Designing a Better Internet for Women* & the LGBTQIA+ Community
Did you know: More than 73% of LGBTQ+ content online is flagged as inappropriate? In this talk, learn about how Lips is putting research into practice to create a safe space online.
Hello again beautiful people! đđđ
I hope you all are managing alright out there and remembering to seek out/ hold onto those moments of joy, rest, and gratitude throughout this difficult time. I just want to take a quick moment to thank you all for being here, at the other end of this computer screen, reading what Iâm writing (even just skimming it), cheering me on, and, whether you realize it or not, motivating me every single day to keep working hard and pursuing this passion.
This week, Iâm excited to share with you the talk Annie and I gave at the Women of Sextech Virtual Conference 2020 held on May 2nd.
In case you missed it, our talk was called âDesigning a Better Internet for Women* & the LGBTQIA+ Community.â We shared research highlighting some of the issues that disproportionately affect marginalized communities online such as censorship, harassment, and plagiarism. Then, we discussed how we, as Lips, along with the entire sextech community can all work together to address these problems and build our own tools for solving them.
Ironically (yet also unsurprisingly), the conference itself almost didnât happen because Youtubeâs irresponsible moderation algorithm decided, during testing the night before, the conference violated the platformâs community guidelinesâa common reason platforms defend bias censorship. Thankfully, the amazing organizers were able to figure it out by hosting us elsewhere, and the incredible knowledge and experiences of all the presenters were able to be shared.
Thanks to my best friend, I have a recording of our talk which you can view below (itâs about 12 minutes long). Or, if youâd rather read it, Iâve transcribed it for you and added hyperlinks to all of our research as well. Enjoy & let me know what you think!
xx
Val
PS: Subscribe to this newsletter, âSextech with Val,â for more of my research into these issues:
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âDesigning a Better Internet for Women* and the LGBTQIA+ Communityâ
Val: Let me start by saying that this task is a challenging one and itâs going to take the entire community. The first question we need to ask is who is this community? Who is women of sextech? Or, more generally, who is sextech?
We are a group of people who understand that there is physical space and digital space but the boundaries are blurred between them. We are allâto some extentâ working, innovating, and disrupting within this space. We know that when we say âdesigning a better internetâ that that has vast implications for the physical world as well.
But thereâs something else that unites us all⊠We know what Audre Lorde means in her essay titled, âThe uses of the erotic as power.â
A quote from her piece says, âEvery oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women [and the lgbtqia+ community], this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives.â
Whether itâs sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, or colonialism we are fighting against (or multiple vectors of these oppressions)⊠Who is sextech? We areâŠ
a group of people leveraging technology to reclaim and cultivate erotic power, which we use to fight against injustice.
Answering the âwhoâ of sextech is important because sextech is not just those of us building the technology itselfâŠ. Weâre often misinterpreted as that and weâve been called a neo-liberal movement for self-help, but thatâs bullshit! Our community is building so much more than that!!! ⊠and designing a better internet is going to take ALL of us.
Sextech is building new knowledge and information structures and that is the most important thing we need to keep doing because that informs the actual technological tools.
For example:
First of all, sex workers literally pioneered the internet by building some of the strongest networks, communities, and virtual platforms in order to overcome the insane censorship, control, social/moral stigma surrounding their work.
Sex educators: knowledge troves, clarifying falsehoods around what weâve been told about ourselves.
Artists - art helps us imagine (in ways words cannot) this better futureâŠ
Kinksters are literally building space out of thin air for safely exploring power dynamics and boundaries.
Healers of all kinds are building radical healing methods that are helping those survive traumas they may have experienced.Â
And of course, companies building vibrators that teach us about our anatomy & pleasure zones so that we can REALLY harness that erotic power for such things as suing the MTA.
While our community is powerful and resilient⊠the truth is unfortunately, we still rely on technologies and knowledge structures that were not built by us or for us.Â
Did you know:
Over 73% of LGBTQ+ content online is flagged as inappropriate.
Instagrams banned hashtags in 2019 included: #curvy, #bi, #lesbian, #bodylove (search it). Our identities are too complicated for them to understandâthey see the words we use to describe ourselves as obscene and therefore they train the tech to think that as well.
Nearly â of social media users say they often or sometimes come across racist, sexist, homophobic, or religious-based hate content in social media.
Check out @lips_zine on IG for more research weâve collected.
On top of not being built for us, these tools are also regulated by a government that passed a bill like FOSTA-SESTA. Also #FUCKEARNIT.
Also right before this conference began, I learned that the tech on which we were supposed to have this very conference (Zoom & Youtube) told us that we were violating their community guidelines.
Many of us, and actually now all of us for being here today, have experienced some form of this. But we clearly cannot blame ourselves.
So, what do we do about it?
Well, we know (again from Audre Lorde) that âthe masters tools will never dismantle the masters houseâ so we have to⊠build our own tools (like weâre already doing) and make sure that these tools are informed by research into our communityâs collective differencesâour diverse community!
We are all so different and we have to use this (for example):
Educate each other with compassion & empathy
Giving honest feedback
Collaboration in brainstorming
My favorite: self-interrogationâsomething that the mainstream world is pretty afraid of doing but our community does really, really well.
By continuing to build these knowledge structures, we will keep uncovering the needs of our community.
I know Iâm preaching to the choir here and so many of us do these things already but I want to encourage you to never be modest with your ambitions. DONâT HOLD BACK.
Before I give the mic to Annie for some examples.. I want to say that..
What these tools, built by our community, will be capable of is beyond our imagination⊠Chipping away at the dominant systems of power is how we design a better internet.
Now I pass the mic to Annie will share with you some more results of our research:
Some of the needs our community has demonstratedÂ
Examples of technology empowered by those needs
Take it away, Annie!
Annie:
Thanks Val. I love the feminist theory background because thatâs a lot of what weâre doing.
At Lips, what weâre doing is weâre taking feminist theory and inserting it into the technological tools that we are using to build. The people who have designed these tools before us are not familiar with our challenges and in fact are bias towards us in very direct ways⊠and so what does a better internet look like exactly?
Well a few things:
We want to encourage technologies that create a safe space for expression
without censorship (#StopCensoringSluts)
without plagiarism
without trolls
We want the technology to embrace the queer aspects of identity, basically allow you to be yourself in full.
Social mobility
advertise
buy
sell
Grow community
that we are creating our own community guidelines built by our standards not built by someone elseâs standards that donât understand the difference between sexual expression and sexual exploitation.
A great example of this can be seen in AI algorithms. Some of the algorithms Iâve written about and find fascinating include:
Algorithms in social media platforms that specifically actually emphasize trolls. Basically, if Iâm a troll that reports an artist like @exotic.cancer (who actually with @alicia_amira designed this t-shirt)⊠if a bunch of people report that account, it doesnât take into account that thatâs a group of trolls that specifically want to get sex workers off of the platforms. It just says, âOh, a lot of people are reporting this, letâs take that off.â And a lot of times it comes down to men who make the final decisionâcis-men and cis-white men.
Examples of companies/organizations working on this stuff:
Fem inc. They wrote a white paper called âTake Back the [AD]â about algorithms and online advertising.
Also, theres a really great study by a researcher named Oliver Haimson, who studies social computing and identity, called âDesigning and Defining Trans Technologies.â Where basically they looked at Tumblr and they asked, âIs this a trans technology?â Briefly, a trans technology was defined as one that can:
The conclusion was that Tumblr was a trans technology until the new algorithms came into play, widely known as the âporn ban,â but not only did it ban porn but it also banned erotic art and queer content of expression of sexuality.
Another one I suggest looking into is called the Algorithmic Justice League. They are awesome. A woman from MIT studied why self-driving vehicles were hitting people of color, specifically African Americans. The reason was because all the developers of the technology where white, and so the people they put into the algorithm to train the data was white people. So the cars literally could not recognize black people as people which is obviously a huge problem.
This goes back to the idea that itâs not a problem with the technology, per se, but its actually a problem with the people behind the technology, building the technology.
And lastly, a really important thing to talk about is designing for diversity in digital spaces, which means meeting people where they are and relentlessly designing to incorporate learnings along the way.
After this, Val and I are hopping into Headstream Acceleratorâs Science Fair. We were awarded a grant to build Lipsâ technology. And weâre going to be working with LGBTQ+ youth, youth of color, and really getting their feedback on what weâre building at Lips.
And so for Lips, donât forget to go to lips.social/signup because weâre looking for beta testers. We want your feedback! We are building this for you. We want to create a social platform and technologies beyond that that serve this community and that allow us to express ourselves without censorship.