Hacktivism & Digital Agency
Image courtesy of the authors as part of their Hacktivism & Digital Agency research tool.
As co-writers of this contribution, we came together through a Master's program in sustainable fashion in Berlin. Our contribution is based on a research inquiry that began to unfold in the spring of 2021 while co-preparing for a class presentation for the Critical Thinking course lectured by the critical fashion educator and consultant Beata Wilczek. At that time we were situated separately in Amman and Berlin, therefore we regularly met online to brainstorm ideas and to research questions for the presentation. We dedicated the first part of these meetings to our regular “check-ins”, where personal emotions, reflections, feedback, and support were constantly exchanged. It was and still is a central part of our meetings to practice care with one another. At one of these sessions, we engaged in a conversation to discuss and acknowledge the demonstrations that took place around the world, both in physical and digital realms, standing in solidarity with P@l3st!nians. [1] In light of the ethnic cleansing of P@l3st!nians in their neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in May 2021, there was a heightened public awareness and a growing movement of solidarity with P@l3st!nians. [2] We were specifically invested in following up with the initiatives of solidarity that claimed a presence on Instagram, with the aim of amplifying P@l3st!nian voices and their documentation of oppression in images, videos, texts, and hashtags 🕊️📱. The Instagram fashion sphere consisting of educators, practitioners, journalists, models, brands, designers, photographers, as well as individuals with an interest in fashion, has also joined the solidarity movement in recognition of the intimate tie between fashion and social justice movements visible during the BLM movement ✊🏾. [3] Their activism spanned from raising awareness of P@l3st!nian fashion and dress tradition specifically in the context of cultural appropriation [4] — in which a dominant culture extracts cultural elements or identity of a minority culture in an exploitative way. 🍉—to civic mobilization that pushes for environmental as much as socio-political and systemic impact. [5]
“We started questioning our role as both fashion practitioners and Instagram users: (How) could we enable autonomy and agency on the platform, in both a personal and intersectional sense?”
In this context, we noticed increasing criticism of the ongoing appropriation of P@l3st!nians dress traditions. Among others, the Copenhagen-based online-clothing store Summery Copenhagen has been massively criticized in the comments section of their instagram account, for building its entire brand by exploiting the P@l3st!nian Keffiyeh pattern, stripping it out of its politics and reducing it to mere aesthetics for the European market. It was in the context of this case that we noticed patterns of censorship from Instagram that would eventually lead to us writing this article. On the 6th of May 2021, Summery Copenhagen posted a photo of a black Keffiyeh dress with the caption “Classy but yet edgy look for a city queen 🕶”. We noticed that some of the comments underneath this post were hidden. One of which read #thisisculturalappropriation. [6] We were taken by surprise that this hashtag was hidden, considering it is not offensive in its language; however, it might have been flagged as sensitive information for the platform, jeopardizing sales. When investigating this instance further it was clear that the romance of social media as a utopia where freedom of expression is celebrated, pluralistic viewpoints are acknowledged, and self-autonomy is achieved is rendered naive against the backdrop of reality. Social media platforms, and specifically Instagram, have been called out before for censoring bodies and perspectives of people who do not adhere to Western white normativity. For instance, pictures of Black naked bodies are instantly taken down by instagram for violating instagram’s community guidelines, while pictures of white naked bodies remain unthreatened on their accounts. [7] Fat bodies have also been censored [8] alongside disabled bodies [9] and queer bodies [10] 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈✊🏾♿️. This censorship follows a pattern of protecting one specific worldview: white, male, heteronormative, and rational—the same perspective that is predominantly behind coding AI and algorithms. Research in 2019 from New York University’s AI Now Institute has found a predominantly white male coding workforce is causing bias in algorithms. [11] The research reported that Facebook, which is now Meta and the mother company of Instagram, have AI researchers who are predominantly men, comprising 85% of the staff, while only 4% are Black and data on trans workers have not been traced. [11]
“The diversity problem is not just about women. It’s about gender, race, and most fundamentally, about power. It affects how AI companies work, what products get built, who they are designed to serve, and who benefits from their development.” West, S.M., Whittaker, M. and Crawford, K, 2019 [11]
P@l3st!nians (and their supporters), just like other marginalized communities, have recognized that their perspectives are being silenced and shadowbanned by Instagram. The platform limited their content reach by restricting visibility, blocking their hashtags, and removing their accounts and any form of documented oppression. [12] The censorship is a result of conscious or unconscious bias built into the framework of the digital world of Instagram. It reflects the society that produces it, including its power structure and prejudices (here’s looking at you, Meta 👀). This phenomenon is recognized by @theslowfactory as “digital colonialism” as it draws parallels to colonialism in the historical sense when colonized people and their perspectives were considered dispensable by those who uphold power and wealth. [13] On the basis of this phenomenon, it was clear in our research that digital colonialism intersects with fashion in the context of Palestine 🍉🕊️. We started questioning our role as both fashion practitioners and Instagram users: (How) could we enable autonomy and agency on the platform, in both a personal and intersectional sense? Might there be ways to trick, hack, or subvert the Instagram AI? And in doing so, what does this make us then?
Fashion critic Otto von Busch assigned the role of the “fashion hacktivist” to designers who subvert the fashion system through micro-actions. In his book Fashion-able: Hacktivism and Engaged Fashion Design [14], he uses concepts from hacker culture to describe how through this role autonomy and agency are enabled at the level of the maker/user/wearer. Hacktivism to him is “The merger between political activism and hacking. It is the modification of systems, programs, or devices to give more users access to action spaces that were otherwise unavailable (…) hacktivism is not about smashing the fashion system. It is about us - the fashion lovers of the world - taking it back”
Similarly, critical fashion practitioner and this issue’s editor Chinouk Filique de Miranda touches upon the fashion system and the enablement of agency, though in the context of digital consumer culture and Instagram. In her essay The Fashion System’s Algorithmic Gaze she defines digital agency as “a space for the individual to create personal autonomy within the digital environment and its influential triggers, to thus act responsibly and independently on these accounts.“ [15] Digital agency, in her view, is necessary to de-mystify the Instagram AI’s propagandistic core that drives passive consumerism on the platform.
“How can we act as fashion hacktivists against Instagram’s biased algorithm to unfold digital agency for marginalized voices? ”
In this sense, our research question works at the intersection of Otto von Busch and Chinouk Filique de Miranda’s scholarship while applying it to the context of decolonial fashion and the case of Palestine.
How can we act as fashion hacktivists against Instagram's biased algorithm to unfold digital agency for marginalized voices? To answer our research question we used Instagram as a research tool. We investigated micro (individuals with small followings) and macro (organizations and accounts with high numbers of followers) hacktivist cases, hashtags, and emoticons, and conducted expert interviews with critical fashion practitioners via IG Direct Messenger. To both present and practice hacktivism, we created the account @hacktivism_digital_agency. The following section will dive into its content, outlining hacktivist tactics performed by a body of micro and macro agents.
MACRO HACKTIVIST CASES: ON LANGUAGE, PURPOSE, & POSITIONALITY
@theslowfactory: care, solidarity, spirituality, openness
@theslowfactory is an anti-colonial institution that uses open knowledge and education to make complex information accessible to the public. In text, image, and emoji choices, they subvert through values of care, solidarity, openness, and spirituality. The use of 🕊️ and 🍉 emojis symbolize @theslowfactory’s stance on peace, resistance, and solidarity. Such humanistic tactics allow for genuine community building, mutual exchange, and decentralized organization outside of “Silicon Valley’s grip”. [16] The decentralized platform I Really Love This Song is their direct answer to providing an alternative meeting ground beyond Instagram. [17]
“Hacking Instagram thereby means interweaving the physical, the digital, and the decentral to nurture social justice. This act of phygital community building is a powerful tool to hack the system because it interconnects agents that would otherwise remain separate from each other. ”
In this way, Hacktivism on instagram is used to engage with the public and to encourage divestment from the monopolistic platform to find decentralized platforms for uncensored communication. Shifting beyond the digital is also something sustainable fashion practitioner & queer activist @ __b.r.i.c.k.s__ highlights in our DM interview: ”find your community, listen, engage, have conversations, show up IRL if you have the privilege to do so.”
Hacking Instagram thereby means interweaving the physical, the digital, and the decentral to nurture social justice. This act of phygital community building is a powerful tool to hack the system because it interconnects agents that would otherwise remain separate from each other. While solely digital and physical forms of activism are means to decentralize knowledge, phygitality allows constructing distributed networks that enable glocal change and resilience. [18]
@diet_prada: canceling, exposing, mobilizing
@diet_prada is a fashion watchdog group that exposes brands and designers accused of copycatting, cultural appropriation, and racism. In recent years, @diet_prada has broadened its coverage to include politics and social justice beyond the fashion sphere. Different from @theslowfactory, @diet_prada’s strategies are centered around calling out, exposing, and canceling. Such an approach evokes notions of clickbait, tactics of loud commentatorship deployed by digital news platforms to create “buzz”, publicity, and ultimately, money.
While @diet_prada undoubtedly succeeds in spreading awareness and mobilizing its followers to call out brands, it is necessary to keep one’s agenda in mind when hacking for social justice. This is not to accuse them of lacking genuineness or being purely money-driven. It is rather about the need to practice reflexivity and consider one’s positionality when acting as a hacktivist. As @ __b.r.i.c.k.s__ reminds us, “when you create content, always do so with conversation in mind: what are you contributing to, whom, and for what purpose? Especially among white ally activists in movements concerning race, it is imperative to listen before speaking. Effective activism doesn’t leave room for ego.”
MICRO HACKTIVIST CASES: ENGAGING DIFFERENTLY WITH IG FEATURES, INVERTING TO SUBVERT
@theethicalpal: political consumerism, using IG for what it is
@theethicalpal encourages boycotting and targeted political consumerism. By providing a brand directory of Palestinian fashion brands, they support people to make intentional consumerist choices that counter Euro-centric consumption and instead drive political power back into local Palestinian communities. In this way, using IG and its actual function as a commercial marketplace becomes a hacktivist and decolonial act in itself.
@qaherhar: stories, highlights, curational hacks: code & finger-write
Palestinian model @qaherhar uses IG stories and highlights as a hacktivist tool. Through finger-writing and word-coding with numbers and special characters (eg., p@l3st1nians and Occup4tion) he avoids direct text to resist the biased AI. As Instagram’s AI can better detect and act upon textual content, codes, drawings, and text-as-image act as shields against shadow banning. Like @theethicalpal he also features Palestinian brands to redirect investments and strengthen local communities.
Similarly, critical fashion practitioner @chinouk.filique and sustainable fashion and IG marketing expert @sun__dream emphasize engaging differently with IG features to hack the “algorithmic gaze“. [15] Both mention the strategy of follower diversification and intentionality when clicking on AI suggestions.
In this way, micro-actions subvert through inversion. Such approaches follow the notion of small change which is a central component of Otto von Busch’s fashion hacktivism. Referring to the designer, system theorist, and futurist Buckminster Fuller and development practitioner Nabeel Hamdi, he understands micro-actions as “decentralized practice of enablement and empowerment” that, while small, “manage to turn a large ship around“. [14] This, in turn, is in parallel with Chinouk’s concept of digital agency, enabling consumers to reclaim power as people.
While we have outlined different strategies on how we can act as hacktivists, we’d like to close with two aspects: decentralism and self-care. As we have learned through the work of hacktivists, in order to unfold genuine intersectional change, where oppressed voices no longer have to resist but can flourish freely, we need to build our own pluriverses—decentralized from the IG platform and entangled with phygital community organization. Likewise, self-care plays an essential part when practicing hacktivism. Speaking in the words of self-described Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, and poet Audre Lorde, “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.“ [19]
Self-care in a hacktivist sense, however, doesn’t refer to commodified, carewashed forms that drive us further away from our sense of self through passive consumption. [20] Instead, it refers to non-commercial practices that nurture joyful and (re)balanced ways of (well)being, through moments of rest, social interactions, bodily movements, or simply being in nature.
All images are courtesy of the authors as part of their Hacktivism & Digital Agency research tool: https://www.instagram.com/hacktivism_digital_agency
Notes
[1] Coding words is one of the strategies cultivated by digital activists to resist censorship from social media platforms.
[2] Vivian Yee and Mona El-Naggar “‘Social Media Is the Mass Protest’: Solidarity With Palestinians Grows Online”, 2021. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/world/middleeast/palestinians-social-media.html
[3] 15 Percent Pledge website, 2020. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://15percentpledge.org/
[4] DietPrada “ Palestinian Keffieyh Appropriation by LVMH”, Instagram. 2021. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPl927EHyiq/?hl=en
[5] TheSlowFactory “ Debunking misinformation around Palestine”, Instagram. 2021. Accessed: 04-04-2022 . https://www.instagram.com/p/COvqhx4lgse/
[6] SummaryCopenhagen “ black Keffiyeh dress”, Instagram. 2021. Accessed: 04-04-2022 . https://www.instagram.com/p/COhikLBA4zb/
[7] Eduardo Morales. “How Instagram Upholds the Censoring of Black Bodies and the Suppression of POC-Run Accounts”. 2020. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://aninjusticemag.com/how-instagram-upholds-the-censoring-of-black-bodies-and-the-suppression-of-poc-run-accounts-cd1d33ff4dc5
[8] Lora Grady. “ Women Are Calling Out Instagram for Censoring Photos of Fat Bodies”. 2018. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://www.flare.com/news/instagram-censorship-fat-plus-size/
[9] Rachel Thompson. “Mum lashes out after Instagram deletes photo of child with disability”. 2017. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://mashable.com/article/child-disability-instagram-censorship
[10] Salty World Net. “Censorship of Marginalized Communities on Instagram”. 2021. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://saltyworld.net/exclusive-report-censorship-of-marginalized-communities-on-instagram-2021-pdf-download/
[11] West, S.M., Whittaker, M. and Crawford, K. “Discriminating Systems: Gender, Race and Power in AI”. AI Now Institute, 2019. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://ainowinstitute.org/discriminatingsystems.pdf
[12] Tamara Kharroub. “Systematic Digital Repression: Social Media Censoring of Palestinian Voices”. 2021. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/systematic-digital-repression-social-media-censoring-of-palestinian-voices/
[13] The slow factory. “Digital colonialism”.Instagram. 2021. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://twitter.com/theslowfactory/status/1377008176898392069
[14] Otto von Busch. “Fashion-able. Hacktivism and engaged fashion design”. 2008. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://www.academia.edu/30938568/Fashion_able_Hacktivism_and_engaged_fashion_design
[15] Chinouk Filique. “the Algorithmic Gaze”. 2019. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://www.algorithmicgaze.online/baselayer
[16] theslowfactory. „Big Tech has zero ethics“. Instagram. 2022. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPQeM_FFXh6/
[17] theslowfactory. „We are here for the Revolution“. Instagram. 2022. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://www.instagram.com/p/CO-ubb0lq0_/
[18] Roddy Hunter. “Paul Baran: Centralized, Decentralized and Distributed networks (1964)“.piece biennale. 2018. Accessed: 09-05-2022. https://www.peacebiennale.info/blog/paul-baran-centralized-decentralized-and-distributed-networks-1964/
[19] Sarah Mirk. “Audre Lorde Thought of Self-Care as an ‘Act of Political Warfare’“. bitchmedia. 2016. Accessed: 04-04-2022. https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/audre-lorde-thought-self-care-act-political-warfare
[20] Lynne Segal & Andreas Chatzikas. “From corporate carewashing to genuine care?“. openDemocracy. 2020. Accessed: 09-05-2022. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/corporate-carewashing-genuine-care/
