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March 29, 2024

When the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade on Friday, Veronica Risinger created what she thought would be a small Facebook group for her neighbors in Kansas City, Missouri, to share resources for people seeking abortions.

But Risinger’s phone calls never stopped. Her small group has morphed into a 30,000-member nationwide group to express anger, heartfelt personal stories and education for anxious people in post-Roy America.

Risinger doesn’t understand how her Facebook group has grown so large. At one point, 10,000 people waited to join the private group American Camping Resource Center, she said. (“camping” is Some online conversations about abortion.)

She’s not ready to take on the time commitment or the responsibility of providing a place for people to express their feelings and find information about the rapidly changing status of abortion laws in America, but she feels she has to do her best. “I don’t want to Do, but this is the world we live in,” Risinger told me.

A woman who unknowingly became the leader of a large forum for abortion rights supporters shows that Facebook remains a place for Americans to spread hope and fear. Just as Facebook groups sprang up to promote false claims of 2020 election fraud, sentiment can help online communities spread in ways that surprise creators and the companies themselves.

On Friday morning, Risinger was at work, and it was boiling. Within minutes of the Supreme Court ruling, her home state of Missouri enacted a “trigger law” banning abortion.

“I’m full of anger,” she told me this week. “I thought, well, I can give people a place where they can come together.”

Risinger, who has experience managing other Facebook groups, founded the USA Camping Resource Center, primarily – or so she thought – for people in her area to share her anger and want to vent, talk about what they can do or offer help. “If it was me and 10 people near me, maybe this would work,” she said.

Almost immediately, it became much more than that. People flocked to Facebook groups to tell original personal stories about abortion or being denied an abortion. They asked a lot of questions about how these bans affect them.

Risinger said a woman in Missouri sent the group a message because she was concerned that a planned birth control implant would pose a legal risk to her. (Birth control is still legal in the U.S. The Kansas City Star has more information A visit to Missouri. ) women also asked if law enforcement could use data from period tracking apps to build abortion cases against them. (Period tracking apps can be risky, but other data can be more sinful.)

For those seeking information, the organization directs people to authoritative sources wherever possible, including organizations experienced in abortion advocacy and assistance.

The reaction, which people seem to have learned about the group mostly by word of mouth, surprised Risinger, who now finds herself moderating posts at all times, including minutes after Saturday’s game.

But the group quickly became very active, and Risinger said she felt overwhelmed. She said she quickly changed her plans: “We had this team before we really knew what we were doing.”

Like many other Facebook groups, Risinger decided the best way to keep conversations from derailing was to create rules and enforce them. The most important rule: “Don’t be a jerk”, there is no room for debate on abortion rights.

Those who want to join the group must first answer why they support “camping”. (Some people apparently think it’s a Facebook group about the outdoors.) Every new person and every post is approved by a moderator, of whom there are now about 20 Risingers recruited after the group got too big to handle.

To protect people from the potential safety risks of offering rides or shelter to strangers, the group began blocking posts suggesting personal help for abortion appointments.

Critics of Facebook have said for years that groups on the site have become a hub for unchecked conspiracy theories or health misinformation. Marginal groups on Facebook and other online platforms spreading wrong ideas or call for violence Respond to Roe’s ruling. After Facebook flagged some comments on Risinger’s group that violated the company’s rules against violence and incitement, she told members to stop suggesting the use of violence as a solution to the problem. (Everything I read in the group was respectful and nonviolent.)

I asked Risinger how people behave differently on Facebook than in an in-person community. Are people more emotionally vulnerable, or more cruel?

“Are people worse off on Facebook than in real life? Almost always,” she said. But on the other hand, the group would never have expanded so rapidly without social media, she said.

Risinger said she doesn’t know what the future holds for the Facebook community she created in a fit of anger. She wants to turn people’s energy into productive action.There is a discussion about mobilization around August Kansas state electionin which voters will decide whether to remove the right to abortion from the state constitution.

“We had momentum that I didn’t lose,” Risinger said. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure it’s fully utilized.”


Tips of the week

call boy, Brian X. ChenThe New York Times’ consumer tech columnist with a very 2022 travel horror story. He offers advice to avoid his bad experience.

Last year, I wrote a column on using technology to make travel plans during a pandemic. That advice still applies: Check your destination’s travel and tourism website for potential requirements regarding Covid-19 vaccines and test results, and carry a digital copy of your health data on your smartphone.

I learned another hard-won lesson from my own bad experience.

This year I booked a flight to fly across the country for a fall wedding. I use travel price comparison service Hopper to find and book the cheapest Delta flights.

I regret. Over the past few months, Delta has changed my flight itinerary several times and even cancelled one of my connecting flights. After I waited over an hour to speak with a Delta representative, the company put me on another flight. The problem is solved? Do not.

When I didn’t receive confirmation of a new ticket, I reached out again. A Delta representative told me that Hopper canceled the ticket after Delta changed it. The only way to contact Hopper is via email support, unless you want to pay more, their response can take up to 48 hours.

After an email to Hopper and a call to Delta, the airline put me on another flight. I sent Hopper another email asking the company not to touch the booking. Crisis resolved. I hope.

course? Simplify the process if you book travel online. Airlines are understaffed and you may have to wait a long time for customer support. Travel booking services like Expedia and Hopper might save you money, but they might not be worth it.

Skip the middlemen and book directly with airlines and hotels. That way, if you have a problem, you’ll be dealing with one company instead of two.

Read more summer travel advice From Seth Kugel trying to help New York Times readers with their travel issues.

  • Deleting your period tracker will not protect you. Text messages, email receipts and Google searches contain more data on people seeking abortions than trackers, my colleague Cash Hill wrote.

    Tech from Wednesday: Our data is a curse, with or without Roe.

  • According to my colleague Karen Weise, Amazon began restricting items and search results related to LGBTQ people and issues on its United Arab Emirates site after the government put pressure on the company. It’s the latest example of tech companies making compromises to operate in restrictive countries.

  • “Everything happened so much.” That weird but perfect tweet from 10 years ago gets retweeted so often when people feel overwhelmed The Atlantic explained what happened around them. There’s also a mysterious backstory to what appears to be a computer-generated Twitter account, but it’s not. (Subscription may be required.)

goat’s run (kind of)Every summer, a New York City park recruits goats to chew on invasive plants. They were released into the park on Wednesday, and not everyone was messing around. (Look what I did there?!)


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