This is a complex issue
is always used to justify harm
Dear Inglorious,
If you’ve been online at all, you’ve probably seen it by now: the statement from Irina, CEO of Hootsuite, after the company came under fire for working with ICE and providing tools that help the agency monitor public conversations at scale. Carefully formatted, serious on purpose, meant to sound like a human response to something deeply inhumane. And maybe, for a second, you felt yourself soften. Maybe you thought, okay, at least they said something. If that was you, you’re not naïve. That reaction makes sense. These statements are built to do exactly that.
And yet, this one is a masterclass in corporate moral laundering.
It opens with vague concern that sounds caring but avoids responsibility. “What we are watching unfold right now is wrong.” Wrong how? Wrong for whom? Wrong enough to stop doing business, or just wrong enough to acknowledge and move on? The letter mentions loss of life and fear like background scenery, then quickly turns to what it’s really trying to manage: optics. Humanity is named, but actual people disappear from the consequences of Hootsuite’s choices. Loss is acknowledged, but responsibility never is. Communities aren’t named. Harm isn’t traced. Everything stays abstract enough to stay comfortable, and that’s the first tell.
Then it gets worse. The most glaring hypocrisy sits right in the middle, delivered like a legal loophole pretending to be an ethical stance: “Our use-case with ICE does not include tracking or surveillance of individuals using our tools.” Let’s slow that down. This is a careful narrowing of harm so the company can say, see, technically, we’re not doing that. But visibility at scale is not neutral when it’s sold to enforcement agencies. Making “public conversation visible at scale” for ICE is not a public service. It’s intelligence gathering. It’s surveillance by another name. Saying otherwise is either not understanding how power works, or pretending not to. And then there’s the line about claims being “false” or “prohibited,” which tries to frame public anger as confusion, as misinformation, as something that can be corrected with a firm tone. But people aren’t confused. They’re reacting to a very clear reality: when social data and context are handed to violent state systems, people get hurt, even when the data is “public.”
Quick question, because this matters. Did you know there are ICE offices in Canada, including one in Ottawa and Toronto? How does that change the way this letter lands for you? Does it make the idea that this is distant, or purely “over there,” feel thinner?
The letter also pulls one of the most unsettling moves of all: turning ICE into a customer who just needs to “listen” better. Listening is not accountability when the listener has guns, detention centres, and legal immunity. Framing ICE as a misunderstood audience that simply needs better insight erases the power imbalance at play. It blurs the line between people speaking and people being hunted, and it quietly suggests the problem isn’t enforcement, but misunderstanding. Ask yourself honestly: when has “listening better” ever made a system like that less violent? Then we get the neutrality line: “Without endorsing specific actions or policies.” It sounds reasonable until you remember neutrality is still a choice. When one side holds overwhelming power and the other is being detained and deported, staying “neutral” doesn’t mean staying out of it, it means siding with the status quo. And right on cue comes the closer: complexity. This is a complex issue. People have strong opinions. Complexity is used here not to show care, but to avoid action. It’s a way of saying, this is too messy to change course. Meanwhile, nothing actually changes. The partnership stays. The money flows. The statement itself becomes the deliverable.
I want to name why I’m speaking up about this, because this didn’t just land as a headline for me. It landed in my body. And honestly, I was pushed there by someone I trust. My internet-friend Taylor Loren, who is not nearly as vocal or public as I am, had a lot to say about Hootsuite. When someone like Taylor, who doesn’t chase the discourse, feels moved enough to speak clearly and firmly, I pay attention.
Anyone who knows me also knows how much I adore my husband. I love my family deeply, of course, but nothing compares, for me, to the love you choose, fight for, and build for yourself. The love that becomes your home. When I see the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Alex Pretti, Renee Nicole Good, Keith Porter Jr., or Liam Ramos, I don’t see abstractions. I don’t see cases or issues. I think about what it would feel like to have my person taken from me. For me, it would feel like ripping out all my internal organs at once. Like being stripped of every memory I’ve ever had. Because he is my compass. He is how I orient myself in the world.
This administration, and the media outlets running cover for them, has done an incredibly effective job dehumanizing the people on the receiving end of this violence. So effective that people forget these are deeply loved humans. People carrying love with them. People who are someone’s centre, someone’s safety, someone’s future. When they are taken, it doesn’t just remove a person. It replaces a living, breathing love with grief. Grief that stretches forward with no end date.
And that’s why this makes me feel sick. Because what ICE does, and what companies like Hootsuite help make easier, is treat that kind of love as collateral damage. As acceptable loss. As something abstract enough to ignore. This statement talks about data and use-cases and listening, but it never once reckons with the fact that these systems tear people away not just from their partners, but from the future they are building together. From the child they planned for. The life they mapped out. The mornings, the arguments, the soft ordinary moments that make up a family. When a company chooses to support that machinery, even indirectly, it is choosing to be part of the system that tears our love into pieces. And no amount of careful language or technical framing can make that feel anything other than evil.
And I need to say this too, because the timing of all of this feels surreal. I’m not here to talk about Bridgerton Day. The event was beautiful, sure. But watching a city dress up in fantasy felt dystopian with the backdrop of ICE and a nationwide strike unfolding across the U.S. Ballgowns on one screen. Bring Liam Home on another. Both happening at the same time. How are you holding that contrast? Does it make you want to laugh, or log off, or get clearer about what you’re willing to accept? Was it just me that felt nauseous?
Here’s the bottom line. You can’t claim humanity while making money from harm. You can’t say you’re being responsible while supporting systems built to scare and disappear people. You can’t “listen at scale” and pretend you’re not shaping outcomes. There’s no courage here. No risk. No sacrifice. Just branding, legal language, and a company insisting it can stay clean while profiting from violence. That’s not leadership. It’s corporate violence with better copywriting.
Reflection Prompts
Take a moment with these. You don’t need perfect answers. Just honesty.
Where have I accepted “neutrality” because it felt easier or safer, even when it clearly benefited people with more power?
What does this statement ask me to feel, and what does it quietly ask me not to question?
If money shows values, what do my own choices (time, money, attention) say about what I’m willing to live with?
Reading & listening resources
If you want to understand why statements like this feel wrong even when they sound reasonable, start here.
1. Race After Technology—Ruha Benjamin
A clear, accessible book about how technology that claims to be “neutral” often ends up causing real harm, especially to Black and Brown communities.
🔗 https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/race-after-technology
2. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness—Simone Browne
A foundational look at how surveillance has always been tied to race, control, and punishment, long before modern tech tools existed.
🔗 https://www.dukeupress.edu/dark-matters
3. On Being Included—Sara Ahmed
An honest, often uncomfortable look at how diversity and inclusion work gets watered down, resisted, or absorbed by institutions without changing anything meaningful.