By Kim McAuliffe

Content warning: discussion of pregnancy loss

I vaguely remember the first time I was bombarded with Facebook and Google ads for a pair of boots I’d added to a shopping cart but never bought. I was creeped out, uneasy, a bit annoyed. My computer was spying on me, whispering about my habits and preferences to various interested parties behind my back.

Now, it happens so often that I don’t bat an eyelash. I find myself managing how Facebook advertises to me by purposely clicking on comments for ads on things that marginally interest me, not because I want more of those ads, but to minimize exposure to ads I don’t want to see. To make its algorithmic analysis of me smarter. I can’t stop seeing ads, so I try to avoid ones that will hurt or annoy me.

This kind of marketing will never go away. At this point, maybe most of us don’t notice, or don’t care. But there are some subjects, some products, that can be triggering, emotionally challenging, even devastating. There are some topics that should be treated with more care.

I find myself managing how Facebook advertises to me.
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I’ve written about pregnancy loss before. Twice. I mentioned in the first piece that in my positive-test excitement I downloaded multiple pregnancy apps only to find later that one or more had sold my information to Similac, which continued to send me unsolicited email long after the pregnancy itself was gone.

What I haven’t written about until now was how shortly after the second loss I got a physical package in the mail from Similac with formula samples and other crap. It seemed so random — until I realized Similac had obtained from the app not only my email address, but my projected due date from the first pregnancy. I was getting this formula right when I should have had a newborn in my arms. I was so hurt by this unexpected reminder, it sent me back into a morass of dark thoughts I had only just started to escape. I was angry; shouldn’t something like a due date have been considered “personally identifiable information” (PII) or protected medical data? How was that even legal?

Hi @AbbottGlobal after 2 miscarriages it’s v sad 2 get surprise #Similac via info u bought fr preggo app I installed

— @EnameledKoi

You can see in the Twitter thread that the company responded, asking me to DM them.

@EnameledKoi Our sincere apologies Kim. Please send us a direct message with your contact information. Thank you.

— @AbbottGlobal

They agreed to remove me from their mailing list, but showed no inclination to take any action that might prevent future harm to others.

I won’t share them here, but the responses to my original tweet make it clear that I am not the only one to have been harmed by similar marketing. I found out that this is so common, in fact, that loss-support groups warn people about it.

@EnameledKoi Have unfortunately suffered the formula samples in the mail too. Luckily we attended a loss support group and were told it would be coming. When your hurtful actions are so common that decent people warn each other, you have a problem. Thanks for posting this.

— @mescad

I also never wrote about the third pregnancy loss a few months later. It was too much, and there were too many other terrible things happening at the same time.

But imagine this for a second: You are nine weeks along, but instead of a heartbeat, sonograms reveal only an empty gestational sac that doesn’t grow. You hope it was too early, a miscalculation, but that hope bleeds away a bit more with every passing day. You spend an indeterminate amount of time waiting to miscarry. You end up traveling with a “specimen kit” because there’s a family emergency — it could happen in the shared bathroom of someone’s AirBnB, but genetic testing on the “products of conception” might be the only way to figure out what’s been going wrong all of this time.

Meanwhile, you suddenly start seeing ads for baby products, nursing bras, pregnancy workouts, and whatever else you can imagine on Facebook. After the initial emotional kick in the gut, you’re angry, because you weren’t stupid enough this time to install any apps. You can’t figure out what happened, until you realize that every desperate Google search for “slow-rising beta hcg levels” or “possible blighted ovum” in your quest for miracle stories has only told the data gods that you are (sort of, not really) pregnant and now is a good time to market baby-related things at you.

You realize your devastation is immaterial in the bigger picture, that you’re an edge-case scenario, and that the gain for all companies involved is too great to care about the heartbreak they’re causing you, right this minute. As if you didn’t already feel so absolutely alone.

It shouldn’t be this way.

If advertising your product has the potential to cause harm, you have the responsibility to try and mitigate that harm.

How The Medical Community Is Pushing Invasive Procedures On People Who Miscarry
theestablishment.co

Asking product manufacturers, marketing departments, and social platforms to think humanely might be a tough sell. How will people buy their products (or ad space) if they aren’t made to feel they are not thin enough, not hot enough, not smart enough, just not enough? Companies are not in the business of making people feel good about themselves.

But hurting those who have experienced tremendous loss already is a breach of human decency so severe, I have a hard time imagining no corporate executive or employee cares. Surely at least some are upset that their products, upon showing up unexpectedly in inboxes, are re-breaking fractured hearts and shattering any tenuous illusion of normalcy.

There is a solution here, and it’s simple: Pregnancy and baby-related companies need to stop using projected due dates for marketing purposes. They must find better and smarter ways to market their products to consumers more likely to have carried to term, like baby registries or Facebook birth announcement posts. They mustn’t presume that everyone browsing a pregnancy forum is there for positive reasons. I can assure you, from three doomed pregnancies’ worth of reading desperate thread after desperate thread at 2 am in bed, unable to sleep — they are not.

At the same time, app developers need to be more sensitive with user data they share for marketing purposes. They must allow pregnancy-app users to remove themselves from all marketing when they experience a loss.

If your app profits from the hopeful journeys of pregnant women who’ve allowed you into their lives, you have a responsibility to care for them when that journey is cut tragically short. Please, avoid causing additional pain when there is already so much.

Please, do better.

Unsplash/ Win Pauwels

“give your daughters difficult names.
give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue.
my name makes you want to tell me the truth.
my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.”
― Warsan Shire

This week, we learned the world is a lot more like an episode of ‘Black Mirror’ than an episode of ‘Black Mirror’ could be. As we come to terms with the deep technological betrayal of privacy and trust, and have long discussions over whether to delete our Facebook accounts, consider that in so many parts of the world, using Facebook is not a luxury, it’s a lifeline. It’s a necessary connection to information, to jobs, to access.

Hitting “deactivate account” is a privilege we get to have: We don’t even have to bother engaging in the fight for privacy. Will you fight anyway, or will you walk away?

Speaking of Facebook, when I posted about a challenge far too many people of color face — that of carrying the undue burden of correcting people about the proper pronunciation of our names—a white person insisted my views were incorrect. “For the record, white people deal with it too when they have names like Dominique,” she argued on my timeline.

Sometimes, the conversation is not about you. You can, for example, be a man who hears a woman saying “me too,” without quickly crying out “not all men!” You could hear a woman say “me too,” without saying it back. You can even listen to another person’s oppression, without jumping in to tell your own stories of oppression.

Sometimes, we don’t want to hear “me too.” Sometimes, “I’m sorry you’re going through that,” is fine. And sometimes, words will never be enough.

With love + solidarity,
Ruchika Tulshyan
Founding Editor

Can It Be Healing For A Sexual Assault Survivor To Communicate With A Harasser?

By Andrea Hannah

The #MeToo movement has illuminated what it takes to truly heal: connection, sisterhood, and the willingness to look at pain head-on.

I know that I alone can’t heal the kind of soul-sucking void Greg has written about, and I reject the individual responsibility of even trying. But because of the courage of so many survivors bringing their pain to light,

I’m strong enough to have these conversations with him. I’m willing enough to witness his own acceptance of his void, and I’m attempting to answer the call of my own questions:

What can I do about this to change the course of the future?

How can I be brave enough to speak up, especially when I fear for the safety of other women?

How can I make sure my daughter and others never have to scream #MeToo?

The Legislation That Would Harm Sex Workers — In The Name Of Their Own Protection
By Alex MK

Whether they utilize Facebook groups, other online forums, or even text group chats, sex workers’ ability to communicate with one another and screen potential clients is one of the only security mechanisms available to them .

It’s one that will be further compromised, with assuredly fatal consequences, if the supposed anti-trafficking bill, FOSTA, passes the Senate this week.

FOSTA will make our lives exponentially more dangerous under the pretense of protecting us.

When You’re Autistic, Abuse Is Considered Love

By Aaron Kappel

We need to be able to speak for ourselves, but instead, #ActuallyAutistic voices are too often shunned and silenced, while the voices of allistic (non-autistic) parents raising autistic children are lifted up and praised.

A common retort to the autistic adults who condemn this genre of writing and alleged advocacy is that our viewpoint is inconsequential because we aren’t autistic enough.

Our needs don’t compare to the mountain of needs their children require because we are able to raise our voices and organize, and by doing so, we are making things harder for autistic people — like their children — who require more care.

Treat yourself to an ESTABLISHMENT membership!

Tips On Filling Out Your March Madness Bracket For Whose Time Is Up Next

By Kristin Nalivaika

Filling out brackets can be daunting. Especially when, in industries varying from entertainment to journalism to government, so many people brought their A game to disgusting, inappropriate behavior in 2017!

Some of these individuals have experienced the spotlight of accusation in prior seasons, but the lack of results have kept on disappointing us year after year. Other entrants are fresh faces appearing in the tournament for the first time.

There are a million different combinations for the 68 individuals in the bracket who have not yet suffered appropriate consequences for their despicable actions. If you want any chance of winning your office pool, here are some tips on picking the Final Four creeps.

A new scheme to fight revenge porn online is raising eyebrows.

flickr/D Sinclair Terrasidius

By Liz Pozner

The tech sector is heavily run by men — sometimes, men who seem blind to the potential dangers of their innovations. Now, in a move that seems to confirm this stereotype, Facebook has come up with a solution to one of its many PR crises — the rise of revenge porn on the platform. To combat this problem, Facebook is proposing that women upload nude selfies preemptively to their websites so that bots can block their exes from posting similar images.

Perhaps sensing the eyebrows raising from this announcement, Facebook sent out a flock of female media relations staffers to defend its anti-revenge porn system.

“It would be like sending yourself your image in email, but obviously this is a much safer, secure end-to-end way of sending the image without sending it through the ether,” online safety commissioner Julie Inman Grant told ABC. An even higher-up employee, Antigone Davis, Facebook’s head of global safety, further assured users that “the safety and well-being of the Facebook community is our top priority.” Uh huh. Sure.

Feminist Hacking Group Helps Women Send Safer Nudes

The idea is that women would snap nude selfies and upload them to Facebook Messager, which would then use AI technology to create a digital copyright of their naked bodies. That would automatically block a different user from posting a photo of the same body. It’s the same concept as fingerprinting at birth…except way more invasive. It sounds like a poor plan, especially at a time when users have less trust than ever in technology’s ability to protect their privacy. Leaked nude photos afflict celebrities and normal folks alike, and hackers who access supposedly secure information are a regular feature in our news cycle, so why on earth should Facebook users be expected to happily hand over even more of their private lives?

Facebook is piloting the technology in Australia, where Inman assured the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that users shouldn’t worry about their nude selfies winding up in Facebook’s cloud. “They’re not storing the image. They’re storing the link and using artificial intelligence and other photo-matching technologies. So if somebody tried to upload that same image, which would have the same digital footprint or hash value, it will be prevented from being uploaded.”

Why Should You Become An Establishment Member For $5 A Month?

Facebook has come under particular pressure in recent months to tackle the problem of users posting explicit images of women online without their consent. The most publicized case was the all-male Facebook group United Marines, which was found in March 2017 to have harvested hundreds of photos of female Marines and veterans. The men would regularly leave lewd messages in the comments, like the Marine who commented on one woman’s photo that he’d like to “take her out back and pound her out.”

It’s a major problem for civilians, too — 10% of American internet users under age 30 have been victims of revenge porn or online harassment. In recent years, multiple women have sued Facebook for failing to promptly take down nude images that were posted without their consent.

10% of American internet users under age 30 have been victims of revenge porn or online harassment.

As Slate’s April Glaser writes, it’s pretty tone-deaf of Facebook to ask victims of revenge porn to upload more nude photos of themselves. “When a naked photo of a person is circulated without her consent, it can be ruinous emotionally and professionally. Requesting that women relive that trauma and trust Facebook, of all companies, to hold that photo in safekeeping is a big ask.”

Surely there must be other ways to prevent revenge porn on social media — heavier community monitoring by humans, perhaps, or a system to automatically flag users whenever they upload photos that contain nudity? Just some thoughts.

Whether Facebook’s anti-revenge porn initiative will succeed depends on an ethical question for the 21st century: do women today trust anonymous AI technology more than they trust the shady men to whom they send nude photos in the first place?

This story first appeared at AlterNet and is reprinted here with permission.

]]> https://theestablishment.co/the-damning-moral-consequences-of-twitters-refusal-to-ban-trump-1d0b64df0c1/ Mon, 02 Oct 2017 22:08:53 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=2921 Read more]]> Trump’s North Korea tweets are a frightening violation of Twitter’s rules. Why won’t the social-media giant take any action against him?

Another day, another escalation in the threat of nuclear war thanks to the tweets of the President of the United States. Yesterday, after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said lines of communication were open with North Korea, Donald Trump tweeted “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man” and “…Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”

The tirade came on the heels of North Korea saying Trump’s digital nosebleeds — otherwise known as tweets — constituted a declaration of war. During what was supposed to be international diplomacy discussions at United Nations meetings last week, The Art of the Deal’s author tweeted:

“Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of [Kim Jong Un], they won’t be around much longer!”

In response, North Korea’s foreign minister Ri Ying Ho retorted:

“For the past couple of days, we had earnestly hoped that the war of words between North Korea and the U.S. would not lead to action… However, [the President of America and infamous game show host] had ultimately declared war again last weekend, by saying regarding our leadership, that he will make it unable to last longer.”

It’s not a stretch to see the words of the renowned WWE Hall of Famer turned 45th POTUS as inconsistent and antagonistic to diplomacy. Trump’s clearly proposing bringing harm to millions of innocent people should certain conditions arise.

If something terrible happens, blood will obviously be on Trump’s tweeting hands. But it will also be on Twitter itself.

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Trump’s clearly proposing bringing harm to millions of innocent people.
Click To Tweet

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The platform the Commander in Chief uses to “communicate” with the world is not owned by Trump or his administration. It’s run by a private company, which has its own Terms and Conditions, concerning what content may and may not be allowed on. Trump’s violation of these terms is flagrant. In fact, one of Twitter’s rules plainly states:

“Violent threats (direct or indirect): You may not make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism.”

If threatening to wipe a country off the map, with the power to do so from behind the Resolute Desk, is not sufficient to constitute a threat of violence, I don’t know what is.

There’s also a clear precedent for the company to take action against those who violate its rules. To cite but a few examples, Twitter has, in the past, axed blogger and terrible person Chuck Johnson; an attention-seeking blowhard who consistently used his army of racist followers to threaten actor Leslie Jones; and the recently convicted Martin Shkreli after he harassed a columnist.

So why not punish Trump?

I’m An Academic Who Was Targeted By Trump’s Weaponized Base

According to Twitter, it’s staying mum because Trump’s tweets are “newsworthy.” When Twitter was slammed for not taking down Trump’s “they won’t be around much longer” tweet, it issued a barrage of threaded tweets which stated:

“We hold all accounts to the same Rules, and consider a number of factors when assessing whether Tweets violate our Rules. Among the considerations is ‘newsworthiness’ and whether a Tweet is of public interest. This has long been internal policy and we’ll soon update our public-facing rules to reflect it. We need to do better on this, and will. Twitter is committed to transparency and keeping people informed about what’s happening in the world. We’ll continue to be guided by these fundamental principles.”

It’s obviously true that Trump is highly newsworthy. But this fact is descriptive and objective, not moral. Stating that something is seen and of interest to many no more tells you that it should be published than if you said it is written in English. So what if it’s “newsworthy,” when it’s also blatantly dangerous?

Tellingly, Twitter contradicts itself in the first two sentences of its statement. How can you hold “all accounts to the same Rules,” then adjust because an account is popular and the tweets get more coverage? That’s not equal application in any sense of the term equal. (As Wired put it in a recent excellent piece on this matter, litigating Trump’s specific violations “requires pretending that Twitter actually intends to apply its rules to all of its users equally.”)

Furthermore, a threat from a man with the U.S. army, a nuclear arsenal, and a notoriously obsessive and hateful fanbase poses far greater harm than some anonymous anime avatar. Indeed, if there is adjustment of the rules, surely they should be adjusted to give less, not more, leeway to the president of a powerful, armed country — a man whose relationship with words is akin to arson?

As to Twitter’s claim about public interest: If it really cares about public interest, then may I suggest the interest of not being destroyed because of hypersensitive men armed with nukes?

Many might shrug at this whole exchange since it’s “only Twitter.” But first, note that the Foreign Minister of North Korea responded to the media. And second, at the very least consider how powerful people have and are forced to respond to Trump’s tweets on a regular basis: to clarify, argue, respond, and so on, on the international stage.

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A threat from a man with a nuclear arsenal poses far greater harm than some anonymous anime avatar.
Click To Tweet

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The President of a very powerful country flips markets, conveys orders and policies, and issues statements that have to be responded to by other leaders, generals, and ministers — foreign and domestic. To brush off tweets as merely contained to the internet is no different than dismissing writing on paper because it is contained to the literate. Those who can see it can and do respond.

On these grounds, Twitter should grow a spine and remove this lovechild of white resentment and unfettered opulence. But since it probably won’t, clinging as it is to the defense of “newsworthiness,” might it at least consider another course of action? What if it simply removed Trump’s verified status?

Twitter has done this before, as an apparent way to punish offenders. Verified status is merely meant to indicate you are who you say you are — but it also confers other benefits, such as conveying authority to other users, access to analytics, and so on. Removing the tick means removing those benefits, while showing strongly that Twitter disapproves of this menace using its platform to further his harmful agenda. Such a move would be similar to Congressional censure, which Congress implemented to allow for something “stronger than a simple rebuke, but not as strong as expulsion.”

Violent Misogyny Was Normal Long Before Trump

Pending this move, Twitter at least owes us more transparency about which rules apply to us mortals, and which apply to those with actual power and the magical “newsworthiness” it appears to crave. ­

While we’re at it, perhaps Facebook can clarify how its ethical obligations align with a need to be “newsworthy.” Mark Zuckerberg has made similar noises about Facebook being a platform to give “all people a voice,” ignoring the dangers of publishing certain content on the grounds that it may be of interest to some.

And herein lies the ultimate rub. When social-media sites crow about “newsworthiness,” they’re really just saying “because it’s good for business.” Beyond Trump’s tweets generating ample attention and interest, Twitter may be afraid to ban the country’s most powerful Republican, as it could lead to a mass exodus of conservative users who contribute to the company’s bottom line. In light of Twitter’s attempts to stay relevant as a business in the face of stagnant growth, this imperative is particularly pronounced. Ditto Facebook, which has profited handsomely off of providing a platform to vile beliefs.

And so we’re back where we started — with Trump able to tweet out whatever he wants, potentially nuclear consequences be damned. If the threats become something more, Twitter and Facebook should be prepared to ask themselves: Was it worth it?

Outside a nondescript building nestled on Facebook’s sprawling campus is a blank wall. On any given day, you could walk by this wall like you would any other wall. But you’d be missing something. Here, beneath the visible surface of reality, exists another one: a living mural, painted on the virtual ether you can only see by holding up your phone and opening your Facebook Camera app.

In doing so, you’ll behold what Facebook is calling “the world’s first augmented reality artwork,” an undulating, deeply-hued progression of strokes and movements seeping off the ground and climbing the wall into a perpetually active artwork, only viewable on your tiny screen. While this artwork is the first large-scale example of the company’s ambitious plans for augmented reality [AR], it’s also a sneak peek at where the art world might be headed — at least if Mark Zuckerberg gets his way.

“This is going to be a thing in the future,” he said at the annual Facebook F8 conference in April, where he revealed the technology. “Just people standing around looking at blank walls.”

For developers and futurists, this vision of a world teeming with virtual minutiae behind our screens is an exciting one. Facebook’s plans for AR through their camera app includes an open platform for developers to build their own experiences and host them through the app, including Snapchat-like lenses that allow users to take selfies with augmented faces. Facebook itself will create a way for people to leave each other virtual notes on the fridge, or carve your name onto tabletops, or leave menu recommendations for your friends at restaurants.

But for the old guard of the art world, this futurist vision is the manifestation of a question that has plagued them for years: Is the future of art digital? And is this something to cultivate, or resist?

Talk of AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality), and AI (artificial intelligence) is not hard to come by these days. Its potential to disrupt labor, media, porn, video games, transportation and, well, everything, is the topic de jour. And this isn’t the first time one of these lauded concepts has touched the art world, either, despite Zuckerberg’s splashy “world’s first” headline.

Just last year, British artist Scarlett Raven was deemed the “world’s first augmentist” when she unveiled a collection of oil paintings that, when viewed through the Blippar app on a smartphone, move and change.

A year before that, a gallery in Mexico curated a show of sculptures that came to life on the screens of iPads with the help of AR, and all the way back in 2013, the art/tech duo The Heavy Projects painted a mural outside St. Louis’ Moto Museum that unfolded into dozens of variations when viewed through another AR-specific app. And that’s ignoring the many virtual artworks viewable through a special headset.

But beyond screens, the concept of “augmenting reality” through art is not new, according to Josette Melchor, founder and executive director of Gray Area, a San Francisco-based nonprofit fostering the intersection of art and technology.

“AR encompasses all sorts of different things about what it means to change someone’s version of their reality,” she said. This could be as simple as projection mapping, 3D chalk art, or even magic, all of which can alter your experience of reality, without the use of high tech. Today’s AR iteration is just one more step in the centuries-old evolution of art through the use of technology, and it’s no less disruptive than it was 100 years ago.

The Future Of Empathy-Building Tech

Tools, arguably the first technology, made more intricate sculpture possible; the invention of the loom brought detailed, large-scale weavings; the camera made it possible to capture reality; printmaking made reproduction easy; etc. Art has long been transformed through the latest technologies. A classic example is a 500-year-old portrait by the German Renaissance painter Hans Holbein, which is believed to have been produced by tracing an outline of an image that was projected onto the canvas with mirrors or lenses, which was cutting-edge technology for the time.

Melchor gets this. “Artists are futurists,” she said. “We see technology as a medium in general, just like paint or photography. [It’s] just another tool.”

Sculptures Come to Life in an Augmented Reality Art Gallery

This sentiment is echoed by Heather Day, the San Francisco artist who teamed up with Facebook to create their living AR mural. An abstract painter by trade, using technology this advanced was new to Day, but that’s what excited her.

“I was curious about what’s happening [with technology] and also sort of thinking about how I can use technology as just another medium,” she said. “Like work on a painting and then switch over to working digitally…that’s really inspiring to me.”

Thinking of artists as futurists might feel counterintuitive when placing them within the stodgy institution of the art world, which is often considered somewhere on the Luddite scale. But this adversity to technology might be deeper than an ideological attachment to the purity and nostalgia of fine art technique. For one, the technologies used to create an AR, VR, or AI artwork today will be outdated in, at most, a few years.

To enter the cannon the way hundred-year-old paintings do, a work of digital art would need to be constantly remastered and rebooted to fit the technology of the now — and its splendor probably wouldn’t stand the test of time. Where physical objects have a lifespan determined by the wear and tear of time, digital art is at the mercy of lightning-speed innovation that quickly renders it irrelevant.

Artists are futurists.
Click To Tweet

But for artists working with state-of-the-art tech, that’s part of the appeal.

“Traditionally, we want the paint on the canvas; we really honor ‘fine art’ and, I would say, perhaps over-romanticize it,” said Day. “The idea that something we created is special for this time, it existed, is completely enough. And from there we’re going to learn from it and build something greater in the future.”

Of course, there are some downsides. For one, there’s no solid way to value art that lives purely in the digital realm, making it impossible to sell in galleries. And if you can’t commodify it, you probably can’t survive off of it. Additionally, like with every other industry in the world, there is the looming question of when robots will take it over and render humans useless.

While that may sound like an unfounded fear for the art world, consider an exhibition in San Francisco last year that showcased prints of trippy, abstract images created by Google’s artificial neural networks, otherwise known as an artificial human brain. The tech giant sold the paintings, raising $84,000 for Gray Area and stunning those who believe the words “artificial” and “art” should never go together.

But beyond swiping the jobs of artists, digital art has its merits. While admittedly, Zuckerberg’s idea that the future of art will be people staring at their screens isn’t too appealing (and likely not terribly realistic), there is something to be said for the idea that once-mundane areas can be made interesting.

Take Lapse for example, an app created last year by the artist Ivan Toth Depeña that features six AR artworks scattered across various locations in Miami, creating the scavenger-hunt-like appeal of Pokemon Go, but for public art. The idea is that the app acts “as a decoder or magnifying glass that reveals hidden gems throughout the built environment,” as Depeña told Artsy. The same can be said for Facebook’s mural.

In this sense, AR’s potential lies not in its ability to take away from physical space, but to add to it. Like street art, AR can push the art world outside the bounds of the gallery and the museum, and create an opportunity for people to interact with and experience a work of art in a new way — and in a way that aligns with how they already move through the world.

“People are already just going into galleries and staring at their phones,” Melchor said. “Even though you can augment someone’s vision of a space and people are already on their phones, I think that that just adds to the value of it. There’s huge value in painting and illustration and dance and performance. Throwing in augmented reality just makes it better.”

For years, LGBTQ+ content has been categorized as NSFW by social-media platforms.

Unsplash/Wesson Wang

Last month, Tumblr joined several other social-media outlets in actively celebrating Pride, sharing a post encouraging LGBTQ+ content. That same month, it also introduced a new measure called Safe Mode, intended to give users “more control over what you see and what you don’t.”

Ironically, it looked to many users like one of the things that set the new feature off was LGBTQ+ content .

In theory, Safe Mode hid “sensitive content” (later clarified to mean “specifically, nudity”) from those who had the filter turned on. It was optional for most users, but mandatory for those under 18. In reality, and to be blunt, the algorithm simply did not work. It failed to block some nudity, sporadically hid everything from educational PowerPoints to gifsets of video games to pictures of cute animals — and, crucially, routinely censored LGBTQ+ content, regardless of how non-sexual it might be.

When the queer community pushed back, Tumblr apologized, and hastily clarified that the problem was the unintentional result of what’s known as “false flags.” In a post, the company wrote:

“The major issue was some Tumblrs had marked themselves as Adult/NSFW (now Explicit) as a courtesy to their fellow users, and their perfectly safe posts were getting marked sensitive unintentionally.”

Essentially, the algorithm had initially assumed that every post shared by someone who self-identified as “Explicit” was sensitive, and this was affecting some LGBTQ+ content. In response to the outcry, Tumblr removed this assumption so that posts are now judged only by their content rather than whoever has created or shared them. The company also gave some details on the algorithm itself, which attempts to use photo recognition to recognize nudity, and described it as “not perfect.”

Ongoing changes do appear to have made the algorithm more successful — or at least less twitchy. Still, people were right to worry.

For years, and across many of the most prominent social-media platforms, LGBTQ+ content has been categorized as NSFW. Back in March, YouTube creators found that LGBTQ+ adjacent videos they had created were being hidden from viewers via the company’s own safety option, called “Restricted Mode.” This included coming-out stories, educational content, and even this video titled “GAY flag and me petting my cat to see if youtube blocks this.”

For years, and across many of the most prominent social-media platforms, LGBTQ+ content has been categorized as NSFW.

YouTube has shared vaguely that it uses “community flagging, age-restrictions, and other signals to identify and filter out potentially inappropriate content.” In response to criticism over the blocking of LGBTQ+ related videos, YouTube sent out a statement that illuminated little about the problem itself, or how exactly it hoped to address it:

A message to our community …

???@YTCreators

The company did seemingly make some changes, as fewer videos are now being blocked. But months later, issues remain. The aforementioned cat video, for one, continues to come up as blocked. As of mid-July, searching “gay” with the filter off returned a wide variety of videos, with top results including documentaries, coming-out videos, and same-gender kisses with hundreds of thousands of views. Turning the filter on, these videos disappeared, with the top results averaging a far smaller viewership.

Long before its latest hiccup, Tumblr had similar issues with filtration. In 2013, searching for tags like “gay” and “lesbian” would return no results on certain mobile versions of the site because they were flagged as inherently NSFW. In response to backlash at the time, the company wrote that “the solution is more intelligent filtering which our team is working diligently on. We’ll get there soon.” According to a reddit thread, this was still a problem in August 2016.

Twitter faced its own criticism this June, for flagging tweets with the word “queer” as potentially “offensive content.” Like YouTube, it replied vaguely, saying simply that it was “working on a fix.” As with Tumblr, the issue was particularly glaring for taking place during Pride Month, when the company was otherwise touting its LGBTQ+ inclusivity.

The Capitalist Appropriation Of Gay Pride

The question of why this keeps happening is a complicated one. Because social-media companies tend to be tight-lipped about how things work on the back-end, we have limited information on the source of these glitches. In some cases, as with Safe Mode, the problems do seem to stem from technical flaws. But it’s hard to imagine human bias not playing a role in at least some of this censorship.

In any case, social-media companies should be taking these filtration issues seriously—their impact on queer people, and especially queer youth, cannot be overstated.

Online, LGBTQ+ communities are far more likely to be welcoming to people of all ages and identities; they are places where minors can explore their sexuality and gender, learn about themselves, and get invaluable support. Tumblr in particular has long been the home of a robust LGBTQ+ community — it’s very difficult to use Tumblr without being exposed to the idea that not only are LGBTQ+ people everywhere, but they’re loud. This can show a questioning person that being LGBTQ+ is nothing to be ashamed of.

YouTube is another crucial resource for young LGBTQ+ people, as are a thousand smaller websites that anyone can access through a simple search — provided their engine doesn’t categorize their query as “unsafe,” like the “kids-oriented” search engine Kiddle once did for “bisexual,” “transgender,” and so forth.

The internet’s imperfect algorithms are not born of a vacuum. They are created by people, who are influenced by their assumptions. And when these programmers make these kinds of choices or mistakes, they don’t only make finding resources more difficult. They undermine the hard work of content creators who often ask for nothing in return except to know that an LGBTQ+ kid feels a little better. Instead of getting a comforting word from an understanding person, the child gets a warning that their identity is considered unsafe by an unfeeling corporation.

The internet’s imperfect algorithms are not born of a vacuum.

There’s also a troubling irony at play in all this — not only are these social media platforms failing their LGBTQ+ users with their “security” settings, they’re doing it to disguise the fact that they aren’t truly making their sites safer. Tumblr is absolutely not a safe website. Bots that spam porn and literal Nazis abound, and Safe Mode does nothing to prevent direct person-to-person harassment, including any aimed at minors. Ditto Twitter, where white supremacist activity has increased 600% since 2012, and Daesh continues to have a presence. Thousands of people, mostly women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color, experience torrents of harassment everyday. Twitter’s solution — hiding “sensitive content,” with filters blocking the word “queer”— has paradoxically hurt the very group it should be working to protect.

Our community is rightfully angry at this continued erasure. We build our support, education, and love on platforms owned by corporations who don’t seem to care about us. Social-media platforms may pay lip service to inclusivity, but in the end, we’re left only with systems that flag our identity as wrong.

We will continue to fight back against this censorship, because we understand a fundamental truth: Our existence is not sensitive content.

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When it comes to social progress, shame is proven to be an effective tool.

By Aja Barber

Contrary to increasingly and troublingly popular belief, your racist relatives on Facebook aren’t funny. They’re racists, which means they probably think less of people who look like me. So why do so many people insist on treating family members who say heinous things as harmless or even borderline-endearing?

Casual, blithe mentions about that “crazy racist aunt (or uncle)” are getting thrown around so much, it’s starting to feel like white people collectively consider racism a lighthearted joke. As if having a racist relative is just “one of those things,” like a run in your tights or a partner who never picks up after themselves. As if the racist relative isn’t actually that big a problem, because you feel untouched by their problematic views.

Just recently, a website I occasionally read featured a pop-up declaring that you should “like” them on Facebook, because they do social media just like your racist aunt! If you identify and chuckle at that “joke,” you should feel ashamed of yourself — because it’s not funny. But mostly you should feel ashamed because it definitely means you haven’t stood up enough.

And yes, I know the question that’s going to be asked now: Have I stood up to my own problematic relatives online? And my answer is: Of course I have. I don’t get to pick my coworkers, and when it comes to holiday dinners, I don’t really get to pick who I break bread with. But in my online space, I get to say who comes in and who stays out. And I’ve decided that racists and other assorted bigots always belong in the latter camp.

It’s starting to feel like white people collectively consider racism a lighthearted joke.

Someone I know, for instance, was always writing problematic posts and sending troubling messages to me about women on Facebook. Because I know these sorts of patriarchal, oppressive ideas are deeply held, I decided that wasting my sweet precious afternoon trying to educate them and their ignorant friends for the greater good of women everywhere wouldn’t be an efficient use of my time. So instead of engaging with them, I deleted them and kept on trucking. Now, not only do I not have to deal with their sexism, but I also no longer receive transphobic jokes in my inbox. Two birds, one stone.

Unfriending racists has had wider-reaching consequences than just protecting me. Sidelining people who spout off damaging views also spares my other Facebook friends, as there are a number of ways that racist relatives hurt and offend. From jumping ignorance-first into comment threads on my posts, to adding remarks — and sometimes attacks — to the posts well-meaning friends leave on my wall, bigots have many methods of spewing hate.

Friendship In The Age Of Unfriending

So, when you unfriend someone, you are not only protecting yourself, but others too from their vile “opinions.” Moreover, by making the active choice to block them from your online space, you are also sending a very loud message: I don’t want you hanging around me with those views. Yes, feelings get hurt. But whose feelings would you rather have hurt? Your unassuming friend of color? The person whose humanity is being stripped away by a diatribe about the “race card”?

Or that racist aunt you barely tolerate who makes you cringe when she talks loudly in public about “illegals”?

The fact is, when it comes to social progress, shame is proven to be an effective tool. When I grew up in Virginia in the ’90s, for instance, homophobic rhetoric was still somewhat acceptable. Now, if you utter something homophobic in public, you should probably expect to get a dressing down, and rightfully so. Of course homophobia still exists in our society, but it’s generally become very unpopular (unlike, say, transphobia, which still despicably gets a pass). Pop culture, marriage equality, and a myriad of other cultural shifts in our society have contributed to a change in views about homosexuality — but so too has the simple fact that at some point, people began telling homophobes that they wouldn’t tolerate their hate. Humiliation is an effective way to make people take note of their problematic views; it may make them uncomfortable, but that’s kind of the point.

Remember, too, that when you unfriend a racist relative, you’re doing your small part to stop the very real issue of Internet harassment. Ask a vocal, marginalized human being how many times a day they receive abuse or harassment on the Internet — the answers will probably surprise you. You putting your foot down is you doing your part to stop that. Maybe racist auntie or uncle will think twice before they harass an innocent stranger from the safety of their computer screen, for fear that others will also swim away from them like a turd in the pool. Maybe not. But it’s well worth a try, isn’t it?

I understand that all those people who choose not to take a stand against their racist relatives on Facebook are afraid of being ostracized by other family members. But as someone who has a long history of unfriending people (quite happily, I must admit), I’m here to tell you that at the end of the day, everyone always gets over it. I’ve never apologized or added anyone back until they learn from the experience . . . and they always do. Maybe there are glib comments here and there made about me, but ask me if I care. (Spoiler alert: I don’t.)

And even if they don’t get over it, I’ve decided that at the end of the day, the humanity of those who’ve been offended by hurtful remarks is way more important than bigots feeling hurt because certain spaces of MINE (that’s right, MINE) are no longer accessible to them.

When you unfriend a racist relative, you’re doing your small part to stop the very real issue of Internet harassment.

Everyone has problematic relatives — but keeping them around isn’t mandatory. Sure, unfriending them is messy. It’s not fun at all. But you know what your passive disapproval is at the end of the day? It’s a pass. And when enough passes are handed out, the implicit message is that racism really isn’t such a big deal.

And for the record, because this happens a lot, I don’t hand out brownie points if — after swallowing your tongue when a relative says something you know to be racist in a comment thread I see — you tell me in a private message that you “disagree” with their opinions. Whether you message me to apologize in private or not, you’re still letting someone get away with problematic behavior. You’re also putting the burden on me, unloading your racist problem like a cat delivering a dead bird to my feet. (Emotional dumping about racism to your friends of color is an entirely different essay in itself.) My day has been thoroughly ruined by racism a great many times in my life. I’d prefer to get a little less of it delivered straight to my inbox by well-meaning friends who can’t reconcile the behavior of a blood relative who they choose to allow in their online life.

So the next time your racist tea partier relative decides to chime in on an otherwise pleasant but topical discussion, please, for the love of God, don’t message me privately about it. You have free will. You don’t need my permission to unfriend them. You shouldn’t even need my encouragement. Just unfriend them. With reckless abandon.

And if you remain inactive one too many times, don’t be surprised if I unfriend you.

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