iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Black people love some Dolly Parton and have done my whole life. She was multitalented, smart, and a good person. RIP

Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Your headline or graphics people framed this in an inflammatory way, given that “limits of the left” is a quotation. Turned off the comments on your IG post so I had to come over here.

Screenshot of The Intercept’s Instagram post about this briefing.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Some people desperately desire to be “cancelled” because being “cancelled” actually brings a person a lot of attention. New audiences and revenue streams open up. But be 74, have a Wikipedia page, be a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and still be this desperate for attention is pretty sad.

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Reposted by Tarika (tarīqah)

ProPublica @propublica.org · 19/08/2026

As the Trump administration ordered agencies to eradicate “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, we identified more than 1,000 nonprofits that removed such language from the mission statements in their tax filings. (Published Dec. 2025)

propublica.org

Under Trump, More Than 1,000 Nonprofits Strip DEI Language From Tax Forms

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Sign #3: A post suddenly it stops getting views.

Chart showing a post get 15k views and then flat-line for 4 days.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Sign #2 Higher than normal views from outside the US.

Chart showing only 68.6% of views from inside the US.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

How can Black creators or activists know when bots are being used to suppress the reach of your content? Here are some things I noticed: 1) Countries where I don’t have a following figuring prominently in my metrics.

Image shows 8 Instagram posts and countries where they oddly got lots of views.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I think the job of the bots that swarmed my account on and after May 29 was to either mimic disinterest in my posts, tricking the algorithm into taking the posts off people’s feeds, and/or trigger Instagram’s bot suppression system, which unfairly suppressed my posts. Full analysis at link up top.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I came upon an article about “malicious view-botting.” A viewbot is a bot that views content. Malicious view-botting is a tactic businesses use to harm the ad reach of a competitor’s products. The malicious viewbots look at an ad but do not engage, which mimics user disinterest. This tanks the ad.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

This graphic shows some of the countries that have represented an unusually large share of my audience for posts made between December of 2025, when I shared reporting about FBI misconduct during Seattle’s BLM protests, and today, as I write a series about modern-day COINTELPRO.

Serbia, Finland, Poland, Germany, S. Korea, Poland, Egypt and Sweden are among atypical countries doing numbers in my engagement metrics.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I observed a lot of bot activity at the same time this surge in non-follower views was happening. Over 30% of my views were from outside the US. In my five years of having this Instagram account, my posts average about 90% of views from the US. So that was odd.

Chart shows only 68.6% of views were from US accounts.

Two comments from May 30 documenting bots viewing my Stories, rapid liking posts, and trying to get me to engage with them.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The overall metrics of the post are highly correlated with non-followers who showed up in high numbers within the first 48 hours, with five times (5x) as many non-follower views as follower views. When non-follower views flat-lined, follower views rounded off as well.

Three graphs for total, follower, and non-follower views each show a shift on day 2, with the shift most notable among non-followers.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The way Instagram works is that your posts are shown to a percentage of your audience, then their engagements push it out to more people. If those people engage, it will show it to more people & so on. The algorithm should’ve pushed the post out to more people. Why would it kill the post instead?

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

On May 29, I made a post about a murder in Seattle. It explained how a 19-year old was shot near a BLM protest in 2020, how protesters tried to save his life, and how “first responders” refused to help. Initially, the post had lots of engagement, quickly reaching 15k views. Then it flat-lined.

An Insight chart shows a post rapidly reach 15k views, then flat-line for several days.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

An Instagram post I made about police & first responder misconduct in 2020 took off, then inexplicably flat-lined 2 days later, as bots swarmed my Instagram account. Then I was shadow banned. So I decided to investigate what happened. #Blacksky #algorithms #meta www.tarikapowell.com/coda/an-anat...

tarikapowell.com

An Anatomy of Silence — Tarika Powell

Are bots being used to tank activists’ posts on social media? The author investigates malicious bots and shadow banning after a post with great engagement inexplicably tanked on Instagram amidst bot a...

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

“The discourse on college campuses went too far…” WHEN HAS IT NOT? It didn’t go too far when you were in college? Right wingers were just as obsessed with liberal college excesses back in your day. They’re baby activists & baby theorists, learning to integrate texts into lives off the page. Deal.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I’ve written about how “woke” is a stolen term wielded by racists to mean the equivalent of “n***** lover.” A “woke” white person was a race betrayer. For liberals and leftists to also wield the term as a weapon is textbook white reconciliation. tarikawrites.medium.com/wokeness-a-b...

tarikawrites.medium.com

Wokeness: A brief history

Black self-love and the shaming of white allies

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

This is really it. This “Woke 1” conversation is nothing more than the same white reconciliation we see at the end of every Black liberation struggle that had a lot of white supporters. White America comes together to redefine what happened, chastise white allies, and agree it went too far.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Everything on him smells like Downy or starch. This man keeps a job and his nieces are spoiled. He’s taking two drinks home, not one. 🤷🏾‍♀️

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I had to read Who Moved My Cheese. Serious & revelatory literature.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

RIL to Mike Brown and all the Ferguson activists who died after protesting to get justice: Darren Seals, Danye Jones, Edward Crawford Jr., Bassem Masri, and Marshawn McCarrell.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

“Then I got a call from a relative I hadn’t spoken to in years. They told me they’d gotten thousands of dollars through multiple PPP loans that summer, and they knew someone who could get one for me. I suppose that’s when I knew for sure the feds were trying to take me down.”

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

“The final week of CHOP was also the apex of the collective. We had a meteoric rise within Seattle’s BLM activism scene, and disappeared just as quickly.” How does an activism collective navigate conflict when people don’t know or trust each other? It doesn’t.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

As someone from outside Chicago, he had a positive perception outside the city last year & I was seeing him everywhere. What happened that sank his approval rating?

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

“A new report reveals oil and gas companies knew as early as the mid-1970s that methane fueled climate change while launching massive PR campaigns to promote natural gas as clean energy.”

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Also Celeste Keaton most likely didn’t curse at the girls and call them insane, she was probably calling the stunt insane. These stunts are all about getting reactions then mischaracterizing the reactions to fake victimhood.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

It’s so vile that RW culture warriors are using teens to stage anti-trans outrage events. These girls were seated courtside with a transphobic poster, wearing transphobic merch. They’ll be on TikTok in 3 years doing an 8-parter on how they were too young to grasp the level of harm they were doing.

Tweet from Brandi Kruse, “Last night, @seattlestorm co-owner Celeste Keaton cursed out two teen girls for wearing
@xx_xyathletics shirts, calling them "f*cking insane." One of them was left in tears. I tried to get security involved and was told I should email the front office.”

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Writing “Antifa” near Philly potholes until the city cracks down on crumbling infrastructure.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Unless someone like you Cares a whole awful lot No one’s gonna do the Kid ‘n Play They’re not.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Doing a post mortem on BLM and not finding feds to be the cause of death is a choice.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

The Odyssey was influenced by Gilgamesh, a much older story from ancient Mesopotamia. Homer was out here copying from brown people, like many of the “greats” in European literature and philosophy. So Lupita can play whomever she wants.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Arkansas gets no love and has an amazing history, so I would if our flag wasn’t literally the confederate flag cut down the middle and sewn into a diamond.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

“The fluorescent light uses a ballast (a circuit that limits electrical current flow) to operate. The heat energy created by the ballast can sometimes cause loosening of brackets or other components in the light fixture, eventually causing a buzzing noise.” www.tuckey.com/blog/experts...

tuckey.com

How Do You Fix Humming Fluorescent Lights? - Tuckey

In this series, our experts address humming fluorescent lights and what you should do about them. Continue reading on our blog today!

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

The first person on my college campus to get a cell phone, we joked that he was selling drugs, bc who else would need a phone on them all the time?

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Here’s a summary of the issues. The “BLM” in question is the one Tanya’s boyfriend worked for in White Lotus, not the other BLM. www.yahoo.com/news/politic...

yahoo.com

BLM fast-tracks proposal to open Chaco Canyon to oil and gas drilling

The Bureau of Land Management wants to repeal a buffer around Chaco Canyon that barred oil and gas drilling.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Public comment period alert! The Bureau of Land Management needs to receive your comment about this within 14 days. Read more below & at link. Please write an *informed* comment speaking to one or more *specific* issues, or it’ll be disregarded. eplanning.blm.gov/Project-Home...

eplanning.blm.gov

BLM National NEPA Register

The Bureau of Land Management National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Register allows you to review and comment on plans and project documents. Search by office, NEPA number, Project name, year, and ...

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

CHOP had become a concentrated reflection of all the untended problems of Seattle. We inherited systemic issues that the city had failed to solve with hundreds of millions of dollars and decades worth of time, and were being blamed for not solving them through a few weeks of mutual aid.

tarikapowell.com

Part 8: The end of CHOP — Tarika Powell

In Part 8 of COINTELPRO in the Digital Age, the author is given a recording of a meeting, there's another secret meeting, and CHOP comes to a tragic end with the shooting death of 16-year old Antonio ...

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

“Public lands grazing is overseen by a nearly century-old system that heavily subsidizes some of the wealthiest Americans…”

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Now that the giraffe has been found, we’re obviously going to need an animated film about her & the random Texans who knew exactly where she was but didn’t tell the law.

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Tarika (tarīqah) @tarikapowell.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Ruth Wilson Gilmore wrote, “we are faced with the ascendance of anti-state state actors: people and parties who gain state power by denouncing state power.” Jay-Z denounces racial discrimination in capitalism, then gets in bed with big corporations that are discriminating against Black people. Same.

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