Block Party to combat online harassment and abuse on SNS launched on Twitter | GLM

Block Party, an anti-harassment startup founded by Pinterest engineer Tracy Chou, aims to make people feel safer on social media, January 15th. Was launched in. Currently only available on Twitter, Block Party offers a service that filters content that people don’t want to see and stores it in what the company calls a “Lockout Folder.” .. It’s a place where users can find all of their filtered content if they want to see it later.

“I think it’s important to admit that these people exist (even if you don’t want to),” Chow told TechCrunch.

Pretending to be non-existent may miss useful information and real connections.

“There can be a lot of good things that might be lost,” she says. “There’s a reason we use a public platform like Twitter.”

She continued to explain if there were any more negative aspects. Still, you may need to check regularly to see if anyone threatens your physical safety.

“Helpers” play a major role in the Block Party user experience. Users can allow trusted helpers access to lockout folders, letting them know if there is any useful information there, or simply blocking trolls.

“It’s very easy to help someone else handle it or flag information of concern. It’s nice to be able to share that burden. Most The current design of the platform imposes a coping burden only on those who are being abused, “she said.

Lockout folders also serve as a tool for keeping records when evidence of harassment needs to be presented to companies, lawyers, and others.

“We’re trying to make people’s lives easier,” says Chow. “It’s very painful to have to see abuse again every time I submit a report.”

The Block Party was born out of Mr. Chow’s own experience working for platform companies like Facebook and Quora, and her experience as an activist who speaks positively for diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. .. At Quora, Chow told me that the block button was one of the first things she made after being harassed on the platform.

“There’s also the perspective of being inside and seeing how the product and engineering team works,” says Chow. “But from my experience as an activist in DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), I’ve seen how teams influence product decisions when they lack minority.”

The Block Party is currently only available to Twitter users, but the goal is to add other platforms to address self-targeted harassment on multiple platforms. Block Party is currently free, but plans to introduce a subscription layer. Still, Mr. Chow said he assumed that a free version would always exist.

To date, Block Party has raised just under $ 1.5 million. The pre-seed round was led by Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures. Other investors include former TechCrunch Co-Editor-in-Chief Alexia Bonatsos, former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, and former Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos. ) And so on.