Roles: Product Lead, Product Manager & User Researcher
Status: In Progress
Today, with Internet connectivity being built into products for every aspect of our daily lives, the potential surface areas for people to co-opt or weaponize platforms for negative impact has dramatically increased. For example, For example, smart home technologies are being used by perpetrators of domestic abuse to covertly monitor, gaslight, and control their victims. Social media platforms, dating apps, and webcam sites are being used by human traffickers to groom and eventually traffick young girls.
As the cost of entry for those seeking to exploit technologies to harm others has also been lowered, demand for innovative solutions to mitigate various types of platform abuse are more needed than ever.
The Mobius Project (work in progress) is a knowledge and research platform that delivers practical ways to incorporate platform abusability testing into existing product life cycles and teams, drawing from existing expertise from privacy, security, scholars, and digital activists. Our first tool aims to support product teams in the planning stages of potential new products or features.
This project was selected as a finalist in the 2019-2020 UC Berkeley Big Ideas Contest, which received over 400 applications this year.
If you are on a product team that is interested in having more actionable, nuanced conversations about how to prevent the technology you build from being used to harm people, I would love to hear from you – please email nicolechi@berkeley.edu and I’ll reach out to schedule a chat!