The New York Times. April 04, 2020

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 2020 N B7

VIRUS FALLOUT

In recent weeks, as schools, busi-
nesses, support groups and mil-
lions of individuals have adopted
Zoom as a meeting platform in an
increasingly remote world, re-
ports of “Zoombombing” or
“Zoom raiding” by uninvited par-
ticipants have become frequent.
While those incidents may have
initially been regarded as pranks
or trolling, they have since risen to
the level of hate speech and har-
assment, and even commanded
the attention of the F.B.I.
The weaponization of Zoom — a
videoconferencing app that has
become a de facto social platform
for the coronavirus era — is the
latest development in the story of
online abuse, the kind playing out
on social networks and darker, un-
moderated corners of the internet.
An analysis by The New York
Times found 153 Instagram ac-
counts, dozens of Twitter accounts
and private chats, and several ac-
tive message boards on Reddit
and 4Chan where thousands of
people had gathered to organize
Zoom harassment campaigns,
sharing meeting passwords and
plans for sowing chaos in public
and private meetings. (Since this
article’s publication online, Reddit
has shut down the message
boards where Zoom raids were
discussed.)
Zoom raiders often employ
shocking imagery, racial epithets
and profanity to derail video con-
ferences. Though a meeting or-
ganizer can remove a participant
at any time, the perpetrators of
these attacks can be hard to iden-
tify; there may be several in a sin-
gle call, and they can appear to
jump from one alias to another.
On March 29, Zahed Amanullah
was in the middle of a call he had
organized with the Concordia For-
um, a global network of Muslim
leaders, about maintaining spiri-
tuality and wellness during the co-
ronavirus crisis when suddenly a
cursor began to draw a racial slur
across one of the slides.
“What is that? How did that
happen?” one of the meeting’s
presenters said as it was appear-
ing. “Did somebody just see what
I saw?”
The infiltrator then began to
screen-share a pornographic vid-
eo while repeating the racial epi-
thet aloud.
“We were all caught off guard,”
said Mr. Amanullah, a resident
senior fellow at the Institute for
Strategic Dialogue in London.
“We had no clue where it was com-
ing from.”
Harassers have begun to lever-
age every feature of Zoom’s plat-
form for abuse. They have used
the app’s custom background fea-
ture to project a GIF of a person
drinking to participants in an Al-
coholics Anonymous meeting,
and its annotation feature to write
racist messages in a meeting of
the American Jewish Committee
in Paris.
“When you see this kind of
rampant abuse, it isn’t just a one-
off thing,” said Whitney Phillips,
an assistant professor at Syracuse
University who teaches digital
ethics. “Clearly, this is systemic.”
Zoom has exploded in popular-
ity as the global population has be-
come increasingly homebound in

an effort to limit the spread of co-

ronavirus. According to the app

data firm SensorTower, first-time

installs of the videoconferencing

company’s mobile app rose by

1,126 percent in March to more

than 76 million, up from just 6.2

million in February.

But the company was not pre-

pared for the rapid growth of its

user base. Zoom has offered guid-

ance on making conferences more

secure by changing call settings

and offering tutorials, but many

users have been unsatisfied with

the company’s response to spe-

cific incidents of harassment.

“Zoom’s response was like,

‘We’re sorry,’ as if this only hap-

pened to me,” said Dennis John-

son, a doctoral candidate who

complained to Zoom after his dis-

sertation defense was disrupted

by pornography and a racial slur.

“They treated me like an isolated

incident — that’s my biggest is-

sue.”

The company gave an email

statement on Thursday. “Zoom

strongly condemns harassment of

this kind and we have been report-

ing instances of this to various so-

cial platforms in order for them to

take appropriate action,” said

Nate Johnson, a Zoom spokes-

man.

The frequency and reach of the

incidents on Zoom prompted the

F.B.I. to issue a warning on Tues-

day, singling out the app and stat-

ing that it had “received multiple

reports of conferences being dis-

rupted by pornographic or hate

images and threatening lan-

guage” nationwide.

On dozens of Twitter accounts

and online forums, people are

drawn into private group chats on

Discord, an app that has been pop-

ular in far-right circles. There,

people share Zoom codes, raid

video conferences simultaneously

and designate point values for

certain types of harassment in or-

der to drive competition. The

Times discovered 14 active Dis-

cord chats with dozens of mes-

sages sent a minute, with the most

popular chat hosting over 2,000

people.

“This behavior violates Dis-

cord’s terms of service, and we

strongly condemn it,” a represent-

ative of Discord said in an email

statement. “Once we identify

those servers engaging in this

sort of activity, we quickly investi-

gate and take action, including re-

moving content, banning users

and shutting down those servers.”

On Instagram, a network of ac-

counts with names like “Zoom-

raid” and “Zoomattack” began to

appear over the weekend and saw

a spike in followers — nearly

30,000 as of Thursday. The owners

of these accounts post Zoom meet-

ing codes so that others can co-

ordinate raids of password-pro-

tected videoconferences.

“We don’t want Instagram used

this way. We will block hashtags

used to coordinate zoombombing

and remove accounts created

solely for the purpose of zoom-

bombing when we see them,” a

Facebook company representa-

tive said via email.

As classrooms across the coun-

try have largely shifted to online-

only education in the wake of the

coronavirus pandemic, many stu-

dents feel ill equipped to perform

in this new learning environment.

Several teenagers who ran Zoom

raid accounts spoke about their

frustrations with online schooling

and how, for them, Zoom raiding

classes provided an outlet. It was

the only way they felt they could

escape their crushing academic

workload.

Most of the accounts run by

teenagers are operating with the

goal of derailing middle and high

school classes with disruptive but

largely inoffensive jokes.

“Part of the reason we do it is a

lot of teachers give us a lot of work

right now,” said James, 16, who

runs a Zoom raid account. “It’s

stressing us out. We just got home

for quarantine and on top of all

that we have all this schoolwork to

do. We still have tests to do, I have

more work to do sometimes now

than before because every

teacher will assign stuff every

week and sometimes classes get

in the way of each other. It’s really

stressful to keep up.”

Some Instagram meme ac-

counts, which typically share

funny videos from TikTok, have

also begun posting Zoom meeting

information in order to boost en-

gagement.

“We go on our Story and post

the info for the Zoom class,” said

Aaliyah, 17, an administrator for

several Instagram meme ac-

counts. “We say, if you join, do

something funny we will follow

you back.”

But for each teenager trying to

escape class, there are many oth-

ers with bad intentions.

The more nefarious organizing

tends to happen on Discord. In one

Discord chat, a middle school’s

class schedule, including Zoom

links for each class, was shared

with hundreds of members who

stated their intent to harass the

students and their teachers.

Another group discussed dis-

rupting a singles mixer organized

by a Baptist church in Virginia.

“As soon as it starts there’s gonna

be rape,” one member said. “I’m

putting gore on straight away,” an-

other added.

Alcoholics Anonymous, which

has largely transitioned to open

online meetings using Zoom, has

become a frequent target. “Have

fun with these AA codes,” one Dis-

cord user wrote in a post that

linked to nearly 600 A.A. meetings

in California. Another uploaded a

28-page document with links to

support groups for trans and non-

binary youth.

Jeff, a 39-year-old A.A. member

in Los Angeles, said that in the last

three weeks he has attended 30

meetings using Zoom. Every sin-

gle one, he said, had been inter-

rupted by an online troll.

When he enters a virtual A.A.

meeting now, Jeff said, his heart

starts racing. “It’s a sense of fear

and panic, but also a sadness

around the loss of this place to be

vulnerable,” he said.

Videos and live streams of

Zoom harassment have begun to

appear on YouTube and Twitch,

the Amazon-owned video-gaming

site. A popular YouTuber

streamed himself for over six

hours harassing dozens of A.A.

meetings hosted on Zoom. An-

other video posted March 30

about crashing college classes

racked up more than 4.2 million

views and inspired a slew of copy-

cats. One video posted by a YouTu-

ber with 1.7 million subscribers

that purported to show “raids of

online classes” instead displayed

a woman facing harassment in an

A.A. meeting.

“We have strict policies that

prohibit content containing har-

assment, hate speech, or unwant-

ed sexualization and we quickly

remove content when flagged by

our users,” said Alex Joseph, a

YouTube spokesman.

Ms. Phillips, of Syracuse Uni-

versity, said that without more ag-

gressive moderation, Zoom risks

normalizing such behavior on its

platform. “Developers of plat-

forms either don’t take the risks of

abuse seriously or don’t anticipate

those risks, which amounts to the

same problem,” she said.

Mr. Amanullah said he was dis-

appointed that his meeting was

turned into a platform for hate

speech. He said that the group

promoted it on social media to

draw a wider audience.

“Certain people are weaponiz-

ing Zoom to sow division in soci-

ety or spread hate,” Mr. Amanul-

lah said. “Those of us who are of

particular backgrounds and who

are targets of hate bear the brunt

of it.”

As Zoom’s Use Soars, So Does Its Abuse by Harassers

DANIEL ZENDER

By TAYLOR LORENZ

and DAVEY ALBA

Targets have included

middle school classes

and A.A. meetings.

76 million

Number of first-time installs of the

Zoom mobile app in March.

Adam Satariano and Ben Decker

contributed reporting.

wrote on Twitter last week. “I just
want to stay in touch with as many
friends as possible.”
Back to the Facebook basics.
Here for the friends. Portal, Face-
book’s countertop video tool,
doesn’t seem so crazy now.
Initiatives that were formed ex-
plicitly to help people escape
screens are now adapting to, well,
screens.
“I started the Forest Bathing
Club to get people and myself off
screens in the 2-D world and into
nature to experience the real
world,” said Julia Plevin, a de-
signer and founder of the Forest
Bathing Club. “Now we’re doing
virtual forest baths.”
Avoiding screens guided the life
choices of Arrington McCoy, a
therapist in Boston, for many
years.
“I picked jobs based in large
part on screens not being part of
the equation,” she said, like be-
coming a backpacking instructor
and now a therapist. “And as of 10
days ago, I am singing a different
tune.”
One friend of mine admitted av-
eraging 16 hours of screen time a
day, often on multiple devices at
once.
I’m 31 and have lived almost all
my life in San Francisco, which
means my friends are all having
babies or they’re hosting forest
baths.
Given our demographic, most of
those having babies crafted care-
ful plans to keep those fresh eyes
from screens. Plans to keep the
babies from using screens, of
course, but also away from even

seeing the screens in use. How are

those plans going now?

“That went out the window last

week,” said my friend Ashley

Spinelli, an administrator at the

University of California, Berkeley,

who just had a boy, Nico.

Shary Niv, a parent of a toddler,

said, “I beg her to watch whatever

children’s programming PBS is

peddling on Amazon Prime.”

Or there’s Miju Han, the direc-

tor of product at HackerOne, a

cybersecurity company in San

Francisco. “My 6-week-old is

starting to only know his grand-

parents from FaceTime,” she said.

“The American Academy of Pedi-

atrics is technically against this,

but the grandparents really want

to see their baby grandson.”

The screen-time surrender isn’t

just a San Francisco phenomenon.

Daniela Helitzer, a doctor of au-

diology in Boca Raton, Fla., said

screen time used to be a constant

debate among the parents in her

town. She had some friends with

toddlers who had never even seen

a television turned on before this.

Not anymore.

“We’ve all officially lost the bat-

tle,” said Dr. Helitzer, who has a 2-

and a 3-year-old.

“I’ve accessed every educa-

tional app you can. I’ve used every

online interactive worksheet I can

find,” Dr. Helitzer said. “If he’s sit-

ting on his iPad for two or three

hours a day, I literally don’t even

care. It’s like, ‘Use that screen as

much as you can.’ ”

Covered in screens these past

few weeks, I have noticed some

positive changes. I FaceTime my

friends so much that I know them

better than I did before. I decided

to learn what TikTok was, and I

love it. I spend hours with my chin

tucked into my chest and a weird

smile on my face, watching. I’m

using Duolingo, an app to learn

languages.

Carolyn Guss, a mother of two

and a vice president at PagerDuty,

a cloud-computing company in

San Francisco, was once very

screen strict. Her children, 8 and 9

years old, did not own any de-

vices. They could watch only very

limited television. On the first day

of quarantine home school, Ms.

Guss wrote up a schedule geared

at keeping them off screens.

“By Day 3, I had given up,” she

said. “I think the fact that it rained

on the first weekend broke my

spirit.”

Suddenly she was giving them

her phone. She was sitting them at

laptops. They were double-devic-

ing. It felt like defeat.

Then something surprising

happened. They started doing

pretty impressive stuff on those

screens.

“My son taught himself iMovie,

and now the kids make videos of

themselves doing basic things —

making Jell-O, shooting hoops —

then cut it into pretty professional

looking footage,” she said. “Then

they screen share it with their

friends on Zoom.

“These kids had no screen ac-

cess before, and they leapfrogged

me within days.”

Screen-skeptics see this as an

apocalyptic moment. Many activ-

ists spent years fighting online

learning in schools. Face-to-face

experience with teachers is irre-

placeable, they argued.

“Ed tech companies now are

jumping on this and saying, ‘See,

we told you,’ ” said Emily Cherkin,

a screen-time consultant in Se-

attle. “Many of them are offering

their services for free right now.

It’s disaster capitalism.”

But even some of the godpar-

ents of the screen-wary move-

ment are coming around.

One of the most prominent

voices on this issue is Sherry

Turkle. For years, she warned that

technology was tearing social fab-

ric apart. She wrote the book

“Alone Together,” about the social

pain that comes from silent family

dinners and people walking, chins

down, staring at their phones.

Now, she is saying maybe some

of the movement she inspired is

focused in the wrong direction.

“I think that this reveals the

screen-time issue as a misplaced

anxiety,” Ms. Turkle said. “Now,

forced to be alone but wanting to

be together, so many are discover-

ing what screen time should be.”

It should be about learning and

connecting. It should be humaniz-

ing, Ms. Turkle said. All those

Zoom cocktail hours are good

screen time.

Even parenting coaches, once

hired to draft strict screen-time

rules for the family, are saying it is

probably time to throw those out.

“Be gentle with yourself,” said

Rhonda Moskowitz, founder of

Practical Solutions Parent Coach-

ing in Columbus, Ohio. “These are

extreme times.”

She said she was now meeting

with her trainer via FaceTime and

had attended a happy hour on

Zoom, which was “a riot.”

And the last thing I have noticed

about myself is how absolutely

thrilled I am now to see a human

in the flesh. It is a small party ev-

ery time. The more I use Face-

Time, the more I hate not being

able to hug my friends. Toasting a

screen is not the same. In my pre-

quarantine life, I could be a home-

body, and I often worked from the

living room. When this is done,

that is, too.

By all of us suddenly guzzling

screen time, we might start to see

the limitations of its high. Now

that touch is the rarest thing of all,

I crave it. The first thing I want to

do when this is done is high-five

every stranger I meet. That is not

something I considered doing be-

fore.

“Going on Week 2 of quaran-

tine, our kids are desperate to see,

touch, feel, smell their friends,”

said Jon Steinberg, the creative di-

rector for Epic, a production and

publishing company. “Weirdly,

Gen Z could come out of this with a

permanent, lifelong, forged-in-

disaster appreciation for physical

connections over digital ones.”

Those who had deactivated Facebook to protest the company’s policies

around fake news are back on, at least for the duration of the pandemic.

JOSH EDELSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE

Clinging to tech now

that touch is the

rarest thing.

Staring Endlessly at Screens Is Now a Less Guilty Escape