MicroWave@lemmy.world to

News@lemmy.worldEnglish · 2 months ago

Racist text messages referencing slavery raise alarms in multiple states and prompt investigations

315

Racist text messages referencing slavery raise alarms in multiple states and prompt investigations

MicroWave@lemmy.world to

News@lemmy.worldEnglish · 2 months ago

Racist text messages invoking slavery raised alarm across the country this week after they were sent to Black men, women and students, including middle schoolers, prompting inquiries by the FBI and other agencies.

Summary

Racist text messages invoking slavery were anonymously sent to Black individuals across several U.S. states, sparking investigations by the FBI, FCC, and local law enforcement.

The messages, received in states like New York, Alabama, and California, varied in wording but shared a disturbing tone, with some directing recipients to report to specific locations.

Civil rights groups, including the NAACP and Southern Poverty Law Center, condemned the messages, calling them deeply disturbing and perpetuating a legacy of evil.

Wireless providers are working to block the messages, which officials believe could be the work of bots or malicious actors.

Chat

Chozo@fedia.io
link
fedilink
arrow-up
41·
2 months ago
We saw an uptick in this sort of bullshit back in 2016, too. Racists and bigots feel emboldened under Trump. Get ready for more targeted harassment like this, and for nothing to be done about it.

News@lemmy.world

news@lemmy.world

You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !news@lemmy.world

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

Visibility: Public

This community can be federated to other instances and be posted/commented in by their users.

3.4K users / day
7.68K users / week
14K users / month
28.2K users / 6 months
1 local subscriber
23.7K subscribers
20.9K Posts
538K Comments
Modlog