#TimesUp for Online Misogyny — Opt Out Tools Release for International Women’s Day
Hi, I’m Teresa, founder of Opt Out Tools. We’ve built a browser extension that hides misogyny from your Twitter feed and we’re launching it in the Firefox add-ons library for International Women’s Day!
At Opt Out Tools (affectionately known as OOT) we want to help women shape their Internet on their terms. At a watershed moment when women around the world are speaking out on social media platforms such as Twitter, the failure of these platforms to adequately and effectively tackle harassment and abuse means that instead of women using their voices, many are being forced into silence. OOT wants to change that.
I am a Software Engineer. My first job was as a Java Developer in a male-dominated team. During this time my girlfriend worked in politics. She would tell me of the abuse the female politicians received, threats like “bite the pillow, I’m coming in”. This is when the idea for the browser extension began to form. I knew that the voices of women were being disproportionately silenced and I also saw the emotional labour it cost them to stay vocal online. I wanted to build something that would enable women to occupy online spaces safely. I took the browser extension idea to a Pyladies hackday and was surprised at the response to the idea… everyone wanted to contribute! I spent the next three weeks building the proof of concept and presented it at a Pyladies meetup. Since that day the project hasn’t stopped growing! We were adopted by a brilliant software consultancy firm called Softeriffic and we now have an active maintainer community of around 15 people. We pride ourselves on being an accessible open-source feminist tech project!
The browser extension works very simply — for now. It’s like an adblocker but hides online misogynistic harassment instead of adverts from your Twitter feed using a misogyny model we’ve built. However, we focus on consent, not censorship; people see and experience online harassment and misogyny differently based on their background and circumstances. We’re designing our browser extension so that you can give it feedback and tailor it to your personal online experience. Also keeping women safe online is our top priority. We are researching how our browser extension can aid the reporting of misogynistic comments to Twitter so the moderators of the platform can analyze the detected abuse and make sure that appropriate action is taken. We hope, by giving women control over what they do and don’t see, whilst upholding their safety, we can show women that their voices can be heard online without the traumatizing consequences.
We’re not finished. After releasing our alpha version in the Firefox add-ons library on International Women’s Day, we’ll begin to implement new features in the browser extension such as the ability to customize the misogyny model. We’ll also carry on doing the important research work that we’re doing, trying to document and model online misogyny.
We need all the help we can get, do not hesitate to get in touch on Twitter @optoutools if you want to contribute! We’re particularly looking out for UX and product researchers.
Find out more and check out our tool at www.optoutools.com
Donate at www.opencollective.com/opt-out-tools
