Excerpt
While only a handful of social networks like Dreamwidth and Quirell explicitly prioritize diversity, there are plenty of lessons to learn about what to do — and what not to do — from Facebook, Twitter, and others. Best practices include an counter-oppressive politics, embedded in the community guidelines and norms; and includes the right tools, technologies, and policies. This session will look at what does and doesn't work in a variety of online environments.
Description
How can we make social networks whose systems are not hostile to diversity — that is, systems that do not actively contribute to lessening the voices of to women, people of color, trans, queer and gender-variant people, and others whose perspectives are typically marginalized? It starts with counter-oppressive politics from people running the site, embedded in the community guidelines and norms. Other key techniques include tools, technologies, and policies in areas such as moderation, muting, blocking, reporting, pseudonymity, accessibility, privacy, and user rights.
This session will look at what does and doesn’t work in a variety of online environments. Dreamwidth, Quirell, Ello’s welcoming the LGBTQ community after Facebook “real names” crackdown last summer, and others provide positive examples to learn from. Less-positive examples like Twitter’s problems with harassment, the Nymwars on Google+ and Facebook, Storify,and Facebook’s privacy abuses also provide valuable lessons. This session will look at what does and doesn’t work in a variety of online environments.
Tags
social networks, diversity, pseudonymity
Speaking experience
Speaking experience: Deborah and Jon have both spoken about social networks at conferences including Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, Data Devolution, and Politics Online (as well as on other topics at software engineering and legal conferences and workshops) -- and OSBridge 2014, where they gave an earlier version of this talk. Lynn speaks about social network design refrequently on twitter, and rejects the notion that screening for prior professional speaking experience will significantly improve the quality of your talks.
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