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- A Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change investigation focused on the misogynistic content espoused by X accounts @AdvoBarryRoux and @ChrisExcel102, which have significant followings.
- These accounts have benefitted from changes in advertising revenue policies on the social media platform X that allow content creators to share revenue from ads.
- The accounts continue to spread harmful stereotypes despite X's rules against such content.
South Africans on X (formerly Twitter) have probably come across the @ChrisExcel102 and @AdvoBarryRoux accounts.
These "parody" and "commentary" accounts, which boast 2 million and 2.3 million followers respectively, are known for sharing content that is either explicitly misogynistic or has misogynistic undertones.
Through their content, @AdvoBarryRoux and @ChrisExcel have become part of the manosphere, a term used to describe an online network of accounts, sites and forums, among other platforms, that seek to speak out against the empowerment of women, promoting sexist and anti-feminist views. They provide support for men while advancing a narrow idea of what it means to be a man, which typically involves disrespecting the rights of women.
Such online behaviour legitimises negative attitudes towards women. It often trivialises sexual harassment and the abuse of women. This diminishes the understanding of how consequential such online behaviour can be. Indeed, as is the case with online bullying and intimidation, it has the potential to spill over into real-world interactions. The manosphere often equates women empowerment with the loss of social standing of men.
@AdvoBarryRoux and @ChrisExcel have used such content to grow and maintain their significant online following on X while benefiting from the changes that have taken place at X since Elon Musk took up the reins last year.
The most significant of these changes is X's decision to let creators and content generators "share revenue from verified users' organic impressions of ads displayed in replies to content you post on X," according to the platform.
A post by Musk stated that "only views from verified handles count, as scammers will otherwise use bots to spam views to infinity".
To be eligible for the ad revenue sharing, users must be subscribed to X Premium or Verified Organisations; have at least 5 million organic impressions on their cumulative posts within the last 3 months and have at least 500 followers to be eligible for advertising revenue sharing.
X states that creators need to adhere to its "Ads Revenue Share Terms, which include, for example, creator monetisation standards and the X rules", once they are eligible.
According to these standards, content that is not permitted under X rules may not be monetised. This includes content that depicts criminal behaviour; graphic content involving humans or animals; content which makes false, misleading or unsubstantiated claims about a product or service, and which have the potential to cause harm, adult or sexually suggestive content and unlicensed content, among others.
@AdvoBarryRoux and @ChrisExcel have benefitted from the new advertising revenue policy and have been vocal about the earnings they've received from X (see Figure 1 below).
AdvoBarryRoux
The @AdvoBarryRoux account does not solely focus on sharing misogynistic content, but is active across a wide variety of content domains, including politics.
In appearance, the @AdvoBarryRoux account looks similar to the @AdvBarryRoux account, which predominantly shares political content on X. The two have identical profile pictures and share descriptions such as "Black Twitter CIC", "Sunday school drop-out", and "Not affiliated with Oscar Pistorius' Lawyer Adv Barry Roux" (see Figure 2 below).
In 2019, News24 revealed that Csho "Shepard" Chilala, 27, a Zambian blogger from the small town of Monze, southwest of Lusaka, was the person behind the @AdvBarryRoux account. The identity of the person behind the @AdvoBarryRoux account is unknown, however, @AdvoBarryRoux came in defence of @AdvBarryRoux following the News24 article (see Figure 3).
As shown in the Figure below, @AdvoBarryRoux's content from 1 August to 17 October 2023 has been focused on responses to a variety of TV shows.
The account describes itself as a parody account of Advocate Barry Roux who represented Oscar Pistorius after being accused of murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. The @AdvoBarryRoux account claims to "stand with the dejected", according to its profile. The claim of standing with the dejected may be part of the attraction of the followers.
The posts shown in Figure 4 are examples of misogynistic content which the influencer @AdvoBarryRoux creates and disseminates.
These posts present women as participants in a system which empowers them at the expense of men. They also seek to undermine women's independence and experiences by applying value judgements.
Most notably, the bottom two posts play on tropes of absent fathers and stepfatherhood, ostensibly to shame men who court or form relationships with single mothers.
From 1 August to 16 October 2023, mentions of @AdvoBarryRoux surpassed 900 000. These mentions include original posts, retweets and replies.
Among the top 10 popular posts during this period are those about Nigerians in South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa, helplines for suicide prevention, mental health, rape and trauma, among others, as well as a post depicting women exposing their breasts with the title "your future wives". The post received about 2.4 million views, 1 200 comments, 16 000 likes and 5000 retweets. Such engagement metrics are supported by X's ad revenue policy to generate income for @AdvoBarryRoux, despite the offensive portrayal of women in the post.
The X account appears to have contradictory messaging. In one post, @AdvoBarryRoux attacks women and in another post, the person shares self-help information. This is indicative of the "whatever-works" strategies influencers, who court notoriety, use to generate income.
ChrisExcel102
@ChrisExcel102 occupied the position of the most mentioned South African on X in a Social Media Landscape Report published by Ornico and World Wide Worx in 2022. The account has ongoing issues related to the stolen identity of a female South African influencer, Bianca Coster.
This influencer @ChrisExcel102 creates content which seeks to promote the inferiority of women in relationships and in society. Posts encourage stereotypes of women (see Figure 5).
These posts are interspersed with content that is often humorous and topical, not directly related to misogyny, but which amplifies viewership of this account and garners a larger audience to feed misogynistic content to.
This is a typical example of what is referred to as a "pipeline", most commonly used when referring to the potential for alt-right radicalisation and the indoctrination of extremist views that are facilitated by the use of social media.
In the case of misogynistic indoctrination, South African individuals may be exposed to content on their social media platforms of choice by influencers similar to these two accounts, which over time, as they interact with them, leads them to seek out content that tends to become more overt and more extreme. This process may be enhanced by content-suggesting algorithms on social media platforms.
@ChrisExcel102 has previously used a phrase often found in posts by another of the selected accounts within the South African manosphere, @Shadaya_Knight (see Figure 6).
From 1 August to 17 October 2023, @ChrisExcel102's content mostly centred around the topics of women, men and money - with sub-topics about step-parenting and cheating, among others (see Figure 7).
Posts within the main topics mostly focused on degrading women online. Examples of high-engagement posts for each main topic are shown in Figure 8 below.
While X is not paying these accounts to spread stereotypical and misogynistic content, it is clear that this is the type of content that has allowed them to grow and maintain large followings online, as is clear from the traction and engagement that such posts are receiving.
By describing themselves as "commentary" and "parody" accounts, @AdvoBarryRoux and @ChrisExcel102 have not violated X's Misleading and Deceptive Identities Policy.
However, these accounts have also constructed and reinforced problematic ideas on what a man is and how a man should act or behave. These notions of manhood are constructed at the expense of women, undermining them, their bodies, behaviours and their role as parents.
It would appear that X has no intention to intervene on efforts to garner revenues through the dissemination of such content, or the growth of its reach and engagement with it. On the contrary, X's current platform management regimes - and lack of adequate regulatory systems - may well encourage and support it instead. In a country that experiences high levels daily of domestic abuse, rape, misogyny and murders of women X - in its current form - may well serve to exacerbate these social challenges.
The CABC is a non-profit company dedicated to fostering change through building social cohesion in online communities.
