Going viral taught me the internet is broken — but fixable | Deja Foxx

Summary

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TED Talks Daily | “Going viral taught me the internet is broken — but fixable”

Speaker: Deja Foxx
Host: Elise Hu
Date: October 6, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this TED Talk, activist and content creator Deja Foxx shares her transformative journey after a viral moment at age 16, exploring both the empowering and damaging effects of online fame for young women. She details how confronting online harassment inspired her to build and advocate for girl-led digital spaces, ultimately calling for a more equitable, safer internet designed by and for women. Through poignant personal stories and promising case studies, Foxx sketches a blueprint for creating a new “Girl Internet” where respect, ownership, and community are foundational.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Journey to Online Advocacy

• Background: Raised by a single mom in Tucson, Arizona, Foxx moved out at 15 due to her mother’s struggles with substance abuse.
• Turning Point: At 16, after her senator voted to cut essential birth control funding, she confronted him at a town hall. The viral video catapulted her into national attention.
  • “My life went from private to public... Social media put me, a 16-year-old girl working at a gas station, on even footing in the public discourse with a United States senator.” (Deja Foxx, 03:33)

2. The Double-Edged Sword of Virality

• Opportunities: Gained a powerful platform, media requests, and new career opportunities.
• Harms: Became a target of mass online harassment, especially during the pandemic isolation.
  • “Four days later, hundreds of thousands of impressions... and this cyber mob had filled my DMs and comments across all social media platforms.” (Deja Foxx, 05:10)
• Emotional Toll: Woke up to threats and invasive comments, highlighting the lack of platform-level solutions for hate and harassment.
  • “Social media platforms didn't have a solution for the hate that they facilitated, but young people in my community did.” (Deja Foxx, 06:36)

3. Building Girl-Led Digital Communities

• Gen Z Girl Gang: Founded out of her dorm in 2019 as a digital collective redefining sisterhood online.
  • “In 2021, we had never met in real life, but when I needed her, [Maya] was there... She went in and deleted hateful comments and DMs before I could ever even see them.” (Deja Foxx, 06:52)
• Mutual Aid Examples: Pandemic support chats saw young women helping each other financially and professionally.

4. Envisioning the ‘Girl Internet’

• Archive of Our Own (AO3): A volunteer-driven, non-commercial fandom archive showcasing a survivable, scalable alternative structure.
• Innovative Women-Led Platforms:
  • Lore: AI-powered search for fangirls, built from Stan account experience.
  • Sunroom: Monetized content platform with content moderation focused on a woman’s perspective; zero tolerance for harassment.
  • dm: Anonymous Q&A app built by and for women, crucial for reproductive health privacy during political upheavals.
    • “They reward conversations that train their algorithm with gems. They work a lot like credit card points... I even saw a dad of two little girls coming to DM to ask for advice.” (Deja Foxx, 10:54)

5. A Case for a Safer, More Accountable Internet

• Main Point: Platforms profoundly shape civil discourse and economic opportunity—participation shouldn’t require weathering hate.
  • “We should not be forced to participate in hate-for-profit business models just to participate in that public discourse.” (Deja Foxx, 11:48)
• Historical Perspective: Reminds us of the youth and original problematic motivations behind today’s dominant platforms.
  • “These social media platforms... are by and large younger than me and I was born in 2000. Not to mention that many of the men who founded them were younger than me too, and in the case of Facebook... more interested in rating their female classmates than democratizing who gets to participate in our political and public discourse.” (Deja Foxx, 12:09)

6. The Promise and Hope of the Digital Age

• Personal Validation: The internet enabled her to win scholarships, work on a presidential campaign, and run for office.
• Call to Action: Invites all generations to join her in creating a better digital future.
  • “I believe in the promise of the Internet and I'm asking you to join my generation to fight for it. Let's build our digital future together.” (Deja Foxx, 12:31)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “My world has opened up in unimaginable ways because of social media, both good and bad.” (Deja Foxx, 04:01)
• “We deserve respect for our rights, privacy and safety by design, not as an afterthought.” (Deja Foxx, 07:46)
• “In my experience, it is teenage girls that are the digital strategists of our time.” (Deja Foxx, 08:49)
• “So let me be the first to welcome you to the Girl Internet.” (Deja Foxx, 09:16)
• “While these apps are built by and for the girls, their benefits go far beyond — they model an internet with respect, control, ownership.” (Deja Foxx, 11:12)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:40 — Deja Foxx’s origin story and going viral
• 03:33 — The impact of virality & sudden fame
• 05:10 — Online harassment and its fallout
• 06:36 — Community-led support against online abuse
• 09:16 — Examples of women-led digital spaces
• 10:54 — “dm” app and its impact on reproductive health info
• 11:48 — Critique of hate-for-profit social media models
• 12:09 — Reflecting on social network founders
• 12:31 — Closing call to action: building the internet’s future together

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Conclusion

Deja Foxx’s TED Talk vividly illustrates both how the current internet system can fail vulnerable users, and how communities—especially young women—are actively building a better digital future. Her personal narrative and practical models for change point listeners toward a more inclusive, respectful, and empowering web.

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Transcript

[Deja Fox]

At Chubb, we set the gold standard in insurance.

[Elise Hu]

We deliver tailored solutions that help protect what matters most to you backed by bold innovation and forward thinking coverage. That's excellence in action.

[Paige Desorbo]

Learn [e-mail] hey, I'm Paige Desorbo and I'm always thinking about underwear.

[Hannah Berner]

I'm Hannah Berner and I'm also thinking about underwear, but I prefer full coverage. I like to call them my granny panties.

[Paige Desorbo]

Actually, I never think about underwear. That's the magic of Tommy John.

[Deja Fox]

Same.

[Hannah Berner]

They're so light and so comfy and if it's not comfortable, I'm not wearing it.

[Paige Desorbo]

And the bras? Soft, supportive and actually breathable.

[Hannah Berner]

Yes. Lord knows the girls need to breathe. Also, I need my PJs to breathe and be buttery, soft and stretchy enough for my dramatic tossing and turning at night. That's why I live in my Tommy John pajamas.

[Paige Desorbo]

Plus they're so cute because they fit perfectly.

[Hannah Berner]

Put yourself on to Tommy John.

[Paige Desorbo]

Upgrade your drawer with Tommy John. Save 25% for a limited time at tommyjohn.com comfort save. See site for details.

[Capital One Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology. At Capital One.

[Elise Hu]

You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host Elise Hu. Deja Fox was 16 years old when she went viral online and it turned her life upside down. In her talk, the activist and content creator shares the good and bad sides of online fame and how it led her to recognize the importance of women owned and led social media platforms to create a safer, more equitable and more inclusive online world. Deja says we must build the girl Internet of the future. After her talk, check out my interview with Deja on this feed. We sat down while on site at the TED Conference in Vancouver in 2025 for our beyond the Talk interview series to learn more about her work.

[Deja Fox]

I was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona by a single mom and when I was 15 years old I moved out because of her struggles with substance abuse. The next year, 2017 while living with my boyfriend and his family. My senator voted to strip the funding that I needed. When I walked into a clinic with no money, no insurance and no parents to walk out with the birth control I needed to take control of my body, my future. It was personal. And I told him so. At a town hall meeting in Mesa, I asked if birth control was helping me to be successful reach for higher education, why would he deny me the American dream? Millions of people saw that video. Overnight, I had gone viral. My life went from private to public. Requests from CNN rolled in to go live. The Washington Post called me the new face of Planned Parenthood. Social media put me, a 16 year old girl working at a gas station, on even footing in the public discourse with a United States senator. My world has opened up in unimaginable ways because of social media, both good and bad. And in the nearly decade since it, it's made possible things I couldn't have even imagined. But I've seen the dark side of insidious algorithms and the ways that companies profit from them. Like the day in 2021 when a stranger labeled me the enemy. Four days later, hundreds of thousands of impressions. 60,000 likes, 4,000 retweets, 600 replies later, and this cyber mob had filled my DMs and comments across all social media platforms. And now I need you to be in my shoes for a second. 20 years old, isolated by an ongoing pandemic, and to reach for your phone first thing in the morning because it's also your alarm to wake up to threats to your personal safety and information, have a notification center full of comments about how you look and speculation on an identity that you yourself are only just coming to build. Social media platforms didn't have a solution for the hate that they facilitated, but young people in my community did. Maya and I met on Instagram through Gen Z Girl Gang. That's the digital collective I founded out of my dorm in 2019. And ever since, we've been committed to redefining the practice of sisterhood in digital spaces. In 2021, we had never met in real life, but when I needed her, she was there. She sent me a text, a lifeline, if I can be honest with you. Send me your passwords. She went in and deleted hateful comments and DMs before I could ever even see them, knowing that otherwise I would be forced to open experience and clear each and every one alone. We deserve respect for our rights, privacy and safety by design, not as an afterthought. And clear protections against hate and harassment that are informed by our experiences standing up for ourselves and our friends. I've seen countless gestures like this one in my time running this digital collective. In our pandemic support chats, girls who had never met volunteered their stimulus checks to help a long distance bestie in need. They've shared thousands of internships, job opportunities, fellowships that have become career making moments first jobs for women they may never meet. Big tech wasn't coming to save us, but girls like my friends just might. In my experience, it is teenage girls that are the digital strategists of our time. In an Internet not built for us, we have built narrative and political power one viral video at a time. We've developed survival strategies like Maya to protect ourselves and our friends. And we're not stopping there. We're building a new, better way of being online, no matter your generation or your gender. So let me be the first to welcome you to the Girl Internet Archive of Our Own was founded in 2008. If you ask almost any girl my age about it, she she'll respond with the story of her introduction to the Internet via its sometimes salacious fanworks. But even more subversive is its structure. A non commercial nonprofit archive run by an elected board, completely volunteer powered, supporting a user base of over 8 million. And its legacy brings us new younger builders like Sarah Naqvi, whose experience running One Direction Stan accounts as a teenager has transformed into an AI powered VC backed search engine for the fangirls called Lore. And then there's Sunroom, where the girls get paid to exist. Think OnlyFans, personalized monetized content, but for everyone from fitness instructors to career coaches and yes, obviously hot girls, but with content moderation done through a woman's lens and zero tolerance for harassment and hate speech. And if you still have questions about the digital world that we're building, there's dm, founded by an all women team. It's built to feel like you're asking questions in the girls restroom at 1am Founded in 2023, it has a user base of over 100,000 and saw an increase by 700% in searches in the days following the US presidential inauguration in 2025. And that's no surprise, because a quarter of their searches are about reproductive health and they're serious about our privacy guaranteeing anonymous searching. In a moment where major platforms are censoring women's health information and respect for their consumers and creators is actually built into their business model. They reward conversations that train their algorithm with gems. They work a lot like credit card points. You can use them at your favorite brands or as donations to the causes you care about. I even saw a dad of two little girls coming to DM to ask for advice. He came away with everything from book recommendations to affirmations from fellow users. So while these apps are built by and for the girls, their benefits go far beyond they model an Internet with respect, control, ownership, and they have more in common than just being built by women. They model a new, better architecture for a digital world that we are building. And this matters because in a world where 39% of adults under 30 get their news on TikTok, this isn't some frivolous teenage pastime. This is the new public square. And we should not be forced to participate in hate for profit business models just to participate in that public discourse. This year alone, we've seen migrations from TikTok to RedNote, Twitter to Blue Sky. As entrenched as the current platforms may seem, they're not permanent. These social media platforms that influence the policies of countries entire economies are by and large younger than me and I was born in 2000. Not to mention that many of the men who founded them were younger than me too, and in the case of Facebook, at least at its origin, was more interested in rating their female classmates than democratizing who gets to participate in our political and public discourse. I stand in front of you today because of the Internet. The college essay that I wrote on my phone earned me a place at my dream university on a full ride, the first of my family to go to college. A dm a direct message on Instagram led to a job on a history making presidential campaign and the following that I have built online has turned into the support I needed to launch my very first run for office. I believe in the promise of the Internet and I'm asking you to join my generation to fight for it. Let's build our digital future together. Thank you.

[Elise Hu]

That was Daisia fox speaking at TED 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out [e-mail] curationguidelines and that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact checked by the TED Research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene, Lucy Little and Tansika Songmarnival. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faizy Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balaurazo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

[Capital One Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

[Paige Desorbo]

Hey I'm Paige desorbo and I'm always thinking about underwear.

[Hannah Berner]

I'm Hannah Berner and I'm also thinking about underwear but I prefer full coverage. I to call them my granny panties.

[Paige Desorbo]

Actually I never think about underwear. That's the magic of Tommy John.

[Hannah Berner]

Same. They're so light and so comfy and if it's not comfortable I'm not wearing it.

[Paige Desorbo]

And the bras? Soft, supportive and actually breathable.

[Hannah Berner]

Yes. Lord knows the girls need to breathe. Also, I need my PJs to breathe and be buttery, soft and stretchy enough for my dramatic tossing and turning at night. That's why I live in my Tommy John pajamas.

[Paige Desorbo]

Plus they're so cute because they they fit perfectly.

[Hannah Berner]

Put yourself onto Tommy John.

[Paige Desorbo]

Upgrade your drawer with Tommy John. Save 25% for a limited time at tommyjohn.com comfort See site for details.

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