"we love an activist until they need something"

March 5, 2024 8:13 PM

Shafiqah Hudson, who had worked in nonprofits but from 2014 on dedicated herself to Twitter activism--spotting and combating the "#endfathersday" scam ten years ago--died on February 15, at 46.

An extremely sad story. Her last few days on Twitter were spent trying to raise money to meet her medical needs.

The Black feminists who saw the alt-right coming

How Black women tried to save Twitter

Black in the Imaginationscape

posted by praemunire (32 comments total)

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posted by emjaybee at 8:32 PM on March 5

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posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 8:38 PM on March 5

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posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:19 PM on March 5

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posted by gryphonlover at 9:21 PM on March 5

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posted by dorothyisunderwood at 9:57 PM on March 5

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posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 10:26 PM on March 5

Rest in power Shafiqah. Gone way too soon, but you made it count.

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posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 10:45 PM on March 5

I wish someone would have paid her handsomely to help eliminate this sort of coordinated inauthentic behavior from our networks. The world would be a better and more secure place if we'd had more disinformation & spam sleuths like her on the big tech+social+government payrolls.

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posted by wowenthusiast at 11:10 PM on March 5 [14 favorites]

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posted by paduasoy at 11:22 PM on March 5

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posted by eirias at 1:15 AM on March 6

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posted by hydropsyche at 2:59 AM on March 6

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posted by The Manwich Horror at 3:10 AM on March 6

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Goddamn, us all passing around the same 20$ is not a sufficient replacement for a functional health care system.
posted by corb at 3:29 AM on March 6 [44 favorites]

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posted by dr_dank at 3:29 AM on March 6

That's one of the grimmest obits I ever read. Imagine being remembered not as "beloved friend and family member" or "respected member of the community" or "creator of something that brought joy or enlightenment to others" but "person who experienced rape threats on the Internet."

Vindicates every current opinion of Internet activism. I hope she had a better life than the one NYT described.
posted by kingdead at 4:26 AM on March 6 [4 favorites]

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posted by humbug at 4:49 AM on March 6

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posted by lalochezia at 5:07 AM on March 6

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posted by tamarack at 6:08 AM on March 6

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posted by riruro at 6:58 AM on March 6

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posted by epj at 7:22 AM on March 6

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posted by Lawn Beaver at 7:29 AM on March 6

Imagine being remembered not as "beloved friend and family member" or "respected member of the community" or "creator of something that brought joy or enlightenment to others" but "person who experienced rape threats on the Internet."

I don't know about others, but I remembered the "#endfathersday" incident, just not her name, and I posted the obit because she was an early lay pioneer of identifying and combating social media disinformation campaigns.

I also didn't know her personally at all, but it seems like she was a respected member of her online community. It just wasn't enough to save her.
posted by praemunire at 7:35 AM on March 6 [12 favorites]

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posted by dlugoczaj at 8:18 AM on March 6

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posted by ourobouros at 8:42 AM on March 6

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posted by caviar2d2 at 9:18 AM on March 6

omg what a tragic read.

she dedicated her life to the endless and thankless work of cleaning up the toxic mess that Twitter allowed to fester, only to die, alone and in pain, and far far too young.

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posted by supermedusa at 9:30 AM on March 6 [4 favorites]

she dedicated her life to the endless and thankless work of cleaning up the toxic mess that Twitter allowed to fester, only to die, alone and in pain, and far far too young.

A more brutal example of precarity of the lives of single women--and, of course, especially single Black women!--could hardly be asked for. She had a college degree from a respectable school, she had a career, her family wasn't gone (wondering a little about their role in all this, but not enough information to judge), she had online friends. Not enough.
posted by praemunire at 10:15 AM on March 6 [7 favorites]

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posted by adekllny at 10:19 AM on March 6

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posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 10:55 AM on March 6

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posted by rude.boy at 10:59 AM on March 6

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posted by socialjusticeworrier at 11:17 AM on March 6

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posted by maggiemaggie at 4:54 PM on March 6