The rise of the socially minded chatbots

Anonymity in the name of social concerns

We already know that many people use Facebook for communication, access and solidarity.

But there are situations when Facebook users reach out to their communities by posting very personal questions, real life issues they encounter. And they usually refrain from using their real name, out of the fear of being exposed, bullied or afraid they could lose their job.

Imagine you’re a nurse who has a substance abuse issue and you fear seeking help because you may lose your license. Or you’re a worried parent who is seeking advice to understand your child’s mental illness and can’t turn to your friends.

Facebook community groups currently don’t have a mechanism of dealing with users who wish to remain anonymous, and this is why vulnerable members of the group have no place to turn for advice and important topics don’t get raised.

Meet Voice

Voice is a messaging experience in the form of a chatbot that assists members of a group in posting problems they deal with anonymously, in a safe and comforting way.

Voice was built during this year’s F8 (Facebook Developer Conference) hackathon by a multidisciplinary team made of hackers & community managers.

This year’s F8 theme was Engaging communities and Voice received the first prize for the quality of the idea, implementation and potential impact on communities.

Phillip, Lisa & Jen- US, Elliott- UK, Silvio & David- Austria & Andra -Romania joined their forces and created, in less than 48 h, the prototype of Voice.

The team gathered insights from the group Grown and Flown, a 70k-members parenting group, with over 2.1 million interactions every month, and over 10,000 requests who wished to remain anonymous gathered over the past 2 years.

“People ask life changing questions, but they need to maintain their privacy.

Voice could give people the chance to open up conversations around issues that would never be raised otherwise” says Lisa, the Community manager of Grown & Flown. “There is no way to do this with any tools that currently exist.”

And this is how Voice was born. Voice centralises the anonymous posts, allowing admins to easily filter through the messages, reduce their time commitment and provide further security to group members in preserving their anonymity.

Further plans for Voice

The team is very motivated to continue to work on the product, especially since the feedback from the community leaders was that Voice would be a useful tool for many groups.

Regarding monetization, Voice could be provided to a community group for either a fixed price or a subscription fee, but the team hasn’t decided yet whether to turn it into a stand-alone product.

Helping users report misdeeds anonymously

Gabbie, a chatbot based in the Philippines, aims to make the reporting of sexual harassment easier and can provide further information about how to proceed.

Spot is a chatbot that initiates an interview process about any sexual harassment event you’ve experienced or witnessed at work.

And there’s also HelloCass, an Australian chatbot that offers information to domestic violence victims and their concerned friends.

These chatbots undoubtedly make it easier for people either to report troubling incidents they see or experience or to raise up difficult subjects, especially when the technology provides anonymity.

They help people get assistance or answers to their problems without making them feel ashamed or frightened. This way, important topics can be raised and people can get access to the justice and support they need.