Ensuring a Safe Environment for Code for America Webinars

“A place where the rules guard each person’s self-respect and dignity and strongly encourage everyone to respect others.” —part of the definition of a safe space from the Safe Space Network

Code for America aims to provide a safe and productive environment in all spaces which it creates, and enforces a strict Code of Conduct to do so. Unfortunately, there recently was a breach of this safe space during a Network Team webinar, leading us to re-evaluate our security features on the video conferencing platform that we use, Zoom.

During the “Preparing for National Day of Civic Hacking” virtual workshop, outside individuals hijacked the meeting and displayed explicit content. Attempts to boot the individuals from the webinar failed because of a loophole in the software that allows individuals to return to a meeting even after they are removed by a moderator. The problem was exacerbated because two individuals were working in tandem to disrupt the workshop.

After working with our Zoom representative to diagnose the problem and find solutions to prevent this from happening again, the Network Team will be taking the following steps to ensure that Code for America meetings and webinars are safe spaces in which all people can participate without violations or disruptions.

• Limit the permissions of participants. In the past, the Network Team has promoted everyone in attendance to panelist in order to allow conversation amongst participants. Promoting attendees to panelists comes along with certain permissions. In the future, the ability to screenshare and speak will be turned off for panelists, unless the host permits this for specific individuals.
• Disable the “join before host” feature of all meetings. Normally, the first person to join a meeting will automatically be made host. But in order to avoid giving host abilities to an unintended attendee, we have disabled the “join before host” feature on our Zoom accounts.
• Locking meetings and webinars after 30 minutes. We will be locking meetings and webinars after 30 minutes. This ensures that stragglers who might have ill intentions can’t join the meeting.

Taking these measures will ensure that we provide a safe and productive space for Code for America meetings and webinars. We hope to continue to improve the experience of attendees and presenters alike, and provide the best possible space to share knowledge and collaborate.

A special thank you to Nohl Espenshade for helping ensure that Code for America webinars are safe and productive.