Archives for January 2023

I was cited in an article that was published in Forbes. The article was part of a series that was assessing the activities of 2022 on Twitter, the crazy policies of a new CEO, and the ramifications on the future of social media.

The article’s central emphasis was on the question of whether or not, in the near future of social media, users can feel secure while maintaining their individual identities.

I was quoted in the following lines as part of a discussion on the pros and cons of maintaining anonymity and pseudonymity online:

“Kaliya Young, Identity Woman, recalls an incident with Kathy Sierra, a female blogger and game developer, who in 2007, experienced death threats online and finally gave up her tech career, withdrew from the blogosphere and from online life. Following that incident there were calls to create blogger codes of conduct to stop this online violence against women.”

“’Look, if the first bad instances of online violence against women were treated seriously and the perpetrators that were not known were held to account then we would be in a different place [today]. They were not.’ Weeve, the pseudonym, of the hacker and self-described neo-Nazi and white supremacist responsible for posting false information about Sierra, had gone unpunished. As per Young, ‘He should have gone to prison for that. I was at the conference when they got up and said Kathy isn’t here because of death threats! It affected my life as a woman working in technology. Instead, he was left alone and went on to commit more acts of terrorism.’”

About the other side, you may find me in the following lines, where I’m contributing to a discussion regarding the importance of transparency and verification:

“Young stresses that it will take ‘time, rigour, investment and a proportionate approach’ to see the payoff. She points out that there is also a middle ground and it’s possible to implement speed bumps to make it less appealing for bad actors to exploit a poorly designed platform. ‘Designing a social media platform with possible consequences including, but not limited to privacy and security risks in mind (like One Dot Everyone, a consequence scanning tool), can improve the design while exploring alternatives to identity verification. Privacy Impact Assessments and Human Rights Impact Assessments will also go a long way to mitigate risks.’”

“Young questions the process for verification. Who will decide a person is who they say they are? Given her work in the Identity space, development of a trust framework should be leveraged to deal with the complexities of identity verification. But it continues to call into question what individuals or groups are responsible for defining the rules for verification?”

“Young professes that Identity has its place online but argues that the systems including the governance layers need to be in sync. ‘So men like Galloway and Haidt can go on about this ‘real name’ stuff all they want. Until the systems they built actually work as claimed and that men who use their real names and are known will be held to account, then what business do they have suggesting that?’”

Now, the purpose of this section is to provide a response to the following question: will technology save us? In the passage that follows, I am referenced as follows:

“Social media accounts have been around for a long time and Young makes clear they are, for the most part, run and managed by real people, attached to other real identities online that have more credibility: I think that analog is the new digital – meaning people will seek out and connect and value time with each other in person.”

Lastly, I am cited in the following lines on the remark that identity verification on social networks does not compute or make sense:

“As per Young, identity needs careful and thoughtful consideration:

There is a difference between the platform knowing who someone is and the whole world knowing the same. Who is enforcing what type of ID? Like Doctor, Young signals the marginalized, and those who have been suffering the abuse on the platform for over a decade. The rules for verification need to incorporate the varying definitions of identity that include cultural, general and local perspectives.”

You can read the full article here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hessiejones/2023/01/04/will-the-future-of-social-media-mean-the-coexistence-of-safety-and-identity/?sh=5851ac587fba