By Andrea Crowley-Hughes

We expected to launch The Refresh during interesting times, but our second week was “interesting” in a way we never would have wanted. We had planned to run reaction pieces on the election of the Hillary Clinton as the United States’ first female president, but after November 8 found ourselves re-sharing Tana’s article on pre-election self care as it took on a whole new light. To say the shock of Donald Trump’s election has fully subsided would be untrue. As writers and creatives, we know this is a time when standing up for accuracy, human rights and social justice is paramount. But cobbling together solutions amid our new national uncertainty is a challenge.

On the upside, we’re not alone. Fields like technology and thrive on uncertainty, and developers have honed the skill of constructing tools out of whatever resources are available. These technical innovations – born to solve everything from online harassment to “fake news” – provide much needed inspiration.

The Coral Project

Long before 2016, comment sections of news websites have been home to vitriol. The makers and technologists at The Coral Project built free, open-source tools publications and community members, to make sure dialogue is safe, respectful and constructive.

Their work comes out of interviews with “more than 300 people in 150 newsrooms in 30 countries, as well as commenters, trolls, and people who never comment.” You can download their card game to understand how online communities work and have fun at the same time.

News Tracer

Being on Twitter lately has felt like scrolling through a real-time enactment of “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Whether it’s the president-elect’s baffling cabinet picks or the latest developments in efforts to recount the vote in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, keeping track of what has been confirmed and what is just speculation is a job and a half. How can we stay on top of it all?

Reuters built New Tracer, a tool which monitors Twitter for breaking news and then clusters relevant tweets into “events.” New Tracer not only clusters tweets related to breaking news, it also includes an algorithm to “assign verification scores to tweets based on 40 factors, including whether the report is from a verified account, how many people follow those who reported the news, whether the tweets contain links and images, and, in some cases, the structure of the tweets themselves.” The tool helps Reuters decide when to report on events that require immediate response.

FiB

“Fake news” circulating on social media before the election could have been responsible for large-scale misinformation. While lies, pranks and propaganda are not new, we are living in a time where their organic spread can be track and, hopefully, stopped.

Students participating in a hackathon at Princeton University created FiB, a Google Chrome extension that classifies social media posts and labels them in the browser as “verified” or “unverified.” Background artificial intelligence makes it happen through image recognition, keyword extraction and source verification. After some quick initial development, the students released it as open source so developers can work with their code.

Signal

People living in the US are feeling an urgent need to safeguard their First Amendment rights as a president who has praised authoritarian forms of government comes into power. Signal, a messaging app by Open Whisper Systems, uses an end to end encryption protocol to facilitate private, untraceable communication.

After the election, Open Whisper Systems’ founder reported the largest increase in daily downloads of the app the company had ever seen. Maintaining the freedom to communicate our opinions freely and without interference is a right the technology community should continue to support.

Tech Jobs for Good

The impetus to do good through volunteering, donating or working to help vulnerable populations has propelled many of us into action in recent weeks. If you’re feeling the drive to spread love in a time of hate and are also looking for your next job, there’s a new Twitter account to help you take that step.

@Goodtechjobs was started after the election. The person behind the feed shares job openings for technology-focused roles in organizations like the ACLU, Natural Resources Defense Council, Planned Parenthood and smaller non-profits or civil justice-minded companies. There’s a handy spreadsheet where the jobs are categorized by area, job type, salary and remote option. Here you might find your perfect match and get to using technology for good yourself!

Do you know of any other ways technology is confronting the problems of our day? Let us know in the comments!

Save