Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. News

#BlackoutTuesday posts are diluting protesters’ messages, activists say

Paul Squire
By

Thousands of social media users posted black images on Tuesday to voice support for the Black Lives Matter movement — but activists warned that well-meaning supporters were unintentionally silencing real protesters.
Recommended Videos

#BlackoutTuesday began in the music industry, with major record labels like Columbia, Interscope, and Republic Records announcing they would cease operations for the day to stand with protesters calling for justice after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minnesota police.

Related

Soon, other tech music companies like Spotify, Apple Music, and Soundcloud joined in, and the hashtag movement spread beyond the music world.

But there’s been an unintended side effect of the support: Hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter, which were attached to the posts about Blackout Tuesday, have been drowned out with images of dark squares.

BlackoutTuesday on Instagram
The #BlackLiveMatter hashtag has been flooded with black images. Image used with permission by copyright holder

“If you do #BlackoutTuesday on Instagram, do NOT use the hashtag #blacklivesmatter or any of the other ones folks are using for info,” warned activist and Campaign Zero founder Brittany Packnett Cunningham “It BURIES all the important information and connection.”

Protesters have used #BlackLivesMatter and similar hashtags to share information as they demonstrate, but the flood of black images was picked up by Twitter and Instagram’s algorithms and crowded searches for those hashtags.

Others argued that the hashtags could be co-opted by those who opposed the protesters, and some pushed on users to amplify the voices of people of color or educate themselves instead.

Be strategic about #BlackOutTuesday.

Don’t use #BLM or #BlackLivesMatter with it. It suppresses vital information.

Still post about what Black people are experiencing.

Post what’s happening at protests + get involved with them.

Educate + share resources about white supremacy.

— Raquel Willis (@RaquelWillis_) June 2, 2020

By Tuesday morning, some Black Lives Matter supporters had even used the algorithms against opponents. Some supporters started flagging their posts with hashtags like #SecondAmendment and #WomenForTrump, causing those searches to be blacked out as well.

Want more news, reviews, guides, and features from Digital Trends? Follow us on Apple News, Google News, and Flipboard.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Paul Squire
Paul Squire
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Paul is the News Editor at Digital Trends. Before joining DT, Paul spent 3 years as an editor on the New York Post's digital…
How Intel and Microsoft are teaming up to take on Apple
An Intel Meteor Lake system-on-a-chip.

It seems like Apple might need to watch out, because Intel and Microsoft are coming for it after the latter two companies reportedly forged a close partnership during the development of Intel Lunar Lake chips. Lunar Lake refers to Intel's upcoming generation of mobile processors that are aimed specifically at the thin and light segment. While the specs are said to be fairly modest, some signs hint that Lunar Lake may have enough of an advantage to pose a threat to some of the best processors.

Today's round of Intel Lunar Lake leaks comes from Igor's Lab. The system-on-a-chip (SoC), pictured above, is Intel's low-power solution made for thin laptops that's said to be coming out later this year. Curiously, the chips weren't manufactured on Intel's own process, but on TSMC's N3B node. This is an interesting development because Intel typically sticks to its own fabs, and it even plans to sell its manufacturing services to rivals like AMD. This time, however, Intel opted for the N3B node for its compute tile.

Read more
How much does an AI supercomputer cost? Try $100 billion
A Microsoft datacenter.

It looks like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Sora, among other projects, are about to get a lot more juice. According to a new report shared by The Information, Microsoft and OpenAI are working on a new data center project, one part of which will be a massive AI supercomputer dubbed "Stargate." Microsoft is said to be footing the bill, and the cost is astronomical as the name of the supercomputer suggests -- the whole project might cost over $100 billion.

Spending over $100 billion on anything is mind-blowing, but when put into perspective, the price truly shows just how big a venture this might be: The Information claims that the new Microsoft and OpenAI joint project might cost a whopping 100 times more than some of the largest data centers currently in operation.

Read more
There’s an unexpected, new competitor in PC gaming
Snapdragon's X Elite PC SoC.

Windows gaming on ARM is becoming a legitimate possibility, and it's not just thanks to the recently unveiled emulation options, but it's chiefly due to the fact that Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite is shaping up to be pretty excellent. Spotted in a recent benchmark, the CPU was seen beating some of the best processors on the current market. Are we finally at a point where it's not always going to be a choice between just Intel and AMD?

The benchmarks were posted by user @techinmul on Twitter, and the results couldn't be more promising for the upcoming Qualcomm processor. The chip was tested in Geekbench 6, and although it's important not to take these results entirely at face value, it's an impressive show of performance that bodes well for upcoming thin and light laptops.

Read more