Abuse (International Women's Day Special)

This is a special episode because it’s International Women’s Day! We’ve recorded a special episode on this day over the past few years. You can check them out on our website if that sounds like fun for you.

Although, they’re probably not relevant any more because everything is totally fine and ok in the world now. It’s 2020. We’ve fixed all the issues plaguing the human race. There is no more inequality. Everything is fine. Everyone is happy. Honest.

Warning: Because this topic is around gender and tech, we may be discussing subjects that might be distressing for some people, so take care when listening. 

Joining host Bex are some excellent TFGL Women, Hera Hussain and Sacha Wynne.

Bex was thinking about gender and tech before it was cool. Now it’s cool, there are UN hackathons and AI roundtables a-plenty. Don’t get her started on that, she’s got lots to stay and she will save it for another day!

Hera lives and breathes gender and tech so it’s going to be hard to rein her in, but I suppose it is International Women’s Day. She can go wild with her commentary. But only today - like corporate feminism - everything goes back to sweatshops and unequal pay tomorrow. 

Sacha, like the many men who come out of the woodwork to put #HeforShe in their twitter bio once a year, her presence is a rarity!

Discussed on the show:

Stat of the week 

#Stalkerware infections grew by 40% in 2019, says @kaspersky . 67,500 unique users had stalkerware apps installed on their phones in 2019 #GIoT

Charity news of the week

The campaign sees Solace Women’s Aid use Twitter’s hidden replies function to highlight the plight of those trapped in ‘hidden’ abusive relationships. 

Parents beg Pornhub to remove explicit sex photos of underage teenagers more quickly

Bristol Post becomes one of the first newspapers to share abuse and threats made to Greta Thunberg by people from Bristol.

Tech news of the week 

Republican mega-donor buys stake in Twitter and seeks to oust Jack Dorsey – report Billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management has taken a ‘sizable stake’ and intends to ‘push for changes’, reports Bloomberg News

A Rant or Nice of the week? (or both…)

The Vatican has joined forces with tech giants Microsoft and IBM to promote the ethical development of artificial intelligence (AI) and call for regulation of intrusive technologies such as facial recognition.

Tracy Chou's app for blocking online harassment is in beta The engineer and tech diversity advocate is working on an app called Block Party.

And finally… 

eBay bans sellers from using coronavirus to 'profit from tragedies and disasters'.

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We’d also like to thank Happy Porch for their sponsorship which will allow us to have our episodes transcribed, helping us be more inclusive and accessible. Happy Porch provide strategy, technology and development for purpose driven organisations. You can find out more about them at happyporch.com.