rather than a deliberate attempt at blocking the hashtags, the problem was a glitch that also affected terms like #cat and #hello. Still, many users speculate that TikTok purposefully censored the phrases. Glitch or not, the issue has been resolved and when you search for those same terms on TikTok now, you should get a full view count.