When the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade case on Friday, she believes Veronica Rissinger will be a small Facebook group for her neighbors in Kansas City, Missouri, to share resources for those seeking abortion. I started to have an abortion.
However, Risinger’s phone notifications never stopped. Her small group transformed into a national connection of 30,000 members for anger, heartfelt personal stories, and education among those worried about Postlow America.
Risinger doesn’t understand how her Facebook group grew. At one point, she said there were 10,000 people waiting to join the private group USA Camping Resource Center. (“Camp” is the codeword used in Some online conversations about abortion.).
She wasn’t ready to take responsibility for expressing their feelings to time promises and people and providing a place to find information about the rapidly changing legal status of abortion in the United States, but as much as she can. I feel I have to do my best. “I don’t want to do this, but this is the world we live in,” Risinger told me.
The fact that a woman has become an unconscious leader in a large forum for abortion advocates shows that Facebook continues to be a place for Americans to shatter their hopes and fears. Emotions help the online community become viral in a way that surprises the creators and the company itself, as in the case of the Facebook group, which was launched to promote the widespread claims of 2020 fraud. ..
Friday morning, Risinger was at work and was lost in thought. Within minutes of her Supreme Court ruling, her hometown of Missouri enacted an immediate “trigger law” banning abortion.
“I was full of such anger,” she told me this week. “OK, I thought I could give a place for people to get together.”
Risinger has overseen other Facebook groups and wants to share her anger, share her anger, talk about what they can do, and provide help to people in her area. Mainly started USA Camping Resource Center for. “Maybe it would have worked if it was me and 10 people in my neighborhood,” she said.
Almost immediately, it went far beyond that. People flooded the Facebook group and told live personal stories about abortions and denials of abortions. And they ask a lot of questions about how these bans affect them.
Risinger said a Missouri woman sent a message to the group because she was worried about her legal risks from the planned procedure for transplanted contraception. (Contraception continues to be legal throughout the United States The Kansas City Star has more information About access in Missouri. The woman also asked if data from law enforcement could be used by law enforcement to file a lawsuit against them for having an abortion. (Period tracking apps can be risky, but other data can be more guilty.)
For those seeking information, the group guides people as much as possible to authoritative sources, including organizations with experience in advocating and supporting abortion.
People seem to know about the group primarily by word of mouth, and the reaction is Riisinger who finds himself moderating posts at all times, including minutes after racing on Saturday. I was surprised.
However, the group soon became very active and Risinger said she felt overwhelmed. She said she soon changed her plan. She said, “We had a group before we really knew what we were doing.”
As is done in many other Facebook groups, Risinger has determined that the best approach to keeping conversations off track is to create rules and apply them strictly. did. The number one rule is “Don’t have an abortion” and there is no room to discuss the right to abortion.
Those who want to join a group must first answer why they support “camping”. (Some people seem to believe it’s a Facebook group about the outdoors.) Each newcomer and each post is approved by the moderator. After the group became too big to handle by one person, Risinger now has about 20 people.
To protect people from the potential safety risks associated with providing vehicles and homes to strangers, the group has begun blocking posts proposing personal assistance for abortion bookings. ..
For years, Facebook critics have said that groups on the site have been hubs of unidentified conspiracy theories and misinformation about health.And Facebook and other online fringe groups Spread wrong thoughts Also Call for violence In response to Roe’s decision. After reporting some comments to the Risinger group as Facebook broke the company’s rules for violence and incitement, she told members to stop proposing violence as a solution to the problem. (Everything I read in the group was respectful and non-violent.)
I asked Risinger how people behave differently in Facebook and in the face-to-face community. Are people more emotionally vulnerable or more cruel?
“Are Facebook people worse than real life? Most of the time,” she said. But on the other hand, she said, the group wouldn’t have grown so rapidly without social media.
Risinger says she doesn’t know what the future holds for the Facebook community she created in a rage. She wants to put people’s energy into productive behaviour.There is a discussion about mobilization Around August Kansas electionsVoters decide whether to remove the right to abortion from the State Constitution.
“The momentum we have is something I won’t lose,” Risinger said. “I will do whatever I can to ensure that it is used successfully.”
This week’s tips
Lessons from hellish vacation plans
Who Boy, Brian X. ChenThe New York Times Consumer Technology Columnist has a 2022 travel horror story. And he provides advice to avoid his bad experience.
Last year I wrote a column about using technology to plan a trip in a pandemic. That advice will continue to apply. Check your destination travel and tourism websites for potential requirements for Covid-19 vaccines and test results, and carry a digital copy of your health data on your smartphone.
There is another hard lesson I learned from my own bad experience.
I booked a plane ticket this year to fly around the country for my autumn wedding. I used the travel price comparison service Hopper to find and book the cheapest Delta flights.
I regret it. Over the past few months, Delta has changed my flight itinerary many times and canceled one of my connecting flights. After waiting over an hour to talk to a Delta representative, the company took me on another flight. Did the problem go away? No.
I contacted again when I didn’t receive confirmation of my new ticket. A Delta representative told me that after Delta changed the ticket, Hopper canceled the ticket. The only way to reach the hopper is through email support. With email support, it can take up to 48 hours to respond, unless you pay an additional fee.
After an email to Hopper and another call to Delta, the airline took me back on another flight. I sent another email to Hopper asking the company not to touch the reservation. The crisis has been avoided. I hope.
lesson? Simplify the process if you book your trip online. Airlines are understaffed and can spend more time waiting for customer support. Travel booking services like Expedia and Hopper may save you money, but they may not be worth it.
Cut out the broker and book directly with the airline or hotel. That way, if you run into problems, you’re dealing with one company instead of two.
Read more summer travel advice From Seth Kugel trying to help Times readers solve travel problems.
Before going …
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Removing the menstrual tracker does not protect it. My colleague Kash Hill writes that text messages, email receipts, and Google search contain more data about people seeking abortions than trackers.
From Wednesday OnTech: Our data is a curse with or without Roe..
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Amazon moved to limit LGBTQ people and problem-related items and search results on the United Arab Emirates website after the government put pressure on the company, my colleague Karen Wise. Reported. This is the latest example of a compromise that tech companies make to do business in a restricted country.
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“Everything happens so much.” That strange but perfect tweet posted 10 years ago is regularly recirculated. When people feel overwhelmed The Atlantic explained by what was happening around them. There’s a mysterious inside story that it looked like a computer-generated Twitter account, but it wasn’t. (A subscription may be required.)
Embrace this
Goat running (a kind).. Every summer, goats devour invading plants in New York City parks. They were released into the park on Wednesday, and not all of them cover it exactly. (See what I did there ?!)
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